Science, Space, & Robotics - Page 23

NASA's Mars rover has pointed its instruments at the downed Ingenuity helicopter sitting in its final resting place.

The Mars helicopter was initially sent to the Red Planet as a technology demonstration with the goal of seeing if flight on another planet was possible. The demonstration was a success and Ingenuity became the first human-made object to take flight on another world.

The Mars helicopter went on to perform more than 70 additional flights, serving as a reconnaissance helicopter for the Perseverance rover. However, on flight 72, the helicopter had a rough landing, causing damage to its rotor blades and ultimately ending its mission.

Harvard scientist Avi Loeb, known for claiming the interstellar object known as 'Oumuamua that passed through our solar system in 2017 was an alien probe, has backed up his claims from last year that pieces of alien technology were discovered in the ocean off the coast of Papa New Guinea.

It was back in July last year that Avi Loeb claimed his team discovered fragments of alien technology at the crash site of the meteor that entered Earth's atmosphere in January 2014. The team sifted through meteor data and discovered the meteorite known as IM1 was traveling "too fast" to have come from within our solar system, meaning it was an object that came from outside of our solar system.

The team ran a magnetic sheet over the seafloor, and what was recovered is claimed to be made from material that is stronger than "all space rocks cataloged by NASA over the past decade," per Loeb. Notably, the Harvard scientist went on the record saying the tiny spheres recovered from the crash site looked like miniature Earths as they contained distinct colors of blue, brown, and gold.

Scientists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison are claiming to have created the first 3D-printed functional human brain tissue.

The researchers published a new study in the scientific journal Cell Stem Cell, and according to the paper, the team created the 3D-printed brain tissue using horizontal layers of "bio-ink" gel. According to the team, the tissue is soft enough to enable neurons to grow through it, yet it is hard enough to keep its structure.

This duality has resulted in the tissue being able to grow cell networks similar to a real human brain, and according to the team, the 3D-printed brain tissue has some advantages over "mini-brain" models that are commonly used to study a human brain.

Engineers have set loose a wheeled robot that's designed to teach itself how to open doors, demonstrating a step forward in machines interacting with the physical world.

The creators behind the wheeled robot trained it through imitation, showing the machine visual examples of how to open different types of doors. The robot was shown visual examples of how to open doors, cabinets, drawers, and even refrigerators. After each visual demonstration, the robot then spent anywhere between 30 minutes and an hour learning how to open each door.

After it was successfully trained, it was then set loose on a college campus where it would encounter different types of doors. The creators trained the robot on 12 objects for practice and then an additional 8 objects. Notably, the robot had a success rate of about 50% when it first started, but after many attempts, its success rate increased to about 95%.

The most volcanically active world in the entire solar system has recently been imaged by NASA's Juno spacecraft during a close fly-by.

That world is none other than Jupiter's moon, Io, and during a close fly-by, the Juno spacecraft captured the volcanically active body at a distance of just 930 miles. Notably, Io is a "tortured moon" as it's constantly engaged in a gravitational tug of war between Jupiter and the two neighboring moons, Europa and Ganymede. The result of being stuck in the middle is friction across the entire world, and when you have friction, you get heat.

The surface of Io is scorched by this intense heat that is further exacerbated by extreme volcanic activity, with recent estimates pointing to more than 400 active volcanoes littered across the surface of the moon. NASA's Juno spacecraft managed to capture some of the plumes of gas erupting into space from these volcanoes. Furthermore, Io's volcanoes aren't like the volcanoes here on Earth; they are much larger - in fact, Io's largest volcano, Loki Patera, is approximately twice the size of Earth's largest volcano, Mauna Loa.

Japan's lunar lander landed on the lunar surface with extreme precision and regained power after a full nine days.

Upon landing, JAXA announced the Smart Lander for Investigating Moon (SLIM) nearly tipped upside down, and now reports indicate the SLIM lander is going dormant while it endures the long lunar night. According to JAXA the SLIM lander has captured an eerie photograph of the impending lunar night, which it might not even wake up from.

The photograph showcases the Shioli crater right before dusk, and according to reports, the lunar night lasts for two Earth weeks, and temperatures reach below -200 degrees Fahrenheit. Notably, the SLIM lander is solar-powered, and according to JAXA, it wasn't designed to withstand the long duration of the lunar night.

The building blocks of life have been discovered within asteroid samples recovered by Japan's Hayabusa2 mission that returned to Earth back in 2020.

The Hayabusa2 mission involved a lengthy trip to the asteroid known as Ryugu, a near-Earth asteroid that is nearly 3,000 feet wide and was originally discovered in 1999. JAXA, Japan's version of NASA, sent a spacecraft to collect samples of the asteroid, and since those samples arrived back on Earth, they have undergone analysis by multiple researchers and scientists.

Now, a team of researchers has discovered evidence the samples contain organic matter, providing further weight to the theory asteroids were the transportation system of organic molecules to planets such as Earth. The team behind the study explained that since Ryugu has no atmosphere, it's prone to enduring micrometeoroid impacts that change the surface composition and the minerals within the asteroid.

Last week, we reported on the HPE Spaceborne Computer-2 making its way to the International Space Station, hitching a ride on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket and mission. Having the computing power of a data center in orbit is an invaluable tool for space-age information processing, research, and scientific experiments, and sitting at the heart of the HPE Spaceborne Computer-2, you've got the latest in KIOXIA SSD storage-130 TB (terabytes) in total.

Supercomputers and SSDs in space, and all with off-the-shelf technology readily available on Earth. Breaking down the 130 TBs of storage, you've got eight 1GB NVMe SSDs and four value 960GB SSDs. Throw in four enterprise SAS SSDs, each with 30.72 terabytes, and you've now got 130 TBs of storage floating in space. It's the most data

storage to travel to the space station on a single mission.

NASA's Perseverance rover landed in the Jezero Crater in February 2021, and since then, it has been collecting sediment samples, some of which may contain proof of past microbial life.

A new study published in Science Advances details a geological survey of the Jezero Crater in which researchers used radar instruments attached to Perseverance to penetrate the ground to collect data on what is beneath the rover's wheels. The new study found the 4 billion-year-old crater that was created through an asteroid impact was later filled with younger sediment and rocks.

Notably, these younger sediments and rock could have been carried down into the crater through multiple river systems, which coincides with researchers' previous strong suggestion that the Jezero Crater once contained deltas fed by an ancient river system. These suggestions were why Perseverance was sent to investigate the Jezero Crater. Now, scientists have found horizontal layers of underground sediment that resemble a lake on Earth.

Miguel Claro, a professional photographer, has captured some stunning footage of a large solar prominence occurring on our host star, the Sun.

The professional photographer, author, and science communicator based in Lisbon, Portugal, captured a solar prominence, or filament of plasma gaining in height, eventually snapping and resulting in a coronal mass ejection (CME).

Claro captured the stunning footage seen above on February 22, 2022, and explained in a recently published article on Space.com the prominence is so large it could likely fit dozens of Earths within it, with some prominences even being so large they can stretch thousands of miles into space.

An ocean exploration company from South Carolina announced on Saturday that it has sonar images that may be evidence of famed aviator Amelia Earhart's plane wreckage.

According to reports from NPR and the Wall Street Journal, the team behind the sonar images is Deep Sea Vision, an ocean exploration company that says it made the discovery using an unmanned underwater drone paired with a 16-person crew that both scoured more than 5,200 square miles of ocean floor between Australia and Hawaii.

Notably, the team detected an airplane-shaped object on the seafloor approximately 100 miles off Howland Island, which is where Earhart and her navigator Fred Noonan were scheduled to refuel but never arrived. Reports indicate that the images do resemble Earhart's aircraft, a Lockheed Electra, in not only shape but also size and tail. The famed disappearance of the aviator happened in 1937 while she was attempting to circumnavigate the globe, which would have made her the first female pilot to have flown around the world.

NASA has released an incredible new Hubble Space Telescope image that showcases a cosmic bridge linking two galaxies.

The galaxy seen above is part of a galactic group called Arp 295, and what can be seen in the image is an incredible 250,000 light-year-long bridge of stars and gas that stretches between two galaxies, Arp 295a to Arp 295b. The galactic cluster imaged above is located 210 million light years from Earth and gives astronomers a peak into the future of our own Milky Way galaxy as it is anticipated that it will collide with the closest neighboring galaxy, Andromeda, in approximately 4 billion years.

So, how did this cosmic bridge form? Reports indicate that following the collision of the two Arp galaxies, they began to circle each other, with each's gravitational pull eventually drawing in the other and removing gas, dust, and stars. This process can take billions of years, and eventually, the galaxies merge, which forms an overall new shape for the now singular galaxy.

NASA has released a collection of images snapped by the incredibly impressive James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), the world's most powerful space telescope that cost more than $10 billion.

From its distant vantage point in space, NASA's Webb has honed its extremely sensitive instruments on a selection of spiral galaxies, revealing them in unprecedented detail for the world to see. The above image is a mosaic of all of the spiral galaxies Webb has imaged, and while many of these galaxies, if not all of them, have been previously studied by astronomers, many are still enthralled by the level of detail Webb can achieve as the observatory's images show parts of the spiral galaxies that have never been seen before.

One of the sought-after aspects of these images is the capture of millions of newborn stars, which populate the spiral arms of these galaxies.

A very lucky photographer has captured a rare phenomenon that occurs when light passes through Earth's atmosphere.

The green flash was captured by photographer Peter Rosén who pointed his camera at one of Earth's closest neighbors - Venus. The footage was snapped in the early hours on January 8 as Rosén was watching Venus rise above the horizon. So, what is this green flash, as shown above? Firstly, visible light contains many different wavelengths of colored light, and when this light shines through Earth's atmosphere, these individual wavelengths begin to be refracted through the molecules in Earth's atmosphere.

The green flash is light bouncing off Venus and making its way through Earth's atmosphere, specifically Earth's low atmosphere, where it travels through more of the atmosphere and eventually reaches the observer. As light passes through Earth's atmosphere, a prism effect takes place, as the light is split into RGB colors, which can also be affected by temperature. When this event is taking place, it's possible that only green wavelengths of light make it to the observer, with all other wavelengths either being scattered or absorbed by Earth's molecules.

The time has finally come, and while many people, including myself, may have thought brain implants were many years away, Elon Musk has announced that the first human has received a Neuralink implant.

In December, Neuralink announced at its event that it was preparing to implant its brain chip into human patients and needed participants. It seems some people put up their hands as the first human has received the implant. Notably, the human trials began after the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) gave the company approval for human testing, which is part of a wider study designed to assess the functionality of the brain-computer interface.

Now, Elon Musk, the founder of Neuralink, has announced via his personal X account the first human has received a Neuralink brain implant and is "recovering well". Additionally, Musk wrote, "Initial results show promising neuron spike detection," which can be translated to brain neuron activity. According to the National Institute of Health, cells use electrical and chemical signals to send information around the brain and body. These signals appear as spikes when fired by the neuron.

NASA has big plans for its return to the moon under the space agency's Artemis Program, and now a new proposal has surfaced under NASA's Innovative Advance Concepts (NIAC) Program that could, if approved, put a massive telescope on the dark side of the moon.

The new proposal written by Kenneth Carpenter and his colleagues at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) details a Long-Baseline Optical Imaging Interferometer (LBI) designed for the dark side of the moon, and would be called the Artemis-enabled Stellar Imager (AeSI). The telescope would consist of an array of smaller telescopes designed to image objects and regions of space in ultraviolet and visible wavelengths.

The proposal states there is massive potential for having an observatory on the lunar surface due to the "radio quiet" nature of the environment and prolonged periods of darkness. For those that don't know, the moon is tidally locked to Earth, meaning one of the sides of the moon is always facing toward Earth, hence the name description "dark side of the moon". Due to this gravitational phenomenon, two weeks on the lunar surface consists of one Earth day, which means the dark side of the moon will be in total darkness for two weeks at a time.

Authors of a series of papers published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society detail the discovery of a new type of star that was found by analyzing a decade-long collection of data collected by the Visible and Infrared Survey Telescope (VISTA).

The team behind the study focused on approximately 200 stars in a specific region of space that had seemingly dramatic shifts in brightness. More specifically, the team was searching for any signs of protostars or young baby stars that are very early in their life. Of the 200 selected stars, the team discovered 32 protostars; each of these was in the process of becoming a fully-fledged fusion monster star, meaning they were constantly outbursting.

Notably, among these young protostars were 21 red giants deep within the center of the Milky Way galaxy, and according to reports and the studies cited by the reports, these red giants are a new type of red giant called old smokers. The inner regions of the Milky Way is rich with heavy elements, meaning the stars located within these regions also have high metallicity.

NASA's iconic Hubble Space Telescope has been used by researchers to identify an exoplanet lurking outside of our solar system that has been described as a "landmark discovery".

The European Space Agency (ESA) and NASA posted to their websites announcing the discovery of an exoplanet located 97 light-years from Earth in the constellation Pisces. The exoplanet is called GJ 9827d and was first discovered by NASA's Kepler Space Telescope in 2017, but now astronomers have pointed Hubble's instruments at exoplanet and detected water vapor.

While this isn't the first exoplanet that astronomers have detected water vapor, it is the smallest at only approximately twice Earth's diameter. Prior to this discovery, water vapor had gone undetected on small planets, and NASA believes that GJ 9827d could be an example of water-rich planets being present elsewhere in our galaxy.

A few days ago, an asteroid entered Earth's atmosphere and exploded over Berlin, Germany, shocking many onlookers who were lucky enough to see the fiery entry.

Small asteroids enter Earth's atmosphere and explode every day, but due to Earth's surface mostly being covered by water, humans don't typically get to witness these awesome cosmic events. Researchers dedicated to tracking these space rocks are quite good at predicting when they will enter Earth's atmosphere, but every now and again, one small asteroid sneaks past detection or is only detected just hours before impact.

The asteroid that exploded over Berlin is officially called 2024 BXI and was first discovered by Krisztián Sárneczky, an astronomer at the Piszkéstető Mountain Station, part of Konkoly Observatory in Hungary. 2024 BXI was only discovered hours before it entered Earth's atmosphere, but before it arrived, NASA issued a warning for residents in West Berlin. "Heads Up: A tiny asteroid will disintegrate as a harmless fireball west of Berlin near Nennhausen shortly at 1:32 am CET. Overseers will see it if it's clear!" wrote NASA Asteroid Watch

It's a sad day in the science community as researchers and engineers worldwide salute NASA's Mars helicopter Ingenuity as the space agency has announced the helicopter's mission has ended.

NASA administrator Bill Nelson has announced that Ingenuity's efforts on the surface of the Red Planet have come to an end after the small helicopter sustained damage to at least one or more of its rotor blades during the landing of its last flight. Ingenuity landed in the Jezero Crater on the Red Planet in February 2018 with NASA's Perseverance rover.

The primary mission of the helicopter was to demonstrate that flight was capable on another planet, and once that was achieved, Ingenuity essentially turned into a reconnaissance device for NASA as it would fly ahead of Perseverance, capturing the terrain and surrounding area with its onboard cameras.