Is Space Becoming More Accessible for Terrorists?

Part 1 Well, somebody has to mention it to sell the papers sometime, and this time it was the Times of India. The story is that the United Kingdom’s Ministry of Defence (MoD) is predicting bad guys are going to be able to launch their own nefarious satellites on rockets owned by private companies. Even […]

Satellite Limitations Searching for MH370

It’s been awhile since there’s been anything said about the mission Malaysian MH370 passenger jet, That’s good, because maybe it allows investigators to investigate. It’s potentially bad if the entire investigation has been dropped (doesn’t appear to be the case though–read about that, here). It appears that Space Safety Magazine has remembered the missing airliner […]

Parsing Polar Bears With Polar Orbiting Satellites

Here’s a method of counting polar bears that’s probably safer than knocking on their doors. According to this US Geological Survey (USGS) post, satellites may be quite useful for counting, tracking, and observing polar bears. The USGS and Canadians are comparing aerial survey pictures against the satellite pictures. They are using imagery taken by DigitalGlobe satellites of parts of […]

Finding Launch Cost Serenity with FireFly

SpaceX isn’t the only launch company boasting about cheap launch prices. According to this GigaOm post, Firefly is a company that will be trying to compete with SpaceX. The rocket they’ll be using is a different design, not using traditional bell nozzles to guide the rocket’s power, but a system called an aerospike. And, just guessing here […]

Forget NOAA; NASA’s GRACE Protects You from Floods

Or is that spelled Noah? Anyway, NASA has a pair of 12-year old satellites from their Gravity Recovery And Climate Experiment (GRACE), and it’s NASA’s GRACE that might save you from flooding. The two satellites are orbiting the Earth in a polar Low Earth Orbit (LEO) and are 220 kilometers (140 miles) apart from each other. They […]