Researchers from NASA Johnson Space Center Neurosciences Laboratory and National Space Biomedical Research Institute are testing a new system that may make astronauts’ return to Earth a bit easier. If you’ve ever seen space travelers land back on terra firma after months in orbit, you must have noticed that they are usually carried by others or use wheelchairs. This happens because over time our sensory system forgets how to coordinate using gravity as one of the inputs. The new system may end up being used on spacecraft to keep astronauts from forgetting how to walk when gravity comes back to them.
December 3rd, 2009
NASA’s latest manned Mars mission plan now available Hyperbola / Flightglobal
NASA’s 100-page Mars Design Reference Architecture 5.0, elements of which were first seen in a 1 October 2007 presentation, is now available on the Lunar and Planetary Institute’s exploration strategies website with a publication date of July 2009. But this blogger can’t find any blogosphere links to it that date to then or since so here it is! Exclusively! With a 406-page addendum and a 47-page executive summary there is plenty to trawl through from this study that was first announced in 2006 – click through to the extended portion of this blogpost for more comment
December 1st, 2009
Op/Ed: What Will Shooting for Mars Get Us? Business Strategy Innovation
At the TEDx NASA conference, I had some amazing conversations with people in the “green room” while preparing to take the stage.
One individual had spent his entire career with NASA focused on travel to Mars. This was his life’s passion. But now that he has moved out of the space program into the private sector, he wonders if the money spent on space travel should be re-focused. He wonders if we should spend the money fixing problems here on earth.
We had a lively debate. One thing I suggested was that shooting for Mars MIGHT be the way to fix some of our issues here on Earth.
November 24th, 2009
Gearing Up for Manned Mission To An Asteroid Popular Science
The Plymouth Rock project could be a stepping stone to Mars. A plan to send a manned space mission to land on an asteroid is gaining traction within both NASA and the aerospace industry as experts look to bridge the feasibility gap between lunar missions and an eventual rendezvous with Mars. Of course, no party is ruling out the possibility of an Armageddon-esque trip to a Near Earth Object (NEO) on a harmful trajectory, should the need arise in the future.
While neither NASA or the White House has signed off on — or even offered funding to study — such a mission, briefing charts put together by Lockheed Martin, maker of the space agency’s next-gen passenger spacecraft, detail how a mission might work. It’s not as far-fetched, or far away, as one might think, with a mission to an NEO possible in a 2020-2025 time frame.
November 5th, 2009
Take Me Out to the Ballpark – On Mars!
Students in fourth through seventh grade will work to create the ultimate baseball experience “on Mars,” even designing the rules for how to play a game on the Red Planet. NASA and JPL have partnered with the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum to host a workshop for kids on Sat., Nov. 7, in Cooperstown, N.Y. The workshop runs from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Saturday, Nov. 7. Cost is $5 per student, which covers materials, supplies and admission to the Museum.
The workshop is limited to 50 participants. To register, visit http://education.baseballhalloffame.org/something_new/ or call 607-547-0362 to request a registration form.
November 5th, 2009
Device Like ‘Star Trek’ Replicator Might Fly on Space Station
Space explorers have yet to get their hands on the replicator of “Star Trek” to create anything they might require. But NASA has developed a technology that could enable lunar colonists to carry out on-site manufacturing on the moon, or allow future astronauts to create critical spare parts during the long trip to Mars.
The method, called electron beam freeform fabrication (EBF3), uses an electron beam to melt metals and build objects layer by layer. Such an approach already promises to cut manufacturing costs for the aerospace industry, and could pioneer development of new materials. It has also thrilled astronauts on the International Space Station by dangling the possibility of designing new tools or objects, researchers said.
November 4th, 2009
Prof To Predict Weather On Mars Texas A&M
Is there such a thing as “weather” on Mars? There are some doubts, considering the planet’s atmosphere is only 1 percent as dense as that of the Earth. Mars, however, definitely has clouds, drastically low temperatures and out-of-this-world dust storms, and Istvan Szunyogh, a Texas A&M professor of atmospheric sciences, has been awarded a NASA grant to analyze and forecast Martian weather. Mars is the most Earth-like planet we know, but it is still quite different. For example, it is much colder on Mars.
The south pole of the Earth is covered by water ice, but the south pole of Mars wears a dry ice (frozen carbon dioxide) cap. In winter, the temperature at the poles can dip to -140°C (-220 degrees Fahrenheit), which is so cold that even carbon dioxide freezes.
November 2nd, 2009
Artificial Intelligence Spacesuits Turn Astronauts Into Cyborg Biologists Wired
Equipped with wearable AI systems and digital eyes that see what human eyes can’t, space explorers of the future could be not just astronauts, but “cyborg astrobiologists.”
That’s the vision of a research team led by Patrick McGuire, a University of Chicago geoscientist who’s developed algorithms that can recognize signs of life in a barren landscape.
“When they look at scenery, children gravitate towards the thing that’s different from the other things,” said McGuire. “That’s how I looked at the cyborg astrobiologist.”
At the heart of McGuire’s system is a Hopfield neural network, a type of artificial intelligence that compares incoming data against patterns it’s seen before, eventually picking out those details that qualify as new or unusual.
November 2nd, 2009
Mars mission solved: Make it 1-way trip The Toronto Star
A leading cosmologist says he has figured out how to affordably mount a manned mission to Mars – make it a one-way trip.
Citing cost savings as well as reduced risk, Prof. Paul Davies made the suggestion at a gathering of NASA astrobiologists last year.
Davies envisions a first-time mission involving four astronauts. The quartet would land on Mars’ surface and immediately seek shelter, possibly inside lava tubes to avoid radiation poisoning. The first four would eventually be joined by others, establishing a permanent colony on the red planet. None of the visitors could ever return home.
He admitted that conditions might be a little Spartan, but “not as bad as Guantanamo Bay.”
November 2nd, 2009
NASA to irradiate monkeys to study effects of long space trips on humans The Telegraph
It will be Nasa’s first experiment on primates in decades.
If a manned mission to Mars ever takes place, the human pilots will be outside Earth’s protective magnetic field for several months, unprotected from solar radiation. Little research has been done on this sort of long-term exposure to low doses of radiation. Rats and mice have been exposed to this sort of radiation before, but that gives only a hint of what the effects would be on humans.
Eleanor Blakely, a biophysicist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, said: “Obviously, the closer we get to man, the better.”