Really Rocket Science

U.C. Berkeley astronomy professor Imke de Pater tells Red Orbit:

The newly discovered outer ring of Uranus is bright blue, for the same reason the Earth’s sky is blue — it is made up of tiny particles, astronomers said on Thursday.

It is "strikingly similar" to Saturn’s outer ring, which astronomers last month confirmed was probably generated by one of the planet’s moons, Enceladus.

Like Saturn’s ring, the Uranus ring also has a small moon in it, called Mab. But Mab is too small and too cold to be spewing a geyser of ice that contributes to the ring as Enceladus is now believed to be doing.

"The outer ring of Saturn is blue and has Enceladus right smack at its brightest spot, and Uranus is strikingly similar, with its blue ring right on top of Mab’s orbit," said Imke de Pater, a professor of astronomy at the University of California Berkeley, who helped lead the study.

"I think there is no chance that the blue ring is caused by geyser activity," added de Pater, whose report is published in Friday’s issue of the journal Science.

Originally named after King George III of England, Uranus is the 4^th largest planet by mass. Found some animation and images of interest, courtesy of the SETI Institute.

The China story is getting more interesting. I only found out a couple of days ago that China has a space program, and some pretty ambitious plans to go along with it. At the time I wasn’t sure how serious the news was as far as the U.S. space program is concerned. Now I find out, via The Write Stuff again, that apparently it’s serious enough that NASA may send someone to China to check things out.

Chinese space officials have invited NASA Administrator Michael Griffin to visit their country in the fall, possibly as early as September.   

During an informal visit to NASA headquarters in Washington, April 3, Luo Ge, vice administrator of the China National Space Administration, met with Michael F. O’Brien, NASA associate administrator for external relations, to discuss a potential trip by Griffin to meet with Chinese space officials and visit their facilities, possibly as early as September.

“I made a joke with Mr. O’Brien that if we need to get married some day, we have to meet; otherwise we cannot get married,” Luo said in an interview here following his morning keynote speech April 5 at the 22nd National Space Symposium. Luo described the visit with O’Brien as “only a drop in” with two purposes:” to see an old friend” and to discuss Griffin visiting China.

Marriage proposals aside, that’s rather interesting news. Granted, it’s only an invitation, I haven’t heard whether it’s been accepted. But Lou did speak earlier about China’s willingness for space collaboration, and given Tom DeLay’s rather dire warning about the "space race" with China, it might be smart for NASA to at least give the Chinese program the once over; especially considering who else could be entering the "space race." 

If Matt Tompkins over at DefenseTech.Org is right when he says "Don’t Freak" over reports that China is set to overtake the U.S. in technology development, NASA may find it has nothing to worry about.  And with China concerns about its U.S. debt holdings, and  news that Iran is entering the space race too, some kind of U.S. – China partnership could be advantageous for both.

Mind you, I’m just a newbie who’s trying to sort all this stuff out. And I wouldn’t’ mind a little help.

It’s been just over a year since Nicholas Negroponte announced at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland the goal of developing a $100 laptop not for the marketplace, but to be distributed to schools globally to provide "children around the world with new opportunities to explore, experiment, and express themselves."

What does the initiative have to do with satellites or rocket science? Indirectly, everything. Such initiatives excite interest in technology in general– and the opportunities for education and discovery provided to so many children by the $100 laptop will play a critical role in bringing a creative and educated individuals to the next generation’s workplace, regardless of industry.

But for today, we’ve filed this under "cool stuff," because the technology itself is cool:

The proposed $100 machine will be a Linux-based, with a dual-mode display—both a full-color, transmissive DVD mode, and a second display option that is black and white reflective and sunlight-readable at 3× the resolution. The laptop will have a 500MHz processor and 128MB of DRAM, with 500MB of Flash memory; it will not have a hard disk, but it will have four USB ports. The laptops will have wireless broadband that, among other things, allows them to work as a mesh network; each laptop will be able to talk to its nearest neighbors, creating an ad hoc, local area network. The laptops will use innovative power (including wind-up)

A wind-up option would be great on my own PC, which always seems to die on long flights just when I’ve decided to turn away from Minesweeper and try to get some work done.

We’ll be tracking the latest news on the $100 Laptop project as news becomes available, because the potential is huge for the technology to "trickle up" to consumer laptops and for the project itself to unlock creativity in millions of children around the world.

 (Be sure to check out additional design concepts here.)

The 22nd National Space Symposium opened its doors in Colorado Springs, Colorado yesterday.

The Symposium, sponsored by the Space Foundation, is an annual space industry conference that brings members of the global space industry and the military together.

Space.com reports:

“In terms of intellectual content, this Symposium is clearly our most exploration-focused and most commercial-entrepreneurial focused ever, said Elliot Pulham, President and Chief Executive Officer of The Space Foundation… 

Local station KKTV looks at what’s of interest to the general public:

This year’s show features a robot who can dance and entertain named "Sprockit." It also features NASA’s Crew Exploration Vehicle, or C.E.V. NASA says the C.E.V. will replace the shuttle and sit four to six people.

The C.E.V. is a refined version of the old Apollo vehicle. They say it’s safer than a shuttle and more economical. 

 More stories can be found here. You can also check out photos from the symposium and even check out the live webcam of the exhibit hall (in the left hand column).

 Organizers expect more than 7,500 people to attend the symposium, which runs through tomorrow at the Broadmoor Hotel.

It’s gonna get crowded up there. In space, I mean. On the moon in particular. And the key to it all may be soon-to-be-former Congressman Tom DeLay. I thought it was down to the U.S. and Sweden in the latest lap of the "space race."  But it looks like there’s one more player entering the arena. I checked my RSS reader this afternoon, and found out via NASA Watch that China has plans for space exploration to the moon and beyond.

A top Chinese space official on Monday described China’s ambitious exploration plans, including robotic Moon missions starting next year.

Beyond Moon missions, including a flight to collect and return lunar samples to Earth in 2017, the Chinese space agency plans to develop a nonpolluting launch vehicle that can lift 55,000 pounds (25,000 kg) into orbit by 2010, said Luo Ge, a vice administrator at the Chinese National Space Administration.

"Space is a high-risk investment," Luo said through a translator at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank. "China as a developing country is limited and constrained by its funding for more ambitious programs."

But Luo says China has an edge because of the progress of its space program, the country’s "openness" — citing its work with countries like Russia, Nigeria, and Brazil — and because the U.S. has grown more closed since the 1990s. The Write Stuff, space blog of the Orlando Sentinel’, points to a story that repeats Luo’s claims and notes the successes of China’s space program, including a manned spaceflight last October. 

But is there anything to China’s claims? And How does Tom DeLay figure into all of this? 

Jeff of Space Politics reminds us that none other than Tom Delay warned just a week ago that the U.S. is in a "space race" with China, and even called China’s space program "a 21st century Sputnik moment". 

I’m not sure I buy that comparison, as it sounds like a bit of hyperbole to me. After all, Luo even noted that China’s $500 space budget is barely bus fare compared to NASA’s $16.6 billion. But then again NASA is losing a powerful backer in Tom Delay, and having to pinch pennies for the moon mission even as scientists are clamoring for more. 

Plus Jeff also speculates that, since he called for a special oversight hearing on NASA’s human space space program during a congressional hearing last week, the Chinese space program might be one reason for DeLay’s 2-month "delay" in actually leaving office. Maybe ensuring NASA stays well head of China’s"sputnik" will be DeLay’s swan song.

I suppose Jeff could be right. After all, just last week I thought Sweden was America’s biggest competitor in space. They don’t call me NooBee (i.e. "newbie) for nothin’, folks.

USA Today reports that the space tourism race is on– and one of the first tourists is ready for his journey:

 Adnan al-Maimani insists he isn’t looking to be a pioneer — he just dreams of looking down on Earth. So the 40-year-old entrepreneur is paying more than $100,000 to go on the first flight traveling to the edge of space from a Mideast nation.

The flight, which will travel about 62 miles toward space and give its passengers up to five minutes of weightlessness, is part of an American company’s plan to establish a spaceport in the northern tip of the United Arab Emirates.

Virginia-based Space Adventures — the only company to have successfully sent private citizens into space — won’t say when the flight will take place, only that it will be within a few years….

The journey has to wait until Space Adventures carries out plans it announced in February to build a commercial spaceport in Ras Al-Khaimah, the most northern of seven emirates making up the United Arab Emirates….

Space Adventures, whose advisers include Apollo 11 moonwalker Buzz Aldrin and several shuttle astronauts, says 200 people have already made reservations for future suborbital spaceflights, although the program is still in a developing stage.

Space Adventures has a partnership with the Russian Federal Space Agency and previously sent American businessman Dennis Tito, scientist Gregory Olsen and South African Mark Shuttleworth on Russian rockets to the international space station. Each paid $20 million.

As we’ve reported before, Space Adventures is locked in a race with Virgin Galactic to bring the next wave of  of tourists, if not quite to the stars, then above the stratosphere. But as any tourist anywhere knows, getting there is easy. It’s finding decent lodging that’s the hard part.

 Virgin Galactic’s Richard Branson is thinking that through, according to Hotels Magazine (link to story not available):

SIR Richard Branson is taking a giant leap for mankind by drawing up plans to build the worlds first space hotels, his space flight company Virgin Galactic has told The Business.

Alex Tai, its operations director, who will pilot Virgins first commercial space flight in 2008, has held talks with US hotel entrepreneur Robert Bigelow about the project, Virgin Galactics president Will Whitehorn confirmed.Bigelow Aerospace is developing inflatable pods it believes could receive the first space travellers by the end of the decade. Branson, Virgin Galactics chairman, revealed the space hotel discussions in Dubai last week.

Branson said: We are talking to people who are developing hotels for space. We are also talking to people who are developing launch craft to get hotels into space. People know that we can turn something that might seem a bit bizarre into a commercial reality. Personally, I think theres a demand for space hotels.

Imagine this problem:

 You’re on-board a ferry cruising across the North Sea between Newcastle and Amsterdam and you realize that you have to call home. Or someone back home has to call you. But you’re hundreds of kilometers from the nearest cellular operator’s service area. So what do you do? What can they do back home?

One alternative is to see if the ferry is equipped with a satellite telephone, but these services tend to be expensive and do not solve the problem of being accessible via your own cell phone number. Increasingly, therefore, a Base Transceiver Station (BTS) has become a permanent fixture on cruise ships and ferries. A BTS, connected to a cellular operator’s land-based Base Station Controller (BSC) over a satellite link, enables passengers to use their regular GSM telephones while at sea, but, given the expense of leasing satellite bandwidth, this alternative cannot serve a large number of simultaneous users either. So how can ship operators ensure that every passenger who wants or needs GSM service coverage will be able to afford it?

Maritime Communications Partner AS (MCP), a Norwegian-based provider of onboard cell phone connectivity to cruise ships and ferries that provides global coverage through leading suppliers of maritime satellite services, has come up with an ideal solution.

 MCP is based in Grimstad, Norway– the port of the poets. "It’s the place to be/ when you must make a call/ at sea," as our own in-house poet (we got him cheap, from a temp service) tells us.

The key technology used by MCP are GSM A-bis optimization gateways designed by RAD Data Communications. The gateways reduce costs by saving on satellite bandwidth.

But you don’t have to be on a Danish-owned cruiseship on the North Sea (where MCP has deployed the product) to enjoy the benefits of the new technology. Skywave Communications Solutions resells the Globalstar Maritime Satellite Phone System for use on private boats.

For your Saturday viewing pleasure, here’s a video from the Robot-One 9 competition in Tokyo. Check out the related videos for more!