[This woman is very good. I've watched lots of her videos. Jan]

Here’s the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lu4mH3Hmw2o

[For a number of years, as I've been doing various research, I've been just dumb struck by what American University students can do! It just blows my mind! And I've also seen what groups of Adults, who are enthusiasts, actually have achieved. The things they can build, including ROCKETS, is just beyond belief. Well, look at this. This is the result of all kinds of technology that is becoming available to the common person. I have myself looked into some of this stuff for my own purposes. In this case the students have built their own tiny robot moon rover. I need to show people what Science students and private groups of adults can do. It will blow people's minds. Jan]

At this link you can see a photo and video of the little Moon Rover. It seems to me it will be controlled from Earth, probably via NASA: https://www.cmu.edu/news/stories/archives/2021/december/iris-moon-rover.html

Students set to land first US rover on the moon — before NASA

By Joanna Thompson published 3 days ago

Students at Carnegie Mellon University are sending America’s first lunar rover to the moon this May, beating NASA to the punch by about a year.

After 65 years of lunar exploration, the United States is finally going to put its first autonomous rover on the moon. But this mission won’t be helmed by NASA engineers — instead, it is the brainchild of a dedicated group of college students.

The Iris rover was developed by students, faculty and alumni at Carnegie Mellon University in Pennsylvania over the span of three years. It is being carried to the moon as part of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program, the agency’s foray into partnering with the commercial space industry. Initially, it was scheduled to launch in late 2021 or early 2022, but setbacks in NASA’s moon agenda delayed the launch to this spring.

The mission represents America’s first moon rover (NASA’s Viper rover is scheduled to launch next year), as well as the first rover to be developed by university students. The 4.4 pound (2 kilograms) rover has a chassis as big as a shoebox, and its carbon-fiber wheels are the size of bottle caps. Its 60-hour-long mission will be a primarily visual one: snapping images of the moon’s surface for geographic study. It will also test new localization techniques as it transmits data about its position back to Earth.

In addition to Iris, the Carnegie Mellon team plans to send along an art installation called the MoonArk, a tiny time capsule filled with poems, music, pictures and small objects. The project is meant to convey a narrative "that is moving to people now, but also 1,000 years down the road," Dylan Vitone(opens in new tab), an associate professor at Carnegie Mellon and MoonArk director said in a statement(opens in new tab). A second, identical ark is currently on display at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum.

MoonArk and its pint-sized rover companion will hitch a ride to space aboard United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan centaur rocket, and be shuttled down to the lunar surface by Pittsburgh-based space company Astrobiotic’s Peregrine lander. Launch is currently scheduled for May 4 — which, fittingly, the internet has christened international Star Wars Day — from the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.

"Hundreds of students have poured thousands of hours into Iris," Raewyn Duvall, a research associate at Carnegie Mellon University and commander of the mission said in a statement(opens in new tab). "We’ve worked for years toward this mission, and to have a launch date on the calendar is an exciting step."

Source: https://www.livescience.com/students-set-to-land-first-us-rover-on-the-moon-before-nasa

[If you look at the people standing around this amazing little plane, you'll see who is responsible for this lovely amazing little plane. Drones are going to the next level … flying into space! Jan]

Here’s the short video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VBqn4cVlkAs

The Mk-II Aurora aims to become the first plane to fly to space twice a day.

Dawn Aerospace’s robotic space plane flew with a rocket engine for the first time last month, taking a major step toward the company’s goal of building a fully and rapidly reusable craft.

Last week, the 15.7-foot-long (4.8 meters) Mk-II Aurora flew three times, and "all test objectives were achieved," Dawn representatives said in a statement(opens in new tab) issued on Wednesday (April 5). The company also released a one-minute video showing the sleek space plane flying over New Zealand’s stunning South Island, close to the Glentanner Aerodrome where the tests were carried out.

In August 2021, the Mk-II Aurora debuted with five test flights using surrogate jet engines, but the plan was always to pivot to a rocket-powered engine. In the latest series of tests, which took place once each day from Wednesday (March 29) to Friday (March 31), the Mk-II Aurora flew to a height of 6,000 feet (1,830 m) at speeds of 196 mph (315 kph), which is similar to those the space plane had achieved during its 2021 test flights, Dawn team said in Wednesday’s update.

Dawn Aerospace’s robotic Mk-II Aurora space plane flew with a rocket engine for the first time in March 2023.

"This is a phenomenal achievement for our small, but extremely capable, team in New Zealand and the Netherlands," Stefan Powell, the CEO of Dawn Aerospace, said Wednesday in a different statement(opens in new tab). "To my knowledge, Dawn now operates the most rapidly reusable rocket-powered aircraft in the world."

The latest test flights aimed mainly to validate the plane’s rocket engine. So the height reached by the plane was not a key factor, and future flights are expected to increase both speed and altitude.

The Dawn team envisions its Mk-II Aurora, which can carry a small payload of 2.2 pounds (5 kilograms), not only to be able to fly more than 62 miles (100 kilometers) high, but to do so twice per day when it carries out commercial operations, such as sending satellites into space. When that manifests, Mk-II Aurora will become the first fully reusable satellite launcher.

Back in December 2020, Dawn Aerospace was approved to fly the Mk-II Aurora out of a conventional airport alongside civil airplanes. This approval, granted by the New Zealand Civil Aviation Authority, the agency responsible for the country’s aviation safety and security, was another major win for the company.

Airports usually wait until launched rockets exit Earth’s atmosphere and sometimes even reroute commercial flights because rockets can leave debris in their wake that can impact passenger planes. Dawn’s team says the Mk-II Aurora stands out in this regard because it is designed to take off and land on a runway, just like an airplane. The space plane thus would not need any special restrictions or dedicated runways.

View from the engine bay of Dawn Aerospace’s Mk-II Aurora space plane during a test flight in March 2023.

All of these milestones, including the success of the latest test flights, advance Dawn’s goal to produce reusable space planes in a scalable and sustainable way, as the company looks toward achieving 100 to 1,000 flights per plane.

"Sustainability is important to us," Powell said in his statement on Wednesday. "Beyond being the responsible thing to do, there is no point in building something if we aren’t going to be able to use it."

As of late 2022, Dawn had raised $13 million to build a successor to Mk-II Aurora that would be able to carry a 550-pound (250 kg) payload to orbit.

Source: https://www.space.com/dawn-aerospace-space-plane-first-rocket-powered-flights-video

Stunned scientists have uncovered more than 900 never-before-seen species of microbes living inside glaciers on the Tibetan Plateau. Analysis of the microbes’ genomes revealed that some have the potential to spawn new pandemics, if rapid melting caused by climate change releases them from their icy prisons.

In a new study, researchers from the Chinese Academy of Sciences took ice samples from 21 glaciers on the Tibetan Plateau — a high-altitude region in Asia wedged between the Himalayan mountain range to the south and the Taklamakan Desert to the north. The team then sequenced the DNA of the microscopic organisms locked inside the ice, creating a massive database of microbe genomes that they named the Tibetan Glacier Genome and Gene (TG2G) catalog. It is the first time that a microbial community hidden within a glacier has been genetically sequenced.

The team found 968 microbial species frozen within the ice — mostly bacteria but also algae, archaea and fungi, the researchers reported June 27 in the journal Nature Biotechnology(opens in new tab). But perhaps more surprisingly, around 98% of those species were completely new to science. This level of microbial diversity was unexpected because of the challenges associated with living inside glaciers, the researchers said. "Despite extreme environmental conditions, such as low temperatures, high levels of solar radiation, periodic freeze-thaw cycles and nutrient limitation, the surfaces of glaciers support a diverse array of life," the study authors wrote.

The researchers aren’t sure exactly how old some of these microbes are; prior studies have shown that it is possible to revive microbes that have been trapped in ice for up to 10,000 years, according to the study.

This is not the first time that scientists have found a surprising abundance of microbes living in Tibetan glaciers. In January 2020, a team that analyzed ice cores from a single glacier uncovered 33 different groups of viruses living within the ice, 28 of which had never been seen before.

The surprising microbial diversity within glaciers, coupled with an increase in melting glacial ice due to climate change, boosts the chances that potentially dangerous microbes — most likely bacteria — will escape and wreak havoc, researchers said. "Ice-entrapped pathogenic microbes could lead to local epidemics and even pandemics" if they are released into the environment, the authors wrote.

Evidence suggests that some of the newfound bacteria could be very dangerous to humans and other organisms. The team identified 27,000 potential virulence factors — molecules that help bacteria invade and colonize potential hosts — within the TG2G catalog. The researchers warned that around 47% of these virulence factors have never been seen before, and so there is no way of knowing how harmful the bacteria could be.

Even if these potentially pathogenic bacteria do not survive for long after escaping their glaciers, they can still cause problems, the researchers said. Bacteria have the unique ability to exchange large sections of their DNA, known as mobile genetic elements (MGEs), with other bacteria. So even if the glacial bacteria die shortly after being thawed out, they can still pass on some of their virulence to other bacteria they encounter. This genetic interaction between glacier microbes and modern microorganisms "could be particularly dangerous," the scientists wrote.

The Tibetan Plateau glaciers could be a hot spot for unleashing future pandemics because they feed fresh water into a number of waterways, including the Yangtze River, the Yellow River and the Ganges River, which supply two of the most populated countries in the world: China and India. Pandemics spread quickly through highly populated areas, as the world witnessed during the COVID-19 pandemic.

But this potential problem won’t just affect Asia. There are more than 20,000 glaciers on Earth covering around 10% of the planet’s land mass, and each glacier is likely to have its own unique microbial communities. In April 2021, a study using satellite images of glaciers found that nearly every glacier on Earth showed an accelerated rate of ice loss between 2000 and 2019, which increases the risk that pandemic-spawning microbes could escape anywhere on the planet. The researchers warned that the "potential health risks [of these microbes] need to be evaluated" before they are released from their icy prisons.

However, there is a silver lining to this new study. Genetic records of microbial communities, such as the TG2G catalog, could be used as "toolkits" for bioprospecting — exploring natural systems to find valuable new compounds that can be used in medicine, cosmetics and other beneficial technologies. That makes databases like TG2G very important, especially if the newly discovered species go extinct in the future; an outcome that is all too likely if they cannot adapt to the changes in their frozen habitat, the researchers wrote.

Source: https://www.livescience.com/hundreds-of-new-microbes-found-in-melting-glaciers

[This British guy does excellent technical videos. He poses an interesting question and then tries to answer it. I like Whites who are into engineering, maths and science. Jan]

Here’s the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBHbLV7xEhc

[The whole science and methodology of discovering exo-planets is simply amazing and the things they are finding are wild. Jan]

NASA astronomers have recently discovered a new planet in the distant reaches of the universe, according to a report from Science Alert. The Jupiter-sized exoplanet, named TOI-4603b, is said to be a brown dwarf with a density greater than lead, making it among the densest material in the known universe, second only to people who think Andrew Garfield was the best Spider-Man. Despite rivaling Jupiter’s size, the giant planet contains the mass of nearly 13 Jupiters, making it nearly 3 times the density of Earth, and a staggering 9 times denser than Jupiter.

Obviously, many people are questioning whether or not humans could ever inhabit the new planet, though that seems out of the question at this time. For starters, it’s so distant from our current position, at roughly 730 light years away from Earth, that making the distant trek out to TOI-4603b would take generations of space travel. Additionally, the planet’s orbit is just 7.25 days from its sun, meaning a single week on this world would account for the entire on-planet year.

Concepts such as space and time can truly boggle the mind when viewed through this lens. At a 7.25-day orbit, this new planet is reminiscent of Christopher Nolan‘s Interstellar, in which Matthew McConaughey and his team of space explorers visited a planet that caused years to pass by on Earth in the span of what felt like seconds to the characters on the ground. While the reality of this dense dwarf may be far less cinematic, the comparison stands to reason why it is highly unlikely that humans would ever visit TOI-4603b.

Scientists have also been struggling to understand how such a planet could even form in the first place, as temperature and pressure from a mass of this density should be causing constant nuclear fusion on the planet’s surface. Nuclear fusion occurs when atoms have been smashed together, creating heavier elements such as lead or uranium. According to what little we understand about the new distant planet, its existence seems to suggest that its core can fuse deuterium, as its mass isn’t constantly collapsing under its own weight.

Deuterium is an extremely heavy isotope of hydrogen that doesn’t require the same heat and pressure necessary to cause nuclear fusion and is used on Earth to slow the neutrons in fission reactors. If the new planet is, in fact, capable of fusing the material, this reinforces its assumed status as a brown dwarf, which often behaves more like stars than planets in their formation and orbit. Velocity measurements taken by NASA’s transiting exoplanet survey satellite, often shortened to TESS, caught TOI-4603b whipping around its solar system in the distant reaches of space in just over a week, providing scientists with a deep insight into the planet’s density and radius.

According to researchers in India, TOI-4603b contains nearly all the criteria necessary to be classified as an exoplanet, though other astronomers wish to probe deeper in order to garner a better understanding of the incredibly dense new planet. Others have noted that the planet’s orbit seems to move in an ovular shape, suggesting the planet’s creation is relatively recent. This means that the planet isn’t just new to us but is rather entirely new.

Source: https://www.giantfreakinrobot.com/sci/new-planet-discovered-unbelievably-dense.html

The two closest black holes to Earth, named Gaia BH1 and BH2, may be part of a rare class of black holes never seen before, new research suggests.

A multi-wavelength image of the stunning galazy Centaurus A, with twin lobes of purple light bursting out of its bright center

Two recently discovered black holes are remarkably close to Earth — and they may represent a previously unknown category of the mysterious, massive objects. An international team of astronomers discovered the black holes using data from the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Gaia mission combined with a bevy of ground-based telescopes from around the world.

Dubbed Gaia BH1 and Gaia BH2, the two black holes are the closest to Earth of any discovered so far, according to ESA. Gaia BH1 lies a mere 1,560 light-years from our solar system towards the Ophiuchus constellation, nearly three times closer than the previous record holder. Gaia BH2 sits about 3,800 light years away, toward the constellation Centaurus. Both are roughly nine to 10 times more massive than our sun, and sit within our own Milky Way galaxy.

Why has it taken so long for astronomers to notice such massive black holes? Because they’re practically invisible. In the past, scientists searched for black holes by looking for the remnants of their latest meal; when a star or cloud of interstellar gas falls in to a black hole, it leaves behind a burst of electromagnetic radiation, which astronomers can detect to infer a black hole’s presence, according to NASA(opens in new tab).

Related: What’s the biggest black hole in the universe?

A map of the Milky Way galaxy, revealing the locations of the extremely close black holes Gaia BH1 and BH2

But unlike previous discoveries, Gaia BH1 and 2 are completely dark; they don’t appear to be snacking on anything at the moment, making them "dormant," or inactive. Instead, the researchers found the black holes by carefully tracking the movements of two sun-like companion stars orbiting around the cosmic giants.

The stars displayed a slight wobble as they traveled through space, indicating that something with a lot of gravity, such as another star, was tugging on them. But when researchers checked the area with telescopes, they couldn’t find anything emitting radiation. According to the math, these movements only made sense if a black hole was involved.

While both black hole systems were discovered in late 2022, astronomers are just now beginning to appreciate how unique the nearby monsters are.The new research suggests that, unlike X-ray binaries — star-black hole pairs that orbit closely together and emit telltale X-ray and radio wave radiation — Gaia BH1 and Gaia BH2 likely represent a new category of black hole never seen before, according to ESA.

"What sets this new group of black holes apart from the ones we already knew about is their wide separation from their companion stars," Kareem El-Badry(opens in new tab), an astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and the discoverer of the new black holes, said in a statement(opens in new tab). He added that these dormant black holes "likely have a completely different formation history than x-ray binaries."

Scientists hope that Gaia’s next data release, which is scheduled for 2025, will uncover more dormant black holes and hopefully shed some (metaphorical) light onto how they formed. The new research was published March 30 in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society(opens in new tab).

Source: https://www.livescience.com/new-type-of-black-hole-found-lurking-in-earths-cosmic-backyard-is-closest-ever-discovered

[James Webb was an incredible step forward. Jan]

Here’s the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0pNDlWX4R5o&t=341s

[What will be even more amazing is when they return the many samples of soil and rock from Mars that the lander is busy gathering. That will take several years. But they'll have to launch it from the surface of Mars. That will be an amazing first. That will be difficult. Jan]

Practice makes perfect, and there are no do-overs once teams recover the sample from asteroid Bennu.

OSIRIS-REx’s asteroid sample is coming home.

OSIRIS-REx, NASA’s first asteroid sample return mission, took a bite out of the space rock Bennu in October 2020 and is on course to return that sample to Earth just over seven years to the day after it launched.

As the probe — whose name is short for "Origins Spectral Interpretation Resource Identification Security-Regolith Explorer" — flies its return trajectory through space, teams on Earth are preparing for the sample’s Sept. 24 landing in the Utah desert.

If all goes as planned, OSIRIS-REx’s sample return capsule will separate from the primary vehicle and enter Earth’s atmosphere at 10:41 a.m. EDT (1441 GMT) on Sept. 24. Built to withstand the heat and turbulence that comes with punching through the atmosphere, the capsule is expected to parachute down to a relatively soft landing at approximately 10:54 a.m. EDT (1454 GMT).

"Once the sample capsule touches down, our team will be racing against the clock to recover it and get it to the safety of a temporary clean room," Mike Moreau, deputy project manager at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, said in an agency press release(opens in new tab).

Scientists are interested in samples from Bennu and asteroids like it because of their potential to hold clues to planetary formation processes and even, potentially, molecular evidence for the precursors to life. Meteorite samples found on Earth are useful for this type of research, but only to a point. Asteroid material collected in space is free of any Earthly contamination and contains particles smaller than those that survive on space rocks that zoom through our planet’s atmosphere.

To protect the incoming Bennu material from any terrestrial micro-invaders, NASA teams are taking extensive measures and making sure they are prepared well ahead of time. Over the next six months, NASA and Lockheed Martin crews will practice step-by-step procedures for recovering and transporting the OSIRIS-REx sample from a 37-mile by 9-mile (59 by 15 kilometers) landing area inside a Department of Defense property in the Utah desert to NASA’s Johnson Space Center (JSC) in Houston.

Upon landing, the return capsule will be transported to a mobile clean room, where technicians will then unpack the vessel’s heat shield and protective exterior to reveal the sealed container of recovered Bennu material. Ground samples will also be taken from OSRIS-REx’s touchdown location, to test against any contamination risk during landing. Once brought to JSC, a careful unpacking procedure will be observed, which is also being rehearsed leading up to OSIRIS-REx’s arrival.

"These accomplishments are the direct result of the extensive training and rehearsals that we performed every step of the way. We are bringing that level of discipline and dedication to this final phase of the flight operations," said OSIRIS-REx principal investigator Dante Lauretta.

Once unpacked, a fourth of the recovered material will be designated for the OSIRIS-REx researchers. The rest, NASA says, will be reserved for "other scientists to study, now and in future generations."

Source: https://www.space.com/nasa-preparing-osiris-rex-sample-arrival-earth?utm_term=AF536F6D-055D-443A-91F7-FD448D0CCA73&utm_campaign=58E4DE65-C57F-4CD3-9A5A-609994E2C5A9&utm_medium=email&utm_content=A4693B30-AC40-4FDF-A404-71C6944EE88F&utm_source=SmartBrief

In February 2021, NASA landed a $2.7 billion rover on Mars that has been roaming the Red Planet ever since. The space agency got what it paid for, as the largely autonomous Perseverance rover has been dutifully collecting rock core samples from Mars and storing them for the first sample return mission from another planet.

Perseverance was the fifth rover of its kind to be sent to Mars, but in terms of NASA’s future robotic exploration of Mars, the space agency is leaning towards launching a series of lower-cost, sustainable missions once every two years, as opposed to developing hugely expensive rovers for the Red Planet.

During a meeting at the National Academies’ Space Studies Board on Thursday, NASA’s Director of the Mars Exploration Program Eric Ianson unveiled the space agency’s long-term strategy for exploring Mars, titled “Exploring Mars Together” that highlighted what’s next after the sample return mission, SpaceNews reported.

“We wanted to look two decades into the future as far as what are the things that we can do to create equally dramatic and profound science [as Mars Sample Return],” Ianson is quoted as saying. “What we’re proposing to do here is to do it at lower cost and a higher cadence of missions.” He projected that those low-cost missions would be between $100 million to $300 million each.

Should the proposed draft strategy be accepted as doctrine, it can be said that NASA will end the era of high-end Mars rovers with a bang; it does not get more complex than Mars Sample Return. The mission is a joint effort between NASA and the European Space Agency, and it includes an orbiter, lander, two helicopters, and a rocket. Working together, this fleet will retrieve rock samples that have been stowed away by the Perseverance rover on Mars.

Moving forward, however, the space agency wants to keep it simple. “Historically we’ve had peaks and valleys in the Mars program,” said Ianson during the meeting, according to SpaceNews. “When we talk about sustainability, it’s something that can be constant throughout. We want to try and maintain missions on a regular cadence.”

That is until NASA tries to land humans on Mars for the first time. The space agency is focused on its Moon to Mars objectives, a proposed idea to use the Moon as a testbed to eventually land humans on Mars, including the use of NASA’s Space Launch System rocket for deep space exploration. With the prospect of landing humans on Mars, NASA no longer seems interested in developing increasingly complex robots for the Red Planet. Which actually makes sense.

NASA’s rover missions usually came one right after the other. The Curiosity rover, Perseverance’s predecessor, landed on Mars in August 2012 and NASA began developing its Mars 2020 rover mission the following year. But now, the agency’s “Future” tab on its Mars Exploration website includes a section for the Mars Sample Return mission and another section for “Humans on Mars,” indicating that another signature Mars rover mission is currently not in the books.

This could very well be the end of a legendary era for NASA’s Mars exploration program. The robotic Martian explorers have provided some major insights on the history of Mars and the potential for the discovery of ancient microbial life on another planet, plus a few iconic selfies during their journey. I guess a human selfie on Mars could be pretty cool too, but those humans will have some big, robotic shoes to fill.

Source: https://gizmodo.com/nasa-expensive-rovers-mars-perseverance-curiosity-1850288783