We don't have to remind readers of the ways that 2020 has been dispiriting, but there's been some good news. The Covid vaccine rollout is a tribute to American ingenuity, and then there's the remarkable success of the SpaceX rocket launches.
The latter have become so routine that they barely make the news. On Saturday the company lit the fuse on one of its 229-foot Falcon 9 rockets, which put into orbit a U.S. spy satellite. It was SpaceX's 26th launch of 2020.
In case you are keeping track:
DVIDS - News - Did You Know: Space-A Travel
How We'll Get to Mars | Nuclear Propulsion and Space Travel
While chemical fuels are still considered best for launches, for example, and plenty of satellites and other intraspace applications are fine for solar power, the Trump administration has said the idea of stationing people on the moon requires a next-level energy system—and NASA agrees.
For now, the agreement relies on well-established technology safely used all around the world and already in space.
Radioisotope power systems (RPSs) have been used safely for decades, and their design has helped to inspire today’s rising generation of nuclear micro-reactors, in fact. They’re basically closed systems where an ongoing nuclear reaction creates energy, but without any moving parts.
Scientists Confirm the Negative Health Effects of Humans Traveling to Space - IGN
Other things to check out:
How does space travel affect astronaut's chromosomes?
Astronauts go through intense stresses like microgravity, confinement, and space radiation during space travel. But the aftermath of space travel on astronauts' health is not clear.
Building on the earlier NASA twin's study , two studies report the impact of space travel on telomere DNA (or teolmores), the buffering sequences present at the end of our chromosomes.
To understand the effects of space travel, the researchers report analyzed the DNA in blood and urine samples from 11 NASA astronauts, and compared them with age- and sex-matched controls on the ground before, during, and after spaceflight.
Ultra-Fast Space Travel Possible After Scientists Discover Hidden Super-Highways
Researchers have discovered a space manifold that can act as a superhighway network to travel through the Solar System much faster than previously thought.
Published in the journal Science Advances , the study by researchers from UC San Diego mentions a connected series of arches inside space manifolds that extend from the asteroid belt to Uranus and beyond .
Deeming it a "celestial autobahn," or celestial highway, it is believed to cut short the time to travel such a distance to a mere decade, as opposed to the hundreds of thousands or millions of years . The authors claim that the route can enable a travel across 100 astronomical units (about 150 million kilometres) in less than a century.
World's space achievements a bright spot in stressful 2020 - ABC News
It promises to do the same in 2021, with February's landings at Mars and next fall's planned launch of the Hubble Space Telescope's successor — the next-generation James Webb Space Telescope.
Boeing hopes to catch up with SpaceX in the astronaut-launching department, while space tourism may finally get off the ground.
"2021 promises to be as much of a space exploration bright spot, perhaps even more," said Scott Hubbard, NASA's former "Mars Czar" now teaching at Stanford University.
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I have a story with this ride 😉. Last year a DAWN writer used a screen grab of me riding a bike in Peshawar (a sho… https://t.co/irHCqIYenC CynthiaDRitchie (from USA & Pakistan) Thu Dec 24 08:28:09 +0000 2020
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