Lifeboat Foundation

These amazing aerial shots provide a unique perspective of our planet.

Russia, China and other adversaries are launching attacks designed to damage or destroy US satellites and interfere with that critical infrastructure. CNN’s Jim Sciutto gets an exclusive look into how Space Force is fighting every day to defend against these technologies.

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SpaceX is reportedly partnering with Canadian tech startup Geometric Energy Corporation to launch a billboard into orbit around Earth.

The download speed is 100 Mbps and the upload speed is 13.89 Mbps.

“Starlink” is a satellite internet project of SpaceX. From 2,019 to 2,024 SpaceX plans to use five years to send thousands of satellites needed for networking into low-Earth orbit to form a “Starlink” network to provide internet services. Currently, there are 1,650 satellites on the “Starlink” network.

The Speedtest report shows that in the second quarter of this year, the average download speed of Starlink satellite internet services in the US market was 97.23 Mbps. This is not far from the average download speed of fixed broadband in the US, which is 115.22 Mbps.

Continue reading “SpaceX starlink allows users to download a movie in less than 1 minute” »

The space-faring firm’s satellite internet service promises connections with high speed and low latency — and data suggests the rollout pace is now increasing.

If you’re wondering just how advanced artificial intelligence (AI) systems are getting, then know this: the US military is testing an experimental AI network tasked with identifying likely future events worthy of closer attention, and days before they occur.

The series of tests are called the Global Information Dominance Experiments (GIDE), and they combine data from a huge variety of sources, including satellite imagery, intelligence reports, sensors in the field, radar, and more.

Cloud computing also plays an important part in this setup, making sure that vast chunks of data collected from all over the world can be processed efficiently, and then accessed by whichever military officials and agencies need them.

The US military’s AI experiments are growing particularly ambitious. The Drive reports that US Northern Command recently completed a string of tests for Global Information Dominance Experiments (GIDE), a combination of AI, cloud computing and sensors that could give the Pentagon the ability to predict events “days in advance,” according to Command leader General Glen VanHerck. It’s not as mystical as it sounds, but it could lead to a major change in military and government operations.

The machine learning-based system observes changes in raw, real-time data that hint at possible trouble. If satellite imagery shows signs that a rival nation’s submarine is preparing to leave port, for instance, the AI could flag that mobilization knowing the vessel will likely leave soon. Military analysts can take hours or even days to comb through this information — GIDE technology could send an alert within “seconds,” VanHerck said.

The most recent dry run, GIDE 3, was the most expansive yet. It saw all 11 US commands and the broader Defense Department use a mix of military and civilian sensors to address scenarios where “contested logistics” (such as communications in the Panama Canal) might pose a problem. The technology involved wasn’t strictly new, the General said, but the military “stitched everything together.”

Up, up, and away.

Launching satellites is an expensive business — at least for now. But satellites are necessary in astronomy for one major reason — they get telescopes above the atmosphere.

Continue reading “238 Year-Old Technology Could Give The Best View of Space Ever” »

Google uses artificial intelligence technology to find millions of buildings on the satellite map that were previously difficult to locate. These can now be used for humanitarian aid or other purposes. Google utilized its building detection model (Continental-Scale Building Detection from High Resolution Satellite Imagery) to create an Open Buildings dataset, containing locations and footprints of 516 million buildings with coverage across most African continent countries.

In this data set, there are millions of buildings that have not been discovered in the past. These newly-discovered building materials will help the outside world understand African populations and where they live, facilitating health care services such as education or vaccination to their communities.

Google’s team of developers built a training set for their building detection model by manually labeling 1.75 million buildings in 100k images to make the most accurate identification possible, even when dealing with rural or urban environments that have vastly different properties and features. The need to identify what kind of dwelling place is being captured was especially difficult during scoping missions in remote areas where natural landmarks were plentiful. At the same time, dense surroundings made it hard to differentiate between multiple structures on an aerial image at once.