Really Rocket Science

While intense debates continue in Washington and capitals throughout the world regarding what to do about the increasing violence in Iraq, the leading cell phone provider in the region has already decided upon its course of action.

Thuraya Satellite Telecommunications Co. has been cutting business in Iraq due to mounting security concerns: 

Yousuf Al Sayed, chief executive officer of the Middle East company, t[said] on the sidelines of the ongoing Telecom World2006 show that Iraq [represented a] mere seven percent of Thuraya’s mobile satellite phone business so far this year.

Iraq boasted a 60-percent and a 40-percent business share of the company in 2004 and 2005 respectively, said the CEO.

Thuraya, based in the United Arab Emirates and founded in 1997, commands a 26 percent share in the global mobile satellite phone market. This map provides a good illustration of the scope of their coverage, which serves a region 2.3 billion people with 2 Boeing GEO-Mobile Satellites:

 "The Thuraya coverage area encompasses the Middle East, North and Central Africa, Europe, Central Asia and the Indian subcontinent. Thuraya offers GSM-compatible mobile telephone services, transmitting and receiving calls through each satellite’s 12.25-meter-aperture reflector. The satellites employ state-of-the-art on-board digital signal processing to create more than 200 spot beams that can be redirected on-orbit, allowing the Thuraya system to adapt to business demands in real time. Calls are routed directly from one handheld unit to another, or to a terrestrial network. The system has the capacity for 13,750 simultaneous voice circuits."

NASA unveiled plans for building a base on the Moon today:

NASA Deputy Administrator Shana Dale, who is guiding the long-term strategy development effort among 14 of the world’s space agencies, said, "This strategy will enable interested nations to leverage their capabilities and financial and technical contributions, making optimum use of globally available knowledge and resources to help energize a coordinated effort that will propel us into this new age of discovery and exploration."

The Global Exploration Strategy focuses on two overarching issues: Why we are returning to the moon and what we plan to do when we get there. The strategy includes a comprehensive set of the reasons for embarking upon human and robotic exploration of the moon. NASA’s proposed lunar architecture focuses on a third issue: How humans might accomplish the mission of exploring the moon.

I can’t help it: every time somebody mentions going to the Moon, I think of the British sci-fi show from the 70’s, SPACE:1999. You can still buy the videos on Amazon.

It begins with the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter in 2008. This is going to be a pretty cool mission.

We’ve been to the back seat to watch TV, but the antenna was a little on the big side. With a few modifications, Sirius Satellite Radio can send TV to their subscribers (probably for an extra fee). They’ve been talking about this for a while, and we heard Bell Labs was working on something for them. Some think TV in cars is dangerous. Skyreport reports on CEO Mel Karmazin’s revelation at the Reuters Media Summit:

"We have three content deals that are very close to being finalized. I don’t know if they will be done by CES, but that is what we are shooting for," he said. "We will have video in the rear seat of the car up and running."

While the comments aren’t completely new – the company said in 2004 it would offer video by mid-2005, Oppenheimer’s Thomas Eagan said they are "intriguing" because Sirius could cost-effectively improve its financial and operational wellbeing with a video service.

Sirius could launch a video service with its existing satellite and repeater infrastructure without reducing its audio content, the analyst said, but consumers would need new or different handsets/in-car receivers to get the signal. Eagan said the video product would consist of three or more children’s channels (i.e. Nickelodeon, Disney and HBO Family) with a DVR downloading service sometime down the line.

"We don’t expect significant difficulties integrating a video service into OEM assembly as many of Sirius’ auto partners, such as Ford and Chrysler are already assembling SUVs with drop down LCD screens," Eagan said. "The size of the video market is clearly smaller than the audio market (and) without significant costs we expect the higher OEM conversion rate and higher ARPU would be accretive."

Watch this Reuters clip of the Karmazin interview. I found it interesting.

It seems like satellites with room for names of supporters is the new UGG boots of the space agencies — everyone’s gotta have them. But, as a savvy consumer, you know you’re better off shopping around. I mean, sure you could have your name on MIT & GeorgiaTech satellite, as we suggested a couple of weeks ago, or you could get your name on Japan’s new lunar orbiter, SELENE.

Here’s the whole story, in only the slightest "All your bases are belong to us" english:

"The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) plans to launch the lunar orbiter ‘SELENE’ on a H-IIA Launch Vehicle from Tanegashima Space Center in the summer of 2007.

The SELENE is an artificial satellite that aims to collect closely featured scientific data on “The formation of the moon and its transitional history up to today,” which is the biggest lunar exploration project since the Apollo Project.

JAXA will accept from the public names and messages to deliver to the moon aboard the SELENE. Please send us your wishful messages."

The real question: If getting your name blasted into space on a satellite is the new in thing, which one is Brangelina going to choose?

Got a spare $80,000 and a dream of putting your own satellite into space?

Well, you’ve come to the right place. A recent article from News.com showcases the exciting CubeSat program, based at Stanford and California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, which allows students and companies from a around the world to launch tiny satellites for cut-rate prices without the bureaucratic and logistical hurdles they might experience if they tried to launch them on their own.

For around $40,000 for development and $40,000 for launch, the CubeSat program has put dozens of one kilogram, ten-centimeter cubed satellites 240-360 miles up in the heavens. Says one of the program’s principle founders Prof. Bob Twiggs:

"I kind of look at this as the Apple II. The ordinary person can get something into space. We don’t know what the ultimate use is, but look what happened to the Internet.”

So what are these mini satellites doing other than helping schools and individuals claim their own chunk of Space? Well, Stanford launch a three-cubed CubeSat in 2003, called QuakeSat, which monitors the seismic energy released over faults which could be used to predict earthquakes… a useful device if there ever was one for quake-prone California.

Students around the world have been using the CubeSat program to gain a working knowledge of spacecraft design that they might not otherwise have the opportunity to engage in. University students in Columbia and Romania are currently in the process of putting together their own CubeSat, as are high school students at San Jose’s Independence High.

While no word is out yet about how you could go about building your own CubeSat with the declining price of space technology, here’s $5 saying you’ll find a CubeSat in a box of Cracker Jacks in the next twenty years.

I used to live in a remote town that, for a time, literally had no doctors. One doctor moved away, another retired, and poof! — for six months you had to drive 100 miles to get your sore throat looked at.

Many people who’ve lived in rural areas, particularly in the West (where there’s a lot of dirt between the lights) can tell similar stories. Delivering quality healthcare in a remote place is difficult and economically challenging. And when the promptness of care is important, the long travel times that many rural residents must endure to get the services they need can be detrimental.

But satellites and cellular technology are helping to change that, and one particularly heartwarming success story comes to us today from the Dakotas: 

By using digital mammograms and a satellite link-up, radiologists in Michigan were able to examine the mammograms of rural Native American women in North Dakota and South Dakota.

This pilot program by University of Michigan researchers was designed as an improvement over the use of films typically used in mobile mammography. Currently, it can take up to a week for women to get their results after having a mobile mammogram, and it can also be difficult to arrange for additional tests.

"Mobile mammography is a critical way for Native American women to get a mammogram. But what happens when a woman needs to be called back for more images? By transmitting the mammograms by satellite, a radiologist could read them on the spot, and three-quarters of the women who needed new images had those done immediately or within fewer than three days," Dr. Marilyn Roubidoux, professor of radiology at the U-M Medical School, said in a prepared statement.

In this pilot program, a mobile mammography unit performed 515 digital mammograms on women living on seven reservations in North Dakota and South Dakota. The images were then transmitted by satellite to the Breast Imaging Division of the university’s radiology department.

On average, it took about 50 minutes from the time the mammography images were sent until the women received a report about the findings. In some cases, when weather and technological factors were perfect, results came back within 30 minutes.

 

 The University of Michigan press release on the pilot program can be found here.

Following up on Spektor’s post on EduSat in India (below) comes more news on how new technologies are bridging the communications gap in India’s rural areas. The Economic Times reports on how Motorola plans to cash in on the demand for wireless broadband:

The world’s second largest maker of mobiles is in discussions with telecom operators to provide network and equipment for offering Wimax (highspeed Internet access over a wireless connection).

The annual broadband wireless equipment market opportunity in India is pegged at around $4.5 billion by ’12 and Motorola is keen to bite into this pie. "Motorola will design networks and provide customer premises equipment (CPEs) and handhelds . Our end-to-end solutions will be deployed by operators beginning next October," Mr Amit Sharma, vice-president , strategy and business development, Motorola Asia Pacific, told ET.

India is targeting 30 million broadband (high speed Internet) users by 2010 while the current base is just 2 million. The most difficult part of providing broadband access is last mile, the final leg of delivering connectivity from a communications provider to a customer , as it requires fanning out of wires and cable. Wimax is an easy solution as it doesn’t require a direct line of sight between the source and endpoint. With a service range of 50 km, Wimax supports peak data rates of 23 Mbps. Samsung and Alcatel are other vendors eyeing the Indian wireless broadband market. 

SDAIndia has more projections of WiMax growth in India and Asia; also be sure to check out this article in CIOL from several months ago, outlining why WiMax is emerging as a popular technology for providing rural connectivity:

With common service centers dotting India’s rural map, WiMax can play a major role in delivering various applications. These include online bill payment, processing and submission of government documents, delivery of agriculture, healthcare and entertainment services, in education, research and information sharing and for e-commerce activities including commodity price information, online trading and banking transactions.

The government of India is already working on programs in order to develop simple, low-cost messaging terminals that could extend wireless communications to poorer communities; an operating system for smart cards; and various building blocks for an available mobile communications infrastructure, with Wi-Fi and WiMax key elements.

“WiMax can play a major role towards providing wireless broadband connectivity for the rural masses in India. We have already seen some pilot deployments going on at various locations in India. Moving forward, we are pretty positive about the potential of this technology and how it can deliver more for less for a country like India,” said Karthik Rangarajan, Product Manager, Navini Networks, a broadband wireless access solution provider.

While you may not normally turn to Really Rocket Science for book recommendations, we’ve always believed that even the best engineers (and enthusiasts) could use a little literature in their life.  Still, if you’re going to indulge in the good stuff, its always a good idea to start with some work that has some applicability to your every day life, which is why we’re recommending a work written by a French playwright chronicle the afterlife of the 20th century’s most preeminent scientist… errr… ummm… Well, now that I think about it, it probably isn’t even close to applicable to your everyday life, but it does sound pretty cool, right?

While the review NYT Science Editor Dennis Overbye gave Jean-Claude Carrière’s Please, Mr. Einstein (Amazon, Powells) was a little ho-hum, the topic of the book, the musings and travails of Albert Einstein from beyond the grave, was interesting enough that it might be worth a look. Written as a play, it appears a little heavy on the monologue, but seems to work, overall, as a novel that "isn’t so much[…] about physics as it is[…] about how people feel about physics."

Sure, we may be more inclined to cosy up to a copy of Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman! (Amazon, Powells) but, come on, how often do you find a play/novel that work in discussions of spacetime between the cameos of Picasso, Newton, and Elvis?

The New York Times Review of Books takes a look at Jean-Claude Carrière’s new novel, Please Mr. Einstein:

In its uncounted hours of conversation, “Please, Mr. Einstein” touches down lightly and charmingly on some of the thorniest philosophical consequences of Einstein’s genius and, by extension, the scientific preoccupations of the 20th century — the nature of reality, the fate of causality, the comprehensibility of nature, the limits of the mind — while scrolling through Einstein’s life. It’s easy to see this novel as the germ of a future playlet or movie along the lines of Steve Martin’s “Picasso at the Lapin Agile” or the play and movie “Insignificance,” which featured a mythical Einstein in a hotel room with Marilyn Monroe.

I like Carrière’s Einstein. He’s frank, down to earth and not prone to cosmic mustiness. He’s actually worn an Einstein T-shirt and admits he’s happy to be talking to a woman, especially a woman from the 21st century, because that means his godchild, the atomic bomb, hasn’t destroyed civilization — yet. “I think better when eyes like yours are looking at me,” he tells her, “and when I’m talking to them.”…

Among the features of Einstein’s unusual office are doors he seems able to open on any time and place. At one point, discussing his years in Germany, he and his visitor step out into a Nazi book-burning. Another excursion provides the surprising climax to an amusing side plot about Newton, who just doesn’t get relativity and quantum theory and keeps pestering Einstein to explain what was so wrong with the clockwork world he described in the 17th century. Finally, exasperated, Einstein calls Newton over and opens a door on the atomic blast that destroyed Hiroshima. Newton’s wig flutters in the wind from the shock wave. He stares, aghast, then slowly turns transparent and disappears. Newton’s universe is truly, undeniably dead, and so his sojourn in this intellectual aerie is over.

Carrière’s novel relies upon spacetime as a literary device. But what is spacetime? This "Spacetime 101" page explains the history of spacetime from Pythagoras to Einstein. 

While snow days might elicit cries of joy from kids here in the US, half-way around the world loss of a satellite signal might shutter the school house doors, albeit without as much elation.

The Indian Express (an online source for news from India) reported last week that many small towns and villages throughout India regularly suffer visual freezes for up to 10 minutes on live telecasts transmitted over the country’s EDUSAT education-only satellite. What’s worse is that residents of the country’s wetter northern regions occasionally lose access to the system for days and weeks at a time when rain blocks clear access to the bird.

The irony of the system’s failure, of course, is that it might be preventing those tasked with fixing its problem in the future from learning from it. While post graduate sociology students and civil service aspirants, who have been completely tuned out of the ongoing Maharashtra Public Service Commission (MPSC) exam coaching currently going on are rumored to be the one’s losing the most, Anna University, whose schools use the satellite system, educates engineers at 250 locations around the country.

If you didn’t already know about it, the EDUSAT, launched in 2004, is a path-breaking project that aims to insure access to education to everyone throughout the world’s largest democracy and is the first satellite meant exclusively for formal education, ranging from grade school to higher education. According to the Indian News article,

"It provides audio-visual lessons employing Direct To Home (DTH) quality broadcast. The satellite has multiple regional beams covering different parts of India — five Ku-band transponders with spot beams covering northern, north-eastern, eastern, southern and western regions and six C-band transponders with their footprints covering the entire country."