September 7, 2012 - NASA's Space Technology Program has selected 5 technologies that could revolutionize America's space capabilities. The following proposals were selected for funding: Representing and Exploiting Cumulative Experience with Objects for Autonomous Manipulation; Lightweight High Performance Acoustic Suppression Technology Development; Fast Light Optical Gyroscopes for Precision Inertial Navigation; EHD-Based Variable Conductance Thermal Interface Material; and Membrane Enabled Reverse Lung. NASA NASA Ames Reseach Center Moffett Field, CA, 94035 USA Press release date: August 17, 2012

WASHINGTON, -- NASA's Space Technology Program has selected five technologies that could revolutionize America's space capabilities.

In March, NASA issued a call for proposal focused on sudden and unexpected innovations that hold a potential for providing a "game-changing" impact on the efficiency and effectiveness of the agency's space capabilities.

NASA has selected the following proposals for funding:

--"Representing and Exploiting Cumulative Experience with Objects for Autonomous Manipulation," University of Massachusetts, Amherst. This technology could improve autonomous robotic operations using artificial intelligence during deep space missions.

--"Lightweight High Performance Acoustic Suppression Technology Development," NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. This technology could suppress acoustic environments during launch. By reducing vibrations by acoustic suppression during launch, the amount of prelaunch vibration stress testing for onboard instruments also could be reduced.

--"Fast Light Optical Gyroscopes for Precision Inertial Navigation," NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Ala. This technology could enhance navigation capabilities for spacecraft by improving the performance of existing gyroscopes by a factor of 1,000.

--"EHD-Based Variable Conductance Thermal Interface Material," The Boeing Company, El Segundo, Calif. The development of this thermal material could provide better heat management for spacecraft.

--"Membrane Enabled Reverse Lung," Oceaneering Space Systems, Houston. This technology could reduce the number of life support systems needed for astronauts.

"NASA's Space Technology Program is enabling our future in space by investing in revolutionary and game-changing technologies that could open new doors for how we live, work and investigate space," said Michael Gazarik, director of the program at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "We are confident these selected technologies, with their highly qualified research teams, will enable great new opportunities for the next chapter in NASA's innovation story."

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NASA Picks Revolutionary Space Tech Proposals for Development

A prototype NASA lander completed a successful free flight on Sept. 5, helping to bring a new generation of landing vehicles closer to reality.

The Mighty Eagle flew up to 100 feet, identified an on-the-ground target with its onboard cameras, and then autonomously landed itself at the chosen spot. The successful flight is part of a series of incremental tests to mature this technology.

The prototype brings to mind earlier Apollo-era test crafts such as the Lunar Landing Research Vehicle, which nearly killed astronaut Neil Armstrong during a training maneuver in 1968.

The cute three-legged lander stands at 4 feet high and 8 feet in diameter, so its not designed to carry astronauts. Instead, NASA engineers are hoping that such a vehicle could one day autonomously land cargo and scientific instruments on the moon, an asteroid, or other airless body in the solar system.

It stands in contrast to NASAs Morpheus Lander, a larger craft capable of bringing about 1,000 pounds to the lunar surface, which might include a robotic humanoid, small rover, or scientific laboratory. During its first untethered test on Aug. 9, Morpheus suffered an inglorious explosion after it flipped over shortly after liftoff.

The video below shows the Mighty Eagle in action during an earlier test on Aug. 8, when the vehicle flew 30 feet in the air.

Image: NASA/MSFC/Dennis Olive

Video: NASA Marshall TV

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NASA's Newest Autonomous Lander Passes Flight Test

The little rover is on the go, and NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter was there to document it.

NASA's Curiosity rover has been sending back awesome images of the Martian surface since it landed on the red planet in early August. But to see the rover itself, you need the work of another NASA craft, the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, which has been circling the planet since 2006. Earlier this week, it was able to capture the above picture of the rover, in which you can clearly see the tracks it has left in the Martian dust. (NASA notes the color in the image has been enhanced to show detail, hence the bluish tinge.)

NASA additionally released a video chronicling the rover's progress so far and previewing the weeks ahead.

Two additional pictures from the Orbiter, mentioned and described in the above video, are below.

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NASA Satellite Captures First Glimpse of Curiosity's Tracks from Martian Orbit

ScienceDaily (Sep. 7, 2012) NASA has begun its latest hurricane science field campaign by flying an unmanned Global Hawk aircraft over Hurricane Leslie in the Atlantic Ocean during a day-long flight from California to Virginia. With the Hurricane and Severe Storm Sentinel (HS3) mission, NASA for the first time will be flying Global Hawks from the U.S. East Coast.

The Global Hawk took off from NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center at Edwards Air Force Base, Calif., Thursday and landed at the agency's Wallops Flight Facility on Wallops Island, Va., today at 11:37 a.m. EDT after spending 10 hours collecting data on Hurricane Leslie. The month-long HS3 mission will help researchers and forecasters uncover information about how hurricanes and tropical storms form and intensify.

NASA will fly two Global Hawks from Wallops during the HS3 mission. The planes, which can stay in the air for as long as 28 hours and fly over hurricanes at altitudes greater than 60,000 feet, will be operated by pilots in ground control stations at Wallops and Dryden Flight Research Center at Edwards Air Force Base, Calif.

The mission targets the processes that underlie hurricane formation and intensity change. The aircraft help scientists decipher the relative roles of the large-scale environment and internal storm processes that shape these systems. Studying hurricanes is a challenge for a field campaign like HS3 because of the small sample of storms available for study and the great variety of scenarios under which they form and evolve. HS3 flights will continue into early October of this year and be repeated from Wallops during the 2013 and 2014 hurricane seasons.

The first Global Hawk arrived Sept. 7 at Wallops carrying a payload of three instruments that will sample the environment around hurricanes. A second Global Hawk, scheduled to arrive in two weeks, will look inside hurricanes and developing storms with a different set of instruments. The pair will measure winds, temperature, water vapor, precipitation and aerosols from the surface to the lower stratosphere.

"The primary objective of the environmental Global Hawk is to describe the interaction of tropical disturbances and cyclones with the hot, dry and dusty air that moves westward off the Saharan desert and appears to affect the ability of storms to form and intensify," said Scott Braun, HS3 mission principal investigator and research meteorologist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.

This Global Hawk will carry a laser system called the Cloud Physics Lidar (CPL), the Scanning High-resolution Interferometer Sounder (S-HIS), and the Advanced Vertical Atmospheric Profiling System (AVAPS).

The CPL will measure cloud structure and aerosols such as dust, sea salt and smoke particles. The S-HIS can remotely sense the temperature and water vapor vertical profile along with the sea surface temperature and cloud properties. The AVAPS dropsonde system will eject small sensors tied to parachutes that drift down through the storm, measuring winds, temperature and humidity.

"Instruments on the 'over-storm' Global Hawk will examine the role of deep thunderstorm systems in hurricane intensity change, particularly to detect changes in low-level wind fields in the vicinity of these thunderstorms," said Braun.

These instruments will measure eyewall and rainband winds and precipitation using a Doppler radar and other microwave sensors called the High-altitude Imaging Wind and Rain Airborne Profiler (HIWRAP), High-Altitude MMIC Sounding Radiometer (HAMSR) and Hurricane Imaging Radiometer (HIRAD).

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NASA's Global Hawk mission begins with flight to Hurricane Leslie

NASA's Curiosity is the largest and most advanced robotic rover to ever explore the surface of Mars. The pictures being produced by the mission are also some of the most stunning ever sent back to Earth by a planetary probe.

Take the most recent image distributed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory that's making the roundsa shot of Curiosity on the surface of the Red Planet taken by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter from space. The picture shows the rover itself and the tracks it laid down on the surface during one of its first treks away from its landing site.

We've collected that image and others in the accompanying slideshow to highlight the best photos from the Curiosity mission to date. Many have had their color enhanced to bring out details on the Martian surface.

Curiosity landed on Mars in the wee hours of the morning on Aug. 6, 2012 (Eastern time) after a risky descent that had the Mission Control team at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, Calif. and viewers around the worldon the edge of their seats.

Just minutes after landing was confirmed, Curiosity's orbiting partner transmitted the first dusty thumbnail images the rover had taken with her rear hazmat cameras. Two hours later, during the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter's second flyover, high-resolution images came down showing rocks and the rim of Gale Crater, where the rover landed at a site named after the late science fiction writer Ray Bradbury.

There would be many more images from Curiosity in the weeks that followed, including a large batch taken by the rover and the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter that were released by NASA several weeks ago.

High-resolution shots of Curiosity's thrilling descent, meanwhile, were recently assembled by visual effects editor Daniel Fitch to create a composite video of the rover's harrowing landing on Mars.

Photographer Andrew Bodrov also stitched together many of the Mars images to create a stunning, 360-degree panorama and a new video was released this week showing an animated demonstration of Curiosity's instrument arm in action (below).

For more, check out the recent "Ask Me Anything" chat that Team Curiosity had on Reddit. PCMag's Meredith Popolo was also at the JPL in California covering the Curiosity rover's arrival on Mars. For more, see her tour of JPL. Also check out 7 Minutes of Terror: Landing the Mars Curiosity Rover and How to Hack NASA's Curiosity Mars Rover.

For more from Damon, follow him on Twitter @dpoeter.

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NASA Releases Stunning Shot of Curiosity From Orbit

NASA's space shuttle Endeavour will embark on a three-day journey by air this month that will take it from coast to coast on a mission to become a museum display.

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NASA's Space Shuttle Endeavour to Depart on Cross-Country Flight for Display