NASAHackSpace 22 September 2011

Posted on by

Planet Hunters Finds Extrasolar Planets Via Crowdsourced Effort

- Planet Hunters: The First Two Planet Candidates Identified by the Public using the Kepler Public Archive Data, MNRAS
- From the Comfort of Home, Web Users May Have Found New Planets, Yale University

Think about this: One would think that with this announcement - one that comes on the heels of the Tatooine discovery last week - that the Kepler team would be working overtime on a way to throw more of its data out - sooner - such that they can harness the crowd-sourced power of interested citizens motivated to make a contribution to the discovery of worlds circling other stars. Not only does this help in times of limited budgets, it allows the citizenry a chance to truly participate in their space agency's exploration of the universe - and therein transform that formerly distant, lofty activity into a personal one. When things get personal, people tend to want to stand up and fight for those things.

Florida is Getting Greedy About Human Space Flight

Posted on by

Florida raises concern over Wallops expansion, Orlando Sentinel

"The most pressing issue for the Florida workforce is the sense of betrayal that their tax dollars might be used in establishing a competing orbital human spaceflight launch capability in another state when they have so well and ably done the job here in Florida," wrote Lynda Weatherman, president and CEO of the Economic Development Commission of Florida's Space Coast. Added Frank DiBello, president of Space Florida, suggested the work could be "duplicative" and raised the possibility of holding a public meeting down in Florida."

Keith's note: Why shouldn't every state in the union have a chance to participate in human space flight? People who live in other states pay tax dollars too - and they have watched their tax dollars go to Florida for half a century for human space flight activities.

Webb Community Webinar: Happy Talk and Denial

Posted on by

James Webb Space Telescope Q&A Session: A Town Hall Webinar

Astronomers Plead for Space Telescope's Life, Wired

"Initially estimated to cost approximately $1 billion in 1996, recent calculations for the telescope peg its price tag at nearly $8.7 billion. An independent panel last year placed the blame for these cost increases on delays and mismanagement by NASA officials. These problems have even created a congressional scuffle, with the House of Representatives voting to zero out the telescope's budget while the Senate produced a bill to fully fund it. The two are currently trying to reconcile the discrepancy."

Controversy over Hubble telescope successor rages on, space.com via MSNBC

"We just really don't know exactly what's going to happen," said planetary scientist Melissa McGrath, chairwoman of the American Astronomical Society's Division for Planetary Sciences. "I think people are really fearful right now because of the bigger context in which this is happening. There's a very budget-conscious feeling right now. There's a lot of pressure on the budget external to NASA and JWST, and that just exacerbates the problem. It's just sort of a worst-case scenario."

Keith's note: At one point today the panelists stated that "no one is talking about canceling Webb". Obviously they are unaware of what House Appropriators have been saying. Also, planetary scientist Jon Lunine stated that he did not think that social media was the place to be having discussions about space policy matters. Alas, Lunine was responding to a question I posted via Twitter and did so on a webinar heavily promoted via social media by its organizers. Rick Howard from NASA could not say where the cost overruns (final cost now pegged at $8.7 billion) would be taken from at NASA other than that half would come from SMD and the rest would come from, well, he did not know exactly where other than it would come from within NASA. And of course no one (including AURA, STScI, and AAS) really wanted to talk about differing opinions withing the space and planetary science community about Webb other than to suggest that internal squabbling was to be discouraged. Instead they repeatedly offered up happy talk about how the world loves Webb. The whole thing is online here. Watch for yourself.

UARS Reentry Update

Posted on by

Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite Reentry Update #6 Wed, 21 Sep 2011 08:03:34 AM EDT

"As of Sept. 21, 2011, the orbit of UARS was 120 mi by 130 mi (195 km by 210 km). Re-entry is expected Sept. 23, United States time. The time reference does not mean that the satellite is expected to re-enter over the United States. It is simply a time reference. Although it is still too early to predict the time and location of re-entry, predictions of the time period are becoming more refined."

Download the Sounds of NASA

Posted on by

Download the Sounds of NASA

Some of the most historic and interesting sound bites from NASA space missions are now available for download as ringtones on your phone, or on your computer for alarms and notifications.

You can hear the roar of a space shuttle launch or Neil Armstrong's "One small step for (a) man, one giant leap for mankind," every time you get a phone call. A new NASA Web page has more than 35 different sounds, including “Houston, we've had a problem," and segments from President Kennedy’s historic Moon speech.

The NASA sounds are available in both MP3 and M4R (iPhone) files. NASA will update the collection as new sounds become available. To listen to and download the sounds, click here.

Green Cars: 2012 Toyota Prius Plug-In Hybrid

Posted on by

At first, I really hated it. In fact, after driving it home the first day I decided I was done with the thing. I wasn't going to drive it anymore for a week. I was just going to walk and ride my bike. How green is that?

But the next day I forced myself to drive it again. And then something

Rainwater Pump Runs On Sunlight

Posted on by

From TreeHugger:

ITT Flow Control recently announced the development of their new, solar powered RainPerfect Water Pump, which takes harvested rainwater in a barrel and pumps it through devices like garden hoses and sprinklers. This way, the rainwater is recycled, and consumers can water

NASA plans to fund only one CCDev company? Probably not.

Posted on by

As expected, NASA released on Monday a draft request for proposals (RFP) for the next phase of the Commercial Crew Development (CCDev) program, known as the Integrated Design Phase. With the shift to a contract based on Federal Acquisition Regulations (FAR), with some elements of the Space Act Agreements used for the first two CCDev rounds, there’s a lot more documentation and administrivia in this solicitation. Those who have plowed through the documents have raised concern about one passage in main draft RFP document [Microsoft Word .docx format] on pages 52–53 of the 105-page document, a section titled “Phased Acquisition Using Down-Selection Procedures”. It reads:

(a) This solicitation is for the Commercial Crew Program’s acquisition to facilitate the development of a U.S. commercial crew space transportation capability with the goal of achieving safe, reliable and cost effective access to and from low earth orbit (LEO) including the International Space Station (ISS). The acquisition will be conducted as a two-phased procurement using a competitive down-selection technique between phases. In this technique, two or more contractors will be selected for Phase 1. It is expected that the single contractor for Phase 2 will be chosen from among these contractors after a competitive down-selection.

“Phase 1″ refers to the Integrated Design Phase, the next CCDev round, while Phase 2 refers to the follow-on “Development, Test, Evaluation and Certification” phase, which covers the actual construction and testing of a commercial crewed spacecraft. The passage above appears to indicate that NASA will select only one company for Phase 2, contrary to past claims that the agency planned to support the development of multiple providers. Does this represent a change in plans?

Probably not. One thing to keep in mind is a passage later in that same section: “Notwithstanding paragraph (a), the competition in Phase 2 may result in the award of multiple contracts if budget allows.” That indicates that the agency remains open to providing multiple awards in the following CCDev phase. In addition, when talking to Florida Today reporter James Dean yesterday for an article he wrote about CCDev, he shared with me a clarification he received from NASA on that issue. It turns out that the clause in question is a standard one in FAR-based contracts, and that the Commercial Crew Program was “investigating getting a waiver or deviation from this standard clause language for the final RFP.”

So, while NASA seems committed to continuing to support multiple providers throughout the CCDev program, funding permitting, this case is a reminder that the shift from Space Act Agreements to FAR-based contracts could create some issues that both NASA and industry need to be aware of.

Peter Singer on Project Nim

Posted on by

Princeton bioethicist Peter Singer has chimed in to reflect on the recent documentary, Project Nim, about a chimpanzee that was raised as a human. The endeavour was part of a science project to determine how much language, if any, a chimpanzee could acquire in a human environment. Singer believes that Nim was treated wrong and that such invasive research should be consigned to history:

Eighteen years ago, Paola Cavalieri and I founded The Great Ape Project, an organisation dedicated to the idea of giving great apes the moral status and legal protection that befits their nature. As the work of Jane Goodall, Diane Fossey, Francine Patterson, Birute Galdikas, H Lyn White Miles, Roger and Deborah Fouts, Sue Savage-Rumbaugh and many other remarkable scientists have shown, chimpanzees, gorillas, bonobos and orang-utans are self-aware beings, capable of thought, and with rich and deep emotional lives. Our idea is that the great apes, as our closest relatives, could serve as a bridge over the immense gulf we have dug between ourselves and other animals. Once one group of animals is included within the sphere of beings with rights, we hope that the extension of some basic rights to other sentient animals will be that much easier to make.

Fortunately, the idea that great apes should not be treated as tools for research – as opposed to the kind of relationship developed by Sue Savage-Rumbaugh – has made some progress since the time when Nim was sent back to Oklahoma. Experiments on great apes are now either banned or severely restricted in New Zealand, Australia, Japan, and throughout the European Union.

In the United States, a bipartisan group of members of Congress is supporting legislation to end the use of chimpanzees in invasive research. Project Nim shows that even when research is not invasive, it can have a devastating psychological impact on an animal. What happened to Nim was wrong, and should never happen again.

More.