NASA ends attempts to regain contact with Mars Rover Spirit

SPACE WATCH
NASA – NASA is ending attempts to regain contact with the long-lived Mars Exploration Rover Spirit, which last communicated on March 22, 2010.

A transmission that will end on Wednesday, May 25, will be the last in a series of attempts. Extensive communications activities during the past 10 months also have explored the possibility that Spirit might reawaken as the solar energy available to it increased after a stressful Martian winter without much sunlight. With inadequate energy to run its survival heaters, the rover likely experienced colder internal temperatures last year than in any of its prior six years on Mars. Many critical components and connections would have been susceptible to damage from the cold.

Engineers’ assessments in recent months have shown a very low probability for recovering communications with Spirit. Communications assets that have been used by the Spirit mission in the past, including NASA’s Deep Space Network of antennas on Earth, plus two NASA Mars orbiters that can relay communications, now are needed to prepare for NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory mission. MSL is scheduled to launch later this year.

Spirit landed on Mars on Jan. 3, 2004, for a mission designed to last three months. After accomplishing its prime-mission goals, Spirit worked to accomplish additional objectives. Its twin, Opportunity, continues active exploration of Mars.

Lengthy detective work with data NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover Spirit collected in late 2005 has confirmed that an outcrop called “Comanche” contains a mineral indicating that a past environment was wet and non-acidic, possibly favorable to life. more> http://is.gd/MeA01V

Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell University

related>

• NASA’s Hibernating Mars Rover May Not Call Home

Will cybersecurity improvement plans actually get anywhere?

By John Moe – The House Subcommittee on National Security, Homeland Defense and Foreign Operations is examining issues related to cybersecurity in a hearing scheduled for Wednesday. Republicans hold a majority in the House. They have indicated that while they may not be as eager to sign off on President Obama’s cybersecurity plans as their colleagues in the Democrat-led Senate, they would like to get something done to protect our Internet infrastructure against escalating attacks.

The thing is, even if all the politicians agreed on everything across the board, any move they make is limited in scope because so much of American Internet infrastructure is privately owned. more> http://is.gd/OJQBsk

related>

• Senate Hearing – Protecting Cyberspace: Assessing the White House Proposal
• Cybersecurity: Lots of Answers, Now Let’s Ask the Right Questions ←
• DHS To Gain Autonomy Under Obama Cybersecurity Plan, Elizabeth Montalbano, InformationWeek
• Military set to lead on US domestic cyber-security, Lewis Page, Register
• Here’s How The U.S. Plans To Plug The Holes In Its Cybersecurity Policy, Jonathan Masters, Council on Foreign Relations/Business Insider
• Is Obama Planning to Lose World War III? Bill Davidow, Forbes

Greece’s 100 billion-euro shadow over banks

By Gareth Gore – European banks remain saddled with almost 100 billion euros of Greek government debt they can’t sell, hedge or ignore.

Greek domestic banks are by far the biggest holders of the country’s bonds with some 50 billion euros of exposure, according to a handful of estimates. But another 50 billion is held at banks outside the country, with German banks alone exposed to around 19 billion of the paper, while French banks hold another 15 billion.

“CDS are beyond the level where you even bother to hedge,” said one analyst. “It’s easier in a way just to take the hit.” The cost of protecting 10 million euros of five-year Greek bonds against default recently rose to 1.48 million amid increased speculation that Athens would default. more> http://is.gd/3PkUsj

related>

• Are Greek bonds pricing in a massive default? Felix Salmon, Reuters
• EU racing to draft second Greek bailout, Jan Strupczewzki and Harry Papachristou, Reuters
• Euro zone’s ‘big four’ hold secretive talks over Greece, EurActiv/ Reuters
• EU options for averting Greek default narrow, Ingrid Melander and Paul Taylor, Reuters
• Greek default would hit others in euro zone, Ingrid Melander, Reuters
• Euro zone debtors under pressure over new risks, Kirsten Donovan and George Georgiopoulos, Reuters
• Eurozone eyes new deal for Greece; ECB issues threat, Jan Strupczewski and Noah Barkin, Reuters

‘Soft skills’ seen as key to employability

EurActiv – Most business leaders believe that Europe’s young people lack the so-called ‘soft skills’ that are considered essential by many employers. Closer links between business and schools are seen as a way to bridge this skills gap.

A recent survey of more than 500 business leaders from across Europe found that most (54%) think young people lack ‘soft skills’ such as

• confidence,
• teamwork,
• self-motivation,
• networking and
• presentation skills.

The survey was carried out by FreshMinds Research for JA-YE Europe, which is Europe’s largest provider of entrepreneurship education programs bringing together businesses, schools and young people.

Last year JA-YE Europe organized activities that involved more than three million students in 38 countries, but despite these efforts, the majority of young people in Europe are denied access to such programs.

“According to the European Commission, only about 6% of the young people under the age of 18 in Europe have access to this kind of tripartite, partnership-based education,” said Caroline Jenner, CEO of JA-YE Europe. more> http://is.gd/dNyKbO

related>

• Europeans spend billions on ‘shadow education’, EurActiv/Reuters

Seventh Broadband Progress Report Highlights

[Reproduced from FCC document FCC 11-78
http://www.fcc.gov/reports/seventh-broadband-progress-report]

FCC – Seventh Broadband Progress Report Adopted: May 20, 2011, and Released: May 20, 2011.

Highlights

• Our analysis of the best data available shows that as many as 26 million Americans live in areas unserved by broadband capable of “originat[ing] and receiv[ing] high-quality voice, data, graphics, and video telecommunications.
• Many of these Americans live in areas where there is no business case to offer broadband, and where existing public efforts to extend broadband are unlikely to reach; they have no immediate prospect of being served, despite the growing costs of digital exclusion. For these and other reasons, we must conclude that broadband is not being deployed in a reasonable and timely fashion to all Americans.
• Approximately one-third of Americans do not subscribe to any form of high-speed Internet access service, citing barriers such as lack of affordability, lack of digital literacy, and a perception that the Internet is not relevant or useful to them. In addition, as many as 80 percent of E-rate funded schools and libraries say their broadband connections do not fully meet their needs.
• Cable networks are rolling out DOCSIS 3.0, capable of offering services of 50 Mbps or higher, and have passed 80 million homes as of the end of 2010. Other providers, mostly Verizon and some smaller providers, are rolling out fiber-to-the-premises, which is capable or providing some of the fastest broadband data rates offered anywhere; FiOS alone claims to have passed 15.8 million premises as of the first quarter of 2011.
• Too many Americans remain unable to fully participate in our economy and society because they lack broadband. Americans with low-income, or who are less educated, unemployed, disabled, seniors, Blacks, and Hispanics have a much lower broadband adoption rate than average.
• The costs of digital exclusion are high and growing: lack of broadband limits healthcare, educational, and employment opportunities that are essential for consumer welfare and America’s economic growth and global competitiveness. In contrast, the widespread deployment and availability of broadband in many areas of the nation promotes a virtuous cycle of investment, innovation, and competition.
• There are several prominent barriers to infrastructure investment and obstacles to competition, including some that increase the costs of deploying and operating networks, and some that reduce potential revenues by limiting demand for broadband. These include: the costs of deploying networks and offering service in unserved areas; low broadband service quality, including performance insufficient to enable consumers to use the applications and services they wish to use, and the applications Congress has specified for particular consideration; lack of affordable broadband Internet access services; consumers’ lack of access to computers and other broadband-capable equipment; lack of relevance of broadband for some consumers; poor digital literacy; and consumers’ lack of trust in broadband and Internet content and applications.
• We assess broadband deployment using a speed tier that approximates the 4 Mbps/1 Mbps broadband speed threshold. The SBDD Data, however, are collected by pre-determined speed tiers, none of which are 4 Mbps/1 Mbps. Of the 99 speed tiers collected in the SBDD Data, one tier lies just below our benchmark (3 Mbps/768 kbps), and another lies just above our benchmark (6 Mbps/1.5 Mbps). Although we have analyzed broadband deployment using these and other cutoffs, in this report we base our statutory assessment of deployment on the 3 Mbps/768 kbps tier rather than the 6 Mbps/1.5 Mbps tier, because it is the closest to the 4 Mbps/1 Mbps threshold.
• Our estimates based upon SBDD Data include data for fixed terrestrial technologies, including fiber to the home, xDSL, cable modem, and fixed wireless.112 We do not draw conclusions based on SBDD Data about mobile wireless services due to our concern that these data do not accurately reflect where mobile wireless subscribers actually are able to obtain service that meets the broadband performance threshold.