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Phoenix Mars Lander of NASA has recently detected snow fall from Martian Clouds. Soil experiment by this spacecraft has detected interaction between minerals on Mars Surface and liquid water. This new discovery has again raised questions on the presence of water on Mars.

Discovery By Phoenix

This discovery was possible through a large instrument place on Phoenix, which gathers knowledge about the interaction between atmosphere and surface on Mars. This instrument detected that there is snow from clouds at about 4 Kilometers (2.5 miles) above the landing site of Phoenix. However data collected, shows that the snow vaporizing before reaching the surface.

According to Jim Whiteway (Professor of New York University and Lead scientist for the Canadian-supplied Meteorological Station on Phoenix), "It I the first time that such scene is viewed on Mars". Now the scientist are looking for the possibility that snow even reaches to Mars surface.

Other Major Discoveries

Experiment by Phoenix also yielded some other results, like Clues of Calcium Carbonate on Mars surface. Calcium Carbonate is a main composition of Chalk and most important thing is that formation of Calcium Carbonate is possible in the presence of liquid water only.
Peter Smith (Phoenix Principal Investigator of the University of Arizona, Tucson.) says, ""We are still collecting data and have lots of analysis ahead, but we are making good progress on the big questions we set out for ourselves."

Key Aim of Phoenix Mission

The main aim of mission is to find the possibilities of favorable environment on Mars for survival of life. Phoenix landed on Mars surface on May 25, and it has already confirmed that there is a hard subsurface layer at its far northern site which contains water-ice.

Evidence of calcium carbonate in soil samples from trenches dug by the Phoenix robotic arm comes from two laboratory instruments called the Thermal and Evolved Gas Analyzer, or TEGA, and the wet chemistry laboratory of the Microscopy, Electrochemistry and Conductivity Analyzer, or MECA.

This discovery is a next step in confirming presence of water on Mars surface.




Experiments by TEGA and MECA

Evidence of calcium carbonate in soil samples from mars has been found out by the high temperature carbon di-oxide release while experimenting from TEGA. This temperature at which carbon dioxide releases matches the temperature known to decompose calcium carbonate and release carbon dioxide.

The MECA evidence came from a buffering effect characteristic of calcium carbonate assessed in wet chemistry analysis of the soil. The measured concentration of calcium was exactly what would be expected for a solution buffered by calcium carbonate.




Mission Phoenix Extended

Originally Mission Phoenix was planned for three months duration, but its timeline has been extended and it is in its fifth month right now. But now it is facing decline in solar energy and it is expected that it will stop working before the end of 2008. Now the Phoenix team I trying to activate microphone on lander before power ceases.

Scientist at STANFORD have developed an Artificial Intelligence System that enables Robotic Helicopters to teach themselves to fly difficult stunts by watching other helicopters perform the same maneuvers. It can result in development of autonomous helicopter than can perform a complete airshow of complex stunts on its own. It is one of most recent example of latest technology inventions .

THE TEAM

This project is directed under Professor Andrew Ng who directed the research of their graduate students- Pieter Abbeel, Adam Coates, Timothy Hunter and Morgan Quigley. The stunts performed by such intelligent helicopters are far more difficult then any other computer controlled helicopters. They have developed various learning algorithms for these Helicopters which helps them to learn by themselves by just observing other expert helicopters.

EXPERIMENT

The experiment was is an important demonstration of Apprenticeship Learning in which robots learn by observing an expert. Stanford's artificial intelligence system learned how to fly by "watching" the four-foot-long helicopters flown by expert radio control pilot Garett Oku.

This advanced helicopter can learn and perform actions such as traveling flips, rolls, loops with pirouettes, stall-turns with pirouettes, a knife-edge, an Immelmann, a slapper, an inverted tail slide and a hurricane, described as a "fast backward funnel."

IMPORTANCE

Previous autonomous helicopters were able to fly stunts by simply replaying the exact finger movements of an expert pilot using the joy sticks on the helicopter's remote controller. But the major problem was that uncontrollable variables such as gusting winds due to which this is not very advance. To solve this problem, the researchers had Oku and other pilots fly entire airshow routines and every movement of the helicopter was recorded.

As Oku repeated a maneuver several times, the trajectory of the helicopter inevitably varied slightly with each flight. At this point, the learning algorithms created by Ng's team were able to discern the ideal trajectory the pilot was seeking. Thus the autonomous helicopter learned to fly the routine better and more consistently.

ADVANCED INTELLIGENT SYSTEM

This advanced and intelligent contains some instrumentation mounted on the helicopter and some on the ground. These instrumentations monitor the position, direction, orientation, velocity, acceleration and spin of the helicopter in several dimensions. A ground-based computer crunches the data, makes quick calculations and beams new flight directions to the helicopter via radio 20 times per second. Some of the important instruments it uses are Accelerometers, Gyroscopes and Magnetometers.

These advance intelligent helicopters are a new generation of very robust, very reliable Helicopter which can fly just as their human counterparts.