Science, Space, & Robotics - Page 100

The moon sample will be auctioned by the Bonhams auction house on April 13th.

The sample contains lunar dust collected by Neil Armstrong on the moon during the Apollo 11 mission in 1969. The item is expected to sell for as much as $1.2 million and was described by the auction house as "the only example of verified Apollo 11 Moon dust that can be legally sold."

Plans for SpaceX's Starlink satellites show that the constellation hopes to one day grow to 42,000 strong.

CEO of SpaceX, Elon Musk, has estimated on Twitter that within the next 18 months, over 4200 Starlink satellites will be operational. When disregarding defunct satellites still in orbit, this number will mean that Starlink satellites make up two-thirds of all operational satellites around Earth. This will also require more than a doubling of active Starlink satellites within the same period.

Before that tweet, Musk said that the progress of his SpaceX Falcon team was going well, which is responsible for the Falcon 9 rockets the Starlink satellites are launched aboard. Since the first Starlink launch in May 2019, over 2,000 Starlink satellites have been sent into orbit, with over 1,600 currently operational.

The area of the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone dubbed the "Red Forest," only became known as such after the Chernobyl disaster.

In the "Red Forest," high levels of radiation absorbed by the pine trees in the area caused them to turn red. Since then, large swathes of the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone have come under Russian control and have been sites of active combat since the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. A Russian troop convoy has been spotted making its way through the area without protective gear.

The convoy appears to have stirred up radioactive dust throughout the area, resulting in sensors detecting radiation seven times the normal amount before going offline. Inhaling the dust is "likely to cause internal radiation in their bodies," and Chernobyl acting director Valery Seida told Reuters that "nobody goes there... for God's sake."

The International Space Station (ISS) remains at an altitude of about 250 miles, and regularly astronauts aboard the station venture out for a spacewalk to conduct repairs/make improvements to the station.

During astronauts' spacewalks, they are often photographed or filmed, but not regularly does someone capture a spacewalk from the surface of Earth. German astrophotographer Sebastian Voltmer snapped a high-quality image of the ISS that shows NASA astronaut Raja Chari and European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut Matthias Maurer out on a spacewalk sometime last week.

According to Voltmer, the image was captured on March 23, 2022, using the C11 EdgeHD telescope. Furthermore, the astrophotographer said that throughout the spacewalk, the ISS started to appear in the bright morning sky over Germany. "I feel like I just made a once-in-a-lifetime image. It's probably the first ground-based picture showing two spacewalkers on the ISS at the same time," wrote Voltmer.

Officials recently warned that Earth is due to be impacted by a powerful solar storm on March 31 that will likely cause incredible auroras in certain locations around the planet.

The U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) warned that active sunspot AR2975 erupted 17 solar flares over two days, resulting in two and possibly three coronal mass ejections (CME) to be hurled towards Earth. The massive wave ejected from the Sun is magnetized charged particles that are expected to hit Earth and trigger a moderate geomagnetic storm that NOAA has categorized as G3, which means it has little chance of causing any severe damage to infrastructure such as satellites.

The two CMEs heading for Earth have merged into what is called a "cannibal coronal mass ejection", which is when the second CME overtakes the first CME, combining together to form one large wave of charged particles. NOAA expects that the CME impact will trigger auroras that could be seen as far south as Pennsylvania, Iowa, and Oregon.

NASA and the European Space Agency's Hubble Space Telescope has broken a record for capturing the light from a star that existed within the first billion years of the universe.

Researchers have used the Hubble Space Telescope to identify what is now considered to be the furthest star that humans know of, breaking the previous record held by MACS J1149+2223 Lensed Star 1, which existed 4 billion years after the Big Bang. NASA has announced that the newly discovered star is called Earendel, which means "morning star," and is 12.9 billion light-years away from Earth.

The light from the morning star has taken 12.9 billion years to reach Earth which means that it existed when the universe was only 7% of its current age, or 900 million years after the Big Bang. Researchers estimate that Earendel is at least 50 times the mass of our Sun and millions of times as bright. Additionally, the newly discovered star isn't expected to have any metal and would mostly be composed of only hydrogen and helium.

A study on the leaking substance titled "Primordial Helium-3 Exchange Between Earth's Core and Mantle" has been published in the journal Geochemistry, Geophysics, Geosystems.

Helium exists in two stable forms on Earth, the helium-4 isotope and helium-3 isotope. The former contains two protons and two neutrons and accounts for approximately 99.99986 percent of all helium on Earth. Helium-3 consists of two protons and one neutron and accounts for approximately 0.000137 percent of all helium on Earth.

Helium-4 primarily comes from the radioactive decay of heavier elements, while most helium-3 remains from the Big Bang, hence primordial. Helium-3 has been detected leaking out from the Earth's core into the crust at a rate of roughly two kilograms (4.4 pounds) per year. The detection of primordial gases escaping the core provides clues about the conditions of Earth's formation. When the Earth formed, it did so inside a solar nebula, the same molecular cloud that birthed our Sun.

A study on the new message titled "A Beacon in the Galaxy: Updated Arecibo Message for Potential FAST and SETI Projects" published in the journal Galaxies.

The new message is a successor to the famous Arecibo Message, a METI (Messaging to Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence) signal broadcast on November 16th, 1974. Researchers have devised a new signal dubbed the Beacon in the Galaxy (BITG) message, which combines elements of the Arecibo Message and other METI attempts.

The BITG message consists of 13 parts, adding up to approximately 204,000 effective binary digits, or 25,500 bytes. Using the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical radio Telescope (FAST) in China and the SETI Institute's Allen Telescope Array in northern California, the research team chose a target to broadcast the signal to situated 4 kiloparsecs (~13,000 light-years) from the galactic center.

A study on the use of UV titled "A UV-LED module that is highly effective at inactivating human coronaviruses and HIV-1" has been published in the Virology Journal.

Researchers from the University of Toronto Scarborough found that UV-LED lights that can alternate between emitting white and ultraviolet (UV) light, of the same form factors used in offices and public spaces, could effectively decontaminate surfaces. The lights can be cheaply retrofitted, allowing easy implementation to make areas safer and help curb the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic more quickly.

UV exposure for 20 seconds reduced the growth of spores of the bacteria Bacillus pumilus by 99%. When testing UV light with droplets containing coronaviruses or HIV, as people would encounter them in public settings, 30 seconds of exposure reduced the infectivity of the viruses by 93%. Higher viral loads were more resistant to UV, but at worst, infectivity still dropped by 88% in the same amount of time.

A pre-print study on the Venus experiment titled "Cloud Continents: Terraforming Venus Efficiently by Means of a Floating Artificial Surface" has been accepted for publication in The Journal of the British Interplanetary Society.

NASA researcher Alex R. Howe has proposed a terraforming method for Venus to make it habitable, covering the entire planet's atmosphere in a plan the Daily Beast described as "absolutely bonkers." The project would likely take at least 200 years and centers on Venus as a terraforming target owing to its similar bulk properties to Earth, such as size, mass, and composition.

Howe's proposal suggests creating an artificial surface in the upper regions of the planet's atmosphere, where the temperature and pressure are more similar to Earth's. Previous proposals to terraform Venus have considered removing its carbon dioxide-rich atmosphere and replacing it with a more habitable environment.

A ceremony aboard the International Space Station (ISS) on March 29th saw the change of command between Russian cosmonauts and NASA astronauts.

Livestreamed on the NASA Live website and elsewhere, Russian cosmonaut Anton Shkaplerov handed NASA astronaut Thomas Marshburn "the keys" to the ISS. The physical key is a symbol in possession of the current commander of the ISS. Shkaplerov is returning to Earth on March 30th alongside the cosmonaut Pyotr Dubrov and NASA astronaut Mark Vande Hei.

Shkaplerov, Dubrov, and Vande Hei are returning to Earth on Soyuz MS-19 after Vande Hei and Dubrov arrived together on April 9th, 2021, and Shkaplerov arrived on October 5th, 2021. Vande Hei has broken the record for longest single spaceflight by an American astronaut over the course of his mission, which was previously set at 340 days.

NASA's database indicates that a space rock will be approaching Earth in the coming days, and it is traveling nearly 30,000 mph.

The space rock is the asteroid labeled as 2007 FF1, and according to astronomers that have been tracking the asteroid, it's estimated to be between 360 and 656 feet in diameter. On March 24, the Virtual Telescope Project snapped an image of the asteroid when it was 7.2 million miles away from Earth, and with that image, astronomers were able to confirm that 2007 FF1 was going to make its closest approach with Earth yet.

The asteroid is officially classified by NASA as "potentially hazardous" because its diameter is 500 feet or greater, and its orbit brings it within 4.6 million miles of Earth, or about 19.5 times the distance to the moon. 2007 FF1 was first discovered back in 2007, and its last closest approach with Earth was in August 2020, when it came within 10.8 million of Earth. The next time 2007 FF1 is scheduled for its closest approach is on April 2, 2037, when it will come within 927,000 miles of Earth.

Individuals have been left shocked at the remains of a what is being described as an "alien-like" creature washing up on a beach in Australia.

Alex Tan found the remains of the unidentified creature on Maroochydore Beach, on the Sunshine Coast, located about 63 miles from Brisbane. Tan took to Instagram to post a video of the creature saying into the camera that "he has found something weird" and describing what he found as "one of those things you see when people claim they've found aliens." From the images and the video, all that can be depicted so far is that the creature features four limbs, a tail, and has a reptile-like skull.

At first, Tan thought what he found was a possum, but after a closer inspection, he ruled doesn't believe that to be the case. "It was just after we had all that stuff washed up on beaches from the floods. Its hands were really weird. I'm just calling it an alien," said Tan.

In the solar system, there are thousands of near-Earth asteroids, and sometimes one will have a close approach with Earth.

Krisztian Sarneczky, a Hungarian astronomer at the Konkoly Observatory, managed to identify an asteroid just hours before it was due to make its closest approach with Earth during the night on March 24/25. The asteroid, now labeled as Sar2594, soared past Earth at a safe distance of about 5,400 miles from the surface, which, to put into perspective, the International Space Station's altitude is about 250 miles, and the moon is about 238,900 miles away.

During its approach with Earth, the asteroid sped past at a ridiculous speed of 40,265 miles per hour. It was estimated to have a diameter of anywhere between 6.6 to 14 feet, making it a contender for the smallest asteroid ever found, which is approximately 6 feet in diameter. Due to its close approach with Earth, Sar2594's orbit has now changed forever, as showcased by Sarneczky in the below tweet.

A physics undergraduate and talented astrophotographer, Vincent Ledvina, has taken a stunning 8K video of the northern lights.

Ledvina recently went on a camping adventure to Fort Yukon, Alaska, where he spent three weeks above the arctic circle capturing auroras across several clear-skied nights. The astrophotographer is currently majoring in physics at the University of North Dakota with plans on becoming a space weather forecaster.

During Ledvina's time at the Fort Yukon Long Range Radar Site, his mission was to test a theory on how pulsating or flashing auroras are created. "The design of the mission was to have the sounding rocket launch into the aurora from the city of Fairbanks on a northward trajectory while high-speed cameras captured the pulsating aurora in two locations, Venetie and Fort Yukon," Ledvina explains.

NASA has observed multiple solar eruptions on the surface of the Sun, which have resulted in coronal mass ejections being sent toward Earth.

The solar flares are coming from the sunspot AR2975, which has been extremely active within the past two days by releasing at least 17 solar eruptions since March 28. The flares have sent coronal mass ejections (CME) in multiple directions, with some of the charged particles due to impact Earth and cause moderate to low geomagnetic storms.

According to both NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, there are at least two CMEs heading towards Earth, with there being a possibility of a third on the way as well. Reports from SpaceWeather.com indicate that the first CME is due to arrive on Thursday, March 31, and the second on Friday, April 1. As previously mentioned, officials expect that the Sun blasts will cause G2/G3 geomagnetic storms that result in an increased chance of auroras.

Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) documents from 1963 and 1964 have been released for a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request by the Government Attic website.

The request resulted in three CIA reports investigating the Soviet Union's apparent usage of extra-sensory perception (ESP) and attempts to develop "cybernetic telepathy." The reports describe conversations between a CIA agent and Soviet cybernetics researcher, and a visiting foreign exchange student.

D.A. Kerminov, the Soviet scientist, told the agent about an experiment where researchers recorded the central nervous signals of a person playing piano and broadcast those signals to another person who had never played the piano. According to Kerminov, "that person would then be enabled to play difficult music, but also would retain some of this skill as permanent learning."

The time a NASA astronaut can spend in space is limited by their exposure to ionizing radiation over their career.

While on Earth, Earth's magnetosphere and atmosphere protect us from ionizing radiation coming from space, primarily from the Sun. The International Space Station (ISS) doesn't receive the same protection from the atmosphere but is still shielded from some ionizing radiation thanks to the magnetosphere. This means astronauts receive higher doses of radiation than those who never leave Earth, about 300 mSv per year on the ISS compared to 3.6 mSv on Earth.

Associated with the higher levels of radiation exposure are increased risks of radiation sickness and cancer. To mitigate this, NASA's current limit for radiation exposure, set in 1989, allows for a maximum of 3% lifetime excess risk of cancer mortality. Both sex and age impact this limit, creating a range of limits from as low as 180 millisieverts (mSv) of radiation for a 30-year-old woman and as high as 700 mSv for a 60-year-old man.

The "cosmically young" rings still have life left, but their time is finite.

We still don't know exactly how Saturn's rings formed, though they are estimated to be between 10 and 100 million years old, narrowing down the possible theories. One theory suggests that the rings could have been formed by one of Saturn's moons coming too close to the planet and being shredded apart.

With every passing year, the planetary ring is losing material due to "ring rain." The term refers to incoming micrometeorites and solar radiation, which strike the particles in the ring, electrifying them and aligning them with Saturn's magnetic field lines. This sets the particles on a course for Saturn's atmosphere, where gravity pulls them in until they are vaporized.

Waydoo is launching its new, portable underwater scooter through a Kickstarter campaign.

Named the Subnado, it is the world's smallest and lightest portable underwater scooter, weighing only 1.4 kilograms (~3.1 pounds) and is 38 centimeters (~15 inches) in length. The cylindrical aluminum body is six centimeters (~2.3 inches) in diameter, extending to seven centimeters (~2.8 inches) wide at the propeller guard.

Its profile allows it easily fit within a backpack and comes equipped with a 98Wh lithium-ion battery that will enable it to run for up to 56 minutes on a single charge. Compared to another underwater scooter, the Sublue Tini, the Subnado is 1 kilogram (2.2 pounds) lighter and can run continuously for 11 more minutes. With its 100W PD fast charger, the Subnado takes 1.2 hours to charge.