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Tesla aimed for Mars will be the payload on first Falcon Heavy launch

8:51 am

Capitalism in space: Elon Musk announced today that the first test launch of a Falcon Heavy rocket next month will carry a Tesla car which will be aimed for a solar orbit about the same distance from the Sun as Mars.

Payload will be my midnight cherry Tesla Roadster playing Space Oddity. Destination is Mars orbit. Will be in deep space for a billion years or so if it doesn’t blow up on ascent.

Musk definitely knows how to generate publicity, even as he lowers expectations for the launch. Richard Branson could learn something from him.

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Soyuz launches military satellite, despite failure earlier this week

8:42 am

A Russian Soyuz rocket today successfully launched a military satellite, despite the launch failure from improper software earlier this week.

The reason they launched this Soyuz was because of two reasons. First, it was not using the Fregat upper stage that had had the incorrect programming. Second, it launched from Plesetsk, a Russian spaceport they have used since the beginning of the space age. The failure launched from the new spaceport at Vostochny, with software that had not been updated for that spaceport.

This launch widens the Russian lead in successful launches over SpaceX for 2018. The U.S. however still leads handily overall.

27 United States
18 Russian
16 SpaceX
13 China

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Conscious Choice cover

Now available in hardback and paperback as well as ebook!

 

From the press release: In this ground-breaking new history of early America, historian Robert Zimmerman not only exposes the lie behind The New York Times 1619 Project that falsely claims slavery is central to the history of the United States, he also provides profound lessons about the nature of human societies, lessons important for Americans today as well as for all future settlers on Mars and elsewhere in space.

 
Conscious Choice: The origins of slavery in America and why it matters today and for our future in outer space, is a riveting page-turning story that documents how slavery slowly became pervasive in the southern British colonies of North America, colonies founded by a people and culture that not only did not allow slavery but in every way were hostile to the practice.  
Conscious Choice does more however. In telling the tragic history of the Virginia colony and the rise of slavery there, Zimmerman lays out the proper path for creating healthy societies in places like the Moon and Mars.

 

“Zimmerman’s ground-breaking history provides every future generation the basic framework for establishing new societies on other worlds. We would be wise to heed what he says.” —Robert Zubrin, founder of founder of the Mars Society.

 

All editions are available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and all book vendors, with the ebook priced at $5.99 before discount. All editions can also be purchased direct from the ebook publisher, ebookit, in which case you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.

 

Autographed printed copies are also available at discount directly from the author (hardback $29.95; paperback $14.95; Shipping cost for either: $6.00). Just send an email to zimmerman @ nasw dot org.

The fly-by anomaly returns with Juno

9:48 pm

The uncertainty of science: An orbital discrepancy between where engineers predict where Juno should be and where it actually is suggests it represents the recurrence of an anomaly that has been seen with numerous past planetary spacecraft.

During the 1970s when the Pioneer 10 and 11 probes were launched, visiting Jupiter and Saturn before heading off towards the edge of the Solar System, these probes both experienced something strange as they passed between 20 to 70 AU (Uranus to the Kuiper Belt) from the Sun.

Basically, the probes were both 386,000 km (240,000 mi) farther from where existing models predicted they would be. This came to be known as the “Pioneer anomaly“, which became common lore within the space physics community. While the Pioneer anomaly was resolved, the same phenomena has occurred many times since then with subsequent missions.

…Another mystery is that while in some cases the anomaly was clear, in others it was on the threshold of detectability or simply absent – as was the case with Juno‘s flyby of Earth in October of 2013. The absence of any convincing explanation has led to a number of explanations, ranging from the influence or dark matter and tidal effects to extensions of General Relativity and the existence of new physics.

However, none of these have produced a substantive explanation that could account for flyby anomalies.

The article describes in detail an effort to pin down the extent of Juno’s orbital anomaly, and to use that information to develop a model that would explain the phenomenon. Not surprisingly, they have not really come up with a comprehensive explanation. To me, the variability of the phenomenon suggests that it isn’t real, that it is either an unmeasured instrument effect or an ordinary component of solar system travel and orbital mechanics that programmers have not yet pinned down. For example, the gravitational effect of every planet and rock in the solar system will influence the path of a spacecraft, though with most that influence will be very small. It would not surprise me if this anomaly is simply the consequence of missing some of this influence.

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Genesis cover

On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.

 
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.


The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
 

"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News

Voyager 1 fires thrusters not used in 37 years

3:30 pm

Because Voyager 1’s primary attitude thrusters are beginning to show wear (after forty years in space), engineers decided to experiment using a different set of thrusters not used since the spacecraft flew past Saturn in 1980, and found that they worked!

In the early days of the mission, Voyager 1 flew by Jupiter, Saturn, and important moons of each. To accurately fly by and point the spacecraft’s instruments at a smorgasbord of targets, engineers used “trajectory correction maneuver,” or TCM, thrusters that are identical in size and functionality to the attitude control thrusters, and are located on the back side of the spacecraft. But because Voyager 1’s last planetary encounter was Saturn, the Voyager team hadn’t needed to use the TCM thrusters since November 8, 1980. Back then, the TCM thrusters were used in a more continuous firing mode; they had never been used in the brief bursts necessary to orient the spacecraft.

…On Tuesday, Nov. 28, 2017, Voyager engineers fired up the four TCM thrusters for the first time in 37 years and tested their ability to orient the spacecraft using 10-millisecond pulses. The team waited eagerly as the test results traveled through space, taking 19 hours and 35 minutes to reach an antenna in Goldstone, California, that is part of NASA’s Deep Space Network.

Lo and behold, on Wednesday, Nov. 29, they learned the TCM thrusters worked perfectly — and just as well as the attitude control thrusters.

They figure these back-up thrusters will allow them to extend the mission by two or three years. The test also went so well that they now plan to do the same test on Voyager 2, which has still not entered interstellar space.

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Facebook now identifies potential suicides for authorities to take action

2:56 pm

Reason #3,434,389 why I don’t use Facebook: Facebook has developed software that identifies what it thinks are suicidal thoughts by a user, then sends that information to the government so it can take immediate action.

The social network has been testing the tool for months in the US, but is now rolling out the program to other countries. The tool won’t be active in any European Union nations, where data protection laws prevent companies from profiling users in this way.

In a Facebook post, company CEO Mark Zuckerberg said he hoped the tool would remind people that AI is “helping save peoples’ lives today.” He added that in the last month alone, the software had helped Facebook flag cases to first responders more than 100 times. “If we can use AI to help people be there for their family and friends, that’s an important and positive step forward,” wrote Zuckerberg. “The AI looks for comments like “are you ok?” and “can I help?””

Despite this emphasis on the power of AI, Facebook isn’t providing many details on how the tool actually judges who is in danger.

The potential for abuse here is beyond words. Worse, Facebook’s unwillingness to be transparent about this software makes it even more suspect. From the article:

TechCrunch writer Josh Constine noted that he’d asked Facebook how the company would prevent the misuse of this AI system and was given no response.

As I’ve written previously, companies like Google, Facebook, and Microsoft might be providing their customers some good products, but they are also doing so from a very amoral position, abusing the privacy of their customers in ways that are simply wrong. While this software is likely being used today in a totally correct way, I have strong doubts about it in the long term. As the politics of our time become even more heated, partisan, and childish, the temptation to use this software to target and eliminate those who disagree with either Facebook or its allies in the government will certainly grow. And then, how does one protect oneself from this abuse?

Hat tip to reader Max Hunt.

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Leaving Earth cover

There are now only 3 copies left of the now out-of-print hardback of Leaving Earth. The price for an autographed copy of this rare collector's item is now $150 (plus $5 shipping).

 

To get your copy while the getting is good, please send a $155 check (which includes $5 shipping) payable to Robert Zimmerman to
 

Behind The Black, c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652

 

Leaving Earth is also available as an inexpensive ebook!

 

Leaving Earth: Space Stations, Rival Superpowers, and the Quest for Interplanetary Travel, can be purchased as an ebook everywhere for only $3.99 (before discount) at amazon, Barnes & Noble, all ebook vendors, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit.

 

If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big oppressive tech companies and I get a bigger cut much sooner.

 

Winner of the 2003 Eugene M. Emme Award of the American Astronautical Society.

"Leaving Earth is one of the best and certainly the most comprehensive summary of our drive into space that I have ever read. It will be invaluable to future scholars because it will tell them how the next chapter of human history opened." -- Arthur C. Clarke

Baby stars at center of galaxy

2:40 pm

New observations of the region surrounding Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*), the super-massive black hole at the center of the Milky Way, has confirmed earlier research by finding what appears to be eleven newly formed baby stars.

Prior observations of the region surrounding Sgr A* by Zadeh and his team had revealed multiple massive infant stars but the finding was not conclusive. These objects, known as proplyds, are common features in more placid star-forming regions, like the Orion Nebula. The new measurements provide more conclusive evidence for young star formation activity. Though the galactic center is a challenging environment for star formation, it is possible for particularly dense cores of hydrogen gas to cross the necessary threshold and forge new stars.

The new ALMA observations, however, revealed something even more remarkable, signs that 11 low-mass protostars are forming within one parsec – a scant three light-years – of the galaxy’s central black hole. Zadeh and his team used ALMA to confirm that the masses and momentum transfer rates – the ability of the protostar jets to plow through surrounding interstellar material – are consistent with young protostars found throughout the disk of our galaxy. “This discovery provides evidence that star formation is taking place within clouds surprisingly close to Sagittarius A*,” said Al Wootten with the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in Charlottesville, Virginia, and co-author on the paper.

They have several theories on how new stars could coalesce in such a violent and turbulent region, but none appears that convincing. Essentially, this is a mystery that does not yet have an answer. It does tell us however that star formation can occur almost anywhere.

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The organic dust of Comet 67P/C-G

11:36 am

A study of the dust released by Comet 67P/C-G and captured by Rosetta shows that carbon molecules appear to comprise the comet’s largest component, and that this material is found in the form of very large macromolecules.

As the study shows, organic molecules are among those ingredients at the top of the list. These account for about 45 percent of the weight of the solid cometary material. “Rosetta’s comet thus belongs to the most carbon-rich bodies we know in the solar system,” says MPS scientist and COSIMA team member Dr. Oliver Stenzel. The other part of the total weight, about 55 percent, is provided by mineral substances, mainly silicates. It is striking that they are almost exclusively non-hydrated minerals i.e. missing water compounds. “Of course, Rosetta’s comet contains water like any other comet, too,” says Hilchenbach. “But because comets have spent most of their time at the icy rim of the solar system, it has almost always been frozen and could not react with the minerals.” The researchers therefore regard the lack of hydrated minerals in the comet’s dust as an indication that 67P contains very pristine material.

…The current findings also touch on our ideas of how life on Earth came about. In a previous publication, the COSIMA team was able to show that the carbon found in Rosetta’s comet is mainly in the form of large, organic macromolecules. Together with the current study, it becomes clear that these compounds make up a large part of the cometary material. Thus, if comets indeed supplied the early Earth with organic matter, as many researchers assume, it would probably have been mainly in the form of such macromolecules.

Organic here does not mean life, but is instead used as chemists use it, to mean the molecule includes the element carbon. The results do suggest however that the early solar system had a lot of carbon available, and that much of it was in a relatively pure form available to interact with other elements.

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Watch a rocket tank being built, mostly by robots

10:39 am

Capitalism in space: The video below the fold shows the process by which Interorbital Systems built a rocket test tank for the Neptune smallsat rocket it is developing. It is definitely worth watching if you want to see the future of complex manufacturing. Robotic equipment does most of the work, in a precise manner that would be impossible for humans, which therefore allows for the construction of engineering designs that were previously impossible or too expensive. Now, such designs can be built relatively cheaply, and repetitively.

Hat tip Doug Messier at Parabolic Arc.

» Read more

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Development at SpaceX’s Texas spaceport to pick up in 2018

10:31 am

Capitalism in space: Though construction at SpaceX’s Texas spaceport has been slower than expected, the company expects to accelerate development in 2018.

According to SpaceX, [people] won’t have to wait much longer for an increase in activity at the future spaceport. The recently installed antennas at Boca Chica are expected to be operational next year — although they’ll initially track flights blasting off from elsewhere — and the company also indicated development of the overall launch complex should pick up. “Even as our teams worked to modernize and repair our launch complexes in Florida so that we could reliably return to flight for our customers, SpaceX invested $14 million into the South Texas project,” said Gleeson, the company’s spokesman.

“Now, with our launch construction projects in Florida wrapping up by early 2018, SpaceX will be able to turn more attention to our work in South Texas,” he said.

In other words, once SpaceX has got its two launchpads in Florida both up and running, including the first use by the Falcon Heavy of one of those pads, the company will then be able to shift its launchpad operations down to Texas.

The article outlines in detail many of the reasons the development has been slow, but I think the issues highlighted in the quote above, issues I had not considered previously, might be the most important. After the September 2016 launchpad explosion in Florida, SpaceX had to divert resources to repairing that pad, which put Boca Chica on the back burner.

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Moon Express will launch to Moon in 2018, regardless of X-Prize deadline

10:23 am

Capitalism in space: The head of Moon Express said yesterday that the company will definitely fly its privately-built lunar rover to the Moon in 2018, regardless of whether that flight occurs in time to win the Google Lunar X-Prize.

The company is competing for the Google Lunar XPRIZE which has a $20 million reward for the first private firm to put a spacecraft on the moon, travel 500 meters, and transmit high definition video and images back to earth. The deadline for doing this is March 2018.

Jain did not give an exact date for the launch and said that getting the prize isn’t necessarily the main priority.

It appears to me that the main reason they will not make the deadline is because Rocket Lab’s Electron rocket won’t be ready in time. This is why its second test launch in the coming weeks is so important. If successful, it increases the chances that Moon Express will be able to meet the X-Prize deadline.

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Europe commits $107 million for new rocket and space plane

8:56 pm

The European Space Agency (ESA) today allocated $107 million to develop both a new larger version of its Vega rocket as well as an orbital version of the spaceplane engineering test vehicle flown in 2015.

The Vega-E will be larger and will give them another rocket capable of competing for launch business, but the space plane project is more interesting.

ESA awarded 36.7 million split between Avio and Thales Alenia Space Italy for Space Rider, an unmanned spaceplane capable of lifting 800 kilograms to LEO for missions up to two months. A single Space Rider should be capable of six missions with refurbishing, according to Thales Alenia Space.

Space Rider leverages technology from ESA’s Intermediate Experimental Vehicle (IXV), which performed a suborbital mission in February 2015, landing in the Pacific Ocean. Unlike its predecessor, Space Rider is designed for ground landings. ESA tasked Thales Alenia Space with building Space Rider’s reentry module based on the IXV.

It seems Europe wants its own version of X-37B and Dream Chaser.

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Portrait of Lotte, 0 to 18 years

6:01 pm

An evening pause: Somehow, to me, this seems a fitting introduction to the holiday season. From the youtube website, “Lotte from the Netherlands (Utrecht) becomes 18 years old in this film! Dutch filmmaker and artist Frans Hofmeester has been filming and photographing his children Lotte and Vince since birth. Every week the images are shot in the same style.”

Hat tip Edward Thelen.

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House panel approves concealed carry reciprocity for all 50 states

12:53 pm

The House Judiciary committee yesterday approved a nationwide law that would require states to recognize the legality of concealed carry licenses from other states.

The legislation allows firearm owners with a concealed carry permit issued by their home state to carry the firearm into any other state (all allow some form of concealed carry, although many are highly restrictive). The gun owners wouldn’t have to reveal they are carrying a weapon, though the bill does require they be eligible to possess a firearm under federal law (which requires a background check), carry a valid photo identification and a concealed carry permit. Gun owners from states that don’t require a concealed carry permit will need to obtain some credential from their home state to take advantage of the new law’s provisions. What form that would take isn’t specified in the House bill.

The bill still has to pass both the House and the Senate. A similar bill in the Senate already has 38 co-sponsors.

The article is typical for the modern mainstream press. It spends a lot of time getting quotes from numerous anti-gun groups and Democratic politicians, but never highlights the numerous examples in recent years where entirely innocent individuals have had their lives ruined because they entered places like New Jersey, DC, and New York with a gun that was totally legal in their home states.

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More delays in Democratic IT scandal

10:52 am

The attorney for Imran Awan, the computer specialist who had worked for numerous Democratic congressmen, including Debbie Wasserman Schlutz and is now charged with bank fraud, has caused a month delay in the court case in an effort to block the use of a laptop and its contents as evidence.

Wasserman Schultz fought to prevent law enforcement from looking at the laptop, threatening a police chief with “consequences” and implying it was “a member’s” laptop. She hired an outside lawyer, Bill Pittard, who specializes in the “speech and debate” clause of the Constitution that is designed to protect lawmakers from persecution for political stances, but lawmakers have used to try to stymie criminal probes in the past.

Now, it is Awans’ lawyers who are seeking the right to keep information in the backpack, including the “hard drive,” from being used as evidence.

The Awan attorneys are claiming that the laptop and all other information found in the backpack should be blocked as evidence because they fall under attorney-client privilege. This is absurd. If the court agrees with this interpretation, it will allow criminals to declare almost all evidence inadmissible, just by claiming it was communications between lawyer and client.

Based on all this effort to keep law enforcement from seeing what’s on that laptop, I suspect it contains some very damning information, both to Awan as well as to Wasserman Schultz and many other Democrats who had hired Awan.

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Someone in India finally reads its proposed oppressive space law

9:25 am

Link here. The analysis of India’s proposed new space law [pdf] is generally very negative, but strangely it avoids entirely the bill’s worst aspect, its requirement that everything launched by India into space must belong to the government.

Instead, the author focuses on how the bill’s broad language fails to deal with specific issues of insurance, the licensing of different kinds of space activities, and environmental pollution. In other words, it appears he cannot see the forest because of the trees.

In the end, however, in concluding that the bill as written does not serve the private sector he does make one good suggestion that I hope the Indian government takes to heart.

It will not do justice to the entrepreneurial community if this Bill is implemented as is. One of the exercises that can be conducted to align the Bill to enable a competitive ecosystem for commercial space in India is to conduct a review of international best practices in managing the space value chain and inducting them within the Bill.

In other words, read what other nations like the U.S. and Luxembourg are doing to encourage their private commercial space sector. India might find that the last entity allowed to own something in space should be the government.

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Chinese space probe detects possible dark matter signal

8:56 am

The uncertainty of science: A Chinese space probe designed to measure cosmic rays has detected a pattern that could be evidence of the existence of dark matter.

Researchers launched the spacecraft from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in the Gobi Desert, about 1600 kilometers west of Beijing, in December 2015. Its primary instrument—a stack of thin, crisscrossed detector strips—is tuned to observe the incoming direction, energy, and electric charge of the particles that make up cosmic rays, particularly electrons and positrons, the antimatter counterparts of electrons. Cosmic rays emanate from conventional astrophysical objects, like exploding supernovae in the galaxy. But if dark matter consists of WIMPs, these would occasionally annihilate each other and create electron-positron pairs, which might be detected as an excess over the expected abundance of particles from conventional objects.

In its first 530 days of scientific observations, DAMPE detected 1.5 million cosmic ray electrons and positrons above a certain energy threshold. When researchers plot of the number of particles against their energy, they’d expect to see a smooth curve. But previous experiments have hinted at an anomalous break in the curve. Now, DAMPE has confirmed that deviation. “It may be evidence of dark matter,” but the break in the curve “may be from some other cosmic ray source,” says astrophysicist Chang Jin, who leads the collaboration at the Chinese Academy of Science’s (CAS’s) Purple Mountain Observatory (PMO) in Nanjing. [emphasis mine]

I must emphasize the large uncertainty here. They have not detected dark matter. Not even close. What they have detected is a pattern in how the spacecraft is detecting cosmic rays that was predicted by the existence of dark matter. That pattern however could have other causes, and the consistent failure of other efforts to directly find dark matter strengthens the possibility that this break is caused by those other causes.

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Soyuz failed because it was programmed for Baikonur, not Vostochny

8:39 am

It now appears that the Soyuz rocket failure this week occurred because the Fregat upper stage had not been programmed for a launch from Vostochny.

Although the information is still preliminary, it is increasingly clear that all the hardware aboard the Fregat upper stage performed as planned. But, almost unbelievably, the flight control system on the Fregat did not have the correct settings for the mission originating from the new launch site in Vostochny, as apposed to routine launches from Baikonur and Plesetsk. As a result, as soon as Fregat and its cargo separated from the third stage of the launch vehicle, its flight control system began commanding a change of orientation of the stack to compensate for what the computer had perceived as a deviation from the correct attitude, which was considerable. As a result, when the Fregat began its first preprogrammed main engine firing, the vehicle was apparently still changing its attitude, which led to a maneuvering in a wrong direction. [emphasis mine]

This reminds me of the NASA’s epic failure with Mars Climate Orbiter in 1998, where some programming used the metric system and other programming used the English system, and no one noticed.

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Review of all Soyuz upper stages ordered by Russian manufacturer

6:44 pm

According to anonymous sources, the Russian manufacturer of the Freget upper stage that failed yesterday during a Soyuz commercial launch has ordered a review of all Fregets.

The Lavochkin research and production association will check all manufactured Fregat boosters, a source in the space industry told TASS on Wednesday after a recent failed launch. “The Lavochkin Research and Production Association will check all Fregat boosters produced earlier. If defects are found, they [the boosters] will be sent for further development,” the source said.

The Lavochkin Research and Production Association did not comment on this information for TASS.

The problem is that Russia already spent almost a full year beginning in early 2016 checking all its rocket engines for substandard construction done by a corrupt manufacturer. Even though the Fregat is built by another manufacturer, did they not check the Fregat upper stages then also?

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NASA confirms next Dragon launch will be on used first stage

6:32 pm

Capitalism in space: NASA today confirmed that it has finally approved the use of a Falcon 9 used first stage for the next Dragon launch on December 8.

NASA had said back on November 12 that they were considering this idea. It seems to me that SpaceX has probably been proceeding under the assumption they would say yes, which essentially at this point, only a few weeks from launch, put pressure on the timid NASA bureaucracy to finally get on the bandwagon.

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The Space Show’s annual fund-raising campaign

11:27 am

David Livingston has begun his annual campaign to show support for The Space Show.

The year 2017 is quickly coming to a close. Now is the time to support The Space Show/OGLF by making a contribution to help maintain and further develop our programming and show access. If you pay U.S. federal taxes, you get a tax deduction for your gift. The same is true for those of you paying California taxes as we are both a federal 501C3 nonprofit corporation and a California Public Benefit Corporation….

Per above, you can make your donation online using Pay Pal at the above links (or click on the Pay Pal logo on the right side of our home page). For those of you who prefer mailing a check, please make your check payable to One Giant Leap Foundation, Inc. and mail it in care of me to P.O. Box 95, Tiburon, CA 94920 USA. Remember, your gift makes possible The Space Show programming and all of the services we provide including our blog

David has most generously permitted me to appear on the Space Show more than any other guest, a gift for which I am deeply grateful. More important, he has led the way in the effort to encourage commercial private space. I hope my readers here will help him continue this effort.

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India’s next launch might slip to 2018

9:22 am

India’s next PSLV commercial launch might slip to 2018, despite months of effort to resume launches in 2017 following the August 31 PSLV launch failure when the rockets fairing did not release.

“We are working towards it. It will be in the end of December or first week of January. In that time frame,” ISRO Chairman A S Kiran Kumar said.

Kumar also said ISRO will try to launch on an average of once a month in 2018. The article also mentions the new and very oppressive Indian space law that has been proposed.

Asked whether the Space Activities Bill, 2017 would come up during the Budget session of Parliament, Kiran Kumar said “We have now put it in public comments. It would have to go through a set of discussions. The process has started.”

The draft of the proposed Bill to promote and regulate space activities of India, along with encouraging the participation of the private sector, has been uploaded on the ISRO website for comments from stakeholders and the public. [emphasis mine]

The highlighted text is typical of all news reports coming from India. The law does no such thing, and in fact will strongly discourage any work by the private sector. It appears that in India reporters either do not read the text of laws they are reporting on, or they really do not have freedom of the press there.

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“Yeti” DNA found to come from bears and dogs

8:59 am

Scientists analyzing DNA samples said to come from either the legendary yeti in the Himalayas or sasquatch in North America have found that all come from known ordinary animals, mostly bears.

Of the nine “yeti” samples, eight turned out to be from bears native to the area, the researchers report today in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B. The other sample came from a dog. Similar studies of hair samples supposedly related to North America’s big hairy hominid, the sasquatch (aka Bigfoot), have revealed that those fibers came from bears, horses, dogs, and a variety of other creatures—even a human.

Debunking aside, the new study also yielded lots of scientifically useful info, Lindqvist says. The analyses generated the first full mitochondrial genomes for the Himalayan brown bear (Ursus arctos isabellinus) and the Himalayan black bear (Ursus thibetanus laniger), for example. That could help scientists figure out how genetically different these rare subspecies are from more common species, as well as the last time these groups shared maternal ancestors in the past.

While we must always recognize the uncertainties of science, we must also recognize when it provides us clarity. This is an example of the latter.

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