Google and NASA will begin in five weeks to unveil technology that will bring NASA data, such as atmospheric observations and sea temperatures, to the satellite navigation service Google Earth.
April 27, 2007 (Press Release) --
Space travel isn't for the faint of heart. It also isn't for the impatient.
In an age of tight federal budgets and cautious flight plans, improvements in space flight come in small, steady steps.
But that didn't discourage 30 start-ups at a NASA/Ames Research Center-sponsored showcase of technologies Tuesday from touting wares that could find their way into future space missions. Many said that as the science of space exploration expands, missions are becoming significantly more sophisticated.
Change won't be rapid, said Pascal Lee, chairman of the Vancouver-based Mars Institute, which in January opened an office on the NASA/Ames campus on Moffett Field in Mountain View.
But "we are barely beginning to scratch the surface" of what is possible, Lee said. The institute is looking at the feasibility of robotic space flights to the tiny Mars moon of Phobos. The missions, if they take place, won't begin until 2011. The goal is to determine whether the 13-mile-long, potato-shaped moon has resources such as hydrogen to fuel future space travel.
But landing on it won't be easy.
Among the companies with technical partnerships with NASA is search-engine operator Google. Google declined to send a representative to the event, but according to Terry Fong, a NASA group leader, the two organizations are busy on several projects and have even discussed the possibility of a satellite venture that Fong described as "really far" off.
A company spokesman said only that project planning continues.
According to Fong, Google and NASA will begin in five weeks to unveil technology that will bring NASA data, such as atmospheric observations and sea temperatures, to the satellite navigation service Google Earth. The two organizations are working as well on a disaster-response project that will place real-time disaster data on Google Earth. That data could include the plume of a wild fire, the condition of a damaged bridge, or even the position of monitoring aircraft.
Other companies at Tuesday's showcase had more immediate in-flight products - even if they took a long time to develop. Honeybee Robotics, also with offices at Moffett Field, has developed an ice shaver for an unmanned Mars mission expected to blast off this summer. The shaver fits on the end of a robotic arm attached to a Mars lander and will capture ice shards from the martian north pole for analysis.
Honeybee, which was formed in 1983, has received NASA funding over the years, but didn't get its first product into space until 2003, said David Glaser, a mechanical engineer with the company.
Author: Mark Boslet
Source: http://www.mercurynews.com/
In an age of tight federal budgets and cautious flight plans, improvements in space flight come in small, steady steps.
But that didn't discourage 30 start-ups at a NASA/Ames Research Center-sponsored showcase of technologies Tuesday from touting wares that could find their way into future space missions. Many said that as the science of space exploration expands, missions are becoming significantly more sophisticated.
Change won't be rapid, said Pascal Lee, chairman of the Vancouver-based Mars Institute, which in January opened an office on the NASA/Ames campus on Moffett Field in Mountain View.
But "we are barely beginning to scratch the surface" of what is possible, Lee said. The institute is looking at the feasibility of robotic space flights to the tiny Mars moon of Phobos. The missions, if they take place, won't begin until 2011. The goal is to determine whether the 13-mile-long, potato-shaped moon has resources such as hydrogen to fuel future space travel.
But landing on it won't be easy.
Among the companies with technical partnerships with NASA is search-engine operator Google. Google declined to send a representative to the event, but according to Terry Fong, a NASA group leader, the two organizations are busy on several projects and have even discussed the possibility of a satellite venture that Fong described as "really far" off.
A company spokesman said only that project planning continues.
According to Fong, Google and NASA will begin in five weeks to unveil technology that will bring NASA data, such as atmospheric observations and sea temperatures, to the satellite navigation service Google Earth. The two organizations are working as well on a disaster-response project that will place real-time disaster data on Google Earth. That data could include the plume of a wild fire, the condition of a damaged bridge, or even the position of monitoring aircraft.
Other companies at Tuesday's showcase had more immediate in-flight products - even if they took a long time to develop. Honeybee Robotics, also with offices at Moffett Field, has developed an ice shaver for an unmanned Mars mission expected to blast off this summer. The shaver fits on the end of a robotic arm attached to a Mars lander and will capture ice shards from the martian north pole for analysis.
Honeybee, which was formed in 1983, has received NASA funding over the years, but didn't get its first product into space until 2003, said David Glaser, a mechanical engineer with the company.
Author: Mark Boslet
Source: http://www.mercurynews.com/
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