Hasta La Gadget!

NASA and the Russian Federal Space Agency Roscosmos have selected the two lucky souls who will spend a year on the International Space Station in 2015. During this time, the ISS crew will collect data essential for human exploration of space, which, more specifically, means they’ll be live experiments on how the human body reacts to space’s environment. They’re slated to return to earth in spring of 2016.

NASA selected Scott Kelly, who was a backup crew member for Expedition 23 and 24 crews, while Roscosmos selected Mikhail Kornienko, who was a flight engineer for Expedition 23/24. Come 2015, the two will take off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan via Russia’s Soyuz. Their mission will provide the agencies with invaluable data on how to reduce the risks other space explorers will undergo during future explorations.

NASA’s Associate Administrator for Human Exploration and Operations William Gerstenmaier offered this statement. “Congratulations to Scott and Mikhail on their selection for this important mission. Their skills and previous experience aboard the space station align with the mission’s requirements. The one-year increment will expand the bounds of how we live and work in space and will increase our knowledge regarding the effects of microgravity on humans as we prepare for future missions beyond low-Earth orbit.”

Scott Kelly is a retired Navy Captain who hails from New Jersey. He has served as a space shuttle mission pilot, commander, and flight engineer. He has spent over 180 days in space. Meanwhile, Mikhail hails from Syzran/Kuibyshev, and served as a paratrooper officer and flight engineer, among other positions. He has spent over 176 days in space.

[via NASA]

NASA and Roscosmos select crew for Space Station mission is written by Brittany Hillen & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

What are the brave astronauts aboard the International Space Station thankful for this year? Round the clock support from their international flight control team on Earth. Adorbs! More »

Space exploration. We like to pretend it is about all kinds of noble things having to do with mankind’s place in the universe, blah blah blah. We all know it is really about all the cool things that you can do while in space, right? You know, like control a robot on Earth. From Space.

Astronaut Sunita Williams used a specially developed laptop on the International Space Station to control an Internet-connected LEGO robot in Germany. That’s pretty awesome. The technology is called Disruption Tolerant Networking (DTN). It works like this: traditional Internet protocol standards assume that there will always be a route of connections available from node A to node B. However, DTN accepts that there will be disruptions in connectivity from where the signal is being sent to where it is supposed to be received.

Aside from having a great time playing with a LEGO robot from space, there was a point to this. NASA sees an opportunity to one day use this technology to control robots on the surface of Mars or some other planet. That sure opens up many possibilities when it comes to exploring (and someday colonizing) other worlds. DTN has been tested for years, but not for robotics applications – for which it now looks promising.

[via Geek]

NASA and the European Space Agency have announced they have successfully tested an internet-like interplanetary communications protocol, called Disruption Tolerant Networking (DTN), between astronauts on the International Space Station and a Lego-built robot in Germany. Over 225 miles separate the two.

NASA and the ESA said yesterday that DTN could one day allow “internet-like communications” with spacecrafts and help support infrastructure on other planets. The experiment took place late last month, and it involved remotely operating a small Lego rover-like robot from the International Space Station.

The Lego robot was located at the European Space Operations Centre in Darmstadt, Germany and it was being operated and driven by US astronaut Sunita Williams who used a laptop that was designed by NASA. A command sent from the laptop would start a script to control the Lego rover, which is also actually a prototype designed for use in the ESA’s future missions.

NASA space communications chief Badri Younes says that once the protocol gets past the experimental stage, DTN could be useful for controlling robots on Mars from either a manned orbiting spacecraft or from Earth using satellites as relay stations. DTN is slightly comparable to the Internet Protocol in terms of functionality. However, the big difference is that IP relies on a continuous connection, while DTN allows for more disconnections and errors.

[via ZDNet]

NASA and ESA test internet-like communication protocol using Lego robot is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

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