Monitor global warming in real-time with new iPhone, Android app

Want to monitor the vital signs of planet Earth? View global warming trends, like ozone, CO2, and sea levels, on a 3D globe? Scan satellite data in real-time? There’s an app for that. It’s called Earth Now and is available on both iPhone and Android. Released by NASA and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory “to drive up excitement for …

Hurricane Isaac and the hurricane of satellite photos in Facebook, Twitter

I’m noticing a boom in crazy-good satellite photos of Hurricane Isaac. They are full color, super-detailed, route and rain predictions, and (my favorite) cloud formations. I’m not sure why this is happening. Perhaps, it is the upgrade to our GOES weather satellites, or that the government has taken to social media like kids to water. …

Crowdsource the launch of a nano-satellite into space – Kickstarter

We are developing a nano-satellite, and mobile apps to go with it, as the focus for a global education and public outreach campaign. The satellite, called SkyCube, is a 10x10x10 cm “1U” CubeSat intended for launch as a secondary payload on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket in 2013. Orbiting more than 300 miles up, on a …

People are pulling the plug on cable television by the hundreds of thousands

People are pulling the plug on cable television by the hundreds of thousands. Comcast’s Q2 2012 earnings show the cable company is relying heavily on its high-speed Internet service subscribers. Though the cable giant reports a total Q2 increase in customers of 138,000; the cable company also lost a massive 395,000 television subscribers in the last year. …

The era of micro-spacecraft is here – ultra small satellites are everywhere

There is big news on the small satellite front. From super-secret agencies to the U.S. military, academia, private firms, world space agencies, and NASA, ultra-small satellites are the big thing. In sizing up “smallsats,” there are a range of classifications in the less-than-500- kilogram department, be they minisatellites, microsatellites, nanosatellites, picosatellites, palm-size CubeSats, even the diminutive …

Prison inmates at San Quentin get contract to build satellite parts for NASA

The NASA Ames Research Center is known for establishing innovative partnerships and Pete Worden, the former Air Force general who serves as the Center’s director, is known as a maverick. Still, the latest joint venture to come to light has caught even some longtime NASA observers by surprise. Under supervision from NASA Ames, inmates working in the …

SeaWorld Rescue returns 2 more seals to the wild – that’s 88 this year!

A pair of male fur seals rescued and nursed back to health by SeaWorld San Diego’s animal care team was returned to the ocean. Both animals were rescued in May emaciated, malnourished and dehydrated. The first of these mammals, a Guadalupe fur seal, was rescued off Imperial Beach weighing almost 15.5 pounds May 13, 2012. …

The highest resolution single-shot of Earth ever taken

Mesmerizing timelapse of the Earth is the highest resolution single-shot imagery ever taken of our planet from space. The video and images were snapped by the Russian weather satellite Elektro-L during its orbit 36,000 kilometers above the equator. The images are in 121 megapixels; That’s 1 km per pixel. In the video shown above here, …

Japan launches its own private space company – Mitsubishi Heavy Industries

The space wars are heating up. As it stands right now, the Russians have the biggest for-hire space program, but their fleet is aging. The new players on the market, like Space X, are competing for the future of that market. Which will look something like this. Every country rich enough to afford it, and …

Get notified when Google Maps updates the satellite imagery for your house

“Love this tip from +Jake Parrillo – I had no idea you could get notified when there was new satellite imagery for your house. Living in the future is pretty great.” – Rick Klau   The full story from Jake: Last night, I received an email from the “Follow Your World” application of Google Maps that alerted …