Science, Space, & Robotics - Page 34

A capsule carrying samples from the asteroid named Bennu successfully touched back down on Earth at 10:52 a.m. EDT, marking a historic mission success for NASA.

NASA's OSIRIS-REx spacecraft officially made history when its sample capsule safely floated down and landed in the Utah desert at 10:52 a.m. EDT on September 24, 2023. The capsule contained samples from the asteroid Bennu, located 4 billion miles away, and are the first asteroid samples collected by NASA. On its journey home, OSIRIS-REx released the capsule 63,000 miles from Earth, and after it safely landed, the teams discovered the gathered 250 grams (8.8 ounces) of rocks and other material from Bennu.

The sample was transported to NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, and underwent further examination in a dedicated new facility labeled the Astromaterials Research and Exploration Science (ARES) division. The next step is to divide the samples into different institutions and research facilities.

A new species of spider was discovered in Australia by a team of researchers that uncovered an incredibly persevered fossil that dates between 11 and 16 million years old.

The fossil is the first evidence of a spider that belongs to the brush-foot trapdoor spider family called Barychelidae and has officially been named Megamonodontium mccluskyi. There have only been four spider fossils ever discovered in Australia, which makes understanding their evolutionary history very difficult for researchers, hence the importance of this recent discovery.

According to the scientists, the closest living relative of the fossilized spider currently lives in the wet forest in Singapore through to Papa New Guinea, which suggests that this type of spider once occupied Australian rainforests but began going extinct when Australia started getting less rainfall and became more arid. Notably, the fossil is of such high quality that researchers can confidently place it to the modern genus of brush trapdoor spider Monodontium. However, it's five times larger.

NASA originally scheduled Mars samples return to Earth in 2026, but independent review boards that looked over NASA's plans have found critical flaws in the space agency's methodology.

These flaws have led NASA to delay moving the Mars Sample Return mission to its next stage of development, which will further push out the date for Martian samples arriving back on Earth. The new report was released on September 21 and found that there was a "near zero probability" that the two critical components of the Mars Sample Return mission; the sample retrieval lander and Earth return orbital, will be ready for launch by 2027/2028, as NASA currently projects.

Additionally, the report concluded that NASA's budget for the entire sample return mission is grossly underestimated and will fall between $8 billion and $11 billion, which is significantly more than what an independent review board reported in 2020 - $3.8 billion to $4.4 billion. The solution would be to move the launch times of the lander and orbiter to 2030, which would cost an additional $1 billion from 2025 to 2028, further hamstringing NASA's already tight budget.

NASA's Sun probe has captured a stunning video of it passing through one of the Sun's most powerful eruptions ever recorded.

The above GIF is footage captured by NASA's Parker Solar Probe, and it shows an event that took place late last year in September. The video was released by Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory and showcases a coronal mass ejection (CME), which is an eruption of solar plasma. CMEs can come in a variety of intensities, with most being billions of tons of plasma and shooting a wave of charged particles into a specific direction in space.

These charged particles travel at ridiculous speeds, with the Parker Solar Probe recording during this event particles accelerating "up to 840 miles per second". Recordings such as these are exactly what the Parker Solar Probe was designed for - providing critical data of solar events that are then relayed back to researchers on Earth to study patterns and, hopefully, learn more about our Sun so more accurate space weather predictions can be made.

The Sun hurled a wave of charged particles at Earth, resulting in a powerful solar storm that pushed auroras much closer to the equator than usual.

The event began on September 16 when a solar filament caused a coronal mass ejection (CME) to launch out from the Sun toward Earth. A CME is essentially a wave of solar particles that can collide with our planet's magnetic field. This interaction between the charged particles and molecules in Earth's atmosphere causes molecules in Earth's atmosphere to be charged, producing incredible colors commonly called auroras.

Our planet funnels the Sun's charged particles toward the poles, hence the Northern and Southern Lights only appearing near the planet's top and bottom. However, during a solar storm, these auroras can be spotted much closer to the equator due to the abundance of charged particles interacting with the atmosphere. Each time the Sun smacks Earth with a CME, photographers have a prime opportunity to capture some incredible photographs of the natural phenomena, and this time was no different. Below are some incredible photographs.

NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has snapped an incredible image of a "bridge" between two colliding galaxies located nearly 500 million light years away from Earth.

The European Space Agency (ESA) has released the image of Arp 107, a pair of galaxies that are slowly but surely merging to form a massive galaxy. Using its Advanced Camera for Surveys, NASA and the ESA's Hubble Space Telescope snapped an image showcasing the faint "bridge" linking the two galaxies.

The galaxy on the left is a Seyfret galaxy, which is a galaxy that houses an active galactic nuclei, or supermassive black hole at its core. The black hole-consuming matter results in a strong glow, as displayed by the image.

Archaeologists have made an incredible discovery on a river bank in Zambia, a discovery that may change how ancient human history is viewed forever.

A new study published in the scientific journal Nature details a discovery of ancient wooden logs that appear to have been used for a small wooden hut. The University of Liverpool scientist Professor Larry Barham led the project called Deep Roots of Humanity, which was responsible for the excavation of the sample and the follow-up analysis. The study states that the ancient logs are approximately 476,000 years old. Additionally, the team discovered ancient human wooden tools such as digging sticks.

The researchers pointed out one of the tools was discovered at right angles to each other. These pieces of wood had been clearly cut by stone tools to fit together with the goal of making a bigger structural object. These samples may be the oldest ancient wooden tool discovery found so far, with the BBC reporting 400,000-year-old samples were found in prehistoric sands at Clacton-on-Sea, Essex, in 1911.

NASA has announced that the first asteroid sample collected in space by the agency will be arriving on Earth by the end of the week.

The space agency took to its website and social media channels to announce when it will begin its live coverage of the Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, and Security-Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx capsule, NASA's mission to collect a sample from the surface of an asteroid. The target was asteroid Bennu, and the collection process was successful as the sample was obtained from Bennu's surface in 2020.

Since then, the capsule has been on a return journey back to Earth, where it's expected it will touch down in the U.S. Department of Defense's Utah Test and Training Range on September 24, 2023. For this precise landing to be achieved, NASA explains that spacecraft operators will need to make sure that OSIRIS-REx enters the planet's atmosphere at a specific angle and speed.

The winners of the Royal Observatory Greenwich's 15th year of astronomy photography have been announced, and the images are nothing short of incredible.

The world's largest astrophotography contest consists of more than 4,000 separate submissions from 64 different countries, with each of the submissions going into a selection of different categories. The winners of 2023 were announced via a shortlist that was published in July, and now we able to see all of the notable submissions. The contest features 11 categories and below you will find winners for; Overall Winner, Auroras, Our Moon, Our Sun, and Stars & Nebulas.

The first image below is the winning photograph of 2023's astrophotography contest, and it showcases the neighboring Andromeda galaxy. The image titled "Andromed, unexpected" was snapped by an amateur astronomer team led by Marcel Drechsler, Xavier Strottner and Yann Sainty. Notably, the plasma streak on the left-hand side of the image was a unique discovery, with researchers now studying it as its believed it could be largest discovered streak of its kind.

The European Space Agency (ESA) has released an image snapped by the famous Hubble Space Telescope, showcasing the galaxy officially called NGC 3156.

The space agency explains that NGC 3156 is a lenticular galaxy, which is a galaxy that falls between an elliptical and spiral galaxy. Notably, this great galactic disk is located 73 million light-years away from Earth within the constellation Sextans, which belongs to the Hercules family of constellations. So, what makes this galaxy so special? Lenticular galaxies are believed to have used up or have lost most of their interstellar matter, leading researchers to believe they are home to much older stellar populations.

The ESA also explains that the equatorial constellation known as Sextans was named after the astronomical instrument, and not the instrument that was commonly used for nautical navigation. "Sextants are often thought of as navigational instruments that were invented in the 18th century. However, the sextant as an astronomical tool has been around for much longer than that: Islamic scholars developed astronomical sextants many hundreds of years earlier in order to measure angles in the sky," writes the ESA.

Following the release of NASA's official UFO report, the space agency has named the new director of the group dedicated to analyzing Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP).

NASA released its highly anticipated UFO report last week, where it came to multiple conclusions based on data provided by the US government. One of the main conclusions was the data used in the study wasn't clear enough for researchers to determine the origin of the UFOs, which resulted in the team calling for improved instruments to collect data, along with better pipelines for data collection. Additionally, the report called for the implementation of AI-powered tools to siphon through data.

The report outlines many more improvements that can be taken by NASA to shed more light on the UFO phenomena, and the full independent study can be viewed here. Notably, NASA appointed Mark McInerney as the director of UAP research. McInerney previously served as a NASA liaison to the Department of Defense, covering limited UAP activities. The role of the director will be to devise data analytical capabilities to establish a robust database for the evaluation of future UAPs.

NASA's Perseverance rover touched down on the surface of the Red Planet on February 18, 2021, and since then, it has been documenting its exploration while simultaneously looking for any evidence of past microbial life.

Throughout the time Perseverance has spent on the surface of Mars, it has run into some pretty interesting objects, most of them are rocks in unique shapes and sizes. According to NASA's official website, which publishes all of Perseverance's photographs, the Mars rover stumbled across an avocado-shaped rock on September 8.

The image was snapped using Perseverance's Mastcam-Z and shows a rock that resembles an avocado cut in half. One half of the avocado laying in the foreground of the image, with the second half laying upright with a nut still in the center.

A US fighter pilot ejected from an F-35 jet over South Carolina, and now the military is asking the public to help them find the jet that's still flying around on autopilot.

Multiple reports indicate the fighter pilot safely ejected from the F-35 at approximately 2 p.m. on Sunday local time over North Charleston, and landed in a neighborhood. Since the ejection was confirmed, multiple military officials have taken to social media and the wider public to gather any information on the F-35 that's still, at the time of writing, reportedly flying around the region on autopilot.

The ABC reports that an investigation has been launched into why the pilot was forced to eject from the vehicle, with Major Melanie Salinas saying the pilot has been taken to a local hospital in a stable condition. So far, estimates have put the $80 F-35 Lightning II jet somewhere between Lake Marion and Lake Moultrie, according to Senior Master Sergeant Heather Stanton, at Joint Base Charleston.

The US space agency has released a new collection of images captured in various wavelengths of light that are invisible to the human eye, showcasing the chaotic beauty of space.

NASA has taken to its blog to release a quintet of images snapped by NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory, along with other world-leading telescopes, showing off the ability and advantages of observing the universe in different wavelengths of light - including X-rays, infrared, and radio. Each of these forms of light has been assigned a color that the human eye can perceive, allowing researchers to look deeper into the universe and uncover its wild mysteries.

The below images and the objects seen in them range in category and distance, with Vela and Kepler both being remnants of stars that have gone supernova, and NGC 1365 being a double-barred spiral galaxy. There is also an image of a galaxy hurling its way through space and what is left behind if that event occurs, ESO 137-001.

A team of researchers that evaluated the US government's evidence on UFOs has recommended that AI-powered tools should be implemented to help shift through large swaths of data.

NASA has recently released a highly anticipated report on the Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP), or more commonly referred to as UFOs. The report is an independent study conducted by 16 community members with a range of expertise that evaluated the information the US government has on UFOs, and provided a conclusion, much to everyone's suspicions, that there isn't enough clear data to determine an origin for the objects.

The researchers provided many recommendations to increase the efforts of analyzing UFOs and gather much clearer and conclusive data. For example, the study recommends the adoption of sophisticated data analysis techniques that include artificial intelligence and machine learning. The study recommends that AI-powered tools be coupled with a comprehensive UFO detection campaign that features systematic data gathering and robust curation.

NASA has finally released its long-awaited UFO report, or as officially called the independent study on Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP).

The independent study involved a team of 16 community experts across many areas that were relevant to the methods carried out in the study, and NASA's overall goal. The space agency set out to evaluate the evidence acquired by the US government on UAPs from a scientific perspective, and it's conclusion would be to create a roadmap that for data and science to develop a greater understanding of the phenomena.

The study concluded that the data the team looked over came back inconclusive, with the researchers determining that with the current data there isn't enough evidence to determine the origin of these objects, leading the researchers to call for well-calibrated sensors to be developed and designed to track these objects. Simultaneously, the team called on NASA to leverage its expertise in this domain, with an overall push for more data to collected.

An independent team of 16 researchers has been evaluating the evidence the US government has acquired on the unexplained flying objects detected in Earth's skies, and now the team is releasing a report this Thursday.

The NASA report is a highly anticipated study within the UFO community, or as recently renamed, the UAP (unidentified anomalous phenomena), as it will likely reinforce the widely believed argument that systems should be put in place that are designed to detect and record valuable data on this phenomena to ultimately understand its capabilities and intention.

The team of researchers shared their preliminary takes on the evidence back in May, saying that much of the data, which includes eyewitnesses, isn't enough to be able to make firm conclusions about the object. The group of researchers simultaneously called for higher-quality data. The study is expected to be released this coming Thursday.

Continuing on previous observations conducted by the Hubble Space Telescope, NASA and the European Space Agency's James Webb Space Telescope, the world's most powerful space telescope, has gained results that indicate a relatively close exoplanet may have an ocean surface.

That planet is K2-18 b and has become a prime location for observations since its discovery, with Webb pointing its highly sensitive instruments at an exoplanet that is located just 120 light-years away from Earth. The results of scanning the atmosphere of the exoplanet were promising, with the analysis indicating that K2-18 b's atmosphere contains traces of carbon dioxide and methane, yet not ammonia, which, according to NASA, may indicate the surface of the planet contains oceans of water.

K2-18 b has a mass approximately 8.6 times that of Earth and is orbiting a star in what astronomers like to refer to as the "habitable zone," which is not too close to the star where the planet will be burned and not too far away where it will be frozen. Both situations for planet position relative to their local star dramatically reduce the chances of life existing, hence the decision by many astronomers to search planets that are residing in habitable zones.

SpaceX is gearing up for Starship's second orbital attempt, and it seems there isn't much more to stop the 394-foot rocket from taking flight again, with Elon Musk announcing that SpaceX has checked off many of the requirements preventing Starship from getting launch approval.

It wasn't long ago that Elon Musk announced that SpaceX had completed all development of Starship, which was followed by SpaceX issuing a press release that explained the team has implemented what they learned from the first orbital test flight onto the new Starship.

The first orbital launch attempt occurred on April 20 this year. Starship took to the skies before a fire severed communications with on-ground teams, resulting in the booster failing to separate and Starship beginning to tumble. SpaceX detonated the rocket in mid-air.

"Alien corpses" were shown to Mexican politicians at the nation's UFO hearing that included experts testifying under oath to the anatomy of these bodies.

The four-hour UFO hearing can be viewed above, and while there are many interesting details, the most shocking is certainly the "alien corpses" that begin being discussed at approximately 3 hours and 10 minutes into the video. The anatomy of these corpses is analyzed by Dr. Jose Salce Benitez, who has 30 years in the Mexican Navy, is currently the director of the Navy's Scientific Health Institute, and the former director of the Navy's Medical Forensic Service.

Benitez explains these bodies were covered in a diatomic white powder that enabled extreme preservation and that the carbon dating makes them approximately 1,000 years old. This species was also Tridactyl, meaning they have three fingers and three toes. These fingers and toes also go straight into arm/leg bones and are described to be very strong, yet light, much like birds. Muscle-wise, the researcher said this species was unable to pick up objects. They featured between 14 and 16 ribs, each circular, complete and continuous.