Mr. Future

From a BBC Technology Article:

“Nasa has confirmed that laptops carried to the ISS in July were infected with a virus known as Gammima.AG.

The worm was first detected on earth in August 2007 and lurks on infected machines waiting to steal login names for popular online games….

The laptops infected with the virus were used to run nutritional programs and let the astronauts periodically send e-mail back to Earth.

The laptops carried by astronauts reportedly do not have any anti-virus software on them to prevent infection. ”

If NASA can’t secure a Windows machine as scrutinized and isolated as a laptop on the ISS, imagine how much harder it is to reliably lock down a home or office network.

Link

Budget-battered NASA Scientists plan to put one of the twin Mars rovers, Spirit, “into hibernation mode” for the coming Martian winter, and limit the activities of the other robot, Opportunity, to fulfill an order to cut $4 million from the program’s budget, mission team members said Monday.

The news comes amid belt-tightening at NASA headquarters, which is under pressure to juggle Mars exploration and projects to study the rest of the solar system. Both rovers were originally planned for three-month missions, but due to a number of factors including their amazingly successful designs, the robots are now in their fourth year of continuous exploration. It costs NASA about $20 million annually to keep the rovers running.

Link (via Yahoo/AP)

Update:  Spirit spared?   NASA issues conflicting signals as to the rover’s fate.

“…shortly after CNN.com published the story, NASA administrator Michael Griffin said the agency will not shut down one of the two Mars rovers, according to spokesman Bob Jacobs.

“There is a process that has to be followed for any mission to be canceled and the cancellation of the Mars Exploration Rovers is not under consideration,” Jacobs said. “There is an ongoing budget review within the agency’s Mars exploration program. However, shutting down of one of the rovers is not an option.

NASA headquarters spokesman Dwayne Brown confirmed the budget directive had been issued. The cut’s purpose is to offset cost overruns with the Mars Science Laboratory, a rover set to launch next year, he said.”

Link

“Greetings, my friend. We are all interested in the future, for that is where you and I are going to spend the rest of our lives.”
- Criswell, Plan 9 From Outer Space

As part of their excellent coverage of the 50th Anniversary of Sputnik, The New York Times is also running an article on the influence of the Space Age on pop culture.

The article runs the whole gamut, from Sci-Fi movies to Googie architecture, but my favorite part of the pop-culture sidebar is the inclusion of this goofy musical tribute to Sputnik clip.

Link - NYT: “When the Space Age Blasted Off, Pop Culture Followed”

Link - NYT: “With Fear and Wonder in Its Wake, Sputnik Lifted Us Into the Future”

Link - NASA: “Sputnik and the Dawn of the Space Age”

(via Paleo-Future)

Just not this week.
Inventor/Professor Young Bae will be demonstrating the first viable photonic laser thruster at the American Institue of Aeoronautics and Astronautics Space Conference next week.

Developed with funding from NASA’s NIAC, the photonic laser thruster (boy that’s fun to say) is tiny, made with off-the-shelf parts, and has the potential to propel spacecraft to speeds greater than 100 km/sec ( 3700 mph ). Zoom.

Link

(… and it goes a little like this )

July 9th 2007, marks the last predicted operational day for the Orbital Express robot pioneers, ASTRO and NextSat, before they are de-orbited, and returned to the earth from whence they came. (albeit faster, and on fire.)

ASTRO and NextSat made robotic history twice this year, first when ASTRO completed an unprecedented autonomous refueling in orbit, and then again in April when ASTRO gave NextSat his battery, 100 miles above the earth at roughly 10,000 miles an hour.

News of the end came as NASA and DARPA had apparently asked the Air Force for a little extra space-robot runtime, but backed down when confronted with the bill.

So observe, if you will, a moment of silence for the bots, maybe spill a little WD-40 on the curb. But remember them, always, at their finest:

From a JPL press release:

It’s a field day for robotics hackers everywhere, as NASA releases the first installment of their CLARAty reusable robotic software framework to the public.

CLARAty development was primarily funded by the Mars Technology Program and it serves as the integration environment for the program’s rover technology developments.

With this first release, a total of 44 CLARAty modules (~100K lines of code ) are now available under the JPL Open Source License. According to the JPL press release, these modules contain everything from math infrastructure to device drivers for common motors and cameras, and computer vision, image, and 3D processing.

So head over to the downloads page, and start building the next Little Rover That Could.

Link (via JPL News)