October 2015
Japan’s H-IIA rocket: beautiful, accurate, and on-time
.... Technologies so far planned include a more robust combustion cycle for the 1st stage engine, manufacturing with 3D printing,... start sequence is therefore simpler than a two-stage combustion cycle, as well as giving a robust response to variations in...
May 2017
Growing plants without gravity
...American experiment in the summer of 1997 planned to grow a model short-cycle plant, Brassica rapa L. in two generations. And for the first ...four full consecutive in-flight ‘seed to seed’ cycles. Genetic analysis gave serious weight to the hypothesis ...
10 May 2016
When sunspots are minimal, the solar magnetic field is at a maximum, say researchers
... a considerable length of time, to fully capture and understand this trend, and to find out whether it is a transient or a real cycle, the simulation would still need to be continued further. What implications this has for understanding future lulls...
July 2014
X-51A Waverider, hypersonics, and the potential of airbreathing engines
... modern flight control system. Scramjets can’t operate at lower speeds, and so must be paired with other propulsion cycles, such as a rocket or a high-speed gas turbine, to carry a vehicle from ground to hypersonic flight. A hypersonic aircraft might...
July 2014
In thrall to a star: understanding the Sun will help us understand our own climate and environment
... effectively stopped for almost 70 years (approximately seven solar cycles). This is known as the Maunder Minimum, after British...flights. Superstorms Over the course of an 11-year solar cycle the Sun will produce thousands of flares and coronal mass...
March 2015
JAXA’s challenge to climate change
... Rain is a critically important element of the planet’s water cycle that affects all organisms, including man. Two-thirds of natural...of global snowfall fills the gap in the water cycle. Precipitation and global warming JAXA is closely monitoring ...
