Two years ago, "Avatar" defined the state of the art in 3-D moviemaking, becoming history's top-grossing film and winning a visual-effects Oscar in the process — so how is the "Avatar" team going to top that for "Avatar 2," "Avatar 3" and beyond?

"I'm overhearing some things that are really exciting," actor Giovanni Ribisi, who played the corporate bad guy in the sci-fi blockbuster, told me last week during the opening of an "Avatar" exhibit at Seattle's EMP Museum.

For example, part of the action in one of the sequels will take place underwater, which poses big challenges for live-action filming as well as computer-generated graphics. Film director James Cameron, who pioneered the use of 3-D cameras for underwater documentaries, is reportedly having a high-tech submersible built for doing the sequels. And special-effects wizards are already working with Cameron to flesh out the underwater habitats of Pandora, the fictional alien moon where the action in "Avatar" takes place.

"He wants to see what's under the water, so we're going underwater," said Richie Baneham, animation supervisor for "Avatar."

Beyond that, the special-effects team has pretty much kept mum about what shape the sequels might take. But during a panel presentation held in conjuction with the Seattle exhibit opening, they made clear that they plan to keep pushing the wave of technological innovation that made "Avatar" possible.

Among those innovations is the Simul-cam camera viewer, which combines computer-generated graphics and live action in real time to show filmmakers more precisely what they'll see in the finished footage. (The technology is demonstrated in the video clip above.) Cameron also used a motion-capture technique that created detailed 3-D renderings of the actors while they were being filmed — a process that "Avatar" actor Laz Alonso said he appreciated greatly.

"As an actor, you usually have to save energy for the close-up," he told me. "With this technology, you can go 100 percent, all in, every single take, because you're being covered 360 degrees on every take."

Nolan Murtha, the digital-effects supervisor for the virtual production unit on "Avatar," predicted that 3-D movies eventually will be made using holographic technology — although it might take a while. "It'll probably be eight years before you'll see really credible results with holograms," he said.

"And I have no doubt Jim will be the first to make a movie with them," quipped Yuri Bartoli, supervising virtual art director for "Avatar."

In the shorter term, Cameron and the "Avatar" special-effects team are concentrating on ways to make the 3-D moviemaking process more like, well, regular old 2-D moviemaking. I asked Murtha about the technological path between "Avatar" and the age of holograms, and here's what he had to say:

Nolan Murtha: "With 3-D being an emerging technology right now, it's really starting to find its way into the consumer market and into the home. I think it will be our task for the next four or five years to develop that technology, and then to also evolve more interactive displays and more volumetric displays. The holographic stuff will be another revolution that I'm really looking forward to."

Q: Do you feel as if you have the tool set for that 3-D era, or do you think more tools have yet to be developed?

A: "We want to allow photographers and production designers to work with digital environments and digital tool sets, but using traditional filmmaking tools. So we want to re-create realistic lights, for example, and give filmmakers the same tools that they would have on a live-action set — in a virtual environment, in a virtual world.

"We're employing a lot of technology, but it's really to get back to a traditional filmmaking experience for the people who are doing the work. We're removing the computer nerd in the corner in the darkened lab, working on the content and then having the director look at it. Well, now the directors and the designers can start to do it themselves. They're directors. They want to do it themselves." 

Q: How far are you on that road? Are there things that really need to be developed yet in order to do what needs to be done for the sequels and for other projects?

A: "Yeah, we are always working, we're always looking at new technologies. I'm going to China to look at some brand-new stuff that they're doing over there. We want to employ whatever technology we can, and we want to be constantly evolving and making ourselves better.

"Three weeks after 'Avatar' came out and it was breaking all these records, we were actually sitting at a table with Jim and Richie and all, and we were talking about what we screwed up, what are we going to do differently, what did we do wrong. We pointed out all of our flaws even as the movie was breaking all these records. So we're constantly re-evaluating what we did, how we did it, and the mistakes that we made. That's important. To stay on the bleeding edge, you have to recognize that you are making mistakes and then adjust."

Q: Can you talk about what you're looking at in China?

A: "No, I can't."

Q: But does it have to do with this sort of filmmaking?

A: "Yeah, real-time graphic technology and some holographic stuff ... but I can't really talk too much about it yet."

Q: This is something we might see sooner rather than later?

A: "Oh, yeah. We hope so."

More about 'Avatar' and the future of film:

• 'Avatar' director targets spaceflight
• 'Avatar' gets top billing at Seattle museum
• The future of the movies is wearing 3-D glasses
• Virtual actor takes over in 'Tron: Legacy'

You can connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page or following @b0yle on Twitter. Also, give a look to "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

Science / AAAS

Reconstruction of a red apple with a green leaf in three dimensions using surface plasmon holograms

A new technique to produce full-color holograms that stay the same when viewed from any angle could usher in a day when we plop down on the couch and watch 3-D TV without optical illusions.

Current methods for creating 3-D images are based on producing a separate image for the left and right eyes. "Inside the brain we reconstruct the 3-D, so it is sort of an illusion," optical physicist Satoshi Kawata of Osaka University of Japan explains in a video made available to reporters.

He and colleagues instead made 3-D color holograms that can be viewed with the naked eye and don't change color no matter what angle they are viewed from. They did this by harnessing so-called surface plasmons, which Kawata describes as "the collective electron oscillations traveling on a very thin metal film."

The researchers coat the metal film onto a light sensitive material called photoresist that contains a hologram made with red, green, and blue lasers. The photoresist hologram rests on a thin glass plate. A corrugated layer of silver is laid on top of the photoresist to help guide the holograph's light waves.

The surface plasmons in the metal film are excited using white light. The angle of the incoming light determines which plasmons are excited and diffracted by the hologram, reconstructing the light waves reaching the viewers eyes so that the 3-D image appears.

"No one has thought to use plasmons for display applications, so it was fun for me," Kawata told Wired Science. "I just wanted to demonstrate that this could be done. But I hope people would be interested in thinking seriously to use this technology for larger-scale 3-D display."

Before it goes big time, however, the technology needs to be scaled up — the current images are a few centimeters across. In addition, the images are static, not moving picture such as film or TV.

A paper describing the research appears in the April 8 issue of Science.

Update for 6:20 p.m. ET: Check out videos of a hologram demonstration and an interview with Kawata, available via EurekAlert.

Tip o' the Log to Lisa Grossman at Wired Science

John Roach is a contributing writer for msnbc.com. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by hitting the "like" button on the Cosmic Log Facebook page or following msnbc.com's science editor, Alan Boyle, on Twitter (@b0yle).

NASA / JPL-Caltech / UCLA

NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer captured this picture of the Rho Ophiuchi star-forming cloud.

The latest picture from NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer serves up a grab bag of colorful goodies, including a ruby-red reflection nebula, a twinkling of hot pink baby stars and some real old-timers in deep blue.

All those objects are visible in this view of Rho Ophiuchi (also known as Rho Oph or "Row Off"), a star-forming cloud complex that straddles the constellations Scorpio and Ophiuchus 407 light-years from Earth. It's a popular target for astronomers; in fact, another NASA infrared observatory, the Spitzer Space Telescope, focused on the same region three years ago.

The different colors represent different wavelengths in the infrared part of the spectrum. The shades of blue and blue-green stand for light emitted directly from stars (3.4 and 4.6 microns), while green and red are used for wavelengths that are mostly emitted by heated dust (12 and 22 microns). 

With that in mind, this is what we're looking at:

• Reflection nebula: The ruby-red splotch at lower right is a star known as Sigma Scorpii, whose light is being reflected by the surrounding dust.
• Emission nebula: The bright area in the center of the picture is an emission nebula, which gloes due to heating from nearby stars.
• Young stellar objects: The bright pink sparks just left of center are actually baby stars. Many of them are still enveloped in a "baby blanket" of dust. They can't be seen in visible light, but the dusty blanket heats up enough to render them detectable in the infrared.
• Star clusters: This picture includes two notable globular clusters of blue stars. One of them, M80, is on the far right image, toward the top. The other, NGC 6144, is toward the center, close to the bottom edge. In today's image advisory, the WISE team says these clusters are much more distant than the cloud, and contain some of the Milky Way's oldest stars.
• Way-out galaxy: The WISE team also says the photo includes a "galaxy far far away," known as PGC 090239. It's the reddish dot at the 3 o'clock position relative to bright emission nebula at the center, about two-thirds of the way from the center to the picture's right edge.
• Optical effects: What's a space picture without some sort of weird optical effect? Two relatively bright lines emerge from the picture's edge at bottom left. These are diffraction spikes caused by the bright star Antares, which is just out of the field of view.

There's more to come from WISE in the weeks and months ahead, even though the spacecraft went into hibernation in February. The $320 million mission's first public data release is scheduled to take place around the middle of this month. Some have speculated that WISE's data could provide evidence for the existence of a large object on the outskirts of the solar system dubbed "Tyche." But NASA says the data from the first release probably won't be enough to confirm (or rule out) Tyche's existence. In any case, WISE's team members are on the watch for what's likely to be asteroid discoveries galore.

Speaking of asteroids, NASA's Dawn mission is closing in on the asteroid Vesta for an encounter in August. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory is already planning for the "Vesta Fiesta," and delving into the question of whether it should be considered an asteroid or a protoplanet. (Why can't it be both? Vesta's big sister, Ceres, is a dwarf planet as well as an asteroid in my book. And when I say "my book," I mean that literally.)

NASA / JPL-Caltech / UCLA / PSI

This stereo view, released March 10, represents scientists' best guess for the shape of the protoplanet Vesta.

To whet the appetite for the Vesta Fiesta, NASA recently released a fresh video clip about the mission, plus this tasty 3-D picture of the protoplanet. Put on your red-blue glasses to see the stereoscopic effect. Don't have glasses? I'm sending more than two dozen sets of specs to folks who registered their request on the Cosmic Log Facebook page. (If you missed out this time, check back at the end of the month for the next giveaway.)

If you're looking for an even bigger smorgasbord, take a look at the cosmic buffet we've spread out in our latest installment of Month in Space Pictures. Click on these links for bigger versions of the pictures and further background:

• Window on the cosmos: Looking in on the space station.
• Before and after the tsunami: More views from DigitalGlobe.
• Cloud from the sun: Learn more about Alan Friedman's pictures.
• Super-moon attacks: NASA focuses on unusually big full moon.
• Cosmic pinwheel: Stunning galaxy sheds light on dark energy.
• Endeavour at the ready: Roberto Gonzalez's shuttle picture.
• Somalia seen from space: Space station's eerie view of desert. 
• Weird trails on Mars: As seen by Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.
• Alaska's bright lights: NASA physicist witnesses aurora.
• Viva la space station! Cuba spotted from orbit.
• Look! Up in the sky! Space station and Discovery over Central Park.
• That's no sunspot ... That's the station and shuttle in front of the sun.
• Winter in China: Cool picture from the space station.
• Mercury rising: Lots more pictures are coming from Messenger.
• Back on Earth: Dmitry Kostyukov's picture of Soyuz landing.
• Spider in space: Hubble Space Telescope focuses on Tarantula Nebula.
• Tribute to Gabby: Astronaut keeps his wounded sister-in-law in mind.
• Dancing with the stars: High-schoolers win with galaxy pairing.

Join the Cosmic Log community by clicking the "like" button on our Facebook page or by following msnbc.com science editor Alan Boyle as b0yle on Twitter. To learn more about my book on Pluto and the search for planets, check out the website for "The Case for Pluto." 

ESA / DLR / FU Berlin / G. Neukum

A stereo image shows an unnamed crater near Huygens Basin in Mars' southern hemisphere. Look at the image through red-blue glasses to get the 3-D effect.

Mars has some of the highest mountains and deepest valleys of the solar system — but you might not realize that unless you're looking at 3-D imagery of the Red Planet. So put on your red-blue glasses and check out some of the latest stereo imagery from interplanetary orbiters.

First up is today's picture of an elongated crater in the Martian southern hemisphere, as seen by the stereo camera aboard the  Mars Express orbiter. The picture was taken last August but has just been released by the European Space Agency. The crater has all the hallmarks of a cosmic impact, but instead of taking on the usual round shape, it's drawn out as if something struck a glancing blow on the surface.

That's pretty much what scientists think happened: A wider-angle view of the scene shows yet another stretched-out crater off to the north-northwest, directionally aligned with the main crater. That suggests that a train of orbital debris circled inward and hit the surface at a shallow angle. There's other evidence to support that hypothesis, including a butterfly-like splash pattern that spreads out on either side of the crater.

In today's image advisory, the European Space Agency says more of these elongated features will be formed in the future: "The Martian moon Phobos will plow into the planet in a few tens of millions of years, breaking up in the process, and likely creating new chains across the surface." That'll be something for future Mars colonists to watch for ... or watch out for.

NASA / JPL / Univ. of Arizona

A stereo image shows a volcanic vent and the vestiges of lava flows on Mars. Look at the image with red-blue glasses to get the 3-D effect.

Our second 3-D highlight comes from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, or MRO. This geological feature looks similar to the impact crater spotted by Mars Express, but it's the result of a completely different phenomenon. The University of Arizona's Alfred McEwen, principal investigator for MRO's High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment, says this is actually a volcanic vent, sitting on top of a Martian shield volcano.

Lava likely flowed out of this vent repeatedly, with "spatters" of molten rock creating an elevated rim around the vent. "Could these vents be the source of atmospheric methane that has recently been detected on Mars? No, they are old and dusty, like every volcanic vent imaged so far on Mars," McEwen writes in his image advisory.

Such vestiges of Mars' volcanic past could become the focus of future exploration. Astrobiologists speculate that collapsed lava tubes might have provided a haven for microbial communities on Mars, and pit caves on Mars (or on the moon, for that matter) may offer the safest locations for settlements.

NASA / JPL / Univ. of Ariz.

An image captured by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter shows light-toned layers in a crater south of Crommelin Crater. Red-blue glasses provide a 3-D effect.

The 3-D image above shows something completely different — the crazy, cratered terrain south of Crommelin Crater, around the Martian equator. The picture, showing the region's light-toned layers, was acquired by MRO last October.

There's lots more to see in 3-D — but if you're looking at these red-blue anaglyphs, you really need 3-D glasses to get the full effect. I believe every household should have a set of the stereo specs lying around. If you're missing out, here's how to remedy the situation: Inexpensive red-blue glasses are generally available at novelty stores, and you may also find them included with 3-D books or DVDs. NASA's website for the STEREO mission provides a list of mail-order outlets, as well as instructions for building your own 3-D glasses.

Here at Cosmic Log, we've distributed hundreds of 3-D glasses that are provided free of charge by Microsoft Research's WorldWide Telescope project. (Microsoft and NBC Universal are partners in the msnbc.com joint venture. WorldWide Telescope's developers have the glasses made up as a promotional item for their astronomy software, which includes 3-D imagery.)

Just today we've given out more than 30 pairs of glasses to folks who "like" the Cosmic Log page on Facebook. If you'd like to keep posted on future giveaways, please visit the page, hit the "like" button and become a full member of the Cosmic Log community.

For still more cool cosmic imagery, in 2-D, check out the latest installment of our Month in Space Pictures slideshow. This week we're featuring the shuttle Discovery's last mission as well as stunners from space telescopes and interplanetary probes. Click on the links below for larger versions of the pictures and additional background:

• Closing in: A perfect lineup for the shuttle and the space station.
• Swirls of ice: Shikotan Island as seen by EO-1 satellite.
• Cosmic reflections: Messier 78 nebula served up by MPG/ESO telescope.
• Pool practice: Bigger version of the AP picture from Star City.
• Continent in the sky: Spitzer's infrared view of the North America Nebula.
• Monster blast from the sun: You'll love this video from the Solar Dynamics Observatory.
• Saturn's northern storm: Planetary Society's Emily Lakdawalla explains Cassini imagery.
• Getting ready for a walk: See more images from Discovery's Flight Day 5.
• Welcomed with open arms: Station's robotic arm grabs Japanese cargo craft.
• Light show: A dazzlingly big picture of Norway's northern lights.
• Ready for landing: Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter sees crater in color.
• Walking on a mock Mars: Simulation crew practices for Red Planet mission.
• A ring of black holes: Chandra and Hubble team up on a galactic pair.
• A grand galaxy: Hubble's majestic view of the galaxy NGC 2841.
• Time to move out: Get a wider perspective on Discovery's preparations for flight. 
• Jumpin' Jupiter: NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory explains what smacked Jupiter.
• Remembering Challenger: Learn more about the 1986 Challenger tragedy and its legacy.
• A stunning sight: Italian astronaut Paolo Nespoli rocks the house with his Flickr pics.
• Eyes on the sky: Beautiful vista from the European Southern Observatory.

Still more cosmic views in 3-D:

• Get a fresh 3-D look at Phobos
• See a Martian crater in 3-D
• See a Martian milestone in 3-D
• See the Martian arctic in 3-D
• See more depths of Mars in 3-D
• 3-D delights from Mars
• Still more from Mars in 3-D
• Go on a space mission in 3-D
• See the moon's marvels in 3-D
• Saturn's moons in 3-D
• More from outer space in 3-D
• Fly through a nebula in 3-D
• Cosmic Log's 3-D-O-Rama

Join the Cosmic Log community by clicking the "like" button on our Facebook page or by following msnbc.com science editor Alan Boyle as b0yle on Twitter. To learn more about Alan Boyle's book on Pluto and the search for planets, check out the website for "The Case for Pluto." 

Watching a space shuttle launch from an airplane is a rare thrill, and having a video camera at the ready for the event is rarer still. So I was amazed to see last week's iPhone view of the shuttle Discovery's launch, captured by software developer Neil Monday from a commercial jet leaving Orlando. Turns out I shouldn't have been all that amazed: Canadian photographer JD Howell caught another view of last Thursday's launch with his own iPhone, from a different plane that happened to be passing through nearby airspace.

"I was returning to Toronto from a shoot in Cuba on an Air Canada flight, and awoke just as it was happening," Howell told me in an e-mail. "I started rolling my iPhone and caught two minutes of it before it exited the atmosphere. Talk about timing!"

The fact that this was Discovery's final launch made the experience all the more special for Howell. And as the mission continues, more photographers are turning their cameras skyward and praying for perfect timing.

Thierry Legault

The International Space Station looms above the shuttle Discovery in a series of images captured by French astrophotographer Thierry Legault. Click on the thumbnail to watch the video.

French astrophotographer Thierry Legault, who's become renowned for his pictures of the International Space Station and space shuttles silhouetted by the sun, snapped a sequence of images showing Discovery's approach to the station on Saturday. Click on the thumbnail at right to watch the whole thing.

"I had to travel as far as Weimar, Germany, to find a clear-enough sky to catch the ISS and Discovery 30 minutes before docking," Legault told SpaceWeather.com. "The station faces near the end of the video as the sun sets on the ISS."

If you want to double your pleasure, check out British photographer Rob Bullen's similarly framed picture of Discovery's approach, which is featured on NASA's website as well as on SpaceWeather.com. Bad Astronomy blogmeister Phil Plait says "it is seriously insane that we can do this." Or is that seriously awesome?

The insanity isn't over quite yet. On Thursday, NASA is due to release launch video captured by cameras mounted on the shuttle's solid-rocket boosters, and photographers will be clicking away again when Discovery undocks from the space station on March 6. Prepare to be wowed ... again.

More pictures with 'wow':

• Sun gets double-crossed
• Space missions in 3-D
• Shuttle in the spotlight
• Stare at the sun

Join the Cosmic Log community by clicking the "like" button on our Facebook page or by following msnbc.com science editor Alan Boyle as b0yle on Twitter. To learn more about Alan Boyle's book on Pluto and the search for planets, check out the website for "The Case for Pluto."

Using a game controller to interact with real-world objects is definitely spooky. You push around a glorified pencil to "feel" the contours of a hand resting on a faraway table. And if that faraway hand moves, you'll feel an unseen force push back. It's as if an occult hand were taking control of the magic pencil from yards or miles away.

The push of a ghostly hand, vs. the virtual sense of touch ... it's not easy for me to say which aspect of the University of Washington's Kinect-based robo-control system is spookier. But it's easy for Fredrik Ryden to say which aspect is more useful.

"We want to give robotic surgeons a sense of touch," the visiting graduate student from Sweden told me.

The point of Ryden's contraption is not merely to manipulate objects over far distances. Heck, even a monkey can use a thought-controlled robotic arm to pick up distant objects, and surgeons have been operating remote-controlled robotic scalpels for years. But it takes a more sophisticated kind of robot to give those surgeons tactile feedback about how deep they're cutting, and create a virtual force field to keep their scalpels from straying.

The fact that Ryden's robo-touch system could demonstrate that capability after just a weekend's worth of work, using a $150 motion-sensing game device, adds to the experiment's geek appeal.

"I realized what I was doing was really cool, but it was easy — so I was surprised that nobody else had done it," Ryden said.

Now that the feat has been publicized on YouTube, in the blogosphere and beyond, it seems as if everyone is trying to do it, said Howard Jay Chizeck, an engineering professor who's co-director of the University of Washington's Biorobotics Laboratory. "The sense I have is that we're just a little bit ahead of whoever is right behind us," he joked.

How it works
Microsoft (which is a partner in the msnbc.com joint venture) sells the Kinect system as a "controller-less" controller for its XBox video game console. Players can interact with their games by gesturing, punching, jumping or even dancing in front of an infrared laser projector and a set of infrared depth sensors. Kinect's software analyzes the patterns of scattered infrared light to create a 3-D "cloud" of data points that reflect the players' changing positions in real time.

It didn't take long for computer geeks to hack into the Kinect system for a wide spectrum of unanticipated applications, ranging from "Air Guitar Hero" and a virtual-reality piano to extreme body jiggling and other risque pursuits. On the serious side, an outfit called Virtopsy has programmed Kinect to serve as a touch-free interface for medical imagery in operating-room environments. And then there's the Biorobotics Laboratory's hack.

Under the direction of UW's Blake Hannaford, the lab has been working for years to develop better robotic surgeons for military as well as civilian use. Surgical robots are already widely used for delicate operations such as prostate removal, but medical experts in the military (and at NASA) would love to have robots that can do a wide range of surgical operations by remote control, from hundreds of miles away.

So the Biorobotics Lab was challenged to come up with a system that could provide real-time feedback to the surgeons at the robot's controls — including a way to warn the surgeons if they were getting too close to a vital artery or some other danger zone.

Think of it as a 21st-century, virtual-reality "Operation" game with real-world consequences. Bzzzzt!

"Essentially, you're projecting a sense of touch through an image," Chizeck explained. "We'd like to have images of things generate 'force fields' around things you don't want to touch."

When the Kinect system came out in November, Ryden saw it as the perfect platform for such a device. His software translates the cloud of data points into a virtual 3-D surface. When the magic pencil (actually, a software-controlled stylus at the end of a robotic arm) "hits" the virtual surface, it moves no farther — just as if it were hitting the real surface of a faraway hand. The same thing can happen if your stylus strays up to the edge of the force field. (Though actually, if you press hard enough, you can push the stylus through the force field. It feels as if you're poking a pin through a piece of virtual cardboard.)

What it's for
The robo-touch system is currently being fine-tuned as part of the Biorobotics Lab's long-running project on surgical robotics. The beauty part is that buying Kinect systems doesn't strain the lab's hardware budget, Chizeck said. "It's 150 bucks for a system that would cost maybe $100,000 or $150,000 to reproduce," he said.

That doesn't mean low-cost Kinects will be showing up in operating rooms. The low-cost devices don't have anywhere near the resolution that the actual robo-touch device would require. Eventually, super-sensitive touch feedback systems will be built from the ground up and put through clinical trials, as part of a long and potentially expensive development process.

"You're talking at least a decade," Chizeck said. "I think in Fredrik's lifetime, it's a sure bet, but it's really hard to predict." (Fredrik Ryden is 22 years old.)

Hannaford told me that surgical robotics may turn out to be the "killer app" for the field of haptics, which focuses on methods for translating virtual-reality shapes into a real-world sense of touch. (Maybe "killer app" isn't the best phrase to use when talking about medical procedures, but you get the point.)

Chizeck had a slightly different take: "I'll make a bet with Blake," he said. "I think there'll be a game application using haptics before there's a patient operated on."

He said robo-touch technology could also be used to create more dexterous bomb-disposal robots and deep-sea autonomous vehicles. But there's one obvious application that no one in the lab was willing to discuss: the use of haptics for long-distance, virtual-reality sex.

"I'll let you think of your own apps," Chizeck said.

More on gaming and virtual reality:

• Virtual haven set up for combat vets
• 'Star Wars' holograms nearly a reality
• Virtual actor takes over in 'Tron'
• Kinect hacks unleash your inner superhero

Join the Cosmic Log community by clicking the "like" button on our Facebook page or by following msnbc.com science editor Alan Boyle as b0yle on Twitter. To learn more about Alan Boyle's book on Pluto and the search for planets, check out the website for "The Case for Pluto."

While NASA's Spirit rover is frozen in place on Mars and potentially dead to the world, the Opportunity rover is hale and hearty as it begins its eighth year of operation on the Red Planet.

"Seven years is a long time, but we're all delighting in it," John Callas, project manager for the rover missions at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, told me today.

When Spirit and Opportunity bounced to their airbag-cushioned landings on Mars, back in 2004, the $800 million twin missions were supposed to last only 90 days.

Now both probes have hit their seventh anniversary (Jan. 3 for Spirit, Jan. 24 for Opportunity, both dates according to Pacific time at JPL). Because of their longevity, the rovers look like the one of the best deals going when it comes to interplanetary exploration. Callas estimates that the current spending rate for a two-rover operation is about $17 million a year. The cumulative cost of keeping Spirit and Opportunity going for seven years has been about $900 million, or "about 1 percent of the AIG bailout," Callas joked.

NASA / JPL-Caltech

The Opportunity rover's mast shows up as a shadow in a picture taken by its navigation camera on Mars on Jan. 10.

From the beginning, success has come more easily for Oppy than it has for Spirit. Cornell astronomer Steve Squyres, the head of the rover science team, has referred to Opportunity as "Little Miss Perfect." Except for a nagging problem with the rover's mini-thermal emission spectrometer, Opportunity is running just fine with nary a service call.

Opportunity is currently sitting at the rim of Santa Maria Crater in Mars' Meridiani Planum region and will be out of communication for about two and a half weeks, due to Mars' position relative to the sun and Earth. Because of the solar conjunction, communication between Mars and Earth is disrupted by interference. Thus, the rovers as well as NASA's Mars Odyssey and Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter will be put on autopilot until the communication links clear up again.

NASA / JPL-Caltech / Cornell / ASU

A stereo image from the Opportunity rover shows a section of the Santa Maria Crater panorama. The 3-D effect can be seen using red-blue glasses.

That doesn't mean Oppy is getting the time off, however. Callas said Opportunity has been programmed to set its Mossbauer spectrometer down on a patch of hydrated sulfate minerals and "integrate for a good long time." Hydrated sulfate deposits are considered an indicator that water once flowed through the area — and so Opportunity's work over the break could set the stage for a fresh round of discovery.

After studying the terrain around Santa Maria Crater, Opportunity will continue its southward odyssey. "We're pretty much going to pull up stakes and head for Endeavour Crater, 6 kilometers away as the crow flies," Callas said. Getting to the crater could take another Martian year — or almost two years of Earth time. It could take even longer, depending on how many stops the science team wants to make along the way.

The 13.7-mile-wide Endeavour Crater would rank as Opportunity's most impressive vista, and the destination with the most potential scientific value. The crater would reveal Mars' geological layers to a phenomenal depth, serving as a time machine for scientists trying to reconstruct the Red Planet's history. Mission scientists are particularly interested in studying the phyllosilicate clay minerals that have been detected from orbit. Such minerals are thought to have formed under wet, warm, non-acidic conditions — just the kinds of conditions that might have been favorable for life.   

Spirit still silent
Meanwhile, Callas and his colleagues are still hoping Spirit can be brought back to life as well. Right now the rover is stuck in a sandtrap on the other side of the planet, and mission managers haven't heard from it since last March. The rover team is hoping that the solar-powered Spirit weathered the Martian winter and will build up enough power to come out of hibernation and re-establish contact. But there's always the chance that Spirit has given up the ghost.

"We're probably moving into the regime that, if there's something wrong with the rover, it's probably more than one thing," Callas said. Mission managers are trying a variety of strategies that should get through to Spirit even if there were multiple failures.

How long will NASA keep trying? "It'll be more driven by us exhausting all the reasonable things to try," Callas said. "We're still developing that list. ... Longer-term, we can continue to listen for Spirit at a reduced level of activity for an extended period of time, at minimal cost to the mission."

Even though he's keeping hope alive, Callas recognizes that time is running out. Plans and budgets are already being drawn up for a one-rover operating mode.

"Candidly, it's likely to start rolling off after the March-April time frame," Callas said.

In honor of Opportunity's anniversary and the latest stereo image of the Red Planet, we sent free 3-D glasses to some of the folks who "like" the Cosmic Log's Facebook page. Hit the "like" button on Facebook to get ready for next month's 3-D glasses giveaway. You can also join the Cosmic Log community by following b0yle on Twitter. To learn more about Alan Boyle's book about Pluto and the search for planets, check out the website for "The Case for Pluto."

G. Neukum / FU Berlin / DLR / ESA

The European Space Agency's Mars Express probe captured this stereo view of the Martian moon Phobos on Jan. 9. Some areas of the image have been adjusted to fix distortions or gaps for 3-D viewing using red-blue glasses.

The European Space Agency’s Mars Express orbiter has snapped a fresh round of high-resolution images of the Martian moon Phobos, including a 3-D picture and a look at a yet-to-be-launched probe’s once and future landing site.

Phobos, the bigger of Mars' two moons, is getting repeated once-overs by Mars Express' high-resolution camera in part because a good atlas is so important for the Russian-led Phobos-Grunt mission, now due for launch in November. The Russians plan to put a lander down on the ground ("Grunt" is Russian for "ground"), and the Mars Express imagery is helping refine their mission trajectory. Phobos-Grunt's lander is to collect rock and dust samples from the surface and send them back to Earth in a capsule.

"With every Phobos image from the stereo camera, we can improve the three-dimensional model of the Martian moon," Jürgen Oberst of the German Aerospace Center's Institute of Planetary Research said Friday in an image advisory.

G. Neukum / FU Berlin / DLR / ESA

The ellipses on this image of Phobos show the previously planned landing area for the Phobos-Grunt mission in red, and the currently planned landing area in blue.

These pictures were taken on Jan. 9 during Mars Express' last scheduled encounter with the 12-by-14-by-17-mile moon. The flyby brought the orbiter within an altitude of 62 miles (100 kilometers) — so close that the camera had to turn at its maximum rate as it passed over Phobos.

Phobos' characteristic grooves show up clearly in these photos — but it's not yet clear exactly what caused them. One hypothesis is that they're splat marks from debris that was kicked up by impacts on Mars. The Planetary Society's Emily Lakdawalla explains the concept in this posting from an earlier Phobos flyby.

More about Phobos:

• Martian moon in spotlight
• Two Martian moons in one picture
• Phobos likely forged by catastrophic blast

Connect with the Cosmic Log community by hitting the "like" button on the blog's Facebook page or following b0yle on Twitter.

NASA / JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Arizona

The HiRISE camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter spies the Opportunity rover on the southwest rim of "Santa Maria" crater on New Year's Eve 2010.

Like a parent who's not quite trusting of their driving teen, one NASA probe is checking out another one that's on the road — on Mars. This image shows how NASA kept tabs from above on its Opportunity rover as it scooted close to the rim of Santa Maria Crater on New Year's Eve.

The image was made with the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment, a spy camera mounted on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. The rover is seen on the left side of the crater.

Opportunity arrived at the football-field-sized crater on Dec. 16, en route to the 14-mile-wide Endeavour Crater. The rover's tracks leading up to Santa Maria are visible in this image as the faint line on the left side. Click on the link from this NASA Web page to see the highest-resolution view available (481 kilobytes).

The rover is taking pictures of the crater interior to better understand the impact process. It will also explore rocks along the crater rim for several weeks before shoving off for Endeavour. The 3-D image below was taken on Christmas Eve by the rover's front hazard-avoidance camera. The rover's raised robotic arm appears to cast a dragonlike pose. Put on your red-blue glasses to see the 3-D effect:

NASA / JPL-Caltech

A 3-D fisheye view shows the edge of Santa Maria Crater as seen by NASA's Opportunity rover on Dec. 24. Use red-blue glasses to experience the stereo effect.

The rover team will investigate the southeast side of the crater rim from late January through early February, a time when the Red Planet is almost directly behind the sun from Earth's perspective, which limits communications between Earth and Mars. After that, the rover will roll on toward Endeavour, its navigation aided by that ever-watchful eye in the sky.

NASA's schedule means the Opportunity rover will still be at Santa Maria for the seventh anniversary of its landing on Mars, on Jan. 25 (Jan. 24 Pacific time). Click through our "Return to the Red Planet" archive to take a walk down memory lane, or check out the Exploratorium's rover image archive to see all of the rover's pictures, right up to the current date.

John Roach is a contributing writer for msnbc.com. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by hitting the "like" button on the Cosmic Log Facebook page or following msnbc.com's science editor, Alan Boyle, on Twitter (@b0yle).

IBM

"Help me, IBM-Kenobi!" This illustration shows how holographic displays might someday be incorporated into a mobile device. Such a concept is nowhere near reality yet, but IBM's forecasters say it could be in five years.

In the year 2015, will we be using holographic 3-D cell phones powered by air-breathing batteries in energy-saving offices to protect the planet and anticipate traffic jams? IBM's forecasters think we will — but a look back at their past technology predictions shows why some forecasts are sure bets and others fall flat.

The company's "Next Five in Five" list is an effort to anticipate technological innovations that are just over the horizon today but will make a significant impact on everyday life five years hence. "These are technologies we are working on, in some cases," Kerrie Holley, an IBM fellow and chief technology officer for global business services, told me. In other cases, IBM's researchers are just trying to figure out "where the hockey puck is going" when it comes to broad tech trends, he said.

Such forecasts blend common-sense projections of current trends with wild ideas that sound so crazy they just might work. You can see how this works in this year's "Five in Five" list:

Beam up your friends in 3-D: Future devices will display 3-D imagery as holograms, which will open the way for real-time interaction at a distance, the way Jedi knights interacted with each other in "Star Wars." Princess Leia could make her famous holographic plea for help using a cell phone rather than R2-D2. This sounds like a crazy idea, but just last month, University of Arizona researchers demonstrated just such a prototype holo-display. Holley said IBM was less interested in holograms and more interested in 3-D data visualization — for example, using medical data to create a computerized avatar that can be twisted and turned for inspection in a doctor's office. "It's 3-D imagery, but it could be displayed on something you could look at only two-dimensionally," he said.

Air-breathing batteries, or no battery at all: Next-generation electronic devices are being designed to do more with less power, and next-generation batteries are being developed to store more power with less weight. Lithium metal-air batteries and zinc-air batteries, for example, use oxygen from the air in their electrodes. Some devices may not even need batteries in the traditional sense, but instead would generate power when they're shaken. Some wristwatches use this trick today: They require no winding, but get charged up by "scavenging" the energy from your arm movements. "This isn't going to power the big devices, but it could conceivably power mobile phones in the future," Holley said. Is there a "shake-and-dial" phone in your future?

Everyone's an observer: Sensors and cameras in your car, your phone and your wallet can be used to produce a real-time, wide-angle picture of the environment. "Snap a photo, maybe the app prompts you for a few quick questions, and then you can send it off," Holley said. All those readings could be aggregated by computers to track seismic events, monitor the rise and fall of rivers, pass along tsunami alerts or even conduct scientific studies. "You'll be able to contribute this data to fight global warming, save endangered species or track invasive plants or animals that threaten ecosystems around the world," IBM says. "In the next five years, a whole class of 'citizen scientists' will emerge, using simple sensors that already exist to create massive data sets for research."

Your commute will be personalized: Mathematical models will draw upon real-time data to figure out not only where highway traffic is gnarly right now, but also what the situation will be when you're on the road. As we discussed six months ago, IBM researchers are already quantifying which factors are the most painful for commuters, and using those findings to develop traffic flow prediction systems. Such a system has already been put to the test in Singapore — so I'd say this is one of those sure-fire forecasts.

Computers will help power your city: Computer data centers are sometimes seen as energy hogs that give off lots of heat, requiring heavy-duty air conditioning systems to cool off all that circuitry. But what if that waste heat could be used to keep buildings warm in the winter and cool in the summer? This year, IBM delivered a water-cooled supercomputer to the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich that consumes up to 40 percent less energy than a comparable air-cooled machine. This is probably the geekiest prediction of the bunch, but IBM says the cooling system reduces the computer's carbon footprint by 85 percent.

How much of this is blue-sky thinking, and how much of this is just common sense? Four years ago, I passed along a couple of five-year, five-tech forecasts, and it's instructive to see how those shaped up. First, here's IBM's "Five in Five" list from late 2006:

3-D Internet: The Internet will become a seamless virtual world that you explore through 3-D computer graphics, like one great big Second Life with open borders. Second Life and other virtual worlds haven't been as successful as some forecasters may have thought, and as a result, this prediction has fallen flat. Who knows? Maybe the same thing will happen to this year's dream of a holographic world. 

Mind-reading cell phones: Mobile devices will be aware of your surroundings and let you know what's on special at the nearest pizza place. You'll be able to take a picture of a landmark and have the mobile network tell you everything it knows about what you're seeing. Four years later, this prediction looks like a sure thing, thanks to GPS-aware smart phones and augmented-reality apps.

Nanotech for energy and the environment: Advances in nanomaterials will lead to new types of water-filtering and desalination systems as well as lower-cost solar power systems. Because engineers were already looking into these technologies four years ago, this was a pretty solid prediction. Just this summer, Stanford researchers announced the development of a water-purifying filter that works 80,000 times faster than existing filters, thanks in part to nanotubes and silver nanowires. And several companies are working on printable thin-film solar panels that will be far less expensive to produce than the solar cells that were available in 2006.

Telemedicine: Patients' vital signs will be beamed directly to your doctor's office, and care providers in remote areas will transmit medical images and data to specialists thousands of miles away for instant review. RFID technology and telemonitoring systems have made this sort of thing possible, although I don't think the practice is quite as inexpensive and widespread as IBM expected it to be. In the future, portable medical scanners could make a big difference in the developing world.

Real-time speech translation: Translators will be popping up in mobile phones, handheld devices and automobiles. Nowadays, text-to-speech translation is no big deal, thanks to apps such as iSpeak. Last year, Google demonstrated near-real-time speech-to-speech translation and said the app would be available in 2010. With 2010 coming to a close, there are indeed some speech translation apps out there, but the challenge hasn't yet been fully met.

In early 2007, I took a turn at the five-tech, five-year prediction game. Here's a review of my picks almost four years later:

Energy independence through ethanol: "We'll become less dependent on foreign fossil fuel, thanks to advances in cellulosic ethanol production and other energy technologies." Unfortunately, energy independence still seems as far off as the 3-D Internet. Much of the luster that surrounded the ethanol dream in 2007 has disappeared, due to a food-vs.-fuel controversy as well as questions about the efficiency of the current production process. Researchers are still looking for workable ways to turn wood waste and other cellulosic sources into biofuels. But nowadays the big buzz is about electric cars rather than biofuel power.

Sociable, drivable robots: "Robots will become more humanlike, while others will be smart enough to drive themselves through city traffic." Autonomous vehicles have proven that they can take on city streets, and this year Google made a splash by road-testing driverless cars (with a human behind the wheel for backup). Robonaut 2, which is scheduled to fly up to the International Space Station, is one example of a robot that's built to fit in with human crewmates. The biggest frontier for humanoid androids is in Japan, where machines have gone to the head of the class, strutted their stuff on the fashion catwalk and officiated at weddings. But sex with a robot? Eeeww!

Cyborgs and cyberhumans: "Researchers will develop better prosthetic devices and perhaps even fiber-optic nervous systems, knitting humans and their machines more closely together." Prosthetics have indeed become much better in the past four years, but you didn't need to be a techno-prophet to see that. Among the examples: more lifelike artificial body parts, artificial skin with a sense of touch, nano-sized circuitry that could be used in brain-computer interfaces, and yes, fiber-optic nerves. But there's still a long way to go, and I might have to keep this one in the next five-tech forecast.

Personalized medicine: "Your genetic profile will help guide medical treatment." It's taking much longer than the experts thought for genetic medicine to hit the big time, in part because the genetic roots of disease are far more complex than expected. But headway is being made. Just this month, German researchers said they figured out the genetic reasons why some patients respond better to the anti-clotting medication Plavix.

Commercial spaceflight: "By 2010, there might well be two or three companies offering quick rides to outer space and back, with a price tag of $200,000 or so." Virgin Galactic and other companies are indeed willing to take your money for future suborbital space trips, but in the six years since SpaceShipOne flew, no other private-sector spaceships have yet brought humans to the final frontier. That may change in 2011 or 2012 — so I still have a shot at partial redemption. 

How close do you think these predictions came? And what do you think the next five years will bring? Feel free to critique all these forecasts or offer your own "Five in Five" prognostications in the comment section below. 

For another perspective on the "Next Five in Five," check out this report from The Motley Fool. Connect with Cosmic Log by "liking" our Facebook page or hooking up on Twitter, and check out "The Case for Pluto," science editor Alan Boyle's book about Pluto and the planet quest.

NASA / JPL / SSI

This false-color view of the Saturnian moon Rhea shows the side that always faces the ringed planet. The colors accentuate subtle differences in Rhea's icy surface, likely related to systematic regional changes in surface composition or the sizes and structures of the grains making up Rhea's icy soil.

Pictures from Rhea reveal the composition and structure of the icy Saturnian moon in festive colors of green, blue and 3-D red. They're a holiday gift from the scientists who work with the imagery beamed back to Earth by the Cassini orbiter.

"In celebration of the holidays, and to mark the end of another fabulous year in orbit around Saturn, the Cassini imaging team is releasing today some very high-resolution views of Saturn's moon Rhea, including a 3-D look at a tectonically fractured region showing cracks as deep as 2.5 miles," the imaging team's leader, Carolyn Porco of the Colorado-based Space Science Institute, said in an e-mail sent out today.

The team also put out a fresh batch of raw imagery acquired during Monday's flyby of Enceladus, another one of Saturn's icy moons. Enceladus has geysers of water ice spewing from fissures in its surface, and the latest pictures take advantage of backlighting from the sun to highlight the fountains rising into space.

NASA / JPL / SSI

An image of Enceladus taken by the Cassini orbiter during a Monday flyby shows backlit geysers of ice rising up from fissures on the moon's surface.

This week's flyby brought Cassini within 50 kilometers (31 miles) of Enceladus' surface. One particularly intriguing picture shows a dark view of the moon's rippled terrain, with those enigmatic fountains just over the horizon. The raw picture is covered with bright speckles, presumably due to radiation effects.

Cassini has produced plenty of pictures showing those rising columns of ice particles. Last month, Porco and her colleagues reported that a "phenomenal amount of heat" was emanating from the fissures as well. Such findings support the view that water or slush is being pushed up from below, most likely due to the moon's tidal flexing. If there's water and warmth beneath the surface, could there be life as well? That's a huge question that will have to be left for future space missions.

Saturn's moons in context
Meanwhile, astronomers are trying to put Saturn's various moons in their proper context. That's where the pictures of Rhea, taken during flybys in November of last year and March of this year, are coming in handy.

"Since NASA's Voyager mission visited Saturn, scientists have thought of Rhea and Dione as close cousins, with some differences in size and density," Cornell's Paul Helfenstein, an imaging team associate, said in today's image advisory. "The new images show us they're more like fraternal twins, where the resemblance is more than skin-deep. This probably comes from their nearness to each other in orbit."

A false-color image traces subtle variations in Rhea's reflectiveness, using shades of green and blue. One side of the moon always faces Saturn, and that's the side shown in the image released today (and displayed at the top of this item). The left half of the visible disk is the part that faces in the direction of Rhea's orbital motion around the planet, and the right half trails behind. Scientists believe the differences in surface appearance, seen so graphically in the false-color view, could be caused by meteoric debris slamming into one side of the moon as it moves in its orbit. Or it could be due to "magnetic sweeping," a process that occurs when ions trapped in Saturn's magnetic field strike Rhea's surface.

Scientists were hoping to find evidence of a wispy ring surrounding Rhea during the flybys, which came as close as 62 miles (100 kilometers). They had no such luck, but they did see a web of bright, wispy fractures that are similar to those spotted on a different area of the moon by the Voyager probes in 1980 and 1981.

Those wisps turn out to be exposures of bright ice along steep cliff walls, most likely formed by tectonic activity. Some of the imagery collected last year was processed to produce a high-resolution 3-D image, showing fractures and troughs cutting through two of the largest craters in the scene. Those craters have few smaller craters superimposed on top of them, suggesting that they're relatively young. That would imply that Rhea's tectonic stresses have been active relatively recently, at least in some areas.

NASA / JPL / SSI

A stereo image of Rhea's icy surface shows a trough and a fracture cutting through the crater on the left. Use red-blue glasses to see the stereo effect. Click to select a wider, higher-resolution view.

Cassini's science team members have used the imagery to improve their maps of Rhea — and still better maps are on the way.

"The 11th of January 2011 will be especially exciting, when Cassini flies just 76 kilometers (47 miles) above the surface of Rhea," Thomas Roatsch, an imaging team scientist based at the German Aerospace Center Institute of Planetary Research, said in the advisory. "These will be by far the best images we've ever had of Rhea's surface — details down to just a few meters will become recognizable."

More about Saturn's moons and the Cassini mission:

• Oxygen. CO2 found in Rhea's wispy atmosphere
• Space walnut created by moons crashing
• Possible ice volcano spied on Titan
• Slideshow: Cassini's greatest hits

Connect with the Cosmic Log community by hitting the "like" button on the Cosmic Log Facebook page or following msnbc.com's science editor, Alan Boyle, on Twitter (@b0yle).