Nextbigfuture interviewed Max Perez of ColdQuanta. Max Perez is the Vice President of Research and Security Solutions at ColdQuanta. ColdQuanta’s cold atom method is a transformational foundational technology platform: ColdQuanta creates ultra-high vacuum cells that are injected with atoms Using laser cooling, ColdQuanta cools the atoms to near absolute zero The system is kept at …
Amazon’s Project Kuiper is asking the FCC to launch more than 4500 satellites. Amazon’s old plan was for 3236 satellites. If the new request is approved they will launch a total of 7774 satellites. They plan to start launching two satellites next year. The Kuiper satellites will operate between 590 and 630 km (370 and …
China’s BeiDou global navigation system was completed in June 2020 provides positioning accuracy of 1.5 to two meters to anyone in the world. GPS World provides details. From March to June 2020, two BDS-3 GEO satellites were launched, while the in-orbit tests of two IGSO satellites, two GEO satellites, and two MEO satellites were completed. …
Blue Origin, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and Draper Laboratory previously lost a bid to build a human lunar lander for NASA to SpaceX. Jeff Bezos’ company bid $6 billion to build one lander but NASA awarded $2.89 billion to SpaceX. Blue Origin’s team and Dynetics filed separate protests with the Government Accountability Office. The GAO …
SpaceX Starlink has 1578 satellites in orbit which have combined download capacity of 26 terabits per second. If this download capacity could be perfectly distributed it would enable 260,000 people to have maxed out 100 Mbps simultaneous downloads. Most people will average about 10-20% of their available capacity when they are actively using their systems. …
SpaceX has launched another 60 Starlink satellites from Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC-40) at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. The Falcon 9 first stage rocket booster supporting this mission previously supported launch of GPS III Space Vehicle 03, Turksat 5A, and four Starlink missions. This was also the 81st successful recovery of a …
SpaceX launched another 60 Starlink satellites. SpaceX had about 1,320 Starlink satellites still in orbit. By April, 2021, SpaceX will have deployed the first shell of 1440 satellites. First: 1,440 in a 550 km (340 mi) altitude shell Second: 2,825 Ku-band and Ka-band spectrum satellites at 1,110 km (690 mi) Third: 7,500 V-band satellites at …
Starlink will change the angle to cover 500-kilometer diameter spots from 1000 kilometer diameter spots. This will increase the download bandwidth from 100 mbps to 300 mbps. The second-generation Starlink will use a tighter beam and the ka band. It will be several years for the second generation Starlink to be deployed. The first 12000 …
OneWeb, the Low Earth Orbit (LEO) broadband satellite communications company,is emerging from U.S. Chapter 11 bankruptcy and is restarting production of satellites. A consortium of UK Government (through the UK Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy) and Bharti Global, has invested $1 billion of new equity to offer broadband connectivity services, via …
There is an arxiv paper “Fused Low-Earth-Orbit GNSS”, by Peter A. Iannucci and Todd E. Humphreys of the Radionavigation Laboratory, The University of Texas at Austin, that details how low-earth orbit satellites can be modified to provide super-precise GPS. MIT Technology Review indicates that the system would be accurate to 70 centimeters. Simple software upgrades …
Freefall Aerospace is a NASA NIAC (NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts) success story. The inflatable antenna system enables big data from cubesats and small low-cost spacecraft. The 3-dimensional phased array antenna technology can provide high data rate communication at virtually any frequency at a fraction of the size and cost of any existing solution. They have …