Research with tiny artificial muscles may yield a full-page active Braille system that can refresh automatically and come to life right beneath your fingertips.
Yosi-Bar Cohen, a senior researcher at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif, was inspired during a business trip to Washington, D.C., where a convention for people with visual impairments was taking place.
Bar-Cohen came up with an idea to create a "living Braille," a digital, refreshable Braille device using electroactive polymers, also known as artificial muscles. He wrote up a technology report and included information in a related book that he published. His writings inspired other scientists and engineers to create active displays using this technology, and prototypes are now under development around the world.
"I hope that sometime in the future we will have Braille on an iPhone. It will be portable and able to project a picture of a neighborhood popping up in front of you in the form of raised dots," said Bar-Cohen. "A digital Braille operated by artificial muscles could provide for rapid information exchange, such as e-mail, text messaging and access to the web and other electronic databases or archives." According to the World Health Organization, about 314 million people are visually impaired worldwide; 45 million of them are blind.
Recently, Bar-Cohen was contacted by the Center for Braille Innovation of the Boston-based National Braille Press to reach out to the Electroactive Polymer community and take advantage of his role in this field. The National Braille Press is a non-profit Braille printing and publishing house that promotes the literacy of blind children through Braille.
Current Braille Display Technologies
The challenge for creating an active Braille display is in packing many small dots into a tiny volume.
Unlike hardcopy Braille, a refreshable display requires the raising and lowering of a large number of densely packed dots that allow a person to quickly read them. Currently, commercial active Braille devices are limited to a single line of characters. A full page of Braille typically has 25 lines of up to 40 characters per line. Characters are represented by six or eight dots per cell, arranged in two columns. To produce a page of refreshable Braille using electroactive polymers requires individually activating and controlling thousands of raiseable dots.
Developing New Braille Technologies
Some of the leading-edge work in Braille technology was developed at SRI in Menlo Park, Calif. Richard Heydt, a senior research engineer there who was involved in developing a prototype says, "The electroactive polymer technology seems to be a natural fit for Braille and tactile display applications."
The Braille display developed at SRI is based on activating a type of polymer consisting of a thin sheet of acrylic that deforms in response to voltage applied across the film. The individual Braille dots are defined by a pattern on this film, and each dot is independently activated to produce the dot combinations for Braille letters and numbers.
In currently available active refreshable Braille displays, each dot is a pin driven by a small motor or electromagnetic coil. In contrast, in the SRI display the actuators are defined regions on a single sheet of film. Thus, while each dot is raised or lowered by its own applied voltage, there are no motors, bulky actuators, or similar components. Since the system has far fewer discrete components for a Braille dot array, it would be potentially much lower in cost.
"The contributions of the developers of electroactive materials to making a low-cost, active Braille display would significantly improve the life of many people with visual impairments, while advancing the field to benefit other applications" said Bar-Cohen.
Looking for the 'Holy Braille'
The Boston-based National Braille Press has recently established a Center for Braille Innovation. They're looking for the "Holy Braille," a full-page electronic Braille display, at a low cost.
"We feel that the exciting field of electroactive polymer technology has matured to the point where it can provide real solutions for Braille displays. We welcome and encourage anyone who wants to take part in Braille innovation," said Noel H. Runyan, National Braille Press, Center for Braille Innovation
In the spring of 2010, Bar-Cohen is including a special session on tactile displays at an SPIE conference. SPIE is the international society for optics and photonics. Tactile displays will be presented and possibly demonstrated at the conference. He hopes these baby steps may someday lead to a full-page Braille system that will allow people to feel and "see" the universe beneath their fingers.
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The Planck space telescope has begun to collect light left over from the Big Bang explosion that created our universe. The mission, which is led by the European Space Agency with important participation from NASA, will help answer the most fundamental of questions: How did space itself pop into existence and expand to become the universe we live in today? The answer is hidden in ancient light, called the cosmic microwave background, which has traveled more than 13 billion years to reach us. Planck will measure tiny variations in this light with the best precision to date.
The missionofficially started collecting science data today, Aug. 13, as part of a test period. If all goes as planned, these observations will be the first of 15 or more months of data gathered from two full-sky scans. Scienceresults are expected in about three years.
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Astronomers have identified a storm cell on Titan the size of the country of India. The storm system appeared in April 2008 in the moon's tropical region, an area not known for its cloudiness. Using the Gemini North Telescope and NASA Infrared Telescope Facility on Hawaii's Mauna Kea volcano, a team of astronomers from the University of Hawaii, the Lowell Observatory, and the California Institute of Technology found a significant mass of methane clouds in a cold desert area where no clouds were expected. Large cloud outbursts such as these are thought to be associated with significant amounts of precipitation and probably play a major part in shaping the geological features on the surface of Titan..
The paper, "Storms in the tropics of Titan," appears in the August 13 issue of Nature.
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Beneath northern India’s irrigated fields of wheat, rice, and barley ... beneath its densely populated cities of Jaiphur and New Delhi, the groundwater has been disappearing. Halfway around the world, hydrologists, including Matt Rodell of NASA, have been hunting for it.
Where is northern India’s underground water supply going? According to Rodell and colleagues, it is being pumped and consumed by human activities -- principally to irrigate cropland -- faster than the aquifers can be replenished by natural processes. They based their conclusions -- published in the August 20 issue of Nature -- on observations from NASA’s Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE).
"If measures are not taken to ensure sustainable groundwater usage, consequences for the 114 million residents of the region may include a collapse of agricultural output and severe shortages of potable water," said Rodell, who is based at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.
Groundwater comes from the natural percolation of precipitation and other surface waters down through Earth’s soil and rock, accumulating in aquifers -- cavities and layers of porous rock, gravel, sand, or clay. In some of these subterranean reservoirs, the water may be thousands to millions of years old; in others, water levels decline and rise again naturally each year.
Groundwater levels do not respond to changes in weather as rapidly as lakes, streams, and rivers do. So when groundwater is pumped for irrigation or other uses, recharge to the original levels can take months or years.
Changes in underground water masses affect gravity enough to provide a signal, such that changes in gravity can be translated into a measurement of an equivalent change in water.
"Water below the surface can hide from the naked eye, but not from GRACE," said Rodell. The twin satellites of GRACE can sense tiny changes in Earth’s gravity field and associated mass distribution, including water masses stored above or below Earth’s surface. As the satellites orbit 300 miles above Earth's surface, their positions change -- relative to each other -- in response to variations in the pull of gravity. The satellites fly roughly 137 miles apart, and microwave ranging systems measure every microscopic change in the distance between the two.
With previous research in the United States having proven the accuracy of GRACE in detecting groundwater, Rodell and colleagues Isabella Velicogna, of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the University of California-Irvine, and James Famiglietti, of UC-Irvine, were looking for a region where they could apply the new technique.
"Using GRACE satellite observations, we can observe and monitor water changes in critical areas of the world, from one month to the next, without leaving our desks," said Velicogna. "These satellites provide a window to underground water storage changes."
The northern Indian states of Rajasthan, Punjab and Haryana have all of the ingredients for groundwater depletion: staggering population growth, rapid economic development and water-hungry farms, which account for about 95 percent of groundwater use in the region.
Data provided by India's Ministry of Water Resources suggested groundwater use was exceeding natural replenishment, but the regional rate of depletion was unknown. Rodell and colleagues had their case study. The team analyzed six years of monthly GRACE gravity data for northern India to produce a time series of water storage changes beneath the region’s land surface.
They found that groundwater levels have been declining by an average of one meter every three years (one foot per year). More than 109 cubic km (26 cubic miles) of groundwater disappeared between 2002 and 2008 -- double the capacity of India's largest surface water reservoir, the Upper Wainganga, and triple that of Lake Mead, the largest man-made reservoir in the United States.
"We don’t know the absolute volume of water in the Northern Indian aquifers, but GRACE provides strong evidence that current rates of water extraction are not sustainable," said Rodell. "The region has become dependent on irrigation to maximize agricultural productivity, so we could be looking at more than a water crisis."
The loss is particularly alarming because it occurred when there were no unusual trends in rainfall. In fact, rainfall was slightly above normal for the period.
As animated here, groundwater storage varied in northwestern India between 2002 and 2008, relative to the mean for the period. These deviations from the mean are expressed as the height of an equivalent layer of water, ranging from -12 cm (deep red) to 12 cm (dark blue). Credit: NASA/Trent Schindler and Matt Rodell › Download animation (9 Mb mp4)
The researchers examined data and models of soil moisture, lake and reservoir storage, vegetation and glaciers in the nearby Himalayas, in order to confirm that the apparent groundwater trend was real. Nothing unusual showed up in the natural environment.
The only influence they couldn’t rule out was human.
"At its core, this dilemma is an age-old cycle of human need and activity -- particularly the need for irrigation to produce food," said Bridget Scanlon, a hydrologist at the Jackson School of Geosciences at the University of Texas in Austin. "That cycle is now overwhelming fresh water reserves all over the world. Even one region’s water problem has implications beyond its borders."
"For the first time, we can observe water use on land with no additional ground-based data collection," Famiglietti said. "This is critical because in many developing countries, where hydrological data are both sparse and hard to access, space-based methods provide perhaps the only opportunity to assess changes in fresh water availability across large regions."
The map shows groundwater changes in India during 2002-08, with losses in red and gains in blue, based on GRACE satellite observations. The estimated rate of depletion of groundwater in northwestern India is 4.0 centimeters of water per year, equivalent to a water table decline of 33 centimeters per year. Increases in groundwater in southern India are due to recent above-average rainfall, whereas rain in northwestern India was close to normal during the study period. › Larger image
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The high-resolution camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has returned a dramatic oblique view of the Martian crater that a rover explored for two years.
The new view of Victoria Crater shows layers on steep crater walls, difficult to see from straight overhead, plus wheel tracks left by NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity between September 2006 and August 2008. The orbiter's High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment camera shot it at an angle comparable to looking at landscape from an airplane window. Some of the camera's earlier, less angled images of Victoria Crater aided the rover team in choosing safe routes for Opportunity and contributed to joint scientific studies.
Another new image from the same camera catches an active dust devil leaving a trail and casting a shadow. These whirlwinds have been a subject of investigation by Opportunity's twin rover, Spirit.
The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has been studying Marswith an advanced set of instruments since 2006. It has returned more data about the planet than all other past and current missions to Mars combined. For more information about the mission, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/mro .
The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter is managed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. JPL is a division of the California Institute of Technology, also in Pasadena. Lockheed Martin Space Systems, Denver, is the prime contractor for the project and built the spacecraft. The High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment is operated by the University of Arizona, Tucson, and the instrument was built by Ball Aerospace and Technologies Corp., Boulder, Colo.
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A new study from two of NASA's Great Observatories provides fresh insight into how some stars are born, along with a beautiful new image of a stellar nursery in our Milky Way galaxy. The research shows that radiation from massive stars may trigger the formation of many more stars than previously thought.
While astronomers have long understood that stars and planets form from the collapse of a cloud of gas, the question of the main causes of this process has remained open.
One option is that the cloud cools, gravity gets the upper hand, and the cloud falls in on itself. The other possibility is that a "trigger" from some external source -- like radiation from a massive star or a shock from a supernova -- initiates the collapse. Some previous studies have noted a combination of triggering mechanisms in effect.
By combining observations of the star-forming cloud Cepheus B from the Chandra X-ray Observatory and the Spitzer Space Telescope, researchers have taken an important step in addressing this question. Cepheus B is a cloud of mainly cool molecular hydrogen located about 2,400 light years from Earth. There are hundreds of very young stars inside and around the cloud -- ranging from a few million years old outside the cloud to less than a million in the interior -- making it an important testing ground for star formation.
"Astronomers have generally believed that it's somewhat rare for stars and planets to be triggered into formation by radiation from massive stars," said Konstantin Getman of Penn State University, University Park, Pa., lead author of the study. "Our new result shows this belief is likely to be wrong."
This particular type of triggered star formation had previously been seen in small populations of a few dozen stars, but the latest result is the first time it has been clearly observed in a rich population of several hundred stars.
While slightly farther away than the famous Orion star-forming region, Cepheus B is at a better orientation for astronomers to observe the triggering process. The Chandra observations allowed the astronomers to pick out young stars within and around Cepheus B. Young stars have turbulent interiors that generate highly active magnetic fields, which, in turn, produce strong and identifiable X-ray signatures.
The Spitzer data revealed whether the young stars have a disk of material (known as "protoplanetary" disks) around them. Since they only exist in very young systems where planets are still forming, the presence of protoplanetary disks -- or lack thereof -- is an indication of the age of a star system.
The new study suggests that star formation in Cepheus B is mainly triggered by radiation from one bright, massive star outside the molecular cloud. According to theoretical models, radiation from this star would drive a compression wave into the cloud-triggering star formation in the interior, while evaporating the cloud's outer layers. The Chandra-Spitzer analysis revealed slightly older stars outside the cloud, and the youngest stars with the most protoplanetary disks in the cloud interior -- exactly what is predicted from the triggered star formation scenario.
"We essentially see a wave of star and planet formation that is rippling through this cloud," said co-author Eric Feigelson, also of Penn State. "It's clear that we can learn a lot about stellar nurseries by combining data from these two Great Observatories."
A paper describing these results was published in the July 10 issue of the Astrophysical Journal. The team of astronomers that worked with Getman and Feigelson also included Kevin Luhman and Gordon Garmire from Penn State; Aurora Sicilia-Aguilar from Max-Planck-Institut fur Astronomie in Germany; and Junfeng Wang from Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Cambridge, Mass.
NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., manages the Chandra program for NASA's Science MissionDirectorate in Washington. The Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory controls Chandra's science and flight operations from Cambridge, Mass. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., manages the Spitzer Space Telescope mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. Science operations are conducted at the Spitzer Science Center at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. Caltech manages JPL for NASA. The Spitzer observations were taken during the observatory's "cold" mission, before its coolant ran out and it began operating at a warmer temperature.
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NASA's Mars Rover Opportunity is investigating a metallic meteorite the size of a large watermelon that is providing researchers more details about the Red Planet's environmental history.
The rock, dubbed "Block Island," is larger than any other known meteorite on Mars. Scientists calculate it is too massive to have hit the ground without disintegrating unless Mars had a much thicker atmosphere than it has now when the rock fell. An atmosphereslows the descent of meteorites. Additional studies also may provide clues about how weathering has affected the rock since it fell.
Two weeks ago, Opportunity had driven approximately 180 meters (600 feet) past the rock in a Mars region called Meridiani Planum. An image the rover had taken a few days earlier and stored was then transmitted back to Earth. The image showed the rock is approximately 60 centimeters (2 feet) in length, half that in height, and has a bluish tint that distinguishes it from other rocks in the area. The rover team decided to have Opportunity backtrack for a closer look, eventually touching Block Island with its robotic arm.
"There's no question that it is an iron-nickel meteorite," said Ralf Gellert of the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada. Gellert is the lead scientist for the rover's alpha particle X-ray spectrometer, an instrument on the arm used for identifying key elements in an object. "We already investigated several spots that showed elemental variations on the surface. This might tell us if and how the metal was altered since it landed on Mars."
The microscopic imager on the arm revealed a distinctive triangular pattern in Block Island's surface texture, matching a pattern common in iron-nickel meteorites found on Earth.
"Normally this pattern is exposed when the meteorite is cut, polished and etched with acid," said Tim McCoy, a rover team member from the Smithsonian Institution in Washington. "Sometimes it shows up on the surface of meteorites that have been eroded by windblown sand in deserts, and that appears to be what we see with Block Island."
Opportunity found a smaller iron-nickel meteorite, called "Heat Shield Rock," in late 2004. At about a half ton or more, Block Island is roughly 10 times as massive as Heat Shield Rock and several times too big to have landed intact without more braking than today's Martian atmosphere could provide.
"Consideration of existing model results indicates a meteorite this size requires a thicker atmosphere," said rover team member Matt Golombek of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "Either Mars has hidden reserves of carbon-dioxide ice that can supply large amounts of carbon-dioxide gas into the atmosphere during warm periods of more recent climate cycles, or Block Island fell billions of years ago."
Spectrometer observations have already identified variations in the composition of Block Island at different points on the rock's surface. The differences could result from interaction of the rock with the Martian environment, where the metal becomes more rusted from weathering with longer exposures to water vapor or liquid.
"We have lots of iron-nickel meteorites on Earth. We're using this meteorite as a way to study Mars," said Albert Yen, a rover team member at JPL. "Before we drive away from Block Island, we intend to examine more targets on this rock where the images show variations in color and texture. We're looking to see how extensively the rock surface has been altered, which helps us understand the history of the Martian climate since it fell."
When the investigation of Block Island concludes, the team plans to resume driving Opportunity on a route from Victoria Crater, which the rover explored for two years, toward the much larger Endeavour Crater. Opportunity has covered about one-fifth of the 19-kilometer (12-mile) route plotted for safe travel to Endeavour since the rover left Victoria nearly a year ago.
Opportunity and its twin rover, Spirit, landed on Mars in January 2004 for missions originally planned to last for three months. Both rovers show signs of aging but are still very able to continue to explore and study Mars.
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NASA astronaut Patrick Forrester, whose hometown is Springfield, Va., will make his third journey into orbit on space shuttle Discovery's next mission to the International Space Station.
Discovery is targeted to launch at 1:36 a.m. EDT, Aug. 25, from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. To cover the launch on-site, U.S. reporters must request Kennedy credentials online at:
Forrester is one of seven astronauts who will fly on Discovery's STS-128 mission. The 13-day flight will deliver science and storage racks, a freezer to store research samples, a new sleeping compartment and a treadmill named after comedian Stephen Colbert. The name Colbert received the most entries in NASA's online poll to name the station's Node 3. NASA named the node Tranquility.
Forrester graduated from West Springfield High School in Springfield, Va. He earned a Bachelor of Science degree in applied sciences and engineering from the United States Military Academy in West Point, N.Y., in 1979, and a Master of Science degree in mechanical and aerospace engineering from the University of Virginia in Richmond in 1989.
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Anyone who's ever driven down a country lane has seen it happen. A fast moving car, a cloud of multiplying insects, and a big disgusting mess.
The next time that happens to you, instead of feeling grossed out, try thinking of the experience as an astronomy lesson. Your car is Earth. The bugs are tiny flakes of comet dust. The carnage on your windshield ... it's a meteor shower!
Earth, like a speeding car, races around the Sun sweeping up everything in its path. There are no insects in space, but there are plenty of meteoroids, little flakes of dust from comets and asteroids. They hit Earth's atmosphere and--splat!--they disintegrate as fiery streaks of light called meteors.
This week lots of meteors will appear over Earth's northern hemisphere when our planet plows through a swarm of dust shed by periodic comet Swift-Tuttle. It's the annual Perseid meteor shower, which peaks on August 11th and 12th.
Just as bugs tend to accumulate on the front windshield of a car, Perseids accumulate on the front windshield of Earth.
Earth has a windshield? It's the atmosphere, which protects us from solar wind and comet dust much as a car's windshield protects passengers from wind, rain and bugs. Earth's front windshield is the early morning sky. Earth circles the Sun dawn-side first, scooping up whatever lies on that side of the planet. That's why it's usually best to look for Perseids just before dawn.
A good time to see Perseids this year is before dawn on Wednesday morning, August 12th, when Earth's front windshield is overhead.
Side windows, the ones to the left and right of passengers in cars, are good, too. Zooming down a bug-infested lane, side windows don't intercept many insects, but the ones they do gather are worth examining. Bugs that strike side windows do so at a shallow angle, leaving long and colorful streaks.
This also happens to meteors. When the constellation Perseus (the source of the Perseids) hangs low near the horizon, meteors streaming from Perseus will skim the the top of Earth's atmosphere, much like a bug skimming the side window of an automobile. Astronomers call these meteors "Earthgrazers." They tend to be long and colorful.
Look for Perseid Earthgrazers on Tuesday night, Aug. 11th, between 9:00 and 11:00 p.m. local time.
This year, evening Earthgrazers on August 11th could be the best part of the show, because the Moon and its interfering glare will be below the horizon in early evening. Dark skies = good meteor watching. Later, when Earth's "front windshield" rises, the Moon will rise with it, reducing the number of Perseids you'll be able to see before sunrise on August 12th.
Earthgrazers don't come in large numbers. The special geometry required to produce them keeps counts low, but even one or two is enough. A breathtaking Earthgrazer is the sort of meteor you're likely to remember for years.
Best of all, there's no gooey residue.
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NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope has found evidence of a high-speed collision between two burgeoning planets around a young star.
Astronomers say that two rocky bodies, one as least as big as our moon and the other at least as big as Mercury, slammed into each other within the last few thousand years or so -- not long ago by cosmic standards. The impact destroyed the smaller body, vaporizing huge amounts of rock and flinging massive plumes of hot lava into space. An artist's animation of the event is at http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/spitzer/multimedia/spitzer-20090810.html .
Spitzer's infrared detectors were able to pick up the signatures of the vaporized rock, along with pieces of refrozen lava, called tektites.
"This collision had to be huge and incredibly high-speed for rock to have been vaporized and melted," said Carey M. Lisse of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, Laurel, Md., lead author of a new paper describing the findings in the Aug. 20 issue of the Astrophysical Journal. "This is a really rare and short-lived event, critical in the formation of Earth-like planets and moons. We're lucky to have witnessed one not long after it happened."
Lisse and his colleagues say the cosmic crash is similar to the one that formed our moon more than 4 billion years ago, when a body the size of Mars rammed into Earth.
"The collision that formed our moon would have been tremendous, enough to melt the surface of Earth," said co-author Geoff Bryden of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. "Debris from the collision most likely settled into a disk around Earth that eventually coalesced to make the moon. This is about the same scale of impact we're seeing with Spitzer -- we don't know if a moon will form or not, but we know a large rocky body's surface was red hot, warped and melted."
Our solar system's early history is rich with similar tales of destruction. Giant impacts are thought to have stripped Mercury of its outer crust, tipped Uranus on its side and spun Venus backward, to name a few examples. Such violence is a routine aspect of planet building. Rocky planets form and grow in size by colliding and sticking together, merging their cores and shedding some of their surfaces. Though things have settled down in our solar system today, impacts still occur, as was observed last month after a small space object crashed into Jupiter.
Lisse and his team observed a star called HD 172555, which is about 12 million years old and located about 100 light-years away in the far southern constellation Pavo, or the Peacock (for comparison, our solar system is 4.5 billion years old). The astronomers used an instrument on Spitzer, called a spectrograph, to break apart the star's light and look for fingerprints of chemicals, in what is called a spectrum. What they found was very strange. "I had never seen anything like this before," said Lisse. "The spectrum was very unusual."
After careful analysis, the researchers identified lots of amorphous silica, or essentially melted glass. Silica can be found on Earth in obsidian rocks and tektites. Obsidian is black, shiny volcanic glass. Tektites are hardened chunks of lava that are thought to form when meteorites hit Earth.
Large quantities of orbiting silicon monoxide gas were also detected, created when much of the rock was vaporized. In addition, the astronomers found rocky rubble that was probably flung out from the planetary wreck.
The mass of the dust and gas observed suggests the combined mass of the two charging bodies was more than twice that of our moon.
Their speed must have been tremendous as well -- the two bodies would have to have been traveling at a velocity relative to each other of at least 10 kilometers per second (about 22,400 miles per hour) before the collision.
Spitzer has witnessed the dusty aftermath of large asteroidal impacts before, but did not find evidence for the same type of violence -- melted and vaporized rock sprayed everywhere. Instead, large amounts of dust, gravel, and boulder-sized rubble were observed, indicating the collisions might have been slower-paced. "Almost all large impacts are like stately, slow-moving Titanic-versus-the-iceberg collisions, whereas this one must have been a huge fiery blast, over in the blink of an eye and full of fury," said Lisse.
Other authors include C.H. Chen of the Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, Md.; M.C. Wyatt of the University of Cambridge, England; A. Morlok of the Open University, London, England; I. Song of The University of Georgia, Athens, Ga.; and P. Sheehan of the University of Rochester, N.Y.
JPL manages the Spitzer mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. Science operations are conducted at the Spitzer Science Center at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. Caltech manages JPL for NASA. Spitzer's infrared spectrograph, which made the observations in 2004 before the telescope began its "warm" mission, was built by Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y. Its development was led by Jim Houck of Cornell.
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Inflatable aircraft are not a new idea. Hot air balloons have been around for more than two centuries and blimps are a common sight over many sports stadiums. But it's hard to imagine an inflatable spacecraft.
Researchers from NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va., are working to develop a new kind of lightweight inflatable spacecraft outer shell to slow and protect reentry vehicles as they blaze through the atmosphere at hypersonic speeds.
They will test a technology demonstrator from a small sounding rocket to be launched at NASA's Wallops Flight Facility at Wallops Island, Va. The launch is scheduled for Aug. 17.
The Inflatable Re-entry Vehicle Experiment, or IRVE, looks like a giant mushroom when it's inflated. For the test, the silicon-coated Kevlar aeroshell is vacuum-packed inside a 16-inch (40.6 cm) diameter cylinder, but once it unfurls and is pumped full of nitrogen it is almost 10 feet (3 m) wide.
Engineers say the concept could help land bigger objects on Mars. "We'd like to be able to land more mass on Mars," said Neil Cheatwood, IRVE's principal investigator and chief scientist of the Hypersonics Project within NASA's Fundamental Aeronautics Program. "To land more mass you have to have more drag. We need to maximize the drag area of the entry system. We want to make it as big as we can, but the limitation has been the launch vehicle diameter."
According to Cheatwood, the idea of inflatable decelerators has been around for 40 years, but there were technical issues, including concerns about whether materials could withstand the heat of re-entry. Since then materials have advanced and because of numerous Mars missions, including rovers, landers and orbiters, there's more understanding of the Martian atmosphere.
That means researchers can now test a subscale model of a compact inflatable heat shield with the help of a small two-stage rocket. The vehicle is a 50-foot Black Brant 9 that will lift IRVE outside the atmosphere to an altitude of about 130 miles (209 km). Engineers want to find out what the re-entry vehicle will do on the way down.
"The whole flight will be over in less than 20 minutes," said Mary Beth Wusk, IRVE project manager. "We separate from the rocket 90 seconds after launch and we begin inflation about three-and-a-half-minutes after that. Our critical data period after it inflates and re-enters through the atmosphere is only about 30 seconds long."
Cameras and sensors on board will document the inflation and high-speed free fall and send information to researchers on the ground.
After its brief flight IRVE will fall into the Atlantic Ocean about 90 miles down range from Wallops. No efforts will be made to retrieve the experiment or the sounding rocket.
The Inflatable Re-entry Vehicle Experiment is an example of how NASA is using its aeronautics expertise to support the development of future spacecraft. NASA's Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate in Washington funded the flight experiment as part of its hypersonics research effort.
On the day of the launch the Wallops Flight facility plans to use the Internet to update the countdown status at:
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The U.S. Air Force's F-16D Automatic Collision Avoidance Technology (ACAT) aircraft takes off from Edwards Air Force Base on a flight originating from NASA’s Dryden Flight Research Center. Dryden and the Air Force Research Laboratory are collaborating to develop collision avoidance technologies that would reduce the risk of ground and mid-air collisions.
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A new study from two of NASA's Great Observatories provides fresh insight into how some stars are born, along with a beautiful new image of a stellar nursery in our Milky Way galaxy. The research shows that radiation from massive stars may trigger the formation of many more stars than previously thought.
While astronomers have long understood that stars and planets form from the collapse of a cloud of gas, the question of the main causes of this process has remained open.
One option is that the cloud cools, gravity gets the upper hand, and the cloud falls in on itself. The other possibility is that a "trigger" from some external source -- like radiation from a massive star or a shock from a supernova -- initiates the collapse. Some previous studies have noted a combination of triggering mechanisms in effect.
By combining observations of the star-forming cloud Cepheus B from the Chandra X-ray Observatory and the Spitzer Space Telescope, researchers have taken an important step in addressing this question. Cepheus B is a cloud of mainly cool molecular hydrogen located about 2,400 light years from Earth. There are hundreds of very young stars inside and around the cloud -- ranging from a few million years old outside the cloud to less than a million in the interior -- making it an important testing ground for star formation.
"Astronomers have generally believed that it's somewhat rare for stars and planets to be triggered into formation by radiation from massive stars," said Konstantin Getman of Penn State University, University Park, Pa., lead author of the study. "Our new result shows this belief is likely to be wrong."
This particular type of triggered star formation had previously been seen in small populations of a few dozen stars, but the latest result is the first time it has been clearly observed in a rich population of several hundred stars.
While slightly farther away than the famous Orion star-forming region, Cepheus B is at a better orientation for astronomers to observe the triggering process. The Chandra observations allowed the astronomers to pick out young stars within and around Cepheus B. Young stars have turbulent interiors that generate highly active magnetic fields, which, in turn, produce strong and identifiable X-ray signatures.
The Spitzer data revealed whether the young stars have a disk of material (known as "protoplanetary" disks) around them. Since they only exist in very young systems where planets are still forming, the presence of protoplanetary disks -- or lack thereof -- is an indication of the age of a star system.
The new study suggests that star formation in Cepheus B is mainly triggered by radiation from one bright, massive star outside the molecular cloud. According to theoretical models, radiation from this star would drive a compression wave into the cloud-triggering star formation in the interior, while evaporating the cloud's outer layers. The Chandra-Spitzer analysis revealed slightly older stars outside the cloud, and the youngest stars with the most protoplanetary disks in the cloud interior -- exactly what is predicted from the triggered star formation scenario.
"We essentially see a wave of star and planet formation that is rippling through this cloud," said co-author Eric Feigelson, also of Penn State. "It's clear that we can learn a lot about stellar nurseries by combining data from these two Great Observatories."
A paper describing these results was published in the July 10 issue of the Astrophysical Journal. The team of astronomers that worked with Getman and Feigelson also included Kevin Luhman and Gordon Garmire from Penn State; Aurora Sicilia-Aguilar from Max-Planck-Institut fur Astronomie in Germany; and Junfeng Wang from Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Cambridge, Mass.
NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., manages the Chandra program for NASA's Science MissionDirectorate in Washington. The Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory controls Chandra's science and flight operations from Cambridge, Mass. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., manages the Spitzer Space Telescope mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. Science operations are conducted at the Spitzer Science Center at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. Caltech manages JPL for NASA. The Spitzer observations were taken during the observatory's "cold" mission, before its coolant ran out and it began operating at a warmer temperature.
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In 1918, magician extraordinaire Harry Houdini created a sensation when he made a 10,000 pound elephant disappear before a mystified audience of over 5,200 at New York's famed Hippodrome theatre. But a vanishing pachyderm is nothing compared to the magnificent illusion to be performed by our solar system's own sixth rock from the sun on Aug. 11. On that day, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, children of all ages, the planet Saturn, with no help from either Jupiter or Uranus, will make its 170,000-mile-wide ring system disappear.
How does a mere gas giant planet, without the benefit of a magic wand, smoke and mirrors, or even sleeves for that matter, manage to hide an estimated 35 trillion-trillion tons of ice, dust and rock fragments? Saturn itself, perhaps adhering to the magician's code never to reveal how a trick is performed, is not talking. But fortunately for us, dear friends, Linda Spilker, deputy project scientist for the Cassini Saturn mission at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., is not in the magician's guild.
"Saturn has been performing the "ring plane crossing" illusion about every 15 years since the rings formed, perhaps as long as 4.5 billion years ago, so by now it is pretty good at it," said Spilker. "The magician's tools required to perform this trick are pure sunlight, a planet that wobbles, and a main ring system that may be almost 200-thousand miles wide, but only 30 feet thick." All planets in our solar system wobble on their axes to some extent. This change of attitude eventually places a planet's equator directly in line with the photons of light streaming in from the sun. This is called "equinox," and on Earthit occurs every year about March 21 (spring equinox) and September 22 (autumnal equinox). On Saturn, it occurs twice during each 29 Earth-year-long orbit around the sun (about every 15 years).
"Whenever equinox occurs on Saturn, sunlight will hit Saturn's thin rings, the ring plane, edge-on," said Spilker."The light reflecting off this extremely narrow band is so small that for all intents and purposes the rings simply vanish." While the second largest planet in our solar system has been conjuring its ring plane phenomenon for millennia, the audience for it only began showing up about 400 years ago. By December 1612, Galileo Galilei had been studying Saturn and its "two large moons" (through his primitive telescope he mistook the ring system for moons on either side of the planet) for over two years. He had been noticing these "two moons" getting thinner and thinner. After the rings disappeared from his eyepiece entirely, Galileo shared his surprise in a letter in which he wrote, "I do not know what to say in a case so surprising, so unlooked for and so novel."
"Galileo had every right to be mystified by the rings," said Spilker. "While we know how Saturn pulls off its ring-plane crossing illusion, we are still fascinated and mystified by Saturn's rings, and equinox is a great time for us to learn more." Far from being a loss, a ring plane crossing provides a unique opportunity for scientists. The sunlight hitting the rings at 90-degree angles can illuminate, or throw shadows, revealing ring structures and oddities previously unseen.
But fair warning for those miserly types armed with their own telescopes and determined to get a free celestial magic show. This particular conjuring of the ring-plane crossing illusion will have an audience of one.
"Saturn's orbit has brought it so close to the sun that it is extremely difficult to see even with the best of telescopes," said Spilker. "Fortunately, we have Cassini in the front row."
The Cassini spacecraft has been observing Saturn, its moons and its rings from orbit around the planet for the past five years. The spacecraft's instruments have discovered new rings, moons, as well as changed the way we look at Saturn's ring system. Around equinox, Cassini's thermal instrument is tasked with measuring the temperature of both sides of the rings as the sun sets to look at how the rings cool as they go through this seasonal change. The spacecraft's cameras are looking for topographic features in the rings, like tiny moons and possible ring warps, which are only visible at equinox, while the near-infrared and ultraviolet instruments will be on the hunt for signs of seasonal change on the planet.
"The great thing is we are not sure what we will find," said Spilker. "Like any great magician, Saturn never fails to impress." The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Cassini orbiter was designed, developed and assembled at JPL. JPL manages the mission for the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington.
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Anyone who's ever driven down a country lane has seen it happen. A fast moving car, a cloud of multiplying insects, and a big disgusting mess.
The next time that happens to you, instead of feeling grossed out, try thinking of the experience as an astronomy lesson. Your car is Earth. The bugs are tiny flakes of comet dust. The carnage on your windshield ... it's a meteor shower!
Earth, like a speeding car, races around the Sun sweeping up everything in its path. There are no insects in space, but there are plenty of meteoroids, little flakes of dust from comets and asteroids. They hit Earth's atmosphere and--splat!--they disintegrate as fiery streaks of light called meteors.
This week lots of meteors will appear over Earth's northern hemisphere when our planet plows through a swarm of dust shed by periodic comet Swift-Tuttle. It's the annual Perseid meteor shower, which peaks on August 11th and 12th.
Just as bugs tend to accumulate on the front windshield of a car, Perseids accumulate on the front windshield of Earth.
Earth has a windshield? It's the atmosphere, which protects us from solar wind and comet dust much as a car's windshield protects passengers from wind, rain and bugs. Earth's front windshield is the early morning sky. Earth circles the Sun dawn-side first, scooping up whatever lies on that side of the planet. That's why it's usually best to look for Perseids just before dawn.
A good time to see Perseids this year is before dawn on Wednesday morning, August 12th, when Earth's front windshield is overhead.
Side windows, the ones to the left and right of passengers in cars, are good, too. Zooming down a bug-infested lane, side windows don't intercept many insects, but the ones they do gather are worth examining. Bugs that strike side windows do so at a shallow angle, leaving long and colorful streaks.
This also happens to meteors. When the constellation Perseus (the source of the Perseids) hangs low near the horizon, meteors streaming from Perseus will skim the the top of Earth's atmosphere, much like a bug skimming the side window of an automobile. Astronomers call these meteors "Earthgrazers." They tend to be long and colorful.
Look for Perseid Earthgrazers on Tuesday night, Aug. 11th, between 9:00 and 11:00 p.m. local time.
This year, evening Earthgrazers on August 11th could be the best part of the show, because the Moon and its interfering glare will be below the horizon in early evening. Dark skies = good meteor watching. Later, when Earth's "front windshield" rises, the Moon will rise with it, reducing the number of Perseids you'll be able to see before sunrise on August 12th.
Earthgrazers don't come in large numbers. The special geometry required to produce them keeps counts low, but even one or two is enough. A breathtaking Earthgrazer is the sort of meteor you're likely to remember for years.
Best of all, there's no gooey residue.
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NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope has found evidence of a high-speed collision between two burgeoning planets around a young star.
Astronomers say that two rocky bodies, one as least as big as our moon and the other at least as big as Mercury, slammed into each other within the last few thousand years or so -- not long ago by cosmic standards. The impact destroyed the smaller body, vaporizing huge amounts of rock and flinging massive plumes of hot lava into space. An artist's animation of the event is at http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/spitzer/multimedia/spitzer-20090810.html .
Spitzer's infrared detectors were able to pick up the signatures of the vaporized rock, along with pieces of refrozen lava, called tektites.
"This collision had to be huge and incredibly high-speed for rock to have been vaporized and melted," said Carey M. Lisse of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, Laurel, Md., lead author of a new paper describing the findings in the Aug. 20 issue of the Astrophysical Journal. "This is a really rare and short-lived event, critical in the formation of Earth-like planets and moons. We're lucky to have witnessed one not long after it happened."
Lisse and his colleagues say the cosmic crash is similar to the one that formed our moon more than 4 billion years ago, when a body the size of Mars rammed into Earth.
"The collision that formed our moon would have been tremendous, enough to melt the surface of Earth," said co-author Geoff Bryden of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. "Debris from the collision most likely settled into a disk around Earth that eventually coalesced to make the moon. This is about the same scale of impact we're seeing with Spitzer -- we don't know if a moon will form or not, but we know a large rocky body's surface was red hot, warped and melted."
Our solar system's early history is rich with similar tales of destruction. Giant impacts are thought to have stripped Mercury of its outer crust, tipped Uranus on its side and spun Venus backward, to name a few examples. Such violence is a routine aspect of planet building. Rocky planets form and grow in size by colliding and sticking together, merging their cores and shedding some of their surfaces. Though things have settled down in our solar system today, impacts still occur, as was observed last month after a small space object crashed into Jupiter.
Lisse and his team observed a star called HD 172555, which is about 12 million years old and located about 100 light-years away in the far southern constellation Pavo, or the Peacock (for comparison, our solar system is 4.5 billion years old). The astronomers used an instrument on Spitzer, called a spectrograph, to break apart the star's light and look for fingerprints of chemicals, in what is called a spectrum. What they found was very strange. "I had never seen anything like this before," said Lisse. "The spectrum was very unusual."
After careful analysis, the researchers identified lots of amorphous silica, or essentially melted glass. Silica can be found on Earth in obsidian rocks and tektites. Obsidian is black, shiny volcanic glass. Tektites are hardened chunks of lava that are thought to form when meteorites hit Earth.
Large quantities of orbiting silicon monoxide gas were also detected, created when much of the rock was vaporized. In addition, the astronomers found rocky rubble that was probably flung out from the planetary wreck.
The mass of the dust and gas observed suggests the combined mass of the two charging bodies was more than twice that of our moon.
Their speed must have been tremendous as well -- the two bodies would have to have been traveling at a velocity relative to each other of at least 10 kilometers per second (about 22,400 miles per hour) before the collision.
Spitzer has witnessed the dusty aftermath of large asteroidal impacts before, but did not find evidence for the same type of violence -- melted and vaporized rock sprayed everywhere. Instead, large amounts of dust, gravel, and boulder-sized rubble were observed, indicating the collisions might have been slower-paced. "Almost all large impacts are like stately, slow-moving Titanic-versus-the-iceberg collisions, whereas this one must have been a huge fiery blast, over in the blink of an eye and full of fury," said Lisse.
Other authors include C.H. Chen of the Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, Md.; M.C. Wyatt of the University of Cambridge, England; A. Morlok of the Open University, London, England; I. Song of The University of Georgia, Athens, Ga.; and P. Sheehan of the University of Rochester, N.Y.
JPL manages the Spitzer mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. Science operations are conducted at the Spitzer Science Center at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. Caltech manages JPL for NASA. Spitzer's infrared spectrograph, which made the observations in 2004 before the telescope began its "warm" mission, was built by Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y. Its development was led by Jim Houck of Cornell.
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Inflatable aircraft are not a new idea. Hot air balloons have been around for more than two centuries and blimps are a common sight over many sports stadiums. But it's hard to imagine an inflatable spacecraft.
Researchers from NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va., are working to develop a new kind of lightweight inflatable spacecraft outer shell to slow and protect reentry vehicles as they blaze through the atmosphere at hypersonic speeds.
They will test a technology demonstrator from a small sounding rocket to be launched at NASA's Wallops Flight Facility at Wallops Island, Va. The launch is scheduled for Aug. 17.
The Inflatable Re-entry Vehicle Experiment, or IRVE, looks like a giant mushroom when it's inflated. For the test, the silicon-coated Kevlar aeroshell is vacuum-packed inside a 16-inch (40.6 cm) diameter cylinder, but once it unfurls and is pumped full of nitrogen it is almost 10 feet (3 m) wide.
Engineers say the concept could help land bigger objects on Mars. "We'd like to be able to land more mass on Mars," said Neil Cheatwood, IRVE's principal investigator and chief scientist of the Hypersonics Project within NASA's Fundamental Aeronautics Program. "To land more mass you have to have more drag. We need to maximize the drag area of the entry system. We want to make it as big as we can, but the limitation has been the launch vehicle diameter."
According to Cheatwood, the idea of inflatable decelerators has been around for 40 years, but there were technical issues, including concerns about whether materials could withstand the heat of re-entry. Since then materials have advanced and because of numerous Mars missions, including rovers, landers and orbiters, there's more understanding of the Martian atmosphere.
That means researchers can now test a subscale model of a compact inflatable heat shield with the help of a small two-stage rocket. The vehicle is a 50-foot Black Brant 9 that will lift IRVE outside the atmosphere to an altitude of about 130 miles (209 km). Engineers want to find out what the re-entry vehicle will do on the way down.
"The whole flight will be over in less than 20 minutes," said Mary Beth Wusk, IRVE project manager. "We separate from the rocket 90 seconds after launch and we begin inflation about three-and-a-half-minutes after that. Our critical data period after it inflates and re-enters through the atmosphere is only about 30 seconds long."
Cameras and sensors on board will document the inflation and high-speed free fall and send information to researchers on the ground.
After its brief flight IRVE will fall into the Atlantic Ocean about 90 miles down range from Wallops. No efforts will be made to retrieve the experiment or the sounding rocket.
The Inflatable Re-entry Vehicle Experiment is an example of how NASA is using its aeronautics expertise to support the development of future spacecraft. NASA's Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate in Washington funded the flight experiment as part of its hypersonics research effort.
On the day of the launch the Wallops Flight facility plans to use the Internet to update the countdown status at:
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The U.S. Air Force's F-16D Automatic Collision Avoidance Technology (ACAT) aircraft takes off from Edwards Air Force Base on a flight originating from NASA’s Dryden Flight Research Center. Dryden and the Air Force Research Laboratory are collaborating to develop collision avoidance technologies that would reduce the risk of ground and mid-air collisions.
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New meteorological data from NASA's Cassini spacecraft indicates the value for Saturn's rotation period could be more than 5 minutes shorter than previously believed - and that Saturn is more like its larger neighbor Jupiter than previously considered. The rate at which Saturnspins provides important data for planetary scientists interested in the ringed world. Obtaining an accurate fix on that number is critical to enhancing scientist's understanding of the planet's evolution, formation and meteorology. The report on this finding, led by Cassini scientist Peter Read of Oxford University, England, is published in the July 30 issue of the journal Nature.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Cassini orbiter was designed, developed and assembled at JPL. JPL manages the mission for the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington.
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NASA astronaut Robert Shane Kimbrough had two dreams growing up as a child; to be an astronaut and to play baseball. He grew up in the small town of Smyrna, Ga., just outside of Atlanta. Recently Kimbrough’s two passions came together while making a special appearance in his native Georgia. He spoke to the people of Atlanta about being an astronaut and was given the opportunity to participate in pregame activities for an Atlanta Braves’ game.
Kimbrough’s appearance in Atlanta marked the second stop of NASA’s Hometown Hero 2009 campaign. He is one of several astronauts returning to their home regions to spread knowledge about the importance of continuing space exploration. At each stop, the astronauts participate in pregame activities at a Major League Baseball game and do community outreach about NASA, the International Space Station, and why space exploration is so vital to the nation.
Kimbrough started his trip with an event-filled afternoon at the Fernbank Science Center. Sporting his blue flight suit, he did media interviews and presented his post-flight presentation to a group of aviation camp kids and the public. Kimbrough talked about the importance of education and raising the next generation’s interest in science and space exploration. The evening wrapped up with a free planetarium show for all who attended.
“It was a pleasure to host Lt. Col. Kimbrough at the Fernbank Science Center,” said Fernbank Science Center Director Doug Hrabe. “The groups were very appreciative of the time that he shared with them.”
The trip continued early next morning with three live interviews. Kimbrough stopped by WXIA-TV to talk with Karyn Greer about his recent mission, STS-126, and his time onboard the space station, where he performed two space walks. Kimbrough also had a radio interview with Kevin and Taylor in the Morning from 104.7 “The Fish.” He discussed the 10-year anniversary of the space station and how there are significant benefits derived from research conducted in space.
“All the things we do up there are to help people on Earth,” Kimbrough said. “We don’t do it for our sake or NASA’s sake—it’s to go up there and figure out how to live better on Earth.”
His last stop of the morning was at WAGA-TV. Kimbrough visited with Suchita Vadlamani. He recounted his days of growing up in Georgia and why he really became an astronaut.
“What first sparked your imagination and inspired you to be an astronaut?” Vadlamani asked.
“People my age were watching men walk on the moon, and that’s really what sparked the whole thing,” Kimbrough said.
After the early morning interviews, Kimbrough headed to Georgia Tech, where he made a post-flight presentation and signed autographs for students and summer campers. Kimbrough received a Master of Science degree in operations research from the Georgia Institute of Technology in 1998, so his visit was somewhat of a welcome home party.
Kimbrough ended his two-day trip with a major strike! He participated in numerous pregame activities at the Atlanta Braves versus Boston Red Sox game. He presented the general manager with a special photo taken from the space station. Later, Kimbrough and his son Zack also gave the “Play ball” call to start the game. But his journey didn’t end there. He signed several autographs and gave a live interview in the Braves’ plaza.
In the end, Kimbrough enjoyed his Hometown Heroes trip and thought the diversity of his events helped educate people about NASA and its goals.
“I had a chance to speak to kids, college students, the public and athletes, which is a very broad spectrum of folks,” Kimbrough said. “I think we did a lot of good for NASAoverall.”
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al muscles could provide for rapid information exchange, such as e-mail, text messaging and access to the web and other electronic databases or archives." According to the World Health Organization, about 314 million people are visually impaired worldwide; 45 million of them are blind.
Recently, Bar-Cohen was contacted by the Center for Braille Innovation of the Boston-based National Braille Press to reach out to the Electroactive Polymer community and take advantage of his role in this field. The National Braille Press is a non-profit Braille printing and publishing house that promotes the literacy of blind children through Braille.
