Mar 28

International Space Station gets ‘Man Cave,’ Robonaut 2

Posted in: NASA, robot, Robots, space, Today's Chili, tweet, twitter

In the narrow confines of the International Space Station, every cubic inch counts, but that won’t necessarily keep NASA from building a rec room. When the Leonardo Pressurized Multipurpose Module (PMM) launches in September 2010, NASA is considering turning it into a internet-connected “man cave” isolated and quiet enough for astronauts to tweet in privacy. The connection’s nothing special — science officer T.J. Creamer compared it to that of a 14.4K modem capable of only tweets, text articles and basic browsing — but Universe Today reports that they will also have a robotic servant, the Robonaut 2, to play with. Imagine a cramped world without fresh water or YouTube, but where you can program a state-of-the-art robot to perform monotonous tasks… We think that’s a fair tradeoff, don’t you?

[Thanks, Robert P.]

International Space Station gets ‘Man Cave,’ Robonaut 2 originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 28 Mar 2010 09:50:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  sourceUniverse Today  | Email this | Comments

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Mar 26

NASA Spacecraft Finds Hundreds of Asteroids Each Day

Posted in: NASA, science, space, Space Tech, Today's Chili

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NASA’s newest space telescope, the $230 million Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE), has been busy discovering hundreds of asteroids every single day–all of which were in our solar system undetected all this time, Space.com reports.
NASA designed WISE to find “dark” objects, like asteroids, brown dwarf stars, and vast dust clouds, the report said, though it’s been busy finding darker asteroids that visible light telescopes have missed in passed surveys.
“Our instrument is finding hundreds of asteroids every day that were never detected before,” said Ned Wright, principal investigator for WISE and a physicist at the University of California in Los Angeles, in the article. “WISE is very good at this kind of work.”
NASA launched WISE in December 2009, and will operate through October, at which point its supply of frozen coolant will run out. (Image credit: NASA/WISE)
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Mar 25

NASA Upgrades Mars Rovers Brain

Posted in: NASA, science, space, Space Tech, Today's Chili
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If it’s too expensive to fly humans to Mars, maybe we can train robots to make human-like decisions.
So goes the thinking at NASA, which has upgraded its Mars Rover Opportunity’s control software, so that the rover can let it make its own decisions about which rocks to focus on.
NASA’s new AEGIS (Autonomous Exploration for Gathering Increased Science) system lets the rover check out images taken with its wide-angle navigation camera, search for rocks that “meet specific criteria,” and then flick on its narrower-angle panoramic camera to snap photos of the rock.
So far, Opportunity has chosen a football-sized layered rock from a nearby impact crater, following NASA’s criteria of “large and dark.” Currently, the rover is en route to Endeavor, a large crater about 13.7 miles across. It has drive over 12 miles during the past six years. (Image credit: NASA)

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Mar 23

Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo completes maiden flight (now with video!)

Posted in: galaxy, space, Today's Chili, Travel
Virgin Galactic’s VSS Enterprise suborbital aircraft made its first captive carry test flight yesterday in Mojave, California. As shown in the above photo (courtesy of Mark Greenberg), the craft remained attached to the VMS Eve mothership for the entirety of its 2 hour and 54 minute flight, reaching an altitude of 45,000 feet in the process. If all goes according to plan, the spacecraft — which we first peeped in December — will start commercial operations late next year. Looks like it’s time to start saving up those Velocity Points, kids! In the meantime, check out CNET’s gallery of shots from the flight by hitting that ever lovin’ source link.

Continue reading Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo completes maiden flight (now with video!)

Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo completes maiden flight (now with video!) originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 23 Mar 2010 13:43:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  sourceCNET  | Email this | Comments

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Mar 23

15 NASA Posters Even Crazier Than the Real Thing [PhotoshopContest]

Posted in: feature, NASA, photoshop, space, Today's Chili, top

Have you seen NASA’s crazy mission posters? Well, these aren’t them. But you know what? They aren’t all that far off. More »

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Mar 23

Lunar Rover Found on Moon After 37 Years

Posted in: gaming, NASA, science, space, Today's Chili

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Seek ye, the rover of kings: Scientists have spotted Lunokhod 2, a Russian space vehicle that landed on the moon in 1973 and stopped working that same year, after a 37-year period where no one knew where the thing was, NPR reports.
What makes Lunokhod 2 even more interesting is that it belongs to Richard Garriott, of Ultima and Origin Systems fame. Garriott purchased the rover at a 1993 Sotheby’s auction for $68,500, making him the world’s only private owner of an object on a celestial body aside from Earth.
Garriott said in the report that he’s thrilled to finally have photos of his “private flag sitting on the moon.”
“My rover has traveled over 40 kilometers. It has tilled the soil or turned the soil with its wheels and it has surveyed land as far as the eye can see — or as far as its cameras can see,” he said.
In 2008, Richard Garriott became the latest of a series of space tourists to visit the International Space Station.
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Mar 23

SpaceShipTwo Takes Maiden Flight

Posted in: science, space, Space Tech, Today's Chili
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We have liftoff: Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo “rocket plane” has taken its maiden flight from the Mojave Air and Space Port in California, MSNBC reports.
The SpaceShipTwo, pictured above attached to the WhiteKnightTwo carrier airplane, flew for almost three hours at altitudes up to 50,000 feet, though it still remained within the Earth’s atmosphere. The report said we still have several months before SpaceShipTwo hits outer space for the first time. Right now, the company is testing SpaceShipTwo’s aerodynamics.
Virgin Galactic is planning to begin taking passengers as early as 2011 or 2012. The Richard Branson-backed project first unveiled SpaceShipTwo late last year.
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Mar 18

Scientists Discover Jupiter-Like Alien World

Posted in: science, space, Space Tech, Today's Chili
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It’s not quite Earth-like. But scientists have discovered a “normal” exoplanet, dubbed CoRoT-9b, that resembles other planets in our Solar System.
The planet appears to be orbiting its star about as close as our own Mercury, and yet is the approximate size of Jupiter, Space.com reports. Still, it’s a lot further away than other “hot Jupiter” exoplanets, and likely has a much more temperate climate, the report said.
CoRoT-9b is likely made of hydrogen and helium, just like Jupiter and Saturn. The planet is named after the French space agency CNES’s CoRoT satellite, which first picked up the light signature of the planet passing in front of its star.
To date, astronomers have discovered over 430 exoplanets, or extrasolar planets, orbiting other stars–with the expectation that there are many, many more out there. (Image credit: ESO/L. Calcada)
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Mar 15

Tiny, robotic space shuttle to be launched into orbit in April

Posted in: NASA, robot, Robots, space, Today's Chili
A long-delayed project initiated by NASA and carried out by Boeing may finally get to see the light of cold, beautiful day according to reports from the US Air Force. The X-37, a small, robotic space plane is set to make its first unmanned trip into orbit in April. Conceived by NASA as an unmanned re-entry lifeboat for crew of the International Space Station, the X-37 reportedly has a cargo bay of just 7 x 4 feet, and it has apparently been shipped to Florida for its maiden voyage, where it will be mounted to an Atlas V rocket for its launch into space. There aren’t any other details — the people running the project are keeping everything pretty quiet, but the shuttle itself is reported to have said that it’s putting itself “to the fullest possible use,” adding that that “is all I think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.”

Tiny, robotic space shuttle to be launched into orbit in April originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 15 Mar 2010 12:53:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  sourceThe Register  | Email this | Comments

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Mar 15

Hubble 3D Review: A Gift From NASA to Us [Movies]

Posted in: Movies, NASA, science, space, Today's Chili, top

Hubble 3D is a pretty simple movie. It’s also one of the most beautiful films I’ve ever seen in my life.

Hubble 3D was shot over several years by three different NASA flight crews, documenting both the launch and subsequent repairs of the Hubble Space Telescope. The repair footage is interesting, especially to a space geek, but it’s not anything you haven’t seen before. (Albeit not on a six-story IMAX screen and in 3D.) But it serves as a framework for two rendered space sequences that are stunning—they brought tears to my eyes more than once.

These sections are rendered from Hubble data that was wedded to spectral analysis and other techniques that allowed artists to create an extremely high fidelity 3D model of astronomical objects like nebulae and galaxies. Director Toni Myers manages to keep the narrative structure fairly simple and let the footage and rendered fly-throughs of Hubble photography speak for itself.

Because these sequences are “real”—or at least as real as we can make them without having another Hubble trillions of light years away from Earth showing us the back sides of same objects—there is a tremendous gravitas. I dare anyone to watch the sequence of Orion’s “star nursery” as it calves solar systems and not feel a tremendous affinity for our own.

We’ve become used to Hubble’s imagery over the last couple of decades, sort of, you know, getting over being able to see into the end (or beginning) of the universe. Hubble 3D reminded me how precious our space program is and how just straight-up ass-kicking the astronauts and engineers who work at NASA really are. Hubble 3D feels like a gift from all of them to us.

For more on the IMAX rigs behind Hubble 3D, see the camera here and some behind-the-scenes astronaut rehearsal here. [Hubble3D]

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