by Paul Gilster | Aug 21, 2004 | Autonomy and Robotics
Build a model to test out systems on an aircraft and you’ve created what engineers call an ‘iron bird.’ Now, as this press release from NASA explains, the agency is developing a ‘virtual iron bird’ (VIB) that would computerize the process, providing three-dimensional images of of individual systems and parts that engineers or astronauts can use to debug problems or refine improvements. In the work, being conducted at NASA’s Ames Research Center in California, the VIB is envisioned as a complete computerized model of the spacecraft that would be carried in its computers, including engineering drawings, specifications, part numbers and all relevant details. Another use of VIB will be to simulate flight situations for vehicles still in the planning stages.
Centauri Dreams‘ take: we’ll need onboard systems that include evolutionary algorithms aboard interstellar probes, allowing them to become self-healing and react to failures of components in ways that are more flexible than current computer models. Even the fastest Centauri missions involve almost fifty years in transit, while some (more realistic) scenarios involve hundreds of years. Robotic probes decades or centuries from home will be adaptive and, it is possible, self-aware, evolving their own fixes to problems their designers may not have been able to anticipate. The current NASA work is at the beginning of this process and it will be fascinating to see how it evolves. For just one take on evolutionary algorithms and replicating systems, see the work of Jordan Pollack and Hod Lipson at Brandeis University.
by Paul Gilster | Aug 19, 2004 | Deep Sky Astronomy & Telescopes, Exoplanetary Science |
Although ESA has cancelled its Eddington mission, which was to have used a precision photometer to record the transit of planets across the disks of distant stars, the agency is pressing ahead with a mission that will compile a catalog of up to a billion stars. As described in the ESA press release, the Gaia mission would be launched in 2010, and would spend almost a decade plotting these stars into a three-dimensional grid that would show not just their current position, but direction of motion, color and composition.
It always startles me how little we know about even nearby stars. It was only last year that the red dwarf SO25300.5+165258 was discovered, but at 7.8 light years away, it is the third closest star to the Sun. Projects like Gaia will be invaluable at filling in our information about other close stars that have so far evaded detection, many of them simply because of their size and dimness — some 70 percent of all stars in the galaxy are type M red dwarfs like Proxima Centauri. They’re tiny, nondescript, and when they’re close, the fact can only be uncovered by studies of their motion against background stars. We have a lot of work ahead of us just to map the immediate stellar neighborhood. And if one billion stars sounds like a lot, recall that there are some 100 billion in the galaxy at large.
by Paul Gilster | Aug 17, 2004 | Sail Concepts
The Japanese Institute of Space Astronautical Science has tested a ‘ reflective polyimide resin only 0.0075 millimetres thick’ in space, deploying two sails at an altitude of 150 kilometers (93 miles) and 170 kilometers (106 miles). This article in New Scientist provides the details, noting that this is the first time a solar sail has ever been deployed in space (I assume they mean the first ‘free-flying’ solar sail, since Russia’s Znamya space mirror tested deployment technologies on February 4, 1993). The Planetary Society’s Cosmos 1 sail would have been the first space-based deployment of a free-flying sail, but the sail was destroyed in 2001 along with its booster rocket. The second test for Cosmos 1 may occur as early as this year. Deployment of thin films in space is dicey stuff, as a later Znamya experiment made all too clear in February of 1999. Attempting to spin the sail, engineers controlling the Progress supply ship to which it was attached accidentally extended an antenna, against which the foil became immediately entangled. Both Znamya and the Progress spacecraft were destroyed in Earth’s atmosphere the next day.
by Paul Gilster | Aug 16, 2004 | Autonomy and Robotics
NASA’s Spirit and Opportunity rovers have given us remarkable views of Mars, but the next generation of such vehicles will need greater onboard intelligence. And as we move ever farther away from the Earth, our systems will eventually need to become capable of a great degree of autonomy. Imagine an Alpha Centauri probe 4.3 light years away as it experiences a malfunction, or discovers a new target in Centauri space that needs investigation. There will be no way to wait 8.6 years for a round-trip signal to Earth, so autonomy and AI are crucial for robotic exploration. A recent story in SpaceDaily talks about NASA’s work at its Ames Research Center that focuses on improving what our rovers can currently do. An interesting quote from NASA’s Kanna Rajan: “Part of the problem is we are not closing the loop on board the rover. Signals from the rover have to go to Earth for a human with his/her cognitive capacity to deliberate on the information in the signal and make a decision. Based on that decision, a signal goes back to Mars to instruct the rover to take pictures or do other work.” NASA hopes to remedy this time-consuming situation with a new AI-based agent software architecture called Intelligent Deployable Execution Agents, or IDEA.
by Paul Gilster | Aug 14, 2004 | Sail Concepts
Cosmos 1, the privately-funded solar sail experiment funded largely by Ann Druyan’s Cosmos Studios and run by The Planetary Society, has passed an important milestone. All electronic systems for the spacecraft have been thoroughly tested at the Space Research Institute in Moscow, and have been sent to nearby Lavochkin for assembly in the vehicle.
Although there have been previous experiments with photon propulsion (through Russia’s Znamya space mirror deployment), Cosmos 1 would be the first spacecraft to demonstrate solar sail technologies in free flight. The goal is to launch the sail from a Russian nuclear submarine in the Barents Sea, perhaps as early as the end of this year. One fascinating experiment to watch in addition to the demonstration of photon propulsion will be an attempt to use beamed microwaves to move the sail. The microwave experiment is in the hands of James Benford of Microwave Sciences, Inc. of Lafayette, CA; Benford plans to use a large radio dish in Goldstone, CA that is part of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s Deep Space Network to transmit the beam.
