The future of personal satellite technology is here – are we ready for it?

SunCube standard,

a new class of affordable miniature satellites for education, research and exploration.

From The Conversation by Elizabeth Garbee & Andrew Maynard

Satellites used to be the exclusive playthings of rich governments and wealthy corporations.
But increasingly, as space becomes more democratized, these sophisticated technologies are coming within reach of ordinary people.
Just like drones before them, miniature satellites are beginning to fundamentally transform our conceptions of who gets to do what up above our heads.
As a recent report from the National Academy of Sciences highlights, these satellites hold tremendous potential for making satellite-based science more accessible than ever before.
However, as the cost of getting your own satellite in orbit plummets, the risks of irresponsible use grow.
The question here is no longer “Can we?” but “Should we?”
What are the potential downsides of having a slice of space densely populated by equipment built by people not traditionally labeled as “professionals”?
And what would the responsible and beneficial development and use of this technology actually look like?
Some of the answers may come from a nonprofit organization that has been building and launching amateur satellites for nearly 50 years.

Just a few inches across and ready for orbit.

The technology we’re talking about

Having your own personal satellite launched into orbit might sound like an idea straight out of science fiction.
But over the past few decades a unique class of satellites has been created that fits the bill: CubeSats.

The “Cube” here simply refers to the satellite’s shape.
The most common CubeSat (the so-called “1U” satellite) is a 10 cm (roughly 4 inches) cube, so small that a single CubeSat could easily be mistaken for a paperweight on your desk.
These mini, modular satellites can fit in a launch vehicle’s formerly “wasted space.”
Multiples can be deployed in combination for more complex missions than could be achieved by one CubeSat alone.
Within their compact bodies these minute satellites are able to house sensors and communications receivers/transmitters that enable operators to study the Earth from space, as well as space around the Earth.
They’re primarily designed for Low Earth Orbit (LEO) – an easily accessible region of space from around 200 to 800 miles above the Earth, where human-tended missions like the Hubble Space Telescope and the International Space Station (ISS) hang out.
But they can attain more distant orbits; NASA plans for most of its future Earth-escaping payloads (to the moon and Mars especially) to carry CubeSats.

 Tiny satellites the size of a small cube, jam-packed with the most advanced nanotechnologies: is this the future of Space missions?

Because they’re so small and light, it costs much less to get a CubeSat into Earth orbit than a traditional communication or GPS satellite.
For instance, a research group here at Arizona State University recently claimed their developmental “femtosats” (especially small CubeSats) could cost as little as US$3,000 to put in orbit.
This decrease in cost is allowing researchers, hobbyists and even elementary school groups to put simple instruments into LEO, by piggybacking onto rocket launches, or even having them deployed from the ISS.
The first CubeSat was created in the early 2000s, as a way of enabling CalPoly and Stanford graduate students to design, build, test and operate a spacecraft with similar capabilities to the USSR’s Sputnik.
Since then, NASA, the National Reconnaissance Office and even Boeing have all launched and operated CubeSats. There are more than 130 currently operational in orbit.
The NASA Educational Launch of Nano Satellite (ELaNa) program, which offers free launches for educational groups and science missions, is now open to U.S. nonprofit corporations as well.
Clearly, satellites are not just for rocket scientists anymore.

Pre-K through 8th grade students at St. Thomas More Cathedral School in Arlington, Virginia designed, built and tested a CubeSat that was deployed in space. NASA, CC BY

Thinking inside the box

The National Academy of Sciences report emphasizes CubeSats' importance in scientific discovery and the training of future space scientists and engineers.Yet it also acknowledges that widespread deployment of LEO CubeSats isn’t risk-free.

The greatest concern the authors raise is space debris – pieces of “junk” that orbit the earth, with the potential to cause serious damage if they collide with operational units, including the ISS.
Currently, there aren’t many CubeSats and they’re tracked closely.
Yet as LEO opens up to more amateur satellites, they may pose an increasing threat. As the report authors point out, even near-misses might lead to the “creation of an onerous regulatory framework and affect the future disposition of science CubeSats.”

 Honey, I shrunk the satellites! Mini-satellites are following in the footsteps of cell phones and computers.

CubeSats are small but highly capable of performing a variety of space missions.

More broadly, the report authors focus on factors that might impede greater use of CubeSat technologies.
These include regulations around earth-space radio communications, possible impacts of International Traffic in Arms Regulations (which govern import and export of defense-related articles and services in the U.S.), and potential issues around extra-terrestrial contamination.
But what about the rest of us?
How can we be sure that hobbyists and others aren’t launching their own “spy” satellites, or (intentionally or not) placing polluting technologies into LEO, or even deploying low-cost CubeSat networks that could be hijacked and used nefariously?
As CubeSat researchers are quick to point out, these are far-fetched scenarios.
But they suggest that now’s the time to ponder unexpected and unintended possible consequences of more people than ever having access to their own small slice of space.
In an era when you can simply buy a CubeSat kit off the shelf, how can we trust the satellites over our heads were developed with good intentions by people who knew what they were doing?
Some “expert amateurs” in the satellite game could provide some inspiration for how to proceed responsibly.

Modular CubeSats deployed from ISS. NASA Johnson, CC BY-NC

Guidance from some experienced amateurs
In 1969, the Radio Amateur Satellite Corporation (AMSAT) was created in order to foster ham radio enthusiasts' participation in space research and communication.
It continued the efforts, begun in 1961, by Project OSCAR – a U.S.-based group that built and launched the very first nongovernmental satellite just four years after Sputnik.

As an organization of volunteers, AMSAT was putting “amateur” satellites in orbit decades before the current CubeSat craze.
And over time, its members have learned a thing or two about responsibility.
Here, open-source development has been a central principle.
Within the organization, AMSAT has a philosophy of open sourcing everything – making technical data on all aspects of their satellites fully available to everyone in the organization, and when possible, the public.
According to a member of the team responsible for FOX 1-A, AMSAT’s first CubeSat:

This means that it would be incredibly difficult to sneak something by us … there’s no way to smuggle explosives or an energy emitter into an amateur satellite when everyone has access to the designs and implementation.

However, they’re more cautious about sharing info with nonmembers, as the organization guards against others developing the ability to hijack and take control of their satellites.
This form of “self-governance” is possible within long-standing amateur organizations that, over time, are able to build a sense of responsibility to community members, as well as society more generally.

AMSAT has a long history as a collaborative community. Jeff Davis, CC BY

 
How does responsible development evolve?

But what happens when new players emerge, who don’t have deep roots within the existing culture?
 Hobbyist and student “new kids on the block” are gaining access to technologies without being part of a longstanding amateur establishment.
They are still constrained by funders, launch providers and a tapestry of regulations – all of which rein in what CubeSat developers can and cannot do.
But there is a danger they’re ill-equipped to think through potential unintended consequences.

What these unintended consequences might be is admittedly far from clear.
Certainly, CubeSat developers would argue it’s hard to imagine these tiny satellites causing substantial physical harm.
Yet we know innovators can be remarkably creative with taking technologies in unexpected directions.
Think of something as seemingly benign as the cellphone – we have microfinance and text-based social networking at one end of the spectrum, improvised explosive devices at the other.
This is where a culture of social responsibility around CubeSats becomes important – not simply for ensuring that physical risks are minimized (and good practices are adhered to), but also to engage with a much larger community in anticipating and managing less obvious consequences of the technology.

This is not an easy task.
Yet the evidence from AMSAT and other areas of technology development suggest that responsible amateur communities can and do emerge around novel technologies.
For instance, see the diy-bio community, where hobbyists work in advanced community biotech labs. Their growing community commitment to safety and responsibility is highlighting how amateurs can embrace responsibility in research and innovation.
A similar commitment is seen within open-source software and hardware communities, such as the members of the Linux Foundation.
The challenge here, of course, is ensuring that what an amateur community considers to be responsible, actually is.
Here’s where there needs to be a much wider public conversation that extends beyond government agencies and scientific communities to include students, hobbyists, and anyone who may potentially stand to be affected by the use of CubeSat technology.

Links :

• GeoGarage blog : Trouble in orbit: the growing problem of space junk
• Scientific American : A quiet revolution in weather forecasting
• BBC : Mini-satellites send high-definition views of Earth (2014)

Facebook and Microsoft are laying a giant cable across the Atlantic

MAREA Overview Schematic Microsoft/Facebook

Going It Alone(ish)

From Wired by Cade Metz

Facebook and Microsoft are laying a massive cable across the middle of the Atlantic.

Dubbed MAREA—Spanish for “tide”—this giant underwater cable will stretch from Virginia to Bilbao, Spain, shuttling digital data across 6,600 kilometers of ocean.
Providing up to 160 terabits per second of bandwidth—about 16 million times the bandwidth of your home Internet connection—it will allow the two tech titans to more efficiently move enormous amounts of information between the many computer data centers and network hubs that underpin their popular online services.

“If you look at the cable systems across the Atlantic, a majority land in the Northeast somewhere,” says Najam Ahmad, Facebook’s vice president of network engineering.
“This gives us so many more options.”

The project expands the increasingly enormous computer networks now being built by the giants of the Internet as they assume a role traditionally played by telecom companies.
Google has invested in two undersea cables that stretch from the West Coast of the United States to Japan, another that connects the US and Brazil, and a network of cables that connect various parts of Asia.
Rather than just leasing bandwidth on undersea cables and terrestrial connections operated by telecoms, the likes of Google, Facebook, and Microsoft are building their own networking infrastructure both on land and across the seas.

The fact that these Internet giants are laying their own cables—at their own expense—shows just how much data these giants must move.
Consider the services they run: Google offers its eponymous search engine, Gmail, Google Docs, Google Maps, and so many more.
Microsoft offers Bing, Office365, and its Azure cloud services.
Facebook has its social network along with Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, and Instagram.
The data moved by just a few online giants now dwarfs that of most others, so much so that, according to telecommunications research firm Telegeography, more than two thirds of the digital data moving across the Atlantic is traveling on private networks—namely networks operated by the likes of Google, Microsoft, and Facebook.
That’s up from 10 percent just a few years ago.
“It’s a tremendous change,” says Telegeography analyst Tim Stronge.

 Facebook, Microsoft and Telefónica have joined forces to lay fiber-optic cable across the Atlantic Ocean, the tech companies’ latest big-budget infrastructure project.

Above, rope is coiled in the foreground as a work crew in France installs a separate submarine cable in March.

Photo: AFP/Getty Images

With so much data flowing across their systems, these companies are scrambling to build new infrastructure.
In addition to building its own undersea cable, Facebook is buying up what’s called “dark fiber”—unused terrestrial cables—so that it can control how its data moves from place to place and move it more efficiently.
According to Ahmad, Facebook is now using dark fiber “pretty much everywhere” as the company expands its network into new regions.
And the same likely goes for Google and Microsoft.

“We’re starting to see more of the large Internet content providers looking to build more of their own networks—whether they are leasing dark fiber or laying down new cables to build new routes,” says Michael Murphy, president and CEO of telecom consultancy NEF.
“It makes sense.”

In the past, Facebook has joined consortia that operate other undersea cables—groups typically made up of telecom companies—but this project is different.
Rather than letting a group build and control the cable—that is, rather than sharing lines with others—the company is laying its own dedicated lines and it has the power to use them however it sees fit.
In the end, this allows Facebook to expand its online empire much quicker than in the past.
“The consortium model is much slower than what we would like,” Ahmad says.

Much the same applies to Microsoft.
That said, the two Internet giants aren’t abandoning the telecom industry altogether.
The pair have brought in another partner: Telxius, a subsidiary of Spanish telecom Telefónica.
Telxius will operate the cable, and Facebook and Microsoft services will command most of its bandwidth.
But Telxius will sell some capacity to other companies in need of trans-Atlantic connections.

The location of the cable also suits the specific needs of Facebook and Microsoft.
Myriad undersea cables connect North America with Europe, but they don’t typically originate in Virginia.
Even though Northern Virginia has long served as a major hub for Internet data centers, including facilities used by Facebook as well as dedicated data centers built by Microsoft and Amazon, the data itself typically flows through cables anchored in the New York area.
With MAREA, Facebook will be able to more efficiently move information not only from facilities in Virginia but from its Facebook-owned and -operated data center in Rutherford County, North Carolina.

“To have a direct connection from Virginia lowers latency,” says Murphy—that is, the time it takes for data to flow from data centers to its ultimate destination.
“And that probably provides better quality service.” Other companies are planning cables anchored in this same area, but MAREA will likely be the first.
Construction is set to begin in August and completion is expected in October 2017.

Connecting Its Own Way

In connecting to Bilbao in Spain, Ahmad says, the cable will provide a more efficient path not only to Europe but to Africa, the Middle East, and even Asia.
All three geographies are increasingly important to Facebook and other Internet giants as they seek new audiences and new sources of revenue.
Spanning more than 1.5 billion people, the Facebook social network has saturated the US and European markets, so now the company must focus on new frontiers.
And in many respects, that involves building new infrastructure.
The project expands the increasingly enormous computer networks being built by the giants of the Internet.

Facebook is also working to fashion all sorts of new hardware that more rapidly pushes the Internet into those parts of the world that don’t already have it, from solar-powered high-altitude drones to a new breed of wireless antenna.
Rather than relying solely on the world’s telecoms and telecom hardware makers, the company is fashioning its own hardware.
And in the hopes of pushing this gear into the market, it intends to open source the designs, freely sharing them with the rest of the world.

A similar dynamic is at play with the new undersea cable.
Rather than just use what the telecoms provide, the company is building on its own.
And a key aspect of the project is that it’s free to use whatever equipment it pleases to plug into the cable.
This isn’t necessarily the case with the consortium model.
“You’re stuck with whatever system was built initially.
And if there has to be an upgrade, all the partners in the consortium have to agree to that upgrade,” Ahmad says.
“[The MAREA Project] gives us more control of our own destiny.”
The Real Telecoms

In some ways, this eats into a market once controlled by the big telecoms.
“It’s going to get interesting.
Who is the real telecommunications provider?” Murphy says.
“It’s going to take some of their business away.”

Murphy compares this shift to how Amazon has gained greater and greater control of the infrastructure needed to ship physical packages from place to place, building its own distribution centers, launching its own fleet of trucks, and even exploring the possibility of delivering packages via drone.
“The move is similar in the data space, where companies get to an economy of scale where it makes sense for them to handle their own traffic.”

But it should also be said that the Facebooks and the Googles and the Microsofts aren’t taking existing business from the telecoms.
They’re just taking potential business.
“This does mean that telecoms are carrying somewhat less of the content provider traffic than they would in the past,” says Telegeography’s Stronge.
“But a lot of this capacity wasn’t even around a few years ago.”

When you consider that these Internet giants are also using their own dark fiber on land, the upshot is that they are, more and more, taking control of their own destiny.
As Murphy points out, if they aren’t beholden to the telecoms, they aren’t beholden either to the whims and the prices of the telecoms or to any disputes over net neutrality (the notion that no company should receive preferential treatment on shared Internet lines.)

With its Fiber division, Google has even gone so far as to become an Internet service provider itself, laying down faster lines all the way to American homes.
That means it can potentially control the length and breadth of the network, from you to its many data centers in many parts of the world, and back again.
Google doesn’t quite control the entire path from its own data centers to everyone’s front doors.
But that’s the direction it’s headed.
And, well, so are Facebook and Microsoft.

Links :

• WSJ : Facebook and Microsoft to Build Fiber Optic Cable Across Atlantic

The battle of Jutland explained

10,000 men. 250 ships. 12 hours.

Two sides. The Battle of Jutland – 100 years ago.

 courtesy of Naval History

 3D video sheds some light on Jutland tragedy

These are the remains of one of the ‘forgotten ships’ of Jutland – animated in three dimensions thanks to 21st Century Royal Navy technology.

Links :

• The Herald : The war graves of Plymouth sailors are being looted 'on an industrial scale' for scrap metal 
• Interactive map : 36 Hours: Jutland 1916, The Battle that Won the War

Ten-year gap in major hurricanes continues

 Improving hurricane forecasts means testing historical storms with today's sophisticated models and supercomputers. NASA and NOAA work together in gathering ground and satellite observations, as well as experimenting with research forecast models.

As a result of this collaboration, model resolution has increased, and scientists are discovering more about the processes that occur within these powerful storms.
The Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) Mission is a joint NASA and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) mission that measures all forms of precipitation around the globe. GPMs Microwave Imager, or GMI, has proven useful in seeing beneath the swirling clouds and into the structure of tropical cyclones.

The information gathered by GPM and other missions will be used to improve forecast models.

Credit: NASA Goddard/Ryan Fitzgibbons 

Could the first tropical storm of the Atlantic hurricane season

break the 10-year “hurricane drought” record?

Recreational boating fatalities decreasing

This video was made for AV-OG-TIL a Norwegian NGO,

working to reduce the harmful effects of alcohol.

The aim is to raise awareness around the dangers of intoxication while operating a boat, when pregnant or together with children.

Docking is an art form best practiced sober.

From Maritime Executive

May 21 – 27 was North American Safe Boating Awareness Week


The U.S. Coast Guard released its 2015 Recreational Boating Statistics report last Tuesday, revealing that boating fatalities nationwide that year totaled 626, the third-lowest number of yearly boating fatalities on record.

From 2014 to 2015,

• injuries decreased from 2,678 to 2,613, a 2.4 percent decrease;
• deaths increased from 610 to 626, a 2.6 percent increase;
• and the total number of accidents increased from 4,064 to 4,158, a 2.3 percent increase.

 About the importance of wearing a life jacket :

The National Safe Boating Council created a new public service announcement campaign, “Silly Humans,” featuring Shaw Grigsby, Bassmaster Elite Series Angler and host of “One More Cast” on The Sportsman Channel.

This light-hearted campaign follows two fish who think they are smarter than some humans, but they are no match for an accomplished angler who boats responsibly and wears a life jacket.

“If you’re not a fish, you’ve got to wear your life jacket,” reminds Grigsby.

The report also shows that in 2015:

• The fatality rate of 5.3 deaths per 100,000 registered recreational vessels reflected a 1.9 percent increase from the previous year's rate of 5.2 deaths per 100,000 registered recreational vessels.
• Twenty-two children under age 13 died while boating that year. Twelve children (55 percent) died from drowning. Two children (17 percent) of those who drowned were wearing a life jacket; half of the remaining 10 children who were not wearing a life jacket were not required to do so under state law.
• Property damage totaled approximately $42 million.
• Alcohol was the leading known contributing factor in fatal boating accidents and was listed as the leading factor in 17 percent of deaths.
• Operator inattention, operator inexperience, improper lookout, machinery failure and excessive speed ranked as the top five primary contributing factors in accidents.

You rock !

Where the cause of death was known, 76 percent of fatal boating accident victims drowned; of those drowning victims, 85 percent were not wearing a life jacket.
Where boating instruction was known, 71 percent of deaths occurred on vessels where the operator had not received boating safety instruction.
The most common types of vessels involved in reported accidents were open motorboats, personal watercraft and cabin motorboats.
The vessel types with the highest number of fatalities were on open motorboats, kayaks and canoes.

 USCG

The Coast Guard reminds all boaters to boat responsibly while on the water: wear a life jacket, take a boating safety course, attach your engine cut-off switch, get a free vessel safety check and avoid alcohol or other impairing substance consumption.

The Coast Guard also encourages the use of the safe boating application available on most smart phones.
The phone application can help boaters request safe boating information, request safety checks, file a float plan, review navigation rules, report hazards or pollution and request emergency situation. Although the safe boating application is a great tool, it is still recommended to have a marine VHF-FM radio installed on your boat or carry a handheld version.
Calling on VHF-FM radio is the most reliable way to call for help in case of an emergency.