What a year for the small satellite industry! Launching spacecraft through rideshare or "piggy back" is not a new concept, but in 2013, it became mainstream. Records for the number of payloads on one launch vehicle were set and broken within days of each other. 29 satellites were launched on a Minotaur and three days later 32 were launchedon Dnepr. 2014 should be a great year for Spaceflight, with 30 payloads onboard the ORB 1 mission heading to ISS for
Yesterday, Skybox Imaging, a commercial company in Mountain View (CA), released the first images from SkySat-1, crisp, clear and astonishing photos with details as small as car colors easily visible. The resolution is high (sub-one-meter) for any satellite, but small size of SkySat-1 makes it even more remarkable.
SkySat-1’s high resolution images are clearer than even NASA’s legacy LandSat project. Admittedly, SkySat-1 is optimized for high resolution an
At Spaceflight, we get pretty excited about rocket launches. More launches mean more opportunities for small satellites, like the ones we integrate, to fly! So, though we already stream most launches, SpaceX’s SES-8 launch grabbed all our attention last week.
Last Monday, although no one admitted it until T-20 minutes, most of us were streaming the SES-8 launch on our work computers. Once we realized that we all were watching it anyway, one of the e...
