U.S. fighter jets to get 'UFO trackers': New radar being fitted to military aircraft to track enemy planes will also make it easier to pinpoint unexplained objects, expert says

• Infrared search and track systems are designed to help track enemy aircraft
• But the systems could have the side-effect of assisting investigations into UFOs 
• Air Force jets and Navy Super Hornet planes are due to get the sensors soon 

By TIM STICKINGS FOR DAILYMAIL.COM

New trackers on U.S. fighter jets could make it easier for them to detect UFOs, an aviation expert has said. 

The infrared search and track systems (IRSTs) are designed to hunt down enemy planes - but could also have the side-effect of helping pilots to investigate unexplained objects.

Military writer Tyler Rogoway said the technology has existed for decades but is now 'exponentially more capable' and could be a 'revolutionary' step in gathering UFO data.

Writing for The War Zone, of which he is the editor, he said the Navy's Super Hornet fleet and Air Force planes including the F-15C are due to get the sensors in the near future.  

Jets such as the Navy's fleet of Super Hornets (one of which is pictured in a file photo) will be equipped with infrared technology that could help investigate UFOs

The new technology 'could result in a major breakthrough, or at least a major uptick, when it comes to detecting and gathering information on so-called unidentified flying objects, if they are indeed out there,' he said.  

It 'could even serve as the final technological element needed to springboard potentially revolutionary data collection on the phenomenon,' he added. 

As a result the Pentagon may get 'more than it bargained for' with the new technology, he suggested.   

The IRSTs would be able to detect more because of their highly sensitive equipment and fast computer processing, Rogoway said. 

The new equipment is an upgrade compared to regular radar technology, which has certain limitations.   

One advantage of IRSTs is that, unlike radars, they do not emit any energy themselves. 

That makes the detection system, in itself, harder to detect, and much harder to jam. 

In addition, the IRST will keep working and tracking enemy aircraft even if the plane's radar system fails, he said.  

As a result, the technology could be of great help to American pilots against stealthy aircraft nearby.  

An image released by the Pentagon shows an unidentified object which was tracked by pilots off the east coast of the U.S. in 2015 

Eurofighter Typhoon jets also feature the technology, which goes by the name of PIRATE. 

They were previously used on older U.S. planes such as the F-101 Voodoo, a jet which was retired from the Air Force in 1972.  

Earlier this year it emerged that a number of pilots in the United States Navy reported seeing UFOs over American airspace between 2014 and 2015. 

One of them, Ryan Graves, said he saw UFOs regularly in the airspace off the Eastern seaboard between Florida and Virginia. 

Graves said he reported what he saw to the Pentagon and to members of Congress. 

In 2014, a pilot operating one of the Super Hornet fighter jets reported that he nearly collided with a UFO.

Another pilot, Danny Accoin, said he noticed a flying object on his radar, missile system, and infrared camera, but was not able to see it in his helmet. 

The UFOs were spotted in areas that were designated for fighter jet training, which makes it unlikely that these were commercial drones or other objects that are classified.

But none of the pilots or the Pentagon would speculate as to what they believed the objects were. 

Read more:

• U.S. Fighter Jets Are About To Get Infrared Sensors That Could Be Huge For UFO Reporting - The Drive

{ https://www.dailymail.co.uk/ }

13-07-2019 om 00:26 geschreven door peter  

Back in 2015, astronomers noticed a star that was behaving in a very unusual way. Nicknamed “Tabby’s Star” after astronomer Tabetha Boyajian, the star exhibits strange and unexplained dips in its light output. This led many to speculate that Tabby’s Star was surrounded by some sort of artificial technological structure like a Dyson sphere constructed by an advanced alien civilization. Radio monitoring of Tabby’s Star didn’t turn up any alien chatter or anything else unusual, but it didn’t explain what was going on with the star either. Now astronomers have discovered another star with mysterious dips in its light output (behavior which usually suggests it’s being orbited by something) for which astronomers also have absolutely no explanation.

According to Scientific American, the star was discovered using the now-retired Kepler space telescope, an extremely precise exoplanet hunting space telescope. After analyzing Kepler’s data on the star, called HD 139139 (it doesn’t have a fancy name like Tabby’s Star yet), for more than a year, astronomers have no explanation for what might be causing its anomalous behavior. Andrew Vanderburg, an astronomer at the University of Texas at Austin says:

“We’ve never seen anything like this in Kepler, and Kepler’s looked at 500,000 stars.”

As an exoplanet hunting telescope, Kepler’s job was to look for periodic dips in brightness coming from stars. These dips in brightness usually indicate orbiting planets as they pass in front of the star. Data from these observations are fed through algorithms that look for repeated patterns, a good indicator exoplanets considering they should be spinning around the star in a consistent pattern. Some of the patterns though are too complex for the algorithms to handle, and are instead placed in the hands of volunteer civilian astronomers. It was one of these astronomers contacted Vanderburg  and told him to check out HD 139139, a star the size of the sun about 350 light-years away.

So what exactly makes this star so strange? According to Vanderburg:

“When I got that e-mail, I looked more closely and said, ‘okay, this definitely looks like a multiplanet system. But I can’t find any [planets] that appear to line up.'”

The dips in light make the star seem like it should be a multiplanet system, but it can’t be. The star displayed 28 dips in light, each of which lasted between 45 minutes and 7.5 hours with no repeats. The team says it looked more like noise than an actual signal. The team thought it may be a glitch in the system, but after checking again, the data turned out to be real.

One explanation was that this star had at least 14 planets and perhaps as many as 28—more planets than any other known system. That would in itself be very strange, but in order for even that explanation to work all of those exoplanets would have to be the same size, only slightly larger than Earth.

Yet there’s another problem with that explanation, according to Vanderburg. based on the short duration of the light dips, the planets would need to be in extremely close orbit to the star. But that doesn’t match the lack of a repeated pattern in the light dips. For there to be no repeats in the 80 days the telescope was pointed at the star is essentially impossible if the planets were as close to the star as they would need to be. So it’s not planets.

Among the other proposed explanations are a second, invisible source of gravity pulling on the star, the dust cloud of a planet disintegrating in front of the star, and short-lived starspots (cooler versions of our suns sunspots that have never been observed). For various reasons, none of these explanations hold up either.

A Dyson sphere is a theoretical structure that could harvest the energy of the enclosed star.

Vanderburg says there was one explanation left out of the recent paper he published on the star: an alien megastructure. Vanderburg says that explanation is extremely unlikely (which is the least surprising thing here), but astronomer Jason Wright, who led the investigation into Tabby’s Star, says HD 139139 will definitely be added to the list of places being investigated for alien technosignatures.

It’s unlikely any further investigations will happen for a while, though. The Kepler space telescope has been decommissioned and there are few other telescopes that can match its precision. So until another telescope is pointed at this mysterious star, all we’re left with is wild speculation. And the experts that are running the numbers and actually have the know-how to comment on it, of course.

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

12-07-2019 om 23:53 geschreven door peter  

CONCEALED: The white marble pyramid was hidden on the Greek island 

(Pic: Cambridge Keros Project)

An ancient Greek pyramid dating back to the Bronze Age – making it the same age as Stonehenge and the pyramids of Egypt – has been discovered on an island in the Aegean Sea and has archeologists and Greek historians throwing around the exclamation “This changes everything!” It certainly changes one thing … who knew the Greeks built pyramids? And how did they get a pyramid’s worth of marble to an island 4,600 years ago? Did they get any advice from the Egyptians or the early Brits? Did they give them any?

“It is by far the largest prehistoric marine transport operation that has ever come to light anywhere in the world. It demonstrates quite clearly just how important, and integral to their culture, seafaring was to these early Bronze Age Aegean people.”

Keros

The story broke this week in The Independent but the actual announcement of the discovery was made earlier by members of the four-year Cambridge Keros Project centered at the University of Cambridge, with help from the Ephorate of the Cyclades and the Cyprus Institute. Keros is the well-known Aegean island where the large collection of artistic and unbroken marble Cycladic figurines now called the “Keros Hoard” was previously found. The nearby smaller island of Dhaskalio, was once linked to Keros by a narrow causeway, is where pyramid was discovered under what was once a settlement. There are few quality marble formations on Keros or Dhaskalio, so this massive pyramid-covering amount of the stone had to be transported there by Bronze Age sailors – a concept that archeologists and historians never believed these ancient Greeks were capable of.

How much marble? The project team estimates between 7,000 and 10,000 tons of glossy white marble was transported by sea from the island of Naxos, about 10 km (6.2 miles) north. It’s estimated that the Aegean boats at that time — Cycladic boats that were only 10-15 meter long and capable of carrying only between one and two tons of stone – made over 3,500 trips over a 20-year period totaling 45,000 miles.

What the builders used all of that marble for was a six-step terrace pyramid built by terraforming the island’s small mountain. (Photo here.) The terraces were six meters wide the end result was a thousand meters of glistening marble pyramid. The archeologists believe the top terrace was once flat and used for ceremonies, and Greek sanctuary expert Dr. Alan Peatfield of University College Dublin’s School of Archaeology thinks this may have been the first and a model for the later ones.

Aerial view of sophisticated prehistoric public architecture uncovered at Keros, Greece.

Image credit: Cambridge Keros project

Excavation in Trench B at the staircase.

Image credit: Cambridge Keros Project

An intact metalworking hearth from 2500 BCE at Keros, Greece. Image credit: Cambridge Keros Project

ENGINEERING: The pyramid shape of the island is man-made 

(Pic: Cambridge Keros Project)

“It is potentially a fundamental place of origin for the phenomenon of sacred mountains within the Greek world.”

If it was the first, it was an impressive start, according to Professor Colin Renfrew of the University of Cambridge and co-director of the excavation.

“At Dhaskalio we see a number of sophisticated architectural techniques employed in a well-thought through manner. These include massive entranceways, stone-flagged stairways, and an intricate drainage system covering the entire island. This gives the clear impression of a skilled architect and a guiding hand planning and executing a building programme whose scope can only be compared with a site like Knossos on Crete.”

An Egyptian steppe pyramid

The mountain pyramid may have symbolized the importance of Dhaskalio and Keros as a metalworking center and marketplace for metal products such as high-quality daggers. With those metal products being found throughout the islands, this new discovery reinforces the new theory that the seafaring skills of the ancient Greeks began earlier and were much more impressive than first thought.

Is it just a coincidence that this Greek pyramid, Stonehenge and the Egyptian pyramids (and possibly those in Central and South America and Asia) were built at about the same times? Or was something else going on that influenced these nearly simultaneous  “This changes everything!” constructions? That’s a question for another day and a different set of experts.

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

12-07-2019 om 23:36 geschreven door peter  

Area 51 Raid, Over 400K People Sign up to Storm Groom Lake for Alien Secrets

{ https://beforeitsnews.com/v3/ }

12-07-2019 om 23:04 geschreven door peter  

Secrecy on UFOs has been with us for a lifetime. At times it has seemed like it would last forever.

For the past few years, however, the media has treated the subject rather differently and since late 2017 ufology has been in a fevered state with new revelations, new media coverage, and a much enhanced "brand" overall.

Nearly all of this is due to To the Stars Academy (TTSA). TTSA's recent TV show, Unidentified, portrayed several military encounters with UFOs, and more than once - many times, in fact - used the word "threat" in connection to these encounters.

We have to believe TTSA that there is a “threat” or is this just fear mongering and if so, what might the agenda be?

Or, is there any legitimacy to considering UFOs as at least a potential threat or are we on a path toward some sort of disclosure? If so, is it something complete, partial, or even false, as some argue?

  

Link to Part 2: TTSA: Fear Mongering or Not?

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BOUfueQRX0c&t=5s

{ http://ufosightingshotspot.blogspot.com/ }

12-07-2019 om 22:49 geschreven door peter  

Learn About Alien Abductee Case Files Which Reveal Who Aliens Are And What They Want, UFO Sighting News.

Here is a great video about a UFO and alien researcher who has learned a lot from her work and shares her discoveries with us. Some of the things you are going to hear are probably things that you have never heard, but may have thought existed. Understand that abductees are not all abducted by the same species, but rather often have different experiences due to the difference of the aliens that abducted them. Different cultures, different behaviors. 
Scott C. Waring

Video states: 

This talk will share big insights into abduction drawn from many case files. Laurie finds that one of the more difficult areas for researchers is sorting out the large number of alien races that appear in abductee testimonies. Laurie will discuss what the ETs want from us and what effect their activities might be having on human consciousness. She will tell us how the experiences of abductees from different cultures and geographic areas differ.

{ https://www.etdatabase.com/ }

12-07-2019 om 22:37 geschreven door peter  

Three UFOs Over The UK Just 15 Min Ago From My Tour Bus!

{https://www.etdatabase.com/ }

12-07-2019 om 21:55 geschreven door peter  

Underwater Stonehenge-style rock found in the Mediterranean Sea: Monolith may have served as a 'lighthouse' 10,000 years ago

• Mysterious monolith was found 37 miles (60km) off the coast of Sicily
• 15-tonne rock is broken into two and has three man-made holes in it
• Experts said the stone shows ancient islanders were good engineers
• Monument could shed light on the earliest civilisations to call the Mediterranean basin home, before some islands were flooded

By SARAH GRIFFITHS FOR MAILONLINE

A mysterious monolith has been discovered buried on the sea bed off the coast of Sicily.

Broken into two parts, the rock has three holes that experts say could not have formed naturally and it is thought the structure was crafted 10,000 years ago.

The Stonehenge-style monument could shed light on the earliest civilisations to call the Mediterranean basin home.

A mysterious underwater monolith has been discovered 37 miles (60km) off the coast of Sicily. Broken into two parts (top image), the rock has three holes (shown bottom right and left) that experts say could not have formed naturally and the structure is thought to have been crafted 10,000 years ago

The archaeological site has been surveyed using geophysical and geological methods.

One of the holes in the 15-tonne monolith travels through both parts, while the other two are on the sides of the 39ft-long (12 metre) rock.

Zvi Ben-Avraham, of Tel Aviv University, and Emanuele Lodolo of the National Institute of Oceanography and Experimental Geophysics in Trieste, Italy, wrote in the Journal of Archaeological Science: ‘There are no reasonable known natural processes that may produce these elements’.

The monolith was discovered 131ft (40 metres) below the waves on what was once an island called Pantelleria Vecchia Bank in the Sicilian Channel.

The archaeological site has been surveyed using geophysical and geological methods. This 3D map shows how the monolith is elevated in the Mediterranean Sea

The Stonehenge-style monument could shed light on the earliest civilisations to call the Mediterranean basin home. It is not known whether the Mediterranean monolith stood alone or as part of a group, as seen at Stonehenge, which is younger, constructed in around 2,600BC (pictured)

The island was submerged during a flood 9,500 years ago, after the Last Glacial Maximum. 

This was the last period in the Earth's climate history during the last glacial period when ice sheets were at their most prominent.

‘The Sicilian Channel is one of the shallow shelves of the central Mediterranean region where the consequences of changing sea-level were most dramatic and intense,' the experts explained.

'The ancient geography of the Mediterranean Basin was profoundly changed by the increase in sea level following the Last Glacial Maximum.

‘This global event has led to the retreat of the coastlines, especially in lowland areas and shallow shelves, such as the Sicilian Channel.’

Beforehand, the shallowest north-western part of the Sicilian Channel was connected to Sicily, forming a peninsula that was separated from North Africa by just 30 miles (48km).

But most of the peninsula was flooded with the exception of some high points that formed an archipelago of islands surrounded by shallow sea, including Pantelleria Vecchia Bank.

The discovery of the monolith suggests a prehistoric civilisation thrived on the island and ancient people may have colonised others nearby.

The study said: ‘This discovery provides evidence for a significant Mesolithic human activity in the Sicilian Channel region.’

The location of submerged Pantelleria Vecchia is shown in the top map. Map 'B' shows how the Sicilian and Tunisian shorelines changed. The brown contour shows what they would have looked like when the sea level was 393ft (120 metres) lower than present day, and in grey, 164ft (50 metres) lower when the island thrived

One of the holes in the monolith is seen through both parts, while the other two (pictured) are on the sides of the 39ft-long (12 metre) rock

Dr Lodolo told Discovery News: This discovery reveals the technological innovation and development achieved by the Mesolithic inhabitants in the Sicilian Channel region,’ before the island was submerged 9,500 years ago.

The monolith was hewn from a single block of stone, demonstrating the ancient culture were able to extract, transport, cut and install the monument.

‘Such an effort undoubtedly reveals important technical skills and great engineering,’ he said.

Dr Lodolo believes the stone could have served a purpose to the community, who were thought to have traded fish with neighbouring islands, leading him to suggest it may have acted as a 'lighthouse' or local beacon for seafarers, or even as a place to anchor boats.

The discovery of the monolith suggests a prehistoric civilisation thrived on the island and ancient people may have colonised others nearby. This map shows the sea floor near the monolith

It is not known whether the substantial stone stood alone or as part of a group, as seen at Stonehenge, which is younger, constructed in around 2,600BC. 

The famous Neolithic monument in Wiltshire is aligned to the sunset of the winter solstice and the sunrise of the summer solstice and is thought to have been used by ancient people to survey the heavens.

It's thought the monument was also a meeting point for ancient people and may have been a religious site at which people worshiped their ancestors.

Some have suggested it was a place of the dead, while others say it was a place of healing, because the bluestones could be struck to make a noise thought to have mystic or healing powers.

Dr Lodolo believes submerged settlements in the Mediterranean Sea may help fill in gaps in understanding about ancient cultures in the region.

Read more:

• Underwater 'Stonehenge' Monolith Found Off Coast of Sicily : Discovery News
• A submerged monolith in the Sicilian Channel (central Mediterranean Sea): Evidence for Mesolithic human activity
• Discovery News

{ https://www.dailymail.co.uk/ }

12-07-2019 om 02:11 geschreven door peter  

Real reason why NASA is in a hurry to return to the Moon

NASA is working hard to bring back U.S. astronauts to the lunar surface.

By Lorraine Lorenzo

Israel's Beresheet Lunar Lander Is About To Arrive On The Surface of Moon

U.S. space agency NASA initially set its return to the Moon in 2028. However, in response to Vice President Mike Pence's challenge to uphold NASA's mandate to move the U.S. Space industry forward, NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine moved up the target date to 2024.

Considering the mammoth effort of bringing men to the Moon back in the 1960s, one would wonder what's causing the rush this time. First of all, U.S. President Donald Trump might have something to do with it.

In a tweet made earlier this month, the U.S. President shared that he wanted America to return to space in a "BIG WAY."

"Under my Administration, we are restoring NASA to greatness and we are going back to the Moon, then Mars. I am updating my budget to include an additional $1.6 billion so that we can return to Space in a BIG WAY!" Pres. Trump said.

The upcoming Moon mission billed "Artemis" — named after the Greek Moon goddess and the twin sister of Apollo, god of the Sun — is set to be the first lunar mission that will deliver the first woman to the Moon. The first American Moon missions in the 1960s and the 1970s have all been realized with men.

This herculean project will definitely bode well for Trump's administration as it would speak big in terms of his administration's political will and how it acts on momentum. According to Vox, it would make a lot of sense to complete even one moonshot in this administration.

Before Trump, George W. Bush's admin vied for a Moon mission without success, while President Barrack Obama's term veered further into space by working on the start of missions to Mars. NASA has been clamoring for major space missions in recent years as counterparts from other international space agencies have been overshadowing their efforts. In fact, even astronauts headed to the International Space Station (ISS) often rely on hitching an expensive ride on Russian spacecraft just to get to space.

Despite Trump's enthusiasm to make it back to the lunar surface, however, one would wonder how this will be completed. The report described the ongoing preparation for 2024 as "Trumpian" in grandiosity, meaning the plans could be big in papers but also impractical.

Rockets and spacecraft to be used for the mission remain unfinished and even non-existent. And considering the major budget cuts of NASA, one would wonder who will pay for such an ambitious project.

Notwithstanding the challenges, a Moon mission would be a significant study not only in the U.S. but for the rest of the world as well, so pushing for it to happen is understandable.

The Moon would be able to help scientists understand more about the origin and development of the entire solar system. The Moon, dated at around 3.5 billion years old, could tell so much of our celestial history by studying its craters, surface make-up and other important geological aspects.

"The Moon has recorded impact processes that have gone on throughout the entire solar system," Georgiana Kramer, a planetary scientist who has done an extensive study of the Moon, said.

Even small rocks brought back by earlier Moon missions have already helped scientists understand not only how the Moon was formed but also how the Earth likely developed as well. Going back and collecting more samples, especially those from the far side of the Moon, could mean additional historical data that would give scientists like Kramer a more significant POV of how the solar system began and where it will most likely be headed.

An important breakthrough like this would certainly establish America's position as ahead of its pack in the space industry.

• This article originally appeared in IBTimes US.

{ https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/ }

12-07-2019 om 01:56 geschreven door peter  

Astronauts could travel in 'cryosleep': Nasa project to build 'suspended animation' chamber for deep space journeys to Mars

• A company in Atlanta is developing a space habitat for journeys to Mars
• It will put humans into a state of deep sleep for travelling in space
• Nasa awarded the project $500,000 (£350,000) to develop the technology
• Project is part of Nasa's Innovative Advanced Concepts programme

By ABIGAIL BEALL FOR MAILONLINE

In the story of Snow White a young princess is tricked into eating a poisoned apple, which places her in a deep sleep until she is awoken by a prince.

Since the Brothers Grimm made the concept famous over two hundred years ago, the idea of using 'suspended animation' has appeared in countless science fiction films to help humans travel to the stars.

But now Nasa is funding an aerospace engineering company to develop technology for putting humans into a state of deep sleep for use in space transportation.

Scroll down for video 

A space company in Atlanta is developing a space habitat (pictured) for putting humans into a state of deep sleep for use in space transportation. Nasa has just awarded the project $500,000 (£350,000) to take it to the next stage

The US space agency has awarded SpaceWorks $500,000 (£350,000) to develop the project.

Films like Interstellar and Alien have all used cryosleep as a way to allow humans to travel deep into space on journeys that can take years.

In real-life space missions, human crew and everything that goes along with it have a direct impact on mission mass, as well as number of launches required for the trip.

But putting astronauts into short-term hibernation could make space travel more efficient.

The habitat designed by Atlanta-based SpaceWorks is capable of placing the crew in an inactive 'torpor' state for the duration of the in-space mission segments. 

This substantially reduces the mass and size of the habitat, which ultimately leads to significant reductions in the amount of mass needed on board.

'The idea of suspended animation for interstellar human spaceflight has often been posited as a promising far-term solution for long-duration spaceflight,' said Dr John Bradford, CEO of SpaceWorks.

'It was very exciting to receive notice of our selection, I know there is always a lot of competition for these awards,' Dr Bradford told MailOnline.

'We have a great project plan outlined and really appreciate NASA giving us the opportunity to further explore and develop this idea.'

The SpaceWorks habitat design a very small, pressurized module that is docked around a central node/airlock permitting direct access to the Mars ascent/descent vehicle and Earth entry capsule by the crew. 

'We believe the crew habitat mass can be reduced to only 5-7 metric tonnes (mt) (11,000 - 15,000 lbs) for a crew of 4 to 6, compared to 20-50 mt (44,000 - 110,000 lbs) currently,' Dr Bradford said.

'The total habitat module volume would be on the order of 20 square metres (215 square feet), compared to 200 square metres (2150 square feet) for most current designs.'

The habitat designed by Atlanta-based SpaceWorks is capable of placing the crew in an inactive, 'torpor' state for the duration of the in-space mission segments.  This substantially reduces the mass and size of the habitat, which ultimately leads to significant reductions in the overall architecture size

Since the Brothers Grimm made the concept of 'suspended animation' famous in 1812 with the story of Snow White, the concept has remained firmly in the realm of fiction, until now. An 1852 depiction of Snow White laid in a glass coffin during her period of magically induced suspended animation shown

The SpaceWorks habitat design a very small, pressurized module that is docked around a central node/airlock permitting direct access to the Mars ascent/descent vehicle and Earth entry capsule by the crew (pictured)

While the crew members are in a hypothermic state, various sensors would be hooked up to them so their conditions can be monitored. 

They would receive nutrition intravenously through total parenteral nutrition (TPN) - where a liquid containing all the essential elements needed for a human body to function and catheter to drain urine.

The crew would be in this medically induced hypothermic state for 14 days at a time, with crew members taking turns being awake for two or three days at a time to ensure the needs of the crew and ship are met. 

Medically induced hypothermia is already used to treat a variety of conditions, including after heart attacks or brain and spinal cord injuries.

While the crew members are in a hypothermic state, SpaceWorks has said various sensors would be hooked up to them so their conditions can be monitored. They would receive nutrition intravenously from a liquid that would contain all the essential elements for a human body to function

In the 2014 film 'Interslettar, hypersleep pods (pictured) are used to slow the aging process of the human body so that astronauts do not incur excessive senescence and not overly consume limited supplies while on their missions

The project is part of Nasa's Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) Program, with 8 projects in total selected to proceed to the next stage of development, each receiving as much as $500,000 (£350,000) for a two-year study.

'The NIAC program is one of the ways Nasa engages the US scientific and engineering communities,' said Steve Jurczyk, associate administrator of Nasa's Space Technology Mission Directorate in Washington.

'[This] including agency civil servants, by challenging them to come up with some of the most visionary aerospace concepts,' said Steve Jurczyk, associate administrator at Nasa.

'This year's Phase II fellows have clearly met this challenge.'

SpaceWorks said it will use the funding to better understand the effects of prolonged hypothermia, and consider the technology's impact on other exploration missions.

'We will be working on both the engineering/aerospace aspects required for the system as well as the medical research,'Dr Bradford told MailOnline. 

'On the engineering front, we will be refining our technology and the torpor habitat designs. 

'We will also be looking at destinations beyond Mars,'We have expanded our team to include leading researchers and experts in the field.'

Another project involving cryogenic preservation is called 'Cryogenic Selective Surfaces', led by Dr Robert Youngquist, lead scientist at Nasa's Kennedy Space Flight Center.

The project is aimed at creating a material that can thinly coat the space ship, reflecting more than most of the light and allowing it to reach incredibly low temperatures, and it could also be used for cryogenic storage.

The coating, called 'Solar White' is predicted to reflect more than 99.9 per cent of the sun's energy when used in deep space.

'The ramifications of such a coating are broad and significant, ranging from enabling long-term cryogenic storage to allowing passive high temperature superconductor operation in space,' he said. 

'As we venture into the solar system we would like to take oxygen with us,' Dr Youngquist told MailOnline.

'Right now we have to do this with heavy pressurized containers, but if we could make the oxygen cold enough it becomes a liquid and storing large amounts of it becomes much easier. The cryogenic coatings I've proposed appear to allow these very cold temperatures to be reached, potentially allowing us to bring liquid oxygen (LOX) out into the solar system.

This could cool fuel tanks in space down to 300°F below zero (-184°C), with no energy input needed. 

'My cryogenic coatings should allow cryogenic temperatures to be reached in space, something that is difficult to do now,' he said. 

'So any application of cryogenics we have on earth, be that operating superconductors or preserving people, will now be possible in space.' 

The 'Cryogenic Selective Surfaces'project is aimed at creating a material (pictured) that can thinly coat the space ship, reflecting more than most of the light and allowing it to reach incredibly low temperatures, and it could also be used for cryogenic storage

The project is part of Nasa's Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) Program, with 8 projects in total selected to proceed to the next stage of development, each receiving as much as $500,000 (£350,000) for a two-year study

Nasa says it selected these projects for their 'innovativeness and technical viability.'

'Phase II decisions are always challenging, but we were especially challenged this year with so many successful Phase I studies applying to move forward with their cutting-edge technologies,' said Jason Derleth, the NIAC program executive at Nasa Headquarters in Washington.

Also included as part of the portfolio is a dual aircraft platform that may be able to stay aloft for weeks or even months at a time. The work is being led by Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University and consists of two glider-like unmanned aircraft which are connected via a thin, ultra-strong cable. 

A separate group is working on parachute made of plasma that can be trapped in a magnetic field to help probes glide safely back to Earth. Aerospace firm MSNW of Redmond, Washington, won a Nasa grant to demonstrate the technique on a CubeSat. 

Meanwhile, Texas Engineering Experiment is working on the design of a rotating habitat with a robotic system that constructs the structure allowing to 'grow' while in space.   

Engineers are developing a dual aircraft platform that may be able to stay aloft for weeks or even months at a time. The work is being led by Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University and consists of two glider-like unmanned aircraft which are connected via a thin, ultra-strong cable

A separate group is working on parachute made of plasma that can be trapped in a magnetic field to help probes glide safely back to Earth. Aerospace firm MSNW of Redmond, Washington, won a Nasa grant to demonstrate the technique on a CubeSat

'Whether it's tensegrity habitats in space, new ways to get humans to Mars, delicate photonic propulsion, or any one of the other amazing Phase II studies NIAC is funding, I'm thrilled to welcome these innovations and their innovators back to the program.

'Hopefully, they will all go on to do what NIAC does best - change the possible.'

All projects are still in the early stages of development, most requiring 10 or more years of concept maturation and technology development before use on a Nasa mission.

Texas Engineering Experiment is working on the design of a rotating habitat with a robotic system that constructs the structure allowing to 'grow' while in space

µ

{ https://www.dailymail.co.uk/ }

12-07-2019 om 01:42 geschreven door peter  

12-07-2019 om 01:18 geschreven door peter  

Over the last month, ESA’s Mars Express has been watching dust storms brew at the planet’s north pole and disperse toward the equator.

In late May 2019, a spiral-shaped dust storm at the north polar ice cap of Mars was observed by several instruments onboard Mars Express. A Mars Express camera captured this image on May 26. The dust storm’s brown color contrasts with the white ice of the north polar ice cap below. The image covers an area of about 1,200 x 3,000 miles (2,000 x 5,000 km). 

See a larger image. Image via ESA.

The European Space Agency’s (ESA) Mars Express spacecraft has been monitoring dust storms brewing at Mars’ north pole over the last month, and watching as the storms disperse toward the equator. The spacecraft observed at least eight different storms at the edge of the ice cap between May 22 and June 10, 2019, which formed and dissipated very quickly, between one and three days.

It’s currently spring in the northern hemisphere of Mars, and water-ice clouds and small dust-lifting events are frequently observed along the edge of the seasonally retreating ice cap. Local and regional storms lasting for a few days or weeks and confined to a small area are common on Mars, but at their most severe they can engulf the entire planet, as experienced last year in a global storm that circled the planet for many months.

Mars dust storm in motion. This animated sequence was compiled from images of a different storm captured by the VMC over a period of 70 minutes on May 29, 2019. This particular storm started on May 28 and continued to around June 1, moving toward the equator during that time.

Image via ESA/GCP/UPV/EHU Bilbao.

This montage of images shows 3 different storms developing on May 22, 2019, on May 26, and between June 6 and 10. In the latter case, the cameras watched the storm evolve for several days as it moved in an equator-ward direction. At the same time, wispy patches of light-colored clouds can be seen at the outer margin of the polar cap and also several thousand kilometers away (several thousand miles), close to the volcanoes Elysium Mons and Olympus Mons.

Image via ESA/DLR/FU Berlin

Both Mars Express and NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter observed that when the dust storms reached the large volcanoes Elysium Mons and Olympus Mons, orographic clouds – water ice clouds driven by the influence of a volcano’s leeward slope on the air flow – that had been developing, started to evaporate as a result of the air mass being heated by the influx of dust.

These regional dust storms only last a few days. The planet’s circulation moves the elevated dust and spreads it out into a thin haze in the lower atmosphere. Some traces of dust and clouds remained in the volcanic province into mid-June.

A dust storm underway at the edge of the north polar ice cap of Mars. The image was taken by the Mars Express Visual Monitoring Camera on May 29, 2019.

Image via ESA/GCP/UPV/EHU Bilbao

Look out for dust storms in the daily images provided by the ESA’s Mars webcam, on Flickr and Twitter.

• Bottom line: Images of dust storms at the Mars north pole, take by ESA’s Mars Express.
• Via ESA

{ https://earthsky.org/ }

12-07-2019 om 00:42 geschreven door peter  

Current telescopes may be able to find the wandering worlds

BY 

LISA GROSSMAN 

 

THAT’S NO MOON  Comets around distant stars, shown in this artist’s illustration, could be explained by “ploonets” — moons that were freed from their orbits around migrating gas giants.

LYNNETTE COOK/FUSE/NASA

Meet ploonets: planets of moonish origin.

In other star systems, some moons could escape their planets and start orbiting their stars instead, new simulations suggest. Scientists have dubbed such liberated worlds “ploonets,” and say that current telescopes may be able to find the wayward objects.

Astronomers think that exomoons — moons orbiting planets that orbit stars other than the sun  — should be common, but efforts to find them have turned up empty so far (SN Online: 4/30/19). Astrophysicist Mario Sucerquia of the University of Antioquia in Medellín, Colombia and colleagues simulated what would happen to those moons if they orbited hot Jupiters, gas giants that lie scorchingly close to their stars (SN: 7/8/17, p. 4). Many astronomers think that hot Jupiters weren’t born so close, but instead migrated toward their star from a more distant orbit.

As the gas giant migrates, the combined gravitational forces of the planet and the star would inject extra energy into the moon’s orbit, pushing the moon farther and farther from its planet until eventually it escapes, the researchers report June 29 at arXiv.org.

“This process should happen in every planetary system composed of a giant planet in a very close-in orbit,” Sucerquia says. “So ploonets should be very frequent.”

Some ploonets may be indistinguishable from ordinary planets. Others, whose orbits keep them close to their planet, could reveal their presence by changing the timing of when their neighbor planet crosses, or transits, in front of the star. The ploonet should stay close enough to the planet that its gravity can speed or slow the planet’s transit times. Those deviations should be detectable by combining data from planet-hunting telescopes like NASA’s TESS or the now-defunct Kepler, Sucerquia says.

Ploonethood may be a relatively short-lived phenomenon, though, making the worlds more difficult to spot. About half of the ploonets in the researchers’ simulations crashed into either their planet or star within about half a million years. And half of the remaining survivors crashed within a million years.

Even with few visible survivors, ploonets could help explain some bizarre exoplanetary features. Moon debris from such crashes could lead to giant ring systems around planets, like the 37 rings that encircle exoplanet J1407b, the team says.

Or, if the ploonet had an icy surface or an atmosphere before moving close to its star, the star’s heat would evaporate it, giving the ploonet a tail like a comet’s. Evaporating ploonets zipping by with a long light-blocking tail could explain strangely flickering stars like Tabby’s star, Sucerquia says (SN: 12/22/18, p. 9).

“Those structures [rings and flickers] have been discovered, have been observed,” Sucerquia says. “We just propose a natural mechanism to explain [them].”

While the solar system doesn’t have any hot Jupiters, ploonethood may be possible here, too. Earth’s moon is moving slowly away from the Earth, at a rate of about 4 centimeters per year. When it eventually breaks free, “the moon is a potential ploonet,” Sucerquia says — although that won’t happen for about 5 billion years.

The study is a good first step for thinking about what would happen to exomoons in real planetary systems, says planetary astrophysicist Natalie Hinkel of the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, who wasn’t involved in the new work. “Nobody’s looked at the problem quite like this,” she says. “It adds to the layers of how complex these systems are.”

Plus, ploonet is “a wonderful name,” Hinkel says. “Normally I sort of eye-roll at these made-up names, but this one is a keeper.”

Citations

• M. Sucerquia et al. Ploonets: formation, evolution, and detectability of tidally detached exomoons. arXiv:1906.11400. Posted June 28, 2019.

Further Reading

• L. Grossman. Skepticism grows over whether the first known exomoon exists. Science News Online, April 30, 2019.
• L. Grossman. Astronomers spot another star that flickers like Tabby’s star. Science News. Vol. 194, December 22, 2018, p. 9.
• L. Grossman. Tabby’s star is probably just dusty, and still not an alien megastructure. Science News Online, August 31, 2017.
• M. Temming. Scalding hot gas giant breaks heat records. Science News. Vol. 191, July 8, 2017, p. 4.
• C. Crockett. Giant rings encircle young exoplanet. Science News. Vol. 187, March 7, 2015, p. 5.
• C. Crockett. Comets caught zooming around nearby star. Science News Online, October 22, 2014.
• A. Grant. Life has prospects on moons of giant extrasolar planets. Science News. Vol. 183, February 9, 2013, p. 5.

{ https://www.sciencenews.org/ }

12-07-2019 om 00:21 geschreven door peter  

Why Is the Apollo Reflector Experiment Still Operating, 50 Years Later?

By Elizabeth Howell 

Apollo 11 astronauts left this retroreflector on the lunar surface in 1969. 

(Image: © NASA)

An epic lunar laser experiment is still going strong, five decades after the Apollo astronauts set it up on the surface.

The moonwalking crew of Apollo 11, which landed on the moon 50 years ago this month, put special retroreflectors on the lunar surface, as did the later crews of Apollo 14 and 15, in 1971. (Another retroreflector, built by the French, sits on the Soviet Lunokhod 2 rover that landed without a crew in 1973.)

The NASA experiment, called the laser ranging retroreflector, is "a special type of mirror with the property of always reflecting an incoming light beam back in the direction it came from," explained the Lunar and Planetary Institute (LPI) in a statement. And the reflector is key for measuring the distance between the Earth and the moon, the institute added.

• Related: Apollo 11 at 50: A Complete Guide to the Historic Moon Landing

The way it works is an observatory — quite often the McDonald Observatory in Texas, although many others have participated — shoots a laser beam at the moon. "They remain tightly focused for large distances," the institute explained, although there is some dispersion. By the time the beam bounces off the mirror and returns to Earth, it has widened to about 12 miles (20 kilometers) in diameter. This beam dispersion makes it more difficult to view the reflection.

The reflector itself doesn't require any power, which is why it's still operating decades after other instruments on the moon fell silent. This instrument includes 100 "corner cubes" (or fused silica half-cubes), which are placed in an 18-inch-square (46 centimeters square) aluminum panel, according to NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). It's due to the shape of these corner cubes that any laser shot at them reflects light directly back. Over the years, measurements of the moon's distance have improved thanks to better laser and computing equipment.

"Once the laser beam hits a reflector, scientists at the observatories use sensitive filtering and amplification equipment to detect any return signal," JPL said. "The reflected light is too weak to be seen with the human eye, but under good conditions, one photon, the fundamental particle of light, will be received every few seconds."

Observations must be made over several hours to account for the weak signal. But by averaging out the signal, researchers can calculate the moon's distance down to a precision of less than 1 inch (2 cm), JPL said. That's not a bad margin of error given that the moon's distance averages 238,855 miles (384,400 km) from our planet, or about 30 Earth diameters away from us. It's a distance so vast that it took Apollo astronauts three days to get there.

While the experiment is most famous for its measurements of lunar distance, researchers have also used the data to show that the moon has a fluid core and that the natural satellite is moving slowly away from Earth, said James Williams, a scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory involved in the experiment, in a 2009 Space.com interview. 

The timing of the laser round trip provided evidence supporting Albert Einstein's theory of general relativity. That theory says, in part, that the speed of light in a vacuum is independent of any observer's motion. This experiment also showed that Isaac Newton's gravitational constant is extremely constant, changing by less than 1 part in 100 billion between 1969 and 2004, NASA stated.

•  Scientists Bounce Laser Beams Off Old Soviet Moon Rover 
•  NASA Put a Big Disco Ball in Space 40 Years Ago, and It's Still There 
•  This Is the Purest Beam of Light in the World 

Follow Elizabeth Howell on Twitter @howellspace.

Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook. 

{ https://www.space.com/ }

11-07-2019 om 23:58 geschreven door peter  

Nearly 200K People Have Signed Up to Steal Alien Secrets from Area 51 in Late-Summer Raid

By Brandon Specktor 

As this sign outside of Nevada’s infamous Area 51 military base reminds would-be visitors, guards are authorized to respond to trespassers with deadly force.

(Image: © Barry King/Getty Images)

Pack your shades, your sunscreen and your coziest tinfoil hat, because the late-summer event of the season is happening in Nevada's scenic Area 51, and you're invited.

According to a tongue-in-cheek Facebook event called "Storm Area 51, They Can't Stop All of Us," a ragtag army of alien hunters will meet up near the top-secret Air Force base in the predawn hours of Sept. 20, coordinate a plan of attack, then raid the grounds in search of captive aliens. Per the event's hosts (a page that posts memes and a guy who streams video games on Twitch), the delicate operation will involve running supernaturally fast — faster than the guards' bullets can fly — but will be worth it to "see them aliens."

So far, nearly 200,000 Facebook users have signed up to attend, with another 200,000 "interested" in the affair. 

• Related: 15 Far-Out Facts About Area 51

This event is, of course, a joke (please, do not raid this or any other military base). Area 51 — a massive plot of desert about 80 miles (129 kilometers) northwest of Las Vegas — is a top-secret military installation that is infamously well-guarded by fences, radars and heavily armed "camo dudes" in white trucks. After more than 60 years of operations, the base's primary purpose remains classified and its grounds restricted to the public, fomenting an aura of spooky secrecy that has intrigued all manner of skeptics and conspiracy theorists for decades.

This much is known about the base: It's huge, covering a total of 2.9 million acres (1.2 million hectares) and 5,000 square miles (12,950 square km) of restricted airspace. Officially, the base is part of the Nevada Test and Training Range (NTTR), which is affiliated with Nellis Air Force Base; according to the Air Force, it is the largest combined air and ground space for peacetime military operations in the free world.

Since the Air Force set up shop there in 1955, Area 51 has hosted hundreds of nuclear weapons tests and has served as a training-and-testing ground for all manner of top-secret stealth aircraft, Live Science previously reported. If you believe the most popular conspiracy theory about the base, one of those aircraft may be an alien saucer that crash-landed in Roswell, New Mexico, in the late 1940s.

Poll: Do You Believe Alien Life Exists?

I'm not sure

No - Aliens are just part of science fiction.

Yes - We may not have found them yet, but they're out there.

Vote

View Results

Crowdsignal.com

The U.S. military claimed that the mysterious object was a weather balloon (a 1994 Air Force report confirmed this to be true — albeit, a souped-up weather balloon designed to detect far-off nuclear fallout). However, conspiracy theorists insisted that the wreck was indeed an alien spacecraft, which had been subsequently transported to Area 51 to be broken apart, studied and put back together again. This theory gained traction in the 1980s, when a man claiming to have worked at Area 51 told the news media that he had actually seen scientists reverse engineer alien saucers there.

This man, it turns out, was a liar who never set foot on the base (he also lied about the colleges he went to and other past employment); but his stories gained enough attention that Area 51 had a new, permanent reputation as that eerie place in the desert where scientists might be tinkering with aliens. Subsequent tests of experimental, top-secret aircraft at the base have only strengthened this far-out legacy.

The allure of the mysterious desert base is undeniable. So, what happens if you do attempt to trespass into Area 51 and liberate the juicy alien secrets contained within? For starters, you'll probably be stopped at gunpoint by guards dressed in camo, as two intrepid adventurers experienced in 2016 after trying to sneak a camera through the base's back gate.

According to signs posted around the base, these infamous "camo dudes" are permitted to greet trespassers with deadly force — but, if past encounters are any indication, trespassers are more likely to be met with a hefty fine and a court date. When an SUV filled with tourists accidentally crossed into the base's restricted area a few years ago, the driver and four passengers were each cited with a $650 fine and a misdemeanor charge. The unwary passengers eventually got their charges dropped, but the driver had to pay up — and was banned from leading tours in the area for several years.

If you happen to join the joke raid proposed for this September, keep that man's story in mind. When it comes to unearthing the truth of Area 51, you may have only one shot. Choose your plan wisely.

• Flying Saucers to Mind Control: 22 Declassified Military Secrets
• Top 10 Conspiracy Theories
• Why Do People Believe in UFOs?

Originally published on Live Science.

{  https://www.space.com/ }

11-07-2019 om 23:43 geschreven door peter  

Boop! Japanese Spacecraft Grabs Second Sample from Asteroid Ryugu

By Meghan Bartels 

It's rare for a spacecraft to "boop" an asteroid twice.

The asteroid Ryugu, as seen by Japan's Hayabusa2 spacecraft during its sample-grabbing descent on July 10, 2019.

(Image: © JAXA)

It looks like Japan's Hayabusa2 spacecraft has snagged its second souvenir from asteroid Ryugu, marking one of the last major milestones of the probe's visit.

Today's (July 10) maneuver was a calculated risk, as mission staff sought to weigh the scientific value of a subsurface sample with the possibility that failure would jeopardize the sample that the team believes is on board the spacecraft. Now, Hayabusa2 has just one more rover to deploy on the space rock before it departs at the end of the year.

• Related: Pow! Japan's Hayabusa2 Bombs Asteroid Ryugu to Make a Crater (Photo) 

The maneuver stretched on for hours as the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency's (JAXA) Hayabusa2 slowly lowered itself to the surface. At 100 feet (30 meters) above the surface, the spacecraft spotted the bright, white target marker it had dropped during a preparatory procedure.

That marker is 65 feet (20 m) north of the site where, in April, the spacecraft deployed a copper bomb to create an artificial crater in order to look below the asteroid's surface. (JAXA had decided that sampling sites within the crater itself were too rocky and would risk the spacecraft's safety.)

Finally, at about 9:15 p.m. EDT (0115 GMT on July 11), Hayabusa2 touched down, fired a tantalum bullet into the space rock and — if all went according to plan — collected a bit of the resulting debris. That debris should be extra-special — not just any space rock, but pristine material dug out from below the surface of the space rock by the formation of the crater. 

Because Ryugu does not have an atmosphere or magnetic field, the asteroid's surface is exposed to all the hazards of space. Cosmic rays and charged particles of solar wind streaming off the sun pummel Ryugu and its companions, altering the rock at the exterior of these bodies.

But underneath these shells, asteroids contain the rubble left over from the birth of the planets. That's why scientists hope that today's procedure in particular will help them understand how the solar system formed: by allowing them to not just analyze the crater that Hayabusa2 created on the surface but also get that rock into labs here on Earth.

HAYABUSA2@JAXA@haya2e_jaxa

 · 19h

Replying to @haya2e_jaxa

[PPTD] July 11 at 10:39 JST. The antenna has switched to the HGA (high-gain) and telemetry data has been received. We are now checking the state of the spacecraft.

HAYABUSA2@JAXA@haya2e_jaxa

[PPTD] July 11 at 10:51 JST: Gate 5 check. The state of the spacecraft is normal and the touchdown sequence was performed as scheduled. Project Manager Tsuda has declared that the 2nd touchdown was a success!

• 760

3:57 AM - Jul 11, 2019

Twitter Ads info and privacy

• 303 people are talking about this

The Hayabusa2 spacecraft was designed with three compartments for sample storage. Mission staff believed two of those compartments were already holding pieces of Ryugu; now they hope the third one does as well.

But until the spacecraft makes its way back to Earth and scientists can get inside that sample storage system, they aren't sure what's in there. Once the samples arrive, the team will first weed out anything from the spacecraft's operations; the metals of the bomb and bullets used during the mission were chosen because they do not exist on asteroids and so will be easy to identify and discard.

Then, it's all about the asteroid science, whatever that turns out to be. JAXA ran into trouble during the sampling portion of Hayabusa2's predecessor mission and ended up with minuscule grains of an asteroid called Itokawa in 2010. Yet scientists have still made discoveries based on that dust. For example, they found that there is water on the space rock and that Itokawa seems to be built from rubble formed during a large collision. If Hayabusa2 has grabbed larger hunks of asteroid, that's more material for more science.

Of course, all that will have to wait until the spacecraft makes its journey back to Earth. It has one more task to accomplish first: deploying a small rover, called MINERVA-II2, later this summer. Then, in November or December, Hayabusa2 will head home, delivering its bounty toward the end of next year. 

•  Watch Japan's Hayabusa2 Grab a Piece of an Asteroid in This Incredible Video! 
•  Shadow Selfie! Japanese Asteroid Probe Snaps Amazing Post-Landing Pic 
•  Japan's Hopping Rovers Capture Amazing Views of Asteroid Ryugu (Video) 

Email Meghan Bartels at mbartels@space.com or follow her @meghanbartels.

Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook. 

{ https://www.space.com/ }

11-07-2019 om 23:20 geschreven door peter  

NASA

How moon landing conspiracy theories began and why they persist today

Bill Kaysing was a former US Navy officer who worked as a technical writer for one of the rocket manufacturers for NASA’s Apollo moon missions. He claimed that he had inside knowledge of a government conspiracy to fake the moon landings, and many conspiracy theories about the Apollo moon landings which persist to this day can be traced back to his 1976 book, We Never Went to the Moon: America’s Thirty Billion Dollar Swindle.

The basic template of the conspiracy theory is that NASA couldn’t manage to safely land a man on the moon by the end of the 1960s as President John F Kennedy had promised, so it only sent astronauts into Earth orbit. Conspiracy theorists then argue that NASA staged the moon landings in a film studio and that there are tell-tale signs on the footage and the photos that give the game away. They claim that NASA has covered up the elaborate hoax ever since.

Moon landing sceptics point to supposed clues such as photos that appear to show the astronauts in front of cross hairs that were etched on the camera glass, or a mysterious letter C visible on a moon rock. These and many other seeming anomalies have been debunked, but moon landing conspiracy theories have persisted in the popular imagination.

In the US, opinion polls indicate that between 5-10% of Americans distrust the official version of events. In the UK, a YouGov poll in 2012 found that 12% of Britons believed in the conspiracy theory. A recent survey found that 20% of Italians believe that the moon landings were a hoax, while a 2018 poll in Russia put the figure there as high as 57%, unsurprising given the popularity of anti-Western conspiracy theories there.

• To the moon and beyond is a new podcast series from The Conversation marking the 50th anniversary of the moon landings. Listen and subscribe here.

Ready to disbelieve

That Kaysing’s conspiracy theory took hold in mid-1970s America is in large part due to a wider crisis of trust in the country at the time. In 1971, citizens read the leaked Pentagon Papers, showing that the Johnson administration had been systematically lying about the Vietnam War. They tuned in nightly to the hearings about the Watergate break-in and subsequent cover-up.

A series of congressional reports detailed CIA malfeasance both at home and abroad, and in 1976, the House Select Committee on Assassinationsconcluded – in contrast to the Warren Commission more than a decade earlier – that there was a high probability that there had been a conspiracy to kill Kennedy. These revelations had helped fuel a wider shift in conspiracy thinking since the late 1960s, from a belief in external enemies, such as Communists, to the suspicion that the American state was itself conspiring against its citizens.

Moon landing conspiracy theories have proved particularly sticky ever since. To understand their popularity we need to consider their cultural context, as much as the psychological dispositions of believers.

As with the Kennedy assassination, they formed a new kind of conspiracy theorising. These theories reinterpret the publicly available evidence, finding inconsistencies in the official record, rather than uncovering suppressed information. Visual evidence is crucial: for all their scepticism, their starting point is that seeing is believing. In the realm of photo evidence, the assumption is that everyone can be a detective. In the conspiracy theory communities that emerged at the tail-end of the 1960s, the self-taught buff became central.

MORE ON THE MOON AND BEYOND 
Join us as we delve into the last 50 years of space exploration and the 50 years to come. From Neil Armstrong’s historic first step onto the lunar surface to present-day plans to use the moon as a launchpad to Mars, hear from academic experts who’ve dedicated their lives to studying the wonders of space.

Constructed reality

The moon landing conspiracy theories also brought to the mainstream the notion that significant events are not what they seem: they have been staged, part of an official disinformation campaign. The idea that tragic events are created by “crisis actors” employed by the government has become the default explanation for many events today, from 9/11 to mass shootings. This type of conspiracy theory is particularly harmful – for example, parents of children killed in the Sandy Hook elementary school shooting have been relentlessly hounded by internet trolls claiming they are merely paid stooges.

However, the story that the lunar landings were staged also resonates with the more plausible notion that the space race itself was as much a Cold War spectacle as a triumph of the human spirit.

The 1978 Hollywood film Capricorn One did much to popularise moon landing conspiracy theories. Based on Kaysing’s book, it imagined that a Mars landing was faked in a film studio, tapping into conspiracy rumours that the moon landings themselves had been directed by Stanley Kubrick. This suggestive myth is based in part on the idea that special effects had become much more sophisticated with Kubrick’s 1968 film 2001 A Space Odyssey, although still far from the capabilities that the conspiracy theories suppose.

Even if they are far-fetched in factual terms, moon landing conspiracy theories nevertheless call up the more plausible possibility that in our media-saturated age reality itself is constructed, if not actually faked.

{ https://theconversation.com/uk }

11-07-2019 om 22:19 geschreven door peter  

11-07-2019 om 22:02 geschreven door peter  

India keert terug naar de maan met nieuwe missie ‘Chandrayaan-2’ - HLN.be

Na het succes van de vorige Indiase missie naar de maan, Chandrayaan-1, gaat de nieuwe missie alweer een stapje verder. Dit keer moet het ruimtetuig ook landen op de maan. Dat zal onbemand gebeuren. Als India daarin slaagt, zal het land het vierde ter wereld zijn om een maanrover te laten rondrijden op de maan.

Op 14 juli wordt de maanrover reeds gelanceerd. En als alles zoals gepland gaat, zal de maanrover twee maanden later – op 6 of 7 september – eveneens landen op het maanoppervlak. Dat gebeurt zo’n 600 kilometer van de zuidpool van de maan, een plaats waar voorlopig geen enkele ruimtetuig landde. Daar zal de lander gedurende een jaar gesteenten en maanbevingen bestuderen.

• Ook NASA heeft plannen met de maan. De Amerikaanse ruimtevaartorganisatie wil een nieuw ruimtestation rond de maan bouwen.

Bekijk het hier: 

• Lees ook: Verovering van de maan: deze landen nemen deel aan de race

{ https://www.hln.be/ }

11-07-2019 om 21:42 geschreven door peter  

Belgisch bedrijf levert onderdelen van Indiase maansonde - HLN.be

Bron: Belga

Deze infrarode afbeeldingsspectrometer zal de minerale en volatiele verbindingen in kaart brengen, en de overvloed aan water en hydroxylionen op het maanoppervlak karakteriseren, aldus het bedrijf.

 EPA

• Lees ook: India keert terug naar de maan met nieuwe missie ‘Chandrayaan-2'

{ https://www.hln.be/ }

11-07-2019 om 21:34 geschreven door peter