It came from the lab.

Scientists repeatedly fired a beam of 3,500-degree Fahrenheit solar light from the lab's Solar Thermal Test Facility onto sample materials NASA wants to use to save money on future spaceflights.

Sandia and NASA scientists were testing the materials to see how they stood up under intense heat.

"It's worked beautifully," Bill Congdon, manager of ARA Ablatives Laboratory, said after a set of morning zaps.

ARA, based in Colorado, makes the materials under contract to NASA.

Congdon wore thick black glasses as he stood inside a protective building on the rooftop, watching gray smoke and red flame burst from one of his samples.

"We want to make sure it doesn't come apart _ that's the purpose of this," Congdon said, noting that the 2-foot-by-2-foot block of material was still in one piece after the blast.

Sandia's Thermal Test Facility is the only place in the country where NASA can test objects larger than a hockey puck under such intense heat, said Bonnie James, a manager at NASA.

"This is a very unique facility with very unique capabilities," James said.

The facility _ used by Sandia for solar energy research _ uses 212 computer-controlled mirrors laid out in a grid to capture and focus the sun's energy onto a single target.

As a testament to its power, bugs that occasionally flew into the beam between tests Wednesday were instantly vaporized in little whiffs of smoke.

A few birds have met their end that way, too, James said, noting that NASA has tested materials at the facility since about 2003.

"They go to bird heaven," she said, looking a bit guilty.

At least the test materials _ ultralight thermal shields that get rid of heat _ sustained the heat better than the bugs and birds.

They remained relatively intact after a full two-minute blast.

The shields get rid of heat by burning their outer layers. They are key to a new space maneuvering technique being developed by NASA called air capture.

In air capture, spacecraft use the thickness of a planet's atmosphere to slow down before acquiring orbit _ sort of like the way a rock slows down when you slam it into a deep pool.

Usually, NASA slows its spacecraft using either a lot of expensive fuel or a combination of fuel and atmospheric drag in a process called aerobraking, said James, manager of NASA's air-capture program.

The problem with aerobraking a craft into a steady orbit is that it can take months and it still uses a lot more fuel than the air-capture method, James said.

"Aerobraking takes five, six, seven, eight months," James said. "With air capture, we can get that down to minutes. It's faster, but it's also hotter."

Using air capture, space missions can save almost half of the mass usually taken up by fuel, James said.

"If you can save that mass, you can save a lot of cost," James said.

NASA wasn't able to use air capture in the past because materials that could handle that sort of heat didn't exist, she said.

But with the successful tests Wednesday, she hopes the technique will be used on a NASA mission in 2010 that will maneuver into Earth's atmosphere.

"It's in the works," James said.

Related Links
Sandia National Laboratories
Powering The World in the 21st Century

Memory Foam Mattress Review

SPACE MEDIA NETWORK PROMOTIONS Solar Energy Solutions Tempur-Pedic Mattress Comparison ... Newsletters :: SpaceDaily :: SpaceWar :: TerraDaily :: Energy Daily XML Feeds :: Space News :: Earth News :: War News :: Solar Energy News