Since one of the biggest asteroids to strike Earth nearly 65 million years ago, our planet has been unarmed -- until now.

On the front lines of defending the planet is the newest technological advancement by NASA's Planetary Defense team: the Double Asteroid Redirection Test, otherwise known as DART.

DART's mission? To knock asteroids flying close to Earth off-course by striking them at a speed about nine times faster than a bullet.

NASA plans on testing the DART system on the moon of the asteroid Didymos. The satellite launches into space in 2020 with plans for impact in 2022.

"That's why we're doing this demonstration on the moon of an asteroid because we can change its orbit around Didymos much more easily and be able to measure the change we make much more easily," said Andy Rivkin, co-lead of the DART investigation team.

Small meteors hit Earth everyday, breaking up in the upper atmosphere and mostly going unnoticed. But several have been caught shooting across the sky.

The damage they can cause isn't just the stuff of fiction. In 1908 an asteroid flattened hundreds of square miles of forest in Siberia. In 2013 a meteor about 65 feet wide exploded over Chelyabinsk, Russia, injuring about 1,500 people and damaging thousands of buildings.

"There are no threatening asteroids that we know of but the way that that probability works, we don't think that we're due, but it's not the sort ofthing you can predict like that," Rivkin said.

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How NASA plans to knock asteroids heading toward Earth off course ... - CBS News

Mr Erdogan does not take kindly to criticism from the bloc, which he believes is taking him for a fool.

The EU has been giving us the runaround since 1963. And they are still making us wait at the door, the leader this week told German daily Die Welt in a rare interview with a foreign newspaper.

But Turkey's credit-driven economy is very much linked to the Western financial system. Half of Ankaras foreign trade is with the European Union.

Even if Mr Erdogan wanted to, it would not be easy to turn his back on Europe. And if the president gave up on the moribund ascension bid altogether he would risk a backlash.

Mr Erdogan seems to have spent much of the last year making enemies. In 12 months he has had spats with the EU, the US over its decision to arms the Kurds in Syria, Russia, Germany (which he said was being run by neo-Nazis), the Netherlands (which he called a Nazi remnant), and most recently with an alliance of Arab states trying to isolate terrorist-funder Qatar.

Perhaps the most egregious example of them all was allowing his personal bodyguards to beat up Kurdish demonstrators outside the Turkish ambassador's residence during a visit to DC in May.

Instead of extending his apologies to his hosts, the president summoned the US ambassador to explain why the guards were later questioned over the incident.

Beating up protesters in Washington, his position on the Qatar crisis, reluctance to work with Syrian Kurds in the fight against ISIS only pushed for his isolation in the world. Turkey is not an international pariah yet, but it sure is on its way to be, analyst Mr Zeynalov says.

Erdogan is already isolated, counters Aaron Stein, a resident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council's Rafik Hariri Centre who specialises in Turkey. Seriously, what major world leader is willing to stick up for Turkey these days?

Internally, opposition movements are growing.

In the first act of mass defiance against the purge, thousands have been taking part in a march organised by members of the opposition Peoples Republican party (CHP) along the 280-mile route from Ankara to Istanbul.

The march is due to finish today with a massive rally in Istanbuls Maltepe district.

We lost our democracy, and we are on the streets to demand it back, 22-year-old Mehmet Altan, one of the protesters, told the Telegraph.

Those who had cheered on the coups failure last summer, including Mr Altan, now find themselves filled with regret.

We were so fearful of what could have been, but we should have been afraid of what we already had, lamented the student.

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Nasa scientist researching mission to Mars still in prison a year on from failed Turkey coup - Telegraph.co.uk

BBC News

Mike Pence ignores Nasa 'do not touch' sign BBC News US Vice-President Mike Pence has made a tongue-in-cheek apology to Nasa after a photo of him touching a piece of space flight equipment went viral. Mr Pence was visiting the Kennedy Space Center in Florida when he placed his hand on a piece of ... Pence on that viral NASA photo: Rubio dared meCNN In NASA speech, Mike Pence shoots for the Moon (and Mars)TechCrunch NASA gives Pence a pass on touching the space equipment: 'We were going to clean it anyway'The Boston Globe NBCNews.com -The Verge all 279 news articles »

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Mike Pence ignores Nasa 'do not touch' sign - BBC News

When I think of cigars, I think of endless tobacco fields and warehouses where the leaves dry. I think of open-air factories where dozens of rollers hand-make the cigars under the soft rotation of overhead fans while lectors readers help workers pass the time by reading aloud from newspapers and books.

I think of wood-paneled, clubby tobacco shops such as New Yorks Nat Sherman, W. Curtis Draper in the District and Georgetown Tobacco, lined with glass cases full of boxes packed with stogies. I think of walk-in humidors rich with the aroma of tobacco.

Omar de Frias has none of that.

What he does have is a successful cigar brand. His Springfield, Va.-based Fratello Cigars is on track this year to sell $2 million worth from Chicago to Amsterdam. That comes to almost 250,000 smokes and around $1 million in gross revenue.

The former NASA project analyst walked away from a $200,000 (benefits included) job last fall to pursue an enterprise whose biggest assets are his smarts and persistence.

I liked the culture, said de Frias, who was drawn to the tobacco businesss nostalgic vibe.

The 38-year-old businessman grew up next to a tobacco store in Santo Domingo, in the Dominican Republic, where he was enthralled by the swaggering cigar smokers in their big cars and wavy brimmed hats. I have been smoking cigars for 20 years and have always been fascinated by the industry, he said. I liked how I would see my grandfather smoking a cigar. It was such a fine thing to do. It seemed classy.

[Is this the final burn for Floridas Cigar City?]

De Frias may be drawn by the romance, but his unsentimental approach to business is all about the bottom line.

I am a driven guy, said the 6-foot-9 former professional basketball player, who was on his way to his umpteenth cigar show when we chatted last week. Work ethic is everything. It drives our products, business practices and customer relations. I just wish there were more hours in a day.

The three-employee business which includes his office manager wife, Ivonne is run out of his head, out of his home and out of a small Springfield warehouse where he stores his three lines of Nicaraguan- and Dominican-made premium cigars. They fetch between $8 and $10 each.

Theres no secret to what is going on here. Just persistence. Hustle. Endless travel to cigar shows and Central American factories. Weekends on the road, cold-calling tobacco retail shops. The same drudgery that drives most small businesses. The same thing that took him from a $41,000-a-year NASA salary to several times that by the time he left.

The harder and smarter I would work at NASA, the more notice I would receive from senior management, he said. The harder I work at selling my cigars, the greater profit I generate. Its that simple. I get up in the morning trying to outsmart and outwork everybody else.

Like most things retail, its a tricky business. The key is keeping manufacturing costs low. The cost of making a cigar can range from 30 cents using low-quality tobacco to $5 with the best wrapper and superior rollers, the highly skilled people who hand-make them.

Cigars are like wine. Its all about age, quality, richness, alchemy. Those all go into the profit margin on each cigar, which de Frias declined to detail. The outside wrapper on each cigar is a key ingredient and the most expensive because it is what the customer sees.

[Youll soon be able to bring back more cigars and rum from Cuba]

Also like wine, tobacco is subject to the unpredictable nature of dealing with an agriculture product whose supply and demand have rocked his bottom line. Over the past five years, he said, tobacco prices have increased over 20 percent, eating into his profit.

Like most things sold at retail stores, the markup on cigars can run 75 to 100 percent. So a cigar that a consumer buys for $10 at a store is double the price the store paid the manufacturer.

Fratello, which is Italian for brother, sells three brands of cigars, from mild to full-bodied: Fratello Body Habano, Fratello Bianco, Fratello Oro. Later this year, hell introduce the Fratello Navetta.

De Frias was born in Puerto Rico and grew up in the Dominican Republic, where his father, now 69, is an electrical engineer.

I grew up seeing my dad work 12- to 14-hour days and telling me that the result of your work is only as good as your efforts, he said.

He earned degrees in business management from a joint program shared by a Dominican Republic university and the Rochester Institute of Technology in 2002. He later earned a masters in finance from the University of Puerto Rico at Mayaguez in 2004.

De Frias was hired by NASA in 2004 and moved to the Washington area. He cultivated mentors who helped him prosper in the NASA bureaucracy.

Ten years later, he had advanced as far as he could and began looking for his next challenge.

A friend forwarded him a speech by Apple founder Steve Jobs: The only way to do great work is to love what you do.

With encouragement from his wife, de Frias explored cigars as a business, reading about the industry and visiting factories in Nicaragua, Honduras and the Dominican Republic.

As he put it: I wanted to identify the structure of the industry and where I would fit. Retail? Manufacturing? Branding? Management?

He decided on an asset-light approach of creating a brand, which would allow him to keep the security of his job at NASA while pursuing his project and keeping costs low.

I needed to be cognizant of the risk, de Frias said.

He borrowed $50,000 from his federal Thrift Savings Plan, the civil service version of the 401(k), and pulled twice that from savings to cover start-up costs. He invested more than $5,000 in branding and upfront marketing costs related to his band. It angles around the cigar, making the brand recognizable and unique.

[Is this the final burn for Floridas Cigar City?]

Developing the cigar blend and profile was more complicated. He scoured Central America for the right partners, making presentations to factory owners, meeting industry experts and delivering his business plan. He was searching for a medium-body cigar using tobaccos from various countries to differentiate himself from the competition.

He settled on Joya de Nicaragua in Esteli. Its the oldest cigar factory in Nicaragua.

Once he had his cigar recipe, he zeroed in on finding a manufacturer. It roughly goes like this: If you are interested in creating your own brand in the USA, you can go research which cigar factories in Nicaragua and the Dominican Republic could work with you to develop your ideal blend. They will take the recipe, put a band on it, box it and deliver it to you.

In July 2013, he took a chunk of his initial production of 50,000 cigars to the International Premium Cigar and Pipe Retailers trade show in Las Vegas, where he rented a booth for more than $10,000.

The show was a tipping point. De Frias caught the attention of three high-profile retailers: Drapers in the District, Old Virginia Tobacco with its seven stores across Virginia, and Nat Sherman, the cigar smokers mecca off Fifth Avenue in New York City.

His brand took off.

Within 18 months, de Frias had repaid his loan from his retirement account and had broken even from his initial investment. In the three-plus years since, he has worked 90-hour weeks growing his cigar business into a profitable enterprise that earns him and his wife comfortable incomes.

Comfortable enough that he was able to quit his government job in October. Hes now a full-time cigar mogul which pays more than those rocket scientists at NASA.

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This NASA analyst left a $200000 job to sell cigars - Washington Post

How to tell the story of 100 years in just three days? That is the challenge for the Langley Centennial Symposium this week at the Hampton Roads Convention Center.

And the answer, in part, is to focus on even more than 100 years by including a look into the future.

The symposium, which runs from Wednesday through Friday and is open to the public free of charge, is part of this summer's celebration of the centennial of NASA Langley Research Center, which was founded in 1917 under the heading of the National Advisory Commission for Aeronautics.

"We'd like to see people come away with a better understanding not only of what Langley has done, but what NASA as a whole has done over the last 100 years," Langley spokesman Michael Finneran said. "There are amazing achievements that made stuff possible like supersonic flight. We also hope they will have a better understanding of what NASA and Langley are doing now, and some sense of what the future might look like."

Langley Research Center, which was the epicenter of the early days of America's space program, has received a sudden burst of national attention in the past few years after the release of the best-selling book "Hidden Figures" and its Oscar-nominated film adaptation.

The book focused on the stories of Katherine Johnson, Mary Jackson and Dorothy Vaughan, three African-American women whose work at NASA Langley in mathematics and engineering was vital to the space program in an era when women and minorities were thought to have no major role in technical fields.

Finneran said the center routinely receives phone calls, emails and correspondence from people all around the country wanting information on those ladies, and hoping to contact Johnson, who lives in Newport News and will turn 99 years old next month. At the symposium, NASA historian Bill Barry will tell "The Story Behind the Story" of the book and the film.

"There are two things that I will largely focus on," Barry said. "First, 'what is a human computer and where the heck did they come from?' How did women start getting hired here, including the main characters, and how they fit in. Second, I'll talk about NASA's involvement with the movie and what we did to help make it as accurate as possible."

Barry said the response to the book and the film has been overwhelmingly positive for NASA, for Langley, and for the science and technological fields in general.

"When you talk about NASA, people think of astronauts and amazing scientists, but the people who do the day-to-day stuff don't get the attention, and they're amazing in their own right," Barry said. "NASA's big interest in collaborating with 20th Century Fox on the movie was that it was a way to get to a group of kids who otherwise might have never associated their future with NASA. Now they see, 'I can be a fill-in-the-blank and still work at NASA and do cool stuff.' Math and science come into a new focus."

In response to the demand, Langley and other NASA centers around the country have developed a "Modern Figures" program, with contemporary employees trained to give presentations to the public about the space program today and how it relates to the work described in "Hidden Figures."

The symposium will feature panel discussions, as well as keynote addresses by Jean-Yves Le Gall, the president of France's space program, and by former NASA deputy administrator Dava Newman.

Topics will include the history of human flight, international partnerships in space exploration, the future of NASA, and yes, the story behind the story of "Hidden Figures."

Finneran said one of the goals is for attendees to come away with a greater understanding of how NASA's work in space has affected our daily lives here on Earth.

"So much of what we do today has to do with Earth science and understanding more about our climate," he said. "Not only benefits for the long term, but also for right now working with agencies like (the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) on making better predictions of weather, and of hurricane and storm forecasting.

"NASA is doing things that benefit people here on Earth, either deliberately or when we happen to see ways that technology we've developed can be used in different ways, such as medical applications. We always want the public to understand more about what we do."

Holtzclaw can be reached by phone at 757-928-6479.

Where: Hampton Roads Convention Center, adjacent to the Hampton Coliseum

When: Wednesday, 8 a.m.-5 p.m.; Thursday, 9 a.m.-5 p.m.; and Friday, 8 a.m.-1 p.m.

Admission: Free

Wednesday: Welcome; keynote presentation by former NASA deputy administrator Dava Newman; panel discussion of Langley Center directors; "Hidden Figures: The Story Behind the Story"; Langley During World War II; panel discussion on the history of flight

Thursday: Keynote presentation by Jean-Yves Le Gall, president of France's space program; panel discussion on how NASA's work benefits society; science and technology scholars student presentations; panel discussion on the future of NASA; History of How the HL-20 Became the Dream Chaser; panel discussion on NASA Langley's contributions to technology and space exploration

Friday: Panel discussion on aeronautics research partnerships; panel discussion on applying existing technologies to challenges in space; The Next 100 Years; panel discussion on aerospace in the next 20-30 years; closing remarks

Information: http://www.nasa.gov/langley/100/events, or call 757-315-2200

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NASA Langley symposium looks at past, present and future - Daily Press

RS-25 Engine test fire on the A-1 test stand at NASA's Stennis Space Center. Photo: Aerojet Rocketdyne

The first reusable rocket engine in history, the RS-25, proved its worth during NASAs 30-year space shuttleera, helping power the orbiters uphill from 0 Mach 25in just 8 minutes, with a 100% success rate over the course of the program (the losses of Challenger and Columbia were not related to the main engines).

Often referred to as the Ferrari of rocket engines, the liquid hydrogen/liquid oxygen fueled RS-25 is one of the most tested large rocket engines ever made, with more than 3,000 starts and over one million seconds (nearly 280 hours) of total ground test and flight firing time over the course of 135 shuttle missions.

Now, with the shuttle fleet retired several years ago, and a new heavy-lift rocket to launch deep-space crews in development, the engines thatproved their worth time and time againare being called upon to serve the United States one more time forNASAs colossal Space Launch System (or SLS).

Just like shuttle, two tall solid rocket boosters will provide most of the thrust during launch and ascent to reach space (we will have a story on those later). But the main engines are just as critical, andAerojet Rocketdyne (the manufacturer) currently has 16 flight engines in inventory; 14 are veterans of numerousshuttle missions and 2 are brand new, plus there are 2 development test engines as well.

But differences between the SLS and space shuttle require that the RS-25s now undergo severalmodifications to adapt to the new environment they will encounter with SLS, to meet the giant 320-foot-tall rockets enormous thrust requirements.

Locked down on the A1 test stand atthe agencys Stennis Space Center near Bay St. Louis,Miss., the RS-25s have been undergoing hot fire tests now since early 2015,providing engineers with critical data on the engines new state-of-the-art controller unit, or the brain of the engine, whichallows communication between the vehicle and the engine itself, relaying commands to the engine and transmitting data back to the vehicle.

The new controller also provides closed-loop management of the engine by regulating the thrust and fuel mixture ratio while monitoring the engines health and status, thanks to updated hardware and software configured to operate with the new SLS avionics architecture.

Higher inlet pressure conditions, thanks to the engines upgrades, are alsoevaluated.

Weve made modifications to the RS-25 to meet SLS specifications and will analyze and test a variety of conditions during the hot fire series, saidSteve Wofford, engines manager at NASAs Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, where the SLS Program is managed for the agency.

The engines for SLS will encounter colder liquid oxygen temperatures than shuttle; greater inlet pressure due to the taller core stage liquid oxygen tank and higher vehicle acceleration; and more nozzle heating due to the four-engine configuration and their position in-plane with theSLS boosterexhaust nozzles.

For shuttle flights the engines pushed 491,000pounds of thrust during launcheachand shuttle required three to fly, but for SLS the powerlevel must increaseto 512,000 pounds of thrust per engine (more than 12 million horsepower). The SLS will require four to help launch the massive rocket and its payloads with a70-metric-ton (77-ton) lift capacity that the initial SLS configuration promises (later variants will be even bigger and more powerful).

The RS-25 canhandle temperatures as low as minus 400 degrees (where the propellants enter the engine) and as high as 6,000 degrees as the exhaust exits the combustion chamber where the propellants are burned.

There is nothing in the world that compares to this engine, said Jim Paulsen, vice president, Program Execution, Advanced Space & Launch Programs at Aerojet Rocketdyne. It is great that we are able to adapt this advanced engine for what will be the worlds most powerful rocket to usher in a new space age.

The engines currently in stock are already assigned their spots to fly the first four SLS missions, but unlike their former lives as reusable engines, these will be their final launches. The SLS is being made as an expendable launcher designed from heritage hardware and ideas; theRS-25 is now one-time use.

NASA awardedAerojet Rocketdynea $1.16 billion, nine-year contract to restart production of an expendable version of the RS-25 for SLS in late 2015.

Meanwhile, development of the rocket itself is well underway across the country. NASA is hoping to launch the first mission with an un-crewed Orion capsule to the moon and back on a shakedown flight in 2019, before launching the first crewed Orion mission sometime between 2021 and 2023.

Once the engines are finished testing individually, they will be integrated with an SLS first stage and mounted atop another test stand, totest fire the engines for a full-duration launch. Engineers need to make the engines THINK the rocket is really flying a launch ascent profile, in order to verify everything will operate as expected on launch day.

That test is expected to occur in 2018.

For now, heres a little preview; some incredible video from NASA test firing the Saturn V first stage, whose five F-1 engines launched men to the moon on the Apollo missions:

And just think, when the SLS stage test fires, it will do so for 500 seconds

As the rocket evolves over the 2020s and 2030s, it will become the largest and most powerful rocket ever made, but the initial SLS missions will only have half the lifting powerof the Apollo Saturn V moon rockets.

The elephant in the room is whether the SLS program will keep getting the funding and political support it needs to put people on Mars in the next 20 years.

Meanwhile, SpaceX is developing the Falcon Heavy rocket, and plans to launch two paying customers to circle the moon and back before 2020, with hopes of Mars missions by 2030. . Follow Mike Killian on Instagram and Facebook, @MikeKillianPhotography .

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NASA is Bringing the Space Shuttle Engine Back to Launch the World's Largest Rocket - Avgeekery (blog)

In Brief NASA just approved the first-ever mission to test the possibility of deflecting or redirecting an asteroid on a collision course with Earth. Dubbed the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) the project is moving into its preliminary design phase after receiving approval on June 23. A Plan for Asteroids

Both science and science fiction have made us familiar with what could happen if a large enough asteroid were to hit the Earth. Just look at the fate of dinosaurs and youd glean the prospective outcome would not be a pleasant one. Not wanting us to go the way of the dinosaurs, NASA asks: how do we defend the planet from such a threat?

The Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) would be the first-ever mission to test the possibility of deflecting or redirecting an asteroid on a collision course with Earth. The plan is being designed by the The Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland, who would also manage DART. The projectreceived approval from NASA on June 23, and is now moving from concept development to the preliminary design phase.

DART would be NASAs first mission to demonstrate whats known as the kinetic impactor technique striking the asteroid to shift its orbit to defend against a potential future asteroid impact, Lindley Johnson, planetary defense officer at NASA Headquarters in Washington, said in press release. This approval step advances the project toward an historic test with a non-threatening small asteroid.

In order to figure out if such defense system could work, NASA aims use DART to target a twin asteroid called Didymos. Its expected to have adistant approach to Earth in 2022, and again in 2024. This binary asteroid system includesa larger component(Didymos A, about 780 meters in size) and a smaller one orbiting it (Didymos B, roughly 160 meters).

Using an on-board targeting system, DART would aim atDidymos B after launch. The goal is to shift the asteroids trajectory using kinetic impact; changing its speed by a small fraction of its overall velocity. If the DART mission works, scientists would be able to predict just how much of a nudge a threatening asteroid needs to avoid hitting Earth.

DART is a critical step in demonstrating we can protect our planet from a future asteroid impact, DART investigation co-lead Andy Cheng said in the press release. Since we dont know that much about their internal structure or composition, we need to perform this experiment on a real asteroid. With DART, we can show how to protect Earth from an asteroid strike with a kinetic impactor by knocking the hazardous object into a different flight path that would not threaten the planet.

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NASA is Moving Forward With Its Plan to Deflect an Asteroid From Earth - Futurism

Four members of the New Horizons South African observation team scan the sky while waiting for the start of the 2014 MU69 occultation, early on the morning of June 3, 2017.

The frigid, faraway body that NASA's New Horizons spacecraft will zoom by 18 months from now may actually be a cluster of small objects, new observations suggest.

New Horizons which performed the first-ever flyby of Pluto in July 2015 will have another close encounter on Jan. 1, 2019, this time with a little-studied object called 2014 MU69.

Mission scientists recently had a chance to learn more about 2014 MU69, which lies about 1 billion miles (1.6 billion kilometers) beyond the orbit of Pluto and is thought to be 12 to 25 miles (20 to 40 km) wide. On the night of June 2, MU69 crossed in front of a distant star in a 2-second "occultation" visible from a narrow band of land and sea that stretched from the Indian Ocean through South Africa to southern Argentina and Chile. [Destination Pluto: NASA's New Horizons Mission in Pictures]

So New Horizons team members set up shop in various spots along the occultation path and pointed their telescopes skyward. They ended up taking more than 100,000 images of the occulted star, none of which captured 2014 MU69 itself, NASA officials said.

"These results are telling us something really interesting," New Horizons principal investigator Alan Stern, of the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado, said in a statement.

"The fact that we accomplished the occultation observations from every planned observing site but didnt detect the object itself likely means that either MU69 is highly reflective and smaller than some expected, or it may be a binary or even a swarm of smaller bodies left from the time when the planets in our solar system formed," Stern added.

The team may be able to narrow down these possibilities soon. MU69 will make two more stellar occultations this month: one on July 10 and the other on July 17.

New Horizons scientists plan to use NASA's Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy a 747 jet equipped with a 100-inch (2.5 m) telescope to observe the July 10 event. The main goal is to hunt for debris around 2014 MU69 that could pose a danger to New Horizons during the upcoming flyby, agency officials said.

New Horizons team members will observe the July 17 occultation from southern Argentina, gathering data that could help nail down 2014 MU69's size. Scientists will also use NASA's Hubble Space Telescope to watch that event, searching for hazardous debris.

The $700 million New Horizons mission launched in January 2006. More than nine years later, on July 14, 2015, the probe gave humanity its first up-close looks at Pluto, revealing a startlingly complex and diverse world with vast nitrogen-ice plains and towering mountains of water ice.

The upcoming flyby of 2014 MU69 is the centerpiece of New Horizons' extended mission, which NASA officially approved last year.

Follow Mike Wall on Twitter @michaeldwall and Google+. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook or Google+. Originally published on Space.com.

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NASA Pluto Probe's Next Target May Actually Be 'Swarm' of Objects - Space.com

Collin Skocik

July 7th, 2017

Martian dust is one of the problems that astronauts will have to deal with on Mars. Photo Credit: NASA

One of the challenges that astronauts will face on Mars is the presence of the fine Martian dust. Not only can the dust get into equipment and cause damage, but also it is extremely toxic with perchlorates.

However, scientists at NASAs Kennedy Space Center (KSC) are working on this problem. Dr. Carlos Calle, lead scientist at the Electrostatics and Surface Physics Laboratory, and physicist Jay Phillips are developing an electrostatic precipitator which will filter out the dust and enable the Martian air to be used for in-situ resource utilization (ISRU).

Unlike the Apollo Moon landing missions, which took with them everything that would be needed for the duration of the missions, Mars astronauts will, to a certain extent, have to live off the land. Mars, despite its stark, airless, radioactive surface, is rich in materials useful to future Mars explorations.

Commodities such as oxygen water and methane can be obtained from the carbon dioxide-rich Martian atmosphere, Calle said. Astronauts will need these essentials as they practice in-situ resource utilization.

Electrostatic precipitators already exist and are used in other industries, chiefly filtering particles out of the plumes from power plants. As the gas passes through the precipitator, high-voltage electrodes impart an electrostatic charge on the dust particles in the gas. Once the particles are charged, they migrate to an electrode with an opposite charge.

LEFT IMAGE: Dr. Carlos Calle, lead scientist in the Kennedy Space Centers Electrostatics and Surface Physics Laboratory (left) and Jay Phillips, a research physicist, are modifying an electrostatic precipitator. On Mars, the device would allow astronauts to extract useful elements such as oxygen, water, and methane. RIGHT IMAGE: In their Swamp Works laboratory at NASAs Kennedy Space Center, Dr. Carlos Calle and Jay Phillips are testing an electrostatic precipitator using dust that closely approximates the make-up of that on Mars. They upgraded their electrostatic precipitator to fully simulate Martian atmosphere by designing and constructing a dust aerosolization pre-chamber. Photos & Caption Credits: Kim Shiflett / NASA

Calle and Phillips would like to adapt this existing technology for use on Mars, but they note that it will need to be greatly adapted for a very different environment.

Electrostatic precipitators will remove dust from the atmospheric gas intakes on the Martian ISRU processing plants, Philips said. Dust can damage equipment and must be separated from the atmosphere prior to producing the consumables astronauts will require for life support and fuel on Mars.

In order to maximize the efficiency of the crewed Mars spacecraft, much of the equipment for the Mars mission will be sent ahead to the landing site before the crew arrives.

The plan is to send an electrostatic precipitator and other equipment to a landing site to prepare for the arrival of the crew, Phillips said.

Calle and Phillips have designed a dust aerosolization pre-chamber, which converts dust particles into much finer particles, closer to the conditions on Mars. Particles so small and light are suspended in the air much like an aerosol.

The challenge on Mars is the much lower atmospheric pressure there compared to the atmospheric pressure on Earth, Calle said.

The atmosphere on Mars is only 0.6 percent the atmospheric pressure at sea level on Earth, and the composition of the atmosphere is primarily carbon dioxide.

By duplicating conditions on Mars, Calle and Phillips hope to design an electrostatic precipitator that will be able to effectively remove dust from the environment on Mars.

Tagged: Journey to Mars Mars Martian atmosphere NASA The Range

Collin R. Skocik has been captivated by space flight since the maiden flight of space shuttle Columbia in April of 1981. He frequently attends events hosted by the Astronaut Scholarship Foundation, and has met many astronauts in his experiences at Kennedy Space Center. He is a prolific author of science fiction as well as science and space-related articles. In addition to the Voyage Into the Unknown series, he has also written the short story collection The Future Lives!, the science fiction novel Dreams of the Stars, and the disaster novel The Sunburst Fire. His first print sale was Asteroid Eternia in Encounters magazine. When he is not writing, he provides closed-captioning for the hearing impaired. He lives in Atlantic Beach, Florida.

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NASA scientists designing Martian dust filter - SpaceFlight Insider

As far back as she can remember, Utah State University student Ivana Molina has always been curious and loved science.

It was not until her college years, studying in America after growing up in her native Argentina, that she got the bug to study science specifically, heliophysics, the study of the effects of the sun on the solar system.

I think it is fascinating and it presents us with difficult and challenging problems to solve, Molina wrote in an email.

Story continues below video

These days, Molina, 29, is studying for her Ph.D., and now she has the chance to research heliophysics with a NASA Earth and Space Science Fellowship supporting her. According to information provided by USU, Molina was one of only nine students nationwide to receive this opportunity.

I was surprised because I know its very competitive, Molina said, laughing. It was super exciting to find out.

According to NASAs website, the agencys Earth and space science three-year fellowship is tailored toward graduate students, supporting basic and applied research in Earth and space science.

The fellowship provides Molina with up to $45,000 per year to cover tuition, fees, student expenses and travel, according to USU.

As a NASA fellow, Molina will study geomagnetic storms from the sun and its effect on the Earths upper atmosphere, where many satellites and the International Space Station reside.

Much research has been done already by universities throughout the world on the suns rays and how it can impact the Earths upper atmosphere.

But Molina said such studies still fall short in reliably specifying the storm response in the thermosphere.

For my study I will use a novel technique to model the thermospheric winds similar to what people do for the weather forecast on the ground, she said. We hope that we will gain a reliable global perspective of the dramatic changes that occur in the upper atmosphere during solar storms.

Molina heard about the NASA fellowship through other graduate students and thought it would be the right opportunity for her.

In academia, its good to get fellowships. Its the way you build up your career, she said.

Ludger Scherliess, USU professor of physics and Molinas adviser, called the NASA fellowship prestigious and extremely competitive.

She felt pretty strongly about what she wanted to do, she wrote the entire proposal herself, he said. To go from A to Z, through that entire process, was an invaluable learning experience.

Scherliess called Molina thorough, smart and an excellent worker.

If you tell her something, she doesnt just take it she goes back and does her homework, he said.

Those traits served Molina well, Scherliess said, when she applied for the same NASA fellowship last year and did not make the cut. But after reviewing feedback from NASA on her proposal, Molina applied again this year and earned the fellowship.

That was a good learning experience for her, he said. You take criticism and you learn from it. Your work becomes better. Thats how it should be, thats how we write papers.

Scherliess said the three-year fellowship will be very positive for Molina and may give her the edge over other candidates for a job once she graduates with a Ph.D.

Molina first came to do research in the United States as a college student in Rochester, New York, with support from the National Science Foundation.

I felt like it made me realize I could stay in the U.S. and study, she said. Because this is a whole change. I come from a super different culture. You have to adapt. I realized I could do it if I wanted to.

But it was at a conference in Argentina when she first heard about USU just that its world-renowned institution for this type of research, and I wanted to research the upper atmosphere, Molina said.

Looking back on her decision to come to Utah, Molina has no regrets.

I really like the United States and Utah in particular, she said. I come from a city. Being here, you have the mountains and everything. Its just beautiful.

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USU student gets prestigious NASA fellowship - The Herald Journal

Originally designed to survey the night sky in infrared, the Near Earth Object Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer, or NEOWISE, hunts for asteroids and comets that might pose a danger to Earth.

On Asteroid Day, scientists joined NASA's Planetary Defense Coordination Office (PDCO) to discuss the different strategies for preventing a catastrophic asteroid impact.

NASA hosted the special live-stream broadcast on June 30 from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. The speakers emphasized early asteroid detection as a key area of focus in planetary defense to ensure Earth's safety from an asteroid impact.

For the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), it is essential that the planetary defense office find threats early, PDCO's Lindley Johnson said during the broadcast. Once planetary defense officers determine the size and mass of an asteroid, they can decide which devices to use to deflect it, in the event it is on a crash course for the planet. If it's heading for U.S. soil on short notice, FEMA would coordinate natural disaster preparations, according to Johnson. [Defenders of Planet Earth: Asteroid Hunters Scour Night Skies for Threats (Video)]

Comet C/2013 UQ4 Catalina first looked like an asteroid when NASA's NEOWISE team first observed it on December 31 2013.

"In any given night, the [International Astronomical Union's] Minor Planet Center receives something like 100,000 individual observations of asteroids," astrophysicist Matthew Holman said during the broadcast. Roughly 90 percent of those asteroids have already been seen in the sky, and their orbits have been precisely calculated. That means, Holman said, observers can "focus our attention on the remaining 10 percent and try to determine if those are potentially hazardous near-Earth objects or garden-variety main belt asteroids."

To put it into a reassuring perspective, the distance from Earth to the Main Asteroid Belt is more than two and a half times the distance between Earth and the sun.

To then determine if any new asteroids have orbits that would lead to impact with Earth, each asteroid's movement is compared to the constant of the background stars. Through the visual phenomena of parallax, something that's close-by appears to move faster than something that's located much farther away, even when they're moving at the same speed. The rate of motion of the asteroid is therefore used as a proxy for distance.

In the broadcast, Marina Brozovic of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory shared that radar is another great tool for asteroid detection. "Radar is a little bit like a Swiss army knife," she said. "It reveals so much about asteroids all at once."

Details like size, shape and whether an asteroid is a binary system in which a smaller object orbits the larger asteroid can be determined with radar technology, whereas optical detection is less accurate in measuring that kind of information.

An artist's rendition of 2016 WF9 as it travels toward the sun and passes Jupiter's orbit.

But should an asteroid approach Earth for what would be a doomsday scenario, the PDCO has a course of action outlined to address the danger. Johnson cited two technologies the agency could use to avoid disaster: a kinetic impactor, which is a high-speed spacecraft that would run into an asteroid to nudge it from Earth's path, and a gravity tractor, a spacecraft that flies long-term alongside an asteroid and ultimately uses its own gravity to pull the asteroid off from Earth's path.

That said, telescopes are still key to documenting the numerous asteroids that pass by the Earth within relative proximity, the researchers said. One potential surprise is that NASA makes use of freelance and amateur astronomers to watch for near-Earth objects in the night sky. Bob Holmes, for instance, appeared in the broadcast and owns not one, but four of some of the largest privately owned telescopes in the world and he keeps them trained on the skies to identify new asteroids.

During the broadcast, several people on social media shared their concerns that an impending impact would be withheld from the public. Dr. Kelly Fast of NASA's Solar System Observations program commented that there are websites where near-Earth object observations are available and constantly updated. Anyone with an internet connection can view these sites, Fast said.

Kelly Fast, a scientist in NASA's Near Earth Object program, was a regular speaker in Asteroid Day's live broadcast. She was brought in several times to speak during the segment and answered social media questions about how NASA would communicate with the general public should an impact be imminent.

The special broadcast on Asteroid Day also offered some interesting anecdotes. Dr. Eileen Ryan of the Magdalena Ridge Observatory in New Mexico spoke about an asteroid that once passed through Earth's geosynchronous satellite zone, the highest orbit for satellites, and flew by one of NASA's communications satellites.

An asteroid is normally named based on the year and the two-week period when the space rock was discovered, the researchers said. In special instances, however, asteroids and minor planets can be given a human name in honor of someone. Asteroid 316201 Malala, for example, was named after Malala Yousafzai, the Nobel Peace Prize recipient of 2014 because, said JPL's Amy Mainzer, "She's awesome! She needs an asteroid."

Follow Doris Elin Salazar on Twitter @salazar_elin.Follow us@Spacedotcom,FacebookandGoogle+. Original article onSpace.com.

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NASA's Planetary Defense Coordination Office: How They Detect Asteroids Early - Space.com

Freight Farms' largest customer on this planet, however, is Brooklyn-based Square Roots Grow, founded by Kimbal Musk and Tobias Peggs. Square Roots operates a whole parking lot full of LGM units for local growers and entrepreneurs. Because the containers are self-contained, they can program the simulated daytime hours inside the farms to run at night when energy costs are lower. It's a sustainable system that has legs.

"My hope is that we are in every metro area in America as fast as we can get there," Musk told Popular Mechanics in an email.

The inside of a Leafy Green Machine.

Freight Farms

Beyond fresh greens, Freight Farm founders Jon Friedman and Brad McNamara say that it's also popular to grow radishes, edible flowers, peppers, tomatoes, and pumpkins. What's more, given the closed-loop system of a LGM, it can sustain the crops on just 10 gallons of water a day. The efficiencies of Leafy Green Machines are an astonishing 90 percent improvement over traditional farming, according to the USDA.

Maintaining a single LGM takes roughly 20 hours per week. That's only 10 hours per acre, per week. To sustain the plants, columns of hanging LED strips with blue and red diodes in the grow lights require an average of between 90 and 110 kWh per dayabout the equivalent of 3 average U.S. households. Many LGMs are outfitted with solar panels as well to minimize the required energy input.

Freight Farms' LGMs are currently operating across America, Canada, Europe, and Japan. Atlantic island nations are among the first in the developing world do adopt the technology in an effort to become more food-independent. These areas are heavily reliant on imports, and even though they have tropical climates, food production is difficult. The result is high prices and low variety from imported produce. Pilot projects are currently sprouting up throughout the Middle East and Africa as well. And yes, the units can be shipped out on trucks, freighters, and railroads, traveling anywhere you can send an intermodal containerso basically anywhere in the world.

And it's not just restaurants or remote islands that have opted for the Leafy Green Machine. Institutions around America are harnessing the power of these units not only for food but also for educational purposes. Corporate campuses like Google were eager early adopters. Schools including the University of Michigan and UMass Dartmouth are using the LGMs as part of their curriculum to teach students about sustainable agriculture.

The benefit of distributed small farms is that they're vastly more sustainable than larger options in terms of conserving land and minimizing transport. Between production and shipping, the global food system accounts for about one-third of all human-induced greenhouse gas emissions. It also helps that the local produce passes through fewer hands, which means more affordable food. "The most exciting thing about Square Roots and urban farming is getting back to knowing our farmer and trusting our food again," says Musk.

With Leafy Green Machines spreading across the world, it might not be too long until NASA builds the very first variantthe Leafy Red Machine, perhaps?and launches it to Mars.

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Freight Farms Builds Farms in Shipping Containers, and NASA Wants to Launch Them to Space - Popular Mechanics

In Brief A company headed by one of the most decorated astronauts in history has proposed using nuclear-heated plasma to reach Mars. While it has been funded by NASA, is the idea viable? Elon Musk doesn't think so Plasma Propelled Rockets

Ad Astra Rocket Company thinks that a plasma engine could hypothetically get us to the Red Planet in 38 days, by traveling at a speed of 115,200 mph contrary to the mainstream idea that massive rockets are the only way. NASA has supported the companys plan by investing nine million dollars.

Franklin R. Chang Daz, the CEO of Ad Astra and the man who co-holds the record for most visits to the International Space Station, plans to use plasma because it can be held in place magnetically, which means that more power can be produced because there is nothing for the fuel to melt. However, when in space, heating fuel to this temperature would require a nuclear power source which is where this concept gets controversial.

Elon Musk, in particular, is critical of this plan on two fronts. First, attaching the weight of a nuclear reactor to a spacecraft, he thinks, is unfeasible. Secondly, he believes that using nuclear fuel on a spacecraft is dangerous because radioactive debris would fall back to Earth if the system failed.

Recently,Stephen Hawking added his voice to the choir of intellectuals and industry leaders proclaiming that humanity must become an interplanetary species. But with our ambition established, the question now becomes how to make it happen.

All other serious ideas of how to get to Mars propose using a chemical space rocket engine. NASA and SpaceX have both revealed plans that use enormous rockets which carry astronauts and all of their provisions including water, air, food, and machinery.

At the more theoretical end of the spectrum are plans to use technology that, previously, has been reserved for the realms of science fiction. Phillip Lubin has proposed using photon propulsion which, hypothetically, could get us to Mars in just three days.

The race for the red planet is well and truly on, and the winner of this 21st-century space race will be decided in the intellectual theater long before human boots touch Mars dusty surface. However, according to most estimates, we will only need to wait around a decade to find out.

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A NASA Funded Project Wants to Use Plasma Rockets to Get to Mars - Futurism

Executive Summary

Telemedicine is a key component of medical care on the International Space Station. While doctors have always communicated with the crews of short missions, largely to guide them through acute spaceflight-specific health issues, todays long-duration and exploration missions require space medicine to fulfill a much wider-ranging mandate and extend beyond minor illness and urgent care. Telemedicine enables preventive, diagnostic, and therapeutic care during many months in space, and ideally allows for seamless continuity of care from before and after the missions. NASAs experience shows that achieving this requires advanced planning and training prior to launch, as well as good communication and rapid learning in space. These factors are important for realizing the potential of telemedicine to improve care in other remote, extreme, or otherwise resource-constrained environments.

Since the Expedition One launch to the International Space Station (ISS) in 2001 the first long-duration stay on the orbital construction site NASAs Human Health and Performance team has been developing expertise in the planning and provision of medical support to crews staying in our worlds most remote environment. Four times each year, we launch a new team of astronauts and cosmonauts to the ISS, where they will stay for six months to one year, performing engineering tasks, research, maintenance, and upgrades to prepare for future commercial vehicles. During this amount of time, access to medical care is crucial, as altered routines and microgravity have deconditioning effects on crew members bone and muscle, fluid distribution, and immune function.

Telemedicine is a key component of medical care on ISS. While doctors have always communicated with the crews of short missions, largely to guide them through acute spaceflight-specific health issues, todays long-duration and exploration missions require space medicine to fulfill a much wider-ranging mandate and extend beyond minor illness and urgent care. Telemedicine enables preventive, diagnostic, and therapeutic care during many months in space, and ideally allows for seamless continuity of care before and after missions. But our experience shows that achieving this requires planning and training prior to launch, as well as good communication and rapid learning in space. These factors are important for realizing the potential of telemedicine to improve care in other remote, extreme, or otherwise resource-constrained environments.

Planning the medical support of each mission. The medical capability in a given space flight program (e.g., Apollo, Skylab, ISS, etc.) is defined by its medical requirements. Medical care for each mission within the program is planned by NASAs ground medical team of doctors, biomedical engineers (BMEs), nurses, imaging specialists, and psychologists. There is careful consideration of the mission profile, a broad set of factors that influence health and medical needs and risks, such as flight duration, launch and landing modes, medical evacuation capability, and time to definitive medical care.

They determine what material and intangible means of disease and trauma prevention, diagnosis, and treatment are needed for each mission. Medicines, instruments, consumables, and exercise devices belong to material assets; intangible assets involve medical expertise on board and on the ground, processes, procedures, and protocols. Telemedicine capability brings these together with a well-planned and tested communications system that securely moves medical data, other information, and expertise in both directions as needed.

Training crew members to manage their care. Before launch, all astronauts are trained to use the medical assets that will be on board. There is not always a doctor on board, so some astronauts also undergo 40 hours of paramedic-level training to qualify as a crew medical officer. They become familiar with a checklist of foreseeable medical problems and emergency responses, such as a crewmate having difficulty breathing. They learn how to perform a periodic basic physical examination and how to handle the most common medical problems, such as motion sickness, skin irritation, and back pain. Over 60% of astronauts experience back pain in space as their spine lengthens and straightens uponarriving on orbit. After training, theyll know they can either call their flight surgeon, who might direct them to a drug in the medical kit, or use a procedure to relieve the pain.

Over the course of several launch cycles, a group of physicians, nurses, and pharmacists will periodically evaluate NASAs procedures and medical kits to bring them up to date with the most recent best practices in both terrestrial and space medicine. For instance, when the American Hospital Association removed the medication Lidocaine from the simplified Pulseless Arrest Algorithm (used to resuscitate someone), NASA flight surgeons removed it from the medical kits on orbit and the ISS Advanced Life Support procedure. Astronaut training and software-based procedures changed accordingly to ensure the most current and effective medical care was available.

Good communication and rapid learning is essential. Astronauts, doctors, nurses, and Mission Control personnel learn to acquire good operational communication skills through classes, practice, and scenario-based simulations. They learn how to communicate about and address a range of medical concerns. In emergency scenarios, such as an astronaut choking, a crew member will rely on training and onboard procedure files to address the problem immediately. At some point after the emergency, and for less critical medical issues, the crew will establish a private medical conference with a doctor on the ground to discuss the best course of action and follow-up. A BME sets up a secure connection for the doctor to videoconference with the astronaut and direct all aspects of patient evaluation, situation assessment, and treatment. Occasionally, a specialist will be consulted and tied into the conference to assist with diagnoses or treatments. Our experience has demonstrated that shared knowledge and training, combined with a reliable private communication link, leads to the best care.

Telemedicine in action can be best described through an example: In the middle of a six-month mission, an ISS crew member with history of knee injury (who was symptom-free before the mission) developed bothersome knee pain when training on the resistive exercise device that all astronauts use on board. When pain persisted for two days and occasional acetaminophen and ibuprofen were no longer effective, a private medical conference was arranged between the astronaut and a NASA physician on the ground. The physician requested an ultrasound examination of the affected joint.

Ultrasound imaging, for the time being, is the only medical visualization device that can be flown and operated on a spacecraft. The technology is radiation-free, versatile, cost-effective, and easily repeatable, and its results are more reliable and less operator-dependent than techniques such as computed tomography and magnetic resonance imaging.

NASA ultrasound specialists guided the crew step-by-step through a comprehensive imaging procedure. They were also assisted by a remotely located orthopedic radiologist (connected throughvirtual private network), who could view the ultrasound imaging stream in real time and offer a preliminary impression. After reviewing the full set of imagery (downloaded from the ISS within the hour by the BME), the radiologist confirmed the problem. The astronaut was then prescribed a temporary reduction of exercise loads and some medications. He was soon able to return to the normal exercise routine, and he completed the mission without difficulty.

In this example, a specialized procedure of targeted ultrasound imaging was used to augment a clinical assessment with objective information for accurate decision making. The procedure would not be possible without telemedical remote guidance by an experienced ultrasound guider on the ground, and could be incomplete without additional expertise from the remote radiologist. Effectiveness also depended on the crew receiving premission conceptual training, learning basic imaging skills in practice sessions, and remaining intellectually engaged throughout the procedure.

While ultrasound remains the most practiced and well-developed telemedicine procedure, this approach would hold true for other guidable medical procedures as well, such as a dental procedure, minor surgery, or acupuncture. The remote guidance paradigm works in remote care scenarios wherever imaging technology and internet connectivity are available but local expertise is lacking. It is being successfully applied in an increasing number of rural, expeditionary, and military medicine settings where lightweight, deployable equipment can be operated through an easily adaptable procedure, as long as there is a reasonably stable internet connection.

NASAs experience with telemedicine can be applied not only to remote environments like Antarctica but also to areas currently underserved by medicine, from rural areas in the United States to developing countries. As technology and the internet become more accessible, telemedicine will increasingly connect health care providers to underserved areas. Since specialists concentrate in larger cities, this technology infrastructure, combined with telemedicine best practices, will improve disparities in health care.

In the meantime, we are taking what weve learned about telemedicine to figure out how we will deliver care on future interplanetary missions, which will no longer have instantaneous communications and will require guidance to be provided by onboard computers, artificial intelligence, and virtual reality software. While the communication links between the ISS and Mission Control operate in near real time, allowing step-by-step guidance of the onboard operator, a Mars mission would entail a delay of minutes, which would render remote guidance impossible and therefore require the necessary knowledge banks and guidance tools to be placed on the vehicle ahead of time. Space exploration, again, may help create new solutions that will eventually enhance medical care on Earth.

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How NASA Uses Telemedicine to Care for Astronauts in Space - Harvard Business Review

James Merle Thomas and Mikael Jorgensen.

airspacemag.com July 5, 2017 3:00PM

On their debut album Hip Mobility, James Merle Thomas and Mikael Jorgensenwho call their musical project Quindarwerent interested in rewriting The Right Stuff or remaking Apollo 13. They wanted to explore the early decades of NASA and the pre-Shuttle space program, but from an oblique angle. Countdown, blastoffthat stuff has been well covered, explains Jorgensen, probably best known as a multi-instrumentalist in the critically acclaimed indie band Wilco. We wanted to find little moments that were more humanizing.

The result of their searchone result, anywayis a sequence of eight electronic compositions inspired by archival material from NASA and its contractors that Thomas began unearthing while earning his art history doctorate from Stanford University: sound recordings, bits of film, blueprints, documents. A few compositions, like the album-closing Honeysuckle This Is Houston, sample NASA radio transmissions directly. But the artifacts are more often an influence than an ingredient, says Thomas. The project has a deep grounding in the fine-grained experience of looking at materials, walking around the interior of SkyLab just soaking up the embodied knowledge of the place. The duo chose the name Quindar after the familiar analog-synthesizer generated handshake tone that indicated a successful radio transmission during the Mercury and Apollo eras. Its got the coolest letter of the alphabet Q and it sounds post-war, Jorgensen says. Quindar! Like radar, like Telstar. To me its obvious that its rooted in this postwar moment. That postwar era is Thomass speciality. The dissertation that planted the seed for the project focused on the intersection of art, technology, and politics of the Cold War period, he says.

As for the album title, that came from some test film Thomas found of spacesuit designers demonstrating the range of motion on one of their prototypesand the duos recognition of a solid double entendre: What is hip mobility, Jorgensen asks with a grin. Is it being able to move into Bushwick, Brooklyn, or to move out of Bushwick, Brooklyn? (Jorgensen and his family recently traded Brooklyn for the sunlit charms of Ventura County, California.)

Thomas breaks down the projects aesthetic and method in detail in the liner notes included with the album:After researching the details of a specific sound, we strip it from its history, manipulate its formal qualities and then build a new compositional framework around the sounds character, he writes, deciding in some cases to go so far as to fully obscure the original piece of archival audio with which we began.

Found materials are more recognizeable in Quindars live performances, where they are typically joined by Jeremy Roth, a concert lighting designer and video artist who triggers projections in real time. Hes not just pressing play and letting a pre-assembled sequence of video run; hes making creative choices about what to play, just like Thomas and Jorgensen. Quindar has been performing since 2013; their most recent appearance was at the Eaux Claires Music & Arts Festival in Wisconsin in mid-June. The music on Hip Mobility was recorded in fits and starts between 2012 and 2015not exactly Space Race tempo. But then Jorgensen and Thomas are both busy men. Thomas, a lifelong musician who completed a Guggenheim Fellowship at the National Air and Space Museum in 2011-12, is more likely to cite avant garde composer John Cage as an influence than John Glenn. In January, he was appointed executive director of Vox Populi, a nonprofit artists collective and exhibition space in Philadelphia. Jorgensen, a pianist and recording engineer from Chicago, has toured with Wilco for 15 years and played on seven of the bands albums. (Full disclosure:Ive been a fan of Wilcoforlonger than Jorgensen has been in the group.)

Discussing their approach to interpreting their subject material, both artists cite Stoned Moon, the series of lithographs Robert Rauschenberg made after NASA invited him and other artists to Cape Canaveral to document the Apollo 11 launch in 1969. The roughly three dozen piecesRauschenberg made after his visit were impressionistic, incorporating imagery of Florida flora and fauna along with schematics of rockets and spacesuits and portraits of astronauts. Thomas also likes to talk about the famed industrial designer Raymond Loewy, who devised space habitats and equipment for NASA between 1967 and 1973, having previously created the ubiquitous Coca-Cola logo and the sigil on the side of every Greyhound bus.Of his thousands of designs, the SkyLab interior was the most notable one brought to fruition by NASA. Thomas and Jorgensen met through a mutual friend, Volker Zander, the bass player for Calexico who also has performed with Wilco. Recognizing in each other a creative ally, they spent several years looking for a project to dig into together. Hip Mobility is the long-gestating first result of a process that began in earnest when Jorgensen invited Thomas to his Brooklyn studio five years ago for an expectation-free jam session. Thomas likes to use the word administration, as opposed to composition, to describe their working methods, much of which involved setting up systems of synthesizers and sequencer gear and letting themselves be surprised by the resulting sounds. Jorgensen says Quindar sees IMAX as a natural format for their project, which would allow them to push Roths visuals even farther. IMAX theaters also tend be located in museums and science centers, the sorts of places they see as better suited to their multimedia collaboration than traditional music venues. Hip Mobility, the debut album from Quindar, is out July 14 on Butterscotch Records.

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Electronic Music Duo Looks to NASA's Past for Inspiration - Air & Space Magazine

Killer asteroids on a crash course with Earth aren't just for imaginative sci-fi movies. NASA recognizes rogue asteroids as a legitimate concern, so it's developing a mission called the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART).

The space agency on Friday announced that DARTis moving from concept development into a preliminary design phase and released a video showing how it might work.

DART is about testing out what NASA calls "the kinetic impactor technique." This means smashing a spacecraft into an asteroid to redirect it to a safer path. NASA is eyeing asteroid Didymos, which actually a pair of asteroids, Didymos A and the smaller Didymos B. Didymos B orbits around its larger friend. Didymos will be approaching Earth (from a safe distance) in both 2022 and 2024.

As the video shows, DART would launch, fly to the asteroids and aim itself at the smaller of the pair. "Then the refrigerator-sized spacecraft would strike the smaller body at a speed about nine times faster than a bullet, approximately 3.7 miles per second (6 kilometers per second)," NASA notes. Scientists on Earth would then observe the asteroid to see how its orbit around Didymos A has changed.

NASA tracks potentially dangerous asteroids classified as near-Earth objects. While we can keep an eye on these NEOs, we're still in the early phases of working out how to deal with an asteroid large enough to damage our planet. If DART is successful, it could become the blueprint for how to manage threatening asteroids.

"Since we don't know that much about their internal structure or composition, we need to perform this experiment on a real asteroid. With DART, we can show how to protect Earth from an asteroid strike with a kinetic impactor by knocking the hazardous object into a different flight path that would not threaten the planet," says DART investigation co-lead Andy Cheng of The Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory.

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Arizona-sized asteroid as seen by NASA (pictures)

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Here's how NASA plans to deflect an asteroid - CNET

By Robert Avery, ravery@hcnonline.com

NASA-West's outfielders watch a pitching change unfold Wednesday night. The scoreboard shows the District 14 champs holding onto a one-run lead, but that disappeared quite quickly.

NASA-West's outfielders watch a pitching change unfold Wednesday night. The scoreboard shows the District 14 champs holding onto a one-run lead, but that disappeared quite quickly.

NASA-West's Matthew Fernandez, who had doubled, slides home with the game's first score Wednesday night. He also smacked a hard-hit ball in the third that was caught by the center fielder.

NASA-West's Matthew Fernandez, who had doubled, slides home with the game's first score Wednesday night. He also smacked a hard-hit ball in the third that was caught by the center fielder.

NASA-West 11s open sectionals with 13-3 defeat

LEAGUE CITY - Being backed into a corner is nothing new for the NASA-West 11-year-old All-Stars, but if they're to get themselves out of this predicament, they have to find a way to cool off the bats of their Section 3 adversaries.

The Post Oak All-Stars spotted the District 14 champions a 3-1 lead before exploding for 12 runs and 11 hits in just two innings, paving the way for a 13-3 Section 3 Tournament victory at the League City Sportsplex's Joseph Fleming Field Wednesday night.

The good news for manager Tim Sims' crew is the fact they stand a very good chance of staying alive when they play the first elimination game Thursday night back at the Complex. They'll take on a Huffman All-Star team that appears to be pretty thin in talent across the board. Huffman was a 27-0 loser to Pearland East in the other first-round game Wednesday night.

Game time is 6 p.m.

The first championship game is set for Saturday night at 7. NASA-West is hoping some of that District 14 loser's bracket magic will reappear so that they'll force the IF game on Sunday night at 7. But again, Post Oak and Pearland have a potent attack. Either NASA-West has to meet that potency or find pitchers that produce outs.

Should NASA-West indeed stay alive Thursday night, they'll meet either Post Oak again or Pearland East on Friday. Those two meet at 8 p.m. with the loser facing the winner of the 6 p.m. game Friday night at 7.

Post Oak roughed up four NASA-West pitchers for the 13 runs, including starting and losing pitcher Jonathan Neel. He was one of three pitchers who couldn't stop Post Oak's third-inning rampage. The team paraded 13 batters to the plate, scoring seven go-ahead runs. Post Oak batted around again in the fourth, bringing on the mercy rule after four frames.

Post Oak finished with 12 hits and five went for doubles.

But the two-baggers weren't the problem in the third inning, at least not initially. The opening four batters in the third reached base thanks to three singles and a bases-loaded walk to Richie Klosek. With the lead still theirs at 3-2, NASA-West thought the strikeout that followed was the start to something good.

It wasn't.

The next six Post Oak All-Stars reached base and it was started with a two-RBI double to the fence from Ethan Goldstein. That was after a passed ball plated the tying run. Another double made it 6-3 before a wild pitch and the seventh hit of the inning upped the Post Oak lead to 8-3.

Post Oak had the bases jammed and looking for more runs but the 13th batter and the clean-up hitter struck out.

Three of the five doubles arrived in the fourth-inning uprising as Goldstein doubled for the second time. The nine-hole hitter singled home two more runs, a passed ball scored the fourth run and Klosek doubled home the 13th run.

Leading the way in scoring was Andy Guy. He was quite the guy in the two-hole slot, scoring three times by reaching base on the strength of three walks and a single.

NASA-West finished with six hits. Evan French led the way with two hard-hit shots, a double to start the second inning, later scoring on Liam Sweeney's infield single and then roping a single to left in the third.

Matthew Fernandez, James Nimmo and Cayden Cribbs had the other basehits. Nine-hole hitter Christian Rivera had the team's only other RBI when he hit into a 6-3 double play. But it gave the team that 3-1 lead, a lead that wouldn't hold up on this night.

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NASA-West 11s open sectionals with 13-3 defeat - Chron.com

Photograph by Getty Images/Brand X

On the off chance that giant asteroid ends up on a collision course with Earthand Bruce Willis and Ben Affleck are unavailableNASA is putting together a backup plan

Step one: Crash a satellite into one and see what happens.

The space agency has entered the preliminary design phase for its Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART). This represents the first trial of what's called the "kinetic impactor technique" of asteroid deflection. Put another way, NASA hopes that by hurling a refrigerator-sized spacecraft at one of the space rocks at a speed roughly nine times that of a bullet, it can knock the asteroid off course and save the Earth.

The plan is to launch the first DART satellite at a binary asteroid called Didymos ("Twins"); the twin asteroids are scheduled to pass by earth in 2022 and 2024. (Neither pass poses any threat, according to NASA.)

By striking one of the two asteroids, scientists will be able to measure the impact of the collision.

Since we dont know that much about their internal structure or composition, we need to perform this experiment on a real asteroid," said Andy Cheng of the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland, the DART investigation co-lead.

So why spend millions to create then crash a satellite in this fashion? NASA says it has found 93 asteroids whose orbits bring them close to earth that are big enough to potentially cause "global effects."

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NASA Is Going To Crash a Satellite Into an AsteroidOn Purpose - Fortune

NASA will decide in the next two months whether to keep Dawn in orbit around Ceres or send it to another asteroid. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

WASHINGTON NASA expects to make a decision within the next two months whether to keep the Dawn spacecraft in orbit around the largest body in the main asteroid belt or have it fly past another asteroid.

Dawn completed a one-year extended mission in orbit around Ceres at the end of June, but NASA did not announce whether the spacecrafts mission would be extended again. NASA spokesperson Laurie Cantillo said July 5 that the agencys planetary science division is still reviewing an independent report on the science the mission has achieved at Ceres.

NASAs Planetary Science Division has received and is now reviewing a report from an independent science review panel with regard to Dawns completion of Level 1 science requirements at Ceres, Cantillo told SpaceNews.

That review is required before NASA makes a decision on Dawns future. The spacecraft could remain in orbit around Ceres or use its remaining fuel to travel to another asteroid, she said.

Cantillo said that points of clarification about the report are currently being discussed are part of the overall science review of the mission. Once completed, a decision will be made, most likely in the next 3060 days, she said. Spacecraft operations will continue during the review process.

A project scientist said last month that the mission was considering a flyby. Its an option, Carol Raymond, deputy principal investigator for Dawn at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said at a June 13 meeting of NASAs Small Bodies Assessment Group (SBAG). She said then that the mission was in the process of discussing with NASA options for a second extended mission but declined to give additional details about those options.

Project officials proposed an asteroid flyby last year as part of the biannual senior review of planetary science missions seeking extensions. That proposal called for leaving orbit around Ceres in July 2016 and making a slow flyby of the asteroid Adeona in May 2019.

The NASA report that reviewed those extended mission proposals criticized the Dawn proposal for discrepancies, including a lack of specifics and scientific justification, which it blamed on being submitted late in the process. NASA decided instead on a one-year extended mission that remained in orbit around Ceres, in part to ensure that the missions Level 1 science requirements were met.

Dawn, developed as part of NASAs Discovery program of low-cost planetary science missions, launched in 2007. It entered orbit around the main belt asteroid Vesta in July 2011, remaining in orbit there for more than one year. Dawn used its ion propulsion system to leave orbit in September 2012 and travel to Ceres, a body designated by the International Astronomical Union as a dwarf planet, entering orbit in March 2015.

The spacecraft has continued operations despite problems with its reaction wheels, used for attitude control. After suffering the loss of two of its four reaction wheels earlier in the mission, a third wheel malfunctioned in April. The spacecraft went into safe mode briefly, but controllers resumed operations with hydrazine thrusters taking over for the failed wheel.

That failure will eventually lead to the end of the mission when the spacecraft runs out of hydrazine. It does reduce our lifetime because we have to use hydrazine at a faster rate, Raymond said at the SBAG meeting in June.

That lifetime, she said, is dependent on the spacecrafts orbital altitude. Dawn has spiraled out to a higher orbit during its extended mission, which reduces the amount of hydrazine needed for attitude control. The lifetime is now highly dependent on orbital altitude because we need to use the jets to fight the gravity gradient torques, she said.

In its current high orbit, Raymond said that Dawn had sufficient hydrazine, as well as xenon propellant used for the ion engine, to operate at least through the end of 2018. In a lower orbit, like that used by Dawn earlier in the mission for high-resolution mapping of Ceres, the spacecrafts lifetime would likely be limited to weeks.

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NASA reviews options for Dawn extended mission - SpaceNews

In BriefAfter a 50-year break, NASA has returned to the idea of usingnuclear fission to power space missions. However, providing energyfor off-world colonists is just one of myriad questions we willhave to answer before we could hope to become a multi-planetaryspecies. Nuclear NASA

Being able to producepower on alien worlds will define our terraforming and interplanetary colonization experiences how we generate atmospheres, produce lifes prerequisites, and power machines for exploration depend on it. NASA experts estimate that a Mars expeditionwould require roughly 40 kilowatts of power around enough to power eight houses on Earth and they think they may know the best way to generate that energy: nuclear fission.

For the past three years, NASA has been funding Kilopower, a project that aims to develop a compact, low cost, scalable fission power system for science and exploration.

The projects budget is around $15 million, and in September, the agencywill unveil the fruits of their labor a 1.9 meters (6.5 feet) tall generator designed to produce up to 1 kilowatt of electric power during testing at the Nevada National Security Site.

Although other alternatives for generating power have been put forward, none are as viable as fission. Solar energy, for instance, would require that astronauts stick to regions that receive an adequate amount of sunlight. If you want to land anywhere, surface fission power is a key strategy for that,Michelle Rucker, an engineer at NASAs Johnson Space Center, told Space.com.

Project Kilopower marks something of a fission resurgence for NASA after a hiatus of more than 50 years. The last time the agency operated a fission reactor was in 1965, when they launched the Systems for Nuclear Auxiliary Power (SNAP) project. That project resulted in radioisotope thermoelectric generators (RTGs) that are still used to power spacecraft today, as well as the nuclear-powered spacecraftSNAP 10A, which stopped working 43 days after it was launched into space due to an electrical component failure.

Individuals such as Stephen Hawking have issued warnings that Earth cant survive our habitation for much longer, so finding an alternative home for humanity is becoming critical.The question of how to provide power off-world is one of the biggest ones we face as we consider the Red Planet as our future home.

Other aspects of Mars colonization are already falling into place. Elon Musks SpaceX is driving the transportation elementof the cosmic migration forward, developing detailed plans and working on ever-larger spaceships that we could use to get to our planetary neighbor.

Several solutions have been proposed to help us generate a habitable atmosphere. TheDefense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA)is considering using bacteria that would form algae to warm and thicken the atmosphere, while NASA detailed at the Planetary Science Vision 2050 Workshop earlier this year how they could build an Earth-like magnetic field around the planet.

If we ever successfully move to another planet, these questions and hundreds more, such ashow diseases will respond to spaceand how reproduction will work,will have to be answered. Estimates concerning how long this will take vary, with some saying decades and others saying centuries. At any rate, let us hope it is sooner rather than later if Hawkings prediction proves to be accurate.

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NASA to Test Nuclear Reactor Designed to Power Future Mars Colony - Futurism