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      Satellites keep photobombing space images. Astronomers need a fix

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Wednesday, 14 June, 2023 - 13:55 · 1 minute

    image of a galaxy showing a streak from a satellite

    Enlarge / A Hubble image of a pair of colliding galaxies, with a satellite trail running through it. (credit: Space Telescope Science Institute; NASA)

    Throngs of satellites are streaking across the Hubble Space Telescope’s field of view, leaving what look like scratch marks on space photos and hindering scientists’ work. Teeming swarms of these satellites , which reflect sunlight and mimic astronomical objects, threaten to gradually transform the night sky and affect how astronomy can be done.

    “We see these satellite trails in Hubble data, and really in all astronomical data, and they’re a bit of a nuisance,” said David Stark, an astronomer at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, speaking last week at the American Astronomical Society conference in Albuquerque, New Mexico. In fact, he said, his team used a new detection method to measure that the rate of satellite trails is doubling . But Stark was presenting his team’s idea for a Band-Aid fix: new software they described in a recent report that is five to 10 times more sensitive at finding trails than previous software, and then masking them out. “It’s particularly good at finding satellite trails that can be missed by eye,” he said.

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      Un matériau étonnant pourrait régler un gros problème des satellites

      news.movim.eu / JournalDuGeek · Friday, 2 June, 2023 - 06:00

    template-jdg-158x105.jpg Une vue d'artiste de LignoSat

    Le bois et ses dérivés pourraient un jour remplacer une partie des alliages high-tech utilisés couramment dans l'aérospatiale.

    Un matériau étonnant pourrait régler un gros problème des satellites

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      China building cyberweapons to hijack enemy satellites, says US leak

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Friday, 21 April, 2023 - 13:28

    Satellite in space

    Enlarge / The Dragon SpaceX satellite. China’s ambitious cyber attacks aim to mimic the signals that satellites receive from their operators, tricking them into being taken over or to malfunction. (credit: European Space Agency.)

    China is building sophisticated cyber weapons to “seize control” of enemy satellites, rendering them useless for data signals or surveillance during wartime, according to a leaked US intelligence report.

    The US assesses that China’s push to develop capabilities to “deny, exploit or hijack” enemy satellites is a core part of its goal to control information, which Beijing considers to be a key “war-fighting domain.”

    The CIA-marked document, which was issued this year and has been reviewed by the Financial Times, was one of dozens allegedly shared by a 21-year-old US Air Guardsman in the most significant American intelligence disclosures in more than a decade.

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      Une IA a pris le contrôle d’un satellite chinois pendant 24 heures

      news.movim.eu / JournalDuGeek · Wednesday, 19 April, 2023 - 14:00

    sat-158x105.jpg un satellite au dessus de la Terre

    Une expérience encore assez singulière pour le moment, mais qui pourrait devenir la norme d'ici quelques années.

    Une IA a pris le contrôle d’un satellite chinois pendant 24 heures

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      Après avoir frôlé la faillite, OneWeb voit enfin le bout du tunnel

      news.movim.eu / JournalDuGeek · Tuesday, 28 March, 2023 - 15:30

    ow-158x105.jpg un satelllite oneweb

    L'opérateur britannique a enfin terminé le déploiement de sa constellation de satellites web après une longue traversée du désert.

    Après avoir frôlé la faillite, OneWeb voit enfin le bout du tunnel

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      Hubble continue de se faire photobomber, et c’est de pire en pire

      news.movim.eu / JournalDuGeek · Wednesday, 8 March, 2023 - 07:30

    hubble-lignes-158x105.jpg

    Les chercheurs tirent la sonnette d'alarme, la pollution visuelle générée par certains satellites modernes créent des perturbations.

    Hubble continue de se faire photobomber, et c’est de pire en pire

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      Even Hubble’s seeing a growing number of satellite tracks

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Tuesday, 7 March, 2023 - 20:13 · 1 minute

    Image of the cylindrical Hubble space telescope in orbit above a cloudy Earth.

    Enlarge (credit: NASA )

    A combination of space junk and a growing constellation of functional satellites like SpaceX's Starlink have astronomers worried about the potential for orbital materials to interfere with observations. And justifiably so, given that researchers are currently arguing over whether one observation represents one of the farthest supernovae ever observed or a spent Russian booster .

    This clutter is obviously a big problem for ground-based observatories, which sit below everything in orbit. But several observatories, including the Hubble Space Telescope, sit in low-Earth orbit, which places them below many satellites. And a new survey of Hubble images shows that it's capturing an increasing number of satellite tracks in its images. So far, this hasn't seriously compromised its science, but it clearly shows that orbiting observatories aren't immune to these problems.

    Leaving tracks

    The work came from a citizen science project, the Hubble Asteroid Hunter , which organized volunteers to search for the tracks asteroids left in long-exposure Hubble observations. If an asteroid happens to pass through Hubble's field of view during this exposure, it can leave a short streak in the resulting image. But the participants started noting that some of the streaks they were seeing crossed Hubble's entire field of view during a single image (the project maintains a forum where the volunteers can discuss their work).

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      Rocket Lab set to try its first US-based launch again

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Tuesday, 24 January, 2023 - 15:59 · 1 minute

    A previous launch of the Electron from New Zealand.

    Enlarge / A previous launch of the Electron from New Zealand. (credit: Rocket Lab)

    On Tuesday, Rocket Lab will try again to send its first payloads to orbit from the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport (MARS) in Virginia. With clear skies and a launch window that opens after sunset, the launch has the potential to be visible on most of the Eastern Seaboard and as far west as Ohio.

    While Rocket Lab's Electron launch vehicle has a solid track record of launches from New Zealand, the use of Virginia would represent a big step forward for both the company and MARS itself. Having a US-based launch site allows the company to reach trajectories that aren't available from New Zealand and opens up opportunities for US government work, some of which requires launches from within the country.

    For MARS, which is based at NASA's Wallops Flight Facility, Rocket Lab would represent its second major commercial customer. NASA operates small sounding rockets from the site, and Orbital ATK has flown resupply missions to the International Space Station from there. But the Electron is a small launch vehicle that can allow a rapid cadence of launches and could boost the traffic from MARS considerably. Perhaps more significantly, Rocket Lab is using Wallops for the development of its larger reusable Neutron rocket, which would both launch and land at MARS.

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      Espace : un échange de « prisonniers de guerre » entre Roscosmos et Arianespace ?

      news.movim.eu / JournalDuGeek · Wednesday, 18 January, 2023 - 13:00

    cov-1-158x105.jpg une fusée soyouz et des satellites one web

    Une fusée Soyouz (à g.) et un ensemble de satellites OneWeb (à d.), ici dans un LVM 3 indien. © Arianespace / Roscosmos / OneWeb

    Espace : un échange de « prisonniers de guerre » entre Roscosmos et Arianespace ?