Deployment Diversity

Sometime in the past few days, new objects showed up in the satellite tracking database published by Space-Track.org. This is nothing new. Space-Track.org is supposed to do this every day. It’s their job: tracking and identifying objects orbiting the Earth, primarily for the United States Department of Defense, and as an ancillary service to the […]

NanoRacks Puts the Screws to its Deployment Problems

Almost exactly a month ago, I wrote about the faulty NanoRacks CubeSat Deployer (NRCSD) on the International Space Station (ISS–don’t forget to read the update–there’s some more accurate information there). It essentially launched very small satellites when it shouldn’t have and didn’t launch when it was expected to. According to this SpaceNews.com article posted last […]

DIY Space: Ardusat

Before I begin the fairly short DIY part, this is just a reminder for those who don’t know, or just plain forgot. Today is the anniversary of Sputnik I, the first man-made satellite, which was launched into orbit on the top of an R-7 rocket from Baikonur Cosmodrome. The R-7 had already been successfully tested as a […]

How to purchase an affordable small satellite – at the cost of a mid-size car

Because it’s been a year, I’m taking a little break. So you’re currently looking at some of the Clearancejobs.com articles about space I’ve written. I’ll be interspersing these throughout for a little bit (not long). This particular article was posted on Clearancejobs.com on 3 January, 2014. Do you have a spare $35,000 in your pocket? […]

DIY Space: Two-fer–Build Your Own Satellite and Track It

These two DIY projects are straight from the DIY Space Exploration website. One project tells you how to build a picosat, the other tells you how to track it. You can read each one in whatever order you fancy, but if you intend to actually accomplish each project, then you should probably build your picosat before attempting to […]