Tag: Science
Spying from Space: U.S. Launches World’s Largest Satellite
by Ranju Chaudhary on Nov.23, 2010, under Latest Web Technologies, Trends
The United States has just launched the largest satellite ever to orbit earth; while its exact purpose is secret, we know it’s not going to be monitoring the weather.
Its mission will be to gather intelligence for the U.S. National Reconnaissance Office.
The satellite, dubbed NROL-32, was sent into orbit yesterday by a Delta 4 Heavy rocket — the largest unmanned rocket with the most powerful liquid-fueled booster. U.S. National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) Director Bruce Carlson said the NROL-32 would be “the largest satellite in the world.”
All this superlative hugeness isn’t likely just a result of Americans’ obsession with size; in fact, the NRO launches almost as many small vehicles into space as it does large ones. More to the point, however, NROL-32 has a very important job: replacing a slew of Cold War-era satellites currently in orbit past their expiration dates.
Carlson gave an address (links to a PDF that’s a good read on the bureaucracy of space) last month in which he stated that the agency had adopted a new charter and “a remarkably aggressive launch campaign” to go along with it.
Referencing the then-upcoming NROL-32 launch and related launches, Carlson said, “This is the most aggressive launch campaign that the National Reconnaissance Office has had in 20 years… These [satellites] are very important, because they all go to update a constellation which is aging rapidly. We bought most of our satellites for three, five, or eight years, and we’re keeping them on orbit for ten, twelve, and up to twenty years.”
Carlson also said then that those aging satellites “designed to essentially operate during the era of the Soviet Union… are today doing tactical intelligence collection that leads us to actionable intelligence on bad guys every day. Every day.”
We hope the new, huge satellites being sent into orbit will continue to do exactly that, as well as accomplish the NRO’s science and technology goals.
iPhone App Measures Your Happiness
by Ranju Chaudhary on Nov.12, 2010, under Gadgets, Top Gadgets
Harvard researchers, using the iPhone to track people’s moods, have found a correlation between daydreaming and unhappiness.
The app, aptly named “Track Your Happiness,” contacts iPhone users at random times during the day to ask how they’re feeling and what they are doing while answering these questions. Users have the option to decide when and how often they’ll be notified.
The researchers’ findings, published in the journal Science, were based on samples from 2,250 adults. Out of those surveyed, 58.8% were male, and 73.9% of them reside in the U.S. The mean age of those involved in the survey was 34. As DISCOVER reports, responders said they were daydreaming 46.9% of the time when the iPhone rang to check in on their thoughts. And those who said they were daydreaming were more likely to reveal that they were feeling unhappy.
That said, Jonathan Schooler — a psychology professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara — told The Boston Globe that the findings should not just be used to determine that a wandering mind is an unhappy one.
According to Schooler, mind-wandering is key for one’s problem solving abilities — and there is also evidence that it could be important for creativity.
As Schooler told the Globe, “Even if here are times when mind-wandering causes one to be unhappy, it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s not the thing that one should be doing.”
Meanwhile, “Track Your Happiness” is still out there, being used as a scientific tool to help researchers figure out the causes of one’s happiness.
