LAB REPORT

Firefly Aerospace, which successfully operated its Blue Ghost lander on the lunar surface earlier this year, announced today (June 18) that it's working on a new moon project: a "lunar imaging service" called Ocula.

Firefly is developing its Elytra vehicle for a variety of uses in Earth orbit and deep space, including the region around the moon. The Ocula project will equip Elytra probes with high-resolution telescopes developed by the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, a U.S. Department of Energy facility in the California Bay Area.

These scopes will be able to resolve features as small as 8 inches (20 centimeters) on the lunar surface from an altitude of 31 miles (50 kilometers), according to Firefly.

"With ultraviolet and visible spectrum capabilities, the telescopes are designed to support situational awareness of other objects in cislunar space, enable fine-grained lunar surface details and identify concentrations of ilmenite, which indicates the presence of helium-3," Firefly representatives wrote in the emailed statement.

The National Ignition Facility (NIF) at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) achieved fusion ignition for the eighth time on April 7, producing a net-energy gain from a controlled fusion reaction. Using a new fuel-capsule design, the experiment set records for both energy yield and target gain, producing 8.6 megajoules (MJ) of energy using 2.08 MJ of laser energy, or a target gain of 4.13.

The results broke NIF’s own target-gain record, set in February, of 2.44.

Completed in 2009, NIF conducts experiments to support national security, the nation’s nuclear-weapon stockpile and basic science. The facility, which spans the size of three football fields, amplifies 192 lasers before they converge on a target the size of a peppercorn suspended in a small cylindrical X-ray oven known as a hohlraum. When bathed in X-rays, the target implodes with enough force to trigger nuclear fusion.

April’s experiment used a target with a redesigned inner layer, known as a dopant, to improve the target’s compression symmetry during the fusion process.

When Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL)’s National Ignition Facility (NIF) conducts a high-energy-density physics experiment, a tremendous amount of high value data is generated in the blink of an eye. LLNL uses AI data tools to manage this data, using them to improve predictive modeling capabilities and transform optics inspection.

To boost its AI capabilities, LLNL and Amazon Web Services (AWS) have partnered to develop an AI-driven troubleshooting and reliability system for NIF. At NIF, the team recently completed the first phase of integrating generative AI capabilities into operations.

According to LLNL director Kim Budil, leveraging the lab’s extensive historical data through advanced AI techniques allows the lab to solve problems faster and pave the way for predictive maintenance and more efficient operations in the future.

The initiative is expected to boost operational efficiency at NIF, which achieved fusion ignition in December 2022. LLNL has repeated ignition seven times since the milestone achievement, obtaining higher fusion yields in the process. AI-driven cognitive simulation, a combination of high-performance computing and machine learning, was a key factor in achieving ignition.

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) researchers have found that microwaves open a whole new world of 3D printing.

Traditional 3D printing techniques, while amazing, are often time consuming and limited in the kinds of materials they can use. But a LLNL team, led by staff scientists Saptarshi Mukherjee and Johanna Schwartz, has pioneered Microwave Volumetric Additive Manufacturing that allows the use of a wide range of materials.

The breakthrough involves the resin-heating process. During this phase, researchers introduced microwaves, which penetrate more deeply into the material. This allows both opaque and transparent resins to cure and harden to full strength more quickly. It even works on plastic resins that are loaded with additives. 

Because it is scalable, the technique could allow 3D-printed parts to be made bigger and more complex in the future. It has potential uses in national security and industries like aerospace, automotive and healthcare. The technology can currently print objects up to about 2 inches, but according to the team could scale up to 36-inch-plus structures in the future.

A paper on fusion neutron sources by a team from the United States of America’s Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and the University of Rochester has won the IAEA’s annual Nuclear Fusion prize.  The article describes critical successes in producing output from fusion in the form of neutrons.

The Nuclear Fusion prize is given annually to recognize outstanding work issued in the IAEA journal, Nuclear Fusion. Each year, a shortlist of ten papers is nominated. These are papers of the highest scientific standard, published in the journal volume three years previous to the award year. Nominations are based on citation record and recommendation by the Board of Editors. The Board then votes to determine which of these papers has made the largest scientific impact.

“Shooting really big lasers at stuff can stimulate fusion reactions like those occurring in the sun and other stars,” said Charles B. Yeamans, the paper’s first author and winner of the prize.