Possible Discovery Of Liquid Water In Mars’ Mid-Crust By The Insight Lander

August 13, 2024 by Maya Posch 15 Comments

One of the most sought after substances in the Universe is water – especially in its liquid form – as its presence on a planet makes the presence of life (as we know it) significantly more likely. While there are potentially oceans worth of liquid water on e.g. Jupiter’s moon Europa, for now Mars is significantly easier to explore as evidenced by the many probes which we got onto its surface so far. One of these was the InSight probe, which was capable of a unique feat: looking inside the planet’s crust with its seismometer to perform geophysical measurements. These measurements have now led to the fascinating prospect that liquid water may in fact exist on Mars right now, according to a paper published by [Vashan Wright] and colleagues in PNAS (with easy-read BBC coverage). Continue reading “Possible Discovery Of Liquid Water In Mars’ Mid-Crust By The Insight Lander” →

The First Real Sputnik

August 7, 2024 by Al Williams 17 Comments

Americans certainly remember Sputnik. At a time when the world was larger and scarier, the Soviets had a metal basketball flying over the United States and the rest of the world. It made people nervous, but it was also a tremendous scientific achievement. However, it wasn’t the plan to use it as the first orbiter, as [Scott Manley] explains in a recent video that you can see below.

The original design would become Sputnik 3, which, as [Scott] puts it, was the first Soviet satellite that “didn’t suck.” The first one was essentially a stunt, and the second one had an animal payload and thermal problems that killed the canine occupant, [Laika].

Continue reading “The First Real Sputnik” →

A Look Inside The Space Shuttle’s First Printer

August 6, 2024 by Dan Maloney 23 Comments

There was even a day not too long ago when printers appeared to be going the way of the dodo; remember the “paperless office” craze? But then, printer manufacturers invented printers so cheap they could give them away while charging $12,000 a gallon for the ink, and the paperless office suddenly suffered an extinction-level event of its own. You’d think space would be the one place where computer users would be spared the travails of printing, but as [Ken Shirriff] outlines, there were printers aboard the Space Shuttle, and the story behind them is fascinating.

The push for printers in space came from the combined forces of NASA’s love for checklists and the need for astronauts in the early programs to tediously copy them to paper; Apollo 13, anyone? According to [Ken], NASA had always planned for the ability to print on the Shuttle, but when their fancy fax machine wasn’t ready in time, they kludged together an interim solution from a US military teleprinter, the AN/UG-74C. [Ken] got a hold of one of these beasts for a look inside, and it holds some wonders. Based on a Motorola MC6800, the teleprinter sported both a keyboard, a current loop digital interface, and even a rudimentary word processor, none of which were of much use aboard the Shuttle. All that stuff was stripped out, leaving mostly just the spinning 80-character-wide print drum and the array of 80 solenoid-powered hammers, to bang out complete lines of text at a time. To make the printer Shuttle-worthy, a 600-baud frequency-shift keying (FSK) interface was added, which patched into the spaceplane’s comms system.

[Ken] does his usual meticulous analysis of the engineering of this wonderful bit of retro space gear, which you can read all about in the linked article. We hope this portends a video by his merry band of Apollo-centric collaborators, for a look at some delicious 1970s space hardware.

Detecting Faster Than Light Travel By Extraterrestrials

August 4, 2024 by Maya Posch 73 Comments

The idea of traveling faster than the speed of light (FTL) has been a popular idea long before [Alcubierre] came up with the first plausible theoretical underpinnings for such a technology. Yet even if such an FTL drive is possible, it may be hundreds of years before humanity manages to develop its first prototype. This does however not prevent us from for looking for possible FTL drive signatures in the spacetime around us. Such a concept was recently proposed by [Katy Clough] and colleagues in a recent article (Arxiv preprint).

For a friendly but detailed explanation the PBS Space Time video (embedded below) on the paper comes highly recommended. The gotcha with detecting an FTL warp drive is that it is undetectable until it collapses in some fashion. By simulating what this collapse might look like, the researchers were able to speculate about the properties to look for. These include gravitational waves, which would not be detectable by an existing gravitational wave detector like LIGO, but we might be able to build one that can.

Ultimately we’d be acting on conjecture on what a warp bubble would look like and how it would behave when it collapses so we might just as well mistake something far less intelligent for Vulcans passing through our solar system. It might also be our first sign of extraterrestrial life, possibly ogling some primitive civilization on a Class M planet until it’s ready for First Contact.

Continue reading “Detecting Faster Than Light Travel By Extraterrestrials” →

The Continuing Venusian Mystery Of Phosphine And Ammonia

July 19, 2024 by Maya Posch 18 Comments

The planet Venus is in so many ways an enigma. It’s a sister planet to Earth and also within relatively easy reach of our instruments and probes, yet we nevertheless know precious little about what is going on its surface or even inside its dense atmosphere. Much of this is of course due to planets like Mars getting all the orbiting probes and rovers scurrying around on its barren, radiation-blasted surface, but we had atmospheric probes descend through Venus’ atmosphere, so far to little avail. Back in 2020 speculation arose of phosphine being detected in Venus’ atmosphere, which caused both excitement and a lot of skepticism. Regardless, at the recent National Astronomy Meeting (NAM 2024) the current state of Venusian knowledge was discussed, which even got The Guardian to report on it.

In addition to phosphine, there’s speculation of ammonia also being detectable from Earth, both of which might be indicative of organic processes and thus potentially life. Related research has indicated that common amino acids essential to life on Earth would be stable even in sulfuric droplets like in Venus’ atmosphere. After criticism to the original 2020 phosphine article, [Jane S. Greaves] et al. repeated their observations based on feedback, although it’s clear that the observation of phosphine gas on Venus is not a simple binary question.

The same is true of ammonia, which if present in Venusian clouds would be a massive discovery, which according to research by [William Bains] and colleagues in PNAS could explain many curious observations in Venus’ atmosphere. With so much uncertainty with remote observations, it’s clear that the only way that we are going to answer these questions is with future Venus missions, which sadly remain rather sparse.

If there’s indeed life on Venus, it’ll have a while longer to evolve before we can go and check it out.

Using Forward- And Reverse-Osmosis To Let Astronaut EVA Suits Produce Fresh Water From Urine

July 14, 2024 by Maya Posch 34 Comments

An uncomfortable reality with the spacesuits used for extravehicular activities (EVA) – commonly referred to as spacewalks – is that the astronaut spends hours in them, during which normal bodily functions like urinating and defecating continue. The current EVA record at the ISS is currently a hair under nine hours, necessitating a new approach. A team of researchers have now pitched the idea of an in-suit water recovery system with an article by [Sofia Etlin] and colleagues as published in Frontiers in Space Technologies.

For the current Extravehicular Mobility Unit (EMU) EVA spacesuit the current solution is what is called the MAG: the Maximum Absorbency Garment, which is effectively a fancy adult diaper with sodium polyacrylate as absorbent for up to 2 L of fluids. It replaced the urine collection device (UCD) that was used until female astronauts joined the astronaut corps in the 1970s. Generally astronauts aim to not defecate until they finish their EVA, which leaves urinating and the related activity of rehydrating as the spacesuits only have 0.95 L of water that has to last the duration of the spacewalk. Continue reading “Using Forward- And Reverse-Osmosis To Let Astronaut EVA Suits Produce Fresh Water From Urine” →

Axial 3D Printer Aces Test Aboard Virgin Spaceplane

July 13, 2024 by Tom Nardi 32 Comments

Here on Earth, being able to 3D print replacement parts is handy, but rarely necessary. If you’ve got a broken o-ring, printing one out is just saving you a trip to the hardware store. But on the Moon, Mars, or in deep space, that broken component could be the difference between life and death. In such an environment, the ability to print replacement parts on demand promises to be a game changer.

Which is why the recent successful test of a next-generation 3D printer developed by a group of Berkeley researchers is so exciting. During a sub-orbital flight aboard Virgin Galactic’s Unity spaceplane, the SpaceCAL printer was able to rapidly produce four test prints using a unique printing technology known as computed axial lithography (CAL).

Continue reading “Axial 3D Printer Aces Test Aboard Virgin Spaceplane” →