Satellite
Remote observatory aims to solve Earth's magnetic mystery
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Until November, Tristan da Cunha was home only to 271 people, a small flightless bird, and a piece of land named Inaccessible Island. Now the world's most remote inhabited archipelago is host to a Danish Observatory designed to help improve our understanding the Earth’s weakening magnetic field and the way this affects satellites.
Solar Power Satellites could broadcast energy to Earth
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Dusting off an old renewable energy proposal, president of the National Space Society Ben Bova recently published an article in The Washington Post calling for the next president of the United States to commission a US$1 billion solar power satellite from NASA before the end of their second term. The satellite would harness energy directly from the sun and broadcast it back to a receiver on Earth using microwave frequencies. Read More
India launches first lunar mission
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The Indian Space Research Organisation has successfully launched Chandrayaan-1, the country’s first scientific mission to the moon. The two-year, USD$80 million mission will see the PSLV-C11 rocket enter lunar orbit in roughly two weeks, before descending to a final 100 km-high circular orbit. The Moon Impact Probe will land on the lunar surface, while the orbiter will continue gathering data with 11 scientific instruments. Read More
NASA launches Interstellar Boundary Explorer
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NASA has launched the Interstellar Boundary Explorer, which will observe the edge of our solar system from a 200,000-mile Earth orbit and determine whether or not we’re... err, doomed. Over the next two years, the 23-inch high octagonal craft will study the area of space where solar wind hits the wider galaxy – hopefully it will also find out why the solar wind, which shields us from harmful cosmic rays, has decreased by 25% in the last ten years. Read More
Universal remote control with built-in WiFi, color screen
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There’s no point hauling yourself off the couch to go outside only to find that the weather’s terrible, right? The Universal Smart Remote Control from Acoustic Research eliminates the guess work displaying up to date weather information, plus news, sports and TV listings using a built-in WiFi connection. Read More
First images from NASA's Gamma-ray telescope
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After two months of calibration and testing, NASA’s Gamma-ray Large Area Space Telescope has started to deliver the goods, providing scientists with an all-sky image of the Milky Way. The all-sky image combines 95 hours of “first light” observations from the Large Area Telescope, which is 30 times more sensitive than any previous space-based gamma-ray instrument. Read More
Sqish: the camouflaged satellite dish
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Maybe satellite dishes were some kind of status symbol, but now that the novelty has worn off they just look like big and ugly hunks of metal on your roof. The Sqish, a rectangular wall-mounted dish, has circumvented this problem in an unusual way – when you order your dish, you send in a picture of your wall, and they send you a “squishoflage” sticker to cover the offending protuberance. Read More
The smallest black hole ever
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April 7, 2008 Using measurements taken by the Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer satellite, NASA scientists have identified the smallest known black hole in the universe. At 3.8 times the mass of our Sun and estimated at only 15 miles in diameter, the black hole known as XTE J1650 is also close to the smallest size thought to be theoretically possible for such an object. Read More
Wide-angle camera improves security surveillance
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Researchers at the University of Alabama (UAH) have developed a wide-angle camera that will assist security forces by enabling them to monitor large areas through high-resolution images taken from a satellite or an airborne craft. The proposed one giga-pixel camera was created after UAH researcher, David Pollock, discovered that if you point a large number of lenses toward a common point, and then make a small correction on each of the lenses, you have a camera with capabilities that far surpass existing technologies. Read More
Padova University scientists declare quantum leap in quantum communications
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Physicists at Padova University, Italy, are one step closer to constructing a quantum channel between space and Earth – the first step in establishing a truly secure quantum communications system. The Institute of Physics’ New Journal of Physics published the results of an experiment in which individual photons were reflected off a space satellite in orbit almost 1500 kilometers above the Earth, and identified back on the ground. Read More
Lockheed Martin receives DARPA grant for modular, networked satellite system
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March 7, 2008 Lockheed Martin Space Systems Company has received a $5.7 million contract from DARPA to head a team to compete in Phase 1 of the System F6 space technology program. F6 - meaning Future, Fast, Flexible, Fractioned, Free-Flying Spacecraft United by Information Exchange – is an attempt to construct a networked, module-based alternative to singular, monolithic satellites. Read More
US Air Force assumes control of first Boeing WGS satellite
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January 30, 2008 Boeing has handed over control of the first of six Wideband Global SATCOM satellites to the US Air Force. WGS-1 is the Department of Defense's highest capacity communications satellite and the WGS line is to eventually replace the Defense Satellite Communications System constellation.
Spitzer Space Telescope locates youngest solar systems
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December 3, 2007 Infrared imaging technology on
NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope has been used to locate some of the youngest solar systems yet detected. Astronomers at the University of Michigan made the discovery when using the telescope to more closely observe gaps in protoplanetary disks of gas and dust surrounding the young stars UX Tau A and LkCa 15 in the Taurus star formation region. Read More
New GPS satellite operational
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November 6, 2007 The fourth in a series of eight modernized Global Positioning System (GPS) satellites that will deliver new capabilities to military and civilian users has been declared fully operational. Launched from Cape Canaveral October 17 as part of the Global Positioning System Block IIR (GPS IIR-M), the new GPS IIR-17M satellite features increased signal power to receivers on the ground, two new military signals for improved accuracy, enhanced encryption and anti-jamming capabilities for the military, and a second signal that will provide civilian GPS users with an open access signal on a different frequency.
Chang'e-1 launch to expand lunar exploration
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October 29, 2007 The Chang’e-1 spacecraft successfully blasted off from the Xichang Satellite Launch Centre, Sichuan, atop a Long March 3A rocket last week bound for lunar orbit. The launch by the Chinese National Space Administration (CNSA), is China’s first step in a program that aims to land robotic explorers on the Moon before 2020. Read More
50th anniversary of Sputnik satellite launch
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October 4, 2007 Today marks the 50th anniversary of the launch of the Sputnik satellite. Even half a century on, the impact of the October 4th 1957 launch that saw the Soviet Union’s satellite became the first to be put into orbit still resonates as a momentous achievement in the history of human endeavor. Considered the first real blow in the "Space race" between the USSR and the USA, the launch provided the springboard for an exciting period of space exploration carried out by the two countries. Read More
Satellite imagery used for sales lead generation
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September 20, 2007 Part of the fascination with emerging technologies is wondering just where they will take us, and when the application of new ideas is given a dose of lateral thinking the results are often surprising. This new service from Geosemble is a case in point. Making traditional telemarketing look about as sophisticated as two tin cans with string, GeoPrism is the first sales lead generation service using artificial intelligence (AI) techniques to automatically generate sales leads based on satellite imagery (think Google Earth). Read More
Google Local Search now available in BMW navigation systems
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September 4, 2007 BMW has announced it’s enriching its ConnectedDrive in-car navigation system with a direct hookup to Google's Local Search. The console on your Beemer will soon be a virtual Yellow Pages that lets you search for businesses, restaurants and places of interest, then select one and have it automatically entered into your GPS nav system as a destination. Read More
50 years since the dawn of the space age
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June 18, 2007 Half a century ago, with the Cold War still in full effect, the Soviet space program struck a crucial first body blow in its space race against the USA - and in the process, ignited the imaginations of millions across the world and lifted our eyes towards the heavens. The year 1957 saw the successful launch of Sputnik, the first man-made satellite to orbit the Earth. A polished 58.5cm diameter aluminum alloy sphere with four long antennae drawn back from its sides, Sputnik covered around 60 million km between its launch on October 4th and when it burned up on re-entry on October 26. Read More
GPS mapping enriched with historical traffic speed data
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May 30, 2007 Satellite navigation can already tell you the shortest route from A to B, or the way that uses the most high-speed freeways - but on a gridlocked arterial freeway, speed limits are more of an insult than an indication of travel speed. That's why Tele Atlas have included new information in their latest U.S. mapping data so your SatNav system can analyse 2 years' worth of historical traffic speed data and tell you which route is likely to get you there fastest at a particular time of day. Read More
The sharpest ever satellite map of Earth
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May 18, 2007 The European Space Agency's GlobCover project has unveiled the most detailed portraits ever of the Earth's land surface. Using around 40 Terabytes of images captured from the ESA's Envisat, the maps, ten times sharper than anything produced previously, the GlobCover maps will have numerous uses, including plotting worldwide land use trends, studying natural and managed ecosystems and modelling climate change extent and impacts. Read More
