Kirameki - 2
24-Jan-2017: Japan's military launches its first communications satellite
The satellite was launched on an H-2A rocket from the Tanegashima Space Center in southern Japan.
Amid China’s increasing maritime activities and North Korea’s missile threat, the Kirameki-2 satellite – Japan’s first military communications satellite – is designed to upgrade the communications networks for the country's Self Defense Forces.
The new satellite, one of the three so-called X-band satellites planned to replace the three civilian ones currently used by the Japanese military, will strengthen military units’ ability to communicate on a high-speed and high-capacity network.
The first satellite, the Kirameki-1, was planned to go into space last July, but was damaged during transport to a launch port in French Guiana. It is currently undergoing repair and is scheduled for launch next year.
As the main US ally in Asia grows increasingly alarmed by China’s military activity in the region and missile threats from North Korea, the new satellites will also expand Japan’s capacity to communicate across more territory in an emergency.
The island nation is in the midst of a territorial dispute with its neighbors in the East China Sea over a group of uninhabited islands that China calls the Diaoyu, while Japan calls them the Senkaku. According to a UN report in 1969, the islets may contain sizable petroleum reserves, which renewed territorial interests in the region.
Tensions between China and Japan escalated in 2016, with Japan scrambling to meet new challenges both in air and in the sea. Japan's Ministry of Defense announced Friday that Chinese aircraft approached Japanese airspace 644 times between April and December, almost doubling the number from the previous year. In December, in what China called a routine exercise, China sent out its first aircraft carrier with several warships into the passage between the Japanese Southwestern islands and the Pacific.
The new satellite program is also seen as part of the effort for Japan to assume a stronger security role in Asia under right-leaning Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.
After the 2011 earthquake and tsunami, which caused nuclear accidents and more than 15,000 fatalities, Japan also hopes to use the new satellites for emergency response in the case of a natural disaster.
They could also help Japanese troops in overseas operations, including its international peacekeeping operations in South Sudan and Somali.
Lucy and Psyche missions
19-Jan-2017: NASA approves Psyche mission to explore iron-rich asteroid "16 Psyche".
NASA is working to send a spacecraft to explore iron-rich asteroid that may help scientists to better understand the formation of solar system.
The mission has been named 'Psyche', which will focus on the asteroid called '16 Psyche' thought to be made of iron and nickel. It could perhaps be a part of what was an earlier planet as large as Mars.
The mission will be launched in October 2023 and will arrive at the asteroid in 2030, following an Earth gravity assist spacecraft manoeuver in 2024 and a Mars flyby in 2025.
16 Psyche is the only known object of its kind in the solar system. It is nearly three times farther away from the sun than is the Earth. The asteroid measures about 210 kilometres in diameter.
Scientists believe that the asteroid might have lost its outer core through a series of collisions and the mission could shed light on how planets and other masses broke up into cores, mantles and crusts years ago.
5-Jan-2017: Lucy and Psyche to explore early Solar System
Aiming to find important clues to the earliest history of the solar system, NASA has announced two missions — one to explore Jupiter’s mysterious Trojan asteroids and the other to study a unique metal asteroid.
These two missions, Lucy and Psyche, are chosen from five finalists and will proceed to mission formulation, with the goal of launching in 2021 and 2023, respectively.
Lucy mission:
Lucy will visit a target-rich environment of Jupiter’s mysterious Trojan asteroids. It is a robotic spacecraft scheduled for launch on October 2021. It is slated to arrive at its first destination, a main belt asteroid, in 2025. From 2027 to 2033, Lucy will explore six Jupiter Trojan asteroids. These asteroids are trapped by Jupiter’s gravity in two swarms that share the planet’s orbit, one leading and one trailing Jupiter in its 12-year circuit around the sun. The Trojans are thought to be relics of a much earlier era in the history of the solar system, and may have formed far beyond Jupiter’s current orbit. This is a unique opportunity because the Trojans are remnants of the primordial material that formed the outer planets, they hold vital clues to deciphering the history of the solar system. Lucy, like the human fossil for which it is named, will revolutionize the understanding of our origins.
Psyche mission:
The Psyche mission will explore one of the most intriguing targets in the main asteroid belt – a giant metal asteroid, known as 16 Psyche, about three times farther away from the sun than is the Earth. This asteroid measures about 130 miles (210 kilometers) in diameter and, unlike most other asteroids that are rocky or icy bodies, is thought to be comprised mostly of metallic iron and nickel, similar to Earth’s core. The mission will help scientists understand how planets and other bodies separated into their layers – including cores, mantles and crusts – early in their histories. Psyche, also a robotic mission, is targeted to launch in October of 2023, arriving at the asteroid in 2030, following an Earth gravity assist spacecraft maneuver in 2024 and a Mars flyby in 2025.
Artificial Skin using pectin
30-Jan-2017: Scientists create artificial skin using pectin
Scientists have developed an artificial skin that can detect temperature changes. An advance that may diversify robotic and biomedical applications. The material could be grafted onto prosthetic limbs to restore temperature sensing in amputees. It could also be applied to first-aid bandages to alert health professionals of a temperature increase – a sign of infection – in wounds.
The substance responsible for temperature sensitivity was pectin, a long-chain molecule present in plant cell walls. Pectin is already used in food industry as a jellifying agent and its easy to obtain and also very cheap.
Scientists created a thin, transparent flexible film of pectin and water, which is as little as 20 micrometres thick(equivalent to the diameter of a human hair). Pectin molecules in the film have a weakly bonded double-strand structure that contains calcium ions. As temperature increases, these bonds break down and the double strands “unzip,” releasing the positively charged calcium ions.
Either the increased concentration of free calcium ions or their increased mobility results in a decrease in the electrical resistance throughout the material, which can be detected with a multimeter connected to electrodes embedded in the film.
The film senses temperature using a mechanism similar -but not identical – to the pit organs in vipers, which allow the snakes to sense warm prey in the dark by detecting radiated heat.
In those organs, ion channels in the cell membrane of sensory nerve fibers expand as temperature increases. This dilation allows calcium ions to flow, triggering electrical impulses. Existing electronic skins can sense temperature changes of less than a tenth of a degree Celsius across a five-degree temperature range.
The new skin can sense changes that are an order of magnitude smaller and have a responsivity that is two orders of magnitude larger than those of other electronic skins over a 45-degree temperature range. So far, the skin is capable of detecting these tiny changes across a range of temperatures roughly between five to 50 degrees Celsius, which is useful for robotics and biomedical applications.