Latest news on "Space"

The US Missile Defense Agency has signed a contract with the US company Northrop Grumman to develop a prototype satellite capable of detecting hypersonic targets. According to C4ISRNET, the transaction amount was $ 155 million. Under the terms of the agreement, the company will have to assemble a prototype of the satellite and conduct its demonstration tests.

The Falcon 9 heavy launch vehicle on Sunday successfully launched a record batch of 143 mini-satellites, including 10 spacecraft, to continue the deployment of the global Internet coverage of the Starlink system, the developer company SpaceX said.

A decision on the readiness of the communication satellite payload for operation will be made in the near future

The decision on the readiness of the payload of the Express-80 communication satellite for operation will be made in the near future, experts have already conducted its flight tests. This is stated in a video posted on Wednesday on the official channel of JSC "Information Satellite Systems named after M. F. Reshetnev" (ISS) on YouTube.

Mass media: Russia was removed from the discussion of the lunar station

Russian experts no longer participate in the discussion of the project of the American lunar station Gateway. It became known that they were excluded from the mailing list of letters and deprived of access to the materials.

A new crack has been discovered on the International Space Station (ISS). This was stated on the air of the TV channel "Russia-24" by the head of the flight of the Russian segment of the ISS, Vladimir Solovyov, TASS reports.

The Russian government has instructed the Treasury to check the contract for the construction of the launch complex for the Angara rockets at the Vostochny cosmodrome. The corresponding decree, signed by Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin, is published on the official Internet portal of legal information.

According to some Russian publications, this year Roscosmos will launch five GLONASS satellites. The first device is scheduled to be sent in the spring, the Izvestia TV channel reports. Two models of new-generation satellites will be launched into orbit. "Glonass-K" and "Glonass-K2" emit a larger number of signals. The service life of these devices is about 10 years. At the moment, the group consists of 28 devices.

NASA is undergoing personnel and administrative changes – the former head, Jim Bridenstine, has left his post, but a successor has not yet been appointed. This is one of the duties of the newly elected President Biden, but he still has too many other, more urgent things to do. Therefore, the space agency was temporarily headed by Steve Yurchik, who said that he would manage it, in fact, from the basement of his own house.

According to journalists, a subsidiary of SpaceX has acquired two drilling platforms: after the conversion, the complexes can be used for launching Starship spacecraft.

NASA may reduce its staff working in Russia. Some of the employees who work in the office in Moscow will be dismissed. Also, the division in Star City is waiting for the reduction. Perhaps the agency will refuse to rent the houses where the astronauts and their families lived, the Izvestia TV channel reports. The work of the department at the Institute of Medical Problems will change.

Rocket engines produced by NPO Energomash provided 23 of the 114 space launches conducted in 2020, Roscosmos reported.

According to an informed source, the promising Russian module "Science" for the ISS found new technical problems. Experts do not consider them fatal and do not plan a new postponement of the launch.

The Falcon 9 heavy launch vehicle successfully launched a new batch of 60 mini-satellites into low-Earth orbit on Wednesday, designed to continue the deployment of the Starlink system's global Internet coverage network, developer SpaceX said.

On the Russian segment of the ISS, the SLE-2 air conditioning system failed. The second-SLE-1-continues to work in normal mode.

The Americans decided to develop the military direction of nuclear energy. So far, the current President, Donald Trump, has signed a decree on the development of low-power nuclear reactors for the armed forces and space exploration. For the first time in half a century, the United States will use nuclear energy not only in the Navy. About why Washington needs new compact reactors-in the material of RIA Novosti.

At the end of 2020, the Air Force Office of Scientific Research at the Air Force Research Laboratory awarded 17 grants for quantum information research, two of which focused on the use of quantum computing to overcome problems in navigation without the use of GPS, according to the publication Inside GNSS. Quantum computing and quantum sensors use quantum bits (qubits) to speed up computing processes while performing multiple operations simultaneously, which is beyond the capabilities of modern computers. 

The operators of the insight mission came to the conclusion that it is pointless to continue trying to drill the Martian surface. A drill with tools to measure the heat flow from the interior of the red planet could not dive deep enough due to lack of friction with the soil — it was too lumpy.

In total, in order to improve the ground-based complex, about three dozen development works are currently being carried out [/b]

The level of modern ground stations in parts of the Main Test Space Center named after G. S. Titov will grow to 90% in the coming years. This was announced by the head of the center, Major General Sergei Marchuk.

Billionaire Branson launched 10 satellites from an airplane]

Billionaire Richard Branson finally managed to launch a rocket with 10 satellites from a Boeing 747. His company expects to occupy a niche of such launches and reduce the cost of putting small satellites into orbit.

Engineers from Switzerland and the Netherlands have developed a new algorithm for quadrocopters that allows them to stay in the air after turning off one propeller. Unlike similar algorithms developed earlier, the new one allows the drone to move controllably, not just hover in place, and also works only with the drone's own sensors, without requiring an external tracking system or GPS. The paper is published in the journal IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters, and its preprint is available on the website of the University of Zurich.