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IBM, NASA and Oak Ridge develop a new AI foundation model for weather
September 23, 2024 08:00 AM ET
A new foundation model for climate- and weather-focused AI capabilities has been developed by IBM in partnership with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and Oak Ridge National Laboratory, the company announced Monday.
The new model is designed to process data specific to climate modeling, in order to detect and predict severe weather patterns, improve the spatial resolution of global climate simulations and improve how physical processes are represented in numerical weather and climate models.
Beyond these applications, the foundation model is also designed to be scalable for other short- and long-term weather projections.
The model is available for download on Hugging Face, an open source AI code repository.
It is part of the proprietary IBM-NASA Prithvi family of AI foundation models, a weather-specific model series whose name stems from the Sanskrit word for “Earth.”
“Advancing NASA’s Earth science for the benefit of humanity means delivering actionable science in ways that are useful to people, organizations, and communities.
The rapid changes we’re witnessing on our home planet demand this strategy to meet the urgency of the moment,” said Karen St. Germain, director of the Earth Science Division of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, in a press release.
“The NASA foundation model will help us produce a tool that people can use: weather, seasonal, and climate projections to help inform decisions on how to prepare, respond, and mitigate.”
Trained on 40 years of Earth observation data from NASA's Modern-Era Retrospective analysis for Research and Applications, researchers say the model has a specialized architecture that keeps it adjustable for a diverse amount of global, regional and local weather modeling applications.
One study, documented in a paper unveiling the foundation model, reportedly showed its ability to accurately reconstruct global surface temperatures using a sample data set derived from just 5% original data.
There are two specific tasks the model is designed and trained to handle.
One is climate and weather downscaling, which features inferring high-resolution outputs from low-resolution inputs.
Data for these types of problems includes temperature, weather prediction and surface winds, which all have highly variable resolutions.
A model handling these data would translate it at up to twelve times the resolution quality, regardless of the resolution of the input data.
The second application, gravity wave parameterization, focuses on using existing numerical climate models and data to illustrate the atmosphere’s gravity waves.
Improved gravity wave generation will in turn improve the accuracy of input numerical weather models through better estimations of gravity wave generation and its impact.
“This space has seen the emergence of large AI models that focus on a fixed dataset and single use case — primarily forecasting,” said Juan Bernabe-Moreno, the director of IBM Research Europe and IBM's Accelerated Discovery Lead for Climate and Sustainability.
“We have designed our weather and climate foundation model to go beyond such limitations so that it can be tuned to a variety of inputs and uses.”
This collaboration moves in sync with the Biden administration’s efforts to prioritize the innovation stemming from public-private sector partnerships.
https://www.nextgov.com/artificial-intelligence/2024/09/ibm-nasa-and-oak-ridge-develop-new-ai-foundation-model-weather/399723/
Expedition 71 Soyuz Landing
Sep 23, 2024
NASA astronaut Tracy C. Dyson is seen smiling and holding a gifted matryoshka doll outside the Soyuz MS-25 spacecraft after she landed with Roscosmos cosmonauts Oleg Kononenko and Nikolai Chub, in a remote area near the town of Zhezkazgan, Kazakhstan on Monday, Sept. 23, 2024.
Dyson is returning to Earth after logging 184 days in space as a member of Expeditions 70-71 aboard the International Space Station and Chub and Kononenko return after having spent the last 374 days in space.
https://www.nasa.gov/image-article/expedition-71-soyuz-landing/
United States House of Representatives Special Events Statue Unveilng of Johnny Cash
September 24, 2024
Country music legend Johnny Cash will receive a statue in his honor in the United States capitol.
Cash was born February 26, 1932, in Kingsland, a small town roughly 60 miles south of Little Rock, Arkansas. During his lifetime, he sold 90 million records worldwide. His music spanning the genres of country, blues, rock, and gospel, Cash was inducted into Country Music Hall of Fame in 1980, and into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1992. He received numerous awards, among them, 13 Grammys and 9 Country Music Association Awards. Cash died in 2003 at age 71.
The work of Little Rock sculptor Kevin Kresse, Cash’s eight-foot-tall statue depicts him with a guitar across his back and a Bible in hand.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JPUBCkqa2pg
US, Republic of Korea Sign Statement to Advance Aerospace Cooperation
Sep 23, 2024
NASA and the Republic of Korea’s newly created Korea AeroSpace Administration (KASA) signed a joint statement of intent Thursday affirming their interest to advance cooperation in space exploration, science, and aeronautics.
The signing took place at NASA Headquarters in Washington during the KASA’s first visit since its creation in May 2024.
“Building on years of work together both on Earth and in space, we are proud to significantly grow our partnership with the Republic of Korea and its new space agency,” said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson.
“We look forward to the discoveries and innovation that our two nations will accomplish in this exciting time for space exploration.”
The countries will discuss potential cooperation in a range of areas including NASA’s Moon to Mars Architecture, space life sciences and medical operations, lunar surface science, utilization of Korea’s deep space antenna, future commercial low Earth orbit activities, and other fields of science such as heliophysics.
The statement also acknowledges a shared commitment to the Artemis Accords, to which the Republic of Korea was an early signatory.
NASA, in coordination with the U.S. Department of State and seven other founding member nations, established the Artemis Accords in 2020, reinforcing the commitment by signatory nations to the Registration Convention, the Rescue and Return Agreement, as well as best practices and norms of responsible behavior, including the public release of scientific data.
“The signing of the joint statement marks a pivotal moment in opening a new chapter for the Republic of Korea-U.S. aerospace alliance.
It presents a vital opportunity for Korea to emerge as a responsible space-faring nation, and also for humanity to pursue scientific discoveries and pioneer the future,” said KASA Administrator Youngbin Yoon.
“The Korea AeroSpace Administration will continue to collaborate globally for sustainable space activities and strengthen Korea’s role on the international space stage.”
In attendance at the ceremony were top officials from the Korea Aerospace Research Institute (KARI) and the Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute (KASI).
The organizations worked with NASA to share data from the Korea Pathfinder Lunar Orbiter and leverage the agency’s Deep Space Network.
The U.S. and the Republic of Korea have built and placed satellites in orbit that can track air pollution in North America and Asia and making that data and knowledge available to the world.
NASA’s recently launched TEMPO (Tropospheric Emissions: Monitoring of Pollution) mission, and KARI’s GEMS (Geostationary Environment Monitoring Spectrometer), are improving life on Earth by revolutionizing the way scientists observe air quality from space, solving Earth’s greatest challenges.
https://www.nasa.gov/news-release/us-republic-of-korea-sign-statement-to-advance-aerospace-cooperation/
https://science.nasa.gov/missions/maven/celebrating-10-years-at-mars-with-nasas-maven-mission/
Celebrating 10 Years at Mars with NASA’s MAVEN Mission
Sep 23, 2024
A decade ago, on Sept. 21, 2014, NASA’s MAVEN (Mars Atmospheric and Volatile EvolutioN) spacecraft entered orbit around Mars, beginning its ongoing exploration of the Red Planet’s upper atmosphere.
The mission has produced a wealth of data about how Mars’ atmosphere responds to the Sun and solar wind, and how these interactions can explain the loss of the Martian atmosphere to space.
Today, MAVEN continues to make exciting new discoveries about the Red Planet that increase our understanding of how atmospheric evolution affected Mars’ climate and the previous presence of liquid water on its surface, potentially determining its prior habitability.
“It is an incredibly exciting time for the MAVEN team as we celebrate 10 years of Martian science and see the tremendous impact this mission has had on the field,” said Shannon Curry, the principal investigator of MAVEN and a researcher at the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado Boulder.
“We also look forward to the future discoveries MAVEN will bring.”
In celebration of this mission milestone, we recap some of the most significant scientific results of this unique and long-lasting Mars aeronomy mission.
Extreme atmospheric erosion
One of MAVEN’s first big results was discovering that the erosion of Mars’ atmosphere increases significantly during solar storms.
The team studied how the solar wind — a stream of charged particles continually streaming from the Sun — and solar storms continually strip away Mars’ atmosphere, and how this process played a key role in altering the Martian climate from a potentially habitable planet to today’s cold, arid planet.
Sputtering to space
To better understand how Mars lost much of its atmosphere, MAVEN measured isotopes of argon gas in the upper Martian atmosphere. Argon is a noble gas, meaning it rarely reacts with other constituents in the Martian atmosphere.
The only way it can be removed is by atmospheric sputtering — a process where ions crash into the Martian atmosphere at high enough speeds that they knock gas molecules out of the atmosphere.
When the MAVEN team analyzed argon isotopes in the upper atmosphere, they were able to estimate that roughly 65% of the argon originally present had been lost through sputtering over the planet’s history.
A new type of aurora
MAVEN has discovered several types of auroras that flare up when energetic particles plunge into the atmosphere, bombarding gases and making them glow.
The MAVEN team showed that protons, rather than electrons, create auroras at Mars.
On Earth, proton auroras only occur in very small regions near the poles, whereas at Mars they can happen everywhere.
Martian dust storm
In 2018, a runaway series of dust storms created a dust cloud so large that it enveloped the planet.
The MAVEN team studied how this “global” dust storm affected Mars’ upper atmosphere to understand how these events affect how the escape of water to space.
It confirmed that heating from dust storms can loft water molecules far higher into the atmosphere than usual, leading to a sudden surge in water lost to space.
Map of Martian winds
MAVEN researchers created the first map of wind circulation in the upper atmosphere of Mars.
The new map is helping scientists better understand the Martian climate, including how terrain on the planet’s surface is disturbing high-altitude wind currents.
The results provide insight into how the dynamics of the upper Martian atmosphere have influenced the Red Planet’s climate evolution in the past and present.
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Twisted tail
Mars has an invisible magnetic “tail” that is twisted by its interaction with the solar wind.
Although models predicted that magnetic reconnection causes Mars’ magnetotail to twist, it wasn’t until MAVEN arrived that scientists could confirm that the predictions were correct.
The process that creates the twisted tail could also allow some of Mars’ already thin atmosphere to escape to space.
Mapping electric currents
Researchers used MAVEN data to create a map of electric current systems in the Martian atmosphere.
These form when solar wind ions and electrons smash into the planet’s induced magnetic field, causing the particles to flow apart.
The resulting electric currents, which drape around the planet, play a fundamental role in the atmospheric loss that transformed Mars from a world that could have supported life to an inhospitable desert.
Disappearing solar wind
MAVEN recently observed the unexpected “disappearance” of the solar wind. This was caused by a type of solar event so powerful that it created a void in its wake as it traveled across the solar system.
MAVEN’s measurements showed that when it reached Mars, the solar wind density dropped significantly.
This disappearance of the solar wind allowed the Martian atmosphere and magnetosphere to balloon out by thousands of kilometers.
Ultraviolet views of the Red Planet
MAVEN captured stunning views of Mars in two ultraviolet images taken at different points along the Red Planet’s orbit around the Sun.
By viewing the planet in ultraviolet wavelengths, scientists gain insight into the Martian atmosphere and view surface features in remarkable ways.
Mars’ response to solar storms
In May 2024, a series of solar events triggered a torrent of energetic particles that quickly traveled to Mars.
Many of NASA’s Mars missions, including MAVEN, observed this celestial event and captured images of glowing auroras over the planet.
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Northrop Grumman Completes Hybrid SATCOM Demonstration, Connecting to Commercial Space Internet
24/09/2024
Northrop Grumman Corporation (NYSE: NOC) successfully completed its first over-the-air demonstration of a hybrid satellite communications (SATCOM) solution, providing seamless connection with Viasat and a commercial proliferated low Earth orbit (PLEO) communications provider.
The demonstration validated resilient, uninterrupted connectivity while rapidly switching between constellations and orbits.
As a prime systems integrator, Northrop Grumman’s hybrid SATCOM solution enhances communication for pilots and operators between space, air and ground.
This capability increases mission effectiveness by making it exceedingly difficult for adversarial threats to disrupt U.S. communications across multiple orbits, providers and frequency bands.
Demonstrated for the Air Force Research Laboratory, this technology is an integral part of the Defense Experimentation Using Commercial Space Internet program, also known as Global Lightning.
Expert:
Steven Conn, director of advanced communications and signals intelligence, Northrop Grumman: “Northrop Grumman is responding to the U.S. Air Force’s need for rapid deployment of resilient communications to develop and field the technologies required by our warfighters to meet today’s challenging missions.
This successful test, leveraging a diverse team of commercial and defense SATCOM providers, is critical for the pace of maturity on the Global Lightning program and the ability to begin flight testing in the near future.”
Details:
The Northrop Grumman hybrid SATCOM terminal is capable of hosting nine modems with network routing, security and encryption for mission networks.
The terminal alternates among the modems if network failures occur to maintain resilient connectivity for the user.
The demonstration proved communications diversity with a connection to a commercial PLEO communications provider at Ku frequencies in low-Earth orbit and Viasat at Ka frequencies through its ViaSat-3 F1 satellite in geosynchronous orbit.
The hybrid SATCOM terminal includes a Northrop Grumman radio outfitted with an antenna provided by GetSat.
Northrop Grumman is a leading global aerospace and defense technology company.
Our pioneering solutions equip our customers with the capabilities they need to connect and protect the world, and push the boundaries of human exploration across the universe.
Driven by a shared purpose to solve our customers’ toughest problems, our employees define possible every day.
https://www.edrmagazine.eu/northrop-grumman-completes-hybrid-satcom-demonstration-connecting-to-commercial-space-internet
https://www.earth.com/news/low-gravity-conditions-in-space-cause-heart-damage/
https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2404644121
Low gravity conditions in space cause heart damage
09-24-2024
The low gravity conditions of space may cause significant damage to heart tissue, according to a new study.
Cardiac tissues exposed to a low-gravity environment showed signs of mitochondrial impairment and oxidative stress, which are key features of heart failure.
For the investigation, experts at Johns Hopkins University arranged for 48 human bioengineered heart tissue samples to spend 30 days aboard the International Space Station.
Heart tissue in a low-gravity environment
Upon analysis, the experts observed that the low-gravity environment weakened the heart tissues and disrupted their normal rhythmic beats compared to control samples kept on Earth.
According to the scientists, the heart tissues “really don’t fare well in space.”
Over time, the tissues on the space station beat with only about half the strength of their Earth-bound counterparts.
Impacts of long-duration spaceflight
“With current plans for manned missions to Mars and beyond, the need to better understand, prevent, and counteract the harmful effects of long-duration spaceflight on the body is becoming increasingly important,” noted the study authors.
Previous research has shown that astronauts returning to Earth often experience age-related conditions such as reduced heart muscle function and arrhythmias (irregular heartbeats), some of which dissipate after their return.
However, scientists have been seeking ways to study these effects at a cellular and molecular level in order to develop strategies to keep astronauts safe on long-duration space flights, explained project leader Professor Deok-Ho Kim.
Bioengineered heart tissues
The project used heart muscle cells (cardiomyocytes) derived from human induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) – a process developed by Jonathan Tsui, a former PhD student in Kim’s lab at the University of Washington.
Tsui later continued the space biology research with Professor Kim at Johns Hopkins University.
The bioengineered heart tissues were placed in a miniaturized tissue chip that mimicked the environment of an adult human heart.
The tissue chip was designed to string the cells between two posts, allowing the researchers to collect data on how the tissues contracted.
Sending heart tissues to space
To send the cardiac tissues aboard the SpaceX CRS-20 mission, which launched in March 2020, Tsui personally hand-carried the tissue chambers to Florida, where he cared for them for a month at the Kennedy Space Center.
Once aboard the space station, real-time data was collected every 30 minutes for 10 seconds, measuring the strength of the tissue contractions, known as twitch forces, and detecting any irregular beating patterns.
Astronaut Jessica Meir helped maintain the experiment by changing the liquid nutrients surrounding the tissues weekly and preserving samples at specific intervals for later gene and imaging analysis.
Protecting the viability of the tissues
On Earth, a second set of heart tissues (developed the same way) was housed in identical chambers to serve as a control.
When the space-bound tissue chambers returned to Earth, Tsui resumed collecting data from the tissues.
“An incredible amount of cutting-edge technology in the areas of stem cell and tissue engineering, biosensors and bioelectronics, and microfabrication went into ensuring the viability of these tissues in space,” said Professor Kim, whose team developed the tissue chip used for this project and future studies.
Devin Mair, a former PhD student in Kim’s lab and now a postdoctoral fellow at Johns Hopkins, analyzed the tissues’ ability to contract.
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Weakened tissues and potential heart disease
The heart muscle tissues in space not only lost strength but also developed irregular beating patterns, known as arrhythmias – disruptions that could potentially lead to heart failure.
Typically, the time between one beat and the next is about one second, but in the space-bound tissues, this time increased nearly fivefold.
However, when the tissues were returned to Earth, their beating rhythm gradually returned to near-normal levels.
The researchers also discovered that sarcomeres – the protein bundles in muscle cells that facilitate contraction – became shorter and more disordered in the space-bound tissues, a hallmark of heart disease.
Additionally, the mitochondria, which are responsible for producing energy in cells, became larger, rounder, and lost their characteristic folds, further indicating impaired energy production.
Inflammation and oxidative damage
Finally, Mair, along with assistant research professor Eun Hyun Ahn, and PhD student Zhipeng Dong, analyzed gene activity in the tissues.
The heart tissues that had spent time in space showed increased expression of genes associated with inflammation and oxidative damage, both of which are common markers of heart disease and are consistently observed in post-flight health checks of astronauts.
Shielding the heart from damage in space
Professor Kim’s team sent a second batch of 3D-engineered heart tissues to the space station in 2023 to screen for drugs that might protect the cells from the harmful effects of low gravity.
This ongoing research may lead to therapies that not only help astronauts maintain heart function during spaceflight but could also benefit people on Earth as they age.
The team is also continuing to refine their “tissue on a chip” system while exploring the effects of radiation on heart tissues at the NASA Space Radiation Laboratory.
The space station orbits within the Earth’s magnetic field, which shields its occupants from most space radiation, but further research is needed to understand the impact of cosmic radiation on astronauts’ cardiovascular health during longer missions outside this protective zone.
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House passes NASA authorization bill
September 24, 2024
The House passed a new NASA authorization bill Sept. 23 that would largely keep the agency on course in its human spaceflight and science programs while directing it to prepare several reports.
The House passed the NASA Reauthorization Act of 2024, H.R. 8958, on a 366–21 vote.
That far exceeded the two-thirds threshold for approval required under suspension of the rules, the legislative procedure used to take up the bill.
In remarks on the House floor, Rep. Frank Lucas (R-Okla.), chair of the House Science Committee, called the bill essential to keep NASA on track to return humans to the moon through the Artemis campaign ahead of Chinese lunar exploration efforts.
“America’s role as a space leader cannot be taken for granted,” he said.
“The next nation to land on the lunar surface will play a key role in guiding the norms and practices that may govern lunar and space exploration for decades to come.
We cannot cede U.S. leadership at this time.”
He argued that the bill provides NASA with “thoughtful, strategic direction across NASA’s mission areas” that go beyond Artemis to human spaceflight in low Earth orbit, science programs and technology development.
The bill, introduced in July, would make few major changes in those efforts. Instead, it formally authorizes several existing NASA initiatives, like the commercial development of spacesuits for Artemis and the International Space Station, a deorbit vehicle for the ISS, the Commercial Low Earth Orbit Destinations program to support work on commercial station that will succeed the ISS and the ongoing Commercial Lunar Payload Services program.
The bill also directs a wide range of reports from NASA, on topics ranging from non-NASA demand for the Space Launch System and potential “alternative approaches” to current Human Landing System lunar lander projects to a summary of recent studies NASA has done on servicing and reboosting the Hubble Space Telescope.
No members spoke on the House floor against the bill.
“While not perfect, this is a good bill that builds on the NASA Authorization Act of 2022 that was enacted as part of the CHIPS and Science Act,” said Rep. Valerie Foushee (D-N.C.) during the brief debate on the bill, urging members to vote for it.
The bill now goes to the Senate, although it was not clear if senators would seek to pass it or advance a separate NASA authorization bill.
“I hope that the other chamber will seize this opportunity to take up this important piece of legislation before the end of this year so that NASA will have the certainty that it needs to carry out the bold activities that we’ve tasked it with,” said Rep. Brian Babin (R-Texas), chair of the House Science Committee’s space subcommittee, on the House floor.
The House also passed on a voice vote H.R. 6219, the Accessing Satellite Data to Enable New Discoveries Act (ASCEND) Act.
The bill formally authorizes NASA’s ongoing Commercial Smallsat Data Acquisition Program, where the agency buys commercial satellite imagery and other data for use in scientific research.
https://spacenews.com/house-passes-nasa-authorization-bill-3/
https://science.house.gov/press-releases?ID=135D7BEE-4A9C-46DE-B6F3-824074B6D026
https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-bill/8958/text/rh?format=txt&overview=closed
IARPA’s William Benard Shares Insights on AI, Data & Space
September 24, 2024
As the Intelligence Community continues to push modernization, organizations, including the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity, are working towards making more innovative investments in future capabilities and partnerships.
During a keynote address at the Potomac Officers Club’s 2024 Intel Summit, Dr. William Benard, the director of IARPA’s Office of Collections Research, spoke on how the agency’s key initiatives and program designs contribute to developing new technologies throughout the intelligence community.
Benard began his address by reintroducing IARPA’s alignment with the 2023 National Intelligence Strategy. The strategy sets six goals to advance the IC’s capabilities to prepare for threats in a time of “intensifying strategic competition” worldwide.
“Competition is fundamentally premised on emerging technology,” Benard emphasized.
Goal four of the strategy — to diversify, expand and strengthen partnerships — was a critical sentiment to start Bernard’s keynote.
“We have to work with others, and you’ll see in large language models that data sets are now transnational. In the U.S., they cannot produce enough data to feed the next generation of large language models.
We have to work with our partners. We have to federate in order to have control and access to technologies at these extreme global scales,” Benard said.
Benard also gave an overview of the Office of Collections Research. The OCR has strategic and tactical values, including manufacturing autonomy, microelectronics, space systems and quantum services.
In particular, Benard drove home the urgency behind OCR’s recent strategic developments with the agency’s space systems and environment programs, especially in light of the rising threat of space debris.
“So the two key programs we have there are looking at space and environment, looking at debris, trying to track things between one millimeter and 10 millimeters.
Currently, we track things greater than 10 millimeters. Things that are smaller than that currently are not possible,” Benard stated.
“[With] something in that one to 10-millimeter range, the average velocity is over 20,000 miles per hour in geo orbit. What does that mean?
It means that’s an incredible amount of energy, equivalent to something like a hand grenade,” he added. “So even though it’s really small, that hits your space platform, you’re having a really bad day.”
With the recent surge in the implementation of artificial intelligence worldwide, Benard also said the nation could expect another “AI winter” — a period of reduced interest and research in the capability.
Benard closed his remarks by noting that instead of focusing on quantity in the development of large language models, the IC should shift its focus to data.
“That’s really where the intelligence community has an opportunity,” Benard said.
“It’s getting that high quality data, high fidelity, well-tagged and multidimensional data sets, which I think is really going to be the future.”
https://www.govconwire.com/2024/09/iarpas-william-benard-shares-insights-on-ai-data-and-space/
SpaceX fishes Starship Super Heavy booster out of the sea
September 24, 2024
SpaceX has pulled some pieces of its Starship megarocket from the sea.
On Sunday evening (Sept. 22), SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk posted on X a photo of dripping and damaged rocket hardware being lifted out of the ocean.
The mangled metal is part of the first-stage booster that flew on the most recent Starship test flight, Musk said.
"Like the ruins of a futuristic, long-dead civilization," he wrote in another post a few hours later.
SpaceX is developing Starship to get people and payloads to the moon, Mars and beyond.
The vehicle consists of two stainless-steel elements — a huge first-stage booster called Super Heavy and a 165-foot-tall (50 meters) upper-stage spacecraft called Starship, or just Ship.
Both of these stages are designed to be fully and rapidly reusable, and both are powered by SpaceX's powerful new Raptor engines — 33 for Super Heavy and six for Ship.
Starship, which stands 400 feet tall (122 meters) tall when fully stacked, has flown four test flights to date, all of them from SpaceX's Starbase site in South Texas.
These missions lifted off in April and November of 2023 and March and June of this year.
The Super Heavy piece featured in the newly posted photo is from the June liftoff, which SpaceX declared a complete success.
Ship reached orbital velocity, and both it and Super Heavy survived their descent through Earth's atmosphere, hitting the waves intact — Ship in the Indian Ocean and Super Heavy in the Gulf of Mexico.
But those splashdowns did some damage, as the newly posted photo shows.
The hunk of Super Heavy featured in the image sports 14 Raptors; it's unclear if SpaceX collected the other 19 as well, or if those engines are still resting on the ocean floor.
It's also unclear why SpaceX went to the trouble of salvaging the hardware from the sea; Musk did not provide a reason in his X posts.
"Some SpaceX watchers are speculating it could be after the booster's engines as part of its research to glean additional knowledge or simply to ensure they don't fall into the hands of rival companies or other countries," Brandon Lingle of the San Antonio Express-News wrote in an article published on Sunday.
That piece told the story of a group of independent filmmakers who heard about the Super Heavy recovery operation in the Gulf and chartered a boat to observe it.
SpaceX is gearing up to launch Starship's fifth test flight.
The company says that it's been ready to fly since early August, but it likely won't get approval from the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) until late November.
The FAA says it needs more time to assess the launch's potential environmental impact and to review modifications to the Starship vehicle and flight plan that SpaceX made after Flight 4.
https://www.space.com/spacex-starship-super-heavy-booster-retrieved-sea-photo
https://www.space.com/scientists-find-evidence-of-extreme-solar-storms-could-be-disasterous-for-tech-based-society
Scientists have found evidence of past extreme solar storms. Their return could be disastrous for our technology-based societies
September 24, 2024
In September 1859, the same year that Darwin published On the Origin of Species, telegraph systems across Europe and North America stopped working and started sparking, leading to fires in some cases.
Just hours before, researchers had observed the first ever confirmed solar flare – an intense burst of radiation emitted from the Sun.
It was a warning something big was about to hit our planet. Most of the northern and southern skies lit up with brilliant auroras (northern and southern lights) signalling that a massive solar storm was underway.
This storm, later named the Carrington event, was one of the strongest in documented history.
However, in a recent article in Nature, we have shown that in the not-so-distant past, the Earth was battered by much more extreme solar storms.
Evidence of these storms has come, in particular, from analysing levels of radioactive carbon – known as radiocarbon, or carbon-14 – in tree rings.
Solar storms cause disturbances in the Earth’s magnetic shield, or magnetosphere.
One frequent way they are caused is by coronal mass ejections – outpourings of charged particles from the Sun – that make their way to Earth and penetrate the magnetosphere.
Extreme solar storms could spell disaster for our highly technological society because they have the potential to damage satellites and bring down communications networks and global electricity grids..
The strength of some past extreme solar storms detected in tree rings suggest they would have played havoc with our technological infrastructure on a scale never seen before.
One extreme solar storm known to have occurred in AD774, for example, would have dwarfed the Carrington event.
Measuring radiocarbon
Radiocarbon, or carbon dating, has been widely used for decades to age objects that were once alive, such as bone, wood and leather.
When plants and animals die, the radiocarbon inside them decays at a predictable rate.
So by measuring how much radiocarbon is left in an object such as bone, scientists can estimate how long ago the organism died.
However, in the last decade, scientists have discovered that extreme solar storms can affect the amount of radiocarbon absorbed into living organisms such as trees.
This provides researchers with the opportunity to search for extreme solar events not recorded by the history books and to precisely date them.
The amount of radiocarbon in the atmosphere varies over time, which can make radiocarbon dating give misleading ages.
There have therefore been extensive efforts over the years to “calibrate” the radiocarbon record to make it more accurate.
This means relating it to other material of known age. These might be trees which can be dated through their growth rings, or stalagmites and corals which have been dated using other methods.
When combined with the science of determining ages from tree rings (dendrochronology), the radiocarbon signature of an extreme solar storm can provide a reference point to the exact year.
This could help make radiocarbon dating even more accurate.
By reviewing the available evidence for these extreme solar storms we can now try to figure out how often these events occur.
The evidence tells us many things about the global carbon cycle, ocean and atmospheric circulation (how heat is redistributed over the Earth’s surface), and the workings of the Sun.
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Solar storms change radiocarbon in trees
In 2012, a team led by Fusa Miyake, at Nagoya University in Japan, discovered that extreme solar storms could produce abrupt changes in the radiocarbon concentrations found within tree rings.
Before this, radiocarbon production rates were not thought to vary substantially over short time periods and so annual measurements of past radiocarbon were unlikely to be of particular interest.
They identified the massive spike in radiocarbon production in the atmosphere associated with the AD774 extreme storm.
Other extreme events have since been confirmed to have occurred in AD993, 660BC, 5259BC and 7176BC.
The most extreme solar storm we have detected in the radiocarbon record took place around 14,370 years ago, towards the end of the last ice age.
We do not yet know if these events are simply larger-scale versions of regular solar storms – so-called “Black Swan” events – or if they are caused by distinct physical phenomena.
As more extreme solar storms are identified from the radiocarbon record, they will add to our knowledge of physical processes occurring in our parent star.
One of the biggest threats from a large solar storm is its potential to instantly kill the entire satellite fleet (except for those low-altitude satellites that are permanently protected by the geomagnetic field), as well as to bring down power grids. Being able to forecast these events and give advance warning to grid operators is vital.
In coming years, the radiocarbon record could well reveal more extreme solar storms.
The scientific community is racing to analyse old trees from different regions of the world with the goal of strengthening existing evidence and discovering new extreme solar storms of the past.
Enhancing our understanding of these extreme events is not only important for precise radiocarbon dating but also for understanding processes happening on the Sun and on our own planet.
It can also assist us in preparing for the next extreme solar storm. We can’t yet forecast when it will happen, but new insights into the past tell us that there will be one sooner or later.
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China launches 10 satellites on 2 rockets less than 6 hours apart
September 23, 2024
China launched separate sets of Earth-observation and "Internet of Things" satellites into orbit on Friday (Sept. 20) on two different missions.
The action began at 12:11 a.m EDT (0411 GMT, or 12:11 p.m. Beijing time) on Friday, when a Long March 2D rocket lifted off from Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center in northern China.
Insulation tiles fell away from the rocket's payload fairing as it climbed into cloudy skies above the spaceport.
Aboard were six remote-sensing satellites for Changguang Satellite Technology (CGST), a commercial spinoff from the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
The Jilin-1 Kuanfu (wideband) 02B satellites numbers 1-6 add to CGST's Jilin-1 commercial remote-sensing constellation, which is planned to consist of 300 satellites when completed, and provide high-resolution imagery.
The company was founded in 2014 and has already launched more than 100 satellites.
U.S. Space Force space domain tracking picked up objects associated with the launch in near-circular, 339 by 330-mile (545 by 531 kilometers) near-polar orbits.
This choice of orbit, common for Earth observation and remote sensing, allows the satellites to image the same spots on the planet at the same time of day repeatedly.
China's second launch of the day took place just under six hours later.
A Kuaizhou 1A solid rocket launched at 5:43 a.m. EDT (0943 GMT, or 5:43 p.m. Beijing time) from Xichang Satellite Launch Center in the country's southwest, according to Expace, the commercial launch provider affiliated with the state-owned defense giant CASIC.
Aboard were four Tianqi satellites, numbered 29-32, for Guodian Gaoke, a Chinese commercial satellite operator.
The satellites provide low-bandwidth communication to connect Internet of Things (IoT) devices in remote or hard-to-reach locations.
The U.S. Space Force tracked the satellites from the launch in 529 by 523-mile-altitude (852 by 842 km) orbits inclined by 45 degrees.
Guodian Gaoke — full name Beijing Guodian Hi-Tech Technology Co., Ltd. — aims to build a 38-satellite constellation.
The satellites serve the agriculture, logistics and transportation fields, providing real-time data collection and monitoring, which can improve operational efficiency in remote areas.
The rocket was sponsored by the children's nutrition brand Inne, according to Expace. The launches were China's 42nd and 43rd of the year.
https://www.space.com/china-two-launches-10-satellites-september-2024
NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover is enroute to conduct 1st crater rim study at 'Dox Castle'
September 23, 2024
NASA's Perseverance Mars rover will soon encounter rare rubble dumped on the Red Planet by an ancient asteroid impact, kicking off a new phase of science observations as the rover continues its arduous trek to the western edge of Jezero Crater.
Scientists working on the mission announced last week that Perseverance is enroute to Dox Castle, a patch of Jezero Crater whose rocks may have been dumped by the asteroid impact that carved the crater out.
Jezero Crater is a dried ancient lakebed that Perseverance has been studying since 2021, searching for signs of ancient microbial life.
Searing heat from the asteroid strike that created this crater may have invigorated fluids that circulated through fractures in the area.
The process would have been similar to how particle-laden fluids ooze out of hydrothermal vents rooted on seafloors here on Earth.
And, importantly, signatures of any life that formed in and around those vents may still be preserved in the region's rocks, scientists think.
Dox Castle also sits between what’s known as the “Margin Unit” that lines the inside of the crater rim and the rim itself, offering scientists a rare opportunity to study ancient, asteroid-impacted rocks strewn in the transitioning region and piece together the Red Planet’s layered history.
"Dox Castle will be our first chance to do rim science," Margaret Deahn, a Ph.D. candidate at Indiana's Purdue University who is involved with mapping the rover's ongoing journey to the crater rim, wrote in a recent news release.
"With the Perseverance rover we have the potential to explore some of the oldest exposed rocks on the planet."
The rover began its months-long climb to the crater rim in mid-August as part of a bonus trek after fulfilling its original science goals.
The ongoing journey is an effort to study a vastly different, and much older, region than what Perseverance has been exploring so far.
The rover will also collect samples to fill its remaining 13 sample tubes — specimens that will hopefully be brought back to Earth someday if and when NASA’s Mars Sample Return mission reaches fruition.
The rover has already dropped a backup of previously collected samples on the Jezero crater floor, where they await pickup by the ambitious program whose troubled architecture and budget is still being ironed out by NASA and the European Space Agency.
Perseverance is now following a route planned by its team of scientists and engineers, who were astonished there was even a viable route toward Dox Castle the rover could drive along.
While its path was crafted based on orbital images, the rover is relying on its automatic navigation system to keep it safe as it maneuvers unseen hurdles on 23-degree rocky slopes and gains a total of 1,000 feet (300 meters) — its most challenging ascent yet.
The system, named AutoNav appears to have kept the rover from drifting even as its view got increasingly hazy after a local dust storm struck late last month.
Scientists hope the Martian skies clear up soon, because they expect spectacular views of the crater floor and Jezero delta and equally insightful science when Perseverance completes its ascent.
"Our rover is in excellent condition, and the team is raring to see what's on the roof of this place," Art Thompson said in an earlier statement.
https://www.space.com/nasa-perseverance-mars-dox-crater