Roy Mark

Aneesh Chopra, President Obama’s nominee to be the nation’s first chief technology officer, is scheduled for a May 19 confirmation hearing before the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science & Transportation. Obama nominated Chopra April 18 to fill the still vaguely defined position.The hearing comes just two days before a White House-mandated May 21 deadline for […]

Calling the Hubble Space Telescope’s extreme makeover a “really tremendous adventure,” the Space Shuttle Atlantis crew finished its fifth and final spacewalk May 18 and began preparing for a return trip to Earth. In all likelihood, it was the final trip that will ever be made to Hubble, the telescope that has become a symbol […]

The Obama administration has decided not to seek a Supreme Court review of lower court decisions striking down controversial Patriot Act provisions allowing the government to impose gag orders on NSLs (national security letters) recipients. FBI NSLs require recipients to turn over sensitive information about their clients and subscribers. The gag order provision allows the […]

The space shuttle Atlantis lifted off from the Kennedy Space Center May 11 on an ambitious final 11-day mission to repair and upgrade the Hubble Space Telescope to keep it operational for at least five more years. So far, so good.From tweets to system tweaks to major instrument upgrades, the seven-person crew of the Atlantis […]

Opposition in Congress is growing to President Obama’s proposed elimination of the Loran navigational system. According to the White House, the Loran system has been made “obsolete by GPS” and dropping the program would save taxpayers $35 million in 2010 and $190 million over five years. The Loran system employs a chain of land-based, low […]

It didn’t happen easily, but the space shuttle Atlantis’ astronauts installed new gyroscopes May 15 on the Hubble Space Telescope. Working in extremely tight quarters inside the Hubble, the spacewalking crew encountered a box of gyros that wouldn’t align properly but successfully installed a different set.The bulky gyroscope box delayed the timetable for the primary […]

With debris from an exploded 2007 Chinese weather satellite safely avoided, the Atlantis crew May 14 began the first major repairs to the Hubble Space Telescope since 2002. The four-inch piece of debris came within approximately 1.7 miles and 492 feet below the Atlantis and the attached Hubble at 7:28 p.m. EDT May 13.“No action […]

Having suffered only minor damage from its May 11 launch at the Kennedy Space Center, the Space Shuttle Atlantis arrived at the Hubble Space Telescope May 13 to begin the high-risk task of repairing the 19-year-old orbiting observatory. Around midafternoon, NASA Astronaut Megan McArthur captured the Hubble with Atlantis’ robotic arm and lowered it into […]

Clearwire and Cisco announced May 12 an alliance to enhance and expand Clearwire’s 4G mobile WiMax network, currently limited to Baltimore and Portland, Ore. The deal names Cisco as Clearwire’s IP NGN (national Internet Protocol Next-Generation Network) core infrastructure provider with Cisco to build new mobile WiMax devices for the consumer, small office or home […]

With the remote networking market targeted by virtual branch office comprising roughly half of the nearly $11 billion WAN edge market, Aruba Networks said May 12 it was aggressively moving into the market, releasing three new families of remote devices. Aruba’s VBN solution includes new software for data center-based Aruba Controllers, as well as three […]