The ring of galaxies, appropriately called the “Big Ring,” has a circumference of nearly 4 billion light-years.
“We need to be prepared for and reduce risks in space for those living now on the International Space Station and for those who might live there in the future,” said Dr. Kali Kniel. “It is important to better understand how bacterial pathogens react to microgravity in order to develop appropriate mitigation strategies.”
As human spaceflight has advanced, so has the food that astronauts eat during their respective missions. This has evolved from dehydrated food during the Apollo missions to regular food that astronauts can get shipped from Earth. But an astronaut’s diet expanded thanks to a 2020 study published in Frontiers in Plant Science that evaluated space-grown lettuce in the International Space Station (ISS) with promising results. While that study exhibited “negative results” for human pathogens, a recent study published in Scientific Reports has demonstrated that human pathogens could infect space-grown lettuce, specifically leafy green vegetables, that could lead to food safety concerns during spaceflight from the microgravity conditions where the plants are grown.
For the study, the researchers simulated microgravity conditions by rotating plants at 2 rotations per minute (RPM), 4 RPM, and unrotated and with and without S. enterica Typhimurium, which is a known salmonella bacterium, and later with Bacillus subtilis strain UD1022. The team analyzed changes in how much each bacteria invaded the plant’s pores, which function as the primary mechanism during photosynthesis for discharging oxygen and taking in carbon dioxide.
Continue reading “Space-Grown Lettuce Faces Food Safety Concerns on the ISS” »
Led by researchers from Université de Montréal’s Trottier Institute for Research on Exoplanets (iREx), a team of astronomers has harnessed the power of the revolutionary James Webb Space Webb Telescope (JWST) to study the “hot Saturn” exoplanet HAT-P-18 b.
Their findings, published last month in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, paint a complete picture of the HAT-P-18 b’s atmosphere while exploring the great challenge of distinguishing its atmospheric signals from the activity of its star.
HAT-P-18 b is located over 500 light-years away with a mass similar to Saturn’s but a size closer to that the larger planet Jupiter. As a result, the exoplanet has a “puffed-up” atmosphere that is especially ideal for analysis.
Iron is one of the world’s most abundant elements and a primary component of the Earth’s core. Understanding the behavior of iron under extreme conditions, such as ultra-high pressures and temperatures, has implications for the science of geology and the Earth’s evolution.
In a study conducted by a team led by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. researchers combined lasers and X-ray diffraction methods to examine how different crystal structures of iron are related to each other and what happens when it melts at ultrahigh pressures and temperatures. The paper was published in the journal Physical Review B.
Using the Dynamic Compression Sector beamline at Argonne National Laboratory, researchers applied nanosecond laser shock compression to iron at pressures up to 275 gigapascals (GPa) — more than 2 million times atmospheric pressure — and used in situ picosecond X-ray diffraction to study the structure of the iron under these extreme conditions. Authors said the ability to gather this novel data on iron provides insights into materials science and the internal dynamics of Earth and other terrestrial exoplanets.
Despite this historic feat achieved by the Smart Lander for Investigating Moon (SLIM), challenges persist.
The mission team established immediate communication with the lander post-landing, but concerns arose as the solar cell struggled to generate electricity.
Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) decided to switch off the Moon lander almost three hours after the historic landing.
Confounding and confusing.
As measurements of distant stars and galaxies become more precise, cosmologists are struggling to make sense of sparring values.
After just over 10 and a half days in space, Peregrine Mission One, which was hosted by the private space company, Astrobotic Technology, burned up in the Earth’s atmosphere over the South Pacific Ocean on January 18, 2024, at approximately 4:04 pm EST (1:04 pm EST). This concluded what is being deemed as a mostly successful mission for the first commercial mission for NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program, although the spacecraft was unable to land on the lunar surface due to a fuel leak that occurred about seven hours after launch on January 8, 2024. Despite this, Peregrine was able to test several of its onboard instruments during the short mission, which will provide valuable data for future missions to the Moon, specifically for NASA’s Artemis program.
Had Peregrine landed on the Moon, it would have marked the first time a US-built spacecraft would have landed on the lunar surface since NASA’s Apollo 17 in 1972. Despite this, four of the five instruments on Peregrine successfully collected data during the 10-day mission: Linear Energy Transfer Spectrometer (LETS), Near-Infrared Volatile Spectrometer System (NIRVSS), Neutron Spectrometer System (NSS), Peregrine Ion-Trap Mass Spectrometer (PITMS), with the fifth instrument, NASA’s Laser Retroreflector Array (LRA), designed to only be used on the lunar surface.
“Astrobotic’s Peregrine mission provided an invaluable opportunity to test our science and instruments in space, optimizing our process for collecting data and providing a benchmark for future missions,” said Dr. Nicola Fox, who is the associate administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters. “The data collected in flight sets the stage for understanding how some of our instruments may behave in the harsh environment of space when some of the duplicates fly on future CLPS flights.”
Astronauts aboard the ISS have shared dramatic imagery of the Axiom-3 Crew Dragon as it approached the station on Saturday.
A small asteroid entered Earth’s atmosphere Sunday morning and lit up the sky over eastern Germany. Videos of the incident have gone viral on social media, depicting a glowing object descending over Europe. Experts later confirmed that the light came from a disintegrating meteorite.
According to astronomers and observers, the 2024 BX1 asteroid, which was temporarily designated as Sar2736, landed outside Berlin near Nennhausen at around 1:30 am local time. Hungarian astronomer Krisztián Sárneczky was the first one to discover the approaching asteroid several hours before its impact, according to The International Astronomical Union.
