Month: May 2020

Enlarge / Dana Deasy, Department of Defense chief information officer, testifies during a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on May 6, 2020 in Washington, DC. (credit: Getty Images)

GPS is facing a major interference threat from a 5G network approved by the Federal Communications Commission, US military officials told Congress in a hearing on Wednesday.

In testimony to the Senate Committee on Armed Services, Department of Defense Chief Information Officer Dana Deasy disputed the FCC's claims that conditions imposed on the Ligado network will protect GPS from interference.

When the FCC approved Ligado's plan last month, the agency required a 23MHz guard band to provide a buffer between the Ligado cellular network and GPS. Deasy argued that this guard band won't prevent interference with GPS signals:

Enlarge / Someone fix this.

Unity is coming to Google's messaging strategy—again. A report from The Verge details a shakeup in Google's messaging leadership that will see Javier Soltero, the VP and GM of G Suite, take charge of all of Google's messaging apps in a single "unified team."

A Google statement says Soltero will be in charge of "all of Google's collective communication products," which presumably means Google Hangouts, Google Meet, Google Chat, Google Messages, Google Duo, and Google Voice. Oddly, the report also lists "Android phone app" as one of Soltero's new responsibilities. Here's Google's full statement.

We are bringing all of Google’s collective communication products together under one leader and unified team that will be led by Javier Soltero, VP and GM of G Suite. Javier will remain in Cloud, but will also join the leadership team under Hiroshi Lockheimer, SVP of Platforms and Ecosystems. Outside of this update, there are no other changes to the personnel and Hiroshi will continue to play a significant role in our ongoing partnership efforts.

Soltero only joined Google in October of last year. Previously, he created the Acompli email app, which Microsoft acquired in 2014 and turned into the Outlook mobile app. After speaking to Soltero, The Verge comes away with what seems to be conflicting statements on the future of Google's messaging apps. On one hand, the report says Google has "no immediate plans to change or integrate any of Google’s apps," but when speaking of Google's consumer messaging apps, it also quotes Soltero as saying, “The plan continues to be to modernize all of that towards Google Meet and Google Chat.”

Enlarge / China's new spacecraft shown after landing Friday. It looks something like a Crew Dragon, no? (credit: CASC)

China's new—and as yet unnamed—spacecraft safely returned to Earth on Friday after a three-day mission. Under the care of three parachutes, the spacecraft came to a rest in a Chinese desert at 1:49am ET (05:49 UTC). Images released by the Chinese space corporation showed a singed but intact spacecraft.

For China this was a historic flight, sending an uncrewed prototype of its next-generation spacecraft to an altitude of 8,000km. The mission also served to test a new variant of the country's most powerful rocket, the Long March 5B, which also was deemed a success.

According to Space News, the spacecraft's reentry velocity was 9km/s as it approached from a higher orbit. This is on par with the high-speed return made by NASA's Orion spacecraft during its uncrewed Exploration Flight Test-1 mission in 2014, when the capsule reached a peak altitude of 5,800km.