TYB
Valiant Dan
NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day
October 27, 2024
LDN 43: The Cosmic Bat Nebula
What is the most spook-tacular nebula in the galaxy? One contender is LDN 43, which bears an astonishing resemblance to a vast cosmic bat flying amongst the stars on a dark Halloween night. Located about 1400 light years away in the constellation Ophiuchus, this molecular cloud is dense enough to block light not only from background stars, but from wisps of gas lit up by the nearby reflection nebula LBN 7. Far from being a harbinger of death, this 12-light year-long filament of gas and dust is actually a stellar nursery. Glowing with eerie light, the bat is lit up from inside by dense gaseous knots that have just formed young stars.
https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html
SpaceX Starlink Mission
October 26, 2024
On Saturday, October 26 at 5:47 p.m. ET, Falcon 9 launched 22 Starlink satellites to low-Earth orbit from Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC-40) at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.
This was the the 19th flight for the first stage booster supporting this mission, which previously launched OneWeb 1, SES 18+19, Eutelsat HOTBIRD-F1, CRS-24, and now 15 Starlink missions.
https://www.spacex.com/launches/mission/?missionId=sl-10-8
https://x.com/NicoleShanahan/status/1823882490249138540
SpaceX breaks record, launches 73rd rocket of the year from Florida coast
Updated: October 26, 2024 at 6:03 PM
SpaceX broke a record with its 73rd launch of the year from Florida’s Space Coast with a successful liftoff of a Falcon 9 rocket on Saturday.
The Falcon 9 rocket lifted off at 5:47 p.m., breaking the record of 72 launches, which was set last year and recently tied.
In a release, SpaceX officials said that the launch will bring 22 more Starlink satellites into orbit from the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.
This is the 19th flight for the first-stage booster used in this mission, which was previously used to launch OneWeb 1, SES 18+19, Eutelsat HOTBIRD-F1, CRS-24, and 14 other Starlink missions.
Following stage separation, the first stage is set to land on the Just Read the Instructions droneship in the Atlantic Ocean.
https://www.clickorlando.com/news/local/2024/10/26/spacex-announces-record-shattering-falcon-9-launch-from-florida-coast/
SpaceX
@SpaceX
The @PolarisProgram’s Polaris Dawn crew performed the first-ever spacewalk from Dragon, travelled farther from Earth than anyone since the Apollo program, and used @Starlink to connect with those back on Earth
10:07 AM · Oct 26, 2024
https://x.com/SpaceX/status/1850222664666743070
New study of Apollo 16 moon samples reveals hidden lunar history
October 27, 2024
Scientists continue to piece together the moon's complex history using lunar samples collected during NASA's Apollo missions over half a century ago.
A fresh analysis of lunar dust collected by Apollo 16 astronauts in 1972 offers a clearer picture of the effects of asteroid strikes on the moon, allowing scientists to reconstruct billions of years of lunar history.
The findings could also help upcoming crewed missions pinpoint precious natural resources for establishing moon bases, scientists say.
After landing in the heavily-cratered Descartes region in the lunar highlands, astronauts John Young, Charles Duke and Ken Mattingly collected roughly 200 pounds (96 kg) of material from the moon's surface.
Chemical analyses of soil-like pebbles in those samples, which the astronauts had gathered by raking across the landing site, have revealed the presence of various noble gasses including argon and xenon.
These trapped gasses serve as useful timestamps of space weather processes like solar wind and asteroid impacts that have helped shape and reshape the moon's surface over billions of years.
Most of the samples collected during the Apollo era have already been scrutinized. To take advantage of new science and technology, NASA cracked open one of the last sealed samples, collected during the Apollo 17 mission, just two years ago.
Much of our knowledge about the moon and its evolution comes from these samples, including the moon's true age being 40 million years older than we thought.
But researchers say this new study of trapped lunar gasses is already revealing new chapters of lunar history.
"We can build a much more complete picture of the history of this part of the moon during the early solar system, where heavier impacts on the lunar surface in its first billion years or so gave way to less intense periods from two billion years ago or so," study lead author Mark Nottingham of the University of Glasgow in the U.K. said in a recent statement.
While analyzing samples collected during the Apollo 16 mission, Nottingham and his colleagues used mass spectrometry techniques to catalog various noble gasses and their abundance in the samples, which helped them "determine how much time the samples spent exposed on or near the moon's surface," Nottingham said in the statement.
Chemical makeup of gasses trapped in these "regolith breccias" — a result of moon dust fusing into rock under the sheer force of asteroid impacts — show they stood exposed to solar wind and asteroid impacts for a prolonged period.
The specific exposure ages varied widely between samples, from 2.5 billion years ago to less than a billion, suggesting the moon's soil around the landing area is "well mixed," with some of it dredged up to the surface by more recent impacts, the new study reports.
Nottingham says that studies like this one will help scientists better understand where noble gases and other elements might be found on the moon and in what abundance, helping humanity better plan for future lunar exploration.
"It's remarkable to think that the samples Apollo 16 brought back more than half a century ago still have secrets to reveal about the moon's history, and that they could yet help shape how we explore the solar system in the decades to come," Nottingham said.
This research is described in a paper published Oct. 15 in the journal Meteoritics & Planetary Science
https://www.space.com/apollo-16-moon-samples-lunar-history
https://www.gla.ac.uk/news/headline_1119964_en.html
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/maps.14244
Before and after satellite images show lakes appearing across Sahara after deluge of rain soaks desert
October 26, 2024
Lakes have appeared in the Sahara after a cyclone brought a deluge of rain to northern Africa that drenched swathes of the largest hot desert on Earth, satellite images show.
An extratropical cyclone hit parts of Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and Libya on Sept. 7 and 8, dropping around 8 inches (20 centimeters) on the affected areas — equivalent to an entire year's worth of rainfall in just a few days, according to NASA's Earth Observatory.
The deluge and runoff filled multiple ephemeral lakes in the Sahara, including the Sebkha el Melah in Algeria and several dotted around the Erg Chebbi — a vast expanse of star dunes in Morocco.
NASA's Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on the Terra satellite also captured several ephemeral lakes appearing across parts of Morocco and Algeria.
The Erg Chebbi lakes filled after rivers from the nearby Atlas Mountains overflowed close to Merzouga, a town near the Algerian border that serves as a gateway to the star dunes.
An image captured on Oct. 1 by one of the Copernicus Sentinel-2 satellites shows new lakes dotted around the edges of Erg Chebbi.
NASA's Landsat 9 satellite captured the images of the newly filled Sebkha el Melah lake in Algeria. Images captured on Aug. 12 and Sept. 29 and shared by Earth Observatory show changes to the landscape, with a green lake appearing in the desert.
The lake covered 74 square miles (191 square kilometers) and was approximately 7.2 feet (2.2 meters) deep, according to calculations by Moshe Armon, a senior lecturer at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
Armon used satellite images to establish the extent of the water combined with a 3D map of the lake, according to Earth Observatory.
Since 2000, there have been two times when water levels at Sebkha el Melah were higher than they are now.
In 2008, the lake filled after an extratropical cyclone that led to exceptionally heavy rainfall. It took four years for the lake to completely dry up again.
The water currently filling Sebkha el Melah will likely remain for some time.
"If we don't get any more rain events, a 2.2-meter depth, like we have now, would take about a year to evaporate completely," Armon said in the statement.
Understanding how rainfall events like the cyclone in September impact the Sahara help researchers better understand what the desert was like thousands of years ago, when it was green, and how it will change in the future as a result of climate change.
Current projections suggest parts of the Sahara will receive more rainfall, but there are huge uncertainties.
"What's going to happen in the Sahara remains very unclear, but we hope that we'll eventually develop a better understanding of the Sahara's future by studying these lake-filling events," Armon said.
https://www.space.com/sahara-lakes-appear-after-rain-soaks-desert-before-after-images
https://www.earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/153475/water-for-a-desert-lake-in-algeria
Crew-8 astronaut released from hospital
October 26, 2024
A member of the Crew-8 mission hospitalized for an unspecified medical issue after splashdown has been released after an overnight stay, NASA said Oct. 26.
In a statement, NASA said the astronaut, whose identify has not been disclosed, was released from Ascension Sacred Heart Pensacola hospital after an overnight stay.
“The crew member is in good health and will resume normal post-flight reconditioning with other crew members,” the agency said.
NASA has not disclosed the identity of the astronaut or the medical condition that prompted the hospitalization.
NASA said Oct. 25 that the astronaut “experienced a medical issue” and was hospitalized in stable condition.
The four members of the Crew-8 mission — NASA astronauts Matthew Dominick, Michael Barratt and Jeanette Epps along with Roscosmos cosmonaut Alexander Grebenkin — returned to Earth early Oct. 25 on a Crew Dragon spacecraft after completing a 235-day mission, the longest for an American crewed spacecraft.
The four appeared to be in good condition when taken off the Crew Dragon a little more than a half hour after splashdown, as seen on NASA’s broadcast of the mission’s return.
NASA said several hours later, though, that after the usual medical evaluations on the recovery ship, “the additional evaluation of the crew members was requested out of an abundance of caution.”
All four were transported to the Pensacola hospital, but three were discharged from the hospital and returned to the Johnson Space Center a few hours later.
NASA has not provided any additional details about what happened to prompt the medical evaluations, including whether they might be linked to an issue with the Crew Dragon spacecraft or recovery operations.
At a briefing about 90 minutes after splashdown, though, NASA and SpaceX officials said there were no issues with the spacecraft’s return, but also said at the time that the four people were “doing great” after splashdown.
https://spacenews.com/crew-8-astronaut-released-from-hospital/
Charlie Kirk saw a UFO after Penn State-Wisconsin. Was it aliens or something else?
Oct. 27, 2024, 5:00 a.m.
Charlie Kirk spent part of his Saturday in Wisconsin on the sidelines for the Badgers’ game against Penn State, and he spent his night trying to figure out what in the heck he might have been looking at in the sky on his flight home.
Not saying it was aliens, but, at least by definition, whatever he saw up there was certainly an unidentified flying object.
The controversial political figure and Turning Point USA founder shared a video to X around 1 a.m. Sunday morning filmed from the cockpit of his flight and there was definitely something strange going on up there.
“I was flying back from Wisconsin on a friend’s plane tonight and got called up to the cockpit,” he wrote along with the video.
“The pilots were very confused at what they were seeing. Something was above them and not showing on radar. I’m sure there is a logical explanation here. Watch this video and tell me what I am missing.”
The pilots point out in the video several objects that appeared to be circling high above the plane.
“We are at 40,000 feet,” the pilot says. “So, whatever that is has to be at 80,000 or 100,000 feet. I mean way up there.”
“They are at 100,000 feet?” Kirk asks. “They’d have to be,” the pilot responds.
Kirk later asks, again, if radar would pick it up if it was an airplane.
“What kind of thing wouldn’t be picked up by radar?” he asks the pilot. “Could it be military?”
The pilot guessed it may be something stealth.
He checks their location on GPS at that time, and it appears they are flying through New Mexico — Roswell, anyone?
— into Arizona at the time the video was filmed. However, the pilot and co-pilot said they had been seeing the circling lights for most of the trip.
The word the pilot kept using to describe it was, “weird.” And it definitely was weird.
Kirk’s followers chimed in with many finding ways to make political jokes about the video, but others tried to offer real explanations.
A popular answer was “satellites,” but in the video the pilots discussed the fact that they did not appear to be satellites because they were circling instead of going in a straight line.
https://www.pennlive.com/news/2024/10/charlie-kirk-saw-a-ufo-after-penn-state-wisconsin-was-it-aliens-or-something-else.html
https://x.com/charliekirk11/status/1850402352509182254
Donald Trump and Joe Rogan discuss UFOs: ‘A lot of interest in the people coming from space’
Oct. 26, 2024, 12:17 p.m. ET
Former President Trump offered some new insights about extraterrestrial life during his interview with podcaster Joe Rogan.
“There is a lot of interest in the people coming from space, you know,” Trump offered as the nearly three hour Friday chat was winding down.
“How much did they tell you about that?” Rogan asked.
“A lot,” Trump offered, though he demurred on the specifics.
“I have to be honest, I have never been a believer … [But] I interviewed jet pilots that were solid people, perfect. I mean, great pilots, great everything.
And they said we saw things sir that were very strange, like a round ball.
But it wasn’t a comet or a meteor it was something, and it was going four times faster than an F-22 which is a very fast plane,” Trump said.
The topic of aliens was among the most frequent questions he received from people, the Republican nominee said.
When Rogan asked what Trump believed, the former president was circumspect.
“There’s no reason not to [believe]. I mean, there’s no reason not to think that Mars and all these planets don’t have life,” he said.
https://nypost.com/2024/10/26/us-news/donald-trump-and-joe-rogan-discuss-ufos-the-people-coming-from-space/
https://x.com/jre_clips