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Category: space – Page 297

Stirling converters could allow deep space missions to massively reduce their reliance on potentially scarce solar energy.

China’s Shenzhou-15 mission crew aboard the China Space Station (CSS) has reportedly completed testing on a free-piston Stirling thermoelectric converter, according to a report from state-owned media in China.

NASA and China have both experimented with Stirling converters.

Gremlin/iStock.

The successful test marks the first time China has verified this type of technology in orbit. The experimental technology, which NASA has also investigated, has the potential to provide crucial backup energy to deep space missions.

Continue reading “China’s space agency reportedly tested a Stirling converter in orbit” | >

Puzzle over ‘Hubble constant’ could suggest many of our basic assumptions are wrong We may be fundamentally wrong about some of the deepest parts of the universe, according to a new study. For years, scientists have been puzzled over the “Hubble tension”. That refers to the difficulty over measuring how quickly the universe is expanding: different measurements show different speeds, and scientists have been unable to say why.

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In the not too distant future, trips to the мoon will Ƅe мanned and of long duration. In order for astronauts to surʋiʋe there for the duration of their мission, they мust first find a way to create oxygen, water, and fuel with the resources that exist there, since transport froм Earth is coмpletely unfeasiƄle.

Now, a teaм of Chinese astronoмers froм Nanjing Uniʋersity has just discoʋered how to achieʋe this and thus facilitate huмan exploration to create a perмanent Ƅase.

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A celebrated experiment in 1,801 showed that light passing through two thin slits interferes with itself, forming a characteristic striped pattern on the wall behind. Now, physicists have shown that a similar effect can arise with two slits in time rather than space: a single mirror that rapidly turns on and off causes interference in a laser pulse, making it change colour.

The result is reported on 3 April in Nature Phys ics1. It adds a new twist to the classic double-slit experiment performed by physicist Thomas Young, which demonstrated the wavelike aspect of light, but also — in its many later reincarnations — that quantum objects ranging from photons to molecules have a dual nature of both particle and wave.

The rapid switching of the mirror — possibly taking just 1 femtosecond (one-quadrillionth of a second) — shows that certain materials can change their optical properties much faster than previously thought possible, says Andrea Alù, a physicist at the City University of New York. This could open new paths for building devices that handle information using light rather than electronic impulses.

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Looking ahead: Automatic Construction is in the process of building a concrete house for one customer in New York and has contracts signed with two others, according to Bell. It’s also inked a deal with a “large commercial contractor” for a structure.

It’s not clear how large those will be, but the prototypes the company has built so far are better described as tiny houses than starter homes — they might be large enough for one person, but they aren’t likely to accommodate a family.

Automatic Construction is testing a 650-square-foot, two-story concrete house design, though, and claims its technique could be scaled up for larger structures — including commercial buildings, city skyscrapers, or even houses on Mars.

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NASA’s plan to land the first woman and first person of color on the Moon during the first crewed lunar flyby of the 21st century took one giant leap this week with the unveiling of four astronauts for the Artemis II mission.

In a news conference Monday at Ellington Field near NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston the space agency announced the first black man, the first woman and the first Canadian on any crewed Moon mission—the agency’s first since Apollo 17 in 1972.

The Apollo 8-style Artemis 2 mission will see NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glove and Christina Hammock Koch, and Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen, embark on a 10-day trip around the Moon.

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The off-world chopper flew to its highest altitude and speed on its 49th mission on the Red Planet.

NASA’s record-breaking Mars Ingenuity helicopter has soared to new heights and flown faster. The off-world helicopter has flown for almost two years, massively exceeding its original mission parameters.

On its latest flight, Sunday, April 2, Ingenuity flew to its highest altitude yet and faster than on any of its previous missions. The latest flight.

Ingenuity soars to new heights.

NASA / jpl-caltech / ASU / MSSS

The off-world helicopter has flown for almost two years, massively exceeding its original mission parameters.

Continue reading “NASA’s Mars Ingenuity helicopter breaks records once again” | >

The team was able to produce blur-free, high-resolution images of the universe by incorporating this AI algorithm.

Before reaching ground-based telescopes, cosmic light interacts with the Earth’s atmosphere. That’s why, the majority of advanced ground-based telescopes are located at high altitudes on Earth, where the atmosphere is thinner. The Earth’s changing atmosphere often obscures the view of the universe.

The atmosphere obstructs certain wavelengths as well as distorts the light coming from great distances. This interference may interfere with the accurate construction of space images, which is critical for unraveling the mysteries of the universe. The produced blurry images may obscure the shapes of astronomical objects and cause measurement errors.

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It also says that it has a healthy pipeline for chips in the future.

Search engine giant Google has claimed that the supercomputers it uses to develop its artificial intelligence (AI) models are faster and more energy efficient than Nvidia Corporation’s. While processing power for most companies delving into the AI space comes from Nvidia’s chips, Google uses a custom chip called Tensor Processing Unit (TPU).

Google announced its Tensor chips during the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic when businesses from electronics to automotive faced the pinch of chip shortage.

AI-designed chips to further AI development

Interesting Engineering reported in 2021 that Google used AI to design its TPUs. Google claimed that the design process was completed in just six hours using AI compared to the months humans spend designing chips.

For most things associated with AI these days, product iterations occur rapidly, and the TPU is currently in its fourth generation. As Microsoft stitched together chips to power OpenAI’s research requirement, Google also put together 4,000 TPUs to make its supercomputer.

Continue reading “AI chip race: Google says its Tensor chips compute faster than Nvidia’s A100” | >

Most of the light streaming through the Universe is invisible to human eyes. Beyond the mid-range wavelengths we can see, there’s a whole cosmos shining in high-and low-energy radiation.

But we humans are clever little animals and have managed to build instruments that can see the light we cannot. One of these is NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, an observatory hanging out in low-Earth orbit, monitoring the sky for gamma rays, the highest-energy light in the Universe.

Fermi constantly surveils the entire sky, observing gamma-ray sources and how they change over time, providing astronomers with a map of the various producers of gamma radiation that we can detect. This data is compiled into a catalog that scientists can use to probe the production of gamma radiation.

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