Copernical Team
Studying rainforests from the skies - radar technology measures biomass
At present, there are only estimates of how much forest biomass exists worldwide. However, its extent is crucial in order to accurately assess global warming. This information could be used to predict the consequences of climate change and to take appropriate countermeasures. Researchers at the German Aerospace Center (Deutsches Zentrum fur Luft- und Raumfahrt; DLR) are working on technologies t The oldest and fastest evolving moss in the world might not survive climate change
A 390-million-year-old moss called Takakia lives in some of Earth's most remote places, including the icy cliffs of the Tibetan Plateau. In a decade-long project, a team of scientists climbed some of the tallest peaks in the world to find Takakia, sequence its DNA for the first time, and study how climate change is impacting the moss. Their results, publishing in Cell on August 9, show that Taka Embracing the future we need
When you picture MIT doctoral students taking small PhD courses together, you probably don't imagine them going on class field trips. But it does happen, sometimes, and one of those trips changed Andy Sun's career.
Today, Sun is a faculty member at the MIT Sloan School of Management and a leading global expert on integrating renewable energy into the electric grid. Back in 2007, Sun was an AFRL opens extreme computing facility, announces $44M in additional funding
The Air Force Research Laboratory's, or AFRL, new Extreme Computing Facility at the Information Directorate in Rome, New York, is a vital component to national defense research, and AFRL is using the most cutting-edge Quantum Computing technology available to protect the nation and deliver game-changing technologies to the warfighter.
AFRL's Information Directorate welcomed U.S. Senate Maj Using supernovae to study neutrinos' strange properties
In a new study, researchers have taken an important step toward understanding how exploding stars can help reveal how neutrinos, mysterious subatomic particles, secretly interact with themselves.
One of the less well-understood elementary particles, neutrinos rarely interact with normal matter, and instead travel invisibly through it at almost the speed of light. These ghostly particles ou Week in images: 14-18 August 2023
Week in images: 14-18 August 2023
Discover our week through the lens
Huginn - piloting the Dragon
Huginn - piloting the Dragon
Huginn
NASA's tale of two towers: Both Artemis mobile launchers see action
NASA's Artemis program has one tower standing and one just getting started.
Mobile launcher 1 (ML-1), which endured some significant damage after its use on the Artemis I mission last November, has been undergoing repairs and enhancements in preparation for its reuse on next year's planned Artemis II flight, the first with humans on board.
NASA stuck the 380-foot-tall structure atop its slow-moving crawler-transporter 2 on Wednesday at Kennedy Space Center to begin its two-day return to Launch Pad 39-B.
ML-1 is the ground structure that holds NASA's powerful Space Launch System rocket, and for Artemis II, NASA has been working to add essential features for the four humans that will be riding in the Orion capsule atop the rocket. It will make its way into the Vehicle Assembly Building for eventual stacking of all the rocket parts early next year.
For now, though, it has work planned at the launch site where NASA's Exploration Ground Systems team will perform tests and work on upgrades for both the launcher and the launch pad. That includes a launch day demonstration for the Artemis II crew of NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch and Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen as well as NASA's closeout crew and the rescue team.
New Horizons is so far away, it can measure the true darkness of the universe
Just how dark is the night sky?
If you step outside during a moonless night and look up, it probably doesn't look that dark at all. Streetlights or nearby porch lights fill the air with a background glow, particularly if they happen to be bluish-white LEDs. Light pollution in your neighborhood is likely so bad that you can only see a few bright stars. Even in somewhat rural areas, our skies are so bright that the Milky Way isn't really visible. In North America and Europe, only about a quarter of children have seen the Milky Way.
To get away from all the light pollution you need to travel to a pretty remote corner of the world. One of the most remote is the Andean desert in Chile.
Scientists propose adapting a Mars ISRU system to the changing Mars environment
Human missions to Mars will require a substantial launch vehicle to ascend from Mars to rendezvous with a waiting Earth return vehicle in Mars orbit. For an ascending crew of 6, the current best estimate of oxygen propellants required for ascent is about 30 metric tons. Producing oxygen for ascent propellants and possibly life support from the indigenous CO2 on Mars, rather than bringing oxygen to Mars from Earth, is of significant benefit.
The oxygen production is accomplished through a process known generically as in situ resource utilization (ISRU). Since the Mars Oxygen ISRU Experiment (MOXIE) Project demonstrated operation of a prototype electrolysis system for converting Martian CO2 to O2 on Mars with great success, it is now appropriate to investigate scaling up this prototype to a full-scale system.
In a research paper recently published in Space: Science & Technology, Donald Rapp and Eric Hinterman modeled the performance of a full-scale Mars in situ resource utilization (ISRU) system to produce 30 metric tons of liquid O2, operated for 14 months as the Mars environment changes diurnally and seasonally.