There are plenty of necessary qualifications to meet including fluency in Russian, background in medicine, various engineering, and for whatever reason you may not be taller than 185cm (that's just under 6'1"). Interested? Apply on the ESA website. [ESA via PhysOrg]

Over the last year and a half, Patria Aviation Oy has worked on developing a flexible-yet-durable, functional-yet-adaptable antenna. The best part? Based on a successful call to the "Netherlands from their headquarters in Finland by using the prototype antenna," they've succeeded.

How do they work? Apparently the flexible antennas connect "to Iridium satellites (whose low-altitude operations do not require large antennas)" for outgoing calls. As it stands, they can't take incoming calls. This leaves me a bit baffled, since if I'd only want to call people with other patch communicators, if I had one. Also a bit confusing is exactly where the actual phone and GPS portion of this device is kept (the patch is only the antenna, after all).

Aside from those oddities, these flexible antennas sound fantastic: They're supposedly able to "maintain a strong radio signal, even when the patch is bent vertically, horizontally or diagonally" and "send location information to a remote user" (great because a device in your pocket or wherever might have trouble sending a GPS signal). All that seems to be missing is the option to get beamed up.

And in case you're wondering: no, I won't share my number one Star Trek fantasy (though you're free to guess). [Network World via Slashdot via PopSci]

The study is the brainchild of a European Space Agency and Russian Institute for Biomedical Problems partnership. The subjects weren't astronauts but volunteers from various parts of the globe with backgrounds in the military and aviation.

But the worst part of the experience? It wasn't language barriers or bad food. It was the "monotony," according to one crew member.

While researchers plan a longer, 520-day simulated trip to Mars (in reality, the roundtrip would still take twice as long), 6 volunteers get to explain to friends and family the thrill of almost not going into space.

I say we just make the whole thing a reality show, drop some sharks in the tank and get the international space program some Fox sponsorship.

About 50 percent of all trackable objects are due to in-orbit explosion events (about 200) or collision events (less than 10).

Yes, we knew that there was a lot of crap out there, but not to this extent. According to the ESA, this is really bad news and urgent measures are needed. Explosions in space are not disastrous on their own, but because of the aftermath. One example: a geostationary satellite travels at 6,213 miles per hour. If it explodes, all the debris stays near the orbit, forming a cloud around the Earth within a few days, as this simulation shows:

The ESA is urging to introduce measures to mitigate this problem, like the complete depletion of fuel in rocket stages (like some Delta launchers already do following NASA's Procedural Requirements for Limiting Orbital Debris) or returning objects to Earth once their mission is complete (perhaps to destroy them on re-entry,) just like SES Americom is going to do with their brand-new AMC-14. This satellite failed to reach its projected altitude and now has to be splashed into the sea because of a dispute with Boeing, which won't let SES Americom use their patented recovery method to put the satellite into the right geostationary orbit.

The impact of these measures could be huge, as reflected by this simulation of how things could look by the year 2112, with and without taking action:

While the idea of bringing back used stages and satellites back to Earth may seem too expensive, in the long run it's clear that leaving all this trash up there is going to have huge consequences to the development of space exploration and colonization. Those concepts may still seem science fiction for many, but as these simulations show, the current and future problem is very real, and could be extremely dangerous.

This is how it looks when orbital debris hits a spaceship, simulated in a laboratory.

[ESA Gallery, Space debris: assessing the risk, NASA, Wikipedia — via Space Travel and Slashdot]

The most notable is the ATV's automatic rendezvous and docking technology - the ship can find its own way to the station and attach itself without any human intervention.

Tomorrow's launch will be carried off by an Ariane 5 rocket, and the double-decker-bus-sized ATV will be the heaviest payload ever carried by one. The maneuver will be trickier than usual, with the upper stage of the rocket igniting twice, to get it up there and then again to boost it safely over the Pacific Ocean. [BBC News]

No commercial plans have been announced thus far as this is more of a proof of concept more than anything else. Interesting development and good to see the ESA devoting resources to improve the signal quality of breakfast radio. Come back when you've put a man on the moon. – Nicholas Deleon

Multimedia car radio of the future [ESA via Newlaunches.com]

I-Garment [ESA Telecommunications]

Following-up on Monday's Gizmodo Ink, The National Forest Service in Utah is testing a fleet of robotic fire-fighting planes. "Some of the aircrafts can be carried in a backpack, unfolded, then dispatched day or night to spy on a fire." They are also equipped with cameras and infrared night vision (the benefit of flying by night is that these bots would not interfere with the manned planes that drop fire retardant). The planes communicate with one another and beam back real-time monitoring of the fire's spread.

These planes have a wingspan of 5 feet, weigh only 15 pounds, and can fly for up to six hours. An experiment with larger drones will begin next spring in California.
Fold-Up Robot Planes Could Help Fight Fires [KSL.com]
Fighting Wildfires with Robotic Planes [Roland Piquepaille's Technology Trends]
MLB BAT UAV [MLB Company]

A team of scientists from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, Switzerland have successfully tested a microscopic robot that could be injected into the human body with a syringe. Unlike other micro-surgical robotic creations, this one is not battery or electric cable powered. Instead, the bot is guided by an external magnetic field. The minimally invasive robot, which is about four hair-widths long, was successfully demonstrated using a watery maze but would eventually be targeted to blood vessels in the heart, eyes and ears.

"The application we're actively considering is eye surgery in which these devices are guided inside the eye toward the retina by a surgeon to inject drugs in retinal veins that are about the size of a human hair," said team leader Brad Nelson, professor of robotics and intelligent systems.

The folks who brought you the Weird-72 are back with a sequel: The Weird-7. This walking, googley-eyed, 14-inch high dipping bird DIY robot kit sells for $350 US. Functionality? No idea.
The Weird-7 DIY Robot Kit [Probotics]

The European Space Agency has scrapped the mission plan from the team behind Beagle 2 and is now pinning its Mars aspirations on a single rover robot. The craft is scheduled to blast off in June 2011, and reach Mars in June 2013.
Europe Ponders On Mars Robot [Sofia News Agency]