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Category: satellites – Page 187

Maybe Elon Musk could work with Waste Management the Waste Company in the US to keep space clean and environmentally happy.

ISRO is all set for its prestigious launch of 22 satellites in a single shot in June, said ISRO Chairman, Kiran Kumar, without giving the details about the possible type of satellites, though expected to be mostly nanosatellites.

Tentatively slated in the second half of June, the PSLV-C34 mission in the PSLV-XL configuration, will launch the Cartosat 2C high-resolution Earth observation satellite and 21 smaller secondary payloads from international customers. Originally scheduled for May, it was postponed to June.

Riding high on successful test of the reusable launch vehicle, he said last month end, “Next month we have a launch where we will be launching about 22 satellites. Also one of a cartographic series satellite will be launched.”

Continue reading “ISRO’s 1:22 Ratio to Crowd Space with Nano Satellites?” | >

As the world is wary about cyber hackers in China, the next big thing for it is launching an experimental quantum communication satellite in July that was designed by the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), making it first of its kind.

Since quantum communications assure the highest level of security being hard to replicate or separate. Nor can it be reverse engineered as it involves a complex process employing quantum entanglement. Once it is successful, China can be sure that no one can crack into its security networks, making it impossible for any world power to snoop around.

Developed over the last five years, the quantum satellite will be launched from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center with four ground stations to track and facilitate communication. Moreover, it will have one space quantum teleportation experiment station, said a report prepared by CAS.

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Perhaps it’s serendipitous, then, that the machines have finally arrived. Truly smart, truly impressive robots and machine learning algorithms that may help usher in a new Green Revolution to keep humans fed on an increasingly mercurial planet. Think satellites that automatically detect drought patterns, tractors that eyeball plants and kill the sick ones, and an AI-powered smartphone app that can tell a farmer what disease has crippled their crop.

Forget scarecrows. The future of agriculture is in the hands of the machines.

A Digital Green Thumb

Deep learning is a powerful method of computing in which programmers don’t explicitly tell a computer what to do, but instead train it to recognize certain patterns. You could feed a computer photos of diseased and healthy plant leaves, labeled as such. From these it will learn what diseased and healthy leaves look like, and determine the health of new leaves on its own.

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In the last few years, hundreds of contained “nano” satellites known as CubeSats have been launched in low Earth orbit for many purposes, including for collecting targeted scientific data. Federal agencies such as NASA and the National Science Foundation are exploring the potential of these highly affordable satellites in advancing research goals.

A new report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine concludes that CubeSats have demonstrated usefulness for scientific data gathering and can also augment – but not replace — the capabilities of large satellite missions and ground-based facilities. The report identifies examples of high-priority science goals that could be pursued through the use of CubeSats in areas such as solar and space physics, planetary science, and Earth science.

In order to continue building the capabilities of CubeSats for research, federal support is crucial, the report says, which identifies several steps NASA and NSF should take to ensure that CubeSats reach their full potential.

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Excellent read about future Commerce in Space — could we see an Amazon or a HomeDepot in space?

In space there are no service stations to pull into and get replacement parts for your satellite. Nor is there a towing service if a satellite is in the wrong orbit, a construction contractor to help you build structures, or a “Space Depot” for those who wish to “do-it-themselves” on orbit. In other words, we still operate within a first-generation space industrial enterprise, i.e. all commerce is on Earth, and we only focus on bits (data) coming from monolithic things that go up (i.e., satellites), which eventually die or just come down with no chance of repair or reuse.

Today the commercial space industry focuses exclusively on applications that support launching science, exploration, military, or established earth-bound data communication or delivery services, focusing data to/from space. The lack of technology to support or “markets” to enter has resulted in nebulous, unconsolidated and without-a-critical-mass investment in space-based infrastructure, industrialization, space resources (survey and process maturation) and global utility creation and delivery applications in space. However, all that may finally be changing.

Space applications that are not solely data driven are becoming real. Asteroid mining, fuel depots and commercial space stations are all being actively pursued by companies around the world, as examples of different types of revenue-generating endeavors outside of data-driven end use. These missions and their spacecraft will require greater upkeep, maintenance, repair, and consumable restoration. Consequently, “services” are now being talked about and pursued, executed from one space platform to another. The most talked-about “service” event is providing either consumables (fuel) or failure remediation to satellites on orbit, referred to as “servicing”. However, a handful of companies are seeking to break the shackles that today’s satellites are stuck with at launch, and go well beyond “servicing” into modifying and even constructing new space platforms, on orbit.

Continue reading “From data to service: the transition to “space-to-space” commerce” | >

Explosive storms spawned by interactions between the magnetic fields of Earth and the sun can endanger satellites, spacecraft and astronauts in space, as well as power grids on Earth. Now, a fleet of NASA spacecraft has for the first time directly witnessed the mysterious way in which these magnetic explosions occur.

This work could help shed light on dangerous solar outbursts and help improve the design of advanced nuclear reactors, researchers said. The discovery was made using NASA’s Magnetospheric Multiscale mission (or MMS for short), which launched four spacecraft into Earth’s magnetosphere, the bubble of plasma controlled by the planet’s magnetic field.

SEE ALSO: Satellite quartet: NASA’s Magnetospheric Multiscale Mission in pictures.

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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.

Continue reading “DARPA is building acoustic GPS for submarines and UUVs” | >