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WASHINGTON — The chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee unveiled a proposal to add $10 billion to a budget reconciliation bill to offset changes to NASA human spaceflight and exploration programs in the administration’s budget proposal. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) released June 5 a package of “legislative directives” he seeks to include the Senate version […]
Continue ReadingBlue Origin successfully completed its 12th human flight with the New Shepard program on Saturday, May 31. (Blue Origin) EL PASO, Texas (KTSM) — Space technology company Blue Origin announced that its next human flight will be this weekend. The next New Shepard crewed flight is scheduled to lift off Saturday, June 21 from the […]
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Just over two years after the Japanese company ispace attempted but failed to land its HAKUTO-R Mission 1, the HAKUTO-R Mission 2 Resilience lander attempted a lunar landing this week but was not successful. Mission 2 was to touch down on the lunar surface at 60.5 degrees north and 4.6 degrees west, in Mare Frigoris, the same region in the Moon’s northern hemisphere where Mission 1 attempted to touch down at Atlas Crater in 2023.
Resilience, in orbit around the Moon since early May, was scheduled to land one month after its lunar orbit insertion. The spacecraft attempted its landing on Thursday, June 5, at 19:17 UTC (4:17 AM JST Friday, June 6) near the center of Mare Frigoris, but data was lost 90 seconds before landing. The company later confirmed the mission was lost. There was a contingency plan for up to three alternate sites with dates and times for each should that be needed, but this plan was not used.
Other commercial landing attempts include and the Intuitive Machines IM-1 and IM-2 spacecraft, which were able to function for a time on the surface but ended in non-nominal orientations due to landing issues. The ispace company’s first HAKUTO-R mission failed due to a misinterpretation of altimeter data caused by a computer software issue exposed when the spacecraft passed a crater wall on its way to the landing site.
This interpretation of the data — rejecting it as bad when it was in fact correct — caused Mission 1 to hover at five kilometers above the lunar surface. After the lander ran out of fuel, it spun uncontrollably and impacted the surface, ending the mission. Resilience, though using the same basic HAKUTO-R design as Mission 1, incorporated upgrades from the lessons learned based on the first flight.
After its rideshare launch to the Moon on Jan. 15, 2025, Resilience arrived in a highly elliptical lunar orbit on May 6 at 20:41 UTC (5:41 AM JST May 7). The arrival came after taking a fuel-efficient trajectory, which included a flyby of the Moon on Feb. 15 before attaining a maximum distance of 1.5 million km from Earth.
The Moon as seen from ispace’s HAKUTO-R Mission 2 lander Resilience. (Credit: ispace)
The lunar flyby came to within 8,400 km of the lunar surface, the closest Resilience would come to the Moon prior to its orbital insertion. Immediately after orbital insertion, the spacecraft reached a highly elliptical lunar orbit of 44 km by 5,910 km with a 104-degree inclination according to calculations by citizen scientist Scott Tilley. Over the following weeks, the lander gradually lowered its orbit, ending up in a circular orbit around 100 km altitude on May 28 after a 10-minute engine burn.
Resilience, with a 340 kg dry mass, orbited the Moon once every two hours prior to starting the landing sequence, and completed all orbital control activities — the eighth out of its 10 planned mission milestones — a few days before its landing attempt. The attempt started well enough with a good deorbit burn followed by a pitch-up maneuver to adjust attitude. The lander moved into a terminal descent phase before its touchdown, and it used one main landing thruster plus six assist thrusters.
Screenshot of live telemetry from HAKUTO R M2 Resilience’s landing attempt. (Credit: ispace)
Everything seemed to go according to plan until close to 90 seconds before landing, when telemetry showed the craft descending rapidly. The last readings from the spacecraft showed the lander only 52 m from the surface, and that value quickly changed to over -300 m – in other words, underneath the surface – before all telemetry was lost. The time of landing passed without any further contact, and with clearly worried controllers assessing the situation.
The landing was to become the mission’s ninth milestone, and if all had gone well, it was to be followed by establishing a steady power-positive state using Resilience’s solar panels, capable of generating up to 350 watts. It would have attempted to obtain a steady communications link.
The landing site was chosen so that the 2.3 m tall lander, with a total footprint of 2.6 x 2.6 m, could have remained in contact with Earth at all times. These activities were to be the tenth and final mission milestone, which would have allowed customer activities on the lunar surface.
The Tenacious rover shown in its protective box on the Resilience lander before launch. (Credit: ispace)
Resilience carried a small lunar rover and several payloads from various companies. The micro rover, known as Tenacious, had a carbon fiber structure, massed five kilograms with dimensions of 26 x 31.5 x 54 cm, and was manufactured by ispace in its Luxembourg facility. The rover was carrying a work of art on board, a Falu red miniature cottage called Moonhouse by Swedish artist Mikael Genberg, which it was to deposit on the lunar surface.
Tenacious also featured a soil scoop to gather regolith, which it was to then photograph for NASA. The rover also contained a forward-mounted high-definition camera. Tenacious was to be controlled from the ground with Resilience, equipped with X-band communications, functioning as a relay, and was to rove around the landing site untethered.
The lander’s secondary payloads included a Takasago Thermal Engineering Company-developed water electrolyzer as well as a food production experiment module developed by the Euglena Company. A radiation probe flown by Taiwan’s National Central University was also on board, as well as a “Charter of the Universal Century” commemorative plaque provided by Bandai Namco.
Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter image of Resilience’s planned landing site in Mare Frigoris. (Credit: NASA/ASU/GSFC)
The United Nations also had a small payload aboard Resilience. The United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization provided a memory disk, which will be a cultural artifact aboard the lander. The memory disk has examples of 275 human languages.
This memory disk, intended to preserve a record of cultural and linguistic diversity, was the latest attempt by humanity to preserve some of its knowledge aboard space missions. It was similar in purpose to the famous “Golden Records” carried by Voyager 1 and 2 and other items included in missions leaving Earth.
The HAKUTO-R Mission 2, though conceived and operated by a Japanese company, had international elements. The Tenacious rover was actually the first European-built rover to go to the Moon. Moreover, the European Space Agency supported mission communications with ground stations in Argentina, Australia, French Guiana, Spain, and the United Kingdom.
Illustration of the APEX 1.0 lander, scheduled for launch in 2027. (Credit: ispace)
The ispace company operates facilities in Japan, Luxembourg, and the United States — in Denver, Colorado. The Denver facility is working on the APEX 1.0 lander, which is intended to fly on ispace’s Mission 3 to the lunar far side in 2027. The company develops the lander for NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services as part of “Team Draper,” led by US space and defense contractor Draper.
Regardless of how the HAKUTO-R Mission 2 turned out, more commercial and government-operated robotic landing missions are planned for the lunar surface prior to human missions planned by NASA and China. After a very long period in the late 20th Century with no lunar missions at all, renewed international competition and cooperation, along with a surging commercial space sector, are expected to keep lunar exploration on this century’s spaceflight agenda.
(Lead image: Rendering of the HAKUTO-R Mission 2 lander Resilience and its Tenacious rover on the lunar surface. Credit: ispace)
If Resilience had landed according to plan, it would have been the second fully successful commercial robotic lunar landing of not just this year but also in history, after Firefly’s Blue Ghost Mission 1 “Ghost Riders In The Sky”, which Resilience shared a ride to orbit with on a Falcon 9. It would also have become the second successful Japanese lunar landing after SLIM, which was a Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency project.
Source: https://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2025/06/hakuto-r-m2-landing/
Continue ReadingAstronomers will use the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope to improve our understanding of the size and orbit of asteroid 2024 YR4, which has a very small chance of impacting Earth in 2032.
Why is asteroid 2024 YR4 important?
Asteroid 2024 YR4 was discovered on 27 December 2024. As of 10 February 2025, it has an approximately 98% chance of safely passing Earth on 22 December 2032. Astronomers are working to reduce our uncertainty about the asteroid’s orbit and rule out any impact risk, but it will fade from view from Earth in a few months’ time, and a small chance of impact may persist until it becomes visible again in 2028.
The chance of impact is very slim, and the asteroid is small enough that the effects of any potential impact would be on a local scale, but the situation is significant enough to warrant the attention of the global planetary defence community.
What do we hope to learn by studying the asteroid with Webb?
Astronomers around the world are using powerful telescopes to measure the asteroid’s orbit as accurately as possible. But knowing its orbit will only tell us if the asteroid could impact Earth, not how significant an impact could be.
To accurately assess the hazard posed by asteroid 2024 YR4, we need a more precise estimate of its size. Our current estimate, 40—90 m, has not changed much since the asteroid was first discovered in December 2024, despite many follow-up observations.
This is because astronomers are currently limited to studying the asteroid via the visible light it reflects from the Sun. In general, the brighter the asteroid, the larger it is, but this relationship strongly depends on how reflective the asteroid’s surface is. 2024 YR4 could be 40 m across and very reflective, or 90 m across and not very reflective.
It is very important that we improve our size estimate for 2024 YR4: the hazard represented by a 40 m asteroid is very different from that of a 90 m asteroid.
Webb is able to study the infrared light (heat) that 2024 YR4 emits, rather than the visible light it reflects. Infrared observations can offer a much better estimate of an asteroid’s size, as explained in an article recently published in the journal Nature, co-authored by members of ESA’s Planetary Defence Office.
Astronomers will use Webb’s MIRI instrument to get a much more precise estimate of the asteroid’s size. This, in turn, will be used by ESA, NASA, and other organisations to more confidently assess the hazard and determine any necessary response.
Observations made using Webb’s NIRCam instrument will complement MIRI’s thermal data and will also provide additional measurements of the asteroid’s position once it is beyond the reach of Earth-based telescopes.
When will the observations of 2024 YR4 take place?
The first round of observations will take place in early March, just as the asteroid becomes observable by Webb and is at its brightest. The second round of observations will take place in May. Astronomers will use these later observations to study how the temperature of 2024 YR4 has changed as it has moved further away from the Sun and to provide the final measurements of the asteroid’s orbit until it returns into view in 2028.
Who requested the observations?
Each year, a small amount of Webb’s observational time is reserved for ‘Director’s Discretionary Time’. This time is set aside for time-critical or new discoveries made after the annual Webb proposal deadline that cannot wait for the next proposal cycle.
An international team of astronomers from institutions including ESA’s Planetary Defence Office submitted a proposal to use some of this time to study 2024 YR4. This proposal has now been accepted. The total observation time will amount to around four hours. The resulting data will be publicly available.
About Webb
Webb is the largest, most powerful telescope ever launched into space. Under an international collaboration agreement, ESA provided the telescope’s launch service, using the Ariane 5 launch vehicle. Working with partners, ESA was responsible for the development and qualification of Ariane 5 adaptations for the Webb mission and for the procurement of the launch service by Arianespace. ESA also provided the workhorse spectrograph NIRSpec and 50% of the mid-infrared instrument MIRI, which was designed and built by a consortium of nationally funded European Institutes (The MIRI European Consortium) in partnership with JPL and the University of Arizona.
Webb is an international partnership between NASA, ESA and the Canadian Space Agency (CSA).
Many thanks to the team at ESA’s Planetary Defence Office and to Andrew Rivkin of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, Principal Investigator for the James Webb Space Telescope observations of 2024 YR4, for their input to this post.
Continue ReadingAstronomers have taken a crucial step in showing that the most massive black holes in the universe can create their own meals. Data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and the Very Large Telescope (VLT) provide new evidence that outbursts from black holes can help cool down gas to feed themselves.
This study was based on observations of seven clusters of galaxies. The centers of galaxy clusters contain the universe’s most massive galaxies, which harbor huge black holes with masses ranging from millions to tens of billions of times that of the Sun. Jets from these black holes are driven by the black holes feasting on gas.
These images show two of the galaxy clusters in the study, the Perseus Cluster and the Centaurus Cluster. Chandra data represented in blue reveals X-rays from filaments of hot gas, and data from the VLT, an optical telescope in Chile, shows cooler filaments in red.
The results support a model where outbursts from the black holes trigger hot gas to cool and form narrow filaments of warm gas. Turbulence in the gas also plays an important role in this triggering process.
According to this model, some of the warm gas in these filaments should then flow into the centers of the galaxies to feed the black holes, causing an outburst. The outburst causes more gas to cool and feed the black holes, leading to further outbursts.
This model predicts there will be a relationship between the brightness of filaments of hot and warm gas in the centers of galaxy clusters. More specifically, in regions where the hot gas is brighter, the warm gas should also be brighter. The team of astronomers has, for the first time, discovered such a relationship, giving critical support for the model.
This result also provides new understanding of these gas-filled filaments, which are important not just for feeding black holes but also for causing new stars to form. This advance was made possible by an innovative technique that isolates the hot filaments in the Chandra X-ray data from other structures, including large cavities in the hot gas created by the black hole’s jets.
The newly found relationship for these filaments shows remarkable similarity to the one found in the tails of jellyfish galaxies, which have had gas stripped away from them as they travel through surrounding gas, forming long tails. This similarity reveals an unexpected cosmic connection between the two objects and implies a similar process is occurring in these objects.
This work was led by Valeria Olivares from the University of Santiago de Chile, and was published Monday in Nature Astronomy. The study brought together international experts in optical and X-ray observations and simulations from the United States, Chile, Australia, Canada, and Italy. The work relied on the capabilities of the MUSE (Multi Unit Spectroscopic Explorer) instrument on the VLT, which generates 3D views of the universe.
NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, manages the Chandra program. The Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory’s Chandra X-ray Center controls science operations from Cambridge, Massachusetts, and flight operations from Burlington, Massachusetts.
Read more from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory.
Learn more about the Chandra X-ray Observatory and its mission here:
https://www.nasa.gov/chandra
https://chandra.si.edu
Visual Description
This release features composite images shown side-by-side of two different galaxy clusters, each with a central black hole surrounded by patches and filaments of gas. The galaxy clusters, known as Perseus and Centaurus, are two of seven galaxy clusters observed as part of an international study led by the University of Santiago de Chile.
In each image, a patch of purple with neon pink veins floats in the blackness of space, surrounded by flecks of light. At the center of each patch is a glowing, bright white dot. The bright white dots are black holes. The purple patches represent hot X-ray gas, and the neon pink veins represent filaments of warm gas. According to the model published in the study, jets from the black holes impact the hot X-ray gas. This gas cools into warm filaments, with some warm gas flowing back into the black hole. The return flow of warm gas causes jets to again cool the hot gas, triggering the cycle once again.
While the images of the two galaxy clusters are broadly similar, there are significant visual differences. In the image of the Perseus Cluster on the left, the surrounding flecks of light are larger and brighter, making the individual galaxies they represent easier to discern. Here, the purple gas has a blue tint, and the hot pink filaments appear solid, as if rendered with quivering strokes of a paintbrush. In the image of the Centaurus Cluster on the right, the purple gas appears softer, with a more diffuse quality. The filaments are rendered in more detail, with feathery edges, and gradation in color ranging from pale pink to neon red.
Source: https://www.nasa.gov/image-article/black-holes-can-cook-for-themselves-chandra-study-shows/
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NASA’s SPHEREx observatory undergoes testing at BAE Systems in Boulder, Colorado, in August 2024. Launching no earlier than Feb. 27, 2025, the mission will make the first all-sky spectroscopic survey in the near-infrared, helping to answer some of the biggest questions in astrophysics.
Credit: BAE Systems/NASA/JPL-Caltech
Shaped like a megaphone, the upcoming mission will map the entire sky in infrared light to answer big questions about the universe.
Expected to launch no earlier than Thursday, Feb. 27, from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California, NASA’s SPHEREx space observatory will provide astronomers with a big-picture view of the cosmos like none before. Short for Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization and Ices Explorer, SPHEREx will map the entire celestial sky in 102 infrared colors, illuminating the origins of our universe, galaxies within it, and life’s key ingredients in our own galaxy. Here are six things to know about the mission.
1. The SPHEREx space telescope will shed light on a cosmic phenomenon called inflation.
In the first billionth of a trillionth of a trillionth of a second after the big bang, the universe increased in size by a trillion-trillionfold. Called inflation, this nearly instantaneous event took place almost 14 billion years ago, and its effects can be found today in the large-scale distribution of matter in the universe. By mapping the distribution of more than 450 million galaxies, SPHEREx will help scientists improve our understanding of the physics behind this extreme cosmic event.
2. The observatory will measure the collective glow from galaxies near and far.
Scientists have tried to estimate the total light output from all galaxies throughout cosmic history by observing individual galaxies and extrapolating to the trillions of galaxies in the universe. The SPHEREx space telescope will take a different approach and measure the total glow from all galaxies, including galaxies too small, too diffuse, or too distant for other telescopes to easily detect. Combining the measurement of this overall glow with other telescopes’ studies of individual galaxies will give scientists a more complete picture of all the major sources of light in the universe.
3. The mission will search the Milky Way galaxy for essential building blocks of life.
Life as we know it wouldn’t exist without basic ingredients such as water and carbon dioxide. The SPHEREx observatory is designed to find these molecules frozen in interstellar clouds of gas and dust, where stars and planets form. The mission will pinpoint the location and abundance of these icy compounds in our galaxy, giving researchers a better sense of their availability in the raw materials for newly forming planets.
Molecular clouds like this one, called Rho Ophiuchi, are collections of cold gas and dust in space where stars and planets can form. SPHEREx will survey such regions throughout the Milky Way galaxy to measure the abundance of water ice and other frozen molecules.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
4. It adds unique strengths to NASA’s fleet of space telescopes.
Space telescopes like NASA’s Hubble and Webb have zoomed in on many corners of the universe to show us planets, stars, and galaxies in high resolution. But some questions — like how much light do all the galaxies in the universe collectively emit? — can be answered only by looking at the big picture. To that end, the SPHEREx observatory will provide maps that encompass the entire sky. Objects of scientific interest identified by SPHEREx can then be studied in more detail by targeted telescopes like Hubble and Webb.
5. The SPHEREx observatory will make the most colorful all-sky map ever.
The SPHEREx observatory “sees” infrared light. Undetectable to the human eye, this range of wavelengths is ideal for studying stars and galaxies. Using a technique called spectroscopy, the telescope can split the light into its component colors (individual wavelengths), like a prism creates a rainbow from sunlight, in order to measure the distance to cosmic objects and learn about their composition. With SPHEREx’s spectroscopic map in hand, scientists will be able to detect evidence of chemical compounds, like water ice, in our galaxy. They’ll not only measure the total amount of light emitted by galaxies in our universe, but also discern how bright that total glow was at different points in cosmic history. And they’ll chart the 3D locations of hundreds of millions of galaxies to study how inflation influenced the large-scale structure of the universe today.
6. The spacecraft’s cone-shaped design helps it stay cold and see faint objects.
The mission’s infrared telescope and detectors need to operate at around minus 350 degrees Fahrenheit (about minus 210 degrees Celsius). This is partly to prevent them from generating their own infrared glow, which might overwhelm the faint light from cosmic sources. To keep things cold while also simplifying the spacecraft’s design and operational needs, SPHEREx relies on an entirely passive cooling system — no electricity or coolants are used during normal operations. Key to making this feat possible are three cone-shaped photon shields that protect the telescope from the heat of Earth and the Sun, as well as a mirrored structure beneath the shields to direct heat from the instrument out into space. Those photon shields give the spacecraft its distinctive outline.
More About SPHEREx
SPHEREx is managed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory for the agency’s Astrophysics Division within the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington. BAE Systems (formerly Ball Aerospace) built the telescope and the spacecraft bus. The science analysis of the SPHEREx data will be conducted by a team of scientists located at 10 institutions in the U.S., two in South Korea, and one in Taiwan. Data will be processed and archived at IPAC at Caltech, which manages JPL for NASA. The mission principal investigator is based at Caltech with a joint JPL appointment. The SPHEREx dataset will be publicly available at the NASA/IPAC Infrared Science Archive.
For more information about the SPHEREx mission visit:
https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/missions/spherex/
Source: https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/6-things-to-know-about-spherex-nasas-newest-space-telescope/
Continue ReadingPublished in 1962 by American astronomer Frank Drake, Ph.D., the eponymous Drake equation sought to estimate the number of detectable alien civilizations in the Milky Way galaxy. This equation takes into account the average rate of star formation in the galaxy, the fraction of those stars that have orbiting planets, and the average number of those planets per star that can support life. It gets hairier: This formula also considers what fraction of those planets could support intelligent organisms, and whether those organisms can develop technology capable of contacting others.
Now, researchers in Switzerland and the U.K. have homed in on one particular aspect of this equation to contemplate how a crucial component of our universe affects star formation and, by extension, the possibility of intelligent life. Their paper studies the relationship between the density of a mysterious force in the universe, called dark energy, and the overall number of stars formed in the universe’s history. Published in November 2024 in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, this work describes a new theoretical model of cosmic star formation applied to our universe as well as other possible ones with varying dark energy densities.
In other words, it ponders the likelihood of intelligent life existing in the multiverse.
To approach this question, the team tackled anthropic reasoning. This line of thinking is the idea that we can derive fundamental properties of the universe based on the fact that we exist. There’s so much we don’t know about the universe, but one thing we know for certain is that, at least in one tiny corner, it allows humans to exist. That starting point guides the way for understanding other characteristics of the universe.
Anthropic reasoning can offer explanations for the amount of dark energy in our universe. In the late 1980s, physics Nobel laureate Steven Weinberg used this idea to propose that the observed density of dark energy in the universe informs the existence of intelligent life within it. He contemplated that larger densities of dark energy would cause the universe to expand faster, negating gravity’s effort to clump matter together into galaxies, which would discourage star formation, and therefore, life.
Dark energy is an enigmatic force that may be causing the universe to expand at an accelerated rate. While it doesn’t explicitly factor into the Drake equation, dark energy does relate to star formation, which is key to the formula. In the same way that life on Earth wouldn’t exist without our sun, stars are a prerequisite for the formation of intelligent life. So, contemplating how varying amounts of dark energy in the universe impact star formation could tell us about other possible universes, too.
“Since stars are a precondition for the emergence of life as we know it, we then ask whether it would be easier for intelligent life to spawn in our Universe, or in a hypothetical universe with a different dark energy content,” the paper’s first author Daniele Sorini, Ph.D, a postdoctoral research associate in cosmology and astrophysics at Durham University’s Institute for Computational Cosmology in the U.K., says in an email to Popular Mechanics.
Dark energy is baffling. According to Sorini, “while we can measure the density of dark energy, we do not really know what it is.” Still, measuring it is useful. For example, in the paper, Sorini and his team plot the efficiency of star formation throughout the cosmos in relation to varying amounts of dark energy density. The team found that the amount of stars formed in the universe’s history is maximized if dark energy density is about one-tenth its observed value. That means, hypothetically, the ideal universe for forming life—because the formation of life comes from the formation of stars—would have less dark energy than our universe. Assuming that this amount is proportional to stars formed, this would make for the ideal universe to create intelligent life. In this optimal scenario, 27 percent of ordinary matter in the universe converts to stars, while in our universe, it’s only 23 percent. This gap demonstrates that while our universe is close to hosting the optimal conditions for life, it’s still not the most ideal.
Cosmic star formation continues to decrease with higher dark energy densities. Hypothetically, a universe with increasing dark energy density is less hospitable to the formation of intelligent life. Likewise, Weinberg posited that very few universes with intelligent life in the multiverse would have limited dark energy density.
As Weinberg had done, Sorini and his co-authors pondered what might change if a universe contained a different density of dark energy. But, considering a multiverse wherein each universe contains a different dark energy density—observed by one intelligent observer—the team found that 99.5 percent of these universes boasted a higher dark energy density than our own universe’s.
“This might seem at odds with the fact that higher dark energy abundance leads to lower likelihood of generating intelligent life,” Sorini says. “But there is no contradiction.” He explains that, individually, universes with higher dark energy densities contain fewer intelligent observers, though there are many more such universes. The paper’s calculations show that, taken collectively, these multiverses contain intelligent observers.
However, Sorini emphasizes that this paper doesn’t aim to prove the existence of the multiverse or locate extraterrestrial life. Rather, it’s a novel way of considering how dark energy density in the universe could impact star formation, which serves as a proxy for the development of intelligent life.
“Whether the multiverse scenario is real or not is beside the point of our paper,” Sorini says. “It is a thought experiment to understand whether we can provide a suitable explanation of the puzzling observed value of the dark energy density in our universe, based on the fact that we exist.”
source: https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/a63635014/aliens-parallel-universe/
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Japan’s government has been considering joining a U.S.-led space telescope initiative to search for Earth-like planets and extraterrestrial life, aiming to contribute technology and secure key research opportunities.
The NASA-led „Habitable Worlds Observatory“ project plans to launch a large-scale space telescope in the early 2040s, designed to observe wavelengths like ultraviolet and X-rays that cannot penetrate the Earth’s atmosphere.
Tokyo plans to have a specialized team within the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency assess what potential technological contributions can be made.
Government officials view the space telescope endeavor as a significant international project, comparable to the Artemis lunar exploration program, which has over 50 countries involved. Joining the initiative would bolster Japan’s role in global space science and provide priority access to observation opportunities.
A render of a design for the Habitable Worlds Observatory. (Photo courtesy of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center Conceptual Image Lab)(Kyodo
Serving as the successor to the James Webb Space Telescope, launched in 2021, the envisioned telescope will orbit 1.5 million kilometers from Earth. It will utilize infrared, visible and UV light to detect exoplanets with conditions such as liquid water and atmospheres capable of supporting life.
Detecting Earth-like planets involves capturing faint light signals obscured by the brightness of stars. Drawing on expertise gained from developing instruments for the Subaru Telescope in Hawaii, Japan hopes to contribute observation equipment and remote maintenance technologies to the project.
Although Japan did not take part in the development of the James Webb Space Telescope, which has made major discoveries including uncovering the structure of the early universe, experts highlight the importance of contributing to future large-scale space initiatives.
„Discovering life beyond Earth would deepen our understanding of what life is and how it developed on our planet,“ said Satoshi Miyazaki, director of the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan’s Hawaii Observatory.
He added that Japan must leverage its unique technologies to maintain a leading role in global space exploration efforts.
Colossal super-rockets being produced by billionaires Elon Musk snd Jeff Bezos are set to carry … [+]
One of the globe’s top designers of space robots says a new “Golden Age of Space Exploration” – spearheaded by the world’s twin Titans of spaceflight – will speed up astronauts joining robotic scouts in trekking around the Moon and Mars.
Gigantic new rockets now being tested by spacecraft makers Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos – the planet’s leading hyper-billionaires – are setting the stage for human explorers to sojourn across an expanding realm of off-world outposts, says Kris Zacny, Director of the Exploration Technology Group at Honeybee Robotics.
During a virtual roundtable with journalists and space aficionados staged by the Mars Society, Dr. Zacny, who holds a doctorate in geotechnical engineering, with a focus on extraterrestrial drilling and mining, from the University of California Berkeley, sketched out his predictions for the new space epoch being opened by the titanic spacecraft now waiting in the wings.
“Folks who love space are the luckiest people on Earth,” Zacny mused during the meetup, hosted by the Mars Society’s Ashton Zeth.
“We have two of the wealthiest guys in the world prepared to spend their own money to go to space and change how we explore space and make space habitable,” Zacny says.
“They have a combined wealth of 500 billion dollars – half a trillion dollars – and this is their vision.”
“This is a golden age of space exploration.”
A new generation of gigantic rockets will power astronaut flights to an expanding ring of celestial … [+]
SSPL via Getty Images
“Jeff [Bezos] and Elon [Musk] are prepared … to change humanity forever.”
By designing colossal boosters that are rapidly reusable, and could power interplanetary flights ahead, these two Promethean rivals of the NewSpace sector, with their contest to dominate the celestial sphere, could collectively propel expanding waves of spacefarers into the heavens.
“Last week a Falcon 9 launched with [the Moon-bound lander] Firefly,” Zacny recounted, “then the next day New Glenn launched for the first time – it was a perfect launch – then Starship launched again.”
“We had three different rockets from private companies launching in three consecutive days, and these rockets will be taking humans to the Moon and Mars – so we are lucky.”
Blue Origin’s first flight test of its massive New Glenn rocket played out almost flawlessly, while the seventh demo of the Starship – which featured a more advanced version of the super-capsule – ended in a pyrotechnic break-up of the second stage, sparked by SpaceX’s super-speed campaign to perfect the most powerful and technologically sophisticated spacecraft ever to take flight from Planet Earth.
Both Blue Origin and SpaceX have been commissioned by NASA to deploy landers to shuttle astronauts from lunar orbit down to the polar region of the Moon in a series of Artemis missions across the second half of the 2020s, and their supercharged rockets will launch those landers.
This unfolding phase of advanced rocketry and robotics will set the stage for human bases to expand outward.
Kris Zacny has produced an array of groundbreaking studies and books on deploying robots to extraterrestrial outposts to build the foundation for later astronaut missions, for example by constructing H2O reservoirs that could in turn provide oxygen for domed oases on the Martian dunes and rocket fuel for Mars-Earth space odysseys.
His team at Honeybee Robotics Exploration Systems has already designed robotic instruments that have sped across the solar system, including on the Mars Phoenix lander, the Mars Exploration Rovers Spirit and Opportunity, and the Perseverance rover, which is now exploring the ghosts of lakes and rivers that once animated the orange-red dune-covered planet.
Honeybee’s breakthrough technologies are also set to touch down on the netherworld-like moon Titan, revolving around the fantastical rings of Saturn.
One of Honeybee’s future robots will fly across the otherworldly lakes and skies of Saturn’s moon … [+]
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Another Honeybee invention, designed to collect samples of moondust on the lunar surface, is now on its way to the silvery orb, and its Trident drill, aimed at potentially excavating water around the lunar South Pole, is still searching for a White Knight rocket to blast it off to the Moon, Zacny told me during the Mars Society’s virtual conference.
When I asked Dr. Zacny about the fate of the Trident, part of the VIPER mission that was once slated to help prospect for ice that survived – potentially for billions of years – hidden away in the Moon’s eternally shadowed craters, he was surprisingly upbeat.
NASA commissioned leading American scientists and roboticists to design and develop a roving science lab, with spectrometers to detect ice and the Trident to drill for it, as part of pivotal plan to begin amassing ice for later astronaut missions and habitats.
Then, when researchers were just about to cross the finish line on perfecting the VIPER lab last summer, NASA’s leaders abruptly cancelled the $433-million project, stating that “cost increases” and “delays to the launch date” impelled the agency to “stand down on the mission,” even though these same negative factors plagued a host of NASA science missions as the COVID pandemic hit the world.
“Moving forward, NASA is planning to disassemble and reuse VIPER’s instruments and components for future Moon missions,” the leadership then in power stated, but the space agency held out a slight chance of a reprieve for the lab if a commercial American or international partner offered to deploy “the existing VIPER rover system at no cost to the government.”
“VIPER is finished in terms of development of the rover,” Zacny told me. “It went through all the environmental testing and it passed with glowing colors. So it’s ready.”
“What we are looking for is a ride to the Moon – the rocket.”
“Once we start flying these big missions – once Blue Origin’s Mark 1 and and Mark 2 [lunar] landers start flying – once the Starship starts flying to the Moon – these have enormous capacity – enormous.”
On a Starship or New Glenn flight, he adds, “VIPER would be just one of the payloads – not the only payload.”
“I’m 100-percent sure we’re going to be flying to the Moon.”
Although Blue Origin acquired Honeybee Robotics three years ago, the robot maker has operated fairly autonomously, and Kris Zacny delves out equal praise to Blue and to SpaceX.
He has even teamed up with two of SpaceX’s top engineers, along with a constellation of vanguard American space scholars, to sketch out how the leading-edge Starship could open an astonishing phase of human settlements across the solar system.
In a joint study titled “Accelerating Martian and Lunar Science through SpaceX Starship Missions,” Zacny and his SpaceX confrères state: “This two-stage vehicle (Super Heavy first stage and Starship as the second stage) is fully reusable and can transport payloads to Earth orbit, the Moon, and Mars, along with being able to support a number of other missions including to Venus, asteroids, or elsewhere in the Solar System. “
“The first set of Starships launched to Mars will be uncrewed and are intended to demonstrate the capability to successfully launch from Earth and land on Mars with human-scale lander systems.”
These autonomously piloted ships will “provide the opportunity to deliver significant quantities of cargo to the surface in advance of human arrival.”
SpaceX founder Elon Musk says he aims to loft a flotilla of unmanned Starships to Mars next year, … [+]
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Teams of autonomous robots flown to Mars on this first fleet of Starships could help set up an astronaut base by positioning “equipment for increased power production, water extraction, LOX/methane production [for rocket fuel], pre-prepared landing pads, radiation shielding, dust control equipment [and] exterior shelters for humans.”
Elon Musk told his 200 million followers on X last summer that he aims to launch five unmanned Starships to Mars in late 2026, when the next Earth-Mars orbital transfer window opens, and the first Mars-bound astronauts in 2028 – for a Starship landing in the second half of 2029.
Ever since launching SpaceX, Musk has said its core mission is to create a second foundation for human civilization on Mars, with the near-term goal of fostering the Red Planet’s first cosmopolis, of one million human Martians, within two decades of lofting the initial flotillas of interplanetary Starship capsules.
“An ultimate objective of SpaceX is to develop self-sustaining cities on Mars,” Zacny and his SpaceX co-authors state, “and current SpaceX architecture plans call for multiple Starship flights to be launched to Mars at every launch opportunity (~2 years).”
While Mars is the primary target, they add, “flights to the Moon do provide the opportunity to test and demonstrate Starship systems closer to Earth prior to the longer journey to Mars.”
“More frequent flights to the Moon than to Mars are feasible due to orbital dynamics,” they add, “and thus significant capabilities can be developed and tested at the Moon prior to Mars missions.”
During the Mars Society gathering, Zacny predicted the next stage of human spaceflight missions would target the Earth’s ancient black and silver satellite: “We’re going to the Moon first for many reasons.”
Yet he adds: “I’m really hopeful we’ll go to Mars this decade.”
The venue Zacny chose to outline his predictions on the changing destiny of humans in space – the Mars Society – was created a quarter-century ago by Robert Zubrin, who is likely to be chronicled by historians of the future as the master architect of the campaign to reshape Mars in the Earth’s image.
While NASA and other space agencies have perennially cast Mars as a target destination for human landings in the distant future, Zubrin has scripted a series of books, including The Case for Mars, that outline how this generation can deploy current rockets and robots to touch down on Mars and begin terraforming the now-frozen planet.
Mars Society founder Robert Zubrin aims to remake the Red Planet in the Earth’s image, as a … [+]
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Zubrin envisions that inside massive geodesic domes – assembled by robots and pressurized with oxygen captured on Mars – the first human colonies and glasshouse gardens will start spreading across the dunes even as geo-engineers begin warming the entire planet, restoring its ocean and atmosphere while building a proto-Eden to host a new branch of civilization.
Kris Zacny paid homage to the founder of the Mars Society during his talk, and said reading one of Zubrin’s books while a graduate student in California changed the trajectory of his life, setting him on track to design robots bound for Mars.
A Chinese private aerospace company has secured a ticket to the moon as it prepares to launch two AI-controlled lunar exploration robots alongside the Chang’e-8 mission in 2028, with international cooperation.
The robots are being jointly developed by STAR.VISION, a private aerospace company based in Hangzhou, along with a professor from Zhejiang University and another professor from Middle East Technical University in Turkey, according to a statement released on Friday.
“This is the first time a private company in China has been responsible for a sub-project in space exploration. Traditionally, China’s space missions have been conducted primarily by state-owned entities,” Wang Chunhui, the company’s chief technology officer, said in an interview.
Chinese private aerospace company STAR.VISION will collaborate with experts from Zhejiang University and Middle East Technical University in Turkey to develop lunar rovers for Chang’e-8. Photo: Handout
“Previous missions like this were typically handled by industrial departments, but this time, we’ve incorporated commercial aerospace companies, and we are also exploring international cooperation,” he said, adding that his company intended to make the most of the opportunity.
The China National Space Administration started carrying international payloads with its Chang’e-4 mission, where it worked with various European and Asian partners.
“STAR.VISION’s primary contribution will focus on the AI processor, while we will contribute expertise in navigation, algorithms and the mechanical components for the rovers, including the rollers,” Halil Ersin Soken, a professor of robotics with Middle East Technical University, said in a press release on Friday.
The two lunar exploration robots will also interact autonomously. “Through data sharing and task delegation, the robots will work together like a team, achieving objectives that would be impossible for independent robots to complete,” Wang said.
Sun Shujian, an aerospace and satellite expert with Zhejiang University, said artificial intelligence (AI) would play a key role in China’s future lunar exploration.
Part of the Chang’e-8 mission includes setting up a lunar research station. Photo: Handout
“The moon is 380,000km (236,000 miles) from Earth, and especially at the lunar south pole, where communication faces significant coverage challenges, communication between the rover and Earth relies on relay satellites, which means delays of up to several minutes. So, the autonomy of the rovers is critical,” Sun said.
Past lunar rovers have been limited by preprogrammed instructions, which sometimes hindered their full capabilities. The Zhurong Mars rover struggled due to a lack of real-time algorithmic control, and ended up stuck in a pit.
In 2019, the Change’-4 mission landed a spacecraft on the far side of the moon in the South Pole-Aitken basin. China is aiming to land astronauts on the moon by 2030 and set up a lunar research station by about 2035.
In addition to remote robotic exploration, the Chang’e-8 mission will carry out tests on the lunar surface for a command and communication hub that will be part of a planned lunar base.
In the run-up to the mission, STAR.VISION will need to address various technical challenges, carry out tests in experimental conditions, procure equipment and obtain the necessary approvals.
“Over the next year, the main focus will be to validate core technologies and build prototypes. The moon’s gravity is just one-sixth of Earth’s, which makes it difficult to control the robots with electric motors,” Sun said.
“Additionally, the lunar south pole faces a continuous night that is 14½ [Earth] days long, with temperatures dropping to as low as minus 197 degrees Celsius (minus 323 degrees Fahrenheit). Ensuring that electronic equipment works properly in such extreme conditions will be a major challenge,” Sun added.
The company did not elaborate on the rovers’ missions due to the classified nature of Chang’e-8’s specific tasks.
Part of the mission would be to set up a lunar research station, Peng Jing, chief designer of the Chang’e-8 probe, previously told state media.
“It will be similar to the Chang’e-7 mission, with the main module being a lander that will carry scientific instruments. There may also be a small probe, resembling a robot sweeper, working in coordination with the lander.”
Last August, STAR.VISION launched a satellite equipped with an AI processor capable of processing data directly in space.
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