BRIGHTEST 'STAR' IN THE SKY MAY SOON BE THIS RUSSIAN SATELLITE - Soon, there may be a new human-made “star” gliding across the heavens that will be brighter than both the International Space Station and the planet Venus. Mayak, the Russian word for “beacon,” is a pyramid-shaped satellite that is the brainchild of a group of students at the Moscow State University of Mechanical Engineering (MSUME), who successfully crowdfunded the money to build and launch the probe. Their 3U CubeSat is part of a flotilla of 73 satellites hitching a ride aboard a Soyuz rocket scheduled to launch on June 14 from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.   More
(Source: National Geographic - Jul 15)

A RUSSIAN SOYUZ ROCKET PROVIDED A RIDE SHARE TO SPACE FOR MORE THAN 70 SATELLITES THIS MORNING - A Russian Soyuz rocket launched a whopping 73 satellites into space this morning, sending the spacecraft into three different orbits around Earth. The satellites — ranging from tiny probes the size of a shoebox to a half-ton satellite the size of a car — rode together into space, arranged in a tall tower stacked on top of the rocket. It’s the most amount of satellites a Soyuz has ever put into space at one time. This mission was essentially a rocket ride share, as the satellites belong to various companies and universities.    More
(Source: The Verge - Jul 15)

SOYUZ ROLLED OUT FOR LAUNCH OF MULTINATIONAL SATELLITE CLUSTER - A Soyuz rocket arrived at a launch pad Tuesday in Kazakhstan for liftoff later this week with a satellite to monitor natural disasters and track forest fires from orbit and 72 secondary payloads from Russia, the United States, Germany, Norway and Japan. The Russian launcher’s blastoff is timed for 0636:49 GMT (2:36:49 a.m. EDT; 12:36:49 p.m. Kazakh time) Friday from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.   More
(Source: SpaceFlight Now - Jul 14)

NASA’S TDRS-M SATELLITE BEING READIED FOR UPCOMING LAUNCH - With the Atlas 5 rocket that will boost it into space now assembled and waiting, a $408 million NASA communications satellite is in final preparations for its science data relay mission. The Tracking and Data Relay satellite-M, or TDRS-M, will be carried aloft by United Launch Alliance on Aug. 3 from Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. A 40-minute morning launch window opens at 9:02 a.m. EDT (1302 GMT).   More
(Source: SpaceFlight Now - Jul 14)

SPACEX GOES THERE—SEEKS GOVERNMENT FUNDS FOR DEEP SPACE - During the last decade, NASA has invested billions of dollars into programs with private companies to carry cargo and, eventually, astronauts to the International Space Station. These commercial services were powered by new kinds of contracts for the agency, because they offered a "fixed price" for services and required companies to put in their own funding to develop new spacecraft and rockets. But the space agency has established a Maginot line of sorts around the planet when it comes to deep space exploration.   More
(Source: Ars Technica - Jul 14)

SENTINEL SATELLITE CAPTURES BIRTH OF BEHEMOTH ICEBERG - Over the last few months, a chunk of Antarctica's Larsen C ice shelf has been hanging on precariously as a deep crack cut across the ice. Witnessed by the Copernicus Sentinel-1 mission, a lump of ice more than twice the size of Luxembourg has now broken off, spawning one of the largest icebergs on record and changing the outline of the Antarctic Peninsula forever. The fissure first appeared several years ago, but seemed relatively stable until January 2016, when it began to lengthen. In January 2017 alone it travelled 20 km, reaching a total length of about 175 km.    More
(Source: Phys.org - Jul 13)

SMALL SATELLITES DRIVING SPACE INDUSTRY GROWTH: REPORT - Small satellites used for observing conditions on the earth are the fastest growing segment of the $260.5 billion global satellite industry, the Satellite Industries Association said in an annual report released on Tuesday. Small satellites, some no bigger than a shoe box, generated an 11 percent jump in annual revenue for Earth imagery in 2016 and a growing share of the 1,459 operating spacecraft that circled the planet at the end of the year, the report said.    More
(Source: Reuters - Jul 12)

ARISS TO CELEBRATE 20TH ANNIVERSARY WITH SSTV EVENT - The Amateur Radio on the International Space Station (ARISS) program is planning a slow-scan television (SSTV) event starting on Thursday, July 20, and continuing for 2 days, to commemorate its 20th anniversary. Transmissions, set to get under way around 2125 UTC, will feature 12 images from past and present ARISS activities. The SSTV signal should be available nearly anywhere on the globe at some point during the event. “Starting with our first meeting in November 1996, our joint operations on Mir, becoming the first operational payload on ISS in November 2000, to our [more than 1,100] school contact (so far), ARISS’s accomplishments have been tremendous,” ARISS International Chair Frank Bauer, KA3HDO, said, in first announcing the SSTV event last.    More
(Source: ARRL - Jul 12)

THE FIRST SLOVAK SATELLITE REPORTS PROBLEMS - The first Slovak satellite, skCUBE, orbited the Earth without any significant problems for only 15 days. During the night of Friday, July 7 to Saturday, July 8, the first error occurred – the satellite stopped sending all data. Only data packets from the COM communication system are now being received while data from other systems on board and from the sensors are missing. “Our last connections with the satellite only some hours before, showed all systems were fully functional and there was no indication of any impending problems,” ...   More
(Source: The Slovak Spectator - Jul 11)

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