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By looking at satellite imagery, University of Maryland scientists hope to predict cholera epidemics four to six weeks before they actually happen. The research could help save lives worldwide, and could be used to develop other models to predict other seasonal or climate-driven infectious diseases. "Predicting the conditions that trigger cholera outbreaks in coastal regions could be very valuable for public health," said Rita Colwell, a University of Maryland scientist who has studied cholera for decades. "If we see this coming we could go into these areas with bottled water and medication to save lives." Cholera, a disease that gives...

Looks like a swarm of bees.

Whether it’s due to government restrictions, personal-privacy lawsuits or mistakes, Google Maps has slapped a "Prohibited" sign on the following 51 places. 1. The White House: Google Maps' images of the White House show a digitally erased version of the roof in order to obscure the air-defense and security assets that are in place. 5. PAVE PAWS in Cape Cod, Mass.: PAVE PAWS is the U.S. Air Force Space Command’s radar system for missile warning and space surveillance. There are two other installations besides the one in Cape Cod. 19. Bahrain: In August 2006, Bahrain's Ministry of Information instructed the...

A new feature on the Google Internet site allows anyone with a computer and Internet access to look at street-level views of towns and cities throughout the world. Although it's a useful tool for drivers planning car trips and curious folks who want to explore the globe, at least one lawsuit has been filed from a couple who said their privacy was violated after Google's cameras took a picture of their home as the company mapped the United States. Google offers the map service free of charge for people with access to a computer. After the company's Google Earth program...

ISS = International Space Station To see if the pair will in fact pass and be visible over your particular location, schedules and other important information are available from the website just below (heavens-above.com):http://www.heavens-above.com/ NASA-International Space Station (official website):http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/main/ Important note for first time Space Station observers: Unless the Station is scheduled to pass 20 or more (depending on your viewing location--obstructions, etc) degrees above the horizon, you may not see it at all. But if the pass IS high enough above your local horizon, it will 'look' like a very bright white star, w/ no blinking or colored lights...

From spaceweather.com for Monday, May 19, 2008: The 2008 "ISS Marathon" gets underway this week when the International Space Station spends three days (May 21-23) in almost-constant sunlight. Sky watchers in Europe and North America can see the bright spaceship gliding overhead two to four times each night. Please try our new and improved Simple Satellite Tracker to find out when to look. The station is not only bright and easy to see with the naked eye, but also it makes a fine target for backyard telescopes: "I took these pictures during the early morning hours of May 12th using...

A warship's missile hits its target to cheers from the control room Capt. R. M. Hendrickson stepped across the deck of the guided missile cruiser USS Lake Erie last Saturday afternoon to a bank of ballistic missile launch tubes, motioning to the particular 2-by-2-foot location from which a missile flew from the ship positioned at the time some 420 miles northwest of Hawaii.A modified tactical Standard Missile-3 (SM-3) launches from the USS Lake Erie impacting a non-functioning NRO satellite. (US Navy/AP) The missile hit its target, destroying a defective intelligence satellite that was falling toward Earth at 17,000 miles per...

Beijing is looking to take the lead in an increasingly militaristic space race, and it wants Washington to keep out. China plans to launch more than 10 spaceships and satellites this year, Agence France Presse has reported. This will be a record number of spacecraft for China, coming after 16 launches over the past two years. The announcement, made by China Academy of Space Technology chief Yang Baohua, comes at a time when tension is high over the military use of space. The United States announced late last week that it was preparing to shoot down a defunct reconnaissance satellite...

It has been one year since China took aim on its own nearly one-ton meteorological satellite by way of an anti-satellite (ASAT). That January 11, 2007 target practice spewed out a huge cloud of clutter - debris that remains a troublesome problem for operating satellites, as well as the International Space Station. Odds are that somebody’s satellite is due for a whacking - if it hasn’t already taken place.

Two orbiting U.S. spacecraft were forced to change course to avoid being damaged by the thousands of pieces of space debris produced after China carried out an anti-satellite weapon test one year ago today. The maneuvering, ordered by ground controllers and conducted several months ater the test, is an example of lingering problems caused by China's Jan. 11, 2007, missile firing in a bold demonstration of space weaponry against a weather satellite, said Air Force Brig. Gen. Ted Kresge, director of air, space and information operations at the Air Force Space Command in Colorado. Gen. Kresge, a F-15 figher pilot,...

Secrets and signsPatches for classified missions can sometimes provide otherwise-unavailable insights into the nature of those missions by Dwayne A. Day and Roger Guillemette Monday, January 7, 2008 One of the biggest movies currently in theaters is National Treasure: Book of Secrets. Like its predecessor, the movie is a lot of silliness and ’splosions, a nonstop chase as the hero travels around the world to decipher clues leading to a city of gold underneath Mount Rushmore. Much of the plot hinges upon the Freemasons, a secretive society that has left symbols with mysterious meanings, and that some people believe actually...

Project Vanguard represented the American commitment to place a satellite in orbit as part of its contribution to the International Geophysical Year. The project was managed by the Naval Research Laboratory and funded by the National Science Foundation. Vanguard 1, known as TV-3 before launch, was to have been placed in orbit on December 6, 1957. The satellite was recovered after the launch rocket malfunctioned almost immediately after ignition and crashed on the launchpad. It carries two radio transmitters to allow earth stations to track its flight; this would allow scientists to obtain data on the Earth's shape and variations...

France has a new, $400 million, satellite tracking system, and is using it to blackmail the United States. Using special radar and telescopes, the Graves Radar System (GRS) seeks to keep track of satellites and space debris. Currently, the largest satellite tracking system, the U.S. Defense Department's Space Surveillance Network (SSN), has been doing this for decades. But it has long been known that, while the SSN public catalog lists huge numbers of satellites and space debris, it leaves out many low flying American spy satellites. The new French system has discovered about two dozen of these, and has offered...

Russian Military Intelligence Analysts are reporting today that one of the United States most secretive spy satellites, the KH-13, targeting Iran was 'destroyed in its orbit' with its main power generator powered by the radioactive isotope Pu-238 surviving re-entry and crashing in a remote region of the South American Nation of Peru, and where hundreds are reported to be ill from radiation poisoning. Western media reports are stating that the US spy satellite debris hitting Peru was caused by a meteor, but which, according to these reports, would be 'impossible' as the size of 30-meter crater, if caused by a...

PASADENA, Calif. – Scientists on the Cassini mission to Saturn are poring through hundreds of images returned from the Sept. 10 flyby of Saturn's two-toned moon Iapetus. Pictures returned late Tuesday and early Wednesday show the moon's yin and yang--a white hemisphere resembling snow, and the other as black as tar. Images show a surface that is heavily cratered, along with the mountain ridge that runs along the moon's equator. Many of the close-up observations focused on studying the strange 20-kilometer high (12 mile) mountain ridge that gives the moon a walnut-shaped appearance. "The images are really stunning," said Tilmann...

Armchair explorers will now have the entire universe at their fingertips, thanks to Google's latest venture, Google Sky, a new free feature that's an application in the popular Google Earth program. Starting today, anyone with a computer can view a close-up of about 100 million galaxies and 200 million stars. To access Google Sky, available today, download the new Google Earth at http://earth.google.com. "This is an application that allows you to see the sky at very, very high resolution, as if you were just flying through the universe and seeing and visiting galaxies," said Chikai Ohazama, a Google product manager...

China’s newest ballistic missile submarine, the Jin-class vessel, has been spotted for the first time by a commercial satellite, a nuclear expert at the Federation of American Scientists said July 5. The submarine was photographed in late 2006 south of the northeastern Chinese city of Dalian, said Hans Kristensen, director of the FAS’s Nuclear Information Project. It appeared to be based on Russia’s Victor-3 model and, although photographs are unclear, resembles China’s early-1980s Xia-class submarines, said Kristensen, who spotted the long-anticipated vessel. The 436-foot Jin-class submarine probably will carry Julang-2 sea-launched ballistic missiles in its estimated 12 launch tubes. It...

A satellite image of China's new nuclear ballistic missile submarine is available on the Google Earth Internet site. Hans M. Kristensen, director of the Nuclear Information Project at the Federation of American Scientists (FAS), spotted the images, photographed by the commercial Quickbird satellite in late 2006. One photo is of what is apparently the new Type 094 Jin-class SSBN at the Xiaopingdao base near Dalian, FAS reported. The Jin-class is about 35 feet longer than the Xia-class SSBN, "primarily due to an extended mid-section of approximately 115 feet (35 meters) that houses the missile launch tubes and part of the...

At 5:28 PM EST on Jan. 11, 2007, a satellite arced over southern China. It was small — just 6 ft. long — a tiny object in the heavens, steadily bleeping its location to ground stations below, just as it had every day for the past seven years. And then it was gone, transformed into a cloud of debris hurtling at nearly 16,000 mph along the main thoroughfare used by orbiting spacecraft. It was not the start of the world's first war in space, but it could have been. It was just a test: The satellite was a defunct Chinese...

Vital satellites sitting ducks for missile attack 13:48 25 June 2007 NewScientist.com news service Robert Adler Vital communications and navigation satellites could be more vulnerable to missile attack than previously thought. After China's deliberate destruction of one of its own satellites in January 2007 (see China comes clean over shot-down satellite), two specialists in infrastructure vulnerability set out to determine whether a rogue state or terrorist group with access to an intermediate-range ballistic missile could also destroy a satellite. Using a satellite-tracking programme available on the internet, plus some university-level physics, they were able to recreate the Chinese shoot-down -...

In the face of Iran's race to obtain nuclear weapons and predictions that war with Syria is on the horizon, Israel strengthened its foothold in space pre-dawn Monday and successfully launched a spy satellite, which defense officials said granted the IDF unprecedented operational capabilities. The satellite, called Ofek 7, was launched from the Palmahim Air Force Base and successfully reached orbit. Officials said however that it would take several days to test the satellite's systems before it would be declared operational. The satellite was launched atop a Shavit missile. The successful launch came as a great relief for the defense...

BERKELEY, Calif. Human-rights activists are using high-resolution satellite cameras to keep watch over imperiled villages in the Darfur region of Sudan and posting the images online to enlist help preventing violence. The new Amnesty International Web site, http://www.eyesondarfur.org, was launched Wednesday in conjunction with a conference at the University of California, Berkeley. "We're hoping that by shining a light that we will deter the abuse from ever happening," said Ariela Blatter, director of the Crisis Prevention and Response Center for Amnesty International USA. Satellite images have been used before to document destruction in Darfur and elsewhere. But the latest project...

Space intel wars Defense officials say a turf war is shaping up that could diminish the capabilities of the government's most important space intelligence center, the Air Force's National Air and Space Intelligence Center (NASIC). The Air Force center, located at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio, was the key center in identifying China's secret anti-satellite weapons program and monitoring the provocative Jan. 11 test by China of an anti-satellite weapon. The officials say NASIC's space-threat analysis work is in danger as a result of a Defense Intelligence Agency reorganization plan that seeks to take the space-threat missions from NASIC, which...

So far, only the test satellite Giove-A is flying in orbit Europe's satellite-navigation system, Galileo, will have to be built with public funds if it is to be built at all, says the European Commission (EC).It has put forward proposals for the stumbling space project to be completed with taxpayers' money - not the private finance as was originally envisaged. The four billion euro (£2.7bn) system should be up and working by 2012. Its 30 satellites will beam radio signals to receivers on the ground, helping users pinpoint their locations. The recommendation now to construct the whole system -...

Satellites solve mystery of low gravity over Canada 20:16 10 May 2007 NewScientist.com news service Kelly Young The GRACE satellites have detected changes in the gravitational field over regions of Canada that can be attributed to the crust bouncing back after the melting of a glacier 20,000 years ago and convection in Earth's mantle (Illustration: Science/M Tamisiea) If it seems Canadians weigh less than their American neighbours, they do – but not for the reasons you might think. A large swath of Canada actually boasts lower gravity than its surroundings. Researchers have puzzled for years over whether this was due...

WASHINGTON April 22 (UPI) -- A top U.S. Air Force official has ordered a review of all current military satellites to determine if they are vulnerable to attack. Air Force Gen. T. Michael "Buzz" Moseley ordered the wide-ranging review in March after China detonated one of its weather satellites, prompting concern that the Asian nation may be creating anti-satellite weaponry, the Los Angeles Times reported Sunday. China never officially explained the military action and a large field of debris remains in orbit because of the satellite's destruction. "What I'm looking for is just a better way to think through the...

A solar eruption in December disrupted the Global Positioning System, a satellite-based navigational system used widely by the U.S. military, scientists and civilians, researchers reported Wednesday. The solar flare created radio bursts that traveled to Earth, covering a broad frequency range, the researchers said, affecting GPS and other navigational systems. Solar flares have been known to knock out satellites and even electricity grids, but the researchers said at the Space Weather Enterprise Forum in Washington that this was an unexpectedly serious new effect. "In December, we found the effect on GPS receivers were more profound and widespread than we expected,"...

PALMDALE - Northrop Grumman Corp. will begin formal development of a new satellite communications system for the B-2 stealth bomber under Air Force approval, which was announced Wednesday. The new system ultimately will allow the bomber to send and receive battlefield information up to 100 times faster than today. The upgrades will be installed at the company's facility at Air Force Plant 42 in Palmdale, where the bombers were built and where major maintenance and modification work continues. The system will use extremely high frequency, or EHF, satellite communication. The current system uses ultra high frequency, or UHF. "Upgrading the...

So far, only test spacecraft for Galileo have been launched Europe's proposed satellite-navigation system, Galileo, faces big delays and cost overruns unless major obstacles to its development are removed - and fast. A large order for spacecraft must be placed in the coming months if the project is to keep to a 2011-12 target for full operational deployment. But negotiations to set up the private framework that will implement and run the system have now been suspended. It has fallen to the German government to try to break the impasse. The Germans currently hold the presidency of the European...

WASHINGTON (AFP) - The US military has been quietly working on an array of defenses against attacks on its satellites, including tiny new satellites that could one day be armed for wars in space, analysts say. That may explain the muted US response to China's anti-satellite test two months ago. When China destroyed one of its own weather satellites with a ballistic missile in the January 11 test, the White House waited a week until news of it leaked and then issued only a mild expression of concern. Experts said the test came as no suprise to the US military,...

The Skynet system brings an increase in power and bandwidth The British military is set to take one of its most significant steps into the digital age with the launch of the first Skynet 5 satellite. The spacecraft will deliver secure, high-bandwidth communications for UK and "friendly" forces across the globe. It is part of a multi-billion-pound project that will allow the Army, Royal Navy and RAF to pass much more data, faster between command centres. The Skynet 5A platform lifts off from Kourou, French Guiana, on Saturday. It will fly atop an Ariane 5-ECA launcher that is scheduled...

wo climate scientists and a former Republican governor warned the House Science and Technology Committee Feb. 13 that the U.S. Earth-observing satellite system is in danger of collapse without a substantial and immediate reinvestment. “At a time when the need has never been greater, we are faced with an Earth-observation program that will dramatically diminish over the next five to 10 years,” warned Berrien Moore, director of the Institute for the Study of Earth, Oceans and Space at the University of New Hampshire. Moore was testifying as the co-chair of the National Academy of Sciences committee that released a report...

Criticizing China's test of an anti-satellite weapon, the U.S. State Department said Friday "modern life as we know it" depends on the security of space-based technology. State Department deputy spokesman Tom Casey said the administration raised concerns about the test with Chinese officials in Washington and in Beijing, making clear its opposition to "any militarization of space." He said tests of the kind China carried out "produce extensive amounts of space debris, have the potential for disturbing or accidentally disrupting communication satellites or other kinds of space vehicles that are out there." A report released Friday by a U.S. congressional...

The Chinese are beating the U.S. in the new "space race," a military strategy expert says. Australia-born defense analyst Greg Copley claims Communist China is working fast towards controlling space with its weapons technology and may even set up the first military base on the moon. Hear This Report Greg Copley, president of the International Strategic Studies Association (ISSA), says the United States may have won the race to put a man on the moon decades ago; but the Communist Chinese, he believes, have clearly moved ahead of America in the military space race. One recent indication of that, he...

On November 8, Russian president Vladimir Putin obliquely warned the United States to not start a “space arms race”. His words, addressed to “some nations” but unambiguously referring to the US, denounced those “seeking to untie their hands in order to take weapons to outer space, including nuclear weapons.” He then complained about “stagnation in the sphere of disarmament, which is far from our fault”—referring to previous Russian proposals for banning space weapons. How did Putin (and the head of his military intelligence agency, at whose celebration Putin was speaking) come to this conclusion? Was it something the spies had...

China successfully launched two satellites into space with a Long March-4B carrier rocket early Tuesday morning. The two satellites, which are intended for space environment exploration, were launched from the Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center in north China's Shanxi province at 7:34 a.m. One of the satellite was detached from the rocket after about 11 minutes of take-off, followed by the other about one minute later. Both have successfully entered preset orbits. The two satellites, which form Group-02 of Shijian-6, were manufactured by the Shanghai Academy of Spaceflight Technology and China's DFH Satellite Co., Ltd. respectively. Both have a designed life...

Is China Disrupting U.S. Satellites? InsideDefense.com NewsStand | Elaine M. Grossman | October 12, 2006Gen. James Cartwright, the top U.S. military officer in charge of operations in space, says the United States has not seen clear indications that China has intentionally disrupted American satellite capabilities. In an interview last month, Inside the Pentagon asked the U.S. Strategic Command chief about allegations made by some uniformed officials and civilian experts that the Chinese military in recent years has tested the means to harm or destroy American satellites. “Your [question pertains] to someone actually with intent interfering out there,” Cartwright said during...

US spy satellites detect N Korea's nuclear moves By Colin Joyce in Tokyo and Richard Spencer in Beijing (Filed: 05/10/2006) The United States has detected activity in North Korea indicating possible preparations for an underground nuclear test. Spy satellites have picked up unusual movement of vehicles at potential test sites, although an American official said it did prove that a test was imminent. Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe: the North Korean issue is expected to dominate his visits to China and South Korea The images were seen the day after North Korea said it would conduct its first test, a...

Huge 'launch ring' to fling satellites into orbit 16:00 03 October 2006 NewScientist.com news service David Shiga A ring of superconducting magnets fires a projectile off a ramp at 8 kilometres per second, fast enough to reach orbit (Artist’s conception: J Fiske/LaunchPoint) A cone-shaped shell would protect the payload during its passage through the atmosphere into space, and includes a rocket at the back end to adjust its trajectory (Illustration: J Fiske/LaunchPoint Technologies) An enormous ring of superconducting magnets similar to a particle accelerator could fling satellites into space, or perhaps weapons around the world, suggest the findings of a...

he Greenland icesheet, the second largest single store of frozen freshwater in the world, is melting faster than previous estimates, according to a study that adds to grim news about global warming. In 2001, the UN's top scientific forum on global warming projected that the thick slab of ice that covers most of Greenland would melt only slightly during the 21st century. But a study published on Thursday in the British weekly journal Nature calculates that the rate of Greenland ice loss increased by 250 percent between May 2004 and April 2006 compared with the two years between April 2002...

Those among you who like your skies darkened by black helicopters are invited to mosey on down to the remote Chinese village of Huangyangtan which hosts what must be the strangest military installation ever spotted (http://bbs.keyhole.com/ubb/showthreaded.php/Cat/0/Number/484568/page/vc) by the Google Earth Community:Zooming in for a closer look, we have what appears to be a 900x700m scale model of a mountainous landscape......complete with lakes, valleys and snow-capped peaks:Truly bizarre. Google Earth aficionados can examine the evidence for themselves here (http://regmedia.co.uk/2006/07/19/huangyangtan.kmz) (.kmz) while wondering what on Earth, or where on Earth for that matter, this remarkable landscaping project is. Don't, however, spend...

Failure of the launching of a Russian rocket carrying 18 satellites BAIKONOUR - a Russian launcher carrying 18 satellites fell down on ground little after its takeoff of the cosmodrome of Baïkonour to Kazakhstan, announced the aerospace agency Russian Rossaviakosmos. "No injury was caused at the cities and villages of the surroundings". The Dnepr rocket, which carried "a Russian satellite and 17 foreign satellites, whose first satellite bélarusse", fell down to 25 km in the south of the launching pad, declared number 2 of Rossaviakosmos, Youri Nossenko, quoted by the Interfax agency.

The US military is relying ever more on space satellites to help wage combat in places like Iraq and Afghanistan, though analysts say that Washington's space supremacy could be threatened by rivals in the future. The Pentagon is using sophisticated satellites that orbit Earth in a bid to track down its enemies and keep a round-the-clock watch on unfriendly foes. The technological advantage can prove lethal, as witnessed by the recent air raid that killed the long-wanted Al-Qaeda in Iraq leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. "Space capabilities have revolutionized the way we fight today by providing our forces with battlefield situational...

U.S. Military, Commercial Space Assets Vulnerable To Attack: Experts Defense Daily 06/22/2006 Author: Dave Ahearn U.S. military and commercial satellites, long seen as above the fray and out of harm's way, are vulnerable to multiple types of attack, an assault that a determined enemy someday will attempt. So said military, government, industry and think tank experts testifying yesterday before the House Armed Services Committee strategic forces subcommittee. Defending against such an attack in the long-peaceful realm of space can be accomplished, but at a price: military, government and commercial satellite owners would have to provide more money to companies making...

In using Google Earth to look at the Dalien Shipyards and other places in Red China, I was able to find these pictures. Given time, one could find a lot more regarding PLAN bases and PLAAF bases, or any other fixed locations. Dalien Naval Shipyard Pictures (Varyag Aircraft Carrier, Typre 51C DDG, and others): PLAN Submarine Base Pictures (SSBN, several SSN and SS...and an entrance to an underground facility):

Spy Agency Watching Americans From Space By KATHERINE SHRADER, Associated Press Writer WASHINGTON - A little-known spy agency that analyzes imagery taken from the skies has been spending significantly more time watching U.S. soil. In an era when other intelligence agencies try to hide those operations, the director of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, retired Air Force Lt. Gen. James Clapper, is proud of that domestic mission. He said the work the agency did after hurricanes Rita and Katrina was the best he'd seen an intelligence agency do in his 42 years in the spy business. "This was kind of a...

SMITH SAYS- The latest bogus debate between our Republican and Democratic leaders is over the supposed Freedom to Phone. This is not a phone debate, it’s a phony one. There is no phone privacy right written into our Constitution or any where else for that matter. And, more to the point, thanks to the wonders of electronics, it could never be. Simply stated, the Founding Fathers lacked access to a cell, satellite or any other derivative of Mr. Bell’s miraculous invention. Hence, they had no reason to incorporate Freedom to Phone in the Bill of Rights, or any other of...

U.S. to Piggyback on India's Mission to Orbit the Moon NASA's chief signs a deal that will put two of the agency's mapping instruments on the unmanned spaceflight planned for 2008. By Paul Watson, Times Staff Writer May 10, 2006 NEW DELHI — American outsourcing to India is approaching a new frontier: outer space. The two nations' space agencies signed an agreement Tuesday in India's high-tech hub of Bangalore to fly two U.S. lunar mapping instruments on India's unmanned mission to orbit the moon, scheduled for 2008. Because sending a U.S. spacecraft to the moon again remains a possibility only...

The spacecraft is small by world standards — a microsatellite of a few hundred pounds. Launched in October by the Russians for an oil-rich client, it orbits the earth once every 99 minutes and reportedly has a camera for peering down on large swaths of land. But what makes this satellite particularly interesting is not its capabilities, which are rudimentary, but its owner: Iran. With last year's launching and another planned in the next few weeks, Tehran has become the newest member of the international space club. --snip-- Tehran's effort to build a fleet of rockets, and to buy and...

Liberals are whipping themselves into a frenzy over "Bush's domestic spying." But the left's outrage is new. During the Clinton era, they found government surveillance just peachy. In 1999, in fact, The New York Times itself had no problem with the Clinton NSA's Echelon project, which - without warrants - monitored millions of phone calls between U.S. citizens: "Few dispute the necessity of a system like Echelon," assured The Times, "to apprehend foreign spies, drug traffickers, and terrorists." That was then. Now the antique press is too busy getting its panties in a wad about Bush Administration security measures to...