Really Rocket Science

Falcone’s telecom troubles mount, as the Harbinger Fund investments in LightSquared jeopardize investors’ value and a group of investors sues in federal court.
[Wall Street Journal - 02/18/2012]

Latest Pentagon spending plans scale back push to use commercial satellites to supplement the military’s communication and space efforts.
[Wall Street Journal - 02/17/2012]

Second attempt to launch Atlas V rocket with first MUOS satellite is scrubbed due to weather conditions.
[Central Florida News - 02/17/2012]

U.S. bankruptcy court approves TerreStar reorganization plan; Dish Network prepared to close previously approved acquisitions of TerreStar and DBSD upon FCC approval of license transfers.
[Satellite Today - 02/17/2012]

Eutelsat and ViaSat receive Industry Innovators Awards from the Society of Satellite Professionals International for development and launch of their High Throughput broadband Satellites, KA-SAT and ViaSat-1.
[Sacramento Bee - 02/17/2012]

General Dynamics demonstrates first MUOS satellite-based communications on JTRS HMS Radio.
[Market Watch - 02/17/2012]

NSR free webinar coming February 22 – Military budget cuts and troop drawdowns: What’s the impact on commercial satcoms?
[NSR - 02/17/2012]

NASA selects 33 small “cubesat” satellites to fly as auxiliary payloads aboard rockets.
[SatNews - 02/17/2012]

Global Satellite USA launches Iridium Pilot, Iridium’s second-generation maritime broadband platform.
[SatNews 02/17/2012]

Satlink expands the reach of God’s Leaning Channel into Asia on the ABS1 satellite at 75 degrees East.
[SatNews - 02/17/2012]

United States, in review of future satellite needs, examines opportunities to increase international collaboration and orders from commercial providers, U.S. Air Force official says.
[Fox Business - 02/16/2012]

SES-4 successfully performs post-launch maneuvers.
[Market Watch - 02/16/2012]

Media Networks Latin American signs long-term capacity deal with SES fior multiple transponders on AMC-4 to launch new DTH wholesale pay TV service.
[SatNews - 02/16/2012]

LightSquared may be looking to Department of Defense to save its LTE network; FCC still believes satellite spectrum can be used for wireless buildout but will tread more carefully next time.
[Washington Post - 02/16/2012]

Avanti partner STM buys Ka band capacity on HYLAS 1 to enable launch of Enterprise services in Spain.
[Proactive Investors - 02/15/2012]

Comtech EF Data wins Industry Innovators Award from Society of Satellite Professionals International for MetaCarrier technology that adds carrier ID information to a reference carrier using spread spectrum technology.
[Market Watch - 02/15/2012]

Officials eye changes to GPS receivers, but move comes too late for LightSquared.
[Nextgov - 02/15/2012]

NSR reports that FCC statement all but negates years of work from both the FCC and the mobile satellite industry.
[SatNews - 02/15/2012]

Swiss to build clean-up satellites to attack the space junk issue.
[R&D Magazine - 02/15/2012]

ORBIT Communication Systems and Milano Teleport receive orders for complete C-band VSAT solution for supertankers of one of worlds leading shipping companies based in Greece.
[SatNews - 02/15/2012]

Newly announced Intellian t80W maritime satellite TV antenna system uses WorldView LNB that automatically switches polarization and frequency according to satellite tracking onto, and satellite control system intelligence and dual antenna system that allows seamless reception of TV programs on a global basis.
[SatNews - 02/15/2012]

Harris CapRock Communications signs contract to provide telecommunications systems and infrastructure for Chevron’s Big Foot platform project in the Gulf of Mexico.
[SatNews - 02/15/2012]

IO Sat one of first customers providing services on Spacecom’s AMOS-5 satellite.
[SatNews - 02/15/2012]

NASA budget request includes funding for again launching astronauts, further exploration into space, and continuing research, providing jobs and technology that will boost the economy.
[SatNews - 02/13/2012]

Google applies for FCC licenses for “antenna farm” in Kansas that hint at possible super head-end for capturing satellite television signals for over-fiber distribution.
[Kansas City Star - 02/14/2012]

FCC bars use of satellite spectrum terrestrially for broadband networks, sending LightSquared back to Square One.
[New York Times - 02/14/2012]

Gilat develops customized solution for O3b Networks’ satellite network.
[Globes - 02/14/2012]

Xplornet Communications’ 4G broadband satellite service on ViaSat-1 goes live over Canada.
[Digital Journal - 02/14/2012]

Global Telesat Corp. launches E-Commerce mobile satellite solutions portal on worldwide web.
[Market Watch - 02/14/2012]

ORBIT awarded services contract from U.S. Air Force to install service communication management systems on KC-135 Stratotankers.
[Market Watch - 02/14/2012]

UtiliSat to offer end-to-end managed network services to U.S. government agencies under new GSA custom SATCOM solutions small business contract.
[Market Watch - 02/14/2012]

FAB Express Trucking selects VeriWise(TM) satellite tracking systems to manage dry van fleet.
[Market Watch - 02/14/2012]

Obama budget targets LightSquared.
[Nextgov - 02/13/2011]

YAHSAT begins transmission of High TV 3D.
[Satellite Today - 02/13/2012]

ViaSat phases out WildBlue brand for new Exede service on ViaSat 1.
[Satellite Today - 02/13/2012]

Spectacular view from International Space Station includes lights of hundreds of cities plus massive Aurora Borealis on the horizon.
[SatNews - 02/13/2012]

WBMSAT satellite communications consulting services

Our friends at DigitalGlobe Inc., providers of satellite imagery via the Worldview spacecraft, have released photos of Syrian tanks surrounding residential neighborhoods. Via WaPo…

Stephen Wood, director of DigitalGlobe’s analysis center, said the photos show tanks, armored personnel carriers and other armored vehicles in the southern part of the city, some of them near apartment buildings.

The satellite images show an increase in the level of army activity in and around Homs from the previous 24 hours, Wood said.

Fighting in Homs has reportedly killed hundreds of people over the past week from bombardments followed by soldiers’ advances. The battle there is part of the Syrian government’s attempts to suppress an 11-month-old uprising against the rule of President Bashar Assad.

Wood said no battle damage was visible in the photos taken Friday, but previous images captured by the company’s satellites did show the effects of fighting.

And this report from Al Jazeera furthers the news…

Good job getting the images out. It’s good for business, especially if you consider there’s growth in the earth observation sector, according to Euroconsult.

Check out their Flickr photostream. Very cool.

There’s no shortage of DoD acronyms. There was that hosted payload on one of the SES spacecraft, CHIRP (Commercially Hosted Infrared Payload). The topper is now MASTER: Modular Architecture for Signal-processing, Tracking and Exploitation Research program. Yeah, seems a bit of a stretch. It comes to us via the rocket scientists at Northrup Grumman:

MASTER supports the government ground processing effort for the Air Force’s Commercially Hosted IR Payload (CHIRP) program’s on-orbit period. An experimental CHIRP sensor is hosted on a commercial SES satellite operating in geosynchronous orbit over the United States. The SES satellite was successfully launched on Sept. 21 from French Guiana.

“MASTER provides an important sensor-agnostic ground processing capability for our customer,” said Ron Alford, Northrop Grumman’s director, sensor exploitation systems and Colorado campuses. “The architecture utilizes an enterprise approach with an open architecture and plug-and-play components. In future data processing systems, measurable cost savings can be enjoyed by using the MASTER architecture to provide common processing capabilities across sensor types and system constellations without the need for customized processing chains.”

“This approach not only reduces costs, but facilitates new missions, new sensor/data providers and the participation of third parties in specialized processing algorithms for new and changing missions,” Alford said.

The enterprise architecture developed for the MASTER program can be used by multiple types of sensors without the redundant cost of redeveloping the ground mission processing software, but currently is prototyped against Overhead Persistent Infrared (OPIR) sensors.

MASTER has been successful in integrating and using algorithms provided by outside third parties as well as processing data from multiple operational OPIR sensors and new experimental simulated data. The MASTER architecture has also enabled innovative parallel data processing with multiple plug-and-play algorithms, along with significant advances in star and static-source line-of-site correction methods.

The MASTER contract is a follow-on effort to the Alternative Infrared Satellite System program, begun in 2006 and renamed Third Generation Infrared Surveillance as a technology maturation program. MASTER has been focused on developing an open, plug-and-play, sensor-agnostic processing architecture for the government to use in evaluating whole earth-staring array sensors.

Yes, you read that right: “earth-staring array sensors.” Our favorite is AFRTS (Armed Forces Radio & Television Services). Pronounced as you would expect.

Spitsbergen! Somebody in China decided to hack a couple of observation spacecraft via the Svalbard Earth Station in Norway. The scoop, via Bloomberg BusinessWeek…

Computer hackers, possibly from the Chinese military, interfered with two U.S. government satellites four times in 2007 and 2008 through a ground station in Norway, according to a congressional commission.
The intrusions on the satellites, used for earth climate and terrain observation, underscore the potential danger posed by hackers, according to excerpts from the final draft of the annual report by the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission. The report is scheduled to be released next month.
“Such interference poses numerous potential threats, particularly if achieved against satellites with more sensitive functions,” according to the draft. “Access to a satellite‘s controls could allow an attacker to damage or destroy the satellite. An attacker could also deny or degrade as well as forge or otherwise manipulate the satellite’s transmission.”
A Landsat-7 earth observation satellite system experienced 12 or more minutes of interference in October 2007 and July 2008, according to the report.
Hackers interfered with a Terra AM-1 earth observation satellite twice, for two minutes in June 2008 and nine minutes in October that year, the draft says, citing a closed-door U.S. Air Force briefing.
The draft report doesn’t elaborate on the nature of the hackers’ interference with the satellites.

Excellent launch video of the ORS-1 spacecraft from Wallops Island in Virginia. The news, via the USAF:

An Air Force team successfully launched the first Operationally Responsive Space prototype satellite aboard a Minotaur I launch vehicle at 11:09 p.m. EDT June 29 from the NASA Wallops Flight Facility on Wallops Island, Va. ORS-1 deployed 12 minutes after launch.

This marks a great achievement by the Space and Missile Systems Center’s Space Development and Test Directorate, the Operationally Responsive Space Office and their contractor teams, according to Col. Carol Welsch, the directorate’s acting director and the ORS-1 mission director. ORS-1 is the Operationally Responsive Space Office’s first operational prototype satellite and represents the potential of low-cost, tactically focused satellites designed to provide critical battlespace awareness capabilities to the joint warfighter.

“Words cannot express how proud I am of the entire ORS-1 team,” she said. “The men and women of the Space Development and Test Directorate, the Operationally Responsive Space Office, and our industry partners of Goodrich, ATK, and Orbital have all worked tirelessly to move forward on the concept of a responsive space capability designed to support the warfighter. Their teamwork and dedication is simply inspiring.”

Rapidly developing and fielding ORS-1 is an important step to demonstrating the possibilities to meet emerging and persistent warfighter needs in operationally relevant timelines, Colonel Welsch said.

“Our team was able to develop, integrate, test and launch this system in just over 30 months which is a remarkable achievement,” she said.

ORS-1 was initiated as a result of a requirement to the ORS office from the commander of U.S. Strategic Command to support U.S. Central Command.

Built by ATK in 16 months! In Maryland, no less.

One of many interesting, fantastic details of the film “Avatar” was the bioluminescent plants — and the inter-networked biosystems on Pandora.

Why am I thinking about this? NASA just released details of maps illustrating land plant fluorescence, based on the work of several scientists who published “First observations of global and seasonal terrestrial chlorophyll fluorescence from space.” The abstract:

Remote sensing of terrestrial vegetation fluorescence from space is of interest because it can potentially provide global coverage of the functional status of vegetation. For example, fluorescence observations may provide a means to detect vegetation stress before chlorophyll reductions take place. Although there have been many measurements of fluorescence from ground- and airborne-based instruments, there has been scant information available from satellites. In this work, we use high-spectral resolution data from the Thermal And Near-infrared Sensor for carbon Observation – Fourier Transform Spectrometer (TANSO-FTS) on the Japanese Greenhouse gases Observing SATellite (GOSAT) that is in a sun-synchronous orbit with an equator crossing time near 13:00 LT. We use filling-in of the potassium (K) I solar Fraunhofer line near 770 nm to derive chlorophyll fluorescence and related parameters such as the fluorescence yield at that wavelength. We map these parameters globally for two months (July and December 2009) and show a full seasonal cycle for several different locations, including two in the Amazonia region. We also compare the derived fluorescence information with that provided by the MODIS Enhanced Vegetation Index (EVI). These comparisons show that for several areas these two indices exhibit different seasonality and/or relative intensity variations, and that changes in fluorescence frequently lead those seen in the EVI for those regions. The derived fluorescence therefore provides information that is related to, but independent of the reflectance.

Real science is never too far from science fiction, is it?

That reminds me: I should water the garden.

A new program on BBC One, “Egypt’s Lost Cities,” features the work of Sarah Parcak, Ph.D., of the University of Alabama’s Laboratory for Global Health Observation.

She’s using infrared satellite imagery to locate entire cities, some buried for centuries, by studying remnants of mud brick buildings, for instance. They’ve found 3,000 ancient settlements, which includes 1,000 tombs and 17 pyramids. Good show!

Check out her book, Satellite Remote Sensing for Archaeology, so you too can become familiar with her ways.

That’s right, rocket scientists, weather spacecraft have seen the erupting Grímsvötn volcano in Iceland and it’s pretty cool. This one’s from Meteosat-9:

The animation shows Meteosat-9 observations from the High Resolution Visible (HRV) channel, providing measurements with a resolution of 1 km at the sub-satellite point, representing roughly a 3-5 km resolution over Iceland. At around 19:15 UTC, a very rapid eruption of the Grímsvötn volcano occurred, which is visible from the animation below. The eruption is transporting a large amount of water vapour and ash significantly higher than the cloud deck heights over Iceland.

Meteosat-9 is located on the Greenwich Meridian, while the GOES-13 spacecraft, also a weather observation satellite, is located at 75º West. So here we have a different angle…

How small can a satellite get? The answer, my rocket scientist friend, in blowing in the solar wind. It’s not big or red, but it is from Cornell University…

The thin, 1-inch-square chips, in development for three years in the lab of Mason Peck, associate professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering, will be mounted to the Materials International Space Station Experiment (MISSE-8) pallet, which will be attached to the space station, exposing them to the harsh conditions of space to see how they hold up and transmit data.

Although grapefruit-size satellites have been launched before, they have functioned much like larger satellites. The flight dynamics of a chip satellite are fundamentally different from these larger “CubeSats.”

“Their small size allows them to travel like space dust,” said Peck. “Blown by solar winds, they can ‘sail’ to distant locations without fuel. … We’re actually trying to create a new capability and build it from the ground up. … We want to learn what’s the bare minimum we can design for communication from space,” Peck said.

When the MISSE-8 panel is removed and returned to Earth in a few years, the survival of the prototypes will be assessed.

The trip to space is the result of a phone call about a year ago, when one of Peck’s colleagues called to ask if he had anything small that could be ready within a few weeks time to put on the MISSE-8 pallet, as a small patch of space had opened up.

“He didn’t know that we had been working on the satellite-on-a-chip program for a long time, and over the next week we put together these prototypes,” Peck said.

The three prototypes were built entirely by three Cornell students when they were undergraduates — Ryan Zhou ’10 and doctoral candidates Zac Manchester ’09 and Justin Atchison ’10.

The prototypes are physically identical, but each transmits differently. “They all emit at the same frequency … [but] they are different and distinct from each other in ways that we can recognize on the ground,” said Peck. “That’s very important because it’s a pathfinder for something we hope to do in the future. We want to launch a huge number of these things simultaneously but still sort out which is which.”

The current prototypes are mostly made of commercial parts, but Peck’s group has partnered with Draper Lab in Boston to work on making a more space-ready prototype.

“We’re seeing such an explosion in personal electronics … all these components are super high performance, and they have far outstripped what the aerospace industry has at its disposal,” said Peck, noting that these technologies were used on the small satellites.

Cornell, he added, plays a leading role in the field of chip satellites. “We are definitely the first to launch something, and we are the first to be looking at the flight dynamics as a way to enable new ways to explore space,” he said.

Watch the local news report on this “Sputnik on a chip” from Newschannel 9/WYSR-TV…

The Commercially Hosted Infrared Payload (CHIRP), set to piggy-back on the SES-2 spacecraft later this year, passed thermal vacuum chamber testing. According to DefPro, all is nominal and you can’t get any better than that in the space business…

SES-USG today announced that the Commercially Hosted Infrared Payload (CHIRP) and its host spacecraft, SES-2, have completed thermal vacuum (TVAC) testing.
The experimental wide field-of-view sensor was designed by Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) for the U.S. Air Force Space and Missile Systems Center. After integration onto the SES-2 spacecraft, built by Orbital Sciences Corp., the TVAC tests were conducted to demonstrate the sensor’s ability to withstand the space environment it will experience following the launch this August. A preliminary review of the test data indicates the CHIRP payload thermal performance was as expected.
Victoria Kennedy, CHIRP Program Manager at SES noted, “The TVAC was a key milestone for CHIRP, and puts the program well on track for the remaining environmental tests.”
The TVAC is one of a series of recent successful tests completed by the CHIRP program. In January, the payload was integrated onto the SES-2 spacecraft and passed what is known as the initial post-mate electrical checkout. Following this milestone, an integrated ground-to-payload test was completed where the sensor was commanded from SAIC’s Mission Analysis Center in Seal Beach, CA through Orbital’s Mission Operations Center in Dulles, VA. Through this process, payload data, including images and state-of-health data were successfully transmitted. This demonstration was a key risk reduction activity in the development and testing of the CHIRP Ground Segment.
Brent Armand, CHIRP Program Manager at Orbital Sciences Corporation remarked, “The team is very pleased with the payload performance during TVAC. We are all systems go as we look forward to the upcoming vibration test campaign and the near-term completion and delivery of the SES-2 spacecraft.”

To simulate the hot and cold extremes possible in space, the thermal vacuum chamber can reach temperatures in a 600-degree F range from 302° F all the way down to minus 310° F. Wow, the best we can do as humans on earth is the 300-degree Club in Antarctica.

What’s next? Vibration testing, which includes random vibration, base-drive modal and quasi-static load tests – all conducted while the spacecraft is mounted on a shaker.

This NASA video does an excellent job of explaining these critical tests…