the just education makes the world to make up your own mind. made for mines the they can play a big role in the future of sustainable mobility calls that run without fuel and emissions. how it, i mean the by the energy of the sun, many teams, the developing solar vehicles, large scale production is still a long way down the road. researches and engine is making progress. you know, type of 2023. they mess up to race, then they just prototypes across australia is something drenched out black power. jim and team said that and much more this week on dw sign show. welcome to tomorrow . today of the city of darwin

and the north of australia. 38 teams are here to compete in the world solar challenge, the toughest race of its kind on the planet. the top qualifier on the 1st day was team zone and bargain from often. over the last 2 years, almost 50 students at austin's technical university have worked on this solar racing car, developing its components and assembling the vehicle in their free time. they've named it oddly because it's aerodynamic design was inspired by adelaide penguins. team leader lean or ceiling says from an energy standpoint, starting the race and poll position is ideal than others when you accelerate, like when overtaking you, use a lot more energy and you have to excel right. todd, at 1st. the call doesn't really like to do that. it can, but it needs energy, of course, and then you're just driving straight ahead. you get to them the flow at some point and ideally remain out in front. the next morning the car set out on their 3000

kilometer race to adelaide and southern australia. top teams from belgium and the netherlands sees the lead on the 1st day. every 300 kilometers, there are a control stops, and it's time for a pitstop to tilt the solar cells at the sun for precisely 30 minutes. and switch drivers from 8 in the morning until 5 in the afternoon, the teams zip across the back. then they have to stop and set up camp. the solar cars are parked in ideal alignment with the sun to recharge their batteries. they're going to do now also generate energy while driving with but the angles not really ideal. we can only set it ultimately when parked. so these are the most important i was in the race. everyone does all they can not to lose a minute, because that's what brings in the energy in a given think. victory or defeat hinge on how well the teams harvest and use the suns entered to the belgian team has developed

a retractable sense to move more efficiently and the when the outside competition drives innovations, like the says, race, observer marcus, my thoughts of vehicle experts from northern germany and isn't all of those many components installed in the solar costs here. i'll specially design because their engines have to work much more efficiently and the normal cost of, of the range is the problem for everyone. and they're trying to further optimize that of taking a completely different truck and things of what else comes onto the machine. here it's all about maximizing efficiency and some have made more compromises than others as teams on involved in is realizing halfway through the race, the lead teams have left the field. far behind those top teams are on the road with more powerful batteries, even though they pose a greater risk. nathan, by telling me that magenta, my notice got a lithium batteries with silicone on those are all the rage because of the energy density. i almost have not, the researches are still trying to make them safe. the god act wherever the sign

right now i'd say l s t is better chemistry because the health enrollment. so if we chose it for safety reasons, the seller sells on susceptible to sell more changes and are safe even if the island treated the way they should be. indeed probably wouldn't be mission so, but hundreds, but did you find it depends on those qualities will be crucial on the final day of the rates playing catch up, the team from often increases speed to over 100 kilometers per hour. with a little luck they could still finish force, but then just 300 kilometers from the finish line. in strong crosswinds, the league goes into a skid and flips. there are no pictures of the accident, driver's e mail and luckily gets out of it with no more than a square and a few scratches. the team is disappointed after the crash, but also released at least the battery survived the accident on damaged. so as long as electrons against it's the electric heart of

a car. and since we really thought about wherever and how each of the battery cells should be placed, like that horizontal rather than an upright for example, which is unusual. it pushes the center of gravity down more as much stuff as you can also say that there are no straight edges in the housing, and everything is curved, the cell holders will mailed, including buyers individually. so it's a tailor made boundary in every way. there's the driver's cocked, it is also tailor made and on damage the very next day, z moment is not behind the wheel scroll down and out of the safety aspects. what is planned movement. so the driver was able to get out a 2nd contract. he was able to press the emergency store even while tipping over, which shows how experienced our drivers are and how comfortable they feeling the cause. it didn't seem on his back of the wheel now for you and he deserves to drive the law meters over the finish. line, even if it didn't go quite as we imagined,

i'm trying to scan for very often and so far. so if i'm in adelaide, seattle lee gets to take to the road again. it may not have been the fastest vehicle in the solar race, but it was one of the safest and the team from offering can still celebrate a kind of victory. after clocking up 3000 kilometers and their car powered by the side with mad about fines technology, that's like dw signs is now on take talk. what do you do for fun? why do gravitational ways? when did people begin getting high and laughing gas out the drums boogie to the beads and what's the perfect kid football by find the on says gets most dw science own new tick tock channel are going to cause just stones when they break down the so the boats the to run the

development every little dangerous that battery is empty. but solar powered airplane crash that was an ever present see a few years ago during the 1st round, the world slide to the plane powered only by the sun history. making jenny had some dramatic moment there switched pioneers of electric aviation fair chunk, the car and andre for spare dared to do the impossible. they were the 1st to build and electrically powered solar aircraft, able to circumnavigate the world. the. there were already some tears of relief at the start in march 2015. as it was stress right up until the last moment is that still men around the world trip in 17 stages, kicked off and abu dhabi. the goal was to fly around the cloud using the power of

the sun alone. the car and bush bear developed the aircraft together, despite major resistance from the ation industry. they remained undeterred in their pursuit of the bold dream. andre horsberg put together the projects technical team. while barry tron p card focused on acquiring financial support, the one you slide, thanks to the sun go. you look at the sun and the fuel gauge and say that's making me fly. sensitivity development took 5 years in total. thanks to a highly efficient electric propulsion system. the solar impulse aircraft only consumes around the same amount of energy. it takes to power a motor scooter to waste as much as a car and has a wing span as wide as

a boeing 747, a glide should the air at a snail's pace, just 75 kilometers per hour. the plane had to store enough energy during the day, but it wouldn't crash at night. the. so you don't get to that good when it comes to how much energy can be provided. just remember that a single square meter of paneling is enough to power a hair dryer, because this we have 200 square meters. so the power of $200.00 hair dryers that the sun puts at our disposal. but honestly, the 112 days after the start of the journey, the biggest hurdle away to the flight across the pacific. 7000 kilometers driven only by the energy of the sun. 342.2, all the way from on all of the way we shoot all the best and up sort of degrade slides. i really move the 12 hours into the flight.

horsberg and the team performed the last safety check from this point on over the pacific, there is no turning back. and with the check comes of shock, the system that monitors the aircraft auto pilot isn't working. that means the system that keeps an eye on things about the pilot sleeps is faulty. if he continues to fly, his life is in danger. most critical moment about the project so far. no. to do this because one of the discussion on the ground was then do we fly on and risk the pilot slide and that's a very important factor. or do we take the easy way out? we could still turn back. so let's live back to indigo. yeah. and the home care i'm seeing that stuff was enough not going on. and hearing from the engineers point of view, the situation was clear, turnaround and repair of the plane. if andre bore spec wanted to keep flying,

he'd be up there on his own. but together with bear tron p card for spare, decided to ignore the advice and keep going. able to see what is most emotionally i didn't know if i had the right to do that. to my family, i was sure they were going to be very worried that i have the right to subject them to that stress. especially my wife should do when it was the pilot flew past the point of no return. then there was more bad news. the batteries were no longer charging properly for boy spare. the situation had grown even more critical faulty batteries, no auto pilot. he turned to meditation to calm himself down. that is because that was the fear loki anxiety related stress sauce. it's huge and situations like to have symbol, but if you've prepared well, then you can suppress it a bit. i mean, it's up to the good the force bear colds out and the sun provides the

necessary energy or after 4 days 21 hours and 50 minutes of constant tension. he finally glimpses the lights of honolulu, a magic moment for everyone involved the milestone in the history of aviation. in honolulu, it took several months to install new batteries in the solar impulse, but then it took to the air again uncompleted. the 1st round the world slide to the solar powered aircraft in july 26. the electric aviation has made the big steps forward since that most airplane designs charge the batteries before. take of d n. e in the future with electricity from renewable sources like that, produced in a special 7 o'clock in portugal. it's quiet

and he didn't get units largest human made was of why the ok the on the boat in between portugal in spain, in the south west and part of the ibm peninsula. there's not much else here. the confidence launches floating, so the power plant looks almost lost. it can only be reached by boat states to throw it to the island. every thing about this facility is special and the innovation everywhere. who's fine a photo baltic panels themselves are conventional much applicants on how they're set up in a floating fluctuating environment. that's what makes this project so special vis projects. 12000 solar panels. right. so really here on full heck to as a full tank. here's how it works. sunlight phoning on this side of the panels, creates an electrical voltage between the front and back of the cell, but allows the energy from the sun to be converted into

a tricity. it's been transmitted to the dams, power generation system through underwater cables. the pilot can be fed directly into the electrical grid that's already connected, that it's a hybrid system. so there's just some bluish warranty. there are 2 renewable energy sources and play hydro power and solar power, who's inc, or e, they're generated together at the same time. and so i had gotten their energy is fed into the power grad at the same connection point. the hydro power plant alone doesn't fully exploit, the potential of the power lines is electric as the floating. so the power plant is expected to produce 7.5 gigabyte hours of electricity per year. enough to supply around 1500 families in portugal with green energy. any step to select tricity will be stored in bunk changes at the power plant to pick up the slack jane cloudy

periods. the hydro electric power plant has been connected to the electrical grid for a long time. and a floating soda pound has a low impact on the environment. then a non base solution would have, if you compare these with centralized solar with, you know, $1000.00 x r as in the mountain are in the forest to the area in, uh, where uh, not only the landscape but also the eco systems might be effected. this is clearly a much better option to go ranks very high in your when it comes to the portion of renewable energy in the politics with lots of sunshine state, the winds, around 260 times. the country has many options for catching fossil fuel use. let us read why. i'm now able to you, do you have a science question? send it to us as a video, text or voice mail. if we don't see your query on the show,

we'll send you this list of pro nice as the same key. the skill on just task. this makes question comes from mike and teresa see from the us if the sun were to suddenly disappear, when would the earth leave its orbit? albert einstein was fascinated by gravity. and how it functions with a mass around $333000.00 times that of hers. the son dominates, gravitational matters in our solar system. the many celestial bodies that make it up revolve around the sun. i in stein described how gravity works and here's the theory of general relativity. it says that heavy objects warp space time with its enormous mass,

the sun bends. it's so much that the planets begin to move in a curbing orbit around it. just like the moon does around the earth. einstein also showed that nothing can move faster than light. it rips through space at nearly 300000 kilometers per 2nd. according to the great physicists theory, gravity propagates at the same speed. researchers were able to prove this in 2015 after decades of trying, they were finally able to measure gravitational waves for the 1st time. earth orbit the sun at a distance of about 150000000 kilometers. it takes just under 8 and a half minutes for its light to reach our planet. so if the sun were to suddenly disappear, we wouldn't know about it on earth until about 8 and a half minutes later. then the sky would suddenly go as dark as the deepest night.

because gravity also travels at light speed. yours would also leave its orbit at that moment and begin whizzing through space at 30 kilometers, a 2nd illuminated only by the light of distant stars. in the far future, who knows, maybe gravity from one of them would then pull in our orphan planet. how hard is it actually to design a rock? it's able to reach space? many nations and companies are currently launching one mission off to another to the moon mazda rather planets. aerospace engineering students at one gym and university enjoy a unique hands on experience when it comes to learning about rocket building challenges. now to is a come to the rich funding of cost. the tension grows higher and higher,

the closer you get to the account down onto the real stock. the side was the oh, it's very long days and short nights, but i'd say every 2nd was worth it. the state and everything, and i didn't remember any other moments in my life with such attention and emotion along with such positive feelings. julian indira philip an over 60 of the aerospace engineering students took got university how they cleared go to develop a real kit, could reach space on it. so they came up with a hybrid rocket propelled by solid and liquid fuel. the t name, high end hybrid engine development, the other we all started more or less from scratch of students. i learned a lot and i don't get hospitalized in all the things that then grew up. my power shoots made an engine tested. it made structural parts with common still to tie

them and those kinds of challenges that go to associate with i was quite a genuinely the experience was that you can do things here. you couldn't do otherwise, mich, michigan, can you stop them and find? well, i think it says it was hard to imagine that a student program could just go beyond the boundaries of university like this one of them. we were really in a workshop j and night finishing stuff up to developing testing building. it was very, very challenging to stand by a few times as a whole spot. in the end, it would take more than 3 years to construct and test the rocket system. some tests were run over and over again, like those on the engine. oh, the self same parachutes that we'd have to deploy to ensure the rocket safer to into of the team also managed to successfully launch smaller tests. versions of the design, the,

the beginning of march 2023 crunch time is the big launch approached. the students efforts have to pass must that with space experts. they had independently developed a setting metre, long hybrid ms style. just been asked to make them understand. i'm both excited and stressed out. of course i'm really glad. well now get confirmation for a launch o stay for the final configuration. and that we can stop packing scene. we'll do what we can to at least scratch the edge of space inside the rock. it has to post safety inspections. the german aerospace center supervisors, the rocket program for students. we find that it's approval, the planned launch in corrina renewals and sweden won't take place from expensive. i don't currently see any sticking points that would stop the launch. we'll discuss everything as a team later,

but at the moment everything looks pretty good. honestly, it's a stressful time for the high end team. the aerospace experts want to know about everything from the control and the chronics installed and the rockets knows code to it's comp and find the fuselage. the questions are extensive, grueling and tough stop soon, cuz i think projects like these are also a way to get more students and young people excited about stuff like the ice gun. if you have a thrilling project that pulls you in, then people come and are highly motivated to implement the whole thing. this can solve some of the time for the decision on whether the team can continue down the path from theory to practice. that's what the rocket acceptance review has power to basic so you have to go for the campaign in corona it's a huge hurdle for the students to clear. many have worked on the rockets the 2 more hours a week for years on top of the studies. give students

a completely free writing, they organize things and you see that projects can actually be implemented successfully a 6 weeks later, but you are as range space tend to encourage certification in hand. the high end team complete the construction on to hyper drawer kits. transported them to northern sweden and is preparing them for launch. they have both will make it, at least to the edges space and altitude of at least 100 kilometers. at the end of april, the countdown is on the moon. she's a 6th sense bible. and then with the 2 weeks were really intense. yeah, we had to work well together as a team who to ask. i was actually surprised by the positive vibe. i guess we got

a lot of praise the working very professionally to come to us with that perfect scenario. and that's just one reason i'm so proud of my team. but it's been the power sheets. what the rockets are recovered. unfortunately, they didn't reach space, but at least they set a new altitude record for student build. hi pedro kits. just done to 65 kilometers the months off to the campaign in carina. what's left at the rockets is back in still got the idea of the going to unpack all the pieces and looked at them all again. because that's also part of this project. finding out what worked, what didn't, and why everything didn't go as planned. it was on site, this is on a 2nd flight and normally i could find some we're still trying to figure out exactly what happened. and from the 1st launch,

we would cover the complete rotate on the 2nd mission, just to tank among other things, indira eulley and philip and the other high and team members will now precisely mitchell. and i'm elias, how they rootkits, reacted to temperature, pressure and vibrations. so the learning continues, it doesn't say it's my new government. i can, we build a rocket by and i also studied a little on the side kind of, you know what, i don't have an exact number in my head, but i can't remember it day here. instruct god where i wasn't in the rock at loud and i think it was worth it. the the student rocket program supervised by the gym and aerospace center will continue the so other teams will send one day launch cells built real kits into space from carina. in sweden's finals, the and that wraps things up this week on

dw science show. thanks for watching and see you again next time on some more a today the the

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