Nexus One blasts off to 28,000 feet, looks slightly worse for wear (video)

Your average satellite these days is roughly on par in terms of size with your average living room, give or take, and so naturally the cost of lofting one into orbit is, if you’ll pardon the phrase, sky high. Despite that, many offer less processing power a mobile processor like Snapdragon. The obvious solution? Chuck a smartphone into orbit and revel in the savings. That’s the idea behind the PhoneSat, helped along by the Mavericks Civilian Space Foundation, which strapped a Nexus One into a rocket with 1,000lbs of thrust and threw it up to 28,000 feet to see how it copes with the immense stress of riding into space. Of course, 28,000 feet isn’t quite space (NASA would have run out of astronaut badges long ago), but the G-forces and temperature cycles felt during this short trip are comparable to a one-way voyage to orbit. The first such launch didn’t go so well, with the rocket suffering a ballistic return — coming in like a projectile without a ‘chute. The shattered remains of that are shown above. But, the second flight was rather more successful, and the video results can be seen below — captured by the phone itself.

Update: Matt Reyes, one of the folks behind the launch, wrote in to let us know of another article here on the project, including more details on the history of the team and the various hardware beyond the N1 payload. Matt, along with project members Chris Boshuizen and Will Marshall, are NASA engineers, helped by Ryan Hickman at Google, which probably helps to explain how they were able to get from the photo above to the successful launch below in just one iteration.

[Photo credit: Steve Jurvetson]

Continue reading Nexus One blasts off to 28,000 feet, looks slightly worse for wear (video)

Nexus One blasts off to 28,000 feet, looks slightly worse for wear (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 30 Jul 2010 14:40:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Smithsonian’s Spacesuits: Number One On The Runway [Space]

The iconic NASA spacesuit didn’t show up in astronauts’ closets fully formed. Here, a small sampling of the many precursors held with reverence at the Smithsonian Museum. More »

Robonaut 2 enters final preparations before flying off into space

Tests, upgrades and final checks are being carried out on the Robonaut 2, the humanoid spacefaring robot that has been in the works since 2007. The baby of NASA and General Motors, this sack of metal and wires has already produced a catalog of 34 new patents and, according to GM, is setting the stage for new safety features in forthcoming generations of its road vehicles. Sensor technology being developed in the R2 could deliver better lane departure warning systems, adaptive cruise control, and more intelligent parking assistance. That’s good news and all, but can we ship it out to the ISS already — we’d rather it be off-world when its instruction set switches from “serve humans” to “serve human meat.”

Continue reading Robonaut 2 enters final preparations before flying off into space

Robonaut 2 enters final preparations before flying off into space originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 08 Jul 2010 11:01:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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NASA successfully tests autonomous lunar lander navigation system, codename GENIE (video)

Robonaut2 may have fantastic biceps, but raw muscle won’t put a man humanoid on the moon — that takes rockets. Rockets like the one in this RR-1 prototype lander, recently outfitted with a Guidance Embedded Navigator Integration Environment (GENIE) system to let the craft safely descend to the lunar surface. On June 23rd, NASA and partner Armadillo Aerospace put the system to the test, hoping it could figure out the complex algorithms necessary to process volumes of data from the laser altimeter, GPS and inertial sensors, and quickly enough to steer the rocket engine accordingly… but the machine performed like a charm. See its first solo flight in an inspiring, flame-filled video after the break, and skip to 4:12 for the good stuff.

Continue reading NASA successfully tests autonomous lunar lander navigation system, codename GENIE (video)

NASA successfully tests autonomous lunar lander navigation system, codename GENIE (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 03 Jul 2010 21:33:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Supersonic Green Machine sends greetings from the future

While many of us are busy debating the relative merits of pocket-sized technology, NASA is mulling over ideas on a much grander scale. Submitted as part of the Administration’s research into advanced aeronautics, the above Lockheed Martin-designed aircraft is just one vision of how air travel might be conducted in the future. It’s a supersonic jet employing an inverted-V engine-under-wing configuration, which apparently helps to significantly reduce the resultant sonic boom. Other than that, we’re only told that “other revolutionary technologies” will provide for the achievement of range, payload and environmental goals. So that snazzy paintjob wasn’t just for show, after all — who’d have guessed?

Supersonic Green Machine sends greetings from the future originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 29 Jun 2010 03:32:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Lifechanger: Astronaut Leroy Chiao’s Coffee Maker [Lifechanger]

What was my Lifechanger? Hmmmm…iPhone? iPad? Macbook Pro? Let’s dig back a little deeper…Airplane? The1MB original-style Mac (with external 20 MB hard disk), on which I wrote my Ph.D. thesis? Radio Shack TRS-80? Nope, it was a coffee maker! More »

Something Hits Jupiter Again; Shades of 1994?

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An enterprising amateur astronomer in Australia picked up something interesting Thursday: a big bright flash on the surface of Jupiter.
It turns out that an asteroid struck the gas giant and burned up in the planet’s atmosphere, an observation later confirmed by other astronomers, according to the Associated Press.
“When I saw the flash, I couldn’t believe it,” said amateur astronomer Anthony Wesley in the article. “The fireball lasted about 2 seconds and was very bright.”
This guy is pretty good, it turns out; last year, he was the first to spot a scar “the size of the Pacific Ocean” on Jupiter’s surface. That’s actually the one pictured above; we’re still waiting for photos of the current impact.
Back in 1994, comet Shoemaker-Levy struck the surface of Jupiter, marking the first time the collision of two solar system bodies have ever been observed.

SpaceX Falcon 9 Rockets Into Orbit

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And we have liftoff: the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket has launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida Friday in its first launch test, CNN reports, after an earlier aborted attempt just seconds before ignition.
SpaceX, the brainchild of Paypal and Tesla co-founder Elon Musk, is a commercial venture that could eventually ferry astronauts and cargo to the International Space Station. Those trips could end up much less expensive than NASA’s 30-year-old shuttle program.
“It’s time for NASA to hand that over to commercial industry who can then optimize the technology and make it more reliable, make it much lower cost and make it much more routine,” Musk said in the report.
SpaceX’s $1.6 billion contract calls for 12 missions.

Life-Size Webb Space Telescope Model Launches World Science Festival

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To kick off the World Science Festival (WSF), to be held at various venues throughout New York City this week, a full-scale model of the James Webb Space Telescope, the size of a tennis court, was unveiled this morning in Battery Park in lower Manhattan.

The World Science Festival consists of 40 events (talks, performances, readings, and more) in diverse subjects, including some exploring the relationship between science and music, visual art, and faith. They include a gala in Lincoln Center tonight to honor Stephen Hawking, and events featuring luminaries such as neurologist Oliver Sacks, Mars rover project leader Stephen Squyres, SETI researchers Jill Tartar and Seth Shostak, artificial intelligence pioneer Marvin Minsky, physicist Kip Thorne, and even some non-science notables such as cartoonist Jules Feiffer and actor Alan Alda. Also, science-oriented street festival will take place next Sunday in Washington Square Park. The first World Science Festival, in 2008, drew 120,000 people to its events.

More about the Webb telescope after the jump.

Pentagon Warns of Space Junk Collisions

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The Department of Defense has issued a warning in its Interim Space Posture Review that the amount of space junk orbiting the earth has “reached a critical tipping point,” one that could result in a series of chain-reaction collisions that “brings everyday life on Earth to a grinding halt,” according to Popular Science.
That may be overstating the case slightly, but it’s still an important issue. Here’s the situation: there are about 1,100 satellites orbiting the earth right now. Contrast that to about 370,000 pieces of space junk orbiting the earth, ranging from lost nuts and bolts from spacewalks, to entire decommissioned satellites–all speeding around at about 4.8 miles per second, the report said.
The Pentagon warned that a collision–numerically probable at some point–could generate thousands of pieces of additional junk, which could then cause additional crashes, and so on. This has actually happened a few times in the past, notably with a defunct Russian satellite in 2009 and an errant Chinese missile back in 2007.
A collision could cripple communications, along with civilian and military GPS systems, and the resulting debris clouds could seriously inhibit future satellite deployments, according to the article. (Image credit: NASA)