WHAT do you do with a fleet of mobile phone satellites that nobody wants to
use? Why, turn them into a space weather monitoring network, of course.
Earlier last year, it looked like the 66 satellites of the Iridium network
would be ditched in the ocean because so few consumers wanted to cart around the
bulky handsets needed to communicate with them. But last November a company
called Iridium Satellite offered to buy the network
(Â鶹´«Ã½, 25 November, p 11).
The company has now signed a deal with the US military to
provide phone services.
But a group…
