Lifeboat Foundation

How do you power a super advanced alien civilization? Soak up a star.

We harness the power of the sun using solar panels. What if you were to scale this idea to astronomical proportions? Surround an entire star with solar-collecting structures or satellites to power your sprawling alien galactic empire. Such massive structures are known as megastructures—in this case a “Dyson sphere.” We are already trying to detect possible megastructures in space using the dimming of a star and the glow of megastructure components in infrared light. But recent research provides a new detection method—a Dyson sphere may cause its host star to swell and cool.

Students from eight Jewish and Arab schools spent three years building satellites and watched a live NASA feed as they took off for outer space.

China successfully launched the Gongjian Ludi Tance-1 01A (L-SAR 01A) satellite into a quasi sun-synchronous orbit of 607 kilometers. The 3.2 metric ton satellite was launched at 23:44 UTC on Tuesday, January 25 on a Chang Zheng 4C from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center.

The satellite is equipped with an L-band and multi-channel synthetic aperture radar (SAR) payload. It is a civilian satellite that will use a 33 square meter array to survey the Earth after major events such as earthquakes and landslides.

This is comparable to the Argentinian SAOCOM satellites which are also equipped with L-band and a SAR to monitor environmental disasters. L-band brings the advantage of being able to penetrate clouds, rain, and vegetation which makes it easier to monitor the ground. It operates in a frequency range of 1–2 GHz.

SpaceX’s Starship will be a multipurpose launch vehicle, capable of returning astronauts to the Moon to build a permanent base and enabling humanity to build a sustainable colony on Mars. It is expected to become the world’s most powerful rocket-ship. “Starship was designed from the onset to be able to carry more than 100 tons of cargo to Mars and the Moon. The cargo version can also be used for rapid point-to-point Earth transport. Various payload bay configurations are available and allow for fully autonomous deployment of cargo to Earth, Lunar, or Martian surfaces,” the company said.

SpaceX’s Starship launch vehicle has many potential uses and capabilities that will enable access to space like never before. The cargo version of Starship will be able to launch entire satellite constellations in a single launch inside its payload bay. For perspective, SpaceX’s Falcon 9 can carry up to 60 Starlink in a tight configuration inside its 5.2-meter diameter fairing, Starship will be able to carry 400 Starlink to deploy in a single launch inside its fairing. Starship will be capable of deploying giant spacecraft to space inside its clamshell-like fairing, which has an outer diameter of 9-meters –“the largest usable payload volume of any current or in development launcher,” the company says. SpaceX also plans to design an extended Starship volume capability for payloads requiring up to 22-meters of height.

Starship will also be able to capture already in orbit to be repaired or brought back to be disposed of on Earth, according to SpaceX’s Starship User Guide. “Fully-reusable Starship and Super Heavy systems are expected to allow for space-based activities that have not been possible since the retirement of the Space Shuttle and Space Transportation System, or have never been possible before. With a fully reusable Starship, can be captured and repaired in Orbit, returned to Earth, or transferred to a new operational orbit,” SpaceX’s vehicle guide says. This will be possible with Starship’s large clamshell-like cargo door mechanism that opens and closes, as shown in the image below. The clamshell door can be modified to “chomp up” old and space junk orbiting Earth. “We can fly Starship around space and chomp up debris with the moving fairing door,” SpaceX founder Elon Musk said in July 2021.

A SpaceX rocket that launched nearly seven years ago is now on course to crash into the moon, astronomers have predicted.

The Falcon 9 booster was launched in February 2015 as part of a mission to send a climate observation satellite 930,000 miles (1.5 million kilometers) from Earth, but since running out of fuel, the 4.4-ton (4 metric tons) rocket has been hurtling around space in a chaotic orbit.

The rocket is now expected to hit the far side of the moon while traveling at a blistering speed of 5,771 mph (9,288 km/h) on March 4, 2022, according to Bill Gray, the developer of software that tracks near-Earth objects.

Continue reading “Out-of-control SpaceX rocket will smash into the moon in weeks” »

We will soon need to make some difficult choices.

Given current trends, that number will be reached within a year or so. There are ways to mitigate the effect of these streaks. Painting the satellites and adding reflective panels could reduce their brightness, particularly at infrared wavelengths that are important for near-Earth asteroid detection.

But the study points out that the mitigation strategy currently proposed by Starlink won’t be sufficient to avoid an impact on astronomy.

Continue reading “SpaceX Starlink: Why humanity needs to act now before it’s too late” »

Space Exploration Technologies Corp. Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk is offering to send Starlink internet terminals to Tonga after an underwater volcanic eruption and subsequent tsunami cut off communication links.

High-tech missiles, sensors, aircraft, ships, and artillery all rely on atomic clocks on GPS satellites for nanosecond timing accuracy. A timing error of just a few billionths of a second can translate to positioning being off by a meter or more. If GPS were jammed by an adversary, time synchronization would rapidly deteriorate and threaten military operations.

To address this scenario, DARPA has announced the Robust Optical Clock Network (ROCkN) program, which aims to create optical atomic clocks with low size, weight, and power (SWaP) that yield timing accuracy and holdover better than GPS atomic clocks and can be used outside a laboratory. ROCkN will leverage DARPA-funded research over the past couple decades that has led to lab demonstration of the world’s most precise optical atomic clocks. ROCkN clocks will not be as precise as the best lab optical clocks, but they will surpass current state-of-the-art atomic clocks in both precision and holdover while maintaining low SWaP in a robust package. https://www.darpa.mil/news-events/2022-01-20

What if plants could tell us when pests are attacking them, or they’re too dry, or they need more fertilizer. One startup is gene engineering farm plants so they can communicate in in fluorescent colors. The result: a farmer’s phone, drone, or even satellite imagery can reveal what is happening in hundreds of acres of fields …

That leads to better food, fewer crop failures, and more revenue for farmers.

Continue reading “Engineering plants to talk via bioluminescence” »