NASA Inflatable Heat Shield Finds Strength in Flexibility

HIAD undergoing testing by Boeing. Credit. BoeingHow does something that looks like a stack of orange inner tubes covered in a black tarp survive temperatures reaching 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit as it plunges through the atmosphere? An upcoming technology demonstration uses advanced materials to make a heat shield that's tougher than it looks.

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Pilot Project Tests New High-Capacity Transmission Lines

Power lines by Pok Rie-PexelsVEIR, an early-stage technology company based in Woburn, Mass., is pioneering the first application of superconducting transmission over long distances, a key component to deliver renewable sources of energy safely and reliably from where it is generated to where it is needed, often cross-country. VEIR is teaming up with National Grid, an electricity, natural gas, and clean energy delivery company with operations in the US and UK, that will aid the project in product development with the joint goal of demonstrating the new technology on a protected area of the grid.  

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Thermal Control Designs Keep Astronauts Cool on Space Station

Astronauts at work on Tiangong Space StationFor astronauts, staying cool and comfortable on China's Tiangong space station is no problem. The station orbits Earth in about 90 minutes at an altitude of 400 km. It experiences large fluctuations in temperature, ranging from 150 degrees Celsius when the station is exposed to the sun to minus 100 degrees Celsius when over the night side of the planet. So how to protect station residents from extreme heat and cold during their six-month stay in orbit? The answer lies in several thermal control designs courtesy of the China Academy of Space Technology.

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Three Questions: Emre Gençer on the role of blue hydrogen in decarbonizing the world’s energy systems

Credit: akitada31/PixabayIn the past several years, hydrogen energy has increasingly become a more central aspect of the clean energy transition. Hydrogen can produce clean, on-demand energy that could complement variable renewable energy sources such as wind and solar power. That being said, pathways for deploying hydrogen at scale have yet to be fully explored. In particular, the optimal form of hydrogen production remains in question.

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First Radio-Astronomy Cryogenic Receivers with All-Metal 3D-Printed RF Components

Image: IMAGE: A 3D-PRINTED CORRUGATED HORN (LEFT). A BAND 1 RECEIVER WITH THE ALL-METAL 3D-PRINTED CORRUGATED HORN INSTALLED (RIGHT). CREDIT: NAOJ, ASIAAThe NAOJ ALMA Project and Advanced Technology Center have successfully fabricated corrugated all-metal 3D-printed horns for the ALMA Band 1 receivers (Radio Frequency: 35-50 GHz). Since around 2015, the NAOJ ALMA Project and the Advanced Technology Center have been studying the applications of additive manufacturing (AM), which produces three-dimensional objects by depositing, joining, and solidifying materials based on 3D models input to a control computer. Since astronomical receivers often have only one or two devices of each type per instrument and they require unique custom-made components, there is potential for effective use of additive manufacturing.

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Explained: Why ISRO again test-fired its CE-20 Cryogenic Engine, ahead of next flight in 2023

ISRO has successfully test-fired its CE-20 Cryogenic engine, as part of the preparation for the next launch of its heaviest rocket. Credit: WION The Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) has successfully test-fired its CE-20 Cryogenic engine, as part of the preparation for the next launch of its heaviest rocket. This latest test comes a week after the Indian Space agency placed 36 satellites of the UK-based 'OneWeb', into Low Earth Orbit, using its heaviest rocket LVM3. The next launch to be carried out using the LVM3 will be performed sometime around January or February 2023, Chairman, ISRO, Dr. S. Somanath told WION. 

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Azenta Hosts First Cryogenic Considerations for Cell & Gene Therapy Symposium

Image: David Lewandowski, Director, Business Development for Cell and Gene Therapy at Azenta speaks at the symposium. Credit: AzentaAzenta Life Sciences, a leading provider of life sciences solutions worldwide, hosted the Cryogenic Considerations for Cell and Gene Therapy Symposium in Boston, MA October 17-19th. The symposium brought together over 100 participants across over 60 organizations including top cryobiology experts to discuss the nuances of cryogenic supply chain, transient warming, and thawing of advanced therapies—from collection of raw materials to manufacturing and distribution of cell and gene therapies.

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Almac Unveils New Cryogenic Service Solution for Advanced Therapy Trials

Almac Unveils New Cryogenic Service Solution for Advanced Therapy TrialsAlmac Clinical Services, a member of The Almac Group, announced a new state-of-the-art cryogenic service solution within its Durham, N. C. campus to support cell and gene therapies. This latest investment from Almac adds to the company’s overall $4 million investment to date in innovative cold chain technology in North Carolina. The Cryogenic Service Solution ensures an unbroken chain of custody from product line to patient, for sponsors of advanced therapy trials. 

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Cryo-EM Reveals Cold-sensing Cell Channels Manipulated by Chemicals to Induce Cold Sensation

The image is an interpretation of the role of the TRPM8 channel—the primary player responsible for cold sensation in humans. The concept of sculpting ice refers not only to the cold sensation itself triggered by the opening of this channel, but also to the process of discovering further how its complex structure works. Credit: Joana C. CarvalhoA team of researchers affiliated with the Duke University School of Medicine, Lehigh University and the National Institutes of Health has revealed the molecular means by which cold-sensing channels in cells are manipulated by certain chemicals to induce a cold sensation. The study is published in the journal Science.

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Air Liquide to Design Cryogenic Tanks for Vega-E Space Launcher

rocket launchAir Liquide is advancing space exploration, having signed a contract with space propulsion expert Avio for the design of the new generation of cryogenic tanks for the upper stage of the future Vega-E launcher. The project is coordinated by the European Space Agency (ESA), and the launcher will use cryogenic tanks filled with a mixture of oxygen stored at -182° C and methane stored at -161° C to act as propellant for the oxygen-methane engine. 

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Video: Pushing the Limits of Cryogenic Technology

 Left: Interior of the Goldeneye The extremely low temperatures required for performing state-of-the-art physics experiments and operating large quantum processors have been achieved in Project Goldeneye. IBM researchers have successfully demonstrated the proof-of-concept technology for a dilution refrigerator capable of cooling future generations of quantum experiments. You can watch a sneak peek of the IBM Quantum System Two here

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NASA’s SpaceX Crew-5 Launches to International Space Station

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carrying the company's Dragon spacecraft is launched on NASA’s SpaceX Crew-5 mission to the International Space Station Wednesday, Oct. 5, 2022, at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.  A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carrying the company's Dragon spacecraft is launched on NASA’s SpaceX Crew-5 mission to the International Space Station with NASA astronauts Nicole Mann and Josh Cassada, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) astronaut Koichi Wakata, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Anna Kikina onboard, Wednesday, Oct. 5, 2022, at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. NASA’s SpaceX Crew-5 mission is the fifth crew rotation mission of the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft and Falcon 9 rocket to the International Space Station as part of the agency’s Commercial Crew Program. Mann, Cassada, Wakata, and Kikini launched at 12:00 p.m. EDT from Launch Complex 39A at the Kennedy Space Center to begin a six-month mission onboard the orbital outpost. Credits: NASA/Joel KowskyThe crew members assigned to NASA’s SpaceX Crew-5 mission went into orbit following their launch to the International Space Station on Wednesday, October 5, from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The international crew will serve as the agency’s fifth commercial crew rotation mission with SpaceX aboard the orbital laboratory.

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Cryogenic Blast Freezing in Minutes Increases Throughput

Credit: CryometrixThe biotech and biopharma industries utilize freezers to rapidly freeze and store thermally sensitive products such as vaccines and biopharmaceuticals as well as biological materials such as blood plasma. However, conventional compressor-based systems can take hours to reach an ultra-low target temperature, which slows production throughput. 

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Element Strengthens Cryogenic and Hydrogen Testing Capacity

ElementUK-based testing, inspection and certification services provider the Element Materials Technology Group (Element) has announced that it will expand its cryogenic testing capacities at its Milan laboratory. By investing in new fatigue testing frames, Element will strengthen its position in both aerospace and the energy sector by offering testing for hydrogen industry applications. 

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Private Rocket Startup, Astrophel Aerospace, to Launch Rocket in Three Years; Initiates Testing of Cryogenic Engine

Astrophel AerospacePune-based private rocket startup, Astrophel Aerospace, will soon test its cryogenic engine that would power its Astra rocket, said the promoters. "We have completed the injector cold and hot flow tests. The engine design has been completed, and soon testing will happen," Suyash Bafna, founder and CEO told IANS.

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The Magneto-Optic Modulator

Many state-of-the-art technologies work at incredibly low temperatures. Superconducting microprocessors and quantum computers promise to revolutionize computation, but scientists need to keep them just above absolute zero (-459.67° Fahrenheit) to protect their delicate states. Still, ultra-cold components have to interface with room temperature systems, providing both a challenge and an opportunity for engineers. An international team of scientists, led by UC Santa Barbara’s, has designed a device to help cryogenic computers talk with their fair-weather counterparts. The mechanism uses a magnetic field to convert data from electrical current to pulses of light. The light can then travel via fiber-optic cables, which can transmit more information than regular electrical cables while minimizing the heat that leaks into the cryogenic system. The team’s results appear in the journal Nature Electronics. “A device like this could enable seamless integration with cutting-edge technologies based on superconductors, for example,” said Pintus, a project scientist in UC Santa Barbara’s Optoelectronics Research Group. Superconductors can carry electrical current without any energy loss, but typically require temperatures below -450° Fahrenheit to work properly. Right now, cryogenic systems use standard metal wires to connect with room-temperature electronics. Unfortunately, these wires transfer heat into the cold circuits and can only transmit a small amount of data at a time. Pintus and his collaborators wanted to address both these issues at once. “The solution is using light in an optical fiber to transfer information instead of using electrons in a metal cable,” he said. Fiber optics are standard in modern telecommunications. These thin glass cables carry information as pulses of light far faster than metal wires can carry electrical charges. As a result, fiberoptic cables can relay 1,000 times more data than conventional wires over the same time span. And glass is a good insulator, meaning it will transfer far less heat to the cryogenic components than a metal wire. However, using fiber optics requires an extra step: converting data from electrical signals into optical signals using a modulator. This is a routine process at ambient conditions, but becomes a bit tricky at cryogenic temperatures.  Pintus and his collaborators built a device that translates electrical input into pulses of light. An electric current creates a magnetic field that changes the optical properties of a synthetic garnet. Scientists refer to this as the “magneto-optic effect.” The magnetic field changes the garnet’s refractive index, essentially its “density” to light. By changing this property, Pintus can tune the amplitude of the light that circulates in a micro-ring resonator and interacts with the garnet. This creates bright and dark pulses that carry information through the fiberoptic cable like Morse code in a telegraph wire. “This is the first high-speed modulator ever fabricated using the magneto-optic effect,” Pintus remarked. Other researchers have created modulators using capacitor-like devices and electric fields. However, these modulators usually have high electrical impedance — they resist the flow of alternating current — making them a poor match for superconductors, which have essentially zero electrical impedance. Since the magneto-optic modulator has low impedance, the scientists hope it will be able to better interface with superconductor circuits. The team also took steps to make their modulator as practical as possible. It operates at wavelengths of 1,550 nanometers, the same wavelength of light used in internet telecommunications. It was produced using standard methods, which simplifies its manufacturing. The project, funded by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, was a collaborative effort. Pintus and group director John Bowers at UC Santa Barbara led the project, from conception, modelling and design through fabrication and testing. The synthetic garnet was grown and characterized by a group of researchers from the Tokyo Institute of Technology who have collaborated with the team at UCSB’s Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering on several research projects in the past. Another partner, the Quantum Computing and Engineering group of BBN Raytheon, develops the kinds of superconducting circuits that could benefit from the new technology. Their collaboration with UCSB is a longstanding one. Scientists at BBN performed the low-temperature testing of the device to verify its performance in a realistic superconducting computing environment. The device’s bandwidth is around 2 gigabits per second. It’s not a lot compared to data links at room temperature, but Pintus said it’s promising for a first demonstration. The team also needs to make the device more efficient for it to become useful in practical applications. However, they believe they can achieve this by replacing the garnet with a better material. “We would like to investigate other materials,” he added, “and we think we can achieve a higher bitrate. For instance, europium-based materials show a magneto-optic effect 300 times larger than the garnet.” There are plenty of materials to choose from, but not a lot of information to help Pintus and his colleagues make that choice. Scientists have studied the magneto-optic properties of only a few materials at low temperatures. “The promising results demonstrated in this work could pave the way for a new class of energy efficient cryogenic devices,” Pintus said, “leading the research toward high-performing (unexplored) magneto-optic materials that can operate at low temperatures.” Image 1: Electricity flowing through a metal coil generates electric (purple) and magnetic (faint green) fields. This changes the properties of the substrate, which tunes the resonance ring (red) to different frequencies. The whole setup enables the scientists to convert a continuous beam of light (red on left) into pulses that can carry data through a fiber-optic cable. Credit: BRIAN LONG  Image 2: The magneto-optic modular: Gold coil (top), synthetic garnet (green in middle), silicon micro-ring resonator and waveguide (bottom). Port 1 and 2 are the input and output for the optical transmission. Credit: PAOLO PINTUS ET AL.Many state-of-the-art technologies work at incredibly low temperatures. Superconducting microprocessors and quantum computers promise to revolutionize computation, but scientists need to keep them just above absolute zero (-459.67° Fahrenheit) to protect their delicate states. Still, ultra-cold components have to interface with room temperature systems, providing both a challenge and an opportunity for engineers.

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IBM Scientists Cool Down the World’s Largest Quantum-ready Cryogenic Concept System

Pat Gumann, IBM Research staff member, and Goldeneye technical lead, adjusts the bottom of the "super-fridge,” a dilution refrigerator larger than any commercially available today. Credit: Connie Zhou for IBMWe create knowledge by exploring reality’s frontiers: we study the coldest, the furthest, the lowest and highest energies, and the smallest things in the universe. But reaching these frontiers is no small feat — typically, it requires building all-new apparatuses that push the limits of modern technology. That’s why we built the world’s largest dilution refrigerator by experimental volume. 

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Allen Dufort: Coding a cutting-edge space telescope

In July, as the world marveled at the first images of the Cosmic Cliffs and previously invisible areas of star birth revealed by the James Webb Space Telescope, Allen Dufort felt excited that he’d soon make his own contributions to space exploration.In July, as the world marveled at the first images of the Cosmic Cliffs and previously invisible areas of star birth revealed by the James Webb Space Telescope, Allen Dufort felt excited that he’d soon make his own contributions to space exploration. As a software engineer intern, Dufort is supporting Brown University Professor of Physics Gregory Tucker's NASA-funded project to help build a telescope that will enable the study of distant planets. As part of the team, Dufort spent the summer of 2022 writing computer code for components of the telescope that the team from Brown is able to build, thanks to a grant from NASA.

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Cryogenic Operation of LEDs Results in Improved Quantum Efficiency

Illustration of gravitational waves produced by two orbiting black holes. [Credit: Henze/NASA]Terrestrial Gravitational Wave Detectors

Terrestrial gravitational wave detectors have been used to identify various gravitational wave sources. For example, researchers have detected potential black hole neutron star mergers, binary neutron star inspirals, and binary black hole mergers via the advanced Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO). The aLIGO detectors' most sensitive band is limited by thermal noise from the primary optics and quantum shot noise. The thermal noise is combated in the KAGRA detector via cooling its core optics.

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3D Systems Announces Copper-nickel Alloy for PBF-LB

3D Systems intends to add CuNi30 to its general portfolio in Q4 2022 (Courtesy 3D Systems)3D Systems has announced CuNi30 – a corrosion-resistant, copper-nickel alloy for use with its DMP Flex 350, metal additive manufacturing machine. The material is a result from the company’s collaboration with HII’s Newport News Shipbuilding division to develop materials and process parameters for the Laser Beam Powder Bed Fusion (PBF-LB) process.

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