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Satellite Dispenser
A satellite dispenser is a space tug usually released from the upper stage (sometimes called kick stage) of a rocket and designed to fly small secondary payloads to their desired location before deploying them. Project West Ford launched 480,000,000 needles in space in 1961 and 1963 using a dispenser. The company Moog Inc. launched a satellite dispenser on a Falcon 9 rocket on 14 July 2014, placing 6 Orbcomm satellites in orbit. SHERPA (space tug), SHERPA is a satellite dispenser first launched on 3 December 2018 on a rideshare mission called ''SSO-A: SmallSat Express''. The two SHERPA dispensers placed 64 satellites, after separating from the Falcon 9 Block 5 rocket once it entered a polar Sun-synchronous orbit around 575 kilometers above Earth. [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Space Tug
''Space Tug'' is a young adult fiction, young adult science fiction novel by author Murray Leinster. It was published in 1953 in literature, 1953 by Shasta Publishers in an edition of 5,000 copies. It is the second novel in the author's Joe Kenmore series. Groff Conklin gave it a mixed review in Galaxy Science Fiction, ''Galaxy'', noting that it held "plenty of excitement though not much maturity." Anthony Boucher, Boucher and J. Francis McComas, McComas preferred it to the series's initial volume, but still found it "quite a notch below ... Leinster's adult work." P. Schuyler Miller reported the novel was marked by "the fastest kind of action" and "the feeling of technical authenticity.""The Reference Library", ''Astounding Science Fiction'', November 1954, p.144 Plot introduction The novel concerns the problems of the running of a space station. Publication history * 1953, US, Shasta Publishers , Pub date 1953, Hardback * 1955, US, Pocket Books , Pub date 1955, Paperback * ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Project West Ford
Project West Ford (also known as Westford Needles and Project Needles) was a test carried out by Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Lincoln Laboratory on behalf of the United States military in 1961 and 1963 to create an artificial ionosphere above the Earth. This was done to solve a major weakness that had been identified in military communications. History At the height of the Cold War, all international communications were either sent through submarine communications cables or bounced off the natural ionosphere. The United States military was concerned that the Soviets might cut those cables, forcing the unpredictable ionosphere to be the only means of communication with overseas forces. To mitigate the potential threat, Walter E. Morrow started Project Needles at the MIT Lincoln Laboratory in 1958. The goal of the project was to place a ring of 480,000,000 (Abstract) copper dipole antennas in orbit to facilitate global radio communication. The dipoles collectively prov ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Falcon 9
Falcon 9 is a Reusable launch system#Partial reusable launch systems, partially reusable, two-stage-to-orbit, medium-lift launch vehicle designed and manufactured in the United States by SpaceX. The first Falcon 9 launch was on June 4, 2010, and the first commercial resupply mission to the International Space Station (ISS) launched on October 8, 2012. In 2020, it became the first commercial rocket to launch humans to orbit. The Falcon 9 has been noted for its reliability and high launch cadence, with successful launches, two in-flight failures, one partial failure and one pre-flight destruction. It is the most-launched American orbital rocket in history. The rocket has two-stage-to-orbit, two stages. The first (booster) stage carries the second stage and payload to a predetermined speed and altitude, after which the second stage accelerates the payload to its target orbit. The Booster (rocketry), booster is capable of Vertical takeoff, vertical landing, landing vertically to fa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Orbcomm
ORBCOMM is an American company that offers industrial IoT solutions designed to track, monitor, and control fixed and mobile assets in markets including transportation, heavy equipment, maritime, oil and gas, utilities and government. The company provides hardware devices, modems, web applications, and data services delivered over multiple satellites and cellular networks. As of June 30, 2021, ORBCOMM has more than 2.3 million billable subscriber communicators, serving original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) such as Caterpillar Inc., Doosan Infracore America, Hitachi Construction Machinery Co., Ltd., John Deere, Komatsu Limited, and Volvo Construction Equipment, as well as other customers such as J. B. Hunt, C&S Wholesale Grocers, Canadian National Railways, C.R. England, Hub Group, KLLM Transport Services, Marten Transport, Swift Transportation, Target, Tropicana, Tyson Foods, Walmart and Werner Enterprises. ORBCOMM owns and operates a global network of 31 low Earth o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
SHERPA (space Tug)
SHERPA is a commercial satellite dispenser developed by Andrews Space, a subsidiary of Spaceflight Industries, and was unveiled in 2012. The maiden flight was on 3 December 2018 on a rocket, and it consisted of two separate unpropelled variants of the dispenser. Riding atop the launcher's final stage, SHERPA's release follows deployment of the primary mission payload for the dispensing of minisatellites, microsatellites, or s such as |
Falcon 9 Block 5
Falcon 9 Block 5 is a Reusable launch system#Partial reusable launch systems, partially reusable, human-rating certification, human-rated, two-stage-to-orbit, medium-lift launch vehicle designed and manufactured in the United States by SpaceX. It is the fifth major version of the Falcon 9 family and the third version of the Falcon 9 Full Thrust. It is powered by SpaceX Merlin, Merlin 1D engines burning rocket-grade kerosene (RP-1) and liquid oxygen (LOX). The main changes from Block 3 (the original Falcon 9 Full Thrust) to Block 5 are higher-thrust engines and improvements to the landing legs along with numerous other small changes to streamline recovery and re-use of List of Falcon 9 first-stage boosters, first-stage boosters and increase the production rate. Each Block 5 booster is designed to fly ten times with only minor maintenance between launches and potentially up to 100 times with periodic refurbishment. In 2018, Block 5 succeeded the transitional Bl ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Spaceflight Industries
Spaceflight Industries, Inc. is an American private aerospace company based out of Herndon, Virginia, that specializes in geospatial intelligence services. It sold its satellite rideshare business, Spaceflight, Inc., in June 2020. Spaceflight Industries has two primary business services: BlackSky Global, their geospatial intelligence service, and LeoStella, a joint venture with Thales Alenia Space to manufacture small satellites. History Spaceflight Industries was founded in 2009 as Spaceflight Services by Jason Andrews, with Curt Blake joining soon thereafter as SVP and General Counsel. Prior to founding Spaceflight, Jason Andrews worked at Kistler Aerospace and founded Andrews Space in 1999. Jason Blake has previous experience at Microsoft, Starwave, SpaceDev, and GotVoice. Spaceflight Services purchased excess capacity from commercial launch vehicles and resold it to a number of "rideshare" secondary payloads, along with providing integration and certification se ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cygnus NG-11
NG-11, previously known as OA-11, is the twelfth flight of the Northrop Grumman robotic resupply spacecraft Cygnus (spacecraft), Cygnus and its eleventh flight to the International Space Station under the Commercial Resupply Services (CRS-1) contract with NASA. The mission launched on 17 April 2019 at 20:46:07 Coordinated Universal Time, UTC. This is the last mission from the extended CRS-1 (phase 1) contract; follow-up missions are part of the CRS-2 contract. Cygnus NG-11 was also the first mission to load critical hardware onto Cygnus within the last 24 hours prior to launch, a new Antares feature. Northrop Grumman Innovation Systems, Orbital ATK and NASA jointly developed a new space transportation system to provide commercial cargo resupply services to the International Space Station (ISS). Under the Commercial Orbital Transportation Services, Commercial Orbital Transportation System (COTS) program, then Orbital Sciences Corporation, Orbital Sciences designed and built Antar ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
ION CubeSat Carrier
ION Satellite Carrier (formerly ION CubeSat Carrier) is a satellite platform developed, manufactured, and operated by Italian company D-Orbit. The platform features a customizable 64U satellite dispenser capable of hosting a combination of CubeSats that fits the volume. Throughout a mission, ION Satellite Carrier can release the hosted satellites individually, changing orbital parameter between one deployment and the next. Each of the miniature CubeSats weighs a few kilograms. The organization also developed a D3 (D-Orbit Decommissioning Device) system, which has obtained funding from the European Commission and the European Space Agency, to safely dispose of satellites at the end of their lives and avoid adding to the problems created by the approximately 130 million pieces of space debris. According to D-Orbit, a space circular economy is feasible, and space recycling will soon be a new sector. This will involve using local resources such as dead satellites to create spacesh ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Vega (rocket)
Vega (, , ) was a European expendable small-lift launch vehicle developed by Avio and operated by Arianespace for the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Italian Space Agency (ASI). Designed to carry payloads between into low Earth and polar orbits, Vega served primarily scientific and Earth observation missions. Development of Vega began in 1998, with its maiden flight launched from the Guiana Space Centre on 13February 2012. Over the next decade, it became the eighth most launched small-lift launch vehicle history, though it struggled to compete in the commercial launch market. After initial success, two in-flight failures and rising competition from SpaceX's rideshare programs, which offered lower prices, relegated Vega to primarily serving European government agencies willing to pay more to support independent space access. The rocket took its name from Vega, the brightest star in the constellation Lyra. It featured a single-body design without strap-on boosters, con ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Vega Flight VV16
Vega flight VV16, also called SSMS PoC Flight (for ''Small Spacecraft Mission Service Proof of Concept Flight''), was the launch of the Vega rocket. The launch was also notable as it was the first Vega launch following the accident of the VV15 launch in July 2019 that caused the loss of FalconEye1 satellite. Payload This first low Earth orbit rideshare commercial flight for 21 customers embarked a total of 65 satellites (53 satellites to be released by the launch vehicle directly plus an additional 12 that were later released by one of them) arranged in the modular SSMS dispenser. Of the 53 satellites that were released, 7 microsatellites weigh between 15.4 kg and 150 kg (one of them contained 12 CubeSats), while the other 46 are smaller CubeSats (between 0.25U and 6U) weighing between 0.250 kg and 7 kg: Launch campaign Launch campaign activities were significantly affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. To prevent the spread of the epidemic in French G ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Planet Labs
Planet Labs PBC (formerly Planet Labs, Inc. and Cosmogia, Inc.) is a publicly traded American Earth imaging company based in San Francisco, California. Their goal is to image the entirety of the Earth daily to monitor changes and pinpoint trends. The company designs and manufactures 3U-CubeSat miniature satellites called Doves that are then delivered into orbit as secondary payloads on other rocket launch missions. Each ''Dove'' is equipped with a high-powered telescope and camera programmed to capture different swaths of Earth. Each ''Dove'' Earth observation satellite continuously scans Earth, sending data once it passes over a ground station, by means of a frame image sensor. The images gathered by ''Doves'', which can be accessed online and some of which are available under an open data access policy, provide up-to-date information relevant to climate monitoring, crop yield prediction, urban planning, and disaster response. With acquisition of BlackBridge in July 2015, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
