keep them high“DiskSat is a lightweight, compact, flat disk-shaped satellite designed to optimize future rideshare launches,” the aerospace corporation said in a statement. The discs are 39 inches (1 m) wide, about twice the diameter of a New York-style pizza, and only 1 inch (2.5 cm) thick. Made of composite carbon fiber, each satellite carries solar cells, control avionics, reaction wheels and an electric thruster to change and maintain altitude. The flat design allows the disksats to be stacked one on top of the other for launch. The format has significantly more surface area than other small satellites of comparable mass, making room for more solar cells for high-power missions or large-aperture payloads such as radar imaging instruments or high-bandwidth antennas. NASA and the US Space Force funded the development and launch of the DiskSat demo mission.
SpaceX warns of dangerous Chinese launches. SpaceX’s vice president of Starlink engineering said China recently deployed nine satellites in a dangerous manner due to a Starlink satellite. Michael Nichols wrote in a Dec. 12 social media post that there was a distance of 200 meters between the satellite, launched on Dec. 10 on a Chinese Kinetica-1 rocket, and SpaceX’s Starlink-6079 spacecraft at an altitude of 560 kilometers (348 miles), Aviation Week and Space Technology reported. “Much of the risk of operating in space comes from the lack of coordination between satellite operators – this needs to change,” Nichols wrote.
Blaming the customer... CAS Space, the company in charge of the Kinetica-1 rocket, responded to Nichols’ post on X, saying it would “work on identifying the exact details and provide assistance.” In a follow-up post on December 13, CAS Space said that the close call, if confirmed, occurred about 48 hours after the satellite separated from the Kinetica-1 rocket, by which time the launch mission had ended. “CAS Space will coordinate with satellite operators moving forward.”
A South Korean startup is ready to take off. South Korean space startup Innospace will launch its independently developed commercial rocket, Hanbit-Nano, on Friday, the Mile Business Newspaper reports. The rocket will take off from the Alcantara Space Center in Brazil. The small launcher will attempt to deliver eight small payloads, including five deployable satellites, into low-Earth orbit. The launch was delayed by two days to give technicians time to replace components of the first stage oxidizer supply cooling system.
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