LENSwith no technical background,” he explains. “It
might look complicated, but once you have printed
the pieces, it goes together like LEGO or a puzzle.”
Matt describes how he built his Ultrascope for
around £200, making it many times cheaper than
existing, commercially available AROs. The design
and software itself is open-source, enabling anyone
to create and distribute improvements or
modifications to the system under the CERN Open
Hardware Licence.
James and his team have always been interested
in the collision of ‘DIY engineering’ and the emerging
‘space entrepreneur’ movement. They wanted to
create a space-themed project that would appeal to
established makers and amateur communities
around the world, while also proving that it’s
possible to develop open hardware that is able to
contribute and scale citizen science with a level of
data accuracy that is valuable to researchers.
“Citizen scientists can also make the tools for
research,” says James, “which we believe is the
next chapter of citizen science: huge science
projects that are conducted by armies of highly
skilled, data-gathering individuals who build the tools
to do the work. The Ultrascope project is this – a
passionate, highly skilled, data-harvesting army who
build their own devices to help save the world.
James hopes the Ultrascope and its users will play
a significant role in NASA’s Asteroid Challenge Lab,
which encourages citizens to assist in seeking out
asteroids that could pose a potential threat to Earth.
NASA estimates that less than 10% of potentially
hazardous objects smaller than 300 metres in
diameter, and less than 1% of potentially hazardous
objects smaller than 100 metres in diameter, have
been discovered.
The Ultrascope’s primary purpose is to “close the
gap in the Southern Sky” by providing an ultra-low-
cost robotic observatory for citizen scientists to
support the work of professional astronomers in the
Southern Hemisphere.
“James hopes the Ultrascope and its users will play a
significant role in NASA’s Asteroid Challenge Lab, which
encourages citizens to assist in seeking out asteroids that
could pose a potential threat to Earth”
HOW DO YOU MAKE A WHISKY GLASS FOR SPACE?
Preventing extinction-level events and
planetary destruction is all very well, but
the Open Space Agency has been working
on an even more important
problem: how to drink
whisky in space.
After the success
of the Ultrascope
project, James Parr
and the Open Space
Agency were
commissioned by
blended Scotch
whisky company
Ballantine’s to create
a 3D-printed whisky
glass that works in
zero gravity.
The OSA team studied
how whisky behaves in zero gravity
as they built a series of prototypes,
which included rotating discs and
spinning bases that closely resembled
laboratory centrifuges. The prototypes
were then tested using the ZARM Drop
Tower in Bremen, Germany to simulate
weightlessness, while the results were
captured in super slow motion.
“In space, you can’t sip whisky out of a
glass because it floats around. You can’t
pull air; by sucking you will compress the
air around the liquid, but you won’t move
anything. To solve the problem of drinking
in space, we needed to find a way of
actually capturing the liquid and then to
allow capillary forces to pull the liquid up
into the mouth,” explains James.Sipping whisky in space
The Space Glass is made from the same
medical grade 3D-printed PLA used for
heart valves that go inside human bodies.
The glass has a spiral convex base plate
that creates surface tension to hold thewhisky down in a reservoir at the bottom of
the glass. The base plate is stainless steel
coated in rose gold, to prevent the glass
from affecting the whisky’s taste.
Filling the Space Glass
with whisky and drinking
it has been engineered
according to a four-
step process, explains
James. “Motion one
pulls the whisky into
the base of the glass;
then motion two is to
roll the whisky in your
hand and let the heat
transfer through the
metal base into the liquid
itself. Step three involves
then moving the glass down
before moving your nose into the area
where the vapours are resting. The final
motion is to move the glass upwards to
capture the liquid in the base plate and let
it enter your mouth.”Below
There is no word
yet on a space
martini glass for
orbital 007s
Credit
Open Space Agency
(CC-BY-SA_