Items tagged with satellites
Companies such as SpaceX and Amazon are currently working to deploy large satellite constellations. These satellite constellations may help improve the availability of the Internet, but they may also provide challenges to astronomers. Astronomers recently argued that satellite constellations could “fundamentally change” how they observe and record data about the night sky. The astronomer’s report was shared at the Satellite Constellations 1 (SATCON1) workshop. The workshop was hosted virtually from June 29th to July 1st, 2020 and the report has since been shared on the American Astronomical Society’s website. It is unclear what exact impact these satellite constellations...
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Astronomers aren't happy with SpaceX because the Starlink satellites that it is launching into orbit at a blistering pace are much brighter than anyone ever expected. Astronomers were aware that SpaceX was launching the satellites, and the plan was well documented going as far back as 2015. The ultimate intention of SpaceX is to place about 4,000 satellites into low Earth orbit to blanket the globe in broadband internet access at a low price. While the initial plans called for about 4,000 satellites, SpaceX has since received approval to put 12,000 satellites into orbit and is seeking permission to put up to 30,000 into orbit. As of now, SpaceX expects to launch its broadband service sometime...
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As we approach the new decade, it feels as if every major tech company is working on their own satellites. Everyone from SpaceX to Amazon is interested in broadband satellites. It was recently revealed that Apple has also thrown its hat into the ring. Apple has been secretly working on its own satellites over the last few years. According to a Bloomberg article, Apple has been hiring hardware and software engineers for the satellite project over the last few months. There are currently about a dozen engineers working on the satellites. The team is led by aerospace engineers Michael Trela and John Fenwick, who worked for the company Skybox Imaging until 2015. Apple hopes to finish the satellites...
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"Beam me up, Scotty!" Chinese scientists just set a record for quantum entanglement distance, and many argue that this experiment expands the possibilities for global quantum communication. The Chinese team of scientists, led by Ji-Gang Ren at the University of Science and Technology in Shanghai, fired a laser from a station in Tibet to a satellite 1,400 kilometers (870 miles) above the Earth’s surface. The laser that went to the satellite carried a photon that was entangled with another photon that remained on the ground. The scientists then entangled a third photon and measured their quantum states. Image from: Wikimedia Commons, Maksim“Entangled” photons have what Albert Einstein referred...
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The space above Earth is about to get a little more crowded. The FCC has recently granted approval to OneWeb to launch over 720 Internet-beaming satellites into orbit. OneWeb is “the first satellite constellation of its kind to receive approval from the full commission.” The low-Earth orbit satellites will employ on-geostationary satellite orbit (NGSO) technology. OneWeb as a company is backed by some industry heavy-hitters as well, with Dr. Paul Jacobs, Executive Chairman of Qualcomm and Sir Richard Branson, Founder of Virgin Group, among others residing on its Board of Directors. Image from: OneWebOneWeb was granted 7 GHz of spectrum in 1997 by the United Nations International Telecommunications...
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This spring has been an important one for SpaceX. Elon Musk’s space flight company landed its Falcon 9 rocket on a barge (though a little too hard) and then completed a successful abort test for the Dragon capsule. So far, the spotlight has generally been on what SpaceX can do for our astronauts at the International Space Station (ISS). Today, the U.S. Air Force announced that it has certified SpaceX for “national security space launch missions.”The announcement was made by Lieutenant General Samuel Greaves, Commander of the Air Force Space and Missile Systems Center (SMC). “The SpaceX and SMC teams have worked hard to achieve certification,” Greaves said in a statement. “And we’re also maintaining...
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You have to hand it to Tony Stark, err, I mean Elon Musk. The man helped to co-found PayPal and he’s the CEO of Tesla Motors, which has brought us wonderful electric vehicles like the Roadster and the outrageous Model S P85D. Musk also helms SpaceX, which just recently made its fifth successful trip the International Space Station (ISS) to deliver supplies via the Dragon capsule. The secondary mission of the latest ISS launch resulted in the “successful failure” of the Falcon 9 rocket, which Musk described as a Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly (RUD) event. And let’s not forget that Musk is also the chairman of SolarCity, which produces commercial- and consumer-grade solar panels. You would think...
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We’d bet that when Mark Zuckerberg drunkenly dashed off the original Facebook precursor in his dorm room, he never imagined that within a decade he’d be actively trying to connect two-thirds of the world to the Internet and working with NASA to do so, but that is indeed what has transpired. Zuckerberg announced that Internet.org, the organization comprising Facebook and many other Internet companies, is “working on ways to beam internet to people from the sky” by building drones, satellites, and lasers in the new Facebook Connectivity Lab. Different population densities require different solutions. For example, in low population densities, the team is looking to satellites....
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Every now and then we need a reminder that technology is more than games and gadgets, and this is one of those times: To help in the bizarre and tragic case of the Malaysia Flight 370 jet that has mysteriously vanished without a trace, a company called DigitalGlobe is using satellite images and crowdsourcing to help in the search. DigitalGlobe says it owns the world’s most advanced commercial imaging satellites, and it also has a crowdsourcing platform called Tomnod that allows users to comb through satellite images to aid “Response and recovery efforts for numerous natural and man-made disasters”. DigitalGlobe Tomnod DigitalGlobe used its satellites to capture some 3,200 square...
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If Toshiba has its way, fingerprint authentication is about to become passé. Toshiba Satellite laptops with Toshiba's "Fusion finish" (the Satellite U400, M300, A300, and P300 models) will all come standard with "Toshiba Face Recognition" software. Instead of logging in with a traditional typed password, Satellite users can get access to their systems by having their faces scanned by the Satellite's integrated webcam and then compared against a database of stored images of the users' faces. A press release from Toshiba stated:“Toshiba prides itself on making laptops that stand out in the marketplace,” said Jeff Barney, vice president of marketing, Digital Products Division, Toshiba America Information...
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