Month: November 2021

Enlarge / NASA Television of the Crew-2 landing shows three main parachutes deployed, with a fourth one lagging behind. (credit: NASA TV)

11:30pm ET Monday update: Crew Dragon Endeavour safely splashed down into the Northern Gulf of Mexico on Monday evening, just south of Pensacola, Florida. The water landing capped a successful 199-day mission to the International Space Station.

The spacecraft's return to Earth seemed nominal up until 4 minutes before splashdown, when the vehicle's main parachutes deployed. Three of the four parachutes came out nominally, but inflation of the fourth parachute was delayed by a fraction of a minute. Despite this, the commentators on the NASA-SpaceX livestream indicated that the fourth parachute's inflation rate was normal, and the spacecraft's descent speed nominal.

The crew emerged from the spacecraft less than an hour later, on board a recovery ship, no worse for wear. Another Crew Dragon spacecraft, carrying NASA's Crew-3 mission, is set to launch from Florida in less than two days. It seems possible that this mission could be delayed due to the parachute issue observed Monday night.

Enlarge / Smaller vehicles like the Kia EV6 could benefit from lighter, more energy-dense batteries. (credit: Kia)

Solid-state batteries have been hailed as the Holy Grail for electric vehicles. While that might be an overstatement, they do promise to boost range and slash charging times, bringing zero-emissions vehicles that much closer to parity with their fossil fuel competition.

Yet solid-state batteries, which use a solid electrolyte as opposed to a liquid or gel, remain just over the horizon. Recently, they’ve started to look less like vaporware and more like a real product, and they will probably make their way into cars and trucks by the end of the decade. Still, that’s a timeline that gives competitors an opening.

One of those competitors is a company called SES, which last week announced a new battery that promises to nearly double the energy density of today’s lithium-ion cells. The key was eliminating a piece of the battery that added weight and thickness—but to do so without introducing dangerous conditions that could lead to a fire.