Science, Space, & Robotics - Page 103

NASA has given an update on the progress of the James Webb Space Telescope that was launched back in December, 2021.

The world's most powerful space telescope is currently located 1 million miles away from Earth in a specific point in space called a Lagrange point. The $10 billion dollar mission has been more than 20 years in the making and is now in its final steps before science observations can begin.

NASA has taken to its blog to announce that Webb is making its way through its calibration, with it recently hitting a major milestone called "fine phasing", which is a successful calibration of every optical parameter on Webb's Optical Telescope Element. NASA has confirmed that Webb is able to successfully gather light from distant objects, with tests results indicating that Webb's optical path is working perfectly.

South Korean military has reported a missile launch from the capital of North Korea that ended up failing completely.

According to a report from Fox News on Wednesday, North Korea launched a missile from near its capital city which soon after launch exploded. South Korea's military has reported the missile making this North Korea's 10th missile launch of its kind for 2022. Under anonymity, a South Korean military official said that the launched missile only exploded at an altitude of 20 kilometers or less, adding that the exact cause of the missile's explosion is currently unknown.

Lee Choon Geun, an honorary research fellow at South Korea's Science and Technology Policy Institute, predicted that the missile would have exploded less than a minute after being launched. Geun also stated that there is a possibility that the toxic fuels from the missile could cause a health impact if they were to land on North Korean residential areas. As of writing, there is no current outside report of missile damage near North Korea's capital.

It was only last week the sun released a coronal mass ejection (CME) blast towards Earth, causing moderate geomagnetic storms.

Now, observatories have honed in on an active sunspot region that has produced two solar flares on March 15, at M.1 and M1.6, respectively. Dr. C. Alex Young, a NASA heliophysicist, or sun scientist, announced that the solar flares caused shortwave radio blackouts over the Atlantic Ocean and the Pacific Ocean, followed by a predicted R1 warning from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Space Weather Prediction Center (NOAA).

The below image was captured by a Solar Dynamic Observatory that showcases the sunspot region AR12965 on March 14. This sunspot region caused most of last week's solar activity with geomagnetic storm activity and an increased chance of auroras. EarthSky reports that this active sunspot region still has the potential to produce more solar flares. SpaceWeather.com reported that a filament of magnetism located on the sun's southern hemisphere snapped and exploded, which may cause a CME to impact Earth on March 14.

Previously, a 9.0-magnitude earthquake struck Fukushima, Japan, leading to the 2011 Fukushima disaster.

The latest 7.4-magnitude earthquake struck at 11:30pm local time on March 16th, off the coast and 36 miles (60 kilometers) below sea level, according to the Japan Meteorological Agency. The agency issued a tsunami warning, suggesting a 3 foot (1 meter) high wave could hit the Miyagi and Fukushima prefectures, but has since scaled the warning back to reflect milder sea-level changes along the coast.

The 2011 earthquake led to the worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl, destroying the Fukushima nuclear power plant. The Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) still manages the defunct Fukushima plant and has since sent workers to investigate the plant. No abnormalities have been found, nor has any damage been reported at the Onagawa nuclear power plant in Miyagi Prefecture, according to the Tohoku Electric Power company.

Former NASA astronaut Scott Kelly has been embroiled in a Twitter feud with the head of the Russian space agency.

In Russian, Kelly has used Twitter to jab at Dmitry Rogozin, the Director-General of Roscosmos, Russia's space agency, translating to: "Dimon, without those flags and the foreign exchange they bring in, your space program won't be worth a damn. Maybe you can find a job at McDonald's if McDonald's still exists in Russia." The tweets came following Rogozin's tirades on Twitter since the beginning of the Russian invasion into Ukraine, including thinly-veiled threats against the International Space Station (ISS).

Now, Kelly has been asked by an unnamed NASA official to exercise restraint in his dealings online with Russian authorities. According to CNN, the email read: "As Americans, each of us enjoys freedom of speech, and you are all empowered to speak your mind. However, please know that as former NASA astronauts, your words carry additional weight, and attacking our Russian partners is damaging to our current mission."

A recent poll by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research found that three-quarters of Americans would prefer not to have to switch back and forth between standard and daylight saving time (DST).

Eighteen states have already moved to adopt DST permanently, but they cannot do so without congressional approval. Now, the U.S. Senate has passed legislation to make the change nationwide. However, this is not a first for the nation, as, in 1973, President Nixon signed a bill to put the U.S. on DST for two years, going into effect on January 6th, 1974.

Like now, the public wanted to avoid changing their clocks year-round. However, the price they paid was sunrises at 8 a.m. and as late as 9:30 a.m. in certain places and deeper into winter months, according to David Prerau, an expert and author on DST. Public approval of the change quickly dropped from 79% in December 1973 to 42% in February 1974, the New York Times reported, and lawmakers reversed course subsequently.

The genetically modified mosquitos are a project by the British biotech firm Oxitec.

Oxitec is seeking permission to release its mosquitoes in the Tulare County of Visalia, California, with potential expansions into Fresno, San Bernadino, and Stanislaus counties. It plans to introduce two million male mosquitoes over time, each with a "kill switch" built into their DNA that will mean any offspring they have will die before adulthood, eventually destroying the mosquito population in the area.

The modified mosquitoes are named "Friendly", and as they are male, they do not bite or spread disease. They have also been modified to only mate with the target population of mosquitoes first detected in Los Angeles County in 2011 and not California's native mosquito. The California native emerges at dusk, while the newer, target mosquito variety is active during the day.

The Artemis program has been plagued by delays, but the Artemis I mission seems to finally be making progress.

The integrated Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and Orion spacecraft that will fly as part of the Artemis I lunar mission are now due to roll out on March 17th. They will roll out onto Launch Pad 39B at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, for which live coverage by NASA will begin at 5 p.m. EDT (21:00 UTC). The event will be viewable on NASA Television, the NASA app, and NASA's website.

The rollout will involve a 4-mile (6.4 kilometers) journey from the Vehicle Assembly Building to the launch pad, which is expected to take between six and twelve hours. Beginning at 4 p.m. EDT (20:00 UTC), the Kennedy Newsroom YouTube channel will also be capturing the event. Once at the pad, NASA will conduct a final prelaunch test known as the wet dress rehearsal, conducting a launch countdown and loading the SLS propellant tanks.

The images were taken by the High Resolution Imaging Experiment (HiRISE) aboard NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO).

The newly released image shows layering in the sedimentary rock in the Danielson Crater on Mars. From top to bottom, the terrain captured in the image spans just under a kilometer, and the image was taken while the MRO was orbiting 276 kilometers (171 miles) above the surface.

Scientists do not know exactly how the rocks formed but can infer from the regularity of the layers that a continually repeating process is responsible for their formation on an annual or even longer timescale. The regularity suggests that random phenomena like meteor impacts did not cause the layers to accumulate. Some scientists suggest their formation may be associated with climate changes related to orbital variations, while others suggest upwelling groundwater could be responsible.

The star is a pulsar named PSR J2030+4415, and resides approximately 1,600 light-years from Earth.

The beam ejected from the pulsar extends 40 trillion miles and has been imaged by NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory. The beam was first detected in 2020, but astronomers could not determine its full length as it extended past the bounds of the Chandra detector. The record-breaking beam is the longest spotted from originating from a pulsar.

Russian journalist Kamil Galeev has reported that Roscosmos is prohibiting its employees from leaving Russia.

The order to prohibit employees of the Russian space agency, Roscosmos, from leaving the country has come from the Roscosmos Director-General, Dmitry Rogozin. The move results from fears that critical staff, such as IT workers, will not return. The "brain drain" problem of educated personnel leaving the country is being driven by the sanctions imposed on Russia over its invasion into Ukraine, crippling its economy.

According to Galeev, Russian border guards have instructions to prevent IT workers from leaving Russia. From Russia, flights to Georgia sold out first, followed by Armenia and Azerbaijan. People continue to want to flee the country, with more than 25,000 Russians having left for Georgia alone, so others are turning to anywhere one can get tickets.

A NASA astronaut has just broken the record for the longest spaceflight after launching from Earth in April, 2021.

That astronaut is retired Army colonel and now NASA astronaut Mark Vande Hei, who has now been aboard the International Space Station (ISS) for more than 340 days, 8 hours and 42 minutes, which was the previous record for the longest spaceflight trip for a NASA astronaut, set by Scott Kelly on March 2, 2013. Hei is expected to break the record by 15 days as its expected he will make a return trip back to Earth on day 355.

While its certainly a celebratory moment for Hei, his new record is still quite far away from the world record that is currently held by Russian cosmonaut Valery Polyakov who stayed aboard the Russian Mir space station from January 1994 to March 1995, for a total of 437 days, 17 hours and 58 minutes. For Hei to break the record set by the Russians, he would need to stay another 82 days. The NASA astronaut did say he could stay aboard the ISS longer if he was required to, but not voluntarily.

An article on the man's tongue titled "Black Hairy Tongue" has been published in Journal of the American Medical Association's JAMA Dermatol.

A man in his 50s came to doctors in India with a black, hairy tongue after suffering a stroke three months prior. Following the stroke, the man had motor weaknesses in his left side and was put on a pureed diet. For about two weeks, a black coating covered his tongue, which doctors diagnosed as the condition of black hairy tongue, or lingua villosa nigra.

The condition occurs in about 13% of the population, according to the American Academy of Oral Medicine, and is relatively harmless. The condition results more commonly in people on pureed diets, as a lack of food that abrades or stimulates the top of the tongue leads to the build-up of the protein keratin. Consequently, the filiform papillae covering the tongue grow longer and take on a hairy appearance.

A study on the star system titled "The Physical Properties of the SVS 13 Protobinary System: Two Circumstellar Disks and a Spiraling Circumbinary Disk in the Making" has been accepted for publication into The Astrophysical Journal.

The binary star system is called SVS 13 and is located 980 light-years away from Earth. After a star is born, the leftover dust and gas form a protoplanetary disk, which can then produce planets, asteroids, comets, moons, or various other kinds of celestial bodies. Astronomers have now observed three such protoplanetary disks forming around SVS 13.

Hours after regaining power following a previous outage, the plant has once again lost power.

Ukrenergo, Ukraine's electrical grid operator, has blamed Russian forces for damage to a high-voltage power line connecting the plant to the grid and has demanded a repair crew be allowed to access it. The power line was repaired by a crew on March 13th, allowing Ukrenergo to start delivering power to the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant (NPP) and the city of Slavutych. Before power was fully returned, Russian occupying forces damaged the line again.

Elon Musk has called out Vladimir Putin on Twitter, issuing a challenge for "single combat."

Musk wrote Putin's name in Russian, and below his challenge wrote the "Stakes are Ukraine." In reply to his initial tweet, Musk wrote entirely in Russian to @KremlinRussia_E, the official Twitter page of the President of Russia, with a message translating to "Do you agree to this fight?" He then followed up with a reply to a Twitter user, writing "I am absolutely serious".

Since Musk's tweets, Dmitry Rogozin, the Director-General of Russia's space agency Roscosmos, issued his own tweets in response, translating to "You, little devil, are still young, Compete with me weak; It would only be a waste of time. Overtake my brother first." The tweet quotes a Russian fairytale by A. S. Pushkin, known as "The Tale of the Pope and his worker Balda".

The files residing in Barack Obama's Presidential Library have been uncovered by a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request.

The FOIA request was filed by John Greenewald Jr., of The Black Vault, which has filed over ten thousand FOIA requests and houses over three million declassified government documents on its website. The request sought documents related to the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP), which began as the Advanced Aerospace Weapon Systems Applications Program (AAWSAP) and had the objective of studying unidentified flying objects (UFOs) and unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP).

The library responded to the request by saying it has approximately 3,440 pages and 26,271 electronic files that potentially pertain to the topics in question. It will likely take some time before the files become available, as they will need to be examined and potentially redacted in places before becoming publicized. Obama has previously gone on record stating that UFOs are indeed real.

Jeff Bezos' aerospace manufacturer and sub-orbital spaceflight services company, Blue Origin, has announced the next space tourists.

Back in October 2021, Bezos' Blue Origin successfully took Star Trek star William Shatner to space, taking off from the launch site located in west Texas to the Karman line 66 miles above the surface of Earth. In December 2021 the aerospace manufacturer took NFL player and Good Morning America co-host Michael Strahan to space on Blue Origin's New Shepard rocket.

Now, Blue Origin has announced that Saturday Night Live star Pete Davidson will be joining five other passengers on the next launch scheduled for March 23. The other passengers aboard Blue Origin's next ride to space will include CEO and investor Marty Allen, Sharon and Marc Hagle, entrepreneur Jim Kitchen and George Nield, a former NASA manager.

Russia has promised that it won't be leaving behind any NASA astronauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS).

Recently a strange video was released by a state-controlled media outlet that showcased the Russian side of the ISS detaching and cosmonauts leaving behind NASA astronaut Vande Hei who is currently onboard the space station. Hei is also scheduled to return back to Earth on Russia's Soyuz rocket, and after viewing the video, some individuals interpreted it as a potential threat of leaving Hei stranded in space.

However, Russia's space agency, Roscosmos, has given a new statement via Russian state-owned news network TASS, where the agency vowed, "US astronaut Mark Vande Hei will travel back home in the Soyuz MS-19 spacecraft together with Russia's Anton Shkaplerov and Pyotr Dubrov on March 30. Roscosmos has never let anybody doubt its reliability as a partner."

On July 17, 2014, the flight MH17 flying from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur mysteriously went missing and was later discovered to be shot down.

The flight carried 283 passengers and 15 crew members, and all were killed in what was discovered to be a missile strike in the Hrabove area of Eastern Ukraine, where the plane was shot down. A Dutch-led joint investigation concluded that four individuals were responsible for the destruction of MH17 and were charged, three of those individuals had connections to the Russian military.

Additionally, the missile that the four individuals used to shoot down the plane was a Russian Buk-TELAR, which is a surface-to-air missile system that originally belonged to the Russian Federation's 53rd Anti-Aircraft Military Brigade. On top of that, the investigation found that the missile system was moved from Russia to a location that was controlled by Russian-funded separatists and that the missile system could have only been operated under the supervision of an appropriately trained Russian military.