May 9, 2024 Quick space links
Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay. This post is also an open thread. I welcome my readers to post any comments or additional links relating to any space issues, even if unrelated to the links below.
- Sierra Space’s Tenacity mini-shuttle successfully completes all pre-launch testing at NASA facility in Ohio
It is now going to be shipped to Cape Canaveral for final testing before it is stacked on ULA’s Vulcan rocket. They are still targeting a launch before the end of the year.
- Chinese university touts the launch yesterday of the first satellite of what it claims will be internet constellation
One wonders. The constellation is dubbed Skynet, which is the same name China uses for its ground-based video surveillance network, using 600 million cameras to record and track every Chinese citizen everywhere.
- Chinese-French high energy space telescope being readied for June launch on a Chinese rocket
Dubbed SVOM, working it both gamma and optical wavelengths, it will attempt to identify gamma ray bursts as they happen. It is essentially a new version of the Gehrels Swift space telescope that has been doing this work since 2004.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay. This post is also an open thread. I welcome my readers to post any comments or additional links relating to any space issues, even if unrelated to the links below.
- Sierra Space’s Tenacity mini-shuttle successfully completes all pre-launch testing at NASA facility in Ohio
It is now going to be shipped to Cape Canaveral for final testing before it is stacked on ULA’s Vulcan rocket. They are still targeting a launch before the end of the year.
- Chinese university touts the launch yesterday of the first satellite of what it claims will be internet constellation
One wonders. The constellation is dubbed Skynet, which is the same name China uses for its ground-based video surveillance network, using 600 million cameras to record and track every Chinese citizen everywhere.
- Chinese-French high energy space telescope being readied for June launch on a Chinese rocket
Dubbed SVOM, working it both gamma and optical wavelengths, it will attempt to identify gamma ray bursts as they happen. It is essentially a new version of the Gehrels Swift space telescope that has been doing this work since 2004.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
‘Skynet’? That sounds like something out of sci-fi. This stuff isn’t:
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/17/technology/china-surveillance.html
https://www.businessinsider.com/china-facial-recognition-technology-works-in-one-second-2018-3
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/25/technology/china-surveillance-police.html