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Category: space – Page 126

This is a sci-fi documentary, looking at what it takes to build an underground city on Mars. The choice to go underground is for protection, from the growing storm radiation that rains down on the surface every day. And to further advance the Mars colonization efforts.

Where will the materials to build the city come from? How will the crater be covered to protect the inhabitants? And what will it feel like to live in this city, that is in a hole in the ground?

It is a dream of building an advanced Mars colony, and showing the science and future space technology needed to make it happen.

Personal inspiration in creating this video comes from: The Expanse TV show and books, and The Martian.

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When a star like our Sun reaches the end of its life, it can ingest the surrounding planets and asteroids that were born with it. Now, using the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (ESO’s VLT) in Chile, researchers have found a unique signature of this process for the first time — a scar imprinted on the surface of a white dwarf star. The results are published today in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

“It is well known that some white dwarfs — slowly cooling embers of stars like our Sun — are cannibalising pieces of their planetary systems. Now we have discovered that the star’s magnetic field plays a key role in this process, resulting in a scar on the white dwarf’s surface,” says Stefano Bagnulo, an astronomer at Armagh Observatory and Planetarium in Northern Ireland, UK, and lead author of the study.

The scar the team observed is a concentration of metals imprinted on the surface of the white dwarf WD 0816–310, the Earth-sized remnant of a star similar to, but somewhat larger than, our Sun.

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DENVER—()—Palantir Technologies Inc. (NYSE: PLTR) today announced that the Army Contracting Command – Aberdeen Proving Ground (ACC-APG) has awarded Palantir USG, Inc. — a wholly-owned subsidiary of Palantir Technologies Inc. — a prime agreement for the development and delivery of the Tactical Intelligence Targeting Access Node (TITAN) ground station system, the Army’s next-generation deep-sensing capability enabled by artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML). The agreement, valued at $178.4 million, covers the development of 10 TITAN prototypes, including five Advanced and five Basic variants, as well as the integration of new critical technologies and the transition to fielding.

“This award demonstrates the Army’s leadership in acquiring and fielding the emerging technologies needed to bolster U.S. defense in this era of software-defined warfare. Building on Palantir’s years of experience bringing AI-enabled capabilities to warfighters, Palantir is now proud to deliver the Army’s first AI-defined vehicle” Post this

TITAN is a ground station that has access to Space, High Altitude, Aerial, and Terrestrial sensors to provide actionable targeting information for enhanced mission command and long range precision fires. Palantir’s TITAN solution is designed to maximize usability for Soldiers, incorporating tangible feedback and insights from Soldier touch points at every step of the development and configuration process. Building off Palantir’s prior work delivering AI capabilities for the warfighter, Palantir is deploying the Army’s first AI-defined vehicle.

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How much oxygen does Jupiter’s moon, Europa, produce, and what can this teach us about its subsurface liquid water ocean? This is what a study published today in Nature Astronomy hopes to address as an international team of researchers investigated how charged particles break apart the surface ice resulting in hydrogen and oxygen that feed Europa’s extremely thin atmosphere. This study holds the potential to help scientists better understand the geologic and biochemical processes on Europa, along with gaining greater insight into the conditions necessary for finding life beyond Earth.

For the study, the researchers used the Jovian Auroral Distributions Experiment (JADE) instrument onboard NASA’s June spacecraft to collect data on the amount of oxygen being discharged from Europa’s icy surface due to charge particles emanating from Jupiter’s massive magnetic field. In the end, the researchers found that oxygen production resulting from these charged particles interacting with the icy surface was approximately 26 pounds per second (12 kilograms per second), which is a much more focused number compared to previous estimates which ranged from a few pounds per second to over 2,000 pounds per second.

“Europa is like an ice ball slowly losing its water in a flowing stream. Except, in this case, the stream is a fluid of ionized particles swept around Jupiter by its extraordinary magnetic field,” said Dr. Jamey Szalay, who is a research scholar at Princeton University, a scientist on JADE, and lead author of the study. “When these ionized particles impact Europa, they break up the water-ice molecule by molecule on the surface to produce hydrogen and oxygen. In a way, the entire ice shell is being continuously eroded by waves of charged particles washing up upon it.”

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Can the ancient past of Mars be unlocked from knowing the orientation of rocks? This is what a study published today in Earth and Space Science hopes to address as an international team of researchers led by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) investigated bedrock samples that were drilled by NASA’s Perseverance rover in Jezero Crater on Mars to ascertain the original orientation of the rocks prior to the drilling, with the orientation potentially providing clues about Mars’ magnetic field history and the conditions that existed on ancient Mars.

What makes this study unique is it marks the first time such a method is being conducted on another planet. Additionally, while orienting 3D objects is common on Earth, Perseverance is not equipped to perform such tasks. Therefore, this method had to be conducted using angles of the rover’s arm and using identifiers from the ground, as well. The team notes how this method could be applied to future in-situ studies, as well.

“The orientation of rocks can tell you something about any magnetic field that may have existed on the planet,” said Dr. Benjamin Weiss, who is a professor of planetary sciences at MIT and lead author of the study. “You can also study how water and lava flowed on the planet, the direction of the ancient wind, and tectonic processes, like what was uplifted and what sunk. So, it’s a dream to be able to orient bedrock on another planet, because it’s going to open up so many scientific investigations.”

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