Category: Space

WITH THE MOON’S LOW GRAVITY, YOU COULD BUILD INCREDIBLY TALL TOWERS.

by VICTOR TANGERMANN

Moon Tower

Scientists have come up with an ambitious new idea to provide bases on the Moon’s surface with solar power, New Scientist reports: massive, kilometer-high towers constructed from lunar concrete and almost entirely covered in solar panels.

The team, led by Sephora Ruppert from Harvard University, suggest in a yet-to-be-peer-reviewed paper that the towers could be constructed by mixing lunar soil and heating it to bind it together, not too dissimilar from regular concrete.

“We choose concrete as the capital cost of transporting large masses of iron or carbon fiber to the Moon is presently so expensive that profitable operation of a power plant is unlikely,” the researchers write in the paper. “Concrete instead can be manufactured in situ from the lunar regolith.”

Continue reading… “HARVARD SCIENTISTS PROPOSE SUPER-TALL TOWERS TO POWER MOON BASE”

On the way to its lowest and final orbit, NASA’s Dawn spacecraft captured this dramatic image of Ceres’s limb.IMAGE BY NASA/JPL-CALTECH/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA

The tiny, frigid world Ceres amazes with evidence of recent ice volcanoes fed by the remnants of an ancient underground sea.

Tucked into the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, the dwarf planet Ceres is a small world that holds big surprises. A slew of new research from NASA’s Dawn spacecraft advances the case that—in its own cold, salty way—Ceres is a geologically active body, with ice volcanoes and surviving pockets of an ancient ocean.

About a year’s worth of data collected by Dawn from late 2017 through late 2018—during its final orbits before running out of fuel—show that the dwarf planet probably has briny liquid seeping out on its surface, as well as mounds and hills that formed when ice melted and refroze after an asteroid impact about 20 million years ago. 

The idea that liquid water could persist on Ceres—a world that’s less than a third of the moon’s width—would have once seemed outlandish. But now that humankind has seen it up close, we know that frigid, tiny Ceres is geologically alive. 

Continue reading… “Dwarf planet closest to Earth is geologically alive”

SATELLITE MELT

byVICTOR TANGERMANN

THAT’S ONE WAY TO DO IT.

As we speak, thousands of small pieces of debris are cluttering Earth’s orbit. Even entire derelict satellites are drifting through space, having long fulfilled their purpose. In fact, an astonishing 60 percent of our planet’s roughly 6,000 satellites are no longer in operation.

That’s a problem, as any collision could end in disaster — or the dreaded knock-on effect known as Kessler syndrome, a cascade of collisions generating new pieces of dangerous space debris that could render Earth’s orbit uninhabitable.

That’s why Russian physicist Egor Loktionov is suggesting a highly unusual intervention: using space-based lasers to melt non-operational satellites into plasma, the Academic Times reports.

Continue reading… “RUSSIAN SCIENTIST PROPOSES USING LASERS TO MELT SPACE JUNK”

By  Brad Bergan

We’re one step closer to round-trip space tickets.

One of the most ambitious space startups — Axiom Space — has completed a $130 million Series B funding round, confirming investor confidence in the company — which NASA tapped to add privately-manufactured space station modules to the International Space Station (ISS), according to a Tuesday press release.

Crucially, Axiom Space also plans to build the first entirely-private space station once it’s finished with NASA’s ISS addition.

Continue reading… “World’s First Commercial Space Station Project Just Raised $130 Million”

SPACE FARMING

“COVID AND THE CLIMATE CHANGE REALLY OPENED OUR EYES TO THE FRAGILITY OF FOOD SECURITY IN BOTH THE DEVELOPING AND THE DEVELOPED WORLD.”

Private space company Nanoracks recently signed a deal with investors in the United Arab Emirates to build orbital greenhouses and grow extremely-resilient crops out in space.

It sounds like an unusual idea, to say the least. But Nanoracks CEO Jeffrey Manber told Space.com that he believes any crops capable of surviving the extremes of life in space could go a long way toward solving looming food security crises here on Earth — and pointed to scientific evidence support that hypothesis.

Continue reading… “NASA CONTRACTOR SIGNS DEAL TO BUILD GREENHOUSES IN EARTH’S ORBIT”

By Marcia Dunn

Cape Canaveral: After hurtling hundreds of millions of miles through space since last northern summer, three robotic explorers are ready to hit the brakes at Mars.

The stakes — and anxiety — are sky high.

The United Arab Emirates’ orbiter reaches Mars on Tuesday, followed less than 24 hours later by China’s orbiter-rover combo. NASA’s rover, the cosmic caboose, will arrive on the scene a week later, on February 18, to collect rocks for return to Earth — a key step in determining whether life ever existed at Mars.

Continue reading… “Three robotic spacecraft set to arrive at Mars this month”