August 31, 2011

Good Morning,

The search for life on Mars has not, surprisingly to me, been concluded, but that is all about to change with a new high-tech instruments. Check out all the details in the last article of this issue.

Until Next Time,
Erin

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New sytem can safely store hydrogen fuel

LOS ANGELES - U.S. scientists says they've developed a robust, efficient method of storing hydrogen, bringing practical hydrogen fuel cells one step closer. Hydrogen is an excellent fuel because it can easily be converted to electricity in a fuel cell and because it is carbon-free, but its downside is that because it is a gas it can only be stored in high pressure or in cryogenic tanks. If you were riding in a vehicle with a tank full of hydrogen, "if you got into a wreck, you'd have a problem," Travis Williams, professor of chemistry at the University of Southern California, said. Williams and his team have figured out a way to release hydrogen from an innocuous chemical material -- a nitrogen-boron complex, ammonia borane -- that can be stored as a stable solid, a USC release said Tuesday.
The team has developed a catalyst system that can release enough hydrogen from its storage in the stable solid to make it usable as a fuel source. The system is lightweight and efficient enough to have potential fuel applications ranging from motor-driven cycles to small aircraft, Williams said.


Twin spacecraft prepared for moon mission

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - NASA says final preparations are under way for a launch of twin satellites intended to study the moon in greater detail than ever before. The space agency's Gravity Recovery And Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) mission is set for a scheduled Sept. 8 launch from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida, a NASA release said. During a planned nine-month mission, the twin GRAIL spacecraft will explore Earth's nearest neighbor in unprecedented detail, surveying its structure from crust to core. The two satellites have sealed atop the launch rocket, ready for liftoff. "Our two spacecraft are now sitting comfortably inside the payload fairing which will protect them during ascent," said David Lehman, GRAIL project manager for NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.. "Next time the GRAIL twins will see the light of day, they will be about 95 miles up and accelerating." Once in lunar orbit, GRAIL-A and GRAIL-B will transmit radio signals precisely defining the distance between them while regional gravitational differences on the moon expand and contract that distance. GRAIL scientists will use the accurate measurements to define the moon's gravity field to understand what goes on below the surface of our orbiting companion.


New materials for stronger wind turbines

CLEVELAND - A U.S. researcher says he's built a lighter, stronger wind turbine blade that will enable allow larger turbines to capture greater amounts of wind energy. Marcio Loos and others at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, have built what they say is the world's first polyurethane blade reinforced with carbon nanotubes -- making it lighter and eight times stronger than blades made with current materials such as epoxy resin, fiberglass, carbon fiber and aluminum -- a university release reported Tuesday. To meet the expansion expected in the market for wind energy, turbines need to be bigger, but just building larger blades isn't a smart answer, researchers say. The heavier the blades, the more wind is needed to turn the rotor, and the more the blades flex in the wind, the more they lose the optimal shape for catching moving air. Lighter, stiffer blades would enable maximum energy and production, Loos says. Carbon nanotubes are lighter per unit of volume than carbon fiber and aluminum, and have more than five times the tensile strength of carbon fiber and more than 60 times that of aluminum. "The idea behind all this is the need to develop stronger and lighter materials which will enable manufacturing of blades for larger rotors," Loos said.


New instruments may settle Mars life hunt

DENVER - New instruments 1,000 times more sensitive than previous ones may soon answer question about whether there is life on Mars, U.S. scientists say. "The bottom line is that if life is out there, the high-tech tools of chemistry will find it sooner or later," said Jeffrey Bada, co-organizer of a special two-day symposium on the Red Planet at the National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society in Denver. "One reason that the questions linger is that they haven't had the right instruments," Bada, from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego, said in an ACS release Tuesday. "We have the instruments now or are in the process of developing and refining them. The challenge is getting them onboard future spacecraft, knowing what kinds of compounds to look for and knowing exactly where to look." He said he worries NASA budget cuts could jeopardize future unmanned missions that could carry the sophisticated instruments to the distant planet. Many scientists are pinning their hopes on the new Mars Science Laboratory rover, called Curiosity, scheduled for launch in November. The $2.5 billion nuclear-powered machine will land on Mars' surface with a suite of 10 science instruments to try to determine whether conditions are favorable for life. "The instruments on that atmospheric mission have a factor of 100 to 1,000 increase in sensitivity over what is currently available from Mars orbiters or from ground observations," symposium co-organizer Mark Allen, the U.S. project scientist for the 2016 mission, said.

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