All articles tagged with #de orbit
AST SpaceMobile’s satellite launched on a Blue Origin booster ended up in an inoperable, too-low orbit and will be de-orbited; its cost is expected to be recovered under insurance, marking a setback to AST’s plan to deploy about 45 satellites by 2026 to offer space-based broadband amid Starlink competition, with the stock dropping about 7% in early trading.
Lockheed Martin's electronically steerable antenna payload, launched to orbit on December 22, 2023, is expected to de-orbit in February after being placed in the wrong orbit due to an upper stage problem with the Firefly Aerospace Alpha rocket. Despite the shortened mission, the company stated that it successfully achieved many of the technology demonstration objectives, including demonstrating the capability to calibrate and activate the antenna faster than before. The spacecraft data shows that the antenna design is operating on-orbit as it had during ground testing, advancing the technology readiness level for a range of mission applications.
A prototype satellite called SBUDNIC, built by students at Brown University, successfully demonstrated a deployable drag sail made from Kapton polyimide film to de-orbit satellites. The CubeSat design deployed the drag sail once in orbit, causing its orbit to decay. Tracking data showed that SBUDNIC's orbit decayed faster than other satellites of similar size, and it burned up in the atmosphere after just 445 days in orbit. The project aimed to address the problem of space junk accumulating in low Earth orbit and showed a low-cost solution for future satellites to de-orbit at the end of their lifespan.