[ad_1] The Clipper team is assessing its performance in the electromagnetic test facility’s controlled environment, much like how the Mars helicopter team used JPL’s Space Simulator to prove their unmanned flying vehicle works. In particular, they’re making sure it’s highly accurate when it comes to pointing to its targets, since that’s the key to sending […]
Category: Nasa
Researchers designed a shape-shifting airplane wing
[ad_1] In a paper in the journal Smart Materials and Structures, the research team explains how it has radically redesigned the airplane wing. Their new structure is a lightweight lattice framework, made of thousands of repeating, tiny triangles of matchstick-like struts, covered in a thin polymer layer. Because this “metamaterial” is mostly comprised of empty […]
NASA proves its space helicopter can fly on Mars
[ad_1] Since the Martian atmosphere only has about one percent the density of Earth’s, the researchers would’ve had to conduct their flight tests at an altitude of 100,000 feet if they did’t rely on the simulator. The 25-foot-wide vacuum cylinder was the much better choice, especially since the agency has been using it to test […]
VP Pence wants US astronauts back on the Moon by 2024
[ad_1] Pence agreed that the timeline was short but maintained that it was possible, pointing to the Apollo 11 landing as an example of how quickly the US can move when it’s motivated. He suggested that it might require using private rockets if the Space Launch System isn’t ready in time. There’s one main problem […]
An ill-fitting spacesuit cancels NASA’s first all-female spacewalk
[ad_1] A historic spacewalk was scheduled to occur this week, with only women operating outside the ISS for the first time ever. News of the event was revealed earlier this month when a flight controller tweeted about the schedule, but as NASA noted at the time “assignments and schedules could always change.” Now that has […]
NASA, ESA will study how artificial gravity can keep astronauts healthy
[ad_1] The scientists can tweak the intensity of the centrifugal force as well as decide whether to spin around a person’s head or chest, but it’s not clear just what will work. That’s partly what the experiment is for — they’ll have a better sense of what gravitational effects would be necessary to prevent muscles […]
NASA’s latest cubesat candidates include a solar sail test
[ad_1] The 16 chosen projects are: Star-Planet Activity Research CubeSat (SPARCS) from Arizona State University. It will monitor the solar flares and activities of red dwarfs to assess the habitability of their planets. BeaverCube from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. It was designed so that high school students can learn to design CubeSats and study […]
NASA unveils stunning images of merging supersonic shockwaves
[ad_1] The jets shown in the images are T-38s flying at 28,000 feet or so. They were captured by a B200 King Air flying a pattern just 2,000 feet above them, equipped with 1,400 fps cameras mounted on a special arm. They show the shockwaves, or rapid pressure changes that result when an aircraft flies […]
Iranian hackers stole terabytes of data from software giant Citrix
[ad_1] Resecurity understood that hackers from Iridium, an Iran-linked group, stole data in December 2018 and again on March 4th. They made off with at least 6TB of documents and as much as 10TB, and they seemed to be focused on project data for the aerospace industry, the FBI, NASA and Saudi Arabia’s state-owned oil […]
Watch SpaceX’s Crew Dragon return to Earth starting at 2 AM ET
[ad_1] Just about a week after launching on its inaugural voyage, the SpaceX Crew Dragon has one more step to complete: returning to Earth. First, the uncrewed spacecraft will undock from the International Docking Adapter on the ISS that it has called home for the last few days, which is scheduled to occur at about […]