Here are some of the space missions to keep an eye out for in 2021. Source: https://earthsky.org/space/6-space-missions-2021-artemis-chandrayaa3-jameswebb…
Tag: cryogenic
‘Major Component Malfunction’ Ends SLS Rocket Test Early. NASA Considers New Timeline
“NASA’s rocket charged with taking the agency back to the moon fired its four main engines Saturday afternoon, but the test in Mississippi was cut short after a malfunction caused an automatic abort,” reports Florida Today… “We did get an MCF on engine four,” a control room member said less than a minute into the test fire, using an initialism that…
Watch NASA Test-Fire Its SLS Mega-Rocket Engines
“The date is set,” NASA tweeted yesterday, thanking its partners Boeing Space and Aerojet Rocketdyne for Saturday’s “hot fire” test of the SLS’s core stage. “One of NASA’s main goals for 2021 is to launch Artemis I, an uncrewed moon mission meant to show the Orion spacecraft and Space Launch System rocket can safely send humans to our lunar neighbor,” reports…
Hibernating lemurs may be the key to cryogenic sleep for human space travel
Science fiction is shifting into reality. With humanity’s plans to return to the moon this decade and further ambitions to travel to Mars in the next, we need to figure out how to keep astronauts healthy for these years-long missions. One solution long championed by science fiction is suspended animation, or putting humans in a hibernation-like sleep for the duration of…
Upgrades yield increased cryogenic power at Large Hadron Collider
The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is one of the coldest places on Earth. The 1.9 K (-271.3 °C) operating temperature of its main magnets is even lower than the 2.7 K (-270.5 °C) of outer space. To get the LHC to this temperature, 120 tons of liquid helium flow around a closed circuit in the veins of the accelerator. …
NASA Loads 14 Companies With $370M For ‘Tipping Point’ Technologies
NASA has announced more than a third of a billion dollars worth of “Tipping Point” contracts awarded to over a dozen companies pursuing potentially transformative space technologies. The projects range from in-space testing of cryogenic tech to a 4G LTE network for the Moon. From a report: The space agency is almost always accepting applications for at least one of its…
Researchers on a path to build powerful and practical quantum computer
For the first time, researchers have designed a fully connected 32-qubit trapped-ion quantum computer register operating at cryogenic temperatures. The new system represents an important step toward developing practical quantum computers. …
Will we see a Starship test this week?
As we speak, engineers at SpaceX’s Boca Chica test facility are busy getting the fifth Starship prototype (SN5) ready. Having recently passed the crucial cryogenic load test, and with the installation of its SN27 Raptor engine, the ground crews are now gearing up for a static fire test. Assuming the SN5 doesn’t explode in a massive fireball (as the SN4 did),…
Earth-shaking science in the freezer: Next generation vibration sensors at cryogenic temperatures
A cutting-edge vibration sensor may improve the next generation of gravitational-wave detectors to find the tiniest cosmic waves from the background hum of Earth’s motion. Source: https://phys.org/news/2020-07-earth-shaking-science-freezer-vibration-sensors.html…
New setup for high-throughput electrical measurements of quantum materials and devices
QuTech, a collaboration between TU Delft and TNO, has demonstrated a novel setup for fast turnaround testing and validation of quantum materials and devices. The setup uses ordinary electronic chip components that can operate at extreme cryogenic temperatures, and can be readily integrated in any type of cryostat. The scientists published the details of their setup in an open-access journal npj…