Archives for July 14, 2019

The mission’s ground team has switched off one of Voyager 2’s heaters to conserve energy.

NASA’s Voyager probes are still out there, exploring interstellar space 42 years after they left our planet. To keep them running all these years with generators that are 40 percent less powerful than they were decades ago — and which are producing less and less energy over time — the agency had to sacrifice some of their parts and components. In fact, the mission managers have recently switched off the heater for Voyager 2’s cosmic ray subsystem instrument (CRS) as part of their new power management plan.

The probe’s cosmic ray system played a key role in confirming that Voyager 2 left the heliosphere in November, and it remains useful to this day. Since it was designed to detect fast moving particles both from the sun and from sources outside our solar system, it continued sending back data even after it entered interstellar space.

That’s why the managers held extensive discussions with the science team before deciding to switch off the instrument’s heater, which is necessary to keep it from freezing. In the end, everybody decided that it’s the component to sacrifice at this point in time, because the CRS can only look in certain fixed directions. Thankfully, that didn’t spell instant death for the cosmic ray instrument. The team has confirmed that it’s been sending back data even after its temperature dropped to minus 74 degrees Fahrenheit and even though it was tested at temperatures dropping only to minus 49 degrees Fahrenheit decades ago.

Voyager Project Manager Suzanne Dodd said it’s “incredible that Voyagers’ instruments have proved so hardy.” She added: “We’re proud they’ve withstood the test of time. The long lifetimes of the spacecraft mean we’re dealing with scenarios we never thought we’d encounter. We will continue to explore every option we have in order to keep the Voyagers doing the best science possible.”

As another example of the probes’ need to adapt to circumstances to keep going, Voyager 2 has fired up its correction maneuver thrusters on July 8th, 30 years after it was last fired. Its attitude control thrusters are old and haven’t been working as well, requiring the probe to fire an increasing number of pulses to make sure its antenna keeps pointed at our planet. Now, the spacecraft has switched thrusters like the Voyager 1 did in 2018, and will be using them to correct its orientation.

“Just make it faster.”

A Porsche 911 is, by design, a pure sports car. Since 1963, the automaker hasn’t deviated from building exciting two-door sportscar rockets. But not all of the 911 community is satisfied with what comes out of the factory in Stuttgart, Germany.

That’s where Vonnen comes in. The aftermarket component-maker is a new company (albeit an offshoot of third-party Porsche part-maker Elephant Racing) that has one product — but it’s a doozy. The company has created a hybrid system for 911, and it’s not for better gas mileage.

The Shadow Drive system adds a whopping 150 horsepower and 150 pounds of torque to whatever 911 it’s installed in. I got a chance to get behind the wheel of the development vehicle, and I was impressed by the results.

The first vehicle the company put the Shadow Drive in was the 911 Carrera, the vehicle with the least amount of power in the lineup. The car’s 350 horsepower shouldn’t be dismissed, but it’s far less than a GT3. The reasoning was that this car would have the largest perceivable power boost when driving.

I can’t comment on that without driving the modified GT3, but I can say that the addition of the Shadow Drive threw me back in my seat more times than I could count. On mountain roads in Northern California, I’d hit the accelerator and a high-pitched whine would accompany a surge in power as the Shadow Drive spun up.

It’s a bit like a turbo, without the lag and more power. It’s good. It’s very, very good.

Vonnen has a clever solution to making the Shadow Drive a reality. It stuck the pizza box-sized EV motor between the engine and transmission. The element replaces the stock flywheel (it helps start the car and smoothes out the connection between the transmission and engine) and the starter. The electric motor takes care of bringing the car to life.

It’s not a perfect fit though. The Shadow Drive requires the transmission to be moved back about an inch (25mm). So Vonnen had to fashion a custom mount to make up the difference. But the trade-off for that space is a lot of power.

Feeding that motor is a battery pack situated in the front luggage compartment while the controller is placed behind the rear seats. On the development Carerra, it’s visible through the rear window. But Vonnen says that it can place the unit wherever the owner wants. So you can have the additional power of the Shadow Drive and your friends down at the Porsche club would be none the wiser.

All in all, the system adds about 170 pounds to the car. That’s factoring in the removal of the stock flywheel and starter. So about the weight of a passenger. But the tradeoff is remarkable and adjustable. The Shadow Drive system uses a Bluetooth-connected companion app to place it into one of three modes: Street, Sport and Overboost.

These distinct settings adjust how and when the EV motor kicks in. The Shadow Drive is enabled based on how far down the accelerator is depressed. In Street mode, it kicks earlier than the other settings but doesn’t offer up all of the EV motor’s power.

In Sport mode, the system waits a bit longer to kick in, but when it does, it’s a huge difference in power. This is the mode most drivers will use when they really want to use the Shadow Drive for a quicker run at the track. Meanwhile, Overboost is a bit like Ludicrous mode. The system goes all out when you slam on the gas pedal. Like Tesla’s feature, it’s not really meant to be used all the time and it tends to push the motor to its thermal limit and deplete the battery pack.

At least that’s what it did in the car I drove. Vonnen says that the Shadow Drive it’s manufacturing right now is 30 percent more thermally efficient than what I drove in the development 911. In other words, you can use Overboost more times in a row if you like.

Vonnen has pulled off a pretty ingenious way to add power to an already powerful car. But as with anything related to the 911, it’s not cheap. The turnkey solution will set owners back $75,000. CEO Chuck Moreland notes that the Shadow Drive is really for the owners of GT2 and GT3 911s. Folks that are happy to drop large piles of cash to make their fast cars even faster.

Moreland also said that the Shadow Drive would work in older air-cooled 911s. Although it might have to tame the power output so as not to stress the components of these older vehicles. In all of this Moreland had one goal, “just make it faster.”

Sure it’s pricey, but Vonnen did exactly that.

Spektr-RG could significantly expand understanding of the universe.

Russia is back in the business of space observation after losing control of a radio telescope a the start of 2019. The country has successfully launched Spektr-RG, an X-ray telescope co-developed with Germany’s help. The vessel will take 100 days to reach its final destination of Lagrange Point 2, where it can conduct studies in stable conditions a million miles from Earth. When it gets there, though, it could significantly reshape human understanding of the universe.

Spektr-RG is expected to conduct an exceptionally detailed 6.5-year survey that could discover roughly 100,000 galaxy clusters, hundreds of thousands of active stars and about 3 million supermassive black holes. In addition to providing a more detailed map of the cosmos, it could help understand the formation of black holes, the distribution of matter in the universe and the influences of dark energy on cosmic expansion.

This is a milestone for Russian astronomy. While the telescope’s final design varies significantly from the original concept and suffered multiple delays, it puts Russia (and by extension, Germany) on the cutting edge of X-ray astronomy. While existing X-ray telescopes have made major discoveries, they might not accomplish something on a similar scale for a while.

The MRW-S3 is built for pro photographers.

It’s hard to spice up USB hubs when they’re practically ubiquitous. Sony’s solution? Make it indispensable to pro photographers. The company’s newly announced MRW-W3 hub is billed as the “world’s fastest” UHS-II SD (and microSD) card reader, supporting read rates up to 300MB/s. Whether or not it lives up to the boasts, it should easily transfer your camera’s giant RAW photos and 4K videos. This isn’t a one-trick brick, either — it’s meant to handle many of your laptop’s other needs while you’re on the road.

The hub supports 100W power delivery to handle monitors and other particularly demanding peripherals. You’ll also have USB-C and USB-A connectors to connect devices new and old, not to mention HDMI output for video up to 4K at 30 frames per second. Even the case is resilient, with IP68 dust and water resistance as well as an aluminum “wave” design that improves grip and reduces scratches.

Sony will sell the MRW-S3 sometime in the fall alongside new SF-M Tough SD cards (in 64GB, 128GB and 256GB capacities) that can take advantage of the hub’s speeds. The tech giant hasn’t provided a price, but that might not be an obstacle. If you own a high-end mirrorless or DSLR camera that can seriously tax the fastest card readers, the price of the USB hub will seem trivial by comparison.