Infrastructure
2010 – Probes – Snapshot
NASA’s Kepler spacecraft was launched in March 2009 aboard a Delta II rocket from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. Kepler’s mission is to monitor the brightness of more than 100,000 stars in a single region of the sky for at least three years.
2010 – Landers, Rovers – Snapshot
While ground-based telescopes and orbiting spacecraft can provide many kinds of new information, different insights are possible when physically present on other bodies in the Solar System. A number of spacecraft have touched down and explored the surface of other worlds, from the human Apollo landings more than 40 years ago to the robotic Mars rovers, Spirit and Opportunity.
2010 – Meteorology – Snapshot
Concerns about global climate change have led to the use of remote sensing satellites to measure the potential impact of humans on the environment. NASA employs more than a dozen Earth science spacecraft measuring a variety of environmental factors, including sea level, the amount of aerosols in the atmosphere, and changes in the size of the Earth’s ice sheets. The United States and Taiwan have partnered to develop the six-satellite FORMOSAT fleet, used to collect atmospheric data for weather prediction and for ionosphere, climate, and gravity research.
2010 – Land Imaging (GIS) – Snapshot
Two major U.S. commercial providers of satellite-based Earth imagery are DigitalGlobe and GeoEye. Both companies provide imagery for widely used applications such as Google Earth. In August 2010, the companies were awarded separate 10-year, $## billion contracts from the U.S. National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency under that agency’s EnhancedView procurement. These contracts make it possible for both companies to finish procurement and launch of new advanced satellites capable of discerning objects on the Earth’s surface as small as 25 centimeters (9.75 inches) in size.
2010 – In-Space Activities – Snapshot
In-space activities include research and development services, manufacturing, satellite refueling, and orbital debris clean-up. NASA’s Commercial Reusable Suborbital Research Program (CRuSR) is helping fund development of vehicles capable of carrying payloads on brief trips into space.
2010 – U.S. Human Launch Efforts – Snapshot
Certain spaceflight systems, including both the launch vehicle and its spacecraft payload, can be used to carry humans into space. Such flights amount to a small portion of all space missions—in 2010 only ## of the year’s ## launches carried people.
2010 – Spaceports – Snapshot
Launch sites, commonly called spaceports, host the launches of orbital and suborbital vehicles and, in some cases, the return of spacecraft from space. Spaceports take many forms, from sprawling, dedicated complexes such as Baikonur in Kazakhstan, to specialized ships floating in the Pacific Ocean, such as Sea Launch’s Odyssey.
2010 – Fixed Satellite Service (FSS) Space Activities – Snapshot
The dominant providers of international fixed satellite services (FSS) are Intelsat, SES, Eutelsat, and Telesat. These four companies collectively own nearly half of all GEO commercial communications satellites (125 satellites, or 47% of the total), and represented 49% of total FSS market revenues in 2010.
2010 – Mobile Satellite Service (MSS) Space Activities – Snapshot
Mobile satellite services (MSS) providers enable users to connect phones and other handheld devices directly to a satellite to provide near-constant coverage, even in places underserved by terrestrial facilities, such as ships at sea, isolated rural villages, polar settlements, or other remote sites. Although they also provide a wide range of routing services to major users such as the U.S. Navy fleet, MSS is particularly useful in the aftermath of natural and man-made disasters when regular forms of communication are often unavailable.
2010 – Bigelow Space Stations – Snapshot
Bigelow Aerospace has been working for several years to develop commercial orbital habitats using expandable modules. This approach, leveraging technology licensed from NASA, involves launching modules in a compact form and inflating them once in orbit, creating much larger volumes than would be possible with traditional metallic structures.