Lifeboat Foundation

Akash Systems has signed a non-binding preliminary memorandum of terms with the U.S. Department of Commerce for $18.2 million in direct funding and $50 million in federal and state tax credits through the CHIPS Act. Although this isn’t yet a binding contract that will give the company the promised funds, it’s an important first step in the negotiation process for the Oakland-based startup, which shows that both the company and the U.S. government are gradually moving towards a formal agreement. According to Akash Systems (h/t Axios), it will use the funds to ramp up its operations for producing diamond-cooled semiconductors for AI, data centers, space applications, and defense markets.

Diamond-cooling technology goes deeper than just thermal paste with nano-diamond technology. For example, some use synthetic diamonds as the chip substrate, utilizing the material’s thermal conductivity to more efficiently move heat away from the processor. So, let’s look closer at Akash’s solution.

An international team of researchers has uncovered evidence that astrophysics models of massive stars and supernovae are inconsistent with observational gamma-ray astronomy.

There is a region of the sky where astronomers fear to look. Filled with dark clouds of dust, it hides an unseen mass. A mass so large it is pulling the Milky Way and other galaxies toward it.

The South Pole-Aitken Basin on the Moon’s far side is one of the most remarkable regions in our Solar System. Spanning approximately 2,500 kilometers (1,550 miles) in diameter, it’s among the largest known craters, with research interest from multiple space agencies. Among recent discoveries, planetary scientists uncovered an enormous mass anomaly beneath this basin, which could be key to understanding the Moon’s geological history. This mass anomaly, first revealed in 2019, has implications for future lunar missions and provides a window into the Moon’s formation.

Discovery of a Giant Mass Anomaly

Scientists detected the buried mass using data from NASA’s Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) mission, which monitors changes in the Moon’s gravitational field. This unique technique enabled researchers to identify the anomaly and measure its incredible weight, estimated at around 2.18 billion billion kilograms. The mass was so dense that it caused the basin floor to dip by nearly a kilometer (more than half a mile), an indication of its massive gravitational pull. To visualize this, Peter B. James, the lead scientist from Baylor University, compared it to burying a metal structure five times the size of Hawaii underground.

NASA and ISRO’s NISAR satellite aims to revolutionize our understanding of Earth’s surface movements with frequent global scans.

By detecting minute motions in land and ice, the satellite will enhance predictions for earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, and monitor infrastructure stability in ways previously not possible, saving significant time and resources in disaster management.

Continue reading “NISAR: The Powerful New Satellite That Will Track Earth’s Secret Shifts” »

NASAs Voyager 2 flyby of Uranus decades ago shaped scientists’ understanding of the planet but also introduced unexplained oddities. A recent data dive has offered answers.

In 1986, Voyager 2’s flyby of Uranus caught the planet during a rare magnetic anomaly caused by unique space weather, which influenced its magnetosphere’s behavior, offering new insights into its intense radiation belts and suggesting potential activity on its moons.

Voyager 2’s Historic Uranus Flyby

Since the initial James Webb Space Telescope photographs were released in July, our feeds have been inundated with breathtaking images of space, ranging from amazingly detailed images of Jupiter to the furthest distant known star.

This is an updated (quotes and sources) version of the previous article.

Webb has done it again, this time capturing an almost perfect Einstein ring from a distance of 12 billion light-years. And we can’t take our eyes off them.

“Solar system formation models using the new solar composition successfully reproduce the compositions of large Kuiper Belt objects (KBOs) and carbonaceous chondrite meteorites, in light of the newly returned Ryugu and Bennu asteroid samples from JAXA’s Hayabusa-2 and NASA’s OSIRIS-REx missions.”

To make this discovery, the team combined new measurements of solar neutrinos and data about the solar wind composition from NASA’s Genesis mission, together with the abundance of water found in primitive meteorites that originated in the outer solar system. They also used the densities of large KBOs such as Pluto and its moon Charon, as determined by NASA’s New Horizons mission.

“This work provides testable predictions for future helioseismology, solar neutrino and cosmochemical measurements, including future comet sample return missions,” Truong said.

“This paper shows a fun way to make carbon-neutral fuels and chemicals,” said Dr. Curtis P. Berlinguette. “We’ll need plastic on Mars one day, and this technology shows one way we can make it there.”

Can we use the planetary environment of Mars to help power a future colony on the Red Planet? This is what a recent study published in Device hopes to address as a team of researchers investigated how current thermoelectric generators—which can operate in a myriad of environments—on Mars could convert carbon dioxide (CO₂) into fuel and other chemicals that can be used for a future Mars colony. This study holds the potential to help scientists, engineers, and the public better understand how a future Mars colony could be managed and operated without constant need for resupply from Earth.

“This is a harsh environment where large temperature differences could be leveraged to not only generate power with thermoelectric generators, but to convert the abundant CO₂ in Mars’ atmosphere into useful products that could supply a colony,” said Dr. Abhishek Soni, who is a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of British Columbia (UBC) and lead author of the study.

Continue reading “Harnessing Earth’s and Mars’ Temperature Extremes for CO2 Conversion into Fuels” »