Science, Space, & Robotics - Page 137

A man that was armed with a metal detector discovered a heavy rock that he believed was gold, but after further analysis, it was found to be much more valuable.

David Hole discovered the large rock back in 2015 when he was prospecting with a metal detector in Maryborough Regional Park near Melbourne, Australia. After finding the rock, he took it home and attempted to open it, thinking that there would be a gold nugget inside. Hole tried opening the rock with a rock saw, angle grinder, drill, and even acid. All of which didn't work. Years later, Hole took the rock to the Melbourne Museum for identification, and that's when he discovered what he found wasn't a heavy rock with gold potentially in the middle, but a large meteorite.

The meteorite weighed in at 37.5 pounds and after using a diamond saw to dissect a small portion of it, researchers discovered that its composition is a high percentage of iron, meaning that the meteorite is classified as a chondrite. Melbourne museum geologist Dermot Henry told The Sydney Morning Herald, "Meteorites provide the cheapest form of space exploration. They transport us back in time, providing clues to the age, formation, and chemistry of our Solar System (including Earth)."

A new study published in Nature Communications details the discovery of an enormous "barrier" located at the center of our Milky Way.

The team of astronomers behind the study from the Chinese Academy of Sciences located in Nanjing, looked at a map of gamma-rays in our galaxy. Space.com reports that gamma-rays are the highest-energy form of light in the universe and can originate when high-speed particles known as cosmic rays collide with matter. The map showed researchers that at the center of the Milky Way, there is something that is increasing the speed of particles, some even close to the speed of light.

Additionally, the map showed a large amount of cosmic and gamma rays just outside of the center of the galaxy. On top of that, the researchers detailed that while the galactic center of the Milky Way blasts out high-energy radiation into the space surrounding it, something is preventing large amounts of cosmic rays from entering. The researchers describe it as a "barriera" that appears to be wrapped around the center of the galaxy. This "barrier" keeps the density of cosmic rays within the region lower than the baseline amount seen throughout the rest of the Milky Way galaxy.

A group of astronomers discovered a hellish exoplanet where one year on the planet is really just a few days on Earth.

The team of astronomers from the Physical Research Laboratory (PRL) published a study in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society back in October, and it details the discovery of exoplanet TOI 1789b. The exoplanet is estimated to be around 1.4 times the size of Jupiter, with around 70% of its mass. Additionally, TOI 1789b orbits its star extremely closely, completing one full rotation around the star in just 3.2 days.

Being so close to its host star, the planet gets extremely hot. The researchers estimate that the planet can reach temperatures up to 2,000 K, or 3,140 Fahrenheit. Planets such as TOI 1789b are referred to as a "hot Jupiter", as they are similar to Jupiter but have very short orbital periods around their host stars resulting in them being hot. If you are interested in reading more about this story, check out this link here.

In the coming days, the European Space Agency's Solar Orbiter will perform its riskiest fly-by of Earth yet as it makes its way towards the Sun.

The European Space Agency (ESA) has detailed on its website the upcoming mission for its Solar Orbiter. The satellite is returning back to Earth before it makes it way back towards the Sun to observe the fiery ball in an attempt to understand space weather better. Before it can measure the Sun, the Solar Orbiter must pass closely with Earth in order to slow down and be lined up for a close pass with the Sun.

During this maneuver, the Solar Orbiter will come within 286 miles of the planet's surface, which is only a little bit above where the International Space Station orbits (250 miles). However, that isn't where the risk lies. The ESA detail in the infographic found above that the Solar Orbiter will have to pass through two layers of space debris that could potentially damage the satellite.

Humans are looking towards Mars as the next spot to settle down on, but being a barren wasteland with minimal habitable options, the Red Planet is a bit of a fixer-upper.

A new paper spotted by Universe Today on the pre-print server arXiv looks at how humans can achieve a sustained presence on the Red Planet that would include factors such as travel, research, visiting, tourism, etc. The paper states that for that level of colonization to take place, Mars would need a strong magnetic field capable of deflecting solar wind blasts from the Sun, which are deadly to humans. Earth's magnetic field comes from its core, but Mars' core is different from Earth's and would require either its core to be started up (as its cooler) or an artificial magnetic field to be created around the planet's surface.

Since the latter of the two options is more feasible, the team of scientists, including NASA's own chief scientist James Lauer Green, proposes a ring of charged particles to be built around the planet. The study details using Mars' moon Phobos to create a magnetic field by ionizing particles from the moon's surface and then accelerating them to create a plasma torus, a doughnut-shaped region around the orbit that is filled with hot ionized gas (a plasma).

NASA is currently gearing up for its very first planetary defense mission that will include launching a spacecraft directly towards an asteroid in an attempt to redirect it.

NASA is targeting a binary asteroid system that features two asteroids; one smaller asteroid named Didymos and one larger asteroid named Dimorphos. Didymos, the smaller of the two asteroids, is orbiting its larger companion and will be the target of NASA's Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART). The space agency plans to launch a vending machine-sized asteroid towards Didymos in an attempt to change its orbit slightly. The results from this test will answer the question if NASA is capable of redirecting an asteroid if it's on route to hit Earth.

The DART spacecraft will be traveling at 15,000 mph and will collide with Didymos, which is about the size of the Great Pyramid of Giza. NASA expects that the impact should change Didymos' orbit by more than 1%, and if it does, the mission is considered a success. As the DART spacecraft is flying towards the asteroid, it will be taking images rapidly and relaying them back to Earth before it's completely destroyed.

The Hubble Space Telescope has peered out into the void and snapped an image of a celestial prawn drifting throughout deep space.

Located around 6,000 light-years away, the Prawn Nebula (IC 4628) is a massive stellar nursery that's located within the constellation Scorpius. A stellar nursery is a molecular cloud that houses all the ingredients that will eventually form into stars. The Prawn Nebula is 250 light-years across and doesn't emit light in wavelengths the human eye can detect, but Hubble can see it quite clearly.

The pristine image snapped by Hubble showcases the nebulas structure of energized, or ionized gas caused by the radiation of a nearby star. The radiation from the nearby star strips the hydrogen atoms located within the nebula, energizing the electrons and changing them from a higher-energy state to a lower-energy state. If you are interested in reading more about this story, check out NASA's blog post on the Prawn Nebula here.

NASA's Perseverance rover is asking the public to take a second to marvel at its first-ever Martian sunset viewing.

NASA has posted the image of the Mars sunset on the Perseverance Twitter account while also detailing the observation on its website. Perseverance snapped the image of the Martian sunset using its Mastcam-Z camera system on November 9, 2021, and according to the blog post, Mars sunsets are usually blue due to the fine dust throughout the atmosphere allowing blue light to penetrate it more effectively than other wavelengths of light.

However, the sunset seen above is different, and NASA explains, "less dust in the atmosphere resulted in a more muted color than average. The color has been calibrated and white-balanced to remove camera artifacts." Perseverance will continue its search for signs of microbial life on the Red Planet, and throughout its journey, it will collect rock samples that will eventually be transported back to Earth for researchers to analyze. If you are interested in reading more about this story, check out this link here.

The LightSail 2, a small CubeSat fitted with a solar sail spanning 32 square meters (433 square feet), is still sailing through Earth's orbit two and a half years after launch.

LightSail 2 is a crowdfunded project which amassed $7 million and is run by The Planetary Society, a U.S.-based space education and outreach non-profit organization. Much like sails on a boat catch the wind to move them forward, the solar sails are used to catch photons from the sun in space to propel the LightSail 2 forward and demonstrate their viability for space travel.

Since LightSail 2's journey began in June 2019, NASA has implemented solar sails into the designs of its upcoming NEA Scout, Solar Cruiser, and ASC3 missions. Orbiting at an altitude of 687 kilometers (426 miles) above the Earth, friction in the atmosphere is working against the craft to slow it down. Generally, the propulsion provided by the sails allows it to overcome this. However, the spacecraft is currently descending through the atmosphere as the sails don't always generate enough thrust to maintain the same altitude.

NASA and the U.S. Department of Energy's Idaho National Laboratory (IDL) are collaborating to create a power source on the moon that doesn't rely on the Sun.

The duo have issued a request for proposals regarding a nuclear fission power plant, something Rolls Royce is also working on in collaboration with the UK Space Agency.

With a successful implementation on the moon's surface, aiming to support a sustained human presence, the next goal would be to do the same on Mars.

Northrop Grumman's unmanned Cygnus spacecraft arrived at the International Space Station on August 12th, 2021, and after more than three months, it is scheduled for departure on November 20th, 2021.

Upon arrival, it delivered nearly 8,000 pounds of supplies, research, hardware, commercial products, and an assortment of other cargo to the station. The mission was Northrop Grumman's 16th commercial resupply for NASA.

Cygnus' departure is scheduled for 10:45 a.m. EST (15:45 UTC), and a livestream of the event will be available on NASA television, NASA's website, and the NASA app.

In 2020, SpaceX set its record for the most Falcon 9 flights in a calendar year at 26. In the first half of 2021, SpaceX was on track to outpace this record significantly with 20 Falcon 9 launches, averaging a launch every nine days.

However, the launch rate has slowed to only five launches so far in the second half of 2021, as SpaceX focuses on its new generation of Starlink satellites. As their production finalizes at the SpaceX factory in Redmond, Washington, the Falcon 9 launch schedule has picked up to accommodate at least five missions before the year's end.

The first of these, scheduled for November 24th in California, will tie the company's record, and the subsequent launch planned for December 1st will break it. Another three launches have confirmed December dates, with additional launches for Starlink possible at some point.

A new study has been published where for the first time, water has been turned into a new phase of matter referred to as superionic ice or superionic water, long enough to be studied.

Also known as ice XVIII, superionic ice is one of the nineteen known crystalline phases of ice. By compacting a water droplet between two diamonds and hitting it with a powerful laser, scientists subjected the droplet to such extreme temperatures and pressures. The water molecules then break apart, allowing the oxygen ions to crystallize and form an evenly spaced lattice through which the hydrogen ions may then float freely. As a result, superionic ice can conduct electricity, with hydrogen ions and electrons migrating towards anodes and cathodes, respectively.

Using a 0.2-carat diamond anvil, researchers pressurized the water droplet to 3.5 million times Earth's atmospheric pressure, and the laser raised its temperature beyond that of the surface of the sun. Using a synchrotron, an electron-accelerating device that generates X-rays, the study team could determine the structure of the superionic ice over its lifespan based on the scattering of the X-rays.

After years of waiting due to technical and funding issues, NASA's James Webb Space Telescope is scheduled for launch on December 18th, 2021, aboard Ariane flight VA256.

Set to survey worlds in our solar system and the greater universe, the James Webb Space Telescope will succeed NASA's esteemed Hubble Space Telescope. It is destined for the Lagrange point, a gravitationally stable area roughly a million miles (1.6 million kilometers) from Earth. After a month-long journey to arrive, the observatory will require another six months before it becomes fully operational. Onboard systems must find all instruments in working order, especially the giant folded mirror that must unfold and arrange itself.

All eighteen mirror segments will unfold into a final design that must align with precision within one five-thousandth the diameter of a human hair, which algorithms running on the observatory's systems must manage, expected to consume several months as the process is carefully undertaken.

Following the events of Russia testing an anti-satellite weapon on one of its satellites, and causing a swath of space debris that resulted in the ISS crew scrambling, a branch of the U.S. Armed Forces has committed $1.5 million towards cleaning up space.

A report from Wired states that the U.S. Space Force is prepared to give out contracts to companies that are devising methods of removing space debris or space junk. The U.S. Department of Defense's Space Surveillance Network (SSN) is currently tracking more than 22,000 pieces of space debris in Earth's orbit, and as humans continue to expand off-planet with continued launches, that number is expected only to increase exponentially. That is without taking into consideration the possibility of Kessler syndrome.

The U.S. State Department has called "upon all responsible spacefaring nations to join us in efforts to develop norms of responsible behavior." Additionally, the U.S. Space Force's arm, SpaceWERX, will award $250,000 contracts to companies that are presenting ideas to develop technologies that will assist in the removal of space debris in a cost-effective manner. These awards are a part of the Orbital Prime program, the first phase being the $250,000 contract award and the second phase award being a $1.5 million contract to the most promising ideas.

We caught wind that Elon Musk is scheduled to give an interview at the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, and during it, the SpaceX CEO gave an update on Starship.

Starship is SpaceX's next-generation launch vehicle that is designed to be able to launch a large amount of mass anywhere in the solar system while also taking into account key features such as re-usability, rapid use. Musk gives a brief overview of all of Starships features and goes on to mention that SpaceX is currently preparing for the rocket's first orbital test.

Musk says that the upcoming orbital test has significant risks, saying, "There's a lot of risk associated with this first launch. So, I would not say that it is likely to be successful, but we'll make a lot of progress." However, the SpaceX CEO says that in theory, the designs should work, all of the calculations have been done, and they have "closed" for having a "fully reusable hundred ton to low Earth orbit capability". Musk says that SpaceX is hoping to conduct the first orbital flight for Starship in January, which coincides with the completion of the FAA environmental assessment of the Starbase launch site. He also mentions, "It's the biggest rocket ever, ever designed."

Forecasters are predicting that a storm may provide early Thanksgiving travels some problems as it rolls inland across several U.S. states.

AccuWeather meteorologists predict that an arctic blast is moving its way into the northern plains and will move across Minneapolis, Chicago, and Kansas City as it continues through the Midwest. Experts believe that the storm will eventually move eastward over the weekend and develop into a winter storm. Cities from Washington, D.C., to New York City may experience rainfall that is expected to cause travel delays on Monday, as well as high winds that may cause airline travel delays.

Reports indicate that the biggest concern of this storm is the winds causing massive travel delays for Thanksgiving travelers, as many people will be hitting the road or the airport at the start of the week. On Monday, 35-50 mph wind speeds are expected in Minneapolis, Chicago, Milwaukee, Detroit, and Cincinnati. Wind gusts of up to 70 mph are expected on the shores of the southern and eastern Great Lakes. If you are interested in more information about the storm, check out this link this link below.

Newly released court documents between NASA, Blue Origin and SpaceX have revealed some stark details about how the court viewed Blue Origin's lawsuit.

The documents come from the US Court of Federal Claims and details the government body's decision to deny Blue Origin's lawsuit against NASA over Blue Origin losing the competition set out by NASA for a $2.9 Human Landing Systems contract. The competition involved companies presenting NASA with a design, to which NASA chose SpaceX over Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin. This sparked time consuming litigation and halted all construction of lunar lander, which caused a delay to be announced for the entire timeline of humans getting back onto the Moon.

Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin argued that NASA didn't give Blue Origin a fair chance because NASA waived some of the required safety reviews before each Starship is launched. SpaceX's proposal includes more than a dozen launches, which includes launching a propellant docking port, while Blue Origin's requires just three launches. Blue Origin's argument was that it would have designed an alternative lander if they were giving the same flexibility. This was then rebutted by Blue Origin being required to prove it would have had a chance of winning the contract if NASA offered them the same safety waivers.

It seems that Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP), or more commonly referred to as UFOs, are bringing the two US government parties together in an agreement.

Congress is moving towards creating a specific program that focuses on studying UFOs. According to the proposal, the program will create a "UFO Office", or "Anomaly Surveillance and Resolution Office". The proposal reads that the program would be designed to "gain as much knowledge as possible" into UFOs and develop technology capable of studying them.

The program isn't assuming that the UFOs seen by US military personnel are of extraterrestrial origin, or if they are from another country with unknown advanced technology, but they aren't ruling out either. New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, who is leading the push on this program, told Politico, "If it is technology possessed by adversaries or any other entity, we need to know. Burying our heads in the sand is neither a strategy nor an acceptable approach."

NASA's Perseverance rover has captured the most detailed look of the helicopter named Ingenuity flying across the surface of Mars.

The footage has been posted on the NASA JPL Raw YouTube channel and showcases Ingenuity taking its 13th flight on September 4. This flight for Ingenuity is certainly one of its hardest yet as the scout helicopter was scheduled to take images of a region of land from multiple angles, which would then be relayed back to the research team that decides what location is of most value to move Perseverance to. Ingenuity snapped these images from a height of 26 feet.

As for the flight video, Perseverance's two-camera Mastcam-Z captured the footage, which was a part of research into measuring the amount of dust clouds created by Ingenuity taking off and landing. Justin Maki, the deputy principal investigator for the Mastcam-Z instrument at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said, "The value of Mastcam-Z really shines through with these video clips. Even at 300 meters [328 yards] away, we get a magnificent closeup of takeoff and landing through Mastcam-Z's 'right eye." And while the helicopter is little more than a speck in the wide view taken through the 'left eye," it gives viewers a good feel for the size of the environment that Ingenuity is exploring."