Buildings of the future could be “clothed” in a flexible, power-generating material that looks like denim. The Canadian company developing the material says it can be draped over just about any shape – greatly expanding the number of places where solar power can be generated. The inventors hope their power-generating material will enable architects to design complex, curvy buildings that can nevertheless carry solar cells. One day, consumer products such as personal stereos and cellphones might also harness “denim-power” to charge their batteries.
January 22nd, 2003
Nuclear fusion could power NASA spacecraft New Scientist
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 21st, 2003
Australian bush fires closed Deep Space Network New Scientist
The firestorms that devastated the Canberra region at the weekend, killing four people, also forced NASA’s Deep Space Network facility offline for four hours, it has emerged. The DSN installation, 40 km from the Australian capital, is responsible for tracking and controlling deep space spacecraft from the southern hemisphere. There are two other tracking stations in the northern hemisphere.
December 17th, 2002
Microbes from edge of space revived New Scientist
Microbes collected from the edge of space have been brought back to life in the lab. This enabled the high-flying organisms to be identified, almost two years after they were found in air samples collected by a weather balloon cruising at 41,000 metres (135,000 feet) over southern India. How the bugs got there is not known, but there are three possibilities: they were carried up on winds, they sneaked into the samples on Earth or they have flown through space and are aliens making their way down to our planet.
December 6th, 2002
Asteroids prompted Martian flash floods New Scientist
The torrential downpours and flash floods that carved the gigantic river valleys on Mars may have resulted from a ferocious asteroid bombardments billions of years ago. The valleys indicate a wet past, but researchers have struggled to explain how Mars could ever have been warm enough to sustain rainfall that could gouge the Martian valleys. But, according to Teresa Segura, at the University of Colorado, Boulder, and her colleagues, the frequent asteroid impacts that showered Mars 3.5 billion years ago could have warmed the planet for thousands of years at a time and created conditions for heavy rainfall.
October 23rd, 2002
NASA prepares to boldly go New Scientist
Ever since astronauts last set foot on the Moon in 1972, the world has been waiting for a grand vision of humanity’s next foray deep into space. Our visits have been restricted to the space stations barely 400 kilometres above the Earth’s surface and, burdened with the spiralling costs of the International Space Station, NASA has kept silent about the future. But now it has become clear that the agency never stopped dreaming of sending people into the unknown. Last week, without fanfare or any grand announcement, it quietly unveiled its blueprint for the future. It calls for a space station close to the Moon that will ultimately serve as a gateway for missions all over the Solar System.
October 23rd, 2002
Space station radiation shields ‘disappointing’ New Scientist
Radiation levels on the International Space Station are as high as they were on the antiquated Russian space station Mir, in spite of NASA’s attempts to clad the ISS with better shielding. If NASA can’t protect astronauts, its vision of sending a crew into deep space may come to nothing. Data collected by NASA and a Russian-Austrian collaboration show that astronauts on the ISS are subjected to about 1 millisievert of radiation per day, about the same as someone would get from natural sources on Earth in a whole year. Spending three months in these conditions translates into about one-tenth the long-term cancer risk incurred by regular smokers.
October 18th, 2002
Mars lander undergoes drop test New Scientist
A simulated Mars landing took place at a remote airfield in Shropshire, England, at dawn on Friday, in a crucial last test for the UK’s first Martian probe. The trial run tested the parachute that will slow the Beagle 2’s rapid descent to the red planet’s surface. It was a success, with a dummy payload safely carried to the ground from a height of 90 metres. A prototype of the unique parachute design underwent testing in Arizona in September, but Friday’s experiment tested the final design.
September 26th, 2002
Tough Earth bug may be from Mars New Scientist
A hardy microbe that can withstand huge doses of radiation could have evolved this ability on Mars. That is the conclusion of Russian scientists who say it would take far longer than life has existed here for the bug to evolve that ability in Earth’s clement conditions. They suggest the harsher environment of Mars makes it a more likely birthplace.
August 20th, 2002
Prototype Mars rover passes final field trial New Scientist
A prototype of two remote-controlled Mars rovers due for launch in 2003 has passed its final field tests in the desert in northern Arizona. NASA’s Field Integrated Design and Operations (FIDO) robot is a smaller, stripped-down model of the Mars Exploration Rovers – two identical robots that will explore the surface of Mars after touching down in January 2004. The rovers will have much greater mobility than the 1997 Pathfinder, and travel as far in one Martian day as the Pathfinder did in its lifetime.