Space Stuff

redrumloa said:
Yeah, I don't know about that context. Was it written by Boeing's hitman crowd?
Click to expand...
I haven't checked but Community Notes are usually a reasonable indicator of authenticity, and several orders of magnitude more reliable than blue-tick Tweets. There was not context when I posted it but my initial instinct is it's probably genuine so I guess it looks a lot worse than it is..
 
NASA seemingly being unable to produce a space suit, no wonder there are still fake-moon-landing nutters out there.

NASA’s commercial spacesuit program just hit a major snag​

"Unfortunately Collins has been significantly behind schedule."​

NASA astronaut Christina Koch (right) poses for a portrait with fellow Expedition 61 Flight Engineer Jessica Meir, who is inside a US spacesuit for a fit check.


Almost exactly two years ago, as it prepared for the next generation of human spaceflight, NASA chose a pair of private companies to design and develop new spacesuits. These were to be new spacesuits that would allow astronauts to both perform spacewalks outside the International Space Station as well as walk on the Moon as part of the Artemis program.
Now, that plan appears to be in trouble, with one of the spacesuit providers—Collins Aerospace—expected to back out, Ars has learned. It's a blow for NASA, because the space agency really needs modern spacesuits.
 

Saturn’s moon Titan has shorelines that appear to be shaped by waves​

The liquid hydrocarbon waves would likely reach a height of a meter.​

Ligeia Mare, the second-largest body of liquid hydrocarbons on Titan.

Ligeia Mare, the second-largest body of liquid hydrocarbons on Titan.

During its T85 Titan flyby on July 24, 2012, the Cassini spacecraft registered an unexpectedly bright reflection on the surface of the lake Kivu Lacus. Its Visual and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer (VIMS) data was interpreted as a roughness on the methane-ethane lake, which could have been a sign of mudflats, surfacing bubbles, or waves.
“Our landscape evolution models show that the shorelines on Titan are most consistent with Earth lakes that have been eroded by waves,” says Rose Palermo, a coastal geomorphologist at St. Petersburg Coastal and Marine Science Center, who led the study investigating signatures of wave erosion on Titan. The evidence of waves is still inconclusive, but future crewed missions to Titan should probably pack some surfboards just in case.
 

Reservoir of liquid water found deep in Martian rocks​

An artist's impression of the Nasa Insight lander
IMAGE SOURCE,NASA
Scientists have discovered a reservoir of liquid water on Mars - deep in the rocky outer crust of the planet.

The findings come from a new analysis of data from Nasa’s Mars Insight Lander, which touched down on the planet back in 2018.

The lander carried a seismometer, which recorded four years' of vibrations - Mars quakes - from deep inside the Red Planet.

Analysing those quakes - and exactly how the planet moves - revealed "seismic signals" of liquid water.
 
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Astronomers think they’ve found a plausible explanation of the Wow! signal​

Magnetars could zap clouds of atomic hydrogen, producing focused microwave beams.​

One reason for the excited reaction is that such a signal had been proposed as a possible communication from extraterrestrial civilizations in a 1959 paper by Cornell University physicists Philip Morrison and Giuseppe Cocconi. Morrison and Cocconi thought that such a civilization might use the 1420 megahertz frequency naturally emitted by hydrogen, the universe's most abundant element and, therefore, something an alien civilization would be familiar with. In fact, the Big Ear had been reassigned to the SETI project in 1973 specifically to hunt for possible signals. Ehman himself was quite skeptical of the "it could be aliens" hypothesis for several decades, although he admitted in a 2019 interview that "the Wow! signal certainly has the potential of being the first signal from extraterrestrial intelligence."
 
 

For the first time in more than three years, SpaceX misses a booster landing​

The fleet leader has met its demise.​

Early on Wednesday morning, at 3:48 am ET local time, a Falcon 9 rocket booster making its 23rd launch took off from Space Launch Complex-40 at Cape Canaveral, Florida.

The mission successfully delivered 21 Starlink satellites, including 13 of the larger vehicles with direct-to-cell capabilities, before attempting a landing on the A Shortfall of Gravitas. However, the experienced booster had a shortfall of stability and tipped over shortly following touchdown.

Prior to Wednesday's landing failure, SpaceX had landed 267 boosters in a row. The company's last failure occurred in February 2021. The cause of the failure was not immediately clear, and SpaceX said "teams are assessing the booster's flight data and status." Based on video of the landing, it is possible there was an engine burn timing issue.
 

More water worlds than we thought might support life​

Too much water on exoplanet surfaces would mean high pressure ices, not life.​

Diagram of Earth and an exoplanet, showing that the water-covered exoplanet would form a layer of high-pressure ices.

High pressure ices near the crust are a feature of water-rich worlds.`

The possibility that there is liquid water on an exoplanet’s surface usually flags it as “potentially habitable,” but the reality is that too much water might prevent life from taking hold.

“On Earth, the ocean is in contact with some rock. If we have too much water, it creates high-pressure ice underneath the ocean, which separates it from the planet’s rocky interior,” said Caroline Dorn, a geophysicist at ETH Zurich, Switzerland, who led new research in exoplanet interiors.

This high-pressure ice prevents minerals and chemical compounds from being exchanged between the rocks and the water. In theory, that should make the ocean barren and lifeless. But Dorn’s team argues that even exoplanets that have enough water to form such high-pressure ice can host life if the majority of the water is not stored in the surface oceans but is held much deeper in the planet’s core. The water in the core can’t sustain life—it’s not even in its molecular form there. But it means that a substantial fraction of a planet’s water isn’t on the surface, which makes the surface oceans a little more shallow and prevents high-pressure ice from forming at their bottom.
 

Boeing Starliner returns to Earth, but without astronauts​

Boeing and NASA teams work around the Starliner spacecraft after it landed on Saturday
IMAGE SOURCE,NASA

Boeing's Starliner spacecraft has completed its journey back to Earth - but the astronauts it was supposed to be carrying remain behind on the International Space Station.

The empty craft travelled in autonomous mode after undocking from the orbiting lab.

The capsule, which suffered technical problems after it launched with Nasa's Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams on board, was deemed too risky to take the astronauts home.
 
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