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Fleet Space

Flavia Tata Nardini : Fleet Space Founder and a Pioneer in the Emerging Australian Space Industry

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Today, everything is about connections; not the human connection, but the connection of humans through the internet. The Internet has transformed the world in less than the world had in the past 20 centuries. People just need their smartphone, and they can accomplish most of their daily routine work in a few swipes. Despite such advancement in human life, an aerospace engineer from Australia, Flavia Tata Nardini, does not want to stop here. She wants to create a network in the space, such that there will be no earthly object without an internet connection. Whether it is the students in the classroom or the tree in the forest, everything connected. The founder of Fleet Space Technologies has been developing satellites since she was a teen, and now, she is entirely focussing on the space as well as connecting the IoT devices.

Early Life and Career

Nardini was born into an engineer’s family in Rome, Italy. With a dream of becoming an astronaut, she completed a bachelor degree in aerospace engineering from University La Sapienza, Rome. She then completed a master’s degree in space engineering from the same university. In her late teens, she bagged an internship job at European Space Agency in The Netherlands, where she worked on the rocket propulsion technology.

In July 2009, she joined another company named TNO in The Netherlands, where she worked in various roles for four years, including propulsion design and test engineer as well as a product manager. Later, she even moved to Qatar to work with another space agency, where she sent nanosatellites to space.

Flavia Nardini founder Fleet Space
Image Source: amazon.com

Later, she moved to Adelaide, South Australia, to live with her partner (now husband) in 2014. Qualified with a lot of experience in space activities, it became tough for Nardini to find a job, as there was only one space startup back then. And having kids, she could not work in the defence, either. So, along with one of her future Fleet Space partner, Matt Pearson, she founded an educational startup named Launchbox. Under this startup, the two of the co-founders started teaching little kids about space and nanosatellites. Under the program, they even built CubeSat satellite using 3D printed components and launched them to the stratosphere.

Founding Fleet Space

While working for Launchbox, the two of the co-founders realised that they could also build a new space startup for connecting the IoT devices. Since no space agencies were working in Australia, founding one seemed a good idea to them. Hence in 2015, they, along with another aerospace engineer, Dr Matthew Tetlow, co-founded Fleet Space.

Fleet Space aims to create a network of nanosatellites around the earth, such that it can provide internet access to every person on earth for cheaper prices. The increase in the interconnection through the internet will make every single task accessible through a smartphone. For now, the company target is to connect 7.5 billion IoT devices on earth with the help of nanosatellites by 2020.

Partnerships and Fundings

Fleet Space has got the Australian as well the US government on board for the development process. Private companies like SpaceX has also partnered with the company to fulfil the goal. The French space agency CNES has also taken an initiative to help Fleet Space get the financial backing, and will be tracking and supporting the satellites built by Fleet Space. The company raised a $5m in Series A capital from Blackbird Ventures and Atlassian.

At the time Nardini founded the company, there was only one space startup in Australia. But with the success of Fleet Space, other budding entrepreneurs have also stepped into the same technology, and there are over 260 new startups that are working in the field of space research. In fact, the Australian government also announced in 2017 that it will be building the national space agency for Australia.

In September 2019, the company raised $7.35 million in the Series B funding led by Momenta Ventures and Horizons Ventures. Till now, Fleet has placed four CubeSat-class satellites in orbit and plans to send more satellites to the space to fulfil the demands.

Nardini’s love for space and satellites proves that the sky is the limit for her. She is an inspiring woman and a true example of women empowerment.

LightSail 2

LightSail 2 Successfully Sailing in Space through Sunlight

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This is true that all the living things get energy from the sunlight, and now, with the latest experiment carried out by The Planetary Society through its LightSail 2 spacecraft, it is confirmed again. Bill Nye, CEO of the non-profit organisation, announced today that the organisation’s experimental bread-loaf-sized, solar-powered spacecraft has successfully raised its orbit with the help of sunlight.

“Today, we declare mission success. We’re going to a higher orbital altitude without rocket fuel, just with the push of sunlight,” Nye said in a press conference.

The spacecraft was launched on 25th June from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, along with the other payloads, with the help of the SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket and was deployed in its solar sail on 23rd July. The solar sail is made of four triangular sails of shiny Mylar. Since the deployment of the craft, the team LightSail have been observing and supervising every movement of the spacecraft.

LightSail 2
Image Source: pressfrom.info

According to the team, LightSail 2 was moving slowly upward in the Earth’s orbit, and it has raised its apogee about 2 kilometres in the past four days. The 5 kilograms CubeSat had been keeping the records about the progress of the craft, and on July 2, it sent the information about its successful propelling to the Earth’s orbit.

The solar sail is 344 square foot in area. The light particle from the sun bounce from the shiny sails and generate a small amount of force. With the continues bouncing of the light, particles make this force even stronger and push the craft forward, raising the craft in its orbit, that too, without the use of fuel.

It has been over a decade since The Planetary Society has been working on the LightSail program, and the previous experiment with the LightSail was a fail. The current mission is crowdfunded through about 40,000 donations, raising $7 million.

LightSail 2 has become the first spacecraft of this size to rise its orbit with solar sailing, and the first to be propelled by solar sailing in the Earth orbit. Usually, the spacecraft make use of fuel engine to a propeller in the space, but the success of LightSail 2 is indicating that in future there can be big spacecraft that will consume the photons for propelling.

The orbit raised by LightSail 2 is slowly forming an elliptical shape, and since the orbit is more towards the Earth’s atmosphere, the LightSail team has estimated that it will be dying within a year. But the success of this experiment has raised new hopes for people.

Nasa Orion

NASA is All Set to Carry Out its Next Moon Mission with Orion Crew Capsule

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Fifty years ago the first moon mission took place and last week was nothing but a celebration of the 50th anniversary of the same. Along with celebrating the whole event, NASA also revealed that it is going to carry out another mission to the moon using its newly developed Orion spacecraft, that will return humans to the moon by 2024.

During the 50th anniversary event at the Kennedy Space Center, the agency confirmed that the Orion crew capsule is ready for its trip to the moon and it will be carrying out its first mission after June 2020.

In the first mission of Orion next year, i.e., Artemis 1, the spacecraft will not carry any humans to the moon. It will be propelled through Boeing‘s new Space Launch System and will spend three weeks in the space. During this time, it will stay in the orbit of the moon for over six days. The mission will also carry out a test on the spacecraft while returning to the earth. During the mission, the agency will be testing the thermal shielding of Orion the time it will be entering the atmosphere of the earth at the highest of speed. This very mission is estimated to cost a total of $20-30 billion.

Nasa Orion
Image source: wikimedia.org

In the second mission to the moon, i.e. Artemis 2, in 2022 the spacecraft will carry a proper crew, and later in 2024, with the mission Artemis 3, it will take the astronauts to the surface of the moon.

During the event, Vice President Mike Pence talked about the first successful moon mission and the spaceflight, Apollo 11, that first landed humans on the moon. He also talked about the new Orion spacecraft and the missions that it will be carrying out in the coming future.

“Thanks to the hard work of the men of NASA, men and women of NASA, and American industry, the Orion crew vehicle for the Artemis 1 mission is complete and ready to begin preparations for its historic first flight,” said Pence during his speech.

It won’t be the first time that Orion will go into space. It took its first four hours flight into space back in 2014. It was a test flight in which it took two complete rounds of the earth.

Along with the moon mission, NASA is also working with other private companies like SpaceX and Boeing for its other space missions. The first mission that Orion will carry out will only be possible in 2020 if Boeing builds its most powerful Space Launch System rocket on time.

Encouraging the astronauts and scientists present at the event, Pence also stated, “It will be American men and the first American woman who will step on the surface of the moon in the coming five years.”

Nasa to Fly Dragonfly a Drone-like Lander on Titan to Find the Traces of Life

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Our solar system and space beyond have always been the topic of interest for the humans. For a few years now, most of the big space agencies are exploring the Martian surface, and now, the American space organisation, NASA has decided to explore ‘Titan’, one of the 62 moons of Saturn.

Nasa has revealed that it will send a drone-like lander, named Dragonfly, on the surface of Titan, capable of flying 8 or 9 miles in an hour. The Dragonfly will be a 10-foot-long, and 10-foot-wide dual-quadcopter, similar to the size of the Mars rover and will be a look-alike of a giant drone.

Nas's drangonfly on Titan
Image Source: sciencemag.org

Since the Titan has the best environment for flying rather than walking or rolling over the surface, the drone is specifically designed to hop and fly over it. The gravity of Titan is equal to one-seventh of the Earth’s gravity and has a far thicker environment than that of the Earth, providing the suitable conditions for Dragonfly to fly in it.

According to Nasa, the drone will be exploring the surface of Titan and will discover places for landing over it. It will be collecting samples for research, observe the weather conditions and will notify the agency if it finds something unusual. The drone is equipped with drills and probes, to investigate the surface and has got cameras embedded to it, through which will it will be sending HD pictures of the objects found on Titan back to Nasa. Dragonfly will spend about 16 days at a single place and examine the environment. After 16 days, it will move further with the help of the eight rotors it possesses.

Elizabeth Zibi Turtle, the lead investigator of the mission, said during the announcement that Nasa will launch Dragonfly in 2026, which will land on the dune-filled equatorial region of Titan through a parachute. The drone will be back to Earth in 2034.

Nasa has already touched down the surface of Titan with the Huygens probe via the Cassini mission earlier, but according to Turtle, with Dragonfly, it will be a more in-depth mission and will discover major alien things on it.

“We know that Titan has rich organic material, very complex organic material on the surface. There’s energy in the form of sunlight, and we know there’s been water on the surface in the past. These ingredients, that we know, are necessary for the development of life, as we know it is sitting on the surface on Titan. They’ve been doing chemistry experiments, basically, for hundreds of millions of years, and Dragonfly is designed to go pick up the results of those experiments.” said Turtle.

With the rivers and other organic material found on Titan, it has always been considered as a prototype of Earth, before life on Earth. So the interest of the researchers has always been to find the traces of life over it.