Author: Anil Verma

A team of scientists has launched a series of research flights over the remote seas surrounding Antarctica in an effort to better understand how much carbon dioxide the icy waters are able to lock away. Called ORCAS, the field campaign will provide a rare look at how oxygen and carbon dioxide are exchanged between the air and the Southern Ocean. The campaign is led by the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR). Michelle Gierach of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, is a principal investigator, along with other scientists from a range of universities and research institutions. Carbon dioxide is the main greenhouse gas contributing to human-caused climate change. As more carbon dioxide has been released into the atmosphere by the burning of fossil fuels, t...

NASA is developing and demonstrating technologies to service and repair satellites in distant orbits. Robotic spacecraft — likely operated with joysticks by technicians on the ground — would carry out the hands-on maneuvers, not human beings using robotic and other specialized tools, as was the case for spacecraft like the low-Earth-orbiting Hubble Space Telescope. This photograph looks closely at one of the tools that could be used for satellite servicing in the future: the Visual Inspection Poseable Invertebrate Robot (VIPIR), a robotic, articulating borescope equipped with a second motorized, zoom-lens camera that would help mission operators who need robotic eyes to troubleshoot anomalies, investigate micrometeoroid strikes, and carry out teleoperated satellite-repair jobs. NASA suc...

For the past year, NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley and automaker Nissan have been collaborating on the development of autonomous driving technologies that could one day be used in future consumer vehicles, robotic rovers on Mars and other space exploration missions.   On Wednesday, January 6, a group of senior executives from the Renault-Nissan Alliance, including Carlos Ghosn, chairman and CEO of Nissan, and Jose Munoz, chairman of Nissan North America, visited Ames for meetings and a showcase of the technical partnership between NASA and Nissan North America. The partnership allows researchers to develop and test autonomy algorithms, concepts, and integrated prototypes for a variety of vehicular transport applications – from rovers to self-driving cars. Afte...

When global food prices spiked dramatically in late 2007 and into 2008, the costs of many basic dietary staples doubled or even tripled around the world, sparking protests and riots. Panicked governments stopped exporting food, aggravating the crisis. Almost as troubling: the crisis had taken the world by surprise. To keep it from happening again, international leaders created an agricultural monitoring group, bringing together representatives from governments and aid groups. The initiative, dubbed the Group on Earth Observation’s Global Agricultural Monitoring (GEOGLAM), looked in large part to data from Earth-imaging satellites, hoping to use it to make better predictions about weather and future crops. One of the key crops to monitor was rice. It is a majorfood staple...