Scientists are developing technology to make sustainable space travel possible. As NASA prepares for long term space missions to the moon, Marsand beyond, many challenges remain. The future of space travel requires solutions for long-duration missions with limited resources. They will need access to fuel and the essential elements that sustain life. Scientists recently demonstrated a possible solution by splitting water into oxygen and hydrogen in zero gravity using a semiconductor material and light.
Challenges for Sustainable Space Travel
It’s already difficult for astronauts to live at the International Space Station (ISS) and that’s a well-established station located nearby in low earth orbit. Longer missions will be even trickier.
According to NASA, the ISS uses a system that recycles approximately 90% of the water and 42% of the oxygen in the spacecraft. The system purifies the crew’s waste — including urine and sweat — and turns it into potable water for the crew to drink. Still, cargo spacecraft regularly visit the space station to supplement essential supplies and replace some of the system’s components. How will future astronauts get the elements they need to survive on long-term space missions? What will fuel their spaceships and the electronic gadgets they’ll need onboard?
Fuel Cell Space Vehicles
The Conversation reports that an international team of researchers demonstrated that it is possible to produce hydrogen and oxygen from water using a semiconductor material and sunlight (or light from any star) in zero gravity. These findings, which are published in Nature Communications, are a step toward long-term space travel with storable, renewable energy.
While water may be a relatively heavy supply for space travel, it’s a reasonable option because it provides a two-for-one, with hydrogen for fuel and oxygen for astronauts to breathe. Plus, it can be recycled, making sustainable space travel possible. As a bonus, launching a space vehicle loaded with water is safer than the potentially explosive alternative of rocket fuel and oxygen. If this idea is going to be realistic, scientists need to develop a method for splitting water apart and putting it back together again. They’re working on how to create water from oxygen and hydrogen, plus the opposite.
The Process
In space, we don’t have the luxury of plants releasing oxygen, but we can mimic photosynthesis. According to the Conversation, water can be split into hydrogen and oxygen via electrolysis, where scientists run an electric current through a water sample that contains a soluble electrolyte.
A new version is even better for space travel because it uses lightweight equipment and sunlight (or starlight). While solar power is useful on earth, it’s even more abundant in space, where light isn’t filtered through an atmosphere. In this alternative method, photo catalysts absorb photons into a semiconductor material in the water.
The researchers explain in Nature, “The photoelectrochemical cell consists of an integrated catalyst-functionalized semiconductor system that generates hydrogen.”
As a bonus that will be especially useful with limited resources in space, the process can be reversed.
How to Create Water From Oxygen and Hydrogen
The hydrogen and oxygen can be recombined, according to the Conversation, “using a fuel cell returning the solar energy taken in by the photocatalysis.” This energy can be used to power electronics, and it produces water that can be reused.
Drop Tower Testing
To test their system, the researchers dropped their experiment down a 120-meter tower. As the object accelerated toward Earth, the “drop tower” simulates microgravity by creating an opposite effect to the G forces that astronauts experience during lift-off.
The Bubble Problem
While the researchers did successfully split water into hydrogen and oxygen in this microgravity environment, a big challenge popped up: bubbles. When the water is split to create gas, bubbles form. On Earth, gravity causes the bubbles to float to the surface, but in zero gravity the bubble lurks near the catalyst, blocking the next potential bubble, and therefore obstructing overall gas production.
They attempted to fix the bubble problem by creating pyramid-shaped zones on the catalyst so that the bubble could easily move from the pointed tip and float away. But even though this forced the bubbles away from the catalyst, without gravity, they remain in the liquid and create a pesky foam that blocks the catalyst and electrodes, making the whole system inefficient.
Despite these remaining challenges, the new water-splitting method proves that there’s great potential for sustainable space travel in the future. Advanced technology and creative scientific processes can make the most of limited resources, on Earth and in space.
NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — The body of Ugandan Olympic athlete Rebecca Cheptegei — who died after being set on fire by her partner in Kenya — was received Friday by family and anti-femicide crusaders, ahead of her burial a day later.
Cheptegei’s family met with dozens of activists Friday who had marched to the Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital’s morgue in the western city of Eldoret while chanting anti-femicide slogans.
She is the fourth female athlete to have been killed by her partner in Kenya in yet another case of gender-based violence in recent years.
Viola Cheptoo, the founder of Tirop Angels – an organization that was formed in honor of athlete Agnes Tirop, who was stabbed to death in 2021, said stakeholders need to ensure this is the last death of an athlete due to gender-based violence.
“We are here to say that enough is enough, we are tired of burying our sisters due to GBV,” she said.
It was a somber mood at the morgue as athletes and family members viewed Cheptegei’s body which sustained 80% of burns after she was doused with gasoline by her partner Dickson Ndiema. Ndiema sustained 30% burns on his body and later succumbed.
Ndiema and Cheptegei were said to have quarreled over a piece of land that the athlete bought in Kenya, according to a report filed by the local chief.
Cheptegei competed in the women’s marathon at the Paris Olympics less than a month before the attack. She finished in 44th place.
Cheptegei’s father, Joseph, said that the body will make a brief stop at their home in the Endebess area before proceeding to Bukwo in eastern Uganda for a night vigil and burial on Saturday.
“We are in the final part of giving my daughter the last respect,” a visibly distraught Joseph said.
He told reporters last week that Ndiema was stalking and threatening Cheptegei and the family had informed police.
Four in 10 women or an estimated 41% of dating or married Kenyan women have experienced physical or sexual violence perpetrated by their current or most recent partner, according to the Kenya Demographic and Health Survey 2022.
TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — A rare Bronze-Era jar accidentally smashed by a 4-year-old visiting a museum was back on display Wednesday after restoration experts were able to carefully piece the artifact back together.
Last month, a family from northern Israel was visiting the museum when their youngest son tipped over the jar, which smashed into pieces.
Alex Geller, the boy’s father, said his son — the youngest of three — is exceptionally curious, and that the moment he heard the crash, “please let that not be my child” was the first thought that raced through his head.
The jar has been on display at the Hecht Museum in Haifa for 35 years. It was one of the only containers of its size and from that period still complete when it was discovered.
The Bronze Age jar is one of many artifacts exhibited out in the open, part of the Hecht Museum’s vision of letting visitors explore history without glass barriers, said Inbal Rivlin, the director of the museum, which is associated with Haifa University in northern Israel.
It was likely used to hold wine or oil, and dates back to between 2200 and 1500 B.C.
Rivlin and the museum decided to turn the moment, which captured international attention, into a teaching moment, inviting the Geller family back for a special visit and hands-on activity to illustrate the restoration process.
Rivlin added that the incident provided a welcome distraction from the ongoing war in Gaza. “Well, he’s just a kid. So I think that somehow it touches the heart of the people in Israel and around the world,“ said Rivlin.
Roee Shafir, a restoration expert at the museum, said the repairs would be fairly simple, as the pieces were from a single, complete jar. Archaeologists often face the more daunting task of sifting through piles of shards from multiple objects and trying to piece them together.
Experts used 3D technology, hi-resolution videos, and special glue to painstakingly reconstruct the large jar.
Less than two weeks after it broke, the jar went back on display at the museum. The gluing process left small hairline cracks, and a few pieces are missing, but the jar’s impressive size remains.
The only noticeable difference in the exhibit was a new sign reading “please don’t touch.”
VICTORIA – The British Columbia government is partnering with a bear welfare group to reduce the number of bears being euthanized in the province.
Nicholas Scapillati, executive director of Grizzly Bear Foundation, said Monday that it comes after months-long discussions with the province on how to protect bears, with the goal to give the animals a “better and second chance at life in the wild.”
Scapillati said what’s exciting about the project is that the government is open to working with outside experts and the public.
“So, they’ll be working through Indigenous knowledge and scientific understanding, bringing in the latest techniques and training expertise from leading experts,” he said in an interview.
B.C. government data show conservation officers destroyed 603 black bears and 23 grizzly bears in 2023, while 154 black bears were killed by officers in the first six months of this year.
Scapillati said the group will publish a report with recommendations by next spring, while an independent oversight committee will be set up to review all bear encounters with conservation officers to provide advice to the government.
Environment Minister George Heyman said in a statement that they are looking for new ways to ensure conservation officers “have the trust of the communities they serve,” and the panel will make recommendations to enhance officer training and improve policies.
Lesley Fox, with the wildlife protection group The Fur-Bearers, said they’ve been calling for such a committee for decades.
“This move demonstrates the government is listening,” said Fox. “I suspect, because of the impending election, their listening skills are potentially a little sharper than they normally are.”
Fox said the partnership came from “a place of long frustration” as provincial conservation officers kill more than 500 black bears every year on average, and the public is “no longer tolerating this kind of approach.”
“I think that the conservation officer service and the B.C. government are aware they need to change, and certainly the public has been asking for it,” said Fox.
Fox said there’s a lot of optimism about the new partnership, but, as with any government, there will likely be a lot of red tape to get through.
“I think speed is going to be important, whether or not the committee has the ability to make change and make change relatively quickly without having to study an issue to death, ” said Fox.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 9, 2024.
