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--- transportation:satellites [2026/08/12 19:47] – [Reflect Orbital] timb
+++ transportation:satellites [2026/09/09 20:09] (current) – [Reflect Orbital] timb
@@ Line 2911: / Line 2911: @@
+===== Yaogan-50 =====
+== Chinese Satellite Breaks Apart in Rare Orbit That Could Hold Debris for Centuries ==
+Yaogan-50 generated a large filed of debris in a highly retrograde orbit.
+Passant Rabie - September 8, 2026, 2:20 pm ET
+A reconnaissance satellite suffered an unidentified anomaly and broke apart into pieces. Now, those fragments are trapped in a high altitude above Earth, where they risk a head-on collision with another object.
+China’s Yaogan-50 (02) satellite launched on March 15, 2026, on board a Long March 6A rocket. The satellite successfully reached its operational orbit—a highly retrograde orbit, meaning that it travels in the opposite direction of Earth’s rotation at an altitude of approximately 590 miles (952 kilometers).
+A few months into its mission, however, the satellite appears to have malfunctioned. On September 4, the U.S. Space Force cataloged 43 debris objects from the breakup of Yaogan-50 (02), according to Jonathan McDowell, a former astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics who tracks space activity.
+https://gizmodo.com/chinese-satellite-breaks-apart-in-rare-orbit-that-could-hold-debris-for-centuries-2000808645
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 https://arstechnica.com/space/2026/07/katalysts-satellite-rescue-mission-is-now-in-pursuit-of-nasas-swift/
+== NASA calls off mission to rescue Swift gamma-ray observatory ==
+Without a rescue, NASA’s Swift Observatory is expected to reenter the atmosphere later this year.
+Stephen Clark – Aug 19, 2026 5:18 PM
+NASA and Katalyst Space Technologies announced Wednesday they are giving up on a robotic mission to rescue the Swift gamma-ray telescope before it falls out of orbit.
+The rescue satellite, named Link, launched July 3 on a journey to fly up to NASA’s Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory, capture it with three robotic arms, and boost its orbit high enough to escape a looming reentry. Link is about the size of a refrigerator, with two power-generating solar arrays and three xenon-fueled electric thrusters to send Swift into a safer, higher orbit.
+Katalyst, the startup leading the Swift rescue effort, said Wednesday that “ongoing attitude control issues” will prevent the Link satellite from completing its rescue mission. The spacecraft is still alive, and Katalyst said it will make the most of Link’s remaining capacity, which may still allow it to get near enough to Swift for a demonstration of the satellite’s close-in navigation system.
+“While the mission will not have the ending we originally intended, NASA and Katalyst are assessing what milestones remain ahead,” Katalyst said in a statement. “We will continue working to extract technical and operational value from the spacecraft.”
+https://arstechnica.com/space/2026/08/nasa-calls-off-mission-to-rescue-swift-gamma-ray-observatory/
+== NASA calls off mission to rescue the falling Swift observatory ==
+Katalyst’s LINK spacecraft will still rendezvous with the telescope but will no longer tug it to a higher orbit.
+Mariella Moon - Aug. 20, 2026 6:01 am EST
+The Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory is expected to re-enter and burn up in the Earth's atmosphere later this year, after NASA has aborted the mission meant to tug it back up to a higher orbit. NASA has announced that Katalyst Space's LINK spacecraft will no longer dock with the satellite and boost it to a higher altitude as planned. The agency blamed it on LINK's ongoing attitude control issue, which started in late July.
+If you'll recall, NASA reported at the time that the spacecraft was having problems managing its orientation in orbit, causing it to spin helplessly. That led to sporadic communications with the spacecraft. There was also some loss in functionality to LINK's thruster system. NASA and Katalyst were still optimistic last month that the spacecraft could accomplish its goal, but things have clearly changed since then.
+Katalyst had less than a year to design a spacecraft for the Swift Boost mission, which launched in early July. Shawn Domagal-Goldman, the Astrophysics Division director at NASA Headquarters in Washington, said it was a "high-risk, high-reward mission" mission from the start. It was a first-of-its-kind attempt, and the team had very little time to try and rescue the Swift telescope, whose orbit is rapidly decaying due to an increase in solar activity in recent years.
+Read More: https://www.engadget.com/2240611/nasa-calls-off-swift-rescue-mission/
+== Rescue Mission Is Called Off For NASA's Aging Swift Space Telescope ==
+Posted by BeauHD on Thursday August 20, 2026 12:00AM
+NASA has called off a $30 million mission to rescue its aging Swift space telescope after Katalyst Space's Link spacecraft developed persistent control and positioning problems. The Associated Press reports:
+<blockquote>
+Katalyst said Link will not attempt to capture Swift and boost it to a higher orbit because of problems with controlling the spacecraft. NASA said this means the telescope will plunge through the atmosphere after more than 20 years of tracking some of the biggest explosions in the universe like gamma ray bursts and exploding stars. Its demise is not expected before October.
+NASA paid $30 million to Katalyst in an attempt to raise the telescope to a safer, longer-lasting orbit. Intense solar activity caused it to lose altitude faster than expected. The rescue spacecraft went into an uncontrollable spin a few weeks after its liftoff in early July. While flight controllers managed to slow Link's tumble, issues continued to plague its pointing and positioning in orbit.
+</blockquote>
+https://science.slashdot.org/story/26/08/19/2213259/rescue-mission-is-called-off-for-nasas-aging-swift-space-telescope
 ===== SWOT =====
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+====== Planet Labs ======
+== Planet Labs' Open Satellite Feed ==
+Mark Litwintschik - Tue 08 September 2026
+Planet Labs is a 15-year-old, San Francisco-based satellite manufacturer and constellation operator. They operate or have operated four different constellations throughout their history and capture imagery of the entire Earth's landmasses every day. As of this writing, LinkedIn lists the firm as having 1,751 associated members.
+Their CEO, Will Marshall, is one of the firm's three co-founders. In February, he posted images alongside the Secretary General of NATO, Mark Rutte, French President Emmanuel Macron and Kaja Kallas, who was Estonia's Prime Minister between 2021 and 2024 and is now Vice-President of the European Commission.
+https://tech.marksblogg.com/planet-labs-open-satellite-feed.html
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+===== Rassvet =====
+== Is Russia’s rival to Starlink failing? Here’s what we know. ==
+At least three of the first 32 Rassvet satellites likely suffered outright failures, and more may be in trouble.
+Stephen Clark – Sep 2, 2026 4:15 AM
+Russia’s attempt to replicate SpaceX’s Starlink satellite network seems to be moving as slowly as the front lines in eastern Ukraine.
+The Rassvet program, often billed as Russia’s answer to Starlink, started launching its first operational satellites earlier this year. Two launches, one in March and a second in July, have delivered 32 Rassvet satellites to low-Earth orbit, some 10 percent of the roughly 300 Rassvet spacecraft Russia aims to put into orbit by the end of next year to provide connectivity for military and civilian users. The company in charge of Rassvet, Bureau 1440, wants to deploy 924 satellites by 2035.
+But none of the 32 satellites launched so far have reached the 500-mile (800-kilometer) orbit they were designed to operate in. The rockets that launched the first two batches of Rassvets released the satellites much closer to Earth, and the satellites were expected to use their own plasma engines to raise their orbits over the next few months.
+The highest altitude achieved by the Rassvet satellites so far is a little more than 300 miles (500 kilometers). Twelve of the 16 Rassvet satellites from the first launch in March have settled into orbits at this altitude, according to an assessment released Monday by the Institute for the Study of War. A chart published by Jonathan McDowell, an independent tracker of global launch and satellite activity, indicates one more Rassvet satellite may soon climb above 300 miles.
+https://arstechnica.com/space/2026/09/rassvet-russias-rival-to-starlink-is-getting-off-to-a-slow-start/