This Subaru was spotted on the 405N freeway in California by Gizmodo reader "the duck," sporting all manner of dishes, antennae and gear strapped to its roof. He wants to know what's going on with this contraption, and so do I.

Radio? Weather station? Google StreetView for the hobbyist sect? Female repellent? You tell me.

Editor's Note: I'm loving all the ham radio email I'm receiving today. You guys are great, and I'm basically learning something cool and new with each one. Thanks! - j.l.

[Wired Science and Big Picture]

Indeed, Earth and space-based telescopes couldn't see it at the time, but there was, in fact, a dusty plume that got kicked up by the kamikaze LCROSS probe. Success!

That said, there's still no word on whether or not water or aliens or cheese were present in the plume. Perhaps it was a combination of all three, and that's the reason for NASA's silence thus far (more seriously, NASA says results by "mid-November").

Next time, just to be sure, I think NASA should shoot something a bit bigger into the Moon for better results. Something like, say, Richard Heene's ego. [New Scientist]

It's true. We (being astronomers and people far smarter than I) really don't know. But we do know where this mysterious event took place: One billion kilometers away, in Saturn's F ring.

The pic was snapped by a school bus sized gadget we call Cassini. It's been orbiting Saturn since 2004, and the wealth of data, photos and knowledge beamed back to us in that timeframe is nothing short of amazing.

But this latest snapshot is an enigma. Something punched through the F ring, violently spewing a plume of dust, ice and rock out into the nothingness—but what?

Even more mysterious is the bright spot left in the object's wake. Icy crystals laid bare for the Sun's rays? A new material? A cosmic mooning from some alien prankster? Possibly, but whatever it is, it's yet another reminder of how violent and unexpected space can be.

Isn't that right, Jupiter? [Bad Astronomy]

Yes, when mapping experts spotted up the unmistakable reddish-brown smears of penguin poop—penguano?—on the antarctic ice, the jig was up for a huge colony of emperor penguins that would've otherwise remained hidden for years to come.

Being in the limelight isn't all that bad. In this case, the shifting poo tracks will be studied to see how the penguins are responding to climate change. [AdelaideNow]

The Air Force recently held a Twitter news conference to a—wait, what?

Force Space Command's subject-matter-expert on the Global Positioning System (GPS) program will Twitter on the command's site, www.twitter.com/AFSpace, in response to the recent Government Accountability Office report on the GPS program.

Apparently, the F-22 Raptor was only phased out to free up some funds to buy everyone Twitterific licenses. Anyway.

The conference was intended to assuage the people's fears of haywire satnavs and inconsistence Loopt performance. This was apparent from the start:

The issue is under control. We are working hard to get out the word. The issue is not whether GPS will stop working. There's only a small risk we will not continue to exceed our performance standard. Agree w/ GAO thr's a potential risk, but GPS isn't falling out of the sky—we have plans 2 mitigate risk & prevent a gap.

But that's not terribly specific, and they more-or-less said that they agree with the previous report. Well, not totally:

We have 30+ satellites on orbit now. We'll launch another in Aug 09, and again early 10. Going below 24 won't happen.

Dropping below 24 satellites was the central concern of the initial report, and the subject of all its various probability calculations: when reporters talk about the 90% chance of GPS degradation by 2017, they were actually referring to the chances of the satellite constellation dipping below 24.

So the Air Force is pretty sure they can prevent that, now that they know. That's reassuring, but also exactly what they kind of have to say, being that GPS is a critical tool not just for gadget enthusiasts, but for militaries and corporations around the world. [PC World via TechRadar]

The Pacific Gas and Electric Company, servicing northern California, has signed a contract with Californian-by-way-of-Armenia company Solaren for the latter to provide 200MW of energy with their space panels. The solar panels, possibly as large as a square kilometer, absorb solar energy and beam it back to Earth by converting it to radio waves, which will then be converted back to energy and fed into the power grid. It's a nice idea, since solar panels will be far more efficient without clouds and other junk to get in the way of the sun's rays, but the tech's original purpose was something quite different.

Satellites armed with solar panels were originally thought to have possible use in the control of weather systems. Yeah, you read that right. Space-controlled weather. The beams would be used to change the temperature or wind patterns of weather formations, thus lessening, or strengthening, natural events like hurricanes and rainstorms. This could be used to create a lovely microclimate for a wealthy city, or to rain down God's own fury onto one's enemies. Eep.

Solaren is confident in their solar energy strategy and hopes to start beaming down some juice within 7 years. They also insist that the radio waves will not be harmful to people, animals, crops, or even airplanes that pass through them, although we really just have to take their word for it at this point. Who knew green energy and super-villainy would mix so well? [The Guardian via BLDGBLOG]

Much of this country's geography is remote, and beyond the reach of cellphone coverage, making American satellites an ideal, if illegal, communications option. The problem goes back more than a decade, to the mid-1990s, when Brazilian radio technicians discovered they could jump on the UHF frequencies dedicated to satellites in the Navy's Fleet Satellite Communication system, or FLTSATCOM. They've been at it ever since.

In fact, everyone from truck drivers to drug dealers to soccer fans have hijacked the system to increase the range of their communications or coordinate operations. Because the practice is so widespread, eradicating it on the ground is probably not going to have a major impact. However, it does illustrate the woeful obsolescence of military satellite technology. [Wired]

According to the Wall Street Journal, the problem with debris eradication is that there's no money in it. Anybody can cough up a billion or so to launch a telecom satellite, but anyone who wants NASA or the ESA to start cleaning up has to come up with a plan that costs a lot less.

There's no money in it probably because nothing really bad has happened yet. According to that video down below, shuttle pilots have had near misses 12 times with pieces and parts that could've played serious havoc. Like so many busy intersections that are missing stop lights, the problem may require a fatal collision before money is made available. Though nobody died, the recent mid-air collision of US and Russian satellites was at least some kind of wake-up call.

In the meantime, here are some low-budget proposals:

1. Jonathan Campbell at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, AL says the answer is lasers, what the WSJ says would be "existing low-power lasers in quick pulses" to "singe the surface of an object in space" to "help point it downward." Campbell calls this Project Orion, as in the great hunter in the sky, but the Orion lasers would be based on land. (Note to self: Don't ever fly over Orion lasers.)

2. Jim Hollopeter, who works for Satellite Communications in Austin, TX, likes water cannons mounted to rockets, or as the Journal says, "aging rockets loaded with water to spray orbiting junk" thereby gradually pushing it towards the atmostphere to burn up, along with the spent rocket itself. "The water would turn to steam," says the Journal.

3. Heiner Klinkrad, head of ESA's Space Debris Office in Darmstadt, Germany, thinks we should give a hoot and just not litter. Rockets should not drop bolts and straps when they separate, and satellites should commit space hara-kiri, by steering themselves toward the atmosphere when their job is done. He's also looking into garbage collection strategies.

What definitely won't work:
• Big magnets - There's no iron in space debris.
• Powerful lasers - Would just make more space junk.
• Strong Nets - Cuz you're in space, not in some meadow chasing butterflies.

Read the full article at the WSJ for more good stuff, or watch their video here:

[WSJ]

"Future launches will have to be adjusted with regard to the fact that the debris [from the collision] has spread over an 800-km area and will gather at a common orbit in 5-6 years," said Alexander Stepanov, director of the Pulkovo Observatory in St. Petersburg.

According to NASA this massive cloud of human failure joins the 19,000 other objects that currently pollute the low and high orbit space around the planet. As we reported last week, the Hubble Space Telescope is already in danger.

On a related note, anyone who criticized the Pixar movie Wall-E for "liberal bias" or for "unfairly" depicting future humans as slovenly creatures that polluted Earth and space to the point where it was uninhabitable is a doofus. And so ends my personal rant for the day. [Space Fellowship]

According to Flight Global, The Government wants to develop a rocket, dubbed "LauncherOne," to sit on the back of WhiteKnightTwo and when the craft reaches the proper altitude, lauch off on its own to begin orbit. The microsatellites would be under 200kg in weight, though it's unclear exactly what the satellites will do. But with all these add-ons, WhiteKnightTwo is starting to remind me of The Centurions or something. [Flight Global via The Register]

The collision has sent more than 600 pieces of debris whizzing around the Earth at 17,500 mph. At those speeds, shards can take out a spacecraft (and you don't even want to think about what it could do to astronauts on a spacewalk). NASA has calculated the chance of a catastrophic impact at around 1 in 185—just below their 1 in 200 threshold. A decision on whether or not to progress with the Hubble repair mission in May is expected to come down within the next week or two. [Discovery via Wired]

According to the Economist, the Japanese satellite, Ibuki, will circle the Earth every 100 minutes, collecting data from 56,000 points around the world at 667km above the surface. For detection methods, it uses a spectrometer to detect carbon dioxide and methane levels through the sun, and can detect changes down to one part per million. Ibuki also uses a detector which reads clouds and aerosols for radiation levels.

The American satellite, the Orbiting Carbon Observatory, will circle the Earth ever 99 minutes (take THAT, Japan!), and fly at an altitude of 724km. OCO will use three spectrometers to measure carbon dioxide and oxygen levels, and report back with concentration maps every 16 days.

The goal with these satellites is two fold: first, it will hopefully help figure out what happens to CO2 after it is produced. Scientists think there is a large "sink" of unaccounted-for greenhouse gases some where on the planet, but there's no definitive proof of where that might be. Secondly, they want to figure out the effect that natural CO2 producers, such as rain forests and forest fires, have on the planet. Though they can measure man-made CO2 levels using more accurate ground sensors, figuring out what role the natural world plays in all this has been difficult. Maybe this will answer the question. [Economist]

"We knew this was going to happen eventually," Johnson Space Center orbital debris scientist Mark Matney told reporters, in what I imagine was the most Onion-esque quote from a NASA scientist this year.

One of the crafts was a 1,235-lb Iridium communications satellite sent up in 1997, and the other was a 1-ton Russian satellite launched in 1993 that was presumed to be nonfunctioning—and out of control. NASA is pinning the blame on the Russians.

They still don't know how many pieces of debris were generated from this event, nor were they clear on how it would impact the ISS that's floating at about half that orbital height. There's a shuttle mission scheduled for Feb. 22, which may be delayed.

Previous collisions have involved discarded pieces and parts, apparently. This is the first time that two whole satellites have pulled off a no-loser chicken tourney. [AP]

AP brings us Iran's state television footage:

Named Omid, or hope, the satellite weighs around 60 pounds and is primarily a "data-processing satellite" according to IRNA, the state news agency. Last summer, Iran said they successfully put a dummy satellite in space, but this appears to be the first time a working piece of hardware was put into orbit.

As we all know, space programs aren't all for planting flags in far-off rocks in the name of fellowship, exploration and the triumph of the human spirit—they're primarily for figuring out how to toss warheads at your far-flung enemies around the world. The differences between a rocket and an intercontinental ballistic missile are very few, and that's clearly one of the many messages Iran is hoping to send home with this launch.

The NYTimes is quoting David Washington, a proliferation expert at the Institute for Science and International Security, who says the Safir 2 rockets do not pose a serious threat:

“It’s not a very capable missile. The payload and diameter aren’t that great,” he said. “It doesn’t say much, if anything, about their ability to deliver a nuclear weapon. But part of the concern here is that Iran is continuing its steady drip-drip-drip toward a nuclear weapons capability.”

White house spokesman Robert Gibbs said the US will use "all elements of our national power" to deal with any potential threat posed by these new developments. [NYTimes, Breitbart]

We should note that the Pentagon admonition is only the first time the agency has publicly commented on satellite-on-satellite spying. It's probably been done, and done a lot, for a while now.

The satellites in question for this story, called MiTEx micro-satellites, are the direct result of work done at the DARPA project, whose internet-, gadget- and weapon-creating ways need no introduction here.

And they weren't checking out foreign satellites, at least not yet. In this case, two MiTEx micro-satellites were evaluating the failed U.S. 5,000lb. DSP 23 missile tracking satellite, which had launched successfully in November 2007, but failed soon after reaching a geostationary orbit. Its orbit has slowly degraded since then, endangering other geostationary satellites that share the space.

The controversy arrives when you start thinking about what's happening up there, right now. If a satellite can maneuver to within striking distance of another satellite, and can dance around it without crashing, what's stopping it from actually striking it some day?

Nothing really, which is why the UN is raising a stink. "I am positive other nations, particularly China, will find this development suspicious," said Theresa Hitchens, the incoming director of the UN Institute for Disarmament Research in Geneva. "And the US behavior regarding the program is hypocritical, given that Washington is always chastising Beijing for its lack of transparency regarding its space programs and intentions."

Regardless, the fact remains that the U.S. has a class of micro-satellite in orbit today that can spy on, track, maneuver around and eventually destroy other satellites. Just leave the Sirius XM ones alone, ok? I'm sorry, honestly, but I'm one of the few people who actually enjoys having the pricing plans changed on a whim while channels disappear and reappear at random.

UPDATE: We have spoken with Theresa Hitchens regarding an inaccurate quote attributed to her in this post. The quote attributed to her was incorrectly applied, and has been redacted due to its inaccuracy (above). The quote was given to Wired BEFORE she assumed the attributed role at the UN, and did not in any way mean she was speaking for the UN, or even for the UNIDIR, a think tank where Hitchens worked before arriving at the UN. We apologize to Ms. Hitchens for the error. — J.L.

[New Scientist]

And heavy. To get the promised 20 channels of satellite TV programming, users will have to install a 3lb., 11.3-by-10.3-by-4.3-inch antenna on their roof that's "not particularly noticeable," says AT&T. They've obviously never driven off to work with a laptop on the roof, which is what this sounds like. Believe me, people notice this kind of thing, especially when it falls off in the middle of the freeway.

While the number of channels appears to be set in stone, the full lineup is unknown. So far, the confirmed family-friendly focused channels include the Disney Channel, Disney XD, Discovery Kids, Animal Planet, Nickelodeon, Cartoon Network Mobile, USA, Comedy Central, MSNBC, CNN Mobile Live, and CNBC. Twenty satellite radio stations are also included in the package, which costs $1300 up front for the system, and $28 a month for the service.

Service cut-outs that occur when similar services go under a bridge or into a tunnel, like my ancient 4-year-old Sirius XM radio receiver, will be addressed—allegedly—by AT&T's proprietary "breakthrough buffering technology."

Additionally, there was no word on the kind of insurance claim one should file when the satellite receiver caves in your roof, but we'll keep an eye out for an update. [CruiseCast via PC World]

Smaller, multiple satellite missions are economical and provide redundancy. Instead of launching one big, heavy satellite, launching lots of little is easier. They can orbit Earth in tandem, each doing their own small part of the overall mission. If a solar flare zaps one satellite—no problem. The rest can close ranks and carry on. Launch costs are reduced, too, because tiny satellites can hitch a ride inside larger payloads, getting to space almost free of charge.

The idea sounds great, but I can't help but want to see numbers painted all over these things. [Universe Today via io9]