NASA's Perseverance Rover Completes Mars Sample Depot – Captures Amazing Variety of Martian Geology - SciTechDaily

Perseverance’s Three Forks Sample Depot Selfie: NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover took a selfie with several of the 10 sample tubes it deposited at a sample depot it is creating within an area of Jezero Crater nicknamed “Three Forks.” Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

Ten sample tubes, capturing an amazing variety of Martian geology, have been deposited on Mars’ surface so they could be studied on Earth in the future.

Less than six weeks after it began, construction of the first sample depot on another world is complete. Confirmation that NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover successfully dropped the 10th and final tube planned for the depot was received around 5 p.m. PST (8 p.m. EST) on Sunday, January 29, by mission controllers at the agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. This major milestone involved precision planning and navigation to ensure the tubes could be safely recovered in the future by the NASA-ESA (European Space Agency) Mars Sample Return campaign, which aims to bring Mars samples to Earth for closer study.

Throughout its science campaigns, the rover has been taking a pair of samples from rocks the mission team deems scientifically significant. One sample from each pair taken so far now sits in the carefully arranged depot in the “Three Forks” region of Jezero Crater. The depot samples will serve as a backup set while the other half remain inside Perseverance, which would be the primary means to convey samples to a Sample Retrieval Lander as part of the campaign.

NASA Sample Retrieval Lander: This illustration shows a concept for a proposed NASA Sample Retrieval Lander that would carry a small rocket (about 10 feet, or 3 meters, tall) called the Mars Ascent Vehicle to the Martian surface. After being loaded with sealed tubes containing samples of Martian rocks and soil collected by NASA’s Perseverance rover, the rocket would launch into Mars orbit. The samples would then be ferried to Earth for detailed analysis. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Mission scientists believe the igneous and sedimentary rock cores provide an excellent cross-section of the geologic processes that took place in Jezero shortly after the crater’s formation almost 4 billion years ago. The rover also deposited an atmospheric sample and what’s called a “witness” tube, which is used to determine if samples being collected might be contaminated with materials that traveled with the rover from Earth.

The titanium tubes were deposited on the surface in an intricate zigzag pattern, with each sample about 15 to 50 feet (5 to 15 meters) apart from one another to ensure they could be safely recovered. Adding time to the depot-creation process, the team needed to precisely map the location of each 7-inch-long (18.6-centimeter-long) tube and glove (adapter) combination so that the samples could be found even if covered with dust. The depot is on flat ground near the base of the raised, fan-shaped ancient river delta that formed long ago when a river flowed into a lake there.

“With the Three Forks depot in our rearview mirror, Perseverance is now headed up the delta,” said Rick Welch, Perseverance’s deputy project manager at JPL. “We’ll make our ascent via the ‘Hawksbill Gap’ route we previously explored. Once we pass the geologic unit the science team calls ‘Rocky Top,’ we will be in new territory and begin exploring the Delta Top.”

WATSON Documents Final Tube Dropped at ‘Three Forks’ Sample Depot: NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover dropped the last of 10 tubes at the “Three Forks” sample depot on Jan. 28, 2023, the 690th Martian day, or sol, of the mission. Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

Next Science Campaign

Passing the Rocky Top outcrop represents the end of the rover’s Delta Front Campaign and the beginning of the rover’s Delta Top Campaign because of the geologic transition that takes place at that level.

“We found that from the base of the delta up to the level where Rocky Top is located, the rocks appear to have been deposited in a lake environment,” said Ken Farley, Perseverance project scientist at Caltech. “And those just above Rocky Top appear to have been created in or at the end of a Martian river flowing into the lake. As we ascend the delta into a river setting, we expect to move into rocks that are composed of larger grains – from sand to large boulders. Those materials likely originated in rocks outside of Jezero, eroded and then washed into the crater.”

Perseverance’s ‘Three Forks’ Sample Depot Map: This map shows where NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover dropped each of its 10 samples – one half of every pair taken so far – so that a future mission could pick them up. After five weeks of work, the sample depot was completed Jan. 24, 2023, the 687th day, or sol, of the mission. Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech

One of the first stops the rover will make during the new science campaign is at a location the science team calls the “Curvilinear Unit.” Essentially a Martian sandbar, the unit is made of sediment that eons ago was deposited in a bend in one of Jezero’s inflowing river channels. The science team believes the Curvilinear Unit will be an excellent location to hunt for intriguing outcrops of sandstone and perhaps mudstone, and to get a glimpse at the geological processes beyond the walls of Jezero Crater.

More About the Mission

One of the key objectives for Perseverance’s mission on Mars is astrobiology, including caching samples that may contain signs of ancient microbial life. The rover will analyze the planet’s geology and past climate, lay the foundation for human exploration of the Red Planet, and be the first mission to gather Martian rock and soil samples.

Later NASA missions, in cooperation with ESA, will send spacecraft to Mars to collect these sealed samples from the surface and return them to Earth for in-depth analysis.

The Mars 2020 Perseverance mission is part of NASA’s Moon to Mars exploration approach, which includes Artemis missions to the Moon that will help pave the way for human exploration of the Red Planet.

JPL, which is managed for NASA by Caltech, built and manages operations of the Perseverance rover.

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'A Bear On Mars?' NASA Spots Trippy Phenomenon On Planet's Surface - HuffPost

A bear on Mars?

NASA

Scientists looking at the surface of Mars have spotted what looks like a bear staring back at them.

A camera on NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter took a photo of the formation on Dec. 12. It was shared Wednesday by the University of Arizona, which operates the camera.

A hill with a V-shaped collapse structure forms the bear’s nose and a circular fracture pattern creates the head, the university’s Lunar and Planetary Laboratory explained in the blog for its High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera.

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“The circular fracture pattern might be due to the settling of a deposit over a buried impact crater. Maybe the nose is a volcanic or mud vent and the deposit could be lava or mud flows?” it said.

HiPOD: A Bear on Mars?

This feature looks a bit like a bear’s face. What is it really?

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NASA/JPL-Caltech/UArizona#Mars #science #NASA https://t.co/2WUNquTUZH pic.twitter.com/1k2ZnLcJ5o

— HiRISE: Beautiful Mars (NASA) (@HiRISE) January 25, 2023

Humans often see faces, animals, objects and other things in space phenomena. In the past, viewers have spotted everything from Godzilla in a cloud of space gas to a muppet, a human face and a Sasquatch on Mars.

This is due to a tendency for the human brain to try to see recognizable shapes in objects or data that are otherwise not familiar to us, known as pareidolia.

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Rare Green Comet To Make Closest Approach To Earth This Week - NDTV

Comets are cosmic snowballs made of frozen gases

A rare green comet is due to make its closest pass by Earth. The comet named C/2022 E3 (ZTF) will be visible this week for people in the Southern Hemisphere if the skies are clear. The comet is streaking back our way after almost 50,000 years.

According to NASA, the comet visited Earth during Neanderthal times. It will come within 26 million miles (42 million kilometres) of Earth on Wednesday before speeding away again, unlikely to return for millions of years.

The comet was first spotted in March last year by astronomers through the wide-field survey camera at the Zwicky Transient Facility. It was in Jupiter's orbit at the time and has grown brighter since then.

National Aeronautics and Space Administration says that Neanderthal Comet will shift to the northwest on the horizon throughout January and it will make its closest pass of Earth between February 1 and February 2.

"Comets are notoriously unpredictable, but if this one continues its current trend in brightness, it'll be easy to spot with binoculars, and it's just possible it could become visible to the unaided eye under dark skies," NASA wrote in its "What's Up" blog.

Comets are cosmic snowballs made of frozen gases, rocks, and dust that orbit the Sun. While these celestial bodies are small in size when frozen, they get heated upon coming closer to the Sun and release gases and dust into a large glowing head, which is bigger than most planets.

According to Space.com, the orbital period of the comet was determined to be around 50,000 years. This means that it will be making its first approach to Earth in 50,000 years next month.

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Scientists discover monster 17-pound meteorite in Antarctica - Digital Trends

A team of researchers working in Antarctica have discovered a massive meteorite, weighing in at a hefty 17 pounds. Rocks falling to Earth from space aren’t uncommon, but it’s very unusual for such a large one to be found. Studying such meteorites can help scientists learn about early conditions in the solar system and even about how planets form.

The researchers found a total of five meteorites, including the gigantic 17-pounder. Antarctica is an inhospitable place for humans but a great location for meteorite hunting, thanks to its combination of dry climate and snowy conditions, which make it easier to spot dark hunks of rocks.

The researchers with their 16.7-pound find. White helmet: Maria Schönbächler. Green helmet: Maria Valdes. Black helmet: Ryoga Maeda. Orange helmet: Vinciane Debaille. Courtesy of Maria Valdes

As the coldest place on Earth, though, Antarctica is a difficult place to work — even if it is stunning to look at. “Going on an adventure exploring unknown areas is exciting,” said lead researcher Vinciane Debaille of the Université Libre de Bruxelles in Brussels. “But we also had to deal with the fact that the reality on the ground is much more difficult than the beauty of satellite images.”

Four team members had scoured the white continent for meteorites, using satellite imagery that had been used for mapping to locate the monster find. “Size doesn’t necessarily matter when it comes to meteorites, and even tiny micrometeorites can be incredibly scientifically valuable,” said Maria Valdes of the University of Chicago, one of the researchers, in a statement. “But of course, finding a big meteorite like this one is rare, and really exciting.”

Researchers estimate that of the approximately 45,000 meteorites found in Antarctica to date, only around 100 are this big or larger. Along with the four other meteorites discovered by the team, it will now be shipped to the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences for study.

Meteorites are scientifically valuable because they originate from beyond Earth, bringing a piece of the solar system to us for study. They can come from asteroids, comets, or even be pieces of other planets that have been blasted off by an impact. They can also reveal information about the early stages of the solar system because they can be extremely old and well-preserved due to their time in space.

“Studying meteorites helps us better understand our place in the universe,” said Valdes. “The bigger a sample size we have of meteorites, the better we can understand our Solar System, and the better we can understand ourselves.”

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50,000 years on, 'green comet' comes visiting again - Times of India

JAIPUR: Comet C/2022 E3 (ZTF), popularly known as the "green comet", which last visited Earth's neighbourhood 50,000 years ago when the Neanderthals were still roaming its surface, can now be viewed in India with a pair of binoculars from a dark location.
It may further brighten in the next few days and become visible to the naked eye as it makes its closest pass of the Earth on February 2.
TOI captured pictures of this rare visitor - among the first camera images of the comet in India - from the dark skies of Sambhar Lake in Jaipur early Saturday morning, using a camera and a star tracker. The comet appears distinctly green with a characteristic fuzzy coma and a faint hint of a tail.

A close-up shot of the comet shot from Sambhar Lake. Picture source: Amit Bhattacharya
As per watchers from other parts of the world, C/2022 E3 is now regularly being reported to be just brighter than magnitude +6, which technically makes it a naked-eye object. Its naked-eye visibility, though, is still likely to be restricted to extremely dark places under good conditions. This may change in the next few days. At present, from reasonably dark rural locations, the comet can be easily viewed as a greenish fuzzy object with a pair of binoculars.
The visitor can be spotted above the northern horizon. Over the next few days, its location will be between the Pole Star (Polaris) and the Great Bear (Ursa major, or Sapt Rishi) constellation. Since moonlight makes sky objects fainter, the best time to view it is in the early morning hours after moonset. The brightness of comets is difficult to predict but this one is expected to be the brightest of 2023.
C/2022 E3 (ZTF) was discovered by astronomers Bryce Bolin and Frank Masci using the Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF) survey on 2 March 2022. Long-period comets like C/2022 E3 are believed to come from the outermost realms of our Solar System, a vast frigid zone called the Oort Cloud.
The green comet isn't expected to be anywhere as spectacular as shiny tailed "great comets", several of which have been bright enough to be seen in daylight. The last such object was Comet McNaught in 2007. However, it's still a fascinating visitor to our skies and won't likely be seen again for 50,000 years.

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NASA’s ‘Mega Moon Rocket’ aced first flight and is ready for crewed Artemis II launch - TechCrunch

The enormous Space Launch System passed its first test with flying colors, NASA’s preliminary analysis concludes, and the rocket and Orion capsule are good to go for their next mission: Artemis II, which will carry a crew to lunar orbit.

After numerous delays and enormous cost overruns, some worried that the SLS (nicknamed the “Mega Moon Rocket”) would never actually take off. But the launch in November went off (mostly) without a hitch, as did the 25-day mission undertaken by an uncrewed Orion capsule.

While its success was apparent, it wasn’t a case of all or nothing. Reams of data needed to be analyzed by NASA’s teams to make sure that Artemis I didn’t succeed in spite of serious problems. Fortunately that does not seem to be the case: Although the teams are still working through the terabytes of raw data, the agency has pronounced the mission good enough to endorse its sequel.

“Building off the assessment conducted shortly after launch, the preliminary post-flight data indicates that all SLS systems performed exceptionally and that the designs are ready to support a crewed flight on Artemis II,” wrote NASA in a news post.

Emphasizing the point, SLS Program manager John Honeycutt is quoted as follows:

The correlation between actual flight performance and predicted performance for Artemis I was excellent. There is engineering and an art to successfully building and launching a rocket, and the analysis on the SLS rocket’s inaugural flight puts NASA and its partners in a good position to power missions for Artemis II and beyond.

Key pressures, temperatures, and other values were all within 2 percent of predictions. No doubt the team is working on narrowing that delta even now.

Artemis II’s crewed mission obviously depended entirely on the success of Artemis I, and this is the clearest indication since launch that the SLS and Orion are quantifiably good enough. It’s a big step to say, “Yes, we’re moving forward with putting astronauts on this thing,” but of course there’s a lot more work to come before it takes place. Artemis I’s timeline didn’t exactly go as planned but having verified that the rocket works as expected may help hurry along the next part of NASA’s big plan to return to the moon.

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Earth's inner core's rotation has slowed - ThePrint

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Watch: "Mysterious Flying Spiral" Spotted In Night Sky Over Hawaii. Here's What It Is - NDTV

The video was taken from Subaru-Asahi STAR Camera.

A Japanese telescope camera has captured a bizarre blue "flying spiral" in Hawaii. Taking to YouTube, the official account of Subaru Telescope, which is operated by the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan, shared the eerie video, which showed the "mysterious" whirlpool of light in the shape of a spiral galaxy briefly appearing in the night sky above Maunakea, Hawaii on January 18. 

"A "Mysterious" Flying Spiral was seen over Maunakea. 2023-01-18 UT. Really unusual view! Any idea about what it is? Our keen viewers discovered this rare event... The video was from our "Subaru-Asahi STAR Camera" which is jointly operated by NAOJ (Subaru Telescope) and Asahi Shimbun (Japanese newspaper company)," the caption of the YouTube post read. 

Watch the video below: 

Internet users were quick to react to the video. They were intrigued by the mysterious flying spiral and sought the reason behind the formation. Some users even made "alien" and spaceship" jokes. 

"OMG, Andromeda has arrived 4 billion years early!!" wrote one user. "Hey @elonmusk, this you or aliens?" commented another.

Also Read | Uranus To Hide Behind The Moon This Saturday. See Details

Meanwhile, according to the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ), it turns out the stunning spiral was comprised of frozen rocket fuel that was ejected during a SpaceX launch. "The spiral seems to be related to the SpaceX company's launch of a new satellite," the Japanese space agency wrote on Twitter. 

As per Space.com, the SpaceX launch in question was a Falcon 9 rocket that was lifted off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida on January 18. The report also mentioned that such spirals have been seen in the past as well. It usually appears as the upper stage of Falcon 9 dumps excess fuel into the ocean. 

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Blazing meteorites from the outer solar system triggered life on Earth 4.6 billion years ago - Daily Mail

Oxytocin Is Overrated - The Atlantic

This article was featured in One Story to Read Today, a newsletter in which our editors recommend a single must-read from The Atlantic, Monday through Friday. Sign up for it here.      

Of the dozens of hormones found in the human body, oxytocin might just be the most overrated. Linked to the pleasures of romance, orgasms, philanthropy, and more, the chemical has been endlessly billed as the “hug hormone,” the “moral molecule,” even “the source of love and prosperity.” It has inspired popular books and TED Talks. Scientists and writers have insisted that spritzing it up human nostrils can instill compassion and generosity; online sellers have marketed snake-oil oxytocin concoctions as “Liquid Trust.”

But as my colleague Ed Yong and others have repeatedly written, most of what’s said about the hormone is, at best, hyperbole. Sniffing the chemical doesn’t reliably make people more collaborative or trusting; trials testing it as a treatment for children with autism spectrum disorder have delivered lackluster results. And although decades of great research have shown that the versatile molecule can at times spark warm fuzzies in all sorts of species—cooperation in meerkats, monogamy in prairie voles, parental care in marmosets and sheep—under other circumstances, oxytocin can turn creatures ranging from rodents to humans aggressive, fearful, even prejudiced.

Now researchers are finding that oxytocin may be not only insufficient for forging strong bonds, but also unnecessary. A new genetic study hints that prairie voles—fluffy, fist-size rodents that have long been poster children for oxytocin’s snuggly effects—can permanently partner up without it. The revelation could shake the foundations of an entire neuroscience subfield, and prompt scientists to reconsider some of the oldest evidence that once seemed to show that oxytocin was the be-all and end-all for animal affection. Cuddles, it turns out, can probably happen without the classic cuddle hormone—even in the most classically cuddly creatures of all.

Oxytocin isn’t necessarily obsolete. “This shouldn’t be taken as, ‘Oh, oxytocin doesn’t do anything,’” says Lindsay Sailer, a neuroscientist at Cornell University. But researchers have good reason to be a bit gobsmacked. For all the messy, inconsistent, even shady data that have been gathered from human studies of the hormone, the evidence from prairie voles has always been considered rock-solid. The little rodents, native to the midwestern United States, are famous for being one of the few mammal species that monogamously mate for life and co-parent their young. Over many decades and across geographies, researchers have documented how the rodents nuzzle each other in their nests and console each other when stressed, how they aggressively rebuff the advances of other voles that attempt to homewreck. And every time they checked, “there was oxytocin, sitting in the middle of the story, over and over again,” says Sue Carter, a behavioral neurobiologist who pioneered some of the first studies on prairie-vole bonds. The molecular pathways driving the behaviors seemed just as clear-cut: When triggered by a social behavior, such as snuggling or sex, a region of the brain called the hypothalamus pumped out oxytocin; the hormone then latched on to its receptor, sparking a slew of lovey-dovey effects.

Years of follow-up studies continued to bear that thinking out. When scientists gave prairie voles drugs that kept oxytocin from linking up with its receptor, the rodents started snubbing their partners after any tryst. Meanwhile, simply stimulating the oxytocin receptor was enough to coax voles into settling down with strangers that they’d never mated with. The connection between oxytocin and pair bonding was so strong, so repeatable, so unquestionable that it became dogma. Zoe Donaldson, a neuroscientist at the University of Colorado at Boulder who studies the hormone, recalls once receiving dismissive feedback on a grant because, in the words of the reviewer, “We already know everything that there is to know about prairie voles and oxytocin.”

So more than a decade ago, when Nirao Shah, a neurogeneticist and psychiatrist at Stanford, and his colleagues set out to cleave the oxytocin receptor from prairie voles using a genetic technique called CRISPR, they figured that their experiments would be a slam dunk. Part of the goal was, Shah told me, proof of principle: Researchers have yet to perfect genetic tools for voles the way they have in more common laboratory animals, such as mice. If the team’s manipulations worked, Shah reasoned, they’d beget a lineage of rodents that was immune to oxytocin’s influence, leaving them unfaithful to their mates and indifferent to their young—thereby proving that the CRISPR machinery had done its job.

That’s not what happened. The rodents continued to snuggle up with their families, as if nothing had changed. The find was baffling. At first, the team wondered if the experiment had simply failed. “I distinctly remember sitting there and just being like, Wait a sec; how is there not a difference?” Kristen Berendzen, a neurobiologist and psychiatrist at UC San Francisco who led the study, told me. But when three separate teams of researchers repeated the manipulations, the same thing happened again. It was as if they had successfully removed a car’s gas tank and still witnessed the engine roaring to life after an infusion of fuel. Something might have gone wrong in the experiments. That seems unlikely, though, says Larry Young, a neuroscientist at Emory University who wasn’t involved in the new study: Young’s team, he told me, has produced nearly identical results in his lab.

The explanations for how decades of oxytocin research could be upended are still being sussed out. Maybe oxytocin can attach to more than one hormone receptor—something that studies have hinted at over the years, Carter told me. But some researchers, Young among them, suspect a more radical possibility. Maybe, in the absence of its usual receptor, oxytocin no longer does anything at all—forcing the brain to blaze an alternative path toward affection. “I think other things pick up the slack,” Young told me.

That idea isn’t a total repudiation of the old research. Other prairie-vole experiments that used drugs to futz with oxytocin receptors were performed in adult animals who grew up with the hormone, says Devanand Manoli, a psychiatrist and neuroscientist at UCSF who helped lead the new study. Wired to respond to oxytocin all through development, those rodent brains couldn’t compensate for its sudden loss late in life. But the Stanford-UCSF team bred animals that lacked the oxytocin receptor from birth, which could have prompted some other molecule, capable of binding to another receptor, to step in. Maybe the car never needed gas to run: Stripped of its tank from the get-go, it went all electric instead.

It would be easy to view this study as yet another blow to the oxytocin propaganda machine. But the researchers I spoke with think the results are more revealing than that. “What this shows us is how important pair bonding is,” Carter told me—to prairie voles, but also potentially to us. For social mammals, partnering up isn’t just sentimental. It’s an essential piece of how we construct communities, survive past childhood, and ensure that future generations can do the same. “These are some of the most important relationships that any mammal can have,” says Bianca Jones Marlin, a neuroscientist at Columbia University. When oxytocin’s around, it’s probably providing the oomph behind that intimacy. And if it’s not? “Evolution is not going to have a single point of failure for something that’s absolutely critical,” Manoli told me. Knocking oxytocin off its pedestal may feel like a letdown. But it’s almost comforting to consider that the drive to bond is just that unbreakable.

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NASA Announces Successful Test of New Propulsion Technology for Treks to Deep Space - Gizmodo

The rocket engine test occurred at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama.

Image: NASA

As NASA gears up for a return to the Moon with the Artemis missions, the administration has announced that its researchers have successfully developed and tested a new type of supersonic rocket engine called a rotating detonation rocket engine.

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The rotating detonation rocket engine, or RDRE, generates thrust with detonation, in which a supersonic exothermic front accelerates to produce thrust, much the same way a shockwave travels through the atmosphere after something like TNT explodes. NASA says that this design uses less fuel and provides more thrust than current propulsion systems and that the RDRE could be used to power human landers, as well as crewed missions to the Moon, Mars, and deep space.

Rotating Detonation Rocket Engine Test at Marshall Space Flight Center

NASA’s test of the RDRE featured 3D-printed parts made with a copper-alloy called GRCop-42, which the agency developed. During the test, the rocket withstood the high temperatures and pressures generated by the detonation, producing over 4,000 pounds (1,814 kilograms) of thrust for almost a minute.

NASA argues that the new rocket design can move more mass into deep space with less fuel, potentially making space travel more sustainable. With the successful tests, NASA engineers are now working on a fully reusable 10,000-pound (4,536 kilogram) RDRE to compare its performance to traditional liquid rocket engines.

NASA’s development of the RDRE signals the space administration’s interest in developing more efficient rocket technology for space travel. Earlier this week, NASA announced a joint collaboration with DARPA to develop DRACO, short for Demonstration Rocket for Agile Cislunar Operation. DRACO would utilize a nuclear thermal engine for interplanetary travel, reducing travel time with a more efficient propulsion technology.

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Earth's inner core may have stopped turning and could go into reverse, study suggests - CNN

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The rotation of Earth’s inner core may have paused and it could even go into reverse, new research suggests.

The Earth is formed of the crust, the mantle and the inner and outer cores. The solid inner core is situated about 3,200 miles below the Earth’s crust and is separated from the semi-solid mantle by the liquid outer core, which allows the inner core to rotate at a different speed from the rotation of the Earth itself.

With a radius of almost 2,200 miles, Earth’s core is about the size of Mars. It consists mostly of iron and nickel, and contains about about one-third of Earth’s mass.

In research published in the journal Nature Geoscience on Monday, Yi Yang, associate research scientist at Peking University, and Xiaodong Song, Peking University chair professor, studied seismic waves from earthquakes that have passed through the Earth’s inner core along similar paths since the 1960s to infer how fast the inner core is spinning.

The "LLR" laser has been installed on the summit of the Säntis (2500m) and was activated from June to September 2021. It was focused above a 124m high transmitter tower belonging to the operator Swisscom, equipped with a traditional lightning conductor.

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Car-size laser deflects lightning atop a mountain in Switzerland

What they found was unexpected, they said. Since 2009, seismic records, which previously changed over time, showed little difference. This, they said, suggested that the inner core rotation had paused.

“We show surprising observations that indicate the inner core has nearly ceased its rotation in the recent decade and may be experiencing a turning-back,” they wrote in the study.

“When you look at the decade between 1980 and 1990 you see clear change but when you see 2010 to 2020 you don’t see much change,” added Song.

The spin of the inner core is driven by the magnetic field generated in the outer core and balanced by the gravitational effects of the mantle. Knowing how the inner core rotates could shed light on how these layers interact and other processes deep in the Earth.

However, the speed of this rotation, and whether it varies, is debated, said Hrvoje Tkalcic, a geophysicist at the Australian National University, who was not involved in the study,

“The inner core doesn’t come to a full stop,” he said. The study’s finding, he said, “means that the inner core is now more in sync with the rest of the planet than a decade ago when it was spinning a bit faster.”

“Nothing cataclysmic is happening,” he added.

Based on new evidence from the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope, this illustration reflects the conclusion that the exoplanet LHS 475 b is rocky and almost precisely the same size as Earth. The planet whips around its star in just two days, far faster than any planet in the Solar System. Researchers will follow up this summer with additional observations with Webb, which they hope will allow them to definitively conclude if the planet has an atmosphere. LHS 475 b is relatively close, 41 light-years away, in the constellation Octans. [Image Description: Illustration of a planet and its star on a black background. The planet is large, in the foreground at the centre, and the star is smaller, in the background and also at the centre. The planet is rocky. The top quarter of the planet (the side facing the star) is lit, while the rest is in shadow. The star is bright yellowish-white, with no clear features.]

NASA/ESA/CSA

James Webb Space Telescope discovers its first exoplanet

Song and Yang argue that, based on their calculations, a small imbalance in the electromagnetic and gravitational forces could slow and even reverse the inner core’s rotation. They believe this is part of a seven-decade cycle, and that the turning point prior to the one they detected in their data around 2009/2010 occurred in the early 1970s.

Tkalcic, who is the author of “The Earth’s Inner Core: Revealed by Observational Seismology,” said the study’s “data analysis is sound.” However, the study’s findings “should be taken cautiously” as “more data and innovative methods are needed to shed light on this interesting problem.”

Song and Yang agreed that more research was needed.

Studying the Earth’s core

Tkalcic, who dedicates an entire chapter of his book to the inner core rotation, suggested the inner core’s cycle is every 20 to 30 years, rather than the 70 proposed in the latest study. He explained why such variations occur and why it was so difficult to understand what happens in the innermost reaches of the planet.

“The objects of our studies are buried thousands of kilometers beneath our feet,” he said.

“We use geophysical inference methods to infer the Earth’s internal properties, and caution must be exercised until multi-disciplinary findings confirm our hypotheses and conceptual frameworks,” he explained

“You can think of seismologists like medical doctors who study the internal organs of patients’ bodies using imperfect or limited equipment. So, despite progress, our image of the inner Earth is still blurry, and we are still in the discovery stage.”

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Optical illusion gives rare green comet an 'anti-tail' that seemingly defies physics - Livescience.com

Comet C/2022 E3 (ZTF) with a short third tail (to the left of the comet) and longer gas and dust tails (to the right of the comet) on Jan. 21. (Image credit: Alessandro Carrozzi)

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A rare green comet, which has been streaking across the night sky as it approaches Earth for the first time since the Stone Age, briefly grew a bizarre third tail. This "anti-tail" appeared to streak in the wrong direction, seemingly breaking the rules of physics. 

The comet — named C/2022 E3 (ZTF) but more commonly referred to as the "green comet" thanks to a chemical reaction that emits a greenish glow around the cosmic cannonball — was first discovered in March 2022 heading towards Earth from the Oort Cloud, a collection of icy objects in the outer solar system. 

Normally, comets like this have two tails: one made from dust, which is blown off the comet by solar wind; and one made of gas from within the comet that sublimates, or transitions, directly from solid to gas. But on Jan. 21, several astrophotographers, including Ruslan Merzlyakov (opens in new tab) in Denmark and Alessandro Carrozzi (opens in new tab) in Italy, snapped pictures of the green comet with a third tail that was pointed towards the sun instead of away from it.

This bizarre third tail is known as an "anti-tail," and although it is made up from the same stuff as the comet's other tails, it is not actually part of the comet. Instead, it's an optical illusion caused by Earth moving through the comet's orbital plane, according to Spaceweather.com (opens in new tab).

Related: Blazing comet tail is whipped by solar winds in astonishing astronomy photo 

A comet's twin tails are often clearly visible — the dust tail reflects sunlight, while the gas within the other tail becomes ionized, giving it a faint glow.  

The released gas eventually cools and becomes invisible, but the leftover dust is left to drift in the wake of the comet's trajectory around the sun, or orbital plane. When Earth crosses through a comet's orbital plane, some of this dust is reilluminated by the sun and appears as a bright streak, which can appear to shoot out of the comet in the opposite direction to its other tails, depending on the comet's trajectory and orientation. But in reality, this is just an optical illusion, and there is no extra tail.

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A photo of the green comet and its anti-tail above the Thy National Park in Denmark on Jan. 21. (Image credit: Ruslan Merzlyakov)

A close up look of the comet and its anti-tail. (Image credit: Ruslan Merzlyakov)

This illusion is similar to how the Milky Way appears as a bright band across the night sky because we are looking at the galaxy's plane side-on. But instead of looking across our galaxy's plane, we are looking across the comet's plane around the sun, according to Universe Today (opens in new tab).  

Other notable comets that have been observed with an anti-tail include Comet Kohoutek in 1973, Comet Hale–Bopp in 1997 and Comet PanSTARRS in 2013.

This is not the first time that the green comet's tails have made headlines. On Jan. 12, the green comet was clearly visible in the night sky as it reached its perihelion, or closest point to the sun, which caused its small atmosphere, or coma, to glow brighter than normal. On Jan. 17, one of the comet's tails briefly separated mid-stream as it was blasted by extreme solar winds from a coronal mass ejection. 

If you’ve missed the comet so far, don't worry; it will become visible to the naked eye again in late January as it approaches its closest point to Earth on Feb. 1. Experts calculate that the last time the comet flew this close to Earth was around 50,000 years ago, when Homo sapiens were still sharing the planet with Neanderthals. 

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