The red sun rising over the radar station on Alnwick Moor picks out the tall shape of a hare at our end of the meadow. It lopes forward a little way forever appearing, as hares always do, to be on the brink of a forward roll and then pauses, sits up and shakes the dew from its front paws.
Shares in Rocket Lab Corp were heading for their second day of gains on Monday after the aerospace manufacturer was named as one of four companies that will build tracking satellites for the U.S. Space Development Agency (SDA). The stock (Nasdaq: RKLB) was up more than 4% in premarket trading on Monday as of this writing. That's in addition to a jump of 17% on Friday when the news was announced. Share are now trading at record highs.
Today the globe is circled by thousands of active satelliteseach prone to photobombing astronomers' telescopes as an artificial star zipping across the night sky. Scientists working with ground-based observatories such as the cutting-edge Vera C. Rubin Observatory have long worried about this visual interferencebut as satellites continue to proliferate, space-based telescopes, including the beloved Hubble Space Telescope, are beginning to suffer, too. And the problem is only going to get worse.
This first-of-its-kind unmanned mission - Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorers, or ESCAPADE - could launch as early as this Sunday, sending twin satellites to Mars that together will offer the clearest picture yet of the shifting Martian atmosphere and magnetic field. If it succeeds, it could reveal mysteries about how Mars became the red wasteland that we see today, and may help us send humans to safely explore our planetary neighbor. It also pioneers a new path to Mars and a cheaper - if riskier - model for space exploration.
Guillaume Faury, chief executive of Airbus, Roberto Cingolani, chief executive of Leonardo and Patrice Caine, chief executive of Thales, said in a joint statement that the new company marked a pivotal milestone for Europe's space industry. By pooling our talent, resources, expertise and R&D capabilities, we aim to generate growth, accelerate innovation and deliver greater value to our customers and stakeholders, they said.
Chinese satellites SJ-21 and SJ-25 merged on July 2, indicating a potential high-altitude orbital refueling capability, enabling possibly military applications such as disabling foreign satellites.
"Satellite infrastructure is no longer just commercial, but strategic. Space has become a new front line... the vulnerabilities in current systems stem from old technology."
