Collaborate Disseminate
ESA engineers are looking at using the world’s thinnest known material to build lighter, more efficient solar sails. By making sails out of one-atom-thick graphene sheets, the space agency aims to make sails capable of propelling unmanned interstellar … Continue reading Graphene shows promise as solar sail material in ESA tests
If you read science fiction, you are probably familiar with the idea of a light or solar sail. A very large and lightweight sail catches solar “wind” that accelerates a payload connected to the sail. Some schemes replace the sun with a laser. Like most things, sails have pros and …read more
Although oxygen is common throughout the cosmos, most of it isn’t in the form that we as humans need to breathe – molecular oxygen, or O2. Now, researchers at Caltech claim to have created a reactor that can turn carbon dioxide into molecular… Continue reading Caltech reactor could convert CO2 into breathable oxygen for space trips
On February 22nd, a Falcon rocket lifted off from Cape Canaveral carrying the Indonesian communications satellite Nusantara Satu. While the satellite was the primary payload for the mission, as is common on the Falcon 9, the rocket had a couple of stowaways. These secondary payloads are generally experiments or …read more
It’s been 6 years since the hacker’s treat of a book, “The Martian” by Andy Weir, was self-published, and 2 years since the movie came out. We’ve talked about it briefly before, but enough time has passed that we can now write-up the book’s juicier hacks while being careful to not give away any plot spoilers. The book has more hacks than the movie so we’re using the book as the source.
For anyone unfamiliar with the story, Mark Watney is an astronaut who’s left for dead, by himself, on Mars. To survive, he has a habitat designed for six, …read more
OSM stands for Oligonucleotide Synthesizer designed for use in Microgravity, meaning that it’s a device that makes arbitrary DNA strands (of moderate length) in space. Cool eh? I’ve been working on this project for the last eight months with a wonderful team of fellow hackers as part of the Stanford Student Space Initiative, and I’d like to share what we’re doing, what we’ve already done, and where we’re going.
Why space? Well, first of all, space is cool. But more seriously, access to arbitrary DNA in space could accelerate research in a plethora of fields, and the ability …read more
Continue reading OSM (Pronounced Awesome) Hardware Makes DNA in Space
Interstellar travel is evolving into a legitimate engineering challenge, rather than an idealistic pipe dream. Continue reading NASA’s Newest Interstellar Concepts Rely on Huge Laser Arrays and Gravity Surfing
The Translational Research Institute is a new, independent research group look to push the boundaries of our health in space. Continue reading What Goes In Our First-Aid Kit For the Mission to Mars?
Your daily round-up of some of the other stories in the news Continue reading News in brief: moon tourists to launch ‘next year’; health provider fined after breach; drone pilot jailed
The computer scientist, one of the six crew members of the fifth HI-SEAS experiment, is part of a new generation redefining what it means to be an astronaut. Continue reading Former Googler Laura Lark Is Spending Eight Months Living On a Simulated Mars
