Really Rocket Science

Here’s one of the many fabled stories of how lunar eclipses have influenced history:

A lunar eclipse bailed Christopher Columbus out of a jam in Jamaica in 1504. Stranded there, ships damaged on a follow-up voyage to what would be called the Americas, Columbus and crew were starving because the natives refused to trade food for trinkets. The wily explorer consulted an almanac and learned a lunar eclipse would occur on Feb. 29, 1504. On that day, Columbus told the natives that God frowned on their lack of hospitality and would remove the moon from the sky if they didn’t cooperate. The eclipse made good on the warning. The spooked natives promptly offered food if Columbus would bring back the moon, which natural events did for him. Well-supplied, Columbus and crew ultimately made it back to Europe.

While unlikely to improve relations with your neighbors, it’s worth stepping out to see tonight’s lunar eclipse. USA Today ran a great viewing guide yesterday. Some highlights:

• Nearly a billion people in the Western Hemisphere, more than 1.5 billion in Europe and Africa, and perhaps another half-billion in western Asia will be able to watch — weather permitting…
• The only problematic area will be along the Oregon and northern California coast, where the first partial stage of the eclipse will already be underway when the moon rises…
• This eclipse comes with a rare bonus. The planet Saturn (magnitude +0.2) and the bright bluish star, Regulus (magnitude +1.4) will form a broad triangle with the moon’s ruddy disk….this upcoming double event will be the only one of its kind occurring within the next millennium!

The European Space Agency and NASA both have viewing information, as well. For those in North America, this map tells you the time the eclipse will begin in your location. The short of it: 10:01 pm Eastern.

NASA also explains the color change during totality: 

During an eclipse the moon changes color, going from a light gray color to an orange or deep red shade. This is totality. The moon takes on this new color because indirect sunlight is still able to pass through the Earth’s atmosphere and cast a glow on the moon.

The exact color that the moon appears depends on the amount of dust and clouds in the atmosphere. If there are extra particles in the atmosphere, from say a recent volcanic eruption, the moon will appear a darker shade of red.

I can’t think of any recent volcanic eruptions, do dark red may not be in the picture. 

The next lunar eclipse will be on Dec. 21, 2010.

Start getting ready!

Next week brings us the SATELLITE 2008 conference at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center in Washington D.C. On the schedule: a hockey game that may prove to be a conference highlight.

(No word yet on whether the press releases emanating from the conference will be any better this year. But we digress.)

Of course, what makes SATELLITE 2008 truly interesting for satcom buffs and worker bees is the unveiling of new technologies. Among the "must see satellite technologies" that will be introduced to the marketplace is Crawford Satellite Services’ MPEG-4 HD platform, which will utilize SES AMERICOM’s satellite AMC-18 for domestic distribution into cable and DBS (digital broadcast system) providers:

With its HD launch on December 31, 2007, cable television network Tennis Channel utilized Crawford’s MPEG-4 service to allow satellite partner DIRECTV to access the signal…

Crawford has selected Motorola’s MCPC (multiple channel per carrier) MPEG-4 HD platform with redundant encoding and multiplexing (mux) as its video compression system. With this state-of-the-art equipment, the Company is able to employ DVB S2 advanced modulation and MPEG-4 compression technology which better utilizes satellite bandwidth.

DVB S2 allows for the distribution of a greater number of channels on a single transponder. The MPEG-4 technology compresses an HD channel so that it uses less than half of the bandwidth required as compared to an MPEG-2 HD signal. The result of the combined technologies gives Crawford the capacity to deliver seven to eight HD channels per transponder while maintaining outstanding HD quality.

Crawford got in on SES-AMERICOM’s AMC-18 capacity before it recently sold out, though they also have C-band platforms on AMC-10 and Galaxy-11. 

The Tennis Channel HD also includes a new production studio in Culver City. "The new multiple-studio, master control and post production facility is the home to the only 24-hour channel dedicated to the sport of Tennis," according to the press release from the company. 

The Tennis Channel is certainly breaking new ground in the use of MPEG-4 compression. As for programming, we recommend running old footage of McEnroe from when he played competitive tennis. No one’s ever made the sport more interesting:

Over the opposition solely of Qatar — which, not incidentally, is the home of Al-Jazeera—  information ministers of the 22-member Arab League voted Tuesday to adopt a document that would impose regulations on Arab satellite television.

AFP reports:

The meeting was called at the request of Egypt, which hosts the Arab League and serves as base for several Arab satellite channels.

It calls for the stations "not to offend the leaders or national and religious symbols" of Arab countries.

Cairo and Riyadh frequently complain of criticism of their regimes in talk shows aired by Al-Jazeera and other satellite channels.

The Cairo document authorises signatory countries to "withdraw, freeze or not renew the work permits of media which break the regulations".

It stipulates that satellite channels "should not damage social harmony, national unity, public order or traditional values."

The Financial Times provides more detailed background on what has motivated members of the Arab League to crack down on private satellite channels: 

In recent years the explosion in satellite channels – there are now about 500 – has meant that states have lost control over what their populations could see on television.

Channels like al-Jazeera, which at times has upset most Arab governments, have provided platforms for opposition groups and have breached taboos by broadcasting stories about human rights violations and election fraud.

An Egyptian court last week fined an al-Jazeera journalist for damaging the image of the country by filming a documentary containing reconstructions of torture in a police station. Saudi Arabia has also long had problems with al-Jazeera, though gulf watchers say the channel appears to have toned down its coverage of the kingdom after a recent rapprochement between Doha and Riyadh.

Abd-al-Bari Atwan, the editor in chief of the London-based al-Quds al-Arabi newspaper, comments that "The Arab ministers have started to coordinate in an admirable way in order to take the Arab media back to the dark ages," or to "a media of praise":

 [U]nder the new rules, the government of Nuri al-Maliki in the new Iraq can demand the closure of any Arab satellite channel if the channel refuses to call the Iraqi resistance of the U.S. occupation terrorism, and continues to host its leaders or those sympathetic to it on its satellite channels….

The Arab governments, and in particular the Saudi and Egyptian ones, want to take Arab public opinion to the previous lifeless era which prevailed before the satellite channels boom and in which the official media played the heroic role, that is, political programmes that had nothing to do with reality and reflected the views of the intelligence services and their rulers [rather than those of the public.]

More seriously, these two countries are also the ones who are investing the most, through some of their followers, in the entertainment and amusement channels which are multiplying at a frightening rate. Many believe that they aim to corrupt the young generations and steer them away from the fundamental and essential issues which affect their future, such as unemployment, corruption, human rights violations, and all kinds of freedoms.

Noting that "the time when the Arab citizen tunes in to the BBC to learn about his country’s news [was] supposed to have gone forever" with the advent of satellite TV and the internet, Atwan wonders if the new document adopted by the Arab League will spell the end of an independent Arab media.

Time will tell.

Warning that the militarization of space could produce "unpredictable consequences" for global security, Russia and China presented a draft treaty of their space disarmament proposal at the UN-sponsored annual Geneva Disarmament Conference on February 12.

Initially put forward in 2002, the Sino-Russian proposal has been making the rounds of world capitals: 

The document, which bans the use of force and threats of force against spacecraft in orbit, is designed to rectify shortcomings in international space laws, encourage the further use of space, ensure the security of space property and reinforce global security and arms control.

Lavrov said that the draft, distributed last June, has received a positive reaction from most of the partners, who are ready to work on the issue.

He said Russia hoped to persuade the United States of the need to prevent the deployment of weapons in space.

The United States criticized the Russian-Chinese initiative, especially following China’s anti-satellite missile tests last year, which we blogged about here.

In that test, China shot down an aging weather satellite in low orbit. We blogged a video simulation of the anti-satellite test. 

For its part, China recently denied that the test represents participation in an outer space arms race. 

Photo: The world’s largest BSoD, outside the Port Authority Bus Terminal in New York.

Who will be the next President? With voters casting ballots in 43 nominating contests in 24 states right now, we should have a clearer understanding — though most probably not a definitive one — of who the nominees for each party will likely be later this evening.

(Voters in New York might be late getting to the polls today, on account of the Giants parade taking place as we write this.) 

Regardless of who ultimately wins in November, among the many issues the next president will have to contend with is creating a strategy for securing cyberspace. But they don’t have to contend with the issue alone, because the Center for Strategic and International Studies has established a Commission on Cyber Security for the 44th Presidency:

The Commission will examine existing plans and strategies to assess what a new administration should continue, what it should change, and what new policies should be adopted or new authorities sought from Congress [in pursuit of cyber security].  Issues for consideration will include infrastructure protection, software assurance, federal agency cyber security, and information security initiatives in both the public and private sectors.  As part of its work, the Commission will review how the Federal government organizes its cybersecurity efforts and make recommendations for improvement.  It will examine existing legal authorities for cyber security and identify where new authorities (including incentives) are necessary.

The Commission will be a bipartisan group composed of twenty to twenty-five experts drawn from the cyber security policy community and from the private sector.  It will be co-chaired by leaders from Congress and the private sector.  The work of the Commissioners will be reinforced by a private sector advisory group composed of representatives from companies and associations, and by the ex officio participation of relevant federal officials…

 The final product would be a well-supported package of recommendations for improving cyber security that could help to guide both a legislative agenda and Presidential policy documents….

CSIS is a nonpartisan, nonprofit research center organization headquartered in Washington, D.C. with more than 200 staff and a large network of affiliated experts.  Its focus is on security in a changing global environment. 

The CSIS isn’t alone in thinking ahead about cyber security, of course. DoD IT, cybersecurity, SPACECOM, STRATCOM, DISA — everybody’s trying to prevent an "electronic Pearl Harbor."  

Cybersecurity is becoming a critical issue for the private sector, too. Verizon just hired a former Army guy to lead their cyber security effort.

What will Verizon’s new cybersecurity guru look into first? How about the submarine cable disruptions in the Mediterranean Sea and Persion Gulf? If you’re keeping score at home, there have been two disruptions in each cable — near Marseilles, France, and Alexandria, Egypt; near Dubai and another near Qatar–  all within a week of each other. Ships’ anchors caused three of the incidents and power trouble caused the fourth, as we blogged recently. 

Given all the recent trouble undersea, it’s no wonder the U.S. government prefers using satcom over fiber, even for their radios in the field . 

In preparation for the lifting of its first nationally-built satellite, the Omid, Iran has launched a Kavoshgar1 "sounding rocket" into space. The launch also marks the inauguration of Iran’s first domestic satellite complex:

 The suborbital research rocket took off at Iran’s space launch base, which is specifically built for sending Iranian rockets into outer space from inside the country.

A sounding rocket is an instrument-carrying rocket designed to take measurements and perform scientific experiments during its suborbital flight.

Kavoshgar1 was launched as a preliminary step towards sending the ‘Omid Satellite’ into orbit. Omid is the first advanced scientific research satellite exclusively designed and made by Iranian scientists.

The Omid (which is Persian for "hope") Iran will be the first of five satellites that Iran plans to launch into orbit by 2010. Iran "joined the international space-faring community" in February 2007 after successfully testing its first sounding rocket.

The AP reports that "some Western experts also have raised the possibility that Iran’s space program may be a cover to more fully develop its military ballistic missiles, a prospect many find troubling at a time when the U.S. and others worry Tehran is trying to develop nuclear weapons." 

In other satellite news from the Middle East, Israel Aerospace Industries announced over the weekend that its TecSAR satellite, launched last month, had beamed down its first images of Earth and was in "perfect" working condition. We blogged about TecSAR’s launch here.

Photo Caption: A model of Explorer 1, held by JPL’s Director William Pickering, scientist James Van Allen and rocket pioneer Wernher von Braun (from left to right). The team was gathered at a news conference at the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, D.C., to announce the satellite’s successful launch. America’s first satellite, Explorer 1 had launched a few hours before, on Jan. 31, 1958.

It may not be on par with the launch of Explorer 1, but  SES Americom is proud to announce the launch of satellitewiki.com today:

Using the same style and software used to power Wikipedia, satellitewiki.com, satellitewiki.com lets visitors explore the history of man-made satellites, definitions of satellite terms and learn about how satellites impact a wide range of industries from oil and gas to television….

From the first U.S. satellite’s bleep in 1958 to modern satellites with their own neighborhoods, users exploring the wiki can find interesting facts, download imagery and discover how satellites work. With input from other users and readers, information can be updated, changed and added, as well.

Want to know the difference between ‘carrier frequency’ and “geostationary transfer orbit”? Or when the best time to look up in the night sky to see a satellite passing over your neighborhood? Log on at  satellitewiki.com.

Although SES AMERICOM has funded the creation of satellitewiki.com, the site is open to the public to add and edit content in true wiki fashion. SES AMERICOM invites all players in the satellite industry to visit satellitewiki.com and add their content so that the website can grow into an important resource for anyone interested in the satellite industry. SES AMERICOM and U.S. satellite historical timeline

As BusinessWeek reported last spring, many corporate wikis are going viral. Both Nokia and investment bank Dresdner Kleinwort, for example, have successfully used wikis to collaborate on solving specific product-design problems and as alternatives to e-mail and collaborative software.

Wikis are also becoming interfaces for B-to-B marketing. IBM is exploring opening up its wikis to explain new products to potential customers,  while Hewlett-Packard has used wikis as a focal point for their "The Computer is Personal Again" marketing campaign:

 In the first two weeks after the campaign broke in late August, more than 220,000 visitors clicked through to a microsite for small and midsize businesses, and the HP Community wiki recorded more than 1,400 visitors. Other Web-based printing activities are being added, and the marketing campaign will continue to evolve, based on the feedback HP receives from customers via the wiki.

The current initiative isn’t just an advertising tactic but a marketing strategy designed to reinforce the brand’s relevance in a changing world.

In marketing, how many people wikis reach may be less important than who is reached. As Ross Mayfield puts it, "It’s no longer about impressions you make but who you impress."

But wikis, once they hit a critical mass, can be just plain fun. Equotes, for example, has some good quotes from all sorts of luminaries, including Neil Armstrong. There’s a SpaceWiki for astronomy buffs. And feel free to add your own insights and knowledge of the satcom industry at our new satellitewiki.com.

Or, you can start your own free wiki here. 

Note: You’re going to have to read through to the end to understand how the picture above relates to the headline of this post. 

Two weeks ago we wrote about Eutelsat and Viasat teaming up to deliver broadband via satellite to the U.S. and Canadian markets. Telesat is playing a key role in that project:

 ViaSat has executed a contract with Space Systems/Loral, a subsidiary of Loral Space & Communications, to build ViaSat-1, which is expected to be the world’s highest capacity broadband satellite…..

ViaSat-1, with a launch planned for early 2011, involves a collaborative effort with top satellite broadband leaders in the market including Loral, Telesat, and Eutelsat. Loral is investing in the Canadian coverage portion of the satellite in anticipation of Telesat using this capacity for the provision of broadband services throughout Canada. The satellite is planned for the Telesat 115 West longitude orbital slot as part of the agreement. Telesat will provide telemetry, tracking & control (TT&C) operations for the satellite.

Now comes news that Eutelsat and Telesat could merge, if one reads the tea leaves correctly in this interview with Telesat CEO Dan Goldberg in Satellite Today (subscription required):

Some industry observers have proposed a linkup between Telesat and Eutelsat, the third largest communications satellite operator.

“Telesat and Eutelsat are complementary businesses that would fit together well, but I would say that Eutelsat has a lot of growth opportunities that they are pursuing,” he said. “I watch what they are doing with great interest, including their Ka-band activities and their S-band plans. They have a lot of opportunities they are focused on. We have a lot of opportunities that we are focused on. I would say while there are lots of good theoretical combinations that might exist out there, all of us are focused on the here and now and growing our businesses, and if there is value to be created for shareholders and we can all effectively serve our customers by considering some consolidation opportunities in the future, I’m sure everyone will be pragmatic about that going forward.”

Will it happen? Who can say? As Goldberg points out, however, 2008 is likely to be a breakout year for satellite broadband, and such rapidly growing markets tend to transform the market players.

In other Telesat news, "Lockheed Martin has announced that it will be farming out $175-million-worth of work to Ontario companies in connection with the federal government’s purchase of its Super Hercules aircraft….

"Telesat Canada would be one of the Ontario companies set to benefit from the commitments to the region, with Lockheed Martin using Telesat’s WAAS GCCS Signals in Space services," according to the Ottawa Business Journal (and thus explaining the picture above).

UPDATE (1/29/2008, 11:45am): While we were talking about Canada, I should have mentioned that, well, Canada’s space program is in total crisis:

Imagine getting news that the space operations of Lockheed Martin and Boeing, including the shuttle and military space programs, had been sold to a corporation based in Europe. Imagine further that this startling news is followed the next day by the announcement that the administrator of NASA has suddenly resigned after just a few months on the job.

The scenario is playing out for our neighbor to the North: Canada’s largest space contractor, MacDonald, Dettwiler and Associates Ltd., announced it was selling all of its space operations to Alliant Techsystems Inc. (ATK) of Edina, Minnesota, for $1.3 billion; and the president of the Canadian Space Agency (and the former CEO of Telesat), Laurier Boisvert, resigned after just nine months on the job. Ouch.

We’ve long been fans of space tourism generally and Virgin Galactic specifically — in large part because of a longstanding admiration for the design skills of Burt Rutan.

Now, we can ooh and ahh at the symmetry of Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShip Two and its launch vehicle, WhiteKnightTwo; designs for both were unveiled yesterday.

MSNBC provides the details: 

[Yesterday’s unveiling] was the most detailed look yet at the craft that will carry on the legacy of SpaceShipOne, the first commercially developed spaceship and winner of the $10 million Ansari X Prize in 2004.

The biggest twist is that the WhiteKnightTwo plane has spread out and sprouted another passenger cabin on its 140-foot-long wing. The two cabins and four Pratt & Whitney jet engines straddle a central mount for the rocket plane, which will be carried to an altitude of 50,000 feet and dropped. Then SpaceShipTwo will light up its hybrid rocket engine for the final push to the edge of outer space, reaching an altitude of at least 68 miles (110 kilometers).

The twin cabins are basically carbon copies of the SpaceShipTwo cabin, so riding on WhiteKnightTwo will give passengers a taste of what the big blast to space will be like. While commercial astronauts are taking their trip to see the curving earth below the black sky of space, the passengers on WhiteKnightTwo will experience a lower-altitude version of the experience – including a bit of zero-G.

Why two cabins on the mothership?

Burt Rutan, the craft’s designer and head of California-based Scaled Composites, imagined a scenario in which a husband riding in the mothership watches his wife take off in the spaceship, sitting only 25 feet away.

"You’ll say, ‘Honey, have a nice flight,’" Rutan told scores of journalists and dignitaries at the American Museum of Natural History. "While she is enjoying black sky and weightlessness, you, in the launch airplane, will be doing parabolas and floating about the cabin."

So what’s it like?

SpaceShipTwo is designed to carry six passengers and two pilots into space, with enough headroom to allow for free floating. It’s about twice as large as SpaceShipOne, with 18-inch-wide windows and reclining seats for fare-paying fliers.

More than 100 people are already in line for spaceflights, at a cost of $200,000 per person, and Rutan expects there to be thousands more: He said the innovations incorporated into SpaceShipTwo will make human spaceflight "at least as safe as the airliners of the late ’20s."

Hmm. "At least as safe as the airliners of the ’20s" doesn’t really inspire the highest degree of confidence. Maybe they should come up with a better comparison. 

Virgin Galactic is aiming to begin passenger flights in 2010.

After a rough 2007 — in which they lost $335,000 on nearly $40 million in revenues,  compared to a 2006 profit of just over $250,000 — Israel’s Gilat Satellite Networks Ltd. is entering 2008 with some good news:

Israel’s Gilat Satellite Networks Ltd. announced Monday that it will supply India’s Bharti Airtel with a broadband satellite network comprising more than 13,000 small two-way ground stations.

The new network, using Gilat’s SkyEdge technology, will be used by Bharti Airtel to offer information and communication services to the local citizens of India’s Gujarat State.

The agreement "will enable remote citizens in the state of Gujarat to benefit from information and e-governance services," Erez Antebi, CEO of Gilat Network Systems, said in a statement.

Gilat offers VSATs or very small aperture terminal, a two-way satellite ground station with a dish antenna, in India.

SkyEdge is a satellite communications system that delivers high-quality voice, broadband data and video services over a powerful unified system. 

No word yet on the value of the contract, but it’s probably just a taste of the satellite broadband opportunities that are rapidly emerging in India. Compare it, for example, to the deal Bharti signed with IBM, which includes direct-to-home satellite services and IPTV:

In a bid to boost its triple play platform, Bharti Airtel has awarded a $150-million contract to IBM to provide IT solutions and services to support broadcasting services such as DTH and IPTV.

Bharti had already outsourced its IT requirement for the telecom business and the new deal is aimed at providing a one-stop experience spanning mobile, PC and television. 

A direct-to-home satellite TV service in India is, of course, the satcom motherloade. People have been trying to launch that kind of service for years. Back in 1999, News Corp’s ISkyB attempted it in partnership with Hughes; Star TV India was another service from News Corp, which is now a collection of premium content for India.