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Elon Musk is doing good stuff for Ukraine.

Iran announced Tuesday it had successfully placed a military satellite in orbit, as talks on reviving a 2015 nuclear deal between Tehran and major powers reach a critical stage. "Iran's second military satellite -- named Nour-2 -- has been launched into space by the Qassed rocket of the aerospace wing of the Revolutionary Guards and successfully placed in orbit 500 kilometres (310 miles) above the Earth," the official IRNA news agency reported. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps described the Nour-2 as a "reconnaissance satellite" in a statement on its Sepah News website. Iran successfully put its first military satellite into...

MOSCOW, March 2 (Reuters) - Russia will treat any hacking of its satellites as a justification for war, the head of the country's space agency was quoted as saying in a news report on Wednesday. Roscosmos head Dmitry Rogozin denied media reports that Russian satellite control centres have already been hacked amid Moscow's invasion of Ukraine, while warning against any attempts to do so, Interfax news agency reported. "Offlining the satellites of any country is actually a casus belli, a cause for war," Interfax quoted him as saying.

SpaceX founder Elon Musk said Saturday evening that the company's Starlink satellites are now active in Ukraine to alleviate some of the connectivity challenges the country is facing amid the Russia invasion. Ukrainian Vice Prime Minister Mykhailo Fedorov appealed to Musk on Saturday morning, saying that while his "rockets successfully land from space — Russian rockets attack Ukrainian civil people!"

This is a one-off. Do not know any more than this. If inaccurate, pull. If accurate, please help confirm. If any FReeper is in contact with any of the truckers, please check. Thank you, Norski

A Chinese Satellite Just Grappled Another And Pulled It Out Of Orbit The maneuver raises concerns about the potential militarization of satellites designed to inspect, manipulate, or relocate other satellites. ===== A Chinese satellite was observed grabbing another satellite and pulling it out of its normal geosynchronous orbit and into a “super-graveyard drift orbit.” The maneuver raises questions about the potential applications of these types of satellites designed to maneuver close to other satellites for inspection or manipulation and adds to growing concerns about China's space program overall. On January 22, China’s Shijian-21 satellite, or SJ-21, disappeared from its regular...

Space Force general details how jamming, blinding lasers, cyber attacks, and other satellites have America's space-based capabilities under siege. US. Space Force's General David Thompson said last week that Russia and China are launching "reversible attacks," such as electronic warfare jamming, temporarily blinding optics with lasers, and cyber attacks, on U.S. satellites "every single day. “The Chinese are actually well ahead of Russia. They're fielding operational systems at an incredible rate.” ... when asked, Thompson could not confirm or deny whether any American satellites had actually been damaged in a Russian or Chinese attack. Beyond that ... even if such...

Continuing a recent streak, Friday saw the fourth successful orbital launch from China in one week. This time, the Zhongxing-1D (ChinaSat-1D) satellite was inserted into orbit by a Chang Zheng 3B rocket launched from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center. The ChinaSat (Zhongxing) series of satellites, built by the state-owned China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC), fall under the communications category. The ChinaSat-1 series is specifically designed for military communications, with the first of this type launched in 2011. Two types of military communications satellites are used, with Friday’s launch exhibiting the Feng Huo-2, used for tactical communications providing Chinese...

Russia on Thursday successfully placed into orbit a military satellite believed to be part of the Kremlin's early warning anti-missile system. A Soyuz rocket carrying a classified payload blasted off from the Plesetsk cosmodrome in northern Russia in the early hours of Thursday morning, the defence ministry said. At 0109 GMT a rocket was launched that put a "space apparatus into orbit in the interests of the defence ministry", the ministry said in a statement carried by the Interfax news agency. It did not provide further details. According to the Spaceflightnow website, which covers space launches, the launch could be...

On Nov. 3 U.S. Space Force’s 18th Space Control Squadron (SPCS) catalogued a new object alongside Shijian-21 with the international designator 2021-094C. The object is noted as a rocket body and more precisely an apogee kick motor (AKM), used in some launches for a satellite to circularize and lower the inclination of its transfer orbit and enter geostationary orbit. Apogee kick motors usually perform a final maneuver after satellite separation so as to not pose a threat to active satellites through risk of collision. However both Shijian-21 and the SJ-21 AKM are side by side in geostationary orbit. It is...

China has confirmed the loss of its Shiyan-10 satellite, despite an otherwise successful liftoff on Monday (Sept. 27). The Shiyan-10 satellite launched to space on a Long March 3B rocket, which lifted off from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center in southwest China around 4:20 a.m. EDT (0820 GMT; 4 p.m. local time) on Monday (Sept. 27). The spacecraft was China's second orbital launch of the day, following the Jilin-1 Gaofen 02D satellite, which was carried by a Kuaizhou-1A rocket that lifted off from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwest China at 2:19 a.m. EDT (0619 GMT; 2:19 p.m. local...

The typical rocket launch dumps the same amount of CO2 into the atmosphere as one airliner does in the course of a trans-Atlantic crossing If you’re worried about your ‘carbon footprint’ - a concept foisted on the world in 2004 by British Petroleum to persuade people that their own behaviour, and not giant oil companies like BP, is causing the climate problem -- then you definitely should not sign up for a sub-orbital space flight. Besides, you probably can’t afford it ($250,000 pp). Millions of people can afford it, however, and since the Branson/Bezos ‘space race’ last month tickets for...

Apple's newest iPhone will offer technology that lets it connect to satellites, allowing users to make calls and send messages when they're out of range from a 4G or 5G network, according to a new analyst report. TF International Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo said the new device will feature a customized Qualcomm chip that allows for low-earth-orbit (LEO) satellite communications, effectively making the next iPhone a satellite phone, according to a report seen by MacRumors. The analyst said Qualcomm is teaming up with Globalstar on the chip, a customized version of Qualcomm X60 baseband chip. In this case, a customer...

In March, the U.S. Space Force's 18th Space Control Squadron (18SPCS) reported the breakup of Yunhai 1-02, a Chinese military satellite that launched in September 2019. It was unclear at the time whether the spacecraft had suffered some sort of failure — an explosion in its propulsion system, perhaps — or if it had collided with something in orbit. On Saturday (Aug. 14), McDowell spotted an update in the Space-Track.org catalog, which the 18SPCS makes available to registered users. The update included "a note for object 48078, 1996-051Q: 'Collided with satellite.' This is a new kind of comment entry —...

A couple of weeks ago, word arrived that 120 new missile silos had been discovered in the desert of Northern China. While the press made much of this evidence that China is busy expanding its nuclear weapons program, they did not look at who found the silos and how he did it. As it happens, the silos were spotted by Decker Eveleth, an undergrad at Reed College. He spent weeks poking around on satellite imagery until he happened upon the silos’ distinctive inflatable dome coverings. (Which, in turn, has led some people to describe them as “bouncy houses of death.”)...

Toothpicks. Tables. Crates. Spoons. Satellites? An ambitious project will send a tiny wooden satellite into orbit later this year to see if it can stand up to the brutal conditions of space. The WISA Woodsat is a 4-inch (10-centimeter) square satellite that's scheduled for a fall launch on a Rocket Lab Electron rocket in New Zealand. Getting to orbit is only part of the adventure. Once there, the team will monitor the little cube to see how its plywood build stands up to cold, heat, radiation and the vacuum of space. Woodsat is the brainchild of Jari Makinen, co-founder of...

Five years ago, 63% of Americans mostly watched television through cable and satellite. Today, that percentage has dropped to fewer than half of all Americans, while the percentage of those primarily watching television via a streaming service on the internet has jumped 17 percentage points, from 20% in 2016 to 37% today. About one in 10 Americans watch their TV through a digital antenna, which replaced old-fashioned broadcast television several years ago.

Mitsubishi Heavy Industries of Japan plans to launch an H-IIA rocket on Sunday, 29 November to deploy a top secret communications satellite to support the country’s reconnaissance and scientific programs. Liftoff is scheduled for a two-hour window opening at 16:25 local time (07:25 UTC or 02:25 EST) from the Tanegashima Space Center. The Optical Data Relay Satellite payload aboard this mission will be used to relay data collected by Japan’s fleet of Information Gathering Satellites (IGS) – including both optical and radar-imaging reconnaissance spacecraft – back to Earth for analysis. It is a joint mission with the Japan Aerospace Exploration...

China has successfully launched what has been described as "the world's first 6G satellite" into space to test the technology. It went into orbit along with 12 other satellites from the Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center in the Shanxi Province. The telecoms industry is still several years away from agreeing on 6G's specifications, so it is not yet certain the tech being trialled will make it into the final standard. This is the world's first practical use of 6G technology. It involves use of high-frequency terahertz waves to achieve data-transmission speeds many times faster than 5G is likely to be capable...

Inmarsat is a satellite communication system that is likely to become obsolete once Elon Musk’s Starlink system is up and running. The differences go well beyond age and branding. Let’s learn more about the differences between the Starlink and Inmarsat antennas.