• Android phone goes into orbit

    D.W. Wheeler / NASA / Ames

    A prototype SPHERES satellite has a Samsung Nexus S attached to an expansion port.

    By Alan Boyle, Science Editor, NBC News

    The mobile-phone space race has ended in a tie: Last month we found out that NASA's final space shuttle flight was taking a couple of iPhones to the International Space Station, and it turns out that an Android phone was aboard the shuttle Atlantis as well.

    The Google-powered Samsung Nexus S phone will be used on the station in a series of experiments aimed at developing free-flying robotic assistants — zero-gravity gizmos that were inspired by the zippy little training sphere that helped Luke Skywalker practice his lightsaber skills in "Star Wars." These volleyball-sized free-fliers are known as SPHERES — which is short for Synchronized Position Hold, Engage, Reorient Experimental Satellites.

    SPHERES prototypes have been in the works for more than a decade. The camera-equipped, thruster-driven devices were developed by students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in cooperation with the Defense Department and NASA, for possible use as remote-controlled observers in microgravity environments. You could imagine a spyball floating through far-off modules of a space station to make sure all systems were go, during times when the station's human crew is otherwise occupied. Future versions of the device could also look over the shoulder of a spacewalker to give Mission Control an up-close video view of the action.

    MIT Tech TV

    The beauty part is that the SPHERES prototypes have an expansion port for plugging in extra devices or appendages — and the Samsung Nexus S is the first smartphone to be plugged in.

    "By connecting a smartphone, we can immediately make SPHERES more intelligent," D.W. Wheeler, lead engineer in the Intelligent Robotics Group at NASA's Ames Research Center, said in a NASA news release. "With a smartphone, the SPHERES will have a built-in camera to take pictures and video, sensors to help conduct inspections, a powerful computing unit to make calculations, and a Wi-Fi connection that we will use to transfer data in real time to the space station and Mission Control."

    Neither the Android phones nor the iPhones are being used to make actual phone calls: Space station residents have special satellite-linked Internet phones for that. But today's smartphones pack so much computing power that they could come in handy as backup navigation devices (in the iPhones' case) or satellite controllers (in the Android phone's case).

    "We'll start by simulating a mobile inspection of the station to test how well SPHERES can move around and collect data using the smartphone's camera and sensors," said Terry Fong, director of the Intelligent Robotics Group. "This will tell us basic information about the light and sound levels inside various areas of the station. Then we'll use SPHERES to conduct an interview with a crewmember — a task that usually requires two crew members to complete. We'll have Mission Control and the smartphone-enhanced SPHERES take the place of the astronaut holding the video camera." 

    Just having the phones on the space station serve as status symbols for the companies involved.

    "Samsung is proud to have the Nexus S chosen to be aboard NASA's final space shuttle launch, an event that is historical," Dale Sohn, president of Samsung Mobile, said in the news release. "The research that is being conducted with SPHERES using the Nexus S will help monitor and communicate from the International Space Station."

    So what about all the other smartphones and tablets that are out there? Because this is the last shuttle flight, future gizmos will have to be certified for flight on other types of space transports, such as the Russian Soyuz or Progress craft, European and Japanese cargo spaceships, or on commercial vehicles that are currently under development.

    The future telecom space race may well be a contest to see which company can extend its calling network to the final frontier. I'm sure there are some future space tourists who'd love to flip on their phone while flying on SpaceShipTwo, call down to their pals and say, "Can you hear me now?" What do you think?

    More about phone connections in space:

    Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page or following @b0yle on Twitter. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," Alan's book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds. 

  • iPhones head for final frontier

    Odyssey Space Research

    An artist's conception shows one of Odyssey Space Research's iPhones floating in the International Space Station's Tranquility module, with a view of Earth from the Cupola observation deck.

    By Alan Boyle, Science Editor, NBC News

    The last space shuttle mission will be the first mission to send iPhones into orbit — but if this experiment works out the way its developers hope, you could be seeing a lot more such devices on the final frontier in the years to come.

    The two Apple iPhone 4's certified for launch to the International Space Station on the shuttle Atlantis next month won't being used for phone calls. Astronauts on the space station already have a pretty reliable Internet phone link for that, so they don't have to worry whether AT&T or Verizon provides better reception from space. In fact, the phone function on these iPhones has been disabled.

    "My joke is that the roaming charges would be astronomical," Brian Rishikof, the chief executive officer for Houston-based Odyssey Space Research, told me today.

    Odyssey has loaded the phones with an app designed to help spacefliers get oriented in case they ever get lost in space. SpaceLab for iOS will be used for four experiments on the station:

    • Limb Tracker lets astronauts snap pictures of Earth's horizon and analyzes the shape of the planet's arc, or limb, to estimate altitude as well as flight angle.
    • Sensor Cal uses a series of reference photos to calibrate the phone's gyro and accelerometer for subsequent measurements.
    • State Acq enable astronauts to estimate their spacecraft's latitude and longitude by matching up iPhone photos with a wireframe of Earth's coastlines.
    • LFI checks the effects of space radiation on the iPhone by monitoring certain areas of the phone's memory for single-bit upsets —flipped bits that can scramble a spacecraft's brains. Bit flips have been blamed for space glitches affecting NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and Voyager 2 probe, as well as the Toyota accelerator glitches on Earth.

    The $100 billion space station is bristling with communication equipment, so it's unlikely that astronauts would ever lose their bearings there. But in the years ahead, NASA will have to rely on commercial space transports, and it's conceivable that mobile devices could serve as backup systems for spacecraft navigation in the event of a catastrophic computer glitch or communication failure. If you've seen the movie "Apollo 13," you might recall that those astronauts had to eyeball Earth through their window to set a course for their return from the moon.

    Beyond the experiments, putting the iPhones on the station will help NASA figure out how best to adapt commercial off-the-shelf devices for use in space, said Jeffrey Manber, managing director of NanoRacks. Manber's company developed the rack-storage system in which the phones and other payloads will be flown.

    Manber told me it was "extremely difficult" to get the phones certified for spaceflight.

    "It was probably one of the hardest payloads we had," he said. "It's not exactly the same iPhone that you or I would buy."

    Rishikof said Odyssey disabled the phone function as well as GPS location capabilities, to streamline the certification process and to avoid running afoul of other space communication channels (including military channels). Even if GPS was enabled, "you're not going to get reception" on the space station, Rishikov said. The iPhones also run off pre-certified external batteries rather than the internal batteries, although that situation may change for future experiments, he said.

    Manber estimated that it took four to five months to get the phones certified — which is significantly quicker than NanoRacks' average of nine months. "NASA's not getting enough credit for making the process more commercial-friendly," Manber said.

    He also said this was only the beginning of a new age for spaceworthy devices, and for NanoRacks. "We've got 60 payloads in the queue," Manber told me. "We have 15 customers already. We're going gangbusters."

    Rishikof, meanwhile, said his company is eyeing potential space applications for other mobile devices. "The iPod and the iPad are natural opportunities, but we haven't done anything explicitly yet," he said.

    The space iPhones are due to be returned to Earth this fall aboard a returning Russian Soyuz craft. "Actual flight data from the experiments are expected to be collected, analyzed and shared so that educators, students, scientists and space enthusiasts can re-create the experiments as if onboard the ISS itself," Odyssey said in a news release.

    But you don't have to wait until then to give SpaceLab a spin. It's already available at the App Store, and you can play around with simulated data that's adjusted for Earth's gravity. Just two days after its release, the app is already heading toward the top of the charts for iPhone educational software.

    Update for 6 p.m. ET: Inquiring minds wanted to know exactly what was done to the phones, and so I followed up with Rishikof on that point. He told me iOS operating system was not modified. "We did not 'jailbreak' the phone," he told me. But it wasn't merely a matter of flipping the phones to "airplane mode," either. Rishikof said minor modifications were made in the interest of getting the phones certified for spaceflight in time for launch — modifications that were analogous to, say, yanking a wire. In the future, Odyssey intends to have the iPhone certified for spaceflight as it is, "out of the box," Rishikof said.

    Rishikof said he's gratified by the interest in the project, particularly because it shows how gadgets that are increasingly familiar to folks on Earth can become part of the technological landscape in space as well. "That sense of connection is really important," he said.

    Meanwhile, NASA spokesman Kelly Humphries told me that if the iPhones work as hoped, that would be of interest to the space agency. He mentioned the Apollo 13 example that I cited above and said, "NASA is always interested in additional layers of redundancy for spacecraft navigation."

    Although several sources have said these are the first iPhones to go into space, Humphries pointed out that the line gets fuzzier when you're talking more broadly about mobile devices. "There are lots of iPods and MP3 players" on the space station, Humphries said. But the astronauts don't use them as navigational aids. They use them pretty much as folks on Earth do: for instance, listening to tunes while they do their workouts.

    More about space gadgetry:

    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.