Space calendar 2021: Mars landings, SpaceX Starship tests, NASA launches and more - CNET

The year 2020 AD did not turn out exactly as we would have liked down on Earth. But in space, it did prove to be momentous.

SpaceX and NASA delivered astronauts to the International Space Station (twice!) aboard the Crew Dragon capsule, Japan and China brought back extraterrestrial rock to Earth and NASA scooped up some space chunks from asteroid Bennu. Excitement for Mars peaked in July, when three missions departed for the red planet. The Mars-bound spacecraft, from NASA, China and the United Arab Emirates, are en route now. They're set to arrive early in 2021.

Last year, to keep all of you in the know, CNET launched the SPACE CALENDAR (all caps for dramatic cosmic effect), covering all the big rocket launches, mesmerizing meteor showers, epic eclipses and even an assortment of scientific milestones. In 2021, we're back at it again. You can find all the key dates for space missions below, with meteor showers and events without a date toward the end of the piece.

Our always-updating Google calendar can be synced with your own calendar so you never miss a thing. That big button below? That's how you add it.

You can also use another calendar with this link, which will allow you to download our calendar file and add it to a provider of your choice, like Outlook.

There are many more rocket launches each year than those listed below, but they're so often subject to change that we've decided to leave them off this big list. The best advice is to always keep an eye on CNET's Science page and sign up for our space and science newsletter if you want to ensure you're getting launch updates from the likes of SpaceX, Rocket Lab and Blue Origin. We'll also endeavor to shift things around on the Google calendar as soon as we have information, so keep your eyes peeled.

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Are we missing anything? You can email or tweet me with any glaring omissions.

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[February?] Starship SN9 test

BOOM. SpaceX's Starship SN8 prototype had an eventful landing.

SpaceX

Remember the incredible explosion of SpaceX's SN8 prototype in December? SpaceX considers that a success on its way to a fully fledged spacecraft that can get to orbit and -- eventually -- to Mars. In late 2020 or early 2021, Elon Musk's spaceflight company expects to send the next numbered prototype on its way. Its three powerful Raptor engines are attached and it has been wheeled onto the launchpad, so the prototype is likely to fly early in 2021.

The SN9 test has been delayed a number of times and we're trying to stay on top of things. It's looking like an early February launch is possible. We'll keep you updated, just jump over to this article!

[Feb. 9] Hope inserts itself into Mars' orbit

The Hope probe (Al Amal) will circle Mars on a 55 day orbit, analyzing its atmosphere. 

MBRSC

The United Arab Emirates' Hope (Al Amal) probe, which was launched in July 2020, will perform a Mars Orbital Insertion (MOI) as it prepares to circle the red planet and produce one of the most complete pictures of its atmosphere ever. A successful MOI would make the UAE the fifth nation to reach Mars, following the US, Russia, China and India. 

The MOI is a complex procedure, involving a 30 minute burn that slows Hope from 75,000 miles per hour to just 11,200. At approximately 7:42 a.m. PT on Feb. 9, the bus-length probe will be "at" Mars and will begin to transition to the science phase of the mission. It will, at its closest point, be just 620 miles from Mars' surface. 

Want to know more about the journey to Mars for the UAE? Read about it here.

[Feb. 10] Tianwen-1 arrives at Mars

Tianwen-1 on its way to Mars, hoping to make China the third nation to successfully land on the red planet.

Chinese Lunar Exploration Program

China's Tianwen-1 ("Questions to Heaven") spacecraft is carrying a Martian orbiter, lander and rover as cargo and will make its own insertion just a day after Hope, according to Chinese news service CCTV. The Chinese mission will not release it's lander or rover immediately to the surface. It's expected to release those vehicles sometime in May. 

The rover has a lifespan of around 92 days and Li Zhencai, deputy commander of the project, told CCTV the mission will be completed around "the end of August."

[Feb. 18] NASA's Perseverance rover lands on Mars

NASA's mission trailer shows the Perseverance rover making a dramatic landing on Mars.

NASA JPL

Perseverance will touch down on Mars on Thursday, Feb. 18, 2021, at approximately 12:30 p.m. PT (3:30 p.m. ET). It will have to go through the famous Seven Minutes of Terror, slowing down from an extreme speed of around 12,000 miles per hour to a full stop on the surface in just 420 seconds. It's set to be a huge year for Martian robots and specifically, the quest to find signs of ancient life on the red planet. Along with Perseverance, China's Tianwen-1 lander and rover will also be putting Mars dirt under the microscope -- however, it's not expected to touch down until later in the year.

More: NASA launches next Mars rover: Everything you need to know about Perseverance

[March 25] Boeing Starliner OFT-2 launch

The CST-100 Starliner lands back on US soil, airbags full.

NASA/Bill Ingalls

The CST-100 Starliner, a cone-shaped spacecraft designed to deliver astronauts to the International Space Station as part of NASA's Commercial Crew Program, has had its fair share of ups and downs. The first Orbital Flight Test in December 2019 (wow, it was that long ago?) experienced an "anomaly" with the spacecraft's clock which meant it didn't reach the ISS as it had intended and, instead, safely landed back in the desert two days later.

Boeing will now perform a second uncrewed orbital flight test to get the Starliner ready to carry crew. If it all goes successfully, it could pave the way for astronauts to be launched within the capsule later in the year. Fingers crossed.

[March 2021] The Large Hadron Collider powers up again

The Large Hadron Collider will recommence operations in 2021.

Peter Macdiarmid, Getty Images

The Large Hadron Collider, the highest-energy particle collider on the planet, has been powered down since Dec. 10, 2018. In March, scientists at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) flick it back on again.

The collider has been instrumental in testing predictions of theories in particle physics, including discovery of the Higgs boson, or the "God particle" (just don't call it that in front of any particle physicists).

Its third observational run or "Run 3" should kick off in 2022, with a period of commissioning and magnet training to get things up to scratch for examining the atomic world in March. It will then be shut down in 2025 and upgraded again, for its fourth run in 2027. I'm putting this in a space calendar, because, physics is everywhere. Let me have this one. It's cool.

[April/May] China's Tianwen-1 rover lands on Mars

An artist's impression of the three spacecraft China will send to Mars in the coming weeks.

Nature Astronomy

Tianwen-1, China's triple threat mission to Mars, left Earth in July and is scheduled to insert itself into Mars orbit in February. However, the Chinese space program will not attempt a touchdown for a few months, with most estimates suggesting late April or early May for the historic event.

China is going big here -- an orbiter will continue to circle the red planet, and two spacecraft, a lander and a rover, will be steered to the surface. Mars is typically a very mean-spirited planet: It kills around half of all spacecraft that try to land there, so it's a huge and daring mission for China's space agency. It will be able to build on a strong heritage of moon exploration however, with its Chang'e probes achieving incredible feats of space exploration in the last three years.

More: China's daring Tianwen-1 mission to Mars: Everything you need to know

[May 26] Total Lunar Eclipse of the Flower Moon   

The fantastically named "super blood wolf moon" of Jan. 20 and 21 was a stunner combining a total lunar eclipse (blood) with January timing (wolf) and a particularly large appearance due to being closer to the Earth (super).

Richard Bell/Kalamazoo Astronomical Society

When the Earth's shadow covers the moon, you get a lunar eclipse. When the entire moon is shadowed, that's a total lunar eclipse. And when there's a full moon in May, it's known as a "Flower Moon." That's how you get a total lunar eclipse of the flower moon... and that's the first big celestial event of 2021. We have a handy guide for viewing eclipses here. We'll provide a bigger update as it gets closer to May.

[June 10] Ring of Fire eclipse 

Millions of people across eastern Asia and the western US had a great view of the annular eclipse in 2020.

James Martin/CNET

The Johnny Cash eclipse, as it's affectionately known by nobody except myself, will occur over parts of the Northern Hemisphere on June 10. A ring of fire eclipse occurs when the moon only partially blocks sunlight, leaving a dazzling ring of fire in the sky. The most recent eclipse (an "annular" eclipse, in scientific parlance) occurred in 2020 and it was spectacular. The best places to watch will be across Russia, Canada and Greenland, but there will be plenty of livestreams and places to watch this one, we assume. We'll bring you all the details as it gets closer.

[June] Boeing Crewed Flight Test

The first crewed Starliner mission could occur as early as June.

Boeing

Provided everything works out exactly as hoped in March, the first crewed test flight of the Starliner could head to the International Space Station in June. Similar to SpaceX's Demo-2 mission in 2020, this would be the final check for Boeing's spacecraft before it becomes operational. A big achievement, should it get there.

[July 22] NASA launches DART mission to crash into an asteroid

NASA's mission to crash into an asteroid will say "armageddon outta here" on July 22 as it heads toward space rock 68503 Didymos. The rock also has a smaller twin, known as Dimorphos, which orbits it as its personal moon. The "Double Asteroid Redirection Test" will crash into this smaller asteroid (which is about as big as Egypt's Great Pyramid), and then another mission, led by the European Space Agency for launch in 2024, will study the impact crater and how it changed Dimorphos' orbit and properties.

If it works, NASA thinks the spacecraft could shift the orbit of Dimorphos by around half a millimeter per second. It doesn't seem like a lot, but over time, that could dramatically alter its orbital period. 

[Oct. 2] BepiColombo flys past Mercury

BepiColombo will release an orbiter to zip around Mercury in 2025.

CNET

BepiColombo, a joint mission between the ESA and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), had a pretty big 2020. It was called into action as it performed a flyby of Venus to check for signs of life in the upper atmosphere. In 2021, it performs its first flyby of its intended destination -- the planet Mercury. It will be the first in a series of six flybys and culminate in the release of an orbiting craft that will monitor Mercury from 2025. 

[Oct. 16] NASA's Lucy launches on asteroid hunt

NASA's Lucy will explore six asteroids over the coming decade.

NASA

One of the most ambitious missions on NASA's slate is known as Lucy, which will attempt to visit eight asteroids over the next decade. It will be the first mission to study the Trojans, a group of asteroids that trail and lead Jupiter in orbit around the sun.

The mission is named after the fossilized remains of an ancestral human discovered in Ethiopia in 1974, which rewrote the history books on human evolution. NASA's Lucy might end up rewriting the history of the solar system. The Trojans likely harbor clues to the origin of our solar system and operate as time capsules, allowing scientists to understand the environment of the solar system's earliest eons.

[Oct. 31] NASA's James Webb Telescope launches

NASA engineer Ernie Wright prepares the first six flight-ready primary mirror segments of the James Webb Space Telescope at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center.

NASA/MSFC/David Higginbotham

A particularly spooky launch date for NASA's long-delayed next- generation space telescope. The planned successor to NASA's workhorse Hubble, James Webb is a major upgrade to our capabilities in studying the early universe. Granted things go well, it should be able to see some of the earliest galaxies that ever formed.

But it has been a struggle for the telescope to get into space. It's now coming up to its 25th birthday and it hasn't even got off the ground -- with the pandemic setting it back even further. Granted this launch date holds, it will be a big (and spooky) day for NASA. Another fingers crossed mission.

[Dec. 4] Darkness descends on Antarctica

The only total eclipse of 2021 will occur over Antarctica.

Jonathan Ordonez/Getty

If you're some of the scattered wildlife that spends time in Antarctica (or perhaps some lucky researchers), then you'll be able to catch the only total solar eclipse of 2021, when the moon blocks light from the sun over the icy continent.

The next total solar eclipse after that won't be until 2023 and it will only be visible in parts of Southeast Asia and Australia. The US will experience a total solar eclipse in 2024.

Artemis I is coming (perhaps)

"Earth blue, rocket red and lunar silver" is how NASA describes the colors used in the logo for the Artemis program. The logo pulls from the history of the Apollo program.

NASA

NASA's plan to return humans to the moon in 2024 involves a series of missions under the Artemis banner. The very first Artemis mission, Artemis I, is scheduled to launch in 2021. The missions will use a huge, new rocket known as the Space Launch System, or SLS, which will carry an uncrewed spacecraft known as Orion to lunar orbit.

NASA has discussed this one for November, but there's every chance it will slip later than that and potentially to 2022. If the mission succeeds, we might see Artemis II -- with a human crew -- launch in 2023.  

Will Chandrayaan-3 launch in 2021?

India launched Chandrayaan-2 to the moon in 2019, but a software glitch caused a "hard landing."

ISRO

In 2019, the Indian space agency, ISRO, attempted to make history by becoming the fourth nation to soft-land on the surface of the moon. Unfortunately, things went awry. A software glitch caused the spacecraft, Chandrayaan-2, to careen into the moon's surface. The mission was designed to land at the lunar south pole, which would have been a historic first. Almost as soon as Chandrayaan-2's unfortunate ending came to light, India announced it would try again,with Chandrayaan-3.

The mission was slated to launch in 2020, but pandemic. Will it launch in 2021? That's what ISRO is shooting for.

Steve Brown grabbed this magnificent time-lapse of star trails during the Perseid meteor shower.

Steve Brown

Throughout the year, CNET will have bespoke coverage of when and how to catch each meteor shower listed below. If you bookmark this page, you can just return here at your leisure -- or, remember to check CNET for the latest on how to spot meteors!

• Quadrantids Dec. 27, 2020 - Jan. 10, 2021.
  Peak night: Jan. 2 
  

Want to watch the Quadrantids meteor shower? Read about that here.

• Lyrids April 16 - April 30.
  Peak night: April 21
  
• Eta Aquariids April 19 - May 28.
  Peak night: May 5
  
• Perseids July 17 - Aug. 26.
  Peak night:  Aug. 13
  
• Draconids Oct. 6 - Oct. 10.
  Peak night: Oct. 7
  
• Orionids Oct. 2 - Nov. 7.
  Peak night: Oct. 20
  
• Leonids Nov. 6 - Nov. 30.
  Peak night: Nov. 16
  
• Geminids Dec. 4 - Dec. 17.
  Peak night: Dec. 13
  
• Ursids Dec. 17 - Dec. 26.
  Peak night: Dec. 21
  

Read more: How to see the year's best meteor showers: Everything you need to know

This page is constantly updated. 

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What if temperature determined a baby's sex? - Livescience.com

The series "Imaginary Earths" speculates what the world might be like if one key aspect of life changed, whether related to the planet or humanity.

The sex of humans is largely controlled by the X and Y sex chromosomes. However, in many reptiles and fish, sex is instead influenced by how warm or cool eggs are before hatching. What might life be like for humans if sex was likewise under the sway of temperature?

The fact it was even possible to control the sex of animals using heat or cold was first uncovered in the rainbow agama lizard in 1966 by French zoologist Madeline Charnier at the University of Dakar in Senegal. She found hatchlings from eggs incubated at lower temperatures were female, while those that developed at higher temperatures were male.

Since then, scientists have discovered other patterns of temperature-dependent sex determination. For instance, with the Hawaiian green sea turtle, females emerge if incubated above a certain temperature and males if below a certain temperature, and if temperatures in nests fluctuate between those extremes, a mix of males and females are seen, according to a 2020 study published in the journal Bionatura. In contrast, with the American alligator, females develop from extremes of hot and cold and males from intermediate temperatures. 

Related: What if humans had photosynthetic skin?

Temperature controls sex determination, in all crocodilians, most turtles, many fish, and some lizards, according to organismal biologist Karla Moeller at Arizona State University. Within a specific window of time during the embryonic development of these animals, heat or cold can influence the production of sex hormones, which in turn can sway a hatchling's fate.

Moeller noted that one cause of temperature-dependent sex determination is an enzyme known as aromatase, which can convert male sex hormones to female sex hormones. In animals such as the red-eared slider turtle, heat during a specific developmental stage can increase levels of this enzyme, leading to more females.

Evolutionary mysteries

It remains uncertain exactly why these animals practice temperature-dependent sex determination, although a huge number of theories exist, Jennifer Graves, a geneticist at La Trobe University in Melbourne, Australia, told Live Science in a phone interview.

"Our best guess is that temperature-dependent sex determination originated because reptiles do not have parental care and the eggs are in close interaction with the environment," Diego Cortez, a biologist at the National Autonomous University of Mexico in Mexico City, told Live Science in an email. "We also know that elevated incubation temperatures speed up the development of embryos. So, the sex that is linked to higher incubation temperatures will hatch earlier." 

Because, among reptiles, hatching is often linked with the rainy season, when life flourishes, any hatchling that emerges early will likely get more food, Cortez said. "With more food, it will grow faster, and will have higher chances of surviving until it reaches maturity," he said.

According to this idea, known as the survival-to-maturity hypothesis, "if for some reason it is better for a species to have larger females or larger males at maturity, then this sex will be linked to high incubation temperatures so it can hatch earlier during the season," Cortez said. 

Another possibility is that temperature-dependent sex determination could give a way for mothers to control the sex of their offspring. Scientists have suggested that female alligators may choose cooler nests to have more female hatchlings, so when populations are low, "females can make their nests down near the water so more females hatch," Graves said. In contrast, when populations have reached a stable level, females might choose warmer nests "so there are a lot more males, getting more male aggression and competition." The next generation of females could then choose from the best males, Graves suggested.

Unlikely in humans?

All known species with temperature-dependent sex determination are both oviparous, or egg-layers, and cold-blooded, meaning their body temperatures change with that of their surroundings. However, humans are neither of those things.

Related: Why do animals hibernate?

As such, "temperature-dependent sex determination in humans is not very likely because you would need, at a minimum, two different body temperatures — one that would trigger female development and one that would trigger male development," Cortez said. "But the human body is always at 37 degrees Celsius (98.6 degrees Fahrenheit)."

Still, if women could somehow experience a range of body temperatures, Cortez said he could imagine a way for temperature-dependent sex determination to happen in humans. He noted that some proteins that help regulate circadian rhythms in humans — our internal clocks — are also linked with temperature-dependent sex determination in reptiles. These proteins, known as CLK kinases, are found throughout the body, and can sense very small fluctuations in body temperature.

"It would not be impossible to think that if CLK kinases are involved in temperature-dependent sex determination in reptiles, where they sense large changes in incubation temperatures — usually between 3 and 7 degrees Celsius [5.4 to 12.6 degrees F] — that the system could be adapted to sense smaller temperatures changes that could, hypothetically speaking, be then linked to the embryo's sex," Cortez said.

For temperature-dependent sex determination to exist in humans, Graves suggested one possibility is that we somehow become poikilotherms — that is, unable to control our body temperature — much like the naked mole-rat. Another possibility is that instead of live births, we were to somehow lay eggs like a platypus, she added.

Controlling sex

So what might humanity look like if temperature could decide the sex of our offspring? The most important consequence would likely be that it would then be trivial for parents to decide their children's sex, Graves said.

One big risk is the potential for a major imbalance between the sexes in a society.

"Many humans like to decide the sex of their kids," Cortez said. "Sadly, in many places on this planet, the preferred sex would be males. So, if humans could decide the sex of their offspring using a non-complicated technique, like changing their body temperature during a specific week during pregnancy — incubation temperature would have to be changed only during the week when sex is determined — I'm confident this would create many societies biased towards men."

That would be a problem.

"We know that excess of one specific sex in adult populations creates an unbalanced population that has been linked to increased violence, more sexual conflict because is not easy for one sex to get a partner, less parental care, and so on," Cortez added. "So, in other words, a less harmonious society."

One could imagine that governments might intervene to ensure that one sex was not too heavily favored. However, "we might then start to speculate what might happen if the choice of sex might not be up to parents — what forces might interest the state to skew the sex ratio one way or the other," Graves said.

Originally published on Live Science.

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NASA delays moon lander awards as Biden team mulls moonshot program - The Verge

NASA last week quietly delayed its plan to award two high-profile crewed lunar lander contracts, moving the finish line back two months for a crucial program under the Trump administration’s hasty timeline to get astronauts on the moon in 2024. With short funding from Congress and a new administration focused on more pressing national issues, the move was expected.

Elon Musk’s SpaceX, a team of aerospace giants led by Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin, and Leidos-owned Dynetics won a combined $967 million in seed funding from NASA last year to develop rivaling concepts for a human lunar landing system. It’s the space agency’s first effort to spend money on astronaut moon landers since the Apollo program in the 1970s.

Last Wednesday, NASA told the three contractors that an extension to their development contracts “will be required,” picking a new award date of April 30th. Under the Trump administration’s timeline, the agency had planned to pick two of the three bidders in late February, giving a stamp of approval for two systems that would inevitably carry humans to the moon.

The delay was all but certain: The spending bill Congress passed in December gives NASA $850 million for the Human Landing System program, far short of the $3.2 billion it needed to stick with the 2024 timeline. But NASA remained committed to the February award date and, similarly, the 2024 moonshot. A delay was also expected as Biden’s team holds off on releasing any space policy and focuses more on climate change and curbing the pandemic, keeping the long-term fate of NASA’s Artemis program uncertain.

Now, NASA says the delay is designed to give it more time to evaluate the bidders’ proposals and to “preserve the ability to seamlessly transition” from the development phase, but added it may not need the full extension period and could award the lander contracts earlier. The extension also gives the companies more time to design and develop their lander systems, NASA said.

SpaceX’s lunar lander pitch to NASA is Starship, a roughly 16-story-tall fully reusable vehicle the company has been launching and landing in short, suborbital test flights — called “hops” — in Boca Chica, Texas. The company’s chunk of development funds was $135 million.

Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin got the largest award, $579 million, to develop its Blue Moon lander. The company announced a “National Team” in 2019 comprised of Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and Draper to work on the project. Dynetics got $253 million for its lander and has partnered with Sierra Nevada Corp.

The Biden administration has yet to pick its NASA administrator or release any space policy objectives, but is expected to slow down the Artemis program’s sprint to the moon by 2024 — a date widely viewed as unrealistic. This month, the administration announced its team for the White House’s Office of Science and Technology Policy, picking pioneering geneticist Eric Lander as Biden’s top science adviser.

Trump’s NASA chief Jim Bridenstine left office on inauguration day after serving since 2018 and spawning the Artemis program. He handed the agency’s control to his No. 2, Steve Jurczyk as acting administrator.

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635 million-year-old fossil is the oldest known land fungus - Livescience.com

The oldest evidence of land fungus may be a wee microfossil that's 635 million years old, found in a cave in southern China.

Too small to be seen with the naked eye, this remarkable find pushes back the appearance of terrestrial fungus by about 240 million years to a period known as "snowball Earth" when the planet was locked in ice from 750 million to 580 million years ago. 

The presence of land fungus at this critical point may have helped Earth to transition from a frozen ice ball to a planet with a variety of ecosystems that could host diverse life-forms, scientists wrote in a new study. By breaking down minerals and organic matter and recycling nutrients into the atmosphere and ocean, ancient fungus could have played an important part in reshaping Earth's geochemistry, creating more hospitable conditions that paved the way for terrestrial plants and animals to eventually emerge and thrive.

Related: Images: The oldest fossils on Earth

Scientists discovered the fossilized threadlike filaments — a trademark of fungus structures — in sedimentary rocks from China's Doushantuo Formation in Guizhou Province, dating to the Ediacaran period (about 635 million to 541 million years ago). Identifying rocks that might contain microscopic fossils takes luck as well as skill, said study co-author Shuhai Xiao, a professor of geosciences with the Virginia Tech College of Science (VT) in Blacksburgh, Virginia.

"There's an element of serendipity, but there's also an element of experience and expectation. Having worked with microfossils, one knows what kind of rocks to look at," Xiao told Live Science. For example, rocks must be fine-grained, because the fossils are so small. Color can also provide clues; organic carbon in microfossils can make fossil-bearing rocks look darker than rocks that don't contain fossils.

"But it's not error-proof; most times, we slice a rock, and we don't find anything. There's maybe a 10% success rate," Xiao said.

Thinly sliced

To find the fossils, the study authors ground slices of rock thin enough for light to penetrate, measuring no more than 0.002 inches (50 micrometers) thick. Powerful microscopes revealed the fungus's tiny tendrils, which were just a few micrometers in diameter — about 1/10 the width of a human hair. Under the microscopes, traces of organic carbon in the fossils were darker than the rock surrounding it. 

The researchers also used more advanced microscopy to examine the fossils and build digital copies of their structures. Luckily, many of those structures "were excellently preserved in three-dimensions," lead study author Tian Gan, a doctoral candidate at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing and a visiting scholar at VT, told Live Science in an email.

Three-dimensional rendition of the fungus-like filamentous microfossils and associated spherical fossils. (Image credit: Tian Gan of Virginia Tech and Chinese Academy of Sciences)

Those branching filaments told the researchers that the fossils were biological in origin, rather than mineral. Though some types of bacteria also produce branches, the closest analogs for these types of filaments are fungal, and small spheres in the fossil "could be interpreted as fungal spores," supporting the hypothesis that these microorganisms were a type of fungus, the scientists wrote.

Ancient life

Fossil evidence of the earliest organisms on Earth is exceptionally rare, but this microfossil and other recent finds are helping researchers to slowly piece together important clues about when life first appeared. 

The oldest evidence of marine fungus, described in 2019 from rocks found in Canada, dates to about a billion years ago; the oldest forest, described in 2020 from fossilized roots in upstate New York, is 386 million years old; and the oldest known animal — a bizarre, oval-shaped creature called Dickinsonia — is about 558 million years old (fossils that were once thought to represent older animals were recently attributed to ancient algae, Live Science reported in December 2020).

Fossilized structures from Canada that may have been built by microbes between 3.77 billion and 4.29 billion years ago represent one of the oldest possible examples of life on Earth. Other structures preserved in Greenland rock are also thought to have microbial origins, and are 3.7 billion years old. Yet another fossil from western Australia may contain microbes estimated to be 3.5 billion years old, though some scientists have argued that geothermal activity could have altered chemicals in the rock to make them resemble biological traces, Live Science previously reported.

Scientists first linked terrestrial fungus to the appearance of land plants, based on fossils from the Rhynie cherts in Scotland that preserve plants and fungi together and date to about 410 million years ago, Xiao said. In those fossils, "plants and fungi have already established some sort of ecological relationship," he explained. 

However, fungus fossils that predated the earliest known plants previously hinted that terrestrial fungus appeared first, about 450 million years ago, "and now we extend that back to 635 million years ago," Xiao said.

The findings were published online Jan. 28 in the journal Nature Communications.

Originally published on Live Science.

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This Ammonite Was Fossilized Outside Its Shell - The New York Times

The bizarre fossil is one of very few records of soft tissue in a creature better known as a whorled shell.

If anxious humans have nightmares of being naked in public, an anxious ammonite may have dreamed about swimming around without its shell, its soft body exposed to the elements and the leering eyes of predators.

For one unfortunate ammonite in the Late Jurassic, this was no dream but a harsh reality. The animal died utterly unclad, outside its whorled shell, and was buried this way. According to a study published recently in the Swiss Journal of Palaeontology, the ammonite’s death made it an extraordinary fossil — one of very few records of soft tissue in a creature that is most often immortalized as a shell.

“We know millions and millions of ammonites that have been preserved from their shell, so something exceptional had to happen here,” said Thomas Clements, a paleobiologist at the University of Birmingham in England who was not involved with the research. “It’s like finding ——” Dr. Clements said, trailing off. “Well, I don’t even know what it’s like finding, it’s that bizarre.”

René Hoffmann, an ammonitologist at the Ruhr-University Bochum in Germany who reviewed the study, called the fossil a “paleontological jackpot you have only once in a lifetime.”

To the untrained eye, the fossil looks more like an Impressionist painting than an ammonite: a pink, bean-shape smear surrounded by bulges, veins and ovals. It was discovered in the Solnhofen-Eichstätt region of southern Germany which was, in the ammonite’s day, around 150 million years ago, an archipelago studded with serene, oxygen-deprived lagoons. These conditions allowed soft, dead creatures to sink into the mud unscathed by predators or bacteria, according to Christian Klug, a paleontologist at the University of Zurich in Switzerland and the first author of the paper.

A reconstruction of the possible internal anatomy of the ammonite as it came to rest on the sediment, top, and reconstructed as they would be arranged in a conch.Klug et al., Swiss Journal of Palaeontology, 2021

When Dr. Klug first saw the fossil, he knew it represented the soft parts of an ammonite, but exactly which soft parts, he did not know. He left it alone for months until Helmut Tischlinger, a fossil collector and an author on the paper, sent him photos of the fossil taken with ultraviolet light, which revealed the minute elevations and mineral stainings in the fossil.

Dr. Klug reconstructed the creature’s anatomy sequentially, from the most visible organs to the most obscure. First he identified the aptychus, a shelly lower jaw that indicated the fossil was an ammonite. Behind the jaws, he found the chitinous layer of the esophagus, and then a lump that suggested a digestive tract with a cololite — fecal matter (he used a different word) “that is still within the intestine,” Dr. Klug clarified.

“For the most part, the soft body reconstruction makes perfect sense,” said Margaret Yacobucci, a paleobiologist at Bowling Green State University in Ohio who was not involved with the research.

Solving the fossil’s other mystery — how the ammonite came to be separated from its shell — was far more difficult. The soft parts were so intact that they appeared to still be coiled. The authors propose several alternate endings to the ammonite’s life, each possible but uncertain. One suggests that the soft parts of a dead ammonite slipped out when the tissue connecting its body to its conch began to decay.

Another, more elaborate explanation imagines a predator breaking the ammonite’s shell from behind and sucking out its body only to drop the naked ammonite. “The best explanation is that some squid-like organism pulled out the soft parts and could not retrieve it,” Dr. Klug said.

A reconstruction showing how the soft parts of the ammonite could have been separated from its shell.Klug et al., Swiss Journal of Palaeontology, 2021

Dr. Clements finds the clumsy predator theory “awesome” if unlikely; presumably a chomped-on ammonite body would show more visible damage. But he has no good alternative. Interpreting a fossil always invites some degree of doubt, and Dr. Clements predicts that the unarmed ammonite will be analyzed again in the future with robust chemical analyses.

Curiously, the fossilized ammonite is missing its arms, leaving unresolved one of the outstanding mysteries of ammonite anatomy. “Did they have many thin, delicate arms, like modern nautiluses, or a few strong arms, like modern coleoids?” Dr. Yacobucci asked. “If I gained access to a time machine, the very first thing I would do is zip back to the Jurassic to see what kind of arms ammonoids had.”

If a squid-like predator did in fact free the ammonite from its shell, it may have munched on the creature’s unknown quantity of arms as a consolation prize, nourishing both ancient cephalopods and the scientists who study them.

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NASA Perseverance Rover will experience a violent seven-minute descent to Mars - SlashGear

One of the most challenging parts of putting any rover on the surface of Mars is the approximately seven-minute-long descent from orbit to the surface of the Red Planet. NASA is gearing up for the Mars 2020 Perseverance rover to land on Mars about 20 days from now. Currently, Perseverance has about 23.9 million miles left on its 292.5 million mile trip to Mars.

The spacecraft is closing on Mars at a rate of 1.6 miles per second. Once the spacecraft reaches the atmosphere of Mars, its seven-minute descent will begin. The spacecraft will experience extreme heat with temperatures equivalent to the surface of the sun.

It will decelerate rapidly using a parachute that will inflate while the spacecraft is traveling at supersonic speeds. Wrapping up the harrowing landing process will be the first ever autonomous guided landing on Mars. After the landing is successfully completed, Perseverance can prepare to begin studying the surface of Mars.

We mentioned earlier this morning that one of its significant experiments would be deploying the Ingenuity helicopter to see if air travel is possible on Mars. The main reason for Perseverance to cruise the surface of Mars is to search for signs of ancient life and collect samples that will one day be returned to earth for study.

Perseverance was constructed using collective knowledge gained from past missions to Mars. Its operations team hopes that it will expand the knowledge of Mars and solve mysteries about the possibility of ancient life on Mars. Jezero Crater is where Perseverance will be landing, a dry 28-mile basin home to a River Delta and ancient Lake filled with water in the distant past. Perseverance is scheduled to arrive at Mars on February 18.

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Next SpaceX commercial crew mission to launch in April - SpaceNews

WASHINGTON — The second operational SpaceX commercial crew mission to the International Space Station will now launch in mid-April, carrying astronauts from Europe, Japan and the United States.

NASA said Jan. 29 that it set a launch date of April 20 for the Crew-2 mission to the station. NASA astronauts Shane Kimbrough and Megan McArthur will be the commander and pilor, respectively, with Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency astronaut Akihiko Hoshide and European Space Agency Thomas Pesquet on board as mission specialists.

The four will replace the Crew-1 astronauts who flew to the station in November on the first operational Crew Dragon mission. NASA astronauts Michael Hopkins, Victor Glover and Shannon Walker, and JAXA astronaut Soichi Noguchi, will return in that spacecraft in late April or early May, assuming Crew-2 launches on its current schedule.

NASA earlier announced a no-earlier-than launch date for Crew-2 of March 30. However, it delayed the mission to allow the uncrewed Orbital Flight Test 2 mission by Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner commercial crew vehicle to launch no earlier than March 25 for an approximately one-week mission. Both Starliner and Crew Dragon dock to one of two ports on the station, one of which is occupied by the Crew-1 Crew Dragon spacecraft.

The delay to April 20 also accommodates a Soyuz spacecraft, Soyuz MS-18, scheduled to launch around April 10. It will bring three Russian cosmonauts to the station, with Soyuz MS-17 returning to Earth a week later with Russian cosmonauts Sergey Ryzhikov and Sergey Kud-Sverchkov, and NASA astronaut Kate Rubins, on board.

“Around the mid-March timeframe we’ll really start to ramp up our preparations for doing some visiting vehicle operations,” Kenny Todd, deputy manager of the ISS program at NASA, said during a Jan. 22 briefing about an upcoming series of spacewalks at the station.

At the briefing he didn’t give a schedule for those missions. “We are still working with our Russian colleagues as well as the Commercial Crew Program to firm up the schedules for the Soyuz 64S and Crew-2 flights,” he said in a Jan. 27 statement to SpaceNews, using the NASA designation for Soyuz MS-18. “Both flights are currently targeting spring 2021, but specific launch dates have yet to be finalized.”

Two of the Crew-1 astronauts, Hopkins and Glover, performed the first in a series of spacewalks Jan. 27, working on the exterior of the Columbus module to support the Bartolomeo external payload platform and to install a new communications antenna there. A second spacewalk on Feb. 1 will complete the installation of a new battery for the station’s power system.

Another pair of spacewalks is tentatively planned for late February or early March, Todd said at the briefing. Those would take place after the arrival of a Cygnus cargo spacecraft currently scheduled for launch Feb. 20.

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SpaceX targets Monday launch of additional Starlink satellites, announces next crew mission - Fox News

SpaceX is gearing up for its next launch of Starlink satellites after its historic delivery last week, according to local reports.

The company is targeting a launch on Feb. 1 to deliver another load of Starlink satellites -- a delay from the initially-planned Sunday morning launch.

And while SpaceX continues to deliver satellites into orbit, NASA and SpaceX jointly announced that they will target an April 20 launch for another crew rotation mission to the International Space Station (ISS).

NASA ASTRONAUTS CONDUCT FIRST SPACEWALK OF 2021

The Monday liftoff is scheduled for 6:41 a.m. from the historic Kennedy Space Center’s Launch Pad 39A, according to FOX 35 Orlando.

The mission would see 60 additional satellites added to the network, following the 10 satellites launched on Jan. 24.

Saturday saw a test-fire of a Falcon 9 rocket, which would deliver the new satellites into orbit. A static test-fire is required before any launch, according to Click Orlando.

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The Starlink satellites are part of an ongoing mission to create a space-based broadband network that would be available worldwide.

SpaceX was set to test-launch a stainless steel Starship SN9 prototype, but the company failed to attain the appropriate FAA approval, Space.com reported. 

SpaceX continues to follow an aggressive timeline at the direction of the company’s founder and CEO, Elon Musk.

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NASA decides to redo SLS Green Run Static Fire - NASASpaceFlight.com - NASASpaceflight.com

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NASA Astronauts Just Shared The Coolest Pics Of The Aurora From The POV Of Space (PHOTOS) - Narcity USA

NASA astronauts just shared the coolest pictures of the aurora from their point of view at the International Space Station and they are out-of-this-world.

Dozens of amazing angles of the aurora australis, or "southern lights," hovering over the Earth were posted to an official NASA Flickr — we'll let the photos speak for themselves. 

Editor's Choice: 12 Bottles Of Wine Are Headed Back To Earth After Spending A Year In Space

The astronauts at the Space Station have the most incredible view and they're giving us an inside look.

NASA Johnson | Flickr

They can see everything from billions of stars to cities across the world. 

NASA Johnson | Flickr

The colorful phenomenon makes the Earth looks like it's glowing!

NASA Johnson | Flickr

Trails of rainbow colors dance across the atmosphere. 

NASA Johnson | Flickr

The pics look like something out of a space movie, but unbelievably, it's real. 

NASA Johnson | Flickr

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Live coverage: SpaceX planning Falcon 9 static fire today – Spaceflight Now - Spaceflight Now

Live coverage of the countdown and launch of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from pad 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The mission will launch SpaceX’s 18th batch of approximately 60 Starlink broadband satellites. Text updates will appear automatically below. Follow us on Twitter.

Credit: Spaceflight Now

Spaceflight Now Members can watch a live view of the Falcon 9 rocket on pad 39A. SpaceX’s live webcast will be available on this page for everyone beginning around 15 minutes before launch.

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Meet the People Who Paid $55 Million Each to Fly to the International Space Station - Travel+Leisure

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Meet the People Who Paid $55 Million Each to Fly to the International Space Station

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