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Tag: Space and Astronomy

  • Observatorio Nacional Kitt Peak reinicia visitas del público

    Observatorio Nacional Kitt Peak reinicia visitas del público

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    Newswise — A partir del 22 de septiembre, el Observatorio Nacional de Kitt Peak (KPNO), un Programa de NOIRLab de NSF, reiniciará las visitas guiadas diurnas para el público los días viernes, sábados y domingos a través del centro de visitas de Kitt Peak [1]. Las disposiciones de seguridad posteriores al Incendio Contreras y la limitada disponibilidad de estacionamiento implican que el acceso sólo sea posible a través de reservas anticipadas. Se invita a los visitantes a reservar con bastante antelación, ya que sólo hay 60 cupos disponibles por día. Cualquier persona que desee recorrer el campus de Kitt Peak va a requerir una reserva.

    Durante los recorridos, los visitantes podrán explorar la rica variedad de telescopios de KPNO —la colección más grande y diversa del mundo—, así como su historia y sus descubrimientos. Entre los aspectos más destacados del recorrido se encuentra una visita al Telescopio Nicholas U. Mayall de 4 metros, hogar del estudio DESI (Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument). Este proyecto, que gestiona el Departamento de Energía de los Estados Unidos, tiene como objetivo estudiar la misteriosa energía oscura mediante la creación de un mapa en 3D de más de 40 millones de galaxias. Un segundo recorrido lleva a las instalaciones del Telescopio KPNO de 2,1 metros, uno de los primeros telescopios instalados en Kitt Peak y que se utiliza tanto para imágenes como para espectroscopía.

    Además de reanudar los recorridos nocturnos, KPNO reanudó su Programa de Observación Nocturna con  Telescopios.  A través de este programa personalizado, cualquier persona puede vivir la experiencia de ser un astrónomo durante una noche completa. En él, las visitas tienen acceso toda la noche a un telescopio que pueden utilizar para realizar observaciones visuales (mirando un objeto directamente a través de un ocular) o capturar imágenes de objetos en el espacio profundo. Los boletos para esta experiencia única están disponibles en Eventbrite. Se espera que los programas nocturnos, como el Programa de Observación Nocturna y el Programa de Descubrimiento del Cielo Nocturno, regresen en octubre. Suscríbete a nuestra lista de Eventbrite para recibir notificaciones sobre nuevos eventos.

    Kitt Peak estará cerrado a las visitas de lunes a jueves, hasta finales de septiembre. Los visitantes pueden esperar más días de puertas abiertas en octubre próximo.

    Si bien las visitas autoguiadas a los sitios de los observatorios no son posibles por ahora, la ruta SR386 es una vía pública, por lo que los ciclistas y automovilistas que deseen disfrutar de la desafiante y hermosa ruta hacia la montaña son bienvenidos sin reservas. Algunas partes de la montaña, como la zona de picnic, aún están  inaccesibles debido a los daños causados por el incendio. Si bien el Centro de Visitas está abierto para comprar regalos locales hechos a mano, no se pueden comprar alimentos ni bebidas en la montaña, por lo cual debe traer sus propios refrigerios. Hay baños disponibles cerca del estacionamiento del Centro de Visitas.

    Tanto KPNO como NOIRLab están muy agradecidos por los esfuerzos del Departamento de Transportes de Arizona (ADOT) para reparar los daños causados por el incendio que afectó a la ruta 386 y a la vía de acceso al observatorio. El camino fue reparado y equipado con nuevas barandas más seguras. También se realizaron reparaciones en los bordes del terraplén de la carretera, así como también se implementaron parches en la misma, reparaciones de alcantarillas y nuevos trazados de líneas demarcatorias. 

    La Directora Asociada de KPNO, Michelle Edwards, expresó que “realmente apreciamos el arduo trabajo de ADOT para efectuar estas importantes reparaciones; el público puede volver a experimentar las maravillas del Universo en la cima de Kitt Peak”.

    Más Información

    [1] El centro de visitas de Kitt Peak abrió sus puertas en 1964 y celebrará su aniversario número 60 en 2024.

    NOIRLab de NSF (Laboratorio Nacional de Investigación en Astronomía Óptica-Infrarroja de NSF), el centro de EE. UU. para la astronomía óptica-infrarroja en tierra, opera el Observatorio internacional Gemini (una instalación de NSF, NRC–Canada, ANID–Chile, MCTIC–Brasil, MINCyT–Argentina y KASI – República de Corea), el Observatorio Nacional de Kitt Peak (KPNO), el Observatorio Interamericano Cerro Tololo (CTIO), el Centro de Datos para la Comunidad Científica (CSDC) y el Observatorio Vera C. Rubin (operado en cooperación con el National Accelerator Laboratory (SLAC) del Departamento de Energía de Estados Unidos (DOE). Está administrado por la Asociación de Universidades para la Investigación en Astronomía (AURA) en virtud de un acuerdo de cooperación con NSF y tiene su sede en Tucson, Arizona. La comunidad astronómica tiene el honor de tener la oportunidad de realizar investigaciones astronómicas en Iolkam Du’ag (Kitt Peak) en Arizona, en Maunakea, en Hawai‘i, y en Cerro Tololo y Cerro Pachón en Chile. Reconocemos y apreciamos el importante rol cultural y la veneración que estos sitios tienen para la Nación Tohono O’odham, para la comunidad nativa de Hawai‘i y para las comunidades locales en Chile, respectivamente.

    Enlaces

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    NSF’s NOIRLab

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  • The truth is out there. This astrophysicist is helping to find it using science

    The truth is out there. This astrophysicist is helping to find it using science

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    Newswise — Capture good, useful data and University of Delaware astrophysicist Federica Bianco will dig deep to help analyze it. It’s what she does with great expertise as a scientist and associate professor of physics and astronomy and it’s a big reason why she was among the 16 people selected to serve on a NASA-appointed panel studying Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP).

    UAP is the official term now applied to what many used to call Unidentified Flying Objects (UFOs), things spotted in the sky that could not be correlated with an airplane, satellite or some other known aerial phenomenon. The new term includes all manner of anomalous phenomena — whether detected in the air, in space, even under the ocean.

    NASA says UAP are of interest for reasons including national security and air safety. Access to extensive data sets are required to verify or explain observations and the panel has focused on what data could be collected to scientifically discern the nature of UAP.  

    But there has been precious little useful data to go on, as the panel reported in its four-hour publicly accessible meeting on May 31. Now the panel has released its final report.

    During a media briefing on Thursday, Sept. 14, astrophysicist David Spergel, who chaired the independent study panel, was clear.

    “It is essential to clarify that we find no evidence that UAP are extraterrestrial in origin,” he said. “Most events are explainable as planes, balloons, drones or weather phenomena.”

    A small fraction of reports are anomalous, however. So far, for lack of adequate data, scientists cannot explain them.

    “If you see something, collect high-quality data on it,” Spergel said. “Then we can learn.”

    Theories and conspiracy theories often swirl after reported sightings of such anomalies. Images captured on smart phones or other video devices can be impressive and even seem persuasive at a glance.

    Scientists, though, rely on data and bring careful, rigorous processes to the questions they consider.

    “There’s a lot of folklore out there,” said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson. “We want to shift from sensationalism to science.”

    To that end, NASA now has appointed a director of UAP Research, said Nicola Fox, the head of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate.

    Bianco brought high-level data analysis skills and expertise in astrophysics to the interdisciplinary panel, which also included other experts in the scientific, aeronautics and data analytics communities.

    “The reports we have cannot be studied scientifically,” Bianco said. “That’s not a dismissal of people’s experiences. It just doesn’t rise to the level of evidence of extraordinary phenomena. If people see things in the sky that they can’t explain, that doesn’t mean there was a phenomenon in the sky. But with the capabilities they have for observation, it is not explainable by anything they know.”

    This is exactly what astrophysicists investigate, she said. If someone says they saw something in the sky that was brightening up and then dimming and they think it must be a new kind of star, she will have a lot of questions.

    “If they come to me and tell me what they saw, first I want to go and measure it quantitatively,” Bianco said. “Where is it? How much does it brighten? What is the color that tells me about the physics? Are these characteristics something I’ve never seen? Is it something the person has perceived correctly?”

    The questions examined by the panel certainly fall within NASA’s wheelhouse. Exploring space and the atmosphere is central to all NASA does. And while NASA is always looking for signs of life elsewhere in the universe, it does not actively search for UAPs. NASA has said it has found no credible evidence of extraterrestrial life and there is no evidence that UAPs are extraterrestrial.

    The UAP study panel was led by Spergel, president of the Simons Foundation in New York City and previously the chair of the astrophysics department at Princeton University in Princeton, New Jersey. Daniel Evans, assistant deputy associate administrator for research at NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, served as the NASA official responsible for orchestrating the study.

    Bianco has known Spergel for several years and was glad to join the study.

    “I like interdisciplinary groups and the composition of the panel was so intriguing,” she said. “And aliens, right? That’s an interesting thing to think about and to work on. So yeah, I didn’t hesitate much before agreeing to that.”

    Public interest has been high, too. And recent Congressional hearings have drawn more attention to the issue of UAPs. Some interest has carried sharp political barbs, with accusations that NASA and several U.S. government agencies are hiding important evidence of extraterrestrial life, including recovered parts of alien spacecraft and even live aliens themselves.

    “Really, none of the eyewitness testimony — even those by the military that we have seen — has associated data that is of good enough quality,” Bianco said. “If the videos were shot by people’s phones, what were the lighting conditions? How sensitive is the instrument? If you cannot say these things, you cannot know quantitatively. When we were able to do that — in a couple of observations with multiple sensors — in fact, the characteristics were not unique.”

    The data available now are mostly of limited value.

    “The current status of data is inconsistent, largely incomplete and not systematically retrievable,” she said during the panel broadcast on May 31. “That causes problems in the automation of analysis. Machine learning and artificial intelligence cannot be applied until the data meets that standard. Organized repositories are needed.”

    In addition, the data must be collected by calibrated sensors, with information about the brands, characteristics, instrument sensitivity, circumstances, locations and the condition of the sensors. At the time of data collection, she said.

    Bianco finds the quest for useful data essential, but recognizes that not everyone agrees with the need for facts. Some will never accept that their beliefs, based on something other than sound data, may be incorrect.

    “I could spend my life trying to convince some people — and they are clearly not my target audience,” she said.

    Those who think the scientists on the panel are there simply to give plausibility to a greater government cover-up may not really understand the scientist’s quest for knowledge and disseminating that knowledge.

    “As a scientist, if I find evidence of extraterrestrial life, I have not only an obligation to publish the findings but — while there is no board that requires it — spiritually, I have taken an oath to adhere to the truth and propagate the truth that I find. That’s my job,” she said.

    “I don’t work for the government. I understand the government may have security issues that I don’t understand. But I’m a scientist. If this panel showed me evidence of extraterrestrial life, I’d be writing about it.”

    Among Bianco’s suggestions is a crowd-sourcing application that allows people to submit data about things they have seen and allows others to examine and assess that data. It could include camera information, audio, pixels, resolutions, sensitivity of the instrument and the wavelengths it captures.

    “Part of the problem is that if you really want to look at this data in context, you need all of this information,” she said. “One gets a blurry picture, another gets a sound recording and another gets a photo but doesn’t know why the colors look the way they look.”

    Crowd-sourcing projects have their own set of challenges, but she sees potential value for those who want to understand and participate in the quest in some way.

    “You have three types of audiences — people who care, people who don’t care enough to do the work or be active, but can listen to you, and people who are adversarial,” she said. “It might be more satisfying to fight a battle with the adversarial, but it’s not most productive. There are people who have completely bought into the idea that NASA is hiding aliens and is part of some dark forces that sell a lie for reasons I don’t know. That’s not my audience, but they are kind of dominating the discussion.”

    She likes the idea of an app that gives people information about things that exist in the sky and allows them to submit data from their own devices.

    “It could help people become part of this conversation,” she said. “It would help us communicate the understanding we have and what the process looks like.”

    Panelists talked with many agencies to explore the way they collect data, curate data and retain data.

    The Federal Aviation Administration, for example, can tell you that about 880,000 small drones are registered in the United States and thousands are operated on a daily basis. Almost 100 weather stations release balloons on a daily basis, with requirements on how they report timing and tracking data.

    While some may be convinced that what they saw must have been extraterrestrial, scientists don’t start there.

    “I can’t just take your word,” she said. “That’s not how we make decisions. We make decisions based — traditionally and aspirationally — on evidence and fact, not the hunches and feelings of individuals.

    “We have to start from the skeptical point of view. We take the scientific approach, where I first falsify the most unusual explanation and try to explain things in ways that are usual. We have hypotheses and we rule them out. What is left is what we currently believe. Our current understanding of the physical world comes from ruling things out until the things we have found no longer fit the better data that we now have.”

    Any alternate route should be considered with great skepticism.

    “If you’re trying to actively collect exceptional and specific pieces of evidence that support your ideas but don’t look at the larger context, you are trying to make a name for yourself,” she said. “That is not the correct scientific approach…. I would not have been on that panel.”

    Among Bianco’s research interests are technosignatures, which are defined as any detectable sign of extant or extinct life. They are part of UAP studies because they are a sign of technology that can be used to infer the existence of civilizations elsewhere in the universe —including large orbiting structures, atmospheric pollution, narrow-band radio signals or pulsed lasers.

    The panelists started their work on Oct. 24, 2022. All panelists had to submit financial disclosures and have a comprehensive government ethics briefing. Each was appointed in accordance with the Federal Advisory Committee Act, ensuring independent and objective advice.

    With its final report, the panel now has mapped out how data gathered by civilian government entities, commercial data and data from other sources can potentially be analyzed to shed light on UAPs. The study focused solely on unclassified data. 

    About the researcher

    Federica Bianco is an associate professor of physics and astronomy at the University of Delaware, with a joint appointment in the Biden School of Public Policy and Administration. She is also a senior scientist at the Multi-city Urban Observatory and deputy project scientist for the Vera C. Rubin Observatory, which this year will start the Legacy Survey of Space and Time to study the night sky in the southern hemisphere and discover new galaxies and stars.

    Her research uses data science to study the universe and find solutions to urban-based problems on Earth.

    She has been published in more than 100 peer-reviewed papers and received the Department of Energy’s “Innovative Development in Energy-Related Applied Science” grant. Bianco also is a professional bantamweight boxer and a TED Fellow.

    Born in Italy, Bianco earned her bachelor’s degree in astronomy at the University of Bologna and her doctorate in physics at the University of Pennsylvania. Before joining the UD faculty in 2019 she did postdoctoral research at the Las Cumbres Observatory and at the Center for Urban Science and Progress at New York University.

    The full list of panelists is available on NASA’s website.

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    University of Delaware

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  • Expert available: NASA report into UFOs

    Expert available: NASA report into UFOs

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    NASA is releasing a report today on Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena – commonly known as UFOs. A live streamed media briefing, headed by Nasa boss Bill Nelson and other leaders, will begin at 3pm BST from the Washington headquarters.

    Dr Chris Pattison, from the Institute of Cosmology and Gravitation at the University of Portsmouth, is available for comment and media interviews. He can discuss: 

    What is the NASA report likely to reveal?

    What are UAPs?

    What are the challenges with identifying them?

    Why is NASA taking potential UAP sightings more seriously?

    Comment on the hearing this week in Mexico where someone claimed to show actual aliens to congress.  More info here  

    Chris has recently written this article on the subject: https://theconversation.com/ufos-what-well-learn-from-the-nasa-panel-investigating-sightings-207328
    He also has a YouTube channel 

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    University of Portsmouth

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  • Korean Scientific payload for observing the lunar space environment begins its transfer to the US for the scheduled 2024 launch

    Korean Scientific payload for observing the lunar space environment begins its transfer to the US for the scheduled 2024 launch

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    Newswise — The Ministry of Science and ICT (Minister Jong-Ho Lee, hereinafter referred to as ‘MSIT’) and the Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute (Director Young-Deuk Park, hereinafter referred to as ‘KASI’) announced the beginning of the transfer of the lunar space environment monitor, ‘LUSEM'(Lunar Space Environment Monitor) that will be aboard United States’ unmanned lunar lander in 2024, has began on September 4th.

    LUSEM is a payload developed by the Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute (KASI) in participation with the U.S. NASA’s CLPS(Commercial Lunar Payload Services) initiative as an international lunar exploration and research collaboration. The CLPS initiative is a subset of the U.S. Artemis program, led by NASA, which aims to launch unmanned lunar landers every year to carry payloads related to scientific exploration and commercial development of the Moon. NASA is responsible for project planning and management. Contractors selected through bidding are responsible for developing, launching, landing, and operating the unmanned lunar landers. KASI plans to develop four scientific payloads* to be carried on the lander, contributing to collaborative lunar scientific exploration missions.

    * ① LUnar Space Environment Monitor (LUSEM), ② Lunar Surface MAGnetometer (LSMAG), ③ Lunar Regolith-grain Camera (GrainCams), ④ Lunar Vehicle RADiation Dosimeter (LVRAD) 

    LUSEM is a scientific payload developed by KASI in collaboration with Professor Jongho Seon’s research team (Dept. of Astronomy and Space Science at Kyung Hee University). It is equipped with a sensor capable of detecting high-energy particles with energies of 50 kilo-electronvolts (50 keV) and above. The development was undertaken in partnership with the domestic company Satrec Initiative, which was responsible for manufacturing.

    Unlike the Earth’s surface, the lunar surface lacks protection from an atmosphere or magnetic field making high-energy particles from deep space to be directly detected. These high-energy particles can have implications for the health of astronauts, the functionality of spacecraft electronics, and the structural integrity of space vehicles. Moreover, they are essential for scientific research into phenomena like space weathering on celestial bodies devoid of atmosphere. Due to these reasons, the importance of studying high-energy particles has consistently been highlighted, as they play a crucial role in future manned deep-space exploration and space science research. 

    Based on this necessity, NASA announced in November 2021 that LUSEM of Korea will be aboard the Intuitive Machines’ unmanned lunar lander, Nova-C, scheduled for launch in 2024. The Nova-C lander will land on the low-latitude “Reiner Gamma” region on the lunar near side. Its mission will encompass a range of tasks, including space environment observation through LUSEM, surface terrain observation, local magnetic field measurements, deployment of small cooperative autonomous rovers for exploration, and deployment of laser retroreflectors. 

    LUSEM consists of a sensor unit, an electronic box, and connecting harnesses. Among them, the sensor unit is the main equipment for observing high-energy particles, composed of two solid-state telescopes (SST) that enable bidirectional observations – one pointing upwards and the other downwards. Each pair of SST detects either electrons or ions. The sensors facing upward detect particles coming from space, while the ones facing downward detect particles reflected from the lunar surface. By analyzing the differences between these two measurements, valuable insights are gained. The electronic box controls the sensor unit, processes signals, supplies power, and so on.

    On September 4th, after packaging for air transportation, LUSEM embarks on its journey to the United States. It will onboard a vibration-free vehicle to be transferred from Daejeon to Incheon International Airport, then transferred to Intuitive Machines of Housten, Texas by air. Subsequently, KASI will integrate LUSEM into Nova-C by early 2024 under the oversight of NASA and will conduct launch preparation Activities including the interface and functionality tests with the lander with the goal of launching in late 2024 using Falcon-9 of Space X. 

    Cho Sun-hak, Director General of the Space, Nuclear and Big Science Policy Bureau at the Ministry of Science and ICT, commented, “As the first collaborative project launched after signing the Artemis Agreement, its successful progression is of immense significance.” He further added, “Following the achievements of Danauri, this continuous collaboration between South Korea and the United States in the field of space exploration is truly heartening. We will strive to expand our nation’s participation scope within the Artemis program and further extend the horizon of international space collaborative research.” 

    Park Young-Deuk, the Director of the KASI, remarked, “LUSEM stands as a source of pride among our nation’s remarkable scientific payloads.” He expressed optimism, saying, “We anticipate that LUSEM will provide a wealth of information about the space environment crucial for the era of space exploration.”

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    National Research Council of Science and Technology

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  • Seeking Supermassive Black Holes Early On

    Seeking Supermassive Black Holes Early On

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    Newswise — Supermassive black holes (SMBHs) – black holes with masses exceeding a million times that of the Sun – are known to prevail in the universe today. However, it is not clear yet when, where, and how they formed during the 13.8 billion years of cosmic history. Observations in the past few decades have revealed that every galaxy harbors a SMBH in the center, and that the black hole mass is almost always one-thousandth of the host galaxy mass. This close relationship implies that galaxies and SMBHs have co-evolved together. Revealing the origin of SMBHs is thus crucial not only to understand SMBHs themselves, but also to elucidate the formation processes of galaxies, the major constituents of the visible universe.
    A key to addressing this issue lies in the early universe, where the time elapse since the Big Bang (i.e., the beginning of the universe) was less than a billion years. Thanks to the finite speed of light, we can look back at the past by observing the distant universe. Did SMBHs already exist when the universe was only a billion years old or less? Is it possible for a black hole to acquire such a large mass (exceeding a million solar masses and sometimes reaching billions of solar masses) in such a short time? If so, what are the underlying physical mechanisms and conditions? In order to close in on the origin of SMBHs, we need to observe them and compare their properties with predictions from theoretical models. And in order to do so, we first need to find where they are in the sky.
    We used the Subaru Telescope at the top of Maunakea, Hawaii, for the present study. One of the biggest advantages of Subaru is its widefield observing capability, which is particularly suited for our purpose. Since SMBHs do not emit light, we looked for a special class called “quasars” – SMBHs with shining outskirts where the infalling material releases gravitational energy. We observed a wide sky area equivalent to 5000 times the full moon, and successfully discovered 162 quasars residing in the early universe. In particular, 22 of them lived in the era when the universe was less than 800 million years old – the most ancient period in which quasars have been recognized to date. The large number of quasars we discovered has allowed us to determine the most fundamental measure called the “luminosity function”, which describes the space density of quasars as a function of radiation energy. We found that quasars were forming very rapidly in the early universe, while the overall shape of the luminosity function (except for the amplitude) remained unchanged over time. This characteristic behavior of the luminosity function provides strong constraints on theoretical models, which could ultimately reproduce all the observables and describe the origin of SMBHs.
    On the other hand, the universe was known to have experienced a major phase transition called “cosmic reionization” in its early stage. Past observations suggest that the whole intergalactic space was ionized in this event. The source of the ionization energy is still under debate, with radiation from quasars being considered as a promising candidate. By integrating the above luminosity function, we found that quasars emit 1028 photons per second in a unit volume of 1 light-year on a side in the early universe. This is less than 1% of the photons needed to maintain the ionized state of the intergalactic space at that time, and thus indicates that quasars made only a minor contribution to cosmic reionization. Other energy sources are critically needed, which, according to other recent observations, may be the integrated radiation from massive hot stars in forming galaxies.

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    Ehime University

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  • Examination of Trajectory Design and Optimization for Exploration of the Jovian System by Scientists

    Examination of Trajectory Design and Optimization for Exploration of the Jovian System by Scientists

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    Newswise — The Jovian system has greatly attracted the interest of human exploration because of the important scientific value. However, Jupiter and its 4 Galilean moons form a unique and complex multi-body dynamical environment that greatly challenges trajectory design and optimization. Moreover, the extremely strong radiation environment of Jupiter and the low available fuel of spacecraft further increase the difficulty of trajectory design. In order to satisfy the requirements of diverse missions of the Jovian system exploration, develop new mission concepts, and obtain higher merit with lower cost, a variety of theories and methodologies of trajectory design and optimization were proposed or developed in the past 2 decades. Whereas, there is a lack of comprehensive review of these methodologies, which is unfavorable for further developing new design techniques and proposing new mission schemes. In a review article recently published in Space: Science & Technology, scholars from Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics and Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey provide a systematic summarization of the past and state-of-art methodologies for 4 main exploration phases, including Jupiter capture, the tour of the Galilean moons, Jupiter global mapping, and orbiting around and landing on a target moon.

    First, authors review the techniques, design, and optimization of Jupiter capture trajectories. Using the satellite-aided capture technique, the required Δv can be lowered significantly. According to the number of the Galilean moons involved, it can be classified as single-, double-, triple-, and quadruple-satellite-aided captures. In the last century, single-satellite-aided capture condition is derived by Cline in the two-body problem. As for multiple-satellite-aided capture through flybys of 2 or more Galilean moons, the techniques of a phase angle analysis based on the Laplace resonance and the near-resonance of Callisto and Ganymede are proposed to find triple- and quadruple-satellite-aided capture sequences are studied by Lynam et al. Multiple-satellite-aided capture is more complex but is able to further decrease the required Δv compared with single-satellite-aided capture. In addition, the problem of satellite-aided capture without Δv has been analyzed by Macdonald and McInnes. Other techniques have also been proposed to reduce the cost. A spacecraft with a long tether may generate larger enough Lorentz force as propulsion for capture due to the strong magnetic field of Jupiter. Solar electric propulsion (SEP) is a favorable option for Jupiter exploration missions because of its much higher specific impulse than the traditional chemical propulsion. The technique of cloudtops arrivals is another approach for efficiently achieving Jupiter orbit. Furthermore, the studies on trajectory design and optimization for capturing a spacecraft into a Jovian orbit can be categorized as 2 cases. The first case only focuses on the trajectories in the Jupiter system while the second case integrates the heliocentric interplanetary transfers with satellite-aided captures. Various methods for design and optimization are developed, taking different dynamics into consideration. An overview of the tour trajectory design and optimization methods is given in Fig. 3.

    Second, authors review the tours of Galilean moons. The patched-conics model is often used for efficiently analyzing and designing tour trajectories containing flybys of Galilean moons for its simplicity. Resonant hopping, petal rotation, crank-over-the-top (COT) sequences, switch-flip, and Cyclers are special flyby sequences in the tour of Galilean moons. The V-infinity leveraging maneuvering (VILM) technique can achieve desired changes on the excess velocity of the spacecraft to the moon, and improve the efficiency of orbit maneuver. The Tisserand graph and the (V-Infinity, Resonance) Graph are useful tools for designers to pick up viable gravity-assist sequences. Although the two-body techniques are convenient, they do not fully utilize the natural dynamics of the Jupiter-moon system and have limitations in application. Therefore, a series of techniques have been developed for three-body trajectory design. Tisserand–Poincaré graph, Flyby map, and Tisserand-leveraging transfer are developed in a gradual way, for designing low-Δv orbit transfers in CRTBP. Invariant manifolds of libration point orbits and unstable resonant orbits provide a gateway to design low-cost tour trajectory between moons. Efficiently patching invariant manifolds is an important concern in recent studies. Additionally, a key problem restricting the design efficiency is that the three-body problem cannot be analytically solved and relies on numerical integration. The popular artificial intelligence (AI) technique provides a new possible approach to address the difficulty. Furthermore, converting low-fidelity trajectories to high-fidelity trajectories is essential in engineering practice. A continuation parameter κ can be used to convert the patched-conics model to the n-body model, according to a continuation method by Bradley and Russell. As for the optimization, the deterministic optimization of a tour mission includes 2 parts: (a) the flyby sequence optimization that requires broad search and (b) impulsive and continuous trajectory optimization with a given flyby sequence. However, in an actual mission, there are many uncertainties such as model uncertainties, navigation errors, orbital maneuver errors, etc., thus robust design of trajectories before launch is necessary.

    Third, authors review Jupiter global mapping trajectories. Unlike the low-inclination tour trajectories, Jupiter’s global mapping trajectories need high inclinations. On the one hand, gravity assists of the Galilean moons can be used to increase the inclinations of the spacecraft. On the other hand, repeating ground-track orbits are designed under the non-sphere perturbation of Jupiter. In addition, adjusting the exploration orbit around Jupiter may require long-flight-time transfer trajectories, which is challenging due to the convergence problem using the initial guess from a Keplerian Lambert solution.

    Forth, authors review moon orbiter and lander trajectories. As for orbits around Galilean moons, low-altitude and near-polar orbits are suitable candidates of science orbits, but highly inclined orbits around Europa are not stable and easy to collide with Europa due to the third-body gravitational effect of Jupiter. How to design long-life orbits are investigated by different scholars considering tidal force of Jupiter and the J2, C22, J3 and J4 perturbations of Europa. In addition, high-inclination and near-circular artificial frozen orbits around Europa with low thrust are investigated. Solutions of natural frozen orbits are also found for Ganymede and Callisto based on the Milankovitch elements. Observing a moon using low-energy orbits is an alternative approach, where the heteroclinic and homoclinic connecting between unstable periodic orbits around L1 and L2 points of the Planet-moon three-body system are proposed as mission orbits for observations. As for orbit capture at Galilean moons, the first issue is how to approach the target moon. The final planar and spatial approach is tied to resonance orbits and resonances required were evaluated using the computation of the invariant manifolds of Lyapunov and halo orbits. Lowering the capture cost is the second important issue, where the temporary capture is a choice. As for landing on Galilean moons, only a few studies have been published on design trajectories for Galilean moon landing.

    Finally, authors draw the conclusion. A brief summary about comparing different techniques and methods is given as follows. (1) The two-body techniques are useful for designing flyby trajectories in the Jovian system and not able to utilize the multi-body dynamics possibly leading to higher fuel cost, while the three-body techniques or multi-body techniques can further utilize the natural dynamics of the Jovian system but more complex and time-consuming. (2) Low-thrust techniques can save fuel due to the much higher specific impulse or utilizing the magnetic field of Jupiter. However, the orbit correction ability of low thrust is lower than delta-V, which leads to new navigation challenges. (3) Most of the existent trajectory optimization methods are deterministic by which the designed trajectories are not robust to the uncertainties and future navigation analysis is required. In contrast, robust trajectory optimization takes the uncertainties into account and the obtained optimal control is robust. However, robust trajectory optimization is challenging due to propagation of the orbit uncertainties in multi-body dynamics and the large solution space. According to the current research progress, development in the following aspects is expected in the future: (1) multi-body techniques in engineering mission design, (2) robust trajectory optimization methods, and (3) AI techniques.

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  • New research points to possible seasonal climate patterns on early Mars

    New research points to possible seasonal climate patterns on early Mars

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    Newswise — LOS ALAMOS, N.M., Aug. 9, 2023—New observations of mud cracks made by the Curiosity Rover show that high-frequency, wet-dry cycling occurred in early Martian surface environments, indicating that the red planet may have once seen seasonal weather patterns or even flash floods. The research was published today in Nature.

    “These exciting observations of mature mud cracks are allowing us to fill in some of the missing history of water on Mars. How did Mars go from a warm, wet planet to the cold, dry place we know today? These mud cracks show us that transitional time, when liquid water was less abundant but still active on the Martian surface,” said Nina Lanza, principal investigator of the ChemCam instrument onboard the Curiosity Rover. “These features also point to the existence of wet-dry environments that on Earth are extremely conducive to the development of organic molecules and potentially life. Taken as a whole, these results a giving us a clearer picture of Mars as a habitable world.”

    The presence of long-term wet environments, such as evidence of ancient lakes on Mars, is well-documented, but far less is known about short-term climate fluctuations.

    After years of exploring terrain largely comprised of silicates, the rover entered a new area filled with sulfates, marking a major environment transition. In this new environment, the research team found a change in mud crack patterns, signifying a change in the way the surface would have dried. This indicates that water was still present on the surface of Mars episodically, meaning water could have been present for a time, evaporated, and repeated until polygons, or mud cracks, formed.

    “A major focus of the Curiosity mission, and one of the main reasons for selecting Gale Crater, is to understand the transition of a ‘warm and wet’ ancient Mars to a ‘cold and dry’ Mars we see today,” said Patrick Gasda of the Laboratory’s Space Remote Sensing and Data Science group and coauthor of the paper. “The rover’s drive from clay lakebed sediments to drier non-lakebed and sulfate-rich sediments is part of this transition.”

    On Earth, initial mud cracks in mud form a T-shaped pattern, but subsequent wetting and drying cycles cause the cracks to form more of a Y-shaped pattern, which is what Curiosity observed. Additionally, the rover found evidence that the mud cracks were only a few centimeters deep, which could mean that wet-dry cycles were seasonal, or may have even occurred more quickly, such as in a flash flood. 

    These findings could mean that Mars once had an Earth-like wet climate, with seasonal or short-term flooding, and that Mars may have been able to support life at some point.  

    “What’s important about this phenomenon is that it’s the perfect place for the formation of polymeric molecules required for life, including proteins and RNA, if the right organic molecules were present at this location,” Gasda said “Wet periods bring molecules together while dry periods drive reactions to form polymers. When these processes occur repeatedly at the same location, the chance increases that more complex molecules formed there.”

    The paper: “Sustained wet-dry cycling on early Mars.” Nature. DOI: 10.1038/s41586-023-06220-3

    Funding:  NASA’s Mars Exploration Program and in France is conducted under the authority of CNES. Mastcam mosaics were processed by the Mastcam team at Malin Space Science Systems. Edwin Kite funding by NASA grant 80NSSC22K0731. Lucy Thompson funding as MSL team member is provided by the CSA.

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  • International Space Station Fast Facts | CNN

    International Space Station Fast Facts | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Here’s a look at the International Space Station (ISS), a spacecraft built by a partnership of 16 nations: United States, Canada, Japan, Russia, Brazil, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom.

    Information on ISS crews and expeditions can be found here.

    The ISS includes three main modules connected by nodes: the US Laboratory Module Destiny, the European Research Laboratory Columbus, and the Japanese Experiment Module Kibo (Hope). Each was launched separately and connected in space by astronauts.

    Mass: 925,335 pounds (419,725 kilograms)

    Habitable Volume: 13,696 cubic feet (388 cubic meters)

    Solar Array Length: 239 feet (75 meters)

    The ISS orbits Earth 16 times a day.

    As of June 22, 2023, 266 spacewalks have been conducted for station assembly and maintenance.

    November 1998 – A Russian Proton rocket places the first piece, the Zarya module, in orbit.

    December 1998 – The space shuttle Endeavour crew, on the STS-88 mission, attaches the Unity module to Zarya initiating the first ISS assembly sequence.

    June 1999 – The space shuttle Discovery crew, on mission STS-96, supplies two modules with tools and cranes.

    July 2000 – Zvezda, the fifth flight, docks with the ISS to become the third major component of the station.

    November 2000 – The first permanent crew, Expedition One, arrives at the station.

    November/December 2000 – The space shuttle Endeavour crew, on mission STS-97, installs the first set of US solar arrays on the station and visits Expedition One.

    February 2001 – Mission STS-98 delivers the US Destiny Laboratory Module.

    March 2001 – STS-102 delivers Expedition Two to the station and brings Expedition One home. The crew also brings Leonardo, the first Multi-Purpose Logistics Module, to the station.

    September 16, 2001 – The Russian Docking Compartment, Pirs, arrives at the ISS.

    June 2002 – STS-111 delivers the Expedition Five crew and brings the Expedition Four crew home. The crew also brings the Mobile Base System to the orbital outpost.

    December 2002 – STS-113 delivers the Expedition Six crew and the P1 Truss.

    May 3, 2003 – Expedition Six crew return to Earth on Soyuz TMA-1. Crew members Kenneth Bowersox and Don Pettit are the first American astronauts ever to land in a Soyuz spacecraft.

    July 29, 2003 – Marks the 1,000th consecutive day of people living and working aboard the ISS (this is a record for the station, but not for space).

    August 10, 2003 – Russian Cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko marries his fiancée Ekaterina Dmitriev from space. The bride and groom exchange vows over a hotline set up for the event. Dmitriev stands next to a life-sized picture of Malenchenko.

    April 22, 2004 – The second of four gyroscopes that stabilize the orbiting outpost of the ISS fails. NASA officials say this does not pose an immediate threat to the crew. An extra spacewalk will have to be conducted to the fix the electrical component box thought to be at fault.

    November 2, 2005 – Fifth anniversary of continuous human presence in space on the ISS.

    February 3, 2006 – SuitSat-1, an unmanned space suit containing a radio transmitter is deployed as a part of an ISS spacewalk. The suit is supposed to transmit recorded messages in six languages to school children and amateur radio operators for several days before reentering Earth’s atmosphere and burning up, but it goes silent shortly after its deployment.

    March 31, 2006 – Arriving with the crew of Expedition Thirteen is Marcos Pontes, the first Brazilian astronaut. Staying eight days, Pontes conducts scientific experiments before returning to Earth with the crew of Expedition Twelve.

    July 7, 2006 – The arrival of Thomas Reiter of Germany via the Space Shuttle Discovery returns the station’s long-duration crew to three for the first time since May 2003 and the Columbia shuttle disaster. Reiter is the first non-US and non-Russian long-duration station crewmember, and he remains onboard during the first part of Expedition Fourteen.

    September 9, 2006 – Space Shuttle Atlantis docks with the ISS, delivering the P3/P4 truss and its solar wings before undocking September 21 and returning to Earth.

    September 20, 2006 – Arriving with the crew of Expedition Fourteen is Anousheh Ansari, an American businesswoman. She spends about eight days conducting experiments and blogging about her experiences before returning to Earth with two of the three members of Expedition Thirteen.

    December 2006 – Arrival of Flight Engineer Sunita Williams via space shuttle mission STS-116. Williams replaces Reiter, who returns to Earth with the crew of STS-116.

    April 7, 2007 – Charles Simonyi becomes the fifth space tourist when he accompanies the Expedition Fifteen crew to the ISS. He spends 12 days aboard the space station before returning to Earth with the crew of Expedition Fourteen.

    June 10, 2007 – Space Shuttle Atlantis docks with the the ISS to install a new segment and solar panel on the space station and retrieve astronaut Williams, who has been at the space station since December. Williams is replaced by Flight Engineer Clayton Anderson, who will return to earth aboard Discovery on Mission STS-120.

    June 15, 2007 – Four days after ISS’s computers crash, two Russian cosmonauts bring them back online. The computers control the station’s orientation as well as oxygen production. The crew used Atlantis’ thrusters to help maintain the station’s position while its computers were down.

    October 25, 2007 – Space Shuttle Discovery docks with the ISS. In the days while docked with the ISS, the Discovery crew delivers and connects Harmony to the ISS, a living and working compartment that will also serve as the docking port for Japanese and European Union laboratories. Discovery and ISS crew also move an ISS solar array to prepare for future ISS expansion, planning a special spacewalk to repair damage to the solar array that occurred during its unfurling.

    November 14, 2007 – ISS crew move the Harmony node from its temporary location on the Unity node to its permanent location attached to Destiny.

    February 9, 2008 – Space Shuttle Atlantis arrives. Its crew delivers the European-made Columbus laboratory, a 23-foot long module that will be home to a variety of science experiments. Atlantis remains docked with the ISS for just under nine days.

    March 9, 2008 – “Jules Verne,” the first of a series of European space vessels designed to deliver supplies to the ISS, launches from the Ariane Launch Complex in Kourou, French Guiana. The vessels, called Automated Transfer Vehicles (ATV), are propelled into space atop an Ariane 5 rocket, and are designed to dock with the ISS with no human assistance. The Jules Verne will wait to dock with the ISS until after Space Shuttle Endeavour’s March mission is completed.

    March 12, 2008 – Space Shuttle Endeavour docks with the ISS.

    March 24, 2008 – Endeavour detaches from the ISS. While docked, crew members make five spacewalks to deliver and assemble the Dextre Robotics System, deliver and attach the Kibo logistics module, attach science experiments to the exterior of the ISS, and perform other inspection and maintenance tasks.

    April 3, 2008 – The unmanned European cargo ship Jules Verne successfully docks with the ISS. Able to carry more than three times the volume of the Russian-built Progress resupply vehicles, the Jules Verne contains fuel, water, oxygen and other supplies.

    April 10, 2008 – Two members of Expedition 17 crew arrive at the ISS via a Russian Soyuz spacecraft. Travelling with them is Yi So-yeon, a space flight participant and South Korea’s first astronaut. Yi later returns to Earth aboard an older Soyuz spacecraft along with members of the Expedition 16 crew.

    June 2, 2008 – Space Shuttle Discovery docks with the ISS. Discovery is carrying Japan’s Kibo lab, a replacement pump for the station’s toilet, and astronaut Gregory Chamitoff, who is replacing Garrett Reisman as part of the station’s crew.

    June 11, 2008 – Discovery undocks with the ISS after its crew successfully delivers and installs the Japanese-built Kibo lab, delivers parts to repair the ISS’s malfunctioning toilet, collects debris samples from the station’s faulty solar power wing, and retrieves an inspection boom left behind during a previous shuttle mission. Station crewmember Reisman departs with Discovery.

    October 12, 2008 – The Soyuz TMA-13 capsule carrying two Americans – flight commander Michael Fincke and computer game millionaire Richard Garriott, and Russian flight engineer Yuri Lonchakov – lifts off from Kazakhstan. It docks with the ISS on October 14.

    March 12, 2009 – Orbital debris from a prior space shuttle mission forces the crew of Expedition 18 to temporarily retreat to its Soyuz capsule.

    August 24, 2011 – Russian emergency officials report that an unmanned Russian cargo craft, the Progress-M12M that was to deliver 3.85 tons of food and supplies to the ISS, crashed in a remote area of Siberia.

    May 19, 2012 – SpaceX’s launch of the Falcon 9 rocket, the first private spacecraft bound for the ISS, is aborted a half a second before liftoff. SpaceX engineers trace the problem to a faulty rocket engine valve.

    May 22, 2012 – The unmanned SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launches from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. The rocket carries the Dragon spacecraft, which is filled with food, supplies and science experiments and bound for the ISS.

    May 25, 2012 – The unmanned SpaceX Dragon spacecraft connects to the International Space Station, the first private spacecraft to successfully reach an orbiting space station.

    October 7, 2012 – SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket, with its Dragon capsule carrying 1,000 pounds of supplies bound for the ISS, launches from Florida’s Cape Canaveral. It is the first of a dozen NASA-contracted flights to resupply the International Space Station, at a total cost of $1.6 billion.

    May 9, 2013 – The crew discovers that the ISS is leaking ammonia. The crew performs a spacewalk and corrects the leak two days later.

    November 9, 2013 – Russian cosmonauts perform the first ever spacewalk of the Olympic Torch ahead of the 2014 Sochi Winter Games.

    December 11, 2013 – A pump on one of the station’s two external cooling loops shuts down after hitting a temperature limit, according to NASA. The malfunctioning loop had been producing too much ammonia, possibly the result of a malfunctioning valve.

    December 24, 2013 – Astronauts complete a repair job to replace the problematic pump. Their spacewalk lasts seven and a half hours, and is the second ever spacewalk on Christmas Eve. The first was in 1999 for a Hubble Repair Mission.

    March 10, 2014 – After five and a half months aboard the ISS, Expedition 38 astronauts return to earth aboard the Soyuz TMA-10M spacecraft.

    September 16, 2014 – NASA announces that Boeing and Space X have been awarded contracts to build vehicles that will shuttle astronauts to and from the space station.

    December 15, 2015 – Astronaut Tim Peake is the first British European Space Agency astronaut to arrive at the ISS.

    March 2, 2016 – NASA astronaut Scott Kelly and Russian cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko land in the Kazakhstan desert after a nearly yearlong mission on the ISS.

    August 3, 2018 – NASA selects nine astronauts, seven men and two women, for missions in spacecraft developed by Boeing and SpaceX. The flights, scheduled for 2019, will be the first launches to space from US soil since the Space Shuttle program was retired in 2011, and the first in capsules developed and built by the private sector.

    June 2019 – NASA announces the ISS is opening for commercial use. The newest NASA directive is intended to allow “commercial manufacturing and production and allow both NASA and private astronauts to conduct new commercial activities aboard the orbiting laboratory.”

    October 18, 2019 – NASA astronauts Jessica Meir and Christina Koch conduct the first all-female spacewalk outside of the ISS. The spacewalk last seven hours and 17 minutes.

    May 30, 2020 – SpaceX and NASA’s Falcon 9, bound for the ISS, launches. This is the first crewed spaceflight to launch from US soil since 2011. The astronauts spend two months working on the ISS, then return to Earth on August 2.

    November 16, 2020 – The SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft with four astronauts on board safely docks with the ISS. The spacecraft launched from Florida’s Kennedy Space Center on November 15 and marks the first fully operational crewed mission for SpaceX.

    April 21, 2021 – Russia announces that it is ready to start building its own space station with the aim of launching it into orbit by 2030, according to Interfax news agency. The project will mark a new chapter for Russian space exploration. Russia, which signed a memorandum of understanding in March to explore establishing a joint lunar base with China, will notify its ISS partners regarding its departure from ISS at a future date.

    June 16, 2021 – NASA astronaut Shane Kimbrough and European Space Agency astronaut Thomas Pesquet conduct a spacewalk to install solar arrays on the space station. After technical delays, the work is completed four days later. The arrays are rolled up like carpet and are 750 pounds (340 kilograms) and 10 feet (three meters) wide. They will provide a power boost to the space station.

    January 31, 2022 – NASA reveals it intends to keep operating the ISS until the end of 2030, after which the ISS will be crashed into a remote part of the Pacific Ocean known as Point Nemo.

    April 9, 2022 – The first crew entirely comprised of private citizens reaches the ISS.

    July 26, 2022 – Russia announces it is planning to pull out of the ISS after 2024, ending its decades-long partnership with NASA at the orbiting outpost.

    October 6, 2022 – A SpaceX capsule carrying a multinational crew of astronauts docks with the ISS after a 29-hour trek. The mission launched from Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 12 p.m. ET on October 5. The four crew members included astronauts Nicole Mann and Josh Cassada of NASA, astronaut Koichi Wakata of Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, and cosmonaut Anna Kikina of Roscosmos, the first Russian to travel on a SpaceX spaceflight.

    October 24, 2022 – According to NASA, the ISS fires its thrusters to maneuver out of the way of a piece of oncoming Russian space junk.

    December 22, 2022 – Two NASA astronauts carry out a spacewalk to install a new solar panel on the ISS. The spacewalk lasts about seven hours.

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  • Colonizing Mars could be dangerous and ridiculously expensive. Elon Musk wants to do it anyway | CNN Business

    Colonizing Mars could be dangerous and ridiculously expensive. Elon Musk wants to do it anyway | CNN Business

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    Austin, TX
    CNN Business
     — 

    Elon Musk has spent nearly two decades rallying SpaceX fans around his goal of colonizing Mars, something world governments aren’t currently attempting — in part because of the unfathomable price tag such a mission will entail.

    Musk, the company’s CEO and chief engineer, refers to his interplanetary ambitions more like a sci-fi protagonist with a moral calling than an entrepreneur with a disruptive business plan.

    “If there’s something terrible that happens on Earth, either made by humans or natural, we want to have, like, life insurance for life as a whole,” Musk said during a virtual Mars conference on Aug. 31. “Then, there’s the kind of excitement and adventure.”

    SpaceX’s plans for a Red-Planet settlement bring up numerous technological, political and ethical questions. One of the most challenging hurdles may also be financial: Not even Musk has ventured to guess an all-in cost estimate.

    The last space program that came close to Musk’s interplanetary travel ambitions was NASA’s Apollo program, the mid-20th Century effort that landed six spacecraft and 12 astronauts on the moon. Apollo cost well over $280 billion in today’s dollars, and, in some years, NASA was taking up more than 4% of the entire national budget. The space agency, which in more recent years has received less than half of one percent of the federal budget, is mapping its own plans to return humans to the moon and, eventually, a path to Mars.

    But the agency has not indicated how much the latter could cost, either.

    Musk’s personal wealth has ballooned to about $100 billion — at least on paper — thanks in no small part to a series of stock and stock awards from his electric car company, Tesla. Musk has also repeatedly said that he hopes profits from SpaceX’s other businesses, including a satellite-internet venture that is currently in beta testing, will help fuel development of his Mars rocket. SpaceX has also raised nearly $6 billion from banks and venture capitalists, swelling into one of the most highly-valued private companies in the world, according to data firm Pitchbook. Presumably, at least some investors will one day be looking to cash out.

    And that begs the question: Is there money to be made on Mars?

    SpaceX is likely still many, many years from developing all the technology a Mars settlement would require. The company is in the early stages of developing its Starship, a massive rocket and spaceship system that Musk hopes will ferry cargo and convoys of people across the at-minimum 30 million-mile void between Earth and Mars. Musk has estimated Starship development will cost up to $10 billion, and Musk said Aug. 31 that SpaceX will look to launch “hundreds” of satellites aboard Starship before entrusting it with human lives.

    If it proves capable of the trek to Mars, settlers will need air-tight habitats to shield them from toxic air and the deadly radiation that rains down on its surface.

    “It’s not for the faint of heart,” Musk said. “Good chance you’ll die, and it’s going to be tough going…It’d better be pretty glorious if it works out.”

    But for at least the first 100 years that humans have a presence on Mars, the economic situation will be dubious, said Michael Meyer, the lead scientist for NASA’s Mars Exploration Program, which recently launched the Perseverance rover to further study the planet robotically.

    Musk does have a plan for making Mars an attractive destination for long-term living: Terraforming, a hypothetical scenario in which humans make Mars more Earth-like by pumping gases into the atmosphere. It’d be an attempt to use the same greenhouse gases causing the climate crisis on our home planet to make Mars’ atmosphere thicker, warmer and more hospitable to life. Musk has promoted the idea that the process could be kicked off by dropping nuclear bombs on the planet.

    The idea of terraforming arose from scientists who were kicking around ideas, Meyer said, but not from anyone who thought it was something humans could or should do.

    “It was an intellectual exercise,” Meyer said. But there’s barely any oxygen in Mars’ atmosphere. And there’s an infinitesimally small amount of water, meaning it will be extremely difficult to grow crops, much less create a Mars-wide water cycle. It’s not even clear if there are enough resources on Mars to make terraforming possible at all.

    Musk, in a photo posted to his Instagram, wears one of SpaceX's

    “I think ‘Total Recall’ has the right idea,” he joked. “You’d need to use some alien technology.”

    Musk has also acknowledged that terraforming will be extremely resource-intensive. But the concept is ingrained in SpaceX lore, so much so that the company sells t-shirts saying “Nuke Mars” and “Occupy Mars.”

    Musk is frequently seen wearing one.

    Values and valuations

    There are no known resources on Mars that would be valuable enough to mine and sell back to Earthly businesses, Meyer said. “Part of the reason [scientists are] interested in Mars is — it’s pretty much made of the same stuff as Earth,” he told CNN Business.

    Musk has previously suggested that he agrees, noting that the resources on Mars would likely be valuable only to settlers hoping to build up industries on the planet. He noted eight years ago that the only “economic exchange” between Mars and Earth dwellers would be “intellectual property.”

    Mars, the fourth planet from the sun, has days that are roughly as long as Earth days. But it's a smaller planet, its temperatures average -81 degrees Fahrenheit, and its atmosphere is much thinner and comprised mostly of carbon dioxide.

    Money-making ambitions aside, the idea that Mars could one day become home to a metropolis and — potentially — a tourist destination is acknowledged by mainstream scientists like Meyer, NASA’s lead Mars expert.

    Meyer said that, 20 years ago, he attended a presentation about Mars business and tourism. “I went in pretty skeptical of this… and coming away I was thinking, ‘Well, [there are] some pretty reasonable ideas,” he said, adding that he now embraces the idea that businesspeople could make space travel more accessible.

    Meyer added that, in his mind, it’s not if Mars travel will one day be a profitable venture, but when.

    Musk hasn’t expanded on his ideas for making money on Mars, but his musings about exporting intellectual property echoed a book written by Robert Zubrin, an influential but polarizing figure in the space community and a longtime Musk ally.

    “Ideas may be another possible export for Martian colonists,” Zubrin, who heads the Mars Society, wrote in his oft-cited 1996 book, “The Case for Mars.”

    To look towards a potential future of humanity, Zubrin looks to its past.

    “Just as the labor shortage prevalent in colonial and 19th century America drove the creation of Yankee Ingenuity’s flood of inventions, so the conditions of extreme labor shortage…will tend to drive Martian ingenuity.”

    In a recent interview with CNN Business, Zubrin stood by those ideas, arguing American colonization has worked. Zubrin again harkens back to the colonization of North America as an example of how would-be Mars colonists might fund their trip.

    “If you say, okay, you want to go to Mars, you’re going to want to offer something,” Zubrin said. “If you look at Colonial America, a middle-class person could travel to America by liquidating their farm. But, the proceeds would give them a one-way ticket. But if you are working, what you could do is sell your labor for seven years. Remember the indentured servants?”

    “So there’ll be some selection for, like, you know, if you can pay it, you can go on your own terms — but if you can’t…effectively it’s like $300,000 which is about what a working person can make in seven years, or what a middle class person can put together by selling their house,” Zubrin added.

    Zubrin, who has worked with conservative think tanks but says he is not politically affiliated, also acknowledged that colonization can go hand-in-hand with exploitation: “If somebody says, ‘But won’t there be exploitation there?’ Well sure, that’s what people do to each other all the time.”

    (Musk has not expounded on his thoughts about colonialism, and he donates to both US political parties.)

    To be clear: The story of American colonialism also included chattel slavery and the brutalization and erasure of many native populations.

    “There aren’t native Martians,” Zubrin said.

    But Damien Williams — a teacher and PhD student at Virginia Tech who studies the intersection of advanced technologies, ethics and societies — warns that the stories we may tell ourselves about America and exploring outer space can leave out key context.

    A prototype of SpaceX's Starship spacecraft is seen at the company's Texas launch facility on September 28, 2019 in Boca Chica near Brownsville, Texas

    It’s still unclear, for example, who Musk envisions as the first Mars settlers. NASA astronauts? Ultra-wealthy thrill-seekers? SpaceX employees?

    “This competitive stance of expansion and exploration, it’s not necessarily a bad thing,” Williams, who also works with the advocacy group Just Space Alliance, said. But, when it comes to a private company using resources that international treaties say do not belong to anyone — “Who’s been brought in and how? Who’s been left out and why? These things matter.”

    Musk’s use of the word “colonization” also belies a long history of Americans and other Western nations enriching themselves by exploiting and enslaving others. And when it comes to colonizing another planet, it’s not just the microbial lifeforms that may exist on Mars that should be concerned. Without clearly defined objectives and agreements, SpaceX’s colony could create a “contentious sphere of conflict,” Williams said.

    “The values that we take with us into space exploration should be front and center,” he added.

    SpaceX did not respond to requests for comment for this story.

    Update: This story has been updated with additional quotes from Robert Zubrin regarding how Mars settlers might pay for their journey.

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  • Astronomers Shed New Light on Formation of Mysterious Fast Radio Bursts

    Astronomers Shed New Light on Formation of Mysterious Fast Radio Bursts

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    Newswise — More than 15 years after the discovery of fast radio bursts (FRBs) – millisecond-long, deep-space cosmic explosions of electromagnetic radiation – astronomers worldwide have been combing the universe to uncover clues about how and why they form. 

    Nearly all FRBs identified have originated in deep space outside our Milky Way galaxy. That is until April 2020, when the first Galactic FRB, named FRB 20200428, was detected. This FRB was produced by a magnetar (SGR J1935+2154), a dense, city-sized neutron star with an incredibly powerful magnetic field. 

    This groundbreaking discovery led some to believe that FRBs identified at cosmological distances outside our galaxy may also be produced by magnetars. However, the smoking gun for such a scenario, a rotation period due to the spin of the magnetar, has so far escaped detection. New research into SGR J1935+2154 sheds light on this curious discrepancy. 

    In the July 28 issue of the journal Science Advances, an international team of scientists, including UNLV astrophysicist Bing Zhang, report on continued monitoring of SGR J1935+2154 following the April 2020 FRB, and the discovery of another cosmological phenomenon known as a radio pulsar phase five months later. 

    Unraveling a Cosmological Conundrum

    To aid them in their quest for answers, astronomers rely in part on powerful radio telescopes like the massive Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical radio Telescope (FAST) in China to track FRBs and other deep-space activity. Using FAST, astronomers observed that FRB 20200428 and the later pulsar phase originated from different regions within the scope of the magnetar, which hints towards different origins.  

    “FAST detected 795 pulses in 16.5 hours over 13 days from the source,” said Weiwei Zhu, lead author of the paper from National Astronomical Observatory of China (NAOC). “These pulses show different observational properties from the bursts observed from the source.”

    This dichotomy in emission modes from the region of a magnetosphere helps astronomers understand how – and where – FRBs and related phenomena occur within our galaxy and perhaps also those at further cosmological distances.  

    Radio pulses are cosmic electromagnetic explosions, similar to FRBs, but typically emit a brightness roughly 10 orders of magnitude less than an FRB. Pulses are typically observed not in magnetars but in other rotating neutron stars known as pulsars. According to Zhang, a corresponding author on the paper and director of the Nevada Center for Astrophysics, most magnetars do not emit radio pulses most of the time, probably due to their extremely strong magnetic fields. But, as was the case with SGR J1935+2154, some of them become temporary radio pulsars after some bursting activities. 

    Another trait that makes bursts and pulses different are their emission “phases”, i.e. the time window where radio emission is emitted in each period of emission. 

    “Like pulses in radio pulsars, the magnetar pulses are emitted within a narrow phase window within the period,” said Zhang. “This is the well-known `lighthouse’ effect, namely, the emission beam sweeps the line of sight once a period and only during a short interval in time in each period. One can then observe the pulsed radio emission.” 

    Zhang said the April 2020 FRB, and several later, less energetic bursts were emitted in random phases not within the pulse window identified in the pulsar phase. 

    “This strongly suggests that pulses and bursts originate from different locations within the magnetar magnetosphere, suggesting possibly different emission mechanisms between pulses and bursts,” he said. 

    Implications for Cosmological FRBs

    Such a detailed observation of a Galactic FRB source sheds light on the mysterious FRBs prevailing at cosmological distances. 

    Many sources of cosmological FRBs – those occurring outside our galaxy – have been observed to repeat. In some instances, FAST has detected thousands of repeated bursts from a few sources. Deep searches for seconds-level periodicity have been carried out using these bursts in the past and so far no period was discovered. 

    According to Zhang, this casts doubt on the popular idea that repeating FRBs are powered by magnetars in the past. 

    “Our discovery that bursts tend to be generated in random phases provides a natural interpretation to the non-detection of periodicity from repeating FRBs,” he said. “For unknown reasons, bursts tend to be emitted in all directions from a magnetar, making it impossible to identify periods from FRB sources.” 

    Publication Details

    The study, “A radio pulsar phase from SGR J1935+2154 provides clues to the magnetar FRB mechanism”, appeared July 28 in the journal Science Advances and includes 37 co-authors from 10 co-authors from 17 institutions. Besides NAOC and UNLV, primary collaborating institutions include Peking University and Beijing Normal University from China, George Washington University from the U.S., and Sabancı University from Turkey. 

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    University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV)

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  • St. Croix: Radio Astronomy in the Caribbean

    St. Croix: Radio Astronomy in the Caribbean

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    BYLINE: Brian Koberlein, PhD

    Newswise — When the morning sun rises over the lands of the United States, it rises first over St. Croix. Located within the Virgin Islands, St. Croix is the easternmost U.S. territory. Originally inhabited by the Igneri and Taino peoples of the indigenous Caribbeans, it was colonized by the Dutch in the 1600s. Over the centuries control of the island passed between several colonial powers before becoming a United States territory in 1917. 

    Once an agricultural power in the islands, it is now a popular tourist destination. It has a rich culture with a unique island flair. Within the main city of Christiansted, Spanish, Arabic, and Virgin Island Creole can be heard, scattered among the predominant English dialect. From the old but brightly painted buildings at the center of Christiansted to its modern storefronts, the town is a wonderful mix of past and present.

    St. Croix is rich with wildlife, often as relaxed as the tourists around them. The outdoor tables of seaside restaurants are visited by iguanas, colorful birds, and even mother hens with their brood. As with its people, much of the island fauna can trace its origin from faraway lands, brought to the island by colonists and traders. With its warm days and cool nights, it’s easy to call the island home.

    Because St. Croix marks the easternmost territory of America, it is a perfect location for an antenna of the Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA). The purpose of the VLBA is to observe the radio sky at an extremely high resolution. High enough that it can pinpoint the locations of distant quasars and use them to measure the Earth’s rotation, and even the geological drift of continents. To achieve such precise measurements, the VLBA requires an array of antennas spread as far apart as possible. It currently consists of ten antennas located on the big island of Hawaii, various locations across the continental U.S., and St. Croix. Thanks to St. Croix, the VLBA can achieve a baseline of nearly 9,000 kilometers, giving it the highest resolution of any single radio observatory.

    Although the location of St. Croix is perfect for a VLBA antenna, the island poses significant challenges for using and maintaining a radio antenna. The St. Croix dish is located on the eastern side of the island, almost at sea level. So it is constantly bombarded by salt air, ocean rains, and even the occasional tropical storm. The tropical ocean climate is terribly hard on a radio telescope, so the maintenance crew must work hard to protect it from rust and mechanical stress. Data gathered by the antenna must be gathered on data tapes and shipped back to the Very Large Array in New Mexico to be processed.

    But one thing the St. Croix antenna has on all the others is the view. Nowhere else does a VLBA dish have an ocean beach view. Nested within the green hills of the eastern shore, the white dish gleams against a brilliant blue sky. It calls St. Croix its home, and if you are lucky enough to visit St. Croix, you’ll understand why.

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    National Radio Astronomy Observatory

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  • Webb Detects Water Vapor in Rocky Planet-Forming Zone

    Webb Detects Water Vapor in Rocky Planet-Forming Zone

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    Newswise — Water is essential for life as we know it. However, scientists debate how it reached the Earth and whether the same processes could seed rocky exoplanets orbiting distant stars. New insights may come from the planetary system PDS 70, located 370 light-years away. The star hosts both an inner disk and outer disk of gas and dust, separated by a 5 billion-mile-wide (8 billion kilometer) gap, and within that gap are two known gas-giant planets.

    New measurements by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope’s MIRI (Mid-Infrared Instrument) have detected water vapor in the system’s inner disk, at distances of less than 100 million miles (160 million kilometers) from the star – the region where rocky, terrestrial planets may be forming. (The Earth orbits 93 million miles from our Sun.) This is the first detection of water in the terrestrial region of a disk already known to host two or more protoplanets.

    “We’ve seen water in other disks, but not so close in and in a system where planets are currently assembling. We couldn’t make this type of measurement before Webb,” said lead author Giulia Perotti of the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy (MPIA) in Heidelberg, Germany.

    “This discovery is extremely exciting, as it probes the region where rocky planets similar to Earth typically form,” added MPIA director Thomas Henning, a co-author on the paper. Henning is co-principal investigator of Webb’s MIRI (Mid-Infrared Instrument), which made the detection, and the principal investigator of the MINDS (MIRI Mid-Infrared Disk Survey) program that took the data.

    A Wet Environment for Forming Planets

    PDS 70 is a K-type star, cooler than our Sun, and is estimated to be 5.4 million years old. This is relatively old in terms of stars with planet-forming disks, which made the discovery of water vapor surprising.

    Over time, the gas and dust content of planet-forming disks declines. Either the central star’s radiation and winds blow out such material, or the dust grows into larger objects that eventually form planets. As previous studies failed to detect water in the central regions of similarly aged disks, astronomers suspected it might not survive the harsh stellar radiation, leading to a dry environment for the formation of any rocky planets.

    Astronomers haven’t yet detected any planets forming within the inner disk of PDS 70. However, they do see the raw materials for building rocky worlds in the form of silicates. The detection of water vapor implies that if rocky planets are forming there, they will have water available to them from the beginning.

    “We find a relatively high amount of small dust grains. Combined with our detection of water vapor, the inner disk is a very exciting place,” said co-author Rens Waters of Radboud University in The Netherlands.

    What is the Water’s Origin?

    The discovery raises the question of where the water came from. The MINDS team considered two different scenarios to explain their finding.

    One possibility is that water molecules are forming in place, where we detect them, as hydrogen and oxygen atoms combine. A second possibility is that ice-coated dust particles are being transported from the cool outer disk to the hot inner disk, where the water ice sublimates and turns into vapor. Such a transport system would be surprising, since the dust would have to cross the large gap carved out by the two giant planets.

    Another question raised by the discovery is how water could survive so close to the star, when the star’s ultraviolet light should break apart any water molecules. Most likely, surrounding material such as dust and other water molecules serves as a protective shield. As a result, the water detected in the inner disk of PDS 70 could survive destruction.

    Ultimately, the team will use two more of Webb’s instruments, NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) and NIRSpec (Near-Infrared Spectrograph) to study the PDS 70 system in an effort to glean an even greater understanding.

    These observations were taken as part of Guaranteed Time Observation program 1282. This finding has been published in the journal Nature.

    For more information or to download full-resolution images, visit https://webbtelescope.org/contents/news-releases/2023/news-2023-130

    The James Webb Space Telescope is the world’s premier space science observatory. Webb is solving mysteries in our solar system, looking beyond to distant worlds around other stars, and probing the mysterious structures and origins of our universe and our place in it. Webb is an international program led by NASA with its partners, ESA (European Space Agency) and the Canadian Space Agency.

    Media Contacts:

    Christine Pulliam
    Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, Md.
    [email protected]

    Markus Nielbock
    Max Planck Institute for Astronomy, Heidelberg, Germany
    [email protected]

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    Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI)

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  • Ancient Impacts May Have Fueled Venus Volcanism

    Ancient Impacts May Have Fueled Venus Volcanism

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    Newswise — SAN ANTONIO —July 20, 2023 —A Southwest Research Institute-led team has modeled the early impact history of Venus to explain how Earth’s sister planet has maintained a youthful surface despite lacking plate tectonics. The team compared the early collision histories of the two bodies and determined that Venus likely experienced higher-speed, higher-energy impacts creating a superheated core that promoted extended volcanism and resurfaced the planet.

    “One of the mysteries of the inner solar system is that, despite their similar size and bulk density, Earth and Venus operate in strikingly distinct ways, particularly affecting the processes that move materials through a planet,” said Dr. Simone Marchi, lead author of a new paper about these findings in Nature Astronomy.

    The Earth’s shifting plates continuously reshape its surface as chunks of the crust collides to form mountains ranges, and in places promote volcanism. Venus has more volcanos than any other planet in the solar system but has only one continuous plate for its surface. More than 80,000 volcanos — 60 times more than Earth — have played a major role in renewing the planet’s surface through floods of lava, which may continue to this day. Previous simulations struggled to create scenarios to support this level of volcanism.

    “Our latest models show that long-lived volcanism driven by early, energetic collisions on Venus offer a compelling explanation for its young surface age,” said Professor Jun Korenaga, a co-author from Yale University. “This massive volcanic activity is fueled by a superheated core, resulting in vigorous internal melting.”

    Earth and Venus formed in the same neighborhood of the solar system as solid materials collided with each other and gradually combined to form the two rocky planets. The slight differences in the planets’ distances from the Sun changed their impact histories, particularly the number and outcome of these events. These differences arise because Venus is closer to the Sun and moves faster around it, energizing impact conditions. In addition, the tail of collisional growth is typically dominated by impactors originating from beyond Earth’s orbit that require higher orbital eccentricities to collide with Venus rather than Earth, resulting in more powerful impacts.

    “Higher impact velocities melt more silicate, melting as much as 82% of Venus’ mantle,” said Dr. Raluca Rufu, a Sagan Fellow and SwRI co-author. “This produces a mixed mantle of molten materials redistributed globally and a superheated core.”

    If impacts on Venus had significantly higher velocity than on Earth, a few large impacts could have had drastically different outcomes, with important implications for the subsequent geophysical evolution. The multidisciplinary team combined expertise in large-scale collision modeling and geodynamic processes to assess the consequences of those collisions for the long-term evolution of Venus.

    “Venus internal conditions are not well known, and before considering the role of energetic impacts, geodynamical models required special conditions to achieve the massive volcanism we see at Venus,” Korenaga said. “Once you input energetic impact scenarios into the model, it easily comes up with the extensive and extended volcanism without really tweaking the parameters.”

    And the timing of this new explanation is serendipitous. In 2021, NASA committed to two new Venus missions, VERITAS and DAVINCI, while the European Space Agency is planning one called EnVision.

    “Interest in Venus is high right now,” Marchi said. “These findings will have synergy with the upcoming missions, and the mission data could help confirm the findings.”  

    The paper “Long-lived volcanic resurfacing of Venus driven by early collisions” appears in Nature Astronomy and can be accessed at https://doi.org/10.1038/s41550-023-02037-2.

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    Southwest Research Institute

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  • Mystery cylinder on Western Australia beach likely space junk, authorities say | CNN

    Mystery cylinder on Western Australia beach likely space junk, authorities say | CNN

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    Hong Kong
    CNN
     — 

    A mystery object that washed ashore on Australia’s western coast sparking a flurry of local excitement and speculation over its origin is most likely space junk, police said Tuesday.

    Since it has turned up on a beach at Green Head, a coastal town 250 kilometers (155 miles) north of Perth, the copper-colored cylinder had drawn in curious local residents eager to catch a glimpse of the unidentified object.

    Speculation also erupted online with people posting a host of theories about where it might have come from.

    The Western Australia Police Force said in a statement on Tuesday that the item is believed to be “space debris”, echoing similar comments from the country’s space agency which was working on the same hypothesis.

    Police were initially cautious, throwing up a cordon around the object and telling locals to keep away.

    But in a new update on Tuesday, police said an analysis by the Department of Fire and Emergency Service and Chemistry Centre of Western Australia had found the object to be safe, posing no current risk to the community.

    Police added they were discussing ways with relevant agencies to safely remove and store the object, while working on finalizing their findings.

    But space junk looks the most likely explanation.

    “The object could be from a foreign space launch vehicle and we are liaising with global counterparts who may be able to provide more information,” the Australian Space Agency tweeted on Monday.

    The bulky cylinder, which stands taller than a human, appears to be damaged at one end and is covered with barnacles, suggesting it has spent a significant amount of time at sea before washing up.

    The space agency urged people to avoid handling and moving the object due to its unknown origin and to report any further discovery of suspected debris.

    Police said previously that the item did not appear to originate from a commercial aircraft and vowed to guard it until its removal.

    Alice Gorman, a space archaeologist from Flinders University in Adelaide, said the cylinder is likely the third phase of a polar satellite launch vehicle previously launched by India.

    “It is identical in dimension and materials,” Gorman told CNN, comparing it with launch vehicles used by India since 2010.

    Space rockets are multi-stage, meaning they are made up of various compartments carrying fuel, each of which are dumped in a sequential order when the propellant runs out, with much of the debris falling back to Earth.

    Gorman also said the largely intact color and shape of the cylinder suggests that it did not reach outer space before it detached, sparing it from intense burn with the atmosphere on re-entry. It may have landed in the ocean about five to 10 years ago until a recent deep sea storm pushed it to the shore, she added.

    Gorman said the cylinder runs on solid fuel, which only releases toxic substances under high temperature. But she advised local residents to err on the side of caution.

    “Just as general rule, you don’t touch space junk unless you need to,” she said.

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  • Into the unknown: NASA space laser provides answers to a rainforest canopy mystery

    Into the unknown: NASA space laser provides answers to a rainforest canopy mystery

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    Newswise — We know less about the rainforest canopy, where most of the world’s species live than we do about the surface of Mars or the bottom of the ocean. However, that is about to change thanks to GEDI—a NASA space laser that has provided a detailed structure of the world’s rainforests for the first time ever. 

    “Tropical forests are mainly unstratified especially in Amazonia and regions with lower fertility or higher temperatures” reads the title of the recently published paper in Environmental Research Ecology that details the laser’s findings. Authored by researchers from the U.S., the U.K. and Singapore, Christopher Doughty, professor in NAU’s School of Informatics, Computing, and Cyber Systems and first author on the study, believes this research is crucial—and long overdue—in finding out more about the tropical ecosystems. 

    “Most of the world’s species live in tropical forests and most of those make use of the canopy, and yet, we know so little,” Doughty said. “Rainforest structure matters because it controls how animals access resources and escape predators, and these findings will help us understand tropical forest animal’s susceptibility to climate change.” 

    Research into forest canopies has come a long way. Early western visitors described tropical forests as horror vacui (nature abhorring a vacuum) since vegetation was “anxious to fill every available space with stems and leaves.” Later, as scientists began to study tropical forests, they categorized the lush flora into forest layers—a thick upper crown and a thick mid-layer with a thin layer in between. However, this was only observed in a few well-studied locations. The structure across most tropical forests was still unknown. 

    Then came GEDI, the Global Ecosystem Dynamics Investigation. 

    “A key difference between GEDI and many other satellites is its measurement of three-dimensional canopy structure,” said Hao Tang, professor in the Department of Geography at the National University of Singapore (NUS) and co-author on the paper. Tang, who is also a principal investigator at the NUS Centre for Nature-based Climate Solutions, added, “Conventional satellites, while providing valuable data on land cover and canopy greenness, often lack the detailed vertical information offered by GEDI. This vertical information is crucial for understanding ecosystem dynamics, carbon storage and biodiversity that cannot be easily seen from typical satellite images.”

    Launched in late 2018, NASA’s GEDI shoots an invisible laser from the International Space Station into Earth’s forests thousands of times a day. Depending on the amount of energy returned to the satellite, it can provide a detailed 3D map that shows where the leaves and branches are in a forest and how they change over time. This will help researchers understand the amounts of biomass and carbon forests store and how much they lose when disturbed—vital information for understanding Earth’s carbon cycle and how it is changing. 

    Doughty, Tang and the other authors of the paper analyzed GEDI data across all tropical forests and found that the structure was simpler and more exposed to sunlight than previously thought. Data also revealed that most tropical forests (80 percent of the Amazon and 70 percent of Southeast Asia and the Congo Basin) have a peak in the number of leaves at 15 meters instead of at the canopy top, debunking the fullest-at-the-top theory of early researchers. While forests vary, a key finding that seemed to remain constant in every scenario was that deviation from more ideal conditions (like lower fertility or higher temperatures) leads to shorter, less stratified forests with lower biomass. 

    “It was really surprising to see the dominance of this structure type because it differs from what we had learned in the classic textbooks on the topic,” Doughty said. “These finding will not only help us understand how the millions of species that live in a rainforest canopy might acclimate to changing temperatures, but also how much carbon these forests hold and how good they are at fighting climate change.” 

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    Northern Arizona University

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  • The fight for the sacred Black Hills of South Dakota takes center stage in the documentary ‘Lakota Nation vs. United States’ | CNN

    The fight for the sacred Black Hills of South Dakota takes center stage in the documentary ‘Lakota Nation vs. United States’ | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Jesse Short Bull grew up a mile from an Indian reservation in South Dakota not realizing the ground he was stepping on was once soaked with the blood of his ancestors.

    Less than a century ago, the Indigenous people of the Lakota Dakota Nakota Nation were killed defending themselves from the United States government, which broke a treaty that vowed the sacred lands, including the Black Hills, would belong to the tribes forever.

    “I was like any other kid in America. The real history didn’t exist to me. I had no clue, and the truth was never taught to us,” Short Bull, whose Lakota name is Mni Wanca Wicapi (Ocean Star), told CNN. “When I became older, I wanted to understand what happened and why, and I started to fill in all the missing pieces.”

    These missing pieces, which led to Short Bull’s revelation of the violent injustices that led to the creation of South Dakota, is the topic of his documentary, “Lakota Nation vs. United States,” which was released Friday.

    The documentary, co-produced by actor Mark Ruffalo, is an in-depth and seldom-heard account of American history – a history that begins with the theft of land and the sacrifice of the Indigenous people who refused to surrender it.

    “This film is very much a push for land back, for the return of land, there’s no misunderstanding that’s what they’re looking for,” said film co-director Laura Tomaselli.

    Woven together by interviews with community leaders and activists, historical footage and racist Hollywood film depictions, the IFC Films documentary is split into three parts: extermination, assimilation and reparations.

    “It’s not about being angry, it’s not about being bitter. It’s about a lot of people appreciating this country and its constitution. Not realizing our treaty, which was bound to that constitution, is negated to being an old dusty antique that has no meaning,” Short Bull said. “Nothing exists to them from our country or our land or our people. But to us, it exists. We’re real.”

    The documentary, elegantly narrated by Oglala Lakota poet Layli Long Soldier, begins with a string of broken treaties by the federal government.

    Within the land legally protected by these treaties are the Black Hills, a holy site described in the film by Milo Yellow Hair, an Oglala Lakota elder and activist, as “our cradle of civilization, the heart of everything that is.”

    The Black Hills are a place of emergence, the birthplace of dozens of Indigenous tribes who consider it to be the most sacred place in the world.

    “It is one of the oldest places on the Earth, over 5 billion years old,” Yellow Hair said. “So we say from the Black Hills and the Wind Cave is that place, that opening on this mother Earth that breathes.”

    When gold was discovered on this land in 1851, war broke out for 17 years, forcing Indigenous leaders to fight gun-holstered soldiers with bows and arrows.

    In 1868, in efforts to make peace after consistently losing battles against Indigenous tribes, the US government signed the Treaty of Fort Laramie. The treaty designated millions of acres west of the Missouri River for the absolute and undisturbed use and occupation of the Great Sioux Nation, which encompasses over a dozen tribes.

    The treaty says the US government “solemnly agrees that no person, except those herein designated and authorized so to do…shall ever be permitted to pass over, settle upon, or reside in the territory described in this article.”

    But it became another broken promise.

    In 1980, the US Supreme Court ordered over $100 million to be paid to the Great Sioux Nation because of the broken treaty. But the nation hasn’t taken the money. Since 1980 that original $100 million has accrued interest and grown to more than $2 billion.

    The Black Hills of South Dakota, a holy site for dozens of Indigenous tribes who are fighting to see the land returned to them.

    But despite the poverty they face, the Great Sioux Nation still refuses the money. Because the land was never for sale.

    “We are nothing without the Black Hills, that’s why the Black Hills are not for sale, because we are not for sale,” Sicangu Lakota historian Nick Estes says in the documentary. “How can you sell your very identity of what makes you an Indigenous person?”

    The documentary also offers in-depth analysis into forced assimilation tactics deployed by the US government to weaken Lakota Dakota Nakota tribes who were still fighting back. One method was killing off their buffalo and depleting their resources, so they began to starve and had no choice but to depend on the government, according to the film.

    Another method was taking away their children and enrolling them in boarding schools, stripping them of their Indigenous names and clothing, banning them from speaking their languages and forcing them to cut their hair. If they resisted, they were punished, often violently.

    With the intention of conquering their people by destroying their culture, says Oglala Lakota activist Nick Tilsen, “they outlawed our language, they made our ceremonies illegal, they criminalized us for living our way of life.”

    After premiering at the Tribeca Film Festival in June 2022, “Lakota Nation vs. United States” has played on the screens at Indigenous reservations where the tragic story takes place.

    At Standing Rock Sioux Reservation, nearly 200 people, including elders who still carry stories of dark days, attended the screening, and many were in tears, says Hunkpapa Lakota elder Cedric Good House.

    “We were impressed with Jesse and everybody else because it took real bravery to do this, a lot of courage,” Good House told CNN. “It’s coming at a time when people think they can know it all in a matter of a minute. They’ll read a little clip on Facebook and that’s it.”

    “But here is this lengthy documentary and people are getting captivated by the truth, and after they finish watching they can see this is still applicable to us today. We can point it out for them,” he continued. “Look what’s happening today here and here and here, we are still fighting.”

    The Standing Rock Sioux have been recently entangled in another battle against the federal government, mainly the US Army Corps of Engineers, the agency responsible for approving the Dakota Access Pipeline.

    A violation of the Treaty of Fort Laramie, the pipeline is a 1,172-mile underground conduit that would transport some 470,000 barrels of crude oil a day – stretching across North Dakota, South Dakota, Iowa and Illinois.

    The Standing Rock Sioux, whose reservation resides near where the pipeline runs, say it will not only endanger their main source of drinking water – the Missouri River – but also their sacred tribal grounds.

    “This movie is about our history, but here in the present we see nothing has changed,” Good House said. “This is our sacred land, and we try to get ourselves into the process, but the process still doesn’t address us.”

    In a desperate fight to protect their land and Unci Maka, or Mother Earth, Native tribal members alongside non-Indigenous allies and environmentalists demonstrated for years against the construction of the oil pipeline until they were forcibly removed from the protest site in 2017.

    “We’re not here to chase people off land. We’re not here to take over their farms and ranches and start charging people for crossing our territory,” Good House said. “We are protecting this Earth, we’re not here to do what the government has done to us.”

    In the land where ceremonies were once held and their ancestors bones now lay, Indigenous holy sites are still being exploited for profit, elders and activists say in the film.

    After killing those who attempted to protect it, the US government has turned stolen land into tourist attractions, Short Bull says, making money off the ongoing pain and suffering of Lakota Dakota Nakota tribes.

    Deep in the Black Hills stands a mountain known as the Six Grandfathers, or Tȟuŋkášila Šákpe, whose peaks were blown up to carve the faces of four presidents – now known as the Mount Rushmore National Memorial.

    Mt. Rushmore, in Keystone, South Dakota, is carved into the Black Hills, which had been occupied by Lakota Sioux Natives.

    “Mount Rushmore represents and is the ultimate shrine to White supremacy,” activist Krystal Two Bulls of the Northern Cheyenne and Oglala Lakota says in the film. “Our sacred mountain, the Six Grandfathers, of course they carved four racist White men into our sacred mountain, who believed in slavery, who actually removed us from our lands.”

    Today the children of the Indigenous leaders who died to preserve whatever land they could continue their ancestors’ purpose: demanding their land back.

    And as the world suffers a climate crisis where Indigenous traditions, like controlled burning, are now being used to fight it, “it’s a no brainer” to return the land to those who can actually care for it, says Tomaselli, the film’s co-director.

    “If you are a non Indigenous person and you’re concerned about the climate, it should be obvious to throw all of your energy behind people that were living here before any of our ancestors showed up, tribes who have been taking care of this environment better than anyone has before,” Tomaselli said.

    As calamities happen around them for the sake of money, Short Bull says – gold mining, coal mining, the pipeline development, deforestation – the Indigenous people living there still have no say.

    But with their demand for land back comes a warning.

    “I want people to remember that there is bloodshed on Earth and our relatives’ blood is on this ground,” Short Bull said. “This planet was not created for you to just take, take, take. The Earth is an extension of you, and if you’re not going to take care of it, disaster is coming.”

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  • India shoots for the moon with historic Chandrayaan-3 mission | CNN

    India shoots for the moon with historic Chandrayaan-3 mission | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    India is bidding to become only the fourth country to execute a controlled landing on the moon with the launch Friday of its Chandrayaan-3 mission.

    Chandrayaan, which means “moon vehicle” in Sanskrit, is expected to take off from the Satish Dhawan Space Center at Sriharikota in southern Andhra Pradesh state at 2:30 p.m. local time (5 a.m. ET).

    It’s India’s second attempt at a soft landing, after its previous effort with the Chandrayaan-2 in 2019 failed. Its first lunar probe, the Chandrayaan-1, orbited the moon and was then deliberately crash-landed onto the lunar surface in 2008.

    Developed by the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO), Chandrayaan-3 is comprised of a lander, propulsion module and rover. Its aim is to safely land on the lunar surface, collect data and conduct a series of scientific experiments to learn more about the moon’s composition.

    Only three other countries have achieved the complicated feat of soft-landing a spacecraft on the moon’s surface – the United States, Russia and China.

    Indian engineers have been working on the launch for years. They are aiming to land Chandrayaan-3 near the challenging terrain of the moon’s unexplored South Pole.

    India’s maiden lunar mission, Chandrayaan-1, discovered water molecules on the moon’s surface. Eleven years later, the Chandrayaan-2 successfully entered lunar orbit but its rover crash-landed on the moon’s surface. It too was supposed to explore the moon’s South Pole.

    At the time, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi hailed the engineers behind the mission despite the failure, promising to keep working on India’s space program and ambitions.

    Just before Friday’s launch, Modi said the day “will always be etched in golden letters as far as India’s space sector is concerned.”

    “This remarkable mission will carry the hopes and dreams of our nation,” he said in a Twitter post.

    India has since spent about $75 million on its Chandrayaan-3 mission.

    Modi said the rocket will cover more than 300,000 kilometers (186,411 miles) and reach the moon in the “coming weeks.”

    India’s space program dates back more than six decades, to when it was a newly independent republic and a deeply poor country reeling from a bloody partition.

    When it launched its first rocket into space in 1963, the country was no match for the ambitions of the US and the former Soviet Union, which were way ahead in the space race.

    Now, India is the world’s most populous nation and its fifth largest economy. It boasts a burgeoning young population and is home to a growing hub of innovation and technology.

    And India’s space ambitions have been playing catch up under Modi.

    For the leader, who swept to power in 2014 on a ticket of nationalism and future greatness, India’s space program is a symbol of the country’s rising prominence on the global stage.

    In 2014, India became the first Asian nation to reach Mars, when it put the Mangalyaan probe into orbit around the Red Planet, for $74 million – less than the $100 million Hollywood spent making space thriller “Gravity.”

    Three years later, India launched a record 104 satellites in one mission.

    In 2019, Modi announced in a rare televised address that India had shot down one of its own satellites, in what it claimed was an anti-satellite test, making it one of only four countries to do so.

    That same year ISRO’s former chairman Kailasavadivoo Sivan said India was planning to set up an independent space station by 2030. Currently, the only space stations available for expedition crews are the International Space Station (a joint project between several countries) and China’s Tiangong Space Station.

    The rapid development and innovation has made space tech one of India’s hottest sectors for investors – and world leaders appear to have taken notice.

    Last month, when Modi met US President Joe Biden in Washington on a state visit, the White House said both leaders sought more collaboration in the space economy.

    And India’s space ambitions do not stop at the moon or Mars. ISRO has also proposed sending an orbiter to Venus.

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  • Webb Celebrates First Year of Science With Close-up on Birth of Sun-like Stars

    Webb Celebrates First Year of Science With Close-up on Birth of Sun-like Stars

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    Newswise — From our cosmic backyard in the solar system to distant galaxies near the dawn of time, NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has delivered on its promise of revealing the universe like never before in its first year of science operations. To celebrate the completion of a successful first year, NASA has released Webb’s image of a small star-forming region in the Rho Ophiuchi cloud complex.

    “In just one year, the James Webb Space Telescope has transformed humanity’s view of the cosmos, peering into dust clouds and seeing light from faraway corners of the universe for the very first time. Every new image is a new discovery, empowering scientists around the globe to ask and answer questions they once could never dream of,” said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson. “Webb is an investment in American innovation but also a scientific feat made possible with NASA’s international partners that share a can-do spirit to push the boundaries of what is known to be possible. Thousands of engineers, scientists, and leaders poured their life’s passion into this mission, and their efforts will continue to improve our understanding of the origins of the universe – and our place in it.”

    The new Webb image released today features the nearest star-forming region to us. Its proximity at 390 light-years allows for a highly detailed close-up, with no foreground stars in the intervening space.

    “On its first anniversary, the James Webb Space Telescope has already delivered upon its promise to unfold the universe, gifting humanity with a breathtaking treasure trove of images and science that will last for decades,” said Nicola Fox, associate administrator of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington. “An engineering marvel built by the world’s leading scientists and engineers, Webb has given us a more intricate understanding of galaxies, stars, and the atmospheres of planets outside of our solar system than ever before, laying the groundwork for NASA to lead the world in a new era of scientific discovery and the search for habitable worlds.”

    Webb’s image shows a region containing approximately 50 young stars, all of them similar in mass to the Sun, or smaller. The darkest areas are the densest, where thick dust cocoons still-forming protostars. Huge bipolar jets of molecular hydrogen, represented in red, dominate the image, appearing horizontally across the upper third and vertically on the right. These occur when a star first bursts through its natal envelope of cosmic dust, shooting out a pair of opposing jets into space like a newborn first stretching her arms out into the world. In contrast, the star S1 has carved out a glowing cave of dust in the lower half of the image. It is the only star in the image that is significantly more massive than the Sun.

    “Webb’s image of Rho Ophiuchi allows us to witness a very brief period in the stellar lifecycle with new clarity. Our own Sun experienced a phase like this, long ago, and now we have the technology to see the beginning of another star’s story,” said Klaus Pontoppidan, who served as Webb project scientist at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Maryland, since before the telescope’s launch and through the first year of operations.

    Some stars in the image display tell-tale shadows indicating protoplanetary disks – potential future planetary systems in the making. Discover more details in the image video tour, or explore yourself in the zoomable image.

    A Full Year, Across the Full Sky

    From its very first deep field image, unveiled by President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, and Nelson live at the White House, Webb has delivered on its promise to show us more of the universe than ever before. However, Webb revealed much more than distant galaxies in the early universe.

    “The breadth of science Webb is capable of exploring really becomes clear now, when we have a full year’s worth of data from targets across the sky,” said Eric Smith, associate director for research in the Astrophysics Division at NASA Headquarters and Webb program scientist. “Webb’s first year of science has not only taught us new things about our universe, but it has revealed the capabilities of the telescope to be greater than our expectations, meaning future discoveries will be even more amazing.” The global astronomy community has spent the past year excitedly poring over Webb’s initial public data and getting a feel for how to work with it.

    Beyond the stunning infrared images, what really has scientists excited are Webb’s crisp spectra – the detailed information that can be gleaned from light by the telescope’s spectroscopic instruments. Webb’s spectra have confirmed the distances of some of the farthest galaxies ever observed, and have discovered the earliest, most distant supermassive black holes. They have identified the compositions of planet atmospheres (or lack thereof) with more detail than ever before, and have narrowed down what kinds of atmospheres may exist on rocky exoplanets for the first time. They also have revealed the chemical makeup of stellar nurseries and protoplanetary disks, detecting water, organic carbon-containing molecules, and more. Already, Webb observations have resulted in hundreds of scientific papers answering longstanding questions and raising new ones to address with Webb.

    The breadth of Webb science is also apparent in its observations of the region of space we are most familiar with – our own solar system. Faint rings of gas giants appear out of the darkness, dotted by moons, while in the background Webb shows distant galaxies. By comparing detections of water and other molecules in our solar system with those found in the disks of other, much younger planetary systems, Webb is helping to build up clues about our own origins – how Earth became the ideal place for life as we know it.

    “With a year of science under our belts, we know exactly how powerful this telescope is, and have delivered a year of spectacular data and discoveries,” said Webb senior project scientist Jane Rigby of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. “We’ve selected an ambitious set of observations for year two that builds on everything we’ve learned so far. Webb’s science mission is just getting started — there’s so much more to come.”

    For more information or to download full-resolution images and videos, visit https://webbtelescope.org/contents/news-releases/2023/news-2023-128

    The James Webb Space Telescope is the world’s premier space science observatory. Webb is solving mysteries in our solar system, looking beyond to distant worlds around other stars, and probing the mysterious structures and origins of our universe and our place in it. Webb is an international program led by NASA with its partners, ESA (European Space Agency) and the Canadian Space Agency.

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  • Webb Locates Dust Reservoirs in Two Supernovae

    Webb Locates Dust Reservoirs in Two Supernovae

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    Newswise — Researchers using NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope have made major strides in confirming the source of dust in early galaxies. Observations of two Type II supernovae, Supernova 2004et (SN 2004et) and Supernova 2017eaw (SN 2017eaw), have revealed large amounts of dust within the ejecta of each of these objects. The mass found by researchers supports the theory that supernovae played a key role in supplying dust to the early universe.

    Dust is a building block for many things in our universe – planets in particular. As dust from dying stars spreads through space, it carries essential elements to help give birth to the next generation of stars and their planets. Where that dust comes from has puzzled astronomers for decades. One significant source of cosmic dust could be supernovae – after the dying star explodes, its leftover gas expands and cools to create dust.

    “Direct evidence of this phenomenon has been slim up to this point, with our capabilities only allowing us to study the dust population in one relatively nearby supernova to date – Supernova 1987A, 170,000 light-years away from Earth,” said lead author Melissa Shahbandeh of Johns Hopkins University and the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Maryland. “When the gas cools enough to form dust, that dust is only detectable at mid-infrared wavelengths provided you have enough sensitivity.”

    For supernovae more distant than SN 1987A like SN 2004et and SN 2017eaw, both in NGC 6946 about 22 million light-years away, that combination of wavelength coverage and exquisite sensitivity can only be obtained with Webb’s MIRI (Mid-Infrared Instrument).

    The Webb observations are the first breakthrough in the study of dust production from supernovae since the detection of newly formed dust in SN 1987A with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) telescope nearly a decade ago. 

    Another particularly intriguing result of their study isn’t just the detection of dust, but the amount of dust detected at this early stage in the supernova’s life. In SN 2004et, the researchers found more than 5,000 Earth masses of dust.

    “When you look at the calculation of how much dust we’re seeing in SN 2004et especially, it rivals the measurements in SN 1987A, and it’s only a fraction of the age,” added program lead Ori Fox of the Space Telescope Science Institute. “It’s the highest dust mass detected in supernovae since SN 1987A.” 

    Observations have shown astronomers that young, distant galaxies are full of dust, but these galaxies are not old enough for intermediate-mass stars, like the Sun, to have supplied the dust as they age. More massive, short-lived stars could have died soon enough and in large enough numbers to create that much dust. 

    While astronomers have confirmed that supernovae produce dust, the question has lingered about how much of that dust can survive the internal shocks reverberating in the aftermath of the explosion. Seeing this amount of dust at this stage in the lifetimes of SN 2004et and SN 2017eaw suggests that dust can survive the shockwave – evidence that supernovae really are important dust factories after all.

    Researchers also note that the current estimations of the mass may be the tip of the iceberg. While Webb has allowed researchers to measure dust cooler than ever before, there may be undetected, colder dust radiating even farther into the electromagnetic spectrum that remains obscured by the outermost layers of dust.

    The researchers emphasized that the new findings are also just a hint at newfound research capabilities into supernovae and their dust production using Webb, and what that can tell us about the stars from which they came. 

    “There’s a growing excitement to understand what this dust also implies about the core of the star that exploded,” Fox said. “After looking at these particular findings, I think our fellow researchers are going to be thinking of innovative ways to work with these dusty supernovae in the future.”

    SN 2004et and SN2017eaw are the first of five targets included in this program. The observations were completed as part of Webb General Observer program 2666. The paper was published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society on July 5.

    The James Webb Space Telescope is the world’s premier space science observatory. Webb will solve mysteries in our solar system, look beyond to distant worlds around other stars, and probe the mysterious structures and origins of our universe and our place in it. Webb is an international program led by NASA with its partners, ESA (European Space Agency), and CSA (Canadian Space Agency).

    For more information, please visit https://webbtelescope.org/contents/news-releases/2023/news-2023-115. 

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  • Search efforts grow as mission to rescue 5 aboard missing submersible races clock | CNN

    Search efforts grow as mission to rescue 5 aboard missing submersible races clock | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    The multinational search efforts for a submersible with five people onboard that disappeared Sunday while diving to view the Titanic’s resting place grew Tuesday as more ships and aircraft joined the mission to find the mariners before their oxygen runs out.

    A spokesperson for the US Navy said the military branch is sending subject matter experts and a “Flyaway Deep Ocean Salvage System” to help in the rescue mission for the commercial submersible, which disappeared Sunday morning and as of Tuesday night, had just over 30 hours of oxygen left.

    The system has the capacity to lift and recover large, bulky and heavy undersea objects, like the small submersible.

    The equipment and personnel were expected to arrive at St. John’s, Newfoundland, by Tuesday night, the spokesperson said.

    The US Coast Guard and the Royal Canadian Air Force are also deploying more aircraft and vessels to aid in the search for the 21-foot submersible. The fleet of assets joining the operation include a Canadian pipe-laying vessel with underwater capabilities, along with other vessels and aircraft.

    Follow live updates

    OceanGate Expeditions says the submersible, known as “Titan,” begins each trip with 96 hours of life support on the vessel. That is “a short amount of time,” said retired Capt. Bobbie Scholley, a former US Navy diver.

    “The hard part is finding the submersible. And once they find the submersible, there are all sorts of situations of how to get that submersible to the surface, and rescue the crew,” Scholley said.

    The international search and rescue operation is “doing everything possible” as part of a “complex search effort” but has so far “not yielded any results,” US Coast Guard Capt. Jamie Frederick told reporters Tuesday at a 1 p.m. ET news conference. The “unique” and “challenging” search effort has brought together “our nations’ best experts,” he said.

    At the time, Frederick estimated the vessel was down to 40 hours of oxygen – and officials do not know whether that’s enough time to rescue those onboard.

    “What I will tell you is, we will do everything in our power to effect a rescue,” he said in response to a question about the oxygen time limit from CNN.

    If searchers locate the submersible deep in the ocean, the mission to recover the craft and any onboard survivors will be complex.

    “There’s very few assets in the world that can go down that deep,” said retired Capt. Chip McCord, whose 30 years of US Navy experience includes overseeing several salvage operations.

    Because of the depth of the ocean floor, a search craft would have to “go up and down like an elevator” rather than cruise the bottom of the sea, he added.

    Searchers have taken the mission below sea level after scouring an area of the ocean’s surface about the size of Connecticut, US Coast Guard District 1 Rear Admiral John Mauger said Tuesday morning. “We now have underwater search capability on scene, and so we’re going to be using that to see if we can locate the submersible in the water,” he told CNN.

    The search zone covers an area about 900 miles east of Cape Cod, Massachusetts, and 13,000 feet deep, Mauger said Monday afternoon. “We are deploying all available assets to make sure that we can locate the craft and rescue the people onboard,” he told reporters.

    The submersible known as “Titan” – roughly the size of a minivan – was carrying one pilot and four “mission specialists” when it lost contact with its mother ship about 1 hour and 45 minutes into its descent, authorities said.

    The submersible is operated by OceanGate Expeditions, a company that organizes a journey to the ocean floor for a price of $250,000, according to an archived version of its website.

    The 23,000-pound Titan is made of highly engineered carbon fiber and titanium and is equipped with repurposed everyday items, including a video game controller used to steer.

    The expedition reflects the ongoing fascination with the Titanic’s wreckage more than a century after it hit an iceberg and sank on its maiden voyage, killing more than 1,500 people. The journey is also part of the growing business of wealthy adventure tourism, along with the space flights of Blue Origin or the rise of guided tours to Mount Everest.

    OceanGate CEO and founder Stockton Rush is among the five onboard, according to a source with knowledge of the mission plan.

    The others are British businessman Hamish Harding; Pakistani billionaire Shahzada Dawood and his son, Sulaiman Dawood; and French diver Paul-Henri Nargeolet, according to CNN reporting.

    OceanGate did not immediately respond to CNN’s request for comment about Rush being aboard.

    OceanGate in a statement on Monday said “every step possible is being taken to bring the five crew members back safely. We are deeply grateful for the urgent and extensive assistance we are receiving from multiple government agencies and deep-sea companies as we seek to reestablish contact with the submersible.”

    In 2018, the Manned Underwater Vehicles committee of the Marine Technology Society penned a letter to Rush, expressing concern over what they referred to as OceanGate’s “experimental approach” of the Titan and its planned expedition to the site of the Titanic wreckage, the New York Times reports.

    “Our apprehension is that the current experimental approach adopted by Oceangate could result in negative outcomes, (from minor to catastrophic) that would have serious consequences for everyone in the industry,” the letter – which was obtained by the Times – reads, in part.

    Specifically, the letter expressed concern over the company’s compliance with a maritime risk assessment certification known as DNV-GL.

    “Your marketing material advertises that the TITAN design will meet or exceed the DNV-GL safety standards, yet it does not appear that Oceangate has the intention of following DNV-GL classrules,” the letter says. “Your representation is, at minimum, misleading to the public and breaches an industry-wide professional code of conduct we all endeavor to uphold.”

    OceanGate has not responded to a request for comment on the letter.

    The effort to locate those on board, meanwhile, has grown by the day. The Coast Guard is searching with aerial and water surface craft, and the Canadian Armed Forces is also deploying aircraft to assist in the search, a spokesperson told CNN.

    The Canadian research vessel Polar Prince, which took the submersible to the wreckage site, is assisting search and rescue efforts, a spokesperson for its co-owner Horizon Maritime told CNN.

    Officials involved in the search have not publicly named those aboard the submersible, but social media posts and friends and family have identified them.

    Action Aviation, an aircraft brokerage based in the United Arab Emirates, in a statement on Tuesday confirmed Harding, its chairman, is on board.

    “Both the Harding Family and the team at Action Aviation are very grateful for all the kind messages of concern and support from our friends and colleagues,” the statement said. “We are thankful for the continued efforts of the authorities and companies that have stepped in to aid in the rescue efforts. We put great faith and trust in their expertise.”

    Harding has an extensive record of adventures: In 2019 he took part in a flight crew that broke the world record for the fastest circumnavigation of the globe via both poles, and in 2020 he became one of the first people to dive to Challenger Deep in the Pacific Ocean, widely believed to be the deepest point in the world’s oceans.

    And last year, he paid an undisclosed sum of money for one of the seats on Blue Origin’s space flight.

    The day before the vessel went missing, Harding wrote of the Titanic mission: “I am proud to finally announce that I joined OceanGate Expeditions for their RMS TITANIC Mission as a mission specialist on the sub going down to the Titanic.”

    A friend told CNN on Tuesday that Harding is “larger than life.”

    “He lives exploration. He is an explorer to the core of his soul,” fellow explorer Jannicke Mikkelsen said. “He has been to the bottom of planet earth in the Mariana Trench … he’s even been in space. We circumnavigated the planet together … the north and south pole, and set the world speed record.”

    Nargeolet was scheduled to be on Sunday’s dive with him, Harding said Saturday in a Facebook post:

    “The team on the sub has a couple of legendary explorers, some of which have done over 30 dives to the RMS Titanic since the 1980s including PH Nargeolet,” Harding wrote, according to CNN news partner CTV News.

    A friend of Nargeolet, Mathieu Johann, told CNN Tuesday the missing submariner is a “hero” and said, “I hope that, right to the end, like in the movies, he’ll reappear very quickly to reassure us all.”

    “What we’re going through right now is this interminable wait,” Johann said.

    Nargeolet is a Titanic expert who has taken the trip every year, completing more than 37 dives to the wreck, according to an archived version of OceanGate Expeditions’ website accessible via the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine.

    “Something we always think about as explorers and scientists … we’ve always known something like this could happen and now it’s happened,” said David Gallo, a colleague of Nargeolet and the senior adviser for Strategic Initiatives at RMS Titanic Inc. “But we’re still pretty much in shock, the community is. I hope it has a good ending.”

    Further, Shahzada Dawood and his son Sulaiman Dawood, of Pakistan, “embarked on a journey to visit the remnants of the Titanic in the Atlantic Ocean,” their family said Tuesday in a statement. “As of now, contact has been lost with their submersible craft and there is limited information available,” the family said, adding they’re praying for their loved ones’ safe return.

    The incident has left the community of undersea explorers in shock, said David Gallo, who called Nargeolet his “closest colleague. “We’ve always known something like this could happen and now it’s happened … I hope it is a good ending,” Gallo, senior adviser for strategic initiatives at RMS Titanic Inc., told CNN.

    An undated photo shows the OceanGate Titan vessel.

    The OceanGate Expeditions trip began with a 400-nautical-mile journey from St. John’s, Newfoundland, to the Titanic wreck site. There, the submersible started its descent Sunday morning before losing contact with the Polar Prince, a converted ice breaker that was its mother ship.

    The last communication between the vessel and OceanGate staff at the surface came in at 11:47 a.m. The vessel was expected to resurface at 6:10 p.m. but did not do so, and authorities were notified at 6:35 p.m., according to Polar Prince co-owner Miawpukek Maritime Horizon Services.

    Chief Mi’sel Joe of Miawpukek First Nation, which co-owns the Polar Prince, got a call Sunday alerting him that the submersible was two hours overdue and still hadn’t surfaced and communication with it was lost, he said. At that point, requests for search and rescue had gone out, he said.

    “There’s a tremendous amount of concern,” Joe said. “I have anguish that people are going through this. I wish there was more I can do.”

    Unlike a submarine, a submersible needs a mother ship to launch it, has fewer power reserves and can’t stay underwater as long.

    A mother ship can communicate with a submersible “via text messages which are exchanged via a USBL (ultra-short baseline) acoustic system,” according to OceanGate Expeditions’ archived website. The submersible is required to communicate with the ship every 15 minutes or more frequently, if needed, the site says. That USBL system is the only communications link between the submersible and the surface, it adds.

    What we know about the timeline:

    Friday, June 16:

  • The Polar Prince departs St. John’s, NewfoundlandSaturday, June 17:
  • The Polar Prince arrives at the dive siteSunday, June 18:
  • 9 a.m.: The dive operations started
  • 11:47 a.m.: Last communication between vessel and OceanGate surface staff
  • 6:10 p.m.: Originally scheduled resurface time
  • 6:35 pm.: Authorities notified and response operation initiated
  • All times in Atlantic Daylight Time, which is 1.5 hours ahead of Eastern Time
  • Source: Miawpukek Maritime Horizon Services, which co-owns the Polar Prince

While Titan is made of carbon fiber and titanium, some parts are decidedly low-tech.

“It is operated … by a gaming controller, what essentially looks like a PlayStation controller,” said CNN correspondent Gabe Cohen, who sat in Titan in 2018 while reporting on OceanGate Expeditions for CNN affiliate KOMO.

Cohen was surprised by how simple some of the craft’s technology seemed, he said Tuesday on “CNN This Morning.”

It’s a “tiny vessel, quite cramped and small,” Cohen said. “You have to sit inside of it, shoes off. It can only fit five people.”

A Titanic dive takes about 10 hours from start to finish, including the two and a half hours it takes to reach the bottom, the website says. The company calls its clients “mission specialists,” who are trained as crew members in a variety of different roles, including communicating with the topside tracking team, taking sonar scans and opening and closing the vessel’s dome, the archived site says.

Clients do not need previous maritime experience to join as mission specialists, it adds.

In case of an emergency, the submersible is equipped with basic emergency medical supplies and pilots have basic first aid training, according to OceanGate Expeditions’ website.

Everybody is “focused onboard here for our friends,” an expedition participant on the Polar Prince said Monday.

“We have a situation that is now the part of a major Search and Rescue effort, being undertaken by major agencies,” Rory Golden said on Facebook after CNN contacted him. “That is where our focus is right now.”

Hamish Harding posted an image of the submersible to his social media accounts on Saturday.

Deep sea-mapping company Magellan, known for their one-of-a-kind deep sea imagery of the Titanic, is trying to get involved in the search and rescue efforts but a key transport issue is holding them back. Magellan Chairman David Thompson told CNN that his team is familiar with the site of the wreck and received written notice from OceanGate Expeditions to mobilize early Monday and help.

However, they need an aircraft with the ability to transport their deep-sea diving equipment from the UK to Canada to launch their operation. Specifically, he said, they would require the use of a C-17 Globemaster III military jet.

“We know the wreck site, we know the location, and the equipment we are trying to get picked up is the equipment we used to do that scanning of the Titanic,” Thompson said.

Thompson said the US Air Force or UK Royal Airforce have not gotten back to Magellan letting them know if or when a plane can be procured for them to use to transport the equipment they need to Canada to embark on rescue efforts.

Correction: An earlier version of this story incorrectly described Mathieu Johann’s relationship to Nargeolet. He is a friend.

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