Hasta La Gadget!

It would be an understatement to say there’s been a long build-up to the moment when Voyager 1 ventures into interstellar space: scientists thought the probe was on the edge back in 2010, and we’ve been waiting for the official milestone ever since. Researchers contributing to an American Geophysical Union journal now believe that the spacecraft may have crossed that symbolic border months ago. Measurements from August 25th onwards show a steep drop in the detected volume of cosmic rays from the heliosphere, just as the extrasolar rays are picking up. Spectrum measurements from the period also mirror those of interstellar regions. On the surface, the clues strongly imply that Voyager 1 has passed the limit of our solar system’s influence. NASA, however, disputes the claims — the agency notes that its vehicle is still traveling the magnetic highway, and it won’t have officially escaped the surly bonds of the Sun until the magnetic fields shift. We won’t break out the champagne and party streamers, then, but the dispute underscores just how close we are to having another human-made object roaming the galaxy.

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Via: BBC

Source: AGU, NASA

For the very first time, a man-made object has reached the cosmic abyss beyond the farthest reaches of our solar system. As of today, Voyager 1 is the first spacecraft to begin the endless journey into deep space. More »

Earth runs the risk of an unexpected asteroid strike because NASA‘s budget for identifying and tracking potential risk-rocks is woefully insufficient, science advisors have warned US Congress this week. The ominous news, in which lawmakers were told that – at current funding levels – it would take until 2030 to adequately catalog 90-percent of near-Earth objects ranging between 140m and 1km in width, was revealed at a hastily-convened hearing of the House Science Committee following the Russian meteor incident in mid-February. There, members of Congress were warned that praying might be the only defense should an unpredicted asteroid be spotted three weeks out from Earth.

Congress has already mandated its expectations for the breadth of NASA’s tracking, NBC News reports, as well as more than quadrupling the space agency’s budget to do so, up to in excess of $20m. However, that’s still hopelessly insufficient, NASA Administrator Charles Bolden told Committee members.

Without a boost in cash, White House science advisor John Holdren pointed out, NASA would still struggle with one of the biggest shortcomings of its current space rock spotting setup: catching sight of, and monitoring, asteroids that are hidden by the glare of the sun. It’s a problem that has a track record of incidents, too. The Russian asteroid last month was disguised by glare, and thus went unnoticed.

“It came from a direction where our [existing] telescopes could not look, we cannot look in the sun” Holden said. What’s needed is a second telescope, orbiting out at a range similar to that of Venus, he argued. A similar plan has already been put forward by a nonprofit organization, which aims to launch its Sentinel Space Telescope by 2017 by 2017 at the earliest.

Other alternatives are a “crowdsourcing” monitoring system, though it’s still unclear whether that would provide sufficient warning to actively divert a rogue asteroid. Asked what the plan would be if such a threat was observed with less than month’s notice, Bolden was pessimistic. “If it’s coming in three weeks … pray,” he deadpanned. “The reason I can’t do anything in the next three weeks is because for decades we have put it off.”

As it stands, NASA has a metaphorical eye on around 95-percent of 1km+ near-Earth objects, but that success ratio dwindles to just 10-percent or thereabouts for 140m+ asteroids. That leaves as many as 18,000 such objects potentially unchecked, the space experts highlighted, sufficient to “devastate the better part of a confident” should one strike the Earth, according to Holdren. On the plus side, NASA has previously warned that the most notice we’d get of a near-Earth object strike is a “flash of light and the shaking of the ground as it hit,” hardly leaving time for any panic at all.

NASA: Slashed space budget leaves asteroid spotting in the dark is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

NASA expects to have the Curiosity rover back up and exploring Mars “in a few days” time the space agency has announced, with the fix for the unexpected downtime “very straightforward” according to the mission lead. A software error was blamed for the rover being put into automatic fault-protection mode – freezing all activity – when a file was artificially inflated in size and thus failed a software check.

Curiosity has two computers – A-side and B-side – which it can switch between for the sake of redundancy. To ensure stability, files on both machines are regularly compared, making sure the systems are identical and thus the rover’s behavior the same no matter which computer is in control at the time.

However, a glitch in software caused one of the files to increase in size, after another, unrelated file was appended to it. That caused the automatic checks to fail the system, and Curiosity to be put into safe mode while teams back on Earth investigated.

According to Curiosity project manager Richard Cook, the fix should be swift. “We can just delete that file,” he explained, “which we don’t need any more, and we know how to keep this from occurring in the future.”

However, while the software tweaks are simple, waking Curiosity back up will be staggered over the space of a few days. It only leaves a relatively short window before the rover’s next period of isolation: as of April 4, the Jet Propulsion Lab will cease all remote commands for a four week period, as Mars will be blocked from a direct line of sight with the Earth by the sun. The team is concerned that commands might be corrupted by the obstruction.

Curiosity back roving Mars in days after “straightforward” fix says NASA is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Back on March 11, NASA was scheduled to apply two software patches to its Curiosity Mars rover after recovering from a problem with one of its on-board computers. Now the rover has run into another problem, this time with a software file error that is preventing it from performing most of its duties, though it remains in communication with the NASA team.

According to NASA, safe mode was caused by a failed command file size check, causing the rover to automatically revert into its protected mode. The rover was utilizing the B-side computer, which it switched to earlier this month when the A-side computer corrupted. The A-side computer was later restored to work as a back up for the B-side, but the rover did not switch over to it.

The incident happened late Saturday night, and has further set the rover’s schedule back, this time by a few days. NASA engineers expect Curiosity to resume its mission “in a few days.” Thus far, the rover has been incapacitated to some degree for most of the month, having experienced its initial computer problem and then later being put into sleep mode due to a solar flare.

This follows ahead of a 4-week moratorium on communicating with the rover that will start on April 4 due to the stars’ alignment, putting the sun in such a position that it could cause interference with any transmissions sent to the rover. Fortunately, the problem is easy to solve according to Curiosity’s project manager Richard Cook: “This is a very straightforward matter to deal with. We can just delete that file, which we don’t need any more, and we know how to keep this from occurring in the future.

[via NASA]

Curiosity put back into safe mode due to software error is written by Brittany Hillen & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.