Lifeboat Foundation

Capable of shipping 99,000 cubic meters of liquefied gas across the Pacific Ocean, the world’s first very large ethane carrier (VLEC), “Pacific Ineos Belstaff,” was named and delivered by Chinese shipbuilder Jiangnan Shipyard Group in Shanghai on Tuesday.

As the largest carrier for ethane in the world by far, the vessel features the Type-B cargo quartet containment system “BrilliancE” developed by Jiangnan Shipyard. B stands for Type-B and E stands for ethane and ethylene.

It is also equipped with dual-fuel technology that can use ethane as fuel through a shaft generator that helps it meet the most stringent emission requirements.

After a successful launch of NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope Dec. 25, and completion of two mid-course correction maneuvers, the Webb team has analyzed its initial trajectory and determined the observatory should have enough propellant to allow support of science operations in orbit for significantly more than a 10-year science lifetime. (The minimum baseline for the mission is five years.)

State-approved project was found to emit polluted wastewater.

HONG KONG — Shanghai Electric Power has abandoned a project that was supposed to produce clean energy in China’s Xinjiang region but instead created a new source of pollution.

In a tenth of a second.

We’ve just taken another step toward comprehending enormous magnetar explosions.

For the first time, a group of international researchers was able to measure oscillations in the brightness of a magnetar during its most violent moments.

Continue reading “A Neutron Star Unleashed an Energy Equivalent to That Created by the Sun in 100,000 Years” »

Thanks to Ariane 5 rocket launching Webb on the right path.

After nearly 30 years of planning and thorough work, NASA finally got to launch its $10 billion next-generation space observatory, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), on Christmas day. JWST is now headed on a long six-month trip until it can begin its science mission and start to conduct routine science operations.

Now, it turns out that JWST might be traveling and collecting data for much longer than initially expected. JWST was forecast to be operational for 5 to 10 years, but NASA’s latest analysis revealed that the observatory should have enough fuel to “allow support of science operations in orbit for significantly more than a 10-year science lifetime.”

The observatory should now have enough propellant to support science operations well past its 10-year science lifetime. The space agency said the precision of the Arianespace Ariane 5 launch resulted in less propellant being used than anticipated. A smooth mid-course correction maneuver after launch, which added approximately 45 mph to the craft’s speed, also helped conserve fuel.

A second correction burn occurred on December 27, speeding up Webb by 6.3 mph.

NASA said that from this point on, all scheduled deployments on Webb will be controlled by humans. This means their deployment, or even their order, could change. Webb at this point is a little over a day into a six-day process to unfold its sunshield.

German company Schaeffler has just revealed an innovative new drive system for electric bicycles that eschews traditional bike chains and belts for an entirely electrical-driven system. The new system is known as the Schaeffler Free Drive and marks the entry of one of the most divergent electric bicycle drivetrains we’ve seen in years.

The Free Drive, which was co-developed with electric bicycle drivetrain specialists Heinzmann, is based upon a generator installed at the bike’s bottom bracket.

The rider’s pedaling action powers the generator and converts the energy from mechanical to electrical energy.

The subsidiary of cable distributor Klaus Faber has presented a compact solar battery container. The mobile container combines a solar system with 24 kilowatts and a lithium storage unit with 80 kilowatt hours of capacity as well as an emergency power generator.

The growing interest in deep-space exploration has sparked the need for powerful long-lived rocket systems to drive spacecraft through the cosmos. Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) have now developed a tiny modified version of a plasma-based propulsion system called a Hall thruster that both increases the lifetime of the rocket and produces high power.

The miniaturized system powered by plasma—the state of matter composed of free-floating electrons and atomic nuclei, or ions—measures little more than an inch in diameter and eliminates the walls around the plasma propellent to create innovative thruster configurations. Among these innovations are the cylindrical Hall thruster, first proposed and studied at PPPL, and a fully wall-less Hall thruster. Both configurations reduce channel erosion caused by plasma-wall interactions that limit the thruster lifetime—a key problem for conventional annular, or ring-shaped, Hall thrusters and especially for miniaturized low-power thrusters for applications on small satellites.