Posts Tagged ‘satellite’
High-res image of Earth: Both sides, now
Last week
Last week, NASA released its 2012 version of the famous “Blue Marble” image. By using a planet-pointing satellite, Suomi NPP, the space agency created an extremely high-resolution photograph of our watery world.
The photo centered on the western hemisphere, highlighting North and Central America. It went viral and got even more hits on Flickr than the iconic “Situation Room” photo, taken at the time of the assassination of Osama bin Laden.
Now, responding to public demand, the agency has created a companion image: this time focusing its lens toward the East and showing Africa, Saudi Arabia and India.
This week
Nowadays, the rest of world notices a lot sooner when government agencies only think their side of the world is important.
RTFA for the links.
Giant German satellite was minutes from crashing into Beijing
A two-and-a-half ton German satellite came within minutes of crashing into Beijing the European Space Agency has disclosed…
“Our calculations showed that, if Rosat had crashed to the ground just seven to 10 minutes later, it would have hit Beijing,” Heiner Klinkrad, head of the agency’s space debris team, told German magazine Der Spiegel, adding that an impact on the city “was very much within the realm of possibility.” The satellite eventually landed, as hoped, in the Indian Ocean.
Although most space debris burns up on entering the earth’s atmosphere Rosat, a defunct satellite launched 20 years ago, was made of durable material. Experts said that as much as 60 per cent of its bulk survived re-entry so if it had crashed into a highly populated like Beijing it could have caused the worst disaster in the history of space exploration.
The satellite’s remnants, travelling at speeds of 280mph, would have destroyed buildings, left craters and would have almost certainly caused casualties…
If it had crashed into Beijing it would also have landed the German government with an expensive bill. Under an international agreement the country responsible for placing the satellite in orbit is also responsible for any damage caused when it comes down.
Can you imagine the conspiracy theories that would have circled the Earth faster than any satellite?
Now, imagine the dead satellite being Russian and crashing, say, into Chicago. Phew!
Satellite view of Costa Concordia
Photo from DigitialGlobe
Click on photo to enlarge
Doomed – I say “Dooomed!” – Russian probe crashes today!
An artist’s conception shows the breakup of the Phobos-Grunt probe in the atmosphere
Russia’s botched Mars probe mission Phobos-Grunt is fast approaching a fiery death, with just one or two days remaining before it falls from space…
“The European Space Agency’s current re-entry prediction for Phobos-Grunt … points to the early evening (Central European Time) on Sunday, Jan. 15, with an uncertainty of plus/minus five orbits,” equal to plus or minus 7.5 hours, said Heiner Klinkrad, head of the space debris office at ESA’s European Space Operations Center in Darmstadt, Germany…
A statement from Russia’s Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos) also pegged Sunday as the crash day for Phobos-Grunt, but went even further. According to the statement, released in Russian, the 14-ton spacecraft filled with fuel is expected to fall on Sunday and may crash in the Pacific Ocean, off the coast of Chile.
Russian space officials pegged the potential crash time as occurring at about 4:51 p.m. ET Sunday, although major uncertainties still remain. There is a chance the spacecraft could fall earlier in the day, or on Monday…
As Phobos-Grunt draws closer and closer to its fiery finale, a worldwide team of skywatchers is on standby alert in the hopes of spotting the fall.
“Experienced observers know that the probability of seeing any given satellite re-entry is very small, so they maintain very low expectations,” said Canada-based Ted Molczan, a leader in the citizen network of observers.
RTFA for beaucoup details.
Yes, I’m one of those people who will go outdoors and look around the expected atmosphere impact time.
Watch Out! — another dead satellite falling to Earth this weekend
If you see a large glowing object plummeting from the sky late Saturday or early Sunday, duck.
A defunct European satellite called ROSAT is headed straight for Earth this weekend—and chances are even higher that a piece of space debris could hit someone than the odds placed on a NASA satellite that fell from orbit last month.
The German Aerospace Center, which led the development and construction of ROSAT, estimates that the chance of anyone being harmed by debris from the satellite is 1 in 2,000. For NASA’s UARS, the injury risk was roughly a third lower, at 1 in 3,200.
ROSAT is currently estimated to make an uncontrolled reentry during the early morning hours on Sunday, Greenwich Mean Time, said Heiner Klinkrad, head of the European Space Agency’s space debris office. But Klinkrad cautions that the satellite could enter Earth’s atmosphere up to 24 hours earlier or later than the estimated time…
Unfortunately, neither Klinkrad nor anyone else can say exactly where on Earth ROSAT is headed.
Debris could come down anywhere between 53 degrees north latitude and 53 degrees south latitude, an area that includes most of Earth’s land mass…That could be a worry, because the satellite’s 1.5-ton mirror is likely to survive the superheated trip through the atmosphere all the way to the ground, where it could make a major dent in whatever it strikes…
If bits of the satellite do land in a populated area, “they will be extremely hot,” added the German Aerospace Center’s Roland Gräve. “This is why we recommend not touching any satellite parts” that do make it to the ground.
And any ROSAT debris, no matter where it’s found, belongs to the German government, he said.
There are people like Jonathan McDowell from the Center for Astrophysics who are planning reentry parties. It’s tough keeping it on a schedule. He has a blanket email ready to go when he has concrete location numbers – just fill in the blanks and send it off into the Web.
We all can go “whoopee” while it crashes and burns.
There’s an app for that – from NASA
NASA has launched an iPad application for those interested in Earth science.
Dubbed the NASA Visualization Explorer, the application delivers real-satellite data, including movies and stills, of Earth, that enable users to learn a bit more about the “natural world.” Short stories accompany the videos and stills to explain what users are seeing and why it’s important.
“The app will explore stories of climate change, Earth’s dynamic systems, plant life on land and in the oceans–all of the small and large stories captured in data by NASA satellites and then visualized,” Michael Starobin, a senior producer at the Goddard Space Flight Center, said in a statement.
“Science should be accessible to everyone, and visualization reveals the meaning and value of the often intangible, but essential, data delivered by NASA’s research efforts,” Starobin continued. “Data visualization makes information immediately visual and understandable when it otherwise might go unnoticed.”
In addition to visualizations, the app also comes with six editorial features related to Earth science. According to NASA, two new editorials will be added each week. The organization also said it might include stories about the sun and solar system at some point.
The free NASA Visualization Explorer is available now in Apple’s App Store.
Combining lights and statistics yield global economic data
The glow of lights in a city at night means different things to different people. For some, the amazing hues along Broadway, the Las Vegas Strip or the Sunset Strip in Hollywood mean a fun night out. For an economist, these dazzling lights signify people’s pockets are flush with cash; and in fact, a new study confirms it.
Research by William Nordhaus, Sterling Professor of Economics at Yale University and Quinnipiac University sociologist Xi Chen shows nighttime lights, when seen from outer space, reveal how economically developed an area is…
Called luminosity data, researchers measure the glow or radiance of this artificial, or “human induced,” lighting to study economic growth, poverty, health status and environmental conditions. They use it to track GDP and other economic activity.
Although the approach is highly promising, Nordhaus and Chen say its application may be best suited for countries with limited data collection programs where it is most needed…
Based on their analysis, Nordhaus and Chen found luminosity is likely to add value as a substitute for standard measures of economic output in countries with statistical systems graded D and E–those that are war-torn, have no reliable censuses of population and have only rudimentary economic statistics.
By contrast, luminosity has very limited value for countries with high quality statistical systems…
“What is really interesting is that the lights data are available at a very high resolution, close to 1 x 1 kilometers, and therefore have great promise for use as a proxy,” he said.
An interesting shortcut when data is scarce. RTFA for the details.
Indian head listening to iPod
Measuring roughly 500 x 250 meters, this land formation in Canada provides one of the biggest images you’ll likely see of someone listening to their iPod.
NASA’s first pictures of Mercury taken from orbit
A spidery crater named for a French composer features in the very first picture MESSENGER took from orbit around Mercury, taken March 29 and released March 30.
Debussy Crater had been known since before MESSENGER’s arrival, thanks to its brilliant appearance in Earth-based radar images of Mercury. But no spacecraft had seen Debussy in visible light until MESSENGER made a flyby on its way into orbit.
The new shot of the 80-kilometer-wide crater is a composite of three out of eight images taken through different light filters. Combining images taken at multiple wavelengths can reveal changes across Mercury’s surface, since different minerals reflect light in unique ways. A black-and-white version of this Mercury picture was released on March 29.
RTFA – go to the NatGeo site and click through each photo and description. Delightful.
Wonder what’s happening in Egypt? Do what the networks do! – UPDATED
Go to AlJazeera to find out what’s really going on.
Click the link above if you’re at your desktop computer. There is an App for iPod, iPhone and iPad as well.
It’s a sad commentary on American news organizations they have so little direct coverage – especially outfits like CNN which used to field direct satellite communications back to North America from around the world. They were the inspiration for AlJazeera – which now surpasses the mediocrity that CNN has become.
If it weren’t for the Web, of course, we’d have little access to AlJazeera and their peers around the world. Broadcast television, cable and satellite broadcasters are too afraid of offending the ignorant to carry primary source media.
UPDATE: AlJazeera has been “officially” shut down; but, is continuing to broadcast live.
Guardian Unlimited is doing a superb job of live blogging everything associated with the uprising in Egypt – from around the world and on the ground in Egypt.
