Category Archives: Transhuman News

Alien: Isolation review - Quit or Continue episode 2
In space, no-one can hear the Quit or Continue podcast. Which is a disaster, quite frankly, as this time around we #39;re giving Alien: Isolation the full podcast review treatment. Join regular...

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Alien: Isolation review - Quit or Continue episode 2 - Video

Black Tooth Moan - Space Station X (unknown intruder mix)
https://soundcloud.com/black-tooth-moan https://soundcloud.com/leviathant An electronic remix I made of a Black Tooth Moan track, as performed by my humble noisemaking robot ensemble.

By: Matthew Dunphy

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Black Tooth Moan - Space Station X (unknown intruder mix) - Video

Dec 04, 2014 Technology demonstrations aboard the International Space Station help drive space exploration. Credit: NASA

If necessity is the mother of invention, then survival in space breeds many "children." These children are the research and technologies demonstrated aboard the International Space Station. For 16 years, the station has provided researchers a platform in microgravity where they perform experiments and test technologies to allow humans to travel farther into the solar system than ever before. From life support systems to growing plants in space, the space station continues to drive human exploration for missions beyond low-Earth orbit.

NASA's Orion spacecraft, which is set to blast off on its first flight test in December, will demonstrate many technologies first tested aboard the space station. Orion, built to transport humans into deep space, embarks on a two-orbit, four-hour "Trial By Fire" on Dec. 5 to test many of its critical systems.

"Without what we've learned from having a continuous human presence in space for more than a decade, we wouldn't be able to think about sending people into deep space onboard Orion," said Mark Geyer, Orion Program manager. "We're testing out technologies and concepts on the space station right now that are necessary for the kind of long-duration trips Orion enables."

Technology demonstrations aboard the station beget new systems and concepts for on Earth and for space exploration. For example, the amine swingbed, which uses organic compounds with modified ammonia atoms, controls carbon dioxide and humidity in Orion. This type of recovery system also can operate on Earth to help remove carbon dioxide and humidity in tight spaces, like in mine tunnels or submarines.

With successful demonstrations of 3-D printing on the space station, the potential now exists to manufacture parts quickly and cheaply in space. Instead of waiting for a cargo delivery, astronauts could replace filters or faulty equipment simply by printing new parts. Researchers are gaining insight into improving 3-D printing technology on Earth by testing it in microgravity. This knowledge could help advance industry printing methods.

Environmental control and life support systems (ECLSS) aboard the station support humans in space. ECLSS includes wastewater recycling to provide clean water for bathing and drinking. It also includes oxygen generation systems to provide air for crews to breathe. These and other components of ECLSS help cut transportation costs for resupply and provide astronauts a habitable environment. This technology demonstration helps engineers design and develop improved closed-loop life support systems for long duration spacecraft.

"Testing various life support sub-systems is an ideal use of the space station," said George Nelson, manager of NASA's International Space Station Technology Demonstration. "Reliability of these systems on long duration missions is paramount. We can verify design reliability in the microgravity environment by using them on the station without any mission or crew risk, since the existing space station systems are always available."

Human behavioral health and performance also is taken into account for deep space missions where crew members reside in confined spaces for long periods of time. One study evaluates the effects of delayed communications for interplanetary crews that have to handle medical and other emergencies. This type of research also may help refine procedures for Earth-based teams that operate in extreme or remote environments with limited contact with a home base and its experts. Additionally, NASA recently announced funding for three proposals to help answer questions about neurological conditions related to behavioral health and performance on deep space exploration missions.

Finally, plant growth facilities on the station like Veggie may one day produce safe, fresh and nutritious crops for astronauts while giving the crew opportunities for relaxation and recreation. Using these facilities, researchers can glean knowledge about plant growth and development in microgravity. This information may improve growth, biomass production and farming practices on Earth.

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International Space Station enables interplanetary space ...

December 10, 2014

Image Caption: ESAs Automated Transfer Vehicle Georges Lematre seen from the International Space Station as it approaches for docking in August 2014. To the right of the ESA logo, three cameras around the front cone form part of the Laser Infrared Imaging Sensors, or LIRIS, experiment that demonstrated new rendezvous and docking technology. The lidar optical head and its box of electronics sit just above the ESA logo and form the second element of the tracking system. Credit: ESA/NASA/RoscosmosO. Artemyev

Provided by ESA

ESAs fifth and last Automated Transfer Vehicle tested a new technique before docking with the International Space Station in August, at the same time revealing the orbital complex in a new light.

ATV Georges Lematre demonstrated a set of European sensors that offers future improvements on the autonomous rendezvous and docking that these ferries have completed five times since 2008. ESAs goal is to perform an automated rendezvous further from home perhaps near Mars or with an uncooperative target such as an inert object.

Seeing through an eclipse

During Georges Lematres rendezvous using its proven system, the Laser Infrared Imaging Sensors, or LIRIS, experiment was turned on some two and a half hours and 3500 m from the Space Station. All of the sensors worked as expected and a large amount of data was recorded and stored on hard disks in ATVs cargo hold.

The disks were retrieved by ESA astronaut Alexander Gerst on 29 August and returned to Earth in Soyuz TMA-12M in September. The information is now being compared against the results from ATVs normal navigation sensors.

With ATV-5 pointing directly at the Station, the LIRIS infrared cameras tracked the weightless research Centre perfectly despite several 30-minute periods in darkness when the Sun was eclipsed by Earth and traditional cameras would have gone blind.

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ATV Views Space Station As Never Before

Astronauts on the International Space Station (ISS) no longer have to wait for a delivery from Earth if they are missing some gizmo in space. With the addition of a 3D printer aboard the space station they may now make a certain number of components themselves.

In November, NASA created history by successfully 3D printing the first object in space. An additive manufacturing device, or 3D printer, was turned on, and initiated the first official 3D print on the ISS. Developed in partnership with NASAs Marshall space flight center and Ames research center, the project takes a step towards commercially and sustainably fabricating objects off of our planet.

The first print job was a small plate for mounting the 3D printer extruder print head that is the important part of the printer where the plastic material is heated and becomes liquid, so it can be squeezed out of a small nozzle. When the layer after layer of plastic placed on top of each other, 3D objects slowly becoming the reality.

After doing an initial calibration, engineers on the ground sent commands to the printer to make its first object. This first print serves to demonstrate the potential of the technology to produce replacement parts on demand if a critical component fails in space. The printer will be controlled from the control center on Earth that sends print jobs up and tells the astronauts when the object is ready for pickup.

This first print is the initial step toward providing an on-demand machine shop capability away from Earth, Niki Werkheiser, project manager for the International Space Station 3-D Printer project, said in a statement. The space station is the only laboratory where we can fully test this technology in space.

The plate says MADE IN SPACE and the logo of NASA were printed without problems, though the plastic was something better to the tray print than expected. If the printer works as planned, astronauts will be able to make simple things based on instructions from the ground.

As NASA ventures further into space, whether to redirect an asteroid or sending humans to Mars, the space agency needs transformative technology to reduce cargo weight and volume. In the future, perhaps astronauts will be able to print the tools and components they need in space. NASA hopes that astronauts will be able to print a variety of spare parts and tools to be used in space, and which would otherwise take a long time and cost for the sendoff from Earth.

This is the first time weve ever used a 3D printer in space, and we are learning, even from these initial operations, Werkheiser said. As we print more parts, well be able to learn whether some of the effects we are seeing are caused by microgravity or just part of the normal fine-tuning process for printing. When we get the parts back on Earth, well be able to do a more detailed analysis to find out how they compare to parts printed on Earth.

NASA says the space station will be a good spot to test this kind of stuff out. Additive manufacturing with 3-D printers will allow space crews to be less reliant on supply missions from Earth and lead to sustainable, self-reliant exploration missions where resupply is difficult and costly. The space station provides the optimal place to perfect this technology in microgravity.

The first 3D printed objects built in space will be returned to Earth in 2015 for detailed analysis and comparison to identical ground control samples. The goal of this analysis is to verify that the 3-D printing process works the same in microgravity as it does on Earth.

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Era of in-space manufacturing starts as NASA creates first 3D printed object in space

The fifth SpaceX cargo mission to the International Space Station (ISS) under NASA's Commercial Resupply Services contract is scheduled to launch at 2:31 p.m. EST Tuesday, Dec. 16, from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. NASA Television coverage of the launch begins at 1:15 p.m.

NASA will host a series of prelaunch news conferences Monday, Dec. 15 at the agency's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. All briefings, which are subject to a change in time, will air live on NASA TV and the agency's website.

The first briefing, airing at 10 a.m., will cover the Cloud-Aerosol Transport System (CATS) Earth science instrument headed to the space station. Participants for this briefing will be: -- Julie Robinson, ISS Program chief scientist at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston -- Colleen Hartman, deputy director for science at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland -- Robert J. Swap, program scientist with the Earth Science Division at NASA Headquarters in Washington -- Matthew McGill, CATS principal investigator at Goddard

The second briefing, at 12:30 p.m., will provide up-to-date information about the launch. Participants for the prelaunch briefing will be: -- Mike Suffredini, NASAs ISS Program manager -- Hans Koenigsmann, vice president for Mission Assurance at SpaceX -- Kathy Winters with the U.S. Air Forces 45th Weather Squadron at Patrick Air Force Base in Florida

The final briefing of the day, at 2 p.m., will cover some of the numerous science investigations headed to the space station. Participants for the science briefing will be: -- Julie Robinson, NASAs ISS Program chief scientist -- Michael Roberts, senior research pathway manager at the Center for the Advancement of Science in Space, headquartered in Melbourne, Florida -- Cheryl Nickerson, Micro-5 principal investigator at Arizona State University -- Samuel Durrance, NR-SABOL principal investigator at the Florida Institute of Technology in Melbourne

Media and the public can join the conversation using #ISScargo and #SpaceX5, and ask questions using #askNASA.

For more information about media accreditation, contact Jennifer Horner at 321-867-6598 orjennifer.p.horner@nasa.gov.

For an updated schedule of prelaunch briefings, events and NASA TV coverage, visit:

http://go.nasa.gov/1FrjDEO

For launch countdown coverage, NASA's launch blog, and more information about the mission, visit:

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NASA Updates Briefings for Fifth SpaceX Resupply Mission to Space Station

You may know opals as fiery gemstones, but something special called OPALS is floating above us in space. On the International Space Station, the Optical Payload for Lasercomm Science (OPALS) is demonstrating how laser communications can speed up the flow of information between Earth and space, compared to radio signals.

"OPALS has shown that space-to-ground laser communications transmissions are practical and repeatable," said Matthew Abrahamson, OPALS mission manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

"As a bonus, OPALS has collected an enormous amount of data to advance the science of sending lasers through the atmosphere. We look forward to continuing our testing of this technology, which sends information to and from space faster than with radio signals."

Laser communication science has Earth benefits, too. Faster downlinks from space could mean people receive higher-definition video from both satellites orbiting our planet and spacecraft farther into space, including NASA's Mars rovers. Laser communication technology also has the potential to provide faster Internet connections in remote areas on Earth. Anyone with an interest in high-speed, high-quality downloads may benefit from this technology -- including researchers, engineers and consumers.

OPALS has completed its four-month prime mission. In the next phase of the mission, OPALS scientists will look at how adaptive optics can increase the efficiency of the optical communications link. The lessons learned from OPALS will make future optical links more robust and reliable.

OPALS launched to the space station aboard a SpaceX Dragon cargo capsule in April. The payload was able to establish an optical communications link when its laser locked onto a ground beacon emitted by the Optical Communications Telescope Laboratory's ground station at JPL's Table Mountain Observatory in Wrightwood, California. The technology uses a beacon with four individual lasers to average the effects of atmospheric turbulence.

"Four lasers from the ground station travel through the sky toward the space station. Under clear, dark background conditions, it's very easy for the payload to acquire the ground beacon. Daylight conditions have proven more challenging, but we are working on increasing capabilities during the day as well, through software enhancements," Abrahamson said.

OPALS had 18 successful passes from Table Mountain: nine during daylight and nine during nighttime. The payload was able to track the ground receiver with stunning accuracy.

"At times, weather was a challenge, with clouds obscuring the lasers. The payload showed the capability to reacquire the signal after cloud blockage," Abrahamson said.

OPALS had its first success on June 5, a night pass lasting 148 seconds. It sent a copy of the same video (with the message, "Hello, World!") every 3.5 seconds. With traditional downlink methods, the 175-megabit video would take 10 minutes to transmit.

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OPALS: Light Beams Let Data Rates Soar