NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Chris Cassidy ventured out on their third spacewalk over the past few weeks to replace outdated batteries with more powerful new ones.
Category: space – Page 795
The United Arab Emirates will launch its 1st-ever Mars mission today. Here’s how to watch live
The United Arab Emirates (UAE) will launch its first-ever interplanetary mission today (July 19), and you can watch the historic liftoff live.
The Emirates Mars Mission, also known as Hope, is scheduled to launch atop an H-IIA rocket from Japan’s Tanegashima Space Center today at 5:58 p.m. EDT (2158 GMT; 6:58 a.m. July 20 Japan Standard Time. You can follow the action live here at Space.com courtesy of the UAE Space Agency and the Dubai One news channel, or directly via the latter two organizations here.
#EZScience Episode 9: Launching to Mars with NASA’s Perseverance Rover
Let’s talk about science! In the latest episode of #EZScience, learn about the upcoming launch of NASA’s Perseverance Mars Rover targeted for liftoff on July 30. Dr. E and Dr. Z talk about the technological advancements of the newest Mars rover (and helicopter!).
How Artificial Intelligence Is Changing Science
The latest AI algorithms are probing the evolution of galaxies, calculating quantum wave functions, discovering new chemical compounds and more. Is there anything that scientists do that can’t be automated?
Astronaut Bioengineers Human Cartilage in Space Using Magnetic Fields
One small step for cells, one giant leap for science.
China Mars Mission: At the Launch Pad (Updated with Video, Photos)
The fourth Long March-5 rocket, to be used to launch China’s first Mars exploration mission — the Tianwen-1 — was vertically transported to the launching area at the Wenchang Space Launch Center in south China’s Hainan Province on Friday.
Pentadiamond, a new addition to the carbon family
To calculate the most stable atomic configuration, as well as estimate its hardness, the team relied on a computational method called density functional theory (DFT). DFT has been successfully used throughout chemistry and solid-state physics to predict the structure and properties of materials. Keeping track of the quantum states of all the electrons in a sample, and their interactions, is usually an intractable task. Instead, DFT uses an approximation that focuses on the final density of electrons in space orbiting the atoms. This simplifies the calculation to make it suitable for computers, while still providing very precise results.
Based on these calculations, the scientists found that the Young’s modulus, a measure of hardness, for pentadiamond is predicted to be almost 1700 GPa – compared with about 1200 GPa for conventional diamond.
“Not only is pentadiamond harder than conventional diamond, its density is much lower, equal to that of graphite,” explains co-author Professor Mina Maruyama.
Apollo 11 Launch
#OTD 51 years ago, Apollo 11 launched from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center with NASA Astronauts Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins aboard. Four days later, Armstrong and Aldrin landed on the Moon’s surface, while Collins orbited overhead in the Command Module: https://go.nasa.gov/3j7tRV0
Solar Orbiter Returns First Data, Snaps Closest Pictures of the Sun
The first images from the Solar and Heliospheric Imager, or SoloHI instrument, reveal the zodiacal light (the bright blob of light on the right protruding towards the center). Mercury is also visible as a bright dot on the image left. The straight bright feature on the very edge of the image is a baffle illuminated by reflections from the spacecraft’s solar array.
Credits: Solar Orbiter/SoloHI team (ESA & NASA), NRL
Images from the Polar and Helioseismic Imager, or PHI, showed it is also primed for later observations. PHI maps the Sun’s magnetic field, with a special focus on its poles. It will have its heyday later in the mission as Solar Orbiter gradually tilts its orbit to 24 degrees above the plane of the planets, giving it an unprecedented view of the Sun’s poles.