TYB
New Laser Network Could Make Space-to-Earth Contact 1,000X Faster
17 August 2024
A new 'laser-powered' project being launched in the state of Western Australia could revolutionize global communications.
Two optical ground stations in a strategically placed network have successfully received laser signals from a German satellite, researchers say, paving the way to increase the capacity of space-to-Earth communications by a staggering 1,000 times.
The 'TeraNet' initiative is led by astrophotonics scientist Sascha Schediwy from the University of Western Australia (WA) and funded by the Australian Space Agency's Moon to Mars Demonstrator Mission.
"The overall aim of the project is to contribute towards Australia's vision for the next generation of space exploration," Schediwy told ScienceAlert.
Since the launch of Spuntik I in 1957, satellites have communicated via radio waves.
Their low-frequency signal limits their capacity to transmit data, and after nearly 70 years of development, radio-wave communications are becoming unable to keep up with the enormous demand for data transfer.
"It's been pushed to the absolute extreme, but it's really now reached a bottleneck," said Schediwy.
With thousands of satellites orbiting Earth, there's a huge volume of data being collected that needs to be sent back down. High-frequency laser communications could present a solution.
"By switching to infrared laser beams for communications, we get a factor of 100, or 1,000, times greater bandwidth," said Schediwy.
Among its many potential applications, the researchers hope this powerful satellite communications system will help people feel more connected to space exploration than ever before.
"We can have multiple camera angles and 4K video footage of the next people landing on the Moon," Schediwy said.
"That's a really exciting aspect of the technology, I think."
Traditional radio communications tend to have a wide broadcast area, which can cause overlap and interference between radio signals. The short-wavelength signals being used by TeraNet will be more focused.
"With optical signals, instead of your beam being maybe 100 kilometers [62 miles] across, it can be 100 meters [328 ft] across. So, you're really targeting an individual user on the ground," said Schediwy.
With such distinct advantages on offer, it could seem surprising that optical communications haven't been more widely adopted. But these laser-powered systems have a drawback.
Unlike their radio-wave counterparts, targeted short-wavelength signals are prone to interference. Lasers are easily interrupted by clouds, making them an unreliable option for satellite communications.
The team has a surprisingly simple solution. The system will have ground stations at several locations in WA connected to the same network, so hopefully, at least one station will always have a clear connection with the satellite.
"If it is cloudy in Perth, the satellite can download its data up at Mingenew, 300 kilometers [186 miles] north," said Schediwy.
If the Perth and Mingenew stations are both blocked by cloud, the TeraNet program has a final ace up its sleeve: an additional ground station receiver mounted on the back of a Jeep that can be driven out to whatever coordinates are necessary to achieve the best signal.
If this initial three-station network is successful, the team is already looking to collaborate with other organizations on the east coast of Australia and in New Zealand to set up an Australasian optical ground station network, and that's only the beginning.
"WA is geographically ideally located to be part of a global communications infrastructure, with an oversight of a large part of the Indian Ocean and a reach into Southeast Asia and the polar region," Schediwy told ScienceAlert.
Once established, a global optical communications network will enable continuous, ultra-fast satellite data downloads. This could transform situations requiring the rapid sharing of large amounts of data, such as disaster response.
It might only be three ground stations right now, but it will potentially herald a new space age of communication.
"This demonstration is the critical first step," says Schediwy.
https://www.sciencealert.com/new-laser-network-could-make-space-to-earth-contact-1000x-faster
Naples Soap Company using space tech for anti-aging soap
August 16, 2024
Space and soap is not a combo that would come to your mind right away, but it’s one that’s hoping to spark a breakthrough.
Naples Soap Company is partnering with NASA and using their space technology to create a new line of products centered around anti-aging.
“Very cool stuff, cutting-edge technology.
We’re a Florida-based company, so we absolutely love, love the opportunity to work with NASA technology,” said Deana Willins, CEO of Naples Soap Company.
Expected to be released in 2025, the products are developed from a 3D biometric technology that targets wrinkles and helps with anti-aging.
From soaps to body scrubs, this store has everything a skincare lover dreams of.
“It definitely reminds me of the beach and like vacation,” said Natalie, a visitor.
With millions of sales a year, Willins said that she hopes to expand nationally, but she’s forever grateful to her customers in Southwest Florida.
“We have been through a lot as a company, as a soap squad and as a community.
We’ve had Hurricane Irma, we had COVID, and we are still here.
We have a resilient team, but that’s because of the local support that we get.
We really try to offer the best customer service and customer experience possible,” Willins said.
https://winknews.com/2024/08/16/naples-soap-company-space-tech-anti-aging-soap/
An astronaut accidentally dialed 911 from space and Houston had a problem.
August 16, 2024
When you’re an astronaut living in a zero-gravity environment, doing simple, everyday tasks are much more difficult than they are on Earth.
NASA astronauts even have to go through an entire toilet training before they’re allowed to head out into space.
However, making a phone call is pretty similar to how we do it here on Earth.
Recently, Dutch astronaut André Kuipers explained how making a phone call from the International Space Station is such a common occurrence, he’s even dialed a wrong number from 220 miles above the Earth’s surface.
While trying to contact NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, Kuipers accidentally dialed 911 and immediately hung up.
This set off an alert and a security team was dispatched to the Houston center.
“I made a mistake, and the next day I received an email message: did you call 911?” he told a Dutch public broadcasting station.
Imagine being the 911 dispatcher and getting a call from space.
“Uhm, sorry guys it’s going to be a little tough to get any police officers out to the International Space Station. Looks like you’re on your own.”
Accidentally dialing 911 is a common occurrence for astronauts at the International Space station because — just like a terrestrial office phone — orbiting astronauts have to dial 9 for an outside line, followed by 011 for an international line.
According to astronaut Holly Ridings, the phones astronauts use in space operate like Skype.
“[Astronauts] can call any phone in the world if they have the right satellite coverage,” she told Space Answers.
“That helps them stay in connection with their families and their friends as well as the people they work with.”
If I were up in space, I’d order a pizza. Because, at a lot of places, if they don’t deliver in 30 minutes or less, your order is free.
https://www.good.is/an-astronaut-accidentally-dialed-911-from-space-and-houston-had-a-problem
Space beer may taste better than Earth beer
Aug 16, 2024 1:19 PM EDT
Researchers are investigating how beer making may be affected by microgravity—not (just) for the prospect of one day sipping brews in space, but for ensuring humanity’s survival beyond Earth.
Virtually every civilization throughout history has relied on fermentation not just for their booze, but for making everything from bread, to pickles, to yogurt.
As humanity’s technological knowledge expanded, we have adapted those same chemistry principles to pharmaceuticals and biofuels, among many other uses.
And while it may not be the first necessity that comes to mind when planning for long-term living in a lunar base, or even on Mars, the process will be crucial to long-term mission success.
To explore how these concepts may change offworld, a team at the University of Florida’s Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences (UF/IFAS) first experimented with making beer in microgravity.
Their results, published in the journal Beverages, indicate microgravity may not only speed up fermentation processes—it may also produce higher quality products.
“We are absolutely going to be conducting fermentations under microgravity in the future, as we continue space exploration, and there are going to be outcomes that will be very difficult for us to predict,” Andrew MacIntosh, study co-author and UF/IFAS associate professor of food science, said in an accompanying university announcement on August 14.
Getting a beer brewer’s starter kit up to the International Space Station, however, isn’t quite in the cards yet. Instead, the UF team led by undergraduate researcher Pedro Fernandez Mendoza created a tiny microgravity simulator here on Earth.
After gathering locally grown barley and mashing it into wort (grain-derived sugary liquid necessary for beers and whiskey), Mendoza and colleagues portioned it out into six samples.
They then added the yeast used in lagers, Saccharomyces pastrorianus, to each tube before leaving three of them to act as controls.
The other trio were placed in a clinostat—a tool capable of simulating microgravity conditions by constantly rotating its contents around a horizontal axis.
Over the course of three days, the team then assessed their fermenting baby-beers at regular intervals on the basis of density, yeast counts, and yeast viability.
After three days, researchers were able to confirm one of their initial hypotheses that microgravity doesn’t appear to harmfully affect fermentation.
What’s more, the fermentation process actually sped up in the clinostat samples as compared to their controls.
But there was one additional, unexpected result—microgravity yeast may allow for even higher quality products than simply fermenting here on Earth.
Although further investigation is needed, researchers think this might relate to a particular gene in yeast that oversees the levels of ester—fermentation byproducts responsible for both good and bad beer flavors.
Typically, the ratio between high alcohol groups and lager ester amounts ranges between 3-4:1, with higher ratios offering a drier, less aromatic beer.
The team recorded their control samples as having a ratio of 1.4:1, while their microgravity beer measured 4.6:1, implying the latter was “less aromatic by this measure.”
Meanwhile, two esters in particular, isoamyl acetate and 2-phenethyl acetate, showed “significant differences” between microgravity and controls.
Higher concentrations of these esters produce a fruity, banana-like flavor in beers that many drinkers often consider undesirable.
In the microgravity brews, a “multiple-fold decrease” in ester concentration compared to the standard examples.
“Depending upon the brewery, these compounds may be desirable; however, the presence of these compounds above a detection threshold would usually be considered a defect,” the team writes.
Given this, their microgravity results offered a final product “that would be considered higher quality due to the reduced esters.
As for brewing in space, researchers now believe microgravity may actively help things along to create better beers, and may even “provide benefits not realized terrestrially.”
MacIntosh and his team, however, can’t attest to any potential benefits just yet—they didn’t try their concoctions.
“Unfortunately when we make beer for science we use rather boring recipes,” he tells Popular Science while making sure to note “there are a few local collaborators who make very decent quality beer upon whom we rely for quality when it is deemed necessary…”
https://www.popsci.com/science/brewing-beer-in-space/
Ominous black ring appears over US state
Updated: 18:42 EDT, 16 August 2024
A mysterious black ring appeared in the blue skies over Virginia this week, which hovered for about 10 minutes before vanishing.
Williamsburg locals flooded news station around 11am ET on Tuesday when they spotted the ominous circle over a major highway.
Ron Stepp said that he was working near Eastern State Hospital when it appeared above like a huge smoke ring in the sky.
Others reported the sighting from nearby neighborhoods, suggesting it was visible for miles.
Similar black rings have been spotted in other locations, with fires and explosions being cited as the likely cause.
But officials reported no fires at the time of the sighting.
Peggy Olszyk captured the black ring as it hung over tree tops, while Renee Fisher snapped a couple photos of it from outside a neighborhood.
Two other viewers sent in photos to the station taken on Interstate 64 westbound in the area of the Fort Eustis exit, and in the area of Old Moretown Road.
This isn't the first time an object like this has been see floating in the sky.
In June, a similar looking ring-shaped cloud was spotted over Venezuela and captured in a now viral video.
'A flying saucer,' one of the young men shouts as they drove down a rode on a sunny afternoon.
And in July, another floating black ring was photographed drifting across an orange and pink sunset over Pearland, Texas.
There have been numerous other sightings all across the world as well - it seems that these mysterious objects can pop up pretty much anywhere.
But so far, no one has officially confirmed what these objects are or where they came from. But there are some theories.
Experts have pointed to fire or some type of explosion that most likely create the rings, such as fireworks.
WAVY reached out to the James City County Fire Department to ask if there were any reports around the time the Williamsburg circle was reported.
The fire chief hadn’t heard of any.
The news station also reached out to Dominion Energy, a American energy company headquartered in Richmond, Virginia, if there was a blown transformer that could have caused the ring.
Dominion spokesperson Tim Eberly told WAVY that there were no incidents this week involving equipment that could have caused a black ring of smoke.
But the news station's in-house meteorologist Ricky Mathews said he had seen these rings from pyrotechnics before - basically stemming from concentrated fire rising.
He also theorized that it could be a special effect used for a film.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-13751591/Ominous-black-ring-appears-virginia.html
Lightning can make energy waves that travel shockingly far into space
16 August 2024
An overlooked mechanism lets energy from lightning reach the highest layers of the atmosphere, where it could threaten the safety of satellites and astronauts.
When lightning occurs, the energy it carries sometimes gives rise to special electromagnetic waves called whistlers, so named because they can be converted to sound signals.
For decades, researchers thought lightning-induced whistlers would remain trapped relatively close to Earth’s surface, below about 1000 kilometres.
Now Vikas Sonwalkar and Amani Reddy at the University of Alaska Fairbanks have discovered that some whistlers can bounce off a layer of the atmosphere called the ionosphere, which is filled with charged particles.
This enables the waves, and the energy they carry, to reach distances up to 20,000 kilometres above the planet’s surface.
That means they can travel deep into the magnetosphere, the region of space dominated by Earth’s magnetic field.
The researchers found evidence of these reflected whistlers in data from the Van Allen Probes, twin robotic spacecraft that measured the magnetosphere between 2012 and 2019.
They also saw signatures of this phenomenon in studies published as early as the 1960s.
Old and new data all suggest that it is very frequent and happening constantly, says Reddy.
In fact, lightning could be contributing twice as much energy to this area of space as previous estimates indicated, the team says.
And this energy charges and accelerates nearby particles, producing electromagnetic radiation that can damage satellites and harm the health of astronauts.
“Lightning was always believed to be a little bit of a smaller player.
We haven’t had this data until a decade ago, and we have certainly not been looking at it with this great level of detail,” says Jacob Bortnik at the University of California, Los Angeles.
The new work extends an invitation to other researchers to develop a more accurate picture of the magnetosphere, he says.
Establishing the link between lightning and the magnetosphere is also important because changes in Earth’s climate may be making lightning-heavy storms more common, says Sonwalkar.
The team now wants to analyse data from more satellites.
It hopes to learn more about how lightning-based whistlers populate the magnetosphere, and how they may be affected by space weather.
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2444182-lightning-can-make-energy-waves-that-travel-shockingly-far-into-space/