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Some scientists say insects are conscious – it doesn't settle anything
Some scientists say insects are conscious – it doesn't settle anything
Cosmic fountain is polluting intergalactic space with 50 million suns' worth of material
Ep. 716: The God**** Particle – Remembering Peter Higgs
Last week, we learned about the death of Peter Higgs, a physicist and discoverer of the particle that bears his name. The Large Hadron Collider was built to find and describe the particle. Today, we’ll look back at the life of Peter Higgs and his particle.
After Months of Gibberish, Voyager 1 Is Communicating Well Again
NASA scientists spent months coaxing the 46-year-old Voyager 1 spacecraft back into healthy communication
India aims to achieve 'debris-free' space missions by 2030
NASA Announces 30th Human Exploration Rover Challenge Winners
NASA announced the winners of the 30th Human Exploration Rover Challenge (HERC) April 22, with Parish Episcopal School, from Dallas, winning first place in the high school division, and the University of Alabama in Huntsville, capturing the college/university title.
The annual engineering competition – one of NASA’s longest standing challenges – held its concluding event April 19 and April 20, at the U.S. Space & Rocket Center in Huntsville, Alabama, near NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center. The complete list of 2024 award winners is provided below:
High School Division
- First Place: Parish Episcopal School, Dallas
- Second Place: Academy of Arts, Careers and Technology, Reno, Nevada
- Third Place: Escambia High School, Pensacola, Florida
College/University Division
- First Place: University of Alabama in Huntsville
- Second Place: Instituto Tecnológico de Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic
- Third Place: Campbell University, Buies Creek, North Carolina
Ingenuity Award
- University of West Florida, Pensacola, Florida
Phoenix Award
- High School Division: East Central High School, Moss Point, Mississippi
- College/University Division: North Dakota State University, Fargo, North Dakota
Task Challenge Award
- High School Division: Erie High School, Erie, Colorado
- College/University Division: South Dakota School of Mines and Technology, Rapid City, South Dakota
Project Review Award
- High School Division: Parish Episcopal School, Dallas
- College/University Division: University of Alabama in Huntsville
Featherweight Award
- Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, Rhode Island
Safety Award
- High School Division: NPS International School, Singapore
- College/University Division: Instituto Especializado de Estudios Superiores Loyola, San Cristobal, Dominican Republic
Crash and Burn Award
- KIET Group of Institutions, Delhi-NCR, India
Jeff Norris and Joe Sexton Memorial Pit Crew Award
- High School Division: Erie High School, Erie, Colorado
- College/University Division: Campbell University, Buies Creek, North Carolina
Team Spirit Award
- Instituto Tecnológico de Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic
Most Improved Performance Award
- High School Division: Jesco von Puttkamer School, Leipzig, Germany
- College/University Division: Universidad Católica Boliviana – San Pablo, La Paz, Bolivia
Social Media Award
- High School Division: Bledsoe County High School, Pikeville, Tennessee
- College/University Division: Universidad de Piura, Peru
STEM Engagement Award
- High School Division: Princess Margaret Secondary School, Surrey, British Columbia
- College/University Division: Trine University, Angola, Indiana
Artemis Educator Award
- Sadif Safarov from Istanbul Technical University, Turkey
Rookie of the Year
- Kanakia International School, Mumbai, India
More than 600 students with 72 teams from around the world participated as HERC celebrated its 30th anniversary as a NASA competition. Participating teams represented 42 colleges and universities and 30 high schools from 24 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and 13 other nations from around the world. Teams were awarded points based on navigating a half-mile obstacle course, conducting mission-specific task challenges, and completing multiple safety and design reviews with NASA engineers.
“This student design challenge encourages the next generation of scientists and engineers to engage in the design process by providing innovative concepts and unique perspectives,” said Vemitra Alexander, HERC activity lead for NASA’s Office of STEM Engagement at Marshall. “While celebrating the 30th anniversary of the challenge, HERC also continues NASA’s legacy of providing valuable experiences to students who may be responsible for planning future space missions including crewed missions to other worlds.”
HERC is one of NASA’s eight Artemis Student Challenges reflecting the goals of the Artemis program, which seeks to land the first woman and first person of color on the Moon while establishing a long-term presence for science and exploration. NASA uses such challenges to encourage students to pursue degrees and careers in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.
HERC is managed by NASA’s Southeast Regional Office of STEM Engagement at Marshall. Since its inception in 1994, more than 15,000 students have participated in HERC – with many former students now working at NASA, or within the aerospace industry.
To learn more about HERC, please visit:
https://www.nasa.gov/roverchallenge/home/index.html
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Gerelle Dodson
NASA Headquarters, Washington
202-358-4637
gerelle.q.dodson@nasa.gov
Taylor Goodwin
Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Ala.
256-544-0034
taylor.goodwin@nasa.gov
Scientists use AI to reconstruct energetic flare blasted from Milky Way's supermassive black hole
Will We Know if TRAPPIST-1e has Life?
The search for extrasolar planets is currently undergoing a seismic shift. With the deployment of the Kepler Space Telescope and the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), scientists discovered thousands of exoplanets, most of which were detected and confirmed using indirect methods. But in more recent years, and with the launch of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), the field has been transitioning toward one of characterization. In this process, scientists rely on emission spectra from exoplanet atmospheres to search for the chemical signatures we associate with life (biosignatures).
However, there’s some controversy regarding the kinds of signatures scientists should look for. Essentially, astrobiology uses life on Earth as a template when searching for indications of extraterrestrial life, much like how exoplanet hunters use Earth as a standard for measuring “habitability.” But as many scientists have pointed out, life on Earth and its natural environment have evolved considerably over time. In a recent paper, an international team demonstrated how astrobiologists could look for life on TRAPPIST-1e based on what existed on Earth billions of years ago.
The team consisted of astronomers and astrobiologists from the Global Systems Institute, and the Departments of Physics and Astronomy, Mathematics and Statistics, and Natural Sciences at the University of Exeter. They were joined by researchers from the School of Earth and Ocean Sciences at the University of Victoria and the Natural History Museum in London. The paper that describes their findings, “Biosignatures from pre-oxygen photosynthesizing life on TRAPPIST-1e,” will be published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society (MNRAS).
The TRAPPIST-1 system has been the focal point of attention ever since astronomers confirmed the presence of three exoplanets in 2016, which grew to seven by the following year. As one of many systems with a low-mass, cooler M-type (red dwarf) parent star, there are unresolved questions about whether any of its planets could be habitable. Much of this concerns the variable and unstable nature of red dwarfs, which are prone to flare activity and may not produce enough of the necessary photons to power photosynthesis.
With so many rocky planets found orbiting red dwarf suns, including the nearest exoplanet to our Solar System (Proxima b), many astronomers feel these systems would be the ideal place to look for extraterrestrial life. At the same time, they’ve also emphasized that these planets would need to have thick atmospheres, intrinsic magnetic fields, sufficient heat transfer mechanisms, or all of the above. Determining if exoplanets have these prerequisites for life is something that the JWST and other next-generation telescopes – like the ESO’s proposed Extremely Large Telescope (ELT) – are expected to enable.
But even with these and other next-generation instruments, there is still the question of what biosignatures we should look for. As noted, our planet, its atmosphere, and all life as we know it have evolved considerably over the past four billion years. During the Archean Eon (ca. 4 to 2.5 billion years ago), Earth’s atmosphere was predominantly composed of carbon dioxide, methane, and volcanic gases, and little more than anaerobic microorganisms existed. Only within the last 1.62 billion years did the first multi-celled life appear and evolve to its present complexity.
Moreover, the number of evolutionary steps (and their potential difficulty) required to get to higher levels of complexity means that many planets may never develop complex life. This is consistent with the Great Filter Hypothesis, which states that while life may be common in the Universe, advanced life may not. As a result, simple microbial biospheres similar to those that existed during the Archean could be the most common. The key, then, is to conduct searches that would isolate biosignatures consistent with primitive life and the conditions that were common to Earth billions of years ago.
This artistic conception illustrates large asteroids penetrating Earth’s oxygen-poor atmosphere. Credit: SwRI/Dan Durda/Simone MarchiAs Dr. Jake Eager-Nash, a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Victoria and the lead author of the study, explained to Universe Today via email:
“I think the Earth’s history provides many examples of what inhabited exoplanets may look like, and it’s important to understand biosignatures in the context of Earth’s history as we have no other examples of what life on other planets would look like. During the Archean, when life is believed to have first emerged, there was a period of up to around a billion years before oxygen-producing photosynthesis evolved and became the dominant primary producer, oxygen concentrations were really low. So if inhabited planets follow a similar trajectory to Earth, they could spend a long time in a period like this without biosignatures of oxygen and ozone, so it’s important to understand what Archean-like biosignatures look like.”
For their study, the team crafted a model that considered Archean-like conditions and how the presence of early life forms would consume some elements while adding others. This yielded a model in which simple bacteria living in oceans consume molecules like hydrogen (H) or carbon monoxide (CO), creating carbohydrates as an energy source and methane (CH4) as waste. They then considered how gases would be exchanged between the ocean and atmosphere, leading to lower concentrations of H and CO and greater concentrations of CH4. Said Eager-Nash:
“Archean-like biosignatures are thought to require the presence of methane, carbon dioxide, and water vapor would be required as well as the absence of carbon monoxide. This is because water vapor gives you an indication there is water, while an atmosphere with both methane and carbon monoxide indicates the atmosphere is in disequilibrium, which means that both of these species shouldn’t exist together in the atmosphere as atmospheric chemistry would convert all of the one into the other, unless there is something, like life that maintains this disequilibrium. The absence of carbon monoxide is important as it is thought that life would quickly evolve a way to consume this energy source.”
Artist’s impression of Earth in the early Archean with a purplish hydrosphere and coastal regions. Even in this early period, life flourished and was gaining complexity. Credit: Oleg KuznetsovWhen the concentration of gases is higher in the atmosphere, the gas will dissolve into the ocean, replenishing the hydrogen and carbon monoxide consumed by the simple life forms. As biologically produced methane levels increase in the ocean, it will be released into the atmosphere, where additional chemistry occurs, and different gases are transported around the planet. From this, the team obtained an overall composition of the atmosphere to predict which biosignatures could be detected.
“What we find is that carbon monoxide is likely to be present in the atmosphere of an Archean-like planet orbiting an M-Dwarf,” said Eager-Nash. “This is because the host star drives chemistry that leads to higher concentrations of carbon monoxide compared to a planet orbiting the Sun, even when you have life-consuming this [compound].”
For years, scientists have considered how a circumsolar habitable zone (CHZ) could be extended to include Earth-like conditions from previous geological periods. Similarly, astrobiologists have been working to cast a wider net on the types of biosignatures associated with more ancient life forms (such as retinal-photosynthetic organisms). In this latest study, Eager-Nash and his colleagues have established a series of biosignatures (water, carbon monoxide, and methane) that could lead to the discovery of life on Archean-era rocky planets orbiting Sun-like and red dwarf suns.
Further Reading: arXiv
The post Will We Know if TRAPPIST-1e has Life? appeared first on Universe Today.
Has the US finally figured out how to do high-speed rail?
Has the US finally figured out how to do high-speed rail?
Earth Day 2024: Witness our changing planet in 12 incredible satellite images
NASA Nurtures Promising Tech Ideas from Small Businesses
New space technology ideas emerge every day from innovators across the country, and NASA’s Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program on Monday selected more than 100 projects for funding. This program offers small businesses in the United States early-stage funding and support to advance the agency’s goals of exploring the unknown in air and space while returning benefits to Earth.
Specifically, NASA’s SBIR program awarded $93.5 million in Phase II contracts to bring 107 new ideas to life from 95 selected small businesses. Of these businesses, nearly 80% have less than 50 employees, and 21% are receiving their first Phase II award, valued at up to $850,000 each. Each small business was also eligible to apply for up to $50,000 in Technical and Business Assistance program funding to help find new market opportunities and shape their commercialization roadmap.
“We are thrilled to support this diverse set of companies as they work diligently to bring their technologies to market,” said Jenn Gustetic, director of Early Stage Innovation and Partnerships with NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate (STMD) at the agency’s headquarters in Washington. “Inclusive innovation is integral to mission success at NASA, and we’re excited to see that 29% of the awardees are from underrepresented groups, including 11% women-owned businesses.”
In Phase II, awardees will build on their success from the program’s first phase to bring their technologies closer to real-world use. The companies have 24 months to execute their plans, which focus on their technologies’ path to commercialization.
For example, NASA selected women-owned and first-time NASA Phase II awardee nou Systems, Inc. in Huntsville, Alabama, for its genetic testing instrument. While portable genetic sequencing already exists, field sequencing – that would allow DNA analysis anywhere on Earth or off planet – remains unfeasible as the preparation of the DNA Library remains an intensely manual process, needing a trained wet lab technician and several pieces of laboratory equipment. The Phase II technology takes advantage of several cross-enabling technologies, creating an instrument to automate the genetic sequencing process.
“Our program works directly with small businesses to forge innovative concepts and technologies that drive impact for NASA projects as well as a myriad of commercial endeavors,” said Jason L. Kessler, program executive for NASA’s SBIR and Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) program at NASA Headquarters. “This collaboration results in realized opportunities not only for NASA but all of humanity.”
This includes technologies aiming to reduce astronaut workload and improve robotic scientific endeavors on the Moon and Mars. PickNik Inc. based in Boulder, Colorado, will use its Phase II award to continue developing a hardware-agnostic platform for supervised autonomy that empowers humans to command a remote robot to complete complex tasks with minimal input, which could support the Artemis program. Outside of NASA, PickNik’s software product may be of interest to commercial space customers working on low Earth orbit destinations, in-space servicing, and more, as well as on Earth in areas like warehouse management, oil rig maintenance, and deep-sea exploration.
The NASA SBIR program is open to U.S. small businesses to develop an innovation or technology. The program is part of STMD and managed by NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley.
To learn more about the NASA SBIR program, visit:
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Jimi Russell
Headquarters, Washington
james.j.russell@nasa.gov
202-358-1600
Our Beautiful Water World
This Jan. 30, 2012 image of Earth was created from photographs taken by the Visible/Infrared Imager Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) instrument aboard the Suomi NPP satellite. Many features of North America and the Western Hemisphere are particularly visible. The composite was created from the data collected during four orbits of the robotic satellite taken earlier in January 2012 and digitally projected onto the globe.
VIIRS collects visible and infrared imagery along with global observations of Earth’s land, atmosphere, cryosphere, and ocean, extending observational records collected by similar instruments aboard previously launched satellites, such as NASA’s Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) and NOAA’s Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR).
Help us celebrate Earth Day by sharing a #GlobalSelfie.
Image Credit: NASA
Our Beautiful Water World
Watch a Hotspot Orbit Our Galaxy's Black Hole
Astronomers have reconstructed a 3D video of hot gas orbiting a stone’s throw away from our galaxy’s central black hole.
The post Watch a Hotspot Orbit Our Galaxy's Black Hole appeared first on Sky & Telescope.