Tag: NASA

The brilliant art amongst our stars

The brilliant art amongst our stars

On 15 January 2025, the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launched from NASA’s Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida bound for the Mare Crisium basin of the moon—carrying with it 47 artistic creations, including MAX IV colleague Filip Persson’s artwork, ‘MAX IV Control System’. The art will be part of humanity’s galactic impression to live for millions of years.

According to Persson, his artwork represents a new genre of art with requirements yet to be defined. “The idea with the genre ‘Technical Art’ is that a sufficiently complex machine can create art by being run in normal operation. So, no deliberate special run in order to create the art. It can, for example, be instabilities or other things creating a beautiful pattern.”

The work, curated for the MoonMars Museum project, was created with Python and Gephi software. All devices of the full control system of MAX IV along with all interconnections were extracted as a huge table. The table was then imported into Gephi as a node network and evolved using gravitational parameters, creating beautiful patterns resembling galaxies—a bit like a Big Bang but with the very different behaviour that all information about the control system and the connections remain intact.

“I have over the years seen a lot of beautiful graphs at MAX IV and I thought quite early, due to having a somewhat artistic mind, that it would be fun to do something with these images,” explained Filip Persson, who is MAX IV’s Assistant Head of Accelerator Operations.

The artworks are packaged both digitally, on a very resilient memory card, and analogue as laser etched into a nickel plate using state-of-the-art Nanofiche technology with 300 000 DPI resolution. The art is part of the company LifeShip’s payload called ‘Pyramid on the Moon’.

How does one define technical art? The parameters are something that Persson aims to classify so that more people from around the world can contribute to the genre.

Read more on MAXIV website

Transistors and NASA’s radiation paradox

Transistors and NASA’s radiation paradox

The nature of Metal-Oxide-Semiconductor Field Effect Transistors (MOSFETs) present a fascinating paradox in space exploration. Their strength in radiation detection becomes their weakness in space operations, exposing an Achilles’ heel for NASA. Yet, these same devices monitor radiation doses received by humans – on earth and in space. 
 

These tiny transistors have transformed everything from consumer electronics to advanced scientific applications. They are essential components in radios, MP3 players and iPods, powered satellite communications and now drive the artificial intelligence age. Their unique ability to measure radiation by capturing changes in electrical characteristics when exposed to ionising radiation is critical in both space exploration and cancer treatment.  
 

Australia leads the development of MOSFET-based radiation detectors for radiation monitoring. In a recently published work, ANSTO scientists and collaborators showed how four MOSFETs can be used to precisely measure radiation doses that patients receive during Boron Neutron Capture Therapy (BNCT).

Ironically, this property that we rely on for measuring radiation nearly doomed NASA’s Europa Clipper mission, due to the risk of radiation damage compromising the operation of its MOFET-based systems. Understanding this dual interaction with radiation highlights the importance of innovative solutions in both space missions and healthcare. It is also a great example of how mission-based research impacts everyday life. 

The Versatility of MOSFETs 

MOSFETs are a key component in modern electronics. Following Moore’s Law, the number of transistors in a circuit has increased exponentially over time enabling more powerful and energy-efficient technologies. Companies like NVIDIA use billions of MOSFETs in their GPUs, such as the A100, which is the backbone of  high-performance AI systems. These transistors allow the efficient power management and rapid switching that is necessary for handling the complex operations in machine learning and AI applications,

In jointly published research, ANSTO and University of Wollongong (UOW) researchers used a Quad-MOSFET array to precisely measure radiation quality in boron neutron capture therapy (BNCT). Each MOSFET was coupled to a different moderator (material that interacts with radiation) and measures different energy levels to allow accurate radiation monitoring during treatment.  

Another example is the MOSkin dosimeter, developed at the Centre for Medical Radiation Physics at the University of Wollongong. MOSkin is a skin-mounted MOSFET device that provides real-time radiation dose measurements during radiotherapy. This technology is already being used in clinical settings to improve safety and accuracy in radiation treatments. 

MOSFETs in Space Exploration 

MOSFETs are integral to managing systems and instruments in spacecraft due to their efficiency and low power consumption. However, space environments, especially around Jupiter, expose these devices to intense radiation—a challenge NASA faced with the Europa Clipper mission.

The radiation delivers a harsh cocktail of ionising particles. This radiation can cause single event effects (SEE), where high-energy particles flip a MOSFET’s state from “on” to “off,” causing them to malfunction. It can also cause total ionising dose (TID) effects, a situation in which radiation slowly degrades the MOSFET’s performance by trapping charges and creating defects in the semiconductor material. 

Read more at ANSTO website

#EBSstory Asteroid Bennu’s samples investigated at the ESRF

#EBSstory Asteroid Bennu’s samples investigated at the ESRF

Scientists from the Schwiete Cosmochemistry Laboratory at Goethe University Frankfurt in Germany and the University of Ghent in Belgium have come to the ESRF to study minuscule samples from Asteroid Bennu, after they were brought back to Earth by NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission on 24 September 2023.

The asteroid Bennu is a scientific gem. Asteroids are airless remnants left over from the early formation of our solar system about 4.6 billion years ago. Early analysis led by NASA has indicated that asteroid Bennu appears to be very rich in carbon and shows evidence for hydration, which scientists believe can shed light on the origin of life and the Solar System. “It is a primitive carbonaceous asteroid, a so-called near-Earth object located within the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter and, because it hasn’t undergone the geological processes known for example from Earth and other planets, we think its composition can provide us with clues about the beginning of the Solar System”, says Dr. Beverley Tkalcec, lead scientist in the team at ESRF and geoscientist at the Goethe University Frankfurt and specialised in space samples.

After the return of the OSIRIS-REx mission, NASA sent out samples of the asteroid to  scientists across the world for further investigation, including long-term ESRF users from the Goethe University Frankfurt (Germany) and University of Ghent (Belgium). They have come to the ESRF this week to  analyse some of the precious samples on the high-energy ESRF beamline ID15A. “The targeted  minerals in our samples are less than half a millimetre in size and the concentration of some of the elements we want to find is of the range of  parts per million”, explains Laszlo Vincze, professor from the University of Ghent and leading the synchrotron analysis of the samples.

The researchers want to track and quantify individual minerals enriched with Rare Earth Elements (REE), as tracers of asteroidal processes. These minerals might have changed after being in contact with water. “It is like finding a needle in a haystack, so we need a really high flux to study these samples and this is exactly what the ESRF offers today with the new EBS”, adds Vincze. The experiments use X-ray fluorescence combining high incident energies of 90 keV with a 300 nm resolution scanning capability and a new high-count rate high-efficiency fluorescence detector.

Read more on ESRF website

Image: The asteroid Bennu

Credit: NASA