Science, Space, & Robotics - Page 57

The very first near-Earth asteroid was discovered in the 1800s, and since then, astronomers have been scouring the skies for more.

Over the course of many years, astronomers have continuously found more and more near-Earth asteroids, with researchers reaching a milestone number of more than 30,000 near-Earth asteroids only recently. As equipment increases in quality and accuracy, astronomers are exponentially finding more asteroids. To illustrate this, more than 15,000 near-Earth asteroids were discovered in just the past 10 years. So, are any of these dangerous?

Scientists believe that they have found all asteroids that would cause an extinction-level event if they impact Earth. These asteroids are considered to be "large" near-Earth asteroids (NEA), which means their orbit comes within 120,842,549 miles of the Sun, and their diameter is slightly larger than 1 mile. Researchers report that all of the asteroids of this caliber have already been discovered and that none as expected to hit Earth for at least the next 100 years.

NASA has taken to its Sun & Space social media account to announce that the Sun has erupted eight solar flares and twenty-three solar flares.

NASA has posted to its Sun & Space Twitter account to announce a space weather roundup for the past week. According to the announcement, the Sun has released a total of eight solar flares and twenty-three coronal magnetic ejections over the course of the week. Above is a NASA video that showcases various active regions on the Sun that can be seen in the brighter areas of our star. Notably, there were no geomagnetic storms to report despite the Sun's increasing activity.

The space agency explains that at 2:30 in the video, you can see NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) make calibration maneuvers, which is an important process that only happens twice a year. The calibration maneuvers ensure the spacecraft's instruments are taking in the light from the Sun accurately, while also assessing how that light is being received by the spacecraft.

Shortly after Russia began its invasion of Ukraine, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk announced that his company would provide Starlink satellite constellations to the country so Ukrainians could stay connected to the internet and maintain vital communication channels.

SpaceX provided the Starlink constellations back in February, and since then, SpaceX says it has been fronting the majority of the bill to keep connectivity maintained. However, a CNN report revealed that SpaceX sent a letter to the Pentagon saying that it was no longer in a position to further donate terminals to Ukraine or fund the existing terminals for an undetermined amount of time.

The letter sent to the Pentagon by SpaceX claims that it would cost SpaceX nearly $400 million over the next year to maintain Starlink at its current level. Following the exclusive report from CNN, Musk took to his personal Twitter account to echo much of the same points of view as outlined in SpaceX's letter to the Pentagon, but the SpaceX CEO gave in, saying that his private company will continue to support the Ukrainian government "for free".

The recent Association of the United States Army (AUSA) conference featured a number of armed robots and similar technologies on display.

At the conference, one of the companies that garnered significant attention was German company Rheinmetall, which launched its hybrid and electric drivetrain vehicle, the Mission Master-CXT. The model is a mid-sized unmanned vehicle that can shuttle weapons - and autonomously identify targets and launch strikes.

Here is what Alain Tremblay, VP of business development and innovation, said in a statement published by Defense One:

NASA's Perseverance rover is currently exploring the surface of Mars, collecting samples that will eventually be sent back to Earth.

Perseverance, accompanied by its scout helicopter named Ingenuity, are scouring the surface of the Red Planet for viable locations to sample, and so far, the rover has collected fourteen samples that are stored within the vehicle. On October 5, NASA announced that Perseverance successfully collected its thirteenth sample, which was described as "fine-grained". Notably, NASA stated that it planned on collecting an additional sample from the same area.

On October 12, NASA took to the Perseverance Twitter account, where it announced that the fourteenth sample had been collected, but the rover encountered an issue when attempting to seal and store it. NASA explained that the rover was unable to seal the sample tube, but the sample itself remained safe within Perseverance's caching assembly. NASA added that Perseverance's team was currently working on a fix for this issue, and as of October 15, there hasn't been an update.

Researchers have proven for the first time that cells living in a petri dish can be taught how to play a simple game, like Pong.

A newly published study in the scientific journal Neuron details a group of researchers that took 800,000 mouse and human brain cells, placing them in a petri dish that they named DishBrain. The team was able to grow the cells by placing them on top of a microelectrode arrays, which stimulated the cells and also read their activity. Through this technology, the team was able to teach the cells to be able to perform goal-directed tasks and in this instance, to successfully teach the group of cells to play the classic computer game, Pong.

Using the microelectrode arrays and close up monitoring of the cells activity, the scientists were able to inform the cells on where the Pong ball was located and how to move the paddle up and down to deflect the incoming ball. The researchers explain that this new capacity to be able to teach cells to perform tasks and have those tasked represented in a virtual environment hasn't been achieved before.

Robots are able to conduct a lot of tasks more efficiently than their human counterparts, but activities that require fine motor skill were once out of grasp - but researchers are moving in the right direction. Touchlab aims to give robots the ability to use custom grippers that give robots tacticity and the ability to manipulate objects in a more precise manner.

Robots might be ideal for some factory automation, but tasks that require honed motor skills remain extremely challenging to figure out. Touchlab hopes its electronic skin will give doctors full immersion with its full-body Telerobot technology - even if a medical specialist is working remotely.

The electronic skin is thinner than the skin covering our bodies, with the ability to withstand severe temperature changes. The robot makes use of sensors and custom software so they'll have better dexterity when handling objects.

Researchers from the Stanford University Biomechatronics Laboratory have moved their exoskeleton beyond lab-based emulators and out into the real-world. The custom boot is particularly aimed towards older citizens and people with mobility impairments that make just walking around a difficult task.

The exoskeleton is designed to help a wearer receive an extra push with every step, greatly aiding the calf muscles with natural walking motion. What sets this "robotic boot" apart from other exoskeletons, however, is that researchers used machine learning that was based on the model developed using emulators.

The device was found to provide "twice the energy savings of previous exoskeletons," which will greatly enhance walking speed and significant energy savings while used in the real-world. The functionality of it being custom tailored to each person wearing it is something unique, as it can support people of different heights, weights, leg strides, and walking speeds.

Located just 5,000 light-years away from Earth, which is a relatively short distance when considering the universe's vastness, are a pair of stars known as Wolf-Rayet 140.

NASA's James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has pointed its extremely advanced instruments at the star duo and photographed a remarkable event. The image showcases seventeen concentric dust rings emanating from the two stars, with each ring being created when the two stars came close to each other and their stellar winds meet, compressing the gas and forming space dust.

NASA explains in its blog post that the dust rings are much like the growth rings on a tree's trunk as they represent a passage of time. This event only happens once every eight years when both of the star's orbit's come close together. Ryan Lau, an astronomer at NSF's NOIRLab and lead author of a new study recently published in the journal Nature Astronomy that focuses on the star system, said that Webb's image illustrates just how sensitive its instruments are, because researchers were only able to see two dust rings with ground-based telescopes.

A scammer individual that claimed he was stuck on the surface of the Moon has received tens of thousands of dollars from a woman.

According to a report from last week by the Japanese newspaper Yomiuri Shimbum, which stated that a 65-year-old Japanese woman has been scammed 4.4 million yen, or approximately $30,000 US, from an undisclosed individual that told her he was stranded aboard the International Space Station (ISS) and needed the funds to pay for a ride back down to Earth. The scammer not only lied about being stuck in space, but he also claimed that he had fallen in love with the woman and that if she paid for his ride back to Earth, he would start a new life with her.

Additionally, the scammer told the woman that when he was unable to contact her for sometimes days on end that the cell service aboard the ISS was sometimes spotty, which is simply not true at all because there is zero cell service aboard the ISS. Legitimate astronauts aboard the ISS access the internet via an internet-connected IP phone. After sending a total of five payments to the scammer, the woman contacted authorities on the suspicion that the individual was lying. Unfortunately, it's not known if the scammer was caught by authorities or if the 65-year-old woman got her money back.

Entrepreneur Dennis Tito was the very first private citizen to book his own ride to the International Space Station (ISS) in 2004, and now the now 84-year-old wants to go to the Moon.

Tito and his wife, Akiko Tito, went to the SpaceX headquarters a year ago, located in Hawthrone, California, where they went on a tour that ended up in booking a space venture. According to the announcement via SpaceX's website, the Tito's were asked if they wanted to book a trip around the Moon via SpaceX's in-development Starship launch vehicle. The Tito's looked at each other, and both agreed immediately to the offer and penciled in a flight that is expected to happen before the end of the decade.

The announcement marked the very first woman to be scheduled to fly aboard SpaceX's Starship, and if everything goes to plan between now and liftoff, the flight will take the couple and ten other yet-to-be-booked passengers on a week-long journey around the Moon, where they will come within just 24 miles of the lunar surface, according to Ars Technica.

Two neutron stars collided, causing a jet of material that astronomers initially believed traveled more than seven times the speed of light.

The event occurred back in 2017 when astronomers watched two neutron stars orbiting each other collide, causing a massive jet of material to be blasted out of the merger. Astronomers initially measured the speed of the jet and found it was traveling seven times the speed of light, a speed that was thought to be impossible or beyond the current understanding of physics.

Scientists were right in suspecting that there was something up with their initial measurements, as they discovered a viewing phenomenon called superluminal speed, an illusion that occurs based on the viewing angle of the event.

A group of photographers was blessed with the opportunity to capture SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket zooming past the full Moon shortly after it was launched.

The photographer behind the incredible image seen below is Nicholas D'Alessandro, who captured SpaceX's Falcon 9 launch last Saturday, October 8, from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. D'Alessandro spoke to PetaPixel and explained that it wasn't as simple as just rocking up to the location and snapping a few photos, as the below image was three days in the making after the launch of the rocket was scrubbed in the two days prior due to a helium leak.

Photographers are stubborn when it comes to getting the perfect shot, and their patience certainly paid off as on the third-day launch was a go, and the conditions to capture the rocket right in front of the full Moon were the best out of the three days they waited. "It happened to be the best day out of the three for the Moon's position, as it was increasingly full and lower on the horizon which each successive attempt. A fourth attempt would have been off the table as the Moon rose after the launch at that point," explains D'Alessandro.

NASA has announced it will be livestreaming the departure of four astronauts from the International Space Station (ISS) via SpaceX's Dragon capsule.

It was only last week that SpaceX launched a ground-breaking mission to the International Space Station via its Falcon 9 rocket and its Dragon capsule. The Dragon capsule carried four astronauts safely to the ISS, where it docked, marking the first time a Native American woman has reached the final frontier, along with cosmonaut Anna Kikina being the very first Russian to fly on a private American spacecraft.

Now, the return journey is about to get underway as four astronauts have wrapped up their nearly six-month stay aboard the floating laboratory. NASA astronauts Bob Hines, Kjell Lindgren, and Jessica Watkins, as well as ESA (European Space Agency) astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti, will say their goodbyes to the crew aboard the ISS and board the Dragon spacecraft on October 12. NASA expects that the Dragon spacecraft will splashdown off the coast of Florida on October 13 in one of seven targeted landing zones.

Nearly 500 pilot whales have been found stranded on two remote New Zealand beaches, and, unfortunately, none could be saved.

In what seems like a bizarre, naturally occurring event, reports indicate that 477 pilot whales became stranded on the Chatham Islands, which is located approximately 500 miles from New Zealand's main islands. The event has been described by Daren Grover, the general manager of Project Jonah, a non-profit group that focuses on saving whales, as a "heartbreaking" loss as none of the whales could be saved, and the ones that were found still alive on the beach had to be euthanized.

While you may think this event is extremely unusual, it comes only two weeks after 200 pilot whales beached themselves in Australia on a remote Tasmanian beach. According to Dave Lunquist, a technical marine advisor for the Department of Conservation, said that refloating pilot whales isn't conducted on Chatman Islands due to the risk of shark attacks on humans, leaving only euthanasia as the "kindest option".

Elon Musk has been caught in the geopolitical crossfire as claims have surfaced that he's spoken directly with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The claims come from Ian Bremmer, a long-standing political scientist, and author that focuses on global political risk. The news surfaced when Bremmer released his Eurasia Group newsletter to subscribers, where he claimed that Musk spoke directly with Russian President Vladimir Putin prior to tweeting the infamous peace proposal between Ukraine and Russia, where Musk called for Ukraine to permanently give some land back to Russia so a peace deal could be struck.

Bremmer doubled down on his claims saying that he has been writing his geopolitical newsletter for 24 years and that the newsletter mentioning Musk and the apparent conversation between the Tesla CEO and Putin was written: "honestly without fear or favor, and this week's update was no different". Bremmer added that he has, "long admired Musk as a unique and world-changing entrepreneur, which I've said publicly. He's not a geopolitics expert."

A group of researchers has released a new map that brings science closer to an accurate estimation of the true size and age of the universe.

The new research was published in The Astrophysical Journal on October 23 and details a new map called Cosmicflows-4. The scientists behind the study explain the map was created with very little margin of error and that they took into account not only their own data they acquired but also data from various other studies that looked into acquiring an accurate age of the universe, its expansion rate, and the date of the Big Bang. To find out any of the aforementioned figures, researchers measured the distance between 56,000 galaxies, along with their velocities as they move farther away.

With this data, the researchers measured the distances between each of the galaxies and their velocities to construct the Cosmicflows-4 map, allowing for an unprecedented level of accuracy to be achieved on the expansion rate of the universe and its age. The team's study gives a value of H0=75 kilometers per second per megaparsec or Mpc (1 megaparsec = 3.26 million light years), with a very small statistical uncertainty of just 1.5%.

NASA has released the results from the world's first planetary defense mission - the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART).

The DART spacecraft was launched in November 2021, and since then, the vending machine-sized spacecraft has been traveling at high speeds to a binary asteroid system with one goal, colliding into an asteroid named Dimorphos.

The 525-foot-wide asteroid named Dimorphos orbits its larger companion asteroid Didymos, and NASA's goal was to demonstrate the very first planetary defense mission using a kinetic impactor, which essentially means testing out if colliding a high-speed spacecraft into Dimorphos will alter its orbit around Didymos.

A group of researchers has determined through sample analysis that the oldest DNA has been discovered, dating back approximately one million years ago.

The new study published in the scientific journal Nature Communications details a specific type of DNA called sedaDNA, which is ancient sedimentary DNA that can be found in various environments such as terrestrial caves and subarctic permafrost. Researchers use this sedaDNA to derive what lived in the region hundreds of thousands to millions of years ago, and it is also useful for understanding how climate change has and will affect regions such as Antarctica.

sedaDNA is found in locations that have extremely cold temperatures, low oxygen levels, and little UV radiation exposure, which makes locations such as the Scotia Sea a fantastic location for prospecting. As for the oldest sedaDNA found to date, it was originally found in 2019 when it was excavated from the ocean floor in the Scotia Sea, north of Antarctica.

A team of archaeologists is making wild discoveries in a cave that was used to sacrifice more than one hundred people more than a thousand years ago.

A new study published in the International Journal of Osteoarchaeology on September 20 details the discovery of blue cotton fibers in the teeth of the humans that were sacrificed in the Midnight Terror Cave. The cave was initially discovered 15 years ago, and after a three-year excavation conducted by professors and students from California State University, it was determined that the Midnight Terror Cave harbored more than 10,000 bones from at least 118 people, with many of these individuals showing signs of inflicted trauma prior to their deaths.

The cave was found to be used as a burial/sacrificial site during the Maya Classic period that dates between 250 to 925 CE, with researchers believing the sacrifices were to the Maya rain god Chac. The recently published study delves into the dental health of the victims and focuses on the blue fibers that were found clinging to some of the victims' teeth.