ESA Astronaut Luca Parmitano‏: In Training for ISS mission

ESA's Italian Astronaut, Luca Parmitano‏ (@astro_luca), in training for ISS mission at JSC Houston. Waiting in the simulation airlock, going through his spacesuit checks, prior to an EVA.

NASA Halts Heritage Auction of Apollo 13 checklist

Heritage, we may have a problem. That's more or less what NASA told Heritage Auctions of Dallas, Texas recently, in response to their record-setting, $388,375 sale of astronaut James Lovell's Apollo 13 flown checklist.

"NASA has made a claim against astronaut Jim Lovell, claiming that he does not have title to the checklist," Greg Rohan, Heritage's president but the space agency interprets its inquiry differently.

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.

Science Fiction's Robotics Laws Need Reality Check

Artificial intelligence researchers often idealize Isaac Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics as the signpost for robot-human interaction. But some robotics experts say that the concept could use a practical makeover to recognize the current limitations of robots.

Self-aware robots that inhabit Asimov's stories and others such as "2001: A Space Odyssey" and "Battlestar Galactica" remain in the distant future. Today's robots still lack any sort of real autonomy to make their own decisions or adapt intelligently to new environments.

But danger can arise when humans push robots beyond their current limits of decision-making, experts warn. That can lead to mistakes and even tragedies involving robots on factory floors and in military operations, when humans forget that all legal and ethical responsibility still rests on the shoulders of homo sapiens.

"The fascination with robots has led some people to try retreating from responsibility for difficult decisions, with potentially bad consequences," said David Woods, a systems engineer at Ohio State University.

Woods and a fellow researcher proposed revising the Three Laws to emphasize human responsibility over robots. They also suggested that Earth-bound robot handlers could take a hint from NASA when it comes to robot-human interaction.