As we venture forward to the Moon and establish a sustained lunar presence, finding and understanding water on the lunar surface becomes increasingly important. Lunar water is largely in the form of, but not necessarily limited to, water ice. Astronauts on the Moon could use this ice for various crew needs, potentially including rocket fuel. The Lunar IceCube mission, led by…
Tag: Broadband
Kepler Achieves a World-First For Satellite Broadband With 100Mbps Connection To the Arctic
Small-satellite startup Kepler and its nanosatellites have successfully demonstrated achieving over 100Mbps of network speed to a Germany icebreaker sea vessel that acts as a mobile lab for the MOSAiC research expedition. TechCrunch reports: This is the first time there’s been a high-bandwidth satellite network for any central Arctic ground-based use, Kepler says, and this connection isn’t just a technical demo:…
Africa Should Look To India For Digital Inspiration
Aubrey Hruby, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Africa Center, writing at Financial Times: Africa’s digital economy is still small in size compared with those of its global peers. But it has seen exponential growth over the past decade and now has the potential to redefine the continent’s economies. […] African governments and development finance institutions (DFIs) should look to…
Comcast Argues ‘We’ve Never Sold Customers’ Data’
An anonymous reader quotes MediaPost: Faced with a new controversy related to online privacy, Comcast said this week that it doesn’t draw on information about the sites broadband users visit for advertising or targeting. The company said Thursday that it deletes information every 24 hours about the domain names people navigate to online. “Millions of Comcast customers look up billions of…
SpaceX Plans To Start Offering Starlink Broadband Services In 2020
SpaceX president Gwynne Shotwell said the goal is to complete six to eight Starlink launches to get sufficient coverage to start offering the service to consumers in 2020. SpaceNews reports: SpaceX is confident it can start offering broadband service in the United States via its Starlink constellation in mid-2020, the company’s president and chief operating officer Gwynne Shotwell said Oct. 22….
Libertarian Accused of Faking 1.5M Net Neutrality Comments Using Data-Breached Addresses
BuzzFeed says they’ve identified two firms which “misappropriated names and personal information as part of a bid to submit more than 1.5 million statements” pretending to oppose net neutrality regulations: The anti-net neutrality comments harvested on behalf of Broadband for America, the industry group that represented telecommunications giants including AT&T, Cox, and Comcast, were uploaded to the FCC website by Media…
Mystery green blob appears and disappears in distant galaxy
What is ULX-4 – a mystery green blob of X-ray light that appeared in the Fireworks Galaxy – and then soon disappeared again? A black hole or neutron star are 2 possibilities. Source: https://earthsky.org/space/mystery-green-blob-ulx-4-fireworks-galaxy…
Musk and Bezos’ Satellite Internet Could Save Consumers Billions of Dollars
“The fight for space internet supremacy is on,” writes the consumer policy expert at BroadbandNow, calculating the benefits of these additional broadband competitors:
Low Earth orbit (LEO) satellites for broadband internet access are beginning to display signs of real potential. Recently, Amazon chief Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin pulled back the curtain on its space intentions by announcing Project Kuiper, a 3,236-satellite constellation….
Comcast Expands Low-Income Internet Program
Comcast announced today its largest-ever eligibility expansion for Internet Essentials, the cable giant’s program that subsidizes basic broadband service and low-cost computers to help increase adoption for low-income households in the cities Comcast serves. From a report: The program, which began 8 years ago with the merger of Comcast and NBCUniversal, will now be open to seniors and people with disabilities….
Researchers Build Device That Turns Heat Into Light, Possibly Boosting Solar Cell Efficiency
Kant (Slashdot reader #67,320) shared this story from the photovoltaics news site PV Magazine: Scientists at Rice University in Texas have developed a device which converts heat into light by squeezing it into a smaller bandgap. The ‘hyperbolic thermal emitter’ could be combined with a PV system to convert energy otherwise wasted as heat — a development the researchers say could…