Motorola is set to launch two more satellites for its Iridium system, which will eventually include 66 low-earth-orbit satellites for use in wireless communications services. The launch, set for Monday, will use a Long March 2C/SD rocket and take place at the Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center in China.
The satellite system will communicate with land-based wireless networks and allow subscribers to communicate using handheld telephones and pagers from virtually anywhere in the world. Motorola expects to complete the Iridium satellite launches and start offering services in 1998.
Monday's launch will be the first from the Chinese site, and the eighth in the past eight months, bringing the total number of satellites on-orbit to 41.
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Truth is stranger than science fiction: A NASA aerospace engineer has launched Warp Drive When?, a new Web site to explore the ambitious goals of the agency's Breakthrough Propulsion Physics Program. The recently established BPPP seeks to compile breakthroughs and research in next-generation physics and engineering with the goal of bringing the space propulsion systems of science fiction closer to reality.
Marc Millis uses analogies borrowed from sci-fi such as Star Trek to simplify complex scientific concepts and explain the current physics problems facing "warp speed" space travel. (5.Dec.97)
