Boeing accommodated NASA astronauts at its St. Louis facility to aid in the preparations for the launch, flight and return operations aboard the company’s CST-100 Starliner spacecraft, the space agency said April 27.

Stephanie Martin and Steven Siceloff write that commercial crew astronauts Suni Williams and Eric Boe tested the cloud-based training simulators designed to run astronauts and mission controllers through all phases of a mission.

Williams said the touchscreen displays on the simulators facilitate versatility in training.

“We can run multiple simulations by just changing software and then put that same software into a bigger crew simulator, which we will use to train the whole crew for a spaceflight,” she added.

NASA said it will send the Boeing part-task trainers to the Johnson Space Center in Houston for the daily practice of astronauts.

A simulator for the full Starliner flight deck will also eventually be shipped to Johnson, the space agency noted.

According to NASA, Boe and Williams have been selected alongside Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley for test flight training aboard the Starliner and SpaceX Crew Dragon.

The two spacecraft are slated to transport crew to and from the International Space Station.

The Federal Trade Commission and Lockheed Martin have received recognition at an American Council for Technology and Industry Advisory Council event for FTC’s identity theft recovery website developed by Lockheed.

Lockheed and FTC received the “Impacter Dynamite Award” at the 2016 ACT-IAC Igniting Innovation Awards event for IdentityTheft.gov, a website that works to assist identity theft victims, the company said Tuesday.

“The FTC received more than 490,000 identity theft complaints in 2015, which represents a 50 percent increase from 2014,” noted Scott Gray, vice president of information technology and security solutions at Lockheed’s information systems and global solutions unit.

Lockheed IS&GS created the online portal, which the company said provides a platform for consumers to report identity theft cases and access information on recovery.

Consumers can use tools available on IdentityTheft.gov to report their complaints to police, credit bureaus and the Internal Revenue Service, the company added.

IdentityTheft.gov, which launched on Jan. 21, also features Web chat and call center support.

The Department of Homeland Security plans to introduce and expand a series of incentive schemes across DHS headquarters components in an effort to recruit and retain cyber professionals, Federal News Radio reported Tuesday.

Jared Serbu writes Paul Beckman, chief information security officer at DHS’ headquarters, said the department plans to renew the bonus program on an annual basis after it started pilot tests of the initiative within the national protection and programs directorate in 2015.

Beckman told Federal News Radio that the program aims to provide cyber professionals up to 25 percent in additional bonuses based on their positions and certifications achieved.

Serbu reports that the agency’s bonus scheme is in accordance with the recruitment authorities under the Border Patrol Agent Pay Reform Act of 2014.

Beckman also noted that DHS will work to leverage direct hire authorities for cybersecurity and information technology management jobs as stated in the Office of Personnel Management’s GS-2210 series in order to grow its pool of cyber professionals.

He said he plans to launch a program within DHS that would give job offers to top 5 percent of students who completed cybersecurity-focused programs that universities and colleges offer in the National Capital Region, according to the report.

Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency Director Arati Prabhakar told her audience at an Atlantic Council event that artificial intelligence is still in the infancy stage as new technologies emerge, FedScoop reported Monday.

Billy Mitchell writes that the research agency invests in the advancement of AI and looks to address its limitations in what Prabhakar refers to as the “second wave of AI.”

“It’s a wave that is about machines that learn,” said Prabhakar.

“It’s been fueled by new GPU architectures, by new algorithms and especially by the vastness of data that’s available for these systems to train on,” she added.

The DARPA director also discussed AI’s limitations compared to humans in areas such as image identification, FedScoop said.

Prabhakar also noted that a human element will always be present throughout the “third wave” advancement of AI to a stage where machine learning will affect Defense Department decision-making on the battlefield, the report said.

A team of scientists at NASA‘s Goddard Space Flight Center has built a passive thermal-control technology designed to integrate with miniaturized satellites used for space research.

Allison Evans, project principal investigator, and her team members created the thermal-control unit by repurposing a large panel of louvers that were initially used on spacecraft in the 1960s, NASA said Tuesday.

The agency noted each unit comprises a boron nitride nano mesh-based back plate, aluminum front plate and flaps and bimetallic springs.

Evans and other Goddard scientists have evaluated the performance of the technology through a benchtop lifecycle test, thermal-vacuum test cycles and a vibration test.

NASA plans to demonstrate the small thermal-control system during the maiden flight of a newfangled six-unit CubeSat known as Dellingr and built by a team of agency scientists and engineers at the Goddard facility.

The Department of Homeland Security has asked Silicon Valley entrepreneurs to participate in a DHS program that aims to employ products and services from the technology hub, Federal Times reported Tuesday.

Salvador Rodriguez writes DHS held an event on Friday where officials from the department and the Customs and Border Protection agency discussed their technology requirements to entrepreneurs and urged engagement with the Silicon Valley Innovation Program.

“One of the No. 1 goals of our innovation program is to educate the innovation community on our problems,” said Douglas Maughan, senior executive of the DHS initiative.

Maughan added the DHS solely intends to buy products and services rather than become part owners of the startups, according to the report.

The program will award up to $800,000 to startups within 30 days after a pitch and requires delivery of a prototype through a period of three to six months, Federal Times noted.