Artist makes satellite at home in just $500

"Making a satellite is no more difficult than making a cellphone," said Song Hojun, 34, who said he built the $500 OpenSat to show people they could achieve their dreams.

SEOUL: Years of rummaging through back-alley electronics stores will pay off later this year for a South Korean artist when he fulfills his dream of launching a homemade, basement-built satellite into space.
"Making a satellite is no more difficult than making a cellphone," said Song Hojun, 34, who said he built the $500 OpenSat to show people they could achieve their dreams.
"I believe that not just a satellite, but anything can be made with the help of the internet and social platforms. I chose a satellite to show that symbolically."
There's a long history of do-it-yourself satellites being launched by universities and scientific groups around the world, as well as amateur radio clubs, but Song said his is the first truly personal satellite designed and financed by an individual.
An engineering student at university, Song regularly incorporated technology into his art pieces. In a work called Apple he used light bulbs that would "ripen" -- change colour from green to red when people take photos of it with flashes.
After working as an intern at a private satellite company, he came up with the idea for his "Open Satellite Initiative," which in turn led him to contact space professionals from Slovenia to Paris.
"I'm just an individual, not someone working for big universities, corporations or armies, so they open up to me and easily give out information," said Song.
The bespectacled Song spent nearly six years combing through academic papers, shopping online at sites that specialise in components that can be used for space projects, and rummaging through electronic stores hidden in the back alleys of Seoul.
He ran a small electronics business to support himself, but the bulk of his funds came from his parents.
The cubical OpenSat weighs 1 kg (2.2 lbs) and measures 10 cubic centimeters. It will transmit information about the working status of its battery, the temperature and rotation speed of the satellite's solar panel.
Radio operators will be able to communicate with the satellite. If all goes well, it will repeat a message in Morse code using its LED lights at a set time and location.
The components cost only 500,000 won ($440). But the cost for launching it hit 120 million won after Song signed a contract with NovaNano, a French technology company, which acted as a broker to arrange the launch, including submitting paperwork and finding a rocket.
The satellite will be launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan in December with another satellite.
Song has been invited to talk at international universities and organisations including MIT Media Lab and CalArts, both in the United States, and the Royal College of Art in London.
"The reason why technology or science is talked about is not because it is an absolute truth, but rather because it generates interesting stories," he said.

ASTRONAUTS TO HOLD SUMMER OLYMPICS IN SPACE

THE GIST

• A crew of astronauts due to be on board the space station during the Olympics will stage some types of Olympic events.
• The astronauts hope to perform something "team oriented."

enlarge

Japanese astronaut Soichi Noguchi kicks up his legs and small skis during a makeshift Winter Olympics event aboard the International Space Station in February 2010.Click to enlarge this image. 
NASA TV 

UPDATE (June 19, 2012): The astronauts' schedule may not allow any time for re-enacting the Olympics, NASA officials now say, although the crew will be kept abreast of the games and their home countries' medal counts.

To mark the upcoming Olympic Games in London, a crew of astronauts due to launch to the space station this summer is planning an orbital sporting event for the occasion.

NASA astronaut Sunita (Suni) Williams, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency spaceflyer Akihiko Hoshide and Russian cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko are due to launch July 14 to the International Space Station.

Their planned four-month stay in space will overlap with the London 2012 Olympics July 27 to Aug. 12, so the sporty spaceflyers have something up their sleeves to celebrate the event.

PHOTOS: Olympic Tech Faster Than Skin

"Something unique about our increment is we have a very huge sports event during our increment, so what we're talking about amongst ourselves is, why don't we do some kind of sports event on board the station too?" Hoshide told reporters during a NASA preview the mission. "We're just tossing around ideas right now, what kind of sport event we can do. That's something I'm looking forward to."

WATCH VIDEO: How safe it is for runners to push their bodies to the limits -- and run 26.2 miles at one time? Find out here.

Astronauts have staged orbital sports before. In fact, for the last Olympic Games, the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, Canada, the 11 astronauts aboard the space station and the space shuttle Endeavour, which was docked there at the time, recreated the event in orbit. (Video: Sports in Space)

The spaceflyers tried their hand at space skiing, the zero-G luge and weightless figure skating, all the while beaming a video of their orbital Olympics to Mission Control.

"You are officially the only folks who are able to get more hang time than Shaun White," the American gold medal-winning snowboarder, Mission Control radioed to the astronauts.

This time around, the spaceflyers are still working out which orbital events to stage, given their limitations.

"We just thought it would be something fun to do on orbit," Hoshide said."We have limited space and limited equipment."

HSW: How the First Olympics Worked

Williams herself has participated in weightless workouts before, when she ran along with the Boston marathon on the treadmill aboard the International Space Station in 2007. She completed the marathon in four hours, 24 minutes, all while orbiting the Earth at some 17,500 miles (28,163 kilometers) per hour.

"Doing anything to encourage physical fitness would be great," Williams said of the upcoming Olympics plans. "I think we're going to do something a little bit more team-oriented this time around, rather than a marathon. I don't think I'll be in marathon shape, but I will be in good sprinting shape."

ESA Rover Traverses Its Path In Desert Before ExoMars Mission

European Space Agency (ESA) has successfully tested its seeker rover in Mars-like environment in Chile’s Atacama Desert. The folks at ESA developed this planetary rover to operate autonomously and find its way to-and-fro the desert. The rover makes its own decisions in a no-GPS field about finding its path back to the start-point. The team that took up this challenge, gave the rover a stereo vision so that it could build a 3D map of its surroundings. With the help of this map, on which it can track its own position with an accuracy of one meter, it decides how far it has traveled & plans the most efficient route to avoid obstacles.

The team first tested the rover’s prototypes indoors and then took it out in the Atacama Desert in May, where it had to go over different kinds of terrain and varying lighting conditions. Finally, the rover became successful in completing ESA’s first large-scale test of 5.1km, a little less than the predetermined 6km aim with a maximum speed of 0.9 km/h. This is great because the ExoMars mission that expects the rover to land on Mars in 2018, would want it to travel only 150m per Martian day and not more than three kilometers during the complete mission.

Fly to the Moon - for just $150 million

London ... Jenn Sander poses in the space suit of American astronaut Peggy Whitson, inside a space craft owned by Excalibur Almaz / pic: Getty Images Source: The Daily Telegraph

A BRITISH company is offering seats to adventurers willing to go the extra mile on a historic journey to the moon - a snip at just $150 million.

The first 800,000km round trip in a converted Soviet-era space station could take place as early as 2015.

Excalibur Almaz (EA) founder and chief executive Art Dula told a space tourism meeting in London: "We're ready to sell the tickets."

The Isle of Man-based space entrepreneur has acquired two Almaz space stations designed for orbital spying operations. Thrusters attached to the stations will convert them to long-distance spaceships.

Four re-entry capsules, or reusable return vehicles, will ferry three people at a time to the orbiting space station and return them to earth.

All the space vehicles - the cost of which is confidential - are housed in hangers on the Isle of Man.

Much of the actual flying will be computer-controlled and all necessary training, including the human skills needed to pilot the spacecraft, is provided in the package.If the bold plan succeeds, it will be the first manned Moon mission since Apollo 17 in 1972.

Mr Dula said: "The EA fleet has previously flown to space several times and will undertake many more missions. This is scientific fact, not fiction."

A giant Russian Proton rocket, launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, will put the 30-tonne space station into orbit.

Robots that can touch and feel?

Researchers have shown that a specially designed robot can outperform humans in identifying a wide range of natural materials according to their textures, paving the way for advancements in prostheses, personal assistive robots and consumer product testing. The robot, built by researchers 

at the University of Southern California''s Viterbi School of Engineering, was equipped with a new type of tactile sensor built to mimic the human fingertip. It also used a newly designed algorithm to make decisions about how to explore the outside world by imitating human strategies.

Capable of other human sensations, the sensor can also tell where and in which direction forces are applied to the fingertip and even the thermal properties of an object being touched.

Like the human finger, the group’s BioTac sensor has a soft, flexible skin over a liquid filling.

The skin even has fingerprints on its surface, greatly enhancing its sensitivity to vibration. As the finger slides over a textured surface, the skin vibrates in characteristic ways. These vibrations are detected by a hydrophone inside the bone-like core of the finger. The human finger uses similar vibrations to identify textures, but the robot finger is even more sensitive.

When humans try to identify an object by touch, they use a wide range of exploratory movements based on their prior experience with similar objects.

A famous theorem by 18th century mathematician Thomas Bayes describes how decisions might be made from the information obtained during these movements. Until now, however, there was no way to decide which exploratory movement to make next.

The study, authored by Professor of Biomedical Engineering Gerald Loeb and recently graduated doctoral student Jeremy Fishel, describes their new theorem for solving this general problem as “Bayesian Exploration.”

Built by Fishel, the specialized robot was trained on 117 common materials gathered from fabric, stationery and hardware stores.

When confronted with one material at random, the robot could correctly identify the material 95 percent of the time, after intelligently selecting and making an average of five exploratory movements. It was only rarely confused by pairs of similar textures that human subjects making their own exploratory movements could not distinguish at all.

So, is touch another task that humans will outsource to robots? Fishel and Loeb pointed out that while their robot is very good at identifying which textures are similar to each other, it has no way to tell what textures people will prefer.

Instead, they say this robot touch technology could be used in human prostheses or to assist companies who employ experts to assess the feel of consumer products and even human skin.

Loeb and Fishel are partners in SynTouch LLC, which develops and manufactures tactile sensors for mechatronic systems that mimic the human hand.

Founded in 2008 by researchers from USC’s Medical Device Development Facility, the start-up is now selling their BioTac sensors to other researchers and manufacturers of industrial robots and prosthetic hands. (ANI)

Mission gets go-ahead to probe Universe's darkest secrets

The first-ever mission dedicated to looking for dark matter and dark energy, two mysterious entities believed to explain the composition of the universe as we know it, will be launched in 2020, the European Space Agency said Wednesday. 

The 800-million-euro ($1-billion) Euclid project was given the final go-ahead by the agency's science programme committee, a body composed of ESA member states that decides which missions are flown. 

"We're one step closer to learning more about the Universe's darkest secrets," said Rene Laureijs, Euclid project scientist. 

The satellite will use a 1.2-metre (four-foot) diameter telescope and special cameras to map a third of the known universe, a 3D reconstruction of up to two billion galaxies and dark matter associated with them, the agency said in a statement. 

"Euclid is optimised to answer one of the most important questions in modern cosmology: why is the Universe expanding at an accelerating rate rather than slowing down due to the gravitational attraction of all the matter in it?" 

Dark energy is a term used to explain the accelerating expansion of the universe, while dark matter is what is believed to hold it all together, exerting a gravitational force. 

Dark matter is believed to comprise 83 percent of matter in the Universe, but it cannot be detected by the naked eye or by existing astronomical techniques.



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‘I predict natural disasters using vedic knowledge’

Ramachandran with one of his geocentric graphs.

The southwest monsoon was almost a washout with about 50 per cent deficiency in most parts of the country, astro-meteorologist S. Ramachandran said Sunday.

“I predicted this Novem-ber last year whereas India Meteorological Depart-ment admitted deficiency only this week,” he told DC.

Northwest India will be the worst hit. There is some cheer, though.

Mr Ramachandran said the best rainfall of the season would happen between July third week and September 15. He said he had correctly predicted rain during June 11-20.

“My published forecast in 2011, that global temperatures would be higher this year, has come true. “My calculations show Chennai will have floods between mid-November and mid-December.” n

‘I predict natural disasters using vedic knowledge’

Winter this year will set in early, even by mid-October, with night temperatures dropping lower than normal levels, according to astro-meteorologist S. Ramachandran, who has several proven predictions of weather and natural calamities come true in the past — from the devastating Kandla (Gujarat) cyclone in June 1998 to the Sumatra earthquake (2004), Mumbai-Chennai floods (2005), Chinese quake (2008), monsoon failure in the country (2009), Thane cyclone (December 2011), etc.

“The Guchol typhoon now threatening countries in the Pacific, such as east China, Taiwan and south Japan, was forecast by me in December 2011 itself and had been carried in the media”, said Ramachandran, flaunting the newspaper clippings to prove his claim.

“Also, typhoon Mawar that lashed Philippines and Japan was predicted by me with specific dates,” he said.

Ramchandran’s interest in astrology began in early ’90s following a personal incident.

He went deep into ancient texts such as Jyotida Vishayamritham and was fascinated to find Indian astrology “as stout and strong as any western science”.

From thereon, he moved into astro-meteorology through various texts such as Brihit Samhita.
In Vedic astro-meteorology, the geocentric study has divided the solar system into two parts for studying the behaviour patterns — one among the planets between sun and earth and the second among planets beyond earth.

They also provide significance to the alignment of plants with a particular star in the zodiac. For instance, the 2004 tsunami which occurred on a full moon day, owing to a particular inter-planetary struggle and the effect was delivered by moon aligning with Mrigasrisham (Orionis), Ramachandran explained.

“In contrast to my study, done with limited resources, yielding accurate forecasts well ahead of time, I have found that the IMD predictions have failed many times, despite their huge infrastructure, resources and manpower, besides international collaborations”, said Ramachandran, listing out a few IMD ‘mishaps’.

IMD, he pointed out, had admitted in the media in February 2010 that year 2009 had been the hottest in several years “whereas I forecast that even in January 2009 in a printed article”.

“I do not want to fight the IMD. I only want to argue they are missing out a very important and authentic part of our own scientific repository of planetary behaviour written down in Vedic scriptures.

These texts explain the inter-planetary relationships and the struggle between their orbiting positions and the effect of their disturbance on sun and earth.

The modern weatherman only uses the wind pattern and pressure systems in the ocean to forecast weather; this will be accurate only for a couple of days.

Many a time their forecasts for longer period such as 15 days have gone wayward because they have not perfected the study of these pressure systems”, said the ‘Vedic’ weatherman, who prepares his geocentric planetary graph for every year using data from the NASA website and juxtaposes the sutras, which are the formulae available in Vedic texts, to forecast weather and quakes.

“I am willing to share whatever work I have done in this research with a competent and unbiased team of vedic scholars and meteorologists in order to accomplish 100 per cent accurate forecasting system, which will benefit mankind across the globe,” he said.

“Once perfected, we will be able to forecast extreme weather conditions and natural calamities and public tables similar to NASA’s eclipse tables for 7,000 years”, he said.