In an effort to apply the tools of space exploration to more terrestrial concerns, some unique NASA technologies may one day be showing up at the scene of the crime.
If the planned collaboration between NASA and law enforcement materializes, forensic experts sifting through crime-scene evidence would be aided by space-age technology developed for radically different purposes. This new crime technology has been dubbed "teleforensics."
Logistics is a big reason for law enforcement's interest in the project.
"Lots of these instruments we've developed for flight are portable and remote," said Jack Trombka, a senior fellow at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. "If we can use the technologies for remote analysis in planetary exploration, we can measure, calibrate, and control instruments from a central place here on Earth."
NASA systems put a premium on small size, mobility, and efficiency, Trombka said. "Each instrument has a CPU [central processing unit]. The instrument compacts the data and sends it to the space craft CPU. It's transmitted back to Earth, and unpacked here. So we can do rather rapid determination of quality analysis."
Utilizing this technology, forensics experts could theoretically gather and digitize evidence at the crime scene and enter it into an onsite computer. Then, using satellite communication, the data could be beamed to a crime lab for swift analysis.
NASA and the National Institute of Justice, the research arm of the US Department of Justice, are close to an agreement to launch a pilot program. Crime labs in Virginia and Connecticut have been selected to test the employment of NASA technology as a crime-fighting tool.
NASA has long been refining ways to analyze the contents of a planet's surface millions of miles away. The space agency has developed systems containing both an efficient means for sensing and digitizing data and then beaming low-powered, wireless communications data back to the lab for analysis.
A recent example was seen in the Pathfinder mission, where Earth-bound systems were busy hauling in sensor data from the Sojourner rover, the tiny robot crawler charged with sniffing out the Martian landscape.
Trombka agreed that NASA's analytic technologies can greatly help criminal investigators, allowing crime lab staff to participate remotely in the proper collection of data, securing an area for evidence, and generally "maintaining the chain of evidence" to keep it from being corrupted before a trial.
This could be a boon to investigators, since current evidence-gathering techniques are hardly foolproof. Sample materials are collected at the scene - evidence which may or may not have been the best selection - and only later undergo thorough analysis.
Dr. Jeffrey Schweitzer, a University of Connecticut scientist whose work with gamma ray detection could prove particularly helpful in this project, sees great benefits for forensic science.
"Robotic instruments like Sojourner would be great for going into arson scenes before things have cooled down too much," he said. As soon as a fire is put out and the elements set in, a lot of evidence dissipates, so a Sojourner-like robot could immediately be set loose, he said, to detect substances such as accelerants that might have propelled a fire.
Schweitzer's specialty, gamma ray detection, measures the gamma-ray energy of a substance after it's been bombarded with neutrons. The technique is used to identify many elements, including chlorine and a number of metals. It could be used to analyze on-scene evidence involving gunshots, explosions, or arson.
Schweitzer imagines a police unit in the field relying on a number of different instruments. Officers might "haul out of the van [whatever] they need, clamp them on [to the rover], and just let the rover go on."
Schweitzer said the National Institute of Justice and NASA are almost finished hammering out a "memorandum of understanding." The memorandum is a framework for the ultimate technology and will lead to early research into applying NASA's techniques to crime science.
Schweitzer estimates that it would likely be a couple of months, while specific proposals are written, before the state "alpha sites" would begin work on the new technologies.
This foray into teleforensics represents a trend toward merging the efforts of separate government agencies to make use of technologies with a similar purpose, Trombka said. Working together can be a benefit to the interests of each agency.
"If we scratch each other's back, we get much more out each dollar," he said.
The project is soliciting the help of law professors deal with the related issues of individual rights, such as invasion of privacy.
The project is "only in the very beginning phases and we're just learning how to develop the mechanisms for how this cooperation will proceed," Trombka said. "We have to learn what the nature of the forensics problem is.
"It's sort of matching the two cultures."
