The Navy may have been the loudest about its railgun dreams, but the Army is quietly moving ahead with turning the tech into something deployable.
Orbion is a four-year-old startup in Houghton, Michigan, that specializes in Hall-effect plasma thrusters for small satellites.
WASHINGTON — Small satellite manufacturer Blue Canyon Technologies announced Sept. 15 it selected Orbion Space Technology to supply the electric propulsion system for the U.S. military’s Blackjack constellation.
Blue Canyon is producing four satellites for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s Blackjack program. DARPA plans to launch as many as 20 small satellites to demonstrate that a mesh network in low Earth orbit can meet military requirements at lower cost and shorter design cycles than traditional Pentagon programs.
Continue reading “Blue Canyon selects Orbion electric thrusters for DARPA’s Blackjack satellites” »
General Atomics Aeronautical Systems has unveiled a rendering of its next-generation intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance and strike unmanned air vehicle as a proposed replacement of the US Air Force’s MQ-9A Reaper.
Historically, human space exploration was initiated by the Soviet Union with the Sputnik launch into the Earth orbit in 1957. Humankind’s space endeavors grew with more determination after the first animal’s launch, a dog called “Laika”. Marked by the Soviet Union’s Yuri Gagarin trip in the Vostok 1 in 1961 and his compatriot Valentina Tereshkiva’s three-day space orbiting mission in the Vostok 6 in 1963, humankind succeeded to make the giant leap beyond Earth’s boundaries.
Nonetheless, the Yuri Gagarin’s spacewalk and Neil Armstrong’s first steps on the Moon remain the spark to ignite ambitious human prospects on space travel, which unleashed unlimited possibilities on the humankind’s expansion into outer space. The achieved milestones in space endeavors created a shift from a mere inspirational driver and curiosity feeder on existential questions [3] to a space race which grew from a bipolar race between the United States and the former Soviet Union to a different space race in which new actors, particularly private actors, have become essential players [4].
The most prominent ongoing transformation of the global space sector is the race to commercialize space driven by private enterprises and induced by governmental agencies who rewarded these enterprises billions of dollars in governmental space contracts. The evolution of space commercialization could be illustrated through the U.S. space economic emergence from the National Aeronautics and Space administration’s (NASA) monopoly to a more liberalized space sector. Such an emergence came as a consequence of NASA’s struggle to improve its military-based technologies to achieve cost-effective and safe space access [5] in addition to budget reductions and various costly accidents, which led NASA to outsource its spaceship manufacturing.
Continue reading “#SpaceWatchGL Opinion: New Space – Overview and investment Trends” »
After an internal investigation, the US Department of Defense (DoD) announced that is standing by its decision to award the $10 billion JEDI cloud computing contract to Microsoft and not Amazon. The probe was triggered after Amazon complained that the integrity of the bidding process was cast into doubt because of statements by President Trump.
The Pentagon affirmed its initial decision awarding the contract to Microsoft, but acknowledged that the legal battle isn’t over. In a press release, it said it “determined that Microsoft’s proposal continues to represent the best value to the government” but added that the contract “will not begin immediately.” That’s because of a temporary injunction issued over an Amazon lawsuit arguing that the contract had “clear deficiencies, errors and unmistakable bias.”
Ira Pastor, ideaXme life sciences ambassador, interviews Dr. Rachel Ramoni, Chief Research and Development Officer at the U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs.
Ira Pastor Comments:
Chinese fighter jets approached Taiwan on Thursday for a second day in a row, the island’s defence ministry said, urging China to stop “destroying regional peace” in a further ratcheting up of tension across the sensitive Taiwan Strait.
China, which claims Taiwan as its own territory, has held numerous military exercises up and down its coast and near the island in recent weeks.
The defence ministry said Su-30 fighters and Y-8 transport aircraft were among the Chinese aircraft that entered Taiwan’s air identification zone to its southwest on Thursday morning.
The Chinese Navy is already the largest in the world, with a fleet of more than 350 ships that includes a fast-growing armada of destroyers, carriers and submarines, a reality which continues to raise concerns with the Pentagon and Navy weapons developers. By the end of this decade, China is expected to operate as many as 400 ships, according to the Pentagon’s 2020 China Military Power report which catalogs the pace and extent of China’s ambitious military modernization. “China is the top ship-producing nation in the world by tonnage and is increasing its shipbuilding capacity and capability for all naval classes,” the report said.
My latest publication in Satellite Markets and Research, with significant contribution of Ms. Zoe Shahid.
by Muhammad Furqan and Zoe Shahid
Brisbane, Australia, September 4, 2020 —Exponentially increasing numbers of announced ambitious NGSO (Non-Geo Stationary Orbit) or LEO-HTS (Lower Earth Orbit – High Throughput Satellites) Mega Constellations have been creating waves in the world of technology. Their success will not be a mere disruption to the existing system, it will be a whole new system altogether.
Continue reading “Challenges to LEO HTS Megaconstellations” »
India has become the fourth country to successfully flight test hypersonic technology, joining an elite club alongside the US, Russia and China with the ability to develop missiles that can travel several times faster than the speed of sound.
Defence ministry says demonstration vehicle with scramjet engine reached an altitude of 30km and six times the speed of sound.
