NASA HAS BUILT FLYING SAUCERS FOR MARS MISSIONS, POSSIBLE KNOW TO US AS U. F.O

New NASA gear that could help humanity set up an outpost on Mars has gotten its first test flight.

The space agency launched its Low-Density Supersonic Decelerator (LDSD) test vehicle today (June 28) from Hawaii. Although the first part of the test went well, the vehicle's huge parachute failed to deploy properly — but LDSD engineers likely won't view that as a disaster. 

"We're doing something that hasn't been done before," LDSD principal investigator Ian Clark, of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, told Space.com in April. "While I'm optimistic that things will go well, if they don't, that's probably even better, because we tend to learn more from the failures than from the successes."                                                                                                                                      Today's test — which lifted off from the U.S. Navy's Pacific Missile Range Facility on the island of Kauai at about 2:40 p.m. EDT (1840 GMT; 8:40 a.m. local Hawaii time) — was designed to help NASA engineers get their first good look at how equipment designed to slow the descent of heavy spacecraft through the Red Planet's atmosphere performs at high speeds in Mars-like conditions. 

Today's flight was originally scheduled for June 3, but poor weather conditions pushed it back multiple times, causing a delay of nearly a month.                                                                                                                  The LDSD project is developing and testing a 100-foot-wide (30.5 meters) parachute — the biggest supersonic chute ever flown — and two saucer-like devices called Supersonic Inflatable Aerodynamic Decelerators, or SIADs.

One SIAD is 20 feet (6 m) wide, while the other measures 26 feet (8 m) across. Both devices are built to fit around the rim of atmospheric entry vehicles like the one that carried NASA's Mars rover Curiosity in August 2012, slowing them down by increasing their drag. 

Today's test called for a huge balloon to carry the 7,000-lb. (3,175 kilograms) test vehicle, which was equipped with the big chute and the 20-foot SIAD, up to an altitude of 23 miles (37 kilometers). The balloon would drop the craft, whose onboard rocket motor would kick on and boost it to Mach 4 (four times the speed of sound) and 34 miles up (55 km).

The thin air at such heights is a good analog for the Martian atmosphere, which is just 1 percent as dense as that of Earth at sea level, researchers said.

If the test had gone perfectly, the SIAD would have inflated and slowed the test vehicle down to Mach 2.5, at which point the chute would have deployed and taken the craft down to a soft splashdown in the Pacific Ocean.

But things did not go perfectly. The balloon dropped the test vehicle at 5:05 p.m. EDT (2105 GMT), and the rocket appeared to fire properly. The SIAD seemed to inflate as planned, but the parachute didn't deploy correctly, officials said. More information will become available later, after engineers have had a chance to analyze data from the test.

The LDSD team aims to retrieve the downed balloon — which, when inflated, could fill a football stadium such as the Rose Bowl — and the test vehicle by boat, both to recover all the test data and to avoid littering the ocean, NASA officials said. It could take about a day to track this gear down. 

Getting big payloads down on Mars

At 1 ton, the SUV-size Curiosity rover is the biggest spacecraft ever to touch down on Mars. The robot landed softly thanks to a bold and complicated scheme that involved a 51-foot-wide (15.5 m) parachute and a rocket-powered sky crane, which lowered Curiosity down to the surface on cables.

NASA's Low-Density Supersonic DeceleratorNASA workers at the agency's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, wearing clean room "bunny suits," prepare the LDSD test article for shipment later this month to Hawaii. LDSD will help land bigger space payloads on Mars or return them back to Earth. 

Credit: NASA/JPLView full size image

The sky crane can (and probably will) be used again to put payloads down on Mars. But new gear such as bigger chutes and SIADs will likely have to be included to slow really heavy stuff down enough for the sky crane to finish the job, Clark said. And that's where the LDSD project comes in.

"With the science and the technologies that we're testing here, we think we could double the mass that we land on Mars, which would go from something like the 1-ton Curiosity rover to something twice that," Clark told reporters during a pre-launch briefing in early June, adding that the gear could also help put payloads down more accurately and at higher elevations on the Red Planet than is currently possible.

The LDSD technologies should also be extensible, Clark said. For example, multiple 100-foot-wide chutes could work together, helping put human-scale payloads — such as habitat modules and other big pieces of infrastructure — down on Mars.

"We think that the parachute we're developing and testing is amenable to being used in clusters," Clark said. "Several parachutes at once create even more drag, and those kinds of things are the technologies that would enable the 20 to 30 tons that we're talking about."

The next stop for the LDSD gear will not be Mars, however. NASA plans at least two more flight tests out of Hawaii, both of which will likely happen in 2015.

DARK ENERGY MISSION COULD SPOT 3,000 NEW ALIEN PLANE EARTH'S

A mission NASA is designing to probe the nature of mysterious dark energy could discover thousands of alien planets as well.NASA's proposed Wide-field Infrared Survey Telescope (WFIRST) mission aims to help researchers better understand dark energy, the puzzling stuff that makes up about three-quarters of the universe and drives its accelerating expansion.

But WFIRST — which is tentatively scheduled to launch in the early to mid-2020s — should also prove to be an adept planet hunter, complementing the activities of the space agency's prolific Kepler space telescope, researchers say."We predict WFIRST will have 3,000 individual planet detections, the same order of magnitude as Kepler," Scott Gaudi, of Ohio State University, said in April during the Space Telescope Science Institute's Habitable Worlds Across Time and Space Symposium in Baltimore.

Gravitational microlensing ,Scientists detect planets around other stars using several different methods. Kepler notes the tiny, telltale dimming of light that occurs when a planet crosses, or transits, the face of its host star from the spacecraft's perspective. But WFIRST would rely on gravitational microlensing.

In this technique, astronomers watch what happens when a big object passes between Earth and a background star. The foreground object's gravity bends and amplifies the light from the background star, acting like a magnifying glass. If the foreground object is a star, and it has planets, the planets can affect the magnified light, creating a signal that astronomers can detect. The process behind this strategy was laid out in 1936 by Albert Einstein, based on his general theory of relativity.

Earth-based telescopes have already detected more than 20 exoplanets using microlensing. WFIRST will be a space-based telescope, which opens up greater detection abilities, researchers said.If you go to space, you can do a lot of great things," Gaudi said. Because microlensing requires the correct lineup of foreground and background stars, the ability to follow up on WFIRST's finds will be limited. However, the process will expand the population of known alien planets, aiding scientists aiming to determine how rare Earth-size planets might be.

A census of worlds

WFIRST should provide a wealth of information about what types of planets exist, allowing stronger statistical conclusions to be drawn, researchers said. Such work would be a nice follow on from Kepler, which has discovered thousands of candidate exoplanets, many of them in solar systems very different than our own. If every solar system looked like ours, Kepler would have found very few or no planets," Gaudi said. "The solar systems we're learning about with Kepler are very different from our own."

Kepler has had a great deal of success spotting planets that orbit relatively close to their stars (because they transit frequently). WFIRST, on the other hand, will be more sensitive to larger bodies farther from their suns, researchers said. In addition, WFIRST should be able to detect smaller distant planets, as well as free-floating "rogue planets" that have been ejected from their systems. Together, Kepler and WFIRST will cover virtually the entire plausible spectrum of planets in mass and orbits.

WFIRST will be able to capture information about Earth-size planets that lie farther from their suns than Earth does, as well as unbound planets the size of Mars. According to Gaudi, in favorable cases, the instrument should be able to detect a terrestrial moon orbiting a distant Earth, or a gas-giant satellite as large as Ganymede (Jupiter's largest moon), though both observations would be challenging. Unbound moons, like unbound planets, would also be detectable.

Of the 3,000 new planets expected to be found by WFIRST, scientists think about 300 will be Earth-size worlds and 1,000 will be "super-Earths," possibly rocky planets up to 10 times the mass of our own.  Such predictions are based on present-day understanding of the distribution of types of planets, knowledge that may be either strengthened or challenged by the wealth of data that WFIRST will bring.

With WFIRST, Gaudi said, "we'll measure the galactic distribution of the planets."

At present, the observatory is in the pre-formulation stage, where it will remain until 2016. In addition to creating a statistical catalog of exoplanets, WFIRST will also directly image previously confirmed planets, study black holes, and hunt for clues about dark energy.

ONLINE TELEPORTER TAKE YOU-TO RANDOM PLACE-AROUND THE WORLD

Got cabin fever? Canadian artist Jim Andrews has just the thing for you.

He calls it Teleporter. It uses the newest Google Maps API and a slate of panoramic photos to ping-pong you around the planet with the flick of a wrist. Just click "Teleport" and you'll be on your way, somewhere. It's like spinning the Google globe and plunking down your index finger. Where will you end up? Who knows!  provides an unusual virtual travel experience. When you click the Teleport button, the program picks a random point on the Earth and displays a nearby interactive "photo sphere" 360° panorama from the experimental version of Google's Street View database.

Sometimes, instead, it displays a random custom panorama created for this project that isn't stored on Google's servers, such as the one below, which is the opening photo sphere.

Teleport: Displays a random "photo sphere" panorama. In the mobile app, you can shake your device to the same effect. The program remembers where you have teleported for the last few sessions so as not to take you to the same places; it doesn't repeat itself frequently.

Map View: View a map of the location associated with the current Street View panorama. The map is zoomable. You can view the map in three different styles: Noir, Map, and Satellite. Rather than always travelling randomly you can, if you like, select a location by positioning the Map View crosshair  where you want it and then by clicking the Street View button.

Street View: Return to Street View. The panorama that will be viewed will be the closest one to where the crosshair () in the middle of the map is located.

Back: Go back to the previous panorama. The number inside the graphic indicates the number of the current panorama. The number starts at 0 at the beginning of a session and increments each time you visit a new location.

Share: Share your current Street view. Copy the URL that is then displayed. When you paste that URL into an email or Facebook (or whatever), when someone clicks the link, they are taken to the web version of TELEPORTER CONSOLE and shown your precise current view.

There are several versions of TELEPORTER CONSOLE. There's a web version you view through a browser. This works well on both desktop and mobile devices. There's also a free mobile app version of the program for iOS and for Android. The mobile app is much like the web version except you can shake your device to teleport; and the app gets installed on your device, so you have quick, easy access to it rather than having to access it through the web. All versions require an internet connection.

Currently, TELEPORTER CONSOLE is primarily a superior interface into the remarkable, already vast and growing collection of "photo spheres" created by Google and byindividuals who have contributed their photography to this database.

That TELEPORTER CONSOLE is as much fun as it is reflects the fascinating and global character of the photographic work in that database. You almost certainly will see many parts of the world you haven't seen before. It isn't "teleportation", which involves being physically transported instantaneously to another location, but I think you'll find the experience compelling. Many have commented that it is "addictive". I don't find it addictive myself, but I do find it enjoyable, educational, and seemingly endless in the number of panoramas.

Eventually, in a future version, TELEPORTER CONSOLE will also explore some of the narrative possibilities of linked 'photo spheres' beyond the notion of a tour. A tour is what you usually experience in the current linked panoramas from the Google database.

Just like hypertexts link texts, Google Street View links photo sphere panoramas. The little clickable arrows (you can also use the arrow keys to navigate) are hyperlinks between panoramas. There are all sorts of unexplored possibilities. Like what? Well, there are rarely any interesting events going on as we move from one panorama to another, and when people are present, they're usually incidental—or cut in half by the photo-stitching process. There is very little story telling going on. TELEPORTER CONSOLE can and does occassionally display linked panoramas that are not Google-approved, that are not part of the Google database of photo spheres. This project can explore the expressive possibilities of the environment freely, without having to conform to a Google vision of how the photo spheres should be.

Night Walk through Marseilles is one of the few pieces I've seen that starts to explore the narrative possibilities.

However, the Google database is not without its departures from photographic realism and sometimes includes interesting fictions. Take, for instance, the teleporter/time machine panoramas created by Google to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the sci-fi television show Dr. Who. That Google did indeed create these panoramas is evident both from the credits displayed on these panoramas ("©2014 Google") at bottom right and also from various articles from newspapers published when these panoramas first appeared. London's Daily Mail wrote that "A Google spokesperson said: 'Inspired by the 50th Anniversary of Doctor Who, our engineers thought it would be a cool idea for users to find and tour the TARDIS from Street View level.'" Below we see the inside of the TARDIS and, below that, the entrance to the TARDIS.

As the Daily Mail article points out, Google projects sometimes include "easter eggs". Mostly Google takes care of business, but a database of street views should also be wonderful. It isn't simply a database of images on how to find your way to the store; it's an unprecedented map, a growing, changing collective photographic representation of much of the world--and some of the simply imagined worlds.

Another non-realistic panorama from the Google database is shown below. It is obviously Photoshopped: note how the curve defining the Earth does not quite line up. But it's fun and interesting and depicts a high-tech form of travel, like the TARDIS.

Below, we see another panorama from the Google database. It looks like a teleporter of some sort. What is it? Well, actually this is not fictive. You can click to open up the panorama and explore it to discover just what and where it is. It's not a teleporter, but it is a high-tech form of intergalactic imaginative transportation and inquiry.

So, yes, sometimes truth competes with fiction in its appeal to the imagination. The database of panoramas is not without imaginative appeal. It is apparently not stuck in simplistic realism. It's quite interesting not only because of the work of individuals who have contributed fascinating work but also, apparently, because the people at Google managing the matter are not sticks in the mud.

Another area of interest, for me, concerning Google Maps and Street View is what can be done with the API in terms of overlays, animations, and such. In other words, I'm interested in how Google Maps is becoming kind of a platform not without comparison to something like Flash and Director. Flash and Director were/are multimedia authoring tools. They weren't anchored to a map environment, unlike Google Maps, of course. They were general multimedia authoring tools. In Google Maps, we see multimedia functionality starting to emerge slowly and selectively. And we see Google Maps appearing in other multimedia IDEs such as for Android development and general web development in tools like Dreamweaver.

Maps and street views are an important part of the mobile computing environment to help us get around and find what we need. Exploring the imaginative and poetical possibilities of such technologies is something I enjoy doing and have enjoyed doing in TELEPORTER CONSOLE. Art is all about bringing it home to where we are; art is a map of the real and the imaginary, of all things.