Electronics related to Military/Aerospace
Urban Sky, which describes itself as “a stratospheric platform company”, has closed a $30 million Series B investment round for its rapidly deployable Microballoon technology. The funding will be used to develop and commercialise its products for using the stratosphere tactically for military and commercial customers. The payloads of the balloons enable high-resolution, persistent data monitoring above wide areas. To ...
OroraTech, a specialist in space-based thermal intelligence, will develop the payloads for the satellite constellation of the WildFireSat mission. The Ontario-based company will again be working with Spire Global Canada, a subsidiary of Spire Global, which won the $51 million (Can$72 million) contract from the Canadian Space Agency. Air quality The WildFireSat mission is actually a joint initiative by the ...
The Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (DSTL) has carried out a live trial led involving robotic dogs to successfully detect and defuse bomb threats. The UK Ministry of Defence scientists were working alongside L3Harris, Marlborough Communications Ltd and AeroVironment (Tomahawk Robotics). Robotic dogs The trials – investigating robotic Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) capabilities – took place over four days. And ...
Nasa is highlighting its progress with testing autonomous satellites in constellations using a technology it calls Distributed Spacecraft Autonomy (DSA). The goal is to allows individual spacecraft to make independent decisions while also collaborating with each other. They would all be working towards common goals or mission objectives but without direct human input. The long term goal is improve multi-spacecraft ...
The U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has confirmed two research teams to further investigate in-space manufacturing, in its NOM4D (Nomad”) programme. Both the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and Caltech (California Institute of Technology) have worked with the agency on previous phases of the project. Accompanying the announcement was the decision by DARPA to pivot the third and final ...
The MoD has awarded a £127 million contract to Airbus to build a constellation called Oberon consisting of two satellites to be deployed in 2027. Oberon will be able to capture imagery in any weather conditions by using Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) technology which can create high-resolution 2-D images or 3-D reconstructions of objects, such as landscapes. SAR achieves fine ...
The UK Space Agency (UKSA) has backed a Welsh communications integration specialist, Excelerate, with a £6 million award to develop a multi-orbit, multi-beam satellite antenna. Based in Cardiff, Excelerate Technology will receive the funding for work on a Mobility and Autonomy Market User Terminal (MAMUT). This is designed to allow users to choose an operator, and orbit, via an app. ...
Vodafone has carried out what it describes as the UK’s first satellite-enabled smartphone video call. It was from an area of ‘no coverage’ using a standard mobile phone and was processed via Vodafone’s newly-unveiled space-to-land gateway. A single such receiver – pictured above – can serve the whole of the UK. The call was made from a remote mountain in ...
EnSilica, the Oxford ASIC house, has been awarded £10.38 million funding over three years from the UK Space Agency under its Connectivity in Low-Earth Orbit (“C-LEO”) programme. In the bidding process for the award, EnSilica put forward a business case, supported by letters of interest from potential lead customers, to develop a chip family to support future generations of mass ...
Taoglas, the San Diego antenna specialist, has brought out active, multi-band GNSS antennas. Levity Series’ AHP24510 (L1/L2/L-Band) and AHP54510 (L1/L5/L-Band) directional patch antennas are optimized for GPS, Galileo, GLONASS, and BeiDou satellite constellations. Triangulation across several satellites provides faster and more accurate acquisition and lock onto signals, particularly in built-up areas. The L-Band capability means Levity Series antennas also work ...
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