OrbitalHub

NASA dixit:

“NASA’s CubeSat Launch Initiative provides opportunities for small satellite payloads built by universities, high schools and non-profit organizations to fly on upcoming launches. Through innovative technology partnerships NASA provides these CubeSat developers a low-cost pathway to conduct scientific investigations and technology demonstrations in space, thus enabling students, teachers and faculty to obtain hands-on flight hardware development experience.

Each proposed investigation must demonstrate a benefit to NASA by addressing aspects of science, exploration, technology development, education or operations relevant to NASA’s strategic goals. This initiative provides NASA a mechanism for low-cost technology development and scientific research to help bridge strategic knowledge gaps and accelerate flight-qualified technology.”

Video credit: NASA Kennedy

ULA dixit:

“Astrobotic’s Peregrine Lunar Lander will launch onboard a ULA launch vehicle in 2019, during the 50th anniversary of Apollo 11. This effort is a big step in realizing Astrobotic’s goal of creating a Rust Belt based international gateway to the Moon. The Peregrine Lunar Lander will fly 35 kilograms of customer payloads on its first mission, with the option to upgrade to 265 kilograms on future missions.”

Video credit: ULA

NASA dixit:

“Saturn’s giant, hazy moon Titan has been essential to NASA’s Cassini mission during its 13 thrilling years of exploration there. Cassini and the European Huygens probe have revealed a fascinating world of lakes and seas, great swaths of dunes, and a complex atmosphere with weather – with intriguing similarities to Earth. Titan has also been an engine for the mission, providing gravity assists that propelled the spacecraft on its adventures around the ringed planet.”

Video credit: NASA

Wikipedia dixit:

“TDRS-M, to be renamed TDRS-13 upon entry into service, is an American communications satellite operated by NASA as part of the Tracking and Data Relay Satellite System. The thirteenth Tracking and Data Relay Satellite, it is the third and final third-generation spacecraft to be launched, following the 2014 launch of TDRS-L.

TDRS-M was constructed by Boeing, based on the BSS-601HP satellite bus. Fully fueled, it has a mass of 3,454 kg (7,615 lb), with a design life of 15 years. It carries two steerable antennas capable of providing S, Ku and Ka band communications for other spacecraft, with an additional array of S-band transponders for lower-rate communications with five further satellites. The satellite is powered by two solar arrays, which produce 2.8 to 3.2 kilowatts of power, while an R-4D-11-300 engine is present to provide propulsion.”

Video credit: ULA

NASA dixit:

“From a million miles out in space, NASA’s Earth Polychromatic Imaging Camera (EPIC) captured 12 natural color images of the moon’s shadow crossing over North America on August 21, 2017. EPIC is aboard NOAA’s Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR), where it photographs the full sunlit side of Earth every day, giving it a unique view of total solar eclipses.”

Video credit: NASA

NASA dixit:

“While many in the U.S. experienced a total solar eclipse on August 21, 2017, SDO’s perspective, observing the Sun from Earth orbit, afforded it a view of a partial eclipse. This movie, created from images taken by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory, shows the Sun first in visible light, and then in 171-angstrom extreme ultraviolet light. The apparent slight movement of the Sun is because SDO has a hard time keeping the Sun centered in its images during eclipses, with so much light being blocked by the Moon. The fine guidance systems on SDO’s instruments need to see the whole Sun in order keep the images centered from one exposure to the next. Once the transit was over, the fine guidance systems started back up, once again providing steady images of the Sun.”

Video credit: NASA