This document discusses proposals for interstellar travel using beam-powered propulsion techniques. It presents three main classifications of interstellar travel: 1) Relativistic reaction propulsion using nuclear or antimatter rockets, 2) Spacetime distortions requiring exotic matter, and 3) Generation ships. It then focuses on the basics and applications of radiation propulsion, including solar and beam-powered light sails. Models are presented for photon rocket kinematics, single trips to Alpha Centauri using antimatter rockets and beam-powered sails, and a two-stage laser-pushed sail concept for roundtrips requiring much less energy than other proposals.
Why the solar system's first space elevator will likely be martianMax Fagin
Space Elevators involve lowering a tether down from orbit to the surface of a planet, then electromechanically hauling payload up the tether to space. While the concept is theoretically sound, it has been shown to be infeasible on Earth until the development of mass-produced ultra-lightweight materials with specific tensile strengths in the range of ~40 MPa/kg/m3 (~20 times stronger than Kevlar). Such strength is within the theoretical limits of Carbon Nanotubes (CNTs), but it is not known when (if ever) practical commercially available CNTs will reach this required strength. On Mars however, the lower surface gravity and lower synchronous orbit altitude allow a space elevator to be built from materials with specific strengths of only ~5 MPa/kg/m^3, which is within the range of existing CNTs, provided such materials could be mass-produced. The required tether mass and length is also significantly reduced from 9,000 tonnes and 155,000 km at Earth to only 1,500 tonnes and 70,000 km at Mars. This presentation reviews the driving engineering limits for the construction of a space elevator, and make a comparison between the construction requirements of building one on Earth and on Mars. An industrial/economic analysis is also presented to quantify the project scale, timeline, cost, and expected economic activity Mars will likely have to support before a Martian space elevator would become a profitable investment.
Why the solar system's first space elevator will likely be martianMax Fagin
Space Elevators involve lowering a tether down from orbit to the surface of a planet, then electromechanically hauling payload up the tether to space. While the concept is theoretically sound, it has been shown to be infeasible on Earth until the development of mass-produced ultra-lightweight materials with specific tensile strengths in the range of ~40 MPa/kg/m3 (~20 times stronger than Kevlar). Such strength is within the theoretical limits of Carbon Nanotubes (CNTs), but it is not known when (if ever) practical commercially available CNTs will reach this required strength. On Mars however, the lower surface gravity and lower synchronous orbit altitude allow a space elevator to be built from materials with specific strengths of only ~5 MPa/kg/m^3, which is within the range of existing CNTs, provided such materials could be mass-produced. The required tether mass and length is also significantly reduced from 9,000 tonnes and 155,000 km at Earth to only 1,500 tonnes and 70,000 km at Mars. This presentation reviews the driving engineering limits for the construction of a space elevator, and make a comparison between the construction requirements of building one on Earth and on Mars. An industrial/economic analysis is also presented to quantify the project scale, timeline, cost, and expected economic activity Mars will likely have to support before a Martian space elevator would become a profitable investment.
Ultra-fast Outflows from Active Galactic Nuclei of Seyfert I GalaxiesAshkbiz Danehkar
High Energy Phenomena Seminar, Harvard CfA, Cambridge, USA, September 7, 2016, https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.13699048 https://youtu.be/7q_wv61ou1E
Why The Solar System's First Space Elevator Will Likely be MartianMax Fagin
Space Elevators involve lowering a tether from synchronous orbit down to the surface of a planet, then electromechanically hauling payload up the tether to space. While theoretically possible, the concept has been shown to be infeasible on Earth until the development of mass-produced ultra-lightweight materials with specific tensile strengths of ~40 MPa/kg/m^3 (~20 times stronger than Kevlar). Such strength is within the theoretical limits of Carbon Nanotubes (CNTs), but it is not known when practical commercially available CNTs will reach this required strength. On Mars, however, the lower surface gravity and lower synchronous orbit altitude allow a space elevator to be built from materials with specific strengths of only ~5 MPa/kg/m^3, which is within the range of existing CNTs, provided such materials could be mass produced. The required tether mass and length is also significantly reduced from 9,000 tonnes and 155,000 km at Earth to only 1,500 tonnes and 70,000 km at Mars. The driving engineering limits for construction of a space elevator will be compared between Earth and Mars, and an industrial/economic analysis will be presented to quantify the project scale, timeline, cost, and expected economic activity Mars will likely have to support before a Martian space elevator would become a profitable investment.
Presented at the 2018 Mars Society Conference in Pasadena California.
Digital Library of GLT Saraswati Bal Mandir. Gravitation is a natural phenomenon by which all physical bodies attract each other. It is most commonly experienced as the agent that gives weight to objects with mass and causes them to fall to the ground when dropped.
Airborne and underground matter-wave interferometers: geodesy, navigation and...Philippe Bouyer
The remarkable success of atom coherent manipulation techniques has motivated competitive research and development in precision metrology. Matter-wave inertial sensors – accelerometers, gyrometers, gravimeters – based on these techniques are all at the forefront of their respective measurement classes. Atom inertial sensors provide nowadays about the best accelerometers and gravimeters and allow, for instance, to make the most precise monitoring of gravity or to device precise tests of the weak equivalence principle (WEP). I present here some recent advances in these fields
Ultra-fast Outflows from Active Galactic Nuclei of Seyfert I GalaxiesAshkbiz Danehkar
High Energy Phenomena Seminar, Harvard CfA, Cambridge, USA, September 7, 2016, https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.13699048 https://youtu.be/7q_wv61ou1E
Why The Solar System's First Space Elevator Will Likely be MartianMax Fagin
Space Elevators involve lowering a tether from synchronous orbit down to the surface of a planet, then electromechanically hauling payload up the tether to space. While theoretically possible, the concept has been shown to be infeasible on Earth until the development of mass-produced ultra-lightweight materials with specific tensile strengths of ~40 MPa/kg/m^3 (~20 times stronger than Kevlar). Such strength is within the theoretical limits of Carbon Nanotubes (CNTs), but it is not known when practical commercially available CNTs will reach this required strength. On Mars, however, the lower surface gravity and lower synchronous orbit altitude allow a space elevator to be built from materials with specific strengths of only ~5 MPa/kg/m^3, which is within the range of existing CNTs, provided such materials could be mass produced. The required tether mass and length is also significantly reduced from 9,000 tonnes and 155,000 km at Earth to only 1,500 tonnes and 70,000 km at Mars. The driving engineering limits for construction of a space elevator will be compared between Earth and Mars, and an industrial/economic analysis will be presented to quantify the project scale, timeline, cost, and expected economic activity Mars will likely have to support before a Martian space elevator would become a profitable investment.
Presented at the 2018 Mars Society Conference in Pasadena California.
Digital Library of GLT Saraswati Bal Mandir. Gravitation is a natural phenomenon by which all physical bodies attract each other. It is most commonly experienced as the agent that gives weight to objects with mass and causes them to fall to the ground when dropped.
Airborne and underground matter-wave interferometers: geodesy, navigation and...Philippe Bouyer
The remarkable success of atom coherent manipulation techniques has motivated competitive research and development in precision metrology. Matter-wave inertial sensors – accelerometers, gyrometers, gravimeters – based on these techniques are all at the forefront of their respective measurement classes. Atom inertial sensors provide nowadays about the best accelerometers and gravimeters and allow, for instance, to make the most precise monitoring of gravity or to device precise tests of the weak equivalence principle (WEP). I present here some recent advances in these fields
It is always amazing to see the interaction of planets, Sun, Stars, and other celestial objects in space which leads to astronomical events. In this chapter we will learn certain laws of physics which explains gravitation between celestial objects, free fall of body, mass and weight of the objects.
Ultrafast transfer of low-mass payloads to Mars and beyond using aerographite...Sérgio Sacani
With interstellar mission concepts now being under study by various space agencies and institutions,
a feasible and worthy interstellar precursor mission concept will be key to the success of the long
shot. Here we investigate interstellar-bound trajectories of solar sails made of the ultra lightweight
material aerographite. Due to its extremely low density (0.18 kgm−3) and high absorptivity (∼1), a
thin shell can pick up an enormous acceleration from the solar irradiation. Payloads of up to 1 kg can
be transported rapidly throughout the solar system, e.g. to Mars and beyond. Our simulations consider
various launch scenarios from a polar orbit around Earth including directly outbound launches as well
as Sun diver launches towards the Sun with subsequent outward acceleration. We use the poliastro
Python library for astrodynamic calculations. For a spacecraft with a total mass of 1 kg (including
720 g aerographite) and a cross-sectional area of 104 m2, corresponding to a shell with a radius of 56m,
we calculate the positions, velocities, and accelerations based on the combination of gravitational and
radiation forces on the sail. We find that the direct outward transfer to Mars near opposition to Earth
results in a relative velocity of 65 kms−1 with a minimum required transfer time of 26 d. Using an
inward transfer with solar sail deployment at 0.6AU from the Sun, the sail’s velocity relative to Mars
is 118 kms−1 with a transfer time of 126 d, whereMars is required to be in one of the nodes of the two
orbital planes upon sail arrival. Transfer times and relative velocities can vary substantially depending
on the constellation between Earth andMars and the requirements on the injection trajectory to the Sun
diving orbit. The direct interstellar trajectory has a final velocity of 109 kms−1. Assuming a distance
to the heliopause of 120AU, the spacecraft reaches interstellar space after 5.3 yr. When using an
initial Sun dive to 0.6AU instead, the solar sail obtains an escape velocity of 148 kms−1 from the
solar system with a transfer time of 4.2 yr to the heliopause. Values may differ depending on the
rapidity of the Sun dive and the minimum distance to the Sun. The mission concepts presented in this
paper are extensions of the 0.5 kg tip mass and 196m2 design of the successful IKAROS mission to
Venus towards an interstellar solar sail mission. They allow fast flybys atMars and into the deep solar
system. For delivery (rather than fly-by) missions of a sub-kg payload the biggest obstacle remains in
the deceleration upon arrival.
Orbit design for exoplanet discovery spacecraft dr dora musielak 1 april 2019Dora Musielak, Ph.D.
Most exoplanets have been discovered with space telescopes. Starting with an overview of rocket propulsion, this presentation introduces spacecraft trajectories in the Sun-Earth-Moon System, focusing especially on those appropriate for exoplanet detection spacecraft. It reviews past, present, and future exoplanet discovery missions.
2024.03.22 - Mike Heddes - Introduction to Hyperdimensional Computing.pdfAdvanced-Concepts-Team
Presentation in Science Coffee of the Advanced Concepts Team of the European Space Agency.
Date: 22.03.2024
Speaker: Mike Heddes (University of California, Irvine)
Topic: Introduction to Hyperdimensional Computing
Abstract:
Hyperdimensional computing (HD), also known as vector symbolic architectures (VSA), is a computing framework capable of forming compositional distributed representations. HD/VSA forms a "concept space" by exploiting the geometry and algebra of high-dimensional spaces. The central idea is to represent information with randomly generated vectors, called hypervectors. Together with a set of operations on these hypervectors, HD/VSA can represent compositional structures, which, in turn, enables features such as reasoning by analogy and cognitive computing. In this introductory talk, I will introduce the high-dimensional spaces and the fundamental operations on hypervectors. I will then cover applications of HD/VSA such as reasoning by analogy and graph classification.
Isabelle Diacaire - From Ariadnas to Industry R&D in optics and photonicsAdvanced-Concepts-Team
Presentation in the Science Coffee of the Advanced Concepts Team of the European Space Agency.
Date: 28.02.2024
Speaker: Isabelle Dicaire (CCTT Optech)
Topic: From Ariadnas to Industry R&D in optics and photonics
The ExoGRAVITY project - observations of exoplanets from the ground with opti...Advanced-Concepts-Team
Presentation in the Science Coffee of the Advanced Concepts Team of the European Space Agency on the 09.02.2024.
Speaker: Sylvestre Lacour (Paris Observatory/LESIA)
Title: The ExoGRAVITY project - observations of exoplanets from the ground with optical interferometry
Abstract: I will talk about the latest observations and results with the GRAVITY instrument installed at the VLTI, Paranal observatory.
Presentation in the Science Coffee hosted by the Advanced Concepts Team of the European Space Agency on the 12.01.2024.
Speaker: Benoit Famaey (CNRS - Observatoire astronomique de Strasbourg)
Title: Modified Newtonian Dynamics
Abstract: Presentation around the topic of MOND / tests of MOND
Presentation in Science Coffee of ESA’s Advanced Concepts Team on the 24.11.2023 by Pablo Gomet (ESA/ESAC)
Abstract:
Current and upcoming space science missions will produce petascale data in the coming years. This requires a rethinking of data distribution and processing practices. For example, the Euclid mission will be sending more than 100GB of compressed data to Earth every day. Analysis and processing of data on this scale requires specialized infrastructure and toolchains. Further, providing users with this data locally is not practical due to bandwidth and storage constraints. Thus, a paradigm shift of bringing users code to the data and providing a computational infrastructure and toolchain around the data is required. The ESA Datalabs platforms is specifically focused on fulfilling this need. It provides a centralized platform with access to data from various missions including the James Webb Space Telescope, Gaia, and others. Pre-setup environments with the necessary toolchains and standard software tools such as JupyterLab are provided and enable data access with minimal overhead. And, with the built-in Science Application Store, a streamlined environment is given that allows rapid deployment of desired processing or science exploitation pipelines. In this manner, ESA Datalabs provides an accessible and potent framework for high-performance computing and machine learning applications. While users may upload data, there is no need to download data, thus mitigating the bandwidth burden. As the computational load is handled within the computational infrastructure of ESA Datalabs, high scalability is achieved, and resources can be requisitioned as needed. Finally, the platform-centric approach facilitates direct collaboration on code and data. Currently, the platform is already available to several hundred users, regularly showcased in dedicated workshops and interested users may request access online.
Jonathan Sauder - Miniaturizing Mechanical Systems for CubeSats: Design Princ...Advanced-Concepts-Team
ESA/ACT Science Coffee presentation of Nov 3, 2023 by Jonathan Sauder (NASA/JPL/CalTech)
Abstract:
In the past decade CubeSats have evolved from small university educational opportunities to industry and governments using them make new discoveries and monetize space. While originally most missions were restricted to Low Earth Orbit (LEO), CubeSats have begun to increase their reach across the solar system with the advent of Mars Cube One (MarCO) in 2018. However, with the small, constrained CubeSat form factor there is often a need to expand the CubeSat through deployable mechanical systems once the satellite is in space. In reviewing many CubeSat missions, it has been found that over 90% have deployable structures actuated by a mechanical system. These include antennas, solar panels, and instrument booms.
There is a key challenge in CubeSat mechanism design, as one can not just shrink larger spacecraft mechanisms down to the CubeSat form factor. Rather, these mechanisms must be designed in a way to reduce complexity, which means good mechanical design principles are paramount. From experience designing the deployment mechanisms for the MarCO and RainCube missions, working on deployable antenna technology, and reviewing deployables used on hundreds of other CubeSats, several key principles have been identified for developing miniaturized mechanical systems for mechanisms. These principles will be discussed in the presentation, and examples will be provided. Small satellite missions can be made more robust by incorporating good design principles into future miniaturized mechanical systems, which in turn with result in greater reliability of small satellites. This is especially important given that many small satellites have mission critical deployables, and the ever-increasing number of interplanetary small satellite missions and opportunities.
Artificial intelligence (AI) is a potentially disruptive tool for physics and science in general. One crucial question is how this technology can contribute at a conceptual level to help acquire new scientific understanding or inspire new surprising ideas. I will talk about how AI can be used as an artificial muse in quantum physics, which suggests surprising and unconventional ideas and techniques that the human scientist can interpret, understand and generalize to its fullest potential.
EDEN ISS is a European project focused on advancing bio-regenerative life support systems, in particular plant cultivation in space. A mobile test facility was designed and built between March 2015 and October 2017. The facility incorporates a Service Section which houses several subsystems necessary for plant cultivation and the Future Exploration Greenhouse. The latter is built similar to a future space greenhouse and provides a fully controlled environment for plant cultivation. The facility was setup in Antarctica in close vicinity to the German Neumayer Station III in January 2018 and successfully operated between February and November of the same year. During that nine month period around 270 kg of food was produced by the crops cultivated in the greenhouse. Besides the mere production of food for the overwintering crew (10 people) of the Neumayer Station III a large number of experiments were conducted. These experiments delivered valuable data for engineering of space greenhouses, horticultural sciences, microbiology, food quality and safety, psychology and operation of a food production facility in a remote environment. Component and subsystem validation was conducted to better understand engineering issues when building a space greenhouse. Fresh edible and inedible biomass was measured upon every harvest, dry weight ratios were determined and crop life cycle data was collected. More than 400 plant and microbiological samples were taken for the microbiology, and food quality and safety scientists working on the project. Some samples were composed of freeze dried plant tissue, but most samples were frozen at -40°C and shipped to Europe for analysis in specialized laboratories. A survey with the overwintering crew was executed to get information about the impact of the greenhouse on the crew during the nine month long winter season. Operation procedures for horticultural tasks, but also for system maintenance were developed and tested. The required crewtime, energy and resources demands were measured. This presentation shows an overview of the research results of the EDEN ISS research campaign in Antarctica close to the Neumayer Station III.
The quest to create artificial general intelligence has largely followed a “brain in a vat” approach, aiming to build a disembodied mind that can carry out the kinds of logical reasoning and inference that humans are capable of, usually demonstrated through language. This approach may some day pay off, but it’s not how nature did it. Intelligence did not evolve to solve abstract problems – it evolved to adaptively control behaviour in the real world. Living organisms are agents that can act, for their own reasons, in pursuit of their own goals – most fundamentally, to persist as a self through time. By charting the evolution of agency, we can see the origins of action and the concomitant emergence of behavioural control systems; the transition from pragmatic perception-action couplings to more and more internalised semantic representations; and, on our lineage, a trajectory of increasing cognitive depth and ever more sophisticated mapping and modelling of the world and the self. The resultant accumulation of causal knowledge grants the ability to simulate more complex scenarios, to predict and plan over longer timeframes, to optimise over more competing goals at once, and ultimately to exercise conscious rational control over behaviour. In this way, intelligent entities – agents – evolved, with greater and greater autonomy, flexibility, and causal power in the world. To realise intelligence in artificial systems, it may similarly be necessary to develop embodied, situated agents, with meaning and understanding grounded in relation to real-world goals, actions, and consequences.
Brains rely on spiking neural networks for ultra-low-power information processing. Building artificial intelligence with similar efficiency requires learning algorithms to instantiate complex spiking neural networks and brain-inspired neuromorphic hardware to emulate them efficiently. Toward this end, I will briefly introduce surrogate gradients as a general framework for training spiking neural networks and showcase their robustness and self-calibration capabilities on analog neuromorphic hardware. Drawing further inspiration from biology, I will discuss the impact of homeostatic plasticity and network initialization in the excitatory-inhibitory balanced regime on deep spiking neural network training. Finally, I will show how approximations relate surrogate gradients to biologically plausible online learning rules with a minor impact on their effectiveness.
The promise of computer aided manufacturing is to make materializable structures that could not be fabricated using traditional methods. An example is 3D printed lattices, where variation in the lattice geometry and print media can define a vast spectrum of resulting material behaviour, ranging from fully flexible forms to completely stiff examples with high strength. While these “architected materials” offer huge promise for industrial applications, in practice they are difficult to generate and explore digitally, and even harder to simulate for mechanical testing. In this talk I will outline a range of approaches to the study of architected materials using machine learning. I will describe several projects using graph neural networks (GNNs) to model lattice geometry, and report on a few recent works that construct inverse models. These approaches are progress toward better methods for approximation of the material behaviour of the space of all lattice geometries, offering potential for real-time material feedback at the design stage, and a streamlined selection process for architected materials.
Electromagnetically Actuated Systems for Modular, Self-Assembling and Self-Re...Advanced-Concepts-Team
This talk will cover two research projects within the MIT Space Exploration Initiative’s microgravity self-assembly portfolio. While the sizes and geometries of today’s space structures are limited by launch mass and volume, modular reconfigurability may support tightly packing structure modules over multiple launches and provide for adaptation to unforeseen circumstances once deployed. Self-assembly methods also promise to reduce crew EVA construction time on-orbit, when leveraged for large-scale habitat structures. We will report on a quasi-stochastic self-assembly hardware platform, and accompanying robotics simulation, for hollow buckyball shells in orbit. This talk will also introduce a reconfigurable space structure based on electromagnetically pivoting cubes that originated in the ACT. Both projects will show recent hardware for fully untethered modules, results from physical experiments on parabolic flights and a 30-day ISS mission, and simulation approaches for planning and characterizing self-assembly and reconfigurability.
HORUS (Hyper-effective nOise Removal U-net Software) is a cutting-edge AI tool designed to enhance Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) optical low-light imagery of the Moon's shadowed regions by removing most of the CCD-related and photon noise. For the first time, HORUS enables scientists and engineers to identify intra-shadow geologic features (craters, boulders, etc.) as small as 3 meters across, making this tool uniquely useful for applications such as geologic mapping, landing site selection, hazard recognition, and mission planning, directly supporting the robotic and crewed exploration of the Moon's south pole.
META-SPACE: Psycho-physiologically Adaptive and Personalized Virtual Reality ...Advanced-Concepts-Team
During this pandemic we have experienced the devastating effects of isolation. Although astronauts undergo exhaustive training, psychological strain has been observed during space missions resulting in stress, home-sickness, anxiety, etc. Being confined with the same people poses challenges that could result in interpersonal antagonisms or sleeping problems. This effect could be also emphasized during long-term missions or Earth-out-of-view phenomenon.
The aim of our system is to alleviate some of those issues. A standalone VR headset with physiological sensors will be used to collect and integrate different inputs such as psycho-physiological signals, oculomotor patterns, voice, and behavioral actions. Afterwards, an adaptive model will process and analyze the signals to detect specific psychological states (e.g., stress, fatigue). Finally, the system will stream personalized content (user’s favorite Earth locations or revisiting family/friends memories) or provide individual games for entertainment and training. The system will also allow the integration of other crew members in the same VR.
The expected result is to provide astronauts with a tool to escape the feeling of isolation, to promote positive wellbeing timely delivered, and to boost crew cohesion and teamwork.
The Large Interferometer For Exoplanets (LIFE) II: Key Methods and TechnologiesAdvanced-Concepts-Team
The LIFE initiative has the goal to develop the science, the technology and a roadmap for an aspiring space mission that will allow humankind to detect and characterize, via nulling interferometry, the atmospheres of hundreds of nearby extrasolar planets including dozens that may be similar to Earth. This follow-up talk will tackle more of the techniques and technologies that will enable such an ambitious undertaking. I will outline the underlying measuring principle, and provide some overview over essential technologies, their current status and necessary developments.
Black holes have evolved from theoretical prediction to accepted hypothesis, due to the wealth of new discoveries in the last decades. In this talk I will discuss the observational evidence for the existence of black holes of different sizes and what we know about their evolution based on observations and theory. I will also describe what Quasars and Active Galactic Nuclei are, and how these extremely luminous objects can be used to study black holes at the early ages of the Universe.
In vitro simulation of spaceflight environment to elucidate combined effect o...Advanced-Concepts-Team
Long-term exposure to microgravity, ionizing radiation and increased levels of psychological stress can cause changes in the astronauts’ skin, resulting in skin rashes, itches and delayed wound healing during space missions. There is still a lack of understanding how the complex spaceflight environment induces these defects. This PhD project aims to investigate how exposure to a combination of spaceflight stressors can affect the structure and function of the skin, and how they can hamper wound healing. For this we have developed in vitro simulation models and are exposing primary human dermal fibroblasts to hydrocortisone, ionizing radiation and simulated microgravity. Results indicate a significant negative effect of hydrocortisone as well as simulated microgravity on wound healing capability of dermal fibroblasts. Furthermore, a project has been initiated with the support of the European Space Agency Academy “Spin Your Thesis!” Campaign, aiming to investigate the effects of an increased gravitational force on fibroblast function related to wound healing. Altogether the results of this PhD project will give more insights into the effects of combined spaceflight stressors on dermal skin cells, and improve risk assessment for human deep space exploration.
The Large Interferometer For Exoplanets (LIFE): the science of characterising...Advanced-Concepts-Team
Studying the atmospheres of a statistically significant number of rocky, terrestrial exoplanets - including the search for habitable and potentially inhabited planets - is one of the major goals of exoplanetary science and possibly the most challenging question in 21st century astrophysics. However, despite being at the top of the agenda of all major space agencies and ground-based observatories, none of the currently planned projects or missions worldwide has the technical capabilities to achieve this goal. In this talk we present new results from the LIFE Mission initiative, which addresses this issue by investigating the scientific potential of a mid infrared nulling interferometer observatory. Here we will focus on the mission's yield estimates, our simulator software as well as various exemplary science cases such as observing Earth- and Venus-twins or searching for phosphine in exoplanetary atmospheres.
Ephemeral wetlands – vernal pools, are temporal isolated bodies of freshwater that host amphibious (aquatic & terrestrial) lifeforms. Herein rare plant species and living animal fossils have adapted to the extreme conditions of water saturation and rapid desiccation events. In many ways, vernal pools hold extreme properties analogous to conditions that could be found across the solar system; they are natural laboratories to understand life adaptations to extreme conditions, colonization events and ecological life patterns. Vernal pools are very appropriate to study life macroecology, the diversity and distribution patterns of the taxa across the globe including microbes. Microbial organisms in vernal pools had never been studied before. Using high-throughput sequencing technology we addressed the diversity of bacteria and archaea in soils, water and plant tissues, exploring community assembly mechanisms and diversity patterns. In addition, the microbes living inside plants —endophytes, which are known to alleviate plants under environmental stress, were unraveled for the first time from the vernal pool-amphibious plant species Eryngium castrense. Discrete diversity patterns were found across latitudinal and anthropogenic transects, but this last one pattern is still part of further investigation and analysis. Vernal pools represent a new frontier to understand the dynamics of life, holding important lessons about adaptation processes, including mutualisms. They can be seen as naturally enclosed ecosystems on planetary bodies or even spacecraft in our quest for extraterrestrial habitats.Protecting and understanding these understudied and threatened ecosystems may hold the key of future human survival.
Sentinel-1 satellites, ESA’s Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) mission, provide continuous data from the Earth surface in weekly to biweekly time intervals. This data availability provides an unprecedented opportunity to continuously monitor the Earth surface motion in areas prone to geohazards; such as regions of high seismic and volcanic activities, with the end goal of supporting the Early Warning Systems. However, the great challenge is to derive insights from Terabytes of satellite image sequences, in a computationally-efficient and time-critical manner. We’ve risen to this challenge by designing innovative signal processing and deep learning algorithms to efficiently mine this invaluable wealth of data. This talk gives on overview of our designed solutions, as well as a demonstration of these solutions in the Tectonic and Volcanic monitoring of South America (TecVolSA) project.
Harnessing WebAssembly for Real-time Stateless Streaming PipelinesChristina Lin
Traditionally, dealing with real-time data pipelines has involved significant overhead, even for straightforward tasks like data transformation or masking. However, in this talk, we’ll venture into the dynamic realm of WebAssembly (WASM) and discover how it can revolutionize the creation of stateless streaming pipelines within a Kafka (Redpanda) broker. These pipelines are adept at managing low-latency, high-data-volume scenarios.
We have compiled the most important slides from each speaker's presentation. This year’s compilation, available for free, captures the key insights and contributions shared during the DfMAy 2024 conference.
6th International Conference on Machine Learning & Applications (CMLA 2024)ClaraZara1
6th International Conference on Machine Learning & Applications (CMLA 2024) will provide an excellent international forum for sharing knowledge and results in theory, methodology and applications of on Machine Learning & Applications.
Using recycled concrete aggregates (RCA) for pavements is crucial to achieving sustainability. Implementing RCA for new pavement can minimize carbon footprint, conserve natural resources, reduce harmful emissions, and lower life cycle costs. Compared to natural aggregate (NA), RCA pavement has fewer comprehensive studies and sustainability assessments.
Online aptitude test management system project report.pdfKamal Acharya
The purpose of on-line aptitude test system is to take online test in an efficient manner and no time wasting for checking the paper. The main objective of on-line aptitude test system is to efficiently evaluate the candidate thoroughly through a fully automated system that not only saves lot of time but also gives fast results. For students they give papers according to their convenience and time and there is no need of using extra thing like paper, pen etc. This can be used in educational institutions as well as in corporate world. Can be used anywhere any time as it is a web based application (user Location doesn’t matter). No restriction that examiner has to be present when the candidate takes the test.
Every time when lecturers/professors need to conduct examinations they have to sit down think about the questions and then create a whole new set of questions for each and every exam. In some cases the professor may want to give an open book online exam that is the student can take the exam any time anywhere, but the student might have to answer the questions in a limited time period. The professor may want to change the sequence of questions for every student. The problem that a student has is whenever a date for the exam is declared the student has to take it and there is no way he can take it at some other time. This project will create an interface for the examiner to create and store questions in a repository. It will also create an interface for the student to take examinations at his convenience and the questions and/or exams may be timed. Thereby creating an application which can be used by examiners and examinee’s simultaneously.
Examination System is very useful for Teachers/Professors. As in the teaching profession, you are responsible for writing question papers. In the conventional method, you write the question paper on paper, keep question papers separate from answers and all this information you have to keep in a locker to avoid unauthorized access. Using the Examination System you can create a question paper and everything will be written to a single exam file in encrypted format. You can set the General and Administrator password to avoid unauthorized access to your question paper. Every time you start the examination, the program shuffles all the questions and selects them randomly from the database, which reduces the chances of memorizing the questions.
KuberTENes Birthday Bash Guadalajara - K8sGPT first impressionsVictor Morales
K8sGPT is a tool that analyzes and diagnoses Kubernetes clusters. This presentation was used to share the requirements and dependencies to deploy K8sGPT in a local environment.
3. The challenge of interstellar travel
★ Distance Sun-Proxima ≅ 10 000 x distance Sun-Neptune
★Voyager probes :
→ both launched in 1977
→ Voyager 2 now at 18 billion kilometers or 10-3 ly
→ Voyager 1 has record cruise velocity: 17 km/s
★Closest extrasolar system : Proxima Centauri at 4.4 ly (4.2x1013km)
★10 000 stronger propulsion, almost a billion more kinetic energy !
★ Or 10 000 times longer trips!
4. Classifications of interstellar travel proposals
1) Relativistic Reaction Propulsion
→ Nuclear energy (fission or fusion) rather than chemical to expel propellant
→ Antimatter rockets (direct or indirect)
→ Photon rockets or beam-powered propulsion (directed energy)
→ Energy cost : E~mc2 (~rest mass energy)
→ For 100 t ship: 16 x world annual energy production
NERVA fission nuclear
thermal rocket engine
5. Classifications of interstellar travel proposals
2) Spacetime distortions (wormholes, warp drives, etc.)
→ Require exotic matter with negative pressure (Dark Energy) at extreme density
→ Strong gravitational field => high compactness (=GM/(c2L))
→ Energy ~c4 L/G (with L the size of deformation)
→ For a one km-wide distortion : 1026 x world annual energy production
Interstellar
movie
6. Classifications of interstellar travel proposals
3) Generation ships
★Huge autonomous spaceships embarking a whole population at sub-light velocities
★ only the descendants (hopefully) arrive at destination
★ maintaining (intelligent) life in the ark during millenia-long trips
★ For a 10 000 yrs trip powered by 10 GW : 5 x world annual energy production
4) Faster-than-light travel
→ forbidden by conventional physics (special relativity)
→ useless for the relativistic traveler who undergoes time dilation
→ required only if you want to manage some galactic empire
7. Basics of radiation propulsion
★ Radiation pressure has many applications :
→ stellar equilibrium, cosmic microwave background, optical tweezers, plasma physics and H-bomb
;
→Yarkovski & YORP effects on asteroids ; comet tails Poynting-Robertson effect
→ Radiation recoil: gamma emission, Mossbauer effect, « black hole kick » from gravitational
waves
★Reaction force from momentum conservation of rocket + radiation beam
★ Thrust ~ Luminosity / c
→ 300 Megawatts of incoming light produce one Newton of thrust…
★ On-board powered propulsion :
→ Thermal photon rocket (blackbody radiation) ; matter-antimatter annihilation rocket
★Solar or beam-powered sail :
→IKAROS & NanoSail missions ; Breakthrough Starshot project
8. Beam-powered ultrafast probes
★ Pionneers of solar sails : Tsiolkowsky & Zander (<1930s)
★ Solar sail interesting for inner solar system not long distances
★Laser-propelled lightsails for interstellar exploration (Forward, 1962)
★ Forward ’s plan for interstellar rendezvous & roundtrips (1984):
→ space-based solar powered lasers
→ Phased array of lasers or huge (Fresnel) lens
→ Multi-stage laser-pushed sails
★ Most plausible proposal for interstellar travel
(after nuclear powered rockets?!)
★ Revival with Breathrough Initiative #3: Starshot (2016)
Starshot
project
9. A relativistic model for photon
rocket
See also : A. Füzfa,
« Interstellar travels aboard radiation-powered rockets »,
Physical Review D 99, 104081 (2019)
10. Relativistic kinematics for radiation rockets
★ Equations of motion :
→ Four-force : [fm]=(Power, 3-Force*c)
→ Four-momentum: [pm]= (E/c, 3-momentum)
→ t : proper time aboard the rocket
★ Total 4-momentum conservation : fm
total=fm
rocket+fm
beam=0
→ is conserved (r=rocket ; b=beam)
→ and, since , we have that
4-force on rocket
Beam 4-momentum
11. Relativistic kinematics for radiation rockets
★ For one-dimensional motion :
→ fT=±fX (rocket’s driving power = ± thrust*c)
→ Variation of rocket inertial mass (kinetic energy) :
→ Rocket’s driving power:
→ with y the rapidity (Velocity=c*tanh(y)) and m0 the rocket rest mass
→ valid for both radiation emission rockets and beam-powered sails
→ N.B.: for a free rocket m=m0 cosh(y) (see basic special relativity)
★ Specific solution: provide driving power P !
★Relativistic rocket equation (Ackeret, 1946):
13. Non-inertial effects aboard radiation rocket
★ Accelerated rocket at relativistic velocities : application of general relativity !
★ « Photon rocket spacetimes »
→ Vaidya’s shining star (1951) :
✦generalization of Schwarzschild spacetime to a particle at rest absorbing or emitting radiation
uniformly
→ Kinnersley (1969) :
✦spacetime around a particle accelerated by an anisotropic emission or absorption of radiation
→ Bonnor/Damour (1994) : « Photon Rocket spacetime »
→ Füzfa (2019) : application to the modeling of interstellar spaceflight aboard radiation
rockets
✦propagation of incoming/outgoing light, Doppler shift, aberration
✦Application to telecommunications and navigation
14. Stellar panoramas on-board
★ Deformation of the traveller’s local celestial sphere :
→ Aberration of light : shift of apparent positions of the stars
→ Doppler shift : change of the color of the stars
→ Relativistic focusing : increase of stellar apparent luminosities
★ Astronavigation requires correct astrometric measurements
★ Aberration of light : special and general relativity (acceleration to high
velocities)
15. 120° field of view around Alpha Centauri
in Earth sky (rest frame)
A taster
Southern Cross
Scorpion
& Sagittarius
Canopus & Sirius
Local sky seen by an accelerated traveller at 0.7 x c
Great Dipper
Little Dipper
Orion
Summer
Triangle
16. Applications
1- Manned mission toward Alpha Centauri aboard a matter-antimatter rocket
2 – Flyby at relativistic velocities in the solar system and beyond
3 - rendezvous with double-stage beam-powered sails
17. Single trip to Alpha Centauri (1/3)Velocityw.r.tEarth(c)
2) Cruise
1) acceleration
3) approach
Rocket proper time (years) Rocket proper time (years)Properacceleration(g)
18. Single trip to Alpha Centauri (2/3)
Initial mass :
100 t
Final mass :
~ 20 t
Maximum power:
a million of
GW power
plants!!
Energy cost = 74 x world annual energy production !!
Restmass(m0)
Rocket proper time (years) Rocket proper time (years)
Power(PW=1015W)
19. Single trip to Alpha Centauri (3/3)
Rocket’s time
Earth’s time
Total duration
in Earth’s time :
8.2 years
Total duration
in rocket’s time :
6.5 years
Time (years) Rocket proper time (years)
DistancefromEarth(ly)
Earthpropertime(years)
20. Duration is not the problem ; it is energy cost
Relations between travel duration toward Alpha Centauri (in time
aboard the rocket)
and cruise speed, energy cost ,
proper acceleration
N.B: initial mass = 100 t
Energy cost
(annual world
energy production)
Maximum local
gravity (g)
Cruisespeed(c)
On-board duration (years)
On-board duration (years)
21. Aberration of light
for the accelerated traveller
★Application of general relativity (Kinnersley spacetime)
★Deformation of the past light-cone
★Two contributions to apparent angle :
→ Variation of proper acceleration (« jerk »)
=> deviation of light geodesics
→ rocket’s velocity (special relativity)
★ Aberration of light is stronger than
expected with special relativity alone
A. Füzfa, Physical Review D 99, 104081 (2019)
In the cruise phase
During approach
22. Astronavigation with general relativity
Aberration of light from general relativityAberration of light due to special relativity
at 0.7 x c
23. Enjoy the panoramas during
your trip
Velocityw.r.tEarth(c)
Rocket proper time (years)
24. Applications
1- Manned mission toward Alpha Centauri aboard a matter-antimatter rocket
2 – Flyby at relativistic velocities in the solar system and beyond
3 - rendezvous with double-stage beam-powered sails
25. Model for laser-pushed sails
★Relativistic kinematics:
→ One-dimensional motion, pointlike photon rocket
→ Evolution of rapidity, mass, distance and duration in Earth time as a function of rocket’s proper time
→ Variation of driving power :
1. Decreasing with inverse square of distance from source (see also Kulkarni et al. 2018)
2. Doppler shift of the light flux
★Applications
→ Starshot project:
Power at source = 2 GW ; Initial mass = 1 g ; Beam divergence = 10-10 rad ; l= 1064 nm; Size of the sail = 10
m
→ High-velocity CubeSats :
Power at source = 1 MW ; Initial mass = 1 kg ; Beam divergence = 10-10 rad ; l= 1064 nm ;Size of the sail =
10 m
27. Kinetic energy gain and energy cost
2x1013J
of kinetic energy
for 1015J
energy cost
Free particle
in special relativity
(Kulkarni et al. 2018)
STARSHOT High-velocity CubeSat
1.5x1013J
of kinetic energy
for 3x1013J
energy cost
30. Imaging during flyby at 0.2 c
Aberration of light in
General Relativity
Aberration of light in
Special Relativity
Reference
31. Applications
1- Manned mission toward Alpha Centauri aboard a matter-antimatter rocket
2 – Flyby at relativistic velocities in the solar system and beyond
3 - rendezvous with double-stage beam-powered sails
32. A two-stage laser-pushed light sail
★Roundtrip with multi-stage sails (Forward, 1984) :
→ accelerating phase with a large sail
→ Separation : outer ring goes on while the inner sail with payload is reversed
→ Approach thanks to deceleration with light flux reflected from runaway outer ring
★Same model as before but with double account for Doppler shift and flux decay with
distance + separation
→ Power at source = 6 MW ; Initial outer ring mass = 10 kg ; Initial inner sail mass : 1kg
★Energy cost~ 10-7 x world annual energy production for one probe
33. A rendezvous with Saturn in laser sails
Separation
Outer ring
Inner
sail
and
payload
34. A rendezvous with Proxima in laser sails
Separation
Outer ring
Inner
sail
and
payload
Power ~ 10 TeraWatts
Total mass = 100t
Payload mass = 10t
Total energy cost = 8 x world annual
energy production
35. Conclusions
★Main problem of interstellar flight is energy cost
★Directed energy for deep space propellant-less propulsion
★Modeling photon rockets with general relativity (trajectory,
telecommunications, astronavigation, etc.)
★Building a MegaWatt-scale solar-powered laser propulsion system
→ one expensive propulsing system but unlimited number of probes
→ break Voyager’s cruise velocity record
→ fast exploration of solar system with cube sats
→ test bench for beam-powered propulsion technologies and relativistic navigation
→ space debris and defense applications
★Paving the way to future manned missions into the solar system and nano-
probes interstellar exploration
36. A long path to the stars…
It is time to go beyond engineering sketches
and theoretical work…
Editor's Notes
If I should mention only one truly serious physical problem, it would certainly be interstellar travel. All the rest—whether or not spacetime has four dimensions, whether gravity is emergent or can eventually be quantized— should come afterwards. It is not that such questions are not important nor fascinating—and actually they could quite likely be related to the above-mentioned crucial problem—but interstellar travel is the most appealing physical question for a species of explorers such as ours. Interstellar travel, although not theoretically impossible, is widely considered as practically unreachable. This topic has also been often badly hijacked by science-fiction and pseudo-scientific discussion when not polluted by questionable works.
Title: « Preparing interstellar travel with ultrafast beam-powered lightsails »
Abstract:
Light sails propelled by some radiation beam emitted from a remote power source, aka directed energy propulsion, might be considered as the most promising candidate to send probes at relativistic cruise velocities through the Solar system and beyond. We first briefly present how one can model such accelerated relativistic flight using beam-powered propulsion with general relativity. We then give key features of relativistic navigation: the Ackeret-Tsiolkowsky equation, the rocket rest mass variation and the mission energy cost, the time dilation aboard the probe, the Doppler frequency shifts and light aberration effects due to accelerations at velocities close to the speed of light. Finally, we apply these results to describe a possible demonstrator of relativistic spaceflight in the Solar system. Such a pioneering mission would allow to develop beam-powered propulsion, acquire experience in navigation during accelerated relativistic spaceflights and pave the way to future interstellar missions.
Voir aussi:
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centrale_solaire_orbitale
Title: « Preparing interstellar travel with ultrafast beam-powered lightsails »
Abstract:
Light sails propelled by some radiation beam emitted from a remote power source, aka directed energy propulsion, might be considered as the most promising candidate to send probes at relativistic cruise velocities through the Solar system and beyond. We first briefly present how one can model such accelerated relativistic flight using beam-powered propulsion with general relativity. We then give key features of relativistic navigation: the Ackeret-Tsiolkowsky equation, the rocket rest mass variation and the mission energy cost, the time dilation aboard the probe, the Doppler frequency shifts and light aberration effects due to accelerations at velocities close to the speed of light. Finally, we apply these results to describe a possible demonstrator of relativistic spaceflight in the Solar system. Such a pioneering mission would allow to develop beam-powered propulsion, acquire experience in navigation during accelerated relativistic spaceflights and pave the way to future interstellar missions.
Voir aussi:
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centrale_solaire_orbitale
4.2x1013km = 42 000 billion kilometers
Nuclear Engine for Rocket Vehicle Application
Propulsion chimique: generation ships et 10 000 ans de voyage
unless tachyons do exist in nature
Pionneers of solar sails : Tsiolkowsky & Zander (<1930s)
Solar sail interesting for inner solar system
decrease of radiation flux withthe square of distance
Laser-powered lightsail for interstellar exploration (Forward 1962)
coherent light at high flux, energy transmission on large distance
Most mature technology (maybe after nuclear thermal rocket)
Avant Forward
Forward 1983
Breathrough Initiative Starshot
Huge power required : space-based solar power and wireless power transmission (directed energy propulsion)
Pioneering paper:
R.L. Forward, Roundtrip Interstellar Travel Using Laser-pushed lightsails », Journal of Spacecraft, 21 (2), pp. 187-195 (1984).
Propulsion photonique:
Conversion de la masse au repos en photons
Idéalement: fusée à annihilation matière-antimatière mais production de photons gamma difficile à orienter
Propulsion hydrodynamique:
Éjection des ergols
Une nouvelle application de la relativité générale
Examples of null fluid spacetimes
Examples of four-force models
for the laser-sail, emission rocket
For the flyby: add blue marble distortion
Pure antimatter rocket
Difficultés techniques:
- production et stockage
de l’antimatière
- redirection des éjectas relativistes
The plot psi(tau) allows to derive P(tau)
This is the inferred function P(tau)
Space-time diagram of trajectory (worldline) and time dilation
Examples of four-force models
for the laser-sail, emission rocket
For the flyby: add blue marble distortion
Pure antimatter rocket
Difficultés techniques:
- production et stockage
de l’antimatière
- redirection des éjectas relativistes
Gain in kinetic energy is max(M*cosh(psi)-1)*m0*c^2
Energy cost is max(tau)*P_Source
Examples of four-force models
for the laser-sail, emission rocket
For the flyby: add blue marble distortion
Pure antimatter rocket
Difficultés techniques:
- production et stockage
de l’antimatière
- redirection des éjectas relativistes
Looks like newtonian but these are relativistic computations