A NASA nominee, NWS data and more robot boats

Newman is president's pick for #2 NASA job

Dava Newman, a professor of aeronautics and astronautics and engineering systems at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is President Barack Obama’s choice as deputy administrator at NASA.

Newman joined the MIT faculty in 1993, and is now the director of the MIT Portugal Program, director of the Technology and Policy Program, and co-director of the Man-Vehicle Laboratory.

Her work has included development of a lightweight spacesuit design that would give astronauts far more mobility. She has also done research on movement in space, including computer modeling of human motion in microgravity conditions. Newman was part of three spaceflight experiments as principal investigator, and has a specialty in “understanding partial-gravity locomotion for future planetary exploration,” according to MIT news.

At NASA, Newman’s duties would include supporting the agency’s legislative and intergovernmental affairs and communications, the Mission Support Directorate, International Space Station and overseeing educational programs in science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

The nomination is subject to Senate confirmation.

NWS powers up faster, more detailed weather forecasts

The National Weather Service recently activated a system that quickly harnesses weather data from multiple sources, integrates the information and provides a detailed picture of the current weather, GCN reports.

The Multiple Radar Multiple Sensor system combines data streams from multiple radars, satellites, surface observations, upper air observations, lightning reports, rain gauges and numerical weather prediction models to produce a suite of decision-support products every two minutes.

ONR stages international competition for autonomous boats

The Office of Naval Research is sponsoring an international competition this coming weekend to find the best way to make an unmanned surface vehicle function on its own, Defense Systems reports.

Fifteen teams of college students from some of the best engineering schools in the world will take part Oct. 24-26 in the inaugural Maritime RobotX Challenge in Singapore.