Lifeboat Foundation

Just in time for Christmas.

Scientists from the European Space Agency (ESA) will soon open a container of Moon soil that has gone untouched since it was collected by the Apollo 17 astronauts almost 50 years ago, a press statement reveals.

To open the sample, they will have to use a specialized piercing tool jokingly titled the “Apollo Can Opener” by members of the team. The tool was specially designed to open the specific soil sample, designated the number 73001.

Continue reading “An ‘Apollo Can Opener’ Will Soon Unseal a 50-Year-Old Box of Moon Soil” »

The nature of dark matter continues to perplex astronomers. As the search for dark matter particles continues to turn up nothing, it’s tempting to throw out the dark matter model altogether, but indirect evidence for the stuff continues to be strong. So what is it? One team has an idea, and they’ve published the results of their first search.

The conditions of dark matter mean that it can’t be regular matter. Regular matter (atoms, molecules, and the like) easily absorbs and emits light. Even if dark matter were clouds of molecules so cold they emitted almost no light, they would still be visible by the light they absorb. They would appear like dark nebulae commonly seen near the galactic plane. But there aren’t nearly enough of them to account for the effects of dark matter we observe. We’ve also ruled out neutrinos. They don’t interact strongly with light, but neutrinos are a form of “hot” dark matter since neutrinos move at nearly the speed of light. We know that most dark matter must be sluggish, and therefore “cold.” So if dark matter is out there, it must be something else.

In this latest work, the authors argue that dark matter could be made of particles known as scalar bosons. All known matter can be placed in two large categories known as fermions and bosons. Which category a particle is in depends on a quantum property known as spin. Fermions such as electrons and quarks have fractional spin such as 1/2 or 3/2. Bosons such as photons have an integer spin such as 1 or 0. Any particle with a spin of 0 is a scalar boson.

The era of predictable unpredictability is not going away.

Researchers are training rodents with tiny backpacks to sniff out survivors.

For more than 50 years, near space has been viewed as a vast resource to exploit with few limits. In reality, near space is a very scarce resource. While international agreements such as the Outer Space Treaty and the Registration Convention take steps to protect this precious resource, no single global body is responsible for ensuring the long-term sustainability and safety of near space.

The current surge in the exploitation of outer space means that this lack of a global framework for space sustainability must be addressed immediately, or it will be too late; near space will be cluttered and unrecoverable. We are seeing increased use of near space for tourism and other business ventures and the deployment of megaconstellations comprising tens to hundreds of thousands of satellites. And this is just the start. Last month, we witnessed a Russian anti-satellite test that left portions of near space cluttered with orbital debris. Failure to implement a global framework with an enforcement mechanism for space sustainability could severely impact the ability to fully utilize the resource in the near future.

Today near space activities are subject to disparate space sustainability requirements, generally reliant on the requirements of the object’s launching state or conditions imposed by countries in which entities have market access. Some countries have developed well-crafted requirements for at least some space objects, but others have not. In addition, except for the items covered in existing treaties, like launching state liability, there is almost no harmonization on requirements, which further jeopardizes space sustainability.

German drugmaker BioNTech is enrolling patients in a clinical trial to test its mRNA vaccine for colon cancer relapse.

Intricate patterns in the movements of millions of stars are revealing the history of our home galaxy in rich detail – and could even pinpoint the events that gave birth to our sun.

Replacing rigid semiconductors with skin-like equivalents could be a real breakthrough for everything from health and wearables to robotics.

The world’s next generation cosmic observatory, the James Webb Space Telescope 0, is due for launch on an Ariane 5 from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana.

Webb is a joint project between NASA

Established in 1958, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is an independent agency of the United States Federal Government that succeeded the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA). It is responsible for the civilian space program, as well as aeronautics and aerospace research. It’s vision is “To discover and expand knowledge for the benefit of humanity.”