From Discovery

Springing off the heels of a successful repair mission to the Hubble Space Telescope, NASA has been quietly working on developing a new specialty: satellite repair-bots.

The goal of the NASA project is to demonstrate to commercial firms the feasibility of refueling, repairing and servicing spacecraft in orbit.

There are more than 360 operational commercial satellites and hundreds of government spacecraft currently in orbit, many of which will run out of fuel long before they sustain electronics or other systems failures.

"It's our idea to stimulate a pathfinder kind of mission," said Frank Cepolina, a Hubble mission development manager now spearheading NASA's new Satellite Servicing Development Office at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. "Once we're done, commercial takes over."

The first of what could be several demonstration missions is expected to fly on the International Space Station sometime next year. The plan is to use Dextre, the station's Canadian-built robot, to demonstrate autonomous orbital refueling.

Outfitted with smart sensors and tools, Dextre would basically pump fuel through tank valves that are identical to equipment flying on hundreds of satellites today. The robot would have to remove insulation, disconnect safety wires and prepare ports as part of the job.

"We want to demonstrate our ability to get up there...and pass fuel into valves and into a receiving tank, and do this test in many configurations, many different times," said Cepolina.

Dextre already has been through the paces. Before it was launched to the space station, the Hubble team used it to test robotic servicing options for fixing the telescope. NASA initially canceled the shuttle servicing mission after the 2003 Columbia accident, believing it was too risky to fly astronauts anywhere but the space station. In the end, NASA reinstated the shuttle's mission to Hubble, which was successfully completed last year.

The robotics work, however, was not in vain. Tools and techniques developed for the robotic servicing of Hubble were adapted for the shuttle mission, boosting productive of the spacewalking service teams. After the flight, NASA began thinking more generically about robotic satellite servicing.

Click here for more

From Cnet

The American trucking industry could save as much as $10 billion, or 3.4 billion gallons of diesel fuel, a year if devices being tested in a joint public-private initiative at the world's-largest wind tunnel here are rolled out nationally.

Over the last few weeks, a partnership between the Lawrence Livermore National Lab, the U.S. Air Force, the NASA Ames Research Center, and the conglomerate, Navistar, has been conducting tests on the aerodynamics of tractor-trailer trucks. The findings indicate that new devices could be added onto the nation's thousands of trucks that could increase fuel efficiency on the vehicles by 12 percent.

The physical tests were conducted at the National Full-Scale Aerodynamics Complex--the world's largest wind tunnel--at NASA's Ames Research Center here, as well as on supercomputers at the Lawrence Livermore National Lab. The idea behind the partnership was to find a way to help the trucking industry--and by extension, almost every other segment of the economy--cut costs on fuel, and at the same time, reduce carbon-dioxide emissions.

The impact on the environment of the 12 percent increase in fuel efficiency, explained Lawrence Livermore National Lab (LLNL) Director George Miller, would be an annual reduction of carbon-dioxide emissions of 36 million tons.

Click here for more

From Scientific American

A super-quiet, hover-capable aircraft design, NASA's experimental one-man Puffin could show just how much electric propulsion can transform our ideas of flight. It looks like nothing less than a flying suit or a jet pack with a cockpit.

On the ground, the Puffin is designed to stand on its tail, which splits into four legs to help serve as landing gear. As a pilot prepares to take off, flaps on the wings would tilt to deflect air from the 2.3-meter-wide propeller rotors upward, keeping the plane on the ground until it was ready to fly and preventing errant gusts from tipping it over. The Puffin would rise, hover and then lean over to fly horizontally, with the pilot lying prone as if in a glider. When landing, the extending spring legs would support the 3.7-meter-long, 4.1-meter-wingspan craft, which is designed with carbon-fiber composites to weigh in at 135 kilograms, not including 45 kilograms of rechargeable lithium phosphate batteries.

In principle, the Puffin can cruise at 240 kilometers per hour and dash at more than 480 kph. It has no flight ceiling-it is not air-breathing like gas engines are, and thus is not limited by thin air-so it could go up to about 9,150 meters before its energy runs low enough to drive it to descend. With current state-of-the-art batteries, it has a range of just 80 kilometers if cruising, "but many researchers are proposing a tripling of current battery energy densities in the next five to seven years, so we could see a range of 240 to 320 kilometers by 2017," says researcher Mark Moore, an aerospace engineer at NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va. He and his colleagues will officially unveil the Puffin design on January 20 at an American Helicopter Society meeting in San Francisco.

Moore and his colleagues at NASA, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the Georgia Institute of Technology, the National Institute of Aerospace, and M-DOT Aerospace named their craft the Puffin because "if you've ever seen a puffin on the ground, it looks very awkward, with wings too small to fly, and that's exactly what our vehicle looks like," he explains. "But it's also apparently called the most environmentally friendly bird, because it hides its poop, and we're environmentally friendly because we have essentially no emissions. Also, puffins tend to live in solitude, only ever coming together on land to mate, and ours is a one-person vehicle."

This design relies on electric motors. These remain efficient regardless of their size, whereas internal combustion engines become less efficient the smaller they are. As such, electric aircraft can use small motors while generating impressive propulsion-the Puffin can lift a person with just 60 horsepower.

Click here for more

From New Scientist

A SPACE probe plunges its way through Titan's atmosphere and lands safely on the surface. Over a billion kilometres away here on Earth, a machine fills a bag of potato crisps. Georg Koppenwallner didn't think that Saturn's largest moon had much in common with his favourite bar snack - at least not until he got a call from the European Space Agency (ESA).

Koppenwallner's company Hyperschall Technologie Göttingen in Germany runs experiments in wind tunnels and calculates the aerodynamics of spacecraft, including ESA's. This time ESA had an unusual request: could the firm's scientists and engineers take time out from their daily grind to help find a way of packing crisps faster? Koppenwallner's team duly obliged. Sure enough, they found a way to fill 50 per cent more bags using clever aerodynamic tricks with air pulses to speed up crisps on the production line.

It might sound strange that ESA is helping out such a decidedly non-space industry. Yet it makes good economic sense. With tens of billions of dollars spent on research every year, ESA, NASA and the Japanese space agency JAXA have access to some of the best technology and facilities in the world. That's where Frank Salzgeber, head of ESA's technology transfer office in Noordwijk, the Netherlands, comes in. "We make the best out of every buck the taxpayers pay," he says.

Forget the apocryphal tales about NASA inventing Teflon for space shields, Velcro for anchoring items in zero gravity, and Tang fruit drink for improving the taste of reprocessed water. All were existing products that NASA merely popularised. However, plenty of other technologies from the space industry do make it into our everyday lives. This is the story of how they are brought in from the cold of space.

Slick, voluble, confident - Salzgeber epitomises a salesman whose job is to promote the benefits of space technology. Armed with a vast knowledge of what's happening in ESA's laboratories and a keen eye to spot where it could be applied, he and his network of "space salespeople" travel Europe matching up companies in want of technological solutions with space expertise. The team of 10 manage roughly two dozen technology transfers every year.

Many of the spin-offs Salzgeber's team comes up with are pretty offbeat. The obvious ones tend to happen anyway, which leaves the space sales team to "squeeze the lemon until the last drop". But it is these dregs that are often the most impressive.

Paul Vernon, who works as a broker for ESA at the UK's Science and Technology Facilities Council in Daresbury, hit pay dirt five years ago when he was visiting a laboratory at Queen Mary University of London. He had a brainwave when engineer Ejaz Huq showed him some unusual space gadgets through a microscope. Given modest heating from an electric current, the tiny cantilevers of double-layered plastic could bend enough to control the exact position of mirrors on satellites.

Thinking of potential spin-offs, Vernon suggested to Huq that he put one of the cantilevers in a liquid to see what happened. To their surprise, they discovered that its rate of bending depended on the liquid's viscosity, and moreover that this rate could be determined from the cantilever's electronic readout. "My thinking was 'where could you make cash with disposable viscosity meters?'" Vernon recalls. "And then I thought of the medical market."

It was a prudent idea. Patients at risk of heart attacks or strokes need to have their blood viscosity checked regularly so that they know when to take blood-thinning drugs: if the blood is too thick it could clot, yet if the blood is too thin they could bleed uncontrollably. Spurred on by the $1 billion-plus world market for blood viscometers, Vernon set up a company called Microvisk to turn the space cantilevers into easy handheld devices. The Microvisk devices are still in development, yet clinical tests already indicate that they will be the most accurate on offer.

If there is one space technology that is exploited on Earth more than any other, it is probably GPS. Aside from its well-known uses, such as the sat-nav in your car, the list of applications is bewildering. Flood prediction, tracking hazardous waste and monitoring individuals' carbon footprints are just a few areas to benefit from the satellite positioning technology. Perhaps the most unusual, and fun, application comes from a German ex-technical support worker, Andy Lürling.

At weekends, Lürling would enjoy watching Formula 1 on television with his friends while playing driving games on a computer console. "We said, hey, wouldn't it be great if we could bring the two together," he recalls, "so we can race against real F1 drivers and not against the computer?"

Lürling had a vision of how this could work. Modern F1 cars are fitted with hundreds of sensors that amass data on key parameters, such as throttle, braking and acceleration, and then send them back to the pits. In essence, these telemetry systems provide virtual duplicates of the cars, which could potentially be forwarded in real time to viewers' consoles via the internet. The only red flag was the most important parameter of all: the cars' positions. Although each car is fitted with a GPS tracker, these are often only accurate to 15 metres, which would be useless for gaming.

Click here for more

Roberto Sierra, a Cornell professor of music, has created a tribute to Saturn.

The music was inspired by NASA's Cassini mission that continues to relay back to Earth staggering imagery of the ringed Saturn and its many moons.

Sierra composed a 10-minute-long, full-orchestra piece titled Anillos, or "rings" in Spanish.

The musical piece is part of a newly issued DVD that contains interviews as well as a video sequence that accompanies the music using Cassini imagery.

The music was recorded at Cornell's Bailey Hall, featuring Chris Younghoon Kim, Cornell director of orchestras, conducting the Cornell Symphony Orchestra with percussion soloist Tim Feeney, director of percussion ensembles at Cornell.

Matthew Hedman, a Cornell research associate in astronomy, created the video sequence that accompanies the music.

A sample of the music may be heard at:

http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/Jan10/Anillos.html

By LD/CSE

From Daily Press

A gigantic block with portholes, NASA Langley Research Center's latest undertaking looks like a geometric escape pod.

But you won't find astronauts inside its metallic walls. Instead you'll see something that resembles an engine suspended above a steel table.

This is the guts of the Electron Beam Freeform Fabrication, a $2.5 million hands-free fabrication and welding machine that could revolutionize the way airplanes and spacecraft parts are built. Here's how it works.

Using a computer, engineers draw a three-dimensional object. The drawing is sliced into layers which the beam traces.

Meanwhile, metal wire, such as aluminum or titanium, is fed into the beam to build the layers. Heat from the beam - it can reach 3,000 degrees - briefly liquefies the metals before they settle into the desired shape.

"You can draw a part and build it directly," said Karen Taminger, a materials research engineer at Langley who is overseeing the effort.

She demonstrated the beam recently inside a Langley warehouse. The portholes provided a glimpse of the process.

Inside the unit, what appeared to be a laser - the beam - moved back-and-forth above an aluminum plate. The beam barely made a sound as engineers repeated the process a dozen or so times. Hydraulics slid open the unit's door 10 minutes later to reveal a quarter-inch-tall strip of aluminum fused to the plate.

While not as impressive as a space rocket, the demonstration shows the beam's potential, Taminger said.

For example, an aircraft builder might start with a 6,000-pound block of titanium and machine it down to a 300-pound part. The remaining metal would be recycled, a costly process because it requires thousands of gallons of cutting fluid.

"From an environmental standpoint, you've got a lot of material," Taminger said.

The beam promises to reduce that material; it also requires less power to operate, she said. That's why aircraft builders, such as Lockheed Martin, are already working with similar technology.

Its applications for space travel are more tantalizing, Taminger said. Engineers developed a more compact version - about the size of a clothes dryer - that, theoretically, could travel to outer space.

Its usefulness could be immeasurable, she said. For example, say the International Space Station needed repairs, but astronauts did not have the tools for the job. They could use the beam to create the tools, Taminger said, thereby avoiding the cost of sending extra supplies into space.

Click here for more

From Fox News

NASA may concern itself largely with space exploration, but it also wants to keep Earth on a steady course in the face of rising energy costs and climate change. Now the U.S. space agency has thrown its weight behind a clever method of growing algae in wastewater for the purpose of making biofuel.

The OMEGA system consists of algae grown in flexible plastic bags floating offshore, where cities typically dump their wastewater. Oil-producing freshwater algae would naturally clean the wastewater by feeding on nutrients in the sewage. The cleansed freshwater could then release into the ocean through forward-osmosis membranes in the sides of the plastic bags.

"You're concentrating nutrients and releasing extremely clean water into the ocean," said Jonathan Trent, a bioengineer at NASA Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif. The forward-osmosis membranes only release fresh water into the ocean, and don't permit salty water to contaminate the bags.

Trent envisions harvesting the algae with barges every ten days, and then flushing the plastic bags with salt water to clean out any freshwater algae that might foul the sides of the bags or the forward-osmosis membranes. The algae would be turned into fuel in a manner similar to using corn to make ethanol.

Municipal wastewater pumped into the bags would then start the cycle all over again.

Such a process would mainly rely on the energy of the ocean waves to mix the algae, as well as sunlight and carbon dioxide. The offshore locations and the wide oceans would also have more than enough room to grow massive amounts of algae needed to produce biofuels for an energy-hungry world.

Click here for more

From NASA

How do you make a helicopter safer to fly? You crash one.

NASA aeronautics researchers recently dropped a small helicopter from a height of 35 feet (10.7 m) to see whether an expandable honeycomb cushion called a deployable energy absorber could lessen the destructive force of a crash.

On impact, the helicopter's skid landing gear bent outward, but the cushion attached to its belly kept the rotorcraft's bottom from touching the ground. Four crash test dummies along for the ride appeared only a little worse for the wear.

Researchers must analyze the test results before they can say for sure whether the deployable energy absorber worked as designed.

"I'd like to think the research we're doing is going to end up in airframes and will potentially save lives," said Karen Jackson, an aerospace engineer who oversaw the test at NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va.

According to the National Transportation Safety Board, more than 200 people are injured in helicopter accidents in the United States each year, in part because helicopters fly in riskier conditions than most other aircraft. They fly close to the ground, not far from power lines and other obstacles, and often are used for emergencies, including search and rescue and medical evacuations.

For the test at Langley, researchers used an MD-500 helicopter donated by the U.S. Army. The rotorcraft was equipped with instruments that collected 160 channels of data. One of the four crash test dummies was a special torso model equipped with simulated internal organs. It came from the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Md.

Technicians outfitted the underside of the helicopter's crew and passenger compartment with the deployable energy absorber. Created by engineer Sotiris Kellas at Langley, the device is made of Kevlar and has a unique flexible hinge design that allows the honeycomb to be packaged and remain flat until needed.

Click here for video and more

The nation's security, economic well being and educational standing are at stake as the White House and Congress chart NASA's future beyond the retirement of the space shuttle, a panel of aerospace experts warned a House oversight panel on Thursday.

The House Science and Technology Committee hearing examined the issues faced by the nation's 650,000 aerospace workers, including NASA's employees, as the agency's space shuttle program draws to a close late next year.

The gap of at least five years before the U.S. can expect to resume the launching of its own astronauts will mean job losses for thousands of space agency workers, most of them employed by NASA's major aerospace contractors. But the impact is expected to extend far beyond.

Many of the companies, small as well as large, that support NASA's human space flight efforts with parts and services are also in jeopardy. They offer specialized components and services for the commercial and military satellites that provide telecommunications, satellite navigation and weather forecasting vital to many of the country's other commercial sectors as well as those responsible for protecting the nation's security.

"The president and Congress now have serious decisions to make in the coming weeks and months. We can either support a significant augmentation of NASA's budget to carry out a meaningful human space exploration program without having to gut other national initiatives, or we can keep NASA on a flat funding profile and place our human exploration program frankly on hold for the foreseeable future," said U. S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-Arizona, who presided over the hearing as chair of the Space and Aeronautics Subcommittee. "What we eventually decide to do will have profound and very long term effects. Because of the consequences in front of us. We really need to get it right."

President Obama has yet to address a report from the White House-appointed U.S. Human Space Flight Plans Committee that completed an assessment of NASA's future in October. The spaceflight committee concluded the agency was so under funded it could not carry out a six-year-old Bush Administration initiative to return human explorers to the moon by 2020. It called on policy makers to gradually increase NASA's funding by $3 billion annually and offered a range of new exploratory options to ensure U.S. global leadership.

Without NASA on the cutting edge, all of the nation's lucrative aerospace efforts are in jeopardy of being overtaken by initiatives by other nations, David Thompson, president of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, told the House panel.

"For years, the benefits of the space program were provided primarily by the United States and Russia. Our lead was achieved because space was given a Cold War priority, as far as funding," Thompson reminded lawmakers, "But funding is no longer at the level it was back then. Now, other nations with the proper work force and foresight have caught up to us."

China, India as well as Russia, Europe and Japan now challenge U.S. leadership in human space fight, satellite manufacturing and launch systems, he said.

In the United States, aerospace activities account for about two million jobs in addition to the 650,000 directly employed by the industry, according to the AIAA. The aerospace industry generated sales of $240 billion in 2008. Many of the products are state-of-the-art and in such demand around the world they produced export sales totaling about $100 billion last year.

However, nearly half of the nation's aerospace workforce is facing retirement within the next five years, taking with them the experience and knowledge they gained working on the shuttle, the Apollo moon program and other ground breaking projects.

At the same time, the U. S. is failing to produce sufficient numbers of new engineers to replace retirees, though the average wage of a domestic aerospace worker is nearly $90,000, or twice the annual average of U.S. professionals in other fields.

Only 15 percent of American students are graduating from college with degrees in science in engineering. In Europe and much of Asia, the numbers range between 40 and 50 percent.

"Great countries do great things, and human spaceflight falls in a category of one of those great things," A. Thomas Young, a retired Lockheed Martin company executive and NASA program manger told the House panel.

"I'm a fiscal conservative. But if we do not approach this from what's in the best interest of the country as opposed to a budget issue, I fear we will end up with the wrong answer," Young said. ""We should never under estimate how hard (this capability) was to build and how heard it will be to re-build. If we don't use it in a bold and inspiring way, it will disappear on us.

Marion Blakey, president of the Aerospace Industries Association, which represents 300 of the nation's manufacturers of spacecraft as well as military and civilian aircraft, called the issue "significant."

"This country sees itself as a space faring nation," said Blakey, who sketched out a scenario where China reaches the moon with astronauts ahead of the United States.

"We know we have a very definite competition for leadership in space from a number of countries, India as well as China or Russia," said Blakey. "All these things matter and budget should follow policy and not the other way around."

From Mainstreet.com

The shaky economic picture-and widespread budget shortfalls-have some wondering if NASA is still worth taxpayers' support. As reported by WalletPop, "NASA will see its 2010 fiscal year budget increase to $18.7 billion. Combined with the $1 billion NASA got from the new stimulus package, that's $2.4 billion more than the space agency received in 2008. But there are raised eyebrows among congressional auditors who have called for a ‘more disciplined approach' to projects."

Simmer down, legislators. NASA is about more than just putting people into outer space. We can thank the space agency for a number of things which many of us can't live without. As NASA explains on its Space Shuttle spinoffs page, "Since 1976, over 1,600 documented NASA technologies have benefited U.S. industry, improved our quality of life, and created jobs. The Space Shuttle Program alone has generated more than 100 technology spinoffs."

Here are a handful of the most intriguing technologies generated by NASA efforts. They will surprise you-and may make you think twice before telling politicians to de-fund the space program. (Of course, aside from interesting new technologies, NASA helps the U.S. maintain its supremacy in space-without easy access to space, we would be reliant on other nations for military & communications satellite launches.)

Click here for the list

Known as Lifeshear cutters, the lightweight portable emergency rescue cutters incorporate NASA pyrotechnical separation technology and were developed under a cooperative agreement that teamed NASA and Hi-Shear Technology Corporation of Torrance.

The cutters were developed under the Clinton Administration's Technology Reinvestment Program (TRP), an effort to transfer government-sponsored technology to the U.S. commercial marketplace. The development project was undertaken to meet the need of some 40,000 U.S. fire departments for modern, low-cost emergency cutting equipment.

Prior cutting equipment employed expensive gasoline powered hydraulic pumps, hoses and cutters for use in accident extrication. To eliminate much of this cumbersome equipment, the Lifeshear design team opted for pyrotechnically-actuated cutters, which made possible a 50 percent weight saving and a 70 percent reduction in cost. The key technology is a modified power cartridge, a miniature version of the cartridges that actuate pyrotechnical separation devices aboard the Space Shuttle and other NASA spacecraft. Hi-Shear Technology Corporation is an industry leader in the development and manufacture of pyrotechnically actuated thrusters, explosive bolts, separation nuts, pin pullers and cutters and has supplied such equipment for a number of NASA deep space missions plus the Apollo/Saturn, Skylab and Space Shuttle programs. Although the company had broad experience in pyrotechnics, it lacked handon experience and training in vehicle rescue, therefore asked the City of Torrance Fire Department and Fire Chief Scott Adams to contribute their user experience to the development effort.

Hi-Shear offers the Lifeshear cutter in the two versions shown in at right above, the LS 100 (top unit) and the LS-200 (lower unit). The LS 100 has a 3 1/2-inch "jaw" opening, is 26 inches long and weighs 11 1/2 pounds. The LS 200 has a 11/2-inch opening, is 22 inches long and weighs only 8~ pounds. The tools take only about 30 seconds to set up and they require no pumps or hoses; they can sever automotive clutch and brake pedals or cut quickly through roof posts and pillars to remove the roof of an automobile. They provide a bonus to firefighters and rescue personnel in that they reduce the probability of lower back injuries that occur with the use of hydraulically-powered equipment.

Managed for NASA by Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the Lifeshear development effort was accomplished with funding of $1.6 million, shared by NASA and Hi-Shear. The contract award, made in February 1994, was the first of the national TRP cooperative agreements. Hi-Shear was able to bring the cutters to production and commercial availability in only six months, and by mid-1995 the company was manufacturing 600 units a month. The Lifeshear program supports seven machine shops in the Los Angeles area and employs 40 people.

From Universe Today

Ever wonder what it would be like to walk on the Moon or run on Mars? A treadmill developed using NASA technology can provide users the feeling of moving about in less than 1 G. Anti-gravity treadmills, sold under the name of Alter-G, are becoming common in hospitals, rehab centers, and sports facilities, and just about every professional sports team in North America has one. They are a bit pricey for individuals to afford, but athletes and physical therapists say the device is a fantastic addition to their exercise repertoire.

Anti-G treadmills allow people to improve mobility and health, recover from injury and surgery more effectively, overcome medical challenges that limit movement, and enhance physical performance. Runners and other athletes use the anti-gravity treadmills to maintain their fitness level after a minor injury, without adding stress to their injury.

The Alter-G treadmill creates a seal around the user's waist and then inflates to create a pressurized environment that can take away up to 80% of the user's body weight, lessening the pounding to the joints.
The technology was first proposed for use on the space station to actually increase the amount of gravity felt by the body by using differential air pressure in space to mimic the Earth's gravity to prevent bone loss and muscle deterioration.

Ames Research Center scientist, Robert Whalen, who came up with the idea said the anti-G trainer evolved directly from his original idea of how to add weight to an astronaut's body during treadmill exercise in the low gravity of space. On Earth, it works just the opposite, giving users an astronaut-like experience.

A variety of patients-whether suffering from brain injury, neurological disorders, athletic injuries, or other stresses on the joints such as arthritis or morbid obesity-now use the NASA-derived technology in physical therapy.

Click here for more

From Network World

The House Committee on Science and Technology last week held Congressional hearings to examine the summary report of the Review of U.S. Human Space Flight Plans Committee. While it heard the challenges of future human space exploration and the alternatives to NASA's plans one of the most important discussions centered on the conclusion that "Human exploration beyond low-Earth orbit is not viable under the FY 2010 budget guideline." If further manned exploration of the moon and beyond is significantly delayed or nixed altogether, what does that mean for the myriad technologies NASA already has in development? Here we take a look at some of the best NASA technology currently in development that might never get to space.

Click here for the 10

NASA's Spinoff magazine, now available online, covers the latest developments in space technology and how it effects our every day lives.

But don't take my word for it.  Check it out now!

From Discovery

NASA scientists have developed a speedy new technology that can detect pathogens in 15 minutes flat.

Developed by chemist Adrian Ponce for the planetary science division at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), the new device is designed to minimize contamination of other worlds by ensuring outgoing spacecraft are clear of earthly germs.

"The technology works on the timescale of 15 minutes, from sampling to results," Ponce told Discovery News. That compares to two to three days for NASA's standard technique, which involves culturing, Ponce said.

Ponce's research may find a use on Earth, too. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is working with the chemist to turn the technology into a portable biocontamination detection instrument.

Hospitals, pharmaceutical companies and even electronics manufacturers -- anywhere unwanted germs congregate -- may one day benefit from the breakthrough.

Click here for more

The imaging technique used by NASA to inspect the space shuttle for a safe reentry may be applied to predicting tissue damage often experienced by breast cancer patients undergoing radiation therapy.

Researchers at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago and neighboring Argonne National Laboratory are collaborating on a study to determine if the NASA shuttle imaging method can find utility as three-dimensional thermal tomography in radiation oncology.

Preliminary results from the study are being displayed during the American Society for Radiation Oncology (ASTRO) Annual Meeting in Chicago, being held this week.

Roughly 80 percent of breast cancer patients undergoing radiation treatment develop acute skin reactions that range in severity. The more severe reactions cause discomfort and distress to the patient, and sometimes result in treatment interruptions. The severity is quite variable among patients and difficult to predict.

According to Katherine Griem, professor of radiation oncology at Rush:

"Because reactions usually occur from 10 to 14 days after the beginning of therapy...if we could predict skin reactions sooner we may be able to offer preventative treatment to maximize effectiveness and minimize interruption of radiation treatment."

The work by Rush and Argonne is focused on studying if three-dimensional thermal tomography (3DTT) can detect the earliest changes that may trigger a skin reaction.

3DTT is a relatively new thermal imaging process that is currently being used as a noninvasive away to detect defects in composite materials. The basic idea of thermal imaging is to apply heat or cold to a material and observing the resulting temperature change with an infrared camera to learn about its composition.

3DTT may also find use in detecting other skin diseases such as skin cancer and measure skin damage caused by electricity or lightening. Such applications require the determinations of tissue conditions below the skin that is normally not visible - but can be measured by 3DTT, noted J.G. Sun, a mechanical engineer at Argonne in a press statement.

The follow-up plan is to perform additional studies to confirm the preliminary results with the hope to soon begin studying 3DTT in breast cancer patients.

For more information, go to:

http://www.rush.edu/webapps/MEDREL/servlet/NewsRelease?id=1307

By LD/CSE

Mobiado of Vancouver, Canada is serving up a new celestial offering.

The Grand 350 Pioneer phone pays homage to NASA's Pioneer 10 spacecraft. But there's more. It is billed as the first phone to utilize "the compelling beauty of meteorite."

The date and time of Pioneer 10's launch on March 3, 1972 is machine engraved into the left side of each Grand 350 Pioneer phone, and its limited edition number is engraved into the right side. One phone for every year, representing Pioneer 10's odyssey from launch in 1972 to present day.

That adds up to 37 limited edition masterpieces in total.

The centerpiece of the 350 Pioneer is its unique work of art; the Gibeon meteorite battery cover. Supplied by the cosmos, this four billion-year old meteorite plummeted through the atmosphere during prehistoric times to land in Namibia. The meteorite was discovered in 1836.

The phone comes with the famous pictorial message known as the Pioneer Plaque.

It shows the figures of a human male and female, in front of the silhouette of the Pioneer 10 spacecraft, along with several symbols that are designed to provide information about the origin of the spacecraft.

All telling evidence for extraterrestrials that come up alongside Pioneer 10, take it home as a space collectible, then try to figure out what they've snagged.

The 350 Pioneer comes fully loaded with connectivity, still and video camera, as well as GPS and other capabilities.

The phone works within North America, Europe, Africa, Asia- Pacific, and South America where certain networks are available.

Cost of this phone, likely astronomical.

Probably works on Mars too, but that's not in the press details which you can find at:

http://www.mobiado.com/press_release%20GRAND350%20Pioneer.pdf

By Leonard David

More than 20 years ago, Telesensory, Mountain View, Califomia, produced a spinoff technology that enabled the blind and deaf-blind to read‹not just braille transcriptions but anything in print. In 1989, the company introduced an even more exciting aid for the blind, a second-generation spinoff that not only provides access to printed words, but also to the electronic information available on most personal computers. The original device, called optacon, is a combination of optical and electronic technology and incorporates research performed at Stanford Research Institute under the sponsorship of NASA's Ames Research Center. The user passes a mini-camera over a printed page with his left hand; a control unit processes the camera's picture, translates it into a vibrating image of the words the camera is viewing, and the user senses the tactile image with his other hand. optacon, which can be used with virtually any alphabet or language, has provided a new level of independence for thousands of blind people in more than 70 countries.

From Florida Today

NASA has signed a patent license agreement with a California company to improve the medical community's access to hyperbaric chambers used to treat many medical conditions and emergencies. OxyHeal Medical Systems Inc. of National City, Calif., will develop new products based on technologies NASA originally developed for space.

Hyperbaric chambers create an environment in which the atmospheric pressure of oxygen is increased above normal levels. The high concentrations of oxygen can reduce the size of gas bubbles in the blood and improve blood flow to oxygen-starved tissues.

"These technologies will allow OxyHeal to develop new products capable of providing life-saving treatments and care to patients in remote areas that may not have access to large, fixed-site hyperbaric chamber facilities," said Ted Gurnee, president of OxyHeal. Additionally, the company is working on solutions that involve large portable hyperbaric chambers for possible use in treatment of disaster victims.

The partially exclusive patent license agreement allows the company to use three technologies developed at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston that are associated with inflatable spacecraft modules and portable hyperbaric chambers.

NASA developed the technologies as part of a program to plan for how astronauts in space might be treated for decompression sickness. Decompression sickness, commonly called "the bends," can occur in astronauts as they undergo pressure changes returning from spacewalks and in divers as they return to the water's surface.

In addition to treating decompression sickness, hyperbaric chamber therapy on Earth also commonly provides treatment for carbon monoxide poisoning, crush injuries, healing problem wounds, soft tissue infections, significant blood loss and other ailments.

Click here for more

From HowStuffWorks.com

In 1958, President Eise­n­hower signed the Space Act, officially creating the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. From the beginning, the purpose for the ne­w branch extended beyond space ships and moon boots. The law stipulated that its research and advancements should benefit all people, and in its 50-year history, NASA has certainly fulfilled that role.

Although most people today will never set foot on the moon, everyone likely comes in contact with a NASA by-product every day. Partnering with various research teams and companies, NASA continues to spawn a vast array of new technologies and products that have improved our daily lives. Basic steps in health, safety, communications and even casual entertainment find their ro­ots in the government branch commonly associated with rocket ships and floating people. In fact, NASA has filed more than 6,300 patents with the U.S. government [source: NASA Scientific and Technical Information].

Each year since 1976, NASA has published a list of every commercialized technology and product linked to its research. The NASA journal "Spinoff" highlights these products, which have included things like improved pacemakers, state of the art exercise machines and satellite radio. Each product was made possible thanks to a NASA idea or innovation.

But it doesn't take a rocket scientist to use many of these so-called spinoffs.

Click here to read about them

From the Times

There are sportswear firms offering bespoke trainers and funeral companies that sell personalised coffins, but this latest extension of Savile Row principles may shock even the staunchest devotees of mass customisation.

Laser eye surgeons are now offering tailor-made corneas. Two decades after the first laser eye treatment in Britain, in November 1989, the quest for perfect vision has been replaced, in many cases, by eyesight tailored to an individual's life and career.

Would sir like night vision? Does he require the eyes of a hawk? Or one eye customised to see into the distance, the other for reading? Such questions are now the stuff of client consultations in leading eye clinics.

Now one of the three most common surgical treatments in Britain, an estimated 100,000 people undergo the procedure each year, about 20 million have had it worldwide, and an increasing number have their corneas tailored to meet specific demands.

Julian Stevens, of Moorfields Eye Hospital, is an expert on laser refractive surgery. He has, in the past, offered tailored treatment for members of the special forces. "They require 1,000-metre vision at night," he said. "It is the same for fighter pilots."

Increasingly, though, he offers to reshape corneas to cope with the more mundane work/life demands of office workers and lorry drivers.

The refractive power of a lens is measured in diopters. "Vision changes by about 0.3 diopters at night," he said. "If you are a sniper that's critical. It is also important for long-distance lorry drivers, who need excellent night-time distance vision."

Professor Stephen Trokel, who was the first to demonstrate the application of the excimer laser (then used for carving microchips) to the field of eye surgery in 1983, recently operated on a leading soprano in his New York clinic. She requested that her eyesight be corrected so that she could see the front row of the orchestra and read the music."I also had a catcher for the New York Yankees whose vision was terrible and who needed to be able to see a ball coming out of the light at night," he said.

Laser refractive surgery alters the shape of the cornea to correct myopia (short-sightedness) or hyperopia (longsightedness), but technological advances have now made more specific alterations possible. Wavefront technology, originally developed by Nasa to aid the focus of the Hubble Space Telescope on distant stars, measures up to 250 spots in the pupil to provide a precise map of the cornea and iris. This offers the potential to correct problems not addressed by glasses, such as halos around lights at night or glare.

Click here for more

Water quality on the International Space Station is a must.

University of Utah chemists have come up with a two-minute water quality monitoring technique - a method also useful here on Earth.

Now onboard the ISS, the new technique involves sampling space station or space shuttle galley water with syringes, forcing the water through a chemical-imbued disk-shaped membrane, and then reading the color of the membrane with a commercially available, handheld color sensor normally used to measure the color and glossiness of automobile paint.

The sensor detects if the drinking water contains enough iodine (used on U.S. spacecraft) or silver (used by the Russians) to kill any microbes. The International Space Station has both kinds of water purification systems.

As an Earth application, the method is being modified so it can quickly check water for the level of arsenic. Arsenic is a natural pollutant in places like Bangladesh and the U.S. Southwest and Northeast, and it can be adapted to inexpensively and quickly test for other pollutants.

Indeed, the technique could be used on the ground for testing all kinds of water contaminants, such as chromium, cadmium, nickel and other heavy metals.

Marc Porter, a University of Utah professor of chemistry and chemical engineering, along with Lorraine Siperko, a senior research scientist in Porter's laboratory, evaluated the water quality idea numerous times on NASA research aircraft, such as the KC-135 and C-9. During a flight, each plane makes 40 parabola-shaped arcs through the sky, climbing steeply, then leveling and diving. Weightless conditions exist for about 30 seconds at the top of each arc.

The water-monitoring system fits in a pack the size of a small ice chest. It was launched back in August on space shuttle Discovery and is now onboard the International Space Station.

"The experiment is in space for the first time," Siperko says, for a six-month test on the International Space Station.
Porter adds that the space station "the coolest place to do experiments."

The project is funded by NASA, the Utah Science, Technology and Research (USTAR) economic development initiative and two universities where Porter worked previously: Arizona State and Iowa State.

The project team now includes NASA, USTAR and the University of Utah, Iowa State University and Wyle Laboratories. Porter is a professor hired under the USTAR program.

By Leonard David

From NASA

A group of engineers working on a novel manufacturing technique at NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va., have come up with a new twist on the popular old saying about dreaming and doing: "If you can slice it, we can build it."

That's because layers mean everything to the environmentally-friendly construction process called Electron Beam Freeform Fabrication, or EBF3150, and its operation sounds like something straight out of science fiction.

"You start with a drawing of the part you want to build, you push a button, and out comes the part," said Karen Taminger, the technology lead for the Virginia-based research project that is part of NASA's Fundamental Aeronautics Program.

She admits that, on the surface, EBF3 reminds many people of a Star Trek replicator in which, for example, Captain Picard announces out loud, "Tea, Earl Grey, hot." Then there is a brief hum, a flash of light and the stimulating drink appears from a nook in the wall.

In reality, EBF3 works in a vacuum chamber, where an electron beam is focused on a constantly feeding source of metal, which is melted and then applied as called for by a drawing-one layer at a time-on top of a rotating surface until the part is complete.

While the options for using EBF3 are more limited than what science fiction allows, the potential for the process is no less out of this world, with promising relevance in aviation, spaceflight-even the medical community, Taminger said.

Commercial applications for EBF3 are already known and its potential already tested, Taminger said, noting it's possible that, within a few years, some aircraft will be flying with large structural parts made by this process.

Click here for more

From NASA

What's about the size of a large refrigerator, weighs a ton and may help pave the way for new and improved metals or glasses here on Earth?

It's the Materials Science Research Rack -- a new laboratory on board the International Space Station.

This facility will allow researchers to study a variety of materials -- including metals, alloys, semiconductors, ceramics, and glasses to see how the materials form, and learn how to control their properties. The results from experiments conducted in the facility could lead to the development of materials with improved properties on Earth.

Materials science research is a multidisciplinary endeavor studying the relationships between the processing conditions and properties of materials. The research rack -- measuring 6 feet high, 3.5 feet wide and 40 inches deep -- will provide a powerful, multi-user materials science laboratory in a microgravity, or near weightless, environment. Researchers can benefit from studying materials in space because they can isolate the fundamental heat and mass transfer processes involved that are frequently masked by gravity on the ground.

The research rack will provide hardware to control the thermal, environmental and vacuum conditions of experiments; monitor experiments with video; and supply power and data handling for specific experiment instrumentation.

"Materials science is an integral part of our everyday life," said Sandor Lehoczky, project scientist for the rack at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala. "The goal of materials processing in space is to develop a better understanding of how processing affects materials properties without the complication of gravity causing density effects on the processes. With this knowledge, reliable predictions can be made about the conditions required on Earth to achieve improved materials."

The Materials Science Research Rack is an automated facility with two different furnace inserts in which sample cartridges will be processed to temperatures up to 2,500 degrees Fahrenheit. Initially, 13 sample cartridge assemblies will be processed, each containing mixtures of metal alloys. The cartridges are placed -- one at a time -- inside the furnace insert for processing. Once a cartridge is in place, the experiment can be run by automatic command or conducted via telemetry commands from the ground. Processed samples will be returned to Earth for evaluation and comparison of their properties to samples similarly processed on the ground.

The research rack was launched to the space station aboard space shuttle Discovery on August 28. It was installed in the U.S. Destiny Laboratory Sept. 2. The development of the rack was a cooperative effort between NASA and the European Space Agency. The rack accommodates the European Space Agency's Materials Science Laboratory -- designed to provide controlled, materials processing conditions and advanced diagnostics. The Materials Science Laboratory has the capability to handle different furnace inserts. Metallurgical research will be conducted in the laboratory to gain a better understanding of industrial metallurgical processes, such as casting, welding and other advanced melting processes.

 Click here for more