Chinese Lunar Lander – Jupiter Broadcasting https://www.jupiterbroadcasting.com Open Source Entertainment, on Demand. Mon, 22 Feb 2016 02:44:36 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=5.5.3 https://original.jupiterbroadcasting.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/cropped-favicon-32x32.png Chinese Lunar Lander – Jupiter Broadcasting https://www.jupiterbroadcasting.com 32 32 Asteroid Belt Water | SciByte 117 https://original.jupiterbroadcasting.net/50632/asteroid-belt-water-scibyte-117/ Wed, 29 Jan 2014 20:59:19 +0000 https://original.jupiterbroadcasting.net/?p=50632 We take a look at water vapor on a Dwarf Planet, driverless taxis, evening smartphone use, sensors in football helmets, spacecraft updates, and more!

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We take a look at water vapor on a Dwarf Planet, driverless taxis, evening smartphone use, sensors in football helmets, spacecraft updates, Curiosity news, and as always take a peek back into history and up in the sky this week.

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Show Notes:

Water on a Dwarf Planet in the Asteroid Belt

  • Scientists have made the first definitive detection of water vapor on the largest and roundest object in the asteroid belt, Ceres.
  • Plumes of water vapor are thought to shoot up periodically from Ceres when portions of its icy surface warm slightly
  • A Viewer Also Pointed Out This Story
  • Michael Thalleen ‏@ThalleenM
  • Ceres
  • Ceres was known as the largest asteroid in our solar system
  • When it first was spotted in 1801, astronomers thought it was a planet orbiting between Mars and Jupiter
  • The materials making up Ceres likely date from the first few million years of our solar system\’s existence and accumulated before the planets formed.
  • The International Astronomical Union is the governing organization responsible for naming planetary objects reclassified it as a dwarf planet, a solar system body bigger than an asteroid and smaller than a planet.
  • They reclassified Ceres as a dwarf planet because of its large size. It is roughly 590 miles (950 kilometers) in diameter
  • Until now, ice had been theorized to exist on Ceres but had not been detected conclusively
  • NASA\’s Dawn Mission
  • Is on its way to Ceres now after spending more than a year orbiting the large asteroid Vesta is scheduled to arrive at Ceres in the spring of 2015, where it will take the closest look ever at its surface.
  • There it will map the geology and chemistry of the surface in high resolution
  • Intermediate Water Vapor
  • Scientists used far-infrared vision to see, finally, a clear spectral signature of the water vapor, but they did not see water vapor every time it looked
  • They were able to see the water vapor four different times, on one occasion there was no signature
  • What scientists now think is happening is when Ceres swings through the part of its orbit that is closer to the sun, a portion of its icy surface becomes warm enough to cause water vapor to escape in plumes
  • When Ceres is in the colder part of its orbit, no water escapes
  • The strength of the signal also varied over hours, weeks and months, with water vapor plumes rotating in and out of Herschel\’s views as the object spun on its axis
  • This enabled the scientists to localize the source of water to two darker spots on the surface of Ceres
  • Previously seen by NASA\’s Hubble Space Telescope and ground-based telescopes, the dark spots might be more likely to outgas because dark material warms faster than light material.
  • Dwarf Planets, Asteroids and Comets
  • \”This is the first time water vapor has been unequivocally detected on Ceres or any other object in the asteroid belt and provides proof that Ceres has an icy surface and an atmosphere,\” | Michael Küppers of ESA in Spain
  • Scientists now believe Ceres contains rock in its interior with a thick mantle of ice that, if melted, would amount to more freshwater than is present on all of Earth
  • \”The lines are becoming more and more blurred between comets and asteroids\” | Seungwon Lee of JPL
  • \”We knew before about main belt asteroids that show comet-like activity, but this is the first detection of water vapor in an asteroid-like object.\” | Paul von Allmen, JPL
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Telescope spies water plumes on dwarf planet Ceres | Phys.org
  • Herschel Discovers Water Vapor Spewing from Ceres | UniverseToday.com

— NEWS BYTE —

Driverless Taxis

  • Driverless taxis will be carrying passengers during demonstration projects in five European cities as of February 2014
  • EU-funded CityMobil2 project, is one of a number of research initiatives that are testing out specially designed self-driving road vehicles as the technology required to navigate them becomes cheaper and more reliable
  • Visual Odometry
  • Cybercars have traditionally sensed the world through expensive gyroscopes, microwaves and laser beams
  • Currently, cheap cameras and fast image-recognition algorithms has led to a new technique known as visual odometry
  • Visual odometry uses images to look at the terrain before and after a small drive step
  • By tracking specific features they can tell how far they have moved, the position and orientation of the vehicle.
  • Sound Familiar? Curiosity Rover is using the same technology for some of it\’s automated driving
  • SciByte 103 | Martian Methane & Deep Impact | September 24, 2013
  • V-Charge Project
  • Car manufacturers are already making automated piloting features of their own – radar-based cruise control, anti-braking systems (ABS) and lane-control assistance
  • Cables and hydraulic pressure valves which previously linked the controls of the vehicle to its working parts are gradually being replaced with electronic circuits
  • The V-Charge Project is a consortium of companies and universities which is working on fully automated low-speed driving in cities using only cameras and other low-cost sensors mounted on standard cars
  • The consortium is working to produce detailed maps and a perception system that allows a vehicle to recognize its location and identify nearby pedestrians and vehicles, all using only stereoscopic or fisheye cameras.
  • The team has taken this a step further, pioneering a guidance system that works economically by using a single camera.
  • How Soon is Soon?
  • While companies such as Google see autonomous cars in a couple of decades the people with the CityMobil2 project think that they could be hitting the road sooner than that
  • The team believes that, in addition to teaching cars to respond autonomously to traffic conditions, traffic should be adapted to automated cars
  • In their current state of development, cybercars can already drive safely in pedestrian areas and designated lanes
  • The first CityMobil project shuttled passengers across the car park of London Heathrow airport in a fleet of driverless pods
  • CityMobil2, now brings specially designed automated vehicles to designated roads inside the city centre
  • Future Plans
  • The project plans to procure two sets of automated vehicles which will tour five cities in a series of demonstration projects each lasting six to eight months
  • Investors are at present deterred by their high initial investment and perceived risks.
  • CityMobil2 is bringing together experts from ministries in each member state to agree on technical requirements by the time the project concludes in 2016 that could feed into a future European directive on the issue
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Driverless Taxis in European Cities from 2014 | ScienceWorldRepoer.com

— TWO-BYTE NEWS —

Nighttime Smartphone Use

  • In a pair of studies surveying a broad spectrum of U.S. workers found that people who monitored their smart phones for business purposes after 9 p.m. were more tired and were less engaged the following day on the job.
  • Productivity and Sleep
  • More than half of U.S. adults own a smartphone and many consider the devices to be among the most important tools ever invented when it comes to increasing productivity of knowledge-based work
  • The National Sleep Foundation says only 40 percent of Americans get enough sleep on most nights a commonly cited reason is smartphone usage for work.
  • The Studies
  • The first study, the researchers had 82 upper-level managers complete multiple surveys every day for two weeks.
  • The second study surveyed 161 employees daily in a variety of occupations — from nursing to manufacturing and from accounting to dentistry
  • They showed that nighttime smartphone usage for business purposes cut into sleep and sapped workers\’ energy the next day in the office
  • The second study also compared smartphone usage to other electronic devices and found that smartphones had a larger negative effect than watching television and using laptop and tablet computers
  • In addition to keeping people mentally engaged at night, smartphones emit \”blue light\”
  • Blue light is the most disruptive of all colors of light and is known to hinder melatonin, a chemical in the body that promotes sleep
  • Nighttime use of smartphones appears to have both psychological and physiological effects on people\’s ability to sleep and on sleep\’s essential recovery functions
  • Johnson, MSU assistant professor of management
  • \”There may be times in which putting off work until the next day would have disastrous consequences and using your smartphone is well worth the negative effects on less important tasks the next day,\”
  • \”But on many other nights, more sleep may be your best bet.\”
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Nighttime smartphone use zaps workers\’ energy | ScienceDaily.com

Football Helmet Safety Tech

  • The CDC estimates that between the 1.6 million and 3.8 million Americans suffer sports-related concussions every year, these concussions occur after what seems like a pretty mild blow to the head
  • In football, the risk of concussion has been a hot-button issue
  • Sensors
  • Sensors within helmets can catch what human eyes often miss, alerting people on the sidelines that a player may need to be taken out of play and screened for a concussion
  • Jake Merrell, a graduate student in mechanical engineering at Brigham Young University created a smart foam that works within football helmets to measure how hard a player just got hit
  • Motion sensors transmit data wirelessly to a tablet or computer when the foam in the helmet is compressed by the player\’s head, measuring the force and acceleration of the impact.
  • What\’s Out Now
  • The helmet manufacturer Riddell debuted a similar concussion-alert product this year, called the InSite Impact Response System which is being used by some high school teams in the 2013 season.
  • Sensors inside the player\’s helmet lining measure the severity of a head impact and send an alert to the sidelines if a player has sustained a potentially concussion-inducing hit
  • Although this system only works in Riddell\’s Revolution Speed helmet so far.
  • What\’s Next
  • \”A coach will know within seconds exactly how hard their player just got hit\” | Jake Merrell, a graduate student in mechanical engineering at Brigham Young University
  • He plans to submit his project to the Head Health Challenge sponsored by GE and the NFL
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Smart Foam In Football Helmets Measures Impact Of Each Hit | Popular Science

— SPACECRAFT UPDATE—

Chinese Lander, Chang’e 3, Panorama

  • Color of the Lunar Soil
  • The lander beamed back a series of new photos taken with its panoramic camera. stitched together, they give us a more detailed and colorful look of the rover’s surroundings in northern Mare Imbrium
  • Color images of the moon’s surface by the Apollo astronauts along with their verbal descriptions indicate a uniform gray color punctuated in rare spots by patches of more colorful soils
  • Apollo visited six different moonscapes – all essentially gray
  • One thing that stands out is the brown color of the lunar surface soil or regolith, it\’s possible that it is simply that the color balance in the Chinese images might be off. Or did Chang’e 3 just happen to land on browner soils
  • Multimedia
  • The six wheeled Yutu rover, which means ‘Jade Rabbit’, has “experienced a mechanical control abnormality” in a new report by China’s official government newspaper, The People’s Daily
  • ‘Jade Rabbit’ was traversing southwards from the landing site as the incident occurred just days ago – about six weeks into its planned 3 month moon roving expedition
  • Very few details have emerged or been released by the Chinese government about Yutu’s condition or fate
  • The abnormality occurred due to the “complicated lunar surface environment,” said the State Administration of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defence
  • Based on unofficial accounts, it appears that one of the solar panels did not fold back properly over Yutu’s mast after it was lowered to the required horizontal position into a warmed box to shield and protect it from the extremely frigid lunar night time temperatures
  • This could potentially spell doom for the mast mounted instruments and electronic systems, including the color and navigation cameras and the high gain antenna, if true
  • The event took place just prior to the beginning of the 2nd lunar night and ‘dormancy’ for both ‘Jade Rabbit’ and the Chang’e-3 each Lunar night also lasts approximately 14 Earth days
  • There is no communication possible during sleep mode, no one will know until the resumption of daylight some two weeks from now – around Feb. 8 to 9.
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Yutu rover Suffers Significant Setback at Start of 2nd Lunar Night | UniverseToday.com+ Chang\’e 3 Lander Beams Back New Lunar Panorama Photos | UniverseToday.com

— CURIOSITY UPDATE —

  • Comet C/2013 A1 Siding Spring
  • On Oct. 19, 2014 comet C/2013 A1 Siding Spring will buzz Mars about 10 times closer than any identified comet has ever flown past Earth
  • Spacecraft at Mars might get a good look at the nucleus of comet Siding Spring as it heads toward the closest approach, roughly 86,000 miles (138,000 kilometers) from the planet
  • Dust particles that the comet nucleus sheds this spring could threaten orbiting spacecraft at Mars in October
  • The level of risk won\’t be known for months, but NASA is already evaluating possible precautionary measures as it prepares for studying the comet
  • Observations of comet Siding Spring are planned using resources on Earth, orbiting Earth, on Mars and orbiting Mars, and some are already underway
  • Infrared imaging reveals a comet that is active and dusty, even though still nearly three-fourths as far from the sun as Jupiter is
  • Comet Viewing Experience
  • Researchers using spacecraft at Mars gained experience at trying to observe comet ISON approached Mars
  • That flyby distance was about 80 times farther than Siding Spring\’s will be
  • The High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA\’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter could provide imagery with resolution of dozens of pixels across the diameter of the nucleus, when HiRISE observed comet ISON, the nucleus was less than one pixel across
  • Cameras on the Mars rovers Curiosity and Opportunity might watch for meteors in the sky that would be an indication of the abundance of particles in the comet\’s tail, though the geometry of the flyby would put most of the meteors in daytime sky instead of dark sky
  • The degree to which Siding Spring brightens this spring will be an indicator of how much hazard it will present to spacecraft at Mars
  • The path the nucleus will take is now known fairly well. The important unknowns are how much dust will come off the nucleus, when it will come off, and the geometry of the resulting coma and tail of the comet.
  • Spacecraft Safety
  • Orbiters are designed with the risk of space-dust collisions in mind
  • Over a five-year span for a Mars orbiter, NASA figures on a few percent chance of significant damage to a spacecraft from the background level of impacts from such particles, called meteoroids
  • If managers choose to position orbiters behind Mars during the peak risk, the further in advance any orbit-adjustment maneuvers can be made, the less fuel will be consumed
  • Multimedia
  • Image Galleries at JPL and Curiosity Mulimedia
  • Social Media
  • Curiosity Rover @MarsCuriosity
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Mars Science Laboratory: NASA Preparing for 2014 Comet Watch at Mars | Mars.NASA.gov

SCIENCE CALENDAR

Looking back

  • February 1, 1811 : 203 years ago : Bell Rock Lighthouse Lit : The Bell Rock Lighthouse was lit for the first time. Using 24 lanterns, it began flashing its warning light, 11 miles out off the east coast of Scotland atop a white stone tower rising over 30m (100ft) high. It was built by Robert Stevenson on a treacherous sandstone reef, which, except at low tides, lies submerged just beneath the waves. Since then, no repair has been necessary to its stonework. It is the oldest sea-washed lighthouse in existence. It was Stevenson\’s finest achievement, regarded by many as the finest lighthouse ever built, the most outstanding engineering achievement of the 19th century. In the centuries before, the dangerous Bell Rock had claimed thousands of lives, as vessels were wrecked on its razor-sharp serrated rocks. Bell Rock Lighthouse | Wikipedia

Looking up this week

The post Asteroid Belt Water | SciByte 117 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

]]> Sleep Apnea & Heart Defect Treatments | SciByte 115 https://original.jupiterbroadcasting.net/49562/sleep-apnea-heart-defect-treatments-scibyte-115/ Tue, 14 Jan 2014 21:11:04 +0000 https://original.jupiterbroadcasting.net/?p=49562 We take a look at breast-cancer therapy research, a new sleep apnea treatment, biomedical glue, spacecraft updates, and a little Curiosity news.

The post Sleep Apnea & Heart Defect Treatments | SciByte 115 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

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We take a look at breast-cancer therapy research, a new sleep apnea treatment, biomedical glue, spacecraft updates, Curiosity news, and as always take a peek back into history and up in the sky this week.

Direct Download:

MP3 Audio | OGG Audio | Video | Torrent | YouTube

RSS Feeds:

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— Book Pic: —

Breast-Cancer Therapy Research

  • A new breast-cancer therapy partially reverses the cancerous state in cultured breast tumor cells and prevents cancer development in mice, the therapy emerged from a sophisticated effort to reverse-engineer gene networks to identify genes that drive cancer
  • Current Treatment Options
  • To date the only way to stop cancer cells has been to kill them.
  • The treatments that accomplish that, including surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation therapy, often damage healthy tissue, causing harsh side effects
  • Many women currently undergo surgery, chemotherapy and radiation as a precaution, who might never develop the disease
  • In addition some women with a high hereditary risk of breast cancer have chosen to undergo preemptive mastectomies.
  • A therapy that heals rather than kills cancerous tissue could potentially help all these patients, as well as men who develop the disease
  • Identifying Problem Genes
  • First they had to identify the culprit genes among the thousands that are active in a cell at any moment
  • When molecular biologists typically are looking for cancer-causing genes, they search for individual genes that become active as cancer develops, but because genes in cells work in complex networks
  • With this process however, cells that are not cancer-causing often get labeled as such as well
  • To improve the odds of finding the real culprits, a systems biology expert who has developed a sophisticated mathematical and computational method to reverse-engineer bacterial gene networks.
  • Computational Method
  • They were able to hone the computational network to work for the first time on the more complex gene networks of mice and humans
  • The refined method helped the scientists spot more than 100 genes that acted suspiciously just before milk-duct cells in the breast begin to overgrow
  • The team narrowed their list down to six genes that turn other genes on or off, and then narrowed it further to a single gene called HoxA1 that had the strongest statistical link to cancer
  • The HocA1 Gene
  • Researchers wanted to know if blocking the HoxA1 gene could reverse cancer in lab-grown cells, so they grew healthy mouse or human cells in a nutrient-rich, tissue-friendly gel
  • Healthy cells in the gel formed hollow spheres of cells akin to a normal milk duct, cancerous cells, in contrast, packed together into solid, tumor-like spheres.
  • When they treated cancerous cells with a short piece of RNA called a small interfering RNA (siRNA) that blocks only the HoxA1 gene the cells reversed their march to malignancy
  • It stopped the runaway growth and forming hollow balls as healthy cells do, in addition they specialized as if they were growing in healthy tissue
  • The siRNA treatment also stopped breast cancer in a line of mice genetically engineered to have a gene that causes all of them to develop cancer
  • Researchers packed the siRNA into nanoparticles called lipidoids that allow for genes to be silenced for weeks inside the body
  • When they injected these nanoparticles, the treated mice remained healthy, while untreated mice developed breast cancer
  • The Future
  • The idea would be to start the treatment early on and sustain it throughout life to prevent cancer development or progression
  • The same strategy could lead to many new therapies that disable cancer-causing genes no current drugs can stop, and it also can be used to find therapies for other diseases
  • The findings open up the possibility of someday treating patients who have a genetic propensity as more women than ever are undergoing early tests that reveal precancerous breast tissue
  • Early diagnosis could potentially save lives; however, few of those lesions go on to become tumors and doctors have no good way of predicting which ones will turn malignant
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Novel noninvasive therapy prevents breast cancer formation in mice | MedicalXpress.com

— NEWS BYTE —

Sleep Apnea Medical Device

  • Implantation of a sleep apnea device called Inspire Upper Airway Stimulation (UAS) therapy can lead to significant improvements for patients with obstructive sleep apnea (OSA)
  • Obstructive Sleep Apnea (OSA)
  • Affects more than 8 million men and 4 million women in the U.S. and is twice as common in men
  • Is characterized by repeated episodes of upper airway collapse during sleep, due to narrowing or blockage
  • Patients with OSA stop breathing, known as apnea, frequently during sleep, often for a minute or longer
  • Repeated episodes of apnea can lead to daytime fatigue, and increase a person\’s risk for heart attack, stroke, high blood pressure and even death.
  • Current Treatments for OSA
  • Include weight loss, upper airway surgeries, oral appliances, and continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP), which is considered the primary treatment for OSA
  • CPAP is a successful treatment when used on a regular basis
  • As many as half of the patients who have been prescribed CPAP are unable to use it regularly, largely due to discomfort with the mask and/or the lack of desire to be tethered to a machine
  • Inspire Upper Airway Stimulation (UAS) Therapy
  • Differs from other traditional sleep apnea devices and surgical procedures as it targets the muscle tone of the throat rather than just the anatomy
  • The device is designed to sense breathing patterns and deliver mild stimulation to a patient\’s airway muscles to keep the airway open during sleep.
  • Surgical implantation of the upper-airway stimulation system was performed by otolaryngologists at 22 academic and private centers
  • Stimulation electrode was placed on the hypoglossal nerve, which provides innervation to the muscles of the tongue
  • The device was implanted in three areas, a sensing lead was placed between rib muscles to detect breathing effort, a neurostimulator was implanted in the upper right chest, just below the clavicle bone
  • Two thirds of patients using the Inspire UAS therapy device had successful control of their OSA, even more reported improvement in snoring, daytime sleepiness and quality of life measures
  • The Study
  • This was the first trial to evaluate the use of upper airway stimulation for sleep apnea
  • Conducted at 22 medical centers in the United States and Europe
  • From 724 candidates initially screened, the STAR trial implanted and prospectively evaluated 126 moderate-to-severe OSA patients who had difficulty using or adhering to CPAP therapy:
  • All patients underwent surgery to implant the device, 83 percent of the participants were men, the mean age was 54.5 years, and the mean body-mass index was 28.4.
  • Patients used a \”controller\” to turn on the device at night, so it is only used when the patient sleeps
  • Long Term
  • Eighty-six percent of patients were still using the device every night at the one year mark, which compares very favorably to CPAP
  • Using various sleep-disorder measuring systems, patients were found to experience 68 to 70 percent fewer sleep-apnea episodes per hour
  • After one year, patients using the device had an approximately 70 percent reduction in sleep apnea severity, as well as significant reductions in daytime sleepiness
  • Multimedia
  • YouTube | Dr. Soose explains sleep apnea clinical trial | UPMC
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • New device can reduce sleep apnea episodes by 70 percent, study shows | MedicalXpress.com

— TWO-BYTE NEWS —

Glue for the Heart

  • In a preclinical study, researchers developed a bio-inspired adhesive that could rapidly attach biodegradable patches inside a beating heart in the exact place where congenital holes in the heart occur, such as with ventricular heart defects.
  • Heart Defect Treatments
  • When a child is born with a heart defect such as a hole in the heart, the highly invasive therapies are challenging due to an inability to quickly and safely secure devices inside the heart
  • Sutures take too much time to stitch and can cause stress on fragile heart tissue
  • Currently available clinical adhesives are either too toxic or tend to lose their sticking power in the presence of blood or under dynamic conditions, such as in a beating heart
  • A New Adhesive
  • Many creatures in nature have secretions that are viscous and repel water enabling them to attach under wet and dynamic conditions
  • Researchers developed a material with these properties that also is biodegradable, elastic and biocompatible
  • The degradable patches secured with the glue remained attached even at increased heart rates and blood pressure and it works in the presence of blood and moving structures
  • The adhesive was strong enough to hold tissue and patches onto the heart equivalent to suturing, is biodegradable and biocompatible, so nothing foreign or toxic stays in the bodies of these patients
  • Its adhesive abilities are activated with ultraviolet (UV) light, providing an on-demand, anti-bleeding seal within five seconds of UV light application
  • What This Means
  • Researchers note that their waterproof, light-activated adhesive will be useful in reducing the invasiveness of surgical procedures, as well as operating times, in addition to improving heart surgery outcomes
  • \”It should provide the physician with a completely new, much simpler technology and a new paradigm for tissue reconstruction to improve the quality of life of patients following surgical procedures.\” | Pedro del Nido, MD, Chief of Cardiac Surgery, Boston Children\’s Hospital, co-senior study author
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Bio-inspired glue keeps hearts securely sealed | ScienceDaily.com

Supernova In the Works

  • SN 1987A is the closest supernova to that we’ve been able to study since the invention of the telescope and it has provided scientists with good opportunities to study the physical processes of an exploding star
  • A nebula with a giant star at its center has striking similarities to SN 1987A.
  • Both stars have identical rings of the same size and age, which were travelling at similar speeds; both were located in similar HII regions; and they had the same brightness
  • No one can predict when a star will go supernova, but astronomers are certainly hoping they’ll have the chance to watch it happen.
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • What a Star About to Go Supernova Looks Like | UniverseToday.com

— SPACECRAFT UPDATE—

Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo (SS2)

  • 2014 should be the year that Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo (SS2) brings passengers on suborbital space flights
  • The company started off the year by successfully completing its third rocket-powered supersonic flight after dozens of successful subsonic test flights
  • Getting to Altitude
  • The WhiteKnightTwo (WK2) carrier aircraft brought SS2 to an altitude around 46,000 ft, then SS2 was released, and its rocket motor was ignited, powering the spaceship to a planned altitude of 71,000 ft.
  • SS2’s highest altitude to date, and it also reached a speed of Mach 1.4.
  • Testing
  • They tested the spaceship’s Reaction Control System, the newly installed thermal protection coating on the vehicle’s tail booms, and the “feather” re-entry system.
  • The RCS will allow its pilots to maneuver the vehicle in space so that passengers will have great views of Earth, as well as aiding the positioning process for spacecraft re-entry
  • The new reflective protection coating on SS2’s inner tail boom surfaces is being evaluated to help maintain vehicle skin temperatures while the rocket motor is firing.
  • Multimedia
  • YouTube | Stunning video: Virgin Galactic SpaceShipTwo goes supersonic in test flight | euronews (in English)
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • SpaceShipTwo Goes Supersonic in Third Rocket-Powered Test Flight | UniverseToday.com

China’s Lunar Lander and Rover Back “Awake”

  • According to a BACC statement the Chinese Lunar lander, Chang’e-3, and the Yutu rover have \’woken up\’ from their Lunar night hibernation
  • Engineers put them to sleep to conserve energy since there is no sunlight to generate power with the solar arrays during the lunar night.
  • Lunar night time environment when temperatures plunged to below minus 180 degrees Celsius, or minus 292 degrees Fahrenheit
  • During the nocturnal hiatus they were kept alive by a radioisotopic heat source that maintained at a temperature of about minus 40 degrees Celsius to prevent debilitating damage to the computer and electronics subsystems inside a box below the deck
  • Just prior to hibernating, the lander snapped the first image of the Earth taken from the Moon’s surface in some four decades
  • The Yutu rover has already resumed roving, and they expect the Chang’e-3 lander should survive at least a year.
  • Multimedia
  • YouTube | Stunning video: Virgin Galactic SpaceShipTwo goes supersonic in test flight | euronews (in English)
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • China\’s Historic Moon Robot Duo Awaken from 1st Long Frigid Night and Resume Science Operations | UniverseToday.com

— CURIOSITY UPDATE —

  • Watching From Orbit
  • NASA\’s Curiosity Mars rover and its recent tracks from driving in Gale Crater appear in an image taken by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA\’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter on Dec. 11, 2013.
  • The tracks show where the rover has zigzagged around obstacles on its route toward the lower slopes of Mount Sharp, its next major destination.
  • HiRISE first imaged the Mars Science Laboratory spacecraft while it was descending on a parachute
  • Mars Orbiter Images Rover and Tracks in Gale Crater | mars.nasa.gov
  • Multimedia
  • YouTube Curiosity Rover Report JPLnews
  • Image Galleries at JPL and Curiosity Mulimedia
  • Social Media
  • Curiosity Rover @MarsCuriosity
  • Further Reading / In the News

SCIENCE CALENDAR

Looking back

  • January 17, 1929 : 85 years ago : Expanding universe : Edwin Hubble communicated the now classic paper that first showed the universe was expanding (and later provided observational evidence for the Big Bang theory). But Hubble explicitly made no such an interpretation. He left that to the reader. His paper was simply titled “A Relation Between Distance and Radial Velocity Among Extra-Galactic Nebulae.” He listed the data that he plotted on a graph. It showed a roughly linear relationship between radial velocity for various galaxies and their distance. It dramatically showed that the the further away the galaxy, the faster it is moving away from the observer. However, stating that future new data might change the interpretation, he discretely wrote that he thought it “premature to discuss in detail the obvious consequences of the present results.

Looking up this week

The post Sleep Apnea & Heart Defect Treatments | SciByte 115 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

]]> Happy Science of 2013 | SciByte 114 https://original.jupiterbroadcasting.net/49107/happy-science-of-2013-scibyte-114/ Tue, 07 Jan 2014 21:16:58 +0000 https://original.jupiterbroadcasting.net/?p=49107 We take a look at my top science stories and events of 2013, Curiosity news, and as always take a peek back into history and up in the sky this week.

The post Happy Science of 2013 | SciByte 114 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

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We take a look at my top science stories and events of 2013, Curiosity news, and as always take a peek back into history and up in the sky this week.

Direct Download:

MP3 Audio | OGG Audio | Video | Torrent | YouTube

RSS Feeds:

MP3 Feed | OGG Feed | Video Feed | Torrent Feed | iTunes

— Book Pic: —

Curiosity | Evidence of Ancient Habitable Water Locations

— NEWS BYTE —

Voyager 1 | “Interstellar Space” Announcement

Exoplanets

International and Private Space Travel

  • India’s Mars Orbiter Mission
  • India’s first ever Mars probe ‘MOM’ successfully fired its main engine on Dec. 1 to begin its nearly yearlong momentous voyage to Mars
  • ISRO’s engineers devised a procedure to get the spacecraft to Mars on the least amount of fuel via six “Midnight Maneuver” engine burns over several weeks – and at an extremely low cost
  • This maneuver increases the ship’s velocity and gradually widens the ellipse eventually raising the apogee of the six resulting elliptical orbits around Earth that eventually injects MOM onto the Trans-Mars trajectory
  • SciByte 111| Memories & International Spacecraft (December 3, 2013)
  • SciByte 109 | ‘Earth-Like’ Planets & Sharks (November 12, 2013)
  • SciByte 107 | Dinosaurs & Satellites (October 29, 2013)
  • Chinese Lunar Lander
  • China had a successful touchdown of the Chang’e-3 probe with the ‘Yutu’ rover on the surface of the Moon on Dec. 14
  • They landed on the lava filled plains of the Bay of Rainbows occurred at about 8:11 am EST or 9:11 p.m. Beijing local time
  • Barely seven hours after the Chang’e-3 mothership touched down on Sunday, Dec. 15, the six wheeled ‘Yutu’, or Jade Rabbit, rover drove straight off a pair of ramps at 4:35 a.m. Beijing local time
  • SciByte 113 | Freshwater Aquifers & Brain Plasticity (December 17, 2013)
  • Bigelow Aerospace’s | Genesis, Inflatable Space Station Modules
  • On Jan 11 NASA announced they have awarded a $17.8 million contract to Bigelow to provide a new inflatable module for the ISS, making it the first privately built module to be added to the space station
  • The outer shell of their module is soft, as opposed to the rigid outer shell of current modules at the ISS, Bigelow’s inflatable modules are more resistant to micrometeoroid or orbital debris strikes it uses multiple layers of Vectran, a material which is twice as strong as Kevlar
  • The company wants to launch and link up several of its larger expandable modules to create private space stations, which could be used by a variety of clients.
  • SciByte 77 | Breath Analysis & Large Structures (January 15, 2013)
  • SpaceX | Geostationary Orbit
  • The Dec 3 liftoff at 5:41 p.m. EST (2241 GMT) marked SpaceX\’s first entry into the large commercial satellite market and its first launch into a geostationary transfer orbit needed for such a mission.
  • Being able to launch into this new orbit will let SpaceX compete against Europe and Russia to haul large telecommunications satellites into orbit.
  • This launch also marks the second of three certification flights needed to certify the Falcon 9 to fly missions for the U.S. Air Force under the Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle (EELV) program
  • When Falcon 9 is certified, SpaceX will be eligible to compete for all National Security Space (NSS) missions

— TWO-BYTE NEWS —

Science Events of 2013

— CURIOSITY UPDATE —

SCIENCE CALENDAR

Looking back

  • Jan 11, 1954 : 59 years ago : First UK TV Weather Broadcast : The first in-vision weather forecaster broadcast on BBC television. George Cowling of the Meteorological Office presented from the BBC\’s Lime Grove studios with two hand-drawn weather charts pinned to an easel.

Looking up this week

The post Happy Science of 2013 | SciByte 114 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

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