Happy Friday everyone. It was great seeing everyone that was able to join us at Hibachi Grill yesterday! Thanks to new retirees Tom Raines and Frank Alanis for joining us.
Also, great to see John Stumpf and many of our now regulars like – Wayne Hale, Fred Houllette, Phil Engelhauf, Oron Schmidt, Mac Henderson and his wife, Larry Schmidt and his wife, Claranita Haefner and her husband Bernie, Bill Reed and his wife, Charlie Harlan and his wife, Mike Conley and his wife, Dave O'Brien, George Dawson, Gene Nitsche, Bernie Rosenbaum, Don Curry, Teresa Sullivan, Linda Lapradd, Alex and Barbara Pope, John Peck, Julie Mathas, Paul Horsman, John Whalen, Jack Garman, Denny Holt, Bill Moon, Tri Nguyen, Jack Knight, Tom Farrell, and my apologies for not remembering the rest of you that joined us (blush).
Also,,,,,thought I should mention that I saw an AMF flyer in building 1 this morning saying that Larry Kenyon of Procurement was retiring! He has not made the Losses list yet!
Have a safe and wonderful weekend.
| | JSC TODAY CATEGORIES - Organizations/Social
- Aliens vs. Astronauts 5.05K Entry Deadline
- Parent's Night Out at Starport - April 25
- JSC Praise and Worship Club Meeting - Jobs and Training
- Space Available: Driving Innovation at JSC
- Career Power - Optimize your Career Development - Community
- Spring into Volunteer Opportunities |  |
| Organizations/Social - Aliens vs. Astronauts 5.05K Entry Deadline
A BATTLE TO DETERMINE THE ULTIMATE LIFE FORM! Starport is proud to present our spring race, Aliens vs. Astronauts. Register as either an alien or astronaut to crown the fastest life form in the universe. This 5.05K (3.14-mile) race will start at the Gilruth and run through JSC. It is open to the public and suitable for all fitness levels. Don't delay! Early registration to ensure you receive a race shirt ends today. Volunteers Needed We are also looking for a few good Earthlings to provide race support. The course will enter JSC, and we need badged employees to direct runners while giving encouragement. If you have a NASA badge and would like to help, please contact Joseph Callahan. All race volunteers will receive an event T-shirt. For more information, please visit the link below. - Parent's Night Out at Starport – April 25
Enjoy a night out on the town while your kids enjoy a night with Starport! We will entertain your children with a night of games, crafts, a bounce house, pizza, a movie, dessert and loads of fun. When: Friday, April 25, from 6 to 10 p.m. Where: Gilruth Center Ages: 5 to 12 Cost: $20/first child and $10/each additional sibling if registered by the Wednesday prior to event. If registered after Wednesday, the fee is $25/first child and $15/additional sibling. - JSC Praise and Worship Club Meeting
Join with the praise and worship band "Allied with the Lord" for a refreshing set of praise and worship songs (the theme will be "Resurrection Day") on Thursday, April 17, from 11:15 a.m. to noon in Building 29, Room 237 (also called Creative Sp.ace). Prayer partners will be available for anyone who has need. All JSC civil servants and contractors are welcome. Event Date: Thursday, April 17, 2014 Event Start Time:11:15 AM Event End Time:12:00 PM
Event Location: Building 29 Room 237
Add to Calendar
Mike FitzPatrick x30758
[top] Jobs and Training - Space Available: Driving Innovation at JSC
Driving Innovation at JSC - May 7 to 8 Individuals in technical organizations are invited to join Dr. Joel Sercel as he explores breakthrough ideas that leaders need to create successful systems for the future. This program combines marketing, product development, technology assessment, value-chain design, project execution and talent management in an integrated architecture for achieving breakthrough performance. You will gain the capability to help position your organization for future sustainment, growth and adaptation to new technologies, business models and missions. Registration is now open to civil service employees. Pre-work assessments and surveys are part of the session, so early registration is encouraged. Sign up today! - Career Power – Optimize your Career Development
Career Power is an engaging learning experience that guides individuals in managing their own development and careers by using activities, discussions and skill-building exercises. Employees can manage their future with Career Power, a lifelong process for today's workforce. Outcomes: - Apply the Career Power model to design your own development strategy
- Identify future trends and see the implications for your career
- Discover values, skills and interests, and manage your personal brand
- Set career direction with multiple options
- Draft a development plan, complete your IDP and prepare and practice for career conversations
Course Details: Date: Thursday, May 1 Time: 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Location: Building 12, Room 134 For: Civil servant and contractor employees SATERN ID: 73300 Use this direct link to register in SATERN. Community - Spring into Volunteer Opportunities
There are a lot of fresh, new opportunities to share your expertise and enthusiasm about NASA with the public. Check out the following events in V-CORPs! St. Mary's Elementary School Science Fair Judges Date: April 9 Time: 8 to 11 a.m. Where: St Mary's Elementary School What: Encourage these young scientists (grades K to 5) by judging their science fair projects. About 80 projects to be presented -- the more judges, the quicker it will go! Archdiocese-Wide Elementary School Science Fair Judges Date: April 24 Time: 8 a.m. to noon Where: St Mary's Elementary School What: This is the district-wide level of the science fair will engage elementary students from multiple schools. About 120 projects are expected, so have your co-workers sign up, too. Texas Space Grant Consortium Engineering Design Challenge Project Judging Date: April 28 Time: 7:30 a.m. to noon Where: South Shore Harbor Resort and Conference Center What: Looking for people with very strong technical backgrounds to judge poster displays, models and/or oral presentations by senior-level college students. These projects are part of the state-wide engineering design challenge. Bring your expertise in Engineering, Operations, Space Life Sciences … None of these suit your fancy? Page through the V-CORPs calendar! The next several months are crammed full of volunteer opportunities! | |
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| JSC Today is compiled periodically as a service to JSC employees on an as-submitted basis. Any JSC organization or employee may submit articles. Disclaimer: Accuracy and content of these notes are the responsibility of the submitters. |
NASA and Human Spaceflight News
Friday – April 4, 2014
HEADLINES AND LEADS
Vast ocean found beneath ice of Saturn moon, NASA-European spacecraft Cassini makes discovery
Marcia Dunn - AP
Scientists have uncovered a vast ocean beneath the icy surface of Saturn's little moon Enceladus.
Under Icy Surface of a Saturn Moon Lies a Sea of Water, Scientists Say
Kenneth Chang – The New York Times
Inside a moon of Saturn, beneath its icy veneer and above its rocky core, is a sea of water the size of Lake Superior, scientists announced on Thursday.
Cassini spacecraft finds sign of subsurface sea on Saturn's moon Enceladus
Joel Achenbach – The Washington Post
For years, the motto among astrobiologists — people who look for life in distant worlds, and try to understand what life is, exactly — has been "follow the water." You have to start the search somewhere, and scientists have started with liquid water because it's the essential agent for all biochemistry on Earth.
Hidden sea on Saturn's moon Enceladus revealed, boosting hopes for life
New data from NASA's Cassini mission appear to confirm a large liquid-water sea below the icy crust of Enceladus, a small Saturn moon. The sea could be habitable for microbes, at least.
Pete Spotts – The Christian Science Monitor
Saturn's tiny moon Enceladus appears to host a regional under-ice sea sporting at least as much water as Lake Superior, according to measurements made by NASA's Cassini spacecraft, which is currently touring Saturn and its moons.
'We Did Not Tell NASA to Stop Cooperation With Russia' – US State Department
RIA Novosti
The US State Department did not call upon NASA to suspend its contacts with Russia, a spokesperson for the State Department said Thursday.
Space station sidesteps space junk again
AP
The International Space Station had to dodge space junk again — the second time in less than three weeks.
Nasa's Robonaut 2 scrubs up for space surgery
Tom Espiner – BBC News
It won't panic in an emergency, its hands don't shake after too little sleep, it won't miss a family after months away from base - in fact it doesn't even need to breathe.
COMPLETE STORIES
Vast ocean found beneath ice of Saturn moon, NASA-European spacecraft Cassini makes discovery
Marcia Dunn - AP
Scientists have uncovered a vast ocean beneath the icy surface of Saturn's little moon Enceladus.
Italian and American researchers made the discovery using Cassini, a NASA-European spacecraft still exploring Saturn and its rings 17 years after its launch from Cape Canaveral. Their findings were announced Thursday.
This new ocean of liquid water — as big as or even bigger than North America's Lake Superior — is centered at the south pole of Enceladus and could encompass much if not most of the moon. Enceladus (ehn-SEHL'-uh-duhs) is about 310 miles across.
The data do not show if the ocean extends to the north pole, said the lead researcher, Luciano Iess of Sapienza University of Rome. At the very least, it's a regional sea some 25 miles deep under miles-thick ice. On Earth, it would stretch from our South Pole up to New Zealand — at the very least.
Cassini's rudimentary instruments also cannot determine whether the moon's ocean harbors any form of life. Another mission using more sophisticated instruments is needed to make that search.
This latest discovery makes the interior of Enceladus "a very attractive potential place to look for life," said Cornell University planetary scientist Jonathan Lunine, who took part in the study.
Back in 2005, Cassini detected a plume streaming from cracks in the south polar region. Scientists suspected these jets of salty water vapor and ice — containing some light organic molecules like methane — might come from a subsurface ocean. On Thursday, they confirmed its presence. Their findings appear in the journal Science.
Cassini provided gravity measurements from three close fly-bys of Enceladus from 2010 to 2012. The Doppler data indicated a dense material beneath the surface of the south pole, most likely liquid water.
The ocean is believed to be sandwiched between miles of surface ice and a rocky core.
"It's extraordinary what Cassini has been able to do for this small moon," California Institute of Technology's David Stevenson, part of the research team, told reporters this week. But "this is not like mapping the surface of the Earth or mapping the surface of the moon, it's nothing like that. It's much cruder, and it's amazing that we've been able to do as much as we can."
Enceladus is hardly the only moon in the solar system with a subsurface sea.
Titan, the largest of Saturn's dozens of moons, is believed to have a global ocean. Evidence points to oceans inside the giant Jupiter moons of Callisto and Ganymede. And Jupiter's Europa also has a hidden reservoir similar to that of Enceladus, complete with plumes and a rocky bottom.
Cassini, already exceeding its life expectancy, is to make three more fly-bys of Enceladus before the mission ends in 2017.
Under Icy Surface of a Saturn Moon Lies a Sea of Water, Scientists Say
Kenneth Chang – The New York Times
Inside a moon of Saturn, beneath its icy veneer and above its rocky core, is a sea of water the size of Lake Superior, scientists announced on Thursday.
The findings, published in the journal Science, confirm what planetary scientists have suspected about the moon, Enceladus, ever since they were astonished in 2005 by photographs showing geysers of ice crystals shooting out of its south pole.
"What we've done is put forth a strong case for an ocean," said David J. Stevenson, a professor of planetary science at the California Institute of Technology and an author of the Science paper.
For many researchers, this tiny, shiny cue ball of a moon, just over 300 miles wide, is now the most promising place to look for life elsewhere in the solar system, even more than Mars.
"Definitely Enceladus," said Larry W. Esposito, a professor of astrophysical and planetary sciences at the University of Colorado, who was not involved in the research. "Because there's warm water right there now."
Enceladus (pronounced en-SELL-a-dus) is caught in a gravitational tug of war between Saturn and another moon, Dione, which bends its icy outer layer, creating friction and heat. In the years since discovering the geysers, NASA's Cassini spacecraft has made repeated flybys of Enceladus, photographing the fissures (nicknamed tiger stripes) where the geysers originate, measuring temperatures and identifying carbon-based organic molecules that could serve as building blocks for life.
Cassini has no instruments that can directly detect water beneath the surface, but three flybys in the years 2010-12 were devoted to producing a map of the gravity field, noting where the pull was stronger or weaker. During the flybys, lasting just a few minutes, radio telescopes that are part of NASA's Deep Space Network broadcast a signal to the spacecraft, which echoed it back to Earth. As the pull of Enceladus's gravity sped and then slowed the spacecraft, the frequency of the radio signal shifted, just as the pitch of a train whistle rises and falls as it passes by a listener.
Using atomic clocks on Earth, the scientists measured the radio frequency with enough precision that they could discern changes in the velocity of Cassini, hundreds of millions of miles away, as minuscule as 14 inches an hour.
They found that the moon's gravity was weaker at the south pole. At first glance, that is not so surprising; there is a depression at the pole, and lower mass means less gravity. But the depression is so large that the gravity should actually have been weaker.
"Then you say, 'A-ha, there must be compensation,' " Dr. Stevenson said. "Something more dense under the ice. The natural candidate is water."
Liquid water is 8 percent denser than ice, so the presence of a sea 20 to 25 miles below the surface fits the gravity measurements. "It's an ocean that extends in all directions from the south pole to about halfway to the equator," Dr. Stevenson said.
The underground sea is up to six miles thick, much deeper than a lake. "It's a lot more water than Lake Superior," Dr. Stevenson said. "It may even be bigger. The ocean could extend all the way to the north pole."
The conclusion was not a surprise, said Christopher P. McKay, a planetary scientist at NASA Ames Research Center in Mountain View, Calif., who studies the possibility of life on other worlds, but "it confirms in a really robust way what has been sort of the standard model."
It also makes Enceladus a more attractive destination for a future mission, especially one that would collect samples from the plumes and return them to Earth to see if they contain any microbes.
The discussion on the possibility of extraterrestrial life in the solar system centers on four bodies: Mars; Enceladus; Europa, a moon of Jupiter; and Titan, another moon of Saturn.
Dr. McKay, who was not involved with gravity measurements, noted that only Enceladus was known to possess the four essential ingredients for life, at least as it exists on Earth: liquid water, energy, carbon and nitrogen.
"I would say it's our best bet," he said.
Mars has a dearth of nitrogen, found in amino acids and proteins, and the surface today is dry and cold. Europa, which also has an under-ice ocean, may have all of the ingredients, but that has not been confirmed. Ice plumes have also been observed coming off Europa's south pole, but intermittently. Titan is the most intriguing and speculative possibility, with lakes of liquid methane, not water. If life existed there, it would be far different from that on Earth.
Still, life on Enceladus is perhaps a long shot. The sea is at freezing temperature and in continual darkness. And the water may have been liquid only in the recent past, a few tens of millions of years, a blink in the 4.5-billion-year history of the solar system. But scientists also do not know how long it takes life to get started, and some think it could happen quickly.
"Is there life in the plume?" Dr. McKay said. "To answer that question, a sample return would be the way."
There are a couple of proposals for that already, including one by Peter Tsou, a retired scientist from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Dr. Tsou devised a way to capture comet particles and bring them back to Earth for NASA's Stardust mission and has been suggesting a similar method for a spacecraft that would fly through Enceladus's plumes and then return to Earth for scientists to examine.
The challenges are to make sure that the interesting particles would not break apart, to take precautions that any alien life would not infect Earth, and to fit it into the $500 million budget of one of NASA's lower-cost planetary missions.
Cassini spacecraft finds sign of subsurface sea on Saturn's moon Enceladus
Joel Achenbach – The Washington Post
For years, the motto among astrobiologists — people who look for life in distant worlds, and try to understand what life is, exactly — has been "follow the water." You have to start the search somewhere, and scientists have started with liquid water because it's the essential agent for all biochemistry on Earth.
Now they've followed the water to a small, icy moon orbiting Saturn. Scientists reported Thursday that Enceladus, a shiny world about 300 miles in diameter, has a subsurface "regional sea" with a rocky bottom.
This cryptic body of water is centered around the south pole and is upwards of five miles deep. It has a volume similar to that of Lake Superior, according to the research, which was published in the journal Science.
The moon's liquid reservoir had already been inferred from the presence of plumes of water vapor emerging from the south pole. The plumes stunned scientists when they were detected by NASA's Cassini spacecraft in 2005. This latest report adds the detail of the rocky sea floor, which is significant because the contact between liquid water and rock creates the potential for the kind of interesting chemistry that gets astrobiologists excited.
This bulletin from the outer solar system could boost Enceladus as a possible target of a future robotic space mission. A spacecraft could fly through the plumes and study whatever's coming out of the moon — something Cassini has done, but with instruments from the previous century that were not designed to look for signs of life.
To become a target for a new mission, however, Enceladus would probably need to outshine Jupiter's moon Europa, which also appears to have subsurface ocean and also has plumes shooting water vapor into space.
NASA is putting together preliminary designs for a possible Europa mission, though budgetary pressures for now make any new major, costly venture in the outer solar system problematic.
"I love Mars, but I think the two of them" — Enceladus and Europa — "provide the highest probability of finding extant life," said Mary Voytek, senior scientist for NASA's astrobiology program. She said she is "torn" about which moon would be the better destination for a robotic probe.
The description of the subsurface sea on Enceladus is based entirely on indirect evidence. The body of water, if it exists, is covered with at least 20 miles of ice, according to the new report. But there are several lines of evidence that point to its presence.
The first is gravitational: The Cassini spacecraft, which has been exploring the Saturn system for nearly a decade, has made multiple flybys of Enceladus. Faint changes in the wavelengths of radio signals sent back to Earth have enabled scientists to calculate how the moon's gravity tugs on the spacecraft. These are not simple calculations, because the gravitational effects have to be disentangled from other effects, including the drag on the spacecraft as it flies through the plumes of water vapor.
But ultimately the scientists created a model for the moon's interior and what appears to be a striking gravitational asymmetry. Around the moon's south pole, there's something that's slightly off, and the calculations seem to be begging for the model of the interior to include some material denser than water ice. Liquid water — about 7 percent denser than ice in those conditions — seems to be the answer.
Another line of evidence is the moon's shape: It has a shallow dimple, a depression, at the south pole. There's missing mass. This fits with the hypothesis that there's denser water down below, deforming the planet's shape.
"We know the composition of the shell. We know that it's water ice. So it's pretty obvious to think that some of the ice is molten and, therefore, if you melt part of the ice, if you transform it, the volume of it reduces, and you create a depression," said Luciano Iess, a professor of space systems at the University of Sapienza in Rome and the lead author of the Science paper. (The Cassini mission, which included the Huygens probe dropped to the surface of Saturn's moon Titan, is a joint endeavor of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency.)
Finally, there are those plumes, which spew water vapor into space. It's possible to generate such a phenomenon without geysers; instead, you could make plumes by rubbing blocks of ice together. But the plumes could be created by a deep ocean sending water up through cracks and into space.
So could there be life there? That's highly speculative. Even if, in a general sense, Enceladus has features of habitability, it's not clear how long the sea has existed, or whether it has ever had the right conditions for the origin of life. The origin of life is its own special mystery. Does it require an evaporating tidal pool bathed in sunshine — what Darwin called a "warm little pond"?
"Liquid water's not enough — not enough for the origin of life certainly," said Carol Cleland, a University of Colorado professor of philosophy who has written about astrobiology. For example, "You need an energy source so that you can drive thermodynamically uphill processes."
Chris McKay, a NASA astrobiologist who has been a major advocate for a new Enceladus mission, says this moon has the major essentials for life as we know it. There's the liquid water, obviously, and energy from tidal forces, plus such life-friendly elements as carbon and nitrogen, which were detected by Cassini when it flew through the plumes.
"Carbon and nitrogen are the concrete and rebar — you need them to build," McKay said, describing a partial blueprint for life as we know it.
He said he's optimistic about the existence of extraterrestrial life, but knows that he and his colleagues have yet to come up with a single sample.
"It's the occupational hazard of astrobiology to jump to the conclusion that you want to be true. I have to constantly chide myself and my colleagues for doing that," McKay said.
Chris Chyba, a professor of astrophysical sciences at Princeton, said any discussion about extraterrestrial life is hampered by a lack of a "theory of life."
"Trying to define it the way you define, say, a chair, is a hopeless project," Chyba said.
He compared it to the difficulties of Leonardo da Vinci five centuries ago when he tried to describe what water is: "It's impossible for him to explain what water is because he was trying to do it before there was any theory of molecules or atoms."
Hidden sea on Saturn's moon Enceladus revealed, boosting hopes for life
New data from NASA's Cassini mission appear to confirm a large liquid-water sea below the icy crust of Enceladus, a small Saturn moon. The sea could be habitable for microbes, at least.
Pete Spotts – The Christian Science Monitor
Saturn's tiny moon Enceladus appears to host a regional under-ice sea sporting at least as much water as Lake Superior, according to measurements made by NASA's Cassini spacecraft, which is currently touring Saturn and its moons.
Evidence for the sea is indirect, based on precise measurements of the moon's gravity field. Even so, the measurements allow for a first look at the extent and volume of the sea, a feature that for nine years has been a subject of keen scientific interest and some debate.
Speculation about an under-ice sea blossomed in 2005, when Cassini surprised researchers with images of plumes of ice crystals and dust erupting from long fissures at Enceladus' South Pole.
Because liquid water is a necessary ingredient for life on Earth, the presence of water on Enceladus, coupled with an energy source persistent enough to keep the plumes supplied with fresh material, would suggest that at least for microbes, the moon is potentially habitable, if not already inhabited.
The results solidify Enceladus' role as an attractive hunting ground for future missions focused on identifying potential habitats for life. It shares similarities with its much heftier cousin, Jupiter's moon Europa, which recently made its own headlines after researchers discovered plumes erupting from its surface.
These two moons alone suggest that researchers are confronting "a kind of cornucopia of habitable environments in the outer solar system," says Jonathan Lunine, a planetary scientist at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y., and a member of the team that analyzed the gravity data.
"What this discovery tells us is that we need to be more aggressive in getting the next generation of spacecraft both to Europa and to the Saturn system once the Cassini mission is over."
The team estimates that the sea sits beneath about 30 miles of ice and extends from the south pole to at least half way to the moon's equator in every direction. The sea's depth ranges from a few miles to perhaps six miles at its deepest locations. It may even extend farther north, although it would become an increasingly thin layer with distance.
The moon's overall structure consists of a rocky core with a radius of about 125 miles with a layer of water ice about 30 miles thick, according to Cassini data. Scientists believe the sea is sustained between the two largely by tidal heating – the energy imparted to the moon by Saturn's gravity.
Evidence of the sea came from measuring changes in the Cassini's speed as it encountered subtle changes in the Enceladus' gravity. These changes reflect differences in the amount of the moon's mass beneath the spacecraft as it passes overhead, explains David Stevenson, a planetary scientist at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena and a member of the team reporting the results in Friday's issue of the journal Science.
For instance, if the craft passes over a broad basin in the ice, it would tend to sense less mass than expected if the moon was a uniform sphere. Passing over elevated areas would register more mass than expected.
As Cassini passed over Enceladus' south pole, it detected a drop in mass relative to the region's surroundings, indicating that the region formed a depression. But the mass reading was too large, given the depth and extent of the depression. Something beneath the ice had to be adding as significant amount of mass.
"The natural way to do this it to have a layer of water, because water is more dense than ice," Dr. Stevenson said during a pre-publication briefing on Wednesday. The team was led by Luciano Iess, a professor of aeronautical engineering at Sapienza Università di Roma in Rome.
Even before the release of the gravity data, chemical analysis of the plumes supported the existence of a large body of water, notes Christopher McKay, an astrogeophysicist at NASA's Ames Research Center at Moffett Field, Calif.
Cassini has detected sodium in plume crystals near the moon's surface and tiny particles of silicates throughout the plume and in Saturn's E ring, which is fed by Enceladus' plumes. The sodium suggested a salty water source, while the silicates suggested that the water was in contact with a rocky core.
Chemistry "provided the most compelling evidence that the source of the plume was liquid, and not some sort of snow or ice eruption," as some researchers had suggested, says Dr. McKay, who was not involved in the gravity-field study.
Now, "this gravity data is further evidence that, indeed, the source of the plume is liquid," he says, adding that the presence of liquid "is incredibly important from an astrobiology point of view."
Other mechanisms have been proposed to explain the presence of liquids that would feed the plumes. The friction of tidal heating could provide enough heat to melt some of the ice but not to create a sea. Or the water could have pooled in relatively shallow pockets distributed along the fissures.
Meanwhile, at the other extreme, some researchers had suggested that the moon hosted a global ocean.
Caltech's Stevenson acknowledges that he held the minority view that evidence for an ocean was equivocal at best. But now, "I happen to like the idea of a regional sea because it does fit the data rather nicely and it also makes it easier to understand why the activity is concentrated at the south pole."
His acceptance of a sea on Enceladus is significant, suggests NASA's McKay.
Given Stevenson's initial skepticism, "his acceptance of an idea usually means that it's achieved a high bar of credibility," McKay says.
The Cassini mission currently is expected to operate through May 2017.
'We Did Not Tell NASA to Stop Cooperation With Russia' – US State Department
RIA Novosti
The US State Department did not call upon NASA to suspend its contacts with Russia, a spokesperson for the State Department said Thursday.
NASA announced on Wednesday that amid tensions over Ukraine it would freeze cooperation with Russia, excluding collaboration on the International Space Station.
"I know that there were false reports on Thursday claiming that the US State Department told them to do that. As much as I would have liked to give orders to NASA, we do not do that," said State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf.
The Verge network reported that the space agency's decision was made based on instructions sent by the State Department to all federal agencies, including NASA.
Ivan Moiseyev, the director of the Russian Space Policy Institute, told RIA Novosti on Thursday that the freeze was unlikely to have any catastrophic repercussions for the Russian space program, adding that Russia does not depend on the US space industry.
Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin, who oversees the space industry, also doubted the move will have any negative consequences for Roscosmos.
"NASA has halted cooperation with Roscosmos, except for work on the ISS. But our cooperation with NASA was only on the ISS," Rogozin said by Twitter on Thursday.
NASA promised last month that the current crisis in Ukraine would not affect longstanding civilian space contacts with Russia, which date to the early 1990s.
A number of NASA employees have condemned the latest decision to suspend the ties, saying cooperation in the peaceful exploration of outer space should not be affected by earthly politics.
Tensions between Russia and the West rose after the ouster of Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych in February, followed by the rise to power of Ukrainian nationalist politicians in the new government in Kiev, which Moscow considers illegitimate.
The subsequent reunification of Crimea with Russia, sparked by deepening concerns about ultranationalistic threats to the Russian-speaking population of the region, triggered a crisis in relations between Moscow and the West.
Space station sidesteps space junk again
AP
The International Space Station had to dodge space junk again — the second time in less than three weeks.
NASA said the station fired its thrusters Thursday afternoon, moving up about half a mile, to avoid some parts from an old Ariane (a-ree-AN') 5 rocket. The European Space Agency launches Ariane rockets out of South America.
The junk would have come within 1,040 feet of the outpost. NASA said the six man crew was never in danger.
NASA spokesman Kelly Humphries said the space agency has had to consider sidestepping space junk dozens of times since the outpost was launched in 1998, sometimes canceling the orbital dodge at the last moment.
The station moved on March 16 to avoid an old Russian weather satellite part.
Nasa's Robonaut 2 scrubs up for space surgery
Tom Espiner – BBC News
It won't panic in an emergency, its hands don't shake after too little sleep, it won't miss a family after months away from base - in fact it doesn't even need to breathe.
Nasa's Robonaut 2 has the makings of the perfect space surgeon.
The humanoid has already been posted to the International Space Station, the only problem is its motor skills are somewhat rudimentary at the moment.
In truth, it can't even walk in zero gravity yet, and perhaps its most impressive physical feat to date has been to catch a floating roll of duct-tape.
But Nasa has high hopes for the new recruit, and techniques being developed by a team on the ground could mean the machine can eventually perform life-saving operations on its team-mates.
"The idea is for him to be the best medic, nurse, and physician," Dr Zsolt Garami of the Houston Methodist Hospital tells the BBC.
"Our plan is to use Robonaut as a telemedicine doctor in remote areas."
As Robonaut's name suggests, it is not alone. There are currently four versions of the android with more in development.
One of them is being trained on Earth to find a pulse in a dummy's neck using ultrasound, then to stick a needle into a vein.
"You want to avoid hitting the carotid artery," Dr Garami says.
The robot has great potential for precise work, he says.
For example, once it can give an injection, it will be able to find the same spot on a human body and use the same angle for the needle again.
He sees the robot eventually being used to perform intricate medical operations like endovascular surgery, where a patient is operated on through their large blood vessels.
Robot cleaner
But in the short-term Robonaut 2 faces a more mundane role as the space station's cleaner.
"The robot has to earn its stripes," Robonaut project leader Ron Diftler tells the BBC.
The machine has already been given "very boring tasks" on the International Space Station such as monitoring air flow from vents, he adds.
Robonaut 2 was shipped up to the space station as just a torso, head and arms.
It is still waiting for a pair of legs to arrive on a forthcoming supply mission, but afterwards the robot should be able to begin to clean handrails, wipe down interior surfaces and other basic jobs.
The next stage is for it to learn to walk in, then to go outside the station to do maintenance tasks.
Its legs will have seven joints and cameras in the feet, so it will be able to "see" where it is going.
Eventually, the robot will perform "dull, dirty, and dangerous" jobs in inhospitable places, Mr Diftler says.
Robot control
Robonaut 2 can be remotely controlled by a ground crew member using a virtual-reality face mask and gloves.
The human controller can see what the robot sees, and manoeuvre it using gestures.
Hand and neck position data from the virtual reality kit are transmitted from the Houston command centre into space, and a video feed and data are beamed back.
It can also be controlled through keyboard commands on a laptop.
The robot has five eyes as part of its vision system, and can "see" the same wavelengths of light as a human, plus infrared light.
It has two high-resolution visible light cameras that transmit stereoscopic video to its operators, and two back-up cameras. It's "mouth" is actually an infrared camera to aid its depth perception.
There is no room in its head for a brain, so the aluminium and steel robot "thinks" with its stomach, which is packed with powerful processors.
The fingers have tendons that run into the forearm of the robot in a similar way to the human arm.
When the robot touches an object, tiny sensors on the fingers measure the force the robot is applying, and allow for a soft touch.
Robonaut 2 has not been designed to have super-human strength, but it's strong by human standards - it can lift and move a 20lb (9kg) weight around in Earth's gravity with one arm.
Time lag
One of the main challenges in surgical telemedicine is the time lag between the surgeon's movements and what the robot does, according to telepresence expert Gordon Mair from the University of Strathclyde.
"If you were to make an incision, there would be a certain amount of time before the robot did it," he explains.
This could seriously affect an operation, as even a second's delay could mean the robot makes too deep or shallow an incision.
The signal takes time to transmit over long distances, with the time lag becoming longer as the distances get bigger.
The time lag for signals between Earth and the International Space Station can be up to a couple of seconds, and can cut out for much longer periods, Mr Diftler adds.
For missions to Mars, the lag could be 20 or 30 seconds, making the problem worse.
One possible way around the issue would be for astronauts inside the station to control the robot.
It could offer them an extra pair of hands, for example helping apply pressure on a wound during an operation.
The robot could also be programmed to act autonomously during parts of an operation, with a controller commanding it to go through a sequence of stages.
Robonaut 2 already has some capabilities to act by itself in various tasks.
For example, Mission Control can tell it to pick something up, and it can use its vision system to locate the object, identify it, then reach out and grab it.
The automaton has a long road ahead of it before it can become an autonomous surgeon, but Nasa's big plans may see the robot go from space station toddler to medic on Mars.
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