Intuitive Machines: Moon lander pictured on its side with snapped leg - BBC.com

By Jonathan Amos@BBCAmos

Intuitive Machines

Odysseus at the moment of touchdown. A support pole to the leg on the left is broken

The first clear images of the Odysseus robot on the surface of the Moon have just been released.

They include a view of the American mission lying to one side, having broken a leg on touchdown.

The spacecraft continued to work afterwards, however, sending back data about the lunar environment.

Odysseus made history last Thursday by becoming the first ever privately built vehicle to complete a soft landing on the Moon.

And despite the awkward orientation it eventually adopted, the robot should be celebrated, said US space agency administrator Bill Nelson.

Nasa had contracted the operating company, Houston-based Intuitive Machines, to carry six scientific instruments on board the lander.

"Odysseus is a success," the agency chief told reporters. "We are in the sixth day of what was planned as an eight-day mission, and we're still receiving data from those instruments."

Intuitive Machines

The robot is lying at an angle of about 30 degrees to the surface

Odysseus' descent, clearly, was a little hairy.

The robot was supposed to come straight down, vertically, with a speed of one metre per second.

In the event, it had navigation issues whereby the onboard computer couldn't process precise laser range-finding data fast enough and had to rely solely on optical cameras for altitude and velocity information.

It meant the craft actually came in three times faster than it should have, and with an element of sideways movement that resulted in a skid.

"The landing gear took the bulk of the load and we broke one or two possibly landing gear," explained Steve Altemus, IM's CEO and co-founder.

"We sat there upright with the engine firing for a period of time. And then, as it wound down, the vehicle just gently tipped over, and in our simulation with 1/6 gravity, we showed that it took about two seconds."

Odysseus is thought to be resting on one of its yellow helium pressure tanks at an angle to the surface of roughly 30 degrees.

The craft was forced to communicate with Houston via its low-gain antennas. But once controllers got the hang of how the signals were being sent, a broad data stream was established.

Intuitive Machines

Artwork: How Odysseus was imagined to look on the Moon before launch

Nasa's six instruments were focused on testing new navigation technologies and studying the surface conditions at the landing site.

Susan Lederer, who oversaw all the experiments, said the agency teams and IM staff worked side by side to make the mission a success.

"We were collaboratively working together to find solutions so that the spacecraft could live and the payloads could get their data," she told reporters.

"We went from basically a cocktail straw of data coming back to a boba tea-sized (very large) straw of data coming back."

The robot is expected to go into hibernation on Thursday at the latest.

Because of the way its solar cells are pointing, they're going to lose sight of the Sun and that will deny the battery of charge.

And, in any case, the Sun will soon disappear over the horizon. Only when it returns in mid-March will engineers have a chance of reviving Odysseus.

"We'll start listening at sunrise at our location and see if 'Oddie' wakes up from a nap," said Tim Crain, IM's CTO and co-founder.

Susan Lederer said she wouldn't bet against the "scrappy little dude" re-establishing contact.

Intuitive Machines

A view of the landing using the fish-eye camera

The Intuitive Machines mission is part of Nasa's Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) programme, in which the agency is paying various private American companies for cargo services to the Moon.

These companies are responsible for designing, building and operating their robot landers - Nasa is a payload customer.

A whole series of robotic "scouts" is planned as the agency works towards returning astronauts to the Moon's surface later this decade.

Nasa regards the CLPS approach as a more economical way of getting its science done, while at the same time seeding what it hopes will become a thriving lunar economy.

Intuitive Machines has two further missions in prospect for 2024. The next will see a robot drill into the surface.

"We've kicked open the door for a robust thriving cislunar economy in the future. That's compelling," said Steve Altemus.

"I think this CLPS experiment, this first landing, the success on the Moon for first time (by the US) in 52 years, is really a point in history that we should celebrate."

Earlier this week, the Japanese space agency managed to wake its Slim lander after it had gone through a "lunar night".

The Jaxa robot had also touched down in an awkward fashion - on its nose. But like Odysseus, this didn't stop it functioning, and it was able to send back many pictures of its surroundings.

JAXA

Japan's Slim robot came back to life after lunar night so there's hope for Odysseus

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Why the Hamilton-Niagara area is the place to be in Ontario for the total solar eclipse - CBC.ca

Robert Cockcroft's advice for people in Hamilton on April 8? Don't leave town — and expect some guests.

"The Hamilton-Niagara area is the best place to see the eclipse because that's where we get to see a total solar eclipse," said the director of McMaster University's William J. McCallion Planetarium. 

That day, people across North America will see the moon pass between the sun and the Earth. In some places, it will partially block out the sun. But in others — including Hamilton, Burlington, Six Nations and the Niagara Region, all in Ontario — the moon will fully block the star's light. 

Only a few other cities in the province — including Kingston, Belleville and Cornwall — will have a similar view.

In Hamilton, the sun will be completely hidden for about two minutes starting at 3:18 p.m. ET, according to the Canadian Space Agency (CSA). However, it will be at least partially covered from about 2 p.m. to 4:30 p.m.

That's because this region is in what's called the path of totality, Cockcroft said — a 100- to 115-kilometre arc across the globe from which things will line up just right. The CSA website states other cities in the path include Montreal and Fredericton.

People will flock Hamilton Niagara to view the eclipse. Here's why

33 minutes ago

Duration 4:04

Robert Cockcroft, the director of McMaster University’s William J. McCallion Planetarium, shares why the Hamilton-Niagara region will be the best in Ontario from which to view the April 8 eclipse. He also explains why this eclipse will be a big deal, and how to view it safely.

Hamilton area will go dark during the eclipse

"There are four to seven solar or lunar eclipses per year, but only those people along the path of an eclipse are able to see it," says the CSA.

If you're outside the path of the coming solar eclipse, "the light will dim noticeably and it will get a bit cooler, but you won't get to see the culmination of the spectacle that is the total solar eclipse, where the sky goes dark enough to see planets and stars in the sky," Cockcroft said.

What's likely to happen is that people from outside the region will come in to view the eclipse, he said. Based on his prior eclipse experience travelling to see an eclipse in 2017, Cockcroft predicts "the roads are going to be a nightmare." 

But, he added, all people in Hamilton need to do is go outside and look up — with the proper eclipse glasses of course. 

Map of the path of totality in Canada for the April 8, 2024, solar eclipse. (Canadian Space Agency)

There will be a range of events in the area during the eclipse, including one McMaster University is planning, Cockfroft said. And if it's a cloudy day, livestreaming the eclipse will be possible too. 

He said it's a great educational opportunity for children, many of whom won't have school that day — just take some precautions. 

Looking at sun before, after totality can hurt eyes 

The sun is too bright to view directly, Cockcroft said. But McMaster University has teamed up with the Hamilton public library to offer residents free eclipse glasses that use the international ISO 12312-2 standard.

With those on, Cockcroft demonstrated outside the planetarium, you can gaze at the star and study features such as sun spots. 

The CSA says glasses made to that standard filter out enough light to make viewing the sun possible, and notes that eye protection is needed before and after the totality.

The only time one can look at the sun without eye protection is during the totality, Cockcroft said.

He said another option for eclipse viewers is to make an eclipse projector — a DIY tool that will allow you to view a protection of the eclipse without special eyewear. 

Cockcroft says eclipses are something entire communities can enjoy together. (Justin Chandler/CBC)

Next total solar eclipse visible from Hamilton is 2144

"To have a total solar eclipse come to you is really a once-in-a-lifetime effect event," Cockcroft said. "We haven't had one of these since 1925 and the next one will be 2144."

But other than the rarity, why do people care so much about eclipses?

For one, it's a strange experience to have the sky go dark midday, Cockroft said.

"You'll notice something weird, even if you didn't know it was coming."

There also may be something more philosophical at play. 

"During a total solar eclipse, for all our technology that we have, we still are at the mercy of things that are going on in the heavens," Cockroft said.

"And it's a nice way just to completely break off from whatever you happen to be doing on that day. Everyone in the community gets to experience this awesome event in the sky all at the same time."

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CRAFT 2.0: Academic hospital network joins centre for research on microfluidic devices for human health - National Research Council Canada - Conseil national de recherches Canada

The Centre for Research and Applications in Fluidic Technologies (CRAFT) is a unique collaboration between the University of Toronto and the National Research Council of Canada and now Unity Health Toronto

Researchers working in the Device Foundry, 1 of 3 facilities that are part of the Centre for Research and Applications in Fluidic Technologies (CRAFT). (Photo credit: Dahlia Katz)

The mandate of the Centre for Research and Applications in Fluidic Technologies (CRAFT) has been extended to 2028 and expanded to formally include Unity Health Toronto, an academic hospital network and leading Canadian health research institute.

A unique partnership between the University of Toronto (U of T), the National Research Council of Canada (NRC) and now Unity Health Toronto, CRAFT develops leading-edge microfluidic devices that can address many challenges in human health.

The latest agreement, which includes $21 million in new investments, will support dozens of U of T trainees who will work alongside NRC scientists and engineers and clinical scientists on exciting projects related to diagnostics biofabrication and organ-on-chip systems.

With the addition of Unity Health Toronto, clinicians will now join CRAFT scientists in developing new microfluidic technologies such as detection of and monitoring risks of infection in intensive care unit (ICU) environments and rapid detection of arterial peripheral diseases. This will allow scientists and clinicians to directly test and validate their technologies in care settings and develop new pathways to work with industry partners.

"CRAFT was built from the common vision that microfluidics could make a real impact on Canada's scientific and clinical fields," says Teodor Veres (PhD), Director of R&D at the NRC's Medical Devices Research Centre and co-director of CRAFT.

"Focused on providing new student generations with opportunities to forge ground-breaking scientific and technological advancements in microfluidic devices, these advancements have the potential to revolutionize disease diagnosis and treatment in Canada and globally. This vision was crucial to our initiative's growth and our current success."

Microfluidic technology enables fluids to be manipulated in engineered, miniaturized devices with features at the scale of microns, or one thousandth of a millimetre. The ability to precisely control fluids at this scale has many important applications in engineering, medicine, biology and chemistry.

Applications of microfluidics include rapid diagnostic devices that help clinicians to reliably test for the presence of certain diseases at the patient's bedside while avoiding the cost and time delays associated with sending samples to large testing laboratories. Microfluidics are also used in biosensors that allow patients in remote communities to send accurate data to specialists located hundreds of kilometres away.

As an example, Dr. Claudia dos Santos, Unity Health critical care physician and scientist, has pinpointed a need to quickly identify ICU patients at risk of sepsis. She is working with CRAFT researchers to develop a microfluidic instrument that can detect biomarkers for sepsis right on the ICU floor. Such an instrument will allow for faster diagnosis and treatment of sepsis, which can be deadly if left untreated.

"With Unity Health Toronto formally joining CRAFT, we are bringing the power and potential of microfluidic devices into clinical settings. This partnership will allow clinicians to merge their expertise with CRAFT scientists and take the next major steps towards transforming patient care," says Dr. dos Santos.

Left to right: Claudia dos Santos (medical devices lead), Pamela Plant (director of the Genomic Facility at the Keenan Center for Biomedical Research), Valeria DiGiovanni (director of the Critical Care Medicine Biobank) and Marlene Santos (chief research coordinator for the Critical Care Research Unit) at the CRAFT Translational Research Station inside the Medical Surgical ICU at St. Michael's Hospital. (Photo courtesy of Unity Health Toronto)

Another application of microfluidics—known as organ-on-chip—enables cells, tissues or even portions of working organs to be grown outside the body in microfluidic devices. These biological models can be used in high-throughput screening of large libraries of potentially therapeutic molecules for specific functions, for example, determining which ones would be most effective against a particular type of cancer. Such screens could even suggest the ideal therapies for an individual patient, opening the door to precision medicine.

CRAFT was founded in 2018 and includes 3 research and development facilities for microfluidic devices: the Tissue Foundry for bioprinting and device preclinical validation; the Device Foundry for microfluidic device design, prototyping and small-scale fabrication; and the NRC device fabrication and scale-up facility. The first two are located at U of T and available for use by academics, students, industry and government. The latter is located on the NRC campus in Boucherville, Quebec.

In 2023, the facilities hosted 125 unique users from across U of T as well as affiliated hospitals, including Sunnybrook, SickKids and the University Health Network. Since its inception, CRAFT has engaged 44 researchers and 114 trainees in a wide range of projects, leading to 69 peer-reviewed publications, 22 patent submissions and 3 spin-off companies.

"CRAFT has been a team effort all along. In addition to the NRC, we have been supported as an Institutional Strategic Initiative through U of T's Division of the Vice-President, Research and Innovation, and by U of T's faculties of Engineering, Arts & Science, Medicine, and Pharmacy. We all look forward to an exciting next chapter in partnering with Unity Health," says Axel Guenther, a professor of mechanical engineering at U of T and co-director of CRAFT.

"Developing the next generation of made-in-Canada microfluidic technologies and bringing them to the people who need them most—patients, healthcare professionals and pharmaceutical companies—will require strong partnerships within and outside of CRAFT with our clinical partners, U of T's entrepreneurship ecosystem and Canadian industry. We invite everyone to visit and use our open research facilities in Toronto, attend our Microfluidics Professional Course from July 17 to 19 or attend our CRAFT research symposium in Boucherville on October 12, 2024."

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The 280m-year-old fossil reptile that turned out to be a forgery - The Guardian

Generations of palaeontologists have marvelled over a 280m-year-old fossilised lizard-like reptile, Tridentinosaurus antiquus, discovered in the Italian Alps in 1931.

Thought to be one of the best-preserved specimens of the species, palaeontologists believed there were even traces of carbonised skin on the surface. Now modern imaging techniques have revealed that this treasured fossil is, in fact, a carving covered in black paint.

Dr Valentina Rossi, from University College Cork, in Ireland, and her team used ultraviolet photography to look beneath the paint. Instead of finding the hoped-for soft tissues, they found an elaborate fake. Although exactly when it was made and who crafted it remains unknown, Tridentinosaurus joins a long list of fossil fakes, including the Piltdown Man and Archaeoraptor, to name just two. Ancient woodlice-like sea creatures known as trilobites were a particular favourite for faking, and natural history museums around the world are increasingly discovering counterfeits in their collections.

Reporting in Palaeontology, Rossi and her colleagues suggest the problem is growing, with a huge market for fake fossils today. Modern imaging techniques are now helping to expose the fakes, but Rossi and her colleagues are calling for tighter regulations to protect the fossil record, including outlawing painting over fossils.

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Japan's moon lander survives lunar night, beating predictions - Euronews

The Japanese space agency is planning to make contact with the vehicle again.

Japan's first moon lander responded to a signal from Earth, suggesting it has survived a second freezing weekslong lunar night, Japan's space agency said on Monday.

JAXA called the signal, received late Sunday night, a “miracle” because the probe was not designed to survive the lunar night when temperatures can fall to minus 170 degrees Celsius.

The craft, Smart Lander for Investigating Moon, or SLIM, made a “pinpoint” touchdown on January 20, making Japan the fifth country to successfully place a probe on the moon.

But the probe landed the wrong way up, with its solar panels initially unable to see the sun and had to be turned off within hours.

SLIM regained power on the eighth day after its landing when it got the sun. For several days, SLIM collected geological data from moon rocks, before going back into hibernation in late January to wait out another lunar night.

JAXA said Sunday's communication was kept short because it was still “lunar midday” and SLIM was at a very high temperature, about 100 Celsius. JAXA is now preparing to make contact again when the vehicle has cooled.

Scientists are hoping to find clues about the origin of the moon by comparing mineral compositions of moon rocks and those of Earth.

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An El Niño Some 80 Years Ago Sparked The Retreat of Antarctica's 'Doomsday Glacier' - ScienceAlert

Substantial ice loss has been observed in the Antarctic region since the 1970s, but a new study suggests for at least some significant regions it actually started as far back as the 1940s, and perhaps even earlier.

A research team led by the University of Houston collected sedimentary rock cores from seven locations near the massive Thwaites Glacier and nearby Pine Island Glacier to determine precisely when current melting began to ramp up.

Dating back over 10,000 years, the rock samples tell the story of the ice shelves before we had satellites to keep an eye on them and could help confirm estimates on the history of Thwaites Glacier's retreat.

Measuring some 120 kilometers (75 miles) across, this vast river of ice happens to be one of the largest glaciers on Earth. It's sometimes known as the 'Doomsday Glacier', because its demise would mean significant and irreversible change in Antarctica.

Measurements based on features of cores near both glaciers matched up well enough for the researchers to conclude that they were looking at the effects of large-scale shifts in the Antarctic environment.

"What is especially important about our study is that this change is not random nor specific to one glacier," says geologist Rachel Clark, from the University of Houston.

"It is part of a larger context of a changing climate. You just can't ignore what's happening on this glacier."

Readings from two glaciers were compared. (Clark et al., PNAS, 2024)

Together with previous modeling, the findings point to an extreme El Niño climate pattern – a shift in the global weather patterns – that warmed the waters of the west Antarctic between 1939 and 1942, and may well have preceded a significant ice shelf retreat.

These external factors, rather than dynamics within the ice itself, have been enough to cause more of the ice to become free floating rather than attached to the seabed. The retreat of this grounding zone contributes to greater instability and more melting as more of the ice foundation comes in contact with warming waters.

According to the researchers, their study implies that once an ice sheet begins to shrink, melting can continue for decades even if the initial triggers are no longer there. That's an important consideration for scientists studying ice melt.

"It is significant that El Niño only lasted a couple of years, but the two glaciers, Thwaites and Pine Island, remain in significant retreat," says geologist Julia Wellner, from the University of Houston. "Once the system is kicked out of balance, the retreat is ongoing."

It's thought that the Thwaites Glacier has seen a net loss of more than 1,000 billion tons of ice since the turn of the century, and understanding more about how increased melting has been triggered in the past can help us model the scale of problems in the future.

"The glacier is significant not only because of its contribution to sea-level rise but because it is acting as a cork in the bottle holding back a broader area of ice behind it," says Wellner.

"If Thwaites is destabilized, then there's potential for all the ice in West Antarctica to become destabilized."

The research has been published in PNAS.

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Scientists gain alarming insight into rapid melting of 'Doomsday Glacier' - CTV News

Scientists have looked back in time to reconstruct the past life of Antarctica’s “Doomsday Glacier” — nicknamed because its collapse could cause catastrophic sea level rise. They have discovered it started retreating rapidly in the 1940s, according to a new study that provides an alarming insight into future melting.

The Thwaites Glacier in West Antarctica is the world’s widest and roughly the size of Florida. Scientists knew it had been losing ice at an accelerating rate since the 1970s, but because satellite data only goes back a few decades, they didn’t know exactly when significant melting began.

Now there is an answer to this question, according to a study published Monday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

By analyzing marine sediment cores extracted from beneath the ocean floor, researchers found the glacier began to significantly retreat in the 1940s, likely kicked off by a very strong El Nino event — a natural climate fluctuation which tends to have a warming impact.

Since then, the glacier has been unable to recover, which may reflect the increasing impact of human-caused global warming, according to the report.

What happens to Thwaites will have global reverberations. The glacier already contributes four per cent of sea level rise as it sheds billions of tons of ice a year into the ocean. Its complete collapse could raise sea levels by more than two feet.

But it also plays a vital role in the stability of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, acting like a cork holding back the vast stretch of ice behind it. Thwaites’ collapse would undermine the stability of the ice sheet, which holds enough water to raise sea levels by at least 10 feet, causing catastrophic global flooding.

The study’s findings match previous research on the neighbouring Pine Island Glacier, one of the largest ice streams in Antarctica, which scientists also found started retreating rapidly in the 1940s.

This makes the research significant, said Julia Wellner, an associate professor of geology at the University of Houston and one of the study’s authors. What’s happening to Thwaites is not specific to one glacier, but part of the bigger context of a changing climate, she told CNN.

“If both glaciers are retreating at the same time, that’s further evidence that they’re actually being forced by something,” Wellner said.

To build a picture of Thwaites’ life over the past nearly 12,000 years, the scientists took an icebreaker vessel up close to the edge of the glacier to collect ocean sediment cores from a range of depths.

These cores provide a historical timeline. Each layer yields information about the ocean and ice going back thousands of years. By scanning and dating the sediments, the scientists were able to pinpoint when the substantial melting began.

From this information, they believe Thwaites’ retreat was set off by an extreme El Nino that happened at a time when the glacier was likely already in a phase of melting, knocking it off balance. “It’s sort of like if you get kicked when you’re already sick, it’s going to have a much bigger impact,” Wellner said.

The findings are alarming because they suggest that once big changes are triggered, it’s very hard to stop them, said James Smith, a marine geologist at the British Antarctic Survey and a study co-author.

“Once an ice sheet retreat is set in motion it can continue for decades, even if what started it gets no worse,” he told CNN.

While similar retreats have happened much further back in the past, the ice sheet recovered and regrew, Smith said. But these glaciers “show no signs of recovery, which likely reflects the growing influence of human-caused climate change.”

Ted Scambos, a glaciologist at the University of Colorado Boulder who was not involved in the research, said the study confirms and adds detail to our understanding of how Thwaites’ retreat began.

A system that was already close to being unstable “took a big shot from a mostly natural event,” said Scambos, referring to the El Nino. “Further events arising more from the warming climate trend took things further, and started the widespread retreat we’re seeing today,” he told CNN.

Martin Truffer, a physics professor at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, said the research shows if a glacier is in a sensitive state, “a single event can knock it into a retreat from which it is difficult to recover.”

“Humans are changing the climate and this study shows that small continuous changes in climate can lead to step changes in glacier state,” said Truffer, who was not involved in the research.

Antarctica is sometimes called the “sleeping giant,” because scientists are still trying to understand how vulnerable this icy, isolated continent may be as humans heat up the atmosphere and oceans.

Wellner is a geologist — she focuses on the past not the future — but she said this study gives important and alarming context for what might happen to the ice in this vital stretch of Antarctica.

It shows that even if a trigger for rapid melting has ended, that doesn’t mean the response stops. “So if the ice is already in retreat today,” she said, “just because we might stop warming, it might not stop its retreat.”

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2024-02-27 00:24:00Z
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Intuitive Machines stock plummets after moon lander tips over - Yahoo Canada Finance

(Reuters) - Shares of Houston-based Intuitive Machines slumped more than 30% on Monday after the space exploration firm said its Odysseus moon lander had tipped over and was resting on its side.

The company, which became the first private company to land on the moon and the first from the U.S. since 1972, said that all but one of its six NASA science and technology payloads were facing upwards and receptive to communications.

The payload on its side contains an art piece comprising miniature stainless steel sculptures by artist Jeff Koons, the company said.

The rest of the payloads are expected to carry out their scientific objectives.

Intuitive's stock fell 34% to $6.30 before the opening bell on Monday, more than offsetting the gains on Friday, in which nearly 99 million shares exchanged hands, a record for the stock.

On Friday, the total value of traded shares reached $1.01 billion, surpassing the company’s market valuation of approximately $960 million, as per LSEG data.

The company's shares, which went public about a year ago, are vulnerable to high levels of volatility as only 18% of the stock is available to trade.

The landing could make things easier for other space focused companies - like Rocket Lab, Astra Space and Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin - seeking investments and stable government contracts.

(Reporting by Akash Sriram in Bengaluru; Editing by Tasim Zahid)

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2024-02-26 10:51:38Z
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SpaceX launches 24 Starlink satellites from Florida - Space.com

SpaceX launched 24 of its Starlink internet satellites from Florida on Sunday (Feb. 25), on the company's 18th mission of 2024.

A Falcon 9 rocket carrying 24 Starlink spacecraft lifted off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida at 5:06 p.m. EST (2206 GMT).

Related: Starlink satellite train: How to see and track it in the night sky

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carrying 24 Starlink satellites lifts off from Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC-40) at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida on Sunday, Feb. 25, 2024. (Image credit: SpaceX)

The Falcon 9's first stage came back to Earth about 8.5 minutes after liftoff. It made a vertical landing on the SpaceX droneship A Shortfall of Gravitas, which was stationed in the Atlantic Ocean.

It was the 13th launch and landing for this particular booster, according to a SpaceX mission description. Eight of its 12 flights to date have been Starlink missions.

The rocket's upper stage, meanwhile, continued powering its way toward low Earth orbit, deploying the satellites there about 65 minutes after launch.

A time lapse exposure captures a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carrying 24 Starlink satellites as it lifts off from Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC-40) at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida on Sunday, Feb. 25, 2024. (Image credit: SpaceX)

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Sunday's launch was the 18th of the year for SpaceX. And many more will follow over the coming weeks and months: The company aims to launch 144 orbital missions in 2024.

SpaceX's most recent two launches have been milestone missions. On Tuesday (Feb. 20), the company lofted an Indonesian telecom satellite called Merah Putih 2 on the 300th successful Falcon 9 liftoff to date. 

And a Starlink launch on Thursday (Feb. 22) was the 19th flight for that Falcon 9's first-stage booster, tying SpaceX's rocket reuse record.

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2024-02-25 23:42:35Z
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Sideways lunar lander in race to complete mission with limited bandwidth - The Globe and Mail

Open this photo in gallery:

The IM-1 Nova-C lunar lander in Houston in October, 2023. Intuitive Machines revealed Friday, Feb. 23, that the Odysseus lander is positioned horizontally at its landing site near the moon’s south pole.The Associated Press

The Odysseus lunar lander, alive but off-kilter, is transmitting data from the moon as engineers try to make the most of the spacecraft’s limited lifespan and communication capabilities.

On Friday, Intuitive Machines Inc. of Houston, Tex., revealed that the lander is positioned horizontally at its landing site near the moon’s south pole.

Temperature readings and other data suggest it may be resting on a rock rather than completely tipped over. While it is receiving enough sunlight on its solar panels to maintain power, its high-gain antenna cannot point toward Earth.

Instead, the lander’s radio signals are likely skipping off the lunar surface, and quite weak by the time they are received. Constrained by the reduced bandwidth, photos that could reveal more about the condition of Odysseus can only be relayed back slowly.

“What’s clear is that the lander is not in the orientation that had been anticipated,” said Christian Sallaberger, president of Canadensys Aerospace. The Ontario-based company supplied several cameras for the mission including those that showed the spacecraft during its departure from Earth and approach to the lunar surface.

Prior to landing, Odysseus was expected to survive about ten days before the moon’s rotation shifted the sun below the horizon, exposing the spacecraft and its electronics to the deep cold of space.

Odysseus lander reaches lunar surface, marking first moon landing for U.S. in half a century with private spacecraft

It is not yet known how many of the experiments that are on board Odysseus can be conducted and return data in that time frame given the lander’s sideways stance and communications bottleneck. That includes a telescope that was built by Canadensys for the International Lunar Observatory Association, a research group based in Hawaii that aims to use the moon as a platform for astronomers.

On Sunday, Dr. Sallaberger said initial indications suggested that the telescope, which is fixed near the top of the 4.3-metre-tall lander, is not directed skyward as planned.

“We’re fearful that it might not be pointing towards the stars, but rather at the surface,” he said.

Odysseus touched down on Thursday after a seven-day journey that began with its Feb. 15 launch aboard a Space X rocket at Florida’s Cape Canaveral. It is the first commercial spacecraft to soft-land on the lunar surface and the first American mission to do so since Apollo 17 in 1972.

Along the way, the lander’s flight team faced a variety of challenges including the discovery that a laser range finder built at the British facilities of MDA, Canada’s largest aerospace company, could not be used to determine the altitude of the spacecraft above the moon.

The cause was an electrical lock that prevents the laser from firing inadvertently during testing as a safety feature. At a news briefing in Houston on Friday, Intuitive Machines flight director Tim Crain said that his company had not deactivated the lock before launch and that there was no way to do so remotely.

Mike Greenley, MDA’s chief executive officer, said that the flight team immediately reached out to MDA when they realized there was a problem.

“The teams were able to share real-time telemetry from the sensor in space so that they could be able to quickly diagnose the issue,” Mr. Greenley told The Globe and Mail.

During the briefing, participants described how flight controllers had to rapidly rewrite software for the landing sequence, substituting the MDA range finder with a NASA-built experimental lidar system that happened to be on board Odysseus as a technical demonstration.

The substitution worked but it also meant that a device called EagleCam, which was to have been ejected seconds before the landing in order to capture images of Odysseus touching down, had to be taken offline.

“If you think back from Apollo days, there wasn’t one mission that went absolutely perfectly, so you have to be adaptable, you have to be innovative and you have to persevere, and we persevered right up until the last moments,” said Steve Altemus, a former NASA engineer and the chief executive officer of Intuitive Machines.

During the briefing, the company revealed how close the spacecraft came to disaster on its way to setting down on the lunar surface – a feat that has previously defeated all private entities as well as some of the countries looking to establish a presence on the moon.

Odysseus began its descent travelling at about 40,000 kilometres an hour and had to shed velocity as it approached its intended landing site near the crater, Malapert A.

Data show that the lander was upright until the final moments before it came to rest. However, as it descended vertically it was also travelling somewhat horizontally, relative to the surface, at about walking speed, Mr. Altemus said. This accounts for why it may have ended up tipped on its side if one of its legs struck an obstacle just before the spacecraft came to rest, he added.

Despite tripping over the threshold, the mission has unquestionably made history as the first of several lunar landings planned by various companies in the next few years.

“It’s an expensive enterprise, but it continues to be increasingly achievable and affordable, which means that there’s a business opportunity there,” Mr. Greenley said.

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2024-02-26 00:57:33Z
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Freakshow Spiders and Their 6-Foot Webs Are Invading American Cities - Yahoo Movies Canada

Spiders With 6-Foot Webs Are Invading AmericaLITTLE DINOSAUR - Getty Images

• First spotted in the United States in 2013, the native east Asian Jorō spider is now spreading along the East Coast.

• Researchers say that the spider isn’t bothered by the urban environment or American climate, positioning it to continue a move northward from Georgia.

• A female Jorō spider can reach 3 inches across and create an orbed web up to 6 feet across.

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There’s something alarming about a spider that can grow 3 inches across, builds orbed webs that can stretch more than 6 feet, and doesn’t seem bothered at all by an urban environment. In fact, they seem to thrive under very human-developed conditions.

That’s why the Jorō spider, native to east Asia, is grabbing attention as it makes its way west.

A new study from the University of Georgia, published in Arthropoda, shows that the spider is expanding its habitat. Originally spotted in the United States in 2013, the spider will likely expand northward, and seems to be able to do so while thriving in an urban landscape that most spiders can’t handle.

Spiders rely on vibrations within their web to know when to attack trapped prey. This means that the urban landscape can create quite the conundrum, with busy roads and buildings that create all sorts of vibration frequencies unrelated to prey.

“If you’re a spider, you rely on vibrations to do your job and catch bugs,” Andy Davis, corresponding author of the study, said in a statement. “But these Jorō webs are everywhere in the fall, including right next to busy roads, and the spiders seem to be able to make a living there. For some reason, these spiders seem urban tolerant.”

The invasive orb-weaving spider from east Asia was first spotted in Georgia in 2013, and a 2015 study confirmed that the Jorō had established itself in North America, ready to populate the continent. Millions of the yellow and black-blue spiders are now spread across Georgia, the Carolinas, and Tennessee, with additional sightings in a handful of other states. The fact that baby spiders can travel up to 100 miles from where they were born, thanks to a parachute-like web that forms after hatching, helps the proliferation.

The new study shows just why the spread is sticking.

The team researched the otherwise stressful living environment that other spiders can’t handle, and showed that the Jorō moves into areas that other spiders simply wouldn’t. The Jorō can build webs that stretch up to 6 feet across on powerlines, streetlights, and within the urban fabric of busy roadside locations.

The team used a tuning fork to simulate the vibrations caused by prey when caught in a web and observed the Jorō’s response. They attacked simulated prey 59 percent of the time in high-traffic areas, slightly lower than the 65 percent in low-traffic areas. These are high numbers compared to the less than 30 percent attack rate from other species. The researchers also found that the spiders in the busy areas didn’t appear to weigh any less, or have any adverse health conditions.

“It looks like Jorō spiders are not going to shy away from building a web under a stoplight or an area where you wouldn’t imagine a spider to be,” Alexa Shultz, co-author on the study and third-year ecology student at the University of Georgia, said in a statement.

The Jorō don’t just seem to ‘not mind’ the urban landscape—they can fully handle the environment. The spider has a high metabolism and heart rate, which makes them cold-hardy enough to survive through freezes that kill off other spider species. In Japan, the Jorō has spread throughout most of the country, and the ability to handle both urban life and cold weather allowed it to do so.

The continued growth of the Jorō doesn’t rely on aggressiveness, though. Rather, Davis believes that the spider outbreeds other species. In previous research, Davis found that the Jorō is timid, and could be the shyest spider ever documented. So, while the Jorō poses no real danger to humans—based on its propensity to freeze for up to an hour when humans come around (rather than a minute or two for most spiders), and the fact its fangs likely can’t puncture human skin—it will likely continue to grow in population.

“I don’t know how happy people are going to be about it,” Shultz said, “but I think the spiders are here to stay.”

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2024-02-25 15:00:00Z
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China Reveals Names of New Manned Moon Spaceship, Lander - BNN Bloomberg

(Bloomberg) -- China’s space agency has unveiled the names of a new manned spaceship and a moon lander for its mission to send astronauts to the moon before 2030.  

The new crew spaceship is named Mengzhou, which means dream vessel in Chinese, according to a statement from China Manned Space Agency Saturday. The moon lander is called Lanyue, meaning embracing the moon in Chinese. The names were selected from almost 2,000 proposals from the public since August of 2023. 

According to the space agency’s plan, two Long March-10 carrier rockets will send the Mengzhou spaceship and the Lanyue lander into lunar orbit. They will dock with each other, which will let astronauts enter the lander and land on the moon. 

The spaceship, lander and carrier rocket are currently at the preliminary sample development stage, according to the agency. 

READ MORE: China Says Its Moon Mission Is on Track as NASA Suffers Setbacks

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Moon lander Odysseus tipped sideways on lunar surface but 'alive and well' - Reuters

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1. Moon lander Odysseus tipped sideways on lunar surface but 'alive and well'  Reuters
2. Intuitive Machines: Odysseus Moon lander 'tipped over on touchdown'  BBC.com
3. Odysseus spacecraft on its side after landing on the moon, officials say  CBC News
4. Odysseus lander reaches lunar surface, marking first moon landing for U.S. in half a century with private spacecraft  The Globe and Mail
5. Moon spacecraft is on its side: company  CTV News

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2024-02-24 03:25:00Z
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Moon lander tipped sideways on lunar surface but 'alive and well' - NBC News

The moon lander dubbed Odysseus is “alive and well” but resting on its side a day after its white-knuckle touchdown as the first private spacecraft ever to reach the lunar surface, and the first from the U.S. since 1972, the company behind the vehicle said on Friday.

The vehicle is believed to have caught one of its six landing feet on the lunar surface near the end of its final descent and tipped over, coming to rest sideways, propped up on a rock, an analysis of data by flight engineers showed, according to Houston-based Intuitive Machines.

Still, all indications are that Odysseus “is stable near or at our intended landing site” close to a crater called Malapert A in the region of the moon’s south pole, said Stephen Altemus, chief executive officer of Intuitive Machines, which built and flew the lander.

“We do have communications with the lander,” and mission control operators are sending commands to the vehicle, Altemus said, adding that they were working to obtain the first photo images from the lunar surface from the landing site.

A brief update on the mission’s status posted to the company’s website earlier on Friday described Odysseus “alive and well.”

The company had said shortly after touchdown on Thursday that radio signals indicated Odysseus, a 13-foot-tall hexagonal cylinder, had landed in an upright position, but Atlemus said that faulty conclusion was based on telemetry from before the landing.

Although the lander’s horizontal position is far from ideal, company officials said that all but one of the six NASA science and technology payloads were mounted on portions of the vehicle left exposed and receptive to communications, “which is very good for us,” Altemus said.

“We think we can meet all the needs of the commercial payloads” as well, he added.

Less promising was the fact that two of the spacecraft’s antennae were left pointed at the surface, a circumstance that will limit communications with the lander, Altemus said.

Also the functionality of a solar energy panel on the top of Odysseus, now facing the wrong way, is uncertain, but a second array on the side of the spacecraft appears to be in working order, and the spacecraft’s batteries had been fully charged, he said.

Intuitive Machines mission director Tim Crain said the spacecraft, burning a propulsion fuel of liquid methane and liquid oxygen for the first time in space, “performed flawlessly” during its flight to the moon.

The uncrewed robot spacecraft reached the lunar surface on Thursday after a nail-biting final approach and descent in which a problem surfaced with the lander’s navigation system, requiring engineers on the ground to employ an untested work-around at the 11th hour.

It also took some time after an anticipated radio blackout to re-establish communications with the spacecraft and determine its fate some 239,000 miles (384,000 km) from Earth.

When contact was finally renewed, the signal was faint, confirming that the lander had touched down but leaving mission control immediately uncertain as to the precise condition and position of the vehicle, company officials said during a webcast of the event on Thursday evening.

Crain said he believed that the payloads aboard the lander would be able to operate for about nine or 10 days, after which sun will have set on the polar landing site.

Shares of Intuitive Machines tumbled 30% in extended trade on Friday, wiping out all their rally in Friday’s market session after the company said its moon lander had tipped over.

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2024-02-24 03:13:00Z
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Researchers find destruction of an Earth oceans' worth of water per month in Orion Nebula - Western News

An international team, including Western astrophysicists Els Peeters and Jan Cami, has found the destruction and re-formation of a large quantity of water in a planet-forming disk located at the heart of the Orion Nebula.

This discovery was made possible by an original multidisciplinary approach combining observations from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) and quantum physics calculations.

The study, a part of the PDRs4All Early Release Science program and led by University Paris-Saclay PhD student Marion Zannese, was published today in Nature Astronomy.

PDRs4All is one of 13 Early Release Science programs selected by NASA to demonstrate the capabilities of the JWST, bringing together an international consortium.

Els Peeters

“It is so impressive that in just a few pixels of observations, and focusing on a few of the lines, we can actually figure out that you have an entire ocean of water being evaporated every month,” said Peeters, co-lead investigator of PDRs4All and faculty member at Western’s Institute for Earth and Space Exploration. “This discovery was based on a tiny fraction of our spectroscopic data. It is exciting that we have so much more data to mine and I can’t wait to see what else we can find.”

Water is an essential ingredient for the emergence of life as it is currently understood. On Earth, most of the water in our oceans was formed long before the birth of the Solar System, in cold regions of interstellar space at -250°C. However, a fraction of this water could have been destroyed and re-formed at higher temperatures (100-500°C) when the Solar System was still just a disk of gas and dust orbiting our young nascent Sun.

To understand this enigmatic recycling of water, the international astronomy team pointed the JWST towards ‘d203-506,’ a planet-forming disk located in the Orion Nebula, a nursery of planetary systems. The intense ultraviolet radiation produced by massive stars leads to the destruction and re-formation of water in d203-506, making it a true interstellar laboratory.

Jan Cami

“The James Webb telescope is amazingly powerful. We’re not talking about finding a needle in a haystack for this discovery. This is a needle in a haystack made of needles,” said Cami, a physics and astronomy professor and PDRs4All core member.

Quantum leap

A collaboration with quantum dynamics experts from Madrid Deep Space Communications Complex (Spain) and the Leiden Observatory (The Netherlands) was the key to understanding how the formation and destruction of molecules located more than 1,000 light-years away could be observed.

When water is destroyed by ultraviolet light, a hydroxyl molecule is released, followed by the emission of photons which travel all the way to the JWST. In total, it is estimated that the equivalent of all of Earth’s oceans’ worth of water is destroyed per month and replenished in the d203-506 system.

But the story doesn’t end there. By a similar mechanism, JWST reveals that hydroxyl, a key intermediate in the formation of water, is also produced in abundance from atomic oxygen. Some of the water making up Earth’s oceans could have gone through such a cycle.

Left and center: the young disk d203-506 buried in the Orion Nebula as seen by the JWST ©NASA/ESA/CSA/PDRs4All/Salomé. Right: Animation illustrating how the formation and destruction of water was revealed by JWST observations. ©M. Zannese

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2024-02-23 14:54:30Z
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Odysseus is on lunar surface after moon landing attempt - The Washington Post

For the first time since the last of the Apollo missions in 1972, an American spacecraft reached the surface of the moon Thursday, a significant step toward NASA’s plan to eventually return astronauts to Earth’s closest celestial neighbor.

After a tense several minutes in which ground controllers were unsure about the health of the spacecraft, designed and operated by Houston-based Intuitive Machines, company officials declared it had landed successfully and was communicating with Earth. About two hours after the landing, the company confirmed that “after troubleshooting communications” the spacecraft was indeed standing upright, a momentous feat for the growing commercial space industry.

“What we can confirm without a doubt, is our equipment is on the surface of the moon,” Tim Crain, Intuitive Machines’ chief technology officer, said shortly after the landing. “And we are transmitting. So congratulations.”

But initially, success was not assured. As the crews waited to hear from the spacecraft in the first few tense moments after the landing, Crain told his team that “we’re not dead yet” while wondering aloud if the spacecraft had landed at an “off angle.”

Steve Altemus, the company’s CEO told his team: “I know this was a nail biter, but we are on the surface and we are transmitting. Welcome to the moon.”

The spacecraft touched down at 6:23 p.m. Eastern, near the moon’s south pole, after a week-long journey that appeared to go very well from the moment it launched atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from the Kennedy Space Center.

But as it prepared to descend to the surface ground controllers realized that lasers intended to determine its altitude and horizontal velocity, key data points for it autonomously to land softly on the surface of the moon, weren’t working. They ordered the craft to take an additional orbit around the moon before the landing attempt while uploading a software patch that would allow the spacecraft to begin using a NASA Doppler Lidar system that was to have been a technology demonstration during the flight.

“We weren’t planning to use it in line with the actual mission coming down to the landing, but now we are,” said Prasun Desai, the deputy associate administrator for NASA’s space technology mission directorate. “So basically it is now the primary system to help provide the velocity and altitude information so that the lander can land safely on the surface.”

The apparent landing of the company’s 14-foot-tall Nova-C lander, which had no people on board, is the first time a commercial spacecraft has reached the lunar surface, and it validates a big bet that NASA placed several years ago when it started a $2.9 billion program to hire a fleet of robotic, private-sector spacecraft to carry science experiments, technology instruments and eventually cargo to the moon.

The Intuitive Machines mission was carried out as part of that program, known as the Commercial Lunar Payload Services program, or CLPS. NASA awarded Intuitive Machines a $118 million contract to carry six instruments to the lunar surface that would help pave the way for future missions under its Artemis program, which seeks to return astronauts to the moon as early as 2026.

Last month, another commercial company, Astrobotic, of Pittsburgh, failed in its attempt to reach the lunar surface after its spacecraft suffered a propulsion problem.

When it first announced its Commercial Lunar Payload Services program several years ago, NASA’s leaders acknowledged the risk it was taking in relying so heavily on the private sector, which had never before sent a vehicle to the moon. But NASA has continued to insist that even if some of the missions failed, there would be others that succeeded, and that the often risk-averse agency would be happy to continue to “take shots on goal,” as they said.

“This is a really a significant shift in how we do business,” Lori Glaze, the director of NASA’s planetary science division, said in an interview before the landing. “The fact that NASA is not actually building or responsible directly for these missions or their launches is an opportunity to invest in the commercial industry to build a new capability. NASA can then purchase the delivery service, and the intent hopefully being that we can increase the frequency of deliveries and reduce the cost to NASA of doing science.”

The landing is a coup for NASA at a time when several nations are eyeing the moon, particularly the lunar south pole, where there is water in the form of ice. Water is not only vital to sustaining human life, but the hydrogen and oxygen could also be used as rocket fuel.

The moon’s south pole “scientifically has been intriguing for a long time, in part because the rocks are really old,” Glaze said. “We believe they’re at least 3.85 billion years old, which kind of goes back to the very early days of the moon. Getting information about those rocks eventually will be able to tell more about the history of the moon. And then, by knowing that history, it tells us more about the history of Earth.”

China has said it intends to land astronauts on the moon by 2030 and eventually build a research station there. Last month, Japan became the fifth country to land on the moon when its robotic spacecraft touched down — though on its side. In 2023, India landed a spacecraft on the moon as well.

Under its Artemis program, NASA intends to establish an enduring presence at the lunar south pole. Created under the Trump administration, the program was cast as a part of a space race with China, and in 2019 then-vice president Pence directed NASA to return astronauts to the moon by this year. That won’t happen. But the program was embraced by the Biden administration, the first time a deep-space, human-exploration campaign has survived subsequent presidential administrations since the Apollo era.

NASA Administrator Bill Nelson, a Biden appointee, has also said the United States is in a race with China. But recently, NASA said the next missions in the Artemis program would be pushed back even further because of an array of technical difficulties.

NASA successfully flew its Orion crew capsule, without anyone on board, around the moon in late 2022. But its next flight, known as Artemis II, won’t happen until September 2025 at the earliest, NASA has said. In that flight, Orion will carry four astronauts — three Americans and one Canadian — around the moon. Artemis III, the first human landing attempt since Apollo, will be pushed back to late 2026, NASA said.

NASA, however, has grown concerned about the effectiveness of Orion’s heat shield, which protects the astronauts from the superhigh temperature generated as the spacecraft reenters Earth’s atmosphere after engineers detected more charring than expected from the initial flight.

There have also been delays in the development of the space suits the astronauts will wear on the moon and of the Starship spacecraft, being built by SpaceX, that NASA has picked to ferry astronauts to and from the lunar surface on the first flight.

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2024-02-23 13:18:05Z
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