The journey time from Earth orbit to Mars could be slashed from six months to less than six weeks if NASA’s idea for a nuclear fusion-powered engine takes off. The space-flight engine is being developed by a team led by Bill Emrich, an engineer at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. He predicts his fusion drive would be able to generate 300 times the thrust of any chemical rocket engine and use only a fraction of its fuel mass. That means interplanetary missions would no longer need to wait for a “shortest journey” launch window. “You can launch when you want,” Emrich says.
January 17th, 2003
White House Go-Ahead On NASA Nuclear Prometheus Project
NASA’s 2004 budget request, officially embargoed until U.S. President George W. Bush presents his spending plan to Congress in February, contains significantly increased funding for a revamped nuclear propulsion research effort the U.S. space agency is now calling Project Prometheus. A source familiar with the NASA budget request for 2004 told Space News that the amount of money the White House is requesting strongly suggests an expansion of the program. “There is significant money in the budget for Prometheus,” the source said. “More than I expected to see.”
December 18th, 2002
NASA Testing K9 Rover in New “Marscape” for Future Missions
ASA scientists and engineers are testing new technologies using a K9 rover in a newly built
December 16th, 2002
Sun Power For the Rest of Us Business 2.0
Solar panels are still a rarity in most communities in the United States. You might ask, why are there so few? But given the true economics of solar power today, it makes more sense to ask, why are there so many? These economics might be changing. While traditional solar technology keeps getting more efficient, the cost of the silicon semiconductor technology that underpins traditional systems keeps costs high. But silicon is not the only semiconductor that can transform sunshine into electric current. A startup, Konarka, uses titanium dioxide powder (more commonly used as white pigment) instead. TiO2 is photovoltaic — it turns photons (light) into electrons (electricity). Konarka dyes the TiO2 dark, so it will absorb more light, and melds the powder into a uniform substance that conducts electricity. (The powder by itself does not.)
November 20th, 2002
Space Elevator Upstarts Settle Down To Business
Constructing a vertical railroad stretching into space is no longer wistful fantasy carried in science fiction novels. Just ask the folks at HighLift Systems in Seattle, Washington. Selling the idea of a space elevator, however, takes a lot of ground floor shoe leather and handshakes. For the last few months, officials at HighLift Systems have been talking it up with an alphabet soup of government agencies, like NASA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), as well as the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO). Meanwhile, testing of prototype space elevator equipment is near at hand. And by far the strongest link that keeps the concept on the straight and narrow is worldwide work now underway by the carbon nanotube research community. Overall, progress is being made in attaining the lofty goal of operating a 21st century elevator to space.
November 19th, 2002
An Unexpected Discovery Could Yield A Full Spectrum Solar Cell
Researchers in the Materials Sciences Division (MSD) of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, working with crystal-growing teams at Cornell University and Japan’s Ritsumeikan University, have learned that the band gap of the semiconductor indium nitride is not 2 electron volts (2 eV) as previously thought, but instead is a much lower 0.7 eV. The serendipitous discovery means that a single system of alloys incorporating indium, gallium, and nitrogen can convert virtually the full spectrum of sunlight — from the near infrared to the far ultraviolet — to electrical current.
November 14th, 2002
Microtechnology: From Desert Wars To The Planet Mars Small Times
Some day soon, members of the American armed forces who have to fight in a sweltering desert climate may wear suits fitted with tiny, lightweight heat pumps to keep them cool. In the future, microreactors the size of a cigarette lighter might run a laptop computer for weeks, instead of using batteries that die in hours. Minuscule medical devices would manufacture chemicals such as insulin right inside the human body. And humans may travel to Mars.
November 13th, 2002
New fabric touted as radiation-proof
Scientists have created what is claimed to be the world’s first radiation-proof fabric which provides as much protection as a lead vest but at a fraction of the weight. Instead of heavy metals to block radiation and X-rays, the new fabric called Demron is non toxic, lead-free and fused between two layers of woven fabric.
November 12th, 2002
DARE for Planetary Exploration
Balloons outfitted with innovative steering devices and robot probes could be the future of planetary exploration. Dr. Alexey Pankine, a fellow at the NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts (NIAC), presented an analysis of balloon applications for planetary science at the World Space Congress in Houston, Texas last month. His study, entitled Directed Aerial Robot Explorers or DARE, is funded by NIAC.
November 6th, 2002
The Chameleon Spacesuit: Light-weight Life-saver
When astronauts have to step outside for a space walk or a stroll across the Moon, they must first face a daunting challenge that would overwhelm an ordinary person: getting dressed. The heavy and complex suits currently in use are hardly the sort of outfit you can just throw on. And even in the microgravity of orbit, moving and working while wearing the massive contraptions during an extravehicular activity (EVA) can quickly exhaust an astronaut. So Ed Hodgson of Hamilton Sundstrand, a NASA contractor, has developed a scheme for building suits that will feel more like a set of coveralls and less like a suit of medieval armor.