Slashdot | NASA’s Mars Polar Lander Found at Last?

tss: “NASA has just released Java PathFinder, a Java Virtual Machine that uses states to check all the possible ways a Java program can be executed, finding possible errors (NPEs or deadlocks, for example) in your code.

It then reports the entire execution path that leads to a defect. It’s especially suited to find hard-to-test concurrency defects in multithreaded programs.

Currently,
the software is limited to check for thread locks and uncaught exceptions, but it can be extended to check for other things, like race conditions. However, there is no support currently for java.awt, java.net and some of java.io.

The license is a custom license from NASA, NASA Open Source Agreement 1.3, but if the project was approved on Sourceforge it should follow the OSI conventions.”

NASA releases Java verification program as Opensource

geekman writes “NASA is paying Rice University $11 million to build a prototype quantum wire that can conduct electricity 10 times better than traditional copper cables at one-sixth the weight. Rice has four years to build a one-meter-long quantum wire, which will be made out of carbon nanotubes. Seems like a lot of money for a little wire, but then again, all the rocket scientists at Los Alamos have only ever been able to put together a four-centimeter nanotube.”

Slashdot | Rice Contracted to Provide NASA’s Quantum Wire

/. Aglassis writes “It appears that NASA is not backing down from their nuclear space initiative. Project Prometheus has recently started a new web page (under JPL) and NASA is finishing up a period of public comment (last session today). Currently Northrop Grumman is contracted to begin preliminary design of the spacecraft until 2008 for NASA (the reactor will be built by the Department of Energy’s Division of Naval Reactors–the folks who control all US submarine and aircraft carrier nuclear reactors). Early specs are that it will be 60 meters long, have a 30,000 kg mass, use a 100 KW reactor using Brayton cycle gas turbines, be powered by ion thrusters with a 7000 second specific impulse, and have a science payload of 1500 kg. Early mission plans for Prometheus 1 (Jupiter Icy Moons Orbiter) indicate that the spacecraft would orbit Callisto, Ganymede, and Europa individually, and perhaps have a lifespan of about 20 years.”

Slashdot | Update on Project Prometheus