August 01, 2006
Newfound Blob is Biggest Thing in the Universe
An enormous amoeba-like structure 200 million light-years wide and made up of galaxies and large bubbles of gas is the largest known object in the universe, scientists say.
The galaxies and gas bubbles, called Lyman alpha blobs, are aligned along three curvy filaments that formed about 2 billion years after the universe exploded into existence after the theoretical Big Bang. The filaments were recently seen using the Subaru and Keck telescopes on Mauna Kea.
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Home >> SpaceJuly 02, 2006
The Geometry of Earth is All Wrong
Stephen Hawking is best known for thinking about time, space, and those teratoid trash mashers known as black holes. But in a recent talk in Hong Kong, the famous physicist digressed from his usual subject matter to tell the audience that they'd better get off the island, and he didn't mean Kowloon. Instead, the Cambridge don was urging the crowd to get off the whole, gosh-darn planet. Hawking was hawking space colonization.
"Life on Earth is at the ever-increasing risk of being wiped out by a disaster, such as sudden global warming, nuclear war, a genetically engineered virus or other dangers," Hawking disclosed.
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Home >> SpaceJanuary 28, 2006
OGLE-2005-BLG-390Lb
The most Earth-like planet yet discovered beyond the solar system has been detected orbiting a distant star, boosting the chances that life exists elsewhere in the galaxy.
The icy, rocky world is just five times larger than our own, making it the smallest and most similar to Earth of all the 160 "exoplanets" around other stars that astronomers have found so far.
The planet, which has been given the unglamorous name OGLE-2005-BLG-390Lb, is considered an unlikely candidate for life, as it has a surface temperature of -220C (-364F) that precludes the presence of the liquid water thought necessary to sustain organisms.
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Home >> SpaceDecember 10, 2005
Telerobotic Construction Challenge
NASA is offering two new $250,000 prizes to stimulate advances in the use of robots in planetary exploration and automated construction.
One, called the Telerobotic Construction Challenge, aims to promote the development of semi-autonomous robots that can build complicated structures with minimal remote guidance from human controllers.
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Home >> SpaceNovember 13, 2005
Gravity Tractor
NASA scientists have come up with a surprisingly simple yet effective way to deflect an Earth-bound asteroid – park a large spacecraft close by and let gravity do the work.
Previous suggestions have focused on deflecting an incoming asteroid with nuclear explosions. But NASA experts believe a "gravity tractor" should be able to perform the same feat by creating an invisible towline to tug the rock off its deadly course.
"Most people think of the Hollywood treatment – throw a nuclear weapon at it," says Edward Lu, a NASA scientist and astronaut who developed the idea. But this would produce shattered pieces, some of which might still head towards Earth. "That’s the blast-and-hope strategy," Lu adds.
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Home >> SpaceNovember 06, 2005
NASA tightens its belt, again
NASA administrator Mike Griffin has confirmed speculation that even more of its science projects would be cut or delayed in an attempt to keep President Bush's 'vision for space' alive.
On 3 November, Griffin told a US House Committee that NASA is US$3-5 billion short on funds to finish the space shuttle programme through to its retirement in 2010. Such shortfalls mean NASA has had to get its priorities in order and make some serious cuts to close part of this funding gap. To that end, Griffin unveiled a series of belt-tightening measures that will see key research programmes in life science and nuclear energy "discontinued, de-scoped or delayed".
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Home >> SpaceOctober 31, 2005
Space designs from ants and squirrels
Ideas that could further exploration in space are coming from a surprising source - animals such as ants, fish and squirrels.
The future of space exploration could lie in biomimetics, where engineering meets biology. In effect, it steals nature's evolutionary tricks to create revolutionary applications.
Engineers like Dr Alex Ellery, head of the Robotics Research Group at the University of Surrey, are trying to find out how natural systems might inspire human-made technology in space.
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Home >> SpaceOctober 22, 2005
An elevator to space?
Space is a long, long way up, but a dozen ambitious high-tech teams assembled in Mountain View on Friday, prepared to compete under NASA encouragement with far-out concepts for reaching the planets in ways no one has ever attempted.
The dozen teams are inventive entrants into the arcane world of untried ventures in aerospace engineering, and this weekend at NASA's Ames Research Center they will be vying for modest prizes -- the first in an annual series of competitions as creative and extreme as any space groupie could envision.
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Home >> SpaceSeptember 04, 2005
Greg Olsen To Orbit
Gregory Olsen, has been confirmed to the Soyuz TMA-7 crew, which is scheduled for an October 1 launch. Olsen would become the third space tourist to go to the International Space Station (ISS) and the first since the Columbia Space Shuttle tragedy.
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Home >> SpaceSeptember 02, 2005
Aerobot aims for Titan
An intelligent floating robot could help to explore Saturn's moon Titan, following flight tests that prove it can survey large areas of land completely autonomously. The aerobot is even smart enough to avoid dangerous turbulence.
"After the Huygens probe returned those stunning pictures of Titan's surface, there's been a lot of interest in another mission," says Alberto Elfes, a robotics expert at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. He and his colleagues think that their aerobot could spend months cruising through the moon's atmosphere, mapping the surface and collecting samples.
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Home >> SpaceAugust 12, 2005
Private Voyage to the Moon
First and only company to launch private explorers to space partners with the and to offer an expedition to the lunar far side., the world's leading space experiences company, announced today the availability of a commercial spaceflight to the far side of the moon. The company, which organized spaceflights for the world's first private space explorers, American businessman and the 'First African in Space' , disclosed the details of the mission, called DSE-Alpha, during a press conference.
DSE-Alpha, the first in a series of lunar missions to be featured in Space Adventures' (DSE) program, is made possible through the company's long-standing partnership with the Federal Space Agency of the Russian Federation (FSA) and the Rocket and Space Corporation Energia (RSC Energia). The mission will utilize the robust Soyuz spacecraft, piloted by a Russian cosmonaut, and could launch as early as 2008. Two commercial seats are available priced at $100,000,000 (USD) each. Before the mission is flown, the required research and development, spacecraft modifications, as well as, the required manned and unmanned test flights will have been completed.
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Home >> SpaceJuly 16, 2005
Reverse engineering intergalactic anti-gravity propulsion system
When a galaxy starts to take away stars from another galaxy, astronomers start looking at it with awe. But now the aerospace engineers are smiling because the universe just revealed the anti-gravity propulsion system.
Anti-gravity propulsion is nothing new. But those who have worked with anti-gravity propulsion research know that creating lift is easy but creating lift that can be navigated is not easy. One reason that we do not use anti-gravity propulsion systems in unclassified flying crafts is that the navigation becomes extremely difficult. Even complex computer models are struggling to solve the puzzle.
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Home >> SpaceJune 19, 2005
Is this the future of air combat?
For 65 years, the Mojave Desert has spawned the fastest, highest-flying and most agile airplanes in the world. This vast expanse of scrub and Joshua tree forests encompasses the U.S. Air Force’s deadly-secret Area 51 in Nevada, Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works in Palmdale, California, and, at Mojave airfield itself, Burt Rutan’s sci-fi enclave, Scaled Composites. At the heart of it all is the flight-test center at Edwards Air Force Base—and here is where a very nontraditional confrontation over the future of air combat is beginning to play out.
In one corner of the base resides the USAF’s current star project, the Lockheed Martin F/A-22 Raptor. The Raptor is fast, cruising at speeds other fighters can attain only in short sprints. It’s also agile, heavily armed, and stealthy. In tests last year, the pilots of older F-15s that engaged the Raptors in simulated combat never saw the airplane that “hit” them.
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Home >> SpaceJune 05, 2005
Aging Universe May Still Be Spawning Massive Galaxies
NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer has spotted what appear to be massive "baby" galaxies in our corner of the universe. Previously, astronomers thought the universe's birth rate had dramatically declined and only small galaxies were forming.
"We knew there were really massive young galaxies eons ago, but we thought they had all matured into older ones more like our Milky Way. If these galaxies are indeed newly formed, then this implies parts of the universe are still hotbeds of galaxy birth," said Dr. Chris Martin. He is principal investigator for the Galaxy Evolution Explorer at the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, Calif., and co-author of the study.
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Home >> SpaceMay 03, 2005
Aerogel
Aerogel is not like conventional foams, but is a special porous material with extreme microporosity on a micron scale. It is composed of individual features only a few nanometers in size. These are linked in a highly porous dendritic-like structure.
This exotic substance has many unusual properties, such as low thermal conductivity, refractive index and sound speed - in addition to its exceptional ability to capture fast moving dust. Aerogel is made by high temperature and pressure-critical-point drying of a gel composed of colloidal silica structural units filled with solvents. Aerogel was prepared and flight qualified at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). JPL also produced aerogel for the Mars Pathfinder and Stardust missions, which possesses well-controlled properties and purity. This particular JPL-made silica aerogel approaches the density of air. It is strong and easily survives launch and space environments. JPL aerogel capture experiments have flown previously and been recovered on Shuttle flights, Spacelab II and Eureca.
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Home >> SpaceApril 24, 2005
The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy
The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy.
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Home >> SpaceApril 19, 2005
Robots in space the next frontier
Within two decades, a Japanese space shuttle will blast off with astronauts working alongside robots to make Japan a brand name in space.
That's the plan the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) pitched to the technology ministry's Space Activities Commission this month.
The JAXA long-range vision includes astronauts using robots to probe for resources, conduct research and beam lectures back to Earth-bound students. They would travel in a reusable space vehicle.
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Home >> SpaceApril 12, 2005
The top three reasons for humans in space
It’s late at night, and you receive an urgent phone call from the White House. “The President wants to know why we should continue to put humans in space. He wants a one-page summary on his desk by tomorrow morning.” What do you write?
Lists of reasons for human spaceflight are readily available. The National Space Society has a detailed list, and SPACE.com has its Top 3 and Top 10. Nonetheless, there is a need for a concise list that can be easily recalled—perhaps something like this:
Humans are in space:
3. To work
2. To live
1. To survive
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Home >> SpaceMarch 31, 2005
ANTS
"This prototype is the first step toward developing a revolutionary type of robot spacecraft with major advantages over current designs," said Dr. Steven Curtis, Principal Investigator for the ANTS project, a collaboration between Goddard and NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va. Using advanced animation tools, Using advanced animation tools, Langley is developing rover operational scenarios for the ANTS project.
The robot is called "TETwalker" for tetrahedral walker, because it resembles a tetrahedron (a pyramid with 3 sides and a base). In the prototype, electric motors are located at the corners of the pyramid called nodes. The nodes are connected to struts which form the sides of the pyramid. The struts telescope like the legs of a camera tripod, and the motors expand and retract the struts. This allows the pyramid to move: changing the length of its sides alters the pyramid's center of gravity, causing it to topple over. The nodes also pivot, giving the robot great flexibility.
Read more at Physics.org & ANTS
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Home >> SpaceMarch 23, 2005
Martian Solar Eclipse
That dynamic duo on Mars, the Spirit and Opportunity rovers, are satellite watchers too.
Turning their respective camera systems up into the martian sky, the robots have caught sight of the moons of Mars - Phobos and Deimos - scooting across the face of the Sun.
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Home >> SpaceMarch 20, 2005
A Dialectical-Materialist View of the Big Bang
The big bang, widely accepted in a variety of forms by most physical scientists today, was first put forward in rudimentary form by a Belgian priest-astronomer, Georges LeMaître, in 1927. LeMaître’s concept of an expanding universe (not yet as a consequence of a "big bang") was stimulated by the earlier discoveries of American astronomer Edwin Hubble and others that galaxies were in motion at high speeds and the work of the Soviet mathematician Alexander Friedmann, who showed that an expanding universe was a possible mathematical consequence of Einstein’s 1915 general theory of relativity. Astronomical observations established that the properties of the universe were essentially the same everywhere, independent of the position in the universe. Further work by Hubble showed that galaxies were moving away from each other at speeds related to the distance.
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Home >> SpaceMarch 18, 2005
NASA cuts threaten future of US aeronautics
The future of aeronautics research in the US is in serious jeopardy due to budget cuts, experts told a congressional committee on Wednesday.
At NASA, aeronautics research includes work on new aircraft designs, air traffic control and aviation safety. Over the next five years, NASA has proposed shutting down several wind tunnels and reducing its aeronautics workforce by about 2000 employees.
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Home >> SpaceMarch 07, 2005
Smarter robots of tomorrow
An eight-legged Scorpion robot prototype is now under evaluation at NASA Ames Research Center in California's Silicon Valley, where scientists are analyzing how similar robots someday may explore planets.
Scientists say descendants of the dog-sized Scorpion robot, able to climb over boulders and rappel on cables down cliffs, may help explore Mars. Scorpion's inventor, Professor Frank Kirchner, is developing a second prototype at the University of Bremen in Germany.
"The most interesting scientific sites on Mars are not on very easy terrains," said Silvano Colombano, a scientist and the NASA collaborator on the Scorpion robot project at NASA Ames. "Very often, the sites that are interesting are on the sides of a cliff, for instance, or very rocky areas. So we need the kind of robot that can go into these areas, look at the geology and pick up samples that are difficult or impossible for a rover, which is about the size of a small car, to go into," Colombano explained.
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Home >> SpaceMarch 04, 2005
It really is rocket science
When computer science professor Bart Massey came to Portland State, he saw a sign that read, "Do you want to build rockets?"
"I thought to myself that either those guys were real dorks or they were doing something really cool," Massey said.
The group was the Portland State Aerospace Society (PSAS), and apparently what they were doing was cool, because Massey is now the faculty advisor. PSAS has a simple vision statement: they plan to put nano-satellites into orbit using rockets.
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Home >> SpaceFebruary 28, 2005
Digging and Sniffing for Life on Mars
Mars is undergoing intensive, simultaneous scrutiny by the largest number of spacecraft ever to explore the red planet.
While orbiters conduct sensor sweeps of the martian landscape, the Spirit and Opportunity Mars rovers continue their extraordinary surface sojourns. The flood of scientific data continues to expose the truth about Mars.
But still to be nailed down: Was the planet once a home for life, perhaps even a hangout for biology today?
Ground-breaking investigations are just that. Some scientists see Mars underground as breathing room for a subsurface biosphere. If true, drilling down to come up with martian life may be in order.
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Home >> SpaceFebruary 27, 2005
Unnatural Selection
To become a professional antenna designer, you can follow one of two paths: you can enroll in college- and graduate-level courses on electromagnetism, immerse yourself in the empirical study of antenna shapes, and apprentice yourself to an established technician willing to impart the closely guarded secrets of the discipline.
Or you can do what Jason Lohn did: let evolution do the work.
Physicists know a lot about Maxwell’s equations and the other principles governing wireless communications. But antenna design is still pretty much a dark art, says Lohn, a computer scientist working at NASA Ames Research Center outside Mountain View, CA. “The field is so squirrelly. All your learning is through trial and error, the school of hard knocks.”
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Home >> SpaceFebruary 20, 2005
Shuttle's recovery given a shot in the Canadarm
When the Discovery blasts off from the Kennedy Space Center this spring, it will be a landmark event for NASA, eager to prove that the shuttle is safe after the Columbia disaster two years ago. But it will also be a shining moment for Canadians who have played a crucial role in the craft's return to flight.
The Discovery will employ a number of new features to help ensure that the events of Feb. 1, 2003, when the Columbia disintegrated on re-entering Earth's atmosphere, are not repeated.
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Home >> SpaceFebruary 19, 2005
Cosmic blast among brightest recorded
A huge explosion halfway across the galaxy packed so much power it briefly altered Earth's upper atmosphere in December, astronomers said Friday.
No known eruption beyond our solar system has ever appeared as bright upon arrival.
The event equaled the brightness of the full Moon's reflected visible light, NASA says. It was not visible to the naked eye.
The blast originated about 50,000 light-years away and was detected December 27. A light-year is the distance light travels in a year, about 6 trillion miles (10 trillion kilometers).
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Home >> SpaceJanuary 24, 2005
Blazing Speed: The Fastest Stuff in the Universe
If you're light, it's fairly easy to travel at your own speed -- that is to say 186,282 miles per second or 299,800 kilometers per second.
But if you are matter, then it's another matter altogether.
Nothing we know of zips along more quickly than light. Einstein, nearly 100 years ago, said it's not possible. For us, the speed limit makes strange sense: Go faster than light, and you could return before you've left, become your own grandpa, or perform other leaps of cosmic logic.
Fast forward a century. Astronomers are now measuring stuff -- material, matter, things -- that moves at so close to the speed of light you might think it'd make Einstein a bit nervous. His theory of relativity appears not to be endangered by the blazing speeds, though.
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Home >> SpaceJanuary 22, 2005
What future for Hubble telescope?
Since its launch 15 years ago, it has captured some of the most profound - and widely distributed - images of the Universe.
Its ethereal shot of a shimmering Eagle Nebula is as likely to be found on the side of a bus as in the pages of an astronomy textbook.
And, like a celebrated icon, Hubble has now become the focus of controversy.
Its future is up for grabs. And as scientists discuss how - even whether - to service the ageing telescope and prolong its life, the debate over using a human or a robot to do so has grown contentious.
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Home >> SpaceJanuary 18, 2005
ISS CREW POISED FOR ANOTHER EVA
The International Space Station (ISS) crew is preparing for the first 2005 extra-vehicular activity (EVA) scheduled for January 27.
"This time, the main task faced by Salizhan Sharipov and Leroy Chiao, is getting the German robot ROKVISS outside and fix it to the outer surface of the orbiter," a spokesman for the Russian Mission Control Center (TsUP) said on Tuesday.
The complicated 2-ft tall structure with a difficult name of ROKVISS (Robotic Components Verification on ISS) is fitted with two joints, a metal finger and two integral video cameras. The remotely controlled robot was designed to take some workload off the ISS crew. The manipulator will be mounted on the outside of the station, where it will first have to prove it is fit to operate in outer space.
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Home >> SpaceJanuary 11, 2005
Could a hole in space save man from extinction?
The great 19th-century biologist Thomas Huxley once wrote that the "question of all questions for humanity... is that of the determination of man's place in Nature and his relation to the Cosmos".
We might soon be able to provide the answer to this huge riddle as a battery of instruments - including satellites, gravity wave detectors and laser devices - not only begins to give us startling insights into our place in the cosmos, but also forces us to confront the birth and final death of the universe - and even the possible existence of parallel universes.
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Home >> SpaceJanuary 02, 2005
Deep Impact
The big, grown-up boys on the NASA team can hardly wait. Next Fourth of July, they get to bust up a comet, Hollywood-style.
"Blow things up? I'm there. Yeah, I don't have any issue with that," says Richard Grammier, manager of the project for Jet Propulsion Laboratory. (And, oh yeah, he used to work with explosives in the military.)
The spacecraft is called Deep Impact just like the 1998 movie about a comet headed straight for Earth. NASA's goal is to blast a crater into Comet Tempel 1 and analyze the ice, dust and other primordial stuff hurled out of the pit.
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Home >> SpaceDecember 25, 2004
Universe not expanding, only galaxies shifting to other circuits
Aleksander Friedmann's theory compares the expanding Universe with a balloon, he says that the distance between any two spots increases and it cannot be pin pointed where exactly the center lies in a balloon. He means the farther apart the spots are the faster they shall be moving apart and the speed of any two galaxies moving apart is proportional to the distance between them.
He also suggests that the red shift of a galaxy should be directly proportional to its distance from the Earth. He also asserts that if the matter in the Universe were greater than the critical density, the Universe would expand again infinitely.
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Home >> SpaceDecember 22, 2004
New clues to how galaxies are born
An orbiting NASA telescope that scans the heavens has found evidence of massive "baby" galaxies that runs counter to a belief that only small new galaxies are being formed by the aging universe.
The findings come from the Galaxy Evolution Explorer, a mission led by the California Institute of Technology that was launched into Earth orbit last year to study 10 billion years of the evolution of galaxies.
"We knew there were really massive young galaxies eons ago, but we thought they had all matured into older ones more like our Milky Way," said Chris Martin, principal investigator for Galex at Caltech.
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Home >> SpaceDecember 03, 2004
Rover data makes return a must
Data from Nasa's Mars rover Opportunity shows its unique landing site is a prime spot for a return mission to look for life, scientists say.
The robot was not designed to find evidence of biology on Mars and did not detect any during nearly a year spent exploring the Meridiani Planum region.
But writing in Science, team members claim the site may have been habitable for long periods of Mars' history. And locations on Earth with similar conditions do host microbial life.
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Home >> SpaceDecember 01, 2004
Robots - our helpers in space
A big advantage of space robots is that they need neither food nor drink and can support very inhospitable conditions. More important still, although expensive to design and produce, their loss is always preferable to that of an astronaut. At this month's ASTRA 2004 workshop robots designed in ESA’s space research and technical centre in the Netherlands attracted much attention.
"On Earth, robots regularly take over when it comes to repetitive tasks or when human health may be at risk. They are used to assemble cars, deactivate bombs, weld pipes at the bottom of the sea and work in nuclear power plants," says Gianfranco Visentin, Head of ESA's Automation and Robotics Section at ESA’s ESTEC, the Netherlands.
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Home >> SpaceNovember 15, 2004
NASA Space Station On-Orbit Status 13 November 2004
All ISS systems continue to function nominally, except those noted previously or below. Saturday -- first weekend rest day. Congratulations to the crew on completing their first month in space!
CDR/SO Chiao and FE Sharipov performed the regular weekly 3-hr. task of thorough station cleaning. ["Uborka", done every Saturday, includes removal of food waste products, cleaning of compartments with vacuum cleaner, wet cleaning of the Service Module (SM) dining table and other surfaces with "Fungistat" disinfectant and cleaning fan screens to avoid temperature rises.]
Leroy Chiao took the periodic (weekly) reading of the cabin air's current CO2 partial pressure in the SM and Lab, using the U.S. CDMK (CO2 monitor kit), for calldown (along with the battery status) for use in trending analyses.
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Home >> SpaceNovember 11, 2004
Solar Sail
A solar sail, simply put, is a spacecraft propelled by sunlight. Whereas a conventional rocket is propelled by the thrust produced by its internal engine burn, a solar sail is pushed forward simply by light from the Sun. This is possible because light is made up of packets of energy known as “photons,” that act like atomic particles, but with more energy. When a beam of light is pointed at a bright mirror-like surface, its photons reflect right back, just like a ball bouncing off a wall. In the process the photons transmit their momentum to the surface twice – once by the initial impact, and again by reflecting back from it. Ever so slightly, propelled by a steady stream of reflecting photons, the bright surface is pushed forward.
Read More @ Planetary.org & JPL NASA
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Home >> SpaceOctober 21, 2004
NASA Space Station On-Orbit Status 19 October 2004
All ISS systems continue to function nominally, except those noted previously or below. Day 4 of joint Exp.9/Exp.10 operations
After wake-up at the regular time (2:00am EDT), another demanding day's schedule awaited the two crews, starting out with rave kudos from Flight Control: "You're making complicated Elektron repairs look easy; you're fixing spacesuits, flying the arm, and completing an impressive array of payloads ops, to say nothing of conducting the handover."
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Home >> SpaceOctober 17, 2004
Electronic Nose
NASA is developing the Electronic Nose, or ENose for short. It's a device that can learn to recognize almost any compound or combination of compounds. It can even be trained to distinguish between Pepsi and Coke. Like a human nose, the ENose is amazingly versatile, yet it's much more sensitive.
"ENose can detect an electronic change of 1 part per million," says Dr. Amy Ryan who heads the project at JPL. She and her colleagues are teaching the ENose to recognize those compounds -- like ammonia -- that cannot be allowed to accumulate in a space habitat.
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Home >> SpaceOctober 13, 2004
Room with an out-of-this-world view arrives at NASA
The world's ultimate observation deck, a control tower for robotics in space, and a sunroom like no other, has arrived at NASA's Kennedy Space Center (KSC). It is bound for the International Space Station.
Built in Italy for the United States segment of the Station, the Cupola traveled part way around the world to reach KSC. One day it will circle the Earth every 90 minutes, and crewmembers will peer through its 360-degree windows. It will serve as a literal skylight to control some of the most sophisticated robotics ever built.
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Home >> SpaceOctober 11, 2004
The semi-autonomous mission plans
Computer rendering of the semi-autonomous mission plans now taking place using the twin Mars' rovers, Spirit and Opportunity.
Credit: Maas/NASA/JPL
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Home >> SpaceOctober 10, 2004
NASA to Test Automated Mission
NASA plans to test a new robotic spacecraft later this month that can rendezvous with satellites and maneuver around them without human intervention.
The Demonstration for Autonomous Rendezvous Technology, or DART, spacecraft is slated to launch from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California on Oct. 26. Within hours, it is to chase down and circle an unused military communications satellite. Mission controllers will then watch as the DART dances around the satellite, moving closer and backing off all by itself, in a test of the spacecraft's onboard guidance system.
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Home >> SpaceSeptember 28, 2004
Robonaut
Robonaut is a humanoid robot designed by the Robot Systems Technology Branch at NASA's Johnson Space Center in a collaborative effort with DARPA. The Robonaut project seeks to develop and demonstrate a robotic system that can function as an EVA astronaut equivalent. Robonaut jumps generations ahead by eliminating the robotic scars (e.g., special robotic grapples and targets) and specialized robotic tools of traditional on-orbit robotics. However, it still keeps the human operator in the control loop through its telepresence control system. Robonaut is designed to be used for "EVA" tasks, i.e., those which were not specifically designed for robots.
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Home >> SpaceSeptember 24, 2004
Universe started with hiss, not bang
The Universe began not with a bang but with a low moan, building into a roar that gave way to a deafening hiss. And those sounds gave birth to the first stars.
Cosmologists do not usually think in terms of sound, but this aural picture is a good way to think about the Universe's beginnings, says astronomer Mark Whittle of the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. Whittle has reconstructed the cosmic cacophony from data teased out over the past couple of years from the high-resolution mapping by NASA's WMAP spacecraft of the cosmic microwave background radiation, the afterglow of the hot early Universe.
The variations in the cosmic background radiation expose the relative clumpiness of the early cosmos at a variety of different scales. These density variations began as quantum fluctuations in the moments after the big bang, and then propagated out as sonic waves. The denser regions became the seeds of galaxies and stars, which is why astronomers are so interested in them.
Posted by Vishwakarma C. K. @ 03:02 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Home >> SpaceSeptember 23, 2004
NASA Extends Mars Rovers' Journey
NASA announced Tuesday that the Mars rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, have had their missions extended for an additional six months, or as long as the Martian rovers remain operational.
Spirit and Opportunity have survived the most dangerous conditions they have faced -- the Mars southern-hemisphere winter, which meant little sun for photovoltaic cells and the low temperatures that threatened to freeze gears and crack fragile components and connections.
Posted by Vishwakarma C. K. @ 03:27 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
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