Space Station Sunday: Robot Handshakes, Tropical Cyclones, And Soon, Songs From Space

Good evening, space fans!  Welcome back to the wonderful world-above-world of the International Space Station.

After the successful arrival of a SpaceX Dragon capsule to the station, the astronauts busied themselves with transferring cargo and initiating time-sensitive scientific experiments contained therein.  However, for this mission, not all of the cargo made it INSIDE the station.  According to full-timewhistle.com, in a first-ever robotic handoff, NASA controllers at the Johnson Spaceflight Center in Houston used the Dextre (Special Purpose Dexterous Manipulator) robotic arm to remove the CATS (Cloud Aerosol Transport System) experiment from the Dragon.

The CATS, a multi-satellite array designed to monitor atmospheric pollutants, was then robotically high-fived over to controllers from the Japanese Space Agency (JAXA), who used their own space-based robotic arm (the Japanese Experiment Module Remote Manipulator System) to install the CATS system on the exterior of the ISS's Japanese module, the Kibo.

And the CATS in the Kibo with the silver spoon...
(Image courtesy NASA,.gov.)

CATS will track everything from clouds to volcanic plumes, as well as contaminants both natural and artificial in the sky. Cloud and aerosol properties will be assessed down to 355, 532, and 1064 nanometer wavelengths.

Speaking of clouds, ESA astronaut Samathan Cristoforetti captured some amazing images of Tropical Cyclone Bansi, a storm over the Indian Ocean which peaked with winds of up to 150 miles per hour.

That bright spot is lightning, or the laser pointer of an angry god.
(Image courtesy Astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti.)

Astronaut Cristoforetti tweeted the images to great response from her followers.  Follow @AstroSamantha for more!

In other news, Astronaut Scott Kelly was lauded at America's State of the Union address last Tuesday.  Kelly, a special guest seated near the First Lady, will be headed to the ISS in March along with cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko to undergo the first one-year space stay ever attempted.  President Obama enthused that the Kelly/Kornienko mission would be part of a greater plan to eventually push on to colonize Mars.  As space.com reported, Obama said, "I want Americans to win the race for the kind of discoveries that unleash new jobs ... pushing out into the solar system, not just to visit, but to stay."

Kelly is a particularly interesting choice for the long-term space experiment, as his twin brother Mark - also a fellow astronaut and Navy SEAL - will have his medical data constantly compared with his brother's (Mark will remain on Earth for the duration of the experiment.)  This will allow an unprecedented control-and-test element to the experiment on how spaceflight affects human physiology over the long term.

His brother Mark has a mustache, so scientists can be sure they didn't switch places to cause shenanigans.
(Image courtesy kansascity.com.)

Kelly isn't the only interesting visitor the ISS will be entertaining.  According to engadget.com, singer Sarah Brightman, 54, plans to ship up to the ISS in early September, for the purpose of becoming the first-ever entertainer in space.  Brightman, who is footing the $50-million-odd bill on her own, was inspired by the Apollo moon landings to make her high-flying effort.  

She may also be looking for love...this is one of her album covers.
(Image courtesy engadget.com.)

Regarding the day-to-day operations of the ISS, NASA reported that things went as per routine this week.  Commander Butch Wilmore installed new parts for the Combustion Integrated Rack (used to test the various ways things can burn in microgravity.)  Astronaut Terry Virts offered ocular and echocardiogram data for further assessment of human physiological issues in space, while Astronaut Cristoforetti worked on the Magvector study, which analyzes how a space-based electrical conductor interacts with the Earth's magnetic fields (don't worry, that had nothing to do with all the lightning photos.)

That's what was up on the ISS this week!  Join us next time for more orbital awesomeness...watch this space!

Tropical Cyclone Bansi at the bottom of the world...NOT the Magvector acting up.  Or so they say.
(Image courtesy Astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti.)

3D Printing The One-Of-A-Kind: New 3D-Printing "Teleporter" Destroys And Redeploys

It's kind of like teleportation...except a little more destructive.

According to rawstory.com, scientists have discovered a way to use "destructive scanning" and 3D printing to make objects rematerialize someplace else.  The process involves milling down (shaving away layers of) an inanimate object so that a 3D printer can make a scan of each layer.  Then, the printer sends the imagery from each scanned layer over an encrypted connection to another 3D printer.  The second printer then reconstitutes the item.

Slash it up, then beam it up, Scotty!
(Image courtesy 3Dprint.com.)

The device is powered by a regular 3D printer, 3-axis milling machine, camera, and encryption microcontroller, 3Dprint.com reports.  A Raspberry Pi provides the brains, while an Arduino works the milling.

The system, called "Scotty" in homage to Enterprise engineer from "Star Trek", is considered useful in its destructive protocol, due to the fact that it enables security by only allowing one copy of an object to exist at any given point.  This could be important for future online vendors who can assure that once purchased, only one copy of an item will be available to the client.

It'll make 3D-printed art forgery a pretty bad idea.
(Image courtesy independent.co.uk.)

The encryption elements being developed for Scotty will hopefully combat homemade mass-production, ensuring the scanned files are difficult or impossible to pirate.  Copying your newest set of 3D printed flatware won't be as easy as copying a CD.

While it'll still be some time before full-scale teleportation comes into public use, it's somewhat comforting to know that even if we can replicate complex items via 3D printing, they still can't always match the originals.

Some one-of-a-kind items should remain so, in their original form.
(Image courtesy replicatorinc.com.)

Home, Home On The Range-R: Military-Grade Radar Scanners Can Help Police Spot You Through Walls

Big Brother isn't just watching - he's digging your moves, and he's not about to let something like legality or a concrete, windowless wall get in his way.  "Thanks" to Range-R radar technology, cops can sense motion inside a space without even having to kick down the doors.

According to USA Today, over the last two years, some 50 law enforcement agencies across America have adopted this technology, because search warrants take time and randomly breaking and entering sometimes gets bad press.  With no concern for privacy other than the privacy of the device itself (no notice of the technology nor its intents were released to the public), agencies from the FBI to the U.S. Marshalls to possibly your hometown cop-shop can now track you with the high-tech scanners.

It allows for that extra few seconds of pondering before the strike team swarms the building.
(Image courtesy policestateusa.com.)

When placed against an exterior wall, the radar use radio waves to penetrate up to 50 feet indoors and snitch if there's a person inside, where they are, and if they're mobile.  The devices are even sensitive enough to detect breathing, so basically, you have nowhere to hide.  They can "see" through concrete, dirt, adobe, wood, stucco or brick, and are even drone-mountable for you pesky apartment dwellers (or maybe just for the extra-lazy lawmen.)

While plausibly for use in hostage scenarios, firefighting emergencies, or search-and-rescue (according to the manufacturer's website), the Range-Rs have already been used over such inanity as parole jumping.  Originally invented for use in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the devices, made by the L3 Communications company, cost $600 apiece.  Some $180,000 has been quietly spent on them since 2012.

While legal issues surrounding the use of the devices remain tricky, the Supreme Court specifically noted in a 2001 ruling that it was Constitutionally unsound to have police scan the exterior of a building with a thermal camera, and that the ruling would also apply to future radar systems.

"What?  We're just checking to make sure they're breathing...before we put a stop to that."
(Image courtesy freethoughtproject.com.)

So far, this ruling has gone unrecognized, as police maintain they are using the devices for the usual "security concerns."  That tight security apparently precludes even mentioning that the Range-Rs exist.  William Sorukas, a former supervisor of the Marshals Service's domestic investigations arm, even went as far as to say, "If you disclose a technology or a method or a source, you're telling the bad guys along with everyone else."

Well, now the bad guys DO know.  And the good guys too.  Neither side should be happy about it.  What happened to doing police work to catch criminals, instead of stooping to their level and committing crimes to summarily execute "justice"?

Your security is just as important as national security.
(Image courtesy reason.com.)

Rock And Scroll: X-Rays Peer Into The Ancient World By "Reading" Volcanically-Charred Papyrus

When we ponder the implications of modern and future technology, it is interesting to note that while they drive us ever further forward, they can also help us understand history more thoroughly.  Such a case was just brought to light by an x-ray technician who creatively solved a classic problem by using an unexpected piece of modern technology.

According to the BBC, Dr. Vito Mocella, of the National Research Council's Institute for Microelectronics and Microsystems in Naples, Italy, was at a scientific conference in France when he learned that "X-ray phase-contrast tomography", a common medical analysis method, was being adapted for use in paleontology. He liked the idea and extrapolated it for another interesting historical cause: how to read data on volcanically-scorched ancient scrolls.

It could save your life from breast cancer, but it can also tell of many lives past.
(Image courtesy nature.com.)

Phase contrast refers to the changing "phase" (slight distortion) of light waves as objects are X-rayed. The analysis of the contrast in the light provides a detailed 3D image of an object (as opposed to simply measuring the amount of light that is visible through the object, as is done with a conventional X-ray.) The technique is frequently used for mammograms, as it helps differentiate layers of an object when there is little contrast in the background material.

This allowed scientists to observe the difference between the ink and the papyrus of a scroll from the Herculaneum, an ancient library that was battered by the Mt. Vesuvius eruption in 79 AD. Volcanic gas at temperatures of 320 Celsius (608 Fahrenheit) charred the scrolls almost to the point of destruction, but ink remnants a mere tenth of a millimeter high were enough for the synchotron machine to deduce some of the words on the scroll.

"Cleopatra is a bitch."
(Image courtesy popsci.com.)

Though the squashed papyrus fibers made determining letters with straight lines difficult (as they were harder to distinguish from the fibers themselves), letters with curved elements were identifiable. The scroll was written in Greek, which was the language of philosophy in ancient Rome. The team believes the scroll to be a work called "On Frank Criticism", a study advocating honesty between friends, written by the Epicurean philosopher Philodemus.

The Herculeaneum, the only surviving library from the ancient world, as it looks today (fortunately sans any crazy volcano action.)  More collections from antiquity may benefit from the technology used on the scrolls found here.
(Image courtesy news.softpedia.com.)

Dr. Mocella admits that while the innovative deciphering technique hasn't yet been perfected, he intends to continue experimenting with the project.  Mocella's team was quoted in National Geographic, saying, "This pioneering research opens up new prospects not only for the many papyri still unopened, but also for others that have not yet been discovered."

The scroll, seen by the naked eye in Image A, and then as rendered by the phase contrast x-ray.
And you thought reading regular books was hard.
(Image courtesy nature.com.)

Ballroom Blitzar: Massive Space-Based Radio-Wave Bursts, But No Message...Yet

Like many fascinating things, sometimes a thing that exists only in legend surprises everyone and blasts into reality.  This is even more interesting when it's a scientific event.

According to Gizmodo, this week several massive bursts of energy emitted from deep space  were recorded by scientists at the Parkes Telescope in New South Wales, Australia.  The massive bursts of tightly-banded radio-frequency waves are known as "blitzars", although this is just one term for what could possibly be a variety of explanations for the observed phenomena.  Though blitzars only last a millisecond, they emit the same power as the sun would over an entire day.  So astronomically speaking, this is pretty striking.

"Say it again."  -The Parkes Telescope
(Image courtesy scientias.nl.)

Scientists first began identifying blitzars in 2007 thanks to documented astronomical observations.  Although the data was weeks or even years old, nine blitzars were noted to have occurred.  However, this week's observation happened in real time, and appeared to emanate from the constellation Aquarius.  Little more is known about its origins other than that the source "must be huge, cataclysmic and up to 5.5 billion light years away," according to researcher Emily Petroff.

Speculations on the source include flares or collapse from large, possibly magnetically-charged neutron stars, but these ideas are presently unfounded.  As Keith Bannister from Australia's national science agency told New Scientist, "Nobody knows what to make of it...All the ideas are very exotic so ruling them out is all you can do at the moment."

"Burp."  -a neutron star
(Image courtesy science.nationalgeographic.com.)

Scientists will continue watching the skies, including in other bandwidths, to see if there are any complimentary blitzar bursts elsewhere. This could help to quantify the density of interstellar mediums via observing the speed and dispersion of the signal through free electrons in space. So we'll perhaps learn how fast and far such energy can travel...even if we don't yet know what it means.

Could creatures at the source be listening to OUR radio waves?  And are they (rightly) disgusted by our terrible pop music?
(Image courtesy iytimg.com.)

Elon Musk's Martian Internet Might Help All Of Mankind

Elon Musk is rampaging into the future with yet another astronomically awesome plan.  The mastermind behind SpaceX, Tesla, and the Hyperloop doesn't just want folks to comfortably travel to space - he wants to make sure they're easily connected to the internet while they're up there.

It might sound crazy to think that the humans who will be among the first "space tourists" would spend their time googling cat videos and playing online poker, but Musk's plans are extra ambitious.  His intent is to establish a space internet so powerful that when colonizing Mars becomes a reality, the pioneers will be able to chat about it on Facebook.

Now THIS is an occupation that will achieve something!
(Image courtesy engadget.com.)

According to Bloomberg Business Week, this new and improved World Wide Web would become the Galaxy Wide Web thanks to a fleet of low-flying satellites Musk intends to launch.  While it would not only aid future connectivity to space travelers, it would serve the immediate purpose of expanding internet speed and coverage all around our home planet.

“Our focus is on creating a global communications system that would be larger than anything that has been talked about to date,” Musk stated.

The first humans will be "checking in" on Mars sooner than we think.
(Image courtesy futurology.net.)

The satellites would orbit some 750 miles above the earth, where the vacuum of space would facilitate faster flow of data - even more so than using fiber-optic cables on Earth.  With the speed of light operating a full 40% faster in the vacuum of space, bouncing data off of Musk's satellites and then back to earth would improve speeds considerably.

Great hypothesis...now, to test!
(Image courtesy astrosurf.com.)

Musk is aware that his competitors have the bandwidth territory, but he holds the ace of rocket technology.  He intends to open a satellite factory in Seattle that will draw engineering talent of all sorts (SpaceX projects will also be in fabrication there), and has a long-term plan over the next five years to bring the initiative to fruition.  The exclusive opening of the Seattle SpaceX office took place on Friday, adding to an ever-increasing network of operational sites.  He is completely serious about looking even further than that, though.

“It will be important for Mars to have a global communications network as well,” he says. “I think this needs to be done, and I don’t see anyone else doing it...we see it as a long-term revenue source for SpaceX to be able to fund a city on Mars.”

In space, no one can hear you scream at Candy Crush.
(Image courtesy hothardware.com.)

Newsweek reported that Musk expounded on this statement, telling the assembled crowd at the launch of the Seattle SpaceX office that, “One day I will visit Mars.” He feels the goal of establishing humans on Mars could be feasible inside the next two decades. Most of all, it's for humanity's own good, or as Musk explains, “the thing that matters long term is to have a self sustaining city on Mars, to make life multi-planetary.”

So at least if you end up marooned on Mars, there'll be Netflix and Pandora there to entertain you.  And no one will fault you for not accepting their Facebook invites.

Which Instagram filter will look best for selfies on the Red Planet?
(Image courtesy memeburn.com.)

Space Station Sunday: More Than Just Chillin'

Good evening, space fans!  There was some drama (but thankfully a safe resolution) on the ISS this week, when an alarm roused the astronauts from sleep to indicate that an ammonia leak was possibly taking place.  Fortunately, this was not the case.

According to the New York Times, the alarm sounded not once but twice on Wednesday, when pressure had built up in a water coolant loop on the ISS.  Normally, the water keeps the space station cool by circulating in the loops and then transferring the heat to external ammonia loops, which then radiate excess heat into space.  Thusly cooled, the external ammonia loops keep the station chill from the outside, though due to ammonia's toxicity, it is not used to cool the station interior (hence the water loops.)  The overburdened loop signified that perhaps ammonia was leaking into the water coolant loop, which would put it in dangerous proximity to the air inside the station.

Even the smallest bits of space work need constant attention.
(Image courtesy nasaspaceflight.com.)

NASA spokeman Bob Jacobs summed it up calmly, stating that, "We saw an increase in water loop pressure, then later saw a cabin-pressure increase that could be indicative of an ammonia leak in the worst-case scenario...So we protected for the worst-case scenario and isolated the crew in the Russian segment of the space station while the teams are evaluating the situation."

Nonessential systems were temporarily shut down to prevent any kind of overheating on the station.  This included scientific freezers aboard, but no data was lost due to the fact that the freezers are designed to remain cold for eight hours, independent of power supply.  The power was restored well within the eight-hour window.

According to the deliciously in-depth technical account of event posted on nasaspaceflight.com, after the initial high-pressure/possible leak alarm went off, the astronauts followed procedure by donning their PBAs (Portable Breathing Apparatus), cutting off the IMV (Inter-Module Ventilation), and quarantining themselves in the RS (Russian section) by sealing the Node 1 Aft CBM hatch.  Atmospheric tests for ammonia were then conducted, all which fortunately proved negative.

Ready for anything:  NASA astronaut Terry Virts and ESA astronaut Samathan Cristoforetti practiced for problems on 12/1.
(Image courtesy NASA.gov.)

Ground teams then rerouted the problem areas and vented nitrogen to relieve the pressure.  The crew were cleared to reenter the US segment, but returned hours later when indications of rising cabin pressure once again manifested.  Once again, no ammonia leak was detected.  This second rise in pressure was likely due to the station rebooting itself after the power-down and use of emergency breathing devices.

NASA Spaceflight considered the event a good practice run, albeit a somewhat scare one.  They stated, "If nothing else, the incident served to exercise the well-practiced procedures, proving that both the crew and ground teams responded in a timely and appropriate manner to a situation that could have been very dangerous if missed – thus serving to prove the effectiveness of NASA’s vigorous regime of procedural training and simulation."

All good in the orbital hood.
(Image courtesy pcmag.com.)

The Russian space agency Roscosmos also agreed the scenario was handled well, with Maxim Matyushin, head of the Russian mission command center, telling the Independent UK that,  "Safety of the crew has been achieved through the coordinated and timely actions themselves cosmonauts and astronauts, as well as operational management groups in Moscow and Houston."

Despite the drama, fellow spaceman James Kelly (a Space Shuttle pilot who served two missions to the ISS) chimed in from mission control with some levity, enthusing, "Enjoy your impromptu day off."

 

Keeping it cool.
(Image courtesy space.com.)

In other news, the SpaceX Dragon capsule that made it safely to the ISS last week caused no trouble...however the landing of its attendant Falcon 9 rocket was not so smooth.  This week, exclusive imagery of the rocket crash was released.  The original (and still tangible) intent from the SpaceX mission was to land the rocket safely on an offshore pad and have it retrofitted for re-use.  This plan didn't exactly work out, just yet.  Inappropriately exciting video (linked below) followed.

Well, that's why they call it experimenting.

Not bad, considering how few rockets, you know, LAND.
(Image courtesy newscientist.com.)

That's all this week from our outstanding orbital outpost!  Be sure to tune in next week for more awesomeness above the atmosphere...watch this space!