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Retired CIA Director James Woolsey said Friday that North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un "may have more up his sleeve" than firing a nuclear missile at the United States. "It is a little worse than that," Woolsey, 75, a former Navy undersecretary, told Don Lemon on CNN. "They can launch a satellite into orbit. "That's actually easier to do than to hit a target on the other side of the Earth. "If that satellite contains a small nuclear weapon — and it is detonated over some place, say the United States, it can be devastating to the electric grid. "So, we've...

We believe, based on comments made by two remarkable experts on this subject, Dr. Peter Pry of emptaskforce.org and Ambassador Hank Cooper of highfrontier.com, the latter of whom worked in the Reagan Administration, that Iran already has the bomb and is working on figuring out how to get it into a vehicle and send it our way. It will not, however deliver annihilation to any single city or cities in the conventional sense. That would be pointless, futile and suicidal. Instead, working together with North Korea, they will seek to take out our electric infrastructure and anything electronic via satellites...

The Trump administration is seeking to slash the budget of one of the government’s premier climate science agencies by 17 percent, delivering steep cuts to research funding and satellite programs, according to a four-page budget memo obtained by The Washington Post. The proposed cuts to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration would also eliminate funding for a variety of smaller programs, including external research, coastal management, estuary reserves and “coastal resilience,” which seeks to bolster the ability of coastal areas to withstand major storms and rising seas. NOAA is part of the Commerce Department, which would be hit by an overall 18 percent budget reduction from...

A prefecture in China’s far western Xinjiang region is requiring all vehicles to install satellite tracking systems as part of stepped-up measures against violent attacks. Traffic police in Bayingolin Mongol Autonomous Prefecture announced the regulation on Sunday, shortly after thousands of heavily armed police paraded in the Xinjiang capital and ruling Communist Party officials vowed to ramp up their campaign against separatists and Islamic militants. The vehicle-tracking program in Bayingolin will utilize China’s homegrown Beidou satellite system, launched in recent years to reduce China’s reliance on U.S.-based GPS providers for sensitive applications. Authorities said they will also track cars using...

Internet satellite company OneWeb — the poster child for SoftBank 's pledge to President Donald Trump to invest billions of dollars in the U.S. — will open a "high volume" factory that will build three satellites per day, CEO Greg Wyler told "Squawk Alley" on Friday. The factory will be on NASA property in Florida, and start operating this year, Wyler said. SoftBank said in December that it would invest $1 billion in OneWeb, taking a 40 percent stake. With that investment, Wyler said the company would create 3,000 new high-tech, highly skilled manufacturing and engineering jobs. At its new...

California Gov. Jerry Brown gave a fiery speech on climate-change policy on Wednesday, during which he said, "If Trump turns off the satellites, California will launch its own damn satellite," according to The Los Angeles Times. Brown was speaking at the 2016 meeting of the American Geophysical Union, a prominent body of scientists who study Earth and space. In November, a top adviser to President-elect Donald Trump suggested the incoming administration would eliminate NASA's earth-science programs.

http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nclimate3004.htmlNASA: Carbon Dioxide Fertilization Greening Earth, Study Finds April 26, 2016 From a quarter to half of Earth’s vegetated lands has shown significant greening over the last 35 years largely due to rising levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide, according to a new study published in the journal Nature Climate Change on April 25. An international team of 32 authors from 24 institutions in eight countries led the effort, which involved using satellite data from NASA’s Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectrometer and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer instruments to help determine the leaf area index, or...

Engineers erected a commercial Antares rocket vertical on its launch pad on Virginia’s Eastern Shore Friday, positioning the 13-story booster for liftoff Sunday night with more than 5,000 pounds of supplies and experiments for the International Space Station. With a Cygnus supply ship enclosed in its nose cone, the rocket rolled out of its Horizontal Integration Facility on a self-propelled transporter starting around 5:12 p.m. EDT (2112 GMT) Thursday for the mile-long journey to launch pad 0A on Wallops Island, Virginia. Orbital ATK’s ground team secured the rocket after reaching the seaside launch pad at dusk, then hoisted the booster...

The explosion of a SpaceX rocket last Thursday will have an impact across the space industry, far beyond the losses on the launchpad at Cape Canaveral. An Israeli satellite operator’s deal to sell itself to a Chinese company is imperiled. Planned launches of communications satellites that support international mobile phone service and digital television are delayed and put in doubt. NASA’s cargo deliveries to the International Space Station will probably be disrupted. All of them are customers of the Space Exploration Technologies Corporation, or SpaceX, whose rocket exploded in Florida. The private space launch company, led by the entrepreneur Elon...

The space rocket which exploded before takeoff yesterday (1 September) was carrying a satellite Facebook intended to use to connect sub-Saharan Africa to the Internet. Whilst many critics have had doubts about the plan of founder Mark Zuckerberg to provide web access to the developing world, the destruction of the SpaceX rocket and its cargo will set the plan back many months, if not years. The explosion of the Falcon 9 rocket on the launchpad at NASA’s Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida also saw the destruction of its AMOS-6 satellite, manufactured by an Israeli firm, but leased to...

The world's second-largest economy aims to use the power of particle physics through photons to send the encryption keys necessary to decode information. The launch of Micius - named after a 5th Century BC Chinese scientist - took place in the early hours of Tuesday in the southwestern Gobi Desert, according to Xinhua, China's state news service. It will be used in experiments aimed at proving the viability of quantum technology to communicate over long distances. Unlike traditional secure communication methods, it is impossible to intercept the data held in the bursts of subatomic particles because any attempts at eavesdropping...

For the second time this year, SpaceX is preparing to launch a commercial communications satellite for Tokyo-based SKY Perfect JSAT Corp. early Sunday. A Falcon 9 rocket is set to blast off at 1:26 a.m. EDT (0526 GMT) from Cape Canaveral with the JCSAT 16 satellite to relay data and video across Japan and the Asia-Pacific. A first stage landing attempt will follow in the Atlantic Ocean a few minutes later. The launch window extends for two hours. On Saturday, ground crews at Cape Canaveral's Complex 40 launch pad plan to roll the Falcon 9 rocket out of its hangar...

Do you believe the Clintons would arrange murder for power? A fervent prayer that radio talk show host Tom Bauerle and Yours Truly won’t become the ‘dearly departed’ following “mysterious deaths” while walking our dogs, hoisting barbells down at the gym or walking home. Bauerle is the braver of the two because he is right in the U.S., in graver danger for digging like a terrier at the truth about the satellite-reliant election equipment that may now be being “rigged” to get Hillary Clinton elected as the next U.S. president. Special: Alzheimer's Quick Test: Is Your Bedroom Organized This Way?...

SALT LAKE CITY, Utah – People across the western United States saw mysterious lights streak across the sky late Wednesday night and lit up social media with videos. Utah NASA Ambassador Patrick Wiggins confirms it is a “rocket body” or “rocket booster” from China falling toward earth. Satview tracks satellites and estimates the “space junk” from China’s CZ-7 R/B rocket will reenter the atmosphere early Thursday morning.

Credit: Canadian Space Agency, via TheTelegraph ====================================================================================================================== William Gadoury, a 15 year old Mayan history enthusiast who lives in Saint-Jean-de-Matha in Lanaudière, Quebec, has, according to Le Journal de Montréal, used satellite imagery to make associations between ancient Mayan city locations and constellations, and in so doing, may have actually discovered a site that has not been previously known. According to the news report, Gadoury, who claims to have been long interested in the Mayan culture, gained access to satellite imagery—after applying the Geographic Information System he found a correlation between 22 constellations and 117 Mayan cities. But, in so...

This story actually broke just as we were warming up for the debate last night and our readers were discussing it in comments while most of the political sphere was focused on New Hampshire. Ahead of their original schedule, Kim Jong-un launched a missile into orbit allegedly carrying an “Earth observing satellite” over the objections of pretty much everyone else on the planet. Like we needed this on top of everything else that’s going on.(WaPo) North Korea on Sunday declared that it had successfully put an "earth observation satellite" into orbit under the direct orders of leader Kim Jong Un,...

Senior Pentagon officials on Wednesday sought to defend the use of Russian-made rocket engines to send U.S. military satellites into space, telling exasperated lawmakers they are moving quickly to end the practice and rely on American-made rockets for the launches. But Air Force Secretary Deborah James and Pentagon acquisition chief Frank Kendall failed to stem sharp criticism from several members of the Senate Armed Services Committee who view Russia as the chief geopolitical threat to the United States. Led by the committee chairman, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., they said using the Russian engines enriches President Vladimir Putin's inner circle and...

An Australian project to create a reusable vehicle to launch small satellites is a step closer after flying a small-scale test model in Brisbane. The test vehicle was built and flown by Australian Droid and Robot, a drone start-up by Dr Joe Cronin - best known for managing the load haul dump (LHD) automation project at the former Rio Tinto-owned Northparkes mine in NSW - and rocket scientist Dawid Preller. The entire Austral Launch Vehicle (ALV) project is being run by Heliaq Engineering Services and involves multiple partners including Australian Droid and Robot and the University of Queensland. The project...

<p>London, England (CNN) -- Metropolitan police in London, England, appealed Monday for further information about last month's death of a man who worked for a British intelligence agency and whose naked body was found in a padlocked duffel bag in his bathroom.</p>

BETHESDA, Md., May 18, 2006 – It might not be a household name, like, say, the CIA, but the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency is an integral part of the U.S. intelligence community. Satellite Image of Islamabad, Pakistan. Courtesy of National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency   Geospatial intelligence, or GEOINT, is the collecting and analysis of satellite imagery of the earth's surface. The mission of the agency, headquartered here, is to provide that type of intelligence to support national security objectives. "If it's something manmade or natural on the face of the earth and it has national security implications, then we map it, chart...