SpaceX Test-Fires Recovered Falcon 9

As reported by Fortune: Reusable rockets, and cheaper space flight, just got much closer.

On Thursday, SpaceX conducted a full-duration test-firing of a Falcon 9 rocket. The video doesn’t look too special (except that it’s a spacecraft strapped to the ground and shooting fire), but this is a first-of-its-kind event, because this particular rocket has already been to space.

This is the so-called first stage of the rocket, which provides the bulk of the thrust to push payloads into space. Until SpaceX came along, rockets’ first stages simply splashed back into the ocean after launch, becoming, essentially, very expensive trash. But just a few months ago, SpaceX accomplished the mind-boggling feat of vertically landing a booster, intact, on a barge in the ocean. It had landed a rocket on dry land before, but the barge landing was more significant because it provides much more flexibility in launch planning.

SpaceX has said the actual launch of a recovered rocket stage will happen in September or October of this year. They didn’t release any information from this test firing, but such tests are of course key to making sure that eventual re-launch goes according to plan. They have previously test-fired a rocket recovered from a ground landing for a two-second burst, which was enough to reveal irregularities in one engine.

This time, the three-minute burn was about what it would have taken to get the rocket back into space.

The rocket seen firing above was actually the second successfully landed at sea, back in May. It was originally used to launch a Japanese communications satellite, JCSAT-14. Notably, that launch took the stage higher than in the April launch, exposing it to greater speed, stresses, and heat. That means re-using it would constitute a better test of the viability of SpaceX’s process.

However, there’s a wrinkle here—just two weeks ago, SpaceX vice president Hans Koenigsmann announced that the first rocket that would be re-used would be the stage recovered from the April mission, designated CRS-8. The fact that they’re testing the JCSAT stage suggests they’re getting both rockets ready for re-use, with the JCSAT stage coming back from the dry cleaners’ first (so to speak).

We do not yet have much insight into details of the recovery process—how much needs to be replaced on the rockets, for instance. But it looks like it took about three and a half months to get the JCSAT stage back on the launch pad. This has never been done before, so there’s nothing to compare it to, but that turnaround does suggest a labor-intensive process. As that process gets refined, time and cost will almost certainly go down.

And lowering launch cost is the key to Elon Musk’s long-term master plan. No, not the master plan for renewable energy and clean transportation. The other master plan—to colonize Mars.

US Interior to Test Drone GeoFence Over Wildfires

As reported by GCN: With wildfires blazing through 2 million acres in the United States so far this year, keeping drones away from firefighting aircraft has become a priority for forest managers.

Drone intrusions over wildfires more than doubled from 2014 to 2015, with 21 drones spotted, according to an Interior Department statement released July 25. Fifteen intrusions have complicated aerial firefighting efforts in California, Arizona, Utah, Nevada, Alaska, Minnesota and Montana. Several incidents have nearly resulted in collisions. The agency said it had been forced to ground some firefighting aircraft to ensure pilot safety.

Now a new prototype smartphone app provides real-time alerts and geofencing alarms to drone pilots if they approach zones where aerial firefighting operations are in progress. Interior developed the app with drone manufacturer DJI, which said the technology is similar to the real-time information on temporary flight restrictions it provides for major stadium events.

"This pilot project makes initial wildfire location data publicly available to commercial mapping providers that support [unmanned aerial system] operations, alerting drone pilots before they enter airspace over an active wildland fire," said Mark Bathrick, director of Interior's Office of Aviation Services, in the July 25 statement. "No responsible drone operator wants to endanger the lives of the men and women who work to protect them, and we believe this program, which uses the Global Positioning System to create a virtual barrier, will move us one step closer to eliminating this problem for wildfire managers." 

Officials said they developed the app with DJI, the largest maker of unmanned aerial vehicles in the United State, and two of the leading airspace intelligence and navigational services providers -- AirMap and Skyward.

The companies now receive information directly from Interior's Integrated Reporting of Wildland-Fire Information system and transmit it to drone pilots via AirMap apps and the geofencing system in DJI's GO flight control app.

Interior officials said they will incorporate what they learn from the prototype system into a "full public and industry release" of the application, planned for 2017. Future versions will "prevent drones from operating in restricted airspace once they reach a geofence perimeter."

5G Wireless Is Coming, and It’s Going to Blow You Away

As reported by MIT Technology Review: Mobile data consumption is soaring, but a broad set of technology advances is poised to transform what today’s smartphones and other wireless mobile devices can do—ushering in high-resolution video and fully immersive, 3-D environments.

At the NYU Wireless lab in Brooklyn, students are testing prototype equipment—forerunners to next-generation phones—that are able to transmit a blazing 10 gigabits of data per second, all while moving around crowded courtyards. And Samsung recently showed how a car traveling at 25 kilometers per hour could maintain a gigabit-per-second connection as the car moved in and out of range of mobile transmitters called base stations. 

Both achievements are roughly 100 times faster than what current commercial mobile phone technology can do. 

These are demonstrations of the kinds of astonishing capabilities that will be unleashed thanks to this month’s release of vast amounts of high-frequency spectrum by the U.S. Federal Communications Commission—a move that will make available several times more spectrum than has ever existed for wireless telecommunications—and a $400 million research effort announced by the White House.

The next-generation technology will eventually be defined in a standard that will be known as “5G.” It is expected to provide Internet connections at least 40 times faster—and with at least four times more coverage worldwide—than the current standard, known as 4G LTE. 

The new technology is expected to use so-called “millimeter wave” radio spectrum, or wavelengths above 24 gigahertz. The FCC’s move in mid-July made the United States the first country to make far more of this spectrum available for commercial use, as opposed to primarily for radar and military systems.

Higher-frequencies carry significantly more data. But they are also far more easily blocked by buildings, foliage, and even rain, making their use for mobile communications quite challenging (some existing systems use these frequencies for fixed point-to-point wireless connections with clear lines of sight).

This Intel chip, called a "massive antenna array," includes
64 antennas and can be expanded to 256, allowing
ultra-high-capacity millimeter-wave frequencies
to be send in specific directions.

But thanks to advances in signal processing, chips, and antenna technologies, Samsung, AT&T, Verizon, Ericsson, and other companies will be able to use this spectrum for next-generation mobile connectivity.

Already, some startups are using these tricks to pursue new business models. One is Starry, a company beta testing a home Internet access service in Boston. But such efforts are intended for stationary devices.

The NYU and other demos are showing how millimeter wave signals can be used for mobile communications and get around the biggest problem: they’re blocked by objects that come between transmitter and receiver.

Arrays of tiny antennas on chips or on miniature circuit boards can “steer” a signal in specific directions and mitigate this downside. This is known as “phased array”; Samsung, for example, has already prototyped a 32-antenna phased array in handheld wireless devices. Samsung, Ericsson, and Nokia all have equipment they are preparing for trials.

“There’s a tremendous amount of work being done at all the major telecom companies, big and small. You see a lot of good activity happening throughout the industry, realizing that the millimeter wave future is coming very, very quickly,” says Ted Rappaport, who heads wireless research at NYU.  

The first commercially available handsets with such technology could appear in two to five years. “I call this the renaissance of wireless. There is a confluence of events that will change the world much faster than anybody believed a few years ago,” Rappaport says. 

Underpinning the new wireless technologies are remarkable advances in microchips. First, the smaller feature size on chips will allow much more data processing without killing off your battery. And second, such chips are being overlaid with a second layer of materials that act as antennas, minimizing signal loss and energy consumption.

Manufacturing advances are making these advanced capabilities possible on standard silicon, paving the way for cheap consumer devices, says Ken Stewart, chief wireless technologist at Intel. “What the consumer will see are ever richer experiences and high-resolution video on mobile devices,” he says. “Instead of playing Pokémon Go while watching phone screens, they’ll be doing it in fully immersive, 3-D environments with fast refresh rates.” 

The groundswell of activity comes amid exponential growth in wireless data demands as billions of people expect more capacity in their mobile devices. Additional demand will come from machines like networked cars and smart power grids.

Lithium-Oxygen Battery Promises Lighter Electric Cars

As reported by Engadget: Lithium-air batteries are supposed to lead to lighter, longer-ranged electric cars thanks to their high power-to-weight output, but they have some showstopping flaws: they not only degrade rapidly, but waste a lot of energy input as heat. Neither is exactly ideal in a vehicle that's expected to last you several years and charge quickly. Scientists at MIT, Argonne National Laboratory and Peking University might have found a better way, though. They've engineered a lithium-oxygen battery that offers the light weight of lithium-air without its drawbacks.

Instead of pulling in oxygen from the air to trigger a chemical reaction, like a lithium-air battery would, this new design relies on nanoscale particles that hold both lithium and oxygen, keeping the oxygen inside as it changes states. This both dramatically reduces the energy loss (about five times less voltage) and prevents the rapid changes in volume that cut tend to shrink a battery's usable lifespan. The lithium-oxygen tech is also more friendlier to real-world conditions (lithium-air can't take carbon dioxide or moisture) and is inherently protected against overcharging -- it just shifts to a different reaction when there's too much power.

Right now, the battery exists solely as a proof of concept in a lab. However, there is a plan to create a prototype within a year. It's realistic, too, as it doesn't need expensive materials and could be used just like a run-of-the-mill lithium-ion battery. Should all go well, you could see electric cars that store twice as much energy at a given weight as lithium-ion cells. That, in turn, could lead to EVs that either end range anxiety or don't have to weigh so much to deliver the range you get today.

Solar Impulse Completes its Round-The-World Journey

As reported by Engadget: In March 2015 Solar Impulse 2 took off from Abu Dhabi and tonight it has successfully returned, completing a 40,000km+ round the world trip. It managed the feat "without using a drop of fuel," becoming the first to manage the feat thanks to sunlight, piloted by Bertrand Piccard and Andre Borschberg. Its arrival is a bit delayed, partially due to some problems withheat-related battery damage, but just making the trip helps the project's goal to show off the potential of transportation powered by green energy sources.

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Google Cuts Its Giant Electricity Bill With DeepMind-Powered AI

As reported by Bloomberg Technology: Google just paid for part of its acquisition of DeepMind in a surprising way.

The internet giant is using technology from the DeepMind artificial intelligence subsidiary for big savings on the power consumed by its data centers, according to DeepMind Co-Founder Demis Hassabis.

In recent months, the Alphabet Inc. unit put a DeepMind AI system in control of parts of its data centers to reduce power consumption by manipulating computer servers and related equipment like cooling systems. It uses a similar technique to DeepMind software that taught itself to play Atari video games, Hassabis said in an interview at a recent AI conference in New York.

The system cut power usage in the data centers by several percentage points, "which is a huge saving in terms of cost but, also, great for the environment," he said.

The savings translate into a 15 percent improvement in power usage efficiency, or PUE, Google said in a statement. PUE measures how much electricity Google uses for its computers, versus the supporting infrastructure like cooling systems.

Google said it used 4,402,836 MWh of electricity in 2014, equivalent to the average yearly consumption of about 366,903 U.S. family homes. A significant proportion of Google’s spending on electricity comes from its data centers, which support its globe-spanning web services and mobile apps.

Saving a few percentage points of electricity usage means major financial gains for Google. Typical electricity prices companies pay in the U.S. range from about $25 to $40 per MWh, according to datafrom the U.S. Energy Information Administration. (Prices in different regions range from a few dollars to more than $100). Either way, saving 10 percent on data center power consumption, for instance, could translate to hundreds of millions of dollars in savings for Google over multiple years. Google acquired DeepMind in 2014 for 400 million pounds, or more than $600 million at the time, according to The Guardian.

The application of DeepMind’s technology builds on previous efforts by Google to apply machine learning, a type of AI, to its data centers. Back in 2014, the company said it used neural networks, a type of pattern recognition system, to predict how its power usage would change over time, letting it arrange equipment in more efficient ways.

The DeepMind work goes a step further. Instead of making moves in an Atari game, the software changes how equipment runs inside the data centers to get the highest score -- in this case more efficient consumption of electricity.

"It controls about 120 variables in the data centers. The fans and the cooling systems and so on, and windows and other things," Hassabis said. "They were pretty astounded."

This is just the beginning of the project, Hassabis said. Now that DeepMind knows the approach works, it also knows where its AI system lacks information, so it may ask Google to put additional sensors into its data centers to let its software eke out even more efficiency.

SpaceX Will Attempt to Land Three Rockets at Once

As reported by Gizmodo: Having successfully launched and landed a few single rockets, SpaceX is now planning a simultaneous triple rocket landing. This is going to look cool.

SpaceX told The Orlando Sentinel that it’s seeking government permission for two extra landing pads in preparation for the launch of the new Falcon Heavy rocket. The private spaceflight company says that it might attempt to land its Falcon Heavy rockets on one of its drone barges—a protocol that the SpaceX has nearly perfected in the past year. Eventually, however, SpaceX wants to land three rockets on solid ground. The extra two ports SpaceX hopes to build at Cape Canaveral’s Air Force Base, where the company already has one port, would give it the real estate to do that.

When the Falcon Heavy launches, it will be the world’s most powerful rocket, beating the current title-holder, the Delta IV, with more than twice the power. The Falcon Heavy will be capable of lifting up to 54 tons of weight into space. To get that much thrust, it actually has three separate rocket cores, and that means that the company will need multiple landing pads to successfully save all three rockets. 

Musk went on Twitter to further explain that two of those rockets would land practically simultaneously, while the third would arrive after a slight delay. You can see how the process would unfold in this animation the company put together:

Three rocket landings at once certainly sounds like something to see, but Musk also went on to hint at one more landing down the road. While the rocket cores in the Falcon Heavy are designed to return, the upper stage of the rocket is not—not yet anyways. Musk tweeted:

Prob best to stay focused on the Mars rocket, indeed.