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Category: space

The coldest place beyond Earth is artificial, too. Last summer, astronauts activated an experiment called the Cold Atom Lab aboard the International Space Station. The lab has attained temperatures 30 million times lower than empty space. “I’ve been working on this idea, off and on, for over 20 years,” says Robert Thompson of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab, one of the researchers who devised the experiment. “It feels incredible to witness it up and operating.”

What happens when matter gets that cold?

If Thompson sounds excited, it’s because ultra-cold atoms behave in fascinating and potentially useful ways. For one thing, they lose their individual identities, fusing to form a bizarre state of matter called a Bose-Einstein condensate.

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NASA and Northrop Grumman have made the decision to fly the L-1011 Stargazer and Pegasus XL rocket carrying NASA’s Ionospheric Connection Explorer, or ICON, spacecraft back to its integration facility at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. The ferry flight will take place early next week. Returning to the environmentally-controlled integration facility allows the team to further investigate off-nominal data observed during the Nov. 7 launch attempt.

Once the investigation is complete, a new launch date will be determined. ICON will launch out of Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. The ICON spacecraft, which uses Northrop Grumman’s LEOStar-2 platform, is monitored at all times and remains healthy.

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The best time to see the meteor showers will be between midnight and dawn on both mornings, wherever you are in the world. If you live in an urban area, you may want to drive to a place that isn’t littered with city lights that will obstruct your view.

Find an open area with a wide view of the sky, and don’t forget to bundle up. If you want to photograph the Leonid meteor shower, NASA suggests using a camera with manual focus on a tripod with a shutter release cable or built-in timer, fitted with a wide-angle lens.

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Due to unfavorable weather conditions, the launch of Northrop Grumman Corporation’s #Antares rocket with #Cygnus cargo spacecraft is now targeted for 4:01 a.m. EST on Saturday, Nov. 17 from NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility. The spacecraft will deliver more than 7,400 pounds of science & research, crew supplies and hardware to the International Space Station. Get the latest updates: https://go.nasa.gov/2qW8lJb

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LEXINGTON, Ky. (NOVEMBER 15, 2018) – Space Tango, a leader in the commercialization of space through R&D, bioengineering and manufacturing in microgravity, today announced ST-42, a fully autonomous robotic orbital platform designed specifically for scalable manufacturing in space. Launching in the mid 2020’s, ST-42 aims to harness the unique environment of microgravity to produce high value products across industries; from patient therapeutics to advanced technology products that have the potential to revolutionize industries here on Earth. ST-42 is an extension of the International Space Station’s (ISS) capabilities, and NASA’s creation of a robust commercial marketplace in low Earth orbit (LEO).

ST-42 will bring the economics of production in orbit into reality coupling autonomy with the reduced cost and larger number of launch vehicle providers. Space Tango expects the platform to be at the forefront of new breakthroughs in knowledge discovery, therapeutic solutions and manufacturing, and to provide the required capabilities for creation of new biomedical and technology product sectors in the commercial Space economy.

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Tokamaks like EAST could help us do just that. They’re devices that use magnetic fields to control plasma in a way that could support stable nuclear fusion, and it’s this plasma that EAST heated to such an incredible temperature.

Going Nuclear

Not only is EAST’s new plasma temperature milestone remarkable because, wow, it’s really hot, it’s also the minimum temperature scientists believe is needed to produce a self-sustaining nuclear fusion reaction on Earth.

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