honk em sideways
NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day
Jan 27, 2024
Full Observatory Moon
A popular name for January's full moon in the northern hemisphere is the Full Wolf Moon. As the new year's first full moon, it rises over Las Campanas Observatory in this dramatic Earth-and-moonscape. Peering from the foreground like astronomical eyes are the observatory's twin 6.5 meter diameter Magellan telescopes. The snapshot was captured with telephoto lens across rugged terrain in the Chilean Atacama Desert, taken at a distance of about 9 miles from the observatory and about 240,000 miles from the lunar surface. Of course the first full moon of the lunar new year, known to some as the Full Snow Moon, will rise on February 24.
https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html?
Confirmation of ancient lake on Mars builds excitement for Perseverance rover’s samples
January 26, 2024
If life ever existed on Mars, the Perseverance rover’s verification of lake sediments at the base of the Jezero crater reinforces the hope that traces might be found in the crater.
In new research published in the journal Science Advances, team led by UCLA and The University of Oslo shows that at some point, the crater filled with water, depositing layers of sediments on the crater floor. The lake subsequently shrank and sediments carried by the river that fed it formed an enormous delta. As the lake dissipated over time, the sediments in the crater were eroded, forming the geologic features visible on the surface today.
The periods of deposition and erosion took place over eons of environmental changes, the radar indicates, confirming that inferences about the Jezero crater’s geologic history based on Mars images obtained from space are accurate.
“From orbit we can see a bunch of different deposits, but we can’t tell for sure if what we’re seeing is their original state, or if we’re seeing the conclusion of a long geological story,” said David Paige, a UCLA professor of Earth, planetary and space sciences and first author of the paper. “To tell how these things formed, we need to see below the surface.”
The rover, which is about the size of a car and carries seven scientific instruments, has been exploring the 30-mile-wide crater, studying its geology and atmosphere and collecting samples since 2021. Perseverance’s soil and rock samples will be brought back to Earth by a future expedition and studied for evidence of past life.
Between May and December 2022, Perseverance drove from the crater floor onto the delta, a vast expanse of 3 billion-year-old sediments that, from orbit, resembles the river deltas on Earth.
As the rover drove onto the delta, Perseverance’s Radar Imager for Mars’ Subsurface Experiment, RIMFAX, instrument fired radar waves downward at 10-centimeter intervals and measured pulses reflected from depths of about 20 meters below the surface. With the radar, scientists can see down to the base of the sediments to reveal the top surface of the buried crater floor.
Years of research with ground-penetrating radar and testing of RIMFAX on Earth have taught scientists how to read the structure and composition of subsurface layers from their radar reflections. The resulting subsurface image shows rock layers that can be interpreted like a highway road cut.
“Some geologists say that the ability of radar to see under the surface is kind of like cheating,” said Paige, who is RIMFAX’s deputy principal investigator.
RIMFAX imaging revealed two distinct periods of sediment deposition sandwiched between two periods of erosion. UCLA and the University of Oslo report that the crater floor below the delta is not uniformly flat, suggesting that a period of erosion occurred prior to the deposition of lake sediments. The radar images show that the sediments are regular and horizontal — just like sediments deposited in lakes on Earth. The existence of lake sediments had been suspected in previous studies, but has been confirmed by this research.
A second period of deposition occurred when fluctuations in the lake level allowed the river to deposit a broad delta that once extended far out into the lake, but has now eroded back closer to the river’s mouth.
“The changes we see preserved in the rock record are driven by large-scale changes in the Martian environment,” Paige said. “It’s cool that we can see so much evidence of change in such a small geographic area, which allows us extend our findings to the scale of the entire crater.”
https://newsroom.ucla.edu/releases/ancient-lake-mars-perseverance-rover-life-samples
Europe sets up space finance taskforce
January 25, 2024
The European Commission is joining forces with the European Space Agency and Europe’s investment arm to help more space companies get financing, including from a largely untapped multi-billion-dollar fund for strategic investments.
The tripartite agreement, signed Jan. 24 between the EC, ESA, and European Investment Bank (EIB), aims to streamline access to the variety of financial resources the region has on offer to grow its space ecosystem.
One of the main ways the EIB currently invests in space is through the Strategic European Security Initiative (SESI), a five-year 8 billion euro ($8.7 billion) fund launched in 2022 for investing in strategic assets — mainly for security and defense purposes.
EIB has approved about 2 billion euros in funding under SESI to date, a spokesperson for the bank said, but only a fifth of this has been earmarked for space despite the industry’s growing strategic importance.
Space is one of the key priority areas under SESI as Europe seeks more sovereign capabilities to catch up to the United States and other countries outside the European Union. These capabilities include a broadband constellation that Europe is preparing to contract by the end of March.
However, despite efforts to support domestic space projects, EC director-general for defense and space Timo Pesonen said access to financing remains challenging for the sector.
The three European institutions are planning regular meetings to share information about space financing bottlenecks as part of their alliance.
The EIB spokesperson said they would also seek to proactively identify promising European space projects, and offer them financial advice through EIB advisory services to accelerate and ease their access to debt financing.
They also intend to share best practices on public-private partnerships to ultimately enable more PPP space projects in the EU.
The partnership comes shortly after the European Investment Fund, the part of EIB focused on startups and small-to-medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), launched a 175 million euro equity fund for defense investments that could benefit space.
https://spacenews.com/europe-sets-up-space-finance-taskforce/
Suspect Arrested After 'Alien-Like' Homemade Explosive Device Goes Off
Fri, 26 January 2024 at 8:41 am
Security footage recorded the moment a homemade explosive device, described as “alien-like” by a witness, went off on January 12, startling residents and blowing out the windows of a business.
The footage was shared by Taylor Preisser and recorded at the family business, Even Preisser, in Colorado Springs. In the video, the strange and luminous balloon can be seen floating around the property.
Preisser told Storyful that the device got lodged in their fence, with the video showing the moment it exploded on site.
Local media said Colorado Springs police arrested a man, identified as 69-year-old Edward Kiley, who is suspected of having created the explosive device. Credit: Taylor Preisser via Storyful
https://uk.news.yahoo.com/suspect-arrested-alien-homemade-explosive-164138582.html