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Mars Base

How Robo-Bees Could Save America's Crops | Popular Science - 1 views

www.popsci.com/...true-bee-or-robot-be

scibyte103 Robo-Bees

shared by Mars Base on 22 Sep 13 - No Cached
  • Something is killing off up to half of America's bees
  • Fewer bees not only means less honey, it means less food
  • Researchers at Harvard are working on
  • ...9 more annotations...
  • tiny drones the size of bees
  • flying robots designed to be small enough to pollinate a flower (they weigh just 80 milligrams
  • are also designed to hover, giving them plenty of time to transfer pollen
  • wings mimic those of a fly,
  • special ceramic that contracts when stimulated by electricity
  • The robo-bees aren't ready
  • time yet
  • they're so tiny, they can't fit a battery pack for power
  • will also need some sort of computer so they can guide themselves in flight
Mars Base

Curiosity Rover Finds No Methane On Mars. What's Happening? - 0 views

www.universetoday.com/...ethane-on-mars-whats-happening

scibyte103 Curiosity

shared by Mars Base on 21 Sep 13 - No Cached
  • NASA’s Mars Curiosity rover can’t find any sign of methane on the red planet, but the agency emphasized that methane would be only one indicator of possible life
  • reduces the probability of current methane-producing Martian microbes
  • this addresses only one type of microbial metabolism
  • ...14 more annotations...
  • here are many types of terrestrial microbes that don’t generate methane
  • Curiosity
  • sniffed the atmosphere six times for methane between October 2012 and June 2013
  • didn’t see any sign of the molecule
  • The instrument
  • would be able to detect minute concentrations
  • Scientists today estimate methane on Mars must be 1.3 parts per billion at the most, which is only one-sixth as much as earlier estimates
  • results are intriguing given that other teams have spotted methane on Mars as far back as 1999
  • Mars Global Surveyor, which was working for more than 10 years, charted the evolution of Martian methane over three years
  • NASA Earth-bound observations using spectroscopic measurements reported even greater amounts in the Martian atmosphere in 2009,
  • reports of the highest concentrations of Mars methane came from Earth-based observatories
  • imply that they think peering through Earth’s atmosphere may have distorted the measurements
  • Some Earthly measurements indicated local regions with methane as high as 45 parts per billion
  • s no known way for methane to disappear quickly from the atmosphere
Mars Base

An Unexpected Ending for Deep Impact - 0 views

www.universetoday.com/...xpected-ending-for-deep-impact

scibyte103 Curiosity

shared by Mars Base on 21 Sep 13 - No Cached
  • After almost 9 years in space
  • July 4th impact and subsequent flyby of a comet, an additional comet flyby, and the return of approximately 500,000 images of celestial objects
  • NASA’s Deep Impact/EPOXI mission has officially been brought to a close.
  • ...22 more annotations...
  • team at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory has reluctantly pronounced the mission at an end after being unable to communicate with the spacecraft for over a month
  • The last communication with the probe was Aug. 8
  • journeyed a total of about 4.7 billion miles (7.58 billion kilometers).
  • Launched in January 2005
  • the spacecraft first traveled about 268 million miles (431 million kilometers) to the vicinity of comet Tempel 1.
  • On July 3, 2005, the spacecraft deployed an impactor into the path of comet to essentially be run over by its nucleus on July 4
  • caused material from below the comet’s surface to be blasted out into space
  • examined by the telescopes and instrumentation of the flyby spacecraft
  • in late December 2007 to put it on course to encounter another comet, Hartley 2 in November 2010
  • Sixteen days after that comet encounter, the Deep Impact team placed the spacecraft on a trajectory to fly back past Eart
  • The spacecraft’s extended mission
  • the successful flyby of comet Hartley 2 on Nov. 4, 2010
  • Along the way, it also observed six different stars to confirm the motion of planets orbiting them
  • took images and data of the Earth, the Moon and Mars
  • data helped to confirm the existence of water on the Moon, and attempted to confirm the methane signature in the atmosphere of Mars
  • It took images of comet ISON this year and collected early images of comet ISON in June
  • After losing contact with the spacecraft last month, mission controllers spent several weeks trying to uplink commands to reactivate its onboard systems
  • Although the exact cause of the loss is not known
  • analysis has uncovered a potential problem with computer time tagging that could have led to loss of control for Deep Impact’s orientation.
  • That would then affect the positioning of its radio antennas, making communication difficult
  • its solar arrays, which would in turn prevent the spacecraft from getting power
  • allow cold temperatures to ruin onboard equipment, essentially freezing its battery and propulsion systems.
Mars Base

Leave the Driving to Autonav | NASA - 0 views

www.nasa.gov/...curiosity20130919.html

scibyte103 Curiosity

shared by Mars Base on 22 Sep 13 - No Cached
  • For the past year, Curiosity has been driving on Mars following instructions from human rover planners
  • new capability that’s coming on line
  • that will let Curiosity drive herself on Mars
  • ...13 more annotations...
  • called “Autonomous navigation
  • Humans are still
  • going to tell her where to go.  Curiosity is going to decide how to get there
  • Curiosity takes pictures from the navigation cameras, with the hazard cameras, and it’s able to combine that information, put it all together to define a safe way to get to where we ask her to go
  • The drive lasted about 10 meters
  • she turned her camera this way and that to look at what’s ahead of her.
  • She actually curved a little bit to the right to avoid some of the small rocks that were directly in front of her.
  • the actual speed that Curiosity
  • only about 2 inches per second
  • Another part of the autonomous navigation capability is using visual odometry
  • Visual odometry uses images from the mast cameras to look at the terrain before and after a small drive step.
  • Curosity will see a few hundred features and see how they move across the step
  • by tracking those features she can know exactly how far she moved, whether she slipped or twisted a little bit during the drive
Mars Base

MESSENGER: MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry, and Ranging - 0 views

messenger.jhuapl.edu/...image.php

scibyte103 mercury

shared by Mars Base on 24 Sep 13 - No Cached
  • , a portion of the terrain surrounding the northern margin of the Caloris basin
  • an elevated block in the shape of a certain carbonite-encased smuggler who can make the Kessel Run in less than twelve parsecs
  • This block may be part of the original surface that pre-dates the formation of Caloris, which was shaped by material ejected during the basin-forming event
Mars Base

Protein injection triggers vessel repair | Genes & Cells | Science News - 0 views

www.sciencenews.org/...jection_triggers_vessel_repair

scibyte103 eyes

shared by Mars Base on 23 Sep 13 - No Cached
  • retinopathy, a condition that causes tissue damage in the eye and can lead to blindness
  • In mice
  • a single injection of angiopoietin-1 in the blood vessels triggers the release of the growth factor fibronectin
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • which fuels the growth of blood vessels
  • Researchers hope the protein will one day work as a treatment for retinopathy in people.
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