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NOAA seeks continuity of space weather observations

SAN FRANCISCO — The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is looking ahead to a future generation of space weather instruments. The agency’s first priority is ensuring the continuity of measurements to be made by the Space Weather Follow-On (SWFO) mission sensor suite scheduled to travel to Lagrange Point 1 in 2025 on NASA’s Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration probe.

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After a successful 2021, Avio is looking forward to the future

Space-based services and applications are increasingly important in our daily life, for the economy, the environment, the resources’ management and for our security. In 2011, the United States National Security Space Strategy defined space as “a domain that no nation owns but on which all rely, [which] is becoming increasingly congested, contested, and competitive”.

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Scorching alien planet takes seasons to an extreme

Researchers used NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope to film a year on an exoplanet called XO-3b. Conveniently, a year on this world lasts only three Earth days. Within that time, the exoplanet experiences a one-day-long summer and a two-day-long winter — and while the seasons pass fast, they’re also awfully dramatic.

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Virgin Orbit launches seven cubesats on third operational mission

Cosmic Girl, the Boeing 747 aircraft that serves as the launch platform for LauncherOne, took off from the Mojave Air and Space Port in California at 4:39 p.m. Eastern. It released the rocket at approximately 5:52 p.m. Eastern, which then ascended to low Earth orbit at an altitude of about 500 kilometers. Virgin Orbit tweeted an hour after release that all seven satellites on the rocket had been deployed.

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SpaceX launches third dedicated smallsat rideshare mission

The Falcon 9 lifted off from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida at 10:25 a.m. Eastern Time January 13, 2022. The upper stage reached orbit eight and a half minutes later and, after a second burn 55 minutes after liftoff, deployed its payloads into a 525-kilometer sun-synchronous orbit over the following half-hour.

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