Science, Space, Health & Robotics News - Page 353

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.