Lifeboat Foundation

Astronomers have cracked a mystery 1,000 light-years from Earth.

Even when politicians and countries have sparred, pursuing scientific truths has been a shared experience across academia and political boundaries. But not now with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

In response to the invasion of Ukraine programs of cooperation between Europe, North Americas, and Russia in space and research are ending.

Joseph DePasquale, the senior data imaging developer at Space Telescope Science Institute, did some minor stretching of the image to bring out more of the detail of the star in the constellation Ursa Major known as HD 84406.

NASA’s James Webb Telescope will capture images in infrared light, providing a new perspective on the cosmos.

The rise of flying space junk also poses unplanned and catastrophic risk of destruction. Here’s how NASA plans to destroy the International Space Station in a safer and more controlled manner.

The number 18 just hits different.

NASA and NOAA launch the weather satellite, the third in the GOES-R series to detect Earth and space weather.

Space worms.

Two young worms are the first offspring in a Mars soil experiment at Wageningen University & Research. Biologist Wieger Wamelink found them in a Mars soil simulant that he obtained from NASA. At the start he only added adult worms. The experiments are crucial in the study that aims to determine whether people can keep themselves alive at the red planet by growing their own crops on Mars soils.

To feed future humans on Mars a sustainable closed agricultural ecosystem is a necessity. Worms will play a crucial role in this system as they break down and recycle dead organic matter. The poop and pee of the (human) Martian will also have to be used to fertilise the soil, but for practical and safety reasons we are presently using pig slurry. We have since been observing the growth of rucola (rocket) in Mars soil simulant provided by NASA to which worms and slurry have been added. ‘Clearly the manure stimulated growth, especially in the Mars soil simulant, and we saw that the worms were active. However, the best surprise came at the end of the experiment when we found two young worms in the Mars soil simulant’, said Wieger Wamelink of Wageningen University & Research.

‘The positive effect of adding manure was not unexpected’, added Wamelink, ‘but we were surprised that it makes Mars soil simulant outperform Earth silver sand’. We added organic matter from earlier experiments to both sands. We added the manure to a sample of the pots and then, after germination of the rucola, we added the worms. We therefore ended up with pots with all possible combinations with the exception of organic matter which was added to all of the pots.

Earth´s Moon may have been habitable and hosted life billions of years ago: a hypothesis re-evaluated.

An Outrageous Hypothesis Re-Evaluated.

It turns out that free-floating planets are more common in our galaxy than previously thought.