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Category: space

Robert Adams updated the work on a phase 2 Pulsed Fission-Fusion (PuFF) Propulsion Concept. Robert works at the NASA Marshall Space Flight Center. This system should be able to achieve 15 kW/kg and 30,000 seconds of ISP. This will be orders of magnitude improvement over competing systems such as nuclear electric, solar electric, and nuclear thermal propulsion that suffer from lower available power and inefficient thermodynamic cycles. Puff will meet an unfilled capability needed for manned missions to the outer planets and vastly faster travel throughout the solar system.

A tiny lithium deuteride and uranium 235 pellet will be fired into a shell of structure that will complete a circuit and generate high voltages and pressures that will compress the pellet and cause fission and fusion to occur.

Heat from fission fuel increases the reactivity of the fusion fuel and the neutron flux may breed additional fuel to fuse. Additionally, the neutron flux from the fusion fuel will induce fission. This coupling can drastically reduce the driving energy required to initiate the burn and drastically improve output. This concept has been examined in the past by Winterberg and is being investigated in support of a Pulsed Fission-Fusion (PuFF) engine concept at Marshall Space Flight Center and the University of Alabama in Huntsville.

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CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — NASA’s sun-skimming spacecraft, the Parker Solar Probe, is surprising scientists with its unprecedented close views of our star.

Scientists released the first results from the mission Wednesday. They observed bursts of energetic particles never seen before on such a small scale as well as switchback-like reversals in the out-flowing solar magnetic field that seem to whip up the solar wind.

NASA’s Nicola Fox compared this unexpected switchback phenomenon to the cracking of a whip.

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An instrument aboard NASA’s New Horizons is sending back data that could help scientists predict when the unmanned deep-space probe will reach interstellar space. Using the Solar Wind Around Pluto (SWAP) instrument aboard the spacecraft, a team of researchers led by Southwest Research Institute are learning more about how the solar winds change in the outer regions of the solar system.

Though the solar system may look like a big ball of nuclear fire at the center surrounded by a scattering of tiny, solid objects sitting in a lot of very hard vacuum, all that nothingness is permeated by the solar winds – an unceasing flow of ionized particles from the Sun that forms an uneven bubble around our family of planets called the heliosphere.

The outer limit of the heliosphere is where it encounters materials from interstellar space. This is the point where the solar wind slow down to subsonic speeds due to interacting and then is stopped altogether by the interstellar medium. These two points are called, respectively, the termination shock and the heliopause.

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3D printing technology is changing and will change pretty much everything. Besides printing the intermittent novelty project at home with a desktop printer, additive manufacturing or 3D printing technology is being used in a large group of businesses changing the manner in which we design, build, create, and even eat.

NASA is planning to use 3D printing technology to construct housing on Mars for future colonies while organizations like byFlow are using the emerging technology to create food and intricate edible tableware. The uses and applications appear to be both limitless and exciting, yet this is only the beginning. Things being what they are, what sort of changes can we expect to see in the medical industry?

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In pouring over data from Australia’s Desert Fireball Network (DFN) — a network of cameras set up across Australia to capture images of minimoon fireballs, or minimoons entering Earth’s atmosphere and burning up — a group of researchers have identified what they think is a minimoon meteor, or fireball.

This is the second time that researchers have identified a TCO blazing through the atmosphere before hitting the ground. In finding the fireball, named DN160822_03, the researchers think that it exploded over the Australian desert on Aug. 22, 2016.

Related: Earth Has ‘Minimoons,’ and They May Solve Asteroid Mysteries.

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