As reported by CTV News: A SpaceX capsule headed back to Earth on Wednesday with precious science samples from NASA's one-year space station resident.
The Dragon left the International Space Station in the morning, bound for an afternoon splashdown in the Pacific, a few hundred miles off the Southern California coast. The station's big robot arm set the Dragon free over Australia. The capsule had been at the station for a month, dropping off supplies as well as an experimental, inflatable room that will pop open in two weeks.
British astronaut Timothy Peake bid farewell to Dragon on behalf of the station's entire six-man crew.
"Dragon spacecraft has served us well, and it's good to see it departing full of science," Peake radioed from 250 miles up. "We wish it a safe recovery back to Planet Earth."
Nearly 4,000 pounds of items fill the Dragon, including blood and urine samples from astronaut Scott Kelly's one-year mission. Kelly returned to Earth in March and has since retired from NASA. Researchers will use the medical specimens to study how the body withstands long journeys in space, in preparation for an eventual mission to Mars in the 2030s.
Also on board: a spacesuit that leaked water into an astronaut's helmet in January, forcing an early end to a spacewalk. Engineers want to examine the suit to see what might have gone wrong.
It is SpaceX's first return trip for NASA in a year. A launch accident last summer grounded the California-based company for months.
SpaceX's Dragon is the only station supply ship that returns to Earth. The other capsules -- Orbital ATK's Cygnus and Russia's Progress -- are filled with trash and burn up on re-entry.
It's the company's eighth return flight from the station since 2012.
The Falcon rocket that launched this Dragon back on April 8 is now in a hangar at Cape Canaveral, Florida -- awaiting another flight.
Rather than getting dumped in the ocean as is customary for launch companies, the Falcon's first-stage booster flipped around after performing its job and flew to a vertical landing on a barge floating in the Atlantic. It was the first successful rocket touchdown at sea. A second booster touched down safely at sea last Friday following a satellite delivery.
SpaceX chief Elon Musk wants to recover and reuse his rockets to drive down costs.
As reported by Engadget: The world of Elon Musk-imagined levitating super trains that fly through tubes is finally a little bit less confusing. Today Hyperloop Technologies changed it's name to Hyperloop One. The new moniker should help reduce any mix ups with competing company Hyperloop Transportation Technologies (HTT). More importantly, the company is ready to publicly demo its propulsion system.
Tomorrow, the company formerly known as Hyperloop Technologies will show off its propulsion system in the Nevada Desert outside of north of Las Vegas. The company says that it can currently hit 400 MPH along an open-air test track but is shooting for 700 MPH within the confines of a vacuum-sealed Hyperloop tube. CTO and Co-founder Brogan BamBrogan said that the company would have a full system, full scale test (a pod racing through a tube) by the end of 2016.
During a presentation in Las Vegas the company also announced Hyperloop One partnerships both in the private and public sector. Probably the most important of those is the state of Nevada. In a statement, Nevada governor Brian Sandoval said, "we believe that Hyperloop One will develop the next mode of transportation while also providing a significant revenue stream and job opportunities for Nevadans."
Because the Hyperloop community loves competition, the company dropped that it's starting the Hyperloop One Global Challenge. It says the event will be an "opportunity for individuals, companies and governments to develop competitive proposals for using the first Hyperloop One solutions on transport corridors in their regions." Proposals are due on September 15, 2016 with the winners announced in March of 2017.
At the event the company also announced that it's taking part in studies to see if routes are feasible in Finland, Norway and between the Los Angeles and Long Beach ports.
But again, the real news is the open-air test of its propulsion system. All the partnerships and competitions in the world won't matter if the Hyperloop One can't get its pods through the tubes. While the chances of confusing it with its rival Hyperloop Transportation Technologies have been reduced thanks to the new name, there's still competition between the two endeavors. Yesterday, HTT announced that it will use the government-developed Inductrack levitation system. It will be partnering with Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory to bring the passive magnetic system to its pods.
If successful, Hyperloop One is looking beyond passengers to cargo. BamBrogan even hypothesized the potential of moving an entire port offshore and using underwater Hyperloop tracks and pods to move goods from ships to the land. This would expand the company's idea to put tubes underwater along the shoreline.
As reported by Tech Daily: A new electric vehicle company breaks cover led by Trevor Milton. The Nikola Motor Company has come out of hiding announced the Nikola One class 8 electric semi-Truckand the Nikola Zero 4×4 electric UTV.
The Salt Lake City based electric vehicle startup has been created by Trevor Milton, who has been CEO of dHybrid Systems, a natural gas storage technology company that got acquired by Worthington Industries in 2014.
The Nikola One Truck has 2,000 hp and a 1,200 miles range. It carries 320kWh battery that power the 6×6 electric drive. The Nikola One has regenerative braking and a turbine that charges the batteries.
The Nikola Zero UTV has a 100 to 150 miles range and 520hp. The all-wheel drive UTV has a 50kWh battery and accelerates to 60mph in 3s. The Nikola Motor Company takes a page out of Tesla Motors playbook and offers reservations of their vehicles which are in a prototype stage. The Nikola One Truck can be reserved for $1,500 and the UTV for $750.
There is no word yet on when Nikola Motor Company will be able to actually deliver any of their planned vehicles. Prototypes are supposed to be shown later this year. Nikola Motor Company is of course named after the famous inventor and electrical engineer Nikola Tesla. If the name brings good fortunes remains to be seen.
The Nikola Motor Company released many technical details about their planned electric vehicle that look impressive. At least we know what electric vehicle this company is working on, in contrast to secretive Apple, which is also supposed to build an electric vehicle under the project Titan.
As reported by Phys.Org: A start-up company hosted in an ESA business incubator is developing the world's first vertical takeoff and landing aircraft for personal use. The electric two-seater will open the door to a new class of simpler, quieter and environmentally friendly planes available from 2018.
"Our goal is to develop an aircraft for use in everyday life," explains Daniel Wiegand, CEO and one of the company's four founders.
"We are going for a plane that can take off and land vertically and does not need the complex and expensive infrastructure of an airport.
"To reduce noise and pollution, we are using electric engines so it can also be used close to urban areas."
Founded in February 2015 by four engineers and doctoral students from the Technical University of Munich in Germany, Lilium has already proved the concept with several scale, 25 kg prototypes and is now developing its first ultralight vertical takeoff and landing aircraft.
Simpler and easier air transportation
Today, general public aviation offers fixed-wing aircraft and helicopters. Conventional aircraft are efficient, fast and available in many sizes but require airports often 20–50 km from city centres because of their space-hungry runways and the high noise levels.
Airports are expensive bottlenecks for transportation. This is especially so for short-haul flights, where travel time to and from airports can easily double the duration of a trip. This is not a problem for helicopters, which can take off almost anywhere and are therefore often used for short shuttle flights and special applications.
The electric aircraft under development by ESA BIC Bavaria start-up Lilium needs only an open flat area of about 15x15 m for vertical takeoff and landing. The environmentally friendly aircraft is planned to be available from 2018. Credit: Lilium
However, helicopters are very noisy and difficult to fly – which requires expensive licences. They also have no backup in case of rotor failure, making them expensive to build and maintain.
The Lilium vehicle combines the benefits of helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft while avoiding their drawbacks. While initially restricted to airfields, the goal is for it to take off vertically from almost anywhere – even from back gardens – it needs only an open flat area of about 15x15 m.
Although taking off and landing like a helicopter, by swivelling its engines it also functions as a very efficient aircraft that can travel at up to 400 km/h.
ESA BIC Bavaria start-up Lilium is developing a two-seater electric powered plane for personal use. Although taking off and landing like a helicopter, by rotating its engines it also functions as a very efficient fixed-wing aircraft that can travel at up to 400 km/h and have a range of 500 km. Credit: Lilium
Entirely electric, the plane is much quieter during takeoff than helicopters thanks to its ducted fan engines. Its batteries, engines and controllers are redundant, making it a much safer design than conventional helicopters.
The plane is classed as a Light Sport Aircraft for two occupants, with the pilot's licence requiring 20 hours' minimum training – almost like taking a driving licence.
It is intended for recreational flying during daylight, in good weather conditions and in uncongested airspace up to 3 km altitude.
ESA BIC Bavaria start-up Lilium is testing concepts for their electric-powered aircraft, which is planned to be ready by 2018. Several small-scale prototypes are being flown at Special Airport Oberpfaffenhofen, next to the company’s development site. Credit: Lilium
Using computer control for vertical takeoff and landing is essential for a vehicle targeted at the consumer market for personal transportation.
Powered from a simple wall plug
Highly efficient in its cruising mode, the vehicle will have a range of 500 km. It features a touchscreen and fly-by-wire joystick controls, retractable landing gear, wing doors, large storage, panoramic windows, and a battery that can be recharged from any wall plug.
Entirely electric, the Lilium plane is much quieter during takeoff than helicopters thanks to its ducted fan engines. The fans are positioned vertical during takeoff and landing, and turned horizontal for flying to make the plane a very efficient fixed-wing aircraft that can travel at up to 400 km/h. Credit: Lilium
Satnav is crucial to the high degree of automation and wind compensation during takeoff and landing.
The company is hosted at ESA's Business Incubation Centre in Bavaria, which offers a workshop for developing and building the prototypes and final plane.
Located directly next to the Special Airport Oberpfaffenhofen, the company has direct access to test fields and an inspiring aviation-friendly environment.
ESA BIC Bavaria start-up Lilium is building the world’s first vertical takeoff and landing two-seater electric airplane for personal use. Credit: Lilium
"The half-size prototype is already flying and now under test. The full-size unmanned prototype is planned for this summer," says Thorsten Rudolph, CEO of AZO, which runs the incubator, one of many in ESA's Technology Transfer Programme throughout Europe.
"We are helping the Lilium team to turn their idea into a viable business. They are the aircraft experts, and we provide the expertise on how to make a business out of their dream."
Supported by a venture capital investor, the company is planning its first manned experimental flight in 2017 and rollout of the completed vehicle for licensing by 2018, ready for initial production to begin meeting orders. Serial production will follow later.
The retail cost will be far less than similar-sized aircraft of today and with much lower running costs.
"In the longer term, our target is to build an aircraft that not only the super-rich can afford, and that can make private air transportation possible for a much wider number of people," adds Daniel.
"With the concept of taking off and landing almost everywhere, we could see that one day our plane will be used for quick and daily transportation almost like a car today."
The optical clock developed by UCLA Engineering researchers is the small black strip between the two black cylinders.
As reported by Phys.Org: Researchers at the UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science have created an optical clock that's just 1 cubic centimeter—small enough to fit on a standard silicon chip—and can track time intervals with precision to 270 quintillionths of second. (One quintillionth is equivalent to 1 times 10 to the negative 18th power, or 0.000000000000000001.)
Today's most accurate clocks, atomic clocks, are used to keep time for the Internet and satellite communications, and help astronomers detect Earth-like planets beyond our solar system. Their accuracy—to "only" within a tenth of trillionths of a second, or 1 times 10 to the negative 13th power—is based on the naturally occurring frequencies of atoms that respond to radiation. The atomic frequencies can be expressed as a "frequency comb," a series of evenly spaced vertical lines of light produced by the atoms under radiation into microwave frequencies that are accessible to the electronic instruments that ultimately turn those readings into accurate measurements of time.
Previous optical clocks were much larger than the new one developed at UCLA: They used large fiber lasers that needed to be housed in equipment about the size of a desktop computer. The UCLA team was able to shrink the mechanism significantly to 1 cubic centimeter by using a process similar to how silicon chips are made. The new clock's precision approaches the world's best frequency standards.
The clock could lead to more precise measurements of space and time, an area known as attosecond physics, and could have applications in optical, wireless and space-based communications. For example, it could be used to measure the movement of atoms, or to discern the movement of distant objects far beyond our solar system.
"If incorporated with other technologies into infrared telescope observatories, this device can enable the detection of Earth-like planets and celestial objects 100 times smaller than that, which was previously impossible," said Shu-Wei Huang, a UCLA Engineering scientist and the project's lead author. The research was published in Science Advances. Chee Wei Wong, a UCLA associate professor of electrical engineering, is the project's principal investigator.
"Measuring the time it takes for a pulse of light to reflect from an object and return back to us also tells us a distance," Wong said. "This could help in precision laser distance ranging, such as in sensing for self-driven automobiles and aerial vehicles."
Wong said the laser clock could help generate ever-shorter pulses of light, which would be useful for watching the motion of electrons or detecting trace hazardous materials from faraway distances.
The new clock could also help further refine the absolute value of "fundamental constants," numbers that are thought to be same throughout the universe—for example, the strength of electromagnetic interactions between electrons and other elementary particles.
Wong said because the clock is cast on a silicon chip, it is more reliable than the previous, larger model, which required additional stabilization and control electronics to work.
The paper's other authors are Jinghui Yang of UCLA, Mingbin Yu and Dim-Lee Kwong of Singapore's Institute for Microelectronics , and Bart McGuyer and Tanya Zelevinsky of Columbia University.
As reported by Quartz: Flying satellites and landing rockets are almost becoming routine for the Elon Musk’s rocket company, but SpaceX still managed to wedge a new milestone into their latest flight.
After launching JCSAT-14, a Japanese satellite that will provide TV and data services across the Pacific early this morning, SpaceX landed the first stage of its rocket on a floating platform at sea for the second time ever, a novel technique the company has developed to reuse more of its rockets and save costs.
Today’s landing does offer something new to the discerning observer: This is the first time that the company has landed a rocket that flew to “geosynchronous transfer orbit,” or GTO. That means it set its satellite cargo on a path to reach an altitude where the speed of its orbit will match the speed of earth’s rotation, allowing it to “hang” over one place, about 36,000 kilometers above us.
To get that high, the rocket must be going much faster than to reach, say, the International Space Station in low earth orbit. You can get a sense of the distance with our satellite map. So far, SpaceX has only landed reusable rockets that had delivered payloads to low earth orbit, because they’re already going slower when it comes time for them to turn around and head for earth.
When the rocket is taking its cargo to GTO, it requires three times the deceleration of one heading for low earth orbit. When the company tried to land a rocket that sent cargo to GTO earlier this year, it landed “hard,” though no images were released—we imagine it looked something like this failed landing from January, 2015:
But, as always with Musk, there’s a business plan behind the technology. The most lucrative satellites are those that hang over one spot on earth in their geosynchronous orbits. Introducing reusability into that launch market is key to lowering the price and growing SpaceX’s market share. And, at a time when numerous companies are developing cheap solutions to launch satellites in to low-earth orbit, ensuring dominance at the highest of altitudes will insulate SpaceX from those competitors.
Besides rocket reusability—and its implications for a trip to Mars—the big 2016 goal for SpaceX is a steady launch tempo. Initially, the plan ran into trouble thanks to a new fueling system, but it appears the kinks have been sorted out. The company has so far launched four out of 18 launches expected by SpaceX president Gwynne Shotwell.
This is the third first stage that SpaceX has landed, leading Musk to joke that he’ll need a bigger rocket storage hangar. But that also raises the question: When will one of these rockets be re-used?
As reported by Popular Mechanics: Jose Fernandez is the founder and lead designer at Ironhead Studios, the company responsible for designing numerous superhero suits for the big screen. The studio has tackled Spiderman,Thor, and most recently, Batman. But the next big suit with Ironhead's touch sounds like it'll be for real-life spacemen. Namely, the ones that will work for our real-life Tony Stark, Elon Musk.
In an interview with Tested, Fernandez offhandedly mentioned his work for SpaceX. "I designed a spacesuit for SpaceX," Fernandez says, at the end of a clip highlighted by a Redditor on the subreddit devoted to the private spaceflight company. "I can't show [it], but they're gonna reveal it in the next possible year."
As another Redditor was quick to point out, this isn't the first time Frenandez mentioned the project, just the first time anyone really picked up on it. In an interview with BLEEP magazineearlier this year, Fernandez went into deeper detail about the project, perhaps most interestingly about how concerned Musk was with the suit's style, and how the suit was first designed to look awesome and then was (or is still in the process of being) reverse-engineered from there.
"I worked with [Musk] for six months and at the end of that, we created a suit that they are now reverse-engineering to make functional for flight. The look they are going to unveil in the next few months is something we created here in the studio. He wanted it to look stylish. It had to be practical but also needed to look great. It's pretty bad ass. He kept saying, "Anyone looks better in a tux, no matter what size or shape they are," and when people put this space suit on, he wants them to look better than they did without it, like a tux. You look heroic in it. It's an iconic thing be a part of."
It's a priority Musk has stressed before, and considering the sort of delightful but cartoonish look of NASA's upcoming suits, it seems like Musk should have plenty of room to edge in the SpaceX suit as "the cool one." Until the actual reveal, we'll just have to guess at how it might look, but lets just say the bar is looking pretty high.
SpaceX teased the new suit in a Crew Dragon conceptual video last year; though there's no guarantee that Frenandez's suit will look anything like what you've seen so far:
Whatever's happening, this won't be an easy task. Spacesuits have understandably stricter demands for comfort, durability and safety -- a ripped, damaged, or malfunctioning suit in space can do a lot more than ruin a day of filming.
Nearly 4,000 pounds of items fill the Dragon, including blood and urine samples from astronaut Scott Kelly's one-year mission. Kelly returned to Earth in March and has since retired from NASA. Researchers will use the medical specimens to study how the body withstands long journeys in space, in preparation for an eventual mission to Mars in the 2030s.
The Falcon rocket that launched this Dragon back on April 8 is now in a hangar at Cape Canaveral, Florida -- awaiting another flight.
