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Space
Eureka! NASA strikes water on lunar surface
By Darren Quick
19:16 November 17, 2009 PST
Scientists have long speculated about the source of significant quantities of hydrogen that have been observed at the moon's lunar poles, and just a few months ago NASA announced that water molecules were indeed present, but in relatively small amounts. Now the Lunar CRater Observing and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS) that was employed to shed some more light on the presence of water on the moon, looks like it has done just that with preliminary data indicating the mission successfully uncovered water in a permanently-shadowed crater. Read More
Teflon mark II to weather the storm in space
By Darren Quick
22:34 November 12, 2009 PST
If you think the weather at your place is bad there’s no way it can compare with “space weather.” The International Space Station (ISS), which travels at about 27,700 kph (17,212 mph), is exposed to extreme levels of ultraviolet radiation and temperatures ranging from -40 to 60 degrees Celsius (-40 to 140 degrees Fahrenheit). These extreme conditions might not make for great holiday weather, but it does provide a good way to test the performance of new nanomaterials. That’s why samples of new nanocomposites - including an improved form of Teflon - will be mounted onto the ISS’s outer hull in a Passive Experiment Carrier (PEC), and exposed to the rigors of outer space. Read More
Long awaited satellite to monitor water cycle reaches orbit
By Darren Quick
22:43 November 5, 2009 PST
The 658kg (1,450 lb) Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (SMOS) satellite launched by the European Space Agency (ESA) this week is the first ever satellite designed both to map sea surface salinity and to monitor soil moisture on a global scale. The unique radiometer it carries will enable passive surveying of the water cycle between oceans, the atmosphere and land thereby playing a key role in the monitoring of global climate change. Read More
NASA IBEX spacecraft shows where we sit in the galaxy
By Jeff Salton
01:26 October 16, 2009 PDT
Move over Google Maps, NASA's Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX) spacecraft has given scientists the tools to construct the first comprehensive sky map of our solar system and where it resides in the Milky Way galaxy. NASA says the new view will change the way researchers study the interaction between our galaxy and sun. Read More
Pentagon looking for someone to pick up the trash in space
18:05 October 8, 2009 PDT
The Soviet Union launched the very first earth-orbiting satellite in 1957, and the world looked on in awe as Sputnik flashed through the sky. Fifty years later, you’d be lucky to see anything. The U.S. Space Surveillance Network says there are almost 20,000 man-made objects in orbit, ninety-four percent of which are non-functional debris. And that’s not counting the hundreds of thousands of bits of junk too small to track. Little wonder the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has put out a call for someone – anyone – to come up with a way to effectively remove orbital debris. Read More
What, exactly, makes a rocket fuel environmentally friendly?
By Darren Quick
22:52 October 7, 2009 PDT
Automobiles aren’t the only vehicles turning to more environmentally friendly fuel sources. As we reported recently, NASA are testing a new type of rocket propellant made of a mixture of water and “nanoscale aluminum” powder they claim could provide a cleaner way to launch rockets, power long-distance space missions and generate hydrogen for fuel cells. A number of readers wondered, not unreasonably, what qualifies a rocket fuel as eco-friendly. We now have a few more answers. Read More
A hard rain's gonna fall on exoplanet COROT-7b
By Mick Webb
04:12 October 5, 2009 PDT
Raining rocks? The concept may not be as preposterous as it sounds according to scientists at Washington University in St Louis who have theorized that a recently-discovered exoplanet, COROT-7b, may have an atmosphere that does exactly that. Read More
Lotus leaf inspires dust-busting shield for space gear
By Paul Lester
16:56 September 27, 2009 PDT
Finding inspiration from nature in order to refine and advance modern technologies is nothing new; Mercedes’ bionic car was an interesting example and we’ve also seen a new ‘smart fabric’ based on the design of pine cones. Perhaps one of the most inspiring species, certainly in the plant world, is the lotus, which has already contributed to the development of fog-free windscreens and other surfaces along with improving the efficiency of solar cells. Now NASA is looking to the Lotus Leaf to develop a non-stick surface for use on spaceflight equipment. Read More
Water found on the moon – what will it mean for the future?
By Jude Garvey
22:18 September 24, 2009 PDT
Newspapers and websites around the world are buzzing with the news that water and hydroxyl (hydrogen and oxygen) molecules have been found in the polar regions of the moon. NASA announced yesterday that instruments aboard three separate spacecraft revealed that water molecules were present, although in relatively small amounts. It was also discovered that hydroxyl also existed in the lunar soil. Although the amount of water found is small, it is exciting in terms of potential for the possibilities of establishing a lunar base and even for creating spacecraft fuel. Read More
The coldest, driest, calmest place on Earth
By Darren Quick
01:30 September 1, 2009 PDT
When you’re planning your next holiday, a site known as Ridge A that sits 4,053m (2.5 miles) high up on the Antarctic Plateau, will probably be one of the first places to strike off the list. Although the research team that discovered it says it could be the calmest place on Earth, it is also thought to be the coldest and driest. A joint U.S.-Australian team pinpointed the site by combining data from satellites, ground stations and climate models in an attempt to find the best observatory site in the world by assessing the many factors that affect astronomy, such as cloud cover, temperature, sky-brightness, water vapor, wind speeds and atmospheric turbulence. Read More
LRO - a giant leap for data transfer from the moon
By Jeff Salton
22:52 August 27, 2009 PDT
How is it that my cell phone still loses connection in the city and my laptop barely gets the Internet in the mountains, yet NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) can keep in touch with Earth from 238,800 miles away, 24 hours a day? Additionally, LRO can transmit 461GB of data per day (the equivalent amount of information found in a huge library), sending this information at a rate of up to 100Mb/s, while my so-called high-speed Internet service struggles to provide about 1-3Mb/s. Obviously, it’s not what you know but who you know! Read More
NASA tests eco-friendly rocket fuel
By Jeff Salton
21:11 August 23, 2009 PDT
NASA and the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR) have successfully launched a nine-foot rocket to a height of 1,300ft using an environmentally-friendly propellant made from aluminum powder and water ice. The fuel, called ALICE, has the consistency of toothpaste with a high burn rate and achieved a maximum thrust of 650 pounds during this test. Read More
X-ray telescope to shed light on dark energy
By Darren Quick
00:45 August 21, 2009 PDT
The German Aerospace Center (DLR) and Russia’s Roskosmos space agency are joining forces to try and shed some light on the poorly understood phenomenon referred to as ‘dark energy’. In 2012 the German 'extended Roentgen Survey with an Imaging Telescope Array'(eROSITA) X-ray telescope will be taken into orbit on board the Russian Spektrum Roentgen Gamma (SRG) satellite to start searching for black holes and dark matter in an attempt to answer why the expansion of the universe is accelerating instead of slowing down. Read More
NASA confirms building blocks of life found on comets
By Paul Lester
18:40 August 19, 2009 PDT
Fresh evidence has been revealed to support the theory that life on Earth began in space. NASA’s Stardust probe, a specially-designed comet ‘chaser’, successfully collected particles shed from Comet Wild 2 in 2004, and NASA scientists have since confirmed for the first time that amino acids can indeed be found on these extraterrestrial bodies. Read More
Terotech
- November 21, 2009 @ 19:38 UTC
