Science, Space, & Robotics - Page 29

SpaceX has just conducted its second orbital launch attempt of the world's most powerful and largest rocket, Starship.

The highly anticipated second orbital launch attempt only came to an end minutes ago after the company reported a Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly (RUD), which translates to a big explosion. Despite the fiery ending, the Elon Musk-led company has declared the launch a success, as key objectives were achieved before the explosion took place.

During the livestream, SpaceX explained that the big objective of the day was to get past stage separation, which is the part of the launch that involves the Super Heavy booster disconnecting from the ship. During this launch, the first stage, Super Heavy, successfully disconnected from the second stage, which was a point of critical failure for the first Starship orbital launch. During the first orbital launch, a fire severed communications with Starship, resulting in a separation failure, an eventual tumble, and then a RUD.

An icy comet that is racing toward Earth has given its largest outburst yet, spewing its icy innards out into surrounding space and forming its iconic "horns".

The comet is none other 12P/Pons-Brooks, an absolutely massive comet that's estimated to be 18 miles wide, or approximately three times the size of Mount Everest, has been in astronomy spotlight for quite some time as it makes its journey toward the inner solar system. As its getting closer to the Sun our local star is heating the surface of the icy comet, specifically the material under its icy crust. This heating process produces a gas that then builds beneath the crust eventually bursting out violently.

These eruptions can be seen as significant increases in brightness levels, as the massive outgassing provides more mass for the Sun's light to bounce off of, which is then seen by astronomers as an increase in the comet's overall size. In the instance of 12P/Pons-Brooks, this iconic comet grows its "devil horns", which seemingly forms into a halo-like coma.

Mars is simply going to disappear from Earth's skies for two whole weeks, but there is nothing to worry about - the Red Planet will be back!

NASA has taken to its website to explain that it will be severing communications with all its robots currently stationed on the surface of Mars as the Red Planet is moving into what is called a "solar conjunction". So, what does this mean? Solar conjunction is a phenomenon that occurs once every two years, and it is when the Sun moves directly in-between the line of sight Earth has with Mars, obscuring our planet from any sight of the Red Planet for a period of two weeks.

While Mars is completely out of sight, its emissions are also problems. Our host star gives off hot, ionized gas continuously, which has the chance of corrupting radio signals sent from Earth to Mars. These corrupted radio signals can cause strange behaviors to happen within the robots that receive them. Commands can get mixed up, and there is the potential for catastrophic failure. Due to these risks, NASA has decided to halt all communications with Mars until the Sun is out of the way.

Last year, a rocket crashed into the dark side of the moon, or the side of the moon that we never see due to the tidal locking.

Astronomers weren't really surprised by the crashed rocket as they were tracking the object through space for many weeks and found that its trajectory lined up perfectly, or not so perfectly, with the surface of the moon. The rocket was called WE0913A, and upon collision with the lunar surface, it created two craters that were then spotted by NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO). Initially, astronomers thought the rocket belonged to SpaceX and was an upper stage of a Falcon 9 rocket that was launched in February 2015.

However, those suggestions have now been thrown out the window as a group based in the University of Arizona nailed down WE0913A is actually a Long March 3C rocket body (R/B) from the Chang'e 5-T1 mission. These results were penned in a new study that was published in the Planetary Science Journal on November 16. The team came to their conclusions through trajectory and spectroscopic analysis using ground-based telescope observations.

The exoplanet NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has honed in on is officially called LTT 1445Ac and was first discovered by NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS).

Reports indicate that LTT 1445Ac is the closest known exoplanet to Earth at a distance of just 22.5 light years away from our planet, residing within the constellation of Eridanus, the River. While light-years are certainly a long distance, LTT 1445Ac is actually considered to be in our galactic neighborhood, and according to reports, this exoplanet isn't alone, as it's joined by two other planets that are all orbiting a cool M-dwarf star.

Researchers discovered LTT 1445Ac by observing the M-dwarf star and recording any dips in light. A dip in the light means an object has been between the observing line drawn between Earth and the M-dwarf star. The bigger the dip in light, the bigger the object. After discovering the planet, researchers tasked NASA's Hubble Space Telescope with confirming the hypothesis that it was a planet causing the dips or transits.

When you think about a satellite, you typically imagine a radar that is likely made out of some tough metal material to protect it from the rays of the Sun. But what if it was wooden and cubed?

Introducing LignoSat, a coffee mug-sized satellite that is comprised of wood, specifically magnolia wood. The mission is a joint project between NASA and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), which are planning on launching the LignoSat into Earth's orbit sometime in 2024, likely before summer. So, why is it wood? Researchers want to test if wood is a viable option for space objects, as it has many benefits over materials typically used to build satellites.

Researchers sent three wood samples to the ISS earlier this year, and studies showed each of the samples didn't deteriorate after being exposed to space, which has an extreme environment that shifts dramatically in temperature. This has led researchers to build the LignoSat, and the type of wood that was chosen was magnolia as it less likely to shatter compared to cherry or birch, which was also tested on the ISS.

The time has finally arrived. SpaceX has been granted a launch license from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to perform Starship's second orbital launch attempt.

The last orbital launch attempt took place on April 20, and while Starship managed to gain altitude much further than SpaceX anticipated it would, it did end in a fiery, purposeful explosion. A fire on the rocket unfortunately severed communications with ground teams, resulting in no separation between the first and second stages. This separation failure caused the rocket to begin to tumble, and ultimately, the decision to abort the mission and initiate the rapid disassembly protocol - boom.

Shortly after the first launch, SpaceX announced it had learned quite a lot from Starship's first orbital test flight and had implemented a range of new changes to the design to prevent the critical point of failure that presented itself during the first flight. Now it's time to take to the skies again, with SpaceX announcing that all the necessary regulatory I's have been dotted and T's crossed as it has been granted a launch license.

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has granted a license to SpacX for its second orbital launch attempt with Starship, the world's largest and most powerful rocket ever flown.

The launch license has been highly anticipated by the public, SpaceX, Elon Musk, and basically anyone who is interested in the steps civilization is taking toward becoming a multi-planetary species as Starship is designed to be the transportation method to the Moon, Mars, and beyond.

However, after the first orbital launch attempt, which ended in Starship being blown up mid-air after a fire severed communications, resulting in a tumble, the space fairing company has been knee-deep in regulatory bodies conducting investigations into Starship's design, impact on the environment, etc - all of which is to make the launch of the world's largest rocket as safe as possible for everyone and everything. Passing all of the regulatory checks takes time, but now it's finally over, and SpaceX can press that big red launch button.

NASA has announced it stopped communicating with all its different types of robots that are exploring the surface of Mars.

The space agency explained that due to a "Mars solar conjunction", which is when the Earth and Mars are on opposite sides of the Sun, communications with its Mars-exploring robots have been put on hold over safety concerns. NASA officials explained that during a Mars solar conjunction, the hot ionized gas emitted from the Sun can potentially corrupt radio signals, leading to unexpected behaviors for the robots that receive them.

To prevent these corrupted radio signals from being received by Mars robots, the space agency has decided to halt all communications during the two-week period of the Mars solar conjunction. While communications are down with the rovers, that doesn't mean they are taking a two-week break from scientific operations, as Perseverance and Curiosity will be monitoring any changes in the Martian weather and radiation, while Ingenuity, NASA's Mars helicopter, will be using its color camera to study the movement of the Martian sand.

Something strange is happening at the center of our Milky Way galaxy, or at least that is what scientists are reporting after observing the supermassive blackhole named Sagittarius A*.

At the center of the Milky Way galaxy is a supermassive black hole named Sagittarius A*, and while it's not considered to be very active, meaning it isn't consuming a large amount of its surroundings, it's still eating some material. Now, astrophysicists Gustavo Magallanes-Guijón and Sergio Mendoza of the National Autonomous University of Mexico have analyzed gamma-ray data on Sagittarius A* that was acquired by the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope in December 2022.

The astrophysicists began looking for any patterns within the data and discovered that every 76.32 minutes, the supermassive black hole shoots out a flare of gamma radiation, which is the most energetic wavelength range of light in the known universe. Furthermore, the team discovered a radio flare that happens as often as the gamma-ray flare. On top of that, the astrophysicists discovered an X-ray flare occurs every 149 minutes, double the periodicity of the gamma-ray flare.

A team of archaeologists have stumbled across an incredible find while excavating a skeleton that dates back to between 1450 and 1620.

In a new statement released by the Bavarian State Office for Monument Preservation details the discovery of a metal prosthetic hand that was found alongside a skeleton. The team of researchers carbon dated the skeleton and discovered the man died likely between 1450 and 1620, and that the metal prosthetic was made from iron and used to replace four of his missing fingers.

The report states it's currently unclear exactly how the man lost his fingers, and that the discovery of a metal prosthetic leads researchers to believe that it was used to replace his amputated fingers. The team discovered the skeleton in a grave near a church in Freising, which is located close to the Bavarian state capital of Munich, Germany.

UFO whistleblower David Grusch has taken a hit from the Pentagon UFO office, which is claiming the whistleblower has refused to be interviewed by the UFO-dedicated office.

For those that don't know, David Grusch is a US Air Force veteran who sounded the alarm on secret US government programs that involve military personnel encountering non-human intelligence and exotic alien spacecrafts. The claims from Grusch originally came from a one-hour interview with News Max where he claimed that he had been briefed by people both formerly and currently involved in these alleged secret US government programs.

Additionally, Grusch claimed that he had spoken to people who have worked on programs that concentrated on retrieving crashed UFOs - some of which included reports of personnel retrieving non-human biologics (aliens) from these crafts. These claims evolved into a hearing before Congress, where he was asked to provide more information on them. Most of Grusch's replies weren't specific and didn't reveal many damming details.

NASA's database has confirmed that the "devil comet," officially named 12P/Pons-Brooks, is on its way to Earth, and throughout its journey, it has erupted, sprouting some pretty interesting "horns".

The last time that 12P/Pons-Brooks came this close to Earth was more than 70 years ago, as its orbit takes it far away from our planet to the outer reaches of the solar system before it makes its slow, but steady journey back around the Sun. So, what makes 12P/Pons-Brooks a "devil comet"? Firstly, 12P/Pons-Brooks poses no danger to Earth, and astronomers have nicknamed it a devil comet for outgassing, which is caused by the Sun heating up its interior, resulting in a large amount of pressure building up under its icy crust.

This pressure then breaks through the icy shell, causing gas and dust to surround the comet, which is technically called the comet's coma. These outbursts of the comet's insides result in "horns" forming, or at least that is what it looks like to astronomers who are observing the comet from the perspective of Earth. Notably, 12P/Pons-Brooks is a massive comet, measuring 10.5 miles across, or the approximate size of two Mount Everests stacked on top of each other.

While most things in space are rocks, dust, planets, nebulas, and other astronomical objects - some are less interesting but are a little closer to home, such as a tool bag.

Astronauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS) accidentally dropped a tool bag in space that managed to get away from them during a spacewalk. With no hope of ever retrieving the tool bag, it has now become a new object that is visible from Earth. The tool bag got away from NASA astronauts Jasmin Moghbeli and Loral O'Hara on November 2, 2023, as they were conducting a spacewalk.

As for the tool bag now, it's visible orbiting Earth slightly in front of the ISS with a visual magnitude of around 6, per EarthSky. The visual magnitude is a ranking of how visible an object is, and the instance of the tool bag, it's approximately the same brightness as the planet Uranus. Due to its size and brightness, the tool bag isn't visible to the naked eye but can be seen with a pair of binoculars.

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has sat down for an interview with Lex Fridman on the Lex Fridman podcast, where he was asked to talk about the hardships he has overcome with launching Starship, the world's largest and most powerful rocket.

Musk explained that the main thing causing Starship launch delays isn't manufacturing or creating the rocket, but regulatory bodies and organizations that are preventing the rocket launch through investigations into various aspects of safety.

While you may think that safety investigations are warranted, and they are - unfortunately, it seems they can get a little out of hand as Musk said that SpaceX was contacted by an organization that was concerned about the impact of sonic booms from Starship's launch on seal procreation near the Vandenberg launch site.

NASA has apologized and walked back the statement where it said humans will never visit Jupiter, which seemingly bothered a lot of netizens.

The source of the NASA apology can be traced back to a post from NASA 360, which wrote: "Is visiting Jupiter on your bucket list? Let's face facts, it's not going to happen". The post went on to promote NASA's "Message in a Bottle", which asks the public to submit their name to the space agency for a chance for it to be engraved on an uncrewed spacecraft that's headed to Jupiter's moon Europa next year.

Despite the logistical problems, along with the obvious facts such as Jupiter not even having a surface for humans to land on, netizens seemed to take extreme offense at the doubt insinuated by NASA's post. SpaceX intern Nathan Commissariat responded to the post and said, "NASA [is] really out here telling kids to stop dreaming and instead engrave their name on a tiny plate. There are so many better ways to have worded this."

A critical part of humans being able to expand into a multiplanetary species is mastering botany in zero gravity, as it will provide us with a reliable resource for food.

Astronauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS) have taken another step forward in that process by successfully gardening in low-Earth orbit. NASA took to its website to announce that NASA Flight Engineer Jessica Watkins has started harvesting radishes and mizuma greens aboard the floating laboratory, both of which were grown without any soil.

So, how were these vegetables grown without soil? NASA says we can thank an experimental system called XROOTS created by private sector company Sierra Space, which includes multiple "growth chambers" that enable astronauts to test various concoctions on different plants. To create the vegetables the system used hydroponic and aeroponic techniques.

NASA's Juno spacecraft has gathered new data that leads researchers to believe there are organic compounds located on the surface of the moon Ganymede.

The new research has been published in the paper Nature Astronomy and details an observation made by Juno on June 7, 2021, where the small spacecraft imaged the surface of the planet in infrared. Juno conducted this fly-by at an altitude of 650 miles, and according to the paper, it yielded results that indicated the abundant presence of salts and organics in both dark and bright terrains that are protected by the moon's magnetic field.

So, what does this mean? According to Scott Bolton, Juno's principal investigator from the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, these results indicate the remnants of a deep ocean that made its way to the surface. Notably, Ganymede is the largest of Jupiter's 79 moons, with a diameter of 3,273 miles. It's the ninth-largest object in the solar system - even bigger than the planet Mercury and dwarf planet Pluto. NASA's Galileo spacecraft detected the presence of a liquid ocean deep beneath its icy shell in the 1990s.

A team of astronomers has used data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory to detect a ghostly skeleton hand floating in deep space located more than 15,000 light years away from Earth.

NASA's latest and greatest X-ray telescope has used its Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer (IXPE) to observe MSH 15-52 for a total of 17 days, the longest Chandra has observed a single object since it launched in December 2021. So, what is the ghostly hand? The astronomers explain that MSH 15-52 is the leftover remains of a dead collapsed star. When a star exhausts its fuel, it collapses in on itself creating an extremely dense object called a neutron star.

A pulsar is a rapidly spinning neutron star, and technically, MSH 15-52 is a pulsar wind nebula that emits a very strong magnetic field that produces powerful jet streams of energized particles. The researchers recently penned a study published in the Astrophysical Journal where they explain the magnetic field created by the pulsar determines the basic shape of the nebula and, in the case of MSH 15-52, the bones of the ghostly hand.

Elon Musk has teased an upcoming Cybertruck event on The Joe Rogan Experience podcast, where the Tesla CEO said that a video will play showing a tommy gun, along with other weapons, being fired at the Cybertruck.

Musk and Joe Rogan begin their conversation about the Tesla Cybertruck by discussing the vehicle's bulletproof exterior, which was tested by Rogan, who fired a broadhead arrow at the door of Musk's Cybertruck from an 80-pound draw-weight compound bow.

Musk goes on to tease the upcoming Cybertruck event by saying he "doesn't want to give it all away right now," but there is a video that will be played during the upcoming event that will show three demonstrations - the first is emptying a tommy gun into the side of the Cybertruck, the second is a shotgun test, and 45mm and a 9mm test. All of which Musk said the Cybertruck's exterior stopped with zero penetration.