- — NASA may alter Artemis III to have Starship and Orion dock in low-Earth orbit
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at 4/19/24 9:20amEnlarge / This image taken by NASA's Orion spacecraft shows its view just before the vehicle flew behind the Moon in 2022. (credit: NASA) Although NASA is unlikely to speak about it publicly any time soon, the space agency is privately considering modifications to its Artemis plan to land astronauts on the surface of the Moon later this decade. Multiple sources have confirmed that NASA is studying alternatives to the planned Artemis III landing of two astronauts on the Moon, nominally scheduled for September 2026, due to concerns about hardware readiness and mission complexity. Under one of the options, astronauts would launch into low-Earth orbit inside an Orion spacecraft and rendezvous there with a Starship vehicle, separately launched by SpaceX. During this mission, similar to Apollo 9, a precursor to the Apollo 11 lunar landing, the crew would validate the ability of Orion and Starship to dock and test habitability inside Starship. The crew would then return to Earth. In another option NASA is considering, a crew would launch in Orion and fly to a small space station near the Moon, the Lunar Gateway, and then return to Earth.Read 15 remaining paragraphs | Comments- — Rocket Report: Starship could save Mars Sample Return; BE-4s for second Vulcan
- at 4/19/24 5:00amEnlarge / A BE-4 engine is moved into position on ULA's second Vulcan rocket. (credit: United Launch Alliance) Welcome to Edition 6.40 of the Rocket Report! There was a lot of exciting news this week. For the first time, SpaceX launched a reusable Falcon 9 booster for a 20th flight. A few miles away at Cape Canaveral, Boeing and United Launch Alliance completed one of the final steps before the first crew launch of the Starliner spacecraft. But I think one of the most interesting things that happened was NASA's decision to ask the space industry for more innovative ideas on how to do Mars Sample Return. I have no doubt that space companies will come up with some fascinating concepts, and I can't wait to hear about them. As always, we welcome reader submissions, and if you don't want to miss an issue, please subscribe using the box below (the form will not appear on AMP-enabled versions of the site). Each report will include information on small-, medium-, and heavy-lift rockets, as well as a quick look ahead at the next three launches on the calendar. Going vertical Down Under. Gilmour Space has raised its privately-developed Eris rocket vertical on a launch pad in North Queensland for the first time, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation reports. This milestone marks the start of the next phase of launch preparations for Eris, a three-stage rocket powered by hybrid engines. If successful, Eris would become the first Australian-built rocket to reach orbit. Gilmour says the maiden flight of Eris is scheduled for no earlier than May 4, pending launch permit approvals. This presumably refers to a commercial launch license from the Australian government.Read 22 remaining paragraphs | Comments
- — Boeing says it will cut SLS workforce “due to external factors”
- at 4/18/24 5:52pmEnlarge / The SLS rocket is seen on its launch pad at Kennedy Space Center in August 2022. (credit: Trevor Mahlmann) On Thursday senior Boeing officials leading the Space Launch System program, including David Dutcher and Steve Snell, convened an all-hands meeting for the more than 1,000 employees who work on the rocket. According to two people familiar with the meeting, the officials announced that there would be a significant number of layoffs and reassignments of people working on the program. They offered a handful of reasons for the cuts, including the fact that timelines for NASA's Artemis lunar missions that will use the SLS rocket are slipping to the right. Later on Thursday, in a statement provided to Ars, a Boeing spokesperson confirmed the cuts to Ars: "Due to external factors unrelated to our program performance, Boeing is reviewing and adjusting current staffing levels on the Space Launch System program."Read 11 remaining paragraphs | Comments
- — Amid schedule uncertainty, Boeing will shed workers on SLS rocket program
- at 4/18/24 5:52pmEnlarge / The SLS rocket is seen on its launch pad at Kennedy Space Center in August 2022. (credit: Trevor Mahlmann) On Thursday senior Boeing officials leading the Space Launch System program, including David Dutcher and Steve Snell, convened an all-hands meeting for the more than 1,000 employees who work on the rocket. According to two people familiar with the meeting, the officials announced that there would be a significant number of layoffs and reassignments of people working on the program. They offered a handful of reasons for the cuts, including the fact that timelines for NASA's Artemis lunar missions that will use the SLS rocket are slipping to the right. Later on Thursday, in a statement provided to Ars, a Boeing spokesperson confirmed the cuts to Ars: "Due to external factors unrelated to our program performance, Boeing is reviewing and adjusting current staffing levels on the Space Launch System program."Read 11 remaining paragraphs | Comments
- — Hospital prices for the same emergency care vary up to 16X, study finds
- at 4/18/24 4:14pmEnlarge / Miami Beach, Fire Rescue ambulance at Mt. Sinai Medical Center hospital. ] (credit: Getty | Jeffrey Greenberg/) Since 2021, federal law has required hospitals to publicly post their prices, allowing Americans to easily anticipate costs and shop around for affordable care—as they would for any other marketed service or product. But hospitals have mostly failed miserably at complying with the law. A 2023 KFF analysis on compliance found that the pricing information hospitals provided is "messy, inconsistent, and confusing, making it challenging, if not impossible, for patients or researchers to use them for their intended purpose." A February 2024 report from the nonprofit organization Patient Rights Advocate found that only 35 percent of 2,000 US hospitals surveyed were in full compliance with the 2021 rule. But even if hospitals dramatically improved their price transparency, it likely wouldn't help when patients need emergency trauma care. After an unexpected, major injury, people are sent to the closest hospital and aren't likely to be shopping around for the best price from the back of an ambulance. If they did, though, they might also need to be treated for shock.Read 8 remaining paragraphs | Comments
- — Renovation relic: Man finds hominin jawbone in parents’ travertine kitchen tile
- at 4/18/24 3:16pmEnlarge / Reddit user Kidipadeli75 spotted a fossilized hominin jawbone in his parents' new travertine kitchen tile. (credit: Reddit user Kidipadeli75) Ah, Reddit! It's a constant source of amazing stories that sound too good to be true... and yet! The latest example comes to us from a user named Kidipadeli75, a dentist who visited his parents after the latter's kitchen renovation and noticed what appeared to be a human-like jawbone embedded in the new travertine tile. Naturally, he posted a photograph to Reddit seeking advice and input. And Reddit was happy to oblige. User MAJOR_Blarg, for instance, is a dentist "with forensic odontology training" and offered the following: While all old-world monkeys, apes, and hominids share the same dental formula, 2-1-2-3, and the individual molars and premolars can look similar, the specific spacing in the mandible itself is very specifically and characteristically human, or at least related and very recent hominid relative/ancestor. Most likely human given the success of the proliferation of H.s. and the (relatively) rapid formation of travertine. Against modern Homo sapiens, which may not be entirely relevant, the morphology of the mandible is likely not northern European, but more similar to African, middle Eastern, mainland Asian. Another user, deamatrona, who claims to hold an anthropology degree, also thought the dentition looked Asiatic, "which could be a significant find." The thread also drew the attention of John Hawks, an anthropologist at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and longtime science blogger who provided some valuable context on his own website. (Hawks has been involved with the team that discovered Homo naledi at the Rising Star cave system in 2013.)Read 7 remaining paragraphs | Comments
- — SpaceX and Northrop are working on a constellation of spy satellites
- at 4/18/24 1:54pmEnlarge / A Falcon 9 rocket launches a Starlink mission in January 2020. (credit: SpaceX) SpaceX is reportedly working with at least one major US defense contractor, Northrop Grumman, on a constellation of spy satellites for the National Reconnaissance Office. According to Reuters, development of the network of hundreds of spy satellites by SpaceX is being coordinated with multiple contractors to avoid putting too much control of a highly sensitive intelligence program in the hands of one company. "It is in the government's interest to not be totally invested in one company run by one person," one of the news agency's sources said, most likely referring to SpaceX founder Elon Musk.Read 11 remaining paragraphs | Comments
- — The largest marine reptile ever could match blue whales in size
- at 4/18/24 10:07amEnlarge (credit: Sergey Krasovskiy) Blue whales have been considered the largest creatures to ever live on Earth. With a maximum length of nearly 30 meters and weighing nearly 200 tons, they are the all-time undisputed heavyweight champions of the animal kingdom. Now, digging on a beach in Somerset, UK, a team of British paleontologists found the remains of an ichthyosaur, a marine reptile that could give the whales some competition. “It is quite remarkable to think that gigantic, blue-whale-sized ichthyosaurs were swimming in the oceans around what was the UK during the Triassic Period,” said Dean Lomax, a paleontologist at the University of Manchester who led the study. Giant jawbones Ichthyosaurs were found in the seas through much of the Mesozoic era, appearing as early as 250 million years ago. They had four limbs that looked like paddles, vertical tail fins that extended downward in most species, and generally looked like large, reptilian dolphins with elongated narrow jaws lined with teeth. And some of them were really huge. The largest ichthyosaur skeleton so far was found in British Columbia, Canada, measured 21 meters, and belonged to a particularly massive ichthyosaur called Shonisaurus sikanniensis. But it seems they could get even larger than that.Read 10 remaining paragraphs | Comments
- — The hidden story behind one of SpaceX’s wettest and wildest launches
- at 4/18/24 6:30amEnlarge / Is that sooty rocket lifting off with the CRS-3 mission in 2014 a reused booster? No, it is not. (credit: SpaceX) Ten years ago today, when a Falcon 9 rocket took off from Florida, something strange happened. Dramatically, as the rocket lifted off, a fountain of dirty water splashed upward alongside the vehicle, coating the rocket in grime. Following the ultimately successful liftoff of this third cargo Dragon mission to the International Space Station, SpaceX founder Elon Musk was asked about the incident during a news conference. He offered a fairly generic answer without going into the details. "We sprayed a bunch of water all around the pad," Musk said. "Essentially what happened is we splashed dirty water on ourselves. So it’s a little embarrassing, but no harm done."Read 19 remaining paragraphs | Comments
- — Life-threatening rat pee infections reach record levels in NYC
- at 4/17/24 4:26pmEnlarge / A rat looks for food while on a subway platform at the Columbus Circle - 59th Street station on May 8, 2023, in New York City. (credit: Getty | Gary Hershorn) A life-threatening bacterial infection typically spread through rat urine sickened a record number of people in New York City last year—and this year looks on track for another all-time high, the NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene reports. The infection is leptospirosis, which can cause a range of symptoms, including non-specific ones like fever, headache, chills, muscle aches, vomiting, diarrhea, and cough. But, if left untreated, can become severe, causing kidney failure, liver damage, jaundice, hemorrhage, bloody eyes (conjunctival suffusion), respiratory distress, and potentially death. The bacteria that causes it—spirochete bacteria of the genus Leptospira—infect rats, which shed the bacteria in their urine. The germs jump to people through direct contact with open wounds or mucous membranes.Read 7 remaining paragraphs | Comments
- — Bodies found in Neolithic pit were likely victims of ritualistic murder
- at 4/17/24 1:30pmEnlarge / Three female skeletons found in a Neolithic storage pit in France show signs of ritualistic human sacrifice. (credit: . Beeching/Ludes et al., 2024) Archaeologists have discovered the remains of three women in a Neolithic tomb in France, with the positioning of two of the bodies suggesting they may have been ritualistically murdered by asphyxia or self-strangulation, according to a recent paper published in the journal Science Advances. (WARNING: graphic descriptions below.) France's Rhône Valley is home to several archaeological sites dating to the end of the Middle Neolithic period (between 4250 and 3600/3500 BCE in the region); the sites include various storage silos, broken grindstones, imported ceramics, animal remains (both from communal meals and sacrifices), and human remains deposited in sepulchral pits. Saint-Paul-Trois-Châteaux is one such site.Read 8 remaining paragraphs | Comments
- — Climate damages by 2050 will be 6 times the cost of limiting warming to 2°
- at 4/17/24 1:06pmEnlarge (credit: Frame Studio) Almost from the start, arguments about mitigating climate change have included an element of cost-benefit analysis: Would it cost more to move the world off fossil fuels than it would to simply try to adapt to a changing world? A strong consensus has built that the answer to the question is a clear no, capped off by a Nobel in Economics given to one of the people whose work was key to building that consensus. While most academics may have considered the argument put to rest, it has enjoyed an extended life in the political sphere. Large unknowns remain about both the costs and benefits, which depend in part on the remaining uncertainties in climate science and in part on the assumptions baked into economic models. In Wednesday's edition of Nature, a small team of researchers analyzed how local economies have responded to the last 40 years of warming and projected those effects forward to 2050. They find that we're already committed to warming that will see the growth of the global economy undercut by 20 percent. That places the cost of even a limited period of climate change at roughly six times the estimated price of putting the world on a path to limit the warming to 2° C.Read 18 remaining paragraphs | Comments
- — A chunk of metal that tore through a Florida home definitely came from the ISS
- at 4/17/24 8:09amNASA has confirmed that the object that fell into a Florida home last month was part of a battery pack released from the International Space Station. This extraordinary incident opens a new frontier in space law. NASA, the homeowner, and attorneys are navigating little-used legal codes and intergovernmental agreements to determine who should pay for the damages. Alejandro Otero, owner of the Naples, Florida, home struck by the debris, told Ars he is fairly certain the object came from the space station, even before NASA's confirmation. The circumstances strongly suggested that was the case. The cylindrical piece of metal tore through his roof on March 8, a few minutes after the time US Space Command reported the reentry of a space station cargo pallet and nine decommissioned batteries over the Gulf of Mexico on a trajectory heading forward the coast of southwest Florida.Read 33 remaining paragraphs | Comments
- — Bogus Botox poisoning outbreak spreads to 9 states, CDC says
- at 4/16/24 3:10pmA package of counterfeit Botox. (credit: FDA) At least 19 women across nine US states appear to have been poisoned by bogus injections of Botox, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported late Monday. Nine of the 19 cases—47 percent—were hospitalized, and four—21 percent—were treated with botulinum anti-toxin. The CDC's alert and outbreak investigation follows reports in recent days of botulism-like illnesses linked to shady injections in Tennessee, where officials reported four cases, and Illinois, where there were two. The CDC now reports that the list of affected states also includes: Colorado, Florida, Kentucky, Nebraska, New Jersey, New York, and Washington. In a separate alert Tuesday, the Food and Drug Administration said that "unsafe, counterfeit" versions of Botox had been found in several states, and the toxic fakes were administered by unlicensed or untrained people and/or in non-medical or unlicensed settings, such as homes or spas. The counterfeit products appeared to have come from an unlicensed source, generally raising the risks that they're "misbranded, adulterated, counterfeit, contaminated, improperly stored and transported, ineffective and/or unsafe," the FDA said.Read 6 remaining paragraphs | Comments
- — Studies reveal new clues to how tardigrades can survive intense radiation
- at 4/16/24 2:55pmEnlarge / SEM Micrograph of a tardigrade, more commonly known as a "water bear" or "moss piglet." (credit: Cultura RM Exclusive/Gregory S. Paulson/Getty Images) Since the 1960s, scientists have known that the tiny tardigrade can withstand very intense radiation blasts 1,000 times stronger than what most other animals could endure. According to a new paper published in the journal Current Biology, it's not that such ionizing radiation doesn't damage tardigrades' DNA; rather, the tardigrades are able to rapidly repair any such damage. The findings complement those of a separate study published in January that also explored tardigrades' response to radiation. “These animals are mounting an incredible response to radiation, and that seems to be a secret to their extreme survival abilities,” said co-author Courtney Clark-Hachtel, who was a postdoc in Bob Goldstein's lab at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, which has been conducting research into tardigrades for 25 years. “What we are learning about how tardigrades overcome radiation stress can lead to new ideas about how we might try to protect other animals and microorganisms from damaging radiation.” As reported previously, tardigrades are micro-animals that can survive in the harshest conditions: extreme pressure, extreme temperature, radiation, dehydration, starvation—even exposure to the vacuum of outer space. The creatures were first described by German zoologist Johann Goeze in 1773. They were dubbed tardigrada ("slow steppers" or "slow walkers") four years later by Lazzaro Spallanzani, an Italian biologist. That's because tardigrades tend to lumber along like a bear. Since they can survive almost anywhere, they can be found in lots of places: deep-sea trenches, salt and freshwater sediments, tropical rain forests, the Antarctic, mud volcanoes, sand dunes, beaches, and lichen and moss. (Another name for them is "moss piglets.") Read 10 remaining paragraphs | Comments
- — Second-biggest black hole in the Milky Way found
- at 4/16/24 2:18pmEnlarge / The star's orbit, shown here in light, is influenced by the far more massive black hole, indicated by the red orbit. (credit: ESO/L. Calçada) As far as black holes go, there are two categories: supermassive ones that live at the center of the galaxies (and we're unsure about how they got there) and stellar mass ones that formed through the supernovae that end the lives of massive stars. Prior to the advent of gravitational wave detectors, the heaviest stellar-mass black hole we knew about was only a bit more than a dozen times the mass of the Sun. And this makes sense, given that the violence of the supernova explosions that form these black holes ensures that only a fraction of the dying star's mass gets transferred into its dark offspring. But then the gravitational wave data started flowing in, and we discovered there were lots of heavier black holes, with masses dozens of times that of the Sun. But we could only find them when they smacked into another black hole. Now, thanks to the Gaia mission, we have observational evidence of the largest black hole in the Milky Way outside of the supermassive one, with a mass 33 times that of the Sun. And, in galactic terms, it's right next door at about 2,000 light-years distant, meaning it will be relatively easy to learn more.Read 14 remaining paragraphs | Comments
- — NASA says it needs better ideas on how to return samples from Mars
- at 4/16/24 7:53amEnlarge / NASA's existing plan for Mars Sample Return involves a large lander the size of a two-car garage, two helicopters, a two-stage bespoke rocket, a European-built Earth return vehicle, and the Perseverance rover already operating on the red planet. (credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech) NASA's $11 billion plan to robotically bring rock samples from Mars back to Earth is too expensive and will take too long, the agency's administrator said Monday, so officials are tasking government and private sector engineers to come up with a better plan. The agency's decision on how to move forward with the Mars Sample Return (MSR) program follows an independent review last year that found ballooning costs and delays threatened the mission's viability. The effort would likely cost NASA between $8 billion and $11 billion, and the launch would be delayed at least two years until 2030, with samples getting back to Earth a few years later, the review board concluded. But that's not the whole story. Like all federal agencies, NASA faces new spending restrictions imposed by the Fiscal Responsibility Act, a bipartisan budget deal struck last year between the White House and congressional Republicans. With these new budget headwinds, NASA officials determined the agency's plan for Mars Sample Return would not get specimens from the red planet back to Earth until 2040.Read 40 remaining paragraphs | Comments
- — How to keep Earth from being cooked by the ever-hotter Sun
- at 4/16/24 5:30amEnlarge I’d wager a guess that we are, as a species, rather fond of our home planet (our wanton carbon emissions notwithstanding). But the ugly truth is that the Earth is doomed. Someday, the Sun will enter a stage that will make life impossible on the Earth’s surface and eventually reduce the planet to nothing more than a sad, lonely chunk of iron and nickel. The good news is that if we really put our minds to it—and don’t worry, we’ll have hundreds of millions of years to plan—we can keep our home world hospitable, even long after our Sun goes haywire. A waking nightmare The Sun is slowly but inexorably getting brighter, hotter, and larger with time. Billions of years ago, when collections of molecules first began to dance together and call themselves alive, the Sun was roughly 20 percent dimmer than it is today. Even the dinosaurs knew a weaker, smaller star. And while the Sun is only halfway through the main hydrogen-burning phase of its life, with 4-billion-and-change years before it begins its death throes, the peculiar combination of temperature and brightness that make life possible on this little world of ours will erode in only a few hundred million years. A blink of an eye, astronomically speaking.Read 29 remaining paragraphs | Comments
- — Song lyrics are getting more repetitive, angrier
- at 4/15/24 10:29amEnlarge (credit: Henrik Sorensen) From ‘80s new wave to ‘90s grunge to the latest pop single, music has changed a lot over the decades. Those changes have come not only in terms of sound, though; lyrics have also evolved as time has passed. So what has changed about the lyrics we can’t get out of our heads? After analyzing 12,000 English-language pop, rock, rap, R&B, and country songs released between 1970 and 2020, researcher Eva Zangerle of Innsbruck University and her team have found that lyrics have been getting simpler and more repetitive over time. This trend is especially evident in rap and rock, but it applies to other genres as well. Another thing Zangerle’s team discovered is that lyrics tend to be more personal and emotionally charged now than they were over 50 years ago. Know the words… “Just as literature can be considered a portrayal of society, lyrics also provide a reflection of a society’s shifting norms, emotions, and values over time,” the researchers wrote in a study recently published in Scientific Reports.Read 10 remaining paragraphs | Comments
- — Sleeping more flushes junk out of the brain
- at 4/14/24 5:22amEnlarge (credit: OsakaWayne Studios) As if we didn’t have enough reasons to get at least eight hours of sleep, there is now one more. Neurons are still active during sleep. We may not realize it, but the brain takes advantage of this recharging period to get rid of junk that was accumulating during waking hours. Sleep is something like a soft reboot. We knew that slow brainwaves had something to do with restful sleep; researchers at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have now found out why. When we are awake, our neurons require energy to fuel complex tasks such as problem-solving and committing things to memory. The problem is that debris gets left behind after they consume these nutrients. As we sleep, neurons use these rhythmic waves to help move cerebrospinal fluid through brain tissue, carrying out metabolic waste in the process. In other words, neurons need to take out the trash so it doesn’t accumulate and potentially contribute to neurodegenerative diseases. “Neurons serve as master organizers for brain clearance,” the WUSTL research team said in a study recently published in Nature.Read 12 remaining paragraphs | Comments
- — Why do some people always get lost?
- at 4/14/24 4:55amEnlarge / Scientists are homing in on how navigation skills develop. (credit: Knowable Magazine (CC BY-ND)) Like many of the researchers who study how people find their way from place to place, David Uttal is a poor navigator. “When I was 13 years old, I got lost on a Boy Scout hike, and I was lost for two and a half days,” recalls the Northwestern University cognitive scientist. And he’s still bad at finding his way around. The world is full of people like Uttal—and their opposites, the folks who always seem to know exactly where they are and how to get where they want to go. Scientists sometimes measure navigational ability by asking someone to point toward an out-of-sight location—or, more challenging, to imagine they are someplace else and point in the direction of a third location—and it’s immediately obvious that some people are better at it than others. “People are never perfect, but they can be as accurate as single-digit degrees off, which is incredibly accurate,” says Nora Newcombe, a cognitive psychologist at Temple University who coauthored a look at how navigational ability develops in the 2022 Annual Review of Developmental Psychology. But others, when asked to indicate the target’s direction, seem to point at random. “They have literally no idea where it is.”Read 29 remaining paragraphs | Comments
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