NASA
NASA, Verizon developing tech to track drones via cell towers
NASA, Verizon developing tech to track drones via cell towers
Mark Harris reports at The Guardian:
That $500,000 project is now underway at Nasa’s Ames Research Center in the heart of Silicon Valley. Nasa is planning the first tests of an air traffic control system for drones there this summer, with Verizon scheduled to introduce a concept for using cell coverage for data, navigation, surveillance and tracking of drones by 2017. The phone company hopes to finalise its technology by 2019.
This is fascinating to me because the documents obtained by The Guardian describe the purpose of the partnership as to “jointly explore if cell towers and communications could possibly support Unmannned Aerial Systems (UAS) Traffic Management (UTM) for communications and surveillance of UAS at low altitudes” (emphasis added).
NASA typically focuses on altitudes so high they’re, well, in space, so why are they involved with developing low-altitutde drone tracking technology?
I want to note that I’m not necessarily opposed to someone in the government being able to keep track of all the drones that will inevitably be zipping around. I’m just not sure why NASA is involved, and I wonder whether their choice of Verizon as a partner serves as a tacit confirmation of that cellular network’s claims of coverage supremacy over its competitors.
There will be some related surveillance stories in tomorrow’s Modern Law newsletter, so sign up to get an email with five links I haven’t blogged about yet.
Image © Nevit Dilmen
Obama to NASA: I want to know about Martians right away
Obama to NASA: I want to know about Martians right away
President Obama, speaking to NASA’s Curiosity team (as quoted by CNET‘s Chris Matyszczyk):
If, in fact, you do make contact with Martians, please let me know right away. I’ve got a lot of other things on my plate, but I suspect that that would go to the top of the list, even if theyre just microbes.
Landing 2,000 Pounds of Patriotism on Mars
From the NASA press release:
The Seven Minutes of Terror has turned into the Seven Minutes of Triumph,” said NASA Associate Administrator for Science John Grunsfeld. “My immense joy in the success of this mission is matched only by overwhelming pride I feel for the women and men of the mission’s team.”
The feeling I had just reading about this at 1:30 a.m. is nothing compared to the joy of those working on this project. But it was definitely a strange but wonderful sense of personal triumph, like “I’m a human, and humans did this amazing thing, and that is awesome.”
I wish it didn’t look trite as I typed the words, but it’s true.
There was something stranger in that feeling, too, if no less wonderful: it was a sense of patriotism. I’m a patriotic person, despite harboring a certain cynicism about modern American politics. But my Curiosity Rover patriotism is a patriotism I rarely feel, and it’s what I always imagined people felt when we landed on the moon, and when they watched numerous other early launches by NASA.
Humanity will go farther, on Earth and in space, if well-meaning nations work together. But there is something so moving about watching a chronically underfunded national agency, whose importance to our past, present, and future is always underestimated, put almost two-thousand pounds of advanced technology on another planet.
And the best part? This is really just the beginning of the mission.