Next month, the Earth will come between the sun and the moon, causing the moon to take on an eerie reddish hue.

Just 24 hours after setting a March 6 launch date for the Artemis 2 mission, NASA said a problem with the Space Launch System upper stage will delay the launch.

The post NASA preparing for Artemis 2 rollback to fix upper stage problem appeared first on SpaceNews.

Learn more about the microbes that consume plastic and how they could one day help clean up our environment. 

Tory Bruno, former CEO of United Launch Alliance, said he decided to join Blue Origin to work on important national security projects, including applications of the company’s Blue Ring spacecraft.

The post Bruno says he joined Blue Origin to work on ‘urgent’ national security projects appeared first on SpaceNews.

Agency acknowledges young investigators are losing out as result of multiyear funding policy imposed by White House

Jim O’Neill will need to build ties, say former agency leaders

DOE’s 21-member Office of Science Advisory Committee is well-qualified but lacks disciplinary breadth, observers say

What scientists thought were four separate star clusters are actually part of one nearly invisible system.

Learn about the archaeological site of 'Ubeidiya, now confirmed as one of the oldest areas that humans occupied outside of Africa. 

Learn how a Tyrannosaurus tooth embedded in fossil bone from the Hell Creek Formation is helping researchers reconstruct a prehistoric encounter.

A previously unknown virus may be the key to assessing the risk of colorectal cancer and improving diagnosis.

Aalto is turning to Australia as a key operating base to bolster the business case for initial commercial services of its stratospheric pseudo-satellite over Japan, now pushed to 2027 amid regulatory hurdles and ongoing system-integration work.

The post Aalto plots Australia base to boost planned high-altitude pseudo satellite service appeared first on SpaceNews.

Learn how cleaner wrasse used a mirror and even dropped food to test their reflections, a behavior linked mostly to mammals.

Learn more about “boomerang” earthquakes and why scientists say they may be more common than previously believed.

A 2023 law championed by Republicans requires the CDC have a director confirmed by the Senate. For months, though, it’s had only acting directors—and the White House won’t say when that will change.

Physicists combined human acumen and AI-assisted math to show that a doubted particle interaction is possible after all

NASA is targeting a March 6 launch for Artemis 2 after completing a countdown test with few problems.

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Here at Physics World we are always on the look out for physicists with extraordinary talents outside of science. In 2023, for example we were in awe of Harvard University’s Jenny Hoffman who ran across the US in 47 days, 12 hours and 35 minutes – shattering the previous record by one week.

Now, coverage of the Winter Olympics in Italy has revealed that the Chinese freestyle skier Eileen Gu had studied physics at Stanford University. The most decorated female Olympic freestyle skier in history, US-born Gu bagged two gold medals and a silver at the 2022 Beijing games and added two silvers at Milano Cortina.

Gu has subsequently switched majors to international relations at Stanford, but we can still celebrate her as an honorary physicist.

Physics-rich event

Indeed, freestyle skiing is quite possibly the most physics-rich of all Olympic events. Athletes must consider friction, gravity and the conservation of momentum and angular momentum to perfect their skiing.

Now, I’m not suggesting that studying free-body diagrams of freestyle manoeuvres is essential for Olympic success, but I live in hope that an understanding of classical mechanics can improve one’s skiing. (I’m not sure why I believe this, because a PhD and decades of writing about physics certainly hasn’t improved my skiing!).

As well as being lauded for her prowess on the snow, Gu has found herself at the centre of an international furore regarding her choice of competing for China rather than for the US. So, international relations combined with physics seems like a very good course of study!

The post Olympian Eileen Gu rules the piste with physics and international relations appeared first on Physics World.

The company opened a new facility in El Segundo to support Millennium’s missile-warning satellite backlog

The post Boeing to boost production of missile-tracking sensors for military satellites appeared first on SpaceNews.

Fast-moving cracks in tape’s adhesive layer produce shock waves that make the stuff sing as it unrolls

First-of-its-kind product raises questions about costs, access, and equity

A new way of extracting energy from ocean waves has been proposed by a researcher in Japan. The system couples a gyroscope to an electrical generator and could be fine tuned to extract energy from a wide range of wave conditions. A prototype of the design is currently being built for testing in a wave tank. If successful, the system could be used to generate electricity onboard ships.

Ocean waves contain huge amounts of energy and humans have tried to harness this energy for centuries. But, despite the development of myriad technologies and a number of trials, the widespread commercial conversion of wave energy remains an elusive goal. One important problem is that most generation schemes only work within a narrow range of wave conditions – and the ocean can be a very messy place.

Now, Takahito Iida at the University of Osaka has proposed a new energy-harvesting technology that uses gyroscopic flywheel system that can be tuned to absorb energy efficiently over a broad range of wave frequencies.

“Wave energy devices often struggle because ocean conditions are constantly changing,” says Iida. “However, a gyroscopic system can be controlled in a way that maintains high energy absorption, even as wave frequencies vary.”

Wobbling top

At the heart of the technology is gyroscopic precession, whereby a torque on a rotating object causes the object’s axis of rotation to trace out a circle. This is familiar to anyone who has played with a spinning top, which will wobble (precess) when perturbed.

Iida’s device is called a gyroscopic wave energy converter and comprises a spinning flywheel mounted on a floating platform (see figure). On calm seas, the gyroscope’s axis of rotation points in a fixed direction thanks to the conservation of angular momentum. However, waves will cause the platform to pitch from side-to-side, exerting torques on the gyroscope and causing it to precess.  It is this precession that drives a generator to deliver electrical power.

To design the system, Iida used linear wave theory to model the coupled interactions between waves, the platform, the gyroscope and the generator. This allowed him to devise a scheme for tuning the gyroscope frequency and generator parameters so that an energy conversion efficiency of 50% is achieved for a variety of wave conditions.

The effect of the generator was modelled as a spring-damper. This is a system that responds to a torque by storing and then returning some energy to the gyroscope (the spring), and removing some energy by converting it to electricity (the damper).  Iida discovered that a maximum conversion of 50% occurs when the spring coefficient of the generator is adjusted such that the gyroscope’s resonant frequency matches the resonant frequency of the floating platform.

Fundamental constraint

Iida explains that 50% is the maximum efficiency that can be achieved. “This efficiency limit is a fundamental constraint in wave energy theory. What is exciting is that we now know that it can be reached across broadband frequencies, not just at a single resonant condition.”

Iida tells Physics World that a small prototype (approximately 50 cm³ in size) is being built and will be tested in a 100 m-long tank.

The next step will be the development of a system with a generating capacity of about 5 kW. Iida says that the ultimate goal is a 300 kW generator.

Iida also explains that the gyroscopic wave energy converter is designed to operate untethered to the seabed. As a result he says the system would be ideal for use as an auxiliary power system for a ship. “The target output of 300 kW is based on the assumed auxiliary power demand of a typical commercial vessel,” says Iida.

The research is described in the Journal of Fluid Mechanics.

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NASA completed a second wet dress rehearsal for the Artemis 2 mission on Feb. 19 without any of the hydrogen leaks seen in the first such test earlier this month.

The post NASA completes second Artemis 2 fueling test appeared first on SpaceNews.

Massive data centers for generative AI are bad for the Earth. How about launching them into orbit?