The Kremlin said on Thursday that changes to Russia's nuclear weapons doctrine outlined by President Vladimir Putin should be considered a signal to Western countries that there will be consequences if they participate in attacks on Russia.Putin said on Wednesday that...

Donald Trump's lawyers on Thursday will seek to persuade a New York state appeals court to toss a nearly half-billion dollar judgment against the former U.S. president over real estate business practices a court has declared fraudulent.Justice Arthur Engoron in February...

Astronomers at the European Southern Observatory have released the largest infrared map of the Milky Way ever. The enormous dataset contains millions of new objects, and the researchers expect to scour it for discoveries for years to come.

Good Thursday morning. Here is what’s on 46 agenda today: 10am: The President receives the President’s Daily Brief 1:45pm: The President holds a bilateral meeting with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy…

For perhaps the first time, MSNBC’s Stephanie Ruhle was the smartest person in the room during her Wednesday interview with Vice President Kamala Harris. The interview went about as well as you could…

Happy Thursday. Today begins The Stream’s 40 days of fasting and prayer for the election. Look for some prayer guides and other reflections among our materials during this time. We are already getting…

Ramifications beyond the Big Apple. Eric Adams has become the first sitting mayor of the Big Apple to be indicted. On Wednesday, September 25, a grand jury determined that charges connected to a federal…

The United States announced $8 billion in new aid for Ukraine as President Joe Biden prepared to host Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy for talks Thursday at the White House. Biden said in a statement…

We have known that water ice exists on the Moon since 1998. These large deposits are found in the permanently shadowed craters around the polar region. The challenge is how to get it since shadowed craters are not the best place for solar powered vehicles to operate. A team of engineers have identified a design for an ice-mining vehicle powered by americium-241. With a half-life of 432 years, this element is an ideal power source for a vehicle to operate in the dark for several decades.  Ice in the polar regions of the Moon is of vital importance for our future space explorations, not just lunar visits but as we stretch our legs in the Solar System. Its thought to be ancient material deposited by comets or formed by interactions with solar wind. It is expensive to take materials to the Moon so harvesting on site is far more efficient. Ice on the Moon can provide drinking water, oxygen for breaking and even hydrogen for rocket fuel. Surveys suggest something in the region of 600 billion kilograms of ice deposited at the lunar poles.  Exposed water ice (green or blue dots) in lunar polar regions and temperature. Credit: Shuai Li The challenge facing future lunar harvesting missions is that operations in the permanently  shadowed regions (or PSRs as they have been called) cannot be powered by solar panels as is often the case. The environment is cold too, in the region of 40K, that’s -233?C and at those temperatures special power considerations are required.  A team of researchers have been exploring the use of Radioisotope Power Systems (RPS) to provide thermal and electrical power systems. These power systems have been used before during deep space missions for example Voyager and New Horizons. They work by generating electricity using the heat that is released from the natural decay of a radioactive isotope usually plutonium-238. Artist rendition of Voyager 1 entering interstellar space. (Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech) The team led by Marzio Mazzotti from the University of Leicester have explored an ice-mining rover using power generated by the radio activate decay fo Americium-241. It has a half-life of 432 years which means it takes 432 years for half of a sample of Americium to decay. During this time, half of the atoms in the substance will transform into a different element. Using this power source will provide a stable power supply for an ice-mining rover in the darkness of the lunar polar craters for decades. Apollo 17 commander Eugene Cernan with the lunar rover in December 1972, in the moon’s Taurus-Littrow valley. Credit: NASA Using a radioisotope power system is not new however the team came upon the idea that the excess heat that is not used can be used to thermally mine ice from samples of lunar material. The rover would be fitted with a sublimation plate that would turn any ice deposits into a gas which would be collected in a cold trap. The team developed a model of its Thermal Management System and tested it for icy regolith (the fine dusty lunar surface) material with a water ice content of 0-10 vol %. Their simulations showed that it is possible to mine ice using thermal techniques in the PSR of the Moon using an RPS (I had to really concentrate writing that sentence!) powered lunar rover.  Source : Ice-Mining Lunar Rover using Americium-241 Radioisotope Power Systems The post A New Rover Design Could Crawl Across the Moon for Decades Harvesting Water appeared first on Universe Today.