Science, Space, Health & Robotics News - Page 266

There are countless amount of asteroids floating about in space, and it's NASA's job to track the ones that are potentially dangerous to Earth.

Luckily, NASA believes it is tracking the large ones that could be a threat to our planet, as there aren't as many of those as the smaller ones that would burn up in our atmosphere if their trajectory lined up with Earth. Additionally, asteroids make "close" fly-by's with Earth quite regularly, and two will be doing that very soon. On its Jet Propulsion Laboratory website, NASA states that Asteroid 1998 SD9 and Asteroid RP12 will be making their closest approach to Earth on October 6.

Originally discovered in 1998, asteroid 1998 SD9 will arrive at 3:53 p.m. ET and will be traveling at a speed of 24,606 mph. 1998 SD9 is anywhere between 144 to 325 feet in diameter, or approximately the size of an airplane, according to NASA. Additionally, 1998 SD9 will be within 2,530,000 miles of Earth. Asteroid RP12 is slightly smaller than 1998 SD9 at around 104 to 256 feet in diameter, but it will pass closer - within 1,200,000 miles of Earth. RP12 will pass Earth at around 21,000 mph.

On the weekend, people saw a mysterious black circle appear in the sky, onlookers took pictures of the ring, and then an inspection began on social media.

Social media users speculated that the black ring could have been birds migrating to a different location, and while birds do form shapes in the sky when they are flying, the formations usually don't remain locked in place for very long as this circle did. So, what was the circle? And has something similar to it been spotted before?

The mystery of the ring over the Hudson Valley was finally solved when a video was published from the Old Rhinebeck Aerodome. The video shows an explosion being triggered, causing a large black mushroom cloud to appear in the sky. As the smoke rises, it starts to take a circle shape, becoming thinner and more circular. This isn't the first time onlookers were confused at a black ring appearing high in the sky, in fact, these plumes of smoke rings have been spotted around the world - each with a different source.

The European Space Agency (ESA) partnered with the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency has achieved the first fly-by with its BepioColombo mission.

The European Space Agency explained that the spacecraft completed its first flyby of Mercury on Friday at 11.34 pm GMT. The spacecraft used the planet's gravity to slow down, passing at altitudes of less than 125 miles from the surface. During its fly-by, the spacecraft snapped an image of the planet, and according to the ESA, the image showcases Mercury's Northern Hemisphere as well as the 103-mile-wide Lermontov crater.

The BepiColombo mission was launched back in 2018, and up until now, the spacecraft traveled once past Earth and twice past Venus on its way to Mercury. The ESA explained that five more fly-by's of Mercury are needed before the spacecraft can release ESA's Mercury Planetary Orbiter and JAXA's Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter. These two probes will relay data back to researchers about Mercury's magnetic sphere and core.

Researchers in China are working hard to create an "artificial Sun" capable of producing unlimited clean energy.

Back in June, researchers at the Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST) set a new world record for nuclear fusion. The team was able to raise temperatures of their mini-star to 120 million degrees Celsius (216,000,032 F) for 101 seconds, and while that doesn't seem very long, in 2016, the team was only able to reach 50 million degrees Celsius for 102 seconds. As you can see, considerable progress is being made.

The team does have a few problems on their hands though. To create a mini-star here on Earth, the team needs to sustain a large amount of pressure in the chamber so the nuclear fusion process can take place. For the Sun or any other stars like it, this process is quite easy. The Sun is so large that gravity provides an equally distributed amount of pressure needed to initiate and sustain the fusion process. While researchers are still quite far from replicating what the Sun can do, steps are being taken towards achieving that goal.

The International Space Station (ISS) is a modular space station that is located in lower-Earth orbit. It serves as a place for research to be conducted in microgravity.

The images were taken by Russian cosmonaut Oleg Novitskiy who was traveling on the Russian Soyuz capsule from the Earth-facing Rassvet module to the docking port on the Nauka module. Novitskiy was joined by Pyotr Dubrov, a fellow cosmonaut and NASA astronaut Mark Vande Hei. According to Novitskiy, everything went according to plan.

Looking at the image, you can see at the bottom of the space station the Nauka module and SpaceX's Crew Dragon capsule "Endeavour," which transported four astronauts to the space station in April at the top. In other news about the International Space Station, Russia will soon be launching a director, an actor, and a cosmonaut to the ISS to shoot the first movie in space, more on that story can be found here.

Actor William Shatner has announced that he will be going on a suborbital flight to space with Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin.

The announcement from Shatner comes after the heated news that Blue Origin employees found the work environment "toxic" and uncomfortable for women. Shatner is known for his role in Star Trek as Captain Kirk and will be joined by Audrey Powers, the vice president of missions and flight operations at Blue Origin. The launch is scheduled to occur at New Shepard's launch site in west Texas on October 12.

Shatner took to Twitter to announce the news, saying, "So now I can say something. Yes, it's true; I'm going to be a 'rocket man!'" Shatner added in a Blue Origin statement, "I've heard about space for a long time now. I'm taking the opportunity to see it for myself. What a miracle." Additionally, the announcement comes after anonymous former/current Blue Origin engineers warned that Blue Origin prioritized speed over safety.

The largest underwater eruption caused a massive volcano to rise up from the seafloor, leading researchers to investigate.

On May 10, 2018, researchers recorded a seismic event that caused a volcanic island to emerge from the seafloor between Madagascar and East Africa. Within a few days of the island emerging, researchers recorded a 5.8 earthquake that was traced back down to volcanic activity underwater. In February 2019, teams of researchers mapped 3,320 square miles of the seafloor with sonar in an effort to gain more knowledge of the event.

The researchers found that more than 17,000 seismic events occurred between February and May 2019 at a depth of 30 miles beneath the seafloor. The researchers dubbed the discovery of these seismic events as "highly unusual". From these observations, the researchers were able to construct a model of how the volcanic island came to be and found that the island started with magma below the molten mantle.

The team aboard the International Space Station will soon be welcoming three new crew members, a director, a cosmonaut, and an actor.

The three new crew members will be taking off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 4:55 a.m. EDT (0855 GMT or 6:55 p.m. local time) and will be venturing to the ISS to shoot the very first movie scenes in space. The three crew members are Russian cosmonaut and multi-spaceflight veteran Anton Shkaplerov, film director Klim Shipenko, and actor Yulia Peresild.

The crew of three is going to the ISS to shoot scenes for a character in the movie The Challenge. The movie follows a doctor that has to go to the ISS to assist a cosmonaut that is in need of medical attention. The New York Times reports that Russia is trying to secure first place for the first movie shot in space and has even moved its launch schedule around to fast-track the launch ahead of SpaceX and NASA's plans to support a Tom Cruise action movie being shot in space.

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has taken to his personal Twitter account to share a crazy video of the rocket Starship caught in a lightning storm.

The video showcases SpaceX's Starship rocket that will be transportation humans take to get to Mars one day. The team at SpaceX is currently hard at work getting Starship ready for its first orbital flight that is scheduled to happen sometime before the end of the year. SpaceX's Starship is the company's largest rocket, and when paired with the Super Heavy booster, it's the tallest rocket ever constructed at 400 feet.

In the video that Musk shared, we can see Starship at SpaceX's Texas facility off to the left-hand side with lightning appearing all around it, causing a gorgeous silhouette of the massive rocket. Musk further clarified in a follow-up reply to the original post that what viewers were seeing was real, "this is real btw" as some people must not have believed the video was real. If you are interested in reading more about this story, check out this link here.

NASA previously announced it was looking for four individuals to participate in spending a month in the space agency's simulated Mars habitat.

The four individuals were required to have certain qualifications and would have to spend 45 days working and living in the Human Exploration Research Analog (HERA). The idea behind this project is so NASA scientists can observe how the first humans will react to living on Mars when we finally get there. While we are still decently far away before any colony starts on the Red Planet, the space agency wants to do as much preparation as it can before the missions go underway.

As for this particular HERA mission, NASA will be simulating a trip to Phobos, the innermost and larger of the two natural satellites of Mars. The mission will include cramped living spaces and delayed communications with the outside world. As previously stated, the duration of the mission will be 45 days, and throughout that time, NASA researchers will be monitoring the four individuals inside for changes in the human psyche, health, etc.