NASA’s Ion Drive To Mars; Planet nine Where Art Thou; iCar Is A Berliner
Latest News from 100TB
This week 100TB brings you the highlights from the world of science and technology: NASA is a step closer to its manned mission to Mars; scientists make further predictions of Planet 9’s location in our Solar System; rumors of the iCar are spreading prompt.
NASA’s Mission to Mars
Until now the only way to create massive thrust big enough to escape the Earth’s gravitational pull, and to then accelerate in space, required tons and tons of fuel. Rockets obey the Tsiolkovsky equation , which goes after an exponential increase in mass relative to enhanced velocity. This means that in order for a substantial rocket with passengers to be propelled into its space path, the rocket would have to consist primarily of fuel. This of course sets some serious physical limitations.
However, NASA has come up with a much better plan: they have granted a $67 million contract to Aerojet Rocketdyne to “design and develop an advanced electrical propulsion system that could power future trips to an asteroid and Mars”, a technology that harnesses the Sun’s energy and converts it into thrust. Gallimore, from the University of Michigan’s College of Engineering, explains the ‘ion technology’ as goes after: “We inject xenon into a circular channel and pack this with electrons at around half a million degrees Celsius,” he explains. “These knock off electrons from the gas particles, turning them into positively charged ions. An electrified field accelerates these ions out , which generates thrust.”
Ion technology is already being used by satellites to make orbit adjustments and by some Nasa probes. Of course, we cannot leave behind the ‘ion drives’ used in Starlet Wars spaceships
Locating Planet 9
Recently there has been growing evidence that our Solar System has a hidden, unidentified ninth planet hiding far away on a massively ellipse orbit around our Sun. The Cassini spacecraft has exposed fresh data for scientists to examine, attempting to locate Planet 9.
Holman and Payne have just published their paper on their calculations of attempting to determine the location of this distant planet. They do so by “examining its [the distant planet] influence on the distance inbetween Earth and the Cassini Spacecraft.” This, in effect, is a dynamical model using Planet nine as a tidal perturber of orbits in the sky, meaning that if Planet nine is at location X, then its presence will cause perturbations to the trajectories of planets around it.
Combining their findings with Batygin and Brown’s prediction that Planet nine is located in the Kuiper asteroid belt, they identify a region perpendicular to the orbit of Saturn: “our preferred
region is centered approximately at (RA, Dec)= (40◦, −15◦), and extends ∼ 20◦in all directions.”
iMac, iPhone, iPad, now iCar?
There are rumors that the tech giant Apple is secretly working on injecting the electrical vehicle market.
The German Newspaper, FAZ , announced that Apple has hired German car experts for their iCar laboratory in Berlin. According to the FAZ, the iCar lab is a secret development facility in the heart of Berlin.
Rumours had already been flying that Apple was injecting the electrified car market under the codename “Project Titan”. The iCar project supposedly has 15-20 high caliber experts working on the car, said to be youthfull visionaries who don’t conform to the traditional concept of car development. Furthermore, the iCar is expected to be market ready in 2019-2020 and is predicted as a car sharing venture. Also, it is rumoured to be built in Austria by Magna— who of course deny to make a comment!
