It took a crop of potatoes to keep Matt Damon alive on the red planet in The Martian. And in future, real life astronauts on the Moon and Mars will have to be gardeners, farmers and expert recyclers as well as explorers. Do you have promising ideas that might help them to get by in space on next to no resources?

Image: Crash test dummy

Berlin, Germany (SPX) Jan 18, 2022
The 'Columbus Ka-Band Terminal' (ColKa) has commenced service. "The volume of scientific data generated by the experiments on the International Space Station (ISS) is continuously increasing. ColKa gives the Columbus laboratory on the ISS its own direct access to the SpaceDataHighway. The high-speed satellite link will significantly accelerate 'data traffic' to Europe. Many scientists will

Cincinnati OH (SPX) Jan 19, 2022
What do you call a broken satellite? Today, it's a multimillion-dollar piece of dangerous space junk. But a new collision-avoidance system developed by students at the University of Cincinnati is getting engineers closer to developing robots that can fix broken satellites or spacecraft in orbit. UC College of Engineering and Applied Science doctoral students Daegyun Choi and Anirudh Chhabr

Greenbelt MD (SPX) Jan 19, 2022
Northrop Grumman recently signed agreements to license three technologies from NASA related to satellite servicing. Two of the technologies were developed by NASA for the On-orbit Servicing, Assembly, and Manufacturing 1 (OSAM-1) mission. OSAM-1 is a first-of-its-kind mission that will grapple a US government-owned satellite, Landsat 7, to refuel it and to demonstrate the capability to pot

Washington DC (SPX) Jan 19, 2022
There are 6,500 satellites in orbit, but only about half of them are functional. Once a satellite breaks down or runs out of fuel, it is essentially useless. Repairs, maintenance and upgrades are nearly impossible in orbit. It's launch once, use once. But as satellites have become more robust, their operators often find that fleets outlast their projected lifespans and need new technology,

Tsukuba, Japan (SPX) Jan 13, 2022
The shape of a cell affects its physical and chemical properties. Different cell types have developed different shapes to enable effective functioning. But what shape were the very first cells, as life began to evolve? Primitive cells are thought to have been spherical, but experimental evidence supporting this belief remains elusive. Now, however, researchers from the University of Tsukub

New Brunswick NJ (SPX) Jan 14, 2022
Addressing one of the most profoundly unanswered questions in biology, a Rutgers-led team has discovered the structures of proteins that may be responsible for the origins of life in the primordial soup of ancient Earth. The researchers explored how primitive life may have originated on our planet from simple, non-living materials. They asked what properties define life as we know it and c

Almaty, Kazakhstan (Sputnik) Jan 19, 2022
Kazakhstan's President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev has fired his special envoy to the Russia-leased Baikonur space port, his press office said on Monday. "A decree of the head of state has relieved Serik Zhusipovich Suleimenov of his duties as the Kazakhstani president's special representative at Baikonur complex," the presidency said. Serik Suleimenov was appointed envoy to Baikonur in th

Pasadena CA (JPL) Jan 19, 2022
We continue to document rocks similar to what we saw at "The Prow," a dark appearing rock outcrop with amazing sedimentary structures and details. To do this, we need to get as close as possible to an outcrop surface but that has called for some short multi-plan drives, as we manoeuvre to a new feature called "Panari" (a length of roughly 20 metres away from The Prow). In our last plan, we