Who will be the “ultimate space operator?”

Most people might agree the ultimate space operator is the astronaut (cosmonauts for those Russian fans). But according to this Slate article (posted today), the space operator will be robots. Fair enough. Satellites are a kind of robot, or at the very least, a drone. They have sensors, CPUs, power supplies, etc. Many things akin to […]

More of a good thing

AND THEY’RE OFF!! Now we have two US companies supplying the International Space Station with their own rockets and spacecraft. SpaceRef just posted this article about Orbital’s new rocket and its launch today. Go here for photos of the take-off. And to think we were concerned about a lack of US space launch capability earlier […]

Why space matters–especially when it’s close to home

DigitalGlobe decided to release this blog entry earlier today. The flooding here in Colorado happened on a scale that couldn’t have been predicted. It impacted Longmont, Colorado, where DigitalGlobe has it’s space operations center, pretty badly as well as a lot of other communities along the Front Range. USA Today has a good collection of […]

Why space matters: Imaging satellite operations, part 12—all the colors of the rainbow—from space!!!

This lesson is not about space Skittles. Nor is it about any political parties or leanings within or without closets. The one thing I am asking you to do for this and the remainder of these imagery operations lessons, is keep in mind I am guessing. I don’t KNOW exactly how DigitalGlobe conducts their space […]

Space imagery tells you why there’s no hurricane coming towards you…YES–YOU!!

From the pages of Phys.org, this is a good article about how imagery is helping scientists understand the world better. Dust from Africa apparently might be affecting the weather in the Americas. Pretty interesting stuff. This is all put together, a composite, of the images taken from the Suomi National Polar-Orbiting Partnership, using its Visible […]