A future with gadgets made of asteroid-mined minerals and Google’s bosses’ plan for space domination

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  • April 22, 2012 at 3:36 pm

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Artist's impression of Hayabusa space probe over asteroid Itokawa

What do Google’s Larry Page and Eric Schmidt, director James Cameron, Microsoft alumnus Charles Simonyi, billionaire Ross Perot Jr. and X Prize founder Peter Diamandis have in common? Apparently an aspiration in mining asteroids, and making even more money of course.

After conquering the world-wide web, your phone and your smartphone, the Google duo has outer space ambitions and in their plan they will be joined, among others, by the above named billionaires and visionaries and a few former NASA employees.

The group of investors have formed a new company, named Planetary Resources that will be unveiled this coming Tuesday by Peter Diamandis and former NASA Mars mission manager Chris Lewicki. Planetary resources said in a short press release:
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NASA Suomi NPP satellite takes some awesome pictures of our lovely planet

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  • January 25, 2012 at 2:57 pm

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NASA 64-megapixel photo of the earth

NASA’s Suomi NPP (which stands for National Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System Preparatory Project) Earth-observing satellite was launched into orbit in October 2011. As the name suggests, the satellite is tasked with onlooking upon humanity’s home planet. It’s part of a project with which NASA will be collecting data to increase our understanding on long-term climate change and improve weather forecasts.

A key instrument on the satellite it the Visible/Infrared Imager Radiometer Suite or VIIRS and it’s with that instrument that this amazing 64-megapixel (8,000 x 8,000 resolution) image of the Earth was taken.
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