On Thursday, NASA announced it has released a set of 3D photo collections of the International Space Station and its Mars rover. The photos were created using Microsoft's Photosynth technology, which automatically stitches together hundreds of images from standard digital cameras.
(Credit: NASA)NASA said on Thursday that it has released a collection of 3D photographs of the International Space Station and its Mars rover.
The photos, which were created using Microsoft's Photosynth tool, show both internal and external views of the space station, as well as a model of the rover.
Because the images were prepared using Photosynth, users can zoom in or out of any of the images, allowing them to see "details of the space station's modules and solar arrays or...a more global view of the complex."
At the same time, the Mars rover images depict the latest iteration of the hardware being crafted at NASA's Mars Science Laboratory. The rover, NASA said, is expected to be launched to Mars in 2011.
Both collections are made up of hundreds of photos taken with standard digital cameras that have been stitched together automatically using Photosynth.
And this isn't the first time NASA has used Photosynth to present images of its various projects. In 2007, it employed the Microsoft Live Labs technology to showcase a 3D view of the Space Shuttle Endeavour.
On June 22, Geek Gestalt will kick off Road Trip 2009. After driving more than 12,000 miles in the Pacific Northwest, the Southwest, and the Southeast over the last three years, I'll be looking for the best in technology, science, military, nature, aviation and more in Colorado, Utah, Idaho, Wyoming, Montana, and South and North Dakota. If you have a suggestion for someplace to visit, drop me a line. And in the meantime, join the Road Trip 2009 Facebook page and follow my Twitter feed.
When the Space Shuttle Endeavour launches Friday afternoon, assuming it is not delayed, the astronauts onboard and the technicians on the ground at mission control will have at their disposal new software that could streamline the process of problem reporting and analysis.
The software, called the Problem Reporting Analysis and Corrective Action (PRACA) system, was created by the Human-Computer Interaction Group at NASA's Ames Research Center, and is designed to give a wide cross-section of people in the Space Shuttle ecosystem access to a single database package for tracking problems with the Shuttle and its associated infrastructure.
According to Alonso Vera, the lead of the Ames Human-Computer Interaction Group, the single, universally accessible PRACA package is replacing a set of more than 40 different database systems that had been used over the past 30 years by the many different parts of that Shuttle ecosystem.
And, like a related database system known as Items for Investigation (IFI) that is used for tracking International Space Station issues, the new PRACA was written using open-source Bugzilla tools that will save NASA considerable amounts of time and money.
Vera wouldn't say exactly how much the new systems cost to build, but he said they were an order of magnitude cheaper than what was being used before, closer to $100,000 than the $1 million it would have cost in the past.
More to the point, Vera explained, by using open-source Bugzilla tools, technicians will be able to make changes to either PRACA or IFI more or less on the fly, rather than having to submit any proposed changes to the publishers of proprietary software, steps that often took weeks to achieve.
The PRACA system is used, Vera said, to help anyone trying to diagnose problems with the Shuttle find reports of similar issues from the past to see how they were resolved. The IFI system, by contrast, is used by those involved with the Space Station to report new problems for later analysis.
Already, the new PRACA systems are being used in NASA's Constellation program, which will replace the Space Shuttle after 2010. But Friday's launch will be the first live test of the system, given that Constellation has yet to go into space. However, since it's only a test, the existing PRACA system will also be used.
Similarly, the Space Station program has now phased out its older IFI system and turned on the new version.
Vera said that the Space Shuttle program has yet to commit fully to the new PRACA system, though the Space Station program will do a full switchover in March 2009.
The crew of STS-126, the Space Shuttle launching Friday, will be delivering to the International Space Station a wastewater regeneration system that will recycle astronauts' urine.
(Credit: NASA)If you're the kind of person who wants to do research on the International Space Station, it appears that you may need to cross some boundaries of taste many of us wouldn't even consider.
According to a BBC News story Friday, the crew aboard the Space Shuttle Endeavour, which is scheduled to launch from the Kennedy Space Center on Friday afternoon, will be handing off to their Space Station colleagues a water regeneration system designed to, among other things, recycle urine for reuse as fresh water.
The system, which will ionize, filter, distill, and oxidize wastewater, "will make yesterday's coffee into today's coffee," one astronaut told the BBC.
The idea behind the $250 million system seems to have been to figure out a way to ensure that residents of the Space Station had a supply of fresh water. To date, the Space Station has had the luxury of getting water deliveries from newly arrived Space Shuttles. But the Shuttle program is slated for retirement after 2010, and that looks to end the program's role as, among other things, the Space Station's personal water truck.
Still, the system won't be implemented right away. First, NASA wants to be sure that it works, as designed, in a zero-gravity environment.
On Earth, astronaut testers are apparently convinced that the filtration technology works just fine.
"Some people may think it's downright disgusting," Endeavour astronaut Heidemarie Stefanyshyn-Piper told the BBC, "but if it's done correctly, you process water that's purer than what you drink here on Earth."
Some who have tried the recycled water did report a faint taste of iodine, but they didn't see that as a problem.
"Other than that, it is just as refreshing as any other kind of water," said Bob Bagdigian, who ran the system's development. "I've got some in my fridge. It tastes fine to me."
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