Standing on the shoulders of giants

In this case, those shoulders are a little smaller, but no less impressive. [Link]

Margaret Hamilton earned her BA in math from Earlham College, but obviously learned about programming on the job—there was no other way. In the photo above, she is standing in front of the printouts of the code for the Apollo guidance system, a lot of which she wrote and which she oversaw.

She was all of 31 when the Apollo 11 lunar module landed on the moon, running her code. (Apollo 11 was able to land at all only because she designed the software robustly enough to handle buffer overflows and cycle-stealing.)

She’s now a tech CEO and won the ‘86 Lovelace Award and the NASA Exceptional Space Act Award.

The engineers weren’t all boys with crewcuts, short sleeve oxford shirts, and narrow black ties. That’s just a fairy tale they told for a while.

Her Wikipedia Entry.

At NASA Hamilton was responsible for helping pioneer the Apollo on-board guidance software required to navigate to/from and land on the moon, and its multiple variations used on numerous missions (including the subsequent Skylab).^[1] She worked to gain hands-on experience during a time when computer science and software engineering courses or disciplines were non-existent.

In the process, she produced innovations in the fields of system design and software development, enterprise and process modelling, preventative systems design, development paradigm, formal systems (and software) modelling languages, system-oriented objects for systems modelling and development, automated life-cycle environments, methods for maximizing software reliability and reuse, domain analysis, correctness by built-in language properties, open-architecture techniques for robust systems, full life-cycle automation, quality assurance, seamless integration (including systems to software), distributed processing systems, error detection and recovery techniques, man/machine interface systems, operating systems, end-to-end testing techniques, and life-cycle management techniques.^[1]

These in turn led her to develop concepts of asynchronous software, priority scheduling, and man-in-the-loop decision capability, which became the foundation for modern, ultra-reliable software design.

Found! First Earth-Size Planet That Could Support Life

Neat! [Link]

Potentially habitable planet

Scientists think that Kepler-186f — the outermost of five planets found to be orbiting the star Kepler-186 — orbits at a distance of 32.5 million miles (52.4 million kilometers), theoretically within the habitable zone for a red dwarf.

Earth orbits the sun from an average distance of about 93 million miles (150 million km), but the sun is larger and brighter than the Kepler-186 star, meaning that the sun's habitable zone begins farther out from the star by comparison to Kepler-186.

"This is the first definitive Earth-sized planet found in the habitable zone around another star," Elisa Quintana, of the SETI Institute and NASA's Ames Research Center and the lead author of a new study detailing the findings, said in a statement.

Other planets of various sizes have been found in thehabitable zones of their stars. However, Kepler-186f is the first alien planet this close to Earth in size found orbiting in that potentially life-supporting area of an extrasolar system, according to exoplanet scientists.

'An historic discovery'

"This is an historic discovery of the first truly Earth-size planet found in the habitable zone around its star," Geoff Marcy, an astronomer at the University of California, Berkeley, who is unaffiliated with the research, told Space.com via email. "This is the best case for a habitable planet yet found. The results are absolutely rock-solid. The planet itself may not be, but I'd bet my house on it. In any case, it's a gem."

The newly discovered planet measures about 1.1 Earth radii, making it slightly larger than Earth, but researchers still think the alien world may be rocky like Earth. Researchers still aren't sure what Kepler-186f's atmosphere is made of, a key element that could help scientists understand if the planet is hospitable to life.  [Kepler-186f: Earth-Size World Could Support Oceans, Maybe Life (Infographic)]

"What we've learned, just over the past few years, is that there is a definite transition which occurs around about 1.5 Earth radii," Quintana said in a statement. "What happens there is that for radii between 1.5 and 2 Earth radii, the planet becomes massive enough that it starts to accumulate a very thick hydrogen and helium atmosphere, so it starts to resemble the gas giants of our solar system rather than anything else that we see as terrestrial."

ICE/ISEE-3 to return to an Earth no longer capable of speaking to it

Like if Ulysses returned home after the Odyssey and finding no one can speak Greek anymore. [Link]

It's with great sadness that I report today that the Goddard Space Flight Center team has determined that we cannot, in fact, communicate with this spacecraft. Two days, ago, the following was posted on the ISEE3returns Facebook page:

Communication involves speaking, listening and understanding what we hear. One of the main technical challenges the ISEE-3/ICE project has faced is determining whether we can speak, listen, and understand the spacecraft and whether the spacecraft can do the same for us. Several months of digging through old technical documents has led a group of NASA engineers to believe they will indeed be able to understand the stream of data coming from the spacecraft. NASA's Deep Space Network (DSN) can listen to the spacecraft, a test in 2008 proved that it was possible to pick up the transmitter carrier signal, but can we speak to the spacecraft? Can we tell the spacecraft to turn back on its thrusters and science instruments after decades of silence and perform the intricate ballet needed to send it back to where it can again monitor the Sun? The answer to that question appears to be no.

The transmitters of the Deep Space Network, the hardware to send signals out to the fleet of NASA spacecraft in deep space, no longer includes the equipment needed to talk to ISEE-3. These old-fashioned transmitters were removed in 1999. Could new transmitters be built? Yes, but it would be at a price no one is willing to spend. And we need to use the DSN because no other network of antennas in the US has the sensitivity to detect and transmit signals to the spacecraft at such a distance.

This effort has always been risky with a low probability of success and a near-zero budget. It is thanks to a small and dedicated group of scientists and engineers that we were able to get as far as we have. Thank you all very much.

Cue sad Hulk music.

Falcon 9 landing tests

The goal: to bring back the first stage of a Falcon 9 rocket and land it under power for reuse like rockets are supposed to. [Link]

The prospect of a Falcon 9 v1.1 first stage returning to terra firma following launch is continuing to advance along a path towards reality, as the SpaceX team push forward with testing on the system’s landing legs at their Texas test facility. Photos of the Grasshopper 2 (GH2) test vehicle have surfaced, showing the leg structures that are likely to be similar to those that will fly on a real mission this year.

Gemini Planet Imager

Very neat. [Link]

After nearly a decade of development, construction, and testing, the world’s most advanced instrument for directly imaging and analyzing planets around other stars is pointing skyward and collecting light from distant worlds.

The instrument, called the Gemini Planet Imager (GPI), was designed, built, and optimized for imaging faint planets next to bright stars and probing their atmospheres. It will also be a powerful tool for studying dusty, planet-forming disks around young stars. It is the most advanced such instrument to be deployed on one of the world’s biggest telescopes – the 8-meter Gemini South telescope in Chile.

“Even these early first-light images are almost a factor of 10 better than the previous generation of instruments. In one minute, we are seeing planets that used to take us an hour to detect,” says Bruce Macintosh of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory who led the team that built the instrument.

GPI detects infrared (heat) radiation from young Jupiter-like planets in wide orbits around other stars, those equivalent to the giant planets in our own Solar System not long after their formation. Every planet GPI sees can be studied in detail.

“Most planets that we know about to date are only known because of indirect methods that tell us a planet is there, a bit about its orbit and mass, but not much else,” says Macintosh. “With GPI we directly image planets around stars – it’s a bit like being able to dissect the system and really dive into the planet’s atmospheric makeup and characteristics.”

GPI carried out its first observations last November – during an extremely trouble-free debut for an extraordinarily complex astronomical instrument the size of a small car. “This was one of the smoothest first-light runs Gemini has ever seen” says Stephen Goodsell, who manages the project for the observatory.

For GPI’s first observations, the team targeted previously known planetary systems, including the well-known Beta Pictoris system; in it GPI obtained the first-ever spectrum of the very young planet Beta Pictoris b. The first-light team also used the instrument’s polarization mode – which can detect starlight scattered by tiny particles – to study a faint ring of dust orbiting the very young star HR4796A. With previous instruments, only the edges of this dust ring, (which may be the debris remaining from planet formation), could be seen, but with GPI astronomers can follow the entire circumference of the ring.

Although GPI was designed to look at distant planets, it can also observe objects in our Solar System. The accompanying test images of Jupiter’s moon Europa, for example, can allow scientists to map changes in the satellite’s surface composition. The images were released today at the 223rd meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Washington DC.

“Seeing a planet close to a star after just one minute, was a thrill, and we saw this on only the first week after the instrument was put on the telescope!” says Fredrik Rantakyro a Gemini staff scientist working on the instrument. “Imagine what it will be able to do once we tweak and completely tune its performance.”

“Exoplanets are extraordinarily faint and difficult to see next to a bright star,” notes GPI chief scientist Professor James R. Graham of the University of California who has worked with Macintosh on the project since its inception. GPI can see planets a million times fainter than their parent stars. Often described, ‘like trying to see a firefly circling a streetlight thousands of kilometers away,’ instruments used to image exoplanets must be designed and built to “excruciating tolerances,” points out Leslie Saddlemyer of NRC Herzberg (part of the National Research Council of Canada), who served as GPI’s systems engineer. “Each individual mirror inside GPI has to be smooth to within a few times the size of an atom,” Saddlemyer adds.

Why does China's Moon Rover exhibit show a nuclear mushroom cloud over Europe?

This is worrying. [Link]

China has made a major diplomatic faux pas by illustrating its Moon Rover exhibit with a stock image of a nuclear mushroom cloud over Europe.

While it's probably just an embarrassing error, it's still an unsettling image given the Chinese government's recent statements concerning plans to build a missile base on the Moon.

On December 3, The Beijing Times reported that Chinese experts are discussing whether the People’s Liberation Army could establish a missile base on the Moon. Per the Taiwan-based, English-language site Want China Times:

An expert from the China National Space Administration's Lunar Exploration Programme Center told the [Beijing Times]that China plans to send its first astronaut to the moon by 2030. By 2050, the moon could become a base from which to send the country's manned spacecraft to explore deep space, the source said. [Want China Times]

Innocent enough, right? But the source added that the Moon could be transformed into a deadly weapon. Like the Death Star in Star Wars, the Moon could be used as a military battle station, bristling with ballistic missiles that could be launched against any military target on Earth.

Lest you think this is all science fiction, there has been a worrying trend toward a militarization of space. Officially, the Outer Space Treaty bars states from placing nuclear weapons or any other weapons of mass destruction in orbit around Earth, installing them on the Moon or any other celestial body, or otherwise stationing them in outer space. It exclusively limits the use of the Moon and other celestial bodies to peaceful purposes. China, the United States, and Russia are all party to this treaty.

The cloud cities of Venus

The best real estate in the Solar system besides Earth itself. [Link]

However, Venus holds a secret — it has some of the most Earth-like conditions (that we know of) in the Solar System. 50km above the rocky, smoking surface the atmospheric pressure is the same as on Earth, and average temperatures rarely exceed 50°C or drop below zero. The atmosphere — 96 percent carbon dioxide — is so dense that large metal structures filled with the nitrogen and oxygen mix we call ‘air’ would float with half as much lifting power on Venus as helium has here.

It’s not just zeppelins that would fly on Venus — it’s entire buildings.

Importantly, because there is no need for pressurisation, any leaks would be no more disastrous than opening a door in a house and letting out heat. Rips,tears, holes of any kind can be monitored and repaired long before they cause any deflation issues.

OK, the sulphuric acid rain is a bit of an issue, but nevertheless, it’s not too dissimilar to the conditions you’ll find within the calderas of volcanoes on Earth, and would only require similar breathing apparatus and protective clothing as volcanologists use. More than any other planet in the Solar System, Venus — with its Earth-like gravity, too — would feel the most like home. This is why NASA’s Geoffrey Landis calls it “the paradise planet”.

In 1985, The Soviet Union’s Vega program managed to deploy two balloons into the Venusian atmosphere at 53km above the surface, so we already have some data to go on. Wind speeds were seen to go as high as 340km/h — that’s fast, but not as fast as the 395km/hm world speed record for fastest balloon flight set by the Pacific Flyer in 1991.

At those speeds, our balloon colonies would circle Venus roughly every eight Earth days, relative to the surface — a further bonus since a typical Venusian day is longer than the Venusian year, taking 243 Earth days. We’d get our energy from the Sun (since we’d be high enough for it to break through the clouds), and our Earth calendar would only subtly have to be adjusted.

Be honest with yourself: the floating sky cities of Venus sound much more glamorous than coldly clinging to the dead rock of Mars. Think how restricted scientists are when living in Antarctica — any tin can bolted to the face of Mars will be lucky to give its residents anything like that much freedom. On Venus, we could conceivably build larger, faster, and further — and we could use our experience in the Venusian clouds to colonise the gas giants of the Solar System. In the long run, starting nearer to Earth could take us further.

Bears in Space!

Hibernation for astronauts. [Link]

Bradford's team is trying to leverage and extend medical advances in therapeutic hypothermia, which seeks to prevent tissue damage during periods of low blood flow by lowering core body temperature.

For every drop of 1 degree Fahrenheit in body temperature, metabolic rate decreases by 5 to 7 percent, Bradford said. The researchers are aiming for a 10-degree drop during manned Mars missions, or a 50 to 70 percent reduction in metabolic rate.

That's a big drop, but it's still a far cry from the suspended animation featured in sci-fi films such as the 1979 classic "Alien," which takes body processes all the way down to zero. [6 New Sci-Fi Movies to Watch in 2013]

"We're not freezing anybody. It's not cryopreservation; it's closer tohibernation," Bradford said. "So they're still breathing, and they still need sustenance." (Food and water would be delivered intravenously, he added.)

Ideally, the body-temperature drop would induce an unconscious state by itself, he added, so sedatives would not have to be administered to voyaging astronauts.

The team is investigating the best ways to cool an astronaut's core. The front-runner idea at the moment may be the gel pads that doctors use during hypothermia therapy, Bradford said. Injecting fluids into the bloodstream could also get the job done, but the researchers are hoping to avoid such invasive methods.

It's also possible to take another tack, Bradford said: Let the Mars-bound spacecraft cool down in the frigid depths of space, but work to warm the astronauts up to the desired temperature.

The longest anyone has remained in a medically induced hypothermic torpor to date is about 10 days, Bradford said. But that's likely not an upper limit, he stressed; rather, it's a reflection of the low medical need to keep people in such states for prolonged periods of time.

"We're trying to give [the medical community] a need, or a rationale" to push the 10-day record out to 30 days and beyond, and to look for any possible attendant complications, Bradford said.

Water leak in spacesuit during spacewalk

First hand account of astronaut Luca Parmitano's spacewalk where his suit developed a water leak. [Link]

As I move back along my route towards the airlock, I become more and more certain that the water is increasing. I feel it covering the sponge on my earphones and I wonder whether I’ll lose audio contact. The water has also almost completely covered the front of my visor, sticking to it and obscuring my vision. I realise that to get over one of the antennae on my route I will have to move my body into a vertical position, also in order for my safety cable to rewind normally. At that moment, as I turn ‘upside-down’, two things happen: the Sun sets, and my ability to see – already compromised by the water – completely vanishes, making my eyes useless; but worse than that, the water covers my nose – a really awful sensation that I make worse by my vain attempts to move the water by shaking my head. By now, the upper part of the helmet is full of water and I can’t even be sure that the next time I breathe I will fill my lungs with air and not liquid. To make matters worse, I realise that I can’t even understand which direction I should head in to get back to the airlock. I can’t see more than a few centimetres in front of me, not even enough to make out the handles we use to move around the Station.

I try to contact Chris and Shane: I listen as they talk to each other, but their voices are very faint now: I can hardly hear them and they can’t hear me. I’m alone. I frantically think of a plan. It’s vital that I get inside as quickly as possible. I know that if I stay where I am, Chris will come and get me, but how much time do I have? It’s impossible to know. Then I remember my safety cable. Its cable recoil mechanism has a force of around 3lb that will ‘pull’ me towards the left. It’s not much, but it’s the best idea I have: to follow the cable to the airlock. I force myself to stay calm and, patiently locating the handles by touch, I start to move, all the while thinking about how to eliminate the water if it were to reach my mouth. The only idea I can think of is to open the safety valve by my left ear: if I create controlled depressurisation, I should manage to let out some of the water, at least until it freezes through sublimation, which would stop the flow. But making a ‘hole’ in my spacesuit really would be a last resort.

Apollo Flight Control - every console explained

Incredibly cool. [Link]

Ars recently had the opportunity to spend some quality time touring the restored Apollo "Mission Control" room at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. We talked with Sy Liebergot, a retired NASA flight controller who took part in some of the most famous manned space flight missions of all time, including Apollo 11 and Apollo 13. The feature article "Going boldly: Behind the scenes at NASA's hallowed Mission Control Center" goes in depth on what "Mission Control" did during Apollo and how it all worked, but there just wasn't room to fit in detailed descriptions and diagrams of all of the different flight controller consoles—I'm no John Siracusa, after all!

But Ars readers love space, and there was so much extra information that I couldn't sit on it. So this is a station-by-station tour of Historical Mission Operations Control Room 2, or "MOCR 2." As mentioned in the feature, MOCR 2 was used for almost every Gemini and Apollo flight, and in the late 1990s was restored to its Apollo-era appearance. You can visit it if you're in Houston, but you won't get any closer than the glassed-in visitor gallery in the back, and that's just not close enough. Strap yourselves in and prepare for an up-close look at the MOCR consoles, Ars style.

Interactive Drake Equation

The Drake Equation is used to try to figure out why we have not seen any evidence of other intelligent life other than what is on Earth. Here is an interactive one from the BBC where you can change the numbers and recalculate how many civilizations in the Galaxy and in the Universe. [Link]

What has NASA done for you and your life?

A whole lot. (Reload for more) [Link]

Asteroid Mining?

Start prospecting, belters. [Link]

MIT's Technology Review has just gotten news of a mysterious new project that claims it will "create a new industry and a new definition of 'natural resources.'" Space exploration company Planetary Resources will be unveiled in a conference call on Tuesday, April 24th. Besides the audacious announcement, which promises to "overlay two critical sectors — space exploration and natural resources — to add trillions of dollars to the global GDP," what makes this unique is its high-profile support group. The venture is backed by Google executives Larry Page and Eric Schmidt, director James Cameron, and politician Ross Perot's son, among others.

The important questions that need answering

Could you build a minifig scale Death Star? [Link]

Just when you thought everything was over, it keeps going. What if this Lego set were indeed in orbit around the Earth? Low Earth orbit (with an altitude of 300 km). What would it look like? Well, first let me say that the angular size of the the moon is about 0.53 degrees. If this 3.52 km diameter radius object was in orbit, it would have an angular size of:

So, it would appear bigger than the actual real moon. You know I am going to make a diagram showing that. Here it is.

How cool would that be? People would mistake it for a moon, just like Han Solo did.  Well, it look just like the moon except that it would just take a couple of minutes to pass across the sky where the moon doesn’t really seem to change its position.

That's no moon. It's bigger.

Space:1999 to be remade as Space: 2099

Launch Eagles! [Link]

HDFilms president Jace Hall here called science fiction: "A powerful format capable of visualizing the human condition in thought-provoking ways."

Hall's clearly sat through Battlestar Galactica.

Hall continued: While we are indeed re-imagining the franchise and bringing something new and relevant to today's audiences... I feel strongly that some of the overall tones set by the original Space: 1999 television show represent an exciting platform to explore possibilities."

Space: 1999 was the work of the Andersons, the pair behind the wire-controller puppetry ofThunderbirds, Stingray, Fireball XL5, Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons, Joe 90 and live actioner UFO.

Space: 1999 came in the hunt for a successor to UFO and ran for just two seasons between 1975 and 1977. It told the story of boffins working on Moonbase Alpha who were propelled into fantastic adventures beyond imagination after a massive nuclear explosion on the moon on 13 September 1999 sent our little satellite planet into deep space.

The programme introduced us the graceful Doctor Helena Russell, the cranially gifted Professor Victor Bergman, shape-shifter and day-saver Maya, plucky chief pilot and Ozzie Alan Carter, and – yes – Commander John Koenig played by actor Martin Landau, who no matter how many grown-up roles he takes with Woody Allen or Tim Burton will, forever, be John Koenig.

Stylistically, Space: 1999 was of the 1970s with its funky-disco opener that previewed each week's episode. It was stuffed with hero shots, explosions, alien encounters and a re-cap of that fateful nuclear blast. It set hairs tingling on the backs of pre-teen necks setting down for some pure space action.

It was also a chip of the black obelisk of that seminal sci-fi film of that era, 2001: A Space Odyssey, from the colon in the name, to the Luna-bleached exterior shots of Moonbase Alpha, and, ahem, "computers" that served as blinking and chundering background props and did little actual computing. The boffins' flared, cream uniforms with obligatory colour flashes that denoted function were a firm nod to that other great influence of the era: Star Trek.

Space has come along way since 1975: we've jettisoned flares and story lines that worked around and avoided computers. And an update is overdue. Let's just hope that the Eagles and the staple guns make the cut.

Reducing travel costs to space

Reusability and quick turnaround are key. [Link]

[T]here are two primary ways to recover a rocket part: It can either fly back to a recovery location with wings (as the shuttle did) or return under rocket power. Wings add structural weight but are reasonably reliable, while the rocket approach is versatile but adds weight because of the extra propellant that must be carried to fly back. Plus, there’s a risk of the rocket engines not restarting, or shutting down permanently. 

Despite the dangers, Musk is clearly a fan of the rocket-powered approach. He told PM that SpaceX has come up with a solution to make both the lower and upper stages of the Falcon 9 reusable. (The Dragon capsule that will fly atop the rocket has already demonstrated that it can be recovered in the ocean after it splash-lands with a parachute, though SpaceX is building vertical-landing capability into that as well.) 

The key, at least for the first stage, is the difference in speed. "It really comes down to what the staging Mach number would be," Musk says, referencing the speed the rocket would be traveling at separation. "For an expendable Falcon 9 rocket, that is around Mach 10. For a reusable Falcon 9, it is around Mach 6, depending on the mission." For the reusable version, the rocket must be traveling at a slower speed at separation because the burn must end early, preserving enough propellant to let the rocket fly back and land vertically. This also makes recovery easier because entry velocities are slower. 

However, the slower speed also means that the upper stage of the Falcon rocket must supply more of the velocity needed to get to orbit, and that significantly reduces how much payload the rocket can lift into orbit. "The payload penalty for full and fast reusability versus an expendable version is roughly 40 percent," Musk says. "[But] propellant cost is less than 0.4 percent of the total flight cost. Even taking into account the payload reduction for reusability, the improvement is therefore theoretically over a hundred times." 

A hundred times is an incredible gain. It would drop cost for Musk’s Falcon Heavy rocket—a scaled-up version of the Falcon 9 that’s currently rated at $1000 per pound to orbit—to just $10. "That, however, requires a very high flight rate, just like aircraft," Musk says. "At a low flight rate, the improvement is still probably around 50 percent. For Falcon Heavy, that would mean a price per pound to orbit of less than $500." Falcon Heavy is particularly amenable to reuse of the first stage—the two outer cores in particular, because they separate at a much lower velocity than the center one, being dropped off early in the flight. 

Reasons for long term habitation of the Moon

181 reasons from NASA. [Link PDF]

Create a strategy for permanently transferring government lunar assets, such as physical facilities, associated infrastructure, and the
related operational considerations (physical, logistical, legal transfer), to the private sector. As these assets are transferred, there will
need to be sufficient commercial or scientific reasons for living on Moon, such that it remains an attractive destination for private
firms to utilize the government assets and invest further.

The manned Venus flyby that could have happened

That would have been neat. [Link]

The crew would launch on a Saturn V during a month-long window beginning on October 31 and ending on November 30, 1973. This window offered the best geometry for a quick transit to Venus and the year was chosen because it was expected to be one with minimal solar activity — a good thing to take advantage of since the crew would be going towards the sun. At their closest, the crew would be only 0.7 AU from the Sun. (1 AU is the distance from the Earth to the Sun, about 93 million miles or 150 million kilometres. 0.7 AU is about 65.1 million miles or 105 million kilometres.)

After a brief stay in Earth orbit, the crew would fire their SIV-B stage (the upper stage of the Saturn V) and begin their transit to Venus. The outbound leg of the trip would last 123 days, making the crew’s arrival at Venus some time around March 3, 1974. Like Mariner 2, they would flyby rather than go into orbit, giving them only a brief time for up close observations and experiments. After their brief encounter with the planet, the spacecraft would sling around and begin its 273 day trip back to Earth. The crew would arrive and splash down, just like they would on Apollo, around December 1, 1974. Including the month-long launch window, the mission was planned for 400 days.

Capture the Flag - in Space

A flag is waiting in the ISS for whoever can get there first. [Link]

The space-taxi companies that make it will be bidding for NASA’s two flights to and from the station each year. NASA will be buying seats — four on each flight. Not a large order for a new business. But there’s always the high-priced space tourist with more money than they can spend. For 10 years, millionaires have been buying rides on Russia's Soyuz spacecraft, and they could serve as a clientele for the new U.S. spaceships as well.

And don’t forget the cargo. The private taxis can haul payloads as well as people.

In this space race, money won't be the only prize. The most meaningful prize awaiting the first crew to cross the finish line is the flag, a very special flag. The last space shuttle crew left the prize behind on the space station last month. It's a U.S. flag that flew first on the space shuttle’s maiden voyage, on April 12, 1981. It’s hanging there, waiting.

NASA looking to laser communication system

It would give many times the bandwidth. [Link]

As cameras technology has allowed us to increase the resolution of the images we capture and video we watch, so has the bandwidth required to transfer that imagery. In space, the amount of data that can be sent is currently limited due to the radio frequency (RF) systems being relied upon.

NASA is trying to fix that limitation by testing a new communications system called a Laser Communication Relay (LCR). LCR is a desirable replacement because the optical/laser communication system (lasercom) allows for much higher data transfer rates while retaining the same size, weight and power requirements of existing RF systems. What that also means is a smaller optical system can still transmit at a decent data rate too, but save on power, weight, and size on board a satellite.

The difference in data rates is quoted as being as much as 100x that of existing RF systems and is the equivalent of trying to transfer data over broadband compared to Wi-Fi. The example NASA gives is the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) which manages a 6Mbps data rate. The lasercom system would increase that to 100Mbps, meaning a high resolution image would arrive on Earth in 5 minutes rather than the current 90 minutes MRO takes.

This is pulled right from sci-fi.