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 […]

A shadow of the future: When is a space shuttle not a space shuttle?

When it is a museum-piece being shuttled by an airplane to its resting place. Digitalglobe’s twitter-feed just sent this out. A little sad picture of the past (almost a year ago). Note the artifacting of the image in the photo? The way Digitalglobe explain it is the aircraft is moving fast during the time their […]

Why space matters: Imaging satellite operations, part 10–short bus schooling

Labor Day took its toll, but I’m back to write more (hopefully) interesting articles for you. What a space operator should know about satellite systems and space operations fills several volumes of books, folders and checklists. But, in essence, a space operator and space operations crew worries about three things: the satellite ground system, 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 […]