If you look at satellite photographs of the Far East by night, you'll see a large splotch curiously lacking in light. This area of darkness is the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.


The hardest thing about my job isn't the snake bites or the crocodiles, it's being away from my children. I have a really religious satellite phone call every day back to the boys, wherever we are, whatever time zone, to say goodnight.

With every inch of land on Earth now catalogued by our satellites, the stars are the next place we as a species must travel. And with a booming world population that will hit 9.1 billion in 2050, large-scale space travel may become a necessity.

Historically, privacy was almost implicit, because it was hard to find and gather information. But in the digital world, whether it's digital cameras or satellites or just what you click on, we need to have more explicit rules - not just for governments but for private companies.

On the 11th anniversary of 9/11, it is some consolation that the man most responsible for that terrible morning will not be smiling smugly to himself as satellite TV brings to the leafy boulevards of Abbottabad the somber images of New Yorkers commemorating those who perished in the Twin Towers.

The world I live in is benefiting from things like satellite radio. Jazz and blues fests are everywhere now, and Americana is going strong on college radio. What I'm hearing is an appreciation of real music.

For several days in July of 2012, Greenland surface ice cover melted more than at any time in 30 years of satellite observation. During that month, an estimated 97% of the ice sheet thawed.

NSS strongly supports the usage of space to provide benefits to people living on the Earth. The Iridium satellites enable first responders to communicate rapidly during an emergency anywhere in the world.

Even by the diverse standards of Saturn's satellites, Enceladus was an outlier. Its icy surface was as white and bright as fresh snow, and whereas the other airless moons were heavily pocked with craters, Enceladus was mantled in places with extensive plains of smooth, uncratered terrain, a clear sign of past internally driven geologic activity.

If you look at the architecture of Washington, D.C., it is not by mistake that the dome over the Capitol is the very center of the federal city. The White House and the Supreme Court are set about us, satellites to the supreme power of the people expressed in the legislative authority of Congress.