Technologies from space provide new solutions for food handling on Earth. In exchange travellers in space will get gourmet menus from Earth to cheer them up during long space missions. At the International Food Exhibition SIAL in Paris this week, ESA presents an exchange of ideas between food and space, including recipes for travellers to Mars.
“Every year we research and develop a number of pioneering technologies needed for space exploration. Many have potential for innovative s
From 10 to 14 October the ion engine of ESA’s SMART-1 carried out a continuous thrust manoeuvre in a last major push that will get the spacecraft to the Moon capture point on 13 November.
SMART-1, on its way to the Moon, has now covered more than 80 million kilometres. Its journey started on 27 September 2003, when the spacecraft was launched on board an Ariane 5 rocket from Europe’s spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana. Since then, it has been spiralling in progressively larger orbit
A major step forward for optical sensing technology
Researchers at the University of California, Santa Cruz, have reported the first demonstration of integrated optical waveguides with liquid cores, a technology that enables light propagation through small volumes of liquids on a chip. The new technology has a wide range of potential applications, including chemical and biological sensors with single-molecule sensitivity. “It is an enabling technology that opens up a wide range of
These images, taken by the High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) on board ESA’s Mars Express spacecraft, show the eastern rim of the Martian impact crater Huygens.
The images were taken during orbit 532 in June 2004 with a ground resolution of approximately 70 metres per pixel. The displayed region is centred around longitude 61° East and latitude 14° South.
Huygens is an impact structure, about 450 kilometres wide, located in the heavily cratered southern highlands of
Scattered in universities across Europe, a 250-strong team of students have never collectively met in person, but between them they have built a space-ready satellite. SSETI Express is currently being integrated in an ESA cleanroom for a planned launch in May next year.
Collaboration between the pan-European network of students, universities and experts involved in the Student Space Education and Technology Initiative (SSETI) has been carried out via the internet. Now that the co
Intergovernmental organisation urges scientists to present a unified coherent vision for large, expensive projects
The OECD Global Science Forum has developed findings and recommendations regarding future large projects in astronomy. Some of the recommendations are directed towards the international scientific community, others pertain more to the work of government funding agencies. Among the conclusions are: the need for a globally-coordinated scientific vision of the most imp
Light is so fast that it takes less than 2 seconds to travel from the Earth to the moon. This blazing fast speed is what makes the Internet and other complex communications systems possible. But sometimes light needs to be slowed down so that signals can be routed in the right direction and order, converted from one form to another or synchronized properly.
Now, physicists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have proposed a new way to slow light down to
On Jan. 14, 2005, the Huygens probe will plow into the orange atmosphere of Saturn’s moon, Titan, becoming the first spacecraft to attempt to land on a moon in our solar system since the Soviet Union’s Luna 24 touched down on Earth’s moon in 1976.
Though scientists hope that Huygens will survive the plunge, it will be flying blind through hydrocarbon haze and methane clouds to a surface that could consist of seven-kilometer-high ice mountains and liquid methan
On Wednesday 6 October 2004 a team of UK astronomers from Liverpool John Moores University and the University of Hertfordshire used the world’s largest robotic optical telescope, the Liverpool Telescope, to detect the optical light, or afterglow, from a Gamma Ray Burst (GRB).
“Gamma ray bursts are the most energetic explosions in the Universe and it is very exciting to have detected a Gamma Ray Burst afterglow for the first time with the Liverpool Telescope and then to watch i
University of California scientists working at Los Alamos National Laboratory have begun to analyze data from an instrument aboard the joint U.S.-European spacecraft Cassini. Although Cassini has only been orbiting the planet Saturn since July 1, data from the Cassini Plasma Spectrometer (CAPS) has already begun to provide new information about the curious nature of Saturn’s space environment.
CAPS had been detecting advance readings for several days before Cassini finally
Purdue University physicists have built a critical component for the development of quantum computers and spintronic devices, potentially bringing advances in cryptography and high-speed database searches a step closer.
A team of researchers including Leonid P. Rokhinson has created a device that can effectively split a stream of quantum objects such as electrons into two streams according to the spin of each, herding those with “up” spin in one direction and corralling those tha
British astronomers are providing a vital component to the world-wide effort of identifying and monitoring rogue asteroids and comets. From this month, the UK Astrometry and Photometry Programme (UKAPP) for Near-Earth Objects, based at Queens University, Belfast, will track Near-Earth Objects (NEOs) and feed their crucial information into the international programme of protecting the Earth from any future impact by a comet or asteroid.
On average 30-40 NEOs are discovered each
These images, taken by the High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) on board ESA’s Mars Express spacecraft, show a part of the southern highlands of Mars, called Promethei Terra.
The images were taken during orbit 368 in May 2004 with a ground resolution of approximately 14 metres per pixel. The displayed region is centred around longitude 118° East and latitude 42° South.
They show an area in the Promethei Terra region, east of the Hellas Planitia impact basin. The smo
UK radio astronomers at the Jodrell Bank Observatory, working with colleagues from Europe and the USA, have demonstrated a new technique that will revolutionise the way they observe. To create the very best quality images of the sky, they routinely combine data from multiple telescopes from around the world – a technique called Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI). They have now combined this with the power of dedicated internet resources to send data from all the telescopes to a special com
One of sport’s greatest scientific mysteries has been solved, sort of. Two University of Northern British Columbia physicists have explained the centuries-old question of why a curling stone curls, or moves laterally, in a counter-intuitive direction.
The solution – published in the current issue of the Canadian Journal of Physics – isn’t an elegant equation of the kind mathematicians adore, say the scientists, but rather one that involved a lot of experimental sweeping.
Johns Hopkins team examines Kepler’s supernova using NASA’s three Great Observatories
On the night of October 9, 1604, sky watchers – including Johannes Kepler, an astronomer best known for discovering the laws of planetary motion – were startled by the sudden appearance in the western sky of a “new star” which rivaled the brilliance of the nearby planets. Now, exactly 400 years later, a pair of astronomers at The Johns Hopkins University is using NASA’s three Great Observatories to
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