Elon Musk's SpaceX created a new world record by launching 143 satellites on a single rocket last night. SpaceX has beaten the Indian space agency ISRO's record of deploying 104 satellites in a single launch in February 2017. The launch vehicle for the SpaceX record-breaking flight was the Falcon 9 rocket.
The 143 satellites launched last night include commercial and government CubeSats, microsats and 10 Starlink satellites. Onboard was also a spacecraft belonging to NASA. With these satellites, SpaceX aims to provide near-global broadband internet coverage all over the world by 2021. According to sources, SpaceX offered a very low price of 15,000 dollars per kilogram for each satellite to be delivered to a polar sun-synchronous orbit.
Jan 25, 2021
World Record Set
A new world record has been set for the number of satellites sent to space on a single rocket.
The 143 payloads, of all shapes and sizes, rode to orbit on a SpaceX Falcon rocket that launched out of Florida.
The number beats the previous record of 104 satellites carried aloft by an Indian vehicle in 2017.
It's further evidence of the major structural changes taking place in space activity that are allowing many more actors to get involved.
This shift is the result of a revolution in robust, miniaturized, low-cost components — many taken direct from consumer electronics such as smartphones — that mean pretty much anyone can now build a capable satellite in a very small package.
And with SpaceX offering to transport those packages to orbit for just $1m, the commercial opportunities will continue to open up.
Jan 23, 2021
NASA Investigating Distant Galaxy Mysteriously Shooting Flares Out Every 114 Days
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is investigating a distant galaxy that erupts once roughly every 114 days and has been spotted 570 million light-years away.
According to NASA, scientists have studied 20 repeated outbursts, classified as ASASSN-14ko, as observed by its Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory and Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) by measuring different wavelengths of light.
These are the most predictable and frequent recurring multi wavelength flares which have been seen from a galaxy's core, and they give a unique opportunity to study this extragalactic Old Faithful in detail.
Jan 22, 2021
EU orders next-generation Galileo satellites
The European Commission has handed down industrial contracts worth a total of €1.47bn (£1.31bn; $1.97bn) to build the next generation of Galileo satellites.
The work is going to the continent's two dominant space manufacturers — Airbus and Thales Alenia Space.
They will make six spacecraft each for the global navigation satellite system, with the first of them likely to go into orbit in 2024.
Galileo is the EU's version of the US Global Positioning System (GPS).
Now enabled in billions of smartphones worldwide, both services allow users to identify their location on the planet down to an error of a metre or so.
The precise timing transmissions from orbit are also used in numerous infrastructure applications, including the synchronisation of telecommunications and energy networks.
Jan 21, 2021
NASA Mission Discovers 10 Billion-year-old Exoplanet 50% Larger than Our Own
NASA's TESS mission (Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite) has discovered a hot and rocky planet that is about 50 per cent larger than Earth and has three times the mass but surprisingly, the same density as Earth. Referred to as an exoplanet owing to its location outside our solar system, it has been named TOI-561b.
The discovery of this exoplanet was revealed in a study accepted for publication in The Astronomical Journal. This study was made public during the 237th meeting of the American Astronomical Society, which was held virtually owing to the Covid-19 pandemic.
Interestingly, the exoplanet TOI-561b which has more mass but the same density as Earth takes only less than half of 24 hours to complete one orbit around its host star. Owing to its features, the exoplanet is also being referred to as a 'Super-Earth'.
Astronomers Discover Earliest Supermassive Black Hole and Quasar in the Universe
The most distant quasar known has been discovered. The quasar, observed just 670 million years after the Big Bang, is 1000 times more luminous than the Milky Way.
It is powered by the earliest known supermassive black hole, which weighs in at more than 1.6 billion times the mass of the Sun. Seen more than 13 billion years ago, this fully formed distant quasar is also the earliest yet discovered, providing astronomers with insight into the formation of massive galaxies in the early Universe.
The result was released at the January 2021 meeting of the American Astronomical Society.
Quasars, which are powered by the feeding frenzies of colossal supermassive black holes, are the most energetic objects in the Universe.
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