NASA is continuing efforts to recover the InSight lander’s heat probe that stopped operating since it began digging the Martian surface in February. The agency said Thursday it is analyzing various ways of maneuvering InSight’s robotic arm to assist the heat probe, which is known as “the mole” and is intended to dig up to 16 feet below Mars’ surface to measure the amount of heat it emanates.

During the operation, the team discovered up to 4 inches of duricrust or thick cemented soil beneath the planet’s surface. The team is working on soil-scraping techniques as part of the probe and plans to make the images captured by the lander available to the public.

“This might increase friction enough to keep it moving forward when mole hammering resumes,” said Sue Smrekar, deputy principal investigator for the InSight mission at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.

JPL manages the InSight program, while the German Aerospace Center built the heat probe as part of the Heat Flow and Physical Properties Package instrumentation package.

The Federal Trade Commission’s inspector general found that the agency faces security and cost challenges in information technology. FTC Office of the Inspector General identified the agency’s challenges in securing information systems and networks from destruction, data Loss or compromise, Andrew Katsaros, FTC inspector general, wrote in a letter posted Sept. 27.

The agency does not employ a security-embedded enterprise architecture to support risk management activities. OIG gave the agency a rating of level 3, which is below the maturity standard imposed by the Department of Homeland Security.

The inspector general office recommends FTC to maintain performance of information assets while the agency updates systems, reorganizes IT staff, address new security requirements and support missions.

Katsaros also noted FTC’s issue of escalating costs to to hire expert witnesses. The agency’s bureaus of Competition and Consumer Protection are engaging with increasingly complex cases that make it difficult to predict future costs of expert witnesses.

OIG recommends the FTC to consider utilizing an in-house workforce of expert witnesses. The audit report also includes issues that do not pose high-level challenges but still require attention: acquisition planning and contract management, impersonations of the FTC and its employees. OIG conducted the audit in accordance with the Reports Consolidation Act of 2000.

Bill Zielinski, assistant commissioner of the General Services Administration’s Office of Information Technology Category, has said that agencies must begin analyzing ways to leverage 5G technology, Federal News Network reported Thursday. He told attendees at an event hosted by GSA and the Advanced Technology Academic Research Center that testing activities should already begin as the government expects to see a significant increase in mobile data in 2024.

“We have some opportunities here to think very differently about how we put in place our network infrastructure and telecommunications in the future, but we have to have that lens of security to go along with it,” Zielinski noted.

Frank Konieczny, the U.S. Air Force’s chief technology officer, added that the service needs 5G to “to quickly extract the data” generated by next-generation aircraft and support real-time data analytics operations.

He added that the Air Force plans to expand LTE connectivitiy to a maximum of 17 bases next fiscal year.

The Department of Homeland Security’s National Urban Science and Technology Laboratory has collaborated with the Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory to evaluate in-suit equipment designed to help first responders communicate when they respond to hazardous material incidents.

Fire service responders wore Level A personal protective equipment and communication tools from CavCom, CeoTronics, Drager and TEA Headsets during four different scenarios as part of the field assessment held at a joint training facility in Seattle, DHS said Thursday.

Participants communicated within noise-filled environments and performed building entry drills to test the ISC units. NUSTL and PNNL then collected feedback from the responders to assess the devices against a set of criteria such as deployability, capability, maintainability and usability.

“Through these hands-on assessments, we have an opportunity to look at emerging technologies, get our hands on it, test it in a realistic environment, validate our assumptions or expectations of how it will perform, and then share our findings and ideas with other responders from around the country,” said Grady Poole, a firefighter at the Seattle Fire Department.

NUSTL operates under the DHS’ science and technology directorate and oversees the System Assessment and Validation for Emergency Responders program, which is meant to help first responders obtain data they can use before procuring communications gear.

Gen. David Berger, commandant of the U.S. Marine Corps, said analytics data from simulation and modeling events will help define the service branch’s future force construct, National Defense reported Thursday.

“We have right now I think [an] 80 to 85 percent picture of what the Marine Corps will need a decade out. But this last step [of using data gathered from modeling and simulation events] is so important because now is when we run that force against a peer threat 10 years out, over and over and over again to develop the analytical base,” Berger said Thursday in his speech at the Heritage Foundation think tank in Washington, D.C.

“I believe in analytics as a foundation,” he noted. “We’re at that stage now where we’re testing the force that we think we will need, and that will conclude in another month or two.”

Berger cited the service’s efforts to comply with the National Defense Strategy and the importance of experimentation and wargaming in shaping the future force construct.

Jeanette Manfra, a cybersecurity official at the Department of Homeland Security, said DHS considers the lack of cyber professionals a threat to national security and is now prioritizing the development of a workforce training initiative for such professionals, TechCrunch reported Friday.

“It’s a national security risk that we don’t have the talent regardless of whether it’s in the government or the private sector,” Manfra, assistant director for cybersecurity for DHS’ Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, said at the TechCrunch Disrupt SF event. “We have a massive shortage that is expected that will grow larger.”

She cited the need for critical collaboration between government agencies and tech community to address the cyber talent shortage and suggested the idea of providing scholarships to cyber experts to work for the government for a three- to five-year term before transitioning to the private sector.

“It builds a community of people with shared experience [and] in security we’re all trying to do the same things,” Manfra added.

NASA has awarded 20 industry and academic organizations funds worth approximately $10M combined to develop their proposed space technology platforms for commercial test flights under the agency’s Flight Opportunities program.

The space agency said Thursday the 25 selected technologies deal with two topic areas meant to support NASA’s lunar exploration objectives through the Artemis program.

“With vibrant and growing interest in exploration and commercial space across the country, our goal with these selections is to support innovators from industry and academia who are using rapid and affordable commercial opportunities to test their technologies in space,” said Christopher Baker, program executive for Flight Opportunities at NASA. “These suborbital flights enable researchers to quickly and iteratively test technologies with the opportunity to make adjustments between flights. 

The first topic supports sustainable lunar exploration and economic activity expansion in cislunar space. Topic 1 awardees are:

• Carthage College
• Draper
• Honeybee Robotics
• IMEC USA Nanoelectronics Design Center
• Johns Hopkins University
• Masten Space Systems
• Montana State University
• North Carolina State University
• Southwest Research Institute
• University of Central Florida, Orlando
• University of Colorado, Boulder
• University of Florida, Gainesville

The second topic seeks to advance the utilization of suborbital space and low-Earth orbit commercialization. The awardees are:

• GSSL
• Johns Hopkins University
• Mayo Clinic
• Night Crew Labs
• Purdue University
• Southwest Research Institute
• Space Environment Technologies
• University of Kentucky, Lexington
• Vanderbilt University

The agency’s space technology mission directorate funds the Flight Opportunities program, which is managed by Armstrong Flight Research Center. Ames Research Center oversees the solicitation and assessment of technologies.