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NASA just announced that any published research funded by the space agency will now be available at no cost, launching a new public web portal that anybody can access.
The free online archive comes in response to a new NASA policy, which requires that any NASA-funded research articles in peer-reviewed journals be publicly accessible within one year of publication.
“At NASA, we are celebrating this opportunity to extend access to our extensive portfolio of scientific and technical publications,” said NASA Deputy Administrator Dava Newman. “Through open access and innovation we invite the global community to join us in exploring Earth, air, and space.”
The database is called PubSpace, and the public can access NASA-funded research articles in it by searching for whatever they’re interested in, or by just browsing all the NASA-funded papers.
“Making our research data easier to access will greatly magnify the impact of our research,” said NASA Chief Scientist Ellen Stofan. “As scientists and engineers, we work by building upon a foundation laid by others.”
Right now, there are some 861 research articles in the database, and you can expect that number to keep rising as NASA-funded researchers get on board with the new policy.
As you’d expect, there’s an enormous spread of research already on offer, ranging from exercise rountines to maintain health during long-duration space missions, to the prospects for life on Titan, and the risk of miscarriage for flight attendants exposed to cosmic radiation.
All of this is now free for researchers or anybody with an interest in science to check out and download – a welcome change from when much of the content was locked behind a paywall.
But not all NASA-funded research can be found in the archive. As the space agency indicates, patents and material governed by personal privacy, proprietary, or security laws are exempt from having to be included in PubSpace.
NASA’s move comes in response to a 2013 request from the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, which directed major science-funding agencies to come up with ways of increasing access to the results of publicly funded research.
It also follows a growing general trend towards more openness in science research and academia more broadly. With frustration stemming over the commercial control wielded by the companies who own most academic publishing, some researchers are bypassing established journals altogether by uploading their work directly to the internet.
Others are illegally sharing scientific papers online in a dramatic bid to spread knowledge. At the same time, there are calls in Europe to make all published science funded by the public free.
The same logic is what’s behind NASA’s new portal – but even the space agency itself could benefit from the initiative, which will help it keep track of all the research it’s funding more easily.
“This’ll be the first time that NASA’s had all of their publications in one place, so we estimate what our publication rate is for the agency, but this will actually be able to tell us what it is,” NASA Deputy Chief Scientist Gale Allen told Samantha Ehlinger at FedScoop. “And we’ll be able to show even further what we’re doing with taxpayer dollars.” [Reply]
In the military world, fighter pilots have long been described as the best of the best. As Tom Wolfe famously wrote, only those with the "right stuff" can handle the job. Now, it seems, the right stuff may no longer be the sole purview of human pilots.
A pilot A.I. developed by a doctoral graduate from the University of Cincinnati has shown that it can not only beat other A.I.s, but also a professional fighter pilot with decades of experience. In a series of flight combat simulations, the A.I. successfully evaded retired U.S. Air Force Colonel Gene "Geno" Lee, and shot him down every time. In a statement, Lee called it "the most aggressive, responsive, dynamic and credible A.I. I've seen to date."
And "Geno" is no slouch. He's a former Air Force Battle Manager and adversary tactics instructor. He's controlled or flown in thousands of air-to-air intercepts as mission commander or pilot. In short, the guy knows what he's doing. Plus he's been fighting A.I. opponents in flight simulators for decades.
But he says this one is different. "I was surprised at how aware and reactive it was. It seemed to be aware of my intentions and reacting instantly to my changes in flight and my missile deployment. It knew how to defeat the shot I was taking. It moved instantly between defensive and offensive actions as needed."
The A.I., dubbed ALPHA, was developed by Psibernetix, a company founded by University of Cincinnati doctoral graduate Nick Ernest, in collaboration with the Air Force Research Laboratory. According to the developers, ALPHA was specifically designed for research purposes in simulated air-combat missions.
The secret to ALPHA's superhuman flying skills is a decision-making system called a genetic fuzzy tree, a subtype of fuzzy logic algorithms. The system approaches complex problems much like a human would, says Ernest, breaking the larger task into smaller subtasks, which include high-level tactics, firing, evasion, and defensiveness. By considering only the most relevant variables, it can make complex decisions with extreme speed. As a result, the A.I. can calculate the best maneuvers in a complex, dynamic environment, over 250 times faster than its human opponent can blink.
After hour-long combat missions against ALPHA, Lee says,"I go home feeling washed out. I'm tired, drained and mentally exhausted. This may be artificial intelligence, but it represents a real challenge."
The results of the dogfight simulations are published in the Journal of Defense Management. [Reply]
What do you get when you mix the heart cells of a rat with silicone from breast implants and then sprinkle in a bit of gold and genetic engineering? No, not Trump's next trophy wife -- you actually get this incredible "living" robot. Developed by a team of researchers at Harvard University, the bio-engineered marvel looks, flexes and swims just like a tiny stingray.
The stingray-bot is made up of four distinct layers: a silicone substrate that forms its body, a skeletal system made of gold wire, a second layer of silicone that insulates the skeleton and, finally, 200,000 genetically-engineered rat cells. Those cells are designed to contract when exposed to a specific wavelength of light. When they do, the robot effectively swims in the same undulating manner as its namesake. What's more, the "biological life-form," as lead researcher, Kit Parker, describes it, automatically follows the light source as it swims through the nutrient-rich liquid that keeps its cells alive, allowing it to be remotely controlled.
The bio-bot can't survive outside of the lab yet. Even if it didn't need its specialized liquid, the rat cells have no immune system and would be immediately attacked by bacteria and fungal pathogens. Even so, Parker hopes that it will lead others to develop a complete, genetically-engineered heart, among other things.
"Roboticists and engineers can see different ways to use biological cells as building materials," Parker told Popular Mechanics. "Marine biologists can take a look to better understand why the muscle tissues in rays are built and organized the way they are." [Reply]
In the military world, fighter pilots have long been described as the best of the best. As Tom Wolfe famously wrote, only those with the "right stuff" can handle the job. Now, it seems, the right stuff may no longer be the sole purview of human pilots.
A pilot A.I. developed by a doctoral graduate from the University of Cincinnati has shown that it can not only beat other A.I.s, but also a professional fighter pilot with decades of experience. In a series of flight combat simulations, the A.I. successfully evaded retired U.S. Air Force Colonel Gene "Geno" Lee, and shot him down every time. In a statement, Lee called it "the most aggressive, responsive, dynamic and credible A.I. I've seen to date."
And "Geno" is no slouch. He's a former Air Force Battle Manager and adversary tactics instructor. He's controlled or flown in thousands of air-to-air intercepts as mission commander or pilot. In short, the guy knows what he's doing. Plus he's been fighting A.I. opponents in flight simulators for decades.
But he says this one is different. "I was surprised at how aware and reactive it was. It seemed to be aware of my intentions and reacting instantly to my changes in flight and my missile deployment. It knew how to defeat the shot I was taking. It moved instantly between defensive and offensive actions as needed."
The A.I., dubbed ALPHA, was developed by Psibernetix, a company founded by University of Cincinnati doctoral graduate Nick Ernest, in collaboration with the Air Force Research Laboratory. According to the developers, ALPHA was specifically designed for research purposes in simulated air-combat missions.
The secret to ALPHA's superhuman flying skills is a decision-making system called a genetic fuzzy tree, a subtype of fuzzy logic algorithms. The system approaches complex problems much like a human would, says Ernest, breaking the larger task into smaller subtasks, which include high-level tactics, firing, evasion, and defensiveness. By considering only the most relevant variables, it can make complex decisions with extreme speed. As a result, the A.I. can calculate the best maneuvers in a complex, dynamic environment, over 250 times faster than its human opponent can blink.
After hour-long combat missions against ALPHA, Lee says,"I go home feeling washed out. I'm tired, drained and mentally exhausted. This may be artificial intelligence, but it represents a real challenge."
The results of the dogfight simulations are published in the Journal of Defense Management.
I'm sure it would mop the floor with Iceman, but Maverick is just crazy enough to take it down. [Reply]
Less than a month before the end of the mission, Rosetta’s high-resolution camera has revealed the Philae lander wedged into a dark crack on Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko.
The images were taken on 2 September by the OSIRIS narrow-angle camera as the orbiter came within 2.7 km of the surface and clearly show the main body of the lander, along with two of its three legs.
The images also provide proof of Philae’s orientation, making it clear why establishing communications was so difficult following its landing on 12 November 2014.
“With only a month left of the Rosetta mission, we are so happy to have finally imaged Philae, and to see it in such amazing detail,” says Cecilia Tubiana of the OSIRIS camera team, the first person to see the images when they were downlinked from Rosetta yesterday.
“After months of work, with the focus and the evidence pointing more and more to this lander candidate, I’m very excited and thrilled that we finally have this all-important picture of Philae sitting in Abydos,” says ESA’s Laurence O’Rourke, who has been coordinating the search efforts over the last months at ESA, with the OSIRIS and Lander Science Operations and Navigation Center (SONC, CNES) teams.
Philae was last seen when it first touched down at Agilkia, bounced and then flew for another two hours before ending up at a location later named Abydos, on the comet’s smaller lobe.
After three days, Philae's primary battery was exhausted and the lander went into hibernation, only to wake up again and communicate briefly with Rosetta in June and July 2015 as the comet came closer to the Sun and more power was available.
However, until today, the precise location was not known. Radio ranging data tied its location down to an area spanning a few tens of metres, but a number of potential candidate objects identified in relatively low-resolution images taken from larger distances could not be analysed in detail until recently.
While most candidates could be discarded from analysis of the imagery and other techniques, evidence continued to build towards one particular target, which is now confirmed in images taken unprecedentedly close to the surface of the comet.
At 2.7 km, the resolution of the OSIRIS narrow-angle camera is about 5 cm/pixel, sufficient to reveal characteristic features of Philae’s 1 m-sized body and its legs, as seen in these definitive pictures.
“This remarkable discovery comes at the end of a long, painstaking search,” says Patrick Martin, ESA’s Rosetta Mission Manager. “We were beginning to think that Philae would remain lost forever. It is incredible we have captured this at the final hour.”
“This wonderful news means that we now have the missing ‘ground-truth’ information needed to put Philae’s three days of science into proper context, now that we know where that ground actually is!” says Matt Taylor, ESA’s Rosetta project scientist.
"Now that the lander search is finished we feel ready for Rosetta's landing, and look forward to capturing even closer images of Rosetta's touchdown site,” adds Holger Sierks, principal investigator of the OSIRIS camera.
The discovery comes less than a month before Rosetta descends to the comet’s surface. On 30 September, the orbiter will be sent on a final one-way mission to investigate the comet from close up, including the open pits in the Ma’at region, where it is hoped that critical observations will help to reveal secrets of the body’s interior structure.
Further information on the search that led to the discovery of Philae, along with additional images, will be made available soon. [Reply]
Imagine it: you're an astronaut and launch day for your first spaceflight has arrived. Years of intense study and training have culminated in this moment. You're suited up and ready to go. In mere minutes, you'll be getting strapped into your spacecraft and blasting into the cosmos.
So, how do you spend these final precious moments on Earth?
If you're flying from the U.S., you'll probably play poker. If you're flying aboard a spaceflight leaving from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, you'll be ordered to pee on the back-right tire of a bus.
It's tradition.
Such rituals, many of which pay homage to the launch-day behavior of spaceflight pioneers, help to soothe frayed nerves on a day filled with excitement, according to former NASA astronaut Paul Lockhart. Lockhart, who piloted two Space Shuttle missions to the International Space Station during 2002, recalls participating in "comforting actions that make what you’re doing approachable, so that you’re more calm." Though some of these traditions have a high quirk factor, they also provide a sense of stability and make astronauts feel linked to those who have traveled before them.
“People become very comforted in doing the same routine before launch," says Lockhart. "And sometimes that has to happen two or three times for a single mission, because your launch could be delayed if there was weather or if a system failed."
For spaceflights leaving from Kennedy Space Center in Florida, the pre-launch traditions begin with a hearty breakfast and a celebratory sheet cake—regardless of the time of day or night.
"The breakfast is a tradition that’s been held since probably the early days of the space program," says Lockhart. A few hours before launch, the astronauts, dressed in their crew shirts and slacks, gather for a feast of steak and eggs, accompanied by a celebratory cake. The breakfast serves as a last-minute photo op, as well as an opportunity for the crew members to line their stomachs with sustaining fare for the long flight ahead. But nerves often get in the way of nourishment.
In his memoir, Riding Rockets, Mike Mullane, who flew three Space Shuttle missions between 1984 and 1990, recalls a communal loss of appetite on launch day: "Most of us ate nothing or very lightly. I had a piece of toast."
For Mullane, the standard steak, eggs, and coffee was not on the menu. "One bite of that fare and I would have vomited. Nobody drank coffee. That would have been bladder suicide," he wrote.
Since the early days of NASA's manned flight program, the breakfast has been an exercise in seeming calm while freaking out on the inside. "Launch breakfasts always have an air of studied casualness," writes Michael Collins, the Command Module Pilot on the Apollo 11 mission, in his book Carrying the Fire. On the morning of that fateful mission to the moon, "anyone overhearing our conversation would think that we five were slightly bored at the prospect of another empty day."
After breakfast and the cake that no one eats, astronauts don their launch suits and, with minutes to spare before the van arrives to transport them to the launch pad, sit down to play cards. Lockhart explains the rules of the game: "It’s not a game of who has the best hand, it’s who has the worst hand," he says. "And you can’t leave until the commander has the worst hand at poker. So you sit there playing cards and you’re saying, 'Come on, let’s hurry up, you need to win by losing so that we can go.'"
Sometimes, if the cards aren't falling as they should, this game of bad-on-purpose poker can come perilously close to messing with the launch schedule.
"I recall one time we got everything completed about one minute before we had to walk out the door," says Lockhart. "But it all came out in good order."
Following the termination of the Space Shuttle program in 2011, manned launches from Kennedy Space Center are on hold. Until at least 2017, when stateside human spaceflight launches are projected to resume, American astronauts fly from Russia's Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, where a whole other set of pre-launch traditions is in place.
Most of the Russian rituals pay tribute to Yuri Gagarin, the Soviet cosmonaut who, in 1961, became the first human to go to space. The preparations kick off about two weeks before launch, when the astronauts visit Gagarin's old office in Star City and sign a guest book. Five days to a week before launch, the astronauts, now staying at Cosmonaut Hotel in Baikonur, go to a grove on the Avenue of the Cosmonauts and plant a tree. Every space traveler who has flown from Baikonur, going all the way back to Gagarin, has planted a tree at this grove.
In the 48 hours before launch, the Gagarin homages really ramp up. Two days before leaving earth, crew members get a haircut. On the night prior to launch, it's time to watch the 1969 movie White Sun of the Desert, a high-action tale set during the Russian civil war. When the new day dawns, crew members depart the Cosmonaut Hotel, signing their room doors as they leave. All of this mimics the pre-launch behavior of Gagarin prior to his historic 1961 flight aboard the Vostok.
Once the crew has left the hotel, each member participates in a newer tradition: prayers and blessings performed by a Russian Orthodox priest. A man in gold-accented black robes flings holy water onto each space traveler while pushing a golden cross into their face. Every crew member is invited to receive the blessing, regardless of their religious affiliation or lack thereof. Anousheh Ansari, an Iranian-American, Muslim woman who traveled to the ISS as a self-funded space traveler in 2006, recalls in her memoir that "the Russians had asked me if I had any objection to participating in a Christian ceremony, and I replied that a prayer in any language and any religion is still a prayer."
The blessing is one of the few Russian traditions not linked to Gagarin. According to the European Space Agency, it was established in 1994, when Soyuz TM-20 mission commander Alexander Viktorenko requested that the rocket be blessed prior to departing for the Russian space station Mir. Ever since, the blessing has been performed on the rocket, the crew, and even members of the media, who get doused in holy water after assembling on the desert steppe.
Following the blessing, crew members board a bus to the launch pad. But it's not a direct journey—there is a mandatory bathroom break along the way. According to the ESA, Gagarin was on his way to the launch pad in 1961 when he realized he needed to urinate one last time. The bus was stopped, and Gagarin got off, headed to the back-right tire, and relieved himself. As a tribute, each bus trip to the Baikonur launch pad now incorporates a stop, during which crew members pee on the back-right bus tire.
“Much is made of this as a tradition, but really, if you’re going to be locked in a rocket ship, unable to leave your seat for quite a few hours, it’s just common sense,” writes retired astronaut Chris Hadfield in his book An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth. The only problem is that, when clad in a launch suit, one cannot simply unzip one's fly. Hadfield writes that “the suit techs on board had to help us undo all the tricky fasteners they’d painstakingly closed not an hour before, so we were able to urinate manfully on the tire without spoiling our plumage.”
Women are excused from participating in the urination ritual, but may bring a vial of their own urine to pour on the tire if they so desire.
All of these rituals help calm nervy space travelers, but what of the astronauts' families who are tasked with nervously watching their loved ones launch into space? They, too, participate in traditions designed to keep the acknowledge the specialness of the experience while keeping worrying to a minimum.
“For the shuttle launches, the family are taken down to the launch control center," says Lockhart, who, in addition to flying for NASA, served as an "astronaut escort" at Kennedy Space Center, during which he accompanied families on launch days. According to Kennedy tradition, children are rounded up in front of a whiteboard, given markers, and allowed to draw anything they like.
"They do this to keep the children occupied while the countdown process is occurring," says Lockhart. "NASA covers that whiteboard with plastic and it becomes wall art. So if you go over to the launch control center at Kennedy Space Center, and you walk through the halls, you’ll find dozens of these whiteboards that have been drawn by the children."
The whiteboards provide a fascinating kid's-eye view into what it's like to have a family member blast off into space. "You get a big perspective of a young child who is six or seven and who doesn’t really understand what’s happening," says Lockhart. "Then you’ll get the art from the teenage sons and daughters, or maybe someone who’s just entered into college, and their drawings portray what’s happened to their family. Some of them are really enlightening."
Following a successful launch, families visit the launch director's office and place their loved one's mission patch on the door. Then, they are invited to participate in one last tradition of unknown origin: tucking into a meal of beans and cornbread alongside NASA crew. "My wife did not like this one," says Lockhart. "The kids are running everywhere, and they serve the family cornbread and some sort of cold beans. Who knows why." [Reply]
NASA is moving forward with a spring 2018 launch of its InSight mission to study the deep interior of Mars, following final approval this week by the agency's Science Mission Directorate.
The Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport (InSight) mission was originally scheduled to launch in March of this year, but NASA suspended launch preparations in December due to a vacuum leak in its prime science instrument, the Seismic Experiment for Interior Structure (SEIS).
The new launch period for the mission begins May 5, 2018, with a Mars landing scheduled for Nov. 26, 2018. The next launch opportunity is driven by orbital dynamics, so 2018 is the soonest the lander can be on its way.
"Our robotic scientific explorers such as InSight are paving the way toward an ambitious journey to send humans to the Red Planet," said Geoff Yoder, acting associate administrator for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, in Washington. "It's gratifying that we are moving forward with this important mission to help us better understand the origins of Mars and all the rocky planets, including Earth."
The SEIS instrument -- designed to measure ground movements as small as half the radius of a hydrogen atom -- requires a perfect vacuum seal around its three main sensors in order to withstand harsh conditions on the Red Planet. Under what's known as the mission "replan," NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, will be responsible for redesigning, developing and qualifying the instrument's evacuated container and the electrical feedthroughs that failed previously. France's space agency, the Centre National d'Études Spatiales (CNES), will focus on developing and delivering the key sensors for SEIS, integration of the sensors into the container, and the final integration of the instrument onto the spacecraft.
The German Aerospace Center (DLR) is contributing the Heat Flow and Physical Properties Package (HP3) to InSight's science payload.
NASA's budget for InSight was $675 million. The instrument redesign and two-year delay add $153.8 million. The additional cost will not delay or cancel any current missions, though there may be fewer opportunities for new missions in future years, from fiscal years 2017-2020.
InSight's primary goal is to help us understand how rocky planets formed and evolved. Jim Green, director of NASA's Planetary Science Division, said, "We've concluded that a replanned InSight mission for launch in 2018 is the best approach to fulfill these long-sought, high-priority science objectives."
CNES President Jean-Yves Le Gall added, "This confirmation of the launch plan for InSight is excellent news and an unparalleled opportunity to learn more about the internal structure of the Red Planet, which is currently of major interest to the international science community."
The InSight Project is managed by JPL for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. Lockheed Martin Space Systems, Denver, built the spacecraft. InSight is part of NASA's Discovery Program, which is managed by NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. [Reply]
Originally Posted by :
The world is still vulnerable to a potentially catastrophic asteroid strike, according to President Barack Obama's chief science adviser.
NASA has made substantial progress in finding the asteroids that pose the biggest threat to Earth, but there's still a lot of work to do, said John Holdren, director of the White House's Office of Science and Technology Policy.
"We are not fully prepared, but we are on a trajectory to get much more so," Holdren said today (Sept. 14) at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, during a discussion of the agency's planned Asteroid Redirect Mission (ARM). [Images: Potentially Dangerous Asteroids]
Holdren cited the February 2013 meteor explosion over the Russian city of Chelyabinsk and the 1908 Tunguska airburst as reasons to take the asteroid threat seriously..
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