Chinese rocket scientist reveals blueprint for ‘incredible project’ to build solar power station in space using super heavy rockets.

How will NASA conduct its Mars Sample Return (MSR) Program? This is what the renowned space agency recently discussed as it unveiled two potential landing options for MSR with the goal of determining a final option during the second half of 2026. This comes after NASA tasked a Mars Sample Return Strategic Review team to evaluate 11 proposals in September 2024 for returning samples from Mars to Earth while achieving cost-effectiveness while maximizing mission success.

Both options still call for loading the 30 sample tubes that have been collected and dropped across the Martian surface by NASA’s Perseverance rover during its trek on Mars. However, the Mars Ascent Vehicle, which will lift off from the Martian surface and deliver the samples to the orbiting capsule, will be smaller than previous designs. Additionally, past designs of the landed platform called for solar panels for energy, whereas new designs will incorporate a radioisotope power system for energy needs.

“Pursuing two potential paths forward will ensure that NASA is able to bring these samples back from Mars with significant cost and schedule saving compared to the previous plan,” NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said in a statement. “These samples have the potential to change the way we understand Mars, our universe, and – ultimately – ourselves. I’d like to thank the team at NASA and the strategic review team, led by Dr. Maria Zuber, for their work.”

Researchers created a groundbreaking solar panel system that could increase the total amount of clean energy solar panels can generate.

Solar energy is a promising energy source that is significantly cleaner than traditional dirty fuels. However, current solar panels often require high-temperature manufacturing processes that generate significant amounts of carbon. On top of that, traditional solar panels absorb only small portions of infrared and ultraviolet light, meaning chunks of sunlight don’t get converted into usable energy.

Researchers created a new solar panel system to address these challenges. In a recent study published in Nature, a team of scientists combined perovskite and organic solar cells, two emerging solar technologies, to create what they call a “tandem solar cell” that can absorb a wide spectrum of sunlight.

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The vast distances between stars make interstellar travel one of humanity’s most daunting challenges. Even the Voyager spacecrafts, now in interstellar space, would take tens of thousands of years to reach the nearest star, Alpha Centauri. To put this into perspective, Alpha Centauri is 277,000 astronomical units (AU) away—over 7,000 times the distance from Earth to Pluto. At current spacecraft speeds, a journey to our stellar neighbor would take an unimaginable 70,000 years. However, new ideas like the Sunbeam Mission offer a promising path forward, proposing innovative propulsion techniques that could shorten this timeline to mere decades.

The Sunbeam Mission centers around relativistic electron beam propulsion, where high-energy electron beams, accelerated close to the speed of light, push a spacecraft forward. This approach eliminates the need for onboard fuel, reducing the spacecraft’s mass and enabling greater acceleration. A stationary satellite, or statite, positioned near the Sun, would generate these electron beams by converting solar energy into electricity. Using materials and technologies like those developed for NASA’s Parker Solar Probe and European Space Agency’s Solar Orbiter, the statite could endure the Sun’s intense heat while directing the beam over vast distances. This could propel a spacecraft to 10% of the speed of light, allowing it to reach Alpha Centauri in about 40 years.

While the concept is ambitious, its challenges—like generating and maintaining the beam, energy conversion, spacecraft navigation, material durability, and beam focus—are not insurmountable. Current technologies, such as the Large Hadron Collider, high-temperature solar converters, and advanced heat-resistant materials, provide a foundation for overcoming these hurdles. Innovations in adaptive optics and laser communication systems also offer insights into managing beam precision over interstellar distances, demonstrating how existing advancements could be adapted for this revolutionary mission.

The Sunbeam Mission represents an extraordinary opportunity to explore interstellar space within our lifetimes, blending ingenuity and existing technology to bring the dream of reaching another star closer to reality. By addressing these interconnected challenges, humanity could usher in a new era of exploration, paving the way for scientific discoveries that redefine our place in the universe.

Electron transport in bilayer graphene exhibits a pronounced dependence on edge states and a nonlocal transport mechanism, according to a study led by Professor Gil-Ho Lee and Ph.D. candidate Hyeon-Woo Jeong of POSTECH’s Department of Physics, in collaboration with Dr. Kenji Watanabe and Dr. Takashi Taniguchi at Japan’s National Institute for Materials Science (NIMS).

The findings are published in the journal Nano Letters.

Bilayer graphene, comprising two vertically stacked graphene layers, can exploit externally applied electric fields to modulate its electronic band gap—a property essential for electron transport. This distinctive feature has drawn considerable attention for its prospective role in “valleytronics,” an emerging paradigm for next-generation data processing.

Australia has made history with its very ambitious SunCable project, which promises to change the face of renewable energy around the globe. It entails the export of solar energy towards Singapore via a 4,300 km underwater cable, marking Australia’s transition to sustainable power from fossil fuels.

It is indeed very exciting development in renewable energy which is the SunCable project. At its heart is an intended most gigantic solar and battery park in the world, to be built near Tennant Creek in northern Australia, at an estimated cost of $35 billion.

This will supply green energy to Singapore, with the potential of contributing 6 GW towards 15% of its electricity needs, connected by the world’s longest underwater cable – a technological marvel six times the length of any existing cable.

Increasing module efficiency and expanding manufacturing capacity play complementary roles in reducing costs of metal halide perovskite/silicon tandem solar modules, according to researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL). Each cost lever can play a similar role depending on a manufacturer’s ability to scale up and improve module performance.

Most photovoltaic (PV) modules manufactured today are based on single-junction silicon solar cells. By pairing silicon with another solar cell material such as metal halide perovskites (MHPs), thus creating a tandem, manufacturers can create a solar module that can convert more sunlight to electricity than using silicon alone.

This tandem technology is still in the early stages, and there are multiple options being pursued to integrate MHPs and silicon, with a lot of unknowns in terms of cost and performance. To address this gap, the researchers built a manufacturing cost model that combines laboratory processes with existing equipment and supply chains to compare different possible approaches at scale.

Dust storms on Mars could one day pose dangers to human astronauts, damaging equipment and burying solar panels. New research gets closer to predicting when extreme weather might erupt on the Red Planet.

Today’s weather report on Mars: Windy with a chance of catastrophic dust storms blotting out the sky.

In a new study, planetary scientists at the University of Colorado Boulder have begun to unravel the factors that kick off major dust storms on Mars — weather events that sometimes engulf the entire planet in swirling grit. The team discovered that relatively warm and sunny days may help to trigger them.

The world’s first self-charging energy device integrates supercapacitors and solar cells for efficient solar energy capture and storage.

The great state of Wisconsin is about to get enough clean energy to power 200,000 homes, as the Public Service Commission of Wisconsin has approved a new solar farm that will be the most powerful in the state, Electrek reported.

Vista Sands Solar Farm, which will be located on 8,500 acres of private farmland in Portage County that is being leased from its owners, is being developed by Doral Renewables LLC, a Philadelphia-based company.

The project is expected to take around two years to complete. It will cost $1 billion and generate around 500 jobs during construction and 50 permanent positions once the farm is open for business, per the company.