Orion ingenuity improves manufacturing while reducing mass
Washington DC (SPX) Nov 18, 2015 -
How do you reduce the weight of a spacecraft's underlying structure, while using the same materials as the heavier version and still hold to the same manufacturing schedule?
This month, the engineers who helped answer that question are seeing their hard work pay off. Technicians have finished welding together three cone panels that make up a section of the Orion crew module that will fly b ...
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Streamlining mobile image processing
Boston MA (SPX) Nov 18, 2015 -
As smartphones become people's primary computers and their primary cameras, there is growing demand for mobile versions of image-processing applications.
Image processing, however, can be computationally intensive and could quickly drain a cellphone's battery. Some mobile applications try to solve this problem by sending image files to a central server, which processes the images and sends ...
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XCOR develops Lynx Simulator
Mojave CA (SPX) Nov 18, 2015 -
XCOR Aerospace has announced that it has completed work on its Lynx simulator system, built by Protobox LLC in conjunction with the Air Force Research Lab (AFRL) at Wright Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio. This simulator will provide XCOR invaluable training as the test pilot team prepares for Lynx flight test.
"Dedicated aerodynamic modeling of the vehicle in the LAMARS (Large Amp ...
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Rice makes light-driven nanosubmarine
Houston TX (SPX) Nov 17, 2015 -
Though they're not quite ready for boarding a la "Fantastic Voyage," nanoscale submarines created at Rice University are proving themselves seaworthy. Each of the single-molecule, 244-atom submersibles built in the Rice lab of chemist James Tour has a motor powered by ultraviolet light. With each full revolution, the motor's tail-like propeller moves the sub forward 18 nanometers.
And with ...
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S.Africa and China sign nuclear energy cooperation pact
Johannesburg (AFP) Nov 16, 2015 -
Nuclear energy regulators in South Africa and China have signed a technical cooperation agreement as Africa's most industrialised economy presses forward with controversial plans to build eight new nuclear reactors.
The deal, which includes "licensing procedures, vendor inspections, inspector training and joint inspections and technical support", was signed last week in Beijing, South Afric ...
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Discovery of classic pi formula a 'cunning piece of magic'
Rochester NY (SPX) Nov 17, 2015 -
While most people associate the mathematical constant p (pi) with arcs and circles, mathematicians are accustomed to seeing it in a variety of fields. But two University of Rochester scientists were still surprised to find it lurking in a quantum mechanics formula for the energy states of the hydrogen atom.
"We didn't just find pi," said Tamar Friedmann, a visiting assistant professor of m ...
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Ultra-thin, tunable, broadband microwave absorber may advance radar cloaking
Washington DC (SPX) Nov 17, 2015 -
Microwave absorbers are a kind of material that can effectively absorb incident microwave energy to make objects invisible to radar; therefore they are commonly used in aircraft cloaking and warship stealth.
Recently, as radar detection devices have been improved to detect the near-meter microwave length regime, scientists are working on high-performance absorbers that can cloak objects i ...
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