Anytime the topic of space is mentioned my attention is immediately grabbed. I've been fascinated with space exploration, the discovery of new planets, and astronomical events since I was a child. I'm super excited about the total eclipse that is going to occur on August 21.

There is more good news. Google recently announced a new feature that will give everyone a birds-eye view of the International Space Station (ISS).

There is already a way to catch breathtaking live views coming from the ISS. Click here to check out the ISS HD Earth Viewing Experiment. It's a live stream of HD video cameras pointed at Earth from the ISS.

Now, you have the chance to explore the International Space Station itself. Google announced last week that its map imagery tool, Street View, will allow everyone to get an in-depth look inside the ISS.

The feature gives users a 360-degree, panoramic view of everything happening inside the ISS, including activity from astronauts that are onboard.

Watch the following video to catch a glimpse of what to expect:

It took nearly four months for French Astronaut Thomas Pesquet to map the entire ISS for Google. He collected images that were sent back to Earth and used to put together a 360-degree view.

Pesquet said in a statement, "The ISS has technical equipment on all surfaces, with lots of cables and a complicated layout with modules shooting off in all directions--left, right, up, down. And it's a busy place, with six crew members carrying out research and maintenance activities 12 hours a day. There are a lot of obstacles up there, and we had limited time to capture the imagery, so we had to be confident that our approach would work."

Click here to check out images from Street View of the ISS. Once you've clicked our link, click the box that says International Space Station. It's pretty amazing!

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Google Street View now lets you tour the International Space Station - Komando

The city of Alpha in Luc Besson's latest fantasy film, "Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets," shares a few similarities to the existing International Space Station, which is highlighted in the opening scene of the movie.

In the new adventure movie "Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets," directed by Luc Besson, the title city of Alpha has a present-day origin: the International Space Station.

The opening of "Valerian" a film inspired by the popular French comic series "'Valrian et Laureline," created by Pierre Christin and Jean-Claude Mzires has a scene that showcases the International Space Station (ISS) as it grows into a galactic United Nations, hosting meet-and-greets with representatives from Earth and, later, aliens. It grows physically, too, until it is large enough that it needs to be moved out of low-Earth orbit. [Read our full "Valerian" review!]

The fictional metropolis Alpha was inspired by Point City, which was first written about in the sixth volume of the "Valerian and Laureline" graphic novel series, entitled "Ambassador of the Shadows."

The ISS' evolution is a plausible one: The station has a history of bringing cultures together to build itself and to exchange ideas. In "Valerian," the first greeting in the montage takes place in the not-too-distant year 2020, where two human astronauts are shown embracing, and as we advance in time, we see increasingly strange aliens introduce themselves to humans on board the station.

Certainly, the international crews that have continuously occupied the existing ISS since 2000 would have milder reactions to meeting foreign astronauts than hypothetically meeting alien life-forms. However, the ISS was nevertheless groundbreaking in its ability to unite five space agencies to expand scientific research possibilities and to mend older nationalistic divisions. Many of the space programs involved with the station NASA (United States), Roscosmos (Russia), CSA (Canada), JAXA (Japan), ESA (Europe) include countries that have warred with one another in the last century.

This image is a side-by-side view of early space station concepts in fact and fiction. In the decade following these illustrations, the "Valerian and Laureline" comic was written, later inspiring director Luc Besson to create the 2017 "Valerian" film.

Early concepts for the ISS had the space station taking the shape of a giant wheel. Wernher von Braun developed an ISS station concept in 1952 that was round in order to provide simulated gravity through rotation, with a capacity to house dozens of scientists, accordingthis Space.com infographic.

Science-fiction storytellers were clearly inspired by these concepts, and a few years later, in 1968, Stanley Kubrick's film "2001: A Space Odyssey" developed a model for a space station that was in a similar wheel shape. The year before, 1967, the first issue of "Valerian and Laureline" was published by Dargaud, according to "Valerian" film representatives. Point Central, a vast space station that lies at the crossroads of space that inspired Alpha in the film adaptation, appeared a few years later, in the 1975 comic "Valerian Vol 6: Ambassador of the Shadows."

Right now, NASA and U.S. officials have only promised to fund the ISS through 2024, so it's uncertain what the future will hold for the orbiting lab. But as crews from around the world work together to research and live in space, science-fiction writers have inspiration to continue writing tales of the ISS expanding someday into that kind of vibrant metropolis.

Mission specialists Lopez-Alegria and Herrington working on a newly installed Port One (P1) truss on the International Space Station in 2002.

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

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In 'Valerian,' International Space Station Evolves into Interstellar Metropolis - Space.com

Youve used Google Street View to check out a new apartment, map traffic before you hit the road and search for haunting slices of the everyday world.

Now, the comprehensive terrestrial mapping system has gone extraterrestrial, allowing users to peer inside the International Space Stationfrom their computer 248 miles below with 360-degree, panoramic views.

The Street View imagery was captured by Thomas Pesquet, an astronaut with the European Space Agency, who spent six months aboard the ISS before returning to earth in June.

Google Street View, which is featured in Google Maps and Google World, was launched in 2007 and quickly expanded locations around the globe, including places as remote as Mount Everest base campand as offbeat as Scotlands Loch Ness. The vast majority of Street Views photography is shot by a vehicle, whose movement is available to fans online.

[The search for the Loch Ness monster has moved online, thanks to Google]

Googles foray into space is the first time StreetView imagery was captured beyond planet Earth.

In a blog post about his experience, Pesquet wrote that it was difficult to find the words or take a picture that accurately describes the feeling of being in space.

Working with Google on my latest mission, I captured Street View imagery to show what the ISS looks like from the inside, and share what its like to look down on Earth from space, he added.

The virtual tour allows users to peek into areas where astronauts eat, exercise, work and even bathe.

Pesquets imagery reveal an environment that may look a bit cramped and chaotic if not altogether dizzying to humans anchored on earth, but some of the scenes from inside the ISS are downright mesmerizing.

The images were captured using DSLR cameras and then stitched together back on earth to create panoramic views.

Pesquet noted that the ISS is a busy place with six crew members working and researching 12 hours a day.

There are a lot of obstacles up there, and we had limited time to capture the imagery, so we had to be confident that our approach would work. Oh, and theres that whole zero gravity thing, he wrote.

Floating through the ISS online, youll notice clickable dots with detailed descriptions of the space and its objects to help viewers understand what theyre looking at. Pesquet noted that this is the first time annotations helpful little notes that pop up as you explore the ISS have been added to Street View imagery.

The ISS is a large spacecraft that orbits around Earth at more than 17,500 miles per hour and is home for astronauts from around the world, according to NASA. The ISS is made up of many pieces that were constructed by astronauts beginning in 1998. By 2000, as more pieces of the station were added, the station was ready for people, according to NASA. Portions of the station are connected via modules known as nodes, according to NASA.

The first crew arrived on November 2, 2000, NASA wrote. People have lived on the space station ever since. Over time more pieces have been added. NASA and its partners around the world finished the space station in 2011.

NASA compares the inside of the station to the inside of a house, noting that the structure which weighs almost one million pounds and covers an area the side of a football field has five bedrooms, two bathrooms, a gymnasium and a big bay window.

The station houses labs from the United States, Russia, Japan and Europe.

We can collect data on the Earths oceans, atmosphere, and land surface, Pesquet wrote. We can conduct experiments and studies that we wouldnt be able to do from Earth, like monitoring how the human body reacts to microgravity, solving mysteries of the immune system, studying cyclones to alert populations and governments when a storm is approaching, or monitoring marine litter the rapidly increasing amount waste found in our oceans.

Several times a week, Mission Control at NASAs Johnson Space Center in Houston determines where Earthlings can spot the station from the ground below from thousands of locations all over the globe. To find out the best time to see the station from your town, click here.

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Google Street View's latest destination: The International Space Station - Washington Post

NEW DELHI: Ever wondered what the inside of a spaceship looks like? Google will now let people navigate through the International Space Station (ISS) on Google Maps through Street View.

Thomas Pesquet, an astronaut at the European Space Agency (ESA), spent six months at the ISS and captured the Street View imagery in zero gravity, Google said in a statement.

The images will now be available to public to help them discover and explore the experience of being in a spaceship.

The first-of-its-kind initiative by Google and ESA showcases images of the interiors of the ISS and allows users to experience how looking down on Earth from outer space would feel like.

The Street View imagery is also supported with handy little dots. When users click on these, a small note pops up with additional information or fun facts.

"I am very enthusiastic about bringing street view aboard ISS. It will be a fantastic opportunity for everyone to experience the incredible feeling of being in space," Pesquet said.

He added that he hoped that the ISS on Google Maps Street View would change viewers' perspective of the world.

The Street View team worked with NASA at the Johnson Space Centre in Houston, US and Marshall Space Flight Centre in Alabama to design a gravity-free method of collecting the imagery using DSLR cameras and equipment already on the ISS.

The still photos collected from the ISS were then sent down to Earth where they were stitched together to create panoramic 360 degree imagery of the ISS, Google said.

For over 16 years, astronauts have been working and living on the ISS, a structure which is made up of 15 connected modules and floats 250 miles above the Earth.

It acts as a base for space explorations -- possible future missions to the Moon, Mars and asteroids.

ISS also acts as a reservoir that collects data on the Earth's oceans, atmosphere, and land surface. It can be used to conduct experiments and studies that would not be able to do from Earth, like monitoring how the human body reacts to microgravity and studying cyclones in order to alert the population and governments.

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You can now navigate through the International Space Station and get a view of the Earth from outer space on Google ... - Economic Times

Fly me to the moon, let me play among the stars, students sang in a large Campbell Middle School classroom as they tucked away their workbooks and laptops.

They werent rehearsing to form a Frank Sinatra tribute band. Crooning the tune is the celestial motivation for a group of roughly a dozen students hoping to get their lines of code to the International Space Station this summer.

The Zero Robotics program at Campbell Middle aims to take students work to the moon and beyond, all while teaching students about space exploration, computer science and coding.

The five-week summer program is an offshoot of a national high school program and competition provided through a partnership between MIT Space Systems Lab, the Innovation learning Center and Aurora Flight Sciences. It is sponsored by NASA, the Center for the Advancement of Science in Space and the Northrup Grumman Foundation.

The program sees students learn about efficient use of fuel and how to write specific lines of code. Once theyve had enough practice on and off the computer, students write and send the best line of code to the competition in their respective state. There are nine other teams in California competing.

Students must complete objectives, such as navigating around obstacles, docking to other satellites or going in a particular direction, all while conserving the most amount of fuel possible.

Winning teams will get their code uploaded to the International Space Station and watch via a live feed as small robots aboard the space station follow their program. The robots are similar to the ones students work with in the program back on Earth.

Students participate in a game to program movements for synchronized, position, hold, engage, reorient, experimental satellites, or SPHERES for short.

I thought the SPHERES would be shaped like the Earth, but they are shaped like a 3D octagon, said sixth-grade student Tamba Bangurah.

This is the first year students from the Campbell Union School District have participated. Summer camp program coordinator Tanner Marcoida said he had been planting the seed among some students toward the end of the school year to generate interest in participating.

If we have the best code out of our region, then our code will be uploaded to the space station and we will get to see the SPHERES, the actual robots that are on the space station in zero gravity, he said. We actually get to see them play out the game that they have been coding this entire time. Thats quite the treat for hard work.

Documenting the middle school students feat is a film crew from National Geographic.

Marcoida and his students have had Thomas Verrettes film crew follow their daily lessons and games and it will stick around until the final winner is announced.

I didnt know what school I would be in at the time, what students Id be following and the educators, Verrette said. I used the orientation as that resource. I watched how all the educators responded to the program and interviewed quite a few of them and then decided on Campbell.

After deciding Marcoida and his students would be an interesting group to film, he showed up the second day of camp with cameras to get the students used to the crew and having cameras in the room.

The kids are great, Verrette said. Every once in awhile theyll smile and laugh because they forget that were there. In some ways they are a lot easier to deal with than adults when youre trying to document something.

Verrette said he hopes when the documentary is complete and released, people have a newfound respect for science.

As for a release date, Verrette said that is to be determined.

For more information about Zero Robotics, visit zerorobotics.mit.edu.

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Summer program aims to send students' coding projects to space - The Mercury News

A gravity-free Google Street View has landedon the International Space Station (ISS).

Related: Google grant seeks to curb gun violence in 10 U.S. cities

The search engine on Thursday announced that anyone can now see inside the ISS using its popular map tool, Street View. Launched in 2007, the technology feature in Google Maps and Google Earth provides 360-degree views from different positionspreviously limited to streets aroundthe world. For the first time ever, Google has extended the feature into outer space.

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Earth is seen behind the International Space Station from Space Shuttle Discovery as the two spacecraft begin their relative separation in this NASA handout photo taken on September 8, 2009. Google Street View on Thursday landed on the ISS. NASA/Handout/Reuters

Users can poke through 15 parts of the ISS. Tiny dots within the images allow users to launch notes that explain specific functions. In the Pirs, Docking Compartment 1, for example, clicking on the description for the Orlan Spacesuitexplains that the accessory is designed to protect an Extravehicular Activity crewmember from the vacuum of space, ionizing radiation, solar energy and micrometeoroids.

The ISS is a large spacecraft and science lab that orbits around the Earth. It houses astronauts from around the world and acts as a base for space exploration, with possible future missions to the moon, Mars and asteroids. The station is made of many parts, also called modules,the first of which was launched by a Russian rocket in 1998. The first crew arrived on November 2, 2000, and NASA and its international partners finished the stationin 2011.

As Google users now can see, the space station is as big inside as a house with five bedrooms. It has two bathrooms, a gymnasium and a big bay window. Six people are able to live there. It weighs almost a million pounds and is big enough to cover a football field that includes the end zones.

Thomas Pesquet, an astronaut at the European Space Agency, spent six months aboard the ISS as a flight engineer and captured Street View imagery to share what it looks like from the inside, and what its like to look down on Earth from outer space. Looking at Earth from above made me think about my own world a little differently, and I hope that the ISS on Street View changes your view of the world too, he wrote Thursday in a blog post.

Modules called nodes connect parts of the station to each other. The ISShas science labs from the United States, Russia, Japan and Europe, where astronauts learn about living and working in space. From Earth, the ISS often can be seen with the naked eye. The ISS is one of the first steps in NASAs plan to send humans deeper into space than ever before.

Googles milestone comes 48 years after the first manned mission landed on the moon.

See original here:

Tour the International Space Station With Google Street View - Newsweek

WANT to spot the International Space Station over Bundy?

With no clouds forecast for the next few days comes the chance to see the International Space Station fly over in the early evenings.

Bundy stargazers should be able to get a good view of the Space Station on the following days:

From 6.04pm for six minutes, max height 69 degrees, appears 10 degrees above SW.

From 6pm for one minute, max height 17 degrees, appears 17 degrees above NNW.

From 5.25am for one minute, max height 15 degrees, appears 10 degrees above NNE.

From 6.08am for two minutes, max height 54 degrees, appears 11 degrees above NNW.

From 5.16am for six minutes, max height 54 degrees, appears 11 degrees above NNW.

From 4.27am for one minute, max height 19 degrees, appears 10 degrees above W.

From 5.11am for three minutes, max height 39 degrees, appears 39 degrees above SW.

It will likely appear as a bright light moving quickly across the sky, as the space station flies at approximately 29,000 kmh.

The International Space Station is a large spacecraft that orbits around Earth and astronauts live on it.

The space station is also a science lab and many countries have worked together to build it.

They also work together to use it.

The space station is made of many pieces.

The pieces were put together in space by astronauts.

NASA uses the station to learn about living and working in space.

These lessons help NASA explore space.

Read more:

When and where to see the space station over Bundy - Bundaberg News Mail

Instead, thrust comes from an internal fan and steering is through three reaction wheels the latter classic satellite technology.

Inside is one of two exquisitely-engineered (see this and this video) self-contained 3d inertial orientation control modules both aimed at general-purpose use in space-craft, drones and even as self-propelled rolling cube ground robots.

The 100mm cube weighs 1.34 kg including a wireless communicator and a battery and includes six MEMS inertial sensors and three brushless DC motors driving three orthogonal rotating wheels as reaction masses (see image).

The sensors are mounted on the modules vertexes to improve attitude estimation accuracy, Hall sensors in the motors also feed-back rotational speed and each wheel has an electromagnetic brake. The brakes can generate 2.1Nm of torque, reducing wheel speed from 6000rpm to zero within 100ms, including demagnetization time.

Also in the module is a wireless tranceiver for telemetry and commands, and the lithium polymer battery.

A smaller inertial unit has 31mm reaction wheels and squeezes these, a guidance control computer and 6-axes of inertial sensing inside a 50g mass budget. Exploration of microgravity asteroids is a potential use for this one, said JAXA.

A video describing both of the inertial steering modules can be viewed here

Int-Ball, short for JEM Internal Ball Camera, was delivered to the Kibo Japanese Experiment Module by a Dragon spacecraft in early June.

Many of its parts were 3d-printed.

See the article here:

Inertia steers Int-Ball drone through International Space Station - Electronics Weekly

Footage from the ISS livestream, uploaded to YouTube, shows a massive hazy object come into view in the background away from the space station.

Commentators have described it as first appearing as a line of orange lights, before it begins to take on a larger form.

As the clip comes to the end, the lights appear to dim back into space.

The video was released by brothers Blake and Brett Cousins who run YouTube channel thirdphaseofmoon yesterday.

The pair showed an interview with a UFO expert in an effort to identify the mysterious anomaly.

Nasa*YouTube

In the video the expert says: "First, what I was looking at is I dont know exactly what I was looking at.

In the very beginning, you see these orange dots around it and by the end of it the entire thing almost shrinks up a little bit.

Almost as if its a giant mothership for all we know.

There have already been more than 40,000 views of the video.

One viewer said: Looks like the Battlestar Galactica just jumped into orbit.

NASA

1 of 14

ISS Nasa live cam cuts after 'suddenly locking on to mystery glowing UFO'

In the very beginning, you see these orange dots around it and by the end of it the entire thing almost shrinks up a little bit. Almost as if its a giant mothership for all we know.

UFO expert

Another said: Its an interstellar mother ship, watching what NASA is doing, as NASA have lied since the first encounter with UFO.

But a sceptical third said: To me it looks like the ISS filmed a storm in the upper atmosphere.

Thirdphaseofmoon has made it onto a number of UFO website and YouTube channel blacklists by more sceptical investigators, amid claims they use hoax and misrepresented footage.

The brothers deny this and claim to be legitimate researchers.

UFO chasers have reported seeing scores of UFOs on the livestream this year but they have turned out to be nothing more than ice, space debris, or lens flares which is when light refracts inside the camera lens and then is projected on to the still or video image.

Express.co.uk showed the video to Scott Brando, who runs debunking website ufoofinterest.org, who said it was just reflected light coming from the ISS itself, so there was no UFO and nothing was actually there.

Follow this link:

UFO LATEST: Truth about 'alien mothership' filmed 'tracking ... - Express.co.uk

National Institutes of Health (press release)

Space station project seeks to crystalize the means to counteract nerve poisons National Institutes of Health (press release) In June of this year, samples of the human AChE enzyme were sent to the International Space Station U.S. Laboratory by a team of CounterACT scientists led by Andrey Kovalevsky, Ph.D., Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and Zoran ... Space station crystals to aid search for better antidotes for chemical ...UPI.com all 3 news articles »

Originally posted here:

Space station project seeks to crystalize the means to counteract nerve poisons - National Institutes of Health (press release)

The microgravity conditions of the International Space Station (ISS) may hold the key to improving our understanding of how to combat toxic nerve agents such as sarin and VX. That is the hope of Countermeasures Against Chemical Threats (CounterACT) project that is part of an initiative at the National Institutes of Health aimed at developing improved antidotes for chemical agents.

"With increasing worldwide concern about the use of chemical weapons, there is significant interest in developing better counteragents," said David A. Jett, Ph.D., director of the CounterACT program, National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS), a part of NIH.

Organophosphates (OPs), a family of chemicals that includes several pesticides as well as sarin and VX nerve agents, block the activity of the enzyme acetylcholinesterase (AChE). This enzyme is critical for allowing muscles to relax after they have been stimulated by the nervous system. When the activity of AChE is blocked (for example, by OPs), muscles cannot relax, leading to paralysis and eventually death.

Developing antidotes to this type of poisoning requires detailed knowledge about the structure of the AChE enzyme. Until now, the forces of gravity on Earth have posed a challenge to this area of research. That's where traveling into space comes in.

In June of this year, samples of the human AChE enzyme were sent to the International Space Station U.S. Laboratory by a team of CounterACT scientists led by Andrey Kovalevsky, Ph.D., Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and Zoran Radic, Ph.D., University of California, San Diego. Using these samples, astronauts are currently growing large crystals of pure enzyme of a size that cannot be formed on Earth due to interference from gravity.

"By taking advantage of the microgravity conditions of the International Space Station, we hope to grow better, more uniform crystals that we are unable to grow on Earth," said Dr. Kovalevsky.

Once the crystals are grown to a large enough size, they will be returned to Earth and analyzed by a sophisticated imaging method called neutron diffraction that can provide an atomic-level view of the enzyme.

"Using this technique, we will be able to get a closer look at how the enzyme interacts with pesticides and nerve agents and learn about how the bond between the two can be chemically reversed," said Dr. Radic. "This method would not work on the smaller enzyme crystals that can be grown here."

Antidotes to OP exposure reactivate AChE by directly breaking its chemical bond with the OP. However, the speed at which the countermeasures available today are able to do this is too slow to be fully effective. This project will help researchers to develop antidotes that break the AChE-OP bond more quickly and that can also be delivered orally, which is another key to dealing with large-scale exposure to nerve poisons.

"Developing better countermeasures against these sorts of nerve agents is a major thrust of our overall program," said Dr. Jett. "This project is the kind of cutting-edge science we envisioned when we established the CounterACT program."

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Space station project seeks to crystallize the means to counteract nerve poisons - Space Daily

An adorable little robotic camera drone with wide illuminated eyes and a perpetually surprised expression has joined the crew of the International Space Station.

Known as Int-Ball, the bot can be controlled remotely by researchers on the ground, allowing them to capture images and video from aboard the artificial satellite.

Int-Ball contains actuators, rotational and acceleration sensors and electromagnetic brakes, which allow it to move around autonomously in zero gravity.

Developed by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), it was delivered to the ISS on 4 June 2017, and has already started feeding photos and video back to Earth.

JAXA claims that Int-Ball could eventually replace the need for astronauts to capture photos and record video aboard the ISS - tasks that currently take up about 10% of their time.

It could also enable more cooperative work between astronauts and researchers, as those on the ground would be able to see things from the same perspective as the crew.

During its time on the ISS, JAXA will be take part in experiments both inside and outside the space station, in order to test and improve its performance.

JAXA hopes that it will also help to promote the use of robotics technology in future space exploration missions.

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Cute zero-gravity robot is newest member of the International Space Station crew - Mirror.co.uk

Now anyone can see Europe from an astronaut's point of view with this epic video shot from the International Space Station.

Captured with a 4K ultra-high-definition camera, the video shows a crystal-clear view of Europe, starting with Spain and flying east all the way to Budapest, Hungary. In the time it took to shoot this video clip a little over 3 minutes the space station traveled nearly 1,000 miles (1,600 kilometers). [Earth from Space: Amazing Astronaut Photos]

The space station orbits about 250 miles (400 km) above Earth, and it captures the view down below with several onboard cameras. Traveling at about 17,500 mph (28,000 km/h) relative to the ground, it whizzes around the globe every 92 minutes. But the view is not the same every 92 minutes, because the space station's flight pathshifts slightly with each orbit.

Astronauts aboard the International Space Station capture views of Zadar, Croatia; Vienna; Munich; and Salzburg, Austria.

The footage was recorded in August 2016, and NASA's Johnson Space Center, which oversees activities on the space station, released the video Monday (July 17). The groovy background music was produced by Swedish composer Joakim Karud.

Editor's note:Space.com senior producerSteve Spaletacontributed to this report.

Email Hanneke Weitering at hweitering@space.com or follow her@hannekescience. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebookand Google+. Original article on Space.com.

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See Europe from Above in Breathtaking Ultra-HD Video from Space - Space.com

Space watchers have seen footballs, mini-soccer balls and water balls float through the International Space Station but never a drone ball. Now, new footage of a spherical Japanese robot shows it hovering and skittering around the Destiny laboratory.

The hope is that the robot will not only save the crewmembers time today, but could also improve robotic-human cooperation in future space expeditions, according to a statement from the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA).

"Int-Ball," as the drone is called, would add to a growing legacy of robot "helpers" in space, including NASA's Robonaut 2 (which can throw switches and may eventually do simple spacewalk tasks) and the adorable, talking Japanese Kirobo, which made small talk with astronaut Koichi Wakata in 2013.

The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency's JEM Internal Ball Camera, called Int-Ball, can record video in space while remote controlled from the ground.

Videos show Int-Ball, under the watchful eye of NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson, moving near the walls, taking pictures of experiments and other regions in its vicinity. One shot shows a laptop lazily floating by. In another clip, Peggy Whitson's fellow NASA astronaut Jack Fischer playfully hides behind a camera, taking pictures of the drone.

If the drone works out as planned, it could reduce or eliminate the time astronauts spend taking pictures, an activity that takes up about 10 percent of their working hours right now, JAXA officials said in the statement.

NASA astronauts Peggy Whitson and Jack Fischer work on the International Space Station as Int-Ball observes, above.

It also would let teams on the ground, where Int-Ball is controlled, look at the crew's work from the drone's viewpoint, JAXA added. "The effective cooperative work between in-space and on-the-ground [teams] will contribute to maximized results of 'Kibo' utilization experiments," the agency said, referring to the Japanese experiment module on the space station.

Int-Ball launched aboard SpaceX's Dragon spacecraft on the CRS-11 resupply mission June 3 and arrived at the space station June 5. It's now in testing to ensure that its images and video are recording information as planned, under control from the JAXA Tsukuba Space Center.

JAXA added that Int-Ball's camera which appears to be located between two "eyes" on the robot uses technology that has already been tested on past drones. The ball's exterior and interior were fully 3D-printed on the ground.

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

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BB-8 Flies? Adorable Japanese Drone Ball Tours Space Station - Space.com

An analysis by John Bucknell (x-Spacex senior engineer) describes an 11 meter diameter robotic vehicle with a 6,000-megawatt nuclear thermal rocket in a NTTR arrangement. The rocket would be single stage to orbit and would be immediately be able to refly after landing and refueling much like todays airliners. Even fully reusable Spacex rockets where all stages are resused would need to be re-assembled.

He describes SSTOH missions to place a 21 meter minor and 214 meter major diameter toroidal habitat in space, capable of full terrestrial gravity simulation by spinning at 3 rpm. The habitat begins as two thin films defining the interior and exterior surfaces of the torus, which is then inflated with lunar-sourced water in a 1m thick shell and allowed to freeze.

Access to space is driven by the economics of launch vehicles. A previously published rocket propulsion cycle called the Nuclear Thermal Turbo Rocket (NTTR) is able to achieve payload fractions of more than 45% to Low Earth Orbit (LEO). This rocket is intended to be completely reusable for the launch mission as it is a Single Stage to Orbit (SSTO) vehicle, which improves economics vastly. However, providing material to LEO is not always the most economical solution for permanent space-based habitation. In-situ resource utilization (ISRU) has been proposed as a method for avoiding the Earths gravity well for space-based construction with solutions proposed using Lunar, Martian as well as other resources.

The Air enhanced nuclear thermal rocket has been described a couple at times at Nextbigfuture.

The proposed space station would be close to the size of Titanic but the space station would consist of mostly water ice

Water ice can be used as both reaction mass for propellant in liquid form and as structure in solid form. Nuclear Thermal rockets in particular are well-suited to in-space propulsion as they can add enthalpy to a variety of propellants for thrust without requiring processing plants to achieve chemically active reactants, thus saving on mission payload mass. A mission is proposed that leverages the NTTR vehicle as well as ISRU to construct an orbital habitat of Lunar water ice with a single terrestrial launch (Single Stage to Orbital Habitat SSTOH).

The lunar water ice is extracted from permanently shadowed regolith on the Lunar south pole, where the NTTR vehicle propulsively lands and places 54 tons of payload. The lunar payload is comprised of a small 30 MWth nuclear reactor and associated mechanisms able to extract sub-surface ice.

NOTE NASA will soon officially confirm that there is surface water ice at the lunar pole. The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter did find evidence of frost on the moon earlier in the year, but there is a NASA paper that will be released soon that will confirm surface water ice.

The NTTR vehicle fills its propellant tank with 720 tons of lunar water, and using the water as a propellant delivers 400 tons of water to the habitat in LLO before returning to the Lunar water extraction plant. The reusable NTTR vehicle makes 100 trips to inflate the 40,000-ton habitat, with approximately one trip per 24 hours. Subsequently, the lunar water extraction reactor can be transported to the habitat as a power supply and the NTTR vehicle can push the habitat to a Lagrange point.

The 40,000 ton habitat would be just short of the max cargo of a Panamax container ship. The ISS weighs 450 tons.

In such a fashion, a single vehicle of low investment can produce a 199,000m^3 habitat within 5 months of launch.

In 2015, Bucknell presented the Nuclear Thermal Turbo rocket which added air-breathing to a nuclear thermal rocket. Bucknell design would have 1664 ISP. 60% more than the best prior nuclear thermal rocket designs.

Link:

Plan for a mostly water ice space station 90 times bigger than the ISS - Next Big Future

An air lock designed by Webster-based NanoRacks for the International Space Station passed an astronaut training exercise at Johnson Space Center's Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory.

Continue for a look inside the NanoRacks office.

Continue for a look inside the

Mechanical engineer Cody Burgey inspects a deep-freeze contraption at NanoRacks in Webster.

Mechanical engineer Cody Burgey inspects a deep-freeze contraption at NanoRacks in Webster.

Operations engineer Jerry Mathew interprets data at NanoRacks in Webster.

Operations engineer Jerry Mathew interprets data at NanoRacks in Webster.

November 11 2016: Mariel Rico, operations engineer, describes how cubes holding student experiments collect data at NanoRacks in Webster, Texas. (Leslie Plaza Johnson/Freelance)

November 11 2016: Mariel Rico, operations engineer, describes how cubes holding student experiments collect data at NanoRacks in Webster, Texas. (Leslie Plaza Johnson/Freelance)

November 11 2016: Kyle Warner, operations engineer demonstrates the location and placement of a payload system at NanoRacks in Webster, Texas. (Leslie Plaza Johnson/Freelance)

November 11 2016: Kyle Warner, operations engineer demonstrates the location and placement of a payload system at NanoRacks in Webster, Texas. (Leslie Plaza Johnson/Freelance)

November 11 2016: Keith Tran, Manager of Flight Operations demonstrates the mechanics of a mockup at NanoRacks in Webster, Texas. (Leslie Plaza Johnson/Freelance)

November 11 2016: Keith Tran, Manager of Flight Operations demonstrates the mechanics of a mockup at NanoRacks in Webster, Texas. (Leslie Plaza Johnson/Freelance)

November 11 2016: Cubes such as the plexiglass version pictured here contain student-generated experiments at NanoRacks in Webster, Texas. (Leslie Plaza Johnson/Freelance)

November 11 2016: Cubes such as the plexiglass version pictured here contain student-generated experiments at NanoRacks in Webster, Texas. (Leslie Plaza Johnson/Freelance)

November 11 2016: Jerry Mathew, operations engineer describes the function of a section of payload equipment at NanoRacks in Webster, Texas. (Leslie Plaza Johnson/Freelance)

November 11 2016: Jerry Mathew, operations engineer describes the function of a section of payload equipment at NanoRacks in Webster, Texas. (Leslie Plaza Johnson/Freelance)

November 11 2016: Doug Wilson, operations manager holds up a mockup part at NanoRacks in Webster, Texas. (Leslie Plaza Johnson/Freelance)

November 11 2016: Doug Wilson, operations manager holds up a mockup part at NanoRacks in Webster, Texas. (Leslie Plaza Johnson/Freelance)

November 11 2016: The robotic arm is one of many design projects underway at NanoRacks in Webster, Texas. (Leslie Plaza Johnson/Freelance)

November 11 2016: The robotic arm is one of many design projects underway at NanoRacks in Webster, Texas. (Leslie Plaza Johnson/Freelance)

November 11 2016: Keith Tran, Manager of Flight Operations and Jerry Mathew, operations manager discuss one of the ongoing projects at NanoRacks in Webster, Texas. (Leslie Plaza Johnson/Freelance)

November 11 2016: Keith Tran, Manager of Flight Operations and Jerry Mathew, operations manager discuss one of the ongoing projects at NanoRacks in Webster, Texas. (Leslie Plaza Johnson/Freelance)

November 11 2016: Marcia Blount, Director of Houston Operations handles a plexiglass cube used by students to conduct experiments at NanoRacks in Webster, Texas. (Leslie Plaza Johnson/Freelance)

November 11 2016: Marcia Blount, Director of Houston Operations handles a plexiglass cube used by students to conduct experiments at NanoRacks in Webster, Texas. (Leslie Plaza Johnson/Freelance)

November 11 2016: Marcia Blount, Director of Houston Operations handles an integral part of a design at NanoRacks in Webster, Texas. (Leslie Plaza Johnson/Freelance)

November 11 2016: Marcia Blount, Director of Houston Operations handles an integral part of a design at NanoRacks in Webster, Texas. (Leslie Plaza Johnson/Freelance)

November 11 2016: Keith Tran, Manager of Flight Operations demonstrates the mechanics of a mockup at NanoRacks in Webster, Texas. (Leslie Plaza Johnson/Freelance)

November 11 2016: Keith Tran, Manager of Flight Operations demonstrates the mechanics of a mockup at NanoRacks in Webster, Texas. (Leslie Plaza Johnson/Freelance)

November 11 2016: Daniel Acevedo, engineering technician works on a 3-D printer at NanoRacks in Webster, Texas. (Leslie Plaza Johnson/Freelance)

November 11 2016: Daniel Acevedo, engineering technician works on a 3-D printer at NanoRacks in Webster, Texas. (Leslie Plaza Johnson/Freelance)

November 11 2016: Keith Tran, Manager of Flight Operations and Doug Wilson, operations engineer describe the function of a mockup section at NanoRacks in Webster, Texas. (Leslie Plaza Johnson/Freelance)

November 11 2016: Keith Tran, Manager of Flight Operations and Doug Wilson, operations engineer describe the function of a mockup section at NanoRacks in Webster, Texas. (Leslie Plaza Johnson/Freelance)

November 11 2016: Cody Burgey, mechanical engineer and Keith Tran, Manager of Flight Operations assemble a mockup at NanoRacks in Webster, Texas. (Leslie Plaza Johnson/Freelance)

November 11 2016: Cody Burgey, mechanical engineer and Keith Tran, Manager of Flight Operations assemble a mockup at NanoRacks in Webster, Texas. (Leslie Plaza Johnson/Freelance)

November 11 2016: Jerry Mathew, operations engineer simulates the grasping capabilities of the robotic arm at NanoRacks in Webster, Texas. (Leslie Plaza Johnson/Freelance)

November 11 2016: Jerry Mathew, operations engineer simulates the grasping capabilities of the robotic arm at NanoRacks in Webster, Texas. (Leslie Plaza Johnson/Freelance)

November 11 2016: Keith Tran, Manager of Flight Operations explains one of the many ongoing projects at NanoRacks in Webster, Texas. (Leslie Plaza Johnson/Freelance)

November 11 2016: Keith Tran, Manager of Flight Operations explains one of the many ongoing projects at NanoRacks in Webster, Texas. (Leslie Plaza Johnson/Freelance)

November 11 2016: Cody Burgey, mechanical engineer, assembles a mockup at NanoRacks in Webster, Texas. (Leslie Plaza Johnson/Freelance)

November 11 2016: Cody Burgey, mechanical engineer, assembles a mockup at NanoRacks in Webster, Texas. (Leslie Plaza Johnson/Freelance)

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Webster company's air lock passes training exercise at Johnson Space Center - Chron.com

You, a lone Soviet cosmonaut, are sent to investigate a communications blackout on a space station. When you arrive the place is falling apart, the crew is missing, and its up to you to find out what happened to the station and the workers aboard it. Set in the 80s, Outreach fuses real-world history with conspiracy theories. The environments are realistic, modeled on Russias famous Mir space station, meaning theres no technology that didnt exist at the time. Developer Pixel Spill spent months researching the era, and it shows. Everything from computer consoles to clothing has a feel of authenticity. Its like stepping back in time.

And this realism extends to the way you navigate the station, with zero gravity to deal with. You can push against scenery to propel your body forward, or grab railings to pull yourself along. Its slightly headspinning at first, and adjusting to the fact that theres no up or down takes some getting used to. But when you master it, floating around is a lot of fun. And when you realise that you can grab objects, throw them, and watch them spin through the air realistically, the story will take a temporary backseat as you experiment and play around with the physics. The zero-gravity movement feels just right, which is the result of a lot of painstaking tweaking and adjusting by Pixel Spill.

Theres something wonderfully eerie about the lifeless station. Abandoned space stations are nothing new in games, but the realism element in Outreach makes it feel unique. The chunky tech is reminiscent of Alien: Isolation, which Pixel Spill cites as a big influence on the art design. I drift through the station discovering remnants of the mysteriously missing crew: conversations recorded on cassette tapes, letters, and family photos. I methodically check each and every module for clues, but find nothing. Then I reach a door with a broken handle, meaning Im going to have to go for a spacewalk to reach the next area.

When I step outside into the expanse of space, the size of the Earth below makes me feel dizzy. The sense of scale is incredible. And while I felt relatively safe in the confines of the station, out here Im suddenly overwhelmed by dread. A sensation thats justified when I try and leap towards a handrail, only to miss, float helplessly away and die horribly in the depths of space.

This section is remarkably tense, requiring patience, timing, and concentration to carefully grab each rail and pull yourself to a distant airlock. You have to hit the grab button at precisely the right time, otherwise youll overshoot the rail and drift away from the station with no way to make your way back. I make it eventually, but I die several times in the process. Then, cruelly, the demo ends, and I dont get to see whats inside.

Outreach is fascinating, but my demo leaves me none the wiser about what kind of story itll tell. Will it be a psychological thriller? Or is there something supernatural going on aboard the station? Im looking forward to finding out in the finished game. Pixel Spill promises players will discover the lives and motivations of the crew and learn about something called Project Outreach, which sounds suitably sinister.

The developer also says that youll uncover the true nature of the space station as you explore it, which is filling my head with questions. Im told the game will be a relatively short experiencemaybe three or four hours, the length of a long movieand Im okay with that. Short, focused, well-told stories are fast becoming one of my favourite kinds of game on PC, and I hope Outreach is one that delivers

See the article here:

Exploring an abandoned Soviet space station in Outreach - PC Gamer

July 17, 2017 Samples of human AChE enzyme travel to the International Space Station aboard the SpaceX-11 Dragon capsule. Credit: NASA

The microgravity conditions of the International Space Station (ISS) may hold the key to improving our understanding of how to combat toxic nerve agents such as sarin and VX. That is the hope of Countermeasures Against Chemical Threats (CounterACT) project that is part of an initiative at the National Institutes of Health aimed at developing improved antidotes for chemical agents.

"With increasing worldwide concern about the use of chemical weapons, there is significant interest in developing better counteragents," said David A. Jett, Ph.D., director of the CounterACT program, National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS), a part of NIH.

Organophosphates (OPs), a family of chemicals that includes several pesticides as well as sarin and VX nerve agents, block the activity of the enzyme acetylcholinesterase (AChE). This enzyme is critical for allowing muscles to relax after they have been stimulated by the nervous system. When the activity of AChE is blocked (for example, by OPs), muscles cannot relax, leading to paralysis and eventually death.

Developing antidotes to this type of poisoning requires detailed knowledge about the structure of the AChE enzyme. Until now, the forces of gravity on Earth have posed a challenge to this area of research. That's where traveling into space comes in.

In June of this year, samples of the human AChE enzyme were sent to the International Space Station U.S. Laboratory by a team of CounterACT scientists led by Andrey Kovalevsky, Ph.D., Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and Zoran Radic, Ph.D., University of California, San Diego. Using these samples, astronauts are currently growing large crystals of pure enzyme of a size that cannot be formed on Earth due to interference from gravity.

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"By taking advantage of the microgravity conditions of the International Space Station, we hope to grow better, more uniform crystals that we are unable to grow on Earth," said Dr. Kovalevsky.

Once the crystals are grown to a large enough size, they will be returned to Earth and analyzed by a sophisticated imaging method called neutron diffraction that can provide an atomic-level view of the enzyme.

"Using this technique, we will be able to get a closer look at how the enzyme interacts with pesticides and nerve agents and learn about how the bond between the two can be chemically reversed," said Dr. Radic. "This method would not work on the smaller enzyme crystals that can be grown here."

Antidotes to OP exposure reactivate AChE by directly breaking its chemical bond with the OP. However, the speed at which the countermeasures available today are able to do this is too slow to be fully effective. This project will help researchers to develop antidotes that break the AChE-OP bond more quickly and that can also be delivered orally, which is another key to dealing with large-scale exposure to nerve poisons.

"Developing better countermeasures against these sorts of nerve agents is a major thrust of our overall program," said Dr. Jett. "This project is the kind of cutting-edge science we envisioned when we established the CounterACT program."

Explore further: OSU chemist developing solution to nerve agent exposure

Scientists are working to develop a new drug that will regenerate a critical enzyme in the human body that "ages" after a person is exposed to deadly chemical warfare agents.

The substance that could be responsible for the death Kim Jong-nam, the half-brother of the North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, was the VX nerve agent, according to preliminary reports from Malaysian police.

Nerve agents are molecular weapons that invade the body and sabotage part of the nervous system, causing horrific symptoms and sometimes death within minutes. Few antidotes exist, and those that do must be administered soon ...

A chemical weapons attack that killed more than 80 people, including children, triggered the Trump administration's recent missile strikes against the Syrian government. The use of illegal nerve agents apparently by the ...

Researchers at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, are a step closer to creating a prophylactic drug that would neutralize the deadly effects of the chemical weapons used in Syria and elsewhere.

America's war on terror includes fighting the dark side of deadly chemical agents, and Texas A&M University chemist Dr. Frank Raushel is helping with the fight by developing an enzyme that might neutralize one such chemical ...

(Phys.org)An international team of astronomers has performed detailed measurements of the chemical composition of 158 red giant stars in the nearby Sagittarius dwarf galaxy. The study, presented in a paper published July ...

(Phys.org)A pair of researchers with Aberystwyth University in the U.K. has used data from NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory to learn more about how the sun's corona behaves over differing stages of its 11-year cycle. ...

Space is not empty, nor is it silent. While technically a vacuum, space nonetheless contains energetic charged particles, governed by magnetic and electric fields, and it behaves unlike anything we experience on Earth. In ...

NASA's new Neutron star Interior Composition Explorer (NICER) mission to study the densest observable objects in the universe has begun science operations.

One night three months ago, Rosa Castro finished her dinner, opened her laptop, and uncovered a novel object that was neither planet nor star. Therapist by day and amateur astronomer by night, Castro joined the NASA-funded ...

In July 2015, NASA's New Horizons spacecraft sent home the first close-up pictures of Pluto and its moons amazing imagery that inspired many to wonder what a flight over the distant worlds' icy terrain might be like.

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Space station project seeks to crystalize the means to counteract nerve poisons - Phys.Org

NASA astronauts, scientists and engineers will join industry and academia for a three-day, in-depth conversation about the International Space Station (ISS) as a catalyst for discovery during the sixth annual ISS Research and Development Conference July 17-20 in Washington. Acting NASA Administrator Robert Lightfoot will provide the morning keynote on Wednesday, July 19.

See the conference agenda for a full list of topics and speakers. Keynote addresses and panels from the conference will be broadcast on NASA TV and the agency's website.

The conference, hosted by the American Astronautical Society and the Center for the Advancement of Science in Space (CASIS), in cooperation with NASA, brings together leaders from industry, academia and government.

Attendees will explore innovations and breakthroughs in microgravity research; life sciences; materials development; technology development; human health and remote sensing; the potential applications for space-based research; and the economic benefits of increased commercial activity in low-Earth orbit.

NASA astronaut Kate Rubins, who tested an innovative technology in orbit that may improve medical diagnoses in space and on Earth, will provide a keynote presentation. Rubins completed her first spaceflight in 2016, and was the first person to sequence DNA in space.

The technology she used could help diagnose potentially fatal diseases in remote locations, including during long space voyages. Rubins also grew heart cells in orbit, performing real-time analysis and experiments.

NASA and CASIS, both manage and fund research on the space station, will provide overviews of research applications, external and internal capabilities, and upcoming opportunities.

During the Monday, July 17 preconference day, NASA and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) will host a joint workshop covering the achievements and opportunities tied to cooperative use of unique JAXA experiment hardware for joint research.

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NASA Offers Space Station as Catalyst for Discovery in Washington - Space Daily

WASHINGTON, July 14, 2017 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- NASA astronauts, scientists and engineers will join industry and academia for a three-day, in-depth conversation about the International Space Station (ISS) as a catalyst for discovery during the sixth annual ISS Research & Development Conference July 17-20 in Washington. Acting NASA Administrator Robert Lightfoot will provide the morning keynote on Wednesday, July 19.

See the conference agenda for a full list of topics and speakers. Keynote addresses and panels from the conference will be broadcast on NASA TV and the agency's website.

The conference, hosted by the American Astronautical Society and the Center for the Advancement of Science in Space (CASIS), in cooperation with NASA, brings together leaders from industry, academia and government. Attendees will explore innovations and breakthroughs in microgravity research; life sciences; materials development; technology development; human health and remote sensing; the potential applications for space-based research; and the economic benefits of increased commercial activity in low-Earth orbit.

NASA astronaut Kate Rubins, who tested an innovative technology in orbit that may improve medical diagnoses in space and on Earth, will provide a keynote presentation. Rubins completed her first spaceflight in 2016, and was the first person to sequence DNA in space. The technology she used could help diagnose potentially fatal diseases in remote locations, including during long space voyages. Rubins also grew heart cells in orbit, performing real-time analysis and experiments.

NASA and CASIS, both manage and fund research on the space station, will provide overviews of research applications, external and internal capabilities, and upcoming opportunities.

During the Monday, July 17 preconference day, NASA and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) will host a joint workshop covering the achievements and opportunities tied to cooperative use of unique JAXA experiment hardware for joint research.

Media interested in interviewing NASA personnel should contact Tabatha Thompson at 202-358-1100 or tabatha.t.thompson@nasa.gov.

Watch the conference live stream at:

Home

and

http://www.nasa.gov/live

Get breaking news, images and features from the station on Instagram and Twitter:

http://instagram.com/iss

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View original content with multimedia:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/nasa-offers-space-station-as-catalyst-for-discovery-in-washington-300488599.html

SOURCE NASA

http://www.nasa.gov

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NASA Offers Space Station as Catalyst for Discovery in Washington - PR Newswire (press release)