“Space weather describes the changing environment throughout the Solar System, driven by the energetic and unpredictable nature of our Sun. Solar wind, solar flares and Coronal Mass Ejections can result in geomagetic storms on Earth, potentially damaging satellites in space and the technologies that rely on them, as well as infrastructure on the ground.
ESA’s future Lagrange mission will keep constant watch on the Sun. The satellite, located at the fifth Lagrange point, will send early warning of potentially harmful solar activity before it affects satellites in orbit or power grids on the ground, giving operators the time to act to protect vital infrastructure.”
“NASA’s Earth Polychromatic Imaging Camera (EPIC) sits onboard NOAA’s Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR) satellite at the Lagrange point 1, a million miles away from Earth. EPIC has been imaging the sunlit side of Earth between 13 and 22 times a day since 2015. Now, scientists have developed ways to use these images to study specific elements of our home planet’s atmosphere and plant life, like ozone in the stratosphere, the makeup of clouds and the health of vegetation on land.”
“NASA’s new laser instrument, the Global Ecosystem Dynamics Investigation, or GEDI, has advanced laser technology that will reveal the makeup of remote forest ecosystems around the globe. GEDI will soar above Earth at 17,150 miles per hour onboard the International Space Station. Its measurements of the height of leaves, branches, trees, and shrubs below its path will help scientists map the structure of forests and better understand how ecosystems are storing or releasing carbon.
GEDI’s lidar instrument sends laser pulses down to Earth, where they penetrate the globe’s temperate and tropical forests. The laser beams ricochet off the first thing they hit, which can be a leaf atop a dense canopy, a protruding branch, or the ground from which the forest emerges. The energy returned to the GEDI telescope on the International Space Station will provide an intricate three-dimensional map of forest canopies and carbon storage.
Led by the University of Maryland in collaboration with NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, GEDI has the highest resolution and densest sampling of any lidar every put in orbit. ”
“The Ionospheric Connection Explorer (ICON) is a satellite designed to investigate changes in the Earth’s ionosphere. ICON will study the interaction between Earth’s weather systems and space weather driven by the Sun, and how this interaction drives turbulence in the upper atmosphere. It is hoped that a better understanding of this dynamic will mitigate its effects on communications, GPS signals, and technology in general. It is part of NASA’s Explorers program and will be operated by UC Berkeley’s Space Sciences Laboratory.
Once launched, ICON will perform a two-year mission to observe conditions in both the thermosphere and ionosphere. ICON will be equipped with four instruments: a Michelson interferometer, built by the United States Naval Research Laboratory, will measure the winds and temperatures in the thermosphere; an ion drift meter, built by UT Dallas, will measure the motion of charged particles in the ionosphere; and two ultraviolet imagers built at UC Berkeley will observe the airglow layers in the upper atmosphere in order to determine both ionospheric and thermospheric density and composition.
Many low-Earth orbiting satellites, including the International Space Station, fly through the ionosphere and can be affected by its changing electric and magnetic fields. The ionosphere also acts as a conduit for many communications signals, such as radio waves and the signals that make GPS systems work. The ionosphere is where space weather manifests, creating unpredicted conditions such as electric currents that can cause electrical charging of satellites, changing density that can affect satellite orbits, and shifting magnetic fields that can induce current in power systems, causing strain, disrupt communications and navigation or even blackouts. Improved understanding of this environment can help predict such events and improve satellite design.”
“Rocket Lab is a private American aerospace manufacturer and smallsat launcher with a wholly owned New Zealand subsidiary. It has developed a suborbital sounding rocket named Ä€tea and currently operates a lightweight orbital rocket known as the Electron, which provides dedicated launches for smallsats and cubesats.
The Electron test program began in May 2017, with commercial flights announced by the company to occur at a price listed in early 2018 as US$5.7 million. Launching from Mahia Peninsula, New Zealand, the rocket’s test flights took place on 25 May 2017 and 21 January 2018, while its first commercial flight took place on 11 November 2018.
Rocket Lab was founded in 2006 by New Zealander Peter Beck, the company’s CEO and CTO. Internet entrepreneur and fellow New Zealander Mark Rocket was the seed investor and co-director from 2007 to 2011. In 2009, Rocket Lab claimed it had become the first private company in the Southern Hemisphere to reach space with the Ä€tea-1 sounding rocket. The payload was not recovered. This was not deemed necessary. As an instrumentation dart, the payload was not powered; its trajectory depended only on the boost phase of flight. The boost stage was recovered, and did have flight telemetry, on which the claim of reaching space was based.
In December 2010, Rocket Lab was awarded a U.S. government contract from the Operationally Responsive Space Office (ORS) to study a low cost space launcher to place CubeSats into orbit. This agreement with NASA enables the company to use NASA resources such as personnel, facilities, and equipment for commercial launch efforts.”
“This is an incredible aerial view of NASA’s Recovery Team and the US Navy practicing recovering a test version of the Orion crew capsule after it splashes down. Underway Recovery Test-7 is one in a series of tests to verify and validate procedures and hardware that will be used to recover the Orion spacecraft after it splashes down in the Pacific Ocean following deep space exploration missions.”
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