Space station astronauts visit with Air Force Academy students – Video

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Space station astronauts visit with Air Force Academy students
On April 24, NASA astronauts Rick Mastracchio and Steve Swanson fielded questions about life and research on the International Space Station during an in-flight educational event with students...

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Space station astronauts visit with Air Force Academy students - Video

Spacewalkers Make Quick Work of Computer Repair on Space Station

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Two astronauts quickly replaced a bad backup computer box and took on an extra task at the International Space Station on Wednesday during one of NASA's shortest spacewalks.

Within an hour, NASA astronaut Rick Mastracchio and Steve Swanson removed the old box, which failed to respond to commands on April 11, and installed a spare. Ground controllers reported that the new box, known as a multiplexer-demultiplexer or MDM, was working fine.

Mastracchio tucked the old box into an equipment bag and told Mission Control that he had "one MDM, slightly used."

"Nice and clean," Mission Control communicator Jeremy Hansen told the spacewalkers. "Good job."

Most spacewalks run for five or six hours, but this one lasted only an hour and 36 minutes arguably making it NASA's shortest glitch-free operation outside the space station.

An astronaut performs a repair job on the International Space Station during Wednesday's spacewalk.

Routine but critical task

The backup box is part of a redundant system that plays a part in controlling critical equipment on the station, including the solar arrays, a robotic rail car and the external cooling system. The primary computer box is working just fine, but NASA didn't want to go without a working backup any longer than necessary.

Replacing the box is considered one of the space station's "Big 12" routine maintenance tasks. Mastracchio and Swanson have been trained in advance for such jobs.

While Mastracchio switched the boxes, Swanson cut some dangling lanyards that had been blocking the way for the space station's Dextre robotic hand. In the future, Dextre might be able to perform maintenance tasks like the computer replacement without the need for a spacewalk.

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Spacewalkers Make Quick Work of Computer Repair on Space Station

Dreams Space Flight MTV Italo Beat Dance Mastered 16|9 Moon Walk Ship DJ House Official Pop Soul R&B – Video

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Dreams Space Flight MTV Italo Beat Dance Mastered 16|9 Moon Walk Ship DJ House Official Pop Soul R B
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Dreams Space Flight MTV Italo Beat Dance Mastered 16|9 Moon Walk Ship DJ House Official Pop Soul R&B - Video

X-Class Flare Erupts From Sun On April 24

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April 25, 2014

Image Credit: NASA/SDO

Karen C. Fox, NASAs Goddard Space Flight Center

The sun emitted a significant solar flare, peaking at 8:27 p.m. EDT on April 24, 2014. Images of the flare were captured by NASAs Solar Dynamics Observatory. Solar flares are powerful bursts of radiation. Harmful radiation from a flare cannot pass through Earths atmosphere to physically affect humans on the ground, however when intense enough they can disturb the atmosphere in the layer where GPS and communications signals travel.

To see how this event may impact Earth, please visit NOAAs Space Weather Prediction Center at http://spaceweather.gov, the U.S. governments official source for space weather forecasts, alerts, watches and warnings.

This flare is classified as an X1.4 flare. X-class denotes the most intense flares, while the number provides more information about its strength. An X2 is twice as intense as an X1, an X3 is three times as intense, etc.

Updates will be provided as needed.

Source: Karen C. Fox, NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center

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X-Class Flare Erupts From Sun On April 24

Lower limbs for Robonaut 2 are aboard the International Space Station

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14 hours ago NASAs Robonaut 2 with its newly developed climbing legs, designed to give the robot mobility in zero gravity. With legs, R2 will be able to assist astronauts with both hands while keeping at least one leg anchored to the station structure at all times. Credit: NASA

(Phys.org) Getting your "space legs" in Earth orbit has taken on new meaning for NASA's pioneering Robonaut program.

Thanks to a successful launch of the SpaceX-3 flight of the Falcon 9/Dragon capsule on Friday, April 18, the lower limbs for Robonaut 2 (R2) are aboard the International Space Station (ISS). Safely tucked inside the Dragon resupply vehicle, R2's legs are to be attached by a station crew member to Robonaut's torso already on the orbiting outpost.

R2's upper body arrived on the space station back in February 2011 during the last flight of the space shuttle Discovery. That event signaled the first human-like robot to arrive in space to become a permanent resident of the laboratory.

Jointly developed by NASA's Human Exploration and Operations and Space Technology mission directorates in cooperation with with General Motors, R2 showcases how a robotic assistant can work alongside humans, whether tasks are done in space or on Earth in a manufacturing facility.

"NASA has explored with robots for more than a decade, from the stalwart rovers on Mars to R2 on the station," observes Michael Gazarik, the associate administrator for NASA's Space Technology Mission Directorate (STMD). "Our investment in robotic technology development is helping us to bolster productivity by applying robotics technology and devices to fortify and enhance individual human capabilities, performance and safety in space."

Some assembly required

The R2 now consists of a head and a torso with two arms and two hands. With the addition of the newly developed climbing legs, the robot can augment its chief role: to help astronauts by taking over some of their duties on the space station.

But before R2 is up and running with its new limbs, there's some assembly required.

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Lower limbs for Robonaut 2 are aboard the International Space Station

Tim Cahill, Andre Akpan healthy and available for New York Red Bulls' showdown with Columbus Crew

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HARRISON, N.J. The New York Red Bulls bench will be a little deeper this weekend.

Head coach Mike Petke told reporters Friday that Tim Cahill and Andre Akpan will both on the 18-man roster that heads to Columbus to take on the Crew on Saturday (7:30 pm ET, MLS Live). Both players had both been dealing with nagging hamstring injuries, but are now healthy enough to possibly see time for a Red Bulls side looking to pick up a third straight win.

Cahill came off the bench and played 27 minutes in New Yorks 2-1 win over the Philadelphia Union on April 16, but was not in uniform in this past Wednesdays 4-0 thrashing of the Houston Dynamo. The Australian international did not go as far as saying that he suffered a setback, but added that he is definitely not yet ready to start.

The main thing is you make calculated decisions during the season, Cahill, who has missed three games this season, told reporters at Red Bull Arena. I think that was a good, calculated decision [to play vs. Philadelphia] because we got the right result and afterwards the boys got the belief and had a fantastic home win against Houston.

With Cahill unable to go from the opening whistle, Petke will likely not have many lineup selection headaches this weekend. One position that might require some good thought for the second-year head coach, however, is center back.

Ibrahim Sekagya is back from a one-game suspension due to a red card received vs. the Union and now Petke will have to decide between Sekagya and Armando for the center-back spot next to defensive anchor Jmison Olave. Both Sekagya and Armando fared well in their most recent outings, but Petke did not reveal which of them would get the nod against the Crew.

Theyre both competent and confident with the ball, said Petke. Defensively, Armando is more of a get-stuck-in guy and Ibra is more of a read-the-game guy, not to say he doesnt get stuck in. Theyre both similar, but have some different type of things. It depends on the day, it depends on what were feeling.

Franco Panizo covers the New York Red Bulls for MLSsoccer.com. He can be reached by e-mail at Franco8813@gmail.com.

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Tim Cahill, Andre Akpan healthy and available for New York Red Bulls' showdown with Columbus Crew

Latest NASA Mars Image Reveals Building Foundation Amazing Mars Anomaly – Video

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Latest NASA Mars Image Reveals Building Foundation Amazing Mars Anomaly
Latest NASA Mars Image Reveals Building Foundation Amazing Mars Anomaly Visit us at http://enigmadigest.blogspot.com This a close look at one of the latest Mars rover images released...

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Latest NASA Mars Image Reveals Building Foundation Amazing Mars Anomaly - Video

NASA's Curiosity rover sends pictures of space rocks from Martian surface

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NASA'sCuriosity rover snapped pictures ofCeres and Vesta, the two biggest space rocks in the solar system's asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.

NASA's Mars rover Curiosity has captured the first image of asteroids as seen from the surface of the Red Planet.

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Curiosity's historic asteroid pictureof the Martian sky shows Ceres and Vesta, the two biggest space rocks in the solar system's asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. These objects would be bright enough to be visible to a person with normal eyesight standing on the Red Planet, NASA officials wrote in an image description.

The SUV-sized Curiosity rover has an imaging system on its "head" called Mastcam, which snapped the picture on April 20, PDT (April 21, UTC). The rover was primarily taking portraits of Mars' two moons, PhobosandDeimos, but the asteroids appeared in a 12-second exposure as faint streaks. Curiosity also saw the planets Jupiter and Saturn during its photo session. [Photos: Asteroid Vesta Seen by NASA Spacecraft]

"This imaging was part of an experiment checking the opacity of the atmosphere at night in Curiosity's location on Mars, where water-ice clouds and hazes develop during this season," camera team member Mark Lemmon, of Texas A&M University, said in a statement. "The two Martian moons were the main targets that night, but we chose a time when one of the moons was near Ceres and Vesta in the sky."

Witha diameter of about 590 miles (950 kilometers),Ceresis by far the largest object in the asteroid belt. The spherically shaped body was the first asteroid to be discovered (by Giuseppe Piazziin 1801) and it is actually considered a dwarf planet now.

Vesta, meanwhile, measures 350 miles (563 kilometers) wide and ranks as the third largest object in the asteroid belt, though it is the second-most massive. It has dark and light patches much like Earth's moon, and chunks of the asteroid have broken off and slammed into Earth as meteorites. From an Earthling's point of view, Vesta is the brightest asteroid in the sky, sometimes visible to the naked eye.

NASA's Dawn mission orbited Vesta in 2011 and 2012, capturing detailed images of the asteroid's lumpy, pockmarked surface. The spacecraft will enter into orbit around Ceres next year.

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NASA of the 1970s reveals how it thought the future would look

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NASA has revealed what it thought the future might look like back in the 1970s and it's pretty impressive.

Three concepts for space colonies were drawn up showing elaborate communities to house anything from 10,000 people all the way up to a full 1 million people, with everything from rivers to trees to fully enclosed agriculture pods.

NAS thought that rather than living on planets, settlers would live on gigantic spaceships in three different designs: cylindrical colonies, toroidal -- or donut shaped -- colonies and Bernal spheres in which the people would live inside a giant hollow sphere.

The settlements would be airtight to hold a breathable atmosphere and would rotate in order to provide psuedo-gravity so the people could stand on the inside of the hull of any given ship.

The renderings were drawn up by researchers at NASA's Ames Research Center and Stanford University during three space colony summer studies done in the 1970s, when space exploration was arguably reaching towards its heyday. Thave been kept under wraps until now.

The cylindrical design is perhaps the most impressive, with the potential to house over 1 million people with full-grown living landscapes mixed with human engineering like a suspension bridge.

The agriculture models in the Bernal sphere design show cattle being raised in fields on one level while above, on a second tier, regular farm machinery harvests crops.

Many benefits of living in a colony are noted including access to "continuous, ample, reliable solar energy" and "great views from Earth."

Enormous amounts of matter, probably lunar soil at first, according to the researchers, must cover the settlements to protect inhabitants from radiation just as the Earth's atmosphere is designed to protect us regular Earthlings.

NASA's settlements website shows just how optimistic these visionaries were about how far space travel could develop, suggesting the idea of launching millions of people to live in space was not totally outlandish.

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Worlds Smallest Image 'Nano-Chiseled' from Polymer

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Kids will look through a microscope at the worlds smallest magazine cover at today and tomorrows USA Science & Engineering Festival in Washington, DC. When they do, they will see a fuzzy pair of panda twins on the March 2014 cover of National Geographic Kids, the defending champion of Guinness World Records for the smallest magazine cover.

This years is 11 by 14 micrometers (National Geographic video). Engineers and researchers looking through the microscope, however, might see the cover for what it really is: a demonstration of scanning probe nanolithographys growing prowess.

Researchers at IBM Research in Zurich, Switzerland, began developing a new method for etching polymers several years ago, as IEEE Spectrumreported in 2010 (IBM Develops Patterning Technique That Could Replace E-Beam Lithography).

That patterning method used a heated silicon probe to evaporate the material in the substrate, leaving behind the desired pattern in three dimensions. Part of the breakthrough was choosing the right chemistry for the substrate, so that the evaporated chemicals went into a less reactive phase, preventing them from sticking to nearby surfaces.

One of the researchers involved, Urs Duerig, says that was more elegant and cleaner than related lithographic methods, some of which left the excavated debris on nearby surfaces. At first, however, it was too slow for most applications. But by 2011, the team reported a 1000x increase in the speed of their system in the journal Nanotechnology. That speed brings the method on par with existing commercial nanolithography techniques.

The method has another advantage: built-in inspection. After a heated silicon tip evaporates the unwanted material, a second relatively cold tip inspects the results. Thats handier than the industry standard, electron-beam lithography, which requires a separate inspection process. Scanning probe nanolithography may also offer researchers greater control over the depth of the cavities they produce. Duerig claims that they can achieve 1-nm precision. That would enable researchers to create tiny optical cavities, for example, or to create curved structures such as lenses.

IBM licensed the technology to SwissLitho, a spinoff startup founded by researchers from the original team. That team set about creating a machine they could sell to other researchers, and shipped their first one a few weeks ago to a lab at McGill University, which promptly drew a micro-map of Canada.

Maybe for their next publicity stunt they should map the Vatican City.

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Worlds Smallest Image 'Nano-Chiseled' from Polymer

IBM creates world's smallest magazine cover

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IBM has unveiled the worlds smallest magazine cover at the USA Science and Engineering Festival in Washington, DC. Certified by the Guinness Book of World Records, the micro magazine is a reproduction of the cover of the March 2014 issue of National Geographic Kids and is many times smaller than a grain of salt at just 11 14 micrometers. Why, you ask? The tiny cover was created to demonstrate potential of a new nano-scale manufacturing technology, as well to encourage young peoples interest in science and technology.

The tiny publication has nothing to do with breaking into the magazines-for-microbes market. Its creation is part of an effort by IBM to deal with Moores Law, the famous observation that number of transistors on an integrated circuit doubles every two years. Thats held true for decades, but IBM says that as chips grow ever smaller Moore's Law is close to reaching its limits, as can be seen in the example of processor clock speeds not increasing by much for the past five years.

IBM sees the possible solution to this barrier in materials other than silicon and new types of transistors as the basis for new electronics. However, that creates its own problems because using these new materials and working on tinier scales requires new ways of fabricating them. Until now, the standard technique has been using an electron beam to create prototype circuits in a technique called e-beam lithography. This works, but its expensive, slow, and needs a lot of equipment.

The heatable silicon tip is 100,000 times smaller than a sharpened pencil point

What IBM wanted was something cheaper, faster, and more compact. It had to be able to fabricate prototypes of new components quickly, and had to work on scales below 30 nanometers. To give some idea of this scale, one nanometer is 80,000 times smaller than the diameter of a human hair.

IBMs solution was called nanopatterning or nanomilling. Taking a page from the ancient Egyptians, who used to chisel hieroglyphics in stone, IBM researchers decided that instead of printing circuits as with an electron beam, theyd chisel them out using a tiny, heatable silicon tip with a sharp apex that's 100,000 times smaller than the tip of a sharpened pencil. As the tip, heated to 1000 C (1,832 F), moves over the surface of a tiny sheet of polymer, it acts like a 3D printer that chisels away material by local evaporation. This also makes it a much more compact machine that fits on a tabletop and can print items in minutes that an electron beam would take hours to accomplish due to e-lithographys complex processing and imaging steps.

With our novel technique we can achieve very a high resolution at 10 nanometers at greatly reduced cost and complexity," says Dr. Armin Knoll, a physicist at IBM Research. "In particular by controlling the amount of material evaporated, we can also produce 3D relief patterns at the unprecedented accuracy of merely one nanometer in a vertical direction. Now its up to the imagination of scientists and engineers to apply this technique to real-world challenges.

But what has this to do with magazines? IBM and National Geographic Kids magazine decided to show the capabilities of the new nano-chisel in a way that might also spark the enthusiasm of young people. After running a poll that let kids select which cover to use, IBM used the tool to print the cover on a sheet of polymer, which measures 11 14 micrometers. Thats small enough for 2,000 to fit on a grain of salt and to get into the Guinness Book of World Records.

National Geographic Kids magazine subscribers loved this cover, so it makes sense that a broader audience would vote it as their favorite of 2014 as well," says Rachel Buchholz, vice president and editor of National Geographic Kids. "And by helping to set this Guinness World Records title, they're learning about science while having fun, which is what Kids is all about.

Developed at IBM, the chisel technology is now on the market and Swiss company SwissLitho has obtained a license to make nanopatterning tools under the brand NanoFrazor, the first of which was recently delivered to McGill Universitys Nanotools Microfab in Canada, where it was used to make a nano-sized map of Canada measuring 30 micrometers long.

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