Space Exploration
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- A research team from the Center for Applied Space Technology and Microgravity (ZARM), the Department of Environmental Process Engineering (UVT) at the University of Bremen and the German Aerospace Center (DLR) has made significant progress toward a self-sufficient Mars mission: a fertilizer, which can be produced solely with Martian resources, has been successfully used to grow edible biomass.
- The European Space Agency announced Thursday it has re-established communication with a spacecraft that is part of its Proba-3 mission, after losing contact with the satellite a month ago.
- Two recent studies suggest that fiber-optic cables laid directly on the moon's surface could potentially detect moonquakes, offering a simpler way to gather seismic data to support future human and robotic exploration.
- It's well known that spaceflight causes muscle atrophy and other biological changes in reduced gravity, and especially in near-zero gravity (microgravity) environments. However, the gravity threshold needed to maintain sufficient muscle health in space is still unclear.
- Heat shields are designed to protect the surface and cargo of a spacecraft as it enters an atmosphere. Aerospace engineers in The Grainger College of Engineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign recently observed a violently destructive difference in how heat shields function in atmospheres like Earth that contain oxygen versus nitrogen-rich atmospheres such as Venus and Titan, one of Saturn's moons.
- Cosmic rays are one of the greatest challenges for space travel and pose a considerable risk to humans and materials. For the first time on European soil, an international research team in collaboration with the European Space Agency (ESA) has succeeded in providing a simulator for galactic cosmic rays at the GSI/FAIR accelerator facility in Darmstadt, Germany. The results have been published in two articles in the journal Life Sciences in Space Research.
- Observations of the Rimae Bode region on the moon reveal five distinct types of terrain and identify several potential landing sites for China's first crewed mission, according to research titled "Geology of Rimae Bode region as priority site candidate for China's first crewed lunar mission." The work is published in Nature Astronomy.
- Just a few days in simulated microgravity can subtly change the way women's blood clots, sparking bigger questions about health monitoring protocols for astronauts who can spend six months or more in orbit, say Simon Fraser University researchers. First reported in 2020, an International Space Station mission detected an unexpected blood clot in a female astronaut's jugular vein. To date, space-health research has had more male participants, but with the number of female astronauts on the rise, a new SFU–European Space Agency study examined how microgravity affects blood clotting specifically in women.
- Simulated lunar dirt can be turned into extremely durable structures, potentially paving the way to more sustainable and cost-effective space missions, a new study suggests. Using a special laser 3D printing method, researchers melted fake lunar soil—a synthetic version of the fine dusty material on the moon surface, called regolith simulant—into layers and fused it with a base surface to manufacture small, heat-resistant objects.
- As space agencies prepare for human missions to the moon and Mars, scientists need to understand how the absence of gravity affects living cells. Now, a team of researchers has built a rugged, affordable microscope that can image cells in real time during the chaotic conditions of zero-gravity flight—and they're making the design available to the broader scientific community.
- NASA aims to send astronauts to the moon in March after acing the latest rocket fueling test.
- Atom-thick layers of molybdenum disulfide are ideally suited for radiation-resistant spacecraft electronics, researchers in China have confirmed. In a study published in Nature, Peng Zhou and colleagues at Fudan University put a communications system composed of the material through a gauntlet of rigorous tests—including the transmission of their university's Anthem—confirming that its performance is barely affected in the harsh environment of outer space.
- When part of a SpaceX rocket re-entered Earth's atmosphere exactly a year ago, it created a spectacuglar fireball that streaked across Europe's skies, delighting stargazers and sending a team of scientists rushing toward their instruments.
- Scientists are proposing to build a laser in a crater on the moon to help future lunar missions land safely in the dark and find their way around. This ultra-stable light source could also help us keep time more accurately, as they explain in a paper available on the arXiv preprint server.
- Imagine you're all alone, driving along in a rocky, unforgiving desert with no roads, no map, no GPS, and no more than one phone call a day for someone to inform you exactly where you are. That's what NASA's Perseverance rover has been experiencing since landing on Mars five years ago. Though it carries time-tested tools for determining its general location, the rover has needed operators on Earth to tell it precisely where it is—until now.
- Researchers at The University of Manchester have developed a new way to design Earth-observation satellite missions that could help protect the space environment while continuing to deliver vital data for tackling global challenges, such as climate change, food production, supply chain vulnerabilities and environmental degradation.
- A new crew rocketed toward the International Space Station on Friday to replace the astronauts who returned to Earth early in NASA's first medical evacuation.
- The first solar eclipse of the year will grace Antarctica, and only a lucky few will get to bask—or waddle—in its glow.
- If humankind is to explore deep space, one small passenger should not be left behind: microbes. In fact, it would be impossible to leave them behind, since they live on and in our bodies, surfaces and food. Learning how they react to space conditions is critical, but they could also be invaluable fellows in our endeavor to explore space.
- Using an advanced machine-learning algorithm, researchers in the UK and Japan have identified several promising candidate locations for the long-lost landing site of the Soviet Luna 9 spacecraft. Publishing their results in npj Space Exploration, the team, led by Lewis Pinault at University College London, hope that their model's predictions could soon be tested using new observations from India's Chandrayaan-2 orbiter.
Foto: SpaceX auf Pexels