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Sunday, July 31, 2022

Chinese rocket falls to Earth, NASA says Beijing did not share information - Reuters.com

A Long March-5B Y3 rocket, carrying the Wentian lab module for China's space station under construction, takes off from Wenchang Spacecraft Launch Site in Hainan province, China July 24, 2022. China Daily via REUTERS/File Photo

WASHINGTON, July 30 (Reuters) - A Chinese rocket fell back to Earth on Saturday over the Indian Ocean but NASA said Beijing had not shared the "specific trajectory information" needed to know where possible debris might fall.

U.S. Space Command saidthe Long March 5B rocket re-entered over the Indian Ocean at approximately 12:45 p.m. EDT Saturday (1645 GMT), but referred questions about "reentry’s technical aspects such as potential debris dispersal impact location" to China.

"All spacefaring nations should follow established best practices and do their part to share this type of information in advance to allow reliable predictions of potential debris impact risk," NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said. "Doing so is critical to the responsible use of space and to ensure the safety of people here on Earth."

Social media users in Malaysia posted video of what appeared to be rocket debris.

Aerospace Corp, a government funded nonprofit research center near Los Angeles, said it was reckless to allow the rocket's entire main-core stage - which weighs 22.5 tons (about 48,500 lb) - to return to Earth in an uncontrolled reentry.

Earlier this week, analysts said the rocket body would disintegrate as it plunged through the atmosphere but is large enough that numerous chunks will likely survive a fiery re-entry to rain debris over an area some 2,000 km (1,240 miles) long by about 70 km (44 miles) wide.

The Chinese Embassy in Washington did not immediately comment. China said earlier this week it would closely track the debris but said it posed little risk to anyone on the ground.

The Long March 5B blasted off July 24 to deliver a laboratory module to the new Chinese space station under construction in orbit, marking the third flight of China's most powerful rocket since its maiden launch in 2020. read more

Fragments of another Chinese Long March 5B landed on the Ivory Coast in 2020, damaging several buildings in that West African nation, though no injuries were reported.

By contrast, he said, the United States and most other space-faring nations generally go to the added expense of designing their rockets to avoid large, uncontrolled re-entries - an imperative largely observed since large chunks of the NASA space station Skylab fell from orbit in 1979 and landed in Australia.

Last year, NASA and others accused China of being opaque after the Beijing government kept silent about the estimated debris trajectory or the reentry window of its last Long March rocket flight in May 2021. read more

Debris from that flight ended up landing harmlessly in the Indian Ocean.

(The story is refiled to remove extra word 'said' in paragraph 2)

Reporting by David Shepardson Editing by Alistair Bell

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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This Week @NASA: Mars Sample Return, Benefits of Space Station Research and Development - SciTechDaily

NASA Mars Sample Return Benefits of Space Station Research

The benefits of space station research and development …

Refining the architecture for the Mars Sample Return mission

And test firing a solid-rocket booster for our mega Moon rocket … a few of the stories to tell you about – This Week at NASA!

The Benefits of Space Station Research and Development

The 11th annual International Space Station Research and Development Conference took place July 25-28 in Washington. The conference was hosted by the American Astronautical Society and the Center for the Advancement of Science in Space, in cooperation with NASA. The event coincided with the release of the 2022 edition of the International Space Station Benefits for Humanity publication. The digital book, which is available online, is filled with examples of how people on Earth have benefitted from research conducted in the microgravity environment of the space station. For more about the groundbreaking discoveries, benefits for humanity, and how the agency and its commercial and international partners are maximizing research and development aboard the space station, check out nasa.gov/stationbenefits.

Multiple Robots NASA Mars Sample Return Mission

This illustration shows a concept for multiple robots that would team up to ferry to Earth samples collected from the Mars surface by NASA’s Mars Perseverance rover. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Refining the Mars Sample Return Mission’s Architecture

The Mars Sample Return Program is nearing completion of the conceptual design phase of the mission. The program has reviewed, evaluated, and refined the mission architecture that will be used to return the scientifically selected samples currently being collected on Mars by our Perseverance rover. Refinements to the mission architecture include using Perseverance to replace the Sample Fetch Rover as the primary means of transporting the samples to our Sample Retrieval Lander. The program has also added two sample recovery helicopters, based on the design of our Ingenuity helicopter, that will provide a secondary capability to fetch cached samples from the Martian surface.

SLS Flight Support Booster 2 Test

NASA and Northrop Grumman, the Space Launch System (SLS) booster lead contractor, conducted the full-scale Flight Support Booster-2 (FSB-2) test in Promontory, Utah, on July 21 to support future flights of NASA’s mega Moon rocket. The SLS uses two, five-segment solid rocket boosters to help launch NASA’s Artemis missions to the Moon. A single solid rocket booster motor will fire during the FSB-2 test and evaluate improvements and new materials in the boosters for missions beyond Artemis III. Credit: NASA/Kevin O’Brien

Test Firing a Booster Engine for a Future Artemis Mission

Teams from NASA’s Space Launch System or SLS Program recently test fired a ground-based version of a booster engine for our SLS mega Moon rocket at Northrop Grumman’s test facility in Promontory, Utah. Engineers are using the test data to evaluate improvements and new materials in the boosters for missions after Artemis III. Together, two solid rocket boosters on SLS will provide more than 75% of the initial thrust during an Artemis launch.

VIPER Engineering Test Team

The VIPER engineering test team uses lunar soil simulants and hand-picked rocks to carefully shape the terrain to realistically mimic actual features at the surface of the Moon’s South Pole. Credit: NASA

VIPER Motors Through Moon-like Obstacle Course

NASA’s Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover or VIPER prototype recently faced the most realistic tests to date of its ability to navigate the most difficult terrain it might encounter at the Moon’s South Pole. The VIPER team used the Simulated Lunar Operations or SLOPE Lab at our Glenn Research Center to create an assortment of tricky soil conditions. They also tested the prototype’s ability to use its wheels to “inch-worm” its way out of being stuck. VIPER is targeted for delivery to the Moon in November 2024 to search for water and other resources that could eventually be harvested to sustain human exploration on the Moon, Mars — and beyond.

AirVenture 2022

Visitors to the 2022 Experimental Aircraft Association’s AirVenture in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, can find a wide range of aeronautical exhibits, activities, and experts to engage with at NASA’s pavilion. Credit: NASA

NASA Technologies Showcased at AirVenture 2022

We participated in the Experimental Aircraft Association’s AirVenture Oshkosh 2022 event. Our NASA pavilion included exhibits and hands-on demonstrations showcasing aviation inspired technology, and the latest in NASA aeronautics research, space exploration, science, and more. One of the goals of the annual event, which is often called the world’s greatest aviation celebration, is to inspire the next generation of innovators.

That’s what’s up this week @NASA

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Ocean-exploring robot could search for lost cities and shipwrecks - CNN

A version of this story appeared in CNN's Wonder Theory newsletter. To get it in your inbox, sign up for free here.

(CNN)The ocean is full of mysteries that lead to legendary lore.

During a recent moonlit harbor excursion, conversation quickly turned to tales of piracy and exploration.
A guide shared stories from the days when tall masts and billowing sails loomed over coastal skylines -- and intriguing characters such as Blackbeard and Barbarossa sailed the seas.
We couldn't help but wonder about the secrets that went down with shipwrecks and lost artifacts scattered across the ocean floor. But these sites are hidden deep beneath the waves where humans typically can't reach.
However, one explorer is venturing to places no human has gone before.

Ocean secrets

Stanford University's OceanOneK diving robot explores a shipwreck.
At first glance, OceanOneK looks a bit like a diver descending through the waters off the coast of France.
Stanford University researchers designed the robot to go underwater to explore sunken planes, ships, submarines and perhaps even lost cities. And this year, the humanoid robot reached a new milestone when it dove half a mile (852 meters) beneath the ocean's surface.
The robot has hands that can cradle priceless artifacts and bring them to the surface and stereoscopic eyes that capture the world of the deep in full color.
But another feature makes the robot even more special -- a touch-based feedback system. This interactivity allows its operators to feel everything they might experience if they were diving themselves -- the water's resistance and touching objects such as vases and oil lamps from an ancient Roman ship.

Curiosities

Archaeologists have uncovered telltale timbers that may have belonged to a centuries-old shipwreck -- one that likely inspired the cult classic "The Goonies."
A volunteer team found more than 20 pieces of wood in a cave off the coast of Oregon in June. The timbers belonged to the 1693 shipwreck of the Santo Cristo de Burgos.
The Spanish galleon wasn't loaded with treasure, but local lore and the ship's mysterious fate have become storied over time -- possibly enough to inspire Steven Spielberg as he created his 1985 film about teens in Astoria searching for pirate's treasure on the Oregon coast.
The discovery has reignited interest in searching for more parts of the wreck. After all, "Goonies never say die!"

Fantastic creatures

King penguins have reappeared on Tierra del Fuego at South America's tip after initially disappearing.
Penguins may reign supreme in Antarctica, but they also live across the wilds of Patagonia in South America. In these remote places, scientists and conservationists dedicate their lives to protecting the flightless marine birds.
Gentoo, Magellanic and king penguins act as beacons for how ecosystems are responding to the climate crisis.
"It's the perfect animal to get to know the ocean better," marine biologist Andrea Raya Rey said.
The king penguin colony on Tierra del Fuego disappeared 200 years ago due to overhunting -- but they've made an unexpected comeback.
Learn more during Sunday's episode of the CNN docuseries "Patagonia: Life on the Edge of the World" at 9 p.m. ET/PT. Every new episode of the six-part series will be available on CNNgo the day after it airs on television. You can also access CNNgo via our CNN app.

Across the universe

Astronomers have found a "black widow" in space, and this dead star has grown to record-breaking size by feasting on another celestial object.
Much like its namesake arachnid, the neutron star is devouring its companion star. This pulsating, cosmic lighthouse also spins a dizzying 707 times per second.
The neutron star, or the dense, collapsed remains of a colossal star, weighs more than twice the mass of our sun -- making it the heaviest one ever observed. When these objects become too hefty, they usually collapse and form a black hole, so this one could be the limit for neutron stars.

Dino-mite!

The Gorgosaurus fossil is mounted to show how the dinosaur walked on two hind legs.
Meet a rare Gorgosaurus, a relative of T. rex -- but with more speed and a stronger bite. The 77 million-year-old fossil was sold for just over $6 million this week during a Sotheby's auction.
This specimen is just one of a few dinosaur skeletons that have made their way to the bidding block -- a trend that troubles scientists. When fossils are auctioned, it's possible they will end up in private collections, which means paleontologists can't study them.
Whoever bought the "fierce lizard" remains unknown, but the buyer will have the unusual opportunity to name it.

Explorations

Settle in with these reads:
-- The first mission to return samples from another planet will touch down on Earth in 2033, and two Ingenuity-style helicopters will help retrieve the Martian rocks.
-- Photographer Joel Sartore is on a mission to capture images of 20,000 species to prevent the extinction of creatures great and small. See some of these endangered species through Sartore's lens.
And keep your eye on the night sky this weekend for a meteor shower. Here's how to watch.
Like what you've read? Oh, but there's more. Sign up here to receive in your inbox the next edition of Wonder Theory, brought to you by CNN Space and Science writer Ashley Strickland, who finds wonder in planets beyond our solar system and discoveries from the ancient world.

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Season 5, Episode 31: Meet a Webb Scientist Who Looks Back in Time - NASA

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  1. Season 5, Episode 31: Meet a Webb Scientist Who Looks Back in Time  NASA
  2. NASA James Webb Telescope looks back in time! Nobel Prize winner Dr John Mather explains how  HT Tech
  3. ‘We can study the future now — India’s S. Chandrasekhar knew the sun’s life in 1931’  Times of India
  4. View Full Coverage on Google News
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Friday, July 29, 2022

Gorgosaurus: Ancient dinosaur skeleton sells for $6m at auction - BBC

Gorgosaurus Skeleton on display in New York CityGetty Images

A rare ancient dinosaur skeleton has been sold in the US to an unknown buyer for just over $6m (£5m).

It was offered up by Sotheby's and sold at the firm's natural history auction in New York City on Thursday.

The fossil is that of a Gorgosaurus - a distant relative of the infamous and deadly Tyrannosaurus rex - that was discovered in 2018.

The anonymous buyer will have the unique opportunity to bestow a nickname on the one-time apex predator.

The sale is the second-ever of a fossilised dinosaur skeleton auctioned by Sotheby's. The first, a T-rex nicknamed Sue, was sold to Chicago's Field Museum in 1997 for $8.36m.

The Gorgosaurus was expected to attract bids of up to $8m.

It is the only specimen of its kind to be offered up for private ownership. There are only 20 fossils like it known to exist around the world.

The Gorgosaurus roamed the Earth about 77 million years ago and, like the T-rex, it had a large head, a mouth full of curved serrated teeth, and small two-fingered front limbs.

Though smaller than its cousin dinosaur, it was faster, fiercer and packed a stronger bite, optimised for "cutting into thick skin and penetrating deep into the flesh of their prey", according to Sotheby's.

The fossil was discovered on private land in the US state of Montana. It has 79 bone elements, stands 10ft (3m) tall and is 22ft long.

While a nickname for the Gorgosaurus skeleton has not yet officially been announced, "Gorgeous George" emerged as a strong contender among Sotheby's social media followers.

Other natural history items up for auction on Thursday include a complete T-rex rooted tooth, which sold for just over $100,000, a Triceratops skull, which sold for $661,500, and a sabre-toothed tiger skull.

The world record price for dinosaur fossils remains $31.8m (£24.6m), sold at an online auction to a private buyer in 2020.

Some experts are concerned about dinosaur skeletons being sold on the private market.

"A skeleton like this is part of our collective natural heritage, a vestige of the Earth's past that is relevant to us all," said David Polly, a professor at Indiana University and former president of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology.

"I feel that all such fossils should go into the public trust where they can be studied, visited and enjoyed by scientists and a wide range of other people."

Gregory M Erickson, a professor of anatomy and vertebrate paleobiology at Florida State University, told the BBC he worries the sale "sends a message that it's just any other commodity that you can buy for money and not for scientific good".

But he said those sales and the fanfare surrounding them are a by-product of our "dinomania" society.

"Right from childhood people are enamoured of dinosaurs, so I can see why people buy dinosaur fossils," he said.

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Building-size asteroids are barreling toward Earth - Livescience.com

Two skyscraper-size asteroids are zooming toward Earth this weekend, with one making its closest approach on Friday (July 29) and the second whizzing by on Saturday (July 30).

The first asteroid, dubbed 2016 CZ31, will fly by around 7 p.m. ET (23:00 GMT) on Friday, whizzing at an estimated 34,560 mph (55,618 km/h, according to NASA.

Astronomers estimate that the asteroid measures about 400 feet (122 meters) across at its widest point, making it about as wide as a 40-story building is tall. The asteroid will safely miss our planet, passing about 1,740,000 miles (2,800,000 kilometers) out from Earth — or more than seven times the average distance between Earth and the moon. According to NASA, this space rock makes close approaches to Earth every few years, with the next one scheduled for January 2028.

Related: Why are asteroids and comets such weird shapes?

On Saturday, a second, ever larger asteroid will skim past our planet, albeit at a greater distance from Earth. That asteroid, named 2013 CU83, measures approximately 600 feet (183 m) across at its widest visible point, and will pass by about 4,320,000 miles (6,960,000 km) from Earth, or about 18 times the average distance between Earth and the moon.

This colossal space rock will be traveling at 13,153 mph (21,168 km/h) when it nears Earth at 7:37 p.m. ET (23:37 GMT).

Both of these close encounters are significantly further afield than the asteroid 2022 NF, which came within 56,000 miles (90,000 km) — or about 23% the average distance between Earth and the moon — on July 7.

NASA and other space agencies closely monitor thousands of near-Earth objects like these. Even if an asteroid's trajectory puts it millions of miles from our planet, there is an extremely slim chance that the asteroid's orbit could shift slightly after interacting with the gravity of a larger object, such as a planet; even such a tiny shift could potentially put an asteroid on a collision course with Earth on a future flyby.

As such, space agencies take planetary defense very seriously. In November 2021, NASA launched an asteroid-deflecting spacecraft called the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART), which will slam directly into the 525-foot-wide (160 m) asteroid Dimorphos in autumn 2022. The collision won't destroy the asteroid, but it may change the space rock's orbital path slightly, Live Science previously reported. The mission will help test the viability of asteroid deflection, should some future asteroid pose an imminent danger to our planet.

Originally published on Live Science.

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DeepMind AI Powers Major Scientific Breakthrough: AlphaFold Generates 3D View of the Protein Universe - SciTechDaily

AlphaFold Protein Structure Prediction

AlphaFold predicts the structure of almost every cataloged protein known to science. Credit: Karen Arnott/EMBL-EBI

AI-powered predictions of the three-dimensional structures of nearly all cataloged proteins known to science have been made by DeepMind and EMBL’s European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI). The catalog is freely and openly available to the scientific community, via the AlphaFold Protein Structure Database.

The two organizations hope the expanded database will continue to increase our understanding of biology, helping countless more scientists in their work as they strive to tackle global challenges.

This major milestone marks the database being expanded by approximately 200 times. It has grown from nearly 1 million protein structures to over 200 million, and now covers almost every organism on Earth that has had its genome sequenced. Predicted structures for a wide range of species, including plants, bacteria, animals, and other organisms are now included in the expanded database. This opens up new avenues of research across the life sciences that will have an impact on global challenges, including sustainability, food insecurity, and neglected diseases.

Now, a predicted structure will be available for practically all protein sequences in the UniProt protein database. This release will also open up new research avenues, including supporting bioinformatics and computational work by allowing scientists to potentially spot patterns and trends in the database.

“AlphaFold now offers a 3D view of the protein universe,” said Edith Heard, Director General of EMBL. “The popularity and growth of the AlphaFold Database is testament to the success of the collaboration between DeepMind and EMBL. It shows us a glimpse of the power of multidisciplinary science.”

“We’ve been amazed by the rate at which AlphaFold has already become an essential tool for hundreds of thousands of scientists in labs and universities across the world,” said Demis Hassabis, Founder and CEO of DeepMind. “From fighting disease to tackling plastic pollution, AlphaFold has already enabled incredible impact on some of our biggest global challenges. Our hope is that this expanded database will aid countless more scientists in their important work and open up completely new avenues of scientific discovery.” 

Q8W3K0

Q8W3K0: A potential plant disease resistance protein. Credit: AlphaFold

An essential tool for scientists

DeepMind and EMBL-EBI launched the AlphaFold database in July 2021. At that time it contained more than 350,000 protein structure predictions, including the entire human proteome. Subsequent updates saw the addition of UniProtKB/SwissProt and 27 new proteomes, 17 of which represent neglected tropical diseases that continue to devastate the lives of more than 1 billion people globally. 

More than 1,000 scientific papers have cited the database and over 500,000 researchers from over 190 countries have accessed the AlphaFold Database to view over two million structures in just over one year. 

The team has also seen researchers building on AlphaFold to create and adapt tools such as Foldseek and Dali which allow users to search for entries similar to a given protein. Others have adopted the core machine learning ideas behind AlphaFold, forming the backbone of a slate of new algorithms in this space, or applying them to areas such as RNA structure prediction or developing new models for designing proteins.

Impact and future of AlphaFold and the database

AlphaFold has also shown impact in areas such as improving our ability to fight plastic pollution, gaining insight into Parkinson’s disease, increasing the health of honey bees, understanding how ice forms, tackling neglected diseases such as Chagas disease and Leishmaniasis, and exploring human evolution

“We released AlphaFold in the hopes that other teams could learn from and build on the advances we made, and it has been exciting to see that happen so quickly. Many other AI research organizations have now entered the field and are building on AlphaFold’s advances to create further breakthroughs. This is truly a new era in structural biology, and AI-based methods are going to drive incredible progress,” said John Jumper, Research Scientist and AlphaFold Lead at DeepMind.

“AlphaFold has sent ripples through the molecular biology community. In the past year alone, there have been over a thousand scientific articles on a broad range of research topics which use AlphaFold structures; I have never seen anything like it,” said Sameer Velankar, Team Leader at EMBL-EBI’s Protein Data Bank in Europe. “And this is just the impact of one million predictions; imagine the impact of having over 200 million protein structure predictions openly accessible in the AlphaFold Database.”

DeepMind and EMBL-EBI will continue to refresh the database periodically, with the aim of improving features and functionality in response to user feedback. Access to structures will continue to be fully open, under a CC-BY 4.0 license, and bulk downloads will be made available via Google Cloud Public Datasets

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Thursday, July 28, 2022

An uncontrolled Chinese rocket booster will fall to Earth this weekend - The Verge

Sometime this weekend, a massive booster from a Chinese rocket will beginan uncontrolled fall back to Earth from space — and because of its considerable size and weight, parts of it may survive the descent through our planet’s atmosphere and hit the ground. The chances of the rocket hitting anyone and killing them are exceedingly rare, but a similar falling Chinese rocket last year sparkedmajor concern worldwide, which means this rocket will probably do the same.

The booster is part of a Long March 5B rocket, which launched on July 24th, sending a new module into orbit for China’s growing Tiangong space station. After the giant rocket reaches space, it sheds a fairly massive part of itself: its core booster. This booster sticks around in orbit, lapping the planet before eventually falling back to Earth. Since the rocket part is more than 100 feet long and more than 22 tons in weight, it’s possible that up to 9 tons’ worth of material could survive the fall.

Space trackers are doing their best to predict exactly when and where the Long March 5B booster will come down. The situation closely mimics that of last year’s global scare over an uncontrolled Chinese rocket that fell back to Earth, as well as a similar uncontrolled reentry in 2020. Both of those instances also involved a core booster from China’s Long March 5B, which does not have the capability of disposing of itself in a controlled manner. Fortunately, last year, the rocket came down in the sparsely populated Indian Ocean, but in 2020, that falling rocket did dump debris off of the Ivory Coast, sending metal pipes and other objects into villages without causing any injuries.

Still, the risk to the average human from this year’s rocket is so low that it should not keep anyone up at night. In fact, for any one person on Earth, there are six chances in 10 trillion that a part of this rocket will hit you and cause some kind of casualty or injury, according to the Aerospace Corporation, a nonprofit that does space research and development, as well as provide technical guidance on spaceflight. But, the fact that space trackers have to continue to deal with this kind of issue without knowing when and where the rocket will come down is frustrating.

“Why are we worried? Well, it did cause property damage the last time, and people are having to do preparation as a result,” Ted Muelhaupt, a space traffic expert and consultant with the Aerospace Corporations’ corporate chief engineer’s office, said during a presser about the rocket. “Furthermore, this is not needed. We have the technology to not have this problem.”

In the United States and Europe, the rule for space operators is that if there is going to be some kind of uncontrolled reentry of space debris into Earth’s atmosphere, there must be a lower than 1 in 10,000 chance that the falling object will cause some kind of casualty, or injury, on the ground. It’s a particularly high bar to clear, which is why US and European missions have to be vigilant about how they dispose of the rockets they send into space. “Basically, once you’re done delivering your payload, you turn your rocket around, fire the engine, and drive it back into the ocean somewhere, usually someplace where there’s no population,” Marlon Sorge, a space debris expert and technical fellow with the Aerospace Corporation, said. “You do that, and you have pretty much mitigated the risk right there.”

Controlled disposal is something that most launch providers throughout the world do already. SpaceX and the United Launch Alliance, for instance, purposefully deposit parts of their rockets over the ocean after they launch to space. Plus, the core of SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket is famous for actually flying back to Earth and landing upright — either on a drone ship or landing pad — following its flights. The core booster of the Long March 5B doesn’t have that capability. Once it launches into orbit, the engines on the rocket core can’t really reignite. “They’re designed for a single burn,” Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist at the Harvard Center for Astrophysics and space tracking expert, tells The Verge. “And so this thing just burns once and then switches off, and it’s dead.” Then we just have to wait for it to fall back to Earth as its orbit decays over time.

The Aerospace Corporation estimates that there is between a 1 in 1,000 and 1 in 230 risk of a casualty from the falling Long March 5B booster. That’s 10 times above the 1 in 10,000 threshold, which is why there is heightened vigilance around this specific case. And whenever China pulls a stunt like this, the US isn’t particularly happy about it. “Spacefaring nations must minimize the risks to people and property on Earth of reentries of space objects and maximize transparency regarding those operations,” NASA administrator Bill Nelson said when the 2021 Long March 5B fell. “It is clear that China is failing to meet responsible standards regarding their space debris.”

China seemingly took note of the criticism. During this most recent launch, one Chinese official during the CGTN launch livestream mentioned that they had made improvements to dispose of the booster after launch. “The last segment, or the core segment, once it [enters] into the orbit, it also [works] as a spacecraft,” Xu Yansong, former director for international cooperation at the China National Space Administration, said during the livestream. “So we’ll have to bring it back safely and in a controlled manner. So one of the first missions was unable to do that, but later on, we improve our technologies. And so what we call the passivation of the last stage has been conducted, so we can safely bring back the last fuselage.”

However, it does not seem like anything has changed since the last scare. In fact, the European Union’s Space Surveillance and Tracking network has found that the booster is tumbling through space, indicating there is no control over the object. So we’ll be going through the whole process of predicting where it will come down all over again. As of now, the European Union, the US Space Force, and the Aerospace Corporation’s best guesses of when it will come down is sometime late Saturday night or early Sunday morning. As for where it will come down, it’ll be somewhere between 41.5 degrees North and 41.5 degrees South. That means about 1 billion who live north and south of those lines have zero risk. (Boston and parts of Tasmania — congratulations, you’re right outside the zone.) But 88 percent of the human population lives within that range, according to the Aerospace Corporation.

Predictions will get more precise with each passing day as we get closer to Sunday, and the Aerospace Corporation is continually updating its predictions here. The European Union is keeping track as well, as is the Space Force. As for what to expect when the rocket comes down? Based on past experience, the debris could spread over an area hundreds of miles in length along the rocket’s orbital track. Some pieces, depending on their size and weight, may hit the ground slowly, while others might hit the ground fast, at speeds that could reachhundreds of miles per hour. Ultimately, it’s a guessing game, and we may not know much about this event until the rocket actually comes down. “The history of reentering things has been a history of continuing surprise,” says McDowell. “How much actually does survive reentry? Sometimes more survived than you might have initially expected.”

But even though there is slightly more risk than usual with this falling rocket, it’s important to keep things in perspective. “The risk to any given individual in any given year from getting conked in the head by a piece of space debris is one in 100 billion,” Muelhaupt said. “You’re 80,000 times more likely to get hit by lightning than you are by space debris. But this doesn’t mean that this is a good thing to do.”

So enjoy this new round of falling rocket uncertainty. Once it’s over, we’ll probably have to do it all again. There’s another Long March 5B launch tentatively scheduled for this fall.

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Scientists use dead spider as gripper for robot arm, label it a 'Necrobot' - The Register

Videos Scientists from Rice University in Texas have used a dead spider as an actuator at the end of a robot arm – a feat they claim has initiated the field of "necrobotics".

"Humans have relied on biotic materials – non-living materials derived from living organisms – since their early ancestors wore animal hides as clothing and used bones for tools," the authors state in an article titled Necrobotics: Biotic Materials as Ready-to-Use Actuators. The article also notes that evolution has perfected many designs that could be useful in robots, and that spiders have proven especially interesting. Spiders' legs "do not have antagonistic muscle pairs; instead, they have only flexor muscles that contract their legs inwards, and hemolymph (i.e., blood) pressure generated in the prosoma (the part of the body connected to the legs) extends their legs outwards."

The authors had a hunch that if they could generate and control a force equivalent to blood pressure, they could make a dead spider's legs move in and out, allowing them to grip objects and release them again.

So they killed a wolf spider "through exposure to freezing temperature (approximately -4°C) for a period of 5–7 days" and then used a syringe to inject the spider's prosoma with glue.

By leaving the syringe in place and pumping in or withdrawing glue, the researchers were able to make the spider's legs contract and grip. Here's a vid of the necrobot at work, turning off a light.

Youtube Video

The article claims that's a vastly easier way to make a gripper than with conventional robotic techniques that require all sorts of tedious fabrication and design efforts.

The necrobot gripped strongly. "The necrobotic gripper is capable of grasping objects with irregular geometries and up to 130 percent of its own mass," the article states. Other virtues include biodegradability and excellent camouflage when used in outdoor settings. Disadvantages include being creepy as all get out as shown in the video below that depicts one dead spider lifting another.

Youtube Video

The article does consider the ethics of offing spiders, but notes "there are currently no clear guidelines in the literature regarding ethical sourcing and humane euthanasia of spiders."

The authors therefore "procured our spiders from a scientific product supplier and followed euthanasia methods presented in prior work."

But they're not sure those methods are appropriate, because they were designed to preserve spiders for examination under a microscope. The authors are not sure those methods are the best way to preserve spiders for use as necrobots. The suggest further study is called for.

"Our work here presents the first step in this new avenue of research, which we expect will extend to locomotion of necrobots by independently actuating each leg of the spider," the authors conclude – which doesn't sound like the stuff of nightmares at all. They'd also like to work on "biotic materials derived from other creatures with similar hydraulic characteristics."

Which makes concerns about The Rise Of The Machines seem quaint, now that we have The Rise Of The Machines Wielding Zombie Spiders to worry about. ®

Youtube Video

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Wednesday, July 27, 2022

NASA Will Send More Helicopters to Mars - The New York Times

Instead of sending another rover to help retrieve rock and dirt samples from the red planet and bring them to Earth, the agency will provide the helicopters as a backup option.

The first helicopter that NASA sent to Mars worked so well that it is sending two more.

The helicopters are similar to Ingenuity, the “Marscopter” that accompanied NASA’s Perseverance rover to Mars. But they’ll have the added ability of being able to grab and transport small tubes filled with bits of Martian rock. (Think of them as extraterrestrial drones, similar in concept to the ones Amazon has been developing to deliver packages.)

That is part of a major rejiggering of NASA’s next great mission to Mars, a collaboration with the European Space Agency to bring Martian rocks back to Earth for close examination by scientists using state-of-the-art laboratory equipment that cannot fit into a spacecraft.

“We have a path forward using a revised and innovative architecture,” Thomas Zurbuchen, the associate administrator for NASA’s science directorate, said during a news conference on Wednesday that provided an update on the mission, known as Mars Sample Return.

The Perseverance rover has been drilling rock samples during its exploration of a crater named Jezero. Its focus is on a dried-up river delta along the crater rim, a prime location where signs of ancient life might be preserved if any organisms ever lived there.

The original plan was to send a rover built by the ESA to pick up the samples and carry them back to the lander, where they would be loaded onto a rocket and launched into Martian orbit. Another spacecraft would grab the container with the rocks and take them to Earth. But the design of the rover was becoming bigger, and it, along with that rocket, was getting too heavy to fit on one lander. Earlier this year, NASA announced that it was going to use two landers — one for the rover, and one for the return rocket.

The mission redesign eliminates the fetch rover. Instead, the plan is for Perseverance to drive to the lander, where 30 rock samples would be loaded onto the return rocket. As Curiosity, a rover with a design that is almost identical to that of Perseverance, continues to operate on Mars a decade after its arrival, NASA managers are confident that Perseverance will still be in working order when the Mars Sample Return lander arrives in 2030.

NASA/JPL-Caltech

The helicopters would be a backup option if something went wrong with Perseverance. The sample return lander would settle close to where Perseverance had dropped the rock samples on the ground, sealed within tubes about the size of cigars. The helicopters would then fly the samples back to the lander.

The trip back to Earth would take a few more years, landing in a small capsule in 2033.

NASA officials have been surprised by the continuing accomplishments of Ingenuity, carried to Mars on the underside of Perseverance. Originally, the helicopter was going to fly a few times during a one-month technology demonstration soon after the mission landed on Mars in February 2021, and then Perseverance would leave Ingenuity behind and get on with its main scientific mission. Ingenuity has now flown 29 times.

Perseverance

The NASA mission includes Perseverance, a 2,200-pound rover, and Ingenuity, an experimental Mars helicopter.

Ingenuity Helicopter

The four-pound aircraft will communicate wirelessly with the Perseverance rover.

Solar Panel

Blades

Four carbon-fiber blades will spin at about 2,400 r.p.m.

Power

The plutonium-based power supply will charge the rover’s batteries.

MAST

Instruments will take videos, panoramas and photographs. A laser will study the chemistry of Martian rocks.

PiXl

Will identify chemical elements to seek signs of past life on Mars.

Antenna

Will transmit data directly to Earth.

Robotic arm

A turret with many instruments is attached to a 7-foot robotic arm. A drill will extract samples from Martian rocks. The Sherloc device will identify molecules and minerals to detect potential biosignatures, with help from the Watson camera.

Perseverance Rover

The 2,200 pound rover will explore Jezero Crater. It has aluminum wheels and a suspension system to drive over obstacles.

Ingenuity Helicopter

The aircraft will communicate wirelessly with the rover.

Solar Panel

Blades

Power

The plutonium-based power supply will charge the rover’s batteries.

MAST

Instruments will take videos, panoramas and photographs. A laser will study the chemistry of Martian rocks.

PiXl

Will identify chemical elements to seek signs of past life on Mars.

Antenna

Robotic arm

A turret with many instruments is attached to a 7-foot robotic arm. A drill will extract samples from Martian rocks. The Sherloc device will identify molecules and minerals to detect potential biosignatures, with help from the Watson camera.

Perseverance Rover

The 2,200 pound rover will explore Jezero Crater. It has aluminum wheels and a suspension system to drive over obstacles.

Solar panel

Ingenuity Helicopter

Blades

Power

Mast

PIXL

Antenna

Suspension

Perseverance rover

Robotic arm

A turret with many instruments is attached to a 7-foot robotic arm. A drill will extract samples from Martian rocks. The Sherloc device will identify molecules and minerals to detect potential biosignatures, with help from the Watson camera. PiXl will identify chemical elements to seek signs of past life on Mars.

By Eleanor Lutz | Source: NASA

But the Ingenuity’s flights — a difficult technological challenge in the wispy air of Mars — were so successful that NASA decided to have the helicopter continue to follow Perseverance, serving as an aerial scout of the landscape ahead.

“We reached our decision based on new studies and recent achievements at Mars that allowed us to consider options that, frankly, weren’t available to us one year ago or before,” Dr. Zurbuchen said.

The helicopters for the sample return mission would be roughly the same size, but with the addition of small wheels at the bottom of the landing legs. That would allow each of the helicopters to drive a short distance to straddle a sample tube; then, a small robotic arm would pick up the tube.

With the elimination of the fetch rover, the Mars Sample Return mission only requires one lander, not two. That simplifies the mission design — each landing on Mars adds to the risk — and helps keep costs down.

The total cost of the mission will be billions of dollars, but NASA would not speculate how much. “All I can say right now is the obvious,” said Jeff Gramling, the director for the Mars Sample Return program at NASA. “One lander certainly is much less costly than two.”

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Mars sample return effort includes 2 helicopters, no fetch rover - Space.com

The campaign to bring pristine Martian samples to Earth will now include two mini helicopters.

NASA officials involved with the Mars sample return (MSR) effort announced today (July 27) that they plan to redesign the mission, abandoning a previous concept that called for a European Space Agency (ESA) "fetch rover" that would touch down on its own lander.

NASA's Perseverance rover, expected to still be active when a NASA MSR lander touches down in 2031, will now be tasked with bringing the samples it is collecting and caching to a Mars ascent vehicle. Failing that, however, two helicopters much like Ingenuity, which landed with Perseverance last year, will be backup options to pick up the caches themselves.

The helicopters will be similar to Ingenuity in terms of size and mass, but with two key differences, NASA MSR program manager Richard Cook told reporters during a briefing today.

"There will be landing legs that include, at the bottom of them, mobility wheels," Cook explained, saying this new capability will allow the helicopters to "traverse across the surface." A mini robotic-arm on each of the craft will allow the drones to pick up the sample tubes Perseverance leaves behind, if need be.

Related: 12 amazing photos from the Perseverance rover's 1st year on Mars

If the helicopters are needed for such work, they will land near a sample tube, roll over to pick it up, then fly to a spot near the Mars ascent vehicle. After touchdown, the helicopters will roll closer to the vehicle and drop the sample within reach of a newly announced ESA-built transfer arm.

The redesign decision means that no ESA rover will touch down on Mars in the near future. But the new concept also may allow NASA and ESA to accomplish the ambitious sample return effort with less cost and complication, according to the coalition.

"The engineer in me was fascinated by the sample rover, because it's designed to travel much faster than previous Mars rovers, probably about four or five times as quickly over the surface," David Parker, director of ESA's human and robotic exploration, told reporters today. 

Adding the rover, however, would have entailed "a second launch, second lander and so forth," which meant that removing the hardware from the manifest "makes a great deal of programmatic sense," he said.

ESA is still building a rover tasked with landing on Mars — a life-hunting robot named Rosalind Franklin. That rover was supposed to launch this year on a Russian rocket, but that plan fell through after Russia invaded Ukraine. Rosalind Franklin is now expected to lift off no earlier than 2028.

"The engineering team has been working at great speed to find an alternative approach for delivering Rosalind Franklin rover to Mars," Parker said of the situation, saying different options are under discussion. A special European council meeting in Paris in November will allow member states to decide the best path forward, he added.

Life on Mars: Exploration and evidence

The European ExoMars rover may reach Mars in 2028.

The European ExoMars Rosalind Franklin rover is expected to launch no earlier than 2028 due to changes in its landing platform and launching rocket. (Image credit: ESA)

Parts of the revised MSR plan are still being worked out. Officials have no estimate yet on the cost but suggest that only having a single lander going to Mars will be far less costly than sending two. The helicopters also have no defined primary mission, although they may be tasked with observing the area around the Martian ascent vehicle or observing the rocket as it takes off from the Red Planet, Cook said.

This new design was spurred in part by the impressive performance of other hardware that has greatly exceeded its lifespan on the Red Planet, said Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator of NASA's Science Mission Directorate. 

The Curiosity rover, which informed the design of Perseverance, will celebrate 10 years on Mars on Aug. 5. Ingenuity was cleared for a five-flight plan in its design but has flown 29 times on the Red Planet to date.

Related stories:

There's been a lot of movement on the MSR file in recent months. In May, NASA asked the public to provide comments on an environmental assessment as the agency readies for a draft environmental impact statement later in 2022.

The second lander requirement, now dropped, itself was added only in March after the Mars Sample Return Independent Review Board said a dual lander capability "may improve the probability of mission success," according to NASA statements at the time. 

But the addition of the second lander forced the mission to push the launch date two years back to 2028, and the takeoff to return to Earth another two years to 2031. (Those timelines haven't changed with the new mission plan.)

NASA also announced during the MSR press conference that the Perseverance rover is in the middle of picking up its 11th sample on the Red Planet. That sample, a fine-grained sedimentary rock, was selected due to its potential in preserving biosignatures that might be key to help scientists assess the chances for life on Mars.

Follow Elizabeth Howell on Twitter @howellspace (opens in new tab). Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom (opens in new tab) and on Facebook (opens in new tab).

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