Science, Space, & Robotics - Page 79

NASA's 55-pound CAPSTONE satellite that was recently launched from New Zealand on July 4 experienced a communications issue.

The space agency revealed the news via its blog, where it wrote on July 5 that the spacecraft was unable to communicate with the Deep Space Network while it was on its journey to the moon. The spacecraft is relatively small, but will provide very important data on the moon, which will be used by NASA researchers to inform decisions leading up to humans revisiting the lunar surface.

NASA provided an update on the spacecraft on July 5 and wrote that its health is in good shape and that it's been in partial communication with ground systems. From the partial contact, mission operators were able to determine the speed and position of CAPSTONE, but due to the choppy communication, the spacecraft's first maneuver had to be delayed.

A derecho has hit several states in the US, and the storm was so powerful it changed the color of the sky.

A derecho is a collection of powerful thunderstorms that are known to travel extremely far and fast, as well as cover an area as large as 100 miles across. South Dakota, Iowa, Nebraska, Minnesota, and Illinois all experienced a derecho on July 5, and the massive storm brought gale-force winds to several areas across the aforementioned states. Huron, South Dakota, recorded wind speeds of up to 90 mph, with Miner, S.D reporting wind speeds of 99 mph and softball-sized hail.

The American Meteorological Society will classify a storm as a derecho when it has caused damage either continuously or intermittently over a region of 400 miles, 60 miles wide. Notably, the National Weather Service adds that windspeed is also taken into account when a classification is being made, with meteorologists taking into account top wind speeds of 75 mph or more.

Bill Nelson, the Administrator of NASA, has been vocal about being wary of China's space program, including its activity regarding the Moon.

Nelson recently spoke with German newspaper Bild, stating "we must be very concerned that China is landing on the moon and saying: 'It's ours now and you stay out'," during an interview published on July 2nd, 2022. He went on to describe the Chinese space program as a military endeavor, and reiterated sentiments he has previously expressed about China's apparent penchant for stealing technology and more.

Nelson's remarks have drawn the ire of Beijing, with Zhao Lijian, a spokesman at the Chinese foreign ministry, describing them as a continuation of a "smear campaign against China's normal and reasonable outer space endeavors" by the United States. Lijian also said that "China firmly opposes such irresponsible remarks."

The International Space Station (ISS) and its crew have thus far kept the situation in Ukraine from interfering with their work and relationships.

Nevertheless, on Monday July 4th, 2022, just over four months out from Russia's invasion of Ukraine, new photographs from aboard the space station have been shared on Telegram by Roscosmos, Russia's state space corporation. Featured in the images are the cosmonauts Oleg Artemyev, Denis Matveyev, and Sergey Korsakov, holding the flags of the Luhansk People's Republic and the Donetsk People's Republic.

Both Luhansk and Donetsk are cities in Ukraine, within the Luhansk Oblast and Donetsk Oblast, respectively, and both are within the Donbas region in eastern Ukraine. However, pro-Russian separatists in the regions broke away from Ukraine to form the respective People's Republics in April 2014, creating quasi-states not recognized by the United Nations, which have been the site of ongoing fighting ever since, especially since the invasion of Ukraine began in February 2022.

CERN's Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is back up and running after a three year hiatus, operating at its highest power yet.

Now, the LHCb experiment at the LHC has observed three never-before-seen particles: a new type of pentaquark, and two new tetraquarks. Quarks are elementary particles that combine to make hadrons, the most common of which are protons and neutrons, found inside the nucleus of atoms. Six different kinds of quarks exist, the up, down, charm, strange, top, and bottom quarks, and the LHC has been able to observe new combinations of them in four (tetra-) and five (penta-) arrangements.

Protons and neutrons are made from a combination of three up and down quarks, however, exotic hadrons like the newly discovered tetraquarks and pentaquarks contain less common quarks. The new pentaquark contains a charm quark, a charm antiquark (the antimatter equivalent of a charm quark), an up, a down, and a strange quark, making it the first pentaquark observed to be made with a strange quark.

The results of the largest study of its kind have been presented at the 38th annual meeting of the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology (ESHRE).

The study analyzed 5335 intrauterine insemination (IUI) cycles performed for fertility treatments between 2004 and 2001 at the practice of Dr. Panagiotis Cherouveim from the Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School. The results show that cryopreserved sperm do not produce inferior outcomes for IUI treatments compared to fresh sperm.

Sperm are most commonly stored with cryopreservation, which involves a six-month quarantine period in which samples are screened for infections. Concerns regarding sperm viability after being thawed include potentially affected motility, structure, and DNA content. However, both fresh and frozen samples resulted in similar pregnancy rates, though the frozen samples had a marginally longer time-to-pregnancy, and minor differences were observed in a small subgroup receiving specific medications after more than one IUI cycle.

Swedish company Oumph! released its limited edition Human Meat Plant-Based Burger late last year for Halloween.

The company set out to create a plant-based meat patty that recreated the taste and texture of human meat for Halloween, to prove that they can make their plant-based meats taste like any other meat "you can ever imagine." Claiming to have never eaten human meat, Ankan "The Duck" Linden researched online to determine what texture and taste would be necessary to replicate human flesh.

Linden made the meat with soy protein, mushrooms, wheat protein, starch, and "some secret spicing." The resultant burger has since won a Silver Brand Experience and Activation Lion at the Cannes Lions Festival, among 1,919 other entries. The burger isn't listed on the Oumph! website, but it may resurface for Halloween later this year.

Researchers in Australia have made a breakthrough in increasing the efficiency and stability of solar windows.

Solar windows use semi-transparent solar cells to replace regular window glass, allowing light through while generating power, which could soon lead to powering massive structures like skyscrapers. Researchers from Monash University and the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) have created a new solar cell that converts power with 15.5% efficiency while letting 20.7% of light through.

This result has a lower efficiency than a previous demonstration of a solar window prototype by the same team in 2020, which had 17% power-conversion efficiency. However, that window had only 10% visible transmittance, making it much less viable. The team has now also developed a second prototype semi-transparent solar cell, with 4.1% power-conversion efficiency and 52.4% visible transmittance, providing a second solution to broaden potential real-world applications.

NASA's Perseverance rover landed in the Jezero Crater on Mars on February 18, 2021, and since then, it has been exploring the Red Planet.

Perseverance has been roaming around the Jezero Crater for many months now and has collected several samples throughout its journey. The rover is designed to carry 43 sample tubes, and has so far only collected a few. Eventually, NASA wants to bring the martian samples back to Earth for analysis under the best instruments possible. The task of getting the samples back to Earth is a difficult one, but the space agency is confident that they can pull it off and get 30 samples back to Earth sometime in the early 2030s.

The Philadelphia Inquirer contacted NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and presented a list of questions sourced from the public after a NASA presentation held in May. The questions were answered by Mars Sample Return scientists Michael Meyer and Lindsay Hays. Many of the questions that were answered were regarding the safety of the Mars samples and if NASA has considered testing the samples for life/microbes before returning them to Earth.

NASA is moving forward with its ambitions of taking humans back to the Moon with the launch of the CAPSTONE satellite.

The satellite was launched from New Zealand last week aboard Rocket Lab's Electron rocket, and for the six days after launch, the small 55-pound satellite was continuously increasing its altitude and speed. After gaining enough speed, the NASA satellite broke free of Earth's orbit and began its relatively slow journey to the Moon.

The space agency explains that the CAPSTONE satellite stands for Cislunar Autonomous Positioning System Technology Operations and Navigation Experiment, and after its four-month journey to the Moon (arriving in November), it will enter a never-before-flown orbit where it will fly within 1,000 miles of the Moon's North Pole, and 43,500 miles from the South Pole at its farthest orbital point. The CubeSat will stay in this elongated orbit for six and a half days to study dynamics.

A YouTuber has decided to take it upon himself to recreate the wheels on a bicycle, and the results are truly impressive.

The YouTube channel "The Q" posted a video around the end of last month titled "Just a Normal Bike Math: 0.5 x 2 = 1 Wheel", and the video shows an individual riding a bike, crashing into a curb, and destroying the front wheel. The bike is then quickly dismantled by the individual and put through a seemingly long process of improvements, where the frame of the bike was extended, the back wheel was cut in half, and customization was done to the chain's placement.

The YouTuber decided to cut the back wheel in half, placing one-half of the wheels where the typical back wheel would be and the other half behind it on the custom-made elongated frame. The rider is still able to use the bike as you would normally, as the video shows it successfully riding in a straight line at a cruising speed and going down curbs without any problem. Does this new design of bicycle replace the traditional whole-wheel design? Absolutely not, but it's fun to watch nonetheless.

Thousands of Americans are traveling around the country for Fourth of July celebrations, and right as travel is peaking, American Airlines has found a glitch in its scheduling system.

The news comes from CNBC, which reported that a glitch in American Airlines' scheduling system has resulted in more than 12,000 flights lacking a captain, first officer, or both. On Saturday, American Airlines announced that it would be suspending the scheduling service, but also stated to Fox News Digital that the glitch won't have any "operational impact".

American Airlines explained in a statement that pilots use a trading system for flights, and that the technical issue caused certain trading transactions to be processed when they shouldn't have been. Notably, American Airlines states that its engineers have already restored the "vast majority" of the trips that were affected by the glitch. This glitch that has affected thousands of flights comes at the peak of travel throughout the year, when flights are already regularly delayed and canceled. Airlines are also suffering from staffing problems.

Germany is building a large tower near the Spree river in Berlin, which will functionally resemble a large thermos when completed.

The tower was unveiled by German power provider Vattenfall on June 30th, 2022, which stands at 45 meters (147.6 feet) tall and can hold up to 56 million liters (14.8 million gallons) of hot water. Effectively acting as a large battery, the giant tank receives excess electricity from the grid produced by renewable energy sources like wind and solar. This energy is used to heat the water to almost boiling temperatures.

The facility will cost 50 million euros ($52 million) to complete and will have a thermal capacity of 200 Megawatts (MW). Its insulation will allow it to keep water hot for up to 13 hours and helps smooth out fluctuations in power availability from renewable energy sources during the day as the Sun disappears or wind levels drop. The giant thermos will be Europe's largest heat storage facility, larger even than an upcoming one planned for the Netherlands.

A study on the implant titled "Soft, bioresorbable coolers for reversible conduction block of peripheral nerves" has been published in the journal Science.

Researchers from Northwestern University have created a small, flexible, biocompatible device that can be implanted into a patient to provide pain relief as an alternative to painkilling medications like opioids, circumventing any problems arising from the highly addictive properties of such drugs. The device softly wraps around nerves and cools them, numbing them and preventing pain signals from being sent to the brain, and the patient can adjust it to provide more or less relief with an external pump.

The implant is water-soluble and bioresorbable, meaning when it is no longer needed, the body can absorb it, bypassing the need for it to be extracted with surgery. It contains perfluoropentane, a liquid coolant it releases from one small channel to mix in a shared chamber with nitrogen gas from a second channel. The mixing causes the perfluoropentane to evaporate, cooling the nearby nerve, while an integrated temperature sensor protects against tissue damage by ensuring the nerve doesn't get too cold.

The Astrophysics Stratospheric Telescope for High Spectral Resolution Observations at Submillimeter-wavelength (ASTHROS) mission will launch no earlier than December 2023.

The mission is managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Southern California and will use a balloon larger than a football field to carry the ASTHROS mission to the stratosphere at an altitude of 130,000 feet (~40,000 meters) over Antarctica. ASTHROS will study star formation, particularly a phenomenon that stops them from forming in some galaxies, over about four weeks.

The telescope uses an 8.2-foot (2.5 meters) primary mirror, which gathers light into the telescope, and is the tied for the largest mirror to ever fly with a high-altitude balloon. Mirrors for telescopes operating on Earth and in space have key differences in their construction, but the high-altitude setting provided challenges for constructing ASTHROS' mirror. It had to be made light enough to be carried by the balloon while being strong enough to resist Earth's gravity from deforming its perfect shape by more than roughly 0.0001 inches (2.5 micrometers).

A study on birds and wildfires titled "Wildland fires ignited by avian electrocutions" has been published in the journal Wildlife Society Bulletin.

Humans, lightning, and even the Sun on particularly hot days are common causes of wildfires. However, birds that enjoy perching on power lines can sometimes bridge two wires or form a connection to the ground, resulting in a potentially fiery death from electrocution.

Researchers from EDM International, a Colorado-based engineering consultancy firm, documented fires occurring between 2014 and 2018 using Google Alerts, narrowing down the results by filtering out reports that didn't have evidence of a bird being the cause. Ultimately, they identified 44 individual wildfires sparked by birds in regions prone to them due to droughts and other environmental factors.

A new report has revealed that the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has granted SpaceX approval for an expansion of its Starlink satellite internet service.

CNN has reported that the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has approved SpaceX for bringing Starlink internet to trains, ships, and other vehicles such as RVs and planes. Commercial airlines and private jets currently use ground-based cell towers and satellites for internet connections. However, the distance between the plane and the cell tower or satellite is extreme, sometimes reaching 22,000 miles (satellite). This extreme distance can cause inconsistent connection/speed.

Switching to Starlink would reduce the distance between the plane and the satellite, giving a more stable internet connection per the proximity of the satellites. SpaceX has launched Starlink satellites into lower-Earth orbit, which are only a few hundred miles from the surface of Earth. Having the satellites closer to the ground gives Starlink a lower latency internet connection, according to SpaceX. Notably, Hawaiian Airlines has already signed a deal with SpaceX back in April to implement Starlink services to its selection of jets.

A study on astronaut bone loss titled "Incomplete recovery of bone strength and trabecular microarchitecture at the distal tibia 1 year after return from long duration spaceflight" has been published in the journal Scientific Reports.

Researchers studied seventeen international astronauts, comprising fourteen males and three females, before they went to space, upon returning to Earth, and at six and twelve-month intervals following their return. They scanned the astronauts' tibia (shinbone) and radius (forearm) to determine their resistance to fracturing, known as the failure load, bone mineral content, and thickness.

Overall, the average result for 16 of the astronauts was the incomplete recovery of their shinbones from bone loss sustained in space after one year back on Earth. However, the forearm did recover completely. The average pre-flight shinbone failure load was 10,579 newtons of force, which dropped by 152 newtons to 10,427 newtons, while bone mineral density reduced by 4.5 milligrams per cubic centimeter from 326.8 mg/cm³ pre-flight.

A study on the bacteria titled "Biosynthesis of polycyclopropanated high energy biofuels" has been published in the journal Joule.

Researchers from the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory have found a way to produce jet fuel by harvesting a specific molecule created by streptomyces, a common bacteria found in soil. Streptomyces synthesize an energy-rich carbon molecule called Jawsamycin, named after the movie 'Jaws,' that is created by the bacteria as it metabolizes glucose.

Any molecule which requires a large amount of energy to produce can subsequently be broken up to release that energy. Jawsamycin is a large molecule containing multiple triangular cyclopropane groups, which require much more energy to hold together than open carbon chains. The researchers hope to scale up their process for producing Jawsamycin to avoid waiting millions of years for more fossil fuels to launch rockets with, opting for a more sustainable alternative.

NASA is gearing up for science operations to begin on the almost-ready James Webb Space Telescope that launched from Earth on Christmas day, 2021.

The $10 billion observatory has been in development since 2004 has been plagued with numerous issues, but the task was finally completed and Webb launched from Earth and sent a million miles away into a specific orbit around the Sun. The observatory is outfitted with next-generation instruments that officials says will "unfold the universe" by allowing researchers to see far further back in time than what was previously possible.

Not only will Webb be able to see further than any space telescope before it, NASA has also equipped it with planet-examining instruments that are primarily designed to observe exoplanets and identify their atmosphere's.