NASA have just issued a press-release about a forthcoming SpaceX Falcon launch scheduled for Saturday the 22nd of June. Two satellites should be of particular interest to this group: a mercury-ion atomic clock, and some cube-sats intended to help characterise the atmosphere in order to improve the accuracy of GPS reception. NASA press releases can be seen here: https://www.nasa.gov/news/releases/latest/index.html
The latest, in part, reads: May 15, 2019 MEDIA ADVISORY M19-037 Media Invited to SpaceX Falcon Heavy Launch of Four NASA Missions Media accredation is open for SpaceX’s third Falcon Heavy launch. ... The Enhanced Tandem Beacon Experiment (E-TBEx) explores “bubbles” in the electrically-charged layers of Earth's upper atmosphere, which can disrupt key communications and GPS signals that we rely on down on the ground. Such bubbles currently appear and evolve unpredictably, making them difficult to characterize from the ground. Increasing our understanding of them will help us prevent the disruption of the many radio signals that pass through Earth's upper atmosphere. The two NASA CubeSats on this mission will work in concert with the six satellites of NOAA's COSMIC-2 mission. Varying orbital positions among the eight spacecraft will give scientists chances to study these bubbles from multiple angles at once. See: https://www.nesdis.noaa.gov/content/cosmic-2-mission A new kind of atomic clock aims to let spacecraft conduct precise navigation on their own, instead of waiting for trajectory information from Earth. This versatile technology also has science and exploration applications. The Deep Space Atomic Clock can be used to study planetary gravity fields and atmospheres, or could even enable a GPS-like capability on the surface of the Moon. The technology demonstration mission, developed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, is the primary payload on General Atomics’ Orbital Test Bed spacecraft. See: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/tdm/clock/index.html ... To learn more about the STP-2 mission, visit: https://www.spacex.com/stp-2 _______________________________________________ time-nuts mailing list -- [email protected] To unsubscribe, go to http://lists.febo.com/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts_lists.febo.com and follow the instructions there.
