One of the significant challenges for putting humans for long durations on the Moon or other planets is in getting enough breathable air. ESA scientists have begun to produce oxygen out of simulated moondust. A prototype oxygen plant has been set up in the Materials and Electrical Components Laboratory of the European Space Research and Technology Center in the Netherlands.
Caltech scientists have invented an ultrafast camera that is capable of taking 1 trillion frames per second of transparent objects. The invention comes after the university created a camera so fast that it could capture light in slow motion about a decade ago. The camera is called phase-sensitive compressed ultrafast photography or pCUP.
By now, SpaceX is quite famous for launching rockets that land safely back on earth to be reused again. Last Sunday, however, it let a Falcon 9 rocket explode and actually got congratulated for it. That's really because the expensive rocket wasn't the focus of the launch. Instead, SpaceX was testing the Crew Dragon's escape system that could hopefully save even more precious lives when the capsule does make its first manned flight in a few months.
The European Space Agency has finally discovered what went wrong during the descent of the Huygens probe it sent to Saturn's moon Titan as part of the Cassini-Huygens mission launched in 1997. Both the Cassini and the Huygens missions were successful, but the latter didn't perform without issue: the ESA says its probe started spinning the wrong direction during descent, a mystery that has now been solved.
Researchers from Penn State University, along with researchers from Northeastern University, have announced that they have developed a highly sensitive, wearable gas sensor for environmental and human health monitoring. The researchers believe that the wearable sensor may soon become commercially available. The new sensor is an improvement on existing wearable sensors thanks to its self-heating mechanism that enhances sensitivity.
Researchers at Stanford University have been looking into exactly how birds can maintain controlled flight by changing the shape of their wings. For their study, they invented a robot called PigeonBot that has a pair of "biohybrid morphing wings." The robot is being used to test out new control principles. One of the most interesting aspects of the PigeonBot is that the scientists fitted the flying robot with real bird feathers.
NASA's Ames Research Center in California is developing and testing prototype technologies that may enable future explorers to 'grow' their own houses for use in Moon and Mars colonies. The system would involve the mycelia produced by a fungus -- the white thread-like structures that grow underground before eventually producing the fruits we refer to as mushrooms. These technologies also have the potential for creating sustainable structures on Earth.
Astronomers from the UCLA Galactic Center Orbits Initiative have discovered a new class of objects that are orbiting the supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy. That black hole is called Sagittarius A, and the team says that the bizarre objects look like gas and behave like stars.
Astronomers at Caltech have made an interesting discovery using the Caltech Zwicky Transient Facility or ZTF. ZTF is a survey camera that is based at the Palomar observatory. What the researchers have discovered is a new asteroid, dubbed 2020 AV2, that orbits entirely within the orbit of Venus. The scientist say the only way the asteroid will ever get out of its orbit is if it is flung out via a gravitational encounter with Mercury or Venus.
Researchers have discovered a method with which they're able to create living bricks that turn carbon dioxide into CaCO3, the main ingredient for cement. Studies with Synechococcus cyanobacteria (we'll just refer to it as bacteria from here on out) showed great potential for future building projects when used in combination with sand, carbon dioxide, and a specific range of humidity conditions. Cutting the resulting bricks results in self-healing and reproduction.
Last year was the second warmest recorded year since humans started keeping track of global temperatures in the late 1800s, according to a joint release from NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). The space agency says that it and NOAA conducted independent analyses of the data and both came to the same conclusion. At this point in time, the only hotter year on record is 2016, meaning the last half-decade has officially been the warmest in 140 years.
A team of scientists from the University of Vermont working with researchers from other institutions, has been able to repurpose living cells. The cells used were scraped from Frog embryos and assembled into new lifeforms. The new lifeforms are millimeter-wide "xenobots" that can move towards a target. They may also be able to pick up a payload, such as a medication, that needs to be delivered to a specific place inside the person. The xenobots can also heal themselves after being cut.