The Ultimate High Ground? This Sounds Familiar…

The Indians have been getting into space in their own way. A few of my previous posts have highlighted their space activities. This latest post about India’s space activities from the website, “The Diplomat,” is interesting, in a nostalgic sort of way. Back in 2003, possibly earlier, the United States Air Force (USAF) was beating the drum […]

Asteroid Hunting–Yeah?! You and What Army?

Oh, that army. The crowd of smart folks NASA hopes to use in developing a new method to track the asteroids lurking in space above the Earth. NASA is calling this crowdsourced contest the “Asteroid Grand Challenge Series.” It will be open to any person who is a “topcoder.” According to the Topcoder site, nearly […]

Out of Many, One (Synthetic Image, that is)

This Defense Update post sounds like something I may have talked about before–using a flock of small maneuvering satellites, with each satellite within the flock taking an image and using each image to build a big, high resolution image–one a bigger, more expensive satellite might get with a big imagery sensor. NASA’s contractor, Aurora Flight […]

Why Space Matters: GEO Satellite operations, Part 7–Curves and Angles

Geosynchronous (GEO) satellites are wonderful. They can see a lot of the Earth from 22,236 miles in space. It’s why they make great observation and communications satellites. Previous chapters explained some of the problems facing GEO satellites, too, such as solar influence and eclipses. But now’s the time for a few lesser known problems GEO satellites […]

Pictures of a Decaying Satellite

The United States Geological Survey (USGS) and National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) -run Landsat 8 Low Earth Orbiting (LEO) imagery satellite’s primary job is to take pictures of the Earth. But occasionally, like teenagers with new camera phones, Landsat 8 feels compelled to take pictures of other satellites. Really—you can see the evidence here […]