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Chris Fisher

47 year old television signals bouncing back to Earth - 0 views

www.rimmell.com/news.htm

scibyte bbc television signals

shared by Chris Fisher on 12 Dec 11 - No Cached
  • "I realised the signal was in the VHF Band and slap bang in the middle of 41-68 MHz. It was obviously old terrestrial television broadcasts, but they seemed to be originating from deep space.
  • "They are signals that left the Earth about 50 years ago and have bounced off an object or more likely a field of objects some 25 light years away".
  • Radio signals travel at approximately 300,000 kilometers per second.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • we asked NASA if they could point Hubble at the centre of what we've named the 'Bounce Anomaly'. NASA were very keen to help once they had seen our data."
  • However the $3 billion space telescope was unable to produce any clues as to what the signals are bouncing off. One theory is a massive cloud of asteroids is acting like a mirror in space reflecting radio signals from our past, back to us.
  • "We now know these are original broadcasts. So far we have recovered about 7 weeks of old television signals from space. Every day in our lab is like traveling back in time. And speaking of which we have just started the digital recovery of signals that contain lost Doctor Who episodes.
Mars Base

Dark matter detector reports hints of WIMPs | Atom & Cosmos | Science News - 0 views

www.sciencenews.org/...etector_reports_hints_of_WIMPs

scibyte91 DarkMatter

shared by Mars Base on 16 Apr 13 - No Cached
  • Ultracold crystals designed to catch particles of dark matter deep underground have come up with three potential detections
  • The researchers do not have enough evidence to say they have discovered dark matter particles
  • Theoretical physicists have put forth some ideas for particles that might constitute dark matter, including one called a weakly interacting massive particle, or WIMP.
  • ...22 more annotations...
  • The experiment that made the newly reported detections is designed to pick up the signal of a WIMP as Earth passes through the galaxy
  • The Cryogenic Dark Matter Search consists of a network of silicon and germanium crystals cooled to near absolute zero
  • in the Soudan Underground Laboratory in Minnesota, a former iron mine more than 700 meters beneath the surface
  • If WIMPs exist, one should very occasionally slam into the nucleus of a silicon or germanium atom, causing a release of energy and a detectable vibration in the crystal
  • The hundreds of meters of earth above the experiment prevent other particles, such as protons and neutrons, from reaching the crystals and triggering a false positive
  • between July 2007 and September 2008, two of the experiment’s 11 silicon crystal detectors picked up three signals consistent with those expected from WIMP interactions
  • If the signals were caused by WIMPs
  • estimates the dark matter particle would weigh in at about 10 times the mass of the proton, well below many theoretical estimates
  • While the crystals’ underground setup provides plenty of shielding, some non-WIMP particles, such as electrons on the crystals’ surface, can cloud the results
  • it’s extremely unlikely that three events would show up from non-WIMP sources.
  • the energy released by the potential WIMPs is at the very lower limit of the detectors’ sensitivity
  • making erroneous WIMP detections more likely
  • concerns that the two crystals that picked up the signal could be more susceptible to false positives than the rest
  • In 2009, CDMS published a paper reporting that its germanium detectors had snagged two potential WIMPs, but further analysis revealed them to be surface electrons
  • more convinced if the detectors had picked up 10 or 12 signs of WIMPs, rather than just three
  • definitive detection would require multiple experiments worldwide to converge on the same characteristics for a dark matter particl
  • One in Italy called DAMA, short for Dark Matter, has made bold claims of dark matter detection that have drawn skepticism from many scientists
  • Other experiments have claimed to find signals at masses similar to this latest CDMS calculation but have not definitively said they have observed WIMPs
  • each experiment uses a different detection technique and has its own protocol for distinguishing WIMPs from background noise, making it hard to compare results
  • As for CDMS, the silicon detectors that found these signals are no longer collecting data
  • Researchers recently upgraded the Soudan facility with supersensitive germanium detectors
  • Over the next few years, the germanium detectors will move to a new, deeper underground home in Sudbury, Ontario, about 2 kilometers below the surface
Mars Base

Researchers find clues to how the brain decides when to rest - 0 views

medicalxpress.com/...2013-01-clues-brain-rest.html

scibyte80 Learning

shared by Mars Base on 22 Jan 13 - No Cached
  • A team of researchers
  • has found what they call a "signal" that tells a person when to rest while engaging in work, and then when to resume once rested
  • used fMRI scans on a group of volunteers to study a part of the brain normally associated with pain perception and found what amounts to a signal calling for the conscious mind to take a break
  • ...10 more annotations...
  • Scientists studying how people make decisions regarding work have over time devised theories of cost versus benefit scenarios to describe what causes people to engage in work activities, or to not
  • Not so well studied is how people come to decide when it's time to take a break
  • researchers enlisted the aid of 39 participants who were asked to squeeze a spring-loaded handgrip over and over as they underwent fMRI scans
  • Each was promised a monetary reward for doing so based on a sliding scale. The longer they squeezed, the better the reward would be
  • In analyzing the fMRI images, the researchers discovered that activity in a part of the brain called the posterior insula (normally associated with pain perception), built over time as the volunteers continued squeezing – a signal of sorts
  • grew during effort, and then faded during rest times – peaking just before resting
  • researchers suggest that when a certain peak is reached, the rest of the brain is alerted to the need to take a break
  • The team also found that increasing the difficulty of the squeezing led to the signal increasing at a faster rate, but slowed when a bigger reward was offered despite the increased workload
  • They also found that bumping up the reward during a rest period caused the lowest signal point to come more quickly, indicating that rest time was up sooner than it would have been otherwise
  • suggest that their observations indicate that they brain is constantly engaged in a struggle to maximize reward, while simultaneously minimizing the amount of work needed to get that reward, and uses rests stops to help it get there in a manner best suited to the work at hand.
Mars Base

Long-lived NASA Rover Begins Probing Interior of Mars | NASA & Mars Rover Opportunity |... - 0 views

www.space.com/pportunity-winter-science.html

scibyte30 opportunity

shared by Mars Base on 21 Jan 12 - No Cached
  • rover is allowing scientists to begin investigating the mysterious interior of the Red Planet
  • beaming radio signals home to Earth
  • analyzing these signals, researchers hope to get "a handle on the structure of the interior of the planet
  • ...11 more annotations...
  • distribution of mass, and perhaps how large the core might be
  • the rover won't sleep
  • , it will investigate the rocks at Greeley Haven, take panoramic photos of its surroundings
  • most important — send radio signals back to Earth.
  • mission team will track those signals
  • using Opportunity's motion relative to Earth as a proxy for the rotation of Mars
  • Scientists should thus be able to get very precise measurements of the planet's spin.
  • learning how Mars' spin axis has changed, or precessed, since NASA's Viking mission made similar measurements back in the mid-1970s
  • Knowing the precession rate should allow scientists to get a much better handle on the Red Planet's interior structure
  • keen to study Mars' nutation, which is a smaller-period variation in the planet's rotation. Such information might help reveal whether the Red Planet's core is solid or liquid
  • mission team will be tracking Opportunity's radio signals almost daily. After three to six months, researchers expect to have enough data to start getting an in-depth picture of the Martian interior
Mars Base

UHF-Satcom.com - Chang'e 3 & Yutu reception - 0 views

www.uhf-satcom.com/...chang-e-3

scibyte120 ChineseSpaceProgram ChineseSpaceProgram-Yutu

shared by Mars Base on 15 Feb 14 - No Cached
  • 10th February 2014
  • some nice signals are detected from the Lunar Lander but nothing from the Lunar Rover - several news outlets report that the Rover has had a failure after its Lunar sleep, and that it was not expected to become alive again
  • t doesn't hurt to monitor the downlink now and then.
  • ...12 more annotations...
  • it was thought possible to hear any command uplink signals
  • 12th February 2014
  • Again, searching the various downlink frequencies for signs of life from the 'dead' Lunar Lander
  • nothing was heard
  • indicating that a communications session with the Lunar Lander was not progressing
  • Tuning to
  • did however reveal another huge signal, this time an uplink to the Lunar Rover - China was attempting to talk it back into life
  • immediately the dual band converter was switched
  • was checked where to everyone's surprise, the Lunar Rover was in full chat mode, the Rover had survived and was not dead after all
  • 13th February 2014 - The second night of Yutu's rebirth - would there be signals again?
  • 13th February 2014
  • ere was a lot chatter on the @UHF_Satcom Twitter feed about the discovery of signals from the Yutu rover
Mars Base

Wireless signals could transform brain trauma diagnostics - 0 views

medicalxpress.com/...-brain-trauma-diagnostics.html

scibyte94 brain

shared by Mars Base on 15 May 13 - No Cached
  • New technology
  • is using wireless signals to provide real-time, non-invasive diagnoses of brain swelling or bleeding.
  • The device analyzes data from low energy, electromagnetic waves, similar to the kind used to transmit radio and mobile signals
  • ...15 more annotations...
  • The technology
  • could potentially become a cost-effective tool for medical diagnostics and to triage injuries in areas where access to medical care, especially medical imaging, is limited
  • The researchers tested a prototype in a small-scale pilot study of healthy adults and brain trauma patients admitted to a military hospital for the Mexican Army
  • The results from the healthy patients were clearly distinguishable from those with brain damage, and data for bleeding was distinct from those for swelling
  • symptoms of serious head injuries and brain damage are not always immediately obvious, and for treatment, time is of the essence.
  • The researchers took advantage of the characteristic changes in tissue composition and structure in brain injuries
  • For brain edemas, swelling results from an increase in fluid in the tissue
  • For brain hematomas, internal bleeding causes the buildup of blood in certain regions of the brain.
  • Because fluid conducts electricity differently than brain tissue, it is possible to measure changes in electromagnetic properties.
  • Computer algorithms interpret the changes to determine the likelihood of injury.
  • The study involved 46 healthy adults, ages 18 to 48, and eight patients with brain damage, ages 27 to 70.
  • engineers fashioned two coils into a helmet-like device, fitted over the heads of the study participants
  • One coil acts as a radio emitter and the other serves as the receiver. Electromagnetic signals are broadcast through the brain from the emitter to the receiver
  • the waves are extremely weak, and are comparable to standing in a room with the radio or television turned on
  • The device's diagnoses for the brain trauma patients in the study matched the results obtained from conventional computerized tomography (CT) scans
Mars Base

Spray-on antenna gets great reception at Google event - 0 views

www.physorg.com/...na-great-reception-google.html

scibyte34 spray-on-antenna

shared by Mars Base on 17 Feb 12 - No Cached
  • A Utah startup has introduced a spray-on signal booster in a can that promises an improved signal
  • tested the spray on a tree, among other tests, and the team was able to send a VHF signal up to 14 miles away using only the treated tree
  • promoting it as a multi-purpose antenna, simple and quick to assemble, mountable on almost any surface, for use in any environment. "Any" bears quite a range of possible end uses.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • upbeat over successful tests that were run to examine the spray's signal performance underwater
  • is not to say the idea of a spray-on antenna on surfaces does not have a history
  • February 14, 2012
  • could be used by weather and oceanographic researchers and underwater welders.
Mars Base

Supernova Candidate Stars May Signal "Impending Doom" - 0 views

www.universetoday.com/...tars-may-signal-impending-doom

scibyte24

shared by Mars Base on 02 Dec 11 - No Cached
  • very visible supernova event. Hosted in the Whirlpool Galaxy (M51),
  • researchers at Ohio State University, a galaxy survey may have captured evidence of a “stellar signal” just before it went supernova
  • OSU team was undertaking a survey of 25 galaxies for stars that changed their magnitude in usual ways
  • ...12 more annotations...
  • goal was to find a star just before it ended its life
  • a binary star system located in M51 produced just the results they were looking fo
  • ne star dropped amplitude just a short period of time before the other exploded
  • Maybe stars give off a clear signal of impending doom, maybe they don’t
  • But we’ll learn something new about dying stars no matter the outcome
  • it was a binary star system being studied by the OSU team
  • consisted of both a blue and red star
  • At this point, the astronomers surmise the red star was the one that dimmed significantly over the three-year period while the blue one blew its top
  • reviewing the LBT data
  • when compared with Hubble images, the red star dimmed at about 10% over the final three-year period at an estimated 3% per previous years
  • researchers surmise the red star may have actually survived the supernova event
  • After the light from the explosion fades away, we should be able to see the companion that did not explode
Mars Base

EyeWire gamers help researchers understand retina's motion detection wiring - 0 views

medicalxpress.com/...mers-retina-motion-wiring.html

scibyte130 eyes

shared by Mars Base on 06 May 14 - No Cached
  • A team of researchers working at MIT has used data supplied by gamers on EyeWire to help explain how it is that the retina is able to process motion detection
  • the team describes how they worked with gamers at EyeWire and then used the resulting mapped neural networks to propose a new theory to describe how it is the eye is able to understand what happens when something moves in front of it.
  • Scientists have known for quite some time that light enters the eye and strikes the back of the eyeball where photoreceptors respond
  • ...18 more annotations...
  • Those photoreceptors send information they receive to another type of neural cell known as bipolar cells
  • they in turn convert received signals to another signal format which is then sent to what are known as starburst amacrine cells (SACs)
  • Signals from the SAC are sent via the optic nerve to the brain
  • scientists believe they have a pretty good idea about how the whole process works for static images, they have not been able to get a handle on what happens when images sent to the eyeball have information about things that are moving
  • In this new effort, the researchers sought to do just that—via assistance from thousands of gamers on the EyeWire game playing site
  • The problem with figuring out how nerve cells work in the eye, of either mice or humans, is the inability to watch what happens in action—everything is too tiny and intricate
  • To get around that problem, researchers have been building three dimensional models on computers
  • even that gets untenable when considering the complexity and numbers of nerves involved
  • That's where the EyeWire gamers came in, a game was created that involved gamers creating mouse neural networks—the better they were at it the more points they got
  • only the best at it were invited to play
  • The result was the creation of a model that the researchers believe is an accurate representation of the cells involved in processing vision, and the networks that are made up of them
  • the rest was up to the research team
  • They noted that in the model, there were different types of bipolar cells connecting to SACs—some connected to dendrites close to the cells center, and others connected to dendrites that were farther away
  • Prior research had shown that some bipolar cells take longer to process information than others
  • The researchers believe that the bipolar cells that connect closer to the center are of the type that take longer to process signals
  • This, they contend, could set up a scenario where the center of the SAC receives information from both types of bipolar cells at the same time—and that, they suggest, could be how the SAC comes to understand that motion—in one direction—is occurring
  • The researchers suggest their theory can be real-world tested in the lab, and expect other teams will likely do so
  • If they are right, the mystery of how our eyes detect motion will finally be solved.
Mars Base

Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - 0 views

en.wikipedia.org/...son_Microwave_Anisotropy_Probe

scibyte88 WMAP

shared by Mars Base on 31 Mar 13 - No Cached
  • a spacecraft which measures differences in the temperature of the Big Bang's remnant radiant heat – the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation – across the full sky
  • The WMAP spacecraft was launched on June 30, 2001,
  • The WMAP mission succeeds the COBE space mission and was the second medium-class (MIDEX) spacecraft of the Explorer program.
  • ...15 more annotations...
  • WMAP's measurements played the key role in establishing the current Standard Model of Cosmology
  • WMAP data are very well fit by a universe that is dominated by dark energy in the form of a cosmological constant
  • The anisotropies then are used to measure the universe's geometry, content, and evolution; and to test the Big Bang model, and the cosmic inflation theory
  • he map contains 3,145,728 pixels, and uses the HEALPix scheme to pixelize the sphere
  • The telescope's primary reflecting mirrors are a pair
  • that focus the signal onto a pair of
  • secondary reflecting mirrors.
  • shaped for optimal performance: a carbon fibre shell upon a Korex core, thinly-coated with aluminium and silicon oxide.
  • The secondary reflectors transmit the signals to the corrugated feedhorns that sit on a focal plane array box beneath the primary reflectors
  • The receivers are polarization-sensitive differential radiometers measuring the difference between two telescope beams.
  • To avoid collecting Milky Way galaxy foreground signals, the WMAP uses five discrete radio frequency bands
  • The WMAP's trajectory and orbit
  • The WMAP observes in five frequencies, permitting the measurement and subtraction of foreground contamination (from the Milky Way
  • Foreground contamination is removed in several ways
  • First, subtract extant emission maps from the WMAP's measurements; second, use the components' known, spectral values to identify them; third, simultaneously fit the position and spectra data of the foreground emission, using extra data sets
Mars Base

Regaining proper hearing at last - 0 views

medicalxpress.com/...2013-04-regaining-proper.html

scibyte89 Hearing

shared by Mars Base on 08 Apr 13 - No Cached
  • In the case of patients with severe hearing impairments, however, conventional behind-the-ear hearing aids reach the limits of their usefulness
  • These patients' hearing can only be helped by an implant, which amplifies sounds more effectively than conventional systems and boasts better sound quality
  • these middle ear implants require complex operations that last several hours. The high risk and expense of the surgery mean that it is rarely performed
  • ...13 more annotations...
  • The new solution is composed of three parts: a case with a microphone and battery; wireless, optical signal and energy transmission between the outer and middle ear; and an electro-acoustic transducer – the centerpiece and loudspeaker of the implant.
  • Researchers
  • are developing the electro-acoustic transducer, which will be round in shape and measure approximately 1.2 millimeters
  • To implant our system, all surgeons have to do is make a small incision at the side of the eardrum and then fold it forward. This can be done in outpatient surgery."
  • takes the form of a piezoelectric micro-actuator, is then placed directly at the connection between the middle and inner ear known as the "round window"
  • there it transmits acoustic signals to the inner ear in the form of amplified mechanical vibrations, thereby enhancing the hearing capacity of patients
  • it can output volumes of up to 120 decibels, which is roughly the noise a jackhammer makes.
  • This high performance is necessary for very good speech comprehension, particularly for high-pitched sounds, which people who are severely hard of hearing find especially difficult to pick up
  • currently testing a first working prototype in the laboratory. Results have been positive to date
  • The individual components of the hearing aid have all been developed. The next step is to optimize and assemble them
  • The implant must measure up to high requirements: the material must be encased so the body tolerates it and it has to remain stable over long periods
  • hearing aid implants should last at least ten years
  • optimized individual components should be ready by June of this year; testing of the overall system is planned for 2014
Mars Base

FITSAT - 0 views

www.fit.ac.jp/...fitsat.shtml

scibyte56 FITSAT-1

shared by Mars Base on 25 Jul 12 - No Cached
  • The shape is a 10cm cube, and the weight is 1.33kg.
  • The main mission of this satellite is to demonstrate the high speed transmitter developed. It can send a jpeg VGA-picture(480x640) within 6 seconds
  • NIWAKA will write messages in the night sky with Morse code as: (JAXA movie 120MB)
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • The beacon signal is a standard Morse code CW signal. The signal starts with "HI" and telemetry data follows.
Mars Base

T Minus 9 Days - Mars Orbiters Now in Place to Relay Critical Curiosity Landing Signals - 0 views

www.universetoday.com/...ical-curiosity-landing-signals

scibyte56 Curiosity

shared by Mars Base on 28 Jul 12 - No Cached
  • NASA’s Mars Odyssey will relay near real time signals of this artist’s concept depicting the moment that NASA’s Curiosity rover touches down onto the Martian surface
  • Engines aboard NASA’s long lived Mars Odyssey spacecraft fired for about 6 seconds to adjust the orbiters location about 6 minutes ahead in its orbit. This will allow Odyssey to provide a prompt confirmation of Curiosity’s landing inside Gale crater at about 1:31 a.m. EDT (531 GMT) early on Aug. 6 (10:31 p.m. PDT on Aug. 5) – as NASA had originally planned.
  • Watch NASA TV online for live coverage of Curiosity landing: mars.jpl.nasa.gov or www.nasa.gov
Mars Base

Spaceflight Now | Breaking News | It's alive! Russia's Phobos-Grunt probe phones home - 0 views

www.spaceflightnow.com/...23phobosgrunt

scibyte23 Phobos-Grunt

shared by Mars Base on 23 Nov 11 - No Cached
  • a ground station in Australia heard signals from Russia's marooned Phobos-Grunt Mars mission
  • A tracking station in Perth succeeded in contacting Phobos-Grunt
  • Russia sought help from ESA, which maintains a network of radio stations around the world
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • Perth station heard a signal from Phobos-Grunt at about 2025 GMT (3:25 p.m. EST) Tuesday
  • There has been no contact with Phobos-Grunt since then
  • "no meaningful telemetry" was received from Phobos-Grunt
  • only an acquisition of a radio signal
  • November 23
Mars Base

It's Official: Voyager 1 Is Now In Interstellar Space - 0 views

www.universetoday.com/...1-is-now-in-interstellar-space

scibyte102 Voyager1

shared by Mars Base on 13 Sep 13 - No Cached
  • NASA says the most distant human made object — the Voyager 1 spacecraft — is in interstellar space
  • It actually made the transition about a year ago
  • there is a bit of an argument on the semantics of whether Voyager 1 is still inside or outside of our Solar System
  • ...44 more annotations...
  • it is not farther out than the Oort Cloud
  • it will take 300 more years reach the Oort cloud and the spacecraft is closer to our Sun than any other star
  • the plasma environment Voyager 1 now travels through has definitely changed from what comes from our Sun to the plasma that is present in the space between stars.
  • debate
  • There’s also been a
  • between the latest various science papers and their authors
  • Scientists thought that when the spacecraft had crossed over into interstellar space, the magnetic field direction would change
  • that didn’t happen
  • scientists determined they needed to look at the properties of the plasma instead
  • The Sun’s heliosphere is filled with ionized plasma from the Sun
  • Outside that bubble, the plasma comes from the explosions of other stars millions of years ago
  • The main tell-tail difference is the interstellar plasma is denser.
  • the real instrument that was designed to make the measurements on the plasma quit working in the 1980’s
  • Instead they used the plasma wave instrument, located on the 10-meter long antennas on Voyager 1 and
  • from the Sun
  • a massive Coronal Mass Ejection
  • The antennas have radio receivers at the ends – “like the rabbit ears on old television sets
  • The CME erupted from the Sun in March 2012, and eventually arrived at Voyager 1′s location 13 months later, in April 2013
  • Because of the CME, the plasma around the spacecraft began to vibrate like a violin string
  • The pitch of the oscillations helped scientists determine the density of the plasma
  • the particular oscillations meant the spacecraft was bathed in plasma more than 40 times denser than what they had encountered in the outer layer of the heliosphere
  • The plasma wave science team reviewed its data and found an earlier, fainter set of oscillations in October and November 2012 from other CMEs
  • extrapolation of measured plasma densities from both events, the team determined Voyager 1 first entered interstellar space in August 2012
  • certainly in a new region at the edge of the solar system where things are changing rapidly
  • not yet able to say that Voyager 1 has entered interstellar space
  • the data are changing in ways that the team didn’t expect
  • after further review, the Voyager team generally accepts the August 2012 date as the date of interstellar arrival
  • The charged particle and plasma changes were what would have been expected during a crossing of the heliopause
  • expect the fields and particles science instruments on Voyager will continue to send back data through at least 2020
  • , it was first questioned in August of 2012, with more speculation in December 2012, then in March of 2013
  • Then about a month ago
  • Voyager 2, launched before Voyager 1, is the longest continuously operated spacecraft
  • emitted signals are currently very dim, at about 23 watts — the power of a refrigerator light bulb
  • Voyager mission controllers still talk to or receive data from Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 every day
  • planetary alignment that only happens every 176 years enabled the two spacecraft to join together to reach all the outer planets in a 12 year time period
  • By the time the signals get to Earth, they are a fraction of a billion-billionth of a watt
  • Data from Voyager 1′s instruments are transmitted to Earth typically at 160 bits per second
  • signal from Voyager 1 takes about 17 hours to travel to Earth.
  • After the data are transmitted to JPL and processed by the science teams, Voyager data are made publicly available
  • Scientists do not know when Voyager 1 will reach the undisturbed part of interstellar space where there is no influence from our Sun
  • They also are not certain when Voyager 2 is expected to cross into interstellar space, but they believe it is not very far behind.
  • While Voyager 1 will keep going, we will not always be able to communicate with it, as we do now
  • In 2025 all instruments will be turned off, and the science team will be able to operate the spacecraft for about 10 years after that to just get engineering data
  • In the year 40,272 AD, Voyager 1 will come within 1.7 light years of an obscure star in the constellation Ursa Minor
Mars Base

Voyager 1 spacecraft reaches interstellar space, study confirms - 0 views

phys.org/...ecraft-interstellar-space.html

scibyte102 Voyager1

shared by Mars Base on 13 Sep 13 - No Cached
  • University of Iowa space physicist
  • says there is solid evidence that NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft has become the first manmade object to reach interstellar space
  • 11 billion miles distant and 36 years after it was launched
  • ...8 more annotations...
  • For several months, the relative position of Voyager 1
  • remains some lingering evidence of the nearby heliosphere beyond the heliopause.
  • April
  • there are variations in some of Voyager's measurements that may be due to the nearby presence of the heliosphere
  • 11.6 billion miles from the sun, or about 125 astronomical units.
  • it takes more than 17 hours for a radio signal to travel from the spacecraft
  • The signal strength is so incredibly weak that it takes both a 230-foot and a 110-foot-diameter antenna to receive our highest resolution data
  • moving outward from the sun at about 3.5 AU per year
Mars Base

Demo of mind-controlled exoskeleton planned for World Cup - 0 views

phys.org/...led-exoskeleton-world-cup.html

scibyte130

shared by Mars Base on 11 May 14 - No Cached
  • The World Cup opening ceremony
  • June 12
  • a standout for athletes and their fans but yet another eye-opener may make the Sao Paulo stadium opener long remembered globally
  • ...14 more annotations...
  • a mind-controlled exoskeleton designed to enable a paralyzed person to walk is to make its debut.
  • BBC report provided the latest developments in the robotic suit. "If all goes as planned," wrote Alejandra Martins, "the robotic suit will spring to life in front of almost 70,000 spectators and a global audience of billions of people."
  • The exoskeleton was developed by an international team of scientists, part of the Walk Again Project, and described by the BBC report as a "culmination" of over 10 years of work
  • The goal is to show the brain-controlled exoskeleton during the opening ceremony of the 2014 FIFA World Cup.
  • The (DiVE) website talks about the day when "the first ceremonial kick in the World Cup game may be made "by a paralyzed teenager, who, flanked by the two contending soccer teams, will saunter onto the pitch clad in a robotic body suit."
  • According to the BBC, since November, Nicolelis has been training eight patients at a lab in Sao Paulo, amidst "media speculation that one of them will stand up from his or her wheelchair and deliver the first kick of this year's World Cup.")
  • the exoskeleton is being controlled by brain activity and it is relaying feedback signals to the patient.
  • The patient wears a cap which picks up brain signals and relays them to a computer in the backpack, decoding the signals and sending them to the legs.
  • A battery in the backpack allows for around two hours' use. The robotic suit is powered by hydraulics.
  • Many different companies helped to build the skeleton's components
  • they used a lot of 3-D printing technology for purposes of both speed and achieving strong but light materials, along with using standard aluminum parts
  • "When the foot of the exoskeleton touches the ground there is pressure, so the sensor senses the pressure and before the foot touches the ground we are also doing pre-contact sensing. It's a new way of doing skin sensing for robots," Cheng
  • Dr Gordon Cheng, at the Technical University of Munich
  • Duke University in November announced that in a study led by Duke researchers, monkeys learned to control the movement of both arms on an avatar using just their brain activity.
Mars Base

International Cometary Explorer - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - 0 views

en.wikipedia.org/...nternational_Cometary_Explorer

scibyte132 ISEE-3

shared by Mars Base on 25 May 14 - No Cached
  • Original mission: International Sun/Earth Explorer 3 (ISEE-3)
  • to investigate solar-terrestrial relationships at the outermost boundaries of the Earth's magnetosphere
  • to examine in detail the structure of the solar wind near the Earth and the shock wave that forms the interface between the solar wind and Earth's magnetosphere
  • ...38 more annotations...
  • investigate motions of and mechanisms operating in the plasma sheets
  • continue the investigation of cosmic rays and solar flare emissions in the interplanetary region near 1 AU
  • Second mission: International Cometary Explorer
  • On June 10, 1982, after completing its original mission, ISEE-3 was repurposed. It was renamed the International Cometary Explorer (ICE)
  • The primary scientific objective of ICE was to study the interaction between the solar wind and a cometary atmosphere
  • a series of lunar orbits over the next 15 months. Its last and closest pass over the Moon, on December 22, 1983, was a mere 119.4 km above the Moon's surface. By the beginning of 1984, ICE was in heliocentric orbit
  • Giacobini-Zinner encounter
  • on a trajectory intercepting that of Comet Giacobini-Zinner.
  • On 11 September 1985, the craft passed through the plasma tail of Comet Giacobini-Zinner
  • ICE carried no cameras. It instead carried instruments for measurements of energetic particles, waves, plasmas, and fields
  • Halley encounter
  • transited between the Sun and Comet Halley in late March 1986, when other spacecraft
  • were in the vicinity of Comet Halley
  • ICE flew through the tail
  • Heliospheric mission
  • mission was approved by NASA in 1991
  • consisting of investigations of coronal mass ejections in coordination with ground-based observations
  • End of mission
  • On May 5, 1997, NASA ended the ICE mission, and ordered the probe shut down, with only a carrier signal left operating
  • Further contact
  • In 1999, NASA made brief contact with ICE to verify its carrier signal. On September 18, 2008
  • NASA, with the help of KinetX, located ICE using the Deep Space Network after discovering that it had not been powered off after the 1999 contact
  • status check revealed that all but one of its 13 experiments were still functioning, and it still has enough propellant
  • Reboot effort
  • A team webpage said, "We intend to contact the ISEE-3 (International Sun-Earth Explorer) spacecraft, command it to fire its engine and enter an orbit near Earth, and then resume its original mission...If we are successful we intend to facilitate the sharing and interpretation of all of the new data ISEE-3 sends back via crowd sourcing."
  • Sometime after NASA's interest in the ICE waned
  • A team of engineers, programmers, and scientists
  • realized that the spacecraft might be steered to pass close to another comet
  • began to study the feasibility and challenges involved
  • On May 15, 2014, the project reached its crowdfunding goal
  • which will cover the costs of writing the software to communicate with the probe, searching through the NASA archives for the information needed to control the spacecraft, and buying time on the dish antennas
  • The project then set a 'stretch' goal of $150,000
  • The project members are working on deadline: if they get the spacecraft to change its orbit by late May or early June 2014, it can use the Moon's gravity to get back into a useful halo orbit.
  • Earlier in 2014, officials with the Goddard Space Flight Center had said that the Deep Space Network equipment necessary to transmit signals to the spacecraft had been decommissioned in 1999, and that replacing it was not economically feasible
  • oject members obtained the needed hardware (power amplifier, modulator/demodulator[12]), and installed it on the 305-meter Arecibo dish antenna on May 19, 2014
  • Although NASA is not funding the project, it made advisors available and gave approval to try to establish contact
  • On May 21, 2014, NASA announced that it had signed a Non-Reimbursable Space Act Agreement with the ISEE-3 Reboot Project
  • "This is the first time NASA has worked such an agreement for use of a spacecraft the agency is no longer using or ever planned to use again," officials said
Mars Base

Super-Earth joins ranks in life-supporting zone | Atom & Cosmos | Science News - 0 views

www.sciencenews.org/..._ranks_in_life-supporting_zone

scibyte71 exoplanet

shared by Mars Base on 14 Nov 12 - No Cached
  • Astronomers
  • have found a new candidate: a world seven times as massive as Earth in a nearby solar system.
  • planet orbits a star about 42 light-years away in the constellation Pictor
  • ...10 more annotations...
  • thought to harbor only three planets
  • sensitive data-filtering methods revealed the presence of three more
  • farthest-out of these lies in a “sweet spot
  • detected the new planets from changes in the light of the host star as the planets’ gravity tugged on it.
  • Instead of analyzing all the light from the star
  • the scientists split the light into different wavelengths to pick out the planets’ signals from those
  • able to look more deeply into the data and detect weaker signals
  • Nothing is known yet about the new planet’s physical and geochemical properties
  • a good target for a space-based imaging mission,
  • because it is so close to Earth
Mars Base

Kicksat: Crowd-funded, DIY spacecraft to float into low-Earth orbit - 0 views

phys.org/...-diy-spacecraft-low-earth.html

scibyte74 crowdsourcing

shared by Mars Base on 06 Dec 12 - No Cached
  • It'll look like hundreds of postage stamps fluttering toward Earth—each an independent satellite transmitting a signal unique to the person who helped send it to space
  • Sprites are the size of a cracker but are outfitted with solar cells, a radio transceiver and a microcontroller (
  • launching unit, is a CubeSat
  • ...9 more annotations...
  • Using Kickstarter
  • raised nearly $75,000 as more than 300 people sponsored a sprite that will transmit an identifying signal, such as the initials of the donor
  • In 2013, about 250 sprites will be sent into space
  • One person, who donated $10,000, Manchester added, will get to "push the big red button" on the day of the launch.
  • NASA's Educational Launch of Nanosatellites (ELaNA) program, which provides a free launch (normally $300,000) for university space research
  • KickSat will hitch a ride in September 2013 (subject to change) from Cape Canaveral on CRS-3, the third SpaceX Falcon 9 flight destined for the International Space Station
  • A large part of the project is helping people track their own satellites with a simple software radio interface
  • From a research standpoint, Manchester is interested in the dynamics and behavior of the satellites, and plans to test how to track their positions and determine their orbits
  • KickSat is set to launch more than 200 of these tiny satellites, nicknamed "sprites," into low-Earth orbit
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