Space
news briefs:
Armadillo
Rocket Video:
Check out the video
that Armadillo
Aerospace presented at the recent Space Frontier
conference in LA.
The slick presentation
reviews the progress of their vertical takeoff and landing
vehicles. Includes a look at the manned vehicle now
under construction.
The section showing various
launch bloopers is hilarious.
Japan
Space Solar Power:
Japan continues with its long running, if low funded,
space based solar power projects.
A satellite project for
2005 timeframe will demonstrate that 10kw of power can
be beamed efficiently to earth: Report:
Japan Developing Satellite That Would Beam Back Solar
Power - Space.com - Oct.29.01
Leonids
Coming Soon:
Watch for the Leonids meteor showers that should peak
around Nov.18: Coming
Soon: Spectacular Meteors - Wired - Oct.31.01
Battle
of space titans:
Echostar's takeover of Hughes DirecTV illustrates that
satellite broadcasting is now a big time business. Long
road ahead for EchoStar merger - CNET - Oct.30.01
While the merger could
lead to anti-trust problems related to rural customers,
the combined company would have the resources to invigorate
the satellite
broadband to home efforts which are off to
a somewhat slow start.
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Astronomy
* Space
Science
Students
to Control
Robotic Telescopes
The design of the Liverpool
2-meter telescope .
currently being installed in La Palma, Canary Islands.
Amateur astronomers, students,and
teachers can soon access powerful professional
telescopes over the internet.
The RoCCoTO
project at the University of Glamorgan in Wales, for example,
will allow users via the Internet to submit targets for observation
on its 40cm telescope. Dome
is home to robotic telescope - BBC - Oct.21.01
The system will prioritize the
requests and make the observation at the first opportunity
as allowed by the weather.
The user then downloads the image
from the observatory web site. The project will open in January
2002.
The RoCCoTO project is a part
of the British National
Schools' Observatory program that will provide student
access to several large telescopes around the world.
Other robotic telescope projects
include
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