Hanwha Q Cells officially opened its 300,000 square foot solar panel factory in Dalton, Georgia last week, claiming it is the largest such manufacturing facility in the western hemisphere. The $200 million factory employs more than 650 workers and is capable of producing 12,000 solar panels a year — enough to generate 1.7 GW of electricity. Its standard production panel features six bus bars, has an efficiency of about 19%, and an output of up to 345 watts.
A robotic Japanese cargo ship successfully arrived at the International Space Station Saturday (Sept. 28) carrying more than 4 tons of supplies, including new batteries for the outpost’s solar power grid.
The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency’s (JAXA) HTV-8 cargo ship pulled up to the space station at 7:12 a.m. EDT (1112 GMT), where it was captured by a robotic arm wielded by NASA astronaut Christina Koch inside the orbiting lab. The station and HTV-8, also known as Kounotori 8 (Kounotori means “white stork” in Japanese), were soaring 262 miles (422 kilometers) over Angola in southern Africa at the time.
“What you all have done is a testament to what we can accomplish when international teams work together towards a common goal,” Koch radioed to NASA’s Mission Control in Houston and flight controllers at JAXA’s Tsukuba Space Center in Japan. “We’re honored to have Kounotori on board, and look forward to a successful and productive mission together.”
This evening, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk will give an update on the design and future of his company’s next-generation rocket, Starship, a massive vehicle that is meant to take people to the Moon, Mars, and beyond. The concept for Starship has evolved in numerous ways over the last few years, and now Musk plans to reveal the vehicle’s latest blueprints.
Musk is giving an hour-long presentation on the rocket at SpaceX’s test facility in Boca Chica, Texas, a tiny town just north of the Mexican border. SpaceX has been building lots of test hardware for Starship at the site, and the CEO will likely be surrounded by this shiny material during his talk. As you watch, keep an eye out for a large Starship test vehicle that’s meant to perform high-altitude test flights in the months ahead.
It’s unclear exactly what Musk will discuss. He mentioned on Twitter that this talk is “mostly a design update for those interested,” though he might touch on the longer-term plans for Starship, as well. The discussion will get underway at 8PM ET; here’s what you need to know before the show.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) — The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration late on Friday said it would require operators of some Boeing (BA.N) 737 NG jetliners to conduct inspections for structural cracks and make repairs as needed following the discovery of cracks on a small number of planes.
The FAA said Boeing notified it of the issue “after it discovered the cracks while conducting modifications on a heavily used aircraft.” Subsequent inspections “uncovered similar cracks in a small number of additional planes.” Boeing said on Friday it has been in contact with 737 NG operators about a cracking issue, but added that “no in-service issues have been reported.”
Neither the FAA nor Boeing immediately said how many planes were impacted by the required inspections.
Circa 2010
Light has been put to work generating the same force that makes airplanes fly, a study appearing online December 5 in Nature Photonics shows. With the right design, a uniform stream of light has pushed tiny objects in much the same way that an airplane wing hoists a 747 off the ground.
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For the first time, a gas station has converted its business model to 100% electric vehicle charging. The Takoma Park, Maryland, gas station conversion was funded by the Electric Vehicle Institute and Maryland government.
A quasi-particle that travels along the interface of a metal and dielectric material may be the solution to problems caused by shrinking electronic components, according to an international team of engineers.
“Microelectronic chips are ubiquitous today,” said Akhlesh Lakhtakia, Evan Pugh University Professor and Charles Godfrey Binder Professor of Engineering Science and Mechanics, Penn State. “Delay time for signal propagation in metal-wire interconnects, electrical loss in metals leading to temperature rise, and cross-talk between neighboring interconnects arising from miniaturization and densification limits the speed of these chips.”
These electronic components are in our smartphones, tablets, computers and security systems and they are used in hospital equipment, defense installations and our transportation infrastructure.
A team of researchers affiliated with several institutions in France has observed a phase transition in an artificially created flock. In their paper published in the journal Physical Review Letters, the group describes how they created their artificial flock and the events that led to a phase transition.
Scientists trying to understand crowd behavior generally create computer models meant to mimic human behavior under crowded conditions—but such simulations are limited by the parameters that are used to create them. Most in the field agree on the need to recreate crowd or flocking behavior physically in a lab. In this new effort, the researchers have built on prior work with an artificial crowd, and have found that under certain conditions it underwent a phase transition similar to water freezing to an ice state.
Working on a prior effort, some of the team members created an artificial crowd consisting of millions of beads suspended in a liquid between two plates of glass. The plates were joined in a way that allowed the beads to move around the outer edges of an oval—similar to cars on a partially three-dimensional race track. The beads were forced to move in one direction by applying an electric field—the Quincke effect spun the beads, which pushed them through the liquid in the same direction. Also, due to a dipole effect, the beads did not adhere to one another—instead, they moved around the track, seemingly of their own accord. The prior team showed that increasing density of the beads could set off a Vicsek-like transition in which randomly moving particles exhibit flock-like behaviors. In this new effort, the researchers used the same setup with the beads to create a flock and then watched what would happen as density was increased.
Most EV attention focuses on cars and SUVs, but medium and large electrified trucks for local and regional deliveries are coming to market, too, including from Volvo.
Boston Dynamics is announcing this morning that Spot, its versatile quadruped robot, is now for sale. The machine’s animal-like behavior regularly electrifies crowds at tech conferences, and like other Boston Dynamics’ robots, Spot is a YouTube sensation whose videos amass millions of views.
Now anyone interested in buying a Spot—or a pack of them—can go to the company’s website and submit an order form. But don’t pull out your credit card just yet. Spot may cost as much as a luxury car, and it is not really available to consumers. The initial sale, described as an “early adopter program,” is targeting businesses. Boston Dynamics wants to find customers in select industries and help them deploy Spots in real-world scenarios.
