Lifeboat Foundation

Billionaire Elon Musk has long been vocal about his ambitions for colonizing Mars – here’s everything we know about his plan.

Musk founded SpaceX in 2002 and since then has constantly reiterated one of his biggest goals is to help make humankind a multi-planetary species.

In order to achieve this otherworldly feat, the world’s richest man (at the time of publishing) turned his attention to the red planet, located approximately 33.9 million miles away from Earth.

Tae Seok Moon, associate professor of energy, environmental and chemical engineering at the McKelvey School of Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis, has taken a big step forward in his quest to design a modular, genetically engineered kill switch that integrates into any genetically engineered microbe, causing it to self-destruct under certain defined conditions.

His research was published Feb. 3 in the journal Nature Communications.

Moon’s lab understands microbes in a way that only engineers would, as systems made up of sensors, circuits and actuators. These are the components that allow microbes to sense the world around them, interpret it and then act on the interpretation.

For those building their own remote controlled devices like RC boats and quadcopter drones, having a good transmitter-receiver setup is a significant factor in the eventual usability of their build. Many transmitters are available in the 2.4 GHz band, but some operate at different frequencies, like the 868/915 MHz band. The TBS Crossfire is one such transmitter, and it’s become a popular model thanks to its long-range performance.

When [g3gg0] bought a Crossfire set for his drone, he discovered that the receiver module consisted of not much more than a PIC32 microcontroller and an SX1272 LoRa modem. This led him to ponder if the RF protocol would be easy to decode. As it turns out, it was not trivial, but not impossible either. First, he built his own SPI sniffer using a CYC1000 FPGA board to reveal the exact register settings that the PIC32 sent to the SX1272. The Crossfire uses channel hopping, and by simply looking at the register settings it was easy to figure out the hopping sequence.

Continue reading “Reverse Engineering A 900 MHz RC Transmitter And Receiver” »

Get the CuriosityStream x Nebula bundle deal for just 14.79 until December 24th https://curiositystream.com/realengineering.

New streaming platform: https://watchnebula.com/

Continue reading “The Insane Engineering of the Parker Solar Probe” »

Also read: IIT delhi built solar panels that track sun’s movement to generate more electricity.

However, now an engineer from the Philippines has developed a new kind of solar panel that doesn’t really need sunlight to generate electricity. At least not directly.

Developed by Carvey Ehren Maigue, a student at Mapua University in the Philippines, the novel solar panels (called AuRES) are designed to feed off the UV rays of the sun — something that even dense cloudy days cannot block.

Solar panels are a cornerstone of the clean energy revolution. And yet, they have one great flaw: when the clouds roll in their productivity dives.

Now, a new type of solar panel has been developed by an electrical engineering student at Mapua University that harvests the unseen ultraviolet light from the sun that makes it through even dense cloud coverage. Maigue, who won the James Dyson Sustainability Award for his creation, hopes it will soon be used on the windows and walls of large buildings, turning them into constant sources of energy.

Continue reading “These New Solar Panels Don’t Need Sunlight to Produce Energy” »

A nanomaterials-engineered penetrating sealer developed by Washington State University researchers is able to better protect concrete from moisture and salt—the two most damaging factors in crumbling concrete infrastructure in northern states.

The novel sealer showed a 75% improvement in repelling water and a 44% improvement in reducing salt damage in laboratory studies compared to a commercial sealer. The work could provide an additional way to address the challenge of aging bridges and pavements in the U.S.

“We focused on one of the main culprits that compromises the integrity and durability of concrete, which is moisture,” said Xianming Shi, professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering who led the work. “If you can keep concrete dry, the vast majority of durability problems would go away.”

Astronomers have been waiting decades for the launch of the James Webb Space Telescope, which promises to peer farther into space than ever before. But if humans want to actually reach our nearest stellar neighbor, they will need to wait quite a bit longer: a probe sent to Alpha Centauri with a rocket would need roughly 80,000 years to make the trip.

Igor Bargatin, Associate Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics, is trying to solve this futuristic problem with ideas taken from one of humanity’s oldest transportation technologies: the sail.

As part of the Breakthrough Starshot Initiative, he and his colleagues are designing the size, shape and materials for a sail pushed not by wind, but by light.

The Future Of Space Tech & Innovation — Dr. Joel Mozer Ph.D., Director of Science, Technology & Research, United States Space Force.

Dr. Joel Mozer is the Director of Science, Technology, and Research, United States Space Force (https://www.spaceforce.mil/).

Continue reading “Dr Joel Mozer, PhD — United States Space Force — Director of Science, Technology, and Research” »