Official News page 6

REAL LIFE NEWS: NASA ERECTS SURVEILLANCE CAMERAS ACROSS THE US

by Hazed

Speaking of NASA, the organisation has plans to cover the US with surveillance cameras that monitor their targets 24/7.

But don't worry, this isn't as sinister as it sounds, because the cameras won't be looking at people - they'll be pointing at the sky. The All-Sky Fireball Network will be tracking meteorites as they enter the atmosphere. By triangulating images from different cameras NASA can determine where the meteorites land, and also figure out where they came from.

This is not intended to be a warning system but it will help the scientists to recover these space rocks. It will also give information to help build the next generation of spacecraft, which will have to contend with meteor damage.

The network is intended to be fully automated. Meteors are detected by a computer which sends images, video clips and data analysis to NASAs head of Meteoroid Environment Office. What's more, we can all see the same info he gets because the network's website publicly records all the data.

For more information about these meteor-cams, go here: http://singularityhub.com/2011/03/11/nasa-building-network-of-smart-cameras-across-the-us/.

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