Dinner for the Space Technology Hall of Fame Nominees

The 30th Space Symposium is almost at an end. The whole event ends tonight with the Space Technology Hall of Fame Dinner at the Broadmoor. The dinner is all about recognizing nominee contributions and picking a winner. The nominees have developed products from satellite and space technology that help make life easier for folks here on Earth. One […]

KickSat Kicks the Bucket

According to update #73 on the KickSat Kickstarter page, KickSat is no more. The nanosatellite had experienced a single event upset (SEU) and the Watchdog Timer reset (those terms are explained in this article, here). The result of those two events was a reset of a crucial timer that was supposed to release the smaller […]

Spaceport America: We’re on a Road to Nowhere

“Takin’ that Ride to Nowhere, We’ll take that Ride” Why the map? It’s just to show where Spaceport America is relative to everything (or in this case, the nothing) around it. It’s pretty much in the Middle of Nowhere, New Mexico. But two companies we’ve heard much about, SpaceX and Virgin Galactic, are working on […]

Can Nigerian Satellites Find Kidnapped Girls?

For those people not living under a rock, there have been quite a few stories regarding the kidnapped girls in Nigeria (rock-dwellers go here to catch up). Imagine my surprise, though, at finding out that Nigeria has not just one, but two imagery satellites orbiting the Earth in Low Earth Orbit (LEO). Not only that, […]

Space, Transparency, and MH370

The Atlantic’s Ari Schulman has a terrific explanation regarding Inmarsat’s analysis of the “pings” their geostationary satellite received from Malaysian Airlines flight 370. Of more interest, the article also talks about why Inmarsat’s analysis may be incorrect. There are some puzzling problems with the data Inmarsat produced. The “ping” doppler values appear to be positive, […]