NASA and Microsoft Provide Mars 3-D Close Encounter

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.

The High-Resolution Imaging Science Experiment aboard NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter provides this view of Olympus Mons, the tallest known volcano in the solar system. Image credit: (Credit: NASA/JPL/Microsoft/University of Arizona)

"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.

To learn more and download the WorldWide Telescope, visithttp://www.worldwidetelescope.org.

For more information and images of Mars taken by HiRISE, visit http://hirise.lpl.arizona.edu.

For more about the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter mission, visithttp://www.nasa.gov/mro.

Miniature Auto Differential Helps Tiny Aerial Robots Stay Aloft

Microrobots could be used for search and rescue, agriculture, environmental monitoringEngineers at Harvard University have created a millionth-scale automobile differential to govern the flight of minuscule aerial robots that could someday be used to probe environmental hazards, forest fires, and other places too perilous for people.

Engineers at Harvard University are developing minuscule aerial robots that could someday be used to probe environmental hazards, forest fires, and other places too perilous for people. (Credit: Pratheev S. Sreetharan/Harvard University)

Their new approach is the first to passively balance the aerodynamic forces encountered by these miniature flying devices, letting their wings flap asymmetrically in response to gusts of wind, wing damage, and other real-world impediments.

"The drivetrain for an aerial microrobot shares many characteristics with a two-wheel-drive automobile," says lead author Pratheev S. Sreetharan, a graduate student in Harvard's School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. "Both deliver power from a single source to a pair of wheels or wings. But our PARITy differential generates torques up to 10 million times smaller than in a car, is 5 millimeters long, and weighs about one-hundredth of a gram -- a millionth the mass of an automobile differential."

High-performance aerial microrobots, such as those the Harvard scientists describe in the Journal of Mechanical Design, could ultimately be used to investigate areas deemed too dangerous for people. Scientists at institutions including the University of California, Berkeley, University of Delaware, University of Tokyo, and Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands are exploring aerial microrobots as cheap, disposable tools that might someday be deployed in search and rescue operations, agriculture, environmental monitoring, and exploration of hazardous environments.

To fly successfully through unpredictable environments, aerial microrobots -- like insects, nature's nimblest fliers -- have to negotiate conditions that change second-by-second. Insects usually accomplish this by flapping their wings in unison, a process whose kinematic and aerodynamic basis remains poorly understood.

Sreetharan and his co-author, Harvard engineering professor Robert J. Wood, recognized that an aerial microrobot based on an insect need not contain complex electronic feedback loops to precisely control wing position.

"We're not interested so much in the position of the wings as the torque they generate," says Wood, an associate professor of electrical engineering at Harvard. "Our design uses 'mechanical intelligence' to determine the correct wing speed and amplitude to balance the other forces affecting the robot. It can slow down or speed up automatically to correct imbalances."

Sreetharan and Wood found that even when a significant part of an aerial microrobot's wing was removed, the self-correction engendered by their PARITy (Passive Aeromechanical Regulation of Imbalanced Torques) drivetrain allowed the device to remain balanced in flight. Smaller wings simply flapped harder to keep up with the torque generated by an intact wing, reaching speeds of up to 6,600 beats per minute.

The Harvard engineers say their passive approach to regulating the forces generated in flight is preferable to a more active approach involving electronic sensors and computation, which would add weight and complexity to devices intended to remain as small as lightweight as possible. Current-generation aerial microrobots are about the size and weight of many insects, and even make a similar buzzing sound when flying.

"We suspect that similar passive mechanisms exist in nature, in actual insects," Sreetharan says. "We take our inspiration from biology, and from the elegant simplicity that has evolved in so many natural systems."

Sreetharan and Wood's work was funded by the National Science Foundation.