California-based commercial aerospace company Moon Express, are on track to send their Electron rocket to the Moon in 2017. The Electron is propelled by 3D printed engines made by Rocket Lab, headquartered in Los Angeles. The project is designed for Google’s modern-day space race: the Lunar X Prize.
3D printed engines
Nine liquid-propellant Rutherford engines are behind the Electron. The rocket engines, the first to use 3D printing for the all core parts, use kerosene and liquid oxygen (LOX) for fuel.
By Kelsey Tollefson | Executive Editor John Lenker
The notion of harvesting resources from extraterrestrial sources is not a new one. The lure of untold bounties—orbiting just out of reach—has prompted generations of poets and presidents alike to expound upon the potential applications of space mining. These days, “space mining” is no longer a mere pipe dream.
If you feel no awe when watching this video, then you are already dead.
On Jan. 14, 2005, ESA’s Huygens probe made its descent to the surface of Saturn’s hazy moon, Titan. Carried to Saturn by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft, Huygens made the most distant landing ever on another world, and the only landing on a body in the outer solar system. This video uses actual images taken by the probe during its two-and-a-half hour fall under its parachutes.
Huygens was a signature achievement of the international Cassini-Huygens mission, which will conclude on Sept. 15, 2017, when Cassini plunges into Saturn’s atmosphere.
For more info, visit https://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/spacecraft/huygens-probe/
Most of today’s robot hands can perform easy tasks. They’re uber-practical grippers, simple and useful. But is it really so much to ask for robotic masterworks as dextrous as Luke Skywalker’s bionic hand in Star Wars? In short, yes, yes it is. It might have been a long time ago in a galaxy far far away—but most Star Wars tech is beyond us.
Still, it’s hard not to get in a Star Wars state of mind watching this beautiful robot hand engineered by Yale postdoc Joseph (Zhe) Xu and the University of Washington’s Emanuel Todorov.
Scientist Carl Sagan said many times that “we are star stuff,” from the nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our teeth, and the iron in our blood.
It is well known that most of the essential elements of life are truly made in the stars. Called the “CHNOPS elements” – carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorous, and sulfur – these are the building blocks of all life on Earth. Astronomers have now measured of all of the CHNOPS elements in 150,000 stars across the Milky Way, the first time such a large number of stars have been analyzed for these elements.
“For the first time, we can now study the distribution of elements across our Galaxy,” says Sten Hasselquist of New Mexico State University. “The elements we measure include the atoms that make up 97% of the mass of the human body.”
One of the most powerful observing instruments on Earth, the Very Large Telescope, will join the search for potentially habitable planets around the Alpha Centauri star system.
The survey will take place in 2019 under the terms of an agreement signed by the European Southern Observatory, which operates the VLT in Chile, and by the Breakthrough Initiatives.
Luv this; definitely a great role model to young girls everywhere.
This was the first of two spacewalks astronauts will perform this month to finalize the replacement of 12 old nickel-hydrogen batteries six with new lithium-ion batteries.
Kimbrough is wearing the suit bearing red stripes marked as EV1 member 1, but Whitson is wearing the suit with no stripes, marked EV2, member 2.
NASA is sending an African-American astronaut to the International Space Station for the first time. Built by Swales Aerospace Inc., it is the staple of NASA’s space tool arsenal.