A veteran Russian cosmonaut, a Japanese shuttle flier, and a NASA astronaut making his first space flight docked with the International Space Station Tuesday after a two-day orbital chase, donning Santa hats to mark the holiday season.
With Commander Oleg Kotov monitoring a problem-free automated approach to the huge lab complex, the Russian Soyuz TMA-17 spacecraft docked at an Earth-facing port on the Russian Zarya module at 5:48 p.m. EST, as the two spacecraft sailed 220 miles above the Atlantic Ocean east of Rio De Janeiro, Brazil.
Soyuz Commander Oleg Kotov, left, chats with family members after docking with the International Space Station. Timothy Creamer and Soichi Noguchi look on to his left, while Maxim Suraev and station Commander Jeff Williams float in the foreground.
(Credit: NASA TV)Hatches were opened about an hour and a half later, after leak checks to make sure the Soyuz was firmly latched in place.
Expedition 22 Commander Jeffrey Williams and cosmonaut Maxim Suraev were standing by to welcome Kotov and his two crewmates--Japanese astronaut Soichi Noguchi and NASA astronaut Timothy Creamer--on board to boost the lab's complement back up to five.
"It's great to see all you guys on orbit," Bill Gerstenmaier, NASA's chief of space operations, radioed from the Russian mission control center near Moscow. "Have a great Christmas, a good New Year. I can't think of a better family to have in space than you. I'm here with your families in the control center, so have a great expedition."
"Thank you, Gerst, it's good to hear your voice, it's great to have these guys on board," Williams replied. "It completes the complement of Expedition 22."
"Oleg, hello, we're so happy to see you aboard the station one more time," a family member radioed Kotov. "Daddy, I'm so proud of you. You're the best father in the world! We wish you the best of luck."
The Soyuz TMA-17 spacecraft slowly approaches its docking port on the International Space Station after an automated approach.
(Credit: NASA TV)"Thanks to you for coming, thank you for your words, I love you very much and I'll talk to you soon," Kotov replied.
Said Creamer: "Everything's doing really great here. It's better than great, it's 154 times better than great. So thanks for the well wishes."
Williams and Suraev have had the station to themselves since December 1 when cosmonaut Roman Romanenko, European Space Agency astronaut Frank De Winne, and Canadian Robert Thirsk returned to Earth after a six-month stay in space.
Kotov, Creamer, and Noguchi plan to remain aboard the lab complex for a six-month tour of duty. Williams and Suraev will return to Earth in late March, but three more crew members are scheduled for launch in early April to boost the crew to six.
A Russian Soyuz spacecraft carrying three fresh crew members bound for the International Space Station blasted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan early Monday local time, lighting up a cold, pre-dawn sky with a torrent of flame visible for miles around.
With Soyuz commander Oleg Kotov, a station veteran, Japanese astronaut Soichi Noguchi, a shuttle veteran, and rookie astronaut Timothy Creamer strapped into the Soyuz TMA-17 capsule, the rocket roared to life at 4:52 p.m. EST Sunday (3:52 a.m. Monday local time) and quickly climbed away from the same pad used by Yuri Gagarin at the dawn of the space age.
The Soyuz TMA-17 spacecraft blasts off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.
(Credit: NASA)Liftoff was timed for roughly the moment Earth's rotation carried the launch pad into the plane of the space station's orbit. Kotov, seated in the spacecraft's center seat, was flanked by Creamer to his right and Noguchi on his left.
The climb to space appeared normal and live television views from inside the TMA-17's central module showed all three crew members relaxed and at ease as they monitored their cockpit instrument displays. Noguchi flashed a thumbs up and Creamer waved.
A little less than nine minutes after liftoff, the spacecraft slipped into its planned preliminary orbit and Kotov reported "everyone feels great, no problems." Later this evening, Kotov planned to oversee two rendezvous rocket firings to fine-tune the craft's approach to the lab complex.
A third rocket firing is planned for Monday and if all goes well, the TMA-17 spacecraft will execute an automated approach to the Earth-facing port of the station's Zarya module Tuesday for a docking around 5:54 p.m.
Waiting to welcome the new crew members on board will be Expedition 22 commander Jeffrey Williams and Maxim Suraev, launched to the outpost Sept. 30. Suraev and Williams, who has a previous station flight to his credit, have had the lab to themselves since December 1, when cosmonaut Roman Romanenko, European Space Agency astronaut Frank De Winne and Canadian Robert Thirsk returned to Earth after a six-month stay in space.
"One of the things we've learned over the last couple of years is it's really beneficial to have (experienced) crew members (on board) when a new crew arrives," said Kirk Shireman, deputy manager of the space station program at the Johnson Space Center in Houston.
"So while it'll be a new experience for these guys, the fact that Max and Jeff have already been up there, they'll know where everything is, they'll know how things work and that'll allow these three guys to quickly adapt and be able to hit the ground running."
According to an Associated Press report, Creamer told reporters he would miss his family over the Christmas holidays, but "we are going as a family together to a family in space." He has been using Twitter to keep friends, family and the public up to date and plans to continue posting from space.
"I thought if I can give you the status of what I am doing, what we are hoping for, what we are looking forward to seeing, those would be good little teasers," he said.
The Soyuz TMA-17 crew, bound for the International Space Station. Left to right: Soyuz commander Oleg Kotov, Timothy Creamer, Soichi Noguchi.
(Credit: NASA)After a break for Christmas and the New Year holidays, the crew will face a busy month in January.
Using the station's robot arm, a NASA pressurized mating adapter currently attached to the left side of the central Unity module will be relocated Jan. 5 to clear the way for attachment of a new U.S. module in February.
Suraev and Kotov plan a spacewalk January 14 to finish outfitting a new Russian docking port known as Poisk, or MRM-2, that was recently attached to the Zvezda command module's upward-facing hatch. Once that work is done, the Soyuz TMA-16 spacecraft now docked to Zvezda's aft port--the capsule that carried Williams and Suraev to the station--will be moved to Poisk on January 20.
The shuttle Endeavour is scheduled for launch from the Kennedy Space Center on Fabruary 7 to deliver Tranquility, or Node 3, a roomy module that will be attached to Unity's left-side port. Once installed and checked out, a toilet now installed in the Destiny lab module will be moved into Tranquility, along with exercise equipment and other life support gear that has been temporarily housed elsewhere.
"This increment really sets the stage for the last year of the shuttle program," Shireman said. "It's a big growth year...the last major growth spurt for the International Space Station...We're looking forward to a really, really exciting year."
As it currently stands, four Soyuz flights to the station are planned in 2010, NASA's final five shuttle missions and up to six unmanned Progress supply ships. Along with Tranquility, a new Russian module will be delivered by the shuttle, along with a cargo transfer module that will be left aboard the station after the final shuttle visit.
"This is the beginning of another phase where we learn to operate with a larger crew size, more demands on the hardware, more demands on the space station," said Bill Gerstenmaier, NASA's associated administrator of space operations. "So for the systems to work right requires a lot of extra preparation and this is the beginning of that preparation."
Said chief astronaut Peggy Whitson: "It's obviously very complicated. I think we have done in the past several years a fantastic job of making very difficult things look easy. We always have problems, but we always seem to be able to overcome them and I think that's kind of NASA's theme for survival.
"We expect that adding on a new module, two new modules this year ... it's going to be pretty exciting, expanding the station even further. I know when I was up there when we increased the station volume with three new modules it was just really exciting, opening up this huge new space to live in and explore."
UPDATED at 5:30 p.m. EST with Soyuz launch.
Science buffs got an early Christmas present when rare video was released showing a spectacular undersea volcanic eruption deep in the Pacific Ocean.
The West Mata volcano sits nearly 4,000 feet below the surface of the Pacific in an area bordered by Fiji, Tonga, and Samoa. It was discovered in May by scientists with funding from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the National Science Foundation. Lucky researchers managed to catch high-definition video of the eruption with the help of a remotely-operated underwater robot named Jason.
Jason's cameras captured masses of lava bubbling up into the cold seawater, chunks of debris breaking off vents and falling to the seafloor, and enormous clouds of volcanic ash billowing into the water.
The discovery is significant for several reasons. For one, it is the deepest erupting volcano ever seen. As marine geologist Bob Embley said, "Since the water pressure at that depth suppresses the violence of the volcano's explosions, we could get the underwater robot within feet of the active eruption. On land, or even in shallow water, you could never hope to get this close and see such great detail."
It's also the first deep-water eruption observed in the last 25 years of submarine volcano research by NOAA and the NSF. In addition, the kind of lava spewing from the West Mata volcano is rare. Known as boninite lava, it's believed to be among the hottest on the planet. Prior to the West Mata discovery, it had only been seen on extinct volcanoes that were more than a million years old.
Despite the volcano's incredible depth and an environment as acidic as battery acid, the area is far from lifeless. Tim Shank, a biologist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (which operates the Jason robot), discovered shrimp thriving in the area of the eruption. He is now comparing the DNA of the West Mata shrimp to that of shrimp found in similar environments 3,000 miles away to determine whether they are the same species.
Scientists presented their work Thursday at an annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union.
(Credit:
ATR)
A humanoid robot has been deployed to a supermarket in Japan to help senior shoppers with their grocery purchases.
The modified version of the Robovie II robot developed by Japan's Advanced Telecommunications Research Institute International, or ATR, is working as a temporary shopping assistant at Apita-Seikadai supermarket in Kyoto until March. It's another experiment to test the viability of advanced personal robots in everyday situations.
Robovie can wirelessly receive a list of items selected beforehand by the customer, carry the shopping basket, and make recommendations about what to buy.
In the video below, the robot slowly follows a 67-year-old woman around the supermarket, carrying her basket, as they are followed by reporters. Robovie keeps telling the lady that the fruit she puts in the basket looks delicious, to which she agrees. It then suggests lettuce for a salad.
ATR's Robovie series has been developed into several machines. Some have been used as crowd monitors to detect people who are lost, while others have been miniaturized as hobby robots.
Via Pink Tentacle
The MQ-1 Predator.
(Credit: U.S. Air Force)Iraqi insurgents have reportedly intercepted live video feeds from the U.S. military's Predator drones using a $25.95 Windows application that allows them to track the pilotless aircraft undetected.
Hackers working with Iraqi militants were able to determine which areas of the country were under surveillance by the U.S. military, The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday, adding that video feeds from drones in Afghanistan also appear to have been compromised.
Meanwhile, a senior Air Force officer said Wednesday that a wave of new surveillance aircraft, both manned and unmanned, were being deployed to Afghanistan to bolster "eyes in the sky" protection for the influx of American troops ordered by President Obama.
This apparent security breach, which had been known in military and intelligence circles to be possible, arose because the Predator unmanned aerial vehicles do not use encryption in the final link to their operators on the ground.
Read more of "U.S. was Warned of Predator Drone Hacking" at CBSNews.com.
Earlier this week I had the very awesome opportunity to attend the first flight of the Boeing 787 Dreamliner in Seattle. This is usually Daniel Terdiman's beat, but knowing that I'm a huge airline geek, CNET let me take a break from cell phones to cover the first flight. Daniel wrapped up the event with blogs and great photos of the take-off and landing--I helped by shooting the take-off video--but I also had the opportunity to visit the Dreamliner Gallery.
The gallery, which is located in Everett, Wash., just near Paine Field where the 787 was built and took off, offers potential customers a chance to check out the Dreamliner's interior features. A series of rooms display various seating arrangements, galleys, lavatories, and crew rest areas. You also can view mockups of the cockpit and a section of the passenger cabin. So for your own glimpse into the Dreamliner Gallery, check out the slideshow below.
Let's say you find a lump somewhere and decide to go in for an exam. And let's say there was a little box to check that allows you to get a shot that targets and kills cancerous cells right then and there, no surgery, no waiting, and possibly no radiation or chemo therapy down the road. Would you check the box?
These nanoshells target tumors in the lungs and, upon excitation with near-infrared light, destroy only the cancerous tissue.
(Credit: The Alliance for NanoHealth)Since time matters when it comes to cancer, the creation of a single nanoparticle--traceable in real time via MRI--that tags and zaps cancer cells all in one procedure has a team of researchers raising their eyebrows in hopeful arches.
"Some of the most essential questions in nanomedicine today are about biodistribution--where particles go inside the body and how they get there," says Naomi Halas, a nanomedicine pioneer at Rice University in Houston, Texas, whose findings have just been published in Advanced Functional Materials. "Noninvasive tests for biodistribution will be enormously useful on the path to FDA approval, and this technique--adding MRI functionality to the particle you're testing and using for therapy--is a very promising way of doing this."
The all-in-one particles are modeled on nanoshells, a cancer treatment Halas invented in the '90s that are now in human clinical trials. The shells harvest laser light that would typically pass through the body harmlessly and convert that light into heat that destroys cancerous cells.
Halas, who designed the new particle with assistant professor Amit Joshi of Baylor College of Medicine's Division of Molecular Imaging, added a fluorescent dye to the nanoshell so that it glows when hit by near-infrared (NIR) light.
Tracking the nanoparticles by their fluorescence, the team confirmed that the particles do indeed target cancer cells and kill them with heat. Even though human clinical trials are probably a few years out, the hope is that eventually patients will be able to get a shot with a cocktail of these nanoparticles and antibodies tailored to specific cancer types, and then sit back and watch the war on tumors in real time via MRI and/or NIR imaging.
Halas adds that the team has been careful to choose components that are either already approved for medical use or are already in clinical trials: "We're putting together components that all have good, proven track records."
The clever folks at MIT have developed a smart wheel that could give bicycle riders a 21st century boost.
Unveiled Tuesday at the Copenhagen Conference on Climate Change, MIT's new Copenhagen wheel is trying to do its part to help the environment by making bike riding easier and more enjoyable.
The wheel's battery can store energy as you step on the brakes and then return that power back to help you climb a hill or boost your speed. A sensor inside the hub measures your effort when you ride. As you pedal forward, the sensor tells the wheel's electric motor to give you a boost. When you hit the brakes, the motor regenerates, slowing you down and recharging the batteries. The goal behind this design is to encourage people to bike farther distances, relying less on gas-guzzling transportation.
"Over the past few years we have seen a kind of biking renaissance, which started in Copenhagen and has spread from Paris to Barcelona to Montreal," said Carlo Ratti, director of the MIT Senseable City Laboratory and the Copenhagen Wheel project, in a statement. "It's sort of like 'Biking 2.0'--whereby cheap electronics allow us to augment bikes and convert them into a more flexible, on-demand system."
(Credit:
Senseable City Lab)
Beyond giving you an energy boost, the wheel has other secrets in its bright red hub. Using sensors and a Bluetooth connection, the wheel can talk to an iPhone mounted on the handlebars. Through an iPhone app, you can check your speed, direction, and distance traveled. The wheel can also monitor traffic conditions and smog and even keep track of your bicycling buddies.
The Copenhagen wheel embeds all the required electronics inside the hub, so no other gadgets need to be added to the bike frame. A special spoking method devised by the team also lets you install the hub on any rim.
Any existing bike can be retrofitted with the wheel. In fact, the MIT team sees it as a plug-and play-device, one that any bike owner should be able to easily install as a back wheel.
... Read moreHave you noticed how many times bullets miss their mark in the movies?
If you need to shoot a bank robber, Sean Bean, John Malkovich, or even an ugly looking two-dimensional chap on a distant target, it seems as if it's very much a hit-or-miss affair.
This, believes professor Timothy Kraft of the University of Alabama, Birmingham, is because no one has re-thought the basic principles of a pistol sight for a hundred years.
Kraft, who happens to rather enjoy shooting and is good at it, dedicated some of his finest mental armory to solving the problem. As he describes it on the university's site, Kraft decided to consider what the subconscious is doing in the milliseconds between aiming and firing.
When your eye sees a familiar shape that isn't fully formed, it is quick to fill in the blanks. So Kraft created a triangular sight, called an Opti-sight, which has the top part incomplete.
"This triangular shape that I've created allows the brain to visualize concentric triangles whose imaginary apexes focus the shooter's attention on the exact target bull's-eye," he said on the site.
New Gunsight Improves Marksmanship With Intuitive Aim, Says UAB Vision Scientist from uabnews on Vimeo.
Just as the U.S. Olympic shooting coach begs his charges not to think but to shoot, Kraft's device essentially makes the shooter feel more at one with the task.
"Opti-sight makes shooting very intuitive by allowing gunsight alignment to become subconscious," Kraft explained.
So what was so wrong with the sight that did for so many victims in times gone by? It seemed to work passably well for soldiers, policemen and especially for Matt Damon.
"The way a traditional gunsight works is all very disconnected," Kraft explained. "In order to get a good shot off you have to visually scan the gap between the front post and rear sight on the left and equalize that to the gap on the right, then align all that with the center of the target. It is too much for the eye and brain to process."
Technology that works with your subconscious rather than with the arrant mediocrity of the rational mind seems rather exciting. Now if we could only find an intuitive way to make sure that the target was always the the right one.
Japanese robot maker Kokoro, best known for its Actroid line of ultra-lifelike androids, will make robot clones of people in a special limited-time offer.
Osaka University roboticist Hiroshi Ishiguro (right) and his android clone, Geminoid.
(Credit: Tim Hornyak)The New Year promotion is being offered via select department stores in Japan. People willing to pay about $225,000 can have themselves recreated in robot form, with their robot clone having exactly the same face, hair, eyes, and body.
Kokoro will also model the buyer's voice, facial expressions, and upper-body movements to create the most lifelike doppelganger possible.
The Actroid and Geminoid androids are powered by a quiet air servo system that moves their upper bodies. They cannot walk.
Both are based on real people--one version of Actroid was based on a Japanese newscaster, and Geminoid is based on Osaka University roboticist Hiroshi Ishiguro.
Kokoro is only offering to make two robot clones. If more than two orders are received, the lucky buyers will be selected by lottery.
(Via Pink Tentacle)
