Category: Other Worlds and Tech

Google Glass – the comeback?

Posted on by Inara Pey
Glass Enterprise Edition: targeting the manufacturing and service sectors – and beyond? Credit: Alphabet X Company

Five years ago, Google Glass leapt (literally – the product launch included a team of skydiving Glass wearers) into the public consciousness. At the time it went through a pretty rapid-fire hype cycle: from the kit everybody would want (with no clear understanding of what it was really for), to the reality of a buggy, poorly implemented system to over-hyped fears of privacy invasion and a slew of resultant bannings of the hardware from all manner of places.

So rapid was the rise and fall of Google’s premature launch into the world of augmented reality (from arrival to apparent death in three years) that many in the media wrote it off as the butt of jokes and pointed to it as a reason why AR and VR could well be fads.

Only, as Google revealed on Tuesday, July 18th, and as superbly  reported on in depth by Steven Levy for Wired’s, Backchannel, Google Glass never actually died. Google just did the sensible thing – admitted they’d got their original vision for the product wrong, quietly turned the page on Glass as a consumer product and focused on developing the technology into something people actually wanted, and were themselves working to create using Glass.

These “people” were companies in the manufacturing and service sectors who had seen the potential for the headset system and had started buying units and developing software to use with them.  Companies like General Electric, GE Aviation, Volkswagen, Boeing, DHL, agricultural equipment manufacturer AECO (featured in the Wired piece) and healthcare system provider Augmedix all got involved with Google Glass. What’s more, Google noticed, and started re-aligning the headset’s development. Hence why in January 2015, the consumer version of the headset was brought to an end with the comment posted the Glass website: “Thanks for exploring with us”— The journey doesn’t end here.”

GE Aviation uses Glass EE to take maintenance manuals which are the heart and soul of an airline mechanic’s world, constantly referred to and checked during aircraft servicing, and delivers all of the information – text, diagrammatic overlays, videos – directly to the mechanic whenever the information is required, right at the point at which it is required. Credit: Alphabet X Company

Alphabet X, the R&D arm of Google’s parent company, Alphabet, took over the development of Glass, working closely with the companies putting it to work. Although based on the 2013 Google Glass Explorer Edition chassis, the new Glass Enterprise Edition (“Google” has been entirely dropped from the name) is an almost new headset, featuring:

  • Improved electronics – camera (complete with a red recording light to let others know when the camera in being used), wifi, processor.
  • Improved battery life and recharging.
  • A removable”Glass Pod” containing all the system’s electronics, which can be mounted on safety glasses, allowing Glass to be used in environments where eye protection is required, or used with prescription glasses.

In his piece, Steven Levy dives into some of the areas where Glass is already being used to great effect by several of the organisations mentioned above, and the list of blue-collar and service environments where Glass is being used is interesting and diverse, offering a glimpse of the potential for AR.

Augmedix, for example has been pioneering the use of Glass with a number of healthcare organisations to help improve doctor / patient interactions.  The headset is use to access medical data and help keep the doctor away from a computer screen, allowing them to decrease the amount of time per consultation they are spending working on a computer whilst increasing the amount of face-to-face direct interaction with patients. Further, thanks to the use of an unseen “scribe” – a medical student or trained medical transcriber – who might be down the hall, in another state or even in another country, the doctor can dictate updates to the patient’s records, provide information on prescriptions, etc., removing the 2-3 hours a day they otherwise need to spend managing the records on their own – again allowing more time to be spent with those in their care.

The other point to note here is that this is not the announcement of some beta programme; it’s the launch of an actual product by Alphabet. “This isn’t an experiment,” Jay Kothari, Glass Project Lead, said. “It was an experiment three years ago. Now we are in full-on production with our customers and with our partners.” Not bad for a product written off as dead just 24 months ago.

The announcement also means that the companies that have helped developed the software etc., to run alongside of Glass – as with Augmedix – are now free to roll Glass out as they need, and to start marketing their products developed to work alongside Glass. Google also have plans of their own to further extend Glass’ reach as an enterprise tool – although they remain silent as to whether the consumer product will be resurrected.

The announcement about Glass points to 2017 as possibly being the year in which AR / MR starts on its rise to practical prominence. It joins Microsoft’s HoloLens as an enterprise tool, while Windows 10 offers a platform for MR development (and Microsoft are working with hardware manufacturers to provide consumer focused headsets). Elsewhere, Qualcomm – as I recently reported – is leading the charge with Android-based enterprise and consumer AR / MR headsets. It’ll be interesting to see where all the leads, both in the work place and – in time – at home.

Space Sunday: anniversaries, storms and hidden worlds

Posted on by Inara Pey
July 16th, 1969. A Saturn V rocket lifted the crew of Apollo 11 – Neil A. Armstrong, Edwin Eugene “Buzz” Aldrin Jr and Michael Collins –  on their way to the Moon, and the first manned landing there. Credit: NASA

July is a celebratory month for the US space programme. I’ve already written about July 4th marking the 20th anniversary of America – and the world – having had a continuous robotic presence on or around Mars for 20 years. This week, July 16th and July 20th mark the anniversaries of perhaps the two most momentous days in human space flight – the Lift-off of the Apollo 11 mission to land men on the lunar surface and, on July 20th, the actual landing of the Lunar Excursion Module Eagle on the Sea of Tranquillity. Neil A. Armstrong and Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin  spent 21.5 hours there, while their colleague Michael Collins (the “forgotten third man” of Apollo 11) orbited the Moon aboard the Command and Service Module Columbia, carrying out a range of science work as he awaited his compatriots’ ascent back to orbit.

The Apollo programme, although ultimately dedicated to meeting John F. Kennedy’s 1961 goal of “putting a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth”, actually had its roots in President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s administration, when it was seen as a logical progression from America’s single-seat Mercury programme to a vehicle capable of carrying a crew of three on a range of mission types, including ferrying crews to a space station, performing circumlunar flights, and eventually forming part of manned lunar landings.

Apollo was a bold venture, particularly when you consider Kennedy’s directive that America commit itself to achieving a manned landing on the Moon before the end of the 1960s, given in a stirring address before Congress on May 25, 1961 came just twenty days after NASA had finally managed to pump a man  – Alan Shephard – into space on a sub-orbital flight, while their first orbital success with John Glenn was still nine months in the future. It was a programme which was politically motivated to be sure, but which nevertheless yielded scientific and technological results which helped shape both our understanding of the solar system and helped improve ours lives on many levels. It raised the potential of human space exploration high in the public consciousness, and was illuminated by tremendous successes whilst also and shadowed by moments of tragedy and near-tragedy.

A sketch of the Apollo lunar landing mission profile produced as a part of NASA’s post Apollo 8 mission report of February 1969 annotating how the mission would be undertaken

As well as the missions themselves and the hardware required to carry them out – the Command and Service Module, the Lunar Excursion Module, the Saturn family of rockets (including the mighty Saturn V), Apollo perhaps did more than any over programme to shape NASA. It gave rise to the massive launch infrastructure at Merritt Island, Florida – now known as the Kennedy Space Centre – including the historic launch pads of Launch Complex 39, used by both Apollo and the shuttle, and now used by SpaceX and (soon) by NASA’s massive Space Launch System rockets; the Vehicle Assembly Building (then called the Vertical Assembly Building), where the Saturn rockets were assembled ready for launch, the still-used Launch Control Complex, and more. At the same time, Apollo gave NASA its operational heart for human space missions – the Manned Spaceflight Centre (now called the Johnston Spaceflight Centre) on land just outside Houston, Texas, donated to NASA by Rice University.

The entire history of the programme is a fascinating read – the politics, both in Washington (Kennedy’s own s science advisor, Jerome Wiesner, was quite vociferous in opposing the idea of sending men to the Moon) and in NASA (where a fierce difference of opinion was apparent in how the mission should be carried out. It’s a story I may some day plumb in a Space Sunday “special”, but for now I’ll simply say that all things considered, Apollo was a success, albeit one very self-contained. Six missions to the surface of the Moon, nine missions to and around the Moon, and the opportunity to increase our understanding of Earth’s natural satellite both by a human presence there and afterwards, thanks to the equipment left behind.

Armstrong, Collins and Aldrin pose for an official Apollo 11 crew shot, May 1st, 1969

New Horizons Pluto Flyby

July 14th marked the second anniversary of the New Horizons spacecraft’s flyby of Pluto and Charon – a high-speed dash between the two lasting mere hours, after a nine-and-a-half year flight simply to reach them. Brief though the encounter might have been, the spacecraft returned such a wealth of data and images that our view of Pluto and its companion has been forever changed, with Pluto in particular – as I’ve often referenced in these Space Sunday pieces –  revealing itself to be an enigma wrapped in a puzzle, determined to shatter our understanding of small planetary bodies in the solar system.

Such is the wealth of data gathered by the probe, coupled with the distances involved and the rate at which it could transmit data back to Earth, it took 16 months of all of the information stored aboard New Horizons to be returned to scientists here on Earth.

The July 14th mosaic of Pluto. The heart-shaped region is informally called “Tombaugh Regio” in honour of Pluto’s finder, Clyde Tombaugh. The left lobe of the “heart” is a vast icy plain. Credit: NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI.

To mark the second anniversary of New Horizons’ flyby, NASA released a new video using actual New Horizons data and digital elevation models of Pluto and Charon, to offer a unique flight across Pluto.

The movie starts over the highlands to the south-west of “Sputnik Planum’s” great nitrogen ice sheet (visible to the right as the movie progresses), with the track of the film passing directly over the chaotic cratered and mountain terrain of “Cthulhu Macula”. moving northwards, the flight passes over the fractured highlands of “Voyager Terra” then back southwards over Pioneer Terra, distinguished by pitting, before concluding over the bladed terrain of Tartarus Dorsa in the far east of the encounter hemisphere.

Continue reading “Space Sunday: anniversaries, storms and hidden worlds” →

Space Sunday: imaging a star and x-rays from a planet

Posted on by Inara Pey
The M-2 red super giant Betelgeuse, 650 light-years from Earth, as seen by the Atacama Large Millimetre Array (ALMA). Credit: ALMA / ESO / NRAO

Some call it Betelgeuse others call it Beetlejuice. It is the second brightest star in the constellation of Orion and officially designated Alpha Orionis, the ninth brightest star in the night skies over Earth.

A red super giant of spectral type M1-2, Betelgeuse is around 12 times the mass of our own Sun, and is one of the largest and most luminous stars visible to the naked eye. It is also destined to be – in cosmic terms –  very short-lived. At just eight million years of age, it is already approaching the end of its life and will likely go supernova some time in the next few thousand years.

But it is the star’s sheer size which makes it stunning: it’s an estimated 2.6 AU in diameter. To put this in perspective, were it to be dropped into our solar system to replace the Sun, it would extend out towards the orbit of Jupiter.  Such is its size, it is one of the few stars we can observe via telescope large enough to be resolved as anything more than a point of light.

This was brought home at the end of June 2017, when the Atacama Large Millimetre Array (ALMA) captured the star in a series of images taken at the sub-millimetre wavelength range. The images reveal the star’s chromosphere looking somewhat asymmetrical, the result of the star  generating a massive bow-shock as it moves through the interstellar medium. In short, as Betelgeuse travels through the gas clouds at a rate of around 30 kilometres per second, it own equivalent of the solar wind (much denser than anything the Sun generates) which is thrown off of the star at 17 kilometres / second, slams into this gas in the direction of travel at47 km/ sec, generating a massive shock wave about 3 light-years across in front of the star, which curls around it, influencing its chromosphere.

The bow shock preceding Betelgeuse, as seen by the Japanese Akari orbital observatory. Credit: JAXA/Akari

When Betelgeuse goes supernova, it will be in a blink of an eye – although we’ll only know about it 650 years after it has actually happened. When it does so, it will create an unmistakable light in the night sky – and this bow shock of matter will play a role in the supernova process, as it reacts to the sudden influx of matter slamming into it from the exploding star at a large fraction of the speed of light.

As violent as it will be, the Betelgeuse supernova will not threaten life on Earth, as it’s beyond the “harmful” range. And in case you think that’s a bit of a reach, scientists have shown that the Earth has in fact been influenced by supernovae in the past. This evidence comes from the presence of Iron 60 in the deep oceans, an isotope formed within stars, and which has an exceptionally short half-life: 2.6 million years – so the fact we can detect it suggests it originated in other stars that went supernova.

In fact, for the last 5-10 million years, the solar system has been travelling through a region of space called the “local bubble”, an expanding region of gases some 300 light years across, created by a series of supernova explosions which occurred over a relatively short period  of time about 20 million years ago. Within this bubble, the magnetic field is weak and disordered, which could greatly magnify the impact a large supernova occurring within 100 light years from Earth could have on life here.

At the upper end of this distance, research suggests a supernova could lead to climate changes similar to those which caused a rise in glaciation seen in the Pleistocene period, 2.5 million years ago. At the nearer end of this distance – say, 25-30 light years – a supernova could actually be an extinction level event for much of life here due to the radiation levels striking the Earth, altering the climate, impacting the Earth’s biomass, and giving raise to increases in cancers.

The stars of the IK Pegasi system compared to our own Sun (r). IK Pegasi is the large white star on the left, and IK Pegasi B – a potential supernova progenitor – is the white dot below and between the other two stars. Credit: R.J. Hall

Fortunately, the nearest known star to us which is likely to go supernova is IK Pegasi B, a massive white dwarf star which forms part of the binary star system IK Pegasi in the constellation of Pegasus, and 150 light years away. As a massive white dwarf, IK Pegasi is no longer generating energy through nuclear fusion. However, when its companion star, IK Pegasi A, a main sequence star slightly larger than our own Sun and itself a variable star, reaches the latter stages of its life, it will swell up to a red giant, allowing IK Pegasi B to star accrete matter from it, causing it to swell to as much a 1.4 solar masses – at which point it will explode as a supernova.

China’s Launch Failures

China’s space efforts have been in the news for the wrong reasons of late. In mid-June a Long March 3B rocket – the workhorse of the Chinese fleet – designed to carry a communications satellite to geostationary transfer orbit was declared a “partial failure” when the rocket’s upper stage failed, initially leaving the satellite stranded in a much lower orbit. Since then, mission controller have been using satellite’s manoeuvring motors gradually nudge it up to an operational orbit, although this will drastically shorten its active lifespan.

A slight fuzzy TV image of the Long March 5 launch on July 2nd, 2017. The vehicle suffered “an anomaly” shortly after lift-off and eventually crashed into the Pacific Ocean. Credit: CCTV

Then, on July 2nd, 2017, the second launch of China’s powerful Long March 5, capable of launching 8.4 tonnes of payload to the Moon or placing 25 tonnes in low Earth orbit, suffered a major failure shortly after clearing the launch pad at 11:23 GMT. This booster is key to China’s longer-term ambitions in space, as it is crucial to the development of their own space station, as well as vital for a number of deep space missions.

Continue reading “Space Sunday: imaging a star and x-rays from a planet” →

Space Sunday: 20 years on Mars, 24/7

Posted on by Inara Pey
On July 4th, 2017, we will have had a robotic presence at Mars 24/7 for twenty years. Here’s a look at those missions, and more. Credit: NASA/JPL

July 4th is a special date in American history, and this year it will, for space exploration enthusiasts be doubly meaningful, as it will mark the point at which we have been examining and exploring Mars continuously for 20 years without a single break.

Of course, attempts to explore and understand Mars began much earlier than that. We first started launching missions to the Red Planet far back in the 1960s. The first successful mission  – the United States’ Mariner 4 probe – shot past Mars in July 1965, returning just 22 fuzzy images as it did so, travelling too fast and without any fuel to achieve orbit. In 1969, and total overshadowed by the Apollo 11 mission to the Moon, Mariner 6 also flew by Mars in July, and was followed in August by its twin, Mariner 7, becoming the first dual mission to visit another world in the solar system.

Mariner 4’s route past Mars in July 1965, and the 22 images returned to Earth. Ironically, the vehicle flight path took it over some of the more “uninteresting” parts of Mars, leading some to dismiss it as being much the same as the Moon in looks. Credit: NASA

The first American mission to orbit Mars was Mariner 9, which arrived in orbit in November 1971, the exact time Mars was wreathed in a series of globe-spanning dust storms. Fortunately, the space vehicle had a planned orbital life of around 18 months, and successfully waited out the storms before returning the most spectacular images of Mars yet seen – including the mighty Tharsis volcanoes and the great gash of the Vallis Marineris, named in honour of the probe.

Russia also finally successfully reach Mars orbit in 1971 with the dual Mars 2 and Mars 3 missions. The former arrived just days after Mariner 9, and the latter became the first mission to successfully deploy a lander to the surface of Mars – although the craft ceased transmitting just 15 seconds after a safe landing had been confirmed, probably due to the dust storms. Unlike Mariner 9, the Russian orbiters had a shorter operational lifespan, and both ceased operations before the dust had fully cleared, resulting in them being classified as “partially successful” missions.

Then, in 1976 came the twin Viking Missions, comprising two pairs of orbiter and lander vehicles. Even now it remains one of the most ambitious robotic missions ever undertaken.  The Viking 1 orbiter and lander combination launched on August 20th, 1975 and arrived in Mars orbit on June 19th, 1976. Viking 2 departed Earth on September 9th, 1975 and arrived in Mars orbit on August 7th, 1976.

Viking returned the first colour still images of the surface of Mars, including this one, taken by Viking Lander 2, 1100 Sols into its mission and showing frost scattered over the ground before it. Credit: NASA/JPL

Viking Lander 1 had been scheduled to depart its orbiter and attempt a landing on Mars on July 4th, 1976 – the 200th anniversary of America’s independence. However, images of the landing site taken by the orbiter revealed it to be far rougher terrain than had been thought, so the landing was delayed while an alternative site was surveyed. The lander eventually touched-down on July 20th, 1976, marking the seventh anniversary of the first mission to land on the surface of the Moon. Viking lander 2 touched down half a world away on September 3rd, 1976.

Viking really was a landmark – and controversial – mission. Landmark, because they utterly changed our understand over Mars during years both orbiters and landers operated. Controversial because it is still argued to this day by some that two of the five life-seeking experiments carried by each of the landers did find evidence of Martian microbes living in the planet’s regolith, although it seems more likely that the positive results – in both cases, from the same two experiments – were the result of inorganic chemical reactions between mineral in the Martian soil samples and elements within the experiments.

After Viking the came a pause. While missions continued to be launched to Mars by the USA and Russia in the 1980s and early 1990s, none of them were successful. It was not until 1997 that the current trend of having vehicles continuously operating around and on Mars began – and which NASA has been celebrating, having been the stalwart of the 20-year effort of these 24/7 operations.

This run technically started in early November 1996, with the launch of NASA’s Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) mission. It was followed a month later by the NASA Pathfinder Mission. By a quirk of orbital mechanics, the Pathfinder Mission – designed to test the feasibility of placing a lander and small rover on Mars – arrived at Mars first, performing a successful aerobraking and landing on July 4th, 1996.

Mars Pathfinder being prepared in a clean room at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The lander’s base station in the centre of the vehicle and during flight would be surrounded by the three solar panel “petals”, one of which houses the Sojourner mini-rover, in its stored configuration. Credit: NASA/JPL

The Pathfinder lander arrived in Ares Vallis on Mars, an ancient flood plain in the northern hemisphere in an innovative way. A conventional aerodynamic heat shield protected the craft through initial entry into, and deceleration through, the upper reaches of Mars’ tenuous atmosphere. Having slowed from a velocity of several thousand kilometres an hour to just over 1300 km/h, allowing a supersonic parachute to be deployed. This slowed the vehicle’s descent to around 256 km/h and lowering the vehicle to just 355 metres above the surface of Mars, where several things happened.

Firstly, a tetrahedron cocoon of protective airbags was inflated all around the vehicle in less than a second. A set of rocket motors in the back shell beneath which the airbags and lander were suspended, then fired. These slowed the vehicle almost to a hover about 15-20 metres above the ground, at which point the tether connecting the cocooned lander was cut, and the lander fell to the ground, bouncing several times before coming to rest and the airbags were deflated and drawn back underneath the lander. The triangular lander was designed to right itself while unfolding its three solar power “petals”, however, this was not required as the lander came to a stop the right way up, allowing the petals to be deployed, and – after check-out tests – the little Sojourner rover was command to drive down off of the lander and onto the surface of Mars. The same system would later be used for the MER rover missions.

The Sojourner mini-rover on Mars during Sol 22 of its mission

As a proof of concept mission, Pathfinder was not intended to be a long duration mission. Just 65 cm (25.6 in) long and 48 cm (19 in) wide, the 10.5 kg (23 lb) Sojourner rover had a top speed of 1 cm a second, so it could never roam far from its base station;  in fact it never went further than about 12 metres (39 ft) from the base station, which acted as a communications relay as well as studying the Martian atmosphere and imaging Sojourner in action. Nevertheless, the mission exceeded expectations, lasting some 3 months, with the little rover examining 16 points of interest with its humble 0.3 megapixel cameras and its on-board spectrometer.

Continue reading “Space Sunday: 20 years on Mars, 24/7” →

CastAR closes, IP for sale?

Posted on by Inara Pey
The CastAR dream: a slimline, lightweight set of glasses capable of projecting interactive 3D images onto a retro-reflective surface. Credit: Technical Illusions / CastAR

Augmented reality headset maker, CastAR (formerly Technical Illusions), and which I’ve been following and reporting on in this blog, has apparently closed its doors.

The company first came to prominence when the system – designed to use a glasses-like headset to project holographic images onto a retro-reflective surface users could then interact with via a hand-held controller  – was shown at the 2013 Maker Faire in New York.

At that time, the idea was very much fledgling and more spirit gum, soldering, tape and wires than it was a commercial venture – but that was enough to convince the pair behind the system, Jeri Ellsworth and Rick Johnson they had a potential product on their hands, so they went ahead with a Kickstarter campaign to raise US $400,000 to start development in earnest – and ended up raising over a million.

The Head Crab – Jeri Ellworths’ initial approach to what became CastAR. Image courtesy of Jeri Ellsworth

The system, called CastAR due to its primary function of projecting images onto that retro-reflective surface, actually came about by accident. In 2012, Ellsworth was working on another project at Gabe Newall’s Valve when she accidentally found she could create holographic-like images on the surface.

The potential of the idea excited her and (then) fellow co-worker Johnson, so they started delving into the idea. Then, in February 2013, they were among a group of staff let go by the company – and in a generous move, Newall allowed them to take the IP for the CastAR system with them, even though almost the entire development up to that point had been made on Valve’s time and with Valve’s resources.

 

The Development Kit / Kickstarter version of the CastAR headset. Credit: CastAR

From here, the story does suffer the hiccups. The Kickstarter raised US $1 million, enough to fund development of an initial headset system, but it was not entirely what Ellsworth and Johnson were hoping it would be. There were delays,  funding seemed (from the outside) to be slow in coming in and delivery dates for the initial Kickstarter headset got pushed back, although there was sufficient for the company to establish operations, hire a CEO (initially David Henkel-Wallace), refine the headset design, develop games to run on it.

But the company kept doing the rounds of VR / AR shows and the like, garnering publicity, generating interest and towards the end 2015, secured US $15 million in funding. The majority of this came from Playground Global, co-founded by Andy Rubin of Android Inc. fame, and Rubin persuaded Ellsworth and Johnson to back to basics and design the system they wanted.

Playing a projected game using CastAR (simulation). Credit: Technical Illusions / CastAR

As a result, in 2016, the company announced a significant change in direction. The US $1 million raised via the Kickstarter was refunded, together with a promise all backers would receive a “consumer” version of the headset,  CastAR hired talent to open its own mixed reality studio in Salt Lake City and acquired entire Eat Sleep Play development team, responsible for the Twisted Metal series and God of War. All of this was done with the aim of developing a complete consumer package – headset, controllers, game surfaces and games – which would be low-cost and playable “right out of the box”.  2016 saw LucasArts chief Darrell Rodriguez take over as CEO, with former Disney executive Steve Parkis as its president and chief operating officer.

Now, according to an article appearing in Polygon on Monday, June 26th, and since widely circulated in the tech media, CastAR has closed its doors with up to 70 people being laid off. There has been no official statement on the matter from either CastAR – the corporate website continues to reference a consumer product launch in 2017, although it doesn’t appear to have been updated since around the start of the year – nor Playground Global, despite attempts by a number of outlets to secure a comment. However, the Polygon piece suggests the reason for the closure is Playground Global’s refusal to provide further funding for the venture after CastAR failed to obtain investment from other sources.

The CastAR headset and “wand” hand controller as they looked in November 2016. Credit: CastAR

Following the story breaking, Polygon later updated their article to reflect sources stating that a small team has been retained by CastAR to oversee attempts to sell the company’s IP. But again, there has yet to be an official statement from CastAR.

This might be seen as a blow to the fortunes of AR. However, as innovative as CastAR was (and as much as I found their approach fascinating), the system took a markedly different approach to AR / MR than is the case with the likes of Qualcomm (see here) and others, simply by its reliance on a retro-reflective surface. While the latter is well suited to gaming, and the company tried to suggest it could have practical applications through their promotional videos, it still might have been seen as a limiting factor in the system’s broader appeal.

Space Sunday: other worlds, near and far

Posted on by Inara Pey
Curiosity on “Mount Sharp” as seen by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. Credit: NASA/JPL / MSSS  (click for full size)

NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory rover, Curiosity continues to climb Aeolis Mons (“Mount Sharp”), and in doing so, it has been once again imaged from orbit by the HiRISE camera system on NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). The image was captured on June 5th, 2017 (Curiosity’s 1717th Martian Sol), at the same time the rover was engaged in taking colour images of its surrounding using its mast-mounted Navcam system.

MRO has actually been imaging Curiosity roughly once every three months, as the orbiter’s track around Mars carries it over “Mount Sharp” and the rover’s route up the mound’s flank. However, these aren’t simply happy snaps of the rover’s progress: MRO is actively monitoring the terrain around the rover to allow scientists to check for changes – such as movement among sand dunes – and to help plan the rover’s route up the slopes.

The June 5th image, released by NASA on June 20th, has been colour enhanced to better reveal Curiosity as a bright blue feature. To give an idea of scale and resolution, the rover is some 3 metres (10ft) in length and 2.8 metres (9 ft) wide.

A mosaic of images captured by Curiosity using the Navcam system, looking back along the rover’ route up “Mount Sharp” towards the distant rim of Gale Crater. The images making up the view were all captured on June 5th, 2017 (Sol 1717 for the rover), the same day as MRO imaged the rover from orbit. Credit: see image

Curiosity is currently traversing ground between two points of scientific interest: the “Bagnold Dunes”, an area of sand dunes which are slowly progressing down the side of “Mount Sharp” as a result of both wind action and gravity; and a high-standing ridge which runs parallel to the eastward side of the dune field. Dubbed the “Vera Rubin Ridge” after the American astronomer who pioneered work on galaxy rotation rates, this ridge line is of interest to scientists because it has been shown to exhibit signatures of hematite, an oxidized iron mineral which can provide clues to the environmental conditions on this region of “Mount Sharp” when it formed.

The route to the ridge is slightly circuitous. At the moment the rover is heading east-north-east around a small set of dunes. Once clear of them it will turn south-east and drive to where a potential safe route up onto the ridge has been identified. The drive is further slowed as Curiosity periodically pauses to capture images of the feature to help scientists characterize any observed layers, fractures, or geologic contacts and better understand determine how the ridge formed, and its relationship to the other geologic units found within Gale Crater.

The route ahead: a June 14th (Sol 1726) mosaic captured by Curiosity, showing “Vera Rubin Ridge”, which was roughly 370 metres (114 ft) away from the rover at the time the images were captured. Credit: NASA/JPL / MSSS / Ken Kremer / Marco DiLorenzo

At the same time NASA released the image of Curiosity seen from orbit, half a world away, attempts to correct a wheel problem the solar-powered Opportunity Mars Exploration Rover (MER) had been experiencing appeared to end in partial success.

“Oppy” had suffered a failure with its left-front wheel steering actuator on June 4th, leaving the wheel angled and unable to straighten. After numerous attempts to correct the issue, a new approach tested on June 20th resulted in the wheel turning correctly and resuming its proper alignment with the other wheels. However, what originally caused the actuator to fail remains unknown, and there is concern that it might recur.

To limit the risk of this happening and possibly stranding “Oppy”, the rover will avoid all use of its front wheel steering, and will only use its rear wheel steering when absolutely necessary. To maintain manoeuvrability, it will instead rely on “tank steering” – effectively running the drive motors for the wheels on one side of the rover in opposition to those on the other, allowing Opportunity to turn left or right more-or-less on the spot, a technique the rover is designed to use. This should allow the rover to continue its current survey of “Perseverance Valley” in preparation for a descent into Endeavour Crater.

“Planet Nine” Set to Become “Planet Ten”?

I’ve written extensively in these pages about the hunt for “Planet Nine” (or “Planet X” or “George”, “Jehoshaphat” or “Planet of the Apes” as some would have it): the Neptune-sized world believed to be orbiting the sun at a distance of at least 200 astronomical units (AUs – one AU being the average distance of the Earth from the Sun) in a highly eccentric orbit.  The search for that world is still continuing, but if a new study is confirmed, that mystery world may well have to give up its “Planet Nine” title for another.

A planetary mass object the size of Mars would be sufficient to produce the observed perturbations in the distant Kuiper Belt. Credit: Heather Roper/LPL

Kat Volk and Renu Malhotra of the University of Arizona’s Lunar and Planetary Laboratory, offer compelling evidence of a yet-to-be-discovered planetary body with a mass somewhere between that of Mars and Earth, orbiting the Sun much closer than the mysterious “Planet Nine”, at around 50 AU distance.

Whilst carrying out a detailed studying of Kuiper Belt Objects (KBOs) – the disk of rocky asteroids and comets surrounding the Sun from a distance of around 30 AU to about 50-60 AU, Volk and Malhotra discovered a consistent anomaly. Whilst most KBOs surround the sun with orbital inclinations that average out to what planetary scientists call the “invariable plane of the solar system”, they discovered that the more distance KBOs – those around 50 AU or over from the Sun are tilted away from the invariable plane by about eight degrees.

The pair surveyed around 600 of the 2,000 observed KBOs, and found all of those on the outer reaches of the Kuiper Belt to be inclined from the invariable plane by roughly the same amount and in numbers that tend to preclude a statistical fluke. In modelling possible causes for this, they discovered that an object with a mass of Mars, orbiting about 50-60 AU would cause just such a disruption, as would a Earth-sized body slightly further away.

However, Volk and Malhotra carefully avoid any suggestion there is a Mars- or Earth-sized body is awaiting discovery, noting that the disruption might also be the result of several large (but not planet-sized) masses lying within the outer fringes of the Kuiper belt. Even so, a single body would seem more likely, and given it is effectively sitting within the galactic plane – an area so densely packed with stars that solar system surveys tend to avoid it – could explain why it has been able to remain undetected.

An artist’s rendering of the LSST atop Cerro Pachón mountain, Chile. When LSST starts taking images of the entire visible southern sky in 2022, it will produce the widest, deepest and fastest views of the night sky ever observed. Over a 10-year time frame, LSST will image several tens of billions of objects and create movies of the sky with unprecedented detail – and might reveal whatever is causing the odd perturbations among the KBOs studied by Volk and Malhotra. Credit: Large Synoptic Survey Telescope Project Office

But it might not remain hidden for much longer. 2020 should see the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) come on-line. This 8.4 metre (27.6 ft) primary mirror telescope is due to commence a 10-year sky survey in 2022. Among other things, it is expected to increase the number of KBOs so far observed from 2000 – to over 40,000 as it carries out real-time surveys of the sky, night after night. In doing so, it could well find any planet-sized body lurking near them.

Continue reading “Space Sunday: other worlds, near and far” →