Science, Space, & Robotics - Page 19

SpaceX has issued a major update for what fans of the space fairing company can expect throughout 2024, and one of those updates is when Starship, the world's largest and most powerful rocket, will take to the skies once again.

The update was hosted by SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, who took to the stage at Starbase for a 45 minute presentation outlining all of what SpaceX is working on and what we can expect out of 2024. If you haven't been keeping up with Starship news, the world's largest rocket conducted its third orbital test flight last month and it was a major success, with the massive rocket successfully reaching orbit.

Now SpaceX is preparing for the fourth test flight and according to Musk the main objectives will be landing the rocket somewhere in the ocean on a virtual tower. Notably, SpaceX plans on "catching" Starship's booster Super Heavy on a tower SpaceX call Mechazilla.

The world's most powerful space telescope, the James Webb Space Telescope, has pointed its extremely sensitive infrared instruments at the heart of a galaxy that's teeming with newly born stars.

NASA's Webb telescope captured the Cigar Galaxy, scientifically known as Messier 87 (M87), to capture the region of space in gorgeous high detail. M87 is located 12 million light years away from Earth within the constellation Ursa Major, and according to NASA this region of space is forming stars 10 times faster than our own galaxy the Milky Way. M87 was captured with Webb's infrared instruments, giving researchers a new look into the heart of the region of space that other telescopes typically can't see due to it being obscured by dust and gas.

Infrared light is able to penetrate the dust and gas, making Webb an incredible telescope to see further in space than ever before. The different colors seen in the above image represent different aspects of the galaxy. For example the dark, reddish-brown colors represent dust, while the green specks indicate the presence of iron leftover from supernovas, or stars that run out of fuel and end their in a violent explosion.

A team of researchers analysed a dataset that contained 98,000 reports collected over 20 years and found that environmental roles play a factor in the number of UFO, or Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP) sightings.

The new study published in the journal Science Reports examined a dataset collected over 20 years by the National UFO Research Center. The goal of the study was to see how environmental variables such as light pollution, cloud cover, airports, and military bases coincide with UFO reports. The findings indicate you are more likely to see a UFO if you live in the western US, a finding that was "completely unexpected," according to the study's lead author.

So, why do the Western states see more UFOs? According to the team behind the study there are a few reasons why, such as the wide-open spaces and year-round weather that leads people to be more outdoors than other states, resulting in more sightings as people are "looking skyward," according to Medina.

The White House has tasked NASA and other agencies to come up with an idea to keep track of time on Earth, but not on Earth.

The White House has officially instructed NASA and other US agencies to work with the appropriate international agencies to develop a preliminary idea by the end of the year that creates a moon-centric time reference system, or a moon clock. Notably, there is less gravity on the moon due to its lower mass, which means time moves slightly differently than here on Earth, precisely 58.7 microseconds quicker every day. Why do we need a moon clock?

Highly sophisticated computer systems rely on timing to make communications possible, and with NASA's push back into space exploration with its Artemis missions and future plans, along with other countries' space agencies, keeping track of the time has become more paramount than before. NASA has already proposed creating an atomic clock for the moon, an extremely precise clock that would create a unified time for the moon. Furthermore, the moon will not have a daylight saving time, according to Kevin Coggins, NASA's top communications and navigation official.

The pursuit to create an "artificial Sun" through nuclear fusion has been a dream of scientists for quite some time, and now a team of researchers has inched a little bit more closer to making that dream a reality.

South Korean scientists have now set a new world record with the Korea Superconducting Tokamak Advanced Research (KSTAR) device, a nuclear fusion reaction that is capable of generating plasma temperatures of up to 100 million degrees Celsius, or seven times hotter than the Sun's core. The team was able to achieve this temperature for just 48 seconds, with the previous record being set in 2021 at 30 seconds.

The idea behind fusion reactors is quite simple - superheat two elements until they combine into one, which gives off heat and energy. However, maintaining the reaction is the challenging part. The most common way to achieve fusion energy is by heating hydrogen variants within a donut-shaped reactor called a tokamak.

The Sun goes through an 11-year cycle that ranges from extreme activity to very minimal activity, and when our host star is at the height of its activity, astronomers detect numerous solar flares, plasma ejections, and tumultuous conditions.

NASA sent its Parker Solar Probe to orbit the Sun and monitor our star's ever-changing conditions with the goal of researchers learning more about its constitution and evolution. With that knowledge, scientists can more accurately predict potentially dangerous space weather caused by the Sun. Now, the Parker Solar Probe has made some ground-breaking observations while passing through a Coronal Magnetic Ejection (CME), a wave of charged particles ejected from the Sun, similar to a burp.

According to reports, the Wide-field Imager for Parker Solar Probe (WISPR) instrument has captured turbulent eddies, which are what physicists call Kelvin-Helmholtz instabilities (KHI). These events occur when one patch of fast-moving fluid interacts with another. This phenomenon has been detected in clouds when the wind speed at one end of the cloud is different from the other end. However, it has never been observed within a solar eruption but was theorized by solar physicists for quite some time.

An investigation has been launched into a space object that crashed through the roof and both floors of a two-story house in Naples, Florida.

The object smashed through the roof of Alejandro Otero's home in Naples, Florida, on March 8. At the time, Otero wasn't home, but his son was. Notably, the home's Nest camera managed to capture the sound of the object crashing through the roof, with the time stamp being 2:34 pm local time (19:34 UTC). That timestamp is an important piece of information as it's around the time when US Space Command recorded the reentry of a space junk that was traced back to the International Space Station (ISS).

US Space Command recorded space junk reentering Earth's atmosphere at 2:29 pm EST (19:29 UTC), and this object was on track to land somewhere in the Gulf of Mexico, near southwest Florida. Furthermore, the space junk was depleted batteries from the ISS and was attached to a cargo pallet that was originally planned to be returned to Earth safely. However, due to several delays, the pallet missed its opportunity to be returned back to Earth, and instead, NASA decided to launch it from the ISS with the goal of an unguided entry. The launch occurred in 2021.

Remember in 2022 when astronomers snapped the very first photograph of the supermassive black hole named Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*) located at the center of the Milky Way galaxy? A team of astronomers have pointed their instruments at the region of space once again, capturing a new image of the enigmatic phenomena.

The first-ever image of the Sgr A* was captured using the Event Horizon Telescope, which is a global network array of radio observatories, and now astronomers have fired up that telescope again to measure the black hole's magnetic fields in polarized light for the first time. The image showcases a magnetic field structure that's strikingly similar to what astronomers observed in 2019, with the very first photograph of a black hole located at the center of the galaxy, Messier 87 (M87).

These results were published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters and suggest that these strong magnetic fields may be common to all black holes. Additionally, astronomer observations of M87 revealed powerful jets of material being shot out of the supermassive black hole, and these recent observations of Sgr A* indicate it could be releasing similar jets, despite Sgr A* being 1,000 times smaller than the black hole located at the center of M87.

NASA's Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) resulted in the asteroid called Dimorphos being shattered and knocked off its original orbit, a groundbreaking mission that proved Earth has the capabilities of redirecting an asteroid should one ever pose a threat to our planet.

The test was more than successful with NASA being able to prove that a kinetic impactor is capable of changing the orbit of an asteroid, therefore changing its overall trajectory. For those that don't know, NASA launched a vending machine-sized spacecraft at an asteroid system that contained two space rocks, Didymos and Dimorphos.

Dimorphos, the smaller of the two, is orbiting its larger companion asteroid Didymos, and after the collision of the DART spacecraft, which was traveling at extremely high speeds, Dimorphos' orbit was reduced its orbit time around Didymos by 32 minutes and 42 seconds. Additionally, the impact resulted in Dimorphos' shape being completely changed. Now a new paper published in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, details the possibility of pieces of Dimorphos entering Mars' thin atmosphere and making it down to its surface where it would create craters.

Varda Space Industries, a company whose goal is to cook real life-saving drugs in space, has posted the results from its first in-orbit manufacturing stint.

The goal of the company was to autonomously manufacture pharmaceuticals in microgravity or within Earth's orbit. The idea behind this process is to reduce the cost of life-saving drugs, and according to a recent paper published on a pre-print server, Varda Space is now one step closer to achieving it. The company dubbed the mission W-1, and it included sending Varda's hardware into Earth's orbit, where it would then autonomously manufacture the therapeutics.

Varda Space sent a capsule into Earth's orbit, and it remained there for seven months. When it returned back to Earth's surface on February 21, the capsule contained the life-saving HIV/AIDS medication ritonavir. According to Varda Space cofounder Delian Asparouhov, "Them space drugs cooked real good". Notably, manufacturing pharmaceuticals in microgravity has been explored before with astronauts aboard the International Space Station and other testing via parabolic flights.

A new study published in the journal Science Robotics details the creation of a robot that's designed to predict when a human is about to smile and return the smile with its own.

The idea behind the creation of the robot named "Emo" is to assist humanoid robots in appearing more natural when faced with human interaction. The study explains that Emo is capable of predicting the smile of human its facing within one second, and is able to achieve this through cameras within the pupils of its eyes. Once the smile is detected, Emo will respond with its own smile, which isn't much of a smile and is more of a grimace, at approximately the same time as your smile being full.

The team was able to train Emo to detect smiles by performing "self modeling" in front of it. This process included the robots initiating random facial movements, which then led to Emo learning to control its facial actuators. To learn to detect a smile the researchers fed Emo with several hours of human facial expressions, leading to Emo being able to accurately predict when a smile is about to occur.

Astronomers detected a burst of bright light 848 million light years away from Earth back in December 2020, and now a new study has detailed why this unusual behavior took place.

The team traced the burst of bright light to a region of space with a supermassive black hole at its center, and since then the black hole has been relatively quiet. But during the time of activity the energy released from this region of space strangely dipped every 8.5 days before it completely settled down to near-zero activity. These releases of energy are similar to having celestial hiccups.

A new study published in the journal Science Advances details the use of the X-ray telescope NICER (the Neutron star Interior Composition Explorer), which is aboard the International Space Station. The researchers gathered four months of data on the region of space, and after analyzing the data the team landed on the conclusion that an object was passing in front of the supermassive black hole, causing the dips in energy every 8.5 days.

Astronauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS) have to endure many challenges during their stay aboard the floating laboratory, and one of those challenges is making sure their possessions aren't lost to the void of space.

Unfortunately, that is what astronauts Jasmin Moghbeli and Loral O'Hara experienced on November 2, 2023, as a tool bag worth approximately $100,000 escaped from their clutches during a spacewalk. The tool bag is now being tracked from Earth's surface as it orbits the planet, which can be seen in the below video taken from Añasco, Puerto Rico, on November 11, 2023. Notably, the tool bag appears to be changing in brightness, which suggests that it's tumbling as it orbits the planet.

Furthermore, Crew-7 was transported back to Earth's surface by SpaceX's Crew Dragon capsule, and recently sat down for their first post-flight press conference where Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) astronaut, Satoshi Furakawa, explained he was embarrassed when he discovered he accidently captured the tool bag when he was attempting to take a photograph of Mt. Fuji.

The Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore collapsed early Tuesday morning when it was struck by a massive cargo ship.

The tragic event has now been captured by space, showcasing the 1.6-mile (2.57 km) long bridge mostly submerged in the cold waters of the Patapsco River. The massive cargo ship that measures 984 feet, named Dali, was en route to its destination in Colombo, Sri Lanka when it lost power and unfortunately steered itself into one of the critical pillars supporting the Key Bridge. Within just minutes, the bridge collapsed, sending people and vehicles into the water below.

Six people are presumed dead, with rescue efforts still underway to search for any remaining survivors. Before the collision took place, the ship sent out a signal to officials informing them that the cargo ship was going to collide with one of the pillars.

A new study published in the Journal of Geophysical Research details the discovery of tens of thousands of seismic events on the moon that were previously unknown to researchers.

The findings were presented at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference. The space agency explains that billions of years the moon formed vast basins called "mare", which researchers assumed were dead, bereft of any geological activity that likely occurred before dinosaurs were even on Earth.

However, researchers conducted a survey on more than 12,000 images of the moon and found that one mare has been "cracking and shifting as much as other parts of the Moon" and may very well still be happening today. Notably, between 1969 and 1977, seismometers that Apollo astronauts stationed detected around 13,000 moonquakes, and now one researcher has gone back through the Apollo data with a fine-toothed comb and found an additional 22,000 moonquakes, bringing the grand total to around 35,000.

A letter has been sent to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) asking why the regulator didn't conduct an investigation into the company before it granted it approval for human testing.

The lawmaker is Democratic U.S. Representative Earl Blumenauer, who sent a letter to the FDA on Monday claiming the regulator ignored "troubling evidence" of Elon Musk's Neuralink violating animal testing procedures. Notably, animal testing violations at Neuralink can be traced back to at least 2019, with previous reports from Reuters citing a complaint that accused Neuralink's brain implant testing on monkeys produced "recurring infections", "suffering" and significant health complications that comprised the "integrity of the research".

Back in September 2023, Neuralink founder Elon Musk responded to the allegations, saying, "No monkey has died as a result of a Neuralink implant" and that the monkeys that have died throughout testing were terminally ill and "close to death already". As for the lawmaker's letter, Blumenauer also cited Reuters reports of Neuralink employee complaints of "hack jobs" due to a rushed schedule, which resulted in needless suffering and deaths. Blumenauer has asked the FDA how it reconciled these reports, which led to Neuralink being granted approval for human trials.

The dreaded "devil comet" is back in the news as an astronomer has decided to snap an incredible photograph of its core, rather than the extremely long iconic tail.

The comet that many astronomers around the world are now focussing their instruments on is none other than 12P/Pons-Brooks, a 10.5 mile-wide (17 kilometers) ball of ice and rock that circles the Sun at an extremely elliptical orbit that takes 71 years to complete.

12P is currently on its way to make its closest approach with the Sun, which is scheduled to happen sometime in April, and while it approaches, the Sun's rays continuously heat up the surface of the comet, melting its icy outer shell, creating gas that then turns into what we know as the iconic comet tail, or as astronomers call the coma.

The first privately constructed lunar lander to ever successfully land on the surface of the Moon has permanently faded, never to wake up again and communicate with its creators back on Earth.

The first US company to achieve a Moon landing was Houston-based Intuitive Machines, which partnered with NASA to construct the Odysseus lander, later nicknamed Odie. On February 22, the lunar lander descended to a location near the lunar south pole, and while Intuitive Machines announced the landing was a success, company CEO Steve Altemus later explained Odie was lying on its side. The phone-booth-sized lander tipped over from one or more of its landing legs, which were caught up on a rock during entry and snapped off.

Despite its undesired orientation, Odie was able to carry out its mission objectives to a reasonable degree, but unfortunately, its active time on the lunar surface has come to its end with Intuitive Machines officially announcing via its X account that the solar-powered spacecraft operated on the lunar surface for seven Earth days, "then went silent after the sun went down at its landing site". The company behind the historic spacecraft said, "This was the expected length of the lander's surface mission."

Supercomputers are incredible pieces of technology for a myriad of reasons, and one of those reasons is the unlocked capability to run highly complex computer simulations.

Astronomers and researchers alike have been using supercomputers to run simulations of astronomical objects in an attempt to learn more about how they work, came to be, and evolve. One of those objects is neutron stars, or the leftover corpse of a star that has expelled all of its fuel and exploded in a fiery supernova.

While the material on the outside of the star is blasted into space, the core of the neutron star collapses, forming an extremely dense sphere that is only approximately 12 miles in diameter. However, this small ball has as much mass as 2.3 of our Sun's. Scientists don't have a full understanding of neutron star properties, with a prime query being how matter can be that dense.

In November, it was announced that NASA astronauts lost a bag while conducting a spacewalk, and now one of those astronauts who returned to Earth recounted their first-hand experience.

It is commonplace for astronauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS) to conduct spacewalks outside of the floating laboratory. These spacewalks involve various mission objects, such as repairing instruments and replacing old ones, both of which require tools to do so. During a spacewalk on November 2, 2023, NASA astronauts Jasmin Moghbeli and Loral O'Hara were separated from their tool bag, and funnily enough, reports at the time stated it was possible to see the bag with a pair of binoculars in Earth's orbit.

Now, Moghbeli, European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut Andreas Mogensen and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) astronaut Satoshi Furukawa have returned back to Earth's surface thanks to SpaceX's Crew Dragon capsule. The Crew-7 astronauts sat down for an interview where they discussed the difficulties of their stay aboard the ISS and the challenges of returning back to Earth, such as the slow adaptation to gravity.