Browse by Tags

All Tags » Satellites   (RSS)
15 August 2008
GLAST Science Operations Underway – Now, About That Name…
After a 60-day checkout period, science operations have begun in earnest for GLAST, the Gamma ray Large Area Space Telescope, which is now surveying the gamma-ray sky. Launched on June 11, 2008, the GLAST spacecraft has been undergoing calibrations of the two instruments on board, the LAT (Large Area Telescope) and the GBM (GLAST [...]
Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!
0 Comments  
09 August 2008
From Space to the Olympics
Space and the Olympics might not be synonymous in most people's minds — although this image of the Opening Ceremony fireworks makes it look like Olympic Stadium is going supernova — but there are a few connections between the two for this year's Summer Olympics in Beijing, China. Google Earth recently updated the satellite [...]
Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!
0 Comments
Filed under:
 
10 July 2008
Nano-materials Could Protect Spacecraft and Satellites From Debris
Space junk in Earth orbit is becoming a big problem (here's an previous UT article that illustrates the problem.) If the International Space Station or an operating communications or science satellite were struck by debris such as an old satellite, launch vehicle parts, or even something as small as a paint chip, it could [...]
Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!
0 Comments
Filed under:
 
09 July 2008
Wind Power From the Ocean (With Help from Space)
I drive regularly through Iowa and southern Minnesota in the US, and over the past few years wind farms have been popping up in that region up almost faster than corn grows. These massive wind turbines are awesome to see. But there may be an even better location for future wind farms than [...]
Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!
0 Comments  
08 July 2008
The Yin and Yang of the NeXT Spacecraft
Hard and soft. Dark and bright. High and low. Wide and thin. JAXA and NASA. And that's just one spacecraft. Japan's space agency, JAXA and NASA are teaming up to create a new spacecraft to study the extreme environments of the universe. NeXT, which stands for New exploration [...]
Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!
0 Comments
Filed under:
 
02 July 2008
STEREO Maps Far Reaches of Solar System
NASA's twin STEREO spacecraft have been studying the sun since their launch in 2006. But the mission made a surprising and unexpected discovery by detecting particles from the edge of the solar system, and for the first time, scientists have now been able to map the region where the hot solar wind meets up [...]
Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!
0 Comments  
01 July 2008
Canada to build World's First Asteroid-hunting Satellite
Just yesterday (June 30th) was the 100-year anniversary of the Tunguska event, when a small piece of ice or rock created a huge blast crater near the Podkammenaya Tungus river in Siberia, flattening trees and scaring the heck out of people in the surrounding area. Thankfully, the blast didn't happen in a populated area and [...]
Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!
0 Comments
Filed under: ,
 
30 June 2008
Solar Sail To Launch This Summer
NASA’s Marshall and Ames Research Centers will team up with the commercial space company SpaceX to launch and deploy a solar sail this summer. A bread-box sized payload called NanoSail-D will travel to space onboard a SpaceX Falcon 1 Rocket and if all goes well, it will be the first fully deployed solar sail [...]
Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!
0 Comments
Filed under: ,
 
21 June 2008
Photographer Images Satellites That Do Not Exist
Trevor Paglen is an astrophotographer with a difference… he takes photos of satellites that are not there. Officially "not there", anyway. He spends many nights surveying the skies, waiting for classified spy satellites to pass overhead. When one appears, after researching what is actually out there (which is a hard task, these things are not [...]
Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!
0 Comments  
20 June 2008
New Satellite Will Monitor Rising Oceans
A Delta 2 rocket blasted off early this morning at 3:46 a.m. EDT bringing the Ocean Surface Topography Mission-Jason 2 into Earth orbit. The satellite will use a radar altimeter to precisely measure the height of ocean surfaces, which have been rising in recent years because of increasing temperatures. The data will be [...]
Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!
0 Comments
Filed under:
 
07 June 2008
Possible Solution to Solar Flare Damage to Satellites
When a solar flare blasts energetic particles and magnetic flux at Earth, our satellites are on the front line. As coronal mass ejections (CMEs) interact with the Earth's magnetosphere, there is a huge injection of energetic electrons into the Earth's radiation belts. This can have dire consequences for the satellites that we depend on for [...]
Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!
0 Comments
Filed under:
 
01 June 2008
Harvesting Solar Power from Space
In a new report, the viability of sending solar panels into space to collect a vast quantity of uninterrupted energy has been re-investigated. Although the idea has been around since the 1970's, space solar power has always been viewed as prohibitively expensive. In the current energy climate down here on Earth with spiralling oil prices [...]
Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!
0 Comments  
29 May 2008
US Wants to Defend Satellites From Laser Attack
So what do you do if someone fires a powerful laser at your satellite? The optics on the satellite will probably be fried, so you couldn't see who did it. The US military appears to be concerned that this possibility may become a reality. As the US depends more and more on space for communications, [...]
Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!
0 Comments
Filed under: ,
 
27 May 2008
The A-Train: Using Five Satellites as One to Analyze Polluted Clouds
This is one of the finest examples of satellite collaboration. Five Earth-observing orbiters, four from NASA and one from France, are working together to provide the deepest analysis of cloud cover ever carried out. The satellites orbit in a close formation, only eight minutes apart, and create what is known as the "Afternoon Constellation" (or [...]
Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!
0 Comments  
27 May 2008
China Launches Second Olympic Satellite; Will Help Earthquake Zone
China is stepping up its preparations for this year's Olympics to be held in the Chinese capital, Beijing. Concern is growing for the start of the games this summer as early August is known to be a wet period in the region. More advanced weather satellites are therefore being sent into orbit to aid the [...]
Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!
0 Comments
Filed under: ,
 
More Posts Next page »