Space Technology, Defense & Exploration

Landing on Mars is hard. Two out of three missions to the red planet have failed. Hundreds of things have to go just right during this nail-biting drop. To get there, will have to fly through about 483 million kilometers (300 million miles) of deep space and target a very precise …

The volume of space between the Earth’s surface out to geosynchronous orbit is enormous—equivalent to 240,000 times all the Earth’s oceans. Yet the number of objects calling that volume home is growing all the time—not just with satellites but with debris of all kinds, natural and manmade. And keeping track …

A U.S.-developed space surveillance telescope has been assembled at a new facility in Western Australia and is expected to start operating in 2022, the U.S. Space Force Space and Missile Systems Center announced April 2020. The telescope, designed to track and identify debris and satellites more than 22,000 miles above Earth, …

The Global Positioning System (GPS), is a global navigation satellite system (GNSS) that provides location and time information in all weather conditions, anywhere on or near the Earth where there is an unobstructed line of sight to four or more GPS satellites. Each one transmits information about its position and …

Traditional systems engineering approaches to air systems design have been upended by two trends – increasing complexity and accelerating delivery timelines. Digital mission engineering is essential to these new challenges, enabling a system integrator to redirect work from physical systems to their logical representations.   Space systems are exceptionally complex, …

The primary function of the space propulsion system is to provide thrust, which helps in the functioning of the launch vehicle or satellite. In propulsion systems, the fluid (either solid, liquid, or electric) reacts to initiate acceleration and provide force in the system.   An ion thruster is a form …

Space capabilities have become central to many military operations, including missile warning, geolocation and navigation, target identification, and tracking of adversary activities.  US, Russia and China are world leaders in  militarization of space possessing extensive space infrastructure. The NASIC report said there number of foreign intelligence and imaging satellites “has tripled” to …

A communications satellite is an artificial satellite that relays and amplifies radio telecommunications signals via a transponder; it creates a communication channel between a source transmitter and a receiver at different locations on Earth. Satellite communications networks servicing large number of users comrise of  user terminals, satellites and a ground …

Sensors are usually thought of in terms of physical devices that receive and respond to electromagnetic signals – from everyday sensors in our smartphones and connected home appliances to more advanced sensors in buildings, cars, airplanes and spacecraft. However present day physical sensors are severely limited in range to continuously …