Archive for the ‘space’ category: Page 458
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Jul 6, 2021
China’s space station recycles 66 liters of urine in 3 weeks to support crew
Posted by Alberto Lao in categories: bioengineering, space
As the Shenzhou-12 crew of three taikonauts has lived for nearly three weeks in China’s Tianhe space station core module, the urine treatment system in the module has recycled 66 liters of urine and treated it into distilled water to support the crew, the Global Times learned from the system designers on Tuesday.
This urine treatment system — a sub-system of the life support system — was devised by Chinese scientists with the 206 Research Institute of the Second Academy of the China Aerospace Science and Industry Corp (CASIC). The developers told the Global Times that this is the nation’s first engineering application of the system, and its good performance shows how China’s space station construction work has advanced.
All indicators of the distilled water have reached the standards for usage, and the mission planners have unanimously recognized this outstanding performance, the institute said in a statement it sent to the Global Times.
Jul 6, 2021
Methane Keeps Showing Up on Mars. NASA Just Got Closer to Solving The Mystery
Posted by Alberto Lao in categories: biological, space
Methane is an organic molecule that hangs around in Earth’s atmosphere and is mostly produced by living organisms, most notoriously by burping cows. Its detection on Mars, on the other hand, has been a weird mystery for planetary scientists.
In recent years, NASA’s Curiosity rover has picked up tiny traces of methane numerous times on the red planet. While these emissions might be coming from some geological process, it was possible they could indicate the presence of some sort of life form on Mars (unlikely to be cows, of course).
As you’d expect, scientists are really excited by that prospect, but the data are confusing. Higher in the atmosphere, orbiting technology from the European Space Agency (ESA) has detected no methane in any concentration.
Jul 6, 2021
New Book Details Unsung History Of NASA’s Apollo ‘Moon Buggies’
Posted by Bruce Dorminey in category: space
Apollo’s last three missions were arguably the most scientifically significant, largely due to roving vehicles which the astronauts used to jaunt from point to point over the Moon’s extremely difficult terrain.
Jul 6, 2021
Bursting the Hubble Bubble: Powerful Ground-Based Telescope Will See Further and Clearer Than Hubble Space Telescope
Posted by Genevieve Klien in category: space
Australian scientists will help construct one of the world’s most powerful ground-based telescopes that promises to see further and clearer than the Hubble Space Telescope and unlock mysteries of the early Universe.
The team will develop a new, world-first instrument that will produce images three times sharper than Hubble under the multimillion-dollar project.
The MAVIS instrument will be fitted to one of the eight-meter Unit Telescopes at the European Southern Observatory’s (ESO’s) Very Large Telescope in Chile, to remove blurring from telescope images caused by turbulence in Earth’s atmosphere. MAVIS will be built over seven years at a cost of $57 million.
Jul 6, 2021
Methane in the Plumes of Saturn’s Moon Enceladus: Possible Signs of Life?
Posted by Lawrence Klaes in categories: biological, chemistry, food, space
An unknown methane-producing process is likely at work in the hidden ocean beneath the icy shell of Saturn’s moon Enceladus, suggests a new study published in Nature Astronomy by scientists at the University of Arizona and Paris Sciences & Lettres University.
Giant water plumes erupting from Enceladus have long fascinated scientists and the public alike, inspiring research and speculation about the vast ocean that is believed to be sandwiched between the moon’s rocky core and its icy shell. Flying through the plumes and sampling their chemical makeup, the Cassini spacecraft detected a relatively high concentration of certain molecules associated with hydrothermal vents on the bottom of Earth’s oceans, specifically dihydrogen, methane and carbon dioxide. The amount of methane found in the plumes was particularly unexpected.
“We wanted to know: Could Earthlike microbes that ‘eat’ the dihydrogen and produce methane explain the surprisingly large amount of methane detected by Cassini?” said Régis Ferrière, an associate professor in the University of Arizona Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and one of the study’s two lead authors. “Searching for such microbes, known as methanogens, at Enceladus’ seafloor would require extremely challenging deep-dive missions that are not in sight for several decades.”
Jul 6, 2021
Neil Patrick Harris Is the New Spokesman for Crypto ATM Firm Coin Flip
Posted by Quinn Sena in categories: bitcoin, space
Neil Patrick Harris is the latest celebrity to express love and enthusiasm for bitcoin. So much so that he is now serving as the new spokesperson for Coin Flip, a leading crypto ATM firm.
Neil Patrick Harris Is a Big Crypto Fan
Continue reading “Neil Patrick Harris Is the New Spokesman for Crypto ATM Firm Coin Flip” »
Jul 6, 2021
Unusual Comet – 1000 Times More Massive Than Typical – Discovered in Outer Solar System
Posted by Quinn Sena in category: space
Estimated to be 100–200 kilometers across, the unusual wandering body will make its closest approach to the Sun in 2031.
A giant comet from the outskirts of our Solar System has been discovered in 6 years of data from the Dark Energy Survey. Comet Bernardinelli-Bernstein is estimated to be about 1000 times more massive than a typical comet, making it arguably the largest comet discovered in modern times. It has an extremely elongated orbit, journeying inward from the distant Oort Cloud over millions of years. It is the most distant comet to be discovered on its incoming path, giving us years to watch it evolve as it approaches the Sun, though it’s not predicted to become a naked-eye spectacle.
Jul 6, 2021
Astronomers Detect a Lurking Cosmic Cloud, Bigger Than The Entire Milky Way
Posted by Genevieve Klien in category: space
In the yawning vacuum of intergalactic space, something large is lurking.
Not a galaxy, although it’s of a comparable size: A vast cloud of hot, faintly glowing gas, bigger than the Milky Way, in the space between galaxies congregating in a huge cluster.
Scientists believe this cloud may have been unceremoniously stripped from a galaxy in the cluster, the first gas cloud of this kind we’ve ever seen. Even more surprisingly, it hasn’t dissipated, but has remained clumped together for hundreds of millions of years.