NASA ISS Image: Hurricane Earl

The relatively placid view from the International Space Station belied the potent forces at work in Hurricane Earl as it hovered northeast of Puerto Rico on Aug. 30, 2010.

With maximum sustained winds of 135 miles (215 kilometers) per hour, the storm was classified as a category 4 on the Saffir-Simpson hurricane scale as it passed north of the Virgin Islands.

In this photograph captured with a digital SLR camera by NASA astronaut Douglas Wheelock, Earl had a distinct eye that spanned about 17 miles (28 kilometers).

Most of the storm had a seemingly uniform top, though the bottom edge of the image gives some sense of the towering thunderheads forming over the ocean. The solar panels of the ISS remind us that the sun is still shining, at least on ISS Expedition 24.

"Hurricane Earl is gathering some serious strength," Wheelock wrote from his perch on ISS. "It is incredible what a difference a day makes when you’re dealing with this force of nature. Please keep a watchful eye on this one...not sure if Earl will go quietly into the night like Danielle."

Image Credit: NASA

NASA awards $269 million for commercial crew program

Hopeful commercial spacecraft will be ready to carry humans into orbit by the middle of this decade.

NASA awarded $269.3 million Monday to four companies designing and testing components for private space transportation vehicles.

Boeing Co. will receive $92.3 million from the development announcement, the largest of the four agreements unveiled by NASA.

Sierra Nevada Corp. captured $80 million, SpaceX was awarded $75 million and Blue Origin will get $22 million, according to NASA.

The funds were made available by the federal budget passed by Congress and signed into law last week.

Each company signed Space Act Agreements for NASA to provide government funding when the firms achieve major milestones such as design reviews and hardware tests. The agreements run through approximately May 2012.

The announcements begin the second round of NASA's Commercial Crew Development, or CCDev, program designed to pay seed money to U.S. companies developing rockets and spacecraft for human passengers.

"Given enough time and money, I'm confident that multiple U.S. companies can develop safe, reliable and cost-effective commercial crew transportation systems," said Phil McAlister, NASA's acting director of commercial spaceflight development.

The CCDev 2 funding will go toward maturing the designs of each company's vehicle and testing key systems on the ground, according to Ed Mango, manager of NASA's commercial crew program.

"We are targeting the middle part of this decade to hopefully have services available for purchase," McAlister said. "That is very much dependent on funding and technical progress on the partners."

NASA is working with private industry to provide crew transportation services to the International Space Station and other destinations in low Earth orbit while the government focuses on deep space exploration. Once the space shuttle is retired this summer, NASA astronauts will ride Russian Soyuz vehicles into orbit until a U.S. alternative is available.

"We're committed to safely transporting U.S. astronauts on American-made spacecraft and ending the outsourcing of this work to foreign governments," NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said. "These agreements are significant milestones in NASA's plans to take advantage of American ingenuity to get to low Earth orbit, so we can concentrate our resources on deep space exploration."

NASA ISS Image: Bahamas Tongue

Though the above image may resemble a new age painting straight out of an art gallery in Venice Beach, California, it is in fact a satellite image of the sands and seaweed in the Bahamas.

The top image was taken by the crew of the ISS and the second image was taken by the Enhanced Thematic Mapper plus (ETM+) instrument aboard the Landsat 7 satellite.

Tides and ocean currents in the Bahamas sculpted the sand and seaweed beds into these multicolored, fluted patterns in much the same way that winds sculpted the vast sand dunes in the Sahara Desert.

Image courtesy Serge Andrefouet, University of South Florida

Scientists develop compound that effectively halts progression of multiple sclerosis in animals

Scientists from the Florida campus of The Scripps Research Institute have developed the first of a new class of highly selective compounds that effectively suppresses the severity of multiple sclerosis in animal models.

The new compound could provide new and potentially more effective therapeutic approaches to multiple sclerosis and other autoimmune diseases that affect patients worldwide.

The study appeared April 17, 2011, in an advance online edition of the journal Nature.

Current treatments for autoimmunity suppress the patient’s entire immune system, leaving patients vulnerable to a range of adverse side effects. Because the new compound, known as SR1001, only blocks the actions of a specific cell type playing a significant role in autoimmunity, it appears to avoid many of the widespread side effects of current therapies.

“This is a novel drug that works effectively in animal models with few side effects,” said Tom Burris, Ph.D., a professor in the Department of Molecular Therapeutics at Scripps Florida who led the study, which was a multidisciplinary collaboration with scientists including Patrick Griffin, William Roush, and Ted Kamenecka of Scripps Research, and Paul Drew of the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences. “We have been involved in several discussions with both pharmaceutical and biotechnology firms who are very interested in developing it further.”

A lengthy process of drug development and review is required to ensure a new drug’s safety and efficacy before it can be brought to market.

“This impressive multidisciplinary team has used a combined structural and functional approach to describe a class of molecules that could lead to new medicines for treating autoimmune diseases,” said Charles
Edmonds, Ph.D. who oversees structural biology grants at the National Institutes of Health. “Breakthroughs such as this highlight the value of scientists with diverse expertise joining forces to solve important biological problems that have the potential to benefit human health.”

Read more of the article here: Scientists develop compound that effectively halts progression of multiple sclerosis | Science Blog

Read the paper in Nature here:

HECTOR, the novel hexapod robot from Bielefeld

In an effort to understand how animals move elegantly and in turn provide robots with the same ability, researchers at the University of Bielefeld's Center of Excellence 'Cognitive Interaction Technology' (CITEC) have developed the hexapod walking robot called HECTOR (Hexapod Cognitive autonomously Operating Robot). Designed within CITEC's multi-disciplinary Mulero project, the robot possesses the scaled up morphology of a stick insect and will be used as a test bed in various departments and projects at the University.

In each of the 18 joints of its six legs and the two joints linking the its three body segments, HECTOR uses a new type of bioinspired, self-contained, elastic joint drive that its developers say works as smoothly as muscles. Each of the drives is equipped with sensors, complete control electronics, its own processor and a sensorized elastic coupling that allows the 18 leg joints to be controlled using biologically inspired control algorithms. These give HECTOR the ability to react by yielding during collisions or interactions with people.

As well as its insect-like appearance, HECTOR also possesses a light, yet durable exoskeleton made of carbon fiber reinforced plastic (CFRP) which makes up only around 13 percent of the robot's body weight, but allows it to carry loads many times that – with a total weight of 12 kg (26.45 lb), the one-meter (3.28 ft) long robot can carry a 30 kg (66 lb) load with less than one millimeter (0.04 in) of deformation.

Intended to serve as a test bed for various departments and projects, the robot features a body design that follows an exchangeable lid concept that allows special sensor equipment to be switched for different studies. For example, an omnidirectional camera for near- and long-range sensing can be easily switched for a tactile antenna for exploring its immediate surroundings.

HECTOR's control program works on the same distributed intelligence principle found in insect brains, while a specially developed interface and bus concept makes it easy to link sensory information processing to the robot's movement control system.

Its creators say that they also plan to give HECTOR the ability to learn and plan ahead, which will enable it to make its way through unfamiliar territory and carry out exploration tasks autonomously.

With relatively simple cognitive processes and a variety of light, yet tough body types that have been honed by evolution to suit just about any condition found on Earth, insects are probably the most common source of inspiration for robotics engineers after human beings.

HECTOR joins a growing list of insect-inspired robots that includes the likes of SRI's wall climbing robots and the EPFL's grasshopper-inspired jumping robot. With insects already by far the most numerous type of animal on the face of the planet, they could also be staking an early claim for the most numerous form of robot.

Via Plastic Pals

Underwater Microphone Captures Japan's 9.0-Mag Earthquake

The massive 9.0 magnitude earthquake off the coast of Honshu, Japan was recorded by a hydrophone located near the Aleutian Islands of Alaska. The hydrophone was located 900 miles away from the epicenter, but you can still hear the rumbling noise. The first audio is from a hydrophone located in the central north Pacific and the second (more rumbly) audio clip is from the hydrophone located near the Aleutian Islands.

NASA JWST: Next Generation Space Telescope

NASA engineer Ernie Wright looks on as the first six flight ready James Webb Space Telescope's primary mirror segments are prepped to begin final cryogenic testing at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center.

This represents the first six of 18 segments that will form NASA's James Webb Space Telescope’s primary mirror for space observations.

Engineers began final round-the-clock cryogenic testing to confirm that the mirrors will respond as expected to the extreme temperatures of space prior to integration into the telescope's permanent housing structure.

Image Credit: NASA/MSFC/David Higginbotham