Lifeboat Foundation

The Space Launch System and Orion capsule will launch on Aug. 29 to formally start the Artemis moon exploration program.

Its Biosentinel mission will launch aboard Artemis I.

NASA’s sending living cells to deep space for the first time. The BioSentinel mission will be the first long-duration biology experiment in deep space, a NASA post.

BioSentinel will monitor the growth and activity of yeast cells as they get bombarded by high-energy radiation particles in deep space and beam the data back to NASA researchers on Earth to help safeguard astronaut heath.

Continue reading “Artemis I to Launch First-of-a-Kind Deep Space Biology Mission” »

Current severe heatwaves that will likely increase in severity and frequency in the future are driving a rise in the use of air conditioners, threatening the environment with their high energy consumption and refrigerants with high warming potential. A new study finds that switching to propane as a refrigerant could lessen the global temperature increase from space cooling.

We spend enormous amounts of energy on fighting off the heat in the summer, or throughout the whole year at lower latitudes—about one-tenth of the total worldwide electricity supply. If current temperature trends continue, the energy demands of space-coolers will more than triple by 2050. Apart from the rise in energy consumption, space-coolers also threaten the environment in different ways: by using halogenated refrigerants with high global warming potential.

Split-air conditioners (Split ACs) that use an indoor and an outdoor air unit connected by pipes are the most common appliances used for space-cooling. They mostly utilize HCFC-22 and HFC-410 as refrigerants, both of them characterized by a very high global warming potential score, up to 2,256—meaning that they trap up to 2,256 times more heat than carbon dioxide over 100 years. Urged by the Kigali Amendment to the Montreal Protocol, many manufacturers are looking for alternative refrigerants with lower global warming potential scores, such as HFC-32. However, with a global warming potential score of 771, HFC-32 still poses a significant climate hazard.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=DEPUvjlrOeQ

The Space Launch System will start rolling out to its launchpad a few days ahead of schedule. It is headed to space for the first time as early as August 29th.

Approach splits atmospheric carbon dioxide, but still has kinks to work out.

American spaceman Kjell Lindgren says the encounter “may be my favourite so far”.

At a time when astronomers around the world are reveling in new views of the distant cosmos, an experiment on the International Space Station has given Cornell researchers fresh insight into something a little closer to home: water.

The fourth state of matter can help future humans survive on Mars.