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SpaceX has secured a lucrative NASA contract to demolish the International Space Station after 2030.
The ISS was launched into orbit in the late 1990s and early 2000s, and it has been known for some time that it is now reaching the end of its life cycle.
But what will replace it? Tech & Science Daily spoke with Jake Foster, astronomer at Royal Observatory Greenwich. He explained why the ISS must be deorbited and what will happen next.
Can buildings mimic trees to improve air quality in our cities and reverse the effects of climate change?
Well, according to one of the best architects in the world, with a concept called Urban Sequoia.
Kent Jackson is a design partner at the London office of Skidmore Owings and Merrill and is behind the proposals.
SOM is the company behind the 828-metre-high Burj Khalifa in Dubai, the Canary Wharf masterplan and the One World Trade Center in New York.
Kent tells us why sustainable building is an important solution to the climate crisis, gives his message to our future Prime Minister and explains what they need to do if they win the 2024 election.
An asteroid said to be “the size of Mount Everest” will fly by Earth on Thursday, quickly followed by a smaller asteroid on Saturday.
The largest is a whopping 2,310 meters wide and larger than 99% of all other known objects close to Earth.
And the rest
A new satellite image helps shed light on how ice and snow in clouds turn to rain, and Xbox 360 classic Dead Rising is back with a ‘Deluxe Remaster’, but no one’s quite sure what to make of the protagonist’s new look…
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Here’s a fully automated transcript of today’s episode:
Hi, I’m Rachelle Abbott and this is the Standard’s Tech and Science Daily podcast.
The asteroid will soon pass Earth by.
Now let’s get into it.
SpaceX has secured a lucrative NASA contract to demolish the International Space Station after 2030.
In fact, SpaceX will develop a method to safely remove the space station from Earth orbit.
So it basically pushes or pulls it back into the Earth’s atmosphere, where it can burn up safely in the atmosphere above the ocean.
This kind of thing has happened before with the Russian space station MIR, which was safely removed from space in 2001.
That’s Jake Foster, an astronomer at the Royal Observatory Greenwich.
He explains why the ISS must be removed from Earth’s orbit.
It’s wear and tear.
During its 26-year existence, the ISS has faced many different problems.
For example, the solar panels that supply the space station with power have now been somewhat damaged by cosmic radiation coming from space towards the station.
The ISS was launched into orbit between the late 1990s and early 2000s, and it has been known for some time that it is now reaching the end of its life cycle.
Structural damage has been reported to the docking hatch that spacecraft use to connect to the space station, and there have even been reports of microscopic leaks in one of the modules.
And that is not unexpected and it is not a matter of bad technique.
This is exactly what you can expect when you have a space station the size of a football field hurtling around the Earth at about seven kilometers per second over the course of 26 years.
The ISS remains a blueprint for international science, exploration and collaboration in space, with more than 3,300 experiments conducted in microgravity.
The US, Japan, Canada and the member states of the European Space Agency (ESA) have pledged to keep the space station operational until 2030.
Russia has said it will continue space activities until at least 2028, despite geopolitical tensions with the West.
So that’s the plan for ISS, but what’s going to replace it? Jake’s given us everything we know so far.
NASA currently has its eyes firmly set on the moon.
So instead of NASA creating a replacement space station, they actually have their eyes on a moon gate, essentially a space station in orbit around the moon that will provide safe passage for astronauts traveling to the moon in the near future. several decades.
In addition, NASA wants to build a permanent lunar base on the surface of the moon.
And eventually with the idea of sending astronauts to Mars, to the red planet.
There are plans for commercial space companies to build their own space stations.
Companies like Axiom Space, Blue Origin and even Boeing have plans or are working together to build their own space stations.
Can buildings mimic trees to improve air quality in our cities and reverse the effects of climate change?
Well, according to one of the best architects in the world with a concept called Urban Sequoia.
The Sequoia is the largest tree on our planet.
They are currently suffering from climate change.
They are located primarily in Northern California.
We really came across this idea that we noticed that our profession wasn’t evolving fast enough to solve some of the problems that we face on a daily basis and really look at the impact of climate change.
And so at Urban Sequoia the idea was born: if we could make buildings act more like trees, we thought we would take on a research project that would probably be one of the most difficult typologies you can get in the construction industry, which is tall buildings.
So just over 40 stories.
That’s Kent Jackson, Design Partner at Skidmore, Owings & Merrill’s London office.
SOM is the company behind the 828-metre-high Burj Khalifa in Dubai, the Canary Wharf Master Plan and the One World Trade Center in New York.
Currently, the construction sector generates almost 40% of all global CO2 emissions.
Urban Sequoia is a concept that proposes that buildings can be designed to capture carbon, purify the air, and rejuvenate the environment.
In tall buildings you have the phenomenon of the stack effect, where low air pressure enters the building and then rises through it.
And it was always something that you wanted to prevent from happening in a building.
We decided to reverse that trend and think about whether we could capture the air and bring it to the center of the building so that the high speed of air movement could actually flow through the building, leading to this chimney effect.
We could use direct air capture to capture the carbon.
And what’s really interesting is that after five years we’re already carbon negative and the building continues to sequester carbon from the Earth’s atmosphere for as long as it does throughout its lifetime.
Kent also has some important messages for our future Prime Minister.
Our future Prime Minister must take action.
In the construction sector we have been far too complacent.
It is one of the biggest offenders when it comes to carbon use.
You bring ecologists to the table. You bring politicians to the table. You bring insurance companies, contractors, but also the design team, the developer and the owner and the client together, if necessary, to talk about issues that not everyone is going to be an expert on, but in a shared environment.
And I would encourage the Prime Minister to certainly find ways in which the construction sector can deal with innovation and some of the risks associated with innovation.
They believe that if every city around the world adopted these types of concepts, the built environment could remove up to 1.6 billion tons of carbon from the atmosphere every year.
Let’s move on to the ads.
The classic Xbox 360 game Dead Rising will soon be back with a controversial makeover.
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Welcome back.
An asteroid the size of Mount Everest will pass by Earth today, followed by a smaller asteroid on Saturday.
The big one is a whopping 2,310 meters wide and larger than 99% of all other known objects near Earth.
Its size has been compared to Mount Everest, but honestly that is very generous considering the world’s highest peak is almost nine kilometers high.
So it is thought that the comparison is based on the width of the top instead.
Today the space rock will pass Earth at a distance of 6.5 million kilometers, but on Saturday the smaller one will come much closer, less than the distance between our planet and the moon.
Next, a new satellite image sheds light on how ice, snow and clouds turn into rain.
According to scientists, the image, taken by EarthCare, a joint mission from Europe and Japan, offers a unique insight into the internal structure of clouds.
Experts were able to identify different layers in the clouds, with ice crystals and snowflakes hanging at the top, some of which slowly fell.
The researchers say they have found a clear boundary at an altitude of about 5,000 meters, where the ice and snow melt.
It is thought the findings will help us understand how quickly rain and snow fall, which could help improve weather and climate forecasts.
And finally, classic zombie game Dead Rising is back with a “Deluxe Remaster,” but fans aren’t quite sure what to make of the new changes.
The remaster was announced in a teaser trailer showing off the title’s brand new look, including a strikingly different look for beloved character Frank West.
And it appears that the original voice actor, TJ Roloto, did not reprise his role.
As a result, fans on social media have expressed their outrage, with one user on
No release date has been confirmed yet, but the official X account teases that more information will be available soon.
You are informed.
Come back at 4pm for the standard podcast for the latest news and analysis.
Tech and Science Daily is out tomorrow at 1pm
See you then.