Our Blog

Microsoft has launched its cloud computing capabilities, Azure, into space by partnering with Elon Musk.The company developed Azure Space so that it might be used to simulate space missions, or analyse satellite data.It says that as well as the space industry, the fields of agriculture, energy, telecommunications, and government will also benefit from the project.“Our global network of over 160,000 miles of subsea, terrestrial, and metro optical fiber helps billions of people connect all around the world.  However, many of our customers also operate in remote, rugged environments and find it hard to keep pace with their increased need for access to data and bandwidth”, wrote Tom Keane, Microsoft’s Corporate Vice President of Azure Global in a blog post.Read more“A thriving ecosystem of satellite providers is needed to meet the world’s growing network needs, and we are excited to partner with industry leaders to bring these capabilities to our customers faster.”Microsoft says that it will supply a “multi-orbit, multi-band, multi-vendor, cloud-enabled” service. Alongside its space endeavours, Microsoft revealed the Azure Modular Datacenter (MDC), which is portable and able to be used in areas which do not have reliable cloud computing capabilities.The MDC can operate in a wide range of climates and harsh conditions, housing its servers in a rugged unit which also protects it from radio frequencies. “You have a centre, a capability, you put anywhere on Earth. You need to get that data somewher eels, and having a satellite-based system, you can get there without fibre, you don’t need fibre,” SpaceX president and COO Gwynne Shotwell said in a video.“You basically talk to the satellites we have in orbit, the satellites will talk to each other, and get that data to the other point on Earth where it’s needed.”Microsoft also launched the Azure Orbital Emulator, an emulation environment which allows satellite developers to train AI algorithms and networking before launching any crafts.“Azure can emulate an entire satellite network including complex, real-time scene generation using pre-collected satellite imagery for direct processing by virtualized and actual satellite hardware”, Keane says.It works with NASA, the US military, and private space companies including Lockheed Martin. Amazon also has a plan to launch thousands of satellites into space to establish a global internet network called Project Kuiper, alongside the developments made by Jeff Bezos-owned space company Blue Origin.

An asteroid is heading towards Earth ahead of election day – but is almost certain to skip actually paying a visit, let alone posing any danger.Excitement has increased over the object known as 2018VP1 in recent days. The asteroid will pass by on 2 November, the day before the presidential election in the US.That has led many to fear that the passage could be some kind of portent, or that it could be just one of a sign of major incidents that could happen that week.But the object will almost certainly decline to visit our planet. If it did, it would barely register at all, disintegrating in the atmosphere before it got a chance to get close to Earth.Recent interest in the asteroid has been piqued by a post from Neil deGrasse Tyson, who shared the news that the object would be coming past Earth.”Asteroid 2018VP1, a refrigerator-sized space-rock, is hurtling towards us at more than 40,000 km/hr,” he wrote on Instagram and Twitter.Read more”It may buzz-cut Earth on Nov 2, the day before the Presidential Election.“It’s not big enough to cause harm. So if the World ends in 2020, it won’t be the fault of the Universe.”He is correct that the object is far too small to do any harm. The object is only 6.5 feet in size.At such a small mass, it might cause some minor effects on Earth, such as the rattling of windows or the dropping of very small meteorites. But even if it hit our planet, it could go entirely unnoticed.For something to be classified as a “potentially hazardous object” by Nasa, it must be far bigger, at least 140 meters in diameter. Nasa knows of more than 2,000 of those objects, so there are many more realistic asteroids and comets to be worrying about.But any suggestion that there is any real likelihood that it could touch the Earth is mostly misleading, too.Nasa says the asteroid only has a 0.41 per cent chance of entering Earth’s atmosphere at all, and it will almost certainly fly straight past. The slight uncertainty is a result of the fact that the asteroid has not been observed for two years and so its location cannot be predicted precisely.Instead, its orbit will take it within a very safe distance of 260,000 miles, passing over the Pacific Ocean, according to predictions from Nasa.One unusual thing about the asteroid is that it has lined up with election day before. As its name indicates, it was first discovered in 2018 – on 3 November of that year, just three days before the midterms.

Earth could be visible to alien civilisations on planets outside our solar system, scientists have found.One of the major projects of astronomers in recent years is looking for exoplanets, or other worlds beyond our solar system. When they are found, the key question is whether they might support life, and so whether we might be able to spot habitable planets at this distance.Now astronomers have reversed that question, and explored whether we might also be visible to other civilisations that are outside of our solar system. They found that they were – and that we could be seen in all of the required detail.In the study, astronomers took more than 1,000 main-sequence stars, those similar to our Sun, which might have Earth-like planets orbiting in their habitable zone, neither close enough to be too hot or far away enough to be too cold. All of the planets were within about 300 lightyears of Earth, and were spotted as part of Nasa’s TESS catalogue, which lists exoplanets.They found that many of them would be able to see us – and, if they had the right technology, be able to see the chemical traces that life leaves on our planet.Watch moreAn article describing the research, ‘Which Stars Can See Earth as a Transiting Exoplanet?’ is published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. Transiting exoplanets are those worlds we can see from Earth, spotting them when they move in front of their star and register as a dip in the light that makes it to Earth.“Let’s reverse the viewpoint to that of other stars and ask from which vantage point other observers could find Earth as a transiting planet,” said Lisa Kaltenegger, associate professor of astronomy at Cornell University and director of Cornell’s Carl Sagan Institute, in a statement.“If observers were out there searching, they would be able to see signs of a biosphere in the atmosphere of our Pale Blue Dot,” she said, “And we can even see some of the brightest of these stars in our night sky without binoculars or telescopes.”Professor Kaltenegger led the research alongside Joshua Pepper, associate professor of physics at Lehigh University.The key question to answer when understanding how visible we might be is the Earth’s ecliptic, or the plane on which it orbits around the Sun. To be able to see our world – and explore its atmosphere and signals of life – Earth, our Sun and the other planet would have to line up correctly.The researchers found that many of them were, and that any civilisations should therefore be able to get a good view of our Earth.“Only a very small fraction of exoplanets will just happen to be randomly aligned with our line of sight so we can see them transit.” Pepper said. “But all of the thousand stars we identified in our paper in the solar neighborhood could see our Earth transit the Sun, calling their attention.”“If we found a planet with a vibrant biosphere, we would get curious about whether or not someone is there looking at us too,” Kaltenegger said.“If we’re looking for intelligent life in the universe, that could find us and might want to get in touch” she said, “we’ve just created the star map of where we should look first.”

Netflix will give away two days of free subscriptions to everyone in India as it experiments with new ways to encourage people to sign up.The promotion comes after it stopped offering free trial periods and instead committed to try a number of different ways of finding new subscribers.The offer will come as part of a “StreamFest” event that will only be available in India for now, though it is not clear if the same or similar promotions will launch anywhere else.The aim is for the two day offer to be something that “could really create an event”, according to Greg Peters, Netflix’s chief operating officer. Mr Peters announced the change during the company’s earning call.“And so an idea that we’re excited about and we’ll see how it goes, but we think that giving everyone in a country access to Netflix for free for a weekend could be a great way to expose a bunch of new people to the amazing stories that we have, the service, how the service works, really create an event, and hopefully get a bunch of those folks to sign up,” Mr Peters said in response to response to questions about why the company had brought an end to free trials.Read more“So we’re going to try that in India and we’ll see how that goes. And that’s just an example of the kind of innovation that we seek to do in this space.”Mr Peters also gave more information on the company’s decision to stop offering free trials in the US. While he did not say why exactly the decision had been made, he indicated it had come after “constantly assessing and testing and trying to understand what’s working, what’s working best, how do we improve”, and that it had “shifted those tactics” in response to testing.The free weekend is just one of the many different strategies that Netflix has tried to keep new subscribers coming to the service, as it attempts to find ways to continue its recent rapid growth.Those have also included taking some shows out from behind its paywall, offering the first episodes of shows such as Stranger Things and films such as Bird Box for free and then asking customers to sign up if they want to see more.