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Posts tagged nasa
Startup Of The Day: Ashima Devices
Oct 28th
Wow, do we get entries from awesome startups or what! Today’s SOTD is one awesome startup. Ashima Devices delivers breakthrough imaging technology to law enforcement, rescue, and military personnel. Of course, these folks have a mix of expertise from NASA instrument development with military and law enforcement experience! Rarely do we see such high caliber startups coming together. Ashima Devices was founded in March 2009 with a passion for bringing spacecraft-inspired instrumentation to everyday needs. The unlikely combination of two NASA scientists, an international security consultant, a marketing expert, and a former Wall Street star turned startup incubator comprise the founders of this uncommon developer of easy-to-use field equipment for a variety of commercial and public sector needs.
Ashima brings military grade hi-tech devices into your home. With mapping devices created to map your home inside out, map an entire city in 3D or even map snow at your favorite ski resort, Ashima is making “things-you-saw-in-that-bond-movie” available for civilian use at a fraction of the cost. Their expertise is catering civic agencies, law enforcement agencies and businesses bring military grade imaging technologies into mainstream markets. We especially loved their 3D ballistic camera that streams a live 360 degree video in a law enforcement situation. This is truly something out of a movie! These guys even pack cameras into UAV’s and parachutes!
According to the founders Ashima Devices’ philosophy is simple: make intuitive tools that solve major problems for our customers. Intuitive does not mean simple. Their devices take advantage of state-of-the-art instrument design and advanced data processing techniques – often inspired directly from their knowledge of NASA planetary instrumentation. However, they also know from experience in the field that if a tool is hard to use, it won’t get used. Period. A reconnaissance device for use in a stand-off situation will not be useful if it requires enormous time and concentration to figure out how to make it work. The officers’ minds are on the immediate tactical situation, not on the intricacies of the tool and options. Just as the most popular mobile devices – though very complex – are those that ‘just work,’ Ashima Devices believes in building the complexity in to the device and not exposing it to the user.
Check out a cool video of their ballistic 3D camera at work after the break.
Old McDonald had a farm… on Mars
Aug 20th
A new study from the University of Sydney found that Mars’ reduced gravity could mean greater efficiency for agriculture. Mars’ gravity is one-third as a strong as Earth’s, meaning that water would flow though the soil at a slower rate. This may seem like a bad thing at first, since the slower rate could lead to suffocation of the roots and emission of toxic gases. But, the study found that Mars’ soil retains water with less gravity, so less leaches through and less water could be used to grow crops. This also means fewer fertilizers are needed to keep crops healthy.
A Twitter Account for Your Robot
Aug 19th
Robonaut 2 was designed by NASA to help the astronauts with missions and mundane activities around the International Space Station. With 12,000 followers, you too can keep track of R2’s every tweet. According to its Twitter account, R2 is not related to the nefarious HAL 9000 from 2001: A Space Odyssey. It’s also not related to Boba Fett from Star Wars, despite similar appearances. When asked of a possible connection on Twitter, its handlers replied “Sorry, no relation to Boba Fett. Besides, I’m a friendly robot.” R2 also claims no gender, speaks only computer code and English, and plays chess.
Infographic: Every Mission To Mars
Jul 6th
We wrote why we have to go back to Mars some time back but lets look back on how much the humans have tried to get to Mars. The infographic shows what missions have been flown and how further we got with each mission to conquering Mars. Infogfx after the break.
Video: Morphing Robots And The Future Of Flight
Jul 4th
One small step for the Pentagon, one giant step for robotics. This can be an appropriate punchline to underscore what Pentagon researchers have achieved. They have built a small robot which id paper thin (0.5 mm) and can fold itself into several shapes. This might seem quite trivial to you but DARPA, that funded the project thinks of a whole wide world of applications for this technology. The small squares of robotics joined by elastomers or elastic polymers could one day help a soldier on the ground to engineer a jet out of these self assembling robots to get out of a battle zone. Sounds far fetched, but didn’t we think supersonic flight had to make do with the sonic boom? Video after the break.
Boomless Super Sonic Flight
Jul 3rd
The Concorde may have died its death thanks to its design and the sonic boom it would generate while flying supersonic but there may be an alternative to the Concorde coming soon. Lockheed Martin and NASA are building a “boomless” super sonic frame design that may make supersonic flying an everyday thing. No longer can the sound boom hold back super sonic flights from going inland, a problem that haunted the Concorde. Don’t expect these birds to fly tomorrow. Expect them to be flying circa 2030. Boeing is also building its own boomless supersonic design. Faster times in 20 years? I will wait. Pictures of the planes after the break.
The Most Economical Airplane? MIT Thinks So
Jun 23rd
If you are flying to a place, you’re most likely to have done more damage to the planet than you can think. Now that the world is feeling guilty about pollution, MIT has stepped in to design an aircraft that will consume 70% less fuel than current commercial airplanes. The team also claims that the
NASA Demonstrates Tsunami Prediction System
Jun 15th
How do you make sure tsunamis don’t kill people by the thousands? Throw technology at the problem. That’s exactly what NASA did in creating the tsunami prediction system. For the first time, tsunamis and their magnitudes can be predicted accurately once an earthquake has struck a region. New technology dubbed the Global Differential GPS or
NASA Rover Finds Clue To Mars’ Past And Environment For Life
Jun 7th
Rocks examined by NASA’s Spirit Mars Rover hold evidence of a wet, non-acidic ancient environment that may have been favorable for life. Confirming this mineral clue took four years of analysis by several scientists. An outcrop that Spirit examined in late 2005 revealed high concentrations of carbonate, which originates in wet, near-neutral conditions, but dissolves
NASA’s Airborne Infrared Observatory Sees The “First Light”
May 30th
The Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA), a joint program by NASA and the German Aerospace Center, achieved a major milestone May 26, with its first in-flight night observations. “With this flight, SOFIA begins a 20-year journey that will enable a wide variety of astronomical science observations not possible from other Earth and space-borne observatories,”
