Space matters, but other options help, too

This story has been going around the net for the past few days. And probably for many of you smart people out there, it’s probably an inevitable outcome of our government’s (the USA) infatuation with drones. But, just like my aside “The Poor Man’s LEO satellite” about the North Dakota balloons being used for imagery, […]

Satellite operations imagery supplicant requests the government to loosen regulatory leash

It’s always sad when you’re told you have to hold back on the best things you can produce. This situation has been true and probably particularly irritating for US companies like Digitalglobe, who last week, according to this article, went to the US government to ask for permission to sell higher quality images to a […]

Antenna airbags on cubesats

An inflatable antenna is an interesting alternative on a cubesat. This article talks about the boost in signal range with one of these things. Very interesting idea indeed, but not new. There are ground antennas that are inflatable, such as the GATR. But the idea is the same–make it cheaper and smaller, but keep the […]

New Chinese Launch–another three satellites in one.

The Chinese launched another three satellites from Jiuquan (map below), China, according to this article. One supposedly has a electro-optical payload, another has synthetic aperture radar (SAR), and the third has possibly a ELINT/SIGINT payload. All are suspected, according to the NASA Spaceflight.org page, to be used for maritime vehicle tracking. I don’t know, but suspect these are probably going […]

The poor man’s LEO satellite

This is a good reminder that while satellite technology and operations are cool, sometimes the cheap ways will work just fine, too. Balloons are great if you want to look at areas that are easy to fly over. Just too bad these people feel compelled to do it over North Dakota. I don’t have anything […]