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Falling Starlink satellites highlight space traffic concerns

Starlink satellite deployment
A rocket’s-eye view shows a stack of SpaceX Starlink satellites just before orbital deployment. (SpaceX Photo)

SpaceX says that most of the satellites it launched last week for its Starlink broadband internet constellation are doomed to fall from orbit due to a solar storm.

Based on the company’s analysis, as many as 40 of the 49 satellites — which were built at SpaceX’s facility in Redmond, Wash. — will plunge through the atmosphere and burn up. Some have already made the plunge.

“Ah, how I love the smell of burning satellites in the morning,” Marco Langbroek, a satellite consultant at Leiden University in the Netherlands, joked in a tweet.

In an update, SpaceX stressed that the falling satellites “pose zero collision risk with other satellites and by design demise upon atmospheric re-entry — meaning no orbital debris is created and no satellite parts hit the ground.”

Nevertheless, the satellite failures draw attention to the challenges raised by the rise of satellite mega-constellations, even as the Federal Communications Commission considers SpaceX’s proposal to launch nearly 30,000 second-generation Starlink satellites into new orbital configurations.

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Air Force challenge gives a lift to ‘flying car’ technologies

VTOL concept illustration
Artist’s conception shows an aircraft that makes use of Jetoptera’s propulsion system. (Jetoptera Illustration)

The U.S. Air Force’s tech incubator has given the go-ahead for 11 design concepts aimed at pushing the frontier for aircraft that can take off and land vertically — and at least two of the concepts have roots in the Seattle area.

Among the teams selected to advance in AFWERX’s High-Speed VTOL Concept Challenge are Jetoptera, based in Edmonds, Wash.; and VerdeGo Aero, which is based in Florida but has Bainbridge Island’s Erik Lindbergh as co-founder and executive chairman. Lindbergh is the grandson of aviation pioneer Charles Lindbergh.

AFWERX’s challenge focuses on technologies that the military could use in VTOLs — vertical takeoff-and-landing aircraft that could include next-generation helicopters and other types of vehicles popularly known as “flying cars.” The challenge is being conducted for the Air Force as well as the U.S. Special Operations Command.

The winning teams were chosen from more than 200 entrants in the challenge. Over the next six months, the 11 teams will receive market research investments aimed at advancing their technologies.

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Brazilian airplane maker plugs into electric revolution

ATL-100H hybrid-electric aircraft
Artwork shows Desaer’s ATL-100H aircraft with a hybrid electric propulsion system. (MagniX Illustration)

Everett, Wash.-based MagniX is partnering with the Brazilian aircraft manufacturer Desaer to develop a hybrid-electric version of Desaer’s ATL-100 regional aircraft.

The ATL-100H will make use of two Magni350 electric propulsion units as well as two gas-fueled turboprop engines. MagniX says the configuration is designed to save 25% to 40% of fuel, depending on the range of operation.

“The implications of creating the hybrid electric ATL-100H are far-reaching, and will have a positive impact on environmental sustainability and the aircraft’s operational flexibility in the Brazil region,” Simon Roads, head of sales at MagniX, said today in a news release.

Desaer plans to start flying its gas-fueled ATL-100 prototype in 2023, with the first deliveries expected by 2026. The passenger version of the airplane is designed to seat 19. The hybrid-electric version of the plane is expected to come out after the gas-fueled version, presumably with the same specifications.

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Quantum computing venture leaps into the stock market

Dilution refrigerator system
A team member at D-Wave Systems works on the cooling system for the company’s quantum computer. (D-Wave Photo / Larry Goldstein)

Burnaby, B.C.-based D-Wave Systems, the quantum computing company that counts Jeff Bezos among its investors and NASA among its customers, has struck a deal to go public with a $1.2 billion valuation.

The deal involves a combination with DPMC Capital, a publicly traded special-purpose acquisition company, or SPAC. It’s expected to bring in $300 million in gross proceeds from DPMC’s trust account, plus $40 million in gross proceeds from investors participating in a PIPE arrangement. (PIPE stands for “private investment in public equity.”)

Quantum computing takes advantage of phenomena at the quantum level, processing “qubits” that can represent multiple values simultaneously — as opposed to the one-or-zero paradigm of classical computing. The approach is theoretically capable of solving some types of problems much faster than classical computers.

Founded in 1999, D-Wave has focused on a type of technology called quantum annealing, which uses quantum computing principles and hardware to tackle tasks relating to network optimization and probabilistic sampling.

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Astronomers set up center to save the sky from satellites

Starlink streaks
This time-lapse image of Venus and the Pleiades shows the tracks of SpaceX’s Starlink satellites. (Torsten Hansen / IAU OAE / CC Attribution)

The International Astronomical Union is heading up the creation of a new center to deal with the complications created by broadband satellite constellations like SpaceX’s Starlink and Amazon’s Project Kuiper.

The IAU Center for the Protection of the Dark and Quiet Sky From Satellite Constellation Interference will be co-hosted at the National Science Foundation’s NOIRLab in Arizona and the SKA Observatory’s offices at Jodrell Bank in Britain.

“The new center is an important step towards ensuring that technological advances do not inadvertently impede our study and enjoyment of the sky,” IAU President Debra Elmegreen said today in a news release.

Former IAU General Secretary Piero Benvenuti, the center’s director, said the memorandum of understanding creating the center was signed just a day earlier, and a website for the project hasn’t yet been established.

But the University of Washington’s Institute for Data Intensive Research in Astrophysics and Cosmology, or DIRAC, is already getting a head start on one of the center’s missions — cataloging astronomical images with satellite streaks so they can be made available for analysis.

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Blue Origin explores new frontiers in Phoenix and Denver

Orbital Reef space station
An artist’s concept shows the Orbital Reef space station. (Blue Origin Media)

Blue Origin says it’s hiring in Phoenix and Denver — two Western cities that represent relatively new frontiers for Jeff Bezos’ space venture.

The downtown Phoenix office is focusing on “avionics, systems engineering and integrated supply chain,” Blue Origin says on its career website, while the South Denver office will focus on “program management, systems engineering, avionics, software, integration and mission design” in support of Blue Origin’s launch vehicle and space systems programs.

The Denver area happens to be home to a growing number of space ventures, including past and present partners in some of Blue Origin’s high-profile projects.

Lockheed Martin, for example, was part of a Blue Origin-led team that bid unsuccessfully to build the first crewed lunar lander for NASA’s Artemis program. United Launch Alliance is a customer for Blue Origin’s BE-4 rocket engines, while Sierra Space is a major partner in Blue Origin’s Orbital Reef space station project.

And speaking of Orbital Reef, the Phoenix area is home to Arizona State University, which is leading the space station project’s research advisory group.

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Universe Today

NASA details its plans for space station’s doom in 2031

International Space Station
The International Space Station stretches out in an image captured by astronauts during a survey in November 2021. (NASA Photo)

NASA says it plans to plunge the vestiges of the International Space Station into a remote part of the Pacific Ocean known as Point Nemo in early 2031, after passing the baton to commercial space stations.

In an updated transition report just delivered to Congress, the space agency detailed the endgame for the space station, which has been hosting international crews continuously since the year 2000 — and hinted at what its astronauts would be doing in low Earth orbit after its fiery destruction.

“The private sector is technically and financially capable of developing and operating commercial low-Earth-orbit destinations, with NASA’s assistance,” Phil McAlister, NASA’s director of commercial space, said in a news release. “We look forward to sharing our lessons learned and operations experience with the private sector to help them develop safe, reliable, and cost-effective destinations in space.”

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Electric aviation pioneer pivots to digital ID venture

Roei Ganzarski
Roei Ganzarski discusses electric aviation during a 2019 meetup in Seattle. (GeekWire Photo / Alan Boyle)

Less than a month after announcing his departure from leadership roles at two electric aviation companies, Roei Ganzarski is embarking on a totally different kind of tech adventure. He’s just been named president and CEO of Alitheon, a Bellevue, Wash.-based venture that focuses on digital fingerprinting for physical products.

Ganzarski previously served as the CEO of MagniX, an electric propulsion company based in Everett, Wash., as well as the executive chairman of Eviation Aircraft, which is currently testing its all-electric, middle-mile aircraft in Arlington, Wash. Both of those companies are owned by Singapore-based Clermont Group.

Alitheon was founded in 2016 and reported progress on its latest $5 million equity offering in December. Its key technology is FeaturePrint, a method that uses images captured by off-the-shelf cameras or mobile phones to create and manage unique identifiers for physical objects.

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Fiction Science Club

The realities behind the ridiculousness of ‘Moonfall’

Scene from "Moonfall"
The movie "Moonfall" features a resurrected space shuttle and an ominously looming moon. (Courtesy of Lionsgate)

Even geophysicist Mika McKinnon, one of the science consultants for a $140 million disaster movie called “Moonfall,” admits that the moon-crashing tale is ridiculously exuberant.

So what’s wrong with that?

“A movie is supposed to be fun, and science is allowed to be fun,” McKinnon says in the latest episode of the Fiction Science podcast, which focuses on the intersection of science and fiction. “You don’t need to nitpick at it, or rip it all apart.”

Science-minded spoilsports would probably find it about as easy to rip apart the plot of “Moonfall” as it was for giant tidal waves to rip apart the space shuttle launch pad at California’s Vandenberg Space Force Base in the movie. (One of the plot twists involves taking the shuttle Endeavour off its L.A. museum perch and blasting off from Vandenberg, which was once set up as a shuttle launch site.)

The movie is based on a premise that’s even harder to imagine than resurrecting a space shuttle for a lunar mission: A conspiracy theorist (portrayed by portly John Bradley of “Game of Thrones” fame) discovers that the moon is spiraling out of orbit toward Earth, and eventually persuades NASA to go into world-saving mode (with Halle Berry and Patrick Wilson playing leading roles).

“Moonfall” riffs on the recent scientific speculation over alien megastructures, throws in a villainous swarm of nanobots, and adds a dash of Apollo moon-hoax hokum. It’s the kind of ripped-from-the-tabloid-headlines approach that’s worked in the past for the film’s director, Roland Emmerich, in movies like “Independence Day,” “2012” and “The Day After Tomorrow.”

“There are some who believe that the moon is not a natural object,” Emmerich says in the “Moonfall” production notes. “I thought that was an intriguing idea for a movie. What happens if this object falls down to Earth?”

McKinnon and the movie’s other science consultants were tasked with providing plausible answers to that implausible question.

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Blue Origin tests a giant nose cone for its orbital rocket

Blue Origin New Glenn fairing
The fairing for Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket sits inside a NASA vacuum chamber in Ohio. (Blue Origin via Twitter)

Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space venture is still months away from the first launch of its orbital-class New Glenn rocket, but tests that were recently conducted at NASA’s Glenn Research Center are boosting confidence that the rocket’s cavernous nose cone, or fairing, will work as intended.

In a video released today via Twitter and Instagram, Blue Origin touted the first jettison test of the 7-meter-wide (23-foot-wide) fairing at Glenn Research Center’s Armstrong Test Facility Space Environments Complex in Ohio. The test was designed to ensure that the fairing would split apart cleanly to allow for payload deployment.

The complex houses the world’s largest vacuum chamber, measuring 100 feet in diameter and 122 feet in height. “It’s the only place in the world that we can test out this fairing in an environment similar to what the rocket will be seeing in space,” said Shawna Sherwood Ryan, a project manager and test conductor at Blue Origin.

Blue Origin said the test “validated acoustics, cleanliness and environments that payload customers are expecting.”

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