Troll: leaving the bridge behind

Trolls–remember when only billy goats had to deal with them?? Now humans have to worry about Trolls’ tolls, not just in snarky, crude comments, but in space operations. Actually, it’s only a select group of humans, and Troll, while it deals with space, is on Earth–specifically on ice (well, 300 kilometers (187.5 miles) from the […]

Why space matters: Imaging satellite operations, part 16—“Blue are the streets, And all the trees are too”

Who could forget 1999’s most famous dance single? But does anyone remember the song’s group?? Enough dancing—time to talk about satellite operations until we’re blue in the face (sorry, couldn’t resist). As mentioned in the previous lesson, this lesson is about DigitalGlobe’s WorldView-2 satellite and the blue spectrum of its imagery payload. Mainly, what is […]

Why space matters: Imaging satellite operations, part 15—decrypting the world with waves of color

Finally, we get to discuss the colors used for DigitalGlobe’s imagery satellites—or satellite, as we will be focusing (no pun intended—these satellites can’t really focus, remember) on WorldView-2. According to DigitalGlobe’s Basic Imagery literature, WorldView-2’s image sensors use eight different colors to look at the Earth: Coastal, Blue, Green, Yellow, Red, Red Edge, Near-IR (InfraRed)1, […]

The mini Death Star and its song

Engadget posted a nice, short article about Telstar 1. It’s not about the song (video of it played here), which was played by the Tornados and quite popular. Both were launched in the 1960’s, the song named after the satellite. Telstar 1 looked quite a bit like a space station from a certain popular sci-fi […]

Finding the source of space weather with satellites

Space Daily posted this interesting tidbit yesterday. Researchers are using 8 different satellites to help figure out space weather. Yes, that is a thing and it can affect satellite operations. These researchers found a link for determining the source of space weather. This link was that the Earth’s magnetic field stores the energy of the […]