Google Earth is an amazing resource, but if there’s one criticism that can be leveled at it, it’s that it’s permanently out of date due to the lag between when the data is acquired and when it appears online. But right now, a pair of Californian startups are putting swarms of tiny satellites into space, creating real-time satellite imagery that will solve that problem.
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Worried about an important satellite transmission? The UK’s Meteorological Office will begin offering daily space weather forecasts to warn against solar storms that can knock out power grids, radios, and satellite-based tech like GPS. Solar storm activity follows a 11-year cycle, and we’re approaching a maximum right now. [BBC]
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Greg White has shot some of the most remote and unusual places in the world. The UK photographer has published photo essays on Chernobyl, Svalbard, and even CERN. But for his latest project, he discovered an alien world within the ordinary confines of his home country: The labs where satellites are built.
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The 2011 Tohoku earthquake, which caused the tsunami behind the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear meltdown
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Twenty-nine tiny satellites are tightening their seat belts
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Your coolest high school science project probably involved some baking soda and a paper mâché volcano, right? A little chemical reaction and a big mess? Well, kids these days are smarter than you. They’re building satellites and sending them to space.
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When it comes to orbital launch positioning, the Earth has something of a sweet spot: the equator. Like a gigantic planetary baseball bat, rockets jump off the Earth’s center-line with ease, able to enter geostationary orbits using a fraction of the energy required anywhere else on the planet.
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Last week, China tested out a satellite that’s capable of grabbing and capturing other satellites as they orbit the Earth. This normally wouldn’t be such a big deal, except that it amounts to China conducting a weapons test in space. And that’s worrisome—especially to the Pentagon.
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With an average global broadband connection speed of just 3.1 Mbps, the internet has become one enormous bottleneck for those that send large amounts of data across it. At that speed, a 100 GB file would take around three days to transfer completely, eons too long in a digital era measured by millisecond pings. But a new double-duty satellite launched yesterday could cut that transfer time to just 90 minutes.
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Putting satellites into orbit is no easy task, especially with the demise of the Space Shuttle program. Which is why DARPA’s going to make itself a spacejet.
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