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The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) awarded Dulles, Va.-based Orbital Sciences Corp. a $75 million contract to develop the final design for a radically new space architecture in which traditional, large spacecraft are replaced by clusters of wirelessly connected orbiting modules. Dubbed System F6, short for Future, Fast, Flexible, Fractionated, Free-Flying spacecraft, Orbital’s design was selected among four competing study contracts issued in 2008 and 2009, according to a Dec. 18 company news release. The new contract is valued at $74.6 million over a one-year period. Gregg Burgess, Orbital’s vice president for national security systems in the company’s Advanced...

The US Air Force Research Laboratory's X-51A WaveRider scramjet engine demonstrator completed its first captive-carry flight under the wing of its B-52H mothership from Edwards AFB on Dec. 9. The first free flight is planned for mid-February. The B-52 climbed to the planned launch altitude of 50,000ft during a 1.4h flight that checked out systems and telemetry. The next flight, planned for mid-January, will be a full dress-rehearsal for the first of four planned X-51A hypersonic test flights. The Boeing-built X-51A will be released at 50,000ft over the Pacific and accelerated to Mach 4.5 by a solid rocket booster. The...

It's been a long wait—in some ways, more than 50 years—but in April 2010, the U.S. Air Force is scheduled to launch an Atlas V booster from Cape Canaveral, Florida, carrying the newest U.S. spacecraft, the unmanned X-37, to orbit. The X-37 embodies the Air Force's desire for an operational spaceplane, a wish that dates to the 1950s, the era of the rocket-powered X-15 and X-20. In other ways, though, the X-37 will be picking up where another U.S. spaceplane, NASA's space shuttle, leaves off.

There've been satellites orbiting Earth for half a century. But getting information to and from them is still a pain. Which is why Pentagon research arm Darpa is looking to finally hook the orbiting spacecraft up with reliable broadband connections. It's part of a larger movement to extend terrestrial networks into space, and eventually build an "Interplanetary Internet." In the meantime, we might even get less-than-crappy satellite internet service - if the project works out, of course. Darpa recently issued a request for information about supplying "persistent broadband ground connectivity for spacecraft in low-Earth orbit." The idea would be to...

You would think that an unpiloted space plane built to rocket spaceward from Florida atop an Atlas booster, circle the planet for an extended time, then land on autopilot on a California runway would be big news. But for the U.S. Air Force X-37B project — seemingly, mum's the word. There is an air of vagueness regarding next year's Atlas Evolved Expendable launch of the unpiloted, reusable military space plane. The X-37B will be cocooned within the Atlas rocket's launch shroud — a ride that's far from cheap. While the launch range approval is still forthcoming, SPACE.com has learned that...

A Pentagon-sponsored project to control flying insects remotely has sent ripples of excitement across the scientific pond. Part insect, part machine, the "cyborg beetle" has been tested successfully by its developers at the University of California, Berkeley.Video footage shows a beetle being "flown" around a room by a man using a laptop.At one point it is tethered to a transparent plastic plate, and its tiny limbs can be seen twitching in response to the operator's joy stick. The developers, Michel Maharbiz and Hirotaka Sato, "demonstrated the remote control of insects in free flight via an implantable radio-equipped miniature neural stimulating...

A surgical jamming system that can stop the enemy from communicating and navigating while minimizing disruption to friendly forces will be demonstrated under a new program launched by the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. The Precision Electronic Warfare (PREW) program will demonstrate synchronization and pointing technology enabling multiple airborne and ground transmitters to work together to focus their jamming power on an area smaller than a city block. Jamming systems now used in Iraq and Afghanistan to block the triggering of remote-controlled explosive devices via cellular or satellite telephones are effective, but interfere with friendly forces' communication and navigation...

Phantom Ray will pick up where the UCAS program left off in 2006 by further demonstrating Boeing’s unmanned systems development capabilities in a fighter-sized, state-of-the-art aerospace system. The Boeing UCAS program began with the X-45A, which successfully flew 64 times from 2002 to 2005. Those flights included a demonstration exercise with two X-45A aircraft that marked the first unmanned, autonomous multivehicle flight under the control of a single pilot...] ...Currently planned Dec. 2, the Air Force Flight Test Center’s B-52 will carry the X-51A to 50,000 feet over the Pacific Ocean then release it. A solid rocket booster from an...

WASHINGTON, Aug. 26, 2009 – The F-22 Raptor and F-18 Hornet fighter jets are fast, screaming through the air at twice the speed of sound, but the SR-71 Blackbird was faster, flying Mach 3 until mechanical problems and exorbitant operating costs forced it out of service in the late 1990s. Now, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is striving to build an engine that will propel a hypersonic jet at Mach 4 and faster, while also bringing new efficiencies to ships and ground vehicles. DARPA's Vulcan program kicked off this spring and aims to create the supersonic capability needed to...

Editorial The Moon landing was not the only world-changing event in the summer of '69. An international, cross-disciplinary survey by Nature on page 314 reveals just how powerfully the Apollo programme motivated young people to become scientists 40 years ago — a fact today's space scientists ignore at their peril (see pages 325 and 327). Yet other events in the summer of 1969 would lead to a far deeper empowerment of scientists — and, indeed, many others. Even as Apollo 11 was putting the first humans on the Moon, Ken Thompson at AT&T's Bell Labs was working to get Space...

A few years from now, bird-watchers may be in for a double take: that flapping creature in the distance? Nope, not a bird. Mutant dragon fly? Nope--it's Darpa's latest unmanned aerial robo-sentinel, inspired by the flight mechanics of birds. The tech company Aerovironment recently won a $2.1 million contract to further their work on the Nano Air Vehicle (NAV). One of many progressive projects from Darpa (the Pentagon's advanced-research unit), the NAV is the first-ever "controlled hovering flight of an air vehicle system with two flapping wings that carries its own energy source and uses only the flapping wings for...

What was once sci-fi is becoming reality on the battlefield. Still got a few kinks to work out. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1czBcnX1Ww

'Active' probes via plumbing, wiring etc Pentagon bizarro-tech chiefs have issued a requirement for mysterious sensor systems which would be able to peer through concrete walls to produce a complete internal picture of a building. US Forces would use such kit for "overseas urban building interior awareness". The new plans are known as "Comprehensive Interior Reconnaissance", and come - of course - from famed off-the-wall military tech bureau DARPA, where they believe it's better to invent a head-mounted multispectral imaging device than curse the darkness. The Pentagon brainiacs note: As overseas military and peace-keeping operations have expanded in urban environments,...

It’s October at Duke University, in Durham, N.C., and Jonathan Kuniholm is playing “air guitar hero,” a variation on Guitar Hero, the Nintendo Wii game that lets you try to keep up with real musicians using a vaguely guitarlike controller. But the engineer is playing without a guitar. More to the point, he’s playing without his right hand, having lost it in Iraq in 2005. Instead he works the controller by contracting the muscles in his forearm, creating electrical impulses that electrodes then feed into the game. After about an hour he beats the high score set by Robert Armiger,...

Soldiers barking orders at each other is so 20th Century. That's why the U.S. Army has just awarded a $4 million contract to begin developing "thought helmets" that would harness silent brain waves for secure communication among troops. Ultimately, the Army hopes the project will "lead to direct mental control of military systems by thought alone." If this sounds insane, it would have been as recently as a few years ago. But improvements in computing power and a better understanding of how the brain works have scientists busy hunting for the distinctive neural fingerprints that flash through a brain when...

The Air Force is preparing to test an unmanned spacecraft in orbit, with a launch scheduled for December. The X-37B is designed to perform long-duration testing in low-Earth orbit of new technologies. The unmanned vehicle will carry experiments into space, then return with them to Earth. The vehicle... operates autonomously in orbit and for re-entry and landing. This first orbital flight test of the vehicle will be used to determine the capabilities of the craft, said an Air Force spokesman, Lt. Col. Mark Brown. It is part of a former NASA program that was cut as the space agency focused...

The outer layer of the brain, the reasoning, planning and self-aware region known as the cerebral cortex, has a central clearinghouse of activity below the crown of the head that is widely connected to more-specialized regions in a large network similar to a subway map, scientists reported Monday. The new report, published in the free-access online journal PLoS Biology, provides the most complete rough draft to date of the cortex’s electrical architecture, the cluster of interconnected nodes and hubs that help guide thinking and behavior. The paper also provides a striking demonstration of how new imaging techniques focused on the...

DARPA, the Pentagon's source for R&D (and lovers of acronyms big and small) have released a video illustrating the Damage Tolerance and Autonomous Landing Solution they developed alongside Athena Technologies. Basically, DTALS is designed to take over for a pilot in the event that the aircraft sustains heavy damage. The system automatically detects the damage and adjusts the flight control system to land the aircraft safely.In the demo video, a scale model F-18 manages to return safely to the earth despite the loss of over 60% of its wing. At this point, the DTALS system is being confined to UAVs...

The Nano Air Vehicle (NAV) Program will develop and demonstrate an extremely small (less than 7.5 cm), ultra-lightweight (less than 10 grams) air vehicle system with the potential to perform indoor and outdoor military missions. The program will explore novel, bio-inspired, conventional and unconventional configurations to provide the warfighter with unprecedented capability for urban mission operations. The NAV Program will push the limits of aerodynamic and power conversion efficiency, endurance, and maneuverability for very small air vehicle systems. NAV platforms will be revolutionary in their ability to harness low Reynolds number physics, navigate in complex environments, and communicate over significant...

WASHINGTON, May 8, 2008 – Thanks to great strides in medical care, today’s U.S. warriors have a 50 percent greater chance of survival if they’re wounded on the battlefield than their Vietnam War counterparts did. State-of-the-art prosthetics help troops who have lost a limb resume many, and in some cases all, of their pre-injury activities. The Defense Department is hoping to find new and even better ways to help the nation’s warriors as it researches a field called regenerative medicine that would enable people to generate new skin and even grow new limbs, Army Col. (Dr.) Robert Vandre told...

Fifty years of DARPA: Hits, misses and ones to watch 18:00 15 May 2008 NewScientist.com news service Duncan Graham-Rowe The internet: Precisely who 'invented' the mass of linked computer networks that is today's internet is a moot point. But it wouldn't have happened without the ARPANET network built by DARPA in the 1960s. The idea was to make a "self-healing" communications network that still worked when parts of it were destroyed. It was the first network to transmit data in discrete chunks, not constant streams, and led to the development of the TCP/IP specification still in use today. GPS: We...

Boeing [NYSE: BA] has been awarded a $3.8 million Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) contract for Phase 1 of the Vulture air vehicle program, an effort to create a new category of ultra-long-endurance aircraft. DARPA's Vulture program calls for developing technologies and ultimately a vehicle that can deliver and maintain an airborne payload on station for an uninterrupted period of more than five years using a fixed-wing aircraft. Boeing is teaming with United Kingdom-based QinetiQ Ltd. for the program. The yearlong Phase 1 covers conceptual system definition, and formal reliability and mission success analysis, concluding with a System Requirements...

BigDog is a big hit on YouTube. A new video of BigDog - a robotic “pack mule” that Waltham-based Boston Dynamics is developing for the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency - has attracted more than 2 million viewers since the clip went live on YouTube this week.

Insects with modified body structures and embedded micro-electromechanical systems (MEMS) have survived to adulthood in a US Defense Advanced Reseach Projects Agency (DARPA) programme. DARPA wants to develop inexpensive micro air vehicles to find weapons and explosives inside buildings or caves. Mechanical and fluidic microsystems would allow remote control, could extend insect life, and provide for gas, audio and even imaging sensors. In the latest work a Manduca moth had its thorax truncated to reduce its mass and had a MEMS component added where abdominal segments would have been, during the larval stage. Images taken by x-ray of insects with...

A new video of the Army's BigDog 'bot highlights its eery abilities Two years ago we showed you Boston Dynamics' incredible BigDog—one of the world's most ambitious legged robots—being developed for DARPA and the U.S. Army. With its advanced system of hyper-responsive hydraulic joints and a suite of sensors, accelerometers and gyroscopes, the BigDog's most stunning achievement is it's ability to walk, climb and maintain its balance on diverse terrain, even after slipping on ice or receiving a kick to one side. All while carrying several hundreds of pounds of supplies on its "back." In this new video, we see...

U.S. military scientists are trying to develop a system for ensuring that microchips used in defense equipment are not compromised by the nation's enemies. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency recently awarded contracts to three companies for the first phase of the Trust in Integrated Circuits Program. The military uses integrated circuit chips, commonly called microchips, in everything from computers and communications systems to weapons. But most are manufactured overseas, and there is currently no way of ensuring that they do not contain malicious code that could end up making equipment malfunction or fail. Nearly three-quarters of the world's microchips...

It's rough, tough, unmanned and nearly unstoppable. The Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, has nearly finished work on the Crusher, a six-wheeled robot that rolls through ditches, walls, streams, other vehicles and almost anything else that gets in its way. "This vehicle can go into places where, if you were following in a Humvee, you'd come out with spinal injuries," Stephen Welby, director of DARPA's Tactical Technology Office, told the military-oriented Stars and Stripes newspaper. "Usually vehicles are set up to protect humans. Here, we didn't have to worry about that." The big brute weighs nearly 7...

March/April 2008 A Technology Surges In Iraq, soldiers conducting frontline street patrols finally get software tools that let them share findings and plan missions. By David Talbot First Lieutenant Brian Slaughter wanted his comrades to learn from the insurgent attack that could have killed him on May 21, 2004. Before dawn, the 30-year-old had been leading 12 men in three armored Humvees along a canal in Baghdad's al-Dora district when a massive blast from an improvised explosive device (IED) lifted his vehicle off the ground. Concealed attackers followed with a volley of rocket-propelled grenades and machine-gun fire. But the IED...

He’s big. He’s got no soul. And he’s teaching the DOD what’s possible about driverless vehicles. WASHINGTON — The Crusher is a bad, bad man. He doesn’t smile, doesn’t talk, doesn’t really care about his co-workers. He never offers to carpool. He’ll drive through yards, roadblocks, even other vehicles without a second thought. He speeds through red lights, ignores stop signs and doesn’t brake for animals. He has no soul. But beneath his hard shell lies the heart of a great driver, hellbent on getting from start to finish as quickly as possible. Think Dale Earnhardt Sr., but driving a...

Hands cramping up from too many video games? How about controlling games with your thoughts instead? Later this year, Emotiv Systems Inc. plans to start selling the $299 EPOC neuroheadset to let you do just that. The headset's sensors are designed to detect conscious thoughts and expressions as well as "non-conscious emotions" by reading electrical signals around the brain, says the company, which demonstrated the wireless gadget at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco. The company, which unveiled a prototype last year, says the headset can detect emotions such as anger, excitement and tension, as well as facial expressions...

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa) is researching how computers reading brain waves may one day speed up the ways intelligence analysts detect targets in satellite images and also alert platoon leaders when soldiers are losing situational awareness. This may sound like a scenario out of the science fiction movie 2001: A Space Odyssey, in which a computer named Hal overrides instructions from an astronaut to take control of a spaceship. But in the Darpa experiments, the computer is just a tool that processes brain waves, of which the human being isnÂ’t even aware, and turns them into actionable...

The US Navy's new stealth robot carrier plane is now "structurally complete", according to its maker, and is now being fitted out with subsystems while software tests begin. The Unmanned Combat Air System Demonstrator (UCAS-D) is expected to make its first flight the year after next, and its first carrier deck landing in 2011. "Once we get robust flight controls we will begin failure detection and accommodation testing, which is the real key to any unmanned aircraft," said Scott Winship, UCAS-D project chief at Northrop Grumman, talking to Flight International. Although a firm decision by the US Navy to build...

A Utah-based company is now six years into the development of a unique robot that fits around its user so that it literally mimics every movement of its human commander. Imagine stepping inside a robotic system that fits around your body like an exoskeleton. It allows soldiers to become almost superhuman in strength and stamina. In this case, whatever the soldier needs to do, the exoskeleton follows his or her exact moves. The prototype designed and built by SARCOS is going to become even more polished and sophisticated within the next five years. American soldiers are well trained and physically...

A robotic car named Junior, programmed by Stanford computer scientists, finished slightly ahead of Boss, the robo-vehicle from Carnegie Mellon University, as half a dozen driverless vehicles made history by completing a 60-mile race over a city-like environment. But the real winner of this third and most difficult in a series of robo-races is probably the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, which sponsored the first of these events in 2004 to spur development of unmanned military vehicles. In all, 11 robotic vehicles set out on the race course Saturday morning, and while five scrubbed out for various reasons, the fact...

DARPA has selected the 11 teams that will compete in the Urban Challenge Final Event on Saturday, November 3 at the former George Air Force Base in Victorville, Calif. The 11 teams will compete for cash prizes worth $2 million for first, $1 million for second, and $500,000 for third place. The teams will attempt to complete a complex 60-mile urban course with live traffic in less than six hours. The finalists will operate on the course roads with approximately 50 human-driven traffic vehicles. Speed is not the only factor in determining the winners, as vehicles must also meet the...

The DARPA Urban Challenge is an autonomous vehicle research and development program with the goal of developing technology that will keep warfighters off the battlefield and out of harm’s way. The Urban Challenge features autonomous ground vehicles maneuvering in a mock city environment, executing simulated military supply missions while merging into moving traffic, navigating traffic circles, negotiating busy intersections, and avoiding obstacles.

Aside from a few antennas and a small, spinning cylinder on the roof, the black Chevy Tahoe looks about like any other you might find on the road. A peek inside, however, shows this is something completely different. This Chevy is filled with computers, sensors, motors and other electronic equipment to make it a completely autonomous vehicle, capable of safely navigating city streets on its own - braking at stop signs, navigating lane changes and avoiding other cars and objects. The vehicle, the creation of a team of Cornell University students and recent graduates, is one entry in the DARPA...

Fifty years ago, a small Soviet satellite was launched, stunning the U.S. and sparking a massive technology research effort. Could we be in for another "October surprise"? Quick, what's the most influential piece of hardware from the early days of computing? The IBM 360 mainframe? The DEC PDP-1 minicomputer? Maybe earlier computers such as Binac, ENIAC or Univac? Or, going way back to the 1800s, is it the Babbage Difference Engine? More likely, it was a 183-pound aluminum sphere called Sputnik, Russian for "traveling companion." Fifty years ago, on Oct. 4, 1957, radio-transmitted beeps from the first man-made object to...

DARPA completed its Autonomous Airborne Refueling Demonstration program this month, showing that unmanned aircraft can autonomously perform in-flight refueling under operational conditions. The AARD used precise inertial, GPS, and video measurements, combined with advanced guidance and control methods, to plug a refueling probe into the center of a 32-inch basket trailed behind a tanker.Flights were conducted with a NASA F/A-18, configured to operate as an unmanned test bed, refueling from a 707-300 tanker. Several control techniques were tested, and the best was 100 percent effective in 18 attempted probe-and-drogue connections. Each attempt was made in level flight across a range...

A low-profile Defense Department agency best known for laying the groundwork for the Internet is kicking off its 50th year of technological research this week with a conference showing off its latest projects. More than 3,000 scientists, entrepreneurs and military brass are gathering in Anaheim through Thursday for DARPATech 2007, sponsored by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. Although the group often is linked with the creation of the Web, agency director Anthony Tether reminded his audience of academic and private industry defense contractors that DARPA had been christened nearly 50 years ago after the United States, stunned by the...

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) released a Broad Agency Announcement (BAA) on Friday for the agency's System F6 program. DARPA is soliciting innovative proposals for the performance of research, development, design, and testing to support the agency's System F6 concept. Also known as "Future Fast, Flexible, Fractionated, Free-Flying Spacecraft united by Information exchange". The objective of the System F6 program is to demonstrate the feasibility and benefits of a satellite architecture wherein the functionality of a traditional “monolithic” spacecraft is replaced by a cluster of wirelessly interconnected spacecraft modules. Each such “fractionated” module can contribute a unique capability,...

AN experimental jet engine travelling at up to 10 times the speed of sound reached an altitude of 530km in a 12-minute test flight in the Australian outback today. Scientists hope the engine will ultimately propel the next generation of supersonic planes, with predictions a flight between Sydney and London could take just two hours. The scramjet engine spent 12 minutes and 15 seconds in the air today after being launched from the Woomera rocket range in South Australia's north. It reached speeds of Mach 10 - about 11,000km/h - during re-entry to the earth's atmosphere. The scramjet is an...

What started with a few folding tables at a hotel in Johnstown, Pa., 16 years ago is now one of the country’s most popular technology trade shows. Defense giants and regional companies alike clamor to participate in what it is known as the “Showcase for Commerce.” The event also is a showcase for one powerful member of Congress: Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.), chairman of the House Appropriations defense subcommittee. The lawmaker, who conceived of the show, now held at the Cambria County War Memorial Arena, spends time there each year, visiting every exhibit booth and talking to contractors. The Johnstown...

WINDSOR LOCKS, Conn. -- An astronaut glove stitched together on a Maine engineer's dining room table won a cool $200,000 Thursday in a NASA competition. Peter Homer, an engineer from Southwest Harbor, Maine, won NASA's first-ever Astronaut Glove Challenge after a two-day competition here at the New England Air Museum near Bradley International Airport. "It feels good," said Homer, whose two home-built spacesuit gloves beat entries from two other teams to take home the top prize. "It took a lot of sitting at the sewing machine."

Scientists worldwide are struggling to make motor fuel from waste, but Richard Gross has taken an unusual approach: making a “fuel-latent plastic,” designed for conversion. It can be used like ordinary plastic, for packaging or other purposes, but when it is waste, can easily be turned into a substitute diesel fuel. The process does not yet work well enough to be commercial, but the Pentagon was impressed enough to give $2.34 million for more research. The technique could reduce the amount of material that the military has to ship to soldiers at remote bases, because the plastic would do double...

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Office (DARPA) has initiated an underwater express program to "demonstrate stable and controllable high‑speed underwater transport through supercavitation. The intent is to determine the feasibility for supercavitation technology to enable a new class of high‑speed underwater craft for future littoral missions that could involve the transport of high‑value cargo and/or small units of personnel. The program will investigate and resolve critical technological issues associated with the physics of supercavitation and will culminate in a credible demonstration a significant scale to prove that a supercavitating underwater craft is controllable at speeds up to 100 knots." Such...

DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) is the US Government agency that has created world-changing technology, most notably they are the makers of the “Internet”. Wired magazine has a very interesting article on DARPA’s efforts to create the ultimate soldier. Researchers from a wide range of business and government positions have joined in the efforts to make soldiers stronger, smarter, faster, and more able to survive life-threatening injuries. The most amazing piece of technology that has come from theis new area of research is a “coffee-pot” shaped glove that can cool or warm an individual’s core temperature. This allows them...

WASHINGTON - Scientists, inventors and entrepreneurs will be able to vie for millions of dollars in prizes, including a grand prize potentially worth $50 million, under House-passed legislation to encourage research into hydrogen as an alternative fuel. Legislation creating the “H Prize,” modeled after the privately funded Ansari X Prize that resulted last year in the first privately developed manned rocket to reach space twice, passed the House Wednesday on a 416-6 vote. A companion bill is to be introduced in the Senate this week.

Turning Sharks into Robotic Sentries It seems like science fiction, but the U.S. military would like to use sharks as underwater spies. The folks at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), who dream up the future of weapons and military systems, envision squads of sharks prowling the oceans with sensors that could transmit evidence of explosives or other threats. The military use of marine animals isn’t new. For decades, the navy has used dolphins and sea lions to patrol harbors, salvage expensive hardware, and locate potential sea mines. Indeed, mounting chemical, auditory, or visual sensors on a shark is...

Sniffer bees with a nose for explosives are set to make a major breakthrough in the war on terror. An extraordinary invention by a small British company is being praised by American scientists who have been testing it. Researchers at Inscentinel Ltd, which has just three employees at its Harpenden, Herts, HQ, have developed an amazing "sniffer box" to harness the bees' incredible sense of smell. Now Inscentinel is set to cash in when its box full of computer technology that turns honeybees into bomb detectors goes into mass production. Bee sniffer squads could be on duty at airports, train...