…but it is worth USD $10 billion…
PS. Let’s look for the aliens, already…
https://apnews.com/article/james-webb-telescope-first-photos-32c7cad1f6b277f871990d029bedba72
A picture isn’t worth a thousand words…
July 12, 2022
Plants can grow in lunar soil (barely)
May 16, 2022
The samples were extremely hydrophobic, and repelled water as if it were the most disgusting thing ever invented. Researchers labored to get the lunar soil to gradually soak up water. They also added a nutrient solution.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/science/2022/05/12/plants-grow-in-lunar-soil/
Turns out that it is possible to grow plants on the Moon…
…although you might want to wear gloves while farming, since the “soil” contains tiny pieces of glass from constant bombardment.
Continue Reading“Make Uranus mission your priority” –uh, for what practical reason?
April 30, 2022
“Researchers think an in-depth study of Uranus can help them better understand the many similarly sized objects now being discovered around other stars.“
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-61155725
Uranus is weird. It has rings. It has 13 moons, some of which may harbor life beneath their icy surfaces.
It has a funny name.
I get it. But learning more about how its formation affects planet formation is just not that important.
“Pure” researchers probably are interested, but frankly, if NASA wastes its time doing this, they will miss the opportunity to settle the Moon and Mars, mine asteroids for valuable resources, and explore other moons like Titan and Europa.
China will get there first.
Pure research is all fine and dandy, but it’s also incredibly expensive — taxpayer dollars should be spent on projects with more tangible benefits.
Largest comet ever seen barreling through the solar system
April 18, 2022
“Its size, which NASA noted is larger than the state of Rhode Island, is an estimation because the comet is still too far away for Hubble to tell for certain.”
https://www.businessinsider.com/largest-comet-ever-seen-barreling-toward-inner-solar-system-nasa-2022-4
Note that the original title was “…toward the Inner Solar System”…and yet the article goes on to explain that it won’t come any closer than a billion miles from the Sun, “‘slightly farther than the distance of the planet Saturn,’ NASA said in a statement.“
Uh. The inner solar system is *no where near* Saturn. Try again, fear-mongers.
Sigh.
Anyway, it really is the proverbial “tip of the iceberg,” since this was seen with Hubble, and we have yet to see just what the new James Webb telescope can do. The Oort Cloud is a big place. There must be millions upon millions comets just waiting to be discovered.
Let’s make rocket fuel with E. Coli!
April 12, 2022
In short, the algae will use sunlight to transform CO2 into sugars that are then enhanced by bio-engineered E.coli into 2,3-butanediol. Interestingly, 2,3-BDO is not entirely conceptual as it currently exists and is mainly used to produce rubber components. It has just never been thought of as fuel before.
https://www.universal-sci.com/article/producing-rocket-fuel-on-mars-using-microbes?utm_campaign=Universal-Sci%20Weekly&utm_medium=email&utm_source=Revue%20newsletter
Neat. So all the astronauts have to do is bring, uh, how much algae we talking here?
The article doesn’t say, but it does mention a by-product of the process: Oxygen!
That would seem rather helpful. Mars or bust?
How do you do it without gravity?
March 18, 2022
Or, as I’m sure was unintentionally titled, ”Nasa probing people having sex in space.” 🤦
Ya know, I’m pretty sure we need to figure out “this whole food-air deal” first (to quote comedian Bill Hicks).
“The US space agency confirmed that there were currently no plans for a field or project office to explore the topic in any detail but that could change as we get closer to putting humans on Mars.“
Uh-huh.
Priorities…
Psyche! It might not be as heavy as we thought
March 4, 2022
A new study suggests that 16 Psyche, one of the most intriguing and most valuable asteroids we know of, could be covered in iron-spewing volcanoes.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamiecartereurope/2022/02/24/the-iron-giant-asteroid-worth-more-than-our-global-economy-may-have-an-explosive-secret-say-scientists
Psyche is an asteroid that was probably once the heart of a planet in the early system, one that didn’t survive the violent process of planet formation.
Yep — that “worth more than the global economy” rock in space.
But we’ll have to wait a few years to find out if it’s “less metal and more hard rock” — the Psyche Mission rockets off in August 2022 and the probe won’t arrive for four more years.
How do we find ET? Look for pollution…
February 24, 2022
“We give off waste heat (from industry and homes and so on) and artificial light at night, but perhaps most significantly, we produce chemicals that fill our atmosphere with compounds that wouldn’t otherwise be present. These artificial atmospheric constituents just might be the thing that gives us away to a distant alien species scanning the galaxy with their own powerful telescope.”
https://phys.org/news/2022-02-webb-telescope-civilizations-air-pollution.html
Or, as Futurism puts it: “SCIENTISTS ALREADY PLOTTING HOW James Webb COULD DETECT ALIEN CIVILIZATIONS WHOA.”
Just. Settle down, wouldja. Sheesh.
Scientists have proposed aiming the James Webb space telescope the Trappist system, specifically Trappist-1e.
Really hope this isn’t what they find…
Ready to ride the laser to Mars?
February 11, 2022
“The laser, a 10-meter wide array on Earth, would heat hydrogen plasma in a chamber behind the spacecraft, producing thrust from hydrogen gas and sending it to Mars in only 45 days. There, it would aerobrake in Mars’ atmosphere, shuttling supplies to human colonists or, someday perhaps, even humans themselves.”
https://phys.org/news/2022-02-laser-mars.html
The only problem is that there’s no way to slow the thing down right now…”aerobraking” using current technology would cause gees of 8 or above for several minutes and temperatures hot enough to cook whatever’s in the ship to a nice toasty crisp.
But what if robots could design a receiving station with lasers to “catch” the ship and slow it down…?
Hmmm. Sounds like a science fiction work in progress…
Purple rocks on Mars
February 5, 2022
SuperCam showed that the coatings are enriched in hydrogen and sometimes magnesium. In addition, images from Mastcam-Z suggest that they also contain iron oxides. Both the hydrogen and iron oxides point to past water being involved in the formation of the coatings. That shouldn’t be too surprising, perhaps, since this area in Jezero Crater used to be a lake a few billion years ago.
https://earthsky.org/space/purple-rocks-mars-perseverance-rover-desert-varnish/
The rocks resemble so-called desert varnish, which protect microbes from the sun’s radiation. It’d be interesting to find out whether cyanobacteria that once existed on Mars did this…but the four billion year old question is, how did those bacteria get there in the first place?
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