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Mars Base

Curiosity team switches back to Earth time - 0 views

phys.org/...2-11-curiosity-team-earth.html

scibyte70 Curiosity

shared by Mars Base on 14 Nov 12 - No Cached
  • After three months working on "Mars time," the team operating NASA Mars rover Curiosity has switched to more regular hours, as planned
  • A Martian day, called a sol, is about 40 minutes longer than an Earth day, so the team's start time for daily planning has been moving a few hours later each week
  • at operations." A simultaneous change this
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  • . More than 200 non-JPL scientists who have spent some time working at JPL since Curiosity's landing
  • will continue participating regularly from their home institutions throughout North America and Europe
  • The team has been preparing in recent weeks to use dispersed participation teleconferences and Web connections.
Mars Base

Physicists use Kinect to control holographic tweezers (w/ Video) - 0 views

phys.org/...olographic-tweezers-video.html

scibyte70 Kinect

shared by Mars Base on 05 Nov 12 - No Cached
  • Researchers
  • in Scotland have devised a means of using a Microsoft Kinect sensing system to allow for hand control of holographic optical tweezers
  • Laser tweezers are laser based devices that allow for manipulation of very small objects; typically at the cellular level
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  • A laser beam is projected towards a target, but before reaching it, is split into three separate beams
  • three beams are broadcast onto the edges of the object to be manipulated
  • as the beams are moved the object is caused to move in lockstep
  • , fine tuning control of the laser to cause the movement of an object has been less than ideal
  • researchers to continue looking for alternative means
  • In this new research, the team connected a Microsoft Kinect device to the tweezers and then demonstrated an ability to move microscopic sized objects by moving their hands around in the air.
  • connecting a Kinect device to their virtual tweezers, the researchers found that they were able to define the space in which they wished to work by using simple hand movements and then to connect, virtually to a particular tiny object
  • The Kinect
  • is not precise enough to capture subtle movements however
  • doesn't allow for force-feedback, or the ability to feel the resistance of an object as its being moved
  • HoloHands, is not sophisticated enough to allow for serious research work
  • being used as a tool for educational purposes, either as a tool, or implemented as a learning game.
Mars Base

SpaceX's 10-Story Re-useable Grasshopper Rocket Takes a Bigger Hop - 0 views

www.universetoday.com/...pper-rocket-takes-a-bigger-hop

scibyte70 SpaceX

shared by Mars Base on 05 Nov 12 - No Cached
  • SpaceX is developing the “Grasshopper” reusable vertical takeoff, vertical landing rocket
  • in September, the 32-meter- (106-ft-) tall Grasshopper made a tiny hop – barely lifting off the pad just to test-fire its engines
  • the Grasshopper has made a second, bigger hop
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  • reportedly the goal with Grasshopper is to eventually create a reusable first stage for its Falcon 9 rocket
  • would be able to land safely instead of falling back into the ocean and not being usable again
  • Grasshopper test program is to have three phases of test launches
  • SpaceX’s facility in McGregor, Texas
  • Phases 1 and 2 would consist of very low test fires
  • with the rocket rising to not more than 73 meters (240 feet) during Phase 1 and
  • 204 meters (670 feet
  • Both Phase 1 and 2 flights would last up to 45 seconds.
  • Phase 3 tests have the goal of increasingly higher altitudes with higher ascent speeds and descent speeds
  • altitude test sequence likely would be 366 meters (1,200 feet); 762 meters (2,500 feet); 1,524 meters (5,000 feet); 2,286 meters (7,500 feet); and 3,505 meters (11,500) feet
  • maximum test duration would be approximately 160 seconds. If all goes well
  • Grasshopper would land back on the launch pad
Mars Base

Mars Science Laboratory: Curiosity Maneuver Prepares for Drilling - 0 views

mars.jpl.nasa.gov/...index.cfm

scibyte70 Curiosity

shared by Mars Base on 01 Feb 13 - No Cached
  • placed its drill onto a series of four locations on a Martian rock and pressed down on it with the rover's arm, in preparation for using the drill in coming days.
  • carried out this "pre-load" testing on Mars
  • (Jan. 27
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  • ctions for what would result from the commanded motions.
  • next step is an overnight pre-load test, to gain assurance that the large temperature change from day to night at the rover's location does not add excessively to stress on the arm while it is pressing on the drill
  • air temperature plunges from about 32 degrees Fahrenheit (zero degrees Celsius) in the afternoon to minus 85 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 65 degrees Celsius) overnight
  • Over this temperature swing, this large rover's arm, chassis and mobility system grow and shrink by about a tenth of an inch (about 2.4 millimeters), a little more than the thickness of a U.S. quarter-dollar coin
  • Remaining preparatory steps will take at least the rest of this week
  • Some of these steps are hardware checks. Others will evaluate characteristics of the rock material at the selected drilling site on a patch of flat, veined rock called "John Klein
  • We are proceeding with caution in the approach to Curiosity's first drilling. This is challenging. It will be the first time any robot has drilled into a rock to collect a sample on Mar
  • "drill-on-rock checkout" will use the hammering action of Curiosity's drill briefly, without rotation of the drill bit, for assurance that the back-and-forth percussion mechanism and associated control system are properly tuned for hitting a rock
  • the surface of the rock while penetrating less than eight-tenths of an inch (2 centimeters).
  • "mini-drill" is designed to produce a small ring of tailings -- powder resulting from drilling
  • will not go deep enough to push rock powder into the drill's sample-gathering chamber
  • The rover team's activities this week are affected by the difference between Mars time and Earth time
  • To compensate for this, the team develops commands based on rover activities from two sols earlier
  • the mini-drill activity cannot occur sooner than two sols after the drill-on-rock checkout.
  • Martian sol lasts about 40 minutes longer than a 24-hour Earth day.
Mars Base

Could the Next Planetary Rover Come from Canada? - 0 views

www.universetoday.com/...anetary-rover-come-from-canada

scibyte70 rover

shared by Mars Base on 29 Oct 12 - No Cached
  • Canadian Space Agency is well known for its robotics but they’ve recently expanded from robotic arms to building prototypes for five new rovers, designed for future lunar and Mars missions
  • range from microrovers to full-sized science missions and range in size from 30 kg up to 900 kg.
  • the Lunar Exploration Light Rover, is designed to carry a scientific payload and can be fitted with a robotic arm. It has a range of 15 km, can be operated remotely, or can be used to carry astronauts across a planetary surface.
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  • two Micro-Rover prototypes, at 40 kg and 30 kg., are designed to be operated in conjunction with larger rovers, and can be tethered to them and lowered into otherwise inaccessible areas.
  • On the Moon, permanently shadowed craters provide many interesting areas to find water and other volatiles
  • craters have steep slopes making it difficult and risky for a large rover
  • sending a micro-rover tethered to its mother one gives us the ability to explore the bottom of these craters with a minimum risk.
  • they are very slow so it is more efficient to have them on a larger rover to cover long distance and deploy them when needed.
  • The micro-rovers can also be used to work alongside astronauts, to gain access to small spaces like caves
  • e rovers should be mission-ready by about 2020, and NASA is already interested.
  • designs are intended to fit in with those types of activities.
  • NASA has an experiment under consideration that entails digging up soil on the Moon and making hydrogen and oxygen out of it
  • Canadarm was a fixture on the Space Shuttles and made it possible to do things like deploying satellites like the Hubble Space Telescope
  • instrumental in building the International Space Station
  • CSA also built the huge Canadarm 2 and Dextre, the highly dexterous dual-armed robot, both of which reside on the International Space Station
  • CSA contributed a robotic arm and other equipment to Curiosity
  • e CSA doesn’t anticipate any other rover designs, these 5 prototypes could be focused “on more specific applications such as in-situ resource utilization or science,
Mars Base

Moon's Mysterious 'Ocean of Storms' Explained | Moon Impact Hypothesis | Space.com - 0 views

www.space.com/on-dark-spot-ocean-storms.html

scibyte70 moon

shared by Mars Base on 30 Oct 12 - No Cached
  • The largest dark spot on the moon, known as the Ocean of Storms, may be a scar from a giant cosmic impact that created a magma sea more than a thousand miles wide and several hundred miles deep
  • could help explain why the moon's near and far sides are so very different from one another,
  • Scientists analyzed Oceanus Procellarum, or the Ocean of Storms, a dark spot on the near side of the moon more than 1,800 miles (3,000 kilometers) wide.
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  • near side of the moon,
  • , is quite different from the far side,
  • the moon's dark side (this side does in fact get sunlight — it simply never faces Earth
  • , widespread plains of volcanic rock called "maria" (Latin for seas) cover nearly a third of the near side, but only a few maria are seen on the far one.
  • hers have posed a number of explanations for the vast disparity between the moon's near and far sides. Some have suggested that a tiny second moon may once have orbited Earth before catastrophically slamming into the other moon, spreading its remains mostly on the moon's far side
  • Others have proposed that Earth's pull on the moon caused distortions that were later frozen in place on the moon's near side.
  • Mars' northern and southern halves are also stark contrasts from one another, and researchers had suggested that a monstrous impact may have been the cause
  • scientists in Japan say that a giant collision may also explain the moon's two-faced nature, one that gave rise to the Ocean of Storms
  • researchers analyzed the composition of the moon's surface using data from the Japanese lunar orbiter Kaguya/Selene
  • data revealed that a low-calcium variety of the mineral pyroxene is concentrated around Oceanus Procellarum and large impact craters such as the South Pole-Aitkenand Imbriumbasins.
  • type of pyroxene is linked with the melting and excavation of material from the lunar mantle, and suggests the Ocean of Storms is a leftover from a cataclysmic impact.
  • This collision would have generated "a 3,000-kilometer (1,800-mile) wide magma sea several hundred kilometers in depth
  • that collisions large enough to create Oceanus Procellarum and the moon's other giant impact basins would have completely stripped the original crust on the near side of the moon
  • crust that later formed there from the molten rock left after these impacts would differ dramatically from that on the far side
  • Some researchers had speculated that the Procellarum basin was the relic of a gigantic impact
  • this idea was hotly debated because there were no definite topographic signs it was an impact basin
  • neighboring Earth likely experienced similar-sized impacts around the same period
Mars Base

NASA rover's first soil studies help fingerprint Martian minerals - 0 views

phys.org/...-soil-fingerprint-martian.html

scibyte70 Curiosity

shared by Mars Base on 31 Oct 12 - No Cached
  • results of the first analysis of Martian soil by the Chemistry and Mineralogy (CheMin) experiment on NASA's Curiosity rover
  • presence of crystalline feldspar, pyroxenes and olivine mixed with some amorphous (non-crystalline) material
  • similar to volcanic soils in Hawaii
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  • NASA's Mars rover Curiosity has completed initial experiments showing the mineralogy of Martian soil is similar to weathered basaltic soils of volcanic origin in Hawaii
  • used its Chemistry and Mineralogy instrument (CheMin)
  • quantitative results provide refined and in some cases new identifications of the minerals in this first X-ray diffraction analysis on Mars."
  • identification of minerals in rocks and soil is crucial for the mission's goal to assess past environmental conditions
  • mineral records the conditions under which it formed.
  • composition of a rock provides only ambiguous mineralogical information,
  • X-ray diffraction
  • minerals diamond and graphite, which have the same chemical composition, but strikingly different structures and properties.
  • CheMin uses X-ray diffraction,
  • reads minerals' internal structure by recording how their crystals distinctively interact with X-rays
  • provides more accurate identifications of minerals than any method previously used on Mars
  • The sample was processed through a sieve to exclude particles larger than 0.006 inch (150 micrometers), roughly the width of a human hair.
  • soil material CheMin has analyzed is more representative of modern processes on Mars
  • "We now know it is mineralogically similar to basaltic material
  • significant amounts of feldspar, pyroxene and olivine, which was not unexpected
  • Roughly half the soil is non-crystalline material, such as volcanic glass or products from weathering of the glass
  • ancient rocks, such as the conglomerates, suggest flowing water, while the minerals in the younger soil are consistent with limited interaction with water
  • "So far, the materials Curiosity has analyzed are consistent with our initial ideas of the deposits in Gale Crater recording a transition through time from a wet to dry environment
Mars Base

A Viagra follow-up? Drug used to treat glaucoma actually grows human hair - 0 views

medicalxpress.com/...ow-up-drug-glaucoma-human.html

scibyte70 MedicalTreatment

shared by Mars Base on 27 Oct 12 - No Cached
  • FDA-approved glaucoma drug, bimatoprost, causes human hair to regrow
  • been commercially available as a way to lengthen eyelashes, but these data are the first to show that it can actually grow human hair from the scalp
  • Further research should increase our understanding of how hair follicles work and thereby allow new therapeutic approaches for many hair growth disorders
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  • d three sets of experiments
  • Two involved human cells and the other involved mice
  • tests on human cells involved using hair follicles growing in organ culture as well as those take directly from the human scalp.
  • both of these experiments, the scientists found that bimatoprost led to hair growth.
  • third set of experiments involved applying bimatoprost to the skin of bald spots on mice. As was the case with human cells, the drug caused hair to regrow.
  • the drug is already approved for human use and its safety profile is generally understood
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