Antarctica (HDW)
June 25, 2004 - Software on a NASA spacecraft recently made
a scientific observation on its own without human interaction. The
Space Technology 6 Autonomous Sciencecraft Experiment captured images
of Antarctica's Mount Erebus and detected volcanic activity.
The software, developed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena,
Calif., controls the Earth Observing-1 spacecraft. NASA's Goddard
Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md, manages the satellite. The software
examines pictures from the Hyperion spectrometer, an instrument
highly sensitive to heat released from molten lava. (full
article...)
