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Coalition for Space Exploration contest winner's innovative video answers the question

"The Coalition for Space Exploration (Coalition) is pleased to announce that Caleb Ekeroth is the grand prize winner of its "What's Next?" in space exploration contest. Ekeroth's video titled, "Visit Mars Today," takes viewers through a timeline of human spaceflight history into the future with an in-flight commentary of the first tourist trip to the red planet. Ekeroth's video effectively demonstrates his idea that interplanetary travel is within our reach. The entry was selected as the winner for its thought-provoking message to build upon the successful history of the space program and explore beyond low-Earth orbit."

Flight Assembled Architecture/Architectures volantes from FRAC Centre on Vimeo.

Flying Machine Enabled Construction, ETH

Keith's note: One would think that the software developed by this team could be adapted to robots operating in space to assemble large structures such as solar power satellites or on the surface of the Moon to construct a lunar base. Indeed, you could take 3D printing software and scale it up such that you use remotely operated droids to "print out" a base on the moon using local materials.

"Here's a video from a camera on Xombie looking down at the ground during a pad-to-pad flight that you might recognize as almost identical to the flight path flown during the Lunar Lander Challenge. In this case, we had about 60 lbs of payload at the top of the vehicle and she handled it with ease!"

CubeSat Documentary, Geek Mountain State

"A couple of weeks ago, we posted up a notification that Vermont Public Television would be airing a documentary on Vermont scientists working on a CubeSat project. Now, the documentary is online for your viewing pleasure" Watch video at UVM

NASA to Launch Vermont's CubeSat in 2012

"NASA's 2010 CubeSat Launch Initiative Competition has been awarded a launch slot to the Vermont CubeSat Lunar Lander Project. Faculty and students from Vermont Technical College, Norwich University, UVM and St. Michael's College are developing the satellite for this launch opportunity. It will be launched into Low Earth Orbit as part of a NASA launch payload in 2012. The single-unit CubeSat for this launch will perform critical on-orbit testing of the robotic navigation system that will autonomously guide the eventual three-unit CubeSat Lunar Lander package into a lunar orbit, followed by a landing on the Moon."

Vermont Lunar CubeSat Project

NASA Announces 2011 NASA OPTIMUS PRIME Spinoff Video Contest

"NASA is kicking off its second annual NASA OPTIMUS PRIME Spinoff Video Contest to raise student awareness of how NASA technologies provide benefits to the public. Registration for the contest is open until January 3, 2012."

2011 OPTIMUS PRIME Spinoff Video Contest

"NASA has opened registration for the 2011 OPTIMUS PRIME Spinoff Video Contest. Featuring OPTIMUS PRIME, the leader from the popular TRANSFORMERS brand, the contest highlights spinoffs from NASA technologies that are used on Earth. The goal is to help students understand the benefits of NASA technology to their daily lives. Last year's contest was open to students in grades 3-8 and resulted in 76 video submissions from over 190 students in 31 states."

NASA's Robotic Lander Development Project in Huntsville, Ala., has successfully completed seven autonomous outdoor flight tests of a lander prototype, dubbed Mighty Eagle. On Oct. 14, Mighty Eagle ascended to three meters, translated 30 feet sideways and turned 90 degrees before setting down safely. On Oct. 17, Mighty Eagle successfully flew to a height of 30 feet, translated sideways 30 feet before landing. These tests are paving the way for a Nov. 4 100-foot flight test.

23 August 2011: "During a recent test at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., the robotic lander prototype, known as Mighty Eagle, performed a hover test flying up to three feet and then translated, or moved itself sideways, to perform a controlled, safe landing 13 feet from the launch pad." More information.

On September 30, 2011 at 11:08am, Derek Deville's Qu8k (pronounced "Quake") launched from the Black Rock Desert in Nevada to an altitude of 121,000' before returning safely to earth. Above 99% of the atmosphere the sky turns black in the middle of the day and the curvature of the earth is clearly visible.

Photos

"What's Next?" in space exploration - Coalition for Space Exploration announces video contest

"During this historic time of change within the space industry, the Coalition for Space Exploration (Coalition) wants to hear from the American public about what they envision for the future of space exploration. The Coalition is launching a contest based on a simple question, "What's Next?" Participants are encouraged to share their ideas for the future direction of America's space program in a video. The creator of the winning video entry wins an iPad2."

The Astronaut's Secret, Kickstarter

"What is "The Astronaut's Secret"? "The Astronaut's Secret" will be a 30 minute documentary about the life of Astronaut Rich Clifford. It will uncover how he and NASA kept his Parkinson's Disease a secret for 17 years, explore the impact of the end of the Shuttle Program on Rich's life, and follow him as he speaks nationwide about the importance of Early Detection of Parkinson's Disease."

The Astronaut's Secret, official website

Keith's note: I just donated $100. Rich has a compelling story to tell.

Radar Calibration CubeSat developed by undergraduate and graduate students of the Small-Satellite Program at the University of Hawaii.

Drexel University's experiment, Characterizing the Performance of the CubeSat Deployable Boom in Microgravity has been selected to participate in NASA's 2011 Grant Us Space Reduced Gravity Education Flight Program. This flight will take place in Houston. The flight week the team participated in was July 7-16, 2011.

The International Space University provides graduate-level training to the future leaders of the emerging global space community. This year the summer program took place in Graz, Austria and this video shows a summary of the activities that took place.

My references are various, from Chris Ware for his extraordinary layout and (sometimes abstract) images, Hans Richter, Len Lye, Stanley Kubrick or Godfrey Reggio (with his qatsi trilogy). I must also quote the speech of JFK ( youtube.com/ watch?v=6z1DidldxUo )

During the season of gift-giving, many youngsters may have had toy rocket ships on their wish-lists. In this eye-to-eye interview, we learn how one boy didnt send a letter to the North Pole to get a rocket, rather to the NIH to fund a rocket. We talked to Terence Boylan, who with his friend Bruce Cook, asked for an NIH grant back in April of 1957. Since Terences father was a physician and medical researcher at the University of Buffalo, the nine-year-old thought NIH was the place to go for money. Dr. Ernest Allen received Terences letter, and helped reward the youngsters request with ten dollars.

Note: At the end of the video you can see the immense printout of the famous "Earthrise" picture taken by Lunar Orbiter 1 in 1966 as retrieved by the LOIRP (Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery Project) being hung inside the Hover Test Facility where our friends at MoonExpress are testing their spacecraft.

"In this prequel to the Moon Express Lander Development webisodes, company co-founder & CEO Bob Richards narrates an overview of his Phoenix Mars Lander experience and the very different challenges of landing on the Moon. For the first time, Bob gives a public peak inside the project and the Hover Test Facility located a the NASA Research Park in Silicon Valley, California."

Clyde Space is working with the UK Astronomy Technology Centre in Edinburgh on a feasibility study into high resolution Earth observation from a 3U CubeSat. The system in this video has a performance estimated at less than 1m resolution from a 400km orbit. Source: ClydeSpace

This is the first test of a stored energy deployment system of a dragsail, or aerobrake, for CubeSats. The objective is to provide a reliable means of de-orbiting CubeSats and other small satellites at end of mission by increasing the effect of atmospheric drag on the spacecraft. The dragsail uses stored mechanical energy and therefore does not rely on power from the spacecraft to activate. Caution: includes laughter... Source: ClydeSpace

Singularity University co-founder Peter Diamandis, faculty and staff introduce the aims and mission of the university. The video features students from the current graduate student program 2011.

A short documentary about the PhoneSat suborbital test launch in the Black Rock desert, this video covers both launches of the Nexus One cell phone. Watch to find out whether they survived their 5-second, 18G trips miles into the atmosphere! More videos.

A combined view of ground video, on-rocket video, and accelerometer data from the Nexus One rocket launch. More videos here.

"Rise to the edge of space, freefall for 50,000 feet, fly through clouds, and land gently in bushes"

Educational Balloon Provides Space Shuttle Launch Images and Video From Over 110,000 feet

"A balloon with a student-oriented payload shot high resolution photos and video from an altitude of over 110,000 feet of Space Shuttle Discovery as it climbed into space.These images and video were released today as part of a mission report provided by Quest for Stars representative Bobby Russell at the Next-Generation Suborbital Researchers Conference (NSRC) at the University of Central Florida."

Keith's note: This is a much longer version of the previously released video - with music. If at all possible watch this at 720p resolution. As the payload slowly rotates you will see Discovery's vapor trail at the Earth's limb. The payload (with camera) swings to the west (where the sun is) and then swings back to the east, past Discovery's vapor trail, around to the west again and then continues to rotate to the east toward the fading vapor trail.

Educational Balloon Provides Space Shuttle Launch Images and Video From Over 110,000 feet

"Last week a balloon with a student-oriented payload shot high resolution photos and video from an altitude of over 110,000 feet of Space Shuttle Discovery as it climbed into space.These images and video were released today as part of a mission report provided by Quest for Stars representative Bobby Russell at the Next-Generation Suborbital Researchers Conference (NSRC) at the University of Central Florida."

If you can, watch this video in HD (select the 720p option). As the payload slowly rotates you will see Discovery's vapor trail at the Earth's limb - twice. The payload (with camera) first swings to the west and then reverses and swings back to the east, past Discovery's vapor trial, around to the west again, and then continues to rotate to the east toward the vapor trail again.

Last week a balloon with a student-oriented payload shot high resolution photos and video from an altitude of over 110,000 feet of Space Shuttle Discovery as it climbed into space.These images and video were released today as part of a mission report provided by Quest for Stars representative Bobby Russell at the Next-Generation Suborbital Researchers Conference (NSRC) at the University of Central Florida. More information on this conference can be found at http://nsrc.swri.org

Make sure watch in HD! More Robonaut-1 mission video and imagery will be released in conjunction with a presentation at the Next-Generation Suborbital Researchers Conference being held in Orlando 28 Februrary to 2 March.

Co-sponsored by the Challenger Center for Space Science Education, this mission is one in a series of flights conducted by Quest for Stars, a California-based non-profit educational organization that uses off-the-shelf hardware and a little ingenuity to allow students to place experiments at the edge of space at exceptionally low cost.

Quest for Stars and the Challenger Center for Space Science Education have now joined together to promote the use of these low cost delivery systems. This mission will be the first of what is hoped to be many future collaborations.

- First Photos: Shuttle Discovery's Trail Into Space As Seen from Over 70,000 Feet in a Balloon
- Robonaut-1 Balloon Mission Live Video and Mission Updates
- Challenger Center and Quest For Stars Chase Attempt to Photograph Discovery At The Edge of Space

Co-sponsored by the Challenger Center for Space Science Education, this mission is one in a series of flights conducted by Quest for Stars, a California-based non-profit educational organization that uses off-the-shelf hardware and a little ingenuity to allow students to place experiments at the edge of space at exceptionally low cost. More information

NSF Science Nation wth Miles O'Brien: Your avatar may be just a virtual identity, but it can also affect how you are in the real world. "In this world of new media, people spend a lot of time interacting with digital versions of one another." --Jeremy Bailenson

If you spend a lot of time online, you may even have an electronic alter ego--an avatar. An avatar is a movable image that people design to represent themselves in virtual reality environments or in cyberspace.

"For some reason, I always pick really short people," says Stanford undergraduate student and avid video gamer Oliver Castaneda.

Lockheed Martin plans to increase the affordability and efficiency of space system development with the opening of a new advanced technology and virtual simulation facility, known as the Collaborative Human Immersive Laboratory (CHIL). The CHIL, located at Lockheed Martin Space Systems Company headquarters in Littleton, Colo., integrates several virtual reality technologies enabling engineers and technicians to validate, test, and understand products and processes virtually before creating them physically. The result is a reduction in risk with savings in both time and cost.

NASA has opened online voting for the agency's OPTIMUS PRIME Spinoff Award student video contest. The public is invited to vote for its favorite videos, made by students in grades three through eight, developed to help educate America's youth about the benefits of NASA's technologies.

NASA is using the correlation between Hasbro's TRANSFORMERS property and commercialized agency "spinoffs" to help students understand how technology developed for space and aeronautics "transforms" into what is used on Earth.

Watch as these quadrotors (small helicopters) construct a small structure - alone and as a team. Imagine if you could replace the rotors with small cold gas jets for use in microgravity or on the Moon. More info at Upenn's General Robotics, Automation, Sensing and Perception (GRASP) Laboratory (via io9)

"This is a first prototype of an aerobrake system being developed by Clyde Space and the University of Glasgow. The objective is to deploy this 1m2 foil sail at the end of the mission to de-orbit the spacecraft using drag. The unit demonstrated here has dimensions of 10cm x 10cm x 3cm. Future prototypes are planned to be more compact so as to minimise volume required on the CubeSat."

Keith Cowing talks about the kind of hacks made famous by the Apollo 13 mission, instances where the crew had to improvise using materials at hand. He discusses the following: Skylab Rescue – the umbrella used to replace solar insulation and boating tools bought at a local marina; Syncom Rescue – tools made out of plastic and duct tape; Apollo 13 CO2 removal, use of LEM engine, etc.; Apollo lunar rover fender repair; STS-120 EVA solar panel repair, and ISS camera tracker made from a power tool.

"Seven styrofoam beer coolers sit lined up behind the open hatchback of an SUV, parked next to a soccer field in California's rural Central valley. Each box contains a black Google Nexus S phone, mounted with their cameras facing out through a clear plastic cut-out in the side. Some of the boxes/phones have consumer-grade wide-angle sport video cameras mounted on the outside, odd bits of custom-soldered circuitry poke out of others." More at New Scientist

You've seen these things in SciFI films for years - "Aliens", "Avatar", "Star Trek" and so on. Headsets that let you communicate and record everything around you - hands free. Now you can buy one that works with your iPhone/iPad or Android device. Imagine equipping NASA Away Teams in the field or astronauts in space with these devices and allowing all of us back home to literally peer over their shoulders as they work and live in space and exotic research locations on our own planet.

Video from a Google NexusOne smartphone with specially programmed Android apps, installed aboard James Dougherty's Intimidator-5 on a CTI N4100 load. Launch from Black Rock Playa on 24-July-2010 thanks to Maverick Civilian Space Foundation.

"What do NASA techies do with their spare time? They make rock-n-roll videos. Not the big-hair, booty-shaking, smoke-and-fire kind. They help make rock videos that would make their daytime colleagues proud or jealous, or both. The rock band OK Go prides itself on creative visual expressions of their music, and they wanted an extra dose of gee-whiz fun for their new song "This Too Shall Pass." In the winter of 2010, the group enlisted the help of Syyn Labs -- a self-described "group of creative engineers who twist together art and technology." The Syyn Labs fraternity included (or ensnared) four staff members from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory."

More at NASA Blogs

"We took 40 year old data tapes, tape drives that had been in a garage for 30 years, found elderly engineers, and reverse-engineered ancient technology to provide enhanced imagery from the five Lunar Orbiter missions in a fashion - and resolution - inconceivable at the time that the missions were conducted."

"Keith Cowing talks about the kind of hacks made famous by the Apollo 13 mission, instances where the crew had to improvise using materials at hand. He discusses the following: Skylab Rescue - the umbrella used to replace solar insulation and boating tools bought at a local marina; Syncom Rescue - tools made out of plastic and duct tape; Apollo 13 CO2 removal, use of LEM engine, etc.; Apollo lunar rover fender repair; STS-120 EVA solar panel repair, and ISS camera tracker made from a power tool. Cowing also talks about some of his own projects including the greenhouse he designed and built on Devon Island (and some serious hacks) near the North Pole. Currently, he's working in partnership with NASA Ames to restore a 1960's era Titan I ICBM & convert it for educational use."

This Rubik's Cube solver was designed and programmed using an ARM Powered Android Motorola Droid mobile phone, a LEGO Mindstorms NXT and lots of yellow LEGO technic pieces! Come and see the Speedcuber at ESCsv2010 http://esc-sv09.techinsightsevents.com/. The Android App running on the DROID uses the phones camera to take pictures of each face of the cube and sends the solution to the LEGO NXT controller via Bluetooth.

Newest ICBM 'Titan' Launch 1959/02/09