Scientific research Archives

NASA collected a sample from an asteroid for the first time — here’s why it matters

Victoria Thiem, system safety engineer from Lockheed Martin, checks the temperature of the actual size OSIRIS-REx’s return capsule sample during the recovery rehearsal at Lockheed Martin, Waterton Canyon campus in Littleton, Colorado on Tuesday, June 27, 2023. Photo by Hyoung Chang/The Denver Post

NASA completed its first-ever sample return mission from an asteroid today, with a science capsule containing material from an asteroid landing after having traveled on a 1.2 billion-mile journey from the asteroid Bennu. The capsule was released from the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft as it passed by Earth this morning, entering the atmosphere at around 27,000 mph.

The OSIRIS-REx mission, launched in 2016, has collected as much as several hundred grams of asteroid material, which could help scientists understand the earliest stages of the solar system.

“NASA invests in small body missions like OSIRIS-REx to investigate the rich population of asteroids in our solar system that can give us clues about how the solar system formed and evolved,” said Melissa Morris, OSIRIS-REx program executive, in a mission overview briefing. “It’s our own origin story.”

The science capsule was slowed by parachutes and landed in the Department of Defense’s Utah Test and Training Range at 10:52 AM ET, a landing area chosen as it is the largest restricted airspace in the United States and has been used for previous NASA sample return missions like Genesis and Stardust.

The landing area is 36 miles by 8.5 miles, and the entire mission has required a very high level of precision — particularly for the spacecraft to rendezvous with the asteroid and collect its sample in 2020.

“The really precise navigation required to orbit Bennu and to touch down and collect our sample, we were under a meter away from our target,” Sandra Freund, OSIRIS-REx program manager, said in a pre-landing briefing. “So that illustrates what kind of navigation precision we’ve had throughout this mission.”

Recovery teams collected the sample from the Utah desert, with a helicopter carrying the sample taking off at 12:15 PM ET. The capsule will be taken to a temporary clean room for first disassembly, removing some of the larger parts such as the backshell. It will then undergo a process called a nitrogen purge in which nitrogen is pumped into the canister to protect the sample. This prevents any of Earth’s atmosphere from entering it as it is shipped to Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, where the canister will be opened for the first time so the sample can be analyzed.

Photo by GEORGE FREY/AFP via Getty Images

Why do we need an asteroid sample?

“We’re really interested in trace organic molecular chemistry,” Dante Lauretta, OSIRIS-REx principal investigator, told The Verge. “We really want to understand — the things that are used in biology today, like amino acids that make proteins and nucleic acids that make up our genes — were they formed in ancient asteroid bodies and delivered to the Earth from outer space?”

If you’re not familiar with models of the formation of the solar system, that idea might sound outlandish, bordering on fantastical. But it’s actually a fairly well-supported and widely accepted theory for how some of the key elements for life came to be on Earth.

It’s important to be clear that the theory is not that life itself arose elsewhere and was delivered to Earth, but rather that the basic building blocks of life — often referred to as organic compounds — could have arrived here billions of years ago carried by asteroids.

That’s been a theory for decades; but to test it out, scientists need access to asteroidal material. Going to visit an asteroid and using instruments on a spacecraft to study it is a good start, but to do the kind of detailed analysis scientists want requires a much bigger laboratory, equipped with instruments like a mile-wide type of particle accelerator called a synchrotron which would be impossible to fit onto a spacecraft.

Another option is to study meteorites, which are pieces of matter (including from asteroids) that come from space and fall to Earth’s surface. That’s how most of this research has been performed historically, using these tiny fragments as samples.

But there are two problems with this approach. Firstly, when a meteorite falls, it doesn’t have the context of where in the solar system it came from. Researchers can’t know its origin, or see what other bodies it was close to, which can give important clues to the interpretation of any data. And secondly, by the time a meteorite has passed through Earth’s atmosphere and landed, it may have picked up matter along the way and been contaminated by the local environment.

When scientists are looking for these trace organic compounds, they need to know that anything they find comes from space and wasn’t picked up here on Earth. So to do that, they need an asteroid sample that is as pristine as possible. That’s where OSIRIS-REx comes in.

A worldwide effort

The OSIRIS-REx mission is the first time that NASA has brought back a sample from an asteroid, but it is following in the footsteps of the Japanese space agency JAXA, which collected two asteroid samples in its historic Hayabusa and Hayabusa 2 missions. Though the first Hayabusa mission gathered just a tiny amount of material, the second mission managed to return around five grams of material from asteroid Ryugu in 2020.

OSIRIS-REx is returning much more material from asteroid Bennu, at around 250 grams, which means that more science can be done — particularly when looking for those small amounts of trace materials. But researchers see the two missions as complementary, rather than competitive.

“Not all asteroids are the same,” said Lauretta, who is also a member of the Hayabusa 2 team. Both Ryugu and Bennu have a similar spinning-top-like shape, but they look very different. Ryugu is larger and more red in color, while Bennu is smaller and more blue. Scientists still aren’t sure what that difference in color means, but being able to analyze and compare the samples on Earth should help understand both how the asteroids are similar and how they differ.

“We look at this as not two sample analysis programs, but one big sample analysis program,” Lauretta said, “because it’s a worldwide effort.”

A window into the early solar system

When scientists want to understand how the Earth formed, they need to look beyond our planet and out into the solar system. Star systems form from enormous clouds of gas that collapse into a star at the center, spinning a disk of material around it.

That’s clear from looking at other star systems, but there’s also evidence from our own solar system: the planets revolve around the sun in the same direction and in a single plane, supporting the idea they formed from a single disk of material.Some of that material coalesced into planets, and some was swept into the earliest asteroids, a number of which still exist today.

Source: https://www.theverge.com/2023/9/24/23887975/nasa-asteroid-sample-osiris-rex-bennu-explained

The Man Who Thinks He Can Live Forever

Bryan Johnson, tech entrepreneur and Founder of Blueprint, poses for a portrait at his home. Johnson follows a strict diet and lifestyle routine in an attempt to reduce his biological age. Philip Cheung for TIME

In a neat little neighborhood in Venice, Calif., there’s a block of squat, similar homes, filled with mortals spending their finite days on the planet eating pizza with friends, blowing out candles on birthday cakes, and binging late-night television. Halfway down the street, there’s a cavernous black modern box. This is where Bryan Johnson is working on what he calls “the most significant revolution in the history of Homo sapiens.”

Johnson, 46, is a centimillionaire tech entrepreneur who has spent most of the last three years in pursuit of a singular goal: don’t die. During that time, he’s spent more than $4 million developing a life-extension system called Blueprint, in which he outsources every decision involving his body to a team of doctors, who use data to develop a strict health regimen to reduce what Johnson calls his “biological age.” That system includes downing 111 pills every day, wearing a baseball cap that shoots red light into his scalp, collecting his own stool samples, and sleeping with a tiny jet pack attached to his penis to monitor his nighttime erections. Johnson thinks of any act that accelerates aging—like eating a cookie, or getting less than eight hours of sleep—as an “act of violence.”

Johnson is not the only ultra-rich middle-aged man trying to vanquish the ravages of time. Jeff Bezos and Peter Thiel were both early investors in Unity Biotechnology, a company devoted to developing therapeutics to slow or reverse diseases associated with aging. Elite athletes employ therapies to keep their bodies young, from hyperbaric and cryotherapy chambers to “recovery sleepwear.” But Johnson’s quest is not just about staying rested or maintaining muscle tone. It’s about turning his whole body over to an anti-aging algorithm. He believes death is optional. He plans never to do it.

Outsourcing the management of his body means defeating what Johnson calls his “rascal mind”—the part of us that wants to eat ice cream after dinner, or have sex at 1 a.m., or drink beer with friends. The goal is to get his 46-year-old organs to look and act like 18-year-old organs. Johnson says the data compiled by his doctors suggests that Blueprint has so far given him the bones of a 30-year-old, and the heart of a 37-year-old. The experiment has “proven a competent system is better at managing me than a human can,” Johnson says, a breakthrough that he says is “reframing what it means to be human.” He describes his intense diet and exercise regime as falling somewhere between the Italian Renaissance and the invention of calculus in the pantheon of human achievement. Michelangelo had the Sistine Chapel; Johnson has his special green juice.

But when I showed up at Johnson’s house one Monday in August, I wasn’t really there to figure out if his elaborate age-defying strategies actually worked. I assumed that given my family history of cancer and personal fondness for pepperoni pizza, I probably won’t live long enough to find out. Instead, I spent three days observing Johnson to learn what a life run by an algorithm would look like, and whether the “next evolution of being human” would have any real humanity at all. If living like Johnson meant you could live forever—a big if!—would it even be worth it?

Entrepreneur Bryan Johnson follows a strict diet and lifestyle routine in an attempt to reduce his biological age.

Kate Tolo opens the door to Johnson’s house and welcomes me inside. Tolo, a 27-year-old former fashion strategist who is originally from Australia, is Johnson’s chief marketing officer and most loyal disciple. Two months ago, she became the first person aside from Johnson to commit to Blueprint, making her the first test of how Blueprint works on a female body. Tolo is known as “Blueprint XX.”

Source : https://time.com/6315607/bryan-johnsons-quest-for-immortality

NASA taking ‘concrete action’ to explore UFOs after landmark report

NASA is taking “concrete action” to explore the potential threat of UFOs following the release of a landmark report into the phenomena.

The agency’s administrator, Bill Nelson, said it was time to “shift the conversation from sensationalist to science”, having received the recommendations of an independent panel tasked with looking into years of sightings.

While the 16-team panel stressed there is “no reason to conclude” that any sightings have been alien in origin, their report warned any mysterious flying objects were a “self-evident” threat to American airspace.

Their 33-page report said NASA should play a larger role in detecting such phenomena – and the agency has already appointed its first director of UFO research to lead the way.

NASA is also seeking to rename UFOs to UAPs (unidentified anomalous phenomena) to remove a “stigma” that can prevent people from reporting sightings.

Mr Nelson told a news briefing after the report’s release: “We are looking for signs of life, past and present, and it is in our DNA to explore and to ask why things are the way they are.”

He said “we all are entertained by Indiana Jones in the Amazon finding the crystal skull”, citing the impact of Hollywood and pop culture on people’s fascination with the topic.

“There’s a lot of folklore out there. That’s why we entered the arena: to get into this from a science point of view.”

Mr Nelson acknowledged that with billions of stars in billions of galaxies out there, another Earth could exist.

He said: “If you ask me do I believe there’s life in a universe that’s so vast that it’s hard for me to comprehend how big it is, my personal answer is yes.”

His own scientists put the likelihood of life on another Earth-like planet at “at least a trillion”.

Source: https://news.sky.com/story/nasa-appoints-first-ufo-research-director-but-no-evidence-any-sightings-have-been-alien-in-origin-12961093

Antarctica Warming Faster Than Expected, Threatening Global Sea Level Rise

A new scientific study reveals that Antarctica is warming at nearly twice the rate of the rest of the world, surpassing the predictions of climate change models. Researchers analyzed 78 Antarctic ice cores to reconstruct temperature data spanning 1,000 years. They found that the warming observed across the continent cannot be attributed to natural climate variability alone. The phenomenon, known as polar amplification, was previously observed in the Arctic, and this study provides “direct evidence” that it is also occurring in Antarctica.

What is polar amplification?

Polar amplification is a phenomenon where polar regions experience faster warming than the rest of the planet. The study provides evidence that this phenomenon is occurring in both the Arctic and Antarctica.

Why is West Antarctica considered particularly vulnerable to warming?

In West Antarctica, considered especially vulnerable to warming, the study identified a warming rate twice as high as climate models had projected. Its ice sheet, if collapsed, could contribute significantly to global sea level rise, potentially raising sea levels by several meters.

How does the study’s findings about Antarctica’s warming rate affect future sea level rise projections and the understanding of the continent’s climate?

The findings suggest that current climate models may underestimate the loss of ice in Antarctica, which could have implications for future sea level rise, ocean warming, and marine ecosystems.

What potential consequences are associated with a warming Antarctic?

A warming Antarctic could lead to further losses of sea ice, impacting ocean warming, global ocean circulation, and marine ecosystems. It could also result in the melting of coastal ice shelves that protect glaciers, potentially accelerating glacial retreat and contributing to sea level rise.

Source: https://www.gktoday.in/antarctica-warming-faster-than-expected-threatening-global-sea-level-rise/

Japan launches rocket carrying lunar lander and X-ray telescope to explore origins of universe

Japan launched a rocket Thursday carrying an X-ray telescope that will explore the origins of the universe as well as a small lunar lander.

The launch of the HII-A rocket from Tanegashima Space Center in southwestern Japan was shown on live video by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, known as JAXA.

“We have a liftoff,” the narrator at JAXA said as the rocket flew up in a burst of smoke then flew over the Pacific.

Thirteen minutes after the launch, the rocket put into orbit around Earth a satellite called the X-Ray Imaging and Spectroscopy Mission, or XRISM, which will measure the speed and makeup of what lies between galaxies.

That information helps in studying how celestial objects were formed, and hopefully can lead to solving the mystery of how the universe was created, JAXA says.

In cooperation with NASA, JAXA will look at the strength of light at different wavelengths, the temperature of things in space and their shapes and brightness.

David Alexander, director of the Rice Space Institute at Rice University, believes the mission is significant for delivering insight into the properties of hot plasma, or the superheated matter that makes up much of the universe.

Plasmas have the potential to be used in various ways, including healing wounds, making computer chips and cleaning the environment.

“Understanding the distribution of this hot plasma in space and time, as well as its dynamical motion, will shed light on diverse phenomena such as black holes, the evolution of chemical elements in the universe and the formation of galactic clusters,” Alexander said.

Also aboard the latest Japanese rocket is the Smart Lander for Investigating Moon, or SLIM, a lightweight lunar lander. The Smart Lander won’t make lunar orbit for three or four months after the launch and would likely attempt a landing early next year, according to the space agency.

The lander successfully separated from the rocket about 45 minutes after the launch and proceeded on its proper track to eventually land on the moon. JAXA workers applauded and bowed with each other from their observation facility.

JAXA is developing “pinpoint landing technology” to prepare for future lunar probes and landing on other planets. While landings now tend to be off by about 10 kilometers (6 miles) or more, the Smart Lander is designed to be more precise, within about 100 meters (330 feet) of the intended target, JAXA official Shinichiro Sakai told reporters ahead of the launch.

That allows the box-shaped gadgetry to find a safer place to land.

Source: https://apnews.com/article/japan-rocket-xray-telescope-lunar-jaxa-launch-dfa35431fc3a693aa2b95ef1cbd54ec6

Undying Dread: A 400-Year-Old Corpse, Locked to Its Grave

If reports from the time are to be believed, 17th-century Poland was awash in revenants — not vampires, exactly, but proto-zombies who harassed the living by drinking their blood or, less disagreeably, stirring up a ruckus in their homes. In one account, from 1674, a dead man rose from his tomb to assault his relatives; when his grave was opened, the corpse was unnaturally preserved and bore traces of fresh blood.

Such reports were common enough that a wide range of remedies was employed to keep corpses from reanimating: cutting out their hearts, nailing them into their graves, hammering stakes through their legs, jamming their jaws open with bricks (to prevent them from gnawing their way out.) In 1746, a Benedictine monk named Antoine Augustin Calmet published a popular treatise that sought, among other things, to distinguish real revenants from frauds.

Four centuries later, archaeologists in Europe have discovered the first physical evidence of a suspected child revenant. While excavating an unmarked mass cemetery at the edge of the village of Pień, near the Polish city of Bydgoszcz, researchers from Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń unearthed the remains of what has been widely described in news reports as a “vampire child.” The corpse, thought to have been about 6 at the time of death, was buried face down, with a triangular iron padlock under its left foot, in a likely effort to bind the child to the grave and keep it from haunting its family and neighbors.

“The padlock would have been locked to the big toe,” Dariusz Poliński, the lead archaeologist on the study, said through a translator. Sometime after burial, the grave was desecrated and all the bones removed except those of the lower legs.

“The child was interred in a prone position so that if it returned from the dead and tried to ascend, it would bite into dirt instead,” Dr. Poliński said. “To our knowledge, this is the only example of such a child burial in Europe.” The remains of three other children were found in a pit near the child’s grave. In the pit was a fragment of a jaw with a green stain, which Dr. Poliński speculated was left by a copper coin placed in the mouth, an ancient and common burial practice.

The necropolis, a makeshift graveyard for the poor and what Dr. Poliński called “abandoned souls excluded by society,” was discovered 18 years ago beneath a sunflower field on the slope of a hill. It was not part of a church or, as far as historical local records show, on consecrated ground. So far, about 100 graves have been uncovered at the site, including one only a few feet from the child’s that harbored the skeleton of a woman with a padlocked toe and an iron sickle over her neck. “The sickle was meant to sever the woman’s head should she attempt to get up,” Dr. Poliński said.

A green stain in her mouth was shown by chemical analysis not to have been from a coin, but from something more complicated. The residue bore traces of gold, potassium permanganate and copper, which Dr. Poliński thinks may have been left by a potion concocted to treat her ailments. The cause of the woman’s death is unclear, but whatever it was must have terrified those who buried her.

The woman and child do not qualify as vampires, said Martyn Rady, a historian at University College London. Vampires, he noted, are a specific type of revenant; their characteristics were first defined in the 1720s by Austrian Hapsburg officials, who came across suspected vampires in what is now northern Serbia and wrote reports that ended up in the medical journals of the time.

“They were quite clear that, in popular local legend, the vampire had three characteristics: It was a revenant, feasted on the living and was contagious,” Dr. Rady said. The Austrian definition shaped literary vampire mythology.

Polish legends feature two types of revenants. The upiór, which was later superseded by “wampir,” is similar to the cinematic Dracula, embodied by Bela Lugosi. The strzyga was more like a witch — “that is, in the old fairy-tale sense, a malevolent female spirit or demon that preys upon humans, may eat them or drink their blood,” Al Ridenour, a Los Angeles-based folklorist, said. In Pień, locals sometimes refer to the sickle woman as a strzyga, a wraith typically born with two souls. “The malevolent soul can’t find rest in the grave, so it rises and wreaks havoc,” Mr. Ridenour said.

He pointed to the turbulent nature of the Counter-Reformation in Poland for allowing pagan beliefs toward the undead to persist. “In reaction to the Protestants, the Catholic Church turned up the drama and emotion, as you can see in Baroque art, in memento mori paintings and the like,” he said. Sermons became more fiery, and whipped up fear of the devil and demons, which translated into a fear of revenants and reanimation of the dead.

Source: https://dnyuz.com/2023/09/05/undying-dread-a-400-year-old-corpse-locked-to-its-grave/

The Immortals: meet the billionaires forking out for eternal life

‘I’ve never paid more attention to what he’s eating’ … Bryan Johnson and his son Talmage, whose blood plasma was infused into his own. Photograph: Magda Wosinska/Magdalena Wosinska

A fascinating and often terrifying new podcast delves into the lengths ‘longevity superstars’ will go to make 90 the new 50, from swapping blood with the young to designing the first ‘post-humans’

Hollie Richardson
Hollie Richardson
Tue 5 Sep 2023 15.29 BST
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Until recently, Bryan Johnson was paying hundreds of thousands of dollars to infuse one litre of his teenage son’s youthful plasma into his own ageing blood stream every month. “I’ve never paid more attention to what he’s eating … because that was going into my body,” the 46-year-old American tech entrepreneur says on new podcast The Immortals. He also pumped his own plasma into his 70-year-old father’s body to help improve his declining physical and cognitive health: “It was one of the most meaningful moments in his entire life. And it was the same for me.” Johnson continues to pay $2m a year for a research team to investigate how we can live longer – and he is certainly not the only rich guy in Silicon Valley dedicated to the search for eternal life.

“It took us ages to find somebody to talk to us,” says technology reporter and psychologist Aleks Krotoski, who hosts the BBC Radio 4 series. “Strangely, people who take the blood of the young are a bit reserved … ” But Johnson had just begun using an algorithm to prevent biological ageing, which sifts through all research on longevity to create the best treatment plan and he was using his own body as a petri dish for it. Doctors have told Johnson he has the heart of a 37-year-old and the lungs of an 18-year-old and he was up for talking about this. “He was very reserved at the beginning but then there was a moment,” says Krotoski. “Suddenly I saw the geek in him: the delightfully obsessive, very clever [man]. He no longer felt ‘other’; this was just his jam. If you follow him on Twitter, he’s hilarious.”

Johnson is just one of the extraordinary people Krotoski speaks to who are trying to defy death. It is a ludicrous, fascinating and at times terrifying investigation – one she started as part of her PhD in 2003. The dawn of the internet meant “it felt like all these sci-fi dreams could be made possible”, including technological singularity – technology merging with humanity to create a “post-human existence”. Ultimately, she says, this means “we shall be immortal beings”. At the time, like everybody else, Krotoski wrote this off as “mad”. Two decades later, though, the fringe idea is entering the mainstream: “It has become entrenched in Silicon Valley, particularly because technology has become so advanced in the last five years.”

Plasma transfusions to prevent ageing became a reality in 2017 with Jesse Karmazin’s vampiric startup, Ambrosia. Hundreds of clients, with a median age of 60, would pay $8,000 (£6,200) to take part in what was essentially still a trial. However, it fell out of vogue a couple of years later when the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said in a statement: “We’re concerned that some patients are being preyed upon by unscrupulous actors touting treatments of plasma from young donors as cures and remedies. Such treatments have no proven clinical benefits for the uses for which these clinics are advertising them and are potentially harmful.” It damaged the reputation of longevity research – but the people behind its Frankenstein origins are still known as “longevity superstars”.

Using his body as a petri dish … Bryan Johnson. Photograph: Magdalena Wosinska

Michael and Irina Conboy are professors at the Department of Bioengineering at the University of California, Berkeley. In groundbreaking research in 2005, they stitched together the bodies of old mice and young mice, like conjoined twins, and found that their combined blood “had a younger profile”. This, says Michael over Zoom, presents an opportunity in age-related illness research. “Is it like an oil change for a car – will it run a lot better?” he asks. “If you can get rid of the garbage that is floating around in the blood, does the old body restore itself to health?”

The pair are quick to add that this isn’t going to have a Benjamin Button effect, and the research “wasn’t geared to make old people young” – even if this idea is being bio-hacked around the world. “It was clear that there were improvements after a couple of procedures,” says Irina. “[But] it’s not really healthy or rejuvenating to drain somebody of 70% of their blood and replace it with something.” She warns people to wait until more research is done.

Still, they believe that in the next five years we will see huge advancements in prolonging life treatments – including taking a pill instead of getting blood, and a “fountain of middle age”. “People will be able to have this high quality, productive life where they are healthy for many more decades,” says Irina. “If people choose to, they could be in their late 30s [for much longer].”

The quest for immortality doesn’t stop there. The podcast becomes even more mind-blowing as it digs deeper, from the cryptocurrency founder who created a “longevity city” in Montenegro because he believes we have a moral responsibility to stop ageing, to AI that is already being engineered to create a “post-human being” merged with machines. Last year, Amazon founder and third richest person in the world, Jeff Bezos, reportedly invested in Altos Labs, a startup working on “cellular rejuvenation programming”. PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel, meanwhile, has invested millions in the Methuselah Foundation, a non-profit that aims to make “90 the new 50 by 2030”.

Source: https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2023/sep/05/the-immortals-meet-the-billionaires-forking-out-for-eternal-life

Aditya-L1: India set to launch its first mission to Sun

The mission will help improve our scientific understanding of the Sun – the 4.5 billion-year-old star

India is set to launch its first observation mission to the Sun, just days after the country made history by becoming the first to land near the Moon’s south pole.

Aditya-L1 is due to blast off from the launch pad at Sriharikota on Saturday at 11:50 India time (06:20GMT).

It will be located at a distance of 1.5 million km (932,000 miles) from the Earth – 1% of the Earth-Sun distance.

India’s space agency says it will take four months to travel the distance.

India’s first space-based mission to study the solar system’s biggest object is named after Surya – the Hindu god of Sun who is also known as Aditya.

And L1 stands for Lagrange point 1 – the exact place between Sun and Earth where the Indian spacecraft will be placed.

According to the European Space Agency, a Lagrange point is a spot where the gravitational forces of two large objects – such as the Sun and the Earth – cancel each other out, allowing a spacecraft to “hover”.

Once Aditya-L1 reaches this “parking spot”, it would be able to orbit the Sun at the same rate as the Earth. This also means the satellite will require very little fuel to operate.

The Indian Space Research Agency (Isro) says once the spacecraft takes off, it will travel several times around the Earth before being launched towards L1.

From this vantage position, Aditya-L1 will be able to watch the Sun constantly – even when it’s hidden like during an eclipse – and carry out scientific studies.

The Indian Space Research Agency (Isro) has not said how much the mission would cost, but reports in the Indian press put it at 3.78bn rupees ($46m; £36m).

Isro says the orbiter carries seven scientific instruments that will observe and study the solar corona (the outermost layer); the photosphere (the Sun’s surface or the part we see from the Earth) and the chromosphere (a thin layer of plasma that lies between the photosphere and the corona).

The studies will help scientists understand solar activity, such as solar wind and solar flares, and their effect on Earth and near-space weather in real time.

Former Isro scientist Mylswamy Annadurai says the Sun constantly influences the Earth weather through radiation, heat and flow of particles and magnetic fields. At the same time, he says, it also impacts the space weather.

“Space weather plays a role in how effectively the satellites function. Solar winds or storms can affect the electronics on satellites, even knock down power grids. But there are gaps in our knowledge of space weather,” Mr Annadurai told the BBC.

India has more than 50 satellites in space and they provide many crucial services to the country, including communication links, data on weather, and help predict pest infestations, droughts and impending disasters. According to UN’s Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA), approximately 10,290 satellites remain in Earth’s orbit, with nearly 7,800 of them currently operational.

Aditya, says Mr Annadurai, will help us better understand, and even give us a forewarning, about the star on which our lives depend.

“Knowing the activities of the Sun such as solar wind or a solar eruption a couple of days ahead will help us move our satellites out of harm’s way. This will help increase the longevity of our satellites in space.”

Source: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-66643805

Solar mission Aditya L1’s latest images shared by ISRO ahead of launch: See pics

The Indian Space Research Organisation will launch Aditya L1, India’s first-ever solar mission, from Andhra Pradesh’s Sriharikota on Friday.

Aditya L1, India’s first ever solar mission, is positioned on its launch pad, ready for liftoff from Earth this coming Friday, to embark on a journey spanning four months, covering a distance of 1.5 million kilometers.(ISRO)

The mission aims to study the Sun and its impact on space weather in real-time and achieve other key objectives such as understanding “coronal heating, coronal mass ejection, pre-flare and flare activities, among others,” the ISRO explained.

Aditya L1 will be travel 1.5 million km to be positioned at Lagrange 1, a point in space where the gravitational force of two celestial bodies (like the Sun-Earth) create pockets of gravitational equilibrium. This allows the spacecraft to remain in one position without having to burn fuel.(ISRO)

Source : https://www.hindustantimes.com/photos/news/aditya-l1-solar-missions-latest-images-shared-by-isro-ahead-of-launch-see-pics-101693370842479-3.html

LIFE OUT THERE? Nasa scientist admits she’s ‘absolutely certain there is alien life’ and reveals best place to find it nearby

A NASA scientist has revealed that she’s absolutely certain there’s alien life out there.

The expert told The U.S. Sun about her alien theory and where she thinks life is hiding.

Dr. Michelle Thaller spoke with The U.S. Sun about alien life in the Solar SystemCredit: The U.S. Sun

The expert spoke at the Beyond the Light experience at Artechouse in New York CityCredit: ARTECHOUSE

Dr. Michelle Thaller works as a scientist at Nasa’s Goddard Space Flight Center and has decades of experience.

She told us: “I definitely think we’ll find life on another planet.

“I think that in our own Solar System, we’re quite close to it but once again we don’t have that 100 percent thing.

“On Mars, we see chemistry that on Earth if it were here we would say is due to life.

“But the question is, how well do we understand Mars and are we being fooled by something?”

Dr. Thaller spoke to The U.S. Sun at Beyond the Light, an exhibition at Artechouse in New York that aims to immerse the public in a deep space exploration experience.

The exhibit was created in collaboration with Nasa, and features newly analyzed galactical data from the James Webb Space Telescope.

Artechouse and Nasa collaborated extensively to present this data as an artistic expression of the US space agency’s breathtaking discoveries.

The JWST is a $10billion device that could help humans find habitable planets in distant galaxies.

However, Dr. Thaller thinks life could be much closer to home than that.

She continued: “We see possible signs of life in the atmosphere of Venus.

“Possibly underneath the ice in the icy moons of Jupiter and Saturn.

“The Solar System may be teaming with simple life, microbial life.

“We just have to get that 100 percent certainty to say that we found it and we don’t have that yet.”

Of all those options, Dr. Thaller is excited about Venus’ potential to harbor life.

The hostile and dry planet would kill a human who landed there instantly, and yet several studies suggest microbial life could live in its clouds.

Dr. Thaller said: “I never expected Venus. Venus is now one where we see something in the atmosphere that looks very much like it could be produced by bacteria.”

The expert is certain we will find life and thinks it’s just a matter of when.

Speaking to an audience at the event, she said: “I think it’s only a matter of time until we have proof that it’s in the Solar System.

Source: https://www.the-sun.com/tech/8909027/nasa-scientist-admits-alien-life-location/?utm_campaign=native_share&utm_source=sharebar_native&utm_medium=sharebar_native

China CDC urges WHO to take ‘scientific, fair’ position on COVID origins

Airline staff wear personal protective equipment (PPE) to protect against coronavirus disease (COVID-19) disease as they work at Beijing Capital International airport in Beijing, China March 13, 2022. REUTERS/Soe Zeya Tun

The head of China’s Center For Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on Saturday urged the World Health Organization (WHO) to return to a “scientific, fair” position in tracing the origin of COVID-19.

At a news conference, Shen Hongbing warned the WHO against politicising the source of the virus, which was first detected in central China in late 2019, or becoming a tool of another country.

Source: https://www.reuters.com/world/china/china-cdc-urges-who-take-scientific-fair-position-covid-origins-2023-04-08/