Jupiter 2nd ‘Great Spot’ found

Dark expanse ‘cold & high up’

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla, (Agencies): Another ‘Great Spot’ has been found at Jupiter, this one cold and high up.

Scientists reported Tuesday that the dark expanse is 15,000 miles (24,000 kilometers) across and 7,500 miles (12,000 kilometers) wide. It’s in the upper atmosphere and much cooler than the hot surroundings, thus the name “Great Cold Spot.” And unlike the giant planet’s familiar Great Red Spot, this newly discovered weather system is continually changing in shape and size. It’s formed by the energy from Jupiter’s polar auroras.

A British-led team used a telescope in Chile to chart the temperature and density of Jupiter’s atmosphere. When the researchers compared the data with thousands of images taken in years past by a telescope in Hawaii, the “Great Cold Spot” stood out. It could be thousands of years old.

NASA will give Earth dwellers the first live-streaming look at 4K Ultra HD video from space, in an event coproduced with Amazon Web Services.

The US space agency will present the free live-stream during a session at the 2017 NAB Show on April 26 in Las Vegas. The live feed from 250 miles above Earth will be encoded with Amazon Web Services’ Elemental encoding software on board the International Space Station (pictured above) and on the ground at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston.

The entire event, starting at 10:30 a.m. PT on April 26, will be available free to the public in live 4K (and

Slow Washington landslide:

A slowmoving landslide near the site of a Washington state mudslide that wiped out a neighborhood and killed 43 people in 2014 has downconverted HD) video at live.awsevents.com/nasa4k. A VOD asset will be available after the event in lower resolutions on the NASA TV Channel and in both HD and 4K on NASA’s website. Obviously, 4K-capable devices will be required to view the video in 4K resolution.

In the live 4K stream during the NAB panel, NASA astronaut Dr Peggy Whitson -- on board the ISS -- will converse with AWS Elemental CEO and co-founder Sam Blackman, who will be at the Las Vegas Convention Center. The panel discussion also will feature astronaut Dr Tracy Caldwell Dyson and Rodney Grubbs, manage of NASA’s Imagery Experts Program, along with Bernadette McDaid, head of development for VR & AR at Bau Entertainment, Khawaja Shams, VP of engineering for AWS Elemental, and Dr Dave McQueeney, senior principal investigator with IBM Watson Group.

NASA has been a pioneer in the application of advanced media, including 4K video. By streaming real-time video that captures images four times the resolution of current 1080p HD, NASA is “enhancing its ability to observe, uncover and adapt new knowledge of orbital and deep space,” the agency said.

Amazon’s CloudFront Content Delivery Network (CDN) will provide the live-streaming access in both 4K and HD. Las Vegas-based Roberts Communications Network is providing the satellite downlink truck for the transmission of the 4K feed from Johnson Space Center to the LVCC, and Christie is providing 4K projectors for inroom display during the NAB session.

prompted officials to close a state highway as a precaution and recommend evacuations for a handful of residents, officials said.

The area of the slide near the tiny community

TAL Brabo robot is displayed during a press conference in Mumbai, India, on April 11. TAL Manufacturing Solutions, a subsidiary of Tata Motors Ltd on Tues-

This year’s NAB Show is being held April 22-27 in Las Vegas.

Italian satellite launcher company Avio’s successful public offering on Monday will help fuel its ambitions to be a leader in the next space race, the company’s CEO said in an interview.

Avio, one of the largest satellite launchers in Europe and the first in its category to go public, saw its share price close at 13.40 euros, a gain of 6.6 percent on its initial pricing, after touching a high of 13.95 euros.

Avio makes engines for rockets such as the Ariane 5, which reach geocentric orbit at 35,786 kilometers (22,236 miles), or the Vega, a joint venture with the Italian Space Agency to put small satellites into low Earth orbit.

CEO Giulio Ranzo said the public offering was driven by “unprecedented change, a very rapid shift toward commercial demand” that will require Avio to be able to mobilize financial resources quickly.

The new space race is being driven by smaller countries getting satellites into space in a bid for independence, Ranzo said. They include countries such as Peru and Vietnam, beyond bigger nations like Brazil, South Korea and Japan.

“It is a question of independence, or if you like of non-dependence,” Ranzo told the Associated Press. “Whether we like it or not, our economy, or our life on Earth will increasingly be relying on services that comes from space. It is a question if you want to be in the driver’s seat, or sitting next to the driver’s seat.”

of Oso about an hour’s drive north of Seattle was being tracked by geologists Monday for ground movement. Residents of about a dozen homes were recommended by authorities to evacuate. (AP)

Quake warning system expands:

An early warning system for earthquakes has been expanded to Oregon and Washington, joining California in testing a prototype that could give people seconds or up to a minute of warning before strong shaking begins.

The system isn’t ready to issue public quake warnings yet, according to the US Geological Survey, which has been working with university partners to develop the ShakeAlert system.

But this version allows early adopters in Oregon and Washington to begin using the early signals to figure out what they need to do in the event of an earthquake. Such pilot projects are helping to make the system more reliable and pave the way for broader use.

Officials with USGS, the University of Washington and others held a news conference Monday in Seattle to announce the system’s roll out across the US West Coast. California has been testing the production prototype since early 2016. (AP)