Month: June 2019

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More Mars Methane: Curiosity Rover Spots Biggest Surge Yet

https://www.space.com/curiosity-mars-rover-highest-levels-methane.html

NASA’s Curiosity rover has sniffed out another surge of the potentially life-indicating gas methane on Mars, and this one is the biggest yet.

The six-wheeled robot detected methane levels around 21 parts per billion per unit volume (ppbv) last week inside the 96-mile-wide (154 kilometers) Gale Crater, NASA officials announced yesterday (June 23). That’s far higher than the normal background concentration at Gale, which Curiosity has determined ranges seasonally from about 0.24 ppbv to 0.65 ppbv.

The new result is exciting, because the vast majority of methane in Earth’s air is generated by microbes and other organisms. But we can’t assume Martians were involved. Methane can also be produced abiotically — via the reaction of hot water with certain types of rock, for example.

Related: The Search for Life on Mars: A Photo Timeline

“With our current measurements, we have no way of telling if the methane source is biology or geology, or even ancient or modern,” Paul Mahaffy, of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, said in a statement. Mahaffy is principal investigator of Curiosity’s Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) instrument, which detected the recent surge.

Curiosity has also sniffed out two other spikes of the gas — one in June 2013 and another that lasted from late 2013 through early 2014. Both of those were considerably smaller, peaking at around 6 or 7 ppbv, according to the rover’s measurements

This past April, scientists announced that Europe’s Mars Express orbiter had confirmed the June 2013 surge. But not all orbital measurements add up so nicely. 

For example, the Trace Gas Orbiter, a joint European-Russian probe designed to hunt for methane and other low-abundance gases in the Martian atmosphere, found hardly any methane at all during its first round of observations last year.

The SAM team conducted a separate experiment over the weekend in an attempt to better understand this most recent methane spike, and perhaps get a better handle on the many mysteries swirling around the gas.

“Combining observations from the surface and from orbit could help scientists locate sources of the gas on the planet and understand how long it lasts in the Martian atmosphere,” NASA officials said in the same statement. “That might explain why the Trace Gas Orbiter’s and Curiosity’s methane observations have been so different.”

Mike Wall’s book about the search for alien life, “Out There” (Grand Central Publishing, 2018; illustrated by Karl Tate), is out now. Follow him on Twitter @michaeldwall. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom or Facebook.

Have a news tip, correction or comment? Let us know at community@space.com.

via Space.com http://bit.ly/2WPkkGi

June 24, 2019 at 01:33PM

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Boeing Has So Many Grounded 737 Max Planes Waiting to Be Fixed They’re Parking Them in the Employee Parking Lot

https://jalopnik.com/boeing-has-so-many-grounded-737-max-planes-waiting-to-b-1835811860

You may recall that, thanks to an issue with faulty sensors in the Boeing 737 Max flight control systems, those planes have been grounded after multiple crashes were found to be related to the issue. Grounded planes are, by definition, not in the air, and as such need to be stored, on the ground, somewhere. In the case of Boeing’s Renton Factory in Washington state, there’s so many grounded planes that some of that ground has to be taken from Boeing’s employee parking lots.

As you can imagine, seeing the planes parking among people’s everyday commuter cars is a strange sight, which has led to pictures like these being posted on Twitter:

… and Instagram:

Seattle’s King 5 News has some very comprehensive aerial footage of the factory, which gives a sense of just how many of these planes are parked at Boeing’s factory right now:

That’s a lot of planes. There’s about 500 grounded 737 Max jets around the world, as Bloomberg notes, with about 100 stuck at Boeing’s Renton factory. Those are the planes we’re seeing here, parked alongside people’s Priuses and Explorers.

I wonder if you can snag a spot under the wings if it’s raining?

About the author

Jason Torchinsky

Senior Editor, Jalopnik • Running: 1973 VW Beetle, 2006 Scion xB, 1990 Nissan Pao, 1991 Yugo GV Plus • Not-so-running: 1973 Reliant Scimitar, 1977 Dodge Tioga RV (also, buy my book!)

via Gizmodo https://gizmodo.com

June 24, 2019 at 02:09PM

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Via the BBC, find out how Apollo 11’s Eagle actually landed

https://arstechnica.com/?p=1526021

Apollo lander on the surface of the Moon.

With the 50th anniversary of the first Moon landing fast approaching, there’s a veritable deluge of programs, events, and media of various forms, all dedicated to recapturing an astonishing moment in humanity’s collective history. All of these things face a serious challenge: the Apollo missions have been revisited so many times and from so many angles, it’s difficult to say anything truly new.

Go for the obvious points, and you’ll face telling a big chunk of your audience things they already knew. Aim for something truly novel, and there’s the risk that you’ll end up focusing on an aspect that’s obscure simply because it’s not that interesting or important. These problems are compounded for an audience like Ars’, where most of us have spent a bit of time obsessed by the space program, and the hurdles to finding some novelty grow even higher.

The promise of a new angle on a familiar subject was what got me listening to a production by the BBC’s World Service entitled 13 Minutes to the Moon. This multi-episode podcast focuses on what’s really the key moment in Apollo 11: the final descent and touchdown of the Eagle lander that delivered Armstrong and Aldrin to the Moon’s surface.

I hadn’t thought of the landing this way before, but it really was the critical point in the mission. Everything prior to this had been tested during the Apollo 10 dress rehearsal, when the lunar module descended to 15 kilometers of the Moon’s surface. And, once touchdown had occurred, something pretty dramatic would have to go wrong to keep humans from stepping onto the Moon’s surface. The final descent was probably the last, best chance for failure.

The goal of 13 Minutes to the Moon is to get its listeners to where they understand everything that’s happened to make the descent possible and everything that needs to be done to make sure it happened. With all the pieces in place, the series will end with a rebroadcast of 13 minutes of the main communication loop between Houston and the Lunar Module.

Being produced by the BBC provides significant advantages. For one, the organization is closing in on its 100th anniversary, and so it has archival audio from all of the space race that culminated in Apollo 11. And, in pursuing new angles, the organization’s name and reputation literally opened a lot of doors, as former astronauts and mission controllers welcomed the program’s host into their homes for chats.

The BBC also helped ensure that the program’s host would be Kevin Fong, an experienced presenter and MD who has worked with NASA on crewed spaceflight. (Do not read Kevin’s Wikipedia entry unless you’re mentally prepared to consider how inadequate your life choices have been.)

All that would be wasted, however, if what resulted was a program that ran over familiar ground yet another time. Some of that is inevitable. You can’t cover the Moon program without revisiting the Apollo 1 fire, which triggered tremendous changes in the culture at NASA and the approach the agency took to training and hardware certification. So, the question is really one of whether there’s enough new here to make treading over familiar ground worth it.

For me, there is. While I knew the mission control team was young, I hadn’t considered what it might be like to be a few years out of college and given the ability to determine whether to scrub the entire mission and send Armstrong and Aldrin back to orbit early. Dr. Fong’s interviews with these now-much-older people drive the experience home. And, separately, the series delves into how, when faced with a seemingly infinite number of things that could go wrong, they could quickly determine whether the problems that arose were bad enough to call for a scrub.

Long Island connection

I’ve also learned things about the Lunar Module itself, including that it was made nearby on Long Island, where a museum preserves both training hardware and a flight-ready version that would have gone to the Moon on one of the missions that was ultimately cancelled. In many ways, it’s humanity’s only true spacecraft so far, built to handle a vacuum and maneuver in minimal gravity, yet incapable of doing much in a dense atmosphere under the strain of Earth’s pull. Its use in the Moon’s gentle gravity actually enabled a key weight-saving measure: throwing out the planned seats for the astronauts, which forced them to take the landing standing up.

That said, I think 13 Minutes is going to fail in its ultimate mission. There’s so much here that I’m certain to forget many details by the time the full 13 minutes of the landing are ready to air. But I’m willing to accept that failure given that I’m clearly retaining some things I’d never known. And, as a bonus, I’m probably going to end up visiting a museum on Long Island that I wouldn’t have otherwise known existed.

13 Minutes to the Moon can be downloaded from the BBC.

via Ars Technica https://arstechnica.com

June 23, 2019 at 09:03AM

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Lexus Bladescan is another new headlight safety breakthrough U.S. won’t get

https://www.autoblog.com/2019/06/21/lexus-bladescan-headlight-safety-technology/

Lexus

is back at it with innovative lighting technology. The BladeScan headlights available in Europe on the 2020 RX utilize a new mechanism for throwing light further down the road, aiming that light more precisely, and doing so without blinding other road users. Lights from other OEMs with the same capabilities have increased the number of LEDs inside the housing for finer control. The BladeScan module inside the Lexus lights holds the number of LEDs down to 10 on each side of the RX, which Lexus says is a more cost-effective solution. In fact, BladeScan uses fewer LEDs than

Lexus’ most recent adaptive high-beam system

, which has 24 LEDs on each side.

The LEDs in the new module are arranged in two rows, eight on top, two on bottom. The diodes are fed information about objects ahead, and adjust their intensity to dim light aimed at an oncoming car, or illuminate a pedestrian by the roadside. However, the LEDs don’t shine their light down the road, they shine their strobing light onto two blade-shaped mirrors — hence the name BladeScan — that rotate at high speed. The light reflects off the mirrored blades and into a lens, which orients the beam down the road.

Not only is the reflected light easier to handle for oncoming drivers, the system has aim accurate to 0.7 degrees. Lexus’ current adaptives are accurate to 1.7 degrees, making BladeScan a 143-percent improvement. That means the new feature can throw even more light into areas that are hard to reach with current lights — Lexus says pedestrian recognition at night has increased from 105 feet to 184 feet.

Buyers of the 2020 RX will be able to take advantage when the new

crossover

goes on sale in Europe later this year.

Naturally, U.S. Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard No. 108 means we won’t get BladeScan — that

goes for you, too, Canada

. The now-52-year-old U.S. law mandates a single low beam and a single high beam setting, with no intermediate settings and no activation of high and low beams simultaneously.

Toyota

,

Audi

and

BMW

have been trying for six years to get FMVSS 108 changed to permit new and potentially lifesaving headlight technologies. The automaker wrote

in a statement to Carscoops

, “Last December, Lexus submitted a petition to

NHTSA

to allow ADB in the United States. Currently, we await the Agency’s decision and hope to see an amendment in FMVSS 108.”

via Autoblog http://bit.ly/1afPJWx

June 21, 2019 at 10:21AM

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Secretive Startup SpinLaunch Gets 1st Launch Contract for US Military

https://www.space.com/spinlaunch-first-launch-contract.html

The secretive startup SpinLaunch, which aims to fling satellites into space without a traditional launch pad, has just secured its first launch contract. 

In a statement today (June 19), SpinLaunch announced that it has received a “launch prototype contract” from the U.S. Department of Defense under a deal arranged by the Defense Innovation Unit. The Long Beach, California-based company aims to launch its first test flights in early 2020 from Spaceport America in New Mexico. 

SpinLaunch is developing a “kinetic energy-based launch system” that accelerates a small payload-carrying booster to hypersonic speeds with a spinning system on the ground. A chemical rocket would kick in once the payload has been launched from the ground system. 

An illustration released with the announcement depicted a SpinLaunch booster attached to the arm of what appeared to be a centrifuge.  

Related: Take a Tour of Spaceport America (Photos)

“SpinLaunch is reimagining space launch by revisiting fundamental physics and leveraging proven industrial technologies to create a system that accelerates the launch vehicle to hypersonic speeds using ground-based energy,” SpinLaunch representatives wrote in today’s announcement. “Applying the initial performance boost from a terrestrial-based launch platform will enable the company to provide a substantially lower cost launch to orbit, multiple times per day, with no negative impact on our environment.”

Entrepreneur Jonathan Yaney founded SpinLaunch in 2014 with the goal of developing a low-cost launch system. The company has said in the past that it hopes to be able to launch small payloads up to five times a day for $250,000 per flight. 

In the statement today, Yaney said SpinLaunch would fill the gap between “bulk” carrying commercial launch vehicles (which carry many satellites at once) and “niche” services that are aimed at a specific orbit. 

“SpinLaunch fills this gap by providing dedicated orbital launch with high frequency at a magnitude lower cost than any current ‘niche’ launch system,” Yaney said. “This will truly be a disruptive enabler for the emerging commercial space industry. There is a promising market surge in the demand for LEO constellations of inexpensive small satellites for disaster monitoring, weather, reconnaissance, communications and other services.”

SpinLaunch received $40 million in Series A investment in 2018, with some funding provided by Airbus Ventures, GV (formerly Google Ventures) and Kleiner Perkins. In May 2019, the company broke ground on a $7 million launch site at Spaceport America. 

After a series of test flights in 2020, SpinLaunch aims to begin commercial launch operations in 2022, the company has said.  

Email Tariq Malik at tmalik@space.com or follow him @tariqjmalik. Follow us @Spacedotcom and Facebook.  

Have a news tip, correction or comment? Let us know at community@space.com.

via Space.com http://bit.ly/2WPkkGi

June 19, 2019 at 04:21PM

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These flesh-eating bacteria are finding new beaches to call home

https://www.popsci.com/flesh-eating-bacteria-delaware-climate-change/

Crabbing in the Chesapeake Bay could become more dangerous.

Crabbing in the Chesapeake Bay could become more dangerous. (Deposit Photos/)

Just as birds and ticks are heading north in these warmer times, microbes are also on the move. You may not think of bacteria as having a habitat, but like all living things, different species of bacteria prefer different living arrangements.

Luckily for some of them—specifically the flesh-eating varieties—we humans have warmed the climate enough that their habitats are expanding. Vibrio vulnificus, one of roughly a dozen species that cause vibriosis in humans, only lives in high-salinity surface waters above 13°C (that’s 55.4°F). In the U.S., that means it’s historically been confined to the southeastern coast. But a case report published this week in the Annals of Internal Medicine suggests that our flesh-eating friends are already moving up the shoreline.

As a quick refresher, V. vulnificus is actually less dangerous than it sounds. Most people get infected by eating raw or undercooked shellfish, and by that we pretty much mean oysters. Nearly all oysters have the bacteria during the warmer months, but plenty still have them in the cooler seasons, so it’s really a matter of whether your immune system can stamp them out. Cooking effectively kills V. vulnificus, so if you’re concerned, just make sure you don’t go for raw shellfish. The CDC estimates that roughly 80,000 people get vibriosis every year, and most of them have a nasty case of classic food poisoning: diarrhea and vomiting. But some people will go on to have a more serious case, in which the bacteria gets into the bloodstream. Those cases require hospitalization, and some people—around 100 annually—die from the infection.

Although eating V. vulnificus is the most common way to get infected, particularly nasty cases involve getting the bacteria through an open wound. "Wound" sounds pretty intense, so let’s just remind you that a fresh tattoo counts as an open wound, and you can absolutely get vibriosis by way of your new ink. Any puncturing of the skin is enough to let bacteria inside. It’s for this reason that vibriosis becomes a serious concern during hurricane season. Hurricanes strike in warm water areas where the bacteria live, and during the storm, those coastal waters get pushed inland (along with a ton of debris that you might scratch yourself on).

The report presents five cases, including one fatality, of people who contracted vibriosis from the Delaware Bay. Three of the men had recently been crabbing in the bay, one of whom said he had cut his leg on a trap.

These particular cases are unusually severe. Three involved untreated hepatitis, which is known to predispose you to develop complications from vibriosis, and all of the men required extensive removal of necrotic tissue surrounding their dead flesh. One had to have all four limbs amputated, and another died.

None of this is to say that flesh-eating bacterial infections will become commonplace. These cases are outliers. But as the authors point out, this is a new thing for the Delaware Bay. V. vulnificus was known to occasionally reach the Chesapeake Bay, but almost never to approach the more northerly, colder Delaware. Prior to 2017, the hospital where this research was performed had only ever seen one case of V. vulnificus infection. The five described in the report all happened in a span of two years.

It’s entirely possible that this is a fluke—a statistical blip. But unfortunately, this kind of surge in more-northern-than-usual infections is what we’d expect given our planet’s temperature changes. Folks in traditionally cooler climes will need to be aware of these new risks, as will physicians who may soon see infections they’ve never encountered before. This is the inevitability of a warming sea.

via Popular Science – New Technology, Science News, The Future Now https://www.popsci.com

June 19, 2019 at 06:47PM

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Volvo Group’s new military vehicle can drive sideways, like a crab

https://www.popsci.com/arquus-scarabee-french-military-vehicle/

The Scarabée vehicle from Arquus.

The Scarabée vehicle from Arquus. (Arquus/)

You probably haven’t heard of Arquus, a French defense and security vehicle firm, but you likely do know the company that owns it: Sweden’s Volvo Group. And from this subdivision of Volvo comes a new, light army vehicle: it’s called Scarabée, which is French for “beetle.”

The team’s mission at Arquus was to develop an armored military vehicle that is fast, stealthy, and highly maneuverable. Plus, it has two engines (one electric, one diesel), is remotely-controllable, and is able to carry over two tons of equipment, including weapons. It’s even transportable and droppable from a low height, sans parachute, by plane. Scarabée, which is smaller and faster than an American Humvee, is a candidate to replace the French Army’s fleet of 730 light armored vehicles by 2025.

Composite materials and new assembly processes give the machine protection against bullets, blasts, and mines. “We really worked on the speed because that is also a form of protection,” Emmanuel Levacher, the chief executive of Arquus, explains. “If you put a lot of protective armor on a vehicle it makes it very heavy, big, and therefore slow unless you give it a large, powerful engine—in which case you no longer have a small, agile military vehicle.”

The 6-foot high, 15-foot wide, four-person vehicle weighs 6.6 tons empty. It can drive at over 75 mph and can accelerate quickly, providing almost 60hp per ton compared to around 20hp per ton for a Humvee. For that acceleration, it needs both its 300hp diesel engine and its electric 103hp motor to be engaged at the same time; the acceleration provided would be sufficient to allow it to dodge an incoming anti-tank missile, for example.

Both engines are in the back. The diesel engine can go for up to 620 miles, while the electric motor, powered by two batteries set underneath the body to provide additional protection from mines and improvised explosive devices (IEDs), would last about six miles.

Scarabée is probably a bit of a misnomer. “Crab” may be more appropriate, because it can move like one: sideways. It can not only sharply “sidestep” obstacles on the road, such as mines, but also has a tight turning radius. That’s because its four wheels are all powered, like a 4×4, but also (unlike the 4×4 you may have in your garage) the front and back wheels can all be turned in the same direction, or in opposite ones. So, if the driver wanted to turn the vehicle around on the spot, they would turn the back wheels in one direction and the front ones in another. If the driver wanted the crab effect, then they would turn all the wheels in the same direction.

The vehicle can be air-dropped from a low height.

The vehicle can be air-dropped from a low height. (Arquus/)

“That way you can approach the enemy without either turning your back to him or being full front on, but you could also drive crab-like behind a ridge, for example, and yet still have your roof-top gun with its limited turn radius pointing at the enemy,” a spokesperson for the company says.

The vehicle has two sliding doors so the crew can get in and out easily even in small spaces, such as in narrow streets, where a hinged door would be an impediment. To open the doors from outside you need to have the remote control—there are no handles. This provides additional security for the crew inside.

On its roof, the vehicle can carry radar units or weapons such as a 12.7mm heavy machine-gun turret, a 30mm gun to fire anti-tank shells, or a medium-range missile launcher.

Scarabée’s engine control system, brakes, steering and gearbox were developed by Volvo or its suppliers. To reduce Scarabée’s fuel consumption, for example, developers tapped into the research Volvo Trucks undertook to develop the first fully electrically-powered truck in 2016, but also equipped the vehicle with energy-efficient tires.

Scarabée also makes use of innovations in the robotization sector developed by both Volvo and Arquus, which is a combination of the Latin words for war-horse: Armis Equus. “It was important for us to develop a military vehicle that can be remotely controlled even when it is off-road,” Lavacher remarks. Scarabée can be controlled from afar “even beyond the line of sight of the operator.” In the future, the company is working on the idea of using a drone which could inform the vehicle of unexpected obstacles on its route.

Last, but not least, Scarabée has a motorized, electric trailer that can carry an additional four tons of equipment. The trailer is also robotized so can be used as an independent mule. For example, one Scarabée crew could leave the trailer somewhere and another crew, some distance away on another vehicle, can “call” the trailer to join them.

via Popular Science – New Technology, Science News, The Future Now https://www.popsci.com

June 19, 2019 at 08:33PM