Sans titre. Japan’s plan to supply all the world’s energy from a giant solar power plant on the moon. Shimizu, a Japanese architectural and engineering firm, has a solution for the climate crisis: Simply build a band of solar panels 400 kilometers (249 miles) wide (pdf) running all the way around the Moon’s 11,000-kilometer (6,835 mile) equator and beam the carbon-free energy back to Earth in the form of microwaves, which are converted into electricity at ground stations.
That means mining construction materials on the Moon and setting up factories to make the solar panels. “Robots will perform various tasks on the lunar surface, including ground leveling and excavation of hard bottom strata,” according to Shimizu, which is known for a series of far-fetched “dream projects” including pyramid cities and a space hotel.
The company proposes to start building the Luna Ring in 2035. “Machines and equipment from the Earth will be assembled in space and landed on the lunar surface for installation,” says the proposal. Some of the Most Plausible Scenarios for Alien Civilizations. United Nations to Adopt Asteroid Defense Plan. When a meteor exploded over Chelyabinsk, Russia in February, the world’s space agencies found out along with the rest of us, on Twitter and YouTube. That, says former astronaut Ed Lu, is unacceptable—and the United Nations agrees. Last week the General Assembly approved a set of measures that Lu and other astronauts have recommended to protect the planet from the dangers of rogue asteroids. The U.N. plans to set up an “International Asteroid Warning Group” for member nations to share information about potentially hazardous space rocks.
If astronomers detect an asteroid that poses a threat to Earth, the U.N.’s Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space will help coordinate a mission to launch a spacecraft to slam into the object and deflect it from its collision course. Lu and other members of the Association of Space Explorers (ASE) recommended these steps to the U.N. as a first step to address at the long-neglected problem of errant space rocks. Is This Our First Alien Encounter? Bet you never thought ET would look like this — or that we'd find him hitching a ride on a weather balloon.
But that is exactly what a team from the University of Sheffield says happened, according to a new paper in the Journal of Cosmology. Professor Milton Wainright launched a balloon with special sterile studs that would only deploy when it reached the stratosphere, then retract on the way down. The studs came back loaded with "biomorphs" — tiny organisms never before seen on Earth, and too large to be thrown into the atmosphere via anything short of a violent volcano eruption.
There have been no major volcanoes in the past half-decade. That led Wainright's team to propose that the organisms are constantly arriving in the stratosphere via comets and meteor showers, such as last month's visit from the Perseids. "Our conclusion is that life is continually arriving to Earth from space," the professor wrote. Further tests are being conducted on the organisms. The Universe Was Born from a Four-Dimensional Black Hole, Says Big Bang Alternative. An artist's depiction of a black hole – birthplace of our Universe? Via We’re all familiar with the Big Bang theory, the one that states that the universe exploded out of a single, dense point. But there’s a major question tied up in the Big Bang that the known laws of physics can’t explain: what was the nothing that came before everything? Some cosmologists have taken this unknown start to the universe in a different direction and suggested a brand new model for our universe. The Big Bang, which surfaced in the late 1920s in the work of physicist Georges LeMaître and received a big boost in the 1960s through measurements of the cosmic microwave background, does offer explanations to some of the phenomena we see in the cosmos.
But the main problem with the Big Bang model is that nothing can explain what happened the moment that single point went bang, which leaves explanations about a uniform temperature largely in the realm of speculation. Space Farming: The Final Frontier. He gave the plants sun by shuttling them between space station windows, and grew them in a plastic bag, feeding them a liquid made from composted food scraps. The crew never tried eating the plants; Pettit jokes it would have felt like cannibalism. “We considered them crew members,” he says. “It was delightful to have those plants around, to feel the little hairs on a leaf tickle your nose, to see that sunflower in full bloom.
It changed our whole experience.” Massa thinks VEGGIE could promise similar psychic gains to space station astronauts. Not to mention, caring for plants can conjure up unknowable associative memories. The first batch of space-ready lettuce is something of a tease for the NASA crew — once harvested, it will be frozen and stored away for testing back on Earth. These space germs are often fairly benign, akin to the natural bacteria that build up in any moist root bank. But once that hurdle is cleared, Massa has high hopes for the program.
NASA Funds 6 Futuristic Space Exploration Tech Ideas. NASA has granted funding to six next-generation technology concepts that it believes could help advance humanity's understanding and exploration of the cosmos down the road. The six ambitious ideas, which were selected under Phase 2 of the NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) program, cover a wide range of potential future applications. One proposal, for example, aims to develop laser thrusters for spacecraft, while another seeks to build tiny but tough robots that could explore other planets and moons en masse. "As NASA begins a new chapter in exploration, we're investing in these seed-corn advanced concepts of next-generation technologies that will truly transform how we investigate and learn about our universe," Michael Gazarik, NASA's associate administrator for space technology in Washington, D.C., said in a statement today (Aug. 29).
[Future Visions of Human Spaceflight (Gallery)] The six selected concepts, along with their principal investigators, are: Did Life Come to Earth From Mars? | Surprising Science. Moon Water Discovery Hints at Mystery Source Deep Underground | Space.com. Evidence of water spotted on the moon's surface by a sharp-eyed spacecraft likely originated from an unknown source deep in the lunar interior, scientists say. The find — made by NASA's Moon Mineralogy Mapper instrument aboard India's Chandrayaan-1 probe — marks the first detection of such "magmatic water" from lunar orbit and confirms analyses performed recently on moon rocks brought to Earth by Apollo astronauts four decades ago, researchers said.
"Now that we have detected water that is likely from the interior of the moon, we can start to compare this water with other characteristics of the lunar surface," study lead author Rachel Klima, of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Md., said in a statement. [Water on the Moon: The Search in Photos] Scientists have detected evidence of water from the moon's interior in Bullialdus Crater. There are those 2009 observations by the M3 instrument, for example. Chandrayaan-1 was India's first robotic moon probe. In new concept video, NASA bags an asteroid to theme music. NASA has released a new concept video that animates its ambitious plan, called the Asteroid Retrieval Mission, to snag an asteroid and then send a manned spacecraft to sample it, all between the years 2018 and 2021.
Skip to next paragraph Subscribe Today to the Monitor Click Here for your FREE 30 DAYS ofThe Christian Science MonitorWeekly Digital Edition Concept animation featuring notional crew operations during NASA's proposed Asteroid Redirect Mission The new video’s theme music is as dramatic as the political debate over NASA’s future that the mission has furnished, dividing congress along partisan lines over just how much the government is willing to spend on a plan that NASA Administrator Charles Bolden has called one to “protect our home planet” and that Republican congressman Steven Palazzo has deemed a “costly and complex distraction.”
In the video, the plan is neat and simple, going off without a hitch. This Satellite Could Be Beaming Solar Power Down from Space by 2025. In the third century BCE, King Hiero II of Syracuse asked Archimedes to devise a number of death traps to thwart Roman invaders. Among the many designs the great inventor drew up was a solar death ray. The basic idea was to build an array of mirrors that could reflect rays of light into a central blast, causing Roman ships to burst into flame. It's unlikely the weapon ever made it past the blueprint stage, but it became an incredibly influential model nonetheless. Archimedes was perhaps the first solar power convert, searching for a way to take advantage of the inconceivable amount of energy our friendly neighborhood star barfs up every second.
The SPS-ALPHA could revolutionize disaster relief, give developing countries access to reliable power, and provide the planet with an affordable green energy option. I recently caught up with Mankins to discuss the SPS-ALPHA's progress and potential. Most aerospace professionals would tell you there is, in fact, a lot not to love. Via. NASA Maps Dangerous Asteroids That May Threaten Earth (Photos) If you've seen films like "Armageddon," you know the potential threat asteroids can be for Earth. To meet that threat, NASA has built a map like no other: a plot of every dangerous asteroid that could potentially endanger our planet … at least the ones we know about. NASA released the new map of "potentially hazardous asteroids" on Aug. 2 in a post to its online Planetary Photojournal overseen by the agency's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.
The map shows the orbital paths of more than 1,400 asteroids known creep too close to Earth for comfort. None of the asteroids mapped pose an impact threat to Earth within the next 100 years, agency officials said. "These are the asteroids considered hazardous because they are fairly large (at least 460 feet or 140 meters in size), and because they follow orbits that pass close to the Earth's orbit (within 4.7 million miles or 7.5 million kilometers)," NASA officials explained in the image description. NASA's Giant Space Colony Concepts Explained (Infographic) By Karl Tate, Infographics Artist | August 05, 2013 10:20am ET In the 1970s, with the Apollo moon landing program completed and the space shuttle program under development, space planners realized that huge space colonies were feasible.
Reasons for building such habitats include the following: to create new lands for population expansion, to ensure the survival of humanity in case of global disaster and to create wealth by exploiting space resources. In the early 20th century, Austro-Hungarian rocket pioneer Herman Potočnik (also called Hermann Noordung) designed an early space habitat.
His 1928 book "The Problem of Space Travel" describes a 100-foot (30 meters) ring-shaped station that would rotate to generate artificial gravity. Space Colony Concepts: NASA's 1970s Vision for Giant Space Stations (Gallery) In a 1974 "Physics Today" article, Gerard K. Sci-Fi film 'Elysium' Paints Bleak Future for Earth & Space Colony | Video In 1929, J.D. The Case for Alien Life. On Feb. 9, 2013, NASA's Curiosity roverfound something on Mars that set a milestone in the search for alien life. Packed with instruments, the rover was an SUV-size speck crawling across the floor of the Gale Crater, whose distant walls climbed 15,000 feet in the thin air. The rover had been lowered to the ground six months earlier by means of a complex, jet-propelled sky crane.
Now, almost 221 million miles from home but just a quarter-mile from its landing site, Curiosity was exploring a shallow depression called Yellowknife Bay. The machine trundled up to an outcropping of bedrock, which lay dry and cracked beneath a yellow sky. It drilled into the rock and within minutes pulled a fine gray powder from the narrow borehole. Curiosity scooped up the dust and tasted it. The sample contained smectite clay, which on Earth is found in alluvial plains and regions washed by monsoons. The Great 1952 Space Program That Almost Was. Wonderful article! I can never get enough of the space designs from the 1950's and 60's, when the sky wasn't even close to being the limit. In many ways, the progressive series of steps that were originally proposed - getting into orbit, establishing a space station, assembling a lunar vessel at the station, landing on the Moon, etc. - made more sense than the path that we ultimately took.
Always fun playing "What If? " with stuff like this. A really wonderful book was written by Robert Godwin, called "The Lunar Exploration Scrapbook: A Pictorial History of Lunar Vehicles. " The Onion Predicts Real Life: Republicans Block NASA's Asteroid Plan. Take a Look at Space Suits of the Future. Future astronauts should expect a lighter, more practical suit for suborbital and orbital commercial space travel. As reported by PopSci, a new "3G" space suit was unveiled at Capitol Hill this week by Final Frontier, a Brooklyn-based space company. This suit is the third iteration of the design, and took four years to research and develop.
A previous version won the 2013 Popular Science Invention Award. The new version of the suit has 13 adjustable points for sizing and multiple cooling loops to keep it from overheating. The new suit is "comfortable, lightweight, and inexpensive," according to a Final Frontier press release. The suit was made by a two-man team, consisting of Nik Moiseev, a Russian space suit designer, and Ted Southern, a former costume designer who created the Victoria's Secret angel wings famously worn by runway models. How did this unlikely duo collaborate on the future of space exploration?
Image: Final Frontier Designs. NASA Gets 402 Ideas for Dealing With Asteroids. NASA received 402 ideas for finding asteroids that may be on a collision course with Earth and for relocating a small asteroid into an orbit around the moon for future study. The proposals were offered in response to a June 18 solicitation intended to reach beyond the established aerospace industry for partnerships on two planned asteroid exploration initiatives. Top 10 Ways to Stop an Asteroid The first project, which NASA is calling a “Grand Challenge,” is to find all potentially dangerous asteroids in orbits that come close to Earth.
The agency already has found about 95 percent of the near-Earth asteroids 0.62 miles (1 km) or larger in diameter. Objects of this size are on par with the asteroid or comet that crashed into Earth about 65 million years ago, triggering a global climate change that led to the extinction of the dinosaurs and most other life on the planet. Finding smaller, but still potentially dangerous asteroids is a much more difficult undertaking. When the Moon Becomes Earth's Nemesis. Private Astronaut Taxi Development Entering Final Phase. Self-replicating alien probes could already be here. The Private Plan to Put a Telescope on the Moon - Wired Science. Micro and nanotechnologies for space applications (ESA roundtable) The Weird Way Alcohol Behaves In Space. Anthropic principle.
Billionaires in Space: Whose Dreams Are Biggest? Private Plan to Send Humans to Mars in 2018 Might Not Be So Crazy | Wired Science. 5 Star Space Hotel? Book a cosmic tour now!