Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
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Category: space

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NASA Glenn Research Center, GRC, currently has several programs to advance near-term photovoltaic array development. One project is to design, build, and test two 20 kW-sized deployable solar arrays, bringing them to technology readiness level (TRL) 5, and through analysis show that they should be extensible to 300 kW-class systems (150 kw per wing). These solar arrays are approximately 1500 square meters in total area which is about an order-of-magnitude larger than the 160 square meters solar array blankets on the International Space Station (ISS).

The ISS has the four (pair) sets of solar arrays that can generate 84 to 120 kilowatts of electricity. Each of the eight solar arrays is 112 feet long by 39 feet wide and weighs 2400 pounds. There were space missions involving astronauts working in space to install and deploy the ISS solar panels.

Alliant Technical Systems, ATK, was selected in 2012 by NASA’s Space Technology Program under a Game Changing Technology competition for development of a promising lightweight and compact solar array structure. The MegaFlex™ engineering development unit, EDU, was tested at NASA GRC Plumbrook facility this year. See below for the ATK deployment of the demonstration unit.

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Drones are everywhere these days. They’re at your local park, they’re in the ocean, they’re hovering over the White House lawn, and they may even be hovering overhead armed with tear gas.

In a world that’s becoming increasingly drone friendly, there are some serious safety considerations that shouldn’t be ignored.

Specifically, government and military officials have cautioned that drones might soon be outfitted with explosives or chemical weapons and flown into either public or sensitive spaces.

With that in mind, Boeing recently developed a portable laser cannon that can eviscerate unwanted and pesky drones mid-flight. In the future, these types of lasers might be installed in all sorts of locations, including airports and sensitive military installations.

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Other self-healing plastics exist, but they take much longer to repair themselves. The ability to instantly plug holes could be especially useful to protect structures in space, where flying objects can puncture spacecraft or orbiting habitats. The plastic could be incorporated into their walls, creating a seal if the atmosphere inside a vessel starts to leak out, putting astronauts at risk.

Other fabrics take a different approach: stopping projectiles altogether. A futuristic tissue combining human skin cells with spider silk can cushion a gunshot when fired at half speed. Pure graphene, which is made up of layers of carbon one-atom thick, is being investigated for use in bulletproof armour because it can handle blows better than steel.

Journal reference: ACS Macro Letters, DOI: 10.1021/acsmacrolett.5b00315.

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The closer we get to Ceres, the largest object in our solar system’s asteroid belt, the stranger it becomes.

In June, NASA released a photo of Ceres, taken by the Dawn spacecraft from 2,700 miles away, that showed a several-mile high “pyramid” protruding from the dwarf planet’s otherwise generally smooth surface. And a new photo, taken last Wednesday from only 900 miles away, shows the mountain is four miles high and has a perimeter of previously unseen, reflective streaked slopes.

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By now, the stories of humans transcending their limitations in space have become pretty much ubiquitous. We’ve had space cyborgs, space immortals, and tons of other posthumans in space. But the new novel Edge of Dark by Brenda Cooper still represents a fascinating new approach. http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00…

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The Curiosity rover has snapped a brand new self-portrait and, like any good newbie selfie-taker, it’s figuring out its best angles—not only to show itself off, but also to show us something new about the Martian landscape it lives on.

This newest selfie was made, like the others, by stitching together panoramic shots from the rover’s Mars Hand Lens Imager. But by dropping to a low-camera angle and not an overhand shot like before, we’re suddenly able to see the full surrounding horizon. Essentially, we’re seeing not just Curiosity in this selfie; we’re also seeing what Curiosity sees. That view becomes even more pronounced in this second version of the selfie, this one with the horizon wrapped entirely around the robot:

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