Emory University chemists have developed the most potent homogeneous catalyst known for water oxidation, considered a crucial component for generating clean hydrogen fuel using only water and sunlight. The breakthrough, to be published in "Science" and released online by the journal March 11, was made in collaboration with the Paris Institute of Molecular Chemistry. 
The fastest, carbon-free molecular water oxidation catalyst (WOC) to date "has really upped the standard from the other known homogeneous WOCs," said Emory inorganic chemist Craig Hill, whose lab led the effort. "It's like a home run compared to a base hit."

On this final segment of NOVA scienceNOW’s chat with awesome MIT engineer Dava Newman, she’s asked to pick between Star Wars and 2001, talks about what foods to eat while sailing around the world (that is, when food isn’t being used to steer the boat), and shares the highest complement she’s received for her form-fitting next generation space suit. Nope, it’s not about how much it makes astronauts look like Spider Man.

A journey from Earth to Mars could eventually take just 39 days -- cutting current travel time nearly six times -- according to a rocket scientist who has the ear of the US space agency. Franklin Chang-Diaz, a former astronaut and a physicist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), says reaching the Red Planet could be dramatically quicker using his high-tech VASIMR rocket, now on track for liftoff after decades of development. The Variable Specific Impulse Magnetoplasma Rocket -- to give its full name -- is quick becoming a centerpiece of NASA's future strategy as it looks to private firms to help meet the astronomical costs of space exploration. NASA, still reeling from a political decision to cancel its Constellation program that would have returned a human to the moon by the end of the decade, has called on firms to provide new technology to power rovers or even future manned missions. Hopes are now pinned on firms like Chang-Diaz's Texas-based Ad Astra Rocket Company.

Its origins were in providing NASA with a device to manufacturer oxygen for a manned Mars colony. But when the mission was scrubbed, K.R. Sridhar set his sights back down here to the challenges on Earth, and, figuratively speaking, turned his device inside out. Instead of giving off oxygen, it would take oxygen in. And the output would be cleanly generated electricity. A 60 Minutes segment offered an introductory peek into the people and the principle behind a clean energy innovation that will be officially introduced on Wednesday, February 24. Bloom Energy, and its Bloom Box fuel cell technology, have been mum until now on the details while they have been raising a staggering $400 million in investment capital with the hope of launching what Sridhar insists will be a clean energy game-changer.

The technologies that may be deployed in future space exploration were tested on slopes of Mauna Kea this week, 9,000 feet above sea level on the Big Island of Hawaii. The collaborative science camp set up on the cold and dusty terrain of the mountain included NASA, the Canadian Space Agency, the German Aerospace Center and the University of Hawaii at Hilo's Pacific International Space Center for Exploration Systems (PISCES). Amidst the testing area crawling with lunar rovers and busy scientists were stationary structures working to hatch out an effective process that would enable future extraterrestrial colonists to "live off the land". The equipment processed the fine grained volcanic soil, similar in composition to the regolith that would be found on Mars or the Moon, in order to produce oxygen and water for survival. Not only would the manufactured oxygen be used to sustain the lives of colonists, it would also be used to create rocket fuel. Another mechanism focused the energy of the sun to create a lava-like soil fusion to be used, when cooled, to create a launch pad. The international group of scientists also worked to produce the energy, on site, that would power the processes.

"Apollo on steroids"? Forget about it. Back to the moon? Not anytime soon. NASA's new vision for space exploration is less specific on a destination, but more focused on making room for new technologies and new players in spaceflight. Some critics in Congress say they'll fight to keep some elements of the moon plan in place - but one of the most influential critics says it would be "very difficult" to change NASA's new course. In its budget request, released today, the White House is seeking $19 billion for the space agency during fiscal 2011, which is a slight increase from the current fiscal year's $18.7 billion. But over the next five years, NASA says it will have $6 billion more than previously planned, with most of that going to support technology development and commercialization. NASA Administrator Charles Bolden told reporters that the increase represented "an extraordinary show of support in these tough budgetary times."

At a populist level there may be much pain and anger in America over President Obama’s budget proposal to abandon the Constellation project to return US astronauts to the moon by 2020. But this is about much more than the symbolism and science of the original moon race of half a century ago. It goes way beyond the GWB plan to set up a permanent manned base on the moon as a way station to Mars, a proposal that was in its own right running into some severe criticism at various levels from its impact on science spending in general to the probability of the astronauts being killed by solar flare radiation long before making it to the red planet. It is about American engagement with the race that China, Russia, Europe and India are already running hard in the space industry stakes. This is the industry of designing, making and selling both disposable and re-usable multi mission space freighters, the business of giant research and military assemblies in orbit or on the surface of accessible asteroids, the future convergence of prime orbital real estate with the distribution of communications bandwidths orders of magnitude larger than what the world uses today, the cleansing of near space from space junk, and, alas, locations from which directed energy weapons can cover almost half a world. When the White House media management machine was leaking the abandon-the-moon message to reporters over the weekend it also had a sub text.

If NASA returns to the moon in 2020 as planned, astronauts will step out in a brand-new space suit. It will give them new mobility and flexibility on the lunar surface while still protecting them from its harsh environment. The suit will also be able to sustain life for up to 150 hours and will even be equipped with a computer that links directly back to Earth. The new design will also let astronauts work outside of the International Space Station (ISS) and will be suitable for trips to Mars, as outlined in NASA's program for exploration, called Constellation. "The current suits just cannot do everything we need them to do," says Terry Hill, the Constellation space suit engineering project manager at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston. "We have a completely new design, something that has never been done before."

Using the vibration from a stereo speaker to levitate dust off surfaces may one day help keep colonies up and running on Mars and the Moon. Blasting a high-pitched noise from a tweeter into a pipe that focuses the sound waves can create enough pressure to lift troublesome alien dust from equipment, suits or vehicles, according to a study published January in the Journal of the Acoustical Society of America. Dust is one of the biggest obstacles for long-term lunar and Martian space colonies. On the moon, there’s no atmosphere and no water, so the dust particles don’t get moved around, worn down and rounded like they do on Earth. Consequently, dust kicked up by rovers and astronauts is “very abrasive and sharp, like freshly broken glass,” said University of Colorado Boulder physicist Zoltan Sternovsky, who was not involved in the study.

Published in 1958 under the auspices of the Atomic Energy Commission as part of its Atoms for Peace program, Fluid Fuel Reactors is a book only an engineer could love: a dense, 978-page account of research conducted at Oak Ridge National Lab, most of it under former director Alvin Weinberg. What caught Kirk Sorensen’s eye was the description of Weinberg’s experiments producing nuclear power with an element called thorium. After it has been used as fuel for power plants, the element leaves behind minuscule amounts of waste. And that waste needs to be stored for only a few hundred years, not a few hundred thousand like other nuclear byproducts. Because it’s so plentiful in nature, it’s virtually inexhaustible. It’s also one of only a few substances that acts as a thermal breeder, in theory creating enough new fuel as it breaks down to sustain a high-temperature chain reaction indefinitely. And it would be virtually impossible for the byproducts of a thorium reactor to be used by terrorists or anyone else to make nuclear weapons.

Scientists with NASA's IceBite project are heading this week for University Valley, a hanging valley perched more than 1600 feet (more than 1 mile) above sea level in Antarctica's McMurdo Dry Valleys. Their objective: to test a set of ice-penetrating drills and select one for use on a future mission to the Martian polar north, the same region of the planet that NASA's Phoenix lander investigated in 2008. The northern polar region on Mars is of particular interest to scientists because it once may have provided a habitable environment for life. Due to variations over time in Mars' orbit and the angle at which it tilts toward the sun, Mars' north pole received much more sunlight several million years ago than it does today — enough sunlight to produce liquid water, enough liquid water to support life. Indeed NASA's Phoenix lander found evidence in Martian arctic soil that liquid water had been present there in the past.

Shortly after coming off a successful Ares program test launch, NASA's Ares I rocket team has been given Time magazine's top accolade in science and technology of the No. 1 best invention of 2009. "Well, I was shocked and amazed when I saw the story, but it shows the work our team has done over the past four years," said Teresa Vanhooser, acting manager of Ares projects at Marshall Space Flight Center. "I'm just proud for the entire team." On Oct. 28, NASA lofted the Ares I-X test rocket into the Florida sky for almost seven minutes. The test will help NASA design and build the planned Ares I, which the space agency hopes to replace the retiring space shuttle with by 2015. "It was an outstanding test, and it validated some areas and showed us where we need to improve. That's what test flight is about," Vanhooser told The Times today.

NASA TV has released a remarkable video of the Oct. 28 Ares I-X test flight. This video was shot using a special gyro-stabilized, high-definition camera system mounted on a Cessna Skymaster "chase plane." This aircraft was cruising at 12,000 feet altitude and was about 10 miles from the launch pad at liftoff. The six-minute film catches up with the Ares I-X a few moments after it has left the pad and follows the flight in amazing detail, right through the splashdown of the spent solid-rocket booster stage into the Atlantic Ocean. It includes a close look at the parachute malfunction that caused the booster to smack into the water much harder than expected, resulting in heavy damage.

Space explorers have yet to get their hands on the replicator of "Star Trek" to create anything they might require. But NASA has developed a technology that could enable lunar colonists to carry out on-site manufacturing on the moon, or allow future astronauts to create critical spare parts during the long trip to Mars. The method, called electron beam freeform fabrication (EBF3), uses an electron beam to melt metals and build objects layer by layer. Such an approach already promises to cut manufacturing costs for the aerospace industry, and could pioneer development of new materials. It has also thrilled astronauts on the International Space Station by dangling the possibility of designing new tools or objects, researchers said.

Equipped with wearable AI systems and digital eyes that see what human eyes can’t, space explorers of the future could be not just astronauts, but “cyborg astrobiologists.” That’s the vision of a research team led by Patrick McGuire, a University of Chicago geoscientist who’s developed algorithms that can recognize signs of life in a barren landscape. “When they look at scenery, children gravitate towards the thing that’s different from the other things,” said McGuire. “That’s how I looked at the cyborg astrobiologist.” At the heart of McGuire’s system is a Hopfield neural network, a type of artificial intelligence that compares incoming data against patterns it’s seen before, eventually picking out those details that qualify as new or unusual.