Archive for the ‘Satellites’ Category

Submarine Cable Cut Mystery Solved

Monday, April 14th, 2008

Earlier this year we discussed undersea fiber cables being cut in the Mediterranean. The event led to disruptions in 70% of Egypt’s Internet service (and lots of busy SES NEW SKIES sales offices). Now, thanks to satellite imagery, comes the swift hand of telecommunications justice:

Dubai authorities have impounded two ships suspected of damaging undersea telecom cables in the Middle East earlier this year. One of the ships has reportedly been released after paying for the damage. The cable cuts, which disrupted Internet traffic in much of the Middle East, India and Pakistan, sparked a flurry of conspiracy theories that the series of outages in the region were not a coincidence.

Reliance Globalcom, whose FLAG Telecom unit maintains the cables, contacted authorities after studying the satellite images of the ship movements around the area of undersea cable damage. The Hindu reports that Dubai Port Trust officials believe the two ships, MV Hounslow and MT Ann, improperly dropped anchor in the area. The cables then were damaged by "jerks and force of the ship(s)" the port said.

The action was taken after Reliance Globalcom provided details of its analysis of satellite images documenting the ship movements around the area of undersea cable damage. "The matter has been brought to the notice of appropriate authorities which are taking necessary action," the Reliance Globalcom official told The Hindu.

The National Terror Alert reports that a Korean ship was released after an official admitted that the vessel was in the area and made a payment of $60,000 to compensate FLAG Telecom for repairs. The second ship, which belongs to an Iraqi company, is still being held in Dubai, the report said, quoting Dubai police officials.

The news may put to rest a number of conspiracy theories, including the ever-popular Godzilla explanation.

Bosnian Phenomena

Thursday, April 10th, 2008

 

"Meteori padaju!!" That’s what Radivoje Lajic has been saying for months (that’s Croatian for "the meteors are falling"). The news item, via Daily News & Analysis:

A Bosnian man whose home has been hit an incredible five times by meteorites believes he is being targeted by aliens.

Experts at Belgrade University have confirmed that all the rocks Radivoje Lajic has handed over were meteorites. They are now investigating local magnetic fields to try and work out what makes the property so attractive to the heavenly bodies.

But Lajic, who has had a steel girder reinforced roof put on the house he owns in the northern village of Gornja Lamovite, has an alternative explanation.

He said: “I am obviously being targeted by extraterrestrials. I don’t know what I have done to annoy them but there is no other explanation that makes sense.”

The Daily Mail is reporting he thinks he’s being targeted by aliens. What are the odds of five meteorites hitting the same house? Must be astronomical. Although he’s got rock-solid evidence, could his neighbors be playing tricks on him?  Consider also the idea of the Bosnian Pyramids:

Inhabitants in Visoko have been fascinated by the hill for thousands of years. Anthropologists discovered that Visoko has a rich history and that it was the center of organized human settlements in the Middle Ages. German and Bosnian archeologists found 24 000 Neolithic artifacts which are 7 000 years old.

Visocica hill is 2120 ft (650 m) high and has a triangular form. Back in time, the medieval fortress was constructed by Bosnian kings at the top of the hill. The fortress was built over an old Roman Empire observation post which was made over the ruins of a prehistoric settlement. In other words, the hill can be used as a typical illustration of cultures building on top of other cultures.

There are no records of any civilizations in Europe attempting to build pyramids. Local and international experts dispute the theory about Bosnian pyramids. They claim that ancient civilizations in Bosnia were not capable of constructing colossal structures as the Bosinan pyramids.

However, Mr. Osmanagic claims that the hill has 4 perfectly formed slopes pointing toward the cardinal points, a plane top and an entrance complex (not yet discovered). 

Could have been built by extraterrestrials? Is Bosnia littered with space rocks? If you find this intriguing, attend the International Scientific Conference for the Bosnian Valley of the Pyramids this August, in Sarajevo.

 

1400-megapixel Camera to Change View of Universe

Wednesday, April 9th, 2008

 

How many pixels? 1400-megapixel? That’s 1.4 billion pixels, shutterbugs. And it won’t fit in your pocket.

The camera is part of the Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System (Pan-STARRS), which promises to change our view of the Universe, producing the largest and most detailed map of the heavens ever produced. Defense Industry Daily reports the project is about to get $8 million in funding from the U.S. Air Force:

Kirkland AFB, NM recently gave the University of Hawaii of Honolulu, Hawaii a modified contract for $8 million for the Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System (PanSTARRS) multi-year program. The initial effort to develop and deploy a telescope data management system was awarded via a Grant to the University of Hawaii (considered a Minority Institute) and “as the various phases progressed, the Air Force determined that a Cooperative Agreement would be the more appropriate instrument as now we would be substantially involved.” At this time all $8 million has been committed (FA9451-06-2-0338, P00002).

Located on top of a dormant volcano in Hawaii, the Pan-STARRS telescope will survey the visible sky, taking up to 1,000 exposures per night. In fact, this one telescope may be able to discover up to five times as many near-Earth asteroids as all present survey telescopes combined.

 

 Check out this page for a comparison of what other observation platforms/systems can see: Hubble, Subaru, Pan-STARRS and Palomar Sky Survey. This is an amazing telescope, with 400 times the sensitivity of the Palomar Sky Survey.

Mars Colony

Tuesday, April 1st, 2008

Screw $200,000 sub-orbital flights, when you can go to Mars. You heard me right – Mars:

Earth has issues, and it’s time humanity got started on a Plan B. So, starting in 2014, Virgin founder Richard Branson and Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin will be leading hundreds of users on one of the grandest adventures in human history: Project Virgle, the first permanent human colony on Mars.

Using their massive combined wealth, Branson, Page, and Brin will begin settling Mars in 2014. Worried by the coming climate crisis and aided by dramatic advances in spacecraft development and new Mars discoveries, the team is convinced the project is doable in the next 6-8 years. The team’s scientists have already chosen a location:

Our landing site is located on Lunae Planum on the northwest side of Kasei Valles. Lunae Planum marks the transition between the high Tharsis rise, a giant volcanic bulge, and the northern lowland plains. This region shows many signs of significant crustal deformation and other structures that are likely caused by ice. Scientists have hypothesized that this area’s valleys and ridges (called "fretted terrain") may have developed as icy debris flowed onto the northern plains eons ago, during the great Martian flood epoch. It’s an ideal place for our settlement, because of the likelihood of both subsurface water and nearby lava tubes and pits; mild weather (in Martian terms) due to its proximity to the equator; and proximity to Kasei Valles, which, after terraformation, will be highly attractive shorefront property. The Virgle 1 should settle down not far from Chryse Planitia, the Plains of Gold, where the Viking 1 spacecraft landed on July 20, 1976.

Watch Branson’s introductory video:

In other news, G-Mail announced a much anticipated custom time feature, TechCrunch is suing Facebook, and today marks the 500th anniversary of a major holiday.

Cassini Tastes Organic Material

Thursday, March 27th, 2008

This isn’t a Whole Foods ad. NASA’s Cassini spacecraft “tasted” a surprising composition of organic materials erupting from Saturn’s moon, Enceladus, during a close flyby on March 12:

New heat maps of the surface show higher temperatures than previously known in the south polar region, with hot tracks running the length of giant fissures. Additionally, scientists say the organics “taste and smell” like some of those found in a comet. The jets themselves harmlessly peppered Cassini, exerting measurable torque on the spacecraft, and providing an indirect measure of the plume density.

“A completely unexpected surprise is that the chemistry of Enceladus, what’s coming out from inside, resembles that of a comet,” said Hunter Waite, principal investigator for the Cassini Ion and Neutral Mass Spectrometer at the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio. “To have primordial material coming out from inside a Saturn moon raises many questions on the formation of the Saturn system.”

“Enceladus is by no means a comet. Comets have tails and orbit the sun, and Enceladus’ activity is powered by internal heat while comet activity is powered by sunlight. Enceladus’ brew is like carbonated water with an essence of natural gas,” said Waite.

The Ion and Neutral Mass Spectrometer saw a much higher density of volatile gases, water vapor, carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide, as well as organic materials, some 20 times denser than expected. This dramatic increase in density was evident as the spacecraft flew over the area of the plumes.

The food metaphors don’t stop with “Whole Foods.” Apparently we have a “recipe for life:”

“Enceladus has got warmth, water and organic chemicals, some of the essential building blocks needed for life,” Dennis Matson, Cassini project scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, said in the statement. “We have quite a recipe for life on our hands, but we have yet to find the final ingredient, liquid water.”

Saturn’s moons have long been of interest to scientists, who say the largest, Titan, may resemble an early version of Earth, providing clues to how the planet developed. Enceladus, the sixth-largest moon, had already surprised scientists when in 2005 they detected a “significant atmosphere.”

“How I Lost a Billion Dollars in My Spare Time”

Tuesday, March 18th, 2008

Typically well done obituary in Wednesday’s New York Times:

Arthur C. Clarke, Premier Science Fiction Writer, Dies at 90

By GERALD JONAS

Published: March 19, 2008

Arthur C. Clarke, a writer whose seamless blend of scientific expertise and poetic imagination helped usher in the space age, died early Wednesday in Colombo, Sri Lanka, where he had lived since 1956. He was 90.

Rohan de Silva, an aide, confirmed the death and said Mr. Clarke had been experiencing breathing problems, The Associated Press reported. He had suffered from post-polio syndrome for the last two decades.

The author of almost 100 books, Mr. Clarke was an ardent promoter of the idea that humanity’s destiny lay beyond the confines of Earth. It was a vision served most vividly by “2001: A Space Odyssey,” the classic 1968 science-fiction film he created with the director Stanley Kubrick and the novel of the same title that he wrote as part of the project.

His work was also prophetic: his detailed forecast of telecommunications satellites in 1945 came more than a decade before the first orbital rocket flight.

Other early advocates of a space program argued that it would pay for itself by jump-starting new technology. Mr. Clarke set his sights higher. Borrowing a phrase from William James, he suggested that exploring the solar system could serve as the “moral equivalent of war,” giving an outlet to energies that might otherwise lead to nuclear holocaust.

Mr. Clarke’s influence on public attitudes toward space was acknowledged by American astronauts and Russian cosmonauts, by scientists like the astronomer Carl Sagan and by movie and television producers. Gene Roddenberry credited Mr. Clarke’s writings with giving him courage to pursue his “Star Trek” project in the face of indifference, even ridicule, from television executives.

In his later years, after settling in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), Mr. Clarke continued to bask in worldwide acclaim as both a scientific sage and the pre-eminent science fiction writer of the 20th century. In 1998, he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II.

Mr. Clarke played down his success in foretelling a globe-spanning network of communications satellites. “No one can predict the future,” he always maintained. But as a science fiction writer he couldn’t resist drawing up timelines for what he called “possible futures.” Far from displaying uncanny prescience, these conjectures mainly demonstrated his lifelong, and often disappointed, optimism about the peaceful uses of technology — from his calculation in 1945 that atomic-fueled rockets could be no more than 20 years away to his conviction in 1999 that “clean, safe power” from “cold fusion” would be commercially available in the first years of the new millennium.

Popularizer of Science

Mr. Clarke was well aware of the importance of his role as science spokesman to the general population: “Most technological achievements were preceded by people writing and imagining them,” he noted. “I’m sure we would not have had men on the Moon,” he added, if it had not been for H. G. Wells and Jules Verne. “I’m rather proud of the fact that I know several astronauts who became astronauts through reading my books.”

Arthur Charles Clarke was born on Dec. 16, 1917, in the seaside town of Minehead, Somerset, England. His father was a farmer; his mother a post office telegrapher. The eldest of four children, he was educated as a scholarship student at a secondary school in the nearby town of Taunton. He remembered a number of incidents in early childhood that awakened his scientific imagination: exploratory rambles along the Somerset shoreline, with its “wonderland of rock pools”; a card from a pack of cigarettes that his father showed him, with a picture of a dinosaur; the gift of a Meccano set, a British construction toy similar to American Erector Sets.

He also spent time, he said, “mapping the moon” through a telescope he constructed himself out of “a cardboard tube and a couple of lenses.” But the formative event of his childhood was his discovery, at age 13 — the year his father died — of a copy of Astounding Stories of Super-Science, then the leading American science fiction magazine. He found its mix of boyish adventure and far-out (sometimes bogus) science intoxicating.

While still in school, he joined the newly formed British Interplanetary Society, a small band of sci-fi enthusiasts who held the controversial view that space travel was not only possible but could be achieved in the not-so-distant future. In 1937, a year after he moved to London to take a civil service job, he began writing his first science fiction novel, a story of the far, far future that was later published as “Against the Fall of Night” (1953).

Mr. Clarke spent World War II as an officer in the Royal Air Force. In 1943 he was assigned to work with a team of American scientist-engineers who had developed the first radar-controlled system for landing airplanes in bad weather. That experience led to Mr. Clarke’s only non-science fiction novel, “Glide Path” (1963). More important, it led in 1945 to a technical paper, published in the British journal Wireless World, establishing the feasibility of artificial satellites as relay stations for Earth-based communications.

The meat of the paper was a series of diagrams and equations showing that “space stations” parked in a circular orbit roughly 22,240 miles above the equator would exactly match the Earth’s rotation period of 24 hours. In such an orbit, a satellite would remain above the same spot on the ground, providing a “stationary” target for transmitted signals, which could then be retransmitted to wide swaths of territory below. This so-called geostationary orbit has been officially designated the Clarke Orbit by the International Astronomical Union.

Decades later, Mr. Clarke called his Wireless World paper “the most important thing I ever wrote.” In a wry piece entitled, “A Short Pre-History of Comsats, Or: How I Lost a Billion Dollars in My Spare Time,” he claimed that a lawyer had dissuaded him from applying for a patent. The lawyer, he said, thought the notion of relaying signals from space was too far-fetched to be taken seriously.

But Mr. Clarke also acknowledged that nothing in his paper — from the notion of artificial satellites to the mathematics of the geostationary orbit — was new. His chief contribution was to clarify and publicize an idea whose time had almost come: it was a feat of consciousness-raising of the kind he would continue to excel at throughout his career.

A Fiction Career Is Born

The year 1945 also saw the start of Mr. Clarke’s career as a fiction writer. He sold a short story called “Rescue Party” to the same magazine — now re-titled Astounding Science Fiction — that had captured his imagination 15 years earlier.

For the next two years Mr. Clarke attended King’s College, London, on the British equivalent of a G.I. Bill scholarship, graduating in 1948 with first-class honors in physics and mathematics. But he continued to write and sell stories, and after a stint as assistant editor at the scientific journal Physics Abstracts, he decided he could support himself as a free-lance writer. Success came quickly. His primer on space flight, “The Exploration of Space,” became an American Book-of-the-Month Club selection.

Over the next two decades he wrote a series of nonfiction bestsellers as well as his best-known novels, including “Childhood’s End” (1953) and “2001: A Space Odyssey” (1968). For a scientifically trained writer whose optimism about technology seemed boundless, Mr. Clarke delighted in confronting his characters with obstacles they could not overcome without help from forces beyond their comprehension.

In “Childhood’s End,” a race of aliens who happen to look like devils imposes peace on an Earth torn by Cold War tensions. But the aliens’ real mission is to prepare humanity for the next stage of evolution. In an ending that is both heartbreakingly poignant and literally earth-shattering, Mr. Clarke suggests that mankind can escape its suicidal tendencies only by ceasing to be human.

“There was nothing left of Earth,” he wrote. “It had nourished them, through the fierce moments of their inconceivable metamorphosis, as the food stored in a grain of wheat feeds the infant plant while it climbs towards the Sun.”

The Cold War also forms the backdrop for “2001.” Its genesis was a short story called “The Sentinel,” first published in a science fiction magazine in 1951. It tells of an alien artifact found on the Moon, a little crystalline pyramid that explorers from Earth destroy while trying to open. One explorer realizes that the artifact was a kind of fail-safe beacon; in silencing it, human beings have signaled their existence to its far-off creators.

Enter Stanley Kubrick

In the spring of 1964, Stanley Kubrick, fresh from his triumph with “Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb,” met Mr. Clarke in New York, and the two agreed to make the “proverbial really good science fiction movie” based on “The Sentinel.” This led to a four-year collaboration; Mr. Clarke wrote the novel and Mr. Kubrick produced and directed the film; they are jointly credited with the screenplay.

Many reviewers were puzzled by the film, especially the final scene in which an astronaut who has been transformed by aliens returns to orbit the Earth as a “Star-Child.” In the book he demonstrates his new-found powers by detonating from space the entire arsenal of Soviet and United States nuclear weapons. Like much of the plot, this denouement is not clear in the film, from which Mr. Kubrick cut most of the expository material.

As a fiction writer, Mr. Clarke was often criticized for failing to create fully realized characters. HAL, the mutinous computer in “2001,” is probably his most “human” creation: a self-satisfied know-it-all with a touching but misguided faith in his own infallibility.

If Mr. Clarke’s heroes are less than memorable, it’s also true that there are no out-and-out villains in his work; his characters are generally too busy struggling to make sense of an implacable universe to engage in petty schemes of dominance or revenge.

Mr. Clarke’s own relationship with machines was somewhat ambivalent. Although he held a driver’s license as a young man, he never drove a car. Yet he stayed in touch with the rest of the world from his home in Sri Lanka through an ever-expanding collection of up-to-date computers and communications accessories. And until his health declined, he was an expert scuba diver in the waters around Sri Lanka.

He first became interested in diving in the early 1950s, when he realized that he could find underwater, he said, something very close to the weightlessness of outer space. He settled permanently in Colombo, the capital of what was then Ceylon, in 1956. With a partner, he established a guided diving service for tourists and wrote vividly about his diving experiences in a number of books, beginning with “The Coast of Coral” (1956).

Of his scores of books, some like “Childhood’s End,” have been in print continuously. His works have been translated into some 40 languages, and worldwide sales have been estimated at more than $25 million.

In 1962 he suffered a severe attack of polio. His apparently complete recovery was marked by a return to top form at his favorite sport, table tennis. But in 1984 he developed post-polio syndrome, a progressive condition characterized by muscle weakness and extreme fatigue. He spent the last years of his life in a wheelchair.

Clarke’s Three Laws

Among his legacies are Clarke’s Three Laws, provocative observations on science, science fiction and society that were published in his “Profiles of the Future” (1962):

¶“When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.”

¶“The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.”

¶“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”

Along with Verne and Wells, Mr. Clarke said his greatest influences as a writer were Lord Dunsany, a British fantasist noted for his lyrical, if sometimes overblown, prose; Olaf Stapledon, a British philosopher who wrote vast speculative narratives that projected human evolution to the farthest reaches of space and time; and Herman Melville’s “Moby-Dick.”

While sharing his passions for space and the sea with a worldwide readership, Mr. Clarke kept his emotional life private. He was briefly married in 1953 to an American diving enthusiast named Marilyn Mayfield; they separated after a few months and were divorced in 1964, having had no children.

One of his closest relationships was with Leslie Ekanayake, a fellow diver in Sri Lanka, who died in a motorcycle accident in 1977. Mr. Clarke shared his home in Colombo with his friend’s brother, Hector, his partner in the diving business; Hector’s wife, Valerie; and their three daughters.

Mr. Clarke reveled in his fame. One whole room in his house — which he referred to as the Ego Chamber — was filled with photos and other memorabilia of his career, including pictures of him with Yuri Gagarin, the first man in space, and Neil Armstrong, the first man to walk on the moon.

Mr. Clarke’s reputation as a prophet of the space age rests on more than a few accurate predictions. His visions helped bring about the future he longed to see. His contributions to the space program were lauded by Charles Kohlhase, who planned NASA’s Cassini mission to Saturn and who said of Mr. Clarke, “When you dream what is possible, and add a knowledge of physics, you make it happen.”

At the time of his death he was working on another novel, “The Last Theorem,” Agence France-Presse reported. “ The Last Theorem’ has taken a lot longer than I expected,” the agency quoted him as saying. “That could well be my last novel, but then I’ve said that before.” 

 

On to the next dimension, Sir Arthur.

 

Spitzer’s New Look

Monday, March 10th, 2008

This is not about my governor.

We’re talking about one of our favorite space instruments, the Spitzer Space Telescope. They’ve got a new feature on their site, one where you can zoom in and pan on some very cool space images.

 

 

Be sure the check out some of the animations. I like "Spitzer’s Delicate Ring Flower:"

NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope finds a delicate flower in the Ring Nebula, as shown in this animation. The outer shell of this planetary nebula looks surprisingly similar to the delicate petals of a camellia blossom. A planetary nebula is a shell of material ejected from a dying star. Located about 2,000 light years from Earth in the constellation Lyra, the Ring Nebula is also known as Messier Object 57 and NGC 6720. It is one of the best examples of a planetary nebula and a favorite target of amateur astronomers.

The "ring" is a thick cylinder of glowing gas and dust around the doomed star. As the star begins to run out of fuel, its core becomes smaller and hotter, boiling off its outer layers.

Spitzer’s infrared array camera detected this material expelled from the withering star. Previous images of the Ring Nebula taken by visible-light telescopes usually showed just the inner glowing loop of gas around the star. The outer regions are especially prominent in this new image because Spitzer sees the infrared light from hydrogen molecules. The molecules emit infrared light because they have absorbed ultraviolet radiation from the star or have been heated by the wind from the star.

NASA called it a celestial valentine.

The candles are lit, the champagne is on ice. All you need now are flowers and a ring. This Valentine’s Day, NASA’s Spitzer and Cassini spacecraft provide you with both, in two engaging new images.

NASA’s Cassini-Huygens mission and Spitzer Space Telescope have captured images of Saturn’s rings and the Ring Nebula, respectively, to bring home spectacular views of two of the most looked-at objects in the sky. The Cassini image shows a detailed color mosaic of Saturn’s shimmering rings. Spitzer imaged the outer shell of the Ring Nebula, which looks surprisingly similar to the delicate petals of a camellia blossom. 

 

Heavy, Heavy Jules Verne

Wednesday, March 5th, 2008
  1. Led Zeppelin: "Stairway To Heaven"
  2. John Lennon: "Imagine
  3. Mika: "Grace Kelly" 
  4. Louis Armstrong: "What A Wonderful World"
  5. Avril Lavigne: "Girlfriend"

Those were the top five songs submitted by students from member states in the European Space Agency’s competition to determine which songs get included in a playlist being carried by the ESA’s Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV). The songs will be download and enjoyed by the astronauts. Not sure if the RIAA let this one through. Here’s the winning playlist, sumitted by 14-year-old Therese Miljeteig of Norway:

The Beatles: "Here Comes The Sun" 
Frank Sinatra: "Come Fly With Me" 
Elton John: "Rocket Man" 
Joe Cocker and Jennifer Warnes: "Up Where We Belong"
John Lennon: "Imagine"
Irene Cara: "What A Feeling" (from Flashdance)
Dire Straits: "Walk of Life"
Celine Dion: "Fly"
Status Quo: "Rockin’ All Over The World" 
R Kelly: "I Believe I Can Fly"

The ATV, the "Jules Verne," will also carry become the Ariane 5’s heaviest payload at 20.7 tons when it launches this weekend (9 March 2008) from Europe’s Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana.

Wait a minute. Was that 20.7 tons?! That’s got to be double their heaviest payload ever. But if you think about it, the previous record was for launching into geosynchronous transfer orbit, which is much, much higher than the International Space Station’s.

According to yesterday’s piece in the New York Times, this increases the ESA’s ISS participation substantially:

Jean-Jacques Dordain, director general of the European Space Agency, said the inauguration of A.T.V. flights — along with last month’s delivery of the Columbus science module and activation of a European control center — cements Europe’s major new role in space.

"This makes us full partners and a significant player in the space station and space in general," Mr. Dordain said of his organization, which represents 17 European nations. The supply vehicle, Columbus laboratory and other components represent Europe’s investment of more than $7 billion in the station project.

Jules Verne and at least four spacecraft like it are to be launched to the station about every 18 months. Until now, American space shuttles and Russian Progress cargo ships have been the main lifeline to the station.

Michael Suffredini, NASA station program manager, noted that the European craft carries almost three times as much cargo as a Progress and will have an increasingly significant role. "It will be most important after 2010, when the space shuttle retires," he said.

The Jules Verne is the first fully automatic cargo spacecraft of its kind. After launch, it is designed to fly itself to the vicinity of the space station and use a unique system of laser-optical sensors to rendezvous and dock with no human assistance.

The ESA published a great video on the project. Enjoy:

 

Britain – a space power?

Monday, March 3rd, 2008

Well, sort of. With a little investment, the Brits could be an important player in space exploration and business:

Britain can play an important role in space exploration by exploiting its skills in the satellite sector rather than joining the competition in manned space flights, according to David Williams, head of Avanti, a satellite communications company. "There aren’t unlimited resources – we have to prioritise in areas where we have an economic advantage," he said.

Britain should be creating the communications infrastructure that will be needed as exploration expands deeper into space, he said. Countries such as the US, China, India and Russia, as well as the European Space Agency, are working on deep-space exploration. "If mankind is going to exploit the resources of the solar system, you are going to have to travel over very long distances and you are going to have to communicate over very long distances and you will need a network of data-relay satellites. The UK has a big advantage. We have the opportunity to control the space internet, which is going to be this network of data-relay satellites."

As The Guardian explains, these hopes are part of the government’s space strategy, drawn up by the British National Space Centre, which aims to double the number of British companies involved in the space business by 2012. Unfortunately, a trip to the moon is NOT part of the plan:

However, many space enthusiasts will be disappointed to learn that the plan has little to say about long-held aspirations for a British astronaut, though officials are to launch a review of the costs and possible benefits of human spaceflight.

In the 1960s ministers opted out of all crewed space missions, a stance governments have maintained since, but last year several key groups of experts, including the Commons science committee and a panel commissioned by the BNSC, warned that Britain risked being left behind if it did not end its long-standing opposition.

The failure to back a British astronaut dismayed some experts who believe Britain has missed any chance of being involved in European and Nasa plans to send humans back to the moon.

"There’s no commitment at all from this strategy. We’re the only developed nation that doesn’t have an astronaut, despite the fact that we’re the fifth largest economy," said Nick Spall of the British Interplanetary Society, who has been leading a campaign for a British astronaut.

"The government has missed a huge trick in terms of being able to offer inspiration to young people. In particular the chances of the UK contributing to a return to the moon, from a human spaceflight point of view, are very limited now. If we don’t have an astronaut with spaceflight experience we won’t get a look in on either of those missions."

Instead of "catching up" with other national manned space programs, Britain is going to try to conquer what it beleives to be an emerging focus of space research – climate change and disaster warning/relief:

The threat of climate change to planet Earth is to become the cornerstone of Britain’s role in the heavens, following an extensive review of space policy. British experts will develop satellites and other sophisticated technology capable of gazing back at Earth and taking the pulse of the planet from orbit, by monitoring melting ice sheets, dying rainforests and violent storms, under plans to be published by the government today.

The satellites will help create an early warning system for natural disasters, including hurricanes and tsunamis, and help to police international carbon-cutting agreements, such as pledges to avoid deforestation in some of the world’s environmental hotspots.

The move is at the heart of the government’s space strategy, drawn up by the British National Space Centre, which aims to double the number of British companies involved in the space business by 2012.

Under the plans Britain will become home to a major new European Space Agency facility based at Harwell in Oxfordshire. It will be dedicated to understanding climate change from space and developing robotics for space exploration. Britain is the only major contributor to the ESA that does not yet have its own facility.

According to BNSC officials, Earth observation from space is prioritised to help Britain become a hub for expertise in environmental science and disaster relief. During the 1990s natural disasters killed half a million people and caused £380bn of damage. Some 80% of those disasters were weather related, the report states.

It says: "Global satellite-based monitoring systems underpin our understanding of the health of the planet, alert us to dangers and speed up our responses. Satellites have a significant role in accurately assessing changes in sea [level] and temperature, the melting ice caps, and the effects of solar activity on the Earth and its environment."

Kizuna: The Big Kahuna in Satcom Bandwidth

Sunday, March 2nd, 2008

 

JAXA‘s new spacecraft, launched via an H-IIA rocket last week, promises 155-Mbps downlink and 6-Mbps uplink speeds:

It is expected that this information and telecommunications network’s speed and capacity will be much higher than anything achieved previously. KIZUNA satellite communication system aims for a maximum speed of 155Mbps (receiving) / 6Mbps (transmitting) for households with 45-centimetre aperture antennas (the same size as existing Communications Satellite antennas), and ultra-high speed 1.2 Gbps communication for offices with five-meter antennas.

In addition to establishing a domestic ultra high speed Internet network, the project also aims to construct ultra high speed international Internet access, especially with Asian Pacific countries and regions that are more closely related to Japan.

KIZUNA project is responsible for the demonstration of the validity and usefulness of technologies related to large-capacity data communications in our space infrastructure project, "i-Space," the purpose of which is to promote the use of satellites in such fields as Internet communications, education, medicine, disaster measures and Intelligent Transport Systems.

JAXA’s been working on this "i-space project" for a while now:

The Japanese Government announced in January 2001 that Japan becomes one of the most advanced countries in the world in the field of Information Technology (IT). They also set a ambitious target to launch an ultra-high speed Internet satellite (i.e. WINDS) by 2005 and completes verification testing of its function.

Recognizing the importance of this commitment toward an advanced information society and in response to a growing social demand to realize broadband communications environment and advanced mobile communications, JAXA proposes a new space project named "i-Space Project". The i-Space Project intends to make contribution to a revolutionized information society, and is accomplished by developing new space-based communication capabilities effectively integrated with ground communication infrastructure. It is also promoted by demonstrating an experiment(s) to prove its effectiveness in as many space-based application areas as possible.

Here’s the launch video: