ORLANDO, Fla., Oct. 3, 2012 /PRNewswire/ --TopCoder, Inc., the world's largest competitive Community of digital creators today announced the launch of the Big Data Challenge a series of ideation competitions hosted through the NASA Tournament Lab (NTL) to create mobile applications that integrate across multiple United States agencies data repositories related to the field of health, energy and earth sciences. Competitors will be tasked with imagining tools and techniques that find new value hidden in discrete government information domains and then describing how they may be shared as universal, cross-agency solutions that transcend the limitations of individual silos. Registration is open today through 10/13/2012 for the Ideation Challenge phase, the first of four idea generation competitions in the series. For full competition details and registration visit: http://community.topcoder.com/coeci/nitrd

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Sponsored by the Networking and Information Technology Research and Development program, (NITRD), the Big Data Challenge series is a partnership between NASA, the National Science Foundation (NSF), the Department of Energy (DoE), TopCoder and Harvard Business School. The goal of the series is to apply the process of Open Innovation (OI) to conceptualizing novel approaches to extracting value from the huge information sets residing in various agency silos and delivering impactful value while remaining consistent with individual agency missions.

The opportunity to contribute to a matter of national importance draws many individuals and teams from diverse fields within the general public, so beyond cash prizes are the rewards of peer recognition and the satisfaction that comes with making a real impact on a significant challenge.

The TopCoder Open Innovation platform and process allows U.S. government agencies to conduct high risk/high reward challenges in an open and transparent environment with predictable cost, measurable outcomes-based results and the potential to move quickly into unanticipated directions and new areas of software technology. Big data is a term applied to data sets whose size is beyond the ability of commonly used software tools to capture, manage and process the data within a tolerable elapsed time. Big data sizes are a constantly moving target currently ranging from a few dozen terabytes to many petabytes of data in a single data set.

"The TopCoder platform for Open Innovation is the most sophisticated platform of its kind available today in the digital space," said Rob Hughes, President and COO of TopCoder, Inc. "Matched with the power and talent of the TopCoder Community, we look forward to seeing new value created out of existing government big data that will manifest itself in new tools and services for both American consumers and industry."

The TopCoder platform supports the entire end-to-end digital creation lifecycle from idea conception to implementation and support through a true collaborative open innovation model. Almost any type of content, application, algorithm or digital asset can be built entirely through the platform whether a standalone mobile app through to enhancements or additions to large, existing enterprise systems to the development of entirely new cloud based offerings for customers to testing and support through small enhancements and bug fixes. All areas of digital creation are covered through one easy to use cloud based Innovation as a Platform (IaaP) offering accessing TopCoder's renowned community of over 425,000 members from business analysis to creative asset creation, analytics and sophisticated processes for API, software design and development as well as digital content.

About NASA Tournament Lab NASA and Harvard University have established the NASA Tournament Lab (NTL), which with the enabling capabilities of the TopCoder community allow for competitions to create the most innovative, most efficient, and most optimized solutions for specific, real-world challenges being faced by NASA researchers. The NTL provides an online virtual facility for NASA researchers with a computational or complex data processing challenge to "order" a solution, just like they would order laboratory tests or supplies. Learn more at the official NTL Website.

About NITRD The Networking and Information Technology Research and Development (NITRD) Program is the Nation's primary source of Federally funded revolutionary breakthroughs in advanced information technologies such as computing, networking, and software. A unique collaboration of Federal research and development agencies, the NITRD Program seeks to:

The NITRD Program stems from the High-Performance Computing (HPC) Act of 1991 (Public Law 102-194) as amended by the Next Generation Internet Research Act of 1998 (Public Law 105-305). These laws authorize Federal agencies to set goals, prioritize their investments, and coordinate their activities in networking and information technology research and development.

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NASA Tournament Lab & TopCoder Launch Big Data Challenge Series for U.S. Government Agencies

NASAs twin Radiation Belt Storm Probes (RBSP) took a musical interlude and listened to the Earth singing to itself. This Earthsong, as NASA calls it, was recorded by the two spacecraft as they orbited inside the highly radioactive Van Allen Belts that surround the Earth. The song is in the form of radio waves generated by the belts and the study of it may provide a clue toward answering the question of how to protect satellites and astronauts from deadly radiation storms.

The Earthsong is better known to ham radio operators as the chorus. They've been listening to it from the ground for years and its rising and falling tones sound like a dawn chorus of chirping birds, from which it derives its name.

"This is what the radiation belts would sound like to a human being if we had radio antennas for ears," said Craig Kletzing of the University of Iowa, whose team built the RBSPs Electric and Magnetic Field Instrument Suite and Integrated Science (EMFISIS) receivers used to pick up the signals.

The chorus isn't acoustic, but rather electromagnetic in nature. Its made up of radio waves in the 0 to 10 kHz range and is caused by intense plasma waves, called chorus waves, in the Van Allen Belt. However, they are more than just a pretty sound. One of the most important waves in the Van Allen Belts, they may be the cause of killer electrons electrons that are caught up in the chorus wave and boosted to a high enough energy to damage electronic equipment or even astronauts.

This fits in very well with the brief of the Radiation Belt Storm Probes. Theyre designed to detect these waves by means of the EMFISIS antennae, which are tuned to detect very low frequency (VLF) emissions. The transmissions they send back are 16-bit, which is the same quality as a CD. Furthermore, with these two spacecraft, stereo is possible. That isn't just to make the music sound richer, it also helps to build up a complete picture of the phenomenon, where exactly it occurs and how.

Launched August 30, 2012, the RBSPs mission is to study the highly radioactive Van Allen Belts and the part they play in space weather. This goes beyond pure science because severe space weather, such as a massive solar flare could imperil astronauts or even threaten to knock out the power grid on half the Earth in an instant. Given that the chorus wave may contribute to such severe events, it may be that the Earthsong is more like the song of the mythical Sirens that were a prelude to disaster.

An MP3 recording of the Earthsong is available here.

The NASA video below discusses the chorus wave.

Source: NASA

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NASA's Radiation Belt Storm Probes record electromagnetic "Earthsong"

ScienceDaily (Oct. 3, 2012) Astronomers using NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope have announced the most precise measurement yet of the Hubble constant, or the rate at which our universe is stretching apart.

The Hubble constant is named after the astronomer Edwin P. Hubble, who astonished the world in the 1920s by confirming our universe has been expanding since it exploded into being 13.7 billion years ago. In the late 1990s, astronomers discovered the expansion is accelerating, or speeding up over time. Determining the expansion rate is critical for understanding the age and size of the universe.

Unlike NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, which views the cosmos in visible light, Spitzer took advantage of long-wavelength infrared light to make its new measurement. It improves by a factor of 3 on a similar, seminal study from the Hubble telescope and brings the uncertainty down to 3 percent, a giant leap in accuracy for cosmological measurements. The newly refined value for the Hubble constant is 74.3 plus or minus 2.1 kilometers per second per megaparsec. A megaparsec is roughly 3 million light-years.

"Spitzer is yet again doing science beyond what it was designed to do," said project scientist Michael Werner at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. Werner has worked on the mission since its early concept phase more than 30 years ago. "First, Spitzer surprised us with its pioneering ability to study exoplanet atmospheres," said Werner, "and now, in the mission's later years, it has become a valuable cosmology tool."

In addition, the findings were combined with published data from NASA's Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe to obtain an independent measurement of dark energy, one of the greatest mysteries of our cosmos. Dark energy is thought to be winning a battle against gravity, pulling the fabric of the universe apart. Research based on this acceleration garnered researchers the 2011 Nobel Prize in physics.

"This is a huge puzzle," said the lead author of the new study, Wendy Freedman of the Observatories of the Carnegie Institution for Science in Pasadena. "It's exciting that we were able to use Spitzer to tackle fundamental problems in cosmology: the precise rate at which the universe is expanding at the current time, as well as measuring the amount of dark energy in the universe from another angle." Freedman led the groundbreaking Hubble Space Telescope study that earlier had measured the Hubble constant.

Glenn Wahlgren, Spitzer program scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington, said infrared vision, which sees through dust to provide better views of variable stars called cepheids, enabled Spitzer to improve on past measurements of the Hubble constant.

"These pulsating stars are vital rungs in what astronomers call the cosmic distance ladder: a set of objects with known distances that, when combined with the speeds at which the objects are moving away from us, reveal the expansion rate of the universe," said Wahlgren.

Cepheids are crucial to the calculations because their distances from Earth can be measured readily. In 1908, Henrietta Leavitt discovered these stars pulse at a rate directly related to their intrinsic brightness.

To visualize why this is important, imagine someone walking away from you while carrying a candle. The farther the candle traveled, the more it would dim. Its apparent brightness would reveal the distance. The same principle applies to cepheids, standard candles in our cosmos. By measuring how bright they appear on the sky, and comparing this to their known brightness as if they were close up, astronomers can calculate their distance from Earth.

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NASA's infrared observatory measures expansion of universe

There appears to be support within NASA to position astronauts at an Earth-moon libration point to bolster the space agency's plans of pushing beyond low-Earth orbit with its Orion spacecraft design.

Anchoring hardware and a crew at the Earth-moon L2 "gateway" would offer many benefits, advocates say. One of them is building on multinational cooperation honed at the International Space Station (ISS).

Under review is use of Russian-supplied hardware at the L2 point, according to insiders contacted by SPACE.com. Surplus space shuttle gear and ISS-flight-ready spares are also in the mix.

Regarding the use of Russian space hardware, both the Multipurpose Laboratory Module and the Scientific-Power Module are new modules being developed in Russia. Both will add new capabilities to the ISS. A proposal on the table seeks to use a similar Russian-provided Scientific-Power Module in cislunar space as a base of operations for exploration missions. [Gallery: Visions of Deep-Space Station Missions]

NASA space planners have been sketching out an exploration strategy that would make use of the Lagrange points. For one, by exploring and working beyond the Earth's radiation belts, more can be learned about space radiation protection. Additionally, the Lagrange points provide unique perspectives of the moon, sun and Earth. Sojourns to the Earth-moon L2 would take humans farther than they have ever been from Earth.

Done deal?

A recent Orlando Sentinel newspaper story kick-started the perception that NASA officials have picked a leading candidate for the agency's next major mission: creation of a "gateway spacecraft" parked at the Earth-moon libration point 2, also known as EML-2.

Indeed, NASA has spotlighted the fact that, as crewed missions extend farther from Earth and for longer periods of time, they will require new capabilities to enable safe and sustainable habitation and exploration.

As reported by SPACE.com earlier this year, a Feb. 3 memo from William Gerstenmaier, NASA's associate administrator for human exploration and operations, noted that a team would be formed to develop a cohesive plan for exploring the EML-2 spot in space.

Libration points, also known as Lagrangian points, are places in space where the combined gravitational pull of two large masses roughly balance each other out, allowing spacecraft to essentially "park" there.

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NASA considering deep-space station on moon

ScienceDaily (Oct. 3, 2012) NASA scientists periodically monitor subtle changes in volcanic activity with the Uninhabited Aerial Vehicle Synthetic Aperture Radar (UAVSAR) carried by a modified NASA C-20A (G-III) aircraft. This month the specialized NASA Airborne Science aircraft, with the UAVSAR installed in a pod under the plane's fuselage, deploys to Alaska and Japan to continue a study of active volcanoes.

Developed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., the UAVSAR uses a technique called interferometry to detect and measure very subtle deformations in Earth's surface.

This study builds on UAVSAR research of U.S. West Coast and Hawaiian volcanoes acquired from 2009 through 2011 and additional observations of Central and South American volcanoes gathered in 2010 and 2011.

The deployment of NASA's C-20A (G-III) began Oct. 2 when the aircraft departed NASA's Dryden Aircraft Operations Facility in Palmdale, Calif., imaging volcanoes in the Western United States en route to Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Tacoma, Wash. After refueling, the aircraft will travel on to Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson near Anchorage, Alaska.

The sensor will image volcanoes in Alaska, including those in the Aleutian Islands, before arriving at Yokota Air Force Base near Tokyo, Japan. Yokota is the staging location for science missions to collect data about volcanoes on several islands in Japan that pose a hazard to nearby populations. On its return, the aircraft will repeat the route, acquiring data from the opposite viewing direction, before arriving back at its base in Palmdale Oct. 11.

The aircraft features a high-precision autopilot designed and developed by engineers at NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center. The Precision Platform Autopilot guides the aircraft using a kinematic differential Global Positioning System developed by JPL and the aircraft's inertial navigation system to enable it to fly repeat paths to an accuracy of 15 feet or less. With the precision autopilot engaged, the synthetic aperture radar is able to acquire repeat-pass data that can measure land-surface changes within millimeters.

UAVSAR provides a measurement system that complements satellite-based observations by providing rapid revisits and imaging of active volcanoes to better understand their deformation prior to, during or after an eruption.

In addition to the NASA study of volcanoes, the UAVSAR team is working with Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency scientists to define cross-calibration sites, including flight lines over disaster and forested areas, between the UAVSAR and the PISAR-L2 airborne radars.

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NASA airborne radar to study volcanoes in Alaska and Japan

NASA's Curiosity Mars rover checked in on Mars Wednesday using the mobile application Foursquare. This marks the first check-in on another planet. Users on Foursquare can keep up with Curiosity as the rover checks in at key locations and posts photos and tips, all while exploring the Red Planet.

"NASA is using Foursquare as a tool to share the rover's new locations while exploring Mars," said David Weaver, associate administrator for communications at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "This will help to involve the public with the mission and give them a sense of the rover's travels through Gale Crater."

After landing in Gale Crater last month, Curiosity began a planned 23-month mission that includes some of Mars' most intriguing scientific destinations. Curiosity is roving toward Mount Sharp, a mountain about 3 miles (5 kilometers) tall. The rover is conducting experiments along the way, seeking clues in the rocks and soil that would indicate whether Mars ever was capable of supporting microbial life. It is taking and sharing pictures of the trip.

Back here on Earth, Foursquare users will be able to earn a Curiosity-themed badge on the social media platform for check-ins at locations that generate an interest in science, technology, engineering and mathematics. Available late this year, this new badge will encourage Foursquare users to explore science centers, laboratories and museums that pique scientific curiosity.

NASA has been on Foursquare since 2010 through a strategic partnership with the platform. This partnership, launched with astronaut Doug Wheelock's first-ever check-in from the International Space Station, has allowed users to connect with NASA and enabled them to explore the universe and re-discover Earth.

The partnership launched the NASA Explorer badge for Foursquare users, encouraging them to explore NASA-related locations across the country. It also included the launch of a NASA Foursquare page, where the agency provides official tips and information about the nation's space program.

The Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) manages the Mars Science Laboratory mission and its Curiosity rover for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The rover was designed, developed and assembled at JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, Calif.

To find out more about Mars Curiosity and NASA on Foursquare, visit: http://www.foursquare.com/MarsCuriosity and http://www.foursquare.com/NASA

For information about NASA's partnership with Foursquare, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/connect/foursquare.html

For more information about NASA's Curiosity mission, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/msl and http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl

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NASA's Curiosity Rover Checks-In on Mars Using Foursquare

NASA's Mars rover took the post-PC revolution into space on Wednesday by using location-sharing mobile application Foursquare to "check-in" on the Red Planet.

"NASA is using Foursquare as a tool to share the rover's new locations while exploring Mars," said NASA spokesman David Weaver.

"This will help to involve the public with the mission and give them a sense of the rover's travels through Gale Crater," where the Curiosity rover landed in August.

People using social network Foursquare can keep up with Curiosity as the rover explores Mars, checking in at key locations and posting photos and tips, according to NASA.

Details were available online at foursquare.com/MarsCuriosity or foursquare.com/NASA.

NASA announced last week that the Mars rover has discovered gravel once carried by the waters of an ancient stream that "ran vigorously" through the area.

Scientists had previously found other evidence that water once was present on the Red Planet, but this is the first time stream bed gravel has been discovered.

Curiosity is on a two-year mission to investigate whether it is possible to live on Mars and to learn whether conditions there might have been able to support life in the past.

The $2.5 billion craft landed in Gale Crater on August 6, opening a new chapter in the history of interplanetary exploration.

Earth-bound Foursquare users will be able to earn Curiosity-themed virtual badges at the social network for check-ins at labs, science centers or other locations that inspire interest in technology, math or engineering.

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NASA rover checks in online from Mars

What's a rich space tourist to do? If you want to fly in space, seats are harder to find than a flight out of Chicago's O'Hare airport during a blizzard. So your only option is to bump an astronaut from a seat on a Russian Soyuz spacecraft going to the International Space Station.

ABC News has learned that singer Sarah Brightman, of "Phantom of the Opera" fame, will be the next tourist in space, sometime in 2014 or 2015. To get her seat she had to pay the Russian space agency more than the $51 million NASA budgets on average to send its astronauts to the station.

To maintain its presence in orbit when Soyuz seats are limited, NASA had to agree to commit at least one of its astronauts to spend a year in space, instead of the six months they currently stay. Brightman's trip will be announced in Moscow on Oct. 10.

NASA says a year in space has great medical research benefits. Astronauts spending just six months on the space station in the past have suffered from radiation exposure, muscle mass loss, decreased bone density, and vision problems. The research from a year on the space station will help NASA plan for long flights to Mars or an asteroid. It does mean an astronaut will get booted from a flight to adjust for one less seat.

When the space shuttle quit flying last year, it created a conundrum for companies like Space Adventures, whose business -- sending rich tourists into space -- depended upon the resources of Roscosmos, the Russian space agency. Roscosmos is the only space agency willing to send tourists to space. NASA won't do it, and now they don't have a spacecraft anyway so it's a moot point.

Don't have $50 million to spare? There is a budget option: $200,000 for a suborbital flight on Virgin Galactic' s SpaceshipTwo, which should start commercial flights in a couple of years. SpaceShipTwo is designed to be a six-passenger, two-pilot craft, flying to the edge of space. The flight will be short -- just six minutes of weightlessness, but passengers will be able to unbuckle and float around the cabin. If you have $1 million to spare, you can book one trip for yourself and a few friends.

Boeing would like to get into the space tourism business as well, partnering with Space Adventures at some point to launch from Florida.

Space Adventures offers ten days on the International Space Station, in low Earth orbit, with great views and not-so-great accommodations. But there is zero gravity, which means you get to do somersaults and float as much as you want. For a singer like Sarah Brightman, who thrilled the world when she starred in "Phantom of the Opera," the inspiration should be out of this world.

Rumors flew earlier this week when author J.K. Rowling told an audience in England she had once been offered a seat on a space shuttle for a couple of million dollars. NASA quickly scotched that story.

Space Adventures has flown seven tourists into space since 2000. Clients have paid from $22 million to $35 million in the past, but the limited number of Soyuz seats drove the price to more than $50 million. After all, if NASA is willing to pay $51 million, Russia doesn't need to sell the seat at half price.

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Singer Sarah Brightman Outbids NASA for Space Tourist's Seat