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solartim27

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Re: Satellite News
« Reply #50 on: October 15, 2020, 05:05:22 PM »
Sometime tonight there will be a close approach of a retired satellite and a rocket stage. I've seen closest approach estimates  range from 12 to 60 meters. The satellite has a 50 ft boom to add excitement.  TCA is 00:56 tomorrow UTC, or 7:56 pm today US EDT.

https://twitter.com/LeoLabs_Space/status/1316410780552699909?s=19

Edit: The rocket booster is 15 m long, this could be quite interesting. There is still debris being tracked from a 2009 Iridium collision.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_satellite_collision
« Last Edit: October 15, 2020, 07:32:41 PM by solartim27 »
FNORD

Tor Bejnar

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Re: Satellite News
« Reply #51 on: October 15, 2020, 06:00:42 PM »
It's not quite "satellite" news, only stratosphere news.
High-altitude airships company picks New Mexico for base


Quote
(AP) — A technology company aiming to send up high-altitude airships to monitor crops and bring broadband has chosen New Mexico for its U.S. production center, state Economic Development Secretary Alicia J. Keyes announced Tuesday.

The Switzerland-based Sceye picked the state as its U.S. base for stratospheric flights for earth observation and communication after spending more than $50 million in developing the stratospheric airship and building infrastructure, state officials said.

Officials said the company founded by global humanitarian Mikkel Vestergaard will locate its manufacturing operation in the state and will create 140 high-paying manufacturing and engineering jobs.

The move comes as Sceye works to develop a fleet of airships that could be parked for long periods of time about 65,000 feet (19,812 meters) in the air. Once in the sky, the blimp-like airships would monitor crop conditions, climate change, and human trafficking. The aircraft also may improve communication connections between drones, aircraft, satellites, and expand broadband.

The airships are controlled by pilots on the ground who move them as weather and the Earth’s atmosphere changes.
...
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kassy

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Re: Satellite News
« Reply #52 on: October 23, 2020, 06:55:12 PM »
Norway funds satellite map of world's tropical forests

A unique satellite dataset on the world's tropical forests is now available for all to see and use.

It's a high-resolution image map covering 64 countries that will be updated monthly.

Anyone who wants to understand how trees are being managed will be able to download the necessary information for analysis - for free.

The Norwegian government is funding the project through its International Climate and Forests Initiative (NICFI).

....

"There are many parts of the world where high-resolution images simply aren't available, or where they are available - the NGOs, communities, and academia in those countries can't afford them because they're quite expensive.

"So, we've decided to foot the bill for the world, basically," he told BBC News.

The NICFI has awarded a $44m (£33m) contract to Earth-observation specialists Airbus, Planet and Kongsberg Satellite Services (KSAT) for access to their pictures and expertise.

European aerospace giant Airbus is opening up its Spot image archive going back to 2002.

US-based Planet operates the single biggest constellation of imaging satellites in orbit today. The San Francisco firm acquires a complete picture of the Earth's land surface daily (cloud permitting), and it will provide the bulk of the data for the monthly map going forward.

KSAT will tie the information together and provide the technical support for users.

see:

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-54651453
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vox_mundi

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Re: Satellite News
« Reply #53 on: November 03, 2020, 11:22:19 AM »
NASA Objects to New Megaconstellation, Citing Risk of “Catastrophic Collison”
https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/11/nasa-objects-to-new-megaconstellation-citing-risk-of-catastrophic-collison/



NASA has formally commented (PDF) on a request by a US company to build a megaconstellation of satellites at an altitude of 720km above the Earth's surface, citing concerns about collisions. This appears to be the first time that NASA has publicly commented on such an application for market access, which is pending before the Federal Communications Commission.

https://licensing.fcc.gov/myibfs/download.do?attachment_key=2765834

"NASA submits this letter during the public comment period for the purpose of providing a better understanding of NASA's concerns with respect to its assets on-orbit, to further mitigate the risks of collisions for the mutual benefit of all involved," wrote Samantha Fonder, an engineer for the space agency.

At issue are plans put forth by AST & Science, which intends to build a constellation of more than 240 large satellites, essentially deploying "cell towers" in space to provide 4G and possibly 5G broadband connection directly to cell phones on Earth. The company, based in Midland, Texas, calls its constellation "SpaceMobile" and has raised an estimated $120 million.

The space agency felt compelled to comment on AST's proposal for several reasons. Most notably, the proposed altitude for the SpaceMobile constellation lies near the "A-Train," a group of 10 Earth-science monitoring satellites operated by NASA and the US Geological Survey, as well as partners in France and Japan. "Historical experience with the A-Train constellation has shown that this particular region of space tends to produce a large number of conjunctions between space objects," the NASA letter states.

The satellites are also very large. In order to provide service, AST plans to build spacecraft with large phased array antennae—900 square meters. According to NASA, in planning for potential conjunctions with other satellites and debris in this orbit, this would require proscribing a "hard-body radius" of 30 meters, or as much as 10 times larger than other satellites.

Maneuvering around the proposed SpaceMobile constellation would be extraordinarily taxing, NASA said. "For the completed constellation of 243 satellites, one can expect 1,500 mitigation actions per year and perhaps 15,000 planning activities," the space agency stated. "This would equate to four maneuvers and 40 active planning activities on any given day."

Finally, the space agency is concerned because AST has never built a satellite remotely close in size to the 1-ton or larger vehicles that will populate its constellation. Given this lack of experience, it is expected that 10 percent or more of the satellites may fail, making them unable to maneuver to avoid collisions. NASA found the risk of a catastrophic collision to be "unacceptably high."

... When it comes to megaconstellations—including SpaceX's Starlink, OneWeb, and others—the FCC has been considering the debris issue when it comes to putting hundreds, if not thousands, of new satellites into low Earth orbit. Therefore, it will be interesting to see in which direction the FCC goes on this issue because the federal agency has two competing interests.

In the big picture, Weeden said, this dustup between NASA and AST is more evidence that the US government—and other spacefaring nations around the world—need to do a better job ensuring that low Earth orbit remains as debris-free as possible. There is no governmental agency specifically charged with ensuring low Earth orbit remains safe, and the existing models are failing to fully capture the threat from new and old satellites, spent rocket second stages, and known debris. So in some sense, with all the megaconstellations flying into space today, regulators are flying blind, he said.

"We should have done a lot of this work over the last 10 years," he said. "From a government policy oversight perspective, we're behind the power curve."
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gerontocrat

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Re: Satellite News
« Reply #54 on: November 15, 2020, 10:49:00 PM »
EU announces big programme of new Copernicus satellites. UK is out of the frame unless a post-Brexit deal is made next year.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-54926152
New Sentinel satellites to check the pulse of Earth
Quote
Yet more Sentinel satellites are to be built for the EU's Copernicus Earth observation network.

Contracts have been announced with industry to procure spacecraft that can provide information on a range of parameters - from the extent of Arctic sea-ice to the condition of soils in drought-hit regions of the world.

The new satellites are expected to launch towards the decade's end. This depends, however, on sufficient further funding being identified.

Copernicus, with its Sentinel spacecraft, represents arguably the most ambitious EO programme in the world right now.

While a number of commercial concerns are launching larger numbers of satellites to map the Earth, none is investing in so wide a range of high-fidelity sensor types. What's more, all the data from the Sentinels is free and open, including to users outside Europe.

The contracts announced by the European Space Agency (Esa) on Friday begin the development of three systems that, for the moment, carry only codenames:

- CHIME (Copernicus Hyperspectral Imaging Mission for the Environment): A hyperspectral imager to return detailed information on the health of crops and other plants. The prime contractor is Thales Alenia Space (TAS) France. Total value of the programme is €455m, which would procure two satellite models.
- LSTM (Land Surface Temperature Monitoring): A thermal infrared sensor to measure land-surface temperature. Again, useful in agriculture and to predict drought. The prime contractor is Airbus Spain. The total value of this programme is €380m; and, again, it would secure two satellite models.
- CIMR (Copernicus Imaging Microwave Radiometer): A microwave radiometer to measure sea-surface temperature and salinity, and sea-ice concentration. The prime contractor is Thales Alenia Space Italy. Total value is €495m and, likewise, would secure two spacecraft.

Once Esa and the European Commission are satisfied the financing and the technical wherewithal is in place to fully implement these missions, they will be given a Sentinel designation - just as the six existing programmes have: Sentinel-1, -2, -3, -4, -5 and -6.

n July this year, a contract was awarded to OHB-System of Germany to provide Sentinels (Codename: CO2M) to map carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere; and in September, Airbus Germany was asked to get working on a Sentinel that could measure the shape and thickness of polar ice (Codename: Cristal).

There is also one other mission that is planned but has yet to reach the contract stage. That's for an L-band radar that can also observe ice but many other targets as well, including forests and soils. Thales Alenia Space Italy will be the prime for the mission, codenamed Rose-L. The contract specifics should be tied up by December at the latest.


Member states to Esa gave the agency's Copernicus activities more than was requested when they convened at a special council meeting last year - some €1.8bn. But on Tuesday this week, discussions around the EU's next seven-year budget began to solidify - and it wasn't good news for Copernicus.

The proposed €4.8bn envelope would leave a significant shortfall in funding of about €2bn.

There is hope that the UK, which left the EU in January, can soon re-associate, which would bring with it a potential subscription worth several hundred millions euros over the seven years.

But this association is at the mercy of the wider post-Brexit trade deal between the EU-27 and Britain. If the current talks fail - and the mood music has soured again in recent days - then Copernicus membership for the UK will almost certainly come off the table as well, in the short term at least.

On a brighter note, the first Sentinel-6 satellite is due to be launched on 21 November.

This is a radar altimeter that will measure very precisely the height of the world's oceans. It's data that is critical for understanding sea-level rise but also for weather forecasting and a host of maritime applications, such as efficient routing for ships.

"Para a Causa do Povo a Luta Continua!"
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kassy

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Re: Satellite News
« Reply #55 on: November 19, 2020, 01:51:11 PM »
Sentinel-6 satellite: Watching the sea level rise

New offspring for the Copernicus family! The Earth observation satellite Sentinel-6 is scheduled to be launched on November 21. Its superpower: Sentinel-6 can monitor the ocean with millimeter precision.

...

The Earth observation satellite is intended to measure our oceans and chart the sea level. And this is likely to be a rather depressing sight from space. After all, it is no secret that the sea level is tending to rise  with growing rapidity. While it increased by only 2 centimeters (0.79 inches) in the entire 18th century, it already went up by 6 centimeters in the 19th century and a whole 19 centimeters in the 20th. Industrialization and human-made global warming certainly have had something to do with this.

...

Sentinel-6 is the first of two identical satellites that are to be launched into space. Sentinel-6B, the twin satellite, is scheduled for launch in 2025. The two satellites are meant to collect data for at least five years.

...

It will scan 95% of the global sea surface within 10 days — from an altitude of more than 1,300 kilometers (800 miles) and to an accuracy of less than 1 millimeter.

In addition, it is also to collect precise data on atmospheric temperature and humidity, which can help improve weather forecasts and climate models.

The satellite sends out radar impulses that are reflected from the sea surface and then received again by the spacecraft. "Nobody can do anything with this data at first. It has to be converted into a high-precision distance measurement," says Manfred Lugert, head of Copernicus Mission Development and Jason-CS/ Sentinel 6 program manager at EUMETSAT. He said wave heights and atmospheric influences would also have to be taken into account when measuring distances.

Two independent navigation systems are also on board for determining the location. The satellite's orbit is regularly measured with a laser.

By working together with other satellites, Sentinel-6 will also help to make inferences about the density and thickness of ice. This is important, says Josef Aschbacher, ESA's director for Earth observation programs. The Greenland ice sheet is currently melting  at three times the rate in the 1990s, he says. "We will now get a global measurement every 10 days — in other words, a picture of what the momentary situation is like," says Aschbacher. "The satellite will provide data that has not been available in this detail before."

What's so special about Sentinel-6?
Earth observation satellites as such have been around for decades — for example, TIROS-1, the first experimental weather satellite, was launched on April 1, 1960.

The Copernicus Earth Observation Program launched the Sentinel-1A satellite on April 3, 2014, followed by 1B on April 25, 2016. Since then, other types of Sentinel satellites have been added.

...

The Sentinel-1 satellites provide detailed radar images of the planet's surface in all types of weather, day and night. Sentinel-2's  specialty is to detect changes in vegetation and do things like provide crop forecasts, chart forests and monitor the growth of wild and agricultural plants. Sentinel-3 provides temperature measurements of land and ocean.

Sentinel-4, whose launch is planned for 2022, will collect data on the concentration of pollutants in the air. Sentinel-5 is a mission to measure atmospheric gases worldwide. Sentinel-5P  analyzes the composition of the atmosphere.

But Aschbacher says there is still a lot to be done and still parameters that need to be measured more accurately. For example, he says, the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide is still not being measured precisely and comprehensively enough.

...

https://www.dw.com/en/sentinel-6-satellite-watching-the-sea-level-rise/a-55659812
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gerontocrat

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Re: Satellite News
« Reply #56 on: November 28, 2020, 03:46:37 PM »
So new satellites go up (see above), but old satellites fall down with perhaps no or very late replacements to mantain the continuous record.

The article below is about the European CryoSat-2 and American IceSat-2 spacecraft. But the satellites that produce the NSIDC and JAXA data are even more extremely long in the tooth. At any day they could go kaput. Quite why there is so little news about that is a bit of a mystery, though there is this letter dated April 2019 - https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/ab09b3 Essential gaps and uncertainties in the understanding of the roles and functions of Arctic sea ice  (The newer satellites produce more detailed datasets but they are not compatible with the JAXA and NSIDC datasets).

Ah well, I need a holiday.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-55109092
Polar scientists wary of impending satellite gap

There is going to be a gap of several years in our ability to measure the thickness of ice at the top and bottom of the world, scientists are warning.

Quote
The only two satellites dedicated to observing the poles are almost certain to die before replacements are flown. This could leave us blind to some important changes in the Arctic and the Antarctic as the climate warms.

The researchers have raised their concerns with the European Commission and the European Space Agency. A letter detailing the problem - and possible solutions - was sent to leading EC and Esa officials this week; and although the US space agency (Nasa) has not formally been addressed, it has been made aware of the correspondence.

At issue is the longevity of the European CryoSat-2 and American IceSat-2 missions. These spacecraft carry instruments called altimeters that gauge the shape and elevation of ice surfaces.

They've been critical in recording the loss of sea-ice volume and the declining mass of glaciers.

CryoSat-2 and IceSat-2
IMAGE COPYRIGHTESA/NASA
image captionArtwork: CryoSat-2 (top) and IceSat-2 (bottom) will hopefully last until mid-decade

What's unique about the satellites is their orbits around the Earth. They fly to 88 degrees North and South from the equator, which means they see the entire Arctic and Antarctic regions, bar a small circle about 430km in diameter at the poles themselves.

In contrast, most other satellites don't usually go above 83 degrees. As a consequence, they miss, for example, a great swathe of the central Arctic Ocean and its frozen floes.

The worry is that CryoSat-2 and IceSat-2 will have been decommissioned long before any follow-ups get launched.

CryoSat-2 is already way beyond its design life. It was put in space in 2010 with the expectation it would work for at least 3.5 years. Engineers think they can keep it operating until perhaps 2024, but battery degradation and a fuel leak suggest not for much longer.

IceSat-2 was launched in 2018 with a design life of three years and fuel until 2025. Its altimeter also uses lasers which are a complex technology to maintain in space.

"Without successful mitigation, there will be a gap of between two and five years in our polar satellite altimetry capability," the scientists' letter states. "This gap will introduce a decisive break in the long-term records of ice sheet and sea-ice thickness change and polar oceanography and this, in turn, will degrade our capacity to assess and improve climate model projections."

The only satellite replacement currently in prospect is the EC/Esa mission codenamed Cristal. It will be like Cryosat, although with much greater capability thanks to a dual-frequency radar altimeter. Industry has started work on the spacecraft but it won't launch until 2027/28, maybe even later because full funding to make this date a reality is not yet in place.

Dr Josef Aschbacher, the director of Earth observation at Esa, said his agency was working as fast as it could to plug the gap. "This is a concern; we recognise it," he told the BBC. "We've put plans in motion to build Cristal as quick as we can. Despite Covid, despite heavy workloads and video conferences by everyone - we have gone through the evaluation... and Cristal was kicked off in early September."

Just over 10% of the near-600 signatories to the letter are American scientists.

Dr Thomas Zurbuchen, the head of science at Nasa, is not being sent the letter because it is primarily aimed at European funders - and most of the signatories are European. Nonetheless, Dr Zurbuchen is aware of the letter and its contents. He said he was hopeful any polar gap could be plugged or minimised.

"I think there are multiple options at this moment in time that we can deploy to that end, in partnership or otherwise," he commented.

One of those solutions in Europe would be to run a version of Nasa's IceBridge project.
This was an airborne platform that the US agency operated in the eight years between the end of the very first IceSat mission in 2010 and the launch of IceSat-2 in 2018.

An aeroplane flew a laser altimeter over the Arctic and the Antarctic to gather some limited data-sets that could eventually be used to tie the two IceSat missions together.

There are many who think a European "CryoBridge" is the most affordable and near-term option to mitigate the empty years between CryoSat-2 and Cristal. The cost of manufacture of the airborne radar altimeter could be accomplished for perhaps €5m (£4.5m), scientists believe, but its design and fabrication would likely take two years. Such a project would therefore have to get under way relatively soon. It would, of course, also need an operational budget.

The signatories to the letter sent to the EC and Esa include leading scientists using CryoSat and IceSat data, the president of the International Glaciology Society, and lead authors on the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which prepares the authoritative state-of-the-climate reports for world governments.
« Last Edit: November 28, 2020, 04:03:27 PM by gerontocrat »
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vox_mundi

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Re: Satellite News
« Reply #57 on: December 29, 2020, 05:00:02 PM »
... got to love that Japanese joinery ...

Japanese Looking Into Using Wood to Build Satellites
https://techxplore.com/news/2020-12-japanese-pairing-wood-satellites.html

Japanese company Sumitomo Forestry has announced a joint development project with Kyoto University to test the idea of using wood as a component in satellite construction.

Some of the major components in most satellites include aluminum, Kevlar and aluminum alloys, which are able to withstand both temperature extremes and constant bombardment by radiation—all in a vacuum. Unfortunately, these characteristics also allow satellites to remain in orbit long after their usefulness has ended, resulting in constant additions to the space junk orbiting the planet.

There are currently approximately 6,000 satellites circling the Earth but only 60% of them are still in use. Some in the field have predicted that nearly 1,000 satellites will be launched into space each year over the coming decade. Considering their lifespan, this suggests there could be thousands more dead satellites orbiting the planet in the coming years. This space debris poses a significant threat to other satellites (they all travel thousands of miles per hour) and also to manned space missions.

And there is more bad news—the aluminum used in satellites has been found to break apart when a satellite returns to Earth, creating hundreds or thousands of tiny alumina particles that wind up floating in the upper atmosphere for many years, possibly posing an environmental problem. For all these reasons, the researchers with this new project are looking to replace these materials with wood.

The major benefit of wood-based satellites is they would burn up completely when returning to Earth. But another major bonus of using wood to create the outer shell of a satellite is that electromagnetic waves would pass right through it, which means antennas could be placed inside of satellite structures, making them simpler to design and deploy. The researchers plan to look for appropriate wood candidates and then to conduct experiments to see it they could be treated to stand up to space conditions. They predict they will have a product ready for testing by 2023.

--------------------------------------------

... I've got some old cigar boxes if they need them...
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Tor Bejnar

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Re: Satellite News
« Reply #58 on: December 30, 2020, 12:17:39 AM »
As my mother taught me:
   Catch a falling rocket
   Put it in a match box
   Send it to the U.S.A.


This ditty has new meanings now!
Arctic ice is healthy for children and other living things because "we cannot negotiate with the melting point of ice"

gerontocrat

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Re: Satellite News
« Reply #59 on: January 30, 2021, 01:39:42 PM »
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-55775977

A really good long article on not just the latest Space-X rocket chucking 143 satellites up there.

The article talks about satellite miniaturisation & cost reduction and the way the industry is changing.

Well worth a read
"Para a Causa do Povo a Luta Continua!"
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Ethan13

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Re: Satellite News
« Reply #60 on: March 29, 2021, 12:04:31 PM »
... got to love that Japanese joinery ...

Japanese Looking Into Using Wood to Build Satellites
https://techxplore.com/news/2020-12-japanese-pairing-wood-satellites.html

Japanese company Sumitomo Forestry has announced a joint development project with Kyoto University to test the idea of using wood as a component in satellite construction.

Some of the major components in most satellites include aluminum, Kevlar and aluminum alloys, which are able to withstand both temperature extremes and constant bombardment by radiation—all in a vacuum. Unfortunately, these characteristics also allow satellites to remain in orbit long after their usefulness has ended, resulting in constant additions to the space junk orbiting the planet.

There are currently approximately 6,000 satellites circling the Earth but only 60% of them are still in use. Some in the field have predicted that nearly 1,000 satellites will be launched into space each year over the coming decade. Considering their lifespan, this suggests there could be thousands more dead satellites orbiting the planet in the coming years. This space debris poses a significant threat to other satellites (they all travel thousands of miles per hour) and also to manned space missions.

And there is more bad news—the aluminum used in satellites has been found to break apart when a satellite returns to Earth, creating hundreds or thousands of tiny alumina particles that wind up floating in the upper atmosphere for many years, possibly posing an environmental problem. For all these reasons, the researchers with this new project are looking to replace these materials with wood.

The major benefit of wood-based satellites is they would burn up completely when returning to Earth. But another major bonus of using wood to create the outer shell of a satellite is that electromagnetic waves would pass right through it, which means antennas could be placed inside of satellite structures, making them simpler to design and deploy. The researchers plan to look for appropriate wood candidates and then to conduct experiments to see it they could be treated to stand up to space conditions. They predict they will have a product ready for testing by 2023.

--------------------------------------------

... I've got some old cigar boxes if they need them...

This is a very interesting idea. But until it is implemented, it will still be necessary to deal with what is already in orbit. The first mission to clean up the orbit has just begun. The test satellite was sent from Britain.

kassy

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Re: Satellite News
« Reply #61 on: March 29, 2021, 04:41:58 PM »
WelcomeEthan13!
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Ethan13

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Re: Satellite News
« Reply #62 on: March 30, 2021, 09:10:49 PM »
Thanks for the greeting. I hope the scientists will figure out what to do with the satellites. This is a very useful technology. I love the news that satellites have helped find 11 new penguin colonies. It was funny.

vox_mundi

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Re: Satellite News
« Reply #63 on: April 16, 2021, 12:39:24 AM »
Google Earth Is Now a 3D Time Machine
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/04/google-earth-is-now-a-3d-time-machine/

Google puts 20 petabytes of historical satellite data into the Google Earth globe.

You can now watch glaciers melt away forever in 3D.


Columbia Glacier

Google has pushed out what it says is Google Earth's "biggest update since 2017" with a new 3D time-lapse feature. Entering the new "Timelapse" mode of Google Earth will let you fly around the virtual globe with a time slider, showing you satellite imagery from the past 37 years. Google Earth Timelapse has been around for years as part of Google Earth Engine (which is a totally separate interface from Google Earth; it's a weird Google branding thing), but it was previously only available in 2D. Now, Google has mapped all this data across the 3D Google Earth globe, where you can watch cities being built, forests being cut down, and glaciers receding.

Google Earth Timelapse isn't just a huge amount of data; properly mapping it across the globe means correcting the images for artifacts and problems. The company had to get clouds out of the way, correct images for perspective, and ensure seamless transitioning through zoom levels. Luckily, Google happens to have some really big computers to handle the load.

The company explains what it took to make Timelapse happen:

... Making a planet-sized timelapse video required a significant amount of what we call “pixel crunching” in Earth Engine, Google's cloud platform for geospatial analysis. To add animated Timelapse imagery to Google Earth, we gathered more than 24 million satellite images from 1984 to 2020, representing quadrillions of pixels. It took more than two million processing hours across thousands of machines in Google Cloud to compile 20 petabytes of satellite imagery into a single 4.4 terapixel-sized video mosaic—that’s the equivalent of 530,000 videos in 4K resolution!

To access the timeline, open up Google Earth on the web, click on the navigation ship's wheel icon, and press the big "Timelapse in Google Earth" button—or just go to http://g.co/timelapse . With Timelapse open, you'll get a big panel on the right side with a timeline from 1984 to today, and a few shortcuts to places Google says are particularly interesting. Google Earth Timelapse doesn't work well across the entire world just yet. Some places, like New York City, appear hopelessly blurry, even when you set the timer to 2020. Google's highlighted locations, like Dubai, look a lot better and play out like a game of SimCity.

Google is pitching Timelapse as a teaching tool for climate change. If you want this information in a more portable format than Google Earth, Google has created a big batch of Earth timelapse videos highlighting "urban expansion, mining impacts, river meandering, the growth of megacities, deforestation, and agricultural expansion." The videos are licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0, so you're free to use them for whatever you want as long as you credit Google.

“There are three classes of people: those who see. Those who see when they are shown. Those who do not see.” ― anonymous

Insensible before the wave so soon released by callous fate. Affected most, they understand the least, and understanding, when it comes, invariably arrives too late

kassy

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Re: Satellite News
« Reply #64 on: April 16, 2021, 06:03:36 PM »
Cool , that river does the things our textbooks talked about but i never got to see dutch rivers do because they are all tamed.

Some of the city time lapses are amazing too. So much building...
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vox_mundi

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Re: Satellite News
« Reply #65 on: April 16, 2021, 09:29:37 PM »
“There are three classes of people: those who see. Those who see when they are shown. Those who do not see.” ― anonymous

Insensible before the wave so soon released by callous fate. Affected most, they understand the least, and understanding, when it comes, invariably arrives too late

vox_mundi

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Re: Satellite News
« Reply #66 on: August 19, 2021, 07:24:49 AM »
Russian Space Junk Hit a Chinese Satellite in March, Evidence Suggests
https://gizmodo.com/russian-space-junk-hit-a-chinese-satellite-in-march-ev-1847511922

The mysterious breakdown of the Yunhai 1-02 satellite in March has likely been solved. The discarded remnants of an old Russian rocket appear to have smashed into the Chinese satellite, in what is an ominous sign of things to come in our increasingly cluttered low Earth orbit.

On March 22, 2021, the 18th Space Control Squadron of the U.S. Space Force published a surprising tweet announcing the breakup of Yunhai 1-02—a Chinese military satellite launched in September 2019. The breakup had occurred four days earlier, and it wasn’t immediately clear as to why this satellite, at less than two years old, should suddenly experience such a calamitous malfunction. In its tweet, the Space Force squadron said its “analysis is ongoing” and that it would track the 21 newly created pieces of debris.

On August 15, 2021, Jonathan McDowell, a researcher at Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, tweeted: "Space-Track catalog updated today with a note for object 48078, 1996-051Q:  "Collided with satellite". This is a new kind of comment entry - haven't seen such a comment for any other satellites before. Let's look a bit closer:

... A quick analysis of the data showed that Yunhai 1-02 and the Russian space junk passed to within 0.6 miles (1 km) of each other on March 18, and “exactly when 18SPCS reports Yunhai broke up,” McDowell tweeted. To which he added: “37 debris objects have been cataloged so far from the breakup—there are likely to be more.”

Despite the collision, Yunhai 1-02, though no longer in use, is still making orbital adjustments, which suggests the collision wasn’t completely catastrophic, said McDowell.

The size of debris object 48078 is not known, but it’s likely somewhere from 2 to 12 inches (5 to 30 centimeters) wide, McDowell said. He explained that in-space collision involving a small object of this size will damage a satellite, “but not destroy it completely.” Small objects are increasingly appearing in orbit, “so we expect more incidents like this, and indeed we have been seeing about one a year.”

Estimates from the European Space Agency suggest 900,000 objects from 0.4 to 4 inches (1 to 10 cm) and 34,000 objects larger than 4 inches (10 cm) are currently in Earth orbit.

A major concern is that debris might trigger a Kessler Syndrome, which is akin to a snowball that increasingly gets bigger as it tumbles down a mountain. Upsettingly, the debris caused by this latest collision could go on hit other objects in space, resulting in an even larger debris field. A hypothetical cascade could conceivably destroy troves of satellites, which would be very bad and make low Earth orbit inaccessible.
“There are three classes of people: those who see. Those who see when they are shown. Those who do not see.” ― anonymous

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gerontocrat

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Re: Satellite News
« Reply #67 on: August 19, 2021, 01:46:00 PM »
Russian Space Junk Hit a Chinese Satellite in March, Evidence Suggests
https://gizmodo.com/russian-space-junk-hit-a-chinese-satellite-in-march-ev-1847511922

The mysterious breakdown of the Yunhai 1-02 satellite in March has likely been solved. The discarded remnants of an old Russian rocket appear to have smashed into the Chinese satellite, in what is an ominous sign of things to come in our increasingly cluttered low Earth orbit.

Estimates from the European Space Agency suggest 900,000 objects from 0.4 to 4 inches (1 to 10 cm) and 34,000 objects larger than 4 inches (10 cm) are currently in Earth orbit.

A major concern is that debris might trigger a Kessler Syndrome, which is akin to a snowball that increasingly gets bigger as it tumbles down a mountain. Upsettingly, the debris caused by this latest collision could go on hit other objects in space, resulting in an even larger debris field. A hypothetical cascade could conceivably destroy troves of satellites, which would be very bad and make low Earth orbit inaccessible.

Quelle surprise?

Yet another bunch of warnings for a good many years remain unheeded apart from a couple of demo satellites picking up an odd bit of trash.

A demo of why fat-tail risks of Global heating are down-played or scrubbed out by consensus?
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vox_mundi

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Re: Satellite News
« Reply #68 on: August 27, 2021, 01:03:07 AM »
Number of Objects in Low Earth Orbit Jumps 22% in 2 Years: Space Operations Command
https://www.defenseone.com/threats/2021/08/number-objects-low-earth-orbit-jumps-22-2-years-space-operations-command/184837/

U.S. Space Command is tracking almost 35,000 objects in low Earth orbit, a 22 percent increase from just two years ago, Lt. Gen. Stephen Whiting, the head of Space Operations Command said Wednesday.

The jump is due “to the mega constellations that we've seen launched. Also some debris-generating events, but it is a substantial increase in the number, the amount of debris and satellites that we're tracking on orbit today,” Whiting said.

Because of the growth of commercial low Earth orbit satellites the U.S. Commerce Department has been tasked with standing up its own agency to track all the commercial orbits. But Space Command will still keep watching both the commercial and military side, Whiting said.

https://www.defenseone.com/business/2021/05/space-junk-multiplies-pentagon-stuck-tracking-it-civilians/174340/
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vox_mundi

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Re: Satellite News
« Reply #69 on: September 16, 2021, 11:48:43 PM »
Revolutionary Tech Could Allow Near-Real Time Space Tracking, MITRE Says
https://breakingdefense.com/2021/09/revolutionary-tech-could-allow-near-real-time-space-tracking-company-says/

... The orbital parameters of objects in space, called Two-Line Elements (TLEs), made public by DoD through its Space Situational Awareness (SSA) data sharing website,  https://www.space-track.org , are notoriously inaccurate. Indeed, the website itself itself cautions users that: ... “a TLE available to the public should not be used for conjunction assessment prediction” — i.e., predicting close approaches and possible collisions, which is exactly what space operators need to do to keep their satellites safe.

Thus, DoD has been seeking improved SSA capabilities, from increasing the number of sensors in the SSN by integrating commercial and allied sensor data to improving accuracy of tracking, to enabling real-time ‘custody’ of an object once it has been identified. MITRE says SNARE can do all of those things, if it can be scaled up.

Called SNARE for Sensor Network Autonomous Resilient Extensible, its capabilities are detailed in a highly technical MITRE paper being presented at the Advanced Maui Optical and Space Surveillance Technologies Conference (AMOS) conference.

According to the paper, in a MITRE test against 1,000 randomly chosen orbiting targets, SNARE demonstrated that its use could provide an average improvement of the accuracy of space objects in Space Force’s “catalog” by 0.8 kilometers, and “over 10 percent of the catalog had accuracy improved by more than 3.0 kilometers.”

A three kilometer difference in where a satellite operator thinks another satellite or piece of space junk could be fatal, resulting in a damaging collision.
« Last Edit: September 17, 2021, 03:54:39 AM by vox_mundi »
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Insensible before the wave so soon released by callous fate. Affected most, they understand the least, and understanding, when it comes, invariably arrives too late

gerontocrat

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Re: Satellite News
« Reply #70 on: September 27, 2021, 09:27:36 PM »
"What is arguably the world's most important satellite has launched to orbit from California."

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-58683181

Landsat-9: 'Satellite of record' launches to picture Earth


The California weather cleared shortly before lift-off to enable everyone to see Landsat-9's Atlas rocket leave the pad

Quote
What is arguably the world's most important satellite has launched to orbit from California.

Landsat-9 is the continuation of a series of Earth-observing spacecraft stretching back almost 50 years.

No other remote-sensing system has kept a longer, continuous record of the changing state of our planet.

It was the pictures taken by Apollo astronauts, looking back towards Earth, that cemented the idea of having a permanent eye on our home world. And in 1972, The American space agency (Nasa), in partnership with the US Geological Survey (USGS), proceeded to launch their Earth Resources Technology Satellite.

Today, the ninth imaging spacecraft in what subsequently became known as the Landsat programme is ready to assume responsibility for maintaining the legacy.

The Nasa/USGS spacecraft series is the ultimate record of change.

Landsat has catalogued the growth of the megacities, the spread of farming and the evolving outlines of coasts, forests, deserts and glaciers.

It's even been used to monitor from orbit the behaviours of a diverse range of animals - from wildebeest and wombats to woodpeckers and walrus.

"We've assembled an amazing history of how the planet has changed over the last half century," explained Dr Jeff Masek, Nasa's Landsat-9 project scientist.

"For example, we're able to see the natural disturbances that occur, (such as) fires, hurricanes, and insect outbreaks; and then the long-term recovery of ecosystems that takes place for decades after that.

"And we're able to look specifically at climate and climate-change impacts on ecosystems. We've mapped areas of increased plant cover at high latitudes due to a warming climate. We've also seen areas of vegetation decline in water-limited semi-arid environments."

Since 1982 and Landsat-4, the system has been able to resolve features on the ground as small as 30m across. And while there are now plenty of other imaging spacecraft up there that can boast a much sharper view (in the tens of centimetres), none comes close to Landsat for longevity.

This is the power that enables scientists to pull out the real trends in time. Just as important - the data is free and open. Anyone anywhere can access and use Landsat pictures at no cost.
"Para a Causa do Povo a Luta Continua!"
"And that's all I'm going to say about that". Forrest Gump
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Jim Hunt

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Re: Satellite News
« Reply #71 on: September 28, 2021, 01:43:10 AM »
Video of the Landsat 9 launch, on a rather damp day in California:



Apparently I can't embed a URL including a start time. Skip to 41:40 for the actual launch.
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ivica

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Re: Satellite News
« Reply #72 on: November 05, 2021, 10:42:11 PM »
China launches satellite SDGSAT-1 for global sustainable development | 2021-11-05

"The satellite is also named “Sustainable Development Goals Satellite 1” or SDGSAT-1. It was developed by Chinese Academy of Sciences for earth science. The satellite is the first to support “The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development”, a resolution passed by the United Nations. The satellite will help scientists study the impact of human activities on nature and the data will be shared globally."

Andrew Jones tweets: "This was China's 42nd orbital launch of 2021."

#COP26 #WorldIsWatching #DearWorldLeaders #DontChooseExtinction <

vox_mundi

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Re: Satellite News
« Reply #73 on: November 10, 2021, 09:44:33 PM »
Space Station Will Make an Emergency Maneuver After Detection of Threatening Space Junk
https://gizmodo.com/space-station-will-make-an-emergency-maneuver-after-det-1848031344

An impromptu “space debris evasion maneuver” has been scheduled to prevent errant space junk from slamming into the International Space Station, in what is becoming an increasingly routine procedure

Preliminary calculations suggest the space junk will come to within 1,970 feet (600 meters) of the International Space Station on Thursday, November 11 at approximately 8:00 p.m. ET (Friday, November 12 at 4:00 a.m. Moscow time), according to Russian space agency Roscosmos. That’s too close for comfort, requiring the ISS to be positioned farther away from the danger zone. The maneuver is scheduled for Wednesday at 3:15 p.m. ET (11:15 p.m. Moscow time).

The offending chunk of junk is a remnant of the Fengyun-1C spacecraft. China deliberately destroyed its own weather satellite in January 2007 as part of an anti-satellite missile test. The event prompted howls of outrage, as experts criticized China for contributing to the militarization of space and for deliberately producing a dangerous cloud of orbital debris. A fictional version of this event was portrayed in the 2013 film Gravity, in which a rapidly expanding cloud of debris, accidentally caused by Russia shooting down a defunct spy satellite, destroyed the ISS.

The ISS has performed 29 avoidance maneuvers over the past 22 years, including three in 2020. The most recent happened on September 22, 2020, when space junk belonging to a Japanese rocket stage threatened to pass within 0.86 miles (1.39 kilometers) of the orbital outpost.

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vox_mundi

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Re: Satellite News
« Reply #74 on: June 10, 2022, 02:12:00 PM »
Google Tool Shows What’s On the Surface of the Earth In Real Time
https://www.theverge.com/2022/6/9/23161070/google-land-cover-dynamic-world

A new dataset from Google shows the features on the surface of the Earth in near real time, the company announced Thursday. The tool, called Dynamic World, uses deep learning and satellite imagery to develop a high-resolution land cover map that shows which bits of land have features like trees, crops, or water.

https://www.dynamicworld.app/

https://blog.google/products/earth/dynamic-world-land-cover-data/

Land cover maps usually take a long time to produce, and there are big gaps between the time images are taken and when the data is published. They also often don’t have a detailed breakdown of what’s on the ground in a particular area — a city would be classified as “built-up” (a designation for human-altered landscapes) even if there are big sections with parks, for example.

Dynamic World classifies the land cover type for every 1,100 square feet, Google said. It shows how likely it is that the sections are covered by one of nine cover types: water, flooded vegetation, built-up areas, trees, crops, bare ground, grass, shrub / scrub, and snow / ice. Google detailed its system, developed with the World Resources Institute, in a paper published in Nature’s Scientific Data

With its AI model analyzing Copernicus Sentinel-2 satellite images as they become available, over 5,000 Dynamic World images are produced every day, providing land cover data dating back to June 2015 to as recently as two days ago.

This means that not only is the land cover information in Dynamic World more detailed, but it's also more timely within any given day, week or month than existing datasets. .

Dynamic World, Near real-time global 10 m land use land cover mapping, Nature’s Scientific Data, (2022)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41597-022-01307-4
« Last Edit: June 10, 2022, 08:54:32 PM by vox_mundi »
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kassy

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Re: Satellite News
« Reply #75 on: July 22, 2022, 07:25:19 PM »
50 Years of Incredible, Terrifying Photos of a Changing Earth Taken From Space

Landsat celebrates a new milestone in the longest continuous space-based record of Earth, which has exposed the effects of climate change.

On a summer Sunday a half-century ago, a satellite launched into space and opened an eye on Earth that has kept watch over our planet’s immense beauty, and its rapid transformation at the hands of humans, ever since.

The Landsat program, which has produced the longest-running view of Earth from space in existence, turns 50 on Saturday, a milestone that marks the launch of that first space observer, now known as Landsat 1, on July 23, 1972. Since that inaugural mission, Landsat has successfully launched seven other satellites, three of which are still in operation, and experienced one launch failure when Landsat 6 did not reach orbit.

Managed jointly by NASA and the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), Landsat has captured more than ten million images, which are available to anyone at no cost, enabling humans to both behold our planet’s grandeur and the pressures we are exerting on it.  Landsat has built a mosaic of our planet out of photographic tiles, each capturing an area of Earth that is 115 miles in length and width. These postcards-from-space reveal dune-rippled deserts, remote islands, sprawling cities, and branching river systems that flow through landscapes like veins, among other marvels.

...

Landsat 1, which retired in 1978, was a relatively simple spacecraft compared to its modern successors, but many still recognized it as “a wave of the future” at the time, according to Jim Irons, who has been a Landsat leader for decades and currently serves as deputy project scientist for Landsat 7 and project scientist for Landsat 8 at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.

“I think it was clear that it was going to revolutionize the way we observe the Earth over time,” said Irons, who recently retired as director of Earth Science Division at Goddard, in a joint call with fellow Landsat team member Temilola Fatoyinbo.

“Even if we use more high resolution data sets—because now we have all these other really amazing, very high-resolution data—it's still useful to compare it to Landsat,” added Fatoyinbo, who is a research physical scientist specializing in coastal ecosystems at Goddard’s Biospheric Sciences Lab. “The power lies in the ability to compare and look at the same spot on Earth through time, and we can only do that with Landsat.”

...

Because Landsat has provided consistent calibrated coverage at no cost for decades, it is “a really powerful tool for understanding the impacts of climate change in many, many ways,” Irons said, citing observations of “retreating glaciers, Amazonian deforestation and forest disturbance, urban growth, changes in ecosystems” which “are all reflective of climate change—the list is huge.”

...

https://www.vice.com/en/article/3adb7n/50-years-of-incredible-terrifying-photos-of-a-changing-earth-taken-from-space
Þetta minnismerki er til vitnis um að við vitum hvað er að gerast og hvað þarf að gera. Aðeins þú veist hvort við gerðum eitthvað.

Stephan

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Re: Satellite News
« Reply #76 on: October 14, 2022, 08:55:37 PM »
I regularly check EOSDIS Worldview to monitor B-22 and its surroundings as well as Getz Ice Shelf. For some days now there is no picture available (the last one is from Oct 09). Does anybody know what has happened?
It is too late just to be concerned about Climate Change

J Cartmill

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Re: Satellite News
« Reply #77 on: October 15, 2022, 01:24:44 PM »
Not sure what is going on with Terra but the Aqua Modis satellite imagery is still available. Click on the "Corrected Reflectance (True Color) Aqua Modis" in the Base Layers Group.

 

Stephan

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Re: Satellite News
« Reply #78 on: October 16, 2022, 01:24:00 PM »
Thank you. That helped very much  :)
It is too late just to be concerned about Climate Change

Stephan

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Re: Satellite News
« Reply #79 on: October 28, 2022, 10:04:07 PM »
I regularly check EOSDIS Worldview to monitor B-22 and its surroundings as well as Getz Ice Shelf. For some days now there is no picture available (the last one is from Oct 09). Does anybody know what has happened?
Terra / Modis is working again.  ;D
It is too late just to be concerned about Climate Change

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Re: Satellite News
« Reply #80 on: November 26, 2022, 11:49:30 AM »
Bad news about the Aqua and Terra satellites.  They are running out of fuel and may be terminated soon.  NASA may decide to extend these satellite missions for a few years, but that would be expensive and would delay the launch of new satellites that are planned for the end of this decade.  In any case, a data gap of several years seems unavoidable.

https://www.science.org/content/article/nasa-s-drifting-climate-satellites-could-find-new-life-wildfire-and-storm-watchers


Quote
...

Terra and two other satellites—Aqua, launched in 2002, and Aura, in 2004—served as the foremost sentinels of a changing planet, running far past their expected 6-year missions.

Now, all three satellites are approaching their end. They must save their remaining fuel to dodge space junk and slow down for a final plunge into Earth’s atmosphere. Too little is left to maintain the precise pole-crossing orbits that allow them to swoop past lower latitudes at exactly the same time every day. In the next month, NASA is expected to decide whether to terminate the missions, which cost $85 million a year to run, and invest that money in its next-generation Earth System Observatory satellite program, which will replace some of the trio’s capabilities by the late 2020s.

But killing them off now would be a mistake, the missions’ scientists argue. The satellites are healthy enough to survive until the middle of this decade and provide measurements no other spacecraft can match. Their drifting orbits, far from hampering them, will allow them to see Earth from new vantages, at other times of day.

...

NASA is worried about the cost. If all three missions are extended, “it would require delays in the Earth System Observatory,” NASA said in a statement to Science. But the scientists are now lobbying NASA to let them make their case next year at a “senior review,” a meeting convened every 3 years to decide the fate of ongoing missions.

vox_mundi

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Re: Satellite News
« Reply #81 on: November 30, 2022, 04:37:33 PM »
NASA Cancels Greenhouse Gas Monitoring Satellite Due to Cost
https://phys.org/news/2022-11-nasa-cancels-greenhouse-gas-satellite.html

NASA on Tuesday announced that its GeoCarb mission, which was supposed to be a low-cost satellite to monitor carbon dioxide, methane and how plant life changes over North and South America, was being killed because of cost overruns.

When it was announced six years ago, it was supposed to cost $166 million, but the latest NASA figures show costs would balloon to more than $600 million and it was years late, according to NASA Earth Sciences Director Karen St. Germain.

Unlike other satellites that monitor greenhouse gases from low Earth orbit and get different parts of the globe in a big picture, GeoCarb was supposed to be at a much higher altitude of 22,236 miles (35,786 kilometers) from one fixed place in orbit and focus intently on North and South America. That different and further perspective proved too difficult and costly to get done on budget and on time, St. Germain said.

The equipment alone has more than doubled in price and then there were non-technical issues that would have added more, she said. The agency has already spent $170 million on the now-canceled program and won't spend any more.

"We're still committed to doing that science. But we're going to have to do it a different way because we don't see this instrument coming together."

Instead of its project, NASA is looking to launch a yet-to-be-decided Earth-focused mission, designed to be bigger and less risky. The space agency also is getting methane data from a special instrument on the International Space Station that was meant to look at mineral dust but is monitoring the potent greenhouse gas as a bonus, plus there are methane monitoring satellites from the European and Japanese space agency and some commercial and non-profit firms, she said.

NASA also has two dedicated satellites that monitor carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas.
“There are three classes of people: those who see. Those who see when they are shown. Those who do not see.” ― anonymous

Insensible before the wave so soon released by callous fate. Affected most, they understand the least, and understanding, when it comes, invariably arrives too late

vox_mundi

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Re: Satellite News
« Reply #82 on: December 14, 2022, 01:40:03 PM »
Space Debris Expert: Orbits Will Be Lost—and People Will Die—Later This Decade
https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/12/space-debris-expert-orbits-will-be-lost-and-people-will-die-later-this-decade/

... I think we are going to lose the ability to use certain orbits because the carrying capacity is going to get saturated by objects and junk. Orbital capacity being saturated means "when our decisions and actions can no longer prevent undesired outcomes from occurring." So if we're trying to minimize having to move out of the way or bumping into each other, and no matter what we do we can't avoid that, that means that for all intents and purposes, that orbit highway is no longer usable.

... When you talk to SpaceX, it's very clear that the destruction of this Russian satellite likely had the intent of harmfully interfering with the Starlink satellites (prior to the Ukraine invasion). They've already had to maneuver several thousand times out of the way of the debris. It's an impact to their operations. That was not random. That was not haphazard.
“There are three classes of people: those who see. Those who see when they are shown. Those who do not see.” ― anonymous

Insensible before the wave so soon released by callous fate. Affected most, they understand the least, and understanding, when it comes, invariably arrives too late

ivica

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Re: Satellite News
« Reply #83 on: January 18, 2023, 02:45:19 PM »
Space Junk
Avoiding the Kessler Syndrome with Moriba Jah
for a long time it will remain - similar to entropy, mess (#pieces) can only increase (mutual collisions,  meteorits)
they dont mention possibility that our LeadersAsUsual 'enlighten' us with a space war and junk state worsen exponentialy
it shows on its own way how the space is not for compulsive speciemens for many reasons <

vox_mundi

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Re: Satellite News
« Reply #84 on: April 17, 2023, 07:20:18 PM »
NASA ICESat-2 Satellite's Elusive Green Lasers Spotted at Work
https://phys.org/news/2023-04-nasa-satellite-elusive-green-lasers.html

... It's the first time the ICESat-2 team has seen footage of the satellite's green laser beams streaming from orbit to Earth, said Tony Martino, ICESat-2 instrument scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.



... ICESat-2 was launched in September 2018 with a mission to use laser light to measure the height of Earth's ice, water, and land surfaces from space. The laser instrument, called a lidar, fires 10,000 times a second, sending six beams of light to Earth. It precisely times how long it takes individual photons to bounce off the surface and return to the satellite. Computer programs use these measurements to calculate ice losses from Greenland and Antarctica, observe how much of the polar oceans are frozen, determine the heights of freshwater reservoirs, map shallow coastal regions, and more.



... With the precise location of the satellite in space, the location of where the beam hit, the coordinates of where Fujii's cameras were set up, and the addition of cloudy conditions, Martino was able to confirm, definitively, that the streaks of light came from ICESat-2's laser.
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Insensible before the wave so soon released by callous fate. Affected most, they understand the least, and understanding, when it comes, invariably arrives too late

vox_mundi

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Re: Satellite News
« Reply #85 on: June 03, 2023, 04:49:18 PM »
The Thermosphere Is Heating Up
https://spaceweather.com/

If you're a satellite, this story is important. A series of geomagnetic storms in 2023 has pumped terawatts of energy into Earth's upper atmosphere, helping to push its temperature and height to a 20-year high. Air surrounding our planet is now touching satellites in Earth orbit and dragging them down.



"Blame the sun," says Martin Mlynczak of NASA Langley. "Increasing solar activity is heating the top of the atmosphere. The extra heat has no effect on weather or climate at Earth's surface, but it's a big deal for satellites in low Earth orbit."

Mlynczak is an expert on the temperature up there. For 20 years he has been using the SABER instrument on NASA's TIMED satellite to monitor infrared emissions from "the thermosphere," the uppermost layer of the atmosphere.

"Right now we’re seeing some of the highest readings in the mission's 21.5 year history," he says.

The thermosphere is exquisitely sensitive to solar activity, readily absorbing energy from solar flares and geomagnetic storms. These storms have been coming hard and fast with the recent rise of Solar Cycle 25.

"There have been five significant geomagnetic storms in calendar year 2023 that resulted in marked increases in the amount of infrared radiation (heat) in Earth's thermosphere," says Mlynczak. "They peaked on Jan. 15th (0.59 TW), Feb. 16th (0.62 TW), Feb. 27th (0.78 TW), Mar. 24th (1.04 TW), and April 24th (1.02 TW)."

The parenthetical values are TeraWatts (1,000,000,000,000 Watts) of infrared power observed by SABER during each storm. The sensor obtains these numbers by measuring infrared radiation emitted from nitric oxide and carbon dioxide molecules in the thermosphere.

"The two storms exceeding 1 TW are the seventh and eighth strongest storms observed by SABER over the past 21.5 years," he says. "It is interesting to note that each successive storm in 2023 is generally stronger than its predecessors."

Actually, it doesn't take a strong storm to cause problems. In Feb. 2022, a minor geomagnetic storm dumped enough heat into the thermosphere that 38 newly launched Starlink satellites fell out of the sky. SpaceX has since started launching their Starlinks to higher initial altitudes to avoid the drag.

If current trends continue, the thermosphere will warm even more in 2023 and 2024. This is a matter of concern because Earth's population of active satellites has tripled since SpaceX started launching Starlinks in 2019. The growing constellation of 4100 Starlinks now provides internet service to more than a million customers. An extreme geomagnetic storm like the Halloween Storms of 2003 could shift the positions of these satellites by many 10s of kilometers, increasing the risk of collisions and causing some of the lowest ones to de-orbit.

“There are three classes of people: those who see. Those who see when they are shown. Those who do not see.” ― anonymous

Insensible before the wave so soon released by callous fate. Affected most, they understand the least, and understanding, when it comes, invariably arrives too late

Rodius

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Re: Satellite News
« Reply #86 on: June 04, 2023, 05:40:17 AM »
"Blame the sun," says Martin Mlynczak of NASA Langley. "Increasing solar activity is heating the top of the atmosphere. The extra heat has no effect on weather or climate at Earth's surface, but it's a big deal for satellites in low Earth orbit."

Hmmm.... I loathe to challenge experts in their field so I suspect I must be completely wrong about this.... my understanding is the sun isnt the only reason the upper atmosphere is heating up. It is obviously a contributing factor but the main contributing factor is how radiation bouncing off Earth is reflected back to space but is being trapped by greenhouse gases like CO2 trapping more heat.

There was a study done to demonstrate that if the sun was the main reason of climate change then the upper atmosphere would behave in a specific way, but if CO2 was the reason, it behave differently. And one of those differences was an increase in the upper atmosphere as explained in this article.

So, IF this is correct (which I assume I have misunderstood the process), the increase in sun activity is slightly to blame, but it is mostly to do with increased CO2 in the atmosphere.

HapHazard

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Re: Satellite News
« Reply #87 on: June 04, 2023, 06:58:59 AM »
I imagine "upper atmosphere" isn't enough of a descriptor, as there's many layers. Perhaps that's the stumbling block here?
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vox_mundi

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Re: Satellite News
« Reply #88 on: June 04, 2023, 07:20:59 AM »

https://scied.ucar.edu/sites/default/files/styles/extra_large/public/media/images/ionosphere_layers_altitude_diagram_600x810_0.jpg.webp

https://www.weather.gov/jetstream/layers

Thermosphere: The thermosphere lies between the exosphere and the mesosphere, about 53 miles (85 km) and 375 miles (600 km). “Thermo” means heat, and the temperature in this layer can reach up to 3,600 degrees Fahrenheit.
 
This layer is known as the upper atmosphere. While still extremely thin, the gases of the thermosphere become increasingly denser as one descends toward the earth.

As such, incoming high energy ultraviolet and x-ray radiation from the sun begins to be absorbed by the molecules in this layer and causes a large temperature increase.

Because of this absorption, the temperature increases with height. From as low as -184°F (-120°C) at the bottom of this layer, temperatures can reach as high as 3,600°F (2,000°C) near the top.

However, despite the high temperature, this layer of the atmosphere would still feel very cold to our skin due to the very thin atmosphere. If you were to hang out in the thermosphere, though, you would be very cold because there aren't enough gas molecules to transfer the heat to you. The high temperature indicates the amount of the energy absorbed by the molecules but with so few in this layer, the total number of molecules is not enough to heat our skin.

This layer of Earth’s atmosphere is about 319 miles (513 kilometers) thick.

The thermosphere is home to the International Space Station as it orbits Earth. This is also where you’ll find low Earth orbit satellites.

« Last Edit: June 04, 2023, 07:27:55 AM by vox_mundi »
“There are three classes of people: those who see. Those who see when they are shown. Those who do not see.” ― anonymous

Insensible before the wave so soon released by callous fate. Affected most, they understand the least, and understanding, when it comes, invariably arrives too late

Rodius

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Re: Satellite News
« Reply #89 on: June 04, 2023, 09:42:22 AM »
I imagine "upper atmosphere" isn't enough of a descriptor, as there's many layers. Perhaps that's the stumbling block here?

Probably.
I really have no idea but the question popped into my head and it would be interesting to see what I have wrong (which is my assumption) so I can learn something.

I also know that I dont know enough to answer the question even if I looked for it, I dont think I even know enough to know where to start looking.

kassy

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Re: Satellite News
« Reply #90 on: June 04, 2023, 05:54:18 PM »
They actually name the thermosphere.

The difference is the time scale. The incoming storms effect the hot top of this outer layer immediately which then drags down the satellites. These storms don´t have a noticeable effect below.

The long term changes due to greenhouse gasses also have an effect but it is more gradual and more noticeable below. It won´t effect the high up hot part of the thermosphere but it slowly increases drag in the lower part of the thermosphere.

The processes are different so both happen but the latter is easy to correct for satellites.
The storms are a bigger problem for them. But that does not say anything about long term atmospheric responses.
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kassy

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Re: Satellite News
« Reply #91 on: June 13, 2023, 06:56:48 PM »
HotSat-1: Spacecraft to map UK's heat inefficient buildings

A novel British satellite designed to map the heat signature of buildings has been launched.

The idea is to highlight those dwellings that are wasting energy and could benefit from better insulation.

The relatively small spacecraft is appropriately called HotSat-1 and it will be operated by the London-based start-up Satellite Vu.

Its infrared sensor has been developed with funds from the UK and European space agencies.

HotSat-1 launched on a SpaceX Falcon-9 rocket from the Vandenberg Space Force Base in California at about 14:35 PDT (22:35 BST), a little later than planned.

Flying at an altitude of 500km (311 miles), it will have the resolution to see individual roof tops and walls.

The UK has some of the most inefficient housing stock in Europe, with the vast majority of dwellings built pre-1970.

If many of these properties can be retrofitted, it would not only save on householders' fuel costs but help the country as a whole achieve its ambition of becoming climate-neutral by 2050.

"There is grant money there to improve insulation, but for councils and utilities there is a challenge in knowing where best to apply it," said Satellite Vu CEO Anthony Baker.

"With city-wide data, we'll be able to show you the worst 20% of buildings very quickly. And after the upgrades are done, we can check to make sure that it's done well."

The company plans to fly eight satellites as a constellation of "thermometers in the sky".

...

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-65775901
Þetta minnismerki er til vitnis um að við vitum hvað er að gerast og hvað þarf að gera. Aðeins þú veist hvort við gerðum eitthvað.

oren

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Re: Satellite News
« Reply #92 on: June 18, 2023, 12:43:44 PM »
That's a nice idea.

Sigmetnow

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Re: Satellite News
« Reply #93 on: June 30, 2023, 04:19:21 PM »
—- Sentinel-1B replacement satellite launch likely to be delayed
The Vega-C rocket that was to launch the replacement for the Sentinel-1B satellite failed during testing on June 28.  It had been expected that the satellite’s launch would take place in the first half of 2023. Now, it is likely that the rocket’s return to flight (after its earlier failure in December 2022) will slip to no earlier than the first quarter of 2024.

Background:  An equipment failure on Sentinel-1B in December 2021 accelerated work on Sentinel-1C, originally planned to launch in December 2023.  Sentinel-1B has been retired, leaving Sentinel-1A the only satellite of the constellation.

Quote
In mid-March, a source within ESA speaking to European Spaceflight explained that the team working on Sentinel-1C was examining the possibility of qualifying the satellite to fly aboard [a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket]. With the Sentinel-1 constellation continuing to operate under a reduced capacity, it would not be surprising if this latest delay finally pushes the satellite to the Falcon 9 launch manifest.

Of note:  SpaceX has been launching a Falcon 9 about every 4.5 days so far in 2023.

Vega C Return to Flight Delayed After Z40 Test Failure
June 29, 2023
https://europeanspaceflight.com/vega-c-return-to-flight-delayed-after-z40-test-failure/

 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sentinel-1
 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sentinel-1B
People who say it cannot be done should not interrupt those who are doing it.

morganism

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Re: Satellite News
« Reply #94 on: July 29, 2023, 02:02:15 AM »

NASA's TROPICS Offers Multiple Views of Intensifying Hurricanes

NASA's newest storm-watching satellites have collected their first views of hurricanes, offering scientists a new tool for understanding the inner workings of storms over shorter time spans.

Data from the TROPICS mission — short for Time-Resolved Observations of Precipitation structure and storm Intensity with a Constellation of Smallsats — will help weather researchers learn more about the environmental factors contributing to hurricane structure and intensity. Such information could prove useful for NOAA, the U.S. Joint Typhoon Warning Center, and international agencies responsible for developing hurricane, typhoon, and cyclone forecasts.

In late June 2023, the TROPICS mission acquired data for images of the first named storms of the Eastern Pacific hurricane season. Hurricane Adrian developed near the west coast of Mexico but steered away from land. The animation and stills show the evolution of the storm's clouds from the morning of June 28 to the afternoon of June 29. (The images shown were curated from nearly two dozen taken by the satellites in that time.) Nearby, Beatriz was developing into a tropical storm, visible in these images as the less-organized clouds closer to the coast.   

TROPICS is a constellation of four identical CubeSats designed to observe tropical cyclones. The cost-effective, milk carton-sized satellites were launched in May 2023 by Rocket Lab. Each TROPICS CubeSat contains a microwave radiometer that collects data across 12 channels to detect temperatures, moisture, and precipitation around and within a storm.

The images in the animation were built from data collected by a single channel (205 gigahertz) that is sensitive to ice in the clouds. Each scene shows brightness temperature; that is, the intensity of radiation detectable at that channel frequency moving upward from the cloud layers and toward the satellites.

(more)

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/nasas-tropics-offers-multiple-views-of-intensifying-hurricanes

morganism

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Re: Satellite News
« Reply #95 on: August 05, 2023, 12:40:52 AM »
(not quite sat, but in support of ground truthing.)

Probing the Atmospheric Precipitable Water Vapor with SOFIA, Part. IV. Water Vapor Estimates from FORCAST Grism Spectra

Abstract

SOFIA was an airborne observatory for far-infrared astronomy stationed at the Armstrong Flight Research Center in Palmdale, CA, USA. Although SOFIA flew at altitudes of ∼41,000 ft, any far-infrared observations from within the Earth's atmosphere are nevertheless hampered by water vapor absorbing the astronomical signal. The primary atmospheric parameter governing absorption at far-infrared wavelengths is the total upward precipitable water vapor (PWV). In this paper we present a method of deriving PWV values directly from low resolution (R ∼ 100–200) mid-infrared (5–40 μm) spectroscopic observations and apply it to low resolution grism spectra obtained with the FORCAST instrument on-board SOFIA. We then compare these values with those determined from the fifth European Re-analysis (ERA5) of the global atmospheric parameters provided by the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) for the time and altitude corresponding to the SOFIA observations. In general, we find a very good correlation between the ERA5-ECMWF values and the values derived from the FORCAST grism spectra, especially for high signal-to-noise ratio data. These results indicate that ERA5-ECMWF PWV values can be used to generate the telluric corrections for FORCAST imaging data as well as grism spectra for which the PWV values cannot be determined directly. We also derive the resolving power of the various grism and slit width combinations for FORCAST. Our results will be useful for reprocessing the FORCAST data in the SOFIA archive.

https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1538-3873/ace6fa

morganism

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Re: Satellite News
« Reply #96 on: August 05, 2023, 11:24:53 PM »
Satellite supergroup spots methane super-emitters with “staggering” accuracy

Sustainability - The combination of satellites allows the identification of major sources of greenhouse gas and is a crucial development for climate change mitigation efforts


    Using a combination of satellites, researchers can now detect methane super-emitters globally with great accuracy and almost in real time.
    This allows the identification of major sources of this potent greenhouse gas and is a crucial development for climate change mitigation efforts.
    The tiered approach moves from low-resolution global scans by Sentinel-5P to pinpointed spotting of emitters by Sentinel-3 and Sentinel-2 with increasing spatial resolution

https://innovationorigins.com/en/satellite-supergroup-spots-methane-super-emitters-with-staggering-accuracy/

vox_mundi

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Re: Satellite News
« Reply #97 on: August 27, 2023, 01:57:19 AM »
Space Junk Is Colliding With Itself, Creating More Space Junk
https://www.extremetech.com/aerospace/space-junk-is-colliding-with-itself-creating-more-space-junk

It's a sad irony, but an irony nonetheless, that this week the European Space Agency announced that a piece of space debris — left in orbit by a 2013 launch of Arianespace's Vega rocket and the target of a removal mission — appears to have been struck by other space debris.

The European Space Agency (ESA) shared Tuesday that debris targeted by a forthcoming space cleanup mission was struck by a “small, untracked object,” resulting in the “low-energy release of new fragments.” According to the US Space Surveillance Network, which identified the fragments, the struck object was the VEga Secondary Payload Adapter (VESPA), which helped the ESA deliver multiple small satellites to different orbits. VESPA has been hanging out in space for the last decade, having last seen an Arianespace Vega rocket launch in 2013. Its pieces hover in low Earth orbit (LEO) at about 660km perigee.

https://www.esa.int/Space_Safety/Objects_detected_in_the_vicinity_of_ClearSpace-1_debris_removal_mission_target

The irony of this situation doesn’t just lie in the discovery that space junk gives way to more space junk (as far as quantity is concerned, anyway—if satellites were out there creating new mass, this would be a different story entirely). It’s also in the fact that ClearSpace, a space junk cleanup company, was scheduled to snatch VESPA out of LEO in 2026. After having dedicated €86 million ($93 million) to the Switzerland-based startup in 2020, the ESA was looking forward to its first mission, ClearSpace-1, removing decommissioned equipment from orbit before it could endanger new satellites.

https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/317863-the-esa-funds-giant-claw-to-clean-up-space-junk

ClearSpace-1 is still on the roster, but the ESA will work with ClearSpace and other industry partners to gather more information about the space junk collision over the next several weeks. If anything, VESPA’s fragmentation proves that space cleanup projects are vital to the ongoing success of LEO missions.

-------------------------------------------------------------

ISS Fires Engines To Dodge Space Debris While Awaiting Cargo Delivery
https://scitechdaily.com/iss-fires-engines-to-dodge-space-debris-while-awaiting-cargo-delivery/

On Thursday, August 24, the International Space Station’s Zvezda service module engines were fired for 21.5 seconds, beginning at 11 a.m. EDT to maneuver the complex away from the predicted track of an orbital debris fragment.
“There are three classes of people: those who see. Those who see when they are shown. Those who do not see.” ― anonymous

Insensible before the wave so soon released by callous fate. Affected most, they understand the least, and understanding, when it comes, invariably arrives too late

morganism

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Re: Satellite News
« Reply #98 on: September 06, 2023, 09:44:07 PM »
Hmm, i thought AIM (noctilucent clouds) satt was lost. They quit support for it in March, now i see this?

"Unfortunately, the lack of NLCs has coincided with a technical malfunction in NASA's Aeronomy of Ice in the Mesosphere (AIM) satellite, the main device used to monitor NLCs. The spacecraft has been offline since March after its battery overloaded, and it may not fully recharge until next year. "

https://www.livescience.com/planet-earth/weather/rare-night-shining-clouds-have-not-arrived-on-schedule-and-a-brewing-storm-of-solar-activity-could-be-to-blame


march 16

NASA’s AIM Mission Ends Operational Support

(...)
After more than 15 years of scientific discoveries, NASA’s Aeronomy of Ice in the Mesosphere, or AIM, spacecraft is no longer supporting operations after experiencing issues with its battery.

AIM’s batteries initially started to decline in 2019, but the Earth-studying spacecraft continued to return a significant amount of data. Now, with further decline in the battery power, the spacecraft currently is not able to receive commands or collect data.

Launched in 2007, AIM has studied polar mesospheric clouds, also known as night-shining or noctilucent clouds, from its orbit 312 miles above Earth. Its data have changed scientists’ understanding of the causes and formation of the clouds, leading to 379 peer-reviewed scientific papers. AIM – originally slated to operate for two years – completed its primary mission in 2009 and has been in extended operations status since then.

The AIM team will continue to monitor AIM’s communication for two weeks in case the spacecraft is able to reboot and transmit a signal.

By Mara Johnson-Groh
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md

https://blogs.nasa.gov/sunspot/

SOLAR MAX IS MELTING NOCTILUCENT CLOUDS: 2023 has not been a good year for noctilucent clouds (NLCs). First, NASA's iconic AIM spacecraft broke, losing power when its main battery failed. We could no longer see noctilucent clouds from space. Next, the clouds themselves failed:

"NLCs are clouds of frosted meteor smoke. They form every year in summer when wisps of water vapor rise up to the edge of space. At altitudes greater than 80 km, the water crystallizes around disintegrated meteoroids, forming electric-blue structures visible in the night sky.

In recent years, bright NLCs have been sighted as far south as Spain and southern California. This year appears to be different; NLCs in 2023 are dimmer and less widespread than before.

What's going on? The solar cycle may be to blame. This year, the active sun is hitting Earth's upper atmosphere with lots of extreme ultraviolet radiation. These high energy photons make it harder for ice crystals to form in the mesosphere, thus suppressing NLCs. "

https://www.spaceweather.com/archive.php?view=1&day=02&month=07&year=2023

morganism

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Re: Satellite News
« Reply #99 on: September 07, 2023, 08:35:27 PM »
The Meteor M2-3 weather satellite appears to have lost attitude control, giving us a very nice view of the Earth's limb. The black Sea is easiest to recognize. This image was received, demodulated and decoded with my SatNOGS ground station.


https://astrodon.social/@cgbassa/111011753053318167