Tag Archives: science

How to watch Boeing Starliner’s uncrewed flight back to Earth

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The Starliner is scheduled to undock from the International Space Station and to make its way back to Earth at 6:04PM Eastern time today, September 6. If the weather cooperates and the spacecraft leaves the ISS as planned, it will be landing at White Sands Space Harbor in New Mexico with the help of parachutes to slow its descent and inflated airbags at around 12:03AM ET on September 7. While the ground teams at Starliner Mission Control in Houston and at Boeing Mission Control Center in Florida can control the spacecraft remotely if needed, it will be an uncrewed, fully autonomous flight for the Starliner. 

NASA recently announced that Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, the astronauts that headed to the ISS aboard the Starliner for its first crewed flight, will be coming home on a SpaceX Crew Dragon instead. Wilmore and Williams flew to the ISS in June and were only supposed to spend a little more than a week on the orbiting laboratory. On the way there, however, five of the spacecraft's maneuvering thrusters had failed, and its helium leak problem that previously caused its launch to be pushed back had worsened. Engineers on the ground conducted tests with help from the astronauts on the ISS to determine whether the Starliner was safe for the crew to ride back to Earth. In the end, NASA decided that it's safer for Wilmore and Williams to come home on a SpaceX vehicle, because "there was too much uncertainty" around the Starliner's thrusters. 

The space agency will cover Starliner's return live on NASA+, the NASA app, its website, and you can also watch it below. Coverage of the undocking procedure will start at 5:45PM ET, while coverage for the spacecraft's deorbit burn, entry and landing will start at 10:50PM. NASA will also livestream Starliner's landing on September 7, starting at 12AM ET.

As for the SpaceX Crew-9 mission that's replacing the Boeing's vehicle on the ISS, it's scheduled to launch no earlier than September 24. Instead of flying with four astronauts as planned, it will fly with two — NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Roscosmos cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov — to leave two seats empty for its return flight with Wilmore and Williams in February 2025. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/science/space/boeings-starliner-is-coming-back-without-a-crew-on-september-6-140023545.html?src=rss

These robots move through the magic of mushrooms

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Researchers at Cornell University tapped into fungal mycelia to power a pair of proof-of-concept robots. Mycelia, the underground fungal network that can sprout mushrooms as its above-ground fruit, can sense light and chemical reactions and communicate through electrical signals. This makes it a novel component in hybrid robotics that could someday detect crop conditions otherwise invisible to humans.

The Cornell researchers created two robots: a soft, spider-like one and a four-wheeled buggy. The researchers used mycelia’s light-sensing abilities to control the machines using ultraviolet light. The project required experts in mycology (the study of fungi), neurobiology, mechanical engineering, electronics and signal processing.

“If you think about a synthetic system — let’s say, any passive sensor — we just use it for one purpose,” lead author Anand Mishra said. “But living systems respond to touch, they respond to light, they respond to heat, they respond to even some unknowns, like signals. That’s why we think, OK, if you wanted to build future robots, how can they work in an unexpected environment? We can leverage these living systems, and any unknown input comes in, the robot will respond to that.”

The fungal robot uses an electrical interface that (after blocking out interference from vibrations and electromagnetic signals) records and processes the mycelia’s electrophysical activity in real time. A controller, mimicking a portion of animals' central nervous systems, acted as “a kind of neural circuit.” The team designed the controller to read the fungi’s raw electrical signal, process it and translate it into digital controls. These were then sent to the machine’s actuators.

Diagram showing various parts of a complex fungus-robot hybrid
Cornell University / Science Robotics

The pair of shroom-bots successfully completed three experiments, including walking and rolling in response to the mycelia’s signals and changing their gaits in response to UV light. The researchers also successfully overrode the mycelia’s signals to control the robots manually, a crucial component if later versions were to be deployed in the wild.

As for where this technology goes, it could spawn more advanced versions that tap into mycelia’s ability to sense chemical reactions. “In this case we used light as the input, but in the future it will be chemical,” according to Rob Shepherd, Cornell mechanical and aerospace engineering professor and the paper’s senior author. The researchers believe this could lead to future robots that sense soil chemistry in crops, deciding when to add more fertilizer, “perhaps mitigating downstream effects of agriculture like harmful algal blooms,” Shepherd said.

You can read the team’s research paper at Science Robotics and find out more about the project from the Cornell Chronicle.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/science/these-robots-move-through-the-magic-of-mushrooms-171612639.html?src=rss

Blue Origin targets mid-October for New Glenn’s inaugural flight and launch of NASA’s Escapade Mars mission

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Blue Origin’s New Glenn heavy-lift rocket and its Mars-bound NASA payload now have a tentative launch date. The company said on Friday that the inaugural flight will take place no earlier than October 13, carrying two probes built by Rocket Lab to help NASA study the effects of solar wind on Mars’ atmosphere. This will be the first time New Glenn flies after years of delays in its development, and the date cuts well into the window of opportunity for travel to Mars, which occurs roughly every two years based on the planetary alignments. That launch period opens on September 29 and extends to mid-October, per Ars Technica.

The mission will lift off from Space Launch Complex 36 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. The twin spacecraft of NASA’s Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorers mission (Escapade) arrived in Florida on August 19 to begin preparations and integration with the launch vehicle. 

Now, the pressure is really on for Jeff Bezos-founded Blue Origin to get New Glenn ready in time. Bloomberg reported on Wednesday that the company recently suffered two failures at its factory that resulted in damage to hardware for its second and third New Glenn flights. But, a spokesperson told the publication that it’s still on track for this year’s inaugural launch.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/science/space/blue-origin-targets-mid-october-for-new-glenns-inaugural-flight-and-launch-of-nasas-escapade-mars-mission-224611923.html?src=rss

SpaceX will soon send the Polaris Dawn crew off to attempt the first commercial spacewalk

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Polaris Dawn, a private space mission that aims to complete the first-ever civilian spacewalk, is expected to launch this week. On X, SpaceX said it’s targeting Tuesday August 27 at 3:38AM ET for liftoff of the Falcon 9 rocket that will carry the Polaris Dawn crew to orbit. Led by billionaire Jared Isaacman, Polaris Dawn plans to send its crew of four private citizens as far as 870 miles from Earth — farther than any human has traveled since the Apollo program. The spacewalk, in which two of the crew members will step outside the SpaceX Dragon capsule, will take place at an altitude of 435 miles above Earth.

The Polaris Dawn crew includes Isaacman, CEO of Shift4, as commander, retired Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Scott “Kidd” Poteet as its pilot, and SpaceX engineers Sarah Gillis and Anna Menon as mission specialists. Menon will also serve as the medical officer. The mission is expected to last about five days. 

While only two crew members will actually leave the spacecraft during the flight, all will be exposed to the vacuum of space when the hatch opens — the Dragon capsule doesn’t have an airlock. It’ll be a critical test for SpaceX’s new Extravehicular Activity space suits, which the entire Polaris Dawn crew will have to wear to keep them safe. In an interview with Florida Today ahead of the mission, Menon said the suits have gone through extensive testing on the ground and expressed confidence in their performance. “We absolutely know the suits can pressurize there,” Menon said, adding that the team has “spent a lot of time pressurizing the suits at this point.”

Polaris Dawn will also put Starlink laser-based communications to the test in space for the first time, and gather data to support research into the effects of spaceflight on human health. The mission comes several years in the making and is the first of three planned Polaris spaceflights.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/science/space/spacex-will-soon-send-the-polaris-dawn-crew-off-to-attempt-the-first-commercial-spacewalk-171538506.html?src=rss

Starliner astronauts will come home in February on a SpaceX Crew Dragon

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After more than two months of tests and discussions, NASA has decided that astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams will come home in February 2025 on a SpaceX Crew Dragon, and the Boeing Starliner they flew to the International Space Station on in June will return uncrewed. In a press conference on Saturday, Steve Stich, manager for NASA's Commercial Crew Program, said “there was too much uncertainty” around the predictions for Starliner’s thrusters to move forward with a crewed return flight. 

The plan now is that Starliner’s first crew will return with SpaceX’s Crew-9, which is scheduled to launch to the ISS at the end of September. Crew-9 was initially supposed to carry four crew members, but will instead have to go ahead with two, so as to make room for Wilmore and Williams on the way back. That spacecraft is being reconfigured with seats for the two astronauts, and Dragon spacesuits will be added to its cargo for them to wear home. By the time Wilmore and Williams depart, the duo will have been on the space station for about eight months. The Starliner flight test was only supposed to last a little over a week. 

The next step is to get Starliner ready for undocking and wrap up as an uncrewed flight test. The agency plans to conduct the second part of its readiness review for the process this coming week, and expects undocking to take place around early next month. “We are changing the separation sequence that we planned and we will review those aspects at the readiness review,” Stich said. “We’re going to go with a simplified separation technique to get away from the station a little more quickly.”

The issue with Starliner’s thrusters has been “very complex,” Stich said, and their performance has been “challenging to predict.” Without being able to accurately predict how the thrusters would perform from undocking through the deorbit burn, the potential risks for the astronauts were just too high, he explained.

“We have had mistakes in the past,” said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson. “We have lost two space shuttles as a result of there not being a culture in which information can come forward.” With that context looming over the discussions, he said, “We have been very solicitous of all of our employees that if you have some objection, you come forward. Spaceflight is risky, even at its safest and and its most routine, and a test flight by its nature is neither safe nor routine. And so the decision to keep Butch and Suni aboard the International Space Station and bring the Boeing Starliner home uncrewed is the result of a commitment to safety.”

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/science/space/starliner-astronauts-will-come-home-in-february-on-a-spacex-crew-dragon-173008021.html?src=rss

NASA will soon announce whether Starliner’s astronauts are coming back on a SpaceX vehicle

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On August 24, NASA will finally announce how Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, the astronauts that flew to the ISS aboard Boeing's Starliner, will be coming home. Earlier this month, the agency said it was already in talks with SpaceX about the possibility of giving the astronauts two seats aboard an upcoming Crew Dragon mission. While NASA was making sure that the option was available, it continued asking Boeing for data to prove that the Starliner is safe to ride back to Earth. The Starliner's batteries won't last forever, though, and the agency needs to make a decision soon. 

In its announcement, NASA said that on August 24, its leadership will make a final examination of the data Boeing gathered through various ground tests and simulations by engineers with help from Williams and Wilmore. An hour later, at around 1PM Eastern time, it will hold a news conference to broadcast its official decision. You can watch the event on NASA+, NASA Television, the NASA app, YouTube and the agency’s website, but we'll also keep you updated. 

The Starliner's first crewed mission blasted off the space in June on top of a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket after several delays. It was only supposed to stay docked to the ISS for eight days before making its way back home with both astronauts. During its flight to the orbiting lab, however, five of its maneuvering thrusters had failed. The helium leak that caused Boeing and NASA to scrub its launch also came back and had even worsened. Over the past few months, engineers conducted tests and simulations on the ground to provide NASA with the data it wanted. "We are letting the data drive our decision making relative to managing the small helium system leaks and thruster performance we observed during rendezvous and docking," said Steve Stich, manager of NASA's Commercial Crew Program, back in June. 

If NASA does decide to go with its backup plan of making Wilmore and Williams hitch a ride on the Crew Dragon, then the Starliner will be coming back to Earth without a crew onboard. It's still unclear when the Starliner is making its way back to the planet, but it likely couldn't come soon enough for the company. Aside from the fact that the Starliner's batteries are running out, Boeing reported earlier this month that it took another $125 million in losses due to the spacecraft's delayed return. Wilmore and Williams will then be coming home as part of the SpaceX Crew-9 mission, the same mission that had to be delayed because Starliner was still taking up one of the two slots on the ISS that can accommodate astronaut capsules. The Crew-9 capsule won't be flying back to Earth until February 2025, though, so the astronauts' supposed eight-day trip will turn into an eight-month stint. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/science/space/nasa-will-soon-announce-whether-starliners-astronauts-are-coming-back-on-a-spacex-vehicle-120049271.html?src=rss

Scientists find evidence of liquid water deep underneath the Martian surface

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Water exists on Mars, according to a team of geophysicists, and not just as ice on its poles or as vapor in its atmosphere. The scientists have found evidence of liquid water deep in its outer crust, based on their analysis of data provided by NASA's Mars Insight Lander. Specifically, they analyzed four years' worth of ground motions recorded by the lander's seismometer. By looking at seismic velocities, or how fast seismic waves travel on the planet, they were able to determine the materials that the waves moved through. What they found was that Mars' mid-crust has fractured igneous rocks saturated with liquid water. 

One of the scientists involved in the study, Prof Michael Manga from the University of California, Berkeley, told the BBC that they implemented the same techniques used "to prospect for water on Earth, or to look for oil and gas." He said his group's findings can answer the question of where all the water on Mars had gone, because features on the planet's surface showed that it had lakes and rivers around three billion years ago. While there's a theory that most of that water was lost to space, scientists have challenged that idea in recent years. One study by Caltech and NASA JPL published in 2021 found data that most of that water is still trapped in the planet's crust. 

The scientists involved in this newer study, published in PNAS, were only able to analyze seismic velocity data taken from underneath the lander. However, they believe that similar underground water reservoirs exist all over the planet, and they estimate that there's enough liquid water under the surface to form a layer across Mars that's half a mile deep. Manga told the the BBC that "much of our water is underground and there's no reason for that not to be the case on Mars too."

While the team's findings could be taken as good news for space agencies and private companies looking to visit and even form human colonies on the planet, it won't be easy reaching Mars' water reservoirs. They're located around 7 to 12.5 miles below the surface, which won't be easy to reach even on our planet. "Drilling a hole 10km (6 miles) deep on Mars — even for [Elon] Musk — would be difficult," Manga said, adding that "without liquid water, you don't have life."

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/science/space/scientists-find-evidence-of-liquid-water-deep-underneath-the-martian-surface-120054729.html?src=rss

Catch the Perseid meteor shower at its peak late tonight into tomorrow

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The Perseid meteor shower is one we can count on every summer for a great show, weather permitting, and this year’s event reaches its peak tonight. Late Sunday night into the pre-dawn hours of Monday will be the best time to see the Perseids, according to NASA. You’ll want to find a viewing spot with clear, dark skies, but you won’t need any special equipment to get the most out of the experience — the meteors should be plentiful, and visible to the naked eye.

The Perseids come around annually in late July and last several weeks. These meteors (or shooting stars) occur as debris from comet Swift-Tuttle interacts with Earth’s atmosphere, creating colorful streaks of light as the pieces burn up. At its peak, the phenomenon can bring as many as 100 meteors per hour. And, the Perseids have been known to give off an extra spectacular light show. “Perseids are also known for their fireballs,” according to NASA. “Fireballs are larger explosions of light and color that can persist longer than an average meteor streak. This is due to the fact that fireballs originate from larger particles of cometary material.”

So find a good spot — ideally after the moon sets — look up, and wait. You may be able to see some natural fireworks.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/science/catch-the-perseid-meteor-shower-at-its-peak-late-tonight-into-tomorrow-153441606.html?src=rss

What to read this weekend: Near-future dystopian fiction and a new approach to explaining life’s origin

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New releases in fiction, nonfiction and comics that caught our attention.

The book cover for Hum by Helen Philips, showing green eye-shaped figures arranged against a beige background. One of them has an iris and pupils

Robots have become a regular fixture of the workforce, and humans are losing their jobs to AI. Climate change is wreaking havoc on the planet. It’s getting harder and harder for the average person to make ends meet. Facial recognition technology is being used for surveillance. Sound familiar? In her new novel, Hum, author Helen Phillips paints a picture of what our near-future could look like.

Its main character, May, has lost her job after technology made her role obsolete, and, desperate for money to support her family, she agrees to participate in an experiment that alters her face to make her undetectable to facial recognition. With the extra cushion from the payment, she takes her husband and children on a short, technology-free vacation to the Botanical Garden — but things go dangerously awry. Hum is a captivating, unsettling work of dystopian fiction that makes it impossible not to draw parallels with our current reality.

The book cover for Sara Imari Walker's Life As No One Knows It: The Physics of Life's Emergence. Showing spherical shapes composed of dots in blue, pink, yellow and green on a beige background

There’s so much we don’t know about the origins of life on Earth, and how it could appear on other worlds. Arizona State University theoretical physicist and astrobiologist Sara Imari Walker tackles the enduring question, “What is life?” and so much more in her book, Life as No One Knows It: The Physics of Life's Emergence. It explores assembly theory, which, as Walker explained recently as a guest on the Event Horizon podcast, states that “life is the only mechanism the universe has for generating complexity. So complex objects don’t happen spontaneously, they only happen through evolution and selection.”

It’s an endlessly fascinating topic that’s spurred a lot of debate over the years, and Walker’s book presents its case in a way that is compelling and readable even for us non-scientists. It’ll definitely give your brain a bit of exercise, though... and maybe spark some (friendly) arguments. Kirkus called it, “Ingenious, but not for the faint of heart.

The cover for Cruel Universe #1, showing a man in a spacesuit with an old-school bubble helmet holding a spear and fighting a T-rex in a futuristic arena

EC Comics’ comeback continues with the release of another new series, Cruel Universe. The recently resurrected publisher dropped the first issue of the science fiction series this week, featuring stories by Corinna Bechko, Chris Condon, Matt Kindt and Ben H. Winters, with art by Jonathan Case, Kano, Artyom Topilin and Caitlin Yarsky. Cruel Universe #1 takes us to an interstellar battle arena, face-to-face with a black hole, on a quest for eternal life and more.

It’s a great followup to last month’s Epitaphs of the Abyss, the new horror anthology from EC. If you liked the old Weird Science comics and EC’s other science fiction series, this is definitely one to check out.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/entertainment/what-to-read-this-weekend-near-future-dystopian-fiction-and-a-new-approach-to-explaining-lifes-origin-194355528.html?src=rss

Oxford scientists’ new light-absorbing material can turn everyday objects into solar panels

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Oxford University scientists may have solved one of the greatest hindrances of expanding access to solar energy. Scientists from the university’s physics department have created an ultra-thin layer of material that can be applied to the exterior of objects with sunlight access in place of bulky silicon-based solar panels.

The ultra-thin and flexible film is made by stacking layers of light-absorbing layers of perovskite that are just over one micron thick. The new materials are also 150 times thinner than a traditional silicon wafer and can produce 5 percent more energy efficiency than traditional, single-layer silicon photovoltaics, according to a statement released by Oxford University.

Dr. Shauifeng Hu, a postdoctoral fellow at Oxford’s physics department, says he believes “this approach could enable the photovoltaic devices to achieve far greater efficiencies, exceeding 45 percent.”

This new approach to solar energy technology could also reduce the cost of solar energy. Due to their thinness and flexibility, they can be applied to almost any surface. This reduces the cost of construction and installation and could increase the number of solar energy farms producing more sustainable energy.

This technology, however, is still in the research stage and the university doesn’t mention the long-term stability of the newly designed perovskite panels. Going from 6 to 27 percent solar energy efficiency in five years is an impressive feat but stability has always been limited compared to photovoltaic technology, according to the US Department of Energy. A 2016 study in the science journal Solar Energy Materials and Solar Cells also noted that perovskite can provide “efficient, low-cost energy generation” but it also has “poor stability” due its sensitivity to moisture.

Solar energy has also become a cheaper power option just over the last decade. The cost of solar photovoltaic technology has dropped by 90 percent in the last 10 years, according to the Global Change Data Lab.

New solar energy farms are popping up all over the world. The US Department of Energy announced earlier this month its turning an 8,000-acre piece of land that once housed parts of the nuclear weapons program known as the Manhattan Project into a solar farm. Last month, Google invested in a Taiwanese solar company to build a 1 gigawatt pipeline in the region.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/science/oxford-scientists-new-light-absorbing-material-can-turn-everyday-objects-into-solar-panels-200410760.html?src=rss