For everything from family to computers…
More than three-quarters of the U.S. government’s satellite images don’t come from government satellites. They’re provided by two companies, GeoEye and DigitalGlobe. So alarms began to ring in Washington in February, when those two companies started talk to become one, forming a monopoly in space and radically altering the economics of the commercial satellite industry and how we see the Earth from above.
from Wired Top Stories
The last controlled moon landing was in 1976. Now it’s time to go back and the reasons are more compelling than ever, argue space scientists
It’s almost 40 years since the last humans visited the lunar surface during the Apollo 17 mission of December 1972.
Among the many lessons the US military learned from the war in Afghanistan (beyond, of course, don’t engage in a land war in Afghanistan) is the need for continuous battlefield surveillance. To help do that work, Boeing developed the Phantom Eye UAV, a drone aircraft that can scout a theater of operations for up to four days at a time without blinking. More »
from Gizmodo
What would happen if you ripped out all the TVs and associated wiring from a plane, and gave everyone an iPad instead? Well, we just found out: the plane becomes 7 percent lighter, and saves an awful lot of fuel as a result. More »
from Gizmodo
Imagine all you wanted for Christmas was a telescope. As you frantically peel off layer after layer of wrapping, there it is — your brother’s old one. Well, okay, if your brother was the National Reconnaissance Office (and you were NASA) this might not seem quite as unjust. Thankfully so, as that’s effectively what’s just happened. The NRO has given NASA two 2.4-meter “space qualified” telescopes and satellite casings for it to play with. The gifts — which can observe about 100 times the area of the Hubble telescope — could complement existing projects and provide much-needed resources at the space agency. As there is currently no funded mission for them, however, they’ll remain firmly on the ground for now, but at least this implies they’re not needed elsewhere — hinting at improved international relations. Unless the NRO just got an upgrade?
from Engadget
On Friday, history was made as SpaceX’s Dragon docked with the International Space Station, marking the start of a future of privatized space exploration. Now, one of the astronauts aboard the ISS has shared his reactions to Dragon and posted them on his blog. More »
from Gizmodo
