Connect with us

News

SpaceX’s first West Coast Falcon 9 launch in eight months now set for early 2020

Falcon 9 B1048 produced a truly spectacular nebula-like cloud of sunlit exhaust during the October 2018 launch of SAOCOM-1A. SAOCOM-1B is now tracking towards a February 2020 launch. (Tom Cross)

Published

on

After what is set to be a more than 8-month lull, SpaceX’s California launch facilities are scheduled to support a Falcon 9 launch no earlier than February 2020.

Speaking at 2019’s World Satellite Business Week, Raúl Kulichevsky – a director at the Comisión Nacional de Actividades Espaciales (CONAE), Argentina’s national space agency – confirmed that the country’s SAOCOM-1B Earth observation satellite making great progress towards that launch target.

The launch was recently pushed into January and later March of 2020 after minor satellite production delays ended plans for a late-2019 launch. On a recent positive note, Deputy Executive and Technical Director of CONAE Raúl Kulichevsky indicated that SAOCOM-1B’s Falcon 9 launch was now planned a month or so earlier than previously expected and is on track for a February 2020 liftoff from Vandenberg Air Force Base (VAFB).

This small but positive schedule bump comes just a week or so after CONAE engineers and technicians wrapped up a major SAOCOM-1B integration milestone, successfully attaching the satellite’s main imaging instrument – a large phased-array radar – to its bus (the primary structure). This work is ongoing in Bariloche, Argentina, a spectacular town surrounded by the Andes mountain range and glacier-fed lakes. Aside from the electrical and mechanical integration of SAOCOM-1B’s radar and bus, the CONAE team completed the installation of thermal insulator blankets. Up next will be the attachment of two solar arrays and associated deployment tests, followed by integrated center-of-gravity measurements and vibrational/acoustic load tests.

This May 2019 photo shows off the spectacular interior of SAOCOM-1B’s main bus, an extremely rare view of the swath of internal systems that allow satellites to function in orbit.

Assuming a successful launch early next year, SAOCOM-1B will join its SAOCOM-1A sister satellite in a sun-synchronous orbit (SSO), completing the L-band Satélite Argentino de Observación Con Microondas Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) constellation. In an agreement called Sistema Italo Argentino de Satélites para la Gestión de Emergencias (SIASGE), the completed SAOCOM constellation will work in conjunction with Italy’s four-satellite COSMO-SkyMed constellation to provide accurate and persistent Earth observations and support disaster monitoring efforts around the world.

Advertisement

CONAE hopes to eventually expand its SAOCOM constellation with the future development and deployment of two SAOCOM-2 spacecraft.

An overview of the joint Italy-Argentina SIASGE constellation, featuring two SAOCOM-1 and four COSMO-SkyMed satellites. (CONAE)

The SAOCOM-1A satellite was launched in a spectacular fashion in October 2018, producing a nebula-like cloud of sun-lit Falcon 9 exhaust that was visible for hundreds of miles. The SAOCOM-1A marked the second launch of Falcon 9 booster B1048 and also featured SpaceX’s first successful West Coast Return-to-Launch-Site (RTLS) landing.

Falcon 9’s SAOCOM-1B mission will come long after SpaceX’s most recent West Coast launch – the June 2019 launch of the Canadian Space Agency’s (CSA) RADARSAT Constellation Mission (RCM). West coast observers and launch teams are sure to welcome the launch of the SAOCOM-1B mission after what is set to be more than eight months spent without a launch.

Check out Teslarati’s newsletters for prompt updates, on-the-ground perspectives, and unique glimpses of SpaceX’s rocket launch and recovery processes.

Advertisement

Space Reporter.

Advertisement
Comments

Elon Musk

Tesla Phone? Not quite, but close: analyst

Published

on

elon musk phone
Photo: Boss Hunting.com.au

For years, there have been images and videos across social media platforms that have reminded me of when I was a 15-year-old kid teased by “Xbox 720” videos on YouTube. These videos are of the supposed “Tesla Phone” that Elon Musk was secretly developing in between leading Tesla with its electric cars and SpaceX with its reusable rockets.

Although Musk has put those rumors to bed several times, it was never completely out of the realm that he could get involved in cell phones in some capacity. Think outside the box and more macro-level, though. Instead of reinventing the computer, Musk reinvented connectivity by developing Starlink with SpaceX.

It could be something similar, TD Cowen analyst Gregory Williams said in a note last week, where he hinted SpaceX could be gathering some steam to acquire T-Mobile.

Williams said it would be the “clear choice” for SpaceX if it decided to go through with a network acquisition. He also suggested AT&T.

The move would be possible through selling more of its own stock, which would help SpaceX raise the money to purchase T-Mobile, which would cost roughly $300 billion. It could be one of the moves SpaceX makes post-IPO in terms of an acquisition: it already acquired Cursor AI for $60 billion.

Other analysts, like Dan Ives of Wedbush, believe SpaceX and Tesla will eventually merge into one anyway, and that conglomeration could come as soon as this year, some have said.

The implications of SpaceX purchasing T-Mobile are massive. A combined entity would create a truly ubiquitous network: T-Mobile’s terrestrial 5G towers and Starlink’s growing constellation of Direct-to-Cell satellites. This would essentially eliminate dead zones across the U.S. and potentially globally.

SpaceX would instantly become a full-scale facilities-based carrier with satellite differentiation; a huge advantage. This would pressure AT&T and Verizon heavily.

There are also concerns like a potential reduction in long-term competition, and of course, a deal of that size would face intense scrutiny from government agencies.

The strategic fit is compelling due to the existing Starlink–T-Mobile partnership and complementary technologies (space + terrestrial). It could create a dominant integrated communications player. However, the regulatory, financial, and execution hurdles are enormous — this remains highly speculative with no indication SpaceX is actively pursuing it right now.

Continue Reading

News

Tesla reveals huge Cybercab detail in new guide for First Responders

Published

on

Credit: Tesla

Tesla revealed a major new Cybercab detail in a guide it released for First Responders, showing new territory in its beliefs and intentions for the ride-hailing-focused vehicle that entered production in April.

The First Responders Guide is released to give fire departments, paramedics, and other emergency personnel the proper guidance on what to do in the event of an accident, entrapment, or other situation that would require immediate attention.

On one of the pages of the First Responders Guide, Tesla revealed a stark detail about the Cybercab, which could help personnel enter the vehicle more easily in case of an emergency.

Tesla Cybercab has one important piece that AI4 cars might need for FSD

It shows Tesla has no intention of releasing any Cybercab units that were initially proposed for ride-hailing services for the general public with any manual controls, meaning a steering wheel or pedals:

“A Cybercab equipped with steering wheel, brake pedal, and an acceleration pedal is typically an engineering or test vehicle, and operates at SAE Level 2 autonomy. Cybercab is not typically equipped with a steering wheel or acceleration and brake pedals.”

This is a major development for those who continue to believe Tesla planned to release the Cybercab with any sort of manual controls so that passengers could take over if needed. However, when Tesla started manufacturing production versions of the Cybercab in Giga Texas earlier this year, they were spotted without a steering wheel or pedals.

It essentially confirms the company has no intentions of bringing manual controls to the car’s production versions. Some have argued that the likelihood of Tesla having something

There still are some Cybercab units out there with a steering wheel and pedals, and as Tesla said, these cars are engineering or test vehicles, which have Safety Monitors on board to help the car out of a precarious situation or emergency.

Continue Reading

News

Tesla Full Self-Driving v14 ‘Lite’ Release Notes: new capabilities and features

Published

on

(Credit: Megan Gale/Twitter)

Tesla released the Full Self-Driving v14 ‘Lite’ suite to owners of Hardware 3 or AI3 vehicles today, adding several new features to the vehicles that were once believed to be capable of unsupervised self-driving.

Now, Tesla has released this modified suite to older Tesla vehicles, adding plenty of new features and capabilities.

Here are the full release notes for the suite:

  • Distilled the intelligence from HW4 V14 into HW3. This allows HW3 to directly learn how to handle scenarios using HW4 V14 as a guide. This process unlocks the improvements that have been made to HW4 including Reinforcement Learning (RL) and offline models for HW3.
  • Improved both proactive and reactive responsiveness across a wide variety of categories including navigation handling, merges and forks, pedestrian interactions, traffic lights, and vehicle cut-in scenarios.
  • Improved general comfort in nominal scenarios through fewer false slowdowns, smoother steering and more consistent lane centering.
  • Introduced parking, unparking, and reversing capabilities.
  • Added Arrival Options for you to select where FSD should park: in a Parking Lot, on the Street, in a Driveway, or at the Curbside.
  • Speed Profiles are now available at all times, to further customize driving style preference.

These improvements, according to Tesla’s Head of AI, Ashok Elluswamy, help distill the driving behavior from AI4’s v14 series into both the camera and compute configurations of AI3.

Tesla Full Self-Driving v14 ‘Lite’ for older cars finally gets released

He added:

“It includes destination options and speed profiles on city roads, but more importantly significantly improved safety. We hope you’ll enjoy it, once the build ships wide.”

Tesla will continue to roll out the v14 Lite suite more widely in the coming weeks, the company said.

Continue Reading