The MQ-1 Predator.
(Credit: U.S. Air Force)Iraqi insurgents have reportedly intercepted live video feeds from the U.S. military's Predator drones using a $25.95 Windows application that allows them to track the pilotless aircraft undetected.
Hackers working with Iraqi militants were able to determine which areas of the country were under surveillance by the U.S. military, The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday, adding that video feeds from drones in Afghanistan also appear to have been compromised.
Meanwhile, a senior Air Force officer said Wednesday that a wave of new surveillance aircraft, both manned and unmanned, were being deployed to Afghanistan to bolster "eyes in the sky" protection for the influx of American troops ordered by President Obama.
This apparent security breach, which had been known in military and intelligence circles to be possible, arose because the Predator unmanned aerial vehicles do not use encryption in the final link to their operators on the ground.
Read more of "U.S. was Warned of Predator Drone Hacking" at CBSNews.com.
Earlier this week I had the very awesome opportunity to attend the first flight of the Boeing 787 Dreamliner in Seattle. This is usually Daniel Terdiman's beat, but knowing that I'm a huge airline geek, CNET let me take a break from cell phones to cover the first flight. Daniel wrapped up the event with blogs and great photos of the take-off and landing--I helped by shooting the take-off video--but I also had the opportunity to visit the Dreamliner Gallery.
The gallery, which is located in Everett, Wash., just near Paine Field where the 787 was built and took off, offers potential customers a chance to check out the Dreamliner's interior features. A series of rooms display various seating arrangements, galleys, lavatories, and crew rest areas. You also can view mockups of the cockpit and a section of the passenger cabin. So for your own glimpse into the Dreamliner Gallery, check out the slideshow below.
A certain American Airlines 757 pilot gave me and a couple of hundred others a very hard landing this week.
So my jaw finally began to cease chattering when I discovered NASA is beginning to work on dropping flying things from the sky to see if perhaps the impact can be absorbed.
NASA's Web site told me that it dropped a helicopter from 35 feet in order to see whether an expandable honeycomb cushion that NASA calls a "deployable energy absorber" could minimize damage to life, limb, and even nervous systems.
The MD-500's landing gear did bend a little, NASA said, but the agency seemed most pleased that "four crash test dummies along for the ride appeared only a little worse for the wear."
Perhaps you will be most heartened by the words of Karen Jackson, an aerospace engineer who was one of the brains behind the test, which was conducted at NASA's Langley Research Center: "I'd like to think the research we're doing is going to end up in airframes and will potentially save lives."
I know we're only talking about helicopters right now. But given that commercial pilots do enjoy the occasional drink and have even drifted past Minneapolis and headed out to Wisconsin, surely one can dream that one day someone will create an extraordinary cushion for your average 757.
MOJAVE, Calif.--Virgin Galactic founder Richard Branson and legendary aircraft designer Burt Rutan, whose SpaceShipOne took the $10 million Ansari X Prize in 2004, unveiled the VSS Enterprise Monday, a sleek commercial rocket plane that represents the ultimate thrill ride for well-heeled space tourists and amateur astronauts.
Seating six passengers and two pilots, Virgin Space Ship Enterprise--also known as SpaceShipTwo--will begin test flights next year with commercial launchings carrying paying customers starting after government regulatory requirements are met. More than 300 people have already put down deposits or paid the full $200,000 cost of a ticket for future sub-orbital up-and-down flights aboard the new spacecraft.
California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Virgin founder Richard Branson, right, inspect a model of SpaceShipTwo Monday before the craft's roll-out. Designer Burt Rutan looks on from the left.
(Credit: William Harwood)Most of those ticket holders, along with California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, were on hand for the SpaceShipTwo unveiling Monday at Mojave airport, braving rain, high winds and frigid temperatures to witness the long-awaited roll-out.
Branson told the enthusiastic crowd that safety was Virgin Galactic's No. 1 priority and that "we will not be putting anybody into space until the test pilots have done many, many, many trips on this spaceship."
"Only when we are absolutely certain we can safely to space will we go into space," he said. "I promise you, it will be well and truly tested before we go into space."
Schwarzenegger said attending the unveiling was "one of the coolest things I've ever done." Describing Branson as "an extraordinary visionary," he called Rutan "one of the greatest space engineers of our time."
"Space is our next great frontier," he said. "When it comes to space enterprise, California is and always has been at the forefront and leading the way."
Virgin Galactic reportedly plans to spend some $400 million to build a fleet of five or six rocket planes. Commercial flights will be launched from taxpayer-funded spaceport under construction in New Mexico. Assuming test flights go well and government requirements are met, commercial launchings could begin by 2011.
"My state is energized and raring to go," Richardson said. "We're proud to be on the ground floor of the second space age...I call on the Obama administration to embrace commercial space travel. We're opening up an opportunity that before now was only available to a select few, a chance to travel in space. Three hundred have already jumped at the chance, signing up to be among the first space tourists."
Turning to Schwarzenegger, Richardson said, "Governor, you should join me in going into space. But I want you to go first."
Construction of SpaceShipTwo, carried out in near-total secrecy at Rutan's Scaled Composites facility in Mojave, began in 2007. The first spacecraft, named VSS Enterprise on Monday, is a scaled-up version of the three-seat SpaceShipOne Rutan designed, with funding from Microsoft founder Paul Allen, to compete for the $10 million Ansari X Prize.
A comparison showing the relative sizes of SpaceShipOne, which won the Ansari X Prize in 2004, and the scaled-up SpaceShipTwo, designed for commercial sub-orbital flights.
(Credit: Virgin Galactic)The X Prize required competitors to complete two manned flights to an altitude of 100 kilometers, or 62 miles, the somewhat arbitrary "boundary" of space. After Rutan won the X-Prize, Branson launched Virgin Galactic and announced plans to build a fleet of larger spacecraft to carry space tourists on sub-orbital flights.
Looking to the future, Rutan said "I believe, to satisfy this market, there will need to be between 40 and 50 spaceships. Assuming we have enough spaceports and assuming we work the cost numbers appropriately we can attract that large number of people. That's what will be required" for the long-term success of commercial manned spaceflight.
Peter Diamandis, who directed the Ansari X Prize program, hailed SpaceShipTwo as an "incredible milestone" and said the industry will flourish despite the high initial cost.
"There is definitely a business model," he said in an interview. "We've got more billionaires on the planet and millionaires than ever before in the history of humanity. It's the same thing with every new technology, whether it's cell phones or airplanes, the wealthy step up first, they pay the higher ticket price and eventually it becomes available to everybody. We need to demonstrate the market and the technology will follow."
SpaceShipTwo will be carried aloft by a futuristic-looking mothercraft called WhiteKnightTwo, a four-engine jet-powered aircraft unveiled last year that features twin fuselages mounted on either side of a huge wing.
For the unveiling Monday, WhiteKnightTwo, with the rocket plane attached to the center of the wing, was rolled into view amid soaring music and floodlights.
SpaceShipTwo, carried by the WhiteKnightTwo carrier plane, rolls out Monday in Mojave, Calif.
(Credit: William Harwood)SpaceShipTwo will be released at an altitude of 50,000 feet. A hybrid rocket motor burning solid propellant with nitrous oxide then will boost SpaceShipTwo onto a steep trajectory to an altitude of more than 62 miles.
The roomy cabin of SpaceShipTwo, about the same size as a large executive jet, features multiple portholes to give its passengers a spectacular view of Earth and space.
After about five minutes of weightlessness as the spaceplane arcs through the top of its ballistic trajectory, the rocket plane will fall back into the atmosphere, pivoting its wings upward in a technique invented by Rutan to ease the stress or re-entry. From there, with the wings back down in their normal orientation, the spacecraft will glide to a runway landing.
An artist's rendering of SpaceShipTwo with its wings pivoted up to reduce the stress of re-entry.
(Credit: Virgin Galactic)Rutan said the spacecraft is being built with a design philosophy that requires a much greater factor of safety than government standards for manned space flight.
"I believe it's not enough, in terms of developing something for the public, to say we'll just do the best that we can," he said. "I believe you also have to have a goal. And clearly the goal of meeting the safety of government manned spaceflight is not anywhere near acceptable, where 4 percent of the people who have left the atmosphere have died. I believe we need to set our sights more on the goal of the safety of the early airliners, and that's an extremely difficult goal.
"That's what we're shooting for, that's what has (guided) our decisions on redundancy and on quality and on training," he said. "What we will achieve now is based on how well we do in our best efforts. But at least we have a proper goal. Making sure spaceflight can attract customers and can fly safely is a much bigger job than doing a research program like we've done before."
How the budding commercial space market might react to a failure early in the program remains to be seen. But Diamandis said he is optimistic.
"If anybody can, Scaled can build a vehicle that's robust and highly reliable," he said.
Updated at 8 p.m. PST with comments from SpaceShipTwo participants.
Updated December 8 at 7:20 a.m. PST to clarify re-entry technique.
Switzerland's Solar Impulse solar plane has finally taken flight.
The first plane designed to fly day and night without fuel, the Solar Impulse HB-SIA lifted off for the first time on Thursday at 13:11 Swiss time, reported its promoters and co-founders Bertrand Piccard and Andre Borschberg. The plane took to the air from its home at Dubendorf Airfield, near Zurich, Switzerland, traveling 1 meter (3.2 feet) off the ground and landing successfully after flying 350 meters (1,148 feet).
The first flight of the Solar Impulse prototype evoked a huge wave of applause from its team, who had spent the past several weeks running ground tests to check acceleration, braking, and engine power. After those tests passed with flying colors, the word was given for pilot Markus Scherdel to man the plane for the test trip.
The flight came after years of research, testing, and labor to design and construct the Solar Impulse.
"This is the culmination of six years of intense work by a very experienced team of professionals," said Borschberg in a statement. "This first "flea hop" successfully completes the first phase of Solar Impulse, confirming our technical choices."
As part of its initial test flight, the Solar Impulse's solar panels were not yet connected or used. Following this positive outcome, the plane is set to be dismantled and moved to an airfield at Payerne, almost two hours away. Early next year, the team plans to launch the Impulse on its first solar test flights, slowly increasing the distance each time until the craft is ready to take its first night flight using solar energy.
Though the Impulse is as wide as a Boeing 747, it weighs only around 1.7 tons. The 12,000 solar cells mounted on the wing are designed to provide renewal solar power to the plane's four electric motors. The solar panels also charge the craft's batteries by day, allowing it to fly at night.
For now, the team is basking in the success of this small but critical first step, yet is thinking of the future and the challenge ahead.
"For over 10 years now, I have dreamt of a solar aircraft capable of flying day and night without fuel--and promoting renewable energy," said Piccard in a statement. "Today, our plane took off and was airborne for the very first time. This is an unbelievable and unforgettable moment! On the other hand, I remain humble in the face of the difficult journey still to be accomplished--it's a long way between these initial tests and a circumnavigation of the world."
A first shot from DigitalGlobe's WorldView-2 satellite shows the AT&T Center in San Antonio, Texas.
(Credit: DigitalGlobe)
The Henry B. Gonzalez Convention Center San Antonio, Texas, where DigitalGlobe is showing off its first images for the GeoInt 2009 conference.
(Credit: DigitalGlobe)Twelve days after it launched WorldView-2 into orbit, DigitalGlobe has released its first images from the satellite, which will supply high-resolution photography for Google's and Microsoft's online mapping services.
The first images are of two locations in San Antonio, Texas, where the company is showing off its work at the GeoInt 2009 Symposium this week, and of Dallas Love Airport.
The quality of the images should improve over these first shots, taken Monday. "More refinements to early-stage images can be expected as the ongoing check-out and calibration continues," DigitaGlobe said.
Microsoft and Nokia sponsored the WorldView-2 launch, but the former's Bing and the latter's Navteq won't be the only services to get the imagery. They'll share it with Google, which has been the sole online beneficiary of images from GeoEye-1, a satellite launched last year by DigitalGlobe rival GeoEye.
The new satellite is able to capture imagery with a resolution fine enough to detect features as small as 0.46 meters, or 1 1/2 feet, on the ground, though federal regulations permit DigitalGlobe to offer images with only a maximum resolution of 0.5 meters for general commercial use, the Longmont, Colo.-based DigitalGlobe said. Other DigitalGlobe satellites with sub-meter resolution in orbit already are QuickBird and WorldView-1.
"WorldView-2 is expected to improve the speed and rate of imagery delivery to the government and commercial markets with large-scale collection capacity and daily revisit rates," meaning that the satellite can photograph the same site multiple times during the same day, the company said. The satellite can capture multispectral imagery--eight bands of light, or more than what's visible to humans--though at a lower resolution of 1.8 meters.
Dallas Love Airport as photographed by WorldView-2.
(Credit: DigitalGlobe)
(Credit:
ISAE)
It may look like something your kids brought home from shop class, but this rugged, French-designed micro air vehicle (MAV) could be a missing link between smooth, steady hover and fast, forward flight.
The inventor, Dr. Jean-Marc Moschetta, professor of aerodynamics at the Institut Superieur de l'Aeronautique et de l'espace in Toulouse, France, created what he calls the MAVion with both commercial and military markets in mind.
A mere 30 centimeters long, the MAVion combines fixed wings with two counter rotating propellers, allowing it to operate with high aerodynamic efficiency--even in adverse conditions, according to the professor.
"The ultimate goal of the MAVion concept is to demonstrate a twofold capability using the same vehicle: fast forward flight and hover flight," Moschetta explained. "The two counter-rotating tandem propellers provide a simple means to enhance yaw control, which is particularly important in vertical flight."
"The global vision for developing the bimotor MAVion is to provide a fixed-wing aircraft that can be easily upgraded for hover, but also for rolling on the ground or along walls by adding wheels on either side," he said.
The project, funded by the European Office of Aerospace Research and Development in London and the French military, took top honors at the International Micro Air Vehicle Flight Competition held in Pensacola, Fla., this year.
(Credit:
ISAE)
The Advanced Tactical Laser in an undated flight over Albuquerque, N.M.
(Credit: Ed Turner, Boeing)Boeing continues to carve notches in its directed-energy bandolier.
The defense contractor said Tuesday that its Advanced Tactical Laser aircraft in mid-September fired from the air and hit a vehicle moving on the ground. That bull's-eye marks the first time the modified C-130H has used its onboard chemical laser to strike a moving target. Boeing didn't offer specifics on the type of vehicle, other than to say it was remote-controlled, or how fast it was moving, nor did it give the airspeed or altitude for the aircraft.
The actual damage was minimal: the laser beam put a hole in the fender of the vehicle. But it does go another small step toward demonstrating the potential of directed-energy weapons. A few weeks earlier, the ATL had made a laser strike on a stationary ground target that Boeing describes as "tactically representative." On that occasion, Boeing said in a September 1 press release, "the laser beam's energy defeated the vehicle"--"defeated" in this case meaning that the vehicle was made temporarily or permanently unavailable for its intended use.
So don't expect Hollywood pyrotechnics. Check out the several videos from the summer in which Boeing shows the ATL carving a gash, blowtorch-style, in the hood of what looks like a pickup truck. (Boeing says those videos are separate from the ATL defeating a ground vehicle.)
The September test took place at the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico, with the aircraft flying out of Kirtland Air Force Base, located near Albuquerque. Boeing is working the kinks out of the ATL for the U.S. Air Force, as it is with the bigger Airborne Laser, a modified 747 that's intended to target ballistic missiles. Where the Airborne Laser fires its high-energy chemical laser through the aircraft's nose, the ATL shoots from a ball turret in the belly of its fuselage.
In a case of what goes down must also go up, Boeing is also working on a Humvee-mounted laser weapon that has shown it can shoot down an unmanned aerial vehicle.
The 787 Dreamliner was first unveiled to the public in July 2007.
Boeing announced on Thursday that the first flight of its 787 Dreamliner is now expected by the end of the year, with first delivery anticipated for the fourth quarter of 2010.
The Dreamliner has been grounded by a series of delays since its rollout in 2007. Boeing said the latest schedule change is due to its need to reinforce an area within the side-of-body section of the plane. The company also plans to add several weeks to its schedule to reduce risks in the flight test and the aircraft's certification.
"This new schedule provides us the time needed to complete the remaining work necessary to put the 787's game-changing capability in the hands of our customers," said Boeing CEO Jim McNerney. "The design details and implementation plan are nearly complete, and the team is preparing airplanes for modification and testing."
Boeing said the team reinforcing the side-of-body area has finished initial testing and is finalizing the design of new fittings to ensure structural integrity. The first 787 test airplane and the static test unit have been prepared for the new fittings, with installation expected to begin in the next few weeks. The test that discovered this issue will be repeated and the results analyzed before the first flight takes off.
Boeing revealed the Dreamliner in July 2007 to a huge, excited throng of thousands. At that time, the company said the aircraft would take its first flight in late 2007 and carry its first passengers in spring 2008.
But delays quickly set in. Boeing was soon forced to revise its initial estimates, saying first flight would occur in the fourth quarter of 2008 with first delivery in the third quarter of 2009. Then in December 2008, Boeing said a machinist's strike had caused yet another delay, with first flight reset to the second quarter of 2009 and delivery in the first quarter of 2010.
Once the Dreamliner gets off the ground, Boeing expects to manufacture 10 planes a month by the end of 2013.
Beam control optics in the Airborne Laser system stabilize and shape the beam emitted by the chemical oxygen iodine laser en route to the nose turret of the aircraft.
(Credit: Russ Underwood, Lockheed Martin)The Airborne Laser may have lost favor in Washington, but it's still going strong at Edwards Air Force Base.
Boeing, the prime contractor for the directed-energy weapons system, said Thursday that the ABL's high-energy laser earlier this week was fired in flight for the first time--though not at an external target. Instead, in a flight over California, the laser beam traveled only as far as an on-board calorimeter, which measured the beam's power. Boeing didn't say what that measurement was, but the system is generally referred to as "megawatt-class."
The Airborne Laser in flight.
(Credit: Boeing)The one-of-a-kind ABL was built to test out and ultimately show off what a laser beam can do to a ballistic missile fired in anger. The goal, if and when all systems are go, is for the laser-equipped aircraft to home in on an ICBM while it's still early in its trajectory, holding the laser beam on the missile long enough to rupture its skin and thus knock it out of commission.
Ambitious plans for the Airborne Laser, however, have been considerably scaled back. Earlier this year, in revamping the Pentagon's budget and operations priorities, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said that a second prototype would not be built.
The core of the existing ABL is a chemical oxygen iodine laser, or COIL, and it's hardly man-packable machinery. The COIL system itself takes up the back half of a modified 747-400F, while the front half of the jumbo jet is given over to the beam control/fire control system.
Given that an aircraft in flight can be a fidgety beast, the ABL's ability to maintain precise alignments was a notable accomplishment, according to a Thursday press release from Northrop Grumman, which designed and built the high-energy laser:
ABL has to keep all of the powerful laser's optical components perfectly positioned as the aircraft vibrates and flexes during flight...Since we were unable to fly the kind of large concrete pads used to hold a ground-based laser's optics in place, we had to isolate the COIL's optics from the structure but also maintain alignment. So the team developed an optical bench isolation system that isolates disturbances caused by normal aircraft operations while maintaining alignment to the gain medium, or the source of a laser's optical power. It's like an automobile's 'smart suspension' that keeps the car riding smoothly at the same level over a bumpy road.
Last week, in a continuing series of piecemeal tests, the ABL engaged in an in-flight trial run against an instrumented target missile. The aircraft used its infrared sensors to locate the missile, then fired a pair of solid-state illuminator lasers that tracked the missile and gauged atmospheric conditions. "This test demonstrates that the Airborne Laser can fully engage an in-flight missile with its battle management and beam control/fire control systems," Michael Rinn, Boeing vice president and ABL program director, said in a statement. "Pointing and focusing a laser beam on a target that is rocketing skyward at thousands of miles per hour is no easy task."
A number of increasingly complex tests still lie ahead for the ABL, including firing the high-energy laser through the Lockheed Martin-developed beam control/fire control system and out of the nose-mounted turret. Before the end of the year, Boeing expects to do a full-fledged intercept test against a ballistic missile.
