Scientists analyse the famous 'WOW!' signal first detected in 1977 - and finally reveal the truth about the mysterious flash

• Scientists have new found evidence that the signal was not sent by aliens
• The signal could have been caused by a natural microwave laser hitting Earth  

By Wiliam Hunter

In 1977, the Ohio State University's Big Ear radio telescope captured a signal from space so strange that scientists are still baffled by it almost 50 years later.

For decades, scientists have struggled to find any natural process capable of producing the 72-second burst which prompted astronomer Jerry Ehman to write 'WOW!' on the telescope's readout.

Now, new analysis of the so-called WOW! signal has revealed that it might have been caused by a hugely powerful laser slamming into Earth.

Experts say this was not the first salvo of an alien invasion, but rather the entirely natural product of a rare alignment between a collapsed star and a cloud of cool hydrogen.

Unfortunately for alien-hunters, scientists from the University of Puerto Rico at Arecibo say this new evidence shows that the WOW! signal is not evidence of life beyond Earth.

For decades, scientists have struggled to find any natural process capable of producing the 72-second burst which prompted astronomer Jerry Ehman to write 'WOW!' on the telescope's readout

What are the theories to explain the WOW! signal?

There have been many theories over the years for what could have been the source for the short-lived, narrow band radio signal that became known as the Wow! signal.

At the time, it was seen has having all the traits of having come from a distant planet, but the inability to pick it up again has frustrated astronomers.

While some have taken it to be a radio message broadcast by an alien beacon into space, others have looked for other astronomical sources. 

Theories have included collisions between asteroids and stars, flares from stars, merging white dwarfs and colliding neutron stars. 

Now, experts suggest that it could have been caused by energy from a neutron star trigger a cloud of atomic hydrogen gas to release a laser burst. 

When the WOW! signal hit Earth, many scientists put forward the idea that this could have been the first 'hello' from a distant alien civilisation.

The signal was not only uniquely powerful but also arrived in an unusually narrow band of frequencies around 1420 MHz - similar to those produced by atomic hydrogen.

Since hydrogen is so abundant in the universe, some suggested that advanced civilisations might be using its frequency as a calling card for signalling to other intelligent species.

Other natural explanations for the signature have been proposed, such as passing comets releasing clouds of gas.

In the absence of any good natural explanation, the idea that the WOW! signal was a 'technosignature' from another world became widespread.

Now, Professor Abel Méndez and his colleagues believe they have identified a series of similar signals which could explain the WOW! signal's origin.

The made the discovery by combing through the archives of the now-collapsed Arecibo Observatory's Radio Emissions from Red Dwarf Stars (REDS) project.

Since this telescope had a similar experimental set-up to the Big Ear radio telescope, he hoped that it would be able to reveal if anything like the WOW! signal had ever been spotted.

The researchers spotted several signals which appeared to be extremely similar to the WOW! signal, albeit considerably fainter. 

In 1977, the Ohio State University's Big Ear radio telescope (pictured) captured a signal from space so strange that scientists are still baffled by it almost 50 years later 

Researchers have used data from the now defunct Arecibo Observatory (pictured) to find signals that match the original WOW! signal. This evidence suggests it could be been the product of a giant space laser 

Read More

• Amateur astronomer traces possible source of notorious 'WOW!' signal first detected in 1977 to a sun-like star 1,800 light years from Earth  

Four of those originated from the tiny red dwarf star, Teegarden's Star, which is just 12.5 light-years from Earth.

Professor Méndez says: 'Our latest observations, made between February and May 2020, have revealed similar narrowband signals near the hydrogen line, though less intense than the original Wow! signal.'

What makes Teegarden's star unique, however, is that it is surrounded by clouds of cool atomic hydrogen.

When intense light from the red dwarf hits these clouds of hydrogen atoms, they are stimulated to produce a powerful burst of microwave energy in the 1420 MHz. 

Researchers spotted similar bands of energy (pictured) being produced at fainter levels from a nearby red dwarf star called Teegarden's Star. Importantly this star is surrounded by clouds of atomic hydrogen 

Read More

• Signals from outer space: The FOUR times scientists have believed we were contacted by aliens... as 'impossible' spinning object 4,000 light years away sends repeated radio bleeps to earth  

The result is an entirely natural microwave laser, or maser, within the hydrogen range which looks extremely similar to that of the WOW! signal.

The researchers argue that the WOW! signal was likely produced when an even more powerful burst of energy collided with a similar hydrogen cloud, producing an even bigger maser.

A burst that powerful is rare, but could have been produced by a type of neutron star called a magnetar.

These are formed when a star collapses and explodes into a supernova, leaving behind an ultra-dense, fast-spinning core with an extremely powerful magnetic field.

If the burst from a neutron star hit a cloud of cool hydrogen gas it could trigger a colossal maser burst just like the WOW! signal.

The signal may have been produced by a microwave laser triggered by the collision of energy from a magnetar (artists impression pictured) and a cloud of hydrogen gas. This means that the Wow! signal is not evidence for alien life 

Since it would be extremely rare for a magnetar to line up with a hydrogen cloud in just the right way, this also explains why we haven't heard the signal again.

If true, this would mean there is no need to suppose that the WOW! signal is evidence of alien life.

In their paper, published on arXiv, Professor Méndez and his colleagues write: 'Our hypothesis accounts for all observed characteristics of the Wow! signal introduces another source of false positives in technosignature searches, and suggests that this signal represented the first recorded astronomical maser flare in the hydrogen line.

'We will continue with Arecibo Wow! exploring our extensive sets of observations from Arecibo REDS. Future studies will incorporate archival data from the Arecibo Observatory.'

WHAT IS THE FERMI PARADOX?

The Fermi Paradox questions why, given the estimated 200bn-400bn stars and at least 100bn planets in our galaxy, there have been no signs of alien life. 

The contradiction is named after its creator, Italian physicist Enrico Fermi.

He first posed the question back in 1950.

Fermi believed it was too extraordinary that a single extraterrestrial signal or engineering project has yet to be detected in the universe — despite its immense vastness. 

Fermi concluded there must a barrier that limits the rise of intelligent, self-aware, technologically advanced space-colonising civilisations.

This barrier is sometimes referred to as the 'Great Filter'.

Italian physicist Enrico Fermi devised the so-called Fermi Paradox in the 1950s. It explores why there is no sign of alien life, despite the 100 billions planets in our galaxy

If the main obstacle preventing the colonisation of other planets is not in our past, then the barrier that will stop humanity's prospects of reaching other worlds must lie in our future, scientists have theorised.  

Professor Brian Cox believes the advances in science and engineering required by a civilisation to start conquering the stars ultimately lead to its destruction.

 He said: 'One solution to the Fermi paradox is that it is not possible to run a world that has the power to destroy itself and that needs global collaborative solutions to prevent that.

‘It may be that the growth of science and engineering inevitably outstrips the development of political expertise, leading to disaster.'

Other possible explanations for the Fermi Paradox include that no other intelligent species have arisen in the universe, intelligent alien species are out there — but lack the necessary technology to communicate with Earth.

Some believe that the distances between intelligent civilsations are too great to allow any kind of two-way communication.

If two worlds are separated by several thousand light-years, it's possible that one or both civilisation will be extinct before a dialogue can be established. 

The so-called Zoo hypothesis claims intelligent alien life is out there, but deliberately avoids any contact with life on Earth to allow its natural evolution.

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24-08-2024 om 16:44 geschreven door peter  

Since landing on June 1, Chang’e 6 has been carrying out a robotic lunar exploration mission launched by China’s National Space Administration. The Chinese probe was initially launched in early May.

Nearly a week after Chang’e 6 touched down in the Apollo basin, NASA’s LRO passed above its landing site, allowing it an opportunity to capture images that revealed the Chinese spacecraft’s location near the rim of a 50-meter crater.

With the new imagery in hand, LRO imaging experts were quickly able to determine the coordinates of Chang’e 6’s position to be roughly 42 degrees south latitude, 206 degrees east longitude, and placing the probe at an elevation of about minus 5,256 meters.

The new imagery obtained by the LRO was released amid a flood of recent social media posts that falsely link earlier imagery obtained by NASA, some dating as far back as 2010, to the recent landing of Chang’e 6.

Land of the Ancient Lunar Lava Flows

Billions of years ago, the area where Chang’e 6 is carrying out its mission was the site of basaltic lava flows that made their way to the area, where they likely subsided once they met a geological fault believed to exist in the area.

Chang’e 6’s landing site is roughly halfway between a pair of prominent dorsum or “wrinkle ridges,” features that are ubiquitous on lunar basalt plains and can sometimes reach several hundreds of kilometres in length. The basaltic flow in this region appears to overlap with an earlier one located to the west, which lacks the iron oxide and titanium dioxide that is evidenced by the adjacent younger basaltic formation.

NASA’s Spy in Lunar Orbit

Since June 18, 2009, the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) has been observing the moon from its unique eccentric mapping orbit, providing crucial imagery for creating a 3D map of the lunar surface.

Although the LRO was initially planned for a two-year mission, its operation was extended to gather data addressing various scientific questions, including the evolution of the moon’s crust and regolith.

The recent photos the LRO obtained of China’s Chang’ e 6 spacecraft aren’t the first time NASA’s ever-watchful eye in lunar orbit has successfully spotted operations on the lunar surface undertaken by other countries. Last September, the LRO captured images of India’s Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft at its landing site. Also, in April of this year, the LRO managed to capture images of the Korea Pathfinder Lunar Orbiter (KPLO), an orbital spacecraft operated by the Korea Aerospace Research Institute (KARI).

Mapping the Moon and Beyond

Apart from photographing spacecraft sent to the Moon by other nations, the LRO has provided an unprecedented amount of information that has helped scientists expand our knowledge of Earth’s natural satellite. With a suite of high-resolution cameras and other powerful instruments, the LRO has succeeded at mapping the surface of the Moon with an impressive amount of detail, imagery which NASA has made available for viewing online.

Artist’s concept of NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter in orbit around the Moon

(Credit: NASA).

The LRO has played a significant role in several major discoveries, including the confirmation of water ice in craters on the Moon that remain in permanent shadow. Last December, the LRO also transmitted a laser beam from its laser altimeter instrument toward a tiny device on the Indian Space Research Organization’s (ISRO) Vikram lander, proving that the LRO could be used to locate retroreflectors on the surface of the Moon.

Currently, Chang’e 6 is carrying out China’s second sample return mission. The samples collected by the lander were transferred to an ascender module and carried to an orbiter where it docked on June 6 for their transfer back to Earth. The Chang’e 6 lander and its associated rover have also conducted experiments while operating on the lunar surface.

Additional information on China’s Chang’e 6 mission can be found here, and more about the ongoing operations of NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissaince Orbiter can be found on NASA’s official LRO mission webpage.

• Micah Hanks is the Editor-in-Chief and Co-Founder of The Debrief. He can be reached by email at micah@thedebrief.org. Follow his work at micahhanks.com and on X: @MicahHanks.

• https://youtu.be/7kagUc6kDho

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24-08-2024 om 01:39 geschreven door peter  

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24-08-2024 om 00:41 geschreven door peter  

Planetary scientists want to know more about the moon’s geological processes. Io is considered a high heat flux world, and scientists want to learn more about its tidal dissipation. Studying Io can also tell us more about primitive planetary bodies that were once more volcanic, which Earth likely was early in its history.

Io can also tell us more about volcanogenic atmospheres, which can play a vital role in shaping a planet’s environment. This 2020 paper draws a link between Earth’s volcanic activity and the Great Oxygenation Event, a critical period when oxygen accumulated in Earth’s atmosphere. A better understanding of the link between volcanic activity and atmospheric evolution will help us better understand exoplanets and habitability.

Scientists know that the Galilean moons exchange material with Jupiter’s atmosphere and magnetosphere. They also know that material ejected from Io’s volcanoes can reach the surfaces of the other moons. Some of it can be turned into plasma by Jupiter’s powerful magnetosphere, forming Io’s plasma torus. They’re curious about this mass exchange in the Jupiter system and how it’s shaped the moons.

These are the reasons for a dedicated mission to Io.

In 2010, scientists at the University of Arizona and Johns Hopkins University’s Applied Physics Laboratory first proposed the Io Volcano Observer (IVO) as part of NASA’s Discovery Program. IVO was proposed as a low-cost mission to explore Jupiter’s volcanic Moon. It was proposed again in 2015 and in 2019. In 2020, IVO was selected with two other missions for further study but ultimately lost out to the DAVINCI+ and VERITAS missions to Venus.

Now, there’s another proposal for the Io Volcano Observer, but this time, it’s under NASA’s New Frontiers Program. The new proposal shows that the desire for an Io-focused mission won’t go away. Instead, it’s gaining steam.

In a new paper still subject to peer review, a group of mostly American scientists present their case for the New Frontiers IVO. It’s titled “Comparing NASA Discovery and New Frontiers Class Mission Concepts for the Io Volcano Observer (IVO).” The first author is Christopher Hamilton from the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory, University of Arizona.

The IVO NF would address our scientific questions by reaching three goals, according to the authors:

• Determine how and where tidal heat is generated inside Io;
• Understand how tidal heat is transported to the surface of Io;
• Understand how Io is evolving.

The original IVO proposal had the spacecraft encounter Io ten times in four years after reaching the moon in 2033. It would’ve carried five instruments, with a sixth under consideration. The IVO would’ve crossed Io from pole to pole, passing over the equator at an altitude of between 200 and 500 kilometres (124 and 310 miles.)

The closest approaches were carefully designed to give the spacecraft the best observations of the moon’s magnetic field, gravity field, and libration amplitude. The approaches also would’ve allowed for both sunlit and dark views of volcanoes, allowing the spacecraft to study the composition of lava. The polar perspective would’ve provided new views of heat emanating from the moon that were unavailable to Galileo and unobservable from Earth.

The new IVO NF proposal maintains the polar orbit of the original IVO but improves it in several ways. Universe Today talked with lead author Christopher Hamilton about the new proposal. His remarks have been lightly edited for clarity.

The first change in the new proposal concerns the number of flybys, which would increase from 10 to 20.

“10 flybys for the original Discovery-level IVO mission would fill important gaps in image coverage that remain unfilled after the Voyager and Galileo era,” Hamilton said. So why double it?

“The new tour not only doubles the image coverage of Io’s surface with high-resolution imaging but also enables more flybys of active volcanoes, like Loki, Loki Patera, and Pillian Patera,” Hamilton said. “These are highly dynamic volcanic systems that include active lava lakes and explosive eruptions—one pass over the volcanic systems is simply not enough to constrain their time-variability and eruption dynamics.”

Like Earth’s Moon, Io is tidally locked to Jupiter, with one side more readily available for study than the Jupiter-facing side. But Jupiter’s effect on Io is much stronger than Earth’s effect on the Moon. “However, tidal interactions between Jupiter and Io are much stronger, exciting tides in solid rock with an amplitude of about 100 m (328 feet), which is taller than the Statue of Liberty!” Hamilton said. These tidal interactions drive Io’s powerful volcanism. “However, studies of the past decade have suggested that this heat has also melted a layer within Io to form a subsurface ‘”‘magma ocean,'” Hamilton said.

The original IVO’s ten orbits, with its magnetometer instrument, would have confirmed or excluded this hypothesis. The new proposal will carry an improved version of this instrument, and with more orbits, it could answer questions about Io’s magma ocean.

“IVO-NF would also carry a fluxgate magnetometer and with the repeat passes, carefully timed to measure Io’s induced magnetic field at different times in its orbit, would greatly reduce the uncertainty in estimating a potential magma oceans depth,” Hamilton said. The current uncertainty is ±10 km, but IVO NF would reduce it to ±3 km. This “would revolutionize our understanding of Io’s interior and the links between tidal heating and volcanism,” Hamilton told Universe Today.

“Both IVO and IVO-NF are great missions, but doubling the number of flybys more than doubles the scienctific return from an Io mission!” Hamilton said.

IVO-NF would also approach Io much closer than the original IVO. The original mission called for an altitude of 200 and 500 kilometres (124 and 310 miles) above Io’s surface. IVO-NF would begin its mission with high-altitude fly-bys, but as the mission progressed and objectives were reached, it would come much closer.

“With 20 flybys, IVO-NF can be more daring, flying closer to Io’s surface and even flying through its volcanic plumes to determine the chemistry of its erupted products in unprecedented detail,” Hamilton told Universe Today.

Initial flybys would be at about 200 km, “but as the mission progresses and Baseline objectives are achieved, we will be able to lower the altitude of later flybys over active volcanoes like Pele Patera,” Hamilton said.

“Nonetheless, we would image and analyze these volcanoes first, making use of repeat coverage to further constrain the safety of the close approach, and take precautions like reorienting the spacecraft’s solar panels so that they fly through the plume side-on rather than exposing the full cross-sectional area,” Hamilton told Universe Today. “Plume flythroughs for Io would also open the door to other sampling opportunities for plumes on Saturn’s active moon, Enceladus.”

“This may seem dangerous, but even at altitudes of 50 km, there would be very few particles,” Hamilton said. But before the spacecraft comes that close, it’ll use its Surface Dust Analyzer to understand the hazard. This instrument was added to the IVO-NF as a top priority. It will measure surface dust composition and the composition of nanograins in the volcanic plumes. Overall, it will give scientists a better understanding of Io’s dust environment and inform them if it’s safe to approach within 50 km.

According to Hamilton, we’re experiencing a renaissance in exploring the Jovian system.

“This is an important time in Planetary Exploration, and exploration of the Jupiter System is undergoing a renaissance, with Juno, Europa Clipper, and JUICE examining Jupiter, Europa, and Ganymede at the same time,” Hamilton told Universe Today. Io is a critical part of Jupiter’s moon system. It’s at the heart of the orbital resonance configuration between Io, Europa, and Ganymede, and the resonance drives geological activity on all three moons, including volcanism, tectonic activity, and the formation of surface features.

“Juno has filled some important gaps left after the end of the Galileo mission (1995–2003), but IVO and IVO-NF would be the first to have an instrument suite that is optimized specifically for Io,” said Hamilton.

To the intellectually curious, everything in nature is worthy of study and deeper understanding. An extraordinary world like Io is certainly no exception, with everything it has to tell us about itself, its sibling moons, and even about the early Earth and Moon.

“Our paper makes the case that Io is a priority target for exploration that should be considered in the next New Frontier Announcement of Opportunity,” Hamilton told Universe Today. He acknowledges that the original IVO mission at the Discovery level is possible, but the IVO New Frontiers mission would accomplish a lot more and would more thoroughly address our outstanding questions about Io.

“A larger mission to Io via New Frontiers would more than double the scientific return of the mission and would offer the best approach to understanding not just Io, but the Jupiter System as a whole, and the origins of high-heat flux worlds like the early Earth, early Moon, and other terrestrial planets in the Solar System and beyond,” Hamilton concluded.

{ https://www.universetoday.com/ }

24-08-2024 om 00:35 geschreven door peter  

“Our species, Homo sapiens, has been successful at adapting to ecological conditions — from tropical forests to arctic tundra — that require different kinds of problems to be solved,” said associate professor Charles Perreault, an anthropologist from Arizona State University’s School of Human Evolution and Social Change. and a research scientist with the Institute of Human Origins.“Cumulative culture is key because it allows human populations to build on and recombine the solutions of prior generations and to develop new complex solutions to problems very quickly.”

Toolmaking Suddenly Underwent a Rapid Advance in Technology

In their published study, “3.3 million years of stone tool complexity suggests that cumulative culture began during the Middle Pleistocene,” which appeared in the journal PNAS, Perreault and fellow author Jonathan Paige, a University of Missouri anthropologist, explain how their analysis of stone tools dating back to 3.3 million years ago revealed this sudden and unexpected technological leap.

The researchers analyzed tools collected from 57 separate ancient hominin sites. The oldest tool, dating back over 3 million years, came from an African site. However, the researchers also studied ancient stone tools discovered at ancient hominin sites in Eurasia, Greenland, Sahul, Oceania, and the Americas.

Next, the team ranked the tools’ complexity. This meant analyzing how many steps would need to be taken to create the tool in question. The researchers characterized and ranked 62 distinct tool-making sequences.

Above: Tools that become increasingly more complex over the course of 3 million years. Left: First time period studied — Oldowan core, Koobi Fora, Kenya; Center: Second time period studied — Acheulean cleaver, Algeria; Right: Characteristic of 600,000 years ago technology — Levallois core, late Pleistocene Algeria (Image credits: (left) Curry, Michael. 2020. Oldowan Core, Koobi Fora. Museum of Stone Tools LINK; (middle) Curry, Michael. 2020. Acheulean Cleaver, Morocco, Koobi Fora. Museum of Stone Tools. LINK; (right) Watt, Emma. 2020. Levallois Core, Algeria. Museum of Stone Tools. LINK).

After charting the tools’ complexity, the team saw some unexpected patterns. Tools made between 3.3 million years ago and 1.8 million years ago required somewhere between two and four procedural units to manufacture. The complexity of stone tools steadily increased over the next 1.2 million years, with the top samples requiring an impressive seven steps. While significantly more complex than tools made over a million years earlier, the researchers say this is still within the range of complexity for a single craftsman. This means knowledge from previous generations of toolmakers had most likely not been passed down over that span.

However, the researchers discovered that when they looked at tools made around 600,000 years ago, in the Middle Pleistocene, they began to see a sudden and unexpected increase in complexity. Tools from this time period were not only more complex, but more complex manufacturing processes were required to make these tools.

“We analyzed the stone tools made during the last 3.3 million years,” the researchers explain. “We found that these stone tools remained simple until about 600,000 B.P. After that point, stone tools rapidly increased in complexity.”

Where previous tools had required only a handful of procedural steps to manufacture, tools from this time often required as much as 18 steps. According to Paige and Perreault, this is way too many steps for a single generation of craftsmen to achieve without the knowledge passed down from previous generations.

This evidence, the researchers write, is consistent with findings from other research teams, suggesting that such a rapid transition “signals the development of cumulative culture in the human lineage.”

“By 600,000 years ago or so, hominin populations started relying on unusually complex technologies, and we only see rapid increases in complexity after that time as well,” said Paige. “Both of those findings match what we expect to see among hominins who rely on cumulative culture.”

Dawn of Cumulative Culture and the Evolution of Modern Humans

Although the evolution of stone toolmaking provides evidence for the dawn of cumulative culture, the researchers behind the findings say such a leap likely affected all aspects of early humans. This likely included changes in human culture, biology, and even the ability to adapt to a range of environments and habitats found across the globe.

Such changes can increase in complexity as genetic and cultural evolution happen concurrently. According to the researchers, this “gene-culture coevolution process” may explain increases in relative brain size, a prolonged life history, “and other keystone traits underlying human uniqueness.”

Notably, the researchers point out that the Middle Pleistocene shows many other examples of evolving technology. For example, studies of this era reveal consistent evidence of the controlled use of fire, hearths and other domestic spaces. This era also features the evolution of wooden structures constructed with logs hewn using hafted tools, which, the researchers explain, “are stone blades affixed to wooden or bone handles.”

In their conclusion, Paige and Perreault note that toolmaking is just one measure of cumulative culture, and further study could spot other increases in this behaviour that may have occurred in the past but are not immediately evident in the archaeological record. “It is possible that early hominins relied on cumulative culture to develop complex social, foraging, and technological behaviours that are archaeologically invisible,” they write.

Ultimately, the research team believes that their findings show how knowledge can be passed down through the generations without each successive generation having to rediscover the knowledge of the past. When enough knowledge makes it through, like what appears to have happened 600,000 years ago, this process can result in an ever-increasing and adaptive knowledge pool that allows for a consistent upward progression in cultural and technological evolution.

“Generations of improvements, modifications, and lucky errors can generate technologies and know-how well beyond what a single naive individual could invent independently within their lifetime,” the researchers conclude. “When a child inherits her parent’s generation’s culture, she inherits the outcome of thousands of years of lucky errors and experiments.”

“The result is, our cultures — from technological problems and solutions to how we organize our institutions — are too complex for individuals to invent on their own,” Perreault adds.

• Christopher Plain is a Science Fiction and Fantasy novelist and Head Science Writer at The Debrief. Follow and connect with him on X, learn about his books at plainfiction.com, or email him directly at christopher@thedebrief.org.

{ https://thedebrief.org/category/science/ }

23-08-2024 om 21:38 geschreven door peter  

23-08-2024 om 20:43 geschreven door peter  

A rare landing on the south pole of the moon led to this scientific discovery

There was once a magma-filled ocean on the south pole of the moon, scientists recently discovered after analyzing lunar soil that revealed ancient information about the moon's origin.

The study of soil taken from a less-studied region of the moon suggests the presence of remnants of a former ocean of magma, according to a study published Wednesday in Nature.

• MORE: Climate change is altering the length of days on Earth, according to new research

The researchers analyzed lunar soil extracted from high-latitude regions on the southern portion of the moon -- taken as part of the Chandrayaan-3 mission when India’s Vikram lander module made a historic touchdown near the south pole of the moon in August 2023. The mission is the southern-most landing that has ever taken place on the moon -- a difficult feat considering the lack of sunlight, which can create visibility and communication issues, Anil Bhardwaj, director of Physical Research Laboratory in Ahmedabad and co-author of the study, told ABC News. Most lunar landings, especially human landings, have taken place in the equatorial or low-latitude regions.

India's lunar mission found remnants of a magma ocean on the south pole

The mission embarked the use of new technology -- a particle access spectrometer -- an instrument aboard the rover that was able to make observations and collect data very close to the lunar surface, M. Shanmugam, the lead engineer of the alpha particle X-ray spectrometer at the Physical Research Laboratory in Ahmedabad, told ABC News.

The Moon's South Pole.

© NASA GSFC Scientific Visualization Studio

The composition of the soil found on Vikram’s landing site is consistent with an ancient magma ocean, the authors conclude.

When analyzing the soil, the researchers found a relatively uniform elemental composition among 23 measurements at various spots along the lunar surface, primarily containing the rock-type ferroan anorthosite. The spectrum of elements also included all of the major and minor elements of the presence of magma, including sodium, aluminum, magnesium, carbon, silicon, sulfur, potassium, iron, titanium, chromium and manganese, Bhardwaj said.

MORE: The future of space exploration is a transforming, animal-like robot, scientists say

The moon is believed to have formed after a body the size of Mars struck Earth about 4.24 billion years ago, Bhardwaj said. The material that formed as a result of the volatile impact was likely magma that was thrown into space that remained within the Earth's gravitational pull and eventually began forming a planetary-mass object.

The magma ocean is likely to have existed for tens to hundred million years, Santosh Vadawale, a professor in the Physical Research Laboratory and lead author of the study, told ABC News.

Researchers believed the magma disappeared as the moon cooled throughout its formation, hypothesizing that, less dense ferroan anorthosite floated to the lunar surface while heavier minerals sank to form the mantle during the cool-down -- forming the lunar highlands as a result of the floatation of lighter anorthositic rock.

Previous research into the Moon’s geology has primarily relied on samples taken by missions to lunar mid-latitudes, such as the Apollo program, giving scientists a more nuanced look into the history of the moon's formation, according to the paper.

Chandrayaan-3's rover Pragyaan explored the south pole region for 10 days last August

• MORE: Water vapor and temperatures that could support life found on exoplanet, NASA says

While the lunar magma ocean hypothesis has existed for decades, ever since the Apollo mission placed humans on the moon in 1969, the new research has allowed researchers to confirm the evolutionary history of the moon from billions of years ago, Vadawale said.

"Our next mission, we would like to try to go as close as possible to poles, where there are these permanently shadowed regions where there is water is supposed to be there," he said.

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23-08-2024 om 18:45 geschreven door peter  

SpaceX’s Polaris Dawn Is Sending Astronauts to a Literal Radiation Belt to Test New Spacesuits

The risky new private space mission will launch on Monday, August 26.

by Kiona Smith

 

The mission is scheduled to launch Monday, August 26 from Kennedy Space Center, sending four astronauts in a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule (like the one the stranded Starliner crew will ride home in) on a long, narrow orbit that will carry them through the innermost of the Van Allen belts — bands of high-energy radiation that surround our planet — making them the first people to cross the belts in 52 years. Midway through the 5-day mission, two crew members will leave the capsule for the first spacewalk by private astronauts.

Those plans might look like more space billionaire stunts — this is also the age of space tourism, after all — but Isaacman (who will fly on Polaris Dawn as the mission’s commander) insists the Polaris program has real science and technology development goals.

Polaris Dawn Will Test SpaceX’s New EVA Suits

One goal of the Polaris Dawn mission is to test new technology for deep space travel. The mission will be the first flight test of SpaceX’s new pressure suits for extravehicular activities (EVAs), such as spacewalks. Isaacman and mission specialist Sarah Gillis are about to become the first non-government-employed astronauts to ever attempt a spacewalk, but they’re also about to depressurize their spacecraft, open the door, and step outside while wearing spacesuits that have never flown before.

The design is meant to be lighter and more maneuverable than the ones currently in use, and the helmet comes with a heads-up display that shows a mission clock alongside the suit’s pressure, temperature, and humidity. At the moment, neither NASA’s spacesuits nor SpaceX’s current generation “intervehicular activity” (IVA) suits have the heads-up display. Both the IVA suits and the new EVA suits are much less bulky than NASA’s version, but Isaacman and SpaceX claim the EVA suits flying on Polaris Dawn offer more mobility at the joints, and they’re also easier to get into and out of.

SpaceX previously took the new suits to White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico to fire tiny projectiles at them at thousands of miles an hour, arguably the most direct way to test whether the suits could endure strikes from micrometeorites or other tiny bits of orbital debris. Next week’s mission will be their first flight test — and since the mission calls for opening up the whole Crew Dragon cabin to the vacuum of space before Isaacman and Gillis venture outside, it will be a high-stakes test, and it carries more than the usual amount of risk that comes with flying to space.

The four astronauts will also test communications systems using laser links between the Crew Dragon capsule and SpaceX’s (increasingly problematic) constellation of StarLink satellites in low Earth orbit.

What Will Happen During Polaris Dawn’s Spacewalk?

While the spacesuits are very new and Polaris Dawn’s crew are about to be the first non-space-agency astronauts to ever attempt a spacewalk, the method they’ll be using for this test is extremely old-school. The Polaris Dawn spacewalk is going to look almost exactly like the very first American spacewalk back in 1965, except with twice the number of people and much sleeker spacesuits.

Astronauts aboard the International Space Station will breathe pure oxygen for about two hours before a spacewalk, then step into an airlock (a separate room that air can be let in and out of) and then into the vast vacuum of space — leaving the rest of the space station safely sealed and pressurized behind them. But the Crew Dragon capsule doesn’t have an airlock, just a main hatch, so in order to walk in space, the crew will have to open the hatch and expose the whole cabin to vacuum.

Isaacman and Gillis will float out the hatch, tethered to the capsule by umbilical cables that provide life support and keep them tethered to the ship. Pilot Scott Poteet and mission specialist and medical officer Anna Menon will be strapped into their seats, managing the umbilicals and the ship’s systems — but all four of them will be exposed to the unforgiving forces of vacuum, with nothing but their suits and open hatchway between them and eternity. That’s exactly how the crew of Gemini 4 — pilot Edward White and commander James McDivitt — did it 59 years ago, when White became the first American spacewalker.

Spacesuits keep astronauts’ bodies under enough air pressure to survive and function, but the pressure inside an EVA suit will still be very low compared to the normal air pressure in the room you’re sitting in now, or in the Crew Dragon’s cabin.

That’s why astronauts on the ISS spend a couple of hours “pre-breathing” oxygen before an EVA. The goal is to make sure there’s no nitrogen in their bloodstream, so they can avoid a painful and often fatal condition called decompression sickness (DCS), or the bends. Normal air is 78 percent nitrogen, which ends up in our bloodstream when we breathe. That’s not a problem, unless our bodies are suddenly under much lower pressure than normal. Then, it quickly becomes a big problem because all the nitrogen gas mixed with our blood comes fizzing out, like the bubbles in soda bottles when you take the lids off too quickly.

Polaris Dawn’s crew will spend a lot more time pre-breathing. They’ll start as soon as they reach orbit, and for the next two days, they’ll gradually turn the cabin pressure down and the oxygen concentration up. That will force the nitrogen out of their bodies even as they’re adjusting to lower pressure. By day 3, it will be time to open the hatch and hope it worked.

Medical Research in Space

Exploring how the human body responds to the physical weirdness of being in space — changing air pressure, microgravity, and radiation exposure — is another key goal of the Polaris Dawn mission (and pretty much every crewed mission, on some level). During their 5 days in orbit, the crew will gather data for more than 30 experiments on the human body.

When it launches, the Crew Dragon capsule will be carrying samples of human tissues and cells, which researchers at Baylor College of Medicine and Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University will compare with their “BioBank” samples here on Earth. The goal is to learn how deep space affects the tissues that make up the human body on a microscopic level, looking for changes on the cellular level.

Other experiments will study bone and muscle loss in microgravity — and test a couple of possible methods to track and prevent them. Still other experiments will study changes to astronauts’ vision, which are believed to be caused by changes in the amount of fluid in astronauts’ heads during spaceflight. The crew will measure the pressure on their eyes with portable ultrasound instruments, tiny sensors in contact lenses, and small cameras that measure the size of astronauts’ pupils.

A couple of other experiments are focused on how exposure to microgravity and cosmic radiation impacts medicines; a NASA study will track whether there are any physical or chemical changes to medicines stored on the Crew Dragon capsule during the flight, while a UTHealth Houston study will measure blood flow in the astronauts’ liver and kidneys (again with portable ultrasound devices) to build digital models of how the human body might process medicines taken during a space flight.

Meanwhile, NASA will be testing a nasal spray for space sickness, a type of motion sickness that happens to people in space. All of these tests will hopefully get us all one step closer to feeling safer and healthier in space.

{ https://www.inverse.com/ }

23-08-2024 om 17:10 geschreven door peter  

True Story of a Man who Worked for the CIA: He was Tasked with Viewing Jupiter and Made Wild Claims that Later Came True.

This is the true story of a man who was part of a secret government program. As a CIA psychic informant, he was tasked with viewing Jupiter and the far side of the Moon. He made wild claims about Jupiter, and they later came true…

INGO SWANN (1933-2013) was internationally known as an advocate and researcher of the exceptional powers of the human mind and as a leading figure in governmental and scientific projects to investigate and identify the scope of subtle human perceptions.

In the 1970s, Ingo was involved in remote viewing experiments established by the U.S. Army and the CIA in collaboration with the Stanford Research Institute. This clandestine initiative — code-named Project Stargate — later became the basis for the movie The Men Who Stare at Goats, starring George Clooney and Jeff Bridges. (Source)

For Stargate, Ingo and a group of psychics used their abilities to spy on Russia from Palo Alto, California, even remotely discovering a downed Soviet spy plane under a jungle canopy in the African country of Zaire after the U.S. Department of Defense had deemed it lost.

Ingo’s various remote views of celestial bodies included: Jupiter (1973), Mercury (1974), the Moon (1975), and Mars (1975, 1976, and 1984). Selected information on these sessions is provided below. More can be found in his archives at the University of West Georgia.

In 1973, most scientists, academics, and media strongly opposed research into parapsychology or psychoenergetics. So, it was surprising when the country’s second-largest think tank started researching these topics. This caused a big reaction because the think tank, SRI, was highly respected and connected to the military and intelligence communities.

The idea of controlled remote viewing was a process in which viewers could view a location given nothing but its geographical coordinates and was developed and tested by Puthoff and Targ with CIA funding.

The experiment was controlled by Harold Puthoff and according to the account, during the experiment; Swann using the power of his thought visited the distant planet. The experiment was dated April 27, 1973.

According to Ingo, in the space to the right of the room, he could see Jupiter, remotely located many millions of miles away. (Source)

He could see how it was shining with a blinding light. He could look at it from all directions of his mind’s eye. At first, everything was seen in miniature and then everything was suddenly expanded.

“These visions are inside me, then outside. There is a yellow cast to space and seeming dark objects show through it. Can they be other moons of contrasting colors or densities? The impressions come to me that there are 17, some yet undiscovered by earth scientists, much closer to Jupiter, and the feeling also comes that some of them have been and are being spawned by the conclusive, volcanic action in the interior..,” Swann said, according to the document.”

Ingo also “saw” rings around Jupiter, but, he said that they were not as noticeable as that of Saturn. (Source)

Later, in 1979, the space probe Voyager confirmed the existence of the Jovian ring system; however, the hypothesis of its existence was put forward by the Soviet astronomer Sergey Vsehsvatskiy in the 1960s.

Perhaps, it was Swann who earlier provided the CIA with information regarding ancient civilizations on Mars. The Stargate project was launched in 1970 after the CIA stated that the Soviet Union reportedly spent more than $1 million a year on research into Psychotronics.

This experiment has been ridiculed by skeptics, who often haven’t reviewed its details. There are two key points that skeptics overlook: first, the Jupiter Probe was just an exploratory experiment, not a claim of any findings; second, it had prestigious sponsorship and scientific oversight.

The experiment’s focus on remote sensing of a distant planet was seen as radical, challenging not only mainstream academic views but also the usual practices in parapsychology.

Six of these thirteen factors were given scientific substantiation by 1975. Before Jupiter’s ring was “scientifically” discovered in 1979, most scientists flatly denounced the possibility of the RING. (Source)

In February 1975, he was contacted by a certain highly-placed figure from Washington, DC, who guardedly told Swann that he, Swann, would soon be receiving a telephone call from the aforementioned Mr. Axelrod

Ingo quickly agreed to a mysterious, last-minute meeting, despite feeling concerned. He met a man who resembled a Marine, exchanged brief formalities, and was then driven to a helicopter. Blindfolded for a 30-minute flight, Swann was taken to what seemed like a secret underground location. Once there, he met a man named Mr. Axelrod, who admitted the name was fake, adding to the secrecy of the situation.

Axelrod quickly got to the main point, asking Ingo many questions about remote viewing. He also made it clear that he wanted to use Swann’s skills for a secret mission and offered a large sum of money. It was an offer Swann couldn’t refuse, and he didn’t.

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Axelrod then asked Ingo what he knew about the Moon, revealing the true purpose of their meeting. Someone in the government wanted the Moon to be remote-viewed, and Swann agreed to do it.

When Ingo began his work, he was shocked by what he saw. His mind focused on an image of a massive tower on the Moon, similar in size to the United Nations Secretariat Building. Swann was told that this structure wasn’t made by humans but by mysterious extraterrestrials. However, no one knew where they came from.

In later remote-viewing sessions, Ingo saw many unusual things on the Moon. He described domed structures, advanced machines, tall towers, large cross-shaped structures, and strange tubes spread across the landscape. He also saw signs of what looked like mining operations. It seemed that someone, or something, had secretly built a base on the Moon.

Ingo also focused on a group of people on the Moon who looked human. They were inside some kind of enclosure and were digging into a cliff. The strange thing was that they were all completely naked.

Suddenly, Axelrod, who was overseeing the experiment, stopped it. He hinted that the beings on the Moon might have noticed they were being watched and that Ingo could be in serious danger if they decided to confront him.

Axelrod asked Ingo if he knew a man named George Leonard. Ingo said no, he didn’t know him.

At the same time, Axelrod was asking him to investigate strange things on the Moon. Meanwhile, George Leonard was writing a book called “Somebody Else is on the Moon”.

In 1977, Leonard’s book was published. It talked about strange structures on the Moon, which was exactly what Axelrod was worried about —strange, possibly man-made structures on the Moon.

Ingo and Axelrod had several secretive meetings about strange events on the Moon. These meetings, which felt almost like a spy movie, ended suddenly in 1977, leaving Swann confused.

He wondered if he had psychically seen an advanced base on the Moon built by extraterrestrials. However, since the people he “saw” there looked like naked humans, he also considered it might be a secret Earth-based installation that Axelrod wanted to investigate.

The mystery remains unsolved, but there are more questions. The idea of aliens secretly using our Moon brings to mind similar claims about aliens on Earth.

In the 1997 book Remote Viewers, Jim Schnabel shared a story about the U.S. Intelligence community’s involvement in psychic spying, which started in the 1970s.

One remote viewer, Pat Price, believed that Alaska’s Mount Hayes housed one of the largest alien bases. He claimed the aliens looked human but had different hearts, lungs, blood, and eyes, and could control people through thought. Price also mentioned that this base caused problems for both U.S. and Soviet space missions.

{ https://www.howandwhys.com/ }

23-08-2024 om 16:46 geschreven door peter  

“For the first time, we have shown that even a tiny fraction of cellular material could be identified by a mass spectrometer onboard a spacecraft,” said lead author Fabian Klenner, a University of Washington (UW) postdoctoral researcher in Earth and space sciences. “Our results give us more confidence that using upcoming instruments, we will be able to detect lifeforms similar to those on Earth, which we increasingly believe could be present on ocean-bearing moons.”

Oceans Beneath Surface of Icy Moons are Ideal Targets for Alien Lifeforms

While the search for life outside Earth has many targets, including the soil of Mars or the clouds of Venus, astrobiologists are increasingly optimistic about finding signs of past and present alien lifeforms within the subsurface oceans of the solar system’s icy moons. Along with Europa, these targets include Saturn’s moon Enceladus. Those hopes received even more fuel when researchers recently found evidence of phosphate on the surface of Enceladus.

The researchers explain, “This planetary body now appears to contain energy, water, phosphate, other salts, and carbon-based organic material, making it increasingly likely to support lifeforms similar to those found on Earth.”

This image shows red streaks across the surface of Europa, the smallest of Jupiter’s four large moons. The upcoming Europa Clipper mission will send instruments to investigate this moon.

Credit: NASA/JPL/Galileo

In the decade since NASA’s Cassini mission detected plumes of water and ice being ejected by Enceladus, mission planners and amateur enthusiasts alike have theorized about how such a life-hunting mission might actually take place. While some of the more exotic proposals include mini submarines or a snakelike probe that can crawl down into those subsurface oceans, the most popular involves flying a sample mission through those ejected plumes and scanning them for clues to alien lifeforms.

Now, an international team of researchers says instruments that might be included on upcoming missions should not only be able to detect signs of alien lifeforms, but they believe the conditions are ideal for such a finding as soon as the Europa Clipper.

Lab Study Shows Instruments Could Spot Signs of Life in a Single Grain of Ice

To see if instruments slated to join future missions would be able to detect signs of life in the plumes ejected from Enceladus and Europa, the UW research team selected a type of bacteria called Sphingopyxis alaskensis for study. That’s because this particular bacterium lives in cold environments on Earth and can survive on very little nutrients, making it a likelier analog of extraterrestrial bacteria that may thrive beneath the surface of these icy moons. The researchers also say this bacterium is just the right size for future probes to spot within a single grain of ice.

“They are extremely small, so they are, in theory, capable of fitting into ice grains that are emitted from an ocean world like Enceladus or Europa,” Klenner said.

After coming up with a lab experiment that would best simulate the conditions a future mission might experience these ejected ice grains, the team used a mass spectrometer to see if they could spot the life signs of their chosen bacterium in a single grain of ice. Significantly, they note that their instrument was less sensitive than the one planned for the Europa Clipper.

As hoped, their study was a success. An analysis of water injected into a vacuum showed that the right instruments could indeed detect alien lifeforms as they were ejected from Enceladus or Europa. In fact, the scientists behind the successful experiments say searching for life in this method “is more successful than averaging across a larger sample containing billions of individual grains.”

Instrument on NASA’s Europa Clipper Mission May Be First to Discover Alien Lifeforms

In their published study, the UW researchers supplemented their experiments by looking at the conditions on Earth that cause bacteria to collect on the ocean’s surface and cause a layer of “ocean scum.” They soon realized that a similar set of conditions likely exists on the surface of these extraterrestrial oceans. As a result, any subsurface water ejected into space would likely capture pieces of alien lifeforms and encapsulate them within grains of space ice, where NASA’s instruments could detect them.

“We here describe a plausible scenario for how bacterial cells can, in theory, be incorporated into icy material that is formed from liquid water on Enceladus or Europa and then gets emitted into space,” Klenner said.

Although they are not directly involved with the planning of NASA’s missions, the team notes that NASA’s Europa Clipper, thanks to its unique instrumentation, could be perfectly equipped to find alien lifeforms living beyond Earth.

“With suitable instrumentation, such as the SUrface Dust Analyzer on NASA’s Europa Clipper space probe, it might be easier than we thought to find life, or traces of it, on icy moons:” said senior author Frank Postberg, a professor of planetary sciences at the Freie Universität Berlin, “if life is present there, of course, and cares to be enclosed in ice grains originating from an environment such as a subsurface water reservoir.”

•  Christopher Plain is a Science Fiction and Fantasy novelist and Head Science Writer at The Debrief. Follow and connect with him on X, learn about his books at plainfiction.com, or email him directly at christopher@thedebrief.org.

{ https://thedebrief.org/category/space/ }

23-08-2024 om 01:35 geschreven door peter  

The ionosphere, a layer of the Earth’s atmosphere extending from about 50 to 400 miles above the surface, is a region where solar radiation ionizes atmospheric particles, creating a plasma of charged particles. 

This layer plays a crucial role in long-distance radio communications, as it can reflect radio waves back to Earth. However, GOLD’s new observations have shown formations that challenge current scientific models.

Observations from NASA’s GOLD mission shows charged particles in the ionosphere forming an X shape on Oct. 7, 2019. (The colors indicate the intensity of the ultraviolet light emitted, with yellow and white indicating the strongest emission, or highest ionospheric density.) 

(Image credit: F. Laskar et al.)

“A unique phenomenon—A geomagnetically quiet time merging of Equatorial Ionization Anomaly (EIA) crests, leading to an X-pattern (EIA-X) around the magnetic equator—has been observed in the night-time ionospheric measurements by the Global-scale Observations of the Limb and Disk mission,” researchers wrote in the study published in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Space Physics.

Observations of these distinctive X-pattern structures had previously been noted only during geomagnetic disturbances, such as after solar storms or volcanic eruptions. However, these new sightings during geomagnetically calm conditions suggest that unknown processes from the lower atmosphere can affect the ionosphere, presenting a new scientific mystery.

Computer simulations showed that these bizarre X-shaped equatorial ionization anomalies are generated during pre-sunset hours and persist until after sunset at local times. 

Models also propose that these X-shapes may develop when changes in the lower atmosphere draw plasma downward. However, this hypothesis requires further investigation. 

Images from NASA's GOLD mission show C-shaped and reverse-C-shaped plasm

“The X is odd because it implies that there are far more localized driving factors,” Dr. Jeffrey Klenzing, a scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center who studies the ionosphere, said in a statement. “This is expected during the extreme events, but seeing it during ‘quiet time’ suggests that the lower atmosphere activity is significantly driving the ionospheric structure.”

Additionally, GOLD identified C-shaped and reverse-C-shaped plasma bubbles near each other. C-shaped plasma bubbles are typically long and straight and form along magnetic field lines. However, on several occasions, GOLD found these structures a mere 400 miles apart, implying that strong turbulence or vortex-like activity in the lower atmosphere influences the ionosphere. 

This discovery of closely linked C-shaped bubbles offers further evidence that more complex dynamics are at work in the Earth’s atmosphere than is currently understood. 

Dr. Deepak Karan, a research scientist at the University of Colorado’s Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP) and author of a 2023 study on these mysterious C-shaped bubbles, highlighted the significance of these recent discoveries. 

“Within that close proximity, these two opposite-shaped plasma bubbles had never been thought of, never been imaged,” Dr. Karan said. “To have wind patterns change course in such a small area suggests some sort of strong turbulence — like a vortex, wind shear, or tornado-like activity — is likely at play in the atmosphere.”

“The fact that we have very different shapes of bubbles this close together tells us that the dynamics of the atmosphere is more complex than we expected,“ Dr. Klenzing added.

GOLD’s findings are notable for their clarity and consistency, thanks to the satellite’s geostationary orbit, which allows it to continuously monitor the same region of the Earth. This extended observation capability has enabled scientists to detect the persistent nature of these X- and C-shaped structures.

Since its launch in 2018, GOLD has only recorded two instances of C-shaped atmospheric structures being closely paired. Researchers say the bizarre X-shape anomaly has been detected “very clearly on one occasion and to some extent on other six occasions, during geomagnetically quiet periods.“ This suggests that this mysterious phenomenon, which researchers likened to atmospheric “alphabet soup,” is extremely rare. 

Nevertheless, these findings are significant as they could impact our understanding of how the ionosphere interacts with communication and navigation signals, which can be disrupted by such plasma structures. 

The presence of strong turbulence or localized disturbances in the ionosphere can lead to signal loss or degradation. Our reliance on technologies that depend on stable ionospheric conditions, such as GPS and satellite communications, makes understanding these influences increasingly critical.

Likewise, the mission’s findings underscore the complexity of the Earth’s atmosphere and the need for continued research to understand the various factors that influence its behavior. 

NASA says ongoing observations by GOLD, alongside data from other heliophysics missions, are expected to provide more insights into these phenomena. Scientists hope to use this information to shed more light on these enigmatic structures and their implications for our technological world.

Researchers concluded their recent study by noting, “A comprehensive understanding of the dynamics during the pre- to post-sunset period will not only advance our knowledge of the ionosphere’s response to external (lower atmospheric or geomagnetic) drivers but also plays a crucial role in the development of space weather forecasting capability.”

NASA scientists have discovered some unusual shapes high up in the Earth’s ionosphere, which is a layer stretching from 50 to 400 miles above the planet.

Normally, the ionosphere can get electrically charged, especially when influenced by space weather.

In addition to the X shapes, scientists have also found C-shaped bubbles in the ionosphere. These shapes can appear close to each other, indicating that the dynamics of the atmosphere are more complex than previously thought.

• Tim McMillan is a retired law enforcement executive, investigative reporter and co-founder of The Debrief. His writing typically focuses on defense, national security, the Intelligence Community and topics related to psychology. You can follow Tim on Twitter: @LtTimMcMillan.  Tim can be reached by email: tim@thedebrief.org or through encrypted email: LtTimMcMillan@protonmail.com 

{ https://thedebrief.org/category/space/ }

23-08-2024 om 01:16 geschreven door peter  

In 1977, Big Ear detected a peculiar signal that’s taken on a life of its own: the Wow! Signal. The Wow! Signal was a strong narrowband radio signal right near the frequency of neutral hydrogen. The Big Ear telescope is long gone now, but the effort to understand what the signal is lives on.

The signal lasted the full 72-second window in which Big Ear was able to observe it. A few days later, astronomer Jerry R. Ehman was looking over the data when he saw the signal on a computer printout. Astronomers had never seen anything like it, and he wrote “Wow!” beside it, and the name has stuck ever since.

The signal has another name: 6EQUJ5. This has been interpreted as a message hidden in the signal, but it really represents how the signal’s intensity varied over time.

The signal generated a lot of excitement. Some thought it was extraterrestrial in origin, some thought it could come from some type of human-generated interference, and some thought it could be from an unexplained natural phenomenon.

New research shows that the Wow! Signal has an entirely natural explanation.

The research is “Arecibo Wow! I: An Astrophysical Explanation for the Wow! Signal.” The lead author is Abel Méndez from the Planetary Habitability Laboratory at the University of Puerto Rico at Arecibo. It’s available at the pre-print server arxiv.org.

Arecibo Wow! is a new effort based on an archival study of data from the now-defunct Arecibo Radio Telescope from 2017 to 2020. The observations from Arecibo are similar to those from Big Ear but “are more sensitive, have better temporal resolution, and include polarization measurements,” according to the authors.

“Our latest observations, made between February and May 2020, have revealed similar narrowband signals near the hydrogen line, though less intense than the original Wow! Signal,” said Méndez.

Arecibo detected signals similar to the Wow! signal but with some differences. They’re far less intense and come from multiple locations. The authors say these signals are easily explained by an astrophysical phenomenon and that the original Wow! signal is, too.

“We hypothesize that the Wow! Signal was caused by sudden brightening from stimulated emission of the hydrogen line due to a strong transient radiation source, such as a magnetar flare or a soft gamma repeater (SGR),” the researchers write. Those events are rare and rely on precise conditions and alignments. They can cause clouds of hydrogen to brighten considerably for seconds or even minutes.

The researchers say that what Big Ear saw in 1977 was the transient brightening of one of several H1 (neutral hydrogen) clouds in the telescope’s line of sight. The 1977 signal was similar to what Arecibo saw in many respects. “The only difference between the signals observed in Arecibo and the Wow! Signal is their brightness. It is precisely the similarity between these spectra that suggests a mechanism for the origin of the mysterious signal,” the authors write.

These signals are rare because the spatial alignment between source, cloud, and observer is rare. The rarity of alignment explains why detections are so rare.

The researchers were able to identify the clouds responsible for the signal but not the source. Their results suggest that the source is much more distant than the clouds that produce the hydrogen signal. “Given the detectability of the clouds as demonstrated in our data, this insight could enable precise location of the signal’s origin and permit continuous monitoring for subsequent events,” the researchers explain.

The Wow! Signal was originally interpreted as a technosignature by many. By explaining where the signal came from, this research outlines a new source of false positives.

“Our hypothesis explains all observed properties of the Wow! Signal, proposes a new source of false positives in technosignature searches, and suggests that the Wow! Signal could be the first recorded event of an astronomical maser flare in the hydrogen line,” the authors explain in their conclusion.

{ https://www.universetoday.com/ }

22-08-2024 om 21:12 geschreven door peter  

For their study, Peña-Asensio and his colleagues relied on data obtained by the Light Italian CubeSat for Imaging of Asteroids (LICIACube), which accompanied the DART mission and witnessed the kinetic impact test. This data allowed the team to constrain the initial conditions of the ejecta, including its trajectories and velocities – ranging from a few tens of meters per second to about 500 m/s (1800 km/h; ~1120 mph). The team then used the supercomputers at NASA’s Navigation and Ancillary Information Facility (NAIF) to simulate what will become of the ejecta.

These simulations tracked the 3 million particles created by the DART mission’s impact with Dimorphos. As Peña-Asensio told Universe Today via email:

“LICIACube provided crucial data on the shape and direction of the ejecta cone immediately following the collision. In our simulation, the particles ranged in size from 10 centimeters to 30 micrometers, with the lower range representing the smallest sizes capable of producing observable meteors on Earth with current technology. The upper range was limited by the fact that only ejected centimeter-sized fragments were observed.”

Their results indicated that some of these particles would reach Earth and Mars within a decade or more, depending on how fast they traveled after the impact. For example, particles ejected at velocities below 500 m/s could reach Mars in about 13 years, whereas those ejected at velocities exceeding 1.5 km/s (5,400 km/h; 3,355 mph) could reach Earth in as little as seven years. However, their simulations indicated that it will likely be up to 30 years before any of this ejecta is observed on Earth.

“However, these faster particles are expected to be too small to produce visible meteors, based on early observations,” said Peña-Asensio. “Nevertheless, ongoing meteor observation campaigns will be critical in determining whether DART has created a new (and human-created) meteor shower: the Dimorphids. Meteor observing campaigns in the coming decades will have the last word. If these ejected Dimorphos fragments reach Earth, they will not pose any risk. Their small size and high speed will cause them to disintegrate in the atmosphere, creating a beautiful luminous streak in the sky.”

Peña-Asensio and his colleagues also note that future Mars observation missions will have the opportunity to witness Martian meteors as fragments of Didymos burn up in its atmosphere. In the meantime, their study has provided the potential characteristics these and any future meteors burning up in our atmosphere will have. This includes direction, velocity, and the time of the year they will arrive, allowing any “Dimorphids” to be clearly identified. This is part of what makes the DART mission and its companion missions unique.

In addition to validating a key strategy for planetary defense, DART has also provided an opportunity to model how ejecta caused by impacts could someday reach Earth and other bodies in the Solar System. As Michael Küppers, the Project Scientist of the ESA’s Hera mission and co-author of the paper, told Universe Today via email:

“A unique aspect of the DART mission is that it is a controlled impact experiment, i.e., an impact where the impactor properties (size, shape, mass, velocity) are accurately known. Thanks to the Hera mission, we will also know the target properties well, including those of the DART impact site. Data about the ejecta came from LICIACube and earth-based observations after the impact. There is probably no other impact on a planetary scale with that much information about the impactor, the target, and the ejecta formation and early development. This allows us to test and improve our models and scaling laws of the impact process and ejecta evolution. Those data provide the input data (source location, size, and velocity distribution) used by the ejecta evolution models.”

Further

• Reading: arXiv

{ https://www.universetoday.com/ }

22-08-2024 om 21:10 geschreven door peter  

While a NASA probe heads for an asteroid known as Psyche, telescopes have been probing it to prepare for the arrival. Data from the James Webb Space Telescope has found something quite unexpected on the surface – hydrated molecules and maybe even water! The origin of the water is cause for much speculation, maybe it came from under the surface or from chemical interactions with the solar wind! 

Asteroid Psyche was discovered in 1852 by the Italian astronomer Annibale de Gasparis. It was named after the Greek goddess of the soul who was born mortal and married Eros. It measures 225 km across and is one of the most massive objects in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. Most of the asteroids in the belt are composed of rock and ice but Psyche seems to be different being largely composed of metals, perhaps the exposed core of a protoplanet that lost its outer layers. Psyche is of immense interest to study because it provides an opportunity to study planetary cores which are usually inaccessible. 

Aptly named Psyche, the probe launched by NASA has already started its 3.5 billion km journey to the asteroid, due to arrive in August 2029. With its solar panels deployed, the probe measures 25 metres by 7.3 metres, about the size of a tennis court. It has a mass of 2,747 kg and is powered by five solar panel arrays. Once arrived at Psyche they can generate about 3 kilowatts of power.

While the probe is enroute, telescopes on Earth and in space have been exploring Psyche. Observations in different wavelengths of light have provided information that will aid and support the data collected by the Psyche spacecraft. The study was led by Dr. Stephanie Jarmak from the Southwest Research Institute and it was their observations that confirmed the hydroxyl molecules on the surface. 

The data, which was collected using the James Webb Space Telescope revealed the telltale signs of hydroxyl but stopped short of explaining where they came from. There are two possible explanations and we can look to the origin of asteroids to understand them. They are the leftovers from the formation of planets and their make up is determined by the location in the solar nebula from which they formed. If the hydroxyl formed locally without interference from external process then it might suggest that Psyche is not a planetary core remnant.  It might be that Psyche simply formed at a distance that volatile compounds like water condense to form solids like ice before migrating. 

An alternative model explains the variability of the molecule distribution across the surface. This might indicate that impacts from carbonaceous chondrites (like the meteorites often found on Earth) could have provided the water molecules that have been observed. 

It seems that for now, we will have to wait until the arrival of the Psyche spacecraft in 2029 to unravel the mystery. If we can get a better understanding of the origin of the asteroid Psyche it will help us to learn more about the distribution of elements in the nebula that the planets formed from. In particular, understanding more about the distribution of water will help us to develop a better insight to the origins of life. 

Source : 

• SwRI-Ked Team Finds Evidence of Hydration on Psyche

{ https://www.universetoday.com/ }

22-08-2024 om 21:00 geschreven door peter  

One way to diagnose the composition of interstellar space trash, like the anomalous interstellar object `Oumuamua, is by using the hot Sun to vaporize them. Suppose their trajectories are not maneuvered by artificial propulsion like the Parker Solar Probe. In that case, the rate of interstellar “Sun-divers” can be calculated from the statistics of interstellar objects near Earth.

The rate of Sun-divers is significant – not just because the Sun is 110 times bigger than Earth but also because of gravitational focusing. The gravitational potential at the surface of the Sun is deeper by a factor of 210 compared to its value at the Earth-Sun separation. A similar factor characterizes the ratio between the square of the escape speed from the surface of the Sun and the square of the characteristic speed of interstellar objects.

Taking account of gravitational focusing, I calculated in a paper with my former postdoc John Forbes that `Oumuamua-like objects would collide with the Sun once every 30 years. `Oumuamua had a diameter of about 160 meters, comparable to the pre-launch height of Starship, the largest rocket ever built by humans. The appearance rates of meteors, namely space objects impacting the Earth, imply that there are many more small ones than there are large ones. As a rule of thumb, the inferred abundance of solar system rocks scales as the inverse of their mass. If the same applies to interstellar objects, as argued in a paper I wrote with my former student Amir Siraj, then meter-scale interstellar Sun-divers are a few million times more  abundant than `Oumuamua was.

Based on NASA’s CNEOS catalog of fireballs, the impact rate on Earth of meter-scale interstellar meteors, like IM1 or IM2, is once per decade. This suggests that a few million of them are within the Earth’s orbit around the Sun. In this case, their collision rate with the Sun would be once every 4 minutes!

Meter-size interstellar Sun-divers release the equivalent energy output of ten Hiroshima bombs upon impact on the Sun. But even before entering the Sun, they would get vaporized by the enormous radiation intensity of thousands of degrees Kelvin. By monitoring the spectrum of the evaporated gases with an Earth-based telescope, one could identify the spectral fingerprints of different elements and infer the composition of these interstellar Sun-divers.

The challenge of doing so is that only one in a thousand Sun-divers is interstellar in origin. However, one could separate interstellar objects from solar system rocks or comets by measuring their velocities and inferring whether they were unbound by the Sun’s gravity at large distances. A prime observatory for this purpose is the 4-meter Inouye Solar Telescope near the summit of Haleakala in Maui, Hawaii. Coincidentally, this is the same mountaintop where the Pan-STARRS observatory, which discovered `Oumuamua, is located. I was fortunate to visit this observatory in July 2017 when the solar telescope was constructed, just a few months before `The Pan-STARRS observatory spotted ‘Oumuamua. In principle, the Webb telescope might also be able to constrain the surface composition of interstellar objects from their infrared emission spectrum.

Alternative methods to study the composition of interstellar objects are much more expensive. The Pacific Ocean expedition I led in June 2023 targeted the chemical composition of the interstellar meteor IM1. This task cost 1.5 million dollars and required a full year of analysis, the findings of which were summarized in a detailed paper by our research team.

The discovery of an unusual chemical composition for BeLaU spherules at IM1’s site motivates our next expedition. Within a year, we hope to search for bigger pieces of IM1, which would allow us to study the material properties and nature of this anomalous interstellar meteor, which was moving faster than 95% of all stars in the vicinity of the  Sun and had material strength tougher than that of iron meteorites.

Based on recent data about the fragmentation of iron meteorites of the same size, IM1’s fireball should have left behind an order of 10,000 fragments of mass ~0.5 grams (or a diameter of ~0.5 centimeter), about 1,000 fragments of mass ~15 grams (or a diameter of ~1.5 centimeters), about 100 fragments of mass ~0.5 kilogram (or a diameter of ~5 centimeters), about ten fragments of mass ~4 kilograms (or a diameter of ~9 centimeters), and one fragment of mass ~20 kilograms (or a diameter of ~16 centimeters). We hope to find some of these in our next expedition, which will cost 6.5 million dollars.

Another approach for studying the material composition of interstellar objects is to rendezvous with them along their trajectory as they approach Earth. Our detailed calculations indicate that a maneuvering speed of tens of kilometers per second would be required, well above the few kilometers per second capability offered by the European-Japanese Comet Interceptor, planned for lunch in 2029.

Finally, there is a possibility of observing maneuvering interstellar probes in the form of Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAPs) near Earth. The Director of National Intelligence delivered three reports about UAPs, but it is unclear from publicly available data whether the reported UAPs cannot be all human-made. The main challenge in attending to data-poor reports is avoiding confusion with existing military programs to retrieve and reverse engineer technologies found in crash sites of flying objects manufactured by adversarial nations, which could involve bodies of human pilots. Government agencies might label classified data retrieved by these programs as UAPs to confuse adversaries or discredit the leakage of classified information.

Fortunately, science is better than politics. The Galileo Project observatories take a scientific approach to resolving any confusion. They are collecting data on UAPs in the sky and will soon release the findings in a series of papers. Also fortunate for science is that neither the sky nor our oceans are classified.

• Avi Loeb is the head of the Galileo Project, founding director of Harvard University’s – Black Hole Initiative, director of the Institute for Theory and Computation at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, and the former chair of the astronomy department at Harvard University (2011-2020). He is a former member of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology and a former chair of the Board on Physics and Astronomy of the National Academies. He is the bestselling author of “Extraterrestrial: The First Sign of Intelligent Life Beyond Earth” and a co-author of the textbook “Life in the Cosmos”, both published in 2021. His new book, titled “Interstellar”, was published in August 2023.

{ https://thedebrief.org/category/space/ }

22-08-2024 om 17:31 geschreven door peter  

An Ancient Magma Ocean Once Covered the Moon, India’s Pragyan Lunar Rover Reveals

The Moon was probably once a gooey ball.

by Doris Elín Urrutia

 

NASA

{ https://www.inverse.com/ }

22-08-2024 om 17:02 geschreven door peter  

Bewijs van “Sneeuwbalaarde” gevonden op 700 miljoen jaar oud gesteente

door Janine

Oleg Kuznetsov/Wikimedia Commons - CC BY-SA 4.0

De afgelopen decennia hebben we meer inzicht gekregen in de geologische geschiedenis van onze planeet: we kunnen nu gebeurtenissen traceren die honderden miljoenen, zo niet miljarden jaren geleden plaatsvonden. Een van de meest fascinerende gebeurtenissen is ongetwijfeld die van de Sneeuwbalaarde, een tijdperk waarin onze planeet volledig bedekt was met ijs. Dit is een theorie die vrij wijdverspreid is in de wetenschappelijke gemeenschap, maar sommige onderzoekers hebben er mogelijk bewijs van gevonden dat even uitzonderlijk als zeldzaam is. Laten we eens kijken wat het is.

Rotsen gevonden die de theorie van de Sneeuwbalaarde bevestigen

We bevinden ons tussen Ierland en Schotland, waar een bepaalde rotsformatie mogelijk het meest complete bewijs levert van de Sneeuwbalaarde. De ontdekking werd gedaan door een team onderzoekers van het University College in Londen, die hun bevindingen publiceerden in het Journal of Geological Society. Volgens het onderzoek bestaat deze rotsformatie uit lagen die zich tussen 662 en 720 miljoen jaar geleden hebben gevormd, tijdens het Sturtien. Dit zijn de woorden van de onderzoekers over de ontdekking:

De rotslagen die zijn blootgelegd op de Garvellachs zijn uniek in de wereld. Onder de rotsen die zijn afgezet tijdens de onvoorstelbaar koude ijstijd van het Sturtien bevinden zich 70 meter oudere carbonaatrotsen die zijn gevormd in tropische wateren. Deze lagen laten een tropisch zeemilieu zien met florerend cyanobacterieel leven dat geleidelijk kouder werd en het einde markeerde van een miljard jaar gematigd klimaat op aarde.

Met name een rotspunt op de Garvellachs-eilanden in Schotland lijkt de abrupte overgang van een gematigd klimaat naar een met ijs bedekte, sneeuwbalachtige aarde aan te tonen.

Een Sneeuwbalaarde, 700 miljoen jaar geleden

NOAA At The Ends of the Earth Collection - Public Domain

Het bewijzen van de theorie van de Sneeuwbalaarde is niet alleen nuttig om meer te weten te komen over de geschiedenis van onze planeet, maar ook om de evolutie van levensvormen te begrijpen. Van eencellige organismen en algen tot veel complexere vormen en de Cambrische explosie: de Sneeuwbalaarde zou, kortom, een fundamenteel moment kunnen zijn in de evolutie van het leven op onze planeet. Het probleem is om te begrijpen hoe en volgens welke verschijnselen.

Een vrij algemeen geaccepteerde theorie ziet extreme kou als een van de factoren die eencelligen ertoe bracht om met elkaar samen te werken en zo de eerste meercellige organismen te vormen. Tegelijkertijd zou de snelheid van deze evolutie verklaard kunnen worden door de relatief korte tijden van uitzetting en terugtrekking van het ijs, dankzij het albedo-effect. In de praktijk geldt dat hoe meer ijs er op het aardoppervlak zit, hoe meer het de zonnestralen reflecteert en daardoor afkoelt: een vicieuze of virtueuze cirkel, afhankelijk van hoe je het bekijkt.

Waar te zoeken naar bewijs van de Sneeuwbalaarde

Het team van het University College London kwam tot deze conclusies na het verzamelen van zandsteenmonsters uit rotsformaties tussen Noord-Ierland en Schotland. Daarna analyseerden de onderzoekers bepaalde mineralen in het gesteente, zirkonen genaamd, die gedateerd kunnen worden door de aanwezigheid van uranium dat met regelmatige tussenpozen vervalt tot lood. Deze monsters werden gevormd tussen 662 en 720 miljoen jaar geleden, precies aan het begin van het Cryogene tijdperk.

Als de resultaten van het onderzoek worden bevestigd door verder onderzoek, dan kunnen we kijken naar onweerlegbaar bewijs van de Sneeuwbalaarde. Aan de andere kant lijkt het vrij duidelijk dat we van de vroegere eenvoudige organismen zijn overgegaan op complexere organismen. Tussen de twee perioden in is er een planeet bedekt met ijs dat, eenmaal gesmolten, leidde tot een van de grootste veranderingen die ooit op aarde zijn gezien.

{ https://www.curioctopus.nl/ }

22-08-2024 om 16:28 geschreven door peter  

The research, led by researchers with the University of Montreal, reveals that LHS 1140 b is unlikely to be a small gas giant or “mini-Neptune,” constituting a large, mostly gaseous planet with a thick atmosphere abundant in hydrogen.

The data was collected by the Webb telescope last December and built on previous data collected by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, as well as the Spitzer and TESS telescopes.

Ryan MacDonald, a NASA Sagan Fellow in the University of Michigan’s Department of Astronomy and one of the participants in the recent research, said the discovery “is the first time we have ever seen a hint of an atmosphere on a habitable zone rocky or ice-rich exoplanet.”

“Detecting atmospheres on small, rocky worlds is a major goal from JWST, but these signals are much harder to see than for giant planet atmospheres,” he added.

MacDonald, who played a significant role in analyzing LHS 1140 b’s atmosphere, says that LHS 1140 b represents one of the best small exoplanets astronomers have discovered in the habitable zone so far, given that it can support a thick atmosphere.

“[W]e might just have found evidence of air on this world,” MacDonald said in a statement.

As the most advanced space telescope to date, the James Webb Space Telescope excels in the study of exoplanets. Its cutting-edge technology allows astronomers to probe the atmospheres of distant worlds, analyzing their makeup and assessing their potential to support life.

Credit: Northrup Grumman

A Captivating Habitable Zone Exoplanet Discovery

One reason LHS 1140 b has astronomers talking has to do with how close it is. At just 48 light-years away within the constellation Cetus, LHS 1140 b is likely one of the closest exoplanets to our solar system that also resides within its host star’s habitable region, sometimes also known as the “Goldilocks Zone” since such planets can offer temperatures suitable for the existence of liquid water, as opposed to its frozen or gaseous states.

However, there are still a number of questions about LHS 1140 b, including its size. Astronomers are hoping to determine if the exoplanet is indeed a rocky or water-rich super-Earth or if it might still be a gas-rich mini-Neptune after all.

Charles Cadieux, a doctoral student at the University of Montreal and the lead author of a new study on the promising exoplanet discovery, says that LHS 1140 b presently represents what may be “our best bet to one day indirectly confirm liquid water on the surface of an alien world beyond our solar system.”

Such a discovery, if confirmed, would be “a major milestone in the search for potentially habitable exoplanets,” Cadieux said.

A Super-Earth or a Mini-Neptune?

Although many aspects of LHS 1140 b’s size and nature remain mysterious, some of the data recently obtained with help from the James Webb Space Telescope seem to contradict the idea that the exoplanet is a mini-Neptune. Specifically, the team points to evidence that suggests LHS 1140 b has an atmosphere rich in nitrogen, making it similar to Earth.

Additional data will be required from future observations by Webb before the exoplanet’s nitrogen-rich atmosphere can be confirmed. However, one of the more promising details in the current data suggests that LHS 1140 b possesses less density than what astronomers would expect for a rocky planet with a composition like Earth’s, which could mean that as much as a fifth of the planet’s mass could consist of water.

In other words, LHS 1140 b could be a water world, which astronomers say may likely resemble a snowball. A liquid ocean may exist on the portion of its surface that continually faces its host star, given that it possesses a synchronous rotation similar to that of our own planet’s Moon, with one side constantly facing the Earth.

Current estimates suggest that if LHS 1140 b is indeed a snowball super-Earth or a water world, it may possess a “bull’s eye” ocean on its star-facing side that would be roughly half the surface area of the Atlantic Ocean. Given its constant exposure to radiation from its nearby star, this bull’s eye of liquid water ocean would also maintain a regular estimated temperature of around 20 Celsius (68 Fahrenheit).

Exoplanets are worlds that orbit stars other than the sun. 

(Image credit: Science Photo Library via Getty Images)

A Glimpse at a Habitable World

“This is our first tantalizing glimpse of an atmosphere on a super-Earth in the habitable zone,” MacDonald said of his team’s discovery, which they believe to be one of the best candidates ever discovered for such habitability studies. Compared with other potentially habitable exoplanets, the relatively calm state of its host star also makes studies of LHS 1140 b’s atmosphere less likely to suffer from interference resulting from starspots.

Although MacDonald says that initial observations are extremely promising, additional observations by the Webb telescope will help astronomers confirm whether the exoplanet does possess a nitrogen-rich atmosphere

For now, MacDonald and his team are excited about what their current findings seem to have revealed.

“Our initial reconnaissance of LHS 1140 b with JWST has revealed this to be perhaps the best habitable zone exoplanet currently known for atmospheric characterization,” MacDonald said.

• Micah Hanks is the Editor-in-Chief and Co-Founder of The Debrief. He can be reached by email at micah@thedebrief.org. Follow his work at micahhanks.com and on X: @MicahHanks.

{ https://thedebrief.org/category/space/ }

21-08-2024 om 23:47 geschreven door peter  

21-08-2024 om 21:18 geschreven door peter  

Inside NASA's $1 BILLION plan to obliterate the ISS: Step-by-step graphic reveals how the doomed space station will be destroyed in 2030 - with up to 100 TONNES expected to slam into Earth

• In 2030 the ISS will be tugged into Earth's atmosphere and destroyed
• Experts say that the ISS is no longer useful for NASA and is a growing liability 

By Wiliam Hunter

The International Space Station (ISS) is not just a remarkable feat of scientific progress but, for many, is humanity's crowning achievement.

For the last 24 years, this football field-sized testament to human ambition and cooperation has whizzed silently over our heads 16 times a day without fail.

But it will soon be time to say goodbye to our outpost among the stars as NASA begins to lay out its $1 billion plan to bring the ISS crashing back to Earth.

By 2030, a SpaceX-operated tugboat will drag the space station back into Earth's atmosphere where it will burn up and, hopefully, fall harmlessly into the ocean.

However, while it might be sad to see the station go, experts say the ISS is already long past its expiry date.

After 24 years in orbit, NASA has now revealed its plans to bring the ISS crashing back to Earth in 2030 

How will the ISS be brought back to Earth? 

Since 1998 when construction began on the first modules, the ISS has hosted more than 250 visitors from 20 different countries.

In that time, astronauts have produced over 400 research papers and have studied everything from how mice embryos develop in microgravity to more efficient ways to recycle urine.

But after roughly 146,000 orbits, the systems and hardware installed on the ISS are beginning to show their age.

Weighing 400 tonnes (880,000 lbs), equivalent to more than 400 elephants, the ISS is so large that it can't actually stay in such a low-Earth orbit unassisted.

As it orbits, the station constantly hits particles from Earth's atmosphere which gradually but inevitably drag it back toward the planet.  

This means that the station's thrusters need to be regularly fired in order to keep it at a stable orbit of around 250 miles (400km) above Earth.

The ISS (pictured) was initially constructed in 1998 and has been home to more than 250 visitors from 20 different countries 

If these thrusters failed, the station would gradually fall out of orbit and crash, uncontrolled down to Earth.

To avoid the station falling of its own accord and potentially threatening a populated area, NASA unveiled its plan to deorbit the station in 2022.

Starting from 2026, the ISS will be allowed to fall under the effects of atmospheric drag until it reaches a height of about 200 miles (320km).

At this point, the last human crew will depart the station on a regular crew capsule, taking with them whatever equipment or items are deemed most historically important.

Once the last crew have gone, the station will continue to fall over several months until it reaches the 'point of no return' at an altitude of 175 miles (280 km).

When the station hits this point NASA deems that there is no way the ISS could be boosted back up to its old orbit and it now must be brought safely down to Earth.

To deliver the finishing blow, NASA has commissioned a 'space tug' which will launch from Earth, dock with the ISS, and then push the station out of orbit.

Speaking in a recent NASA press conference, Dana Weigel, NASA’s ISS manager, explained that the tug would do this over several stages over 18 months.

Ms Weigel says: 'At the right time it will perform a complex series of actions... over several days to deorbit the space station.

NASA now plans to use a SpaceX tug to push the station out of orbit so that most of the station will burn up in Earth's atmosphere upon reentry

'First, the deorbit vehicle will perform orbit shaping burns to put the station in a low elliptical orbit and then, eventually, it will perform a final reentry burn'.

Most of the space station will be destroyed as it hits the thicker parts of the atmosphere at speeds of around 18,000 miles per hour (29,000km/h).

However, between 40 and 100 tonnes of material, mainly made up of the station's denser components, are still expected to slam into a remote region of Earth.

NASA hopes that its careful planning will bring the remaining pieces down at Point Nemo, a spot in the Pacific Ocean so remote that astronauts on the ISS are often the closest living people.

So far, between 260-300 space objects have already been brought down at Point Nemo, earning it the nickname 'the spaceship graveyard'. 

If all goes to plan, any remaining debris will fall near Point Nemo (pictured) in the Pacific Ocean, this is the furthest place on earth from any living person 

Read More

BREAKING NEWS

•  Elon Musk's Starship returns to Earth after completing landmark test flight for the first time 

However, developing a spaceship capable of bringing this monumental station safely to Earth will not be easy or cheap.

Ms Weigel said: 'The deorbit vehicle will need six times the usable propellant and three to four times the power generations and storage of today's Dragon spacecraft.

'The thing that I think is most complex and challenging is that this burn must be powerful enough to fly the entire space station all the while resisting the torques and forces caused by increasing atmospheric drag.'

NASA had originally suggested that it would employ a Russian Progress spacecraft to deliver the final push.

NASA has commissioned SpaceX to develop a modified version of their Dragon Capsule (pictured). The difference is that the Trunk section (bottom) will need to function as its own spaceship 

But as geopolitical tensions escalated, Russian officials have gone back and forth on whether they will commit to the ISS beyond 2024. 

Perhaps spooked by their partner's lack of commitment, the space agency has now commissioned Elon Musk's SpaceX to provide the space tug instead.  

The final tug will be based on the SpaceX Dragon with an enhanced trunk section.

That trunk will essentially be a spaceship in its own right complete with navigational equipment, a huge fuel supply, and an enormous array of engines. 

NASA now estimates that the total cost of developing this new system will be $1 billion (£800 million).  

NASA estimates it will cost $1bn (£800m) to convert a Dragon capsule (pictured) into a vehicle capable of pushing the ISS out of orbit 

Read More

• Out-of-control rockets and spacecraft that have crashed to Earth REVEALED in interactive map 

Is the plan safe?

Bringing satellites out of orbit is always somewhat risky but, thanks to improved modelling, has become a fairly routine part of the space industry.

While there is room for error at every step of the mission, the most critical moment will come as the space tug begins its final deorbit burn.

Dr Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer at the Harvard–Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, told MailOnline: 'You can lower the ISS down to maybe 250km (150 miles) and still fly it the way you are now, but below that you're flying 17,000 miles per hour through the upper atmosphere so you need much more muscle power.'

The biggest concern is that when the ISS reaches an altitude of 100 miles (150km), the rocket won't be able to keep it pointed in the right direction.

To bring the ISS safely out of orbit will require a massive amount of thrust. Even carrying a spaceship that powerful into orbit will require SpaceX to upgrade from the Falcon 9 rocket (pictured) to the currently experimental Falcon Heavy

Dr McDowell says: 'Now you're firing the rocket in the wrong direction and you're tumbling end over end so you end up.

'You end up with a space station that is in a very, very low orbit that's going to reenter somewhere in a matter of days but you don't know where.'    

However, that station was only one-fifth the size of the ISS so the space tug will need to be significantly stronger.

To make matters worse, space weather conditions can cause the Earth's atmosphere to fluctuate, changing the amount of resistance on the space station.

This could potentially trigger the station to tumble out of control, falling past the point of no return earlier than NASA anticipated. 

Unfortunately,  NASA already has a clear example of what can happen when deorbiting a space station goes wrong.

In 1979, NASA tried to deorbit their 75-tonne space station Skylab (pictured), the resulting disaster saw pieces of debris slam into populated regions of Western Australia 

Read More

• Revealed: The shocking conditions endured by NASA astronauts stranded by Boeing's faulty spaceship 

In 1979, NASA's first space station, Skylab, had been slipping from its intended orbit for months and the space agency made the decision to push into a dive over an uninhabited region of the Indian Ocean.

The 75-tonne structure tore itself apart as it crashed through the atmosphere sending debris falling over parts of populated parts of Western Australia.

Most of the debris did fall in the ocean as intended and no one was hurt, but the Australian town of Esperance did fine NASA for littering.

NASA's new space tug will need to deliver one final kick which is strong enough to bring the station down in less than half an orbit while not being so powerful that it tears the station apart. 

Over recent years there has also been a worrying trend of more space material surviving re-entry than intended.

Laura Forczyk, founder of space consultancy firm Astrolytical, told MailOnline: 'One thing that is popping up as a bit of a concern is that our modelling for what gets burned up in the atmosphere is proving to be a little off.'

Since the Skylab disaster, NASA has also miscalculated whether objects will burn up in orbit more often than expected. This led to pieces of an ISS battery (pictured) slamming through the roof of someone's house 

Fragments of SpaceX Dragon trunk sections have scattered over farms in Canada and the US and part of an ISS battery array even crashed through the roof of a house in Florida. 

'But this shouldn't be too much of a concern since it's just going over the Pacific Ocean,' Ms Forczyk adds.

Ultimately, since 1979 when Skylab crashed to Earth, NASA has gotten a lot better at bringing material out of orbit and the risk of the ISS missing its target is exceptionally low.

Ms Forczyk also points out that NASA is giving itself an extremely long mission time which should help mitigate any unexpected interference from space weather.  

Provided SpaceX's tug meets the specifications NASA provides and doesn't suffer any kind of software glitch in flight, the ISS should return to Earth with minimal risk.  

Large pieces of a SpaceX Crew-1 have also been found in a field in Australia in 2022. Hopefully, any debris from the ISS will land safely in the Pacific Ocean 

Read More

• NASA astronauts face 'life-altering' risks due to being stuck in space by Boeing's faulty Starliner 

Why is it time to destroy the ISS?

While it might be sad to see the ISS go, the hard truth is that the ISS's time is finally up.

Ms Forczyk said: 'The bottom line is that the ISS is getting older, some of that hardware's been up there for almost 25 years.'

The ISS was initially meant to be deorbited in 2016 but has had its lifespan extended several times in the intervening years.

This means that many of the systems and equipment on the station are now out of date and increasingly incompatible with modern technology.

More worryingly, the very structure of the ISS is beginning to show troubling signs of deterioration.

Each day the exterior of the station shifts from -120°C (-184°F) to 120°C (248°F) as it moves in and out of the sun's rays.

The ISS (pictured) has served humanity well for over two decades but the station is now old, outdated, and increasingly at risk of failure 

The ISS was originally coated with materials designed to reflect most of the heat, but constant exposure to UV radiation has degraded these coatings in some areas.

This has created uneven expansion which is putting an intense strain on the station's structure which has now created leaks.

In 2021, former cosmonaut Vladimir Solovyov told state media that at least 80 per cent of the in-flight systems on the Russian section had passed their expiry date and could soon suffer irreparable failures. 

Then in February this year, NASA said it was monitoring a growing leak in the Russian section of the ISS which doubled in size over the course of a week. 

Ms Forczyk says that these risks are dangerous but that the costs of keeping the station safe are simply no longer worth it.

'I don't believe it's a risk worthy of evacuating early, but as we're seeing with Boeing's Starliner you can never tell when equipment is going to go in another direction,' Ms Forczyk says.

'There's nothing saying we absolutely have to retire the ISS by 2030, it's simply budgets and balancing logistics.' 

Beyond these structural concerns, some argue that the ISS is now outdated in terms of what NASA wants to get out of its space programme.

As NASA turns its attention to projects like the Lunar Gateway orbital station, the ISS has served its purpose and is no longer needed to further the space agency's ambitions 

Dr McDowell explains: 'There's an argument to be had that we've learned most of what we need to from the ISS.

'Now, NASA wants to spend their human spaceflight on going to the moon, and you can't fund both.'

Dr McDowell says that the true legacy of the ISS is that it has taught us how to operate a large facility in space for a long period of time.

That is knowledge which will be critical for NASA's future missions to the moon and Mars, but the ISS has now simply outlived its usefulness.

Mr McDowell concludes: 'NASA is an agency that does the frontier, and the frontier is moving out.

'Now, low earth orbit is just another place where humans do business and that's not where NASA should be - NASA should be at the frontier.'

{ https://www.dailymail.co.uk/ }

20-08-2024 om 23:46 geschreven door peter