Tag Archives: NASA (US National Aeronautics and Space Administration)

Transformative potential of Martian nanomaterials

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Yes, nanomaterials from Mars! A December 21, 2023 news item on Nanowerk makes the proposition, Note: A link has been removed,

Researchers at the University of Sussex have discovered the transformative potential of Martian nanomaterials, potentially opening the door to sustainable habitation on the red planet. They published their findings in (“Quasi–1D Anhydrite Nanobelts from the Sustainable Liquid Exfoliation of Terrestrial Gypsum for Future Martian-Based Electronics”).

Using resources and techniques currently applied on the International Space Station [ISS] and by NASA [US National Aeronautics and Space Administration], Dr Conor Boland, a Lecturer in Materials Physics at the University of Sussex, led a research group that investigated the potential of nanomaterials – incredibly tiny components thousands of times smaller than a human hair – for clean energy production and building materials on Mars.

Taking what was considered a waste product by NASA and applying only sustainable production methods, including water-based chemistry and low-energy processes, the researchers have successfully identified electrical properties within gypsum nanomaterials – opening the door to potential clean energy and sustainable technology production on Mars.

…

A December 21, 2023 University of Sussex press release (also on EurekAlert) by Stephanie Allen, which originated the news item, features the lead researcher’s hopes for the discovery, Note: A link has been removed,

Dr Conor Boland, said: 

“This study shows that the potential is quite literally out of this world for nanomaterials. Our study builds off recent research performed by NASA and takes what was considered waste, essentially lumps of rock, and turns it into transformative nanomaterials for a range of applications from creating clean hydrogen fuel to developing an electronic device similar to a transistor, to creating an additive to textiles to increase their robustness.

“This opens avenues for sustainable technology – and building – on Mars but also highlights the broader potential for eco-friendly breakthroughs here on Earth.”

To make the breakthrough the researchers used NASA’s innovative method for extracting water from Martian gypsum, which is dehydrated by the agency to get water for human consumption. This produces a byproduct called anhydrite—considered waste material by NASA, but now shown to be hugely valuable.

The Sussex researchers processed anhydrite into nanobelts –  essentially tagliatelle-shaped materials – demonstrating their potential to provide clean energy and sustainable electronics. Furthermore, at every step of their process, water could be continuously collected and recycled.

Dr Boland added: 

“We are optimistic of the feasibility of this process on Mars, as it requires only naturally occurring materials – everything we used could, in theory, be replicated on the red planet. Arguably this is the most important goal in making the Martian colony sustainable from the outset.”

While full-scale electronics production may be impractical on Mars due to the lack of clean rooms and sterile conditions, the anhydrite nanobelts hold promise for clean energy production on Earth, and could, later down the line, still have a profound effect on sustainable energy production on Mars.

Here’s what a Martian nanomaterial looks like,

Caption: Two raw rocks used by the researchers (left). Vials show the nanobelts in water, with a close up of the actual nanobelts (right). Credit: University of Sussex

Here’s a link to and a citation for the paper,

Quasi–1D Anhydrite Nanobelts from the Sustainable Liquid Exfoliation of Terrestrial Gypsum for Future Martian-Based Electronics by Cencen Wei, Abhijit Roy, Adel K. A. Aljarid, Yi Hu, S. Mark Roe, Dimitrios G. Papageorgiou, Raul Arenal, Conor S. Boland. Advanced Functional Materials DOI: https://doi.org/10.1002/adfm.202310600 First published: 14 December 2023

This paper is open access.

Anti-dust technology paves way for self-cleaning windows and more

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I’m always interested in a ‘self-cleaning window’ story’. From a February 22, 2023 news item on phys.org,

Dust is a common fact of life, and it’s more than just a daily nuisance—it can get into machinery and equipment, causing loss of efficiency or breakdowns.

Researchers at The University of Texas at Austin partnered with North Carolina-based company Smart Material Solutions Inc. to develop a new method to keep dust from sticking to surfaces. The result is the ability to make many types of materials dust resistant, from spacecraft to solar panels to household windows.

…

A February 22, 2023 University of Texas at Austin news release (also on EurekAlert), which originated the news item, describe the research in more detail,

“What we’ve demonstrated here is a surface that can clean itself,” said Chih-Hao Chang, an associate professor in the Cockrell School of Engineering’s Walker Department of Mechanical Engineering and a lead author of the study. “Particulates aren’t able to stick to the surface, so they come off using just the force of gravity.”

In tests, the researchers piled lunar dust on top of their engineered surfaces and then turned each surface on its side. The result: Only about 2% of the surface remained dusty, compared with more than 35% of a similarly smooth surface.

The researchers said the discovery boils down to things the human eye can’t detect. In the experiments, the team altered the geometry of flat surfaces to create a tightly packed nanoscale network of pyramid-shaped structures. These sharp, angular structures make it difficult for the dust particles to stick to the material, instead sticking to one another and rolling off the material via gravity.

These structures provide a passive solution, meaning they don’t require any extra energy or materials to remove dust. Compare that with more active solutions such as a car windshield that requires the use of windshield wipers and wiper fluid to clean off dust.

The research was funded via a grant from NASA’s [US National Aeronautics and Space Administration] Small Business Innovation Research program, so the first applications focus on space technology. Space dust is especially pesky because of how high-risk everything becomes in that environment, and the conditions make cleaning off dust challenging. Dust wreaked havoc on the Apollo missions and has caused Mars rovers to fail.

“There’s not much you can do about lunar dust in space – it sticks to everything and there’s no real way to wipe it off or spray it off,” said Samuel Lee, a lead author who was an undergraduate researcher in Chang’s group. “Dust on solar panels of Mars rovers can cause them to fail.”

This technology also could have tremendous impact on Earth. It could prevent solar panels from collecting dust and losing efficiency over time. It could protect glass windows and someday even digital screens such as phones and TVs.

Anti-dust technology has been around for decades, but it has not gained much traction outside of the lab because of scaling challenges. The researchers used fabrication concepts called nanocoining and nanoimprinting, which prints patterns on objects in a modernized version of the way newspapers and photographs were mass produced during the 1800s.

Chang and Lee led the work for UT Austin, along with Stephen Furst, founder and CEO of Smart Material Solutions, which is working to commercial the technology. Other members of the team are Andrew Tunell, Kun-Chieh Chien and Saurav Mohanty of UT Austin; and Lauren Micklow and Nichole Cates of Smart Material Solutions.

There’s no indication this self-cleaning glass is coming to a window near me or you soon but we can always dream about this video,

Here’s a link to and a citation for the paper,

Engineering Large-Area Antidust Surfaces by Harnessing Interparticle Forces by Samuel S. Lee, Lauren Micklow, Andrew Tunell, Kun-Chieh Chien, Saurav Mohanty, Nichole Cates, Stephen Furst, and Chih-Hao Chang. CS Appl. Mater. Interfaces 2023, 15, 10, 13678–13688 SOI: https://doi.org/10.1021/acsami.2c19211 Publication Date:February 22, 2023 Copyright © 2023 American Chemical Society

This paper is behind a paywall.

You can find the North Carolina company mentioned in the news item, Smart Material Solutions, here.

A Café Scientifique Vancouver (Canada) May 28, 2019 talk ‘Getting to the heart of Mars with insight’ and an update on Baba Brinkman (former Vancouverite) and his science raps

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It’s been a while since I’ve received any notices about upcoming talks from the local Café Scientifique crowd but on May 22, 2019 there was this announcement in an email,

Dear Café Scientifiquers,

Our next café will happen on TUESDAY, MAY 28TH [2019] at 7:30PM in the back room at YAGGER’S DOWNTOWN (433 W Pender). Our speaker for the evening will be DR. CATHERINE JOHNSON from the Department of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences at UBC [University of British Columbia] .

GETTING TO THE HEART OF MARS WITH INSIGHT

Catherine Johnson is a professor of geophysics in the Dept of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences at UBC Vancouver [campus], and a senior scientist at the Planetary Science Institute, Tucson.  She is a Co-Investigator on the InSight mission to Mars, the OSIRIS-REx mission to asteroid Bennu and was previously a Participating Scientist on the MESSENGER mission to Mercury.

We hope to see you there!

I did some digging and found two articles about Johnson, the InSight mission, and Mars. The first one is an October 21, 2012 article by James Keller on the Huffington Post Canada website,

As NASA’s Curiosity rover beams back photos of the rocky surface of Mars, another group of scientists, including one from British Columbia, is preparing the next mission to uncover what’s underneath.

Prof. Catherine Johnson, of the University of British Columbia, is among the scientists whose project, named Insight, was selected by NASA this week as part of the U.S. space agency’s Discovery program, which invites proposals from within the scientific community.

Insight will send a stationary robotic lander to Mars in 2016, drilling down several metres into the surface as it uses a combination of temperature readings and seismic measurements to help scientists on this planet learn more about the Martian core.

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The second one is a May 6, 2018 article (I gather it took them longer to get to Mars than they anticipated in 2012) by Ivan Semeniuk for the Globe and Mail newspaper website,

Thanks to a thick bank of predawn fog, Catherine Johnson couldn’t see the rocket when it blasted off early Saturday morning at the Vandenberg Air Force Base in California – but she could hear the roar as NASA’s InSight mission set off on its 6½-month journey to Mars.

“It was really impressive,” said Dr. Johnson, a planetary scientist at the University of British Columbia and a member of the mission’s science team. Describing the mood at the launch as a mixture of relief and joy, Dr. Johnson added that “the spacecraft is finally en route to do what we have worked toward for many years.”

But while InSight’s mission is just getting under way, it also marks the last stage in a particularly fruitful period for the U.S. space agency’s Mars program. In the past two decades, multiple, complementary spacecraft tackled different aspects of Mars science.

Unlike the Curiosity rover, which landed on Mars nearly six years ago and is in the process of climbing a mountain in the middle of an ancient crater, InSight is designed to stay in one place after it touches down Nov. 26 [2018]. Its purpose is to open a new direction in Mars exploration – one that leads straight down as the spacecraft deploys a unique set of instruments to spy on the planet’s interior.

“What we will learn … will help us understand the earliest history of rocky planets, including Earth,” Dr. Johnson said.

It has been a prolonged voyage to the red planet. In 2015, technical problems forced program managers to postpone InSight’s launch for 2½ years. Now, scientists are hoping for smooth sailing to Mars and an uneventful landing a few hundred kilometres north of Curiosity, at a site that Dr. Johnson cheerfully describes as “boring.”

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Does the timing of this talk mean you’ll be getting the latest news since InSight landed on Mars roughly six months ago? One can only hope. Finally, Johnson’s UBC bio webpage is here.

Baba Brinkman brings us up-to-date

Here’s most of a May 22, 2019 newsletter update (received via email) from former Vancouverite and current rapper, playwright, and science communicator, Baba Brinkman,

… Over the past five years I have been collaborating frequently with a company in California called SpectorDance, after the artistic director Fran Spector Atkins invited me to write and perform a rap soundtrack to one of her dance productions. Well, a few weeks ago we played our biggest venue yet with our latest collaborative show, Ocean Trilogy, which is all about the impact of human activities including climate change on marine ecosystems. The show was developed in collaboration with scientists at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute, and for the first time there’s now a full video of the production online. Have you ever seen scientifically-informed eco rap music combined in live performance with ballet and modern dance? Enjoy.

Speaking of “Science is Everywhere”, about a year ago I got to perform my song “Can’t Stop” about the neurobiology of free will for a sold-out crowd at the Brooklyn Academy of Music alongside physicist Brian Greene, comedian Chuck Nice, and Neil deGrasse Tyson. The song is half scripted and half freestyle (can you tell which part is which?) They just released the video.

Over the past few months I’ve been performing Rap Guide to Evolution, Consciousness, and Climate Chaos off-Broadway 2-3 times per week, which has been a roller coaster. Some nights I have 80 people and it’s rocking, other nights I step on stage and play to 15 people and it takes effort to keep it lively. But since this is New York, occasionally when there’s only 15 people one of them will turn out to be a former Obama Administration Energy Advisor or will publish a five star review, which keeps it exciting.

Tonight I fly to the UK where I’ll be performing all next week, including the premiere of my newest show Rap Guide to Culture, with upcoming shows in Brighton, followed by off-Broadway previews in June, followed by a full run at the Edinburgh Fringe in August (plus encores of my other shows), followed by… well I can’t really see any further than August at the moment, but the next few months promise to be action-packed.

What’s Rap Guide to Culture about? Cultural evolution and the psychology of norms of course. I recently attended a conference at the National Institute for Mathematical and Biological Synthesis in Knoxville, TN where I performed a sneak preview and did a “Rap Up” of the various conference talks, summarizing the scientific content at the end of the day, check out the video.

Okay, time to get back to packing and hit the road. More to come soon, and wish me luck continuing to dominate my lonely genre.

Brinkman has been featured here many times (just use his name as the term in the blog’s search engine). While he lives in New York City these days, he does retain a connection to Vancouver in that his mother Joyce Murray is the Member of Parliament for Vancouver Quadra and, currently, the president of the Treasury Board.

Turn yourself into a robot

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Turning yourself into a robot is a little easier than I would have thought,

William Weir’s September 19, 2018 Yale University news release (also on EurekAlert) covers some of the same ground and fills in a few details,

When you think of robotics, you likely think of something rigid, heavy, and built for a specific purpose. New “Robotic Skins” technology developed by Yale researchers flips that notion on its head, allowing users to animate the inanimate and turn everyday objects into robots.

Developed in the lab of Rebecca Kramer-Bottiglio, assistant professor of mechanical engineering & materials science, robotic skins enable users to design their own robotic systems. Although the skins are designed with no specific task in mind, Kramer-Bottiglio said, they could be used for everything from search-and-rescue robots to wearable technologies. The results of the team’s work are published today in Science Robotics.

The skins are made from elastic sheets embedded with sensors and actuators developed in Kramer-Bottiglio’s lab. Placed on a deformable object — a stuffed animal or a foam tube, for instance — the skins animate these objects from their surfaces. The makeshift robots can perform different tasks depending on the properties of the soft objects and how the skins are applied.

“We can take the skins and wrap them around one object to perform a task — locomotion, for example — and then take them off and put them on a different object to perform a different task, such as grasping and moving an object,” she said. “We can then take those same skins off that object and put them on a shirt to make an active wearable device.”

Robots are typically built with a single purpose in mind. The robotic skins, however, allow users to create multi-functional robots on the fly. That means they can be used in settings that hadn’t even been considered when they were designed, said Kramer-Bottiglio.

Additionally, using more than one skin at a time allows for more complex movements. For instance, Kramer-Bottiglio said, you can layer the skins to get different types of motion. “Now we can get combined modes of actuation — for example, simultaneous compression and bending.”

To demonstrate the robotic skins in action, the researchers created a handful of prototypes. These include foam cylinders that move like an inchworm, a shirt-like wearable device designed to correct poor posture, and a device with a gripper that can grasp and move objects.

Kramer-Bottiglio said she came up with the idea for the devices a few years ago when NASA  [US National Aeronautics and Space Administration] put out a call for soft robotic systems. The technology was designed in partnership with NASA, and its multifunctional and reusable nature would allow astronauts to accomplish an array of tasks with the same reconfigurable material. The same skins used to make a robotic arm out of a piece of foam could be removed and applied to create a soft Mars rover that can roll over rough terrain. With the robotic skins on board, the Yale scientist said, anything from balloons to balls of crumpled paper could potentially be made into a robot with a purpose.

“One of the main things I considered was the importance of multifunctionality, especially for deep space exploration where the environment is unpredictable,” she said. “The question is: How do you prepare for the unknown unknowns?”

For the same line of research, Kramer-Bottiglio was recently awarded a $2 million grant from the National Science Foundation, as part of its Emerging Frontiers in Research and Innovation program.

Next, she said, the lab will work on streamlining the devices and explore the possibility of 3D printing the components.

Just in case the link to the paper becomes obsolete, here’s a citation for the paper,

OmniSkins: Robotic skins that turn inanimate objects into multifunctional robots by Joran W. Booth, Dylan Shah, Jennifer C. Case, Edward L. White, Michelle C. Yuen, Olivier Cyr-Choiniere, and Rebecca Kramer-Bottiglio. Science Robotics 19 Sep 2018: Vol. 3, Issue 22, eaat1853 DOI: 10.1126/scirobotics.aat1853

This paper is behind a paywall.

Testing ‘smart’ antibacterial surfaces and eating haute cuisine in space

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Housekeeping in space, eh? This seems to be a French initiative. From a Nov. 15, 2016 news item on Nanowerk,

Leti [Laboratoire d’électronique des technologies de l’information (LETI)], an institute of CEA [French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission or Commissariat a l’Energie Atomique (CEA)] Tech, and three French partners are collaborating in a “house-cleaning” project aboard the International Space Station that will investigate antibacterial properties of new materials in a zero-gravity environment to see if they can improve and simplify cleaning inside spacecraft.

The Matiss experiment, as part of the Proxima Mission sponsored by France’s CNES space agency [Centre national d’études spatiales (CNES); National Centre for Space Studies (CNES)], is based on four identical plaques that European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut Thomas Pesquet, the 10th French citizen to go into space, will take with him and install when he joins the space station in November for a six-month mission. The plaques will be in the European Columbus laboratory in the space station for at least three months, and Pesquet will bring them back to earth for analysis at the conclusion of his mission.

A November 15, 2016 CEA-LETI press release on Business Wire (you may also download it from here), which originated the news item, describes the proposed experiments in more detail,

Leti, in collaboration with the ENS de Lyon, CNRS, the French company Saint Gobain and CNES, selected five advanced materials that could stop bacteria from settling and growing on “smart” surfaces. A sixth material, made of glass, will be used as control material.

The experiment will test the new smart surfaces in a gravity-free, enclosed environment. These surfaces are called “smart” because of their ability to provide an appropriate response to a given stimulus. For example, they may repel bacteria, prevent them from growing on the surface, or create their own biofilms that protect them from the bacteria.

The materials are a mix of advanced technology – from self-assembly monolayers and green polymers to ceramic polymers and water-repellent hybrid silica. By responding protectively to air-borne bacteria they become easier to clean and more hygienic. The experiment will determine which one is most effective and could lead to antibacterial surfaces on elevator buttons and bars in mass-transit cars, for example.

“Leveraging its unique chemistry platform, Leti has been developing gas, liquid and supercritical-phase-collective processes of surface functionalization for more than 10 years,” said Guillaume Nonglaton, Leti’s project manager for surface chemistry for biology and health-care applications. “Three Leti-developed surfaces will be part of the space-station experiment: a fluorinated thin layer, an organic silica and a biocompatible polymer. They were chosen for their hydrophobicity, or lack of attraction properties, their level of reproducibility and their rapid integration within Pesquet’s six-month mission.”

Now, for Haute Cusine

Pesquet is bringing meals from top French chefs Alain Ducasse and Thierry Marx for delectation. The menu includes beef tongue with truffled foie gras and duck breast confit. Here’s more from a Nov. 17, 2016 article by Thibault Marchand (Agence France Presse) ong phys.org,

“We will have food prepared by a Michelin-starred chef at the station. We have food for the big feasts: for Christmas, New Year’s and birthdays. We’ll have two birthdays, mine and Peggy’s,” said the Frenchman, who is also taking a saxophone up with him.

…

French space rookie Thomas Pesquet, 38, will lift off from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan with veteran US and Russian colleagues Peggy Whitson and Oleg Novitsky, for a six-month mission to the ISS.

Bon appétit! By the way, this is not the first time astronauts have been treated to haute cuisine (see a Dec. 2, 2006 article on the BBC [British Broadcasting Corporation] website.)

The launch

Mark Garcia’s Nov. 17, 2016 posting on one of the NASA (US National Aeronautics and Space Administration) blogs describes this latest launch into space,

The Soyuz MS-03 launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan to the International Space Station at 3:20 p.m. EST Thursday, Nov. 17 (2:20 a.m. Baikonur time, Nov. 18). At the time of launch, the space station was flying about 250 miles over the south Atlantic east of Argentina. NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson, Oleg Novitskiy of Roscosmos and Thomas Pesquet of ESA (European Space Agency) are now safely in orbit.

Over the next two days, the trio will orbit the Earth for approximately two days before docking to the space station’s Rassvet module, at 5:01 p.m. on Saturday, Nov. 19. NASA TV coverage of the docking will begin at 4:15 p.m. Saturday.

Garcia’s post gives you details about how to access more information about the mission. The European Space Agency also offers more information as does Thomas Pesquet on his website.

US Los Alamos National Laboratory catches the D-Wave (buys a 1000+ Qubit quantum computer from D-Wave)

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It can be euphoric experience making a major technical breakthrough (June 2015), selling to a new large customer (Nov. 2015) and impressing your important customers so they upgrade to the new system (Oct. 2015) within a few short months.* D-Wave Systems (a Vancouver-based quantum computer company) certainly has cause to experience it given the events of the last six weeks or so. Yesterday, in a Nov. 11, 2015, D-Wave news release, the company trumpeted its sale of a 1000+ Qubit system (Note: Links have been removed),

D-Wave Systems Inc., the world’s first quantum computing company, announced that Los Alamos National Laboratory will acquire and install the latest D-Wave quantum computer, the 1000+ qubit D-Wave 2X™ system. Los Alamos, a multidisciplinary research institution engaged in strategic science on behalf of national security, will lead a collaboration within the Department of Energy and with select university partners to explore the capabilities and applications of quantum annealing technology, consistent with the goals of the government-wide National Strategic Computing Initiative. The National Strategic Computing Initiative, created by executive order of President Obama in late July [2015], is intended “to maximize [the] benefits of high-performance computing (HPC) research, development, and deployment.”

…

“Los Alamos is a global leader in high performance computing and a pioneer in the application of new architectures to solve critical problems related to national security, energy, the environment, materials, health and earth science,” said Robert “Bo” Ewald, president of D-Wave U.S. “As we work jointly with scientists and engineers at Los Alamos we expect to be able to accelerate the pace of quantum software development to advance the state of algorithms, applications and software tools for quantum computing.”

A Nov. 11, 2015 news item on Nanotechnology Now is written from the company’s venture capitalist’s perspective,

Harris & Harris Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:TINY), an investor in transformative companies enabled by disruptive science, notes that its portfolio company, D-Wave Systems, Inc., announced that Los Alamos National Laboratory will acquire and install the latest D-Wave quantum computer, the 1000+ qubit D-Wave 2X™ system.

The news about the Los Alamos sale comes only weeks after D-Wave announced renewed agreements with Google, NASA (US National Aeronautics and Space Administration), and the Universities Space Research Association (USRA) in the aftermath of a technical breakthrough. See my Oct. 5, 2015 posting for more details about the agreements, the type of quantum computer D-Wave sells, and news of interesting and related research in Australia. Cracking the 512 qubit barrier also occasioned a posting here (June 26, 2015) where I described the breakthrough, the company, and included excerpts from an Economist article which mentioned D-Wave in its review of research in the field of quantum computing.

Congratulations to D-Wave!

*’It can be euphoric selling to your first large and/or important customers and D-Wave Systems (a Vancouver-based quantum computer company) certainly has cause to experience it. ‘ changed to more accurately express my thoughts to ‘It can be euphoric experience making a major technical breakthrough (June 2015), selling to a new large customer (Nov. 2015) and impressing your important customers so they upgrade to the new system (Oct. 2015) within a few short months.’ on Nov. 12, 2015 at 1025 hours PST.