Next-gen spacecraft: In-development solid oxide fuel cells offer bipropellant enabled electrical power supply

Mass and volume limitations make it challenging to load a spacecraft with all the equipment needed for a mission. An effort led by the Air Force Research Laboratory is developing a solid oxide fuel cell that converts chemical energy in a spacecraft’s bipropellant into electricity, thereby allowing an existing spacecraft component to be used as an auxiliary power supply.

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Video: Approval of industrial seafloor mining trial elicits scrutiny from marine scientists and journalists

On Sept. 7, 2022, Canadian mining startup The Metals Company announced the International Seabed Authority greenlit their plan to conduct an industrial seafloor mining trial to extract polymetallic nodules. While marine scientists are concerned about the environmental effects of deep-sea mining in general, an investigative report by The New York Times questions the choice of The Metals Company to conduct this trial.

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OSTP public access policy memo stirs the scholarly publishing world

On Aug. 25, 2022, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy released new policy guidance recommending that publications and their supporting data resulting from federally funded research be made immediately free and accessible to the public without an embargo period starting Jan. 1, 2026. To better contextualize this decision and the response by scholarly publishers, this CTT provides a brief history of the evolution of scholarly publishing and the push for open access.

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