From Dream to Discovery: Inside NASA Engineering - Video

Experience the challenges of the next generation of space exploration in this brand-new Planetarium show.

By using exciting real-life projects like NASA's James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) and the New Horizons mission to Pluto, the show highlights the extreme nature of spacecraft engineering and the life cycle of a space mission, from design and construction to the rigors of testing, launch, and operations.

Blast off and take the voyage with NASA!

Max Goes to Jupiter - Mike Hopkins

NASA astronaut Michael Hopkins read "Max Goes to Jupiter" for the Story Time from Space activity.

Crew members on the space station host Story Time from Space by videotaping themselves reading children’s books.

They also complete simple demonstrations that accompany the Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths (STEM) concepts in the books.

The videos are edited and posted to an online library with related educational materials for educators and parents to use.

The project aims to bring space station science to communities that have had no other involvement with the space program through the simple beauty of reading a book to the children of Earth from orbit.

The books are delivered to the space station and returned after the videos are completed.

The program will increase awareness of the station, and connects (STEM) concepts with literacy, providing teachers a unique and engaging way to teach.

Engineering antennas into solar panels

Researchers at EPFL have managed to combine antennas and solar cells to work together with unprecedented efficiency in a near future. 

This is a first step towards more compact and more lightweight satellites.

The technology could also be deployed in the autonomous antenna systems used in the aftermath of natural disasters.

Traditionally, telecommunication antennas and solar cells have never really worked well together, as they have to function independently of each other in order to avoid interference.

This has an impact on the weight and size of satellites - the surface area has to be large enough for both antenna systems, which emit and receive data, and solar panels, which supply the electricity.

For his master project, Philippe Dreyer, who is part of Julien Perruisseau-Carrier Group, has been working on ways to combine solar cells and antennas.

Julien Perruisseau-Carrier

In collaboration with the Transparent Conductive Oxides group (TCOs) which is part of the Photovoltaics and Thin Film Electronics Laboratory (PV-Lab), he has developed a mixed surface that allows both the antenna and the photovoltaic cell to perform extremely efficiently.

This could substantially reduce the volume, weight and cost of satellites but not only that. Mobile and autonomous communications systems are often necessary to keep in contact with people in the wake of a natural disaster.

This new technology would make these systems lighter and therefore easier to carry around. "Our device could also support flexible implementation.

It could be folded up so that it isn't deployed until the relief area has been reached," states Julien Perruisseau-Carrier, who supervised the project.

More information: "Copper and Transparent-Conductor Reflectarray Elements on Thin-Film Solar Cell Panels." Philippe Dreyer, Monica Morales-Masis, Sylvain Nicolay, Christophe Ballif, Julien Perruisseau-Carrier. arXiv:1311.4737 [physics.optics] arxiv.org/abs/1311.4737

WSU Researchers Use a 3D Printer to Make Bone-like Material - YouTube

It looks like bone. It feels like bone. For the most part, it acts like bone and it came off an inkjet printer.

A ceramic powder and 3D printer have been paired to create a bone-like material that could be used in surgery within the next decade.

The material, which has already been tested in vivo tests on rats and rabbits, could be created to order for dental and orthopedic procedures.

Once inserted in the body, it acts as a scaffold for new human bone cells to grow upon after just a week.

The manmade scaffold will eventually dissolve "with no apparent ill effects".

The material was created following a four-year effort by chemistry, materials science, biology and manufacturing researchers at Washington State University.

The main "ingredient" is calcium phosphate but silicon and zinc were added, which "more than doubled the strength of the main material," the team explained.

Inside the printer, an inkjet nozzle sprays a plastic binder liquid over a bed of the powder in layers of 20 microns.

Susmita Bose, co-author of the paper revealing the results of the project and professor in WSU's School of Mechanical and Materials Engineering says that custom-ordered replacement bone tissue could be in common use in the next ten years.

"If a doctor has a CT scan of a defect, we can convert it to a CAD file and make the scaffold according to the defect," she said.

Scientists Create World's First Molecular Transistor

Scientists Create World's First Molecular Transistor

A group of scientists has succeeded in creating the first transistor made from a single molecule. The team, which includes researchers from Yale University and the Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology in South Korea, published their findings in the December 24 issue of the journal Nature.

The team, including Mark Reed, the Harold Hodgkinson Professor of engineering and Applied Science at Yale, showed that a benzene molecule attached to gold contacts could behave just like a silicon transistor.

The researchers were able to manipulate the molecule's different energy states depending on the voltage they applied to it through the contacts. By manipulating the energy states, they were able to control the current passing through the molecule.

"It's like rolling a ball up and over a hill, where the ball represents electrical current and the height of the hill represents the molecule's different energy states," Reed said. "We were able to adjust the height of the hill, allowing current to get through when it was low, and stopping the current when it was high." In this way, the team was able to use the molecule in much the same way as regular transistors are used.