Science, Space, & Robotics - Page 193

SpaceX has just recently made its mark on space history forever, as now the United States will have continued access to the International Space Station without having to rely on the Russian Soyuz spacecraft.

Not only has this launch marked history in this way, but it is also the first successful launch to the ISS for SpaceX. The two astronauts aboard the Falcon 9 rocket are Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley, and are now the first NASA astronauts from Florida to journey to the ISS since 2011. At the time of writing this, the astronauts are about 1 hour out from docking with the ISS, so if you want to watch this historic moment via a livestream video, you can do so above.

It has previously been reported that seats aboard the Russian Soyuz spacecraft comes in at a cost of $90 million per seat, and SpaceX has now provided an alternative that is cheaper to launch at $60 million. On top of that, SpaceX has changed commercial space forever as it has already partnered with a private company called Space Adventures, and this company is responsible for passenger trips to space. This move by SpaceX somewhat assists in tourism coming to space, and truly is a mark on space history as we know it.

I can't believe I'm typing this news seriously, but here we go: a gang of monkeys have attacked a medical official in India -- and stolen blood samples of people who had tested positive for COVID-19 coronavirus.

The attack happened when the laboratory technician was taking a walk through the campus in Meerut, which is around 285 miles (460 km) north of Lucknow, the capital of Uttar Pradesh state. Those monkeys sure were lucky... get it? Anyway, A top official at the college, Dr. S. K. Garg, explained: "Monkeys grabbed and fled with the blood samples of four COVID-19 patients who are undergoing treatment ... we had to take their blood samples again".

We don't know of the monkeys had spilled the blood, or if they took it into areas where there are people -- spreading fear that the virus could be out in the open. Garg told Reuters: "No evidence has been found that monkeys can contract the infection".

SpaceX was due to launch the first NASA astronauts into space from American soil in 9 years just a couple of days ago, and will do in the next 24 hours -- but work doesn't stop for the US space agency.

In some new testing, SpaceX was working on its Starship project -- successfully completing a static fire test on its new SN4 prototype. Except, it all went wrong and it exploded right there on the test stand. The Starship SN4 prototype exploded at around 1:49PM CDT (2:49PM EDT, or 6:49PM GMT) at SpaceX's own test facility near Boca Chica, Texas.

Space.com reports that SpaceX's Starship SN4 vehicle is the "latest in a series of stainless steel prototypes SpaceX has built to test technologies required for a truly massive space launch system: the 165-foot-tall (50 meters) Starship rocket and its Super Heavy megabooster. That vehicle is the one SpaceX hopes will carry up to 100 people at a time to space and, eventually, on to Mars".

3D printer fans will probably have ELEGOO's new Saturn machine on their radar -- which is about to release with pre-orders beginning on June 6. Check out the video below:

ELEGOO has just announced that its new resin printer will be up for pre-order on June 6 at 10AM EST, with a retail price of $400. The company is doing something special: the first 200 machine sold will be discounted by $100 with ELEGOO offering an early bird discount.

The ELEGOO Saturn 3D printer has a 4K monochrome LCD built-in, and a large 8.9-inch build plate for your 3D-printed creations.

Everyone, including the President of the United States, was excited for SpaceX's first astronaut launch to the International Space Station, but at the last minute, the launch was canceled.

Elon Musk's space company, SpaceX, was scheduled to launch its first-ever crewed mission to the International Space Station (ISS) on May 27th, but unfortunately, the launch was delayed just 20 minutes before liftoff due to bad weather rolling in. The launch has now be rescheduled for May 30th at the earliest, and hopefully, on May 30th, there are clear skies.

If there aren't clear skies on May 30th, SpaceX has said that it will attempt to launch again on May 31st at precisely 3 p.m EDT or 1900 GMT. The two astronauts that SpaceX plans on sending are NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley. This mission to the ISS will mark the first orbital human spaceflight from the U.S since NASA retired its space shuttle fleet in July 2011.

Commonwealth Fusion Systems (CFS) has announced that it has raise $84 million in a second round of Series A funding, with the MIT spin off using the funds to continue its work on commercializing fusion energy.

The company has now raised $200 million since it first opened its doors in 2018, with the first round of funding seeing CFS secure $115 million in June 2019. Commonwealth Fusion Systems is all-systems-go towards meeting its goal of making commercial nuclear fusion a reality, and that could be much sooner than you think.

Commonwealth Fusion Systems boss Bob Mumgaard explains: "We're in a unique position where it's still something that's far enough in the future that any of the recovery models are not going to affect the underlying needs that the world still has a giant climate problem".

A historic moment is about to happen for the United States.

The US is about to send two astronauts into space from US soil for the first time in nearly 10 years, with President Trump in attendance at the NASA and SpaceX launch of mission Demo-2. This mission will see NASA astronauts thrust into orbit on SpaceX's new Crew Dragon spacecraft riding a Falcon 9 rocket.

NASA veteran astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley will rocket into orbit from the Kennedy Space Center on Launch Pad 39A, with a 19-hour journey ahead of them to the International Space Station (ISS). The NASA astronauts will stay on the ISS for between 1-4 months both living and working in space.

Being an astronomer means you sometimes find things in space that you or no one else has ever seen before.

In a new paper published in Nature Astronomers details one of those findings, and funnily enough, the finding is a galaxy that is shaped like a donut. This galaxy is called R5519, and astronomers estimated that its distance is 11 billion light-years away, which means what we are observing happened 11 billion years ago. According to Dr. Tiantian Yuan, lead author of the study, "It is a very curious object that we've never seen before. It looks strange and familiar at the same time."

So what is this galaxy doing exactly? Well, researchers believe that it's working like a star factory, but its producing stars at a rate that's 50 times greater than our Milky Way galaxy. Researchers also believe that this galaxy formed differently than a typical galaxy, which is usually when a galaxy forms on its own without any outside influence. In the instance of R5519, researchers believe that this galaxy is a "collisional ring galaxy".

A big part of science is to make humans' quality of life better, and to do that, scientists create experiments and prototypes that can assist the instruments we use to interpret the world, or even replace them entirely.

Researchers from the United States and Hong Kong have developed one of the most important instruments the human body has - eyes. Yes, that's right, scientists have built a synthetic eye that was the potential of allowing blind people to see once again. The prototype is referred to as a "biomimetic eye", and is jam-packed with a whole bunch of sensors and an artificial retina.

One of the most difficult challenges the researchers face is interfacing the artificial eye with the brain, and making it so correct communication is occurring. At the moment, the biomimetic eye can render images, but the quality isn't fantastic, or even really close to what we see with our eyes. The biomimetic eye can render letters of the alphabet, and while that might sound extremely disappointing, the researchers behind the project say that as technology evolves, the biomimetic eye has the potential of being better than a real human eye.

If you thought every object out in the deep dark vastness of space was already discovered, you thought wrong.

Almost every day, astronomers spot something they haven't seen before, and only a few days ago, researchers from the University of Hawaii used the Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System or ATLAS and found a Trojan asteroid called 2019 LD2. This asteroid was found to have a strange orbit, and also very active. On top of that it has an icy tail, and according to astronomers appears to be a unique "crossover" between an asteroid and a comet.

Trojans are usually found to be billions of years old, and most of the time, the ice has been melted due to exposure from the sun and they are no longer active. Astronomers also detailed that the newly found Jupiter Trojan has only been active for less than a year, suggesting that Jupiter may have captured the asteroid from a distant colder orbit. Another theory is that the asteroid was hit by another space rock that caused its once safe ice to be exposed. If you want to read more, check out the press release from the University of Hawaii here.

Have you ever wanted to taste food without eating it? The future is nearly ready for you, with researchers from Meiji University in Japan using LED lighting to replicate taste on the human tongue.

The study was done by Homei Miyashita, who names the "taste gadget" the "Norimaki Synthesizer". How does it work? It uses uses ion electrophoresis in five electrolyte gels to (at least in its early stages) recreate the five basic tastes. The study kicked off being inspired by how our eyes can be tricked into seeing something that doesn't necessarily exist.

For example, the monitor or screen you're sitting in front of consists of red, green, and blue (RGB) elements that combine to create full-cover images and video. Miyashita thought that he could use a similar method to trick the human tongue into "tasting" something that isn't there -- thus, the taste display was born.

SpaceX will be launching NASA astronauts into space from the United States, which might not sound like much -- but it's the first time it has happened in nearly 10 years.

President Trump will be attending the historic moment in Florida, where he will be in-person (even during the COVID-19 pandemic) in Florida for the Demo-2 mission launch on May 27 from the Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral. This is the first time that the US has sent astronauts into space from US soil since 2011, when the Space Shuttle Program was wrapped up.

The White House said in a statement to CBS News: "President Trump is continuing to deliver on his promise to reassert American dominance in space. Our destiny, beyond the Earth, is not only a matter of national identity, but a matter of national security".

NASA is looking for US citizens to sign up for an 8-month study into social isolation, something it is doing to prepare for future missions to both the moon, and Mars.

The US space agency will be studying the effects of social isolation and confinement on US citizens, where successful applicants would work towards completing simulated science missions. NASA will be pushing the boundaries of your mind during these times, where participants will be thrusted into the same environmental aspects that future astronauts will experience on Mars.

NASA is forming a small international crew that will be living together in isolation for 8 months "conducting scientific research", where successful applicants would be using VR and performing robotic operations, as well as a bunch of other tasks. The research will concentrate on the "effects of isolation and confinement as participants work to successfully complete their simulated space mission. Results from ground-based missions like this help NASA prepare for the real-life challenges of space exploration and provide important scientific data to solve some of these problems and to develop countermeasures".

The US Navy has tested a new laser weapon system, with the video below showing the docked USS Portland testing its new laser weapon system that is capable of blowing an aircraft up out of the sky mid-flight.

In the video above, the US Navy has its USS Portland testing "the first system-level implementation of a high-energy class solid state laser". The laser disables a drone mid-flight, where you can see in the second half of the clip the drone burning from being hit by the laser.

We don't know how strong the laser itself is, but according to a report published in 2018 from the International Institute for Strategic Studies, it's expected to be at least a 150-kilowatt laser. That's some serious laser weaponary right there, but the US Navy hasn't provided any specifics.

I didn't think I'd be typing this news up -- but sometimes stories just write themselves. A team of scientists in Canadian have discovered at least 13 strains of cannabis sativa that could prevent, and even treat COVID-19.

The researchers wrote in their paper: "We have developed over 800 new Cannabis sativa lines and extracts and hypothesized that high-CBD C. sativa extracts may be used to modulate ACE2 expression in COVID-19 target tissues".

They continued: "Screening C. sativa extracts using artificial human 3D models of oral, airway, and intestinal tissues, we identified 13 high CBD C. sativa extracts that modulate ACE2 gene expression and ACE2 protein levels. Our initial data suggest that some C. sativa extract down-regulate serine protease TMPRSS2, another critical protein required for SARS-CoV2 entry into host cells".

I think we've about heard it all when it comes to coronavirus, but each day brings a new surprise -- and some days, and some places it seems more than others. Now God is sending us messages in the form of coronavirus-shaped hailstones.

Residents in the city of Montemorelos in Mexico have taken to social media to post photos of recent weather events, where the formation of hailstones (at least to them) looked like the shape of coronavirus. The posts on social media have Mexicans claiming that the bad weather was an "omen" to the city of Montemorelos.

One particular post on social media said: "Yesterday coronavirus hailstone, God sent it to our home to remind us to stay put". Another post reads: "Is this a subliminal message from our creator?"

We all know the story of the Titanic, with James Cameron's mega-hit movie making billions at the box office -- but the history is well known on the Titanic, and now it's about to get even more interesting. Maybe they just need to turn back time.

An underwater salvage company has been approved to slice into the Titanic wreckage, where they want to salvage the Marconi telegraph from the ship at the bottom of the ocean. Why do we need the telegraph machine from the Titanic? It could have locked away in the depths of the dark ocean some missed warning messages and even distress calls sent from the ship before it sunk.

Judge Rebecca Smith of the U.S. District Court in Norfolk, Va., made some changes to a court order from 2000 that stopped any company from cutting into the hull of the Titanic looking for diamonds. Judge Smith explains: "The Marconi device has significant historical, educational, scientific and cultural value as the device used to make distress calls while the Titanic was sinking".

I thought I was reading the story line to a TV show like Fringe, Lost, or one of my new favorites: Dark -- but nope, this is real. NASA scientists working down in Antarctica have discovered evidence of a parallel universe... where the rules of physics are the opposite of our world.

The idea of a parallel universe is not new at all, and has been the basis of plenty of movies and TV shows over the decades. But now NASA scientists have discovered some interesting things in their experiments in Antarctica, where an cosmic ray detection experiment has discovered new particles that -- get this -- could be from a parallel universe that started at the Big Bang.

NASA scientists have been running experiments using a gigantic balloon that takes ANITA (Antarctic Impulsive Transient Antenna) into the skies high above Antarctica where the very cold, very dry air provides the optimal environment for NASA's testing. They want to evade all radio noise in order to run their experiment.

President Trump is bringing the pain to the World Health Organization (WHO) where he has threatened to cut funding from the WHO over its handling of the COVID-19 pandemic. In recent WHO-related news, the ex-director of the WHO has said that coronavirus could "burn out naturally", more on that here.

President Trump tweeted out his four-page letter to Dr. Tedros, the Director-General of the WHO, saying that the agency must show "independence from China". Trump writes: "If the World Health Organisation does not commit to major substantive improvements within the next 30 days, I will make my temporary freeze of United States funding to the World Health Organisation permanent and reconsider our membership in the organisation".

The letter from President Trump continues: "It is clear the repeated missteps by you and your organization in responding to the pandemic have been extremely costly for the world. The only way forward for the World Health Organization is if it can actually demonstrate independence from China".

Well folks, it looks like we might not need a coronavirus vaccine after all -- as the former World Health Organization (WHO) director said that COVID-19 could "burn out naturally", thus, not needing a vaccine.

The former WHO director tweeted: "There is a real chance that the virus will burn out naturally before any vaccine is developed. We are seeing a roughly similar pattern everywhere - I suspect we have more immunity than estimated. We need to keep slowing the virus, but it could be petering out by itself".

Professor Sikora replied to his own tweet, adding: "It is my opinion that this is a feasible scenario. Nobody is claiming to know what will happen for sure - I believe in an unknown situation this is a possibility. We need to continue to keep our distance and hope the numbers continue to improve".