An anonymous reader quotes a report from Phys.org: NASA and the nation’s top federal nuclear research lab on Friday put out a request for proposals for a fission surface power system. NASA is collaborating with the U.S. Department of Energy’s Idaho National Laboratory to establish a sun-independent power source for missions to the moon by the end of the decade. If successful in supporting a sustained human presence on the moon, the next objective would be Mars. NASA says fission surface power could provide sustained, abundant power no matter the environmental conditions on the moon or Mars. The reactor would be built on Earth and then sent to the moon.

Submitted plans for the fission surface power system should include a uranium-fueled reactor core, a system to convert the nuclear power into usable energy, a thermal management system to keep the reactor cool, and a distribution system providing no less than 40 kilowatts of continuous electric power for 10 years in the lunar environment. Some other requirements include that it be capable of turning itself off and on without human help, that it be able to operate from the deck of a lunar lander, and that it can be removed from the lander and run on a mobile system and be transported to a different lunar site for operation. Additionally, when launched from Earth to the moon, it should fit inside a 12-foot (4-meter) diameter cylinder that’s 18 feet (6 meters) long. It should not weigh more than 13,200 pounds (6,000 kilograms). The proposal requests are for an initial system design and must be submitted by Feb. 19.

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Source: Slashdot – NASA Seeks Ideas For a Nuclear Reactor On the Moon

Satellite trackers have been working overtime to figure out just how much dangerous debris Russia created when it destroyed one of its own satellites early Monday — and the picture they’ve painted looks bleak. Multiple visual simulations of Russia’s anti-satellite, or ASAT, test show a widespread cloud of debris that will likely menace other objects in orbit for years. The Verge reports: It’s going to take weeks or even months to fully understand just how bad the situation is, but early visualizations of the ASAT test created by satellite trackers show an extensive trail of space debris left in the wake of the breakup. The fragments appear like a dotted snake in orbit, stretching out and moving in roughly the same direction that Kosmos 1408 used to move around Earth. And there’s one thing the visualizers agree on: this snake of debris isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. “There will be some potential collision risk to most satellites in [low Earth orbit] from the fragmentation of Cosmos 1408 over the next few years to decades,” LeoLabs, a private space tracking company in the US, wrote in a blog post.

Two visualizations created by the European Union’s Space Surveillance and Tracking (SST) network and space software company AGI reveal what likely happened in the first moment of impact when Russia’s missile intercepted Kosmos 1408. They both show how the debris cloud grew instantly and spread throughout space. AGI’s simulation also shows just how close the cloud comes to intersecting with the International Space Station, validating NASA’s concerns and the agency’s decision to have the astronauts shelter in place.

Another visualization created by Hugh Lewis, a professor of engineering at the University of Southampton specializing in space debris, shows just how widely the debris from Kosmos 1408 has spread out in space. Lewis explains that when Russia’s missile hit the satellite, each of the fragments that were created got a little kick, sending them to higher and lower altitudes. Each piece is moving at a different speed depending on the height of its orbit. Lewis says that the cloud will continue to morph over time. The debris fragments in the lower orbits will fall to Earth and out of orbit more quickly, while the ones in higher orbits will stay in space much longer.

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Source: Slashdot – Visualizations Show the Extensive Cloud of Debris Russia’s Anti-Satellite Test Created

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Guardian: [R]esearchers have created a hi-tech option for canines left home alone: a ball that allows them to call their owners on the old dog and bone. The device — nicknamed the DogPhone — is a soft ball that, when moved, sends a signal to a laptop that launches a video call, and the sound of a ringing telephone. The owner can choose whether to take the call, and when to hang up, while they can also place a call to their pet — although the dog has to move the ball to pick up.

The research, which is published in the Proceedings of the Association for Computing Machinery on Computer-Human interaction and is being presented at the 2021 ACM Interactive Surfaces and Spaces Conference in Lodz, Poland, reveals how [Dr Ilyena Hirskyj-Douglas, of the University of Glasgow, and first author of the research] and researchers from Aalto University in Finland settled on a soft ball to create the device. The DogPhone underwent a number of iterations to ensure it had the right level of sensitivity towards movement — these were tested over 16 days by Hirskyj-Douglas and her nine-year-old black labrador, Zack.

A diary detailing the calls between owner and pet suggests the latter did not always seem to know what he was doing — despite having been shown five times how the system worked. “Dog rang me but was not interested in our call instead was checking for things in his bed,” Hirskyj-Douglas noted during the testing of one iteration. Another entry reveals the potential pitfalls of the DogPhone. “Dog walking around wagging and then laying down. I was in a meeting so had to hang up quickly,” one record reveals. The team say that many of the calls made by Zack — who was left alone for about eight hours during testing days — appear to have been accidents although they caution that may simply be the human perspective. “For example, when the dog triggered the system with their butt, this could have been deliberate and the dog’s unique way of triggering an interaction,” they write.

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Source: Slashdot – DogPhone Lets Pets Ring Their Owners