MC 2: MC2 Post 1723 NASA Mars Mission Escapes Government Shutdown

Tuesday, October 22, 2013

MC2 Post 1723 NASA Mars Mission Escapes Government Shutdown

Stays On Schedule

Who Knew Forbes was so into SCIENCE Stuff?

From: http://www.forbes.com

The two-week government shutdown paralyzed the vast majority of NASA for the first half of October, leaving only a skeleton crew of essential staff to keep things

running and make sure the folks on the International Space Station have a few familiar, gravity-bound voices to talk to. But MAVEN, the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution Mission, was also deemed essential enough to escape the shutdown and today remains on schedule for launch next month.

MAVEN program manager Guy Beutelschies at Lockheed Martin LMT -2.79% told me that thanks to “some long nights and weekend work, we are on track for meeting the originally planned date of Nov. 1 for the start of launch vehicle integration.”

Thanks to a seemingly rare moment of clear-eyed bureaucratic prioritizing, billions already invested into the exploration of Mars will not be scuttled and by the second half of next year MAVEN should be in place to give us another eye on Mars.

Link: http://www.forbes.com/sites/ericmack/2013/10/21/nasa-mars-mission-escapes-government-shutdown-stays-on-schedule/?utm_campaign=forbestwittersf&utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social

TinyURL: http://tinyurl.com/md7rmqf

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Perfect Time to be reading or even re-reading:

Kim Stanley Robinson's Red Mars.

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Dwarf Planet Ceres May Harbor Life;

NASA Spacecraft En Route

From: http://www.forbes.com

Link: http://www.forbes.com/sites/brucedorminey/2013/10/20/dwarf-planet-ceres-may-harbor-life-nasa-spacecraft-enroute/

TinyURL: http://tinyurl.com/lr5zvbj

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A New Scan For 3D Printing And

Augmented Reality

The Structure Sensor is product number three for Occipital.

After selling RedLaser – a mobile shopping and scanning application – to eBay, Powers, who co-founded the company after quitting his doctorate program at the University of Michigan, started work on Structure eighteen months ago. Several iterations and a headcount increase from five to thirteen people at Occipital later, the 3D scanner is ready. The results show.

It has a PrimeSense Carmine sensor, which, in case you didn’t know, is the same sensor used in Microsoft MSFT -0.09%’s Kinect devices. The scanner can be mounted onto an iPad with custom brackets (supplied with the scanner) and works through iOS and OSx applications. According to Powers, the company intends to release open source Android drivers soon.

From: http://www.forbes.com