Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
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SpaceX has launched another batch of its Starlink satellites — the usual complement of 60 of the low Earth orbit spacecraft, which will join the more than 1000 already making up the existing constellation. This is the fifth launch of Starlink satellites for SpaceX this year, and the twentieth overall.

Earlier this year, SpaceX opened up Starlink access to anyone in a current or planned service area via a pre-order reservation system with a refundable up-front deposit. The company aims to continue launches like this one apace throughout 2021 in order to get the constellation to the point where it can serve customers over a much larger portion of the globe. SpaceX COO and President Gwynne Shotwell has previously said that the company expects it should have coverage over much of the globe at a constellation size of around 1200 satellites, but the company has plans to launch more than 30000 to fully build out its network capacity and speed.

While SpaceX is making good progress on Starlink with its Falcon 9 launcher, it’s also looking ahead to Starship as a key driver of the constellation’s growth. Starship, SpaceX’s next-generation launch vehicle currently under development in South Texas, will be able to deliver to orbit 400 Starlink satellites at a time, and it’s also being designed with full reusability and fast turnaround in mind.

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After his PhD thesis invalidates an old assumption, Norman Cao wonders what’s next.

“What are some challenges in controlling plasma and what are your solutions? What is the most effective type of fusion device? What are some difficulties in sustaining fusion conditions? What are some obstacles to receiving fusion funding?”

For the past four years, graduate student Norman Cao ’15 PhD ’20 has been the Plasma Science and Fusion Center’s (PSFC’s) go-to “answer man,” replying to questions like these emailed by students and members of the general public interested in getting a deeper understanding of fusion and its potential as a future energy source.

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Satellite observations have revealed an unprecedented ‘space hurricane’ in Earth’s upper atmosphere, hinting that such events could occur on other planetary bodies.

Scientists have previously documented hurricanes in the lower atmospheres of Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. Similar phenomena have even been spotted on the Sun. But the existence of space hurricanes — hurricane-like circulation patterns in planets’ upper atmospheres — has been uncertain.

Earth’s upper atmosphere cooks up a storm.

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NEW: A microchip carrying more than 27,000 Civil Air Patrol names with related messages and images is set to be carried to the moon later this year aboard space robotics company Astrobotic’s Peregrine lunar lander. https://www.cap.news/next-stop-the-moon-for-27000-cap-names/

A microchip carrying more than 27000 Civil Air Patrol names with related messages and images is set to be carried to the moon later this year aboard space robotics company Astrobotic’s Peregrine lunar lander.

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A silicone robot has survived a journey to 10900 metres below the ocean’s surface in the Mariana trench, where the crushing pressure can implode all but the strongest enclosures. This device could lead to lighter and more nimble submersible designs.

A team led by Guorui Li at Zhejiang University in China based the robot’s design on snailfish, which have relatively delicate, soft bodies and are among the deepest-living fish. They have been observed swimming at depths of more than 8000 metres.

The submersible robot looks a bit like a manta ray and is 22 centimetres long and 28 centimetres in wingspan. It is made of silicone rubber with electronic components spread throughout the body and connected by wires, rather than mounted on a circuit board like most submersibles. That’s because the team found in tests that the connections between components on rigid circuit boards were a weak point when placed under high pressure.

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Ultimately, Cyrille Przybyla, an aquaculture researcher at the French Research Institute for Exploitation of the Sea who led the research, dreams of designing a lunar fish farm that uses water already on the moon to help feed residents of the future Moon Village set to be established by the European Space Agency (ESA). The Lunar Hatch project is just one of around 300 ideas currently under evaluation by the ESA, and may or may not be selected for the final mission. Przybyla’… See More.

To boldly farm fish where no one has farmed fish before.

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