Ground Based Astronaut

By SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie: Science lectures are coming back!  There have been physical SF conventions since CoVID lockdown and, of course a boom in the new digital online SF gatherings. Physical body science lectures are coming back too. Prior to CoVID, I used to go to several science lectures and three or four one- or two-day symposia a year: something solid once a month or so. All that stopped early in 2020 with CoVID lockdown and while things began to open up in 2021 with the vaccine rollout, in person science symposia and lectures – at least those associated with my usual haunts – are only just opening up. (Sorry, virtual symposia and events just don’t do it for me: for one thing no real networking and discussion opportunities.) For myself, one recent bit of good news was that the Geological Society has now resumed its public lectures and last week I was pleased to attend one by Natasha Stephen on Extra-terrestrial Fieldwork; the adventures of an Earth-bound Astronaut: a topic that is genre adjacent.

I went with a former Institute of Biology work colleague, her partner an amateur astronomer and fellow science fiction fan, Tony Bailey (who incidentally does SF2 Concatenation’s stationery).

This lecture looked at geologists who hunt for meteorites from the Moon, Mars and asteroids and how they track them back to their likely point of origin.

Apparently, there are now world-wide 71,633 scientifically classified meteorites (excluding those on folks’ mantelpieces unclassified). Over 95% of classified meteorites are finds and the rest are tracked down from an observed fall.  One of the best ways to find meteorites is to go to a desert as the meteorites will stick out in the landscape. Having said that deserts contain creatures such as camels or kangaroos (depending on which desert) and it is surprising how many suspected meteorites initially spotted soon turn out to be just animal poo. (A problem not to be sniffed at.)

Nonetheless, such expeditions can be fruitful.  Natasha Stephen’s last meteorite hunting field trip, in 2019 just before CoVID hit, turned up 46 meteorites in 8 days.

46 meteorites in 8 days

Having got your meteorite, it then needs to be microscopically and chemically examined as to determine its exact mineral content. Lumps of rock may seem to be one type of mineral but usually contain microscopic pockets or crystals of other mineral within them. This provides geologists with a sort of mineral fingerprint for the meteorite. We are now directly survey Mars both with landers and using orbital remote sensing. The Moon and a number of asteroids have also been remote-sense surveyed.

Mapping Martian geology
Detailed geological map of Mars.

What the geologists do is look at the mineral crystals within the meteorite and then look at where these combinations of minerals occur on Mars, the Moon and asteroids. Even though there is a huge difference in scale – Mars remote sensing looks at areas hundreds of metres across whereas crystals in micrometorites are sub-millimetre – these locations are then the likely source of the meteorite. Even meteorites which are solid metal (a rare type of meteorite) have a crystal fingerprint depending on how long they took to form in zero-(micro)-gravity. These likely came from the molten cores of larger asteroids (originally tens of miles across) that then were broken up in collisions with other asteroids revealing the core. Again, they have an almost unique fingerprint.

Crystal structure solid metal meteorite.

As Natasha explained, she finds meteorite hunting and the subsequent analysis fascinating. Apparently, even the Apollo 11 astronauts were intrigued when they visited the Smithsonian’s collection of Moon rock meteorites (see picture).

Insert   apollo-11-astronauts-wowed.jpg

Apollo 11 astronauts.

And one advantage of an in-person lecture was being able to see actual meteorites close up, and even hold a meteorite that originated from the Moon.

Jonathan Cowie with Moon rock.

I do not have any hard info as to the lecture’s live online aspect, but I noted that there seemed to be more (possibly twice) as many questions from the online audience as there were from those physically present. The public lecture has since been put online. You can see the full lecture on YouTube. (You have to jump to 8 minutes 25 seconds for the start.)

I did point out to the Geological Society’s Chief Executive, Simon Thompson, that his introduction to the lecture may have perplexed those in the future watching the talk on YouTube when he said that they would be “wrapping up the talk at 6.15 pm as they were closing the roads at 6.30”: future viewers would not know why the roads in London were being closed?  Well, the answer was that the next day was to see the coronation of King Charles. Now, one of Charles’s hobbies is water colour painting and so with his coronation as King he is now ‘the artist formerly known as Prince’.

So we emerged from the lecture to the perpetual drone of helicopters overhead, police motorcycles escorting various black Daimlers and thin crowds of those going home after work and tourists looking at the preparations for the following day’s ceremony. Time to adjourn to a local bar….

Stop press. Over at PBS Eons they have posted a 12-minute vid of a natural history of Mars.

I Spy, Up in the Sky

By Rich Lynch: During the past couple of days the news cycle has been dominated by the story of the Chinese Balloon.  I imagine that by now we’re all maybe a little bit tired of hearing about it, so let’s instead talk about a different balloon. This one:

Anybody else here old enough to remember it?  I was a pre-teen when it was launched in 1960 and space cadet as I was back then, it had supercharged my enthusiasm for all things NASA.  The news coverage had stated that the big balloon would be visible to the naked eye, so for the next several clear nights after Echo I had reached orbit I was out in the backyard of my parents’ house looking for it.  All I had to go on were occasional mentions in the local news of when it might be visible – I hadn’t had any real idea of where specifically to look in the night sky, so it was a bit of a celestial needle in the haystack exercise.  But when I did finally spot it…wow!

I had hoped it would be fairly bright, and it exceeded my expectations.  Maybe this is just an overinflated recollection from so many decades ago but I remember it being one of the brightest objects in the sky.  And you know, I don’t recall ever seeing it again after that.  The thing stayed in orbit for several years until atmospheric drag finally brought it down but if I ever observed it again, those memories have long ago been overwritten.  Nowadays, of course, we’ve got websites and smartphone apps aplenty to show us where to look for most every artificial satellite that’s up there.  But they’re so numerous and often so faint that it’s become too ordinary to much bother with.  Just the opposite, in fact – I’ve had more than one astrophoto ruined by the streak of an artificial satellite that had photobombed the image.

It still causes me to smile whenever I think back to those years and all the things that had excited me during the space race.  And even today I’m in awe about all the scientific wonders constantly being discovered up in the heavens.  I hope I never lose that sense of wonder.

Artemis I: A Hugo Contender?

NASA’s Space Launch System rocket carrying the Orion spacecraft launches on the Artemis I flight test, Wednesday, Nov. 16, 2022.

By Mark Roth-Whitworth: I expect a lot of File 770’s readers watched, as we did, as the Orion capsule returned to Terra. I’m older than some of you, and it’s been decades since I watched a capsule re-entry and landing in the ocean. What had me in tears is that finally, after fifty years, we’re planning to go back… and stay. This time, it’s not a stupid race, but, oh, ok, I’ll say it, the final frontier, and we’re going where no one has gone before.

Hugo nominations are coming, soon enough. Mike reminded me that the Apollo 11 news coverage won the Hugo for “Best Dramatic Presentation”. This capsule wasn’t crewed — that’ll be the next. But if the Artemis I mission doesn’t beat anything else this year deserving of the Best Related Work Hugo, nothing does.

I plan to nominate it. Join me?

NASA’s Orion spacecraft for the Artemis I mission splashed down in the Pacific Ocean at 12:40 p.m. EST, Dec. 11, 2022, after a 25.5 day mission to the Moon.

Cosmonaut Solidarity 

By James Bacon: Despite some very harsh comments from Dmitry Rogozin, the director general of Roscosmos, threatening that “If you block cooperation with us, who will save the ISS from an uncontrolled deorbit and fall into the United States or Europe?” spacefarers seem to have a different perspective and understanding of the importance of international cooperation, respect and solidarity. This appears to have been demonstrated today when three cosmonauts arrived at the International Space Station.  

Cosmonauts Oleg Artemyev, Sergey Korsakov, and Denis Matveyev arrived at the ISS after blasting off from Baikonur in Kazakhstan in a Soyuz MS-21. A quick 3-hour journey, they joined fellow cosmonauts and astronauts at 4:48 p.m.  

Although video footage and photos shows them in their usual white space suits, as they embarked, and official preflight photos in blue suits they changed into Yellow suits with Blue flashes by the time hatches opened.  

When asked Oleg said “It became our turn to pick a colour. But, in fact, we had accumulated a lot of yellow material so we needed to use it, so that’s why we had to wear yellow.

They join Expedition 66 Cosmonaut Commander Anton Shkaplerov and cosmonaut Pyotr Dubrov of Roscosmos, as well as NASA astronauts Mark Vande Hei, Raja Chari, Tom Marshburn, and Kayla Barron, and ESA (European Space Agency) German astronaut Matthias Maurer.

An incredibly brave and brazen demonstration of solidarity and unity. 

Returning to Rogozin’s utterances, NASA’s Bill Nelson said “That’s just Dmitry Rogozin. He spouts off every now and then. But at the end of the day, he’s worked with us. The other people that work in the Russian civilian space program, they’re professional. They don’t miss a beat with us, American astronauts and American mission control. Despite all of that, up in space, we can have a cooperation with our Russian friends, our colleagues.”

Ukraine has had a number of Cosmonauts and Astronauts in Space during soviet and independent times. 

Ukrainian Cosmonaut Pavel Popovich, a Soviet cosmonaut who flew in space in 1962 and 1974. Stamp issued 2012. (MNH.Sc.890)

William Shatner Back From Space

Crew members: Former Nasa engineer Chris Boshuizen, William Shatner, VP of Mission and Flight Operations, Audrey Powers, and healthcare entrepreneur Glen De Vries

Emerging from New Shepard’s crew capsule, 90-year-old actor William Shatner told his host Jeff Bezos how deeply moved he was by his flight to the edge of space:

“What you have given me is the most profound experience I can announce. I’m so filled with emotion about what just happened. I — I just — it’s extraordinary, extraordinary. I hope I never recover from this. I hope that I can maintain what I feel now. I – I don’t want to lose it. It’s so much larger than the me of life. It hasn’t got anything to do with the little green planet or the — it has to do with the enormity and the quickness and the suddenness of life and death…”

Jeff Bezos, the executive chairman of Amazon, is the founder of Blue Origin, the privately-owned orbital spaceflight technology business that developed New Shepard. Today was its second launch with human passengers. Shatner is best known for playing the spacefaring Captain Kirk in Star Trek on TV and in movies.

The AP story adds:

…Bezos is a huge “Star Trek” fan — the Amazon founder had a cameo as an alien in one of the later movies — and Shatner rode free as his invited guest.

As a favor to Bezos, Shatner took up into space some “Star Trek” tricorders and communicators — sort of the iPhones of the future — that Bezos made when he was a 9-year-old Trekkie. Bezos said his mother had saved them for 48 years….

Before the flight it was surprising that a 90-year-old could be expected to withstand the rigors of a rocket launch and return to earth, although the craft’s first crewed flight in July included 82-year-old aviator Wally Funk, one of the Mercury 13. Shatner said the return to Earth was more jolting than his training led him to expect and made him wonder whether he was going to make it back alive.

“Everything is much more powerful,” he said. “Bang, this thing hits. That wasn’t anything like the simulator. … Am I going to be able to survive the G-forces?”

Passengers are subjected to nearly 6 G’s, or six times the force of Earth’s gravity, as the capsule descends. Blue Origin said Shatner and the rest of the crew met all the medical and physical requirements, including the ability to hustle up and down several flights of steps at the launch tower.

  • NBC’s video of Shatner speaking after exiting the capsule
  • CNN’s video of the complete flight

All external – no inside views of the passengers. Includes great visuals of the rocket stage returning upright to the landing pad. Also shows the capsule parachuting back to earth.

NASA Names Perseverance Rover Touchdown Site “Octavia E. Butler Landing”

NASA has named the Perseverance rover’s landing place on Mars the Octavia E. Butler Memorial Landing Site, just as they had earlier named the Curiosity site for Ray Bradbury (Bradbury Landing). The location is marked with a star in the above image from the High Resolution Imaging Experiment (HiRISE) camera aboard NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO).

It’s a great choice, both for Butler’s inspiring work as a science fiction writer, and that she did much of her writing while living in Pasadena only a few miles away from Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which built and manages operations of the Perseverance rover.

A key objective for Perseverance’s mission on Mars is astrobiology, including the search for signs of ancient microbial life. The rover will characterize the planet’s geology and past climate, pave the way for human exploration of the Red Planet, and be the first mission to collect and cache Martian rock and regolith (broken rock and dust).

Read more about Perseverance here.

Butler signing in 2005. Photo by Nikolas Coukouma.

[Based on a press release. Thanks to David Shallcross for the story.]

NASA Award to Advance Stem Cell Therapies in New Space Station Lab

A three-year, nearly $5 million award from NASA will allow researchers at the Sanford Stem Cell Clinical Center at UC San Diego Health, Sanford Consortium for Regenerative Medicine, Arthur C. Clarke Center for Human Imagination, and their partners at Space Tango to develop a new integrated space stem cell orbital research laboratory within the International Space Station (ISS) and launch three collaborative research projects within it.

Stem cells self-renew, generating more stem cells, and specialize into tissue-specific cells, such as blood, brain and liver cells, making them ideal for biological studies far from Earth’s resources. The goal of the new effort is to leverage microgravity and these unique properties of stem cells to better understand how space flight affects the human body. The studies will also inform how aging, degenerative diseases, cancers and other conditions develop in a setting with increased exposure to ionizing radiation and pro-inflammatory factors. The findings from these studies may speed the development of new therapeutics for a broad array of degenerative diseases on Earth.

“We envision that the next thriving ecosystem of commercial stem cell companies, the next nexus for biotechnology, could be created 250 miles overhead by the establishment of these capabilities on the ISS,” said Catriona Jamieson, MD, PhD, co-principal investigator of the award and Koman Family Presidential Endowed Chair in Cancer Research, deputy director of Moores Cancer Center, director of the Sanford Stem Cell Clinical Center and director of the CIRM Alpha Stem Cell Clinic at UC San Diego Health.

The project’s first flight to the ISS is planned for mid-2021. The ISS stem cell lab is expected to be fully operational and self-sustaining by 2025.

With hardware designed by Space Tango, a developer of fully automated, remote-controlled systems for research and manufacturing on orbit, initial projects in the new lab will include investigations of:

Blood cancers and immune reactivation syndromes, led by Jamieson, who is also a member of the Sanford Consortium for Regenerative Medicine, and Sheldon Morris, MD, MPH, clinical professor of family medicine and public health and infectious diseases at UC San Diego School of Medicine. 

In what’s known as the NASA Twins Study, investigators around the nation assessed identical twin astronauts Scott and Mark Kelly. Scott flew aboard the ISS for 342 days in 2015 and 2016, while his identical twin brother, Mark, remained on Earth. In a paper published in Science in early 2019, researchers, including UC San Diego School of Medicine’s Brinda Rana, PhD, described the many ways Scott’s body differed from Mark’s due to his time spent in microgravity, including signs of pre-cancer. 

In the new ISS lab, Jamieson and Morris will use stem cell-derived blood and immune cells to look for biomarkers — tell-tale molecular changes — as cancer develops and immune cells malfunction in microgravity. They will also work with experts in the Jacobs School of Engineering at UC San Diego and Space Tango to build special microscopes and bioreactors that fit the ISS lab space and transmit images to Earth in near real-time.

“If we can find early predictors of cancer progression on the ISS, we are ideally positioned to rapidly translate them into clinical trials in our Sanford Stem Cell Clinical Center back on Earth,” Jamieson said. 

Brain stem cell regeneration and repair, led by Alysson R. Muotri, PhD, professor of pediatrics and cellular and molecular medicine and director of the Stem Cell Program at UC San Diego School of Medicine and a member of the Sanford Consortium for Regenerative Medicine, and Erik Viirre, MD, PhD, professor of neurosciences and director of the Arthur C. Clarke Center for Human Imagination.

This project will build on a previous proof-of concept flight that sent a payload of stem cell-derived human brain organoids to the ISS in 2019. Brain organoids — also called mini-brains — are 3D cellular models that represent aspects of the human brain in the laboratory. Brain organoids help researchers track human development, unravel the molecular events that lead to disease and test new treatments. 

Since their last trip to space, the UC San Diego team has significantly advanced the brain organoids’ levels of neural network activity — electrical impulses that can be recorded by multi-electrode arrays. 

“All the research models we currently use to study aging in a laboratory dish rely on artificial things, such as increasing oxidative stress or manipulating genes associated with aging,” said Muotri, who is also co-principal investigator on the award. “Here we’re taking a different approach to speed up the aging process and study how it plays a role in developmental diseases and neurodegenerative conditions such as Alzheimer’s.”

Liver cell injury and repair, led by David A. Brenner, MD, vice chancellor of health sciences at UC San Diego, and Tatiana Kisseleva, MD, PhD, associate professor of surgery at UC San Diego School of Medicine. 

On Earth, Brenner and Kisseleva study ailments of the liver, such as liver fibrosis and steatohepatitis, a type of fatty liver disease. Liver diseases can be caused by alcohol use, obesity, viral infection and a number of other factors. They are interested in determining the impact microgravity may have on liver function, which could provide insights into diseases on Earth, as well as potential effects during space travel. In the future, the team may test therapies for steatohepatitis in the new ISS lab, where microgravity mimics aging and can lead to liver cell injury.

“These insights may allow us to develop new ways to stop the progression of liver disease and cirrhosis — conditions that affect approximately 4.5 million people in the U.S.,” Brenner said.

Once the ISS stem cell lab is validated, the team said it will replicate the Earth-based Sanford Consortium for Regenerative Medicine, a “collaboratory” in La Jolla, Calif. that brings together experts from five research institutions: UC San Diego, Scripps Research, Salk Institute for Biological Studies, Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute and La Jolla Institute for Immunology. 

Plans for the new ISS research lab and initial projects were made possible by an award from the NASA Research Opportunities for ISS Utilization. The UC San Diego team also credits the support of philanthropists T. Denny Sanford, Rebecca Moores Foundation and the Koman Family Foundation; their leadership, Pradeep Khosla, chancellor of UC San Diego, Patty Maysent, CEO of UC San Diego Health, Scott Lippman, MD, director of Moores Cancer Center at UC San Diego Health; and previous research and infrastructure funding from the National Institutes of Health, California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM), Pedal the Cause, and Leukemia & Lymphoma Society.

[From a press release, of course.]

Astronomer Christian Ready Will Livestream the New Horizons Flyby Beginning New Year’s Eve

[Bill Higgins forwarded this press release with a note, “I myself will be at the center, and hope to help Chris Ready with the program — I’ve already agreed to an interview.”]

Christian Ready is an astronomer whose presentations on the work of the Hubble Space Telescope, and other topics in spaceflight and astronomy, have been very popular at science fiction conventions for years. Chris is currently making astronomy videos on YouTube; on New Year’s Eve and the following day, he’ll be live-steaming coverage of the New Horizons mission, as the spacecraft that visited Pluto performs a flyby of an even more remote, even colder body at the edge of the Solar System.

NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft, having cruised beyond Pluto for two and a half years, is approaching a small object technically designated “2014 MU69,” but nicknamed Ultima Thule. It’s an icy body about 30 kilometers in size; very little is known about it. But on New Year’s Eve, New Horizons will be close enough to begin gathering detailed data: pictures, spectra, and particle measurements. 

Chris Ready writes: “We’re going to be live at mission control at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory. We’re going to talk with people from the New Horizons mission at APL and online during my first-ever remote livestream.

“I’m partnering with Tony Darnell from Deep Astronomy and TMRO to bring this to you live for 24 hours.”

To link to this YouTube livestream, visit https://youtu.be/0zzqOvJiSzE. (YouTube allows users to set a reminder to be notified when the stream begins or significant events occur.)

The livestream is expected to begin at noon, Eastern Standard Time, on Monday, 31 December. It’ll feature experts on planetary science, popularizers of science, and such SF writers as David Brin and Geoffrey Landis.  The moment of closest approach will be 33 minutes after midnight on Tuesday, New Year’s. A signal — indicating success, one hopes — is expected to be received on Tuesday morning at 10:30 EST. Coverage will end at noon on Tuesday. 

Because communication over 6.5 billion kilometers is limited to a slow rate, it will take days for the first detailed images of Ultima Thule to be downlinked to Earth. Nevertheless, a host of scientists and other guests will be gathered in Maryland to celebrate the moment of flyby, review our knowledge of the outer Solar System, and await the crucial signal indicating the spacecraft’s status.  

Chris Ready explains more about the event in a 6-minute video clip here: 

How Laser Weapons Stopped Being Science Fiction

By Jeff Hecht. Author of Lasers, Death Rays, and the Long, Strange Quest for the Ultimate Weapon, (Prometheus Books January 2019):

Pulp science fiction invented a host of directed-energy weapons: heat rays, death rays, blasters, ray guns and disintegrator rays. Lasers joined science-fiction arsenals soon after the Pentagon placed a million-dollar bet on the new idea in 1959. The brand-new Advanced Research Projects Agency was desperate for a defense against Soviet nuclear missiles when Gordon Gould walked in the door with a physically plausible plan to make a laser. Gould’s company got a fat contract, but Gould himself couldn’t get a security clearance to work on the laser. It was Theodore Maiman who launched the laser age when he made the first one in May 1960 at Hughes Research Laboratories in California.

Maiman was dismayed when newspaper headlines heralded his invention as a “science-fiction death ray.” His real-world laser was orders of magnitude short of the power needed to blast Soviet nukes out of the sky. Classified experiments reached tens of kilowatts in the late 1960s by burning chemical fuels in a gigantic flowing-gas system that acted like a rocket engine, but it couldn’t match the power of Star Trek phasers.

In the 1980s, Ronald Reagan’s “Star Wars” program spent billions trying to make orbital laser battle stations, and managed to get a megawatt out of a building-sized laser for a few seconds at a time. But they never got a big laser off the ground. After the end of the Cold War, the Air Force crammed a rocket-engine laser into a Boeing 747, which got off the ground and bagged a few targets in 2010. But it was billions over budget and many years behind schedule, and was scrapped as useless for zapping nuclear missiles fired by rogue states.

However, tests of a smaller rocket-engine laser on the ground in the late 1990s held out a different hope. A joint U.S.-Israeli project called the Tactical High Energy Laser (THEL) could shoot down terrorist rockets before they could wreak havoc. The powers were only a few hundred kilowatts, but the targets were only in the kilometer range, not the thousands of kilometers needed to stop long-range nuclear missiles. Contractors planned how to repackage the five trailers of equipment used in THEL into a mobile rocket-blaster that could be driven to trouble spots. It seemed like a done deal until field operations experts took a look at the plans around 2000.

Logistics is crucial on the battlefield. Napoleon Bonaparte famously said “an army marches on its stomach,” but modern armies also need fuel and munitions. A laser is an appealing weapon because it fires bolts of energy, not expensive missiles that can run out in mid-battle. But chemically powered lasers need two fuels, one containing hydrogen and the other containing fluorine, and they produce highly toxic hydrogen fluoride. The field ops team gave them a thumbs down, but said they would be happy to have a laser that could run on electrical power from generators powered by the diesel fuel that is the ubiquitous source of energy on the battlefield.

Solid-state lasers that ran on electricity had come a long way in the forty years since Maiman made the first one. Some were used in cutting and welding, but their power was far short of the hundred kilowatt level needed to zap insurgent rockets. Yet Congress and the Pentagon could see their benefits, and in 2000 they created the High Energy Laser Joint Technology Office (HEL-JTO) with a mandate to build bigger and more powerful electric-powered lasers.

They planned to crank up the power in two steps to a laser producing the full hundred kilowatts for five solid minutes. Right on schedule, Northrop Grumman announced success. “We’re doing our part to make gunpowder a twentieth-century technology,” said Dan Wildt, head of the company’s laser weapon program, on a March 18, 2009 press teleconference. The laser reached 105 kilowatts, a shade above the desired output power, but its efficiency was a shade below the desired 20 percent. It was an impressive achievement. However, the laser weighed seven tons and filled a shiny metal box 2 by 2 by 2.7 meters, smaller than a 747, but too hefty and fragile for use on the battlefield. It also required banks of laboratory chillers because it generated over 400 kilowatts of heat as well as the 100 kilowatts of laser beam. So JTO pushed on toward more battle-ready lasers.

Meanwhile, industrial laser companies had made a breakthrough of their own by replacing old-fashioned laser rods and slabs with thin optical fibers loaded with light-emitting atoms. Fiber laser output powers had soared from around 100 watts in 2000 to tens of kilowatts in 2009. They were so powerful that military labs started buying welding lasers, bolting them onto battlefield vehicles, and adding beam-focusing optics and a joystick-based control stick for aiming the laser. Then they started firing.

The easiest targets were improvised explosive devices (IEDs) or unexploded munitions laying on around on a battleground. The drill was simple. Park the vehicle a couple hundred meters away, far enough that the shrapnel wouldn’t hurt anybody. Then turn on the laser and point the beam onto it. The infrared laser beam was invisible to the eye, but infrared viewers revealed it on the screen so the operator could point the beam. When the target was exposed on the surface, after a matter of seconds the explosive inside the shell would detonate with a satisfying BANG, and the driver could move along to the next target. That could be useful for clearing battlefields, although it was harder to deliver enough laser energy to explode well-buried land mines and IEDs.

The next step was moving targets. The Army Space and Missile Defense Command in Huntsville installed a five-kilowatt laser atop in a tank-like Stryker in place of the usual heavy gun. It zapped over 150 drones of various sizes before Boeing replaced it with a 10-kilowatt laser. The Navy targeted small boats. A video of one early test showed a boat with a large red outboard motor bobbing quietly on shallow water. Nothing seemed to happen as an invisible infrared laser beam from elsewhere locked onto the motor, but as the beam dwelled on the motor, it began igniting wisps of gasoline fumes, and the motor eventually went up in flames.

The Navy was the first service to officially “deploy” a laser weapon, installed on the aging warship the USS Ponce in 2014 before it went on duty the Persian Gulf. They bought five 5.5-kilowatt industrial lasers from IPG Photonics, the world’s biggest maker of fiber lasers, and hooked them up to a beam-focusing telescope. The laser wasn’t used in combat, but it did zap test drones and small boats, with impressive success.

Laser weapon system aboard USS Ponce in 2014.

Tests are continuing with more powerful lasers taking on more difficult targets. The Army installed a 60-kilowatt state-of-the-art fiber laser from Lockheed Martin in the High-Energy Laser Mobile Demonstrator, a standard military battlefield truck that Boeing has equipped with laser focusing optics and a command and control systems for use by soldiers.

The Navy is buying a pair of similar Lockheed advanced fiber lasers for a new system it calls HELIOS, for High Energy Laser and Integrated Optical-dazzler with Surveillance. In addition to zapping unfriendly small boats and drones, HELIOS will use its optical system to gather intelligence on its environment. It also will include a lower-power visible laser as the equivalent of the “stun” setting on a Star Trek phaser; it will shine so brightly that enemy troops won’t be able to look at it, making it hard for them to attack. One HELIOS will be sent to the Navy by 2020 for integration with the electrical and control systems of a new destroyer. The other will undergo extensive tests at the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico.

Artist’s rendering of Lockheed Martins HELIOS system. Credit: Lockheed Martin (PRNewsfoto/Lockheed Martin)

The Air Force wants lasers for its top-gun fighter pilots, so it’s developing a laser weapon called SHiELD (for Self-protect High-Energy Laser Demonstrator). A cutting-edge Lockheed fiber laser will be mounted in a pod attached to fighter jets to defend against ground-to-air and air-to-air weapons. Initial tests are to start by 2021.

Meanwhile, tests are continuing on a radically different laser design called HELLADS, developed by General Atomic. One big attraction is a remarkably compact and light-weight structure made possible by cooling the laser solid with a flowing liquid with optical properties that match those of the solid so well that it doesn’t disturb the laser beam at all. Another attraction is a modular structure that can double the power by adding a second module, and potentially scale to much higher powers by adding more modules.

After decades of disappointment, this time looks different. Lasers that are more compact, more efficient and more powerful are only part of the story. It’s also focusing on targets that are much closer, so the beam has to go through less air, which isn’t as clear as we think. Look across a sunny blacktop parking lot at mid-day and you can see how air currents can bend light back and forth. Another difference is that drones and short-range rockets are much more vulnerable to laser attack than ballistic missiles hardened for re-entry into the atmosphere.

Nobody’s talking ray guns or phasers yet. A hand-held laser can’t pack lethal energy, although one could burn a blind spot on your retina. Think of these lasers as defensive artillery that can pinpoint enemy rockets, shells, drones and small boats.

Don’t expect these laser weapons to be standard combat equipment next year. The new generation of tests are needed to evaluate the lasers strengths and weaknesses, and to assess their lethality on real-world targets. If lasers pass those tests, they must be ruggedized to withstand battlefield conditions, which are far more harsh than a well-run factory floor. Then they must run a bureaucratic gauntlet to gain approval to move beyond research and development and become a “program of record” that spends buckets of money to produce hardware. That’s a real-world challenge Buck Rogers never had to face.

Science News Roundup 10/10/18

Compiled by Carl Slaughter:

An abundance of planets with an abundance of water

If you hope to one day wake up to the news that scientists have discovered a planet with alien life, the scientists working with the Kepler space telescope have some very good news for you. In a presentation at the Goldschmidt Conference in Boston, researchers from Harvard revealed that the data from the Kepler telescope suggests that water-covered planets are actually a lot more common than you might think.

NASA chief wants to populate space

NASA obviously has a huge interest in mankind exploring space, so it would make sense that the administration’s newly-appointed chief shares the same interests. In a recent interview with Space.com, NASA’s newly-appointed boss Jim Bridenstine makes a couple of interesting declarations, but starts by assuring everyone that he wants to get as many humans as possible off of planet Earth.

DARPA invests in AI research

At a symposium in Washington DC on Friday, DARPA announced plans to invest $2 billion in artificial intelligence research over the next five years. In a program called “AI Next,” the agency now has over 20 programs currently in the works and will focus on “enhancing the security and resiliency of machine learning and AI technologies, reducing power, data, performance inefficiencies and [exploring] ‘explainability'” of these systems. “Machines lack contextual reasoning capabilities, and their training must cover every eventuality, which is not only costly, but ultimately impossible,” said director Dr. Steven Walker.

Satellites that have satellite babies that have satellite babies

Mysterious Russian satellite worries experts

 

Ion rocket engines

Rocket Scientist Natalya Bailey owns a space startup called Accion Systems that specializes in making wafer thin engines that require a tiny fraction of energy that conventional rockets use. If successful, these ion thrusters could revolutionize how we will move through the final frontier.

 

Flying scooter

A man in South China claims to have created the world’s first ‘flying scooter,’ although we’d be remiss not to point out its resemblance to a large quadcopter drone.

According to United Press International (UPI), the aerial vehicle can seat one person and travel at a top speed of roughly 70 kilometers per hour. The machine’s maximum load is 99 kilograms.

AI glider learns how to fly

It took mankind untold eons to learn how to fly, but now artificial intelligence is doing something similar and in a fraction of the time. No, there’s no robots constructing planes like the Wright brothers, but some AI-powered gliders are indeed learning how to cruise through the air just like birds, and they’re getting pretty good at it.

14-year-old builds bullet proof wall to protect students during school shootings

Audrey Larson is a 14-year-old inventor.

For past competitions, she’s created glow-in-the-dark pajamas and a device to pet your dog. But this year, after hearing about the school shooting in Parkland, Florida, she felt compelled to focus on a more serious issue….

Mars habitat contest

Yes, we’ve yet to successfully send humans to Mars, but we already need to start thinking how we can stay there for long stretches of time — or even for good. NASA launched the 3D-Printed Habitat Challenge back in 2015 to find a suitable artificial housing for the first wave of Martian residents, and now the agency has narrowed the contestants down to five after seeing the realistic virtual models they created. The agency and its project partner, Illinois’ Bradley University, judged 18 teams’ models created using a specialized software.

The Earth is wobbling, the Earth is wobbling!

…Two of the three factors identified by the scientists are glacial rebound and mantle convection. Glacial rebound happens when thick ice sheets physically push down on land masses, compressing them, but then release that pressure upon melting. The land then balloons back up over time, causing Earth’s spin to wobble as if slightly off-axis. The effects of the last ice age, which would have compressed a huge amount of land across many continents, is still being felt today in the form of glacial rebound…

Hexagons on Saturn

Saturn sure has a thing for peculiar shapes! Astronomers have known for some time that Saturn’s north pole has developed a very odd hexagonal shape. The massive storm swirling there has well-defined sides, and is a near perfect hexagon. It also has a habit of changing color.

Now, using images gathered from the Cassini mission (rest in pieces), a new study reveals that there’s not one, but two massive hexagons swirling on Saturn’s northern half, and the new one is even higher than the other. As LiveScience notes, scientists haven’t figured out if the two are actually connected in any way, but it would be a pretty wild coincidence if they’re not.

Super soldiers now

Ever since Captain America debuted in Marvel Comics, scientists have been getting closer and closer to creating real-life super soldiers. With the help of Professor E. Paul Zehr and his new book ‘Chasing Captain America’, we’ll explore the origin and history of the Star Spangled Man and explain the science of the super soldier serum that turned Steve Rogers into the Sentinel of Liberty!

 

“Starfish, destroy!”

Australia’s Great Barrier Reef has seen better days. The massive natural wonder is dealing with the impacts of ocean warming (thanks to manmade climate change) which have pushed species away and killed off massive sections of coral, but that’s not the only problem the reef has been forced to deal with.

More recently, an influx of starfish have begun to take over the reef. This is thought to be the result of chemicals from human activity running into the ocean. As CNET reports, some of those chemicals can have the unintended effect of promoting breeding due to increases in algae, which is exactly what the starfish look for to keep their offspring alive. But now, researchers have a robotic ally to keep starfish populations in check, and it’s a real killer.

“Lionfish, destroy!”

Lionfish are incredibly eye-catching creatures, and they’re a favorite of salt water aquarium enthusiasts because they just plain look cool. They’re also an incredibly troublesome species when they are introduced in areas where they don’t belong, and coral reefs in the Caribbean are under serious threat from an invasion.

Now, researchers from the Worcester Polytechnic Institute have developed an autonomous robot that is capable of hunting down lionfish all on its own. But the bot doesn’t just identify and kill the invasive fish — using sharp spears to snag the fish and bring it down — it also allows for the dead fish to be fetched by fishermen who can harvest and sell it.

Is humanity about to accidentally declare war on an alien civilization?

…So let’s say we get it right. We develop the right material to reflect enough of the laser light that it doesn’t incinerate the sail. We collimate the lasers well-enough and build a large-enough array to accelerate these starchip spacecrafts to their designed speeds of 20% the speed of light: ~60,000 km/s. And then we aim them at a planet around a potentially habitable star, such as Alpha Centauri A or Tau Ceti.

Perhaps we’ll send an array of starchips to the same system, hoping to probe these systems and gain more information. After all, the main science goal, as it’s been proposed, is to simply take data during arrival and transmit it back. But there are three huge problems with this plan, and combined, they could be tantamount to a declaration of interstellar war….