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New Frontiers: U.S. Space Force, Zenno, and SpaceX Propel the Next Era of Space Innovation

The US Space Force is making headlines by awarding contracts to Viasat and Intelsat for new anti-jam communication satellites. These are part of a program to develop a jam-resistant satellite communication fleet, and it’s a pretty big investment—we’re talking hundreds of millions of dollars.On a global scale, there's some exciting news from Zenno Astronautics—they've become the first company to operate a superconducting product in space, which is a huge leap for space infrastructure technology.And if we zoom in a bit, there’s also a lot of buzz around SpaceX and its recent IPO. The company's shares have been soaring, and it’s causing a lot of excitement in the market.It’s definitely an exciting time in space industry! 

Breezing through the space environment of Barnard's Star b

The closest exoplanet to us, if we include only single stars like the Sun, is the planet around Barnard's Star, Barnard's Star-b ("BSb"). (The planet Promixa Centauri-b is closer, but Proxima Cen is part of a triple-star system with Alpha and Beta Centauri, and understanding the evolutionary development of the planet is more complicated.) BSb orbits at a distance similar to that of Mercury around the Sun, but Barnard's Star is a cool M-dwarf star and so despite the planet being close to the star it probably resides near the snow line – the distance where stellar irradiation is weak enough to allow volatile elements to condense onto the planet's surface. This makes BSb an especially interesting planet and possibly a keystone for future progress understanding planet formation and atmospheric evolution.

from Astronomy News - Space News, Exploration News, Earth Science News, Earth Science http://bit.ly/2VI9WzH

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