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Space... the final frontier...

That pic of Germany/earth is gorgeous...

China sets new record for quantum entanglement en route to build new communication network
CHINA has scored a victory against hackers and spooks as it surges ahead of other world powers in a new kind of space race.
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IN A bid to build an entirely new kind of internet — completely secure and impervious to hackers — China has pulled off a major feat in particle physics.

Chinese scientists have set a new distance record for beaming a pair of entangled particles: photons of light that behave like twins and experience the exact same things simultaneously, even though they’re separated by great distances.

The principle is called quantum entanglement and it’s one of the subatomic world’s weirdest phenomena. And China has smashed the distance record for quantum entanglement.

In a groundbreaking experiment led by Professor Jian-Wei Pan of Hefei University in China, a laser on a satellite orbiting 480 kilometres above the earth produced entangled photons.

They were then transmitted to two different ground-based stations 1200 kilometres apart, without breaking the link between the photons, the researchers said in a report published in the journal Science.

That distance achieved in the experiment is 10 times greater than the previous record for entanglement and is also the first time entangled photons have been generated in space.

“It’s a huge, major achievement,” Thomas Jennewein, physicist at the University of Waterloo in Canada, told Science. “They started with this bold idea and managed to do it.”

China launched its first quantum satellite in August and if all goes according to plan will send up plenty more to create a system of communication which relies on entanglement.

A COMPLETELY NEW INTERNET
By launching a group of quantum-enabled satellites, China hopes to create a super secure network that uses an encryption technique based on the principles of a field known as quantum communication.

“In physics we are trying, and we have demonstrated some encryption techniques that rely on the law of physics rather than the mathematical complexity and we call this quantum key distribution,” professor Ping Koy Lam from the ANU’s Department of Quantum Science told news.com.au last year, before China launched its first quantum satellite.

“For that to work you need to send laser beams that carry certain information, quantum information, and then you need the senders and the receivers to get together to find a protocol to secure the communication.”

The reason it can’t be hacked is because the information carried in the quantum state of a particle cannot be measured or cloned without destroying the information itself.

“We can show that this kind of quantum encryption works in a city radius or at most between two nearby cities,” Prof Lam said.

However China believes the atmosphere in space will allow the photons to travel further without disruption because “in space there’s nothing to attenuate light.”

In the latest experiment, both stations which received the photons were in the mountains of Tibet, at a height that reduced the amount of air the fragile photons had to traverse.

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The successful characterisation of quantum features under such conditions is a precondition for a global quantum communication network using satellites that would link metropolitan area quantum networks on the ground.


A NEW SPACE RACE

China’s ongoing progress will no doubt be watched closely by security agencies around the world.

While the spectre of a communication network enabled via quantum satellites is still a long way off, as China edges closer to the goal it has led to predictions of a new space race.

Quantum technology has been a major focus of China’s five-year economic development plan, released in March 2016. While other space agencies have been experimenting with the technology, none have seen the level of financial support provided by Beijing.

China has not disclosed how much money it has spent on Quantum research, but funding for basic research which includes quantum physics was $US101 billion in 2015 — an absolutely massive increase from the $US1.9 billion the country spent in 2005.

Scientists in the US, Canada, Europe and Japan are also rushing to exploit the power of particle physics to create secure communication systems, but China’s latest experiment puts the country well ahead of the pack.


...what a bloody interesting article that you posted kxk... I just love the fact that it was the Chinese that announced that they have achieved that first lol!... I bet they enjoyed doing that just to shove it up the USA/Russia/Japan and other so-called 'technically advanced' countries lol!... I can just imagine them all running around like chooks with their heads cut off now in total panic and suddenly thrusting billions of dollars into that research now lol!... well done China!... thanks for posting it kxk... cheers.
 
Fascinating stuff.

I am glad I have a Chinese name and grandfather - when they take over the world, should count for something, and the persecution and stuff:)
 
OOOOOOOOOOO

Hacking group Anonymous claims NASA is about to announce ‘evidence of alien life’
NASA is “on the verge” of announcing the discovery of alien life, according to a new video by hacking group Anonymous.
NASA is “on the verge” of announcing the discovery of alien life, according to the latest video from hacktivist group Anonymous.

The hackers published a YouTube clip overnight which claims a NASA scientist made the announcement at the last meeting of the US Science, Space and Technology committee.

It comes after NASA’s Kepler space observatory discovered 219 “potential new worlds” in other solar systems.

Ten of the planets are “rocky” like the Earth and fall in their systems’ “Goldilocks zone” — so-called because it is not too hot or too cold for life to exist.

In its video, Anonymous claimed head of NASA Science Mission Directorate Professor Thomas Zurbuchen told the meeting: “Our civilisation is on the verge of discovering evidence of alien life in the cosmos. Taking into account all of the different activities and missions that are searching for alien life, we are on the verge of making one of the most profound, unprecedented discoveries in history.”

Professor Zurbuchen said on Twitter last week: “Wow, 219 potential new planets! @NASAKepler data shows us that most stars are home to at least one planet … Are we alone?”

The Kepler space telescope has been hunting for planets since it was launched into orbit around the Sun in 2009.
It can spot tiny drops in a distant star’s brightness when a planet crosses in front of it, called a transit.

The latest groundbreaking discoveries were among 2335 planets beyond our solar system that have been verified after being found by Kepler.

Of these, only 30 planets have been found to be earth-like planets potentially able to host life.

“This carefully-measured catalogue is the foundation for directly answering one of astronomy’s most compelling questions — how many planets like our Earth are in the galaxy?” said Susan Thompson, Kepler research scientist.

http://www.news.com.au/technology/s...e/news-story/e4b56dc2f3b4cb7e20beb728cd360e9e
 
...that's quite an interesting article there kxk... if there is evidence of Life elsewhere?... (which of course there just HAS to be) then why not just announce it and be done with it?...what?... are they worried that the population of Earth will think that we'll be invaded by little green men in flying saucers or something and that we'll all be screaming and running in the streets in total panic?... just like in Orson Well's broadcast back in the 1940's or whatever?... lol!... also... it's not like we're all sweating on hearing that there's finally 'evidence' of something that we've really 'known' in our own minds for decades is it?... lol!... but yes...announce it already lol!...

...with all of the million trillion squillion gadzillion Galaxies/Nebulas/Stars/Planets and whatever that are out there you'd have to be basically brain dead if your mind believes that Life can't have been created on any of them too surely?... most of the people on Planet Earth believes in God and that he created Life and everything in the Universe right?... so why would he in his infinite wisdom just only create it on Earth and that's it?... he sounds like a really generous kind of guy to me... so why wouldn't he spread it around to other Planets and Galaxies or whatever to ensure that everyone and every 'thing' gets a slice of the pie too?... lol!...

...anyhow... getting back to the article and away from my insane babblings... they say in the article that "Ten of the planets are “rocky” like the Earth and fall in their systems’ “Goldilocks zone” — so-called because it is not too hot or too cold for life to exist."... so why do Planets have to be in the 'Goldilocks zone' for Life to exist?... Life doesn't necessarily have to be like anything on Earth to be classified as being 'alive' does it?... anyway... just my thoughts on the subject anyway... thanks for posting the article kxk... very interesting indeed!... cheers.
 
...I don't really know or understand how this all works but none the less I find myself in wonderment like a child at what Scientists can actually do now... they are bending light by using a 'Gravitational Lens' to achieve these photo's using the Hubble Space telescope now?... wow!... just wow!... the part that really blows my mind is what was said here...

"The galaxy in question is so far away that we see it as it appeared 11 billion years ago, only 2.7 billion years after the big bang."

...I just find that to be beyond amazing... it's fantasmagorical!... I love the fact that I'm alive in this era of Space discovery... it blows my mind away... it simply does... on this website below... cheers.

https://www.morningticker.com/2017/07/huge-discovery-deep-in-space-shocks-scientists/

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Huge discovery deep in space shocks scientists


July 9, 2017 by Dan Taylor 1 Comment

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Something incredible has just been spotted deep in the outer reaches of space by NASA's Hubble Telescope using an amazing method.

Scientists have just made a totally amazing discovery deep in space using NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, and they used a clever trick to do it. Using the “natural magnifying glass” of a galaxy cluster, they were able to produce an image of an incredibly distant galaxy that is 10 times sharper than they normally would have, enabling them to find something that could totally change how we understand star-forming regions from shortly after the Big Bang.

Scientists took images of a galaxy that formed only 2.7 billion years following the Big Bang, and found that it was just 200 to 300 light years across. Experts believed that such star-forming knots were 3,000 light years across, but this finding throws that theory into question.

Hubble used a gravitational lense, or a much closer massive object like a cluster of galaxies, to magnifying an image that is warped into an arc shape around that cluster. That allows us to see something far, far away that even the Hubble telescope wouldn’t be able to pick up otherwise. And it’s leading to exciting discoveries like this one.

The full statement from NASA is below.

IC 342 is a challenging cosmic target. Although it is bright, the galaxy sits near the equator of the Milky Way’s galactic disk, where the sky is thick with glowing cosmic gas, bright stars, and dark, obscuring dust. In order for astronomers to see the intricate spiral structure of IC 342, they must gaze through a large amount of material contained within our own galaxy — no easy feat! As a result IC 342 is relatively difficult to spot and image, giving rise to its intriguing nickname: the “Hidden Galaxy.”

Located very close (in astronomical terms) to the Milky Way, this sweeping spiral galaxy would be among the brightest in the sky were it not for its dust-obscured location. The galaxy is very active, as indicated by the range of colors visible in this NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image, depicting the very central region of the galaxy.

A beautiful mixture of hot, blue star-forming regions, redder, cooler regions of gas, and dark lanes of opaque dust can be seen, all swirling together around a bright core. In 2003, astronomers confirmed this core to be a specific type of central region known as an HII nucleus — a name that indicates the presence of ionized hydrogen — that is likely to be creating many hot new stars.

When it comes to the distant universe, even the keen vision of NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope can only go so far. Teasing out finer details requires clever thinking and a little help from a cosmic alignment with a gravitational lens.

By applying a new computational analysis to a galaxy magnified by a gravitational lens, astronomers have obtained images 10 times sharper than what Hubble could achieve on its own. The results show an edge-on disk galaxy studded with brilliant patches of newly formed stars.

“When we saw the reconstructed image we said, ‘Wow, it looks like fireworks are going off everywhere,'” said astronomer Jane Rigby of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

The galaxy in question is so far away that we see it as it appeared 11 billion years ago, only 2.7 billion years after the big bang. It is one of more than 70 strongly lensed galaxies studied by the Hubble Space Telescope, following up targets selected by the Sloan Giant Arcs Survey, which discovered hundreds of strongly lensed galaxies by searching Sloan Digital Sky Survey imaging data covering one-fourth of the sky.

The gravity of a giant cluster of galaxies between the target galaxy and Earth distorts the more distant galaxy’s light, stretching it into an arc and also magnifying it almost 30 times. The team had to develop special computer code to remove the distortions caused by the gravitational lens, and reveal the disk galaxy as it would normally appear.

The resulting reconstructed image revealed two dozen clumps of newborn stars, each spanning about 200 to 300 light-years. This contradicted theories suggesting that star-forming regions in the distant, early universe were much larger, 3,000 light-years or more in size.

“There are star-forming knots as far down in size as we can see,” said doctoral student Traci Johnson of the University of Michigan, lead author of two of the three papers describing the research.

Without the magnification boost of the gravitational lens, Johnson added, the disk galaxy would appear perfectly smooth and unremarkable to Hubble. This would give astronomers a very different picture of where stars are forming.

While Hubble highlighted new stars within the lensed galaxy, NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope will uncover older, redder stars that formed even earlier in the galaxy’s history. It will also peer through any obscuring dust within the galaxy.

“With the Webb Telescope, we’ll be able to tell you what happened in this galaxy in the past, and what we missed with Hubble because of dust,” said Rigby.

These findings appear in a paper published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters and two additional papers published in The Astrophysical Journal.

The Hubble Space Telescope is a project of international cooperation between NASA and the European Space Agency. NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, manages the telescope. The Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore, Maryland, conducts Hubble science operations. STScI is operated for NASA by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy in Washington, D.C.
 
...and... further on that article above and directly from NASA itself in more detail... this article from this website below... cheers.

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2017/hubble-sees-clumps-of-new-stars-in-distant-galaxy

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Hubble Pushed Beyond Limits to Spot Clumps of New Stars in Distant Galaxy

When it comes to the distant universe, even the keen vision of NASA's Hubble Space Telescope can only go so far. Teasing out finer details requires clever thinking and a little help from a cosmic alignment with a gravitational lens.

By applying a new computational analysis to a galaxy magnified by a gravitational lens, astronomers have obtained images 10 times sharper than what Hubble could achieve on its own. The results show an edge-on disk galaxy studded with brilliant patches of newly formed stars.



In this Hubble photograph of a distant galaxy cluster, a spotty blue arc stands out against a background of red galaxies. That arc is actually three separate images of the same background galaxy. The background galaxy has been gravitationally lensed, its light magnified and distorted by the intervening galaxy cluster. On the right: How the galaxy would look to Hubble without distortions.
Credits: NASA, ESA, and T. Johnson (University of Michigan)
"When we saw the reconstructed image we said, 'Wow, it looks like fireworks are going off everywhere,'" said astronomer Jane Rigby of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

The galaxy in question is so far away that we see it as it appeared 11 billion years ago, only 2.7 billion years after the big bang. It is one of more than 70 strongly lensed galaxies studied by the Hubble Space Telescope, following up targets selected by the Sloan Giant Arcs Survey, which discovered hundreds of strongly lensed galaxies by searching Sloan Digital Sky Survey imaging data covering one-fourth of the sky.



The galaxy cluster SDSS J1110+6459 is located about 6 billion light-years from Earth and contains hundreds of galaxies. At left, a distinctive blue arc is actually composed of three separate images of a more distant background galaxy called SGAS J111020.0+645950.8. The background galaxy has been magnified, distorted, and multiply imaged by the gravity of the galaxy cluster in a process known as gravitational lensing.

Credits: NASA, ESA, and T. Johnson (University of Michigan)


Banner image: This artist's illustration portrays what the gravitationally lensed galaxy SDSS J1110+6459 might look like up close. A sea of young, blue stars is streaked with dark dust lanes and studded with bright pink patches that mark sites of star formation. The patches' signature glow comes from ionized hydrogen, like we see in the Orion Nebula in our own galaxy.
Credits: NASA, ESA, and Z. Levay (STScI)
The gravity of a giant cluster of galaxies between the target galaxy and Earth distorts the more distant galaxy's light, stretching it into an arc and also magnifying it almost 30 times. The team had to develop special computer code to remove the distortions caused by the gravitational lens, and reveal the disk galaxy as it would normally appear.

The resulting reconstructed image revealed two dozen clumps of newborn stars, each spanning about 200 to 300 light-years. This contradicted theories suggesting that star-forming regions in the distant, early universe were much larger, 3,000 light-years or more in size.

"There are star-forming knots as far down in size as we can see," said doctoral student Traci Johnson of the University of Michigan, lead author of two of the three papers describing the research.

Without the magnification boost of the gravitational lens, Johnson added, the disk galaxy would appear perfectly smooth and unremarkable to Hubble. This would give astronomers a very different picture of where stars are forming.

While Hubble highlighted new stars within the lensed galaxy, NASA's James Webb Space Telescope will uncover older, redder stars that formed even earlier in the galaxy's history. It will also peer through any obscuring dust within the galaxy.

"With the Webb Telescope, we'll be able to tell you what happened in this galaxy in the past, and what we missed with Hubble because of dust," said Rigby.

These findings appear in a paper published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters and two additional papers published in The Astrophysical Journal.

The Hubble Space Telescope is a project of international cooperation between NASA and the European Space Agency. NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, manages the telescope. The Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore, Maryland, conducts Hubble science operations. STScI is operated for NASA by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy in Washington, D.C.
 
...on a completely different topic altogether that has to do with 3D Printing in Space... with a title like "A 3D-Printed Rocket Engine Just Launched a New Era of Space Exploration"... I'll just let you read the article... it's just simply amazing to me... on this website below... cheers.

https://www.space.com/37163-3d-printed-rocket-engine-launches-new-space-exploration-era.html


A 3D-Printed Rocket Engine Just Launched a New Era of Space Exploration

By Candice Majewski, University of Sheffield | June 15, 2017 07:00am ET


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Credit: RocketLab
This article was originally published at The Conversation. The publication contributed the article to Space.com's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights.

The rocket that blasted into space from New Zealand on May 25 was special. Not only was it the first to launch from a private site, it was also the first to be powered by an engine made almost entirely using 3D printing. This might not make it the "first 3D-printed rocket in space" that some headlines described it as, but it does highlight how seriously this manufacturing technique is being taken by the space industry.

Members of the team behind the Electron rocket at US company Rocket Lab say the engine was printed in 24 hours and provides efficiency and performance benefits over other systems. There's not yet much information out there regarding the exact details of the 3D-printed components. But it's likely many of them have been designed to minimise weight while maintaining their structural performance, while other components may have been optimised to provide efficient fluid flow. These advantages – reducing weight and the potential for complex new designs – are a large part of why 3D printing is expected to find some of its most significant applications in space exploration, with dramatic effect.

One thing the set of technologies known as additive manufacturing or 3D printing does really well is to produce highly complicated shapes. For example, lattice structures produced in exactly the right way so that they weigh less but are just as strong as similar solid components. This creates the opportunity to produce optimised, lightweight parts that were previously impossible to manufacture economically or efficiently with more traditional techniques.

Boeing's microlattice is an example of taking this to the extreme, supposedly producing mechanically sound structures that are 99.9 percent air. Not all 3D printing processes can achieve this, but even weight savings of a few percent in aircraft and spacecraft can lead to major benefits through the use of less fuel.

3D printing tends to work best for the production of relatively small, intricate parts rather than large, simple structures, where the higher material and processing costs would outweigh any advantage. For example, a redesigned nozzle can enhance fuel mixing within an engine, leading to better efficiency. Increasing the surface area of a heat shield by using a patterned rather than a flat surface can mean heat is transferred away more efficiently, reducing the chances of overheating.

The techniques can also reduce the amount of material wasted in manufacturing, important because space components tend to be made from highly expensive and often rare materials. 3D printing can also produce whole systems in one go rather than from lots of assembled parts. For example, NASA used it to reduce the components in one of its rocket injectors from 115 to just two. Plus, 3D printers can easily make small numbers of a part – as the space industry often needs – without first creating expensive manufacturing tools.

In orbit
3D printers are also likely to find a use in space itself, where it's difficult to keep large numbers of spare parts and hard to send out for replacements when you're thousands of kilometres from Earth. There's now a 3D printer on the International Space Station so, if something breaks, engineers can send up a design for a replacement and the astronauts can print it out.

The current printer only deals with plastic so it's more likely to be used for making tools or one-off replacements for low-performance parts such as door handles. But once 3D printers can more easily use other materials, we're likely to see an increase in their uses. One day, people in space could produce their own food items and even biological materials. Recycling facilities could also enable broken parts to be reused to make the replacements.


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Astro printing.
Credit: Barry Wilmore/NASA
Looking even further ahead, 3D printers could prove useful in building colonies. Places like the moon don't have much in the way of traditional building materials, but the European Space Agency has proven solar energy can power the production of "bricks" of lunar dust, which would be a good start. Researchers are now looking at how to use 3D printing to take this idea further and develop complete printed buildings on the moon.

To make many of these applications a reality, we'll need to research more advanced materials and processes that can manufacture components to withstand the extremely harsh conditions of space. Engineers also need to work on developing optimised designs and find ways of testing 3D printed parts to prove they're safe. And then there's the irritating issue of gravity, or rather the lack of it. Many current processes use powders or liquids as their raw materials so we're likely to need some clever tricks in order to make these function safely in a low or microgravity environment.

Some of these barriers may even require entirely new materials and techniques. But as research goes on, 3D printing is likely to be used more and more in space, even if a fully printed space vehicle isn't going to launch any time soon. The sky is no longer the limit.

Candice Majewski, Lecturer, Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Sheffield

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article. Follow all of the Expert Voices issues and debates — and become part of the discussion — on Facebook, Twitter and Google +. The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher. This version of the article was originally published on Space.com.
 
...and adding further to that article above about 3D Printing in Space... from this website below... cheers.

https://www.space.com/37101-self-replicating-3d-printer-moon-bases.html

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Self-Replicating 3D Printers Could Build Moon Bases, Fight Global Warming

By Tereza Pultarova | June 6, 2017 12:58pm ET


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A partially 3D-printed motor created by an engineering team at Carleton University in Ottawa. The team is trying to make self-replicating 3D printers from materials that can be found on the moon.
Credit: Alex Ellery
A 3D printer that could re-create itself from lunar material is in development at a university in Canada.

The technology could one day enable humans to 3D-print lunar bases, as well as conduct in-space manufacturing of satellites and solar shields on the moon that could help fight global warming, according to Alex Ellery, an associate professor in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at Carleton University in Ottawa, who is leading the project.

"I believe that self-replicating machines will be transformative for space exploration because it effectively bypasses launch costs," Ellery told Space.com. [How Moon Bases and Lunar Colonies Work (Infographic)]

The engineer envisions a single 3D printer could be delivered to the moon, where it would make thousands of its copies from surrounding lunar material. Once there would be enough 3D printers, the self-replicating factory would focus on building all other equipment and infrastructure needed for human exploration.

Ellery said he and his colleagues are close to being able to 3D-print a fully functioning electric motor from material similar to what can be sourced on the moon. Although some commercially available 3D printers can reprint some of their own parts, none of those printers can produce motors and electronics, according to Ellery.


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An early attempt to 3D-print wires made of aluminium alloy on silicone plastic substrate. The 3D-printer prototype is being developed at Carleton University.
Credit: Alex Ellery
"Our starting point is the RepRap 3D printer, which can print many of its own plastic parts," Ellery told Space.com, referring to the open-source device originally developed by the University of Bath in the United Kingdom. "In order to fully self-replicate itself, it needs to print its metal bars, its electric motors, its electronics and software, and self-assemble."

Ellery and his team, who described the project in an article published in the Journal of Spacecraft and Rockets last year, are using a mixture of a plastic material and iron filings to 3D-print two parts of the motor, the stator and the rotor.

"We need to maximize magnetic threading through the rotor, which requires more iron, but minimize eddy currents in the stator, which requires less iron," Ellery said. "So we have been varying the amount of iron in the plastic matrix."

Ellery said that elements needed for creating a similar mixture could be extracted from the lunar regolith. The lunar 3D-printer, fitted with a robotic arm, would scoop up the regolith and heat it to about 1,650 degrees Fahrenheit (900 degrees Celsius) using a so-called frensel lens to focus sunlight into a beam. The process would first remove volatile gases from the lunar soil. Subsequently, a component called ilmenite would be separated and used for extraction of iron, according to Ellery.

"Although we are using [polylactic acid] plastic [to 3D-print components], I envisage replacing this with silicone plastic — this can be manufactured from lunar volatile carbon compounds and lunar water," Ellery explained.

As a next step toward 3D-printing the motor, the researchers are aiming to replace the motor's wire coils with aluminum coils printed onto a polylactic acid plastic substrate (the latter is a common material used for 3D printing). On the moon, the aluminum would be replaced with fernico (iron-nickel-cobalt alloy) and the plastic would be replaced with a ceramic substrate made from melted lunar soil.

The magnetic field produced by the aluminum coils printed on the plastic substrate is "actually quite weak, so we are trying figure out ways to add more layers to increase the amount of current that goes through them," Ellery said. "But eventually, what we will do is that we will integrate that into the motor so that will give us a complete core, which is 3D-printed."

Ellery believes that he will have a fully functioning 3D-printed motor in a few months. The other prerequisite for a fully self-replicating machine — the electronics — is a problem that will probably take much longer to solve, he said.


This small motor was made using some 3D-printed parts. Researchers at Carleton University are working to make the entire motor 3D-printable. Credit: Alex Ellery via GIPHY

"We have looked at vacuum tubes because trying to create solid-state electronics would be virtually impossible on the moon," Ellery said. "If you use vacuum tubes, the only materials you need are nickel, tungsten, glass, essentially, and Kovar, all of which you can make on the moon."

Ellery says that the self-replicating machine would use a neural network — a computing system modeled after the human brain — because it would be smaller and easier to 3D-print than a typical computing system. The Carleton team has built a trial neural network and used it to control a small rover.

"Once motors and electronic controllers can be 3D-printed, we can print any kind of robot, including a 3D printer, as well as milling machines, drills, lathes, excavating machines and so on," Ellery said. "If you have a robotic self-replicating machine, you can grow an enormous manufacturing infrastructure on the moon robotically."

Such a machine could build habitats for astronauts before they arrive at a deep- space location. It could also be used to cheaply enable space-based solar power, in which satellites equipped with solar panels turn sunlight into energy, and send that energy down to Earth. Humans could also build space shields to protect the Earth against solar radiation, which could further combat the planet's warming trend Ellery said.

Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article on Space.com.
 
Did you spot this on tonight @Mr Stickyfingers ???

The Farthest

'Series 1: Episode 1'

ABC HD, 9:30pm, Tue, 8 Aug 2017, 60 minutes

NEW SHOW

In August 1977 NASA's Voyager mission began on a journey to Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune & beyond. With its iconic golden record on board, humanity's greatest achievement uses less computing power than a mobile phone.



Series, United States, English, Documentary, Science
 
Did you spot this on tonight @Mr Stickyfingers ???

The Farthest

'Series 1: Episode 1'

ABC HD, 9:30pm, Tue, 8 Aug 2017, 60 minutes

NEW SHOW

In August 1977 NASA's Voyager mission began on a journey to Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune & beyond. With its iconic golden record on board, humanity's greatest achievement uses less computing power than a mobile phone.



Series, United States, English, Documentary, Science

...oh wow!... I just read this and immediately switched channels... bugger!... I've missed the first 20 minutes of the show but am watching the rest of it now... I'll re-watch it again later on ABCIview later tonight... thanks soooooo much for this heads up kxk... you're a gem... you really are sweet lady!... cheers.
 
  • Like
Reactions: kxk
...kxk... I just watched the whole show... thanks so much again for putting me onto that show... I remember back to those days when they were all launched... amazing times indeed... I don't know if you have Foxtel or not but there's a show that I caught last night of people that hunt down old Space exploration memorabilia etc... booster rockets/Spacesuits etc... it was called 'Space Dealers'... this is the website link below...

https://www.aetv.com.au/shows/space-dealers/

...so thanks again kxk... cheers.

2017-08-09_0-14-19.jpg
 
  • Like
Reactions: kxk
Do you watch Catalyst @Mr Stickyfingers .....often very spacey, I love Dr Nguyen

Catalyst

'Meet The Avatars'

ABC, 8:30pm, Tue, 15 Aug 2017, 60 minutes

NEW SHOW

In the series return of Catalyst, Biomedical engineer Dr Jordan Nguyen examines virtual reality & how it could transform the way we learn & travel. He also meets some of the most life-like avatars that scientists are creating



Series, Australia, English, Education, Science & Tech
 
Do you watch Catalyst @Mr Stickyfingers .....often very spacey, I love Dr Nguyen

Catalyst

'Meet The Avatars'

ABC, 8:30pm, Tue, 15 Aug 2017, 60 minutes

NEW SHOW

In the series return of Catalyst, Biomedical engineer Dr Jordan Nguyen examines virtual reality & how it could transform the way we learn & travel. He also meets some of the most life-like avatars that scientists are creating



Series, Australia, English, Education, Science & Tech


...yes I'm taping them both kxk... thanks for getting me onto 'The Farthest'... plus others that you've mentioned to me before now... I'm now beginning to pay more attention to SBS and the ABC for Space and Science programs because of you letting me know about them so thanks for the heads up my friend... cheers.
 
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...I always love these sort of articles... imagine the sights that these little fella's have seen in their travels?... lol!... from this website below... cheers.

http://www.sacbee.com/news/nation-world/article168095622.html


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FILE - This file image released by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory on Monday, July 18, 2011 shows the asteroid Vesta, photographed by the Dawn spacecraft on July 17, 2011. The image was taken from a distance of about 9,500 miles (15,000 kilometers) away. NASA/JPL AP

Nation & World
Biggest near-Earth asteroid recorded by NASA will make a pass in September
By Michael McGough


August 18, 2017 4:48 PM

If Monday’s approaching solar eclipse has you excited about astronomy, there’s some good news: Not even two weeks later, another rare feat will pass us by. And miss us, thankfully.

An asteroid called Florence will pass within 4.5 million miles of Earth on Sept. 1, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory announced in a Thursday press release.

That’s 18 times the distance from the Earth to the moon. If that doesn’t sound impressive, consider its size: At 2.7 miles, Florence is the largest asteroid to pass Earth since NASA began tracking near-Earth asteroids. And this particular asteroid won’t come this close again until 2500, NASA says.

Unfortunately, it won’t be visible to the naked eye. But with a small telescope, stargazers can catch Florence several nights between late August and early September, near the Capricornus and Aquarius constellations, according to JPL.

Florence & the Machines: @NASA + @NSF observatories will track #asteroid Florence when it safely passes Earth Sept 1 https://t.co/5uFrZEDO7R pic.twitter.com/95W03Brx0I

— NASA JPL (@NASAJPL) August 18, 2017

If you’re looking for something a little closer to home, a smaller asteroid will make a close pass in October – this one much, much closer.

A house-sized asteroid will come within one-eighth the distance from Earth-to-moon on Oct. 12, The Guardian reported last Thursday, citing the European Space Agency.

Don’t panic.

“We know for sure that there is no possibility for this object to hit the Earth. There is no danger whatsoever,” Detlef Koschny of ESA’s near-Earth objects research team told Agence France-Presse.

That asteroid, called 2012 TC4, and Florence will give NASA and the ESA good opportunities to study near-Earth items and improve tracking networks, better preparing us in the event of potential collision threats in the future.

These asteroids are the next in a string of remarkable celestial occurrences coming in a short time span. Overshadowed a bit by the coming eclipse, the Perseid meteor shower hit its peak last Saturday night, but a bright moon washed out many meteors from view during one of the year’s most popular showers.
 
...more on that article above from NASA itself... cheers.

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Aug. 18, 2017

Large Asteroid to Safely Pass Earth on Sept. 1
Asteroid Florence, a large near-Earth asteroid, will pass safely by Earth on Sept. 1, 2017, at a distance of about 4.4 million miles, (7.0 million kilometers, or about 18 Earth-Moon distances). Florence is among the largest near-Earth asteroids that are several miles in size; measurements from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope and NEOWISE mission indicate it’s about 2.7 miles (4.4 kilometers) in size.

“While many known asteroids have passed by closer to Earth than Florence will on September 1, all of those were estimated to be smaller,” said Paul Chodas, manager of NASA’s Center for Near-Earth Object Studies (CNEOS) at the agency's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. “Florence is the largest asteroid to pass by our planet this close since the NASA program to detect and track near-Earth asteroids began.”


Asteroid Florence, a large near-Earth asteroid, will pass safely by Earth on Sept. 1, 2017, at a distance of about 4.4 million miles.

Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech


This relatively close encounter provides an opportunity for scientists to study this asteroid up close. Florence is expected to be an excellent target for ground-based radar observations. Radar imaging is planned at NASA's Goldstone Solar System Radar in California and at the National Science Foundation's Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico. The resulting radar images will show the real size of Florence and also could reveal surface details as small as about 30 feet (10 meters).

Asteroid Florence was discovered by Schelte "Bobby" Bus at Siding Spring Observatory in Australia in March 1981. It is named in honor of Florence Nightingale (1820-1910), the founder of modern nursing. The 2017 encounter is the closest by this asteroid since 1890 and the closest it will ever be until after 2500. Florence will brighten to ninth magnitude in late August and early September, when it will be visible in small telescopes for several nights as it moves through the constellations Piscis Austrinus, Capricornus, Aquarius and Delphinus.

Radar has been used to observe hundreds of asteroids. When these small, natural remnants of the formation of the solar system pass relatively close to Earth, deep space radar is a powerful technique for studying their sizes, shapes, rotation, surface features and roughness, and for more precise determination of their orbital path.

JPL manages and operates NASA's Deep Space Network, including the Goldstone Solar System Radar, and hosts the Center for Near-Earth Object Studies for NASA's Near-Earth Object Observations Program, an element of the Planetary Defense Coordination Office within the agency's Science Mission Directorate.

More information about asteroids and near-Earth objects can be found at:

https://cneos.jpl.nasa.gov

https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/asteroidwatch
 
...I've always loved the study our our Sun and in particular the Sun spots and Solar flares... I find this article from NASA to be quite compelling... on this website below... cheers.

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2017/two-weeks-in-the-life-of-a-sunspot

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Aug. 4, 2017

Two Weeks in the Life of a Sunspot

On July 5, 2017, NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory watched an active region — an area of intense and complex magnetic fields — rotate into view on the Sun. The satellite continued to track the region as it grew and eventually rotated across the Sun and out of view on July 17.

With their complex magnetic fields, sunspots are often the source of interesting solar activity: During its 13-day trip across the face of the Sun, the active region — dubbed AR12665 — put on a show for NASA’s Sun-watching satellites, producing several solar flares, a coronal mass ejection and a solar energetic particle event. Watch the video below to learn how NASA’s satellites tracked the sunspot over the course of these two weeks.



On July 5, 2017, the Solar Dynamics Observatory watched an active region — an area of intense and complex magnetic fields — rotate into view. During its 13-day trip across the face of the Sun, the active region put on a show for several NASA Sun-watching satellites, producing several solar flares, a coronal mass ejection and a solar energetic particle event.
Credits: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/SDO/SOHO/CCMC/SWRC/Genna Duberstein, producer
Download this video in HD formats from NASA Goddard's Scientific Visualization Studio
Such sunspots are a common occurrence on the Sun, but less frequent at the moment, as the Sun is moving steadily toward a period of lower solar activity called solar minimum — a regular occurrence during its approximately 11-year cycle. Scientists track such spots because they can help provide information about the Sun’s inner workings. Space weather centers, such as NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center, also monitor these spots to provide advance warning, if needed, of the radiation bursts being sent toward Earth, which can impact our satellites and radio communications.

On July 9, a medium-sized flare burst from the sunspot, peaking at 11:18 a.m. EDT. Solar flares are explosions on the Sun that send energy, light and high-speed particles out into space — much like how earthquakes have a Richter scale to describe their strength, solar flares are also categorized according to their intensity. This flare was categorized as an M1. M-class flares are a tenth the size of the most intense flares, the X-class flares. The number provides more information about its strength: An M2 is twice as intense as an M1, an M3 is three times as intense and so on.


After a large sunspot rotated out of Earth’s view on July 17, 2017, NASA instruments could still track its effects on the far side of the star. This imagery from NASA’s Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory on July 23, 2017, captures an eruption of solar material — a coronal mass ejection — from that same active region.

Credits: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/STEREO/Bill Thompson


Days later, on July 14, a second medium-sized, M2 flare erupted from the Sun. The second flare was long-lived, peaking at 10:09 a.m. EDT and lasting over two hours.

This was accompanied by another kind of solar explosion called a coronal mass ejection, or CME. Solar flares are often associated with CMEs — giant clouds of solar material and energy. NASA’s Solar and Heliospheric Observatory, or SOHO, saw the CME at 9:36 a.m. EDT leaving the Sun at speeds of 620 miles per second and eventually slowing to 466 miles per second.

Following the CME, the turbulent active region also emitted a flurry of high-speed protons, known as a solar energetic particle event, at 12:45 p.m. EDT.

Research scientists at the Community Coordinated Modeling Center — located at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland — used these spacecraft observations as input for their simulations of space weather throughout the solar system. Using a model called ENLIL, they are able to map out and predict whether the solar storm will impact our instruments and spacecraft, and send alerts to NASA mission operators if necessary.

By the time the CME made contact with Earth’s magnetic field on July 16, the sunspot’s journey across the Sun was almost complete. As for the solar storm, it took this massive cloud of solar material two days to travel 93 million miles to Earth, where it caused charged particles to stream down Earth’s magnetic poles, sparking enhanced aurora.

Related:

Banner image: A blended view of the sunspot in visible and extreme ultraviolet light reveals bright coils arcing over the active region — particles spiraling along magnetic field lines. Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/SDO
 
...if you're like me and love Hubble's images... you can go onto this website below and download "Hubble’s Exploration of the Universe"... which is a PDF file that you can print out a beautiful 20 page booklet... it is magnificent!... and... full of so much information about Space too without being too technical at all... I really do encourage you to down load it... it's brilliant... on this website below...

https://www.nasa.gov/content/goddard/2017/highlights-of-hubble-s-exploration-of-the-universe

...and here is the link to the booklet itself...

https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/..._of_hubbles_exploration_of_the_universe_0.pdf

...and... here are just some of the many images in it... cheers.

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...this article is a bit out of the ordinary for me but I find it totally fascinating... instead of talking about it I'll just let you read it yourself... on this link below... cheers.

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July 27, 2017

The Dark Side of the Crater: How Light Looks Different on the Moon and What NASA Is Doing About It

Things look different on the Moon. Literally.
Because the Moon isn't big enough to hold a significant atmosphere, there is no air and there are no particles in the air to reflect and scatter sunlight. On Earth, shadows in otherwise bright environments are dimly lit with indirect light from these tiny reflections. That lighting provides enough detail that we get an idea of shapes, holes and other features that could be obstacles to someone – or some robot – trying to maneuver in shadow.

"What you get on the Moon are dark shadows and very bright regions that are directly illuminated by the Sun – the Italian painters in the Baroque period called it chiaroscuro – alternating light and dark," said Uland Wong, a computer scientist at NASA's Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley. "It's very difficult to be able to perceive anything for a robot or even a human that needs to analyze these visuals, because cameras don't have the sensitivity to be able to see the details that you need to detect a rock or a crater."

In addition, the dust itself covering the Moon is otherworldly. The way light reflects on the jagged shape of individual grains, along with the uniformity of color, means it looks different if it's lit from different directions. It loses texture at different lighting angles.

Some of these visual challenges are evident in Apollo mission surface images, but the early lunar missions mostly waited until lunar “afternoon” so astronauts could safely explore the surface in well-lit conditions.

Future lunar rovers may target unexplored polar regions of the Moon to drill for water ice and other volatiles that are essential, but heavy, to take on human exploration missions. At the Moon’s poles, the Sun is always near the horizon and long shadows hide many potential dangers in terrain like rocks and craters. Pure darkness is a challenge for robots that need to use visual sensors to safely explore the surface.

Wong and his team in Ames' Intelligent Robotics Group are tackling this by gathering real data from simulated lunar soil and lighting.

"We're building these analog environments here and lighting them like they would look on the Moon with solar simulators, in order to create these sorts of appearance conditions," said Wong. "We use a lot of 3-dimensional imaging techniques, and use sensors to create algorithms, which will both help the robot safeguard itself in these environments, and let us train people to interpret it correctly and command a robot where to go."


Above is a set from over 2,500 pairs of stereo camera images taken from at least 12 scenarios of recreated craters and rock formations that Wong and his team collected to accurately simulate the lighting conditions at the Moon's poles. The goal is to improve the stereo viewing capabilities of robotic systems to effectively navigate unknown terrain and avoid hazards at the Moon poles.

Credits: NASA/Uland Wong


The team uses a 'Lunar Lab' testbed at Ames – a 12-foot-square sandbox containing eight tons of JSC-1A, a human-made lunar soil simulant. Craters, surface ripples and obstacles are shaped with hand tools, and rocks are added to the terrain in order to simulate boulder fields or specific obstacles. Then they dust the terrain and rocks with an added layer of simulant to produce the “fluffy” top layer of lunar soil, erasing shovel and brush marks, and spreading a thin layer on the faces of rocks. Each terrain design in the testbed is generated by statistics based on common features observed from spacecraft around the Moon.

Solar simulator lights are set up around the terrain to create Moon-accurate low-angle, high-contrast illumination. Two cameras, called a stereo imaging pair, mimic how human eyes are set apart to help us perceive depth. The team captured photographs of multiple testbed setups and lighting angles to create a dataset to inform future rover navigation.

"But you can only shovel so much dirt; we are also using physics-based rendering, and are trying to photo-realistically recreate the illumination in these environments," said Wong. "This allows us to use a supercomputer to render a bunch of images using models that we have decent confidence in, and this gets us a lot more information than we would taking pictures in a lab with three people, for example."

The result, a Polar Optical Lunar Analog Reconstruction or POLAR dataset, provides standard information for rover designers and programmers to develop algorithms and set up sensors to safely navigate. The POLAR dataset is applicable not only to our Moon, but to many types of planetary surfaces on airless bodies, including Mercury, asteroids, and regolith-covered moons like Mars' Phobos.

So far, early results show that stereo imaging is promising for use on rovers that will explore the lunar poles.

"One of the mission concepts that's in development right now, Resource Prospector, that I have the privilege of working on, might be the first mission to land a robot and navigate in the polar regions of the Moon," said Wong. "And in order to do that, we have to figure out how to navigate where nobody's ever been."

This research is funded by the agency’s Advanced Exploration Systems and Game Changing Development programs. NASA’s Solar System Exploration Research Virtual Institute provides the laboratory facilities and operational support.


For more information about NASA technology for future exploration missions, visit:

https://www.nasa.gov/technology
 
The Universe is so pretty. so photogenic.....
Have you seen this? How the world sounds???

blob:http://www.newyorker.com/c607c88f-240f-46ab-aecb-8b68be50d7ef

How the Voyager Golden Record Was Made
Forty years ago, we sent a message to extraterrestrials—a collection of sights and sounds of life on Earth.

We inhabit a small planet orbiting a medium-sized star about two-thirds of the way out from the center of the Milky Way galaxy—around where Track 2 on an LP record might begin. In cosmic terms, we are tiny: were the galaxy the size of a typical LP, the sun and all its planets would fit inside an atom’s width. Yet there is something in us so expansive that, four decades ago, we made a time capsule full of music and photographs from Earth and flung it out into the universe. Indeed, we made two of them.

The time capsules, really a pair of phonograph records, were launched aboard the twin Voyager space probes in August and September of 1977. The craft spent thirteen years reconnoitering the sun’s outer planets, beaming back valuable data and images of incomparable beauty. In 2012, Voyager 1 became the first human-made object to leave the solar system, sailing through the doldrums where the stream of charged particles from our sun stalls against those of interstellar space. Today, the probes are so distant that their radio signals, travelling at the speed of light, take more than fifteen hours to reach Earth. They arrive with a strength of under a millionth of a billionth of a watt, so weak that the three dish antennas of the Deep Space Network’s interplanetary tracking system (in California, Spain, and Australia) had to be enlarged to stay in touch with them.

read more about it here
http://www.newyorker.com/tech/eleme...niversary-timothy-ferris?mbid=social_facebook
 
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