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Category: space travel – Page 30

Expensive, risky and elite — that’s space travel in a nutshell ever since Yuri Gagarin became the first human to be sent to space 63 years ago. Till now, less than 700 astronauts have reached space altitude and a majority among them have been from just three countries. Even commercial space flights remain exclusive to the few who can afford them.

But not anymore. Giving regular folks from around the world a chance to become astronauts and participate in space science, US-based Space Exploration and Research Agency (SERA) has partnered with Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin to develop what they call “a human spaceflight programme for citizens of all nations”. The cost will be borne by SERA, and co-founders Sam Hutchison and Joshua Skurla say they might even be tapping talent from India for their programme.

In line with this mission to make space accessible, SERA has just signed an agreement to send the first Nigerian to space. In June 2022, Victor Hespanha, a 28-year-old civil engineer from Brazil, was selected to travel to space onboard Blue Origin’s New Shepard Rocket (NS-22). He was only the second Brazilian astronaut, and soon became a national hero.

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“The Cosmosphere is grateful to receive a flown Merlin engine from SpaceX,” said Jim Remar, Cosmosphere president and CEO. “The inclusion of the engine in our museum reaffirms the fact that the Cosmosphere houses one of the greatest collections of space exploration hardware.”

The Cosmosphere has been undergoing renovations since January. The Merlin engine will go on display in the new rocket gallery, which is expected to open in late 2024.

For more about the renovations underway at the Cosmosphere or to see upcoming events and programs, click here.

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A connection between time-varying networks and transport theory opens prospects for developing predictive equations of motion for networks.

Many real-world networks change over time. Think, for example, of social interactions, gene activation in a cell, or strategy making in financial markets, where connections and disconnections occur all the time. Understanding and anticipating these microscopic kinetics is an overarching goal of network science, not least because it could enable the early detection and prevention of natural and human-made disasters. A team led by Fragkiskos Papadopoulos of Cyprus University of Technology has gained groundbreaking insights into this problem by recasting the discrete dynamics of a network as a continuous time series [1] (Fig. 1). In doing so, the researchers have discovered that if the breaking and forming of links are represented as a particle moving in a suitable geometric space, then its motion is subdiffusive—that is, slower than it would be if it diffused normally.

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Humanity is on the verge of entering a new era of space exploration, with the Artemis III mission planning to return humans to the moon in 2026, for the first time in 50 years. Not only will Artemis see a woman and a person of color walk on the lunar surface for the first time, but the week-long mission to the south pole of the moon will begin a period of longer and longer stays in space.

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Grapene’s unusually high conductivity and favorable mechanical properties could further the development of flexible electronics, new batteries, and innovative composite materials for aeronautics and space flight. However, the development of elastic and tough films remains a challenge.

In the journal Angewandte Chemie (“A Stretchable and Tough Graphene Film Enabled by Mechanical Bond”), a research team has now introduced a method to overcome this hurdle: they linked graphene nanolayers via “extendable” bridging structures.

Cartoon representations of the fabrication process of RBG films and toughening mechanism of mechanical bond. Upon applied force, the hidden chain of [2]rotaxane was released due to intramolecular motion, resulting in an increased interlayer slip distance. It follows that the mechanical performance of RBG films were improved when mechanical bond was introduced.

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