A new type of nuclear reactor designed to power crewed outposts on the moon and Mars could be ready for its first in-space trial just a few years from now, project team members said.
A flight test is the next big step for the Kilopower experimental fission reactor, which aced a series of critical ground tests from November 2017 through March 2018. No off-Earth demonstration is on the books yet, but Kilopower should be ready to go by 2022 or so if need be, said Patrick McClure, Kilopower project lead at the Department of Energy’s (DOE) Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico.
Astrobiologists have sent 18 different strains of bacteria up to the International Space Station.
They’re not meant to contaminate the already-kinda-gross orbital research center, but rather to determine whether the mineral-leaching microbes could help astronauts mine space rocks during future missions, Space.com reports.
If the so-called BioRock experiment pans out, the researchers behind the experiment argue that it could help humanity turn space rocks on the Moon or Mars into farmable soil for future human settlements.
Take an asteroid, give it swinging arms and turn it into a rocky jellyfish swimming through space. Project RAMA from @MadeInSpace can solve most of the problems associated with asteroid mining all in one go. https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/atoms/files/niac_20…tagged.pdf
Our observable Universe is an enormous place, with some two trillion galaxies strewn across the abyss of space for tens of billions of light-years in all directions. Ever since the 1920s, when we first unambiguously demonstrated that those galaxies were well beyond the extent of the Milky Way by accurately measuring the distances to them, one fact leaped out at us: the farther away a galaxy is, on average, the more severely shifted towards the red, long-wavelength part of the spectrum its light will be.
This relationship, between redshift and distance, looks like a straight line when we first plot it out: the farther away you look, the greater the distant object’s redshift is, in direct proportion to one another. If you measure the slope of that line, you get a value, colloquially known as the Hubble constant. But it isn’t actually a constant at all, as it changes over time. Here’s the science behind why.
In our Universe, light doesn’t simply propagate through a fixed and unchanging space, arriving at its destination with the same properties it possessed when it was emitted by the source. Instead, it must contend with an additional factor: the expansion of the Universe. This expansion of space, as you can see, above, affects the properties of the light itself. In particular, as the Universe expands, the wavelength of the light passing through that space gets stretched.
The night skies in August are full of celestial wonders, including bright planets and a meteor shower.
Venus and Mars are currently blocked from our view by the sun, but this week is a great chance to catch Jupiter and Saturn in conjunction with the moon.
The nearly full moon will appear very close to Jupiter on the night of August 9. Jupiter, the next brightest planet in our sky after Venus, will be visible in the sky beginning at dusk and well until the early hours of the morning around the world, according to the Old Farmer’s Almanac.
Of the 1,500 active volcanoes worldwide, about 6 percent of them erupt each year, or 50 to 85. Less than half of all volcanoes have sensors, and even fewer are considered well-monitored, the result of high costs and difficulty in maintaining equipment in such unforgiving environments. Volcanoes that are considered dormant rarely have any monitoring, despite surprises like the 2008 eruption of the Chaitén volcano in Chile after 8,000 years of inactivity.
Now, volcanologists are turning to satellite imagery and artificial intelligence to keep a closer eye on more volcanoes and, eventually, forecast eruptions. MOUNTS (Monitoring Unrest from Space), currently tracks 18 volcanoes, including Mount Fuego in Guatemala and Mount Etna in Italy.
With 800 million people living within 62 miles of an active volcano, there are plenty of reasons to increase monitoring.
No glasses needed! 🤓After a visit from our rover ‘optometrist’, #Mars2020 checks out with 20/20 vision. Equipped with several high definition cameras, our new red planet rover will acquire panoramic 3D image data, examine soil for life and more! Check it out:
Equipped with visionary science instruments, the Mars 2020 rover underwent an “eye” exam after several cameras were installed on it. The rover contains an armada of imaging capabilities, from wide-angle landscape cameras to narrow-angle high-resolution zoom lens cameras.
This image, taken in the Spacecraft Assembly Facility’s High Bay 1 at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, on July 23, 2019, shows a close-up of the head of Mars 2020’s remote sensing mast. The mast head contains the SuperCam instrument (its lens is in the large circular opening). In the gray boxes beneath mast head are the two Mastcam-Z imagers. On the exterior sides of those imagers are the rover’s two navigation cameras.
July 20, 2019 marked the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing. Navy Veteran Neil Armstrong, and Air Force Veterans Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins manned the mission.
The National Air and Space Museum displayed full-motion projection-mapping artwork on the Washington Monument. The 17 minute long show, “Apollo 50: Go for the Moon”, included a true-to-scale 363 foot Saturn V lift off, various stages of the rocket separation, the lunar landing, the first step on the moon, re-entry, and splash down back to earth.
To read more about the Apollo 11 crew, visit https://www.blogs.va.gov/VAntage/63407/veteranoftheday-apollo-11-crew/