Science, Space, & Robotics - Page 95

NASA has built the new alloy to withstand extreme environments and temperatures.

NASA innovators have created the NASA Alloy GRX-810, a new metal alloy created using 3D printing. It is an oxide dispersion strengthened (ODS) alloy and can endure temperatures exceeding 2000 degrees Fahrenheit (1093 degrees Celsius). Compared to current state-of-the-art alloys, GRX-810's advantages include "twice the strength to resist fracturing," "1,000 times the durability under stress at high temperatures," and is more malleable, with "three and a half times the flexibility to stretch/bend prior to fracturing."

3D printing allowed the NASA team to uniformly disperse nanoscale oxides throughout the alloy, improving durability and high-temperature properties while using a more efficient, cost-effective, and clean manufacturing process. The team also used thermodynamic modeling to determine the final composition of the alloy.

The missile test features the RS-28 Sarmat nuclear-capable intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM).

The missile is also known as Satan II and was tested for the first time at 15:12 Moscow time (12:12 UTC) on April 20th from a silo launcher. Russian President Vladimir Putin said that the missile would make his country's enemies "stop and think." The missile was launched from Plesetsk in northwest Russia and hit its targets in the Kamchatka peninsula, approximately 3,700 miles (6,000 kilometers) away.

Satan II's design was first unveiled by the Makeyev Rocket Design Bureau in 2016, but has reportedly been in development since 2009. According to Russian news agency TASS, the missile will "enter combat duty in late 2022," replacing the R-36M Voyevoda ICBM Russia currently uses. Satan II can carry a payload of about 10 tonnes, equating to either 10 heavy or 15 light MIRV (Multiple Independently-targetable Reentry Vehicles) warheads, using its Fractional Orbital Bombardment (FOBS) capability to deliver them.

NASA, Axiom Space, and SpaceX are now expecting to undock the Axiom Mission 1 (Ax-1) crew from the International Space Station (ISS) on April 23rd.

The crew will undock at 8:35 p.m. EDT on April 23rd (00:35 UTC April 24th) and splash down around 1:46 p.m. Sunday, April 24th (17:46 UTC April 24th) off the coast of Florida. The crew originally left Earth bound for the ISS on April 8th, and were due to return on April 19th, but poor weather conditions on Earth have meant their return has been delayed.

The return was initially pushed back to April 20th, but with the latest update moving their return to the 24th, the crew will have spent another five days aboard the space station on top of their originally planned ten. NASA and Axiom prepared for the possibility that the private astronaut team would spend additional time on the ISS and ensured there were sufficient provisions for all crew members.

A study on antidepressant effectiveness titled "Antidepressants and health-related quality of life (HRQoL) for patients with depression: Analysis of the medical expenditure panel survey from the United States" has been published in the journal PLOS One.

The study is a meta-analysis that examined data from the Medical Expenditures Panel Survey (MEPS) spanning 2005 to 2016. MEPS is a longitudinal study that follows 17.47 million adults in the United States diagnosed with depression, of which 57.6% take antidepressants. Females made up 67.9% of the MEPS cohort, and 60.5% were on antidepressants compared to 51.5% of males.

Within the MEPS cohort, mental health saw a general improvement over time. However, there was no detectable difference between those taking antidepressants and those who didn't. The researchers concluded that antidepressants do not "continue to improve patients' HRQoL [health-related quality of life] over time" and that instead of focusing on the short-term effects of pharmacotherapy, future studies should consider longer-term impacts.

The U.S Department of Defense has given the go-ahead for a new prototype nuclear reactor in Idaho.

The department has signed off on the Project Pele plan, which includes plans to build a mobile nuclear microreactor prototype and reactor fuel outside of Idaho before assembling and operating the reactor at the Idaho National Laboratory. Two designs are being considered, and officials have estimated that building and testing the microreactor would take about three years.

If the project continues, the reactor would be the first operating Generation IV nuclear reactor in the United States. In China, the world's first electricity-generating Generation IV reactor has already been built and was started up in September 2021. The Department of Defense says it uses 30 terawatt-hours of electricity annually and over 10 million gallons (37.9 million liters) of fuel per day and hopes the portable reactor can help supply some of its energy demand.

Elon Musk is out and hyping his latest product -- Optimus -- Tesla's upcoming robot that the SpaceX and Tesla boss says will be "worth more than the car business, worth more than FSD".

The news on Optimus came during Tesla's Q1 2022 earnings call, where Musk said: "I was surprised that people did not realize the magnitude of the Optimus robot program. The importance of Optimus will become apparent in the coming years. Those who are insightful or looking, listening carefully, will understand that Optimus will ultimately be worth more than the car business, worth more than FSD".

Until now, we've seen nothing but a hype trailer... a man dressed in all-white spandex, pretending to be a robot. It wasn't a robot... it was a human, but that's how Tesla is selling it. Like it's this whizz-bang next-gen robot that is beyond The Jetsons but we'll have to wait and see what Musk and his team have in store for us.

Oxitec has successfully released its genetically modified mosquitoes in Florida with plans for California underway.

Oxitec has released almost five million engineered Aedes aegypti mosquitoes in the Florida Keys over seven months. The genetically engineered male mosquitos carry a gene that is lethal to female offspring, causing them to die before they can reproduce. Male offspring born from the engineered males mating will inherit the gene, causing future generations of females to die off, leading to an overall reduction in the population size.

Oxitec collected over 22,000 eggs laid by wild female A. aegypti to bring back to the laboratory for analysis. They confirmed that all females that inherited the lethal gene died before reaching sexual maturity. The gene persisted in the wild population for two to three months, or about three generations of offspring, before disappearing. No mosquitos carrying the gene were found more than 400 meters (1312 feet) from their release point.

A pre-print paper on humanity's timeline titled "Avoiding the Great Filter: Predicting the Timeline for Humanity to Reach Kardashev Type I Civilization" has been published on arXiv.

Russian astrophysicist Nikolai Kardashev proposed the Kardashev Scale in 1964, a scale that categorizes civilizations into three types: planetary, stellar, and galactic, or Types I, II, and III, respectively. Each category relates to the extent of energy that the respective civilization can harness, with Type I being able to harness all of the stellar energy that reaches its home planet, Type II harnessing all of the energy of its host star, and Type III harness the energy of its host galaxy.

Carl Sagan further popularized the idea and expanded on the concept by adapting it to a continuous scale rather than three discrete stages. Humanity reaching Type I status would mean harnessing 10¹⁶ watts, the average amount of solar energy that reaches Earth. Currently, we use about 10¹³ watts, which on Sagan's scale puts our civilization at roughly 0.73.

The Lyrid meteor shower will be the first significant meteor shower since the Quadrantid in January this year.

The Quadrantid meteor shower took place on January 3rd, and now, 109 days (over 15 weeks) later, the April Lyrids will peak in the morning hours of April 22nd. While many meteor showers and shooting stars are witnessed throughout the year, the Quadrantids and Lyrids represent two of the ten 'principal' meteor displays.

The Lyrids are considered one of the weaker principal displays, with about 10 to 20 meteors per hour being visible at most. If poor weather prevents you from viewing the Lyrids in your area, the shower still occurs with about one-quarter of its peak strength for two days on either side of the maximum peak on the 22nd.

Saturn, Mars, Venus, Jupiter, and the moon are all set to align in the sky on April 23rd.

The orbits of each planet have coincided to allow them all to appear in the same portion of the sky when viewed in the northern hemisphere, starting with Venus, Mars, and Saturn in late March. Jupiter joined the group around mid-April, and Mercury will join around mid-June this year to create an alignment of five planets. 2020 was the last time five planets aligned in the night sky, with preceding alignments in 2016 and 2005.

On April 23rd, the moon will be in its last quarter phase and situated to Saturn's right in the night sky. To Saturn's left and below will be Mars, followed by Venus, and then Jupiter. The alignment will be most visible in the northern hemisphere, about an hour before sunrise.

Former Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield spoke to Futurism about the future of cannabis in space and aboard the International Space Station.

Being intoxicated or inebriated in space would be too much of a liability presently, as the people consistently in space are responsible for too much. But in the future, as more space stations become operational and the price of space tourism continues to fall, it's feasible that recreational vacations in space involving the consumption of cannabis or alcohol could be possible.

Hadfield is currently on the advisory board for a biotechnology company called BioHarvest, which announced in August last year a new, reliable means of creating cannabis trichomes, the active component of cannabis that gives it its sought-after properties. This would circumvent the hassle of having to grow complete plants. BioHarvest CEO Ilan Sobel told Futurism that growing cannabis in a microgravity environment could be "may present a breakthrough from a biological science perspective."

A study on the new stellar explosion titled "Localized thermonuclear bursts from accreting magnetic white dwarfs" has been published in the journal Nature.

Astronomers have used NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), and European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope (ESO's VLT) to observe a new kind of stellar explosion, dubbed a micronova. They are extremely powerful events but still significantly less energetic than conventional stellar explosions, known as novae. They last only several hours and can burn through about 20,000,000 trillion kilograms, or 3.5 billion Great Pyramids of Giza, worth of stellar material.

The research team has observed three micronovae so far, two of which were from known white dwarf stars from the TESS survey. The third required help from the ESO's VLT X-shooter instrument, which led to the confirmation of a third white dwarf.

Earth has experienced two radio blackouts in two days that can be sourced back to an action sunspot region releasing multiple solar flares.

On April 20, officials recorded around 19 solar flares in 24 hours coming from an active sunspot region, and the barrage seemingly isn't stopping, with reports indicating the sunspot group called AR2993-94 released a very large M9.6 class flare. Unfortunately, the sunspot group was almost directly Earth facing when the flare occurred, which resulted in a shortwave radio blackout over southeast Asia and Australia (again).

The strong X-class flare that was reported on April 20 caused the same level of radio blackout across the same regions of the planet. The US Air Force reported that the April 21 solar flare caused a Type II solar radio burst. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) reported, "Additionally, Type II and IV radio sweeps were detected by the USAF Radio Solar Telescope Network (RSTN), with an estimated velocity of 1132 km/s".

Sun has been on a rampage with activity lately, releasing a succession of solar flares and coronal mass ejections.

On April 20, officials confirmed that in a 24-hour period, an active sunspot group flared 19 times, with six of those flares being M-class (moderate) explosions followed by a very powerful X2.2 (strong) class flare. These flares came from a region just beyond the southwest limb of the Sun, "likely former Region 2992," according to the National Oceanic And Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

Notably, the large flare of the barrage that was released came from a sunspot located on the edge of the Sun, meaning that Earth didn't experience the full force of the blast. Officials at the US Air Force confirmed that the flare caused a Type II solar radio burst. NOAA reported that it impacted large portions of the sunlit side of the Earth; southeast Asia and Australia. Throughout this time, radio operators would have noticed a loss of connection at frequencies below 30 MHz for about an hour.

A four-year-old Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) was fulfilled by the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), providing nearly 1,600 pages of unclassified documents to Motherboard.

These 1,600 pages of documents contain various scientific research papers, old contracts, presentations, briefings between individuals about certain programs, and memos. Additionally, Vice reports that the documents contain information on what the Advanced Aerospace Weapons System Application Program (AAWSAP), an arm of the DIA, was researching.

The AAWSAP and the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP), another arm of the DIA, as explained by a DIA spokesperson, "[AATIP] was the name of the overall program. [AAWSAP] was the name of the contract that DIA awarded for the production of technical reports under AATIP." According to the documents, the focus was put on invisibility cloaking, traversable wormholes, antigravity, negative energy, gravity communications, and nuking the moon to create a tunnel from one side to the other.

Since Russia began its invasion of Ukraine, the tensions between the United States and the Kremlin have increased, but apparently, it hasn't affected the astronauts and cosmonauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS).

Despite the strange and aggressive threats from Russia's space agency "Roscosmos" head Dmitry Rogozin, who threatened to crash the ISS into the US, NASA has been very firm that a working relationship has been maintained between Russian cosmonauts and NASA astronauts that are currently aboard the ISS. Recently, NASA administrator Bill Nelson said that the "working relationship" is enduring despite "all the slaughter we're seeing daily".

Since Russia's invasion began, NASA and other prominent space agencies from around the world have separated themselves from Roscosmos, with NASA publicly stating it's maintaining a stance of diplomatic negotiations with Russia. Futurism reports that the recent comments from Nelson are the first time the NASA administrator has publicly condemned Russia's actions in Ukraine.

A potato-shaped solar eclipse has been captured by NASA's Perseverance rover, providing data to planetary scientists looking to understand the gravitation relationship between Mars' moons and its interior.

Perseverance's Mastcam-z camera was used to capture the solar eclipse on April 2, which lasted for just over 40 seconds. The new footage breaks records for being the most zoomed-in, highest frame-rate observation of a Phobos solar eclipse, according to NASA. Furthermore, the new observation will add to the 18-year-old pile of Phobos solar eclipses that were first recorded by NASA's Spirit and Opportunity rovers.

With this data, researchers are able to learn more about how the moon's tidal force impacts the interior of Mars, crust, and mantle. Notably, Phobos is a doomed moon as it's expected to eventually crash into the surface of Mars in around 10+ million years. NASA writes on its website that observations such as the one recently acquired by Perseverance allow NASA scientists to understand better Phobos' "death spiral", which will lead to a more accurate prediction of its doomed timeline.

A Twitter account with the handle @ArmedForcesUkr shared images of Russian military establishments taken from Google Maps on April 18th, 2022.

The account suggested that the publicly visible content meant that Google had sided with Ukraine against Russia, with a message translating to "now everyone can see a variety of Russian launchers, intercontinental ballistic missile mines, command posts and secret landfills with a resolution of about 0.5 meters per pixel." A spokesperson from Google told The Verge that the information had been in the public domain since before the conflict in Ukraine began. Google has already taken a stance concerning Russia by pausing ad sales in the country, cutting off Google Pay access, and banning Russian state media from advertising on YouTube.

Google blurs certain imagery in its Maps service, notably number plates and faces, to protect individual privacy. This blurring practice does extend to some military establishments, for example, the French Air Force base BA 705. However, the infamous Area 51 and other military bases are not blurred, as Google maintains its policy is to keep as much in the public domain as possible.

The humanoid species known as Homo floresiensis is believed by retired ethnobiologist Gregory Forth to be still alive.

Remains of the species were first found on the Indonesian island of Flores by the late anthropologist Mire Morwood in 2004. The bones found came from the Pleistocene era, the most recent geological epoch, which ended about 11,700 years ago and began about 2,580,000 years ago.

The species was believed to be extinct and at the time of its discovery was dubbed "the Hobbit" due to its diminutive stature. According to Forth, a local tribe called the Lio has encountered a small creature that he believes may be a member of the H. floresiensis species, which he describes in his upcoming book Between Ape and Human.

The Discovery space shuttle launched the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) into orbit on April 25th, 1990.

The image released by NASA to celebrate Hubble's 32nd birthday features The Hickson Compact Group 40, a collection of five closely gathered galaxies. Three of the galaxies are spiral-shaped, one is elliptical, and one is lenticular, meaning lens-like. They are close enough together to fit within a region of space that spans less than twice the diameter of the Milky Way's stellar disk.

Other close groupings of galaxies can be found deep within large galaxy clusters elsewhere in the universe, but The Hickson Compact Group 40 is one of the most densely clustered. It is also unusual because it is relatively isolated, in the direction of the largest modern constellation, called Hydra.