Planet Labs' fleet of 28 tiny satellites will send back aerial shots for cheap

Planet Labs Reveals First Images from Space; Announces Plans to Launch Fleet of Satellites to Understand the Changing Planet

San Francisco,
CA, 26th June 2013
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Planet Labs, a space and analytics company, announced plans to launch the world's largest fleet of Earth imaging satellites to image the changing planet and provide open access to that information. Today, they revealed the first images from their first two satellites.

Planet Labs' goal is to provide universal access to information about the changing planet. The company plans to achieve this by launching a fleet of Earth imaging satellites, called 'Doves', that when acting together can provide a new image of the planet at an unprecedented combination of resolution and frequency. To best enable this mission, the company has selected a low orbit for its constellation and an optical resolution of three to five meters – a scale that allows measurement of a tree canopy, but does not compromise individual privacy. This will enable monitoring of deforestation, help improve agricultural yields, track natural disasters and many other applications.

"Planet Labs will create an entirely new data set, with both humanitarian and commercial value," said Tim O'Reilly of O'Reilly AlphaTech Ventures. "We've become used to having imagery of the entire Earth. What we haven't yet understood is how transformative it will be when that imagery is regularly and frequently updated." Everyone from ecologists to citizen journalists will be able to track frequent changes to any place on the planet -- a frequency and coverage greater than ever seen before.

"We're seeing unprecedented innovation in the space industry, starting with SpaceX lowering the cost of access, and now with Planet Labs revolutionizing the satellite segment," said Steve Jurvetson, Managing Director of Draper Fisher Jurvetson (DFJ) and member of the company's Board of Directors. "As Planet Labs' first outside investor, we are delighted to help the company execute on their unique vision to make the big data landscape of the planet more accessible."

A selection of images from the company's first two demonstration satellites, "Dove 1" and "Dove 2," launched in April 2013, are available on www.planet-labs.com. These demonstration missions extended the company's lab into space, and successfully validated key technologies and operations to enable future systems. Data from the upcoming fleet of satellites are scheduled to be available early next year. The company is engaging with select partners and customers to ensure the data service can easily be utilized for both humanitarian and commercial purposes.

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Most Earth-Like Alien Planet Discovered

for Space.com 2013-04-19 02:46:42 UTC

NASA's Kepler space telescope has discovered three exoplanets that may be capable of supporting life, and one of them is perhaps the most Earth-like alien world spotted to date, scientists announced Thursday.

That most intriguing one is called Kepler-62f, a rocky world just 1.4 times bigger than Earth that circles a star smaller and dimmer than the sun. Kepler-62f's newfound neighbor, Kepler-62e, is just 1.6 times larger than Earth, making the pair among the smallest exoplanets yet found in their star's habitable zone — the just-right range of distances where liquid water can exist on a world's surface.

Kepler-62e and f, which are part of a newly discovered five-planet system, "look very good as possibilities for looking for life," said Kepler science principal investigator Bill Borucki, of NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif.

The third potentially habitable planet, called Kepler-69c, is 1.7 times bigger than Earth and orbits a star similar to our own. It's the smallest world ever found in the habitable zone of a sunlike star, researchers said, and represents a big step toward discovering the first-ever "alien Earth."

"We're moving very rapidly toward finding an Earth analogue around a star like the sun," Borucki told SPACE.com.

Researchers announced these newfound planets — all three of which are "super-Earths," or worlds slightly larger than our own — today at a NASA news conference. The Kepler-62 discovery paper, led by Borucki, was also published today in the journal Science.

The three potentially habitable worlds are part of a larger haul. All told, the scientists rolled out seven new exoplanets today — five in the Kepler-62 system and two in Kepler-69.

The five newfound planets in the Kepler-62 system, which is located about 1,200 light-years away in the constellation Lyra, range from 0.54 to 1.95 times the size of Earth. Only Kepler-62e and f are potentially habitable; the other three zip around the star at close range, making them too hot to support life as we know it, researchers said.

Kepler-62e and f take 122 and 267 days, respectively, to complete one orbit around their star, which is just 20 percent as bright as the sun. While nobody knows what the two exoplanets look like, a separate modeling study suggests they're both probably water worlds covered by endless, uninterrupted global oceans.

"There may be life there, but could it be technology-based like ours? Life on these worlds would be under water with no easy access to metals, to electricity, or fire for metallurgy," lead author Lisa Kaltenegger, of the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy and the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, said in a statement.

"Nonetheless, these worlds will still be beautiful blue planets circling an orange star — and maybe life’s inventiveness to get to a technology stage will surprise us," she added.

Not surprisingly, Kepler-62e should be warmer than its more distantly orbiting neighbor. In fact, Kepler-62f may require a greenhouse effect to keep its ocean from freezing over, researchers said.

“Kepler-62e probably has a very cloudy sky and is warm and humid all the way to the polar regions," co-author Dimitar Sasselov of Harvard said in a statement. "Kepler-62f would be cooler, but still potentially life-friendly."

The new modeling study has been accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal.

The $600 million Kepler observatory launched in March 2009 to hunt for Earth-size exoplanets in the habitable zone of their parent stars. Kepler finds alien worlds by detecting the tiny brightness dips caused when they transit, or cross the face of, their stars from the instrument's perspective.

Kepler has used this technique to great effect, spotting more than 2,700 potential planets since its March 2009 launch. While just 120 or so of these candidates have been confirmed to date, mission scientists estimate that more than 90 percent will end up being the real deal.

While Kepler has yet to discover a true Earth twin, it's getting closer and closer, Borucki said, pointing to the confirmation of Kepler-69c as an example. (That planet lies 2,700 light-years away, in the constellation Cygnus. Kepler-69c's neighbor Kepler-69b, which is about twice the size of Earth and too hot to host life, was also announced today.)

"I think we're making excellent progress in that direction," Borucki said. "We have a number of candidates that look good."

Such steady progress makes sense, since Kepler will of course spot more transits the longer it looks. The telescope needs to observe three transits to flag a planet candidate, so detecting a potentially habitable world in a relatively distant orbit can take several years.

Kepler cannot search for signs of life on worlds like Kepler-62e, Kepler-62f and Kepler-69c, but the telescope is paving the way for future missions that should do just that, Borucki said.

"This is one of the early steps, but there's no mistake — we are on our way to explore the galaxy, to learn about life in the galaxy," he said.

Image courtesy of NASA/Ames/JPL-Caltech

This article originally published at Space.com here

Topics: alien planets, exoplanets, NASA, space, U.S., US & World, World Space.com is a Mashable publishing partner that is the world's No. 1 source for news of astronomy, skywatching, space exploration, commercial spaceflight and related technologies. This article is reprinted with the publisher's permission.

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Animal Planet Sets Up Cockroach Cam

Samantha Murphy2013-04-05 08:59:15 -0700

The Internet loves a good kitten and puppy cam, but isn't that so, like, five years ago? Okay, not really. We'll gladly watch 24/7 live footage of adorable creatures crawling on top of each other.

But what about all the misunderstood species in the animal kingdom? Are they not worthy of live webcams?

Now, thanks to Animal Planet, we'll be able to watch all-day video streams of more than 11 species, from cutesy kittens and calves to ants... and oh yeah, cockroaches. That's right, the network is going rogue with its latest digital initiative, giving us an unfiltered peek into the versatile worlds of animals and insects.

The cockroach cam is set up in partnership with the Audubon Butterfly Garden in New Orleans. The site urges you to "pull up a chair, relax and enjoy dinner time with these critters." Yech.

"While feelings may be mixed on these creatures [cockroaches] that have inhabited our planet since the Cretaceous period, viewers will be mesmerized by their activity and surprise setting inspired by the southern home of Audubon Butterfly Garden and Insectarium," said parent company Discovery Communications.

This week, the network announced the launch of Animal Planet L!ve, which builds on the success of its previous live cams, including one for sharks. The following USTREAM cams are now available in HD for your viewing pleasure: ants, belugas, calves, chicks, cockroaches, butterflies, kittens, penguins, puppies, Japanese sea nettles, wild birds and a cam set up in a Pacific Reef.

The webcams can also be accessed via tablets, smartphones and connected TVs.

Image via iStockphoto, April30

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