Why space matters: Imaging satellite operations, part 9–cutting the cheese

Hopefully the beer was tasty and nutritious. The question I posed in my previous post to you, dear (inebriated?) reader: Why is it that moving the plane of a satellite’s orbit against the direction of the Earth’s rotation (backwards) is helpful to those operators of imagery ilk? Let me clarify some terms here before we […]

United States Government adding to the polar low earth orbiting constellation

This article caught my eye, if only because of the inaccuracy of the headline. The nation’s largest rocket was actually the Saturn V. When someone prints a headline like that, it normally means they just took the public release, and reprinted or copy/pasted it. I think they mean the nation’s largest, currently, which might be […]

Kepler, focal plane array specs, still looking for a mission

From a previous aside “Not Dead Yet!!“, I noted the Kepler team is trying to find a different mission, since one of the satellite’s reaction wheels is not responding. Here are some interesting specs for the camera’s charged-coupled device (CCD). Observation: the Nokia Lumia 1020 has half of the megapixel capability (41MP). But I bet […]

Extreme close-up–from space (Cassini, to be precise)!!

According to this Weather Underground article, NASA/JPL just put this collage together: Click to see (and embiggen it while there): Shiny, happy people waving hands 40,000 people in 1,400 pictures! Don’t ask about where our responsible government space agency found the time and money, as the US is still struggling to keep NASA relevant and […]

MORE POWER!!!

Okay, okay…this article’s idea has been floating around for a few decades. Given, that in my imaging operations posts we’ve only talked about low earth orbiting (LEO) satellites, and imagery ones at that, there are a few issues with this that you might be acquainted with. But the premise is right. You could set a […]