NASA's New Spacesuit Design Looks Like Something From 'Tron'

As engineers and scientists work hard to build technologies that astronauts could one day use to live and work on Mars, the future of spacesuits is looking stylish too. Or at least, fittingly, like something out of a science-fiction movie.

NASA recently asked the public to vote on its next three generations of spacesuit prototypes, and it announced its first winner: the "technology" suit, a gray body with splashes of vibrant turquoise. The torso emits light so crew members can spot the wearer during dark spacewalks. The design resembles an outfit from the film Tron, while the previous suit took more of a Buzz Lightyear approach.

The Z-2 design brought in more than 64% of the 230,000 public votes, and NASA said the design "pays homage to spacesuit achievements of the past while incorporating subtle elements of the future."

This is a project under NASA's Advanced Exploration Systems Division, which pioneers the development of technologies for future human space missions.

Although the prototype won't be headed to space yet, it will undergo testing in similar environments and will likely be incorporated into the final version of the suit, which will be ready by November 2014. It will also be made using 3D-printed parts and incorporate human laser scans to fit each astronaut accordingly.


Each version of the suit in the Z-series aims to test technologies that will be used on Mars. Unlike the previous iteration (the Z-1 suit), it features a hard composite upper torso for durability; the Z-1's upper torso was soft.

"The cover layer on flight suits used for spacewalks performs many other important functions like protecting the spacewalker from micrometeorite strikes, the extreme temperatures in space and the harmful effects of radiation," NASA wrote in a press release. "These requirements drive selection of specific high-performance materials and design details that aren’t necessary at this stage in a prototype suit."

The boots are compatible with a full-vacuum environment and the covering protects against snags and abrasion, as well as high temperatures. The design around the shoulder and hip joints have also been updated to make moving within the suits easier.

Image: NASA

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NASA Wants to 3D Print Equipment in Space

The newest adopter of 3D printing isn't some hobbyist in a basement — it's NASA.

The agency is already building some of its customized spacecraft and instrument parts using 3D printing, and someday soon, astronauts might even make tools and replacement by 3D printing them in space.

NASA's Space Technology Mission Directorate has launched several programs to create prototypes of tools for current or future missions using 3D printing, or additive manufacturing, a manufacturing technique that uses Computer-Aided Design (CAD) models to build objects layer-by-layer out of plastic, metal or other materials.

"With additive manufacturing, we have an opportunity to push the envelope on how this technology might be used in zero gravity — how we might ultimately manufacture in space." LaNetra Tate, the advanced-manufacturing principal investigator for the directorate's Game Changing Development Program said in a statement.

NASA's Goddard Spaceflight Center in Greenbelt, Md., has already flown a 3D printed battery case on a sounding-rocket mission test, and Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., used 3D-printed components for the J-2X and RS-25 rocket engines. Marshall is also working with the Silicon Valley start-up Made In Space, which plans to fly a 3D printer to the International Space Station in October.

"We're not driving the additive manufacturing train, industry is," Ted Swanson, the assistant chief for technology for the Mechanical Systems Division at Goddard said in a statement. "But NASA has the ability to get on-board to leverage it for our unique needs."

NASA is part of a team of government agencies investing in a public-private partnership called America Makes (formerly the National Additive Manufacturing Innovation Institute) whose goal is to incorporate 3D printers into mainstream U.S. manufacturing.

"This effort really goes beyond one center," Matt Showalter, who is overseeing Goddard's various 3D printing efforts, said in a statement.

NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va., has developed a green manufacturing technique that uses a computer controlled electron-beam gun to build metal structures that could make parts or tools within hours. NASA's Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, in collaboration with Aerojet Rocketdyne of West Palm Beach, Fla., recently built and tested an engine injector for the RL-10 rocket.

Meanwhile, NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida is researching how to build 3D habitats and others structures on other planets using soil, or regolith.

"It's in the national interest to collaborate with other institutions," Showalter said. "This is a powerful tool and we need to look at how we can implement it."

his article originally published at Space.com

Image: JAE C. HONG/ASSOCIATED PRESS

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Oculus VR’s New “Crystal Cove” Prototype is 2014's Best of CES winner

Virtual reality has captured the imagination of developers, consumers and businesses for decades, but most VR headsets produced so far have been notable more for their limitations than their capabilities. With its latest prototype, code-named "Crystal Cove," Oculus VR has taken a massive leap forward, eliminating the stomach-churning motion blur that has plagued previous generations of VR headsets, and adding sensors and a camera to track the position of both your head and body and provide more accurate simulated movement. With the latest Rift, Oculus has created a device that may usher in an era of truly immersive gaming and entertainment, and even create new opportunities for businesses to use virtual reality in everything from manufacturing to medical environments. Of all the exciting, innovative products we've seen at CES this year, the Oculus Rift "Crystal Cove" prototype is unquestionably the best of the best.

In its short history, Oculus has already gone from being a promising startup to becoming a market-moving creator of innovative technology. The first time we saw a version of the Rift, in mid-2012, Oculus had already raised more than $2 million on Kickstarter and caught the attention of legendary game developer John Carmack, who was so impressed with the company that he joined up as its CTO. In our first hands-on -- playing a Rift-optimized version of the Carmack classic Doom 3 -- we found ourselves "raving about it." Since then, Oculus has raised more than $90 million, grown to almost a hundred employees and has sold 50,000 units to developers. And, of course, the company has continued to refine the Rift, with every update dramatically improving the device.

The Crystal Cove version's 1080p OLED display is amazingly sharp and bright. However, what really sets it apart is its positional-tracking capabilities, accomplished thanks to an array of sensors mounted around the edges of the unit, which are monitored by an external camera. It's no longer just your head that controls movement; lean forward or back, and the virtual environment moves in sync, providing an unparalleled, fully immersive experience. Use the new Rift for a few minutes, and you may never want to take it off; at the very least, it may change the way you think about gaming, and make that 55-inch TV hooked up to your console feel small and constricting. When I tried it out here at CES, in an all-too-brief demo session, I didn't want to take it off, and only reluctantly returned it to the Oculus execs helping with the demo.

The Rift has broad applications beyond gaming, and Oculus VP Nate Mitchell tells us that the company has sold developer kits to companies in virtually every industry, from auto manufacturers to the movie business (and, yes, Mitchell admits that there are military applications for the technology). NASA is already using the Rift to create virtual tours of Mars and the International Space Station, and Mitchell points out that the Rift is getting a lot of interest from the training and educational communities. Virtual reality, says Mitchell, is a "new disruptive medium that can revolutionize the way we do a lot more than just games." Forbes is already referring to the way businesses are looking to capitalize on VR as the "Oculus Rift effect."

The biggest challenge for Oculus is getting the Rift in the hands of consumers, and the company remains quiet about a release date, with Mitchell saying only that "2014 is going to be a big year for VR." It already is, now that Oculus has started the year as the winner of the official Best of CES Award for 2014.

Image: Oculus VR

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NASA Space Telescope Spots 'Hand of God'

Religion and astronomy may not overlap often, but a new NASA X-ray image captures a celestial object that resembles the "Hand of God."

The hand was produced when a star exploded and ejected an enormous cloud of material, which NASA's Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array, or NuSTAR, glimpsed in high-energy X-rays, shown in blue in the photo. NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory had imaged the green and red parts previously, using lower-energy X-rays.

"NuSTAR's unique viewpoint, in seeing the highest-energy X-rays, is showing us well-studied objects and regions in a whole new light," NuSTAR principal investigator Fiona Harrison, of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, said in a statement.

The new image depicts a pulsar wind nebula, produced by the dense remnant of a star that exploded in a supernova. What's left behind is a pulsar, called PSR B1509-58 (B1509 for short), which spins around 7 times per second blowing a wind of particles into material ejected during the star's death throes.

As these particles interact with nearby magnetic fields, they produce an X-ray glow in the shape of a hand. (The pulsar is located near the bright white spot in the image but cannot be seen itself, NASA officials said.)

Scientists aren't sure whether the ejected material actually assumes the shape of a hand, or whether its interaction with the pulsar's particles is just making it appear that way.

"We don't know if the hand shape is an optical illusion," Hongjun An, of McGill University in Montreal, said in a statement. "With NuSTAR, the hand looks more like a fist, which is giving us some clues."

The red cloud appearing at the fingertips is a separate structure called RCW 89. The pulsar's wind may be heating the cloud to produce the low-energy X-ray glow, astronomers believe.

The X-ray energies seen by NuSTAR range from 7 to 25 kiloelectron volts, or keV, whereas the energies seen by Chandra range from 0.5 to 2 keV.

The Hand of God is an example of pareidolia, the psychological phenomenon of perceiving familiar shapes in random or vague images. Other common forms of pareidolia include seeing animals or faces in clouds, or the man in the moon. Despite its supernatural appearance, the Hand of God was produced by natural astrophysical phenomena.

Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech/McGill

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NASA shows off a squishy robot rover that could land on Titan

NASA likes to pack light for extraterrestrial visits, so it has been developing a tensegrity rover a rod-based robot that uses cable tension to absorb blows and roll around, rather than a bulky chassis. Thanks to the agency's demo for IEEE Spectrum, we now know what a prototype of the explorer, Super Ball Bot, looks like in action. While it's not very graceful with only some of its motors working, the vehicle has little trouble getting across a room by squishing itself. The clever design should come in handy for a potential mission to Saturn's moon Titan. Since the robot collapses into a smaller shape, NASA could pack multiple units into one spacecraft and study more of the moon's surface. It also wouldn't require the usual airbags or parachutes to land; a Super Ball Bot could fall from more than 62 miles above Titan without taking damage. Any interplanetary expedition is still years away, but it's already evident that future rovers could bear little in common with their modern-day equivalents.

You can hear SunSpiral and Agogino describe the basic approach and some of the work done so far in the video below.

As the video makes clear, there are still kinks to be worked out. The simulated ball bots perform much more smoothly than their real-world counterparts. But if all goes well, Titan might one day seen an armada of tumbleweed-like robotic explorers, hunting for evidence of life on the hazy moon. The approach, Agogino, says, “is unique. And it could be revolutionary.”

Image: NASA, IEEE Spectrum

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NASA Plans to Put an 'Iron Man' Robot on Mars

NASA's Superhero Robot

At 6'2", 275 pounds, NASA's latest robot look like a decent football player, but Valkyrie could be earmarked for another human profession — astronaut.

The android — which was built to be a search-and-rescue bot — comes with sonar equipment, cameras embedded from head to feet and a giant backpack battery. Its arms, legs and hips aren't as flexible as a person's, but it moves in a similar fashion, which could be important for studying the limits of human motion on Mars.

"Likely NASA will send robots ahead of the astronauts to the [red] planet," Nicolaus Radford, head of the Dexterous Robotics Lab at NASA, said in a video about Valkyrie. "These robots will start preparing the way for the human explorers. And when the humans arrive, the robots and the humans will work together in conjunction."

Radford wants NASA's Mars-bound robots to help people build houses and lay the foundations of civilization on humanity's second planet, which means these android helpers are taking a big step up from their predecessors that were tasked with chores such as vacuuming.

Valkyrie, which looks so much like Iron Man it even has a glowing orb in its chest, will compete with other androids at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's Robotics Challenge. The competition compares robots in categories such as strength and dexterity to determine which would be best to deploy in emergency situations that are too dangerous for people.

The competition looks stiff. DARPA's own robot, Atlas, shows an ability to avoid minor ground obstacles in this YouTube video, and has human-like details down to rotatable wrists. An android built by Team THOR (Tactical Hazardous Operations Robot) also demonstrates that its feet can adjust to changes on the ground.

None of these robots is likely to be the one that first visits Mars, but an advanced version of any of them could see the inside of a space shuttle in the not-too-distant future.

Image: YouTube, IEEE Spectrum

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