On April 17, engineers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Southern California sent commands to shut down an instrument aboard Voyager 1 called the Low-energy Charged Particles experiment, or LECP. The nuclear-powered spacecraft is running low on power, and turning off the LECP is considered the best way to keep humanity’s first interstellar explorer going.

...The instrument has provided critical data about the structure of the interstellar medium, detecting pressure fronts and regions of varying particle density in the space beyond our heliosphere. The twin Voyagers are the only spacecraft that are far enough from Earth to provide this information.

...“Voyager 1 still has two remaining operating science instruments — one that listens to plasma waves and one that measures magnetic fields. They are still working great, sending back data from a region of space no other human-made craft has ever explored...

Engineers are confident that shutting down the LECP will give Voyager 1 about a year of breathing room. They are using the time to finalize a more ambitious energy-saving fix for both Voyagers they call “the Big Bang,” which is designed to further extend Voyager operations. The idea is to swap out a group of powered devices all at once — hence the nickname — turning some things off and replacing them with lower-power alternatives to keep the spacecraft warm enough to continue gathering science data.

As Nasa's Artemis II mission looped the Moon, something important changed back on Earth, says Caitlin Gould.

She is the founder and director of TECgirls, a Cornwall‑based organisation aiming to increase the number of women in technology and engineering.

Gould said children often struggled to believe careers in space genuinely existed for them, but "actually seeing a mission within their lifetime makes them realise this is real".

A hard shell that unfolds like oragami will fit in a single Starship payload but expand to over 250k cubic meters of space (which seems impossible, that's like 10 olympic pools) and offers practical solutions for many of the common engineering challenges with building long-term human habitations in orbit.

cross-posted from: https://sh.itjust.works/post/58605590

https://ibb.co/HDHkmYLZ

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/45572977

Do we run differently in space than we do on Earth? The answer may surprise you. NASA Public Affairs Officer Lori Meggs talks with John DeWitt, principal investigator for the Treadmill Kinematics experiment aboard the International Space Station. Treadmill Kinematics is the first rigorous investigation to quantify the biomechanics of treadmill exercise conditions during long duration space flight on the station.

Author: NASA

British scientists have launched a crew of microscopic worms to the International Space Station in a pioneering experiment that could help unlock the secrets of long-duration space travel - and support ambitions to reach the Moon and beyond.

It seems relatively mature for an early access game. Reviews are generally positive and suggest that the core foundation is enjoyable in it's current state.

...The reason physicists have been skeptical about wormholes comes down to a problem with energy. To hold the throat of a wormhole open, you would need something called exotic matter. In physics, ordinary matter (stars, gas, you, your coffee) always has a positive energy density which corresponds to positive mass. Exotic matter would have negative energy density, essentially “negative mass.” We have never observed anything like that in nature. Most wormhole solutions that physicists have found over the decades require this exotic matter to exist, which is why wormholes have stayed firmly in the category of “mathematically possible but physically unlikely.” Today’s paper offers a way around this problem.

Instead of trying to prop open a wormhole with exotic matter, the authors add two extra physical fields to Einstein’s equations alongside gravity. The first is an electromagnetic field, the same electric and magnetic fields you encounter in introductory physics. This wormhole carries both electric and magnetic charge. The second is something called a dilaton...

Why should we care about the dilaton? Because it is not something the authors invented for convenience. It shows up naturally in several theories that physicists take seriously as candidates for deeper laws of nature. Superstring theory, which attempts to unify all fundamental forces, predicts a dilaton. So does Kaluza-Klein theory, which tries to explain electromagnetism as a consequence of a hidden extra dimension of space. And Brans-Dicke theory includes one too. If any of these theories are correct, the dilaton exists, and the kind of wormhole described in this paper becomes a natural prediction of Einstein’s equations...

Description:

Track NASA's Artemis II Orion spacecraft live as it travels to the Moon and back. Real-time 2D map with position, speed, distance from Earth and Moon, crew info, mission elapsed time, and trajectory replay for all Artemis missions. Free-return trajectory explained.

Bonus eclipse photo! More pics are being uploaded here: https://images.nasa.gov/