Show Notes 15 July 2022
Story 1: Gene-edited rice could help tackle climate change
Source: TheVerge.com Story by Justine Calma
Link: https://www.theverge.com/2022/6/22/23178791/crispr-gene-editing-rice-soil-climate-change
- What if you could use gene-editing technology to boost the ability of rice [the world’s number one crop] to fight climate change as it grows?
- Recently researchers at the Innovative Genomics Institute in Berkeley, California announced their plan to genetically enhance rice to increase its ability to trap carbon dioxide.
- All plants naturally take in the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide during photosynthesis. And eventually, they transfer that carbon dioxide into the soil.
- Using the gene-editing technology called CRISPR the Innovative Genomics Institute team plans to make precise changes to the rice plant’s genetic information to super charge its ability to absorb more carbon dioxide.
- In addition, the research team will be working to boost the capacity of the soil in a rice field to retain, rather than release, greenhouse gasses.
- TUTORIAL ON CRISPR:
Source: https://www.newscientist.com/definition/what-is-crispr/
CRISPR stands for Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats Repetitive DNA sequences, called CRISPR, were observed in bacteria with “spacer” DNA sequences in between the repeats that exactly match viral sequences.
The essence of CRISPR is simple: it’s a way of finding a specific bit of DNA inside a cell. After that, the next step in CRISPR gene editing is usually to alter that piece of DNA. However, CRISPR has also been adapted to do other things too, such as turning genes on or off without altering their sequence.
CRISPR is widely used for scientific research, and in the not too distant future many of the plants and animals in our farms, gardens or homes may have been altered with CRISPR.
Story 2: China recently used a huge “drag sail” to clear up space junk
Source: Interesting Enginnering.com Story by Loukia Papadopoulos
Link: https://interestingengineering.com/chinese-engineers-drag-sail-technology
- We’ve all heard about “space junk” orbiting our planet.
- Our Department of Defense estimates there’s about 30,000 pieces of orbital debris that includes about 5,000 dead satellites.
- Recently, Chinese scientists at the Shanghai Academy of Spaceflight Technology demonstrated a remarkable way to clean up space trash using a huge sail.
- The proof-of-concept demonstration used an approximately 270 square foot sail [made from an incredibly thin membrane, only one-tenth the thickness of a human hair] to trap and then remove the final stage component of one of their Long March 2 rockets from Earth’s orbit.
- Here’s how it worked:
- Once the module carrying the giant sail came close to the rocket debris the sail automatically unfolded and snagged it.
- The giant sail then caused the rocket’s orbit to rapidly decay drawing it back into the atmosphere where it and the sail disintegrated.
- We’re bound to see more use of this in the future as drag sails offer a relatively low-cost solution.
- My take – This is a key step forward, but not the only idea active today to address this problem. For example, there’s the UK’s Harpoon Hunter – Weighing in at about 220 pounds, this target-savvy satellite combines a harpoon that shoots out at 65 feet per second with a net that’s 16 feet wide to trap space junk and pull it back to Earth’s atmosphere. See: https://www.popsci.com/space/space-garbage-clean-up/
The Popular Science article outlines multiple solutions in action and on the drawing board.
Story 3: U.S. Military Wants to Send Fusion Reactor Powered Test Craft into Space Within Five Years
Source: Newsweek Story by Ed Browne
Link: https://www.newsweek.com/american-military-fusion-reactor-space-avalanche-energy-orbitron-1721359
Source: Axios
Link: https://www.axios.com/pro/climate-deals/2022/05/31/avalanche-energy-bets-on-tiny-nuclear-fusion
- The U.S. military’s Defense Innovation Unit wants to send an experimental craft into space powered by a tiny nuclear fusion reactor, and it has partnered with a private company called Avalanche Energy to get a prototype power system operational by 2027.
- Avalanche Energy’s breakthrough solution is a small reactor that uses the same nuclear fusion process that powers the sun.
- Quick tutorial on nuclear fusion:
- Nuclear fusion is a reaction in which two or more atomic nuclei are combined to form one or more different atomic nuclei and subatomic particles. The difference in mass between the reactants and products is manifested as either the release or the absorption of energy.
- Called the Orbitron, Avalanche Energy’s mini nuclear fusion reactor is about the size of a lunch box, which the company says you can hold in one hand.
- And here’s a really cool feature of the company’s approach to powering a space craft – the tiny modular Orbitron nuclear fusion reactors can be strung together like battery cells to make it possible to scale up a spacecraft’s power system as needed.
Story 4: New sailplane could cruise Mars for months on only wind
Source: Popular Science
Link: https://www.popsci.com/science/mars-plane-design/
- A team of aerospace engineers from the University of Arizona and NASA Ames Research Center recently disclosed their prototype for a Mars Sailplane that would only need the power of the wind to fly in the Martian atmosphere.
- The experimental craft looks to me like a big model airplane with a wingspan of about 10 feet
- Creating a vehicle that can fly on Mars presents big challenges, such as vast dust storms, less surface gravity, and an atmosphere 100 times thinner than our own.
- Last year, NASA’s Ingenuity Mars helicopter successfully flew on Mars, but it needs constant solar power to operate.
- To create a non-powered solution, the design team took advantage of the dynamic soaring technique albatross birds use to ride air currents for thousands of miles above the ocean without needing to land or rest.
- The Mars Sailplane team also plans to engineer the craft to be completely autonomous, with an onboard computer that will constantly monitor wind conditions to find the optimal trajectory to maintain flight.
- And here’s what makes the lightweight and inexpensive sailplane’s design really clever – it’s an inflatable craft that can fit into a shoebox size carrier and then be inflated when it’s delivered to Mars.
- With the ability to fly for days or even months without fuel or an engine, NASA says we’ll be able to explore areas of Mars we’ve never been able to reach to date.