Science, Space, & Robotics - Page 125

SpaceX's Starship's first orbital test flight has been delayed, but work is still underway.

Starship's first orbital test flight hinges upon SpaceX's South Texas launch site, Starbase, passing a programmatic environmental assessment (PEA) conducted by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). This assessment was to be completed by December 31st, 2021; however, this has been pushed back. The FAA announced on December 28th that the assessment is now due to be completed by February 28th, 2022.

The test flight was targeted for January or February but now will occur no earlier than March. In the meantime, Starship testing will continue, with the latest testing taking place on December 29th. The Starship SN20 (Serial Number 20) prototype has fired its engines in a "static fire" test at Starbase. The spacecraft remained anchored to the ground while its Raptor engines were ignited briefly.

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) just took another step closer to deploying its sunshield.

On December 29th, the Deployable Tower Assembly (DTA) was successfully deployed aboard the observatory. It extends 1.22 meters (4 feet) and connects the two halves of the telescope. The DTA's movement allows for the separation between the telescope and the rest of the spacecraft, necessary for there to be room for the sunshield membranes to unfold.

The extra distance also allows for better thermal isolation for the upper section of the observatory, which houses the mirrors and scientific instruments. They need to be cooled to extremely low temperatures to detect the infrared light that the JWST will be observing.

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has completed its second mid-course correction burn.

The burn lasted 9 minutes and 27 seconds and is the second of three course corrections that the telescope will undergo to take it to the second Lagrange point, L2. The first course correction, designated MCC-1a, began twelve and a half hours after launch, as the sooner the course correction occurs, the less propellant is required.

The second course correction, designated MCC-1b, was completed 60 hours after launch. The third course correction, designated MCC-2, will occur near the end of the JWST's journey toward the second Lagrange point, known as L2, about twenty-nine days after launching.

The tail of Comet Leonard is starting to break up.

In this picture taken by Gerald Rhemann on December 25th, you can see the tail of Comet Leonard experiencing a disconnection event. Partway down the tail from the comet itself, where it begins to swirl, the tail is being pinched off and separated away from the rest of the tail streaming off the comet.

Coronal mass ejections (CMEs) can disrupt comet tails, sometimes disconnecting them completely, though Comet Leonard has not yet had a known CME impact. Solar winds streams can still produce a similar effect, two of which have hit the comet in recent weeks.

Two weeks after launch, NASA's Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) spacecraft has returned its first images from space.

Components of the DART spacecraft's telescopic instrument are sensitive to movements as small as five-millionths of a meter. The violent vibrations experienced during launch and extreme reduction in temperature to minus 80 degrees Celsius (-112 degrees Fahrenheit) could easily cause severe disruptions to the instrument.

Now, after opening its circular door covering the DRACO (short for Didymos Reconnaissance and Asteroid Camera for Optical navigation) telescopic camera's aperture on December 7th, the DART spacecraft has returned the images it took to Earth. They were taken about two million miles from Earth, showing about a dozen stars in the otherwise empty backdrop of space.

China is unhappy with the United States over recent close encounters between SpaceX satellites and the Chinese space station.

China's space station, named Tiangong, had to make evasive maneuvers to avoid collisions with Starlink satellites owned by SpaceX on two separate occasions. According to a note submitted to the United Nations space agency by Beijing, the first occurred in July 2021, and the second in October 2021.

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) may have launched, but there's still a lot of preparation to go before it is ready to fulfill its mission.

On December 28th, the first of two structures containing the JWST's sunshield was deployed. The Forward and Aft Unitized Pallet Structures are the two structures, which contain five folded sunshield membranes, cables, pulleys, and release mechanisms. The deployment of the forward pallet was completed at 1:21 p.m. EST (18:21 UTC), approximately four hours after it began.

The deployment required dozens of steps by the mission operations teams, with only one being the actual motor-driven movement to take the pallet from its stowed position to its deployed state. The event also marks the first time this structure has conducted this movement since its final deployment test at Northrop Grumman Space Park in Redondo Beach, California, in December 2020.

The AI-based Amazon Alexa smart speaker told the 10-year-old girl: "Plug in a phone charger about halfway into a wall outlet, then touch a penny to the exposed prongs". This was only after the girl asked Alexa for a "challenge to do", where the smart speaker discovered the "penny challenge" on the internet -- mostly through TikTok and other social networks.

The 10-year-old girl's mother, Kristin Livdahl, said: "We were doing some physical challenges, like laying down and rolling over holding a shoe on your foot, from a [physical education] teacher on YouTube earlier. Bad weather outside. She just wanted another one".

Just as her daughter heard the speaker tell her to do something that could've killed her, she jumped in and said "No, Alexa, no!"... I guess like it was a dog or something. But don't worry, the mother said her daughter was "too smart to do something like that". As for Amazon... well, I think Bezos turns a blind eye to most of this.

Researchers from the University of Adelaide have published a new study in Disease Models and Mechanisms examining the link between energy production in the brain and Alzheimer's disease.

The research team studied the brains of young adult zebrafish, which had genetic mutations associated with early-onset Alzheimer's disease. Zebrafish were the ideal candidate for the study, as they produce large families in which subtle effects can be more easily detected.

The Alzheimer's disease mutations affected brain cell function in various ways but notably impacted the cells' ability to use oxygen to produce energy. Energy production is the most fundamentally important process within a cell, a necessary prerequisite for the rest of its functions. In highly active organs like the brain, impacts on energy availability have serious consequences.

Much like the black box found on aircraft to keep a safe record of its functions in the event of a disaster, a new black box will keep a record of the Earth in case of a calamity.

The new project, dubbed Earth's Black Box, is a collaboration between the University of Tasmania, Clemenger BBDO, and The Glue Society. Construction is expected to begin in early 2022 and intends to record all of the relevant data that could contribute to the world's collapse, keeping it safe in that event.

New research has demonstrated an increased prevalence of psychiatric disorders with increased sugar intake in mice models.

Simple sugars like sucrose and corn syrup are found in higher concentrations than ever before in modern diets. Yet, higher intake contributing to the pathogenesis of psychiatric disorders in susceptible individuals hasn't been proven. There has been some evidence thus far that supports a correlation, with patients diagnosed with mental disorders on average consuming approximately two times as much sugar compared to healthy, age-matched individuals.

Researchers from the Tokyo Metropolitan Institute of Medical Science selected the Glyoxylase-1 and Disrupted-in-schizophrenia-1 genes, susceptibility genes for psychiatric disorders, to make their mouse model deficient in the proteins encoded by those genes. By exposing the mice to excessive sugar intakes at the age of puberty, the researchers found increases in mental disorder-like symptoms, including decreased working memory, hyperactivity, and cerebral microvascular angiopathy.

Researchers from the Spanish Astrobiology Centre in Madrid have detected ethanolamine in space and published their findings in a yet-to-be peer-reviewed paper.

Ethanolamine forms part of the phospholipid molecules that comprise cell membranes. It forms the hydrophilic head of the PE class of phospholipids, which are found in all living cells, making up 25% of all phospholipids. In nervous system components of human physiology, they comprise 45% of all phospholipids.

The research team studied Sagittarius B2, a massive molecular cloud of gas and dust located 390 light-years from the center of the Milky Way. In search of ethanolamine, they simulated the expected spectrum produced by the chemical and looked for this in the light coming from the galaxy and found clear evidence for its presence.

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has finally made it off Earth and into space, but there's a lot more to be done before its mission is deemed a complete success.

After more than a decade of delays and almost thirty years and $10 billion of development, the Ariane 5 rocket carrying the JWST launched from French Guiana at the opening of its launch window on December 25th at 7:20 a.m. EST (12:20 UTC). The rocket's upper stage separated from its lower stages to carry the folded-up JWST payload to the beginning of its trajectory toward the Lagrange Point 2 (L2), taking 16 minutes and 6 seconds. The JWST separated from the upper stage 27 minutes and 7 seconds after the rocket's launch.

I don't know about you, but I'd have some issues with an alien being in my room... I've listened to enough Blink-182 that I know they exist. But in Northern Ireland, they're dealing with not just the ongoing pandemic but a huge uptick in UFO sightings.

Northern Ireland's police department has been dealing with 8 separate "weird" UFO sightings in the last year alone, a 30% increase over the 6 sightings of UFOs in 2020 and double the 4 reports of UFO sightings in 2019. A few months ago, Northern Ireland police were called to a locals house about "aliens in bedroom" but no further reporting happened locally, or internationally.

But it gets more interesting: the police department actually detailed a Northern Ireland local who claimed they were abducted by aliens. Another incident had police checking out "strange images" on CCTV footage of a house in the Newtownabbey area, while another sighting of a "dome-shaped" object with 8 bright lights spotted in the Saintfield area.

NASA has just hired 24 theologists, who will be assessing how the human race would react to the discovery of alien life on other planets... and how it would impact religion, our gods, our creation, the fabric of our existence would change. We wouldn't be alone.

The US space agency is hiring 24 theologists who will join their program at the Center for Theological Inquiry (CTI) at Princeton University in New Jersey, where NASA awarded them a $1.1 million grant back in 2014. The CTI describes itself as building "bridges of under understanding by convening theologians, scientists, scholars, and policymakers to think together - and inform public thinking - on global concerns".

The group will be tasked with some of the most impossible -- and sought after -- questions of our existence. What does it mean for humans? What do we consider the differences between aliens and humans, depending on the aliens we discover as they will all be different? What about possibly sentient life in other places, possibly even here on Earth.

Marc del Pozo Puig of the Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e) has created a new 'smart ink' for use in 4D printing.

4D printing uses 3D printing to create objects capable of rearranging themselves in response to environmental stimuli. Given that they change with time, the fourth dimension in 4D printing is time. Printing with a material that changes in response to its environment has been done before to create some objects that can grow or shrink, open and close or twist.

To reverse these changes, the objects needed to be placed underwater. The new ink developed by del Pozo will make reversible change possible in normal conditions. The ink itself is made with liquid crystals instead of the previously used shape-memory polymers or hydrogels. Shape-memory polymers cannot reverse their form changes, and hydrogels can only reverse their changes underwater.

Researchers from the University of Oldenburg have successfully fabricated tiny metal objects with their new 3D printing technique.

In collaboration with researchers from ETH Zurich in Switzerland and Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, the research team has published a new study in Nano Letters detailing the technique. The electrochemical method used makes objects out of copper as small as 25 nanometers, around 3000 times thinner than a human hair.

The method is similar to electroplating, which involves depositing positively-charged metal ions onto a negatively-charged electrode, forming a neutral, solid metal layer. The team used a solution of positively-charged copper ions in a pipette which passed them through a print nozzle with an opening of as small as 1.6 nanometers, which only allows two copper ions through simultaneously onto a negatively charged substrate.

After surpassing recent technical issues, only the weather can stop the launch now.

Scheduled for December 25th, 2021, the highly anticipated James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) launch has moved one step closer to being realized as it has made its way to the launch pad located at the Arianespace ELA-3 launch complex at Europe's Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana.

Loaded atop Arianespace's Ariane 5 rocket, the telescope and rocket were moved out of the Arianespace's final assembly building at 11 a.m. EST (16:00 UTC), arriving at the launch pad by 1 p.m. EST (18:00 UTC). Teams will conduct electrical diagnostics and aliveness tests to ensure all systems are fully operational before liftoff. Now the only obstacle is the weather, which already delayed the launch from Christmas Eve to Christmas Day.

As Comet Leonard makes its way through our solar system, a Chinese satellite has spotted it through an aurora.

Yangwang 1 is a small Chinese satellite owned by Origin Space, launched in June 2021, and is searching the universe around our planet for near-Earth asteroids. It is looking for asteroids that could be mined for resources, with Origin Space hoping to capture a small asteroid in 2025.

Since beginning its orbit, the satellite has captured many images of auroras and meteors, now capturing this year's brightest comet, Comet Leonard (formally known as C/2021 A1). Comet Leonard made its closest approach to Earth on December 12th and will make its closest pass by the Sun on January 3rd, 2022, before disappearing for the next 80,000 years.

Researchers from the Technical University of Denmark (DTU) have made the world's thinnest Christmas tree using graphene.

The Christmas tree measures only one-third of a nanometer thick and 14 centimeters long. It is made of graphene, consisting of a one-atom-thick layer of carbon atoms. The tree was cut out of a 10-meter long roll of graphene and transferred in one piece, demonstrating the capability for continuous quality control in graphene production.