Science, Space, & Robotics - Page 94

Rocket Lab has completed a test run of its next mission by capturing a dummy rocket booster using a helicopter.

Rocket Lab will be using a customized Sikorsky S-92 helicopter to retrieve a falling first-stage rocket booster from the sky in its upcoming "There and Back Again" mission. The mission is scheduled for April 28th if the weather allows, and if successful, it will mark a first-of-its-kind rocket booster retrieval of the company's Electron rocket.

In preparation for the mission, the company has conducted numerous test flights, the latest of which has involved a dummy rocket booster parachuting through the sky as the real thing will, before being collected by the incoming helicopter and its custom grappling hook.

The United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR) has released a new Global Assessment Report.

The latest Global Assessment Report on Disaster Risk Reduction (GAR2022) examines how structures and governance systems are evolving around the world to address systemic risk. The UN's introduction to the report states that despite commitments to tackle climate change and create a more sustainable world, current societal, political, and economic choices are achieving the opposite.

The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development includes measures like the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015-2030 (Sendai Framework) and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to help create a more sustainable world that would help mitigate the onset of more disasters.

May's full moon is known as the Flower Moon to signify the wildflowers that bloom throughout the month in the Northern Hemisphere.

The Flower Moon will undergo a total lunar eclipse on the night of May 15th to May 16th, with the eclipse beginning around 01:32 UTC on May 16th. The eclipse will nearly reach its maximum around the time of the full moon, which will happen almost three hours later at 04:14 UTC, according to the U.S. Naval Observatory.

These timings will vary somewhat depending on your location across the globe, as the moon needs to be on the opposite side of the Earth to the sun for a full moon to occur. The total lunar eclipse comes about two weeks after April's partial solar eclipse, giving another time for the Earth to come in between the moon and the sun for a total lunar eclipse.

Japanese exoskeleton developer Skeletonics has shown off a new exoskeleton kitted out with boxing gear while its operator shadow boxes.

The exoskeleton borrows similar design attributes from previous models offered by Skeletonics. However, in this model, the individually articulating fingers of the Skeletonics Arrive model are absent in favor of boxing glove replicas. As with the Skeletonics Arrive, the exoskeleton is powered exclusively by the operator's strength and replicates their movements directly via mechanical linkages.

The Skeletonics Arrive is currently listened on the company website as the prominent offering and is the fifth of its exoskeletons. In the Arrive, the upper and lower body became connected, and suiting up with it takes only a minute. It stands 9 feet 2 inches (279.4 centimeters) tall, weighs 88 pounds (39.9 kilograms), and is powered mechanically with mechatronics used to operate the fingers.

A crucial component for SpaceX's upcoming Starship rocket appears to be damaged in a recently circulating image.

The prototype part is a component from the Booster 7 rocket booster for Starship and is responsible for transferring propellant to the vehicle's engines. SpaceX conducted pneumatic tests for Booster 7 earlier this month, in which the vehicle was fully pressurized to ensure it performs according to the required specifications.

The downcomer seems to have imploded during the pressure test, meaning Booster 7 could be scrapped in favor of Booster 8 if the part cannot be removed and replaced. It is unclear how much the damaged part will impact the timeline for Starship's upcoming orbital test flight.

A small solar eclipse will nearly blot out the Sun this week as NASA confirms that multiple locations around the world will be able to witness the first solar eclipse of 2022.

According to NASA's database, the first solar eclipse of 2022 will be a partial solar eclipse that occurs on April 30 at 2:45 p.m. EST. A solar eclipse is a phenomenon that happens when the moon passes in between the Earth and the Sun, causing the moon's shadow to be cast on the Earth as the Sun is positioned behind it.

April 30's solar eclipse will be a partial solar eclipse, which means only a portion of the Sun will be covered by the body of the moon. NASA estimates that 65% of the Sun will be blacked out during the maximum of the eclipse. Furthermore, witnessing this coming event won't be possible for residents in the United Kingdom, United States, as it will only be visible over parts of Antarctica, South America, the Pacific, and the Atlantic Ocean.

NASA is expecting a large asteroid to make a close approach with Earth in the coming days, according to CNEOS database entries.

NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory at California Institute of Technology's Small-Body Database Lookup has listed the space rock 418135 (2008 AG33), which is estimated to be anywhere between 1,150 and 2,560 feet in diameter. 2008 AG33 is scheduled to make a close approach with Earth on April 28 when it will fly safely past our planet at 23,264 miles per hour.

Furthermore, NASA's database states that 2008 AG33 will be at its closest point to Earth when its about 2 million miles away from Earth. For a perspective on just how far away 2 million miles is the moon is 240,000 miles away from Earth. Above is an screenshot of the CNEOS database orbit tracker that shows the asteroids orbit and its position in space in relation to the Sun, Earth and other planets.

The Hubble Space Telescope has been used to observe a distant "wispy" or "ultra-diffuse" galaxy called GAMA 526784.

The European Space Agency (ESA) has published a new image snapped by the Hubble Space Telescope, and it showcases GAMA 526784, which is the dimly light region of space slightly left of the center of the image. This galaxy resides in the constellation Hydra and is approximately 4 billion light-years away from Earth.

Notably, GAMA 526784 and other ultra-diffuse galaxies harbor many mysteries that astronomers are yet to explain fully. One of those mysteries is how ultra-diffuse galaxy's dark matter content has only been observed as either extremely low or extremely high. Another is how they contain an unusual amount of globular clusters when compared to other galaxies.

There are things that are exclusively something that you'd say "only in Japan" which is reflected in my headline, where today I saw Reuters sharing a video of "Pedia_Roid": a lifelike child-looking robot that dentists are using in training.

The robot is made in the style of a 6-year-old girl, who is nervous about her dental treatment -- don't worry fantasy real-world, but robotic young girl, I'd be nervous as well -- which "realistically mimics the typical reaction & behavior of child patient who is nervous of receiving dental treatment".

Nissin Dental Products Inc. made the robot, specifically designer for dental, medical, and healthcare students to hone their skills on treating young patients. These learning skills involve communication with the child, facial expression monitoring, avoiding medical accidents, as well as basic life support in an emergency. The company explains that these training situations are "difficult to perform on live child patients". Well, yeah... uh.

NASA has released several new images of the moon taken aboard the floating laboratory called the International Space Station (ISS).

The official International Space Station Twitter account published four of the images on April 24, showcasing the power of the ISS's vantage point of 250 miles above the surface of Earth. From that vantage point, astronauts aboard the station are able to man cameras and snap incredible photographs of not only the moon but also the Earth.

The new collection of moon images has been uploaded to Flickr, where they can be downloaded in high resolution for wallpaper use. Furthermore, the Flickr listings for each of the images revealed they were captured with a Nikon D4 camera on a variety of different dates throughout 2022. Each of the images shows the moon from various places in the ISS's orbit around Earth, revealing just how different the moon can look depending on the viewer's location.

A new report from Fox News correspondent Lauren Green has revealed that a Pennsylvania elementary school is being sued by the Satanic Temple.

The Satanic Temple has filed a lawsuit with against Northern Elementary School in York, Pennsylvania, on the grounds that the elementary school did not allow them to host "an After School Satan Club last week". The lawsuit was filed on constitutional grounds and claims that the Northern York County School Board discriminated against the Satanic Temple by refusing its after-school gathering when other organizations were approved.

Lucien Greaves spokes to Fox News about the debacle and said that he's hoping that people will see that there "good people can have different perspectives, sometimes on the same mythology, but not mean any harm" and that if the school board denies the Satanic Temple use of the public facility without legitimate grounds "it'll have to move into litigation, costly litigation that the community is going to have to pay for."

Last week top scientists from the US National Academies of Sciences Engineering and Medicine recommended that exploring Uranus is a top priority for science.

The mission proposed by the scientists would include sending a Uranus Orbiter and a Probe to a strange distant planet. The orbiter would be used to measure and observe Uranus' exotic atmosphere, and the probe would be sent deep within the atmosphere to gather vital data from within gas giant. In the published piece by the scientists, they outline that this mission could take place sometime in 2030 if engineers began the development process in 2023.

While the plan certainly seems like it will yield great academic value, it hedges on the development of launch vehicles capable of taking the orbiter and probe to their destination. The survey's author didn't directly reference Elon Musk's SpaceX but did write, "a Uranus mission is favored because an end-to-end mission concept exists that can be implemented in the 2023-2032 decade on currently available launch vehicles."

NASA has taken to its blog to explain how its Hubble Space Telescope has been used to explore galactic wings.

NASA posted to its social channels and website last Friday to showcase a picture of two merging galaxies located in the VV-689 system. The two merging galaxies have been nicknamed "Angel Wing", as the above image shows that the two galaxies are currently on a collision course that has created an almost symmetrical shape that depicts angel wings.

Notably, the above image of colliding galaxies comes from the Galaxy Zoo citizen science project, a crowdsourced program involving hundreds of thousands of volunteers who comb through Hubble's data to locate and classify galaxies. In Hubble's long trove of data, the volunteers have discovered many galaxies that are yet to be fully studied and understood.

Chinese officials have revealed plans to construct a "space defense system" that will begin testing sometime in 2025.

In an interview with China Central Television, the deputy head of China's National Space Administration (CNSA), the equivalent of NASA in China, Wu Yanhua, revealed plans to construct a space defense system that would be able to monitor space for any potentially dangerous asteroid and redirect it if it was on a collision course with Earth.

Furthermore, Wu revealed that the system would include both ground and space-based components and potentially have the capabilities of protecting spacecrafts, per Reuters. Notably, the space defense system would be able to catalog all asteroids and be able to determine the likelihood of their orbits crossing over with Earth in the distant future through the use of calculated computer simulations. The Global Times reports that the project hasn't reached full approval as it requires "coordination of multiple departments."

NASA has many ways of observing Mars, and one of them is the agency's InSight lander, which was designed to measure the planet's interior and allow researchers to develop a better understanding of the history, present, and future of Mars.

In the past, the InSight lander, which first landed on Mars in November 2018, detected marsquakes and measured them with its seismometer, its primary scientific instrument. Now, according to a newly published study in the journal The Seismic Record, the InSight lander has detected two large marsquakes that have broken all previously set records. The first was detected on August 25, 2021, which was followed by the second on September 18, 2021.

The first marsquake was labeled S0976a and lasted for several seconds before passing. The InSight lander's instruments recorded a magnitude of 4.2. The second marsquake lasted much longer than the first, spanning a length of 94 minutes before passing. The 94-minute martian-quake is now the longest marsquake to have ever been detected by humans. Notably, both of the marsquakes came from the far side of Mars, with most of the already recorded marsquakes being traced back to sources of origin near the InSight lander.

NASA's Perseverance Rover first landed on the surface of Mars just over a year ago, on February 18th, 2021.

Perseverance landed in the Jezero Crater on Mars and, in its first science campaign, has collected eight rock-core samples from the area. It has since journeyed to Jezero's ancient river delta on April 13th, 2022, to begin its second science campaign, known as the "Delta Front Campaign." The new science campaign is expected to be the rover's best chance of finding ancient microbial life signs.

The delta is a large collection of rocks and sediment found along the western edge of the Jezero crater, where an ancient Martian river and crater lake converged billions of years ago. The science team behind Perseverance is targeting the delta for the fine-grained sediment that has been deposited there, where the rover may find signs of life.

The U.S. Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) completed a demonstration of the wireless power beaming at the U.S. Army Research Field at Blossom Point, Maryland.

1.6 kilowatts of power was beamed over a kilometer using a ten gigahertz microwave beam (3,280 feet) as part of the Safe and Continuous Power Beaming - Microwave (SCOPE-M) project. At MIT in Massachusetts, a second SCOPE-M project was set up at the Haystack Ultra Wideband Satellite Imaging Radar (HUSIR) transmitter.

The ten gigahertz frequency was chosen for its ability to beam through heavy rain with a power loss of less than five percent and falls within international standards of safety for birds, animals, and humans that may be present. The Maryland tests saw the system operating with 60 percent efficiency, and though they had a lower peak power, the average power level was higher, resulting in more energy being delivered.

Astrobotic revealed the flight model of its new Peregrine lunar lander on April 20th, 2022.

The new model differs from previous test models and is the actual version of Peregrine that will fly to the moon. It is scheduled to land on the moon in the fourth quarter of this year, and doing so would make Peregine the first American spacecraft to land on the moon since the Apollo program. Peregrine is the first lander that is part of NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) and will fly to the moon on a United Launch Alliance (ULA) Vulcan Centaur rocket.

Peregrine was unveiled in the cleanroom where it is being developed and tested, so all attendees of the event had to suit up in white overalls and hairnets to keep the area free of contaminants. The cleanroom also housed the 24 payloads Peregrine will deliver to the lunar surface, including scientific instruments from three national space agencies.

The patient had a persistent COVID-19 infection lasting 505 days, over 16 months, exceeding the previous record of 335 days.

The patient from the United Kingdom contracted the disease in early 2020, and their weakened immune system and underlying conditions prevented them from entirely clearing the virus from their body. They were in and out of hospital repeatedly following their initial infection and tested positive every time, with genetic sequencing showing the infection was the same and not the result of re-infection.

The patient was treated with antiviral drugs and eventually succumbed to their conditions and died in hospital in 2021. The patient, along with eight others, was part of a study titled "A longitudinal study of evolution of SARS-CoV-2 variants in immunocompromised individuals with persistent infection" that has yet to be published in a peer-reviewed journal.

CERN's Large Hadron Collider (LHC) was inactive for three years as maintenance, consolidation, and upgrade work was performed.

The LHC is the world's largest and most powerful particle accelerator, and on the 22nd of April at 12:16 CEST, it was restarted for the first time in three years. Two proton beams circulated throughout the LHC's 27-kilometer (16.8 miles) ring in opposite directions with an injection energy of 450 billion electronvolts (450 GeV).

The restart marks the end of the LHC's second long shutdown and the beginning of preparations for the next four years of experiments to collect physics data around the middle of the year. The third operational period of the LHC, dubbed Run 3, will see the LHC run at a record energy of 13.6 trillion electronvolts (13.6 TeV) after the energy and intensity of the beams are safely ramped up in the coming months.