SpaceX Launches DSCOVR Satellite from Cape Canaveral

As reported by the Orlando Sentinel: SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket blasted off Wednesday into a clear sky colored by a setting sun, sending a satellite into space to monitor solar storms that can wreak havoc on Earth's power and communication systems.

The 6:03 p.m. launch from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station came on SpaceX's third try this week, and this time Florida provided a postcard-quality environment for launch. As the rocket rose, the sunset transformed the horizon backdrop into a stripe of rainbow pastels, from pink through blue, for it to pass through.

"The Falcon takes flight, propelling the Deep Space Climate Observatory on a million-mile journey to protect our planet Earth," declared NASA commentator Michael Curie.

However, out to sea, the weather did not cooperate. Because of heavy seas in the Atlantic Ocean, SpaceX canceled its plan to try to land the used first stage of the rocket on an unmanned barge and instead soft-landed it in the water, just a dozen yards from its target.

A little more than a half-hour after launch, the rocket carried the DSCOVR satellite to its first parking point about 125 miles into space.

"Everything has gone just as planned," Currie said after the satellite reached its orbit.

During nearly four months, NASA intends to slowly move the satellite much farther, eventually reaching a spot almost a million miles from Earth, or roughly four times the distance to the moon.

At that point, the gravitational forces of the sun and Earth are in equilibrium, allowing the satellite to follow the Earth around the sun while keeping a constant watch on both the sun and the Earth's sunny side.

There, the refrigerator-sized satellite will give NASA, the Air Force and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration data about events such as geomagnetic storms caused by changes in solar wind. The goal is to give scientists more detailed understanding to provide regional warnings about how the storms might affect power and communication systems.

The satellite was first built for a previous mission and repurposed by NOAA. Initially built in 1998, it was intended to observe Earth only, in a program proposed by then-Vice President Al Gore to monitor global warming.

The original program was scrapped by President George W. Bush. A few years ago NOAA convinced NASA to bring the satellite out of storage and reconfigured it as a solar-storm monitor.

Nonetheless, it retains its ability to monitor Earth's climate, detailing ozone and aerosol amounts, cloud height, vegetation and ultraviolet reflection by the atmosphere.

Gore, who attended the launch, sent a note to NASA after the satellite was deployed, saying it will "further our understanding of Earth and enable citizens and scientists alike to better understand the reality of climate crisis and envision its solutions."

DSCOVR will be replacing a NOAA satellite in roughly the same spot in space called the Advanced Composition Explorer, which was prone to signal disruptions from the very solar storms it was deployed to cover.

Consequently, the ACE satellite provides some data on major storms, but not enough, said Douglas Biesecker, NOAA DSCOVR project scientist.

"DSCOVR will not have that problem," Biesecker said. "It will be more robust."

SpaceX was unable to land its rocket, which was supposed to be an unofficial highlight for the mission. SpaceX hopes to be able to soft-land rockets to reuse them. A first attempt in January failed.

"The drone ship was designed to operate in all but the most extreme weather. We are experiencing just such weather in the Atlantic with waves reaching up to three stories in height crashing over the decks," said a news release by SpaceX.

So the company decided to bring it down in the water.

Later SpaceX founder Elon Musk posted on Twitter, "Rocket soft landed in the ocean within 10m of target & nicely vertical! High probability of good droneship landing in non-stormy weather."

He also tweeted that the drone barge would be redesigned to better handle bad weather.

SpaceX got the launch off at its last opportunity, due to the position of the moon. Wednesday's was the company's third attempt in four days.

Tuesday's launch was scrubbed because winds blew at 100 knots at an altitude of 25,000 feet pretty much all day. SpaceX didn't bother to try Monday, when it rained almost all day. On Sunday, a radar glitch scrubbed the launch with less than three minutes left in the countdown.

Smartphone Theft Drops in London and Two U.S. Cities as Anti-Theft 'Kill Switches' are Installed

As reported by Reuters: Thefts involving smartphones have declined dramatically in three major cities since manufacturers began implementing "kill switches" that allow the phones to be turned off remotely if they are stolen, authorities said on Tuesday.

The number of stolen iPhones dropped by 40 percent in San Francisco and 25 percent in New York in the 12 months after Apple Inc added a kill switch to its devices in September 2013. In London, smartphone theft dropped by half, according to an announcement by officials in the three cities.

"We have made real progress in tackling the smartphone theft epidemic that was affecting many major cities just two years ago," said London Mayor Boris Johnson.

Johnson, San Francisco District Attorney George Gascon and New York state Attorney General Eric Schneiderman were among numerous officials arguing for new laws mandating the kill switches.

In California, where a law mandating kill switches has yet to go into effect, smartphone theft is dropping because some manufacturers have already started installing the software-based switches on the devices they sell, Gascon said.

“The wireless industry continues to roll out sophisticated new features, but preventing their own customers from being the target of a violent crime is the coolest technology they can bring to market,” Gascon said.

California's law, one of the nation's strongest, received wide support from California prosecutors and law enforcement agencies that hoped it could help reduce smartphone thefts.

According to the National Consumers League, handheld devices were stolen from 1.6 million Americans in 2012. In California, smartphone theft accounts for more than half of all crimes in San Francisco, Oakland and other cities.

Other states experiencing a rash of smartphone thefts have considered similar measures, and Minnesota passed a theft-prevention law last year.

So far, Apple, Samsung and Google have implemented kill switches on their smartphones, and Microsoft is expected to release an operating system for its Windows phones that has one this year, the three officials said in their news release.

But some of the smartphone systems require consumers to opt in, meaning not all will be protected when their phones are operating in the default mode.

Gascon, Johnson and Schneiderman called on all manufacturers to make the technology active as a default position, as Apple has done with its iPhones.    

SpaceX Celebrates Successful Dragon Splashdown

As reported by Popular Mechanics: Last night, Elon Musk tweeted this gorgeous photo of the Dragon supply ship returning after splashdown.

Update: Tuesday, 7:52 PM ET: The SpaceX Dragon supply ship successfully splashed down, completing its four-week ISS mission.

Update: Tuesday, 6:34 PM ET: The Dragon supply ship is continuing its descent — splashdown is slated for 7:45PM ET.

After SpaceX Launch Solar Storm DSCO Satellite Heads for Gravitational Sweet Spot: L1

As reported by National Geographic: The Deep Space Climate Observatory, launching later today from a SpaceX rocket, will keep an eye on Earth from a very special perch. Called a Lagrangian point, the spacecraft’s future home is part of a constellation of stable parking spots for satellites in orbit.

At one of these points, the pull of the sun and the Earth combine in just the right way to keep a satellite from being flung out of the solar system. The new satellite, also known as DSCOVR, won’t be alone at its Lagrangian point. For 30 years, space agencies have been capitalizing on the unique properties of these quirky places. (See “Spacecraft to Watch Earth and Warn of Solar Storms.”)

A spacecraft in one of these pockets needs very little fuel to stay at a constant location relative to the Earth, helping extend the life of the mission.

What’s more, satellites that stay in this sweet spot between the sun and Earth avoid the dramatic temperature swings and periodic magnetic disruptions that Earth-orbiting satellites encounter as they pass behind the planet.

Five Lagrangian points, named for mathematician Joseph-Louis Lagrange, occur with any circular orbit, not just the Earth’s path around the sun.

The Earth and moon together create five Lagrangian points, for example. And some of the stable pockets created by Jupiter’s orbit have captured so-called Trojan asteroids.

Limited Real Estate
The DSCOVR satellite will travel a million miles, or roughly one percent of the way to the sun, to its home at the Earth-sun Lagrangian point known as L1. From there it will have unobstructed views of the sun and Earth.

If this is such a great location for a satellite, won’t it start to get crowded?

In fact, several other missions have also taken advantage of L1.

The first, launched in 1978, was the International Sun-Earth Explorer-3 (ISEE-3), which was diverted along an elaborate trajectory to allow it to make the first intercept of a comet's tail. Three decades later, a private group tried unsuccessfully to revive the dormant satellite when its complicated orbit brought it close to Earth again. (See “Zombie Spacecraft Rescue Planned by Private Group.”)

DSCOVR will be joining a few other satellites already located at L1: the Advanced Composition Explorer, which compared solar and interstellar particles; the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory, which is studying the sun; and the WIND mission to study the impact of solar wind.

Stacking Satellites
So won’t the new satellite send these others hurtling into space like balls on a pool table?
Fortunately, multiple missions can play together nicely at this spot because the spacecraft don’t sit directly on L1. Instead, they move around the point in one of two types of looping orbits, known as Lissajous orbits or halo orbits.

It’s as if they become tiny moons orbiting an invisible planet circling the sun at the same pace as Earth.

Marc Kuchner, an astrophysicist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, says it’s just like commercial airspace. “You can fly a lot of planes between Los Angeles and New York,” he said. “Just like you can stack a lot of 747s in 40,000 feet, you can also stack a lot of satellites at L1, L2, or any of these Lagrangian points.”

Mission commanders don’t avoid placing their satellites at the point itself out of pure politeness, but to keep an uncluttered line of communication.

“The problem is the sun is in the background then,” said Robert Farquhar, a retired NASA mission design specialist sometimes known as the master of getting to places, who figured out how to redirect ISEE-3 onto its comet intercept course. Solar interference can make it hard for the satellite to send data back to Earth.

The equilibrium at L1 is not completely stable, so these satellites require periodic “station keeping” adjustments to keep them orbiting correctly. Eventually they will run out of fuel and will not be able to hold their positions.

The Other Sweet Spots
Another point, L2, is also located along the straight line that passes through the Earth and the sun. It is about a million miles away on the opposite side of Earth, in the direction of our planet’s shadow.

This second point is a preferred perch for missions that need to search deep into space and whose sensitive instruments would be particularly challenged by hot and cold extremes, the magnetic field, or solar wind.

The James Webb Space Telescope, launching in 2018, will peer out from L2 with a number of infrared sensors to study the period shortly after the big bang, the formation of solar systems like our own, and other topics. (See video: “Building the Largest Space Telescope Ever.”)
Both the European Space Agency and the China National Space Administration have already placed probes at L2.

The other Lagrangian point along the Earth-sun axis is called L3, but since it sits on the far side of the sun, it’s less useful for space probes: A satellite there would never have a direct line of communication with the Earth.

The final two Lagrangian points, L4 and L5, are the most stable of the group, and are located partially ahead and partially behind the Earth along its orbit.

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.