China's GPS rival BeiDou to go global

https://youtu.be/nG0HyU-Thg4 https://youtu.be/TeI2tNHA9y4 https://www.bloomberg.com/news/videos/2018-11-26/china-s-gps-rival-video

 APA model of the BeiDou Navigation System is displayed during the 12th China International Aviation and Aerospace Exhibition in Zhuhai earlier this month.

HONG KONG/BEIJING:China is taking its rivalry with the U.S. to the heavens, spending at least $9 billion to build a celestial navigation system and cut its dependence on the American-owned GPS amid heightening tensions between the two countries.

Location data beamed from GPS satellites are used by smartphones, car navigation systems, the microchip in your dog’s neck and guided missiles -- and all those satellites are controlled by the U.S. Air Force.

That makes the Chinese government uncomfortable, so it’s developing an alternative that a U.S. security analyst calls one of the largest space programs the country has undertaken.

A model of the Beidou navigation system satellite.

Photographer: Imaginechina

“They don’t want to depend on the U.S.’s GPS,’’ said Marshall Kaplan, a professor in the aerospace engineering department at the University of Maryland. “The Chinese don’t want to be subject to something that we can shut off.’

“They don’t want to depend on the U.S.’s GPS,’’ said Marshall Kaplan, a professor in the aerospace engineering department at the University of Maryland. “The Chinese don’t want to be subject to something that we can shut off.’’

The Beidou Navigation System, currently serving China and neighbors, will be accessible worldwide by 2020 as part of President Xi Jinping’s strategy to make his country a global leader in next-generation technologies.

Its implementation reverberates through the corporate world as makers of semiconductors, electric vehicles and airplanes modify products to also connect with Beidou in order to keep doing business in the second-biggest economy.

Assembly of the new constellation is approaching critical mass after the launch of at least 18 satellites this year, including three this month. On Nov. 19, China launched two more Beidou machines, increasing the number in operation to more than 40. China plans to add 11 more by 2020.


A rocket carrying the 24th and 25th Beidou navigation satellites takes off in Xichang in Nov. 2017. Photographer: Wang Yulei/China News Service/VCG via Getty Images

Beidou is one element of China’s ambitious campaign to displace Western dominance in aerospace. A state-owned company is developing planes to replace those from Airbus SE and Boeing Co., and domestic startups are building rockets to challenge the commercial-launch businesses of Elon Musk’s Space Exploration Technologies Corp. and Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin.

Next month, China is scheduled to launch Chang’e 4, a lunar probe that would be the first spacecraft to the far side of the moon. A Mars probe and rover also are scheduled for liftoff in 2020.

“It is classic space-race sort of stuff,’’ said Andrew Dempster, director of the Australian Centre for Space Engineering Research in Canberra.

China started developing Beidou in the 1990s and will spend an estimated $8.98 billion to $10.6 billion on it by 2020, according to a 2017 analysis by the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission. The system eventually will provide positioning accuracies of 1 meter (3 feet) or less with use of a ground support system.


Chinese space-tracking ship Yuanwang-3 monitor the launch of a rocket carrying a Beidou satellite in Oct. 2018. Photographer: Imaginechina

By comparison, GPS typically provides accuracies of less than 2.2 meters, which can be improved to a few centimeters with augmentation systems, the commission said.

“The Beidou system has become one of the great achievements in China’s 40 years of reform,’’ Xi said in a Nov. 5 letter to a United Nations committee on satellite navigation.

The system, named after the Chinese word for the Big Dipper star pattern, is at the core of an industry that will generate more than 400 billion yuan ($57 billion) of revenue in 2020, according to a forecast by the China Satellite Navigation Office.

Beidou Boom

China has increased the pace of satellite launches for its navigation system


Sources: China Satellite Navigation Office, International GNSS Service

*July satellite part of Phase-II

Beidou also has potential for export as part of China’s “Belt and Road’’ initiative to build political and economic ties through funding of infrastructure projects in other countries, the U.S.-China security commission said.

NavInfo Co., a maker of electronic maps that’s backed by Tencent Holdings Ltd., wants to begin mass producing semiconductors for navigation systems using Beidou in 2020, said Wang Yan, a project director.


Employees prepare a NavInfo car for data collection in Beijing, June 2018.

Photographer: Giulia Marchi/Bloomberg

Beijing-based NavInfo, which supplies Tesla Inc. and Bayerische Motoren Werke AG, expects annual demand of 15 million Beidou-linked chips for autonomous vehicles. In September, NavInfo started providing Beidou-enabled mapping and positioning services for the Singapore government.

“China needs to have its own satellite navigation system from a long-term, strategic perspective,’’ Wang said. “Beidou is the only option.’’

That carries potential implications for the balance of power between the nations, as Beidou’s deployment likely will fuel creation of a supply network for China’s People’s Liberation Army.

“The PLA will additionally have its own domestic ‘industrial chain’ on which to draw for secure components,” the U.S.-China commission said.

Qianxun Spatial Intelligence Inc., a Shanghai-based venture between e-commerce titan Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. and state-owned defense contractor China North Industries Group Corp., provides positioning services for cars, public safety and civil aviation using Beidou and other networks.

To help stay competitive against budding Chinese counterparts, foreign companies are including Beidou compatibility in their products. Qualcomm Inc., the biggest maker of chips used in smartphones, has been supporting Beidou “for a long time,” the San Diego-based company said. Those chip sets also are used in wearables and automobiles.

Most smartphones from global sales leader Samsung Electronics Co. support Beidou in addition to GPS, the Suwon, South Korea-based company said, as do handsets from local rivals Huawei Technologies Co. and Xiaomi Corp., according to state media. Huawei is the nation’s top-selling brand.

China also is the largest auto market, and the government wants all car-navigation systems to be Beidou-compatible within two years. Volkswagen AG -– the market leader in passenger car sales -- is changing the equipment in its vehicles to enable network access, the company said.

“At the moment, Volkswagen Group China does not sell cars with Beidou-enabled equipment, but the next infotainment system generation for cars in the Chinese market will be rolled out in 2020,’’ the Wolfsburg, Germany-based company said. “This system will be ready to receive Beidou information.”

Toyota Motor Corp. is in discussions with companies about Beidou, the Japanese automaker said.


Comac C919 Photographer: Qilai Shen/Bloomberg

In the sky, a regional jet developed by state-owned Commercial Aircraft Corp. of China, or COMAC, last year became the first plane to use Beidou.

Avionics-systems maker Rockwell Collins Inc., a supplier to Airbus, Boeing and COMAC, doesn’t offer products that can access the Chinese satellite network, the company said.

That may have to change. The Chinese government eventually will require airlines flying in the country to add Beidou equipment, Kaplan said.

“They will have to have the Chinese system on board,’’ he said, citing the government’s security concerns. “The Chinese will require airlines to have both systems.’’

Source: Bloomberg — With assistance by Bruce Einhorn, Dong Lyu, Jie Ma, Sam Kim, and Ian King

Related posts:

China implements Beidou navigation satellite system; World's top 4 navigation systems:GPS, GLONASS & Galileo

  

 

 BDS, the Beidou Navigation Satellite System from China

Latest Launch Brings China Closer to ‘GPS’ of Its Own

China's Long March-7 Rocket shipped to South China's Launch Center, Hainan

http://english.cctv.com/2016/05/08/VIDEyzjguMSuBLw9MhaJunYz160508.shtml

TIANJIN, May 8, 2016 (Xinhua) -- A container carrying China's new-generation Long March-7 rocket is seen at the port in north China's Tianjin, May 7, 2016. The Long March-7 rocket departed for its launch base in Hainan on Sunday from Tianjin. It has taken researchers eight years to develop the medium-sized rocket, which can carry up to 13.5 tonnes to low Earth orbit, said Li Hong, director of the Carrier Rocket Technology Research Institute with the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation. (Xinhua/Chen Xi)

China's new-generation Long March-7 rocket departed for its launch base in Hainan on Sunday from north China's port of Tianjin.

It has taken researchers eight years to develop the medium-sized rocket, which can carry up to 13.5 tonnes to low Earth orbit, said Li Hong, director of the Carrier Rocket Technology Research Institute with the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation.

"The Long March-7 launch scheduled for late June will be of great significance as it will usher in China's space lab mission," said Yang Baohua, deputy manager of the company.

China also plans to launch the heavy lift Long March-5 to transport cargo for the planned space station.

China's second orbiting space lab, Tiangong-2, will also be launched this fall, and it is scheduled to dock with manned spacecraft Shenzhou-11 in the fourth quarter.

Yang said that the Long March-7 carrier is more environmentally friendly than earlier Long March models. The rocket will become the main carrier for space launches.

A container carrying China's new-generation Long March-7 rocket is seen at the port in north China's Tianjin, May 7, 2016. The Long March-7 rocket departed for its launch base in Hainan on Sunday from Tianjin. It has taken researchers eight years to develop the medium-sized rocket, which can carry up to 13.5 tonnes to low Earth orbit, said Li Hong, director of the Carrier Rocket Technology Research Institute with the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation. (Xinhua/Chen Xi)

 

A container carrying China's new-generation Long March-7 rocket is seen at the port in north China's Tianjin, May 7, 2016. The Long March-7 rocket departed for its launch base in Hainan on Sunday from Tianjin. It has taken researchers eight years to develop the medium-sized rocket, which can carry up to 13.5 tonnes to low Earth orbit, said Li Hong, director of the Carrier Rocket Technology Research Institute with the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation. (Xinhua/Chen Xi)

 

A container carrying China's new-generation Long March-7 rocket is lifted at the port in north China's Tianjin, May 7, 2016. The Long March-7 rocket departed for its launch base in Hainan on Sunday from Tianjin. It has taken researchers eight years to develop the medium-sized rocket, which can carry up to 13.5 tonnes to low Earth orbit, said Li Hong, director of the Carrier Rocket Technology Research Institute with the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation. (Xinhua/Chen Xi)

The Long March-7 rocket, pillar of China’s space program

 

Related posts: 
  

China space station will be completed by 2020, the super 'eye' to speed up space rendezvous.

 

China set to launch bigger space programme

Jul 2, 2012 ... The mission will be the last docking with the Tiangong-1, which was put ... Then, in a few years, China will launch a more sophisticated version, the Tiangong-2. ... Sourbes-Verger said further advances in China's space station...

 Chinese unmanned lunar orbiter returns home

Nov 1, 2014 ... Commercial gains aside, the space program is already a marker of China's global stature and technical expertise. The Chang'e lunar probes ...

Chinese scientists aim high with space gravitational wave project

Gravitational wave detection proposal in the works

Chinese scientists are proposing a space gravitational wave detection project that could either be a part of the European Space Agency’s eLISA project or a parallel project.

The announcement of the discovery of gravitational waves in the United States on Thursday by the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory has encouraged scientists around the world, with China set to accelerate research. Gravitational waves are tiny ripples in the fabric of space-time caused by violent astronomical events.

Scientists from the pre-research group at the Chinese Academy of Sciences disclosed that the group will finish drafting a plan for a space gravitational wave detection project by the end of this year and will submit it to China’s sci-tech authorities for review.

The Taiji project will include two alternative plans. One is to take a 20 percent share of the European Space Agency’s eLISA project; the other is to launch China’s own satellites by 2033 to authenticate the ESA project.

“Gravitational waves provide us with a new tool to understand the universe, so China has to actively participate in the research,” said Hu Wenrui, a prominent physicist in China and a member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

“If we launch our own satellites, we will have a chance to be a world leader in gravitational wave research in the future. If we just participate in the eLISA project, it will also greatly boost China’s research capacity in space science and technology.

“In either case, it depends on the decision-makers’ resolution and the country’s investment,” he said.

The draft will provide different scenarios with budgets ranging from 160 million yuan ($24.3 million) to more than 10 billion yuan.

“Although I am not sure which plan the decision-makers will finally choose, I think the minimum budget of 160 million yuan should not be a problem for China,” Hu said.

The Laser Interferometer Space Antenna’s gravitational wave observatory was the EAS’ cooperative mission with NASA to detect and observe gravitational waves. The project, proposed in 1993, involved three satellites that were arranged in a triangular formation and sent laser beams between each other.

Since NASA withdrew from the project in 2011 because of a budget shortfall, the LISA project evolved into a condensed version known as eLISA.

On Dec 2, the European Space Agency launched the space probe LISA Pathfinder to validate technologies that could be used in the construction of a full-scale eLISA observatory, which is scheduled for launch in 2035.

“Currently, all the operating gravitational wave detection experiments worldwide are ground observatories, which can only detect high-frequency gravitational wave signals,” said Wu Yueliang, deputy president of the University of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

“A space observatory, without any ground interference or limitation to the length of its detection arms, can spot gravitational waves at lower frequency.”

On February 11, scientists from the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory in the US confirmed they had detected gravitational waves caused by two black holes merging about 1.3 billion years ago. This was the first time this elusive phenomenon was directly detected since it was predicted by Albert Einstein 100 years ago.

LIGO, currently the most advanced ground facility for gravitational research, includes two gravitational wave detectors in isolated rural areas of the US states of Washington and Louisiana.

“Metaphorically speaking, if the research into gravitational waves is a symphony, the discovery of the LIGO experiment makes a good prelude by proving that the hypothetical wave does exist. But I believe the other movements will mostly be composed of new discoveries from space observatory devices, because the low and middle band — which can only be detected from space — is the most extensive source of gravitational wave,” said Hu, the CAS physicist.

Meanwhile, the Taiji project of the Chinese Academy of Sciences has competitors in China. Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou, Guangdong province, proposed the Tianqin project in July. That project will receive a 300 million yuan startup fund from the local government to initiate a four-step plan to send three satellites in search of gravitational waves and other cosmic mysteries.

Li Miao, director of the Institute of Astronomy and Space Science, said it was still too early to tell the specific direction of the future of the university’s Tianqin project.

“The major gravitational wave research program in China is the cooperation with eLISA, which is led by professor Hu Wenrui,” Li was quoted by Guangdong’s Nanfang Daily as saying.

“The reason that eLISA made progress rather slowly was that the member states in Europe held different opinions as to whether gravitational waves exist. Now this has been proved to be true, which will greatly accelerate the pace of research in and out of China,” Li said.

China Daily/Asia News Network

Related:


Video:

China unveils new gravitational wave research plan

Related post:

 

Einstein's gravitational waves took 100 years to prove it right

 

Einstein's gravitational waves took 100 years to prove it right

Big discovery: When two black holes collided some 1.3 billion years ago, the joining of those two great masses sent forth a wobble that hurtled through space and reached Earth on Sept 14, 2015, when it was picked up by sophisticated instruments - Reuters

 
From Aristotle to Einstein, the world's greatest minds have long theorized about gravity. Here are the highlights, and where the study of gravity is headed next. (Gillian Brockell,Joel Achenbach/TWP)

The “chirp” is bright and bird-like, its pitch rising at the end as though it’s asking a question. To an untrained ear, it resembles a sound effect from a video game more than the faint, billion-year-old echo of the collision of two black holes.

But to the trained ear of experimental physicist, it is the opening note of a cosmic symphony. On Thursday, for the first time in history, scientists announced that they are able to hear the ripples in the space-time continuum that are produced by cosmic events — called gravitational waves. The discovery opens up a new field of scientific research, one in which physicists listen for the secrets of the universe rather than looking for them.

[Everything you need to know about gravitation waves (in gifs)]

“Until this moment, we had our eyes on the sky and we couldn’t hear the music,” said Columbia University astrophysicist Szabolcs Márka, a member of the discovery team, according to the Associated Press. “The skies will never be the same.”

Scientists from the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO) announced on Feb. 11 that they have detected gravitational waves, ushering in a new era in the way humans can observe the universe. (Reuters)

Thursday’s moment of revelation has its roots a century earlier, in 1916, when Albert Einstein predicted the existence of gravitational waves as part of his ground-breaking theory of general relativity. The intervening years included brush-offs and boondoggles, false hope, reversals of opinion, an unlikely decision to take a $272 million risk, and a flash of serendipity that seemed too miraculous to be real — but wasn’t.

Here’s how it all happened.

[LIGO’s success was built on many failures]

In 1915, Einstein gave a series of lectures on his General Theory of Relativity, asserting that space and time form a continuum that gets distorted by anything with mass. The effect of that warping is gravity — the force that compels everything, from light to planets to apples dropping from a tree, to follow a curved path through space.

Gravitational waves, which he proposed the following year, are something of a corollary to that theory. If spacetime is the fabric of the cosmos, then huge events in the cosmos — like a pair of black holes banging into each other — must send ripples through it, the way the fabric of a trampoline would vibrate if you bounced two bowling balls onto it. Those ripples are gravitational waves, and they’re all around us, causing time and space to minutely squeeze and expand without us ever noticing. They’re so weak as to be almost undetectable, and yet, according to Einstein’s math at least, they must be there.

But like the entire theory of general relativity, gravitational waves were just a thought experiment, just equations on paper, still unproven by real-world events. And both were controversial. Some people believe that the initial skepticism about Einstein’s theory, plus blatant anti-Semitism — some prominent German physicists called it “world-bluffing Jewish physics,” according to Discover Magazine — explain why he never got the Nobel Prize for it. (He was eventually awarded the  the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics for his explanation of the photoelectric effect.)

 
A century after Einstein hypothesized that gravitational waves may exist, scientists who have been trying to track such waves are gearing up for a news conference. (Reuters)

So scientists came up with a series of tests of general relativity. The biggest took place in 1919, when British physicist Sir Arthur Eddington took advantage of a solar eclipse to see if light from stars bent as it made its way around the sun (as Einstein said it should). It did, surprising Einstein not in the slightest.

According to Cosmos, when he was asked what he would have done if the measurements had discredited his theory, the famous physicist replied: “In that case, I would have to feel sorry for God, because the theory is correct.”

[Inside LIGO: Physicists detect gravitational waves]

One by one, successive experiments proved other aspects of general relativity to be true, until all but one were validated. No one, not even Einstein, could find evidence of gravitational waves. Eddington, who so enthusiastically demonstrated Einstein’s theory of relativity, declared that gravitational waves were a mathematical phantom, rather than a physical phenomenon. The only attribute the waves seemed to have, he snidely remarked, was the ability to travel “at the speed of thought.” In the end, Einstein himself had doubts. Twice he reversed himself and declared that gravitational waves were nonexistent, before turning another about-face and concluding that they were real.


A small statue of Albert Einstein is seen at the Einstein Archives of Hebrew University in Jerusalem on Feb. 11, 2016, during presentation of the original 100-year-old documents of Einstein’s prediction of the existence of gravitational waves.(Abir Sultan/EPA)

Time passed. A global depression happened, followed by a global war. A reeling and then resurgent world turned its scientific eye toward other prizes: bombs, rockets, a polio vaccine. Then, in the 1960s, an engineering professor at the University of Maryland decided he would try his hand at capturing the waves that had so eluded the man who first conceived of them.

The engineer, Joe Weber, set up two aluminum cylinders in vacuums in labs in Maryland and Chicago. The tiny ripples of gravitational waves would cause the bars to ring like a bell, he reasoned, and if both bars rang at once, then he must have found something.

Weber declared his first discovery in 1969, according to the New Yorker. The news was met with celebration, then skepticism, as other laboratories around the country failed to replicate his experiment. Weber never gave up on his project, continuing to claim new detections until he died in 2000. But others did. It didn’t help that gravitational waves supposedly detected by a South Pole telescope in 2014 turned out to be  merely a product of cosmic dust.

People were inclined to believe, physicist Rainer Weiss told the New Yorker, that gravitational-wave hunters were “all liars and not careful, and God knows what.”

[A brief history of gravity, gravitational waves and LIGO] 

Weiss would prove them wrong. Now 83, he was a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology when Weber first started publishing his purported discoveries.

“I couldn’t for the life of me understand the thing he was doing,” he said in a Q&A for the university website. “That was my quandary at the time, and that’s when the invention was made.”

Weiss tried to think of the simplest way to explain to his students how gravitational waves might be detected, and came up with this: Build an immense, L-shaped tunnel with each leg an equal length and a mirror at the far ends, then install two lasers in the crook of the L. The beams of light should travel down the tunnels, bounce off the mirrors, and return to their origin at the same time. But if a gravitational wave was passing through, spacetime would be slightly distorted, and one light beam would arrive before the other. If you then measure that discrepancy, you can figure out the shape of the wave, then play it back as audio. Suddenly, you’re listening to a recording of the universe.

That idea would eventually become the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO), the pair of colossal facilities in Washington and Louisiana where the discovery announced Thursday was made.

But not without overcoming quite a few obstacles.

For one thing, even though gravitational waves are all around us, only the most profound events in the universe produce ripples dramatic enough to be measurable on Earth — and even those are very, very faint. For another, an instrument of the size and strength that Weiss desired would require a host of innovations that hadn’t even been created yet: state-of-the-art mirrors, advanced lasers, supremely powerful vacuums, a way to isolate the instruments from even the faintest outside interference that was better than anything that had existed before. The L tunnel would also have to be long — we’re talking miles here — in order for the misalignment of the light beams to be detectable. Building this instrument was not going to be easy, and it was not going to be cheap.

And there would need to be two of them. The principles of good scientific inquiry, which requires that results be duplicated, demanded it.

It took a few decades and a number of proposals, but in 1990 the National Science Foundation finally bit. Weiss and his colleagues could have $272 million for their research.

“It should never have been built,” Rich Isaacson, a program officer at the National Science Foundation at the time, told the New Yorker. “There was every reason to imagine [LIGO] was going to fail,” he also said.

But it didn’t. Twenty-one years and several upgrades after ground was broken on the first LIGO lab, the instruments finally found something on Sept. 14, 2015.

Like most scientific discoveries, this one started not with a “Eureka,” but a “Huh, that’s weird.”

That’s what Marco Drago, a soft-spoken post-doc sitting at a desk in Hanover, Germany, thought when he saw an email pop up in his inbox. It was from a computer program that sorts through data from LIGO to detect evidence of gravitational waves. Drago gets those messages almost daily, he told Science Magazine — anytime the program picks up an interesting-seeming signal.

This was a big one. Almost too big, considering that Sept. 14 was the very first day of official observations for the newly revamped LIGO instruments. Drago could only assume that the pronounced blip in his data was a “blind injection,” an artificial signal introduced to the system to keep researchers on their toes, make sure that they’re able to treat an apparently exciting development with the appropriate amount of scrutiny.

But the injection system wasn’t supposed to be running yet, since research had just started. After about an hour of seeking some other explanation, Drago sent an email to the whole LIGO collaboration, he told Science: Was there an injection today? No, said an email sent that afternoon. Something else must have caused it.

But no one had an explanation for the signal. Unless, of course, it was what they were looking for all along.
 
An aerial photo shows Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) Hanford laboratory detector site near Hanford, Washington in this undated photo released by Caltech/MIT/LIGO Laboratory on Feb. 8, 2016. (Caltech/MIT/LIGO Laboratory/Handout via Reuters)

Chad Hanna, an assistant professor of physics at Pennsylvania State University who was also part of the LIGO team, blanched as he read the successive emails about the weird signal. He and his colleagues had joked about their instruments detecting something on Day One, he wrote for  the Conversation, but no one imagined that it could really happen.

“My reaction was, ‘Wow!’” LIGO executive director David Reitze said Thursday, as he recalled seeing the data for the first time. “I couldn’t believe it.”

Yet, as the weeks wore on and after an exhaustive battery of tests — including an investigation to make sure that the signal wasn’t the product of some ill-conceived prank or hoax — all the other possible sources of the signal were rejected. Only one remained: Long ago and far from Earth, a pair of black holes began spiraling around one another, getting closer and closer, moving faster and faster, whirling the spacetime around them, until, suddenly, they collided. A billion years later, a ripple from that dramatic collision passed through the two LIGO facilities, first in Louisiana, then, after 7 milliseconds, in Washington.

The realization of what they’d found hit the LIGO collaborators differently. For some, it was a vindication — for themselves as well as the men who inspired them: “Einstein would be beaming,” Kip Thorne, a Cal-Tech astrophysicist and co-founder of the project with Weiss, said at the news conference Thursday.

After the briefing, he also credited Weber, the UMD professor: “It does validate Weber in a way that’s significant. He was the only person in that era who thought that this could be possible.”


Thorne told Scientific American that he’s feeling a sense of “profound satisfaction” about the discovery. “I knew today would come and it finally did,” he said.

For Weiss, who had invested half his life in the search for gravitational waves, there’s just an overpowering sense of relief.

“There’s a monkey that’s been sitting on my shoulder for 40 years, and he’s been nattering in my ear and saying, ‘Ehhh, how do you know this is really going to work? You’ve gotten a whole bunch of people involved. Suppose it never works right?'” he told MIT. “And suddenly, he’s jumped off.”

But the mood Thursday was mostly one of awe, and joy, and excitement to see what comes next.

Neil deGrasse Tyson, director of the Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History and celebrity astrophysicist, joined a gathering of Columbia University scientists who had been involved in the LIGO project. They cheered as they watched the Washington, D.C., news conference where Reitze announced the find.


“One hundred years feels like a lifetime, but over the course of scientific exploration it’s not that long,” Tyson told Scientific American  about the long search for gravitational waves. “I lay awake at night wondering what brilliant thoughts people have today that will take 100 years to reveal themselves.”

Fascinating photos of our solar system and beyond

View Photos

New discoveries about Jupiter’s Great Red Spot and the latest images of Pluto.

New discoveries about Jupiter’s Great Red Spot and the latest images of Pluto.

The collision of two black holes holes - a tremendously powerful event detected for the first time ever by the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) is seen in this still image from a computer simulation released on Feb. 11. Scientists have for the first time detected gravitational waves, ripples in space and time hypothesized by Albert Einstein a century ago, in a landmark discovery that opens a new window for studying the cosmos. Caltech/MIT/LIGO Laboratory/Reuters

Sources:Washington Post

North Korea Satellite & Rocket Launch Failed

DPRK confirms satellite failed to enter orbit

Pyongyang, April 13 (Xinhua) -- An earth observation satellite launched by the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) earlier Friday morning has failed to enter orbit, and scientists and technicians are now looking into the cause of the failure, the official KCNA news agency reported.

The Kwangmyongsong-3 satellite was launched at the Sohae Satellite Launching Station in Cholsan County, North Phyongan Province at 07:38 a.m. on Friday (2238 GMT Thursday), said the report.

"The earth observation satellite failed to enter its preset orbit.Scientists, technicians and experts are now looking into the cause of the failure," it said.

The DPRK's failed launch has aroused international concerns, with the United States, Japan and South Korea all condemning the move, which they viewed had breached relevant UN resolutions.

The DPRK has said that its launch is for peaceful purposes and would not harm the region and neighboring countries.

This still from an Analytical Graphics, Inc., video animation depicts North Korea's Unha-3 rocket and Kwangmyongsong-3 satellite in the last leg of a potential orbital launch in April 2012.
CREDIT: Analytical Graphics, Inc.View full size image
North Korea Rocket Launch Envisioned in Video Animation via @SPACEdotcom

North Korea has launched its long-range rocket but the US, Japan and South Korea say it failed shortly after take-off and fell into the sea. There has been no word yet from Pyongyang on the launch. 

North Korea says the aim of the rocket is to launch a satellite but critics say the launch constituted a disguised test of long-range missile technology banned under UN resolutions.

As the world watches and waits to see if North Korea will continue in its bid to launch a long-range rocket despite international warnings, a new video animation reveals just how the space test could occur.

The new video, released late Wednesday (April 11) by the analytical firm Analytical Graphics Inc., covers North Korea's planned Unha-3 rocket launch, showing the flight trajectory from a point just after liftoff through the separation of its satellite payload.


"AGI has used its software to produce a video demonstrating the launch and its possible path, tracking assets and landing zones," AGI officials wrote in a media alert.

North Korean space officials have said the Unha-3 rocket will launch a new Earth-observing satellite sometime between April 12 and April 16 to honor the 100th anniversary of the birth of Kim Il Sung, the founder of North Korea. Critics of the launch, which include the United States, Japan and South Korea, claim the launch is a cover for a missile test that violates United Nations Security Council resolutions. [Images: North Korea's Rocket and Missile Program]

According to AGI's video animation of the Unha-3 rocket launch, the three-stage booster will blast off from the new North Korean launch site near the northwest village of Tongchang-ri, which corresponds with official statements from North Korea and Western observers. The rocket will then head in a southerly direction and drop its first stage in the Yellow Sea well to the west of South Korea, where officials have said they would shoot down any parts of the Unha-3 territory that threatened to fall on South Korean territory.

The next stage of the Unha-3 rocket would likely fall just to the east of the Philippines after the booster's third stage and payload — the Earth-monitoring satellite Kwangmyongsong-3 — separates and heads towards orbit, the AGI animation shows.

If the Kwangmyongsong-3 satellite reaches its intended polar orbit, its trajectory would carry it over a major stretch of Australia after the spacecraft separates from the Unha-3 rocket, according to the AGI depiction.

North Korea's Unha-3 rocket appears to be a liquid-fueled rocket that stands about 100 feet (30 meters) tall. The Kwangmyongsong-3 satellite, meanwhile, is a boxy, solar-powered spacecraft, according to videos and images in media reports, as well as the AGI video.

Exactly which day of the current window North Korea will launch the Unha-3 rocket is not yet certain, though the country's space organization did begin fueling the rocket for liftoff on Wednesday, suggesting a potential launch attempt in upcoming days, according to press reports.
Follow SPACE.com for the latest in space science and exploration news on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.

Newscribe : get free news in real time

Milky Way home to billions of planets

Tweet  

Milky Way teeming with 'billions' of planets: Study

New methods have allowed the Kepler space telescope to discover billions more planets in the galaxy.

WASHINGTON: The Milky Way is home to far more planets than previously thought, boosting the odds that at least one of them may harbour life, according to a study released on Wednesday.

Not long ago, astronomers counted the number of "exoplanets" detected outside our own solar system in the teens, then in the hundreds. Today the tally stands at just over 700.

But the new study, published in Nature, provides evidence that there are more planets than stars in our own stellar neighbourhood.

"We used to think that Earth might be unique in our galaxy," said Daniel Kubas, a professor at the Institute of Astrophysics in Paris, and co-leader of the study.

 
"Now it seems that there are literally billions of planets with masses similar to Earth orbiting stars in the Milky Way."

Two methods have dominated the hunt over the past two decades for exoplanets too distant and feint to perceive directly.

One measures the effect of a planet's gravitational pull on its host star, while the other detects a slight dimming of the star as the orbiting planet passes in front of it.

Both of these techniques are better at finding planets that are massive in size, close to their stars, or both, leaving large "blind spots".

An international team of astronomers led by Kubas and colleague Arnaud Cassan used a different method called gravitational microlensing, which looks at how the combined gravitational fields of a host star and the planet itself act like a lens, magnifying the light of another star in the background.

If the star that acts as a lens has a planet, the orbiting sphere will appear to slightly brighten the background star.

One advantage of microlensing compared to other methods is that it can detect smaller planets closer in size to our own, and further from their hot-burning stars.

The survey picked up on planets between 75 million and 1.5 billion kilometres from their stars -- a range equivalent in the Solar System to Venus at one end and Saturn at the other -- and with masses at least five times greater than Earth.

Over six years, the team surveyed millions of stars with a round-the-world network of telescopes located in the southern hemisphere, from Australia to South Africa to Chile.

Besides finding three new exoplanets themselves -- no minor feat -- they calculated that there are, on average, 1.6 planets in the Milky Way for every star, Cassan told AFP.

Whether this may be true in other galaxies is unknown.

"Remarkably, these data show that planets are more common than stars in our galaxy -- they are the rule rather than the exception," Cassan said. "We also found lighter planets ... would be more common than heavier ones."

One in six of the stars studied was calculated to host a planet similar in mass to Jupiter, half had planets closer in mass to Neptune, and nearly two-thirds had so-called super-Earths up to 10 times the mass of the rock we call home.

Another study published the same day in Nature, meanwhile, showed that planets simultaneously orbiting two stars -- known as circumbinary planet systems -- are also far more common that once supposed.

There are probably millions of planets with two suns, concluded the study, led by William Welsh of San Diego State University in California.