Science, Space, & Robotics - Page 92

Russian cosmonaut Alexander Skvortsov was interviewed by Russian news outlet Moskovskii Komsomolets to explain his retirement.

Skvortsov explained that a culmination of factors has led to his decision to retire from the space program, such as his age, and that there isn't a lot of interesting work to keep him busy on the International Space Station (ISS). Therefore, continuing to work aboard the space station would see him working alongside American astronauts, which he has "no proper motivation" to do.

Skvortsov has said that he is fit to fly as commander of Expedition 70 to the ISS; however, approaching his 56th birthday, he said, "I do not want to celebrate my 60th anniversary in orbit. We must stop in time." According to Moskovskii Komsomolets, it is possible that cosmonaut Alexei Ovchinin will take Skvortsov's place as commander of Expedition 70.

Boeing's Starliner has had another worrying hiccup on its final stretch to launch.

The Starliner spacecraft is making its way to the Space Launch Complex 41 (SLC-41) at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station (CCSFS) in Cape Canaveral, Florida, for its second attempt at launching to the International Space Station (ISS). However, in an awkward turn of events, a protective window cover fell off the spacecraft as it made its way there.

Boeing confirmed to William Harwood of CBS that a window cover did indeed fall off, but there is no problem with the spacecraft, and its second unpiloted Orbital Flight Test (OFT-2) is still set to go ahead. OFT-2 is planned to launch at 22:54 UTC on May 19th with docking at the ISS expected for around 11:07 UTC the next day.

US lawmakers are receiving secret briefings on the progress the US military is making in uncovering the origins of mysterious, highly advanced aircraft violating protected airspace.

According to a new report from Politico, members of the Senate Intelligence and Armed Service committees have received classified reports showing the progress the Pentagon and other agencies have made on investigating UFOs reports. The news comes from three people that have direct knowledge of the situation, according to Politico.

An aide of Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, who is a member of both the Senate Intelligence and Armed Services Committee, said under anonymity that Gillibrand "believes that the DoD needs to take this issue much more seriously and get in motion. They have had ample time to implement these important provisions, and they need to show us that they are prepared to address this issue in the long-term."

On April 27th, 2022, a fireball into the Earth's atmosphere over southern Mississippi and caused a sonic boom that was heard by dozens.

NASA confirmed the existence of a space rock estimated to be approximately a foot in diameter and entered Earth's atmosphere about 54 miles above the Mississippi River near the town of Alcorn. The space rock was estimated to be traveling at around 55,000 miles per hour, and throughout its journey, it began disintegrating with fragments of it breaking off before it finally exploded.

Previously, NASA estimated that as the meteor heated up, it generated the same amount of energy as 3 tons of TNT. Furthermore, NASA said that this generation of energy created shock waves that propagated to the ground and produced sonic booms/vibrations that were felt by many.

NASA has recorded the Sun releasing a powerful solar flare that officials have categorized as the most intense class of solar flare.

NASA has taken to its blog to detail a strong solar flare that occurred on May 3rd, 2022. the flare happened at 9:25 a.m. EDT and was captured by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory, which constantly watches the Sun for any events such as these. As explained by the space agency, solar flares are strong, powerful bursts of energy that can certainly have an impact on Earth, depending on the intensity.

Solar flares can impact radio communications, electric power grids, and GPS satellites. Additionally, flares and coronal mass ejections from the Sun can also pose a danger to spacecrafts and astronauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS). Notably, officials at NOAA's Space Weather Prediction Center said the flare that was recorded on May 3rd was classified as an x-class flare, the most intense categorization for a solar flare.

NASA is planning on using the Moon as a launchpad to go to Mars and will be setting up a temporary presence on the surface of the Moon.

In a recent interview with NASA associate administrator Bob Cabana, the space agency discussed the process of landing on the surface of the Moon while maintaining the goal of eventually reaching Mars. Cabana was asked what a "sustainable" presence on the Moon looks like and replied that the goal isn't necessarily about "permanently staying there with a specific set of people for a long period of time."

"We don't want to get stuck on the Moon. We wanna learn what we need to know in order to be able to move onto Mars," added Cabana. To achieve these goals, NASA is planning on launching the Lunar Gateway project and the Human Landing System with SpaceX. The idea behind these projects, and others, is eventually to establish a reliable commercial presence between the lunar surface and Earth, which will act as a launchpad for developing appropriate technology, and space travel understanding that will lead to achieving the ultimate goal of reaching Mars.

NASA plans to eventually transport samples from its Perseverance mission currently being conducted on the red planet back to Earth.

While the effort of landing, acquiring, and transporting Martian samples back to Earth for scientific study has been years in the making, there are scientists that are concerned that the samples may contain alien germs. Peter Doran, a geologist at Louisiana State University, explained that there is a very low chance that the samples will contain any form of life, "but there is a possibility".

To combat the concerns from researchers around the world about potential contamination NASA is proposing to hold a public meeting that asks for feedback on its Mars retrieval mission. At the moment, the space agency's current plan to transport Mars samples back to Earth involves launching the samples from the surface of Mars into orbit, where they will be collected by another spacecraft and transported back to our blue planet for analysis. Additionally, NASA will be sterilizing any surface that the Mars samples have touched.

NASA's Perseverance Rover landed on the surface of Mars on February 18, 2021, and since then, it has been exploring the red planet and its barren yet interesting wasteland.

Master has recently published a set of images captured by the small Mars helicopter named Ingenuity. The small helicopter is used as a scout, and as explained by the Perseverance team, the helicopter is used to reach places Perseverance wouldn't usually go and to scout ahead for possible routes that are favorable to the rover.

Images captured on April 23 were from engineer Ingenuity's 27th flight. The small helicopter was able to capture images of a martian ridgeline that the NASA team has called Fortun Ridge. Notably, the Ridgeline is of scientific significance how's the geological feature indicates a boundary between two major rock units.

On April 15th, the US 18th Space Defence Squadron announced that there were an additional 16 pieces of space debris being trapped in low earth orbit.

The new space debris was tracked back to object #32398, which was discovered to be an ullage motor that was used to transport three Russian satellites into orbit back in 2007. These ullage motors are used to correctly position the parent rocket's fuel before the engine is restarted in orbit. These rockets were created to push the fuel down once the rocket has entered orbit as there is no gravity, as explained by Astrophysicist and satellite tracker Jonathan McDowell.

At the moment, there are 64 of these ullage motors floating around in Earth's orbit. Notably, the 18th space defense Squadron confirmed the break up of SL-12 R/B, adding that they are tracking the additional 16 pieces of space debris and that there is an ongoing analysis. Furthermore, the European Space Agency believes that there are about 36000 individual pieces of space debris larger than 4 inches in width currently in low Earth orbit.

A study on the echoing black holes titled "The NICER "Reverberation Machine": A Systematic Study of Time Lags in Black Hole X-Ray Binaries" has been published in The Astrophysical Journal.

Stellar-mass black holes are formed when a star collapses and range from five to several tens of solar masses. Astronomers have estimated that our Milky Way galaxy could contain around 100 million stellar-mass black holes. Of these, many are inactive and effectively invisible. Those that are active can be detected by the light bouncing off the material surrounding the black hole consuming it.

Echoes of light bouncing around these black holes have been discovered in eight new examples by astronomers, adding to the two that had been previously identified in the Milky Way. The echos are generated when the accretion disk made from the dust and gas feeding the black hole flairs brightly with light which is then reflected back.

A study on potential alien life titled "The Number of Possible CETIs within Our Galaxy and the Communication Probability among These CETIs" has been published in The Astrophysical Journal.

Researchers have estimated that the time humanity will have to survive to hear from any Communicating Extraterrestrial Intelligent Civilizations (CETIs) is about 400,000 years. A 2020 study has estimated that the Milky Way houses about 36 CETIs, whereas simulations run by the authors of the latest paper estimate between as high as almost 43,000 and as low as about 111.

The researchers considered two parameters to create their estimations; firstly, the number of planets deemed habitable and how often life evolves on these planets into a CETI, and secondly, the stage of a host star's evolution at which a CETI would come to be.

A study on the plastic waste titled "Quantification and evaluation of plastic waste in the United States" has been published in the journal Resources, Conservation and Recycling.

The United States Department of Energy's (DOE) National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) has estimated that in 2019, the country sent an average of $7.2 billion worth of plastic to landfills. It has also been estimated that though the upfront cost of setting up recycling systems may cost more in the short term than cheaply disposing of plastic waste in landfills, a circular plastic economy could save between $4.5 billion and $9.9 billion.

The NREL estimates that plastic waste in the United States amounts to 44 million metric tons. A different methodology used by the Environmental Protection Agency estimates the amount to be 32.2 million metric tons. New recycling techniques would provide incentives to create a circular economy, reclaiming billions of dollars and the embodied energy of the waste plastics, the amount of energy used to manufacture them, equating to about 12% of the energy consumption of the country's industrial sector.

A study on the new superconductor titled "The field-free Josephson diode in a van der Waals heterostructure" has been published in the journal Nature.

Researchers from the Delft University of Technology (TU Delft) have discovered one-way superconductivity without needing magnetic fields. This was thought to be impossible since 1911, when superconductivity was discovered, and the new discovery helps pave the way to a future of superconducting computing. To enable one-way superconductivity, they created the Josephson Diode, an example of what they call a Quantum Material Josephson Junctions (QMJJ).

Electronics can become hundreds of times faster and use less energy with the help of superconductors, which allow current to travel through a wire without any resistance. Unidirectional energy flow is a prerequisite for computing to be possible and for modern electronics to function properly, and it was previously impossible for scientists to achieve with superconductivity.

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) restarted for the first time in three years almost two weeks ago.

The LHC restarted on April 22nd after three years of maintenance, upgrades, and consolidation work. Three days later, it broke its own record for the energy of its beams. Two proton beams were circulated throughout the particle accelerator with an energy of 6.8 trillion electronvolts per beam, exceeding the previous record set in 2015 at 6.5 TeV.

CERN achieved the record-setting run during its beam commissioning phase as the LHC prepares to begin its third major run of experiments, known as Run 3. CERN plans to slowly ramp up the energy of runs in anticipation of the beginning of Run 3 in the summer and is planning to achieve a record energy of 13.6 TeV.

The European Space Agency (ESA) has posted a new video to its YouTube channel as part of its Cosmic Kiss mission.

The video is sped up by eight times and shows astronauts from Expedition 66 floating throughout the inside of the International Space Station (ISS) as it receives an orbital reboost. The ISS is periodically reboosted to help it maintain its orbit, as it loses about 100 meters of altitude every day due to atmospheric drag.

In March 2022, a reboost was performed with the help of Russia's ISS Progress 70 cargo craft, firing its engines for several minutes until it returned the station to its proper altitude. At the correct altitude, phasing for visiting vehicles in the future is optimized for when they arrive.

Rocket Lab has successfully caught its Electron rocket booster as it fell back to Earth during its latest mission.

A week prior, the company successfully retrieved a dummy booster meant to simulate the real Electron booster in preparation for the upcoming mission. On May 3rd, Rocket Lab recovered its Electron booster with its modified Sikorsky S-92 helicopter during the "There and Back Again" mission.

Rocket Lab's Electron rocket launched 34 satellites for various companies to a sun-synchronous orbit, marking 146 satellites launched by Electron so far. About 15 minutes after launch (52:30 in the company's livestream), Rocket Lab's helicopter caught the rocket's booster in mid-air as it parachuted back to Earth.

A study on the universe shrinking titled "Rapidly descending dark energy and the end of cosmic expansion" has been published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Researchers have created a new model that uses dark energy, the mysterious force that appears to be driving the ever-faster expansion of the universe that has been previously observed. Their model considers dark energy not to be constant but instead decaying over time. This would result in the expansive force from the dark energy waning with time, eventually halting the universe's expansion.

The team's model estimates that within the 65 million years, the universe could stop expanding at an accelerating rate, and then within 100 million years, it could stop expanding entirely. At this stage, the universe would then begin to contract slowly over billions of years. With the universe's current age at 13.77 billion years old, this would see it begin to shrink before its 14 billionth birthday.

The tensions between Russia and the rest of the space venturing countries have seemingly come to an all-time high after Russia confirmed it would be departing from the International Space Station (ISS).

The news comes from Roscosmos director and chief Dmitry Rogozin, who said to the state-owned Rossiya-24 TV channel on April 30 that Russia's involvement with the ISS project will soon come to a close but not prematurely. The head of Russia's space agency said that Roscosmos would maintain previous agreements with nations and give at least one year's notice "in accordance with our obligations".

As LiveScience points out, analysts that have researched Russia's actions in space have found that Russia never agreed to partake in the ISS project further than 2024. Notably, other partners in the ISS program, such as NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) have pledged to extend the project's life to at least 2030. Rogozin has long been vocal about the sanctions imposed on Russia following the kremlins invasion, saying that the international restrictions on Russia would "destroy" the partnership between NASA and the ESA.

It's hard to understand just how truly big something is without seeing it, or at least having something to compare it to.

Understanding how large objects can be in space is a common problem for some people and a truly understandable one to have as our brains struggle to create an accurate representation of a planet that has a diameter of millions of miles. This is why scale is very important in trying to accurately represent the size of an object, and when combining that with a little bit of animation, you get a video that can change the way you view our solar system.

Planetary astronomer James O'Donoghue from the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) recently tweeted out a video showcasing objects within the solar system and their relative size to each other. The video begins with the Ceres dwarf planet and shows the moon, Earth, Mars, Saturn, Jupiter, and finally our massive star we call the Sun. As pointed out by ScienceAlert, even if you know the approximate size of the planets in our solar system, the size of Saturn, Jupiter, and the Sun is still shocking.

A few days ago, NASA reminded everyone that the first solar eclipse of 2022 was inbound and was going to be a partial solar eclipse.

The solar eclipse phenomenon happens when the moon passes between the Earth and the Sun, causing the moon to appear as a black ball in the sky taking chunks out of the Sun that is millions of miles behind it. 2022's first solar eclipse occurred on April 30 at 2:45 pm, and Southern Hemisphere skywatchers in regions such as South America, Antarctica, and the Pacific and Atlantic oceans were able to gaze upon the sight for about four hours.

During the partial solar eclipse, only a small portion of the Sun was obscured by the moon's orbit, and the viewer's location would also impact the severity of the obscurity. Notably, at 4:41 pm EDT, the moon blacked out about 64% if the Sun for viewers located near the southern tip of South America. The next partial solar eclipse is scheduled to happen on October 25 and will be visible over Europe, western Asia, and northeast Africa.