Space station loses power channel, backup working

The International Space Station is featured in this image photographed by an STS-132 crew member on board the Space Shuttle Atlantis after the station and shuttle began their post-undocking relative separation. 

Credit: NASA/Crew of STS-132

The International Space Station is down one power channel because of an electrical malfunction but NASA says everyone and everything is safe up there.

Mission Control says one of eight power channels went down Thursday because of an apparent trip in an electrical switch.

Most of the station systems that depend on that power line immediately switched to a backup. Within an hour, flight controllers moved the remaining systems to the backup power channel.

NASA is trying to determine what happened and how to fix it. Meanwhile, all space station systems are operating normally.

Officials say the problem will not affect Tuesday's departure by three of the six astronauts. An American, Japanese and Russian will return to Earth in a Soyuz capsule following a half-year mission.

USGS LandSat-8: LDCM Earth Observation satellite appears to be working flawlessly

A new satellite hovering nearly 450 miles (725 kilometers) above the Earth appears to working flawlessly as it embarks on a 10-year mission to document the planet's surface, scientists and engineers at the U.S. Geological Survey's Earth Resources Observation and Science Center said Monday.

LDCM Landsat 8 is sending more than 400 data-filled images per day back to the EROS center north of Sioux Falls, where they will be archived and made available for free download by scientists or anyone else who's interested.

Tom Loveland

The center's mission requires images to be publicly available within 48 hours of their capture, though most will be ready within 24 hours, said project scientist Tom Loveland.

The new orbiter has several advantages over its still-functioning predecessor Landsat 7, which captures just 250 images a day.

Landsat 8 also boasts two new spectral bands, one to see deeper into oceans, lakes and rivers and another to detect cirrus clouds and correct for atmospheric effects, Loveland said.

The new satellite's infrared band is split into two, allowing for more accurate surface temperature readings, he added.

"It should really make a difference in our ability to map and characterize changes going on in the surface of the Earth," Loveland said.

NASA launched Landsat 8 into space in February. Since then, teams have been running it through a barrage of tests before placing the satellite into orbit 438 miles (705 kilometers) above the planet's surface.

Jim Nelson

"The spacecraft has been extremely healthy," said Jim Nelson, ground systems manager. "The instruments have performed really well."

The EROS Center, the main federal repository for satellite images, will officially take over the mission May 30 from NASA.

Since 1972, Landsat satellites have been continuously snapping pictures across the globe as part of a 40-year mission to document the planet.

Landsat 8, which is about the size of parcel delivery truck with a 30-foot (9-meter)-long deployed sheet of solar panels, is stocked with a 10-year supply of fuel. It travels at a speed of 17,000 miles (27,360 kilometers) per hour.

Landsat 8 will work in tandem with Landsat 7, launched in 1999, to take pictures of each inch of the planet's surface every eight days. Landsat 7 continues to operate despite a faulty scan line corrector that leaves zigzag gaps in some images.

Landsat 5, which dates back to 1984, worked decades past its expected mission end but began failing in November. Landsat 6 never reached orbit after its 1993 launch because of a ruptured manifold.

Nelson said the EROS Center has been preparing for the wave of new data, upgrading its ground station near Sioux Falls as well as partner facilities in Alaska and Norway.

It also overhauled its data processing and storage systems, "so we can get as much data as possible online for the users to get direct access to," Nelson said.

Loveland said there's a huge demand for the images in the scientific community, giving an example of a recent Brazilian Remote Sensing Symposium that drew more than 800 people looking to tap into the data.

The center used to charge for the images, but for years now, they've been free.

"When you put all this free stuff in universities, innovation happens," Loveland said."

3D Printers: Files posted online to 'print' working handgun

Visitors look at a 3D printer printing an object during an exhibition in New York on April 22, 2013. 

Computer files to create a handgun almost entirely from parts made with a 3D printer went online Monday, alarming gun control advocates after it was successfully test-fired by its inventor.

Computer files to create a handgun almost entirely from parts made with a 3D printer went online Monday, alarming gun control advocates after it was successfully test-fired by its inventor.

The single-shot .380-caliber Liberator bears a vague resemblance to its namesake, the FP-45 Liberator pistol that the United States developed during World War II to be air-dropped to French Resistance fighters.

Computer-aided design (CAD) files for the Liberator appeared on the website of Defense Distributed, a non-profit group that promotes the open-source development of firearms using 3D printers.

"We'll build the trigger first... Next, we'll build the hammer subassembly ... Next, drop the hammer into the frame...," reads the accompanying set of instructions, which come in English and Chinese. "Finally slide the grip on the frame and insert the grip pin. Your Liberator is now ready to go!"

For the Liberator to conform with US firearms law, the instructions call for an inch-big chunk of steel to be sealed with epoxy glue in front of the trigger guard, so that the weapon can be spotted by metal detectors.

The only other non-plastic part is a tiny nail that acts as the firing pin.

Business magazine Forbes posted a video of the Liberator being remotely test-fired outside Austin, Texas last week, with a yellow string tied to the trigger of the toy-like white-and-blue handgun.



"The verdict: it worked," Forbes reported, adding however that the Liberator exploded ("sending shards of white ABS plastic flying into the weeds") when its inventor Cody Wilson attempted a second test using a rifle cartridge.

Cody Wilson

"I feel no sense of achievement," the 25-year-old University of Texas law student told Forbes. "There's a lot of work to be done."

CAD files for gun parts have been available on the Internet for some time, but the Liberator is apparently the first entire weapon ever to be fabricated almost exclusively with parts created with 3D printing technology.

Supporters of tougher gun laws in the United States—where there are nearly as many guns (an estimated 300 million) as there are people (about 315 million) and more than 30,000 gun-related deaths a year—expressed alarm.

Charles Schumer

"Stomach-churning," said Senator Charles Schumer of New York. "Now anyone—a terrorist, someone who is mentally ill, a spousal abuser, a felon—can essentially open a gun factory in their garage. It must be stopped."

In the House of Representatives, Congressman Steve Israel, also from New York, is sponsoring an Undetectable Firearms Modernization Act to outlaw plastic homemade guns.

"Security checkpoints, background checks, and gun regulations will do little good if criminals can print plastic firearms at home and bring those firearms through metal detectors with no one the wiser," he said in a statement.

No longer prohibitively expensive, 3D printers can now be bought for about the same price as a top-end laptop computer. Brooklyn-based MakerBot, for instance, markets its desktop Replicator 2 for $2,199 with delivery in a week.

After the December 2012 massacre of 20 children at Sandy Hook elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut, MakerBot took down CAD files for semi-automatic rifle parts that gun enthusiasts had posted on its open-source 3D printing library.

NASA ISS Crew: Living and Working in Orbit

Commander Dan Burbank (right) and Flight Engineer Anton Shkaplerov work in the Destiny laboratory of the International Space Station. Credit: NASA TV

The International Space Station’s Expedition 30 crew – Commander Dan Burbank and Flight Engineers Anton Shkaplerov and Anatoly Ivanishin – performed science experiments and participated in an emergency drill Tuesday.

Burbank, a NASA astronaut, began his workday almost immediately after the crew’s regular 1 a.m. EST wakeup time as he conducted the Reaction Self Test.

This 5-minute test helps crew members objectively identify any impacts to their performance caused by sleep loss, fatigue and disruptions to circadian rhythms.

Following the crew’s daily planning conference with flight control centers around the world, Burbank spent his morning setting up equipment for the Integrated Cardiovascular experiment and participating as its test subject.

Investigators use the data from these tests to measure the atrophy of the heart muscle that appears to develop during long-duration spaceflight and to develop countermeasures to mitigate those effects.

Experiments like this one are crucial to understanding and maintaining crew health as NASA moves towards space exploration beyond low-Earth orbit.

Meanwhile, Shkaplerov participated in a Russian cardiovascular study known as Pneumocard and later performed routine maintenance on the life-support system in the Russian segment of the orbiting complex.

His fellow cosmonaut, Ivanishin, conducted preventative maintenance on the ventilation system of the Zvezda service module.

After a break for lunch, all three Expedition 30 crew members teamed up for an emergency egress drill to remain familiar with the location of emergency equipment and hatches as well as the evacuation route.

In cooperation with the mission control centers around the world, the crew worked through the response procedures as if there were an actual emergency requiring a rapid departure and tagged up with flight controllers afterward to review the results.

NASA Working to Boost Speed of Space Communications

View of the Canberra Complex showing the 70m (230 ft.) antenna and the 34m (110 ft.) antennas. The Canberra Deep Space Communications Complex, located outside Canberra, Australia, is one of the three complexes which comprise NASA's Deep Space Network. The other complexes are located in Goldstone, California, and Madrid, Spain

Rovers and deep space probes can forget about quickly posting cool high-definition videos to YouTube, given the painfully slow data transfer rates for most of today's space missions.

But NASA wants to change that by fusing together three aged space communication networks into a much faster, more efficient data network worthy of 21st century missions to the moon, Mars and beyond. And it hopes to do it all without costing taxpayers an extra cent.

NASA's overhaul aims to boost space communication by as much as 50 times faster than today's data transfer rates, so that a Mars mission squeaking by on a few megabits per second might someday get as much as 600 megabits per second, if not more. That could enable far more scientific payoff per mission in the long run.

"Imagine what you can accomplish with a single mission instead of several spacecraft flying over several years to collect the data," said Badri Younes, NASA's deputy associate administrator for Space Communications and Navigation.

An upgraded network might support the very quick upload or download of huge video files the size of an HD YouTube video, as opposed to current capabilities that would struggle to transfer mp3 music files.

Younes worked at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center for a decade before leaving to join the U.S. Department of Defense. But the U.S. space agency hired him back in August 2007 for the purpose of revolutionizing its space communication networks.

ESA Proba-3: Star Tiger Two Satellites working in Tandem

The two-satellite coronagraph will create a perpetual eclipse for observations of the solar corona.

The first 'occulter' spacecraft casts a perfectly controlled shadow onto the face of the second, carrying the mission instruments.

Proba-3 will be the first mission to fly such a 'giant external coronagraph'.

Bring together a small group of highly motivated researchers, grant them full access to laboratory and production facilities, remove all administrative distractions, and let them work intensively for four to six months. That's what 'StarTiger' is all about!

It is a different approach to conducting research and development that aims to demonstrate the feasibility of a new and promising technology within a very short time scale.

Within this initiative, ESA is running a six-month crash effort to design an instrument to operate between a pair of satellites flying in formation. One will cast a precisely-controlled shadow across the other to produce a perpetual solar eclipse, revealing parts of the Sun's corona usually hidden in sunlight.

ESA's latest StarTiger project is to create a complete working model of such a 'giant external coronagraph'. The effort began on 15 September, with a core team of seven multidisciplinary experts from France, Belgium, Greece and Italy based at the Laboratoire d'Astrophysique de Marseille (LAM) in France, plus a 20-strong support team. Project hardware is being designed and manufactured, with testing due to begin early next year.

"StarTiger is an initiative within the Agency's Basic Technology Research Programme (TRP), aimed at facilitating breakthrough innovation," said Peter de Maagt, the project's manager. "It is innovative not just in terms of technology but also by changing the way research and development is done."

Eike Kircher, Head of ESA's TRP, added: "Researchers work together face-to-face, participating in a very dynamic design flow on a rapid turn-around basis. They also work against the clock, because at the end of the process they produce a complete instrument from scratch."

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IRAN: Working on Final Component of Nuclear Bomb

The reactor building of Iran's Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant, located 750 miles south of Tehran.

Confidential intelligence documents obtained by The Times of London show that Iran is working on testing a key final component of a nuclear bomb.

The notes, from Iran’s most sensitive military nuclear project, describe a four-year plan to test a neutron initiator, the component of a nuclear bomb that triggers an explosion. Foreign intelligence agencies date them to early 2007, four years after Iran was thought to have suspended its weapons program.

An Asian intelligence source last week confirmed to The Times that his country also believed that weapons work was being carried out as recently as 2007 — specifically, work on a neutron initiator.

The technical document describes the use of a neutron source, uranium deuteride, which independent experts confirm has no possible civilian or military use other than in a nuclear weapon. Uranium deuteride is the material used in Pakistan’s bomb, from where Iran obtained its blueprint.

"Although Iran might claim that this work is for civil purposes, there is no civil application," said David Albright, a physicist and president of the Institute for Science and International Security in Washington, which has analysed hundreds of pages of documents related to the Iranian programme. "This is a very strong indicator of weapons work."

The documents have been seen by intelligence agencies from several Western countries, including Britain. A senior source at the International Atomic Energy Agency confirmed that they had been passed to the U.N.’s nuclear watchdog.

A Foreign and Commonwealth Office spokeswoman said yesterday: "We do not comment on intelligence, but our concerns about Iran’s nuclear program are clear. Obviously this document, if authentic, raises serious questions about Iran’s intentions."