NASA and Microsoft Provide Mars 3-D Close Encounter

PASADENA, Calif. -- NASA and Microsoft Research are bringing Mars to life with new features in the WorldWide Telescope software that provide viewers with a high-resolution 3-D map of the Red Planet.

Microsoft's online virtual telescope explores the universe using images NASA spacecraft return from other worlds. Teams at NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif., and Microsoft in Redmond, Wash., jointly developed the software necessary to make NASA's planetary data available in WorldWide Telescope.

"By providing the Mars dataset to the public on the WorldWide Telescope platform, we are enabling a whole new audience to experience the thrill of space," said Chris C. Kemp, chief technology officer for information technology at NASA Headquarters in Washington.

The fully-interactive images and new NASA data will allow viewers to virtually explore Mars and make their own scientific discoveries. New features include the highest-resolution fully interactive map of Mars ever created, realistic 3-D renderings of the surface of the planet, and video tours with two NASA scientists, James Garvin of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., and Carol Stoker of Ames.

Garvin's tour walks viewers through the geological history of Mars and discusses three possible landing sites for human missions there. Each landing site highlights a different geological era of the planet.

Stoker's tour addresses the question: "Is there life on Mars?" and describes the findings of NASA's Mars Phoenix Lander.

"Our hope is that this inspires the next generation of explorers to continue the scientific discovery process," said Ames Center Director S. Pete Worden.

The Intelligent Robotics Group at Ames Research Center developed open source software that runs on the NASA Nebula cloud computing platform to create and host the high-resolution maps. The maps contain 74,000 images from Mars Global Surveyor's Mars Orbiter Camera and more than 13,000 high-resolution images of Mars taken by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter's High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera. Each individual HiRISE image contains more than a billion pixels. The complete maps were rendered into image mosaics containing more than half a billion smaller images.

"These incredibly detailed maps will enable the public to better experience and explore Mars," said Michael Broxton, a research scientist in the Intelligent Robotics Group at Ames. "The collaborative relationship between NASA and Microsoft Research was instrumental for creating the software that brings these new Mars images into people's hands, classrooms and living rooms."

NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter reached the planet in 2006 to begin a two-year primary science mission. The mission has returned more data about Mars than all other spacecraft sent to the Red Planet. Mars Global Surveyor began orbiting Mars in 1997. The spacecraft operated longer than any other Mars spacecraft, ceasing operations in November 2006.

"Microsoft has a long-standing relationship with NASA that has enabled us to jointly provide the public with the ability to discover space in a new way," said Tony Hey, corporate vice president of the External Research Division of Microsoft Research.

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., manages the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. Lockheed Martin Space Systems in Denver built the spacecraft. HiRISE is operated by the University of Arizona, Tucson, and was built by Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. in Boulder, Colo. Malin Space Science Systems in San Diego provided and operated the Mars Orbiter Camera.

India launches five satellites into orbit

AFP...

BANGALORE, India — India successfully launched five satellites into orbit on Monday, three months after the country's space ambitions suffered a setback when a rocket crashed at lift-off.

The five satellites included an advanced remote sensing satellite called Cartosat-2B, as well as a satellite from Algeria.
Three other smaller experimental devices from India, Canada and Switzerland were also released.
"The rocket deployed the five satellites in the intended polar orbits after a textbook launch from the spaceport under perfect weather conditions," Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) director S. Satish told AFP.
The launch site was at Sriharikota, about 80 kilometres (50 miles) northeast of Chennai.
In April an Indian rocket showcasing domestically-built booster technology crashed soon after lift-off from the same site.
The first Indian-made cryogenic powered rocket, a complex technology mastered by just five countries, fell into the Bay of Bengal due to a component failure.
India aims to launch its first manned space mission in 2016 and wants to grab a larger share of the multi-billion-dollar market for launching commercial satellites.
Last August India's first unmanned moon mission, launched amid much fanfare in 2008, came to an abrupt end when controllers lost contact with the craft.
But gloom turned to delight in September when data collected from the mission showed water on the moon, boosting India's credibility.
India began its space programme in 1963 and has developed its own satellites and launch vehicles to cut dependence on other countries.

Hidden Formulas Send Mixed Signals on Cellphones

More bars in more places? As Apple Inc.'s blunder with its iPhone signal-strength display revealed, the number of bars on a phone has more to do with the whims of handset manufacturers than it does with hard calculations about network coverage.

There is no standard industry definition of what the number of signal bars shown on a cellphone should represent. Consumers who switch from one model or brand to another might find that the maximum number of bars has changed from four to five, and that seeing a maximum signal means something totally different on the new handset. Many wireless companies and phone manufacturers won't reveal the math they use to convert signal strength to bars, calling the information proprietary. And last week, after some consumers noticed that holding the iPhone a certain way made the number of signal bars decline, Apple disclosed that the formula it has been using was "totally wrong," causing the display to overstate cell signal strength.

"It's just a rough graphical presentation," Branimir Vojcic, professor of engineering and applied science at George Washington University, says of signal bars.

In theory, the bars represent the power of a phone's connection to its wireless network. Only a tiny amount of power is needed to complete a call or download data, yet most phones will get reception over a wide range of signal strength. A strong signal, obtained for example when a caller is standing near a cell tower, could be about 10 billionths of a watt, according to wireless engineers. (Thus it would take 10 billion such connections to power a 100-watt light bulb.) At the other end of the spectrum, a signal of 10 quadrillionths, or 0.00000000000001, of a watt (a quadrillion is a million billion) could be enough to complete a call. So a phone could still work when it shows one bar, even though it has one-millionth—and not one-fifth—the signal strength of that same phone when it shows five bars.

That one bar of signal strength might suffice, but it could lead to dropped calls, poor data transfers and other cellphone headaches. Cellphone users' ability to interpret the signal bars has been hampered by companies' varying definitions and a lack of full transparency about what the bars mean.

Apple hasn't disclosed details of the calculations it used or the new formula it plans to adopt based on the recommendations of its U.S. network provider AT&T Mobility, the wireless unit of AT&T. (An AT&T spokesman referred questions to Apple, and an Apple spokeswoman didn't respond to a request for comment.) Several tech enthusiasts, though, have tested their iPhones and reported that the company was showing four bars out of a maximum of five even with relatively weak signals. For instance, tech Web site AnandTech reported that signal strength as low as 80 quadrillionths of a watt corresponded to four bars. IPhoneRoot.com, an independent website for all things iPhone, ran separate tests and concluded that four bars could correspond to signal strength as low as 13 quadrillionths of a watt.

The Google Android, by contrast, shows three bars out of four only when signal strength is above 200 quadrillionths of a watt. That is roughly 2.5 to 16 times stronger than the threshold for iPhone to show four bars out of five.

Comparing the iPhone's formula with other devices is difficult because most manufacturers don't share their calculations either. The Android's software is available on the Internet, but representatives for Motorola Inc., Samsung Electronics Co., Research in Motion Inc. and Nokia Corp. all declined to disclose the formula their handsets use or didn't respond to requests for the information. Representatives for the four major U.S. carriers—AT&T, Verizon Wireless, Sprint Nextel Corp. and Deutsche Telekom AG's T-Mobile USA—also declined to share formulas, with some saying it was left up to the handset makers.

"This was an extreme example," Simon Saunders, director of technology for Real Wireless Limited, a consultancy in Pulborough, U.K., says of Apple's misleading signal bars. He says he understands why a cellphone maker would show the maximum number of bars for all but the weakest signals. "For the majority of that range, everything sounds the same to you," Dr. Saunders says. The problem with that approach is that the consumer wouldn't know that a call is at risk of being dropped, something that is more likely with weaker reception.

Even the raw signal-strength number doesn't tell wireless users everything they need to know about reception. Other factors—such as interference with other cell towers, the type of wireless network and how many others are using the network—also are important. "The reasons calls get dropped are much more varied than simple signal strength," says Spencer Webb, president of AntennaSys Inc., an antenna-design company in Pelham, N.H. "We have done nothing to make this whole thing more quantitative."

Representatives for the Federal Communications Commission and CTIA, the wireless-industry trade group, say they have no rules or standards for signal bars. Matt Larson, marketing manager for wpsantennas.com, which sells antennas to boost cellphone signals, says he would like to see that change. "What if your battery indicator said it was full and all of a sudden it dropped to zero?" Mr. Larson asks.

Solar Powered plane stays airborne for 26 hours

سورج کی کرنوں سے توانائی حاصل کر کے بدھ کو آزمائشی پرواز شروع کرنے والا ایک جہاز جو رات بھر کامیابی سے اڑتا رہا، جمعرات کو26 گھنٹے ہوا میں رہنے کے بعد با حفاظت سوئٹزلینڈ میں اتر گیا ہے۔

Some of you might remember when we first brought up the Solar Impulse and how it succeeded in making an 87-minute long flight at 5,000 feet. I’ve just learned that the Solar Impulse has completed a 26-hour flight, and it reached an altitude of 28,543 feet.

I believe that I reported a few months ago that they were hoping for a 36 hour flight as part of their next stop, and I am not certain if this last flight exceeds or lowers expectations.

Some of you are probably wondering how the Solar Impulse could achieve its historic flight of 26 hours when there isn’t 26 hours of sun on any given day. The answer is simple: batteries. I’m not certain if these batteries were charged before or during the flight, though.

Either way, it proves that solar power is a definite power source for the airways, which could change just about everything! Assuming that the program is still on track, there is a plan to get the Solar Impulse around the world in 2012.

Of course, you realize that the Solar Impulse is a light plane with 12,000 solar cells, and a jumbo jet would be a whole lot heavier. In other words, there is a whole lot of bugs to be worked out before we flying a solar-powered friendly skies.

Windows 8

Windows 8, What you see above is a purportedly leaked slideshow that shows off Microsoft’s potential game plan for Windows 8. It was unconceivable a decade plus ago to see Microsoft and Apple being closely related in some aspects, but this leaked roadmap seems to see Microsoft give a strong nod to Apple, highlighting features such as a Windows app store and instant-on bootup. The slides also point to a one-second bootup that reminds you of the iPad’s instant-on capability, and it certainly points toward exciting times ahead when Windows 8 finally rolls out.