Really Rocket Science

If you’ve been in the satcom business for a while, you remember Loral’s problems with selling satellite technology to China about 10 years ago. The story made the front page of the New York Times 10 years ago:

The documents paint a fascinating portrait of the intense struggles surrounding Mr. Clinton last February as he weighed whether to allow the satellite launching and ignore the pleas of prosecutors and the probable outrage from some in Congress.

A top State Department official had warned White House staff members that the satellite company, Loral Space and Communications, engaged in ”unlawful” and ”criminal” activity by providing valuable help to the Chinese rocket program.

And the chairman of the company, Bernard L. Schwartz, combed a White House dinner on Feb. 5, looking for Samuel R. Berger, the national security adviser, to plead for a decision on the satellite launching, a decision worth tens of millions of dollars to the company.

As it all played out, with the company arguing it needed an immediate decision, the senior White House staff were concluding that the President’s broader strategy of engaging China should not be endangered by blocking the launching.

The impact of that scandal was far-reaching and still affects how satellite technology is exported — or not.  The spacecraft in question, Chinasat 8, was never delivered. What ever became of it? Space Systems/Loral sold it to Bermuda-based ProtoStar, modified it and just shipped it to Kourou for launch next month:

"Space Systems/Loral has been able to deliver a satellite customized to our requirements in a timely and professional manner," said Philip Father, chief executive officer of ProtoStar. "We have worked closely with SS/L throughout this project and are very impressed with the passion and commitment of all the engineers and technicians who have been involved."

The satellite, which was designed to meet the needs of both emerging and existing direct-to-home (DTH) operators in the Asian market as well as other broadband communication needs in the region, was completed for ProtoStar less than 17 months after the contract was signed. It is the first in a fleet of multiple satellites ProtoStar plans to launch that will enable its in-country partners to offer advanced satellite television services and powerful two-way broadband Internet access.
 
"ProtoStar I is the third satellite that SS/L has shipped for launch this year," said John Celli, president and chief operating officer of Space Systems/Loral. "It is rewarding to see the tangible evidence of our ability to deliver within commercial schedule constraints and to help our customers meet business plan requirements."

Space Systems/Loral was able to deliver the satellite in just over a year because the project involved modifications to an existing satellite, which ProtoStar purchased from its previous owner. SS/L then tailored the spacecraft to meet the defined power and footprint/coverage requirements of ProtoStar’s customers.

Now we read of the Protostar-1 satellite is not fully coordinated in Asia, causing quite a bit of friction, via Satellite Finance (subscription):

Confusion has broken out in the Asian satellite industry as Protostar-1 nears its launch at the end of June. Other Asian operators have expressed fears that Protostar-1 has not been properly configured to avoid interfering with the signals of other satellites close to its orbital slot at 98.5° East.

Speaking to SatelliteFinance, Peter Jackson, CEO of AsiaSat, said: "The Ku band is an issue, but it’s the C-Band on the Protostar satellite that’s going to be the real problem, it is going to interfere with a number of satellites. I know that the Chinese national operator has a problem because they are only a half a degree away with Chinasat 22, and Thuraya has a problem because they have a satellite right at 98.5°. New Skies will have issues as well."

Protostar is understood to be launching the satellite to the orbital slot belonging to Singapore. The Chinese Radio Regulatory Department has written to the Infocomm Development Authority in Singapore to express its concerns.

Jackson said that AsiaSat has had contact with Protostar over the issue, but that they have not been able to come to any definitive understanding on the matter. "When AsiaSat 4 launched we had to make changes to accommodate Thaicom, it’s just the way it works," he said. "I’d be very surprised if Singapore allows them launch as it stands. I know that if it were Hong Kong that was in the same position it would definitely not allow it."

Protostar could not be reached for comment on the issue. Protostar-1 is an SS/L built satellite with 16 Ku band transponders and 36 C-Band transponders, and its primary purpose is to provide capacity for DTH platforms in Asia.

This should be interesting. The co-passenger for next month’s launch is expected to be BADR-6 for Arabsat.

The ICO G1, launched last month, is referred to as the "world’s largest" by manufacturer Space Systems/Loral:

ICO G1 is a Loral-designed spacecraft that incorporates a 12-meter antenna reflector designed and built by Harris Corporation. The reflector utilizes a gold-plated mesh reflective surface and a unique new Harris design that allows a very large antenna reflector to stow safely and easily on the Loral 1300 satellite platform. The reflector size enables the increased performance typically required for mobile interactive media services.

ICO G1 is the largest commercial satellite launched to date, weighing nearly 15,000 pounds at liftoff, and measuring more than 27 feet high and over 100 feet wide, following solar array deployment.

Here’s the animation simulating deployment:

Q: How do you connect 1 billion more Africans to the Internet by 2012?

A: By Satellite, of course.

According to a story by Efem Nkanga in This Day (Nigeria), that will call for launching 20 satellites to do the job:

One billion Africans located in under-served rural and urban areas across the continent are set to benefit from an initiative powered by a non profit association of the international satellite industry called Global VSAT Forum to double the number of earth station terminals operating in Africa by 2012.

The worldwide Global body of firms involved in the business of delivering advanced digital fixed satellite unveiled these plans to newsmen at the ongoing Telecoms Africa forum in Cairo. Mr. Jeremy Rose, Chairman, International Development Initiatives, Global VSAT Forum,  who disclosed this initiative said that more than 20 satellites will be brought into service to connect Africa during the next five years to support this initiative. Rose added that to facilitate the industry’s offering, complimentary capacity building will be delivered to governments in Africa by the GVF. These initiatives according to him are being unveiled to support ongoing plans by the International Telecoms Federation to meet Africa’s  connectivity goals set during Connect Africa Summit held in Kigali, Rwanda in October, 2007.

The GSM Association had announced that its industry members planned to invest $50 billion between 2008 and 2012 in networks in Africa, covering 90 per cent of the population.

The Association announced today that the number of mobile connections in Africa has risen 70 million in the past 12 months to 282 million.

Mobile operators have ramped up investment in the region, extending GSM coverage to reach an additional 550,000 square kilometers occupied by 46 million people.

This broadening  coverage along with the falling cost of mobile communications has enabled millions of Africans to get connected.He added that the company’s goal was to provide enhanced opportunities in connecting the next billion people.Earlier, stakeholders had made calls for Africa to have Broadband connectivity at affordable prices that would drive growth in the continent.One of the ways of driving this uptake of broadband was the call for optic fiber deployment across the length and breadth of the continent.A highlight of the formal opening was the Press launch of ITU’s regional report, "African Telecommunication/ICT Indicators 2008: At a Crossroads". Following booming growth in the mobile telephony sector – which saw 65 million new subscribers in 2007- and an encouraging investment climate spurring economic development in the region, Africa is a continent on the move: the theme for ITU TELECOM AFRICA 2008.

That’s quite a challenge from the GVF. If I’m still around in 2012, I’ll do a follow-up post.

Look, I remember a forecast in June of 2001, by a market research company, that an addtional 500 geosynchronous satellites will be needed to satisfy demand.  Nearly 7 years later, I don’t see expansion of that magnitude.

Mars Madness is on the rise in Tucson, the Arizona Daily Star reports. That’s because on May 25th, NASA’s Phoenix Mars Lander is scheduled to touch down on the red planet. The event is significant in Tucson because the University of Arizona’s Lunar and Planetary Lab team is leading the mission’s science and built some of the instruments.

But the fever is spreading well beyond Arizona for this risky mission:

Fewer than half of attempts to land on Mars have succeeded, but planetary scientists leading the Phoenix Mars mission are cautiously optimistic. So far, all looks good, they say.

Public events to celebrate the landing are planned for at least 110 sites around the world, including London and Paris. There’s even a virtual landing bash planned, in Second Life, which is a virtual social world on the Internet.

Just how risky and difficult is it to put a lander on the surface of Mars? To answer that question, check out this excellent video from NASA’s Jet Propulsion laboratory. (NASA has done a fantastic job promoting the mission and landing in the style of a summer movie blockbuster):

The Phoenix Mars Mission website provides additional detail:

At 125 km (78 miles) above the surface, Phoenix will enter the thin martian atmosphere. It will slow itself down by using friction. A heat shield will protect the lander from the extreme temperatures generated during entry. Antennas located on the back of the shell which encases the lander will be used to communicate with one of three spacecraft currently orbiting Mars. These orbiters will then relay signals and landing info to Earth.

After the lander has decelerated to Mach 1.7 (1.7 times the speed of sound), the parachute is deployed. Shortly after the parachute is deployed, the heat shield is jettisoned, the landing radar is activated, and the lander legs are extended. The lander continues through the Martian atmosphere until it comes within 1 km (.6 miles) of the Martian surface. At this point, the lander separates itself from the parachute. It then throttles up its landing thrusters and decelerates.

When Phoenix is either at an altitude of 12 m (39 ft) or traveling at 2.4 m/s (7.9 ft/s), the spacecraft begins traveling at a constant velocity. The landing engines are turned off when sensors located on the footpads of the lander detect touchdown.

As we’ve mentioned, only half of all international attempts to land on Mars have succeeded. Back in 1999, the Mars Polar Lander (MPL) went missing as it entered Mars’s atmosphere, and its fate has been a mystery ever since. But now there is a chance for a member of the public to locate the missing spacecraft and help work out what went wrong, thanks to a new "Spot the Spacecraft" challenge: 

The High-Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE), based at the University of Arizona in Tucson, has a raft of images of the MPL’s projected landing area, but scans of the huge images came up blank.

So now, the HiRISE team’s blog has published 18 images, and has challenged the public to find the lost lander.

Can you find the MPL? The images can be viewed here. 

We’ll report more on the landing of the Phoenix Mars Lander after the 25th. 

We’ve long been fans of inflight broadband, ever since Ed blogged two years ago about his experience watching TV at 35,000 feet while  reflecting on the use of Connexion by Boeing.

Way back in September of 2006, when Boeing shut down Connexion, we reported that Panasonic was looking to get onboard with inflight broadband. It took them longer than we expected to book their flight, as it were, but now Panasonic and Intelsat have announced that they are teaming up to bring broadband to air travelers:

Panasonic, known for delivering state-of-the-art in-flight entertainment technology, is introducing an advanced satellite transmission platform that will allow airline passengers the ability to access Internetbased information and entertainment. The service, Panasonic eXConnect, provides passengers Internet connectivity.

The platform will leverage Intelsat’s existing GlobalConnexSM Broadband service that is available on Intelsat’s global fleet of 53 in-orbit satellites, and regional teleport facilities. By utilizing Intelsat’s existing infrastructure, Panasonic will be able to introduce eXConnect in key regions around the world, providing an efficient and cost-effective means to scale the network capacity as demand grows.

Panasonic eXConnect enables two-way broadband connectivity that provides a wide range of applications useful to both the passengers and crew such as VPN, live TV, shopping, streaming media, tele-medicine, operational applications and personal devices integrated to the airline’s in-flight entertainment systems. With data rates comparable to ground public WIFI hotspots, eXConnect offers airlines the opportunity to further differentiate their in-flight product with a valuable service to their passengers.

ARINC is also working to put a wifi cloud up there with the regular puffy whites. They introduced their own inflight broadband service in Germany back in March: 

ARINC’s Oi connectivity enables passengers to surf the Internet (by the hour, day, or flight leg), access e-mail during flight, chat over Instant Messenger, watch real-time news and sports flashes, hear bulletins—all on their own personal laptops. They can even watch and download the latest Podcasts. ARINC’s Oi technology makes optimum use of Inmarsat Swift satellite communication services.

Passengers merely switch on their PCs and can connect instantly via a wired or wireless cabin backbone to the Oi Web Portal. The Portal is fully customized to each airline’s requirements, supporting a combination of free view or paid applications. Oi will feature a range of price points to suit most budgets, and ARINC expects webmail prices will be under US$10 a flight, with larger attachments requiring an extra charge.

$10 bucks really isn’t that bad for email access per flight leg, considering Sebadoh recently shelled out $3 for a mere half ounce of peanuts that lasted about 2 minutes. 

What about the other services we’ve blogged about in the past, like the Row 44 platform being pursued by Alaska Airlines? We hear Row 44 is moving up, but it’s not yet full.

We spend a lot of time here on Really Rocket Science looking at new technology, telling jokes, and covering rocket launches. The human interest stories are rare – but incredibly important:

U.S. soldier Joseph Chavez couldn’t wipe the smile from his face at seeing his daughter Lilliana for the very first time on a video call via satellite uplink from Iraq.

“Oh wow, she’s so pretty,” a beaming Chavez said over and over from Baghdad as his wife Naomi held his sleeping one-day-old daughter up to the camera for him to see.

The video conference, organized by the American non-profit foundation Freedom Calls, was held in the basement of Vancouver’s St. Paul’s Hospital and attended by throngs of media, at least for the first few minutes. Chavez was projected on a large screen, fuzzy but clearly elated.

“Look at her, she’s beautiful,” he said. “She looks happy to be alive right now.”

Naomi, who lives in Vancouver, had talked to her husband after Lilliana’s birth and sent pictures from her computer, but he was still beside himself to see his new wife and even newer daughter live onscreen.

“I saw all the pictures of everyone else getting to hold her,” said Chavez. “I’m very jealous.”

Freedom Calls is the charity behind the very slick effort:

Freedom Calls Foundation uses high technology to keep U.S. soldiers abroad connected with their families.

The signal from Iraq is bounced off a satellite and picked up in Germany, where it is sent by fibre-optic cable to Atlanta, Ga., and then by high-speed Internet to families in the United States — and this time to Canada. The service is slick, with only a 600-millisecond lag, which is noticeable but not enough to scramble conversation.

“We can connect anywhere in the world via satellite, but this is our first-ever call to Canada,” said Freedom Calls spokeswoman Kathryn Hudacek.

“When soldiers go to Iraq they have a habit of leaving a lot of pregnant wives behind,” said Hudacek. “It’s a real deployment phenomenon.”

Freedom Calls organizes 2,000 video conferences a month and at least 200 are dads meeting new babies, she said.

One of these video conferences not only allowed a soldier to see his newborn, but to watch the actual birth. And this isn’t Freedom Call’s only schtick:

Satellite junkies with a conscience and some disposable income may have just found their perfect charity. You can donate here.

Ballistic re-entry, again. Yes, that’s the story here. But there’s more: did Anatoly Perminov, head of the Russian Federal Space Agency, really say what was attributed to him?

You know in Russia, there are certain bad omens about this sort of thing, but thank God that everything worked out successfully. Of course in the future, we will work somehow to ensure that the number of women will not surpass [the number of men]. This isn’t discrimination. I’m just saying that when a majority [of the crew] is female, sometimes certain kinds of unsanctioned behaviour or something else occurs, that’s what I’m talking about.

Does this imply the women were ganging up on the guy to "just get us home," or something? Unsanctioned behavior — could include "nagging," but I kind of doubt that. 

They experienced 8 to 10 times the forces of gravity, which is very serious, according to the next astronaut from Australia:

The steeper-than-normal angle of re-entry subjects the crew to enormous gravitational force, up to 10 times that which is experienced on the ground.

Nik Halik, an Australian adventurer and entrepreneur, has experienced such forces during his cosmonaut training at Star City, near Moscow.

"The force in your chest, it’s incredible," he said.

"It’s like a boa constrictor is just squeezing you and squeezing and you can hardly breathe.

"That’s why we do training here to make sure that our bodies can cope with the actual stresses because they are very, very excessive."

Mr Halik lives in a room on the floor below the quarantine area where the cosmonauts have been held since their return to Earth.

He has wanted to travel in space since he was four years old and he will soon get his wish. He graduates as a cosmonaut in September after five years of study and training.

Already, he’s been named as the back-up crew member for the next Soyuz mission, currently known as TMA-13.

"The back-up historically has the primary spot, the following flight, which in this case will be the spring of ’09 flight," he said.

"It’s incredibly exciting for an Australian civilian."

Astronaut Yi is recovering in a Moscow hospital and is expected back in South Korea next week:

When she was salvaged from the charred Soyuz space on the Kazahkstan steppe, Yi looked so exhausted that she was not able to walk by herself. “There was a shock during landing, and I’m having trouble with my sense of direction,” she told SBS TV as she was waiting to be airlifted by a military helicopter. Veteran crewmates Peggy Whitson of the United States and Yuri Malenchenko of Russia also looked worn out.

In a press conference held at the Kustanaj airport in Kazakhstan a few hours later, the 29-year-old Korean seemed to have regained some of her energy and cheerfulness. When asked about the most difficult part of her 12-day trip to the International Space Station, she said nothing was harder than the training she received on the ground.

“I have always said the spinning chair was most difficult for me,” she said in English. “Otherwise, it was all exciting and fantastic. The most impressive thing was flying in outer space, so now I’m little bit confused whether I can fly or not.”

"Der Junge aus Potsdam habe recht" — that’s what NASA said, as reported by the Potsdamer Neueste Nachrichten over the weekend. Translation: The boy from Potsdam is right:

Ein Potsdamer Schüler hat die Gefahr eines Asteroideneinschlags richtig berechnet und damit die Nasa blamiert. Was der 13-Jährige für das Jahr 2036 voraussagt, ist alles andere als beruhigend.

NASA figured there was a 1 in 45,000 chance the Apophis asteroid could collide with Earth. More like 1 in 450, according to Nico Marquardt. Here’s the story in English, via the AFP:

A 13-year-old German schoolboy corrected NASA’s estimates on the chances of an asteroid colliding with Earth, a German newspaper reported Tuesday, after spotting the boffins had miscalculated.

Nico Marquardt used telescopic findings from the Institute of Astrophysics in Potsdam (AIP) to calculate that there was a 1 in 450 chance that the Apophis asteroid will collide with Earth, the Potsdamer Neuerster Nachrichten reported.

NASA had previously estimated the chances at only 1 in 45,000 but told its sister organisation, the European Space Agency (ESA), that the young whizzkid had got it right.

The schoolboy took into consideration the risk of Apophis running into one or more of the 40,000 satellites orbiting Earth during its path close to the planet on April 13 2029.

Those satellites travel at 3.07 kilometres a second (1.9 miles), at up to 35,880 kilometres above earth — and the Apophis asteroid will pass by earth at a distance of 32,500 kilometres.

If the asteroid strikes a satellite in 2029, that will change its trajectory making it hit earth on its next orbit in 2036.

Both NASA and Marquardt agree that if the asteroid does collide with earth, it will create a ball of iron and iridium 320 metres (1049 feet) wide and weighing 200 billion tonnes, which will crash into the Atlantic Ocean.

The shockwaves from that would create huge tsunami waves, destroying both coastlines and inland areas, whilst creating a thick cloud of dust that would darken the skies indefinitely.

The 13-year old made his discovery as part of a regional science competition for which he submitted a project entitled: "Apophis — The Killer Astroid."

Paid my taxes the other day — yes, I had to pay. The forthcoming golden goose from the U.S. Treasury will act as a counter-balance, but I’m still paying up. Where does my money go?

The U.S. Defense Budget dwarfs hundreds of other counties’ budgets combined — in fact, the DoD overspent by $295 billion last year, reports the Christian Science Monitor.  Does that include the "black budget?" The New York Times did a great piece on it on April Fools Day:

The classified budget of the Defense Department, concealed from the public in all but outline, has nearly doubled in the Bush years, to $32 billion. That is more than the combined budgets of the Food and Drug Administration, the National Science Foundation and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

Those billions have expanded a secret world of advanced science and technology in which military units and federal contractors push back the frontiers of warfare. In the past, such handiwork has produced some of the most advanced jets, weapons and spy satellites, as well as notorious boondoggles.

Budget documents tell little. This year, for instance, the Pentagon says Program Element 0603891c is receiving $196 million but will disclose nothing about what the project does. Private analysts say it apparently aims at developing space weapons.

More than the FDA, NSF and NASA budget combined? Dude, that’s a black hole, which some find interesting. Hey, I’m all for space research and development, but a cure for cancer would be better 

More interesting, in my opinion, was the news from the ESA press release yesterday about a "certified monster" black hole:

A team of Japanese astronomers using ESA’s XMM-Newton, along with NASA and Japanese X-ray satellites, has discovered that our galaxy’s central black hole let loose a powerful flare three centuries ago.
 
The finding helps resolve a long-standing mystery: why is the Milky Way’s black hole so quiescent? The black hole, known as Sagittarius A-star (A*), is a certified monster, containing about 4 million times the mass of our Sun. Yet the energy radiated from its surroundings is thousands of millions of times weaker than the radiation emitted from central black holes in other galaxies.

"We have wondered why the Milky Way’s black hole appears to be a slumbering giant," says team leader Tatsuya Inui of Kyoto University in Japan. "But now we realise that the black hole was far more active in the past. Perhaps it’s just resting after a major outburst."

The observations, collected between 1994 and 2005, revealed that clouds of gas near the central black hole brightened and faded quickly in X-ray light as they responded to X-ray pulses emanating from just outside the black hole. When gas spirals inward toward the black hole, it heats up to millions of degrees and emits X-rays. As more matter piles up near the black hole, the X-ray output becomes greater. 
 
These X-ray pulses take 300 years to traverse the distance between the central black hole and a large cloud known as Sagittarius B2, so the cloud responds to events that occurred 300 years earlier.

Read more about the XMM-Newton.

Yesterday at 4:12 pm at Cape Canaveral, an Atlas 5 rocket successfully lifted ICO Global Communications‘ ICO G1 North American geosynchronous satellite, "a mobile communications satellite to assist and entertain Americans on the go."

The launch marked the first commercial flight in two years of an Atlast 5, and the carrying of its heaviest payload ever: 

 Weighing 14,625 pounds, the ICO G1 spacecraft was the heftiest payload ever launched by an Atlas rocket. Built by Space Systems/Loral, the craft stands over 27 feet tall, features a 39-foot-diameter mesh reflector antenna that will be unfurled in space and a pair of power-generating solar wings to span over 100 feet tip-to-tip once extended in orbit.

It’s a pretty bird, the G1:

 The ICO G 1 satellite belongs to the 2-GHz mobile systems, which are driving a growing segment of today’s satellite manufacturing industry.

ICO’s G 1 satellite is based on SS/L’s space-proven LS-1300 platform, which has an excellent record of reliable operation. Its high efficiency solar arrays and lightweight batteries are designed to provide uninterrupted electrical power. In all, SS/L satellites have amassed almost 1,200 years of reliable on-orbit service.

ICO G1 is a next-generation satellite designed to deliver a wide variety of interactive services to mobile and portable devices using ICO’s Mobile Interactive Media (ICO mim™).

The launch marks the first deployment of DVB-SH service in North America. DVB-SH is short for Digital Video Broadcasting – Satellite services to Handhelds; it’s "a physical layer standard for delivering IP based media content and data to handheld terminals such as mobile phones or PDAs, based on a hybrid satellite/terrestrial downlink."

ICO mim addresses a wide variety of consumers’ entertainment, information and two-way communication needs, including live and stored mobile TV in vehicles, interactive navigation, and roadside assistance, all with nationwide coverage.

ICO mim will also initially provide 10-15 channels of premium television content to portable, larger-screen (4.5- to 10-inch) user devices. Initial partners for the trial phase of ICO mim include Alcatel-Lucent.

For a demo video of ICO mim click here. To see the current state of DVB-H reployments, click here.

Here’s the launch video…