Lifeboat Foundation

A SCIENTIST revealed how NASA has a last-ditch system in place in the event a huge space rock is “due to impact Earth in one to three weeks” during a planet-saving warning.

A groundbreaking new image provides direct evidence of a ‘cosmic web’ of gas that links every galaxy in the universe.

Last summer, scientists found a “ghost particle” in Antarctica. Now we know more about where it came from: a mysterious galaxy 3.8 billion light-years away.

Their initial discovery had seemed like a contradiction because most other polymer fibres embrittle in the cold. But after many years of working on the problem, the group of researchers have discovered that silk’s cryogenic toughness is based on its nano-scale fibrills. Sub-microscopic order and hierarchy allows a silk to withstand temperatures of down to −200 C. And possibly even lower, which would make these classic natural luxury fibres ideal for applications in the depths of chilly outer-space.

The interdisciplinary team examined the behaviour and function of several animal silks cooled down to liquid nitrogen temperature of −196 C. The fibres included spider silks but the study focused on the thicker and much more commercial fibres of the wild silkworm Antheraea pernyi.

In an article published today in Materials Chemistry Frontiers, the team was able to show not only ‘that’ but also ‘how’ silk increases its toughness under conditions where most materials would become very brittle. Indeed, silk seems to contradict the fundamental understanding of polymer science by not losing but gaining quality under really cold conditions by becoming both stronger and more stretchable. This study examines the ‘how’ and explains the ‘why’. It turns out that the underlying processes rely on the many nano-sized fibrils that make up the core of a silk fibre.

You probably hear a lot of news from NASA’s many amazing Mars missions: the Curiosity rover, InSight, MRO, and more. NASA is good at promoting their stuff of course, but also the images returned from all these missions are truly wonderful.

You may not hear as much from the European Space Agency’s Mars Express mission. Well, you may have heard about the lander Beagle 2: It set down safely on the surface, but two of the four solar panels didn’t deploy, dooming that part of that mission.

Catalan designer eugeni quitllet is an acclaimed industrial designer who describes himself as a ‘disoñador,’ a spanish contraction of designer and dreamer. his invented future is gravity-free, with incredible aesthetics summarized in a combination of digital precision and flowing curves. eugeni creates bestselling objects between drawings and sculptures, mastering fullness and voids to reveal elegant silhouettes hidden in the material.

galaXsea envisions the first space solar sail boat 3D-printed in space.

Researchers at the Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology (Skoltech) in Russia have recently introduced a new strategy to enhance interactions between humans and robotic swarms, called SwarmTouch. This strategy, presented in a paper pre-published on arXiv, allows a human operator to communicate with a swarm of nano-quadrotor drones and guide their formation, while receiving tactile feedback in the form of vibrations.

“We are working in the field of swarm of drones and my previous research in the field of haptics was very helpful in introducing a new frontier of tactile human-swarm interactions,” Dzmitry Tsetserukou, Professor at Skoltech and head of Intelligent Space Robotics laboratory, told TechXplore. “During our experiments with the swarm, however, we understood that current interfaces are too unfriendly and difficult to operate.”

Continue reading “SwarmTouch: A tactile interaction strategy for human-swarm communication” »

Time, as far as we know, moves only in one direction. But last year, researchers found events in some gamma-ray burst pulses that seemed to repeat themselves as though they were going backwards in time.

Now, new research suggests a potential answer for what might be causing this time reversibility effect. If waves within the relativistic jets that produce gamma-ray bursts travel faster than light — at ‘superluminal’ speeds — one of the effects could be time reversibility.

Such speeding waves could actually be possible. We know that when light is travelling through a medium (such as gas or plasma), its phase velocity is slightly slower than c — the speed of light in a vacuum, and, as far as we know, the ultimate speed limit of the Universe.

A robotic Japanese cargo ship successfully arrived at the International Space Station Saturday (Sept. 28) carrying more than 4 tons of supplies, including new batteries for the outpost’s solar power grid.

The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency’s (JAXA) HTV-8 cargo ship pulled up to the space station at 7:12 a.m. EDT (1112 GMT), where it was captured by a robotic arm wielded by NASA astronaut Christina Koch inside the orbiting lab. The station and HTV-8, also known as Kounotori 8 (Kounotori means “white stork” in Japanese), were soaring 262 miles (422 kilometers) over Angola in southern Africa at the time.

“What you all have done is a testament to what we can accomplish when international teams work together towards a common goal,” Koch radioed to NASA’s Mission Control in Houston and flight controllers at JAXA’s Tsukuba Space Center in Japan. “We’re honored to have Kounotori on board, and look forward to a successful and productive mission together.”