Lifeboat Foundation

GPS is an utterly pervasive and wonderful technology, but it’s increasingly not accurate enough for modern demands. Now a team of researchers can make it accurate right down to an inch.

Regular GPS registers your location and velocity by measuring the time it takes to receive signals from four or more satellites, that were sent into space by the military. Alone, it can tell you where you are to within 30 feet. More recently a technique called Differential GPS (DGPS) improved on that resolution by adding ground-based reference stations—increasing accuracy to within 3 feet.

Now, a team from the University of California, Riverside, has developed a technique that augments the regular GPS data with on-board inertial measurements from a sensor. Actually, that’s been tried before, but in the past it’s required large computers to combine the two data streams, rendering it ineffective for use in cars or mobile devices. Instead what the University of California team has done is create a set of new algorithms which, it claims, reduce the complexity of the calculation by several order of magnitude.

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The next-generation satellites from ViaSat could have more bandwidth than the 400 communication satellites already in orbit.

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ViaSat plans to launch three satellites to provide 1 terabit per second internet connections to remote areas, aircraft, and maritime vehicles.

ViaSat, a US-based satellite company, has teamed up with Boeing to build three new satellites that will provide high-speed Internet to remote areas around the world. This joint project was announced two days ago. ViaSat is scheduled to launch its satellite ViaSat2 on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket in just a few months.

These three new satellites, named ViaSat3, will be carrying a total network capacity of a whopping 1 Terabit per second, triple the capacity of ViaSat2. It will be able to deliver 100 Mbps service to remote residential areas in the Americas, Asia, Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

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It seems like every day, a video or image emerges that appears to show a UFO near the International Space Station. And it generally — OK, always — turns out not to be a UFO. It’s normally space debris, light reflections from the station windows, an antenna attached to the station, etc.

But wouldn’t it be interesting if someone actually launched a satellite into Earth orbit (illustrated above), with the specific mission of trying to detect and prove unknown objects are actually out there?

Continue reading “Warning Space Aliens: Earth’s UFO- Hunting Satellite Is Coming For You” »

Made In Space and NanoRacks have been making news lately with the announcement of partnerships to change the way objects are imagined and built off the planet, and now the companies have joined forces to provide a novel new service for CubeSat developers.

They call it “Stash & Deploy,” and the service will leverage the NanoRacks heritage in CubeSat deployment and the capability of Made In Space to provide 3D printing capabilities and deliver – on-demand – satellite manufacturing, assembly, and deployment in the space environment.

The plan calls for a variety of standard and customer-specific satellite components to be “cached” within a satellite deployment vehicle such as the International Space Station, and the components will be “stashed” for rapid manufacture of CubeSats.

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True points and many that I have been sharing on Quantum around its own potential to change everything that we know about technology (devices, internet & networking in general, wireless and satellites, AI, advancements in biotech, security, big data, and singularity itself). The author also highlights many of the same concerns that I have shared around hackers on Quantum breaking through the older digitized platforms and networks; therefore, many companies and governments are exposed as well as consumers who have not adopted Quantum.

Although the author speculates we’re less than 10 yrs for Quantum to be seen in the everyday usage; I believe we’re within 7 yrs.

Within four years quantum computers will have the beating of conventional computers and that will produce a dramatic change in both the technology landscape and in business, according to Professor Jeremy O’Brien from Bristol University.

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Lonestar developed by Texas A&M is a possible tool that prospectors can utilize to locate mining opportunities on asteroids.

Astronauts fired this small, rectangular hunk from the International Space Station today. The payload will separate into two autonomous satellites as part of a research program to take us one tiny step closer towards making asteroid mining a reality.

If we ever want to mine asteroids, we’re going to need to step up our game for multiple satellites sharing data and working together. A pair of Texan universities are working together on a four-mission sequence to create a pair of robots that can autonomously rendezvous and dock in space. The project is called Low Earth Orbiting Navigation Experiment for Spacecraft Testing Autonomous Rendezvous and Docking — or Lonestar if you ignore the D.

Continue reading “This Two-in-One Satellite Will Bring Us One Step Closer to Asteroid Mining” »

Space Tourism … and Much More.

Copyright ©2016 Parabolic Arc.

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https://youtube.com/watch?v=xqPOSIBjfSM

Laser-based comms satellites!

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