The Past, Present, And Future Of Inflatable Space Habitats

January 30, 2024 by Tom Nardi 24 Comments

Recently, a prototype inflatable space station module built by Sierra Space exploded violently on a test stand at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama. Under normal circumstances, this would be a bad thing. But in this case, Sierra was looking forward to blowing up their handiwork. In fact, there was some disappointment when it failed to explode during a previous test run.

That’s because the team at Sierra was looking to find the ultimate bust pressure of their 8.2 meter (26.9 foot) diameter Large Integrated Flexible Environment (LIFE) module — a real-world demonstration of just how much air could be pumped into the expanding structure before it buckled. NASA recommended they shoot for just under 61 PSI, which would be four times the expected operational pressure for a crewed habitat module.

By the time the full-scale LIFE prototype ripped itself apart, it had an internal pressure of 77 PSI. The results so far seem extremely promising, but Sierra will need to repeat the test at least two more times to be sure their materials and construction techniques can withstand the rigors of spaceflight.

Sierra is a targeting no earlier than 2026 for an in-space test, but even if they nail the date (always a dubious prospect for cutting edge aerospace projects), they’ll still be about 20 years late to the party. Despite how futuristic the idea of inflatable space stations may seem, NASA first started experimenting with the concept of expandable habitat modules back in the 1990s, and there were practical examples being launched into orbit by the early 2000s.

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Ingenuity May Be Grounded, But Its Legacy Will Be Grand

January 30, 2024 by Donald Papp 11 Comments

[Eric Berger] has a thoughtful and detailed article explaining why Ingenuity, NASA’s small helicopter on Mars, was probably far more revolutionary than many realize, and has a legacy to grant the future of off-world exploration that is already being felt.

Ingenuity was recently grounded due to rotor damage, having already performed far beyond the scope of its original mission. The damage, visible by way of a shadow from one of the rotors, might not look like much at first glance, but flying in the vanishingly-thin atmosphere of Mars requires the 1.18 meter (3.9 foot) carbon fiber blades to spin at very high speeds — meaning even minor rotor damage could be devastating.

Perseverance and Ingenuity pose for a selfie on Mars.

[Eric] points out a lot that is deeply interesting and influential about Ingenuity. Not only is successful powered flight on another planet a real Wright brothers moment, but how Ingenuity came to be validates a profoundly different engineering approach for NASA.

To work in the space industry is to be constrained by mass. But even so, Ingenuity‘s creators had a mere four pounds to work with. That’s for rotors, hardware, electronics, batteries, solar panel — all of it. NASA’s lightest computer module alone weighed a pound, so engineers had no choice but to depart from the usual NASA way of doing things to get it done at all. Not everyone at NASA was on board. But Ingenuity worked, and it worked wonderfully.

Powered flight opens new doors, and not just for support roles like navigation planning. There’s real science that can be done if powered flight is on the table. For example, [Eric] points out that inaccessible terrain such as the Valles Marineris canyon on Mars is doubtlessly scientifically fascinating, but at 4,000 km long and up to 7 km deep, rover-based exploration is not an option.

A Complete Exchange From Scratch For Your Rotary Dial Phones

January 29, 2024 by Jenny List 12 Comments

Such has been the success of the mobile phone that in many places they have removed the need for wired connections, for example where this is being written the old copper connection can only be made via an emulated phone line on an internet router. That doesn’t mean that wired phones are no longer of interest to a hardware hacker though, and many of us have at times experimented with these obsolete instruments. At the recent 37C3 event in Germany, [Hans Gelke] gave a talk on the analog exchange he’s created from scratch.

The basic form of the circuit is built around a crosspoint switch array, with interfaces for each line and a Raspberry Pi to control it all. But that simple description doesn’t fully express its awesomeness, rather than hooking up a set of off-the-shelf modules he’s designed everything himself from scratch. His subscriber line interface circuit uses a motor controller to generate the bell signal, his analogue splitter has an op-amp and a transistor, and his crosspoint array is a collection of JFETs. Having dabbled in these matters ourselves, it’s fascinating to see someone else making this work. Video below the break.

Have an analogue phone but nowhere to use it? Bring it to a hacker camp!

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New Robots To Explore New Areas Of Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Plant

January 29, 2024 by Maya Posch 10 Comments

During a press event on January 23rd, Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) demonstrated two new robots at the mock-up facility at Japan Atomic Energy Agency’s Naraha Center for Remote Control Technology Development (NARREC). As pictured by AP, one is a snake-like robot that should be able to reach very inaccessible areas, while four flying drones will be the first to enter the containment vessel of the Unit 1 reactor for inspection.

These flying drones are 20 cm across, weigh 185 grams each, and were adapted from an existing model that’s used for boiler inspections. At the Naraha Town facility, operators were able to practice flying it into a copy of the Unit 1’s containment vessel via the piping. As the most heavily damaged unit at the Fukushima Daiichi plant, engineers are interested to learn the details of the fuel and debris that has fallen to the bottom of the vessel so that the clean-up and decontamination steps can be planned.

Most of the current work inside the Fukushimi Daiichi reactor buildings is performed by robots, with the TEPCO gallery providing an overview of the wide range of the types used so far.

One of the first was the PackBot, from US-based iRobot, with many more following for a variety of tasks, from inspection to debris clearing and even dry ice-based decontamination.

A Mouse Becomes A Camera

January 29, 2024 by Jenny List 24 Comments

If your pointing device is a mouse, turn it over. The chances are you’ll see a red LED light if you’re not seriously old-school and your mouse has a ball, this light serves as the illumination for a very simple camera sensor. The mouse electronics do their thing by looking for movement in the resulting image, but it should be possible to pull out the data and repurpose the sensor as a digital camera. [Doctor Volt] has a new video showing just that with the innards of a Logitech peripheral.

The mouse contains a microcontroller and the camera part, which fortunately has an SPI interface. The correct register to query the sensor information was deduced, and as if my magic, an image appeared. An M12 lens provided focus with a handy 3D printed mount, and the board went back into the mouse case as a housing. The pictures have something of the Game Boy camera about them, being low-res and monochrome, but it’s still a neat hack.

If you’d like to give it a go you can find the code in a GitHub repository. You might find it worth finding a gaming mouse though, for the much higher resolution sensor.

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3D Printed Axial Compressor Is On A Mission To Inflate Balloons

January 29, 2024 by Donald Papp 5 Comments

[Let’s Print] has been fascinated with creating a 3D printed axial compressor that can do meaningful work, and his latest iteration mixes FDM and SLA printed parts to successfully inflate (and pop) a latex glove, so that’s progress!

Originally, the unit couldn’t manage even that until he modified the number and type of fan blades on the compressor stages. There were other design challenges as well. For example, one regular issue was a coupling between the motor and the rest of the unit breaking repeatedly. At the speeds the compressor runs at, weak points tend to surface fairly quickly. That’s not stopping [Let’s Print], however. He plans to explore other compressor designs in his quest for an effective unit.

Attaching motor shafts to 3D printed devices can be tricky, and in the past we’ve seen a clever solution that is worth keeping in mind: half of a spider coupling (or jaw coupling) can be an economical and effective way to attach 3D printed things to a shaft.

While blowing up a regular party balloon is still asking too much of [Let’s Print]’s compressor as it stands, it certainly inflates (and pops) a latex glove like nobody’s business.

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