NASA has published a shortlist of six missions its considering for launch from the year 2022.

All are part of the space agency's Explorers Program, which aims to do heliophysics and astrophysics on modest budgets. The program runs Medium-Class missions with a budget cap of US$250m and Missions of Opportunity that get just $70m to play with. Over 90 Explorer missions have run since the first in 1958.

The Medium-Class missions NASA's decided to fling some exploratory cash at are:

The Missions of Opportunity bidding for a green light are:

NASA's already conditionally-selected a mission called CASE, or Contribution to ARIEL Spectroscopy of Exoplanets. CASE would provide packaged detectors to the ESA's planned Atmospheric Remote-sensing Exoplanet Large-survey (ARIEL). Doing so would help that effort's attempts to understand the early stages of planetary and atmospheric formation during the nebular phase and the following few millions of years.

Making this shortlist means the projects mentioned above have scored funding for a nine-month implementation concept study. More reviews await each project after that document is completed and assessed, but NASA is hopeful it will launch one of the missions above by the year 2022.

Sponsored: The Joy and Pain of Buying IT - Have Your Say

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NASA short-lists six candidates for future missions - The Register

Enlarge / With 200 kW of solar power, the VASIMR engine could be used as a lunar tug.

Ad Astra Rocket Company

Almost everyone recognizes that if humans are truly to go deeper into the Solar System, we need faster and more efficient propulsion systems than conventional chemical rockets. Rocket engines powered by chemical propellants are great for breaking the chains of Earth's gravity, but they consume way too much fuel when used in space and don't offer optimal control of a spacecraft's thrust.

NASA recognizes this, too. So in 2015, the space agency awarded three different contracts for development of advanced propulsion systems. Of these, perhaps the most intriguing is a plasma-based rocketwhich runs on Argon fuel, generates a plasma, excites it, and then pushes it out a nozzle at high speed. This solution has the potential to shorten the travel time between Earth and Mars to weeks, rather than months.

But to realize that potential, Houston-based Ad Astra Rocket Company must first demonstrate that its plasma rocket, VASIMR, can fire continuously for a long period of time. The three year, $9 million contract from NASA required the company to fire its plasma rocket for 100 hours, at a power level of 100 kilowatts, by 2018.

This week, Ad Astra reported that it remains on target toward that goal. The company completed a successful performance review with NASA after its second year of the contract, and it has now fired the engine for a total of 10 hours while making significant modifications to its large vacuum chamber to handle the thermal load produced by the rocket engine.

When Ars visited the company early in 2017, the company was pulsing its rocket for about 30 seconds at a time. Now, the company is firing VASIMR for about five minutes at a time, founder Franklin Chang-Diaz told Ars. "The limitation right now is moisture outgassing from all the new hardware in both the rocket and the vacuum chamber," he said. "This overwhelms the pumps, so there is a lot of conditioning that has to be done little by little."

A view of the plasma plume during a test firing.

Ad Astra Rocket Company

Loading the VASIMR engine into the vacuum chamber.

Ad Astra Rocket Company

Where the plasma comes out of the rocket engine.

Ad Astra Rocket Company

The VASIMR engine and the exterior of the vacuum chamber.

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Exterior view of the vacuum chamber.

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Installing cryopumps inside the vacuum chamber.

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Franklin Chang-Daz peers into the vacuum chamber during a test firing.

Ad Astra Rocket Company

Franklin Chang-Daz.

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Setup of the VASIMR engine (VX 200SS) inside the vacuum chamber during tests. The rocket is at left, and the area of the plume is shown by the purple outline.

Ad Astra Rocket Company

As the company continues to test the new hardware, it is gradually building up to longer and longer pulses with inspections in between. As Astra remains on target to perform the 100-hour test in late summer or early fall of 2018, Chang-Diaz said.

Initially, the company foresees the plasma rocket as a means for pushing cargo between Earth and the Moon, or on to Mars. With solar powered panels, the rocket would have a relatively low thrust and therefore would move loads slowly but efficiently. But with more power, such as from a space-based nuclear reactor, it could one day reach much higher velocities that would allow humans to travel rapidly through the Solar System.

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NASA's plasma rocket making progress toward a 100-hour firing - Ars Technica

August 10, 2017 by Guy Webster Clouds drift across the sky above a Martian horizon in this accelerated sequence of enhanced images taken on July 17, 2017, by the Navcam on NASA's Curiosity Mars rover. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/York University

Wispy, early-season clouds resembling Earth's ice-crystal cirrus clouds move across the Martian sky in some new image sequences from NASA's Curiosity Mars rover.

These clouds are the most clearly visible so far from Curiosity, which landed five years ago this month about five degrees south of Mars' equator. Clouds moving in the Martian sky have been observed previously by Curiosity and other missions on the surface of Mars, including NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander in the Martian arctic nine years ago.

Researchers used Curiosity's Navigation Camera (Navcam) to take two sets of eight images of the sky on an early Martian morning last month. For one set, the camera pointed nearly straight up. For the other, it pointed just above the southern horizon. Cloud movement was recorded in both and was made easier to see by image enhancement. A midday look at the sky with the same camera the same day showed no clouds.

Mars' elliptical orbit makes that planet's distance from the Sun vary more than Earth's does. In previous Martian years, a belt of clouds has appeared near the equator around the time Mars was at its farthest from the Sun. The new images of clouds were taken about two months before that farthest point in the orbit, relatively early in the season for the appearance of this cloud belt.

"It is likely that the clouds are composed of crystals of water ice that condense out onto dust grains where it is cold in the atmosphere," said Curiosity science-team member John Moores of York University, Toronto, Canada. "The wisps are created as those crystals fall and evaporate in patterns known as 'fall streaks' or 'mare's tails.' While the rover does not have a way to ascertain the altitude of these clouds, on Earth such clouds form at high altitude."

York's Charissa Campbell produced the enhanced-image sequences by generating an "average" of all the frames in each sequence, then subtracting that average from each frame, emphasizing any frame-to-frame changes. The moving clouds are also visible, though fainter, in a sequence of raw images.

Explore further: Curiosity captures gravity wave shaped clouds on Mars

More information: For more about Curiosity, visit mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl

This week, from March 20th to 24th, the 48th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference will be taking place in The Woodlands, Texas. Every year, this conference brings together international specialists in the fields of geology, ...

Using the most powerful telescope ever sent to Mars, NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter caught a view of the Curiosity rover this month amid rocky mountainside terrain.

Many features on the surface of Mars hint at the presence of liquid water in the past. These range from the Valles Marineris, a 4,000 km long and 7 km deep system of canyons, to the tiny hematite spherules called "blueberries". ...

The left side of this 360-degree panorama from NASA's Curiosity Mars rover shows the long rows of ripples on a linear shaped dune in the Bagnold Dune Field on the northwestern flank of Mount Sharp.

NASA's Curiosity Mars rover began close-up investigation of a target called "Marimba," on lower Mount Sharp, during the week preceding the fourth anniversary of the mission's dramatic sky-crane landing.

Curiosity celebrated two years on Mars on August 5, 2014, and is continuing its progress across the surface of the planet. The rover has already fulfilled one of its primary mission goals by confirming that environments theoretically ...

An asteroid the size of a house will shave past Earth at a distance of some 44,000 kilometres (27,300 miles) in October, inside the Moon's orbit, astronomers said Thursday.

(Phys.org)An international team of astronomers has discovered a Jupiter-mass alien world circling a giant star known as HD 208897. The newly detected exoplanet was found as a result of high-precision radial velocity measurements. ...

NASA's Cassini spacecraft will enter new territory in its final mission phase, the Grand Finale, as it prepares to embark on a set of ultra-close passes through Saturn's upper atmosphere with its final five orbits around ...

A bright Moon will outshine the annual Perseids meteor shower, which will peak Saturday with only a fifth the usual number of shooting stars visible to Earthlings, astronomers say.

Scientists have discovered why heavyweight galaxies living in a dense crowd of galaxies tend to spin more slowly than their lighter neighbours.

New evidence from ancient lunar rocks suggests that an active dynamo once churned within the molten metallic core of the moon, generating a magnetic field that lasted at least 1 billion years longer than previously thought. ...

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Watch martian clouds scoot, thanks to NASA's Curiosity - Phys.Org

By now, you've probably - hopefully - heard that there's a total solar eclipse to watch out for on 21 August this year. Dubbed the 'Great American Eclipse', it's the first such event travelling coast to coast across the United States since 1918 and everyone is super excited.

Naturally, NASA has been using this excitement to do some quality public engagement, and last night they even hosted a science Ask Me Anything (AMA) on Reddit, featuring six actual NASA scientists. There were a lot of valuable scientific queries, but plenty of stuff on the lighter side, too. Below are some of our favourite tidbits.

1. Will I really go blind? Really?

You certainly don't want to be looking directly at the sun, ever - but some people still have their doubts.

One user asked if they would actually go blind if they looked directly at it, only to be assured by atmospheric scientist Jay Herman that yes, yes they would:

Contact me in braille after you are done with the experiment. Seriously, do not attempt this experiment. You can look at it during the 1.5 minutes of totality, but be careful to look away the moment the light gets brighter. Not kidding. Look away instantly.

To a similar query, astronomer Bill Cooke told the cautionary tale of his own unfortunate eye damage:

You can damage your eyes without feeling pain. I know because I have a scar on my retina from not getting my eye protection back on at the end of totality during the 1979 eclipse. Please don't follow my example!

So yes, dowear proper eye protection.

2. Are my animals going to go blind? Or freak out?

One person was really worried about their horses, hoping that they wouldn't look directly at the sky:

Dumb question....do animals suffer eye damage during a total eclipse? Do they even care to look into the sky? The reason I ask is because I have a couple horses that live outside 24/7 and I don't want to be slapped with a major vet bill on the 22nd.

As it turns out, NASA's Bill Cooke has actually experienced a solar eclipse together with a pasture full of horses, and they did not go blind - just ran around a bit, in confusion. Phew.

Several people mentioned animals, and it's actually a really interesting topic - researchers encourage people to take note on how animals are behaving during the eclipse, because it's one of those subjects that's tricky to study due to its rarity.

3. WHAT IF THERE ARE CLOUDS?

As with any phenomenon that involves staring a clear sky, the worst thing that can happen is cloud cover. Having direct access to scientists from NASA, some Reddit users were keen to just get the weather report from them. Okay then.

But we did learn from Bill Cooke that if you're in the path of totality and there are clouds, you'll still get something.

"It will get dark if you're in the path of totality! But it is a weird dark," he wrote.

4. How much fun will I miss out on if I don't watch it?

One person really didn't want to go on their family trip to Oregon to experience the eclipse, so NASA's geologist Noah Petro tried talking them into it:

You'd be missing out on a really awesome experience! Solar eclipses are rare enough that you really shouldn't pass up the chance to see it, if you can! The next total eclipse in the US will be 2024, but it won't be in Oregon.

5. Does NASA have advice for my eclipse wedding?

Some couples have come up with the fun idea that the spectacle of an eclipse would make a great backdrop for a wedding. So naturally, one of these 'eclipse brides' sought input on her big day from NASA scientists.

"Don't lock your knees, drink lots of water, make sure you get some appetizers, have fun, and congratulations! Make sure you and your guests have eclipse glasses," replied Noah Petro.

Solid advice for any event, really.

6. How long before we don't have any more eclipses?

For as long as humans have occupied our planet we've had the spectacle of eclipses (with the earliest eclipse confirmed in 3340BC), but this celestial arrangement is not always going to stick around - some Reddit users aware of this wanted to know how long we have until the Moon recedes too far.

Turns out we have plenty of time to still experience some more totalities - about 600 million years to be precise, according to solar scientist Mitzi Adams.

7. Can I use this to convince my flat earther friend?

Reddit user mistaotoo wanted to know if there would be "any physical proof during the eclipse" that could change the mind of their friend who is into flat Earth theories.

And we just love this answer by NASA's Jay Herman:

Of course the earth is flat. Otherwise you would fall off. We are working on the problem of where the sun goes every day when it sets over a flat earth. So far, we have not seen clouds of steam when it hits the ocean.

But, as Bill Cooke pointed out, there's not much you can do if a flat earther already doesn't accept all those views of Earth we have from space. Sigh.

Bonus: Just sometimes, the best questions are actually comments, like this one:

I just want to thank you and all your coworkers for ensuring the human race never stops learning and exploring, you scientists should be the real super stars.

We totally agree. Thank you very much, NASA!

You can check out the rest of the AMA and some of the more serious scientific answers here.

See original here:

7 of The Wackiest Questions NASA Has Been Asked About The Total Solar Eclipse - ScienceAlert

There is a striking misconception going around that the 2017 Perseid meteor shower will be the "brightest shower in recorded human history" and even visible during the day.

This rumor is not true, according to NASA.

Long-awaited celestial events, such as the annual Perseid meteor shower on Aug. 12 or the total solar eclipse on Aug. 21, create a lot of excitement. However, many rumors about these events get blown out of proportion, as is the case with this year's Perseids, NASA said. [Top 10 Perseid Meteor Shower Facts]

"For one thing, the Perseids never reach storm levels (thousands of meteors per hour). At best, they outburst from a normal rate [of] between 80-100 meteors per hour to a few hundred per hour," Bill Cooke, head of NASA's Meteoroid Environment Office at the Marshall Space Flight Center,said in a statement. "The best Perseid performance of which we are aware occurred back in 1993, when the peak Perseid rate topped 300 meteors per hour.Last year also saw an outburstof just over 200 meteors per hour."

The Perseid meteor shower happens every August, as the Earth passes through debrisleft behind from Comet Swift-Tuttle. This year's Perseids will peak on Aug. 12, when Earth encounters the densest area of the comet's dusty trail. Astronomers expect rates of about 150 meteors an hour, according to the statement.

A meteor streaks across the sky in this 30-second exposure from the Perseid meteor shower on Aug. 13, 2015, in Spruce Knob, West Virginia.

However, it will be a little harder to see the Perseids this year, Cooke said. Shortly before the shower peaks overnight, the full moon will be three-quarters full, meaning its bright light will wash out many of the fainter meteors.

"A meteor every couple of minutes is good and certainly [makes it] worth going outside to look, but it is hardly the 'brightest shower in human history,'" Cooke said. "The Leonid meteor storms of the late 1990s and early 2000s were much more spectacular and had rates 10 times greater than the best Perseid display."

The Perseid meteor shower is one of the most spectacular meteor showers of the year, occurring in early August. How much do you know about the celestial light show?

0 of 10 questions complete

Perseid Meteor Shower Quiz: Test Your Cosmic Fireworks Smarts

The Perseid meteor shower is one of the most spectacular meteor showers of the year, occurring in early August. How much do you know about the celestial light show?

The Leonid meteor shower on Nov. 12, 1833, had tens of thousands possibly even 100,000 meteors per hour (or 20 to 30 meteors per second). For comparison, a Perseid meteor shower has about one meteor per minute under ideal conditions, according to the statement.

"The 1833 storm had a profound effect on those that witnessed it; it also gave birth to modern meteor science. Those of us who study meteors dream of such a display happening sometime within our lifetimes," Cooke said. "But it won't be caused by this year's Perseids."

Follow Samantha Mathewson @Sam_Ashley13. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article on Space.com.

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NASA Debunks Perseid Meteor Shower Rumor - Space.com

Technically Incorrect offers a slightly twisted take on the tech that's taken over our lives.

As the job offers begin to flow, where on Earth will our young Mr. Davis land?

When one spaceship door closes, another opens wide.

Many were moved when 9-year-old Jack Davis wrote to NASA to explain that, as a Guardian of the Galaxy, he was the perfect candidate to be the space agency's new planetary protection officer.

This is a job that involves protecting our Earth against alien microbes and protecting aliens from, well, our general incompetence.

NASA decided Jack wasn't (yet) the perfect candidate as, well, he's 9, you know.

However, in has stepped the (PR department of the) Liberty Science Center near Manhattan. In a YouTube message to the little guardian, Paul Hoffman, CEO of the nonprofit, told Jack he could work at the center's planetarium right now.

Well, when he says right now, he means when it opens sometime later this year. It will be the largest planetarium in the western hemisphere, says the LSC, and Hoffman wants Jack to be its official kid science advisor.

"Give me a call and we can work this out," Hoffman says in the video.

The science center has also sent Jack a letter and is waiting for his response.

My attempts to reach Jack were unsuccessful. As a Guardian of the Galaxy, he's likely quite busy. Moreover, he's already admitted that his sister thinks he's an alien, so he could be anywhere.

Still, Jack lives in New Jersey and the Science Center is in Jersey City, so he'd have a short commute.

My one concern, if I were his agent, would be whether the science center would match the six figure salary offered by NASA for the planetary protection officer job. So I asked.

"We are not offering a salary," a science center spokeswoman told me, adding that the LSC "would love to have him as a kid advisor, until he heads off to NASA in many years!" The canny spokeswoman said the center hasn't yet heard from Jack.

Drive a hard bargain, Jack. You don't want to let those earthlings take advantage of you.

Crowd Control: A crowdsourced science fiction novel written by CNET readers.

Tech Culture: From film and television to social media and games, here's your place for the lighter side of tech.

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9-year-old NASA applicant gets planetarium job offer - CNET

August 10, 2017 by Ellen Gray NASA's P-3 aircraft is prepared for departure from the Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia early in the morning Aug. 1 to support the agency's Observations of Aerosols above Clouds and their interactions or ORACLES mission. A five-year investigation, ORACLES is examining the impact aerosols from biomass burning in southern Africa has on climate as it mixes with clouds over the southeast Atlantic Ocean. The 2017 flight campaign, which runs through August, will base from So Tom, Africa. Credit: NASA/Patrick Black

NASA's P-3 research plane begins flights this month through both clouds and smoke over the South Atlantic Ocean to understand how tiny airborne particles called aerosols change the properties of clouds and how they influence the amount of incoming sunlight the clouds reflect or absorb.

The Observations of Aerosols above Clouds and their Interactions, or ORACLES, field mission is carrying out the month-long field campaign from So Tom and Princip, an island nation off the west coast of Africa. From there researchers will investigate an area off the coast of Angola, where two phenomena meet. One is natural: a low-lying cloud bank that naturally forms over the ocean. The other is at least partly human-made: a plume of smoke from seasonal fires set on agricultural fields across central Africa.

The short lifetime of aerosols in the atmosphere make them among the most variable components of Earth's climate system. An umbrella term for any small particle suspended in the atmosphere, aerosols can be either light or dark, reflective or absorbent of sunlight, and can enhance or suppress the formation of cloud droplets. They can be natural, like desert dust, sea salt or pollen. They can also result from human activities, such as sulfate particles which form from the oxidation of sulfur dioxide emitted from power plants, or, as is the case in Central Africa, soot and ash from human-made fires.

"Imagine a plume of smoke," said ORACLES Principal Investigator Jens Redemann of NASA's Ames Research Center in California's Silicon Valley. "If you see it over the contrast of a dark ocean, it looks lighter, which means the aerosols making up the smoke would have a cooling effect at the top of the atmospherethey reflect more radiation."

In contrast, "if you look at those aerosol particles over a cloud deck, they make the clouds appear darker sometimes, and that would have a warming effect at the top of the atmosphere," he said.

The sheer variety of aerosol particle types and the fact that they stay in the atmosphere for just days to weeks, compared to years spent by greenhouse gases, means they are among the most challenging to understand and incorporate into climate models, said Redemann, which is why the data collected from the P-3 aircraft measurements of aerosols and clouds are so important.

"Ideally, we're going to create a data set climate modelers can use to test their parameterization of these cloud-aerosol interactions," said Redemann. "So ten years from now, someone can go back and say, 'OK, I wonder if these guys collected data on mechanisms A, B, C and I can use that to get the mechanisms correct in my model.'"

One of those climate modelers is Susanne Bauer at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York City, who is also a member of the ORACLES science team.

"In order to develop climate models, we have to consider microphysical processes, such as how a cloud droplet gets formed and how such droplets and physical conditions inside and outside of a cloud are changed by the presence of aerosols," she said. "These can only be measured in the field."

Those microscopic interactions between particles and droplets have multiple effects. In addition to direct effects like absorbing or reflecting sunlight, Bauer said, "they can change how much sunlight a cloud reflects back to space and the lifetime of a cloud. Possibly they can influence if it's raining or if a cloud will start to drizzle." Understanding these small-scale processes is crucial to gaining knowledge about how human-made pollution is changing the climate globally via cloud effects.

NASA's P-3 research aircraft, managed at NASA's Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia, is outfitted with a suite of instruments to directly measure these and other properties from air drawn into the plane through inlets on the sides and wings. Each instrument is operated by small groups of scientists who make up the ORACLES research team.

"The work we do can only be done by a large, dedicated team," said Bernadette Squire Luna, ORACLES project manager at Ames, who manages the logistics for the nearly one hundred scientists who will be rotating through So Tom in August. "We have scientists from five NASA centers, ten universities and two national labs, as well as new international partnerships."

The August 2017 deployment is the second of three annual deployments designed to capture different parts of the agricultural fire season each year.

Explore further: NASA flies to Africa to study climate effects of smoke on clouds

NASA scientists and two research aircraft are on their way to a unique natural laboratory off the Atlantic coast of southwest Africa to study a major unknown in future climate prediction.

How the properties of clouds change in response to local pollution - mainly from coal burning and ship engines - has been more accurately determined.

A spectacular six-month Icelandic lava field eruption could provide the crucial key for scientists to unlock the role aerosols play in climate change, through their interactions with clouds.

A scientist at the University of Miami (UM) Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science is leading an upcoming international research campaign to study a significant contributor to regional climate warming - smoke. ...

Clouds can be observed from the International Space Station moving across Earth's surface, as in this image of New Zealand taken by Expedition 42 Flight Engineer Samantha Cristoforetti. Other tiny solid and liquid particles ...

(Phys.org) Aerosols, tiny particles in the atmosphere, play a significant role in Earth's climate, scattering and absorbing incoming sunlight and affecting the formation and properties of clouds. Currently, the effect ...

It is "extremely unlikely" 2014, 2015 and 2016 would have been the warmest consecutive years on record without the influence of human-caused climate change, according to the authors of a new study.

Efforts by farmers to reduce the amount of fertilizer that reaches drinking water sources can take years to have a positive impact, according to a new study from the University of Waterloo.

Despite repeated promises over the past 18 years, the US Office of Nuclear Energy (NE) is unlikely to deliver on its mission to develop and demonstrate an advanced nuclear reactor by the mid-21st century.

A loss of oxygen in global ocean seawater 94 million years ago led to a mass extinction of marine life that lasted for roughly half a million years.

Drought-stricken areas anxiously await the arrival of rain. Full recovery of the ecosystem, however, can extend long past the first rain drops on thirsty ground.

The disposal of wastewater from oil and gas production by injecting it deep into the ground has been linked to a dramatic increase in earthquake activity in Oklahoma since 2009. Injection rates have declined recently because ...

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NASA airborne mission returns to Africa to study smoke, clouds - Phys.Org

Last week it was reported that on August 14 NASA will begin accepting applications to become its new Planetary Protection Officer.

The job post, which notes a cushy six-figure salary, immediately kicked off a spate of sensational headlines, though the positions actual responsibilities mostly consist of preventing the transfer of microorganisms from Earth to other planets and vice versa to prevent biological contamination during space missions.

For some, the discovery that, rather than activating cosmic shields to defend against alien invasions, the Planetary Protection Officer will more likely be focusing on keeping spacecrafts spotlessly clean, might seem disappointing. Its actually refreshing.

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In an article in New York magazine, The Uninhabitable Earth, journalist David Wallace-Wells prophesizes a litany of potential global warming disasters, including lethal heat waves, global drought, and perpetual war.

Other oft-predicted doomsday scenarios have involved nuclear holocausts, genetically-engineered diseases and, in a particularly sci-fi-oriented example, machine uprisings.

What all of the above scenarios have in common is their roots in human innovation and adventurism.

American astronaut Joseph Tanner during a space walk as part of the STS-115 mission to the International Space Station, September 2006. NASA

Indeed, while our species may not actually bring about the Apocalypse, its hard to claim humanitys ambition has ever been tempered by an abundance of caution.

From land explorations to military conflicts to science and technology, our history has generally been long on hubris and short on humility. In some cases, the dangers were not even foreseeable.

Could the pioneering inventors and engineers of the Industrial Revolution, for instance, ever have imagined the potentially catastrophic effects that oil, coal and gasoline would have on the environment?

Today, as we continue to make ever greater strides in technological innovation, even some prominent tech leaders have expressed reservations. Teslas Elon Musk, for example, has repeatedly warned of the existential threat posed by artificial intelligence, likening A.I. to a demon being summoned by a guy with a pentagram who inevitably wont be able to control it.

In Silicon Valley, his concerns have mostly fallen on deaf ears, though the notion that our technology is outpacing our abilities to contend with it is hardly new. Biologist E.O. Wilson perhaps put it best when he described the essential human problem as follows: W e have Paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions, and god-like technology.

Meanwhile, Musks anxieties have fueled his mission to colonize Mars via his aerospace corporation, SpaceX, in the hopes that humanity may eventually become, in his words, a multi-planetary species.

Stephen Hawking, fearful Earth is on its way to becoming uninhabitable, also urges space colonization as a means for long-term survival. Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, on the other hand, is confident this planet will always remain our home, but is convinced that colonizing space (including the moon) will enable our continued existence here. He aims for his own spaceflight company, Blue Origin, to be part of that process.

If a new Space Age is indeed upon us, it is essential that this new frontier be one area in which human beings know our proverbial place.

In this context, NASAs Planetary Protection Officer emerges as an unlikely hero and an important example for private spaceflight companies like Musks and Bezoss to follow.

In contrast to the fifteenth century European colonialists who visited disease and destruction upon the Americas, NASAs Planetary Protection Officer represents a careful and considerate explorer, intrepid in all the right ways, for all the right reasons.

Of course it can be argued that protecting planets from microscopic organisms is trivial stuff in comparison to close encounters with intelligent extraterrestrial beings. That is correct, and precisely what makes the task so important. It is undoubtedly in the care and concern over the minutia of interplanetary exploration that we set the tone for the entire enterprise.

Our relationship to space is unpredictable and still in its infancy, and an emphasis on responsibility, especially at this stage, is paramount. In that light, the Planetary Protection Officer is no less important than the title implies.

This summer saw the fourth hottest June in record-keeping history. In mid-July, an iceberg the size of Delaware broke off from Antarctica.

If, as many people fear, weve already damaged this world irrecoverably, its not too late to be more responsible with others.

Joseph Helmreich is the author of The Return (St. Martins Press, 2017), a science fiction novel about interplanetary conflict.

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It's No Joke. NASA Needs Someone to Stop Us Polluting Outer Space - Newsweek

August 10, 2017 by Lori Keesey Using headgear and handsets, users can assemble a spacecraft in a new virtual-reality application now being developed with NASA R&D funding. Credit: NASA

Virtual and augmented reality are transforming the multi-billion-dollar gaming industry. A team of NASA technologists now is investigating how this immersive technology could profit agency engineers and scientists, particularly in the design and construction of spacecraft and the interpretation of scientific data.

Thomas Grubb, an engineer at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, is leading a team of center technical experts and university students to develop six multidisciplinary pilot projects highlighting the potential of virtual and augmented reality, also known as VR and AR. These pilots showcase current capabilities in engineering operations and science, but also provide a glimpse into how technologists could use the technology in the future.

"Anyone who followed the popularity of Pokmon Go has seen how the public has embraced this technology," said Grubb, referring to the augmented-reality game that quickly became a global sensation in 2016. "Just as it's changing the gaming industry, it will change the way we do our jobs," Grubb added. "Five years from now, it's going to be amazing."

To understand the potential, Grubb, whose project is funded by NASA's Center Innovation Fund, said people need to understand the technology's differences and how it has evolved.

Virtual reality typically involves wearing a headset that allows the user to experience and interact with an artificial, computer-generated reality. By combining computer-generated 3-D graphics and coded behaviorsthat is, how the app will respond when the user chooses an actionthese simulations can be used for design and analysis, entertainment, and training. They allow the user to feel like he or she is experiencing the situation firsthand.

Augmented reality, on the other hand, doesn't move the user to a different place, but adds something to it. As with Pokmon Go, augmented reality is made possible through low-end devices like smartphones and high-end AR headsets that blend digital components into the real world. In other words, with virtual reality, the user swims with the sharks; with augmented reality, the shark pops out of the user's cellphone.

Although the computer-generated technology can trace its heritage to the 1980s with the advent electronic-gaming devices, it has advanced rapidly over the past 15 years, largely because of sophisticated computer technologies that render more realistic 3-D experiences and the decline in prices for headsets, handheld devices, and other gear.

"For several years, commercial VR and AR technology has been showing promise, but without real tangible results," said Ted Swanson, senior technologist for strategic integration for Goddard's Office of the Chief Technologist. "However, recently there have been substantial developments in VR/AR hardware and software that may allow us to use this technology for scientific and engineering applications."

The aim isn't to reinvent the hardware and software developed by technology companies, but to be a "consumer of the products and create NASA-oriented applications," he said.

The pilots, which involve students from the University of Maryland, College Park, and Bowie State University, also in Maryland, are as diverse as the specialties in which NASA excels, Swanson said.

Under one, Grubb and his university collaborators are creating a collaborative virtual-reality environment where users don headgear and use hand controls to design, assemble, and interact with spacecraft using pre-defined, off-the-shelf parts and virtual tools, such as wrenches and screwdrivers. "The collaborative capability is a major feature in VR," Grubb said. "Even though they may work at locations hundreds of miles apart, engineers could work together to build and evaluate designs in real-time due to the shared virtual environment. Problems could be found earlier, which would save NASA time and money."

In other engineering-related apps, the team has created a 3-D simulation of Goddard's thermal-vacuum chamber to help engineers determine whether all spacecraft components would fit inside the facility before testing begins. In another involving on-orbit robotic servicing, the augmented app combines camera views and telemetry data in one locationan important capability for technicians who operate robotic arms such as the one on the International Space Station. All information is within the operator's field of view, alerting them to potential problems before they happen.

Just as important is applying the technology to scientific analysis, Grubb said.

The team has applied digital elevation maps and lidar data to create a 3-D simulation of terrestrial lava flows and tubes. The goal is to develop a proof-of-concept app that would allow scientists to compare remotely collected data with what they observe in the field. In another, the team is creating a 3-D visualization of space around the sun for mission planning. This simulation involves a constellation of CubeSats surrounding the sun to investigate the structure of the solar atmosphere, including the formation of coronal mass ejections that, when intense and traveling in the right direction, can affect low-Earth-orbiting spacecraft and power grids.

And last, the team is creating a virtual-reality environment where users can explore and visualize topographical features of Earth's protective magnetosphere. This app allows users to study magnetic reconnection sites, which are difficult to interpret without observations from more than one vantage point, Grubb said.

"I'm a gamer, but I see the potential for engineering and science applications," Grubb said. "We're in the early stages, but I believe this technology will transform how we work here. It will enhance engineering and give scientists a unique perspective of data."

Explore further: Microsoft aims at 'mixed reality' with new devices

Microsoft on Thursday debuted hardware for reaching into virtual worlds powered by its technology as it looked to "mixed reality" as the next big computing platform.

Apple has bought a company that makes augmented-reality software, which adds information or images to real-world scenes when viewed through a special headset or even a smartphone camera.

Augmented reality is seeing strong gains among Americans thanks to social networks like Snapchat, Instagram and Facebook, a market research firm said Monday.

Imverse, an EPFL spinoff, has developed a software that lets users convert 360-degree images from 2-D into 3-D and both manipulate and create virtual-reality content in real time with the help of virtual-reality glasses. ...

Facebook on Tuesday launched a mission to make smartphone cameras windows to augmented reality, focusing on what people have in hand instead of waiting for high-tech eyewear.

Apple has a team secretly working on virtual and augmented reality gear in a budding challenge to Facebook-owned Oculus Rift and Microsoft HoloLens, the Financial Times reported on Friday.

An asteroid the size of a house will shave past Earth at a distance of some 44,000 kilometres (27,300 miles) in October, inside the Moon's orbit, astronomers said Thursday.

(Phys.org)An international team of astronomers has discovered a Jupiter-mass alien world circling a giant star known as HD 208897. The newly detected exoplanet was found as a result of high-precision radial velocity measurements. ...

NASA's Cassini spacecraft will enter new territory in its final mission phase, the Grand Finale, as it prepares to embark on a set of ultra-close passes through Saturn's upper atmosphere with its final five orbits around ...

A bright Moon will outshine the annual Perseids meteor shower, which will peak Saturday with only a fifth the usual number of shooting stars visible to Earthlings, astronomers say.

Scientists have discovered why heavyweight galaxies living in a dense crowd of galaxies tend to spin more slowly than their lighter neighbours.

New evidence from ancient lunar rocks suggests that an active dynamo once churned within the molten metallic core of the moon, generating a magnetic field that lasted at least 1 billion years longer than previously thought. ...

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NASA Explores potential of altered realities for space engineering and science - Phys.Org