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https://www.space.com/solar-flare-2017-record-breaking
7 years ago today, the sun unleashed a record-breaking solar flare
September 10, 2024
As August 2024 set another 20-year high for sunspot numbers on the sun, recent solar flares have yet to top two solar flares from September 2017.
One of these flares, which took place seven years ago on Sept. 10 2017, still holds further unbroken records.
September 2017 saw the declining phase of the previous solar cycle (Solar Cycle 24), which peaked in 2014.
Following a period of lower solar activity, active region AR 12673 rapidly emerged onto the scene.
AR 12673 produced a number of X-class solar flares, the most notable of which were Sept. 6 and Sept. 10, 2017.
These flares were initially reported as X8.2 and X9.3, but later reclassified as X13.3 and X11.8 after the NOAA flare recalibration in 2020.
These flare classes are yet to be definitively topped in the current Solar Cycle 25, despite much higher solar activity levels in general.
(There have been some large flares observed behind the sun, that have been unable to be definitively classified).
Although the slightly smaller of these two flares, the Sept. 10, 2017 flare, occurring 7 years ago today, set a number of records, including:
Fastest magnetic emergence
Sunspots are regions of strong magnetic field in the sun's surface, with a cooler temperature (6,330 degrees Fahrenheit or 3,500 ˚C) than the surrounding sun surface (9,930 ˚F or 5,500 ˚C) giving them a darker appearance.
Sunspot magnetic fields have been continuously measured for decades, with a well-known correlation between the strength/complexity of the sunspot magnetic field, and their ability to produce large solar flares.
The magnetic field of a sunspot can grow or decay over time, continuously evolving over a typical sunspot lifetime of several weeks.
In the days leading to the Sept. 6 and 10 2017 solar flares, AR 12673 produced one of the fastest emergence of magnetic field ever observed in a solar active region.
Without this rapid emergence of magnetic field, the largest flares of the solar cycle would likely not have been possible.
Fastest CME acceleration
Solar flares are a conversion of energy from magnetic energy within the sun's atmosphere, to the acceleration of particles, heating of solar plasma, and emission of light across the spectrum.
In about 50% of solar flares, they are associated with a coronal mass ejection (CME) — an eruption of solar plasma from the sun's atmosphere.
Solar flares and CMEs are often conflated, but can be more easily distinguished by the following analogy: Imagine a firing cannon.
The explosion of gunpowder, sound of the explosion and flash of the muzzle can be considered the solar flare, whereas the CME is the ejected cannon ball.
The Sept. 10, 2017 flare triggered a large CME from above the western edge of the sun, not directed directly at Earth.
This CME, powered by the large flare, clocked in with the fastest CME acceleration ever observed, and one of the fastest initial CME speeds (4,300 km/s).
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Strongest long-duration gamma ray source
Solar flares emit light over most of the spectrum, from radio waves to X-rays.
Gamma rays, the highest energy wavelengths of light, are only produced in the very strongest solar flares.
The Sept. 10, 2017 flare not only produced a clear gamma ray signal, but continued to emit gamma rays for over 12 hours.
Observed by the NASA Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, this solar flare gamma ray emission set the record for the strongest gamma ray source to ever be observed for longer than 12 hours in the sky.
Alongside the gamma ray emission, the event also produced one of the largest solar energetic particle storms to be observed from the Earth's surface, also persisting for several hours.
A typical solar flare lasts for tens of minutes, with the very largest X-class flares usually lasting for about an hour. However, some solar flares, aptly named 'long-duration events' can persist for much longer than an hour.
The Sept. 10, 2017 flare is an extreme example of this, with strong evidence showing the flare persisted for over 24 hours, far longer than the observable gamma ray source.
Most published solar flare of all time
Active region AR 12673, and its associated solar flares, came at a time in the solar cycle with little else happening over the sun.
As a result of this, nearly all dedicated solar telescopes, located both on the ground and in space, which can only observe a small window of the Sun at a time, were all focused on the active region.
Due to this, the Sept. 10 flare was observed all across the light spectrum, in radio, microwaves, infrared, visible light, ultraviolet, X-rays and even gamma rays.
Energetic particles from the event were measured from Earth orbit, on the ground, and even from Mars.
In part due to this sheer amount of available data on the flare, and in part due to the interesting behavior of the flare itself, the Sept. 10 2017 flare has become the most published solar flare of all time, with well over a hundred academic publications analyzing different facets of the event.
The flare was even the subject of my PhD thesis.
As Solar Cycle 25 progresses, having already surpassed the size of the previous cycle, with a solar maximum expected this year, we can look forward to more strong solar flares in the next 1-3 years.
But whether or not any of these future flares will break the records set by active region AR 12673 and the Sept. 10 2017 flare remains to be seen.
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Partial lunar eclipse of the Harvest Moon: Everything you need to know
September 10, 2024
The moon will be full on Tuesday, Sept. 17: The Harvest Full Moon.
The Harvest Moon isn't exclusively a September event because the full moon occurring closest to the autumnal equinox gets hung with this moniker.
Every few years, October (rather than September) hosts this moon that once was critical to farmers.
Before electricity and tractors with lights were used to harvest crops all night long, farmers relied on the Harvest Moon's light to extend workdays when fields were most bountiful.
This upcoming full moon will also be the last one prior to an annular (ring) eclipse of the sun on October 2.
And this full moon will also experience — however slight — a lunar eclipse, which can be thought of as the preliminary to the main event a fortnight later.
Both eclipses are, of course, related. A solar eclipse can occur only when the moon is at a node of its orbit.
(The nodes are the two points where the moon's path on the sky crosses the sun's path, the ecliptic).
During the solar eclipse, the moon will be crossing the ecliptic from north to south.
But a half orbit earlier, at full moon, it will cross the opposite node from south to north, encountering the Earth's shadow along the way.
All this is a fine example of how an "eclipse season" works. An eclipse season is when the sun (from our perspective here on Earth) is close enough to one of the moon's nodes to allow for an eclipse to occur.
During the season, which lasts a little more than a month, whenever there is a full moon, a lunar eclipse will occur and whenever there is a new moon a solar eclipse will occur.
This will be almost like the lunar eclipse that occurred last March, though the moon passes not quite so wide of the center of the Earth's shadow and manages to give the Earth's dark umbra a glancing blow.
The umbra, in fact, penetrates at most into only about 1/12 of the moon's diameter.
In contrast with the vague gray penumbra, the umbra is much darker and quite sharp-rimmed.
The region of visibility for this lunar eclipse covers much of North America (except Alaska and Hawaii), and all of South America (where as seen from Sao Luis, Brazil, the moon will be directly overhead at maximum eclipse).
For those situated along and near the Pacific coasts of Washington, Oregon and northern California, the moon will rise on the evening of Sept. 17, already in partial eclipse.
Conversely, for much of Europe and Africa, the moon will be descending the western sky during the early morning hours of Sept. 18, setting with the last vestige of the umbra still visible on the moon's western limb for Finland, Ukraine, Turkey, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Ethiopia and Kenya.
At maximum eclipse (Sept. 18, 2:44 UTC) umbral penetration will be equal to only 8.7%, meaning that only the moon's uppermost limb will be submerged in the Earth's dark umbral shadow.
For those who are in a position to view this eclipse, probably the most interesting thing to watch with binoculars or a telescope is when the umbra grazes the northern edge of the dark, lava-filled lunar impact crater Plato around the time of greatest eclipse.
Entry into or exit from the penumbra is not visible.
About 70% of the moon's diameter must penetrate into the faint penumbra for it to become evident to most as a slight shading or smudginess, roughly a half hour before first contact with the umbra (moon's upper left portion) and roughly a half hour after last contact with the umbra (moon's upper right portion).
With or without a telescope, the smooth curve of the dark umbra on the lunar disk will be a nice reminder to us, as it was a divine revelation to the ancient Greeks, that our Earth is round.
Below is a timetable for the eclipse. Dashes indicate that the particular event is not visible because the moon is below the horizon.
An asterisk indicates that the calendar date is Sept. 18.
https://www.space.com/partial-lunar-eclipse-harvest-moon-september-2024
https://www.space.com/moon-volcanically-active-today-china-change-5
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adk6635
The moon might still have active volcanoes, China's Chang'e 5 sample-return probe reveals
September 9, 2024
Volcanoes have erupted on the lunar surface within a geologically recent timespan, and the moon could still be volcanically active today, according to tiny glass beads in lunar dirt brought back to Earth by the Chinese Chang'e 5 sample-return mission in December 2020.
The discovery could turn what we thought we knew about the evolution of the moon on its head.
We know that the moon had volcanism in the distant past, because we can see the evidence literally all over the face of our nearest neighbor — the dark markings of the famous "man in the moon" are lunar maria, which are vast, volcanic plains dating back three to 3.8 billion years.
It was thought that this was the last time the moon was volcanically active.
But, astonishingly, Chang'e 5 brought home evidence that the moon has experienced volcanic eruptions much more recently — just 123 million years ago, give or take an uncertainty of 15 million years.
That still sounds like a long time ago in human terms, but geologically speaking it was just yesterday. It means that the moon may have been volcanically active its whole life, and could still be volcanically active today.
The evidence for the recent volcanism came from three tiny glass beads — just three out of 3,000 in Chang'e 5's sample.
A team led by Bi-Wen Wang and Qian Zhang of the Institute of Geology and Geophysics at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing carefully searched the 0.6 ounces (1.7 grams) of lunar dirt recovered by Chang'e 5 for these needles in a haystack.
Glass beads, just 20 to 400 microns in size, can be formed by the violent fury of an asteroid impact, melting and pressurizing rock so it turns to glass.
Indeed, these impact-derived beads make up the vast majority of the beads in the sample — unsurprising given the number of impacts evident on the moon in the form of craters. But there's another way to form these beads, too.
"Magma fountains produce volcanic glasses, which have previously been found in samples of the moon's surface," wrote Wang and Zhang's team in their research paper.
Certainly, glass beads of volcanic origin have been found on the moon before, but always originating from those magma eruptions billions of years ago.
However, from its landing site near an area rich in volcanic domes called Mons Rümker in Oceanus Procellarum ("Ocean of Storms"), Chang'e 5 managed to find three glass beads that are very special indeed, returning them to Earth on Dec. 16, 2020.
"Uranium-lead dating of the three volcanic glass beads shows that they formed 123 million, ±15 million, years ago," wrote Wang and Zhang's team.
Uranium-lead dating involves measuring the radioactive decay of uranium into lead in rock samples over a million years old.
In general, the greater the ratio of lead to uranium there is, the older the sample must be for there to have been enough time for all that uranium to decay into lead. Vice versa, the lower the abundance of lead relative to uranium, the younger the sample.
What strengthens the findings is that this is not the first evidence for geologically recent volcanism on the moon.
In 2014, NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) imaged about 70 bizarre features on the surface of the moon called irregular mare patches, perhaps better known as the catchy acronym "IMPs."
In fact, the first IMP was photographed from lunar orbit in 1971 by NASA's Apollo 15 astronauts, but at the time it wasn't recognized for what it really was. IMPs are smooth, round, shallow mounds next to patches of rocky, jumbled terrain that lie downslope.
Averaging less than a third of a mile across, these features are found on volcanic plains, and at least some appear to be less than 100 million years old, and perhaps even less than 50 million years old.
These age estimates come from crater counts — the more craters a surface has, the older it must be, and the smooth slopes are relatively untouched.
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Whereas the IMPs are highly suggestive of recent volcanism, the glass beads provide incontrovertible evidence.
However, our models of the moon's thermal evolution suggest that its interior should have cooled off long ago following its formation 4.5 billion years ago.
Simply put, the inside of the moon shouldn't be warm enough to generate volcanism. So the question now becomes, what is causing it?
"We measured high abundances of rare earth elements and thorium in these volcanic glass beads, which could indicate that such recent volcanism was related to local enrichment of heat-generating elements in the mantle sources of the magma," write Wang and Zhang's team.
These elements, such as potassium, phosphorus, yttrium and lanthanum, can produce heat from radioactive decay, which might be enough to melt rocks in the lunar mantle, at least on a local scale, which could drive modest eruptions.
Two further questions also come to mind. One is, could this volcanism be active today?
Throughout the decades, there have been reports of "transient lunar phenomena," or TLP — ghostly, colored hazes seen to appear over the lunar landscape.
Their existence is greatly disputed, since they have not been seen by space probes, but only by amateur astronomers on Earth.
While many lunar scientists have dismissed TLP as being due to inclement atmospheric conditions above the observing site on Earth or even just misidentification by the observer, one possible explanation that has been suggested is volcanic outgassing.
This had seemed unlikely because of the consensus at the time that the moon was volcanically inert, but the new findings from Chang'e 5, supported by LRO's observations of IMPs, raise the possibility that there could still be volcanic outgassing on the moon.
And if lunar volcanism does still exist, could its energy be tapped into by future lunar astronauts setting base on the moon?
While these are still unanswered questions, what now seems certain is that the moon isn't quite as dead as we thought, and in fact might still occasionally awaken from its slumber.
A hundred million years ago, Cretaceous-era dinosaurs roamed the Earth, while unbeknownst to them, glowing spots of lava may have been lighting up the moon high above their heads.
The new findings from Chang'e 5 were published on Sept. 5 in the journal Science.
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Boeing plots 2026 quantum networking satellite demo
September 10, 2024
Boeing plans to deploy a small satellite in 2026 to test technology needed for a quantum internet capable of connecting more advanced sensors and computers worldwide, the company announced Sept. 10.
The microwave-sized Q4S satellite is being designed to demonstrate quantum entanglement swapping, a communication technique that transfers information between particles without physically moving them across a distance.
Testing this capability in space is key to expanding quantum networks beyond simple point-to-point communication, according to Boeing, enabling more precise measurements from sensors that could be fed directly into more powerful quantum computers.
“In essence, this is the generalized communication protocol that’s needed for a quantum network that is not just sending a stream of single photons across its network,” Jay Lowell, Boeing’s chief engineer for disruptive computing, networks and sensors, said in a media briefing.
While the technology is still in its early stages, Lowell said quantum networking would greatly enhance the capabilities of applications ranging from climate science to communication security.
“One application that has been tossed about is the ability to do exceedingly precise time synchronization,” he said.
“You can use the fact that entanglement collapses at a very small time overlap [of] less than a couple hundred femtoseconds … once you set that correlation up and you entangle those sensors, now their collective measurement of time is guaranteed to be maintained to better than that precision.”
Satellites are better suited to facilitate long-haul quantum information traffic than terrestrial fiber networks, which Lowell said would need to repeat the entanglement-swapping process roughly every 10 kilometers to maintain the connection.
For the mission in 2026, Boeing will attempt to demonstrate quantum entanglement within the satellite.
China is also working to develop a quantum communications satellite network.
However, Lowell said similar experiments conducted in space to date have only explored certain quantum effects rather than concentrating on a core protocol for building a generalized network.
A successful lab validation on the ground paved the way for Boeing’s plan to demonstrate the technology from low Earth orbit.
The mission will use a Corvus satellite platform from Astro Digital, which is slated to begin production next year.
Lowell said Boeing is using an Astro Digital satellite rather than building its own because the company had already proven it could generate the 70-80 watts of continuous power needed for the mission with a small spacecraft
HRL Laboratories, a California-based research center Boeing partly owns, is helping to design the payload.
Boeing is funding the program internally. Lowell said the company is making a “significant investment” to advance quantum technology but declined to give details.
He added that government and commercial customers have expressed interest in the technology, and at least one is likely to partner in the near future on a potential follow-up mission.
https://spacenews.com/boeing-plots-2026-quantum-networking-satellite-demo/
U.S. GPS modernization faces delays, technical challenges: GAO report
September 9, 2024
A new U.S. government report highlights mixed progress in the modernization of the Global Positioning System (GPS), citing advancements in satellite and ground equipment upgrades alongside persistent delays in some areas.
The Government Accountability Office (GAO) report, released Sept. 9, reveals that the Space Force is grappling with technical hurdles in next-generation GPS satellites and ground systems.
These challenges have eroded schedule margins, potentially pushing back the delivery of 24 M-code-capable satellites crucial for military operations through the 2030s.
M-code, a more secure and jam-resistant signal, is central to the modernization efforts.
The ground control segment known as OCX, while achieving some key testing milestones, still requires further evaluation before military acceptance.
The projected acceptance date is now set for December 2025.
The report also flags risks in the development of user equipment, including microchips and cards that process M-code signals.
Although the first increment of user equipment is approaching final tests, newly discovered deficiencies threaten to disrupt the timeline.
The Department of Defense is additionally working to address potential shortages of GPS chips and cards.
Lockheed Martin, the prime contractor for the next-generation GPS IIIF satellites, is tackling manufacturing difficulties with a crucial component, the Linearized Traveling Wave Tube Amplifier, the report says.
This component is essential for enabling a high-powered, steerable M-code signal.
To mitigate these challenges, Lockheed Martin has subcontracted the construction of amplifiers from the third GPS IIIF satellite onward.
The OCX program, led by Raytheon, completed a qualification test for Blocks 1 and 2 in December 2023.
However, several test events remain before the system can be accepted for operational use.
The related OCX Block 3F program has made progress in software development, but ongoing delays with earlier blocks have complicated efforts.
This annual assessment — mandated by Congress in the 2016 National Defense Authorization Act — requires GAO to evaluate the cost, schedule, and performance of GPS acquisition programs.
The report underscores the complexity and ongoing challenges in modernizing this critical global navigation infrastructure.
https://spacenews.com/u-s-gps-modernization-faces-delays-technical-challenges-gao-report/
https://www.gao.gov/assets/gao-24-106841.pdf
CMSSF, CMSAF host SELIS 2024
Sept. 10, 2024
Chief Master Sgt. of the Space Force John Bentivegna and Chief Master Sgt. of the Air Force David Flosi hosted the 2024 Senior Enlisted Leader International Summit, bringing together senior leaders from around the globe, Aug. 26-29.
The four-day summit focused on the “Spirit of Integration,” and brought together Department of Defense, NATO and more 67 allied and partner nations’ SEL counterparts to show the Department of the Air Force’s commitment to working together to overcome shared challenges.
During the summit, Bentivegna delivered a keynote address on the changing character of war and integrated deterrence.
He emphasized the importance of relying on guiding principles to maintain superiority and advantage in the space domain.
“To discourage our adversaries from any aggressive actions in the space domain, we must rely on our guiding principles that remind our Guardians to maintain our superiority and advantage every single day,” Bentivegna said.
“As we expand as a Space Force and continue to grow, we want all of our partner nations to know that there is a Guardian they can turn to and continue to foster the relationships we have initiated.”
Flosi’s keynote emphasized the importance of embracing change in an era of Great Power Competition.
“We're working on a force development model that favors a completely different way of operating to deliver airpower when we need it,” Flosi said.
“We're looking at building small, time and trade mission-focused teams."
Today’s global security environment is dynamically changing. Continuing to improve interoperability with allied and partner forces is essential to winning in a high-end fight of the future.
“Our primary focus is on our joint force, allies and partners,” Flosi said. “We are committed to strengthening our bonds based on shared principles and common interests.
To achieve this, we plan to expand our international exchange program to find opportunities for us to not only learn from each other, but to become interchangeable and rapidly expand these efforts.”
Both Bentivegna and Flosi emphasized the vital role of the enlisted force in ensuring a safe, secure and stable future. They agreed that success can only be achieved through the development and nurturing of the enlisted force.
Bentivegna explains, “Success can only be achieved by fostering the growth and potential of our enlisted personnel and by preserving and upholding our alliances and partnerships with like-minded nations.”
As the summit concluded, Flosi emphasized the vital role of the enlisted force, stating, “We need our enlisted force to understand the important role they play, ensuring a safe, secure and stable future.
We’ve seen the ability to adapt and be agile in theater operations, and how our adversaries have not been able to adapt as quickly to their own venture.”
https://www.spaceforce.mil/News/Article-Display/Article/3900790/cmssf-cmsaf-host-selis-2024/
Montana man records shocking up-close footage of UFO rotating in air that made his wife 'cry
Updated: 08:08 EDT, 9 September 2024
A man in small-town Montana has captured footage of an Unidentified Flying Object (UFO) and shared the shocking video that made his wife 'cry' on Reddit.
The video was recorded on Friday between 10:10 and 10:15 pm, and showed what appears to be a blinking craft streaking across the clear night sky.
Said to have been spinning and adorned with a series of rotating lights, the apparent object flew over tiny Choteau, home to a population of just over 1,700 people.
The videos, along with the original poster's in-depth account of the sighting, reveals how the man and his wife first mistook the unknown object for a meteor.
It comes after Montana was singled out as a hotspot for UFO sightings, with visitors recording some of the most significant and well-documented footage.
'On Friday night my wife and I were sitting on the deck out back looking at the stars - we do this every night,' wrote the unnamed poster, who goes by the user name PoneThePoon.
'Just after 10pm my wife said "is that a shooting star??", which I found odd, because if it was I wouldn't have time to look at it.
'The tree near me was blocking the direction she was staring so I got up and looked, and my jaw dropped,' he continued.
'I said 'Holy st. Holy st!!' and we both jumped off of the deck and got into the yard for a better view.'
Three separate clips show a light in the distance that appeared to be rotating in mid-air and the edge of what appeared to be a craft.
The sight, he said, left his spouse in tears after it lingered for a few minutes before flying away.
'The craft seemed huge, miles away,' he recalled - adding how it had several blinking and spinning lights, and a rotating orange-red light on the bottom.
'You can only see the orange/red light in the video,' he explained, revealing, 'We observed it for 2-3 minutes as it continued flying away, and then it was just gone.
'No noise, it was just gone.'
He also recalled how once the photos and video were secured on his wife's Galaxy Fold 4, he tried to do the same on his Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra.
However, he said, the phone 'died right in front of my eyes'.
Rushing to retrieve his charger, he continued to use his wife's phone to take 'tons of various zoomed photos and videos,' he recalled.
'What I have here is the best that came out of all that, this thing was really far away for a night time phone shot, so I'm pleased with what we did get.'
Speaking about the possibility that the craft was an Elon Musk-made satellite, he said: 'I don't believe this was Starlink.'
'I've watched a ton of Starlink videos since observing this, and our lights were rotating/blinking, not a static line of unchanging lights.
'After we got inside to see what we actually captured, my wife was shaking and crying from the experience,' he concluded.
'It was kind of scary, I couldn't fall asleep until 4am and it was my night to do the early feed for our twin boys.'
The Reddit post was soon met with awe by commenters.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13808765/montana-ufo-sighting-Choteau.html
https://www.thesun.co.uk/tech/30320832/woolly-mammoth-tasmanian-tiger-dodo-de-extinction/
Woolly mammoth, Tasmanian tiger, dodo and Christmas rat could be revived as ‘de-extinction’ list of lost beasts revealed
Updated: 15:20, 8 Sep 2024
The term "extinct" brings to mind ancient heavy-hitters like the mammoth and dodo, but scientists are working to bring back nearly every animal under the sun.
This includes a rodent often excluded from the conversation: the Christmas Island rat.
The creature is named for its place of origin, a chunk of land off the coast of Australia, where it developed strong teeth to feast on crabs.
The rodent was lost over a century ago when Europeans sailed to Christmas Island and introduced novel diseases.
De-extinction can be complicated. Its success hinges on the recovery of undamaged, complete DNA sequences.
But the best-preserved remains don't always have the best genetic starting materials.
Such is the case with mammoth carcasses found encased in ice. The extreme chill can render irreparable damage to DNA.
However, with the Christmas Island rat, which went extinct in 1903, scientists seem to have struck gold.
A study published in Current Biology in 2022 lays out a case for resurrecting the rodent.
A team in Norway has managed to obtain almost all of the rat's genome, but that's not all.
Because it diverged from surviving species fairly recently, the Christmas Island rat shares about 95% of its genome with the common brown rat.
Since some genes, like the gene that codes for sense of smell, are impossible to recover, scientists won't be able to generate a perfect replica.
The remaining DNA must be sequenced, meaning scientists must determine the order of the four chemical building blocks called bases.
Once scientists have figured out the pattern of these amino acids, they can compare it to the reference genome of the living species.
Hypothetically, all they must do is identify the parts of the genomes that don’t match up and edit the DNA of the living species to match that of the extinct one.
Scientists have yet to recreate a full genome of an extinct species, so an identical match seems unlikely.
The best results will be a cross between alive and extinct species with a high degree of genetic similarity - but this proves more difficult in some species.
The quest to bring back the woolly mammoth likely won't start with a clone.
Colossal Biosciences, a multi-million-dollar biotech firm based in Texas, is devising a way to bring back the megaherbivore.
The firm has obtained more than 60 partial woolly mammoth genomes, which will be used to edit elephant genomes in the lab.
Once scientists have settled on a DNA sequence, they will implant a hybrid elephant-mammoth embryo into an Asian or African elephant.
The company plans to produce its first calves by 2028 and frames de-extinction as a noble effort to correct past mistakes.
"For the first time in the history of humankind, we are in control of a science with the power to reverse and prevent biodiversity loss on a large scale," reads a statement on the company website.
"We can heal a hurting planet. We can protect the species living on it. We can ethically decipher and protect genetic codes. And we can begin to turn the clock back to a time when Earth lived and breathed more cleanly and naturally."
Another animal Colossal hopes to resurrect is the dodo, an ill-fated flightless bird last spotted in 1662.
The dodo was native to the island of Mauritius in the Indian Ocean. Isolation meant they had no natural predators - until settlers arrived.
Humans hunted the birds for their meat and introduced non-native animals that ate their eggs and outcompeted them for food.
Flightless and slow to reproduce, dodos were especially vulnerable, and humans succeeded in wiping them out in just a few decades.
Some naysayers argue the poorly-evolved birds were doomed from the start. However, scientists believe they were perfectly suited to their environment and could even outpace a human over rocky terrain.
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Now Colossal is aiming to bring this famed species back from the dead.
Last year, the firm reached a key milestone by fully sequencing the dodo's genome from remains in Denmark.
The next step was to compare the genetic information with the dodo’s closest relatives in the pigeon family.
Their target, the Nicobar pigeon, is an island-dwelling species with brilliant plumage.
cientists must remove primordial germ cells from an egg and edit them with the desired genetic traits in the lab.
Once this process is complete, they will inject them into an egg at the same developmental stage, which will give rise to hybrid offspring.
This is hypothetical, of course - scientists have yet to see how the process will pan out.
Colossal also aims to bring back the thylacine, a marsupial native to Oceania.
The thylacine, also known as the Tasmanian tiger, is one of the only extinct species we have surviving footage of.
The long, lanky marsupial had several signatures including a thin tail, striped lower back, and narrow snout.
Like the dodo, humans played a key role in the thylacine's demise.
The last captive specimen died in September 1936, purportedly from neglect, after being locked out of its sleeping shelter and exposed to freezing temperatures.
In 2022, Colossal announced a partnership with an Australian lab that pledged to de-extinct the thylacine and reintroduce it to the wild.
So far, this project has proven more feasible than reviving the woolly mammoth.
Marsupials are also born halfway through mammal embryogenesis, with development finishing in the mother's pouch.
In contrast to the months a mammoth must spend in the uterus, the thylacine only needs a few weeks.
As Colossal leads the charge, a question remains: what are the outcomes of reintroducing an animal after its ecological niche has vanished?
In the case of the woolly mammoth, some scientists believe the creature could mitigate climate change and find a role in the Arctic ecosystem.
Thousands of years ago, the huge herbivores prevented shrub and tree growth as they trampled the Earth, also serving as pollinators as they spread seeds in their dung.
The Arctic terrain has grown mossy and waterlogged in their absence. However, it is unclear if there is space for them in this unfamiliar environment - not to mention the possibility of causing more harm than good.
Rather than mitigate it, mammoths could contribute to global warming by eroding the permafrost during the warm season and releasing methane.
A team of researchers penned a 2017 article in Nature that questioned spending on de-extinction efforts when the same resources could be put into preserving living species.
The authors noted that "public funding for conservation of resurrected species would lead to fewer extant species that could be conserved, suggesting net biodiversity loss."
The only solution would be to fund both efforts equally, they concluded - but opportunity costs would likely outweigh any benefits.
"Potential sacrifices in conservation of extant species should be a crucial consideration in deciding whether to invest in de-extinction or focus our efforts on extant species," the authors wrote.
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