How the Navy’s orbiting robots will refurbish civilian satellites

Geosynchronous orbits above Earth are among the most valuable real estate in the solar system. This band of space is utilized by everything from civilian communications and GPS satellites, to government-operated weather and nuclear monitors, to military applications like on-demand warfighter broadband. It’s also a veritable minefield of broken-down, ground-up derelict satellites.

As Dr. Darren S. McKnight of Integrity Applications explained during a recent presentation at the 32nd Space Symposium held in Colorado Springs, Colo., this week, every satellite collision could potentially produce hundreds to thousands of debris fragments. And each of those fragments in turn becomes a potential satellite-killing missile. Even tiny bits of debris just a centimeter in diameter, known as the lethal non-trackable (LNT) population, can blast holes clean through satellite components, rendering the spacecraft non-operational.

In fact, these LNT debris are in many ways more dangerous than larger pieces, due to the sheer number of them. McKnight calculates that there are anywhere from 15 to 30 times as many LNT debris currently in orbit than the entire cataloged population of pieces bigger than 10cm.

“In an absolute sense, there is a 10 to 50 percent chance that at least one of each of the constellation members will be struck by a 1cm fragment (or larger),” McKnight wrote in a paper published last year. “This would likely terminate that satellite’s mission and might even liberate debris that would pose additional hazards.” The probability of getting hit by a piece of debris 10cm or larger, however, is just under 3 percent.

So rather than let spacecraft which have reached the end of their projected service life fall into disrepair -– or more dangerously, let them fall into a lower orbit where they could set off Gravity-like collision reactions -– the Naval Research Laboratory has partnered with DARPA to build a satellite that fixes other satellites. Behold the Robotic Servicing of Geosynchronous Satellites (RSGS) program and its Robotic Service Vehicles (RSVs).

I spoke with Naval Research Laboratory Aerospace Engineer Bernard Kelm at the Space Symposium. Turns out, repairing satellites in orbit is just as much of an engineering challenge as it sounds. “Every satellite is different. They’re all custom devices built for their own custom purposes,” Kelm said. However, despite their custom-built nature, there really isn’t that much variation in terms of components when it comes to satellites — thanks in large part to the limited number of manufacturers in the industry.

Take the satellite’s launch interface, for example. It’s the bit on the satellite’s backside that connects it to the rocket during launch, and almost exclusively uses a “cup-cone” setup. That’s where a small knob on the rocket mates with an indentation ring on the back of the satellite to hold it in place. “There’s only two ways it can be attached,” Kelm said. “It’s a ring clamp with only a few profiles; we can have one tool that services them all. And that’s what we’ve done since 2002: We’ve partnered with DARPA to design one servicer that can service multiple vehicles.”

An even bigger challenge will be getting the RSV to do what it needs to do, when it needs to do it, on the first attempt if at all possible. First, there’s about a three-second delay between the ground station communications and satellites in Geosynchronous orbit. Under normal conditions, this wouldn’t be much of an issue. However when you’re trying to grab hold of another satellite while both craft are tumbling around 22,000 miles above the planet, three seconds might as well be three days.

So, to account for the signal delay, the team has crammed as much processing power as it can into the service satellite itself. Or at least as much as the limitations of current-gen spaceflight computers allow. “They have orders of magnitudes less power than what you have on your desktop,” Kelm said. In fact, the first RSV iteration will be among the most processing-intensive vehicles to fly.

What’s more, the added autonomy will enable the RSGS satellites to operate more safely. The NRL team is pre-programming a wide array of potential issues, failures and SNAFUs into the service satellite’s database. That way, if something goes awry during a docking attempt, we’re not just handing an engineer the (three-second-delayed) joystick to a multimillion spacecraft that’s zipping around the edge of space. Instead, the RSV will automatically halt the maneuver (potentially before ground control is even aware of the issue), drop into a predefined emergency routine and await for operators to make a final abort/continue decision.

A second issue facing the RSGS program is that robotic arms generally lack the dexterity of human appendages, despite often having the same degrees of freedom. “A robot arm is a very accurate but very rigid platform,” Kelm said. This creates issues the moment the service satellite’s two-meter grappling “FREND” arm comes in contact with the client satellite in zero gravity because the imparted force will cause the two to drift from each other. Granted, they won’t go rocketing away thanks to the dampening effects of inertia, but it’s still enough to cause havoc if ground control can only see the situation from three seconds in the past. As such, the NRL team added a force torque sensor in the wrist so that the arm can meter its approach and grab the client spacecraft without knocking it out of orbit.

These technological advancements will enable the RSV to perform four primary mission types: Ultra-close inspection, anomaly resolution, orbit modification and, eventually, external upgrades. Close inspection jobs will be the first and most straightforward that the RSGS program takes on. Putting the service satellite’s camera mere inches away from a troubled client satellite will give ground control an unprecedented view of the potential issue. Anomaly resolution will takes inspections a step further by allowing the RSV to physically manipulate other spacecraft. That way if a satellite’s solar panel, say, gets caught a wire while unfurling, the RSV can simply poke the obstruction out of the way rather than have the entire mission be scrapped.

Orbit modification is a bit trickier. When a client satellite is unable to make the jump to a different orbit — or even maintain the orbit its currently in — due to insufficient fuel, the servicer would sidle up to the client spacecraft, inject propellent and send the satellite on its way. “That’s a relatively expensive mission for us,” Kelm said. “It’d use a lot more fuel than other missions but we will have that capability.”

The fourth mission type is easily the NRL’s most ambitious. The agency wants to use RSVs to install standalone modules with new capabilities on existing satellites. So, say the NOAA invents a brand new ocean-level sensory system or the DoD creates a new laser-based communications array. Instead of spending years and billions of dollars developing brand new satellites to haul these modules into orbit, the NRL wants to use an RSV to attach it to a satellite that’s already in space. It is not going to replace the functionality of a large satellite but is an inexpensive and relatively practical means of installing new functions on existing satellites. “We hope that once we prove the capabilities of this method, that satellites will begin being designed and built with docking ports for taking upgrades,” Kelm said.

Most impressive, perhaps, is the fact that the NRL doesn’t envision constellations of these service satellites going up in 20 years or even 10. The lab figures that with a suitable commercial partner, it can have the NSGS program in operation by the end of the decade — five years, tops. “[Commercial industry] has ten times as many satellites, and ten times the need for these services,” Kelm concluded. “There will come a time in the future that there will be a national need for this.”

The NRL clearly isn’t the only agency that thinks so. Vivisat — a joint firm created by US Space and Orbital ATK — announced its Mission Extender Vehicle back in March. This spacecraft will perform the same sort of Third Mission Orbit Modification work as the RSGS program. And at the Symposium this week, the company revealed that its first commercial customer will be Intelsat. Orbital ATK expects to have the MEV refueling satellites in orbit by 2019.

Shuddle shuts down its ‘Uber for kids’ transportation service

Shuddle’s ride-sharing service offered parents a way to get their kids safely to school, sports practices and other commitments. However, it seems the company wasn’t able to attract enough financial support to keep it afloat. Shuddle sent an email to customers and drivers yesterday informing them that the service would shut down today, April 15th. For over two years, the company touted safe and reliable transportation for children via its family-focused ride-sharing service.

“We worked hard to find the financial resources that would allow us to continue to grow, but ultimately could not raise the funding required to continue operations,” the letter explained.

In 2014, Shuddle received a cease and desist letter from California regulators for failing to register with TrustLine, a company that runs background check for adults working closely with children. Reports surfaced last year that the company had yet to take action, despite CEO Nick Allen’s assurances that its own background checks “exceed current requirements.”

“We sincerely appreciate your loyalty and support as passengers and drivers, and wish we could have continued to work with you longer,” Shuddle posted on its website. “We sincerely hope that other family rideshare services can continue successfully on the path that Shuddle helped forge so that families, schools and community organizations continue to receive this much-needs support.”

Via: TechCrunch

Source: Shuddle

House votes to block FCC from regulating broadband prices

In its guidelines for an open internet, the FCC gave itself the ability to regulate what internet customers in the US will pay for service by classifying broadband as a utility. The US House of Representatives is looking to take that power way, and today voted to pass H.R 2666, or “No Rate Regulation of Broadband Internet Access Act.” The bill has drawn criticism from both politicians and open-internet supporters for being vaguely worded and that it could allow service providers to sue the FCC for unrelated enforcement actions (like fines). President Obama already said he’ll veto the legislation if it arrives on his desk.

“There is no authority or need for the federal government to regulate the Internet,” Speaker of the House Paul Ryan explained. “This initiative blocks unelected bureaucrats in Washington from dictating how people use the Internet.”

The bill is seen by many as the latest Republican effort to undermine the tenets of net neutrality. If you’ll recall, the FCC established the set of rules to protect consumers against policies like throttling and allowing companies to pay more for so-called fast lanes. FCC chairman Tom Wheeler has already promised not to use the power to tell internet companies what they can charge. However, members of Congress worry that the provision would allow the commission to fine a service provider if it decided their pricing structure was unfair.

Via: The Daily Dot

Source: Us House of Representatives

Senate to Americans: Your security is not our problem

The Senate Intelligence Committee just released a draft of long-awaited legislation to tackle the problem authorities have with encrypted communications. Namely, because encryption is so secure, it interferes with court orders in the same way private property poses problems for police who just want to get things done.

The Compliance with Court Orders Act of 2016 authored by Sens Richard Burr, R-N.C., and Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., mandates companies to shoulder the technical burden of accessing encrypted emails or files when investigators issue court orders. It doesn’t specify penalties for noncompliance.

When CCOA hit the internet this week, lots of techies, privacy advocates, reporters and security researchers saw red over what they described as legislation that makes encryption illegal or requires backdoors.

Not so fast. The senators might be clueless about security, but they saw those arguments coming from a mile away.

In reality, the Senate committee’s Court Orders Act won’t outlaw encryption. Nor does it mandate golden keys or backdoors in products — it’s very careful to avoid requiring or prohibiting any kind of design or operating system.

No, this slippery little act says that when a company or person gets a court order asking for encrypted emails or files to be handed over and decrypted, compliance is the law.

How compliance actually happens isn’t specified. They don’t care how user security was broken (or if it were nonexistent), and the senators are making it clear that from now on, this isn’t their problem.

The thing is, that pesky encryption the Senate sees as impeding court orders is the same technology that only unlocks iPhones for their owners, that keeps email truly private, and that could have protected the 80 million sensitive customer and employee records stolen when health insurer Anthem’s database was breached.

We’re talking about encryption in computer security. You either have it completely, or you don’t. On some things, the room for passive-aggressive political maneuvers is effectively zero.

The Court Orders Act of 2016 doesn’t do anything as obvious as tell us what kinds of communications or stored files will need to be decoded. But it doesn’t stop there. CCOA can also force entities to produce decrypted identifying information and device information and any data stored remotely or on a device.

Who are these entities? According to the document, that would be device and software manufacturers, electronic communications companies, remote computing services… you get the idea. It will also require companies to provide decrypted communications if the encryption is provided by a third party. Let that sink in for a minute.

This act’s angle is a clever way to leapfrog arguments about making encryption illegal and demanding backdoors. It’s also what makes this legislation even more destructive to security. As it stands now, getting companies and startups to encrypt and protect user security has been an uphill battle. If this bill passes, all the hard work done to raise awareness and establish practices around encrypted communications will be lost.

As everyone knows, security only works when everyone’s doing it.

This bill would ensure that the links in security chains would grow weaker or nonexistent because no one’s going to want to deal with the fallout of a court order.

It appears targeted at Apple, Google and services like WhatsApp. And guess who would happily be in compliance without doing a damn thing? All the companies that don’t take security seriously enough to encrypt records and communications (of which there are far too many). That’s right, the companies you shouldn’t trust your data with will officially have a reason not to protect you with encryption.

Some pundits are saying it’s too crazy to be useful. Wired believes that it’s so bad for privacy that it’s actually good and that it’s unlikely the bill will become law. Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., has threatened a filibuster if it reaches the Senate floor. All of this might make you think it can’t happen here.

I disagree. The White House has declined to support or oppose it — though it did review the text and provide feedback — and President Obama recently admonished opposition to court-ordered access. Given the act’s nuanced approach plus that most people just don’t see how this affects them, I’m pretty sure this thing isn’t as preposterous as everyone thinks.

Encryption legislation has become a priority after years of argument and impasse; at this point, some kind of lawmaking is inevitable. If this doesn’t pass, then a mutated clone of it surely will. So this act isn’t so much a shock as the abysmal way it’s been handled.

Early this year, Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., and House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Michael McCaul proposed creation of a national encryption commission. This was to study the issue among tech industry leaders, privacy advocates, academics, law enforcement officials and members of the intelligence community — to prepare for crafting encryption legislation. Sens Burr and Feinstein decided in late January to skip that altogether, saying it was too slow and told The Hill that “Congress has to move fast.” Bizarrely, Feinstein added, “If the internet goes totally dark, and there are apps that people can use to communicate to plot, to plan, to threaten, to do all of that, you’ve got a real problem.”

Warner and McCaul’s encryption commission bill was introduced to Congress last month. And McCaul is pushing an Energy and Commerce Encryption Hearing next Tuesday, actually even featuring the widely respected crypto and computer security researcher Matt Blaze.

But we can be sure that the people who wrote and back CCOA, people who consider baseline security measures like encryption to be someone else’s problem, will regard crypto hearings with hackers like the kid’s table at Thanksgiving.

I mean, it’s great that the senators can pretend like they’re our parents who know better, and waste time and money in all these variously unproductive ways. But the rest of us who are getting our data stolen every other week desperately need the security that encryption provides.

Verizon will give you 2GB of data for trying Android Pay

Verizon may be one of the more expensive wireless carriers here in the US, but they do like to throw customers a bone every so often. The latest offer comes in the form of 2GB extra data on your monthly plan, and to get it all you have to do is try out Android Pay. The first time you pay for something using Google’s built-in mobile wallet, you’ll get an extra 1GB added to your account. After the third use, you’ll get another 1GB.
The offer is good through the middle of June, and the extra 2GB of data will be applied to your account for two billing cycles. If you’re an Android user who has a phone that works with Android Pay, it’s hard not to recommend giving this a shot — given how expensive and precious data is these days, it’s a pretty minor inconvenience to grab a few extra gigabytes. And given that Android Pay is one of the best mobile payment solutions out there, the experience should hopefully be a easy one, even if you haven’t tried it before.

Source: Verizon

Tesla coil zaps nanotubes into a self-assembling circuit

Carbon nanotubes have gotten fanfare for rebooting Moore’s Law and possibly powering the next generation of space probes, but that’s not all the versatile material can do. How about shocking nanotubes with an electricity gun until they line up into neat little rows? Scientists at Rice University are firing a force field from a tesla coil at piles of carbon nanotubes until they self-assemble in a process called “Teslaphoresis”.

The force field oscillates positive and negative charges in each nanotube until they line up. These chains of nanotubes can form a structure and even carry a current. They light up LEDs, which are wirelessly powered by energy absorbed from the tesla coil’s force field.

“Normally when you talk about building circuits, you have to have physical contact. Now they’re talking about building circuits without actually touching them,” says Rice University scientist Carter Kattrell in a video.

Pointing your lightning beam at carbon nanotubes to do your bidding is cool, but rearranging them has possibilities beyond just lighting up your Christmas tree. Depending on how they’re configured, they can make a material that is stronger and lighter than kevlar or make the blackest fabric known to man.

Self-assembly via electric fields isn’t new, but it’s only been done at extremely short ranges. The Rice scientists saw Teslaphoresis line up nanotubes from several feet away, and believe the process could chain them from the bottom-up into macro structures.

Via: Gizmodo

Source: ACS Nano

MacRumors Giveaway: Win a ‘Twist’ Smart Lightbulb With Built-In AirPlay Speaker

For this week’s giveaway, we’ve teamed up with Astro to give MacRumors readers a chance to win a Twist smart LED lightbulb and wireless speaker. The Twist replaces a standard bulb in a lamp, and with its smart lighting features, it’s able to adjust its color temperature from 2700K to 5000K based on the time of day.

In the morning, the 800-lumen Twist bulb gives off a bluish-white light, and in the evening, the color shifts more towards the yellow spectrum, mimicking the pattern of the sun to make it easier to fall asleep and wake up.

Along with smart lighting features, Twist includes a built-in AirPlay speaker, ideal for homes with little space. It’s able to connect to an iPhone or iPad and stream music from any service, just like other AirPlay speakers. According to the Twist website, it uses a specially-designed driver for premium, lossless audio.

Priced at $99 for a single bulb or $199 for three bulbs, Twist connects to a home using Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, so no hub or extra hardware is needed, and multiple Twist bulbs can interface with one another for whole-home synchronized audio.

The Twist bulb can be purchased from the Twist website and will ship out soon. Five MacRumors readers will win a Twist bulb through our giveaway. To enter to win, use the Rafflecopter widget below and enter an email address. Email addresses will be used solely for contact purposes to reach the winner and send the prize.

You can earn additional entries by subscribing to our weekly newsletter, subscribing to our YouTube channel, following us on Twitter, or visiting the MacRumors Facebook page. Due to the complexities of international laws regarding giveaways, only U.S. residents who are 18 years of age or older are eligible to enter.

a Rafflecopter giveawayThe contest will run from today (April 15) at 11:00 a.m. Pacific Time through 11:00 a.m. Pacific Time on April 22. The winners will be chosen randomly on April 22 and will be contacted by email. The winners have 48 hours to respond and provide a shipping address before new winners are chosen. The prizes will be shipped to the winners for free. Winners will receive their Twist bulbs in June.

Tags: giveaway, Twist
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