The test is actually the RemoveDEBRIS satellite’s second trick: in September, it successfully deployed a spider-like web that was meant to grab space junk out of the sky.
The team at the University of Surrey is now preparing for its third and final test: RemoveDEBRIS will inflate a sail that will slowly drag it into Earth’s atmosphere where it will burn up and be destroyed.
READ MORE: Space junk harpooned like whale in orbit-cleanup test [Associated Press].
Stargazers will get a close-up look at Earth’s natural satellite this week thanks to the brightest supermoon event of the year.
A supermoon phenomenon occurs when a full moon, on its oval-shaped orbit, is at its closest to us, known as perigee, which is about 356,000 kilometres as measured from the centre of the Earth to the centre of the moon.
It takes place when the moon’s orbit brings it to the closest point to Earth while at the same time bathed in sunlight, giving the moon its bright appearance.
Electric cars could be charged at any time and any place.
It could reliably supply energy 99 per cent of the time, at six-times the intensity of solar farms on earth, he said.
Chinese scientists first plan to build and launch small to medium-sized solar power stations to be launched into the stratosphere to generate electricity, between 2021 and 2025.
When a star is born, a chaotic light show ensues.
NASA’s long-lived Hubble Space Telescope captured vivid bright clumps moving through the cosmos at some 1,000 light years from Earth. The space agency called these objects clear “smoking gun” evidence of a newly formed star — as new stars blast colossal amounts of energy-rich matter into space, known as plasma.
Seen as the vivid blue, ephemeral clumps in the top center of the new image below, these are telltale signs of an energy-rich gas, or plasma, colliding with a huge collection of dust and gas in deep space.
Ceramic aerogels have been protecting industrial equipment and space-bound scientific instruments for decades, thanks to their incredible lightness and ability to withstand intense heat. The problem is they can be pretty brittle. Now, a team led by researchers at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) has developed a new ceramic aerogel that’s far hardier and more flexible, even after repeated exposure to wild temperature swings.
Beam Me Down
Needless to say, the biggest problem for a floating power plant is figuring out how to get the energy back down to Earth.
The scientists behind the project are still sorting that part out. But right now, the plan is to have solar arrays in space capture light from the sun and then beam electricity down to a facility on Earth in the form of a microwave or a laser, according to The Sydney Morning Herald.
Alvin Retamar, Chief Science Research Specialist and Project Leader of Philippine Earth Data Resource and Observation Center (PEDRO) said some institutions they have been helping are even calling for higher level training in the space sciences.
“In some areas where we are providing support they are already keen on developing aerospace engineering degree programs,” Retamar said.
Original post from ABS-CBN News
MANILA — The Philippines has enough brainpower to staff a proposed space agency, officials from the Department of Science and Technology (DOST) said Wednesday.
A bill creating the Philippine Space Agency (PhilSA) was passed in the House of Representatives last December, while counterpart legislation is pending in the Senate.
A new study shows that Mars may very well be volcanically active. Nobody’s seen direct evidence of volcanism; no eruptions or magma or anything like that. Rather, the proof is in the water.
In the past, Mars was a much warmer and wetter place. Now, Mars is still home to lots of water, mostly as vapor and ice. But in August 2018, a study published in Science showed a 20-km-wide (12-mile-wide) lake of liquid water underneath solid ice at the Martian South Pole.
The authors of that study suggested that the water was probably kept in liquid state by the pressure from above, and by dissolved salt content.
