Science, Space, & Robotics - Page 175

The recently appointed NASA administrator is moving to establish study groups for UFO sightings and evidence.

NASA chief Bill Nelson has said that not even the higher-ups of the US space agency have any idea what the flying objects are that have been seen by US Navy pilots. Many people believe the high-speed objects seen by US Navy pilots are evidence of extraterrestrial life, and Nelson has said that "We don't know if it's extraterrestrial. We don't know if it's an enemy. We don't know if it's an optical phenomenon."

However, Nelson did say that he isn't ruling out the possibility of the objects seen in the videos being linked to extraterrestrial life. "We don't think [it's an optical phenomenon] because of the characteristics that those Navy jet pilots described". Ultimately, no one officially knows what the Navy pilots have been seeing, but Nelson may establish study groups in the future to get to the bottom of the mystery. "so the bottom line is, we want to know", said Nelson.

Jeff Bezos has announced he will be rocketing up to space on July 20... just 15 days after he resigns as the CEO of Amazon. Jeff will be joined by his brother Mark Bezos, who will be rocketing up to space with him.

In a post on Instagram, Bezos beamed: "Ever since I was five years old, I've dreamed of traveling to space. On July 20th, I will take that journey with my brother. The greatest adventure, with my best friend".

The Pentagon has been inspired by SpaceX to use reusable rockets similar to the Falcon 9 and Starship to deliver military cargo all around the world.

The Pentagon is putting $50 million aside for a new program led by the US Space Force called Rocket Cargo. The new program will focus on researching and developing capabilities such as landing "a rocket on a wide range of non-traditional materials and surfaces," building "a rocket cargo bay and logistics for rapid loading and unloading" and air-dropping "cargo from the rocket after re-entry in order to service locations where a rocket or aircraft cannot possibly land."

From looking at what the Pentagon is describing in the new Rocket Cargo program, it's apparent that the US Air Force is looking to develop rockets similar, or better than SpaceX's Starship. The new military program is looking to develop rockets that can launch 30 - 100 tons of cargo, and are reusable. Currently, the only rocket that can do that is SpaceX's Starship rocket that is still in its late stages of development. For more information on this story, check out this link here.

SpaceX has put their veteran Falcon 9 rocket to the test as it launches yet again from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.

The launch of the Falcon 9 rocket has marked the 17th time SpaceX has launched in 2021 and the 87th overall successful recovery of an orbital class rocket. The Falcon 9 rocket blasted off at 12:26 a.m. EDT (0426 GMT) and was carrying a massive radio satellite into orbit for Sirius XM before it turned around headed back to Earth for landing.

The launch of the recent mission also marked the third SpaceX launch in just three days. The day prior, a different Falcon 9 rocket took off from Pad 39A with 7,300lbs of scientific cargo and supplies. The rocket headed towards the International Space Station, and the cargo arrived successfully last Saturday morning. For more information on this story, check out this link here.

The first human genome was sequenced 20 years ago, and now researchers have announced they have finally filled in all of the missing parts.



The first human genome sequencing draft was announced by researchers from the Human Genome Project and Celera Genomics in 2000. Now, researchers have published a pre-print study that claims the remaining 8% of the human genome that was a mystery has been filled in using new technology.

Karen Miga, a researcher at the University of California, Santa Cruz, said, "You're just trying to dig into this final unknown of the human genome. It's just never been done before and the reason it hasn't been done before is because it's hard." The study has been published in pre-print form, which means that it has yet to be peer reviewed, and for this reason Miga has said that she won't declare that 100% of the human genome has been sequenced until the results are published in an official medical journal.

An unclassified report from the Pentagon and the US director for national intelligence is expected to bust open the mysterious link between Navy sighting of UFO's and aliens.

While the report is highly anticipated, it may be underwhelming when it finally is released because many people are anticipating intelligence bodies to confirm the sighting are aliens. Unfortunately, that isn't the goal of the report, as US intelligence agencies, including the Pentagon, have said that the goal of the report is to establish if there is a link between the sightings and other countries.

According to two officials who have been briefed on the report and decided to speak on the condition of anonymity, the coming report won't disclose or confirm aliens in any way. The officials said that the report found no link between extraterrestrial existence and the sightings and videos that are being used as "evidence".

If you want to tune into the first solar eclipse of 2021, you will have a 100-minute window this coming Thursday.

The first solar eclipse of 2021 will happen on June 10, and it will be the first time this year that the Sun will be entirely blocked out by the moon. For those that don't know, a solar eclipse occurs when the moon passes between the Sun and Earth. The "Ring of Fire" phenomenon occurs when the moon lines up perfectly between the Sun and Earth, causing the Sun's light to bleed around the edges of the moon - creating the Ring of Fire.

Unfortunately, due to the position of Earth in its orbit around the Sun and the orbit of the moon, not everyone will be able to see the total solar eclipse. Canada, northern Russia, and Greenland will be able to see a total solar eclipse. Most of the northern hemisphere will be able to catch a partial solar eclipse. The eclipse will last for a total of 100 minutes. If you are interested in reading more about this story, check out this link here.

The head of NASA has said that researchers are now investigating the recent slew of UFO sightings from US Navy pilots.

Reports of UFOs being spotted by US Navy pilots can be traced back to 2017 when The New York Times reported that many Navy pilots have said they've seen unidentified flying objects in the sky performing aerial maneuvers that far exceed anything that humans are currently capable of.

In December 2020, Senator Marco Rubio, who was the Senate's intelligence committee chair, requested the Pentagon and the US director for national intelligence to deliver an unclassified report to Congress regarding current knowledge on UFO's by the end of the month.

If you thought the highly-anticipated government report on UFOs was going to have aliens landing on the White House lawn and having ice cream with President Biden... think again.

The New York Times and CNN are reporting that the Pentagon UFO report did not find any evidence that the UAPs (unidentified aerial phenomena, the new term for unidentified flying objects) were "alien spacecraft". Even though they are not from this world, they're also not made by the US military or any other US government technology.

I don't get how we go from this:

NASA has partnered with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and other organizations to track the coming hurricane season.

Currently, NASA astronauts are able to take photos and observe the planet from an altitude of 250 miles. Researchers on the ground then take these images and observations and georeference them, adding to other research, advancing the accuracy of weather prediction.

According to NASA Earth, June 1 is the very start of the Atlantic hurricane season, and a forecast from NOAA along with information from NASA's Earth-orbiting satellites found that the coming hurricane season will have an "above average number of named storms." NASA states on its blog that it's currently developing new technology and missions to generate a deeper understanding of the impact of these storms and their formation.

A new study has found evidence that suggests Apple's MagSafe wireless technology could be dangerous to some users.

The new study was published in the American Heart Association Journal explored the dangers of magnet wireless charging interacting with someone who has cardiac implantable electronic devices (CIED).

The researchers wrote, "Magnet wireless charging is being utilized increasingly in current-generation smartphones. Apple's MagSafe is a proprietary wireless charging technology with an array of magnets that has the capacity to generate magnet field strength >50 gauss (G). We hypothesize that there is clinically significant magnet interference caused by Apple's MagSafe technology on cardiac implantable electronic devices (CIED)."

There are many aspects of Jupiter that researchers are excited to try and understand, and a key aspect to developing that understanding is with Juno.

NASA launched the space probe Juno on August 11, 2011, as it is a part of the New Frontiers program, a program run by NASA that selects medium-class missions that can provide high-science returns. NASA tasked Juno with orbiting Jupiter, which begun on July 5, 2016. Since then, the space probe has been taking many pictures of the gas giant that have been vital to researchers developing a deeper understanding of the planet.

Juno's key missions are to measure Jupiter's composition, gravitational field, magnetic field, and polar magnetosphere. Additionally, researchers are interested to know more about how Jupiter formed, if it has a solid core or is completely comprised of gas, how much water is present, and its high-speed winds. In the entirety of this article, you will find some of the best images that Juno has snapped of Jupiter. Check out more of Juno here.

NASA's Perseverance has been living for 100 days on Mars, and NASA is celebrating with a Twitter post that commemorates the new rover.

Perseverance touched down in the ancient lake bed called the Jezero crater on February 18, and since then, it has been sending back incredible information about the Martian landscape. Perseverance is on a hunt for remains of past life, and researchers believe that if Mars ever hosted any life, fossils of their remains would be in the crater.

The new Martian rover is making good progress uncovering the mysteries of the Red Planet, and since it touched down, it has sent back more than 75,000 images. Other achievements from the rover include; recording the first sounds from Mars, transporting the Ingenuity helicopter, which later became the first aircraft humans have ever launched on another world and blasting rocks with lasers. For more information on Perseverance, check out this link here.

NASA is taking some unusual astronauts up to the International Space Station this week, and they aren't human.

NASA's next cargo mission to the International Space Station (ISS) will include more than 5,000 tardigrades, which are microscopic creatures that are commonly referred to as "water bears". Tardigrades are almost indestructible, so researchers are seeing what happens when they are living in zero gravity.

Thomas Boothby, an assistant professor of molecular biology at the University of Wyoming, who is leading the experiment, said, "Some of the things that tardigrades can survive include being dried out, being frozen, and being heated up past the boiling point of water." Adding, "They've been shown to survive and reproduce during spaceflight, and can even survive prolonged exposure to the vacuum of outer space."

NASA has delayed the launch of its highly anticipated replacement for the Hubble Space Telescope, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST).

The James Webb Space Telescope is no stranger to delays, as the initial launch was planned for around 2007. Now that the construction for the new space telescope is almost complete, NASA and the main contractor on the project, Northrop Gunman, are performing extensive testing on it before it's packed up and shipped to the spaceport in French Guyana.

There are many factors that could cause the launch of the JWST to be delayed further. One factor being the Ariane 5 rocket that will take the space telescope off-planet has been grounded since last August due to a problem with the rocket's payload firing. Arianespace has since said that this problem has been resolved with a redesign and that tests for the new rocket are penciled in for July and August.

SpaceX is constructing a brand new spaceport, and this time the spaceport will be out in the middle of the ocean.

The news comes from SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, who took to his Twitter to announce that construction has begun on the new ocean spaceport, and that rocket launches could begin in 2022. In 2020 SpaceX purchased two oil rigs that would be converted into off-shore launch platforms for future missions to the Moon and Mars. The private space company named the oil rigs Phobos and Deimos, which are Mars' two moons.

Deimos is currently under construction at the Port of Brownsville in Texas. Phobos was recently moved to Pascagoula, Mississippi, from the Port of Galveston as it needs to be altered to accommodate Starship, which is currently in development. If both off-shore launch sites are completed by the end of next year, we could see many more of these types of launch sites constructed all around the globe for SpaceX's rockets. For more information on this story, check out this link here.

In celebration of the 31st year since the launch of the Hubble Space Telescope, NASA has released an image of a spiral galaxy that's 300 million light-years away.

NASA explains that the spiral galaxy we are looking at is called AM 0644-741, and from the image, you can see a bright blue ring of star clusters circling around a yellowish nucleus which was once another spiral galaxy. NASA explains in its blog post that the blue ring of star clusters is 150,000 light-years in diameter, "making it larger than our entire home galaxy, the Milky Way".

So, what's with all the blue? According to NASA, the ring is blue because of rampant star formation, as stars that are forming are blue in color. Since the majority of the ring is blue, NASA says that this is a good indicator that many stars are forming in this galaxy. If you are interested in reading any more about spiral galaxies or would like to see another awesome image from Hubble, check out this link here.

NASA has announced that a large asteroid is approaching Earth, and it could be as big, if not bigger, than the Eiffel Tower.

The asteroid has been dubbed 2021 KT1, and according to NASA, it will make a "close approach" with Earth on June 1 at about 10:24 am EDT. 2021 KT1 will whiz past Earth at 40,000 miles per hour, or around 20 times the speed of a bullet shot out of a rifle. Additionally, NASA says that the asteroid could be anywhere between 491 feet and 1079 feet in diameter. For reference, the Eiffel Tower is 1062 feet in height.

If you are wondering if the asteroid warrants any concern, NASA's Center for Near-Earth object Studies has said that "No one should be overly concerned about an Earth impact of an asteroid or comet. The threat to any one person from auto accidents, disease, other natural disasters and a variety of other problems is much higher than the threat from NEOs (near-Earth-objects)." For more information on this story, check out the NASA report here.

Space junk is becoming a large problem as many companies continue to launch rockets and satellites into the atmosphere.

The problem of space junk, or space debris, was brought up by Donald Kessler, a retired NASA senior scientist for orbital debris research, who said that the current state of space junk has reached a "tipping point". Now, a new report has come out about the International Space Station (ISS) experiencing a collision with space junk that has now caused a hole.

Operators noticed a hole in the ISS's Canadarm2 on May 12. The robotic arm has been in service since 2001, and according to Canadian Space Agency (CSA), who provided the ISS with the robotic arm, the hole isn't going to impact the Canadarm2's responsibilities in maintaining the ISS. The CSA has said that the hole is a "lucky strike" considering that the robotic arm has a diameter of just 14 inches.

Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has poked some fun at Jeff Bezos' space exploration company Blue Origin.

For those that aren't caught up with the story, NASA awarded Musk's SpaceX with a $3 billion contract to construct a lunar lander for NASA's Artemis program. Bezos' Blue Origin has contested the decision by NASA by submitting a protest to the U.S Government Accountability Office (GAO) that requests NASA to select a second company to build a lunar lander.

NASA has revealed its reasoning for selecting SpaceX for the award, stating, "SpaceX's Total Evaluated Price of $2,941,394,557 was the lowest among the offerors by a wide margin. Blue Origin's Total Evaluated Price was significantly higher than this, followed by Dynetics' Total Evaluated Price, which was significantly higher than Blue Origin's."