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myfeeds · 2 years ago

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Major storage capacity in water-based batteries

These batteries are different from lithium-ion batteries that contain cobalt. The group’s goal of researching metal-free batteries stems from having better control over the domestic supply chain since cobalt and lithium are outsourced. This safer chemistry would also prevent battery fires. Chemical engineering professor Dr. Jodie Lutkenhaus and chemistry assistant professor Dr. Daniel Tabor has published their findings about lithium-free batteries in Nature Materials. “There would be no battery fires anymore because it’s water-based,” Lutkenhaus said. “In the future, if materials shortages are projected, the price of lithium-ion batteries will go way up. If we have this alternative battery, we can turn to this chemistry, where the supply is much more stable because we can manufacture them here in the United States and materials to make them are here.” Lutkenhaus said aqueous batteries consist of a cathode, electrolyte and an anode. The cathodes and anodes are polymers that can store energy, and the electrolyte is water mixed with organic salts. The electrolyte is key to ion conduction and energy storage through its interactions with the electrode. “If an electrode swells too much during cycling, then it can’t conduct electrons very well, and you lose all the performance,” she said. “I believe that there is a 1,000% difference in energy storage capacity, depending on the electrolyte choice because of swelling effects.” According to their article, redox-active, non-conjugated radical polymers (electrodes) are promising candidates for metal-free aqueous batteries because of the polymers’ high discharge voltage and fast redox kinetics. The reaction is complex and difficult to resolve because of the simultaneous transfer of electrons, ions and water molecules. “We demonstrate the nature of the redox reaction by examining aqueous electrolytes of varying chao-/kosmotropic character using electrochemical quartz crystal microbalance with dissipation monitoring at a range of timescales,” according to researchers in the article. Tabor’s research group complemented the experimental efforts with computational simulation and analysis. The simulations gave insights into the microscopic molecular-scale picture of the structure and dynamics. “Theory and experiment often work closely together to understand these materials. One of the new things that we do computationally in this paper is that we actually charge up the electrode to multiple states of charge and see how the surroundings respond to this charging,” Tabor said. Researchers macroscopically observed if the battery cathode was working better in the presence of certain kinds of salts through measuring exactly how much water and salt is going into the battery as it is operating. “We did that to explain what has been observed experimentally,” he said. “Now, we would like to expand our simulations to future systems. We needed to have our theory confirmed of what are the forces that are driving that kind of injection of water and solvent. “With this new energy storage technology, this is a push forward to lithium-free batteries. We have a better molecular level picture of what makes some battery electrodes work better than others, and this gives us strong evidence of where to go forward in materials design,” Tabor said. The project is funded by the U.S. Department of Energy and the National Science Foundation through the Texas A&M Engineering Experiment Station.

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aidens34h · 2 years ago

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Which Diamond Sellers In Singapore Do Diamond Necklace Evaluation?

Diamond is the most expensive gemstone there is on the planet Earth. Hence, as little as 1 carat can cost a lot of money. This is why any diamond jewelry costs a lot, including diamond necklaces.

However, many people have begun to sell substandard and mixed diamonds to buyers. Some of the diamonds are mixed with other alloys to increase the size so they'll sell for more. Others use glass to manufacture diamond look-alikes and extort money from the public.

Because of issues like this, diamond evaluation now comes into play during any diamond jewelry transaction. If you're buying a diamond necklace, it is a plus to ensure you get a good gemologist to evaluate it for you. This way, you're taught about the properties of that particular diamond in your jewelry.

A few things are being looked out for during the professional diamond evaluation.

They include:

Carat

A lot of people often confuse diamond carats for the general diamond size. A carat is a simple measurement of the diamond's weight in the real sense. During the carat analysis, professionals use an electronic microbalance machine that is extremely accurate. This will aid in determining how original the diamond is.

Color

This test is carried out to measure the colorlessness of a white diamond. The test is carried out by the human eye and should only be done by professionals in the field. Diamond grading is done from D (Totally colorless) to Z (lightly colored).

After evaluation, the color of the diamond helps to decipher between real diamonds and fake or near fake.

Clarity

This measurement tests the flawlessness of a diamond, internally and externally. The internal flaws of a diamond are referred to as inclusions, while the external flaws are blemishes. The gemologists try to check for the flawless qualities in the diamond to decide whether or not it is real.

Cut

Here, a measurement is carried out on how a diamond is cut because cutting has a major impact on how the diamond will capture light. The cuts are graded on a scale of excellent to poor, which is what is most looked out for during evaluation.

Whether real or fake diamond, a diamond necklace without a good cut will never rank high, it will even cost less because it is not up to standard. The cut is the trickiest quality to evaluate because it requires keen attention to detail and a good experience level.

You cannot do these diamond evaluations yourself when you want to buy diamond necklaces as it requires expertise. It is necessary to buy your diamond necklaces from a jeweler who provides you with these services.

In Singapore, your best option is Dianoche. At Dianoche, you're provided with an expert gemologist's free diamond evaluation session. The gemologist will help put you through all the qualities of the diamond before you proceed to buy.

This isn't only applicable to diamond necklaces, and you can get the service for any diamond jewelry you buy. You can also purchase a good gold necklace for a nice price at Dianoche. Visit the website today to book an appointment.

#diamond necklace

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guestcanpost · 5 years ago

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HOW ACCURATE ARE PRECISION BALANACE SCALE

A balance is a crucial and fundamental piece of equipment for any laboratory. The first and foremost consideration in shopping for a laboratory balance is clarity of thought on use and application. The purpose of the balance, the type of materials, and the amount of materials all factor into the choice of instrument. For solid, inert materials of a kilogram or more, an industrial balance would be the right choice. For measuring microgram quantities of pharmaceutical compounds, a precision analytical balance would be necessary. Similarly, consider the laboratory and the overall environment. For a dusty environment, such as a factory floor, look for Precision Balances that are sealed against outside materials. If there are drafts, vibrations, or temperature fluctuations, a sensitive analytic balance may not function well. Some balances come with their own enclosures, to keep contaminants out. If the work being done requires certification, or involves toxic or radioactive materials, regulatory and personnel training requirements may need to be satisfied. In addition, the frequency of use will influence the choice. A balance that is used all day, every day, needs to be very durable and reliable. According to METTLER TOLEDO (Columbus, OH), a manufacturer of analytical balances, customers frequently underestimate the level of accuracy required by their processes. Once the application has been clarified, it can be determined what is expected in terms of accuracy according to the relevant international norms and guidelines. High readability does not necessarily equate to high accuracy, according to a company spokesperson. For example, a customer may choose a balance with 0.1 mg readability (4 decimal places). The accuracy of the balance relates to the measurement uncertainty of each reading, i.e., the ± tolerance in the result. A fast, stable weighing result is not necessarily an indication of accuracy. A balance that is inaccurate cannot reliably produce repeatable results. Different types of balances are selected according to the function they must perform. Laboratory balance types include toploading balances, portable balances, analytical balances, semi microbalances, and microbalances. There are some overlaps in terms of readability and accuracy. In these cases, the user’s application and weighing environment will generally determine the type of balance required. Balances may also be defined according to their weighing sensor. Some balances use a strain gauge, which is essentially a metallic object that deforms as strain is applied, resulting in a change in electrical resistance that can be correlated to the magnitude of the strain induced by the weight. Strain gauges are frequently found in shop scales and other larger instruments. In scales of higher accuracy, a sensor based on electromagnetic force compensation may be used. In that type of sensor, the weight applied to the scale is compensated for by an electromagnetic force. Vertical position changes in the coil trigger a current that returns the position to zero. Since the current is proportional to the weight, a weight value can be calculated from the current. The crucial requirement to fulfill when purchasing a balance is to meet the accuracy requirements of the laboratory. After that, it is up to the user to decide what other factors are important, such as built-in applications, protection against external influences, corrosion protection, user safety, cross-contamination risk, balance longevity, spare parts warranty, and service. Scientists on a budget may choose to compromise in certain areas, but the price/performance ratio and the return-on-investment should also be considered. Read the full article

#analyticalbalances #PrecisionBalances

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labnicsltd · 2 months ago

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Microbalance NMB-101

Labnics microbalance is a highly precise scale that offers a weighting capacity of 6.2 g with 0.001 mg of readability and a tare weight of -6.2 g. It features automatic internal calibration, a 5-inch touch screen display, and a recipe function (GLP setting or user setting).

#microbalance machine price #microbalance online #balance manufacturer in Texas

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fumpkins · 6 years ago

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MOFs Can Sense and Sort Troublesome Gases

This electrode is utilized for gathering the noticing residential or commercial properties of MOFs. 2019 KAUST

From astronauts and submariners to miners and rescue employees, individuals who run in little enclosed areas require excellent air quality to work securely and successfully. Electronic sensing units now established by a KAUST group can concurrently find a minimum of 3 vital specifications that are essential to keep an eye on to guarantee human convenience and security.

These brand-new sensing units utilize fluorinated metal-organic structures (MOFs) as the noticing layer. MOFs are permeable products consisting of a routine range of metal atoms held together by little organic-molecule linkers to form a duplicating cage-like structure. KAUST’s Mohamed Eddaoudi, who led the 2 research studies of the sensing unit’s effectiveness, discusses that by modifying the metal and natural elements, MOFs can be tuned for applications varying from gas separation and storage to catalysis and noticing.

“Many people have attempted to develop simple, efficient, low-cost SO2, CO2and H2O sensors without success,” state scientists Mohamed Rachid Tchalala, Youssef Belmabkhout and Prashant Bhatt, all from Eddoudi’s laboratory.

The method taken by Eddaoudi’s group was to establish a fluorinated MOF, which Belmabkhout and Tchalala checked as sensing unit products for these gases. Evaluating of these advanced products remained in partnership with Khaled Nabil Salama and his group.

The very first research study demonstrates how the sensing unit can determine the concentration of co2 and the level of humidity in the air1. While the 2nd research study of the very same fluorinated MOFs reveals it can find the hazardous and destructive gas sulfur dioxide, or perhaps selectively eliminate it from powerplant flue gas2.

This new-generation noticing setup was developed by Mohamed Tchalala and Youssef Belmabkhout.

“Traces of SO2 are invariably present in the flue gas produced by factories and powerplants, and SO2 can poison materials developed to trap CO2 for carbon capture and storage,” state Belmabkhout and Bhatt. “AlFFIVE-1-Ni can soak up SO2 with an affinity 66 times higher than for CO2, while showing good stability to SO2 exposure.”

The MOFs might likewise be utilized with 2 easy, low-priced high-sensitivity sensing unit platforms. Quartz crystal microbalance (QCM) sensing units that are covered with a thin movie of either MOF identified the modification in mass with the absorption of SO2, or water and CO2. Likewise, MOF-coated interdigitated electrode sensing units identified a modification in electronic residential or commercial properties with the absorption of water and CO2.

Both sensing unit platforms, the group revealed, might keep an eye on wetness and CO2levels under genuine climatic conditions. “The signal is calibrated against CO2concentration, humidity level and mixtures of both,” Tchalala discusses. A QCM-based sensing unit might likewise find SO2 in the air at levels of simply 25 parts per million.

The technology established at the Advanced Membranes and Porus Products Center can spotting different gases with a high degree of selectivity and level of sensitivity. It was just recently given a US Patent3 .

New post published on: https://www.livescience.tech/2019/04/09/mofs-can-sense-and-sort-troublesome-gases/

#gases #MOFs #Sense #Sort #Troublesome

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thetechnonews · 6 years ago

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Electronic Nose Market - Global Forecast to 2025

Electronic nose is a device that collects data from the surrounding and then processes the data with the help of sensors that are built in the device. The application area of electronic nose in healthcare sector includes diagnostics, immunology, pathology, patient recovery, pharmacology, physical therapy, physiology, preventative medicine, remote healthcare, and wound and graft healing. Electronic nose has been used in a variety of commercial agricultural-related industries, including biochemical processing, botany, cell culture, plant cultivar selections, environmental monitoring, horticulture, pesticide detection, plant physiology, and pathology.

Browse Complete Report For More Information @ https://www.coherentmarketinsights.com/market-insight/electronic-nose-market-1723

Market Dynamics

Various healthcare professionals and settings are increasingly adopting advanced technologies for diagnosing health of humans and this is expected to provide conducive environment of growth of the global electronic nose market. Increasing number of cases related to misdiagnosis have resulted in loss of human lives. For instance, according to the Institute of Natural Healing (INH), May 2017, every year 12 million people are misdiagnosed from which 10% of people die every year. Hence, electronic-noses will be ideal instruments for diagnosing health of human as it generates rapid and accurate results, which in turn helps doctors to diagnosis the patients accurately. These electronic nose will help doctors to improve their diagnosis, which in turn minimizes loss of human lives due to misdiagnosis. Therefore, this factor is expected to aid in growth of the market over the forecast period.

Increasing consumption of electric nose in food & beverage industry is accelerating global market growth

Growing concern for health is one of the major driving factors for growth of the market. Thus, demand for e-nose is expected to increase for application in the food and beverages (F&B) industry, in order to improve the quality of the foods, which in turn helps in decreasing diseases caused by food contamination. For instance, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), each year 48 million people get sick from food borne diseases in which 3,000 die every year. This electronic nose consist of sensors, which have ability to determine presence or absence of contaminants and related chemicals. Therefore, this electronic nose is used throughout food manufacturing process in order to maintain the quality of food. Hence, this factor helps in propelling growth of the market. Moreover, it is used by food inspectors, in order to identify freshness of the food products and it also helps in separating spoilt food from fresh food. Thus, this is expected to aid food and quality inspectors to provide certification to food manufacturers after checking the quality of food.

Cost of electric nose hampering global market growth

Major factor hampering growth of the market is the cost of electronic nose, which is very high. Owing to high prices of sensors incorporated in electronic nose, cost of the total product is high. Moreover, once the sensors get damaged, the cost of replacement is also high. This factor is expected to negatively affect growth of the market.

Key Companies

Major players operating in the global electronic nose market are Alpha MOS, Odotech, E-nose Pty, The E-nose Company, Electronic Sensor Technology, Scent Science Corporation, Airsense Analytics GmbH, Scentsational Technologies, and Scensive Technology. Major players in the market such as Alpha MOS are gaining competitive edge by adopting new product development strategy. For instance, in July 2017, Alpha MOS launched HERACLES Neo electronic nose. This electronic nose includes AroChemBase software module, which helps in identifying and characterizing the chemical molecules after analyzing the smell. This software includes advanced search capabilities for analysis of the smell.

Detailed Segmentation:

Global Electronic Nose Market, By Technology:

Metal Oxide Semi-Conductor Sensors(MOS)

Quartz Crystal Microbalance(QCM)

Conducting Polymers(QP)

Other

Global Electronic Nose Market, By End User:

Food and Beverages Industry

Environmental Monitoring

Healthcare

Others

Inquire Here Before Purchase of Research Report @ https://www.coherentmarketinsights.com/insight/talk-to-analyst/1723

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researchreportinsight · 6 years ago

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Label-free Array Systems Market Competition by Manufacturers, Share, Size and Development Trends 2025

8 February 2019 - The Global Label-free Array Systems Market is expected to develop at a substantial CAGR in the forthcoming years. The Label-free Array Systems are utilized in the medicine finding business by pharmacological and biotechnology companies. It functions on the philosophies of optical interferometry, refractive index, and impedance based assays, for the documentation and authentication of the new-fangled particles such as the potential medicine entrants, devoid of the usage of some tags, electronically and greater input. Therefore, decreasing the period and price of the medicine documentation and authentication method.

The division of the international Label-free Array Systems Market on the source of Type of Technology. The international market for Label-free Array Systems Sales is divided in to: Cellular Dielectric Spectroscopy [CDS], Surface Plasmon Resonance[SPR], Bio-layer Interferometry[BLI] Quartz Crystal Microbalance [QCM]and Others.

View Full Report with TOC @ https://www.millioninsights.com/industry-reports/label-free-array-systems-market

The division of the international Label-free Array Systems Market on the source of Type of Application. The international market for Label-free Array Systems Sales is divided in to: Cascade Analysis, Protein Complex, Protein Interface Analysis, Antibody Characterization and Development, Medicine Finding and additional applications. The division of the international Label-free Array Systems Market on the source of Type of End User. The international market for Label-free Array Systems Sales is divided in to: Farming Exploration Establishments, Contract Investigation Establishments, R&D research laboratory between others.

The division of the international Label-free Array Systems Market on the source of Area. The statement divides international market into a number of important Areas. The division is done with respect to Trades in terms of intake, Profits, Market stake and Development percentage of Label-free Array Systems in these areas, for the duration of the prediction period.

The area wise division of the international market comprises North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, Middle East & Africa, and Latin America. By means of area, the North America is the most important area in Label-free Array Systems Market. The area of North America grabbed a most important stake in the international market and is likely to display its supremacy in the approaching years also. The provincial market’s development will likewise be motivated by increasing expenditure on research and development activities, growth in the acceptances of new-fangled expertise, and development of the medicine finding business.

Forecasters expect that the area of Asia Pacific label-free array systems market is likewise expected to display a potential of progress for the duration of the prediction period. Refining GDPs, firming up financial prudence, and growing expenses on research and development are estimated to trigger the progress of Asia Pacific market in the nearby prospect.

The statement revises Trades in terms of intake of Label-free Array Systems in the international market; particularly in the areas of North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, Middle East & Africa, and Latin America. It concentrates on the topmost companies operating in these regions. Some of the important companies, operating in the field of Label-free Array Systems Market on the international basis are: Perkin Elmer, Bio-Rad Laboratories, Agilent Technologies and Biacore. Additional noticeable companies operating in the field of Label-free Array Systems Market on the international basis are: BiOptix, Attana AB, F. Hoffman LA Roche, GWC technologies, Forte Bio between others.

Market Segment:

Geographically, this report is segmented into several key Regions, with production, consumption, revenue (million USD), market share and growth rate of Label-free Array Systems in these regions, from 2013 to 2025 (forecast), covering

• North America

• Europe

• China

• Japan

• Southeast Asia

• India

Global Label-free Array Systems market competition by top manufacturers, with production, price, revenue (value) and market share for each manufacturer; the top players including

• Agilent Technologies

• Attana

• Biacore

• ForteBio

• Perkin Elmer

• F. Hoffman La Roche

• GWC Technologies

• Molecular Devices

• BiOptix

• Bio-Rad Laboratories

Request Sample Copy of This Report @ https://www.millioninsights.com/industry-reports/label-free-array-systems-market/request-sample

#Label-free Array Systems Market Report #Label-free Array Systems Market Share #Label-free Array Systems Market Trend #Label-free Array Systems Market Segment #Label-free Array Systems Market Forecast

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livioacerbo · 6 years ago

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SpaceX’s Dragon Capsule May Be Contaminating the ISS

In February 2017, a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifted through low clouds, pushing a Dragon capsule toward orbit. Among the spare parts and food, an important piece of scientific cargo, called SAGE III, rumbled upward. Once installed on the International Space Station, SAGE would peer back and measure ozone molecules and aerosols in Earth’s atmosphere. Its older siblings (SAGEs I and II) had revealed both the growth of the gaping ozone hole and, after humans decided to stop spraying Freon everywhere, its subsequent recovery.

This third kid, then, had a lot to live up to. Like its environmentally conscious predecessors, SAGE III is super sensitive. Because it needs unpolluted conditions to operate optimally, it includes contamination sensors that keep an eye on whether and how its environment might be messing up its measurements. Those sensors soon came in handy: When the next three Dragons docked at the Space Station, over the following months, SAGE experienced unexplained spikes in contamination. Something on these Dragons was outgassing—releasing molecules beyond the expected, and perhaps the acceptable, levels. And those molecules were sticking to SAGE.

Outgassing, in earthly terms, is what makes a new car smell like a new car. “There are volatile chemicals in those new materials that migrate through the material to the surface,” says Alan Tribble, author of Fundamentals of Contamination Control. You’re smelling escaped seat ingredients, in other words.

Outgassing also builds up as a greasy film on the inside of your new car’s windows—or the outside of your space station. This grime is mostly a problem for instruments that measure light, but it can also reduce solar panels’ efficiency and can make surfaces hotter than they’re supposed to be. To avoid all that, engineers build Space Station additions and satellites in clean rooms, use only prequalified materials, bake out contaminants before launch, and set strict limits on how much proverbial new-car smell a craft can release. “It’s an intense process and considered extremely critical,” says Meg Abraham of the Aerospace Corporation, which consults on a number of space projects. “Everyone thinks about this.”

But that pre-planning doesn’t always work: When astronauts brought some early Hubble Space Telescope instruments back down to Earth, for example, they found that the $1.5 billion telescope’s body, which would have cost $2.89 billion in 2018 dollars, had sprayed enough molecules at them to severely degrade their ability to detect ultraviolet light—one of the telescope’s premier capabilities.

NASA has dealt with such dirt for decades—but the dirt has so far largely come from the agency’s own creations. Dragon, though, is different. It belongs to SpaceX. Today, the company plans to launch another Dragon capsule full of cargo, and perhaps outgassing contaminants, to the Space Station. This launch will be the company’s sixteenth commercial resupply mission.

As NASA offloads operations to private companies like SpaceX, Orbital ATK (now part of Northrop Grumman), and Boeing, it’s having to react when their children misbehave. And that’s a big deal: New ISS instruments tell us about how our planet and the universe around it work, at prices in the tens of millions, with years-long development timelines. With those stakes, the last thing scientists, engineers, and citizens want is for a private company’s capsule to muck up measurements.

SAGE III went to the Space Station aboard SpaceX’s tenth resupply mission for NASA, as part of a SpaceX contract to do the agency’s local deliveries. As soon as SAGE was onboard, its contamination-catching crystals registered Dragon’s excessive outgassing.

These crystals are not of the healing variety (spoiler alert: none are) but are, instead, “thermoelectric quartz crystal microbalances.” Each of SAGE’s eight such sensors has two twin crystals, and working together they make two “contamination monitoring packages.” These crystals oscillate at a certain frequency, which matches up with their mass. If a crystal gains mass—like, say, if a spacecraft sends new-car-smell its way—its frequency changes.

When the twin crystals start out on their missions, they’re precisely the same. But on the Space Station, one of the two is exposed to the outside environment, while the other stays sheltered. It’s kind of like twin studies in psychology. By measuring the difference in the twins’ frequencies, scientists can determine how much contamination was deposited onto the exposed one, although it doesn’t reveal the layers’ nature.

After the eleventh Dragon arrived, one contamination-monitoring package’s frequency steadily shifted, according to a presentation posted on September 1 to NASA’s Technical Reports Server, a database of documents created or funded by the agency. The data was noteworthy because NASA sets contamination limits for sensitive surfaces, which include some of the more delicate parts of the ISS. The crystals in this case were serving as canaries, warning of potential harm to those exquisite instruments.

The results are preliminary, but Dragon may have deposited, according to this presentation, up to 21 times the allowed amount of contamination on one sensor. The crystals also significantly changed in frequency when the next Dragon docked, and the report estimates that this mission may have left behind up to 32 times the rule-abiding amount of extra matter on one sensor.

The presentation was put together by the Space Environments team, a NASA and Boeing collaboration dedicated to understanding how the harsh realities of space mess with instruments and humans. With the troublesome data in hand, the Space Environments folks designed an experiment to figure out what was going on. Maybe, they thought, the problem was the solar array, or the materials on the outside of the capsule. To narrow down the list of suspects, during the thirteenth Dragon flight, engineers positioned the solar arrays so that their edges faced the Space Station. If the panels were outgassing, they then wouldn’t outgas at the spacecraft. Mass would build up on the crystals more slowly, keeping their frequency relatively constant.

But that’s not what happened. While the array was tilted away, the crystals’ frequencies kept on ticking up. The Dragon capsule itself seemed to be the problem—a problem that got worse the more sunlight shone on it. During this thirteenth mission, one sensor may have been sprayed with up to 73 times more than what’s allowed during a sojourn. And for the month or so that Dragon was docked at the Station, two of the sensors individually detected more contamination than is allowed—total, from everything on the Station—in a whole year.

Among the space assets at risk from the capsule’s outgassing is the U.S. Laboratory Science Window, a porthole through which astronauts and instruments can gaze out on Earth. On the more scientific side, there’s CATS, an instrument that measures smoke, pollution, dust, and other particles in the planet’s atmosphere. In total, seven sensitive areas or instruments on the ISS, including SAGE, could be contaminated beyond the limit.

“NASA has communicated with the Station payload community its findings, and payload developers have responded either that their instruments have experienced no impact or they have taken precautions to mitigate impacts to their science,” says Space Environments in a statement. The SAGE III team closes the instrument’s “contamination door,” as a standard operating procedure, when any spacecraft visit to protect its optical instrument, although the resulting measurements aren’t as sensitive .

And at least SAGE III, whose optics are “susceptible to molecular contamination degradation,” knows when it needs to watch out. The SAGE III team only knows those precise levels because it is carrying contamination monitors that didn’t exist on the Station before.

SpaceX, meanwhile, is looking at its ingredients. “SpaceX has scrutinized all external material selections on Dragon and is working with suppliers to custom-develop low outgassing variants of qualified materials to help improve the molecular deposition rate,” says the company, adding that NASA pre-approved all the materials used in the first Dragon design.

Antonius de Rooij, author of the Space Materials Database, believes the capsule’s paint is the likely problem. For one, he says, “the white painted surface is very large, meaning that even low outgassing products can have a large contamination effect.”

He’s curious, too, why the Space Environments team took solar heating and radiation into account, but didn’t consider the human or earthly factors. “Is the paint applied correctly? Is it cured correctly?” he says. “I was a little bit amazed that those points were not mentioned.” Paint won’t behave as advertised if the surface it’s slapped onto isn’t ultraclean, or if the humidity while it dries isn’t Goldilocks-correct. Maybe the paint stews weren’t precisely the same. “This batch variation can be the cause of different outgassing and different optical properties between batches,” he says.

Or the surface could have been tainted after the paint cured. That contamination could beget more contamination. While the precise paint for these three Dragon missions isn’t public information, at least one earlier mission used one called Alion Z-93c55, a variant of Alion Z-93. If Alion Z-93 gets contaminated after curing, it’s prone to degradation when UV rays hit it, a phenomenon documented way back in 1971. It then absorbs more sunlight, gets hotter than anticipated, and outgasses more. “I wonder why they didn’t mention this in their report,” says de Rooij.

Part of the problem here, though, is NASA’s reluctance to talk about both the problem and the plans to fix it. The presentation, shared during the Payload Operations Integration Working Group meeting back in April, was approved for unclassified and unlimited public release and placed on the NASA Technical Reports Server in early September. I asked for an interview about it on September 25. The next day, the presentation was gone. “The record details page you tried to access cannot be found on this server,” the page now says. I inquired about the dead link, and more than three weeks later, I received a response: “The document is under review,” wrote Meagan Storey, of the NASA Scientific and Technical Information Program, “and we advise that you make a FOIA request for the item.”

Statistically, that’s probably a losing prospect. If we use FOIA requests as a proxy for transparency, NASA is one of the government’s most obscured agencies. It denied more FOIA requests by percentage in 2017 than the Department of Defense, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Department of Energy, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, organizations that largely have more to protect than the nation’s space agency. To be fair to NASA, which denied 71 percent of requests, the CIA denied 78 percent.

Last month, before I’d seen this report, I knew something was up. I’d seen a previous document that said, “The Dragon Trunk particulate background has not been characterized, but releases have been observed.” And so I had asked NASA’s SAGE III team—knowing that outgassing could affect their instrument—if they had changed any of their plans because of concerns about Dragon. “No negative contamination effects or concerns on SAGE III science,” they responded, by email. “Nothing to add beyond that.”

As I would learn from the case of the disappearing presentation, and three missions’ worth of measurements that very team had taken, there was a lot to add beyond that.

In being cagey about contamination issues, the agency is protecting not just itself but also its private, profit-making partner, SpaceX, whose capsule in turn has an effect on the ISS instruments that are supported by federal funds.

That lack of transparency will become more pertinent soon, when private companies start shuttling not just astronaut ice cream and atmospheric instruments but also human beings back and forth from space, as part of the agency’s commercial crew program. Another iteration of Dragon will take some of those future astronauts up. “SpaceX is using the data to improve its Dragon 2 crew and cargo vehicles,” says the Space Environments team’s statement.

Today’s contamination issues might not be causing major problems, but if there were a big problem with tomorrow’s Dragon, or with another company’s carrier, this case study suggests it might get worked out behind closed bay doors—or hazy windows.