Frontier Space

Dive into straintronics and mechanical kinks (nanocurtains or or nano-speed bumps) with 2D sheet graphene.Similar to nano-origami, deformed 2D sheet graphene altered material's electronic and mechanical properties and accidentally created the tiniest microchips ever. Adding up to 1% wt of graphene sheets or GOx could make carbon fiber 225% stronger and 184% stiffer. Learn about the applications including highly-sensitive cancer biosensors, advanced water filters, and next-generation energy storage battery parts. Straintronics can increase the amount of transistors inside microchips by 5-6X to make computers, phones, and devices 1,000X faster and Increase time duration of nanorobots and gears by up to 10X.

Tripathi, Manoj et al. “Structural Defects Modulate Electronic and Nanomechanical Properties of 2D Materials.” ACS nano vol. 15,2 (2021): 2520-2531. https://doi.org/10.1021/acsnano.0c06701

The African Union passed legislation to establish the African Space Agency in 2017 and recently approved Egypt as host country for the headquarters of the new agency. Tune into this month's episode to dive into the founding, launch, and development of the African Space Agency (AfSA) with our guest Ayman Ahmed, PhD, Head of Space Imaging & BoD at Egyptian Space Agency. Learn about the objectives, missions, satellite project, involvement of the Egyptian Space Agency, African Union, and government, human space flight program, potential fellowship/exchange program, and how to get involved!

Investigating potential phototrophy, habitability, and bioengineering of microbes and potential floating algae in the lower, middle, and upper cloud layers of Venus with our guest, Rakesh Mogul, Ph.D., Professor of Biological Chemistry and Director; NASA/CSU Spaceward Bound, California State Polytechnic University, Pomona. Professor Rakesh recently published a study outlined below in finding that sunlight filtering through Venus’ clouds could support Earth-like photosynthesis round-the-clock in Venus’ clouds with the middle and lower clouds receiving similar solar energy as Earth’s surface.

Mogul R, Limaye SS, Lee YJ, Pasillas M. Potential for Phototrophy in Venus' Clouds. Astrobiology. October, 2021;21(10):1237-1249. https://doi.org/10.1089/ast.2021.0032

Professor Rakesh's Website:

https://www.cpp.edu/~rmogul/home.html

Discussion/topics include:

Part 1: Phototrophy and Habitability in Venus Clouds

Part 2: Bioengineering

Investigating how to apply the following systems to adapt microbial life to local conditions in Venus clouds: Venus sulfuric acid (H2SO4) coatings, airborne DNA sequencers, Bioengineering Whispering gallery mode (WGM) phycobilliproteins, biophotonic Optofluidic Microcavities Liquid Crystal Droplets, introducing an enzyme into the water to increase H production by 400%, UV resistant nanostructured coatings and biofouling hydrophilic coatings, self replicating algae mats and floating algae ISRU bioreactors in clouds of Venus

A lively dialogue on the mission, design, and implications of SuperBIT balloon-borne telescope one of the highest resolution telescopes ever made with our guest Barth Netterfield PhD, Professor, DADDAA & Physics at Uni of Toronto and project lead of SuperBIT mission to image weak gravitational lensing, galactic star formation, distribution and quantity of dark matter in galaxy clusters and super exoplanet atmospheres.

The $5M Super-pressure Balloon-borne Imaging Telescope (SuperBIT) is 1,300X lower than the cost of the $6.5bn Hubble Space Telescope to image  visible-to-near-UV (300-900 um) with 0.25-.5 arc second imaging and 50X more sensitive resolution than hubble. With a  0.5 m mirror, wide-field, 1.5m aperture, SuperBIT is equipped a helium balloon and 80kg carbon fiber mount telescope with a 69-megapixel camera with low read noise, high quantum efficiency and very low dark current that is capable of flying 1,000kg science payload at 35km altitude. Toward the end of the Podcast episode, Barth enlightens us about the preliminary plans and implications of GigaBIT, next generation atmospheric telescope focusing on green, blue and UV imaging wavelengths, which is planned to be 4X better than ground telescopes with 3X imaging stability over superbit potential launch in late 2020's

SuperBIT: A low-cost, balloon-borne telescope to rival Hubble

https://phys.org/news/2021-07-superbit-low-cost-balloon-borne-telescope-rival.html

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Romualdez, L. J., et al (2018). Overview, design, and flight results from SuperBIT: A high-resolution, wide-field, visible-to-near-UV balloon-borne astronomical telescope. In L. Simard, L. Simard, C. J. Evans, & H. Takami (Eds.), Ground-based and Airborne Instrumentation for Astronomy VII [107020R] (Proceedings of SPIE - The International Society for Optical Engineering; Vol. 10702). SPIE. https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2307754

Chime into the edge of materials science, manufacturing, and applications of amorphous metals, or metallic glass with Doug Hoffman, PhD, Founder of Metallurgy Facility, Cofounder of Materials Development and Manufacturing Technology Group and Additive Manufacturing Center at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

Learn about the material properties of amorphous metals to operate systems and robotics in conditions with high hardness, corrosion resistance, bouncy property, high abrasive, dusty and cryogenic extreme environments. Explore how low cost high performance BMG strainwave gears can reduce robotic arms cost by 50%, significantly improve cost, energy, and science for robotic operations on Earth, Moon, Mars, and beyond. 

The launch of FS Pod Season 2 explores how Bulk metallic glass (BMG), coatings, and strainwave gears are disrupting robotics, spacecraft, solar panel deployment, antenna positioning, in space & bimetallic 3D printing, automotive parts, food industry, and bioengineering.

Explore the dynamics and engineering of Tethered Asteroid systems to adjust the orbital trajectory of near-Earth object (NEO) and potentially hazardous asteroids (PHA) with our guest Flaviane Venditti, PhD who is pioneering the tethered asteroid R&D. Topics in this month's Podcast Episode include tether dynamics, engineering, and materials (i.e. carbon nanotubes), alternative orbital deviation methods, tether anchoring, solar sails, and tethered balloon asteroids

Podcast Guest: Flaviane Venditti, PhD, Observatory Scientist, Head of Planetary Radar, The Arecibo Observatory at University of Central Florida

Dr. Venditti started her scientific career as a Bachelor in Physics/Astronomy at the University of Sao Paulo, where she was part of the Polarimetry group working with observations at the National Laboratory for Astrophysics (LNA) in Minas Gerais, Brazil. Besides observations, she was also interested in celestial mechanics and space missions, which led her to pursue a Master's (2009) and Ph.D (2013) degree in Space Engineering at the National Institute for Space Research, Brazil, focused on Astrodynamics. During her Ph.D, she worked with orbital maneuvers around irregularly shaped bodies, developing a method to model the gravitational field of asteroids with low computational effort using Arecibo's planetary radar data.

Flaviane C. F. Venditti, Luis O. Marchi, Arun K. Misra, Diogo M. Sanchez, Antonio F. B. A. Prado. Dynamics of tethered asteroid systems to support planetary defense. The European Physical Journal Special Topics, 2020; 229 (8): 1463 DOI: 10.1140/epjst/e2020-900183-y

Learn about satellite/telescope deployable mirrors, inspired from James Webb Telescope foldable mirror architecture, that is being developed by Noah Schwartz, Adaptive Optics Engineer at the UK Astronomy Technology Centre. Active deployable primary mirrors holds the potential to significantly improve satellite diffraction limit with potential implications to increase satellite imagery resolution by 2-3X. Discover the experiment results from 500 tests on deployment mirrors, opto-mechanical challenges to packaging and cubesat payload volume, potential implications for a wide range of satellites, and a glimpse into next generation on-orbit cubesat docking implications.

https://www.universetoday.com/151326/teeny-tiny-cubesats-could-have-deployable-mirrors-like-james-webb/

Reference: Schwartz, Noah, et al. “Active deployable primary mirrors on CubeSat.” Space Telescopes and Instrumentation 2020: Optical, Infrared, and Millimeter Wave. Vol. 11443. International Society for Optics and Photonics, 2021. From <https://arxiv.org/abs/2105.12483>

A dialogue on the research developments of Space manifolds and interplanetary highways and the significance for life, spacecraft, and mission design. Our guest Aaron Rosengren, Assistant Professor, Space Systems at University of California, San Diego dives into stable manifolds, Influence of bodies and Lagrange points, Planetary manifold dynamics, near Earth asteroids, and weak stability boundaries

Aaron J. Rosengren received his Ph.D. in Aerospace Engineering Sciences from the University of Colorado, Boulder in 2014. He served as a Marie Curie Postdoctoral Fellow for the European Union Asteroid and Space Debris Network, Stardust, from 2014 to 2016, at the Institute of Applied Physics Nello Carrara of the Italian National Research Council. In 2017, Dr. Rosengren worked at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki in Greece in the Department of Physics, as part of the EU H2020 Project ReDSHIFT. He was an Assistant Professor at the University of Arizona (2017-2020) prior to his appointment at UC San Diego in July 2020. He received the "COSPAR Outstanding Paper Award for Young Scientists" on three separate occasions and has held invited visiting researcher positions in Australia, Israel, Italy, and Serbia.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/aaron-rosengren-558205a/

Research Paper:

The arches of chaos in the Solar System. Science Advances  25 Nov 2020:

https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/6/48/eabd1313

A jam-packed conversation with Peter A. Swan, Ph.D., President of International Space Elevator Consortium (ISEC), about the engineering, architecture, and benefits of the 100,000km Modern-day Space Elevator.

This episode encompasses mass, cost, escape velocities, and logistics comparison of elevator vs. rocket propulsion, as well as graphene manufacturing process and the transit time to Mars. Learn about how candidate Earth-based locations, sci-fi, payload size, Galactic Harbor, and a glimpse into the future of Space Elevators to move massive tonnage to GEO, Solar System, and beyond.

Peter A. Swan, Ph.D. - President of ISEC and team lead for developing the concept of space elevators. A member of the International Academy of Astronautics and Fellow of AIAA and TBIS. He graduated from the USMA, 1968, and served 20 years in the Air Force. He joined the Iridium satellite program then Teaching Science and Technology, Inc. teaching space systems engineering. He continues to teach at Arizona State University for their OLLI classes. His latest book is Road to the Space Elevator Era [2019].

Blue Marble Week - Elevators, Space Edition

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DgR1dwPgGfg

If you enjoy or find value from this episode, please subscribe, leave a review, and follow our journey on LinkedIn and Facebook.