Author: Jonas Steeb

Israel’s ambitions for a moon landing will have to wait for now as Beresheet, the first privately funded mission to the moon, barely missed the lunar landing as it crashed in the last part of its journey.

The spacecraft crash landed on the moon moments before it was supposed to soft land, reports indicate. If the country would have managed to soft land the spacecraft on moon, it would have made it the fourth country to do so after the US, the former Soviet Union and China. The $100 million spacecraft, built by SpaceIL and Israel Aerospace Industries, lost communications with the control room during the landing sequence. At the time of the communications failure, the Beresheet was travelling at 2,110 mph and was about 120 km from its intended landing site.

“I am sorry to say that our spacecraft did not make it in one piece to the moon,” Opher Doron, the manager of Israel Aerospace Industries’ Space Division, said. “We made it all the way to the moon. This is a great accomplishment. We are the seventh country to make it all the way to the moon.”

Back in 2008, NASA has signed an agreement with the Israel Space Agency (ISA) to cooperatively utilize the Israeli nonprofit SpaceIL’s commercial lunar mission. The US space agency contributed a laser retroreflector array to aid with ground tracking and Deep Space Network support to aid in mission communication. ISA and SpaceIL shared data with NASA from the SpaceIL lunar magnetometer installed aboard the spacecraft.

The instrument, which was developed in collaboration with the Weizmann Institute of Science, measured the magnetic field on and above the landing site. If the landing would have been successful and the instrument active, the data collected by it would have been made publicly available through NASA’s Planetary Data System.

There is a possibility that super-Earth planet orbiting the Barnard b (or GJ 699 b) star could potentially be having atmosphere and possibly life.

The planet is likely cold (-170 degrees centigrade), but scientists believe that it could still have the potential to harbor primitive life if it has a large, hot iron/nickel core and enhanced geothermal activity. Scientists have published their findings in a paper titled, “X-Ray, UV, Optical Irradiances and Age of Barnard’s Star’s New Super Earth Planet — ‘Can Life Find a Way’ on Such a Cold Planet?” [PDF].

Scientists say that geothermal heating could support ‘life zones’ under its surface, akin to subsurface lakes found in Antarctica. They say that surface temperature on Jupiter’s icy moon Europa is similar to Barnard b but, because of tidal heating, Europa probably has liquid oceans under its icy surface.

The discovery of Barnard’s Star b was announced in November 2018 in the academic journal Nature. An international team of researchers led by Ribas of the Institute of Space Studies of Catalonia (IEEC), and Institute of Space Sciences (ICE, CSIC) based its analysis on 18 years of observations combined with newly acquired data.

Barnard’s Star b, with a mass just over three times that of the Earth, orbits Barnard’s Star, a red dwarf star, every 233 days and at roughly the same distance that Mercury orbits the Sun. It passes near the dim star’s snow line.

Scientists have obtained high-precision photometry of Barnard’s Star (as well as dozens of other stars) for the past 15 years. This data, along with that of other observers, was included in a recent comprehensive study led by Borja Toledo-Padrón, a doctoral student at the Institute of Astrophysics of the Canary Islands, University of La Laguna. Although very faint, it may be possible for Barnard b to be imaged by future very large telescopes, according to Guinan. “Such observations will shed light on the nature of the planet’s atmosphere, surface, and potential habitability,” he added.

Gigabot X, an open source industrial FPF 3D printer, developed by engineers from Michigan Technological University and re:3D, Inc. could soon be used to manufacture outdoor sporting goods such as kayak paddles, snowshoes, and skateboards.

The newly developed 3D printer can use waste plastic particles and reform it into large, strong prints. Because of the unique challenges presented by sporting goods — size, durability, specificity — the team chose several Upper Peninsula-inspired items. The findings of the study have been published in Additive Manufacturing.

In the paper the team lays out how fab labs, which are prototyping and technical workshops that allow personal digital fabrication, and other 3D printing hubs like makerspaces, public libraries or schools can economically sustain themselves while printing environmentally friendly products using FPF. In some cases, the return on investment for a Gigabot X reached above 1,000 percent for high-capacity use paired with recyclable feedstock.

That’s a hallmark of the Gigabot X — last year a Michigan Tech and re:3D collaborative study showed that it could be used with a wide range of plastics plucked from the waste stream to live on in a new productive life. The system is based on a previous design from the MOST Lab, the recyclebot, which makes waste plastic filament for 3D printers. Pearce’s team has looked deep into better ways to sort, sift and classify plastic to improve its 3D printability. Melting and extruding, however, does weaken plastic, it can withstand five cycles before it’s mechanically compromised. What’s new with the Gigabot X is the process called fused particle fabrication (FPF) or fused granular fabrication (FGF) that skips the step of making filament before 3-D printing and saves on one melt cycle. Basically, it prints directly from shredded waste. The Gigabot X’s size and versatility to use any material including waste is reflected in the machine’s economics.

While not cheap by household standards — the Gigabot X runs around $18,500 — the upfront investment has greater potential return. The team used three case studies: a skateboard deck, double-bladed kayak paddle — both child-sized and adult-sized fitted on an aluminum pipe — and snowshoes.

Using their sporting goods prints, Pearce and his team compared costs of low-end and high-end options for commercially available products, prints with commercial filament, prints with commercial pellets and prints with recycled plastic. They ran these against four capacity scenarios: continuous printing, one new start per day, two new starts per day and printing once per week. The printed kayak paddle, which was the trickiest to produce and compare because of the metal pipe, was financially comparable to the least expensive off-the-shelf paddle. Skateboards and snowshoes were both easy to produce and significantly lower in cost than commercial products. FPF printing beat the economics of even the cheapest decks using commercial pellets and dropped in cost using waste plastic. Over their lifetime, if operated even only once a day, the Gigabot X could produce millions of dollars of sporting goods products.