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NASA, SpaceX to send first Native American woman to orbit

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CNN
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The first Native American woman ever to travel to Earth’s orbit will take flight this week on a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule. The astronaut, NASA’s Nicole Aunapu Mann, will serve as mission commander.

The former US Marine Corps pilot’s role can be thought of as the crew’s quarterback.

Mann’s historic journey — and her first trip to space since joining NASA’s astronaut corps in 2013 — is on track to kick off Wednesday at 12 p.m. ET, when Mann and her three crewmates will ride in their spacecraft atop a 230-foot-tall (70-meter-tall) SpaceX rocket set to take off from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. They’ll travel to the International Space Station for a five-month stay, joining a long list of astronauts to serve as full-time staff aboard the orbiting laboratory, which has hosted humans for nearly 22 years.

On her trip, Mann will carry some mementos: her wedding rings, a surprise gift for her family, and a dream catcher that her mother gave her.

“That will be a special part of my childhood and of my community and my family,” Mann told reporters during a news conference Saturday, just after arriving by plane to the launch site.

Her crewmates will also represent a broad swath of cultural backgrounds. She’ll fly alongside fellow NASA astronaut Josh Cassada, who is from Minnesota; Koichi Wakata of Japan’s space agency, called JAXA, or Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency; and Anna Kikina, a Roscomos cosmonaut who joined this mission as part of a US-Russian ride-sharing agreement.

“I am very proud to represent Native Americans and my heritage,” Mann said. “I think it’s important to celebrate our diversity and also realize how important it is when we collaborate and unite, the incredible accomplishments that we can have.”

Mann grew up in Northern California and is a registered member of the Wailacki tribe of the Round Valley reservation, which encompasses several Indigenous tribes that were forced onto the same post-colonial reservation in the mid-1800s.

“A lot of my extended family still lives in that area,” Mann told Indian Country Today in August. “We actually got together a couple of weeks ago for a family reunion. So it’s really important, I think, for us to continue to create those bonds.”

A colonel in the Marine Corps, Mann began a military career as a second lieutenant in 1999, according to NASA’s website. Two years later, she began flight training and went on serve two deployments, supporting combat operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to NASA. She then earned a spot as a test pilot, flying F/A-18 Hornet and Super Hornet aircraft.

Mann said she realized only later in life that she wanted to be an astronaut — and that such a role was feasible.

“I was in my mid 20s,” she told reporters in August. “I realized that being an astronaut was not only something that was a possible dream, but actually something that’s quite attainable. I think as a young girl, I just didn’t realize that that was an opportunity and a possibility.”

After being selected for NASA’s astronaut corps in 2013, Mann waited years to be assigned to a mission. And after being slotted into her role on Crew-5, Mann spent 18 months in intensive training, including practicing spacewalks underwater and studying Russian to better communicate with her cosmonaut counterparts.

READ MORE: The big numbers that make the Artemis I mission a monumental feat

Mann’s mission, dubbed Crew-5, will mark the sixth astronaut launch that SpaceX has carried out in partnership with NASA since 2020 as part of a broader effort to outsource human spaceflight and other ISS activities to the private sector.

In her role as commander, Mann will be responsible for ensuring the spacecraft is on track from the time it launches until it docks with the ISS and again when it returns home with the four Crew-5 astronauts next year. Never before has a woman taken on the commander role on a SpaceX mission, though a couple women served in that position during the Space Shuttle Program, which NASA retired in 2011.

In the years after NASA was formed in the mid-20th century, astronauts were all White men — even through the final days of the space agency’s famed Apollo program. That only changed when Sally Ride became the first American woman in space in 1983, and she was followed shortly after by the first Black person in space, Guion Bluford.

READ MORE: Meet the space trailblazers of color who empowered others to dream

Since then, NASA has worked to make its astronaut corps more diverse. The space agency’s new, cornerstone human spaceflight program, called Artemis, aims to land the first woman and first person of color on the moon.

The Artemis program hasn’t taken off yet, as NASA is still working to get its mega moon rocket off the ground. But Mann was selected as one of 18 astronauts that could be assigned to the program’s first moon landing mission.

The diverse group of Artemis astronauts have been taking turns traveling to the ISS, where they conduct science experiments and keep of the maintenance of the aging space station as well as prepare for a possible journey to deep space later this decade.

“What we are going to do in low-Earth orbit is a stepping stone to achieve those goals of exploration into deep space,” Mann said, using the term “low-Earth orbit” to refer to the area of space where the ISS orbits. “We’re going to gain a ton of experience flying in low-Earth orbit, and any of us could be assigned to an Artemis mission in the future. And hopefully we’ll walk on the moon together one day. “

On Saturday, Mann also commented on the importance of having astronauts with a wide range of experiences and backgrounds.

“We hope that this will inspire young children throughout the world that come from varying, different backgrounds,” she said. “In fact, I hope it inspires adults as well to follow your dreams and to realize that the limitations that we may have had in the past are starting to be broken down.”



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Asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs also triggered a global tsunami

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CNN
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When a city-size asteroid slammed into Earth 66 million years ago, it wiped out the dinosaurs – and sent a monster tsunami rippling around the planet, according to new research.

The asteroid, about 8.7 miles (14 kilometers) wide, left an impact crater about 62 miles (100 kilometers) across near Mexico’s Yucatan peninsula. In addition to ending the reign of the dinosaurs, the direct hit triggered a mass extinction of 75% of animal and plant life on the planet.

When the asteroid hit, it created a series of cataclysmic events. Global temperatures fluctuated; plumes of aerosol, soot and dust filled the air; and wildfires started as flaming pieces of material blasted from the impact re-entered the atmosphere and rained down. Within 48 hours, a tsunami had circled the globe – and it was thousands of times more energetic than modern tsunamis caused by earthquakes.

Researchers set out to gain a better understanding of the tsunami and its reach through modeling. They found evidence to support their findings about the path and power of the tsunami by studying 120 ocean sediment cores from across the globe. A study detailing the findings published Tuesday in the journal American Geophysical Union Advances.

It’s the first global simulation of the tsunami caused by the Chicxulub impact to be published in a peer-reviewed scientific journal, according to the authors.

The tsunami was powerful enough to create towering waves more than a mile high and scour the ocean floor thousands of miles away from where the asteroid hit, according to the study. It effectively wiped away the sediment record of what happened before the event, as well as during it.

“This tsunami was strong enough to disturb and erode sediments in ocean basins halfway around the globe, leaving either a gap in the sedimentary records or a jumble of older sediments,” said lead author Molly Range, who began working on the study as an undergraduate student and completed it for her master’s thesis at the University of Michigan.

Researchers estimate that the tsunami was up to 30,000 times more energetic than the December 26, 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, one of the largest on record, that killed more than 230,000 people. The energy of the asteroid impact was at least 100,000 times larger than the Tonga volcanic eruption earlier this year.

Brandon Johnson, study coauthor and an associate professor at Purdue University, used a large computer program called a hydrocode to simulate the first 10 minutes of the Chicxulub impact, including the formation of the crater and the beginning of the tsunami.

He included the size of the asteroid and its speed, which was estimated to be moving at 26,843 miles per hour (43,200 kilometers per hour) when it hit the granite crust and shallow waters of the Yucatan peninsula.

Less than three minutes later, rocks, sediments and other debris pushed a wall of water away from the impact, creating a 2.8 mile (4.5 kilometer) tall wave, according to the simulation. This wave subsided as exploded material fell back to Earth.

But as the debris fell, it created even more chaotic waves.

Ten minutes after impact, a ring-shaped wave about a mile high began traveling across the ocean in all directions from a point that was located 137 miles (220 kilometers) away from the impact.

This simulation was then entered into two different global tsunami models, MOM6 and MOST. While MOM6 is used to model deep ocean tsunamis, MOST is part of tsunami forecasting at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Tsunami Warning Centers.

Both models delivered almost the exact same results, creating a timeline of the tsunami for the research team.

An hour after impact, the tsunami had travel beyond the Gulf of Mexico into the North Atlantic Ocean. Four hours post-impact, the waves passed through the Central American Seaway and into the Pacific Ocean. The Central American Seaway once separated North and South America.

Within 24 hours, the waves entered the Indian Ocean from both sides after traveling across the Pacific and Atlantic oceans. And by 48 hours after impact, large tsunami waves had reached most of Earth’s coastlines.

The underwater current was strongest in the North Atlantic Ocean, the Central American Seaway and the South Pacific Ocean, exceeding 0.4 miles per hour (643 meters per hour), which is strong enough to blast away sediments on the ocean floor.

Meanwhile, the Indian Ocean, North Pacific, the South Atlantic and the Mediterranean were shielded from the worst of the tsunami, with lesser underwater currents.

The team analyzed information from 120 sediments that largely came from previous scientific ocean-drilling projects. There were more intact sediment layers in the waters protected from the tsunami’s wrath. Meanwhile, there were gaps in the sediment record for the North Atlantic and South Pacific oceans.

The researchers were surprised to find that sediment on the eastern shores of New Zealand’s north and south islands had been heavily disturbed with multiple gaps. Initially, scientists thought this was because of the activity of tectonic plates.

But the new model shows the sediments being directly in the pathway of the Chicxulub tsunami, despite being 7,500 miles (12,000 kilometers) away.

“We feel these deposits are recording the effects of the impact tsunami, and this is perhaps the most telling confirmation of the global significance of this event,” Range said.

While the team didn’t estimate the tsunami’s impact on coastal flooding, the model shows that the North Atlantic coastal regions and South America’s Pacific coast were likely hit with waves taller than 32.8 feet (20 meters). The waves only grew as they neared the shore, causing flooding and erosion.

Future research will model the extent of global flooding after the impact and how far inland the tsunami’s effects could be felt, according to study coauthor and University of Michigan professor and physical oceanographer Brian Arbic.

“Obviously the greatest inundations would have been closest to the impact site, but even far away the waves were likely to be very large,” Arbic said.

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Dramatic images show spacecraft collision with an asteroid

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CNN
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The DART mission made history this week when it successfully slammed into an asteroid – and we got to see it happen live, from millions of miles away.

As the spacecraft for NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test neared its target Monday, images streamed back to Earth at the rate of one per second of the asteroid Dimorphos, which orbits a larger space rock called Didymos.

Each image proved better than the last, and in the seconds before DART’s impact with Dimorphos, the surface of the small moon filled the entire frame.

Dimorphos, which had never been seen before, turned out to be egg-shaped and covered in boulders. The rocky asteroid has surprised scientists, who are eager to study the images captured by DART before it crashed in a blaze of glory.

Researchers estimate it will take about two months to determine whether DART was successful in changing Dimorphos’ motion in space in humanity’s first test of asteroid deflection technology.

The spacecraft may have shared an incredible first look at an asteroid, but it’s not the only perspective of that asteroid system we’ve been fortunate enough to see.

All eyes were on Didymos and Dimorphos to get a glimpse of the DART impact and aftermath, and the early images did not disappoint.

The Hubble Space Telescope and James Webb Space Telescope both observed the collision and spied plumes of material releasing from the surface of Dimorphos.

Ground-based observatories also shared how bright the asteroid system became after being dinged by DART.

But the most dramatic images were the first ones shared by LICIACube, the mini Italian satellite that followed DART and watched the entire event from a safe distance. The best part? We’re going to see so much more over the next two months.

The Nobel committee will soon announce the recipients of its annual prizes next week.

It’s difficult to predict who will win these prestigious awards because the nominators, short list and the selection process are kept from public view.

In 2021, none of the Nobel laureates for sciences were women, which some critics suggested was more evidence of systemic bias in scientific fields.

But there are plenty of women who are worthy candidates, such as Dr. Mary-Claire King, who discovered cancer-causing genes, and Dr. Marilyn Hughes Gaston, whose work blazed a trail in treating sickle cell disease.

Meet more of the female scientists on CNN’s list and learn about the revolutionary discoveries they’ve made in vaccine research, astronomy and chemistry.

Popping fireworks, sizzling bacon and extended booms of thunder are just some of the sounds associated with Earth’s massive glaciers as they fracture and shrink.

Scientists are tuning in to the surprisingly noisy nature of glaciers to learn how quickly ice is melting amid the climate crisis – and to uncover mysteries of the deep.

Glacial ice can be very fizzy, hissing as it releases pressurized air and bubbles that have been frozen for hundreds or even thousands of years.

Where glaciers meet the ocean can be a dangerous place for humans. Monitoring the acoustics of these dense bodies of ice from afar is changing how researchers understand them and what we know about how their sounds impact the animals living in these disappearing habitats.

More than 100 years after the SS Mesaba sank, scientists have found its wreckage at the bottom of the Irish Sea.

On April 14, 1912, the British merchant steamship had sent a message to the RMS Titanic, but the iceberg warning never reached the massive ocean liner’s main control center on that fateful night.

A German submarine torpedoed the Mesaba just six years later, resulting in the death of 20 people. But the exact location of the vessel has been unknown until now.

Researchers used sonar surveying to find the Mesaba – along with a multitude of other shipwrecks strewn across 7,500 square miles (19,425 kilometers).

Galaxies far, far away seem to be putting on a scintillating show for the James Webb Space Telescope.

Webb spotted the “bones” of a stunning spiral galaxy located 29 million light-years from Earth, a feat even more surprising when compared with Hubble’s view of the same galaxy.

Meanwhile, astronomers analyzed Webb’s very first image and determined that it contains some of the oldest stars and galaxies in the universe – including one that looks a lot like a celestial firework.

The Sparkler galaxy is surrounded by glittering yellow and red dots, some of which turned out to be clusters of ancient stars.

Linger a little longer over these stories:

– The Hubble Space Telescope may get a boost into a higher orbit to extend its life, depending on the findings under a new exploratory agreement between NASA and SpaceX.

– Dogs are endearing for many reasons, and now there’s scientific evidence shedding more light on one of their impressive scent-detecting skills.

– The NASA Juno spacecraft flew by Jupiter’s moon Europa and captured a stunning new look at the ice-covered ocean world.

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NASA spacecraft captures image of ocean world orbiting Jupiter during flyby

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CNN
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A NASA spacecraft flew by one of the most intriguing ocean worlds in our solar system on Thursday.

The Juno spacecraft, which has been orbiting Jupiter since 2016, made its closest approach yet to the moon Europa at 5:36 a.m. ET, flying within 219 miles (352 kilometers) of its icy surface.

Juno captured some of the highest-resolution images ever taken of Europa’s ice shell. The first one has already been transmitted to Earth and shows surface features in a region north of the moon’s equator called Annwn Regio.

“Due to the enhanced contrast between light and shadow seen along the terminator (the nightside boundary), rugged terrain features are easily seen, including tall shadow-casting blocks, while bright and dark ridges and troughs curve across the surface,” a NASA release said. “The oblong pit near the terminator might be a degraded impact crater.”

The spacecraft also gathered data about the moon’s interior, where a salty ocean is thought to exist.

“It’s very early in the process, but by all indications Juno’s flyby of Europa was a great success,” said Scott Bolton, Juno principal investigator at the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio in a statement.

“This first picture is just a glimpse of the remarkable new science to come from Juno’s entire suite of instruments and sensors that acquired data as we skimmed over the moon’s icy crust.”

The ice shell that makes up the moon’s surface is between 10 and 15 miles (16 and 24 kilometers) thick, and the ocean it likely sits on top of is estimated to be 40 to 100 miles (64 to 161 kilometers) deep.

Juno’s Microwave Radiometer instrument will study the ice crust to determine more about its temperature and composition. It’s the first time this kind of information will be collected about Europa’s frozen shell.

The data and images captured by Juno could help inform NASA’s Europa Clipper mission, which will launch in 2024 to perform a dedicated series of 50 flybys around the moon after arriving in 2030. Europa Clipper may be able to help scientists determine whether the interior ocean exists and if the moon – one of many orbiting Jupiter – has the potential to be habitable for life.

Clipper will eventually transition from an altitude of 1,700 miles (2,735 kilometers) to just 16 miles (26 kilometers) above the moon’s surface. While Juno has largely focused on studying Jupiter, Clipper will be dedicated to observing Europa.

“Europa is such an intriguing Jovian moon, it is the focus of its own future NASA mission,” Bolton said. “We’re happy to provide data that may help the Europa Clipper team with mission planning, as well as provide new scientific insights into this icy world.”

All of Juno’s instruments collected data during the flyby, including those that could measure the top layers of Europa’s atmosphere and how Europa interacts with Jupiter’s magnetic field. The team is hoping to spot a water plume rising up from cracks in the ice shell. Previous missions have spied plumes of water vapor erupting into space through the ice shell.

INTERACTIVE: Explore where the search for life is unfolding in our solar system

“We have the right equipment to do the job, but to capture a plume will require a lot of luck,” Bolton said. “We have to be at the right place at just the right time, but if we are so fortunate, it’s a home run for sure.”

Juno is in the extended part of its mission, which was set to end in 2021. The spacecraft is now focused on performing flybys of some of Jupiter’s moons. The spacecraft visited Ganymede in 2021 and will zoom by Io in 2023 and 2024. Its mission is now set to end in 2025.

The Europa maneuver shortened Juno’s orbit around Jupiter from 43 to 38 days.

The spacecraft’s flyby was quick, zooming by the moon at 52,920 miles per hour (85,167 kilometers per hour).

Europa is about 90% of the size of Earth’s moon, and Juno’s flyby was the closest a NASA spacecraft has come to it since the Galileo mission flew by in 2000.

“The science team will be comparing the full set of images obtained by Juno with images from previous missions, looking to see if Europa’s surface features have changed over the past two decades,” said Candy Hansen, a Juno coinvestigator who leads planning for the JunoCam camera at the Planetary Science Institute in Tucson, Arizona, in a statement.

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Moment of DART asteroid impact captured by Italian satellite

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CNN
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History was made Monday night when NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test spacecraft successfully slammed into the asteroid Dimorphos.

DART’s camera shared dramatic images of the asteroid’s surface before it crashed.

Now, new images captured by its companion, a cube satellite known as LICIACube, reveal what the impact looked like from another perspective.

The Light Italian CubeSat for Imaging of Asteroids, provided by the Italian Space Agency, is about the size of a briefcase. It deployed from the DART spacecraft on September 11 and traveled behind it to record the event from a safe distance of about 34 miles (55 kilometers).

Three minutes after impact, the CubeSat flew by Dimorphos – which orbits a larger asteroid, Didymos – to capture images and video.

The series of images showcases bright material releasing from the surface of Dimorphos after the collision. Didymos is in the foreground.

“Here are the pictures taken by @LICIACube of the world’s first planetary defense mission. This is exactly where the #NASA #DartMission ended. An incredible emotion, the beginning of new discoveries,” read a tweet from Argotec Space, an Italian company that developed the CubeSat for the Italian Space Agency.

The egg-shaped asteroid’s surface, covered in boulders, looked similar to Bennu and Ryugu, two other asteroids visited by spacecraft in recent years. Scientists suspect that Dimorphos is a rubble pile asteroid made of loosely bound rocks.

The mission team is eager to learn more about the impact crater left behind by DART, which they estimate to be about 33 to 65 feet (10 to 20 meters) in size. There may even be shattered pieces of the spacecraft in the crater.

The intentional collision, which took place about 6.8 million miles (11 million kilometers) away from Earth, was humanity’s first asteroid deflection attempt.

INTERACTIVE: One spacecraft’s journey to test Earth’s planetary defenses

Neither Dimorphos nor Didymospose a threat to Earth. But analysis of how much the DART spacecraft was able to alter Dimorphos’ motion could inform techniques to protect Earth should a space rock ever be heading for impact.

While it will take about two months for observations from ground-based telescopes to determine whether DART was successful in slightly shrinking Dimorphos’ orbit around Didymos, observatories, including the Virtual Telescope Project in Rome, are already sharing their perspective of the collision event.

Astronomers at the Les Makes observatory on the French island of La Reunion in the Indian Ocean also shared a sequence of images that show the asteroid brightening upon impact, as well as a cloud of material that released from its surface afterward. The cloud drifted eastward and dissipated slowly, according to the European Space Agency.

Les Makes is a collaborating station as part of the ESA’s Planetary Defense Office and Near-Earth Object Coordination Center.

A video of observations shared by the observatory condenses about 30 minutes worth of footage into just a few seconds.

“Something like this has never been done before, and we weren’t entirely sure what to expect. It was an emotional moment for us as the footage came in,” said Marco Micheli, astronomer at ESA’s Near-Earth Object Coordination Center, in a statement.

As astronomers around the world settle in to study their observations of the asteroid system after impact, the ESA’s Hera mission is gearing up for a future visit to Didymos and Dimorphos.

Hera will serve as a follow-up mission, launching in 2024.

“The results from DART will prepare us for Hera’s visit to the Didymos binary system to examine the aftermath of this impact a few years from now,” said Ian Carnelli, Hera Mission Manager, in a statement. “Hera will help us understand what happened to Dimorphos, the first celestial body to be measurably moved by humankind.”



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Webb telescope shares its first observations of Mars

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The James Webb Space Telescope’s main goal is to detect faint light from distant galaxies, but it recently observed one of the brightest objects in the night sky: Mars.

The space observatory captured its first images and data of the red planet on September 5.

Multiple orbiters above Mars, and the land-bound rovers Curiosity and Perseverance, roam the surface, regularly send back insights. Webb’s infrared capabilities contribute another perspective that could reveal details about the Martian surface and atmosphere.

Webb, located a million miles (1.6 million kilometers) from Earth, can spot the sunlit side of Mars that faces the space telescope, which puts the observatory in the perfect position to spy the planet’s seasonal changes, dust storms and weather all at once.

The telescope is so sensitive that astronomers had to make adjustments to prevent the blinding infrared light of Mars from saturating Webb’s detectors. Instead, Webb observed Mars using very short exposures.

The new images depict Mars’ eastern hemisphere in different wavelengths of infrared light. To the left is a reference map of the hemisphere captured by the Mars Global Surveyor mission, which ended in 2006.

The top-right image from Webb shows reflected sunlight on the Martian surface, showcasing Martian features like the Huygens Crater, dark volcanic rock and the Hellas Planitia, a massive impact crater on the red planet that stretches for more than 1,200 miles (2,000 kilometers).

The lower-right image shows the thermal emission of Mars, or the light emitted by the planet as it loses heat. The brightest areas indicate the warmest spots. Additionally, astronomers spotted something else in the thermal emission image.

When this thermal light passes through the Martian atmosphere, some of it is absorbed by carbon dioxide molecules. This phenomenon has caused the Hellas Planitia to appear darker.

“This is actually not a thermal effect at Hellas,” said Geronimo Villanueva, a planetary scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, in Greenbelt, Maryland, in a statement.

“The Hellas Basin is a lower altitude, and thus experiences higher air pressure,” said Villanueva, who is also the principal investigator of Mars and Ocean Worlds studies for Webb. “That higher pressure leads to a suppression of the thermal emission at this particular wavelength range due to an effect called pressure broadening. It will be very interesting to tease apart these competing effects in these data.”

With Webb’s powerful capabilities, Villanueva and his team also captured the first near-infrared spectrum of Mars.

The spectrum indicates more subtle differences in brightness across the planet, which could highlight aspects of the Martian surface and atmosphere. An initial analysis has revealed information about icy clouds, dust, rock types on the surface and the composition of the atmosphere contained in the spectrum. There are also signatures of water, carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide.

The NASA research team will share more about Webb’s observations of Mars in a study that will be submitted for peer review and publication in the future. And the Mars team is looking forward to using Webb’s capabilities to pick out the differences between regions on the red planet and search for gases like methane and hydrogen chloride in the atmosphere.

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New images show intriguing Perseverance discovery on Mars

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If you love space and exploring the cosmos, there is no shortage of wonder right now.

Scientists identified mysterious diamonds that likely originated from a dwarf planet that once existed in our solar system – until it collided with a large asteroid 4.5 billion years ago.

The rare space diamonds aren’t the only find mesmerizing researchers. A “breathtaking” image captured by the James Webb Space Telescope is revealing the secrets of star birth in the Orion Nebula. Expect to see more unprecedented Webb images in the coming weeks.

Meanwhile, the Artemis I mission has a new launch date scheduled for September 27, with a 70-minute window that opens at 11:37 a.m. ET.

And on Mars, inspiring discoveries are afoot as the Perseverance rover investigates an intriguing site.

The Perseverance rover has made its most exciting find on the red planet to date.

Perseverance has finally collected samples from the site of an ancient river delta, which is full of rock layers that serve as a geological record of the Martian past. Some of the rocks include the highest concentration of organic matter found by the rover to date, according to NASA scientists.

Among the organic matter are minerals that correlate with sulfates, which could preserve evidence of once potentially habitable sites on Mars and the microbial life that may have existed there.

New photos show the promising rocks amid the delta’s alien landscape. These important samples could answer the ultimate cosmic question: Are we alone in the universe?

Modern humans and Neanderthals lived in tandem until our ancient relatives went extinct about 40,000 years ago. Now, researchers think they may have pinpointed something that gave Homo sapiens a cognitive edge over the Stone Age hominins.

Scientists discovered a genetic mutation that may have allowed neurons to form faster in the modern human brain.

“We’ve identified a gene that contributes to making us human,” said study author Wieland Huttner, professor and director emeritus at the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics in Dresden, Germany.

But some experts think more research is needed to ascertain the gene’s true impact.

What’s good for the goose is good for the gander – and these golden geese have provided some pretty significant benefits.

Three teams of scientists won the 2022 Golden Goose Awards, prizes organized by the American Association for the Advancement of Science, for pioneering breakthroughs.

One of those includes the Foldscope, a microscope made from paper that costs $1.75 to make. Stanford University bioengineer Manu Prakash came up with the idea on a research trip in the Thai jungle more than a decade ago.

The scientific instrument has traveled around the world, and researchers have even used it to identify a new type of cyanobacteria.

Mark your calendars: A NASA spacecraft will intentionally crash into a tiny asteroid on September 26.

The Double Asteroid Redirection Test spacecraft, or DART, launched in November and is on its way to a rendezvous with Dimorphos, a small moon orbiting an asteroid called Didymos.

The mission will nudge the asteroid, which poses no threat to Earth, to change its speed and path in a first-of-its-kind test of kinetic impact. If DART is successful, the mission could demonstrate future ways to protect Earth from space debris.

The spacecraft recently got its first glimpse of Didymos from about 20 million miles (32.2 million kilometers) away. On the day of the encounter, we’ll see Dimorphos for the first time before DART collides with the space rock.

The Xerces blue butterfly, Floreana giant tortoise and Tasmanian tiger are just some of the species that the world has lost due to human-driven threats.

Environmental and travel photographer Marc Schlossman has spent 15 years documenting extinct and endangered animal specimens in Chicago’s Field Museum collection for his new book, “Extinction: Our Fragile Relationship With Life on Earth.”

Schlossman provides a glimmer of hope at a time when biodiversity loss is accelerating. Of the 82 species photographed for the book, 23 are extinct, he said.

Thanks to conservation efforts, the rest have been brought back from the brink of disappearing or – as in the case of the New Zealand kākāpo – can recover with “robust” conservation work.

Take a closer look:

– One of Saturn’s moons grazed the gas giant 160 million years ago and smashed apart – and this chaotic encounter could explain the origins of the planet’s signature rings.

– Food DNA from 6,000-year-old pottery found on the Isle of Lewis reveals that ancient Scots enjoyed a breakfast that may sound familiar to us.

– Spectators spied an unusually slow-moving fireball in the night sky over Scotland. The mystery object could be a space rock or space debris.

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Long-lost moon explains the origin of Saturn’s rings

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CNN
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With its striking rings and tilted axis, Saturn is the showiest planet in the solar system. Now, scientists say they have a new theory as to how the gas giant got its signature look.

The planet’s rings could be from an ancient, missing moon, according to space scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of California, Berkeley.

Today, Saturn has 82 moons, according to NASA. The research team proposed that the ringed planet may once have had another one that orbited the planet for a few billion years.

But around 160 million years ago, this moon became unstable and swung too close to Saturn in what the researchers described as a “grazing encounter” that smashed the moon apart.

While the gas giant likely swallowed 99% of the moon, the remainder became suspended in orbit, breaking into small icy chunks that ultimately formed the planet’s rings, the scientists suggested.

Previous research had estimated that Saturn’s rings were 100 million years old – much younger than the planet itself – although their age is a hotly debated topic. This latest study provides a potential explanation for their later origin.

“A variety of explanations have been offered, but none is totally convincing. The cool thing is that the previously unexplained young age of the rings is naturally explained in our scenario,” said study author Jack Wisdom, a professor of planetary science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in a news release.

The new research, published in the journal Science on Thursday, is based on computer modeling using measurements made in 2017 at the very end of NASA’s Cassini mission, which spent 13 years exploring Saturn and its moons.

The study also sheds light on two other puzzling features of Saturn.

Previously, astronomers suspected that the planet’s 26.7-degree tilt came from gravitational interactions with its neighbor Neptune, but according to the study, the lost moon theory may provide a better explanation. The two planets may once have been in sync, and the loss of a moon could have been enough to dislodge Saturn from Neptune’s pull and leave it with the present-day tilt.

“The tilt is too large to be a result of known formation processes in a protoplanetary disk or from later, large collisions,” Wisdom said.

The scientists believe the same event may have caused Saturn’s moon Titan – which is the second-largest moon in the solar system and bigger than the planet Mercury – to embark on its curious orbit. The moon is migrating rapidly outward from Saturn at some 11 centimeters (4.3 inches) per year, the study noted.

The researchers named the lost moon Chrysalis, because of the way they think it transformed the planet.

“Just like a butterfly’s chrysalis, this satellite was long dormant and suddenly became active, and the rings emerged,” Wisdom said.

He added that the research told “a pretty good story,” but would have to be tested and examined by other astronomers.

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Artemis I’s next launch attempt may not happen until later this year

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Kennedy Space Center, Florida
CNN
 — 

NASA will not pursue a launch of Artemis I for the remainder of the launch period, which ends on Tuesday, according to an update from the agency after a second scrubbed launch attempt Saturday.

Future launch periods, including those in September and October, depend on what the team decides early next week, but this results in a minimum of delays consisting of at least several weeks.

“We will not be launching in this launch period,” said Jim Free, associate administrator for NASA’s Exploration Systems Development Mission Directorate. “We are not where we wanted to be.”

Free said the stack, including the Space Launch System rocket and Orion spacecraft, has to roll back into the Vehicle Assembly Building, unless they get a waiver from the range, which is run by the US Space Force.

NASA Administrator Bill Nelson reminded that the shuttle was sent back to the Vehicle Assembly Building 20 times before it launched – and noted that the cost of two scrubs is a lot less than a failure.

“We do not launch until we think it’s right,” Nelson said. “These teams have labored over that and that is the conclusion they came to. I look at this as part of our space program, in which safety is the top of the list.”

The scrub was called at 11:17 a.m. ET, three hours before the beginning of the launch window.

Artemis I had been slated to take off Saturday afternoon, but those plans were scrubbed after team members discovered a liquid hydrogen leak that they spent the better part of the morning trying to resolve. Liquid hydrogen is one of the propellants used in the rocket’s large core stage. The leak prevented the launch team from being able to fill the liquid hydrogen tank despite trying various troubleshooting procedures.

Previously, a small leak had been seen in this area, but it became a much larger leak on Saturday. The team believes an overpressurization event might have damaged the soft seal on the liquid hydrogen connection, but they will need to take a closer look.

“This was not a manageable leak,” said Mike Sarafin, Artemis mission manager.

It’s the second time in a week that the space agency has been forced to halt the launch countdown in the face of technical issues. The first launch attempt, on Monday, was called off after several issues arose, including with a system meant to cool the rocket’s engines ahead of liftoff and various leaks that sprung up as the rocket was being fueled.

The liquid hydrogen leak was detected Saturday at 7:15 a.m. ET in the quick disconnect cavity that feeds the rocket with hydrogen in the engine section of the core stage. It was a different leak than one that occurred ahead of the scrubbed launch on Monday.

The launch controllers warmed up the line in an attempt to get a tight seal and the flow of liquid hydrogen resumed before a leak reoccurred. They stopped the flow of liquid hydrogen and proceeded to “close the valve used to fill and drain it, then increase pressure on a ground transfer line using helium to try to reseal it,” according to NASA.

That troubleshooting plan was not successful. The team attempted the first plan again to warm up the line, but the leak reoccurred after they manually restarted the flow of liquid hydrogen.

There was a 60% chance of favorable weather conditions for the launch, according to weather officer Melody Lovin.

The Artemis I stack, which includes the Space Launch System rocket and Orion spacecraft, continues to sit on Launchpad 39B at Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida.

The Artemis I mission is just the beginning of a program that will aim to return humans to the moon and eventually land crewed missions on Mars. Nelson said that the issues during the first two scrubs have not caused any delays to future Artemis program missions.

Here’s how NASA wants to send humans back to the moon

In the last few days, the launch team has taken time to address issues, like hydrogen leaks, that cropped up ahead of Monday’s planned launch before it was scrubbed. The team has also completed a risk assessment of an engine conditioning issue and a foam crack that also cropped up, according to NASA officials.

Both were considered to be acceptable risks heading into the launch countdown, according to Mike Sarafin, Artemis mission manager.

On Monday, a sensor on one of the rocket’s four RS-25 engines, identified as engine #3, reflected that the engine could not reach the proper temperature range required for the engine to start at liftoff.

The engines need to be thermally conditioned before super-cold propellant flows through them prior to liftoff. To prevent the engines from experiencing any temperature shocks, launch controllers gradually increase the pressure of the core stage liquid hydrogen tank in the hours before launch to send a small amount of liquid hydrogen to the engines. This is known as a “bleed.”

The team has since determined it was a bad sensor providing the reading – they plan to ignore the faulty sensor moving forward, according to John Blevins, Space Launch Systems chief engineer.

Once Artemis I launches, Orion’s journey will last 37 days as it travels to the moon, loops around it and returns to Earth – traveling a total of 1.3 million miles (2.1 million kilometers).

While the passenger list doesn’t include any humans, it does have passengers: three mannequins and a plush Snoopy toy will ride in Orion.

The crew aboard Artemis I may sound a little unusual, but they each serve a purpose. Snoopy will serve as the zero gravity indicator – meaning that he will begin to float inside the capsule once it reaches the space environment.

The mannequins, named Commander Moonikin Campos, Helga and Zohar, will measure the deep space radiation future crews could experience and test out new suit and shielding technology. A biology experiment carrying seeds, algae, fungi and yeast is also tucked inside Orion to measure how life reacts to this radiation as well.

Additional science experiments and technology demonstrations are also riding in a ring on the rocket. From there, 10 small satellites, called CubeSats, will detach and go their separate ways to collect information on the moon and the deep space environment.

Cameras inside and outside of Orion will share images and video throughout the mission, including live views from the Callisto experiment, which will capture a stream of Commander Moonikin Campos sitting in the commander’s seat. And if you have an Amazon Alexa-enabled device, you can ask it about the mission’s location each day.

Expect to see views of Earthrise similar to what was shared for the first time during the Apollo 8 mission back in 1968, but with much better cameras and technology.

The inaugural mission of the Artemis program will kick off a phase of NASA space exploration that intends to land diverse astronaut crews at previously unexplored regions of the moon – on the Artemis II and Artemis III missions, slated for 2024 and 2025 respectively – and eventually delivers crewed missions to Mars.

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Did life ever exist on Mars? This rover is on the hunt for evidence

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CNN
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Have you ever spotted another planet in the sky? It’s a celestial thrill without compare.

The first time I spied Mars, it appeared like a red star among a sea of glittering white ones. It was a mind-blowing moment, as I thought about the many spacecraft that humans have sent across millions of miles to visit our planetary neighbor.

The red planet is currently visible in the evening sky through August, so don’t forget to look up.

And this week, the fleet of robots currently exploring Mars revealed more of its secrets.

Courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech

InSight has been able to unlock some of the secrets of the Martian interior, which sheds light on how all rocky planets form.

Mars may not be the kind of place to raise your kids, but it’s a veritable playground for NASA’s Perseverance rover, Ingenuity helicopter and InSight lander.

Ingenuity recently dipped down in craters and flew over rough terrain for its longest, speediest flight yet as an aerial scout – and it captured images of geological features so intriguing that they are changing the course of the Perseverance rover’s scientific quest.

The Perseverance team shared some of the first key observations made by the rover this week as well – including wonderfully weird rocks that could contain evidence of ancient microbial life, if it ever existed on Mars. Percy will collect its first Martian sample within the next two weeks, and it will be one of dozens returned to Earth by future missions.

And in an exciting first, the stationary InSight lander has revealed the mysterious interior of Mars, thanks to its detection of Marsquakes that helped scientists peer inside the planet.

Renaissance polymath Leonardo da Vinci is remembered for and connected with many things – now including 14 living descendants, according to new research.

This is a curious finding, as Leonardo was not known to have fathered any children. But researchers traced his lineage in other ways.

The historians hope to use this information to understand more about Leonardo’s genius and gain insights about his health, including if he had a rare eye condition or not.

Courtesy Field Museum

This Xerces blue butterfly specimen is 93 years old.

The last of the Xerces blue butterflies fluttered through the air in the early 1940s. As the first North American insect to go extinct due to humans, it has become an icon for insect conservation.

These periwinkle pearly-winged insects lived in the coastal sand dunes along San Francisco and were first characterized by scientists in 1852. But humans destroyed their habitat.

It’s a harsh reminder amid what many scientists call an “insect apocalypse,” as species decline around the globe. While all of them may not be as pretty as the Xerces blue butterfly, insects are more crucial to our lives than most people realize.

Raging wildfires in the western US are so bad that the fires are actually creating their own weather and smoke that’s visible from space.

These fires aren’t just a concern in the West; haze from the smoke is reaching across the US, causing bad air quality on the East Coast.

Rare mushroom cloud-like formations have been seen over the fires. These pyrocumulus clouds tower above the ash and smoke from raging wildfires and can be seen for miles.

And it’s not just the US that’s facing the brunt of destructive fires fueled by the climate crisis. Wildfires are sparking globally, even in the world’s coldest city.

ALMA/ESO/NAOJ/NRAO/Benisty et al.

This image shows a planetary system 400 light-years away that is still forming.

It may look like a burning ring of fire, but this is an actual image of a planetary system that’s still cooking 400 light-years away, taken by the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array of telescopes in Chile.

Two Jupiter-like planets orbit a star, but astronomers spied a moon-forming disk around one of the planets – and it’s the first time they have seen anything like this.

The disk around the planet is 500 times larger than the massive rings around Saturn.

Scientists plan to keep an eye on this system to watch as planets, and maybe even moons, form and grow.

A little more intrigue before you go:

– Unknown viruses dating back 15,000 years have been found in ice samples taken from a glacier in the Tibetan plateau – and they are unlike anything scientists have ever seen before.

– Meet octogenarian Wally Funk, who trained for NASA’s Women in Space Program but was denied the opportunity to fly – until now. And this is what’s next after two billionaires took quick trips to the stars.

– For wild cockatoos, opening trash cans isn’t easy. But in Australia, members of one particular species have taught each other how to do it. Leftovers, anyone?

Like what you’ve read? Oh, but there’s more. Sign up here to receive in your inbox the next edition of Wonder Theory, brought to you by CNN Space and Science writer Ashley Strickland, who finds wonder in planets beyond our solar system and discoveries from the ancient world.



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