Intercropping viable for optimizing vegetable production on Mars
Thursday, 02 May 2024 14:20
A group of crop systems analysts at Wageningen University and Research, in the Netherlands, has found evidence that intercropping on Mars could be a viable option for optimizing vegetable production.
In their study, reported in the open-access journal PLOS ONE, Rebeca Gonçalves, G. W. Wieger Wamelink, Peter van der Putten and Jochem B. Evers, grew test plants in simulated Martian soil in a greenhouse.
If humans are ever to going to build colonies on Mars, colonists will need to grow most of their own food sustainably. Hauling soil or fertilizer from Earth to prevent depletion of nutrients in soil is considered to be unsustainable by most in the habitability field. For this new study, the research team looked at the possibility of intercropping as a way to optimize vegetable production.
Astroscale Japan Advances to Next Stage in JAXA's Orbital Debris Removal Initiative
Thursday, 02 May 2024 12:07
Exolaunch facilitates NASA's ACS3 satellite deployment into orbit
Thursday, 02 May 2024 12:07
Pulsed plasma rocket development accelerates manned missions to Mars
Thursday, 02 May 2024 12:07
The Great Observatory for Long Wavelengths Initiative
Thursday, 02 May 2024 12:07
Microsoft announces Thai datacenter region, AI training
Thursday, 02 May 2024 12:07
NASA's Arctic Balloon Missions Set for 2024 Sweden Campaign
Thursday, 02 May 2024 12:07
NASA inspector general report highlights issues with Orion heat shield
Thursday, 02 May 2024 10:05

A year in training: ESA's new astronauts graduate
Thursday, 02 May 2024 09:00
ESA's newly graduated astronauts reach the end of one year of rigorous basic astronaut training. Discover the journey of Sophie Adenot, Rosemary Coogan, Pablo Álvarez Fernández, Raphaël Liégeois, Marco Sieber, and Australian Space Agency astronaut candidate Katherine Bennell-Pegg. Selected in November 2022, the group began their training in April 2023.
Basic astronaut training provides the candidates with an overall familiarisation and training in various areas, such as spacecraft systems, spacewalks, flight engineering, robotics and life support systems as well as survival and medical training. They received astronaut certification at ESA’s European Astronaut Centre on 22 April 2024.
Following certification,
The Sun’s fluffy corona in exquisite detail
Thursday, 02 May 2024 07:00
This otherworldly, ever-changing landscape is what the Sun looks like up close. ESA's Solar Orbiter filmed the transition from the Sun's lower atmosphere to the much hotter outer corona. The hair-like structures are made of charged gas (plasma), following magnetic field lines emerging from the Sun's interior.
The brightest regions are around one million degrees Celsius, while cooler material looks dark as it absorbs radiation.
This video was recorded on 27 September 2023 by the Extreme Ultraviolet Imager (EUI) instrument on Solar Orbiter. At the time, the spacecraft was at roughly a third of the Earth’s distance from the Sun, heading for a closest approach of 43 million km on 7 October.
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