The launch of a Taurus XL T9 rocket, designed by Orbital Science Corporation, was meant to carry the Glory climate change monitoring satellite into orbit. The rocket instead failed to reach orbit, costing the agency around $388 million.

A “mishap investigation board” put together by NASA in the aftermath of the failure determined that the rocket’s fairing system failed to open fully, causing the destruction of the rocket and its payload.

Fairings are clamshell-shaped nosecone devices that surround satellites on their way to orbit. Normally, fairings are jettisoned soon after launch when friction heat from the Earth’s atmosphere is no longer a concern. When Glory’s fairing failed to open, the fairing’s mass altered the rocket’s trajectory. NASA states in its report that the launch vehicle “likely broke up or burned up, or both, because of reentry loads and aerodynamic heating.”

Though the fairing was determined to be the cause of the failure, the NASA board was unable to figure out exactly why the fairing had not opened. The board, though, did narrow down the possibilities to some sort of failure with the frangible joint components of the fairing’s side rail system. Both NASA and Orbital are continuing to investigate the fairing system, and will be making improvements to future designs based on their findings.

(Image courtesy NASA)

The Landsat 5 mission has been orbiting Earth and recording global land change for over 29 years. Though the satellite (which was only designed for a five-year life-span) has been repaired on multiple occasions, the failure of a gyroscope has ended the long-running mission.

“This is the end of an era for a remarkable satellite, and the fact that it flew for almost three decades is a testament to the NASA engineers and the USGS team who launched it and kept it flying well beyond its expected lifetime,” said Anne Castle, assistant secretary for Water and Science at the U.S. Department of the Interior. “The Landsat program is the ‘gold standard” of satellite observation, providing an invaluable public record of our planet that helps us tackle critical land, water, and environmental issues.”

Landsat 5 has now orbited the Earth over 150,000 times and transmitted over 2.5 million images of the planet’s surface. In its nearly three decades of service, the satellite has photographed the impact of natural disasters, climate change, land use practices, urbanization, and agricultural practices on the Earth’s surface.

“Any major event since 1984 that left a mark on this Earth larger than a football field was likely recorded by Landsat 5, whether it was a hurricane, a tsunami, a wildfire, deforestation, or an oil spill,” said Marcia McNutt, USGS director. “We look forward to a long and productive continuation of the Landsat program, but it is unlikely there will ever be another satellite that matches the outstanding longevity of Landsat 5.”

The Landsat program will continue with Landsat 7, which was launched in 1999 and is still in orbit. In addition, the next Landsat satellite, Landsat 8, is scheduled to be launched sometime next month, February 2013.

Is cord cutting actually a trend or is it simply a threat that consumers are sending to cable companies? What’s your take? Please share.

According to a report from ISI Group, cable went from having more than 53 percent of the video market in 2010 to less than 50 percent in 2011:

While it appears that cord cutting is a growing trend, a couple of other reports actually indicate the opposite. Bernstein Research found that pay-TV subscribers grew last quarter. Although the increase (0.2 percent) wasn’t significant, it’s enough to raise some questions about the so-called trend of cord cutting.

What’s more, Business Insider Intelligence found that there was “no meaningful evidence to bolster the much-heralded ‘decline of TV.’” (Emphasis not added.) Alex Cocotas explained that, while cable has lost some subscribers, bundled Internet, telephone, and TV packages have grown.

It’s clear that a lot of consumers are unhappy with cable options, but these recent reports can’t help but make one wonder what is actually happening. According to Bryan Gonzalez, the Director of Social Entertainment Labs at the Entertainment Technology Center at USC, there are many challenges to cord cutting.

Services such as Netflix, Hulu, and Apple TV can be very effective, but there is a downside to some Internet options. For instance, with March Madness in full swing, basketball lovers may not be able to find all their favorite games online. In addition, a lot of the Internet services don’t have current content, which is a problem for some consumers.

As Gonzalez explained, many consumers are trying to get away from cable and are looking to Internet and satellite options instead. However, some appear, as the above charts suggest, to be going back to traditional content even though they aren’t completely happy with their choice.

Time Warner’s CEO Glenn Britt, in a move to counter some of the negativity from consumers, recently laid out a plan for a low-cost package of channels to offer. This experiment has yet to be implemented but some, including Gonzalez, believe that it could be effective.

“By creating these smaller, cheaper packages, you’re really gonna bring back some of the folks who might have gone away for a little bit,” he said.

Another challenge to cord cutting is bandwidth issues. Unfortunately, this is a problem that is expected to increase as more devices such as the new iPad come out. With these types of devices combined with growing families, consumers are going to need more bandwidth.

Britt also discussed a second experiment that Time Warner is working on that addresses bandwidth issues. According to him, Time Warner is testing a metered-usage Internet subscription plan in Texas, which means that tiered data cap could be proposed in the future.

“As soon as you start to limit that, I think that they’re gonna run into that wall pretty quickly,” said Gonzalez.

“You’re gonna see a lot of consumer pushback on that,” he added.

Over on InverstorPlace, Anthony John Agnello issued a warning to Time Warner in regards to this experiment:

“Time Warner needs to tread very carefully, though, or it will lose more than just cable subscribers. For years now, Web users have been vocal opponents of usage-based billing and attempts to cap data. Time Warner attempted to introduce usage-based billing in 2009, but consumer outrage prompted the company to abandon its plans. The same thing happened to competitor Comcast (NASDAQ:CMCSA) when rumors swirled that it intended to start billing based on usage, but Comcast gave up those plans by December 2010. As reported by Stop the Cap, a consumer advocacy group devoted to blocking usage-based data plans and data caps, Comcast applauded Time Warner’s announcement but shied away from saying whether or not it would follow suit in the future.”

In an effort to solve some of these challenges and bring cable and Internet streaming together, Netflix attempted to partner with Comcast but was rejected. According to FierceCable, Comcast issued this response to the offer:

“We have no plans to offer access to Netflix to our customers through our Xfinity TV service, no matter what device,” said Comcast spokeswoman Alana Davis.

The marriage of the companies was a puzzle to many since Netflix has, for a long time, distinguished itself as an alternative to cable. Gonzalez told us that, even though the companies did not reach an agreement, it was encouraging that an attempt was made. Furthermore, without Netflix’s existence, products such as TV Everywhere would probably not be around either.

“Before Netflix, Comcast and Time Warner would have never offered that or thought about that,” he said.

In other words, the advent of Internet alternatives has brought more choices to consumers. While the issue of cord cutting is still being debated, it is clear that these services will play a large role in the future of pay TV. In fact, Avner Ronen, the CEO of Boxee, told WebProNews that the trend toward viewing content online would increase going forward.

“The transition toward more video over the top that’s coming over the Internet such as Netflix and Hulu and iTunes is inevitable,” he said.

(Here’s the full interview:)

Gonzalez agrees that Internet options will be significant but believes that consumers will ultimately gravitate toward some sort of combination of online and traditional services.

“In the short term, I think cable and satellite and broadcast are still… the most effective way and efficient way to distribute video,” he said. “However, I see the future more as a hybrid.”

What would you like to see going forward? Are online services the answer, or, do you still need what cable and satellite operators offer? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.

Toshiba’s high-end Satellite P series has retained most of the features included in its last iteration, including a Blu-ray drive, a high-definition screen with optional 3D, on the 15.6-inch Satellite P850 and P855 models. However, the 3D models of 2012 include Toshiba’s glasses-free 3D instead of active shutter displays. The company will also be selling two of 17.3-inch models, the P875 and P870, which will not feature 3D as an option. All P series laptops will have an option of a 1TB hard drive, or smaller HDD / SSD hybrid drives.

Toshiba’s L series will come in 13.3-inch, 15.6-inch, and 17.3-inch options, and customers can choose between Intel and AMD processors. Screen resolution will range between 1366×768 to 1600×900 and will not include any 3D options, although versions with Blu-ray drives will be capable of pushing 3D content over HDMI. Both the P and L series will be released sometime in during Q2, 2012, and it has been speculated that some models will feature Intel’s Ivy Bridge processors.

The collection of antennas would be highly visible on the property as they are over 12 feet in diameter and need to be placed in an open area. The initial request for registration of the devices was denied by the Federal Communication Commission in early February due to existing guidelines.

Here’s a segment from that letter to Google fiber Inc. from the FCC:

“Second, we dismiss the request for “ALSAT” as a point of communication for receive- only operations in the extended Ku-bands of 10.95-11.2 GHz and 11.45-11.7 GHz.2 The Commission has previously held that an “ALSAT” designation can be granted only to earth stations operating in conventional C-band and conventional Ku-band frequencies”.

While I am sure Google will get this antenna business squared away most fans are just curious how soon Google will offer a video service that could compete with what cable and satellite television providers are already offering. The Google super-speed internet project was started over two years ago and Google claims they are ready to go.

École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, or EPFL for short, has announced CleanSpace One. It’s a program designed to build numerous satellites dedicated to cleaning up space debris.

EPFL says that space trash is a growing problem that needs to be addressed now. NASA tracks about 16,000 objects that are considered space trash. When they collide with a satellite, bad things can happen.

The first launch of the janitor satellite will target one of the two objects currently orbiting around earth – the Swisscube picosatellite launched in 2009 or TIsat that was launched in 2010. Both satellites were made by Swiss citizens.

EPFL says that CleanSpace One has three technological hurdles to overcome if it is to be successful. If they are able to successfully create this satellite, they will be able to apply these technologies to future inventions.

After launch, the satellite will use a new ultra-compact motor to align itself with the orbit of the offending space trash. The space trash will be traveling at speeds of 17,000 MPH at an altitude of 466 miles. CleanSpace One will use a grappling arm to grab and stabilize the trash. From there, CleanSpace One will drag the trash down into the atmosphere where they will both burn up upon reentry.

You would think that making a satellite just to have it end up being destroyed would be expensive. If you were thinking that, you would be right. The maiden voyage is estimated to cost about 10 million Swiss francs or a little over $10 million. The first mission could take place within three to five years depending on funding.

EPFL hopes to turn CleanSpace One into a business. They want to be pioneers in the field of space custodians. If they want to actually sell these things, they better fix that burning up on reentry part. They hope to make the program as sustainable as possible as companies probably don’t want to spend $10 million to clean up each piece of space trash.

Here’s a video showcasing the new technology and what it means to be a space janitor:

“This shows the promise of Google Earth for collecting and verifying data, which means a few trained scientists can use a freely available program to fact-check governments and other large institutions,” says Jennifer Jacquet, a post-doctoral researcher at the University of British Columbia.

The program they are talking about? Fish.

You see, the Great Wall of China is not the only thing you can see from space. Fish farming cages are clearly visible through Google Earth’s satellite images and University of British Columbia researchers have used them to estimate the amount of fish being cultivated in the Mediterranean.

The study, published today in the online journal PLoS ONE, is the first to estimate seafood production using satellite imagery.

“Our colleagues have repeatedly shown that accurate reporting of wild-caught fish has been a problem, and we wondered whether there might be similar issues for fish farming,” says lead author Pablo Trujillo, an Oceans Science Advisor for Greenpeace International, who conducted the study while a research assistant at the UBC Fisheries Centre.

Almost half the cages were located off the coast of Greece and nearly one-third off of Turkey – and both countries appear to underreport their farmed fish production. The researchers note that not all areas had full satellite coverage – for instance, images were missing for large portions of the coasts of France and Israel, for reasons the authors do not fully understand.

Trujillo adds that Google Earth, with its high-resolution images and consistent time series, can be a powerful tool for scientists and non-governmental organizations to monitor activities related to ocean zoning and capture fisheries.

“Now, even if phone lines and the Internet are inaccessible — for example, in a war zone or after a natural disaster — people will be able to share news and stay informed via Twitter,” the company says on its blog.

“We work with as many carriers as we can to support SMS around the world,” Twitter says. “If your carrier does not currently support Twitter SMS, you can still Tweet. Just use one of our long codes.”

Those can be found here.

As the company points out, Twitter did begin as an SMS service. Over the years, Twitter has become even more SMS-friendly, as evidenced by today’s update.

For example, in 2010, Twitter started letting users in the U.S. follow Twitter accounts via SMS without actually signing up for Twitter.

By now, you’ve probably heard mention of the UARS and its destructive return to Earth, as the satellite breaks apart as it reenters the Earth’s atmosphere. Jokes about metal showers and raining bits of satellite are all over the media’s trend cycle, but is this much ado about nothing? While a sense of impending “oh no, the UARS is gonna fall on me” may be over doing it, it’s good to be aware of potential dangers, especially when they come from above.

A good indicator of UARS’ popularity comes from Google Trends, which shows searches have indeed increased as UARS became more and more topical:

As they are wont to do, NASA has been front and center with their coverage of the UARS’ return to Earth. So much so, in fact, they’ve set up an update page with it own RSS feed, their Twitter feed is active with UARS updates, there’s a page containing history of the vehicle, an FAQ discussing debris reentry, and other pertinent information, like so:

As of 10:30 a.m. EDT on Sept. 23, 2011, the orbit of UARS was 100 miles by 105 miles (160 km by 170 km). Re-entry is expected late Friday, Sept. 23, or early Saturday, Sept. 24, Eastern Daylight Time. Solar activity is no longer the major factor in the satellite’s rate of descent. The satellite’s orientation or configuration apparently has changed, and that is now slowing its descent. There is a low probability any debris that survives re-entry will land in the United States, but the possibility cannot be discounted because of this changing rate of descent. It is still too early to predict the time and location of re-entry with any certainty, but predictions will become more refined in the next 12 to 18 hours.

Besides NASA’s normal quality coverage, there are other entities that are non-NASA related that are also providing coverage, like the UARS Reentry Twitter account, which offers entries like the following:

Speaking of Twitter, the #UARS hashtag produces a number of replies, some of them entertaining and some of them informative:

And:

There’s also a number of videos concerning UARS, and the following does a great job of detailing what happens when the satellite reenters our airspace:

Lead image courtesy of NASA.

Put simply, the battle for your living room and the dollars associated with your living room is heating up and I believe that 24 months from now there will be clear winners and losers. The next 24 months will likely represent the biggest changes we’ve seen yet for mainstream America’s media consumption.

First lets talk about the losers.

1. Cable and satellite providers. The economy is bad. There has never been a better time to cancel your cable and satellite service. As more and more digital media content is being made available through other sources, there becomes less and less of a reason to put up with overpriced cable and satellite TV. The service is bad, the service is expensive, and it’s a high reoccurring fee that is just the type of thing that consumers will look to cut out of their lives as they baton down the hatches. What’s more, Comcast is probably especially susceptible to losing internet customers in this downturn as well as they’ve received a lot of negative PR over their bandwidth caps which could increasingly hit consumers as more and more streaming video (and especially streaming HD video) comes into play.

The lone hold out will likely be the sports fanatic who simply cannot get by on network TV sports alone.

AT&T may fare better than traditional cable and satellite providers because they are aggressively rolling out their high speed fiber Uverse service and *requiring* consumers to buy their TV service in order to get the much faster than cable/dsl internet speeds. It’s kind of chump that they do this if you ask me, but hey, only the strong survive right?

2. Apple. Apple computer’s AppleTV has been a huge flop. Just like Thomas Hawk told you it would be over two years ago when I first dubbed AppleTV the iDongle. I followed that post up with another 10 reasons why the iDongle would fail about a year and a half ago. Apple’s mistake was that they sacrificed user functionality over a desire to tightly control your content and charge you up the ying yang for it. By not including a DVD player (something cheap and easy that they could have done) with AppleTV they force you to buy the content from them rather than more cheaply through a Netflix DVD subscription plan. By not including a DVR they force you to either pay them to watch your network TV commercial free or watch it without them and see the commercials. Apple really missed the boat with this one and could have been well positioned had they done like they did on the iPod and focused on the hardware and giving users functionality while not worrying as much about the content. In the end they would have made more money on both hardware and content, but as it is now the box is too restrictive and will be limited to a niche Apple fanboy audience who love anything Apple makes no matter how crappy it may be.

3. Roku. A lot of fanfare was made when the Roku box first came out with people saying it was the best thing ever, blah, blah, blah, blah. While having a few month lead time on comparable streaming Netflix boxes, as Netflix broadens their streaming service to other platforms it just won’t make sense to buy a Roku box when you can already get streaming Netflix on more popular and currently owned devices. More on the Roku here.

4. Movie Theaters. A lot of people say that the movie theater business will be resilient in this upcoming downturn in the economy. After all, movies thrived during the Great Depression right? True point. But back in the Great Depression there was no HDTV, no Netflix, no DVDs, no giant plasma TV screens or home theater sound systems. The movie theater has been a rip off with greater home entertainment competition for the last 3 years, but the economy has been good and people still went to the theater anyways (albeit in declining numbers). Not anymore. Watch the movie theaters go the way of the dinosaur as the consumer tightens back and chooses more economical entertainment at home vs. going out. If you’ve always wanted a photograph of your favorite theater’s neon sign, now’s the time to get it before they go out of business.

5. Blu-Ray. Blu-Ray players and discs are too expensive and a rip off. Sony won the battle by becoming the de facto high def DVD standard after wiping HD DVD off the map, but they lost the war. With streaming high def content and free OTA HDTV there is no need to pay all that money for Blu-Ray.

Now on to the Winners.

1. Netflix. Clearly Netflix has made the right move in investing so heavily in streaming technology. Netflix’s DVD rental and watch now service are both winners. In the past week we’ve seen announcements that Netflix will begin streaming it’s service on both Microsoft XBox 360s and TiVo units. If you have either of these units there is a strong case to be made that with a three disc Netflix plan for $19.99 a month you can have better content to watch at any given time than you can with your cable or satellite provider. If I were Netflix I’d start pumping this message big time. Why pay Comcast or DirecTV $80 a month when you can get better content from Netflix for $20. This is a clear value proposition for the consumer. Even in a bad economy people need something to distract them from their daily woes. And while people might not shell out $80 to take a family of 5 to the movie theater (parking, popcorn, soda, wayyy overpriced tickets, etc.) or pay $80 a month to Comcast or DirecTV for TV, they will pay $20 a month to get a very strong substitute from Netflix.

2. Microsoft XBox 360. The new Microsoft XBox 360 is out just in time for Christmas and may be the most tempting thing for people to try and buy even in this bad economy. Microsoft and Netflix announced this week that they will begin streaming *high def*, yes *high def* content to this new box. They are going to start with only 300 high def titles, but watch for this to rapidly expand in the near future.

Microsoft’s going to try and get a pound of flesh out of you of course by requiring an XBox live "gold" membership which is also kind of chump in my opinion, but this new box is clearly a winner.

3. Microsoft Media Center. Microsoft’s Media Center technology is getting better and better. Charlie Owen, from the Media Center team over at Microsoft, put out a great post earlier this week highlighting some of the things that we have to look forward to with Windows 7.

Many of Media Center’s changes are cosmetic — a cleaner better designed layout and interface. But there are some substantive content changes as well. Probably most significant, the next version of Media Center will support the H.264 high def video format. This means that high def H.264 video files can now be consumed on your television through a Media Center PC or Media Center extender. The significance of this is that the H.264 compatibility opens up the Media Center to a very popular format used for cheap pirated video content. Now I’m not advocating video piracy with this post, but the fact of the matter is that millions of people watch pirated H.264 format video on their computers every year. Now instead of having to watch the latest pirated episode of Dexter on your computer alone, you can now actually watch it from the comfort of your couch with your XBox 360 Media Center extender.

The power of Media Center plays in perfect concert with the power of the XBox 360.

All XBox 360s act as Media Center extenders. This means that if you have a Vista PC in your home (and more and more people do/will every day) you can stream your photos, music, home videos, and TV complete with a DVR if you have a TV tuner in your PC.

Could be a winner / could be a loser

1. TiVo. TiVo is certainly a consumer favorite. People that own them are very, very passionate about them. In addition to a new DirecTV service coming out next year and current offerings on the cable company platforms, TiVo today announced their own partnership with Netflix in what has been a much talked about on again / off again sort of relationship over the past four years or so. Being broadly rolled out in December, the new service will put more than 12,000 titles on the TiVo platform coming from Netflix. The service won’t be available on all TiVo units (it will work on Series3, TiVo HD, and TiVo HD XL units) but makes a TiVo a much more compelling option for consumers.

TiVo already has one of the best DVRs in the business and this new Netflix streaming option makes it even more attractive. Still, TiVo is an expensive option. Consumers either have to pay a $12.95 per month annual fee with TiVo or they have to pay an additional $400 charge for lifetime service. These high fees may keep some consumers away from TiVo as an option. Also there is no confirmation yet from TiVo that they will be offering the HD streaming option that the new XBox 360 will.

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