Science, Space, Health & Robotics News - Page 5

Astronauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS) have to endure many challenges during their stay aboard the floating laboratory, and one of those challenges is making sure their possessions aren't lost to the void of space.

Unfortunately, that is what astronauts Jasmin Moghbeli and Loral O'Hara experienced on November 2, 2023, as a tool bag worth approximately $100,000 escaped from their clutches during a spacewalk. The tool bag is now being tracked from Earth's surface as it orbits the planet, which can be seen in the below video taken from Añasco, Puerto Rico, on November 11, 2023. Notably, the tool bag appears to be changing in brightness, which suggests that it's tumbling as it orbits the planet.

Furthermore, Crew-7 was transported back to Earth's surface by SpaceX's Crew Dragon capsule, and recently sat down for their first post-flight press conference where Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) astronaut, Satoshi Furakawa, explained he was embarrassed when he discovered he accidently captured the tool bag when he was attempting to take a photograph of Mt. Fuji.

The Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore collapsed early Tuesday morning when it was struck by a massive cargo ship.

The tragic event has now been captured by space, showcasing the 1.6-mile (2.57 km) long bridge mostly submerged in the cold waters of the Patapsco River. The massive cargo ship that measures 984 feet, named Dali, was en route to its destination in Colombo, Sri Lanka when it lost power and unfortunately steered itself into one of the critical pillars supporting the Key Bridge. Within just minutes, the bridge collapsed, sending people and vehicles into the water below.

Six people are presumed dead, with rescue efforts still underway to search for any remaining survivors. Before the collision took place, the ship sent out a signal to officials informing them that the cargo ship was going to collide with one of the pillars.

A new study published in the Journal of Geophysical Research details the discovery of tens of thousands of seismic events on the moon that were previously unknown to researchers.

The findings were presented at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference. The space agency explains that billions of years the moon formed vast basins called "mare", which researchers assumed were dead, bereft of any geological activity that likely occurred before dinosaurs were even on Earth.

However, researchers conducted a survey on more than 12,000 images of the moon and found that one mare has been "cracking and shifting as much as other parts of the Moon" and may very well still be happening today. Notably, between 1969 and 1977, seismometers that Apollo astronauts stationed detected around 13,000 moonquakes, and now one researcher has gone back through the Apollo data with a fine-toothed comb and found an additional 22,000 moonquakes, bringing the grand total to around 35,000.

A letter has been sent to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) asking why the regulator didn't conduct an investigation into the company before it granted it approval for human testing.

The lawmaker is Democratic U.S. Representative Earl Blumenauer, who sent a letter to the FDA on Monday claiming the regulator ignored "troubling evidence" of Elon Musk's Neuralink violating animal testing procedures. Notably, animal testing violations at Neuralink can be traced back to at least 2019, with previous reports from Reuters citing a complaint that accused Neuralink's brain implant testing on monkeys produced "recurring infections", "suffering" and significant health complications that comprised the "integrity of the research".

Back in September 2023, Neuralink founder Elon Musk responded to the allegations, saying, "No monkey has died as a result of a Neuralink implant" and that the monkeys that have died throughout testing were terminally ill and "close to death already". As for the lawmaker's letter, Blumenauer also cited Reuters reports of Neuralink employee complaints of "hack jobs" due to a rushed schedule, which resulted in needless suffering and deaths. Blumenauer has asked the FDA how it reconciled these reports, which led to Neuralink being granted approval for human trials.

The dreaded "devil comet" is back in the news as an astronomer has decided to snap an incredible photograph of its core, rather than the extremely long iconic tail.

The comet that many astronomers around the world are now focussing their instruments on is none other than 12P/Pons-Brooks, a 10.5 mile-wide (17 kilometers) ball of ice and rock that circles the Sun at an extremely elliptical orbit that takes 71 years to complete.

12P is currently on its way to make its closest approach with the Sun, which is scheduled to happen sometime in April, and while it approaches, the Sun's rays continuously heat up the surface of the comet, melting its icy outer shell, creating gas that then turns into what we know as the iconic comet tail, or as astronomers call the coma.

The first privately constructed lunar lander to ever successfully land on the surface of the Moon has permanently faded, never to wake up again and communicate with its creators back on Earth.

The first US company to achieve a Moon landing was Houston-based Intuitive Machines, which partnered with NASA to construct the Odysseus lander, later nicknamed Odie. On February 22, the lunar lander descended to a location near the lunar south pole, and while Intuitive Machines announced the landing was a success, company CEO Steve Altemus later explained Odie was lying on its side. The phone-booth-sized lander tipped over from one or more of its landing legs, which were caught up on a rock during entry and snapped off.

Despite its undesired orientation, Odie was able to carry out its mission objectives to a reasonable degree, but unfortunately, its active time on the lunar surface has come to its end with Intuitive Machines officially announcing via its X account that the solar-powered spacecraft operated on the lunar surface for seven Earth days, "then went silent after the sun went down at its landing site". The company behind the historic spacecraft said, "This was the expected length of the lander's surface mission."

Supercomputers are incredible pieces of technology for a myriad of reasons, and one of those reasons is the unlocked capability to run highly complex computer simulations.

Astronomers and researchers alike have been using supercomputers to run simulations of astronomical objects in an attempt to learn more about how they work, came to be, and evolve. One of those objects is neutron stars, or the leftover corpse of a star that has expelled all of its fuel and exploded in a fiery supernova.

While the material on the outside of the star is blasted into space, the core of the neutron star collapses, forming an extremely dense sphere that is only approximately 12 miles in diameter. However, this small ball has as much mass as 2.3 of our Sun's. Scientists don't have a full understanding of neutron star properties, with a prime query being how matter can be that dense.

In November, it was announced that NASA astronauts lost a bag while conducting a spacewalk, and now one of those astronauts who returned to Earth recounted their first-hand experience.

It is commonplace for astronauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS) to conduct spacewalks outside of the floating laboratory. These spacewalks involve various mission objects, such as repairing instruments and replacing old ones, both of which require tools to do so. During a spacewalk on November 2, 2023, NASA astronauts Jasmin Moghbeli and Loral O'Hara were separated from their tool bag, and funnily enough, reports at the time stated it was possible to see the bag with a pair of binoculars in Earth's orbit.

Now, Moghbeli, European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut Andreas Mogensen and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) astronaut Satoshi Furukawa have returned back to Earth's surface thanks to SpaceX's Crew Dragon capsule. The Crew-7 astronauts sat down for an interview where they discussed the difficulties of their stay aboard the ISS and the challenges of returning back to Earth, such as the slow adaptation to gravity.

Chinese robotics firm LimX Dynamics has just shown off the latest developments of its new Biped Robot P1, testing the AI-powered robot and its ability to walk through mountainous forest terrain as well as being hit with a huge piece of wood. Check it out:

The new Biped Robot P1 uses reinforcement training to respond to the real-world, where there are moving objects and disruptions in its past -- a forest setting with leaves, wood, and dirt is great -- allowing LimX Dynamics to train its AI algorithms. You can see the AI robot kicking up dirt as it walks, walking into huge bunches of leaves and getting out of it without falling over.

A human operator is also there pulling at it, and it doesn't fall... as well as being hit by a rather large and heavy piece of wood, the Biped Robot P1 doesn't fault. LimX Dynamics took to the Tanglang Mountain range in Shanghai, China to test out its robot, moving around and navigating through rough terrain meant that the P1 had to be continuously aware of its surroundings, pumping that into its AI algorithm, and responding to it through reinforcement training.

WASP-12b was originally discovered in 2008 and since then has been a point of interest for many astronomers around the world due to its strange and relatively close proximity to Earth.

WASP-12b is an exoplanet orbiting its host star WASP-12, and the reason for its interest by astronomers is its strange egg shape and proximity of just 1,400 light years from Earth, which is close in astronomical terms. Additionally, astronomers have predicted that WASP-12b will eventually be consumed by its host star as its trajectory indicates a death spiral will occur, which will result in the exoplanet approximately twice the size of Jupiter being completely consumed by WASP-12.

Researchers previously estimated that WASP-12b would be consumed by its host star in approximately 10 million years, but new research suggests it will happen in just 3 million years. Notably, WASP-12b has such a narrow orbit that almost one year for the exoplanet, or one full orbit around its host star, is a single Earth day. Its extremely close proximity of just 2.1 million miles to its host star results in surface temperatures around 4,000 degrees Fahrenheit (2,210 Celsius) and such a strong gravitational pull from the star that it warps the exoplanet into an egg shape.