Science

Since 1998, the NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts program has fostered innovation by accepting new and unconventional proposals from the scientific community. Those selected are awarded funding to conduct early-stage technology studies that could lead to applications that help advance the agency’s scientific and exploration objectives. In a recent press statement, NASA announced the 13 concepts it has selected for Phase I development, which will receive a combined award of up to $175,000 in grants to assess the concepts’ feasibility and develop the technology further.

This year’s selectees range from a sample return from the surface of Venus, a fixed-wing aircraft for Mars, a swarm of probes to travel to Proxima Centauri and explore its system of exoplanets, and more. One of the more eye-catching is the Mars Aerial and Ground Global Intelligent Explorer (MAGGIE) proposed by Ge-Cheng Zha, a Professor of Aerodynamics at the Univeristy of Miami and the President of Coflow Jet LLC. The concept calls for a compact, fixed-wing, solar-powered aircraft capable of vertical take-off and landing (VTOL).

A collage of illustrations highlighting the novel concepts proposed by the 2024 NIAC Phase I awardees. Credit: (clockwise, from upper right) Benner/Zhang/McQuinn/Romero-Calvo/Eubanks/Carpenter/Bickford/Romero/Calvo/Cabauy/ Landis/Rothschild/Zha/NASA

Through the NIAC, NASA maintains a strong tradition where game-changing proposals submitted by the public became missions that made crucial contributions. As NASA Associate Administrator Jim Free said in the statement:

“The daring missions NASA undertakes for the benefit of humanity all begin as just an idea, and NIAC is responsible for inspiring many of those ideas. The Ingenuity helicopter flying on Mars and instruments on the MarCO deep space CubeSats can trace their lineage back to NIAC, proving there is a path from creative idea to mission success. And, while not all these concepts will fly, NASA and our partners worldwide can learn from fresh approaches and may eventually use technologies advanced by NIAC.”

According to Zha’s proposal paper, the inclusion of the CoFlow Jet (CFJ) deflected slipstream technology means that MAGGIE will be capable of cruising at Mach 0.25 (~300 km/h; 190 mph) with a cruise lift coefficient (CL) of 3.5 – nearly an order of magnitude higher than conventional subsonic aircraft in Mars’ thin atmosphere. A fully charged battery would last 7.6 Martian days (sols), giving MAGGIE a range of 179 km (111 mi) at an altitude of 1,000 m (3280 ft). The total range of MAGGIE for an entire Martian year – which works out to 668 sols or 687 Earth days – is 16,048 km (9972 mi). As Zha told Universe Today via email, the proprietary CFJ technology consists of three elements:

“First, CoFlow Jet (CFJ) active flow control enhances lift coefficient, which is needed to overcome the low air density on Mars (1% of that on Earth). Conventional lift coefficient will not be able to lift a useful payload. Second, CFJ removes flow separation or stall. Due to the low air density on Mars, the Reynolds number is very low, which makes the  Aircraft prone to flow separation and stall. If the aircraft stalls, the aircraft will crash, and the game is over.

“Third, CFJ enables deflected slipstream, which is the flow pulled by the propeller. It can turn the flow 90 deg downward so that the VTOL aircraft does not need to tilt the propellers upward at hover. The propeller will remain at the forward-facing position like the at cruise. The CFJ is used in the flap to turn the flow. It makes the VTOL aircraft much simpler than conventional aircraft.”

Image of the Mars Ingenuity helicopter. Credit: NASA

The mission profile envisioned here would consist of three atmospheric and geophysical investigations. These would explore how long Mars had a magnetic field, the source of methane signals detected by the Curiosity rover in the Gale Crater, and in-depth mapping of the subsurface water ice observed around Mars’ mid-latitudes. Its reliance on solar energy also means that the mission (barring an accident) could remain operational indefinitely. In short, MAGGIE would be able to perform the first global-scale atmospheric mission of Mars and would be the first concept to enable the ongoing exploration of the Red Planet.

“It has a global scale range. It can go anywhere on Mars,” said Zha. “All the previous rovers can only explore a point on Mars. Their range is very limited. It can not just do the examination on the ground surface, but also examine the atmosphere since it flies.”

The professor also noted how his concept pays homage to the Ingenuity helicopter, which effectively demonstrated the potential for airborne missions on Mars. MAGGIE, he claims, would be similarly engaging to the public because of its audacious nature and the variety of environments it could explore, study, and image. In keeping with the proud tradition of NASA Spinoff, Zha also noted how developing this concept for investigating extraterrestrial environments will have applications for VTOL technologies here on Earth:

“Currently, there is a big movement on Earth to develop eVTOL for urban air mobility (Google it if you are not familiar). They all need to use title rotors, tilt wings, and lift-plus-cruise. It is heavy, draggy, and inefficient. Using the same technology of CoFlow Jet (CFJ) deflected slipstream of MAGGIE, we can improve the efficiency of the eVTOL on Earth enormously.”

Further Reading: NASA

The post NASA Selects the MAGGIE Solar-Powered Aircraft for the 2024 NIAC Program appeared first on Universe Today.

When the Cassini spacecraft returned radar scans of the surface of Saturn’s moon Titan, the results were mindblowing. It revealed giant lakes or seas of liquid methane, a complete absence of waves and what seemed to be islands in the giant bodies of water. Now a team of scientists think they may be blobs of organic molecules that form in the atmosphere, collect in the lakes and float around!

The bus sized space probe Cassini was launched in October of 1997. The journey took the craft 3.5 billion km using gravitational slingshots following launch from Venus (twice), Earth and Jupiter before arriving in July 2004. The mission at Saturn lasted for 14 years when Cassini dived into the atmosphere of Saturn on 15 September 2017. While it was there it orbited Saturn a total of 290 times, explored many of its moons and discovered seven more. 

Artist impression of Cassini Space Probe

A particularly interesting part of the mission was the Huygens probe that hitched a ride aboard Cassini with Titan as its destination. Titan is Saturn’s largest moon, the second largest moon in our Solar System and larger even than our own Moon and the planet Mercury. It’s also the only moon known to have a dense atmosphere and large, stable bodies of water on its surface. 

Natural color image of Titan taken by Cassini in January 2012. (Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute)

The atmosphere of Titan has a neat trick, it transforms gasses like methane and nitrogen (of which there is plenty in the atmosphere) into organic compounds. The team, led by Xinting Yu from the University of Texas studied what happens to those compounds when they reach the surface of the Moon. 

Surpisingly, they found that the compounds reach the surface as solids, even on the lakes. Just what happens then was what the team were interested to explore. If they were structured like a sponge, mostly full of empty space then they would simply float. If on the other hand they were solids, they may still float depending on their composition, otherwise they will just sink to the lake bed. 

One mysterious feature of the Titanian (if that’s even a word) lakes that was picked up ws temporary bright spots seen by radar. They were dubbed ‘magic islands’ because they seemed to be only temporary features. The team found that the only plausible explanation for the observations was that the solid material landing on the surface.. and by chance, in the lakes, must be porous in nature giving it the ability to float. 

Source : The Fate of Simple Organics on Titan’s Surface: A Theoretical Perspective

The post Titan’s “Magic Islands” Could Be Floating Blobs of Organic Solids appeared first on Universe Today.

It’s a dismal gray day in Chicago; last night we had the first snowfall that actually stuck. The snow continues with a few barely discernible flakes. It’s a day of the doldrums.  As I walked home this afternoon,, I passed this tree, or rather the remains of a tree that’s crossed the Rainbow Bridge. It’s an ex-tree, singing with the Choir Invisible.

It was planted in honor of a beloved teacher at the U of C’s Laboratory School, in hope that a small sapling would become a mighty tree that would evoke her memory for decades.

Didn’t happen. The tree died young and all that remains just a bunch of upright sticks. Such is our fate: whatever “immortality” we hope to gain, through books, children, accomplishments—all of this will vanish. Even our immortal genes, carried in our descendants, will be washed out in the tide of interbreeding and genetic drift. “Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!”

Carpe diem.

The story continues apace.

The post Skeptics in the Pub. Cholera. Chapter 7a first appeared on Science-Based Medicine.

Bill Ackman, you’ll recall, is the billionaire who helped bring down Harvard President Claudine Gay. First he chastised her for her performance before the House committee, calling out the antisemitism that occurred at Harvard on Gay’s watch. Then he announced that he would no longer donate to Harvard until they cleaned up their act. Finally, when Gay’s plagiarism in her scholarly papers came to light, he bored down on that, and kept doing it until she resigned as President.  There’s little doubt Ackman’s his stream of tweets about Gay promoted her resignation by calling everyone’s attention to Gay’s missteps and embarrassing the board of Harvard Overseers, which is Gay’s boss.

As I’ve said repeatedly, I think Gay shouldn’t have resigned until the evidence of plagiarism surfaced. Her remarks about antisemitism to the Representatives were wooden and unempathic, but a First-Amendment construal of Harvard’s speech code would indeed have deemed cries for genocide of the Jews as “conditional”. Sometimes it’s legal, and sometimes not. The problem was that Harvard doesn’t have a First-Amendment-based speech code, and it applied its own code unevenly, giving rise to hypocrisy.  However, I would have given her a chance, for if she’d implemented something like Steve Pinker’s “fivefold way”, Harvard would have greatly improved.

In the end, her plagiarism, which also called attention to a rather thin academic resumé, brought her down, and made me agree that she should resign.

Now, however, Ackman is somewhat hoist with his own petard, for his wife, Neri Oxman, a designer and a professor at MIT until 2021, stands accused of plagiarism herself.  It doesn’t seem quite as bad as Gay’s missteps, for Oxman, in her dissertation, did cite the sources of her information. What she failed to do, however, was put quotation marks around phrases and paragraphs she lifted from cited sources, and that’s a violation of MIT’s own plagiarism code.

Business Insider (BI), in the first two articles below, found examples of her plagiarism, and you can see that BI can barely contain its joy of catching an Ackman-adjacent person in the act of plagiarism. It’s almost tabloid journalism.

Click on either to read. The third article is a summary from CNN.  In the end, Oxman admitted guilt and said she’d correct the quotations, but Ackman is pushing back against the charges, vowing reprisal against both MIT and BI while not denying what Oxman did. But since Oxman is no longer at MIT, she has no academic job to lose.

Click below or find this article archived here:

Again, click below or go to the article archived here:

And from CNN, not paywalled.

The accusation (from BI):

The billionaire hedge fund manager and major Harvard donor Bill Ackman seized on revelations that Harvard’s president, Claudine Gay, had plagiarized some passages in her academic work to underscore his calls for her removal following what he perceived as her mishandling of large protests against Israel’s bombardment of Gaza on Harvard’s campus.

An analysis by Business Insider found a similar pattern of plagiarism by Ackman’s wife, Neri Oxman, who became a tenured professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2017.

Oxman plagiarized multiple paragraphs of her 2010 doctoral dissertation, Business Insider found, including at least one passage directly lifted from other writers without citation.

. . .An architect and artist who experiments with new ways to synthesize materials found in nature, Oxman has been the subject of profiles in major outlets such as The New York Times and Elle. She has collaborated with Björk, exhibited at New York’s Museum of Modern Art, and had paparazzi stake her out after Brad Pitt visited her lab at MIT in 2018.

There are two kinds of accusations. First, that Oxman “self plagiarized”, using her own writing in her dissertation word-for-word in her published papers. That’s okay, and isn’t really plagiarism because a dissertation isn’t published, and in most cases is intended to be turned into papers. Thus, BI’s statement below isn’t incriminating:

She also recycled phrasing she used in her dissertation in subsequent papers. The opening paragraph of her dissertation, for instance, appears almost word-for-word in an article she published in 2013. While re-using material isn’t a formal violation of MIT’s academic-integrity code, a guide to “ethical writing” recommended by the university to its scholars and students warns against it.

Self-plagiarizing isn’t a good habit if you use the same phrases or paragraphs in one paper after another, but “plagiarizing” from a dissertation into a paper is not at all a violation. I suspect MIT’s dictum here refers to using your own words repeatedly in published work. And that’s not what Oxman did.

The evidence:

Then there are the other cases, in which Oxman did cite her original sources but also used big chunks of wording from them—without quotation marks. That’s a no-no, but it’s not as big a no-no as what Gay did, which was lift chunks of prose and then not include her using proper citations.

Here are a couple of examples of how Oxman used wording from previously-published papers in her thesis. Notice that she does cite the sources in parentheses, though:

and one more:

The MIT academic integrity code (below; click to enlarge) says that even though sources are cited, this is a no-no. But remember, this is plagiarism in a dissertation, not in a published paper. I’ve circled the bit that Oxman violated:

Oxman apologized for these errors in a tweet, though she couldn’t verify one of the accusations because the source was online. She’s going to get MIT to correct the citations. BI notes:

Neri Oxman, the wife of billionaire hedge fund manager Bill Ackman, admitted to failing to properly credit sources in portions of her doctoral dissertation after Business Insider published an article finding that Oxman engaged in a pattern of plagiarism similar to that of former Harvard president Claudine Gay.

BI identified four instances in Oxman’s dissertation in which she lifted paragraphs from other scholars’ work without including them in quotation marks. In those instances, Oxman wrote in a post on X, using quotation marks would have been “the proper approach for crediting the work. I regret and apologize for these errors.”

. . .Oxman wrote on X that after she has reviewed the original sources, she plans to “request that MIT make any necessary corrections.”

“As I have dedicated my career to advancing science and innovation, I have always recognized the profound importance of the contributions of my peers and those who came before me. I hope that my work is helpful to the generations to come,” she wrote.

Oxman now leads an eponymous company, Oxman, focused on “innovation in product, architectural, and urban design,” she wrote on X. “OXMAN has been in stealth mode. I look forward to sharing more about OXMAN later this year.”

I don’t know how MIT will correct these errors, because I don’t think most Ph.D. theses are online (mine certainly isn’t). If it is they can fix it, but perhaps they’ll just append the corrections in her thesis that reposes in MIT’s library.

If you read the Business Insider articles, they come off as hit jobs, as if somehow they’re joyfully getting back at what Ackman for what he did to Claudine Gay by showing that Ackman’s wife did the same thing. But Oxman didn’t do the same thing: she is guilty of not using quotation marks around quotations taken from an attributed source in a dissertation. Gay, on the other hand, is guilty of not using quotation marks around unattributed quotations, and doing this in published papers, not in a dissertation.  Further, Oxman is no longer a professor at MIT, and was never dean or president of any university, so it’s not such a big deal. Yes, she should have cited sources correctly, but in the end the damage is minor. Her missteps are far more excusable than Gay’s. But they are missteps, and academics need to know what constitutes plagiarism.

Business Insider keeps mentioning Ackman in their two pieces, which of course is what gives this story its legs, but BI also adds superfluous material to make both Ackman and Oxman look bad, like this:

In 2019, emails uncovered by the Boston Globe showed Ackman pressured MIT to keep Oxman’s name out of a brewing scandal over an original sculpture she gave to Jeffrey Epstein in thanks for a $125,000 donation to her lab.

So what? This is irrelevant to the story, and is pretty much of a smear.

As for Ackman, he’s not denying that his wife did what BI accused her of, but is standing by her nonetheless (see the linked tweet below):

Her husband, Ackman, lauded her transparency in his own post on X following the publication of Business Insider’s article.

“​​Part of what makes her human is that she makes mistakes, owns them, and apologizes when appropriate,” he wrote.

However, this empathic stand is weakened by Ackman’s threat to examine the writings of Business Insider staff for plagiarism:

This is an excellent idea. We will review the work of the reporters and staff at BI for completeness. https://t.co/4VImfFN4A6

— Bill Ackman (@BillAckman) January 6, 2024

. . . and he’s going after plagiarism at MIT, too!

We are going to need help with our review of @MIT faculty and affiliates. Please contact Fran McGill at mcgill@persq.com if your company has the capabilities to assist us.

— Bill Ackman (@BillAckman) January 5, 2024

The guy is combative, that’s for sure! It’s not seemly for him to strike out at everybody, trying to find plagiarizing skeletons in their closets. Gay is gone; Oxman admitted fault and will correct her writing. It’s time to move on!

Here are Oxman and Ackman from NBC News; the caption is from NBC:

h/t: Greg Mayer

XRISM, the X-ray Imaging and Spectroscopy Mission, is a joint NASA/JAXA mission led by JAXA. The X-ray space telescope began its mission in low-Earth orbit on September 6th, 2023. Science operations won’t begin until later this year, but the satellite’s science team has released some of the telescope’s first images.

XRISM is a stop-gap telescope. Our existing X-ray observatories, XMM Newton and Chandra, are aging, and their missions will end soon. Their replacement, the European Advanced Telescope for High Energy Astrophysics (ATHENA), won’t launch until 2035, leaving a years-long gap with no X-ray telescope coverage. Japan’s Hitomi X-ray observatory was meant to succeed XMM Newton and Chandra, but it failed a few weeks after launch.

Even though XRISM is intended as a fill-in mission, it’s still very powerful and will deliver robust scientific observations.

“XRISM will provide the international science community with a new glimpse of the hidden X-ray sky,” said Richard Kelley, the U.S. principal investigator for XRISM at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “We’ll not only see X-ray images of these sources but also study their compositions, motions, and physical states.”

Some new images from the telescope show just how powerful this ”stop-gap’ observatory is.

XRISM has two instruments: Resolve and Xtend. Resolve is a microcalorimeter spectrometer, a cryogenic instrument that’s kept at barely above absolute zero. When a photon hits it, it warms the detector by a specific amount related to its energy. “By measuring each individual X-ray’s energy, the instrument provides information previously unavailable about the source,” NASA explains.

Xtend is an X-ray CCD camera with a higher resolution than its predecessor on the failed Hitomi observatory.

The first image from XRISM at the top of the page is of a supernova remnant (SNR) in the Large Magellanic Cloud called N132D. The remnant is almost unseeable in the optical light image but is bright in X-rays. XRISM is a spectrometer and it created the most detailed X-ray spectrum of N132D ever.

XRISM’s X-ray spectrum of N132 reveals the presence of Silicon, Sulfur, Argon, Calcium, and Iron. The numbers indicate the number of electrons lost, or the ionization state, required to produce each peak. These elements originated in the remnant’s progenitor star and blasted out into space when it exploded as a supernova. Image Credit: JAXA/NASA/XRISM Resolve and Xtend

The progenitor star was about 15 times as massive as the Sun and exploded when it depleted its hydrogen and collapsed in on itself. The wreckage, the supernova remnant, is about 3,000 years old and is still expanding. These remnants are important because they spread heavy elements throughout the galaxy, heat the interstellar medium, and accelerate cosmic rays. Their shockwaves can even compress nearby gas and trigger new star formation.

Brian Williams, NASA’s XRISM project scientist at Goddard, explained how XRISM will help us understand SNRs.

“These elements were forged in the original star and then blasted away when it exploded as a supernova,” said Williams. “Resolve will allow us to see the shapes of these lines in a way never possible before, letting us determine not only the abundances of the various elements present but also their temperatures, densities, and directions of motion at unprecedented levels of precision. From there, we can piece together information about the original star and the explosion.”

Measuring the chemical composition of objects is important in astrophysics, and XRISM is proving to be even better than expected at that task.

“Even before the end of the commissioning process, Resolve is already exceeding our expectations,” said Lillian Reichenthal, NASA’s XRISM project manager at Goddard. “Our goal was to achieve a spectral resolution of 7 electron volts with the instrument, but now that it’s in orbit, we’re achieving 5. What that means is we’ll get even more detailed chemical maps with each spectrum XRISM captures.”

Xtend, XRISM’s X-ray imager, plays an important role in the observations. Its large field of view means it can observe an area about 60% larger than the full Moon. The science team released an Xtend X-ray image of Abell 2319, a nearby galaxy cluster that’s the object of frequent study.

XRISM’s Xtend instrument captured galaxy cluster Abell 2319 in X-rays, shown here in purple and outlined by a white border representing the extent of the detector. The background is a ground-based image showing the area in visible light. The pink is X-ray light from gas that permeates the cluster heated to millions of degrees. By measuring it with XRISM, astronomers can measure the mass of the entire cluster, an important point in understanding it. Image Credit: JAXA/NASA/XRISM Xtend; background, DSS

The purple in the image is gas that is leftover from billions of years of star birth and death. XRISM will tell astronomers what elements are present and how abundant they are, especially elements heavier than hydrogen and helium, called ‘metals’ in astronomy. These XRISM observations will help us understand how the Universe has become enriched in metals over its 13+ billion-year history.

Astronomers have observed Abell 2319 with the Chandra and identified different substructures in the intracluster medium (ICM.) They found cold fronts between masses of cooler and warmer gases and even finer substructures within the fronts. It all hints at more complexity than previously thought, triggered by mergers between galaxies and groups and interactions with the cluster’s AGN. Abell 2319 is currently undergoing a major merger event, and since XRISM is more powerful than Chandra, it should reveal even more details about the merger.

But alongside the success represented by these first images, XRISM is facing its first challenge. An aperture door that protects the Resolve detector before launch hasn’t opened. This means that photons below 1,700 electron volts can’t reach the detector. XRISM personnel have made several attempts to open it but haven’t yet been successful. If it remains closed, then the mission won’t detect photons below 1,700 electron volts, while it’s designed to measure photons as low as 300 electron volts. This problem, however, doesn’t affect Xtend, and the XRISM team is still working on a solution.

Though the XRISM mission is primarily a partnership between NASA and JAXA, the ESA and the Canadian Space Agency are also involved.

An aperture that protects the Resolve instrument is stuck closed, meaning XRISM can’t operate at its full electron volt detection range. Xtend, which has its own aperture, is unaffected. Image Credit: By ESA – https://www.esa.int/ESA_Multimedia/Images/2023/08/XRISM_in_a_nutshell, CC BY-SA 3.0 igo

“It’s so exciting to see XRISM already carrying out such marvellous scientific observations, even though it is not yet fully calibrated,” says ESA Director of Science Carole Mundell. “It shows the potential this mission offers to our science communities for groundbreaking discoveries in the study of the most energetic phenomena in the Universe.”

The post Japan’s New X-Ray Observatory Sees First Light appeared first on Universe Today.

The key to astronomy is careful observation. Unlike many sciences, astronomers can’t often do their work in a lab. Sure, they can build space telescopes and large ground observatories, but even with tools as simple as sticks and stones astronomers were able to change our understanding of the Universe with patience and observation. That tradition still holds true today, as a recent study in The Astronomical Journal shows.

The study focuses on a small nebula in the southern hemisphere known as 30 Doradus B. It is part of a star-forming region that has been creating stars for about 10 million years. At first glance, 30 Dor B is a rather typical nebula. It’s a supernova remnant in the Large Magellanic Cloud, but otherwise not much to look at. However, interesting things can be discovered if you take the time to look.

In this case, the team looked at x-ray data captured by the Chandra space telescope. Two million seconds worth of data, which adds up to more than 23 days. From these weeks of data, they were able to detect a faint shell gas emitting X-rays. The shell is about 130 light-years across, which is large, but again not too unusual. X-ray shells such as this are often seen around supernova remnants. When supernovae explode they cast off a shell of high-velocity material, which can collide with interstellar gas to produce X-rays.

But the team went further, and looked at Hubble observations of the region in visible light, and other observations in infrared. By combining all of this data they began to see something strange. The visible and infrared observations show the distribution of gas in the nebula, and combined with x-ray data of the same region they could show that the supernova occurred about 5,000 years ago. But the extended shell of faint X-rays is too large to match that age. Based on the size of the X-ray shell, there must have been a supernova explosion more than 5,000 years ago.

Taken together, the observations revealed that 30 Doradus B is not a simple supernova. Instead, it is the product of at least two supernovae occurring within the same region. It’s possible that the first supernova helped to trigger the second one. It’s even possible that multiple supernovae occurred in the region over the past several millennia.

Of course, none of this is obvious to look at the nebula. If this team of astronomers hadn’t taken a second look we would just assume it is a typical remnant. But because of their detailed study, we can learn more about the evolution and demise of large stars in star-forming regions. Careful observation leads to beautiful data, and our understanding of the cosmos is all the richer for it.

Reference: Chen, Wei-An, et al. “New Insights on 30 Dor B Revealed by High-quality Multiwavelength Observations.” The Astronomical Journal 166.5 (2023): 204.

The post Multiple Supernova Remnants Merging in a Distant Nebula appeared first on Universe Today.

I’ve been first item has been sent, from one source or another, many times, and it’s time to put it on a Caturday Felid post.

From IFL Science (first headline below):

The first streaming video carried by laser beam from beyond the Moon has been received from 31 million kilometers (19 million miles) away. For extra points, it’s ultra-high definition (and very cute).

Among the technical challenges required for human colonization of the Solar System, improved communication systems may not be top of mind. However, when you consider how painfully long it took New Horizons to send back its images from its brief flyby of Pluto, it’s clear we need to pick up the pace.

Last month, NASA conducted a demonstration of the practicality of using near-infrared laser beams to transmit data from the Psyche mission, then at a distance of 16 million kilometers (10 million miles) from Earth.

At the time, NASA HQ’s Trudy Kortes described that achievement in a statement as “One of many critical […] milestones in the coming months, paving the way toward higher-data-rate communications capable of sending scientific information, high-definition imagery and streaming video in support of humanity’s next giant leap: sending humans to Mars.”

The scientific information may have to wait until spacecraft Psyche reaches its destination, the metal-rich asteroid of the same name, but the streaming videos are here right on time. The technical challenges of sending something like this are immense, and get larger the longer the video, so NASA wanted to keep it short. In that context, what could be a more appropriate introduction than 15 seconds of a cat chasing a laser dot?

Here’s the video. The cat is named Taters:

IFL Science:

 

 

ScienceAlert:

And an excerpt:

NASA on Monday announced it had used a state-of-the-art laser communication system on a spaceship 19 million miles (31 million kilometers) away from Earth – to send a high-definition cat video.

The 15-second meow-vie featuring an orange tabby named Taters is the first to be streamed from deep space, and demonstrates it’s possible to transmit the higher-data-rate communications needed to support complex missions such as sending humans to Mars.

The video was beamed to Earth using a laser transceiver on the Psyche probe, which is journeying to the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter to explore a mysterious metal-rich object. When it sent the video, the spaceship was 80 times the distance between the Earth and Moon.

The encoded near-infrared signal was received by the Hale Telescope at Caltech’s Palomar Observatory in San Diego County, and from there sent to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Southern California.

“One of the goals is to demonstrate the ability to transmit broadband video across millions of miles. Nothing on Psyche generates video data, so we usually send packets of randomly generated test data,” said Bill Klipstein, the tech demo’s project manager at JPL.

“But to make this significant event more memorable, we decided to work with designers at JPL to create a fun video, which captures the essence of the demo as part of the Psyche mission.”

. . . ​So why a cat video? First, there’s the historic connection, said JPL. When American interest in television began growing in the 1920s, a statue of Felix the Cat was broadcast to serve as a test image.

And here’s that broadcast:

and, finally:

And while cats may not claim the title as man’s best friend, few can dispute their number-one position when it comes to internet videos and meme culture.

​Uploaded before launch, the clip shows Tabby, the pet of a JPL employee, chasing a laser light on a couch, with test graphics overlayed. These include Psyche’s orbital path and technical information about the laser and its data bit rate.

And that brings us to the next post: the Internet is synonymous with CATS:

********************

Here’s a 13 year old video, three minutes long, that speaks—or rather sings—truth to power. Note the presence of His Holiness Ceiling Cat at 1:31. Maru is in there, too.

Now when you do a Google search for “cats”, you see two things. First, the results: nearly 7.5 billion sites!

And you see this on the Google page. Click on the screenshot below, and then press the cat’s-paw button where I’ve added an arrow. See what happens! (Sound up, too.)

*****************

Here is an 8½-minute video of cats doing what they shouldn’t be doing. (Actually, they behave appropriately in some instances.) My favorite is the cat taking a ciggie at 3:56. Also note “peacekeeper cat” at 5:52.

Unlike the video above, this one’s actually good.

 

*****************

Finally, lagniappe from reader Barry:

I sometimes have cats stay with me over the holidays (via a cat-sitting service in NYC). This one is a Scottish Fold. Her name is Ivy. She is adorable, but in this photo she looks alarmed. “Why do you put whipped cream on the lower half of your face and then scrape it off?”

h/t: Ginger K.

Today’s series, which is about the dangers caused by outdoor cats, comes from Athayde Tonhasca Júnior. His narrative is indented, and you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them.

The killer within

Walter Rothschild (1868-1937), an aristocratic banker turned zoologist, must have been delighted to see his paper published in the December 1894 edition of the Bulletin of the British Ornithologists’ Club. The paper presented to the world the Stephens Island wren from New Zealand, a new species from a new genus – a momentous scientific discovery. Baron Rothschild named the novelty Traversia lyalli to honour Henry Travers, a dealer of animal skins who procured specimens for him, and David Lyall, an assistant lighthouse keeper who first brought the bird to the attention of ornithologists. Rothschild had another reason for feeling smug: he had knowingly scooped Kiwi lawyer and eminent ornithologist Sir Walter Buller (1838-1906), who learned about the hitherto unknown wren before Rothschild and had his own description in the pipeline for publication. Buller, understandably, was not happy with Rothschild’s ungentlemanly behaviour, and the men bickered for years afterwards (Galbreath & Brown, 2004). [JAC note: The Stephens Island wren is now known as Lyall’s Wren, Traversia lyalli]

Baron Rothschild pestering Rotumah, a Galapagos tortoise taken to Australia © C. J Cornish, 1902. Wikimedia Commons:

The race between the two men of science from almost opposite corners of the planet to have the honour of naming a new species was possible because both had bird skins to examine: they were shipped to England by Henry Travers (Rothschild had deep pockets) and given to Buller by David Lyall. But Travers and Lyall did not acquired those specimens: Tibbles, a domestic cat (Felis catus), did.

Stephens Island, a speck of land (1.5 km2) between the two main islands of New Zealand, was an ideal spot for a lighthouse. One was built in 1894 and manned by three keepers, their families, and Tibbles. The cat would go off on hunting expeditions around the island and often bring the bounty to one of the keeper’s house. David Lyall, an amateur naturalist, skinned and saved the most interesting corpses, and noticed they included the ‘rock wren’, as he called it, a flightless, shy little bird rarely glimpsed at night ‘running around the rocks like a mouse and so quick in its movements that he could not get near enough to hit it with a stick or stone’. An earth-bound bird, no matter how skittish, was no match for Tibbles, who gifted Lyall with all the specimens of rock wren (Stephens Island wren as we know it today) that ended up in Rothschild’s and Buller’s hands.

The lighthouse on the Stephens Island’s summit was home to keepers, their families and Tibbles the bird slayer © Herewhy, Wikimedia Commons:

The Stephens Island wren was widespread throughout New Zealand until the arrival of rats, who accompanied the Maori settlers. Stephens Island was the bird’s last haven until catastrophe befell it in the form of Tibbles and its descendants, the island’s first mammalian predators. The little bird was hunted to extinction by cats shortly after Rothschild and Buller squabbled about the priority of naming it.

One of the fewer than 20 known specimens of Stephens Island wren, most of them collected by cats © Museum of New Zealand:

We may lament the demise of the Stephens Island wren and assume it was an unfortunate consequence of geographical isolation. Cats have caused or contributed to the extinction of the Socorro dove (Zenaida graysoni), the little Swan Island hutia (Geocapromys thoracatus) and some 31 other bird, mammal and reptile insular species, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). Alas, moggies’ threats to wildlife are much more far-reaching and worrying than these documented Robinson Crusoe scenarios.

Peter Churcher and John Lawton were among the first to raise the alarm. They convinced the owners of 78 out of 80 house cats living in the English village of Felmersham to gather their pets’ booty for a whole year. The final tally was 1,094 corpses or bodily remains, 64% of which comprised wood mice, voles, shrews and the odd rabbit, weasel and bat. The remaining 36% were from birds, mostly house sparrows, thrushes, blackbirds and robins. Based on published data and some calculations, Churcher & Lawton (1987) estimated that cats killed at least 30% of the sparrows in the village. Their distinguished colleague Robert May extrapolated the study’s figures to suggest that every year 6 million cats in Britain killed about 100 million birds and small mammals, an unimaginable carnage.

The feline killing fields of Felmersham © David Kemp, Wikimedia Commons:

These studies lobbed scat against the fan: angry cat lovers rubbished the papers arguing the premisses were wrong, the conclusions were misleading, the extrapolations unwarranted, or that lovely Mr Whiskers wouldn’t hurt a fly. Besides, cat advocates claimed, their pets did a valuable service by killing rodents. In reality, cats are opportunistic, indiscriminate hunters. They will prey on rats and mice if they are readily available, which usually happens in urban settings. In natural or semi-natural habitats, wild birds and mammals such as wood mice, shrews, voles, squirrels and rabbits are their most likely targets. Worldwide, 2,084 species, including 9% of all known birds and 6% of all mammals, are killed by cats; 347 (16.6%) of them are of conservation concern (Lepczyk et al., 2023).

Cat’s diet based on a review of global studies © Lepczyk et al., 2023:

Subsequent data set upon data set support the Felmersham study. In Canada, domestic cats (pets and ferals) are estimated to kill 100 to 350 million birds/yr.; For Australia, figures are 377 million birds/yr., or ~1 million birds/day – adding to the bag 649 million reptiles/yr. from 258 species. Studies in the UK, The Netherlands and other European countries show similar patterns (reviewed by Trouwborst et al., 2020). But these figures pale in comparison to those from the U.S., a country with 60-62 million pet cats and 50-80 million feral cats (American Veterinary Medical Association). The estimated tallies for moggies’ killings in the contiguous states are ~1 to 4 billion birds, 6 to 22 billion mammals, 230 to 870 million reptiles and 86 to 320 million amphibians/yr. Most prey are despatched by stray and feral cats, but pets’ contributions are not negligible: they are responsible for about a third of the kills (Loss et al., 2013).

A bird, probably a great tit (Parus major) leaving this world in a cat’s maw © dr_relling, Wikimedia Commons:

Despite these industrial scale butcheries, the impact of cats on wild populations is poorly understood. Cats may be only hoovering up sickened or old individuals that would not reproduce or would die soon anyway. An unequivocal link between prey populations and cat predation would require experimental settings of impractical, unfeasible scales. Yet, much circumstantial smoke is coming out of this factual gun. In northwest Bristol (UK), predation by pet cats wiped out 80–90% of the breeding productivity (an estimate of annual offspring output) of house sparrows (Passer domesticus), dunnocks (Prunella modularis) and robins (Erithacus rubecula) (Baker et al., 2005). Cats have been implicated in the extinction of at least 63 species – 40 birds, 21 mammals and two reptiles – figures that represent 26% of all known recent extinctions in these species groups (Doherty et al., 2016). In a ranking of invasive species threatening the largest numbers of vertebrates worldwide, the domestic cat came in third – only rats (Rattus spp.) and Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis (the fungus that is wiping out amphibians around the world), do more damage (Bellard et al., 2016). Cats don’t have to kill to supress wildlife: fear alone would do. The mere presence of a tabby nearby increases stress in birds, reducing their fecundity. Songbird abundance may drop by 95% even when cat-induced mortality is lower than 1% (Beckerman et al., 2007).

Adding to the file the risk of diseases transmitted by cats to wildlife and humans – toxoplasmosis being the more notorious – and setting aside the nuisance factor (crapped lawns and vegetable gardens, nocturnal racket, urine stench), many conservationists argue there is a solid case for adopting the precautionary principle towards free-roaming cats, that is, acting even if evidence is incomplete because the stakes are right. In other words, implementing ‘better safe than sorry’ policies. That would entail not allowing pet cats outdoors and culling feral and other unowned cats.

Deer and wild pigs are regularly culled to reduce their damage to the environment. People don’t like these wet jobs, but usually accept them once they are explained the reasons © Nigel Corby, Wikimedia Commons:

Well, good luck to those conservationists, because perceived cat-hate is guaranteed to unleash a fleet of cognitive dissonance flying monkeys: cat owners in general disagree with the statement that cats are harmful to wildlife and are against any control option except neutering (Mcdonald et al., 2015). Some cat activists strengthen their case with misinformation, obfuscation, slander and political lobbying (Loss et al., 2018). And they are effective. Besides Australia, which started a culling programme, countries are not making much effort to address the possible risk posed by cats despite being required to do so by the Convention on Biological Diversity, Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species, and the European Union Habitats Directive, among other international laws (Trouwborst et al., 2020). In Britain, The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB), a powerful lobby with over one million members, stands by the anaemic position – which is not upfront on their site – that “while we know that cats do kill large numbers of birds in UK gardens, there’s no evidence this is affecting decline in the same way [emphasis added] that these other issues [global warming, intensive agriculture and expanding towns and cities] are”. One would expect a bird conservation organisation to pay heed to the precautionary principle advocated by researchers. But many a bird-loving paying member and many a cat lover are one and the same, and RSPB knows which side its bread is buttered on. So it goes.

‘A man with a conviction is a hard man to change. Tell him you disagree and he turns away. Show him facts or figures and he questions your sources. Appeal to logic and he fails to see your point.’ Leon Festinger (1919-1989), A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance:

Universe Today has examined the potential for sending humans to Jupiter’s icy moon, Europa, the planet Venus, and Saturn’s largest moon, Titan, all despite their respective harsh environments and vast distances. These conversations with planetary science experts determined that humans traveling to these worlds in the foreseeable future could be possible, despite the harsh conditions and travel time, specifically to Titan.

But what if we were to send humans farther out into the Solar System, and much farther out than Titan? Here, we will continue this conversation with planetary science experts to determine whether the dwarf planet Pluto could be a viable destination for sending humans, either in the near or distant future. Pluto lacks the harsh environments of Europa and Venus, but like Titan, the extremely vast distance could pose potential concerns for sending humans to this distant world. So, should we send humans to Pluto?

“I think we should send humans everywhere in the solar system, eventually,” Dr. Alan Stern, who is the Principal Investigator for NASA’s New Horizons mission, tells Universe Today. “But it would be premature to send human beings to most places in the solar system, including Pluto, today, because we don’t know enough about the planet to design such a mission. It’s also very far beyond our technical capabilities, and there’s no present need to spend the kind of money that it would take. But, you know, a hundred, or 200, or 500 years from now could be entirely different.”

Launched in January 2006, NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft became the fastest human-made object ever launched from Earth, as it was catapulted away from our home planet at an astonishing 16.26 km/s (10.10 mi/s). Despite this incredible speed, which allowed New Horizons to reach Jupiter in just over one year for a gravity assist, it still took another eight years and five months to reach Pluto, flying past the dwarf planet on July 14, 2015, and coming within 12,472 km (7,750 mi) of Pluto’s surface.

This lengthy trip is due to Pluto’s vast distance in the outer solar system. While Titan has an average distance of approximately 1.4 billion kilometers (886 million miles) from the Sun, Pluto has an astounding average distance of 5.9 billion kilometers (3.7 billion miles) from the Sun, orbiting in the outer solar system within a region of icy objects of known as the Kuiper Belt.

Dr. Mike Brown, who is a Richard and Barbara Rosenberg Professor of Astronomy at Caltech and is known for his social media handle of @plutokiller, tells Universe Today, “It seems pretty clear that we are unlikely to ever send humans to Pluto, to any other object in the Kuiper Belt, or probably anywhere in the outer solar system. I assume no rational group is actually considering this at this time (and will never consider it). Not to say that it is not a fun thing to speculate about, but, only in a here-is-something-that-will-never-ever-ever-ever happen sort of way.”

Even with a direct flight trajectory to Pluto, our present technology would still require many years to reach its destination; even an unmanned Pluto orbiter, because of its need to brake into orbit, is estimated to take 20+ years to reach Pluto from Earth with today’s technology. But could things be different in a few hundred years with more advanced technology?

Dr. Stern conveyed to Universe Today how Columbus coming to the New World couldn’t envision the present-day world with people traveling cross-country in just a few hours for a tiny fraction of their annual paycheck.

“But it’s likely to be much easier in the distant future,” Dr. Stern tells Universe Today. “And because it’ll be easier, it will be less expensive. And so, if something like Star Trek ever happens, going to Pluto is going to be a walk in the park compared to interstellar travel, and I think there’d be a lot of science to be gained from it.”

During New Horizons’ brief flyby of Pluto, the spacecraft obtained stunning images of the dwarf planet’s surface, revealing a wide range of diversity with smooth, nitrogen plains and vast, water-ice mountain ranges. Along with data obtained about Pluto’s mostly-nitrogen atmosphere, scientists have hypothesized that Pluto could possess an interior ocean of water-ice. While these findings have helped shape a completely different picture of Pluto compared to previous models, if we could send humans to Pluto, what would be the benefits and drawbacks, and what additional science could be conducted by a human mission compared to a robotic mission?

Image of Pluto obtained by NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft during its flyby in July 2015, which reveals the smooth, nitrogen plains of Sputnik Planitia (heart-shaped region) and vast, water-ice mountain ranges. (Scale: 35 miles = 56 kilometers) (Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute)

Dr. Anne Verbiscer, who is a Research Professor in the Department of Astronomy at the University of Virginia, along with being a Deputy Project Scientist and a Co-Investigator on New Horizons, tells Universe Today, “The benefits are that humans are far more efficient explorers than robots and there are myriad drawbacks because of the technical complexities brought on by Pluto’s great heliocentric and geocentric distance.”

In terms of additional science, Dr. Verbiscer tells Universe Today, “Several in-situ experiments could be conducted by humans that robots would not be able to do. But there is so much that can be done and learned from robotic missions that (several of) these need to be conducted well in advance of sending humans.”

This discussion comes as human space exploration, from both worldwide governments and the commercial space industry, is slated to increase in the foreseeable future. In just the next few years, NASA’s Artemis program has the goal of landing the first woman and person of color on the lunar surface, Axiom Space hopes to establish the world’s first commercial space station in Earth orbit, the China National Space Administration wants to land astronauts on the Moon by 2030 as part of its Chinese Lunar Exploration Program, and SpaceX is slowly developing its Starship heavy-lift launch vehicle with the goal of sending humans to Mars, someday.

Will we ever send humans to Pluto? Will such a mission achieve greater scientific objectives than from a robotic mission like New Horizons, and what could it teach us about living and working so far from Earth? Only time will tell, and this is why we science!

As always, keep doing science & keep looking up!

The post Should We Send Humans to Pluto? appeared first on Universe Today.

The European Space Agency (ESA) has made incredible contributions to space exploration and space-based science. Last year, the agency launched the Euclid space telescope, which will survey the Universe back to 3 billion years after the Big Bang to measure cosmic expansion and the influence of Dark Energy. After more than a decade of development, the Ariane 6 launch vehicle conducted its first full-scale dress rehearsal, which included an engine fire test. In a recent video, the ESA showcased its plans for the future, which include some new launch vehicles and engine technology.

As the ESA describes it in the statement accompanying the video’s release, “brand-new rockets are set to take flight, some reusable, some carbon-neutral, with hybrid propulsion, two and three stages, small, large, crewed and uncrewed, to Earth orbit and deep space, the journey continues.” The video provides a rundown of the technologies the ESA has in the works, which includes footage of hot fire tests and other milestones being accomplished at ESA facilities and those of their commercial partners.

Upon review of these new concepts and technologies, some priorities become apparent. Looking to the next decade and beyond, the ESA is committed to ensuring independence in design, manufacture, and launch capabilities. They are also pursuing reusable rocket technology for both engines and launch vehicles, reducing the carbon footprint of spaceflight and servicing the commercial space sector (especially where constellations of small satellites are concerned).

In-House Assembly

SPECTRUM: This two-stage orbital launch vehicle, developed by Isar Aerospace, is specifically designed for small and medium satellites. The vehicle is manufactured at the Isar facility to allow for flexibility with the design and mission profiles. Spectrum has nine ISAR Aquila engines on its first stage and a single Aquila on its second. These engines rely on a combination of liquid oxygen (LOX) and liquid propane fuel. The rocket can reportedly transport 1000 kg (2200 lbs) to LEO and 700 kg (~1545 lbs) to Sun-Synchronous Orbit (SSO).

Space Rider: This reusable uncrewed robotic laboratory, currently being developed by the Agenzia Spaziale Italiana (ASI), Switzerland, and the Portuguese Space Agency, will allow for technology demonstrations and research in pharmaceutics, biomedicine, biology, and physical science. It will be launched to Low Earth Orbit (LEO) using the new four-stage Vega-C, where it will remain for up to two months conducting experiments within its cargo bay. At the end of its mission, it will return to Earth and land on a runway to be refurbished for its next flight.

MIURA-1: Next up is the suborbital launch vehicle fully designed and developed in-house by Spanish aerospace provider PLD Space. Designed for microgravity research, this rocket can transport up to four experiments to space and return them to Earth, with a total payload capacity of 100 kg (220 lbs). The vehicle relies on a single TEPREL-B liquid bipropellant engine that burns kerosene and LOX propellant.

RFA One: This 3-stage rocket is another launch vehicle entirely developed in-house by Austrian aerospace company Rocket Factory Augsburg. The first stage relies on nine Helix ORSC engines optimized for sea level that rely on LOX and RP1 fuel and are equipped with thrust-vector control (TVC). The second stage relies on a single Helix Vac engine built in-house using additive manufacturing. The launch system also has a Redshift Orbital Transfer Vehicle (OTV) that ensures accurate delivery to the desired orbit, with payloads of 1300 kg (2866 lbs) to SSO and 300 kg (660 lbs) to a Lunar Transfer Orbit (LTO).

Susie with cargo bay open – @ArianeGroup Reusability

Prometheus and Themis: Next up is the Prometheus engine and Themis launch stage, both courtesy of ArianeGroup. The former is being developed as part of an ESA program in collaboration with the French Space Agency (CNES) with support from the German Aerospace Agency (DLR). This low-cost, potentially reusable engine runs on LOX and liquid methane and will serve as a precursor for next-generation European launchers used in the post-2030 time frame. Similarly, Themis is an ESA rocket prototype and demonstrator that will test retrieval and reuse technologies.

SUSIE: Short for Smart Upper Stage for Innovative Exploration, SUSIE is a reusable upper stage concept capable of autonomously transporting cargo to LEO or performing crewed missions with up to 5 astronauts. ArianeGroup is currently developing the vehicle to be launched with the Ariane 6 rocket on future ESA missions.

Propulsion

M10 Engine: This engine is under development by a consortium led by the Italian space propulsion company Avio with the help of commercial partners from Belgium, Czechia, Switzerland, France, Austria, and Romania. The M10 will be Europe’s first LOX/methane engine and stage that will help pave the way for next-generation launchers (like the Vega-E), thus ensuring increased competitiveness by European small launchers.

SL1: The Small Launcher-1 is being developed by HyImpulse, a German aerospace company specializing in hybrid propulsion. The three-stage smallsat launch vehicle is equipped with twelve hybrid rocket motors that rely on a combination of LOX and Paraffin wax, a low-cost option that allows for greater safety and flexible launch operations. The SL1 will be the first European launch vehicle capable of launching satellites with a payload of up to 500 kg (1100 lbs) to dedicated Earth orbits.

Green Technology

Orbex Prime: This two-stage launch system is the work of Orbex, a UK-based orbital launch services company specializing in low-carbon, high-performance micro-launch vehicles. This two-stage micro-launcher is carbon-neutral, relying on bio-liquid natural gas (BioLPG) to power its seven engines. Most of its propulsion subsystem is built using additive manufacturing (3D printing), while the main structure and tanks are composed of carbon fiber/graphene composites. With a payload capacity of 180 kg (~400 lbs), this micro-launcher will service the growing small satellite (smallsat) market.

XL: Developed by UK-based launch vehicle manufacturer Skyrora, the XL is a three-stage, light-class launch vehicle intended to send payloads to SSO or Polar Orbit. Powering the first and second stages are nine and one Skyforce engines (respectively) that run on LOX and a kerosene fuel made from waste plastic (Ecosene).

These concepts align with several emerging trends, cutting-edge technologies, and priorities that characterize the modern space age. In addition to reducing costs and increasing access to space, there is the growing role of commercial space and the need for collaboration between the public and private sectors. On top of that, there are significant concerns that so many launches per year will mean more emissions, thus significantly contributing to climate change – hence the need for carbon-neutral manufacturing and fuel options.

Check out the full video below:

Further Reading: ESA

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