Science
U.S. spacecraft touches asteroid to grab sample – CBC.ca
A NASA spacecraft descended to an asteroid Tuesday and, dodging boulders the size of buildings, momentarily touched the surface to collect a handful of cosmic rubble for return to Earth.
It was a first for the United States — only Japan has scored asteroid samples.
“Touchdown declared,” a flight controller announced to cheers and applause. “Sampling is in progress.”
Confirmation came from the Osiris-Rex spacecraft as it made contact with the surface of the asteroid Bennu more than 320 million kilometres away. But it could be a week before scientists know how much, if much of anything, was grabbed and whether another try will be needed. If successful, Osiris-Rex will return the samples in 2023.
“I can’t believe we actually pulled this off,” said lead scientist Dante Lauretta of the University of Arizona. “The spacecraft did everything it was supposed to do.”
Osiris-Rex took four and a half hours to make its way down from its tight orbit around Bennu, following commands sent well in advance by ground controllers near Denver.
Bennu’s gravity was too low for the spacecraft to land — the asteroid is just 510 metres across. As a result, it had to reach out with its 3.4-metre robot arm and attempt to grab at least 60 grams of Bennu.
‘Kissing the surface’
The University of Arizona’s Heather Enos, deputy scientist for the mission, described it as “kissing the surface with a short touch-and-go measured in just seconds.” At Mission Control for spacecraft builder Lockheed Martin, controllers on the TAG team — for “touch-and-go” — wore royal blue polo shirts and black masks with the mission patch. The coronavirus pandemic had resulted in a two-month delay.
Tuesday’s operation was considered the most harrowing part of the mission, which began with a launch from Cape Canaveral back in 2016.
A van-sized spacecraft with an Egyptian-inspired name, Osiris-Rex aimed for a spot equivalent to a few parking spaces on Earth in the middle of the asteroid’s Nightingale Crater. After nearly two years orbiting the boulder-packed Bennu, the spacecraft found this location to have the biggest patch of particles small enough to be swallowed up.
After determining that the coast was clear, Osiris-Rex closed in the final few metres for the sampling. The spacecraft was programmed to shoot out pressurized nitrogen gas to stir up the surface, then suck up any loose pebbles or dust, before backing away.
By the time flight controllers heard back from Osiris-Rex, the action already happened 18.5 minutes earlier, the time it takes radio signals to travel each way between Bennu and Earth. They expected to start receiving photos overnight and planned to provide an update Wednesday.
WATCH | A 3D animation of the asteroid Bennu:
“We’re going to be looking at a whole series of images as we descended down to the surface, made contact, fired that gas bottle, and I really want to know how that surface responded,” Lauretta said. “We haven’t done this before, so this is new territory for us.”
Scientists want at least 60 grams and, ideally, closer to two kilograms of Bennu’s black, crumbly, carbon-rich material — thought to contain the building blocks of our solar system. Pictures taken during the operation will give team members a general idea of the amount of loot; they will put the spacecraft through a series of spins Saturday for a more accurate measure.
NASA’s science mission chief, Thomas Zurbuchen, likened Bennu to the Rosetta Stone: “something that’s out there and tells the history of our entire Earth, of the solar system, during the last billions of years.”
Another benefit: The solar-orbiting Bennu, which swings by Earth every six years, has a slight chance of smacking Earth late in the next century. It won’t be a show-stopping life-ender. But the more scientists know about the paths and properties of potentially hazardous space rocks like this one, the safer we’ll all be.
Osiris-Rex could make two more touch-and-go manoeuvres if Tuesday’s sample comes up short. Regardless of how many tries it takes, the samples won’t return to Earth until 2023 to close out the $800-plus million US quest. The sample capsule will parachute into the Utah desert.
“That will be another big day for us. But this is absolutely the major event of the mission right now,” NASA scientist Lucy Lim said.
Japan expects samples from its second asteroid mission — in the milligrams at most — to land in the Australian desert in December.
NASA, meanwhile, plans to launch three more asteroid missions in the next two years, all one-way trips.
Science
Mar 30: An Australian Atlantis and other lost landscapes, and more… – CBC.ca
Quirks and Quarks54:00An Australian Atlantis and other lost landscapes, and more…
On this week’s episode of Quirks & Quarks with Bob McDonald:
Archaeologists identify a medieval war-horse graveyard near Buckingham Palace
Quirks and Quarks9:04Archaeologists identify a medieval war-horse graveyard near Buckingham Palace
We know knights in shining armour rode powerful horses, but remains of those horses are rare. Now, researchers studying equine remains from a site near Buckingham Palace have built a case, based on evidence from their bones, that these animals were likely used in jousting tournaments and battle. Archaeologist Katherine Kanne says the bone analysis also revealed a complex, continent-crossing medieval horse trading network that supplied the British elite with sturdy stallions. This paper was published in Science Advances.
In an ice-free Arctic, polar bears are dining on duck eggs — and gulls are taking advantage
Quirks and Quarks9:22In an ice-free Arctic, Polar bears are dining on duck eggs — and gulls are taking advantage
Researchers using drones to study ground-nesting birds in the Arctic have observed entire colonies being devastated by marauding polar bears that would normally be out on the ice hunting seals, except the ice isn’t there. What’s more, now they’re enabling a second predator — hungry gulls that raid the nests in the bears’ wake. Andrew Barnas made the observations of this “gull tornado” by following around polar bears in East Bay Island in Nunavut. The research was published in the journal Ecology and Evolution.
A NASA mission might have the tools to detect life on Europa from space
Quirks and Quarks8:05A NASA mission might have the tools to detect life on Europa from space
NASA’s Europa Clipper mission, due to launch this fall, is set to explore the jewel of our solar system: Jupiter’s moon, Europa. The mission’s focus is to determine if the icy moon, thought to harbour an ocean with more water than all of the water on Earth, is amenable to life. However, postdoctoral researcher Fabian Klenner, now at the University of Washington, demonstrated how the spacecraft may be able to detect fragments of bacterial life in a single grain of ice ejected from the surface of the moon. The study was published in the journal Science Advances.
Pollution is preventing pollinators from recognizing floral plants by scent
Quirks and Quarks7:50Pollution is preventing pollinators from finding plants by scent
Our polluted air is transforming floral scents so pollinators that spread their pollen can no longer recognize them. In a new study in the journal Science, researchers found that a certain compound in air pollution reacts with the flower’s scent molecules so pollinators — like the hummingbird hawk-moths that pollinate at night — fail to recognize them. Jeremy Chan, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Naples, said the change in scent made the flowers smell “less fruity and less fresh.”
An Australian Atlantis and underwater archeological remains in the Baltic
Quirks and Quarks17:14An Australian Atlantis and underwater archeological remains in the Baltic
During the last ice age, sea levels were more than 100 metres lower than they are today, which means vast tracts of what are currently coastal seafloor were dry land back then. Geologists and archaeologists are searching for these lost landscapes to identify places prehistoric humans might have occupied. These included a country-sized area of Australia that could have been home to half a million people. Archaeologist Kasih Norman and her colleagues published their study of this now-drowned landscape in Quaternary Science Reviews.
Another example is an undersea wall off the coast of Northern Germany that preserves an underwater reindeer hunting ground, described in research led by Jacob Geersen, published in the journal PNAS.
Science
Solar eclipse April 8 – South Grey News
March 28, 2024
Graphic: Appalachian Mtn Club
Grey Bruce Public Health is urging residents to resist the temptation to look directly at the sun during the upcoming solar eclipse and take steps to safeguard their visual health during this relatively rare celestial event.
On April 8, 2024, parts of southern and eastern Ontario will experience a total solar eclipse for the first time since 1925. Grey-Bruce will be outside of the so-called Path of Totality — a narrow area where the moon will completely block out the sun — but will still experience a partial eclipse.
The eclipse is expected to begin at about 2 pm and continue until 4:30 pm The eclipse will peak around 3:20 pm.
It is never safe to stare directly at the sun, but it may be tempting to do so during a solar eclipse.
Looking directly at the sun during an eclipse can cause retinal burns, blurred vision, and/or temporary or permanent loss of visual function, according to the Ontario Association of Optometrists. Damage to the eyes can occur without any sensation of pain.
Grey Bruce Public Health advises the following:
- Do not look directly at the sun without proper eye protection during the solar eclipse. Looking at even a small sliver of the sun before or after the eclipse without proper eye protection can harm vision.
- Keep a close eye on children and other vulnerable family members during the eclipse to ensure they do not inadvertently look up at the sun without proper eye protection.
- To safely view the eclipse, ISO-certified eclipse glasses that meet the ISO 12312-2 international safety standard must be worn. Ensure these glasses are in good condition, without any wrinkles or scratches, and that they fully cover the entire field of vision. Put on the glasses when looking away from the sun, then look at the eclipse. Look away from the sun before taking the glasses off.
- Regular sunglasses or homemade filters will not protect the eyes.
- It is not safe to view the eclipse through a camera/phone lens, telescope, binoculars, or any other optical device.
Other ways to safely experience the solar eclipse include watching a livestream of the event or creating and using an eclipse box or pinhole projector.
Anyone experiencing temporary vision loss or blurred vision during or after the eclipse should speak with their eye care professional or healthcare provider as soon as possible.
Anyone experiencing blindness (immediate or delayed) after viewing the eclipse must seek emergency care immediately.
More information on the upcoming eclipse is available on the GBPH website.
At South Grey News, we endeavour to bring you truthful and factual, up-to-date local community news in a quick and easy-to-digest format that’s free of political bias. We believe this service is more important today than ever before, as social media has given rise to misinformation, largely unchecked by big corporations who put profits ahead of their responsibilities.
South Grey News does not have the resources of a big corporation. We are a small, locally owned-and-operated organization. Research, analysis and physical attendance at public meetings and community events requires considerable effort. But contributions from readers and advertisers, however big or small, go a long way to helping us deliver positive, open and honest journalism for this community.
Please consider supporting South Grey News with a donation in lieu of a subscription fee and let us know that our efforts are appreciated. Thank you.
Science
NASA to launch sounding rockets into moon's shadow during solar eclipse – Phys.org
NASA will launch three sounding rockets during the total solar eclipse on April 8, 2024, to study how Earth’s upper atmosphere is affected when sunlight momentarily dims over a portion of the planet.
The Atmospheric Perturbations around Eclipse Path (APEP) sounding rockets will launch from NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia to study the disturbances in the ionosphere created when the moon eclipses the sun. The sounding rockets had been previously launched and successfully recovered from White Sands Test Facility in New Mexico, during the October 2023 annular solar eclipse.
They have been refurbished with new instrumentation and will be relaunched in April 2024. The mission is led by Aroh Barjatya, a professor of engineering physics at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Florida, where he directs the Space and Atmospheric Instrumentation Lab.
The sounding rockets will launch at three different times: 45 minutes before, during, and 45 minutes after the peak local eclipse. These intervals are important to collect data on how the sun’s sudden disappearance affects the ionosphere, creating disturbances that have the potential to interfere with our communications.
The ionosphere is a region of Earth’s atmosphere that is between 55 to 310 miles (90 to 500 kilometers) above the ground. “It’s an electrified region that reflects and refracts radio signals and also impacts satellite communications as the signals pass through,” said Barjatya. “Understanding the ionosphere and developing models to help us predict disturbances is crucial to making sure our increasingly communication-dependent world operates smoothly.”
The ionosphere forms the boundary between Earth’s lower atmosphere—where we live and breathe—and the vacuum of space. It is made up of a sea of particles that become ionized, or electrically charged, from the sun’s energy or solar radiation.
When night falls, the ionosphere thins out as previously ionized particles relax and recombine back into neutral particles. However, Earth’s terrestrial weather and space weather can impact these particles, making it a dynamic region and difficult to know what the ionosphere will be like at a given time.
It’s often difficult to study short-term changes in the ionosphere during an eclipse with satellites because they may not be at the right place or time to cross the eclipse path. Since the exact date and times of the total solar eclipse are known, NASA can launch targeted sounding rockets to study the effects of the eclipse at the right time and at all altitudes of the ionosphere.
As the eclipse shadow races through the atmosphere, it creates a rapid, localized sunset that triggers large-scale atmospheric waves and small-scale disturbances or perturbations. These perturbations affect different radio communication frequencies. Gathering the data on these perturbations will help scientists validate and improve current models that help predict potential disturbances to our communications, especially high-frequency communication.
The APEP rockets are expected to reach a maximum altitude of 260 miles (420 kilometers). Each rocket will measure charged and neutral particle density and surrounding electric and magnetic fields. “Each rocket will eject four secondary instruments the size of a two-liter soda bottle that also measure the same data points, so it’s similar to results from fifteen rockets while only launching three,” explained Barjatya. Embry-Riddle built three secondary instruments on each rocket, and the fourth one was built at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire.
In addition to the rockets, several teams across the U.S. will also be taking measurements of the ionosphere by various means. A team of students from Embry-Riddle will deploy a series of high-altitude balloons. Co-investigators from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Haystack Observatory in Massachusetts and the Air Force Research Laboratory in New Mexico will operate a variety of ground-based radars taking measurements.
Using this data, a team of scientists from Embry-Riddle and Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory are refining existing models. Together, these various investigations will help provide the puzzle pieces needed to see the bigger picture of ionospheric dynamics.
When the APEP-sounding rockets launched during the 2023 annular solar eclipse, scientists saw a sharp reduction in the density of charged particles as the annular eclipse shadow passed over the atmosphere.
“We saw the perturbations capable of affecting radio communications in the second and third rockets, but not during the first rocket that was before peak local eclipse,” said Barjatya. “We are super excited to relaunch them during the total eclipse to see if the perturbations start at the same altitude and if their magnitude and scale remain the same.”
The next total solar eclipse over the contiguous U.S. is not until 2044, so these experiments are a rare opportunity for scientists to collect crucial data.
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