Sandeep Sagar.G

1. Since early centuries people have used the ceiling and walls of houses and buildings to hang illumination devices such as torches, chandeliers and more recently incandescent light bulbs, florescent lights , lasers etc.

2. Currently , it is not uncommon to see TV sets hanging from the ceiling in stores, and in public and private buildings, which are used to entertain or inform the customers or people who watch them , they also serve as an attractve special visual environment .

PROBLEM :

1. The energy costs associated with the number of lights used to light an area can be very expensive , (i.e. large number of lights per ceiling area in some retail stores) and also it is expensive to have large array of TV sets (especially if they are plasma or lcd sets ) in order to create an attractive, informative and impressive environment.

ONE SOLUTION

1. This idea relates to the use of clear reflection ,lightweight , unbreakable plastic mirrors (which are far less expensive when compared to conventional mirrors) , configured in a reflector and/or projector optics array (mirrors tilted downwards 20 to 45 deg) , attached to the whole ceiling/wall area of a room , in order to multiply the lighting effect of only a few light sources and also multiply the images of only one or two TV sets , creating the illusion of space ,and at the same time, a special ambient visual experience.

POTENTIAL BENEFITS

COST BENEFITS

1. By using only a few light / TV sources to illuminate and project images in a wide interior room area, a significant reduction in electricity costs can be achieved , along with a cost reduction in the number of TV sets to be purchased.

2. Since there is less heat sources (number of lights), air conditioning costs will also go down. 3. An even more significant electricity bill reduction could be achieved by using the technology called Fiber Optic Solar Lighting (already available and designed to recreate the feeling of sunlight)

1. The special effects experience will probably represent a “quantum leap” in interior building design , which can include rotating lights, colored mirrors , convex and concave mirrors , convex and concave lenses to amplify images , lasers ,etc. All of this will render a new visual treatment for the enjoyment of all of us..

COMMUNITY BENEFITS

1. This ¨never before seen” ambient environment will also spark the competition between building designers, which in turn could lead to the creation of hundreds of companies specialized in creating the most innovative lighting and imaging interior experiences.

POTENTIAL USERS:

· Supermarket stores · Retail stores · Shopping Malls · Hotel, Airport and Cinema lobbies · Dance clubs · Stadiums · Music concerts · Public and private buildings · Restaurants · Marquee & Commercial Signs designers

Thousands of workers

In the 1960s, Teledyne was called Brown Engineering, and thousands of its employees supported NASA by working on parts of the gigantic Saturn V boosters, designing hardware inside the lunar lander and developing science tools for astronauts to use on the moon.

One small contract Brown landed in 1965 was a design study and prototype development for the moon buggy.

"Wernher von Braun and his team at Marshall had a whole range of equipment they had thought up of to be used in exploring the moon," Watson said. "They had designs of stuff dating back to when they were still in Germany. NASA picked those up and went from there in some cases."

The original concept for exploring the lunar surface relied heavily on the proposal that NASA was going to use several Saturn V rockets to assemble in Earth orbit heavy, complex spacecraft for extended lunar missions.

But that plan was scrapped in favor of the cheaper, simpler approach of using one Saturn V for a shot to the moon. Anything that was going to the moon on an Apollo mission had to be lofted into space on a single Saturn V launch.

Weight an issue

Weight and space on the rocket became a big issue, and engineers went back to the drawing boards to design lunar hardware.

The space agency had a design for a lunar rover and lander all in one neat package. Astronauts were going to plow across the moon in cylindrical metal vehicles sporting huge tractor-like tires on a chassis with jointed segments like a commuter bus.

Brown engineers took one look at the proposal and the mock up of the lunar rover, called a mobile laboratory or MoLab, and told NASA the behemoth would never traverse the lunar surface.

"It was a big, six-wheeled thing. They wanted something that was going to go across the moon's craters and valleys, and people were going to live in it and all sorts of scientific work was going to be done," Watson said. "I looked at the thing and just knew one thing - it was too heavy. It would never make it."

Brown assembled a team of 10 to 15 people who concluded that what the astronauts really needed was something like a "A lot of people don't know that there was no Silicon Valley then, and the place to be in technology was right here." Ray Watson lightweight golf cart, Watson said.

The moon cart was pretty simple. It had two seats on a metal tube frame, four small wheels, batteries for power and communications gear. Brown started work on the rover in early 1966, and 18 months later it had a tested, finished product, Watson said.

"It wasn't that lengthy of a project, nor did it take up a lot of our people then," Watson said. "We saw what needed to be done, and went out and did it pretty quickly."

No jealousy

Boeing got the final contract to build the lunar rover, and Brown got a few pieces, such as engineering work on the wheels. There was no jealousy that Brown didn't build the finished product. With its end-of-the-decade deadline, the fast-paced Apollo program had almost too much work to go around, Watson said.

"A company like Boeing taking over, that's pretty standard," Watson said. "A company like Brown would do the initial study and put together a prototype and then hand it off to another company to build."

Apollo 15 blasted off from Pad 39 A at Kennedy Space Center on July 15, 1971, carrying with it the first lunar rover.

It allowed astronauts to move a couple of miles away from the lunar landing site. They could carry more scientific equipment out on the surface of the moon and bring more moon rocks back to the lunar module.

Improved versions?

The rover was carried on the next two lunar missions before America's moon program was shut down. And if NASA were to go back to the moon or to Mars, would Teledyne Brown be able to bring another rover to America's space program?

Watson thinks it would be an improved version. "It certainly would be better now because we've improved the technology of batteries, computers and materials," he said. Today the lunar rover can be seen in museums - the mobile lab, the Brown prototype and Boeing's finished product are at the U.S. Space & Rocket Center in Huntsville.

Watson said the students who build human-powered buggies and race them over a mock lunar landscape get a good for a sense of history as much as education from their work.

"It's great that there's something to involve young people in math and science, but I think one of the benefits of (the race) is letting them know what was done here in Huntsville 40 years ago," Watson said. "A lot of people don't know that there was no Silicon Valley then, and the place to be in technology was right here."

Those long-lived NASA Mars rovers--Spirit and Opportunity--remain in fairly good shape, with one robot in survival mode as martian winter arrives while its twin snakes its way across a taxing terrain of sand dunes to reach a striking target."Both rovers are doing really well right now.We had a bit of a scare with Spirit awhile back, losing use of the right front wheel less than a hundred meters shy of our intended wintering spot on McCool Hill."The wheel breakdown came at a time when the terrain was treacherous, a site of soft sand and salt deposits. "That kind of stuff is hard enough to drive in with six wheels, and with five it was just about impossible. It was really frustrating, being that close to the place we wanted to get to ... and not being able to reach it."

Thanks to the tenacity of rover drivers back on Earth, Spirit was unstuck, then backtracked onto more solid ground--dragging its no longer working wheel. An alternate winter-over spot for the rover was picked on "Low Ridge"--named after George Low, the late NASA Deputy Administrator who played a key role in the Apollo lunar landing effort."Low Ridge is actually a beautiful spot ... one of the most scenic places we've been at Gusev. And there's lots of good science nearby" .Within just a few meters of the Spirit rover, there is finely layered bedrock, blocks of vesicular basalt, and what appears to be very salt-rich soil.

"So, there's enough to keep us busy here for quite a long time".

 To keep producing enough electricity to run overnight heaters that protect vital electronics, Spirit's solar panels must be tilted toward the winter sun by driving the rover onto north-facing slopes.What's in store for the Mars machine is spending time at the location doing in-depth science.Since Spirit drove away from the summit of Husband Hill, the rover has been blasting along at high speed, stopping for science only briefly."The reason, of course, is that we had to get all the way across the Inner Basin and over to this area for north-facing slopes before winter hit."

"So expect to see a very big panorama from this spot," Squyres noted, along with use of the rover's Miniature Thermal Emission Spectrometer (Mini-TES). This instrument provides remote measurements of mineralogy and thermophysical properties of the landscape around the rover. In addition, he said, a very comprehensive set of measurements will be done with every tool available on the robot's mechanical arm.

"We're likely to do some small rover moves, but not any long ones until spring comes. By the time winter is over, Low Ridge should be the best studied place on Mars."

The power situation for Opportunity is much better than it is for Spirit, largely because this rover at Meridiani Planum is much closer to the equator. The robot can be driven an hour and a half or two hours each day.The terrain Opportunity faces consists of large sand ripples and patches of flat-lying rock outcrops. Whenever possible, rover planners keep Opportunity on the "pavement" for best mobility. At present, Opportunity is less than 5,000 feet (1.5 kilometers) from the rim of Victoria Crater, and making good progress daily. This feature is an enormous depression, measuring a half-mile (800 meters) in diameter.

"There's still no telling whether we'll make it or not, of course ... we're so far past warranty that the rover could give out at any time. But at the moment things are looking good." We will make occasional brief stops for science, but for the next several months we expect mostly to just keep pushing south."

Spirit and Opportunity have been exploring Mars since they independently landed on the red planet in January 2004.

The martian rovers Spirit and Opportunity continue to successfully weather a series of severe dust storms that threaten to cut power to their solar panels, but it's still a day-to-day battle for survival, scientists say.

The pervasive dust in the martian atmosphere, as well as dust settling onto the machinery, impedes the ability of the rovers' solar panels to convert sunlight into enough electricity to supply the their needs. One critical need is to protect each rover's "vital organs" of internal computer, electronics, heaters and batteries from becoming so cold that something might, quite literally, snap.

Both robots are in position to pounce on exciting science targets: Spirit is ready to gather more evidence for long-past explosive volcanic activity in an area dubbed Home Plate; Opportunity is a mere 130 feet (40 meters) from the point where it will enter Victoria Crater.

Ride out the storm

The twin rovers landed on the planet in January 2004. They have wheeled across Mars for far longer than their original 90-day warranties. There's no doubt that the long-lived robots have a special connection to their operators.

"There is a very strong attachment. It has been for many of us our everyday work for years. There's a tremendous bond with them," said John Callas, project manager for the Mars Exploration Rovers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California. "We're just going to try to ride out this storm, he emphasized.

"We're hunkered down and we're going to get through this difficult time," Callas told SPACE.com. "There is some suggestion that the storm may be breaking up. But that's on a global scale. What really counts is what is the weather doing over each of the rover sites ... and it's still troublesome."

Of the two rovers, Spirit, in the Columbia Hills of Gusev Crater is doing pretty well, said Steve Squyres, lead Mars Exploration Rover scientist from Cornell University in Ithaca, New York.

"We need to be careful about how much power we consume, so we're not doing any driving for now. But we're making daily science observations, and the vehicle is in good health," Squyres told SPACE.com. "In fact, in just the past couple of weeks we've made the first observations ever of substantial movement of wind ripples on the martian surface. So I feel good about Spirit for the moment."

Opportunity, located far away at Meridiani Planum, is currently suffering more than Spirit, said Jim Rice, a Mars Exploration Rover Project science team member at Arizona State University in Tempe.

A tougher time

At Opportunity's locale, atmospheric opacity is still very high and solar array power available to the robot remains low, between 130-140 watt hours.

"The power levels have been lower there, and Opportunity is performing only bare-bones survival activities, communicating with us once every three sols," Squyres observed.

Squyres said that there are two concerns with Opportunity: One is that there's need to keep the vehicle "power positive" -- to make sure that it generates more power than it consumes. The other is that the rover must keep its electronic innards warm enough.

"The difficult thing about this is that the way you stay power positive is by not consuming energy, and the way you stay warm is by consuming energy. So it's a matter of finding the right balance. We're doing OK so far ... but it's day to day," Squyres said.

If things get really tough for Opportunity, the vehicle will take matters into its own hands, Squyres explained, invoking its onboard "fault protection" capabilities.

"This hasn't happened yet, but if it does, the vehicle will go into a safe mode where it doesn't send us any data at all," Squyres said. "Instead, it will just sleep all day and all night, using what power it has to keep warm and only waking up for a short period each day to listen for commands from Earth. In a situation like that, we might decide to leave it alone for awhile until we got news from orbital images that the skies were beginning to clear."

Frustrating waiting game

Jim Bell, the NASA Mars Exploration Rover Project's Panoramic Camera Payload Element Lead at Cornell University, called it as it is - a frustrating waiting game. Both rovers are ready to wheel onward and investigate new regions of their landing sites in detail. For Spirit, it is closer investigation of Home Plate, while Opportunity is ready to wheel itself into Victoria Crater.
 
"The rovers themselves are fairly healthy. It's the environment -- all the dust in the atmosphere -- that is the problem," Bell said, but added that he remains upbeat.

"I am optimistic that the rovers will ride out this storm and then get back 'on the road' to do great science," he said.

Last Rites?

Steve Squyres shares Bell's optimism, and says he has good reason to.

"I still feel very good about both rovers' chances of survival," he said. "We've got two things going for us. One is just that these are damn tough machines. The other is that even though they're at the mercy of the martian environment -- if they get very low on power -- the martian environment is actually pretty merciful during a major dust storm."

It turns out -- given all that dust flittering about in Mars' atmosphere -- the temperatures don't get nearly as cold at night. And that means that nighttime survival for a rover becomes much easier than it is when the skies are clear, Squyres advised. "So I think there's a good chance we're going to ride this out," he predicted.

Indeed, late last week, the news from Opportunity was good. Downlink data from the robot showed that the vehicle was in excellent health.

"The batteries are fully topped off, and the minimum nighttime temperatures have
still been within the acceptable range," Squyres reported. "In fact, we may decide soon to use some of that battery energy to conduct some science activities. This has a double benefit: It provides us with improved insight into what the weather is doing, and by running the computer inside the rover it also warms the vehicle."

And if the Mars machinery does conk out - does Squyres have any words in terms of Last Rites?

"Sorry, but you'll get no Last Rites from me unless the time for that has come!"

A major dust storm on Mars has worsened and is causing the Mars Exploration Rovers to lose power.

Opportunity's highly anticipated and risky entry into Victoria Crater is delayed for at least several days, NASA announced.

The regional storm, first reported by SPACE.com, is the most severe to hit the rovers since they began exploring Mars in January 2004. Already last week it was thousands of miles wide. At first, scientists did not expect it to affect rover operations.

But dust from the storm is partly blocking sunlight, which the rovers need in order to recharge their batteries via their solar panels. Opportunity's operations were scaled back June 30 to conserve power, according to the statement.

"The storm is affecting both rovers and reducing the power levels on Opportunity," said John Callas, Mars Exploration Rover project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. "We are keeping an eye on this as we go forward, but our entry into Victoria Crater will be delayed until no sooner than July 13."

The storm is expected to continue for at least another week. In the past, regional tempests have been known to grow and engulf the entire planet.

"We have some data that show the atmospheric opacity is decreasing, so the storm might have peaked and we may have passed the worst of this," Callas said. "The situation could improve quickly from here, but we will have to wait and see."

Opportunity is perched near "Duck Bay" at the rim of Victoria Crater on Meridiani Planum.

Pictures from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter show the storm is regional and includes several local areas of especially high dust activity. The images were not released. The storm has been moving eastward and toward mid-latitudes and is now also kicking up more dust at Spirit's location, on the opposite side of the planet at Gusev Crater.

The rovers measure atmospheric dust daily, and Opportunity revealed a new record, with the air's "opacity level" rising from 1.0 to 3.3. Solar array energy on the rover dropped from 765 watt-hours to 402. Dust levels at Spirit's location were much lower.

"While this only represents enough dust to coat the planet to about the thickness of a human hair, it is enough to decrease the brightness of the noon sun by 96 percent compared to a completely clear atmosphere," said Steve Squyres, a Cornell University researcher who is principal investigator of the rover mission. "The solar arrays also receive light that is scattered from the dust, so the decrease in power is not nearly that great."

"We have not seen dust measurements this high on either rover before," Callas said. "If the dust levels were to increase further and stay elevated for several days, there is a risk to how well Opportunity could continue to work in this darkened environment."

A raging dust storm on Mars has cut power to NASA's twin rovers to dangerously low levels, threatening an end to the mission.

The rovers were slated to operate for only 3 months but have been on Mars more than 3 years, so mission officials have had ample time to ponder their eventual silencing.

The storm presents perhaps the rover team's biggest challenge, NASA said in a statement today. Scientists said the storm, which has been brewing for nearly a month, is blocking around 85 to 90 percent of all sunlight to the surface.

The rovers, Opportunity and Spirit, rely on sunlight to charge their solar panels, and one or both rovers could be damaged permanently or even disabled by the limited solar power, officials said.

SPACE.com reported the storm's fresh severity earlier today.

The forecast

Scientists fear the storms might continue for several days or weeks. If the sunlight is further slashed for an extended period, the rovers will not be able to generate enough power to keep warm and operate at all, even in a near-dormant state, the statement said.

The rovers use electric heaters to keep vital core electronics from becoming too cold.

"We're rooting for our rovers to survive these storms, but they were never designed for conditions this intense," said Alan Stern, associate administrator of NASA's Science Mission Directorate.

Steve Squyres of Cornell University, who is the lead scientist of the Mars Exploration Rover Project, said the direct sunlight to the rovers is at an all-time low.

"To give you a sense of the 'thickness' of the dust, the brightness of the sun as viewed from the surface is now down to less than 1 percent of what it would be with a perfectly transparent atmosphere," Squyres said. "Of course, Mars never has a perfectly transparent atmosphere, but the sun is still very faint."

The rovers' scientific operations were stopped Wednesday.

"This is, I think, one of the most significant challenges we've faced over this entire mission," Squyres told SPACE.com today. "The nature of the risk is well understood, but the magnitude of the risk is not. We simply don't know what's going to happen next."

Martian weather is unpredictable, in part because there are few monitoring instruments and no formal weather forecasting agency as on Earth.

"Whatever we do, though, the problem is not going to get much better rapidly," Squyres said. "I think that we have a good chance. If Mars really wants to kill these vehicles it can, but we have a lot of things working in our favor."

The cold facts

If the rovers expend too much energy, they may be unable to warm their electronics and prevent circuit-snapping temperatures.

Before the dust storms began blocking sunlight last month, Opportunity's solar panels had been producing about 700 watt hours of electricity per day, enough to light a 100-watt bulb for seven hours. When dust reduced the panels' daily output to less than 400 watt hours, the rover team suspended driving and most observations, including use of the robotic arm, cameras and other site-inspection instruments.

On Tuesday, July 17, the output from Opportunity's solar panels dropped to 148 watt hours, the lowest point for either rover. On Wednesday, the output dropped even lower, to 128 watt hours.

Mark Lemmon, a planetary scientist at Texas A&M University and member of the rover team, said Opportunity is consuming 130 watt hours per martian day in its "sleep mode." If the negative balance continues without a break, Lemmon explained, the rover may malfunction in a matter of weeks.

"Even with a 10-20 watt hour gap, we'd have a healthy rover for over a week," Lemmon said in a telephone interview. "We've never been in situation where we've been in any imminent danger of a battery depleting, but it's possible."

NASA engineers are working to protect the rovers, especially Opportunity, which is experiencing the brunt of the dust storm. The rovers are showing robust survival characteristics. Spirit, in a location where the storm is currently less severe, has been instructed to conserve battery power by limiting its activities.

"We are taking more aggressive action with both rovers than we needed before," said John Callas, project manager for the twin rovers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

Hanging on

By Opportunity's 1,236th Martian day, which ended Tuesday, driving and all science observations had already been suspended. The rover still used more energy than its solar panels could generate on that day, drawing down its battery.

"The only thing left to cut were some of the communication sessions," Callas said.

To minimize further the amount of energy Opportunity is using, mission controllers sent commands on Wednesday, July 18, instructing the rover to refrain from communicating with Earth on Thursday and Friday. This is the first time either of the rovers has been told to skip communications for a day or more in order to conserve energy.

Since the onset of the storms, engineers have said a similar storm could be weathered by NASA's next Mars mission, a robotic lander. Human missions to Mars, a plan for the distant future, would be challenged greatly by storms like this, officials say.

Even if either of the rovers do malfunction, Lemmon explained all would not be lost.

"This is a really good scientific opportunity to understand how dust storms on Mars work, how they dissipate and how the dust moves around inside them," he said. "I think we'll be able to use the information we're getting now to look ahead to future mission to Mars."

NASA's Spirit rover has finished its primary mission to Mars yet continues to roll along, moving toward a cluster of hills that could yield evidence of the planet's wet past. By Monday, Spirit's 90th full day on Mars, the unmanned robot and its twin, Opportunity, had accomplished nearly all of the tasks before NASA would consider their joint mission a full success. "Spirit has completed its part of the bargain and Opportunity doesn't have much left to do,'' said Mark Adler, manager of the $820 million double mission. The tasks included a requirement that one of the rovers travel at least 1,980 feet -- a mark Spirit surpassed on Saturday.

Between the two of them, the rovers also had to take stereo and color panoramas of their surroundings, drive to at least eight different locations and operate simultaneously for a minimum of 30 days. NASA assumed technical and other problems would ground the rovers fully one-third of the time they operated on Mars. Despite computer memory problems that left Spirit sidelined for 2 1/2 weeks, it's still spent more days at work than expected, Adler said. For Opportunity, it still must function for another 20 martian days -- which are nearly 40 minutes longer than Earth days -- before it meets all of its targets, Adler said. "It's better than we could have possibly imagined," he said.

Spirit landed Jan. 3 in Gusev Crater, a 90-mile-diameter depression scientists believed once contained a lake. Spirit has found traces of limited past water activity in rocks it has examined, but none of the lake deposits scientists hoped it would uncover. Spirit is now several days into a trek toward a cluster of hills that may contain geologic evidence of a more substantially wet environment, including perhaps layered rocks formed in standing water. Opportunity has found such rocks at its landing site, halfway around the now frozen and dry planet, since it landed Jan. 24. Scientists believe a salty sea or swamp once covered that site, called Meridiani Planum. NASA has extended the joint mission through September. If the rovers continue to function, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory will apply for money to further extend the project, Adler said.

Getting a leg up on Mars requires muscle power. But if you are a robot, using muscle wire will put spring into your step.

The University of Arizona is home to a mechanized menagerie of sorts. Need a pick-me-up burst of power on Mars to hop over a rock? How do you refill your fuel tank when the nearest gas pump is millions of miles back on Earth?

These are a few of the challenges being tackled here by Professor Kumar Ramohalli and his students at the school's aerospace and engineering department.

Ramohalli also directs the Space Engineering Research Center at the university. This group studies how to use on-the-spot resources on the moon, Mars, or the asteroids.

Pit stop on Mars

Having a space robot make its own gasoline and oxidizer so it can keep on going…and going…and going is the thought behind a planetary explorer that refuels itself.

The refillable robot also has the ability to generate power bursts. The need for quick and snappy surges of power is a direct message from earlier robots sent to the Red Planet.

Look under the hood

A robot of a different stripe is the cute and cuddly BiRoD. Meant to mimic biological systems, this little critter is far simpler than past robots, explains Roberto Furfaro, an aerospace engineering student at the university.