Categories
GeekWire

To nuke or not: Asteroid plans take shape

Image: Asteroid entering atmosphere
An artist’s conception shows an asteroid entering Earth’s atmosphere. (Credit: NASA)

What should the world do about the potential threat of a catastrophic asteroid collision? This month NASA established the Planetary Defense Coordination Office to manage the issue. Meanwhile, the Russians and the Europeans are talking aboutdiverting nasty space rocks with nuclear weapons.

All this comes as cosmic threats are getting ready to hit prime time, in the form of an NBC comedy titled “You, Me and the Apocalypse.” (The threat in this case is a comet, not an asteroid.)

Former astronaut Ed Lu, CEO of the B612 Foundation, is glad for all the attention. For years, B612 has been trying to raise awareness about the asteroid threat, with mixed success. In a statement posted on Facebook today, Lu noted that NASA’s actions come in response to a highly critical internal report about NASA’s asteroid-hunting effort.

Another indication of a turning tide is contained in last month’s omnibus spending bill, which sets aside $50 million for the effort during fiscal year 2016. That’s 10 times more than NASA was spending in 2010.

Get the full story on GeekWire.

Categories
GeekWire

The case for Planet Nine (a.k.a. Planet X)

Image: Planet Nine
An artist’s conception shows a “super-Earth” far from the sun. (Credit: R. Hurt / IPAC / Caltech)

For decades, astronomers have gone back and forth over whether a “Planet X” exists on the edge of our solar system – and now two researchers have laid out new evidence supporting the claim, including a rough idea of where it could be found.

One of the most notable things about the claim has to do with one of the people who’s making it: Mike Brown, the Caltech astronomer who says he “killed” Pluto when it was the ninth planet.

“This would be a real ninth planet,” Brown said in a news release. “There have only been two true planets discovered since ancient times, and this would be the third.”

Brown’s “two true planets” refer to Uranus and Neptune, not Pluto. To emphasize the point, Brown and his collaborator at Caltech, Konstantin Batygin, have nicknamed the object “Planet Nine.” (Other nicknames are said to include George, Planet of the Apes, Jehoshaphat and Phattie.)

There’s one big gap in the argument: No such object has yet been detected.

Get the full story on GeekWire.

Categories
GeekWire

Stephen Hawking: Mad scientists could kill us

Image: Stephen Hawking
British physicist Stephen Hawking worries about humanity’s long-term future. (Credit: NASA)

British physicist Stephen Hawking says we need to colonize other worlds because humanity will almost certainly face a disaster on Earth sometime in the next few millennia – perhaps a disaster of our own making.

Among the risks he outlined in a report from the BBC are nuclear war, climate change and genetically engineered viruses. What’s more, he said further progress in science and technology will bring “new ways things can go wrong.”

Like SpaceX founder Elon Musk, Hawking believes the best cosmic insurance policy is to create human colonies on other worlds in our solar system and beyond. Find out how he put it in the BBC report.

Get the full story on GeekWire.

Categories
GeekWire

Smartphone gizmo maps meals, counts calories

Image: NutriRay3D device in action
The NutriRay3D device uses a laser-mapping gizmo and a smartphone app to estimate the calories and other nutritional content on a plate of food. (Credit: University of Washington)

How many calories are on your plate? Engineers at the University of Washington have developed a gizmo that estimates the nutritional value of your meal with the mere snap of a smartphone.

NutriRay3D combines a smartphone app with a laser-mapping add-on: The app identifies what kind of food is in the picture, and the laser-mapper provides an estimate of each food’s volume. Then you get a real-time estimate of the calorie count and nutritional content.

The system gets around the toughest hurdles in nutrition tracking: Keeping an accurate record of what you eat, and figuring out how much of it you’re eating.

Get the full story on GeekWire.

Categories
GeekWire

Eric Anderson raises $500,000 for Idea.com

Image: Eric Anderson
Planetary Resources co-founder Eric Anderson talks about asteroids at a 2012 news conference in Seattle. Anderson’s latest venture, Idea.com, has won $500,000 in investments. (GeekWire photo)

The latest big idea from Seattle tech entrepreneur Eric Anderson is … Idea.com. He has raised $500,000 to support the idea, according to a regulatory filing today, but he’s not yet ready to reveal what it is.

Anderson told GeekWire he has several business ideas in mind for Idea.com. “It’s a very powerful brand, and it’s worthy of a great idea and a great company,” he said.

He has already delivered enough big ideas to fill a think tank. As co-founder and chairman of Space Adventures, he helped send millionaires and billionaires on trips to the International Space Station. As co-founder and co-chairman of Redmond-based Planetary Resources, Anderson is setting the stage for what could be a multitrillion-dollar asteroid mining industry. He plays executive roles for Bellevue-based Planetary Power, Personal.com and Seattle-based Booster Fuels, and is involved in a host of high-tech philanthropic efforts.

That’s all in addition to his day job as CEO of Intentional Software, the idea-sharing platform backed by software billionaire (and two-time spaceflier) Charles Simonyi.

Get the full story on GeekWire.

Categories
GeekWire

World View’s spaceport plan gets $15 million lift

Image: World View balloon
World View’s Voyager capsule would rise into the stratosphere at the end of a high-altitude balloon, with a parafoil used to aid in its descent. (World View Enterprises illustration)

World View Enterprises’ plan to send tourists from Spaceport Tucson into the stratosphere in a balloon-borne capsule won a $15 million vote of support today from Arizona’s Pima County.

In a 4-1 vote, the county Board of Supervisors approved a plan to build the spaceport for World View’s use by the end of the year. World View is working on a pressurized Voyager capsule that would rise to 100,000 feet beneath a high-altitude balloon and give passengers a leisurely space-like view – all for the price of $75,000 a person.

World View CEO Jane Poynter told GeekWire that today’s vote of support signals that Arizona has joined the likes of Florida, California, New Mexico and Texas on the commercial space frontier. “We’re really seeing an inflection point in this whole space tech area,” she said.

Get the full story on GeekWire.

Categories
GeekWire

Amazon’s drone plan leaves issues up in the air

Image: Amazon drone
One of the Amazon Prime Air prototypes has horizontal and vertical rotors. (Amazon photo)

How much will it cost to get a 30-minute drone delivery from Amazon Prime Air? A newly published interview with Amazon executive Paul Misener suggests that the pricing question and other key issues have yet to be figured out.

In the interview with Yahoo Tech columnist David Pogue, Amazon’s vice president for global public policy provides a detailed run-through of the Seattle-based online retailer’s plan for aerial delivery dominance.

Many of the details have been laid out before. Others appear to remain up in the air.

Get the full story on GeekWire.

Categories
GeekWire

Airbus and Uber plan on-demand copter rides

Image: Airbus H130 helicopter
Airbus says its H130 copters will be on duty for the Sundance Film Festival in Utah. (Credit: Airbus)

Independent films aren’t the only things that’ll be previewed at the Sundance Film Festival in Utah this week: Airbus Group and Uber Technologies are launching a pilot project that offers on-demand helicopter rides to the show.

But if the project gets picked up for further development, it may require some tweaks to Uber’s standard rideshare model.

Airbus Group’s CEO, Tom Enders, provided a teaser over the weekend at the Digital Life Design conference in Munich, Germany. “It’s a pilot project, we’ll see how it goes — but it’s pretty exciting,” he told The Wall Street Journal.

The Journal quoted an Airbus spokesman as saying that the flights will be provided by Airbus’ H125 and H130 helicopters, in partnership with a Utah-based helicopter operator named Air Resources. Uber would dispatch cars to pick up clients for the rides at Sundance.

Uber has been testing an on-demand helicopter service called UberChopper for about three years, primarily for vacationers or for special events where traffic gets tangled.

Get the full story on GeekWire.

Categories
GeekWire

Twitter truce? Jeff Bezos gives props to SpaceX

Image: SpaceX Falcon landing
SpaceX’s Falcon 9 first-stage booster descends toward a landing on a ship in the Pacific Ocean after the Jason 3 launch. SpaceX says the booster tipped over due to a landing-leg failure. (Credit: SpaceX)

Rocket launches can sometimes turn into flame wars, as shown by last year’s Twitter tug of war between space-minded billionaires Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk.

The rivalry behind Bezos’ Blue Origin and Musk’s SpaceX has been going on for years, flaring up over issues ranging from control of Launch Pad 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center to the patent rights for rocket landings at sea. In both those cases, SpaceX prevailed at Blue Origin’s expense.

That rivalry crossed over into the Twittersphere in November, when the Amazon founder used his first tweet to tout the landing of Blue Origin’s New Shepard suborbital spacecraft after its first test flight to an outer-space altitude.

Get the full story on GeekWire.

Categories
GeekWire

SpaceX rocket lands but tips over after launch

Image: SpaceX Falcon 9 launch
A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket rises into the fog from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, sending the Jason 3 sea-watching satellite into space. (Credit: NASA)

Less than a month after SpaceX’s first successful rocket landing, billionaire Elon Musk’s company tried to do it again today – but this time, one of the rocket’s landing legs failed, resulting in a tumble onto its oceangoing landing platform.

Oh, and the Falcon 9 rocket launched a satellite, too.

The primary objective of today’s launch was to put the Jason 3 ocean-mapping satellite into orbit for NASA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Eumetsat and the French space agency CNES. Jason 3 is designed to monitor changes in sea level from orbit, continuing a decades-long campaign of measurements.

The rocket rose into the fog from its launch pad at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, right on time at 10:42 a.m. PT. The launch was judged as a success, but SpaceX had been hoping for a successful landing, too.

Get the full story on GeekWire.