Satellite

Raytheon has announced the creation of the world's largest infra-red light wave detector, the "4K by 4K" focal plane array. Not only will it allow whole hemisphere satellite monitoring at 16 megapixel resolution but it should also make sensors less dependent on the complicated scanning mechanisms used in current systems.  Read More

The USD$880 Solara Field Tracker 2100 is a handheld GPS with text messaging – no voice, no video, no apps, just text. This may not seem a particularly enticing value proposition, particularly when you consider the USD$30 a month subscription fee, but wait … there's more! As it operates over the Iridium satellite network, which offers truly global coverage, it means you can stay in touch even if you're trekking the Himalayas, or the Silk road or Antarctica. Throw in extreme ruggedness, automatic position reporting and a two-way Emergency Alert notification system and it's a very compelling proposition if you're an adventurer who enjoys getting well off the beaten track.  Read More

Thanks to personal navigation systems, the days of getting completely lost whilst out wandering are well and truly behind us. GPS navigation systems can now show you 3D representations of your surroundings, give you multiple routing options and can even let you know if there's a good restaurant nearby. You can buy units to mount in your car, on your bike or on your wrist and can now even get GPS capabilities in most modern mobile phones. But if all you want is to be able to find your way back to where you started from as quickly and easily as possible then the ECCO personal GPS navigator might be of interest.  Read More

When it comes to severe thunderstorms, every minute of advance warning can be vital. Present methods rely on radar to detect impending storms, but a new technique that uses satellites to measure the temperature changes in the tops of clouds, could predict severe thunderstorms up to 45 minutes earlier than relying on traditional radar alone.  Read More

Student designer Roy Hareguina's "Squad" is a compact indoor positioning system that enables fire fighters, even in dense smoke, to know their exact location and that of their colleagues at all times. Using a dual-mapping system, the tough polyetheretherketone (PEEK) units reduce the danger of separation and disorientation in high-rise buildings, and increase a fire fighter’s ability to save lives.  Read More

May 1, 2009 The idea of replacing very expensive space based satellites and Aircraft mounted Airborne Warning And Control Systems (AWACS) with stationary platforms inside Earth's atmosphere has been floated for decades. Despite the fact that lighter-than-air vehicles or airships that could fulfill this role have been flying for over 300 years, the idea is only now getting off the ground. Lockheed Martin has been chosen by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) for a US$400 million contract to to design, build, test and fly a 1:3 scale model of an airship surveillance and telecommunications platform called the High Altitude Airship (HAA). The full scale HAA would measure 240 ft long by 70 ft in diameter, run entirely on solar power and be able to stay aloft for up to 10 years.  Read More

We’ve recently examined the danger posed to future space missions by the ever increasing collection of space junk orbiting the Earth. Now a plan by a pair of space engineers to use a sail to take out the trash – or rather, bring it back to Earth – may help to stop future space missions adding to the problem of space junk.  Read More

In bad news for NASA (and the planet in general), the Orbiting Carbon Observatory (OCO) satellite did not reach orbit as planned yesterday. According to a launch contingency briefing from NASA, the Taurus XL from California's Vandenberg Air Force Base at 4:55 a.m. EST proceeded normally, with only typical "minor issues" reported as the rocket approached lift-off, but preliminary indications are that the fairing on the Taurus XL launch vehicle failed to separate.  Read More

When we are born, we soil ourselves and other people clean it up for us. As we mature, we take responsibility for our own excrement. Strangely, as a society, we're not at all good at toilet training ourselves regarding the excrement produced by industry, transport or agriculture. Human beings capacity to eschew short term gain when faced with long term harm is notoriously woeful so it’s not surprising we've done exactly the same thing in space, leaving so much debris that it's now dangerous to be in the orbital band around earth due to the likelihood of being hit by junk traveling at 18,000 mph. The latest evidence: last week saw the first ever accidental collision between two intact spacecraft, a deactivated Russian satellite and an Iridium 33 satellite, which left a fresh cloud of debris 497 miles above the Earth.  Read More