NASA Wants to Capture Asteroids…in Bags (And Other New Tech)

NIAC has awarded their first two grant winners for phase III: optical mining and 3D modeling craters, and researchers are further honing in on how to identify faraway habitable planets.

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[rainydaylady]

Please do a video about microbes living in nuclear reactors! That sounds fascinating. 😊

[jdrew]

Question; Who found microbes in nuclear reactors, how did they do that and are they still alive? ( Well 3 questions and a new SciShow )

[RockawayCCW]

What sort of science poems? Vogon poetry or just the regular stuff?

[kingjames]

life has adapted to live on every part of our planet, why couldn't life adapt to different conditions and elements? really the only thing life requires for sure is energy, likely in the form of heat from a nearby star.

[thewritestuffindy]

Congrats to a fellow Indy resident on your feature story on 60 Minutes!! Or am I confusing you with your brother?

[Karabetter]

When do we get to see the story about the rover smelling methane farts on Mars?

[gk]

What about a ‘bag’ that could be put over or even lift out a reactor core like Chernobyl? They just moved their new cover over the site... wouldn’t a tarp or multiple tarps that are designed to trap radioactive particles be cheaper and easier? Or even possible?

[JeremyWS]

It'll be a long time before we discover extraterrestrial life, if ever.
I really like astronomy. It's one of my favorite fields of science.

[gusbisbal]

Crbon Monoxde is a great oxidiser. People act like its a waste product but its one of the main gases that comes of wood when you burn it and it is one of the main elements that produces flame.

[LiftPizzas]

What does "$X for 9 months" mean? Is it that amount per month, 9 times? Is it every other week? One time lump sum? Is that the total, divided up among payments spread out through 9 months?

[artifactland]

"Deinococcus radiodurans" live in nuclear What are they, microscopic hulks?

[TheExoplanetsChannel]

Great video! Thankfully, we have a *nearby Earth-like exoplanet orbiting a Sun-like star:* _Tau Ceti e_

[davidhand]

CO is a pretty weak complaint for exobiology. Blood has evolved several times independently on Earth using a variety of metal elements, not just iron. Evolution would easily find a way around that limitation. Beyond that, there is plenty of Earth life that can survive a CO atmosphere if that's the biggest problem.

When we are thinking about toxic gases more generally we should be mindful of the fact that oxygen is a toxic gas. It's toxic due to its reactivity - which is exactly the property leveraged by living things on Earth. Other life forms breathe H2S and CN, for crying out loud.

Don't think of life so narrowly. It's more versatile than you think.

[keithhunt]

Let's get on with it already. Dude, I can not wait for us to start mining asteroids. I think that is going to REALLY kick off our new space industry.

[chrism]

Imagine NASA got the same funding as the military

[Master_Therion]

Capturing asteroids in bags? I think whoever came up with that idea should be... sacked.

[MarkBoutilier-xnwh]

As legit and consistently truthful as the entire "outfit". Kool Aid -Xtra!

[maludir]

What does this mean for the Trappist1 System? So there is no life possible there at all?

[tv-pp]

Couldn't planets in the outer edge of the habitable zone be kept warm with greenhouse gasses other than CO2?

[Joeviocoe]

Makes more sense if you switch the names of the two winners.
Skylight sounds more like an optical mining program that uses sunlight to focus onto the surface.
And autonomous micro rovers creating 3D models sounds much more like mini bee.