“BRIght Target Explorer” (BRITE) space mission tagged posts

Researchers have invented a technique that enables low Earth orbit satellite antennas to manage signals for multiple users at once, slashing costs and simplifying designs for communication satellites.

Low-orbit satellites could soon offer millions of people worldwide access to high-speed communications, but the satellites’ potential has been stymied by a technological limitation – their antenna arrays can only manage one user at a time.

The one-to-one ratio means that companies must launch either constellations of many satellites, or large individual satellites with many arrays, to provide wide coverage. Both options are expensive, technically complex, and could lead to overcrowded orbits.

For example, SpaceX went the “constellation” route...

Artist’s impression of the hot massive supergiant Zeta Puppis. The rotation period of the star indicated by the new BRITE observations is 1.78 d, and its spin axis is inclined by (24 ± 9)° with respect to the line of sight. Credit: Tahina Ramiaramanantsoa

Astronomers recently discovered that spots on the surface of a supergiant star are driving huge spiral structures in its stellar wind. Massive stars are responsible for producing the heavy elements that make up all life on Earth. At the end of their lives they scatter the material into interstellar space in catastrophic explosions ie supernovae – without these dramatic events, our solar system would never have formed.

Zeta Puppis is an evolved massive star known as a ‘supergiant’...