Science, Space, Health & Robotics News - Page 1

New cases of the rare monkeypox virus first resurfaced in England, Spain, and Portugal from May 17th.

Outbreaks of the virus were first recorded in England, with officials warning of potential spread given the unknown origin and chains of transmission. Since then, cases have doubled in England to 20, and following cases appearing in Spain and Portugal, cases have also appeared in more European countries, including France, Germany, Belgium, Italy, and Sweden.

Cases have also been reported in the United States, Canada, and Australia. The monkeypox virus is endemic to Africa, and cases are seldom seen outside of the region, though currently, at least 11 non-African countries have reported a combined 120+ confirmed and suspected cases of it.

NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft appears to be operating normally; however, it's sent back data that says otherwise.

Voyager 1 is continuing to execute commands it receives from Earth as expected and gathering and returning science data. However, Voyager 1's attitude articulation and control system (AACS), which controls the spacecraft's orientation, is sending back invalid telemetry data that appears either randomly generated or reflects an impossible state for the AACS.

Voyager 1 hasn't been triggered to put itself into safe mode due to the issue, a state in which only essential functions remain active to give engineers time to diagnose and fix any problems. The team is continuing to monitor the signal closely to determine the nature of the issue. However, Voyager 1 is currently 14.5 billion miles (23.3 billion kilometers) from Earth. This means it takes about two days to send a message to the spacecraft and receive a response, though the mission team has become well adjusted to that delay.

The Department of Defense's (DoD) Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) has awarded two Prototype Other Transaction (OT) contracts to develop nuclear-propelled spacecraft, with launches expected in 2027.

The DIU has awarded one contract to the Ultra Safe Nuclear Corporation (USNC) and the other to Avalanche Energy Designs, "to demonstrate the next generation of nuclear propulsion and power capability for spacecraft." The companies' will be testing nuclear-powered prototypes that allow small spacecraft to "maneuver at-will in cislunar space" and "enable high-power payloads."

"Advanced nuclear technologies will provide the speed, power, and responsiveness to maintain an operational advantage in space. Nuclear tech has traditionally been government-developed and operated, but we have discovered a thriving ecosystem of commercial companies, including start-ups, innovating in space nuclear," said U.S. Air Force Maj Ryan Weed, Program Manager for the Nuclear Advanced Propulsion and Power (NAPP) program at DIU.

A study on the new solar cell titled "Triple-junction solar cells with 39.5% terrestrial and 34.2% space efficiency enabled by thick quantum well superlattices" has been published in the journal Joule.

Researchers from the United States Department of Energy's National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) have created a solar cell with the highest efficiency under 1-sun global illumination conditions. The new cell has an efficiency of 39.5%, up from the previous record of 39.2% efficiency, which was previously set by NREL researchers as well in 2020.

"The new cell is more efficient and has a simpler design that may be useful for a variety of new applications, such as highly area-constrained applications or low-radiation space applications," said Myles Steiner, a senior scientist in NREL's High-Efficiency Crystalline Photovoltaics (PV) Group and principal investigator on the project.

A study on the updated Hubble constant titled "A Comprehensive Measurement of the Local Value of the Hubble Constant with 1 km s⁻¹ Mpc⁻¹ Uncertainty from the Hubble Space Telescope and the SH0ES Team" has been accepted for publication into The Astrophysical Journal.

Data from the Hubble Space Telescope has been used since it was launched to measure the rate of the universe's expansion. However, there is a discrepancy between the rate derived from Hubble's observations and what other independent observations predict. The SH0ES team (standing for Supernova, H0, for the Equation of State of Dark Energy) and others have been working to refine the universe's rate of expansion, known as the Hubble Constant.

"This is what the Hubble Space Telescope was built to do, using the best techniques we know to do it. This is likely Hubble's magnum opus, because it would take another 30 years of Hubble's life to even double this sample size," said Nobel Laureate Adam Riess of the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) and the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland.

Starlink customer Steve Birch has posted a photo of his off-grid Starlink setup powered exclusively by solar energy.

Birch took to Reddit to post about his "remote fully off-grid Starlink station installed in the Sawtooth mountains of Idaho." The three solar panels produce a combined 300 watts of solar power and are supported by a 450 amp hour (Ah) battery bank for when the panels can't produce enough power. According to Birch, the system has "been running like a champ 24/7 for the last week."

The campsite where Birch set up the system has a diesel generator that provides power during the day, which Birch sought to bypass for his Starlink setup. Birch calculated that he would need roughly 200 Ah for 24 hours of operation and opted to use four 6V lead acid batteries for his battery bank because lithium wouldn't be viable due to charging issues in the cold.

A study on the Wow! signal titled "An approximation to determine the source of the WOW! Signal" has been published in the International Journal of Astrobiology.

The Wow! signal was detected by Jerry Ehman using Ohio State University's Big Ear telescope on August 15th, 1977. It was named as such after Ehman wrote "Wow!" on the printout from the telescope. The Big Ear telescope was conducting a SETI (search for extraterrestrial intelligence) using a frequency of 1420.4056 megahertz, a frequency associated with the element hydrogen.

"Since hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe, there is good logic in guessing that an intelligent civilization within our Milky Way galaxy desirous of attracting attention to itself might broadcast a strong narrowband beacon signal at or near the frequency of the neutral hydrogen line," Ehman wrote in a report on the 30th anniversary of the Wow! signal.

SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk has been accused of sexual misconduct by exposing himself to a flight attendant and offering to pay her for sexual favors.

BusinessInsider has learned that a flight attendant that worked at SpaceX as part of Musk's private jet cabin crew was encouraged by the crew to become a licensed masseuse so she could give Musk massages throughout travel. The flight attendant told her story to a friend that has now spoken to Insider, and according to the friend, on a flight to London in 2016, Musk allegedly asked for "a full body massage", and when the flight attendant arrived, she found Musk with just a sheet covering his bottom half.

According to the friend's declaration, Musk "exposed his genitals" and then "touched her and offered to buy her a horse if she would 'do more,' referring to the performance of sex acts." The flight attendant is interested in horses and said to Musk that she "is not for sale," adding, "She is not going to perform sexual favors for money or gifts." Insider interviewed the flight attendant's friend, only speaking on the condition of anonymity, and said that "He whipped out his penis, it was erect."

The Mars Curiosity rover snapped an image of a rock formation on the surface of the Red Planet, and the image has picked up quite a lot of traction online.

The image was posted to the NASA subreddit, where it gained many upvotes, with many people speculating what the "door" was and how it formed. Looking at the image, there are many shadows cast by the rock, which has lent to the theory of the alien "door" being formed, which was quickly shut down by NASA officials.

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) spoke to Snopes and said that the rock formation gives the appearance of a "portal" or a "door" due to it being a "very, very, very zoomed in shot of a tiny crevice in a rock." Notably, NASA JPL said to the publication that the "door" is only 11 by 17 inches, and to understand its true size, you can look at the below full-sized image.

On their fourth attempt, the U.S. Air Force and Lockheed Martin launched a hypersonic missile, the AGM-183A Air-launched Rapid Response Weapon (ARRW).

The Air Force completed the launch on May 14th, 2022, deploying the missile from a B-52H Stratofortress off the coast of Southern California. Hypersonic flight refers to speeds over five times the speed of sound, otherwise known as Mach 5. This allows hypersonic weapons to be deployed further away while flying at lower altitudes, as well as making them more difficult to detect and intercept than conventional missiles.

Though the AGM-183A supposedly has a top speed of Mach 20, extreme temperature and pressure at these speeds would make new materials for its construction and avionics necessary for it to withstand the stresses. The test did not involve assessing the missile's top speed, but its booster rocket managed to accelerate it to above Mach 5. It successfully handled operation at those speeds and the team behind it "made history on this first air-launched hypersonic weapon."