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Satellites

satellites

Google Takes Initiative to Find Extraterrestrials by 2012

MIT's teaming up with Google to design the first satellite that can really, truly search the sky for planets similar to Earth in size and terrain, taking us a giant step closer to making contact with extraterrestrials. Google is funding the development of a six high-res, wide-field digital cameras with a 192-megapixel resolution for TESS—the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite. That's enough resolution to gauge the brightness of two million stars. MIT scientists are currently hard at work with the design of TESS' observatory. More »

dystopia

Satellite-Eye-View of People Evacuating in Chad

This is what a mass evacuation from a city looks like from space. Using satellites orbiting over Africa, human rights groups published UNOSAT satellite imagery to show, in very simple terms, the human cost of violence in the Chadian capital city of N'Djamena. Over 10,000 people are crammed on a bridge, trying to escape into the neighboring nation of Cameroon. The black dots are people, and the yellow dashes are vehicles, most likely trucks and buses. It's a chilling portrait of the human future, wracked with violence and recorded via space-based surveillance devices, taken on February 27. See the full map below. More »

rockets

Russian Space Rocket Looks Totally Old-School

The Soyuz-FG launcher sticks to a 1950s snub-nosed aesthetic, even though it was built in 2001. The Soyuz is preparing to launch Dec. 14 from Kazakhstan's Baikonur cosmodrome. Image by STR/AFP/Getty Images.

space age

China Will Win The Next Space Race

What will it take to launch another space age to replace the one that ended with the Cold War? Maybe another space race. China is ramping up its efforts to put people back on the Moon, launch more lunar orbiters, and build its own space station. Already, China is challenging the U.S.' domination of space launches. More »

technology

Spy Satellite Diagnoses Cancer

Satellites will soon capture ultrasound images of unborn children in rural Nunavut and beam them all the way to Ontario. It's just part of a new pilot program which uses technology developed for diagnosing astronauts from Earth. Already, doctors in Calgary can look at real-time ultrasounds of patients in Banff and figure out what ails them. How long will it be before the satellite itself can scan your body from space? More »

Sputnik Is Officially Old Fart Technology
Fifty years ago, the Space Age was born with the flight of Soviet satellite Sputnik, and with that came the age of Surveillance Paranoia. More Sputnik fetish photography available from your pals at NASA.