Science, Space, & Robotics - Page 85

NASA has captured several astronauts enjoying a pizza party with some not-so-good-looking homemade pizzas 250 miles above Earth.

The space agency has posted the images to its International Space Station Laboratory Twitter account and wrote that astronauts aboard the space station recently enjoyed a pizza party in space. The ISS National Lab Twitter account explained that the astronauts cooked their own pizzas with a selection of very few ingredients that can be seen in one of the images.

As pointed out by Futurism, the pizzas seen in the images certainly don't look very appetizing, but considering the ISS's location 250 miles above Earth and the fact that astronauts aboard the station aren't privy to luxurious foods, it seems, at least from the images, that the pizzas were thoroughly enjoyed despite their appearance. For those wondering if these are the first pizza's ever eaten in space, they aren't, as Pizza Hut delivered a six-inch pizza to Russian cosmonaut Yuri Usachov in 2001.

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has published a new report that concentrates on consumer losses throughout 2021.

The FTC took to its official Twitter account to write that it found that more than $1 billion was lost to cryptocurrency scams throughout 2021 and that cryptocurrency is fast becoming the go-to place for scammers. The commission's analysis found that one out of every four dollars reported lost via fraud was paid in cryptocurrency, with the FTC's latest Consumer Protection Data Spot indicating that majority of losses were in "cryptocurrency investment opportunities".

The commission explained that after cryptocurrency investment schemes, the second highest reported loss was "romance scams" that involved a love interest and then impersonations of a business or government official. The FTC found that nearly half of all consumers that reported a cryptocurrency-related scam said that the scam began on social media, and that individuals aged between 20 and 49 were "more than three times as likely as older age groups to have reported losing money to a cryptocurrency scam."

Many engineers around the world are developing clean energy solutions in an attempt to curb the ever-growing problem of fossil fuel use contributing to global warming.

Now, Bloomberg reports that engineers in Japan have successfully tested a turbine that is capable of generating electricity using ocean currents. Reports indicate that the heavy machinery company IHI Corp has tested a prototype called Kairyu, which weighs approximately 330-tons and consists of two counter-rotating turbine fans that are connected to a large fuselage that allows it to remain floating.

Furthermore, the large prototype is also anchored to the seafloor, preventing it from moving out of its designated location. IHI Corp tested the prototype earlier this year and was able to generate 100 kilowatts of electricity, and if the company's ambitions line up with reality, IHI Corp believes it can achieve two megawatts with future testing. Notably, IHI Corp has stated that commercial operations will begin sometime in 2030/s.

Jeff Bezos' space company Blue Origin has successfully transported six more space-fairing individuals 60 miles above Earth's surface.

The launch took place over the weekend, and Blue Origin's New Shepard rocket, which has been reported as somewhat phallic-shaped, carried a crew of six 60 miles above the surface of the Earth, passing the Karman line and giving the passengers an unparalleled view of the Earth. Notably, the entire launch only lasts 11 minutes, counting from the moment of liftoff until the capsule containing the passengers touches back down to Earth.

Blue Origin took to its social media accounts to share the news of its now fifth crewed mission and 21st overall launch. The company touted that its engine inside the New Shepard rocket is powered by "clean-burning liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen," which produces water vapor as a bi-product. Blue Origin makes a point of its engine producing water vapor, as typical rocket fuels produce large amounts of CO2, which environmentalists say contributes to the ever-growing problem of global warming.

Some years ago, Elon Musk laid out his ambitious plan to get humans on Mars and eventually colonize the Red Planet.

To achieve this monumental task, Musk has poured millions of dollars into research and development of Starship, a rocket that is made up of two parts - the Super Heavy booster and the Starship spacecraft. The lower stage, or the booster, measures in at an astonishing height of 230 feet, and when paired with the Starship spacecraft, which is 164 feet tall, it creates the world's largest rocket at a ridiculous 394 feet.

The sheer size of Starship is hard to grasp, but Musk is determined to reach the goal SpaceX has set out to achieve. In response to a question asking Musk how he plans on getting large quantities of humans to the Red Planet, Musk said that he would construct 1,000+ Starships and essentially create a "very modern Noah's Ark/s". So, where are we currently in Musk's plan?

NASA recently selected the two companies it would be sourcing new spacesuits from for its upcoming missions.

The two companies selected by NASA are Axiom Space and Collins Aerospace, which when announced was not accompanied by any design reveals. However, Jeff Foust from SpaceNews has since shared a render and real-life image of Collins Aerospace's upcoming suit being worn and tested.

The suits are expected to be finalized by 2025 in preparation for NASA's Artemis III mission, which will see astronauts return to the moon for the first time since Apollo 17 in December 1972. NASA astronauts currently use spacesuits that were designed about 45 years ago for use in the Space Shuttle program.

A study on the diseases risks titled "A multi-population phenome-wide association study of genetically-predicted height in the Million Veteran Program" has been published in the journal PLOS Genetics.

International researchers have determined that being taller is associated with a higher risk of irregular heartbeats, varicose veins, skin and bone infections, and nerve damage in one's extremities (peripheral neuropathy). They also found that the higher your predicted height as determined by your genetics, the lower your risk of coronary heart disease, but the higher your blood pressure and cholesterol are.

The data used by the research team comes from the VA Million Veteran Program, which includes health and genetic information from over 200,000 white adults and over 50,000 black adults. This allowed them to remove confounding factors and look directly at the connections between over 1,000 conditions and traits to conclude that height is a "previously unrecognized risk factor for several common conditions in adults."

The Juno spacecraft orbiting Jupiter completed its 41st close flyby of Jupiter on April 9th, 2022.

Citizen scientist Andrea Luck used raw image data from the JunoCam instrument aboard the spacecraft to create a new animated sequence, showing the perspective one would experience flying around the gas giant. Jupiter is about 87,000 miles (140,000 kilometers) in diameter, making it the solar system's largest planet, and the closest Juno came to it on April 9th was 2,050 miles (3,300 kilometers) above its clouds.

At that point, Juno was traveling approximately 131,000 miles (210,000 kilometers) per hour, about five times faster than the Apollo missions when they left Earth, bound for the Moon. Juno also came ten times closer to Jupiter than any of the satellites in geosynchronous orbit around Earth are found.

A study on the potential origin of life titled "Catalytic Synthesis of Polyribonucleic Acid on Prebiotic Rock Glasses" has been published in the journal PLOS Genetics.

Researchers from the Foundation for Applied Molecular Evolution have announced a new finding, showing that ribonucleic acid (RNA) can spontaneously form on basalt lava glass. RNA is a molecule, similar to DNA, that constitutes a large amount of the genetic material on Earth, and basaltic glass was abundant on Earth 4.35 billion years ago.

HBO has released a new trailer revealing an upcoming documentary titled "Chernobyl: The Lost Tapes."

The Chernobyl nuclear disaster occurred at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine on April 26th, 1986, about 81 miles (130 kilometers) north of Kyiv, the capital city of Ukraine. It was the worst nuclear accident in history, and a massive amount of time and work was required to clean up the aftermath, as shown in HBO's previous work involving the disaster, the 2019 Chernobyl miniseries.

The documentary will include "never before seen" footage following workers involved in the clean-up effort and more. The trailer shows footage from atop the buildings at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant and from inside medical facilities at the time, showing the health effects people were suffering from due to radiation. Footage from courtrooms containing officials involved in the disaster is also shown, and civil unrest in the streets of the Soviet Union, which Ukraine was a part of at the time.

NASA's Perseverance Mars rover spotted a dust devil swirling across the surface of the Jezero Crater on July 20th, 2021.

On this date, the rover was on the 148th Martian day, or sol, of its mission. It took photos of the dust devil using its Navigation Camera, about 15 seconds apart, to produce this animation. According to NASA, the GIF has been enhanced to "show maximal detail," at the expense of some of the colors being distorted.

The Navigation Cameras, or Navcams, are the eyes of the rover, and primarily aid in autonomous navigation. They are mounted on the rover's mast, separated by about 16.5 inches (42 centimeters). They comprise two of nine engineering cameras, which along with seven science cameras, and seven entry, descent and landing cameras, make up the 23 total cameras onboard the Perseverance rover.

Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn will all be visible in the sky to the naked eye throughout June.

Two or three planets often appear close together in the sky in what's known as a conjunction. However, four is less common, and even less so is the appearance of five simultaneously. Notably, the five planets will also be arranged in the sky in order of their distance from the Sun. All five planets were last visible together in sequence in December 2004.

Binoculars are recommended to see Mercury at the beginning of the month as it will be hard to spot. However, as the month goes on, Mercury will climb higher in the sky and appear brighter. Sky & Telescope magazine says to take particular note of the mornings of June 3rd and 4th, where the planets will span only 91° of separation, and June 24th, when the Moon will be positioned neatly between Venus and Mars, and the planets will span 107° of separation.

3DBio Therapeutics has created a first-of-its-kind 3D-bioprinted ear using a patient's cells.

Surgery was performed to transplant the 3D bioimplant as part of an early-stage clinical trial to evaluate the safety and effectiveness of the procedure. The treatment has the potential to help patients with microtia, a congenital ear deformity where the external ear doesn't properly develop. It is hoped that this technology may one day replace the current treatment, which grafts cartilage from a patient's ribs or uses synthetic material to reconstruct the outer ear.

Tesla had a huge AI Day last year, unveiling a human being dressed in a robot costume -- but then said the company is working on a prototype Tesla Bot -- a humanoid robot for the future.

The last Tesla AI Day was on August 19, 2021 but now SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk has tweeted that the upcoming AI Day has been delayed, and will take place on September 30 instead. But in bigger news, Musk continue the tweet teasing that "we may have an Optimus prototype working by then". He replied to another tweet, saying that Tesla AI Day #2 will be "epic".

Elon has been hyping up the Optimus humanoid robot, saying that the Tesla Bot would debut in 2023 and would eventually be "worth more than the car business"... you know, that little car company Elon runs on the side: Tesla Motors.

A study on the asteroid defense system titled "Apophis Planetary Defense Campaign" has been published in The Planetary Science Journal.

The results of an exercise conducted last year by the International Asteroid Warning Network (IAWN) and NASA's Planetary Defense Coordination Office (PDCO) have now been published in which researchers simulated an encounter with a potentially destructive asteroid. A large, known asteroid, known as Apophis, was removed from an existing monitoring database, and researchers tested the systems to ensure they could detect the "new" hazardous object, ensuring planetary readiness for such a calamity.

Apophis was rediscovered during the exercise, and its trajectory and chances of hitting Earth were continually recalculated to end up ruling out the possibility of impact. When Apophis was originally discovered in 2004, it was thought to have a significant chance of hitting Earth by 2029 at the earliest. However, it's now been assessed not to pose a collision threat for at least 100 years.

An algorithm designed to detect asteroids is spotting many space rocks that have gone unnoticed by astronomers.

NASA has previously stated that there are no Earth-destroying asteroids on track to collide with our planet for at least the next 100 years, and with that being said, the agency is still putting exponential amounts of effort into scanning for any potentially dangerous objects while also developing planetary defense capabilities such as the DART mission. Former NASA astronaut Dr. Lu is aiding the agency's efforts and has developed an algorithm that can identify asteroids in large swaths of data accumulated by astronomers.

The algorithm is named Tracklet-less Heliocentric Orbit Recovery, or THOR. The algorithm is designed to take a large dataset that contains many points of light, and with that dataset, THOR will identify, track, a predict orbits of the objects.

A paper on the new printing method titled "Direct sound printing" has been published in the journal Nature Communications.

Researchers from Concordia University have created a new platform technology called direct sound printing (DSP), which uses soundwaves to create three-dimensional objects, compared to the current photo (light)- or thermo (heat)-activated methods. Focused ultrasonic waves allow users to produce complex geometries that are not otherwise capable.

A study on the new printing method titled "Lift Energy Storage Technology: A solution for decentralized urban energy storage" has been published in the journal Energy.

Researchers from the International Institute of Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) in Vienna, Austria, have devised a new energy storage concept called the Lift Energy Storage Technology (LEST) to turn tall urban buildings into batteries. This concept would support renewable energy technologies and help decentralize energy availability.

The system stores energy by moving high-density loads such as wet sand containers in and out of elevators installed in tall buildings with regenerative braking. Energy would be expended to carry these loads to the top of the building, while bringing them back down would release that energy.

Elon Musk explained some of the specifications and capabilities of the next generation of Starlink satellites during a tour of Starbase with Tim Dodd from the Everyday Astronaut YouTube channel.

Musk revealed that SpaceX has already developed at least one working prototype Starlink Gen 2 satellite, which is currently at the Starbase facility in Texas, and discusses details in the above video from the 9:24 mark. He stressed that Starship needs to get to orbit and that it will be "the only thing that can carry the Starlink 2 satellites."

Musk explained that Starlink Gen 2 satellites are 7 meters long (23 feet), weigh about 1.25 tons (2756 pounds), and "are almost an order of magnitude more capable than Starlink 1" in terms of how much useful data they can handle. For comparison, Starlink 1 satellites only weigh about 260 kilograms, almost 21% as much as Starlink 2 will.

A team of researchers have penned a study recently published in the journal Nature that details the discovery of an ancient lost city within the Amazon rainforest.

The scientists behind the study used LiDAR technology, which stands for Light Detection and Ranging, and is a remote-sensing technology that uses a laser beam to get information about surrounding objects. The team used the LiDAR technology to scan a portion of the Amazon and found beneath the thick canopy the remains of a civilization. The researchers believe the small city was operated by the Casarabe Culture (500-1400 C.E.) and features causeways, urban centers, and platform and pyramid architecture.

Notably, the data showed that some of these causeways were raised and connected to scattered suburban-like settlements, which were separated by some kind of water distribution system that featured canals and reservoirs. Discoveries such as these pave the way for researchers to argue that the Amazon rainforest was at one stage heavily populated and urbanized, which is contrary to the recorded history of the region.