Space Station Module Move Makes Room for Private Spaceships

As reported by Space.com: Astronauts on the International Space Station moved a closet-like storage module to a new spot on the orbiting lab Wednesday (May 27) to make room for a new docking port to welcome private space taxis in 2017.

During an hours-long move, the station's bus-size Permanent Multipurpose Module rode a robotic arm to a new perch on the space station's Harmony connecting node. It was the first move for the module, which NASA calls the PMM, since its installation on the station's Unity node in 2011. You can see a video of the space module move here.

Early in the docking process, NASA astronaut Scott Kelly noted a warning message that was quickly cleared by NASA. "Except for that first little message there, it all looked perfect," Kelly said after the module move was finished.

NASA worked closely with controllers at the Canadian Space Agency in Quebec to move the module using a robotic arm. The work began at 4:45 a.m. EDT (2045 GMT), according to NASA, with the de-mating of the 14-foot-wide (4.3 meters) module taking place at 5:50 a.m. EDT. The module move was closely supervised by Kelly and fellow NASA astronaut Terry Virts, who commands the station's Expedition 43 crew.

The is just one in a series of steps to prime the International Space Station to receive crew flights on U.S.-built commercial spacecraft. Currently, the station's docking ports are designed to accommodate NASA's space shuttle fleet (which retired in 2011) and Russia's Soyuz space capsules, which now ferry all crews to space.

Boeing and SpaceX are creating new spacecraft that will begin sending astronauts aloft around 2017. Two docking adapters will fly into space aboard two SpaceX Dragon spacecraft this year; astronauts will install the adapters in a series of spacewalks.

NASA is shifting to commercial vehicles to reduce its reliance on Soyuz spacecraft, and regain a U.S. capability of launching astronauts into space.

The PMM was first used to haul supplies from Earth while the space station was under construction. Then called "Leonardo," the Italian Space Agency's module flew eight times in space before the STS-133 crew left it behind in 2011 to dock to Unity.

Today, the module is used as a 2,400-cubic-foot (68 cubic meters) storage facility, able to hold 11 tons of equipment, or up to 16 racks, plus several storage bags.

SpaceX Cleared for US Military Launches

As reported by BBC News: The US Air Force has certified the private company SpaceX to launch military and spy satellites.

A joint venture between Lockheed Martin and Boeing has had a monopoly on those launches since 2006.

Founded by entrepreneur Elon Musk, SpaceX has already won contracts with NASA to ferry cargo and crews to the International Space Station.

The approval from the US military followed two years of intensive reviews by the US Air Force.

"SpaceX's emergence as a viable commercial launch provider provides the opportunity to compete launch services for the first time in almost a decade," Air Force Secretary Deborah James said in a statement.

Mr Musk said the decision was "an important step toward bringing competition to national security space launch."

In June, the Air Force expects to open bidding for the contract to launch GPS satellites built by Lockheed and it will be SpaceX's first opportunity to compete for military work.

Russian engines

The US military has been relying on the Atlas 5 rocket, which uses Russian built engines, to power payloads into space.

But the military only has until 2019 to use that system, as US lawmakers have banned the use of Russian engines for launches that concern national security.

The certification of the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket will give the military an alternative rocket ahead of the ban.

New Research Suggests that Hackers can Track Subway Riders Through Their Phones, Even Without GPS

As reported by the Daily Dot:  Underground subways offer no place to hide from hackers.

Determined hackers can track the movements of millions of subway riders around the world even as they go underground by breaking into smartphone motion detectors, new research from Chinese academics reveals. The attack can track subway riders with up to 92 percent accuracy.

The ability to track subway riders represents a significant cybersecurity threat to the tens of millions of people who use public transportation every day. There are more than 5.5 million daily New York City subway passengers, and over half of those people are carrying smartphones, thus exposing themselves to tracking.

"If an attacker can trace a smartphone user for a few days, he may be able to infer the user’s daily schedule and living/working areas and thus seriously threaten her physical safety," wrote Jingyu Hua, Zhenyu Shen, and Sheng Zhong of Nanjing University, one of China’s oldest universities. "Another interesting example is that if the attacker finds Alice and Bob often visit the same stations at similar non-working times, he may infer that Bob is dating Alice."

Smartphones have long been considered God’s gift to spies. They offer myriad tracking tools, from the browser to the GPS sensor, and they stay with their owners almost all day, every day.

The new research, which has not yet been peer reviewed, shows hackers can track people without either cell service or GPS, both of which are heavily protected from attackers and often don't work underground anyway. By contrast, motion sensors, like the accelerometer that enables screen rotation, are much more vulnerable and can give everything away.

Every subway in the world has a unique fingerprint, the researchers said, and every time a train runs between two stations, that fingerprint can be read in the accelerometer, potentially giving attackers access to crucial information.

“The cause is that metro trains run on tracks, making their motion patterns distinguishable from cars or buses running on ordinary roads,” the researchers wrote. “Moreover, due to the fact that there are no two pairs of neighboring stations whose connecting tracks are exactly the same in the real world, the motion patterns of the train within different intervals are distinguishable as well.”

To make this attack a reality, the researchers propose a new attack that learns each subway’s fingerprint and then installs malware on a target’s phone that steals accelerometer readings.

The trio of researchers performed experiments in China by tracking volunteers carrying smartphones through subways in Nanjing. Tracking accuracy reached 70 to 92 percent.

The attack is "more effective and powerful than using GPS or cellular network to trace metro passengers," the researchers assert. Accelerometers simply aren't protected the way GPS and cell networks are. An accelerometer can be accessed, run, and read without the user knowing, whereas smartphones display indicators when either GPS or cell service is being used.

There are several defenses against this hack, the most interesting one being power-consumption scrutiny. To track someone using this method, a hacker would have to continuously access the phone's accelerometer, draining significant power no matter how well the malware was concealed. If you monitor your phone's power consumption, you should notice when an app is using too much of the battery—possibly for nefarious reasons.

The Chinese research paper can be read below:

We Can Track You If You Take the Metro: Tracking Metro Riders Using Accelerometers on Smartphones

Watch the Furthest Flight Ever Flown on a Real Life Hoverboard

As reported by Gizmodo: The Guinness World Records says that Catalina Alexandru Duru just pulled off the farthest flight ever traveled on a real life hoverboard: 905 feet and 2 inches. You can see him rise up 16 feet in the air on the hoverboard and then start cruising through the air over a lake with nothing but invisible underneath him in the video below.

The hoverboard Duru uses is more like a super powerful quadcopter-type hoverboard and not a hoverboard in the 'Back to the Future' sense but it’s still pretty awesome. And also, the added bonus of not using BTTF-style? This one works over water.

You Won't Need Waves with this Electric Surfboard

As reported by Engadget: If you want to surf, but are too lazy to paddle or look for waves, the Wakejet Cruise from Swedish outfit Radinn is for you! The company says it "marries the agility and speed of wakeboarding with the freedom of surfing," but that doesn't mean you can take the electric-powered craft lightly. It cruises along at a rather insane 28mph for a full half-hour on a single charge -- or up to an hour if you're willing to go slower. That's about the same speed as a water skier, meaning that unlike seated watercraft, it'll require your full attention, along with some skill and athleticism.

You control the speed with a hand-held remote, and can recharge the built-in battery in about an hour when you're done. The carbon and kevlar board also has a mobile app, built-in GPS and magnetic safety switches. Radinn's wakejet is hardly the first product like this, but with the relatively short recharge time and long range, it's probably the most practical -- and expensive! It's on pre-order with a Q2 2015 delivery for a mere $20,000 or so, except that other one-percenters already snapped up the first run. Luckily, the next batch is available in Q3.

Not Everyone will be a Winner in the Self-Driving Future

As reported by Gizmodo: The first road-legal autonomous truck made a splashy debut earlier this month. The Freightliner Inspiration Truck is shiny and new, but it will not be good for everyone. Autonomous trucks will destroy jobs, Scott Santens points out at Medium, killing the truck stop as we know it.

Even if you reserve no particular nostalgia for truck stops, the effects will be devastating for local economics. Autonomous trucks will obviously replace drivers, an estimated 3.5 million of them, but they will make the business that cater to drivers obsolete, too. Santens writes:

Those 3.5 million truck drivers driving all over the country stop regularly to eat, drink, rest, and sleep. Entire businesses have been built around serving their wants and needs. Think restaurants and motels as just two examples. So now we’re talking about millions more whose employment depends on the employment of truck drivers. But we still can’t even stop there.

Those working in these restaurants and motels along truck-driving routes are also consumers within their own local economies. Think about what a server spends her paycheck and tips on in her own community, and what a motel maid spends from her earnings into the same community. That spending creates other paychecks in turn. So now we’re not only talking about millions more who depend on those who depend on truck drivers, but we’re also talking about entire small town communities full of people who depend on all of the above in more rural areas. With any amount of reduced consumer spending, these local economies will shrink.

But autonomous trucks have obvious benefits, too. Trucking is a decently paid job but also a dangerous one. It takes truckers far from their families for long stretches of time. It encourages poor lifestyle habits. There are over 300,000 crashes involving heavy trucks every year.

Autonomous trucks will almost inevitably start taking over our roads, but it is worth pausing to consider their unintended effects. A few weeks ago, Martin Ford, author of Rise of Robots,pointed out the ripple effects of autonomous cars in Gizmodo. Not everyone will be a winner in the self-driving future.

GPS/GNSS Satellites Make a Load of Difference to Bridge Safety

As reported by ESA: When extreme weather comes our way, real-time information from space can help us to decide if closing a bridge is the right thing to do.

ESA is working with the UK’s University of Nottingham to monitor the movements of large structures as they happen using satellite navigation sensors. 

Satnav sensors and wind meters

The team fixed highly sensitive satnav receivers for detecting movements as small as 1 cm at key locations on the Forth Road Bridge in Scotland.

Measurements from these sensors were continuously transmitted in real time via satellite to a processing centre at the university and made available via a web-based interface as part of GeoSHM, the project for Global Navigation Satellite System and Earth Observation for Structural Health Monitoring.

This realtime information was complemented by historical Earth observation satellite data to give a better overall picture of possible influences on bridge safety through gradual changes in the surrounding ground and any movements of critical structures.

After analysing Earth observation images of the Forth Road Bridge dating back seven years, the team found no displacements of the towers or the surrounding soil.

Not all bridges are as stable, however: satellite imagery from China has revealed subsidence caused by underground engineering and groundwater extraction around bridge sites in Shanghai and Wuhan.

Over the past 50 years, traffic on the Forth Road suspension bridge has increased from the expected 30 000 vehicles per day to a daily average of 40 000, with 60 000 crossing on peak weekdays.

As a result of this increased load, the bridge has stressed structural members and unexpected deformations. Also, extreme weather conditions such as high winds cause frequent bridge closures, and having only one lane open in each direction results in upwards of £650 000 in lost revenues per day.

Web-based interface

Bridgemaster Barry Colford observed: “This information is extremely useful for understanding how much the bridge can move under extreme weather conditions. This allows us to decide to close the bridge based on precise deformation information.”

"For example, I knew that the bridge can move significantly under high winds but for the first time I know that bridge moved 3.5 m laterally and 1.83 m vertically under a wind speed of 41 m/s.

“Other information provided by the GeoSHM system is also important to define reliable alarm thresholds for issuing the right alerts at the right time.”

The global market for the installation of GeoSHM on existing and currently planned long-span bridges is worth in excess of $1.5 billion. The UK market alone is estimated to be worth in excess of £200 million and growing. China is expected to be the largest market.

While GeoSHM is designed mainly for monitoring bridges with a main span greater than 400 m, it also has potential for shorter bridges, such as Hammersmith Bridge and the Millennium Bridge in the UK.

“Eventually, GeoSHM could be deployed for monitoring offshore wind turbines, masts, towers, dams, viaducts and high-rise buildings, for example,” said Xiaolin Meng, GeoSHM team leader.

Detecting long-term movements

Through the ARTES Integrated Applications Promotion programme, ESA has been supporting a variety of infrastructure monitoring.

"The combination of long-term monitoring of ground levels using Earth observation data and short-term satnav positioning creates a potent information service,” commented Beatrice Barresi, ESA’s GeoSHM project manager.