Japan’s space debris scavenger hunts the main target

The space debris cleanup mission launched by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) has successfully shot down one of its targets.

The commercial debris removal demonstration led Japanese outfit Astroscale to work with JAXA to launch a satellite called ADRAS-J that demonstrates the capabilities needed to remove space debris from orbit. Last Friday, the two entities revealed that one of the mission’s four goals – to get close to a target and observe it from a fixed point while providing continuous images with the required image quality and data volume – was achieved. at the end of May.

The observed object was the upper stage of an H-IIA rocket, launched in 2009 to carry the greenhouse gas monitoring satellite into space. The image below depicts that upper stage, as seen by ADRAS-J from a distance of just 50 meters.

The image is said to demonstrate that Japan’s aim to develop commercial space cleaning services is progressing satisfactorily.

India names new technology minister

India’s re-elected government has appointed a new minister to a key technology portfolio.

A minister from the previous government, Ashwini Vaishnaw, retained his cabinet position, along with the portfolios of Railways, Information and Broadcasting and Electronics and Information Technology.

Jitin Prasada was asked to serve as Minister of State in the Electronics and Information Technology portfolio. The previous minister of state for that portfolio, Rajeev Chandrasekhar, suddenly decided to end his time in politics.

A Singaporean technician was reportedly jailed for deleting his former employer’s VMs

An Indian national who once worked for the NCS service in Singapore has reportedly been jailed for wiping virtual machines after being fired.

Singapore media reports that the man, an Indian national, was released from NCS and returned to his home country, but remained able to access the company’s services.

He then deleted many VMs in a test environment. After the disappearance of the VMs was noticed, authorities reportedly found evidence that the convict was looking for scripts that would delete the resources. The former employee explained that he was confused and angry after being fired and sentenced to two years and eight months in prison.

Hong Kong uses robodog to sniff out pollution

The Hong Kong government has tested a robot dog as a means of sniffing out pollution.

A government case study published on Sunday explains that environmental officers currently rely on their noses to sniff out pollution.

Senior Environmental Protection Department official Law Chi-wing said the robodog “provides objective data and quickly tracks the location of such resources.”

The department envisions a future where this gas-sniffing robot dog can replace human investigators when it comes to entering dangerous and confined spaces during contamination investigations, increasing the efficiency of their investigations and the safety of investigators.

Forrester predicts growth in APAC technology spending

Analyst firm Forrester last week predicted that technology spending in the APAC region would grow by 6.4 percent through 2024, to reach a total of $710 billion.

Compound annual growth rates will continue between 6.4 percent and 7.4 percent per year from 2024 to 2027, meaning spending in the final year will reach $876 billion.

India will be the region’s fastest-growing nation in 2024, with technology spending accelerating at 10.8 percent, outpacing 8.1 percent in six countries (Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand, Taiwan, and Vietnam), China’s 7.2 percent percent, Singapore’s 5.6 percent, and Australia’s growth of 4.0 percent.

Australia is likely to introduce social media age requirement

Australia’s two main political parties have both backed the idea of ​​restricting access to social media for people over 16.

New Prime Minister Anthony Albanese (61) and Gen-X opposition leader Peter Dutton (53) have both backed the idea and suggested age verification would be needed to implement it. However, neither has suggested an age verification mechanism.

Last week Australia also launched an information-sharing scheme aimed at limiting the effectiveness of financial fraud. The Australian Financial Crimes Exchange (AFCX) sees many financial institutions sharing information on fraud they have observed or suspected crimes. The Exchange will work with other government agencies to identify more fraudsters and scammers – in some cases using data provided by social networks.

APAC book of deals

New deals, partnerships and alliances we spotted in the region last week included:

• NTT Data acquired a majority stake in India’s ProvenTech Pvt Ltd – an outfit that provides quality management and manufacturing solutions to the pharmaceutical, healthcare and food industries using its own products, SAP and other enterprise software.
• Australia’s Macquarie Cloud has forged a “strategic relationship” with Dell and Microsoft that will see it offer a hybrid cloud service that combines Azure Stack HCI and Dell’s Apex ITaaS service. We’re told customers will get “workload flexibility, a single management plane, consistent experience, 24×7 mission-critical support and evergreen compatibility across public, private and hybrid cloud environments.”
• Huawei signed a memorandum of understanding with South African telephone company MTN, according to which the pair will “jointly promote the large-scale application of key Net5.5G capabilities, such as 400GE, SRv6, slicing and Digital Network Mapping , to continuously improve MTN’s service experience and network availability in the Consumer and B2B areas.” Huawei is a major supporter of 5.5G – an evolution of the wireless standard that includes some elements expected to appear in 6G specifications later this decade.
• Infosys has reportedly won a deal to assemble new IT capacity for IKEA. The deal will reportedly see the Indian concern take hundreds of IKEA IT staff across Europe in pursuit of innovation.

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