Month: May 2024

India has announced a breakthrough that could boost its efforts to grow as a space-faring nation.

On May 9, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) performed a successful hot-fire test of a liquid-fueled rocket engine that was built using additive manufacturing (colloquially known as 3D printing) technology. 

The engine, which burns a hypergolic mix of nitrogen tetroxide and monomethyl hydrazine, fired for a duration of 665 seconds, marking a major milestone. The engine is used in the upper stage of India’s Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV). 

Related: Latest news about India’s space program

ISRO said the new laser powder bed fusion technique used to make the engine has brought down the number of engine parts from 14 to a single piece. This has eliminated 19 weld joints and saved significantly on the raw material usage per engine: The new process uses 30.2 pounds (13.7 kilograms) of metal powder, for example, compared to the 1,245 pounds (565 kg) of forgings and sheets needed with the conventional technique. The new process also reduces the overall production time by 60%, according to ISRO.

The 145-foot-tall (44 meters) PSLV is one of India’s workhorse launchers, along with the LVM-3. The rocket can deliver up to 3,860 pounds (1,750 kg) of payload to sun-synchronous polar orbits 370 miles (600 km) high.

The milestone will help the country boost its launch rate. India also has grand plans in human spaceflight including landing an astronaut on the moon and establishing a lunar base by 2047. 

Join our Space Forums to keep talking space on the latest missions, night sky and more! And if you have a news tip, correction or comment, let us know at: community@space.com.

Wisconsin has officially become the first state to buy bitcoin, according to a new filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. And while $98 million isn’t considered a lot of money for a state pension fund, it’s still a notable move given how notoriously volatile cryptocurrency investing can be.

The SEC filing, available online, was first reported by Coindesk, which notes the State of Wisconsin Investment Board bought 94,562 shares of BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT) worth about $98 million and $63 million of Grayscale’s spot Bitcoin ETF (GBTC).

Bitcoin ETFs were only approved by the SEC this past January and allow institutional investors to invest in bitcoin without actually holding the crypto directly. Crypto boosters were excited by the news on Tuesday, with many suggesting this could be just the start of other state pension funds investing in crypto.

“Normally you don’t get these big fish institutions in the 13Fs for a year or so (when the ETF gets more liquidity) but as we’ve seen these are no ordinary launches,” Eric Balchunas, an ETF analyst at Bloomberg tweeted. “Good sign, expect more, as institutions tend to move in herds.”

The most famous large institutional investment in bitcoin started in El Salvador in 2021 when President Nayib Bukele purchased the crypto for his country and declared the cryptocurrency to be legal tender. El Salvador currently holds about 5,748 BTC, according to Coin Telegraph, worth roughly $360 million. But bitcoin is an incredibly volatile asset. Those same holdings would have been worth about $155 million a year ago and there’s no guarantee bitcoin’s price will continue to climb steadily.

Bitcoin is currently trading at $61,774, down roughly 2% over the past 24 hours, though the crypto is up about 128% over the past year, recovering significantly since the market went into a tailspin following the implosion of Sam Bankman-Fried’s FTX. Bankman-Fried was sentenced to 25 years in prison for fraud, conspiracy, and money laundering.

The State of Wisconsin Investment Board didn’t immediately respond to questions emailed Tuesday morning. We’ll update this post if we hear back.

The future of space travel depends on our ability to reach celestial pit stops faster and more efficiently. As such, NASA is working with a technology development company on a new propulsion system that could drop off humans on Mars in a relatively speedy two months’ time rather than the current nine month journey required to reach the Red Planet.

NASA’s Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) program recently selected six promising projects for additional funding and development, allowing them to graduate to the second stage of development. The new “science fiction-like concepts,” as described by John Nelson, NIAC program executive at NASA, include a lunar railway system and fluid-based telescopes, as well as a pulsed plasma rocket.

The potentially groundbreaking propulsion system is being developed by Arizona-based Howe Industries. To reach high velocities within a shorter period of time, the pulsed plasma rocket would use nuclear fission—the release of energy from atoms splitting apart—to generate packets of plasma for thrust.

It would essentially produce a controlled jet of plasma to help propel the rocket through space. Using the new propulsion system, and in terms of thrust, the rocket could potentially generate up to 22,481 pounds of force (100,000 Newtons) with a specific impulse (Isp) of 5,000 seconds, for remarkably high fuel efficiency.

It’s not an entirely new concept. NASA began developing its own version back in 2018 under the name Pulsed Fission-Fusion (PuFF). PuFF relied on a device commonly used to compress laboratory plasmas to high pressures for very short timescales, called z-Pinch, to produce thrust. The pulsed plasma rocket, however, is smaller, simpler, and more affordable, according to NASA.

The space agency claims that the propulsion system’s high efficiency could allow for crewed missions to Mars to be completed within two months. As it stands today with commonly used propulsion systems, a trip to Mars takes around nine months. The less time humans can spend traveling through space, the better. Shorter periods of exposure to space radiation and microgravity could help mitigate its effects on the human body.

The pulsed plasma rocket would also be capable of carrying much heavier spacecraft, which can be then equipped with shielding against galactic cosmic rays for the crew on board.

Phase 2 of NIAC is focused on assessing the neutronics of the system (how the motion of the spacecraft interacts with the plasma), designing the spacecraft, power system, and necessary subsystems, analyzing the magnetic nozzle capabilities, and determining trajectories and benefits of the pulsed plasma rocket, according to NASA.

The new propulsion system has the potential to revolutionize crewed spaceflight, helping humans make it to Mars without the toil of the trip itself.

For more spaceflight in your life, follow us on X and bookmark Gizmodo’s dedicated Spaceflight page.