NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day

Oct 30, 2023

Reflections of the Ghost Nebula

Do any shapes seem to jump out at you from this interstellar field of stars and dust? The jeweled expanse, filled with faint, starlight-reflecting clouds, drifts through the night in the royal constellation of Cepheus. Far from your own neighborhood on planet Earth, these ghostly apparitions lurk along the plane of the Milky Way at the edge of the Cepheus Flare molecular cloud complex some 1,200 light-years away. Over two light-years across and brighter than the other spooky chimeras, VdB 141 or Sh2-136 is also known as the Ghost Nebula, seen toward the bottom of the featured image. Within the reflection nebula are the telltale signs of dense cores collapsing in the early stages of star formation.

https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html?

‘Technology surprise’: Are China, Russia ahead of us in UFO retrieval, research?

10/27/23 7:00 AM ET

Last week, a former senior Defense Intelligence Agency scientist became the 10th ex-government official, military officer or scientist to allege (or suggest) publicly that the U.S. government has recovered at least one UFO.

The overwhelming majority of these individuals also claim that the government transferred the retrieved craft to defense contractors for technical and scientific analysis.

Separately, sources interviewed by investigative journalist Michael Shellenberger allege that defense contractors are studying a dozen or more recovered UFOs. All of Shellenberger’s sources claim that excessive secrecy is hindering a comprehensive understanding of the retrieved objects’ enigmatic technology.

Moreover, an expanded network of sources told Shellenberger that at least 30 whistleblowers familiar with these alleged UFO retrieval and analysis efforts have provided testimony to Congress, the U.S. government’s congressionally-mandated UFO analysis office and the investigative watchdogs that oversee the U.S. Department of Defense and Intelligence Community.

Importantly, the inspector general for the intelligence community deemed the lead UFO whistleblower’s core allegations “credible and urgent.” Moreover, the whistleblower, former intelligence official and U.S. Air Force veteran David Grusch is represented by the intelligence community’s first inspector general. This high-profile attorney, now in private practice, sat prominently behind Grusch during an extraordinary July 26 congressional hearing.

As Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-Wisc.), a member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, stated recently, new protections enacted by Congress resulted in “all sorts of [UFO whistleblowers] coming out of the woodwork.” These individuals, Gallagher said, are telling congressional investigators that “they’ve been part of this or that [UFO] program,” resulting in “a variety of pretty intense conversations.”

As Senate Intelligence Vice Chair Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) has put it, one of two astounding possibilities is now at hand. Either dozens of credible individuals are gradually revealing the “the biggest story in human history,” or a sizeable cohort of high-level government officials holding top security clearances is “crazy.”

Reflecting on the stature of the individuals who spoke to Congress, Rubio asked rhetorically, “What incentive would so many people, with that kind of qualification — these are serious people — have to come forward and make something up?”

Indeed, given the penalties for making false statements to investigative agencies, it is unlikely that these individuals — some of whom claim direct, firsthand knowledge of the alleged UFO retrieval and reverse engineering efforts — are participating in a sophisticated disinformation effort.

So, are numerous high-level government officials delusional and making false claims of firsthand UFO knowledge to investigators? Such a stark case of social contagion would amount to a concerning and extraordinary development.

Moreover, if dozens of senior officials are indeed “crazy,” they have still somehow convinced key members of Congress to treat their extraordinary allegations with utmost seriousness.

In July, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), along with a bipartisan group of five other senators, introduced remarkable UFO-related legislation.

Following reporting that China and Russia may also have retrieved UFOs, language in the legislation alluding to the “increasing potential for technology surprise from foreign adversaries” takes on a particular significance.

While the exact details of foreign UFO retrieval and reverse engineering efforts remain murky, Grusch has described a “publicly unknown Cold War over recovered and exploited physical material — a competition with near-peer adversaries over the years to identify UAP crashes/landings and retrieve the material for exploitation/reverse engineering to garner asymmetric national defense advantages.”

According to retired U.S. Army colonel Karl Nell, who served alongside Grusch in an early iteration of the U.S. government’s contemporary UFO analysis efforts, “[Grusch’s] assertion concerning the existence of a terrestrial arms race occurring sub-rosa over the past 80 years focused on reverse engineering technologies of unknown origin is fundamentally correct.”

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These allegations, from two former high-ranking defense officials, in tandem with independent investigative reporting, raise a host of national security questions and issues. And clearly, Congress is paying attention. The Schumer-led legislation, for example, defines “non-human intelligence” as “any sentient intelligent non-human lifeform regardless of nature or ultimate origin that may be presumed responsible” for UFOs.

Notably, the term “non-human intelligence” appears two dozen times in the legislation, alongside frequent references to “biological evidence of non-human intelligence.”

Critically, the legislation Schumer proposed defines “legacy” UFO programs precisely as whistleblowers allege: Any government or private sector “endeavors to collect, exploit, or reverse engineer technologies of unknown origin or examine biological evidence of living or deceased non-human intelligence.”

Just as importantly, the draft legislation mirrors whistleblower allegations that recovered UFOs are now in the hands of defense contractors. If passed as drafted, the bill would require that “any and all recovered [UFOs] and biological evidence of non-human intelligence that may be controlled by private persons or entities” be turned over to the U.S. government “in the interests of the public good.”

A different section of the same legislation, also sponsored by Sens. Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) and Rubio, offers an intriguing glimpse into the programs described by whistleblowers.

Beyond putting an immediate halt to any unreported UFO recovery and reverse-engineering efforts, the Gillibrand-Rubio legislation describes, in some detail, retrieval efforts (“capturing, recovering, and securing [UFOs]”), scientific study (“analyzing [retrieved UFOs] for the purpose of determining properties, material composition, method of manufacture, origin, characteristics, usage application, performance, operational modalities”), security and counterintelligence (“managing and providing security for protecting activities and information relating to [UFOs] from disclosure or compromise”) and reverse-engineering efforts (“replicating [UFO] technology or performance based on analysis of materials or sensor and observational information associated with [UFOs]”).

Of particular interest, the legislation alludes to the existence of highly advanced forms of propulsion derived from recovered UFOs and based on “technology other than chemical propellants, solar power, or electric ion thrust.”

Intriguingly, following a classified briefing from the Department of Defense inspector general on UFOs this week, Rep. Eric Burlison (R-Mo.) stated, “It appears… somebody has discovered something – some advanced form of propulsion or technology – that may actually change all of our lives.”

Should it indeed exist, such technology could pose new dangers or solve any number of global challenges. But as the Gillibrand-Rubio legislation notes in its “Sense of Congress” section, extraordinary secrecy surrounding retrieved UFOs is creating “technology and security stovepipes” that may threaten the nation’s “global lead in critical advanced technologies.”

https://thehill.com/opinion/technology/4277128-technology-surprise-are-china-and-russia-ahead-of-us-in-ufo-retrieval-research/

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NASA, Pacific Disaster Center Increase Landslide Hazard Awareness

OCT 26, 2023

After years of development and testing, NASA’s Landslide Hazard Assessment for Situational Awareness model (LHASA) has been integrated into the Pacific Disaster Center’s (PDC) multi-hazard monitoring, alerting, and decision-support platform, DisasterAWARE. LHASA allows researchers to map rainfall-triggered landslide hazards, giving DisasterAWARE users around the world a robust tool for identifying, tracking, and responding to these threats. The aim is to equip communities with timely and critical risk awareness that bolsters disaster resilience and safeguards lives and livelihoods.

Landslides cause thousands of deaths and billions of dollars in damage every year. Developing countries often bear disproportionate losses due to lack of access to hazard early warning systems and other resources for effective risk reduction and recovery. Reports from the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction emphasize that early warning systems and early action are among the most effective ways to decrease disaster-related deaths and losses.

“Some local authorities develop their own systems to monitor landslide risk, but there isn’t a global model that works in the same way. That’s what defines LHASA: it works all the time and it covers most regions of the world,” says Robert Emberson, NASA Disasters associate program manager and a key member of the NASA landslides team. “Thanks to our collaboration with the Pacific Disaster Center, this powerful landslide technology is now even more accessible for the communities that need it most.”

LHASA uses a machine learning model that combines data on ground slope, soil moisture, snow, geological conditions, distance to faults, and the latest near real-time precipitation data from NASA’s IMERG product (part of the Global Precipitation Measurement mission). The model has been trained on a database of historical landslides and the conditions surrounding them, allowing it to recognize patterns that indicate a landslide is likely.

The result is a landslide “nowcast” – a map showing the potential of rainfall-triggered landslides occurring for any given region within the past day. This map of hazard likelihood can help agencies and officials rapidly assess areas where the current landslide risk is high. It can also give disaster response teams critical information on where a landslide may have occurred so they can investigate and deploy life-saving resources.

Partnering to Protect the Vulnerable

Generating landslide nowcasts is merely the first step. To be truly effective, vulnerable communities must receive the data in a way that is accessible and easy to integrate into existing disaster management plans. That’s where the Pacific Disaster Center comes in.

PDC is an applied research center managed by the University of Hawaii, and it shares NASA’s goal to reduce global disaster risk through innovative uses of science and technology. Its flagship DisasterAWARE software provides early warnings and risk assessment tools for 18 types of natural hazards and supports decision-making by a wide range of disaster management agencies, local governments, and humanitarian organizations. Prominent users include the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC), the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UN OCHA), and the World Food Programme (WFP).

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“The close pairing of our organizations and use of PDC’s DisasterAWARE platform for early warning has been a special recipe for success in getting life-saving information into the hands of decision-makers and communities around the world,” said Chris Chiesa, PDC deputy executive director.

The collaboration with PDC brings NASA’s landslide tool to tens of thousands of existing DisasterAWARE users, dramatically increasing LHASA’s reach and effectiveness. Chiesa notes that teams in El Salvador, Honduras, and the Dominican Republic have already begun using these new capabilities to assess landslide hazards during the 2023 rainy season.

PDC’s software ingests and interprets LHASA model data and generates maps of landslide risk severity. It then uses the data to generate landslide hazard alerts for a chosen region that the DisasterAWARE mobile app pushes to users. These alerts give communities critical information on potential hazards, enabling them to take protective measures.

DisasterAWARE also creates comprehensive regional risk reports that estimate the number of people and infrastructure exposed to a disaster – focusing specifically on things like bridges, roads, and hospitals that could complicate relief efforts when damaged. This information is critical for allowing decision-makers to effectively deploy resources to the areas that need them most.

This effort between NASA and the PDC builds upon a history of fruitful cooperation between the organizations. In 2022, they deployed a NASA global flood modeling tool to enhance DisasterAWARE’s flood early-warning capabilities. They have also shared data and expertise during multiple disasters, including Hurricane Iota in 2020, the 2021 earthquake in Haiti, and the devastating August 2023 wildfires in Maui, PDC’s base of operations.

“The LHASA model is all open-source and leverages publicly available data from NASA and partners,” says Dalia Kirschbaum, lead of the NASA landslides team and director of Earth Sciences at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. “This enables other researchers and disaster response communities to adapt the framework to regional or local applications and further awareness at scales relevant to their decision-making needs.” Kirschbaum and her team were recently awarded the prestigious NASA Software of the Year award for their work developing LHASA.

https://www.nasa.gov/earth/nasa-pacific-disaster-center-increase-landslide-hazard-awareness/

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The enigmatic 'Ancient Alien Library' concealed beneath the Great Sphinx

OCTOBER 29, 2023 05:12

The legendary Great Sphinx of Giza in Egypt holds the potential to unlock the mysterious "Hall of Treasures of Knowledge," according to some researchers who speculate that this hidden chamber could contain ancient documents from the lost city of Atlantis.

The Daily Star reports on the belief among certain individuals that there exists an "alien library" beneath the structure of the Sphinx, believed to hold knowledge left behind by extraterrestrial beings.

While the Great Sphinx has long fascinated tourists worldwide, it may harbor a vast hidden library deep underground. Tombs are said to be located there, although they may have been destroyed by floods over the centuries.

True secrets beneath the Great Sphinx

This raises questions about the existence of an advanced society or the involvement of extraterrestrials in the creation of this enigmatic library. Nub TV's Mark Christopher Lee suggests that further exploration and research into UFO phenomena may shed light on the true secrets hidden beneath the Great Sphinx.

The existence of the controversial "Hall of Knowledge Treasures" remains a topic of ongoing debate.

Nevertheless, there is a significant number of believers who argue that this supposed hall served as a repository for the history of the survivors of Atlantis. Approximately a century ago, researcher and clairvoyant Edgar Cayce first proposed the notion of Atlantis' involvement in the construction of the Sphinx.

Lee, speaking to the Daily Star, said that the ancient Egyptians believed they originated from the stars and would return there after death, possibly from the Orion constellation towards which the Great Pyramids of Giza align. It is said that an ancient library lies beneath the current location of the Sphinx, potentially holding answers to many questions. Researchers like Robert Schoch have discovered signs of erosion by floods, suggesting an age of at least 10,000 years, much older than mainstream archaeologists assume.

How were these structures built?

Lee asked: Were these structures built with the assistance of aliens or by a sophisticated society beyond people's current understanding? He believes that conventional understanding of history may be flawed. Perhaps the disclosure of UFO encounters will bring the world closer to unraveling its true origins, he said.

Increased interest in the Great Sphinx prompted an extensive study in 1999.

While Cayce provided a detailed description of the face and features of the statue, no evidence supporting his claims of a water shaft or other elements emerged during the investigation.

Cayce was the individual who introduced the concept of the "Hall of the Treasures of Knowledge" and offered a vivid account of the interior of this library. He claimed that the site was used to safeguard artifacts from Atlantis, although no tangible evidence of this has been uncovered. According to Cayce, the library hall had a pyramid-shaped interior, and its discovery would have a profound impact on the world. He also suggested that the texts within were written in both Egyptian and Atlantean, with the entrance hidden in the right paw of the colossal statue.

In 2019, historian Matt Sibon highlighted in a video on his YouTube channel that archaeologists had come across a concealed door beneath the Sphinx, potentially indicating the presence of a hidden cave.

Sibon emphasized the need for further investigation and restoration of the statue, calling on the community to examine it anew and bring it back to life.

"We must shine a light on this door," he said, noting that he believed something was beneath the status and that .numerous tunnels waiting to be explored.

https://www.jpost.com/archaeology/article-769738

NASA C-130 Makes First-Ever Flight to Antarctica for GUSTO Balloon Mission

OCT 30, 2023

On Oct. 28, 2023, NASA’s C-130 Hercules and crew safely touched down at McMurdo Station, Antarctica, after an around-the-globe journey to deliver the agency’s Galactic/Extragalactic ULDB Spectroscopic Terahertz Observatory (GUSTO). The United States research station, operated by the National Science Foundation, is host to NASA’s Antarctic long-duration balloon campaign in which the GUSTO mission will take a scientific balloon flight beginning December 2023.

The C-130 crew, which has now completed half of the 26,400-nautical-mile round-trip journey, first stopped at Fort Cavazos, Texas, on Oct. 17, to load the GUSTO observatory and members of its instrument team. Additional stops to service the aircraft and for crew rest included Travis Air Force Base (AFB), California; Hickman AFB, Hawaii; Pago Pago, American Samoa; and Christchurch, New Zealand, before finally reaching McMurdo, Antarctica – a mere 800 miles from the South Pole.

GUSTO, part of NASA’s Astrophysics Explorers Program, is set to fly aboard a football-stadium-sized, zero-pressure scientific balloon 55 days and beyond, on a mapping mission of a portion of the Milky Way Galaxy and nearby Large Magellanic Cloud. A telescope with carbon, oxygen, and nitrogen emission line detectors will measure the interstellar medium, the cosmic material found between stars, and trace the full lifecycle of that matter. GUSTO’s science observations will be performed in a balloon launch from Antarctica to allow for enough observation time aloft, access to astronomical objects, and solar power provided by the austral summer in the polar region.

NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility Aircraft Office in Wallops Island, Virginia, which manages the C-130, spent nearly a year in coordination efforts preparing for GUSTO’s trip to its launch site. From international clearances with agencies, cargo configurations with NASA’s Balloon Program Office, logistical support with the National Science Foundation at McMurdo, to specialized training on nontraditional navigation systems in Antarctica, the Aircraft Office developed an extensive plan to safely deliver the intricate science payload.

The first-ever mission to Antarctica for the NASA C-130 aircraft presented several long-haul cargo flight challenges. Mission managers and NASA’s Office of International and Interagency Relations (OIIR) started early to stay ahead of coordination of international flight clearances.

“We work very hard to make sure that we execute the mission at a high standard of technical competence and professionalism to maintain NASA’s international reputation,” said John Baycura, Wallops research pilot on the GUSTO mission.

Large time-zone changes challenge the crew’s circadian rhythm. Ninety hours in flight across multiple time zones requires an extra pilot and flight engineer on the mission to share the workload. Mandatory crew rest days at strategic locations, per NASA policy, ensure the crew receives enough time to rest, adjust to the schedule, and proceed safely.

Unexpected weather also tops the list of most pressing challenges for this type of flight. Oceanic crossings come with the added risk of weather complicated by no radar coverage over the ocean. The crew uses DOD and civilian weather agencies to identify hazardous weather and adjust flight routes, altitude, and timings accordingly. “For the specific case of McMurdo, while en route, we called the weather shop at McMurdo Station to get a forecast update before we reached our ‘safe return’ point. Using a conservative approach, we decided whether to continue to McMurdo Station or return to Christchurch and try again the next day,” said Baycura.

For this mission, no commercial entities supported the final leg to Antarctica. U.S. Air Force C-17’s and the New York Air National Guard LC-130’s that typically transport to McMurdo Station had limited space in their schedules. By using NASA’s C-130 for this specialized cargo mission, “the balloon program gained a dedicated asset with a highly experienced crew and support team. This greatly reduced the standard project risks to schedule, cargo, and cost,” said Baycura.

https://www.nasa.gov/centers-and-facilities/wallops/nasa-c-130-makes-first-ever-flight-to-antarctica-for-gusto-balloon-mission/