Jellyfish-powered Ornithopter Drone prepares for lift-off - Video

Inspired by nature and by the aviation pioneers of the early 20th century, scientists in the US said Wednesday they had built the world's first jellyfish drone aircraft.

The tiny, ultra-light lab machine, weighing just 2.1 grammes (0.07 ounces), is the first man-made flying object to hover and move with a motion like that of the jellyfish in water, the inventors believe.

Leif Ristroph

"We were interested first of all in making a robotic insect that would be an alternative to the helicopter," said Leif Ristroph, who works alongside Stephen Childress at New York University's Applied Math Lab.

"Our interest ended up being a little bit weird—it was the jellyfish."

The jellyfish has long been admired by engineers for a simple yet efficient motion, sculpted by millions of years of evolution, that requires just a simple muscle and no brain power, just a primitive nervous system.

It has a bell-like translucent skirt that first billows out and then closes tightly, squirting water out from the small opening to provide itself with movement.

In this case, the aircraft uses four petal-shaped wings, each eight centimetres (four inches) long, that when folded together form a downward-facing "cone."

Stephen Childress

A tiny motor, attached to a crankshaft, causes the wings to push outwards and then downwards, 20 times a second, forcing out air through the bottom of the cone.

The result is an "ornithopter," or flying machine that hovers with great stability, without the need for constant, energy-draining correction.

"If it's knocked over, it stabilises by itself," Ristroph said to reporters.

The craft can change direction by making one of the four wings work harder than the others.

Pioneers of flight
The materials to make the machine are all over-the-counter components—light carbon-fibre ribs to hold the motor and provide the frames of the wings, which are covered by transparent Mylar film—bought at ordinary modelling stores.

Ristroph said he and Childress had been intrigued by film footage of aviation pioneers who had tried to mimick insects to build ornithopters, but lacked the knowledge or materials at the time.

More information: Stable hovering of a jellyfish-like flying machine, Journal of the Royal Society Interface, rsif.royalsocietypublishing.org/lookup/doi/10.1098/rsif.2013.0992

ESA: EUMETSAT's Metop-B Lift-off - YouTube

ESA's Metop-B lifts-off the launch pad at 18:28 CEST from Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan.

Europe will receive nearly infallible weather data and save almost $7 billion in weather-related damage annually thanks to this trio of bus-sized spacecraft. This is what the atmosphere will look like in HD.

The MetOp-B satellite, which launched on Monday (local time), is part of a $4 billion joint venture between the European Space Agency and the European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (EUMETSAT).

The program is also coordinating with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) so that MetOp and similar NOAA satellites can maximise their orbital coverage.

The three MetOp satellites are nearly identical. They weigh slightly more than 4000kg and measure 17.6m × 6.5m × 5.2m with their solar panels fully extended, making them the second largest Earth-observation satellite produced by the Europeans.

They will each travel a 820km polar low Earth orbital trajectory during each of their five-year operations.

The individual MetOp satellites are not in orbit together but are instead being launched in five-year increments.

MetOp-A launched back in 2006, Met-Op-B launched on Monday from Baikonur, Kazakhstan, and MetOp-C is expected to launch some time between 2016 and 2018.

Each MetOp is packed with sensors from Europe, the US, Canada and France that are designed to monitor everything from atmospheric humidity to wind speeds over the ocean to levels of ozone and solar activity.

It shares eight instruments with its partner NOAA satellites, including microwave sounding units, very high-resolution radiometers, a search and rescue processor/repeater and a high-resolution infrared radiation sensor.

It also carries an Advanced Scatterometer, the Global Ozone Monitoring Experiment (GOME), and the Infrared Atmospheric Sounding Interferometer (IASI), the most accurate infrared sounding interferometer currently in orbit.

It can scan the atmosphere and measure the temperature and humidity to within 1C and relative 10 per cent respectively for every horizontal kilometre of the air column.

“These crucial instruments will be used for weather forecasting and to help us all gain a better understanding of the Earth’s systems,” said Gene Martin, POES Project instrument manager.

SpaceX: Falcon 9 Rocket Liftoff with Dragon Spacecraft on Board - Video

Solar Array deployed. Ready for power-up!

A private cargo rocket headed to the International Space Station blasted off early Tuesday morning.

Built by Space Exploration Technologies Corp. of Hawthorne, Calif. — commonly known as SpaceX — this rocket is carrying only about 1,000 pounds of cargo, and nothing of great value.

The importance is instead technical and symbolic. If the cargo capsule makes it all the way to the space station, it would be the first commercial, rather than government-operated, spacecraft to dock at the space station, and it would mark an important step in NASA’s efforts to turn over basic transportation to low-Earth orbit to the private sector.

With success of this flight, SpaceX would begin a $1.6 billion contract to fly 12 cargo missions to the space station.

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Soyuz ESA Arianespace: - Mission Liftoff! Soyuz begins its maiden mission

The first Soyuz has lifted off from French Guiana, initiating a 3-hour 49-minute inaugural flight for Arianespace’s medium-lift launcher that will orbit the initial two spacecraft in Europe’s Galileo satellite navigation system.

Soyuz departed the Spaceport’s new ELS launch complex at 07:30:26 a.m. local time in French Guiana – a precise liftoff time that enables the pair of Galileo satellites to be injected into their proper orbital plane.

With a total payload performance of 1,580 kg. – including 700 kg. for each of the Galileo platforms – the Soyuz is to deliver its passengers into a 23,222-km. circular medium-Earth orbit, inclined 54.7 degrees.

This maiden flight marks Soyuz’ introduction into the company’s growing launcher family, joining its heavy-lift Ariane 5 in operations from the Spaceport. The two launchers are to be complemented by the lightweight Vega in 2012.

Soyuz is one of the world’s most utilized launchers, having ushered in the space age and logging more than 1,770 missions to date from its two other launch bases: Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, and Russia’s Plesetsk Cosmodrome.

• Watch the launch live with Arianespace’s real-time video broadcast.
• Arianespace’s VS01 launch kit has additional details on this milestone mission.

NASA Shuttle Atlantis STS-132 Lift-off

Space shuttle Atlantis soars to orbit from Launch Pad 39A at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida on the STS-132 mission to the International Space Station at 2:20 p.m. EDT on May 14.

The third of five shuttle missions planned for 2010, this was the last planned launch for Atlantis.

Image Credit: NASA/Kenny Allen