Data is here.

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Star Trek's Data is no longer a pale sitcom character. Nasa's Robonaut 2 will fly out in September with the Discovery shuttle and work alongside astronauts in the International Space Station. Built to work alongside humans, like a human – Robonaut 2 was developed by General Motors and NASA to be a complimentary companion, not a replacement, for astronauts. With dexterity and humanoid hands and arms, the robot is able to use all of the same tools and perform must of the same functions as its human counterparts, in terms of the space station.

R2 will be monitored closely during its first anti-gravity field trip in September of this year, as machinery does not hold up or operate as expected in space, much like humans.

Keep Going Forward, Boldly, Right?

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President Obama is facing pressure from most of the NASA community not to cut any space programs. Space is a high tech jobs program and NASA has contractors in every state keeping up the political pressure to keep up the spending to keep the highly trained workers employed. As a member of the post-Star Trek generation my heart is with those at NASA who want go to full-speed ahead with the whistles and the bells. That means a yes to every toy a space engineer can dream up.

Big Blue Marble

NASA's Goddard Space Center

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has been accumulating incredible high resolution images of Earth and then using post-processing software to "stitch" together many small images into detailed high resolution images of the entire planet. Goddard scientists and data specialists have stitched together months of observations in 2001 of the entire planet into a rotating mosaic of every square kilometer. They've even established a Flickr account to display these images, images and research paid for with all of our tax dollars and already being used to track resources, locate lost cities, and research atmospheric changes. You can find the NASA Blue Marble Flickr account here. I've linked to sample image in this post; click it for a larger version, and don't forget to enjoy the animation below.

Egyptian Pyramids in Giza from the International Space Station

International Space Station Flight engineer Soichi Noguchi has been

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posting or rather Tweeting pictures he's taken in space using his cell phone while serving on the space station. This week he posted a picture of the pyramids while flying over Egypt. You can see his picture below; click for a larger version.

 

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Station with a Star Trek View

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The landing of the Space Shuttle Endeavor, with its six astronauts, at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, late Sunday night, marked the end of  twelve years construction, costing one hundred billion dollars, for the sixteen nations owned, International Space Station. The Endeavor  carried the station’s final connecting  hub,  a new life support module, which includes a toilet, a water-recycling system,  an oxygen generator,  an air scrubber and an exercise equipment, and of course,  to make the station a comfortable and inviting place for Star Trek fans  -- an observation deck with seven windows, so  that astronauts -- or  future space tourists can gawk at the view?

MoD : If you See An UFO, Don't Call!

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Last December, The British Ministry of Defence (MoD) suddenly  shut down its UFO reporting phone hotline and email address,  and told the public, not to try to call the Government, if one spots a UFO, because the MoD is not going to investigate anymore UFO reports from the public, period!  And as far as some of these UFOs being extra-terrestrial,  don't ask the Government, because the British Government has no opinion on UFOs, period! But don't worry, as far as we know (or are going to admit) no UFO is  threatening the UK-- so just shut up about UFOs!  Not  taking  your UFO reports will save your Government money, ( about $73,000 a year), so shut up, will you?

Twitpics from Space

There's been a lot of interest in social networking of late, especially because of the emergence of Twitter as a micro-blogging tool. I'm a fan of Twitter, but this is, so far, the coolest use I've seen yet for Twitter, and the Twitter-friendly image sharing service Twitpic. We've been able to follow, sort of, the Mars Orbiter and robots, and various announcements from JPL and NASA, which were all fabulous (and nominated for a Shorty award), but this, this is even better.

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