NASA’s Solid Rocket Booster
Posted in space
Category: space – Page 627
Hubble’s Extraordinary ULLYSES Program
Posted in space
Photographer Andrew McCarthy is known for shooting incredible astrophotography images from his backyard in Sacramento, California. He recently added two more jaw-dropping images to his portfolio: ultra-clear views of the International Space Station (ISS) crossing the Sun and Moon.
Given that the ISS whizzes across the Sun and Moon in less than a second from the perspective of someone on Earth, capturing a clear view of the transit is not an easy thing to do.
McCarthy first managed to capture the ISS transiting the Sun on Tuesday, October 6th.
Twenty straight years of life in space makes the ISS the ideal “natural laboratory” to understand how societies function beyond Earth.
The ISS is a collaboration between 25 space agencies and organisations. It has hosted 241 crew and a few tourists from 19 countries. This is 43% of all the people who have ever travelled in space.
As future missions to the Moon and Mars are planned, it’s important to know what people need to thrive in remote, dangerous and enclosed environments, where there is no easy way back home.
Zap it o.o
Astronomers say they’ll have to keep an eye on the near-Earth asteroid Apophis to see how much of a danger the space rock poses to our planet during a close pass in 2068.
Borrowing a page from high-energy physics and astronomy textbooks, a team of physicists and computer scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) has successfully adapted and applied a common error-reduction technique to the field of quantum computing.
In the world of subatomic particles and giant particle detectors, and distant galaxies and giant telescopes, scientists have learned to live, and to work, with uncertainty. They are often trying to tease out ultra-rare particle interactions from a massive tangle of other particle interactions and background “noise” that can complicate their hunt, or trying to filter out the effects of atmospheric distortions and interstellar dust to improve the resolution of astronomical imaging.
Also, inherent problems with detectors, such as with their ability to record all particle interactions or to exactly measure particles’ energies, can result in data getting misread by the electronics they are connected to, so scientists need to design complex filters, in the form of computer algorithms, to reduce the margin of error and return the most accurate results.
Some animals, like mice and birds, are able to bring their body temperature and metabolism way down to conserve energy, going into a sleep-like state called torpor. Now researchers have identified the brain cells that trigger this state, showing they can activate it on demand. The team was even able to do it in rats, which don’t normally do it at all, suggesting that such a “suspended animation” state might eventually be possible in humans.
Torpor seems to have evolved as a survival strategy during times of food scarcity, allowing animals to snooze through cold nights or even entire winters without wasting too much energy keeping their body temperature up. That of course allows them to survive until things warm up again, and food becomes more plentiful.
Scientists have toyed with the idea of inducing this kind of hibernation state in humans to reduce the resources and room required for long treks into space. Now researchers at Harvard and the University of Tsukuba in Japan may have made progress towards doing just that.
Scientists have found a planet where it rains rocks, the winds whip faster than the speed of sound and there is an ocean of magma more than 100km deep.
Researchers have found extreme “lava planets” before. They are worlds so close to their host star that the surface is made of oceans of molten lava.
But the newly-analysed planet known as K2-141b is unusual even among those extreme worlds. Its surface, ocean and atmosphere are all made up of rocks, which fall like rain and melt into its huge seas.
The secrets of the solar system can drive economic return for all.
The launch of NASA’s fifth Mars rover marks a new milestone in the era of space exploration. It puts focus on the need for greater collaboration, equity and inclusion among international partners to ensure the sustainable, peaceful and fair use of resources. Guidelines for interacting and norms of behaviour are as essential to ensure success in space as on Earth.
The Artemis Accords: a framework for cooperation
NASA reestablished communication with the Voyager 2 probe that is more than 11.6 billion miles, after the agency went dark in March to complete hardware upgrades on its satellite.