Coolest Tech Jobs: Driving the Mars Rover

Imagine driving your car to work by sitting in your chair in front of your home computer. If you can imagine this, then maybe you can understand what it’s like to be one of NASA’s Mars rover drivers.

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NASA says “Men on Mars” by 2037

Missions to the moon and Mars, amid a renewal of global interest in space exploration, are at the top of the agenda for the 2,000 space scientists, astronauts, satellite manufacturers and launchers who gathered in Hyderabad.

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Parallel universes exist – study

Parallel universes really do exist, according to a mathematical discovery by Oxford scientists described by one expert as “one of the most important developments in the history of science”.

The parallel universe theory, first proposed in 1950 by the US physicist Hugh Everett, helps explain mysteries of quantum mechanics that have baffled scientists for decades, it is claimed.

In Everett’s “many worlds” universe, every time a new physical possibility is explored, the universe splits. Given a number of possible alternative outcomes, each one is played out – in its own universe.

A motorist who has a near miss, for instance, might feel relieved at his lucky escape. But in a parallel universe, another version of the same driver will have been killed. Yet another universe will see the motorist recover after treatment in hospital. The number of alternative scenarios is endless.

It is a bizarre idea which has been dismissed as fanciful by many experts. But the new research from Oxford shows that it offers a mathematical answer to quantum conundrums that cannot be dismissed lightly – and suggests that Dr Everett, who was a Phd student at Princeton University when he came up with the theory, was on the right track.

Commenting in New Scientist magazine, Dr Andy Albrecht, a physicist at the University of California at Davis, said: “This work will go down as one of the most important developments in the history of science.”

According to quantum mechanics, nothing at the subatomic scale can really be said to exist until it is observed. Until then, particles occupy nebulous “superposition” states, in which they can have simultaneous “up” and “down” spins, or appear to be in different places at the same time.

Observation appears to “nail down” a particular state of reality, in the same way as a spinning coin can only be said to be in a “heads” or “tails” state once it is caught.

According to quantum mechanics, unobserved particles are described by “wave functions” representing a set of multiple “probable” states. When an observer makes a measurement, the particle then settles down into one of these multiple options.

The Oxford team, led by Dr David Deutsch, showed mathematically that the bush-like branching structure created by the universe splitting into parallel versions of itself can explain the probabilistic nature of quantum outcomes.

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Mysterious giant hexagon circling Saturn’s north pole

This nighttime movie of the depths of the north pole of Saturn taken by the visual infrared mapping spectrometer onboard Cassini reveals a dynamic, active planet lurking underneath the ubiquitous cover of upper-level hazes. The defining feature of Saturn’s north polar regions–the spinning six-sided hexagon feature–is clearly visible.

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NASA Plans Bigger Moon Base, Sporty Rovers for Future Missions

The next astronauts to work on the moon will likely live in larger habitats and drive sporty new rovers capable of two-week treks, NASA officials said Thursday. Rather than assembling a lunar outpost over time from a multitude of small, separately launched modules, NASA is now hoping to land up to three large habitats on fewer flights to build a beachhead on the moon, the space agency said.

Doug Cooke, NASA’s deputy associate administrator for exploration systems, said that the space agency’s revised lunar plan calls for the launching of larger habitats to the moon on unmanned cargo flights. That way, the first new lunar astronauts could begin to reap science rewards faster than if they had to haul smaller habitat sections and hardware to the moon on each flight, then combine them into a larger base to support long-duration expeditions.

“We want to get scientific return. We want to get information that will help, potentially, space commerce and we want to get international participation early,” Cooke told reporters in a teleconference. “All of these objectives we want to address as early in the flights as we possibly can by getting the outpost up and running quickly.”

Cooke and other NASA officials detailed the agency’s revised lunar plan at the Space 2007 Conference of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) in Long Beach, California. NASA aims to return astronauts to the moon by 2020 using its space shuttle successor — the Orion Crew Exploration Vehicle and the Ares I booster — as well as the Ares V heavy-lift rocket.

“There is some great science to do on the moon,” said Laurie Leshin, director of sciences and exploration NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, adding that future astronauts will help better understand the moon’s environment and interior.

NASA has eyed the moon’s Shackleton Crater near the lunar south pole as a possible moon base site because of its proximity to permanently lit and shadowed regions that could be key for solar power stations and the hunt for water ice. But Cooke said that Shackleton is not the only candidate for a moon base, especially since the revised plan calls for mobile habitat modules that could move between science targets or gather together in a sort of lunar spare parts depot.

Data from NASA’s unmanned Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, set to launch next year, and other international probes will help pin down future landing sites, Cooke added.

Lunar hot rod

Once astronauts return to the moon, NASA does not expect them to simply stand around their landing craft collecting nearby rocks.

Astronaut Mike Gernhardt, NASA’s lead for extravehicular physiology systems and performance projects, said the agency is now planning to send a pair of pressurized rovers that will allow spaceflyers to explore more of the lunar surface while retaining the relative comfort of a shirt-sleeve environment.

“They’re basically habitats on wheels,” Gernhardt said, adding that the new vehicles would be about the same size as the unpressurized rovers driven by astronauts during NASA’s Apollo moon landings. “If you can picture this thing, it’s kind of a combination between a spacesuit and a sports car.”

Both rovers would be deployed together, each with a crew of two astronauts. If one rover failed, all four spaceflyers could pile into the remaining vehicle to return to their lunar base, Gernhardt said. Current plans call for a 5,000-pound (2,267-kilogram) pressurized vehicle with seats that fold into beds for longer trips.

The two-person rovers would be equipped to handle three-day, seven-day and two-week excursions on the moon with exterior-mounted spacesuits that could be donned by climbing through a shared hatchway, Gernhardt said. It could take just 10 minutes to step into the spacesuits and onto the lunar surface, he added.

Short jaunts could cover about 25 miles (40 kilometers) with the two-week trips roving across 596 miles (960 kilometers) across the lunar surface, he added.

As to how much the rovers may cost, Gernhardt could only offer an estimate.

“I will only say that it will be more than a Ferrari,” he said.

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Star Wars: The Force Unleashed next spring

LucasArts has revealed that Star Wars: The Force Unleashed will be ported to the Wii. A moment of truth for the wii-remote, light-saber games are one place it should shine. But will it fall flat like the golf-games that have come before.

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Sci-fi inspired Spaceport in New Mexico

Next time that you’re waiting for your trip to space, you’ll be able to do so in style. Well fine, space travel is still a few decades away for us meager mortals, but at the very least, we can marvel at the beautiful and science-fiction inspired designs for the New Mexico Spaceport Authority building from Foster + Partners which not only aim to make you get into the mood for space travel, they will also meet LEED platinum standards when finished.

The winning team, led by Foster + Partners and which includes URS, SMPC Architects, PHA Consult, Balis and Company and Exploration-Synthesis Partners, worked hard to provide a setting which would capture the drama of space flight, something which, I think that we can all agree, they succeeded on all counts.

But here at Inhabitat, we like to think that pretty pictures and great design should go hand in hand with incredible environmental performance, and this particular building does, in spades. The entire building was dug into the natural landscape to better use the thermal mass provided by the ground. It has also been designed with reducing not just its energy usage by using skylights and natural ventilation, but to diminish the actual embodied energy of the building materials as much as possible (something which you’ll be hearing much more from the more cutting-edge designs as they come down the line).

We hope that future spaceport developments look at this design, not as the best that they can do, but rather, as a minimum from where to start their work from. We are sure that they can figure it out, after all, they will have a building full of rocket scientists to do so.

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Google Sponsors $30 Million Moon Contest

Google Inc. is bankrolling a $30 million out-of-this-world prize to the first private company that can safely land a robotic rover on the moon and beam back a gigabyte of images and video to Earth, the Internet search leader said Thursday.

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NASA designs new, ultra-high temperature chips

NASA researchers have announced a new type of integrated circuit chip built on Silicon Carbide technology capable of operating in environments of up to (1,112° F). In testing, an SiC processor was capable of running at 500° C for up to 1,700 hrs without failing. NASA is calling this a major breakthrough, and a full 100x increase over current CPUs.

http://digg.com/design/NASA_designs_new_ultra_high_temperature_chips

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NASA Gives Google Parking Space for Private Jet

NASA officials confirmed this week that H211, a limited liability company that counts Google’s chief executive, Eric Schmidt, as one of its principals, had secured rights to operate a refurbished wide-body Boeing 767-200 out of Moffett Field, an airport that is run by NASA and is generally closed to private jets.

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