“European industry has begun assembling the “back end” of the Orion crewship that is due to make an important 2018 demonstration flight around the Moon.”
Category: government – Page 230
China to Launch World’s First Quantum Space Satellite in July
Enough said; China officially makes Quantum communications available via Satellite in July. Now, what does this mean to government funded hackers and the US and Europe?
The launch of the world’s first quantum space satellite developed by China is scheduled for July, according to the project’s chief scientist Pan Jianwei.
BEIJING (Sputnik) — According to the physicist, cited by the People’s Daily Online, the quantum network will connect Beijing, Jinan, Hefei and Shanghai among other cities spanning a 2,000-kilometer (1,243 miles) area.
The US military is creating brain implants to restore lost memories
So, the US Military has developed a way to eliminate bad memories/ PTSD and another method to restore memories. Wish the US Government would make their minds up on this one — LOL.
A scientist in DARPA’s biological technologies offices explains how the agency is developing implants that could bring back memories.
DARPA Has a Simple Plan to Clean Up the World’s Deadliest Weapons
US Government may have discovered a new method of safely getting rid of old chemical and other old stockpile weapons.
Getting rid of chemical weapons is one of the military’s most unpleasant duties. But in the future, it may be no more difficult than incinerating garbage, thanks to a team of DARPA-funded scientists who think they can turn some of the world’s deadliest poisons into harmless dirt.
Chemical weapons, including nerve agents and mustards, have been banned under international law since the 1990s, but many countries still harbor large stockpiles. In 2013, a horrific chemical weapons attack in Syria—called the Ghouta attack —claimed hundreds of civilian lives, prompting the international community to intervene and eliminate the country’s chemical weapons reserves. By August 2014, 600 metric tons of deadly weapons had been destroyed (in the military parlance, “demilitarized”) aboard the US Navy vessel MV Cape Ray.
The Ghouta attack highlighted two things: one, that the world would be a better place if we could annihilate all chemical weapons. Two, that we really don’t have a safe method of doing so. “The Cape Ray did a great job achieving its objective, which was to demilitarize Syria’s chemical weapons,” said Dr. Tyler McQuade, a chemist and program manager at DARPA’s Defense Sciences Office. “The downside is, the weapons had to be transported a long distance, and we did the demilitarization on the Mediterranean. If anything had gone wrong, it could have been really horrible for the local environment.”
Why DARPA Is Pursuing the Reusable Military XS-1 Spaceplane
Coming clean on the story around the XS-1 Spaceplane. Hmmm; US Government coming clean; really?
ORLANDO, Fla. – Here’s a phrase that’s not repeated everyday in the space community:
“You’ve heard Elon’s comments … we want to go beyond that,” Brad Tousley, the head of the tactical technology office at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, said May 15.
Elon, of course, is Elon Musk, the optimistic, and some say visionary, founder of SpaceX with plans of eventually colonizing Mars. After landing three first-stage rockets, Musk has said SpaceX would inspect the rockets with plans to later re-fly most of them. [DARPA’s XS-1 Military Space Plane Concept in Pictures].
Estonia Offers Virtual Government E-Residency To Anyone
Are you tired of your poor selections for political leaders? Maybe you like a new type of government all together. If so, well do I have the story for you. It’s their e-Government as a Service.
If the United Arab Emirates has a minister for happiness (and it does), then why can’t a country have a CIO? Taavi Kotka sees no reason why not and he has been chief information officer for the Estonian government since 2013. Kotka is working to help the country attempt to achieve what it calls a ‘sustained march towards modernity’. The new Estonia wants to be a sort of ‘start-up nation’ with a new digital infrastructure to deliver public and private services.
But E-government (or eGovernment if you prefer) is nothing new, so what makes Estonia worth the E value and is it doing anything radically different?
Kotka insists that digitization is changing the mechanisms of citizen political involvement, public administration and democracy itself. This is not still news though i.e. groups like the Maker Movement and Code For America have been championing personal individual involvement in public services for some time now.
DARPA is building acoustic GPS for submarines and UUVs
A new underwater GPS.
For all the benefits that the Global Positioning System provides to landlubbers and surface ships, GPS signals can’t penetrate seawater and therefore can’t be used by oceangoing vehicles like submarines or UUVs. That’s why DARPA is creating an acoustic navigation system, dubbed POSYDON (Positioning System for Deep Ocean Navigation), and has awarded the Draper group with its development contract.
The space-based GPS system relies on a constellation of satellites that remain in a fixed position relative to the surface of the Earth. The GPS receiver in your phone or car’s navigation system triangulates the signals it receives from those satellites to determine your position. The POSYDON system will perform the same basic function, just with sound instead. The plan is to set up a small number of long-range acoustic sources that a submarine or UUV could use to similarly triangulate its position without having to surface.
The system should be ready for sea trials by 2018. It will initially be utilized exclusively for military and government operations but, like conventional GPS before it, will eventually be opened up to civilians as well.
Draper Gets DARPA Contract to Improve Stealth Capabilities for Undersea Vehicles
I love contract season with the US Government because you get to see all of the cool projects being awarded.
CAMBRIDGE, MA — The U.S. military’s unmanned underwater vehicles (UUVs) depend on stealth as they conduct surveillance and reconnaissance and other missions in the deep oceans. With Global Positioning System (GPS) signals unable to penetrate the ocean’s surface, these UUVs can rely on inertial sensors to provide acceptable positioning information during short missions. On longer missions, however, inertial sensors accumulate error, forcing the vehicles to risk exposing themselves to enemies as they periodically surface to obtain a GPS fix.
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is addressing this issue by funding the development of a small number of acoustic transmitters that can be anchored to fixed locations around ocean basins to serve as an undersea navigation constellation, according to a May 10 release by the Cambridge-based nonprofit company Draper.
By measuring its range to multiple signals emanating from known coordinates, an undersea vehicle can operate continuously with accurate navigation information without needing to surface for GPS fixes or to use high cost inertial systems that are typical of current UUVs. DARPA awarded a contract on March 15 to a Draper-led team to begin development of a solution for the Positioning System for Deep Ocean Navigation (POSYDON).