Skip to main content

Home/ Advanced Concepts Team/ Group items tagged rover

Rss Feed Group items tagged

Filter: All | Bookmarks | Topics Simple Middle
Athanasia Nikolaou

Science on Mars and Mars on Science - 0 views

news.sciencemag.org/...-mars-rover-quest-ancient-life

chemistry geology BIO planetary Mars

shared by Athanasia Nikolaou on 09 Dec 13 - No Cached
  • Athanasia Nikolaou on 09 Dec 13
     
    Some sort of organic carbon has been detected by the sampling of Curiosity; the contamination source was isolated and the signal persists. The scientists suggest as a source meteorites transporting interstellar matter, or maybe some sort of ancient life whose biomass production only survived cosmic radiation as it was buried underground. a big deal: six relevant articles were published simultaneously online: http://www.sciencemag.org/site/extra/curiosity/index.xhtml?utm_content=&utm_medium=Facebook&utm_campaign=Science&utm_source=shortener
LeopoldS

Plant sciences: Plants drink mineral water : Nature : Nature Publishing Group - 1 views

www.nature.com/...512351e.html

plant water Mars exploration terraforming

shared by LeopoldS on 02 Sep 14 - No Cached
  • LeopoldS on 02 Sep 14
     
    Here we go: we might not need liquid water after all on mars to get some nice flowering plants there! ... and terraform ? :-) Thirsty plants can extract water from the crystalline structure of gypsum, a rock-forming mineral found in soil on Earth and Mars.

    Some plants grow on gypsum outcrops and remain active even during dry summer months, despite having shallow roots that cannot reach the water table. Sara Palacio of the Pyrenean Institute of Ecology in Jaca, Spain, and her colleagues compared the isotopic composition of sap from one such plant, called Helianthemum squamatum (pictured), with gypsum crystallization water and water found free in the soil. The team found that up to 90% of the plant's summer water supply came from gypsum.

    The study has implications for the search for life in extreme environments on this planet and others.

    Nature Commun 5, 4660 (2014)
  • Athanasia Nikolaou on 02 Sep 14
     
    Very interesting indeed. Attention is to be put on the form of calcium sulfate that is found on Mars. If it is hydrated (gypsum Ca(SO4)*2(H2O)) it works, but if it is dehydrated there is no water for the roots to take in. The Curiosity Rover tries to find out, but has uncertainty in recognising the hydrogen presence in the mineral: Copying : "(...) 3.2 Hydration state of calcium sulfates Calcium sulfates occur as a non-hydrated phase (anhydrite, CaSO4) or as one of two hydrated phases (bassanite, CaSO4.1/2H2O, which can contain a somewhat variable water content, and gypsum, CaSO4.2H2O). ChemCam identifies the presence of hydrogen at 656 nm, as already found in soils and dust [Meslin et al., 2013] and within fluvial conglomerates [Williams et al., 2013]. However, the quantification of H is strongly affected by matrix effects [Schröder et al., 2013], i.e. effects including major or even minor element chemistry, optical and mechanical properties, that can result in variations of emission lines unrelated to actual quantitative variations of the element in question in the sample. Due to these effects, discriminating between bassanite and gypsum is difficult. (...)"
  • Athanasia Nikolaou on 02 Sep 14
johannessimon81

Google combines skycrane, VTOL and lifting wing to make drone deliveries - 6 views

www.wired.com/...ffort-to-build-delivery-drones

technology drone_delivery VTOL skycrane FUN soundtrack

shared by johannessimon81 on 30 Aug 14 - No Cached
annaheffernan liked it
  • johannessimon81 on 30 Aug 14
     
    Nice video featuring the technology. Plus it comes with a good soundtrack! Google's project wing uses a lifting wing concept (more fuel efficient than normal airplane layouts and MUCH more efficient than quadrocopters) but it equips the plane with engines strong enough to hover in a nose up position, allowing vertical landing and takeoff. For the delivery of packages the drone does not even need to land - it can lower them on a wire - much like the skycrane concept used to deliver the Curiosity rover on Mars. Not sure if the skycrane is really necessary but it is certainly cool. Anyways, the video is great for its soundtrack alone! ;-P
  • ...4 more comments...
  • Paul N on 31 Aug 14
     
    could we just use genetic algorithms to evolve these shapes and layouts? :P
  • Ma Ru on 31 Aug 14
     
    > Not sure if the skycrane is really necessary but it is certainly cool. I think apart from coolness using a skycrane helps keep the rotating knives away from the recipient...
  • Thijs Versloot on 01 Sep 14
     
    Honest question, are we ever going to see this in practice? I mean besides some niche application somewhere, isn't it fundamentally flawed or do I need to keep my window opened on the 3rd floor without a balcony when I ordered something from DX? Its pretty cool yes, but practical?
  • Guido de Croon on 02 Sep 14
     
    Package delivery is indeed more complicated than it may seem at first sight, although solutions are possible for instance by restricting delivery to distribution centers. What we really need of course is some really efficient and robust AI to navigate without any problems in urban areas : ) The hybrid is interesting since it combines the advantage of a Vertical Takeoff and Landing (and hover), and a wing for more efficient forward flight. Challenges lie in the control of the vehicle under any angle and all that this entails also for higher levels of control. Our lab has first used this concept a few years ago for the DARPA UAVforge challenge, and we had two hybrids in our entry last year for the IMAV 2013 (for some shaky images: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z7XgRK7pMoU ).
  • Thijs Versloot on 04 Sep 14
     
    Fair enough, but even if you consider advanced/robust/efficient AI, why would you use a drone? Do we envision hundreds of drones above our heads in the street instead of UPS vans, or postmen, considering delivers letters might be more easily achievable. I am not so sure if personal delivery will take this route. On the other hand, if the system would work smoothly, I can image that I'm send a mail with the question whether I'm home (or they might know already from my personal GPS tracker) and then notify me that they are launching my DVD and it will come crashing into my door in 5min.
  • Paul N on 08 Sep 14
     
    I'm more curios how they're planning to keep people from stealing the drones. I could do with a drone army myself and having cheap amazon or google drones flying about sounds like a decent source.
Luís F. Simões

Dropship offers safe landings for Mars rovers / Technology / Our Activities / ESA - 2 views

www.esa.int/..._safe_landings_for_Mars_rovers

AI UAV StarTiger

shared by Luís F. Simões on 08 Jul 14 - No Cached
  • “StarTiger is a fresh approach to space engineering,” explains Peter de Maagt, overseeing the project. “Take a highly qualified, well-motivated team, gather them at a single well-equipped site, then give them a fixed time to solve a challenging technical problem.”
  • StarTiger stands for ‘Space Technology Advancements by Resourceful, Targeted and Innovative Groups of Experts and Researchers’ working within the Agency’s TRP Basic Technology Research Programme. It brings team members together on a single site to work on a set challenge, aiming to produce a working prototype by the end of the project’s time limit.
  • Luís F. Simões on 08 Jul 14
     
    StarTiger: similar, yet different from the way the ACT does things. Seems like a very interesting programme.
  • Thijs Versloot on 10 Jul 14
     
    Nice initiative and also a good approach, problem-oriented within a fixed time frame. Could definitely be a highly motivating approach, similar to GTOC... I think the ACT should do this more often, targeted at future technologies and/or missions. The team could be structured around 'problems' instead of 'research areas', this will promote multidisciplinary work as well, plus it will also focus activities more. The problems, or more broadly concepts, are identified by the team and a few get chosen as main activities. Subsequent RF and YGT hiring is then done to strenghten the research team. These projects have a maximum lifetime maybe of 1 year? Thoughts?
  • Ma Ru on 10 Jul 14
     
    I'm impressed already by what an innovative group of experts and researchers was able to achieve when resourcefully targeted at coming up with the project's name...
Alexander Wittig

Picture This: NVIDIA GPUs Sort Through Tens of Millions of Flickr Photos - 2 views

blogs.nvidia.com/...flickr

AI

shared by Alexander Wittig on 21 Jul 15 - No Cached
LeopoldS liked it
  • Alexander Wittig on 21 Jul 15
     
    Strange and exotic cityscapes. Desolate wilderness areas. Dogs that look like wookies. Flickr, one of the world's largest photo sharing services, sees it all. And, now, Flickr's image recognition technology can categorize more than 11 billion photos like these. And it does it automatically. It's called "Magic View." Magical deep learning! Buzzword attack!
  • ...4 more comments...
  • LeopoldS on 21 Jul 15
     
    and here comes my standard question: how can we use this for space? fast detection of natural disasters onboard?
  • Alexander Wittig on 22 Jul 15
     
    Even on ground. You could for example teach it what nuclear reactors or missiles or other weapons you don't want look like on satellite pictures and automatically scan the world for them (basically replacing intelligence analysts).
  • Alexander Wittig on 23 Jul 15
     
    In fact, I think this could make a nice ACT project: counting seals from satellite imagery is an actual (and quite recent) thing: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0092613 In this publication they did it manually from a GeoEye 1 b/w image, which sounds quite tedious. Maybe one can train one of those image recognition algorithms to do it automatically. Or maybe it's a bit easier to count larger things, like elephants (also a thing).
  • jcunha on 23 Jul 15
     
    In HiPEAC (High Performance, embedded architecture and computation) conference I attended in the beginning of this year there was a big trend of CUDA GPU vs FPGA for hardware accelerated image processing. Most of it orbitting around discussing who was faster and cheaper with people from NVIDIA in one side and people from Xilinx and Intel in the other. I remember of talking with an IBM scientist working on hardware accelerated data processing working together with the Radio telescope institute in Netherlands about the solution where they working on (GPU CUDA). I gathered that NVIDIA GPU suits best in applications that somehow do not rely in hardware, having the advantage of being programmed in a 'easy' way accessible to a scientist. FPGA's are highly reliable components with the advantage of being available in radhard versions, but requiring specific knowledge of physical circuit design and tailored 'harsh' programming languages. I don't know what is the level of rad hardness in NVIDIA's GPUs... Therefore FPGAs are indeed the standard choice for image processing in space missions (a talk with the microelectronics department guys could expand on this), whereas GPUs are currently used in some ground based (radio astronomy or other types of telescopes). I think that on for a specific purpose as the one you mentioned, this FPGA vs GPU should be assessed first before going further.
  • Paul N on 29 Jul 15
     
    You're forgetting power usage. GPUs need 1000 hamster wheels worth of power while FPGAs can run on a potato. Since space applications are highly power limited, putting any kind of GPU monster in orbit or on a rover is failed idea from the start. Also in FPGAs if a gate burns out from radiation you can just reprogram around it. Looking for seals offline in high res images is indeed definitely a GPU task.... for now.
  • jcunha on 31 Jul 15
     
    The discussion of how to make FPGA hardware acceleration solutions easier to use for the 'layman' is starting btw http://reconfigurablecomputing4themasses.net/.
Juxi Leitner

SPACE.com -- Next Mars Rover's Landing Site Narrowed to 4 Choices - 0 views

www.space.com/...sity-landing-sites-100615.html

mars exploration rovers landing site science space

shared by Juxi Leitner on 16 Jun 10 - Cached
LeopoldS liked it
  • is expected to determine whether Mars is or was ever habitable to microbial lif
  • whittled down to four. They are regions of Mars known as Mawrth Vallis, Gale crater, Holden crater and Eberswalde crater.
Juxi Leitner

Astrobotic announces expanded opportunities to send payloads to the Moon : Astrobotic T... - 1 views

astrobotictechnology.com/...s-to-send-payloads-to-the-moon

lunar rover tech technology space opportunities piggyback payload

shared by Juxi Leitner on 25 Jun 10 - Cached
  • The remaining 229 pounds are available for $700,000 per pound, plus a $250,000 fee per payload to cover the engineering costs of integrating it into either the expedition’s lander or its solar-powered robot.
Juxi Leitner

Lotus Plant-Inspired Dust-Busting Shield To Protect Space Gear - 3 views

www.space-travel.com/...To_Protect_Space_Gear_999.html

technology bio spacecraft dust shielding

shared by Juxi Leitner on 29 Sep 09 - Cached
  • replicate to prevent dirt from accumulating on the surfaces of spacesuits, scientific instruments, robotic rovers, solar array panels and other hardware used to gather scientific data or carry out exploratory activities on other objects in the solar system
  • The team also is trying to partner with Northrop Grumman to add a biocide to the coating, which would kill bacteria that thrive and produce foul odors wherever people are confined to a small space for long periods, like the space station.
  • Tobias Seidl on 04 Oct 09
     
    We had some discussion about the Lotus-effect roughly two years ago. Zoe said that NASA surely worked on it. Well, she was right.
Joris _

OpenLuna Picks Up Where NASA's Moon Mission Leaves Off - 0 views

ostatic.com/...-nasas-moon-mission-leaves-off

MAD Open science

shared by Joris _ on 18 Aug 10 - Cached
  • The ambitious project will tap the resources of private enterprise to build several small scout rovers that will be shipped to the south pole of the moon via a single lander. Rock and earth samples will be returned to Earth for testing, then auctioned off to secure funding for the next phase of the plan
Juxi Leitner

Draper MIT Students Test Lunar Hopper with Eyes on Prize | SpaceNews.com - 0 views

www.spacenews.com/...tudents-test-lunar-hopper.html

tech exploration hopping

shared by Juxi Leitner on 02 May 10 - Cached
  • The testing of the second-generation lunar hopper is being carried out under the supervision of engineers from the nearby Draper Laboratory with an eye toward competing for the Google Lunar X Prize in 2012.
  • Although planetary rovers are not new, the hopper concept could add a new dimension to robotic planetary exploration, one that Tuohy said could inspire a new generation of engineers, technologists and scientists.
LeopoldS

NASA - Mars Science Laboratory, the Next Mars Rover - 4 views

www.nasa.gov/...index.html

shared by LeopoldS on 22 Jul 11 - No Cached
Marion Nachon liked it
  • LeopoldS on 23 Jul 11
     
    forgot to put in my comment: they have chosen a nice landing site .... and quite late it seems to me ...
johannessimon81

Methane fluctuations on Mars - 1 views

spon.de/aeoCb

Mars methane

shared by johannessimon81 on 16 Dec 14 - No Cached
  • johannessimon81 on 16 Dec 14
     
    Localized high concentrations of methane have been discovered by the Curiosity rover. This points to localized sources of methane of yet unknown nature. Maybe the ACT's odor source localization should be resurrected!
  • johannessimon81 on 17 Dec 14
Daniel Hennes

NASA Funds Electricity-Harvesting Robotic Space Eel With Explosive Jet Thrusters and El... - 3 views

spectrum.ieee.org/...y-harvesting-robotic-space-eel

shared by Daniel Hennes on 19 May 15 - No Cached
  • Daniel Hennes on 19 May 15
     
    This concept for a "soft-robotic rover with electrodynamic power scavenging" comes from Cornell University, and NASA has awarded it a grant under the NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) program to hoist itself up from TRL 1 to TRL 2.
LeopoldS

The case for in situ resource utilisation for oxygen production on Mars by non-equilibr... - 6 views

iopscience.iop.org/...aa8dcc

ISRU

shared by LeopoldS on 19 Oct 17 - No Cached
Marion Nachon liked it
  • LeopoldS on 04 Jan 18
     
    interesting idea to produce O2 differently on Mars
  • Marion Nachon on 15 Jan 18
     
    Also, let's see how MOXIE does onboard the Mars2020 rover! https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/mission/instruments/moxie/for-scientists/
Marion Nachon

NASA Next Mars Rover Mission: new landing technology - 3 views

JPL is also developing a crucial new landing technology called terrain-relative navigation. As the descent stage approaches the Martian surface, it will use computer vision to compare the landscape...

technology space

started by Marion Nachon on 15 Jan 18 no follow-up yet
‹ Previous 21 - 38 of 38
Showing 20▼ items per page