These images of Earth were reconstructed from photos taken by three smartphones in orbit, or “PhoneSats.” The trio of PhoneSats launched on April 21, 2013, aboard the Antares rocket from NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility and ended a successful mission on April 27. The ultimate goal of the PhoneSat mission was to determine whether a consumer-grade smartphone can be used as the main flight avionics for a satellite in space. (via NASA - Smartphone Photos From Orbit)
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These images of Earth were reconstructed from photos taken by three smartphones in orbit, or “PhoneSats.” The trio of PhoneSats launched on April 21, 2013, aboard the Antares rocket from NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility and ended a successful mission on April 27. The ultimate goal of the PhoneSat mission was to determine whether a consumer-grade smartphone can be used as the main flight avionics for a satellite in space. (via NASA - Smartphone Photos From Orbit)

Source: nasa.gov

wired: After lying on the ocean floor for more than 40 years, two Apollo rocket engines that helped deliver astronauts to the moon are once again seeing the light of day. A team organized by Jeff Bezos spent three weeks fishing at sea to recover the corroded F-1 engines, which sat more than 4 kilometers below the surface of the Atlantic Ocean. Bezos does not yet know precisely which Apollo mission the engines flew on as the original serial numbers on the objects are missing. He is hoping they are the Apollo 11 engines that brought the first men to the moon. On Mar. 20, his team’s ship was heading back to Cape Canaveral in Florida with the aged pieces to restore them and perhaps determine which mission they came from. “We’ve seen an underwater wonderland – an incredible sculpture garden of twisted F-1 engines that tells the story of a fiery and violent end, one that serves testament to the Apollo program,” Bezos wrote in a blog post. “We photographed many beautiful objects in situ and have now recovered many prime pieces. Each piece we bring on deck conjures for me the thousands of engineers who worked together back then to do what for all time had been thought surely impossible.” [More @ Wired Science]
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wired:

After lying on the ocean floor for more than 40 years, two Apollo rocket engines that helped deliver astronauts to the moon are once again seeing the light of day.

A team organized by Jeff Bezos spent three weeks fishing at sea to recover the corroded F-1 engines, which sat more than 4 kilometers below the surface of the Atlantic Ocean. Bezos does not yet know precisely which Apollo mission the engines flew on as the original serial numbers on the objects are missing. He is hoping they are the Apollo 11 engines that brought the first men to the moon. On Mar. 20, his team’s ship was heading back to Cape Canaveral in Florida with the aged pieces to restore them and perhaps determine which mission they came from.

“We’ve seen an underwater wonderland – an incredible sculpture garden of twisted F-1 engines that tells the story of a fiery and violent end, one that serves testament to the Apollo program,” Bezos wrote in a blog post. “We photographed many beautiful objects in situ and have now recovered many prime pieces. Each piece we bring on deck conjures for me the thousands of engineers who worked together back then to do what for all time had been thought surely impossible.”

[More @ Wired Science]

A free ESA app released today turns a popular iPhone-controlled ‘home drone’ into a spacecraft. The augmented reality game lets owners of Parrot AR.Drone quadcopters attempt dockings with a simulated International Space Station while flying their drones for real – in the process helping to improve robotic rendezvous methods. This new AstroDrone app is part of a scientific crowdsourcing project by ESA’s Advanced Concepts Team, gathering data to teach robots to navigate their environments. “People intuitively assess their position and motion in relation to their surroundings in various ways, based on what they see before them,” explained team research fellow Guido de Croon. “This new app lets us crowdsource examples of this process in practice, as a first step to reproducing it with artificial intelligence. AstroDrone Access the video “For ESA, the result could be much more autonomous spacecraft that can reliably manoeuvre, dock or land themselves.” (via Smartphone app turns home drone into spacecraft / Technology / Our Activities / ESA) iTunes Link
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A free ESA app released today turns a popular iPhone-controlled ‘home drone’ into a spacecraft. The augmented reality game lets owners of Parrot AR.Drone quadcopters attempt dockings with a simulated International Space Station while flying their drones for real – in the process helping to improve robotic rendezvous methods.

This new AstroDrone app is part of a scientific crowdsourcing project by ESA’s Advanced Concepts Team, gathering data to teach robots to navigate their environments.

“People intuitively assess their position and motion in relation to their surroundings in various ways, based on what they see before them,” explained team research fellow Guido de Croon.

“This new app lets us crowdsource examples of this process in practice, as a first step to reproducing it with artificial intelligence. AstroDrone Access the video

“For ESA, the result could be much more autonomous spacecraft that can reliably manoeuvre, dock or land themselves.” (via Smartphone app turns home drone into spacecraft / Technology / Our Activities / ESA)

iTunes Link

Source: esa.int