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Gundam Card Game Launches on December 8 at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston
2024-11-20 15:14 EST
Bandai announced on Wednesday that Gundam Card Game, a new trading card game based on the Mobile Suit Gundam franchise, will launch on December 8 at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston.
Press, influencers, and retailers at the world premiere event can play the game before the North American launch of the "Gundam Card Game Edition Beta" in January 2025 and the full global release that year.
The game will launch worldwide in 2025 in three languages: Japanese, English, and Chinese.
The "Gundam Card Game Edition Beta" will include 16 booster packs with nine cards per pack, a fixed set of 56 cards, a Legend Rare card, playsheet, and six dice damage counters.
There will be trial events starting in December, during which the set will be available, including the "Bandai Card Games Fest 24-25 Early Trial Event" in Utrecht in the Netherlands and Orlando, FL.
There will also be events in select stores in North America, Europe, Latin America, and Oceania.
The game features Mobile Suits as "Unit Cards" and operators as "Pilot Cards" from various series in card battles.
There are also battle ships and other characters as "Base Cards" and "Command Cards." Decks are comprised of 50 cards.
Players can attach Pilots to Units to increase power. Some pairs create special "Linked Units."
In addition to standard 1v1 rules, there are also play styles for Team Battle (2v2) and Battle Royales (3+ players without teams).
Pre-orders for the game are available on Premium Bandai USA.
https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2024-11-20/gundam-card-game-launches-on-december-8-at-nasa-johnson-space-center-in-houston/.218097
https://www.gundam-gcg.com/en/
NASA Plans to Assign Missions for Two Future Artemis Cargo Landers
Nov 19, 2024
NASA, along with its industry and international partners, is preparing for sustained exploration of the lunar surface with the Artemis campaign to advance science and discovery for the benefit of all.
As part of that effort, NASA intends to award Blue Origin and SpaceX additional work under their existing contracts to develop landers that will deliver large pieces of equipment and infrastructure to the lunar surface.
NASA expects to assign demonstration missions to current human landing system providers, SpaceX and Blue Origin, to mature designs of their large cargo landers following successful design certification reviews.
The assignment of these missions builds on the 2023 request by NASA for the two companies to develop cargo versions of their crewed human landing systems, now in development for Artemis III, Artemis IV, and Artemis V.
“NASA is planning for both crewed missions and future services missions to the Moon beyond Artemis V,” said Stephen D. Creech, assistant deputy associate administrator for technical, Moon to Mars Program Office.
“The Artemis campaign is a collaborative effort with international and industry partners. Having two lunar lander providers with different approaches for crew and cargo landing capability provides mission flexibility while ensuring a regular cadence of Moon landings for continued discovery and scientific opportunity.”
NASA plans for at least two delivery missions with large cargo.
The agency intends for SpaceX’s Starship cargo lander to deliver a pressurized rover, currently in development by JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency), to the lunar surface no earlier than fiscal year 2032 in support of Artemis VII and later missions.
The agency expects Blue Origin to deliver a lunar surface habitat no earlier than fiscal year 2033.
“Based on current design and development progress for both crew and cargo landers and the Artemis mission schedules for the crew lander versions, NASA assigned a pressurized rover mission for SpaceX and a lunar habitat delivery for Blue Origin,” said Lisa Watson-Morgan, program manager, Human Landing System, at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama.
“These large cargo lander demonstration missions aim to optimize our NASA and industry technical expertise, resources, and funding as we prepare for the future of deep space exploration.”
SpaceX will continue cargo lander development and prepare for the Starship cargo mission under Option B of the NextSTEP Appendix H contract.
Blue Origin will conduct its cargo lander work and demonstration mission under NextSTEP Appendix P. NASA expects to issue an initial request for proposals to both companies in early 2025.
https://www.nasa.gov/news-release/nasa-plans-to-assign-missions-for-two-future-artemis-cargo-landers/
NASA’s Swift Reaches 20th Anniversary in Improved Pointing Mode
Nov 20, 2024
After two decades in space, NASA’s Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory is performing better than ever thanks to a new operational strategy implemented earlier this year.
The spacecraft has made great scientific strides in the years since scientists dreamed up a new way to explore gamma-ray bursts, the most powerful explosions in the universe.
“The idea for Swift was born during a meeting in a hotel basement in Estes Park, Colorado, in the middle of a conference,” said John Nousek, the Swift mission director at Pennsylvania State University in State College.
“A bunch of astrophysicists got together to brainstorm a mission that could help us solve the problem of gamma-ray bursts, which were a very big mystery at the time.”
Gamma-ray bursts occur all over the sky without warning, with about one a day detected on average. Astronomers generally divide these bursts into two categories.
Long bursts produce an initial pulse of gamma rays for two seconds or more and occur when the cores of massive stars collapse to form black holes.
Short bursts last less than two seconds and are caused by the mergers of dense objects like neutron stars.
But in 1997, at the time of that basement meeting, the science community disagreed over the origin models for these events.
Astronomers needed a satellite that could move quickly to locate them and move to point additional instruments at their positions.
What developed was Swift, which launched Nov. 20, 2004, from Complex 17A at what is now Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.
Originally called the Swift Observatory for its ability to quickly point at cosmic events, the mission team renamed the spacecraft in 2018 after its first principal investigator Neil Gehrels.
Swift uses several methods for orienting and stabilizing itself in space to study gamma-ray bursts.
Sensors that detect the Sun’s location and the direction of Earth’s magnetic field provide the spacecraft with a general sense of its location.
Then, a device called a star tracker looks at stars and tells the spacecraft how to maneuver to keep the observatory precisely pointed at the same position during long observations.
Swift uses three spinning gyroscopes, or gyros, to carry out those moves along three axes.
The gyros were designed to align at right angles to each other, but once in orbit the mission team discovered they were slightly misaligned.
The flight operations team developed a strategy where one of the gyros worked to correct the misalignment while the other two pointed Swift to achieve its science goals.
The team wanted to be ready in case one of the gyros failed, however, so in 2009 they developed a plan to operate Swift using just two.
Any change to the way a telescope operates once in space carries risk, however. Since Swift was working well, the team sat on their plan for 15 years.
Then, in July 2023, one of Swift’s gyros began working improperly. Because the telescope couldn’t hold its pointing position accurately, observations got progressively blurrier until the gyro failed entirely in March 2024.
“Because we already had the shift to two gyros planned out, we were able to quickly and thoroughly test the procedure here on the ground before implementing it on the spacecraft,” said Mark Hilliard, Swift’s flight operations team lead at Omitron, Inc. and Penn State.
“Actually, scientists have commented that the accuracy of Swift’s pointing is now better than it was since launch, which is really encouraging.”
For the last 20 years, Swift has contributed to groundbreaking results — not only for gamma-ray bursts but also for black holes, stars, comets, and other cosmic objects.
“After all this time, Swift remains a crucial part of NASA’s fleet,” said S. Bradley Cenko, Swift’s principal investigator at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.
“The satellite’s abilities have helped pioneer a new era of astrophysics called multimessenger astronomy, which is giving us a more well-rounded view of how the universe works. We’re looking forward to all Swift has left to teach us.”
https://science.nasa.gov/missions/swift/nasas-swift-reaches-20th-anniversary-in-improved-pointing-mode/
Discovery Alert: A Rare Glimpse of a Newborn Planet
Nov 20, 2024
The Discovery
A huge planet with a long name – IRAS 04125+2902 b – is really just a baby: only 3 million years old.
And because such infant worlds are usually hidden inside obscuring disks of debris, it is the youngest planet so far discovered using the dominant method of planet detection.
Key Facts
The massive planet, likely still glowing from the heat of its formation, lies in the Taurus Molecular Cloud, an active stellar nursery with hundreds of newborn stars some 430 light-years away.
The cloud’s relative closeness makes it a prime target for astronomers.
But while the cloud offers deep insight into the formation and evolution of young stars, their planets are usually a closed book to telescopes like TESS, the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite.
These telescopes rely on the “transit method,” watching for the slight dip in starlight when a planet crosses the face of its host star.
But such planetary systems must be edge-on, from Earth’s vantage point, for the transit method to work.
Very young star systems are surrounded by disks of debris, however, blocking our view of any potentially transiting planets.
A research team has just reported an extraordinary stroke of luck.
Somehow, the outer debris disk surrounding this newborn planet, IRAS 04125+2902 b, has been sharply warped, exposing the baby world to extensive transit observations by TESS.
Details
While the warped outer disk is a great coincidence, it’s also a great mystery.
Possible explanations include a migration of the planet itself, moving closer to the star and, in the process, diverging from the orientation of the outer disk – so that, from Earth, the planet’s orbit is edge-on, crossing the face of the star, but the outer disk remains nearly face-on to us.
One problem with this idea: Moving a planet so far out of alignment with its parent disk would likely require another (very large) object in this system. None has been detected so far.
The system’s sun happens to have a distant stellar companion, also a possible culprit in the warping of the outer disk.
The angle of the orbit of the companion star, however, matches that of the planet and its parent star.
Stars and planets tend to take the gravitational path of least resistance, so such an arrangement should push the disk into a closer alignment with the rest of the system – not into a radical departure.
Another way to get a “broken” outer disk, the study authors say, would not involve a companion star at all. Stellar nurseries like the Taurus Molecular Cloud can be densely packed, busy places.
Computer simulations show that rains of infalling material from the surrounding star-forming region could be the cause of disk-warping.
Neither simulations nor observations have so far settled the question of whether warped or broken disks are common or rare in such regions.
Fun Facts
Combining TESS’s transit measurements with another way of observing planets yields more information about the planet itself.
We might call this second approach the “wobble” method. The gravity of a planet tugs its star one way, then another, as the orbiting planet makes its way around the star.
And that wobble can be detected by changes in the light from the star, picked up by specialized instruments on Earth.
Such “radial velocity” measurements of this planet reveal that its mass, or heft, amounts to no more than about a third of our own Jupiter.
But the transit data shows the planet’s diameter is about the same. That means the planet has a comparatively low density and, likely, an inflated atmosphere.
So this world probably is not a gas giant like Jupiter. Instead, it could well be a planet whose atmosphere will shrink over time.
When it finally settles down, it could become a gaseous “mini-Neptune” or even a rocky “super-Earth.”
These are the two most common planet types in our galaxy – despite the fact that neither type can be found in our solar system.
The Discoverers
A science team led by astronomer Madyson G. Barber of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill published the study, “A giant planet transiting a 3 Myr protostar with a misaligned disk,” in the journal Nature in November 2024.
https://science.nasa.gov/universe/exoplanets/discovery-alert-a-rare-glimpse-of-a-newborn-planet/
Space-Grown Brain Organoids Help Advance New Neurological Treatment
Nov 21, 2024, 11:12 ET
Did you know some viruses don't cause illness and can instead be used to treat disease?
Biotechnology startup Axonis Therapeutics reprogrammed a virus to carry a novel gene therapy to neurons to treat neurological conditions like Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, and spinal cord injury.
The company needed a way to test the therapeutic in a mature human brain model, which is difficult to produce on Earth.
To address this challenge, Axonis leveraged the International Space Station (ISS) National Laboratory to quickly grow 3D human brain organoids and test the therapeutic.
The team's groundbreaking research is featured in the latest issue of Upward, official magazine of the ISS National Lab.
In the article, Axonis Therapeutics co-founder and chief scientific officer Shane Hegarty says, "Doing research in space is not something you'd ever think about normally, but the opportunity to leverage microgravity conditions can unlock a lot of untouched potential by pushing the boundaries of science in a unique environment."
Viruses infect cells in a host and insert genetic material into them. In viruses that cause disease, the genetic material takes over cells and damages them.
However, viruses can be reprogrammed to carry helpful genetic material. Axonis has modified a virus that is not harmful to humans to act as a viral vector.
This vector targets neurons and delivers gene therapy designed to prevent neuron degeneration and spur regeneration. Importantly, it must be delivered only to neurons and no other cells in the body.
The viral vector worked in mice but required testing in a mature human brain model. On Earth, gravity forces cells to grow in 2D monolayers, and it is hard to culture multiple neuron subtypes together.
The Axonis team learned about researchers who sent mature liver cells to space, and the cells spontaneously assembled into a 3D liver organoid.
The team wondered if mature central nervous system (CNS) cells would do the same.
Axonis was awarded a Technology in Space Prize—funded by the Center for the Advancement of Science in Space™, which manages the ISS National Lab, and Boeing in partnership with the MassChallenge startup accelerator program—to conduct research on the space station.
The team co-cultured mature neurons and astrocytes on the ISS, and within 72 hours, the cells self-assembled into 3D brain organoids—a feat not possible on Earth.
The viral vector was loaded with a fluorescent protein gene instead of the gene therapy, and the team was excited to see glowing green neurons, meaning the viral vector had worked.
These successful results significantly de-risked Axonis' therapeutic and helped move it closer to clinical trials.
Hegarty said the company's ISS National Lab-sponsored research also helped put Axonis on the map and made it easier for the startup to attract seed investors.
Axonis recently announced the completion of a successful $115 million Series A financing campaign that was oversubscribed (the company received investor interest beyond its fundraising target).
The company will use the funding to advance another of its therapeutics—this one to treat epilepsy and pain—through clinical proof-of-concept in patients.
https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/space-grown-brain-organoids-help-advance-new-neurological-treatment-302313255.html
https://www.flickr.com/photos/iss_casis/54153321524/
Near Space Labs Announces Nationwide Deployment of Stratospheric Robots Featuring New Industry-Leading 7cm Resolution Aerial Imagery
November 21, 2024 09:02 AM Eastern Standard Time
Near Space Labs, a leader in stratospheric remote sensing, today reached a historic milestone with the nationwide deployment of its Swift robots across the United States.
This achievement establishes the first network of stratospheric robots delivering ultra-high-resolution aerial imagery across the continental US, now with enhanced 7cm resolution capabilities that match or exceed traditional aerial survey quality.
The Swift, Near Space Labs' proprietary zero-emission robot, captures up to 1,000 square kilometers of imagery per flight—equivalent to New York City's five boroughs.
Operating at altitudes between 60,000 and 85,000 feet, this compact 12-pound autonomous system provides insurance companies, urban planners, and government agencies with unprecedented access to precisely detailed, frequently updated aerial imagery at a fraction of the cost of traditional methods.
Near Space Labs' nationwide expansion and imaging improvements come at a critical moment for the U.S. home insurance industry in particular, which faced its worst crisis in decades in 2023 with net combined ratios exceeding 110 percent and losses surging past $101 billion.
These results are largely driven by increasingly frequent and severe weather events—from devastating hurricanes and tornadoes to catastrophic wildfires.
Today, major carriers are retreating from high-risk states like Florida, California, and Texas, creating a cascade of consequences that threatens both homeownership and regional economies.
The root of this crisis lies in the growing gap between these mounting climate risks and insurers' ability to accurately assess them.
"Many insurance companies are still relying on aerial data collection methods from the 1950s to assess 2024's climate risks," said Rema Matevosyan, CEO of Near Space Labs.
"When you consider that only six percent of the $250 billion in losses from Hurricane Helene may be covered by insurance, it becomes clear that outdated risk assessment methods are creating a domino effect: poor data leads to inadequate policy pricing, which leads to carrier losses, which ultimately forces insurers to abandon entire markets—leaving homeowners stranded and unable to secure mortgages."
Near Space Labs' coast-to-coast deployment of the highest quality imaging capabilities directly addresses this challenge by providing insurance carriers with detailed, current property data every quarter.
This unprecedented frequency of updates enables insurers to monitor changing conditions, assess risks more accurately, and price policies appropriately—potentially enabling them to remain in or return to markets they previously abandoned.
https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20241121549156/en/Near-Space-Labs-Announces-Nationwide-Deployment-of-Stratospheric-Robots-Featuring-New-Industry-Leading-7cm-Resolution-Aerial-Imagery
https://nearspacelabs.com/
Space camera films footage of giant Starship rocket launching to space
November 21, 2024
You know you live in the space age when solar storms knock out farmers' GPS-reliant tractors and a camera in Earth's lofty orbit films a rocket launching through the atmosphere.
This camera attached to the International Space Station — the SpaceTV-1 instrument operated by the Earth-monitoring company Sen — captured the launch of SpaceX's colossal Starship rocket on Nov. 19, the nearly 400-foot-tall vehicle's sixth test flight. Such footage, showing the rocket's plume from 250 miles up, is rare, if not unprecedented.
"This is believed to be the first time ever a rocket launch has been filmed in real time from space," Getty Images posted online.
In the video below (which plays after a short ad), you can see the white plume appearing on the top of the screen at center-right at eight seconds into the video.
The plume becomes more apparent as the footage progresses closer. (The plume is also pointed out in the post from Sen, below.)
Starship launched from SpaceX's Starbase, located in Boca Chica, Texas, and the body of water below the plume is the Gulf of Mexico.
Some 65 minutes after liftoff, the Starship traveled around much of the world before intentionally splashing down in the Indian Ocean.
The company's ultimate goal, however, is to catch the rocket in giant mechanical arms at its Starbase, allowing for a rapid reuse and launch of the rockets.
Each of these test flights, of which there will be many more in 2025, are part of the company's "rapid iterative development" of Starship, which, once it successfully launches cargo (and later crew), will become the largest and most powerful operational rocket on Earth, surpassing NASA's Space Launch System.
Already, Starship will play a significant role in the space agency's Artemis mission, its endeavor to establish a permanent presence on the moon.
The large spacecraft, for example, will provide a human landing system, or HLS, for when NASA astronauts return to the moon later this decade during the Artemis III mission.
https://mashable.com/article/spacex-starship-launch-footage-from-space-station
https://x.com/sen/status/1859252625587200232
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yP06FiJogt8
Isro, Australian space agency sign cooperation pact for human space flight
Nov 21 2024 | 4:06 PM IST
Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) on Thursday said it has signed an Implementation Agreement (IA) with Australian Space Agency (ASA) for further strengthening of cooperation in space activities between the two countries.
The IA enables cooperation between both space agencies on crew and crew module recovery for Gaganyaan missions, the country's first crewed spaceflight program, it said.
The IA was signed by D K Singh, Director, Human Space Flight Centre (HSFC) on ISRO's side at Bengaluru and Jarrod Powell, General Manager, Space Capability Branch, on ASA's side at Canberra on November 20, the space agency said in a statement.
ISRO has embarked on the Human Spaceflight ("Gaganyaan") programme with an objective of demonstrating capability to carryout Low Earth Orbit in an Indian Crew Module with up to three crew members onboard, for up to three days and to safely recover the module.
The IA enables the Australian authorities to work with Indian authorities to ensure support for search and rescue of crew and recovery of crew module as part of a contingency plan for ascent phase that aborts near Australian waters, ISRO said.
India and Australia are enduring strategic partners and both space agencies are working closely and are committed to explore current and future collaboration activities, it said.
https://www.business-standard.com/india-news/isro-australian-space-agency-sign-cooperation-pact-for-human-space-flight-124112100597_1.html
Star imaged in detail outside the Milky Way for the 1st time
November 21, 2024
Astronomers have captured a "zoomed-in" image of a star outside the Milky Way for the first time.
The team brought the vast red supergiant star designated WOH G64 into focus using the Very Large Telescope Interferometer (VLTI).
WOH G64 is located a staggering 160,000 light-years away in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), a satellite dwarf galaxy companion of the Milky Way.
Astronomers have known of the existence of this star for some time, and it has earned the nickname the "behemoth star" because it is an incredible 2,000 times the size of the sun.
The VLTI was able to see this distant star in such detail that it also revealed its surrounding cocoon of gas and dust.
These outflows of material indicate that WOH G64 is dying, in the final stages of its life leading up to a massive supernova explosion.
"For the first time, we have succeeded in taking a zoomed-in image of a dying star in a galaxy outside our own Milky Way," team leader Keiichi Ohnaka, an astrophysicist from Universidad Andrés Bello, said in a statement.
"We discovered an egg-shaped cocoon closely surrounding the star.
"We are excited because this may be related to the drastic ejection of material from the dying star before a supernova explosion."
Astronomers have captured tens of "zoomed-in" images of stars within the Milky Way, but it has taken until now to capture a star beyond our galaxy with a similar level of detail.
WOH G64 has been a target for Ohnaka and colleagues for some time, with the team studying it with the VLTI, located in the Atacama Desert of Northern Chile, in 2005 and 2007.
While these investigations have helped to unlock several characteristics of the behemoth star, catching an actual image of WOH G64 had to wait until the development of a second-generation VLTI instrument called "GRAVITY" that combines light from four VLT telescopes to image faint objects with great sensitivity.
Imaging WOH G64 with GRAVITY at last, Ohnaka and colleagues discovered that the star has been dimming over the past decade.
"We have found that the star has been experiencing a significant change in the last 10 years, providing us with a rare opportunity to witness a star's life in real-time," team member Gerd Weigelt, an astronomy professor at the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Bonn, Germany said in the statement.
As they approach the final moments of their lives, the death throes of red supergiants like WOH G64 see them shed their outer layers of gas and dust in a process that can last thousands of years.
Team member and Keele Observatory Director Jacco van Loon has been observing the behemoth star for the last three decades: "This star is one of the most extreme of its kind, and any drastic change may bring it closer to an explosive end."
WOH G64 is dimming because of the layers of stellar material it is shedding to create the egg-shaped envelope around it.
The odd-shaped cocoon could also be the result of the gravitational influence of an undiscovered companion star close to WOH G64 tugging on it.
While this first zoomed-in image of WOH G64 is pretty cool, there may not be too many more to come.
That's because, as the behemoth star continues to belch out gas and dust, it will become dimmer and dimmer, making it more difficult to image.
Hopefully, updates to the VLTI, particularly the upcoming GRAVITY+ instrument, could facilitate future images of WOH G64 as it heads toward destruction.
"Similar follow-up observations with ESO instruments will be important for understanding what is going on in the star," Ohnaka said.
https://www.space.com/star-outside-milky-way-wohg64
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