Eutelsat | SpaceX | Rocket Lab | Beidou | HAPS Alliance | Virgin Galactic | Blue Origin | Space Adventures | Intelsat | Arianespace | GAES | ADS | DoubleTree
issue 5
Hi friends;
Today I want to share with you a little discovery. Arthur Charles Clarke, born in 1917 in the United Kingdom and died on 19 March 2008 (at the age of 90) in Sri Lanka, was a British science fiction writer, science writer, futurologist, TV presenter, underwater explorer and inventor. In 1945, just after the end of the WWII and 12 years before the first satellite in history was put into orbit, Sputnik 1, Clarke published an article in the Wireless Wold Magazine, a british electronics journal, in which he proposed a completely surrealistic project:
Many may consider the solution proposed in this discussion too farfetched to be taken very seriously. Such an attitude is unreasonable
Actually, he defended, with lots of very simple calculations and arguments, the insane idea that it would be possible to put rocket stations very high in space, and if positioned at a precise height, can offer radio coverage all over the world.
A body in such an orbit […] would revolve with the earth […] and unlike all other heavenly bodies would neither rise nor set.
In today's English, Clarke is imagining here, probably for the first time in documented history, that one can build an artificial satellite, position it in geosynchronous orbit and thus cover a large regions of the globe.
What makes reading this article funny, completely surreal and at the same time very interesting, is to go through the not-so-insane solutions (or are they?) proposed by one of the most creative minds in the history of mankind trying to solve surrounding technical problems. This goes from the placing in orbit to the choice of frequencies, including a mirror system for power supply and the establishment of an optical inter-satellite link. Today, as a tribute to him, GEO is sometimes called Clarke's orbit or Clarke's belt.
Without spoiling you too much, I let you enjoy “EXTRA-TERRESTRIAL RELAYS: Can Rocket Stations Give World-wide Radio Coverage?”
Have a great week!
PS: Clarke is the scenarist of the film “2001: A Space Odyssey”, a film that I didn't get hooked on at all, but that may deserve to be rediscovered in the light of this article.
PPS: Archives of all Wireless Wold Magazine can be found here, a real little treasure of the internet where you can stumble upon various little nuggets!
🛰 Here is what you missed
👉 Eutelsat Communications states that the European EGNOS navigation payload on the Eutelsat 5WB satellite is now operational.
👉SpaceX has struck again. The company launched the fifth batch of 60 satellites in orbit. Unfortunately this time, the first stage of the Falcon 9 reusable booster was not recovered. It diserves to rest in peace now after four loyal launches.
👉In preparation for the Artemis mission, Rocket Lab won a $10 million NASA contract to develop a cubsat that will serve as a lunar gateway. CAPSTONE, the 25-kilogram satellite will be used to demonstrate the stability of the lunar orbit chosen to place the actual lunar gateway.
👉Four new satellites of the Beidou positioning system have successfully passed orbit tests and are now operational.
👉Airbus and Intelsat join tech companies to form HAPS Alliance, a group of telecommunications, technology, aviation, and aerospace companies which promotes the use of high altitude vehicles in order to eliminate the digital divide.
👉Virgin Galactic, Sir Richard Branson's space company, is slowly but surely moving forward with its space tourism project of suborbital flights. Their spaceship, VSS Unity, and its carrier aircraft, VMS Eve, have completed a 3-hour flight from Mojave, California to New Mexico.
👉After a construction period of only one year, Blue Origin officially opens its new engine production plant for its vehicles and the new ULA launcher Vulcan. It is an area of approximately 33,000m2 where the BE-4 and BE-3 cryogenic engines will be produced at a rate of 42 per year.
👉The space tourism company Space Adventures signs a partnership with SpaceX to send 4 private clients on the first flight of the fully autonomous Crew Dragon launched by the Falcon 9 rocket. The same spacecraft and launch vehicle that SpaceX is planning to use to transport NASA astronauts to the ISS.
👉Intelsat asks the FCC for $1 billion in addition to the $9.7 billion to transfer band C to the terrestrial 5G network operators. Remember that Intelsat, SES and Inmarsat, created together the C-Band Alliance consortium in 2018 to offer to sell C-band frequencies to telecom operators wishing to use them for 5G in the USA. SES is eligible to receive $4 billion.
👉Arianespace completed its 3rd launch of the year, putting in GEO two satellites. The Korean 3,400-kilogram satellite, GEO-KOMPSAT-2B, carries an ocean imaging payload from Airbus Defence and Space and an environmental spectrometer from Ball Aerospace. Its goal is to monitor air pollution and marine conditions around the Peninsula. The second satellite, is a 5,900-kilogram satellite named JCSAT-17, built by Lockheed Martin carries C- and Ku-band transponders, and an 18-meter S-band reflector from L3Harris Technologies. It will provide connectivity for the Japanese telecommunications company NTT DOCOMO.
👉General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, Inc. has successfully completed their optical link test between their Airborne Laser Communication System and a GEO satellite. This was the first demonstration of an air-to-space lasercom compatible with a Medium-altitude, Long-endurance Remotely Piloted Aircraft. Two wavelengths are available (1064nm and 1550nm).
👉Airbus Defence and Space announced plans to cut about 7% of its workforce, i.e. a little under 2,400 positions, due to weak sales and declining performance in space. "Airbus Defence and Space's order intake and financial performance have been affected and have not lived up to our ambitions," said Guillaume Faury, the group's director.
👉DoubleTree, a Hilton’s subsidiary, announced the first-ever baked cookie in space. This great feat was not easy to achieve: 5 trials were needed to find the right combination of oven heat, baking and cooling time.
And this make the perfect transition to the next section!
🍪 Cookie of the week
Saturn V is the giant launcher developed in the 1960s by NASA for the Apollo manned space program. Used between 1967 and 1973, it placed in Earth orbit, without any failure, the spaceships that deposited American astronauts on the moon. No other operational space launcher today has surpassed Saturn V in height, weight or payload capacity. You can find here a scanned a high resolution (600dpi) poster of the detailed configuration of this giant rocket and the corresponding Apollo flight.
Thanks a lot to the author of that website…Do you know any good online service to print that poster?
Here you are debriefed 👌. Rendezvous next week! Until then, if you have a comment/question/suggestion, do not hesitate to reply to this email or leave a comment in the newsletter website.
If this mail was forwarded to you and you enjoyed it, why not subscribe?