Agile is a wonderful springboard for team building & learning

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Maxwell’s Equations in Vector Form

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SpaceX had originally planned to launch the spacecraft next week, but it postponed the launch to give engineers more time to complete preflight testing and analysis. According to the company, the launch is set for 6:38am PT, weather permitting, at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.

If all goes well, SpaceX’s spacecraft will be the first privately built and funded spacecraft to rendezvous with the International Space Station. The goal is for SpaceX to conduct regular commercial cargo missions to the space station.

Read more here.

The more than 50 institutions that received approvals to operate remotely piloted aircraft are more varied than many outsiders and privacy experts previously knew. They include not only agencies such as the Department of Homeland Security but also smaller ones such as the police departments in North Little Rock, Ark., and Ogden, Utah, as well the University of North Dakota and Nicholls State University in Louisiana.

What do you think about this trend?

– Does it worry you … or reassure you?

– Should drones be limited or welcomed like other new technology?

– Does your right to privacy extend to the airspace above your home or business?

– Would you accept any drone as long as it is unarmed?

If you have a comment on this  topic, post it below now!

You Need a Very Different Set of Tools to Manage Your IT Projects

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The Digital Airport Surveillance Radar (DASR) ASR-11 is the first fully digital, solid-state radar to be implemented in the U.S. National Airspace System (NAS). The radars have been deployed to more than 130 sites throughout the world, and will eventually be in more than 150 sites total.

The ASR-11 provides primary surveillance radar coverage up to 60 miles and secondary surveillance radar coverage up to 120 miles. It provides the air traffic controller with improved aircraft detection, lower support costs and better weather display. The primary radar is being manufactured in Waterloo, Canada, while the secondary radar will be made in the United States and United Kingdom.

“This radar technology is raising the bar even higher on safety,” said Mike Prout, vice president of Security and Transportation Systems for Raytheon’s Network Centric Systems business. “Our radars will help controllers maintain safety in an increasingly busy airspace.”

Analog radars are steadily being replaced as part of the NAS Modernization Program, which involves upgrading legacy air traffic control systems with modern digital technology to enable the Navy to keep pace with changing Federal Aviation Administration guidelines and standards for terminal radar approach controls.

The digital radar is also an integral part of Raytheon’s recently introduced Mobile Air Traffic Control system, which provides critical air traffic services when existing infrastructure has been damaged or does not exist.

Now, thanks to National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) new program, you can!

From today through April 28, the public can watch live undersea video and listen in as ocean explorers at sea and ashore comment in real-time as they observe marine species, visit gas seeps and map poorly known areas of the northern Gulf of Mexico.

Through telepresence technology, satellite and high-speed Internet pathways between ship and shore, scientists ashore will view information from sensors and high-definition cameras as it is collected at sea, so they may help guide how the expedition unfolds. Using a computer or mobile device, the public can join the expedition as virtual explorers live online.

“Advances in technology help NOAA and our partners bring the excitement of exploring right into living rooms and classrooms across the globe — live!,” said Tim Arcano, director of NOAA’s Office of Ocean Exploration and Research. “It’s a great way for the public to be involved as virtual ocean explorers, especially as we explore our ocean planet during Earth Day, April 22.”

Though live streams will be sent from the ship 24 hours a day from now through April 28 , each day, weather permitting, the streams between 9 a.m. and 6 p.m. EDT will include video from high-definition cameras on the expedition’s undersea robots, called ROVs for remotely-operated vehicles. The ROVs send video images and sensor data to the ship to be relayed ashore by satellite.

The expedition is using NOAA Ship Okeanos Explorer, which is equipped with a state-of-the-art multibeam mapping sonar; the Institute for Exploration’s Little Hercules ROV; and telepresence capability. Areas to be explored were first identified during a workshop in 2011 and were further refined during a series of mapping missions.

The expedition’s main objective is to explore poorly known regions of the Gulf of Mexico and to map and image unknown features and species. Another objective is to test a method using equipment mounted on the ROV to measure the rate that gas rises from seeps on the seafloor. During a cruise last year, NOAA and partners demonstrated the Okeanos Explorer’s multibeam sonar was capable of mapping gas seeps in the water column over broad areas and at high resolution. Testing new methods and technologies is a priority of NOAA’s Office of Ocean Exploration and Research.

The expedition has been underway since early April and areas exhibiting rich biodiversity have been discovered, including at the base of the West Florida Escarpment, an undersea cliff-like ridge, where explorers found a ‘forest’ of deep corals, several of which were new to scientists on the ship and ashore.

NOAA’s partners in the 2012 Gulf of Mexico expedition include the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement, College of Charleston, C&C Technologies, Florida Atlantic University, Geoscience Earth & Marine Services, Louisiana State University, Mississippi State University, Naval Historical Society, the NOAA Northern Gulf Institute , Pennsylvania State University, Temple University, Tesla Offshore LLC, the Institute for Exploration, University Corporation for Atmospheric Research Joint Office for Science Support, University of New Hampshire, University of Rhode Island, University of Texas at Austin, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, and multiple other NOAA partners. 

The Okeanos Explorer Program is the only federal program dedicated to systematic exploration of the planet’s largely unknown ocean. NOAA Ship Okeanos Explorer is operated, managed and maintained byNOAA’s Office of Marine and Aviation Operations which includes commissioned officers of the NOAA Corps and civilian wage mariners. NOAA’s Office of Ocean Exploration and Research, operates, manages and maintains the cutting-edge ocean exploration systems on the vessel and ashore including, the Institute for Exploration’s Little Hercules ROV, OER’s Camera Sled Seirios, a sonar mapping system, telepresence capability, exploration command centers ashore, and terrestrial high-speed communication networks.

NOAA’s mission is to understand and predict changes in the Earth’s environment, from the depths of the ocean to the surface of the sun, and to conserve and manage our coastal and marine resources.

Shuttle Discovery, atop NASA’s 747 Shuttle Carrier Aircraft to fly over national landmarks

Barring bad weather, NASA said the space shuttle Discovery mounted atop the space agency’s 747 Shuttle Carrier Aircraft will make a series of low passes – 1,500 ft. around parts of Washington DC on April 17 between 10-11 am eastern daylight time.
The exact route and timing of the flight, which has the blessing of the Federal Aviation Administration, depends on weather and operational constraints, NASA said. The aircraft/shuttle combo is expected to fly near a variety of landmarks including the National Mall, Reagan National Airport and National Harbor.

After its done taking a tour of the area, the aircraft will land at Dulles Airport which is next door to the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum, Udvar-Hazy Center where Discovery will be towed and ultimately displayed.

The other retiring shuttles Endeavour and Atlantis will make their retirement trips later this year with Endeavor taking the piggyback 747 flight from Florida to Los Angeles this fall. Atlantis will be transported from the Orbiter Processing Facility to the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex in November, NASA said.

According to the FAA the new site would be used “to launch orbital and suborbital launch vehicles from a private site in Cameron County in southern Texas,” flights from that area would fly directly over the Gulf of Mexico.

Building the new facility will allow SpaceX to handle up to 12 commercial launches per year and the site would specifically support SpaceX’s Falcon 9 medium rocket. The launch site would also support the Falcon heavy launcher however no paying customers have signed on yet to use that launcher.

SpaceX recently signed a $1.6 billion control with NASA and the company already plans to launch some of its Dragon space capsules from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. The contract will fly cargo to the International Space Station.

In November SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said the company was considering launch sites in Alaska, California, Florida, Texas and Virginia. At this time SpaceX is not saying whether any one of those other suggested areas have been ruled out.

NASA’s prolific Kepler space observatory, which has found signs of thousands of alien planets, will keep hunting strange new worlds for at least four more years, the space agency announced.

Funding for the Kepler mission, which has discovered more than 2,300 potential alien planets to date, was slated to run out this November. But a NASA review committee has recommended the telescope’s planet-hunting effort be extended through at least fiscal year 2016.

The $600 milllion Kepler observatory launched in March 2009 on a mission to find Earth-size planets in the so-called habitable zones of their parent stars — a just-right range of distances that could support liquid water and, perhaps, life as we know it.

The telescope finds alien planets using what scientists call the transit method: It detects the telltale dips in brightness caused when an alien world crosses in front of, or transits, its star from Kepler’s perspective. The Kepler spacecraft typically needs to witness three of these transits to firmly identify a planet candidate.

The instrument has been extremely productive, finding 61 confirmed alien planets to date, along with roughly 2,300 “candidate” worlds that still need to be vetted by follow-up observations. Kepler team members have estimated that the vast majority of these candidates — 80 percent or more — will likely end up being the real deal.

Every two years, NASA conducts a peer-reviewed assessment of the missions in its astrophysics division, an activity called a Senior Review. This year’s committee gave Kepler high marks for both performance and potential.

“The Kepler mission is an outstanding success,” committee members wrote in their report. “Kepler is not only a unique source of exoplanet discoveries, but also an organizing and rallying point for exoplanet research.”

Extending Kepler’s mission could yield big dividends for several reasons, researchers have said. Because of the three-transit requirement, most of the worlds Kepler has found so far zip around their stars relatively quickly, in close-in orbits.

So granting Kepler at least four more years gives it a chance to look for planets in more distant orbits, allowing the telescope to survey the habitable zones of warmer stars. (It could take a hypothetical alien version of Kepler up to three years, after all, to see Earth transit the sun three times.)

Seeing more transits will also increase the signal-to-noise ratio for closer-in planets, allowing more of them to be detected, researchers have said.

The review committee’s report did not explicitly lay out funding for Kepler’s extended operations, but Kepler team members have said that it costs about $20 million per year to operate the mission at its current level.

The review looked favorably on all nine astrophysics missions it examined — which also include the Hubble, Chandra, Fermi and Spitzer space telescopes — saying all had performed well and should continue operating through at least fiscal year 2014.