Science, Space, & Robotics - Page 86

Instagram has taken to its blog to announce a rollout of AMBER Alerts, which are new notifications for users that will appear in the feed.

Emily Vacher, the Director of Trust and Safety at Instagram's parent company, Meta, explained in the blog post that the company will be launching AMBER Alerts on Instagram to help find missing children throughout users' local areas. Notably, Instagram writes that the feature was developed in partnership with several organizations such as the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC) in the US, the International Centre for Missing & Exploited Children, the National Crime Agency in the UK, the Attorney General's Office in Mexico and more.

Furthermore, the new feature will be rolled out on June 1 in the US and will be fully available in 25 different countries in the coming weeks. The AMBER Alert that will be displayed in the Instagram feed will showcase images of the child, a description, the location of the child's abduction, and any other relevant information. Additionally, Instagram users will be able to share the AMBER Alert with friends and also contact authorities if they have any information.

NASA is currently preparing to explore the moon, and to do that, the space agency will need brand new spacesuits for its valiant astronauts.

The space agency has revealed the two companies that have been selected to construct next-generation spacesuits designed for spacewalks outside of the International Space Station (ISS) and exploring the surface of the moon. NASA has selected Axiom Space and Collins Aerospace, and have provided the companies with technical and safety standards that will need to be taken into account before any construction commences, as well as a requirement for the suits to be built around the new "xEMU" equipment (Exploration Extravehicular Mobility Unit).

Currently, NASA astronauts are using spacesuits that were designed approximately 45 years ago for the Space Shuttle program, and according to the agency, the new suits are expected to be ready sometime before 2025. Before being widely manufactured, the new spacesuits will first be tested by astronauts aboard the ISS and, if proven useful, will be what astronauts that explore the surface of the moon will be wearing in the years to come.

Many locals in the town of Broome, located in Western Australia, believed they were witnessing a meteor shower, but it turned out to be something else entirely.

ABC confirmed reports from many residents throughout the town that during the early hours of Monday morning, several loud sonic booms were heard/felt at around 12:30 am on Monday. Viewers that rushed outside saw space debris breaking up and streaking across the night. Some people believed what they were seeing was missiles or flares, but according to Harvard astrophysicist Jonathan McDowell, who spoke to ABC, the light show that was seen by a few wasn't meteors, flares, or missiles, but a rocket.

The Harvard astrophysicist said that the rocket was a piece of a Chinese Long March 3 rocket that was launched in July last year. The rocket stage departed Earth's orbit and reentered the planet's atmosphere, where it eventually broke up and disintegrated in a fireball. "It [the rocket] launched a communications satellite called Tian Lian, which is actually a relay satellite that the Chinese astronauts on the Chinese space station use," said McDowell.

A new study published in the journal Neuroscience details a team of researchers accidentally creating violent hamsters.

The team of researchers writes in their study that they used CRISPR gene editing technology to remove a receptor, Avpr1as, for a naturally occurring hormone called vasopressin. The gene and the hormone are designed to regulate levels of teamwork and reduce social barriers. The team was able to determine that the two hamsters the test was performed on were without the gene receptor and the hormone by performing full scans on the subjects' brains.

The researchers expected that the removal of the gene/hormone would mean the hamsters wouldn't regulate their kindness towards each other and become extremely friendly, docile, and basically non-violent. Unfortunately, the polar opposite happened as both of the hamsters exhibited extreme communication with each other, became very territorial, and showed high levels of aggression toward hamsters of the same sex.

A study on the illusion titled "The Eye Pupil Adjusts to Illusorily Expanding Holes" has been published in the journal Frontiers in Human Neuroscience.

For 86% of people, looking at the central black hole in the above image causes it to appear to expand, as if you were moving into a darker environment. Researchers use illusions such as these in scientific settings to probe how the visual system works. The new "expanding hole" illusion tricks the brain into dilating our pupils to let in more light as if we are really moving into a darker environment and need to let more light into our eyes.

NASA has recently debuted a new video of its helicopter making a record flight across the Red Planet's surface.

NASA has taken to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory YouTube channel to post a video of the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter making its 25th flight. The flight occurred on April 8, 2022, and marked the longest and fastest flight Ingenuity has taken yet, covering an astonishing 2,310 feet at a max speed of 12 mph. Notably, the above video showcases sped-up footage of the 161.3-second flight, where the helicopter first reaches an altitude of 33 feet before beginning its flight.

Furthermore, NASA explains that once Ingenuity reaches its designated altitude, it turns southwest and begins to increase its speed. Checking NASA's flight logs on its website, we can see that Ingenuity has since taken many three more flights, all of which weren't as fast or as far as the flight that occurred on April 8. It should be noted that NASA only expected Ingenuity to fly a total of five times, as the helicopter was merely a technology demonstration.

The French inventor of the jetpack has unfortunately suffered from a horrible crash landing after falling 50 feet during a demonstration.

French inventor Franky Zapata was demonstrating a new jet-powered hoverboard when the demonstration took a turn for the worst as Zapata lost control of the device and began to climb in altitude while spinning uncontrollably. The crash occurred over a Lake Biscarosse, located on the west coast of France, and according to reports from BBC, Zapata is alive and recovering from the fall in hospital.

The event was captured by onlookers and was quickly posted to Twitter, where the video/s gained traction. Above, you can see Zapata flying what seems to be Zapata's company's "Flyboard Air", a device capable of reaching speeds of 87 mph, and, according to the company's website, "this machine can lose one engine and still fly. If it loses two engines, the pilot will perform a controlled landing."

Reports indicate that a device has been found at a Chinese space launch that is used to jam communication signals.

The Chinese newspaper named Beijing Daily has reported that researchers from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center located in the Gobi Desert, Inner Mongolia, have found a strange device that was causing "abnormal" interference with communications. Researchers at the launch site detected the communications interference and began looking for the device, which turned out to be a rather small frequency transmitter that only had a range of about 32 feet.

The size of the device and the proximity of the frequency it transmitted have caused researchers and authorities to speculate if the device was placed there intentionally in an attempt to sabotage China's upcoming launch where the space agency will send three astronauts to its newly constructed space station. However, authorities have yet to confirm if the device's placement was intentional or how it arrived where it was found. Furthermore, China's space agency has stated that it will go ahead with the launch.

A study on the new carbon capture method titled "Direct Air Capture of CO₂ Using a Liquid Amine-Solid Carbamic Acid Phase-Separation System Using Diamines Bearing an Aminocyclohexyl Group" has been published in the journal ACS Environmental Au.

Researchers from the Tokyo Metropolitan University have developed a new direct air capture (DAC) system for removing carbon dioxide (CO₂) from the atmosphere. The system passes atmospheric air with relatively low concentrations of CO₂ through an aqueous solution of isophorone diamine (IPDA), causing the carbon dioxide to react rapidly and create a solid product.

The solution can also be mildly heated to release the CO₂, allowing it to be collected and concentrated for storage or other applications. Heating the system to release the CO₂ enables it to be reused to capture more CO₂. The IPDA solution can capture 99% of the CO₂ in air and turn it into a solid carbamic acid precipitate.

A paper discussing potential alien civilizations titled "Estimating the prevalence of malicious extraterrestrial civilizations" has been uploaded to the pre-print server arXiv.

The paper is a thought experiment written by Alberto Caballero from the University of Vigo in Spain, who authored a recent paper on the origin of the famous Wow! signal, published in the International Journal of Astrobiology. The paper estimates that in our galaxy, the Milky Way, there are potentially about four "malicious extraterrestrial civilizations."

Caballero used data on how many external invasions have occurred over the last 50 years on Earth, meaning when one country invades another. Extrapolating this data to a galactic scale and pairing it with the estimation of as many as 15,785 civilizations that may inhabit the Milky Way allowed Caballero to determine that about 4.42 alien civilizations could be malevolent towards us. However, only 0.22 civilizations are capable of interstellar travel.

Iraq is one of the most climate-change-affected countries globally, suffering from extreme droughts for months and dropping water levels in the region.

The recently emerged settlement dates back to the Bronze Age and is a 3,400-year-old city once located along the Tigris River. Water levels of the Mosul reservoir have dropped enough to reveal the city, which is believed to have been an important settlement in the Mitanni Empire between approximately 1550 BC and 1350 BC.

Since December, water has been diverted from the Mosul reservoir to preserve crops suffering during the drought. Now, archaeologists are tasked with excavating and documenting as much of the city as possible before the water levels rise and submerge it once more.

The new discovery increases China's estimated total uranium reserve to two million tonnes, an amount close to that of Australia, one of the world's most uranium-rich countries.

The China National Nuclear Corporation (CNNC) found the industrial-grade uranium deposits at a depth of 3,000 meters (9843 feet), about six times deeper than most of the country's uranium mines. The majority of the country's uranium mines are typically small and have poorer ore quality, and the new mine makes a "major breakthrough" according to the CNNC.

Over 70 percent of China's uranium supply comes from other countries like Kazakhstan, Canada, and Australia, which China uses to expand its nuclear power supply rapidly. China builds about seven to eight new reactors each year, meaning its nuclear power supply is growing faster than any other country's.

The moon dust was collected by Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin from the moon in 1969.

Scientists at the time didn't know as much about the moon as we do now and were therefore concerned about the possibility of the astronauts bringing home some form of life that could threaten life on Earth. Thus, the crew, their spacecraft, and everything else that returned from the moon to Earth were quarantined for 21 days.

The Apollo 11 mission brought back 47.5 pounds (21.5 kilograms) of lunar rocks and dust to Earth. About ten percent of the matter was allocated for tests involving exposing animals to it to test how life on Earth might react to lunar material, including fish, mice, cockroaches, and more.

A study on the Super-Earth titled "A Super-Earth Orbiting Near the Inner Edge of the Habitable Zone around the M4.5-dwarf Ross 508" has been accepted for publication in the journal Publications of the Astronomical Society of Japan.

Ross 508 is a faint red dwarf star located only 36.5 light-years from Earth. Astronomers have now found an exoplanet, named Ross 508 b, orbiting the star with a mass four times that of Earth's. The planet exists in the 'habitable zone' of its host star, where the temperature allows for the formation of liquid water on a planet's surface.

However, the habitable zone is not the only factor determining a planet's ability to support life as we know it. For instance, Mars falls within our Sun's habitable zone but cannot readily sustain life. Ross 508 b is likely to be terrestrial instead of a gas giant, given astronomer's understanding of planetary masses.

Astroforge has received $13 million in funding after a new seed funding round led by Initialized Capital.

The Y Combinator asteroid-mining startup is based out of California, and was only founded in January 2022 with the only goal of taking "asteroid mining out of the realm of sci-fi into the realm of reality," according to AstroForge cofounder and CEO Matt Gialich.

The $13 million in funding secured will finance Astroforge's first two missions, the first of which will be a demonstration flight currently booked for a rideshare mission about a SpaceX Falcon 9 next year. Astroforge has also partnered with OrbAstro to create the first satellite for its initial demonstration flight and already has its eye on a collection of candidate asteroids to visit.

May 25th saw the launch of the SpaceX's Transporter-5 mission from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station (CCSFS), at 18:35 GMT.

The first stage of the Falcon 9 used in the mission returned to land intact after delivering the Crypto-1 satellite to low Earth orbit (LEO) for Cryptosat, a U.S. satellite startup. The satellite is about the size of a coffee mug, assembled with readily available parts, and was launched alongside 58 other spacecraft, including "CubeSats, microsats, non-deploying hosted payloads, and orbital transfer vehicles."

Up in orbit, the satellite is unreachable by bad actors to tamper with, but also more difficult to work with in case something goes wrong compared to something on Earth where "you just open a terminal and debug it," as noted by Cryptosat's co-founder Yan Michalevsky. Crypto-1 will enable secure cryptography for the blockchain in space and potentially facilitate the deployment of an entire space-based blockchain.

Tim Dodd from the YouTube account Everyday Astronaut has uploaded a continuation of his tour around Starbase with Elon Musk.

Musk accompanied Dodd on a tour throughout SpaceX's launch site in South Texas, known as Starbase. In the first part of his tour, Musk takes him through the High Bay, where Starship prototypes are assembled, and through the currently under construction MegaBay.

In the latest video, Dodd and Musk continue making their way through the facility and head up SpaceX's Orbital Launch Tower, also known as Mechazilla. The tower will support the launching and landing of the Starship spacecraft, which SpaceX plans to send to Mars, and is designed to release and catch the spacecraft with two large arms. The tower stands 469 feet (143 meters) tall, about 100 feet (30.4 meters) taller than the Statue of Liberty.

Russian cosmonaut Sergei Korsakov has shared a remarkable photo from his view through one of the International Space Station (ISS) windows.

The picture shows ice crystals forming in a pattern very reminiscent of the moon on the inside of a window in the space station, though the real moon is nowhere to be seen in the photo. Beneath the formation is an out-of-focus Earth, peeking into the shot.

After uploading the original photo to Twitter and Telegram, Korsakov posted a follow-up photo the next day. Korsakov's accompanying caption said, "the adventures of the frosty space pattern continue!" and noted that though "the frost has melted, but the condensation pattern remains."

A study on the new 3D-printed plant materials titled "Physical, mechanical, and microstructural characterization of novel, 3D-printed, tunable, lab-grown plant materials generated from Zinnia elegans cell cultures" has been published in the journal Materials Today.

Researchers from MIT have developed a method of generating "wood-like plant material" in a laboratory as a more environmentally friendly means of acquiring wood-like material than cutting down trees. Currently, about 10 million hectares of forest are lost to deforestation, an area roughly equivalent to the size of Iceland. Some scientists predict that if deforestation continues at the same rate, in 100 to 200 years, there will be no forests left in the world.

A study published by scientists in China's peer-reviewed Modern Defense Technology journal outlines recommendations for the nation's anti-satellite capabilities.

The researchers suggest in the paper that in the event of a war, the Chinese military needs the ability to neutralize or destroy SpaceX's Starlink satellite network. The satellites could pose a potential threat to China's national security in such a scenario. Thus, the nation would need to develop an advanced surveillance system to track every Starlink satellite.

Over two thousand Starlink satellites are already in orbit, and with the ability to continue operating despite losses, Starlink is relatively resistant to complete destruction. China has already developed various anti-satellite technologies involving microwaves, lasers, nanosats launched to target bigger satellites, and cyber weapons.