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Category: space – Page 709

Episode 13; please check out this candid interview with Lowell Observatory astronomer Gerard van Belle on why we need interferometry in space. Many thanks!

Lowell Observatory astronomer Gerard van Belle, Chief Scientist at the Navy Precision Optical Interferometer (NPOI) in Flagstaff. Arizona talks about the possibility of arrays of space telescopes that are 3D printed after launch. We also discuss the history of optical interferometry; why such interlinked telescopes are the key to America’s future in astronomy and why Arizona skies remain as vital today as they were a century ago.

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MUST-WATCH video of a rocket launch as seen from the International Space Station. You can track the tiny spot rising into the darkness as if it’s an animated cartoon. But it’s REAL. Hopefully, it will soon be just one of the flights in the regular commuter network between the planets, a future #Asgardia seeks to make true as soon as possible.\n(Credit: NASA, ISS, Riccardo Rossi (ISAA))\n\nYou can make it happen sooner by sharing your ideas and joining #TheFirstSpaceNation’s Business Partnership Program!

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The Freedom of Information Act process is filled with lots of bureaucratic red tape, however, I feel confident that the #FOIA will be fruitful for declassified information properly vetted for the public first by Uncle Sam. Thanks to the fine folks at NASA — National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

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Astronomers have applied artificial intelligence (AI) to ultra-wide field-of-view images of the distant Universe captured by the Subaru Telescope, and have achieved a very high accuracy for finding and classifying spiral galaxies in those images. This technique, in combination with citizen science, is expected to yield further discoveries in the future.

A research group, consisting of astronomers mainly from the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ), applied a deep-learning technique, a type of AI, to classify galaxies in a large dataset of images obtained with the Subaru Telescope. Thanks to its high sensitivity, as many as 560,000 galaxies have been detected in the images. It would be extremely difficult to visually process this large number of galaxies one by one with human eyes for morphological classification. The AI enabled the team to perform the processing without human intervention.

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AROUND 4 BILLION YEARS AGO, LIFE BEGAN EMERGING ON EARTH in the form of microorganisms. Whether or not life originated on our planet, or was somehow transported there by way of a traveling asteroid, is one of the biggest questions in astronomy.

Now, a new experiment favors the idea that life ended up on our planet after a long journey through space — by proving that bacteria can in fact survive the trip.

Scientists conducted an experiment onboard the International Space Station that supported the controversial theory of panspermia.

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An extract from Space 2.0 by Rod Pyle.

At the other extreme is the massive Dyson Sphere, theorized by physicist Freeman Dyson – a metallic globe large enough to hold a star at its centre and contain a human population at a sufficient distance from the star to comfortably support their survival. This is a highly theoretical idea and is more of a thought experiment than a workable design, at least with any foreseeable technology.

Concerns have been raised about what kinds of governments might take hold in space settlements, and what possible risks they might face from ever more powerful economic and military establishments back on Earth.

Today, we are on the eve of some truly inspiring prospects for early outposts in the final frontier, places that could become reality with the next two decades.

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