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Happy birthday, ISS.

The first components of the International Space Station (ISS) were launched on November 20, 1998, roughly 12 years after the first Soviet MIR-2 module was launched and a full 25 years after Skylab.

The ISS took 10 years and more than 30 missions to assemble. It is the result of unprecedented scientific and engineering collaboration among five space agencies representing 21 countries: NASA (United States of America), Roscosmos (Russia), JAXA (Japan), CSA (Canada), and ESA (16 EU countries and the UK).

With fully-equipped laboratories and advanced life support systems powered by solar arrays, the ISS has space for up to seven crew members to live and work, conducting many kinds of research in low Earth orbit.

Continue reading “ISS Anniversary: Here’s How (And Why) Humans Have Lived in Space For Over Two Decades” | >

SpaceX Embarrassed NASA With Their High Tech SpaceSuit: Whether it’s science fiction or science fact with space as the backdrop, there is one thing that always catches the eye; the spacesuit. Indeed, we’re all familiar with the sense of excitement and inspiration when we see astronauts decked out in advanced spacesuits.

SpaceX being who they are has dropped a bomb in the form of a new spacesuit design, and it’s nothing like what NASA has ever done. What makes this advanced space suit so unique, that it’s obliterating what NASA has ever done? Join us as we explore every detail of the spacesuit.

The futuristic flight suits worn by Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken during last year’s Crew Dragon are a far cry from the bulky orange shuttle flight suits worn by astronauts when they last launched from Florida’s Kennedy Space Center as well as any other spacesuit worn by astronauts from other countries.

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If anyone has a good idea on how to put a nuclear fission power plant on the moon, the U.S. government wants to hear about it.

NASA and the nation’s top federal nuclear research lab on Friday put out a request for proposals for a surface power system.

NASA is collaborating with the U.S. Department of Energy’s Idaho National Laboratory to establish a sun-independent power source for missions to the by the end of the decade.

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They’re a long way from taking human jobs.

Alphabet says its Everyday Robot team at X is now testing its prototype machines in Google’s offices. The bots are performing light custodial work as Alphabet slowly pursues its goal of building a “general-purpose learning robot.”

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The Dimensity 9,000 is both the first smartphone chip to be built using TSMC’s new 4nm process and the first chip to feature Arm’s new Cortex-X2 CPU core. The flagship chip is based on the new ArmV9 architecture and will feature the Cortex X2 as an “ultra” performance core, three Cortex-A710 cores as general “super” performance cores, and four Cortex-A510 efficiency cores. The Dimensity 9,000 will support LPDDR5x memory at bandwidths of up to 7,500 Mbps.

The big jumps in performance don’t stop there: The Dimensity 9,000 is also the first chip to feature Arm’s Mali G710-MC10 GPU, along with industry-leading support for raytracing via the Vulkan SDK for Android. And while there aren’t any phones currently available that have pushed refresh rates this high, MediaTek claims the Dimensity 9,000 can handle screens with up to a 180Hz refresh rate at FHD+ resolutions.

The Dimensity 9,000 also supports the first 18-bit image signal processor, which gives the chip the ability to capture 4K HDR video using up to three cameras at the same time, or still photos using up to a massive 320-MP sensor (assuming device makers can find a 320-MP sensor that fits in a phone).

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Spent lithium-ion batteries contain valuable metals that are difficult to separate from each other for recycling purposes. Used batteries present a sustainable source of these metals, especially cobalt and nickel, but the current methods used for their separation have environmental and efficiency drawbacks. A new technology uses electrochemistry to efficiently separate and recover the metals, making spent batteries a highly sustainable secondary source of cobalt and nickel—the reserves of which are currently dwindling.

A new study, led by University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign chemical and biomolecular engineering professor Xiao Su, uses selective electrodeposition to recover valuable metals from commercially sourced lithium manganese oxide—or NMC—battery electrodes. The method, published in the journal Nature Communications, produces final product purities of approximately 96.4% and 94.1% for cobalt and nickel, respectively, from spent NMC wastes.

Su said cobalt and nickel have similar electrochemical properties—or standard reduction potentials—making it challenging for chemists to recover pure forms of each metal from battery electrodes.

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