In the world’s first planetary defense technology demonstration, NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) made history as it successfully slammed into an asteroid target on Monday. The first ‘attempt’ to move an asteroid in space, the probe tested a way to protect our planet from future hazards and potential impacts.
Category: space – Page 448
DART Countdown to Impact
TODAY NASA will make history but conducting the first ever asteroid redirection test!
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MIT engineers build a battery-free, wireless underwater camera
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) engineers have developed a battery-free, wireless underwater camera that’s powered by sound waves.
Scientists estimate that more than 95 percent of Earth’s oceans have never been observed, which means we have seen less of our planet’s ocean than we have the far side of the moon or the surface of Mars.
The high cost of powering an underwater camera for a long time, by tethering it to a research vessel or sending a ship to recharge its batteries, is a steep challenge preventing widespread undersea exploration.
MIT researchers have taken a major step to overcome this problem by developing a battery-free, wireless underwater camera that is about 100,000 times more energy-efficient than other undersea cameras. The device takes color photos, even in dark underwater environments, and transmits image data wirelessly through the water.
One NASA asset will be critical to Moon and asteroid missions’ success
Different missions are vying for a limited number of antennas. And DART and Artemis are running right up against each other.
Chrysalis: Saturn’s Ancient, Missing Moon
Swirling around the planet’s equator, the rings of Saturn are an obvious indicator that the planet is spinning at a tilt. The belted gas giant rotates at a 26.7-degree angle relative to the plane in which it orbits the sun. Because Saturn’s tilt precesses, like a spinning top, at nearly the same rate as the orbit of its neighbor Neptune.
Neptune is the farthest planet from the sun. In our solar system, it is the fourth-largest planet by size, and third densest. It is named after the Roman god of the sea.
Is Space Force moving fast enough for its Rapid Capabilities Office?
“I need to have the processes in place for rapid fielding and acceptance of these things, and that’s not getting a lot of traction right now,” Space RCO Director Kelly Hammett said Sept. 12 at the Air, Space and Cyber Conference in National Harbor, Md.
The Space RCO aims to develop the first few units of a defense system and then hand them off to Space Systems Command, the Space Force’s acquisition arm, to manage production. Hammett said his team is on track to deliver 10–12 projects over the next three years.
Because most of its programs are classified, the office has not revealed details on the technology and scope of its first deliveries. According to fiscal 2023 budget documents, the Space RCO is supporting an Air Force Research Laboratory effort to use solar energy to provide “logistically agile power” to forces on the ground. Its unclassified budget request included $36 million for that effort and about $9 million to support space capability studies.