Part of the US National Geospatial Intelligence Agency NextView program, the SUV-sized GeoEye-1 launched yesterday in a Delta II 7326 rocket from the Vandenberg Air Force Base in California—without exploding. Hours later, GeoEye's ground station in Norway confirmed that the rocket had delivered its payload right on target. The satellite was alive, fully armed and operational on its 423-mile orbit above the Earth.

Built by General Dynamics, the GeoEye-1 is equipped with a next-generation camera made by ITT. This camera can easily distinguish objects 16 inches long, with 11-bits per pixel color. In other words: this thing can see the color of your shorts. It will be up there, looking at your pants every single day, the time it takes for it to complete one orbit. And it will keep doing that for more than ten years, its expected life.

Of course, there's nothing new here until you notice the huge Google logo on the rocket, signaling the fact that Sergei and Larry own the exclusive rights to the GeoEye-1 images. Yes, no other company will be able to access this information, only Google. And they will be there, available for the public in Google Maps and Google Earth.

But don't fret, tin-foil hatters, because Google won't be able to access the highest resolution images because of US government regulations. Sure, the other guys will, but then again, their big bad satellites can see closer than this one. Still, you can rest safe that your underpants will be safe from public scrutiny. For now. Unless you do like me and keep flashing them around. [GeoEye, Wikipedia, National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency via Cnet]

While it may seem weird that iRobot would work on such an ambitious project, it is important to point out that this is not the first time the company has been involved with a military device, and the type of robots they design make them as good a candidate as any. Whether they can actually pull it off or not remains to be seen, but they will have a brain trust at Harvard and MIT backing them up—so you never know. [Danger Room]

About 50 percent of all trackable objects are due to in-orbit explosion events (about 200) or collision events (less than 10).

Yes, we knew that there was a lot of crap out there, but not to this extent. According to the ESA, this is really bad news and urgent measures are needed. Explosions in space are not disastrous on their own, but because of the aftermath. One example: a geostationary satellite travels at 6,213 miles per hour. If it explodes, all the debris stays near the orbit, forming a cloud around the Earth within a few days, as this simulation shows:

The ESA is urging to introduce measures to mitigate this problem, like the complete depletion of fuel in rocket stages (like some Delta launchers already do following NASA's Procedural Requirements for Limiting Orbital Debris) or returning objects to Earth once their mission is complete (perhaps to destroy them on re-entry,) just like SES Americom is going to do with their brand-new AMC-14. This satellite failed to reach its projected altitude and now has to be splashed into the sea because of a dispute with Boeing, which won't let SES Americom use their patented recovery method to put the satellite into the right geostationary orbit.

The impact of these measures could be huge, as reflected by this simulation of how things could look by the year 2112, with and without taking action:

While the idea of bringing back used stages and satellites back to Earth may seem too expensive, in the long run it's clear that leaving all this trash up there is going to have huge consequences to the development of space exploration and colonization. Those concepts may still seem science fiction for many, but as these simulations show, the current and future problem is very real, and could be extremely dangerous.

This is how it looks when orbital debris hits a spaceship, simulated in a laboratory.

[ESA Gallery, Space debris: assessing the risk, NASA, Wikipedia — via Space Travel and Slashdot]

The most notable is the ATV's automatic rendezvous and docking technology - the ship can find its own way to the station and attach itself without any human intervention.

Tomorrow's launch will be carried off by an Ariane 5 rocket, and the double-decker-bus-sized ATV will be the heaviest payload ever carried by one. The maneuver will be trickier than usual, with the upper stage of the rocket igniting twice, to get it up there and then again to boost it safely over the Pacific Ocean. [BBC News]

Kizuna is expected to go live in July following a setup process once it is in position, but a speed boost is not the only aim of the game. Having a satellite in space means natural disasters on Earth are not going to have any ramifications on the country's connectivity, which can be imperative in disaster zones. If all should go well, expect such an infrastructure to hit the mainstream. Does that mean everyone will have a 1.2Gbps connection? Will outages become a thing of the past? Does Simba eventually become a good leader? The answers come in July, when the service rolls out. [JAXA via Yahoo News; AP]

Frankly, it looks better than anything we have ever seen. It looks better than the iPhone. It looks better than a Vertu. Hell, it even looks better than a lovechild that resulted due to an illicit relationship between an iPhone and a Vertu, which subsequently underwent plastic surgery to work out any gold-clad imperfections. We want. [Swongled]

The revision will cut the number of currently Energy Star eligible machines from around 90% to 25%, so performers will be distinguished. The company plans for all of its X-, T-, and R-series machines to get the new Energy Star sticker, as well as any Santa Rosa machine Lenovo makes. Any of its Santa Rosa systems can qualify after a free, simple download, Lenovo says. It looks like Lenovo is taking the revision seriously, which other companies would do well to imitate. [Crave]

Current liquid mirrors are made of mercury that rotate in gravity field. They are cheaper than traditional mirrors but they can't work in the moon. First, because it freezes at -38º C while the moon goes down to 147º C. But then, this doesn't even matter because "the density of mercury means it's just too heavy to get enough of it there anyway," according to Ken Seddon, a chemistry expert at Queen's University in Belfast, who is also the one that refers to the components of Bob as "ugly ions."

The new material freezes at -98 º C and is lighter. Seddon wants to lower the freeze point 50 degrees and "improve the infrared reflectivity" before the NASA and the Canadian Space Agency can get their hands on it for the lunar telescope, which is supposed to be established by 2018. –Jesus Diaz

Liquid mirror could be used for Moon-based telescope [New Scientist]

Squeeze Bots [New Scientist]

No commercial plans have been announced thus far as this is more of a proof of concept more than anything else. Interesting development and good to see the ESA devoting resources to improve the signal quality of breakfast radio. Come back when you've put a man on the moon. – Nicholas Deleon

Multimedia car radio of the future [ESA via Newlaunches.com]

I-Garment [ESA Telecommunications]

Following-up on Monday's Gizmodo Ink, The National Forest Service in Utah is testing a fleet of robotic fire-fighting planes. "Some of the aircrafts can be carried in a backpack, unfolded, then dispatched day or night to spy on a fire." They are also equipped with cameras and infrared night vision (the benefit of flying by night is that these bots would not interfere with the manned planes that drop fire retardant). The planes communicate with one another and beam back real-time monitoring of the fire's spread.

These planes have a wingspan of 5 feet, weigh only 15 pounds, and can fly for up to six hours. An experiment with larger drones will begin next spring in California.
Fold-Up Robot Planes Could Help Fight Fires [KSL.com]
Fighting Wildfires with Robotic Planes [Roland Piquepaille's Technology Trends]
MLB BAT UAV [MLB Company]

A team of scientists from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, Switzerland have successfully tested a microscopic robot that could be injected into the human body with a syringe. Unlike other micro-surgical robotic creations, this one is not battery or electric cable powered. Instead, the bot is guided by an external magnetic field. The minimally invasive robot, which is about four hair-widths long, was successfully demonstrated using a watery maze but would eventually be targeted to blood vessels in the heart, eyes and ears.

"The application we're actively considering is eye surgery in which these devices are guided inside the eye toward the retina by a surgeon to inject drugs in retinal veins that are about the size of a human hair," said team leader Brad Nelson, professor of robotics and intelligent systems.

The folks who brought you the Weird-72 are back with a sequel: The Weird-7. This walking, googley-eyed, 14-inch high dipping bird DIY robot kit sells for $350 US. Functionality? No idea.
The Weird-7 DIY Robot Kit [Probotics]

The European Space Agency has scrapped the mission plan from the team behind Beagle 2 and is now pinning its Mars aspirations on a single rover robot. The craft is scheduled to blast off in June 2011, and reach Mars in June 2013.
Europe Ponders On Mars Robot [Sofia News Agency]