Space News

Welcome! As our understanding of the universe grows, hundreds of thousands of people have come to work at big aerospace companies. In this article, we will explore various space technologies these aerospace companies create, such as: rocket ships, rovers, and other innovations. In this article, I will talk about these companies and their missions/plans for the future.

SpaceX

On Tuesday, January 18 at 9:02 p.m. EST, Falcon 9 launched 49 Starlink satellites to low Earth orbit from Launch Complex 39A at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. This was also Falcon 9’s first stage booster’s 10th landing! Speaking of Starlink satellites, people might want to know what those are! Never fear, I’m here with an explanation and words directly from the Starlink website. Starlink satellites are kind of perfect as far as internet satellites go, but I feel like SpaceX will no doubt improve upon the design. They are way more compact than most satellites, meaning they can send stacks and stacks of them in one launch. These things can even move themselves and transmit data through space lasers, which is starting to sound like Sci-fi. They even have ion propulsion systems powered by krypton. Starlink explains why the satellites are so low when they say that “while most satellite internet services today come from single geostationary satellites that orbit the planet at about 35,000 km, Starlink is a constellation of multiple satellites that orbit the planet much closer to Earth, at about 550 km, and cover the entire globe. Because Starlink satellites are in a low orbit, the round-trip data time between the user and the satellite – also known as latency – is much lower than with satellites in geostationary orbit. This enables Starlink to deliver services like online gaming that are usually not possible on other satellite broadband systems.”

NASA

Orion, NASA’s new spacecraft, was built to take humans farther than they've ever gone. Orion will serve as the exploration vehicle that will carry a crew to space, provide them emergency abort capability, sustain them during space travel, and provide safe re-entry from deep-space return velocities. This seems like an almost perfect spacecraft, and it may be going to the moon in the coming months, IF it passes all the crucial tests that will allow NASA to put a crew on it and launch it into space.

There wasn’t as much news around this time, but innovation in this industry is still coming at a rapid pace, new plans and ideas are made all the time, and with these innovations coming, there is definitely a bright future to look forward to in this industry.

Sources:

https://www.spacex.com/launches/index.html

https://www.nasa.gov/exploration/systems/orion/index.html