Hughes Network Systems, LLC (HUGHES), the global leader in broadband satellite networks and services, today announced it has been awarded a Wideband Communications Architecture Study (WCAS) contract to support the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) plan for resilient, cost-effective satellite communications (SATCOM) capabilities. Under the contract, Hughes will investigate a wide-ranging commercial perspective on how different satellite transports can interoperate for wideband government applicati...

It was midafternoon, but it was dark in an area in Boulder, Colorado on Aug. 3, 1998. A thick cloud appeared overhead and dimmed the land below for  more than 30 minutes. Well-calibrated radiometers showed that there were very low levels of light reaching the ground, sufficiently low that researchers decided to simulate this interesting event with computer models. Now in 2017, inspired by the event in Boulder, NASA scientists will explore the moon’s eclipse of the sun to learn more ...

International Lunar Observatory Association (ILOA) and Moon Express have announced a collaboration for the delivery of the first International Lunar Observatory to the South Pole of the Moon in 2019 (ILO-1). Moon Express has been contracted by ILOA to develop advanced landing technologies supporting the mission. The ILO-1 astrophysical observatory and research station will be the world's first instrument to image the Milky Way Galaxy and to conduct international astrophysical observations and...

LONDON - July 20, 2017 - Northrop Grumman Corporation (NYSE: NOC) highlighted NASA's James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) programme to audiences around the U.K. in a series of special screenings of the documentary film Into the Unknown as part of the company's science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) education outreach efforts. This is the first time Into the Unknown has been screened in the U.K. The film, developed by the Northrop Grumman Foundation as a resource for teachers, s...

Refurbishing a shuttle-era cargo container used to transfer cargo to the International Space Station, Lockheed Martin (NYSE: LMT) is prototyping a deep space habitat for NASA at Kennedy Space Center. This prototype will integrate evolving technologies to keep astronauts safe while onboard and operate the spacecraft autonomously when unoccupied. Under a public-private partnership, NASA recently awarded Lockheed Martin a Phase II contract for the Next Space Technologies for Exploration Partners...

KBR, Inc. (NYSE: KBR) announced today its global Government Services business, KBRwyle, is one of the winning bidders on the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) Professional and Technical (ProTech) Satellite Domain contract in support of NOAA's satellite activities worldwide. The contract has a two-year base period and three one-year options, and belongs to the ProTech program's suite of contracts that shares a maximum ceiling value of $3 billion. Under the ProTech contr...

One night three months ago, Rosa Castro finished her dinner, opened her laptop, and uncovered a novel object that was neither planet nor star. Therapist by day and amateur astronomer by night, Castro joined the NASA-funded Backyard Worlds: Planet 9 citizen science project when it began in February — not knowing she would become one of four volunteers to help identify the project's first brown dwarf, formally known as WISEA J110125.95+540052.8. After devoting hours to skimming onli...

Working well after midnight on this day in 1977, a Rockwell Collins engineer named David Van Dusseldorp sat on the rooftop of a company building in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, adjusting an antenna every five minutes to receive a signal from the world's first Global Positioning System (GPS) satellite known as NTS-2. Within a small window of time, the satellite was turned on and the message was successfully received and decoded by the team working the GPS receiver below. Since then the technology has g...

The MASCARA (Multi-site All-Sky CAmeRA) station at ESO's La Silla Observatory in Chile has achieved first light. This new facility will seek out transiting exoplanets as they pass in front of their bright parent stars and create a catalogue of targets for future exoplanet characterisation observations. In June 2016, ESO reached an agreement with Leiden University to site a station of MASCARA at ESO's La Silla Observatory in Chile, taking advantage of the excellent observing conditions of the ...

The lightweight Vega launcher for Arianespace’s upcoming mission is undergoing final checkout in French Guiana, readying it to receive a dual payload of Earth observation satellites – consisting of OPTSAT-3000 (as the upper passenger) and Venµs (in the lower passenger position). Vega was integrated at the Spaceport’s SLV launch site, bringing together the solid propellant P80 first stage, Zefiro 23 second stage and Zefiro 9 third stage; followed by the liquid biprope...

In the search for planets similar to our own, an important point of comparison is the planet's density. A low density tells scientists a planet is more likely to be gaseous like Jupiter, and a high density is associated with rocky planets like Earth. But a new study suggests some are less dense than previously thought because of a second, hidden star in their systems. As telescopes stare at particular patches of sky, they can't always differentiate between one star and two. A system...

Sierra Nevada Corporation (SNC) announced that it selected United Launch Alliance's (ULA's) commercially developed Atlas V rocket to launch the first two missions of its Dream Chaser cargo system in support of NASA's Cargo Resupply Services 2 (CRS2) contract. "ULA is pleased to partner with Sierra Nevada Corporation to launch its Dream Chaser cargo system to the International Space Station in less than three years," said Gary Wentz, ULA vice president of Human and Commercial Systems. "We reco...

QuintessenceLabs was awarded a $3.26 million AUD ($2.4 million USD) investment from the Australian Department of Defence to continue the expansion of its quantum key distribution (QKD) capabilities and extend it to free space communications. This was the largest of the eight investments recently made by the Defence Innovation Hub, a part of the Australian Department of Defence. QuintessenceLabs, which has already developed a QKD solution using commercially available off-the-shelf products, ...

In Cassini's Grand Finale orbits - the final chapter of its nearly 20-year mission - the spacecraft travels in an elliptical path that sends it diving at tens of thousands of kilometers per hour through the 2400-km space between the rings and the planet where no spacecraft has ventured before. May, June and July have been busy months for Cassini, as a series of complex ground-station tracking passes involving ESA's Deep Space Antennas (DSA) and NASA's Deep Space Network (DSN) captured a serie...

Images of Jupiter’s Great Red Spot reveal a tangle of dark, veinous clouds weaving their way through a massive crimson oval. The JunoCam imager aboard NASA's Juno mission snapped pics of the most iconic feature of the solar system’s largest planetary inhabitant during its Monday (July 10) flyby. The images of the Great Red Spot were downlinked from the spacecraft’s memory on Tuesday and placed on the mission’s JunoCam website Wednesday morning. “For hundred...

The Space Flight Laboratory (SFL) announced today the successful launch of two Norwegian microsatellites developed and built by SFL for the Norwegian Space Centre with support from the Norwegian Coastal Authority, Space Norway, and the European Space Agency. The Soyuz-2.1a rocket carrying the satellites into orbit launched from Baikonur at 06:36:49 UTC Friday 14 July 2017. Shortly after launch both satellites were contacted from ground stations in Svalbard and Vardo, Norway. Both satellites a...

The final days of the LISA Pathfinder mission are some of the busiest, as controllers make final tests and get ready to switch off the gravitational pioneer next Tuesday. Following 16 months of scientific effort, LISA Pathfinder completed its main mission on 30 June, having demonstrated the technology needed to operate ESA's future LISA space observatory to study gravitational waves - ripples in spacetime predicted by Albert Einstein in his General Theory of Relativity. The LISA mission wi...

Kratos Defense & Security Solutions, Inc. (Nasdaq:KTOS), a leading National Security Solutions provider, announced today that The Regulatory Authority (TRA) of the Sultanate of Oman has formally accepted the Advanced Space Radio Monitoring System (ASRMS) from Kratos. The multi-million dollar project started in late 2014 and includes ten years of long-term support services for the ASRMS system. The most advanced system of its kind, ASRMS is a unique satellite monitoring and geolocation solutio...

Comtech Telecommunications Corp. (Nasdaq:CMTL) announced today that during its fourth quarter of fiscal 2017, its Command & Control Technologies group, which is part of Comtech's Government Solutions segment, has been awarded orders totaling approximately $1.9 million by an international Space and Communications customer. "Comtech supports a number of key projects within the global space industry," said Fred Kornberg, President and Chief Executive Officer of Comtech Telecommunications Corp. "...

NASA's Juno mission completed a close flyby of Jupiter and its Great Red Spot on July 10, during its sixth science orbit. All of Juno's science instruments and the spacecraft's JunoCam were operating during the flyby, collecting data that are now being returned to Earth. Juno's next close flyby of Jupiter will occur on Sept. 1. Raw images from the spacecraft’s latest flyby will be posted in coming days. "For generations people from all over the world and all...