News from SmallSat | Clyde Space joins Teledyne e2v to explore quantum technology in space

View this email in your browser SpaceNews' show daily for the 31st Annual AIAA/USU Conference on Small Satellites Today is Monday, August 7, 2017 Clyde Space joins Teledyne e2v to explore quantum technology in space DEBRA WERNER —Scotland's Clyde Space Ltd. is joining forces with industrial conglomerate Teledyne e2v to develop a free-flying nanosatellite to demonstrate the unique quantum properties of cold atoms. The Cold Atom Space Payload mission "will create a new wave of space applications," Craig Clark, Clyde Space chief executive, said in a statement. Laboratory experiments on the ground have shown that atoms cooled to a temperature of 0 degrees Kelvin, or -273.15 Celsius, can act as extremely sensitive sensors capable of mapping minuscule changes in the strength of Earth's gravity. SEE FULL STORY . Telemetry glitch kept first Electron rocket from reaching orbit JEFF FOUST — Rocket Lab blamed the failure of its first Electron rocket to reach orbit on a telemetry glitch in ground equipment that can be easily corrected, keeping the company on track to begin commercial launches by the end of this year. In a statement released late Aug. 6, the U.S.-New Zealand company said its Electron rocket was flying as planned on its May 25 inaugural launch when a dropout of telemetry from the vehicle required range safety officials to terminate the flight four minutes after liftoff, at an altitude of 224 kilometers. The company said that a third-party contractor supporting the launch misconfigured ground equipment that translated radio signals from the rocket into data used by range safety officials. That caused "extensive corruption of received position data," resulting in the data loss that led safety officials to trigger the rocket's flight termination system. SEE FULL STORY CloudIX joins race to develop small rocket DEBRA WERNER — CloudIX, a startup based in Hayward, California, plans to conduct its first test flight in December of a prototype balloon-launched rocket designed to send cubesats into low Earth orbit. With the initial test, CloudIX (pronounced Cloud Nine) intends to demonstrate its launch capability and show that subsystems including communications, navigation and telemetry work as intended, Brandon Mairs, CloudIX co-founder and chief executive, told SpaceNews. CloudIX is developing its own thrust vectoring system and purchasing solid rocketmotors to send 16 cubesats or one 22-kilogram satellite into low Earth orbit. The firm plans to purchase high-altitude balloons from existing manufacturers, who Mairs declined to name. SEE FULL STORY As annual SmallSat gathering convenes, small satellites have never been a bigger deal DEBRA WERNER — When Pat Patterson was a student at Utah State University in 1987, a friend told him about a conference on small satellites taking place on the campus. "What's a small satellite?" he replied. Over the next few years as Patterson earned his bachelor's, master's and PhD in electrical engineering at Utah State, he learned that most satellites in orbit were the size of school buses. "That made no sense to me," Patterson told SpaceNews in a recent interview. "As I got closer to the small satellite community, I realized they were onto something." Patterson, who has spent his 30-year career focusing on small satellites, upper atmospheric research and satellite mission planning, now oversees the annual conference in Logan, which he calls "a place for the community to come together, share idea and lessons learned, and leverage off the work others are doing." The 2017 event, being held Aug. 5-10 in Logan, Utah,  is expected to attract roughly 2,500 attendees from more than 40 countries. SEE FULL STORY Follow SpaceNews Advertise with Us Copyright © 2017 SpaceNews Inc., All rights reserved. Our mailing address is: SpaceNews Inc. 1414 Prince St, Suite 204 Alexandria, VA 22314