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Jimmy Dore says 9/11 still being used today to determine U.S. foreign policy

September 10, 2024

9/11 truth might keep us out of WWIII, he adds

In his fascinating interview during AE911Truth’s anniversary conference The 24th Hour, podcaster and comedian Jimmy Dore discussed how important it is that the truth about 9/11 continue to be exposed, even 23 years later.

“If we could find the people who actually did that it might keep us out of World War 3,” Dore explained. “It’s not something that’s yesterday’s news at all.”

He also talked about how the establishment does all it can to silence independent voices and crush dissent.

“You don’t get in trouble for lying in America, you get in trouble for telling the truth.

If you tell the truth about the establishment, you will be slandered, discredited, and eventually jailed if they can’t shut you up.”

For those who couldn’t watch the interview on Saturday, The 24th Hour can now be viewed on AE911Truth’s YouTube channel.

And, this week, we are releasing all the interviews and panel discussions as separate videos, so you can watch them in the order you prefer.

You won’t want to miss this important interview! And the interview with presidential candidate Jill Stein has already been posted on our YouTube channel.

https://www.ae911truth.org/news/1013-jimmy-dore-says-911-still-being-used-today-to-determine-us-foreign-policy

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VeSYNDwbyVA

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day

September 11, 2024

A Night Sky over the Tatra Mountains

A natural border between Slovakia and Poland is the Tatra Mountains. A prominent destination for astrophotographers, the Tatras are the highest mountain range in the Carpathians. In the featured image taken in May, one can see the center of our Milky Way galaxy with two of its famous stellar nurseries, the Lagoon and Omega Nebula, just over the top of the Tatras. Stellar nurseries are full of ionized hydrogen, a fundamental component for the formation of Earth-abundant water. As a fundamental ingredient in all known forms of life, water is a crucial element in the Universe. Such water can be seen in the foreground in the form of the Bialka River.

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

Margin’ up the Crater Rim!

Sep 10, 2024

To conclude its exploration of the mysterious margin unit before it ascends the rim of Jezero Crater, Perseverance made one last stop this past week to investigate these strange rocks at “Eremita Mesa.”

Since beginning its steep drive up the crater rim, Perseverance has been traversing along the edge of the margin unit (the margin of the margin!), an enigmatic unit rich in carbonates, a mineral group closely linked to habitability.

Here, the rover team scouted out a mound of rock called “Specter Chasm,” where Perseverance cleared away the dusty, weathered surface with its trusty abrading bit.

The resulting abraded patch, called Eremita Mesa, is pictured above being investigated by Perseverance’s proximity science instruments mounted on its robotic arm. This includes taking close-up images to examine the millimeter-scale particles that make up the rock, using the WATSON (Wide Angle Topographic Sensor for Operations and eNgineering) camera, which functions as Perseverance’s magnifying glass.

Before the rover began exploring, investigations using orbital satellite data had suggested the margin unit rocks may have formed in several different ways.

Theories the team has been exploring include that the unit formed on the shoreline of the ancient lake that once filled Jezero Crater, or instead that it was produced by volcanic processes such as pyroclastic flows or ashfall, or ancient lavas flowing into the crater.

Since Perseverance began its investigation of the unit in September 2023, more than 350 sols ago (1 sol = 1 Mars day), the Science Team has been scouring data collected by the rover’s instruments to help constrain the unit’s origin.

So far, this has remained largely a mystery, with the original rock textures potentially heavily affected by alteration since it formed more than 3 billion years ago.

Perseverance has already collected three exciting samples of this curious rock unit for future Earth return:

“Pelican Point,” “Lefroy Bay,” and “Comet Geyser,” and the team is hoping the data collected at Eremita Mesa could help further constrain the ancient processes on Mars that formed these strange rocks.

Next, it’s onwards and upwards for Perseverance as it faces a steep climb up the crater rim, where perhaps even more exotic and exciting rocks await!

https://science.nasa.gov/blog/margin-up-the-crater-rim/

NASA to Test Telemedicine, Gather Essential Health Data with Polaris Dawn Crew

Sep 10, 2024

NASA researchers will soon benefit from a suite of experiments flying aboard a new fully-commercial human spaceflight mission, strengthening future agency science as we venture to the Moon, Mars and beyond.

The experiments are flying as part of the Polaris Dawn mission which launched aboard a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft and Falcon 9 rocket earlier today.

The four-person Polaris Dawn crew of Jared Isaacman, Scott “Kidd” Poteet, Sarah Gillis, and Anna Menon will conduct science during the mission including essential health and human performance research for NASA’s Human Research Program.

The research will help NASA scientists better understand how exposure to space conditions affects the human body.

The crew will test new medical approaches and technology on telemedicine capabilities, gather data on space motion sickness, and better characterize flight-associated injury risks.

“Each mission, whether the crew is comprised of commercial or NASA astronauts, provides a key opportunity to expand our knowledge about how spaceflight affects human health,” said Jancy McPhee, associate chief scientist for human research at NASA.

“Information gathered from Polaris Dawn will give us critical insights to help NASA plan for deeper space travel to the Moon and Mars.”

The crew will test drive, a commercial device that can collect and integrate measurements of health, including blood pressure, heart rate, respiration rate, and temperature.

The technology also provides ultrasound imaging and larynx and throat-focused video camera capabilities, and includes an experimental telemedicine feature that could help diagnose crew members in near-real time.

To test this technology during the mission, crew members will compare vital sign collection from the device with data gathered from standard periodic health status exams.

The technology’s telemedicine feature, which relies on SpaceX’s Starlink communications system to connect with doctors and specialists on Earth, will also be tested during a simulation.

During the test, the device will attempt to offer an appropriate diagnosis based on crew inputs and available documentation.

“Crew members will need to be more self-reliant during lengthy missions, and we hope that telemedicine can provide crews with assistance,” said McPhee.

Another research project aims to better understand and prevent the motion sickness symptoms that many astronauts experience in space.

Participating crew members will describe their motion sickness symptoms, what interventions they tried to alleviate their symptoms, and whether any approaches helped.

A separate NASA-based research project will survey crew members after their mission to see whether they experienced any injuries or discomfort during re-entry to Earth.

“Our team will take the crew’s survey data and combine it with information gathered from sensors on the spacecraft.

This will allow us to link crews’ reported experiences and health outcomes with the spacecraft’s dynamics and landing loads,” said Preston Greenhalgh, an injury biomechanist at NASA who is leading this work.

Crew members also will participate in a variety of other health studies on behalf of the NASA-funded TRISH (Translational Research Institute for Health), a consortium with various academic institutions.

As part of that work, the Polaris Dawn mission will set a new baseline for collecting standard health data on commercial spaceflights, creating a complement to the datasets routinely collected from NASA astronauts and missions.

Polaris Dawn crew members participating in these TRISH studies will provide data about how spaceflight affects mental and physical health through a rigorous set of medical tests and scans completed before, after, and during the mission.

The work will include assessments of behavior, sleep, bone density, eye health, cognitive function, and other factors, as well as analysis of blood, urine, and respiration.

“We’re so grateful to the crew members who volunteer to be part of NASA’s work. The insights that we gain from each study may trigger breakthroughs that will help ensure future mission success,” said McPhee.

https://www.nasa.gov/humans-in-space/nasa-to-test-telemedicine-gather-essential-health-data-with-polaris-dawn-crew/

It's a good thing NASA sent the Boeing Starliner back to Earth empty because it had even more problems

September 11, 2024

Boeing’s first foray into manned space flight has been an unmitigated cock up. Starliner launched to the International Space Station with two astronauts onboard in June and landed back on Earth two months later without them after issues were uncovered with the craft. Now, more problems have surfaced during Starliner’s return, reaffirming NASA’s decision not to trust it with the lives of Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams.

Starliner landed back on Earth this weekend, almost three months later than it was initially scheduled to touch back on terra firma.

The delay in its return follows issues that arose with the craft’s thrusters during it’s docking with the ISS, as well as other problems that were uncovered while the ship was in space.

The problems with Starliner left NASA with no choice but to leave astronauts Wilmore and Williams up on the ISS as they didn’t believe it was safe bringing them home on Starliner.

Instead, they’ll hitch a ride home on a SpaceX ship next year, leaving them in orbit for almost eight months, instead of the eight days originally planned.

That decision is looking like a safe bet now, as Futurism reports that further issues arose with Starliner on its return to Earth this weekend:

Signals on the capsule’s return were mixed. On the one hand, according to NASA’s commercial crew program manager Steve Stich, it pulled off a “bullseye landing.”

On the other, the agency admitted that a new thruster had failed during its descent.

The capsule also experienced a temporary blackout of Starliner’s guidance system during reentry.

It’s an awkward situation for the space agency: would Starliner have been able to ferry NASA’s missing crew members in the end?

“I think we made the right decision not to have Butch and Suni on board,” Stich told reporters on Saturday.

“All of us feel happy about the successful landing. But then there’s a piece of us, all of us, that we wish it would have been the way we had planned it.”

Questions arose about Starliner’s condition after five out of 28 thrusters failed when it docked with the ISS back in June.

In the months that followed, engineers discovered that the failure was due to overheating in certain parts, which isn’t a good look on a rocket engine that checks notes burns stuff as part of its job.

Because of this and the extreme conditions the craft would experience during re-entry, NASA decided not to bring it back to Earth with Wilmore and Williams onboard, despite Boeing’s claims that it would be safe.

This differing opinion is only highlighting the chasm that exists between Boeing and NASA right now, reports Ars Technica:

Three NASA managers, including Stich, took questions from reporters in a press conference early Saturday following Starliner’s landing.

Two Boeing officials were also supposed to be on the panel, but they canceled at the last minute.

Boeing didn’t explain their absence, and the company has not made any officials available to answer questions since NASA chose to end the Starliner test flight without the crew aboard.

“We view the data and the uncertainty that’s there differently than Boeing does,” said Jim Free, NASA’s associate administrator, in an August 24 press conference announcing the agency’s decision on how to end the Starliner test flight.

It’s unusual for NASA officials to publicly discuss how their opinions differ from those of their contractors.

Joel Montalbano, NASA’s deputy associate administrator for space operations, said Saturday that Boeing deferred to the agency to discuss the Starliner mission in the post-landing press conference.

NASA was scheduled to operate further Starliner launches in collaboration with Boeing, with the next currently tentatively scheduled for August 2025.

However, there’s no certainty over that now as questions swirl about Boeing’s ambitions for space flight going forwards.

https://qz.com/boeing-starliner-nasa-astronauts-earth-land-problems-1851645559

Spain’s ‘sea of plastic’ in Almeria ‘wins’ NASA prize of being the most visible man-made object from the International Space Station

10 Sep, 2024 @ 16:30

The notion that the Great Wall of China is the only human-made structure visible from space has long been a myth.

Despite being one of the Wonders of the World, at about 21,200 kilometres long and with its tallest towers reaching just 800 metres, the Chinese marvel is just too narrow to be seen from space.

Instead, according to NASA, the most easily discernible man-made object from Earth’s orbit is something far less wondrous: the vast expanse of the greenhouses of El Ejido on Spain’s Almerian coast.

But the achievement is far from a laudable one – the region represents 370 square kilometres of white plastic so bright that it stands out against the Earth’s surface, even from the International Space Station

Quite literally ‘a sea’, the region is home to thousands upon thousands of greenhouses that stretch between the towns of El Ejido and La Mojonera.

The sea of plastic even extends south to Motríl and north to Níjar.

By some estimates, Almería’s greenhouses now produce between 2.5 million and 3.5 million tons of fruits and vegetables per year.

It is enough to make them a major source of off-season tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, and melons for households all over Europe.

But activists have long criticised the region for the enormous quantities of plastic employed, which seeps into the surrounding environment as it degrades.

“What is most visible is the field of greenhouses in southern Almería, that’s what you can see from all over the world,” said former Spanish astronaut Pedro Duque, who served aboard the International Space Station in 2003.

“The greenhouses of El Ejido are the only human construction that can be seen from space,” he confirmed to Spanish TV show Desafía tu mente.

He added the Great Wall is ‘just a wall, not that high, and made with the same materials as the earth that surrounds it.”

He dismissed his fellow astronauts who claimed ‘they know where it is and take photos there, but they don’t.’

NASA even confirmed a few years ago that the greenhouses ‘cover an area so large that they have probably even caused a localised cooling effect due to the fact that the white roofs reflect a substantial amount of sunlight.’

The region can also be seen in photos taken by NASA’s Aqua and Terra satellites.

Other large human-made structures, such as the Bingham Canyon mine in Utah and the Palm Jumeirah in Dubai, can also be seen from space, but none are as distinctive or as extensive as the greenhouses of El Ejido.

https://www.theolivepress.es/spain-news/2024/09/10/spains-sea-of-plastic-in-almeria-wins-nasa-prize-of-being-the-most-visible-man-made-object-from-the-international-space-station/

EU Commits €100M to Improve Competitiveness of European Space Industry

September 11, 2024

The European Commission announced 10 September that it has signed an agreement with SPACE AISBL to co-manage the European Partnership for Globally Competitive Space Systems initiative.

Referred to simply as the Space Partnership, the initiative aims to identify key priorities to invest in to accelerate the development of the European space industry.

SPACE AISBL was officially formed in 2023 as a partnership between SME4SPACE, Eurospace, ESRE, EASTRO, and EASN, organizations that represent a large slice of the European space supply chain.

In March 2024, the partnership presented the Space Partnership which, after consulting industry stakeholders, identified key challenges for the future of European space industry competitiveness.

The proposal was then presented to the European Commission for consideration as part of the 2025 Horizon Europe Work Programme.

On 10 September 2024, the European Commission signed a memorandum of understanding with SPACE AISBL agreeing to co-manage the Space Partnership under its Horizon Europe programme.

The Commission agreed to invest €100 million in the initiative, which will be allocated to topics proposed in the domains of satellite communication, Earth observation, and new space transportation systems.

According to SPACE AISBL president Jean-Charles Treuet, the agreement is a “positive signal for the competitiveness of the European space sector as it officially recognises the value of the inputs from the actors whose products are actually facing international competition.”

In addition to the €100 million from the European Commission, SPACE AISBL partners have committed to providing €120 million in in-kind contributions.

The full €220 million is expected to make an immediate impact with the funding being used for calls in 2025, 2026, and 2027.

According to the European Commission, the Space Partnership initiative is a “pilot case” that represents “a new way of working with industry and research institutes in the field of research and innovation.”

https://europeanspaceflight.com/eu-commits-e100m-to-improve-competitiveness-of-european-space-industry/

Mystery of dwarf planet Ceres' origin may finally be solved, thanks to retired NASA spacecraft

September 11, 2024

Scientists have used data from a long-retired NASA Dawn spacecraft to solve the mystery surrounding the origins of the strange dwarf planet Ceres.

Ceres currently resides in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, and most theories surrounding its creation suggest that it was also born there.

Yet, this dwarf planet has some strange characteristics that set it apart from other main asteroid belt objects.

This has led some scientists to speculate that the 596-mile (960-kilometer) wide dwarf planet may have originated at the outer edge of the solar system and may have migrated inwards to its current home.

Not only is Ceres the largest body in the main asteroid belt, but it also seems to have a more complex geology than its fellow occupants.

One particular puzzle is the presence of frozen ammonia on Ceres, which the Dawn spacecraft found when studying the dwarf planet between 2015 and 2018.

Ammonia is thought to be stable only in the outer solar system, away from the sun and radiation that causes it to evaporate. Its presence, therefore, suggested that Ceres could have formed far from its current home.

Now, data collected from one of the oldest impact craters on Ceres, the 40-mile (64 km) wide Consus crater, could dispel the migration theory and show the dwarf planet indeed formed in the main asteroid belt.

"At 450 million years, Consus Crater is not particularly old by geological standards, but it is one of the oldest surviving structures on Ceres," Max-Planck Institute researcher and team member Ranjan Sarkar said in a statement.

"Due to its deep excavation, it gives us access to processes that took place in the interior of Ceres over many billions of years - and is thus a kind of window into the dwarf planet's past."

Ceres is a cryovolcanic body with volcanoes that spew not scorching hot lava but frigid icy sludge.

This icy volcanism has driven the evolution of the dwarf planet over the course of billions of years and could still be occurring today.

Studying the Conus Crater, one of Ceres' smaller impact craters located on the dwarf planet's southern hemisphere, revealed remnants of a brine that has risen to the dwarf planet's surface from its interior, specifically a liquid layer between the mantle and crust, over billions of years.

While most of the deposits found in Ceres' scattered impact craters show light-colored, whitish salt deposits, the material in isolated spots of the Conus Crater is more yellowish in hue.

This material appears to be rich in ammonium, a type of ammonia with an extra hydrogen ion.

Scientists had previously figured the process needed to create ammonium wouldn't have worked as close to the sun as the main asteroid belt because it evaporates too quickly.

These new findings are the first to connect ammonium with salty brine from Ceres’ interior, supporting the idea that Ceres is an asteroid belt native.

To reach their findings, the team assumed the building blocks of ammonium were part of the material that originally formed Ceres.

Because it wouldn't have combined with the other materials in the dwarf planet's mantle, a thick layer of ammonium would have accumulated in the brine between the mantle and the dwarf planet's surface or crust.

This blanket of ammonium would stretch through the entirety of Ceres.

Over billions of years, Ceres's cryovolcanoes would have brought this brine and its ammonium content to the crust, where it would have seeped into layered crystalline structures called phyllosilicates.

"The minerals in Ceres’ crust possibly absorbed the ammonium over many billions of years like a kind of sponge," team leader and former Lead Investigator of Dawn’s camera team Andreas Nathues said.

These would then be exposed by impacts upon Ceres by other asteroids in the main asteroid belt.

Outside of the Consus Crater, conspicuous patches of the yellowish-bright material investigated by the team are found in deep craters of Ceres.

This suggests concentrations of ammonium are greater deeper in the core of the dwarf planet.

The speckles of this yellowish ammonium-rich material to the east of the Consus Crater are thought by the researchers to have been exposed by an asteroid collision around 280 million years ago.

https://www.space.com/dwarf-planet-ceres-origins-nasa-dawn-spacecraft

https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2023JE008150

What's behind the Martian methane mystery?

September 11, 2024

In late 2013 and early 2014, NASA's Curiosity rover detected an unexpected spike in methane on Mars — 10 times the usual level. Within a few months, the spike faded.

Since then, Curiosity has recorded six more of these events, but global measurements of the gas have failed to find anything conclusive.

The cause of these mysterious methane spikes may be a strange form of alien life — or it may just be interesting chemistry. Either way, something odd is happening on the Red Planet.

Methane is relatively straightforward: It's just a carbon atom attached to four hydrogen atoms, and both of those elements are incredibly common in the universe.

On Mars, there's plenty of carbon to go around — it forms the backbone of carbon dioxide, the main component of that planet's thin-but-persistent atmosphere.

Hydrogen is also common on Mars — and literally everywhere else in the universe. But hydrogen is a very friendly element and is usually found bound up in some other molecule.

To make methane, that hydrogen has to be freed.

Related: Mars' subsurface is 'burping' out methane, and scientists aren't sure why

Thankfully, on Earth, we already know of a process to generate free hydrogen. When water interacts with iron- and magnesium-rich rocks, oxidation can release hydrogen.

One of these processes involves olivine, a mineral that's rich in both iron and magnesium. When olivine and water interact, it leads to a process called serpentinization.

The case of olivine is especially interesting because it's a very common mineral on Mars.

Once free, the hydrogen can, under the right conditions, react with carbon dioxide through a process called Fischer-Tropsch synthesis, producing methane. But for all of this to work, Mars needs liquid water.

Although the planet was once water-rich, as evidenced by the dried-up riverbeds and erosion, it's certainly very dry now.

The only place where liquid water could exist on Mars is deep underground, sprinkled here and there in microscopic cracks and crevices, much like it is in Earth's mantle.

If liquid water does exist deep underground, then that water might be able to react with minerals and release hydrogen. The hydrogen could then go on to react with carbon dioxide and produce methane.

But what could trigger the sudden bursts of methane that Curiosity measured? A purely geologic process has difficulty making quick ramp-ups of methane, because Mars isn't geologically active the same way Earth is.

So maybe Mars is "alive." Certainly there is no life on the surface there now, although it's possible that Mars was home to life in its distant past.

If Mars still retains some living creatures, they must also live deep underground, far from the reaches of our current observations.

And that Martian life wouldn't be able to survive on photosynthesis, because sunlight can't penetrate to those depths. Nor could it use oxygen, as there isn't enough free oxygen on that planet to sustain it.

So any hidden life wouldn't be like most living creatures on Earth.

But thankfully, Earth has such a wide variety of life-forms that there is a class of organisms that could fit the bill: methanogens.

These single-celled organisms have very odd metabolisms — notably, they "eat" hydrogen and excrete methane.

In this scenario, methanogens would take the place of chemical processes to produce methane on Mars.

Like all living creatures on Earth, they would still need carbon, and they would still need liquid water to react with iron-rich minerals to generate liberated hydrogen.

But from there, the methanogens would consume the hydrogen and produce methane as a waste gas.

The brief spikes of methane observed on Mars tend to follow the seasons, with late spring and early summer seeming to have the highest levels of atmospheric methane.

While introducing life as a hypothesis to explain some astronomical mystery is always a reach, in this case it's a natural fit, since many living organisms naturally respond to seasonal changes.

Still, there is no other evidence for life on the Red Planet. And there are no signs of other byproducts of methanogens, like excess levels of ethane. So it's not a slam-dunk case for life on Mars.

Plus, there has to be some mechanism for destroying methane on Mars as quickly as it appears. While methane is unstable in the Martian atmosphere, current established methods, like Ub dissociation and oxidation, take centuries to play out.

So whatever method we concoct to explain the sudden appearance of methane has to be matched with a method for removing it.

Whatever's happening on Mars, the seasonal rise and fall of methane is a sign that there is much more to learn about our neighboring planet and that it's holding many secrets beneath its surface.

https://www.space.com/what-is-behind-martian-methane-mystery

Watch a Russian Soyuz rocket launch 3 astronauts to the ISS today

September 11, 2024

A NASA astronaut and two Russian cosmonauts will launch toward the International Space Station (ISS) today (Sept. 11), and you can watch the action live.

NASA astronaut Don Pettit will join Roscosmos cosmonauts Alexey Ovchinin and Ivan Vagner on the Russian Soyuz spacecraft, which will lift off atop a Soyuz rocket from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan today at 12:23 p.m. EDT (1623 GMT; 9:23 p.m. local Baikonur time).

The trio will join the Expedition 71 crew for a half-year mission aboard the ISS.

Today's Soyuz MS-26 launch will stream live here at Space.com, via NASA+ (formerly NASA Television). Coverage begins at 11:15 a.m. EDT (1515 GMT).

NASA will also broadcast the Soyuz's planned 3:33 p.m. EDT (1933 GMT) docking with the ISS starting at 2:30 p.m. EDT (1830 GMT), and the 5:50 p.m. EDT (2150 GMT) hatch opening between the two spacecraft, beginning at 5:30 p.m. EDT (2230 GMT).

Each crewmember has flown to space before. This will be Pettit's fourth launch and will add to his accumulated total of 370 days in space, according to NASA statistics.

His first mission, Expedition 6, was expected to last 2.5 months in space after a launch Nov. 23, 2002 on space shuttle Endeavour's STS-113 mission.

The landing was delayed to May 3, 2003, however, after the shuttle fleet was grounded in the wake of the space shuttle Columbia disaster that took place on Feb. 1, 2003, killing seven astronauts.

Pettit's arrival on Earth aboard the Soyuz TMA-1 spacecraft was safe, but eventful: a malfunction caused the spacecraft to land 295 miles (475 kilometers) off target, causing a lengthy delay for ground teams to reach the crew.

Pettit also flew to space on the shuttle mission STS-126 in November 2008, and (aboard Soyuz TMA-03M) with ISS Expeditions 30 and 31 from Dec. 21, 2011 to July 1, 2012.

Ovchinin's launches have all been aboard Soyuz.

His previous missions include ISS Expeditions 47 and 48 in 2016, the Soyuz MS-10 spacecraft launch on Oct. 11, 2018 that aborted safely after a rocket problem, and Expeditions 59 and 60 in 2019 — a successful retry for Ovchinin following that abort.

Vagner's previous launch was aboard Soyuz, for Expeditions 62 and 63, in 2020.

https://www.space.com/international-space-station-soyuz-ms-26-launch

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ma5CvIG0EMM

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