A Nuclear Engine for Future Mars Missions

Calendar January 26, 2023 | Posted by admin

NASA and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) announced Tuesday a collaboration to demonstrate a nuclear thermal rocket engine in space, an enabling capability for NASA crewed missions to Mars. NASA and DARPA will partner on the Demonstration Rocket for Agile Cislunar Operations, or DRACO, program.

“NASA will work with our long-term partner, DARPA, to develop and demonstrate advanced nuclear thermal propulsion technology as soon as 2027. With the help of this new technology, astronauts could journey to and from deep space faster than ever – a major capability to prepare for crewed missions to Mars,” said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson.

Using a nuclear thermal rocket allows for faster transit time, reducing risk for astronauts. Reducing transit time is a key component for human missions to Mars, as longer trips require more supplies and more robust systems. Maturing faster, more efficient transportation technology will help NASA meet its Moon to Mars Objectives.

Other benefits to space travel include increased science payload capacity and higher power for instrumentation and communication. In a nuclear thermal rocket engine, a fission reactor is used to generate extremely high temperatures. The engine transfers the heat produced by the reactor to a liquid propellant, which is expanded and exhausted through a nozzle to propel the spacecraft. Nuclear thermal rockets can be three or more times more efficient than conventional chemical propulsion.

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Solar Power Station in Space

Calendar March 23, 2022 | Posted by admin

The UK government is reportedly considering a £16 billion proposal to build a solar power station in space. Space-based solar power is one of the technologies to feature in the government’s Net Zero Innovation Portfolio. It has been identified as a potential solution, alongside others, to enable the UK to achieve net zero by 2050. But how would a  in space work? What are the advantages and drawbacks to this technology?

Space-based solar power involves collecting solar energy in space and transferring it to Earth. While the idea itself is not new, recent technological advances have made this prospect more achievable.

The space-based  involves a solar power satellite—an enormous spacecraft equipped with . These panels generate electricity, which is then wirelessly transmitted to Earth through high-frequency radio waves. A ground antenna, called a rectenna, is used to convert the radio waves into electricity, which is then delivered to the .

A space-based solar power station in orbit is illuminated by the Sun 24 hours a day and could therefore generate electricity continuously. This represents an advantage over terrestrial solar power systems (systems on Earth), which can produce electricity only during the day and depend on the weather.

With  projected to increase by nearly 50% by 2050, space-based solar power could be key to helping meet the growing demand on the world’s energy sector and tackling global temperature rise.

Source: https://phys.org/

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How to 3D Print Bandages Using Your Own Skin

Calendar January 17, 2022 | Posted by admin

If you’re going to go to Mars, you’re probably going to get some cuts and scrapes along the way. Traveling into space is a dangerous endeavor. Humans have evolved to live on the surface of our planet and venturing outside of our atmosphere brings all manner of complications. There are the obvious things, like the lack of food, water, and oxygen. Not to mention the deadly vacuum of space or the potentially toxic environments of other worlds. Then there are less obvious problems, things which might not be immediately deadly but could become a problem in an emergency. Here on Earth, if you become injured you have access to a world’s worth of infrastructure including over the counter medications and healthcare systems. In space, if you get a flesh wound, your crewmates might hear you scream but they’ll have limited ways to help. An experiment by German Space Agency (DLR) is hoping to solve this problem with bioprinted bandages made from an astronaut’s own cells.

SpaceX’s 24th commercial resupply mission to the International Space Station, which launched in late 2021, carried with it a handheld device known as the Bioprint FirstAid Handheld Bioprinter, or Bioprint FirstAid for short.

The device is designed to hold cells from astronauts or Earth-bound patients, infused inside a bio-ink. In the event of an injury, the Bioprint FirstAid would be used to apply a bandage to the injury site in near real-time. The bio-ink mixes with two fast setting gels and will create a covering similar to plaster.

Previously existing technologies for creating similar structures involved bulky machinery and required additional time for the patches to mature. The Bioprint FirstAid has the benefit of being small enough to hold in the hand and it is totally manual, requiring no batteries or other outside power source to use.

For the tests on the ISS, the device won’t have any live cells inside. Instead, it’s carrying fluorescent microparticles which take the place of cells for later observation. The primary objective of these experiments is to test the print capability of the device in microgravity and compare it to performance in Earth gravity.

Taking this technology into space allows researchers to understand the way tissue layers work together in microgravity, which might be fundamentally different to the way they operate here at home.

The findings will not only inform the future of this technology in space but will also provide insight which might be useful on the ground. While the allure of bioprinting technology for space-based missions is immense, this technology will likely do most of its work here on Earth.

Source: https://www.syfy.com/

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China Has Made Astounding Progress on Hypersonic Weapons

Calendar October 18, 2021 | Posted by admin

China tested a nuclear-capable hypersonic missile in August that circled the globe before speeding towards its target, demonstrating an advanced space capability that caught US intelligence by surprise. Five people familiar with the test said the Chinese military launched a rocket that carried a hypersonic glide vehicle which flew through low-orbit space before cruising down towards its target.

The missile missed its target by about two-dozen miles, according to three people briefed on the intelligence. But two said the test showed that China had made astounding progress on hypersonic weapons and was far more advanced than US officials realised. The test has raised new questions about why the US often underestimated China’s military modernisation.

“We have no idea how they did this,” said a fourth person.

The US, Russia and China are all developing hypersonic weapons, including glide vehicles that are launched into space on a rocket but orbit the earth under their own momentum. They fly at five times the speed of sound, slower than a ballistic missile. But they do not follow the fixed parabolic trajectory of a ballistic missile and are manoeuvrable, making them harder to track.

Taylor Fravel, an expert on Chinese nuclear weapons policy who was unaware of the test, said a hypersonic glide vehicle armed with a nuclear warhead could help China “negate” US missile defence systems which are designed to destroy incoming ballistic missiles. “Hypersonic glide vehicles . . . fly at lower trajectories and can manoeuvre in flight, which makes them hard to track and destroy,” said Fravel, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

https://www.ft.com/

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Branson Versus Bezos

Calendar July 12, 2021 | Posted by admin

The successful trip was the first in a series to the edge of space and beyond by billionaire entrepreneurs that seek to make human spaceflight more routine. Soaring more than 50 miles into the hot, glaringly bright skies above New Mexico, Richard Branson at last fulfilled a dream that took decades to realize: He can now call himself an astronaut.

On Sunday morning, a small rocket plane operated by Virgin Galactic, which Mr. Branson founded in 2004, carried him and five other people to the edge of space and back. More than an hour later, Mr. Branson took the stage to celebrate. “The whole thing was magical,” he said.

 Another billionaire with his own rocket company — Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon — has plans to make a similar jaunt to the edge of space in nine days. In each case, billionaire entrepreneurs are risking injury or death to fulfill their childhood aspirations — and advance the goal of making human spaceflight unexceptional.

“They’re putting their money where their mouth is, and they’re putting their body where their money is,” said Eric Anderson, chairman of Space Adventures Limited, a company that charters launches to orbit. “That’s impressive, frankly.”

At 8:40 a.m. Mountain time, a carrier aircraft, with the rocket plane, named V.S.S. Unity, tucked underneath, rose off the runway and headed to an altitude of about 45,000 feet. There, Unity was released, and a few moments later, its rocket motor ignited, accelerating the space plane on an upward arc.

Although Unity had made three previous trips to space, this was its first launch that resembled a full commercial flight of the sort that Virgin Galactic has promised to offer the general public, with two pilots — David Mackay and Michael Masucci — and four more crew members including Mr. Branson.

https://www.nytimes.com/

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China Now Launches More Rockets Than Anyone In The World

Calendar November 21, 2019 | Posted by admin

In recent weeks, China‘s space program has made news by revealing some of its long-term ambitions for spaceflight. These include establishing an Earth-Moon space economic zone by 2050, which, if successful, could allow the country to begin to dictate the rules of behavior for future space exploration. Some have questioned whether China, which has flown six human spaceflights in the last 16 years, can really build a large low-Earth space station, send taikonauts to the Moon, return samples from Mars, and more in the coming decade or two. But what seems clear is that the country’s authoritarian government has long-term plans and is taking steps toward becoming a global leader in space exploration.

By one important metric—orbital launches—China has already reached this goal. In 2018, the country set a goal of 35 orbital launches and ended up with 39 launch attempts. That year, the United States (29 flights) and Russia (20) trailed China, according to Space Launch Report. It marked the first time China led the world in the number of successful orbital launches. This year, China is set to pace the world again. Through Sunday, the country has launched 27 orbital missions, followed by Russia (19), and the United States (16). Although nearly a month and a half remain in this year, a maximum of six additional orbital launches are likely from the United States in 2019.

To be fair, China’s space launch program has not been without hiccups. The country’s space program is still trying to bring its large Long March 5 vehicle back into service after a catastrophic failure during just its second mission, in July 2017. And the country had three failures in 2018 and 2019, compared to just one in the United States and Russia combined.

The United States has taken a step back this year in part due to decreased activity by SpaceX. The company launched a record 21 missions last year but has so far launched 11 rockets in 2019. A flurry of missions remains possible in the next six weeks for the company, including a space station resupply mission in early December, a commercial satellite launch, and additional Starlink flights.

Another big factor has been a slow year for United Launch Alliance. The Colorado-based company has launched just two Delta IV-Medium rockets this year, one Delta IV-Heavy, and a single Atlas V mission. The company may launch Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft before the end of 2019, giving the Atlas V rocket a second launch. It is possible that Rocket Lab, which has flown its Electron rocket from New Zealand five times in 2019 and is planning at least one more mission before the end of the year, will have more launches than United Launch Alliance for the first time. Sometime next year, Rocket Lab should also begin to add to the US tally for orbital launches as it opens a new facility at Wallops Island, Virginia.

Source: https://arstechnica.com/

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Worlds Like Earth Common In The Cosmos

Calendar October 30, 2019 | Posted by admin

A new way of studying planets in other solar systems – by doing sort of an autopsy on planetary wreckage devoured by a type of star called a white dwarf – is showing that rocky worlds with geochemistry similar to Earth may be quite common in the cosmos. Researchers studied six white dwarfs whose strong gravitational pull had sucked in shredded remnants of planets and other rocky bodies that had been in orbit. This material, they found, was very much like that present in rocky planets such as Earth and Mars in our solar system. Given that Earth harbors an abundance of life, the findings offer the latest tantalizing evidence that planets similarly capable of hosting life exist in large numbers beyond our solar system.

“The more we find commonalities between planets made in our solar system and those around other stars, the more the odds are enhanced that the Earth is not unusual,” said Edward Young, a geochemistry and cosmochemistry professor at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), who helped lead the study published in the journal Science. “The more Earth-like planets, the greater the odds for life as we understand it.”

The first planets beyond our solar system, called exoplanets, were spotted in the 1990s, but it has been tough for scientists to determine their composition. Studying white dwarfs offered a new avenue.

A white dwarf is the burned-out core of a sun-like star. In its death exoplanets, the star blows off its outer layer and the rest collapses, forming an extremely dense and relatively small entity that represents one of the universe’s densest forms of matter, exceeded only by neutron stars and black holes. Planets and other objects that once orbited it can be ejected into interstellar space. But if they stray near its immense gravitation field, they “will be shredded into dust, and that dust will begin to fall onto the star and sink out of sight,” said study lead author Alexandra Doyle, a UCLA graduate student in geochemistry and astrochemistry.

“This is where that ‘autopsy’ idea comes from,” Doyle added, noting that by observing the elements from the massacred planets and other objects inside the white dwarf scientists can understand their composition.

Source: https://www.reuters.com/

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Counterpart

Calendar June 10, 2019 | Posted by admin

New experiments are revealing hints of a world and a reality that are complete reflections of ours. This mirrorverse may be able to solve the mystery of the universe’s missing dark matter.

At first glance, everything looks familiar. The clock ticks placidly on the wall, cars motor along outside your window, the story you are reading has the same eye-catching pictures. But something is wrong. The clocks are running backwards. Cars are driving on the wrong side of the road. The article you are reading is written back to front. Suddenly, it clicks. You are looking at your own reflection.

Leah Broussard leads a study of neutron decay to understand correlations between electrons and antineutrinos as well as subtle distortions in the electron energy spectrum. The physicist, who hails from Louisiana, influenced the color scheme of the experiment’s newly installed instrument to reflect her home state’s biggest celebration—its spectrometer sports Mardi Gras green on the magnet, purple on the shielding, and gold inside the magnet and on safety bars.

The uncanny world on the other side of the mirror may not seem real to you. But Leah Broussard thinks parallel universes where everything is flipped might be very real indeed. Along with her colleagues at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, she is on the hunt for a universe that is identical to our own, but flipped so that it contains mirror atoms, mirror molecules, mirror stars and planets, and even mirror life. If it exists, it would form a bubble of reality nestling within the fabric of space and time alongside our own familiar universe, with some particles capable of switching between the two.

Source: https://www.ornl.gov/

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Rotating Black Holes Might Serve As Portals For Hyperspace Travel

Calendar March 19, 2019 | Posted by admin

Black holes skirt the line between science fiction and science fact. On the one hand, scientists have seen real black holes in action, consuming unsuspecting stars that pass too close. But where reality ends and fiction takes over is at the edge of a black hole — a place called the event horizon, where no spacecraft has ever gone.

So, whatever happens beyond that boundary, inside of a black hole, is anyone’s guess. Scientists agree that if you travel far enough into a black hole, gravity will eventually become so strong that it kills anything in its path. But sci-fi films are more optimistic, depicting black holes as portals through space and time or gateways to other dimensions. And it turns out, some scientists now think the sci-fi buffs may be onto something. Black holes might be suitable for hyperspace travel, after all; it just takes the right kind of black hole. At the center of every black hole is a point of infinite density, called a singularity. It’s what gives black holes their strong gravitational pull. And for decades, scientists thought singularities were all the same, so anything that passed the event horizon would be destroyed the same way: by being stretched and pulled like an infinitely long piece of spaghetti.

But that all changed in the early 1990s when different research teams in Canada and the US discovered a second singularity called a “mass inflation singularity.” It still has a strong gravitational pull, but it would only stretch you by a finite amount, and potentially NOT kill you in the process, meaning, you might survive the trip through a black hole. More specifically, through a large, rotating black hole, which is where these types of singularities exist.

Now, astronomers obviously can’t travel through a black hole yet to test this theory. In fact, the best place to test this is at the supermassive black hole in the center of our home galaxy, the Milky Way, which is 27,000 light years away. Not conveniently close to the least.

Therefore, scientists instead run computer simulations to see what would happen if we did manage to reach an isolated, rotating black hole, and now, for the first time, a team of scientists at UMass Dartmouth and Georgia Gwinnett College has done exactly that.

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“You would feel a slight increase in temperature, but it would not be a dramatic increase. It’s just that you don’t have enough time to respond to the very strong forces. It would just go through you too quickly,” said Lior Burko from Georgia Gwinnett College.  He added that passing through a weak singularity is like quickly running your finger through a candle flame that’s 1,000 degrees Celsius. If you hold your finger in the flame long enough, you’ll get burned, but pass your finger through quickly, and you’ll barely feel a thing. Similarly, if you pass through a weak singularity with the right speed and momentum, and at the right time, you may not feel much at all.

As for what happens once you get through to the other side, no one really knows, but Burko has his own ideas. He says one possibility is that we’d arrive at some other remote part of our galaxy, potentially light years away from any planets or stars, but a second, and perhaps more intriguing, possibility is that we’d arrive in a different galaxy altogether. That’s if you even make it that far. Scientists say more research is needed before we’re anywhere close to successfully traveling through a black hole. But when we are ready, one of the safest passageways might be the supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy called Sagittarius A*, and it might just be our ticket out of the Milky Way.

Source: https://www.businessinsider.com/
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https://www.ggc.edu/

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