Science, Space, & Robotics - Page 110

A "very large" telescope was used to snap the below image of a galaxy researchers call Messier 77 or NGC 1068.

The European Space Observatory's Very Large Telescope located in Chile was used to snap an image of Messier 77, which is located around 47 million light-years from Earth within the constellation Cetus. The image, according to the ESO, has shed new light on galaxies that harbor an active core. At the center, Messier 77 is a supermassive black hole that has an immense gravitational pull. Galaxies that have an active nucleus are fueled by surrounding gas and dust being sucked into the center of the black hole.

Messier 77's supermassive black hole is shrouded in cosmic dust that completely conceals the spiral galaxy's core. However, the Multi Aperture Mid-Infrared Spectroscopic Experiment (MATISSE) mounted to the Very Large Telescope can see in a range of wavelengths that allow it to see through the cosmic dust. With the acquired data from multiple observations, researchers developed a new way to view Messier 77, adding to the researchers' observing program of galaxies with an active core.

Astronauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS) are on a regular schedule of working out, conducting vital experiments, and doing body research.

In a recent update on the events taking place on the ISS, NASA explains that three astronauts were scheduled for eye and vein scans on Tuesday, and throughout the scanning, doctors on Earth observed. The scanning took place in the Columbus laboratory module and used the Ultrasound 2 device that snapped images of the astronauts' neck, shoulder, and leg veins.

NASA flight engineers Mark Vande Hei and Thomas Marshburn and German astronaut Matthias Maurer also had their eyes scanned. So, why scan astronauts aboard the ISS? NASA explains in its blog post that the acquired data will be used to measure the effects of microgravity on the human body, which will no doubt lead to the development of technology that would reduce any negative impact of long-space duration for astronauts.

A new study on psilocybin's effect in the treatment of major depressive disorder has been published in the Journal of Psychopharmacology.

Researchers from the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine have previously demonstrated psilocybin's ability to relieve symptoms of major depressive disorder in adults for up to a month. A follow-up study of the same participants has shown "substantial antidepressant effects" that can last for at least a year in some patients after psilocybin-assisted psychotherapy treatment.

The study followed 27 participants with a long-term history of depression, where 88% had been previously treated with standard antidepressant medications, and 58% using antidepressants for current depressive episodes. To assess depressive symptoms, the GRID-Hamilton Depression Rating Scale was used, where a score of 24 or more indicates severe depression, 17-23 moderate depression, 8-16 mild depression, and 7 or less no depression.

A new report issued by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and six other federal agencies describes the expected sea-level rise.

The 111-page report was issued on February 15th, and includes projections for sea-level rises on United States' shores to be 10 to 12 inches (25 to 30 centimeters) higher than current levels by 2050. Parts of Louisiana and Texas are likely to see waters rise by up to a foot and a half (0.45 meters).

Nicole LeBoeuf, director of NOAA's National Ocean Service, warned that the cost of such an increase would be steep, noting that forty percent of the American population and much of the economy is found along the coast. The report's lead author and oceanographer William Sweet notes that the worst of the long-term sea-level rise due to melting ice sheets in Antarctica and Greenland isn't likely to kick in until 2100.

Bookings will open through Virgin Galactic's website on Wednesday, February 16th.

Virgin Galactic has announced that it will be reopening its waiting list for customers to book a space tourism flight, requiring a deposit of $150,000 and $450,000 total for the ticket cost. In November 2021, the company reported a pool of about 700 customers awaiting flights, with plans to have a thousand people ready to fly by late 2022, when they plan to begin commercial flights.

Virgin Galactic is currently working on two more space planes to join its fleet, presently comprising only the VSS Unity. The VSS Unity, which is brought to suborbital space with the VMS Eve carrier aircraft, has flown to suborbital space four times but is currently sitting on the sidelines until maintenance and upgrades to VMS Eve are complete.

It is the third documented case of an individual entering HIV remission.

The previous two cases of HIV remission were males, who were known as the "Berlin patient" and the "London patient," who were Caucasian and Latino, respectively. The Berlin patient was in HIV remission for 12 years, having been deemed cured, before he died of leukemia in September 2020, and the London Patient has been in remission for more than 30 months. They both received stem cell treatments from bone marrow.

Now, a woman has been in HIV remission since receiving a different treatment, transplanting CCR5Δ32/Δ32 cord blood stem cells from an umbilical cord. Before her treatment, she had been on antiretroviral therapy (ART) for four years, making her HIV manageable but still detectable. She received the stem cell treatment in 2017 and, after 100 days, had no detectable HIV. At 37 months following the transplant, she ceased ART, and in the 14 months following ART cessation, no HIV has been detected, except for a trace detection 14 weeks after stopping ART.

A camera onboard China's space station has captured a robotic arm crawling along the outside of the station.

The video has been shared by the Chinese Manned Space Agency (CMSA) and showcases a 33.5-foot-long robotic arm crawling along the outside of the Tianhe module. In the above video, the arm rises up and is searching for a docking location on the side of the module, which can be seen in the foreground of the video. So, why is there a massive arm on China's space station? The large robotic arm is designed to assist astronauts that are performing repairs or upgrades outside of the station, as well as assisting in system checks.

Additionally, the robotic arm will be used to move new modules of the space station into their correct positions once more arrive in orbit sometime throughout Q3/Q4 of this year. The arm will move the modules from the front docking port to lateral ports on the space station, which will eventually complete the intended T-shaped design that engineers planned for. For more information on this story, check out this link here.

Asteroids are a constant problem for Earth, but luckily NASA hasn't identified any extinction-level asteroids on track to hit Earth for the next 100 years.

This means all of the ones we will experience between now and 100 years from now will most likely burn up in Earth's atmosphere before reaching the ground. Earth's atmosphere protects us humans and any other life form on the surface from catastrophic impacts, as any space rock that is less than 82 feet in diameter most likely won't reach the surface. However, this grace period between large asteroids and Earth wasn't always the case as there are at least 190 impact craters on Earth's surface that have been identified.

Asteroids that are larger than 82 feet wide aren't very common, but there have been some instances throughout Earth's history where an asteroid far larger than 82 feet in diameter has reached the surface. Some of the craters found in the list below date back to before the dinosaurs even existed, and the asteroids that caused some of the craters caused global effects during their time of impact.

The data comes from WhaleStats, that reports one wallet recently purchased more than $4 million worth of a meme cryptocurrency.

According to reports and Tweets from WhaleStats that analyzes the behavior of the 1,000 largest Binance Smart Chain (BSC) wallet addresses, one wallet address that's total holdings are worth more than $2.38 billion, has recently purchased 139,929,254,883 of the meme cryptocurrency Shibu Inu ($SHIB), worth $4.23 million.

DailyHodl reports that SHIB recently rose to the top and temporarily held there for the 24-hour trading volume among the largest 1,000 wallets on the BSC, as it had an average purchase amount of $4,249 for 140,454,463 SHIB coins. Out of all of the top wallets on the BSC, the meme-cryptocurrency accounts for just 1.03% of their holding, or $26.25 million.

The letter expresses NASA's concerns about the ever-growing constellation of satellites comprising SpaceX's Starlink network.

SpaceX currently has a pending application to the FFC proposing an additional ~30,000 satellites to enter into a Low-Earth Orbit (LEO) as part of its second-generation non-geostationary orbit satellite system (Gen2), Starlink. NASA notes that there are currently 25,000 total objects tracked on-orbit, with about 6,100 of these objects having a perigee below 600 kilometers altitude.

The Gen2 expansion would mean a doubling in the number of tracked objects in orbit and more than a five-fold increase in the number of objects below 600 kilometers altitude. This is without factoring in the growth of other proposed satellite constellations, and the resultant "substantial congestion" would bring "additional risk of debris-generating collision events based on the number of objects alone."

Amprius Technologies has developed the new lithium-ion battery technology.

The new batteries use Amprius' proprietary Si-Nanowire platform to build its lithium-ion batteries, directly replacing the conventional graphite anodes with 100% silicon nanowire anodes. According to a 2020 paper published in the journal Nature, "silicon (Si) has been recognized as one of the most promising anode materials for Li-ion batteries due to its high gravimetric theoretical lithium storage capacity (3,579 mAh/g), compared to conventionally used graphite anodes (372 mAh/g), while also having a relatively low discharge voltage."

Amprius claims that its lithium-ion batteries have the highest energy density available, with cells boasting 450 Watt-hours per kilogram (Wh/kg) and 1150 Watt-hours per liter (Wh/L). By comparison, the cells in the current Tesla Model 3 have around 260 Wh/kg and 730 Wh/L. Their first shipment of the batteries was made to an "industry leader of a new generation of High-Altitude Pseudo Satellites (HAPS)."

Elizabeth Ann is the world's first cloned black-foot ferret, and was born on December 10th, 2020.

Elizabeth Ann made history just over a year ago as the first-ever cloned black-footed ferret. She was created from the cells of another black-footed ferret that died 35 years ago, named Willa. She was born from a surrogate ferret and, just over a year later, has achieved sexual maturity, one of the first clones of an endangered species to do so.

Now that Elizabeth Ann is of breeding age, conservation biologists hope to use her to help save the species from extinction. It will be the first time cloning has been successfully integrated into such an endeavor. Due to their small population size, the wild ferret colonies are currently suffering from inbreeding, decreasing their genetic diversity and reproductive fitness.

The mission is led by billionaire Jared Isaacman, founder of the online payment processing company Shift4.

After leading Inspiration4, the first all-civilian spaceflight aboard SpaceX's Crew Dragon capsule, in September 2021, Isaacman has now unveiled the Polaris Program. The program involves three commercial spaceflights, beginning with SpaceX's Dragon spacecraft and culminating in the first crewed launch of SpaceX's upcoming Starship.

The first of these flights is dubbed Project Dawn, where Isaacman hopes to achieve "the highest Earth orbit ever flown," beating the previous record of 853 miles (1,373 km) high, set in 1966 by NASA's Gemini 11 astronauts, Charles "Pete" Conrad and Richard "Dick" Gordon.

Previous identification of the WE0913A object destined to crash land into the moon as being of SpaceX origin is likely incorrect.

Astronomer Bill Gray previously suggested that a rocket stage moving through space destined to slam into the moon early next month came from a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, which originally launched NASA's Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR) satellite in 2015. On February 12th, Gray announced that he had made an error in his assessment and instead believes it could belong to a Chinese rocket.

The stage likely belongs to the Long March 3C rocket flown as part of China's Chang'e 5-T1 mission in October 2014. An e-mail from Jon Giorgini, an engineer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), to Gray, led to Gray posting a correction notice on the Project Pluto website, a project which Gray manages the software to track near-Earth objects.

Elon Musk is on the cusp of propelling the space industry to new heights and being so close to the end, Musk's competitors are beginning to shake in their boots, according to reports.

So, what are Musk's competitors so scared of? SpaceX is nearing the end of its development for Starship, a 390-foot reusable, refuelable rocket that is capable of transporting large amounts of cargo/people to the Moon, Mars, and back to Earth. Like other SpaceX rockets such as the Falcon 9, Starship has been designed with re-usability at the forefront. SpaceX having a large reusable rocket dramatically reduces the overall cost for a launch. It thus will no doubt be the option space agencies choose over other launch vehicles that cost millions more.

For example, NASA's Space Launch System (SLS) comes with a $2 billion-per-launch price tag, which is much more expensive than Musk's $1 million-per-launch price tag. Rand Simberg, an aerospace engineer and consultant, spoke to Politico and said, "Once [Starship's] reliability is demonstrated with a large number of flights, which could happen in a matter of months, it will obsolesce all existing launch systems. If SLS is not going to fly more than once every couple of years, it's just not going to be a significant player in the future in space, particularly when Starship is flown."

NASA has published a new update regarding its next-generation space telescope, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST).

NASA has taken to its blog to update the public on Webb's development process as the next-generation space telescope nears the completion of its first of the months-long process of aligning its 18 primary mirror segments. The space agency writes that the Webb team faced two challenges, the first was making sure the observatory's NIRCam was ready for operation, and the second was preparing its 18 primary mirror segments for observing light from the same star.

The result was a mosaic image that has now become the "foundation to align and focus the telescope in order for Webb to deliver unprecedented views of the universe this summer." The space agency continued to write that the Webb team, over the coming months, will continue to optimize Webb's mirror so all of the blurry dots seen in the below image turn into one dot or one single star. For more information on this story, check out this link here.

Cyanide is renowned as that lethal pill that is taken by bad guys in movies once they are caught, usually by spies of secret service agents.

While the compound has notoriously got a bad wrap when it comes to public opinion, biology scientists see much more potential in it than just killing villains, as it may have been a key player in the first metabolic reactions on Earth. Chemists at Scripps Research found that cyanide has a carbon atom bonded to a nitrogen atom and performed tests that were designed to create more complex compounds that are fundamental for life to exist.

Knowing that cyanide was present in a young Earth's atmosphere allowed the researchers to devise a list that features a possible set of chemical reactions that could produce more complex organic molecules from carbon dioxide by cyanide interacting with them. This list of possible chemical reactions was tested in a lab, and according to Dr. Ramanarayanan Krishnamurthy, an associate professor of chemistry at Scripps Research and the study's lead author, "It was scary how simple it was. We really didn't have to do anything special, we mixed together these molecules, waited and the reaction happened spontaneously."

SpaceX has been working on Starship, the biggest and most advanced rocket ever made, for quite some time, and now SpaceX's CEO Elon Musk is showcasing how the company may catch the rocket on its descent back down to Earth.

As with all of SpaceX's rockets, they must be reusable as the reusability of its rockets is the company's main attraction as it saves millions in manufacturing rocket parts after every launch. SpaceX is already leading the reusable rocket industry with its workhorse rocket, the Falcon 9, and while that rocket can certainly get the job done when it comes to ferrying satellites and astronauts into low-Earth orbit, it doesn't quite cut it for an attempt on reaching Mars.

This is why SpaceX is building Starship, the largest and most advanced rocket ever created. Starship stacked on top of SpaceX's SuperHeavy Booster stands at a whopping 390 feet tall and will output up to a total of 7,600 tons of thrust at liftoff, which is more than double the power of a Saturn V rocket. As for how much it can carry, Starship will be able to carry between 100 and 150 tonnes to orbit and about 100 tonnes to Mars.

Elon Musk gave an update on SpaceX's Starship on February 10th at SpaceX's Starbase.

Musk's presentation took place in front of a 390-foot-tall (119 meters) assembly of the Starship Ship 20 stacked atop the Super Heavy Booster 4. The update included the announcement that the future designs for the Super Heavy booster will have 33 Raptor 2 engines, up from the 29 engines currently on Booster 4.

The new engine designs will produce up to 230 tons of thrust at sea level while being made from fewer parts than Raptor 1, which can only generate up to 185 tons of thrust. Starship will be able to output up to a total of 7,600 tons of thrust at liftoff, more than double the power of a Saturn V rocket, and breaks the record for the tallest rocket built, previously held by the Saturn V, which stood 363 feet (111 meters) tall.

The robot explored the ruins of Japan's Fukushima nuclear power plant, which was destroyed in 2011.

In 2011, damage to the power plant by a massive earthquake and tsunami caused the meltdown of three of its reactor cores. The radioactive fuel within fell to the bottom of their containment vessels, complicating removal efforts. Now, an ROV-A robot operated by TEPCO has made its way into the Unit One reactor, capturing images of broken structures and mounds of what appears to be melted fuel, all submerged under highly radioactive water approximately two meters (6.5 feet) deep.

Between all three reactors are approximately 900 tonnes of melted nuclear fuel, with about 280 tonnes found in Unit One. Officials estimate the removal of nuclear fuel will take between 30 and 40 years; however, critics say that is "overly optimistic."