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Category: space travel

This ancient interstellar dust formed the Earth and the solar system.

Particles collected from Earth’s upper atmosphere, originally deposited by comets, are older than our Solar System, scientists say – and these fine bits of interstellar dust could teach us about how planets and stars form from the very beginning.

These cosmic particles have lived through at least 4.6 billion years and travelled across incredible distances, according to the new research into their chemical composition.

The international team of scientists behind this study are confident that we’re looking at the very basic materials making up the planetary bodies currently whizzing around our Sun. For anyone studying the origins of the Universe, it’s a fantastic finding.

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James Woodward and the Space Studies Institute has a Phase 2 NASA Innovative Advanced funded study. They are looking at the implementation of an innovative thrust producing technology for use in NASA missions involving in space main propulsion.

Dr. Heidi Fearn explained in a video made in 2017 how just scaling the power and size of the Mach effect propulsion causes problems. (heat, arcing and other problems). They currently believe they can scale the device to one newton of propulsion and then create large arrays of the devices for more thrust. The constant thrust could last for years or decades by using a nuclear power source.

For Mach effect propellantless propulsion it will be better to go to an array of smaller devices.

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The Kennedy Space Center might be getting a major upgrade and expansion soon if Elon Musk gets his way. NASA published a plan submitted by SpaceX that dramatically reimagines the company’s presence at KSC in Cape Canaveral, Florida. The plans include everything from a control tower that resembles a flying saucer to a “rocket garden,” showcasing futuristic designs that will expand the space company’s footprint and potential influence within the US agency.

NASA published a draft environmental review for the proposed SpaceX Operations Area, as first reported by Florida Today on Friday. According to the document, SpaceX is seeking permission to build on a 67-acre patch of land about one mile north of KSC’s visitor center complex.

SpaceX wants to build a 133,000-square-foot Falcon hangar to process the used boosters and other rocket materials that it recovers. The hangar would facilitate more efficient recycling of the materials which could potentially save the company billions of dollars per launch.

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A recent survey of 2,541 Americans by Pew Research Center shows that priorities felt by people are not the same intended by NASA. But: 1) Where the questions t…he most appropriate ones, in order to understand what people really think? 2) Is the NASA’s indicated priority, re-prioritization of human spaceflight by still focusing only on trained astronauts, the best strategic policy, considering the global civilization as the main stakeholder, or even just the US people stakeholder? 3) Which questions were missing, in your opinion, in this survey?

The Trump administration has vowed to make America great again in spaceflight, and the centerpiece of its space policy to date has been a re-prioritization of human spaceflight as central to NASA’s activities. As part of this initiative, the White House has sought to reduce funding for satellites to observe environmental changes on Earth and eliminate NASA’s office of education.

However, a new survey of 2,541 Americans by Pew Research Center, which aims to represent the views of US adults, finds that these views appear to be out of step with public priorities.

The survey asked respondents about their top priorities for NASA, and the highest support came for “monitor key parts of the Earth’s climate system” (63 percent) and “monitor asteroids/objects that could hit the Earth” (62 percent). Sending astronauts to Mars (18 percent), and the Moon (13 percent), lagged far behind as top priorities for respondents.

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Adriano Autino, Founder and President of Space Renaissance International and Vice President of Space Renaissance Italia, will be present at UNISPACE+50 event at… UNOOSA with a delegation of the two associations to share SRI vision and projects. Stay tuned!

18 — 21 June 2018, Vienna, Austria.

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It was a good week for physics as a team with members from Australia and Switzerland invented a flux capacitor able to break time-reversal symmetry. They proposed a device based on quantum tunneling of magnetic flux around a capacitor. And another team with members from across the U.S. reported on a gravitational wave event that likely signaled the creation of a black hole—the merger of two neutron stars.

In biology news, a team of engineers led by Sinisa Vukelic invented a noninvasive technique to correct vision. Like LASIK, it uses lasers but is non-surgical and has few side-effects. And an international team of researchers found what they describe as the mother of all lizards in the Italian Alps, the oldest known lizard fossil, from approximately 240 million years ago. Also, a team at the University of Sydney found that walking faster could make you live longer. People do not even need to walk more, the team reported, they just need to pick up the pace of their normal stride to see an improvement in several health factors. And a team from Cal Poly Pomona discovered how microbes survive clean rooms and contaminate spacecraft—and it involved the cleaning agents themselves.

In other news, a team of researchers from the University of California and the University of Southern Queensland announced that they had identified 121 giant planets that may have habitable moons. And a team at Stanford University found that wars and clan structure might explain a strange biological event that occurred 7,000 years ago—male genetic diversity appeared to collapse for a time. Also, a team of researchers from MIT and Harvard University report the development of a 3D printer that can print data sets as physical objects—offering far more realistic, nearly true-color renderings.

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