Artistic rendition of China’s Xingyun-2 01 satellite.
Image is courtesy of Global Times.

China sent two satellites into orbit on May 12 to test space-based Internet of Things (IoT) communications technology.

The satellites will conduct tests on technologies including space-based IoT communications, inter-satellite laser communications and a low-cost commercial satellite platform.

The satellites, Xingyun-2 01 and 02, were launched by a Kuaizhou-1A (KZ-1A) carrier rocket at 9:16 a.m. (Beijing Time) from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwest China. They have successfully entered their planned orbit.

Developed by the Xingyun Satellite Co., the satellites will conduct tests on technologies including space-based IoT communications, inter-satellite laser communications and a low-cost commercial satellite platform. They will also carry out initial pilot IoT applications, according to the company.

KZ-1A is a low-cost solid-fuel carrier rocket featuring high orbit precision and a short preparation period. The rocket, developed by a company affiliated with Sanjiang Group under the China Aerospace Science and Industry Corporation (CASIC), is mainly used to launch low-orbit smallsats.

This launch was the ninth mission of the Chinese KZ-1A carrier rocket.

China’s Xingyun-2 01 & 02 satellites are launched by a Kuaizhou-1A (KZ-1A) carrier rocket at 9:16 am from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in China, on May 12, 2020. The photo of the launch is courtesy of Wang Jiangbo, Chinanews.com.

Artist impression of DOSAAF-85/RS-44 flying free but seems to be still attached to Breeze K/M rocket body

The amateur radio linear transponder (SSB/CW) payload on the Russian satellite DOSAAF-85 (RS-44) has been activated.

Dmitry Pashkov R4UAB reports:

DOSAAF-85 is a small scientific satellite created by specialists of the company Information Satellite Systems (ISS) Reshetnev and students of the Siberian State Aerospace University (SibSAU) Krasnoyarsk.

DOSAAF-85 / RS-44 under construction

The satellite is named after the 85th anniversary of the Voluntary Society for the Assistance to the Army, Aviation and Navy, the organization responsible for the military training of Soviet youth.

The DOSAAF-85 satellite is designed to provide amateur radio communications, as well as to develop promising technologies. This is the third satellite that was created by specialists of ISS-Reshetnev and is based on the Yubileyniy platform, which features a hexagonal prism structure with body mounted solar cells.

DOSAAF-95 / RS-44 Antennas, 435 MHz top 145 MHz bottom

The satellite was launched into orbit on December 26, 2019 from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome and is in an elliptical orbit with a perigee of 1175 km, an apogee of 1511 km and an inclination of 82.5 degrees.

Transmitter power: 5 watts
Beacon: 435.605 MHz – transmits CW call sign RS44

Inverting transponder:
Earth-to-Space: 145.965 MHz +/- 30 kHz
Space-to-Earth: 435.640 MHz +/- 30 kHz

Source Dmitry Pashkov R4UAB whose page also contains the satellite’s TLE, see
https://tinyurl.com/RussiaR4UAB

Peter 2M0SQL has added RS-44 to the AMSAT Live OSCAR Satellite Status Page at
https://www.amsat.org/status/

Linear Satellite Frequency Summary https://www.amsat.org/linear-satellite-frequency-summary/

RS-44 Pass Prediction http://amsat.org.ar/pass?satx=rs-44

By Dimitry Pashkov,  AmSatUK

Rocket Lab’s 12th Electron launch dress rehearsal.
Photo is courtesy of the company.

Rocket Lab has resumed launch operations for the firm’s next Electron launch, following the easing of Covid-19 restrictions at Launch Complex 1. The mission will launch payloads for the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), and the University of New South Wales (UNSW) Canberra Space.

Rocket Lab’s 12th Electron launch was originally scheduled for March 27th, however, the launch was postponed in response to ‘Stay At Home’ orders that required most businesses to close in response to COVID-19. With restrictions now easing and some businesses able to re-open with safety measures in place, launch operations have resumed safely and crews at Launch Complex 1 completed a successful wet dress rehearsal on May 7, NZT.

The launch is scheduled to take place from Rocket Lab Launch Complex 1 on New Zealand’s Mahia Peninsula. A new 14-day launch window for the mission will be confirmed soon.

The Electron launch vehicle and the Launch Complex 1 ground systems have remained in a state of readiness throughout the Covid-19 lockdown in preparation for a quick return to launch operations. Enhanced health and safety processes will be implemented for this launch in line with government health advice to protect Rocket Lab personnel. These measures include physical distancing, split shifts, maintaining contact tracing registers, and enhanced cleaning procedures.

This week, Rocket Lab was also able to return to full production for Electron launch vehicles and Photon satellites. Accelerated manufacturing processes are in place to deliver a launch vehicle off the production line every 18 days to meet a busy launch manifest for the remainder of the year and into 2021. Through the brief pause in launch operations, Rocket Lab has maintained its entire workforce and continued placing orders with its suppliers, many of whom operate small businesses across the U.S. and New Zealand. 

Peter Beck

Peter Beck, Rocket Lab founder and CEO, stated the early and decisive lockdown action has enabled the company to resume launch operations safely, providing commercial and government small satellite operators with access to space when they need it most. He said the company’s focus in recent years has been to structure Rocket Lab’s teams and operations in a way that enables rapid production and launch capability in order to respond quickly to our customers’ needs and spool up launch operations within days. The company built the team and facilities with a focus on flexibility and responsiveness, and while Rocket Lab didn’t think a global pandemic would be the reason for demonstrating rapid launch capability, the firm is able to put it into practice now. Beck stated that the firm counts themselves incredibly fortunate to be working with such dedicated teams at NASA, the NRO and UNSW Canberra Space who have been steadfast in their support and look forward to delivering their payloads to orbit and keeping access to space open for them through these times.

Rocket Lab’s Launch Complex 1 in New Zealand. Photo is courtesy of the company.

Work on the FalconSAT-8.
Photo is courtesy of the U.S. Air Force Academy.

A satellite built by U.S. Air Force Academy cadets will launch into space on May 16 aboard the X-37B, Orbital Test Vehicle sponsored by the Department of the Air Force Rapid Capabilities Office and built by Boeing — this is the first time a satellite built and designed by cadets will catch a ride into space aboard the X-37B.

The U.S.A.F.’s X-37B Spaceplane.

FalconSAT-8 will carry five experimental payloads, and members of the Cadet Space Operations Squadron will operate FalconSAT-8.

There’s little doubt that the work by cadets will have an effect on the new Space Force, which opened for business in December and is designed to maintain and enhance the competitive edge of the Defense Department in space. Eighty-six cadets in this year’s graduating class commission into the Space Force.

Good noted that few undergraduate programs allow their students to work on flight hardware and design and build their own flight components. Cadets are given hands-on work that allows them to get a feel for real engineering on real projects.

Lt. Col. Dan Showalter, assistant astronautics professor at the Academy, said  that as novel as this mode of transportation might be, the purpose for cadets in the school’s space program is the same as it was when the school’s space program began in the 80s. FalconSAT-8 is an educational platform for cadets. He added that several cadets, including Cadets 1st Class Reagan Good and Claudio Yambao, traveled to Cape Canaveral, Florida to deliver, test, and integrate FalconSAT-8 with the X-37B. This is  like an engineering internship – experimental technologies for the Air Force are flown to evaluate their performance on-orbit,

The Academy’s space program consists of aerospace experts, mechanics and engineers. The FalconSAT program serves as an academic platform for an array of aerospace industry and DOD experiments. Cadets design spacecraft and integrate payloads in the Space Systems Research Center with faculty support.

FalconSAT-8 is the Academy’s capstone undergraduate systems engineering course managed by the school’s Astronautics department.

Cadet Yambao said the space program’s motto, “Learning Space by Doing Space,” means cadets get to experience the postgraduate engineering world on campus and entails building and testing components of a spacecraft and understanding how it plays a role in the entire space engineering community.

Cadets and instructors in the U.S. Air Force Academy’s FalconSAT program pose for a group photograph at the Academy. They were directly involved in building a salivate scheduled to launch into space May 16 aboard the X-37B Orbital Test Vehicle, sponsored by the Department of the Air Force Rapid Capabilities Office and built by Boeing. This is the first time a satellite built and designed by cadets will catch a ride into space aboard the X-37B. Photo is courtesy of the U.S. Air Force Academy.

AMERGINT Technology Holdings (AMERGINT) has acquired Tethers Unlimited, Inc. (TUI) — this transaction will bring together AMERGINT Technologies, Inc. and TUI to provide integrated end-to-end solutions for satellite communications and in-space services to the space market. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

Founded in 1994 by technologist Dr. Hoyt and the renowned science fiction author Dr. Robert L. Forward, for more than 25 years TUI has pioneered an array of innovative space technologies, including software defined radios for satellite communications and mesh networks, robotic systems for in-space servicing, manufacturing, and assembly, and advanced propulsion solutions for orbital maneuvering and orbital debris mitigation.

TUI supplies the space industry with high-performance satellite components that include the SWIFT® software defined radio (SDR), the Terminator Tape™ Deorbit Module, the HYDROS™ water-electrolysis thruster and the COBRA™ gimbal as well as research and development into robotics and in-space manufacturing systems.

Moving forward, AMERGINT and TUI will increasingly offer integrated satellite communications offerings combining software-defined satellite radios with software-defined ground stations. The two companies will also build upon the full suite of technologies and products at both companies around space servicing and test systems to offer a wide range of solutions for government and commercial customers.

Dr. Rob Hoyt, TUI’s CEO, stated that joining forces with AMERGINT makes tremendous sense for Tethers Unlimited. Combining AMERGINT’s ground-based processors and modems with TUI’s software-defined satellite radios and mesh network solution enables us to provide flexible, affordable, secure and resilient end-to-end communications services that scale to meet the needs of the hybrid space architectures under development by the Space Force, the Space Development Agency, DARPA, USAF and the Intelligence Community.

Larry Hill, CEO of AMERGINT Technology Holdings, said the company is thrilled to welcome Rob and the team at TUI into the family and to bring together two engineering-driven, technology organizations that are focused on solving our customers’ toughest challenges across the space ecosystem. At a time when AMERGINT customers are increasingly focused on integrated communications and data networks, the firm is excited to close the link between software-defined solutions from the ground architecture to the spacecraft.

Rob Andzik, president of AMERGINT, noted, that bringing the expertise of TUI and AMERGINT together enables the firm to provide the space and defense sectors with the next generation of solutions to manage the capture, processing, transport and exploitation of vital mission data for communication and data links.

PUNCH smallsats on-orbit. Image is courtesy of SwRI.

On April 8, 2020, the Polarimeter to UNify the Corona and Heliosphere (PUNCH) mission achieved an important milestone, passing NASA’s critical System Requirements Review/Mission Definition Review (SRR/MDR).

Southwest Research Institute is leading PUNCH, a NASA Small Explorer (SMEX) mission that will integrate understanding of the Sun’s corona, the outer atmosphere visible during eclipses, with the tenuous “solar wind” filling the solar system.

The solar wind, a supersonic stream of charged particles emitted by the Sun, fills the heliosphere, the bubble-like region of space encompassing our solar system. Its boundary, where the interstellar medium and solar wind pressures balance, ends the sphere of the Sun’s influence.

PUNCH is a constellation of four separate smallsats scheduled to launch in 2023 into a polar orbit formation. One satellite carries a coronagraph, the Narrow Field Imager, that images the Sun’s corona continuously. The other three each carry SwRI-developed wide-angle cameras, Wide Field Imagers (WFI), optimized to image the solar wind. These four instruments work together to form a single field of view spanning 90 degrees of the sky, centered on the Sun.

SRR/MDR is a major milestone of mission development. It checks the flow of engineering and mission definition as activities segue into the design phase.

The SMEX program provides frequent flight opportunities for world-class scientific investigations from space using innovative, efficient approaches within the heliophysics and astrophysics science areas. In addition to leading the PUNCH science mission, SwRI will operate the mission and build the four spacecraft and three WFIs. The PUNCH team includes the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory, which is building the Narrow Field Imager, and the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in Oxfordshire, England.

PUNCH Principal Investigator Dr. Craig DeForest of SwRI’s Space Science and Engineering Division said that for more than 50 years, SwRI has studied the solar corona by remote imaging and the solar wind by direct sampling. PUNCH will bridge that gap by imaging the solar wind itself as it leaves the outermost reaches of the Sun’s corona. Preparing for the SRR/MDR review was an unexpected challenge. Team members have been working at home for over three weeks, yet they met the challenge and presented their design in written and oral presentations culminating in the positive decision from the company’s review board.

The wide field imager. Photo is courtesy of SwRI.

Chris Forrester

Jeff Bezos’s Amazon is studying UK-headquartered satellite business OneWeb which is in Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in the US, as is being reported by journalists Chris Forrester at the Advanced Television infosite.

The Sunday Telegraph reported that Bezos, who has his own Project Kuiper mega-constellation of satellites in the planning and development stage, had his lawyers inspecting OneWeb’s assets. Other due-diligence examinations of OneWeb’s financials include Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Paris-based satellite operator Eutelsat.

The UK government has also examined OneWeb’s books and assets and this is understood to be connected to a request from OneWeb for a cash injection to help keep it afloat.

The deadline for interested parties to express an interest in making a formal bid will expire at 5:00 p.m., New York-time, on May 4th. The actual auction process will take place on July 2nd if more than one interested party expresses interest.

The formal press advertising confirming the bankruptcy of OneWeb appeared in various newspapers on May 1st.

The logic for Bezos in entering a bid for all or part of the OneWeb business is that it would give Amazon a ‘fast track’ to launching Project Kuiper, although some aspects of the Kuiper plan would need adjustment.

However, Bezos has his own rockets in development which would easily launch the remaining satellites in the OneWeb plan. Moreover, unlike SpaceX and Eutelsat, Amazon has millions of registered users around the globe who might become subscribers of an Amazon-backed, broadband-by-satellite system.

The logic for Eutelsat is that they are the only ‘Big Four’ satellite operator without an LEO satellite plan.

Intelsat had an agreement with OneWeb, which might be re-instated with a successful bidder for OneWeb’s assets. SES has its existing O3b MEO system and expansion with mPower satellites. Telesat has a scheme for almost 300 LEO satellites.

Up for grabs are OneWeb’s spectrum and frequency allocations, as well as 74 satellites already on-orbit.