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About Portable power

PORTABLE POWER That 10% low power warning on your phone or the red battery on your tablet are helpful reminders to plug in. But they’re also a sign of trouble when you’re in the woods, all the outlets in the airport waiting area are taken, or you forgot your charger. Having a lightweight, affordable portable solar panel that makes it convenient to recharge all those batteries is now a viable alternative, thanks to NASA. “We’ve had a lot of small business partners looking not just at advanced cell technology, but also at maintaining low costs,” says Mike Piszczor, chief of the Photovoltaic and Electrochemical Systems Branch at NASA’s Glenn Research Center in Cleveland. “For space applications, a typical cell that’s about 1.5 by 3 inches is $400–$500, and that’s because they go through flight qualification in addition to the manufacturing process used. It saves in the long run, because even with that very expensive cell technology, it’s so efficient that it saves in overall system co...
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Icy moon🌕

EXPLORING ICY MOONS New technology will study above and below surface ice. Skating on a frozen lake—with its ridges, stones, and cracks—can present challenges that skating on an indoor ice rink doesn’t. It’s possible to see and avoid most of those obstacles, no matter how large the lake; but imagine the difficulty and tools required to maneuver around slabs of ice as tall as mountains, cracks that are miles deep, and explosions of water from beneath your feet. Compared to ice on Earth, exploring ice-covered moons won’t be a skate in the park. NASA has learned a lot about the subzero-temperature moons Enceladus and Europa, where the agency wants to search for signs of life, among other observations. But a mission to either moon (they orbit Saturn and Jupiter, respectively) will take more preparation than tossing skates and a thermos of hot chocolate into the car. Just getting there is complicated (See Cosmic Neighborhood). Observations by robotic spacecraft have provided informatio...
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Mini_pumps ? life on Mars☄️🌑

MINI-PUMPS The same miniaturized pumps on the Mars Curiosity rover are at work on Earth. Finding evidence of life on Mars requires high-tech equipment, whether that life is extinct or currently living below the surface and producing methane. Those same resources can be used on this planet during an industrial accident or dangerous chemical spill to let emergency crews know what they’re dealing with. But that’s only if the equipment can be used onsite. A mass spectrometer offers that kind of support on and off this planet. A mass spectrometer analyzes ionized samples of material by measuring the mass of the ionized molecules to determine the ratio of different isotopes in it or learn about the structure of its molecules. This information can be used to determine a sample’s age, how it formed or what molecules it contains (See Distant Encounters). But to land on Mars or be available for onsite emergency use on Earth, this equipment needs to be smaller and more rugged than the large mo...
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DRAGON FLYING 💫🌏

what is dragon flying? The first explorers on distant moons will be robots, including a helicopter bound for Titan. Going back in time to see what Earth was like billions of years ago could answer some questions about why ours is the only planet of its kind in the solar system and how life began. Ancient rocks and fossils of early, simple life forms have provided some information. But if we could explore, today, another world that was similar, at least in some ways, to the young Earth, what might we learn about the way life formed and evolved? Titan, the largest of Saturn’s 62 known moons, offers an opportunity to do just that. The atmosphere is closer to that which Earth experienced billions of years ago. It’s about 95% nitrogen and 5% methane, with small amounts of other carbon-rich compounds. It is much colder, though, with a temperature around -290°F. The terrain is made up of vast expanses of organic-covered surfaces consisting of dunes, rocks, and rivers and lakes of liquid...
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what is Cosmic neighborhood #tech581

Earth’s cosmic neighborhood encompasses eight planets, more than 150 moons, and countless dwarf planets, asteroids, and comets. With such fascinating places to explore, who wouldn’t be curious about what’s around the next corner? NASA’s mission is to explore what’s beyond our planet. Michelle Thaller, a scientist and communicator at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, says this includes finding out whether we have any “neighbors.” If so, finding them will not be easy. “One of the basic, major scientific priorities of NASA is the search for life elsewhere,” she says. Astrobiology is the study of the origin, evolution, and distribution of life in the universe. Satisfying natural curiosity is one motivation for this search, but there are practical reasons too, even if we don’t find life. “The better we understand our larger environment in the solar system, the better we will understand our planet, our own biology,” says Thaller. “The Earth is constantly ...
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Beyond Mars🇲🇭

Many of the NASA scientists and engineers focused on sending humans to Mars in the 2030s, the Red Planet is just a step on a bigger journey to places like Jupiter, Neptune, and even interstellar space. Sending humans much farther than Mars will require scientific breakthroughs we cannot anticipate, but it is still worth researching right now, argues Ron Litchford, who oversees NASA’s propulsion portfolio as a technologist in the Space Technology Mission Directorate. “It’s not just dreaming,” he says. “Having a vision gives you some guidance and helps inform how to invest today. 🤗 While the technical challenges of a human Mars mission are real, there is nevertheless a clarity to what it will require. For example, we do not know yet what type of propulsion we will actually use, but that is partly because we can probably do it with a number of technologies the space agency is already working on. “Between chemical, nuclear thermal, solar electric, and maybe even nuclear electr...
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Biological life raft☣️

🌍 Earth is a biological life raft thatsustains human life in the inhospitable environment of the cosmos. This planetary closed-loop system provides oxygen, water and essential nutrients while recycling waste, purifying contaminants and renewing resources. It does all of this using only the things that already exist in the biosphere. And NASA is learning just how this life raft functions in order to create a portable replica of the biological system we call home. A closed-loop system only uses the resources on hand. In other words, no resupply shipments make it necessary to reuse and recycle everything. On Earth, biology takes care of these processes naturally and efficiently, according to Jitendra Joshi, an engineer based at NASA Headquarters. Joshi studies the systems that sustain human life in space, such as microbiological systems for waste treatment for long duration space missions.   A closed-loop system only uses the resources on hand.   “The water we drank this morning...
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