ScienceAlert: En Route to Asteroid Collision, HERA Snaps Rare Images of Martian Moon
Europe’s HERA mission is aiming to find out how much of an impact a NASA spacecraft made when it deliberately smashed into an asteroid in 2022 in the first-ever test of our planetary defences.
But HERA will not reach the asteroid – which is 11 million kilometres (seven million miles) from Earth in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter – until late 2026.
pv magazine: Unlimited energy storage in Europe
With its northerly latitude, winter solar availability in Europe is poor. In winter, a decarbonized Europe will rely mostly on solar energy generated in the south and wind energy in the north. Large-scale long-duration energy storage is needed to ride through days or even weeks of poor solar and wind availability.
Fortunately, Europe has unlimited, low-cost, off-the-shelf, low-environmental-impact, long-duration, off-river pumped hydro energy storage (PHES), that requires tiny amounts of land and water and does not require new dams on rivers.
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Premium PHES sites are characterized bylarge head (>500m), low-volume dam walls, short pressure tunnels, large-scale (>40 GWh) and long duration (>100 hours).
Europe has over 6000 premium PHES sites with a combined storage of about 1100 terawatt hours, which is about 40 times more storage than required for a fully electrified and decarbonized Europe. There are also many lower-quality sites (classes A-E).
Also includes costing which is highly competitive with alternatives.
Last Updated: 14.Mar.2025 15:10 EDT
