Asteroid Mining

Asteroid mining could open up a new space frontier and key to space exploration. Asteroids are leftover debris from the early solar system formation and the asteroid belt exists between Mars and Jupiter also many asteroids orbit the sun.

Scientists think asteroids are treasures and they could provide many resources. They contain many materials and minerals  like water, Iron, Nickel, Magnesium, zinc, tin, lead, silver,copper, platinum, tungsten ...etc. Asteroid mining operations might supply the Earth and its colonies on other planets with a plenitude of materials.

   

Maximum fuel is spent in overcoming the earth's gravity and need to carry fuel for further space exploration, but if rocket fuel was sourced from space for space, that problem can be avoided. When water is broken into its constituents  hydrogen and oxygen, you have two of the most commonly used elements in rocket fuel.

Asteroids also give us the potential to create tools in space. “Iron is abundant,” says Chris Lewicki(Planetary Resources president and chief engineer) as is nickel and cobalt. Using technology such as 3D printing you can grab material off asteroids and 3D print something that never has to be on a rocket.” Tools, machines and even habitats can then be built off Earth, reducing the cost of exploration even further.

NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft was successfully launched from Cape Canaveral 8 September 2016 with the help of 1.2 million pounds of thrust provided by an Atlas V rocket. The spacecraft will journey to a near-Earth asteroid known as Bennu and return an asteroid sample to Earth 2023. This will be NASA’s first asteroid sample return mission.

Of course we have to wait and see how this nascent technology will progress.

China Using Facial Recognition For Payments.

China is using Facial recognition to do transactions from banking,stores, transportation services, tracking down criminals and access to facilities.

Chinese startup company FACE++ worth $1 Billion is providing many applications. One such app called Alipay is being used to transfer money using only face as credentials. One of Face++’s biggest clients is Ant Financial, the financial subsidiary of Alibaba and developer of online payment platform Alipay.

Ant Financial is currently seeking regulatory approval that would allow it to use Face++’s software to confirm the identities of prospective customers who are looking to start an online bank account. Employees simply show their face to gain entry to the company’s headquarters.

Another Chinese company Baidu which operates most popular search engine, Now developing a system that lets people pick up rail tickets by showing their face.

Come on spruce up.

Closer Study Of Sun

The first investigation of the solar environs with space probes was instigated in 1974 and 1976 respectively when two probes, Helios 1 and Helios 2, were launched successfully.

Helios 1 and Helios 2 developed by Germany in collaboration NASA were launched from the JFK Space Center at Cape Canaveral, Florida, on Dec. 10, 1974,  and Jan. 15, 1976, respectively to study Sun’s magnetic field, the solar wind,the relative strength of cosmic rays, and measurements of meteoroid loss from the solar system. Both traveled closer to the Sun than any other spacecraft.

Helios 1 flew within 45 million km (28 million miles) and Helios 2 within 43.4 million km. Equipped with special heat-dispersal systems, the probes were able to withstand extremely high temperatures, which reached an estimated 700 °F  or  370 °C.

These probes went into orbit and completed the primary missions successfully by the early 1980's but these probes were active till 1985. Till today these probes are still in the orbit around the Sun and are no longer functional.

Both probes collected important data about the processes that cause the solar wind and the acceleration of the particles that make up the interplanetary medium and cosmic rays. These observations were made over a ten-year period from solar minimum in 1976 to a solar maximum in the early 1980's.

Voyager 1 Goes Interstellar

NASA's Voyager 1 and 2 launched in 1977 have completed 40 years of space exploration and still on their extraordinary odyssey .

Voyager 1 as of now is at 20 billion km from the sun, NASA officials say Voyager 1 will have enough power to keep communicating with Earth until 2020, possibly 2025. Destined to wander the Milky Way .

The primary mission was to conduct close-up studies of Jupiter and Saturn, Saturn's rings, and the larger moons of the two planets.

Like Voyager 1, Voyager 2 is still active and operational. It took a different route through the solar system, Voyager 2 went on to explore Uranus and Neptune, and is still the only spacecraft to have visited those outer planets and is expected to follow its twin into interstellar space a few years from now.

Both spacecraft are still sending scientific information about their surroundings through the Deep Space Network, or DSN.

What happened to Mars Magnetic field

Magnetic fields act as the first line of defense against the solar wind. Charged particles in the solar wind are deflected around Earth’s magnetic field while a small fraction are directed in toward the poles. This is why aurora can be seen near the north and south poles.

The magnetosphere is very important to everyone on the planet because it keeps most solar wind that could hurt power and satellites away from the Earth; charged particles coming out of the Sun have to follow the rules and can not jump from one field line to the next to get down to Earth.

When the liquid iron core of Mars cooled and solidified it stopped generating a magnetic field all that is left is a little residual ferromagnetism from the rocks of the Martian crust.

Earth has a liquid core surrounding its solid iron core (actually an alloy of iron and nickel). The liquid core is rotating and that rotation causes movements within the liquid causing the core to generate the electrical currents that provide our magnetic field.

Mars originally had the same arrangement of liquid core surrounding a solid core, so it also generated its own field. Being smaller Mars cooled much quicker than earth, eventually the liquid cooled and stopped generating a magnetic field.

Height of Geostationary Satellites

A Satellite revolving around the earth stays in its orbit because the Gravitational force is balanced by the centripetal force on the satellite.

 

or speed of the satellite  v = √ GM/r

The speed  v = Distance/Time = 2Πr/T = √ GM/r

Hence r³ = GMT²/4Π²
 

G is the gravitational constant (6.674×10⁻¹¹ N · (m/kg)²)

M is the mass of earth 5.9736 x 10²⁴ kg

T =86164.09 seconds which is earth's one rotation on its polar axis (23 hours, 56 Minutes and 4.1 seconds )

and the value of  r =  42300 kilometres

By subtracting the radius of the earth  6,384 km we get height of the Geostationary orbit which is 35916 KM.

The Orbital speed of the satellite v= 3.0746 Km/s or 11068 Km/h

The orbit of geostationary is always Equatorial.