Sunday, August 24th, 2014
The Emirates Institution for Advanced Science and Technology (EIAST) has announced that construction work on a facility to build satellites is on schedule and expected to be completed in the next few months. The facility comprises a clean room for the manufacture of satellites, an electrical laboratory, as well as a mechanical lab, EIAST said.
Sunday, August 24th, 2014
Aquifers provide us freshwater that makes up for surface water lost from drought-depleted lakes, rivers, and reservoirs. We are drawing down these hidden, mostly nonrenewable groundwater supplies at unsustainable rates in the western United States and in several dry regions globally, threatening our future. Read more in National Geographic
Saturday, August 23rd, 2014
The Aug. 22 launch of the first two fully operational Galileo positioning, navigation and timing satellites, initially cheered as a success, will now be registered as a failure of the Europeanized Soyuz rocket’s Fregat upper stage, which left the satellites in a useless orbit, government and industry officials said Aug. 23. Read more via Space
Saturday, August 23rd, 2014
Technology security expert and entrepreneur Peter Mottur has created an app and platform called Vizsafe, a community alert app that allows residents to post geolocation-based photos and videos of crimes being committed allowing police to monitor posts and respond as quickly as possible. The company has worked with the New York and New Jersey Port
Saturday, August 23rd, 2014
Chile’s Environmental Superintendent, Cristian Franz, last week announced the launch of the National Environmental Enforcement Network (RENFA). The new network, comprising 16 agencies with environmental responsibilities under the Superintendent, will increase the number of environmental inspectors in the country from the current 100 to 600. It will also coordinate the work of the country’s various
Friday, August 22nd, 2014
Vietnam’s first earth-observing satellite, VNREDSat-1, changed its orbit to duck a possible collision with another object cruising at high speed last week, the Vietnam Academy of Science and Technology said on Wednesday. The academy’s Center for Small Satellite Control and Exploitation, made changes to the orbit on August 15 after it received a warning from
Thursday, August 21st, 2014
In July, Amazon hired Prime Air VP of Science Paul Viola, an MIT Ph.D. and former Microsoft researcher who led an engineering group at Bing which used machine learning to make dramatic improvements to Bing’s accuracy and precision. Another interesting new hire: Avi Bar-Zeev, now a senior manager at Prime Air. Bar-Zeev co-founded Keyhole, Inc., which
Wednesday, August 20th, 2014
Europe on Thursday is slated to launch the first of a new generation of global-positioning satellites as it seeks to divorce itself from reliance on the Pentagon’s GPS constellation that has become the backbone of global commerce. The first pair of fully operational Galileo satellites are scheduled to be lofted into space on a Russian-designed
Wednesday, August 20th, 2014
Tech is changing how we relate to the environment. But until recently, the mechanics of political influence in America created a segment of environmental activism that isn’t always about connecting people to the environment. Well financed national groups like the National Resources Defense Council and the Environment Defense fund have had notable successes pressing for
Tuesday, August 19th, 2014
A Long March-4B carrier rocket carrying the Gaofen-2 satellite blasts off from the launch pad at the Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center in north China’s Shanxi Province, Aug. 19, 2014. China successfully launched Gaofen-2, a high-definition Earth observation satellite, into orbit on Tuesday, according to the State Administration of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defense