Restructured NASA Advisory Council Meets to Formulate Agency Guidance

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The newly restructured NASA Advisory Council recently concluded its second meeting, held Feb. 18-19, at NASA Headquarters in Washington. This was the first council meeting including all of the committee chairs and other appointed members, completing the restructuring process NASA Administrator Charles Bolden began in fall 2009.

The council provides advice and recommendations to the NASA administrator about agency programs, policies, plans, financial controls and other matters related to the agency's responsibilities.

"I'm very excited about the council's new structure," said NASA Advisory Council Chairman Kenneth M. Ford. "I have the greatest confidence that the committees will provide the full council with the best possible recommendations for Administrator Bolden's consideration."

The council and its nine committees meet on a quarterly basis throughout the year in public and fact-finding sessions. The committees are:

  • Aeronautics Committee: Marion Blakey, chair
  • Audit, Finance and Analysis Committee: Robert M. Hanisee, chair
  • Commercial Space Committee: Brett Alexander, chair
  • Education and Public Outreach Committee: Miles O'Brien, chair
  • Exploration Committee: Richard Kohrs, chair
  • Information Technology Infrastructure Committee: retired Air Force Lt. Gen. Albert Edmonds, chair
  • Science Committee: Wesley T. Huntress, Jr., chair
  • Space Operations Committee: retired Air Force Col. Eileen M. Collins, chair
  • Technology and Innovation Committee: Esther Dyson, chair
  • Ex-Officio Members: Charles Kennel, chair, Space Studies Board, National Academies, and Raymond Colladay, chair, Aeronautics and Space Engineering Board, National Academies
To learn more about the NASA Advisory Council and its committees, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/nac

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NASA’s Space Shuttle Discovery Rolls to Launch Pad; Liftoff Practice Set

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Journalists are invited to cover the STS-131 space shuttle crew's practice countdown and related training March 2-5 at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Reporters also may cover space shuttle Discovery's move from the Vehicle Assembly Building to Launch Pad 39A on March 2.

Atop of a giant crawler-transporter, Discovery's first motion on its rollout to the pad is scheduled for Tuesday at 12:01 a.m. EST. The 3.4-mile journey is expected to take approximately six hours. Activities include a 6:30 a.m. photo opportunity, followed by an 8:30 a.m. interview availability with Discovery Flow Director Stephanie Stilson. Reporters must arrive at Kennedy's news center by 6 a.m. for transportation to the viewing area.

Live coverage of the move will be shown on NASA Television beginning at 6:30 a.m. Video highlights will air on the NASA TV Video File.

Beginning March 2, Discovery's astronauts and ground crews will participate in a launch dress rehearsal, known as the Terminal Countdown Demonstration Test, or TCDT. The test provides each shuttle crew with an opportunity to participate in various simulated countdown activities, including equipment familiarization and emergency training.

The following media events are associated with the TCDT. All times are Eastern.

  • March 1 -- STS-131 crew arrival: The crew will arrive about 7 p.m. at the Shuttle Landing Facility. The arrival will be carried live on NASA TV. Reporters must be at the Kennedy press site at 5:45 p.m. to attend arrival.
  • March 4 -- STS-131 crew media availability: The crew will take questions from journalists at Launch Pad 39A at 8:40 a.m. The event will be carried live on NASA TV. Media representatives must arrive at the press site by 7:15 a.m. to participate.
  • March 5 -- STS-131 crew walkout photo opportunity: The astronauts will depart from the Operations and Checkout Building at 7:45 a.m. in their flight suits in preparation for the countdown demonstration test at the launch pad. The walkout will not be broadcast live but will be part of the NASA TV Video File. Reporters must arrive at the press site by 6:15 a.m. to attend walkout.
Foreign journalist media accreditation for these events is closed. U.S. reporters without permanent Kennedy credentials must apply for accreditation by 4 p.m., Friday, Feb. 26. Reporters requesting accreditation must apply online at:

https://media.ksc.nasa.gov

Badges for the events must be picked up Monday through Friday between 6 a.m. and 4 p.m. at the Kennedy Space Center Badging Office on State Road 405.

Dates and times of events are subject to change. Schedule updates are available by calling 321-867-2525.

Discovery's STS-131 crew members are Commander Alan Poindexter, Pilot James P. Dutton, Jr., Mission Specialists Rick Mastracchio, Dorothy Metcalf-Lindenburger, Stephanie Wilson, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency astronaut Naoko Yamazaki and Clayton Anderson. The seven astronauts will deliver science racks to be transferred to laboratories on the International Space Station. Launch is targeted for 6:27 a.m. EDT on April 5.

For NASA TV downlink information, schedules and links to streaming video, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/ntv

For more information about the STS-131 mission and crew, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/shuttle

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NASA Awards Mississippi Information and Technical Services Contract

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NASA's Stennis Space Center near Bay St. Louis, Miss., has awarded a contract to ASRC Research and Technology Solutions LLC, or ARTS, a small business in Greenbelt, Md., to provide information and technical services at the center.

The cost plus incentive fee contract is valued at $54.5 million. It includes a base two-year contract plus three one-year option periods.

Work performed by ARTS and its subcontractor includes a broad range of information, technical, technology and applied science services. It also covers future requirements and additions, such as telecommunication services for Stennis.

For information about NASA and agency programs, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov

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NASA Awards Agency-Wide Mission Network Services Contract

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NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., has award AT&T of Vienna, Va., a contract to provide Mission Network Services for the agency.

The contract has a one-year, two-month base period, followed by three two-year options that may be exercised at NASA's discretion. It is a firm-fixed price contract with a value of approximately $87 million, if all options are exercised.

Under the contract, AT&T will provide resources necessary to perform NASA's Mission Network requirements at domestic and overseas locations for agency projects and missions.

The contract is a follow-on effort for NASA's agency-wide Mission Network Services, which was awarded under the General Services Administration's Federal Technology Services (FTS) 2001 contract. These services are being transitioned from the GSA FTS 2001 contract to the newly awarded GSA Networx Universal contract.

For more information about NASA and agency programs, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov

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NASA Supports Univision Hispanic Education Campaign, Plans Ongoing Partnership

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NASA is working with Univision Communications Inc. to develop a partnership in support of the Spanish-language media outlet's initiative to improve high school graduation rates, prepare Hispanic students for college, and encourage them to pursue careers in science, technology, engineering and mathematics, or STEM, disciplines.

NASA Administrator Charles Bolden attended Univision's announcement Tuesday at the National Press Club in Washington of a three-year national Hispanic education initiative titled Es El Momento (The Moment is Now).

"Education is a vital component of NASA's mission," Bolden said. "We look forward to developing a partnership with Univision that would allow us to combine NASA's unique STEM education content with Univision's communications platforms -- television, radio, and online and interactive media."

Also present at the event were Univision President and CEO Joe Uva, Univision Networks President Cesar Conde, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, U.S. Secretary of Labor Hilda L. Solis and philanthropist Melinda Gates. Organizations partnering on this initiative include the U.S. Department of Education and the Gates Foundation.

Collaboration with Univision will complement NASA's current education efforts to engage underrepresented and underserved students in the critical STEM fields.

For more information about NASA's education programs, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/education

For more information about Univision's Es El Momento, visit:

http://www.eselmomento.com

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Shape-Shifting Across The Globe | The Loom

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Many animals have evolved camouflage, but nobody quite pulls it off as beautifully as the octopus and its tentacled cousin the cuttlefish. These invertebrates, which belong to a group called cephalopods, are covered in microscopic pigment organs that they can squeeze and stretch to take on the patterns around them. They can curl their tentacles to assume different shapes, and they can even change the texture of their skin to bumpy or smooth, as necessity demands.

Nobody knows the tricks of cephalopods better than Roger Hanlon, a biologist at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. As I wrote in this New York Times profile of Hanlon, he has documented their powers of disguise both in the wild and in his lab. You can see some of the cephalopods in action in this Times video I narrated, as well as in these videos at Hanlon’s web site. Hanlon has carefully documented how cephalopods can melt away into their backgrounds; he’s also shown that male cuttlefishes can disguise themselves as females to sneak past bigger males to get a chance to mate. There’s still a lot Hanlon has yet to study about cephalopod camouflage, though; many of the most spectacular displays of shape-shifting are one-offs that Hanlon or a wildlife videographer happened to catch on a few seconds of video.

The video shown here is the latest addition to the repertoire of cepahlopod camouflage. As Hanlon and his colleagues write in a paper to be published in Biological Bulletin, the Atlantic longarm octopus (Macrotritopus defilippi) does an uncanny impression of a flounder.

Hanlon first saw this trick before he actually knew what it was. In the early 1980s, he captured a young Atlantic longarm octopus and reared it in a tank at Texas A&M University. It was the first time anyone had ever paid close attention to the biology of this obscure creature, which lives on sandy expanses of the Caribbean sea floor. While observing the octopus, Hanlon noticed that sometimes it would flatten out its tentacles and swim close to the bottom of the tank. At the time he didn’t know what to make of it.

In 2000 wildlife photographers took pictures of Atlantic shortarm octopuses in their natural habitat and suggested that they took on the strange shape to mimic flounders. Four years later, Hanlon took another picture that showed the octopus not just flat against the sea floor, but assuming the pattern of the surrounding sand–a trick that flounder use as well. The next year Hanlon and his colleagues spent 51 hours diving of the coast of the island of Saba searching for the octopuses on the sand plains. They managed to film one animal apparently pretending to be a flounder. And since then, professional photographers have supplied Hanlon with still more videos.

Hanlon and his colleagues have compared the footage of the octopus to footage of the peacock flounder, which lives in the same waters. The similarities are uncanny. Flounders hug the sandy bottom as they swim, even following the sand’s ripples. So do octopuses. The octopuses swim in the same short bouts as the flounder, and at about the same speed. They form their tentacles into a sheet-like mass with the same body outline as the flounder. The big difference between the octopus and the flounder is the way they blend into the background. The flounder are relatively slow at matching their surroundings, while the octopuses can change their skin quickly and with great precision. If there are white rocks scattered around on the sandy plain, Hanlon has noticed, a stationary octopus will produce a white spot on its body as well.

The Atlantic longarm octopus is not the only octopus to pretend to be a flounder. On the other side of the world, off the coast of Indonesia, Hanlon and his colleagues have documented two other species that pull off the same trick. (Here’s a video of one of the Indonesian species.) Pretending to be a flounder is such a useful strategy that three distantly related species of octopus have independently evolved it.

With flounder-mimicking octopuses now firmly established in the Atlantic Ocean as well as the Pacific, it’s high time to ask what is so great about flounders? Sandy plains are dangerous places for soft-bodied octopuses. Predators can spot them as they move across the open expanses. It’s possible that octopuses are not mimicking flounders per se, but are just taking advantage of the same kind of camouflage. But it’s also possible that small fish that do spot the octopus may leave it alone because it looks like a flounder. While a small fish could easily take a bite out of a soft, fleshy octopus tentacle, a tough, scaly flounder would pose a threat.


Flying on Skis

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Flying on Skis

Soaring over 100 meters with nothing but a pair of skis may seem unimaginable, but for ski jumpers it's just another day at the office. Ski jumping has been a part of the Olympics since 1924, when the games were held in Chamonix, France in a contest dubbed the "I Olympi

The Burlat Brothers' Bizarre Aero Engine

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In the Burlat engine, B becomes the axis of the crankshaft ; BQ the crank; Q the crank-pin; while P'P materialises into a rigid rod, eye-jointed to the crank-pin Q as indicated, and produced as shown; each end carries a piston S, sliding in a cylinder, these cylinders forming one with the larg

This Is How Google Voice Will Ruin Your Relationships [Google]

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Long ago, someone wrote about how Google is out to control your dog and marry your wife. I don't know how right he was about all that, but I certainly know that Google Voice is out to ruin relationships.

You see, reader Pascal wrote us about a recent experience he had with Google Voice's transcription feature:

I recently set up Google Voice on my wife's new Nexus One, and today I was leaving work late and left her a voice mail whilst there was some background noise in the rain admittedly.

My message was supposed to be something like " Hey babe, I've just left work, its about 7:15. I'll see you at home. Bye. "

Pictured above is what his wife saw as a result of a voice transcription mangling. It reads like a dirty confession about Pascal's upbringing, drinking habits, and age.

Of course I'm exaggerating about something like this ruining a relationship, but it could certainly create some temporary confusion. Especially if you call your girl to tell her about the "trucking stunt" you saw earlier in the day. [Thanks, Pascal!]


Latest iPad/iPhone SDK Mentions Front-Facing Camera, Camera Flash, and Video Conferencing [Apple]

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The latest iPad/iPhone SDK not only makes it easier for developers to build universal iPad/iPhone apps, but it also appears to have support for a front-facing camera, zoom, camera flash, and video conferencing. Oh, and some snazzy accept/decline buttons.

Keep in mind that the iPad SDK is the same as the iPhone SDK at this time, so we can't really know which sections of the framework are intended for which device. Not to mention that Apple sometimes leaves some stray test conditions in the code and those may never make it into a final OS.

In other words? Let's not get too excited here. [MacRumors]


Bolden Responds To Congress over Constellation Actions

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Bolden: NASA legit as it readies to end moon program, Orlando Sentinel

"NASA Administrator Charles Bolden bluntly told Congress in a letter sent Friday that the agency has kept within the law as it prepares to dismantle the Constellation moon rocket program -- despite accusations to the contrary from nearly 30 U.S. House members. The three-page letter was in response to warning sent by the lawmakers on Feb. 12 that reminded the new NASA chief that he could not shut down Constellation this year without prior approval from Congress. They said NASA has begun pulling the plug in violation of a law passed last year."

- NASA Letter To Offerors Regarding Cancellation of Exploration Ground Launch Services (EGLS) Request for Proposal (RFP), earlier post
- Letter From House of Representatives to NASA Administrator Bolden regarding Constellation contract Cancellation, earlier post

Another NASA Lunar Electric Rover iPhone App

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"Welcome to the NASA Lunar Electric Rover (LER) Simulator. You don't need a driver's license, but you still need to buckle up as the LER Simulator gives you a glimpse of what it might be like to support the activities of a functioning Lunar Outpost. Get busy. You never know if your skills here will become a major part of the NASA Astronaut application process in the future."

Download at the iTunes store.

Wiimote Proton Pack Mod Shows Both Dedication and Indifference For Graphical Capability [Ghostbusters]

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This man, Jack Rossi, created a simulation proton pack + thrower so he can play the Wii version of Ghostbusters with as much realism as possible. This is the result.

I gotta admire him for his preference of playability over having this-gen graphics. And for finding a use for all that junk he had lying around his house. [GBFans via Destructoid via Nerd Aproved]


More People Interested In Buying iPad Than Original iPhone [Chart]

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That's what this RBC/ChangeWave's surveys says. Back in April 2007, fewer people were interested in buying the original iPhone compared to those wanting to buy the iPad on February 2010. Does this mean the iPad would be a bigger success?

Not necessarily. It may mean that, but we don't really know for sure. First, back then the iPhone was completely unknown. A new, unproven product, with no user base whatsoever. Today, the iPhone and iPod are well known, so one could even argue that—given their massive popularity—a higher percentage of people would be interested in buying the iPad. In other words, who knows. Let's wait until Apple actually makes the iPad available on their site.

There are other interesting data points. One is the version people are most interested in: The lowest end and the highest end win, with 19% each. With the 64GB Wi-Fi getting only 8% and the 16GB Wi-Fi and 3G version getting 9% of the interest.

Another interesting one: 68% of the people interested in it want to surf the internet, 44% for email, 37% for eBooks, 28% for the reading magazines and other periodicals, and only 24% for watching video. [Digital Daily]


America’s First Wave Power Farm Consists of Ten Buoys, Costs $60 Million, Powers 400 Homes [Energy]

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Ten 200 ton buoys—each measuring 150 feet by 40 feet—are being installed off the coast of Oregon to build America's first wave power farm. They'll power 400 homes by harnessing "the energy of wave motion." Worth $60 million?

Of course, of course. Clean, renewable energy is almost always worth it. The trouble with wave farms is that they haven't shown much success yet. They're currently about six times as costly as wind farms, are easily damaged by large waves, and the first ones didn't work out so well:

The world's first commercial wind wave farm opened in 2008 in Portugal, but power production was suspended due to financial difficulties. Moreover, two years ago, a Canadian-produced wave power device sank off Oregon's coast.

Yikes. I'm sure that in the long run we'll start seeing positive results, but it looks like the path there will be long and expensive. [USA Today via Good via Inhabitat—Thanks to GitEmSteveDave for catching the typo!]