Month: March 2022

What if your computer decided not to blare out a notification jingle because it noticed you weren’t sitting at your desk? What if your TV saw you leave the couch to answer the front door and paused Netflix automatically, then resumed playback when you sat back down? What if our computers took more social cues from our movements and learned to be more considerate companions?

It sounds futuristic and perhaps more than a little invasive—a computer watching your every move? But it feels less creepy once you learn that these technologies don’t have to rely on a camera to see where you are and what you’re doing. Instead, they use radar. Google’s Advanced Technology and Products division—better known as ATAP, the department behind oddball projects such as a touch-sensitive denim jacket—has spent the past year exploring how computers can use radar to understand our needs or intentions and then react to us appropriately.

This is not the first time we’ve seen Google use radar to provide its gadgets with spatial awareness. In 2015, Google unveiled Soli, a sensor that can use radar’s electromagnetic waves to pick up precise gestures and movements. It was first seen in the Google Pixel 4‘s ability to detect simple hand gestures so the user could snooze alarms or pause music without having to physically touch the smartphone. More recently, radar sensors were embedded inside the second-generation Nest Hub smart display to detect the movement and breathing patterns of the person sleeping next to it. The device was then able to track the person’s sleep without requiring them to strap on a smartwatch.

The same Soli sensor is being used in this new round of research, but instead of using the sensor input to directly control a computer, ATAP is instead using the sensor data to enable computers to recognize our everyday movements and make new kinds of choices.

“We believe as technology becomes more present in our life, it’s fair to start asking technology itself to take a few more cues from us,” says Leonardo Giusti, head of design at ATAP. In the same way your mom might remind you to grab an umbrella before you head out the door, perhaps your thermostat can relay the same message as you walk past and glance at it—or your TV can lower the volume if it detects you’ve fallen asleep on the couch.

Radar Research

Giusti says much of the research is based on proxemics, the study of how people use space around them to mediate social interactions. As you get closer to another person, you expect increased engagement and intimacy. The ATAP team used this and other social cues to establish that people and devices have their own concepts of personal space. 

Radar can detect you moving closer to a computer and entering its personal space. This might mean the computer can then choose to perform certain actions, like booting up the screen without requiring you to press a button. This kind of interaction already exists in current Google Nest smart displays, though instead of radar, Google employs ultrasonic sound waves to measure a person’s distance from the device. When a Nest Hub notices you’re moving closer, it highlights current reminders, calendar events, or other important notifications. 

Private Earth observation companies have been sharing satellite images of Ukraine and its bordering countries amid Russia’s military invasion, but these efforts are not actually helping resistance fighters on the ground, Ukrainian entrepreneur Max Polyakov said in a call with reporters on Monday (Feb. 28).

Polyakov, who co-founded the Texas-based spaceflight company Firefly Aerospace, urged Earth observation companies to help Ukraine’s defense operations by freely and rapidly sharing data and images from their satellites with EOS Data Analytics, a company Polyakov owns. EOS would then rapidly process that data and share it with Ukraine’s Ministry of Defense to help fight the Russian invasion, he said.

“Right now, we need to have intelligence,” Polyakov said. Specifically, Ukrainian resistance forces need more data and images from synthetic aperture radar (SAR) satellites, he stressed. 

Related: Satellite photos reveal details of Russian invasion into Ukraine

Optical imagery like the views shared by companies such as Maxar Technologies, BlackSky and Planet is not as useful, he argued — especially when the imagery isn’t made available immediately. Those satellites, which rely on visible and infrared light, also can’t see through clouds and don’t see much at night. 

SAR satellites, on the other hand, work a bit differently. Rather than passively observing our planet, SAR satellites actively transmit signals down to Earth and observe how those signals are reflected. This allows the satellites to “see” what’s down below regardless of lighting or cloud conditions.

“We have enough fighters … we have enough local support to kill all the Russians on our territory; we just don’t know from where they will hit, and at night we are blind because we do not have intelligence,” Polyakov said.

Mykhailo Federov, the vice prime minister of Ukraine and the country’s minister of digital transformation, echoed Polyakov’s plea in a public letter to several remote sensing companies, which he posted to Twitter on Tuesday (March 1).

“We badly need the opportunity to watch the movement of Russian troops, especially at night when our technologies are blind in fact! SAR satellite data is important to understanding Russian troop and [vehicle] movements at night considering that clouds cover about 80 percent of Ukraine during the day,” Federov wrote. “Our appeal is based on the strong understanding that your cooperation and the information you can provide can save [the] lives of our people,” he added.

EOS Data Analytics has set up a new website with more information for satellite operators about how to share their data with the company and the defense ministry. 

“The economic, political, and humanitarian consequences of the war in Ukraine already are too high to stand on the sidelines. If you can help us, please provide the SAR data that actually makes a difference,” Polyakov said in a statement posted to the EOS webpage. 

“Outdated optical satellite imagery is applicable for PR purposes and as evidence of war crimes for future international criminal court proceedings,” he added, but “Ukraine needs actionable intelligence to be able to save the millions of innocent people and the sovereignty of the country.”

Email Hanneke Weitering at hweitering@space.com or follow her on Twitter @hannekescience. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.

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Axiom Space aims to set a standard for future crews with its pioneering mission to the International Space Station (ISS) next month.

Axiom’s Ax-1, the first all-private crewed mission to the orbiting lab, is scheduled to launch on March 30 and last for 10 days. Ax-1’s four spaceflyers — three paying customers and Axiom’s Michael López-Alegría, who’s commanding the mission — will fly inside a SpaceX Dragon capsule, which will lift off atop a Falcon 9 rocket.

“There have been individuals that have flown on government flights, but never a completely private flight [to the ISS] … So we’re very excited about this being the very first one of those,” Michael Suffredini, president and CEO of Axiom, said during a livestreamed press conference Monday (Feb. 28). 

Axiom ultimately aims to operate its own commercial space station, and the Houston-based company plans to launch a private module to the ISS in about two years to start building on that goal, Suffredini said.

He said Ax-1, however, will be the first of “probably hundreds of missions” during the buildout of the Axiom space station and of other missions for services in low Earth orbit. This first crew, he added, has an ambitious research agenda in mind that will not be focused on having the members “paste their nose on the window.”

Photos: The first space tourists

The Ax-1 crewmembers are gearing up for such work as they enter the home stretch of their training, López-Alegría, a former NASA astronaut, said during the same briefing. 

For now, the spaceflyers are focused on refresher training and on “collection of data for the experiments that we do; generally they like doing some pre-flight, in-flight and post flight,” he said. (This is especially true of medical experiments that focus on how spaceflyers’ bodies change due to the rigors of spaceflight.)

López-Alegría added that the Ax-1 training has been broadly similar to that he experienced when preparing for NASA missions. “Our focus is always safety and mission success, and that’s really unchanged,” he said.

López-Alegría noted that his crew is seeking to be “standard bearers” for how private astronauts should conduct themselves on the ISS, seeking to “set the bar very, very high” because they know they will be guests on the orbiting complex.

López-Alegría said his relationships with space tourists in the past, when he was a NASA astronaut, were positive. But he also recognized the potential for disruption. “We’re super sensitive to that, and we think that’s a very good example to be setting for future crews. Everybody on the crew is … very dedicated, very committed, very professional in this, and we really are taking this very, very seriously. It’s not tourism.”

The International Space Station: Facts, history and tracking

The crew’s time will be largely spent on a “collection” of life science and technology demonstrations, Christian Maender, Axiom’s director of in-space research and manufacturing, said during the press conference. More announcements will be forthcoming in future weeks, he added.

The medical investigations will include work with stem cells and cardiac health, and one of the key tech demonstrations will be in-space spacecraft assembly, which proponents hope reduces the costs involved with getting equipment up and running in orbit. (Officials noted that the work may also generate some good videos for public engagement.)

Looking ahead to the Axiom space station, Suffredini said the planned launch date for the first module will be in September 2024. The company should wrap up critical design reviews for the first two modules this summer, he added. 

Among the modules that Axiom plans to launch is a research facility, which will help take over some of the in-orbit science responsibilities when the “ISS is ready to retire … about a year before that happens,” Suffredini.

Suffredini, who was NASA’s International Space Station program manager from 2005 to 2015, said that it’s possible Axiom’s modules could support a mission as soon as 2028 if necessary. “We do have some flexibility there,” he said.

Axiom will launch its modules to the ISS initially. The private facility will eventually detach from the ISS and become a bona fide space station of its own.

NASA wants to extend the ISS agreement to 2030, but that is pending pledges from the various partners that make up the multinational pact to extend beyond the current end date of 2024.

The largest partner, Russia, is now facing severe international sanctions in space (among many other industries) due to a military invasion of Ukraine last week. The invasion has been condemned by the United States and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), among others; many NATO partners have also implemented industry and financial sanctions.

During Monday’s call, Kathy Lueders, NASA’s associate administrator of space operations, emphasized that NASA and Russia continue to work together as usual on the ISS and are committed to continuing that relationship.

“We as a team are operating just like we were operating three weeks ago,” she said. “The teams, the controllers are still talking together. Our teams are still talking together. We’re still doing training together. We’re still working together.”

Follow Elizabeth Howell on Twitter @howellspace. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom or Facebook.