MIT-developed ‘microthrusters’ could propel small satellites

Small-scale satellites show a lot promise, but unless they have equally small-scale thrusters they’re pretty limited in what they can do. Unfortunately conventional thrusters are heavy and take up a lot of valuable space, but a penny-sized rocket engine developed at MIT holds the prospect of not only increasing the capabilities of miniature satellites, but of combating space junk as well. Cubesats are a class of nanosatellites. Unlike most satellites, which weigh in at several tons and can be as big as a bus, cubesats are, as the name implies, tiny cubes only four inches (10.16 cm) on a side and weighing...

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Zero gravity in space may impact astronauts' immunity

Washington: The clue to astronauts' immunity in outer space owing to prolonged travel lies in learning the negative impact of zero gravity on fruit flies.A team of researchers from the University of California at Davis and the University of Central Florida (UCF) has studied the impact weightlessness has on fruit flies bred in space."Our study showed that a biochemical pathway needed to fight fungal infections is seriously compromised in the flies after space flight," said Laurence Von Kalm, a UCF biologist. "More work would be needed to determine if similar effects occur in humans...

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Now, 'sticky-feet' robots to fix space stations

London: Researchers have developed a climbing robot that has dry but sticky gecko-like feet and can crawl around an orbiting spacecraft to maintain and repair it. With the invention of the new robot, astronauts won't have to risk their lives in daring spacewalks to fix things like they did last month on the International Space Station to repair a cooling system. Instead, they could just command swarms of crawling automatons to do the job.  The gecko robot, called Abigaille III, has been developed by Michael Henrey and his colleagues at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, Canada. To test Abigaille's space flight...

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Moon Rovers Planned for Commercial Lunar Exploration Project

The commercial spaceflight company Golden Spike – which aims fly private missions to the moon by 2020 – has teamed up with the New York-based firm Honeybee Robotics to design robotic rovers for the planned lunar expeditions. "We're very proud to be working with Honeybee, which has tremendous experience and a record of successful performance in the development of flight systems for NASA," Golden Spike President and CEO Alan Stern said in a statement last month.  An artist's illustration of a Golden Spike Company moon lander on the lunar surface. Credit: Golden Spike Company Golden...

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Jupiter and Saturn may be studded with diamonds

Washington: Diamonds in the sky! Scientists have found that the atmospheres of Jupiter and Saturn are awash in diamonds.  Recent work by planetary scientists has indicated that these planets may contain chunks of diamond floating in a liquid hydrogen/helium fluid.  The new data available has confirmed that at depth, diamonds may be floating around inside of Saturn, some growing so large that they could perhaps be called “diamondbergs.”   Planetary scientists Mona Delitsky of California Speciality Engineering in Pasadena, California, and Kevin Baines of the University of Wisconsin-Madison have compiled recent data...

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Jupiter-bound NASA probe to grab speed boost from Earth flyby Wednesday

A NASA spacecraft bound for Jupiter will buzz Earth Wednesday (Oct. 9) to snag a gravity speed boost that will slingshot it toward the largest planet in the solar system. The Juno spacecraft will be within 350 miles (560 kilometers) of Earth when it zooms by our planet at 3:21 p.m. EDT (1921 GMT). It will be passing over South Africa during its closest approach to Earth. An artists rendering depicts Nasa's Juno spacecraft wit Jupiter in the background. Juno will swing by Earth to gather the momentum it needs to arrive at Jupiter in 2016 Since its 2011 launch on an unmanned Atlas 5 rocket, NASA's Juno mission to Jupiter has followed...

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A water-rich superearth found 40 lightyears away

Source – PuneMirror Washington: A research team from Japan has used the Subaru Telescope to observe the water-rich atmosphere of a super-earth, 40 lightyears from our planet. The astronomers and planetary scientists has used Subaru Telescope’s two optical cameras, Suprime-Cam and the Faint Object Camera and Spectrograph (FOCAS), with a blue transmission filter to observe planetary transits of super-Earth GJ 1214 b (Gliese 1214 b).  The team investigated whether this planet has an atmosphere rich in water or hydrogen. The Subaru observations show that the sky of this planet does not show a strong Rayleigh scattering feature,...

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