NASA shows off new Mars lander - Morpheus, fueled by Methane

NASA unveils the prototype of a remarkable new landing vehicle this week that is set to form the basis of new space probes to explore the Solar System.

Named Morpheus, the lander is designed to fly to a variety of destinations including Mars, planetary moons or asteroids.

It will incorporate intelligent technology that allows it to register the presence of surface hazards such as boulders and avoid them.

It will also be powered by new "green" propulsion system that uses liquid oxygen and methane because these are fuels that could be readily produced on other worlds.

Another benefit of using methane is that it can be stored for longer in space than can other common rocket propellants. Methane also is cheaper and safer to operate and could be made from ice found on the moon or Mars.

Video of a tethered test of Morpheus. Credit: NASA

The NASA-designed vehicle was manufactured and assembled at JSC and Armadillo Aerospace, and is the second vertical test bed built by the project team. The first, Pixel, was literally put together from spare parts supplied by the commercial company.

NASA converted the Pixel lander to use liquid oxygen and methane as its fuel, fitted it with instruments and carried out early guidance, navigation and control testing. Pixel was flown last year under tether 17 times and three free flights, at Armadillo’s facility near Dallas.

Alternative Energy Sources: Surfactant driven propulsion

A small autonomous boat powered by a volatile surfactant has been developed by scientists in Finland and Israel.

The surfactant modifies the surface tension of the liquid it floats on to create a surface tension gradient that propels the boat forward.

Propulsion induced by a surface tension gradient is known as Marangoni propulsion. It’s used in nature by small creatures such as Microvelia (small aquatic insects) to give a burst of speed to escape predators.

In man-made devices, the Marangoni effect has been used to power small ‘camphor boats’ and ‘soap boats’; however, these systems normally offer only short term propulsion or require the boat to be confined to specific channels.

To develop a longer-term propulsion system, the team led by Robin Ras at Aalto University, Finland, created a boat from a lightweight membrane made from a nano-cellulose aerogel.

The membrane is impermeable to water (and oil) but it allows the gaseous surfactants to pass through it. The team used ethanol as the fuel to power a boat floating on water.

Housed in a reservoir at the rear of the boat, a few drops of ethanol are placed on a tissue. As the ethanol evaporates, it diffuses through the membrane at the rear of the boat and lowers the surface tension of the water.

This creates the surface tension gradient that drives the boat forward. The boat is not steered so it typically travels in a circular route.

Once the boat has passed, the ethanol at the water surface evaporates, returning the surface tension to normal. Modifying the surface tension only requires a small amount of surfactant.

‘The boat ran for over 54 minutes on only 25 microlitres of fuel,’ says Ras. ‘It’s very fuel efficient while cruising at a speed of 2cm s^-1,’ he adds. To demonstrate the generality of their approach, the team showed they could also use pentane to power a boat floating on paraffin oil.

‘This is a beautiful illustration of exciting soft matter research. The researchers combine innovative materials science with fundamental surface science to construct a novel self-propelling floating device that is much more controllable and versatile than any similar device suggested before,’ says Lennart Piculell, an expert in physical chemistry at Lund University, Sweden.

‘I don't see any immediate applications, but the concept is simple and can be applied to even smaller devices.’

This ECO vehicle gets 2,564.8 miles per gallon

Students from the Université Laval in Quebec, Canada won the internal combustion crown in Shell’s Eco-marathon with a prototype vehicle that got 2,564.8 miles per gallon (above).

Shell’s fifth annual Eco-marathon Americas is a challenge for students to design, build and test fuel-efficient vehicles.

Alternative Energy - Lipo-diesel illegal in some states

In November 2008 the Beverly Hills surgeon Craig Alan Bittner suddenly closed his thriving liposuction practice and fled to South America. Why? Bittner had been using the extracted fat of patients as "lipo-diesel" to fuel the SUVs of himself and his girlfriend, and was therefore violating state laws on medical waste.

Solar Simulator: Reactor could make fuel from solar energy and CO2

(Image: Aldo Steinfield/Swiss Federal Institute of Technology)

Imagine filling up your car on an environmentally-friendly fuel produced from sunlight, water and carbon dioxide from the air.

That goal may now be a step closer following successful tests of a new solar-powered reactor.

Researchers around the world have recently been experimenting with different catalysts capable of producing hydrocarbon fuels from water and carbon dioxide when heated by concentrated sunlight.

Such a fuel would not only reduce greenhouse gas emissions, but could be used with little change to our existing cars and infrastructure.

Now William Chueh at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena and colleagues have developed a reactor that uses cerium oxide as a catalyst. Cerium oxide is an abundant material suitable for commercial-scale fuel production, but it hadn't been demonstrated in a reactor under realistic conditions.

In Chueh's reactor, concentrated solar energy enters the chamber through a window. Once inside the chamber, the sunlight is reflected several times to capture as much of the solar energy as possible. It is used to heat a 35 millimetre-diameter cylinder of cerium oxide to around 1500 degrees Celsius. This causes the cerium to release an oxygen atom.

The temperature in the chamber is then reduced to around 900 degrees Celsius, and carbon dioxide is pumped into the chamber through an inlet. The cerium grabs an oxygen atom from the carbon dioxide to replace the one that it has lost, producing carbon monoxide and cerium oxide.

The carbon monoxide is then removed from the chamber, which is heated back up to 1500 degrees Celsius and the whole cycle is repeated.

The same process is also used to generate hydrogen from steam. The team has successfully run the process to produce the two gases in over 500 cycles.

The efficiency of the device is low, at around 0.4 per cent, but much of this is due to heat loss through the reactor walls and aperture, which can be dealt with through improvements to the device's insulation and design, the team say. Efficiencies of up to 19 per cent should then be possible, they add.

Carbon monoxide and hydrogen can be converted into a synthetic liquid using a technique such as the Fischer-Tropsch process, in which they are heated in the presence of an iron-based catalyst to produce hydrocarbon fuels.

Ultimately, such plants could use carbon dioxide from the air to produce fuel. Team member Aldo Steinfeld at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Zurich, has already demonstrated that a similar process can be used to remove CO2 from the atmosphere.

He and his team used concentrated sunlight to heat calcium oxide to 400 degrees Celsius, causing it to react with CO2 in the air to form calcium carbonate. When heated again, this time to 800 degrees Celsius, the calcium carbonate releases a pure stream of CO2 that can then be used in the solar fuel reactor.

Journal reference: Science, DOI: 10.1126/science.1197834

Controversial Climate Change report criticised

A British study suggests Earth's ecosystems and oceans have a much greater capacity to absorb carbon dioxide than has been previously estimated.

The study, led by researcher Wolfgang Knorr at the University of Bristol, found the balance between the airborne and the absorbed fraction of carbon dioxide has stayed approximately constant since 1850, despite emissions of carbon dioxide having risen from about 2 billion tons a year in 1850 to the current 35 billion tons a year.

Knorr said his results run contrary to a significant body of recent research that suggests the capacity of terrestrial ecosystems and the oceans to absorb CO2 should start to diminish as CO2 emissions increase, allowing greenhouse gas levels to skyrocket.

He said the strength of his research is that it rests solely on measurements and statistical data, and does not rely on computations with complex climate models.

However, Knorr urges caution.

"Like all studies of this kind, there are uncertainties in the data, so rather than relying on nature to provide a free service, soaking up our waste carbon, we need to ascertain why the proportion being absorbed has not changed."

The study appears in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

Airbus Claim Alternative fuels are the future

Alternative fuels could power 15 percent of global air traffic by 2020 and 30 percent by 2030, European aircraft-maker Airbus said at the Dubai Airshow on Tuesday.

"If we get the right sources, it is possible that 15 percent of the world's jet fuel will come from sustainable sources by 2020, and 30 percent will come from sustainable sources by 2030," said Ross Walker, engineering programme manager for alternative fuels at Airbus.

"The challenge is finding sustainable feedstocks" that do not take land and water used for food production, he said.

Walker said the alternative or sustainable fuels he was referring to were based on gas or biomass and converted to liquid.

He described algae, which can be grown in salt water, as a promising source of biomass for alternative fuels. "We believe this is the golden chalice we've been looking for."

"If an area the size of the United Arab Emirates were planted with algae, it could produce enough bio jet fuel to support the world's civil aviation industry," he said.

Airbus was focusing on "drop-in fuels," or fuels that can be used in existing aircraft without modifications, he said.

Walker pointed out that the whole aircraft manufacturing industry, including engine and airframe manufacturers, were collaborating on alternative fuel projects.

Airbus conducted its first test of an aircraft using a 50-50 mix of GTL and kerosene in one engine in 2008, while a Qatar Airways Airbus A340 flew from London to Qatar burning a GTL-kerosene mix in all four engines last month.

Walker said Airbus hopes to conduct a test flight of an A320 burning a 50-50 BTL-kerosene mixture some time next year.