Kirobo: Toyota’s Robot Astronaut Heading for International Space Station – Video

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Kirobo: Toyota #39;s Robot Astronaut Heading for International Space Station
On August 4, 2013, Toyota #39;s jointly developed robot astronaut, Kirobo, will blast off from Tanegashima Space Centre, heading for the International Space Stat...

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Kirobo: Toyota's Robot Astronaut Heading for International Space Station - Video

NASA Launches Satellite to Study How Sun’s Atmosphere is Energized

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WASHINGTON -- NASA's Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph (IRIS) spacecraft launched Wednesday at 7:27 p.m. PDT (10:27 p.m. EDT) from Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif. The mission to study the solar atmosphere was placed in orbit by an Orbital Sciences Corporation Pegasus XL rocket.

"We are thrilled to add IRIS to the suite of NASA missions studying the sun," said John Grunsfeld, NASA's associate administrator for science in Washington. "IRIS will help scientists understand the mysterious and energetic interface between the surface and corona of the sun."

IRIS is a NASA Explorer Mission to observe how solar material moves, gathers energy and heats up as it travels through a little-understood region in the sun's lower atmosphere. This interface region between the sun's photosphere and corona powers its dynamic million-degree atmosphere and drives the solar wind. The interface region also is where most of the sun's ultraviolet emission is generated. These emissions impact the near-Earth space environment and Earth's climate.

The Pegasus XL carrying IRIS was deployed from an Orbital L-1011 carrier aircraft over the Pacific Ocean at an altitude of 39,000 feet, off the central coast of California about 100 miles northwest of Vandenberg. The rocket placed IRIS into a sun-synchronous polar orbit that will allow it to make almost continuous solar observations during its two-year mission.

The L-1011 took off from Vandenberg at 6:30 p.m. PDT and flew to the drop point over the Pacific Ocean, where the aircraft released the Pegasus XL from beneath its belly. The first stage ignited five seconds later to carry IRIS into space. IRIS successfully separated from the third stage of the Pegasus rocket at 7:40 p.m. At 8:05 p.m., the IRIS team confirmed the spacecraft had successfully deployed its solar arrays, has power and has acquired the sun, indications that all systems are operating as expected.

"Congratulations to the entire team on the successful development and deployment of the IRIS mission," said IRIS project manager Gary Kushner of the Lockheed Martin Solar and Atmospheric Laboratory in Palo Alto, Calif. "Now that IRIS is in orbit, we can begin our 30-day engineering checkout followed by a 30-day science checkout and calibration period."

IRIS is expected to start science observations upon completion of its 60-day commissioning phase. During this phase the team will check image quality and perform calibrations and other tests to ensure a successful mission.

NASA's Explorer Program at Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., provides overall management of the IRIS mission. The principal investigator institution is Lockheed Martin Space Systems Advanced Technology Center. NASA's Ames Research Center will perform ground commanding and flight operations and receive science data and spacecraft telemetry.

The Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory designed the IRIS telescope. The Norwegian Space Centre and NASA's Near Earth Network provide the ground stations using antennas at Svalbard, Norway; Fairbanks, Alaska; McMurdo, Antarctica; and Wallops Island, Va. NASA's Launch Services Program at the agency's Kennedy Space Center in Florida is responsible for the launch service procurement, including managing the launch and countdown. Orbital Sciences Corporation provided the L-1011 aircraft and Pegasus XL launch system.

For more information about the IRIS mission, visit:

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NASA Launches Satellite to Study How Sun's Atmosphere is Energized

Orbital Sciences Corporation : ORBITAL SUCCESSFULLY LAUNCHES NASA’S IRIS SATELLITE ABOARD PEGASUS ROCKET

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ORBITAL SUCCESSFULLY LAUNCHES NASA`S IRIS SATELLITE ABOARD PEGASUS ROCKET

-- Latest Pegasus Mission Is 28th Consecutive Successful Launch Over 16-Year Period --

-- Company`s Air-Launched Rocket Accurately Deploys NASA`s Newest Heliophysics Science Satellite Into Low-Earth Orbit --

(Dulles, VA 27 June 2013) -- Orbital Sciences Corporation (ORB) announced today that its Pegasus rocket successfully launched the Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph (IRIS) satellite for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). The IRIS spacecraft was deployed into its targeted orbit approximately 400 miles above the Earth and early results confirm that the satellite is operating as anticipated at this stage of its mission.

The launch of the Pegasus rocket originated from Vandenberg Air Force Base (VAFB), California when Orbital`s` L-1011 "Stargazer" carrier aircraft took off from the airfield at approximately 6:30 p.m. (PDT). Following a one-hour preplanned positioning flight, the Pegasus rocket was released at approximately 40,000 feet from Orbital`s L-1011 "Stargazer" carrier aircraft at 7:27 p.m. (PDT). After a 13-minute powered flight sequence, Pegasus launched the 440-pound IRIS satellite into its polar, sun-synchronous Earth orbit.

"The Pegasus rocket carried out another successful mission for NASA today, extending its record of consecutive successful missions to 28 over a 16-year period," said Mr. Ron Grabe, Orbital`s Executive Vice President and General Manager of its Launch Systems Group. "We are proud of our launch team and are pleased to have contributed to a successful beginning of this important NASA heliophysics science mission."

The launch of IRIS marks the 45th overall mission for the Pegasus program. Its launch history now includes 42 launches to orbit, which collectively have deployed more than 80 satellites for Earth and space science missions overseen by NASA; military and technology demonstration spacecraft for the U.S. Department of Defense; and communications and imaging satellites for commercial customers. Pegasus technology has also been used to launch three hypersonic flight experiments in Earth`s stratosphere for NASA`s HyperX program.

IRIS is a NASA Small Explorer (SMEX) mission designed to observe how solar material moves, gathers energy and heats up as it travels through a little-understood region in the Sun`s lower atmosphere. This interface region between the Sun`s photosphere and corona powers its dynamic million-degree atmosphere and drives the solar wind. The interface region also is where most of the Sun`s ultraviolet emission is generated that impacts the near-Earth space environment and Earth`s climate.

About the Pegasus Rocket

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Orbital Sciences Corporation : ORBITAL SUCCESSFULLY LAUNCHES NASA'S IRIS SATELLITE ABOARD PEGASUS ROCKET

NASA: Voyager 1 Is in a ‘New Region’ of Space

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NASA

For months, space enthusiasts have been sitting on the edges of their seats, ready for the Voyager 1 spacecraft to become the first emissary of human civilization to cross from the bubble around our sun* into interstellar space. Last August, two of the three instruments on Voyager 1 started sending back signals that something was -- suddenly, dramatically -- different. Particles from our sun fell way off, and cosmic rays from outside our system shot up. Was this the moment we'd all been waiting for?

Well, not quite yet. That third indicator -- the magnetic field data -- has turned out to be a bit, well, stubborn, showing month after month that Voyager is still in our sun's magnetic field. Two out of three ain't bad, as they say, but scientists need all three boxes checked before they will officially say that Voyager has crossed over, NASA explained in a release today.

Now scientists are giving Voyager's current home a new name -- the heliosheath depletion region. As Kelly Oakes writes in a terrific explanation in Scientific American:

Yep, what Voyager's instruments are now showing us is so odd we need a new name for it. Voyager is, almost literally, pushing the boundaries of our knowledge about the solar system.

Which, if you think about it, is hardly surprising. As Stamatios Krimigis of John Hopkins University, Maryland, and his colleagues write in one of the three papers out today, our ideas about the size and shape of the bubble of plasma we call the heliosphere, created by the solar wind that continuously flows from the sun, are older than the space age.

A trio of papers published in Science today details what scientists know about this new region, including two temporary shifts in the magnetic field data that occurred on May 29 and September 26 of last year, both times reverting to the data associated with our heliosphere (the bubble of solar winds emanating from our sun).

Voyager 1 launched in 1977 and has been traveling at astounding speeds for nearly 36 years (around 38,000 miles per hour currently). It is now more than 11 billion miles away from the sun. As we wait for it to reach its next and perhaps final frontier, scientists don't have a clear idea of what to expect. "I mean this is the first time any spacecraft has been there," Voyager project scientist Ed Stone of Caltech said to me last year.

We didn't know that the "heliosheath depletion region" was going to be there, or that it was going to be this big, but now that Voyager's been there for a while, we may as well give it a name. And while Voyager's departure from our heliosphere might not be the sort of clean, sudden that many of us would find satisfying, the new region is, well, a new region -- a piece of our little home in the universe that we didn't know about before, and now, thanks to Voyager, we do.

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NASA: Voyager 1 Is in a 'New Region' of Space

Is Putin Pulling the Plug on Russian Nanotechnology?

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Just when it seemed Russia had found a shortcut into the nanotechnology arms race that has developed over the last decade and was sweeping up all the discarded nanotechnology companies that had run aground on the rocks of capitalism, Russian President Vladimir Putin last month looked to be sacrificing both Rusnano and another technology project Skolkovoan attempt to build a Silicon Valley outside of Moscowto solidify his political aims.

It appears that Putins hard-nosed attitude towards Rusnano was not entirely unwarranted. Russias Accounting Chamber, which has been bearing down hard on abuses, accused Rusnano in April of this year of taking the $5 billion it had been allocated back in 2007 when it was launched and transferring $40 million into shell companies. As bad as that is, the really high-price boondoggle appears to be the $450 million that was spent on a silicon factory that ended up being non-operational.

On top of nearly half-a-billion dollars spent on a whole lot of nothing, the Accounting Chamber reported that Rusnano had not only lost $80 million in 2012, but also all of its cash reserves used to protect against risky ventures, totaling $800 million. For those counting, thats $1.37 billion down the drain and thats not even counting other operational losses since its inception in 2007.

In the aftermath of these devastating and embarrassing revelations, Putin threw Anatoly Chubais, RusNano's chief, under the bus, accusing him not only of poor decisions but implying that CIA operatives had misguided him.

But Chubais appears to be bouncing back and with him Rusnano. In mid-June, Chubais made a public mea culpa conceding mistakes had been made, and laying out a new plan for Rusnano, including the establishment of a private equity fund that will gradually sell off its managing company to private investors by 2020.

Since the reboot of Rusnano 2.0, the organization has announced a memorandum of understanding with Alcoa to produce technologically advanced oil and gas aluminum drill pipe finished with a life-extending antiwear coating. Of course, MOUs extend about as far as the parties agreeing to send out a press release, but at least we know that the Rusnano saga will continue on for another day.

IEEE Spectrums nanotechnology blog, featuring news and analysis about the development, applications, and future of science and technology at the nanoscale.

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Is Putin Pulling the Plug on Russian Nanotechnology?

Dr. Meissner, 8th symposium of the DAEMBE: Universal Energy – quantum physics – quantum medicine… – Video

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Dr. Meissner, 8th symposium of the DAEMBE: Universal Energy - quantum physics - quantum medicine...
See: http://www.daembe.de, Dr. med. Folker Meissner about the 8th symposium of the DAEMBE e.v.: Universal Energy - quantum physics - quantum medicine:holisti...

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Dr. Meissner, 8th symposium of the DAEMBE: Universal Energy - quantum physics - quantum medicine... - Video