An interstellar journey for CubeSats

In Greek mythology, Icarus was the impulsive son who ignored his father's warning about flying too close to the sun but the students in the Drexel University chapter of Icarus Interstellar are much too dedicated to do anything that careless. Besides, they're aiming for a star located even farther away.

Those students went above and beyond to create the first chapter at any university of Icarus Interstellar, an international nonprofit foundation dedicated to achieving interstellar flight—travel to star systems beyond our own solar system—by the year 2100.

The research-oriented organization's mandate is to train the next generation of interstellar engineers, so the idea of a Drexel chapter organization wasn't very far-fetched.

Icarus is attempting to build the first-ever mission to Alpha Centauri, the star system located the closest to our solar system.

The timing of the project is especially important because no other similar missions are planned and the only mission that could reach a neighboring solar system—the Voyager spacecraft launched into space in 1977—will take tens of thousands of years.

Icarus' Project Tin Tin aims to reach the nearest star in about one-third of the Voyager's time, even though the Voyager will have received a 40-year head start.

Through Project Tin Tin, Icarus plans to create cost-effective technology and prototype CubeSats, or tiny cube-shaped research spacecraft nanosatellites, to test before sending to Alpha Centauri.

The Drexel students will contribute to the mission by designing, analyzing and building their own interstellar CubeSat.

"The idea is that this CubeSat will push the boundaries of what is possible with our current technology and will serve as a stepping-stone for future [faster] missions," said Damien Turchi, a pre-junior mechanical engineering and mechanics major and the president and founder of Drexel's Icarus chapter.

The group plans to send Icarus a project proposal by March 2014 to earn approval and start funding for the Drexel CubeSat, which will potentially be launched as early as 2016.

"By promoting specifically student involvement in interstellar research, the breakthroughs required for this endeavor may very well happen in our generation, because innovation tends to lie in the naïve," Turchi said.

Other activities planned for the Drexel chapter include discussions about Icarus' projects and the implications of long-term interstellar flight on human health and psychology.

The group is also planning a possible trip to the Icarus Interstellar Starship Congress in Texas and is looking into ways to aid other universities to create student chapters.

NASA ORION: Carbon fibre barrier tested - Video

NASA is vacuum testing the carbon fiber barrier between the Orion capsule and the propellent stage. Its main purpose is to keep dangerous gasses away from the spacecraft.

Credit: NASA / MSFC

Callous China destroy homes in pursuit of Space Domination

China's callous disregard for human life has brought further tragedy to its beleaguered population.

Debris from the rocket carrying China's first moon rover plummeted to earth in a village more than a thousand kilometres from the launch site, crashing into two homes, a report said Tuesday.

The incident about nine minutes after the launch of the Chang'e-3 mission early Monday happened in Suining county in the central province of Hunan, which has been hit by space wreckage nearly 20 times, the Xiaoxiang Morning Post said.

"Three of the roof beams have crashed down on our house, and a big hole has been punched into our barn," one local resident told the paper.

"The huge sound scared the living daylights out of me," said another.

A picture showed a somewhat baffled-looking villager peering at the curved shape of what appeared to be a rocket nose-cone, below a gaping hole in his roof.

Authorities gave the residents 10,800 yuan ($1,800) and 5,200 yuan in compensation, the paper said. No one was injured.

A Long March-3B carrier rocket, China's most powerful such vehicle, blasted off at around 1:30 am Monday from the Xichang Satellite Launch Centre in southwestern China.

The lunar rover mission is part of China's ambitious space programme, which has the goal of establishing a permanent space station by 2020 and eventually sending a human to the moon.

But debris from China's numerous space launches has frequently found its way to Suining county, which has been hit by rocket parts nearly 20 times since the early 1990s, the Xiaoxiang Morning Post reported.

Last May wreckage from a rocket sent up by the Xichang Launch Centre crashed into homes and hit a high-voltage wire in the area, according to the Shanghai Daily News.

In October 2011 a steel frame weighing more than 250 kilograms (550 pounds) landed in a field after another satellite launch, and other wreckage pierced a house roof.

NASA Cassini Image: Sunlit Edge of Saturn's Largest Moon, Titan

The sunlit edge of Titan's south polar vortex stands out distinctly against the darkness of the moon's unilluminated hazy atmosphere.

The Cassini spacecraft images of the vortex led scientists to conclude that its clouds form at a much higher altitude -- where sunlight can still reach -- than the surrounding haze.

Titan (3,200 miles, or 5,150 kilometers across) is Saturn's largest moon.

This view looks toward the trailing hemisphere of Titan. 

North on Titan is up and rotated 32 degrees to the left. 

The image was taken with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on July 14, 2013 using a spectral filter sensitive to wavelengths of near-infrared light centered at 938 nanometers.

The view was obtained at a distance of approximately 808,000 miles (1.3 million kilometers) from Titan and at a Sun-Titan-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 82 degrees. Image scale is 5 miles (8 kilometers) per pixel.

Image Credit: NASA /JPL-Caltech /Space Science Institute (SSI)

New computer model may explain moon Europa's chaotic terrain

This rendering shows the temperature field in a simulation of Europa’s global ocean dynamics, where hot plumes (red) rise from the seafloor and cool fluid (blue) sinks downward from the ice-ocean interface. 

More heat is delivered to the ice shell near the equator where convection is more vigorous, consistent with the distribution of chaos terrains on Europa. 

Credit: Model image created by K. M. Soderlund with the image of Europa taken from NASA/JPL/University of Arizona

A team of researchers at the University of Texas with assistance from a computer modeler at the Max Planck Institute in Germany has put together a computer model that might just explain the peculiar surface of Jupiter's moon Europa.

In their paper published in the journal Nature Geoscience, the team suggests the odd surface terrain patterns likely come about due to convection. Jason Goodman of Wheaton College offers a perspective on the researchers' findings in a News & Views piece printed in the same journal.

The NASA space probe Voyager flew past Jupiter and its moons in 1979, and in so doing, set off a debate about the nature of the surface of one such moon, Europa, that has continued to this day—why is the surface so smooth, and why are there odd rough patches covering nearly 40 percent of its surface?

Scientists agree that the general smoothness is likely due to the existence of water beneath the icy surface—the lack of craters indicates a surface that is able to heal itself after impacts.

Less of a consensus has been found regarding the rough patches, however, which scientists call "chaotic terrain."

Galileo

In this new study, the researchers used data from hydro-systems here on Earth as well as data from both Voyager and the Galileo spacecraft (which detected a magnetic field) to create what they believe is a reasonable model of a convection process working beneath the icy shell of Europa's surface.

Some have suggested Europa's surface gets its unique features due to the pull of gravity from Jupiter—others have suggested the sun plays a role.

Such theories have not held much weight however, as there is little evidence to suggest that either could account for the chaotic terrain.

Instead, the modelers suggest, it's due to convection driven by heat from the interior of the moon itself.

Their model shows, they write that currents beneath the ice tend to deliver heat primarily to the equatorial regions of the surface which in turn causes constant heating, melting and refreezing—resulting they say, in the chaotic terrain that we are able to observe.

More information: Ocean-driven heating of Europa's icy shell at low latitudes, Nature Geoscience (2013) DOI: 10.1038/ngeo2021

Robot with brush, water, wiper tackles solar panel cleaning

Credit: Sinfonia Technology (previously known as Shinko Electric Company)

At large-scale solar plants, keeping the surfaces of solar panels free from dust, sand and bird droppings is not just a matter of finicky housekeeping.

It can be a matter of plant profitability. Dirty panels lower power generation efficiencies.

Bird droppings on panels, for example, block the sunlight.

A Tokyo-based company has a solution. Sinfonia Technology announced late last month that it has developed a robot with camera and sensors that can move autonomously and clean solar panels at large-scale solar power plants.

Sinfonia's robot has a distinction in being "autonomous" in that, rather than tethered to rails, the robot is able to move from panel to panel, to tackle the panels' dirt and debris.

The robot is equipped with scrub brush, wiper and detergent; and also sprinkles water stored in its tank. The robot can work in the dark; it has LEDs, having wavelengths in the infrared range.

Aside from autonomy, another key distinction is that Sinfonia's robot can handle the fact that not all solar panels are alike; the robot is designed to tackle panels that tilt in different ways.

To clean tilted solar panels on a mounting system, the robot can move on a planes tilted at 5-30°. If there is a gap between panels, the robot can go over a gap of 50cm or less and can deal with a height difference of 30cm or less.

The robot is powered by a battery and is capable of wireless data transmission. A tablet can be used to check the robot's status—to check if, for example, it has enough water or to check the battery charge remaining.

Sinfonia Technology, in promoting the benefits of its panel-cleaning robots, also noted cost advantages over using manpower for cleaning panels.

Generally, experts say that, for large-scale solar panel installations, attention to keeping the panels clean makes sense.

Earlier this year, however, a study out of the Jacobs School of Engineering at University of California San Diego, in quantifying losses of electricity output due to dirty solar panels, found panels that hadn't been cleaned, or rained on, for 145 days during a summer drought in California lost on average a little less than 0.05 percent of their overall efficiency per day.

The overall conclusion was, that cleaning the panels often was not worth the cost, according to the study's engineers.

They cautioned, though, that their study focused on smaller systems and that, for very large installations, economies of scale may mean that washing panels was worth it.

Sharp, meanwhile, is another Japan-based company showing interest in devising automatic ways to clean solar panels.

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