David Akin and Shane Jacobs, two engineers at the University of Maryland in College Park, are aiming to create a spacesuit that will allow astronauts to be ready "in seconds," with artificial muscles not just helping to make the suit a snug fit, but also lowering the amount of exertion needed to move in space. And that's not all; their prototype also includes an in-helmet video screen and LCD spectacles (just in case the video screen isn't showing anything too exciting, we guess).

The suit is currently being tested at the university but, while we think the LCD glasses and video helmet sound cool, the idea of any kind of automated pressure system to make the suit mould itself to the astronaut's body reminds us just a little bit of this:

Here's hoping they test for a long time, just in case.

Shrink-to-fit spacesuit eases astronauts' workload [NewScientist]

The art of space exploration[Guardian.co.uk]

A few years ago, students at the Obama Fisheries High School in Fukui Prefecture developed a method of processing the monstrous jellyfish into an edible powder, which has been used to make cookies. But lately, raw caramel has been all the rage in Japan, prompting the students to try their hands at sea creature-based caramels. Adding sugar and starch syrup to the jellyfish powder, they have produced a sweet and salty candy.

It was a NASA-designed food safety management system that kicked off this jellyfish cuisine in the first place, and the high school is looking to give something back to the space program. The students have a meeting this week with the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency to make their caramels an official part of the menu aboard the International Space Station.

Space caramel made from giant jellyfish [Pink Tentacle]

Since a manned mission to Mars would, using current technology, take roughly 520 days, both NASA and the ESA have planned simulated missions to test their astronauts' ability to live in tight quarters for extended periods of time. Six NASA astronauts recently completed a 105-day mock mission, and a 520-day simulation is in the works. The ESA, in a joint effort with the Russian Academy of Science's Institute for Medical-Biological Problems, is also planning a 100-day lock-in, offering astronauts who survive the experience a reality show-eque incentive of $20,000 each.

Luke McKinney of the Daily Galaxy thinks the ESA has missed a valuable opportunity to increase interest in the space program by treating its astronauts like island castaways:

With all the recent work by space agencies to raise their profile in the public eye, especially in a world with people asking "Why should we spend money on this when nobody has any?" You literally don't need to add anything - the experiment will be full of cameras anyway, you've got volunteers from three different countries (Russian, Germany and France), you just need to connect it to the TV and it'll start making money. Also, elimination rounds and "voting people off" is a lot more interesting with spaceships and airlocks.

It's a cute idea, but the biggest obstacle the NASA astronauts faced in their 105 days of isolation wasn't back-biting, strategizing, or romantic entanglements — it was boredom. And the sorts of antics that fuel reality television aren't exactly conducive to a successful space mission. Still, perhaps this is the golden opportunity for some enterprising reality TV exec: finding a way to break up the monotony of space travel without sabotaging the mission, and somehow keeping audiences coming back week after week.

Manned Mission-to-Mars Simulation: The Ultimate Reality TV Show [Daily Galaxy]

One hundred candidates, both male and female, have reported to the No. 454 Hospital of the People's Liberation Army in in the hopes of joining the burgeoning ranks of China's astronauts. Nanjing doctor Shi Bing Bing revealed to Chinese newspapers that, in addition to passing rigorous mental and physical tests, the candidates will have to fulfill a list of 100 mandatory standards before they'll be allowed to fly. One item on the list: absolutely no bad breath, as one's breath and other body odors can negatively affect colleagues in the confines of a space craft.

Other requirements include no cavities, no scars (they "might burst and bleed when spaceships are accelerating"), no drug allergies, no ringworm, no runny noses, and no serious family illness in the last three generations. Married aspirants must get permission from their spouses before they can leave the Earth. And candidates are expected to possess a generally "pleasant and adaptable disposition."

If the requirements sound nearly impossible to fulfill, that's more or less the point. Mere mortals, it seems, simply don't qualify to fly under the Chinese banner. Shi says it himself:

"These astronauts could be regarded as super human beings."

Astronauts wanted - no bad breath [BBC]

The experiment was designed to see if the crew could conduct experiments and deal with stressful situations they might experience, including emergencies and communication delays. No murderous computers were involved. The American scientists running the experiment forced their counterparts to endure sleep deprivation, monitored their interactions with Mission Control, and then looked at how stress and fatigue impacted the performance of their duties.

The scientists running the experiment consider it a great opportunity. Said project leader Charles A. Czeislder, who worked on the project,

We've done experiments in the sleep lab to test the efficacy of lighting interventions, but that is a highly controlled environment. By transitioning studies into an operational environment, like the 105-Day Mission, we have the opportunity to learn how to best deploy interventions in a realistic mission setting. This analog is a great intermediate step before implementation on an actual spaceflight.

He and colleagues are hoping that the experiment will allow them not only to help astronauts survive long flights in cramped quarters, but provide some data to help other sleep-derived Earthbound professionals with stressful jobs to stay awake and function better.

In the sleep deprivation experiment, scientists expect to prove that bathing sleep-deprived workers in green light rather than red suppresses the body's production of melatonin, allowing them to work more effectively during overnight shifts. In the stress impact experiment, scientists used facial recognition-style software during videotaped cognitive tests, to have the computer look for signs of stress or negative emotions, in an effort to validate the software for use during real missions. Meanwhile, they went through tests that measured their attentiveness, response times and impulsiveness. In the final experiment, the crew experimented with differing levels of autonomy with mission control to track whether lots of interaction with management was more or less helpful to individual relationships and job performance. Initial results suggest that they didn't appreciated being nagged any more than the rest of us.

105-Day Mars Simulation: U.S. Studies Focus On Improving Work Performance [National Space Biomedical Research Institute ]

Matt Pettinson is a British illustrator who has created an amazing series of images - a few of which you can see below - which chronicle the weird adventures of a band of tiny astronauts encountering an alien world. I love the drama mixed with goofiness here. There are strange animals, malfunctioning machines, and an escaped plant. Only when danger threatens the planet do our heroes regretfully return their samples to where they found them, and escape.

Pettinson's science fiction-inspired line drawings really ought to be t-shirts. I am especially fond of the image of the blobby tree-dweller with the comment, "We know absolutely nothing about this creature."

You can see more of this saga, as well as other amazing work, on Pettinson's blog.

Despite the event's name, the activities will actually continue through May 2nd, where there will be a celebration at the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum in Washington, DC. Astronauts from the recent Shuttle mission, STS-119, will be present, and there will be a live broadcast from the International Space Station.

The overall focus of this event is education, and as such, schools and civic groups have been invited and encouraged to participate. According to NASA, there will be educational activities at the museum from 10 a.m. until 3 p.m. EDT.

More information can be found here : http://www.spaceday.org

Image from the South Dakota Space Grant Consorteum, 2002

The ISS is growing another section, which will allow more astronauts to live and do research for months at a time in space. Space shuttle Discovery brought up an enormous, 16-ton strut that will form the backbone for this new section. It also brought up enormous solar arrays which should keep the ISS zooming along with photon power.

Images via AP/NASA.

Astronauts who are in space at the time of an election were given the right to vote by a 1997 Texas law (astronauts tend to live in or near Houston). Fincke and Chamitoff will cast their votes, and the results will be sent to the Harris and Brazoria County Clerk via encrypted downlinks and emails. The two participatory democracy loving space travelers even made a "Get Out the Vote" video while on board the ISS.

If they're going through all that trouble to vote, wouldn't you feel like a jerk if you didn't bother? So vote already!

No word on which candidate the astronauts plan to vote for, but the ISS is sporting a "Don't Blame Me, I Voted for Kodos" bumper sticker. Image by: NASA.

Be like an astronaut: Vote! [Scientific American]

The article - which begins "When 2001: A Space Odyssey premiered 40 years ago, living and working in space full time was science fiction. Today, three resident crew members are aboard the International Space Station 365 days a year operating one of the most complex engineering projects in history," letting you know just what you're in for - lists the many ways in which the "ultimate trip" has come true:

— One of the most notable visions is the large, low Earth orbiting, revolving space station in the film. Although the shape is different, today's space station is permanently crewed and international. 
— Flat-screen computer monitors that were unheard of in 1968 are now commonly used on the space station.
The film imagines glass cockpits in spacecraft, which are now present on the flight deck of the space shuttle. 
— The film also envisions in-flight entertainment in space. Today there are DVDs, iPods and computers with e-mail access. 
— Another famous scene from the movie depicts an astronaut jogging in space. Aboard the International Space Station, exercise in space is routine. In April 2007, 210 miles above Earth, astronaut Sunita Williams ran the Boston Marathon while in orbit.

It's a chilling thought, though; 2001 is many things - long, ponderous, ultimately sterile and a product of pretension and the late '60s zeitgeist to name just a few - but I've never thought of it as a model of the kind of world that I'd want to live in. Can't The Last Starfighter come true, instead?

1968 Science Fiction is Today's Reality [PhysOrg]

First, while you can't blame the forward-looking makers of What Shall I Be? for including astronaut as a career path, there weren't any female astronauts when the game came out in 1976. Six women were among the 35 members of NASA's class of 1978—they were the first female astronauts. Among them was Sally Ride, who became the first American woman in space in 1983. (The Commies beat us to it by 20 years; Cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova blasted into orbit in 1963, while NASA was still dithering over whether space travel would affect a woman's "special"—as in "gimme a tampon"—physiology.)

Second, the astronaut on the What Shall I Be? box was depicted walking on the lunar surface—something no woman has done. Shuttle commander Eileen Collins almost certainly would have been the first to do so had there been an active lunar program at NASA when she was flying space missions in the 1990s. It's a technicality perhaps, but the fact remains: it's 2008 and a woman has yet to walk on the moon.

Newman was able to do away with most of that dead weight, thanks to her studies of how people move in outer space. Among other things, she's studied ways to modify beds and treadmills in space, so astronauts don't lose so much muscle mass and bone density. So the revolutionary BioSuit uses mechanical counterpressure (from tight inner layers) instead of gas to keep the suit pressurized. That way, the next generation of space explorers will look slinky and move easy. Image courtesy of MIT.

Space Age Spacesuit [Helena Independent Record]

The name 'Geox' [is] from the Greek word geo for 'earth,' and 'x,' the letter symbolizing technology. Wearing these shoes makes you feel you are walking barefoot on earth and without the stink.

When the space age ended, the alien age began. In the early 1990s, the Disney Corporation decided to close down its Mission to Mars ride, itself a direct descendant of the Rocket to the Moon attraction Werner von Braun had helped to design. In its place came Alien Encounter, in which an extraterrestrial stows away on a spaceship. This made things easier for Disney, as one executive admitted: "One way for an attraction to remain timeless is for it to be based in fantasy, rather than reality."

After we stopped sending people into space, it was easier to spin elaborate fantasies. We no longer had any narratives about actual space travel, with all its challenges, to compete with our magical interstellar ships, DeGroot argues.

[Dark Side of the Moon: The Magnificent Madness of the American Lunar Quest] NYU Press 2006

The Space Age is dead, it died of starvation and neglect, somewhere around 1980. Yes, we fed it and gave it money while it was young, and exciting, and sexy, while our love for it was bright and new, but when it got older, and needed more expensive care and more of our time and understanding we guided it to a comfy chair over on the far side of the room, made it a cup of tea, handed it a magazine and left it to look after itself

Atkinson, who founded the Cockermouth Astronomical Society, says we got distracted by the allure of the Information Age. Soon we were out partying with our shiny iPods and googling ourselves in the corner, while the Space Age faded away. (Mostly I just wanted an excuse to say "Cockermouth.")

John Seiler has another explanation: "Funny how the "Space Age" ended about the time that alien creature burst from the guy's chest in "Alien" in 1979."

Space Age: RIP [via Cumbrian Sky] [Image by Getty Images]