NASA Selects 2013 NASA Innovative Advanced Technology Concepts for Continued Study

NASA has selected six technology proposals for continued study under the agency's Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) Program.

The proposals selected for Phase 2 of the 2013 NIAC Program address a range of visionary concepts including photonic laser thrusters, extreme sample return, and innovative spherical robots designed for planetary exploration. NASA's Space Technology Mission Directorate based the selections on their potential to transform future aerospace missions, introduce new capabilities, or significantly improve current approaches to building and operating aerospace systems.

"As NASA begins a new chapter in exploration, we're investing in these seed-corn advanced concepts of next-generation technologies that will truly transform how we investigate and learn about our universe," said Michael Gazarik, NASA's associate administrator for space technology in Washington. "Advancing these proposals from universities, private companies and NASA researchers to Phase 2 studies allows new, futuristic ideas to move closer to becoming real tools for exploration."

NIAC Phase 2 awards can be worth as much as $500,000 for two years, and allow proposers to further develop the most successful concepts from previously selected Phase 1 studies. Phase 1 studies must demonstrate the initial feasibility and benefit of a concept. Phase 2 studies go to the next level, refining designs and exploring aspects of implementing the new technology.

NASA selected these projects through a peer-review process that evaluated innovativeness and technical viability. All projects are still in the early stages of development -- most being 10 or more years from use on a NASA mission.

"Early study and continued development are critical to guiding our technology investments," said Jay Falker, NASA's NIAC program executive in Washington. "Some of the Phase 2 studies that started last year are already attracting the attention of other NASA programs, as well as potential external partners."

NASA's Space Technology Mission Directorate is innovating, developing, testing, and flying hardware for use in future missions. Through programs such as NIAC, the directorate is demonstrating that early investment and partnership with creative scientists, engineers, and citizen inventors from across the nation can provide technological dividends and help maintain America's leadership in the new global technology economy.

For a complete list of the selected proposals and more information about NIAC, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/niac

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Ariane 5's fourth launch of 2013

This evening, an Ariane 5 launcher lifted off from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana on its mission to place two communications satellites, Eutelsat 25B/Es’hail 1 and GSAT-7, into their planned geostationary transfer orbits.

Liftoff of flight VA215 occurred at 20:30 GMT (22:30 CET; 17:30 French Guiana) at the opening of the launch window. The target injection orbit had a perigee altitude of 249 km, an apogee altitude of 35 929 km with an inclination of 3.5° relative to the equator.

Eutelsat-25B/Es’hail 1 and GSAT-7 were accurately injected into their transfer orbits approximately 27 and 34 minutes after launch, respectively.

Eutelsat-25B/Es’hail 1 was the upper payload with an estimated liftoff mass of 6300 kg. Operating at an orbital position of 25.5°E, it will assist European telecommunications operator Eutelsat and Es’hailSat, the Qatar Satellite Company, in providing direct-broadcast services covering the Middle East, North Africa and Central Asia. This will include video broadcasting, telecommunications and government services.

Equipped with four steerable spot beam antennas and four deployable reflectors, along with advanced command and telemetry capabilities, Eutelsat-25B/Es’hail 1 follows on from the current Eutelsat-25C satellite to provide Ku-band range communications, while its Ka-band capability widens business opportunities for both operators.

The Indian Space Research Organisation’s GSAT-7 was the lower payload with an estimated liftoff mass of 2650 kg. It will provide multiband telecommunications over India from an orbital position of 74°E.

Flight VA215 was Ariane 5’s 57th successful launch in a row since December 2002.

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Supermassive Black Hole Sagittarius A*

The center of the Milky Way galaxy, with the supermassive black hole Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*), located in the middle, is revealed in these images. As described in our press release, astronomers have used NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory to take a major step in understanding why material around Sgr A* is extraordinarily faint in X-rays.
 
The large image contains X-rays from Chandra in blue and infrared emission from the Hubble Space Telescope in red and yellow. The inset shows a close-up view of Sgr A* in X-rays only, covering a region half a light year wide. The diffuse X-ray emission is from hot gas captured by the black hole and being pulled inwards. This hot gas originates from winds produced by a disk-shaped distribution of young massive stars observed in infrared observations.
 
These new findings are the result of one of the biggest observing campaigns ever performed by Chandra. During 2012, Chandra collected about five weeks worth of observations to capture unprecedented X-ray images and energy signatures of multi-million degree gas swirling around Sgr A*, a black hole with about 4 million times the mass of the Sun. At just 26,000 light years from Earth, Sgr A* is one of very few black holes in the universe where we can actually witness the flow of matter nearby.
 
The authors infer that less than 1% of the material initially within the black hole’s gravitational influence reaches the event horizon, or point of no return, because much of it is ejected. Consequently, the X-ray emission from material near Sgr A* is remarkably faint, like that of most of the giant black holes in galaxies in the nearby Universe.   
 
The captured material needs to lose heat and angular momentum before being able to plunge into the black hole. The ejection of matter allows this loss to occur.
 
This work should impact efforts using radio telescopes to observe and understand the “shadow” cast by the event horizon of Sgr A* against the background of surrounding, glowing matter. It will also be useful for understanding the impact that orbiting stars and gas clouds might make with the matter flowing towards and away from the black hole.
 
The paper is available online and is published in the journal Science. The first author is Q.Daniel Wang from University of Massachusetts at Amherst, MA; and the co-authors are Michael Nowak from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, MA; Sera Markoff from University of Amsterdam in The Netherlands, Fred Baganoff from MIT; Sergei Nayakshin from University of Leicester in the UK; Feng Yuan from Shanghai Astronomical Observatory in China; Jorge Cuadra from Pontificia Universidad de Catolica de Chile in Chile; John Davis from MIT; Jason Dexter from University of California, Berkeley, CA; Andrew Fabian from University of Cambridge in the UK; Nicolas Grosso from Universite de Strasbourg in France; Daryl Haggard from Northwestern University in Evanston, IL; John Houck from MIT; Li Ji from Purple Mountain Observatory in Nanjing, China; Zhiyuan Li from Nanjing University in China; Joseph Neilsen from Boston University in Boston, MA; Delphine Porquet from Universite de Strasbourg in France; Frank Ripple from University of Massachusetts at Amherst, MA and Roman Shcherbakov from University of Maryland, in College Park, MD.

Image credit: X-ray: NASA/UMass/D.Wang et al., IR: NASA/STScI

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› Chandra on Flickr

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Astronaut Candidate Survival Training

The countenance of astronaut candidate Christina M. Hammock signals her success at fire-starting, a technique that will help sustain her for three days in the wilderness. As the first phase of their extensive training program along the way to become full-fledged astronauts, eight new candidates spent three days in the wild participating in their wilderness survival training, near Rangeley, Maine.

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NASA Data Reveals Mega-Canyon under Greenland Ice Sheet

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Data from a NASA airborne science mission reveals evidence of a large and previously unknown canyon hidden under a mile of Greenland ice.

The canyon has the characteristics of a winding river channel and is at least 460 miles (750 kilometers) long, making it longer than the Grand Canyon. In some places, it is as deep as 2,600 feet (800 meters), on scale with segments of the Grand Canyon. This immense feature is thought to predate the ice sheet that has covered Greenland for the last few million years.

"One might assume that the landscape of the Earth has been fully explored and mapped," said Jonathan Bamber, professor of physical geography at the University of Bristol in the United Kingdom, and lead author of the study. "Our research shows there's still a lot left to discover."

Bamber's team published its findings Thursday in the journal Science.

The scientists used thousands of miles of airborne radar data, collected by NASA and researchers from the United Kingdom and Germany over several decades, to piece together the landscape lying beneath the Greenland ice sheet.

A large portion of this data was collected from 2009 through 2012 by NASA's Operation IceBridge, an airborne science campaign that studies polar ice. One of IceBridge's scientific instruments, the Multichannel Coherent Radar Depth Sounder, operated by the Center for the Remote Sensing of Ice Sheets at the University of Kansas, can see through vast layers of ice to measure its thickness and the shape of bedrock below.

In their analysis of the radar data, the team discovered a continuous bedrock canyon that extends from almost the center of the island and ends beneath the Petermann Glacier fjord in northern Greenland.

At certain frequencies, radio waves can travel through the ice and bounce off the bedrock underneath. The amount of times the radio waves took to bounce back helped researchers determine the depth of the canyon. The longer it took, the deeper the bedrock feature.

"Two things helped lead to this discovery," said Michael Studinger, IceBridge project scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. "It was the enormous amount of data collected by IceBridge and the work of combining it with other datasets into a Greenland-wide compilation of all existing data that makes this feature appear in front of our eyes."

The researchers believe the canyon plays an important role in transporting sub-glacial meltwater from the interior of Greenland to the edge of the ice sheet into the ocean. Evidence suggests that before the presence of the ice sheet, as much as 4 million years ago, water flowed in the canyon from the interior to the coast and was a major river system.

"It is quite remarkable that a channel the size of the Grand Canyon is discovered in the 21st century below the Greenland ice sheet," said Studinger. "It shows how little we still know about the bedrock below large continental ice sheets."

The IceBridge campaign will return to Greenland in March 2014 to continue collecting data on land and sea ice in the Arctic using a suite of instruments that includes ice-penetrating radar.

For more information about NASA's Operation IceBridge, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/icebridge

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Guy Bluford Remembered 30 Years Later

When he was accepted into NASA's astronaut training program in 1978, Guy Bluford never aimed to become the first African-American in space.

"My desire," says Bluford, "was to make a contribution to the program."

Years later, Bluford still recalls the rain-soaked, early Florida morning of Aug. 30, 1983, when a crowd of VIPs and other soggy well-wishers at the Kennedy Space Center awaited Space Shuttle Challenger's soar into history on STS-8.

"People came from all over to watch this launch because I was flying," said Bluford, recalling his thoughts while strapped in and awaiting Challenger's dramatic liftoff. "I imagined them, all standing out there at one o'clock in the morning with their umbrellas, all asking the same question, 'Why am I standing here?'"

Bluford, one of three African-Americans in that 1978 barrier-breaking class of astronauts (former NASA Deputy Administrator Fred Gregory and Challenger astronaut, the lateRon McNair, the others), believes he was selected for the history-making mission because of his complement of pilot and engineering experience.

"All of us knew that one of us would eventually step into that role...I probably told people that I would probably prefer not being in that role...because I figured being the No. 2 guy would probably be a lot more fun."

Regardless, Bluford says he had plenty of fun as he and his four crew members successfully completed their mission.

"The crew taped the intercom conversation," says Bluford of Challenger's liftoff, an experience they replayed upon their safe return to Earth. "There's somebody giggling and laughing all the way up. And we listened to it for quite a while to try and figure out who that was, only to come to the conclusion that it was me. I mean, I laughed and giggled all the way up. It was such a fun ride."

Bluford says it took him awhile to recognize the historical significance of his selection to be the first African-American in space. But when his pioneering role became apparent, Bluford says he embraced it.

"I wanted to set the standard, do the best job possible so that other people would be comfortable with African-Americans flying in space and African-Americans would be proud of being participants in the space program and… encourage others to do the same."
 

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Salty Turkey

This image from Japan’s ALOS satellite was acquired over Anatolia’s dry, central plateau on the Asian side of Turkey.

Also known as Asia Minor, the Anatolian peninsula is surrounded by the Black Sea to the north, Mediterranean Sea to the south and Aegean Sea to the west. In this image over the central high plains, we can see the whole of Lake Tersakan on the left side, with part of Lake Tuz in the upper right corner.

Lake Tuz is Turkey’s second largest lake, as well as one of the largest saline lakes in the world.

While some of the surrounding land shows the patchwork of agriculture, other areas are prone to the seasonal flooding of salty water. During the summer months, however, the lakewater recedes to expose a thick layer of salt.

The bright white surface during these dry summer months has been used by Earth-observing satellites to calibrate their sensors for the colour white – much like how you would adjust a camera’s white balance setting.

The salt from Lake Tuz is also mined, providing over half of the salt consumed in Turkey.

In addition to its economic importance, the lake provides an important breeding ground for the Greater Flamingo and the Greater White-fronted Goose.

Japan’s Advanced Land Observing Satellite (ALOS) captured this image on 21 October 2010 with its Advanced Visible and Near Infrared Radiometer type-2 instrument.

This image is featured on the Earth from Space video programme.

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200 new start-ups launched

When it comes to innovation, the sky is not the limit – this month sees the 200th new start-up company launched through ESA’s Business Incubation Centres.  

Whether it’s for quick mapping of disaster-stricken areas by crowdsourcing, offering smarter transportation solutions, alternative energy handling or improving production technologies, these start-ups benefit local economies while promoting the use of space technology in terrestrial applications.

All of these start-ups nurtured at the ESA Business Incubation Centres (ESA BICs) have one thing in common as their winning key driver: innovation.

Franco Ongaro opening ESA BIC Flanders

“The knowledge and technology that are available in our space programmes are open for entrepreneurs and, with ESA investing in those brilliant minds, we can rest assured that our technology will reach far,” said Franco Ongaro, ESA’s Director of Technical and Quality Management.

“We must continue to boost the European competitiveness, and continue to think globally while investing locally. By innovating through using space technology means that we are investing in our most important asset – planet Earth.”

During their two-year incubation periods hosted at the ESA centres, start-ups receive financial and technical support, leading to the launches of new companies, new products on the market and new jobs for their regions.

SkyLiberty for pilots

The new tool for pilots, SkyLiberty from Belgium, is one example of an ESA-supported start-up, developing a useful app for preparing flight paths quickly, taking into account all aircraft types, weather, airspace situations and airport factors. The app provides a greater accuracy and efficiency for small aircraft flight planning.

From the Netherlands, a computer game has been developed with a serious application: helping rescue workers when they enter disaster-stricken areas. The Cerberus game, developed by an ESA BIC Noordwijk start-up, combines input from thousands of users through crowdsourcing techniques to quickly generate a detailed situation map ofanarea based on satellite data from ESA. 

German train station

In Germany, the revolutionary AppJobber smartphone app became a hit by providing a smart system to monitor hundreds of Deutsche Bahn’s railway stations – not by company-employed inspectors, but rather by regular commuters, providing situation reports and earning money as they go about their normal days.

By allowing this satnav-based app from a start-up in ESA BIC Darmstadt to do their routine monitoring, companies in five countries now save time and money, and also reduce their carbon footprints.

Bruno Naulais

“We started to prepare the operations of the business incubation initiative in 2000 with our first centre here in the Netherlands because we believed that the leading-edge technologies we developed for Europe's space programmes can provide innovative solutions here on Earth,” says Bruno Naulais, ESA BICs manager at ESA's Technology Transfer Programme Office.

“The ESA BIC welcomes innovative entrepreneurs, supporting them through their initial phase of getting started and mature their space technology spin-offs to new terrestrial solutions. Since the first incubatee selected in late 2003, we just crossed the mark of 200 new companies, which means thousand of jobs across Europe.”

Part of ESA Technology Transfer Programme, the eight operating ESA BICs across Europe are based in the Netherlands, Germany (Bavaria and Darmstadt), Italy, UK, Belgium (Redu and Flanders) as well as the most recent one in southern France. By the end of 2013, a ninth centre will be launched in Barcelona, Spain. 

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Annular Eclipse of the Sun by Phobos, as Seen by Curiosity

This set of three images shows views three seconds apart as the larger of Mars' two moons, Phobos, passed directly in front of the sun as seen by NASA's Mars rover Curiosity.  Curiosity photographed this annular, or ring, eclipse with the telephoto-lens camera of the rover's Mast Camera pair (right Mastcam) on Aug. 17, 2013, the 369th Martian day, or sol, of Curiosity's work on Mars.

Curiosity paused during its drive that sol for a set of observations that the camera team carefully calculated to record this celestial event. The rover's observations of Phobos help make researchers' knowledge of the moon's orbit even more precise.  Because this eclipse occurred near mid-day at Curiosity's location on Mars, Phobos was nearly overhead, closer to the rover than it would have been earlier in the morning or later in the afternoon. This timing made Phobos' silhouette larger against the sun -- as close to a total eclipse of the sun as is possible from Mars.

Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Malin Space Science Systems/Texas A&M Univ.

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Cassini Data: Saturn Moon May Have Rigid Ice Shell

An analysis of gravity and topography data from the Saturnian moon Titan obtained by NASA's Cassini spacecraft suggests there could be something unexpected about the moon's outer ice shell. The findings, published on Aug. 28 in the journal Nature, suggest that Titan's ice shell could be rigid, and that relatively small topographic features on the surface could be associated with large ice "roots" extending into the underlying ocean.

The study was led by planetary scientists Douglas Hemingway and Francis Nimmo at the University of California, Santa Cruz, who used data from Cassini. The researchers were surprised to find a counterintuitive relationship between gravity and topography.

"Normally, if you fly over a mountain, you expect to see an increase in gravity due to the extra mass of the mountain," said Nimmo, a Cassini participating scientist. "On Titan, when you fly over a mountain, the gravity gets lower. That's a very odd observation."

One potential explanation is that each bump in the topography on the surface of Titan is offset by a deeper "root" that is big enough to overwhelm the gravitational effect of the bump on the surface. The root could act like an iceberg extending below the ice shell into the ocean underneath it. In this model, Cassini would detect less gravity wherever there is a big chunk of ice rather than water because ice is less dense than water.

"It's like a big beach ball under the ice sheet pushing up on it, and the only way to keep it submerged is if the ice sheet is strong," said Hemingway, the paper's lead author and a Cassini team associate. "If large roots under the ice shell are the explanation, this means that Titan's ice shell must have a very thick rigid layer."

If these findings are correct, a thick rigid ice shell makes it very difficult to have ice volcanoes, which some scientists have proposed to explain other features seen on the surface. They also suggest that convection or plate tectonics are not recycling Titan's ice shell, as they do with Earth's geologically active crust.

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency, and the Italian Space Agency. The mission is managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington.

More information on Cassini can be found at http://www.nasa.gov/cassini and http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov .

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Teamwork Makes Chopper Drop a Success

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Dummies strapped into their seats. Check.

Instrumentation and cameras hooked up. Check.

Helicopter fuselage ready for lift. Check.

After more than two years of preparation and collaboration between NASA, the U.S. Navy, U.S. Army and Federal Aviation Administration, the day had finally come.

Crash test dummies inside a full-scale helicopter fuselage dropped from a height of 30 feet at NASA's Langley Research Center had a rough ride. Data from the crash test will take a while to analyze, but engineers say from preliminary observations had some of the occupants been human they might not h

Image Credit: 

NASA Langley / David C. Bowman

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Researchers say that, while the former Marine helicopter doesn't look very damaged from the outside, a number of the 13 instrumented crash test dummies and two un-instrumented manikins got tossed around pretty violently.

Image Credit: 

NASA Langley / David C. Bowman

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Following the drop test, personnel peer inside the helicopter to check the status of its "passengers."

Image Credit: 

NASA Langley / David C. Bowman

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Thirteen instrumented crash test dummies and two un-instrumented manikins stood, sat or reclined for a potentially rough ride – the Transport Rotorcraft Airframe Crash Testbed full-scale crash test at NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia.

"Three, two, one, release," said engineer Richard Boitnoitt on the loudspeaker at NASA Langley's Landing and Impact Research (LandIR) facility. With that countdown the 45-foot-long former Marine helicopter fuselage smacked into a bed of soil, its 15 occupants violently jolted all in the name of research to try to make helicopters safer.

"We designed this test to simulate a severe but survivable crash under both civilian and military requirements," said NASA lead test engineer Martin Annett. "It was amazingly complicated with all the planning, dummies, cameras, instrumentation and collaborators, but it went off without any major hitches."

Cables hauled the helicopter fuselage to a height of about 30 feet and then swung it to the ground, much like a pendulum. Just before impact, pyro-technic devices released the suspension cables from the helicopter to allow free flight. In "engineer speak," the chopper travelled at "35 feet per second horizontal and 26 feet per second vertical." In everyday language, it hit the ground at about 30 miles an hour.

Almost 40 cameras inside and out, and onboard computers with 350 data channels, recorded every move of the 10,300-pound fuselage and its "passengers." Even the helicopter's unusual black-and-white-speckled paint job contributed to the data collection. It was for a photographic technique called full field photogrammetry.

"High speed cameras filming at 500 images per second tracked each black dot, so after everything is over, we can plot exactly how the fuselage deformed or reacted under crash loads," said NASA test engineer Justin Littell.

The fuselage appeared to survive better than some of the occupants. The data will take months to analyze but initial observations indicate many of the dummies suffered what would have been severe injuries if they were humans.

The goal of the drop was to test improved seat belts and seats, to collect crashworthiness data and to check out some new test methods. But it was also to serve as a baseline for another scheduled test in 2014.

A crash test of a similar helicopter airframe equipped with additional technology, including composite airframe retrofits, is planned for next summer. Both tests are part of the NASA Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate's Fundamental Aeronautics Program Rotary Wing Project.

NASA will use the results of the crash experiments to try to improve rotorcraft performance and efficiency, in part by assessing the reliability of high performance, lightweight composite materials. Researchers also want to increase industry knowledge and create more complete computer models that can be used to design better and safer helicopters.

The Navy provided both CH-46E Sea Knight helicopter fuselages. For this first test it also contributed seats, five crash test dummies, one manikin and other experiments. The Army provided a manikin and a crash test dummy that was lying much like a patient in a medical evacuation litter. The FAA provided a side facing specialized crash test dummy and part of the data acquisition system. Cobham Life Support-St. Petersburg, a division of CONAX Florida Corporation, also contributed a retracting restraint system for the cockpit. NASA Langley added six of its own dummies as well as lead technical expertise and the LandIR facility and crew.

LandIR, a 240-foot high, 400-foot long gantry, has an almost 50-year history. It started out as the Lunar Landing Research Facility, where Neil Armstrong and other astronauts learned to land on the moon. Then it became a crash test facility where engineers could simulate aircraft accidents. And recently it added a big pool where NASA is testing Orion space capsule mock-ups in anticipation of water landings.

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Space Laser To Prove Increased Broadband Possible

When NASA’s Lunar Laser Communication Demonstration (LLCD) begins operation aboard the Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE) mission managed by NASA’s Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif., it will attempt to show two-way laser communication beyond Earth is possible, expanding the possibility of transmitting huge amounts of data. This new ability could one day allow for 3-D High Definition video transmissions in deep space to become routine.

“The goal of the LLCD experiment is to validate and build confidence in this technology so that future missions will consider using it,” said Don Cornwell, LLCD manager. “This unique ability developed by MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology Lincoln Laboratory), has incredible application possibilities and we are very excited to get this instrument off the ground.”

Since NASA first ventured into space, through the moon landings, shuttle program, and unmanned exploration missions, radio frequency communication also known as RF, has been the communications platform used. But RF is reaching its limit just as demand for more data capacity continues to increase. The development of laser communications will give NASA the ability to extend communication applications such as increased image resolution and even 3-D video transmission into deep space.

LLCD is NASA’s first dedicated system for two-way communication using laser instead of radio waves. “LLCD is designed to send six times more data from the moon using a smaller transmitter with 25 percent less power as compared to the equivalent state-of-the-art radio (RF) system,” said Cornwell. “Lasers are also more secure and less susceptible to interference and jamming.”

The LLCD experiment is hosted aboard NASA’s LADEE: a 100-day robotic mission designed, built, integrated, tested and will be operated by Ames. LADEE will attempt to confirm whether dust caused a mysterious glow on the lunar horizon astronauts observed during several Apollo missions and explore the moon’s tenuous, exotic atmosphere. Launch of the LADEE spacecraft is set for September aboard a U.S. Air Force Minotaur V rocket, an excess ballistic missile converted into a space launch vehicle and operated by Orbital Sciences Corp. of Dulles, Va., from NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility on Wallops Island, Va.  

The LADEE spacecraft will take 30 days to reach the moon because of its flight path. LLCD will begin operations shortly after arrival into lunar orbit and continue for 30 days afterward. 

LLCD’s main mission objective is to transmit hundreds of millions of bits of data per second from the moon to Earth. This is equivalent to transmitting more than 100 HD television channels simultaneously. LLCD receiving capability will also be tested as tens of millions of bits per second are sent from Earth to the spacecraft. These demonstrations will prove the technology for increased bandwidth for future missions is possible.

There is a primary ground terminal at NASA’s White Sands Complex in New Mexico, to receive and transmit LLCD signals. The team at MIT designed, built, and tested the terminal. They also will be responsible for LLCD’s operation at that site. 

There are two alternate sites, one located at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, which is for receiving only. The other is being provided by the European Space Agency on the Spanish island of Tenerife, off the coast of Africa. It will have two-way communication capability with LLCD. “Having several sites gives us alternatives which greatly reduces the possibility of interference from clouds,” said Cornwell.  

LLCD is a short duration experiment and the precursor to NASA’s long duration demonstration, the Laser Communications Relay Demonstration (LCRD). It also is a part of the agency’s Technology Demonstration Missions Program, which is working to develop crosscutting technology capable of operating in the rigors of space. LCRD is scheduled to launch in 2017.

NASA engineers believe this technology becomes even more advantageous for communications beyond Earth’s orbit.  In the past, NASA has experimented with sending low amounts of individual pulses to cameras on far-away space probes near Jupiter, Mars, and Mercury.

Recently, an image of Leonardo da Vinci’s painting, the Mona Lisa, was transmitted to NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) spacecraft orbiting the moon. “But this was done at only hundreds of data bits per second,” said Cornwell. “LLCD will be the first dedicated optical communication system and will send data millions of times faster.”

The European Space Agency already has successfully demonstrated laser communication between satellites in Earth orbit. Recently they launched Alphasat to demonstrate laser transmission between a low-earth orbit satellite and a satellite in geostationary Earth orbit. LLCD’s laser link from the moon will be ten times farther away. 

NASA is looking upon laser communication as the next paradigm shift in future space communication, especially deep space.  “We can even envision such a laser-based system enabling a robotic mission to an asteroid,” said Cornwell. “It could have 3-D, high-definition video signals transmitted to Earth providing essentially ‘telepresence’ to a human controller on the ground.”

Related Links:
YouTube:  http://youtu.be/ptfLfrWI648

LLCD SVS page is: http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/vis/a010000/a011300/a011345/

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NASA'S Mars Curiosity Debuts Autonomous Navigation

 NASA's Mars rover Curiosity has used autonomous navigation for the first time, a capability that lets the rover decide for itself how to drive safely on Mars.

This latest addition to Curiosity's array of capabilities will help the rover cover the remaining ground en route to Mount Sharp, where geological layers hold information about environmental changes on ancient Mars. The capability uses software that engineers adapted to this larger and more complex vehicle from a similar capability used by NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity, which is also currently active on Mars. 

Using autonomous navigation, or autonav, Curiosity can analyze images it takes during a drive to calculate a safe driving path. This enables it to proceed safely even beyond the area that the human rover drivers on Earth can evaluate ahead of time.

On Tuesday, Aug. 27, Curiosity successfully used autonomous navigation to drive onto ground that could not be confirmed safe before the start of the drive. This was a first for Curiosity.  In a preparatory test last week, Curiosity plotted part of a drive for itself, but kept within an area that operators had identified in advance as safe.

"Curiosity takes several sets of stereo pairs of images, and the rover's computer processes that information to map any geometric hazard or rough terrain," said Mark Maimone, rover mobility engineer and rover driver at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.  "The rover considers all the paths it could take to get to the designated endpoint for the drive and chooses the best one."

The drive on Tuesday, the mission's 376th Martian day, or "sol," took Curiosity across a depression where ground-surface details had not been visible from the location where the previous drive ended. The drive included about 33 feet (10 meters) of autonomous navigation across hidden ground as part of a day's total drive of about 141 feet (43 meters).

"We could see the area before the dip, and we told the rover where to drive on that part. We could see the ground on the other side, where we designated a point for the rover to end the drive, but Curiosity figured out for herself how to drive the uncharted part in between," said JPL's John Wright, a rover driver.

Curiosity is nearly two months into a multi-month trek from the "Glenelg" area, where it worked for the first half of 2013, to an entry point for the mission's major destination: the lower layers of a 3-mile-tall (5-kilometer-tall) mound called Mount Sharp.

The latest drive brought the distance traveled since leaving Glenelg to 0.86 mile (1.39 kilometers). The remaining distance to the Mount Sharp entry point is about 4.46 miles (7.18 kilometers) along a "rapid transit route." That route was plotted on the basis of images from the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. The actual driving route, which will be based on images from Curiosity's own cameras, could be longer or shorter. 

Curiosity's science team has picked a few waypoints along the rapid transit route to Mount Sharp where driving may be suspended for a few days for science. The rover has about 0.31 mile (500 meters) left to go before reaching the first of these waypoints, which appears from orbiter images to offer exposed bedrock for inspection. 

"Each waypoint represents an opportunity for Curiosity to pause during its long journey to Mount Sharp and study features of local interest," said Curiosity Project Scientist John Grotzinger of the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena. "These features are geologically interesting, based on HiRISE images, and they lie very close to the path that provides the most expeditious route to the base of Mount Sharp.  We'll study each for several sols, perhaps selecting one for drilling if it looks sufficiently interesting."

After landing inside Gale Crater in August 2012, Curiosity drove eastward to the Glenelg area, where it accomplished the mission's major science objective of finding evidence for an ancient wet environment that had conditions favorable for microbial life. The rover's route is now southwestward. At Mount Sharp, in the middle of Gale Crater, scientists anticipate finding evidence about how the ancient Martian environment changed and evolved.

JPL, a division of Caltech, manages the Mars Science Laboratory Project for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. JPL designed and built the project's Curiosity rover.

More information about Curiosity is online at http://www.nasa.gov/msl and http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/ . You can follow the mission on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/marscuriosity and on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/marscuriosity .

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Hubble Peers at a Cosmic Optical Illusion

At first glance, this Hubble picture appears to capture two space giants entangled in a fierce celestial battle, with two galaxies entwined and merging to form one. But this shows just how easy it is to misinterpret the jumble of sparkling stars and get the wrong impression — as it’s all down to a trick of perspective.

By chance, these galaxies appear to be aligned from our point of view. In the foreground, the irregular dwarf galaxy PGC 16389 — seen here as a cloud of stars — covers its neighboring galaxy APMBGC 252+125-117, which appears edge-on as a streak. This wide-field image also captures many other more distant galaxies, including a quite prominent face-on spiral towards the right of the picture.

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Andreas Mogensen to ISS

ESA's Danish astronaut Andreas Mogensen has been assigned to be launched on a Soyuz spacecraft from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan in September 2015 for a mission to the International Space Station.

This 10-day mission will be Andreas's first flight into space and the first ever space mission by a Danish astronaut.

The flight is directly connected to the new era in ISS operations: two experienced spacefarers from the USA and Russia will work on the Station for one year from May 2015. During his stay onboard the ISS, he will conduct a series of experiments preparing future missions and testing new technologies.

"I'm happy to announce this mission as this is already the fifth flight assignment for the class recruited in 2009," said Thomas Reiter, ESA’s Director of Human Spaceflight and Operations.

"With first of the new class, Luca Parmitano, currently working on the Space Station, and three other astronauts already training for their imminent missions, ESA's new astronauts are very busy.

“Thanks to the decisions of the Member States at the Ministerial Council last November, we will be able to fulfil our commitment to fly all six newly selected astronauts before the end of 2017,” said Mr Reiter.

"This mission is the fulfilment of a life-long dream and the culmination of many years of hard work and training,” said Andreas Mogensen.

“I am excited to be able to participate in ESA’s outstanding programme of science and technology development on board the International Space Station and I am honoured to represent Denmark and Europe in space. The mission is a unique opportunity for Europe to develop and test the technologies necessary for the future of human space exploration."

New technology and science mission

Andreas during EVA training

The launch of the mission will take place on 30 September, 2015 with the launch of Soyuz TMA-18 (44S) and it will end on 10 October, when Andreas will land with Soyuz TMA-16 (42S).

During his flight, Andreas will test novel ways of interaction between the ground and space crews with a mobile device that allows astronauts to operate it hands-free and with several multi-user communication techniques. The system will have also advanced 3D visualisation and augmented reality –features that will be fully exploited with added wearable computers and cameras to allow the general public to follow activities on the ISS 'through the eyes of an ESA astronaut' potentially in real time.

Andreas's short mission is an excellent opportunity for several science studies, particularly in life science. By adding samples and measurements from a short-duration mission astronaut to material gathered and being collected during long-duration missions, the value of the biomedical statistics is increased. All the instrumentation needed for physiology, biology and material science experiments is already available in the Columbus laboratory and samples can be returned quickly back to Earth for further analysis.

A short-duration mission is also perfect for testing a new generation of health sensors, vital measurement devices and electro-muscle-mobility devices. These have direct benefit for future exploration missions and even sooner on Earth, for instance with operators of heavy machinery or with rehabilitation after sports injuries.

Andreas will be specially suited too: he will assess a new ‘skinsuit’ during normal daily activities. This is tight garment made from elastic material mimicking Earth gravity and thus passively mitigating deconditioning of an astronaut’s body during spaceflight.

Along with the Soyuz arrival, the ISS will host up to nine persons for a while – a record that has not been broken since retirement of the Space Shuttle in 2011.

Between Luca's ongoing mission and flight of Andreas in 2015, ESA astronauts Alexander Gerst and Samantha Cristoforetti, are scheduled for launch in 2014 for long-duration missions to the Station. After Andreas, the next European destined for space will be Tim Peake, who will start his long-duration mission on the ISS as a member of the Expedition 46/47 in December 2015.

High-flying engineer

Andreas during EVA training

This new technology packed mission will be a dream flight for an aerospace engineer like Andreas. Not only will the mission include many firsts and demonstrations, but also Andreas will fly as the flight engineer in the ‘left seat’ of Soyuz, making him second-in-command of their vehicle.

Andreas was born in Copenhagen, Denmark, on 2 November 1976, and he received a master’s degree in aeronautical engineering from Imperial College London, UK, in 1999, followed by a doctorate in aerospace engineering from the University of Texas, Austin, USA, in 2007.

He was selected as an ESA astronaut in May 2009 and completed the astronaut basic training programme in November 2010 with the five other astronauts of the 2009 class. Andreas is a qualified Eurocom at the Columbus Control Centre in Munich, where he has been communicating with the astronauts on the International Space Station.

In addition to his training and work activities, Andreas worked for ESA on the Lunar Lander programme at ESTEC, Noordwijk, the Netherlands, where he was involved in the design of the guidance, navigation and control system for a precision lunar landing.

From his homebase at the European Astronaut Centre in Cologne, Germany, Andreas will start his mission training with the partners of the International Space Station. This will take him to NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, USA, and Star City, near Moscow, Russia, as well as Japan and Canada.

Andreas blogs about space exploration and his astronaut training activities in Danish atvidenskab.dk/profil/andreas-mogensen.

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