Tag: Commercial Satellites

SpaceX Falcon 9 Launches Payload for AST SpaceMobile, Lands Booster

SPACE reports, “AST SpaceMobile’s first five commercial satellites have reached orbit. The huge spacecraft, called BlueBirds, lifted off today (Sept. 12) at 4:52 a.m. EDT (0852 GMT) atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. … Each BlueBird sports a communications antenna that covers 693 square feet (64 square meters) when unfolded — the largest such array ever deployed by a commercial spacecraft.”
Full Story (SPACE)

 

Video

SpaceX launches Polaris Dawn crew on first private spacewalk mission (Launch at 00:33 second mark)
(VideoFromSpace; YouTube)

Study: Hubble Telescope Images Increasingly Spoiled by Commercial Satellites

The New York Times reports a study published Thursday by the journal Nature Astronomy “reveals an increase in the percentage of images recorded by the Hubble that are spoiled by passing satellites” as of data through 2021. Thousands more satellites “have been launched since then by SpaceX and other companies, and many more are expected to go to orbit in the years ahead, affecting the Hubble and potentially other telescopes in space.” Their results show “that the chance of seeing a satellite in a Hubble image from 2009 to 2020 is only 3.7 percent,” rising to 5.9 percent in 2021, which the researchers say corresponds to SpaceX’s Starlink satellites.
Full Story (New York Times – Subscription publication)