Imaging: Web Articles
Monitoring peatland from Earth and space | R&D Mag
"A team of UK scientists led by Dr. Karen Anderson (University of Exeter) has developed a new technique for monitoring the condition of peatlands. It could help monitor the damage that is being done to peatlands through human activity. Such disruption is contributing to global warming, as peatlands can release the carbon they absorb and store if they are damaged by drainage or peat extraction processes.
The team used a combination of images captured from Earth and space to measure spatial patterning in peatland surfaces as an indicator of their condition. This new method uses a novel coupled approach, using satellite images from space and airborne laser scanning data, and has resulted in improved peatland mapping products."
The End of Magical Climate Thinking | Foreign Policy
"The Obama administration succumbed, like many others, to a sort of magical climate thinking that promised a painless and even prosperous transition to a low-carbon future with the tools already at hand. The only official within his administration to accurately grasp the technology challenges faced, Energy Secretary Steven Chu, was sidelined at crucial moments. Here is the back story of how the Obama administration dramatically raised and then dashed America's -- and the world's -- hopes that 2009 would be a pivotal year for remaking our collective energy future." This article places blame on both government and green energy advocates for "magical thinking" about what will surely at minimum be a tough, expensive, decades-long slog. The importance of space infrastructure advancements, especially by the private sector, to developing innovative lower-cost solar power and biospheric and climate monitoring systems will be major. Earth and its environment are increasingly understood as one evolving macro-ecosystem traveling through space over eons.
Building up a new market for suborbital spaceflight | The Space Review
"...Space tourism isn’t the only market [suborbital space} vehicles can serve. The same vehicles that can give paying customers the ride of a lifetime can also serve as testbeds for scientific research, technology demonstration, and even education. These potential applications had been largely overshadowed by space tourism in recent years, deemed to be secondary markets—and certainly not as novel or glamorous as space tourism. However, in the last year there has been growing interest in these fields, to the point that one advocate for them believes that they might become bigger markets than even tourism."
Virgin Galactic to Unveil SpaceShipTwo - Commercial Spaceflight Federation
"SpaceShipTwo, intended to carry passengers and scientific payloads into suborbital space, is being unveiled today by Virgin Galactic in Mojave, California. SpaceShipTwo was developed for Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic by the engineering firm Scaled Composites, a team that includes aerospace pioneer Burt Rutan.
This reusable spacecraft will take two pilots and six passengers to space after first being carried aloft by the WhiteKnightTwo carrier aircraft, which has already been undergoing test flights for a year. SpaceShipTwo will conduct flights of passengers and science payloads to space from Spaceport America near Las Cruces, New Mexico.
Richard Branson, founder of Virgin Galactic, stated, “This is truly a momentous day. The team has created not only a world first but also a work of art. The unveil of SS2 takes the Virgin Galactic vision to the next level and continues to provide tangible evidence that this ambitious project is not only moving rapidly, but also making tremendous progress towards our goal of safe commercial operation.”
Commercial Reusable Suborbital Research Program (CRuSR) - Request for Info
"In this Request for Information (RFI), the NASA Ames CRuSR Office is requesting technical and programmatic input to improve the government's understanding of flight opportunities to aid potential science investigators in scoping and designing possible future suborbital investigations. Responses to this RFI are welcome from all interested parties, especially potential providers of suborbital spaceflight services. Suborbital spaceflight service providers should consider accommodation of flight experiments that address any of the science disciplines listed herein."
Robot Armada Could Explore New Worlds | R&D Mag
"An armada of robots may one day fly above the mountain tops of Saturn's moon Titan, cross its vast dunes and sail in its liquid lakes. Wolfgang Fink, visiting associate in physics at the California Institute of Technology, says we are on the brink of a great paradigm shift in planetary exploration, and the next round of robotic explorers will be nothing like what we see today."
French Defense Budget Proposes Milsatcom Privatization | SpaceNews.com
"The French Defense Ministry’s 2010 budget request would sell France’s military satellite telecommunications system to a private-sector operator that would lease 90 percent of the capacity back to the French government, and would retain the remaining 10 percent to sell to other governments on a commercial basis."
This appears to be one aspect of the French-style commercialization of space. Could this happen in the U.S.? Military space entities in the U.S. are already leasing portions of commercially-developed communication satellites for their own use. Is the current NASA COTS program a step in this direction as some think? Is this shift toward commercialization both inevitable and wise?
NRO Embraces Cubesats for Testing Advanced Technologies: SpaceNews
" In an effort to reduce risk in developing operational spy satellites, the U.S. National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) has started a new program that will use tiny satellites, known as cubesats, as in-space test platforms for promising new technologies. Last year, the spy satellite agency established a cubesat program office dedicated to small satellites weighing between 1 and 5 kilograms each. Located within the NRO's Advanced Systems and Technology division, the new Colony Program Office has 12 cubesats in production this year and plans to purchase between 20 and 50 additional cubesats at roughly $250,000 each over a two-year period beginning in 2010."
DigitalGlobe Launches a New and Improved World Viewer: Satnews Publishers
"DigitalGlobe is a global provider of commercial, high-resolution, world imagery products and services. Sourced from their own advanced satellite constellation, DigitalGlobe's imagery solutions support a wide variety of uses from mapping and analysis to navigation technology. With advanced collection sources, a comprehensive Image Library and a range of online and offline products and services, clients are able to access and integrate imagery seamlessly into business operations and applications.
With a mission life of 7.25 years, and operating at an altitude of 770 km, the WorldView-2 system is expected to bring agility, capacity, accuracy and spectral diversity to commercial earth imaging.'
The Fall of the Maya: "They Did it to Themselves" | Science@NASA
"For 1200 years, the Maya dominated Central America. At their peak around 900 A.D., Maya cities teemed with more than 2,000 people per square mile -- comparable to modern Los Angeles County. But suddenly, all was quiet. The profound silence testified to one of the greatest demographic disasters in human prehistory -- the demise of the once vibrant Maya society.
So, what happened? Some NASA-funded researchers think they have a pretty good idea. "They did it to themselves," says veteran archeologist Tom Sever. He and his team used computer simulations to reconstruct how the deforestation could have played a role in worsening the drought. They isolated the effects of deforestation using a pair of proven computer climate models: the PSU/NCAR mesoscale atmospheric circulation model, known as MM5, and the Community Climate System Model, or CCSM. The models predict that deforestation could have raised the temperature 3-5 deg F. and caused a drop of 20-3-% in rainfall. There is strong evidence of drought and mass graves were identified suggesting thirst, famine and conflict. NASA-related earth observation technologies helped to solve this long-time mystery.