Europe's Experimental IXV Mini-Space Shuttle to Launch This Wednesday

As reported by Space.com: The European Space Agency (ESA) plans to launch an experimental space plane this Wednesday to test out technologies needed for vehicles to survive the return to Earth from space.

The unmanned space plane, called the Intermediate eXperimental Vehicle (IXV), is slated to blast off Wednesday (Feb. 11) at 8 a.m. EST (1300 GMT) from French Guiana. Its suborbital flight will last 100 minutes. But first, the reusable spacecraft must separate from the rocket by itself while out of contact with Earth. (You can watch the IXV liftoff live here on Space.com, courtesy of ESA.)

"The crucial moments will certainly be those after the blackout phase … The signal from the vehicle after this phase will be an important sign," Giorgio Tumino, ESA's project manager for IXV, told Space.com via email.

  "The telemetry reception after the blackout will be an important contribution to the mission's success," Tumino added. "An important moment after that will also be the correct deployment of the parachute, since several missions worldwide failed this phase."

If everything goes according to plan, the 16.4-foot-long (5 meters) IXV space plane will detach autonomously from its Vega rocket at an altitude of roughly 200 miles (320 kilometers). It will soar as high as 280 miles (450 km) and then come back to Earth for a parachute-assisted splashdown in the Pacific Ocean.

IXV was originally supposed to launch in November, but the mission was postponed to perform additional safety analyses of the mission's launch trajectory. (Vega rockets usually launch northward to send payloards into a polar orbit, but the IXV's Vega will head eastward on a suborbital path, ESA officials said.)

Space planes are not a new concept for ESA. In the 1980s, the agency was developing a small space-shuttle-like craft called Hermes to bring up to three astronauts into space at a time.

Hermes managers added safety precautions, such as ejection seats, to the vehicle's design after NASA's Challenger space shuttle exploded during launch in January 1986, ESA officials have said. But the added cost and complication eventually led to the Hermes program's cancellation in 1992.

"[IXV] is a completely new program, although it builds also on technological work done during the Hermes period," Tumino said. "An example is the thermal protection system, whose first elements were developed in the frame of the Hermes program."

Re-entry study could be useful for multiple applications, he added. Some possibilities include missions returning from other planets, or creating reusable rocket stages.

ESA aims to follow the IXV mission with another unmanned space-plane project called PRIDE (Program for Reusable In-Orbit Demonstrator for Europe), which would deploy satellites in orbit before returning to Earth for a runway landing.

ESA is also studying re-entry of one of its International Space Station cargo vehicles that is expected to return from space Feb. 27, bearing a load of trash. The Automated Transfer Vehicle-5, which is named after the late Belgian astronomer and physicist Georges Lemaitre, harbors internal sensors to track the vehicle's behavior during re-entry, when it is designed to break apart and burn up.

Google Earth Pro is now Free

Google Earth Pro Screenshot by Rick Broida/CNET

As reported by C/NET: Google Earth has been around for years, yet it still makes my jaw drop.

I mean, seriously, for centuries the only way to get a "bird's-eye" view of our planet was to spin an actual globe. Now we can "fly" to any location and zoom all the way in from space to a couple hundred feet above real, satellite-mapped ground.

Most amazing of all, Google made this tool available for free. This despite an educational -- and, let's be honest, entertainment -- value that's virtually impossible to measure.

What you maybe didn't know is that Google has long offered a Pro version of Earth as well, one that cost a hefty $399 per year. Now, however, you can get Google Earth Pro absolutely free.

First things first: The words "free trial" still appear in that URL, but as you'll see when you click through to the sign-up page, "Sign up is no longer required for Google Earth Pro." All you have to do is download the installer, run it, then sign in using your e-mail address (as your username) and license code GEPFREE.

Second things second: Do you really need this? Probably not, as Pro was created with business/enterprise users in mind -- but it does afford some pretty cool extras not found in the free version, including:

• Advanced measurements: Measure parking lots and land developments with polygon area measure, or determine affected radius with circle measure.
• High-resolution printing: Print images up to 4,800 x 3,200 pixel resolution.
• Exclusive pro data layers: Demographics, parcels, and traffic count.
• Spreadsheet import: Ingest up to 2,500 addresses at a time, assigning place marks and style templates in bulk.
• Movie-Maker: Export Windows Media and QuickTime HD movies, up to 1,920x1,080-pixel resolution.

So, yeah, you could print ultra-high-resolution images of, say, your neighborhood. (The free version tops out at 1,000 pixels.) Or add high-def fly-over videos to your movies. Pretty sweet stuff.

And don't overlook the huge thrill of scoring a $400 product for free. That's always fun.

Homeland Security and the US Military are Testing Commercial Drone Nightmare Scenarios

As reported by The Verge: Here's a hypothetical matchup for you. A column of tanks covered in thick armor, capable of firing many bullets of both large and small caliber. On the other side, a bunch of plastic quadcopters you bought at the local Walmart. Who wins? According to exercise by the US military, the drones have it hands down.

This was one of several fascinating factoids from a Wired report on a recent meeting hosted by the Department of Homeland Security, the goal of which was to access just how dangerous these "toys" can be.

Along with DHS and the US military, the Federal Aviation Administration was in attendance.

That agency has a mandate from Congress to come up with new rules governing domestic drones by the end of this year. So far the agency has basically delivered a ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ and some delightfully low budget Youtube PSAs.

A DIJ Phantom 2 Vision Plus commercial drone.

Other fascinating factoids from this meeting include:

• Syrian rebels are importing consumer-grade drones to launch attacks
• A DJI Phantom 2 can carry three pounds of inert explosive. Or at least you can strap that to one sitting on a table and make it seem terrifying
• The software DJI recently used to try and prevent drones from flying over the White House was originally developed to keep the craft out of China's Tiananmen Square Square
• The military has attached automatic weapons to cheap commercial drones and fired them with great success

The reassurance offered by the Wired piece is that it's actually pretty easy to jam the radio signals which are used to pilot these drones. As several commenters point out, preventing a drone on autopilot from flying a route pre-mapped out and routed by its built-in GPS might prove to be a lot more difficult to deter.

Judge Rejects Most of LightSquared Claims Against Deere, GPS firms

As reported by Reuters: A U.S. judge dismissed the bulk of two lawsuits by bankrupt wireless venture LightSquared and equity owner Harbinger Capital Partners accusing Deere & Co and other GPS firms of misleading them about interference concerns and hastening the company's insolvency.

In an opinion rendered on Thursday in Manhattan federal court, Judge Richard Berman threw out Harbinger's lawsuit, and nixed nine of 11 claims asserted by LightSquared, serving a blow to its hope for hefty damages that could help salvage its business.

LightSquared has been in bankruptcy since 2012, when the Federal Communications Commission revoked its license to build a planned wireless network over fears it could interfere with GPS systems.

Harbinger, the hedge fund run by Phil Falcone, would have to give up much of its equity and all of its operational control of LightSquared under a restructuring plan being voted on by creditors.

The lawsuits alleged that Deere, Garmin International , Trimble Navigation Ltd, and a GPS industry group led LightSquared to believe the planned network would not pose an interference risk.

It wasn't until LightSquared had pumped $4 billion into the project, the plaintiffs argued, that the GPS industry voiced their concerns.

Judge Berman dismissed many claims from both plaintiffs, including breach of contract and civil conspiracy, leaving alive only LightSquared's claims for negligent misrepresentation and constructive fraud.

That Berman did not scrap the lawsuit entirely, however, means LightSquared will still have the chance to probe the GPS companies' books and records during discovery.

"LightSquared is pleased with the court's decision," a company spokesman said in an emailed statement to Reuters. "The litigation process will move forward with discovery."

LightSquared believes any potential interference is a result of GPS device designs, rather than LightSquared's planned network, the statement added.

Lawyers for Harbinger and for the defendants did not respond to requests for comment.

The lawsuit could impact LightSquared's bankruptcy, where the company has been trying to convince potential investors that its spectrum will regain FCC approval and ultimately have value. That effort could benefit from a perception that GPS companies acted improperly in raising concerns about interference.

LightSquared's bankruptcy, a contentious case in which Dish Network Corp Chairman Charles Ergen is the largest creditor, has been closely watched in the restructuring world, as several reorganization attempts have fallen flat due to ongoing acrimony between the company and its creditors.

Programming Safety into Self-Driving Cars: Fault-Tolerant Planning, and "Undecidedness" in AI

As reported by Science Daily: For decades, researchers in artificial intelligence, or AI, worked on specialized problems, developing theoretical concepts and workable algorithms for various aspects of the field. Computer vision, planning and reasoning experts all struggled independently in areas that many thought would be easy to solve, but which proved incredibly difficult.

However, in recent years, as the individual aspects of artificial intelligence matured, researchers began bringing the pieces together, leading to amazing displays of high-level intelligence: from IBM's Watson to the recent poker playing champion to the ability of AI to recognize cats on the internet.

These advances were on display this week at the 29th conference of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) in Austin, Texas, where interdisciplinary and applied research were prevalent, according to Shlomo Zilberstein, the conference committee chair and co-author on three papers at the conference.

Zilberstein studies the way artificial agents plan their future actions, particularly when working semi-autonomously--that is to say in conjunction with people or other devices.

Examples of semi-autonomous systems include co-robots working with humans in manufacturing, search-and-rescue robots that can be managed by humans working remotely and "driverless" cars. It is the latter topic that has particularly piqued Zilberstein's interest in recent years.

The marketing campaigns of leading auto manufacturers have presented a vision of the future where the passenger (formerly known as the driver) can check his or her email, chat with friends or even sleep while shuttling between home and the office. Some prototype vehicles included seats that swivel back to create an interior living room, or as in the case of Google's driverless car, a design with no steering wheel or brakes.

Except in rare cases, it's not clear to Zilberstein that this vision for the vehicles of the near future is a realistic one.

"In many areas, there are lots of barriers to full autonomy," Zilberstein said. "These barriers are not only technological, but also relate to legal and ethical issues and economic concerns."

In his talk at the "Blue Sky" session at AAAI, Zilberstein argued that in many areas, including driving, we will go through a long period where humans act as co-pilots or supervisors, passing off responsibility to the vehicle when possible and taking the wheel when the driving gets tricky, before the technology reaches full autonomy (if it ever does).

In such a scenario, the car would need to communicate with drivers to alert them when they need to take over control. In cases where the driver is non-responsive, the car must be able to autonomously make the decision to safely move to the side of the road and stop.

"People are unpredictable. What happens if the person is not doing what they're asked or expected to do, and the car is moving at sixty miles per hour?" Zilberstein asked. "This requires 'fault-tolerant planning.' It's the kind of planning that can handle a certain number of deviations or errors by the person who is asked to execute the plan."

With support from the National Science Foundation (NSF), Zilberstein has been exploring these and other practical questions related to the possibility of artificial agents that act among us.

Zilberstein, a professor of computer science at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, works with human studies experts from academia and industry to help uncover the subtle elements of human behavior that one would need to take into account when preparing a robot to work semi-autonomously. He then translates those ideas into computer programs that let a robot or autonomous vehicle plan its actions--and create a plan B in case of an emergency.

There are a lot of subtle cues that go into safe driving. Take for example a four-way stop. Officially, the first car to the crosswalk goes first, but in actuality, people watch each other to see if and when to make their move.

"There is a slight negotiation going on without talking," Zilberstein explained. "It's communicating by your action such as eye contact, the wave of a hand, or the slight revving of an engine."

In trials, autonomous vehicles often sit paralyzed at such stops, unable to safely read the cues of the other drivers on the road. This "undecidedness" is a big problem for robots. A recent paper by Alan Winfield of Bristol Robotics Laboratory in the UK showed how robots, when faced with a difficult decision, will often process for such a long period of time as to miss the opportunity to act. Zilberstein's systems are designed to remedy this problem.

"With some careful separation of objectives, planning algorithms could address one of the key problems of maintaining 'live state', even when goal reachability relies on timely human interventions," he concluded.

The ability to tailor one's trip based on human-centered factors--like how attentive the driver can be or the driver's desire to avoid highways--is another aspect of semi-autonomous driving that Zilberstein is exploring.

In a paper with Kyle Wray from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and Abdel-Illah Mouaddib from the University of Caen in France, Zilberstein introduced a new model and planning algorithm that allows semi-autonomous systems to make sequential decisions in situations that involve multiple objectives--for example, balancing safety and speed.

Their experiment focused on a semi-autonomous driving scenario where the decision to transfer control depended on the driver's level of fatigue. They showed that using their new algorithm a vehicle was able to favor roads where the vehicle can drive autonomously when the driver is fatigued, thus maximizing driver safety.

"In real life, people often try to optimize several competing objectives," Zilberstein said. "This planning algorithm can do that very quickly when the objectives are prioritized. For example, the highest priority may be to minimize driving time and a lower priority objective may be to minimize driving effort. Ultimately, we want to learn how to balance such competing objectives for each driver based on observed driving patterns."

It's an exciting time for artificial intelligence. The fruits of many decades of labor are finally being deployed in real systems and machine learning is being adopted widely and for different purposes than anyone had ever realized.

"We are beginning to see these kinds of remarkable successes that integrate decades-long research efforts in a variety of AI topics," said Héctor Muñoz-Avila, program director in NSF's Robust Intelligence cluster.

Indeed, over many decades, NSF's Robust Intelligence program has supported foundational research in artificial intelligence that, according to Zilberstein, has given rise to the amazing smart systems that are beginning to transform our world. But the agency has also supported researchers like Zilberstein who ask tough questions about emerging technologies.

"When we talk about autonomy, there are legal issues, technological issues and a lot of open questions," he said. "Personally, I think that NSF has been able to identify these as important questions and has been willing to put money into them. And this gives the U.S. a big advantage."

Uber Will Add Panic Button And Location/Journey Sharing In India

As reported by TechCrunch: Late last year, Uber announced plans for tighter safety measures in India following the rape of a passenger using its service in December. Now it has confirmed that two major features — an in-app panic button and journey/location sharing — will roll out to users in India on February 11.

The company went public with the launch date after Times Of India reported that the Mumbai transportation department was considering a ban on its service over its apparent approach to safety. Authorities are reportedly “not happy with Uber representatives’ responses during various meetings held to consider measures for passengers’ safety.”

Uber cleared the air on its plans to settle “some misconceptions” around its safety policy — which already includes more stringent background checks and a dedicated emergency response team. That will be boosted when the in-app panic button, which alerts local police when triggered, and a ‘safety net’ feature, which goes beyond Uber’s existing ‘share my ETA’ feature to let customers share details of their location and trip with up to five other people, go live in India next week.

The company previously said that these features will be rolled out worldwide at a later date, but India is the first priority in response to heightened concerns about safety following the rape incident.

Times Of India also reported that Uber has irked Mumbai authorities with its reluctance to install physical panic buttons in its drivers’ cars, something that new regulations have made mandatory in the city. Notes from the transportation department reportedly read that Uber “appears [to] want to put the onus of passenger safety on a cab’s owner and driver.”

Uber argued, however, that requiring physical panic buttons would be confusing because many drivers use multiple taxi app services. Since each one button is connected to a single taxi app service, that would necessitate multiple physical panic buttons in many cars, it argued.

“In a situation of distress the rider would have to pick the correct operator’s panic button to be able to get help on time. [In a car that works with India’s four top taxi app services] that’s 25 percent chance of success; and a decision that has to be made and executed in a split-second, if at all,” Uber said in a blog post.

Uber did propose a single panic button — installed by the driver and connected directly to the local police — as a better option. However, it then hit out at officials in Mumbai, adding that “forward looking regulatory authorities in India are already embracing this position and requiring technology platforms to have in-app safety features.”

The Uber returned to the road in New Delhi last month, six weeks after it was banned following the rape. The U.S. company applied for a mandatory radio license and revealed that it has adopted a non-profit model in the city until it is granted.

Bellingcat Launches Crowdsourced Ukraine Conflict Vehicle Tracking Project

From Bellingcat: Over the past few months, the Bellingcat team has been working on something slightly different from our previously published work. Now, we’re pleased to launch a crowdsourced effort to track the movements of military vehicles both inside and in the vicinity of Ukraine, primarily to determine if equipment has been transferred across the border from Russia to Ukraine.

To kick-start the effort, we have used Daniel Romein’s original research of last summer’s military movements to build an initial data set for launch, supplemented with additional interesting sightings collected by the Bellingcat team through social media. The data is made available through Silk, a beautiful data publishing and visualization platform.

You can access the Bellingcat Ukraine conflict vehicle tracking Silk here: http://bellingcat-vehicles.silk.co/

Why are we doing this? We do not want to simply report a list of cases when we think Russian vehicles have crossed the border to Ukraine, but want to provide the active community of social media investigators a platform to do their own research, as well as allow the community to contribute to the data set with their findings through Checkdesk. The Bellingcat team will maintain the data in Silk, and continuously make updates based on the verified submissions. As we consider the current data set ‘Beta quality’, we also welcome corrections to the initial data set via Checkdesk, should you find any errors.

Our hope is to build a large data set that can be mined to make entirely new discoveries. Some sightings of vehicles may not be so interesting on their own, but in a sequence raise new questions. As an example, a group of vehicles was seen travelling towards Russia’s Donetsk on June 21st, and similar vehicles were seen travelling through Ukraine’s Krasnodon later on the same day. Could these be the same vehicles after crossing the border?
In Silk, there are three collections of data:

• Sightings, which provide links to whatever media is available of the event, as well as additional details like data, location, a breakdown of types of equipment seen. In some cases, a sighting can be elaborated down to the uniquely identifiable vehicles. Sightings can also be grouped, so if for instance the same convoy is seen in multiple YouTube videos, these sightings can be grouped together. Link to a filterable list of all sightings.
• Equipment Categories, which are basically ‘buckets’ for categorizing the various types of equipment seen in the video. The category list also doubles as a handy reference to different vehicle types. Link to equipment category list.
• Unique Units, listing individually identifiable units, e.g. based on the license plate or other identifiers. Link to list of uniquely identifiable units.

The data can be visualized and explored in many different ways, so we encourage you do dig in and experiment with e.g. the different mapping options the tool provides!

As for the ready made views, below is a screen shot of the filterable equipment sighting list. Through this view, it’s possible to for instance look up all Pantsir-S1 sightings in the data set, or all sightings from a given month.

Another powerful tool is the search. This is very useful for e.g. looking up if certain military license plates are recorded in the database.

Findings to date
So, what can be found in the data set already today? Let’s have a look.
Around Luhansk, there have been several sightings of Dozor-N armoured vehicles, which are unique to Russia.

East of Donetsk, Pantsir-S1 sightings were reported in late January. This is also a weapon system used only by Russia. Interestingly, there were also several reports through social media of Pantsir-S1 sightings near the Ukranian border not long before this.


Msta-S self-propelled howitzers were filmed travelling on trailers through Rostov in July. In early September, an Msta-S was filmed driving through the town of Novoazovsk, and the unit’s unique markings seem to match exactly to one of the units that were seen passing through Rostov. Again, seems that the units crossed the border from Russia to Ukraine.


Finally, a picture of a Kamaz truck’s trailer in Boguchar was noted on social media, as it was linked to transporting tanks to the Ukranian border. However, cross-referencing the license plate to other trailers in our data set reveals something very interesting: this same trailer was in June transporting the Buk TELAR unit which is linked with the downing of MH17.


So, starting with these kinds of findings, we can’t wait to see what the community can do with this data and platform.

Submitting data through Checkdesk
Checkdesk is a platform that allows users to collaborate on the verification of reports, videos, photographs, and other information. Bellingcat hopes that Checkdesk will be used to bring together a lot of the information already shared and discussed on Russian vehicles in Ukraine, and enable the information to be reviewed and verified openly. We also hope that by making the process as open as possible we encourage our readers to participate in the discovery and verification process, giving them the opportunity to learn about verification and giving those who already have experience verifying content chance to share their knowledge.

Using Checkdesk couldn’t be simpler. A Checkdesk story (example here) is made up of updates, and each update is generally based around verifying individual elements of a story, be it an image or a claim made about the story. Anyone can add verification footnotes to an update, and once “journalists” (site moderators) decide the update is verified or not they can update the status to False, Verified, Undetermined, In Progress, or Not Applicable (example here).

It’s also possible to embed updates into web pages with a simple script:
As part of the current project we ask users to submit all sightings and reports of vehicles in Ukraine to the following updates, and the Bellingcat team will then review and organise the submissions for verification and adding to the database.

• New sightings
• Geolocation updates
• Equipment identification reports
• Error reports (e.g. wrong images or descriptions in sightings)

The Bellingcat team also encourages the preservation of content, especially as material is frequently deleted on social media sites once its discovery has been made public. Videos can be downloaded by a variety of websites, and Archive.org allows many pages to archived.
The following are guides and other resources on verification:

Tools
Google Earth Pro – Now free.
Clip Converter – Video saving site.
Keepvid – Video saving site.
Tube Offline – Video saving site for videos from VK.com.
Archive.org – Site for archiving web pages.
VLC Media Player – A free and light weight media player with various useful tools and options.
Paint.Net – Free digital photo editing software.

Guides
A Beginner’s Guide to Geolocating Videos
Verification and Geolocation Tricks and Tips with Google Earth
Geolocation Techniques – Mapping Landmarks
Open Source Information in Conflict Zones
War and Pieces – Social Media Investigations
The Verification Handbook