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Mar 9, 2024

Google-backed satellite to track global oil industry methane emissions

Posted by in category: futurism

A new satellite backed by Alphabet Inc’s Google and the Environmental Defense Fund group will launch from California on Monday with a mission to pinpoint oil and gas industry methane emissions from space.

Mar 9, 2024

Archaeologists in Egypt unearth section of large Ramses II statue

Posted by in category: futurism

CAIRO, March 4 (Reuters) — A joint Egyptian-U.S. archaeological mission has uncovered the upper part of a huge statue of King Ramses II during excavations south of the Egyptian city of Minya, Egypt’s tourism and antiquities ministry said on Monday.

The limestone block is about 3.8 metres (12.5 feet) high and depicts a seated Ramses wearing a double crown and a headdress topped with a royal cobra, Bassem Jihad, head of the mission’s Egyptian team, said in a statement.

The upper part of the statue’s back column shows hieroglyphic writings that glorify the king, one of ancient Egypt’s most powerful pharaohs, he said.

Mar 9, 2024

SpaceX launches eighth long-duration crew for International Space Station orbit

Posted by in categories: robotics/AI, space travel

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida, March 3 (Reuters) — A SpaceX rocket safely lifted off from Florida on Sunday night carrying a crew of three U.S. astronauts and a Russian cosmonaut on their way to the International Space Station (ISS) to begin a six-month science mission in Earth orbit.

The two-stage Falcon 9 rocket topped with an autonomously operated Crew Dragon capsule dubbed Endeavor was launched from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral, along Florida’s Atlantic coast, at 10:53 p.m. EST (0353 GMT Monday).

A live NASA-SpaceX webcast showed the 25-story-tall rocketship ascending from the launch tower as its nine Merlin engines roared to life in billowing clouds of vapor and a reddish fireball that lit up the night sky. The rocket consumes 700,000 gallons of fuel per second during launch, according to SpaceX.

Mar 9, 2024

SpaceX launches 53 satellites on Transporter-10 rideshare flight, nails rocket landing (video)

Posted by in categories: alien life, satellites

Liftoff occurred at 5:05 p.m. ET (2205 GMT).

Mar 9, 2024

Fixing space-physics mistake enhances satellite safety

Posted by in categories: mathematics, particle physics, space

Correcting 50-year-old errors in the math used to understand how electromagnetic waves scatter electrons trapped in Earth’s magnetic fields will lead to better protection for technology in space.

“The discovery of these errors will help scientists improve their models of artificial radiation belts produced by high-altitude and how an event like that would impact our space technology,” said Greg Cunningham, a space scientist at Los Alamos National Laboratory. “This allows us to make better predictions of what that threat could be and the efficacy of radiation belt remediation strategies.”

Heliophysics models are important tools researchers use to understand phenomena around the Earth, such as how electrons can become trapped in the near-Earth space environment and damage electronics on space assets, or how Earth’s magnetic field shields us from both and particles in solar wind.

Mar 9, 2024

SpaceX fuels up massive Starship megarocket in test for 3rd launch (photos)

Posted by in category: space travel

SpaceX’s next Starship to fly has passed a critical fueling test, setting the stage for a highly anticipated third launch attempt of the world’s biggest rocket.

The gleaming, stainless-steel Starship rocket and its Super Heavy booster, which together stand 400 feet tall (122 meters), were filled with more than 10 million pounds of liquid methane and liquid oxygen propellant during the recent launch dress rehearsal, which was performed at SpaceX’s Starbase facility near Boca Chica Beach in southern Texas.

Mar 9, 2024

Quantum Leap in Superconductivity: Harvard’s High-Pressure Breakthrough

Posted by in categories: particle physics, transportation

Harvard scientists have made a significant advance in high-pressure physics by creating a tool that directly images superconducting materials under extreme conditions, facilitating new discoveries in the field of superconducting hydrides.

Hydrogen (like many of us) acts weird under pressure. Theory predicts that when crushed by the weight of more than a million times our atmosphere, this light, abundant, normally gaseous element first becomes a metal, and even more strangely, a superconductor – a material that conducts electricity with no resistance.

Scientists have been eager to understand and eventually harness superconducting hydrogen-rich compounds, called hydrides, for practical applications ­– from levitating trains to particle detectors. But studying the behavior of these and other materials under enormous, sustained pressures is anything but practical, and accurately measuring those behaviors ranges somewhere between a nightmare and impossible.

Mar 9, 2024

Lockheed Martin offers to acquire Terran Orbital

Posted by in categories: business, space

Under the proposal, Lockheed would pay $1 per share of Terran Orbital stock it does not currently own, valuing the company at a little under $200 million. Lockheed would pay more than $70 million to buy outstanding stock warrants and assume or repay $313 million in Terran Orbital debt.

“Terran represents an attractive opportunity for Lockheed Martin, and we are treating the potential Transaction as a strategic priority,” Lockheed stated in the letter. “Terran’s superior capabilities and business momentum align with one of Lockheed Martin Space’s strategic growth priorities and the Transaction would accelerate that strategy.”

Mar 9, 2024

ISS Roundup: Cygnus NG-20, Axiom Mission 3, and Progress MS-26

Posted by in category: space

This month, the International Space Station (ISS) has seen a flurry of activity, from experiments to vehicle arrivals and departures. Multiple resupply missions by Cygnus and Progress have kept the crew of Expedition 70 healthy onboard the Station. Meanwhile, a private mission from Axiom headed back to Earth with the first-ever all-European commercial crew, and SpaceX Crew-8 prepares to launch to the ISS in the coming days.

Northrop Grumman’s 20th Cygnus mission (NG-20) was berthed to the Station’s Unity module on Feb. 1, beginning the month off with a strong start. NG-20 was launched on a SpaceX Falcon 9 on Jan. 30 at 12:07 PM EST (17:07 UTC) from Space Launch Complex 40 at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.

Experiments on the ISS are actively gaining new insight into possibilities that were never attainable on Earth. Cargo resupply vehicles like Cygnus help carry new experiments and supplies to the Station, supporting these advancements.

Mar 9, 2024

Hackers abuse QEMU to covertly tunnel network traffic in cyberattacks

Posted by in category: cybercrime/malcode

Malicious actors were detected abusing the open-source hypervisor platform QEMU as a tunneling tool in a cyberattack against a large company.

QEMU is a free emulator and hypervisor that allows you to run other operating systems as guests on a computer.

As part of the attack, threat actors used QEMU to create virtual network interfaces and a socket-type network device to connect to a remote server. This allowed the threat actors to create a network tunnel from the victim’s system to the attacker’s server with negligible impact on system performance.