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  • Robo-explorer goes deep

    After a successful deep-water test, an autonomous robot is gearing up to go where no machine - or human, for that matter - has gone before. It's all part of an experiment that could set the stage for seeking life on Europa, an ice-covered moon of Jupiter.

    Stone Aerospace
    The DEPTHX autonomous robot looks like an 8-foot-
    wide orange mushroom packed with electronics.

    The autonomous underwater robot is called the Deep Phreatic Thermal Explorer, or DEPTHX for short. The contraption looks like an 8-foot-wide (2.5-meter-wide), 2,860-pound (1.2-metric-ton) orange mushroom - but it has the tools and the smarts to swim down to the depths of a water-filled cavern, create its own maps of the area, then come back up with scientific samples.

    This month, DEPTHX successfully explored a 377-foot-deep (115-meter-deep) sinkhole in eastern Mexico, called La Pilita, as a warm-up to an even bigger expedition planned in May: DEPTHX will be dropped into what's thought to be the world's deepest sinkhole, Mexico's El Zacaton, and could descend hundreds of yards (meters) into a dark region no diver has been able to reach. (One diver died trying to plumb Zacaton's depths back in 1994.)

    DEPTHX is built to find its own way around an underwater cave without any tethers, guidance or communication from above. That autonomy is what distinguishes DEPTHX from remotely operated vehicles - such as the Alvin submersible robot, which made such a splash in the search for the Titanic.

    "The difference between this and an ROV is like the difference between an airplane and a car," said Bill Stone, principal investigator for DEPTHX and the head of Texas-based Stone Aerospace. "This is designed for unexplored territory, where there is no external navigating."

    But autonomous navigation is just half of DEPTHX's mission, Stone told me. The other half is what Stone calls "science autonomy" - that is, the robot's ability to identify targets of scientific interest and bring 'em back alive. DEPTHX can check the salinity, acidity, conductivity and chemical content of the water around it, and follow the "scent" to a hydrothermal vent or a microbial mat. It can even look for color variations that signal the presence of organisms. Then it can extend a mechanical arm with a coring mechanism, grab a sample and bring it up to the surface.

    The samples from La Pilita's depths have not yet been analyzed - but DEPTHX microbiologist John Spear, an assistant professor of environmental science and engineering at the Colorado School of Mines, expects that those samples will contain several new phyla, or divisions, of bacteria.

    "If that's the case, that will be the first robotically cataloged, previously unknown division," Stone said.

    The Mexican sinkholes, also known as cenotes, are just the first targets for DEPTHX. Stone Aerospace and the other partners in the project - including the Colorado School of Mines, Carnegie Mellon University, the Southwest Research Institute, the University of Texas at Austin, the University of Colorado and the University of Arizona's Lunar and Planetary Laboratory - are already planning to build a more robust robot for exploring Antartica's subsurface lakes.

    The ultimate goal is to produce a breed of robots that can be sent to Europa or other moons where liquid water may exist beneath a miles-deep layer of ice. The mother probe would melt its way through the ice and release a nuclear-powered base station into the water below. DEPTHX's grandchildren would then fan out from the base and look for undersea samples bearing the signatures of alien organisms.

    Along with Mars, Europa offers one of the best opportunities in the solar system for finding extraterrestrial life. "That's why this is so important," Stone said.

    He said the Europa project could get off the ground in seven to 10 years - if only NASA had the money. NASA has allocated $5 million for the DEPTHX project so far, but all that cash has been spent, Stone said.

    "Effectively, we're out of money and running on overhead," he told me. "There are a few of us, including myself, who haven't been paid in six or seven months. ... The budget was about $5 million, and we're probably a quarter of a million over that. It's the same at some of the other institutions involved in this."

    Despite the tight budgets, Stone and his colleagues are proud of what they've done and intend to keep on doing it - with potential funding from NASA as well as the National Science Foundation and international partners. "They could not have paid Lockheed Martin half a billion to do what we did," he said.

    For more about DEPTHX, check out the Carnegie Mellon University news release, the project Web page at CMU's Field Robotics Center, the DEPTHX page at the University of Texas, Stone Aerospace's press kit (which includes video clips of the robot in action) and this report from Popular Science.

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  • Slingshots in space

    NASA's New Horizons probe is zooming past Jupiter to pick up speed on its way to Pluto, becoming just the latest spacecraft to get a slingshot boost from a planetary flyby. It won't be the last. Mission planners are increasingly taking advantage of celestial mechanics to speed up interplanetary trips.

    This year is prime time for gravitational slingshotting: Just last Sunday, the European Space Agency's Rosetta probe got a gravity assist from Mars on its way to a comet encounter in 2014. New Horizons' encounter, which reaches its climax on Wednesday, will speed the probe toward a visit to Pluto in 2015. In June, NASA's Messenger probe to Mercury gets a boost from Venus, while the Dawn probe will be launched on a Mars-assisted mission to the asteroids Ceres and Vesta.

    The reason for such assists is obvious: If a well-chosen course through the planets saves on a spacecraft's fuel requirements, that precious mass can instead be used for things like a bigger rover or an extra camera. The gravity-assist technique was developed back in the 1960s by Michael Minovitch, a student working at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and has been used extensively since then. The Cassini orbiter, for example, went through four gravity assists during its seven-year journey to Saturn (two with Venus, and one each with Earth and Jupiter).

    NBC News space analyst James Oberg says a similar strategy could someday be used to carry human crews on a "cycling" trajectory to Mars and back. "Buzz Aldrin and I published an article in Scientific American about that in March 2000," he wrote in an e-mail.

    How does it work? It turns out that a slingshot isn't the best analogy. In a sense, the spacecraft is stealing some of the angular momentum from the planet. As the probe zooms toward the planet from behind, the two bodies exert gravitational force on each other. The planet, which is much larger, is slowed ever so slightly in its orbit - while the probe is pulled ahead, benefiting from the transfer of momentum.

    Some have compared the phenomenon to lobbing a ping-pong ball at the blades of an electric fan. When the ball hits the fan, the blade slows down ever so slightly, while the ball careens off at a much faster speed.

    Oberg took his own stab at an explanation:

    "The best analogy to explaining 'gravity assist' - how a probe can pass near a planet and exchange momentum with it, either speeding up or slowing down - is the 'ball-off-a-wall' model. Like a planetary flyby, the bounce is 'elastic': Total energy is conserved. Bounce a ball off a wall and it comes back more or less at the same speed (as long as you ignore friction).

    "But bounce a ball off a wall that is moving toward or away from you, and the ball comes back either faster or slower - it either gains energy or loses it, and the wall does the opposite. And if the wall is also moving sideways, the direction of the resulting bounce is also changed, just as with interplanetary spacecraft.

    "It's not magic, but it sure seems like it. And this year, it's going to become very, very 'ordinary.'"

    Oberg wrote a much more detailed explanation for Astronomy magazine back in 1999, when it was swing time for Cassini. Wikipedia also delves into the gravity-assist concept - noting that the technique played a part in multiple "Star Trek" plots, usually with a time-travel twist.

    Although that last part may seem weird, gravity-assist maneuvers have been proposed as a test of general relativity - and theoretically, slingshotting around a massive object should slow down your spaceship's clock. Am I right on that? Feel free to set me straight in the comments section.

  • Proving string theory

    String theory - the idea that the fundamental constituents of matter are tiny strings or multidimensional membranes vibrating in particular ways - currently offers the best hope of bringing together the seemingly inconsistent theories that make up modern physics. Many consider it the best path to a "theory of everything."

    But there's a big problem with string theory: How do you test whether it's true? Some physicists fear that the theory can never be put to the acid test - which would place it in the realm of philosophy rather than science. Theoretical physicist Lawrence Krauss is fond of saying that string theory is really a "theory of anything" - and therefore, a theory of nothing.

    However, other researchers claim that string theory can indeed be put to the test, by checking the data from experiments aimed at producing the stuff of the early universe. And they say the theory already has passed an initial test.

    The argument is outlined in one research paper published by Physical Review Letters, plus another yet-to-be-published paper from the same team. A summary appears in the latest edition of Physics News Update from the American Institute of Physics.

    I have to admit the papers themselves are way beyond me - but the condensed version in Physics News Update says string theory explains some of the puzzling behavior observed in the "Big Bang soup" already created by the Relativistic Heavy-Ion Collider.

    Physicists had expected that the particle collisions would create energetic jets of quarks, but it turned out that those jets were not as energetic as expected. The researchers - Hong Liu and Krishna Rajagopal of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Urs Wiedemann of CERN - used string theory to explain the suppression of the jets (appealing to the existence of a fifth dimension in the process). And in the upcoming paper, they say that future experiments at the Relativistic Heavy-Ion Collider as well as at the Large Hadron Collider could strengthen the case for string theory.

    The Large Hadron Collider is due to start operations this year, and although it may take several years to reach a conclusion, there's increasing hope that we'll eventually find out whether or not string theorists have just been stringing us along.

  • The cyborgs among us

    Jennifer French is one of the nicest cyborgs you'll ever meet. Nine years ago, French became paralyzed from the waist down at the age of 26 - but today she's able to stand up from her wheelchair unaided, due to pushbutton-activated electrodes implanted in her leg muscles. Now she's looking forward to the day when all she'll need to do is think about walking, and she'll walk. "Imagine a world where the bionic man isn't just a TV show," she said. Believe it or not, that world is already becoming a reality.

    The word "cyborg" may call to mind visions of Arnold Schwarzenegger's mechano-muscleman in the "Terminator" movies, or the creepy-looking Borg villains from "Star Trek." But if you go by the American Heritage Dictionary's definition that a cyborg is simply "a human who has certain physiological processes aided or controlled by mechanical or electronic devices," French definitely qualifies - along with thousands of other people with high-tech prosthetics.

    French, whose spinal cord was injured in a snowboarding accident, attained her cyborg status thanks to the Cleveland Functional Electrical Stimulation Center - the research group that created the pushbutton box she wears around her midriff. By pressing the right buttons, she can command a sequence of muscle nerve firings that help her stand up and move.

    Courtesy of Jennifer French
    Jennifer French and her husband, Tim, pose at
    their wedding. French, who is paralyzed from the
    waist down, was able to walk down the aisle,
    thanks to a pushbutton muscle-stimulation
    system and a walker festooned with flowers.

    "My first stand was wonderful," she recalled earlier this month in San Francisco at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. "Suddenly I could hug my husband and my parents without having a medical device in between us. ... I could walk down the aisle at my wedding. Those are things that you can't replace. That's quality of life that insurance doesn't reimburse for."

    Now she's the executive director of a nonprofit group called the Neurotech Network, which aims to raise awareness about neurotechnologies that can assist people with disabilities. Some of those technologies are aimed at miniaturizing and internalizing the way people can control their cybernetic limbs.

    For example, Brown University neuroscientist John Donoghue is working with the Cleveland FES Center to modify the muscle-stimulating system so that it's activated by electrodes the size of baby aspirin pills, implanted directly into the brain.

    "Merely by thinking about moving, you'll move," Donoghue explained.

    The research builds on studies that Donoghue and others have conducted with monkeys - in which the primates have been programmed to control external devices ranging from a cursor on a computer screen to a robotic arm hundreds of miles away.

    Donoghue's venture, Cyberkinetics, is conducting clinical trials with patients who have become paralyzed due to brain-stem strokes, spinal cord injury or degenerative nerve diseases (such as the malady that struck world-famous physicist Stephen Hawking). The initial results are encouraging, he said.

    Some of the tests involve mental control of a computer that can steer a motorized wheelchair, type out a letter or compose a speech for delivery by a voice synthesizer. "We have shown that people who are totally paralyzed can operate that computer," Donoghue said.

    Other tests are aimed at developing a device that will give quadriplegics the ability to "grasp a spoon and bring the spoon to their mouth - to feed themselves, basically," he said.

    Right now, the equipment requires a lot of external wiring, but Donoghue foresees a day when the whole system can be implanted inside the body, running straight from the brain to the moving parts. "There'll be a fiber-optic nervous system - basically, an Internet of the body," he told me.

    To learn more about Jennifer French and others involved in promoting the next wave in neurotechnology, check out this article from IEEE Spectrum (plus photos here and here). And to see other cyborgs in action, check out NBC's video clips about British experimenter Kevin Warwick and real-life bionic woman Claudia Mitchell.

  • The astronaut dreamers

    OK, so maybe a rancher couldn't build an orbital rocket in his barn, as the main character does in the newly released movie "The Astronaut Farmer." But putting the technical details aside, players in the private-sector space race say the movie does reflect the feelings and the dreams of those who are trying to make the final frontier accessible to regular folks.

    They have one quibble, though: The bad guys in the movie are actually the good guys in real life.

    Warner Bros.
    Charles Farmer (played by Billy
    Bob Thornton) is silhouetted
    against his homemade Atlas
    rocket in a scene from "The
    Astronaut Farmer."

    Outside the space community, "The Astronaut Farmer" has gotten mixed reviews: Some film critics say the Billy Bob Thornton vehicle "fails to launch." Others salute the flick's "independent spirit."

    Space buffs see the film through different eyes, of course. On one level, they could dissect every scene to point out how Hollywood has bent the facts in the service of the story. For instance, in the middle of the movie, one launch attempt takes a dramatic and nearly deadly turn. If that scenario happened in real life, "you'd be dead after about five seconds, and the movie would have to end," quipped Rick Searfoss, a retired shuttle astronaut who now works as a test pilot for California-based XCOR Aerospace.

    But Searfoss doesn't think space-savvy spectators should dwell on the improbable plot.  "If you're obsessing on that, if you're one of these techno-detail people, I'd say, 'Get a life," he told me today.

    Rick Tumlinson, one of the founders of the Space Frontier Foundation, agreed. "If you pick on that, you've totally missed the point," he said. "That's like trying to figure out how a light saber works. For me, I think they've made a beautiful movie."

    The movie starts out with the space obsession of Texas rancher Charles Farmer (played by Thornton), who happens to have built a shiny Atlas-style rocket, topped by a Mercury-style space capsule, right inside his barn. The plot traces his efforts to launch himself into orbit, over the objections of the Federal Aviation Administration, the FBI, NASA and a host of other government types wearing dark glasses.

    As the movie unfolds,  what stands out is how Farmer single-mindedly pursues his dream of experiencing space - supported, of course, by his family and neighbors (plus a guy with a tankerful of high-grade rocket fuel who shows up at just the right moment).

    Searfoss and Tumlinson were particularly taken with a line Farmer delivers during an FAA hearing: "Somewhere along the line, we stopped believing that we could do anything. And if we don't have our dreams, we have nothing."

    The dream of achieving something great is one of the big factors driving real-life rocketeers, Searfoss said.

    "This stuff's happening in reality," he told me. "It's a different dynamic. It's small companies doing this, rather than someone in the barn, and they're not doing it as an orbital initiative - except for [SpaceX millionaire] Elon Musk. He's got a little more money than the rest of us. But these people have the same dream as Charlie Farmer."

    He said Farmer's reaction to the glories of space - "This is where the dreams live" - also struck a strong chord.

    "Those guys nailed it on the head," said Searfoss, a veteran of three space missions. "It was almost as if I had written the screenplay."

    Tumlinson felt the same way: "I swear it's as if somebody who worked on that film went to our Web site."

    He said the movie's main message - to pursue that dream even if the odds are against you, because it's the dream that defines you - needn't be limited to outer-space aspirations:

    "You, Mr. and Mrs. America, have the right and ability to go and push open any frontier that you want. For us, it's space. For other people, it could be anything.

    "It's a cultural spirit that we are sorely lacking right now. Why are people so interested in bling, or whether Britney Spears has shaved her head or not? It's because they're not getting real messages to translate into something important. ... That's what the movie gives to me. These are frontier values, and we need frontier values right now - of family, of caring, of respect, of passion."

    Tumlinson and Searfoss, who both saw the movie at a Hollywood premiere earlier this week, said their only caveat about applying "The Astronaut Farmer" to the private-sector space race had to do with the FAA's role as the movie's main villain.

    "I know they needed a heavy to move the story forward, but I think it's unfortunate that the FAA was given the role of the heavy - because as we in the frontier movement know, the FAA has been bending over backward to help us out," Tumlinson said. "It's obvious they didn't talk to anybody in the new-space movement."

    If the filmmakers wanted to remedy that oversight, Tumlinson said he'd be only too happy to help out.

    "We'll take 'em out and show 'em some real rockets," he said. "Mojave is not that far away from Hollywood."

  • Bigelow shoots for the moon

    Bigelow Aerospace
    An artist's conception shows a Bigelow Aerospace complex in Earth orbit. Such a
    station could serve as the precursor for prefabricated lunar bases after 2020.

    Even as Bigelow Aerospace gears up for launching its second prototype space station into orbit, the company has set its sights on something much, much bigger: a project to assemble full-blown space villages at a work site between Earth and the moon, then drop them to the lunar surface, ready for immediate move-in.

    In an exclusive interview this week, Las Vegas billionaire Robert Bigelow confirmed that his company has been talking about the concept with NASA – and that the first earthly tests of the techniques involved would take place later this year. The scenario he sketched out would essentially make Bigelow a general contractor for the final frontier.

    That role would be a good fit for Bigelow, who made his fortune in the real estate, hotel and construction business and is now focused on developing inflatable modules (or as he prefers to call them, "expandable systems") that can serve as the building blocks for orbital living complexes.

    The first big step down that path came in July, when a Russian booster put Bigelow's Genesis 1 prototype module into orbit. Bigelow has said even he was surprised by the success of that mission, and he has committed himself to spending hundreds of millions of dollars to follow up on that first launch.

    The next test module, Genesis 2, is due for launch in April – with a larger prototype, known as Galaxy, tentatively scheduled for liftoff next year. Bigelow's plan calls for launching the company's first space "hotel" capable of accommodating guests (or researchers, for that matter) in 2010.

    Getting all that right is "Job One," Bigelow told me. But by 2012, the focus could start shifting from low Earth orbit, or LEO, farther out into space. One of the key places in Bigelow's plan is a point about 200,000 miles (323,000 kilometers) out from Earth in the moon's direction, where the pulls of terrestrial and lunar gravity balance each other.
    This diagram shows gravitational
    balance points L1 through L5.
    Earth and the moon are not
    drawn to the orbit's scale.

    Bigelow would turn that region of space, called L1, into a construction zone. Inflatable modules would be linked up with propulsion/power systems and support structures, and then the completed base would be lowered down to the moon's surface, all in one piece.

    Once the moon base has been set down, dirt would be piled on top, using a technique that Bigelow plans to start testing later this year at his Las Vegas headquarters. The moon dirt, more technically known as regolith, would serve to shield the base's occupants from the harsh radiation hitting the lunar surface.

    Bigelow is not alone in thinking about ways to do all this. In fact, Bigelow Aerospace arranged the interview in response to last month's story about NASA's plans for building infrastructure on the moon after 2020. At the time, NASA's Larry Toups had mentioned that the space agency was discussing its options with Bigelow as well as other aerospace companies, such as ILC Dover (which has its own inflatable-module project), Lockheed Martin and the Boeing Co.

    Bigelow's latest comments bring the concept of inflatable modules full circle. NASA pioneered the technology for space habitats that could be folded up into a small space for launch, then inflated with pressurized gas after their deployment. Bigelow licensed the technology, known as the Transhab system, for his own private-sector space program – and is now working with the space agency to adapt the system for its original purpose.

    That was the starting point for our interview, which appears here in full (with minor editing):

    Bigelow: These expandable systems were part of NASA's architecture for going to Mars, and then they became the architecture that NASA was going to use for the dormitory for the international space station. And of course, Congress cut the program. So these systems have applications for deep space missions as well as for missions on the moon and the surface of Mars.

    We've had some discussions with NASA regarding lunar activities using these structures, and we've presented NASA with two concepts for our approach as a private company to creating a lunar base and also providing the regolith insulation protection

    Cosmic Log: So those are two separate opportunities – one would be creating the base and the other would be providing that regolith protection. Am I reading that right?

    Bigelow: You are. Our concepts are completely different from all the other concepts that have been kicked around about how to deploy the regolith. We have our own approach about how to create the base and the provision for gathering that lunar material and placing it over the modules. And that's been the focus of our discussions with NASA, on just that particular subject of lunar interest.

    Our company does have a lunar interest. It's obviously secondary to our activities in low Earth orbit, which we certainly want to successfully accomplish first.

    Q: I'll definitely return to that in a second, but I did want to ask you about your approach to the base and the regolith insulation. Someone coming in from the outside might say, "Well, you just take one of those inflatable modules and you plunk that down on the lunar surface and pile moon dirt around it. It doesn't sound that complicated." Is the devil in the details, or is there some radically different way in which Bigelow would approach that challenge?

    A: Yes, there's a significant difference, because both of those are very significant challenges.

    The regolith is made up of very, very fine, talcum-powder-type of glass particles. As you probably know, these particles are a significant abrasive, and they are able to penetrate the smallest of joints in any moving system. So what you don't want to have, if possible, is a reliance on any moving systems to deploy that material.

    AP file
    Robert Bigelow meets
    the press in Las Vegas.

    Now, all the architectures for deploying the regolith involve some kind of conveyor belt, or a tractor or some other kind of large equipment that rolls around the surface, scoops up the material and transports it like you see on construction sites terrestrially. Usually, that type of solution is imagined because people look to construction excavation as the methodology to deal with the lunar regolith problem. Being a general contractor as we have for over 30 years, we've been on an awful lot of construction sites, and we've excavated an awful lot of material.

    If people have ever been around a construction site at night, they'll see a bunch of lights on those machines, and some service trucks there. Those service trucks aren't there just because there's nothing better to do than visit the machinery. It's because that machinery breaks down constantly on Earth, all of the time. Every construction site has that feature to it.  People who have never been to construction sites are completely unaware that this is a habitual problem on Earth, let alone the moon.

    The last thing you want to do is handcuff yourself to an Earth solution for moving material – a strategy that would be just crazy to apply to a lunar application. We have enough problems as it is keeping the machinery running – Caterpillars, loaders, excavators, all kinds of machinery.

    So our solution is something entirely different, involving a method where no machinery actually is used. We're going to be trying the method this year, using one of our steel simulators as a prototype, because it's the size of vessel that mimics the full-scale module. We're actually going to try in Las Vegas to apply our solution for covering up a full-scale module, involving only two people, with a depth of soil on the crown of at least 2 or 3 feet. We'll give you more on this later as we progress with this experiment.

    Q: You don't want to go into detail on the particular strategy involved?

    A: Well, part of it is because we would prefer to actually implement our approach first. The other part is that I don't have a lot of time left right now to explain it. It would take me probably 15 minutes to describe the process to you. … Maybe another time.

    Q: Well, I guess we'll just have to stay tuned for more on that. So in terms of the lunar habitat, would it be another version of the habitat that you're using for orbital operations?

    A: Yes, our concept of lunar base construction would be to assemble various modules and propulsion/power buses in L1, and that would constitute the base. Those propulsion systems are full of fuel, and they are integrated into the overall structure in such a way that the entire structure lands as a unified base – which essentially was once a spaceship in L1, but is landed on the surface of the moon.

    This way, you avoid the significant issues that surround having to gang modules together on the lunar surface on topographical surfaces that are not perfectly even. You avoid having to connect the air locks of modules that maybe weren't able to be brought close enough together. You avoid having to transport modules across the lunar surface, even if they were only a matter of a few hundred yards apart, and assembling them so that you have an airlock-to-airlock connection.

    One module really isn't the issue. It's a matter of how you get three or five or seven down as one overall complex. Our architecture addresses that as a potential solution, using a combination of our propulsion buses and these expandable systems. The propulsion buses would have stanchions on them that act as the rigid points, to be able to deal with uneven topographical surfaces. The expandable systems themselves don't mind at all being set upon a solid surface because of the shields that they have and the durability of the overall system. The rigidity of the system is such that they don't mind at all. Even under a 1-g influence on Earth, there's no problem – so under one-sixth it would be much less.

    They come equipped with their own insulation, by the way, for space debris in low Earth orbit, and to a certain extent for micrometeoroids. So they're already better insulated than the international space station is currently. Of course, the regolith is a significant additive that would be a great enhancement of the protection.

    So anyway, the base is assembled in L1 and proceeds to the lunar surface. Because it's not having to fly direct, it has wider opportunities: Bases can be sent to multiple alternate landing sites. It can be occupied or unoccupied at the time it is deployed to the lunar surface. So you save a lot of time, a lot of money, and lots of lives potentially during assembly, because it's going to be a very risky situation to assemble modules and try to gang them together on the surface.

    Q: The idea is that the L1 balance point would provide a relative stable place where you don't have to worry about things wandering away all that much, and it's a stable place to work with multiple systems to put it together.

    A: Well, yeah, and furthermore, as a precursor to that, we will have already assembled those spacecraft in theory in low Earth orbit. If they can be congregated and ganged together in low Earth orbit, then we're fairly optimistic that can also be done in L1.

    Q: On that topic of orbital operations, can you give me an update on your plans for the next orbital launch, for Genesis 2?

    A: We're making preparations for sending various folks to Russia. We have a sizable crew of people who go back and forth – I think it's on the order of 21 or 22 people we send over there. And I will be adding myself to that number over there as well. We're looking forward to the launch in April, and things are good to go.

    We have a replacement Biobox that we're putting in the spacecraft. Since we have the extra time, we want to give the little living animals that we're flying the best chance for longevity in space. So we had a duplicate Biobox, and we are in the process of replacing the old one with the new one, with the same constituents of ants and beetles and scorpions. In fact, we are outfitting a scorpion with the same identification marks that the fifth-grade class that named that particular scorpion is going to recognize. We've added some color to that scorpion so that the fifth-graders will recognize it.

    So everything is going to be replaced in the new Biobox as it was in the old one, with the intent that we've provided some extra lifetime in orbit.

    Q: And the time frame of sometime around or after April 1 still applies?

    A: Yes, we expect to have updates over the next couple of weeks, before the 15th of March. We will be making more announcements as to the accuracy of that time. We are getting ready to ship the spacecraft out. We still anticipate an April launch, so we're good to go.

    Q: In terms of the time frame for this larger lunar infrastructure project, you mentioned that there would be a test of the regolith transfer system later this year. Are there any other milestones you're looking forward to? Do you expect to make some sort of full-featured presentation to NASA at a particular time, or do you just take each step as it comes, leading to the post-2020 time frame?

    A: Our Job One is to take care of our business in low Earth orbit and try to perfect our spacecraft through these Pathfinder launches. Then try to launch our Sundancer spacecraft in 2010, our Galaxy spacecraft in '08 – and perfect our propulsion buses and our power systems, and start assembly of our first commercial space complex in 2010, 2011, 2012. By 2012, we should have two habitable modules in orbit, and one large propulsion and power system.

    That will constitute the beginning of our opportunity. If we can do that, I would say that's an exercise that's applicable to the L1 scenario.

  • Space worlds collide

    Burt Rutan, the iconoclastic aerospace designer behind Virgin Galactic's fleet of suborbital spaceships, is fond of saying that NASA (or "Naysay," as he jokingly pronounces it) stands for "No Adult Supervision Apparent." His California-based company, Scaled Composites, and the Virgin Galactic team have been cast as nimble mammals, running rings around the dinosaurs of the traditional space establishment. Was there ever an instance of mammals and dinosaurs helping each other out? Well, in the space business there is: Today NASA announced an agreement with Virgin Galactic to collaborate on items ranging from spacesuits to spaceships.

    NASA's news release said a memorandum of understanding called for the agency's Ames Research Center to work together with Virgin Galactic, the space tourism company founded by British billionaire Richard Branson, to "explore possible collaborations in several technical areas, including hybrid rocket motors and hypersonic vehicles capable of traveling five or more times the speed of sound, employing NASA Ames' unique capabilities and world-class facilities."

    NASA said the agreement was negotiated through NASA's Space Portal, a newly formed organization in the NASA Research Park at Ames that looks for ways to promote the development of the commercial space economy. The space agency said that the pact would be in effect for two years, and that neither party would be required to pay the other to support the areas of possible collaboration.

    "This new type of private-public partnership can benefit the agency while helping to foster a new industry," said Dan Coughlin, NASA's lead for the Virgin Galactic agreement. Virgin Galactic's vice president of operations, Alex Tai, said in the same statement that he and his colleagues are "excited to be working with NASA and look forward to future collaborations in exploration and space travel."

    Today's statement must have caused a stir in some quarters, because later in the day, the agency sent out some "additional information":

    "NASA officials signed a memorandum of understanding Tuesday with a U.S. company, Virgin Galactic, LLC, to explore the potential for collaborations on the development of space suits, heat shields for spaceships, hybrid rocket motors and hypersonic vehicles capable of traveling five or more times the speed of sound.

    "The memorandum is only a framework to explore potential collaborations. It does not include training of NASA astronauts, an agreement to buy seats on a Virgin Galactic flight, or provision of technical advice by NASA to Virgin Galactic."

    In advance of NASA's announcement, Flight International reported that Virgin Galactic is planning to develop a new generation of spaceships capable of making suborbital trips between point A and point B. Such point-to-point travel requires more oomph than the up-and-down flights conducted by SpaceShipOne and expected for SpaceShipTwo. Thus, Virgin Galactic will eventually need bigger engines and more robust hypersonic vehicles. That may well be the subject of future collaboration - covered under agreements following up on the memorandum announced today.

    When it comes to NASA's support of commercial spaceflight, Virgin Galactic isn't the only game in town: The agency is funding development efforts by SpaceX and Rocketplane, giving free advice to Planetspace and t/Space - and already starting to talk about commercial opportunities on the moon.

    Is NASA just a dinosaur in mammalian clothing, or is it really evolving? Feel free to add your comments below.

  • Right vs. Wrong Stuff

    The bad press over the "astronaut love triangle" has made this a rough month for the straight-arrow image that NASA's astronauts used to have. But if you're looking for an antidote to tabloid toxicity, one woman you could turn to is Eileen Collins, NASA's first woman shuttle commander.

    The 50-year-old retired astronaut and Air Force colonel will receive the Colorado-based Space Foundation's Douglas S. Morrow Public Outreach Award on April 9, at the opening of the National Space Symposium in Colorado Springs.

    The award, which recognizes contributions toward increasing public awareness of and support for space exploration, is named after an Oscar-winning writer and producer who also happened to be a big space advocate. Past winners include actor/producer Tom Hanks, "Star Trek" creator Gene Roddenberry and the X Prize Foundation.

    Collins is a veteran of four space shuttle flights - including visits to Russia's Mir space station in 1995 and 1997, a mission to deploy the Chandra X-Ray Observatory (which earned her an entry in the history books as NASA's first female mission commander) and 2005's first post-Columbia shuttle test mission. She retired from NASA last May, with the intent of making way for a new generation of space fliers and giving an outside boost to space exploration as well as math and science education.

    So what's she been up to over the past year? In response to an e-mail inquiry, Collins sent along this update:

    "I have been working on the NASA Advisory Council (NAC) Operations Committee.  I have also been doing quite a bit of public speaking.  I had many speaking requests after my mission, which I was not able to fill due to my job duties.  So when I retired from NASA, I began to fulfill more of those requests.

    "Unfortunately, both my parents passed away in the last 15 months.  So that has taken up huge amounts of my time.  Although this is personal and does not apply to the space program, I feel I need to pass along this information because frankly, it is what I have been doing. Cleaning up their stuff! What a job!

    "I also wanted to spend more time with my children, after the long hours and frequent trips while training for STS-114!  They are 6 years and 11 years old."

    As the love-triangle case makes its way through the courts, do you think astronauts will ever regain the type of public adulation seen during Collins' missions? Or have astronaut Lisa Nowak's misadventures dealt a permanent blow to the "Right Stuff" image? Feel free to leave your comments below.

  • Science fights the fakes

    The digital world has made it embarrassingly easy to fake a photograph, as illustrated by the doctored Beirut-bombing photo, the bogus Kerry-and-Fonda pairing and the Katie Couric slim-down plan. The good news is that digital tools are providing new ways to detect image manipulation - in fact, a Dartmouth College researcher says he's helping The Associated Press develop a system for finding fakes on the fly. The bad news is that this could mark just one more phase in an "arms race" between the fakers and the fake-fighters.

  • How to fight an asteroid

    Today there are more than 100 entries on NASA's list of asteroids that just might possibly hit Earth, even if it's less than a one-in-a-million chance. One of them, called Apophis, currently has a risk rating of 1 in 45,000 - serious enough to get people thinking about how to avoid a "cosmic Katrina." Chances are that Apophis will soon no longer be considered a threat, but what about those others? And what about the thousands of space rocks that are expected to be added to the list over the next few years?

    NASA

    A massive asteroid strike would
    have a catastrophic effect.

    Somewhere out there is a killer asteroid with our name on it, and scientists, astronauts, diplomats and space law experts are just starting to draw up a plan for dealing with it - that is, once we figure out which asteroid it is.

    Experts on near-Earth asteroids laid out their current thinking on impact threats today during a news briefing in San Francisco at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. They broke the issue down into three key questions:

    • How do we find potentially threatening asteroids and assess whether the threat is real?
    • What can we do if we determine there's a threat?
    • Who decides what to do?

    The first question is likely to get a lot more interesting: In 1998, just around the time that "Armageddon" and "Deep Impact" hit the movie theaters, Congress told NASA to find 90 percent of all near-Earth objects, or NEOs, bigger than a half-mile (1 kilometer) in diameter. So far, the Spaceguard Survey has cataloged more than 800 asteroids of that size, out of a projected population of 1,100.

    A couple of years ago, Congress revised the goal, calling on NASA to find 90 percent of the NEOs that are at least 460 feet (140 meters) wide. If one of that smaller class of asteroids were to hit Earth, it probably wouldn't wipe out civilization, as the 1-kilometer variety might - but it would devastate an area the size of, say, England or Northern California, said David Morrison of NASA's Ames Research Center.

    NASA is still working on its response to the new mandate, said Doug Cooke, the agency's deputy associate administrator for exploration systems. "The report is actually overdue," but it should be ready for release in the "pretty near term," he told me today.

    "NASA does have some work under way, at least in terms of the first steps for doing it," he said. Five NASA-supported search teams are currently involved in the first phase of the Spaceguard Survey, he said. To move into the next phase, the agency is considering plans to augment those efforts, as well as potential space-based missions to look for asteroids, Cooke said.

    NASA

    This chart shows how additional observations have
    reduced the likelihood that Apophis will pass through
    a "keyhole" in space leading to a collision with Earth
    in 2036. The risk may be reduced to zero in 2007.

    Apophis has emerged as the "poster child" for the assessment of asteroid collision threats, said Steven Chesley of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Initially, the uncertainties surrounding observations of Apophis' orbital path were so great that experts gave it a 1-in-40 chance of hitting Earth in 2029. Since then, more observations have reduced the risk in 2029 to zero, but that 1-in-45,000 chance remains for a later encounter in 2036.

    Chesley said that astronomers have been swarming to make more detailed observations of Apophis over the past couple of months. Those observations - which have not been fully analyzed yet - just might rule out an impact in 2036. "Stay tuned for that," he said.

    Even if it turns out that Apophis isn't a threat, it will still be remembered as an "incredibly valuable asteroid" because it raised global awareness about potential impact threats, said former astronaut Russell Schweickart, chairman of the B612 Foundation.

    Under the auspices of the Association of Space Explorers, Schweickart has organized a series of four workshops aimed at producing the language for an international protocol on asteroid deflection by mid-2009. The first workshop is scheduled this May in Strasbourg, France.

    Schweickart said Apophis is just "an example of thousands of things we're going to have over the next 10 or 12 years," due to the expanded Spaceguard Survey. He pointed to a wavy line going over a map of the earth, representing the places where Apophis could hit in a worst-case scenario for 2036. By 2020, he said, "we're going to find a hundred or more lines across the planet like that."

    Chesley estimated that there were about 20,000 medium-size, potentially threatening asteroids out there, waiting to be found, and a chart he showed during today's presentation indicated that more than 3,000 of them could be cataloged during just one year, 2011. The trick, he said, is to "find them as early as possible" so that there's plenty of time to come up with a strategy in case something has to be done.

    NASA
    This chart shows the estimates for annual detections of asteroids more than 140
    meters wide, based on planning for an expanded Spaceguard Survey.

    So what would be done? NASA astronaut Ed Lu said setting off a nuclear bomb or smashing a spacecraft into an asteroid wouldn't be the best course, because "you don't quite know what the results are going to be." For some time now, he's been fleshing out a scheme for sending a space tractor to hover right next to an asteroid - without touching it at all. In an Apophis-style scenario, the tractor's faint gravitational pull would shift the asteroid in its orbit just enough to avoid a collision.

    Schweickart agreed that the space tractor appeared to be the best tool to use, but he emphasized that someone would have to be responsible for deciding when to use it. "You can know something's coming at you, and have something to do about it, but unless somebody's ready to make a decision, nothing's going to happen," he said. "The question is, who is the decision maker?"

    That's where the U.N. protocol would have to play a part, he said. The United Nations probably wouldn't take on the job itself, but set up a contract with NASA, or the European Space Agency, or whichever entity was judged most competent. There would also have to be provisions for risk tradeoffs and indemnification - because it turns out that moving an asteroid can be a risky proposition.

    "When you start to deflect an asteroid, certain nations are going to have to accept an increase in risk to their populations, in order to take the risk to zero for everybody," he said.

    Schweickart and others involved in the asteroid-watching business aren't too crazy about the scaremongering they see in the media when it comes to potential deep impacts, but they also know it's hard to hold the public's interest unless there's an imminent threat.

    It could take tens of millions of dollars, or even hundreds of millions, to get a good fix on potentially threatening asteroids. Governments and taxpayers will no doubt have to debate how much to spend, over how long a time frame. But unlike hurricanes or earthquakes, an asteroid armageddon is one natural catastrophe that can be stopped before it starts, Schweickart said.

    "We can prevent an asteroid impact, and we do it by reshaping the solar system, ever so slightly," he said. "Literally, we have the human capability today to slightly reshape the solar system to enhance the survival of life on Earth. Now, if we don't do that, we're not that far past the dinosaurs."

  • Down with Darwinism

    Hot on the heels of Darwin Day, scientists following the cultural debate over teaching evolution say focusing on Charles Darwin might be exactly the wrong thing to do. And based on the different experiences in the United States and Europe, some say the controversy has as much to do with the sorry state of religious literacy as with the sorry state of science literacy. These and other bits of unconventional wisdom were passed along today during a trans-Atlantic meeting of the minds at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

    The theme of today's session was anti-evolution sentiment in Europe, a place where the ideas developed by Darwin and his successors in evolutionary biology haven't historically stirred up as much of a fuss as they have in the United States. Last year, a study published in Science indicated that Europeans were far ahead of Americans in their acceptance of evolutionary theory.

    However, that situation may be changing, according to Ulrich Kutschera, a plant physiologist and evolutionary biologist at the University of Kassel in Germany. "The 'Anti-Darwin movement' is currently spreading in European countries and in Russia," he reports in a paper presented at the AAAS meeting. One German-language textbook on intelligent design has just gone into its sixth printing and has been translated into several other languages, he said.

    "The more one argues against this creationist propaganda ... the less you can convince people who are not scientists," he observed during a news briefing today. Darwin's detractors are just too heavily "indoctrinated" for the arguments to have any effect, Kutschera said. (One could say that the volumes of back-and-forth argument over the subject on Cosmic Log bear out this hypothesis as well.)

    So what's the remedy? "My recommendation is simply ... to no longer talk about 'Darwinism,'" Kutschera said. "You could say that Darwinism is one man's outdated ideology of the 19th century. And Darwinism sounds like Marxism, Leninism, Stalinism ... that's a problem. The second point is that it must be made clear that the modern theory of evolution is in part anti-Darwin. Darwin did not, for instance, take into account the principle of evolution by cooperation."

    Eugenie Scott, executive director of the California-based National Center for Science Education, said Kutschera had a good point. She noted that the advocates of intelligent design "can't get through two sentences without using 'Darwinism' or 'Darwinist.'"

    "Geologists don't refer to themselves as Lyellists. Physicists don't refer to themselves as Kelvinists. We don't refer to ourselves by our 19th-century representative. The science has grown up," she said. "This is a rhetorical point. There are some scientists who make that error, and they get it from the creationists."

    The controversy relates to cultural and religious trends much more than scientific issues, said Antje Jackelen, associate professor of systematic theology/religion and science at the Lutheran School of Theology in Chicago and director of the Zygon Center for Religion and Science. It's common to complain about science illiteracy in the United States, but she noted that most American public schools don't adequately address religion. Meanwhile, religious schools focus almost exclusively on one church's doctrine rather than broadening a student's understanding of other religions.

    "What we need to do is [increase] both the scientific and the religious literacy," she said.

    Here again, Scott largely agreed:

    "We will never solve this problem by throwing science at it. Science is necessary but not sufficient to solve this problem. We have to look at this problem of evolution and creationism in this country from a very broad perspective. Yeah, people don't know that evolution is really good science, so that's something that the scientific community needs to make clear - and that applies to astronomers and geologists and biologists and anthropologists. We all use evolution.

    "But people also believe in this dichotomy, that you have to choose between science and religion, between evolution and creation. And here's where the religious professionals have that role to play, in showing that middle position. That it's not necessarily a dichotomy, that there's a great deal of variation out there.

    "And at least in the United States - and I strongly suspect in Europe as well, but I don't know - one of the major arguments is that it's fair to teach both: 'We'll give the students all the choices, this is good pedagogy, it's critical thinking. Give the students evolution and creationism, or evolution and evidence against evolution, and let them work this out and they'll become good critical thinkers.' Americans really resonate to that argument. But it's a false argument, and here's where the teachers can help.

    "So we have a role for scientists, for the religious professionals, the teachers, and we want a role for parents, too, because parents ought to be demanding that the best science be taught in their local schools. Because in the United States, education is very politicized. You vote for the school board members. It's very different from the top-down system you have in Europe."

    Michigan State University science professor Jon Miller, the author of that study on international perspectives on evolution, took an interesting approach to that political question: He ran for a seat on the DeKalb (Ill.) Community Schools board back in the early 1980s - and won. Now he thinks other scientists should do the same.

    "When I served, it was a lot more work and a lot more frustration than I thought," he said in a university news release. "But I would do it again. In order to make schools better, you have to do it. A couple terms from every scientist would be fine."

    Does that make you think about running for office - or running away? Feel free to add your comments below.

  • Love and rockets

    Outer-space romance has been getting a bad rap lately, thanks to an astronaut love triangle that has generated enough data traffic to draw the attention of extraterrestrials if they're watching. But all that bad press hasn't deterred a few couples from trying to score final-frontier firsts for love and marriage. "You're always going to have the positive side, and you're always going have the negative side, in space just like you do on Earth," said Cindy Cashman, a motivational speaker who is angling to become the first bride in space.

    Cashman and her intended, airline pilot Mitch Walling, have made reservations to take their vows in the back seats of Rocketplane Kistler's suborbital spaceship - a yet-to-be-built rocket-jet hybrid plane that is currently slated to enter service in the 2008-2009 time frame. The other spots in the four-seat cabin will be taken up by the pilot (front left seat) and the minister (front right).

    "Anybody can be ordained within five minutes on the Internet," Cashman told me today. "Maybe we'll have a reality-TV show where the winner would be able to marry us in space."

    The plans for the ceremony are an odd mix of traditional Valentine's Day romance and commercial chutzpah. Weddings nowadays are always expensive, but this one would be right up there with a Donald Trump affair. It'll take $750,000 just to buy the three seats in the spaceship. Cashman - who is the author of a "Life Lessons" book series as well as a somewhat less serious tome, "Everything Men Know About Women" - hopes sponsorships and media deals will help defray the cost.

    Cashman is definitely in charge of the arrangements: "My fiancé is very wonderful and open," she said. "He'll laugh and say, 'I'm just along for the ride.'"

    And what a ride it would be: At a peak altitude above 62 miles (100 kilometers), the couple should be able to see the black sky of space spreading over a curving Earth. The roller-coaster rise to weightlessness, and the acceleration experienced on the way down, would put any relationship to the test.

    Cashman is dealing with all the traditional worries surrounding a wedding - for example, finding the right gown for zero-G. "We'll have to definitely find one that won't float up over my head," she said. But the biggest frustration has to do with working around a flight schedule that's still up in the air, so to speak.

    "It's important to remember to enjoy the process," she said. "I'm focusing on enjoying the moment, even though I know it's going to be a long way away."

    Delayed gratification is also a factor in the plans being laid by George Whitesides, executive director of the National Space Society, and his wife, Loretta Whitesides. The couple unveiled their "Honeymoon in Space" Web site today to coincide with Valentine's Day.

    The two had considered actually getting married on Virgin Galactic's suborbital spaceship. But the Whitesides eventually decided that they couldn't wait until 2009, when Virgin's first rocket plane is scheduled to enter service. The couple tied the knot last September, and now they've shifted gears to lay claim to the first honeymoon in space.

    "You have to set a line between doing something interesting and also making sure you're building a family, regardless of what's cool," George Whitesides told me today. "Loretta felt, and I think rightly, that she wanted to get married now. So waiting a couple years for the honeymoon ... I'm OK with that. 2009 is going to be here before you know it."

    Between now and then, the Whitesides will be working together on a variety of earthly space ventures, such as next month's Yuri's Night celebrations and the annual International Space Development Conference. George doesn't see any connection between his own space-based relationship and last week's astronaut romance gone wrong - other than to observe that as more people go into space, we're likely to see the same sorts of buildups and breakdowns that earthbound lovers have experienced for millennia.

    "The exciting thing is that we're going to have all kinds of private citizens going into space, of all stripes and flavors, and you're going to have a bigger diversity of human relationships," he said. "Taking it beyond the astronaut corps makes all that possible."

    And just to demonstrate that astronaut love stories can have happy endings as well, let's revisit the story of Russian cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko and Kat Dmitriev, his Russian-born, American-raised wife. The two were married three and a half years ago in what could be considered the world's first space wedding. (Some might quibble about that title, because even though Malenchenko was aboard the international space station, Dmitriev was stuck on Earth alongside the spaceman's proxy in Houston.)

    At the time, the wedding stirred up an international controversy. Some questioned how long the relationship - and Malenchenko's space career - might last. But by all reports, both are still going strong. Dmitriev gave birth to a baby girl last June, and just this week, NASA said Malenchenko would be returning to the space station this fall as part of Expedition 16.

    Are you thirsting to read more about love, sex and motherhood in outer space? If so, revisit this story about sex in space, plus the follow-up on Cosmic Log. Laura Woodmansee, the author of "Sex in Space," has even created a whole Weblog of her own on the subject.

  • Bigelow's bigger vision

    Seven months after launching its first inflatable space module, Bigelow Aerospace says the orbiting Genesis 1 module has proven itself to be surprisingly resilient and reliable. The North Las Vegas-based company has already hinted that the successors to the Genesis could serve as turnkey space stations, hotels or sports complexes in orbit - or even as pumped-up habitats for the moon and Mars. Now Bigelow is promising to be more specific about how it plans to make its space program profitable.

    Here's the text of Monday's pre-announcement from the company's founder, real-estate billionaire Robert Bigelow:

    "We will be making a very important and exciting announcement at the National Space Symposium on the week of April 9 in Colorado Springs, and we hope you will plan to be in attendance.

    "For the first time, we will be presenting our business plans that we have kept to ourselves until now. This information that we plan to announce on April 10 at the Ball Aerospace Exhibit Center should help support the private space movement."

    "We look forward to seeing you there."

    Bigelow Aerospace

    An external camera on the Genesis 1 module shows
    the spacecraft and its solar panels with Hawaii below.

    The timing is interesting, coming around the time that Bigelow is hoping to have its Genesis 2 test module launched from a Russian missile base. A variety of rocket companies - ranging from aerospace giant Lockheed Martin to upstart SpaceX - have been working with Bigelow to provide the means to get to privately developed orbital destinations. But it's anyone's guess as to how much the April announcement will add to what's already known about Bigelow's big vision.

    One thing's for sure: For Bigelow Aerospace to follow through on that vision, it has to demonstrate the success of its inflatable-module design. And based on the latest report from design team leader Jay Ingham, Genesis 1 has provided a great demonstration already. The prognosis is that Genesis 1 could keep going and going in orbit for at least seven years more.

    NBC News space analyst James Oberg passed along Ingham's assessment after referring to it in his own report for IEEE Spectrum Online:

    "Since Genesis 1 launched on July 12th, 2006, we have been monitoring all of the on-board systems many times a day.   After almost seven months of flight, we have been very pleased with the both the initial operational success as well as the continued reliability of virtually all of the onboard systems.  We have had minor issues arise from time to time, but most all of them have been able to be resolved with minor software fixes or adjustments.

    • "We have seen no measurable degradation of the power generating capability of all eight solar arrays.
    • "Our original orbit of 346 miles altitude has degraded to 340 miles altitude.  So, at this point we are predicting that the vehicle will maintain its orbit for well over 10 years before re-entering the Earth's atmosphere.
    • "Our battery has not shown any signs of a loss of capacity, but from our use and recharge cycles we are currently calculating a life span of seven-plus years.  This may very well be extended when the rate of use is decreased as we get more vehicles into orbit and our time is split between them.
    •  "Our pressure levels internal to the vehicle have maintained exceptionally well, achieving lower leak rates than those that we have tested on the ground.
    • "Structurally Genesis 1 is in tip-top shape, from pressure data we can determine that the expandable envelope and pressurized structure remains perfectly intact, and from the numerous exterior photographs we download daily, we cannot detect any degradation of the orbital debris shield, or discoloration due to the elevated UV exposure we see in space.
    • "Internal to the vehicle we have had some problems with a computer that controlled several of the cameras, but all of the interior lights and fans and all of the other systems internal to the spacecraft remain in perfect working condition.
    • "This vehicle is passively thermal controlled, so the interior air temperature varies with the quantity of electronics we have operational at any point in time and the amount of sun exposure the vehicle sees.  The internal air temperature has varied from [about] 40 degrees F with very minimal electronics in operation when we are in a maximum eclipse cycle, to [about] 90 degrees F with lots of electronics on when we are in the full sunlight portion of our orbit.
    • "Our avionics and communications to and from the vehicle have operated very well.  We communicate with Genesis 1 several times a day (a frequency which is ever growing as we build new ground stations around the world.)  There was a very severe radiation event (caused by solar activity) on and about the 14th of December of this year. We did suffer some minor communications problems during and after this period which required us to use our backup systems.  This problem was remedied with a reset of our primary system.  This was very encouraging to us that we could survive such an event and recover from it gracefully."

    As Oberg points out, you can see Genesis 1 for yourself by looking up the coordinates on the Heavens Above Web site and pointing your binoculars at the specified patch of sky. But for an even better view, you can check out the Bigelow Aerospace Web site for Genesis snapshots and video clips from orbit. If the Bigelow team's projections are correct, there should be plenty more of those to come.  

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