VIRGIN ORBIT’S FIRST LAUNCH COULD HAPPEN LATER THIS MONTH - Virgin Orbit could attempt its first orbital test launch later this month over the Pacific Ocean southwest of Los Angeles, capping a development program for an air-launched small satellite carrier that began in earnest eight years ago. The small satellite launch company, part of Richard Branson’s Virgin Group, entered the final phase of pre-flight testing last week with a ground fueling test of its first flight-worthy LauncherOne rocket. More (Source: SpaceFlight Now - May 5)
RUSSIA TO LAUNCH FIRST SATELLITE TO MONITOR ARCTIC CLIMATE IN 2020 - Russia is planning to launch a satellite called Arktika-M at the end of the year to monitor the Arctic climate and environment. The announcement was made by Vladimir Kolmykov, General Director of the Lavochkin aerospace company. Russia’s Arktika-M remote-sensing and emergency communications satellites aim to gather meteorological data in the polar regions, which will allow for improved weather forecasts and enable scientists to study climate change better. More (Source: SatelliteProME.com - May 5)
STAR POINTS: TRAINS OF ‘STARLINK’ SATELLITES SPREADING ACROSS NIGHT SKY - After a soggy day last month, the night sky cleared and the mud dried so I went for a nighttime walk. Stepping out from the forest at one point and looking up there was a very unusual sight like I have never experienced before. In the eastern sky there was a train-like parade of satellites. Turns out they are part of SpaceX’s Starlink constellation which had been launched five days earlier aboard one of the company’s Falcon 9 rockets. More (Source: Baltimore Sun - May 4)
SPACEX ACES LAST DRAGON PARACHUTE TEST BEFORE CREW LAUNCH - SpaceX completed Friday the last drop test of the Dragon crew capsule’s parachutes before the first launch of astronauts on the human-rated ship May 27, while technicians at Cape Canaveral have mated the spacecraft’s crew module with its unpressurized trunk section. The drop test from a C-130 cargo plane Friday was the 27th and final test of the “Mark 3” parachute design SpaceX will use for the Crew Dragon spacecraft. More (Source: SpaceFlight Now - May 4)
HOW AMATEUR SATELLITE TRACKERS ARE KEEPING AN 'EYE' ON OBJECTS AROUND THE EARTH - Around the planet, a loosely knit but closely woven band of amateurs monitor the whereabouts of satellites — be they secretive spacecraft, robotic space drones, rocket stages, orbital debris or lost-in-space planetary probes. But what's the motivation behind this group of sky prowling spirits? What kind of tools are they using now or in the future to purge secrets from space — at times revealing what some countries don't want others to know about? More (Source: Space.com - May 3)
SCIENTISTS HAVE FOUND A WAY TO USE SATELLITE IMAGERY TO DETECT PLASTIC POLLUTION IN THE OCEAN - In 2018, Lauren Biermann was scouring a satellite image of the ocean off the coast of the Isle of May, Scotland, searching for signs of floating seaweed for a project at her university. Her eyes were drawn to lines of white dots gently curving along an ocean front. “It was weird because I was seeing floating things that didn’t look like plants, and I didn’t know what they could be,” Biermann, an Earth observation scientist at Plymouth Marine Laboratory in the U.K., explained. More (Source: The Rising - May 3)
HUBBLE'S IMPACTFUL LIFE ALONGSIDE SPACE DEBRIS - During its 30 years in orbit around Earth, the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has witnessed the changing nature of spaceflight as the skies have filled with greater numbers of satellites, the International Space Station was born and in-space crashes and explosions have created clouds of fast-moving space debris. Hubble itself has felt the impact of this debris, accumulating tiny impact craters across its solar panels that evidence a long and eventful life in space. More (Source: Phys.org - May 2)
NEW SATELLITE GIVES CLEAREST VIEW YET OF POLAR ICE MELT - A cutting-edge NASA satellite has provided one of the most detailed looks yet at glaciers in Greenland and Antarctica. The findings are clearer than ever: Both ice sheets are losing billions of tons of mass into the ocean each year, contributing significantly to global sea-level rise. The results were published yesterday in the journal Science by a team of researchers from around the country, led by Ben Smith of the University of Washington. More (Source: Scientific American - May 2)
LONG MARCH 5B ROLLED OUT FOR CREWED SPACECRAFT, SPACE STATION TEST LAUNCH - China rolled out a Long March 5B launcher Wednesday for a mission to prove space station launch capabilities and test a new spacecraft for deep space human spaceflight. Images of the Long March 5B shared on Chinese social media indicated that the rollout at Wenchang Satellite Launch Center was completed early April 29. Launch from the coastal Wenchang launch site can now be expected around May 5. However, an official announcement has not yet been made. More (Source: SpaceNews - May 1)
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