CuriouTech

Opportunity, the intrepid NASA rover that spent 15 years on Mars climbing in and out of craters to gather evidence of the planet's watery past, has been brought down by tiny particles of dust. After weeks of trying to revive the veteran Mars rover in the wake of a blinding dust storm, NASA has given up on ever hearing from it again. It's a humble ending for a machine that survived a 300-million-mile journey through space, executed a hole-in-one landing, and set a record by driving more than 28 extraterrestrial miles. Opportunity's last transmission to Earth occurred on June 10 amid an epic Martian dust storm. Still, NASA engineers remained hopeful that when the dust settled, the rover would recharge its solar-powered batteries and resume its superlative mission. Opportunity landed on Mars in January 2004 for a mission that was supposed to last 90 Martian days. Its twin rover, Spirit, had landed three weeks earlier on the other side of the planet. "Wit

A totally new insulation material has been developed that is totally weightless but can still withstand high temperature, that would not be tolerated by other materials and destroy it. The porous aerogel is at least 99 percent open space , with the rest made up of an atomically thin ceramic called hexagonal boron nitride. The design proves extremely durable under high temperatures and rapid temperature shifts of over 1,000 degrees Celsius.  “It’s notoriously hard to make materials that are not just lightweight, but can also be heavily heat resistant,” says Deep Jariwala, an engineer at the University of Pennsylvania.  The new ultralight insulator may be especially well suited to shielding components on spacecraft , which must endure extreme temperature swings when turning toward or away from the sun or re-entering Earth’s atmosphere, he says.  The aerogel comprises a network of tiny air pockets, with each pocket separated by two atomically thin layers of hexagonal b