Hanneke Weitering

Seattle-based Interlune has struck a deal to send a helium-hunting camera to the moon aboard Astrolab's FLIP rover, which is due for launch as soon as this year. It'll be the first off-Earth step in Interlune's plan to deliver lunar helium-3 to paying customers. https://lnkd.in/gZX5KADV

38

✈ Back to the Future: JSX Bets Big on Turboprops ✈ After nearly disappearing from U.S. skies, large turboprops are making a comeback — and JSX is leading the charge. In my latest story for Aviation Week & Space Technology, I explore JSX’s bold decision to add ATR 42-600s to its fleet — a move that could unlock over 1,000 new airports and create a new era of connectivity for smaller communities. As JSX Chief Commercial Officer David Drabinsky told me: “It allows us to serve airports that the Embraer jets just do not, and that will allow us to expand into more communities, whether they’re underserved or high-end leisure destinations. We really see it as being a complementary service to the jets that we currently are flying today.” JSX is keeping its ERJ 135/145 fleet — growing to 52 jets this year — while layering turboprops on top to test new markets, boost frequencies, and bring its private-aviation-style experience to airports the big carriers have long ignored. Read the story here: https://lnkd.in/eVEW4C_H

26

1 Comment

The Case for Bridge Editors Many people seem confused about the gene-editing tool released by Arc Institute. How does it work and why does it matter? Fair questions. The preprint is not easy to understand, and the reasons for inventing a new gene-editing tool are not obvious... So I tried to answer both questions in my latest blog post. You may disagree with my points, but I'm really just trying to lay out the argument so we can all discuss their merits on a more level field. Link here: https://lnkd.in/e3fEQDdQ

21

A Seattle-area startup called Starfish Space has had a second Otter Pup spacecraft sent into orbit to demonstrate its ability to dock with another satellite, two years after the first attempt fell short of the goal. https://lnkd.in/ggbN_6tA

91

Two large structures that once were key to NASA's successes in orbit and at the moon will soon fall back to "earth" as they are toppled at the agency's Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama. The tall-as-a-Saturn-V-rocket Dynamic Test Stand and the half-as-high Propulsion and Structural Test Facility are no longer in use and no longer safe. In their prime, they supported testing of NASA's moon-bound rocket stages and the space shuttle. Read more at collectSPACE: https://lnkd.in/gt5Ektfj

76

7 Comments

Researchers from UC San Diego and University of Maryland pointed a satellite dish at the sky for three years and monitored what unencrypted data it picked up. The results were shocking: They obtained thousands of T-Mobile users' phone calls and texts, military and law enforcement secrets, corporate and critical infrastructure communications. Their study, out today, reveals that roughly half of geostationary satellite communications they monitored were unencrypted. A flood of secrets pouring down from space, available to anyone with an $800 receiver setup. (And there's no doubt spy agencies have been listening, too.) “It just completely shocked us. There are some really critical pieces of our infrastructure relying on this satellite ecosystem, and our suspicion was that it would all be encrypted,” says Aaron Schulman, a UCSD professor who co-led the research. “And just time and time again, every time we found something new, it wasn't.” The group’s paper, which they’re presenting this week at an Association for Computing Machinery conference in Taiwan, is titled “Don’t Look Up”—a reference to the 2021 film of that title but also a phrase the researchers say describes the apparent cybersecurity strategy of the global satellite communications system. “They assumed that no one was ever going to check and scan all these satellites and see what was out there. That was their method of security,” Schulman says. “They just really didn't think anyone would look up.” Read our full story here: https://lnkd.in/eD8pviXV

1,385

72 Comments

🚀 AI-driven mapping captures daily global land changes 🌍 Land cover is constantly shifting under climate pressures and human activities. Yet most satellite products still miss rapid events—from sudden snow cover to floods and crop rotations. A new study in Journal of Remote Sensing (https://lnkd.in/g8qExbaf) introduces FROM-GLC Plus 3.0, a multimodal framework that fuses satellite imagery, near-surface cameras, and advanced AI models—including the Segment Anything Model (SAM)—to deliver daily, parcel-level global land change maps. 🔹 Key breakthroughs: • Overcomes cloud interference and revisit gaps by integrating dense near-surface camera data. • Achieves 70.5% accuracy, surpassing WorldCover and Dynamic World. • Captures abrupt transitions like snow accumulation in North America and wetland expansion in Europe. • Provides field-level insights into crop rotations and land use with reduced noise and sharper boundaries. 🔹 Why it matters: • Agriculture: monitor crop health, rotations, and water stress • Disaster response: enable early warning for floods and droughts • Conservation: track biodiversity habitats and degradation in real time • Climate resilience: build timely environmental intelligence for policy and planning Congratulations to Le Yu, Zhenrong Du, Xiyu Li, Jiatong Gu, Xinyue Li, Liheng Zhong, Hui Wu, Qiang Zhao, Xiaorui Ma, Yuanzheng Yang, and the many co-authors from Tsinghua University and collaborating institutions worldwide for pushing the frontier of land monitoring. #LandCover #RemoteSensing #EarthObservation #AIforEarth #ClimateResilience #EnvironmentalMonitoring #SustainableDevelopment

22