Daily Archives: April 2, 2020

NASA Scientists Say We Could Colonise The Moon by 2022 …

Posted: April 2, 2020 at 5:47 pm

A lot of focus over the past 12 months has been on NASA's journey to Mars. But a group of space experts, including leading NASA scientists, has now produced a special journal edition that details how we could establish a human colony on the Moon in the next seven years - all for US$10 billion.

Although that's pretty awesome, the goal isn't really the Moon itself - from an exploratory point of view, most scientists have bigger targets in sight. But the lessons we'll learn and the technology we'll develop building a human base outside of Earth will eventually be the key to colonising Mars, and other planets, according to the experts.

"My interest is not the Moon. To me the Moon is as dull as a ball of concrete," NASA astrobiologist Chris McKay, who edited the special, open-access issue ofNew Spacejournal, told Sarah Fecht over at Popular Science. "But we're not going to have a research base on Mars until we can learn how to do it on the Moon first. The Moon provides a blueprint to Mars."

The journal articles came out of a workshop held back in August 2014, when some of the greatest minds in space research and business were brought together to explore and develop low-cost options for building a human settlement on the Moon.

We haven't gone back to the Moon since 1972 simply because of how expensive it is - the Apollo program that put the first humans on the lunar surface would have cost US$150 billion by today's standards, Fecht reports. And with a budget of US$19.3 billion for the whole of 2016, NASA hasn't been able to consider the Moon as well as Mars.

But thanks to new technology, it no longer has to be that way.

"The US could lead a return of humans to the surface of the Moon within a period of 5-7 years from authority to proceed at an estimated total cost of about $10 billion (30 percent)," conclude NASA'sAlexandra HallandNextGen Space's Charles Millerin one of the papers.

As Jurica Dujmovic notes for MarketWatch, that's cheaper than one US aircraft carrier.

"The big takeaway,"McKay toldPopular Science,"is that new technologies, some of which have nothing to do with space - like self-driving cars and waste-recycling toilets - are going to be incredibly useful in space, and are driving down the cost of a moon base to the point where it might be easy to do."

NASA

According to the research papers, the lunar base would house around 10 people for stays of up to a year at first - and could eventually grow to a self-sufficient settlement of 100 within a decade.

They'd get to the Moon on SpaceX's soon-to-be-launched Falcon Heavy, and while they'd have to take quite a lot of equipment on the first trip, 3D printing could be used to produce pretty much everything else once they get there.

The colony would most likely be established on the outer rim of one of the Moon's poles, which receive more sunlight than the rest of the surface, so would help keep solar-powered equipment running. As Marketwatch reports:

"Furthermore, all that energy could provide power for robots that would excavate large amounts of ice detected within the craters. Water gathered that way could then be used for life support, as well as for providing oxygen, or it could be processed into rocket fuel, which would be sold or stored for refuelling space crafts."

The astronauts would probably live in the something similar to Bigelow Aeropsace's inflatable habitat, the researchers write, which is radiation resistant and would allow for a range of living areas, as well as easy storing and transport.

It could also provide protected habitats for basic crops, which would be fertilised with the help of a toilet that recycles human waste into energy, clean water, and nutrients, such as the Gates Foundation-funded blue toilet.

BigelowAerospace

The rest of the food and supplies for 10 people that couldn't be grown and 3D printed on the Moon could be shipped by SpaceX for less than US$350 million per yearusing the reusable Falcon 9 rocket.

It all sounds amazing, but the elephant in the room is the fact that the US$10 million establishment cost is more than NASA's existing space flight budget of US$3-4 billion per year. But assuming setting up the colony is a flat fee, it's definitely still affordable and could run alongside plans to Mars, the scientists write.

And things could get even cheaper if commercial service providers are involved, which would then beprime position to sell propellant from the Moon's orbit to NASA and any other space agencies trying to get humans to Mars.

All of the papers in the special edition of New Spaceare freely available online for you to peruse and use to plan your future in space. Get dreaming, because it's closer than you think.

"It is time to go back to this Moon, this time to stay," concludes the journal's preface. "and funding is no longer the main hurdle."

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Astronauts could use their own urine to build moon bases: study – New York Post

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Stuck on the moon with no lunar base? Just take a whiz and youre in biz!

An international team of researchers have proposed that NASA, the European Space Agency (ESA) and Chinas space organization build their future structures out of lunar soil and urea yes, pee. Turns out, the bodily fluid is a pretty effective binding agent for concrete.

In the event of global disaster, there has been some discussion of colonization of the moon. However, the monumental effort poses a number of logistical issues, such as how to get building materials to the desolate, dusty wasteland that is the moons surface. Study authors note that transporting just 0.45 kilograms (just under a pound) of cargo to space costs about $10,000.

Urine, however costs $0.

Engineers from Norway, Spain, the Netherlands and Italy, whose findings were recently published in the Journal of Cleaner Production, showed that incorporating urea into a concrete blend could make the mixture more pliant and thus easier to handle under the moons harsh conditions.

To make the geopolymer concrete that will be used on the moon, the idea is to use what is there: regolith (loose material from the moons surface) and the water from the ice present in some areas, said study author Ramn Pamies, a professor at the Polytechnic University of Cartagena (Murcia).

In his statement, he added, with this study we have seen that a waste product, such as the urine of the personnel who occupy the moon bases, could also be used. The two main components of this body fluid are water and urea, a molecule that allows the hydrogen bonds to be broken and, therefore, reduces the viscosities of many aqueous mixtures.

To test out the pee theory, the researchers used a material supplied by the ESA, which is similar to the moon dirt, or regolith, along with urea and various other plasticizers to 3D print mud cylinders for testing under various conditions. They revealed that the samples made with urea supported more weight and kept their shape better compared to the others.

They also held up when exposed to ultra high and low temperatures.

Scientists admitted that there is the problem of how an astronaut would be expected to separate the urea, which is ammonia and carbon dioxide, from the rest of the stuff in pee, including mostly water, expelled nutrients and other compounds.

We have not yet investigated how the urea would be extracted from the urine, said researcher from the Netherlands Anna-Lena Kjniksen.

However, she added, Perhaps its other components could also be used to form the geopolymer concrete. The actual water in the urine could be used for the mixture, together with that which can be obtained on the Moon, or a combination of both.

In other words, no, they did not use their own pee to conduct these experiments. They concluded that more research is needed.

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Cosmos: Possible Worlds’ brings the search for E.T. down to Earth – Space.com

Posted: at 5:47 pm

In episodes 7 and 8 of "Cosmos: Possible Worlds," host Neil deGrasse Tyson explores themes of science as an instrument of hope and tenacity, and as a means by which the human race can realize its true potential.

Episode 7, titled "Search for Intelligent Life," focuses specifically on first contact and the search for intelligent life in the vastness of the cosmos. Are humans ready to make first contact with other intelligent beings? Is our technology even sophisticated enough to detect communication signals from another world?

Seeking an answer, Tyson introduces us to China's Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope, or FAST, as it's more commonly known. FAST is the largest radio telescope on Earth and can detect radio waves across the universe.

Related: 20 sci-fi movies and TV shows to binge watch on Netflix right now

Tyson points out that we've only had the technology to detect radio signals for a little over a century, making FAST a truly monumental achievement. FAST has already detected a number of pulsars or compact stellar corpses and will continue to search for gravitational waves and signs of extraterrestrial intelligence, among other data it collects.

However, there's an intricate global communications network hidden here on Earth that we've only just become aware of. Tyson turns our attention to a "hidden matrix the creation of an enduring collaboration among fungi, plants, bacteria and animals." He's referring to the mycelium, a complex network of threadlike filaments that forms the functional structure of a fungus and extends to other species, such as trees. These hauntingly beautiful hyphae, or the branching filaments that make up the mycelium, illustrated in the show by special effects to interweave in the soil beneath our feet, reveal the forests' complex and interlinked nature.

"Who are we to search for alien intelligence when we can't even recognize or respect the consciousness all around us, or even beneath our feet," Tyson says, strolling through the forest on top of the soil that's protecting the mycelium beneath his feet. Still, conversations with different worlds, Tyson says, will be done in the language of science.

"The symbolic language of the scientist, mathematician and engineer avoid those things that are lost in translation from one culture to another," Tyson says, explaining that this type of language is more precise and less open to misinterpretation. If we find extraterrestrial intelligent life, will we be communicating with them in a language that resembles a computer programming language, built on the binary code?

Humans have actually already made "first contact" with other intelligent life that communicates through equations and a symbolic language, Tyson points out: bees. Insects in general have played an instrumental role in the development of the natural world, mostly by spreading pollen. Each grain of pollen has been"sculpted differently by evolution each a novel strategy for survival, sharpened by vast expanses of time, " Tyson says.

Insects are as much a part of the Earth's history as the earth itself; The "great Ordovician biodiversity event," when our world began to change as plants and insects left the sea and began to make the land their home, occurred approximately 480 million years ago (or Dec. 20 on Tyson's "cosmic calendar," where the Big Bang marks New Year's Day). The world Tyson describes is an alien one; giant mushrooms tower over trees that only grew a few feet tall, and insects ruled the skies, undisturbed by other winged creatures.

It was Austrian ethologist Karl von Frisch who unlocked the secrets of bee behavior in the early 20th century. "For thousands of years, bees have been symbols of mindless industry shackled to the dreary roles assigned to them by nature," says Tyson, but von Frisch found in his studies that bees lead much more complex lives. They communicate through mathematical equations expressed in their movements, appearing to the untrained eye to be little more than a waggle, but in reality can be an incredibly accurate set of coordinates to a food source meters away.

Tyson calls this a "first contact story" because bees and humans evolved on very different trajectories, and yet both species risked everything and chose the unknown; it's as if there were an unwritten code common to bees and human beings driving those ambitions. This echoes the work of legendary scientist Charles Darwin, who realized if all life is related, certain philosophical implications had to follow. Darwin realized we are "surrounded by other ways of being alive and conscious," Tyson says, and that science had the potential to expand our capacity for empathy and compassion.

Building on those themes of compassion and ambition, episode 8, "The Sacrifice of Cassini," chronicles tales of sacrifice and reveals the little-seen sentimentality and emotion that often accompany our greatest scientific endeavors. The episode honors the efforts and sacrifices of scientists Giovanni Cassini, Galileo Galilei, Christiaan Huygens, and Alexander Shargei, among others.

The episode opens with Tyson's recap of the Cassini-Huygens mission, a joint effort between NASA and the European Space Agency that launched Oct. 15, 1997. The spacecraft would embark on an epic voyage that would last more than two decades and culminate in a final, fatal mission of self-destruction by flying itself into Saturn's atmosphere in 2017.

Spacecraft sent to the outermost regions of our solar system, like Cassini, have brought back valuable data. Researchers are especially interested in any information about the mysterious ringed planets, which puzzled early planetary scientists like Galileo. These ring systems have been notoriously difficult to detect; Galileo's early research on Saturn had him believe the planet had two symmetrical moons, which we now know to be Saturn's rings. What would Galileo say if he could see Saturn as we see it now through the eyes of powerful scientific instruments?

NASA's Voyager 2 spacecraft and Cassini also sent back valuable data about the atmospheres and other physical properties of our cosmic neighbors, like the elusive Uranus. Without Voyager 2, we wouldn't know about the planet's long summers and winters, or that while Uranus doesn't generate any internal heat and the outer edges of its atmosphere is hotter than 500 degrees Fahrenheit (260 degrees Celsius), Uranus also has the coldest clouds in the solar system, nearly 400 degrees Fahrenheit (240 degrees Celsius) below zero.

Interestingly, as Tyson reviews Giovanni Cassini's early life in what is now Italy, he notes that the Italian scientist began his career as an astrologer; a pseudoscientist. Louis XIV of France, the "Sun King," who would be the first monarch to recognize the power of science and the opportunities it afforded national security, would play a pivotal role in Cassini's career development. It was Louis XIV, who established the Paris Observatory a scientific powerhouse and who gave Cassini the tools he needed to pursue his research.

Cassini's observations of Saturn and its moons would have an enduring effect on the scientific world among his other accomplishments, like having discovered Jupiter's Great Red Spot (independently from Robert Hooke) and having calculated the length of a day on Mars; he was only off by 3 minutes.

Cassini's work on Saturn also greatly furthered human beings' knowledge on the planet at the time; he was the first to know Saturn's rings were composed of natural satellites orbiting the planet, and that there were gaps between them. Decades later, a bus-size 12,000-lb. (5,400 kilograms) spacecraft, sent on a years-long voyage to that same celestial body, would be named in his memory.

The scientists who worked closely with the Cassini-Huygens spacecraft, some of them since the very beginning, undoubtedly became emotional as it completed its final mission, as did spectators around the world who witnessed its final moments.

The probe's travails, however, cannot compare to the pain and tragedy of scientist and visionary Oleksandr Shargei, a forgotten pioneer of spaceflight. Shargei was orphaned at a young age and, while studying engineering at a university in Saint Petersburg, Russia, was drafted to the army to serve the Russian Empire in World War I. After the Russian Revolution, when the Bolsheviks overthrew the government, he changed his name to Yuri Kondratyuk out of fear for his life.

In 1926, Kondratyuk self-published a manuscript on rocket motion and space colonization, which would end up capturing the attention of an engineer working on the Apollo program, John Houbolt, decades later. Houbolt's updating of Kondratyuk's theories convinced NASA to select the lunar orbit rendezvous flight plan for Apollo, and to win the Space Race.

Seeing footage from Apollo 11 in the episode elicits a sentimental feeling as it dawns on us that we're witnessing Kondratyuk's dreams become reality, and that his dreams are still coming true to this day; even the Cassini mission used gravity assist maneuvers, also conceived by Kondratyuk, to explore the Saturn system.

The final scene of the episode is of Kondratyuk's childhood home a place where he endured much tragedy in his early years, and sought refuge in physics books. It was also here that Apollo 11 astronaut Neil Armstrong made a pilgrimage after his historic flight to the moon, to honor the man who made that voyage possible.

"There are all kinds of stories in the struggle to understand the cosmos," Tyson reflects. "Sometimes your dreams die with you, but sometimes the scientists of another age pick them up and take them to the moon, and far beyond."

"Cosmos" airs on the National Geographic channel on Mondays at 8 p.m. ET/9 p.m. CT and will be reprised on the Fox television network this summer.

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Belgian couple arrested for selling airline tickets to The Moon – Aviation24.be

Posted: at 5:47 pm

Photo byBriana TozouronUnsplash

This morning, a Belgian couple was arrested for selling airline tickets to The Moon. They allegedly sold the tickets on the street for 99,99 to hundreds of people and promised that each ticket reserved the passenger a first-class seat.

Bart, one of the arrested, explained to Belgian newspaper Het Eerste Nieuws he didnt do anything wrong: For less than 100 a bargain I take these passengers to higher spheres, I really do not understand the fuzz. My first-class flying saucer was ready for boarding! Besides, our on-time performance is one of the highest in the industry.

Bart now risks a heavy fine for deliberate deception of passengers. During a further house search, the police found back the money, fake airline tickets and a baby alligator.

Affected passengers can always file a complaint via this link.

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Urine of astronauts will simplify the construction of the lunar base – FREE NEWS

Posted: at 5:47 pm

European engineers have shown that urea can serve as a suitable plasticizer for concrete mortar for the construction of the future lunar base.

Colonization of the Moon is fraught with a great many difficulties and challenges: a dangerous level of radiation, extreme temperature drops, the risk of meteorites falling, and so on. All of them are completely solvable if a reliable, protected and hermetic base is built on the satellite. But for this, the main problem remains to be solved the logistics.

Shipping every kilogram of cargo to the moon costs tens of thousands of dollars, so transporting building materials to a satellite would be too expensive. Therefore, engineers are developing technologies for building a base of lunar regolith using robotic technology and 3D printing. The find made by the team of Anna-Lena Knicksen from Estoll University College in Norway promises to further ease this task.

In an article published in the Journal of Cleaner Production, they examine the possibility of utilizing the urine of future colonists for the construction of a lunar base. According to engineers, urea isolated from it can serve as a plasticizer for cement mortar. Such an additive increases the ductility of concrete makes it easier to work with it and increases the density and resistance to deformation.

The idea is to use what can be found on the spot: regolith and water from the ice present in many areas, the authors explain. Moreover, we have shown that waste such as urine from the personnel of the lunar base is also useful for the matter. Its two main components are water and urea, whose molecules weaken hydrogen bonds and reduce the viscosity of many aqueous solutions.

For their experiments, scientists used a lunar soil simulator created in ESA and a suitable 3D printer, with which they printed out samples, and then sent them for detailed analysis. The components printed with the addition of urea as a plasticizer underwent several cycles of freezing-thawing and heating to 80C but retained their structural properties completely.

We have not yet considered the process of extracting urea, adds Anna-Lena Knicksen, since we have not yet figured out whether other urine components can be used to add to the building mixture. Perhaps water will go into it, along with the one that can be found on the moon itself.

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Bioengineering to help future Mars Colonies and Earths Global Warming – News Landed

Posted: at 5:47 pm

Today many aerospace industries and nations are competing in the race for Mars. Some with a plan for crew flybys, others with short term scientific missions, and some with the higher objective of colonization of Mars. Mars, as we know, is an arid planet that cannot support life. All the necessary life support systems have to come from the Earth, which would be too expensive as we rely heavily on chemical rockets.

One of the solutions would be to manufacture the necessary raw materials like fuel, organic compounds, and drugs on Mars, maximizing the available resources on the planet. Mars has abundant carbon dioxide (about 96%) and water at its poles in the form of polar ice caps and likely frozen underground reservoirs. Chemist at the University of California, Berkeley, and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory has designed a hybrid system using nanowires and bacteria to harness sunlight, carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere and, water to create the building blocks for organic material.

The system is made by packing Sporomusa ovata bacteria into a forest of nanowires that are one-hundredth the width of human air. The nanowires would absorb sunlight, generate electrons that the bacteria take, and converts two carbon dioxide molecules and water into Acetate and Oxygen.

Acetate is one of the building blocks for many organic compounds, including fuels, drugs, and plastics. We can manufacture other organic compounds from acetate using bioengineering. Oxygen, which is the by-product of this process, can replenish the artificial atmosphere for the colonists. The possibilities are endless.

According to the project leader Peidong Yang, when they tried to pack the bacteria into nanowires to increase efficiency, they faced a problem of elevated pH level of the surrounding water. This increase in pH level (or decrease in acidity) caused the bacteria to detach themselves from the nanowires, causing a break in the circuit. They eventually found a solution to keep the acidity slightly higher and increase efficiency. Their system has a record efficiency of 3.6%, which means 3.6% of solar energy gets converted and stored.

Professor Yang and his team continue to tweak the system to improve efficiency and to manufacture other organic compounds like acetic acid. This system can be a solution to address our global warming issue by absorbing atmospheric carbon dioxide and converting them into organic compounds. Professor Yang and his team are also working on other systems to produce sugars and carbohydrates efficiently, which, one day, can provide food to the colonists.

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Source: Phys.org

+ Scientists propose that COVID-19 could have lived with us for years+COVID-19 may be airborne, according to a new study+ Galaxy-ripping quasar winds discovered by Hubble telescope+Coronavirus patient zero identified to be a Wuhan shrimp seller+Study suggests smoking worsens COVID-19 effects, especially in men

+ Disney might stream Black Widow online instead of in theatres+Astronaut urine could be used to build bases on the moon+YouTuber has recreated the entire Earth in Minecraft+Zoom illegally shared data with Facebook, according to lawsuit+The Astro Slide 5G has some of the most interesting hardware ever

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Growing Vegetables In Space Is Easier Than It Sounds – LIVEKINDLY

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Science fiction has often imagined what food in space would be like. In the various Star Trek series, food has evolved from colorful cubes in the original series to being synthesized by machines. It even predicted cell-based meatand, fresh vegetables grown in space.

In Star Trek: Enterprise, only certain foods can be replicated by technology. An on-board chef provides the intergalactic travelers with fruits and vegetables grown in a hydroponic greenhouse. And thanks to NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration), space-grown greens are becoming a reality for astronauts.

Between 2014-2016, astronauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS) grew leafy greens from surface-sterilized seeds using the Vegetable Production Systems, nicknamed Veggie.

According to research published in the journalFrontiers in Plant Science,space-grown lettuce is safe to eat. This unlocks new possibilities for what mealtime looks like for astronauts as well as sustainable food production in space. Theoretically, future human settlers on Mars could supplement their diets with plant-based food that they grew themselves.

Undergoing intense physical training, floating weightlessly, and witnesses the Earth from the expanse of space, astronauts have unique experiences. The food, not so much. According to NASA, astronauts can choose from a variety of foods that they would eat at home. Macaroni and cheese, peanut butter and jelly, and meat and seafood dishes are all options.

Fresh fruit, nuts, candy, brownies, and ice cream are also available. But, you wont get the freeze-dried astronaut ice cream you can find in science museums. In a zero-gravity environment, crumbs from freeze-dried ice cream or bread could easily fly into the ships controls. Its for that very reason that astronauts use tortillas instead of bread for their sandwiches. Instead of salt and pepper shakers, they have liquid seasoning in packets.

All food comes in disposable packaging and is nonperishable to survive long missions in space.

Although Veggie is a recent innovation, the concept of gardening in space has been in development for more than 30 years. The innovative technology would add variety to astronauts diets and give them access to nutritious, leafy greens.

NASA plant physiologist Ray Wheeler explained to Space.com last November that NASA has been interested in growing plants as a bioregenerative approach for life support, and the plants would provide food and oxygen and could remove carbon dioxide.

In 2015, 44 astronauts aboard the ISS sampled a harvest of Outredgeous red romaine lettuce grown under LED lights. Four years later, in late 2019, astronauts successfully grew mizuna, or Japanese mustard greens. The remainder was stowed in a freezer for later analysis on Earth.

Despite being grown under lower gravity and more intense radiation, research revealed that space greens are free from disease-causing microbes. According to NASA, the Veggie-grown produce is richer in potassium, sodium, phosphorus, sulfur, and zinc. It is also rich in phenolics, molecules with proven antiviral, anticancer, and anti-inflammatory activity. It has about the same antioxidant content as Earth-grown produce.

There is evidence that supports fresh foods, such as tomatoes, blueberries, and red lettuce are a good source of antioxidants. Having fresh food like these available in space could have a positive impact on peoples moods and also could provide some protection against radiation in space, Wheeler said.

Veggie comes with other benefits as well. Gardening provides crew members with a much-valued recreational activity on longer-duration missions.

Besides having the ability to grow and eat fresh food in space, there also may be a psychological benefit, said Dr. Gioia Massa, NASA Veggie project lead. For example, future habitat-related modifications could include plant life. A 2015 study published in the Journal of Physiological Anthropologyfound that active time with indoor plants can reduce physiological and psychological stress.

Veggie is growing only greens at the moment. But, Massa explained that future tests will involve other varieties of lettuce as well as peppers and tomatoes. The International Space Station is serving as a testbed for future long-duration missions, and these types of crop growth tests are helping to expand the suite of candidates that can be effectively grown in microgravity, she told SpaceRef.

The team at Kennedy Space Center hopes that space gardening will become a valuable part of space travel.

The ability to grow food in a sustainable system that is safe for crew consumption will become critical as NASA moves toward longer missions. Salad-type, leafy greens can be grown and consumed fresh with few resources, said Dr. Christina Khodadad, a researcher at the Kennedy Space Center.

It may also be an integral part of travel to and life on Mars. Massa explained: The farther and longer humans go away from Earth, the greater the need to be able to grow plants for food, atmosphere recycling and psychological benefits. I think that plant systems will become important components of any long-duration exploration scenario.

Will space colonies be vegan? According to a NASA factsheet, the surface diet on the moon and on Mars will be similar to a vegetarian diet one would cook on Earthminus the dairy products.

The organization predicts that residents could grow crops. This includes multiple varieties of potatoes, wheat, rice, soybeans, peanuts, dried beans, lettuce, carrots, tomatoes, and herbs. Researchers involved in NASAs Advanced Food Technology (AFT) Project are actively exploring bioregenerative solutions to create sustainable food systems in space.

NASA is expected to kick off the Mars 2020 mission this July. The Perseverance rover will be launched from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. On Mars, it will seek signs of ancient life and collect soil samples for a possible return to Earth.

Billionaire tech entrepreneur and SpaceX founder Elon Musk believes that Mars colonization is possible as well. Using SpaceXs Starship spacecraft and Super Heavy rocket, Musk hopes to facilitate a colony of one million Martians within the next 50-100 years.

A report titled Feeding One Million People on Mars by Kevin Cannon and Daniel Britt at the University of Central Florida, Orlando predicted how such a colony would sustain itself. It ruled out animal agriculture and, in contrast to NASA, plant-based agriculture. Instead, the report predicted that Mars colonists would thrive on produce, insects, and cell-based meat, aka clean meatreal meat grown from animal cells.

The possibility of growing cell-based meat in space was successfully tested by Aleph Farms, an Israeli food tech company, last November. It grew small-scale muscle tissue from cow cells on the ISS using equipment supplied by Russian company, 3D Bioprinting Solutions.

On the website, Eat Like a Martian, Cannon and Britt acknowledge that further research is needed before humans begin colonizing Mars. But, the Martian diet will have several benefits: no mass suffering of caged animals, and sharp cuts in land, water, energy use, and carbon emissions.

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Growing Vegetables In Space Is Easier Than It Sounds

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What do astronauts eat? Mostly packaged meals, but according to NASA, its Veggie project can provide vegetables, variety, and a recreational gardening.

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Kat Smith

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LIVEKINDLY

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Starsky Robotics Shuts Down And Worries Everybody Else Will Also Fail In Robotic Trucks – Forbes

Posted: at 5:44 pm

Starsky robotic trucking has closed their doors

In March, Stefan Seltz-Axmacher, CEO and founder of Starsky Robotics, announced the end of their trucking company, which combined autonomous driving software and remote monitoring techniques to move big rigs. Back in 2015, I had advised Seltz-Axmacher on their plan, but had lost touch. Recently he published a detailed essay outlining the causes of the failure of the company which caused some stir, because one of its assertions that effectively, the problem is too hard, and others will fail as well. Others have rejected that claim and argue that Starsky failed because of failings of the company itself, not the industry.

Lets look at some of the arguments made in the essay:

Ill actually start with some elements of #2 that I dug into in a discussion last week with Seltz-Axmacher. Starsky picked trucking because its a horribly managed industry with lots of opportunities to do better. Theres a giant driver shortage. Drivers are also sometimes unreliable as one customer told him, a robot is unlikely to get into a fight with people at a warehouse, or decide to stop in Las Vegas and spend a few days in a strip club. This doesnt happen all the time in trucking, but it happens enough that having it never happen is a big plus. Starsky planned to run their trucks only on the easiest of highways, short to middle distance runs on clear, open uncongested highways. If a problem arose due to traffic or weather, the truck would just pull over because multi-hour stops are common with human drivers too.

This also meant that a combination of full self-driving with occasional remote assistance could work on these easy roads. Their trucks would never change lanes on their own. They would not mind going slow behind other trucks. They would not mind anything. They felt they picked the easiest driving problem to solve, other than, of course the issue of moving an 40 ton vehicle at high speed and the risks that entails.

Current fleet operators are not early adopters. It is indeed going to be hard to convince them to do something this radical, even with the problem in finding good drivers, or any drivers at all. Starskys original plan was all remote operation, sticking only to roads with good data. In 2015, I told them that finding such roads would be a challenge. Its more possible today, and the deployment of services like Starlink DTLK will probably make it much easier soon.

If existing operators are not early adopters, Starsky reports that investors are scared of having to become a freight carrier in order to be a robotic truck company. Theyre probably right VC investing habits are strange to the rest of the world. They expect to invest in a dozen interesting startups each with the potential of becoming a home run and expecting the other 11 to try like crazy for that but flame out. Traditional businesses dont usually fit that mold.

So here we have a case where Seltz-Axmacher is right that trucking can be a hard sell though it hasnt stopped many other trucking options from getting large investments.

Youll need to read the essay for the full details, but it touches on one of the big questions of 2020 how much harder is self-driving AI than people originally thought? In particular, there was a lot of enthusiasm, some of it definitely hype, about the powers of deep neural networks.

Pretty much every car team has done extensive work building training data for these machine learning approaches. That means gathering real world data (images and LIDAR clouds) and having humans label them to train the AI. This technique has delivered astonishing results, by the standards of just a few years ago. The question is, is it good enough to provide the quality level for self driving, and when will it be, and will it ever be?

Seltz-Axmacher correctly points out its pretty easy to get some early impressive results, and this guiles people into thinking full success is just around the corner. Several companies have even tried to build self-driving systems with full end to end neural networks, which are black boxes you stick camera pixels in and get driving commands out of (steering and pedals.)

Hes right that pure supervised machine learning is not enough right now, and may be some distance in the future. Tesla TSLA is betting it isnt, but most companies are trying to build hybrids that use other algorithms combined with asking machine learning to do what its best at. They still believe this strategy will succeed. Generally, they have looked with disdain on those hoping to use an end-to-end approach, for the very reasons that Seltz-Axmacher outlines. In 2019 and 2020, there has been a pull-back by several players, particularly those in no particular hurry to see the automotive industry disrupted. Those who exist to do that disruption always expected the problem to be hard, I believe, but do not think their efforts are wasted.

That includes the self-driving truck world. Many companies have been attracted to trucking because highway driving is simple, even if trucks are fast and heavy. I mean really simple compared to urban streets. And the commercial value is also very clear. If anything, the commercial value is too clear, and there could be backlash when accidents come (even if at a lower rate) that people are being hurt just to make shipping more efficient, rather than to change how transportation works in general.

This claim is also true, though not entirely. There are forward thinking VCs and strategic investors who could be sold on a somewhat more capital and infrastructure intensive business. Its true that, given the choice, they would rather invest in an Uber that writes only software and owns no cars. The returns are far greater. But even Uber can get investment selling a story of switching to owning large fleets of robotaxis, replacing their drivers.

It may simply be that as the slowdown and market jitters have come, it was Starskys plan and company that didnt pass muster, and not the concept behind it. Certainly several other companies have raised rounds and gotten good valuations, though perhaps not as stratospheric as the valuations from a couple of years ago. There is still a very big prize to be won.

Seltz-Axmacher touches on a real issue when he wonders how much people really care about safety. After all, every company in every presentation you see says, we are all about safety and safety is priority #1 for us. Now, you have to say that, and everybody is very interested in safety, because if you cant attain safety, you cant put your product on the market. So in that sense its a top priority. But in reality, in almost every business, Safety is definitely third after functionality and price. We can recount a hundred stories of products that could have been safer if they cost more money, or has less functionality. After all, self-driving cars that only went 10mph would be pretty easy to make safe quickly, but nobody would want them.

In fact, when car buyers are asked what factors they are considering in choosing their next car, they always list safety as the first choice. Studies of what factors actually govern their choices have suggested its really in more like seventh place. Otherwise, nobody would buy from anybody but the highly-safety focused brands like Volvo and Mercedes, which at various times in history have had the top reputations in that area. They dont.

But Seltz-Axmacher points out something stronger that the public, press and investors dont get excited about safety because it is inherently boring. And it is. The ideal demo ride in a self-driving car is dull as dishwater. Its hard to demo safety.

In the early days of the field, when advising a potential X Prize on self-driving to follow on the heels of the DARPA challenges, I suggested a man vs. machine safety contest. Vehicles would drive a tricky course, and fake obstacles, inflatable pedestrians and cars on small robot platforms, would create problems. Both the skilled race drivers and the robocars would compete on who could avoid hitting anything. It might have been popular not when perfect, but when things are hit but once the robots got perfect while the famous race car drivers were not, it would actually install confidence in the public. But nothing like this has ever been done, and no demo like this has been set up, both because nobody wants video of cars hitting even balloons, and it turns out that just driving was complex enough that handling fake situations never got high on the priority list. Teams now do this in simulator, or sometimes on test tracks, but its never the exciting demo. (Waymo shows a video of their car reacting to employees letting moving boxes fall onto the road.)

I wasnt in the VC meetings that turned down more funding for Starsky. Todays VC climate has cooled, and a lot of companies are being turned down. They may have had other flaws which they dont want to go into. I suspect a lot of companies will continue to get funding, though some will be hurt by having initially received high valuations that cant be sustained.

And it may be true that building a robocar or robotruck just isnt a game for a small startup. Its hard enough for the megafunded startups like Zoox, Cruise and Aurora. Theres a tremendous amount of hard slogging detail work to get from 99% to 99.9999%, which is where you need to be. Its not 1% harder, its 10,000 times harder, and not everybody realizes that. The closer you get to great safety, the harder and harder it is, because each issue becomes harder to find, and each change could cause a regression on something fixed long ago. This may remain something for the big boys, at least for a few years. (Things which took billions to do the first time eventually become doable in a dorm room, it often seems.)

Some companies were going to fail. There was no way they could all survive. Indeed, there is no way that most of the teams out there will survive. Thats to be expected in something as audacious as this. Big valuations demand big results, and only a few will deliver them.

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Starsky Robotics Shuts Down And Worries Everybody Else Will Also Fail In Robotic Trucks - Forbes

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Robots to the Rescue: How They Can Help During Coronavirus (and Future Pandemics) – Singularity Hub

Posted: at 5:44 pm

As the coronavirus pandemic forces people to keep their distance, could this be robots time to shine? A group of scientists think so, and theyre calling for robots to do the dull, dirty, and dangerous jobs of infectious disease management.

Social distancing has emerged as one of the most effective strategies for slowing the spread of COVID-19, but its also bringing many jobs to a standstill and severely restricting our daily lives. And unfortunately, the one group that cant rely on its protective benefits are the medical and emergency services workers were relying on to save us.

Robots could be a solution, according to the editorial board of Science Robotics, by helping replace humans in a host of critical tasks, from disinfecting hospitals to collecting patient samples and automating lab tests.

According to the authors, the key areas where robots could help are clinical care, logistics, and reconnaissance, which refers to tasks like identifying the infected or making sure people comply with quarantines or social distancing requirements. Outside of the medical sphere, robots could also help keep the economy and infrastructure going by standing in for humans in factories or vital utilities like waste management or power plants.

When it comes to clinical care, robots can play important roles in disease prevention, diagnosis and screening, and patient care, the researchers say. Robots have already been widely deployed to disinfect hospitals and other public spaces either using UV light that kills bugs or by repurposing agricultural robots and drones to spray disinfectant, reducing the exposure of cleaning staff to potentially contaminated surfaces. They are also being used to carry out crucial deliveries of food and medication without exposing humans.

But they could also play an important role in tracking the disease, say the researchers. Thermal cameras combined with image recognition algorithms are already being used to detect potential cases at places like airports, but incorporating them into mobile robots or drones could greatly expand the coverage of screening programs.

A more complex challengebut one that could significantly reduce medical workers exposure to the viruswould be to design robots that could automate the collection of nasal swabs used to test for COVID-19. Similarly automated blood collection for tests could be of significant help, and researchers are already investigating using ultrasound to help robots locate veins to draw blood from.

Convincing people its safe to let a robot stick a swab up their nose or jab a needle in their arm might be a hard sell right now, but a potentially more realistic scenario would be to get robots to carry out laboratory tests on collected samples to reduce exposure to lab technicians. Commercial laboratory automation systems already exist, so this might be a more achievable near-term goal.

Not all solutions need to be automated, though. While autonomous systems will be helpful for reducing the workload of stretched health workers, remote systems can still provide useful distancing. Remote control robotics systems are already becoming increasingly common in the delicate business of surgery, so it would be entirely feasible to create remote systems to carry out more prosaic medical tasks.

Such systems would make it possible for experts to contribute remotely in many different places without having to travel. And robotic systems could combine medical tasks like patient monitoring with equally important social interaction for people who may have been shut off from human contact.

In a teleconference last week Guang-Zhong Yang, a medical roboticist from Carnegie Mellon University and founding editor of Science Robotics, highlighted the importance of including both doctors and patients in the design of these robots to ensure they are safe and effective, but also to make sure people trust them to observe social protocols and not invade their privacy.

But Yang also stressed the importance of putting the pieces in place to enable the rapid development and deployment of solutions. During the 2015 Ebola outbreak, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and the National Science Foundation organized workshops to identify where robotics could help deal with epidemics.

But once the threat receded, attention shifted elsewhere, and by the time the next pandemic came around little progress had been made on potential solutions. The result is that its unclear how much help robots will really be able to provide to the COVID-19 response.

That means its crucial to invest in a sustained research effort into this field, say the papers authors, with more funding and multidisciplinary research partnerships between government agencies and industry so that next time around we will be prepared.

These events are rare and then its just that people start to direct their efforts to other applications, said Yang. So I think this time we really need to nail it, because without a sustained approach to this history will repeat itself and robots wont be ready.

Image Credit: ABBs YuMi collaborative robot. Image courtesy of ABB

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Robots to the Rescue: How They Can Help During Coronavirus (and Future Pandemics) - Singularity Hub

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COVID-19 Pandemic Impact: A Surge in Proven Mobile Robotics Use Cases for Disinfection, Monitoring, Surveillance, and Delivery Will Propel the Market…

Posted: at 5:44 pm

OYSTER BAY, N.Y., April 2, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- The Coronavirus outbreak has highlighted use cases for mobile robotics to successfully disinfect, monitor, surveille, and handle and deliver materials. These proven use cases will propel the overall mobile robotics market to US$23 billion by 2021, states global tech market advisory firm, ABI Research.

"Crises shift perceptions on what is possible regarding investment and transformative action on the part of both private and government actors. By the time the COVID-19 pandemic has passed, robots will be mainstreamed across a range of applications and markets," says Rian Whitton, Senior Analyst at ABI Research.

The virus has been a good opportunity for companies to display robots for public applications. One of the more popular has been deploying mobile unmanned platforms with Ultraviolet (UV) light to disinfect facilities. Danish company UVD Robots is reaping the benefits of this opportunity and is scaling up deployments of robots to disinfect hospitals. U.S.-based Germ Falcon is offering a similar UV disinfection solution for aircraft, while Chinese TMiRob is deploying disinfection robots in Wuhan. "Automating disinfection is a key part of maintaining health and safety and could be one of the major bright spots in the response to COVID-19," Whitton points out.

Drones have also been deployed to enforce curfews and surveil areas for security purposes. This represents a big opportunity for aerospace and drone companies to increase sales to government agencies. ABI Research expects the small drone delivery market to reach US$414 million by 2021 and US$10.4 billion by 2030.

In the short term, to enforce quarantine mandates, governments will need to increase their security apparatuses, as well as the productivity of their medical agencies. Robots will be key to achieving that through disinfection, monitoring, and surveillance. Furthermore, the shutting down of households and even ships represents a chance for robot delivery companies (for both land and air) to display their worth. The drone delivery market could take its experience with transporting supplies in the developing world and scale up their operations in the most affected countries.

Long-term, COVID-19 is leading to a significant reassessment of the global manufacturing supply chain. America's dependence on Chinese imports for basic equipment and medicines is becoming a contentious issue, and government representatives are already interpreting the crisis as a chance to revitalize the campaign to reshore more manufacturing capacity to the domestic market. If this translates into more significant measures by governments to diversify or reshore the manufacturing of key goods, this could bode very well for the robotics industry, as such changes would require big increases in CAPEX and productivity improvements within developed countries.

COVID-19 represents a disaster for robotics vendors building solutions for developed markets in manufacturing, industry, and the supply chain. But for vendors targeting markets closer to government, such as health, security, and defense, it represents a big opportunity. Whitton recommends that "industrial players develop customized solutions for non-manufacturing use cases or look to build comprehensive solutions for enabling a scale-up in medical supply manufacturing. For mobile robotics vendors and software companies targeting more nascent markets, this represents a big chance to highlight the importance of robotics for dealing with national emergencies, as well as mitigating the economic shock."

For a clearer picture of the current and future ramifications of COVID-19 across technologies and verticals, including Industrial, Collaborative and Commercial Robotics, download the whitepaper Taking Stock of COVID-19: The Short- and Long-Term Ramifications on Technology and End Markets.

About ABI ResearchABI Research provides strategic guidance to visionaries, delivering actionable intelligence on the transformative technologies that are dramatically reshaping industries, economies, and workforces across the world. ABI Research's global team of analysts publish groundbreaking studies often years ahead of other technology advisory firms, empowering our clients to stay ahead of their markets and their competitors.

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For more information about ABI Research's services, contact us at +1.516.624.2500 in the Americas, +44.203.326.0140 in Europe, +65.6592.0290 in Asia-Pacific or visitwww.abiresearch.com.

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COVID-19 Pandemic Impact: A Surge in Proven Mobile Robotics Use Cases for Disinfection, Monitoring, Surveillance, and Delivery Will Propel the Market...

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