Space Thread

Blackleaf

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Astronomers spot new tiny moons around Neptune and Uranus
Author of the article:Associated Press
Associated Press
Christina Larson
Published Feb 23, 2024 • 1 minute read
The International Astronomical Union's Minor Planet Center announced Friday , Feb. 23, 2024, that astronomers have found three previously unknown moons in our solar system -- two additional moons circling Neptune and one around Uranus. (NASA via AP)
The International Astronomical Union's Minor Planet Center announced Friday , Feb. 23, 2024, that astronomers have found three previously unknown moons in our solar system -- two additional moons circling Neptune and one around Uranus. (NASA via AP) THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
WASHINGTON (AP) — Astronomers have found three previously unknown moons in our solar system — two additional moons circling Neptune and one around Uranus.


The distant tiny moons were spotted using powerful land-based telescopes in Hawaii and Chile, and announced Friday by the International Astronomical Union’s Minor Planet Center.


The latest tally puts Neptune at 16 known moons and Uranus at 28.

One of Neptune’s new moons has the longest known orbital journey yet. It takes around 27 years for the small outer moon to complete one lap around Neptune, the vast icy planet farthest from the sun, said Scott Sheppard, an astronomer at the Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington who helped make the discovery.

The new moon orbiting Uranus, with an estimated diameter of just 5 miles (8 kilometers), is likely the smallest of the planet’s moons.

“We suspect that there may be many more smaller moons” yet to be discovered, he said.

That's nothing. Just last year 62 new moons were discovered orbiting Saturn. This means Saturn now has 146 known moons.
 

spaminator

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First U.S. moon lander in half a century stops working a week after tipping over at touchdown
Author of the article:Associated Press
Associated Press
Marcia Dunn
Published Feb 29, 2024 • 1 minute read
This image obtained on Feb. 27, 2024 courtesy of Intuitive Machines, shows approximately 30 metres (98 feet) above the lunar surface before Intuitive Machines' Odysseus lunar lander lands on the south pole region of the Moon.
This image obtained on Feb. 27, 2024 courtesy of Intuitive Machines, shows approximately 30 metres (98 feet) above the lunar surface before Intuitive Machines' Odysseus lunar lander lands on the south pole region of the Moon. PHOTO BY HANDOUT/INTUITIVE MACHINES /AFP via Getty Images
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — The first U.S. spacecraft to land on the moon since the Apollo astronauts fell silent Thursday, a week after breaking a leg at touchdown and tipping over near the lunar south pole.

Intuitive Machines’ lander, Odysseus, lasted longer than the company anticipated after it ended up on its side with hobbled solar power and communication.


The end came as flight controllers received one last photo from Odysseus and commanded its computer and power systems to standby. That way, the lander can wake up in another two to three weeks — if it survives the bitterly cold lunar night. Intuitive Machines spokesman Josh Marshall said these final steps drained the lander’s batteries and put Odysseus “down for a long nap.”

“Good night, Odie. We hope to hear from you again,” the company said via X, formerly Twitter.


Before losing power, Odysseus sent back what Intuitive Machines called “a fitting farewell transmission.”

Taken just before touchdown, the picture shows the bottom of the lander on the moon’s pockmarked surface, with a tiny crescent Earth and a small sun in the background.

The lander was originally intended to last about a week at the moon.

Houston-based Intuitive Machines became the first private business to land a spacecraft on the moon without crashing when Odysseus touched down Feb. 22. Only five countries had achieved that since the 1960s, including Japan, which made a sideways landing last month.

Odysseus carried six experiments for NASA, which paid $118 million for the ride. The first company to take part in NASA’s program for commercial lunar deliveries never made it to the moon; its lander came crashing back to Earth in January.

NASA views these private landers as scouts that will pave the way for astronauts due to arrive in another few years.

Until Odysseus, the last U.S. moon landing was by Apollo 17’s Gene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt in 1972.
Odysseus-e1709257894155[1].jpg
 

spaminator

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Third test flight of SpaceX’s mega rocket ends with loss of spacecraft
Author of the article:Associated Press
Associated Press
Marcia Dunn
Published Mar 14, 2024 • 1 minute read
SpaceX-Starship-Launch
SpaceX's mega rocket Starship launches for it's third test flight from Starbase in Boca Chica, Texas, Thursday, March 14, 2024. PHOTO BY ERIC GAY /THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
SpaceX’s mega rocket blasted off on another test flight Thursday and made it farther than two previous attempts, but the spacecraft was lost as it descended back to Earth.


The company said it lost contact with the spacecraft as it neared its goal, a splashdown in the Indian Ocean, about an hour after liftoff from the southern tip of Texas near the Mexican border.


T wo test flights last year both ended in explosions minutes after liftoff.

Starship, the biggest and most powerful rocket ever built, headed out over the Gulf of Mexico after launch Thursday. Minutes later, the booster separated seamlessly from the spaceship and splashed down into the gulf and the spacecraft continued eastward. No people or satellites were on board.

An hour later, SpaceX commentators said contact had been lost with the spacecraft.

“The ship has been lost. So no splashdown today,” said SpaceX’s Dan Huot. “But again, it’s incredible to see how much further we got this time around.”


Earlier during the flight, SpaceX’s Elon Musk had congratulated his team.”SpaceX has come a long way,” Musk said via X, former Twitter. The rocket company was founded exactly 22 years ago Thursday.

The rocket and futuristic-looking spacecraft towers 397 feet (121 meters), easily exceeding NASA’s past and present moon rockets.

NASA watched with keen interest: The space agency needs Starship to succeed in order to land astronauts on the moon in the next two or so years. This new crop of moonwalkers — the first since last century’s Apollo program — will descend to the lunar surface in a Starship, at least the first couple times.
1710912024640.png
 

spaminator

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April’s total solar eclipse promises to be the best yet for experiments
Author of the article:Associated Press
Associated Press
Marcia Dunn
Published Mar 22, 2024 • 3 minute read

During the April 8, 2024 total solar eclipse, the rockets will blast off with science instruments into the electrically charged portion of the atmosphere near the edge of space known as the ionosphere.
During the April 8, 2024 total solar eclipse, the rockets will blast off with science instruments into the electrically charged portion of the atmosphere near the edge of space known as the ionosphere.
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — April’s total solar eclipse promises to be a scientific bonanza, thanks to new spacecraft and telescopes _ and cosmic chance.


The moon will be extra close to Earth, providing a long and intense period of darkness, and the sun should be more active with the potential for dramatic bursts of plasma. Then there’s totality’s densely populated corridor stretching from Mexico to the U.S. to Canada.


Hundreds if not thousands of the tens of millions of spectators will double as “citizen scientists,” helping NASA and other research groups better understand our planet and star.

They’ll photograph the sun’s outer crownlike atmosphere, or corona, as the moon passes between the sun and Earth, blotting out sunlight for up to 4 minutes and 28 seconds on April 8. They’ll observe the quieting of birds and other animals as midday darkness falls. They’ll also measure dropping temperatures, monitor clouds and use ham radios to gauge communication disruptions.


At the same time, rockets will blast off with science instruments into the electrically charged portion of the atmosphere near the edge of space known as the ionosphere. The small rockets will soar from Wallops Island, Virginia — some 400 miles outside totality but with 81% of the sun obscured in a partial eclipse. Similar launches were conducted from New Mexico during last October’s “ring of fire” solar eclipse that swept across the western U.S. and Central and South America.

“Time for the biggie! It is pretty exciting!!!” Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University’s Aroh Barjatya, the rockets’ mission director, said in an email.

NASA’s high-altitude jets also will take to the air again, chasing the moon’s shadow with improved telescopes to study the sun’s corona and surrounding dust.


“Dust sounds boring,” acknowledged NASA’s eclipse program manager Kelly Korreck. “But at the same time, dust is actually really interesting. Those are the leftover remnants from when the solar system was forming.”

More than 600 weather balloons will be launched by college students along the track, providing livestreams while studying atmospheric changes. Cloudy skies shouldn’t matter.

“Lucky for us, the balloons flying to 80,000 feet and above don’t care if it’s cloudy on the ground,” said Angela Des Jardins, an astrophysicist at Montana State University who’s coordinating the nationwide project.

And if the Federal Aviation Administration approves, a 21-foot (6.5-meter) kite will lift a science instrument three miles (5 kilometers) above Texas in an experiment by the University of Hawaii’s Shadia Habbal. She, too, wants to get above any clouds that might hamper her observations of the sun.


Normally hidden by the sun’s glare, the corona is on full display during a total solar eclipse, making it a prime research target. The spiky tendrils emanating thousands of miles (kilometers) into space are mystifyingly hotter than the sun’s surface — in the millions of degrees, versus thousands.

“In terms of the value of total eclipses, science still cannot explain how the corona is heated to such extreme temperatures,” said retired NASA astrophysicist Fred Espenak, better known as Mr. Eclipse for all his charts and books on the subject.

The U.S. won’t see another total solar eclipse on this scale until 2045, so NASA and everyone else is pulling out all the stops.

April’s eclipse will begin in the Pacific and make landfall at Mazatlan, Mexico, heading up through Texas and 14 other U.S. states before crossing into Canada and exiting into the Atlantic at Newfoundland. Those outside the 115-mile-wide (185-kilometer-wide) path, will get a partial eclipse.


Scientists got a taste of what’s to come during the 2017 total solar eclipse that stretched from Oregon to South Carolina. This time, the moon is closer to Earth, resulting in more minutes of darkness and a wider path.

“Any time we can observe for longer, that gives scientists more data,” Korreck said.

Another scientific bonus this time: The sun will be just a year away from its maximum solar activity, as opposed to 2017 when it was near its minimum. That means lots more action at the sun, possibly even a coronal mass ejection during the eclipse, with massive amounts of plasma and magnetic field blasted into space.

Plus there are two new spacecraft out there studying the sun: NASA’s Parker Solar Probe and the European Space Agency and NASA’s Solar Orbiter. They’ll join other spacecraft on eclipse duty, including the International Space Station and its astronauts.

Closer to home, April’s eclipse, unlike previous ones, will pass over three U.S. radar sites typically used for monitoring space weather. The stations will tune in to what’s happening in the upper atmosphere as the skies dim.
 

spaminator

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Birds, bees and even plants might act weird during the solar eclipse
Author of the article:Washington Post
Washington Post
Carolyn Y. Johnson, The Washington Post
Published Mar 26, 2024 • 7 minute read

Eclipse
On April 8, 2024, the sun will pull another disappearing act across parts of Mexico, the United States and Canada, turning day into night for as much as 4 minutes, 28 seconds.
A total eclipse isn’t just a spectacle in the sky. When the moon consumes the sun on April 8, day will plunge into twilight, the temperature will drop – and nature will take notice.


Reports abound of unusual animal and plant behavior during eclipses. A swarm of ants carrying food froze until the sun reemerged during an 1851 eclipse in Sweden. A pantry in Massachusetts was “greatly infested” with cockroaches just after totality in 1932. Sap flowed more slowly in a 75-year-old beech tree in Belgium in 1999. Orb-weaving spiders started tearing down their webs and North American side-blotched lizards closed their eyes during an eclipse in Mexico in 1991.


Plenty of scientists see eclipses as rare opportunities to bolster anecdotal reports by studying how nature responds – or doesn’t – to a few minutes of dusk in the middle of the day. That’s why teams across the country produced a swarm of studies about plant and animal behavior during the last total eclipse to cut across the United States in 2017.


Some of these scientists found that when the sun vanished, insects, birds and plants seemed to enter into something approaching a nocturnal pattern. Case in point: Scientists in multiple states reported that fireflies started flashing, and a team in Idaho captured two species of voles that are normally active at night.

Bat researchers in Georgia, on the other hand, weren’t convinced that the eclipse had any effect on behavior, though they noticed slightly more bat activity on the night after the eclipse than on previous or subsequent nights. Beetles flew around as normal in South Carolina.

Understanding how eclipses affect nature writ large is nearly impossible. That’s because eclipses don’t follow one of the most basic rules of science: replication. They don’t happen with regularity in the same spot. They vary in length. They happen at different times of day, during different seasons.


“A lot of the things we found in the literature were exactly that – a curiosity. It happens once every so often, so it’s curious, but not generally informative of animal behavior,” said Olav Rueppell, a scientist who studies honeybee biology at the University of Alberta in Canada.

And while an eclipse is an incredible time to observe the natural world, there’s also a potential observer effect: People who might normally be at school, at work or simply distracted are looking and listening closely, and what they see as responses to the eclipse could just be normal behaviors that escape notice on a typical day.

Adam Hartstone-Rose, a professor of biological sciences at North Carolina State University, led a study of how animals reacted to the 2017 eclipse at the Riverbanks Zoo in Columbia, S.C.


“At any given point on Earth, a total eclipse occurs once every 375 years. So it’s not like you’re learning something now you can use again in the future, and that’s certainly true for animals,” Hartstone-Rose said.

“But it’s a unifying event. All of us have this experience together,” he said, adding that during the April eclipse, “we’re all going to be communing with animals and thinking about how they experience it.”

Studies of animal behavior during an eclipse tend to fall into two categories. Some biologists who are near the path of totality will design a study to see how the eclipse affects their favorite organism, whether it be honeybees or chimpanzees. Others try to activate members of the public to take data and make observations all across the path, which the scientists can use to discern broad patterns.


The NASA-backed Eclipse Soundscapes project, for example, will collect audio data and observations from hundreds of people during the April eclipse to repeat, with a bit more rigor, a citizen-science study of animal responses to a 1932 eclipse.

In his team’s 2017 study of zoo animals, Hartstone-Rose had researchers systematically observe 17 species, including baboons, flamingos and Galapagos tortoises.

Most responded to the eerie darkness in some way – whether by starting their bedtime routines, acting anxious or mating. Giraffes that had been munching on lettuce and chewing their cud huddled near their barn or galloped through their exhibit. A Komodo dragon that hadn’t moved in a day raced around its enclosure and climbed up the wall.


Hartstone-Rose is repeating the observations this year at the Fort Worth Zoo in Texas, and he is drafting more than a thousand volunteers across the country to collect records of animal behavior through a project called Solar Eclipse Safari. He’s as interested in the anomalous behavior of animals as he is in learning how observing animals and trying to understand their experience affects humans, perhaps widening their sense of wonder and awe.

The birds
One common report is that birds go to roost and go quiet during an eclipse. But when a team of ornithologists from Cornell University made recordings along an old logging road near the town of Corinna, Maine, for the 1963 eclipse, they heard the per-chic-o-ree of a goldfinch in the middle of totality, along with a hermit thrush, a Swainson’s thrush and a veery.


“Perhaps no two lists of birds heard before, during, and after the eclipse would be anywhere near similar,” they wrote in their summary of the observations.

In the 50 minutes before and after totality in 2017, researchers monitoring flying insects and birds via the weather radar network found that the skies went eerily quiet, but there was an intriguing uptick of activity right at totality. The researchers speculated that it might be some kind of insect reacting to the sudden darkness, while the birds possibly grew still due to confusion.

“Some previous research shows that insects react much more immediately to light cues, while birds are more like, ‘What’s going on?'” said Cecilia Nilsson, a biologist at Lund University in Sweden. “Totality only lasts a few minutes, so by the time you’re figuring it out, it’s over.”


For bird lovers, the many uncontrollable variables of an eclipse can be scientific opportunities, too.

One exciting aspect of the 2024 eclipse is that it is happening during the spring, whereas the North American eclipse of 2017 took place very early in the fall migration season, Nilsson said. Many birds, she noted, migrate at night and are often more motivated during the spring migration, so it’s possible that abrupt darkness will have a different effect this time around.

The honeybees
Rueppell, the honeybee scientist, was based in North Carolina during the total eclipse in 2017. He decided with collaborators to try to bring some rigor to previous observations of honeybee behavior.

A crowdsourced compilation of observations from a 1932 total eclipse, for example, included reports of a swarm of 200 bees showing “apprehensiveness” in the minutes before totality. Another observer reported that “as darkness increased the outgoing bees diminished in numbers and the return battalions grew larger.”


Rueppell and colleagues at Clemson University in South Carolina enlisted observers to watch the entrances of hives, counting how many honeybees were exiting and how many were returning from foraging trips before, during and after totality. They made some hives hungrier than others by taking the bees’ honey away before the eclipse, to see if that changed their willingness to forage.

The researchers found that the environmental cues overrode bees’ own internal circadian clocks, with darkness causing them to return to the hive and hunker down. Those findings square with another study that found bees stopped buzzing around flowers during totality. But hives that were stressed by hunger shut down less completely than those that weren’t.


They also conducted a second experiment, putting fluorescent powder on bees and releasing them away from their hives, then measuring how quickly they returned.

Right before totality, they found the bees were returning faster, almost as if they were panicked.

The forests full of trees
Daniel Beverly, a plant ecophysiologist at Indiana University, studied how sagebrush in Wyoming reacted during the 2017 eclipse. A total eclipse last passed over Wyoming in 1918, though it traversed different parts of the state.

“These plants are 60 to 100 years old, and they’ve never seen this midday darkness,” he said. The scientists found that photosynthesis plummeted during totality, then took hours to recover from the shock of the sun reemerging minutes later.


This year Beverly will be measuring ecological responses to the eclipse at a forest in Indiana that is part of a long-term project monitoring carbon, water and energy flux through the ecosystem. Because the Morgan-Monroe State Forest is already the subject of intense scientific scrutiny, scientists can take advantage of existing instruments to measure factors such as carbon flux and water movement in white oak, tulip poplars, sassafras and sugar maples.

Beverly noted that he’s excited to get as much of the data collection automated as possible so he and his team can fully appreciate the brief but wondrous moment of totality.

“It is pretty awesome and life-changing,” Beverly said. “Just the spectacle of it. I don’t know what it does to the human brain.”