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Weeding robots can sometimes struggle to tell weeds from crops, but genetically modifying the plants we want to keep to make them brightly coloured would make the job easier, suggest a group of researchers

Investigations of the paradoxical link between tinnitus and hearing loss have revealed a hidden form of deafness, paving the way to possible new treatments

Investigations of the paradoxical link between tinnitus and hearing loss have revealed a hidden form of deafness, paving the way to possible new treatments

The winners of NASA’s 2024 Power to Explore Student Challenge are: 9-year-old Raine Lin, left, 12-year-old Aadya Karthik, and 18-year-old Thomas Liu. Credit: NASA/Dave Lam

NASA announced the winners on Wednesday of the third annual Power to Explore Challenge, a national writing competition designed to teach K-12 students about the power of radioisotopes for space exploration.

The competition asked students to learn about NASA’s Radioisotope Power Systems (RPS), “nuclear batteries” the agency uses to explore some of the most extreme destinations in the solar system and beyond. In 250 words or less, students wrote about a mission of their own enabled by these space power systems and described their own power to achieve their mission goals.

“The Power to Explore Challenge is the perfect way to inspire students – our Artemis Generation – to reach for the stars and beyond and help NASA find new ways to use radioisotopes to power our exploration of the cosmos,” said Nicola Fox, associate administrator, Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington.

Entries were split into three groups based on grade level, and a winner was chosen from each. The three winners, along with a guardian, are invited to NASA’s Glenn Research Center in Cleveland for a VIP tour of its world-class research facilities.

The winners are:

• Rainie Lin, Lexington, Kentucky, kindergarten through fourth grade
• Aadya Karthik, Redmond, Washington, fifth through eighth grade
• Thomas Liu, Ridgewood, New Jersey, ninth through 12th grade

“Congratulations to this year’s winners and participants – together, we discover and explore for the benefit of all,” Fox said.

The Power to Explore Challenge offered students the opportunity to learn about space power, celebrate their strengths, and interact with NASA’s diverse workforce. This year’s contest received nearly 1,787 submitted entries from 48 states and Puerto Rico.

Every student who submitted an entry received a digital certificate and an invitation to the Power Up virtual event held on March 15 that announced the 45 national semifinalists. Additionally, the national semifinalists received a NASA RPS prize pack.

NASA announced three finalists in each age group (nine total) during Total Eclipse Fest 2024 in Cleveland on April 8, a day when millions of Americans saw a brief glimpse of life without sunlight, creating an opportunity to shed light on how NASA could power missions without the Sun’s energy at destinations such as deep lunar craters or deep space. Finalists also were invited to discuss their mission concepts with a NASA scientist or engineer during a virtual event.

The challenge is funded by the NASA Science Mission Directorate’s RPS Program Office and administered by Future Engineers under the NASA Open Innovation Services 2 contract. This contract is managed by the NASA Tournament Lab, a part of the Prizes, Challenges, and Crowdsourcing Program in NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate.

For more information on radioisotope power systems visit:

https://www.nasa.gov/rps

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Karen Fox / Charles Blue
Headquarters, Washington
301-286-6284 / 202-802-5345
karen.c.fox@nasa.gov / charles.e.blue@nasa.gov

Kristin Jansen
Glenn Research Center, Cleveland
216-296-2203
kristin.m.jansen@nasa.gov

JWST's surprise discovery of methane emissions and likely aurorae over a distant brown dwarf could indicate this "failed star" is orbited by an active moon.

For a media briefing in advance of Earth Day, NASA will share info about next steps for its Earth research program, as well as highlight our newest Earth-observing satellite PACE (Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, ocean Ecosystem). This image from PACE shows two different communities of phytoplankton in the ocean off the coast of South Africa on Feb. 28, 2024.Credit: NASA

In anticipation of Earth Day, NASA invites media to a briefing at the agency’s headquarters on Friday, April 19, at 11 a.m. EDT. The event will share updates on NASA’s climate science and early data from the agency’s ocean-watching PACE (Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, ocean Ecosystem) mission, as well as reveal upcoming Earth airborne missions.

The speakers include:

• NASA Administrator Bill Nelson
• Karen St. Germain, division director, NASA Earth Sciences Division
• Tom Wagner, associate director for Earth Action

The briefing will air live on NASA+, NASA Television, and the agency’s website.

To attend the briefing in person in the James E. Webb Auditorium at 300 E St. SW, Washington, or to participate via teleconference, media should RSVP no later than 9 a.m. Friday to Liz Vlock at elizabeth.a.vlock@nasa.gov. NASA’s media accreditation policy is online.

Media and the public are also invited to participate in NASA’s Earth Day celebration:  “Water Touches Everything.” Attendees will be able to explore the complex connections between sea, air, land, and climate through a mix of in-person and virtual activities, talks, and trivia. The celebration begins Thursday, April 18 at 9 a.m. EDT and continues through April 19 until 5 p.m., both online and in person at the NASA Earth Information Center.

For more information on NASA’s Earth Science Division visit:

https://www.nasa.gov/earth

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Liz Vlock
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1600
elizabeth.a.vlock@nasa.gov

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Details Last Updated Apr 17, 2024 LocationNASA Headquarters Related Terms

• Earth
• Climate Science
• Earth Day
• Earth Science

Up to 17 US states could be peppered with more than a trillion cicadas this spring, and though it has been a while since these two specific broods emerged at once, double broods are not that rare

Up to 17 US states could be peppered with more than a trillion cicadas this spring, and though it has been a while since these two specific broods emerged at once, double broods are not that rare

2 min read

Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater) This natural-color image of mountains of central Pennsylvania taken by Landsat 8 shows the colors of changing leaves and the unique topography of the region. Thanks to more than 50 years of planetary observation from low-Earth orbit, it’s possible to see natural changes and those engineered by humans.Credit: NASA

Natural disasters like volcanic eruptions, floods, and tornados can dramatically change the surface of Earth to the point where alterations are visible in space. Changes driven by human actions and interventions, such as mining and deforestation, are also visible in satellite imagery.

For over 50 years, NASA’s Landsat satellites have recorded our planet’s changing surface. Now, terraPulse Inc., a North Potomac, Maryland-based company, applies artificial intelligence to create meaningful maps to help academic institutions, nongovernmental organizations, and businesses understand the many impacts of climate change.

By combining data from multiple NASA and European satellites, terraPulse helps businesses make data-driven decisions regarding ecological impacts. That same data helps scientists understand environmental changes and the processes driving them, which can provide practical information to local decision-makers for infrastructure planning and disaster preparedness.

Measurements taken from space are still undergoing significant research and development. NASA’s Earth Sciences Division funds several remote sensing initiatives to expand our understanding of the impact of land cover change, including a terraPulse effort using FitBits to track and assess the health of wild deer and the impacts of their habitat change.

NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, which manages many of the agency’s Earth-monitoring satellite missions, supports a comprehensive view of our planet. Industries are looking to satellite data to plan for resilience to climate change by monitoring worldwide facilities, identifying manageable risk factors, and more.

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Details Last Updated Apr 17, 2024 Related Terms

• Technology Transfer
• Earth
• Goddard Space Flight Center
• Spinoffs
• Technology Transfer & Spinoffs

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4 min read

Astronauts To Patch Up NASA’s NICER Telescope

NASA is planning to repair NICER (Neutron star Interior Composition Explorer), an X-ray telescope on the International Space Station, during a spacewalk later this year. It will be the fourth science observatory in orbit serviced by astronauts.

In May 2023, scientists discovered that NICER had developed a “light leak.” Unwanted sunlight was entering the instrument and reaching the telescope’s sensitive detectors. While the team took immediate steps to mitigate the impact on observations, they also began thinking about a potential repair.

“The sunlight interferes with NICER’s ability to collect viable X-ray measurements during the station’s daytime,” said Zaven Arzoumanian, NICER’s science lead at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “Nighttime observations are unaffected, and the telescope continues to produce incredible science. Hundreds of published papers have used NICER since the mission began. Blocking some of the light leaking in would allow us to return to more normal operations around the clock.”

This image, obtained June 8, 2018, shows NASA’s NICER (Neutron star Interior Composition Explorer) on the International Space Station, where it studies neutron stars and other X-ray sources. NICER is about the size of a washing machine. The sunshades of its X-ray concentrators are visible as an array of circular features. NASA
Download high-resolution images and videos from NASA’s Scientific Visualization Studio.

Arzoumanian presented efforts to address the issue during a talk on Friday, April 12, at the 21st meeting of the High Energy Astrophysics Division of the American Astronomical Society in Horseshoe Bay, Texas.

NICER is located near the station’s inner starboard solar panels. From that perch, it looks out at the X-ray sky, collecting data on many cosmic phenomena, like regular pulses from superdense stellar remnants called neutron stars and “light echoes” from flaring black holes. Observing these objects helps answer questions about their nature and behavior and increases our understanding of matter and gravity. In 2017, NICER also demonstrated the use of pulsing neutron stars in our galaxy to serve as navigational beacons for future deep space exploration through a program called SEXTANT (Station Explorer for X-ray Timing and Navigation Technology).

The telescope has 56 aluminum X-ray concentrators. Each concentrator has a set of nested mirrors, designed to skip X-rays into a detector. In front of the concentrator lies a thin filter, called a thermal shield, that blocks out sunlight. The concentrator is topped by a hollow circular piece of carbon composite, called a sunshade, with six segments that resemble a sliced pie. The sunshade is designed to keep the concentrators cool in sunlight and protect the delicate thermal shields. After the light leak developed, photos revealed several small areas of damage in some of the shields, though what caused them is still unclear.

“We didn’t design NICER for mission servicing. It was installed robotically, and we operate it from the ground,” said Keith Gendreau, NICER’s principal investigator at Goddard. “The possibility of a repair has been an exciting challenge. We considered both spacewalk and robotic solutions, puzzling out how to install patches using what’s already present on the telescope and in space station toolkits.”

The International Space Station appears in this photograph taken by Expedition 56 crew members from a Soyuz spacecraft after undocking on Oct. 4, 2018. NICER is the small white box standing above the station’s main truss at far right, adjacent to the inner solar panel. NASA/Roscosmos

After many months of consideration, the spacewalk was selected as the path forward. NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope and Solar Maximum Mission, as well as AMS (Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer, also on the station) are the only other science observatories repaired by astronauts in orbit.

NICER’s solution is straightforward. Five pie piece-shaped wedges will slot into the sunshades above the areas with the greatest damage and lock into place. The patches are designed to take advantage of an existing piece of astronaut equipment, called a T-handle tool.

“While we worked hard to ensure the patches are mechanically simple, most repair activities in space are very complicated,” said Steve Kenyon, NICER’s mechanical lead at Goddard. “We’ve been conducting tests to confirm the repair work will be both an effective fix for NICER’s light leak and completely safe for the astronauts on the spacewalk and the space station.”

The patches are currently scheduled to launch to the space station aboard Northrop Grumman’s 21st commercial resupply services mission later this year. Astronauts will complete their installation during a spacewalk, along with other tasks.

NICER is an Astrophysics Mission of Opportunity within NASA’s Explorers Program, which provides frequent flight opportunities for world-class scientific investigations from space utilizing innovative, streamlined, and efficient management approaches within the heliophysics and astrophysics science areas. NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate supports the SEXTANT component of the mission, demonstrating pulsar-based spacecraft navigation.

NICER also collaborates in automated tandem with JAXA’s (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency’s) experiment MAXI (Monitor of All-sky X-ray Image) to rapidly observe stars and other objects that flare unpredictably, advancing scientific understanding of our dynamic universe.

By Jeanette Kazmierczak
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.

Media Contact:
Claire Andreoli
301-286-1940
claire.andreoli@nasa.gov
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.

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Editor Jeanette Kazmierczak Location Goddard Space Flight Center

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• Astrophysics
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• NICER (Neutron star Interior Composition Explorer)
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The last total solar eclipse across the Mexico, the U.S. and Canada for a generation wows observers.

Did you see it? Last week’s total solar eclipse did not disappoint, as viewers from the Pacific coast of Mexico, across the U.S. from Texas to Maine and through the Canadian Maritime provinces were treated to an unforgettable show. The weather threw us all a curve-ball one week out, as favored sites in Texas and Mexico fought to see the event through broken clouds, while areas along the northeastern track from New Hampshire and Maine onward were actually treated to clear skies.

Many eclipse chasers scrambled to reposition themselves at the last minute as totality approached. In northern Maine, it was amusing to see tiny Houlton, Maine become the epicenter of all things eclipse-based.

A composite of images snapped every five seconds during totality, showing off solar prominences. Credit: György Soponyai observing from Montreal, Canada. Tales of a Total Solar Eclipse

We were also treated to some amazing images of the eclipse from Earth and space. NASA also had several efforts underway to chase the eclipse. Even now, we’re still processing the experience. It takes time (and patience!) for astro-photos to make their way through the workflow. Here are some of the best images we’ve seen from the path of totality:

Tony Dunn had an amazing experience, watching the eclipse from Mazatlan, Mexico. “When totality hit, it didn’t look real,” Dunn told Universe Today. “It looked staged, like a movie studio. the lighting is something that can’t be experienced outside a total solar eclipse.”

Totality on April 8th, with prominences. Credit: Tony Dunn.

Dunn also caught an amazing sight, as the shadow of the Moon moved across the low cloud cover:

#Eclipse2024 #Mazatlan The shadow of the Moon crosses the sky. pic.twitter.com/9FEf4TTK8r

— Tony Dunn (@tony873004) April 14, 2024

Black Hole Sun

Peter Forister caught the eclipse from central Indiana. “It was my second totality (after 2017 in South Carolina), so I knew what was coming,” Forister told Universe Today. “But it was still as incredible and beautiful as anything I’ve ever seen in nature. The Sun and Moon seemed huge in my view—a massive black hole (like someone took a hole punch to the sky) surrounded by white and blue flames streaking out. Plus, there was great visibility of the planets and a few stars. The memory has been playing over and over in my head since it happened—and it’s combined with feelings of awe and wonder at how beautiful our Universe and planet really are. The best kind of memory!”

Totality over Texas. Credit: Eliot Herman

Like many observers, Eliot Herman battled to see the eclipse through clouds. “As you know, we had really frustrating clouds,” Herman told Universe Today. “I shot a few photos (in) which you can see the eclipse embedded in the clouds and then uncovered to show the best part. For me it almost seemed like a cosmic mocking, showing me what a great eclipse it was, and lifting the veil only at the end of the eclipse to show me what I missed…”

Totality and solar prominences seen through clouds. Credit: Eliot Herman Totality Crosses Into Canada

Astrophotographer Andrew Symes also had a memorable view from Cornwall, Ontario. “While I’ve seen many beautiful photos and videos from many sources, they don’t match what those us there in person saw with our eyes,” Symes told Universe Today. “The sky around the Sun was not black but a deep, steely blue. The horizon was lighter–similar to what you’d see during a sunset or sunrise–but still very alien.”

“The eclipsed Sun looked, to me, like an incredibly advanced computer animation from the future! The Sun and corona were very crisp, and the Sun looked much larger in the sky than I’d expected. The eclipsed Sun had almost a three-dimensional quality… almost as if it were a dark, round button-like disk surrounded by a bright halo affixed to a deep blue/grey background. It was as if a ‘worm hole’ or black hole had somehow appeared in front of us. I’m sure my jaw dropped as it was truly a moment of utter amazement. I’m smiling as I type it now… and still awestruck as I recall it in my mind!”

An amazing eclipse. Credit: Andrew Symes. Success for the Total Solar Eclipse in Aroostook County Maine

We were met with success (and clear skies) watching the total solar eclipse with family from our hometown of Mapleton, Maine. We were mostly just visually watching this one, though we did manage to nab a brief video of the experience.

What I was unprepared for was the switch from partial phases to totality. It was abrupt as expected, but there almost seemed to be brief but perceptible pause from day to twilight, as the corona seemed to ‘switch on.’ We all agreed later on that the steely blue sky was not quite night… but not quite twilight, either.

The elusive diamond ring, seen from Wappappello Lake, Missouri on April 8th. Credit: Chris Becke

When’s the next one? I often wonder how many watchers during a given eclipse were ‘bitten by the bug,’ and looking to chase the next one. Spain is set to see an eclipse a year for the next three years, starting in 2026:

Spain is set to become ‘solar eclipse central’ in the coming years, with the next total solar eclipse crossing N. Spain on August 12, 2026, another total solar eclipse on August 2, 2027 crossing the Strait of Gibraltar, and a sunset annular solar eclipse on January 26, 2028. pic.twitter.com/acO4urNG45

— Dave Dickinson (@Astroguyz) April 12, 2024

Spain in August… be sure to stay cool and bring sunblock. Don’t miss the next total solar eclipse, and be thankful for our privileged vantage point in time and space.

The post Amazing Amateur Images of April 8th’s Total Solar Eclipse appeared first on Universe Today.

Starliner will make its first trip to space with astronauts no earlier than May 6. The historic flight also marks the crewed debut of a new generation of Boeing blue spacesuits.

The total solar eclipse on April 8 plunged Syracuse, New York's Milton J. Rubenstein Museum of Science & Technology into darkness for 90 seconds, creating a wondrous and memorable totality.

How long can humanity’s artifacts endure on the lunar surface? A new installation from artist Jeff Koons is inadvertently putting this question to the test

Ground-up concrete can remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere in a similar way to ground-up rocks, according to a field study in Ireland

Ground-up concrete can remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere in a similar way to ground-up rocks, according to a field study in Ireland

When astronauts return to the moon later this decade, they’ll bring along science experiments to study moonquakes, lunar water ice and extraterrestrial agriculture

As humans exert greater pressure on natural processes, understanding the intricate workings of our Earth system is increasingly vital for effective action on mitigation and adaption strategies. ESA’s Earth Explorer missions yield a wealth of astonishing findings, serving as the bedrock of scientific research in this field. Now, four new concepts have been selected to undergo assessment study, one of which is destined to be the twelfth in this family of world-leading satellite missions.

For the chief leader of the SETI Institute, established to search for and understand life beyond Earth, there's a need to step back and cuddle up to a cup of cosmic reality.

AI can better education, not threaten it, if we learn some lessons from the adoption of the calculator into the classroom