http://www.gpsdaily.com/index.html Sat, 04 FEB 2012 21:40:02 AEST Sat, 04 FEB 2012 21:40:02 AEST en-us Following detailed analysis of the downlinked telemetry and audio/video recordings from both ground based cameras and a camera that was recovered from the rocket, Armadillo Aerospace has determined that the maximum altitude attained by the STIG-A rocket in the January 28th mission was approximately 82-km MSL (~50 miles). A failure of the ballute (balloon-parachute) recovery system meant th]]> Sat, 04 FEB 2012 21:40:02 AEST ESA has signed a contract to build a further eight Galileo satellites, alongside other agreements to modify Europe's Ariane 5 launcher to carry four navigation satellites at a time. The signing took place at the European Commission's centre in London, Europe House, in the presence of European Commission Vice President Antonio Tajani and UK Universities and Science Minister David Willetts M]]> Sat, 04 FEB 2012 21:40:02 AEST European Commission Vice President Antonio Tajani has announced in London that the consortium led by OHB System AG and Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd (SSTL) will build a further eight satellites for the European Union's Galileo satellite navigation programme under the supervision of the European Space Agency. The new contract will see SSTL continuing its role as payload prime, assembling,]]> Sat, 04 FEB 2012 21:40:02 AEST Jean-Yves Le Gall, Chairman and CEO of Arianespace, and Didier Faivre, Director of the Galileo Program and Navigation-related Activities at the European Space Agency (ESA), has signed an agreement in London to launch satellites in Europe's Galileo satellite positioning system by Ariane 5 launchers. This agreement provides for the possibility of using Ariane 5 launchers in 2014 and 2015 to ]]> Sat, 04 FEB 2012 21:40:02 AEST The EU on Thursday signed contracts with German and French engineering firms to build and launch another eight satellites for its Europe's Galileo geopositioning system. Aiming to provide rival global satellite navigation services from 2014, the contract with Germany's OHB System AG is for 250 million euros, with France's Arianespace and Astrium SAS sharing launch orders worth another 60 mil]]> Sat, 04 FEB 2012 21:40:02 AEST Predicting the future is always a tricky business - just watch a TV weather report. Weather forecasts have come a long way, but almost every season there's a snowstorm that seems to come out of nowhere, or one that's forecast as 'the big one' that turns out to be a total bust. In the last ten years, scientists have shown that it is possible to detect falling snow and measure surface snowpa]]> Sat, 04 FEB 2012 21:40:02 AEST Chinese authorities say an application by Google for an online maps license, required for operating such services in China, is under official examination. The application was submitted in November by Beijing Guxiang Information Technology Co. Ltd, a joint venture with Google, officials said. Under Chinese law foreign companies are banned from providing Internet mapping services i]]> Sat, 04 FEB 2012 21:40:02 AEST A Stanford University research team has designed a high-efficiency charging system that uses magnetic fields to wirelessly transmit large electric currents between metal coils placed several feet apart. The long-term goal of the research is to develop an all-electric highway that wirelessly charges cars and trucks as they cruise down the road. The new technology has the potential to dramat]]> Sat, 04 FEB 2012 21:40:02 AEST Hundreds of rare, endemic species in the Central Andes remain unprotected and are increasingly under threat from development and climate change, according to a Duke University-led international study. "These species require unique ecological conditions and are particularly vulnerable to changes in the environment or climate. Yet our analysis shows that region-wide, about 80 percent of the ]]> Sat, 04 FEB 2012 21:40:02 AEST Dawn is scrutinizing Vesta from its low-altitude mapping orbit (LAMO), circling the rocky world five and a half times a day. The spacecraft is healthy and continuing its intensive campaign to reveal the astonishing nature of this body in the mysterious depths of the main asteroid belt. Since the last log, the robotic explorer has devoted most of its time to its two primary scientific objec]]> Sat, 04 FEB 2012 21:40:02 AEST The largest solar particle event since 2005 hit the Earth, Mars and the Mars Science Laboratory spacecraft travelling in-between, allowing the onboard Radiation Assessment Detector to measure the radiation a human astronaut could be exposed to en route to the Red Planet. On Sunday, a huge coronal mass ejection erupted from the surface of the sun, spewing a cloud of charged particles in our]]> Sat, 04 FEB 2012 21:40:02 AEST The U.S. Air Force's fleet of Global Positioning System (GPS) Block IIR and IIR-M satellites has accumulated 150 collective years of successful on-orbit operations. The Lockheed Martin [NYSE: LMT] built GPS IIR and IIR-M satellites make up the majority of the current operational GPS constellation and have provided a reliability record of better than 99.9 percent. In over 150 cumulati]]> Sat, 04 FEB 2012 21:40:02 AEST ESA Director General Jean-Jacques Dordain and Rt. Hon. David Willetts, Minister for Universities and Science, has unveiled a commemorative plaque marking the inauguration of Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd's (SSTL) new state-of-the-art Kepler technical facility at an event attended by guests from the UK and European space sectors. The European Space Agency (ESA) Director General and the Mi]]> Sat, 04 FEB 2012 21:40:02 AEST Solar flares are giant explosions on the sun that send energy, light and high speed particles into space. These flares are often associated with solar magnetic storms known as coronal mass ejections (CMEs). While these are the most common solar events, the sun can also emit streams of very fast protons - known as solar energetic particle (SEP) events - and disturbances in the solar wind known as]]> Sat, 04 FEB 2012 21:40:02 AEST Looking for an item in a large department store or mall can be like searching for a needle in a haystack, but that could change thanks to a hybrid location-identification system that uses radio frequency transmitters and overhead LED lights, suggested by a team of researchers from Penn State and Hallym University in South Korea. "LED lights are becoming the norm," said Mohsen Kavehrad, W. ]]> Sat, 04 FEB 2012 21:40:02 AEST