{"id":546050,"date":"2026-07-17T12:58:09","date_gmt":"2026-07-17T12:58:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/546050\/"},"modified":"2026-07-17T12:58:09","modified_gmt":"2026-07-17T12:58:09","slug":"rocket-report-indias-vikram-1-nears-debut-flight-ast-to-become-rocket-company","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/546050\/","title":{"rendered":"Rocket Report: India&#8217;s Vikram-1 nears debut flight; AST to become rocket company?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>How many launches to build a data center megaconstellation? In a new feature, <a href=\"https:\/\/arstechnica.com\/space\/2026\/07\/how-hard-is-it-to-build-orbital-data-centers-actually\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Ars looks into the technical challenges<\/a> of building orbital data centers and assesses what it might take to build SpaceX\u2019s proposed 1 million satellite megaconstellation. The key to all of this is not radiation or the need to cool data centers in space. The single-most important factor is cheap access to space. For the purpose of the analysis, Ars modeled three scenarios: high-performing Starship and low-satellite mass; medium-performing Starship and satellite mass; and low-performing Starship and high-mass satellites.<\/p>\n<p>The numbers are pretty daunting \u2026 The optimistic scenario would require 17,500 Starship launches to deploy 1 million satellites. The most pessimistic scenario would require 77,000 total launches. Over a period of five years, by the way, for the pessimistic scenario that would be 42 Starship launches a day. As for total costs, including launches, satellites, and ground systems, under the most optimistic scenario the constellation could be deployed for $1.45 trillion. Pessimistically? Hold your breath: It\u2019s $9.8 trillion.<\/p>\n<p>NASA mission moves to Falcon Heavy. NASA\u2019s SunRISE (Sun Radio Interferometer Space Experiment) mission will launch on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket from the agency\u2019s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, <a href=\"https:\/\/science.nasa.gov\/blogs\/sunrise\/2026\/07\/13\/nasas-sunrise-mission-changes-launch-vehicle-to-spacex-falcon-heavy\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">the space agency said this week<\/a>. As part of the announcement, NASA did not announce a launch date for the heliophysics mission, which had originally been scheduled to launch on United Launch Alliance\u2019s Vulcan rocket.<\/p>\n<p>Six new eyes on the Sun \u2026 The mission is flying as a rideshare sponsored by the United States Space Force\u2019s Space Systems Command. SunRISE comprises six toaster-oven-size small satellites, or SmallSats, that will operate as one giant radio dish slightly above geosynchronous orbit (about 22,000 miles, or 35,000 kilometers, in altitude) to track the rumbles of radio bursts coming from within the Sun\u2019s atmosphere, or corona. (submitted by Tfargo04)<\/p>\n<p>Next three launches<\/p>\n<p>July 16: Starship | Flight Test 13 | Starbase, Texas | 22:45 UTC<\/p>\n<p>July 18: Vikram 1 | Aagaman test flight | Satish Dhawan Space Center, India | 06:00 UTC<\/p>\n<p>July 20: Falcon 9\u00a0| Starlink 17-39 | Vandenberg Space Force Base, Calif. | 14:00 UTC<\/p>\n<p>                        <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"120\" height=\"120\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/rocket.png\" class=\"center full\" alt=\"\"\/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"How many launches to build a data center megaconstellation? In a new feature, Ars looks into the technical&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":546051,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[85,46,141,145],"class_list":["post-546050","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-science","tag-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/546050","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=546050"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/546050\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/546051"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=546050"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=546050"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=546050"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}