News
Scientists have figured out how to use Triton to reach Neptune
Researchers have proposed a new idea for reaching Neptune’s orbit more efficiently: using the thin atmosphere of Triton, Neptune’s largest moon, to capture the orbiter.
The only probe to visit Neptune was Voyager 2, which spent just a few minutes near the planet during its historic flight through the outer solar system in the 1980s.
More than 40 years have passed since this mission. And while space agencies around the world have developed dozens of probes, landers and rovers in recent decades, none have visited the solar system’s most distant planet.
Planetary scientists have long been interested in returning to Neptune, but it is so far away that a probe or lander mission is virtually impossible. Neptune is so far away that it’s hard to imagine: it is about 30 times further from the Sun than Earth. Jupiter is only five times farther from the Sun than Earth. The orbiter will take years to reach Jupiter, but Neptune is five times further away. The Voyager 2 probe took 12 years to reach Neptune, flying past without stopping.
New Horizons flew past Neptune and its moon Triton in 2014 at a distance of about 3.96 billion kilometers, also without stopping. Placing a probe in orbit around a planet is a completely different volume and format of data and is still not possible using existing technologies.
One of the problems with returning to Neptune is that a short visit focused solely on this planet will not provide significant results. Without the right combination of conditions for missions in the 1970s and 1980s, even more fuel would have to be spent to send a probe in that direction, with no hope of obtaining even as much scientific information as decades ago.
The logical next step after a successful flyby mission is an orbiter, but due to the colossal distance to Neptune, such a mission faces serious obstacles. There is still no way to get a probe large enough into the Neptune system with enough fuel to slow it down and do it all in a relatively short time.
However, researchers have proposed an idea to overcome these obstacles: use the thin atmosphere of Triton, Neptune’s largest moon, to capture the probe.
In the article, the researchers point out that NASA successfully completed testing of LOFTID in low Earth orbit in 2022. The goal of this program was to develop an inflatable shield to protect the probe as it descends through the Earth’s atmosphere and reduce its speed so that it does not crash upon landing.
The researchers proposed pointing a future Neptune orbiter toward Triton and using a LOFTID-like device to slow down the probe. They found that Triton’s atmosphere, despite being only a fraction of the air pressure of Earth’s atmosphere, could be quite effective at slowing down a spacecraft and allowing it to be captured by Neptune’s gravity. In addition, scientists will be able to change the angle of the probe to adjust its orientation and precisely set its trajectory to achieve an ideal orbit.
Scientists calculated that to implement the plan it is necessary to lower the probe only 10 kilometers above the surface of Triton. Thanks to the lack of high mountain ranges on Triton (the highest known peaks are barely over one kilometer), the risk of a catastrophic impact with the surface is virtually non-existent.
Similar ideas have already been proposed for orbiter missions around Saturn using its moon Titan, but Titan has a much denser atmosphere, making the task much easier. Even though Triton’s atmosphere is very thin, it is relatively far from Neptune, meaning the spacecraft won’t move as fast and won’t need to slow down much to be captured by the planet’s gravity.
Researchers estimate that using this technique, a mission to Neptune could take just 15 years, much less than other mission designs. This approach has another bonus: it will allow us to study Triton in detail, which is one of the least studied objects in the Solar System and, according to the popular version, it is an object from the Kuiper belt captured by Neptune. Scientists could view the satellite from just a few kilometers above the surface and obtain additional scientific data.
Most modern solid-state drives have the M.2 2280 form factor, but sometimes you need a much more compact SSD – M.2 2242. Corsair did just that.
In the photo you can see the MP600 Micro model in the specified form factor. The length of such a drive is 42 mm, although there is also an M.2 2230 that is only 30 mm long.
The new product supports PCIe 4.0 and is characterized by data transfer speeds of up to 5100 MB/s for reading and 4300 MB/s for writing. Performance is respectively 600,000 and 890,000 IOPS. These parameters are typical for the 1 TB model, which also has a resource of 600 TBW.
It remains to add that the new product is based on 176-layer Micron 3D TLC NAND memory and is priced at $70.
Components
Huawei defeated American sanctions: the Chinese company now has its own 5-nanometer processor
Five years under strict American sanctions, which cut Huawei off from advanced single-chip systems, have yielded results: the company has its own 5-nanometer processor made in China.
There is an interesting story with this processor. Five days ago, Huawei introduced the Qingyun L540 laptop based on the Kirin 9006C SoC: and at that time, all the characteristics of the device were revealed, but nothing was reported about the central element of the hardware platform. Now Huawei has updated the description on the website, which clearly states that the Kirin 9006C is manufactured using the 5 nm process technology.
The official description says that the single-chip system has eight cores and a maximum frequency of 3.13 GHz. The Gizmochina resource adds: the CPU is made according to a two-cluster design – with four Arm Cortex-A77 cores and four more Arm Cortex-A55 cores.
Let’s remember that earlier Huawei had a 7-nanometer SoC Kirin 9000S, and it is used in the flagships of the Mate 60 line. Kirin 9000S is produced by SMIC, and the same company most likely produces the 5-nanometer Kirin 9006C.
News
Intel, where is the gain from new architectures? Core Ultra 9 185H was slower than Core i9-13900H with the same number of cores
Yesterday we took a look at the first tests of the Core Ultra 7 155H, which at first glance are not impressive. Today the first test results of the flagship Core Ultra 9 185H appeared on the Internet.
This CPU has the maximum number of cores for Meteor Lake: six large, eight small and two small in the SoC. The CPU operates at frequencies up to 5.1 GHz. Now there is a result only in CPU-Z: 767 and 8097 points in single-threaded and multi-threaded modes, respectively.
In this case, we are interested in both, since the single-threaded mode shows the benefits of the new architecture, and Meteor Lake has both large and small cores with the new architecture.
As you can see, in single-threaded mode the new product is faster than the Core i5-13500H, but slower than the Core i7-13800H. That is, no advantage in single-threaded performance from switching to a new architecture is visible, but this is if we ignore the issue of power consumption. Formally, the TDP of the Core Ultra 9 185H and Core i7-13800H is the same and is 45 W. If the actual consumption is also approximately equal, then it turns out that, indeed, there is no performance gain from the transition to new architectures.
If we talk about multi-threaded mode, here, interestingly, the situation is a little better, but not that radically. Yes, the Core Ultra 9 185H is already ahead of the Core i7-13800H, and noticeably ahead (by 15%), but the Core i9-13900H is already ahead of the new product by about 10%. And at the same time, all these three CPUs have the same number of large and small cores, except for the small cores in the Meteor Lake SoC. And if you count them, then the new product has even more cores.
Thus, if we summarize yesterday’s data with today’s, it turns out that we should not expect any tangible performance gain from switching from Raptor Lake to Meteor Lake when comparing CPUs with similar configurations. At the same time, Meteor Lake has a much more powerful iGPU and is likely still noticeably lower power consumption, although yesterday’s tests showed that the Ryzen 7040 is even better in this regard thanks to the much more modern 4 nm process technology.
Small, but remote. Corsair unveils SSD MP600 Micro in M.2 2242 form factor
Most modern solid-state drives have the M.2 2280 form factor, but sometimes you need a much more compact SSD –...
Huawei defeated American sanctions: the Chinese company now has its own 5-nanometer processor
Five years under strict American sanctions, which cut Huawei off from advanced single-chip systems, have yielded results: the company has...
Intel, where is the gain from new architectures? Core Ultra 9 185H was slower than Core i9-13900H with the same number of cores
Yesterday we took a look at the first tests of the Core Ultra 7 155H, which at first glance are...
Windows 12 will be released in September-October 2024, but its capabilities will be limited on many computers
The next big Windows 11 update is called Hudson Valley. It is so big that it will be released as...
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