Space, in brief

SpaceX launched a Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral in Florida on Sunday, 13 September, at 2:49 p.m. New York time. [1]

It carried the last three O3b mPOWER satellites for SES, a satellite internet company based in Luxembourg. [1]

It was the 700th mission for SpaceX's Falcon rockets, the company says. The first of them, Falcon 1, flew five times from 2006 and succeeded twice. [1]

The booster, the reusable bottom part of the rocket, was on its 29th flight. It landed on a SpaceX ship in the Atlantic about nine minutes after launch. [1]

The satellites were let go about 8,000 km above Earth, in what is called medium Earth orbit. [1] That is about 20 times higher than the International Space Station, which flies about 400 km up. [4]

SES now has 13 of these satellites in space. [1] It sells their internet capacity to companies, governments and armed forces. [2]

Before the fifth and sixth satellites launched, an electrical problem was found in them. It cut how much internet they can carry and how long they will last. [2]

To make up for it, satellites seven to eleven were changed, and two extra satellites were added to the network. [2]

The three new satellites will not start work straight away. Boeing, which built them, expects them in service by the middle of 2027, after they climb into position and are tested. [2]

Sunday's flight was SpaceX's 107th orbital mission this year, and 105 of them flew on Falcon 9. [1]

SpaceX is cutting back how often Falcon 9 flies. [3] Its much bigger rocket, Starship, has made two test flights this year that did not reach orbit, and the next one is expected to. [1]

NASA leans on Falcon 9 too. Both cargo ships that supply the space station, SpaceX's Dragon and Northrop Grumman's Cygnus, launch on it. [4]

Why it matters. Watch whether the three new satellites start work by the middle of 2027, as Boeing expects, and how many Falcon 9 flights SpaceX keeps while it cuts back for Starship. [2][3]

Sentinel-6B, a sea-measuring satellite launched last November by NASA and its European partners, flies 30 seconds behind the older satellite it will replace. [5] Both are measuring sea height during what ocean scientists expect to be a historic El Nino, a warming of the Pacific that shifts weather worldwide. [5] A scientist at JPL, a NASA laboratory in California, says this one started late and is only now as strong as those of 1997 and 2015. [5] Warm water takes up more room, so a higher sea shows where the ocean holds heat. [5]

Why it matters. Ocean heat helps forecasters judge how fast a hurricane will grow. [5] A hurricane can strengthen fast in its last 48 hours before reaching land. [5] A scientist at NOAA, the US weather agency, plans to start adding Sentinel-6 sea-height data to its hurricane tool by the end of the year. [5]

Astroscale, a Japanese company that builds spacecraft to grab dead satellites and old rocket parts, has two missions booked on Spectrum, a rocket from the German company Isar Aerospace. [3] It signed both before Spectrum had ever reached orbit. [3] One will pull a OneWeb internet satellite down at the end of its life, and the other will grab a dead Japanese rocket stage. [3] Its chief operating officer, Chris Blackerby, told Ars Technica each mission weighs 500 to 700 kilograms and needs a rocket to itself. [3] He said few reliable rockets of that size exist. [3]

Why it matters. Rocket makers are building bigger rockets, so companies with medium-sized missions have fewer rides to choose from. [3] Blackerby also said Astroscale's mission to show refuelling in orbit for the US Space Force is launching soon. [3]

Eutelsat, a French satellite operator, signed a deal last week with Infinite Orbits, a French company that builds robot spacecraft. [6] Its spacecraft, called Endurance, will dock with one of Eutelsat's satellites in high orbit, even though that satellite was never built to be docked with. [6] Each mission adds about five years to a satellite that would normally work for about 15. [6] It is Infinite Orbits' third order of this kind, after SES and Hispasat, and it just opened a 1,000 square metre factory in Toulouse. [6]

Why it matters. An old satellite that keeps working keeps earning, and the company says the extra years are worth more than the mission costs. [6] Its first such mission, for SES, is planned for 2027, with Eutelsat's after it. [6]

TrustPoint, a startup building a paid satellite navigation service like GPS, ordered 40 satellites from the satellite maker EnduroSat last week. [7] They will be built in three batches, and the first cannot launch before 2027. [7] TrustPoint's chief executive, Patrick Shannon, says the whole network could work within 24 to 30 months, depending on parts and rockets. [7] It uses a different band of radio waves from public GPS, one that the upper atmosphere disturbs less. [7]

Why it matters. Solar storms can knock out GPS signals across whole regions, according to Shannon. [7] Each satellite weighs about 10 kilograms and costs a few hundred thousand dollars including launch, he says. [7]

NASA gave Inversion Space, an American company, a contract to study aerocapture last week. [8] Aerocapture means using a planet's air to slow a spacecraft down so it can drop into orbit around that planet. [8] Today, probes carry a lot of extra fuel to fire their engines and slow down on arrival, which leaves less room for what they were sent to carry. [8] The study looks at whether Inversion's Arc spacecraft could show aerocapture for the first time, in Earth's own air. [8] Inversion plans Arc's first flight in space no earlier than 2027. [8]

Why it matters. Inversion's chief executive, Justin Fiaschetti, says braking in air would skip months of firing engines to slow down, so trips to other planets would be faster. [8]

Orbital, a startup in Los Angeles, chose Reflex Aerospace, a German satellite maker, to build the body of Orbital-1. [9] It is meant to be the first of up to 100,000 satellites, each carrying a rack of Nvidia computer chips as a data centre in orbit. [9] Orbital-1 is due to launch in 2028. [9] Orbital also more than doubled its power goal for each satellite, to about 250 kilowatts, the same as a rival SpaceX design. [9]

Why it matters. The deal makes Orbital the first American customer for Reflex. [9] Like most companies in this field, Orbital is counting on SpaceX's Starship for cheap rides to orbit. [9]

Galaxia, a company in Halifax, Nova Scotia, raised 4.5 million Canadian dollars, about 3.25 million US dollars, last week. [10] It builds satellites that photograph Earth and process the pictures on board, so answers come back faster. [10] It was founded in 2020 by Arad Gharagozli while he was a student at Dalhousie University. [10] The week before, it teamed up with Simera Sense, a Belgian company, to add cameras that see many colours of light. [10]

Why it matters. Canada wants space tools it controls itself, and in February Galaxia received about 219,000 Canadian dollars of government defence money. [10] Galaxia says the new money will pay for more satellites and for Canada's own space capabilities. [10]