Posts tagged space

Russia eyeing up a lunar base.

Russia and Japan both revealed hopes of achieving manned exploration of the Moon at this months Global Space Exploration Conference in Washington DC.

According to an executive from the Japanese Space Agency, Japan claims to be “looking at the moon as our next target for human exploration” at this stage.

Russia has higher hopes, with the head of Russian space agency Roscosmos saying “We’re not talking about repeating what mankind achieved 40 years ago. We’re talking about establishing permanent bases”.

‘Vacuum Tube’ processor 12x faster than silicone based transistors.

Vacuum tubes were used in computers until around 50 years ago, when transistors were found to be able to be mass produced onto silicon more cheaply and effectively. Now vacuum tube techniques have been used again to create a device able to operate at up to 0.46 terahertz - more than 12 times faster than the latest Ivy Bridge range of processors from Intel which operate up to 3.8Ghz. 

…it is created by etching a tiny cavity in phosphorous-doped silicon. The cavity is bordered by three electrodes: a source, a gate, and a drain. The source and drain are separated by just 150 nanometers, while the gate sits on top. Electrons are emitted from the source thanks to a voltage applied across it and the drain, while the gate controls the electron flow across the cavity.

Because the device is so small in size, the team found they didn’t need a true vacuum to make it work, as the risk of electrons colliding with any atoms in the air is so low at the nanometre scale. This means they would be more suited to cheaper mass production.

This work is of particular interest to NASA and other space agencies, as traditional computers need to be radiation-proofed before leaving Earth’s atmosphere - this wouldn’t be a problem for the new device, potentially saving them time and money by enabling space-ready computers.

Best YouTube comment ever?

“It’s 2011. Can we get some color photographs of the moon already?”

Biggest full moon of the year, see it tonight.

The Lunar perigee is tonight (May 6), where the Moon reaches it’s closest point of orbit with Earth.

At 221,802 miles from Earth the Moon will be about 15,300 miles closer than average.
Full Moons vary in size because of the oval shape of the Moon’s orbit. It is an ellipse with one side (perigee) about 50,000 km closer to Earth than the other (apogee).

Nearby perigee moons are about 14% bigger and 30% brighter than lesser moons that occur on the apogee side of the Moon’s orbit.

The Moon appears biggest just after Moon rise, while it is low in the sky.

Skylon spaceplane begins critical tests.

The Skylon spaceplane is being developed in the UK, where the team hopes it will revolutionise world travel taking passengers via space to reach any destination in the world within four hours. The design is based around the Sabre engine, which operates like a jet engine at low altitudes, and switches to work as a rocket engine at higher engine. This design eliminates the need for costly multi-stage engines currently used.

Built by Reaction Engines (REL), the Sabre engine is currently undergoing testing to prove it can not only deal with 1,000 degree gasses in the intakes, but also cool those to minus 140C in only 1/100 of a second. If REL can prove this system, they will be able to attract investors to build the finished spaceplace. The company also points out that the engine being tested is a full-sized engine which would be ready to go onto a spaceplane, and not a scale model.

“We intend to go to the Farnborough International Air Show in July with a clear message,” explained REL managing director Alan Bond.

“The message is that Britain has the next step beyond the jet engine; that we can reduce the world to four hours - the maximum time it would take to go anywhere. And that it also gives us aircraft that can go into space, replacing all the expendable rockets we use today.”

SpaceX engine test to be webcast today.

SpaceX is aiming to be the first commercial company to send a spacecraft to the International Space Station. Today a crucial test of the Falcon 9 rocket’s nine engines will take place, in preparation for an actual launch, targeted for May 7.

The test will be run as if it was the actual launch day, with engineers running through all countdown processes as a dress rehearsal. 

Check out the webcast at SpaceX.com at 8pm GMT.

DARPA seeks technology to service satellites in orbit.

DARPA is hosting a conference in June which hopes to create a dialogue within the international space community about how to cooperatively harvest and re-use, and fix valuable components on satellites in orbit.

Geosynchronous orbit is around 36,000km high, and when a satellite there fails it is moved to a ‘graveyard’ orbit where it will stay out of the way. Many of the satellites which are discarded in this way still have valuable, usable parts such as antennas or solar arrays.

A catalyst for making on-orbit re-purposing a reality is DARPA’s Phoenix program. Phoenix aims to develop and demonstrate technologies to cooperatively harvest and re-use valuable components from retired, non-working satellites in GEO to create new space systems at greatly reduced cost.  

If successful, re-using existing satellite components may not only dramatically lower the cost of GEO satellite missions for Defense Department needs, but may also serve to demonstrate, through advanced techniques and technology, a model for future on-orbit servicing activities.

World’s largest digital camera passes first hurdle.

The Large Synoptic Survey Telescope will capture the largest, deepest view of the night sky ever with its 3.2 billion pixel resolution. The LSST passed “Critical Decision 1”, meaning the project can continue to work towards construction which will begin in 2014. Primary work has begun on the 8.4 meter primary mirror being built on top of a mountain in Chile.

The Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) will survey the entire visible sky every week, creating an unprecedented public archive of data – about 6 million gigabytes per year, the equivalent of shooting roughly 800,000 images with a regular eight-megapixel digital camera every night, but of much higher quality and scientific value. Its deep and frequent cosmic vistas will help answer critical questions about the nature of dark energy and dark matter and aid studies of near-Earth asteroids, Kuiper belt objects, the structure of our galaxy and many other areas of astronomy and fundamental physics.

So it occurred to me today that James Cameron is an advisor to Planetary Resources asteroid mining project.

Is that because of his past experience mining on Pandora?

Planetary Resources announcement underway.

Planetary Resources have unveiled their intentions to mine asteroids for minerals. The first phase of their plan involves sending telescopes into space in the next 18-24 months, which will look out for resource rich minerals. Within five years the company says it could launch its first robotic mission to a near Earth asteroid.

The company hopes to mine precious metals like Platinum to bring back to Earth. It will also look for asteroids rich in water, which currently costs up to US$20,000 per kilogram to send to space. That could help future manned space missions not only as a source of drinking water, but it could be split into hydrogen for fuel and oxygen for astronauts as well.

If you’re quick you can still check out the live feed here. Check out the earlier story on the company here.

Update: The company is shady on exactly when asteroid mining would actually begin, saying now that they ‘hope to have identified the asteroids of interest within the next decade’.