International Space Station to get 787-style batteries

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NASA is pressing ahead with a plan to install lithium-ion batteries on the International Space Station (ISS), New Scientist has learned. The batteries are similar to those used on Boeing's 787 Dreamliner aircraft, all 50 of which have been taken out of commercial service worldwide since January following battery fires on two planes. NASA says that lithium-ion cells offer compelling benefits, and it is confident that any safety issues can be overcome.

The agency intends to use batteries sourced from GS Yuasa, based in Kyoto, Japan, which also makes lithium batteries for Boeing 787 Dreamliner planes. Boeing has modified the aircraft batteries following the fires, but the new design has yet to gain safety certification from the US Federal Aviation Administration.

NASA is going ahead because, it says, "proper design" of the battery packs will let it take advantage of the lightness and extra power delivered by lithium-ion technology which is easily better than the current nickel metal-hydride batteries used on the ISS.

"The benefits of [lithium's] higher power density are too compelling to ignore," says NASA spokesman Josh Byerly at the Johnson Spaceflight Center in Houston, Texas. He says the technology would allow launch payloads to be halved. "With space launch costs being extremely high, one can see the benefit in this approach."

The Boeing 787 battery packs contained eight lithium-ion cells made by GS Yuasa and assembled by aerospace contractor Thales, a multinational headquartered in France. Boeing says overheating in one cell vented heat to neighbouring cells and caused them to overheat also, an effect known as thermal runaway. One battery caught fire in a jet on the ground at Boston Logan airport in the US while another melted down in flight, causing an emergency landing and evacuation in Japan.

Boeing has redesigned the battery pack to improve issues such as the physical and thermal isolation of the cells and test-flew it earlier this month. But since what exactly started the fire in the lithium cells has not been precisely identified, the FAA and US National Transportation Safety Board are still deliberating over a solution.

Boeing is also the lead contractor on the ISS. NASA says it is working with it, and with its battery-assembling subcontractor Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne, to do "everything possible to assure that a hazard is mitigated to the maximum possible extent in this case, that conditions that could cause a cell runaway are designed out of the system and that safety controls are available to maintain the cells within allowable limits," says Byerly.

The design and testing will also ensure, he says, that if a hazardous event does occur, "it is contained and does not propagate into an uncontrolled event".

NASA says the situation on the ISS is very different to an aircraft because the batteries are installed outside the pressurised crew modules on a structural joist called a truss.

"In the near-vacuum of low-Earth orbit, while a cell failure resulting in a runaway thermal event would provide its own fuel and oxidiser, with proper design there is nothing available to propagate such an event beyond a single cell, let alone beyond a battery assembly," Byerly says.

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International Space Station to get 787-style batteries

Private firm contracted to deliver space station supplies scrubs Wednesday test rocket launch

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WALLOPS ISLAND, Va. - A private company contracted by NASA to make supply runs to the International Space Station scrubbed a Wednesday test launch of an unmanned rocket, saying cables linked to the rocket's second stage apparently detached too early in blustery winds.

The towering Antares rocket had been scheduled to blast off Wednesday afternoon from Wallops Island on Virginia's Eastern Shore when the countdown clock was halted 12 minutes before a 5 p.m. launch window was to have opened.

Barry Benesky, a spokesman for Dulles-based Orbital Sciences Corp., said it wasn't immediately clear when officials would attempt a launch.

He said officials initially suspected brisk winds had caused a premature separation of a cord linked to the second stage of the rocket. But he said experts were investigating what happened and would release more details later about what prompted the launch to be called off.

The company had said earlier that low cloud cover hugging the Virginia coast was a vexing concern during the day. Amid weather concerns, officials had already shortened their window for a possible launch to just 10 minutes starting Wednesday afternoon.

The planned launch by the Washington area commercial firm was designed to test whether a practice payload could reach orbit and safely separate from the rocket.

Orbital, based near Washinton, D.C., is one of two private companies contracted to restock the space station by NASA, which ended its shuttle program in 2011. California-based SpaceX completed its third supply run to the station last month.

Orbital executives have said they are conducting the tests as they prove their capability to carry out several supply runs.

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Private firm contracted to deliver space station supplies scrubs Wednesday test rocket launch

SPHERES-VERTIGO Investigation Conducted Aboard The International Space Station

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April 18, 2013

Image Caption: NASA astronaut Tom Marshburn conducts the SPHERES-VERTIGO investigation aboard the International Space Station to study the ability to create a three-dimensional model of an unknown object in space using only one or two small satellites. Credit: NASA

NASA

[ Watch The Video ISS Update: SPHERES-VERTIGO ]

It looks like something out of a sci-fi moviefree-formation-flying robotic spheres hovering around the International Space Station with goggles on. The Visual Estimation and Relative Tracking for Inspection of Generic Objects (VERTIGO) study, a part of the Synchronized Position, Hold, Engage and Reorient Experimental Satellites (SPHERES) investigation explores the use of small satellites equipped to analyze and capture data from specified objects, producing a 3-D model of those objects.

The 1.6 kilogram VERTIGO goggles designed for the each SPHERES satellite are similar to a small computer tablet with 1.2 gigahertz data processor, camera, Wi-Fi device and batteries allowing the satellite to see what it is navigating around. This technology could result in techniques for space recycling of old aperture satellites or mapping of an asteroid for exploration, among other missions.

In a March 26 interview on NASA Television, Brent Tweddle, a doctoral candidate at the Space Systems Laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Mass., said the goggles allow for each satellite to, see, perceive and understand its world visually. We use that to communicate that information to the SPHERES satellites using a package called the VERTIGO goggles. [The goggles] are their own little intelligence block that sticks on the front-end of the SPHERES satellite and allows it to see the rest of the world that it wants to navigate through.

Tweddle talked about a variety of topics related to the SPHERES and VERTIGO during the interview, including the different teams interested in this research. He described how the SHPERES are commanded by algorithms. Tweedle also spoke on the February 2012 test run and future SPHERES tests.

The VERTIGO addition to the SPHERES satellites is part of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency-funded International Space Station SPHERES Integrated Research Experiments (InSPIRE) program that leverages the human presence in space for rapid, iterative experimentation and design of space capabilities. It is providing the next generation of scientists and engineers (through the ZERO Robotics Competition) with exposure and experience in carrying out meaningful space experimentation economically and over reasonable time scales.

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SPHERES-VERTIGO Investigation Conducted Aboard The International Space Station

NASA’s Kepler Discovers Its Smallest ‘Habitable Zone’ Planets to Date – Video

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NASA #39;s Kepler Discovers Its Smallest #39;Habitable Zone #39; Planets to Date
NASA #39;s Kepler mission has discovered two new planetary systems that include three super-Earth-size planets in the "habitable zone," the range of distance fro...

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NASA's Kepler Discovers Its Smallest 'Habitable Zone' Planets to Date - Video

NASA finds planet pair just right for life

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WASHINGTON NASAs planet-hunting telescope has discovered two planets that seem ideal for some sort of life to flourish. And they are just the right size and in just the right place.

One is toasty, the other chilly.

The distant duo are the best candidates for habitable planets that astronomers have found, said William Borucki, chief scientist for NASAs Kepler telescope.

And it has astronomers thinking similar planets that are just about right for life Goldilocks planets might be common in the universe.

The discoveries, published online Thursday in the journal Science, mark a milestone in the search for where life could exist.

In the four years Kepler has been trailing Earths orbit, the telescope has found 122 exoplanets, or planets outside our solar system.

In the past, those planets havent fit all the criteria that would make them right for life of any kind, from microbes to man.

Many planets arent in the habitable zone where its not too hot and not too cold for liquid water.

And until now, the few found in that ideal zone were just too big. Those are likely to be gas balls like Neptune and not suitable for life.

Similarly, any Earth-size planets werent in the right place near their stars, Borucki said.

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NASA finds planet pair just right for life

NASA's Kepler spacecraft to reveal new planetary discoveries?

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The space agency is announcing new sightings found by the Kepler spacecraft mission.

Artist's concept of NASA's Kepler space telescope.

NASA's Kepler spacecraft has been in hot pursuit of extraterrestrial life for four years now. And, on Thursday, it's letting people know just what it's found lurking in the Milky Way.

NASA is holding a Kepler briefing at 11 a.m. PT on Thursday. It will be broadcast live on NASA Television and on UStream. The agency will also host a moderated Web chat with Kepler Deputy Project Scientist Nick Gautier of NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab. During the briefing, people can submit questions to the Kepler scientists via Twitter with the hashtag #AskNASA.

Kepler launched in March 2009 and was NASA's first mission capable of finding Earth-size and smaller planets encircling other stars within the Milky Way galaxy. The space telescope has specifically been looking for planets within a certain distance of a star that would allow for a surface temperature where liquid water could exist.

To date, Kepler has flagged more than 2,700 possible planets, 105 of which have been confirmed. It was not that long ago when NASA announced Kepler found its first two confirmed Earth-size planets in 2011 -- this was a major milestone in finding out how commonplace, or rare, Earth-like worlds may be throughout the universe.

It's not yet known what NASA will announce on Thursday, but given the amount of attention the agency is giving to the briefing, there will most likely be some sort of exciting news.

Below is an image showing the Milky Way region of the sky where Kepler has been searching for other planets:

Kepler's targeted star field.

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NASA's Kepler spacecraft to reveal new planetary discoveries?

Water Worlds: Has NASA Found Mirror Earths?

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An artist's impression of Kepler 62f provided by NASA on April 18, 2013.

The search for Earthlike, habitable planets beyond the Sun has been something like a boulder rolling downhill ever since the Kepler space telescope went into orbit in 2009. Before that, ground-based astronomers had been finding so-called exoplanets one or two at a time, here and there in the cosmos, and pretty much all of them were far too large to be hospitable, or much close to the fires of their parent stars, or, usually, both.

But ever since Kepler soared into space and turned its relentless, unblinking eye on a single patch of stars and never looked away, it began notching discoveries at an ever-accelerating pace, finding more planetsand more nearly Earthlike onesall the time. Whats more, its finding them in the so-called habitable zone, just the right distance from their stars to allow life-sustaining liquid water to exist.

Nobody quite imagined what the Kepler team has just announced, however. Writing in Nature, William Borucki, Keplers principal scientist, along with dozens of collaborators, reports the discovery of not one, but two potentially life-sustaining planets, orbiting a star some 1,200 light-years away, in the constellation Lyra. One, named Kepler-62e, is about 60 percent larger than Earth, and lies at the inner, hotter edge of the habitable zone, where water might be awfully hot but still avoid boiling away. The second, Kepler 62f, is 40 percent larger than Earth and is more comfortably within the stars just-right region. This, said Paul Hertz, director of NASAs astrophysics division at a press conference, is really cool. In astronomer-speak, thats huge.

(MORE: Never Mind Life on Distant Planets, What About Distant Moons?)

Borucki and the other Kepler scientists were quick to say they had no direct evidence that either planet actually has liquid water on its surface. All they know for sure is the planets size, and their distance from the star: 33 million mi. (53 million km) out for the larger 62e; 65 million mi. (105 million km) for the smaller 62f.

In our solar system, that would make both planets too hot for water to stay liquid. But the star, Kepler 62, is only about two-thirds as large as the Sun, and significantly dimmer, so a planet can approach much closer and still be hospitable. Even so, its not just water that matters; the atmosphere has to be just right too. The outer [planet], said Lisa Kaltenegger, who has joint appointments at Harvard and at Germanys Max Planck Institute of Astronomy, would need a lot of greenhouse gases to keep it warm, so you wouldnt want to take off your face mask.

The inner world, she said, could well be covered with a planet-wide ocean, if it has the same volume of water as Earth does relative to its size. That means it might be perpetually cloudy as well, since so much water so close to the star would result in a lot of evaporation.Thats a good thing, because the clouds would reflect some of the stars heat, which might otherwise make the surface too hot.

(MORE: Name Your Own ExoplanetFor $4.99)

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Water Worlds: Has NASA Found Mirror Earths?

NASA has found 3 nice, habitable planets for us to choose from

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The agency's Kepler space telescope locates three planets -- in two new planetary systems -- that are the right distance from their suns to make them potentially life-supporting.

Left to right: Kepler-22b, Kepler-69c, Kepler-62e, Kepler-62f, and Earth (except for Earth, these are artists' renditions).

NASA, that wily band of intergalactic peepers, says it's spied three distant planets in two different solar systems that are the proper distance from their suns to make them potentially habitable.

I can almost hear Elon Musk's pitch for time-shares in the Kepler-62 and Kepler-69 systems already.

According to a NASA press release:

The third planet, Kepler-69c, is 70 percent larger than the size of Earth and orbits in the habitable zone of a star similar to our sun. Astronomers are uncertain about the composition of Kepler-69c, but its orbit of 242 days around a sun-like star resembles that of our neighboring planet Venus.

The Kepler-62 system has five planets in total, three of which have shorter orbits around their sun, making them hotter and inhospitable. The Kepler-69 system has two planets; super-Earth-size 69c and Kepler-69b, which is more than twice the size of Earth and orbits its star -- which is in the same class as our sun and located in the constellation Cygnus -- every 13 days.

NASA scientists caution that there's no way to know for sure right now whether these particular planets do host life, but their discovery puts us one step closer to finding a planet like Earth near a star like our sun.

Recently I attended a panel at South By Southwest on the James Webb Space Telescope, the successor to the Hubble scope set to launch in a few years. NASA telescope scientists there spoke of being able to answer the existential question "are we alone?" within a generation.

"The discovery of these rocky planets in the habitable zone brings us a bit closer to finding a place like home. It is only a matter of time before we know if the galaxy is home to a multitude of planets like Earth, or if we are a rarity," said John Grunsfeld, associate administrator of the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters.

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NASA has found 3 nice, habitable planets for us to choose from