February 1, 2012


Good Morning,

Developers in Scotland find that nanotechnology and paint make useful, cheap mix. Check out the second article for details on a new paint that can detect structural problems.

Until Next Time,
Erin

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NASA sets stage for human space flights

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - NASA 's Orion spacecraft will have its first test in early 2014, an event officials say is the first step in rebuilding the agency's human spaceflight program. An unmanned Orion capsule will make two orbits around Earth, going into deep space -- far beyond the lower orbit of the International Space Station -- before splashing down in the Pacific Ocean, officials said. Orion's orbit is expected to peak at nearly 3,700 miles above Earth, the farthest any NASA spacecraft built for humans has gone since the early 1970s. That distance is "significantly higher than human spaceflight has gone since Apollo," Larry Price, Orion deputy program manager at capsule manufacturer Lockheed Martin, told the Orlando (Fla.) Sentinel. "The reason for that is so we can get a high-energy entry so we can stress the heat shield." That's vital if a human flight, set for 2021, is to survive the brutal re-entry into Earth's atmosphere where temperatures are expected to reach 4,000 degrees. "The beauty about flying in 2014 is that we can learn early [if there are problems], so if we find something we've really got to fix we've got time before we fly people," Mark Geyer, head of the Orion program at NASA, said. The capsule project was salvaged from the defunct Constellation moon program, which President Obama and Congress canceled in 2010.


'Smart paint' can warn of structure faults

GLASGOW, Scotland - Researchers in Scotland say a new low-cost "smart paint" can detect microscopic faults in wind turbines, mines and bridges before structural damage occurs. Scientists at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow say the paint uses nanotechnology to detect movement in large structures and can be simply sprayed onto any surface with electrodes attached to detect structural changes long before failure occurs. "The development of this smart-paint technology could have far-reaching implications for the way we monitor the safety of large structures all over the world," researcher Mohamed Saafi said in a university release Monday. The paint contains a recycled waste product known as fly ash and highly aligned carbon nanotubes in a cement-like combination particularly useful in harsh environments, he said. "There are no limitations as to where it could be used and the low-cost nature gives it a significant advantage over the current options available in the industry. "The process of producing and applying the paint also gives it an advantage as no expertise is required and monitoring itself is straightforward," he said.


Networking to create giant telescope

AMSTERDAM - A network of antennas linked together will create a huge radio telescope to hunt for the universe's earliest stars and galaxies, European astronomers said. Banks of antennas in 48 stations in the Netherlands and elsewhere in Europe will be linked by fiber optic cables in the Low Frequency Array, or LOFAR, telescope to scan the sky in largely unexplored radio frequencies. A supercomputer will gather and analyze data from stations in the network, SPACE.com reported Monday. When the array is completed LOFAR will have a resolution equivalent to a telescope 620 miles in diameter, and can be even bigger, officials said. "It's an expandable design -- we can always come along later and add additional stations," Michael Wise of ASTRON, the Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy, said. The array will explore the universe for low-frequency radio waves, a
largely unexplored part of radiation from the sky that could yield clues to how the first galaxies were formed. "This is a pivotal phase in the early evolution of the universe, stretching from 400 million to 800 million years after the Big Bang," astronomer Ger de Bruyn of ASTRON said. "We'd like to know when exactly it happened, how it happened, how fast it happened."


Global warming cutting wheat yields

PALO ALTO, Calif. - Rising temperatures caused by global warming are cutting wheat yields in India, suggesting difficulties ahead for global food supplies, a researcher said. On the Ganges plain, the breadbasket of India, winter wheat planted in November is harvested when temperatures rise in spring and the wheat turns from green to brown, a sign the grain is no longer growing. Researcher David Lobell of Stanford University used nine years of images from an Earth-observation satellite to track when the change from green to brown occurs in the region. He found wheat turned brown earlier in periods of higher average temperatures, with temperatures higher than 93.2 degrees Fahrenheit having a significant effect. He then predicted yield loss using previous field studies and said current estimates of global warming and its impact on food supplies may have underestimated the problem by a third. "It surprised me a little how much crop models underestimate the observed effects," Lobell told NewScientist.com. The crop yield models may have especially underestimated the impact of hot spells, he said, since wheat evolved in cool uplands and has few defenses against heat.


Astronomers see galaxies 'sloshing' gas

WASHINGTON - U.S. scientists say they've observed a distant galaxy cluster 480 million light-years from Earth with vast clouds of hot gas that are "sloshing" about. Astronomers at the Naval Research Laboratory studied the 30-million degree gas using X-ray data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and optical data from the Very Large Telescope, an NRL release said Tuesday. "The X-ray images were amazing. We were able to see gas sloshing like liquid in a glass," NRL's Tracy Clarke said. "Of course this would be one enormous glass since we see the gas sloshing over a region of nearly a million light years across!" The image of the cluster, known as Abell 2052, shows a spiral shape, caused when a small cluster of galaxies collided off-center with a larger one positioned in the center of the galaxy cluster. The gravitational attraction of the smaller cluster drew the hot gas out of the center toward the smaller group until it passed the central cluster, astronomers said, reversing the gas movement and creating the "sloshing" effect captures in the image. Chandra's observation of Abell 2052 lasted more than a week to provide scientists with the details detected in the image, the NRL release said.

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