I Don’t Doubt It

#work

me too

This is a bubble absorber. It’s formed from an array of three springs, seen end-on in the upper center, each of which is coated to make it superhydrophobic. The hollow interior of the springs is filled with air and ventilated to the atmosphere. As bubbles rise through the water, they contact the springs and readily coalesce with the interior gas. In the blink of an eye, the large bubble is almost completely absorbed into the thin air film that clings to the springs. Superhydrophobic arrays like these may be useful in power and life support systems that need to separate liquid and gas phases under low-gravity conditions. (Image credit: N. Pour and D. Thiessen, source)

For humans, swimming is relatively easy. Kick your legs, wheel your arms, and you’ll move forward. But for microswimmers, swimming can be more complicated. For them, the world is a viscous place, and the rules that we swim by can’t help them get around. In a highly viscous world, flows are reversible. Kick one limb down and you might move forward, but when you pull the limb up, you’ll be sucked right back to where you started. So microswimmers must use asymmetry in their swimming. In other words, their recovery stroke cannot be the mirror-image of their power stroke. A new study suggests that simple elastic spheres could make good microswimmers through cyclic inflation and deflation. When the sphere deflates, it buckles, making a shape unlike its inflating one. This difference in shape change is enough to propel the sphere a little with each cycle. Right now the test system is a macroscale one, but the researchers hope to continue miniaturizing. (Image and research credit: A. Djellouli et al.; via APS Physics; submitted by Kam-Yung Soh)

you tell ‘em, borg lady

Things Programmers Shout #654

Shout I overheard at work here at NASA. “It’s not like it’s rocket science!” “I will compile your code to a flash drive and send it to the damn sun if you don’t stop it with the null errors.” // submitted by  @space-husband

Earth’s rotation and Space shuttle launches

Last week we were talking about wind patterns and how they affect flight time. But it is also worth mentioning that Space shuttles are launched almost at all times from West to East to take advantage of the earth’s rotation

How does earth’s rotation affect shuttles ?

Earth is a spherical body rotating with some angular velocity. And as a result of this, the equator is rotating at a higher velocity than the poles. By launching a space shuttle from the equator you are getting a ‘speed boost’.  

This means that if a shuttle is launched from the pole, it has to accelerate from 0 to 17000mph to reach orbital velocity.

But if a shuttle is launched from the equator, it only needs to accelerate from 1025 to 17000mph. (that 1025mph initial velocity is given by the earth free of charge)

This saves valuable amount of fuel required for propulsion

Polar Orbits

Not all rockets are launched from the west to east and the direction is determined by the purpose of its payload.

The satellites that are used for mapping for instance follow a Polar Orbit i.e they move from north to south or vice versa and therefore during launch they cannot take advantage of the earth’s rotation.

Florida or California

Another characteristic of launching satellites is that the launching stations are generally located near the coast just in case of failure of the launch, the satellite falls in an uninhabited area.

NASA primarily uses Kennedy Space Center, Florida for east-west launches and Vandenberg Base California for polar orbits for the very same reason. ***

Rocket science is just truly breathtaking.

* How fast are YOU spinning on Earth’s axis right now?

** Also check out about Retrograde motion

*** This statement holds true for most launches.

that’s the Captain’s prerogative 

The second flight of Europe’s new Vega launcher is set for a 10:06 PM EST liftoff tonight. It carries 3 satellites for the European Space Agency, the Vietnamese government and students in Estonia.

The launch can be watched here.

  The Estonian satellite, although weighing a mere three pounds, will be testing a solar tether-like propulsion concept.