NASA and Google Do the Tango

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Google's Project Tango smartphone, which is jam-packed with sensors, soon will be used in the International Space Station.

The United States National Aeronautics and Space Administration will swap out the smartphones it has used on two volleyball-sized free-flying satellites since 2011 with the Tango devices.

NASA, which announced the Tango tie-in back in February, has flown modified Tango phones several times on an aircraft that can simulate microgravity by taking a parabolic flight path. The phones' motion-tracking and positioning code was rewritten so it could work in the microgravity environment on the ISS.

"Not having gravity is a benefit with electronics, particularly if you want to move them in all three dimensions," he continued, but it would be necessary to "make sure the signals don't interfere with anything else in the station."



More on the Satellites

The flying satellites, called "Synchronized Position Hold, Engage, Reorient, Experimental Satellites" or Spheres, are self-contained units with their own power, propulsion, computing and navigation equipment.

They also have expansion ports for additional sensors and appendages such as cameras, wireless power transfer systems and smartphones.

The smartphones let the Spheres take pictures and videos, conduct inspections, make calculations, and make real-time data transfers to the computers aboard the space station via WiFi, and to mission control back on Earth.

Astronauts on board the ISS have conducted 77 investigations using Spheres to test techniques for tasks including automated docking of service satellites and emergency repairs.
Stepping Out With Tango

The addition of the Tango smartphones will let researchers control the Spheres in real-time in space and from ground control stations on Earth.

In future, free-flying robots such as the Spheres might be used to inspect the exterior of the ISS or of deep space vehicles. So far, the Spheres have been used only inside the ISS.

"These increasingly sophisticated mobile devices could, after being our primary communication devices for two to three years, get a second life as spacecraft that could be used for Earth observation, monitoring asteroids and small bodies, and an avenue to perform science experiments in space," Jekan Thanga, an assistant professor at Arizona State University's School of Earth and Space Exploration, told TechNewsWorld.
Making the Tango Fit for Space

Tango devices may have to be heavily modified for use in space outside the ISS.

"The biggest challenge with using smartphones, as with other electronic devices, is determining robustness to the radiation in space," Thanga said.

While mass-manufactured smartphones are good enough for short-term missions in low-Earth orbit, they will "have to meet much higher standards if they are brought on board for spaceflight missions," he noted.

Smartphones likely will need radiation hardening and possibly some way to be heated to ensure they don't freeze in the depths of space, Enderle suggested.

Touchscreens will be a no-no because "astronauts' gloves would be really huge," Enderle continued. Voice control via radio might be a better option.
Mobile Tech Possibilities

"This will personalize space, providing the opportunity for possibly millions of citizens to have personal space and actively participate in space exploration," Thanga suggested, pointing out that this is already happening in astronomy where amateur astronomers are making "important discoveries."

Eventually, advanced smartphones might have sensors that can adjust to their environment, Jeff Orr, a senior practice director at ABI Research, told TechNewsWorld.

The Mars Rover program could benefit because local probes could capture more granular details of Mars' surface, Orr suggested. "We could have a Google Map of Mars."

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source:TechNewsWorld

Microsoft Research: The 5th edition

Microsoft Research: The 5th edition of WorldWide Telescope now available with new features.

Back in 2008, Microsoft had announced, at TED conference in California, the program called WorldWide Telescope, through which users could explore the universe as known to date, the program continues for several years in a trial form.

 To celebrate it's fifth birthday, Microsoft has released the fifth version of the application with several new features. The WT offers, according to the company, a "cinematic" experience with full three-dimensional models of all the known planets, and an enormous map. The 5.0 version offers high-resolution modeling experience, while also incorporates a faithful reproduction of the International Space Station.

 For those interested, you can download the WorldWide Telescope via the link below. It should be noted that the program is still in beta version, so several corrections are expected in the coming period.

Download Link: wpcentral.com

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 source: wpcentral.com

Laser makes ultra-light mirror out of tiny beads

Laser makes ultra-light mirror out of tiny beads

A surprising kind of mirror (Image: Tomasz M. Grzegorczyk, 

Johann Rohner and Jean-Marc Fournier)

 Shooting a laser at polystyrene beads, scientists have made a mirror that is held together by light. The creation could be a step towards putting ultra-light mirrors in space that would be big enough to see continents and forests on planets orbiting far-off stars.

 Current space telescopes have limited vision because is it costly and complicated to send large, heavy mirrors into orbit. The mirror on NASA's premiere planet hunter, the Kepler space telescope, is just 1.4 metres across and cannot see planets directly. Instead Kepler spots the tiny changes in brightness when a world crosses in front of its host star.

 When NASA's James Webb Space Telescope launches in a few years, it will carry the largest mirror yet into space: a 6.5-metre behemoth made of 18 interlocking segments. To fit into the launch vehicle, the mirror itself will have to be folded up and then unfolded in space.

Jean-Marc Fournier of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, Switzerland, and his colleagues have revived an old idea for building much larger mirrors by exploiting the force produced when laser beams hit tiny particles. Previous work has used this force to make optical tweezers, which can trap and manipulate a few particles at a time.

Self-healing mirror

 In 1979, astronomer Antoine Labeyrie, now at the Collège de France in Paris, suggested that the force could also trap a collection of particles into a flat plane to form a mirror. In theory, shooting two lasers at a central point should cause their optical forces to interfere, creating a stable region where particles line up to make a two-dimensional surface.

 Such a mirror would be exceptionally light, relatively inexpensive and even self-repairing, as any particles knocked out by micro-meteors, which are constantly zipping through space, would simply be replaced by others nearby.

 With funding from NASA's Institute for Advanced Concepts, Fournier's team took a first step towards this goal. They used a single laser to trap 150 micrometre-sized polystyrene beads against a sheet of glass (pictured). Light would normally bounce off a single bead in all directions, but grouping them together produces a flat reflective surface that acts exactly like a mirror, says Fournier.

 To prove the mirror worked, the team shot light through a transparent ruler, so that it bounced off the beads and onto a detector. The resulting picture was murky, but they were able to make out an image of the number 8 on the ruler, which wasn't possible when the beads were removed from the glass.

Spying on exo-Earths

 Fournier thinks the technology could be scaled up to make a 35-metre mirror that would weigh just 100 grams, although he admits there are a number of hurdles to overcome before this technology can be used in telescopes. At the moment the beads are in water, which helps cool them and keep them together, but this wouldn't be possible in the vacuum of space.

 "The water is cheating, we know that," he says. "At least it helps us move a little bit towards another step." Replacing the glass with a second laser will also be a challenge, as will finding a cost-effective power source for the lasers.

 "Whether this technology could be ready for a James Webb successor is quite speculative and would depend on many engineering and mission details that are not yet known," says Jonathan Arenberg of Northrop Grumman Aerospace Systems in Redondo Beach, California, who is the chief engineer for the telescope.

 Labeyrie says he would like to see the team repeat the experiment in a vacuum and in microgravity, perhaps on the International Space Station. If the technology holds up, he envisions sending up an array of laser-trapped mirrors that would act collectively like a single large one.

 "Ten or 100 kilometres may become feasible in this way, and this can provide direct images of exo-Earths, where continents and forested areas such as the Amazon Basin become directly visible," he says.

Journal reference: Physical Review Letters, DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.112.023902

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 source: newscientist.com