NASA Building Network of Smart Cameras Across US

kkleiner writes "A major government agency is looking to blanket the US with cameras that will never stop their surveillance. But don't worry, privacy pundits, those cameras will be spying on the sky, not civilians. NASA's All-sky Fireball Network is a series of cameras that track meteorites as they enter the atmosphere. With careful triangulation, NASA can not only know where the meteorites will land, they can determine where they came from as well. One of the coolest parts of the All-sky Fireball Network is that it's fully automated. Meteors are detected by a computer which sends images, video clips, and data analysis to William Cooke, head of NASA's Meteoroid Environment Office. Now you can get the same information as Cooke, too – the All-sky Fireball Network's website publicly records all the data for you to peruse."

Comments

Is the Funding Safe?

[Sonny Yatsen]

Considering the cuts that are being pushed through the House, especially for research of earth/space science stuff like tsunami warnings, I can't help but wonder whether it'll just get defunded in a few months. I hope not. This looks interesting, but no amount of federal funding for scientific research is safe from the politicians right now.

Re:Is the Funding Safe?

[spun]

The rich get more from society, they should give more back. They are engaged in class warfare against us, they have taken all the gains in GDP over the last forty years for themselves. All they did was "risk" their money, while workers risked their lives and livelihoods. Workers produce all value in society, yet money-lenders take all the profits. I say we fight back, or we will go back to the gilded age and be nothing more than serfs in our own country.

It's big, it's heavy, it's wood?

[Tetsujin]

"This looks interesting" is a lot more legitimate a reason than some of the random tax breaks we've pissed our money away on.

So it's "better than bad" and therefore "good"?