The Ship Who Sang

There are those readers out there who will get the Anne McCaffrey reference–the rest should eventually take time to read that fun book. Unlike the book’s protagonist, a ship with a living brain that eventually sings, this post is about a satellite named Ulises 1 that will “sing” to the people of Earth once it’s in orbit. […]

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 […]

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 […]

Nigeria’s Garbled Space Story

Nigeria is still wrestling with space program issues. On the one hand (and according to this difficult to read post), there seems to be a fundamental lack of knowledge by the general Nigerian population about how satellites work in space. This is no surprise–the Nigerians are dealing with some very real third world survival problems. Even […]

Maritime Safety Satellite’s Launch Cancelled to Make Political Point

Well, this must be frustrating. Imagine that you’re a part of a company that’s getting ready to launch a satellite. All the company’s engineers and managers working to get the satellite ready to go for its mission. Of course, everyone in the company is being paid to get the satellite completed. But then, your government, who […]