Tag: science

The dark matter in the Milky Way is not behaving as its supposed to

8:56 am

The uncertainty of science: Scientists using precise data of the motions of the outer stars of the Milky Way from the Gaia orbiting telescope have found they do not rotate the galaxy’s center as fast as expected, based on the theory of the existence of dark matter.

Dark matter was proposed to explain why in other galaxies the speed of rotation of outer stars does not appear to decline with distance (as seen for example with the planets in our solar system) but remains the same, no matter how far out you go. That extra speed suggests there must be unseen matter pulling on the stars.

[N]ew results that combine Gaia measurements with those from APOGEE (Apache Point Observatory Galactic Evolution Experiment), performed on a ground-based telescope in New Mexico, USA, and which measures the physical properties of stars to better judge their distance, have indeed measured the Milky Way’s rotation curve for stars out farther than ever before, to about 100,000 light years. “What we were really surprised to see was that this curve remained flat, flat, flat out to a certain distance, and then it started tanking,” says Lina Necib, who is an assistant professor of physics at MIT, said in a statement. “This means the outer stars are rotating a little slower than expected, which is a very surprising result.”

…The decline in orbital velocity at these distances implies that there is less dark matter in the center of our galaxy than expected. The research team describe the galaxy’s halo of dark matter as having been “cored,” somewhat like an apple. The crew also says there’s not enough gravity from what dark matter there seems to exist there, to reach all the way out to 100,000 light years and keep stars moving at the same velocity.

The rotation data of other galaxies, while somewhat robust, also includes a number of assumptions might be fooling us into thinking that the speeds are higher than expected. The more precise data gathered nearby, in the Milky Way, is now suggesting those assumptions and that distant data must be questioned.

Or to put it more bluntly, dark matter remains an ad hoc solution to a mystery that astronomers really don’t understand, or have sufficient data to explain. It might very well be a wild goose chase that has made them miss the real answer, whatever that might be.

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The internal structure of 19 galaxies, as seen in the infrared by Webb

9:48 am

The internal structure of 19 galaxies, as seen by Webb
Click for original image.

Scientists using the Webb Space Telescope today released false color infrared images of nineteen different spiral galaxies, each showing the complex internal structure that traces of spiral arms, but not always.

A compliation of those infrared images is to the right, reduced and sharpened to post here.

[Webb]’s NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) captured millions of stars in these images, which sparkle in blue tones. Some stars are spread throughout the spiral arms, but others are clumped tightly together in star clusters.

The telescope’s MIRI (Mid-Infrared Instrument) data highlights glowing dust, showing us where it exists behind, around, and between stars. It also spotlights stars that have not yet fully formed – they are still encased in the gas and dust that feed their growth, like bright red seeds at the tips of dusty peaks. “These are where we can find the newest, most massive stars in the galaxies,” said Erik Rosolowsky, a professor of physics at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada.

The data suggests, not unexpectedly, that the central parts of each galaxy are older, formed first, with starbirth occurring later in the outer regions. A lot of further analysis however will be required to understand all the patterns exhibited in these images and their larger significance in connection with galaxy formation.

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The future of astronomy, as seen by PBS News in 1991

6:01 pm

An evening pause: Today is the 75th anniversary of the moment astonomers took the lens cap off the Hale Telescope at Palomar, what astronomers call “first light.” In honor of this anniversary, tonight’s evening pause is a somewhat well-done news piece produced by PBS in 1991, describing the state of ground-based astronomy at that time, which was actually another key moment in the history of astronomy. After decades of no advancement following the Hale telescope, the field was about to burst out with a whole new set of telescopes exceeding it significantly, based on new technologies. We today have become accustomed to those new telescopes, but in 1991 they were still incomplete or on the drawing board.

This was also after the launch of Hubble but before it was fixed, so this moment was also a somewhat dark time for astronomy in general. Watching this news piece gives you a sense of history, as seen by those living at that time. It also lets you see some good examples of the standard tropes of reporters as well as some astronomers. They always say this new telescope (whatever and whenever it is) is going to allow us to discover the entire history of the universe, even though it never can, and never will.

Hat tip Mike Nelson.

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Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter photographs SLIM on the Moon

1:16 pm

LRO images showing before and after SLIM's landing
Click for blink animation.

Scientists using Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) were able on January 24, 2024 to obtain a photograph of the SLIM landing site on the Moon, and produce a before and after blink animation showing the lander on the ground.

The two pictures to the right, before and after, were taken from that animation. The bright speck in the after image is SLIM, sitting upside down on the surface. The faint streak of light material going from right to left lower in the photo comes from the fresh ejecta material thrown out from the nearby 1,425-foot-wide Shioli Crater to the west.

This picture confirms once again that SLIM achieved its main goal, landing precisely within a tiny landing zone only 300 feet across.

The landing occurred in the morning on the Moon, so the Sun was in the east. Because SLIM got flipped upside down just before touchdown, its one solar panel ended up facing west, where no sunlight could touch it. Based on the shadows in this picture, east is to the left, and west to the right. The solar panel is sitting in the shadow on SLIM’s right side.

In about a week the Sun will begin setting to the west, illuminating that panel. Engineers in Japan hope that at that time the panel will begin to recharge the spacecraft’s batteries, and it will then begin to operate again, if only a short while before the Sun sets and the very cold and hostile lunar night begins. There is little expectation of SLIM surviving that long two-week lunar night, even if it gets its batteries fully charged.

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Ingenuity’s final resting site on Mars

1:00 pm

Overview map
Click for interactive map.

Ingenuity's damaged propeller
Click for orignal image.

The photo to the right was downloaded from Ingenuity today, and looks downward at the ground below the helicopter, showing the shadow of one of its propellers, with the damage at its tip indicated by the arrow.

It is this damage that forced NASA management to retire the helicopter yesterday. With the tip of one of Ingenuity’s two propellers damaged, the helicopter simply can no longer fly reliably, or at all.

The green dot on the map above shows Ingenuity’s final resting spot. The blue dot shows Perseverance’s present position. Perseverance will surely at some point approach Ingenuity closely to get better pictures of the damage to help engineers better figure out what happened and why. For example, did the propellor simply break during flight? And if so, why?

I freely admit that my optimistic speculations last week were wrong, that Ingenuity was merely having communications issues with Perseverance. I also suspect the Ingenuity engineers were hoping the same thing, and were far more disappointed than I to discover otherwise.

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Lucy’s upcoming travels leading to its exploration of the Trojan asteroids

10:16 am

Lucy's future route through the solar system
Click for original image.

The Lucy engineering team today issued an update, outlining the spacecraft’s upcoming fly-bys in 2024 that will carry it to its next asteroid rendezvouses, first with an asteroid in the main belt, and then with four Trojan asteroids orbiting in Jupiter’s orbit but 60 degress ahead.

The map to the right shows this route. The solid red/white line indicates Lucy’s travels in 2024.

In late January, Lucy will begin the series of two deep space maneuvers. On January 31, the spacecraft will briefly operate its main engines for the first time in space. After analyzing the spacecraft’s performance during that brief burn, the team will command the spacecraft to carry out a larger maneuver, nominally on February 3. Combined, these two maneuvers are designed to change the velocity of the spacecraft by around 2,000 mph (approximately 900 meters per second) and will consume roughly half of the spacecraft’s onboard fuel.

That first brief burn will not only test the engines, it will also tell engineers whether one of Lucy’s solar panels — still not fully deployed and latched properly — will not be disturbed by it. If not, they will proceed with the second burn.

After this it will zip past the Earth, which will slingshot it out to Jupiter orbit, passing one main belt asteroid along the way.

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Ingenuity’s mission on Mars is over

3:55 pm

Ingenuity takes off!
Ingenuity takes off on its first flight, April 19, 2021.
For full images go here and here.

NASA today announced that Ingenuity’s mission on Mars has now ended due to damage sustained to one of its propellers during its 72nd flight.

While the helicopter remains upright and in communication with ground controllers, imagery of its Jan. 18 flight sent to Earth this week indicates one or more of its rotor blades sustained damage during landing, and it is no longer capable of flight.

Ingenuity’s engineering mission was designed initially to simply prove that air-powered flight in Mars’ thin atmosphere was possible by a test program of four flights over 30 days. It worked so well that it just kept going and going. During its almost three years of operation on Mars, the helicopter completed 72 flights, for a total air time of about 128 minuntes. It flew a total of about eleven miles, reaching a maximum speed of over 22 miles per hour and a top altitude of about 79 feet. On its 69th flight it traveled a record 2,315 feet, almost a half mile.

All future Mars missions have been changed forever by the success of Ingenuity and its designers and engineers. For example, there are already hints of a helicopter mission to Mars’ giant canyon Valles Marineris. In addition, NASA redesigned its Mars Sample Return Mission to include helicopters based on what it learned from Ingenuity.

More important, Ingenuity suggests that when settlers finally colonize the red planet, it is very possible that air travel will start out more important than ground transport. In fact, long distance roads might never be built, for any number of reasons, because air travel will be available from the beginning.

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All climate models continue to be wrong, overstating warming to significant degrees

12:24 pm

Climate models versus data
Click for full resolution graph.

According to a new analysis comparing actual satellite observations of the climate since 1979 with all the climate models used by the IPCC and global warming activitists, it appears that every single climate model continues to overstate significantly their predictions of warming, with that error increasing with time. From the paper’s abstract:

Warming of the global climate system over the past half-century has averaged 43 percent less than that produced by computerized climate models used to promote changes in energy policy. In the United States during summer, the observed warming is much weaker than that produced by all 36 climate models surveyed here.

While the cause of this relatively benign warming could theoretically be entirely due to humanity’s production of carbon dioxide from fossil-fuel burning, this claim cannot be demonstrated through science. At least some of the measured warming could be natural. Contrary to media reports and environmental organizations’ press releases, global warming offers no justification for carbon-based regulation.

The research was done by Roy Spencer of the University of Alabama, who has also been the principal investigator on one climate satellite. The graph to the right, chart 2 of his paper, shows the error of every single climate model, with some models so wrong they are essentially useless to predict anything.

What is significant about this research is not that these models are wrong, it is that they are all wrong in the same direction. If the climate science community was approaching this work honestly with an effort to be unbiased, we should should expect some models to predict too little warming, and others too much. That all predict too much warming suggests that every single one of these models is tainted by politics and confirmation bias. The people who write the models want global warming to occur (almost certainly for political reasons), and so their models always lean in that direction.

What is even more disturbing is that Spencer’s work shows that the difference between the models and observations is growing, as indicated by chart 3 from his paper, below.
» Read more

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The shaky ground near the Moon’s south pole

10:54 am

Map of lunar south pole showing areas of instability
Click for original map.

According to a paper just published that reviewed and reanalyzed the seismic data gathered by the seismometers placed on the Moon by the various Apollo landings, scientists have determined that the south pole region where NASA wants its first manned Artemis lunar landing to take place happens also to be one of the Moon’s most active moonquake regions. From the paper’s conclusion:

We suggest that the lobate thrust fault scarps in the south polar region in and around the areas of the proposed Artemis III landing regions, particularly the de Gerlache Rim sites and Nobile Rim 1 regions, are potential sources for future seismic activity that could produce strong regional seismic shaking. If slip events on these young faults occur in the south polar region and elsewhere on the Moon, regolith landslides and potential boulder falls can be expected at distances of tens of kilometers from the source faults. Small amounts of water ice in the lunar regolith are expected to significantly increase the cohesion, stabilizing steep slopes against shallow landslides from seismic shaking. Based on our analysis of an N9-level event in the south polar region, we conclude that such an event poses a potential hazard to future robotic and human exploration in the region.

The map to the right is figure 10 from the paper, showing the south pole centered on Shackleton Crater. The colored dots mark areas of potential instability should a quake occur, with the blue boxes indicating all the NASA’s candidate landing sites for the manned Artemis 3 mission. Note the concentration of dots on the interior rim of Shackleton.

The planned landing site of Intuitive Machines Nova-C lander, scheduled for launch in mere weeks, is beyond the top of this map, to the north.

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SLIM landed on the Moon softly, but upside down!

9:41 am

SLIM upside down
Click for original image.

We now know why SLIM’s solar panel was not facing the Sun after the Japanese lunar lander touched down. When it was only 10 to 15 feet above the ground, preparing to land, one of its two descent engines failed, causing the spacecraft to tumble as it softly touched down. As a result, it landed softly, but upside down, thus putting the panel on its west side instead of its east side as planned.

The image to the right, cropped to post here, was taken by one of the two tiny rovers released by SLIM just prior to landing. It shows SLIM upside down, but essentially undamaged.

The lander however still apparently achieved its primary goal, landing within a small zone only 300 feet across, or 100 meters.

Analysis of the data acquired before shutting down the power confirmed that SLIM had reached the Moon’s surface approximately 55m east (180 feet) of the original target landing site. The positional accuracy before the commencement of the obstacle avoidance maneuver (at around a 50m altitude) which indicates the pinpoint landing performance, was evaluated to be at approximately 10m or less, possibly about 3 – 4m.

…Under these circumstances, the SLIM onboard software autonomously identifies the anomaly, and while controlling the horizontal position as much as possible, SLIM continued the descent with the other engine and moved gradually towards the east. The descent velocity at the time of contact with the ground was approximately 1.4 m/s or less, which was below the design range., but conditions such as the lateral velocity and attitude were outside the design range, and this is thought to have resulted in a different attitude than planned.

In other words, when that engine failed, SLIM was only about 10 to 30 feet from its pinpoint landing target, but then drifted eastward as its dropped those last few feet because of the unbalanced engine burn caused by only one engine.

That the spacecraft is still operating and can communicate with Earth, even though it is upside down, is remarkable. Moreover, SLIM did achieve its main goals quite successfully. It landed within its tight target zone, it released two mini-rovers which operated successfully, and has been able to send its own pictures back to Earth. It was not able however to test its crushable landing legs, as they remain in the air.

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Saw-toothed razor rocks on Mars

11:31 am

Saw-toothed razor rock on Mars
Click for original image.

Looking at the base of Kukenan
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture above, cropped and enhanced to post here, was taken on January 22, 2024 by the high resolution camera on the Mars rover Curiosity.

The photo gives us a fine example of the many very strange and delicate formations seen on Martian rocks and boulders as it slowly weaves its way up Mount Sharp, inside the slot canyon Gediz Vallis. On Earth such thin flakes like these are generally only seen inside caves, where there is almost no life to disturb their development and the natural conditions are as benign as well. On Mars, the only thing that can disturb this rock is the wind, and though over time it can erode things the thin atmosphere allows such flakes to form, aided by the gravity about 39% that of Earth’s.

The photo to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken the same day by the rover’s left navigation camera, and illustrates the overall rocky nature of all of the terrain surrounding Curiosity. It looks to the southeast, at the base of nearby 400-foot-high Kukenan.

For a map showing Curiosity’s location (as well as another weird Martian rock, see my prevous post on January 17, 2024, A rock tadpole on Mars.

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An ancient Martian river system now meandering ridges

1:46 pm

Context camera mosaic of river system.

An ancient Martian river system
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped and reduced to post here, was taken on August 27, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It was featured by MRO’s science team yesterday, in which Shane Byrne of the Lunar and Planetary Lab University of Arizona wrote the following:

River beds often get filled with gravel and the surrounding terrain is often built up of fine-grained mud from river overflows. The gravely river bottom and the fine-grained surroundings can lead to a strange phenomenon that geologists call inverted channels. After the river disappears, the fine-grained surroundings can be easily eroded away leaving the gravely river bed as a high-standing ridge.

These ridges show the location of the old river beds in Mars’ distant past. The angle at which the ridges join together indicate that these rivers flowed from top-right to bottom-left (i.e. southwest).

The picture above is a mosaic produced from the global survey taken by MRO’s lower resolution context camera. It gives us a fuller picture of this river system, with the rectangle showing the small area covered by the photo on the right. Overall this ancient and extinct river of ridges travels more than thirty miles downhill from the northeast to the southwest.
» Read more

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Numerous research papers from Harvard found filled with errors and false data

10:57 am

The modern basis of medical research in the dark age
The modern basis of medical research in the dark age

Our bankrupt “elite” academia: It appears that Harvard’s former president, Claudine Gay, was not the exception but the rule at Harvard. Much if not almost all of Gay’s meager published work has now been found to have been plagerized from others. Now we have news that numerous papers published by four senior researchers (and managers) at Harvard’s Dana-Farber Cancer Institute are either being retracted or revised because of “allegations of data falsification.”

In the emailed statement to The Crimson, DFCI Research Integrity Officer Barrett J. Rollins wrote that six manuscripts have retractions underway and 31 are being corrected. The corrections come amid claims of data manipulation against DFCI President and CEO Laurie H. Glimcher ’72, Executive Vice President and COO William C. Hahn ’87, Senior Vice President for Experimental Medicine Irene M. Ghobrial, and Harvard Medical School professor Kenneth C. Anderson. The allegations of misconduct were first compiled and publicized in a Jan. 2 blog post by data sleuth Sholto David.

In the statement, Rollins wrote that David contacted DFCI with allegations of data manipulation in 57 manuscripts. According to Rollins, 38 were articles in which DFCI researchers “have primary responsibility for the potential data errors.”

» Read more

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Ingenuity team confirms the helicopter is healthy

8:47 am

In a slightly more detailed status update today, the engineering team that operates the Mars helicopter Ingenuity has confirmed that the helicopter is healthy and apparently undamaged after its 72nd flight.

During that last flight, a vertical up-and-down hop to allow communications with the helicopter and thus obtain better information as to its status and location, contact was lost as Ingenuity descended to land.

On Saturday, Jan. 20, communications were reestablished between Ingenuity and NASA’s Perseverance rover. The Ingenuity team has determined the helicopter is power-positive and is sitting vertically on the surface. Next steps include running further diagnostic checks, commanding Ingenuity to take photos of its location on the surface, and performing a spin test.

It is still unclear if full communications have been restored. Ingenuity must be within line-of-sight of the rover Perseverance for this to happen, and it appears that still might not be so. During its 71st flight the helicopter landed prematurely in an unexpected spot, apparently limiting communications significantly. The 72nd flight was likely to locate it more precisely and gather data.

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Another apparent splat on Mars

5:44 pm

Another apparent splat on Mars
Click for original image.

This cool image poses a mystery that might be important for future colonists. The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on October 23, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO).

The science team merely labels this vaguely as simply “landforms.” What it appears to be is an ancient flow of mudlike material or a delta that moved from the west to the east. Its nature is even more evident in the full picture. The top of the delta however appears corroded and old, with a number of craters on top suggesting it has been here for a long time.

Its mudlike appearances suggests water was involved, possibly as ice impregnated within the soil. However, the location says no, unless this occurred so long ago that the entire climate of Mars and this region was vastly different. And in fact, it might have been.
» Read more

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More evidence that smart phones are destroying minds

12:58 pm

The smart phone: Bad for kids
The smart phone: Proven very bad for kids

Link here. The article is a detailed look at the growing body of evidence that now strongly suggests that the use of smart phones by young children is very bad for the development of their brains, and leads to numerous mental and physical issues later in life.

The article describes numerous studies that have tracked a sudden rise in childhood behavioral problems, beginning in the early 2010s, when smart phones started to be ubiquitous. For example,

In 2008, psychotherapist Tom Kersting, who worked as a school counselor for 25 years, saw a rise in attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) diagnoses in children over age 8. ADHD tends to be detected in early childhood after a child starts school. However, he has witnessed increasing diagnoses in teenagers and adults. While it could be possible that some of these teens were missed by clinicians when they were young, Mr. Kersting suspects that some developed symptoms of ADHD due to screen use.

Around 2012, when 30 percent of teenagers had a smartphone, he started to see rebellious behavior and anxiety disorders becoming more common among children. Young adults and teenagers growing up now also tend to be more antisocial and have reduced emotional resilience, which may be related to insufficient in-person socializing due to spending most of their time behind screens. “It’s not just the amount of time spent in the cyber world,” Mr. Kersting told The Epoch Times, “but also what they missed out on: outside play and social learning.”

Other studies have found similar rises during this same time period in childhood depression, anxiety, autism, and an inability to control their emotions.
» Read more

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Merging galaxies

10:02 am

Merging galaxies
Click for original image.

Time for another cool image from the Hubble Space Telescope. The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken by Hubble to study “the overall physical characteristics of galaxies and their star formation.”

What the picture however reveals best is the ongoing merger of three galaxies.

Arp 300 consists of two interacting galaxies, UGC 05028 (the smaller face-on spiral galaxy) and UGC 05029 (the larger face-on spiral). Likely due to its gravitational dance with its larger partner, UGC 05028 has an asymmetric, irregular structure, which is not as visible from ground-based telescopes but is quite distinct in this new image from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope. The bright knot visible to the southeast of the center of UGC 05028 may be the remnant of another small galaxy that is in the process of merging with that galaxy.

As always with Hubble galaxy images, there are a plethora of other background galaxies scattered about, including what appears to be another merger in the center right of two elliptical galaxies. In fact, except for one star in the lower right (with the four spikes), every other object in this photo is a galaxy of many shapes and distances.

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Perseverance looks back at the floor of Jezero Crater

9:49 am

Overview map
Click for interactive map.

Looking out across Jezero Crater
Click for original image.

Cool image time. The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and enhanced to post here, was taken today by the left high resolution camera on the Mars rover Perseverance.

Though I am guessing somewhat, I think this image looks east and down into the floor of Jezero Crater, as indicated by the yellow lines in the overview map above. The mountains in the distance are not the easter rim of Jezero, which is generally indistinct, but some peaks inside the crater itself. They appear higher because Perseverance is looking down at them from the delta, near the western rim.

The white line on the map shows the rover’s entire journey so far since landing in February 2021, about 14.77 miles. Since Perseverance’s recent travels should be within this picture, and I can see no rover tracks, it suggests my guess as to what the picture looks at could be very wrong. No matter. Up until now the landscape inside Jezero Crater has in general been less spectacular than seen by Curiosity in Gale Crater many miles away. This picture however shows us that Perseverance can provide us some good views also. It is also a precursor to the views we shall get once the rover exits Jezero and begins to explore the rough regions to the west.

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Engineers shut lunar lander SLIM down in hope sunlight can recharge its batteries

8:54 am

SLIM's landing zone
Map showing SLIM landing zone on the Moon.
Click for interactive map.

Once they were able to download sufficient data, engineers have intentionally shut down Japan’s lunar lander SLIM in order to increase the chances it will recover should sunlight hit its solar panels and recharge its batteries.

The shutdown occurred three hours after landing on January 19, 2024, when the batteries still has a charge of about 12%.

Before turning the lander off remotely, mission control was able to receive technical and image data from its descent, and from the lunar surface. “We’re relieved and beginning to get excited after confirming a lot of data has been obtained,” JAXA said Monday in a statement, adding that “according to the telemetry data, SLIM’s solar cells are facing west”.

“If sunlight hits the Moon from the west in the future, we believe there’s a possibility of power generation, and we’re currently preparing for restoration,” it said.

The landing took place in the morning on the Moon, so there is a chance that in about a week, when the Sun shifts to the western sky, the panels will get sunlight and begin to recharge the battery.

Meanwhile, engineers confirmed that the two experimental mini-rovers were successfully deployed (see the media kit [pdf] for more details). At the moment we do not know if they have operated as planned, one rolling and the other hopping.

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Scientists finally look at prime samples captured by OSIRIS-REx of the asteroid Bennu

9:21 pm

The inside of OSIRIS-REx's sample return capsule
Click for original image.

Scientists have finally opened the sample capsule from OSIRIS-REx to see the prime asteroid material obtained from the asteroid Bennu during the spacecraft’s touch-and-go sample grab.

The captured material inside the capsule can be seen in the picture to the right. It is the debris inside the ring.

Erika Blumenfeld, creative lead for the Advanced Imaging and Visualization of Astromaterials (AIVA) and Joe Aebersold, AIVA project lead, captured this photograph of the open TAGSAM head including the asteroid material inside using manual high-resolution precision photography and a semi-automated focus stacking procedure. The result is an image that shows extreme detail of the sample.

Next, the curation team will remove the round metal collar and prepare the glovebox to transfer the remaining sample from the TAGSAM head into pie-wedge sample trays.

The final mass of material will be determined once it is removed and weighed, though the team has already recovered more than 70 grams that had clung to the outside the capsule, which in itself exceeded the mission’s targeted goal.

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Ingenuity’s status uncertain but likely healthy

8:42 pm

Overview map
Click for interactive map.

Updates from the engineering team that operates the Mars helicopter Ingenuity in the past two days have suggested the helicopter might be in trouble. First the team issued a status update yesterday that indicated communications had been lost prematurely during the helicopter’s 72nd flight.

The flight was designed as a quick pop-up vertical flight to check out the helicopter’s systems, following an unplanned early landing during its previous flight. Data Ingenuity sent to the Perseverance rover (which acts as a relay between the helicopter and Earth) during the flight indicates it successfully climbed to its assigned maximum altitude of 40 feet (12 meters). During its planned descent, communications between the helicopter and rover terminated early, prior to touchdown.

A further update today said that communications had been regained, but also noted that the engineering team still did not have a full understanding of the helicopter’s status.

We’ve reestablished contact with the #MarsHelicopter after instructing @NASAPersevere
to perform long-duration listening sessions for Ingenuity’s signal.

Based on the information released (or lack thereof) from the previous flight, the 71st, it is my sense that the situation is not as dire as these reports suggest, and that the situation might simply be related to issues of communications. Let me explain why I have come to this conclusion.
» Read more

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JAXA: SLIM soft landing successful but will likely die prematurely after landing

10:40 am

According to managers at Japan’s space agency JAXA, its SLIM lunar lander successfully completed its soft landing on the Moon.

It appears SLIM’s solar cells are not producing power. The spacecraft is presently on battery power, which will only last a few hours. Engineers are presently rushing to download images, taken during descent and after landing. There is also no word yet on whether the two test rovers were successfully released and achieved their test goals.

To precisely determine if the lander achieved its goal to hit a precise landing zone less than 300 feet across will require further analysis, much of which will depend on the images presently being downloaded. At the moment the engineers believe this goal was achieved, however, based on the telemetry already received.

Thus, it appears Japan has managed a soft-landing, something that in the past few years several countries (Israel, Russia, India, United States) and private companies (SpaceIL, Ispace, Astrobotic) have failed to do. Right now Japan appears to be the third nation to succeed in this new round of lunar exploration, joining China and India (which succeeded on its second attempt).

The next lunar landing attempt will be by the American private company, Intuitive Machines. Its Nova-C lander is scheduled for launch on a Falcon 9 rocket in mid-February.

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SLIM lands on the Moon

9:00 am

Telemetry after SLIM's landing

According to telemetry data (as shown on the screen capture to the right), Japan’s SLIM lander has apparently landed on the Moon near Shioli Crater, proving its autonomous precision landing system worked as planned.

At the moment however Japan’s space agency JAXA has not yet confirmed that the landing was completely successful. After landing the announcers on the live stream repeatedly noted that though the telemetry indicated it had landed as planned, engineers had not yet confirmed that the lander was still operational. Note how the data to the right suggests the spacecraft is tilted slightly. This tilt appears to match the tilt of the surface, but it could also indicate a problem with communications.

A press conference announcing either a confirmation or a failure will begin shortly at the live stream above.

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Scientists: Evidence of large deposits of buried ice along Martian equator

10:24 am

Theorized buried ice deposits on Mars
Click for original figure from paper.

Using data obtained from Europe’s Mars Express orbiter, scientists believe they have detected evidence of a very large and extensive deposit of buried ice in the dry Martian equatorial regions, buried within the Medusae Fossae Formation, what is thought to be the largest volcanic ash deposit on Mars.

The blue-to-orange areas inside the Medusae on the map to the right, taken from figure 5 of the paper, shows where they have detected potential buried ice, at depths ranging from one to two thousand feet below the surface. The orange areas indicate the thickest ice deposits, as much as two miles thick. From the paper’s abstract:

The MARSIS radar sounder [on Mars Express] detects echoes in Medusae Fossae Formation deposits that occur between the surface and the base which are interpreted as layers within the deposit like those found in Polar Layered Deposits of the North and South Poles. The subsurface reflectors suggest transitions between mixtures of ice-rich and ice-poor dust analogous to the multi-layered, ice-rich polar deposits.

Assuming this detection is real, this would be the largest reservoir of potential water in the dry equatorial regions found yet, comparable to another similar buried detection deep below the giant canyon Valles Marineris but much larger.

Accessing this water however will not be simple, as it is deep underground. You couldn’t just drill a well, as it is ice, not a liquid water table. It would have to mined like minerals on Earth. There are uncertainties about this conclusion as well. It is possible the detection is not water but volcanic ash or dust compacted in a way that mimics an ice detection.

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SLIM lowers orbit in preparation for January 19, 2024 lunar landing

9:33 am

SLIM's landing zone
Map showing SLIM landing zone on the Moon.
Click for interactive map.

The Japanese unmanned lunar lander SLIM, in orbit around the Moon since December 25, 2023, has now lowered its orbit in preparation for its lunar landing attempt, now scheduled for tomorrow, January 19, 2024, with operations beginning at 10:00 am (Eastern).

The image to the right indicates the targeted landing area near Shioli Crater. The mission’s prime engineering goal is to demonstrate precise robotic landing technology, able to land a spacecraft softly on another planet within a target zone less than 300 feet across. If successful it is expected to survive for about two weeks, studying the surface below it with a multi-spectral camera but also releasing two test probes, one a hopping rover and the second a rolling spherical rover. Both carry their own science instruments.

I have embedded the live stream for tomorrow’s landing below.
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Astronomical high-altitude balloon flight now exceeds two weeks

9:14 am

GUSTO's flight path as of January 18, 2024

A high-altitude stratospheric balloon, dubbed GUSTO and designed to study the interstellar medium, has now been circling the south pole over Antarctica for fifteen days.

The map to the right shows its full flight path since its launch on December 31, 2023. From the press release:

GUSTO is mapping a large portion of the Milky Way galaxy and Large Magellanic Cloud to help scientists study the interstellar medium. The observatory is transmitting the data it collects back to watchful teams on the ground as it steadily circumnavigates the South Pole around 120,000+ feet.

GUSTO is flying on a 39 million cubic-foot zero-pressure scientific balloon, which is so large it could easily fit 195 blimps inside of it. The balloon is used to fly missions for long periods of time during the Austral Summer over Antarctica. GUSTO is aiming for a NASA record of 55+ days in flight to achieve its science goals.

You can follow GUSTO’s flight in real time here.

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A rock tadpole on Mars

11:03 am

A rock tadpole on Mars

Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on January 11, 2024 by the left navigation camera of the Mars rover Curiosity.

The picture was highlighted in yesterday’s update from the rover’s science team, describing the team’s upcoming geological goals for the next few days.

We have observed resistant, polygonal fractures/ridges in many recent bedrock blocks. There is much speculation among the team as to the origin of these features. Hypotheses have different implications for past environments, and the polygonal fractures are therefore of high interest. As well as the polygonal fractures, there are more continuous linear veins. The relationship between the polygonal and linear fractures can also help to inform our interpretations

You can see the polygonal fractures in the full image. The thin line of rock sticking up from the tadpole illustrates one of these continuous linear veins. The material that fills the vein is obviously more resistent to erosion, so as the wind (and maybe ancient ice or water activity) scoured the rock into its tadpole shape, the vein material remained.
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Webb confirms the unusual shape of early galaxies as seen by Hubble

9:52 am

Earth galaxies shapes, as seen by Webb in infrared
Click for original image.

The uncertainty of science: The infrared view of the Webb Space Telescope appears to have confirmed and even underlined the unusual shapes of many early galaxies as previously seen by the Hubble Space Telescope.

Researchers analyzing images from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope have found that galaxies in the early universe are often flat and elongated, like surfboards and pool noodles – and are rarely round, like volleyballs or frisbees. “Roughly 50 to 80% of the galaxies we studied appear to be flattened in two dimensions,” explained lead author Viraj Pandya, a NASA Hubble Fellow at Columbia University in New York. “Galaxies that look like pool noodles or surfboards seem to be very common in the early universe, which is surprising, since they are uncommon nearby.”

The team focused on a vast field of near-infrared images delivered by Webb, known as the Cosmic Evolution Early Release Science (CEERS) Survey, plucking out galaxies that are estimated to exist when the universe was 600 million to 6 billion years old.

While most distant galaxies look like surfboards and pool noodles, others are shaped like frisbees and volleyballs. The “volleyballs,” or sphere-shaped galaxies, appear the most compact type on the cosmic “ocean” and were also the least frequently identified. The frisbees were found to be as large as the surfboard- and pool noodle-shaped galaxies along the “horizon,” but become more common closer to “shore” in the nearby universe.

The galaxies also appear generally far less massive than galaxies in the near universe, which fits with the Big Bang theory that says they had less time to grow.

The press release notes that the sample size is still very small, and further observations will be required to confirm whether these shapes are common in the early universe.

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Gullies and avalanches in Martian crater

11:19 am

Gullies and avalanches in a Martian crater
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on September 17, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows two significant features, both of which suggest the action of near-surface water ice to change to surface of Mars.

First are the gullies on the cliff wall, which also happens to be the interior slope of a 30-mile-wide crater. Since the first discovery of gullies on Mars, scientists have pondered their origin, with all their hypothesises always pointing to some form of water process. One popular theory [pdf] points to some form of intermittent water flow linked to long term climate cycles caused by the extreme shifts in the red planet’s rotational tilt, from 11 to 60 degrees. Another theory suggests the gullies form from the winter-summer freeze-thaw cycle and the accumulation of frost during winter.

The second feature are the three avalanche debris piles at the base of these gullies. The long extent of each suggests the avalanches flowed more like wet mud than falling rocks. If the ground here was impregnated with ice, than this look makes sense.
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The divide in a giant Martian lava river

11:29 am

The divide in a giant Martian lava river
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The photo to the right, rotated, cropped, reduced, sharpened, and annotated to post here, was taken on September 24, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO).

As indicated by the arrows, this is a frozen river of lava on Mars, flowing to the southwest and then splitting into two streams, one to the west and the other to the south. Being a Martian lava flow, when it was liquid it flowed much faster than lava on Earth, almost like a thick water. The flow bored into any high features, such as the two mesas in this picture, and streamlined their shapes, tearing material away as the lava moved by quickly. In the process the lava flow exposed many layers in those mesas, indicating many other previous lava flow events.

The crater in the lower mesa, where the stream splits, appears to have been more resistent to the flow, having been compacted into harder and denser material by the impact itself.
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