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Sandra Connelly, deputy associate administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, left, Lori Glaze, acting deputy associate administrator for NASA’s Exploration Systems Development Mission Directorate, Robyn Gatens, director of the International Space Station at NASA Headquarters, and Carrie Olsen, manager of the Next Gen STEM project for NASA’s Office of STEM Engagement, discuss key takeaways at the conclusion of NASA’s LEO Microgravity Strategy Industry and Academia Workshop, Friday, Sept. 13, 2024, at Convene in Washington. NASA’s LEO Microgravity Strategy effort aims to develop and document an objectives-based approach toward the next generation of human presence in low Earth orbit to advance microgravity science, technology, and exploration.NASA/Joel Kowsky

As part of NASA’s effort to advance microgravity science, technology, and exploration in low Earth orbit (LEO), the agency conducted two stakeholder workshops in London and Washington to solicit feedback from the international community, including NASA’s international partners, American industry, and academia on Sept. 6 and Sept. 13, respectively.

The agency released a draft set of 42 objectives in late August, seeking input from U.S. industry, academia, international communities, NASA employees, and others to ensure its framework for the next generation of human presence in low Earth orbit, set to be finalized this winter, includes ideas and contributions from a range of stakeholders. The objectives span six categories: science, exploration-enabling research and technology development, commercial low Earth orbit infrastructure, operations, international cooperation, and workforce and engagement.

“As we chart the future of human exploration, it’s vital that we harness the insights and expertise of our diverse stakeholders,” said NASA Deputy Administrator Pam Melroy. “These workshops provide an invaluable platform for stakeholders to share their insights, helping us create a strategy that reflects our shared ambitions for the future of space exploration.”

Consultation is a fundamental aspect of NASA’s LEO Microgravity Strategy, emphasizing the importance of collaboration and the integration of diverse perspectives in advancing scientific research and technology development in low Earth orbit. By actively engaging with stakeholders –including scientists, industry partners, and educational institutions –NASA aims to gather valuable insights and align its objectives with the broader goals of the space community.

“Engaging with a wide array of voices allows us to tap into innovative ideas that will enhance our missions,” stated Robyn Gatens, director of the International Space Station and acting director of Commercial Spaceflight. “This collaborative approach not only strengthens our current initiatives but also lays the groundwork for future advancements in space exploration.”

To contribute to NASA’s low Earth orbit microgravity strategy, visit: www.leomicrogravitystrategy.org

Voice assistants can build profiles of their users’ habits and preferences, but the consistency and accuracy of these profiles vary

Voice assistants can build profiles of their users’ habits and preferences, but the consistency and accuracy of these profiles vary

SpaceX plans to launch the Crew-9 astronaut mission for NASA on Saturday (Sept. 28), and you can watch the action live online.

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FDA medical examiner Frances Oldham wanted data that would show that thalidomide was safe to use during pregnancy. It wasn’t

Venus is often described as a hellscape. The surface temperature breaches the melting point of lead, and though its atmosphere is dominated by carbon dioxide, it contains enough sulfuric acid to satisfy the comparison with Hades.

But conditions throughout Venus’ ample atmosphere aren’t uniform. There are locations where some of life’s building blocks could resist the planet’s inhospitable nature.

Among the rocky planets, Venus has by far the largest atmosphere by volume. So, while its surface is inhospitable, its atmosphere has regions that are the most Earth-like of anywhere else in the Solar System. Scientists have wondered if life could survive in parts of the planet’s upper atmosphere, and the discovery of the potential biomarker phosphine (though it was later disproved) generated more interest.

Some research suggests that life could exist within Venus’ voluminous clouds. Image Credit: Abreu et al. 2024.

One reason Venus keeps coming up in discussions around habitability is that it’s accessible, whereas exoplanets aren’t. Venus is easily reached, and we currently have one orbiter in place, the Japanese Akatsuki spacecraft. Three other missions to Venus are planned for the mid-2030s: NASA’s Veritas and DAVINCI and the ESA’s EnVision.

Nobody is convinced we’ll find life on Venus. But the planet can teach us a lot about chemistry and biology and their limits.

In new research, a team of scientists tested different building blocks under Venus-like conditions to see if they can withstand the planet’s perilous nature. The research is “Simple lipids form stable higher-order structures in concentrated sulfuric acid.” The lead author is Daniel Duzdevich from the Department of Chemistry at the University of Chicago. The paper is in pre-print now and has been submitted to the journal Astrobiology.

Venus’ surface isn’t a candidate for habitability. But regions in its atmosphere may be. The issue is that much of Venus’ sulfuric acid is concentrated in discrete clouds rather than diffused throughout its atmosphere.

“The Venusian surface is sterilizing, but the cloud deck includes regions with temperatures and pressures conventionally considered compatible with life. However, the Venusian clouds are thought to consist of concentrated sulfuric acid,” the authors explain.

Cloud structure in the Venusian atmosphere in 2016, revealed by observations in the two ultraviolet bands by Akatsuki. Credit: Kevin M. Gill

They wanted to test if any of life’s “fundamental features” could withstand Venus’ challenging environment. Can any of life’s chemistry resist sulfuric acid?

“Organic chemistry in concentrated sulfuric acid is rarely studied yet surprisingly rich, with recent work supporting the notion that complex organic molecules, including amino acids and nucleobases can be stable in this unusual solvent,” the authors write.

If simple organic molecules can remain stable in sulfuric acid, it’s an interesting observation in favour of life. But it takes more complexity than that, and that’s what this research focuses on.

“One fundamental feature of life is cellularity: the differentiation of “inside” (the contents of a cell, including information, molecules, and all their interactions) and “outside” (the environment), in addition to a mechanism for communication and exchange between the two,” Duzdevich and his co-researchers write.

The researchers focused on lipids, the membranes that define cells. Lipids are the foundation of cellular structure, not only as membranes between cells but also as membranes that create distinct parts of the interior of cells. “The cell membrane is especially important in extreme environments because it must help maintain the homeostasis of the intracellular environment against otherwise harsh external conditions,” the authors write.

The researchers performed lab experiments to determine whether lipids can withstand Venus’ harsh environment. They asked two questions: Can simple lipids resist decomposition by sulfuric acid, and can the lipids form stable higher-order structures like they do in cells?

The researchers placed masses of lipids in vials and exposed them to different concentrations of sulfuric acid and measured each vial at specific intervals. Their results show that some lipids can survive exposure to the acid and even form structures.

This figure from the research shows the vesicle-like structures that formed after concentrated sulfuric acid was added to solid lipids. Each panel is a different region of the same sample taken on the same day. Subsequent images showed that the structures remained intact even after seven days. Image Credit: Duzdevich et al. 2024.

Interested readers can explore the detailed chemistry for themselves.

In summary, the results suggest that stable membranes can form and persist in the presence of sulfuric acid. Life uses water as a solvent because it’s a polar molecule, can form networks of hydrogen bonds, has a high heat capacity, and, of course, is abundant on Earth. But it’s not abundant everywhere.

Critically, this study shows that some aspects of the chemistry of life don’t require water as a solvent. Instead, they can tolerate and use sulfuric acid as a solvent. “Here, we show the unexpected stability of complex membranous structures in another polar solvent: concentrated sulfuric acid,” the authors write.

What does this mean for exoplanet habitability and astrobiology?

“Concentrated sulfuric acid as a planetary solvent could be widespread on exoplanets, either on exo-Venuses or on other rocky planets that are desiccated as a result of the stellar activity of their host star,” the researchers explain.

And, of course, sulfuric acid is present in large amounts at Venus.

“Concentrated sulfuric acid is also present in our immediate planetary vicinity as a dominant liquid in the clouds of Venus, further emphasizing its importance for planetary science, planetary habitability, and astrobiology,” the authors write.

The question of whether life could somehow survive in Venus’ clouds is one that won’t go away. We’re new at the astrobiology game, and we’re simply not in a position to rule things out. It might seem far-fetched, but science is an evidence game, and evidence can be surprising.

This study doesn’t present evidence that can answer the question—big questions like this are answered incrementally—but it does present an intriguing result.

“By demonstrating the stability of lipid membranes in this aggressive solvent, we have taken a significant step forward in exploring the potential habitability of the concentrated sulfuric acid cloud environment on Venus,” the authors conclude.

The post Another Building Block of Life Can Handle Venus’ Sulphuric Acid appeared first on Universe Today.

Astronomers listened for radio signals emanating from planets in the TRAPPIST-1 system, but found no evidence of any interplanetary communications

Astronomers listened for radio signals emanating from planets in the TRAPPIST-1 system, but found no evidence of any interplanetary communications

A newly discovered Earth-size world orbiting a dead white dwarf star gives scientists a hint of what the solar system may look like in billions of years.

An oddball galaxy in the early universe shines so brightly it outshines its stars.

Hurricane Helene will make landfall in Florida on Thursday evening (Sept. 26), and satellite footage is capturing it along its path.

NASA is streaming video views of Hurricane Helene today (as it approaches the U.S. Gulf Coast and you can watch it online.

Illustration of NASA’s BioSentinel spacecraft as it enters a heliocentric orbit. BioSentinel collected data during the May 2024 geomagnetic storm that hit Earth to learn more about the impacts of radiation in deep space.NASA/Daniel Rutter

In May 2024, a geomagnetic storm hit Earth, sending auroras across the planet’s skies in a once-in-a-generation light display. These dazzling sights are possible because of the interaction of coronal mass ejections – explosions of plasma and magnetic field from the Sun – with Earth’s magnetic field, which protects us from the radiation the Sun spits out during turbulent storms.

But what might happen to humans beyond the safety of Earth’s protection? This question is essential as NASA plans to send humans to the Moon and on to Mars. During the May storm, the small spacecraft BioSentinel was collecting data to learn more about the impacts of radiation in deep space.

“We wanted to take advantage of the unique stage of the solar cycle we’re in – the solar maximum, when the Sun is at its most active – so that we can continue to monitor the space radiation environment,” said Sergio Santa Maria, principal investigator for BioSentinel’s spaceflight mission at NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley. “These data are relevant not just to the heliophysics community but also to understand the radiation environment for future crewed missions into deep space.”

BioSentinel – a small satellite about the size of a cereal box – is currently over 30 million miles from Earth, orbiting the Sun, where it weathered May’s coronal mass ejection without protection from a planetary magnetic field. Preliminary analysis of the data collected indicates that even though this was an extreme geomagnetic storm, that is, a storm that disturbs Earth’s magnetic field, it was considered just a moderate solar radiation storm, meaning it did not produce a great increase in hazardous solar particles. Therefore, such a storm did not pose any major issue to terrestrial lifeforms, even if they were unprotected as BioSentinel was. These measurements provide useful information for scientists trying to understand how solar radiation storms move through space and where their effects – and potential impacts on life beyond Earth – are most intense.

NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory captured this image of a solar flare on May 11, 2024. The image shows a subset of extreme ultraviolet light that highlights the extremely hot material in flares.NASA/SDO

The original mission of BioSentinel was to study samples of yeast in deep space. Though these yeast samples are no longer alive, BioSentinel has adapted and continues to be a novel platform for studying the potential impacts of deep space conditions on life beyond the protection of Earth’s atmosphere and magnetosphere. The spacecraft’s biosensor instrument collects data about the radiation in deep space. Over a year and a half after its launch in Nov. 2022, BioSentinel retreats farther away from Earth, providing data of increasing value to scientists.

“Even though the biological part of the BioSentinel mission was completed a few months after launch, we believe that there is significant scientific value in continuing with the mission,” said Santa Maria. “The fact that the CubeSat continues to operate and that we can communicate with it, highlights the potential use of the spacecraft and many of its subsystems and components for future long-term missions beyond low Earth orbit.”

When we see auroras in the sky, they can serve as a stunning reminder of all the forces we cannot see that govern our cosmic neighborhood. As NASA and its partners seek to understand more about space environments, platforms like BioSentinel are essential to learn more about the risks of surviving beyond Earth’s sphere of protection.

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Northern sea robins are formidable marine hunters, and they owe their success to modified fin rays that let them find prey buried in the seabed

Northern sea robins are formidable marine hunters, and they owe their success to modified fin rays that let them find prey buried in the seabed

Next-generation space debris protection material is being readied for a test trip to the International Space Station, to see how it holds up in the final frontier.

Experts call for greater testing of contacts of a person who was infected with the H5N1 bird flu strain before the virus causes a wider outbreak

NASA and South Korea's space agency have agreed to deeper cooperation in space exploration, science and aeronautics, including collaboration on a pioneering mission.