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Thijs Versloot

Satellites help power grid keep its balance - 0 views

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    Using realtime environmental information (irradiance in this case) from GOES to update grid forecasts.
Thijs Versloot

Counting whales from space #plos - 1 views

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    The WorldView2 satellite has a maximum 50 cm resolution and a water penetrating coastal band in the far-blue part of the spectrum that allows it to see deeper into the water column. Using an image covering 113 km2, we identified 55 probable whales and 23 other features that are possibly whales, with a further 13 objects that are only detected by the coastal band.
Daniel Hennes

Giant Solar-Powered UAVs Are Atmospheric Satellites - 2 views

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    More information on the future of UAVs and the space industry.
LeopoldS

Testing Continues for Satellite Servicing Capabilities | NASA - 0 views

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    Engineers at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida are partnering with counterparts at the agency's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland to develop systems to bring potential future robotic "service tow trucks" to orbiting spacecraft in need of aid
johannessimon81

Solar Power Satellites: overview of NASA's former plans - 1 views

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    Nice link and clear overview! I like the point raised about 1000 man in space, even when including automation (as far as they could envision at the time). Now that is a future of the space industry and permanent habitation of near-earth orbits! In fact, I can envision just two reasons maybe, power and the hotel industry
Thijs Versloot

ISEE-3 Reboot Project - Recovering an satellite from deep space by crowdsourcing @Spac... - 3 views

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    "A band of space hackers and engineers are trying to do something never done before - recover a 36 year old NASA spacecraft from the grips of deep space and time. With old NASA documents and Rockethub crowdfunding, a team led by Dennis Wingo and Keith Cowing is attempting to steer ISEE-3, later rechristened ICE, the International Cometary Explorer, back into an Earth orbit and return it to scientific operations. Dennis says, 'ISEE-3 can become a great teaching tool for future engineers and scientists helping with design and travel to Mars'. Only 40 days remain before the spacecraft will be out of range for recovery. A radio telescope is available, propulsion designs are in hand and the team is hoping for public support to provide the small amount needed to accomplish a very unique milestone in space exploration
Alexander Wittig

Picture This: NVIDIA GPUs Sort Through Tens of Millions of Flickr Photos - 2 views

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    Strange and exotic cityscapes. Desolate wilderness areas. Dogs that look like wookies. Flickr, one of the world's largest photo sharing services, sees it all. And, now, Flickr's image recognition technology can categorize more than 11 billion photos like these. And it does it automatically. It's called "Magic View." Magical deep learning! Buzzword attack!
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    and here comes my standard question: how can we use this for space? fast detection of natural disasters onboard?
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    Even on ground. You could for example teach it what nuclear reactors or missiles or other weapons you don't want look like on satellite pictures and automatically scan the world for them (basically replacing intelligence analysts).
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    In fact, I think this could make a nice ACT project: counting seals from satellite imagery is an actual (and quite recent) thing: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0092613 In this publication they did it manually from a GeoEye 1 b/w image, which sounds quite tedious. Maybe one can train one of those image recognition algorithms to do it automatically. Or maybe it's a bit easier to count larger things, like elephants (also a thing).
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    In HiPEAC (High Performance, embedded architecture and computation) conference I attended in the beginning of this year there was a big trend of CUDA GPU vs FPGA for hardware accelerated image processing. Most of it orbitting around discussing who was faster and cheaper with people from NVIDIA in one side and people from Xilinx and Intel in the other. I remember of talking with an IBM scientist working on hardware accelerated data processing working together with the Radio telescope institute in Netherlands about the solution where they working on (GPU CUDA). I gathered that NVIDIA GPU suits best in applications that somehow do not rely in hardware, having the advantage of being programmed in a 'easy' way accessible to a scientist. FPGA's are highly reliable components with the advantage of being available in radhard versions, but requiring specific knowledge of physical circuit design and tailored 'harsh' programming languages. I don't know what is the level of rad hardness in NVIDIA's GPUs... Therefore FPGAs are indeed the standard choice for image processing in space missions (a talk with the microelectronics department guys could expand on this), whereas GPUs are currently used in some ground based (radio astronomy or other types of telescopes). I think that on for a specific purpose as the one you mentioned, this FPGA vs GPU should be assessed first before going further.
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    You're forgetting power usage. GPUs need 1000 hamster wheels worth of power while FPGAs can run on a potato. Since space applications are highly power limited, putting any kind of GPU monster in orbit or on a rover is failed idea from the start. Also in FPGAs if a gate burns out from radiation you can just reprogram around it. Looking for seals offline in high res images is indeed definitely a GPU task.... for now.
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    The discussion of how to make FPGA hardware acceleration solutions easier to use for the 'layman' is starting btw http://reconfigurablecomputing4themasses.net/.
Alexander Wittig

SpaceX founder files with government to provide Internet service from space - 0 views

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    Elon Musk is moving forward with space based internet service...
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    reading the qz article, it is not clear to me that google dropped out as one of the main investors in SpaceX? did I miss something?
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    I attended a presentation by H. Hemmati, formerly at NASA's JPL, now at Facebook working to "connect the unconnected" during a panel session of the Workshop "Shining light on future space optical communications". I gather that they are targeting a combined strategy of HAP (with solar powered planes at 20-25 km), balloons and satellites. The rationale behind is that each solution is best suited for different population density zones, i.e. satellites while expensive (total cost of 100MUSD after Hemmati) are the only way to provide internet in remote zones, while balloons seem to be one inexpensive solution for densely populated areas. Funfact: he mentioned that the main drawback will be some crashes of HAP elements...
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    Facebook announced they are ready to test of of their High Altitude Platform element, a drone of the size of a Boeing 737. See the new here http://phys.org/news/2015-07-facebook-ready-giant-drone-internet.html?utm_source=nwletter&utm_medium=email&utm_content=ctgr-item&utm_campaign=daily-nwletter. It seemed interesting for me that they are developing also a reliable optical communication between this element and scattered ground stations.
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    Nice link, that thing is huge and I would love to see a drone that size fly. Also, Facebook's Aerospace Team? :)
Joris _

Spaceflight Now | Breaking News | Prisma satellites will begin high-flying dance next week - 2 views

  • test of new formation-flying and rendezvous technologies
  • relatively low-cost technologies
  • autonomous formation-flying, meaning that we regard these two satellites as one entity
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    they presented it briefly at the 4S symposium (unfortunately really briefly..) FF is though only one of their tech demos on PRISMA
Joris _

ATK Proposes Satellite To Fight Space Debris | SpaceNews.com - 0 views

  • The goal is to turn large debris particles that pose a threat to spacecraft into much smaller pieces that can be deflected by exterior shielding.
Joris _

Spaceflight Now | Breaking News | Sweden's Prisma satellites go their separate ways - 1 views

  • exotic green propellant maneuvering systems
  • In the two months since launch, controllers have powered up the satellites' navigation and formation flying equipment, tested its green propellant thruster, and successfully navigated around orbital debris threats.
  • a smorgasbord of payloads
andreiaries

SPACE.com -- Huge Satellite Poses 150-Year Threat of Space Debris - 1 views

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    ESA is still at the forefront of space debris developments. But we do have a brilliant idea from the public: "Pay Communist China to shoot it down."
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    Just in case you don't realise, it's the one which model is next to the Space EXPO :-) Quite a piece of debris...
Juxi Leitner

The Associated Press: Launch set for US satellite to monitor space junk - 0 views

  • It's designed to give the Air Force its first full-time, space-based surveillance of satellites and debris in Earth's orbit. It monitors them for possible collisions.
Juxi Leitner

Technology Review: Blogs: arXiv blog: Physicist Discovers How to Teleport Energy - 4 views

  • He gives the example of a string of entangled ions oscillating back and forth in an electric field trap, a bit like Newton's balls. Measuring the state of the first ion injects energy into the system in the form of a phonon, a quantum of oscillation. Hotta says that performing the right kind of measurement on the last ion extracts this energy. Since this can be done at the speed of light (in principle), the phonon doesn't travel across the intermediate ions so there is no heating of these ions. The energy has been transmitted without traveling across the intervening space.
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    wonder if we can use that to power a moon base .... or on-board a SBSP satellite
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    will still have to read the actual article but am a bit sceptic if this interpretation really will hold ... what are our fundamental physicists saying about this?
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    I am not the physicist but I thought it might be interesting, from a space security point-of-view
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    Yes it seems really interesting and opens new possibilities. However this technology review article is not very good and the guy uses terms which have a precise meaning (like teleportation), which is different from the word we know... Quantum teleportation is what we use for designing quantum computers, but we are quite far from any practical applications. This energy teleportation will allow new scheme involving energy (if it is experimentally confirmed) which is very nice. However it seems this occurs in an entangled many-body system, which the only macroscopic one I know is a bose-eintein condensate (BEC). So it would mean infuse energy in the BEC by doing a measurement on one of the atom and extract it few millimeters away by doing a measurement on another atom. very far from any long distance power transmission...
Juxi Leitner

robots.net - Robots: Swarming Satellites - 0 views

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    nice podcast to hear also what there plans for the future are
Dario Izzo

Probabilistic Logic Allows Computer Chip to Run Faster - 3 views

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    Francesco pointed out this research one year ago, we dropped it as noone was really considering it ... but in space a low CPU power consumption is crucial!! Maybe we should look back into this?
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    Q1: For the time being, for what purposes computers are mainly used on-board?
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    for navigation, control, data handling and so on .... why?
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    Well, because the point is to identify an application in which such computers would do the job... That could be either an existing application which can be done sufficiently well by such computers or a completely new application which is not already there for instance because of some power consumption constraints... Q2 would be then: for which of these purposes strict determinism of the results is not crucial? As the answer to this may not be obvious, a potential study could address this very issue. For instance one can consider on-board navigation systems with limited accuracy... I may be talking bullshit now, but perhaps in some applications it doesn't matter whether a satellite flies on the exact route but +/-10km to the left/right? ...and so on for the other systems. Another thing is understanding what exactly this probabilistic computing is, and what can be achieved using it (like the result is probabilistic but falls within a defined range of precision), etc. Did they build a complete chip or at least a sub-circiut, or still only logic gates...
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    Satellites use old CPUs also because with the trend of going for higher power modern CPUs are not very convenient from a system design point of view (TBC)... as a consequence the constraints put on on-board algorithms can be demanding. I agree with you that double precision might just not be necessary for a number of applications (navigation also), but I guess we are not talking about 10km as an absolute value, rather to a relative error that can be tolerated at level of (say) 10^-6. All in all you are right a first study should assess what application this would be useful at all.. and at what precision / power levels
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    The interest of this can be a high fault tolerance for some math operations, ... which would have for effect to simplify the job of coders! I don't think this is a good idea regarding power consumption for CPU (strictly speaking). The reason we use old chip is just a matter of qualification for space, not power. For instance a LEON Sparc (e.g. use on some platform for ESA) consumes something like 5mW/MHz so it is definitely not were an engineer will look for some power saving considering a usual 10-15kW spacecraft
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    What about speed then? Seven time faster could allow some real time navigation at higher speed (e.g. velocity of a terminal guidance for an asteroid impactor is limited to 10 km/s ... would a higher velocity be possible with faster processors?) Another issue is the radiation tolerance of the technology ... if the PCMOS are more tolerant to radiation they could get more easily space qualified.....
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    I don't remember what is the speed factor, but I guess this might do it! Although, I remember when using an IMU that you cannot have the data above a given rate (e.g. 20Hz even though the ADC samples the sensor at a little faster rate), so somehow it is not just the CPU that must be re-thought. When I say qualification I also imply the "hardened" phase.
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    I don't know if the (promised) one-order-of-magnitude improvements in power efficiency and performance are enough to justify looking into this. For once, it is not clear to me what embracing this technology would mean from an engineering point of view: does this technology need an entirely new software/hardware stack? If that were the case, in my opinion any potential benefit would be nullified. Also, is it realistic to build an entire self-sufficient chip on this technology? While the precision of floating point computations may be degraded and still be useful, how does all this play with integer arithmetic? Keep in mind that, e.g., in the Linux kernel code floating-point calculations are not even allowed/available... It is probably possible to integrate an "accelerated" low-accuracy floating-point unit together with a traditional CPU, but then again you have more implementation overhead creeping in. Finally, recent processors by Intel (e.g., the Atom) and especially ARM boast really low power-consumption levels, at the same time offering performance-boosting features such as multi-core and vectorization capabilities. Don't such efforts have more potential, if anything because of economical/industrial inertia?
Joris _

DoD Buzz | Back Away from GPS: AF Chief - 4 views

  • develop alternatives to GPS
  • The fact that the U.S., which invented GPS and most of what depends on it (ATMs, gas pumps, trucking companies and lost spouses), would consider stepping away from the system marks a cultural and technological milestone
  • recommended that the U.S. scrap building five more GPS satellites and engage European allies on sharing their proposed Galileo global navigation satellite system
Luís F. Simões

Boeing probes international market for human spacecraft - 1 views

  • The aerospace powerhouse is designing and testing systems for its CST-100 space capsule, a craft the company says could begin flying astronauts to low Earth orbit by 2015. It will launch on existing rockets to lessen development risk and costs.
  • "The spacecraft that we're designing is rocket-agnostic. It would be possible to sell this like a commercial airplane to countries who perhaps have a launch vehicle who would like to launch it in their own country."
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    ...and hitting the news in the same day: A Rocket Built from U.S. and European Parts "A new rocket that would combine parts from NASA's canceled Ares I rocket as well as the Ariane 5 , a well-proven European satellite launcher, could provide a low-cost option for taking crew and cargo to the space station. The rocket proposal was announced this week by ATK, an aerospace and defense company that manufactures the solid rocket motors for NASA's space shuttles, and Astrium, the European company that makes the Ariane 5. They say the rocket, called Liberty, would be ready for flight by 2015." "Other commercial companies, including Boeing and Orbital Sciences Corporation, are looking to use low-end versions of the Atlas V to carry the capsules they are building. Liberty could carry any capsule at a cost less than that of the Atlas V, according to ATK." Look! Competition! :)
pacome delva

Orbiting standards lab could improve climate predictions - physicsworld.com - 2 views

  • Policy makers would be much better placed to combat the effects of global warming if scientists had access to accurate measurements of the Earth's radiation balance from a dedicated satellite, claims an international group of physicists.
  • it estimates that the satellite could cut a decade or more from the time needed to make useful projections of global temperature at the end of the 21st century.
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