Discovery Channel and Discovery Plus To Capture Live Splashdown Return of SpaceX Crew Dragon on Aug 2

Discovery and Science Channel announced today it will capture the incredible live splashdown return of the NASA launch of SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft after docking the past two months at the International Space Station (ISS). SPACE LAUNCH LIVE: SPLASHDOWN a multiplatform event, will air live on Sunday, August 2 at 22:30 hrs. on Discovery. Viewers can stream the HD version of the LIVE feed starting 23:00 hrs. on Discovery Plus.

This past May, Discovery and Science Channel worked with The Washington Post to document the first crewed mission from the United States since the end of the shuttle program in 2011. This successful NASA launch from Kennedy Space Center was a partnership between NASA and SpaceX, marking the first U.S. crewed mission to orbit on a privately built spacecraft. Astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley traveled to the ISS in the SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft, propelled by the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. 

Scott Lewers, Executive Vice President of Multiplatform Programming, Factual & Head of Content, Science, said, “With the incredible access of The Washington Post, we spent over a year documenting SpaceX’s journey to become the first private company to launch American astronauts into space and we’re excited to see their safe return back to Earth. Our live coverage will take viewers inside their incredible journey home.”

This live event, capturing the first landing at sea for U.S. astronauts since 1975, is also made in partnership with The Washington Post and staff writer Christian Davenport, whose depth of experience allowed him to gain inside access to key players. Davenport is one of the country’s leading chroniclers of the space industry. His background and experience will add keen insight to the day’s event, as a co-host of the live broadcast. Davenport joined The Post in 2000 and was on a team that won a Peabody Award in 2010 for its work on veterans with traumatic brain injuries and has been on reporting teams that were finalists for the Pulitzer Prize three times. He is the author of two books, “The Space Barons: Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk and the Quest to Colonize the Cosmos” (2018) and “As You Were: To War and Back with the Black Hawk Battalion of the Virginia National Guard” (2009). He has also served as a Public Policy Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and a fellow at the Alicia Patterson Foundation. 

“The Post has long covered this industry and continues to bring readers in-depth reporting on the new space endeavors with unparalleled access and compelling storytelling,” said Emilio Garcia-Ruiz, managing editor for The Washington Post.  “We are excited to once again partner with Discovery to deliver coverage of this historic event and bring our journalism to a live TV audience.” 

“We are honored to continue our partnership with Discovery and The Washington Post, to share this exhilarating new era in space exploration,” said Aaron Fishman, President of Unscripted at Storied Media Group. "The extraordinary cooperation we have received from NASA and SpaceX are reigniting enthusiasm in space among young and old audiences alike." 

The spacecraft is scheduled to splashdown in the Atlantic Ocean and would successfully conclude NASA and SpaceX’s Demo-2 mission. Temperatures on the return can spike up to 3,500 degrees Fahrenheit on the exterior of the spacecraft due to the friction caused during re-entry. Regarding the spaceship’s return, SpaceX Founder and Chief Engineer Elon Musk noted, “I think there’s an argument that the return is more dangerous in some ways than the ascent.”

Discovery and Discovery Plus’ live coverage will have unprecedented coverage of the spacecraft’s return as well as expert commentary from current and former astronauts, including Mike Massimino and Garrett Reisman, top engineers and other special guests, including adventurer and avid explorer Josh Gates.

TV personality Chris Jacobs will pick up where he left off as host of the live return. Jacobs has a long history with Discovery network live events, reporting live on-the-ground for EXPEDITION UNKNOWN: EGYPT LIVE as well as serving as the digital host during Nik Wallenda’s tightrope walk over the Grand Canyon in SKYWIRE LIVE and in Chicago for SKYSCRAPER LIVE. Jacobs was host for DISCOVERY LIVE: INTO THE BLUE HOLE, CHOPPER LIVE, GOLD RUSH LIVE and the live broadcast of the Barrett-Jackson Auto Auction for Velocity (now MotorTrend). In addition, he is the regular host for TLC’s LONG LOST FAMILY and serves as host of the popular automotive makeover show OVERHAULIN’ on MotorTrend.

Emmy Award-winning journalist David Kerley will also return as part of the reporting team. Kerley reported on aviation, railroads, the automobile industry and space for all ABC News broadcast and digital properties, including World News Tonight, Good Morning America, Nightline, ABC News Radio and ABCNews.com. His work has been recognized with Peabody and Edward R. Murrow awards as well as the prestigious Joan Barone award from the Capitol Hill Radio and Television Correspondents Association.

In addition to watching the return on Discovery at 22:30 hrs, Viewers can stream the HD version of the LIVE feed starting 23:00 hrs on Discovery Plus.Fans can also create photos and videos of themselves in space wearing life-like SpaceX helmets using Discovery’s Space Filter on Facebook or Instagram. Follow Discovery on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and Twitter for the latest updates and join the conversation on social media by using the hashtag #Splashdown. 

SPACE LAUNCH LIVE: SPLASHDOWN is produced for Discovery Channel by Storied Media Group. Executive producers for Storied Media Group are Aaron Fishman, Todd Hoffman and Michael J. Miller. For Discovery and Science Channel, Executive Producers are Gretchen Eisele, Scott Lewers and Caroline Perez. To learn more, go to www.discovery.com, on Facebook at Facebook.com/discovery and on Twitter @Discovery.

About Discovery Channel

Discovery Channel is dedicated to creating the highest quality non-fiction content that informs and entertains its consumers about the world in all its wonder, diversity and amazement. The network, which is distributed to 100.8 million U.S. homes, can be seen in 224 countries and territories, offering a signature mix of compelling, high-end production values and vivid cinematography across genres including, science and technology, exploration, adventure, history and in-depth, behind-the-scenes glimpses at the people, places and organizations that shape and share our world. 

Restrategize Your Workspace with Qpro by Qdesq Across India

Qdesq recently launched Qpro, a new vertical to accelerate the restrategizing of workspaces. As the world is amidst the battle with COVID-19, people who started work from home are still sticking to it post lockdown. The fear of the pandemic is restricting many professionals to step outside of their homes and sit out of office. 

Qpro provides on-demand dedicated desks and promotes work near home. You can book any number of desks and pay monthly. Qpro stresses highly on the word 'flexibility' and hence ensures no-security deposits and no lock-in period. 

The traditional days of having a single office are to be left behind. The new world workforce seeks flexibility to work from anywhere. The head office should be reformed as the place for top executives and conduction of data-sensitive operations. While the teams can work remotely from various managed offices. Qpro acts as the business contingency plan and creates a framework to segregate your team in various offices inter/intra city and puts your business back in action. 

"Qpro will enable all firms to have a financially prudent and productive parallel to work from home, having a fruitful workspace with no strings attached that too on-demand basis in terms of location and flexibility," says Paras Arora, CEO & Co-Founder, Qdesq.

All the offices booked through Qpro are affordable and aesthetically designed. The presence of premium facilities will increase the level of productivity. The managed offices have all the basic and advanced amenities like high-speed internet, transport accessibility, CCTV/security, cafeteria, centralized A.C., etc. One of the key advantages is all the spaces available for booking, abide by the COVID-19 precautionary and check measures, including regular sanitization, social distancing, and adherence for masks

"Qpro not only upgrades the performance factor of the quality but also applies on your financial front where you save capital in the form of no Capex, add of multi-year leases, add or removing a desk as per your requirement, zero fit-out cost etc. which makes it a viable option,” says Lavesh Bhandari, CTO & Co-Founder, Qdesq

Productivity and growth-oriented environment comprise various factors such as infrastructure, energy, and team collaboration. All of these traits are present in a good working milieu and will have a positive impact on your performance. The future of the workspaces is not working from home rather work near home. 

From a single desk to an enterprise solution, Qpro believes in flexibility and productivity for you and your team. It currently caters to Bangalore, Hyderabad, Delhi-NCR, and key micro-markets in other cities. 

Work cutoff for ISRO scientists

India Space Research Organization (ISRO) has established itself as a reliable worldwide service provider for the launch of light satellites up to 2 tons. However, they have not been able to replicate this success with heavier satellites. The team of scientists from ISRO will have their hands full perfecting the launch vehicles for the heavier satellites. The timetable calls for the launch of atleast three or four satellites this calendar year. The future of India's moon mission could depend on this success.

ISRO had earlier this year announced that it plans to launch a number of satellites within this calendar year. These include the launch of Resourcesat-2, Meghtropiques, Youthsat and X-sat satellites all scheduled for this year’s launch.

While the Resourcesat-2, is an advanced remote sensing satellite, Youthsat, is a participatory scientific mission with payloads from both Russia and India, and X-sat, Singapore's first indigenous satellite put off since last year are expected to be launched on board of PSLV C-16 during the next few months,

Despite the failures of two GSLV satellite launches last year, “The morale of our scientists remains high,” K. Radhakrishnan, chairman of ISRO told reporters a press conference after the crash. But the team at ISRO has been tight lipped and not willing to reveal anything more to the media.

Experts say the year 2010 was bad for ISRO. It had the recent failure for a heavy satellite launch -- GSLV-F06, rocket carrying a 2,130 kg communication satellite, which exploded 63 seconds after taking off from Sriharikota in December 2010. Earlier on April 15, 2010 GSLV-D3 developmental flight carrying GSAT4 onboard failed on take-off and plunged into the sea.

Experts say if these satellites had been successfully launched it would have guaranteed India as a super space power. Success or failures are part and parcel of space program and ISRO is no exception. NASA, Russians and the European Space Agency have also had many failures mixed with success.

In fact, according to a Wikipedia report, since 1991 when India launched the GSLV program it has been a mixed bag of successes and failures. It kicked off with GSLV Mk.I, GSAT-1, a satellite with a payload of 1,540 kg was termed as partial success. A number of subsequent launches followed with success and failures. So out of the seven GSLV launches so far four were categorized as success or partial success while three of them failed.

Interestingly, Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV) is built on top of the earlier successful Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV). There was the addition of liquid strap-on boosters and a cryogenic upper stage to put a 5000 kg into an easterly low Earth orbit. Indian GSLV engine makes use of liquid hydrogen and oxygen that did not ignite properly leading to earlier failures.

The government has also constituted a review committee to look into the failures, the committee will now only look into the failure of the GSLV program and also future launches like the INSAT-3D and Chandrayaan-II. This is more grueling work for the ISRO team since the operation would require an indigenous cryogenic stage.

The country’s ambitious moon project, Chandrayaan II project is expected to be launched in 2013 or 2014 and the scientists are need to act fast to meet the aggressive time-line.

Will the Web run out of address space?

The world could well run out of internet addresses next year, unless urgent action is taken to switch to a new generation of net addresses, the European Commission has warned.

According to the commission, businesses urgently need to upgrade to internet protocol version six or IPv6, a new version of the web’s addressing protocol, which will hugely increase the number of available addresses.

The IPv6 system has been ready for over a decade and is providing 340 trillion web addresses. But, not many companies are actually ready to migrate to the new platform.

A survey, conducted by the commission, found that few companies are prepared for the switch from the current naming protocol, IPv4, to the new regime, IPv6, the Daily Telegraph reported on Tuesday. The IPv4 and IPv6 protocols refer to the way in which addresses are created and assigned. Each website has a unique IP address, represented by a string of numbers, such as 192.168.1.1, which are then given a user-friendly web address to make them easier to remember.

The IPv4 protocol uses 32-bit addresses, which enables the web to support around 4.3 billion unique addresses while IPv6 uses 128-bit web addresses, creating billions of possible new web addresses. The EC survey found that of the 610 government, educational and other industry organisations questioned across Europe, the Middle East and Asia, just 17% have upgraded to IPv6.

Detlef Eckert, director in commission’s information society and media directorate-general, said: “Only by ensuring that all devices connected to the internet are compatible with IPv6 can we stay connected and safeguard sustainable growth of the internet.”

Agencies

Can supercomputers unravel universe's secrets?

Scientists are using the world's fastest supercomputer to model origins of the unseen universe including dark energy. Understanding dark energy is the number one issue in explaining the universe, according to Salman Habib of the Laboratory's Nuclear and Particle Physics, Astrophysics and Cosmology Group.

Even though it's looking at only a small segment of the 'accessible' universe, Habib's 'Roadrunner Universe' model requires a petascale computer because like the universe, it's very large, reports ANI. The model's basic unit is a particle with a mass of approximately one billion suns (in order to sample galaxies with masses of about a trillion suns) and it includes more than 64 billion of those particles.

The model is one of the largest simulations of the distribution of matter in the universe, and aims to look at galaxy-scale mass concentrations above and beyond quantities seen in state-of-the-art sky surveys.

According to Habib, as the universe is expanding and at the same time accelerating, either there is a huge gap in our understanding of physics, or there is a strange new form of matter that dominates the universe - 'dark energy' - making up about 70 percent of it. "In addition, there is five times more of an unknown 'dark matter' than there is ordinary matter in the universe, and we know it's there from many different observations, most spectacularly, we've seen it bend light in pictures from the Hubble Space Telescope, but its origin is also not understood," he added.

The Roadrunner Universe model relies on a hierarchical grid or particle algorithm that matches the physical aspects of the simulation to the hybrid architecture of Roadrunner. Habib and his team wrote an entirely new computer code that aggressively exploits Roadrunner's hybrid architecture and makes full use of the PowerXCell 8i computational accelerators.

Agencies

Desi version of Google Earth launched by ISRO

Bhuvan gives you an easy way to experience, explore and visualize IRS images over Indian region.

ISRO is well known amongst space faring nations for its world-leading reputation in developing new, indigenous and innovative service oriented applications using remote sensing technology.

Over the past 2 decades, ISRO has mastered the art of developing these unique applications using various spectral, spatial and temporal resolutions offered by the versatile IRS satellites and these have been successfully institutionalized in many important areas of policy making, natural resources management, disaster support, and enhancing the quality of life across all sections of the society.

Bhuvan, an ambitious project of ISRO

Bhuvan is an initiative to showcase this distinctiveness of Indian imaging capabilities including the thematic information derived from such imagery which could be of vital importance to common man with a focus on Indian region. Bhuvan, an ambitious project of ISRO to take Indian images and thematic information in multiple spatial resolutions to people through a web portal through easy access to information on basic natural resources in the geospatial domain.

Bhuvan showcases Indian images by the superimposition of these IRS satellite imageries on 3D globe. It displays satellite images of varying resolution of India’s surface, allowing users to visually see things like cities and important places of interest looking perpendicularly down or at an oblique angle, with different perspectives and can navigate through 3D viewing environment.

The degree of resolution showcased is based on the points of interest and popularity, but most of the Indian terrain is covered upto at least 5.8 meters of resolution with the least spatial resolution being 55 meters from AWifs Sensor. With such rich content, Bhuvan opens the door to graphic visualisation of digital geospatial India allowing individuals to experience the fully interactive terrain viewing capabilities.

Bhuvan brings a whole lot of uniqueness

Multi-resolution images from multi-sensor IRS satellites of India is seamlessly depicted through the Bhuvan web portal by enabling a common man to zoom into specific area of interest at high resolution. Bhuvan brings a whole lot of uniqueness in understanding our own natural resources whilst presenting beautiful images and thematic vectors generated from varieties of geospatial information.

Bhuvan will also attempt to bring out the importance of multi-temporal data and to highlight the changes taking place to our natural resources, which will serve as a general awareness on our changing planet.

There are lot more special value added services which will be enabled onto the web portal in due course of time and each one of those services are going to be unique to preserving and conserving our precious natural resources through public participation. We are sure the common man will get rich benefits from these Indian geospatial data services in days to come.

Basic features of Bhuvan

Access, explore and visualise 2D and 3D image data along with rich thematic information on Soil, wasteland, water resources etc.

Visualise multi-resolution, multi-sensor, multi-temporal image data

Superpose administrative boundaries of choice on images as required

Visualisation of AWS ( Automatic Weather Stations) data/information in a graphic view and use tabular weather data of user choice

Fly to locations ( Flies from the current location directly to the selected location)

Heads-Up Display ( HUD) naviation controls ( Tilt slider, north indicator, opacity, compass ring, zoom slider)

Navigation using the 3D view Pop-up menu (Fly-in, Fly out, jump in, jump around, view point)

3D Fly through (3D view to fly to locations, objects in the terrain, and navigate freely using the mouse or keyboard)

Drawing 2D objects (Text labels, polylines, polygons, rectangles, 2D arrows, circles, ellipse)

Drawing 3D Objects (placing of expressive 3D models, 3D polygons, boxes)

Snapshot creation (copies the 3D view to a floating window and allows to save to a external file)

Measurement tools (Horizontal distance, aerial distance, vertical distance, measure area)

Shadow Analysis (it sets the sun position based on the given time creating shadows and effects the lighting on the terrain)

There would be many more value added functions and facilities which will be added into the package from time to time.

Particular interest of ISRO/DOS would be to provide such functionalities to common man so that he/she adopts participatory approach with scientists to solve simple problems easily and interactively.

Urban Design Tools (to build roads, junctions and traffic lights in an urban setting)

Contour map ( Displays a colorized terrain map and contour lines)

Terrain profile ( Displays the terrain elevation profile along a path)

Draw tools (Creates simples markers, free hand lines, urban designs)

Navigation map (to jump to and view locations in the 3D India)

Courtesy: http://www.bhuvan.nrsc.gov.in/index.html

Agencies