NASA supports 14 U.S. space tech companies with more than $370 million to support the development of cutting-edge Moon and Mars mission technologies.

For Defense Logistics Agency (DLA) QPL qualification, high-reliability rad hard MOSFETs undergo extensive screening and quality-conformance testing to ensure that devices perform to specification in the harshest environments, sometimes for 15 years and longer. Both the US and European communities have developed specifications detailing quality conformance testing sequence.

Lately there has been a lot of attention paid to the heavens. Specifically, near-Earth space, between Low Earth Orbit (LEO) and Geosynchronous. We recently pointed out in “Money! In! Space!” that there is a business renaissance in space businesses and the related infrastructures. Startups in the space (pun intended) have been expanding old applications, creating new ones, and promising ones over the horizon, from intraorbital satellite taxis to future honeymoon lunar “cruises”.

A rocket is going up into space with a drag sail. The goal? For the drag sail to bring the rocket back to Earth, preventing it from becoming like the thousands of pieces of space junk in Earth’s lower orbit.

To enable continually higher data rates for end users of satellite links, satellite operators are using higher frequencies, such as the Q/V band, where larger bandwidths are available. 

Italian company Leaf Space, a provider of ground-segment services for smallsats, made a partnership agreement with CYSEC, a Swiss cybersecurity company, to offer end-to-end cyber security protection for satellite communications.

Working in technology, it is easy to forget the importance of power. Electricity is like water, in that we are so awash in it we don’t realize its core value as a primary need. People from places where water is scarce often marvel at city sidewalks being washed down with a hose. Just like water, the scope of a project is also often determined by its availability.

Psyche, the NASA mission to explore a metal-rock asteroid of the same name, recently passed a crucial milestone that brings it closer to its August 2022 launch date. Now the mission is moving from planning and designing to high-gear manufacturing of the spacecraft hardware that will fly to its target in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.

Recently we announced here that AImotive, an automotive supplier of automated driving technologies, and C3S, the satellite and space technology provider, will collaborate on a prototype hardware platform for the efficient execution of artificial intelligence (AI) onboard satellites.

The Space Administration in the Directorate of Defense Research and Development (DDR&D) of the Israel Ministry of Defense (IMoD), and Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI), have successfully launched the Ofek 16 reconnaissance satellite into space on the sixth of July 2020, at 4:00 AM.