Sep 3, 2015
NASA and the Makers of the Hoverboard Are Bringing You Tractor Beams
Posted by Shailesh Prasad in categories: space, transportation
The now-famous hoverboard company will work over the next few years to tug NASA’s tiny satellites.
Archive for the ‘space’ category: Page 974
Sep 3, 2015
The Search For Elusive Gravitational Waves Is Headed to Space
Posted by Sean Brazell in categories: cosmology, space
Great news. It’ll be fascinating to see what they discover.
In the distant reaches of the Universe, exploding stars and supermassive black holes are bending the very fabric of spacetime. It’s hard to wrap our brains around such tremendous forces, but we may be able to quantify them, in the form of gravitational waves. A new European Space Agency mission marks humanity’s first bold attempt to do so in outer space.
This fall, the ESA’s LISA Pathfinder will be blasted into space on a course for the L1 Lagrange point. Situated nearly a million miles from Earth, it’ll begin pilot-testing fundamental technologies for the detection of elusive gravitational waves. The miniature science observatory bid farewell to the public this week, on display at a test centre in Ottobrunn, Germany for the last time before its long journey.
Sep 3, 2015
Mars One Mission Called ‘Unsustainable,’ And Here’s Why
Posted by Sean Brazell in categories: 3D printing, space
Ever heard of 3-D printing? Besides, if humanity had followed this guys advice, MIT or not, we would have never left Africa. Never built a new village, town, or city. Never gone to the moon — and we DEFINITELY would never have created a place like MIT AT ALL.
Life is messy, painful, rough and often unforgiving, but taking risks is part of our collective species identity. To succeed sometimes we have to fail, and if that’s what happens with this endevor then, at the very least we’ll know what NOT to try next time.
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Sep 2, 2015
Rethinking ‘The Martian’: Why Dust Storms Wouldn’t Sabotage A Real Mars Mission
Posted by Bruce Dorminey in categories: entertainment, space
Matt Damon stars as a NASA astronaut stranded on the Martian surface in the forthcoming film adaptation of Andy Weir’s The Martian. Credit: Twentieth Century Fox.
Martian dust storms rank among the most impressive in our Solar System. But no matter how menacing they appear from Mars orbit, they’re not likely to cause astronauts to abort future surface missions, says a planetary scientist who studies the phenomena.
Although such storms routinely engulf large swaths of the Red Planet for days at a time, any emergency serious enough to evacuate a crew isn’t likely to be triggered by a dust storm of the sort depicted in the forthcoming film adaptation of Andy Weir’s novel The Martian.
Sep 2, 2015
NASA created a material that can heal itself in seconds—even from bullets
Posted by Sean Brazell in categories: materials, space
Sep 2, 2015
60,000 miles up: Space elevator could be built
Posted by Sean Brazell in category: space
A new international report lays out the challenges to building Earth’s next great mega-project — and they’re more surmountable than you think.
Sep 2, 2015
20 kilometer high space elevator tower planned
Posted by Sean Brazell in categories: energy, space
By Jim and Drury Ambitious plans to build a twenty kilometer (12.4 miles) tall space elevator tower have been announced by a Canadian space technology firm. Although this distance is a mere fraction of that reached in space missions, Thoth Technology says its ThothX Tower will make a major cost reduction in space flights by helping navigate the difficult first 50 kilometers (31 miles) of travel that traditionally requires rockets. In addition to needing to carry sufficient fuel to get a payload into orbit, they need extra fuel in order to carry the required fuel to reach that point in the first place. Despite first being proposed more than a century ago, the idea of a space elevator has always appeared fanciful. Thoth Technology has been granted a United States (US) patent for the elevator, which is pneumatically pressurized and actively-guided over its base.
Sep 1, 2015
NASA developing megawatt solar power arrays and will be used with solar electric propulsion
Posted by Shailesh Prasad in categories: engineering, solar power, space, sustainability
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NASA Glenn Research Center, GRC, currently has several programs to advance near-term photovoltaic array development. One project is to design, build, and test two 20 kW-sized deployable solar arrays, bringing them to technology readiness level (TRL) 5, and through analysis show that they should be extensible to 300 kW-class systems (150 kw per wing). These solar arrays are approximately 1500 square meters in total area which is about an order-of-magnitude larger than the 160 square meters solar array blankets on the International Space Station (ISS).
The ISS has the four (pair) sets of solar arrays that can generate 84 to 120 kilowatts of electricity. Each of the eight solar arrays is 112 feet long by 39 feet wide and weighs 2400 pounds. There were space missions involving astronauts working in space to install and deploy the ISS solar panels.
Aug 31, 2015
Double black hole is powering quasar, astronomers find
Posted by Sean Brazell in categories: cosmology, space
Astronomers have discovered a galaxy is being powered by a quasar that contains two black holes whirling about each other.
Aug 29, 2015
Boeing’s new laser canon can destroy drones in mid-flight
Posted by Shailesh Prasad in categories: drones, habitats, military, space
Drones are everywhere these days. They’re at your local park, they’re in the ocean, they’re hovering over the White House lawn, and they may even be hovering overhead armed with tear gas.
In a world that’s becoming increasingly drone friendly, there are some serious safety considerations that shouldn’t be ignored.
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