Monday, 1 September 2008

Incredible Concrete-Jet “Printers” To Build Houses In Hours

Thinking big, researchers in California are looking to upscale 3D printing techniques to construct entire houses, including internal wiring and plumbing. The houses would be built at rapid speed and at around a fifth of the cost of current construction methods. The system, called Contour Crafting, is not limited to boxy, utilitarian designs either. The system can recreate just about anything designed using CAD software as long as it can support its own weight.

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Friday, 20 June 2008

Mars Phoenix Lander Found Ice On Mars

NASA scientists have announced that the Mars Phoenix Lander has discovered water ice just below the martian surface.


They have captured photographic evidence of dice-sized white material exposed during digging which four days later had begun to disappear.


“It must be ice,” said Peter Smith, the Phoenix Lander’s lead investigator. “These little clumps completely disappearing over the course of a few days, that is perfect evidence that it’s ice.”

The news has huge implications. If there’s life on Mars, or if there ever was, the best place to find evidence of it is in water.

The lander may have also discovered an icy layer. It began digging a different trench when its robotic arm connected with a firm layer and after three attempts, found it could not dig any further.

Source:
NASA Press Release

Monday, 26 May 2008

NASA’s Phoenix Probe Lands On Mars

NASA’s Mars Phoenix Lander successfully touched down on the Martian planet on Sunday and sent through its first images.

“It’s surprisingly close to what we expected and that’s what surprises me most,” said the mission’s principal investigator, Peter Smith. “I expected a bigger surprise.”


The landing ends the probe’s 296-day journey to the Red Planet’s arctic plains with a landing that was right on target. NASA’s Ed Weiler, compared the feat to landing a hole-in-one from 10,000 miles away with a golf ball.

At mission control, (NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California) they celebrated the successful landing but the team is waiting anxiously for the next set of indicators to verify the health of the lander.


NASA was nervous about the landing and justifiably so. Phoenix’s twin, named Polar, malfunctioned during its decent in 1999 and crashed. Another spacecraft, the Mars Climate Orbiter also failed the same year.

Project manager for the Phoenix mission, Barry Goldstein told CNN. “It was better than we could have imagined,” referring to the landing.

During its journey, the Phoenix depended on electricity from solar panels built into the craft’s cruise stage. This was jettisoned seven minutes before entering the Martian atmosphere. Batteries are providing the craft with electricity until its own pair of solar arrays are spread open.

The Phoenix will remain on Mars for 90 days, analysing the permafrost and soil for signs of life – past or present.

“We are not going to be able to answer the final question of is there life on Mars,” said Peter Smith, principal investigator and optical scientist with the University of Arizona. “We will take the next important step. We’ll find out if there’s organic material associated with this ice in the polar regions. Ice is a preserver, and if there ever were organics on Mars and they got into that ice, they will still be there today.”

Photo credit: NASA

Friday, 23 May 2008

NASA Prepares To Land Phoenix On Mars

NASA is preparing to land their Phoenix lander on Mars – a procedure they call the ‘7 minutes of terror’.

With the successful rover missions, Spirit and Opportunity behind them, you would think they would be more optimistic about this upcoming landing.

“I do not feel confident. But in my heart I’m an optimist, and I think this is going to be a very successful mission,” said Peter Smith, principal investigator and optical scientist with the University of Arizona. “The thrill of victory is so much more exciting than the agony of defeat.”

Sunday night will be the big night, when the Phoenix lander will hit the Martian atmosphere traveling at nearly 13 thousand miles per hour. It’s on-board computers will be working at speed to deploy it’s parachute, jettison the heat shield, extend its three legs, release the parachute and finally fire its thrusters to slow its descent to hopefully make a soft landing.


The Mars Phoenix Lander team will be biting their nails as they watch the event unfold from computer monitors at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory In Pasadena, California.

“Everything has to go right,” said Ed Weiler, NASA Associate Administrator. “You can’t afford any failures.”

One of the worries for the Phoenix team, is the landing system itself. Since the Viking missions in the late 1970’s, NASA has not successfully landed a probe on Mars using stabilising thrusters and landing legs. The successful Pathfinder, Spirit and Opportunity rovers used massive airbags to cushion the impact on landing.

The Phoenix Lander was simply too big and heavy to use this method of landing and with plans to launch larger spacecraft in the future, NASA will need to learn to reliably land with thrusters and landing legs.

“We landed on Mars with rockets and legs twice with Viking. It’s not impossible by definition, we have proof of it,” said Weiler. “Humans will have to land on landing legs. Eventually we want to send humans there, obviously.”

The landing site for Phoenix is near the northern polar ice cap on the Northern plains of Mars. There it will dig and scoop with its robotic arm and look for organic chemical evidence of life past or present.

The Phoenix Lander was launched towards Mars last August.

Photo credit: NASA