US and Russian astronauts have had sex in space for separate research programmes on how human beings might survive years in orbit, according to a book published yesterday.

Pierre Kohler, a respected French scientific writer, says in The Final Mission: Mir, The Human Adventure that the subject is taboo both at Nasa and at mission control in Moscow, but that cosmic couplings have taken place.

[...]

Only four positions were found possible without “mechanical assistance”. The other six needed a special elastic belt and inflatable tunnel, like an open-ended sleeping bag.

Mr Kohler says: “One of the principal findings was that the classic so-called missionary position, which is so easy on earth when gravity pushes one downwards, is simply not possible.”

Full Story: Guardian.

(via Robot Wisdom)

A new NASA satellite has recorded the first detailed images from space of a mysterious type of cloud called ‘night-shining’ or ‘noctilucent.”

The clouds are on the move, brightening and creeping out of polar regions, and researchers don’t know why.

Full Story: Live Science.

(Thanks Danny Chaoflux).

Like the a bespectacled kid brother of Earthdance, Yuri’s Night has taken off. This year there were well over 100 events around the globe, from Beijing to Prague to Lagos, and though some of them were probably little more than astrogeeks playing Moby records, the Yuri’s Night held in Mountain View, something more unusual happened.

The event took place at the NASA Ames Research Center, which is where they do stuff like build space-faring robots and study microbes on extra-solar planets. The Center is an imposing, vaguely Ballardian environment: enormous hangers, wind tunnels, empty runways and defeated institutional buildings lying on the edge of the Bay. But on the evening of Friday the 13th, the center opened its doors to raw food vendors, Black Rock sculptors, feral half-nude hoopers, and the nasty electronic breakbeats of the Glitch Mob. In other words, Burning Man spilled onto the nerd turf of the military-industrial complex.

Also on hand were robot designers, private astronauts, shills handing out Google schwag, and a handful of rumpled NASA scientists behind demo booths talking to people wearing purple cowboy hats and furry brassieres about earthquake prediction devices and cutting-edge global visualization tools.

Full Story: Techgnosis.

Taylor and Boan are hardly basement-dwelling paranoids obsessed with tinfoil hats and Area 51. Taylor holds advanced degrees in astronomy and physics, and is an associate at consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton. He and Boan have done consulting work for the Defence Department and the U.S. space agency
NASA.

But their views have won few audiences outside of science fiction conventions, and their book is published by BrownWalker Press, which specialises in fringe topics and books with titles like “The Science and Lore of the Plant Cell Wall” and “ESP and Psychokinesis”.

Full Story: Yahoo!

(Made any more relevant by this news?)

RU Sirius Show: SubGenius Performer & Underground Comix Artist Hal Robins.

NeoFiles Show: NASA Scientist Sez Space is the Place.

RU Sirius Show: Should We Tune Out Media and Experience Interiority?.

Viking Youth Power Hour: Burncast – Sweet Jumps.

NASA unveiled plans yesterday to set up a small and ultimately self-sustaining settlement of astronauts at the south pole of the moon sometime around 2020 — the first step in an ambitious plan to resume manned exploration of the solar system.

The long-awaited proposal envisions initial stays of a week by four-person crews, followed by gradually longer visits until power and other supplies are in place to make a permanent presence possible by 2024.

Full Story: Washington Post.

EO-1 is a new breed of satellite that can think for itself. “We programmed it to notice things that change (like the plume of a volcano) and take appropriate action,” Chien explains. EO-1 can re-organize its own priorities to study volcanic eruptions, flash-floods, forest fires, disintegrating sea-ice-in short, anything unexpected.

Is this real intelligence? “Absolutely,” he says. EO-1 passes the basic test: “If you put the system in a box and look at it from the outside, without knowing how the decisions are made, would you say the system is intelligent?” Chien thinks so.

Full Story: NASA.

(Thanks Daniel).

Somehow I’d think this would be bigger news, or have I just not been paying close enough attention?

You can learn something about a rock by looking at it. But what most geologists really want is to smack it with a hammer.

And that’s just what planetary scientists will do July 4 when NASA’s Deep Impact mission reaches the comet Tempel 1 after a trip of six months and 80 million miles.

If all goes well, an 820-pound copper “hammer” the size of a bathtub will separate from its mother ship and, 24 hours later, smash into the comet’s icy nucleus at about 23,000 mph.

Link (via Corridor of Madness)

“NASA has developed a computer program that comes close to reading thoughts not yet spoken, by analyzing nerve commands to the throat. ”
Link (via DPH)

“Technology inspired by a NASA space probe will soon be helping detectives solve gun crimes and murder cases far faster. A simple handheld device that instantly confirms whether a suspect has recently fired a gun means lab delays will not allow suspects time to get away.”
Link (via Die Puny Humans).

Both NASA and Russia are working on space tourism programs. Yay!

For those who don’t know, I.G. Farben produced Zyklon-B cyanide gas, which was used in Nazi death camps to aid the extermination of the Jews. The Final Solution was in full swing but far away, some say on the moon, some say in Antarctica, some say both, a far different program was taking place.
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