Join S-Booster 2019!
We will invite space-based business ideas from the Asia and Oceania regions!The Contest facilitates the realization of each business idea through open innovation with Japanese companies, and also provides financial support, business coaching and other assistances. Promoting Win-Win Business Cooperation Between Asia and Japan!
Learning to deal with lignin is important for recycling and space settlements. Unused biomass on space settlements and long-term voyages is something that just can’t be tolerated. The same problem exists in dealing with plant waste on earth. A new process helps convert it into a precursor for polyester, which can be used for all kinds of other materials.
Plant cells are composed of three main substances: cellulose, hemicellulose, and lignin. According to Yining Zeng, Michael E. Himmel, and Shi-You Ding in Biotechnology for Biofuels, the composition amounts to “40 to 50% of cellulose, 15 to 25% hemicelluloses, 20 to 25% lignin, and 5 to 10% other components.[1]” For the most part, the only truly useful part is the cellulose and the hemicellulose. The lignin is usually just thrown away. The most common use is fuel for heating units. That’s right. They just burn it.
We can’t keep doing it that way. However, there really isn’t an alternative. Until now. A recent article in Science Daily referenced a new journal article about the use of Novosphingobium aromaticivorans. This is “genus of Gram-negative bacteria that includes N. taihuense, which can degrade aromatic compounds such as phenol, aniline, nitrobenzene and phenanthrene.[2]” Using genetic engineering, they deleted certain genes which allowed the microbe to convert lignin into 2-pyrone-4–6-dicarboxylic acid, which can be converted into polyester. The detailed information is available for free download and was published under the title “Funneling aromatic products of chemically depolymerized lignin into 2-pyrone-4–6-dicarboxylic acid with Novosphingobium aromaticivorans.[3]”
A paper, “The potential science and engineering value of samples delivered to Earth by Mars sample return,” authored by 71 scientists is available. According to the summary at Science Daily.
Returning samples from the surface of Mars has been a high-priority goal of the international Mars exploration community for many years. Although randomly collected samples would be potentially interesting, they would not be sufficient to answer the big questions that have motivated Mars exploration for decades. A new paper published in Meteoritics & Planetary Science describes the results of a major collaboration among 71 scientists from throughout the international science community to define specific scientific objectives for a Mars Sample Return campaign, to describe the critical measurements that would need to be done on returned samples to address the objectives, and to identify the kinds of samples that would be most likely to carry the key information.
Despite being the very first candidate planet discovered by our Kepler Mission, Kepler-1658b had a rocky road to confirmation. Ten years later, scientists have now confirmed that it is, in fact, a planet. It whips around its star every 3.85 days. Details: https://go.nasa.gov/2TDlaIl
Circa 2013
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One in five stars in our galaxy like the Sun have planets about the size of Earth and a surface temperature conducive to life, astronomers at UC Berkeley and University of Hawaii, Manoa now estimate.
The estimate was based on a statistical analysis of all the Kepler observations of NASA’s Kepler space telescope of the 200 billion stars in our galaxy.
