April 18, 2012

Good Morning,

Russian scientists get the go-ahead on a second attempt to probe the Mars moon, Phobos. The first attempt was made back in November but failed. Read about the cause for the initial fail and what is planned to be accomplished on the mission in the first article.

Until Next Time,
Erin

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Russia to retry failed Mars mission

MOSCOW - Russia says it will mount another attempt at a Mars mission similar to the Phobos-Grunt probe that failed to head toward the Red Planet in November. The Roscosmos Space Agency announced Tuesday it was backing an initiative to give the Phobos-Grunt project a second chance, RIA Novosti reported. The Phobos-Grunt probe was meant to bring back samples from Mars' moon Phobos, but a failure of its engines meant it could not leave a so-called support orbit, and the probe eventually crashed back to Earth, landing in the Pacific Ocean after two months in orbit. "We've backed it [a proposal from the institute of space studies on the Phobos-2 project]. We agree with their position. This will be reflected in the strategy [for space development until 2030]," Roscosmos Chief Vladimir Popovkin said. The new project would be more than just an identical repeat of Phobos-Grunt 1, Popovkin said.


Nanotechnology could recover energy

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. - U.S. researchers say a new technique could harvest energy from hot pipes or engine components to recover energy wasted in factories, power plants and cars. Scientists at Purdue University say they've used nanotechnology techniques to coat glass fibers with a new "thermoelectric" material they developed. When thermoelectric materials are heated on one side, electrons flow to the cooler side, generating an electrical current. Fibers treated in this manner could be wrapped around industrial pipes in factories and power plants, as well as on car engines and automotive exhaust systems, to recapture much of the wasted energy, the researchers said. The flexible fibers would conform to the irregular shapes of engines and exhaust pipes while using a small fraction of the material required for conventional thermoelectric devices, they said. "The ugly truth is that 58 percent of the energy generated in the United States is wasted as heat," Yue Wu, a Purdue University professor of chemical engineering, said. "If we could get just 10 percent back that would allow us to reduce energy consumption and power plant emissions considerably."


Technology to block prisoners' cell calls

SACRAMENTO - Calls, Web searches and text messages from cellphones smuggled into California prisons will be blocked with technology a company is to install, officials said. The private company, Global Tel Link, has agreed to install the multimillion-dollar technology in California's 33 prisons at no charge to the state, the Los Angeles Times reported Tuesday. But the company is expected to benefit because it owns the traditional pay phones prisoners can use legally, and the company believes demand for those phones will increase markedly when contraband cellphones are disabled. Contraband cellphones have been used to run criminal enterprises, intimidate witnesses and organize attacks on guards, the Times said. "This groundbreaking and momentous technology will enable [the prison system] to crack down on the potentially dangerous communications by inmates," Corrections and Rehabilitation Department Secretary Matthew Cate said. California prison guards confiscated more than 15,000 contraband cellphones last year -- nearly one for every 11 inmates. Just five years ago, only 261 cellphones were confiscated. Under the Global Tel Link plan, each prison phone will get its own cell tower and prison officials will be able to control it, allowing approved phones to send and received calls, but not others. Installing the systems could cost $16.5 million-$33 million, Cate estimated last year. The Times said Global Tel Link did not respond to a request for comment Monday.


Dark regions on Mars may be volcanic glass

TEMPE, Ariz. - Mysterious dark regions on the planet Mars are made of glass, likely formed in ancient volcanic eruptions, U.S. researchers said. The dark regions occupy almost 4 million square miles of the Martian northern lowlands. Their composition wasn't clear, but past measurements indicated they were unlike dark regions found elsewhere on the Red Planet, which consist mainly of basalt. Researchers at Arizona State University analyzed spectrographic data of the regions captured by the Mars Express orbiter and found characteristics of volcanic glass, a shiny substance similar to obsidian that forms when magma cools too fast for its minerals to crystallize, NewScientist.com reported Monday. The glass is probably in the form of sand-sized grains, similar to that fund in glass-rich volcanic fields in Iceland, researchers Briony Horgan and Jim Bell said. Such glassy grains are often formed when volcanic magma interacts with water ice and snow. If that is true of the Martian glass grains, researchers said, it would make the regions potential hot spots for alien life because they would have held chemical-rich water, a key ingredient for life.

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