Learn Linux. Building block of life found in comet trail. About | LEAP Motion. Plasma Rocket Could Travel to Mars in 39 Days. (PhysOrg.com) -- Last Wednesday, the Ad Astra Rocket Company tested what is currently the most powerful plasma rocket in the world. As the Webster, Texas, company announced, the VASIMR VX-200 engine ran at 201 kilowatts in a vacuum chamber, passing the 200-kilowatt mark for the first time. The test also marks the first time that a small-scale prototype of the company's VASIMR (Variable Specific Impulse Magnetoplasma Rocket) rocket engine has been demonstrated at full power. "It's the most powerful plasma rocket in the world right now," says Franklin Chang-Diaz, former NASA astronaut and CEO of Ad Astra. The company has signed an agreement with NASA to test a 200-kilowatt VASIMR engine on the International Space Station (ISS) in 2013.
But Ad Astra has bigger plans for VASIMR, such as high-speed missions to Mars. Chang-Diaz has been working on the development of the VASIMR concept since 1979, before founding Ad Astra in 2005 to further develop the project. Via: New Scientist. Home. NASA Unveils New Galactic Atlas | Wired Science. NASA has released a new atlas of more than 560 million stars, galaxies and asteroids, many never seen before. The more than 18,000 images were taken by the Wide-field Survey Explorer (WISE), NASA’s infrared space telescope. With WISE, scientists discovered Y Dwarf stars, the dimmest stars of the brown dwarf family. By solar standards, they’re exceptionally cold: One discovered in 2011 had a temperature of only 80 degrees Fahrenheit. By comparison, our sun has a scalding surface temperature of about 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit.
Infrared WISE image showing the light echoes from the Cassiopeia A supernova remnant. Scientists were also able to find the first-ever asteroid with the same orbit as Earth. For apocalypse worrywarts, WISE also brought some good news: A survey of near-Earth asteroids showed fewer mid-sized objects than previously thought. A quick guide to WISE’s all-sky archive is available online. Correction 3/15: The headline originally read, “solar system atlas.” THIS is why we invest in science. This. Every day — every single day, it seems — I see a note on Twitter, or get email, or hear someone on TV asking why we bother spending so much money on NASA.
Billions of dollars! We should be spending that money right here on Earth! This argument is wrong in every conceivable way. Ignoring that we do spend that money here on Earth, ignoring that NASA’s budget is far less than 1% of the national budget, ignoring that the amount we spend on NASA in a year is less than we spend on air conditioning tents in Afghanistan, ignoring that we spend five times as much on tobacco in a year than we do on space exploration… this argument is still dead wrong.
Why? Because when we invest in science, when we invest in space, when we invest in exploration, we always, always get far more back in return than we put in. And not just in dollars and cents. See that picture above? So what, right? [UPDATE: I should have noted that this technology was developed by Orbitec, a contractor with NASA and not NASA itself.
NASA to fly atomic clock to improve space navigation. When people think of space technologies, many think of high-tech solar panels, complex and powerful propulsion systems or sophisticated, electronic guidance systems. Another critical piece of spaceflight technology, however, is an ultra stable, highly accurate device for timing -- essential to NASA's success on deep-space exploration missions. NASA is preparing to fly a Deep Space Atomic Clock, or DSAC, demonstration that will revolutionize the way we conduct deep-space navigation by enabling a spacecraft to calculate its own timing and navigation data in real time. This one-way navigation technology would improve upon the current two-way system in which information is sent to Earth, requiring a ground team to calculate timing and navigation and then transmit it back to the spacecraft.
Ground-based atomic clocks have long been the cornerstone of most space vehicle navigation because they provide root data necessary for precise positioning. Sweet Potato Ranks Number One In Nutrition - Vegetable Facts. According to nutritionists at the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI), the single most important dietary change for most people, including children, would be to replace fatty foods with foods rich in complex carbohydrates, such as sweet potatoes. CSPI ranked the sweet potato number one in nutrition of all vegetables.
With a score of 184, the sweet potato outscored the next highest vegetable by more than 100 points. Points were given for content of dietary fiber, naturally occurring sugars and complex carbohydrates, protein, vitamins A and C, iron and calcium. Points were deducted for fat content (especially saturated fat), sodium, cholesterol, added refined sugars and caffeine. The higher the score, the more nutritious the food. The reasons the sweet potato took first place? Sweet potatoes are high in the following: beta-carotene, vitamin A, vitamin B6 and vitamin C; fiber, thiamine, niacin, potassium and copper. Top 10 Awesome Things You Can Do With the Underused Gadgets You Already Own. Hard drive platter clock. First thing to do is to take your hard drive and a ruler to the local wood working store. I chose to go there rather then the local Hobby Lobby because their quartz clock movements seem to be a much better quality. The 2nd clock later in this instructable (one with 4 platters), unfortunately, has the lesser quality Hobby Lobby quartz movement.
I found that I preferred the 3/4" quartz movement. This gave me the option to put in a 3rd platter which looks pretty nice. The cheaper Hobby Lobby movement was also a 3/4" but it allowed me to put in 4 platters instead of 3. Some examples of the movements I found:Wood Emporium 3/4" quartz movement = $8.50Hobby Lobby 3/4" quartz movement = $4.99 After you get back home put the hour and minute hands on, put the battery in, and hang it on the wall. You can also pick up your clock numbers at the wood working store. To disassemble the hard drive platters I used a T10 Torx bit. Silly Putty for Potholes. CLEVELAND, OHIO—So-called non-Newtonian fluids are the stars of high school science demonstrations.
In one example, an ooey-gooey batter made from corn starch and water oozes like a liquid when moved slowly. But punch it, or run across a giant puddle of it, and it becomes stiff like a solid. Pour it on top of a speaker cone, and the vibrations cause the fluid to stiffen and form strange tendril-like shapes. Now, a group of college students has figured out a new use for the strange stuff: filler for potholes. The students, undergraduates at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, devised the idea as part of an engineering contest sponsored by the French materials company Saint-Gobain—and took first prize last week. "So we were putzing around with different ideas and things we wanted to work with—and we were like, what's a common, everyday problem all around the world that everybody hates? " Ketchup and mayonnaise are shear-thinning fluids.