Daily Archives: December 22, 2014

WATCH LIVE TODAY: NASA Curiosity Mars Discovery Webcast …

Posted: December 22, 2014 at 9:47 pm

NASA officials and space station partners will host a news conference Thursday (Dec. 18) to discuss the planned one-year mission to the International Space Station. The briefing starts at 10 a.m. EST (1500 GMT) and you can watch it live in the window below:

Broadcast live streaming video on Ustream

From NASA:"NASA astronaut Scott Kelly will launch to the space station in March 2015 to begin a yearlong stay aboard the orbiting laboratory -- the longest single space mission ever undertaken by an American. He will be joined by Mikhail Kornienko of the Russian Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos) on this one-year mission."

SpaceX Launch to Space Station Briefings

The private spaceflight company SpaceX is scheduled to launch its fifth official robotic resupply mission to the International Space Station Friday (Dec. 19), but NASA and SpaceX will host a series of news conferences Thursday (Dec. 18) to discuss the mission beforehand. You can watch the first briefing, a prelaunch conference, live in the window below starting at 12:00 p.m. EST (1700 GMT) on Thursday:

Broadcast live streaming video on Ustream

The other two press conferences detail the science flight to the space station onboard Dragon and will air at 1:30 p.m. EST (1830 GMT) and 3 p.m. EST (2000 GMT). You can also watch the live launch of the Dragon to the space station starting at 12:15 p.m. EST (1715 GMT) Friday, with liftoff set for 1:22 p.m. EST (1822 GMT).

NASA's Orion Test Flight

Update for Dec. 5 at 12:27 p.m. EST: As NASA's recovery teams work to retrieve Orion out of the Pacific Ocean, the space agency will hold a press conference at 1:30 p.m. EST (1830 GMT). Tune in to this page for post-splashdown coverage of NASA's Orion mission. FULL STORY:Splashdown! NASA's Orion Spaceship Survives Epic Test Flight as New Era Begins

NASA'sOrion capsule launched into space on its first-ever test flight at 7:05 a.m. EST (1105 GMT), riding atop a ULA Delta 4 Heavy rocket from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. The capsule is made two orbits beforesplashing down in the Pacific Ocean. See Orion Test Flight Photos Here.Watch it live here:

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WATCH LIVE TODAY: NASA Curiosity Mars Discovery Webcast ...

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NASA prints 3D wrench in space

Posted: at 9:47 pm

By Sarah LeTrent, CNN

updated 5:29 PM EST, Fri December 19, 2014 |

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

(CNN) -- Bringing supplies to astronauts on the International Space Station can be a little screwy, leaving astronauts waiting for the next costly and risky resupply mission.

This week, thanks to 3-D printing, astronaut and ISS commander Barry "Butch" Wilmore had a wrench he needed manufactured by a printer in just four hours.

The ratcheting socket wrench was the first "uplink tool" printed in space, according to Grant Lowery, marketing and communications manager for Made In Space, which built the printer in partnership with NASA. The tool was designed on the ground, emailed to the space station and then manufactured.

From start to finish, the process took less than a week.

Made in Space's 3-D printer is the first to operate in zero gravity, and printed its first object in orbit -- a part for the printer, ironically -- in November.

"This means that we could go from having a part designed on the ground to printed in orbit within an hour to two from start to finish," Niki Werkheiser, NASA's 3-D print manager, said in a press release when the printer was sent to the ISS in September. "The on-demand capability can revolutionize the constrained supply chain model we are limited to today and will be critical for exploration missions."

The goal for the project is to create in-space manufacturing, especially as missions venture farther from Earth.

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NASA prints 3D wrench in space

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Space station commander is 'emailed' a much-needed spanner

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A NASA COMMANDER on the International Space Station has been emailed a spanner just in time for Christmas.

Christmas probably has very little to do with the spanner - although we suspect that the space station's inhabitants are in a good position to see Santa coming - but 3D printing and progress do.

A post on the Medium.com website said that Made in Space, a 3D printing company with ties to NASA and hardware already on the ISS station, sent directions for the spanner to an onboard 3D printer.

"We had overheard ISS commander Barry Wilmore mention over the radio that he needed one, so we designed one in CAD and sent it up to him faster than a rocket ever could have. This is the first time we've ever emailed' hardware to space," wrote Mike Chen, founder of Made in Space.

"On the ISS this type of technology translates to lower costs for experiments, faster design iteration, and a safer, better experience for the crew members, who can use it to replace broken parts or create new tools on demand.

"But what I'm really excited about is the impact this could have on human space exploration beyond Earth orbit."

Chen, like Elon Musk, sees space exploration taking in Mars and, like the SpaceX explorer, has the red planet in his sights.

"When we do set up the first human colonies on the moon, Mars and beyond, we won't use rockets to bring along everything we need," he added. "We'll build what we need there, when we need it."

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Space station commander is 'emailed' a much-needed spanner

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Let’s Play Sol 0-Mars Colonization #001 – Auf geht’s zum Mars – Video

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Let #39;s Play Sol 0-Mars Colonization #001 - Auf geht #39;s zum Mars
Sol 0 ist ein neues Strategiespiel das momentan noch in einer Beta Phase ist und um den Einzug bei Steam kmpft. Ich finde es ist ein absolut geniales Spiel ...

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Let's Play Sol 0-Mars Colonization #001 - Auf geht's zum Mars - Video

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NASA wants to build a floating city above the clouds of Venus

Posted: at 9:46 pm

Venus exploration has been deemed off-limits due to its inhospitable climate -- but NASA believes Cloud City may be the answer.

Artistic concept of the permanent city. NASA Langley Research Center

A number of agencies, including, of course, NASA, are focusing solar system exploration efforts on Mars. At first glance, though, Mars doesn't really seem like the best candidate. Venus is much closer -- at a distance that ranges between 38 million kilometres and 261 million kilometres, compared to Mars' 56 million to 401 million kilometres, it's Earth's closest neighbour.

It's also comparable in size to Earth -- a radius of 6,052km to Earth's 6,371 -- and has similar density and chemical composition.

But everything else about it makes it almost utterly unvisitable. While probes have been sent to the planet's surface, they lasted, at most, just two hours before surface conditions on Venus destroyed them. These conditions include an atmospheric pressure up to 92 times greater than Earth's; a mean temperature of 462 degrees Celsius (863 degrees Fahrenheit); extreme volcanic activity; an extremely dense atmosphere consisting mostly of carbon dioxide, with a small amount of nitrogen; and a cloud layer made up of sulphuric acid.

In short, Venus? Not a top holiday destination, really.

NASA thinks it might have a solution that will allow sending humans up to check it out, though: Cloud City.

The High Altitude Venus Operational Concept -- HAVOC -- is a conceptual spacecraft designed by a team at the Systems Analysis and Concepts Directorate at NASA Langley Research Center for the purposes of Venusian exploration. This lighter-than-air rocket would be designed to sit above the acidic clouds for a period of around 30 days, allowing a team of astronauts to collect data about the planet's atmosphere.

While the surface of Venus would destroy a human, hovering above its clouds at an altitude of around 50 kilometres (30 miles) is a set of conditions similar to Earth. Its atmospheric pressure is comparable, and gravity is only slightly lower -- which would allow longer-term stays, effectively eliminating the ailments that occur during long-term stays in zero G. Temperature is about 75 degrees Celsius, which is hotter than is strictly comfortable, but would still be manageable. Finally, the atmosphere at that altitude offers protection from solar radiation comparable to living in Canada.

Artist's concept of the cockpit of the crewed zeppelin. NASA Langley Research Center

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NASA wants to build a floating city above the clouds of Venus

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NASA mulls plan to explore Venus with 'Cloud City'

Posted: at 9:46 pm

Washington Its been done in Star Wars living at a planet by floating above it. Now NASA researchers have proposed the concept in real life.

And the planet they have in mind is not so far, far away.

Its actually Earths closest neighbor, Venus.

Some scientists at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration propose sending people there to help study the atmosphere while flying among the clouds in a dirigible.

Although Venus isnt a hospitable place to land, the scientists make a case that the planet should be part of humanitys future in space.

"The atmosphere of Venus is an exciting destination for both further scientific study and future human exploration, says Christopher Jones of NASAs Systems Analysis and Concepts Directorate, in a summary document shared by the space agency. The environment at 50 km [about 31 miles above the surface] is relatively benign, with similar pressure, density, gravity, and radiation protection to the surface of Earth.

Mr. Jones describes the mission as rich in atmospheric research, but also as part of a multi-phase campaign to explore and potentially settle Venus.

Settle Venus? Where ground temperatures are currently in excess of 800 degrees Fahrenheit?

OK, this is where the analogy to Cloud City in the Star Wars movies comes in.

In "The Empire Strikes Back," Cloud City was suspended above the planet Bespin, and film audiences suspended their disbelief as city leader Lando Calrissian (Billie Dee Williams) gave a hard time to interstellar jet jockey Han Solo (Harrison Ford).

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NASA mulls plan to explore Venus with 'Cloud City'

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A New Way to Reach Mars Safely, Anytime and on the Cheap

Posted: at 9:46 pm

Ballistic capture, a low-energy method that has coasted spacecraft into lunar orbit, could help humanity visit the Red Planet much more often

A newfound, lower-energy means for spacecraft to attain Martian orbit could help make Red Planet voyages cheaper, safer and therefore more frequent. Credit: NASA

Getting spacecraft to Mars is quite a hassle. Transportation costs can soar into the hundreds of millions of dollars, even when blasting off during "launch windows"the optimal orbital alignments of Earth and Mars that roll around only every 26 months. A huge contributor to that bottom line? The hair-raising arrivals at the Red Planet. Spacecraft screaming along at many thousands of kilometers per hour have to hit the brakes hard, firing retrorockets to swing into orbit. The burn can require hundreds of pounds of extra fuel, lugged expensively off Earth, and comes with some risk of failure that could send the craft careening past or even right into Mars.

This brute force approach to attaining orbit, called a Hohmann transfer, has served historically deep-pocketed space agencies well enough. But in an era of shrinking science budgets the Hohmann transfer's price tag and inherent riskiness look limiting.

Now new research lays out a smoother, safer way to achieve Martian orbit without being restricted by launch windows or busting the bank. Called ballistic capture, it could help open the Martian frontier for more robotic missions, future manned expeditions and even colonization efforts. "It's an eye-opener," says James Green, director of NASA's Planetary Science Division. "It could be a pretty big step for us and really save us resources and capability, which is always what we're looking for."

The premise of a ballistic capture: Instead of shooting for the location Mars will be in its orbit where the spacecraft will meet it, as is conventionally done with Hohmann transfers, a spacecraft is casually lobbed into a Mars-like orbit so that it flies ahead of the planet. Although launch and cruise costs remain the same, the big burn to slow down and hit the Martian bull's-eyeas in the Hohmann scenariois done away with. For ballistic capture, the spacecraft cruises a bit slower than Mars itself as the planet runs its orbital lap around the sun. Mars eventually creeps up on the spacecraft, gravitationally snagging it into a planetary orbit. "That's the magic of ballistic captureit's like flying in formation," says Edward Belbruno, a visiting associated researcher at Princeton University and co-author, with Francesco Topputo of the Polytechnic University of Milan, of a paper detailing the new path to Mars and the physics behind it. The paper, posted on arXiv, has been submitted to the journal Celestial Mechanics and Dynamical Astronomy.

"A delicate dance" Ballistic capture, also called a low-energy transfer, is not in of itself a new idea. While at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory a quarter century ago, Belbruno laid out the fuel-saving, cost-shaving orbital insertion method for coasting probes to the Moon. A Japanese vessel, called Hiten, first took advantage in 1991, as did NASA's GRAIL mission, launched in 2011.

Belbruno worked out how to let the competing gravities of Earth, the sun and moon gently pull a spacecraft into a desired lunar orbit. All three bodies can be thought of as creating bowl-like depressions in spacetime. By lining up the trajectory of a spacecraft through those bowls, such that momentum slackens along the route, a spacecraft can just "roll" down at the end into the moon's small bowl, easing into orbit fuel-free. "It's a delicate dance," Belbruno says.

Unfortunately, pulling off a similar maneuver at Mars (or anywhere else) seemed impossible because the Red Planet's velocity is much higher than the Moon's. There appeared no way to get a spacecraft to slow down enough to glide into Mars' gravitational spacetime depression because the "bowl," not that deep to begin with, was itself a too-rapidly moving target. "I gave up on it," Belbruno says.

However, while recently consulting for the Boeing Corp., the major contractor for NASA's Space Launch System, which is intended to take humankind to Mars, Belbruno, Topputo and colleagues stumbled on an idea: Why not go with the flow near Mars? Sailing a spacecraft into an orbital path anywhere from a million to even tens of millions of kilometers ahead of the Red Planet would make it possible for Mars (and its spacetime bowl) to ease into the spacecraft's vicinity, thus subsequently letting the spacecraft be ballistically captured. Boeing, intrigued by this novel avenue to Mars, funded the study, in which the authors crunched some numbers and developed models for the capture.

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A New Way to Reach Mars Safely, Anytime and on the Cheap

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Patricia Bacus Genetic Engineering Fall 2014 – Video

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Patricia Bacus Genetic Engineering Fall 2014

By: Kim Solez

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Patricia Bacus Genetic Engineering Fall 2014 - Video

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GENETIC ENGINEERING BIOTECHAWESOME – Video

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GENETIC ENGINEERING BIOTECHAWESOME
based on journal paper "gene cloning and soluble expression of Aspergillus niger phytase in E.coli via chaperone co-expression (Ushasree et al.)"

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GENETIC ENGINEERING BIOTECHAWESOME - Video

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Stem Cells: Tools for Human Genetics and Heart Regeneration – Video

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Stem Cells: Tools for Human Genetics and Heart Regeneration
Department of Medicine Grand Rounds presentation by Dr. Charles Murry, professor, Department of Pathology, Bioengineering and Medicine/Cardiology; Director, ...

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Stem Cells: Tools for Human Genetics and Heart Regeneration - Video

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