NASA's $10 billion successor to the Hubble Space Telescope has finally been fully assembled, after 12 years of delays and cost overruns.
The two halves that make up the next-generation space telescope have been brought together by NASA engineers for the very first time.
The tennis-court-sized James Webb Space Telescope will be able to see seven times further than the Hubble Space Telescope, capturing more concise pictures of the deep universe.
After 12 years of delays and cost overruns, the $9.7 billion successor to the Hubble Space Telescope — the James Webb Space Telescope — has finally been fully assembled.
The telescope will "explore the cosmos using infrared light, from planets and moons within our solar system", according to the NASA press release. It will be able to take very precise pictures of the deep universe, something which only the Hubble Space Telescope was able to achieve before. The Hubble Space Telescope was launched into Earth's orbit in 1990 and remains in operation.
The James Webb Space Telescope is not a replacement for the Hubble Space Telescope, but an upgrade. While Hubble captures optical and ultraviolet wavelengths, James Webb will capture the universe in infrared. It will also be able to look even deeper into the universe.
While Hubble's 7-foot-wide mirror is limited in the amount of light that it can capture, the James Webb Space Telescope has a 21-foot-wide mirror that can see seven times as far.
NASA engineers are still working on putting in a five-layer sun shield to protect the telescope from the infrared light coming from the Sun.Getty
As of now, the telescope has only been connected "mechanically", according to NASA. Engineers working for the space agency still have to connect the wires and links within the telescope for it to be fully functional.
The next step for engineers at NASA is to put together the James Webb Space Telescope's five-layer sun shield. The sun shield is an integral part of the telescope since it will protect the telescope's mirrors and scientific instruments from the infrared light coming from the Sun.
James Webb is the size of a tennis court and will only work once it unfurls itself in space without tearing or falling apart — a feat it has yet to accomplish.
"The more we learn more about our universe, the more we realize that Webb is critical to answering questions we didn't even know how to ask when the spacecraft was first designed," said Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, in a statement last month.
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Hurricane Dorian is not expected to majorly impact North Carolina over the Labor Day weekend. However, forecasters with the National Weather Service say Dorian will likely head northeast after making landfall as a major Hurricane somewhere in Florida next week. Some coastal flooding and a moderate risk for rip currents are already expected this weekend as the storm approaches the U.S.
Nearly a year after it was supposed to launch, NASA has finally assembled the James Webb Space Telescope, the long-awaited successor to the Hubble Space Telescope.
The government agency said the two halves of the telescope were joined earlier this week in Redondo Beach, Calif., where engineers used a crane to put the telescope together. The next step is to electrically connect the telescope and test it out.
“The assembly of the telescope and its scientific instruments, sunshield and the spacecraft into one observatory represents an incredible achievement by the entire Webb team,” said Bill Ochs, Webb project manager in a statement. “This milestone symbolizes the efforts of thousands of dedicated individuals for over more than 20 years across NASA, the European Space Agency, the Canadian Space Agency, Northrop Grumman, and the rest of our industrial and academic partners.”
The fully assembled James Webb Space Telescope, with its sunshield and unitized pallet structures that fold up around the telescope for launch, partially deployed to an open configuration to enable telescope installation. (Credit: NASA/Chris Gunn)
NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine tweeted about the accomplishment, calling it a "major milestone."
The next steps for the telescope include engineers deploying the five-layer sunshield, which NASA said is "designed to keep Webb's mirrors and scientific instruments cold by blocking infrared light from the Earth, Moon and Sun." The space agency added that the deployment of the sunshield "is critical to mission success."
Following final testing, including environmental and deployment testing, the James Webb telescope will launch into space in 2021. The Hubble continues to allow incredible discoveries since its launch into space in April 1990.
Hinted at in a brief tweet on August 28th, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk says that SpaceX’s massive Starship and Super Heavy launch vehicle – set to be the most powerful rocket ever built upon completion – could eventually be followed by a rocket multiple times larger.
SpaceX is currently in the process of assembling the first full-fidelity prototypes of Starship, a 9m (30 ft) diameter, 55m (180 ft) tall reusable spacecraft and upper stage. Two prototypes – Mk1 and Mk2 – are simultaneously being built in Texas and Florida, respectively, while the beginnings of the first Super Heavy prototype has visibly begun to take shape at SpaceX’s Florida campus.
Once complete, Starship’s Super Heavy booster will be the single most powerful rocket booster ever built, standing at least 70m (230 ft) tall on its own and capable of producing as much as ~90,000 kN (19,600,000 lbf) of thrust with 30 250-ton-thrust and 7 200-ton-thrust Raptor engines installed. Assuming 31 throttleable 200-ton Raptors, Super Heavy’s minimum max thrust is a still record-breaking ~62,000 kN (13.7 million lbf).
In fewer words, a full Starship/Super Heavy ‘stack’ would be the tallest (~118m/390ft), heaviest (~5000 tons/11 million lbs), and most powerful rocket ever assembled.
Starship separates from its Super Heavy booster in this updated render. (SpaceX)
And yet, despite its size, orbital-class rocketry in Earth gravity will almost never fail to benefit from more thrust; more propellant; more rocket. In light of this, CEO Elon Musk says that a theoretical next- next-generation SpaceX rocket – to potentially follow some years after Starship and Super Heavy – could be a full 18m (60 ft) wide, twice the diameter of its predecessors.
Many will recollect that doubling the diameter of a circle quadruples its area, meaning that a theoretical Starship 2.0 would have four times the surface area and four times the propellant tank volume, requiring roughly four times as much thrust and making the vehicle four times as heavy as Starship 1.0. Assuming that Starship’s successor retains its fineness ratio (height/width), an unlikely end result but still interesting to ponder, the vehicle would measure 18m (60 ft) in diameter and a terrifying ~236m (780 ft) tall, literally more than twice as tall as Saturn V. An 18m diameter would also make it the widest rocket ever built, with Saturn V’s S-IC first stage measuring 10m wide and the Soviet Union’s N1 ‘Block A’ first stage measuring an impressive ~17m in diameter at its widest point.
If the above assumptions are correct, a very rough estimate would peg Starship 2.0’s gross (fueled) mass at a gobsmacking ~20,000 metric tons (~45 million pounds). In the unlikely event that SpaceX would use the current generation of Raptor to power such a colossal rocket, the booster would need a bare minimum of 100+ Raptors just to lift off at all. Using Saturn V’s F-1, still the most powerful single-chamber rocket engine ever built, Starship 2.0 would need a minimum of 30+ engines to lift off, comparable to Super Heavy’s 31-37 Raptors.
A roughly to-scale comparison of SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rockets and proposed BFR variants, including Starship (BFR 2018) and an 18m-wide rocket teased by Elon Musk. (Teslarati/SpaceX)
For the time being, Starship and Super Heavy are plenty ambitious on their own, but it’s unsurprising to hear that SpaceX CEO Elon Musk already has some thoughts on what could follow that next-generation launch vehicle in the new decade. Still, it’s worth noting that quite possibly the craziest aspect of Starship – SpaceX’s utterly non-traditional attempt at rewriting the book on rocket manufacturing – could eventually make an 18m-diameter vehicle far more practical, assuming the company proves it’s methods can be used to build reliable, high-performance rockets.
Check out Teslarati’s newsletters for prompt updates, on-the-ground perspectives, and unique glimpses of SpaceX’s rocket launch and recovery processes.
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk says Starship could be followed by a dramatically larger rocket
The first-ever off-Earth helicopter just hooked up with its traveling companion.
Engineers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, attached the tiny Mars Helicopter to the agency's car-size Mars 2020 rover today (Aug. 28), agency officials announced.
The duo will launch together in July 2020 and touch down inside the Red Planet's Jezero Crater in February 2021. Once on Mars, the solar-powered, 4-lb. (1.8 kilograms) helicopter will detach and begin flying test sorties.
"Our job is to prove that autonomous, controlled flight can be executed in the extremely thin Martian atmosphere," Mars Helicopter project manager, of JPL, said in a statement. (Mars' air is just 1% as dense as that of Earth at sea level.)
"Since our helicopter is designed as a flight test of experimental technology, it carries no science instruments," she added. "But if we prove powered flight on Mars can work, we look forward to the day when Mars helicopters can play an important role in future explorations of the Red Planet."
For example, helicopters could serve as scouts for robots or human pioneers on Mars. Red Planet rotorcraft could also carry instruments and conduct a variety of science work of their own, NASA officials have said.
Mas 2020, which will soon get a catchier moniker via a student naming competition, will hunt for signs of long-dead Red Planet life in Jezero Crater, which hosted a river delta in the ancient past. The rover will also characterize the site's geology, collect and cache samples for future return to Earth and demonstrate gear that will generate oxygen from the carbon-dioxide-dominated Martian air, among other tasks.
"With this joining of two great spacecraft, I can say definitively that all the pieces are in place for a historic mission of exploration," Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator of the Science Mission Directorate at NASA's headquarters in Washington, D.C, said in the same statement. "Together, Mars 2020 and the Mars Helicopter will help define the future of science and exploration of the Red Planet for decades to come."
NASA plans to launch another rotorcraft soon as well — Dragonfly, which will soar through the thick atmosphere of Saturn's huge moon Titan. The life-hunting Dragonfly is scheduled to lift off in 2026 and land on Titan's frigid surface in 2034.
Mike Wall's book about the search for alien life, "Out There" (Grand Central Publishing, 2018; illustrated byKarl Tate), is out now. Follow him on Twitter @michaeldwall. Follow us on Twitter@Spacedotcom orFacebook.
To us, the night sky may look like a random splattering of stars, but astronomers are learning that in some regions of our galaxy, stars have clumped into features ...
The completed ExoMars rover, named “Rosalind Franklin,” is lifted in preparation for shipment from an Airbus facility in Stevenage, England. Credit: Max Alexander/Airbus
The European Space Agency’s ExoMars rover left its Airbus factory in Britain on Wednesday, heading for a round of testing in France before integration with its carrier and descent modules on pace for launch toward the Red Planet next July.
The nearly-complete rover is the centerpiece of the ExoMars mission, a joint robotic exploration project between ESA and Roscosmos, the Russian space agency.
The rover is named for Rosalind Franklin, a British chemist and X-ray crystallographer whose work contributed to the discovery of the twisting double helix shape of DNA molecule.
“Completing the build of the Rosalind Franklin rover under the strict cleanliness requirements, with all the science instruments onboard, is a major milestone of our ExoMars program,” said David Parker, ESA’s director of human and robotic exploration, in a statement. “It is thanks to the dedication of all the teams involved that we are able to celebrate this moment today.”
“We’re looking forward to completing the final rounds of tests before the rover is declared flight ready and closed inside the landing platform and descent module that will deliver it safely to the surface of Mars,” Parker said.
The Rosalind Franklin rover is Europe’s first Mars rover.
In launch configuration, the solar-powered robot weighs nearly 700 pounds (about 300 kilograms). The European rover is smaller than NASA’s Curiosity rover currently exploring Mars — along with NASA’s Mars 2020 rover set for launch next year — and somewhat larger than the Spirit and Opportunity rovers that landed on the Red Planet in 2004.
Teams at Airbus Defense and Space’s facility in Stevenage, England, north of London, assembled the Rosalind Franklin rover in a special ultra-clean factory over the last 18 months. The construction work capped more than a decade of design — and redesign — activities to prepare the ExoMars rover for its flight to Mars.
Airbus teams built the rover under strict cleanliness requirements, on top of the clean room standards for a typical space mission.
“The goal of ExoMars is to find life on the surface, more specifically under the surface, of Mars, and that means that we absolutely cannot take anything organic with us,” said Paul Meacham, the rover’s lead systems engineer at Airbus. “So that informs things like material choices. The wheels on the rover, for example, are metallic rather than being made of rubber. But that also means that when people are working on it, they must not in any way organically contaminate the rover.”
Over the last few months, engineers installed the rover’s scientific instruments, drill, a 3D panoramic camera suite, solar panels and wheels.
The Rosalind Franklin rover’s scientific payload includes instruments from Europe and Russia, with some component contributions from NASA. The instruments will study the make-up of the rocks and soil around the rover on Mars.
Teams at Airbus also installed the rover’s Analytical Laboratory Drawer, an instrument box which holds equipment to deliver rock and soil samples to three scientific instruments housed inside the container.
The rover’s six metallic wheels and drive system come from MDA in Canada, a division of Maxar Technologies.
The United Kingdom is the second-biggest financial contributor to the ExoMars program among ESA member states, after Italy, so Airbus’s Stevenage factory won the rights to the rover development.
The completed ExoMars rover, named “Rosalind Franklin,” is lifted in preparation for shipment from an Airbus facility in Stevenage, England. Credit: Max Alexander/Airbus
After leaving Airbus’s Stevenage plant, Rosalind Franklin rover’s next stop is at Airbus’s satellite factory in Toulouse, France, where it is due to arrive by truck Friday.
In Toulouse, engineers will place the rover on a vibration bench and in a thermal vacuum test chamber to verify the robot can withstand the rigors of spaceflight and the frigid environment of Mars, where temperatures will drop to minus 184 degrees (minus 120 degrees Celsius) outside, and minus 76 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 60 degrees Celsius) inside the rover, according to ESA.
The carbon dioxide-rich Martian atmosphere is about 100 times thinner than Earth’s.
The test campaign in Toulouse should last about four months, assuming everything goes according to plan, then officials will ship the rover to Thales Alenia Space in Cannes to meet the ExoMars mission’s German-built cruise stage and Russian descent module.
Engineers mated the cruise stage and descent module for the first time this week at a Thales Alenia Space facility in Turin, Italy, where the hardware will undergo its own test series over the coming months before shipping to Cannes, where engineers will add the rover.
While the major pieces of the ExoMars mission are coming together in Europe, engineers are struggling to confirm the readiness of the lander’s parachutes, which will slow the spacecraft before touchdown on Mars. The two most recent ExoMars parachute tests — in May and earlier this month — resulted in tears to the chutes.
On the most recent test, conducted over Sweden on Aug. 5, the largest of the four parachutes needed to deliver the ExoMars lander to the surface of Mars suffered damage to its canopy. As a result, the test vehicle used in the parachute test descended under the aerodynamic drag of only the much smaller pilot chute, ESA said.
Read our earlier story on the ExoMars parachute testing.
Two more parachute tests are planned later this year and in early 2020. If both tests produce satisfactory results, ESA officials will give the green light to ship the ExoMars spacecraft to the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan for final launch preparations.
ESA says the launch window for the ExoMars lander and rover opens July 26, 2020, and runs for less than three weeks. If the mission misses next year’s window, the next launch opportunity is in 2022.
The Russian-built landing platform for the ExoMars mission is named Kazachok, Russian for “little Cossack.” Credit: Roscosmos
The ExoMars program consists of two parts.
The ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter launched in March 2016 on a Russian Proton rocket and is now surveying the Martian atmosphere with suite of scientific instruments to search for methane, and a camera to map changes on the planet’s surface. The Trace Gas Orbiter launched aboard a Russian Proton rocket in tandem with a landing craft named Schiaparelli, which crashed on the Red Planet on final descent.
Like its orbiter precursor, the second ExoMars mission will launch on a Russian Proton booster from Kazakhstan.
After landing, the Russian descent stage will remain operational as a stationary lander platform — named Kazachok, Russian for “little Cossack” — to conduct its own scientific measurements, while the European rover will drive several kilometers and drill to a depth of 2 meters (6.6 feet) to collect core samples for analysis in the mobile robot’s on-board laboratory.
Scientists have never studied material from so deep below the Martian surface, where biomarkers and organic molecules could survive from life forms that may have inhabited the planet when it was warmer and wetter billions of years ago.
Here’s yet another reminder that alien worlds are far stranger and more diverse than our own solar system might suggest.
Astronomers just found a giant exoplanet three times more massive than Jupiter that loops around its host star on a highly elliptical path.
If this alien planet, known as HR 5183 b, were magically dropped into our solar system, its orbit would reach inside that of Jupiter but extend way out beyond the path of Neptune, discovery team members said.
“This planet is unlike the planets in our solar system, but more than that, it is unlike any other exoplanets we have discovered so far,” Sarah Blunt, a graduate student at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in Pasadena and lead author of a new study announcing the existence of HR 5183 b, said in a statement.
“Other planets detected far away from their stars tend to have very low eccentricities, meaning that their orbits are more circular,” Blunt added. “The fact that this planet has such a high eccentricity speaks to some difference in the way that it either formed or evolved relative to the other planets.”
HR 5183 b orbits a star that lies about 100 light-years from Earth. Blunt and her colleagues found the planet using the radial velocity method, which looks for the gravitational tugs a world exerts on its host star.
The research team has been watching the parent star with several different telescopes since the 1990s. That’s not long enough to capture a full orbit of the newfound world, which takes between 45 and 100 Earth years.
But the astronomers were still able to confirm HR 5183 b’s existence, showing that the radial-velocity method can identify planets even with such partial information.
“This planet spends most of its time loitering in the outer part of its star’s planetary system in this highly eccentric orbit; then, it starts to accelerate in and does a slingshot around its star,” study team member Andrew Howard, an astronomy professor at Caltech, said in the same statement.
“We detected this slingshot motion,” Howard added. “We saw the planet come in, and now it’s on its way out. That creates such a distinctive signature that we can be sure that this is a real planet, even though we haven’t seen a complete orbit.”
The magnitude of HR 5183 b’s gravitational tug allowed the team to calculate the planet’s mass: about three times that of Jupiter.
The exoplanet almost certainly started life on a circular path but then had its orbit reshaped by a gravitational encounter, probably with a similarly sized neighbor world, study team members said.
HR 5183 b reinforces a cosmic truth: Our Milky Way galaxy is studded with a staggering array of planets. There are worlds with three parent stars and "rogues" that zoom through space alone, forever in the dark. There are huge "hot Jupiters” that circle their parents in just a few Earth days, and there are big worlds like HR 5183 b that take decades to complete a lap.
“Copernicus taught us that Earth is not the center of the solar system, and as we expanded into discovering other solar systems of exoplanets, we expected them to be carbon copies of our own solar system,” Howard said.
“But it’s just been one surprise after another in this field,” he added. “This newfound planet is another example of a system that is not the image of our solar system but has remarkable features that make our universe incredibly rich in its diversity.”
The new study will appear in The Astronomical Journal.
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A mysterious spacecraft has been orbiting the Earth for the past 720 days, and only the US Air Force knows why.
This is the fifth mission of the X-37B space plane, an uncrewed and solar-powered military drone. The Orbital Test Vehicle 5 (OTV-5) mission launched way back on September 7, 2017, with the help of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.
On the fourth mission – Orbital Test Vehicle 4 (OTV-4) – it remained in orbit for 717 days, 20 hours, and 42 minutes, which it has now surpassed, with no details yet on when the mission may end.
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The fourth flight of the vehicle, landing smoothly.
The mission objectives of the space plane – similar in design to NASA's space shuttles – have remained a closely guarded secret. The Air Force is tight-lipped about the plane, leaving people to speculate it's doing anything from putting spy satellites into orbit to testing out an EmDrive in space.
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Don't get your hopes up too much on that EmDrive by the way.
When the craft launched, conspiracy theorists suggested it could be a "space bomber", a full seven years before Trump even created Space Force. The theory was quickly quashed by experts, who pointed out how changing a spacecraft's orbital plane requires a lot of thrust that would eat up its limited fuel supply extremely quickly. Essentially it would be useless at hitting any targets that didn't happen to already be on its flight path.
Another theory from Spaceflight magazine is that it's a spy plane.
"Space-to-space surveillance is a whole new ball game made possible by a finessed group of sensors and sensor suites, which we think the X-37B may be using to maintain a close watch on China's nascent space station," Spaceflight Editor Dr David Baker told BBC News back in 2012, though this too was deemed unlikely based on the ship's orbital path.
As fun as those explanations are, they are unlikely. The Air Force's official explanation doesn't give away too much, either.
"The X-37B Orbital Test Vehicle, or OTV, is an experimental test program to demonstrate technologies for a reliable, reusable, unmanned space test platform for the US Air Force," the Air Force said in a statement.
"The primary objectives of the X-37B are twofold; reusable spacecraft technologies for America’s future in space and operating experiments which can be returned to, and examined, on Earth.
"Technologies being tested in the program include advanced guidance, navigation and control, thermal protection systems, avionics, high-temperature structures and seals, conformal reusable insulation, lightweight electromechanical flight systems, advanced propulsion systems, advanced materials and autonomous orbital flight, reentry and landing."
For now, you'll either have to accept the official explanation, or just get comfortable with the knowledge that there's a mysterious space drone flying high above our heads, and only the US military knows why.
The eccentric orbit of the massive super-Jupiter, HR 5183 b, overlaid on our solar system.
W.M. Keck Observatory/Adam Makarenko
Watching stars "wobble" is a tried-and-true method astronomers use to find huge planets lurking in the outer reaches of the cosmos. If a planet is big enough, its gravity tugs on its parent star just enough that we can see the faint changes in starlight. Using this method, a team of astronomers watched the star HR 5183 with three telescopes for 20 years and found a massive planet, around three times the mass of Jupiter, spinning around it on a highly unusual, egg-shaped orbit.
The new find, dubbed HR 5183 b, travels on an orbit that takes anywhere between 45 and 100 years. And its orbit is what astronomers dub "eccentric," meaning it's nothing like the circular orbits we see in our solar system. In fact, if you placed HR 5183 b in the solar system, the super-Jupiter would swing in near the sun closer than our own Jupiter and take it out beyond Neptune. Scientists have spotted comets and even other planets with elliptical orbits like this before -- but generally they're much closer to their home star.
"This planet is unlike the planets in our solar system, but more than that, it is unlike any other exoplanets we have discovered so far," said Sarah Blunt, first author on the new study. The research is set to be published in The Astronomical Journal.
When the orbit is overlaid in our own solar system, it becomes impressively obvious just how unusual it really is:
HR 5183 b travels vast distances away from its star, so even if we keep our eyes peeled in the general vicinity it'd be almost impossible for us to see the planet directly. Instead, the astronomers looked at radial velocity measurements of HR 5183 collected over two decades from Hawaii's W. M. Keck Observatory, the Lick Observatory in Northern California and the McDonald Observatory in Texas.
Radial velocity measurements allow astronomers to carefully examine the movement of a star in space. Due to a phenomenon known as the Doppler effect, when the star is moving farther away the wavelengths it emits decrease, and when it's moving closer they increase. Astronomers can detect these fine changes in wavelength to determine how the star is moving.
Halfway through the period of observation, the team noticed that the measurements rapidly accelerated and then in 2018 flattened out again. That led the researchers to believe a new huge super-Jupiter was tugging on the star as it swung around it in a slingshot motion.
"We detected this slingshot motion. We saw the planet come in and now it's on its way out," said Andrew Howard, a professor of astronomy at Caltech. "That creates such a distinctive signature that we can be sure that this is a real planet, even though we haven't seen a complete orbit."
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NASA's hunting for exoplanets, and it's got its eye on...
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It may be unlike any other exoplanet we've seen, but that doesn't mean these anomalous, eccentric orbits are uncommon across the universe. For instance, ex-planet Pluto has a rather strange orbit, as does Eris, another massive dwarf planet in our solar system. But HR 5183 b is weird -- one of the weirdest exoplanet orbits we've seen -- and it highlights how different planetary systems might be from our own.
It's not the end of the line for HR 5183 b, either. The European Space Agency's Gaia spacecraft has been surveying the sky since 2013, designed to measure stars in the cosmos with incredible precision. The research team indicates that this new planet will be detectable in Gaia data.
"This newfound planet is another example of a system that is not the image of our solar system but has remarkable features that make our universe incredibly rich in its diversity," said Howard.
4:20pm ET Monday Update: Per SpaceX founder Elon Musk, the company is working toward a "hop" test at 6pm ET (22:00 UTC) Monday.
Original post: As soon as Monday afternoon, SpaceX may attempt a second flight for its Starship prototype named "Starhopper." The stubby vehicle, which resembles a water tower, will seek to make a controlled flight to 150 meters above the ground before returning to land safely at SpaceX's test site in South Texas.
One month ago, Starhopper made its first untethered flight, rising about 20 meters. Although smoke from the vehicle's single Raptor engine shrouded most of that test flight from view, it came off successfully and validated the company's ability to control the Raptor engine in flight.
This weekend, Cameron County officials notified residents in Boca Chica Village, near the test site, that the company plans to conduct a flight test from 4pm to 4:15pm CT Monday, and "there is a risk that a malfunction of the SpaceX vehicle during flight will create an overpressure event that can break windows." The Brownsville Herald reported that residents were advised to go outside during the test, which would be signaled 10 minutes in advance by a siren, for their safety. In its latest approval, the Federal Aviation Administration mandated that SpaceX purchase $100 million in liability insurance.
Although SpaceX does not anticipate losing the Starhopper vehicle, which measures 20 meters tall, this will be the vehicle's last flight. This fall, the company hopes to begin flying suborbital tests of larger Starship prototypes that have similar dimensions to the actual vehicle that will launch into space.
After the 150-meter Starhopper test, SpaceX founder Elon Musk has said he will provide an update on the development of Starship during a presentation in Boca Chica. He has not set a firm date for the presentation but has said it probably will occur in mid-September.
In recent months, separate teams of SpaceX engineers in Boca Chica, as well as Cocoa, Florida, have been working on their full-sized prototypes—Starship Mk 1 and Mk 2 respectively. These vehicles will fly, initially at least, with a complement of three Raptor engines. The full-scale Starship, which will launch into space on a rocket called "Super Heavy," is planned to have six engines; it will be capable of landing on and taking off of distant worlds, including the Moon and Mars.
By using two different teams of engineers, SpaceX is following a rapid, iterative process of technology development for the unprecedented spacecraft. it is unclear how long it will take to get everything right, including the difficult process of re-entering Earth's atmosphere without burning up the vehicle, but orbital flights of Starship could occur as early as next year.
The next step, however, is a much more modest hop a few hundred meters above a Texas beach. A list of livestreams for Monday's potential test has been curated by the SpaceX subreddit. Hopefully, the company won't break any windows.
Commandos from Cannon Air Force Base, N.M., clear tumbleweeds from a residential area in Clovis, N.M., 2014. Credit: U.S. Air Force/Senior Airman Ericka Engblom
A new species of gigantic tumbleweed once predicted to go extinct is not only here to stay—it's likely to expand its territory.
The species, Salsola ryanii, is significantly larger than either of its parent plants, which can grow up to 6 feet tall. A new study from UC Riverside supports the theory that the new tumbleweed grows more vigorously because it is a hybrid with doubled pairs of its parents' chromosomes.
Findings from the study are detailed in a new paper published in the Oxford University-produced journal AoB Plants.
"Salsola ryanii is a nasty species replacing other nasty species of tumbleweed in the U.S.," said study co-author Norman Ellstrand, UCR Distinguished Professor of Genetics. "It's healthier than earlier versions, and now we know why."
Humans are diploid organisms, with one set of chromosomes donated by the mother and one set from the father. Sometimes a mother's egg contains two sets of chromosomes rather than just the one she is meant to pass on. If this egg is fertilized, the offspring would be triploid, with three sets of chromosomes. Most humans do not survive this.
Plants with parents closely related enough to mate can produce triploid offspring that survive but are unable to reproduce themselves. However, a hybrid plant that manages to get two copies from the mother and two from the father will be fertile. Some species can have more than four sets of chromosomes. They can even have "hexaploidy," with six sets of chromosomes.
Scientists have long assumed there must be some kind of evolutionary advantage to polyploidy, the term for hybrids that have multiple sets of chromosomes, since it poses some immediate difficulties for the new hybrids.
"Typically, when something is new, and it's the only one of its kind, that's a disadvantage. There's nobody exactly like you to mate with," said study co-author Shana Welles, the graduate student in Ellstrand's laboratory that conducted the study as part of her Ph.D. research. She is now a postdoctoral fellow at Chapman University.
Study co-author Shana Welles found this tumbleweed species in Riverside, California, and put it in the bed of her pickup truck. Credit: UC Riverside
The advantage to having multiple sets of chromosomes, according to the study, is that the hybrid plant grows more vigorously than either of its parents. This has been suggested as the reason polyploidy is so common in plants. However, it has not, until now, been demonstrated experimentally.
Polyploidy is associated with our favorite crops; domesticated peanuts have four sets of chromosomes, and the wheat we eat has six.
Though tumbleweeds are often seen as symbols of America's old West, they are also invasive plants that cause traffic accidents, damage agricultural operations, and cause millions in property damage every year. Last year, the desert town of Victorville, California, was buried in them, piling up to the second story of some homes.
Currently, Salsola ryanii has a relatively small but expanding geographic range. Since the new study determined it is even more vigorous than its progenitors, which are invasive in 48 states, Welles said it is likely to continue to expand its range. Additionally, Welles said climate change could increase its territory takeover.
Though this tumbleweed is an annual, it tends to grow on the later side of winter.
"It's one of the only things that's still green in late summer," Welles said. "They may be well positioned to take advantage of summer rains if climate changes make those more prevalent."
Given its potential for damage, the knowledge now available about Salsola ryanii could be important for helping to suppress it, and Ellstrand believes that is what should happen before it takes over.
"An ounce of prevention is a pound of cure," he said.
More information:
Shana Welles et al, Evolution of increased vigor associated with allopolyploidization in the newly formed invasive species Salsolaryanii, AoB PLANTS (2019). DOI: 10.1093/aobpla/plz039
Citation:
Monster tumbleweed: Invasive new species is here to stay (2019, August 26)
retrieved 26 August 2019
from https://phys.org/news/2019-08-monster-tumbleweed-invasive-species.html
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A massive "raft" of volcanic rock the size of 20,000 football fields has been floating across the Pacific Ocean toward Australia -- and may bring a vast array of marine life to the Great Barrier Reef.
The reef saw an 89 percent decrease in new corals following mass bleaching -- when unusually hot water destroyed much of its colorful algae, a source of food -- in 2016 and 2017.
Sailors had first discovered the giant sheet of volcanic rock produced by an underwater volcano near the Pacific Island of Tonga on August 9, according to the NASA Earth Observatory.
A massive pumice "raft" the size of Manhattan has been floating across the Pacific Ocean toward Australia.
(NASA)
It measured nearly 58 square miles.
One week later, Australian couple Michael Hoult and Larissa Brill said they came across the pumice first-hand while sailing to Fiji, when volcanic rocks between the rudder and hull jammed the boat's steering.
“We entered a total rock rubble slick made up of pumice stones from marble to basketball size,” the couple said. "It was a bit of a mystery, we didn't know how deep it was [or] if we were sailing over a volcano that was active at that moment. It looked almost like there was more coming up, bubbling up from underneath," the couple wrote on Facebook.
Since the encounter, the couple has been working with Queensland University of Technology (QUT) geology professor Scott Bryan by taking samples and pictures of the unique volcanic rock formation.
Bryan said marine creatures such as corals, crabs, snails, worms and barnacles could hitch a ride on the "raft" as it makes its way towards Australia, calling it a "potential mechanism for restocking the Great Barrier Reef."
He added, "Based on past pumice raft events we have studied over the last 20 years, it’s going to bring new healthy corals and other reef dwellers to the Great Barrier Reef."
He also said its one-way nature could help to promote regeneration.
A closer look at the sheet of volcanic rock making its way toward the Great Barrier Reef.
(NASA)
Scientists have said the "raft," which was about 90 percent underwater, was expected to make its way toward Australia within the next seven to twelve months.
“It’s the right timing. So it will be able to pick up corals and other reef-building organisms, and then bring them into the Great Barrier Reef,” Bryan told the Guardian. “Each piece of pumice is a rafting vehicle. It’s a home and a vehicle for marine organisms to attach and hitch a ride across the deep ocean to get to Australia.”
Astronaut Anne McClain has been accused of committing a crime in space, it has been reported (Picture: Reuters)
Nasa is investigating claims one of its astronauts accessed their estranged partner’s bank account while on board the International Space Station, it has been reported.
The New York Times reported that Nasa is examining what could be the first allegation of a crime committed in space.
Astronaut Anne McClain has acknowledged accessing the bank account of her ex-partner Summer Worden while on the space station.
However, she denies any wrongdoing and insists she was checking her former spouse had enough money to pay for the care of Ms Worden’s son, who the pair had been raising together before their break-up.
Anne McClain spent six months on board the International Space Station earlier this year (Picture: Reuters)
Ms Worden has reportedly filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission. Ms McClain has since returned to Earth.
The astronaut’s lawyer, Rusty Hardin, told the New York Times: “She strenuously denies that she did anything improper.”
Ms Worden, an Air Force intelligence officer, married Ms McClain in 2014 but then filed for divorce in 2018.
She has been contacted about her allegation by Nasa’s Office of Inspector General, it was reported.
Nasa astronaut Anne McClain returned to Earth in June (Picture: Reuters)
Nasa astronauts Anne McClain, right, during a spacewalk in March (Picture: Reuters)
Ms McClain started flying for Nasa in 2013 following more than 800 combat hours over Iraq as an army pilot.
She spent six months on the International Space Station and was scheduled to take part in the first all-female spacewalk with Christina Koch earlier this year, but it was cancelled because there was only one medium-size spacesuit available.
The International Space Station is owned by the US, Russia, Europe, Japan and Canada, and the laws of each apply to those on board depending on their nationality.
How do cells generate and use energy? This question might seem simple, but the answer is far from simple. Furthermore, knowing how microbial cell factories consume energy and how proteins are allocated to do so is crucial when working with industrial fermentations.
Now, researchers have shown that it is possible to evoke a shift in the metabolism from fermentation to respiration of E. coli and baker's yeast by optimizing fermentation conditions. This shift means that the cells can be pushed into producing more internal energy (ATP).
"This information can be used to design new, improved cell factories," corresponding author Professor at Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden, and Scientific Director at The Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Biosustainability at DTU in Denmark Jens Nielsen says.
Together with first-author Postdoc Yu Chen from Department of Biology and Biological Engineering at Chalmers, Jens Nielsen has studied the metabolism of E. coli and baker's yeast through the use of mathematical models and biological experiments. The research has now been published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
Cells constantly generate high-energy molecules called ATP from the sugar glucose. ATP is the cellular "food" consumed by the workers—enzymes—within cells. The enzymes use this energy to build biomass or do other cellular work. The more ATP available, the better the microbial workhorses perform in fermentations; at least in principle—many other aspects play a part as well.
Using a computational approach, the researchers found out that ATP can be generated by either of two pathways: a high-yielding respiratory pathway resulting in 23.5 ATP's per glucose molecule or a low-yielding fermentative pathway, which only generates 11 ATP's per glucose molecule.
The two pathways supplement each other, but the researchers were able to shift the natural balance between the two by changing the conditions of the fermentation and the amount of sugar and protein available. Furthermore, they showed that the high-yielding pathway needs more protein mass than the low-yielding pathway for consuming glucose at the same rate.
They also showed that making some key enzymes perform better meant that the cells changed from doing low yielding fermentative metabolism to breathing through the high yielding respiratory metabolism.
This shift both results in more intracellular ATP, but also avoids the build-up of fermentative byproducts; acetate in E. coli and ethanol in baker's yeast.
"These byproducts are unwanted and decrease the yield of the sought-for molecules you want to produce in your cell factory," says Jens Nielsen.
Furthermore, the investigators showed that cells performing their best actually used both pathways, not only the high yielding one, and that more proteins available meant more efficiency in a given pathway.
So, the solution to better performing cells in fermentations is not to switch off the fermentative pathway, but rather to allocate more protein to the high-yielding pathway.
The researchers solely exposed the microbes to different fermentation conditions and didn't do genome engineering to evoke these changes. But at the same time, their studies gave an indication of how one can change the cells' metabolism by genome engineering to become more effective in future experiments.
More information:
Yu Chen et al, Energy metabolism controls phenotypes by protein efficiency and allocation, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2019). DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1906569116
Citation:
Breath! Respiring microbes generate more energy (2019, August 23)
retrieved 23 August 2019
from https://phys.org/news/2019-08-respiring-microbes-energy.html
This document is subject to copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study or research, no
part may be reproduced without the written permission. The content is provided for information purposes only.
The launch was initially planned for 2007.Getty
NASA engineers are still working on putting in a five-layer sun shield to protect the telescope from the infrared light coming from the Sun.Getty
