SSPI approach: • Enabling technologies developed at Caltech • Ultra-light deployable space structures • High efficiency ultra-light photovoltaic (PV) • Phased Array and Power Transmission • Integration of concentrating PV, radiators, MW power conversion and antennas in single cell unit • Localized electronics and control for system robustness, electronic beam steering • Identical spacecraft flying in formation • Target is specific power over 2000 Watts per kilogram. This would cost competitive with ground-based power.
Category: space travel – Page 454
This is the darkest material on Earth
And it’s changing everything from art to space exploration. http://cnn.it/2hPFph3
Skycorp planning to make space industries
The moon is largely made up of metal oxides that could yield new supplies of platinum — perhaps enough to drive prices for the precious metal down to $300 from $1,400 an ounce today. Processing metals on the moon does not require chemicals. Different levels of heat can be used to make different metals. Cheaper platinum will make fuel cells that are so much more effective than combustion engines.
Astronomers Detect Almond-Scented Molecule That Will Help Solve Interstellar Radiation Mystery
There’s an unidentified source of infrared throughout the universe. By looking at the specific wavelengths of the light, scientists think that come from carbon—but not just any carbon, a special kind where the atoms are arranged in multiple hexagonal rings. No one has been able to spot one of these multi-ring “polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons,” or PAHs in space—even though the infrared emissions imply that these PAHs should make up 10 percent of the universe’s carbon. Now, scientists have found a new hint.
A team of researchers in the United States and Russia are now reporting spotting a special single-carbon-ring-containing molecule, called benzonitrile, with a radio telescope in a part of space called the Taurus Molecular Cloud-1. Benzonitrile only has one hexagonal ring of carbon, so it’s not a poly cyclic aromatic hydrocarbon itself. But it could be a potential precursor and could help explain the mysterious radiation.
Before you even ask, yes, this “aromatic” benzonitrile molecule has a smell. “I can tell you from personal experience it smells like almonds,” study first author Brett McGuire from the National Radio Astronomy Observatory told Gizmodo, who has encountered the molecule in the lab.
Return to the MOON Photo
This op-ed originally appeared in the Dec. 12, 2017 of SpaceNews magazine.
America’s space program has long held a special place in the public’s imagination, but NASA missions are limited by budget constraints. NASA must use its funding wisely to implement balanced, cost-efficient programs to develop enabling technologies, such as technologies to power future NASA missions. Speaking as the former project manager of three successful missions — Voyager, Galileo, and Cassini — and the canceled Prometheus-Icy Moons Orbiter, I have a unique perspective to share.