Science, Space, & Robotics - Page 141

Richard Branson's space company Virgin Galactic has announced its targets for how many tourists it wants to be taking to suborbital space per month.

In July, Virgin Galactic took Richard Branson and three others to suborbital space via the company's VSS Unity spaceplane. At the moment, the VSS Unity is the only spaceplane the company offers, but Virgin Galactic won't be stopping there as the company has plans for testing the VSS Imagine in early 2023. The VSS Unity will be flown once a month starting in 2023, and during the second half of 2023, the VSS Imagine will begin accepting travelers.

Virgin Galactic CEO Michael Colglazier said that in 2023 Virgin Galactic plans on taking tourists to space three times per month. On Monday, the company announced it has already presold 700 tickets, and of those 700 tickets, one-hundred of them were at the new price point of $450,000. Virgin Galactic has delayed the launch of commercial flights until late 2022 as it announced it had to work on VMS Eve. For more information on this story, check out this link here.

Recently four astronauts that lived on the International Space Station (ISS) for six months returned back to Earth safely with SpaceX's Crew Dragon capsule.

The four astronauts, NASA's Shane Kimbrough and Megan McArthur, French astronaut Thomas Pesquet of the European Space Agency, and Akihiko Hoshide from Japan, took off from the ISS and touched back down on Earth on Monday. SpaceX celebrated the safe arrival by posting to its Twitter with the following message, "Splashdown of Dragon confirmed - welcome back to Earth", and "The Crew-2 astronauts and Dragon spent 199 days in orbit, the first U.S. spacecraft to reach that milestone!"

Dragon spent nine hours navigating Earth's upper atmosphere before reaching the thick atmospheric layers. Upon getting lower into the atmosphere, Dragon was spotted by several people in separate locations across the U.S. Residents in New Orleans were happy to see the SpaceX crew and astronauts travel through the sky in a fiery hot blaze as Dragon re-entered the atmosphere. SpaceX CEO Elon Musk even saw a video of Dragon re-entering and said, "Dragon enters like a shooting star".

Some social media users and tourists are taking it upon themselves to inspect the simulated Mars base that is being used for research purposes.

In an op-ed published in Space.com, Dr. Shannon Rupert, the director of the Mars Desert Research Station (MDRS) that she has chased more people off the premises than welcomed them. The MDRS used the Utah desert to create a simulated Mars environment that is used to conduct research that will become valuable information for future astronauts that may live on Mars one day.

The director explains that some people are just tourists and are very polite, while others have resulted in the local police being called and them being removed from the property. Additionally, Dr. Rupert writes that some intruders are using drones to take images of the area to post online, which only attracts more curiosity from the public.

The largest and most technically challenging space telescope to ever be created stands at three stories tall and as wide as a tennis court.

NASA and the European Space Agency, along with the Canadian Space Agency, are gearing up to launch the James Webb Space Telescope after many long years of development with countless expensive setbacks and delays. NASA has debuted a new video series titled "Elements of Webb," which informs viewers why engineers behind the next-generation space telescope chose to use the materials the JWST is constructed of.

Additionally, the video explains that the JWST is "one hundred times more powerful than the Hubble Space Telescope but at half the weight" and is designed to look back further in time than another other space telescope. The JWST is designed to see the first galaxies that formed after the Big Bang, and hopefully, with its discoveries, researchers will be able to gain a deeper understanding of the formation of the universe and the events that took place right after the Big Bang occurred.

NASA's Perseverance rover is back online exploring its surroundings and doing what it does best, take samples of the Martian terrain.

In a new post on NASA's official Twitter for the Perseverance Mars Rover, the rover writes in first-person that it has looked inside "something no one's ever seen". The post continues and explains that a small patch of rock was abraded to remove its surface layer so observations could be made for what was inside. In a separate post, two more images were released that show some layered rocks may have formed by water millions of years ago.

The rover continued and said that these could hold clues about the history of the rocks and, therefore, the geological evolution of the area. Perseverance is tasked with examining viable areas for inspection and finding rocks such as these are essentially gold mines of information for researchers back on Earth that are trying to understand Mars' history. Perseverance is also taking samples that are stored on the rover until they are transported back to Earth.

NASA has published a new image taken by the Hubble Space Telescope, and this time around, we are taking a look at "cosmic ribbons".

The image has been published on the NASA website and showcases DEM L249, that's located in the Large Magellanic Cloud. DEM L249 is the result of the death of a white dwarf star through the massive stellar explosion called a supernova, and the leftover remnants of this explosion are believed to be ribbons of gas.

NASA explains that white dwarf stars are usually stable, but in the event of the white dwarf having a companion star, dubbed a "binary system", the white dwarf's gravitational pull can rip enough matter from its neighboring star that it reaches critical mass and explodes. Astronomers investigated DEM L249 and found that the gas was much hotter than the remnants of a typical Type 1a supernova, which leads the researchers to suspect that the white dwarf star that exploded was much larger the previously anticipated.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC) has observed a solar flare occurring on the Sun.

The update has been published to NOAA's SPWC website and states that a long-duration M2 X-ray solar flare occurred at 1702 UTC (12:02 ET) on 9 November 2021. The update goes on to describe that the event took place on the northwest limb of the Sun, facing away from Earth, and that the flare was associated with a coronal mass ejection (CME) burst.

Additionally, the SPWC writes that the CME that was associated with the flare is currently under analysis, but early indicators suggest that it poses no danger to Earth. The M2 flare is categorized as a "minor" flare, with R1 (Radio Blackout) being the lowest level of classification on the five-level scale - R5 being the most extreme. Officials warn that X-rays from the flare may cause a radio blackout over the Americas - a map can be found below.

The position humanity has been in since its existence will be fundamentally changed forever once a space agency identifies the next Earth.

Every ten years National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine release a report that has analyzed the most compelling science goals and presents a program that will give an idea of how government space agencies, such as NASA, can invest in technologies, space-based activities that would achieve discoveries in the recommended areas.

The report boils down astronomy's conundrums into three key scientific challenges for the next ten years; finding an Earth-like habitable world, understanding black holes, and galaxy evolution. The report recommends that to find an exoplanet that is habitable and Earth-like, NASA needs to build a new telescope that features all of the necessary instruments to detect and inspect exoplanets for atmospheric readings, in hopes of identifying any fingerprints of life. Axios reports that this telescope would cost around $11 billion and would be launched sometime in 2040.

Heinz is looking to the future of human space travel and has asked the question - "will there be Heinz Tomato Ketchup on Mars?". The answer is yes, or at least it is "yes" for the time being.

Heinz has stepped out of the box and thought years down the line when humans are attempting to grow foods on other planets and to test out if it's possible to grow tomatoes in harsh conditions, Heinz partnered with astrobiologists at the Florida Institute of Technology's Aldrin Space Institute to grow tomatoes in the same conditions as Mars. The team used the same premium tomatoes that are found in normal Heinz products but grew them in very harsh conditions. The end result is a product that "Heinz Tomato Ketchup Marz Edition".

While the product itself won't be available to purchase, it has provided quite a lot of scientific value as the project has successfully demonstrated that tomatoes could one day be harvested on Mars, as well as pioneering into a relatively new field of research for Martian botany. Dr. Andrew Palmer, from the Aldrin Space Institute and the lead of the team behind the research, said, "Before now, most efforts around discovering ways to grow in Martian-simulated conditions are short-term plant growth studies."

The Sun has seen a lot more activity than what usually occurs recently as our solar star moves further into the most active part of its 11-year solar cycle.

Researchers are estimating that there will be a variation in the number of sunspots that appear on the surface of the Sun and that the activity will reach its peak sometime in 2025. As a result of the increase in solar activity, the Sun has been emitting flares and CMEs more often, some of which have impacted Earth directly, causing minor to moderate geomagnetic storms that create spectacular auroras in the night sky.

European Space Agency's astronaut Thomas Pesquet tweeted out an image of one of these auroras and said that the team was able to experience "the strongest auroras of the entire mission, over North America and Canada." The aurora that Pesquet witnesses was caused by a series of outbursts from the Sun that happened last week. The outbursts occurred in quick succession, with the second was traveling much faster than the first, resulting in the first being cannibalized and a larger cloud being created.

The Sun will eventually die, and it's unknown if humans will even be around to witness it, or hopefully, if they are around, be able to survive it.

The Sun, much like other stars like it, will eventually burn all of the hydrogen, which will cause the core of the star to begin to cool and contract. This interaction then causes a disruption between the inward pressure from gravity and the outward pressure created by the core fusion. As a result of this imbalance, an excess of hydrogen will enter the shell around the core, igniting it, causing the star's edges to swell massively and its mass to be launched off into directions all around it.

Eventually, the star's core will collapse and convert into a white dwarf, and an example of that process can be seen in the above image. Hubble has taken an image of the nebula named NGC 2438, and what can be seen in the image is the star's ejected material still continues to expand after a cataclysmic explosion.

On Monday, the four astronauts re-entered Earth with the SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule and were successfully retrieved after touching down.

NASA's Shane Kimbrough and Megan McArthur, French astronaut Thomas Pesquet of the European Space Agency, and Akihiko Hoshide from Japan boarded the Crew Dragon capsule that was still docked at the International Space Station (ISS) since their arrival to journey back down to Earth just after 2 pm ET on Monday.

The team of astronauts spent 9 hours navigating through Earth's upper atmospheres before approaching the thicker lower levels of the atmosphere, where the capsule then deployed its thrusters and parachutes to slowly guide the craft to its landing location in the Gulf of Mexico. Before the astronauts entered the capsule for their ride home, they were asked not to use the Crew Dragon toilet due to issues with it. Instead, the astronauts were asked to use the "undergarments" that are provided in the suits, which are essentially, space adult diapers.

A new study from researchers who have investigated rock sediments from east India believes they have found evidence that suggests Earth's first continents rose out of the ocean far earlier than previously thought.

The researchers looked at samples derived from Singhbhum, near the city of Kolkata, and extracted the minerals zircon, which was then blasted by a laser to measure the number of elements released. With these results, the scientists were able to estimate the age of when the first continents rose out of the water, placing the date anywhere between 3.3 to 3.2bn years ago - 700 million years earlier than previously estimated.

Dr. Priyadarshi Chowdhury of Monash University, the study's lead author, said, "We have plate tectonics today to control the elevation. When two continents' [plates] collide, you form Himalayas, you form Alps." However, this wasn't the case when the first landmasses emerged. Researchers hypothesize that 300 to 400 million years of violent volcanic activity of a continual build-up of lava from the seafloor caused the first continents to rise. The lava "becomes so thick and it just floats up above the water ... like an iceberg floating on water".

A new paper that has yet to be peer-reviewed has revealed that gravitational wave detection, first proposed by Albert Einstein, can be detected much more frequently than previously thought.

The paper has appeared on the preprint server arXiv and explains that a team of researchers used the Advanced Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO), which is renowned as the world's largest gravitational wave observatory, along with another gravitational wave instrument called Vigo, located in Italy to detect 35 of these events. Astronomers believe that the collision between two black holes engulfing each other or a black hole and a neutron star colliding is the source of these gravitational waves.

Susan Scott from the Australian National University, an astronomer and co-author of the paper, said, "These discoveries represent a tenfold increase in the number of gravitational waves detected by LIGO and Virgo since they started observing." Adding, "We've detected 35 events. That's massive! In contrast, we made three detections in our first observing run, which lasted four months in 2015-16." The majority of the detected events are believed to be a result of two black holes merging, creating a much larger black hole that's called a "supermassive black hole". There is a supermassive black hole located at the center of our Milky Way called Sagittarius A*.

3.9 billion years ago, the Moon experienced a large number of asteroid impacts, and a new study published in the journal Science Advances explores where these asteroids may have come from.

The planetologists analyzed lunar samples that contain very small metal globules that formed during the asteroid impacts. What the researchers found through looking at the isotopic composition of these samples was that the asteroids that impacted the Moon didn't come from outside of our solar system and were consistent with the bodies that formed Earth and the Moon itself.

Dr. Emily Worsham, a planetologist and the lead author on the study, said, "Our research shows that the bombardment of the moon was by the same bodies that formed the earth and moon." Phys.org explains that the research indicates that the asteroids that impacted the Moon were the same bodies that were a part of Earth's formative years. If you are interested in reading more about how this research ties into the solar system's evolution, check out this link here.

Recently Earth has been dealing with the awakening of our local star, and as a result, our blue planet has been battered with geomagnetic storms.

The Sun goes through what is called a solar cycle that ranges about 11 years, and during this cycle, the star goes through peaks and valleys of solar activity. Magnetic storms on the Sun's surface are called sunspots, and these sunspots can lead to solar flares happening, which are large ejections of radiation into space. Additionally, coronal mass ejections (CME) can also accompany a sunspot or a solar flare, and these CMEs are large expulsions of plasma and magnetic field from the Sun's corona.

When facing Earth, these charged particles ejected from the Sun can cause geomagnetic storms in Earth's upper atmosphere. The impact of the charged particles can result in power grids being affected, GPS communications being lost, and satellites malfunctioning. With all that in mind, officials have said that the Sun is entering its most active part of its cycle as we are seeing a ramp-up of solar activity.

A Spanish politician suggested a solution for the seemingly never-stopping lava rivers that are spewing out of the La Palma volcano. The volcano has been erupting for 42 days.

Casimiro Curbelo, the president of the municipal council of La Gomera, an island that neighbors La Palma, said that the lava rivers could be diverted to new locations through bombing runs made by an airplane. Curbelo made the statement during a debate on the Canary Islands' Radio Faycan where he said, "Isn't there a plane that could fly and drop [a bomb]? It arrives, drops and boom. And it sends the lava in a different direction?" Adding, "Maybe it's madness, but I get the impression from a technological point of view that it should be tried."

This suggestion of using bombs to divert the flow of lava has been made before, and attempts have been made. Back in 1983, a team of engineers placed 900 pounds of explosives near a river of lava that was erupting from Mount Etna. The idea was to create a new trench for the lava to move into and divert its original course away from a nearby village.

The successor to the famous Hubble Space Telescope has reached the spaceport where it will launch from, but before its launch, it's been unboxed.

No one is more terrified for the launch of the James Webb Space Telescope than NASA, the European Space Agency (ESA), and every individual that has worked on the project since its fruition more than 10 years ago. Now, the next-generation space telescope is nearing the end of its development and is going through its last checks before it's packed into an Ariane 5 rocket for its launch scheduled in December 2021.

Before everyone nervously watches the launch of the extremely expensive Hubble successor, the European Space Agency has posted a video that showcases Webb being unboxed in the cleanroom at Europe's Spaceport. The video shows Webb being transported from its ship onboard a truck to the facility, where it's then slowly and meticulously unboxed. Webb will keep the world on edge for 29 harrowing days, and to find out why check out this link here.

Reports indicate that NASA has warned of an asteroid estimated to be around the size of the Eiffel Tower approaching Earth.

The asteroid is dubbed 4660 Nereus and is deemed "potentially hazardous", which means that its orbit brings it within 4,647,790 miles of Earth and has a diameter of more than 460 feet. The space agency predicts that 4660 Nereus will pass within 2.4 million miles on December 11 and has a diameter of 1082.68 feet. However, the agency says that the asteroid doesn't pose a threat of impact to Earth.

Additionally, The Independent reports that the asteroid is predicted to make 12 more close approaches to Earth within the coming decades, with the closest being on February 14, 2060, when it will come 745,645 miles away from Earth. For a visual comparison of how close that is to Earth, the Moon is located around 239,000 miles from Earth. If you are interested in finding out if an asteroid has hit Earth before, check out a NASA expert answering that very question here.

NASA is celebrating Nebula November, and the space agency is revisiting all of the incredible nebulae that have been observed throughout our Milky Way galaxy.

One particular jaw-dropping image captured by NASA and the European Space Agency's Hubble Space Telescope is of the Veil Nebula. NASA Hubble Space Telescope used its Wide Field Camera 3 instrument to observe the Veil Nebula that's located around 2,100 light-years away from Earth within the constellation Cygnus. NASA explains that the Veil Nebula is a result of a star that's estimated to have been 20 times the mass of the Sun exploding in a violent supernova around 10,000 years ago.

NASA writes that the star lived fast and died young, and when its life came to an end, it released a large amount of energy into the space around it. The shockwaves from the explosion and the debris "sculpted the Veil Nebula's delicate tracery of ionized gas - creating a scene of surprising astronomical beauty." Ionized oxygen can be seen in the blue colors, ionized hydrogen and ionized nitrogen can be seen in the reds. If you are interested in reading more about the Veil Nebula, check out this link here.