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Editorial
New hazards as smartphones reach new horizons
Monday, April 29, 2013
Ground stations are receiving signals from three new NASA satellites that were launched over the weekend. They have 100 times the computing power of previous satellites, high-resolution cameras, multiple sensors, GPS receivers and radios, and are expected to remain in orbit for about two weeks.
They each weigh less than four pounds, are about four inches across and cost only $3,500 to build and as little as $50,000 to launch into orbit -- a real bargain compared to the typical satellite's $500 million.
The secret? The satellites, named Alexander, Graham and Bell, are built using standard off-the-shelf smartphones. NASA has hopes that PhoneSats like those named after the inventor of the telephone will be useful for a wide array of science and commercial purposes.
Amateur radio operators around the world are receiving data "packets" from the satellites on amateur radio band 437.425 MHz and uploading them to the phonesat.org website.
More and more of us are finding ourselves using our smartphones instead of everything from laptops to GPS to cameras to books -- oh, and don't forget our conventional landline telephone.
Is there anything a cell phone can't do?
Well, yes.
It can't work when cell phone towers go down, as they did on the East Coast when Hurricane Sandy hit last fall -- about one in four cell phone towers failed, cutting off people who relied exclusively on wireless.
As a National Public Radio story today pointed out, regulation hasn't kept up with new technology, and cellular carriers have balked at requirements, for instance, that each cell tower have backup power, which has limited endurance, anyway. There are even questions over who should regulate wireless communications, since more and more of it is going over the Internet.
Nebraska may not be plagued by hurricanes, but the next major blizzard or ice storm may determine just how dependent we are on cellular phone service, and whether or not we have enough safeguards and backup systems in place.