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Category: space – Page 227

The space advocacy movement has announced an initiative to found the Mars Technology Institute, which aims to create the technologies necessary for establishing a presence on the red planet.

The Mars Society is a space advocacy organization established in 1998 by Dr. Robert Zubrin and other members. The association studies settlement technologies for Mars and educates the public on the benefits of such missions.

In recent developments, the space advocacy movement has announced an initiative to found the Mars Technology Institute. This endeavor aims to create the technologies necessary for establishing a presence on the red planet.

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General-purpose automation could radically improve society by vastly accelerating construction, manufacturing, and R&D. Just as the scale and complexity of today’s cities would have been unimaginable 200 years ago, we may see a similar factor of value growth over the next 50 years. Quality of life may dramatically increase as well. I envision that billions could be lifted out of poverty and the average person may live like today’s wealthiest top 1%. Space colonization might be made feasible. Keep in mind these projections are highly speculative. Nonetheless, it is worth considering the remarkable possibilities! #automation #tech #robotics #futurism

The rise of humanoid robots didn’t happen overnight, but a kind of perfect storm has accelerated the phenomenon over the past year and change. The foundation, of course, is decades of research.

Toiling away in research facilities and R&D departments laid the ground work for a new generation of technology. The necessary software and components have come a long way, driven by innovations in industrial robotics, autonomous driving and even the smartphone industry.

And then a global pandemic happened. The events of the last few years have been important for two deeply interconnected reasons. First, investment in robotics has skyrocketed. Second, staffing continues to be an issue. You could say that these conditions have created a humanoid-shaped hole that a robot could walk right through.

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Recovery teams participate in field rehearsals in preparation for the retrieval of the sample return capsule from NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission at the Department of Defense’s Utah Test and Training Range. The sample was collected from the asteroid Bennu in October 2020 by NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft and will return to Earth on September 24th, landing under parachute at the Utah Test and Training Range. Credit: NASA/Keegan Barber.

The OSIRIS-REx team also thought a lot about conditions on the ground itself. Late summer is monsoon season in the desert, so heavy rains could saturate the silty ground. Wet-cement-like mud would make driving difficult if off-road vehicles are required to help helicopters find and transport the capsule.

“We should know by the end of monsoon season how much precipitation we’ve received and the condition of the salt flats,” said Eric Nelson, a U.S. Army meteorologist supporting the mission. “A good indicator is Bonneville Speed Week, an annual racing event in August.” Since it went off without a hitch, “we’re probably okay.”

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A 65-year old perplexing question may have finally been answered: Why is the Sun’s atmosphere hotter than its surface?

For over six decades, scientists have been baffled by a cosmic mystery of scorching proportions: Why is the Sun’s atmosphere, known as the corona, hotter than its surface?

This enigma contradicting conventional wisdom that things cool down the farther they are from a heat source has puzzled solar physicists until now, revealed the European Space Agency.

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NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover has generated oxygen on Mars for the 16th and final time with the agency saying it exceeded expectations.

A device on the rover is known as MOXIE (Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment).

Since Perseverance first landed on Mars in 2021, MOXIE has generated 122 grams of oxygen. According to a NASA blog post about the success of MOXIE’s mission, this is about the amount a small dog breathes in 10 hours. Its 16th run on August 7 saw the microwave-sized device produce 9.8 grams of breathable oxygen.

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Vertical farming saves water, land, and energy — and it could be how we grow food on Mars.

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Vertical farming is a type of indoor farming where crops are grown in stacked layers, rather than spread out across large plots of land. These farms offer many benefits over traditional ones, including the prospect of better access to healthy foods in underserved communities.

Because vertical farms use LED lighting, their output isn’t subject to the natural elements that typically affect plant production such as adverse weather, insects, and seasons.

They’re better for the environment because they require less energy and put out less pollution, without a need for heavy machinery, pesticides, or fertilizers. Additionally, soil-less farming methods like aeroponics require just 10% of the amount of water consumed by outdoor farms.

Adopting these sustainable farming practices could lead to a monumental shift in how we produce food on Earth, and enable us to create a reliable food source beyond our planet.

Continue reading “Vertical farms could take over the world | Hard Reset by Freethink” | >

Neutrinos, the tricky little particles that just stream through the Universe like it’s virtually nothing, may actually interact with light after all.

According to new calculations, interactions between neutrinos and photons can take place in powerful magnetic fields that can be found in the plasma wrapped around stars.

It’s a discovery that could help us understand why the Sun’s atmosphere is so much hotter than its surface, say Hokkaido University physicist Kenzo Ishikawa and Yutaka Tobita, a physicist from Hokkaido University of Science – and, of course, to study the mysterious ghost particle in greater detail.

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A team of researchers, led by a University of Hawai’i (UH) at Manoa planetary scientist, discovered that high energy electrons in Earth’s plasma sheet are contributing to weathering processes on the Moon’s surface and, importantly, the electrons may have aided the formation of water on the lunar surface. The study was published today in Nature Astronomy.

Understanding the concentrations and distributions of water on the Moon is critical to understanding its formation and evolution, and to providing water resources for future human exploration. The new discovery may also help explain the origin of the water ice previously discovered in the lunar permanently shaded regions.

Due to Earth’s magnetism, there is a force field surrounding the planet, referred to as the magnetosphere, that protects Earth from space weathering and damaging radiation from the Sun. Solar wind pushes the magnetosphere and reshapes it, making a long tail on the night side. The plasma sheet within this magnetotail is a region consisting of high energy electrons and ions that may be sourced from Earth and the solar wind.

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