ISRO MoM: First images of Mars transmitted - Update

One of the first images taken by the ISRO Mars Orbiter Mission spacecraft, released on September 25, 2014, shows the surface of Mars seen from a height of 7,300m.

Credit: ISRO

India's spacecraft has beamed back its first photos of Mars, showing its crater-marked surface, as the country glowed with pride Thursday after winning Asia's race to the Red Planet.

ISRO Scientists present a print of MoM's first image of Mars to India's PM Narendra Modi.

Credit: ISRO, Hindustan Times

The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) uploaded one of the photos onto its Facebook page, showing an orange surface and dark holes, taken from a height of 7.3 kilometres (4.5 miles).

ISRO also posted the photo on Twitter, with the caption "The view is nice up here."

A senior ISRO official told reporters several photos have been successfully received, while a spokesman for the government agency said the spacecraft was working well.

India became the first Asian country to reach Mars on Wednesday when its unmanned Mangalyaan spacecraft entered the orbit after a 10-month journey on a shoestring budget.

The mission, which is designed to search for evidence of life on the planet, is a huge source of national pride for India as it competes with Asian rivals for success in space.

India's first Mars orbiter Mangalyaan captured this photo of the Martian atmosphere just after arriving at Mars on Sept. 24, 2014 Indian Standard Time. 

The Indian Space Research Organisation released the image on Sept. 25.

Credit: Indian Space Research Organisation

India beat rival neighbour China, whose first attempt flopped in 2011 despite the Asian superpower pouring billions of dollars into its programme.

At just $74 million, India's mission cost is less than the estimated $100 million budget of the sci-fi blockbuster "Gravity".

It also represents just a fraction of the cost of NASA's $671 million MAVEN spacecraft, which successfully began orbiting the fourth planet from the sun on Sunday.

The true test of success will come from the quality, value and extent of the scientific data collected by both spacecraft and their ability to advance our understanding of Mars and our Solar System.

An Indian Space Research Organisation official uses a scale model of the Mars Orbiter Mission spacecraft to explain how parts of the orbiter works, at the ISRO Telemetry, Tracking and Command Network in Bangalore on September 15, 2014

Credit: ISRO

India now joins an elite club of the United States, Russia and Europe who can boast of reaching Mars.

More than half of all missions to the planet have ended in failure.

This photo of Earth was the first photo from India's Mars Orbiter Mission and captured on Nov. 19, 2013. It shows India and the surrounding region from Earth orbit.

Credit: ISRO

The mission's success received front-page coverage in Indian newspapers on Thursday, with the Hindustan Times declaring "MARTIAN RACE WON" and the Times of India saying "India enters super exclusive Mars club."

Indians, from government ministers to office workers and cricketers poured onto Twitter to show their national pride, while school students celebrated by eating traditional Indian sweets.

NASA LADEE transmits its first images of the Moon

Series of LADEE star tracker images features the lunar terrain. Credit: NASA Ames

Earlier this month, NASA's Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE) observatory successfully downlinked images of the moon and stars taken by onboard camera systems, known as star trackers.

This is the first time the LADEE team commanded the spacecraft to send these pictures back to Earth.

The main job of a star tracker is to snap images of the surrounding star field so that the spacecraft can internally calculate its orientation in space.

It completes this task many times per minute. The accuracy of each of LADEE's instruments' measurements depends on the star tracker calculating the precise orientation of the spacecraft.

Butler Hine

"Star tracker cameras are actually not very good at taking ordinary images," said Butler Hine LADEE project manager at NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif.

"But they can sometimes provide exciting glimpses of the lunar terrain."

Given the critical nature of its assignment, a star tracker doesn't use ordinary cameras.

Star trackers' lenses have a wide-angle field of view to capture the night sky in a single frame.

The images shown here were acquired on Feb. 8, 2014, around 23:45 UTC, while LADEE was carrying out atmospheric measurements.

The series of five images were taken at one-minute intervals, and caught features in the northern western hemisphere of the moon.

LADEE was traveling approximately 60 miles (100 km) per minute along its orbit.

All images were taken during lunar night, but with Earthshine illuminating the surface.

The initial image captured the smooth-floored crater Krieger, about 14 miles (23 km) in diameter, on the horizon, with four mile (seven km) wide Toscanelli, in the foreground.

The second image shows Wollaston P, about two-and-a-half miles (4 km) diameter, near the horizon, and the southeastern flank of the lunar mountain Mons Herodotus.

The third image caught a minor lunar mountain range, Montes Agricola, which is northwest of the large bright crater Aristarchus (out of view), as well as the flat-floored crater Raman, about six miles (10 km) diameter.

Image four in the series captures Golgi, about four miles (6 km) in diameter, and three-mile-wide (5 km) Zinner.

The final image views craters Lichtenberg A and Schiaparelli E in the smooth mare basalt plains of Western Oceanus Procellarum, west of the Aristarchus plateau.

The star trackers will operate while LADEE continues to measure the chemical composition of the atmosphere, collect and analyze samples of lunar dust particles in the atmosphere and hope to address a long-standing question: Was lunar dust, electrically charged by sunlight, responsible for the pre-sunrise glow above the lunar horizon observed during several Apollo missions? And who knows?

The LADEE star trackers may help answer that question.

New Wave Energy UK: Power plants in sky - Wireless Transmission Drones

Here is the idea: flying power plants in the sky as a means of providing clean, renewable energy.

Here is more of the idea: this would be a high-altitude aerial power plant that harvests energy from solar, wind and other sources, and beams it wirelessly to the ground.

Now the idea gets more interesting: The power plant would be using networks of unmanned drones.

The company is New Wave Energy UK, formed in 2012, self-described as "an upcoming energy provider within the UK currently working towards researching and constructing our own novel form of power plant." (New Wave Energy UK is not associated or affiliated with US-based New Wave Energy Corp.)

In a November 15 press release, the company announced that "A new and exciting venture into a whole new form of power plant is currently in incubation within the UK."

The company said the "patent pending technology" is a drone-based power plant for combined solar, wind, heat and emerging new forms of energy generation.

The technology is to incorporate wireless power transmission from the drones (and their wireless network) to the Earth's surface," according to the release.

Details about the drone are in a recent Gizmag article on New Wave Energy UK.

According to the article, the company's ambition is for each drone to have four rotors, multiple wind turbines and a flat base for generating solar power.

With energy harvested, the devices will power themselves and also 50 kW more that can be transmitted wirelessly to the ground.

Rectenna arrays installed inland or on offshore installations would receive electromagnetic waves and convert them into usable power.

According to New Wave Energy, "The technology is tailored to operate at 50,000 ft where wind patterns are more reliable, solar production is greater and there is little or no interference from weather patterns."

In the November 15 press release, the company said it was seeking further investment to advance the project.

New Wave Energy UK is turning to crowdfunding as one such step. "To raise such equity New Wave Energy UK Ltd are hoping to raise £300,000 through crowd funding on Kickstarter.

New Wave Energy UK Ltd also intend to acquire a total of £32 million from private investors during the crucial stages of the project to commercialise the application."

ESA Galileo IOV Satellite: first navigation signal transmitted to Earth

Europe’s Galileo system has passed its latest milestone, transmitting its very first test navigation signal back to Earth.

The first two Galileo satellites were launched into orbit on 21 October.

Since then their systems have been activated and the satellites placed into their final orbits, positioned so that their navigation antennas are aligned with the world they are designed to serve.

Last weekend marked the first orbital transmission from one of these navigation antennas.

The stage was set, the singer in place and an audience – in the shape of engineers on the ground – was waiting eagerly.

The question was would the singer make music, and if so, would it be in tune?

The spectrum of the first Galileo test navigation signal, acquired by Redu ground station in Belgium on 12 December 2011, signed by the Galileo system validation team

Credits: ESA

The turn of Galileo’s main ‘L-band’ (1200-1600 MHz) antenna came on the early morning of Saturday 10 December.

A test signal was transmitted by the first Galileo satellite in the ‘E1’ band, which will be used for Galileo’s Open Service once the system begins operating in 2014.

To prepare for the test, the payload power amplifiers were switched on and ‘outgassed’ – warmed up to release vapours that might otherwise interfere with operations – before transmission began.

A 20 m-diameter L-band antenna stood ready and waiting at Redu.

The antenna is an essential ingredient of Galileo testing, able to assess the shape and quality of the navigation signals, even with the target satellite being 23 222 km up in orbit.

The signal power and shape was well within specifications. The shape is especially important because its modulation is carefully designed to enable interoperability with the ‘L1’ band of US GPS navigation satellites: Galileo and GPS can indeed work together as planned.

First self-powered device can transmit data wirelessly over long distances

Recent advancements in sensor technology and electronics have allowed electronics to generate enough energy from movements.

According to a new study, scientists have developed the first self-powered nano-device that can transmit data wirelessly.

The device has a nanogenerator that generates electricity from mechanical vibrations. There’s also a capacitor that can store the extra energy and a Bluetooth-like communication system that transmits data wirelessly over distances of more than 30 feet.

It’s not far-fetched to think that surveillance cameras could travel in the air and be powered by the wind, wearable personal electronics could be powered by the person’s strides and implantable medical sensors could be powered by the patient’s blood flow.

It’s feasible that in the future, sources like airflow, solar or chemical energy could power devices so batteries don’t have to.

Source: American Chemical Society

Edinburgh bright sparks solve our internet problems ... with the flick of a light switch

Edinburgh bright sparks solve our internet problems ... with the flick of a light switch - Herald Scotland

For what a world it would be if we could all access the internet not through clunky wireless routers and the millions of miles of spaghetti-like cables buried under our streets and fields, but through the golden rays of the electric light bulbs that are in every room in every one of our homes.

Scientists working at Edinburgh University have discovered a way of transmitting wireless data through lightbulbs, an invention that could revolutionise the way we receive the internet.

The discovery is called D-Light (data light) and uses the new light-emitting diode (LED) bulbs that are expected to replace the incandescent models in use. The traditional bulb is banned in parts of the EU due to its wasteful use of energy.

As well as revolutionising internet reception, it would put an end to the potentially harmful electromagnetic pollution emitted by wireless internet routers and has raised the prospect of ubiquitous wireless access, transmitted through streetlights.

The idea is so significant that a Nobel prize-winning physicist has named it among the 100 inventions likely to change everyday life in the next century.

Dr Harald Haas, reader in wireless communications at Edinburgh University, is leading the project.

He claimed the invention could soon be in use all over the world, bringing significant economic benefits to Scotland – and reaffirming the country’s position as one of the world’s leading nations when it comes to scientific innovation.

Dr Haas said: “Engineering and development have, in my opinion, been left out in this country for too long. Lord Mandelson has recently put forward his idea for the digital economy but it needs to be filled with life. This could be one pillar to that economy.

“It should be so cheap that it’s everywhere. Using the visible light spectrum, which comes for free, you can piggy-back existing wireless services on the back of lighting equipment. Power lines are there, which can transmit data, so all you need is a central modem, which would then distribute data into the lightbulbs and then to mobile devices in the home.”

The invention allows data to be transmitted through light, using flickering – imperceptible to the human eye – to send 100 megabits of data a second. That is twice as fast as current wireless routers and matches the speed of the broadband network which could get up to 100 megabits per second by 2017.

At that speed a file of an entire movie could be sent through a lightbulb in only a few minutes. But Dr Haas hopes to be able to send one gigabit a second, which is more than 10 times the speed the network can currently manage.

Wireless communication is a sector growing at an exponential rate, but the infrastructure is struggling to keep up