Spaced Out :: 12 2011

Nice article over at the BBC on new US Army drones. Helicopter based for VTOL, they sport a 1.8GP (yes, thats gigapixel) video camera capable of real time video feed at 10 frames per second, allowing multiple target tracking up to altitudes of 6000m. Nice.

Well just about…. Beidou is the Chinese GPS equivalent and is now “operational”. Well its got 10 operational satellites and these will provide coverage for China and near-surrounds. Expect global coverage by 2020. Whilst perhaps uptake won’t be quick, it is designed to be inter-operable and expect to see handsets starting to take advantage of US, Russian, European and Chinese satellites for positioning. An exciting marketplace at the moment….

Really nice set of images over at the BBC highlighting aspects of 2011 using satellite imagery. Shame there isn’t more detail on the sensor etc, but a powerful reminder of events.

I’ve moaned before about the price of Kindle books and that they are often pennies cheaper than the printed version…. and you can’t lend them! Anyway, part of the reason is that VAT is charged on ebooks, but not on paper books. As PCPro explain, a cut in VAT on ebooks in Luxembourg may well see some sort of parity across Europe and we deserved dropped in prices.

Nice articles by Jonathon Amos on the release of first imagery by Pleiades and the critical role played by British CCD manufacturer e2v. Some sample imagery at Astrium for the moment.