Science, Space, & Robotics - Page 140

A famous comet recently made its closest approach with Earth and won't make another approach for the next 200 years.

Comet 67P became famous after a European mission called Rosetta started orbiting the comet after journeying towards it for 10 years. The Rosetta spacecraft orbited the comet very closely for 2.5 years, taking measurements and capturing valuable information. Additionally, the Rosetta mission featured a small probe landing on the surface of the comet. The small probe Philae landed on the comet in December 2014, marking the first time a human-made probe has landed on a comet.

As for its close approach to Earth, Comet 67P came within 39 million miles from Earth at 7:50 pm EST, Friday, November 12. The comet was visible for amateur astronomers with telescopes, but unfortunately, due to its orbit, the comet won't be coming back to our planet for the next 200 years. EarthSky reports that the celestial ice ball won't approach Earth again until 2214. If you are interested in reading more about this story, check out this link here.

There are very few children like Alena Wicker, who has been accepted into college at the age of 12 and is aiming to be working at NASA by 16.

12-year-old Alena Wicker has been accepted to Arizona State University (ASU), and according to an interview with Phoenix TV station KPNX, Wicker has always dreamed of becoming an engineer, "I always dreamed of being an engineer because, throughout my life, I liked building." Wicker had a talent for numbers, science, and building at a young age, and according to her mother, Daphne McQuarter, "At 4 years old she said, 'I'm going to work at NASA and I'm going to go up there.' She would point to the stars."

Wicker will soon be attending Arizona State University and be double majoring in planetary science and chemistry. As Wicker makes her way through her courses, she will attempt to begin working at NASA as soon as she can. While she may not get accepted into NASA at the age of 16, as that is quite young, she certainly will be on the agency's radar when she becomes a little bit older. Wicker will definitely be going places.

A NASA spacecraft snapped some images of the dark side of Pluto while it was making an approach with the dwarf planet back in 2015.

NASA's New Horizons spacecraft turned around to take some images of Pluto's dark side while it was passing by the dwarf planet in 2015, and after some post-processing, the images revealed some interesting information about the side of Pluto that wasn't illuminated by the Sun. Tod Lauer, a member of the New Horizons team, said, "When you look back at Pluto's dark side, you turn around and look almost right at the Sun, and it's pretty damn bright".

Lauer continued and said, "It's like driving in a car with a dirty window, looking into the Sun without a sun visor, trying to read a street sign." Pluto's main moon named Charon, is much smaller than our moon and resides much closer to the planet. For these reasons, the moon provides faint illumination to the surface of Pluto that is facing away from the Sun. After cleaning up the image by removing parts of it that were overexposed, the researchers found that the south pole of the dwarf planet was less bright than the north pole - something that wasn't expected at all.

Billionaire Jeff Bezos has given a prediction for the future of human civilization. He says humans will eventually be born in space.

During the Ignatius Forum in Washington DC, Amazon and Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos said that humans will eventually be born in space and visit Earth as tourists. According to Bezos, humans will build colonies in space, and these colonies will give birth to humans who have never been on Earth before. "Over centuries, many people will be born in space. It will be their first home," said Bezos.

Additionally, Bezos says that people will live within these space colonies and visit Earth the same way people go and visit countries or locations such as Yellowstone National Park or Disneyland. Here's what Bezos said, "They will be born on these colonies, live on these colonies, then they'll visit Earth the way you would visit, you know, Yellowstone National Park." If you are interested in reading more about this story, check out this link here.

The four astronauts aboard the SpaceX Endurance have successfully arrived at the International Space Station.

Crew Dragon Endurance launched from pad 39A at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Wednesday, November 10, and after 22 hours after launch, linked up with the Harmony module on the International Space Station at 6:32 p.m. EST. The entire event was live-streamed by NASA and SpaceX, and NASA's Courtney Beasley can be heard confirming Endurance attaching itself to the ISS module for docking.

"Capture confirmed. Contact confirmed at 3:32 p.m. Pacific Time as the International Space Station and Endurance were flying above the Caribbean," said Beasley. NASA astronauts Raja Chari, Tom Marshburn and Kayla Barron, and European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut Matthias Maurer were onboard Endurance and are happy and healthy. If you are interested in reading more about the Crew-3 launch, check out this link here.

A new image has been posted to NASA's blogs, and this time it's of a space snowman spotted by the Hubble Space Telescope.

NASA explains in the blog post that the Hubble Space Telescope was used to observe the emission nebula named "Snowman Nebula" that's located in the constellation Puppis about 6,000 light-years away from Earth. The Snowman Nebula, like other emission nebulae, are large clouds of gas that a neighboring star has charged up.

The radiation from the star begins a process called ionization, which is when the gases' electrons are stripped from the hydrogen atoms, resulting in the cloud emitting a light, causing the "glow" to occur. NASA explains the Hubble Space Telescope has captured "the details of sweeping curves of bright gas and dark knots of dust in a small section of the nebula." If you are interested in reading more about the Snowman Nebula, check out this link here.

Subway's tuna is being attacked for its authenticity by people behind a lawsuit that claims the company's tuna isn't actually just tuna but a mixture of other things labeled as tuna.

A lawsuit was filed against Subway that characterized its tuna as a "mixture of various concoctions that do not constitute tuna, yet have been blended together by defendants to imitate the appearance of tuna." This lawsuit sparked heavy criticism from Subway as the company rejected all the claims. Now a new suit has surfaced that leans on DNA testing of Subway tuna samples acquired from multiple locations. However, the results from the testing yielded lacking evidence, according to the court.

Barber Lab at UCLA's Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology tested the samples, and of the 20 samples tested, only one contained tuna DNA and all 20 contained chicken DNA. Additionally, 11 samples contained pork, and seven more had beef. The Washington Post reports that customers with strict dietary requirements for health or religious reasons would have consumed the tuna without knowing its contents. However, the results from the test have been rejected by Subway, with a Subway spokesperson reinforcing its stance on having "high-quality, wild-caught, 100 percent tuna."

A soil researcher has written in The Conversation that the Moon contains enough oxygen for eight billion people to survive for around 100,000 years.

However, this oxygen isn't located in the atmosphere of the Moon because it doesn't have one. It's actually located in the soil. According to John Grant, a soil researcher for Southern Cross University, the top layer of the soil on the Moon referred to as "regolith" contains the oxygen, and through "a pretty straightforward process" called electrolysis, engineers will be able to separate the oxygen from the other soil components such as silicon, aluminum, and magnesium. This process is regularly used by manufacturers here on Earth to make aluminum, writes Grant.

About 45% of the lunar soil consists of oxygen, which means if humans can devise a way to harvest oxygen from the soil, a sustainable lunar base is monumentally more feasible. Grant notes in the article that Space Applications Services, a Belgian startup, has already announced plans to construct three reactors that will be sent to the Moon to test the process of harvesting oxygen from the soil. If you are interested in reading more about this exciting technology, check out this link here.

NASA, the European Space Agency (ESA), and the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) are inching closer to getting the extremely delicate James Webb Space Telescope on the launch pad.

In a new blog post on the NASA website, it's announced that one of Webb's core instruments has been checked by engineers and is ready for use. According to Pierre Ferruit, the scientific lead on Webb's Near-Infrared Spectrograph (NIRSpec) instrument, this instrument is an example of an international effort between space agencies as the instrument is built by European industrial companies with components from NASA, much like Webb itself.

So, what will this instrument do? Ferruit explains that NIRSpec will allow researchers to examine and analyze the properties seen in images of distant galaxies. The instrument will do this by splitting the infrared light into different shades that is called a spectra. Ferruit says, "Analysis of these spectra will tell us how distant these galaxies are, what type of stars they contain, what is the relative abundance of life-giving elements such as oxygen and carbon in their interstellar gas, and much more."

Researchers may have found the origins for the mysterious quasi-satellite that orbits Earth called Kamo'oalewa.

A new study published in Nature details a team of researchers using the Large Binocular Telescope and the Lowell Discovery Telescope to observe the object Kamo'oalewa. The researchers observed the object in several wavelengths and what they found was that the object's colors didn't match up to what a regular asteroid would display. This surprised the researchers as it was assumed that the object was an asteroid trapped inside Earth's gravitational pull.

Benjamin Sharkey from the University of Arizona, and lead author on the study, said, "It doesn't look like what we would have expected if it was just a 'regular' asteroid. We looked at almost 2000 spectra of other near-Earth asteroids, and none of them matched." After comparing the colors to several different types of asteroids, the researchers then compared the results to samples of moon rock that were brought back from the Apollo missions.

Hundreds of people have spotted a fireball streaking across the night sky over several US states, and it wasn't the SpaceX Crew Dragon.

The American Meteor Society (AMS) has recorded the event as 2021-7540 and states that it received more than 400 reports from 13 states of the object erupting into flames before disappearing. The event was seen mostly over North Carolina, but it was also spotted in Washington DC, Delaware, Georgia, Maryland, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, and West Virginia.

According to the report, the fireball became visible to onlookers at around 48 miles and moved northwest at a ridiculous speed of 33,000 miles per hour. The AMS reports that the fireball only lasted 3.5 seconds in Earth's atmosphere before it disintegrated, disappearing in front of onlookers. Additionally, the AMS writes that at its peak, the fireball was so bright it was equivalent to the moon, which suggests it may have weighed around 45 pounds and was around 10 inches in diameter.

Researchers have penned a new study that reveals the discovery of a rare mineral that forms under extremely high pressure and high temperature in Earth's mantle.

The mineral that was found is called davemaoite, after the geophysicist Ho-kwang (Dave) Mao, and forms in the solid layer of Earth that is between the crust and the core. Researchers have suspected that there would be quite a lot of davemaoite but have never found any due to the mineral breaking down into other minerals as it moves closer to the surface. However, researchers examined a diamond from Botswana that is estimated to have formed 410 miles below the surface revealed some davemaoite trapped inside.

Oliver Tschauner, a mineralogist at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and lead author on the study, said to LiveScience, "The discovery of davemaoite came as a surprise". Tschauner explains that the discovery of davemaoite within the diamond suggests that diamonds can form much deeper in Earth's mantle than previously thought and that looking at this depth for more minerals of the mantle may be a viable option for further research.

A new team of astronauts is heading to the International Space Station, and the launch has marked a milestone in human spaceflight history.

According to a new blog post by NASA, SpaceX Crew-3 has successfully launched and is currently in orbit - about to arrive at the International Space Station at the time of writing this. NASA astronauts Raja Chari, Tom Marshburn, and Kayla Barron, and European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut Matthias Maurer launched on the back of SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket, which propelled the Crew Dragon Endurance spacecraft towards the floating laboratory. The astronauts will stay aboard the ISS for six months, as per the crew that just left - more on that here.

NASA administrator Bill Nelson commented on the launch, saying, "With Raja, Thomas, Kayla and Mattias on their way to the International Space Station just days after Crew-2's return, we're seeing the power of American ingenuity right before our eyes. NASA's partnership with SpaceX is not only critical for cutting-edge research but also for international collaboration. The space station brings together nations around the world for the benefit of all. Godspeed, Crew-3 - I can't wait to see all that you accomplish."

Astronomers have an extremely valuable opportunity to learn about the relationship between the formation of planets and moons.

Researchers used the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) to observe a planetary system that features a Jupiter-like exoplanet. The star at the center is called PDS 70, and a large amount of material surrounding it. This material is called a circumstellar disk. Located inside the ring of material is the Jupiter-like exoplanet, and from the data, the researchers know that the planet also has its own disk that is referred to as a circumplanetary disk.

These disks are the formation of celestial objects such as the moon and planets, and now researchers have an opportunity to watch the formation of a potential moon within this system. The researchers suspect that the amount of material that surrounds the star is enough to form three satellites that would be the size of our Moon. If you are interested in learning more about this planetary system, check out the above video that has been released onto the European Space Agency's YouTube channel.

As the human race continues to expand our technological capabilities with space exploration, the amount of space debris is growing exponentially, which will eventually hinder our progress if something isn't done.

An example of space debris becoming a problem is the International Space Station is currently preparing to perform a maneuver out of the way of some space debris that was created after China tested an anti-satellite weapon back in 2007. A Chinese weather satellite that was decommissioned was selected as a target for an experimental anti-satellite missile.

The test was a success as the satellite was completely destroyed, but it caused 3,500 individual pieces of space debris that are being tracked and monitored by officials. In September last year, the ISS had to maneuver again to dodge some space debris, which marked the third time in 2020 the floating laboratory had to do so. The ISS will make its closest approach with the space junk on this coming Friday. For more information on this story, check out this link here.

This month skywatchers will be able to enjoy a partial lunar eclipse that will be the longest of this century, according to CBS.

In a new video posted to the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory YouTube channel, the agency confirms that the partial lunar eclipse will take place overnight on November 18 and 19. The moon will slip into Earth's shadow for 3 hours and 28 minutes, and according to NASA, a large portion of the planet will be able to see it. Regions such as North and South America, Eastern Asia, Australia, and the Pacific region will be able to see the eclipse.

While partial solar eclipses may not be as spectacular as total solar eclipses, where the entire moon is engulfed in Earth's shadow, they occur more frequently, and according to NASA, "that just means more opportunities to witness little changes in our solar system that sometimes occur right before our eyes." Be sure to check your respective location and timezone for the best opportunity to see the partial lunar eclipse, and if you aren't able to see it yourself, you can always watch NASA's livestream that will cover almost 97% of the full moon's surface.

Astronomers have managed to detect using telescopes the first evidence of a black hole outside of our Milky Way galaxy.

The study will be published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society and details a team of astronomers using the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope (VLT) to observe the Large Magellanic Cloud about 160,000 light-years away from Earth. The researchers were looking for any stars showing signs of gravitational anomaly that may mean a black hole is nearby, and they found one, a star five times the mass of the Sun.

The star was showing blips in its motion, and after performing further analysis, the researchers discovered it was a black hole with around 11 times the mass of the Sun. The black hole was located in NGC 1850 and is estimated to be only 100 million years old, which is extremely young when considering some of the ages of other celestial objects in the universe.

Onlookers located on the banks of a reservoir were confused and intrigued at the sight of what appeared to be at the time a dead "prehistoric" sea creature.

The creature washed up on the banks of MacRitchie Reservoir in Singapore and was spotted by Scottish ex-pat Karen Lythgoe who decided to go and get a closer look. Lythgoe explained to the Independent that at first she should it was a crocodile, but upon closer inspection, she believed it was "something you might see in a zoo - it looked prehistoric with its big jaws and teeth". Imran Kassim, an individual from the local area, said, "it flat out looked like an alligator", but it "It was pretty damn strange, but it looked enough like a lizard with its jaws wide open."

The local city's water agency and the National Parks Board declared that the mysterious creature was an alligator gar native to the southern United States. The creature somehow managed to get 10,000 miles away from its native land, and according to The Strait Times, this specific species is known for being released by owners who can't manage it once it's grown to its maximum size of around eight feet. The law in Singapore fines any individual up to $50,000 for being caught releasing animals in parks and nature reserves.

NASA has taken to its YouTube channel to answer another popular question as part of its "We Asked a NASA Expert" series.

This week a NASA expert has answered the question "Is NASA aware of any Earth-threatening asteroids?", and taking center stage is NASA asteroid expert Davide Farnocchia who explains that NASA isn't aware of any Earth-threatening asteroids, but the agency is always searching. Farnocchia explains that for more than 20 years, NASA has funded programs that construct telescopes such as telescopes to observe the sky. Farnocchia adds that over the years, the observations have increased, and now the agency is watching the sky almost every single night.

Continuing on, the NASA asteroid expert explains that through these constant observations, the agency has been able to locate 95% of the asteroids that are greater than 3,280 feet and that could come close to the Earth. Additionally, more than a million asteroids have been discovered. Out of all the asteroids found, the scale that assesses the risk of each asteroid (0 - 10, zero being the lowest, ten being highest) has never categorized an asteroid above 0-level risk. With this information, NASA is able to say that for the next 100 years, there is a very low chance of an asteroid threat.

The head of NASA has told reporters that the date for the Artemis III mission when humans will return back to the Moon has been changed.

NASA administrator Bill Nelson spoke to reports on Tuesday and said that the space agency is pushing back the launch of Artemis III by at least a year. The delay in the launch comes after the Artemis program was smacked by delays that range from the development of technology to legal disputes. After losing to Elon Musk's SpaceX, Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin moved to sue NASA for allegedly changing the terms of the contract throughout the competition to present proposals for designs.

Since the contract was now a legal matter, all development on SpaceX's lander had to be paused until the dispute was over. Nelson commented on the matter between NASA and Blue Origin, saying,"We lost nearly seven months in litigation, and that likely has pushed the first human landing likely to no earlier than 2025".