NASA will soon be testing high-altitude parachute systems that let astroboffins land valuable scientific research payloads from altitudes of 60,000 feet.

The technique, using parafoils cellular aerofoils of the same sort used to make high-performance stunt kites will, so NASA hopes, allow it to recover scientific instruments used for high-altitude data gathering experiments without chasing balloons across vast tracts of America.

Instead of sending payloads up on research balloons and hoping the weather doesn't blow them too far off course, the parafoil method allows for payloads to be released from the balloon at around 60,000ft and then be steered back to earth for an "automatic precision landing".

The system, under evaluation by the American space agency since 2013, is the brainchild of Airborne Systems of New Jersey. The latest test programme will take the aerofoils right up to their full design altitude.

An earlier document [PDF] reveals that some flight testing up to 55,000ft has already taken place.

Other edge-of-space technologies selected by NASA for high-altitude demonstrations include: a system for monitoring how live cells react to rocket launches; an automated solar cell calibration system; a system for carrying out Parkinson's research on protein solution in the zero-G environment of space; and a system for compressing soil and pebbles (regolith) in zero gravity to see what happens to them.

"These selections allow companies and academia to demonstrate technologies of interest to NASA in a much more realistic environment than what they could get in ground-based simulation facilities," said Stephan Ord, technology manager for NASA's Flight Opportunities programme, in a canned statement. "This is a valuable platform for NASA to mature cutting-edge technologies that have the potential of supporting future agency mission needs."

Being able to drop a payload from 60,000ft on to a defined point is a great leap forward from the current situation where it's a best guess as to where the payload lands, as long-time Reg readers will recall from the early LOHAN tests in Spain.

The use of a steerable aerofoil parachute to bring the payloads back to earth is also a neat and logical extension of stunt kite technology.

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NASA extends trial of steerable robo-stunt kite parachute - The Register

February 20, 2017 Scientists from NASA have found a microbe, said to have survived inside crystals for up to 60,000 years, which they believe could prove the existence of living organisms inother extreme environments, like planets and the moon

NASA scientists have discovered living microorganisms trapped inside crystals for as long as 60,000 years in a mine in Mexico.

These strange ancient microbes have apparently evolved so they can survive on a diet of sulfite, manganese and copper oxide, said Penelope Boston of NASA's Astrobiology Institute in a presentation over the weekend at a conference of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

"This has profound effects on how we try to understand the evolutionary history of microbial life on this planet," she said.

They were discovered in the Naica mine, a working lead, zinc and silver mine in the northern Mexican state of Chihuahua.

The mine is famous for its huge crystals, some as long as 50 feet (15 meters).

The discovery has not yet been published in a peer-reviewed scientific journal, but it has led Boston to believe that living organisms may also have survived in the extreme environments of other planets and moons in our solar system.

She said about 100 different kinds of microorganismsmost of them bacteriahave been found locked in Naica crystals for periods ranging from 10,000 to 60,000 years.

Ninety percent of them have never been observed before now, she said.

The discovery of these ultra-hardy microorganisms has been a windfall for researchers but also a source of concern for astrobiologists thinking about bringing back samples collected on space missions in the solar system.

The extreme conditions under which these microbes have survived raises the possibility that dangerous extraterrestrial organisms could accidentally hitch a ride to Earth on a returning spaceship.

Astrobiologists also worry about the risk that Earth organisms could contaminate other planets in the course of missions to places like Mars, which has already been visited by several US robots.

NASA sterilizes its spacecraft and equipment before launching them into space. But there is always a risk that ultra-resistant microorganisms will survive.

"How do we ensure that life-detection missions are going to detect true Mars life or life from icy worlds rather than our life?" asked Boston.

The concerns are not new. During the Apollo missions of the 1960s and '70s, astronauts returning from the moon were quarantined.

The microorganisms found in the Naica mine are not even the oldest discovered to date.

Several years ago scientists reported finding microbes in ice and salt that were up to 500,000 years old.

Explore further: Biologists find weird cave life that may be 50,000 years old

2017 AFP

In a Mexican cave system so beautiful and hot that it is called both Fairyland and hell, scientists have discovered life trapped in crystals that could be 50,000 years old.

Scientists have a constructed a new database of the diversity in an enzyme that is used by microorganisms to metabolize sulfur.

(Phys.org)A team of researchers working deep in a mine in Canada has found water samples that date back approximately 2 billion years, breaking the record of oldest discovered water on the surface of the Earth by approximately ...

Recently, a team of astrobiologists from the EU funded MASE (Mars Analogues for Space Exploration) project descended 1.1 kilometers below Earth's surface to the Mars-like environment of the Boulby Mine in the UK looking for ...

They live several kilometers under the surface of the earth, need no light or oxygen and can only be seen in a microscope. By sequencing genomes of a newly discovered group of microbes, the Hadesarchaea, an international ...

The US space agency NASA on Wednesday announced two unmanned missions to asteroids designed to study one of the earliest eras in the history of the solar system.

Gene editing, which has raised ethical concerns due to its capacity to alter human DNA, is being considered in the United States as a tool for improving livestock, experts say.

Scientists from Queen Mary University of London (QMUL) have discovered that the chromosome responsible for the social organisation of colonies of the highly invasive fire ant is likely to have evolved via a single event rather ...

Forest elephant populations in one of Central Africa's largest and most important preserves have declined between 78 percent and 81 percent because of poaching, a new Duke University-led study finds.

The winter habits of Britain's basking sharks have been revealed for the first time.

What looks like a caterpillar chewing on a leaf or a beetle consuming fruit is likely a three-way battle that benefits most, if not all of the players involved, according to a Penn State entomologist.

By tagging individual bumblebees with microchips, biologists have gained insights into the daily life of a colony of bumblebees (Bombus impatiens) in unprecedented detail. The team found that while most bees are generalists ...

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60000-year-old microbes found in Mexican mine: NASA scientist - Phys.Org

A NASA scientist has confirmed the source of a bright light and booms across the North Escambia area about 9:15 Saturday night was likely a meteorite dropper at least the size of a basketball.

Took a look at the eyewitness reports there is a lot of scatter, but I was able to use a software tool developed by a colleague to derive a ground track. The fireball first appeared to the NE of Mobile and moved westerly at about 56,000 miles per hour. The best reports indicate that it broke apart above U.S. 43 north of Mobile, and the reports of sound indicate it probably penetrated fairly low into the atmosphere before fragmenting, perhaps as low as 14 miles altitude, Bill Cooke, lead of NASAs Meteoroid Environment Office located in Huntsville, AL, wrote in a Facebook post.

The objects average brightness was about that of the full moon, with reports of it being seen as far away as extreme North Alabama and Arkansas.

A search of the Doppler weather radar in the area may be helpful in determining if there were meteoritic particles falling to the ground, he said.

NorthEscambia.com received reports of distant shooting start sightings from Saturday night Panama City to Pensacola, and more fireball-like descriptions from readers either side of a line from Bay Minette to Atmore to Bratt to Flomaton to Brewton. Many of those residents also reported a boom or explosion that rattle windows and shook their homes.

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NASA scientist confirms fireball, boom was likely meteorite - WEAR

By Sarah Lewin February 20, 2017, 8:07:54 AM EST

In this image from NASA TV, the SpaceX Falcon rocket launches from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Sunday, Feb. 19, 2017. It's carrying a load of supplies for the International Space Station. (NASA TV via AP)

SpaceX's historic launch from NASA's Launch Complex 39A Sunday (Feb. 19) was a complete success. So it's no surprise that when the time came to discuss the flight, the post-launch press conference was short, sweet and full of smiling faces.

The private spaceflight company's Falcon 9 rocket launched a Dragon spacecraft full of cargo into orbit at 9:39 a.m. EST (1439 GMT), after which the booster's first stage returned to Earth to make had a perfect landing at the company's Landing Zone 1 at Cape Canaveral.

"It's been a super-exciting day it's really awesome to see 39A roar back to life for the first time since the shuttle era, and it was extremely special that this first launch on 39A was a Dragon mission for NASA to the space station," Jessica Jenson, the Dragon mission manager at SpaceX, said during the briefing. Pad 39A was used for most of the Apollo missions and many shuttle missions, including the first and the last launches; SpaceX modernized the pad under a 20-year lease from NASA.

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SpaceX, NASA celebrate historic successful rocket launch - AccuWeather.com

In the months following John F. Kennedy's 1961 pledge to put men on the moon, NASA conceived a plan wherein an Apollo capsule and its three crewmen would descend to the lunar surface atop a giant, multi-stage rocket; when it was time to go home, the rocket would be powerful enough to blast the capsule, its service module and its astronauts back to Earth. This "direct ascent" plan required an enormously heavy landing vehicle andconsequentlya launch vehicle substantially larger than the immense Saturn V moon rocket. It was too ambitious for the end-of-the-decade deadline, so a new solution was proposed: an independent "Lunar Module" would carry only two men down to the Moon's surface. The third crewman would remain in lunar orbit in the Apollo capsule, along with all of the heavy sundries needed for the trip home: the service module, heat shield, fuels cells, food, and so forth. This way, only the bare essentials would make the journey to the surface, drastically reducing landing weight and simplifying the lunar touch-down. When it was time to go, the Lunar Module would rejoin the Apollo capsule in orbit.

In July, 1962, eleven aerospace companies entered bids to build the lunar module; in August, the contract was awarded to Grumman Aircraft, desirnger of fighter-planes and light bombers. The LM contract was for 350 million dollars; development ended up costing 2.2 billion. The LM's weight was paramount; in places, its skin was less than 3 hundredths of an inch thick. NASA offered a bounty of $50,000 to Grumman for every pound the lander shed. A helicopter-style cockpit, with a pilot and copilot seated next to each other, was dropped in favor of having the Astronauts stand for the duration of the flight. Giant glass windows were dropped in favor of tiny triangular port-holes that would give the standing astronauts an adequate field of view. No one knew precisely what sort of terrain the LM would land on, so its legs and feet had to be simultaneously very flexible, very strong and very light. The LM would have four legs, so if one came down on a soft spot, a tripod would remain. Originally, Grumman wanted five legs, but five were too heavy. There would be only one landing engine, and only one take-off engine: there was no space for backups. If either engine failed, the moonwalkers would die. Happily, the LM's service record was perfect. Not nearly enough credit is given to its chief designer, Thomas Kellyone of the real, unheralded geniuses of the space race.

However, in late 1968, after 6 years of relentless designing, testing, redesigning and retesting, the LM still wasn't done. Per NASA's plan, its first manned flight would be the Apollo 8 mission; Apollo 8 would have to be delayed. Then NASA engineer George Low had an idea.

George Low is another tragically unheralded geniuses of the space race. He was a Jew born in Austria who fled Nazism in the 30s and became an American soldier in the 40s. In 1958, he was one of the founding members of NASA, and is credited by many NASA-men with having saved the moon program after the fatal Apollo 1 fire, in 1967. After the fire, he was made manager of the Apollo Spacecraft Program; a year later, in 1968, he heard about the LM delay, and suggested something else for Apollo 8:

What if, instead of postponing the mission until the LM was ready, a new mission was designed? A flight around the moon, essentially for its own sake. No new hardware would be tested, no prep done for the moon landing that wasn't already planned for Apollo 9later bumped to Apollo 10which would fly to the moon and do a complete landing dress rehearsal. The point of Apollo 8 would be inspiration, a singular moment in the history of mankind. Three Americans would become the first men in history to travel beyond Earth-orbit into deep space. They would be the first men in history to see the moon up close. They would be the first to see the Moon's far side. They would be the first to see an earth-rise. The entire world would watch as men zoomed past the old altitude record of 850 miles above the earth, and set a new one of 250 thousand miles above the earth.

On Christmas Eve, 1968, Apollo 8 entered a lunar orbit. On Christmas Day, Apollo 8's crew broadcast closeup video of the Moon's surface on live TV. They accompanied the footage with a message. Astronaut Bill Anders spoke first:

"We are now approaching the lunar sunrise, and for all the people back on Earth, the crew of Apollo 8 has a message that we would like to send to you:

"In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the spirit of God moved upon the face of the water. And God said, let there be light: and there was light. And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness."

Astronaut Jim Lovell spoke next:

"And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day. And God said, let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters. And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so. And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day."

Commander Frank Borman spoke last:

"And God said, let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so. And God called the dry land Earth, and the gathering together of the waters called he seas: and God that saw it was good.

"And from the crew of Apollo 8, we close with good night, good luck, a Merry Christmasand God bless all of you, all of you on the good Earth."

It has since been estimated that a quarter of everyone then alive on the Earth saw that broadcast, either as it happened or afterward. The Soviet propaganda newspaper Pravda quoted the head of the Soviet "Interkosmos" space program as calling Apollo 8 an "outstanding achievement of American space sciences and technology." Apollo 8's broadcast won an Emmy, and crew were named Time Men of the Year. And an atheist sued them for reading from the bible on government property.

Apollo 8 was one of the defining moments in human history: the first voyage to Moon. The last voyage to the Moon was four years later in December of 1972. In the 45 years since, no one has gone further than Low Earth Orbit. NASA plans to send its new Orion space capsulethe successor to the Apolloon a flight to the moon in September of 2018. "Exploration Mission 1" won't land; like Apollo 8, it will stay in orbit. Unlike Apollo 8, it will be unmanned.

This week, NASA announced President Trump wants to add astronauts to the EM-1 flight, and make it the profoundly inspiring trip back to the Moon we've waited half a century for. It's a phenomenal idea, and NASA is currently doing a feasibility study.

What a thing that would be!

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NASA's New Space Agenda - The Weekly Standard

From the International Space Station, Expedition 42 Flight Engineer Terry W. Virts took this photograph of the Gulf of Mexico and U.S. Gulf Coast at sunset

Nasa

This image of an area on the surface of Mars, approximately 1.5 by 3 kilometers in size, shows frosted gullies on a south-facing slope within a crater. The image was taken by Nasa's HiRISE camera, which is mounted on its Mars Reconaissance Orbiter

Nasa

The Orion capsule jetted off into space before heading back a few hours later having proved that it can be used, one day, to carry humans to Mars

Nasa

The Soyuz TMA-15M rocket launches from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Monday, Nov. 24, 2014, carrying three new astronauts to the International Space Station. It also took caviar, ready for the satellite's inhabitants to celebrate the holidays

Nasa

NASA astronaut Reid Wiseman shared this image of Yellowstone via his twitter account

Nasa

Nasa celebrated Black Friday by looking into space instead sharing pictures of black holes

Nasa

X-rays stream off the sun in this image showing observations from by NASA's Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array, or NuSTAR, overlaid on a picture taken by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO)

Nasa

This near-infrared color image shows a specular reflection, or sunglint, off of a hydrocarbon lake named Kivu Lacus on Saturn's moon Titan

Nasa

Although Mimas and Pandora, shown here, both orbit Saturn, they are very different moons. Pandora, "small" by moon standards (50 miles or 81 kilometers across) is elongated and irregular in shape. Mimas (246 miles or 396 kilometers across), a "medium-sized" moon, formed into a sphere due to self-gravity imposed by its higher mass

Nasa

An X1.6 class solar flare flashes in the middle of the sun in this image taken 10 September, captured by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory

Nasa

An image from Nasa's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) shows a 200,000 mile long solar filament ripping through the Sun's corona in September 2013

Nasa

A false colour image of Cassiopeia A comprised with data from the Spitzer and Hubble Space Telescopes and the Chandra X-Ray observatory

Nasa

An image of the Large Magellanic Cloud galaxy seen in infrared light by the Herschel Space Observatory. Regions of space such as this are where new stars are born from a mixture of elements and cosmic dust

Nasa

Nasa's Mars Rover Spirit took the first picture from Spirit since problems with communications began a week earlier. The image shows the robotic arm extended to the rock called Adirondack

Nasa

Nasa astronaut Scott Kelly captured this photograph of the green lights of the aurora from the International Space Station

The Space Shuttle Challenger launches from Florida at dawn. On this mission, Kathryn Sullivan became the first U.S. woman to perform a spacewalk and Marc Garneau became the first Canadian in space. The crew of seven was the largest to fly on a spacecraft at that time, and STS-41G was the first flight to include two female astronauts

Galaxy clusters are often described by superlatives. After all, they are huge conglomerations of galaxies, hot gas, and dark matter and represent the largest structures in the Universe held together by gravity

Nasa's Hubble Space Telescope has unveiled in stunning detail a small section of the Veil Nebula - expanding remains of a massive star that exploded about 8,000 years ago

The arrangement of the spiral arms in the galaxy Messier 63, seen here in an image from the Nasa Hubble Space Telescope, recall the pattern at the center of a sunflower

The spectacular cosmic pairing of the star Hen 2-427 more commonly known as WR 124 and the nebula M1-67 which surrounds it

Four images from New Horizons Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) were combined with colour data from the Ralph instrument to create this enhanced colour global view of Pluto

The HiRISE camera aboard Nasa's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter acquired this closeup image of a "fresh" (on a geological scale, though quite old on a human scale) impact crater in the Sirenum Fossae region of Mars. This impact crater appears relatively recent as it has a sharp rim and well-preserved ejecta

This photograph of the Florida Straits and Grand Bahama Bank was taken during the Gemini IV mission during orbit no. 19 in 1965. The Gemini IV crew conducted scientific experiments, including photography of Earth's weather and terrain, for the remainder of their four-day mission following Ed White's historic spacewalk on June 3

For 50 years, NASA has been "suiting up" for spacewalking. In this 1984 photograph of the first untethered spacewalk, NASA astronaut Bruce McCandless is in the midst of the first "field" tryout of a nitrogen-propelled backpack device called the Manned Maneuvering Unit (MMU)

This Nasa Hubble Space Telescope image presents the Arches Cluster, the densest known star cluster in the Milky Way

Nasa astronaut Reid Wiseman tweeted this photo from the International Space Station on 2 September 2014

On Mars, we can observe four classes of sandy landforms formed by the wind, or aeolian bedforms: ripples, transverse aeolian ridges, dunes, and what are called draa

A sokol suit helmet can be seen against the window of the Soyuz TMA-11M capsule shortly after the spacecraft landed with Expedition 39 Commander Koichi Wakata of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), Soyuz Commander Mikhail Tyurin of Roscosmos, and Flight Engineer Rick Mastracchio of NASA near the town of Zhezkazgan, Kazakhstan

Jupiter is the largest planet in the solar system and perhaps the most majestic. Vibrant bands of clouds carried by winds that can exceed 400 mph continuously circle the planet's atmosphere

This Chandra X-Ray Observatory image of the young star cluster NGC 346 highlights a heart-shaped cloud of 8 million-degree Celsius gas in the central region

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Nasa to host major press conference on 'discovery beyond our solar system' - The Independent

Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak is the sand-swept strategy affair that Rob Zacny once branded a "great tactical RTS with all the gorgeous aesthetics and atmosphere of the original series." Its developers, Blackbird Interactive, teased a handful of early screens from its next project earlier this year, and has now revealed it's also working with NASA to create an interactive model of Mars in Gale Crater.

Set in 2117, 44 Martian years/82.8 Earth years after the first human mission to Mars, the projectnamed Project Eaglelets users explore a hypothetical Mars colony established at the base of Mount Sharp (close to the landing site of the Mars Curiosity Rover) and marks a collaboration between the devs and NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

Aiming to "inspire new generations to dream of human settlement" on the Red Planet, Project Eagle will be presented live on stage by the JPL's Dr Jeff Norris tomorrow at the DICE Summit 2017. Blackbird's Aaron Kambeitz and Rob Cunningham will also help present.

"Its been a profound honour and pleasure for us here at Blackbird to work with Jeff and the JPL team to dream up what a future base on Mars might really be like, and to deliver that experience as interactive art, says Cunningham.

More information on Blackbird and NASA's Project Eagle presentation, and the DICE Summit itself, can be found in this direction.

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Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak dev partners with NASA to build interactive Mars colony - PC Gamer

Jupiters Icy Moon

To the naked eye, Europa, one of Jupiters moons, might just look like a great big ball of rock and ice. But to NASA, this moon represents much more. It couldcontain what scientists have long been searching for lifeforms that exist outside of our home planet.Through theEuropa Mission, NASAplans to send a lander to Jupiters moon, which is believed to hold a vast ocean beneath its frozen crust. And where there is water, life is almost sure to follow.

The project is due to launch in either 2024 or 2025, when the lander would begin searching for lifeforms on the moons surface. If organisms are found, plans would develop for a more sophisticated craft to be sent to Europa in search of its underground ocean.Dr. Kevin Hand, one of NASAs leading officials with the Europa Mission, explains the programs investment towards these advancements:

For the first time in human history, we can actually build missions and design the instruments that could go out and answer this fundamental question of whether or not biology works beyond Earth. If we commit to getting these missions done, we could potentially find life in our own solar systems backyard within the next 20 years. Technologically it is entirely possible, but it requires public support, excitement about this, so we look to you to help communicate and spread the word.

In order to prevent bacteria from hitching a ride to Europa, the lander would be fitted with a special device to protect from any contaminants. Bacteria would affect test results and could even damage indigenous lifeforms if they are found to exist. As Dr. John Rummel from the Seti Institute in California says, we should protect Europa for the Europansnot the Europeans.

Bacteria could survive the journey to Europa, only if they were protected fromthe Suns ultraviolet radiation. Once they reach the icy moon, most would die off within a few days. But if they were shielded within the spacecraft, theyd have a better chance of surviving. The reverse is also a concern, as extra-terrestrial life could be brought back to Earth, further contaminating the process.

But Dr. Rummel is confident that none of this will happen, and that scientists will be able to contain samples until hazard testing gets underway. With the necessary precautions taken, we might be able to retrieve massive amounts of data that will take us one giant step closer to understanding where life exists in our vast universe.

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NASA Is Sending a Lander to Discover Whether Life Exists on Europa - Futurism

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New and strange footage from NASAs live feed of the International Space Station appears to show six large objects scurrying by. This is not the first time this sight has been seen, but this instance contains unique characteristics.

As you can see in the live video below, relayed by the American space agency, the objects flying by move from the right of the screen towards the left. Unlike previous instances where only 1 object comes into frame, this video contains six UFOs that are resulting in n outcry for explanation from viewers.

The phenomenon was originally spotted by a UFO enthusiast at Streetcap1 who shared the clip with the popular YouTube channel called SecureTeam10. They are a group of UFO experts who track down clips, investigate footage and put their findings out to an eager audience online.

Referring to the ISS UFO clip below, Tyler from SecureTeam said: He has discovered what some are calling a fleet of unidentified flying objects moving in the distance behind the International Space Station.

We have about six UFOs passing behind, and judging from the distance, I would guess that the size of these objects, whatever they are, would be fairly large.

Much larger than Nasas typical excuse of ice particles, we must be looking at icebergs.

Tyler goes on to explain that NASA suspiciously cut the live feed and replaced it with a feed from another ISS camera showing the inside of a briefing room.

There have been a number of instances where NASA has cut a live feed as unexplained objects enter the cameras field of view.

Back in January of 2015, NASAcut the feed aftervideo showeda small grey object slowly rising and then disappearing. There is no saying whether its an extraterrestrial space craft or not, but its unidentified and curious that NASA would cut the feed right at this time.

Again on July 9th 2016 another video from theInternational Space Station feed shows an object entering earths atmosphere and moments later the feed is cut. Once again,we cannot saythis is a UFO or whether its manned, but there is an unidentified object and yet again NASA cut the feed.

Most explanations from NASA lean towards these objects beinga meteor, space debris, or ice but once again we see secrecy and highly coincidental timing.

Take a look at the video below. Do you think it is a real UFO? Or is there some other explanation?

Your life path number can tell you A LOT about you.

With the ancient science of Numerology you can find out accurate and revealing information just from your name and birth date.

Get your free numerology reading and learn more about how you can use numerology in your life to find out more about your path and journey. Get Your free reading.

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NASA Live Video Feed Cut Again As 6 Large 'UFOs' Creep Past International Space Station - Collective Evolution

This is the actual NASA graphic illustrating the "Space Poop Challenge." NASA hide caption

This is the actual NASA graphic illustrating the "Space Poop Challenge."

On Wednesday morning, NASA rewarded five members of the public two doctors, a dentist, an engineer and a product designer for their creative ideas for how to poop in a spacesuit.

Yes, it sounds a little bit funny. But unmet toilet needs could have life or death consequences for an astronaut in an emergency situation.

That's why thousands of people spent tens of thousands of hours on the "Space Poop Challenge," brainstorming, modeling, prototyping and number-crunching to come up with a crowd-sourced solution to the problem of human waste in a spacesuit.

Currently, astronauts on spacewalks rely on diapers, which is a feasible solution for only a few hours at a time. As we explained in November, NASA is imagining a situation where an astronaut is stuck in a spacesuit for days like during an emergency on future Orion missions, which could take astronauts far from Earth.

The super-portable-bathroom solution has to work quickly, easily, in micro-gravity, without impeding movement, for both men and women, for solid and liquid waste. It can either store waste in the suit or expel it. And it has to be comfortable ... for up to six continuous days.

Since the project launched on the HeroX crowdsourcing site in October, nearly 20,000 people, from all over the world, submitted more than 5,000 ideas. They were competing for a total of $30,000 in prizes.

The winning solution came from Thatcher Cardon, an Air Force officer, family practice physician and flight surgeon. He says his design was inspired by minimally invasive surgical techniques and a strong desire not to store the poop.

"I never thought that keeping the waste in the suit would be any good," he told NPR. "So I thought, 'How can we get in and out of the suit easily?' "

[In] less invasive surgeries like laparoscopy or arthroscopy or even endovascular techniques they use in cardiology, they can do some amazing things in very small openings.

Winner Thatcher Cardon

"I thought about what I know regarding less invasive surgeries like laparoscopy or arthroscopy or even endovascular techniques they use in cardiology they can do some amazing things in very small openings.

"I mean, they can even replace heart valves now through catheters in an artery. So it should be able to handle a little bit of poop!"

He designed a small airlock at the crotch of the suit, with a variety of items including inflatable bedpans and diapers that could be passed through the small opening and then expanded. His design even allows an astronaut to change underwear while inside the spacesuit, through the same small opening.

Cardon used an old flight suit to try some physical prototyping, and his kids helped gather supplies. They were "totally excited," he says. "They lost their minds when I told them I won."

Second place went to a trio from Houston a physician, an engineering professor and a dentist (who also served as the team's illustrator). All three had studied chemical engineering in college.

Stacey Louie, the environmental engineer on the team, said the different areas of expertise on the team were central to their solution. But before they fine-tuned their design, they had to discard a lot of ideas.

The SPUDs team "Space Poop Unification of Doctors" designed the Air-PUSH Urinary Girdle. They explain: "Air flows through the top of the device to direct urinary and/or menstrual waste in an anteroposterior direction, where it then exits via the larger tube at the bottom of the device." Katherine Kin/Courtesy of the SPUDs team hide caption

For instance, doctor and team leader Jose Gonzales says that he immediately thought of some medicine-inspired strategies that would be effective but not at all comfortable.

"You have to take into consideration, 'Is the astronaut going to be OK with this design?' " Katherine Kin, the dentist and artist, notes. "You have to have something that's psychologically comfortable."

So internal catheters were out. Instead, Gonzales says, they used an air-powered system to push waste away from the body to store it elsewhere in the suit. "More specifically, that air is created by passive and active normal body movements of the astronaut," Gonzales says.

A product designer from the U.K., Hugo Shelley, placed third. He usually works with electronics and tech products, but he says for this contest, he went in the other direction and tried to build a solution with as few electronic parts as possible.

"I think we're all aware of the dangers of things going wrong in space," he says. A simple design seemed safer, he says.

Hugo Shelley's design is "built into a form-fitting garment that is worn underneath the pressure suit," he says. "It features a new catheter design for extended use in microgravity, combined with a mechanism that compresses, seals and sanitizes solid waste." Dani Epstein/Courtesy of Hugo Shelley hide caption

"My mother's a textile designer so I think I started off really thinking about materials," he says. "Making something as comfortable as possible I thought was fairly important ... a lot of your mechanism really has to be in, effectively, the first few millimeters away from the skin."

His solution, the "SWIMSuit Zero Gravity Underwear," disinfects and stores waste inside the suit, like the second-place design does.

Cardon won $15,000, while the trio from Houston took home $10,000 and Shelley netted $5,000.

The next step is for NASA to start prototyping the ideas, and get working versions of a waste-management system up to the International Space Station for testing.

Dustin Gohmert, the Orion crew survival system project manager at NASA, explains that NASA will combine existing ideas with elements of the winning designs to create a solution that will, indeed, go into space.

"Optimistically this will never be used, because it is a contingency scenario that something catastrophic has happened," he said. "But this will be on Orion and should something happen, and should it be called on to save the crew, this will be there and at their disposal."

Shelley, the product designer, notes that research on how to improve waste management inside a spacesuit could also be useful in "earth-bound applications" for people with incontinence or in high-pressure, critical job situations.

It's an amusing thing to think about, but still it's a part of a spacesuit and there's something incredibly thrilling about the space missions.

Third-place finisher Hugo Shelley

And while it was "kind of odd" to think about poop in space for weeks at a time, he says the project was "quite exciting."

"Yes, it's an amusing thing to think about, but still it's a part of a spacesuit and there's something incredibly thrilling about the space missions," he says.

And, he notes, "you can't fully appreciate being an interplanetary explorer if you've constantly got to use the bathroom and you can't."

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NASA Announces Winners In 'Space Poop Challenge' - NPR

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. SpaceX'shistoric launch from NASA's Launch Complex 39A Sunday (Feb. 19) was a complete success. So it's no surprise that when the time came to discuss the flight, the post-launch press conference was short, sweet and full of smiling faces.

The private spaceflight company's Falcon 9 rocket launched a Dragon spacecraft full of cargo into orbit at 9:39 a.m. EST (1439 GMT), after which the booster's first stagereturned to Earth to make had a perfect landing at the company's Landing Zone 1 at Cape Canaveral.

"It's been a super-exciting day it's really awesome to see 39A roar back to life for the first time since the shuttle era, and it was extremely special that this first launch on 39A was a Dragon mission for NASA to the space station," Jessica Jenson, the Dragon mission manager at SpaceX, said during the briefing.Pad 39A was used for most of the Apollo missions and many shuttle missions, including the first and the last launches; SpaceX modernized the pad under a 20-year lease from NASA. [Watch: The Most Historic Launches Ever from Pad 39A]

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launches its first cargo mission for NASA from the agency's historic Pad 39A, with a U.S. flag and NASA countdown clock in the foreground, in this view from the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida on Feb. 19, 2018.

"This is a huge deal for us," she added.

Jenson is anticipating just a two-week turnaround before SpaceX's next launch from Pad 39A, and the first reused booster will eventually launch from that pad as well. Ultimately, the site will become the primary launchpad for the Falcon 9 Heavy, SpaceX's huge heavy-lift booster, SpaceX representatives have said. The Falcon 9 launches will move to a repaired Pad 40 at the nearby Cape Canaveral Air Force Station (which was damaged last year in a Sept. 1 explosion). Jenson confirmed that SpaceX plans to launch an uncrewed test flight of the its Crew Dragon astronaut taxi by the end of this year, followed by a crewed flight in early 2018.

Sunday's liftoff was originally scheduled for yesterday, but it was called off with 13 seconds left on the countdown as a precaution due to an unexpected reading on the rocket's second-stage engine nozzle's position.

"Great launch today; we were really excited to see everything go well after yesterday's countdown fun," William Spetch, NASA's deputy manager of the International Space Station's transportation office, said during the briefing. "Dragon's on its way, space station is in great shape and really looking forward to getting the 5,000 plus pounds of cargo coming up to the vehicle."

Dragon bringing nearly 5,500 lbs. (2,500 kg) of supplies and experiments to the crew on the space station, including many science investigations. The spacecraft will take two days to reach the station, where it will be grappled by the crew and berthed early Wednesday morning (Feb. 22). [In Photos: SpaceX's 1st Launch from Pad 39A]

Their first priority to unpack? "We have a lot of time-critical stuff that we bring up that gets loaded very late into the vehicle, so the first steps for the crew will be getting that off-loaded on the vehicle and getting into the experiments," Spetch said. "One of the first things is the rodents, getting all of our mice set up in their accommodations on board."

The ground crew will be busy, too, using the station's robotic arm attachments to unload things from Dragon's unpressurized "trunk."

"The ground teams will be working very hard and very quickly on the robotics ops to change out the science that's in the trunk, pull it out, and put it in spots in orbit and put additional cargo back in that's no longer being used."

Email Sarah Lewin at slewin@space.com or follow her@SarahExplains.Follow us@Spacedotcom,FacebookandGoogle+. Original article onSpace.com.

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SpaceX, NASA Hail 1st Falcon 9 Rocket Launch from Pad Steeped in History - Space.com

NASA continues to steadfastly tweet urgent climate change information despite GOP efforts to force the agency to stick to space and forget the Earth.

The Trump administration aims to largely restrict NASAs focus to its space missions and have it abandon climate change research, which is a part of its Earth Sciences Division. The division, which accounts for just $2 billion of NASAs $20 billion budget, also includes gathering weather information, which the Republicans dont want to drop.

At a House Science, Space and Technology Committee hearing last Thursday, Chairman Lamar Smith (R-Texas) said he wants a rebalancing of NASAs mission to allow other agencies to take over its climate change research. But its unclear which agencies could pick up the slack.

The new head of the Environmental Protection Agency, climate-change skeptic Scott Pruitt, has vowed to cut the EPAs budget and staffin the wake of Trumps campaign promise to get rid of the agency, The New York Times noted. The EPA has also been under orders from the Trump administration to refrain from tweeting anything about climate change.

Meanwhile, NASA posts daily climate change updates on@NASAclimateand Facebook, with frequent warnings about rapid global changes.

Despite NASAs own calls for more knowledge and action on climate change, Smith wants more funds to go into space exploration, he told E&E News. Id like for us to remember what our priorities are, and there are another dozen agencies that study earth science and climate change. We only have one agency that engages in space exploration, and they need every dollar they can muster for space exploration.

The move is viewed as yet another way to starve funds from research on climate change, which President Donald Trump, during his campaign,called a Chinese hoax invented to hurt U.S. manufacturing.

Fearful of a crackdown on NASA and other agencies, scientists and techies have been busily downloading all available research information from federal databases through groups like DataRefuge and The Environmental Data and Governance Initiative,Wiredreported. The gag order against EPA and other federal agencies has also given birth to a large family of underground alternative Twitter sites, many with information about climate change.

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GOP Wants NASA To Stop Worrying About Earth And Focus On Space - Huffington Post

As the top portion of SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket separated from its cargo bay in space Sunday morning, cheers erupted back on earth in a conference room filled with scientists and their family members watching the launch at Hampton's Harbour Centre.

The group that filled the conference room was cheering because the live-stream showed two pieces of the Stratospheric Aerosol and Gas Experiment III, or SAGE III, that was designed and built by a team from Hampton University and NASA Langley. SAGE III is an ozone-measuring instrument traveling aboard the Falcon 9, which is bound for the International Space Station.

Dr. Charles Hill, a Hampton graduate and instrument scientist with the SAGE program, said seeing the equipment in space was a big part of the payoff of seven years of work.

He called the launch seven years of work and 30 seconds of terror.

For the scientists in Hampton, the 30 seconds of terror were actually postponed by a day; Falcon 9 was scheduled to launch from Cape Canaveral in Florida Saturday, but conditions in the atmosphere led to the postponement. Hill said the countdown clock got all the way to 13 seconds before the launch was scrubbed.

Once it reaches the space station, SAGE III will collect atmospheric data with special emphasis on the ozone layer. For each sunrise and sunset, SAGE III will look at sun, scan it and use it as a light source to probe the atmosphere and measure ozone and aerosols, according to Robert Damadeo, an algorithm scientist.

"If you look at Edvard Munch's The Scream, the sky is blood red because of residual substance in the air after a huge volcanic eruption on the island of Krakatoa," Damado said. "Same concept now you can tell how much aerosol is in the sky based on its color."

Hill called the readings from the SAGE program the gold standard in these atmospheric readings and said the data is used by scientists throughout the world to validate their research.

Ozone is important to the atmosphere because it protects the earth from ultraviolet rays, similar to sunscreen on a person's skin, Hill said. However, the ozone layer was found to be thinning and eventually a hole was discovered in the 1990s.

Since then, the layer has recovered due to a worldwide ban on Freon 12, a substance once commonly used in air conditioning units that was found responsible for ozone depletion. But Hill said it will take about 50 years for the layer to return to a comfortable level.

Dr. James Russell, co-director of Hampton University's Center for Atmospheric Science, said the SAGE program has its origins in the 1970s, putting 40 years of experience into the SAGE III project. "It's really a Langley brand," he said.

As the team members from Hampton and Langley congratulated each other on the successful launch, Hill said the next step is already lined up; work on SAGE IV will begin in about a month, and funding for the project has already been secured.

Reyes can be reached by phone at 757-247-4692. Mishkin at 757-641-6669

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Ozone-measuring instrument from NASA Langley-HU partnership launches into space - Daily Press

This story was originally published by Wiredand is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

OnFeb. 11, the white stone buildings on UC Berkeleys campus radiated with unfiltered sunshine. The sky was blue, the campanile was chiming. But instead of enjoying the beautiful day, 200 adults had willingly sardined themselves into a fluorescent-lit room in the bowels of Doe Library to rescue federal climate data.

Like similar groups across the country in more than 20 cities they believe that the Trump administration might want to disappear this data down a memory hole. So these hackers, scientists, and students are collecting it to save outside government servers.

But now theyre going even further. Groups like DataRefugeand the Environmental Data and Governance Initiative, which organized the Berkeley hackathon to collect data from NASAs Earth sciences programs and the Department of Energy, are doing more than archiving. Diehard coders are building robust systems to monitor ongoing changes to government websites. And theyre keeping track of whats been removed to learn exactly when the pruning began.

The data collection is methodical, mostly. About half the group immediately sets web crawlers on easily copied government pages, sending their text to the Internet Archive, a digital library made up of hundreds of billions of snapshots of webpages. They tag more data-intensive projects pages with lots of links, databases, and interactive graphics for the other group. Called baggers, these coders write custom scripts to scrape complicated data sets from the sprawling, patched-together federal websites.

Its not easy. All these systems were written piecemeal over the course of 30 years. Theres no coherent philosophy to providing data on these websites, says Daniel Roesler, chief technology officer at UtilityAPI and one of the volunteer guides for the Berkeley bagger group.

One coder who goes by Tek ran into a wall trying to download multi-satellite precipitation data from NASAs Goddard Space Flight Center. Starting in August, access to Goddard Earth Science Data required a login. But with a bit of totally legal digging around the site (DataRefuge prohibits outright hacking), Tek found a buried link to the old FTP server. He clicked and started downloading. By the end of the day he had data for all of 2016 and some of 2015. It would take at least another 24 hours to finish.

The non-coders hit dead-ends too. Throughout the morning they racked up 404 Page not found errors across NASAs Earth Observing System website. And they more than once ran across empty databases, like the Global Change Data Centers reports archive and one of NASAs atmospheric CO2 datasets.

And this is where the real problem lies. They dont know when or why this data disappeared from the web (or if anyone backed it up first). Scientists who understand it better will have to go back and take a look. But in the meantime, DataRefuge and EDGI understand that they need to be monitoring those changes and deletions. Thats more work than a human could do.

So theyre building software that can do it automatically.

Later that afternoon, two dozen or so of the most advanced software builders gathered around whiteboards, sketching out tools theyll need. They worked out filters to separate mundane updates from major shake-ups, and explored blockchain-like systems to build auditable ledgers of alterations. Basically its an issue of what engineers call version control how do you know if something has changed? How do you know if you have the latest? How do you keep track of the old stuff?

There wasnt enough time for anyone to start actually writing code, but a handful of volunteers signed on to build out tools. Thats where DataRefuge and EDGI organizers really envision their movement going a vast decentralized network from all 50 states and Canada. Some volunteers can code tracking software from home. And others can simply archive a little bit every day.

By the end of the day, the group had collectively loaded 8,404 NASA and DOE webpages onto the Internet Archive, effectively covering the entirety of NASAs Earth science efforts. Theyd also built backdoors in to download 25 gigabytes from 101 public datasets, and were expecting even more to come in as scripts on some of the larger datasets (like Teks) finished running. But even as they celebrated over pints of beer at a pub on Euclid Street, the mood was somber.

There was still so much work to do. Climate change data is just the tip of the iceberg, says Eric Kansa, an anthropologist who manages archaeological data archiving for the nonprofit group Open Context. There are a huge number of other datasets being threatened with cultural, historical, sociological information. A panicked friend at the National Parks Service had tipped him off to a huge data portal that contains everything from park visitation stats to GIS boundaries to inventories of species. While he sat at the bar, his computer ran scripts to pull out a list of everything in the portal. When its done, hell start working his way through each quirky dataset.

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Coders to the rescue for NASA's Earth science data - Grist

Four University of Colorado juniors are back from NASA's Langley Research Center, where they competed Wednesday as finalists in that agency's BIG Idea Challenge.

The competition tasked students with advancing concepts for in-space assembly of spacecraft, particularly tugs, powered by solar propulsion.

NASA's challenge to competing students was that their design enable the transfer of payloads from low-Earth orbit to an orbit around the moon, or to a lunar distant retrograde orbit.

CU's group, whose project was dubbed "Odysseus," was one of five selected as finalists who made their pitch for an in-orbit assembly design of a spacecraft that can deliver cargo from low-Earth to lunar and Martian orbits.

The competition, which was held Wednesday, was won by a team from Tulane University.

But the CU team, comprised of juniors Justin Norman, Olivia Zanoni, Gerardo Pulido and Gabriel Walker, nevertheless distinguished itself, according to Brian Sanders, deputy director of the Colorado Space Grant Consortium, who accompanied them to Hampton, Va., returning to Colorado late Thursday night.

"I'm incredibly proud of what the students did, both in terms of paper and presentation, and the feedback we got after the competition from the judges was amazing," said Sanders.

"These students put in hundreds of hours with great simulations, doing great trade studies, to formulate a mission concept that was highly recognized by the judges as being really unique and practical yet cutting edge."

Walker, Norman and Pulido are students in the Ann and H. J. Smead Department of Aerospace Engineering Sciences, while Zanoni is in the Engineering Physics program associated with the Department of Physics. All are members of the Colorado Space Grant Consortium, which provides mostly undergraduate students with hands-on experience in designing, building and flying spacecraft.

The CU students didn't win, and also did not claim runner-up honors that prize went to the team from the University of Maryland but they hardly feel defeated.

"We made it. We were top 5, out of 29 teams in the nation," said Norman, a Boulder native. "To be able to be in the top-17 percentile is an honor in itself."

Norman had no quarrel with seeing the Tulane team take the top prize.

"It was humbling to see other people's designs. They came up with some just outstanding innovative things that just really blew my mind," he said. "The people who won, they deserved it. Their design was totally out of the box, and totally innovative."

The CU team, Norman said, was the only finalist to meet all of the original design requirements, but that wasn't enough to win out over the innovation of other finalists.

Sanders agreed that the students' not winning didn't mean their paper and presentation were in vain.

"Each team brought its own unique vision and solution, and that was commented and remarked upon by the NASA center officials. And they were hoping to collect some of those ideas and further incubate them, and use them as seeds to grow potential future NASA missions," Sanders said.

Elements of all five finalists' projects, Sanders said, could influence future NASA project designs.

"That's exactly what they're hoping to do," Sanders said, "is, take broad brush strokes of concepts from all over the country, elements of proposals one, two, three, four and five, and be able to hopefully influence what NASA is able to do, out of their Game Changing division out at Langley."

Norman returned to Boulder all that more determined to forge a future in aerospace engineering.

"You have to fail before you find success in this field," he said. "If anything, it has made me want to double my efforts toward a career path in that direction.

"I have seen what the bar was raised to by other teams. It's really high. It's good that there's such a high bar, because that's what it takes to do the things we're trying to do."

Charlie Brennan: 303-473-1327, brennanc@dailycamera.com or twitter.com/chasbrennan

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CU Boulder students show NASA their vision of future space transport - Boulder Daily Camera

SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket is prepared Friday for a launch at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Launch Pad 39A, one of the renovated space shuttle launch pads that SpaceX leases from NASA, has been the site of many of NASA's most famous liftoffs. Bruce Weaver/AFP/Getty Images hide caption

SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket is prepared Friday for a launch at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Launch Pad 39A, one of the renovated space shuttle launch pads that SpaceX leases from NASA, has been the site of many of NASA's most famous liftoffs.

Updated at 10:25 a.m. ET

Poised on the brink of ushering in a new era, NASA's historic launch pad in Florida will need to wait another day for its milestone. At the last minute, the private space company SpaceX scrubbed its Saturday launch, which would have marked the first time the Kennedy Space Center's Launch Complex 39A was used in over half a decade.

Instead, the launch will wait at least 24 hours while SpaceX takes a "closer look at positioning of the second stage engine nozzle," an anomaly that came to light shortly before liftoff. The company plans to try again on Sunday.

Taken on its face, the launch itself is not particularly notable. Naturally, it's no mean feat to send a rocket to space, but missions like this one happen all the time. The International Space Station needs provisions, after all, and the 5,500 pounds of supplies and materials for scientific experiments would be a common (if still impressive) load for a resupply mission.

Rather, the liftoff now scheduled for Sunday is making history not for its cargo but precisely where it will be taking place: the pad that served as the launch site for the Apollo 11 mission that first sent humans to the moon in 1969.

In fact, Launch Complex 39A served as a pad for many of the most famous missions in NASA's history from the first missions to space that packed a human crew, to the decades-long space shuttle program that helped construct the orbiting station SpaceX's rocket will be supplying.

As NPR's Rae Ellen Bichell reports for our Newscast unit, the SpaceX mission marks something of a sea change for the historic launch pad:

"According to NASA, this will be the first time the launch pad has been used since the shuttle program ended in 2011 and it will mark the beginning of a new era for the Kennedy Space Center as a spaceport open for use by public and commercial missions to space."

SpaceX, a privately owned space company, is sending its NASA cargo and the Dragon spacecraft that bears it with a Falcon 9 rocket. In a statement, NASA says SpaceX also plans to attempt to land the first stage of the Falcon 9 back on a platform, as it did during its successful launch last month.

NASA also explains some of the experiments this launch will be supporting:

"Science investigations launching on Dragon include commercial and academic research investigations that will enable researchers to advance their knowledge of the medical, psychological and biomedical challenges astronauts face during long-duration spaceflight.

"One experiment will use the microgravity environment to grow stem cells that are of sufficient quality and quantity to use in the treatment of patients who have suffered a stroke. A Merck Research Labs investigation will test growth in microgravity of antibodies important for fighting a wide range of human diseases, including cancer."

According to NASA, the mission will also aid in recording "key climate observations and data records."

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A Liftoff Deferred: SpaceX Mission From NASA's Historic Launch Pad Delayed - NPR

The women who helped pioneer space travel have rocketed into the public eye thanks to the acclaimed movie "Hidden Figures". We spoke to NASA's chief historian to learn more about the remarkable true story of these pioneering mathematicians, engineers and computer scientists, and to explore how the film dramatises their struggles. (Beware of some minor spoilers.)

Based on the book by Margot Lee Shetterly, the Oscar-nominated "Hidden Figures" focuses on the lives of three black American women who worked at the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), later renamed NASA.

Katherine Johnson, played in the film by Taraji P. Henson, was a brilliant geometry expert who worked as a computer -- that is, a person who computes. Mary Jackson, played by Janelle Monae, was a mathematician and aerospace engineer. And Dorothy Vaughan, played by Oscar-nominated Octavia Spencer, was the first black supervisor at NACA and one of the first computer programmers.

Octavia Spencer, Taraji P Henson and Janelle Monae star as the pioneering women who helped send America into space.

NASA's chief historian, Bill Barry, explains that the film, which has been nominated for a slew of awards, depicts many real events from their lives. "One thing we're frequently asked," he says, "is whether or not John Glenn actually asked for Katherine Johnson to 'check the numbers.'" The answer is yes: Glenn, the first American in orbit and later, at the age of 77, the oldest man in space, really did ask for Johnson to manually check calculations generated by IBM 7090 computers (the electronic kind) churning out numbers at Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

Though the film shows Glenn asking for Johnson's approval from the launch pad, she was actually called in well before the launch. Calculating the output for 11 different variables to eight significant digits took a day and a half. Her calculations matched the computer's results exactly. Not only did her conclusions give Glenn and everyone else confidence in the upcoming launch, but they also proved the critical computer software was reliable.

The painting seen here on the "Hidden Figures" set actually hung on the walls of NACA and NASA.

To add to the accuracy of the film, NASA consulted on the film's script, answering questions and providing photographs, documents and films for the filmmakers. NASA even loaned a few items for use as props in the movie. For example, look out for the painting on the wall of NASA's offices (pictured here over Kevin Costner's shoulder).

That painting was part of a series depicting the history of flight from Icarus to the 20th century, which actually hung on the walls of the real Langley Lab in the NACA days. The paintings were in storage and in need of restoration when they were loaned to the movie and placed on set in Atlanta as a link to the real offices.

The film compresses the sequence of real events to set the story around 1961, when Glenn's first mission took place. "If the film was a documentary, many of the events would have been spread out over the late 1940s through the early 1960s," says Barry. For example, a lot happened in 1958, the year NACA became NASA: Mary Jackson qualified as NASA's first black engineer, Katherine Johnson joined the newly formed Space Task Group, and segregation ended.

In real life, the head of the Space Task Group was a man named Bob Gilruth. Unlike the fictional character played by Kevin Costner, he didn't dramatically take a crowbar to a restroom sign.

"Desegregation of bathroom and dining facilities happened gradually and quietly over the 1950s at Langley lab," explains Barry. Langley lab was a federal facility but was located in Virginia, which had state-mandated segregation. "There was some tension between local and federal 'rules' on this issue," says Barry.

Segregation effectively ended when specialised workers were distributed among offices and facilities instead of being grouped together in pools. The segregated West Computing Unit, which comprised African-American women, was eliminated in the spring of 1958.

Women like Johnson, Jackson and Vaughan blazed the trail for America in space and for black women back on Earth. From the hidden figures of the past to the scientists and engineers of today, you can go to NASA's website to meet the diverse range of extraordinary people with their eyes on the stars.

"Hidden Figures" is in cinemas in the UK this weekend. The Oscars take place on 26 February.

Solving for XX: The industry seeks to overcome outdated ideas about "women in tech."

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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Every geek movie we're excited about in 2017

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'Hidden Figures' and the true NASA stories behind the movie - CNET

On Friday, NASA announced that it Juno spacecraft would remain in its current 53-day orbit of Jupiter for the duration of its mission. The decision is a new setback for the spacecraft, which was scheduled to shift to a shorter, 14 day orbital schedule.

This isns the first time that Juno has run into issues orbiting Jupiter. In October, NASA delayed an orbit around the planet due to a pair of helium check valves not working properly. While the spacecraft has since completed two additional orbits the latest was on February 2nd the missions planners were concerned that another main engine burn could result in a less-than-desirable orbit, explained Rick Nybakken, Juno project manager at NASAs Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

The change means fewer orbits of the planet

Junos 53-day orbit is highly elliptical, taking the spacecraft within 2,600 miles of the atmosphere to five million miles away, which helps the spacecraft minimize its exposure to the planets radiation belts. In a shorter orbit, the spacecraft would have completed 33 orbits. The decision to keep Juno in its present orbit will help reduce the chances of something going wrong, but it also means that Juno will be able to conduct fewer orbits. The next flyby is scheduled to take place on March 27th.

Despite the change, NASA noted that it will be able to do some additional work that wasnt originally planned, such as exploring the planets magnetosphere. The decision to keep Juno in its current orbit will also limit its exposure to Jupiters radiation. This is significant, Scott Bolton, Juno principal investigator from Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio explained, because radiation has been the main life-limiting factor for Juno.

Currently, Juno is scheduled to fly through July 2018 for 12 additional orbits, and mission planners will evaluate extending its life. Once the mission is over, the spacecraft will be de-orbited and will burn up in Jupiters atmosphere to avoid any potential contamination of the Jovian moons.

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NASA's Juno spacecraft will stay in its long orbit for the remainder of its mission - The Verge

Only one presidents name came up during the new Congresss first hearing about NASA this week: John F. Kennedy.

This makes sense. The House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology gathered on Thursday to discuss the past, present, and future of NASA, as the name of the hearing suggested, and no president was more instrumental in shaping that past than Kennedy. There was no surprise when one congressman from Colorado reminded the panelists at the hearing that Kennedy chose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard.

The hearing served as a curtain-raiser for the next steps in U.S. space policy, a way for the political and scientific communities to begin the discussion about where NASA may be headed under the Trump administration and a Republican-controlled Congress. NASA is at a bit of a crossroads, just like the last time someone new moved into the White House, waiting to hear a mission statement from on high. For many Americans, Kennedys words remain the guiding principle for the kind of work the space program should be doing. But NASAs Apollo-era budget accounted for 4.5 percent of the federal budget, while todays budget is less than half a percent. Plus, theres no Cold War driving national pride to make those tax dollars seem worth it.

Lawmakers that handle space policy are aware of this reality. It is very difficult to explore a universe of infinite wonder with a finite budget, Brian Babin, the Republican congressman from Texas who chairs the Space Subcommittee, said Thursday.

But that doesnt stop lawmakers from interrogating NASA folks about when theyre going to get the big stuff done. Many members at the hearing wondered when, exactly, Americans would be flying to Mars. Two congressmen from Colorado held up bumper stickers with photos of the Red Planet and the year 2033 in big letters. One asked whether NASA could shave off a year and make it 2032.

Jim Bridenstine, the Republican from Oklahoma considered to be the frontrunner for the next NASA chief, brought up Chinas recent lunar missions, and said the moon is critically important to the geopolitical position of the United States. There were some half-hearted grumbling about Russia, too. Don Beyer, a Democrat from Virginia, asked the panelists what would happen if the budget for NASAs earth-sciences division were eliminated, which studies climate change, apparently amused that his Republican colleagues hadnt mentioned it.

The paneliststwo Apollo astronauts, a former director of the Goddard Spaceflight Center, and the chief scientist under the Obama administrationall said that NASA could use some more cash. But lawmakers, they said, should also help figure out where they want that cash to go. Trumps advisers are considering a robust human spaceflight program that would return Americans to the moon by 2020, and want NASA to focus less on deep-space exploration and more on cislunar activity. Earlier this week, the acting administrator of NASA announced the agency would look into the possibility of putting a crew on the first flight of the Space Launch System, something it hadnt planned to do until the second flight.

These potential changes mean speeding up timelines and moving around money, potentially draining some departments to nourish others. Tom Young, the former Goddard director, argued that NASA is doing too much with not enough resources. I believe that if we continue on the current course with the multiple paths that were on and the current budget, the committee hearing that will take place 10 years from now will say, What a disappointing decade we had, he said. And that well be negligibly closer to landing humans on Mars than we are today.

NASA stands to get some legislative clarity. Lamar Smith, the Texas Republican who chairs the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, said recently hes hopeful that Congress will pass the NASA Transition Authorization Act in the coming weeks. The bill lays out the agencys long-term goals, and specifically cements human exploration of Mars as a top priority. Congress hasnt passed similar legislation since 2010. That legislation, a compromise between Barack Obama and lawmakers, ended a human-exploration program Obama considered too costly and approved the construction of the Space Launch System that lawmakers said would preserve thousands of jobs.

The proposed bill wouldnt prevent Trump, or future presidents, from deciding to shift NASAs focus. Trumps name did not come up at this weeks hearing, but everyone in that room must be anxiously waiting to hear what he has to say. His policies could reshape NASA for years to come. Who knows what the space-themed bumper stickers of the future will say?

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NASA's Next Frontier Is Washington - The Atlantic

Slide: 1 / of 1. Caption: Kevin Phillips/Getty Images

Its near the end of a long flight. Youve been stuck in the middle seat for hours, elbowed by your neighbors, left starving by an airline that stopped offering meals years ago. At least, you think, its almost over. Until the pilots voice comes through the speakers: Hey folks, things are a bit gummed up on the ground, so were gonna do another loop before touching down. The misery continues.

But not for much longer. This month, the FAA and NASA are running a series of trial flights aimed at making airport arrivals far more efficient. Its just one part of NextGen, the FAAs decades-long, $35 billion overhaul of Americas aging, inefficient air traffic control system. By 2030, the idea is to address each phase of flight, from preflight prep to arrival, introducing modern planning software, digital instead of voice communication, and GPS-based position-reporting over imprecise radar-based tracking.

Today, air traffic controllers use radar data to guide aircraft in to land, talking the pilot through the process. The problem is that because radar data is impreciseand because voice communication between humans introduces delaysgreater spacing between airplanes is necessary, says NASA project manager Leighton Quon. Revamping the system for moreprecise tracking and faster communication should allowfor a smaller safety buffer between airplanes.

This will create more efficient flight patterns, save fuel, and improve on-time arrivals, Quon says. And cut down your time in the middle seat.

The core of the new system is an on-board GPS receiver and data transmitter known as ADS-B, which can broadcast an aircrafts position to other aircraft and ground controllers with far greater precision than radar. The setup, already on many business and private aircraft, will be required on commercial airplanes by 2020, mostly to communicate their positions to nearby aircraft, as a safety measure. Folding in the approach management element, Quon says, is a bonus.

The pilot, instead of chatting with an air traffic controller, will follow automated directions beamed to a so-called electronic flight bag. Thats essentially an iPad with navigational software, which communicates with the airplanes onboard systems and updates the flight crew with confirmations that theyre hitting their scheduled approach parameters (or not). These new tools will help controllers manage the approaches to the extent that excess spacing can be minimized, Quon says.

To test this whole thing out, teams from the FAA and NASA put together what they call ATD-1, for Air Traffic Management Technology Demonstration-1. Theyre flying a Boeing 757, a Honeywell business jet, and a Boeing 737 around Grant County International Airport, about 120 miles east of Seattle. The planes, each carrying the necessary tech, will run simulated approaches, so the folks in charge can see what works, and what needs work.

So far, the tests, which could run through February 28, have been successful, Quon says. The GPS-based technology is handily guiding airplanes in from cruise altitudes at 35,000 feet, all the way through descent, and then to their final approaches. The new way of doing things cant touch down soon enough.

Link:

NASA Tests Plane-Guiding Tech to Shorten Your Next Flight - WIRED