A Quote by Sir Martin Rees, Astronomer Royal of Great Britain



Telescopes are in some ways like time machines...
They reveal galaxies so far away that their light has taken billions of years to reach us. We in astronomy have an advantage in studying the universe, in that we can actually see the past. We owe our existence to stars, because they make the atoms of which we are formed. So if you are romantic you can say we are literally starstuff. If you're less romantic you can say we're the nuclear waste from the fuel that makes stars shine. We've made so many advances in our understanding. A few centuries ago, the pioneer navigators learnt the size and shape of our Earth, and the layout of the continents. We are now just learning the dimensions and ingredients of our entire cosmoc, and can at last make some sense of our cosmic habitat.



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Saturday, February 28, 2009

Edge to Sunshine!




The broad, beautiful wings of a space shuttle are the station's awesome solar arrays.

A very easy solution to where space shuttles get their energy from is our “Sun” or Solar Energy. But not all spacecrafts linger near earth where there is abundant sunlight. That might be a major hurdle for Scientists to explore areas of space from where our Sun is not bright enough to power the spacecraft. Space scientists call it the edge of sunshine.

Solution – Powerful solar cells that can convert each photon of light into energy need to be developed. Currently we have cells that convert 14% of light into energy. Most recent ones can convert 30% of light into energy… what we are looking for distant space explorations should be at-least of the cadre of 90% conversion. Just incase you are wondering… Why not carry batteries instead? It’s the weight of the shuttle… It should not increase.

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