History has been made!!!
It made 5 grams of the gas — equivalent to what an astronaut at Mars would need to breathe for roughly 10 minutes.
An instrument in the Perseverance rover produces oxygen from the planet’s carbon dioxide atmosphere.
Category: space – Page 563
Oxygen isn’t just the stuff we breathe. Rocket propellant depends on oxygen, and future explorers will depend on producing propellant on Mars to make the trip home.
The instrument, called the Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment (MOXIE), is a technology demonstration that could eventually be scaled up to produce enough propellant to enable a crew of astronauts to take off from the surface of the Red Planet.
“This is a critical first step at converting carbon dioxide to oxygen on Mars,” said Jim Reuter, associate administrator of NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate (STMD), in a statement. “MOXIE has more work to do, but the results from this technology demonstration are full of promise as we move toward our goal of one day seeing humans on Mars.”
“Oxygen isn’t just the stuff we breathe,” he added. “Rocket propellant depends on oxygen, and future explorers will depend on producing propellant on Mars to make the trip home.”
With NASA’s historic solar-powered helicopter flight over the barren slopes of Mars’ Jezero Crater, Leonardo da Vinci and Igor Sikorsky also deserve credit along with the Wright brothers for enabling this astounding bit of off-world powered, controlled flight. Da Vinci made one of the earliest drawings of a rotor-driven aircraft and Sikorsky built the U.S.’ first commercially viable helicopter.
Even though Orville and Wilbur Wright get credit for making the first powered, controlled aircraft flight at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina in 1903, the vertical flight of helicopters is markedly different. Thus, the first test flight of NASA’s Ingenuity helicopter is all the more astounding in no small part because Mars’ atmosphere is only one percent that of Earth.
“While these two iconic moments in aviation history may be separated by time and 173 million miles of space, they now will forever be linked,” NASA Associate Administrator for Science Thomas Zurbuchen said in a statement. “As an homage to the two innovative bicycle makers from Dayton, this first of many airfields on other worlds will now be known as Wright Brothers Field, in recognition of the ingenuity and innovation that continue to propel exploration.”
Beyond Cislunar
Indeed, AFRL last Thursday held a classified stakeholder meeting to discuss research and development needed to underpin future military operations beyond the traditional near-Earth orbits used today, according to DoD officials. Neither AFRL nor Space Command would provide any details whatsoever about the meeting — not even a list of participants.
Sean Kirkpatrick, who represents the DNI at Space Command’s Joint Task Force-Space Defense (JTF-SD), said last Tuesday the “summit” was focused not just on R&D needed to counter potential adversary activities in cislunar space, but also “all around the sphere of the Earth, not necessarily in the direction of the Moon.”
The growth of space businesses makes this “the most exciting time” to be involved in the industry, but one CEO says private and government organizations must do more to tap the next generation of U.S. workers.
“I do think there’s opportunities for everybody to participate in the excitement … [and] it’s a great opportunity for the government to really lean in on looking for those public-private partnerships,” Steve Isakowitz, CEO of The Aerospace Corporation and former president of Virgin Galactic, told attendees of the America’s Future Series Space Innovation Summit. The event ran on April 6 and 7.
“We need to do more and expand the candidate pool — we’ve got to make sure that all of America has the benefit of being part of the STEM, K-12, opportunities that are out there,” he added, referring to the academic discipline that includes science, tech, engineering and math.
Conducting atom-optical experiments in space is interesting for fundamental physics and challenging due to different environment compared to ground. Here the authors report matter-wave interferometry in space using atomic BECs in a sounding rocket.
NASA hopes to score a 21st-century Wright Brothers moment on Monday as it attempts to send a miniature helicopter buzzing over the surface of Mars in what would be the first powered, controlled flight of an aircraft on another planet.
Landmark achievements in science and technology can seem humble by conventional measurements. The Wright Brothers’ first controlled flight in the world of a motor-driven airplane, near Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, in 1903 covered just 120 feet (37 meters) in 12 seconds.
A modest debut is likewise in store for NASA’s twin-rotor, solar-powered helicopter Ingenuity.
Massive solar storms in space can be picked up by iOS and Android smartphones, meaning billions of people have a personal geomagnetic storm detector — but the signals threaten to interfere with future location-based applications.
Hoping to get the public more involved in science, study author Sten F. Odenwald, an astronomer at the NASA Goddard Spaceflight Center, published a paper on the topic April 2 in Space Weather. It indicates that even through the unavoidable interference caused by other smartphone components, the phone’s built-in magnetometers can detect geomagnetic storms.
“Smartphones — at least theoretically — should be able to detect some of the strongest storms, pretty easily in fact,” Odenwald told The Academic Times. “Especially if you happen to live up in the northern latitudes — in Minnesota or in Canada, or places like that where it really rocks and rolls.”
Basically, we live in one giant algorithm.
In fascinating new research, cosmologists explain the history of the universe as one of self-teaching, autodidactic algorithms.
Circa 2020 o.o
The NASA Perseverance Rover has a device aboard called MOXIE that will convert the air available on Mars into oxygen. The device is a test, and if the technology was used on a larger scale could produce oxygen for humans to breathe on the Red Planet and could be used for rocket fuel. NASA knows that one of the most challenging parts of putting people on Mars will be getting them off the planet and back to Earth.
Two get a crew for off Mars would require 55000 pounds of oxygen to produce thrust from 15000 pounds rocket fuel. Rather than send all of the oxygen needed from Earth to Mars, scientists want to enable the astronauts to create the rocket fuel on Mars. MOXIE is a first-generation oxygen generator meant to test technology that could create the required oxygen.