SpaceX Nails a Tricky Fourth Rocket Landing at Sea

As reported by Engadget:SpaceX is good enough at sea-based rocket landings that they've nearly become commonplace. The private spaceflight outfit has successfully landed a Falcon 9 rocket aboard a drone ship for the fourth time, or its sixth landing overall. And this wasn't a particularly easy trip, either. On top of the inherent challenges of a sea landing, the destination for the rocket's payload (the JCSAT-16 communications satellite) meant that the vehicle had to contend with both "extreme velocities" and high re-entry heat.

No, SpaceX still hasn't reused a rocket yet -- that's happening in the fall. However, the touchdown suggests that the company might just meet its objective of launching a rocket every two weeks by the end of 2016. There are no guarantees that it'll land every time (just ask SpaceX what happened in June), but the success rate is now consistent enough that Elon Musk and crew can expect that rockets will return intact.

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First stage landing confirmed on the droneship. Second stage & JCSAT-16 continuing to orbit http://www.spacex.com/webcast 

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This Is Where the First U.S. Offshore Wind Turbines Were Just Installed

As reported by Fortune: The first wind turbines to be installed off the coasts of the United States were constructed over the past few days about three miles offshore of Block Island, Rhode Island.

While wind farms have been built all over the U.S. on land, the market for building wind farms in U.S. waters has stalled thanks to legal threats, lack of regulatory support, and push back from coastal property owners. At the same time, the “offshore wind” industry has boomed throughout Europe.

The construction milestone is an indicator that offshore wind is finally becoming a reality in the U.S. after many years of fits and starts, and could one day provide substantial amounts of clean energy to Americans.

Last Tuesday, clean energy developer Deepwater Wind began installing the first wind turbine on top of the towers at its Block Island Wind Farm. By Wednesday night, the company had put in the first turbine blade. By Thursday, the first wind turbine had been completed.Construction on the wind farm, which is using gear from GE among others, started about a year ago. When completed later this year, the farm is supposed to provide about 30 megawatts of energy, a relatively small amount compared to what natural gas and coal plants, or even large-scale solar farms, can generate.

However, what the Block Island Wind Farm lacks in size, it makes up for in timing. Multiple offshore wind projects have been planned for the eastern seaboard for years, but many have stalled.

The poster child for the lagging offshore U.S. wind industry is Cape Wind, a once planned $2.6 billion project to install wind turbines across 24 square miles off the coast of Nantucket. After years of legal battles, including from residents that didn’t want their views spoiled by turbines, the companies that had committed to buy the energy from Cape Wind backed out.

The Block Island Wind Farm is the first of about a dozen planned offshore wind projects in U.S. waters and represents growing support for the clean energy option.

Last week, the Massachusetts legislature passed an energy bill that includes the largest state commitment to offshore wind in the U.S. to date. Under the law, which the state’s Governor still needs to sign, utilities would have to buy a combined 1.6 gigawatts of electricity from offshore wind farms in a little over a decade.

Massachusetts is home to waters that have some of the biggest potential for U.S. offshore wind. In addition to the Cape Wind project, DeepWater Wind and Danish energy company Dong Energy hold leases off the state’s coast.

Dong Energy is the world’s largest offshore wind developer. The company, which is partly owned by the Danish government and Goldman Sachs, went public in June, largely based off of the success of the offshore wind industry in Europe.

In Europe, over 11 gigawatts of energy are being produced by offshore wind farms. There are 84 offshore wind farms either operating or under construction in the seas around 11 countries in the continent. Dong Energy plans to build the world’s largest offshore wind farm, called the Hornsea project, off the coast of Yorkshire in Northeast England.One of the reasons offshore wind hasn’t taken off in the U.S. is because the costs of building the first projects, and thus producing the first energy, have been high. The energy from the Block Island Wind Farm has an initial contract of 24.4 cents per kilowatt-hour, which is about 10 cents more than Rhode Island residents currently pay for their electricity, according to Scientific American.

However, prices for offshore wind in Europe have dropped significantly, and they can expect to do so in the U.S., too, as more projects come online. According to the International Renewable Energy Agency, offshore wind could cost on average 12 cents per kilowatt hour by 2025.

Dong Energy recently won a contract to produce offshore wind off the coast of the Netherlands for eight cents per kilowatt hour. At that price, the power is competitive with fossil fuel-based energy.

Billionaire Entrepreneur to Send World's First Private Landing Craft to the Moon

As reported by NBC News: A billionaire entrepreneur who made his fortune during the dot com boom is one step closer to making a literal moonshot of a business opportunity become a reality.

Moon Express, a private space company co-founded by Naveen Jain, along with fellow entrepreneurs and space fanatics Bob Richards and Barney Pell, gained the Federal Aviation Administration's approval on Wednesday to send an unmanned lander to the lunar surface.

"This approval makes us the first company ever in history to ever be granted an approval to leave Earth's orbit and land on a celestial body," Jain told NBC News.

The Outer Space Treaty, which was adopted by the United Nations and went into effect during the great space race of the 1960s, requires "non-governmental entities" to get permission from the "appropriate state party to the treaty."

The Cape Canaveral-based company sees an opportunity to harvest the moon's resources, which include many valuable minerals also found on Earth, such as titanium and platinum.

"The moon has been collecting the asteroid material for the past four billion years and has an abundance of real Earth elements and water," Jain said. "It's good for business."

"Imagine getting engaged and instead of a diamond, giving your fiance a moon rock ring," he said.

If everything goes according to plan, in 2017 a rocket that cost Moon Express "under $5 million" will launch its small lander, which Jain says is about four to five feet in diameter.

After a successful soft landing, the plan is for the Moon Express lander to "hop" around the moon's surface during the initial exploratory mission, according to Jain and the plan outlined by the FAA.

"Our goal is to not only bring back the resources from the moon for the benefit of humanity on Earth, but also as a destination we could colonize, which becomes a stepping stone for us to colonize Mars," he said.

Jain said it's too early to say how much that moon rock engagement ring could cost, but he also sees another business opportunity for after couples tie the knot.

"My goal is one day the honeymoon will really be about taking the honey to the moon, not Hawaii," he said.

Moon Express is also poised to win Google's $20 million Lunar X-Prize, which will be awarded to the first company that lands on the moon, moves at least 500 meters on the surface and sends high-definition photos and video back to Earth.

US Air Force Says the F-35 is Ready For Combat

As reported by Engadget: The F-35 Lightning II has faced more than a few technical problems and cost overruns in the 15 years since Lockheed Martin first won its production contract, but it's nearly done overcoming those hurdles. The US Air Force has declared that the F-35A (that is, the conventional takeoff model) is officially ready for combat. The first squadron to get the advanced jet, the 34th Fighter Squadron at Utah's Hill Air Force Base, can now deploy it on real-world missions if necessary.

Of course, theory and practice are two different things. While the F-35 is technically combat-ready, the Wall Street Journal's Jon Ostrower notes that it won't really be capable until "at least" October. The fighter's current software prevents it from making full use of its capabilities (such as launching certain weapons) at the moment. As it stands, it'll likely take some time before the F-35 deploys to an active theater, like the fight against ISIS -- Air Combat Command estimates 2017. Think of this more as passing a base level of combat-worthiness than anything else.

There's also the question of other military branches' aircraft. While the Marine Corps said its F-35 model (the short/vertical takeoff-capable F-35B) was ready in July 2015, it was glitchy and missing key functionality at that point. And the Navy's carrier-friendly F-35C isn't active, either. It could be a long, long while before the Lightning II is polished enough that it's a mainstay across the US military.

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.