Category Archives: Science

How can astronauts explore Mars’ Grand Canyon, Valles Marineris

July 22, 2022 Admin Leave a comment

There are many in Mars exploration circles that see Valles Marineris as a “tell all” place, ripe for human exploration that can uncover the planet’s history and its capacity to sustain microbial life.

That said, how best to investigate the multifaceted geology in evidence at this site? Can future crews on the Red Planet dive safely into this huge canyon system? And what awaits those probing a vast region that’s been branded as the Grand Canyon of Mars?

Valles Marineris is a humongous feature; a system of canyons cutting across the Martian surface spanning 2,500 miles (4,000 kilometers), covering about one-fifth the circumference of Mars. At some points, this colossal chasm is 125 miles (200 km) wide. In certain places, the canyon floor reaches a depth of 5 miles (8 km).

Bottom line: that’s far deeper than Earth’s Grand Canyon.

Related: Glaciers on Mars likely helped carve Red Planet’s ‘Grand Canyon’

To encourage on-the-spot human studies of Valles Marineris, some scientists have pinpointed and provisionally named an area known as the “Noctic Landing” site. Its strategic location allows the shortest possible surface excursions to the Martian volcanic plateau of Tharsis as well as Valles Marineris — that grand feature and region on the Red Planet that exposes the longest record of Mars’ geology and evolution through time.

Tharsis is the area of Mars that has experienced the longest and most extensive volcanic history, and might still be volcanically active. Some of the youngest lava flows on Mars have been identified on the western flanks of the Tharsis Bulge.

Furthermore, those flows are within driving range of future pressurized rover traverses.

Top priority science

“I think that, when it comes to planning human missions to Mars, we might be past the point of thinking only about notional science objectives in location-agnostic ways,” said Pascal Lee, a planetary scientist at NASA Ames Research Center in California and the SETI Institute.

Lee is chairman of the Mars Institute, an international, non-governmental, non-profit research organization dedicated to advancing the scientific study, exploration, and public understanding of Mars. He’s also director of the NASA Haughton-Mars Project, an international multidisciplinary field research project focused on Mars analog studies at the Haughton impact crater site on Devon Island in the High Arctic.

We can and should, right now, look for human landing sites where most if not all our top priority science objectives could be met, Lee told Space.com. That human touchdown zone would likely offer multiple ways of extracting water locally — something a robotic scouting mission could ascertain — and where it would make sense to establish a base for long term exploration, he said.

Noctis Landing on Mars is an ostensibly flat transitional region between Noctis Labyrinthus and Valles Marineris proper. (Image credit: Pascal Lee)

At the crossroads

Lee is passionate that such a site that he dubs Noctis Landing is an ostensibly flat transitional region between Noctis Labyrinthus (Latin for ‘the labyrinth of night’) and Valles Marineris proper.

Noctis Landing not only offers a large number and wide range of regions of interest for short-term exploration, it is also located strategically at the crossroads between Tharsis and Valles Marineris, which are key for long-term exploration. The area is distinguished for its maze-like system of deep, steep-walled valleys.

“If you head east or south from Noctis Landing, you go deeper into Valles Marineris and can look for signs of past life,” Lee said. “If you head west or north from Noctis, you climb onto Mars’ giant volcanoes with their many caves, and can look for extant life.”

No rock-climbing required

The upshot is that the Noctis Landing locale is unique, being at the literal junction of the search for signs of past and present life on Mars.

As for exploring Valles Marineris, the key advantage of Noctis Landing is that you can access all the rock layers of the canyon without having to resort to rock-climbing, Lee said.

“Thanks to the giant Oudemans impact crater nearby the Noctis Landing, giant slabs of Valles Marineris canyon walls have been laid flat there, ready for you to explore, one rock layer at a time, by just driving along the canyon floor,” Lee added.

Once down at Noctis Landing, astronaut explorers have a number of routes to investigate Mars. (Image credit: Pascal Lee, et al.)

Hidden water

Late last year, Igor Mitrofanov of the Space Research Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow, Russia reported that a significant quantity of hidden water has been spotted at the central part of Mars’ dramatic canyon system, Valles Marineris.

The observation came via the European Space Agency-Roscosmos ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO). Mitrofanov is the principal investigator of the TGO-toted Fine Resolution Epithermal Neutron Detector (FREND) neutron telescope. That instrument is mapping the hydrogen — a measure of water content — in the uppermost meter of Mars’ soil.

Mitrofanov and colleagues found evidence for unusually high hydrogen abundances in the heart of Valles Marineris on Mars.

Unclear mix of conditions

“With TGO we can look down to one meter below this dusty layer and see what’s really going on below Mars’ surface — and, crucially, locate water-rich ‘oases’ that couldn’t be detected with previous instruments,” Mitrofanov stated (opens in new tab) in an ESA-issued statement.

“Assuming the hydrogen we see is bound into water molecules, as much as 40% of the near-surface material in this region appears to be water,” Mitrofanov said.

As the ESA statement puts it, the detection suggests that “some special, as-yet-unclear mix of conditions must be present in Valles Marineris to preserve the water — or that it is somehow being replenished.”

Mitrofanov and his research associates published their work (opens in new tab) in the March 2022 issue of the journal Icarus, stating: “Such ice not only is an intriguing material for searching frozen proto-life fragments or complex organic molecules from the early epoch of Mars, but also is an indispensable natural resource for future Mars exploration that is easy to exploit.”

Fog banks

NASA’s Lee underscored the intriguing finding that there’s frequent occurrence of fog in Valles Marineris. “While the average Martian atmosphere is generally considered to hold too little water vapor for it to be worth compressing and exploiting, the presence of ice fog, the most likely explanation for the fog banks frequently filling Valles Marineris, indicates that the Martian atmosphere could be locally supersaturated in water, possibly up to amounts worth extracting,” he said.

The presence of fog in Valles Marineris, Lee said, also suggests that at least part of the hydrogen detected by Mitrofanov and his associates is likely to be in the form of H2O, not just water of hydration in minerals.

The European Space Agency’s Mars Express caught this image of fog at Valles Marineris. (Image credit: ESA/DLR/FU Berlin (G. Neukum))

Taking to the air

Purging Valles Marineris of its scientific holdings could be augmented by aerial vehicles, said Abigail Fraeman, a research scientist and Mars Science Laboratory Deputy project scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

That view is clearly backed by the airborne success of NASA’s Ingenuity Mars helicopter at Jezero Crater.

“We can start to imagine all sorts of possibilities for future Mars exploration with aerial assets,” Fraeman told Space.com. “One of the benefits of exploring Mars from the air is the ability to travel much longer distances over terrains that would be too treacherous for rovers.”

Astronauts working on the surface of Mars could employ a helicopter (airborne at left) similar to the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter. (Image credit: NASA)

Fraeman said that Valles Marineris is one example of a site that might really benefit from exploration by helicopters. “This platform could enable us to explore sections of really ancient crust exposed in the walls of the canyon, the steep layered sedimentary deposits in the canyon’s center, and even the mysterious recurring slope lineae which occur on steep slopes throughout Valles Marineris and might be formed by very salty liquid water.”

Exploring these features, Fraeman added, “would help us answer questions about the entirety of Mars’ history, from the first formation through the present day, and provide unprecedented insight into mechanisms that affect the climate and habitability of Mars, as well as rocky worlds beyond our solar system.”

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JWST’s stunning ‘Phantom Galaxy’ picture looks like a wormhole

July 22, 2022 Admin Leave a comment

A fresh image based on brand-new deep-space data appears to show a wormhole spinning before our very eyes.

The appropriately named “Phantom Galaxy” glows eerily in a new image by Judy Schmidt based on James Webb Space Telescope data collected nearly a million miles away from our planet using the observatory’s mid-infrared instrument (MIRI).

“I’ve been doing this for 10 years now, and [Webb] data is new, different, and exciting,” Schmidt told Space.com. “Of course I’m going to make something with it.”

Live updates: NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope mission
Gallery: James Webb Space Telescope’s 1st photos

The image highlights the dust lanes in the galaxy, which is more properly known as NGC 628 or Messier 74. Dubbed the “perfect spiral” by some astronomers because the galaxy is so symmetrical, the Phantom Galaxy is scientifically interesting because of the intermediate-mass black hole scientists believe is embedded at its heart.

The galaxy has been imaged professionally many times before, including by space observatories such as the Hubble Space Telescope and the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE). What makes Webb imagery stand apart from these past efforts is the mid-infrared range that highlights cosmic dust, along with the power of its unique 18-segment hexagonal mirror and deep-space location.

Webb observed M74 earlier this week. The data was also shared on Twitter (opens in new tab) (with different filtration) by Gabriel Brammer, an astronomer at the Cosmic Dawn Center in the Niels Bohr Institute at the University of Denmark.

A selected of raw Webb imagery is made publicly available at this portal (opens in new tab) a few hours or days after observations, and amateur imagers and scientists are free to use the data as long as they credit the source when publishing.

The Phantom Galaxy, also known as Messier 74 or NGC 628, as seen by the Hubble Space Telescope. (Image credit: NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage (STScI/AURA)-ESA/Hubble Collaboration)

The busy deep-space telescope released its first operational images on July 12 of deep-space objects, including a nebula and a view of very young galaxies. An infrared view of Jupiter, along with the gas giant’s moons and rings, joined the iconic new images on July 14.

That week’s work alone showcases Webb’s flexibility in switching between faraway objects near the cosmic dawn — when stars began shining — and solar system objects much closer to its viewfinder.

As for the Phantom Galaxy, Schmidt used Photoshop and FITS Liberator for most of the work and said many of the concepts in her 2017 YouTube imaging tutorial (opens in new tab) will help with the more advanced software of today.

You can check out more spectacular imagery of Webb photos and other cosmic objects at Schmidt’s Flickr page (opens in new tab).

Follow Elizabeth Howell on Twitter @howellspace (opens in new tab). Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom (opens in new tab) and on Facebook (opens in new tab).

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Scientists Analyzed Penguin DNA And Found Something Quite Remarkable

July 22, 2022 Admin Leave a comment

Penguins are no strangers to climate change. Their life history has been shaped by rising and falling temperatures, and their bodies are highly specialized for some of Earth’s most extreme conditions.

And yet, scientists are concerned the evolutionary path of the penguin may be grinding to a halt, thanks to what appears to be the lowest evolutionary rates ever detected in birds.

A team of international researchers has just published one of the most comprehensive studies of penguin evolution to date, which is the first to integrate data from living and fossil penguin species.

The research unveils the tumultuous life history of penguins in general, with three-quarters of all known penguin species – now represented by fossils only – already extinct.

“Over 60 million years, these iconic birds have evolved to become highly specialized marine predators, and are now well adapted to some of the most extreme environments on Earth,” the authors write.

“Yet, as their evolutionary history reveals, they now stand as sentinels highlighting the vulnerability of cold-adapted fauna in a rapidly warming world.”

On land, penguins can appear a bit ridiculous, with their awkward waddle and seemingly useless wings. But underwater, their bodies are transformed into hydrodynamic torpedoes that would make any fleeing fish wish it could fly.

Penguins had already lost their ability to fly 60 million years ago, before the formation of the polar ice sheets, in favor of wing-propelled diving.

The fossils and genomic data suggest the unique features that enable penguins’ aquatic lifestyles emerged early in their existence as a group, with rates of evolutionary change generally trending downwards over time.

The scientists think penguins originated on a Gondwanan micro-continent called Zealandia, which is now mostly submerged under the ocean.

The paper suggests the ancestors of modern penguins – crown penguins – emerged approximately 14 million years ago, a whole 10 million years after genetic analyses have hinted at.

This particular period would coincide with a moment of global cooling named the middle Miocene climate transition. Living penguins, however, split into separate genetic groups within the last 3 million years.

Penguins spread out across Zealandia before dispersing to South America and Antarctica multiple times, with later groups likely hitching a ride on the Antarctic Circumpolar Current.

The scientists found that almost every penguin species experienced a period of physical isolation during the Last Glacial Period.

Their contact with other penguins was limited during this time, as groups were forced to live in more fragmented areas of habitat further north, where they could still find food and shelter.

As a result, the DNA pool of each group became narrower, pushing species further apart genetically.

In the period of warming that followed, they moved back towards the poles, and some groups, now much more genetically distinct, crossed paths once more.

The way certain groups of penguins experienced these significant climate events offers insight into how they might cope with human-caused climate change.

The groups that increased in number when warming occurred shared some features: They were migratory, and foraged offshore. The researchers think these features allowed them to respond to changing climates better, especially the ability to look further afar for prey and to move to lower latitudes.

Those that decreased in number, on the other hand, lived in one particular place, and foraged closer to shore for food: a lifestyle that doesn’t cope too well when the conditions ‘at home’ drastically change.

But penguins’ ability to change might be limited by more than just lifestyle – it seems to be embedded in their genes.

It turns out that penguins have the lowest evolutionary rates yet detected in bird species, along with their sister order, Procellariiformes, which includes birds like petrels and albatrosses.

The researchers compared 17 different orders of birds overall, using several genetic signatures closely related to rates of evolutionary change.

They noticed that aquatic birds generally had slower rates of evolution than their terrestrial kin, so they think the adoption of an aquatic lifestyle might go hand-in-hand with low evolutionary rates. They also think that evolutionary rates in birds are lower in cooler climates.

The order Pelecaniformes, which includes seafaring birds like pelicans and cormorants, were a near third for lowest evolutionary rate, and waterfowl (order Anseriformes) had much lower rates than earthbound fowls like turkeys, chickens, and quails (order Galliformes).

The researchers note that the ancestral crown penguins evolved at a faster rate than living penguins, but even then, this was slow compared to other birds.

Half of all living penguin species are endangered or vulnerable, and the scientists say their slow evolutionary rates and niche lifestyles could send penguins towards a dead end.

“The current pace of warming combined with limited refugia in the Southern Ocean will likely far exceed the adaptive capability of penguins,” they write.

“The risks of future collapses are ever-present as penguin populations across the Southern Hemisphere are faced with rapid anthropogenic climate change.”

This research was published in Nature Communications.

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Ancient Microbial “Dark Matter” – Thousands of Unknown Bacterial Species Discovered in Hawaiian Lava Caves

July 22, 2022 Admin Leave a comment

Steve Smith in a Hawaiian cave passage filled with roots of the Kaʻu district on the Island of Hawai`i. Credit: Kenneth Ingham

Centuries-Old Lava Caves of Hawaiʻi Island Contain Thousands of Unknown Bacterial Species

Higher bacterial diversity than scientists expected has been uncovered in the lava caves, lava tubes, and geothermal vents on the big island of Hawaiʻi. The findings have been reported in a new study published today (July 21, 2022) in the journal Frontiers in Microbiology.

This research investigates the variety and interactions within these microbial ecosystems, which illustrate how life may have existed on

“This study points to the possibility that more ancient lineages of bacteria, like the phylum Chloroflexi, may have important ecological ‘jobs,’ or roles,” said first author Dr. Rebecca D Prescott of

Thick microbial mats hang under a rock ledge in steam vents that run along the Eastern Rift Zone on Hawaiʻi Island. Credit: Jimmy Saw

The harshest conditions—the geothermal sites—were expected to have lower diversity than the more established and habitable lava tubes. While the diversity was indeed found to be lower, the team of researchers was surprised to discover that the interactions within these communities were more complex than in locations with higher diversity.

“This leads to the question, do extreme environments help create more interactive microbial communities, with microorganisms more dependent on each other?” said Prescott. “And if so, what is it about extreme environments that helps to create this?”

Since Chloroflexi, and another class called Acidobacteria, were present at nearly all of the locations, they may play essential roles in these communities. However, these were not the most abundant bacteria, and the individual communities from the different sites showed large variations in the diversity and complexity of the microbial interactions. Counterintuitively, the most abundant groups, Oxyphotobacteria and Actinobacteria, were not often ‘hub’ species, suggesting that their roles may be less important to the overall structure of the community.

SpaceX calls rare last-minute abort during California launch countdown – Spaceflight Now

July 21, 2022 Admin Leave a comment

File photo of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket on its launch pad in California before a previous mission. Credit: SpaceX

SpaceX called off a Falcon 9 launch attempt Thursday less than a minute before liftoff from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California, the company’s first terminal countdown abort in more than 18 months for reasons other than bad weather or range safety.

The Falcon 9 rocket was supposed to take off on SpaceX’s Starlink 3-2 mission at 10:39 a.m. PDT (1:39 p.m. EDT; 1739 GMT) Thursday from a foggy launch pad at Vandenberg, a military spaceport about 140 miles (225 kilometers) northwest of Los Angeles.

But the countdown’s computer sequencer aborted the pre-launch sequence at T-minus 46 seconds. SpaceX did not identify a reason for the hold, but weather parameters and the military-run range at Vandenberg were “go” for launch.

The company had two instantaneous launch opportunities Thursday to line up with orbital planes in the company’s Starlink internet constellation. There are 46 Starlink internet satellites awaiting launch from California on the Falcon 9 rocket.

The options for SpaceX’s launch team are also limited once the Falcon 9 rocket is loaded with propellants. The Falcon 9 uses densified, super-chilled kerosene and liquid oxygen propellants, and the fluids can get too warm if the rocket remains on the ground too long before liftoff.

SpaceX’s launch director announced the countdown Thursday was scrubbed, and teams began preparations to drain propellants from the two-stage Falcon 9 rocket. Officials tentatively set another launch attempt for Friday at the same time — 10:39 a.m. PDT.

The last time a technical problem forced SpaceX stopped a countdown in the final phase of countdown preparations was in December 2020 on a launch from Florida for the National Reconnaissance Office. During that launch attempt, SpaceX engineers identified an unexpected pressure reading in the Falcon 9’s upper stage liquid oxygen tank, lowered the rocket horizontal for troubleshooting, then successfully launched the mission two days later.

SpaceX has scrubbed multiple Falcon 9 countdowns since December 2020 due to bad weather or range violations by ships or aircraft that ventured into restricted airspace or waters near the launch site. And there have been a few launch delays caused by concerns with the the Falcon 9 rocket or ground systems, but none of those occurred in the final countdown sequence before liftoff.

SpaceX has launched 62 Falcon 9 rocket missions since the NROL-108 launch was scrubbed by a technical issue more than 18 months ago.

The Starlink 3-2 mission aims to deploy 46 internet satellites into polar orbit. Credit: Spaceflight Now

The launch of the next 46 Starlink satellites from California will mark the 32nd flight of a Falcon 9 rocket this year, breaking the record of 31 missions in a calendar year set in 2021.

And the year is barely half over, meaning SpaceX is on pace to nearly double the number of launches accomplished in 2021. SpaceX has launched more successful missions into orbit so far this year than the combined efforts of any other nation, and the company is far outpacing its chief competitors in the commercial marketplace.

United Launch Alliance, a rival in the competition for U.S. military launch business, has successfully launched four times this year. Arianespace, the European commercial launch company, has accomplished three missions so far in 2021.

SpaceX said its first 31 missions of the year delivered around 351 metric tons (about 774,000 pounds) of payload mass into orbit. The flights have carried astronauts to the International Space Station, launched hundreds of small satellites for the Starlink network and customer fleets, and deployed national security payloads for the U.S. government’s spy satellite agency.

While SpaceX preps for launch of the Starlink 3-2 mission, workers at the Kennedy Space Center are readying another Falcon 9 rocket for liftoff from pad 39A no earlier than Sunday with another batch of Starlink internet satellites.

Email the author.

Follow Stephen Clark on Twitter: @StephenClark1.

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Trap-jaw ants’ lightning-fast bite should rip their heads apart. Here’s why it doesn’t.

July 21, 2022 Admin Leave a comment

Moving at speeds thousands of times faster than the blink of an eye, the spring-loaded jaws of a trap-jaw ant catch the insect’s prey by surprise and can also launch the ant into the air if it aims its chompers at the ground. Now, scientists have revealed how the ant’s jaws can snap closed at blistering speeds without shattering from the force.

In a new study, published Thursday (July 21) in the Journal of Experimental Biology (opens in new tab), a team of biologists and engineers studied a species of trap-jaw ant called Odontomachus brunneus, native to parts of the U.S., Central America and the West Indies. To build up power for their lightning-fast bites, the ants first stretch their jaws apart, so they form a 180 degree angle, and “cock” them against latches inside their heads. Enormous muscles, attached to each jaw by a tendon-like cord, pull the jaws into place and then flex to build up a store of elastic energy; this flexion is so extreme that it warps the sides of the ant’s head, causing them to bow inward, the team found. When the ant strikes, its jaws unlatch and that stored energy gets released at once, sending the jaws smashing together.

The researchers examined this spring-loaded mechanism in fine detail, but the project’s engineers puzzled over how the system could work without generating too much friction. Friction would not only slow the jaws down, but would also generate destructive wear-and-tear at each jaw’s point of rotation. Using mathematical modeling, they eventually found an answer as to how trap-jaw ants avoid this problem.

“This is the part that engineers are incredibly excited about,” in part because the discovery could pave the way for the construction of tiny robots whose parts can rotate with unparalleled speed and precision, Sheila Patek, the Hehmeyer Professor of Biology at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, and the study’s senior author, told Live Science.

Related: What do ants smell like?

A nearly-frictionless, spring-loaded system

To study the incredible jaws of O. brunneus, Patek and her colleagues collected ants from a colony found in the scrubland near Lake Placid, Florida. Back in the lab, the team dissected some of the ants and took detailed measurements and micro-CT scans of their body parts, particularly their jaws and the muscles and exoskeleton of the head. They later plugged these measurements into their mathematical models of the ants’ movements.

In addition, the team placed some ants in front of a high-speed camera that captured footage at a whopping 300,000 frames per second. (Video is typically filmed at 24 to 30 frames per second, for comparison.) These videos revealed that, as the ants prepared to strike, the exoskeleton covering their heads underwent significant compression, shortening by about 3%, length-wise, and growing about 6% skinnier around the middle. This compression took place over several seconds, which feels slow compared with the ant’s speedy bite, Patek said.

Once released from their latches, the ants’ jaws swung through a perfect arc, reaching their peak velocity around the 65 degree mark before beginning to decelerate. At their fastest, the tips of the ants’ jaws traveled roughly 120 mph (195 km/h) through the air.

This ultrafast motion unfolded smoothly and precisely thanks to several forces acting on the jaws at the same time, the team determined.

(Image credit: © Alex Wild, used by permission)

For one, as the ant’s head popped back into its normal shape, it catapulted the tip of each jaw out into space. Meanwhile, the large muscles inside the ant’s head relaxed and stopped stretching out the tendon-like cords to which they were attached. As each cord settled back to its normal length — think of a stretched-out rubber band suddenly being released — it yanked on the end of the jaw that sits inside the ant’s head. It’s this simultaneous pushing and pulling that sent the ant’s jaws flying towards one another.

Related: These worker ants drag their queens to far-off bachelor pads to mate

A similar principle applies when you spin a bottle on a flat surface; the twisting motion required to spin the bottle involves pushing one end of the bottle forward while pulling the other end backwards. Likewise, when ballerinas perform pirouettes with the support of a partner, the partner will push one of her hips forward and pull the other back to set her turn in motion. However, the best analogy for the trap jaw ant’s mandible motion might be stick juggling, a circus art in which performers use two sticks to twirl a baton in mid-air.

The baton encounters little friction as it flips through the air, and based on their mathematical models, the study authors think that a trap-jaw ant’s mandibles are similarly unconstrained. At first, the researchers thought that each jaw might pivot around a pin joint, similar to a door on a hinge, but they determined that such a structure would introduce too much resistance. Instead, they found that the jaws rotate around a far less rigid joint structure that requires little reinforcement in the ant’s head.

“The dual spring mechanism drastically reduces reaction forces and friction at this joint so that the joint does not need very much reinforcement in order to hold the mandible in place,” study co-first author Gregory Sutton, a Royal Society University Research Fellow at the University of Lincoln in England, told Live Science in an email. The lack of friction in this system may explain how trap-jaw ants can strike again and again without ever injuring themselves, the authors concluded.

The authors think that all trap-jaw ants in the Odontomachus genus use the same spring-loaded mechanism to bite, but trap-jaw ants in other genera may use a slightly different strategy, Patek said. That said, Patek suspects that the mechanism they discovered may well be used by other arthropods, meaning insects, spiders and crustaceans.

For example, mantis shrimp, famous for throwing 50 mph (80 km/h) punches, likely warp their exoskeletons and use super-stretchy tendons to build up power for each strike — although such a mechanism has not yet been identified in the shrimp.

“We’re starting to realize that this is going to be the rule of thumb for these super-fast arthropods,” Patek said.

Originally published on Live Science.

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Everything to Know About 2022’s Perseid Meteor Shower, Including When It Peaks and How to Watch

July 21, 2022 Admin Leave a comment

Photomontage taken on Aug. 13, 2021 shows the night sky during the Perseid Meteor Shower above an ecological demonstration zone of Engebei in Kubuqi Desert, north China’s Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region.

Ren Junchuan/Xinhua via Getty

Greetings earthlings!

It’s time to point your eyes to the sky once again because the Perseid meteor shower is upon us, which according to NASA is considered “the best meteor shower of the year.”

Not only do the shooting stars produce approximately 50 to 100 meteors per hour, but the super fast, bright balls leave “wakes” of light and color in their trail as they streak across Earth’s atmosphere.

The Perseids are also known for their fireballs, making the stars appear brighter and faster compared to the average meteor streak due to its derivation from larger particles of cometary material.

RELATED: Breathtaking Photos of July’s Buck Moon Captured From Around the World

Like all meteor showers, the fiery stars originate from their parent comet — and for the Perseids, that would be Comet Swift-Tuttle. The showers produce an incredible starry spectacle when they reach their peak.

“That’s the moment when the Earth passes through the heart of the stream of dust left behind by Comet Swift-Tuttle,” science astrophotographer and astronomer Dr. Darren Baskill told Science Focus Magazine.

From when they will peak to how to watch, here’s everything to know about the 2022 Perseid meteor shower.

When does the Perseid meteor shower peak?

In this 30 second exposure, a meteor streaks across the sky during the annual Perseid meteor shower, Wednesday, Aug. 11, 2021, in Spruce Knob, West Virginia.

Bill Ingalls/ NASA via Getty

This year, the Perseid meteor shower is expected to peak at 1:00 a.m. local time on Aug. 13 — but the early hour on Saturday morning isn’t the only chance for you to try and catch a glimpse of the starry spectacle!

The Perseids started on July 17 and will remain active through Aug. 24, giving stargazers several chances to watch the celestial spectacle. In fact, it might be best to catch the shooting stars on an off night due to the full Sturgeon Moon that will be in effect.

For prime views, it’s best to look up at the sky on a crystal-clear night away from any light pollution, allowing for the stars to really pop.

RELATED: We Tried It: Driving the New Ford Bronco in Search of the Perseids Meteor Shower

When to watch the Perseid meteor shower?

n this NASA handout, a 30 second exposure of a meteor streaks across the sky during the annual Perseid meteor shower August 12, 2016 in Spruce Knob, West Virginia. The annual display, known as the Perseid shower because the meteors appear to radiate from the constellation Perseus in the northeastern sky, is a result of Earth’s orbit passing through debris from the comet Swift-Tuttle.

Bill Ingalls/NASA via Getty

While watching the showers at their peak is expected to grant stargazers the most meteors, EarthSky.com suggests looking up from late evening until early dawn at the beginning of August for the Perseids.

“Also note that the Perseids strengthen in number as late night deepens into the wee hours of the morning,” the space outlet reports. “Watch on multiple mornings, until the waxing moon – brighter each night, and up for more hours – drives you back inside.”

Viewers can expect to catch a meteor “every minute or two during the peak hours – and they move quickly!” Baskill told Science Focus Magazine.

Where does the Perseid meteor shower appear in the sky?

The Perseid meteor shower is seen over a mountain range in Korla, Xinjiang Province, China, in the early hours of August 13, 2021.

Costfoto/Future Publishing via Getty

Like all meteor showers, they appear to shoot from their radiant — the point in the sky from which the stars seem to come from. Typically, they fly high near their corresponding constellation. For the Perseids, that star cluster is known as the Perseus constellation, which “follows the brighter and more distinctive constellation Cassiopeia,” per Space.com.

Before you go and invest in a star map, meteor showers most often can be viewed all over the night sky, despite appearing to radiate from their corresponding constellation.

RELATED: Everything to Know About the Full Moons in 2022

What meteor shower comes after the Perseids?

Everything to Know About the Tau Herculid Meteor Shower

getty

Following the Perseid meteor shower is the Orionids, a mid-strength shower that can produce 10-20 stars at maximum, according to the American Meteor Society. They are set to start on Sept. 26 and remain active until Nov. 22. The Orionids are expected to peak between late night on Oct. 20 and Oct. 21 early morning.

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Hawaii’s Lava Caves Are Teeming With Bacterial ‘Dark Matter’

July 21, 2022 Admin Leave a comment

The Thurston Lava Tube in Hawaii Volcano National Park, Big Island

Photo: Shutterstock (Shutterstock)

Hawaii’s volcanic environments contain a rich array of mysterious microbes, new research this week has found. Scientists say that the islands’ lava caves and other structures created by volcanic activity have unique, diverse, and still uncharacterized communities of bacteria living inside them. The findings indicate that there is much left to learn about life in some of the most extreme conditions on Earth.

Researchers at several universities and NASA collaborated for the study, which was published Thursday in Frontiers in Microbiology. They studied samples collected from 70 sites along the Big Island of Hawaii, the largest island of the Hawaiian archipelago. These sites included caves, tubes, and fumaroles, which are openings or vents where volcanic gasses and water can escape. They analyzed and sequenced the RNA found in the samples, allowing to create a rough map of the bacterial communities living there.

A stalactite formation in a Hawaiian cave system from this study with copper minerals and white microbial colonies.

Photo: Kenneth Ingham

Some of these areas, particularly those with ongoing geothermal activity, are the most inhospitable places in the world, since they are incredibly hot and filled with chemicals toxic to most living things. So the research team expected to find relatively little variety of life nestled within the sites that had these extreme conditions. Older caves and tubes that were formed over 500 years ago, the researchers found, did have greater bacterial diversity. But to their surprise, even the active geothermal vents were filled with a wide variety of bacteria. And compared to the other sites, the bacterial communities in these harsher habitats also appeared to be more complex in how they interacted with one another.

“This leads to the question, do extreme environments help create more interactive microbial communities, with microorganisms more dependent on each other?” said study author Rebecca Prescott, a researcher at the NASA Johnson Space Center and University of Hawaii, in a statement. “And if so, what is it about extreme environments that helps to create this?

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Thick microbial mats hang under a rock ledge in steam vents that run along the Eastern Rift Zone.

Image: Jimmy Saw

The bacteria found in these sites also rarely overlapped, meaning that these environments seem to host their own unique microbial worlds, with at least thousands of unknown species left to be identified. One group of bacteria in particular, known as Chloroflexi, might be especially influential, though, since they were commonly found in different volcanic areas and seemed to interact with many other organisms. And it’s possible that they may be an example of a “hub species”—microbes vital to the structure and function of their communities.

“This study points to the possibility that more ancient lineages of bacteria, like the phylum Chloroflexi, may have important ecological ‘jobs,’ or roles,” said Prescott. “The Chloroflexi are an extremely diverse group of bacteria, with lots of different roles found in lots of different environments, but they are not well studied and so we don’t know what they do in these communities. Some scientists call such groups ‘microbial dark matter’—the unseen or un-studied microorganisms in nature.”

These sorts of genetic sampling studies can provide a broad view of the bacterial world found in a particular place, but not more detailed information about individual species or the roles they play in their tiny neighborhoods. So the scientists say that more research is needed to decipher the mystery of these volcanic inhabitants. In time, what we learn may be relevant to our understanding of how life began on the Earth or even on Mars, since these environments might be the closest existing analog to what the planets looked like long ago.

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SpaceX’s next astronaut launch for NASA slips to late September

July 21, 2022 Admin Leave a comment

SpaceX’s next Dragon passengers will need to wait a little longer to get off the ground.

SpaceX and NASA will launch Crew-5, their next crewed mission to the International Space Station, no earlier than Sept. 29, according to a NASA statement (opens in new tab) released on Thursday (July 21). The delay will see the mission slip behind the next launch of astronauts on a Russian Soyuz vehicle.

“A launch at the end of September will allow SpaceX to complete hardware processing and mission teams will continue to review the launch date based on the space station’s visiting spacecraft schedule,” NASA officials wrote.

In pictures: Amazing launch photos of SpaceX’s Crew-4 mission

Crew-5 includes NASA astronauts Nicole Mann and Josh Cassada, Japanese astronaut Koichi Wakata and Russian cosmonaut Anna Kikina.

The flight will be a crucial milestone for NASA, which has long argued in favor of “crew swaps” in which Russian cosmonauts fly on NASA’s commercially procured missions and NASA astronauts continue to ride on Russian Soyuz capsules.

After lengthy negotiations, NASA announced last week that Crew-5 will be the first SpaceX flight to carry a cosmonaut. NASA and the Russian space agency Roscosmos have also agreed that cosmonaut Andrei Fedyaev will fly on Crew-6, currently targeting launch in the spring. Meanwhile, NASA astronauts Frank Rubio and Loral O’Hara will each fly on Soyuz missions in the coming months.

The new schedule for Crew-5 means that the vehicles will be swapping launch slots as well as passengers.

The Crew-5 mission was previously aiming to arrive at the orbiting laboratory earlier in September. Under the new schedule, rather than Crew-5 replacing the currently orbiting Crew-4 astronauts before the next Soyuz launch, the Soyuz crews will turn over first. The launch of the next Soyuz and return of the current Soyuz crew is scheduled to occur between Sept. 16 and Sept. 30, according to NASA.

In addition to the schedule update, NASA and SpaceX also offered details about the rocket and capsule that will fly Crew-5.

The mission will use the Dragon capsule Endurance, which also carried Crew-3 for a November 2021 launch; the capsule returned to Earth from that flight in early May. Although SpaceX routinely reflies its hardware, NASA noted that this flight will mark a new milestone; it will be the first commercial crew flight to carry four veteran Draco engines to steer the capsule, with no new so-called forward bulkhead Draco engines. Teams are also switching out the capsule’s heat shield, parachutes and pod panels, according to the statement.

Endurance will launch atop a brand-new Falcon 9 booster, but mission personnel still have some issues to address on that end as well. The booster sustained some damage during the journey from the SpaceX production center in California to a test facility in Texas, according to the statement. Accordingly, the company is replacing both the interstage, which connects the first and second stages, and some instruments.

Both SpaceX and NASA are confident in the booster, which underwent a host of tests to ensure that there was no damage beyond the interstage segment; additional tests will also occur after all the replacements are complete, according to the statement.

Email Meghan Bartels at mbartels@space.com or follow her on Twitter @meghanbartels. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.

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Science

NASA Mars rover discovers weird string-like object that goes viral

July 21, 2022 Admin Leave a comment

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As far as scientists at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Library (JPL) know, there are not yet yarn factories on Mars.

So, the image of what looks like a small Martian tumbleweed had some social media users asking questions.

The shots were taken on Tuesday, July 12, or Mars Day 495.

The rover acquired the photos using the onboard Front Right and Front Left Hazard Avoidance Camera A.

NASA’S PERSEVERANCE ROVER SPOTS PIECE OF ITS OWN LANDING GEAR ON MARS

NASA’s Mars Perseverance rover acquired this image of the area in front of it using its onboard Front Right Hazard Avoidance Camera A. This image was acquired on July 12, 2022 (Sol 495) at the local mean solar time of 16:56:25.
(Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech)

One was selected by public vote to be “Image of the Week” last week.

The popular theory, confirmed by a NASA spokesperson in an email to Gizmodo, is that the stringy clump is debris from the mission.

It is not the first time Percy has captured an image of debris.

NASA STEPS UP HUNT FOR EXTRATERRESTRIAL LIFE, WILL COMMISSION ‘ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY’ STUDY ON UFOS

In June, the Perseverance team tweeted that they had spotted a piece of thermal blanket that may have come from the rover’s descent stage.

“That shiny bit of foil is part of a thermal blanket – a material used to control temperatures,” JPL wrote. “It’s a surprise finding this here: My descent stage crashed about 2 km away. Did this piece land here after that, or was it blown here by the wind?”

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Also on July 12, the team wrote the rover had collected its tenth rock core sample.

Julia Musto is a reporter for Fox News Digital. You can find her on Twitter at @JuliaElenaMusto.

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