Weekly Recap From the Expedition Lead Scientist

NASA astronaut Barry "Butch" Wilmore installs a 3-D printer in the Microgravity Science Glovebox on the International Space Station.

Image Credit: 

NASA

(Highlights: Week of Nov 17, 2014) - NASA astronaut Barry "Butch" Wilmore successfully installed and prepared the first 3-D printer in space for upcoming manufacturing operations on the International Space Station as part of NASA's 3-D Printing in Zero-G Technology Demonstration. Wilmore installed the printer in the station’s Microgravity Science Glovebox and started the printer, which extruded plastic filament to form the first of a pair of calibration test prints about the size of a postage stamp, verifying the printer is operational. The 3-D printer heats a relatively low-temperature plastic filament to build parts layer on top of layer in designs supplied to the machine.
The goal of the 3-D printer on the orbiting laboratory is to show that additive manufacturing can make a variety of parts and tools in space, removing the need to send replacement parts and tools from Earth. It is the first step toward establishing an on-demand machine shop in space, a critical enabling component for sustaining deep-space crewed missions and in-space manufacturing.
Wilmore prepared the Light Microscopy Module for the Advanced Colloids Experiment-Microscopy-3 (ACE-M-3) study. Activities included replacing an objective lens, installing a new target and installing a new camera. The ground team -- working with the controllers at NASA's Payload Operations Integration Center in Huntsville, Alabama -- began characterizing the microscope and performing functional checks of the newly installed hardware.
ACE-M-3 observes the design and assembly of complex, three-dimensional structures from small particles suspended within a fluid medium. The NASA investigation in microgravity will provide insight into the relationship between the particle's shape, crystal symmetry and structure. These structures are vital to the design of advanced optical materials. Optical technology utilizing such materials may offer solutions to unavoidable heat generation and bandwidth limitations facing the computer industry -- worth billions of dollars annually to the world-wide economy.
The second science run of the Magnetic Flux Experiment (MAGVECTOR) in the European Drawer Rack (EDR) was completed. The ground team is now analyzing the results. The European Space Agency's MAGVECTOR investigation studies the interaction between a moving magnetic field and an electrical conductor.
Earth's magnetic field is constantly flowing around us. Aside from protecting us from solar winds, it also makes a compass work and birds find their destination when migrating. This same force can interact and interfere with equipment and experiments on the space station. Using extremely sensitive magnetic sensors placed around and above an electrical conductor, MAGVECTOR will help scientists gain insight into how the field influences conductors. The results will help protect future station experiments and electric equipment, and could offer insights into how magnetic fields influence electrical conductors -- the backbone of current technology.
Other human research investigations continued for various crew members including Salivary Markers.

Vic Cooley, Lead Increment Scientist
Expedition 41/42

Azure

What is Windows Azure?
Windows Azure is Microsoft's operating system for cloud computing. 
As with other technologies for cloud computing, Windows Azure is intended to simplify IT management and minimize up-front and ongoing expenses. To this end, Azure was designed to facilitate the management of scalable Web applications over the Internet. The hosting and management environment is maintained at Microsoft data centers.
Windows Azure can be used to create, distribute and upgrade Web applications without the need to maintain expensive, often underutilized resources onsite. New Web services and applications can be written and debugged with a minimum of overhead and personnel expense. New capabilities can be added "on the fly" to existing packaged applications.
The Azure operating system is the central component of the company's Azure Services Platform, which also includes separate application, security, storage and virtualization service layers and a desktop development environment.
A feature called Automated Service Management facilitates application upgrading without compromising performance. Functions such as load balancing, caching, fault tolerance and redundancy are included to ensure high availability.

Windows Azure supports a wide variety of Microsoft and third-party standards, protocols, programming languages and platforms. Examples include XML (Extensible Markup Language), REST (representational state transfer), SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol), Eclipse, Ruby, PHP and Python.
Windows Azure was codenamed "Red Dog" and was temporarily called "Windows Cloud" when first announced, in October 2008.

Cortana Update

Back in April, you heard me talk about how we believe Windows Phone 8.1 is the world’s most personal smartphone because of features like highly personal Live Tiles on your Start screen and the world’s first truly personal digital assistant. Today I am in China to talk about how we’re continuing this vision in the very first update to Windows Phone 8.1, which we’re making available in preview form for developers next week. This update has some great new features for everyone around the world, and in particular we also included some that were completely customized for and by people in China. I’m going to tell you about a couple of the new features in this update.

Cortana:

We have been thrilled by the excitement around Cortana in Windows Phone 8.1. And we’re excited to make her available for people in China and the UK with this update as a “beta” and in Canada, India, and Australia as an “alpha”.

The huge Chinese market has a bunch of different expectations and needs than the US or other countries—so while Cortana (nicknamed “Xiao Na”) generally works the same way in China as the US and the rest of the world, China did get some “special features”. As you’d expect, in her notebook, she displays what she is tracking for you, so you can see and control it. You can set reminders and quiet hours with her. She understands the whole internet so she readily helps you find anything you need. But our team in Microsoft China developed a number of additional features specifically for China. She has an alternative form which has a different visual appearance, animations, and sounds. She supports Chinese (Mandarin) in voice, text, and speech. She also has specialized suggestions tuned specifically for people living in China, like air quality information in weather cards, information about driving restrictions, and the ability to track local TV shows and celebrities. She can look up English words in the Bing Dictionary for people looking to brush up on their English.
Of course fitting a local-market isn’t specific to China! For the UK, Cortana has been tailored to support UK spellings and pronunciations and Bing-provided local data on sports teams (for the EPL), the London Stock Exchange, commuter conditions, and more. The voice and accent is, of course, local, and Cortana’s personality in the UK has also been tweaked to be more locally relevant.
We’re also bringing some improvements for Cortana in the U.S., including new natural language scenarios, snooze times for reminders, and a number of neat additions to her personality (try asking “do an impersonation” and see what happens). We’ve also added the ability to invoke Cortana hands-free in your car for phones connected to car Bluetooth kits that are integrated with your contacts list. If your car kit is integrated with your contacts, you can now treat Cortana as a contact to invoke her, simply saying “Call Cortana” and then talking to her as you normally would.
We know there has been a lot of enthusiasm about Cortana in many other markets, and we wanted to give more people the ability to start using Cortana. Therefore, we’re also starting a new “alpha” program in three countries: Canada, India, and Australia. This early adopter program will be opt-in and give people the ability to try Cortana using English language models from the US and the UK.

Live Folders:

 
You asked for it! You can now organize your apps into folders on your Start screen! We call this Live Folders because the live tiles of apps appear in the tile of the folders—you won’t miss tile updates because you group apps in a folder! To create a Live Folder, just drag a tile over another tile and then name the folder. Open the folder to change the folder name and arrange and size the tiles however you want.

Xbox Music: Faster and with more features

 
The Xbox Music app has been updated to deliver much better performance in areas like app load and list scrolling. It’s also brought back features that were missing in the Windows Phone 8.1 Preview for Developers. From background sync of your collection, to swipe to advance, the product has been continually adding features in every two weeks for the past few months. And in the coming month, there will be a “quickplay” of recent playback activities, and support for Kids Corner. Some of these features/improvements are already there in the latest Xbox Music app with the Windows Phone 8.1 release, but some (Live Tile in particular) are specific to the Windows Phone 8.1 Update. More to come!

Store Live Tile:

  
We made it easier for you to see the latest info about the latest apps and games available in the Windows Phone Store through its Live Tile. If you have the Store pinned to your Start screen on your device, you’ll get updates on the newest titles – refreshed every 6 hours – streamed dynamically to you throughout your day.

SMS merge & forwarding:

We have added the ability to select multiple SMS messages for deletion and forwarding, making it easier to manage your text messages.

Apps Corner:

With Apps Corner, you can specify which apps are displayed in a special “sandboxed” mode (like a protected Start screen) that restricts which apps are used. This feature is for businesses so they can allow access to select apps in cases where a full MDM solution isn’t required. Apps Corner can also be used to boot straight to an app. An example of where this scenario would come in handy might be with employees at a distribution center using Windows Phone devices that go straight into an inventory app they use to scan products in the warehouse when they turn on their phone. Apps Corner can also be used to setup retail demos. Retailers can export the profile of Apps Corner on one device and import it on to other devices. And developers can get data on usage from inside Apps Corner too.

Enhanced privacy and security:

We’ve made some improvements in the Windows Phone 8.1 Update to keep your data and identity more protected on public networks. For example, we have added the ability for you to send and receive data through a virtual private network (VPN) when connecting to Wi-Fi hotspots giving you another layer of protection. If you’re on your home wireless, creating a VPN provides anonymity to help shield your device from being identified by other devices on the network.

Rossetta Mission

mission complete, Rosetta will now continue its own extraordinary exploration, orbiting Comet 67P/Churymov–Gerasimenko during the coming year as the enigmatic body arcs ever closer to our Sun.
Last week, ESA’s Rosetta spacecraft delivered its Philae lander to the surface of the comet for a dramatic touchdown.

The lander’s planned mission ended after about 64 hours when its batteries ran out, but not before it delivered a full set of results that are now being analysed by scientists across Europe.
Rosetta’s own mission is far from over and the spacecraft remains in excellent condition, with all of its systems and instruments performing as expected.

“With lander delivery complete, Rosetta will resume routine science observations and we will transition to the ‘comet escort phase’,” says Flight Director Andrea Accomazzo.
“This science-gathering phase will take us into next year as we go with the comet towards the Sun, passing perihelion, or closest approach, on 13 August, at 186 million kilometres from our star.”

Rosetta control room

On 16 November, the flight control team moved from the large Main Control Room at ESA’s Space Operations Centre in Darmstadt, Germany, where critical operations during landing were performed, to a smaller Dedicated Control Room, from where the team normally flies the craft.
Since then, Rosetta has performed a series of manoeuvres, using its thrusters to begin optimising its orbit around the comet for the 11 scientific instruments.
“Additional burns planned for today, 22 and 26 November will further adjust the orbit to bring it up to about 30 km above the comet,” says Sylvain Lodiot, Spacecraft Operations Manager.
From next week, Rosetta’s orbit will be selected and planned based on the needs of the scientific sensors. After arrival on 6 August, the orbit was designed to meet the lander’s needs.

On 3 December, the craft will move down to height of 20 km for about 10 days, after which it will return to 30 km.

Rosetta path after 12 November

With the landing performed, all future trajectories are designed purely with science as the driver, explained Laurence O’Rourke and Michael Küppers at the Rosetta Science Operations Centre near Madrid, Spain.
“The desire is to place the spacecraft as close as feasible to the comet before the activity becomes too high to maintain closed orbits,” says Laurence.
“This 20 km orbit will be used by the science teams to map large parts of the nucleus at high resolution and to collect gas, dust and plasma at increasing activity.”
Planning the science orbits involves two different trajectories: ‘preferred’ and ‘high-activity’. While the intention is always to fly the preferred path, Rosetta will move to the high-activity trajectory in the event the comet becomes too active as it heats up.
“This will allow science operations to continue besides the initial impact on science planning that such a move would entail,” adds Michael.

“Science will now take front seat in this great mission. It’s why we are there in the first place!” says Matt Taylor, Rosetta Project Scientist.
“The science teams have been working intensively over the last number of years with the science operations centre to prepare the dual planning for this phase.”
When solar heat activates the frozen gases on and below the surface, outflowing gas and dust particles will create an atmosphere around the nucleus, known as the coma.

Rosetta will become the first spacecraft to witness at close quarters the development of a comet’s coma and the subsequent tail streaming for millions of kilometres into space. Rosetta will then have to stay further from the comet to avoid the coma affecting its orbit.
In addition, as the comet nears the Sun, illumination on its surface is expected to increase. This may provide sufficient sunlight for the DLR-operated Philae lander, now in hibernation, to reactivate, although this is far from certain.
Early next year, Rosetta will be switched into a mode that allows it to listen periodically for beacon signals from the surface.