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A new trailer has arrived for Disney+'s "Star Wars: Skeleton Crew," a new family-oriented live-action series starring Jude Law.

A bird flu virus that has been circulating in dairy cattle for months has now been found in a pig in the US for the first time, raising the risk of the virus evolving to become more dangerous to people

A bird flu virus that has been circulating in dairy cattle for months has now been found in a pig in the US for the first time, raising the risk of the virus evolving to become more dangerous to people

Credit: NASA

NASA has awarded the Custodial and Refuse/Recycle Services contract to Ahtna Integrated Services LLC  of Anchorage, Alaska, to provide trash, waste, and recycling services at the agency’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley.

This is a hybrid contract that includes a firm-fixed-price and an indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity portion. The period of performance begins Friday, Nov. 1, with a 60-day phase-in period, followed by a one-year base period, and options to extend performance through November 2029. This contract has a maximum potential value of approximately $24 million.

Under this contract, the company will perform basic, regularly scheduled custodial and refuse and recycling services at NASA Ames. The company will focus on health and safety, environmental compliance, sanitary cleaning, and customer service.

For information about NASA and agency programs, visit:

https://nasa.gov

-end-

Hillary Smith
Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif.                                         
650-313-1701
Hillary.smith@nasa.gov

Inside a hunk of a material called a semimetal, scientists have uncovered signatures of bizarre particles that sometimes move like they have no mass, but at other times move just like a very massive particle

Inside a hunk of a material called a semimetal, scientists have uncovered signatures of bizarre particles that sometimes move like they have no mass, but at other times move just like a very massive particle

Soil is full of an uncountable number of viruses, and scientists are only beginning to understand just how substantial their role in the carbon cycle may be

Soil is full of an uncountable number of viruses, and scientists are only beginning to understand just how substantial their role in the carbon cycle may be

Astronomers have used a range of telescopes, including Hubble, to watch as particles dance around a neutron star collision that created the smallest black hole ever seen.

If there are alien civilizations in the Universe, some of them could be super advanced. So advanced that they can rip apart planets and create vast shells surrounding a star to capture all its energy. These Dyson spheres should be detectable by modern telescopes. Occasionally astronomers find an object that resembles such an alien megastructure, but so far, they’ve all turned out to be natural objects. As best we can tell, there are no Dyson spheres out there.

And when you think about it, building a Dyson sphere is the cosmic endgame of a capitalist dystopia. In the never-ending quest to capture and consume every last bit of energy, your civilization rips worlds asunder, moving heaven and earth to create an orbitally unstable, unlivable engine. If you can traverse light-years and transform planets, why not just move Earth-like planets and moons into a star’s habitable zone and have a nice cluster of comfy planets to live on? If this kind of stellar-punk civilization is out there, could astronomers detect it? This is the question behind a study on the arXiv.

The authors begin by noting that when Freeman Dyson proposed the idea in 1960, our solar system was the only known planetary system. Star systems were thought to be rare at the time, but now we know better. Most stars have planets, and even our solar system has a dozen water-rich moons that could be made habitable with a shift of their orbits and a bit of terraforming. Since this would be much easier than building a Dyson sphere, the authors argue that modified systems should be much more common. The only question is how to detect them.

One way would be to look for planetary systems that don’t seem to have formed naturally. For example, if you find a system with a dozen worlds in a star’s habitable zone and few other planets, that isn’t likely to have happened by chance. Less obvious would be to look for systems that are orbitally unusual. Perhaps the planets have orbital resonances that aren’t stable in the long term, or have unusually perfect orbits. Maybe the chemical composition of some worlds don’t match that of the system as a whole. Anything that stands out might be worth a closer look.

Using lasers to change a planet’s orbit. Credit: Narasimha, et al

Another way would be to look for signs of systems under construction. The authors note that planets could be moved or captured slowly over time using high-power directional lasers to accelerate them. Stray light from those lasers would be visible across light years. If we detect monochromatic laser light coming from a potentially habitable star, it could be aliens building a better home.

It’s not likely that we’ll find this kind of evidence, but the idea is no stranger than those of giant alien megastructures. Besides, it’s fun to think about just how many habitable planets you could pack into a single star system. It turns out to be quite a lot!

Reference: Narasimha, Raghav, Margarita Safonova, and C. Sivaram. “Making Habitable Worlds: Planets Versus Megastructures.” arXiv preprint arXiv:2309.06562 (2023).

The post Will Advanced Civilizations Build Habitable Planets or Dyson Spheres appeared first on Universe Today.

A new edition of Issue #4 of Astrobiology: The Story of our Search for Life in the Universe has been released to include the NASA Europa Clipper mission. NASA Astrobiology/Aaron Gronstal

To celebrate the successful launch of NASA’s Europa Clipper mission, the agency’s Astrobiology program has released a new edition of Issue #4 – Missions to the Outer Solar System – of its graphic history series Astrobiology: The Story of our Search for Life in the Universe.

Issue #4 tells the story of the outer solar system, from beyond the asteroid belt to the outer reaches of the Sun’s magnetic influence. Gas giants like Jupiter and Saturn are not habitable, but many of their moons raise questions about life’s potential far, far away from the warmth of the Sun.

One such body is Jupiter’s moon Europa, which contains an ocean of liquid water beneath its icy surface. The Europa Clipper mission is designed to help scientists understand whether this ocean holds key ingredients that could support habitable environments for life as we know it. The spacecraft launched on Oct. 14 and will arrive at Jupiter in 2030.

Additional content in the fourth edition of Issue #4 also includes ESA’s (European Space Agency) Juice (Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer) mission, which will arrive in the Jovian system in 2031 and collect data on many of Jupiter’s moons, including Ganymede, Europa, Callisto, and Io, that is complementary to Europa Clipper’s investigation.

Read more about how astrobiologists study the potential for life on worlds like Europa and the exciting data that Europa Clipper will gather by visiting NASA’s Astrobiology website and downloading the new edition.

Digital wallpaper for phones, desktops, or meeting backgrounds that feature the new Europa Clipper artwork from Issue #4 are also available.

This wallpaper image featuring NASA’s Europa Clipper mission uses artwork from Issue #4 of the astrobiology graphic history series, Astrobiology: The Story of our Search for Life in the Universe. The image of Jupiter in the background is adapted from imagery taken by NASA’s Juno Mission (Exotic Marble, 2019, NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS/Prateek Sarpal/©CCNCSA) NASA Astrobiology/Aaron Gronstal

For more information on NASA’s Astrobiology program, visit:

https://science.nasa.gov/astrobiology

-end-

Karen Fox / Molly Wasser

Headquarters, Washington

202-358-1600

karen.c.fox@nasa.gov / molly.l.wasser@nasa.gov 

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Nov 01, 2024

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• Astrobiology
• Europa
• Europa Clipper
• JUICE (Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer)

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Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater) European company apetito uses Neurala’s vision inspection software to ensure the quality of its prepared meals, such as green bean portions pictured here. The software evolved from code Neurala was developing more than a decade ago, with NASA funding, for a rover that could independently learn to traverse Martian terrain. Credit: Neurala Inc.

Artificial intelligence software initially designed to learn and analyze Martian terrain is now at the heart of a system to monitor assembly lines on Earth. 

The vision inspection software from Neurala Inc., an artificial intelligence company in Boston, Massachusetts, works with existing cameras, computers, and even cellphones to monitor the quality of products running along a conveyor belt, for instance.  

“Our software can learn very quickly on a processor with a very small footprint, a skill we learned working with NASA,” said Neurala cofounder and CEO Massimiliano Versace. “By doing so, we enable vision inspection with whatever components are already available, deploying in minutes. In our exploration of the market, we realized that the manufacturing space had a precise need for this technology.”

Versace and Neurala (Spinoff 2018) began working with NASA more than a decade ago on a project funded through the Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) program. NASA was interested in “adaptive bio-inspired navigation for planetary exploration,” and Versace and his team had been working on neural network AI software modeled on the human brain. 

Focusing on a rover concept that could independently learn to traverse Martian terrain, Neurala went on to win STTR Phase II funding for the project. Additional money from a NASA Center Innovation Fund enabled the Neurala team to adapt its technology to drone navigation and collision avoidance. 

In both the rover and the drone applications, the Neurala software could run on a small device on the vehicle itself, eliminating the delay of sending signals to a decision maker in another location. Since then, the company developed the software to help monitor assembly lines.

Onsite computing is an advantage in manufacturing, as well, where an assembly line may have a hundred items passing every minute, making visual inspections for quality control difficult.

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Details Last Updated Nov 01, 2024 Related Terms

• Technology Transfer & Spinoffs
• Spinoffs
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30 Years On, NASA’s Wind Is a Windfall for Studying our Neighborhood in Space An artist’s concept of NASA’s Wind spacecraft outside of Earth’s magnetosphere. NASA

Picture it: 1994. The first World Wide Web conference took place in Geneva, the first Chunnel train traveled under the English Channel, and just three years after the end of the Cold War, the first Russian instrument on a U.S. spacecraft launched into deep space from Cape Canaveral. The mission to study the solar wind, aptly named Wind, held promise for heliophysicists and astrophysicists around the world to investigate basic plasma processes in the solar wind barreling toward Earth — key information for helping us understand and potentially mitigate the space weather environment surrounding our home planet.

Thirty years later, Wind continues to deliver on that promise from about a million miles away at the first Earth-Sun Lagrange Point (L1). This location is gravitationally balanced between Earth and the Sun, providing excellent fuel economy that requires mere puffs of thrust to stay in place.

According to Lynn Wilson, who is the Wind project scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, fuel is only one indicator of Wind’s life expectancy, however. “Based on fuel alone, Wind can continue flying until 2074,” he said. “On the other hand, its ability to return data hinges on the last surviving digital tape recorder onboard.” 

An artist’s concept shows a closeup of the Wind spacecraft. NASA

Wind launched with two digital tape recorders to record data from all the instruments on the spacecraft and provide reports on the spacecraft’s thermal conditions, orientation, and overall health. Each recorder has two tape decks, A and B, which Wilson affectionately refers to as “fancy eight-tracks.”

After six years of service, the first digital tape recorder failed in 2000 along with its two tape decks, forcing mission operators to switch to the second one. Tape Deck A on that one started showing signs of wear in 2016, so the mission operators now use Tape Deck B as the primary deck, with A as a backup.  

“They built redundancy into the digital tape recorder system by building two of them, but you can never predict how technology will perform when it’s a million miles away, bathing in ionizing radiation,” said Wilson. “We’re fortunate that after 30 years, we still have two functioning tape decks.”

Wind launched on Nov. 1, 1994, on a Delta IV rocket from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. NASA Bonus Science

When Wind launched on Nov. 1, 1994, nobody could have possibly predicted that exactly 30 years later, NASA would be kicking off “Bonus Science” month in the Heliophysics Big Year. Beyond the mission’s incredible track record of mesmerizing discoveries about the solar wind — some detailed on its 25th anniversary — Wind continues to deliver with bonus science abound.

Opportunity and Collaborative Discovery

Along its circuitous journey to L1, Wind dipped in and out of Earth’s magnetosphere more than 65 times, capturing the largest whistler wave — a low-frequency radio wave racing across Earth’s magnetic field — ever recorded in Earth’s Van Allen radiation belts. Wind also traveled ahead of and behind Earth — about 150 times our planet’s diameter in both directions, informing potential future missions that would operate in those areas with extreme exposure to the solar wind. It even took a side quest to the Moon, cruising through the lunar wake, a shadow devoid of solar wind on the far side of the Moon.

Later, from its permanent home at L1, Wind was among several corroborating spacecraft that helped confirm what scientists believe is the brightest gamma-ray burst to occur since the dawn of human civilization. The burst, GRB 221009A, was first detected by NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope in October 2022. Although not in its primary science objectives, Wind carries two bonus instruments designed to observe gamma-ray bursts that helped scientists confirm the burst’s origin in the Sagitta constellation.

Academic Inspiration

More than 7,200 research papers have been published using Wind data, and the mission has supported more than 100 graduate and post-graduate degrees.

Wilson was one of those degree candidates. When Wind launched, Wilson was in sixth grade, on the football, baseball, and wrestling teams, with spare time spent playing video games and reading science fiction. He had a knack for science and considered becoming a medical doctor or an engineer before committing to his love of physics, which ultimately led to his current position as Wind’s project scientist. While pursuing his doctorate, he worked with Adam Szabo who was the Wind project scientist at NASA Goddard at the time and used Wind data to study interplanetary collisionless shock waves. Szabo eventually hired Wilson to work on the Wind mission team at Goddard.

Also in sixth grade at the time, Joe Westlake, NASA Heliophysics division director, was into soccer and music, and was a voracious reader consumed with Tolkein’s stories about Middle Earth. Now he leads the NASA office that manages Wind.

“It’s amazing to think that Lynn Wilson and I were in middle school, and the original mission designers and scientists have long since retired,” said Westlake. “When a mission makes it to 30 years, you can’t help but be inspired by the role it has played not only in scientific discovery, but in the careers of multiple generations of scientists.”

By Erin Mahoney
NASA Headquarters, Washington

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Nov 02, 2024

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• Goddard Space Flight Center
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• The Sun
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Born and raised in Mexico City, Carlos Fontanot has dedicated 34 years to NASA. He supports the International Space Station Mission Integration and Operations Office, ensuring that high-quality imagery enhances mission objectives and operations.  

Fontanot is known for conceiving and leading the High Definition Earth Viewing (HDEV) project, which has brought stunning live visuals of Earth to millions around the globe. As he approaches his well-deserved retirement, we are excited to spotlight Fontanot’s remarkable career, celebrating his contributions to NASA and the lasting impact he has made on the agency’s mission to share the wonders of space. 

Carlos Fontanot (left) receives the Great Minds in STEM Lifetime Achievement Award from Joel Montelbano, NASA at the Hispanic Engineer National Achievement Award Conference.

What does your position entail? 

Integrate all aspects of station imagery, from initial requirements to acquisition, processing, cataloging, archiving, and distribution of station imagery to multiple stakeholders, our clients.  

How would you describe your job to family or friends who may not be as familiar with NASA? 

I manage an array of television and digital still imagery cameras on the International Space Station. Each day we receive eight channels of high definition (HD) video and thousands of digital images that allow the ground team to see what the crew is doing in their daily lives and as part of scientific activities. In today’s age of social media and high-quality imagery, having these images is crucial for effectively conveying the station narrative. 

I also chair the International Space Station’s Multilateral Imagery Working Group. Our team captures and processes the video and still images on a large server, where they are cataloged, archived, and distributed to our clients. Additionally, we are responsible for the photo and TV hardware aboard the space station and provide training to astronauts on how to use this equipment. 

Carlos Fontanot with Liam Kennedy at the International Space Station Research and Development Conference.

How do you feel the imagery and public affairs teams contribute to the overall mission of NASA? 

Imagery is critical for communication in today’s visual environment. If people can’t see it, they won’t believe it! Effective communication through multimedia and pointed messaging is essential for securing continued support for NASA missions from both Congress and the public. 

What was your path to NASA? 

I was always interested in photography and film, so I studied radio, TV, and film in college. My first job after graduation was with a local TV station, and I also managed a media center for a multinational company. Then, I joined Johnson Space Center’s television and film division, where I managed space shuttle and institutional imagery. 

Once at Johnson, I worked in the Office of Public Affairs as the audiovisual manager and served for two years as the public affairs officer in Moscow at the start of the International Space Station Program, including the launch of the first station crew. 

What advice would you give to young individuals aspiring to work in the space industry or at NASA? 

NASA is not just about astronauts, flight controllers, and engineers—there are countless disciplines and job opportunities here. Take imagery, for example: in today’s digital age, having the highest resolution imagery of our incredible orbiting laboratory environment and our home planet is essential. 

For those aspiring to join the NASA team, I encourage you be open-minded and a team player. We need well-educated and talented individuals from diverse backgrounds across all disciplines to help us achieve our goals and explore the wonders of space. 

Is there a space figure you’ve looked up to? 

The space figure I will always remember and look up to is John Glenn. I had the fortune and privilege to meet him during his training. He was an extraordinary human being with incredibly high goals throughout his career. 

I was assigned to escort John Glenn and the STS-95 crew on a two-week official visit to several European countries. John was by far the most inspiring and dedicated crew member that I’d ever met. He was always ready and willing to engage with dignitaries, politicians, leaders, journalists, and the public to share the NASA story and promote future programs to gain support from various governments and the public. 

What do you love sharing about the International Space Station to general audiences? 

I love sharing the wonders of life in space, especially the unique and breathtaking views of our planet Earth that can only be appreciated from space. I like to tell audiences about the observations and inspiration our astronauts share upon returning from their missions. I emphasize our thin and fragile atmosphere that sustains life as we know it, the beauty of Earth’s deserts, mountains, jungles, and oceans, and most importantly, the absence of borders. There’s always a profound realization that we are all human and that Earth belongs to all of us. 

How has the technology for capturing images and video in space evolved over the years? 

There was no digital imagery when I started my professional career. Photographs were taken on film that had to be processed in a dark room using chemicals to produce images. Video was recorded on two-inch magnetic tape at low resolution. We even flew film on our spacecraft that had to be brought back and processed on the ground. 

Today, in the digital world, images can be streamed directly from our spacecraft and almost instantaneously shared with the entire globe. The evolution of technology has truly transformed how we capture and share the wonders of space! 

Carlos Fontanot (left) sets up a NASA imagery exhibit in the Houston Downtown Tunnel System.

What are some of the key projects you’ve worked on during your time at NASA? What have been your favorites? 

During my time at NASA, I co-led the High Definition Earth Viewing (HDEV) project, which deployed four Earth-viewing cameras on the International Space Station, reaching over 318 million viewers globally. I also contributed to designing Johnson’s new PAO studio, collaborated on upgrading the space station’s downlink system from four standard-definition to eight high-definition channels, and advanced television technology, including the first HD and later UHD live downlinks from the station. These projects have allowed me to enhance NASA’s capacity for sharing space imagery with the world. 

What are your plans for retirement, and how do you hope to stay connected to the space community? 

I plan to travel across the U.S. in a travel trailer with my wife and dog and enjoying my hobbies I will now have time for, such as photography and spending quality time with my family.

Carlos and Pat Fontanot at the Grand Canyon South Rim in Arizona.

 How do you believe NASA’s imagery can continue to inspire future generations? 

Astronaut John Young would come to the photo lab after every shuttle mission to review the film shot onboard. He would say, “A picture is worth a thousand words.” What can inspire more than a breathtaking image of a sunset captured from space or the aurora borealis over the polar regions? 

What legacy do you hope to leave behind after your time at NASA? 

I hope to leave behind a legacy of passion and dedication to acquiring and making pristine, high-resolution imagery from space available for the public to enjoy. 

If you could have dinner with any astronaut, past or present, who would it be? 

I would choose John Young. He flew during both the Apollo and shuttle eras, was an imagery expert, and had a deep understanding of the space station. 

Favorite space movie? 

Interstellar   

NASA Worm or Meatball logo? 

Worm   

*** 

Every day we are conducting exciting research aboard our orbiting laboratory that will help us explore farther into space and bring benefits back to people on Earth. You can keep up with the latest news, videos, and pictures about space station science on the Station Research & Technology news page. It is a curated hub of space station research and digital media from Johnson and other centers and space agencies. 

Sign up for our weekly email newsletter to get the updates delivered directly to you. 

Follow updates on social media at @ISS_Research on X, and on the space station accounts on Facebook and Instagram. 

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