Hasta La Gadget!

When we think of spaceships, we usually think of lasers as weapons. But what if they acted as thrusters instead? Beam-powered propulsion could theoretically enable us to build hyper-energetic vehicles powered by lasers and microwaves, according to LiveScience.

The way it works isn’t quite the picture I would have had, of bright red or blue lasers shooting out the back of a spacecraft. Instead, the power would come from energy beamed remotely from a power plant; the energy would then heat up propellant in a lightweight craft (pictured above).

Getting this to actually work on a large scale is unlikely to work, though. Two years ago, a California physicist built a small demonstration photonic laser thruster in a lab that could help fine-tune a satellite’s position. But the move from that to, say, powering an entire spacecraft–or even just doing the same thing again outside of a controlled lab experiment–could prove daunting. Then again, some scientists believe warp drive may be possible someday, so who knows? (Image credit: Wikimedia Commons)

The National Science Foundation (NSF) has awarded a $2 million grant to researchers at Virginia Tech to build a chain of space weather instrument stations in Antartica, according to NetworkWorld.

The new stations will consist of radar units that hook into the Super Dual Auroral Radar Network, an international project that when combined will give extensive views of the upper atmosphere in both the Arctic and Antarctic regions, according to the report.

The researchers hope to use the stations to better understand how space weather affects satellite performance for GPS, TV reception, and cell phones. In addition, astronauts are vulnerable to energetic radiation at space station altitudes, the report said, and electric power distribution systems can be disrupted by geomagnetic storms. (Image credit: Virginia Tech)

Look out below: astronomers have discovered that a giant, fiery exoplanet called WASP-18b appears locked in a death spiral with its star.

The planet is about 10 times the size of Jupiter and appears to be very close to its star, according to the Associated Press. WASP-18 is so large that it’s triggering huge plasma tides on the star’s surface, the report said–which in turn are distorting the planet’s orbit. Even crazier: the planet orbits the star in less than one day.

Planet discovered Coel Hellier predicts in the article that within the next million years, the planet will spiral right into the star–which should be good for some spectacular fireworks.  “It’s causing its own destruction by creating these tides,” Hellier said.

Like most exoplanets, astronomers discovered WASP-18 by monitoring variations in light from its star whenever the planet crossed in front of it. (Image credit: CARREAU/ESA/Nature)

Space is mighty cool and the Earth’s atmosphere isn’t particularly hot either (most of it, anyway), but when you transition from one to the other a lot of friction can be generated. NASA typically uses gas-generating ablative shields for smaller orbiters and of course everyone is familiar with the silica tiles on the bottom of the space shuttle, but now it’s tested a rather more lightweight and compact option: an inflatable shield. It’s comprised of layers of silicon-coated kevlar fabric that, at least for this initial test, inflates in 90 seconds and forms a sort of saucer shape that’s just perfect for keeping MUFON’s phone lines busy. There’s a dizzying video of it being blasted out of the atmosphere just after the break, and we think you’ll be seeing plenty more of this tech deployed on future martian landers and the like.

[Via Gizmodo]

Continue reading Video: NASA rockets inflatable heat shield 124 miles up, deploys it successfully

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Video: NASA rockets inflatable heat shield 124 miles up, deploys it successfully originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 24 Aug 2009 08:25:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Hold onto your hard drive: NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) has been sending 461 gigabytes of images and other data back home every day, according to Slashdot. Interestingly, it’s using a 100 Mbps data pipe–specifically, a K-band transmitter called the Traveling Wave Tube Amplifier.

It’s a 13-inch long tube that uses electrodes in a vacuum tube to amplify microwave signals, the report said. L-3 Communications Electron Technologies and NASA’s Glenn Research Center built the device in tandem. 100 Mbps doesn’t sound all that impressive on paper, since wired Ethernet has had that for years–until you release the data is traveling almost 240,000 miles. Suddenly FiOS doesn’t seem all that fast.

(Want the latest LRO news and images? Head over to NASA’s dedicated landing page for the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter.)