US Military's 'Gremlin' Program Lets Pilots Launch and Snag Drones in Midair

The U.S. military is developing a fairy-tale-inspired "Gremlin" program that aims to launch and retrieve drones in midair.

"Gremlins" are a swarm of drones that can be deployed from a manned aircraft, according to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the branch of the U.S. military charged with developing new and innovative technologies for the nation's war fighters. The Gremlin program will allow aircraft pilots to launch the drones as needed, and call them back to the transport plane while both are still in flight.

DARPA announced the Gremlin concept in 2015, when the agency called for proof-of-concept designs for the first phase of the project.

Now, DARPA is moving on to the second phase, which will see the continued development of two ideas, according to Scott Wierzbanowski, DARPA program manager. [Humanoid Robots to Flying Cars: 10 Coolest DARPA Projects]

"The Phase 1 program showed the feasibility of airborne [drone] launch and recovery systems that would require minimal modification to the host aircraft," Wierzbanowski said in a statement. "We’re aiming in Phase 2 to mature two system concepts to enable ‘aircraft carriers in the sky’ using air-recoverable [drones] that could carry various payloads — advances that would greatly extend the range, flexibility, and affordability of [drone] operations for the U.S. military."

Phase 2 research will focus on completing designs for full-scale Gremlin drone demonstrations. The program will eventually move to Phase 3, which will result in one full-scale system demonstration that includes the airborne launch and recovery of multiple Gremlins.

DARPA is currently scheduled to conduct flight tests for the program in 2019.

World's First Deep-Sea Mining Venture Set to Launch in 2019

The world's first deep-sea mining operation will kick off in early 2019 when a Canadian firm, Nautilus Minerals Inc., lowers a trio of massive remote-controlled mining robots to the floor of the Bismarck Sea off the coast of Papua New Guinea in pursuit of rich copper and gold reserves.

The machines, each the size of a small house, are equipped with rock-crushing teeth resembling the large incisors of a dinosaur. The robots will lumber across the ocean floor on mammoth treads, grinding and chewing the encrusted seabed, sending plumes of sediment into the surrounding waters and killing marine life that gets in their way. The smallest of the robots weighs 200 tons.

"A lot of people don't realize that there are more mineral resources on the seafloor than on land," said Michael Johnston, CEO of Nautilus, by phone from the company's field office in Brisbane, Australia. "Technology has allowed us to go there."

If Nautilus succeeds, an undersea gold rush could be at hand.

Over two-dozen contracts have already been granted to explore hundreds of thousands of square miles of ocean floor by a United Nations body called the International Seabed Authority (ISA), which regulates areas of the seafloor that lie outside of any national jurisdiction.

"In the seabed, resources are incredibly rich," said Michael Lodge, Secretary-General of the ISA. "These are virgin resources. They're extremely high-grade. And they are super-abundant."

Analysts warn that population growth and a transition to low-carbon economies will test global supply constraints for minerals. Indeed, current levels of mining exploration are not keeping pace with future demand, according to a peer-reviewed paper published in March by a team of researchers led by the University of Delaware's Saleem Ali.

The prospect of mineral demand outstripping supply has led an increasing number of firms to consider operations at the bottom of the ocean, where reserves of copper, nickel, and cobalt are thought to be plentiful, along with lesser amounts of gold and platinum.

"It's no exaggeration to say that there are thousands of years' supply of minerals in the seabed," Secretary-General Lodge said. "There is just absolutely no shortage."

Nautilus says early tests show their Bismark Sea site, called Solwara-1, is over 10-times as rich in copper as comparable land-based mines, with a copper grade above 7 percent versus an average 0.6 percent grade on land. The site also boasts over 20 grams per ton of gold, versus an average grade of 6 grams per ton on land.

Many of the world's best options for surface mining have long since been explored and developed, according to Thomas Graedel, an industrial ecologist at Yale University.

"The planet has been extensively explored on land," he said by phone from New Haven. "I think industry will continue to want to explore for new potential deposits of minerals."

Indeed, mining the ocean floor has been under consideration for decades, but seen as a remote possibility.

In one famous case in 1974, the CIA used a fake ocean floor mining expedition, ostensibly backed by the eccentric billionaire Howard Hughes, as cover for an attempt to hoist a sunken Soviet submarine off the coast of Hawaii.

RELATED: 'Casper' Octopus Could Be Threatened by Deep-Sea Mining

But now, the practice is shifting from fantasy to reality — a fact that is causing alarm among environmental groups who argue that not enough research has been done to prove seabed mining is ecologically sound.

"There are too many unknowns for this industry to go ahead," said Natalie Lowrey of the Australia-based Deep Sea Mining Campaign, which is calling for the practice to be banned. "We've already desecrated a lot of our lands. We don't need to be doing that in the deep sea."

Lowrey worries that the plume of seafloor sediment stirred up by the mining robots could travel with sea currents, disturbing ocean ecosystems. Sediment clouds could prove harmful to filter-feeders, environmentalists argue, undercutting the lower rungs of the food chain and potentially causing knock-on effects for other creatures.

"There's a serious concern that the toxicity from disturbing the deep sea can move up the food chain to the local communities," who live along the coast of Papua New Guinea, she said.

Johnston of Nautilus said his company is taking the sediment plume issue seriously, and that the company's machines are designed to minimize the undersea cloud through the collection procedure itself.

"When we're cutting, we have suction turned on," he said. "It's not like we're blowing stuff all over the place. We're actually sucking it up. So the plume gets minimized through the mining process."

Johnston added, "We go to great efforts to minimize the impact of the plumes. We're quite confident that the impact from these activities will be significantly less than some of these people claim."

RELATED: Seawater Could Provide an 'Endless' Source of Uranium for Nuclear Plants

At Solwara-1, Nautilus is going after a type of deposit known as Seafloor Massive Sulfides (SMS), which form next to subsea hydrothermal vents at the margins of tectonic plates.

The deposits, which include copper, gold, and potentially other valuable minerals, collect after cold water seeps into the earth and becomes geothermally heated, dissolving metals and sulfides from the surrounding rocks before being spewed back out of the vent at temperatures up to 400 degrees Celsius and collecting on the sea floor — along with the minerals brought up from below.

The mining robots have been designed to operate in near-freezing temperatures, under pressure 150 times greater than at sea level.

The first robot, the auxiliary cutter, carves a level path to make way for the second machine, the bulk cutter, which is equipped with a wide, powerful cutting drum.

The third robot, called the collecting machine, follows behind them, slurping up the seawater slurry with a consistency like wet cement through internal pumps before sending the material to the ship at the surface via a riser system.

On the ship, the water is filtered, and solids larger than eight microns are removed, before being returned back into the ocean. The cargo is then transferred to a transport vessel and sent directly to customers in China.

Now, as Nautilus prepares for its maiden voyage, many will be watching from the sidelines — and if it succeeds, imitators will likely try to follow.

"If Nautilus goes ahead, it's going to open the gateway for this industry," Lowrey said.

Air Force's Mysterious X-37B Space Plane Breaks Orbital Record

The ongoing mission of the U.S. Air Force's robotic X-37B space plane is now the longest in the clandestine program's history.

As of today (March 25), the X-37B has spent 675 days on its latest Earth-circling mission, which is known as Orbital Test Vehicle-4 (OTV-4). The previous record was 674 days, set during OTV-3, which lasted from December 2012 to October 2014.

It's unclear what the new duration record will end up being; most X-37B activities and payloads are classified, and the Air Force has historically been tight-lipped about landing plans.

"The landing date will be determined based on the completion of the program's on-orbit demonstrations and objectives for this mission," Capt. AnnMarie Annicelli, an Air Force spokeswoman, told Space.com via email.

OTV-4 is still nowhere near the overall record for longest space mission, however. Some Earth-observation satellites have operated for decades; for example, Landsat-5 studied the planet from 1984 to 2013. And NASA's far-flung Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 probes are still sending data home, nearly 40 years after their 1977 launches.

Mini-shuttle mystery missions

The Air Force is known to have two X-37B vehicles, both of which were built by aerospace giant Boeing. The X-37B launches vertically and lands horizontally on a runway, just like NASA's now-retired space shuttle orbiters did.

The Air Force vehicle also looks like a miniature version of the space shuttle. Each solar-powered X-37B is just 29 feet (8.8 meters) long and 9.6 feet (2.9 m) tall, with a wingspan of about 15 feet (4.6 m). For comparison, the space shuttle was about 122 feet (37 m) long, with a wingspan of 78 feet (24 m).

Together, these two X-37Bs have flown four space missions to date, each of which has set a new duration record. OTV-1 launched on April 22, 2010, and landed on Dec. 3 of that year, spending a total of 224 days in orbit; OTV-2 lifted off on March 5, 2011, and wrapped up on June 16, 2012 (468 days); OTV-3 launched on Dec. 11, 2012, and landed on Oct. 17, 2014 (674 days); and OTV-4 lifted off on May 20, 2015. (The mission lengths of OTV-3 and OTV-4 may seem equivalent as of today, but the former landed about 2 hours shy of the full 675-day mark.) 

The latest three missions have therefore blown past the space plane's designed orbital lifetime, which is just 270 days, according to the Air Force's X-37B fact sheet.

The secrecy surrounding the X-37B program has led to some speculation that the vehicle may be a space weapon. But this is unlikely to be true, experts say; for example, the space plane does not seem big enough or maneuverable enough to be used to manipulate other satellites.

Indeed, the Air Force has always stressed that the X-37B has two primary objectives: testing reusable spacecraft technologies, and helping to conduct experiments that can be returned to Earth for examination.

"Technologies being tested in the program include advanced guidance, navigation and control; thermal
protection systems; avionics; high-temperature structures and seals; conformal reusable insulation, lightweight electromechanical flight systems; and autonomous orbital flight, re-entry and landing,"  Annicelli told Space.com, declining to offer details about OTV-4 in particular.

"Also, the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL), Space and Missile Systems Center (SMC) and the Air Force Rapid Capabilities Office (AFRCO) are investigating an experimental propulsion system," she added.

A Florida landing?

All four X-37B missions have launched from Florida's Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. The first three touched down at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, but OTV-4 might not.

Air Force officials have said they aim to consolidate X-37B launch and landing activities on Florida's Space Coast. To this end, the old Shuttle Landing Facility at NASA's Kennedy Space Center (KSC), which is right next door to Cape Canaveral, has been prepped to accommodate the X-37B.

If OTV-4 does come down at KSC, it would mark the first landing at the site since July 2011, when the space shuttle Atlantis touched down to wrap up its STS-135 mission — the shuttle program's last-ever flight.

NASA Uses AI to Detect and Snap Images of Volcanic Eruptions

When a volcano in Ethiopia erupted in January, volcanologists hoped a NASA satellite would be able to train its eyes on the explosive event and capture photos. It turned out that a satellite was already a few steps ahead and had already begun observing the volcano, thanks to an artificial intelligence program on board.

The Autonomous Sciencecraft Experiment (ASE) is an artificial intelligence (AI) software that has guided the activities of NASA's Earth Observing 1 (EO-1) spacecraft for more than 12 years, according to NASA. The EO-1 satellite was launched in 2000 as an experimental Earth-science satellite, and was outfitted with the AI guide in 2003. With the assistance of the ASE, the satellite can detect changes of scientific interest on Earth (i.e. volcanic eruptions, wildfires and flooding), alert researchers and autonomously take photos of the events.

This month, NASA will be retiring the EO-1 satellite, and agency researchers said the recent volcanic activity in Ethiopia was a fitting end to the satellite's mission.

"We caught this event at the perfect time, during an early, developing phase of the eruption," Ashley Davies, lead scientist for ASE and a volcanologist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), said in a statement. "This simply wouldn't have happened without the Volcano Sensor Web."

The Volcano Sensor Web is a network of satellites (including EO-1) and ground sensors that is tasked with monitoring changes such as rapid temperature increases on the planet. In late January, one of the satellites in the network detected changes in Erta Ale's lava lake in Ethiopia, and pinged the EO-1 satellite to capture images of the volcano.

Known as the "smoking mountain" and the "gateway to hell," Erta Ale is Ethiopia's most active volcano. The shield volcano is located in Africa's Danakil (or Afar) Depression, where three tectonic plates are separating, triggering volcanic activity along the seams. Erta Ale is also one of the few volcanoes in the world that has an active lava lake at its caldera, the basin-shaped depression that forms after an eruption.

Thanks to the EO-1 satellite's quick response to the activity, NASA researchers said they can review images of Erta Ale to study how the discharge of lava changes over time.

Erta Ale was not the only volcano on EO-1's radar during the satellite's more-than-a-decade-long run. NASA researchers used the ASE on board EO-1 to study the eruption of Chile's Puyehue-Cordon Caulle volcano in 2011, and an Icelandic volcano's eruption in 2010. The software was not limited to covering volcanic activity, however, and also helped monitor severe flooding in Thailand in 2011.

"It's a milestone in AI application," said Steve Chien, principal investigator of ASE and head of the Artificial Intelligence Group at JPL. "We were supposed to do this for six months, and we were so successful that we did it for more than 12 years."

Though EO-1 and its AI program, ASE, are headed for retirement, future research will continue the pursuit of satellite autonomy, Chien and Davies said.

Ingestible Snake Robot Could Slither Through Your Intestines

A tiny, swallowable robot that snakes its way through the small intestines could one day be used to actively visualize the digestive system.

The robot, called SAW (single actuator wave-like robot), moves in a wave-like motion and can travel through the extremely squishy environment of the small intestine.

"The external shape of the robot is a 2D projection of a rotating helix. The result is a continuously moving wave. We can simply reverse the direction by reversing the direction of rotation of the motor," said one of the robot's inventors, David Zarrouk, a mechanical engineer at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev.

Crawling through intestines

The team was hoping to create an ingestible robot that could carry a camera through the small intestines, which could ultimately be used for colonoscopies. Currently, colonoscopies can access only the large intestines. There are pill cameras that can reach the small intestines, but they float passively through the digestive system, meaning they typically take 12 hours to travel its entirety. What's more, the pill cameras can sometimes get stuck at certain points in the intestines, at which point the battery dies, leaving no data for a doctor to analyze. Passive camera pills also can't take tissue samples, Zarrouk added.

Initially, the team members created an inchworm-like robot that crawled through tight spaces. But they found it wasn't ideal for traveling through serpentine lengths of the intestines.

So, the team looked for inspiration in the natural world. Snakes move in a smooth, undulating wave that, they reasoned, could be used to quickly cover large distances. In the end, they settled on a fairly simple design that used just one motor and was based on the notion of a rotating helix, Zarrouk said. The snake-like robot is made from a set of interlocking 3D-printed "plastic" pieces that look a bit like vertebrae. In tests, it seems to move incredibly fast and can cross a wide array of terrains, from water to rough, rocky soil.

Working out kinks

So far, the team has made simple mock-ups using 3D printers and a plastic-like material that would be unsuitable for true biological applications. They also have to make sure it wouldn't get stuck in the curvy portions of the intestines, and that the robot can climb upward at points where the intestines snake up, he added

Once those kinks are resolved, and they are ready to test the robot in living creatures (such as pigs), the team would need to switch to a more human-friendly material.

"One possible material would be biocompatible latex, which is a flexible but durable material," Zarrouk told Live Science. The robot is currently much bigger than the small intestines, but shrinking it to a size that could be swallowed by a human (with a sedated gag reflex) is relatively straightforward, he added.

"In theory, if the robot is small enough — smaller than the valve of the stomach, lower esophageal sphincter and the exit of the stomach pyloric part — and doesn't disintegrate, there is no significant risk," Zarrouk said. That's because the stomach's natural peristaltic motion would gradually inch the robot out of the intestines and it would be passed with the next bowel movement, he said. Given that, it's also key to ensure that the robot has no sharp edges that could cut the delicate tissue of the intestines, he added.

Another tricky factor was recreating the squishy properties of the intestines. So the team has engineered a foam-like material with many tiny holes that is much more stretchy than ordinary rubber.

Once they have miniaturized the robot and made it out of safe materials, they could test it in the intestines of pigs, Zarrouk said.

The simplest version of the robot would hold a camera and could be steered by doctors through the intestines to look at certain spots. But in the long term, the team envisions putting small cutting tools on the robots to conduct biopsies, and even a tool to cauterize (or burn) damaged tissue to stop bleeding, Zarrouk said.

Shrine Over Jesus' Tomb in Danger of 'Catastrophic' Collapse

This image shows a shrine called the "Edicule," which is built over a cave where, according to legend, Jesus was buried after he was crucified. The Edicule is located inside the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem.

A shrine built over a cave that is revered as the tomb of Jesus is in danger of "catastrophic" collapse, according to a report by National Geographic.

The shrine (or the "Edicule," as it is often called) is located within the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. According to legend, Helena, the mother of emperor Constantine the Great (A.D. 272-337) visited Jerusalem in the fourth century and discovered the cave where Jesus was buried after being crucified. Whether Jesus was actually buried in the cave is unknown, and many scholars doubt that Helena actually discovered it; nevertheless, the cave has been a place of Christian pilgrimage for many centuries.  

Since the fourth century, a series of shrines and churches have been built over the cave, each one eventually being destroyed or falling into disrepair. Today, the cave is covered with the Edicule, which in turn is covered by the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.

Repair and restoration work at the Edicule has been going on for the past year, during which the limestone bed that Jesus' body was supposedly buried on was revealed. Today (March 22), National Geographic reported that the Edicule is in danger of "catastrophic" collapse if further repairs are not undertaken soon.

The National Geographic Society is a partner in the repair work and has access to a report on the structure's stability, which was written by a team of scientists from the National Technical University of Athens (NTUA).

"When it fails, the failure will not be a slow process, but catastrophic," said Antonia Moropoulou, chief scientific supervisor of the NTUA team, National Geographic reported.

National Geographic says the NTUA team needs to conduct a new 10-month project, one that would cost 6 million euros (about $6.5 million), to repair and strengthen the Edicule's foundations. The project would also add new sewage and rainwater drainage to protect the Edicule from water damage. Archaeological excavations would need to be conducted before repairs begin so that the foundations of the shrine can be strengthened without destroying archaeological remains.

 This new archaeological research could shed light on the history of the various churches and shrines that have been built over the cave since the fourth century.

The report has not been made public, and Live Science could not verify the details reported by National Geographic.

How Urine Could Help Astronauts Grow Food in Space

The German Space Agency is researching how to grow food using recycled urine and sweat for future missions to Mars or the Moon.

If you want to be one of the first human beings to visit Mars, you better have a strong stomach. Scientists in Germany are testing ways in which urine and sweat could help astronauts grow food on the Red Planet.

Most food for missions to the International Space Station are brought as cargo from Earth. However, longer-duration space missions, such as those to Mars, will need a self-sustaining food supply, scientists have said. Jens Hauslage, a plant physiologist at the German Aerospace Center (DLR), is researching how to grow food in space, including a test system that involves a tank of urine and a tomato plant, the BBC reported.

"The Earth is a closed biological system with plants producing oxygen and food; then you have the animals and the microbes to produce all the degradation processes in the soil," Hauslage told the BBC. "Without these systems, no sustainable long-term life-support system will be viable." 

Using both synthetic and human urine, Hauslage is conducting lab experiments to re-create this cycle in a way that could be useful for space fliers, the BBC reported. For example, the scientists filled columns of urine with pumice stones, the hole-covered stones that form when lava mixes with water. Within the pumice stones' holes are colonies of bacteria that feed on the urine, converting the ammonia in the urine into nitrites and nitrate salts (a fertilizer).

Most water on the International Space Station — including that from urine, sweat and wastewater from washing — is recycled aboard the orbiting lab. Hauslage's research at the DLR is investigating other applications for this water, which is already efficiently captured and recycled, for growing food in space.

The lab research will launch into space later this year on DLR's Eu:CROPIS (short for Euglena and Combined Regenerative Organic-food Production in Space) mission, a satellite containing two miniature greenhouses, The satellite will simulate lunar gravity for the first six months, to test the potential of growing vegetables on the moon, and then will simulate Martian gravity.

While the satellite orbits, 16 cameras will document the onboard tomato seeds that will germinate and grow automatically under. Just as in the lab experiments, the satellite growing environment will use bacteria to feed on synthetic urine, producing fertilizer for the tomatoes as they grow, the BBC reported.

"Ultimately, we are simulating and testing greenhouses that could be assembled inside a lunar or Martian habitat to provide the crew with a local source of fresh food," Hauslage said in a statement about the mission last year.