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NASA's Perseverance rover may still be finding its footing in the Jezero Crater, but in the meantime, the Curiosity rover is having a blast taking selfies at a fascinating rock formation.
Since 2014, Curiosity has been slowly but surely climbing the 3-mile-high Mount Sharp, which is located in the middle of the Gale Crater. NASA revealed new images from the rover Tuesday that were captured earlier this month.
On March 16 and March 26, Curiosity snapped 60 images using the Mars Hand Lens Imager on its robotic arm and 11 using its Mastcam, located on its "head." It captured an impressive rock formation called Mont Mercou — named after a mountain in southeastern France.
In the selfies, as well as an accompanying pair of majestic panoramas taken on March 4, Mont Mercou can be seen to the left of the rover. The formation is 20 feet tall.
"Wish you were here!" the rover tweeted with the selfie.
NASA's Curiosity Mars rover used two different cameras to create this selfie in front of Mont Mercou, a rock outcrop that stands 20 feet tall. NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS
Using its drill, Curiosity acquired a sample of rock near the formation — the 30th sample it's collected so far. NASA scientists have named the sample Nontron, after a French village near the actual Mont Mercou.
The names were chosen for this part of the mission because Mars orbiters previously detected nontronite, a type of iron-rich clay mineral found close to the French town, in the region.
The rover's drill turned the sample to dust and tucked it safely inside its body for further study using its internal instruments. Scientists hope to learn more about the rock's composition — and maybe uncover secrets of the planet's past.
NASA's Curiosity Mars rover used its Mastcam instrument to take the 32 individual images that make up this panorama of the outcrop nicknamed "Mont Mercou." It took a second panorama, rolling sideways 13 feet, to create a stereoscopic effect similar to a 3D viewfinder. The effect helps scientists get a better idea of the geometry of Mount Mercou's sedimentary layers, as if they're standing in front of the formation.NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS
The sample was collected as the rover transitions from the "clay-bearing unit" and the "sulfate-bearing unit" of its ascent — an area scientists believe could reveal how Mars transitioned from a potentially habitable planet billions of years ago to the frozen desert planet it is today.
Until Perseverance arrived a little over a month ago, Curiosity was the only rover currently active on the red planet. The two rovers are located about 2,300 miles apart.
Perseverance is now busy preparing the Ingenuity helicopter for its first flight in April — marking the first flight on another planet. After that, it will begin its hunt for ancient life.
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The Crew Dragon capsule poised to fly four civilian astronauts to space this year is getting an upgrade: a glass dome will be added at the top to give space tourists a 360-degree view of the cosmos. Plans for the window were announced on Tuesday as SpaceX and the team managing the tourist mission, Inspiration4, revealed the full crew for the upcoming expedition.
The glass dome-shaped window replaces Crew Dragon’s docking adapter at its nose since the spacecraft won’t be docking to the International Space Station. It’s similar to the famed cupola aboard the International Space Station, but Crew Dragon’s appears to be an uninterrupted sheet of glass, with no support structures dividing the window’s view.
Crew Dragon’s protective aerodynamic shell that shields the hatch door area during launch will pop open to expose the glass dome once the craft is safely in orbit. Based on the rendering SpaceX tweeted, the cupola would fit at least one crew member from the chest up, revealing panoramic views of space.
SpaceX designed Crew Dragon under a $2.6 billion contract from NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, a public-private initiative to stimulate the development of privately built space capsules that’ll serve as NASA’s primary rides to space. Boeing is developing a competing capsule, Starliner, under the same program. Crew Dragon is already in its operational phase and flew its first two crews of government astronauts to space last year.
NASA, which certified Crew Dragon for astronaut flights last year, said it doesn’t plan to use the cupola version of Crew Dragon for NASA astronaut missions and that the window’s installation doesn’t require NASA safety approval.
“NASA currently does not have plans to fly a modified version of the Crew Dragon,” agency spokesman Josh Finch told The Verge. “As a fully commercial launch, NASA does not need to approve SpaceX’s design for the company’s private missions. NASA will continue to maintain insight into SpaceX’s systems through our normal work, including SpaceX sharing flight data from non-NASA missions.”
The charity-focused Inspiration4 mission, led by billionaire tech entrepreneur and Shift4 Payments CEO Jared Isaacman, is slated to launch on September 15th, sending Isaacman and three other non-professional astronauts on a free-flying trip in Earth orbit for three days. It will use the Crew Dragon Resilience capsule that’s currently docked to the ISS in support of NASA’s Crew-1 mission, and the glass window will be installed during Resilience’s refurbishment in Florida after it returns.
“We’ve done all the engineering work, we continue to go through all the analysis and testing and qualification to ensure everything’s safe, and that it doesn’t preclude any use of this spacecraft for other missions,” Benji Reed, SpaceX’s director of Crew Dragon mission management, said during a press conference on Tuesday.
The Inspiration4 crew includes Christopher Sembroski, a Lockheed Martin engineer from Everett, Washington; Sian Proctor, a college professor from Tempe, Arizona; and previously announced Hayley Arceneaux, a St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital employee and bone cancer survivor.
The new window was announced on the same day that Richard Branson’s space tourism firm, Virgin Galactic, unveiled an upgraded version of its suborbital spaceplane SpaceShipTwo called SpaceShip III.
The first known interstellar comet to visit our solar system may be the most pristine ever found, never passing near a star until visiting our own, researchers say.
In 2019, scientists discovered the comet 2I/Borisov as it streaked into the solar system. The comet's speed and trajectory revealed it was a rogue comet from interstellar space, making it the first known interstellar comet and the second known interstellar visitor after pancake-shaped 1I/'Oumuamua.
Now scientists have found two new ways in which 2I/Borisov is unlike any known comet. They detailed their findings online March 30 in two studies, one published in the journal Nature Communications and another study in the journal Nature Astronomy.
An artist's impression of what the surface of the interstellar comet 2I/Borisov might look like.(Image credit: M. Kormesser/ESO)
In one study, researchers used the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope to analyze light scattered off the dust grains in 2I/Borisov's coma — that is, the envelope of gas and dust surrounding its core. Specifically, they looked at the polarization of this light, or the way in which the light waves rippled through space.
All light waves can ripple up and down, left and right, or at any angle in between. The greater the polarization of light, the more its waves all ripple in the same direction.
When a comet passes close to a star, the radiation and winds from that star can alter the material on the comet's surface, "like our skin when we go to the beach," Stefano Bagnulo, an astronomer at Armagh Observatory in Northern Ireland who led the study in Nature Communications, told Space.com. This in turn can reduce the polarization of the light from the comet's coma.
This image of the interstellar comet 2I/Borisov was taken with the FORS2 instrument on the Very Large Telescope in 2019, as the comet was passing close to the sun. Background stars appear as streaks of light as the telescope followed the comet's trajectory.(Image credit: O. Hainaut/ESO)
The scientists discovered the light from 2I/Borisov's coma was very polarized, suggesting it was more pristine than other comets — that is, its surface rarely bathed in the light and winds from stars. The only comet that previous research found had light as polarized as the interstellar visitor's was Hale-Bopp, which lit up Earth's sky in 1997.
"Hale-Bopp rarely went close to the sun," Bagnulo said. "We think that before its apparition in 1997, it did it only once, about 4,000 years ago, so the material at its surface, when we observed it, was only slightly processed by the sun."
However, the polarization of light across 2/I Borisov was uniform, while it was not for Hale-Bopp. This suggests 2/I Borisov may be the first truly pristine comet ever detected — it may never have ventured close to any star before it visited the solar system, making it an undisturbed relic of the cloud of gas and dust it formed from.
An astronaut at the International Space Station captured this image of Comet Hale-Bopp at sunset on Sept. 18, 2012.(Image credit: NASA)
"The fact that the two comets are remarkably similar suggests that the environment in which 2I/Borisov originated is not so different in composition from the environment in the early solar system," Alberto Cellino, a researcher with the Astrophysical Observatory of Torino in Italy and co-author of the Nature Communications study, said in a statement.
Bagnulo noted astronomers may have an even better chance to study a rogue comet in detail before the end of the decade. The European Space Agency is planning to launch the Comet Interceptor probe in 2029, a spacecraft that will have the capability to reach another visiting interstellar object, if one on a suitable trajectory is discovered, he said.
"Comets that never passed close to the sun are particularly interesting because their material is presumably the same as when our solar system was formed," Bagnulo said. "It is important to study them."
In the other study, to gather clues about the comet's birth and its home system, researchers analyzed data from the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) in Chile and from the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope.
"We want to know if other planetary systems form like our own, but we cannot study these systems to the level of their individual comets — comets in other planetary systems are simply too far away and too small to be seen by our telescopes," the study's lead author Bin Yang, a planetary scientist at the European Southern Observatory in Santiago, Chile, told Space.com. "We are very lucky that a comet from a system light-years away made such a close visit to us."
The scientists found the dust in 2I/Borisov's coma consisted of compact pebbles, ones 0.08 inches (2 millimeters) or more in width. In contrast, the dust from our solar system's comets typically consists of irregular fluffy clumps of material ranging widely in size from about 0.00008 inches (2 micrometers) to nearly 39 inches (1 meter) wide.
Previous research suggested the solar system's comets formed in a wide region beyond infant Neptune's orbit, and when giant planets such as Jupiter and Saturn migrated to their current positions, their strong gravity slung these comets out to their present locations in the outer solar system.
In contrast, the compact nature of 2I/Borisov's pebbles suggest they were formed during cosmic impacts close to the comet's home star, mashing its matter together into dense chunks, the researchers found. 2I/Borisov was then later slung out into interstellar space by the giant planets orbiting its home star.
In the future, the Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile, due to see first light this year, is expected to detect one interstellar object per year. The European Southern Observatory's Extremely Large Telescope (ELT), currently under construction in Chile, should shed even more light on these interstellar visitors, Yang said. "The future is quite exciting in terms of detecting and characterizing alien objects from other solar systems," she said.
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WASHINGTON — The private venture that purchased a SpaceX Crew Dragon flight to low Earth orbit has finalized the crew for that mission, scheduled to launch as soon as September.
The Inspiration4 mission, which describes itself as the “world’s first all-civilian mission to space,” revealed the crew that will accompany its sponsor, entrepreneur Jared Isaacman, during a March 30 event at the Kennedy Space Center. Isaacman announced the mission Feb. 1, starting a pair of contests to select two people who would fly with him.
One of those people is Sian Proctor, a scientist and educator who has participated in a number of terrestrial “analog astronaut” missions. She won the seat called “Prosperity” by establishing an online store through Isaacman’s company, Shift4 Payments, and submitting a video judged by an independent panel.
The second is Chris Sembroski, a Lockheed Martin employee in the Seattle area. He won the “Generosity” seat by participating in a sweepstakes that raised money for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.
The fourth member of the crew, previously announced, is Hayley Arceneaux, a physician assistant at St. Jude who, as a child, was treated for bone cancer there. At 29, Arceneaux would be the youngest American in space.
“We promised a crew representing some of the best of humanitarian qualities, exemplifying our mission ideals of leadership, hope, prosperity and generosity,” Isaacman said. “I’m pleased to report that we’ve accomplished that goal.”
The four will start training as a group immediately, he said. That training includes time in Crew Dragon simulators, going through all aspects of the mission, as well as centrifuges to simulate the accelerations of launch and reentry and “other forms of stress testing.”
In addition to announcing the crew, Isaacman and SpaceX outlined the details of the mission itself. Launch is scheduled for no earlier than Sept. 15, slightly earlier than the original announcement of the fourth quarter of this year. The spacecraft will remain in orbit for three days, flying in an orbit at the same inclination as the International Space Station — 51.6 degrees — but in an orbit as high as 540 kilometers, more than 100 kilometers above the station.
That particular orbit, Isaacman said, will be the highest people have been above the Earth’s surface since the final shuttle servicing mission to the Hubble Space Telescope in 2009. “It should send a message,” he said, one of going beyond the ISS. “We’re ready to go back to the moon, and we’re ready to go beyond the moon to Mars. Extending out a little bit farther than where we’ve been for some time right now is a good step in the right direction.”
The three-day mission duration, he added, “is a good balance between the capabilities of the Dragon spacecraft and how much time you want to spend in a relatively small space for a couple days together.”
Benji Reed, senior director of human spaceflight programs at SpaceX, said the company moved up the mission slightly to September to accommodate the Crew-3 launch for NASA later in the fall. “This crew, with training, we believe will be ready by September, as well as the Dragon,” he said. “It works out very well with our manifest.”
The Inspiration4 mission will use the same Dragon spacecraft, called Resilience, currently docked at the ISS for the Crew-1 mission. That spacecraft is currently scheduled to return to Earth April 28, assuming the Crew-2 mission launches to the station on schedule April 22. “We feel very good about the timeframe we’re working in” to refurbish the spacecraft for Inspiration4.
An illustration of the Crew Dragon spacecraft outfitted with a cupola in place of the docking adapter used for space station missions. Credit: SpaceX
Besides refurbishing the spacecraft, SpaceX will install an additional window on the spacecraft, a viewing port modeled on the space station’s cupola that will replace the docking adapter under the spacecraft’s nose cone. Since the Inspiration4 mission will not dock with the station, that adapter is not needed.
“It’s awesome,” Reed said of the cupola. Qualification and testing of the cupola is in progress, and Reed said SpaceX will ensure that its installation doesn’t preclude using the spacecraft for later missions, such as those to the station that will require the reinstallation of the docking adapter.
Inspiration4 will be the first Crew Dragon mission for a customer other than NASA, but it is not the only one on its manifest. Axiom Space will fly four people to the ISS on its Ax-1 mission in early 2022. Space Adventures previously announced a Crew Dragon mission that would fly well above the station, but that space tourism company has not provided any updates on its schedule for that mission.
“We’re trying to deliver an awful lot of messages with this mission,” Isaacman said. “When this mission is complete, people are going to look at it and say this was the first time that everyday people could go to space.”
However, Inspiration4 may have overestimated the interest in the mission. Proctor was one of only about 200 people who participated in the Prosperity competition, which required no expense beyond the time setting up an online store and producing a video. Sembroski was selected from nearly 72,000 entries, which could be purchased at the rate of 10 entries per dollar, up to 10,000 entries per person.
That limited interest has hurt Inspiration4’s efforts to raise money for St. Jude. The mission has raised a little less than $13 million for the hospital as of March 30, most of which was raised when the sweepstakes was open in February. That’s well short of the goal of $100 million set when Inspiration4 was announced Feb. 1.
“We’ve helped drive a significant amount of donations to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital,” Isaacman said. “This fundraising effort is really far from over. We’ll be continuing throughout the year.” He didn’t elaborate on those future fundraising plans.
Llukalkan aliocranianus was a large meat-eating dinosaur that would have been at the top of the food chain.
Jorge Blanco and Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology
There's a tradition of giving dinosaurs badass names. "Tyrannosaurus rex" means "king of the tyrant lizards." In 2020, scientists named a new species "reaper of death." Now say hello to the "one who causes fear," a toothy dinosaur discovered in South America.
Llukalkan aliocranianus roamed current-day Argentina about 80 million years ago. It reached over 16 feet (5 meters) in length and sported a short head with bulging bones that would have looked a bit like a jumbo-sized Gila monster.
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"This is a particularly important discovery because it suggests that the diversity and abundance of abelisaurids were remarkable, not only across Patagonia, but also in more local areas during the dinosaurs' twilight period," Gianechini said in statement from journal publisher Taylor & Francis Group.
Llukalkan aliocranianus is a species of abelisaurids, bipedal, short-armed dinosaurs from the Cretaceous period that resembled T. rex. The name is a mixture of Mapuche -- an Indigenous language of South America -- and Latin. Llukalkan means "one who causes fear" and aliocranianus is Latin for "different skull."
A well-preserved braincase fossil led helped scientists describe the hearing capabilities of Llukalkan aliocranianus.
Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology
The scientists discovered parts of a skull fossil, including a well-preserved brain case, the area that encloses the brain.
The fossil shows Llukalkan aliocranianus had some different features than its cousins, notably "a small posterior air-filled sinus in the middle ear zone." "This finding implies a different hearing adaptation from other abelisaurids, and likely a keener sense of hearing," said study co-author Ariel Mendez of the Patagonian Institute of Geology and Palaeontology.
Fierce, stubby-armed dinosaurs like T. rex have long captured the public's imagination. Llukalkan aliocranianus may not have the name recognition, but it builds on a fascinating history of meat-munching dinosaurs that once ruled South America.
An urban Eurasian red squirrel and the novel food-extraction task in Tsuda Park at Obihiro. Credit: Pizza Ka Yee Chow
Human disturbance in urban environments makes some squirrels fail, but others perform better in novel problem-solving.
Unlike natural environments, urban areas have artificial buildings, traffics, less greenery and, most prominently, more humans. Despite these seemingly 'harsh' or stressful characteristics, some wildlife like the Eurasian red squirrel have chosen to settle down in urban environments, and they thrive. Urban wildlife often show higher behavioral flexibility and increased ability to solve novel problems, and thus can exploit new resources. However, which characteristics of urban environments influence animals' performance, and their relative importance, have remained unclear.
In a study published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, a research team led by Itsuro Koizumi of Hokkaido University set out a novel food-extraction problem for wild Eurasian red squirrels in 11 urban areas in Hokkaido, Japan. This problem contains out-of-reach nuts on levers, and the successful solutions are counterintuitive: a squirrel has to push a lever if it is close to a nut, whereas it has to pull a lever if it is far away from the nut.
The researchers also recorded the environmental characteristics in each area, including direct human disturbance (mean number of humans present per day), indirect human disturbance (the number of buildings), green coverage, and squirrel's population size, and then correlated these with squirrels' novel problem-solving performance.
A squirrel successfully solved the problem and obtained a nearby nut by pushing the lever. Credit: Pizza Ka Yee Chow et al., Proceedings of the Royal Society B. March 31, 2021
Seventy-one squirrels across 11 urban areas attempted to solve the food-extraction problem, and slightly more than half of them (53.5%) successfully solved it. The research team found that their success decreased in the areas with more humans, more buildings, or more squirrels. However, for those repeatedly solved the task, their solving time shortened over time, especially where there were more humans.
A squirrel failed to solve the problem and left. Credit: Pizza Ka Yee Chow et al., Proceedings of the Royal Society B. March 31, 2021
"One of the major stressors, direct human disturbance, led some squirrels to fail and other squirrels to perform better in novel problem-solving," explains Pizza Ka Yee Chow, the leading author of the paper. "A possible explanation is that even squirrels living in urban areas still perceive humans as potential threats but react differently; the successful ones deployed the solution quickly while others just gave up, both to avoid human approach."
Their results highlight how the characteristics in urban environment influence animals' problem-solving performance and have implications on how we can ease human-wildlife conflicts in urban management.
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NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover used two cameras to create this selfie in front of Mont Mercou, a rock outcrop that stands 20 feet (6 meters) tall. The panorama is made up of 60 images from the MAHLI camera on the rover’s robotic arm along with 11 images from the Mastcam on the mast, or “head,” of the rover. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS
The rover also snapped a pair of panoramas to create a 3D view of the stark cliff face featured in the selfie.
At the start of March, NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover began approaching an impressive rock formation that scientists dubbed “Mont Mercou,” a nickname taken from a mountain in France. Standing about 20 feet (6 meters) tall, the outcrop is captured in all its majesty in a new selfie, as well as in a pair of panoramas that offer a 3D view. The selfie shows Curiosity in front of Mont Mercou with a new drill hole nearby at a rock sample nicknamed “Nontron” – the mission’s 30th sample to date.
Curiosity’s drill powderized the sample before trickling it into instruments inside the rover so the science team could get a better understanding of the rock’s composition and what clues it might offer about Mars’ past. This area is at the transition between the “clay-bearing unit” Curiosity is departing and the “sulfate-bearing unit” that’s ahead on Mount Sharp, the 3-mile-tall (5-kilometer-tall) mountain that the rover has been rolling up since 2014. Scientists have long thought this transition might reveal what happened to Mars as it became the desert planet we see today.
NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover used its Mastcam instrument to take the 32 individual images that make up this panorama of the outcrop nicknamed “Mont Mercou.” It took a second panorama to create a stereoscopic view. Both panoramas were taken on March 4, 2021, the 3,049th Martian day, or sol, of the mission. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS
France’s Mont Mercou is located near the village of Nontron in the southeast of the country. The team chose Nontron-related nicknames for this part of the Red Planet because Mars orbiters detected nontronite, a type of clay mineral found close to Nontron, in the region. Surface missions assign nicknames to landmarks to provide the mission’s team members a common way to refer to rocks, soils, and other geologic features of interest.
The selfie is composed of 60 images taken by the Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) on the rover’s robotic arm on March 26, 2021, the 3,070th Martian day, or sol, of the mission. These were combined with 11 images taken by the Mastcam on the mast, or “head,” of the rover on March 16, 2021, the 3,060th Martian day of the mission.
NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover used its Mastcam instrument to take the 126 individual images that make up this 360-degree panorama on March 3, 2021, the 3,048th Martian day, or sol, of the mission. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS
Curiosity also provided a pair of panoramas using its Mastcam on March 4, 2021, the 3,049th Martian day of the mission. By shooting one panorama from about 130 feet (40 meters) away from the outcrop, then rolling to the side and shooting another from the same distance, the rover created a stereoscopic effect similar to those seen in 3D viewfinders. Studying the outcrop from more than one angle helps scientists get a better idea of the 3D geometry of Mount Mercou’s sedimentary layers. An anaglyph of the image can be viewed through red-blue glasses, which you can learn to make here.
Anaglyph of “Mont Mercou.” Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS
In addition to the stereo view and the selfie, Curiosity took a 360-degree panorama of Mont Mercou and its surroundings with its Mastcam.
Three-dimensional representation of the number of people avoiding shark bites from 2020 to 2066 for incrementingproportions of people wearing electronic deterrents for Australia combined. Shown is the median (darker surface) and theupper and lower 95% confidence limits (lighter surfaces). Credit: Professor Corey Bradshaw, Flinders University.
With shark bites increasing in countries like Australia—scientists say the use of personal electronic deterrents is an effective way to prevent future deaths and injuries which could save the lives of up to 1063 Australians along the coastline over the next 50 years.
The research, published in scientific journal Royal Society Open Science, shows that while shark bites are rare events, strategies to reduce shark-bite risk are also valuable because they can severely affect victims and their support groups—with one third of victims experiencing post-traumatic stress disorder.
The researchers analyzed per-capita shark bites around Australia from 1900 to 2020 and developed models to estimate the preventative impact of electronic deterrents if they were worn by water users, to predict how many shark bites could be avoided.
With the incidence of bites increasing worldwide, researchers used the Australian Shark Attack File curated by Taronga Conservation Society Australia to develop the models of incidents, and then projected these shark bites to 2066 when the population is expected to rise to 49 million.
There were 985 incidents reported in the Australian Shark Attack File from 1900 to 2020 from 20 different species.
Lead author Professor Corey Bradshaw of Flinders University says efforts to reduce the risk of shark bites, even if they are extremely rare, are valuable with electronic deterrents capable of reducing the likelihood of a bite by about 60%, potentially saving hundreds of lives over the next 50 years.
Number of fewer bites year predicted for Australia combined (AUS), New South Wales (NSW), Queensland (QLD) andWestern Australia (WA) for incrementing proportions of people wearing electronic deterrents from 2020 to 2066. Credit: Professor Corey Bradshaw, Flinders University
"Avoiding death, injury, and trauma from shark bites over the next half-century would be a realistic outcome if people use these personal electronic deterrents whenever they're in the water, and as long as the technology is operating at capacity."
"Given that governments are applying multiple approaches to mitigate shark bites such as drones, SMART drumlines, and acoustic monitoring, our simulations suggest electronic deterrents could make a valuable contribution to overall mitigation, and so help allay community fears."
"This is especially so when you consider the additional costs associated with the loss of recreational, commercial, and tourism revenue in the tens to hundreds of millions of dollars following clusters of shark-bite events. "
"For example, the New South Wales Government recently invested AU$16 million to mitigate shark bites in part due to lost revenue from businesses benefitting from water users and tourism."
Despite the low probability of being bitten by a shark, the rising number of people spending time in waters frequented by sharks increase shark-bite risk to an extent.
Spatial distribution of shark-bite incidents in the Australian Shark Attack File. Red icons show incidents resulting in ahuman fatality. Credit: Professor Corey Bradshaw, Flinders University
The researchers point out this approach relies on many assumptions, the biggest factors being stability in the abundance of sharks, shark behavior, shark distribution (potentially influenced by climate), and human use of the ocean.
Shark scientist and co-author Associate Professor Charlie Huveneers, who leads the Southern Shark Ecology Group at Flinders University, says the electronic deterrent devices can be beneficial, as long as people understand their effectiveness and how much they actually reduce the risk of attacks.
"Although several studies have demonstrated that electronic deterrents can reduce the probability of shark bites, device efficacy varies among manufacturers and even between products of the same manufacturer."
"When testing these products scientifically, we need a large number of interactions to (i.e., using robust statistics) assess efficacy confidently. As a result, we often need to use bait or berley to attract sharks, which likely motivate sharks to bite more than in situations when sharks encounter a swimmer or surfer."
"Therefore, the ability of electric deterrents to reduce shark bite risk might be greater than the 60% decrease we observed in our studies, further increasing the number of lives saved."
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The fossilized remains of Llukalkan aliocranianus include a superbly preserved and uncrushed braincase and were unearthed in the Bajo de la Carpa Formation in Argentina. Llukalkan means "the one who causes fear" in the language of the indigenous Mapuche, and aliocranianus is Latin for "unusual skull."
Part of a family of dinosaurs called abelisaurids, the creature would have broadly resembled a Tyrannosaurus rex in appearance, with tiny stubby arms. But an unusually short, deep skull, which often bore crests, bumps and horns, set it apart. At least 5 meters long -- around the size of an elephant -- Llukalkan aliocranianus would have roamed Patagonia and other areas of the prehistoric southern subcontinent of Gondwana, which included Africa, India, Antarctica, Australia and South America.
Its most distinctive feature was a small air-filled sinus in the middle ear zone that has not been seen in any other abelisaurid found so far, according to the research published Tuesday in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology,
It means that Llukalkan likely heard differently, and probably better, than other abelisaurids -- more similar to the hearing of a modern-day crocodile.
"A peculiarity of this dinosaur is that it has cavities in the ear area that other abelisaurids did not have, which could have given this species different auditory capacities, possibly a greater hearing range. This, together with its keen sense of smell, would have given great capabilities as a predator to this species," lead author Federico Gianechini, a paleontologist at the National University of San Luis, Argentina, told CNN in an email.
The fossilized remains were discovered in 2015 by accident during a dig in a place known as La Invernada, near the city of Rincón de los Sauces, in Neuquén Province, Gianechini said. The main purpose of the dig was to unearth a sauropod dinosaur (large, lumbering plant-eaters) that they had found a year earlier, but they noticed bones poking out on the surface of the ground a few days before finishing their excavation.
The dinosaur's unique hearing mechanism suggests that abelisaurids were flourishing right before the dinosaurs' extinction 67 million years ago.
"These dinosaurs were still trying out new evolutionary pathways and rapidly diversifying right before they died out completely," said Ariel Mendez, a study co-author and paleontologist from the Patagonian Institute of Geology and Palaeontology, Argentina, in a news statement.
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Meet the four people who will take the first all-civilian rocket trip to orbit Earth.
All it takes is luck and a dream, and a 38-year-old billionaire.
Jared Isaacman, an entrepreneur and philanthropist, announced on Tuesday the names of the final two passengers who will accompany him on a three-day rocket ride circling the Earth.
By purchasing the ride from SpaceX — the company started by another billionaire, Elon Musk — Mr. Isaacman and his passengers will be the first to orbit the planet without the presence of a professional astronaut from NASA or other space agency.
The lucky recipients? Sian Proctor, 51, a community college professor from Tempe, Ariz., and Christopher Sembroski, 41, of Everett, Wash., who works on data engineering for Lockheed Martin. Both are lifelong space enthusiasts.
“The stars really aligned for us in terms of this group,” said Mr. Isaacman, who announced the purchase of the trip on Feb. 1.
The capsule and its occupants will circle Earth at an altitude of 335 miles, about 80 miles higher than the orbit of the International Space Station. The launch date, originally planned for October, may be as soon as Sept. 15, Mr. Isaacman said.
In planning the mission, Mr. Isaacman had several goals.
He said that he wanted to give nonbillionaires a chance to hitch a ride. And he wanted to raise money for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, which treats children for cancer and other diseases at no charge, including a raffle for one of the Crew Dragon seats. Mr. Isaacman also said that he hoped this space crew would be more diverse than who has gone to space in the past, mostly white men.
He seems to have succeeded.
Last month, Mr. Isaacman and St. Jude announced that one seat would go to Hayley Arceneaux, a former patient of St. Jude, who now works as a physician assistant there. Ms. Arceneaux, 29, will be the youngest American ever to go to space and the first person with a prosthetic body part. (During her treatment for bone cancer, part of the bones in her left leg were replaced by metal rods.)
Hayley Arceneaux, a pediatric bone cancer survivor, during her treatment at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, via Reuters
Dr. Proctor, who is African-American and holds a doctorate in science education, got on board by winning a contest sponsored by Mr. Isaacman’s company, Shift4 Payments. Contestants used the company’s software to design an online store and then tweeted videos describing their entrepreneurial and space dreams. (Using the software, Dr. Proctor has started selling her space-related artwork, and in her video, she reads a poem that she wrote.)
Dr. Proctor had come close to becoming an astronaut the old-fashioned way. She said that in 2009, she was among 47 finalists whom NASA selected from 3,500 applications. The space agency chose nine new astronauts that year. Dr. Proctor was not one of them.
She applied twice more and was not even among the finalists. When NASA announced last year another round of applications, Dr. Proctor passed.
“I said, ‘No,’ because I just feel like that door has closed,” she said. “But I was really hopeful that in my lifetime, maybe commercial space would be available for me. I never in a million years would have imagined it would come just like that and so quickly.”
She has had practice. In 2013, Dr. Proctor was one of six people who lived for four months in a small building on the side of a Hawaiian volcano, part of a NASA-financed experience to study the isolation and stresses of a long trip to Mars.
Mr. Sembroski said he heard about Mr. Isaacman’s mission, called Inspiration4, from a commercial during this year’s Super Bowl.
“That was just kind of intriguing,” he said. “And so, it’s like, ‘All right, I’ll donate to St. Jude and throw my name in the hat to see what happens.’”
Mr. Sembroski said he thought he donated $50, but he did not win the sweepstakes, which helped raise $13 million for St. Jude. A friend, though, ending up winning — an old college buddy from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Florida. The friend, who remains anonymous, decided not to go to space but, knowing about Mr. Sembroski’s enthusiasm, transferred the prize to him.
Mr. Sembroski learned that he had won the Crew Dragon seat through a video call with Mr. Isaacman and his friend.
“I just said: ‘Wow. Really? Wow. That’s, that’s amazing,’” Mr. Sembroski said.
Mr. Sembroski was “very reserved at first,” Mr. Isaacman said. “He was almost in like a state of shock.”
After the call ended, Mr. Sembroski went upstairs. “I tell my wife, ‘So yeah, I just got off the call and, um, I’m going to ride a rocket.’ And she looked at me. She said, ‘What?’”
During college, Mr. Sembroski had worked as a counselor at Space Camp, an educational program in Huntsville, Ala., that offers children and families a taste of what life as an astronaut is like. He also volunteered for ProSpace, a nonprofit advocacy group that pushed to open space to more people.
Mr. Sembroski described himself as “that guy behind the scenes, that’s really helping other people accomplish their goals and to take center stage,” and he finds it hard now to be in the spotlight.
“Everybody’s doing that for me this time,” he said. “And that is a completely different and unique experience.”
A couple of days after learning the news, Dr. Proctor and Mr. Sembroski accompanied Mr. Isaacman to Los Angeles to visit the headquarters of SpaceX and undergo health evaluations at the University of California, Los Angeles.
On Tuesday, after the formal announcement at the Kennedy Space Center, the four crew members will head to Philadelphia to be spun around a giant centrifuge, simulating the strong forces they will experience during launch and re-entry into the atmosphere.
Their training at SpaceX in California will be similar to that of NASA astronauts riding SpaceX rockets. At the end of April, Mr. Isaacman also plans to take them for three days of camping on Mount Rainier in Washington.
“This is about mental toughness,” Mr. Isaacman said. “Getting uncomfortable, staying uncomfortable — and how well you perform when you are uncomfortable.”
He said that in the future, he hopes spaceflight becomes more commonplace and turns “into planning a trip to Europe or something.”
This illustration shows a concept of how the NASA Mars Ascent Vehicle, carrying tubes containing rock and soil samples, could be launched from the surface of Mars in one step of the Mars sample return mission. Credit: NASA/JPL-Catlech
NASA awarded Northrop Grumman a contract worth as much as $84.5 million earlier this month to supply rocket motors for a first-of-its-kind launch vehicle to fire a capsule of rock samples off of Mars on a journey back to Earth.
The Mars Ascent Vehicle will fly to the Red Planet on a robotic mission scheduled for launch in 2026. The mission’s objective is to collect rock specimens gathered by NASA’s Perseverance rover, which landed on Mars last month.
Elements of the Mars Sample Return mission are scheduled for launch on two rockets in 2026. One part of the mission will launch on a U.S. rocket, and deliver to the Martian surface a rover to fetch the samples gathered by Perseverance, along with a makeshift launch pad and the Mars Ascent Vehicle.
The rover will load the rock specimens into capsule on top of the rocket. Then the Mars Ascent Vehicle will fire the sample canister into orbit around the Red Planet, where a European Space Agency spacecraft will rendezvous with the sample carrier.
The European orbiter will snag the sample and seat it for return to Earth. If all goes according to plan, the entire campaign to bring home Mars specimens will cost about $7 billion, and the materials could be back on Earth by 2031.
One of the untried mission elements required for the Mars Sample Return program is the rocket that will boost the rock specimens off of the Red Planet.
Northrop Grumman won the Mars Ascent Propulsion System, or MAPS, contract to “provide propulsion support and products” for the Mars Sample Return program,” NASA announced March 4. NASA said the cost-plus, fixed-fee contract has a potential mission services value of $60.2 million and a maximum potential value of $84.5 million.
Technicians work with a Star 27 solid rocket motor used as a kick stage on NASA’s Interstellar Boundary Explorer mission. Credit: NASA
“The Martian environment will be a significant factor in the design, development, manufacturing, testing, and qualification of two different solid rocket motors with multiple deliveries of each,” NASA said in a statement. “Through the MAPS contract, Northrop Grumman will provide the propulsion systems for the MAV, as well as other supporting equipment and logistics services.”
“We are committed to help build the rockets that will orbit the samples Perseverance collects so they can be returned to Earth,” said Rebecca Torzone, vice president of missile products at Northrop Grumman. “We play a vital role with NASA, as we have for decades, by providing key propulsion and control subsystems in support of human spaceflight and robotic exploration missions.”
Based on preliminary design constraints, the Mars Ascent Vehicle can be no taller than 9.2 feet (2.8 meters) and no wider than 1.9 feet (57 centimeters). Its total liftoff mass must not exceed 881 pounds (400 kilograms).
Martian gravity is just 38 percent that of Earth, meaning a rocket designed to launch a payload into orbit can be much smaller on Mars. And the MAV only has to deliver some 30 to 35 pounds (14 to 16 kilograms) of payload into orbit around Mars.
The requirements stack up to create a MAV concept that is tiny by launch vehicle standards, but it’s just enough to do the job, according to NASA engineers. After initially looking at a single-stage hybrid propulsion rocket design, engineers at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, determined a two-stage, solid-fueled rocket is the best choice for the Mars Ascent Vehicle.
Last year, NASA officials said the selection of the Perseverance rover’s landing site in Jezero Crater, which will also be the MAV’s launch site, allowed engineers to consider a solid-fueled rocket design. Located near the Martian equator, Jezero is home to a dried-up lake and river, which scientists believe may preserve signatures of ancient life.
Jezero’s climate is warmer than other locations considered for Perseverance’s landing, making it more amenable for solid rocket motors, which consume pre-packed propellants. Jim Watzin, the former head of NASA’s Mars exploration program, said last year that solid rocket motors are “very much a known and established entity.”
“We made a selection to go with something that we know and understand, that was not necessarily going to have a big challenge with the new, revised temperature limits that we’re going to face,” Watzin said.
The MAV will launch in mid-2026 with the U.S.-built Sample Retrieval Lander and a European fetch rover. Under current mission plans, the rocket won’t be fired until mid-2029 to begin the return trip to Earth.
Northrop Grumman supplies solid-fueled rocket motors for military missiles and satellite launchers, which are sometimes stored for decades before use. The MAV stages will launch pre-loaded with solid propellants.
Thiokol Propulsion, which is now part of Northrop Grumman after a series of corporate acquisitions, developed a solid rocket motor for NASA’s Magellan spacecraft that successfully fired after more than 15 months in space to place the probe into orbit around Venus in 1990.
According to NASA, Northrop Grumman owns a proprietary solid propellant formulation that could be used for the Mars Ascent Vehicle.
Northrop Grumman said in a statement will provide a variant of its Star-class solid rocket motors for the first and second stages of the Mars Ascent Vehicle, plus the first stage’s thrust vector control steering system and small rockets for spin stabilization of the second stage.
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