DARPA's new drone weighs ten grams, looks like a hummingbird and can hover for extended periods of time. It's part of a wide range of ongoing NAV programs — Nano Air Vehicles — that simulate bugs and birds for espionage purposes. Teams DARPA and CIA have come a long way since they started flying spy pigeons in the 1960s.  

“The NAV program will push the limits of aerodynamic and power conversion efficiency, endurance, and maneuverability for very small, flapping wing air vehicle systems,” said Dr. Todd Hylton, DARPA program manager. “The goals of the NAV program — namely to develop an approximately 10 gram aircraft that can hover for extended periods, can fly at forward speeds up to 10 meters per second, can withstand 2.5 meter per second wind gusts, can operate inside buildings, and have up to a kilometer command and control range — will stretch our understanding of flight at these small sizes and require novel technology development.”

(photo credit: AeroVironment NAV demonstrator vehicle at end of Phase I program)

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A young child is reported to have survived yesterday's air crash of Yemenia Flight 626 which went down into the India Ocean approximately 12 miles from the island of Comoros. The child was found floating in the ocean wearing a life vest. Save that miracle, French officials have an extraordinary amount of work ahead of them.

This is the second air disaster involving an aircraft traveling to or from France this month. Of the 142 passengers on board yesterday's flight, 66 were French citizens. The flight originated in Paris and stopped in Marseilles before heading to Yemen.  

Both aircraft involved in the two air disasters — this one and the Air France, Rio-to-Paris crash on June 1st — were made by Airbus, which is headquartered in Toulouse, France. Airbus makes approximately half of the world's commercial planes and is a subsidiary of European Aeronautic Defense & Space.

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On the eve of his 80th birthday — not to mention the 40th anniversary of his walk on the moon — Buzz Aldrin challenges NASA to cancel the Ares part of its Constellation program and aim to colonize Mars. He writes about this in the forthcoming issue of Popular Mechanics Magazine. 

"As I approach my 80th birthday, I’m in no mood to keep my mouth shut any longer when I see NASA heading down the wrong path. And that’s exactly what I see today. The agency’s current Vision for Space Exploration will waste decades and hundreds of billions of dollars trying to reach the moon by 2020—a glorified rehash of what we did 40 years ago. Instead of a steppingstone to Mars, NASA’s current lunar plan is a detour. It will derail our Mars effort, siphoning off money and engineering talent for the next two decades. If we aspire to a long-term human presence on Mars—and I believe that should be our overarching goal for the foreseeable future—we must drastically change our focus."

Last month, I interviewed Buzz Aldrin for an article that will appear in the August issue of the Los Angeles Times Magazine. Here's a photograph from our interview, taken by Buzz's wife Lois. Note Buzz's tee-shirt — promoting higher education on Mars.

His new memoir, Magnificent Desolation, is a beautiful read. 

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Beale Air Force Base, located in Northern California, has been watching North Korea for years.

Earlier in the month, I was at the SR-71 Blackbird convention in Reno. This photograph shows some of the pilots who flew remarkably dangerous reconnaissance missions beginning in the earliest days of the Cold War — flying the U-2, the A-12 Oxcart and the SR-71 Blackbird over denied territories around the globe including North Korea.  

Naturally, conversation turned to current events. How North Korea's unpredictable dictator continues to threaten world security — only now he's got nuclear weapons.

Brigadier General Robert 'Bob' Otto, Commander of the 9th Reconnaissance Wing at nearby Beale Air Force Base (once home to the Blackbirds, current home to the U-2 and Global Hawk) was on hand to answer questions. In a power point demonstration Otto showed a photograph of the radar at Beale Air Force base that watches North Korea's missiles and "would track and intercept them" were any to begin a trajectory over the Sea of Japan en route to Hawaii.  

Otto spoke of a recent test which confirmed just how effective the radar system is. "We had a direct hit after tracking an item at Warp 8," Otto said. 

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French President Nicolas Sarkozy has publicly criticized the draconian Muslim practice of making women wear the burqa. In a speech at the Palace of Versailles Sarkozy said he supports creating a parliamentary commission that will likely result in the burqa's ban in all of France. 

"In our country, we cannot accept that women be prisoners behind a screen, cut off from all social life, deprived of all identity," Sarkozy said to extended applause in a speech at the Chateau of Versailles southwest of Paris.

"The burqa is not a religious sign, it's a sign of subservience, a sign of debasement—I want to say it solemnly," he said. "It will not be welcome on the territory of the French Republic."

In France, the terms "burqa" and "niqab" often are used interchangeably. The former refers to a full-body covering worn largely in Afghanistan with only a mesh screen over the eyes, whereas the latter is a full-body veil, often in black, with slits for the eyes. 

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CNN Reports:

Two U.S. journalists, who were detained in North Korea while covering the plight of defectors living along the China-North Korea border, have been sentenced to 12 years hard labor in prison, the country's state-run media said Monday.

This will — and should — become a tipping point for the State Department's hobbled approach to North Korea, which remains one of the most dangerous nuclear-armed nations in the world. Of note is who the journalists worked for.

[Female journalists Laura] Ling and [Euana] Lee were taken into custody March 17. They are reporters for California-based Current TV, a media venture of former U.S. Vice President Al Gore. 

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Hundreds of Pakistani army preparatory school students in North Waziristan were kidnapped by Taliban yesterday. Today, the Washington Post reports that perhaps dozens of the high-school age children have been rescued.

The students were leaving their school, Razmak Cadet College, by bus convoy for summer vacation when they were attacked by Taliban forces wielding rockets, rifles and hand grenades. 

The message the jihadists wanted to send is clear:

The government-run school trains future army officers and has a reputation for accepting only the brightest students from the tribal regions and neighboring North-West Frontier Province. It caters to the sons of maliks, or tribal chiefs, many of whom have been killed or ousted by Taliban commanders who have upended the traditional tribal structure in Waziristan. 

What will happen to the rest of the boys?

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Iran has announched that its 1,200-mile test of a new surface-to-surface missile, called "Sajil-2," was a success. This means Iran, on its way to becoming a nuclear nation, has a missile capable of hitting targets in Europe. From CNN:

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said President Obama "expressed … his great concern, his continued concern, about Iran's pursuit of nuclear weapons capability and nuclear weapons technology."

In February 2009, Iran launched its first domestically-made satellite, called Omid, shown at right in the presence of its smiling President.

Four years earlier, on October 28, 2005, Russia launched a satellite for Iran, called Sina-1, from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome.

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