Day: March 28, 2022

Editor’s note: Experts expect the crash did occur as predicted, but are still waiting for visual verification.

This article was originally published at The Conversation. The publication contributed the article to Space.com’s Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights.

On March 4, a lonely, spent rocket booster smacked into the surface of the moon at nearly 6,000 mph. Once the dust has settled, NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter will move into position to get an up-close view of the smoldering crater and hopefully shed some light on the mysterious physics of planetary impacts.

As a planetary scientist who studies the moon, I view this unplanned impact as an exciting opportunity. The Moon has been a steadfast witness to solar system history, its heavily cratered surface recording innumerable collisions over the last 4 billion years. However, scientists rarely get a glimpse of the projectiles – usually asteroids or comets – that form these craters. Without knowing the specifics of what created a crater, there is only so much scientists can learn by studying one.

The rocket impact will provide a fortuitous experiment that could reveal a lot about how natural collisions pummel and scour planetary surfaces. A deeper understanding of impact physics will go a long way in helping researchers interpret the barren landscape of the moon and also the effects impacts have on Earth and other planets.

Related: The greatest moon crashes of all time

When a rocket crashes on the moon

There has been some debate over the exact identity of the tumbling object currently on a collision course with the Moon. Astronomers know that the object is an upper stage booster discarded from a high-altitude satellite launch. It is roughly 40 feet (12 meters) long and weighs nearly 10,000 pounds (4,500 kilograms). Evidence suggests that it is likely either a SpaceX rocket launched in 2015 or a Chinese rocket launched in 2014, but both parties have denied ownership.

The rocket was expected to crash into the vast barren plain within the giant Hertzsprung crater, just over the horizon on the far side of the moon from Earth.

An instant after the rocket touched the lunar surface, a shock wave would have traveled up the length of the projectile at several miles per second. Within milliseconds, the back end of the rocket hull will be obliterated with bits of metal exploding in all directions.

A twin shock wave will travel downward into the powdery top layer of the moon’s surface called the regolith. The compression of the impact will heat up the dust and rocks and generate a white-hot flash that would be visible from space if there happened to be a craft in the area at the time. A cloud of vaporized rock and metal will expand from the impact point as dust, and sand-sized particles will be thrown skyward. Over the course of several minutes, the ejected material will rain back down to the surface around the now-smoldering crater. Virtually nothing will remain of the ill-fated rocket.

If you are a fan of space, you may have experienced some déjà vu reading that description — NASA performed a similar experiment in 2009 when it intentionally crashed the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite, or LCROSS, into a permanently shadowed crater near the lunar south pole. I was a part of the LCROSS mission, and it was a smashing success. By studying the composition of the dust plume lofted into the sunlight, scientists were able to find signs of a few hundred pounds of water ice that had been liberated from the Moon’s surface by the impact. This was a crucial piece of evidence to support the idea that for billions of years, comets have been delivering water and organic compounds to the moon when they crash on its surface.

However, because the LCROSS rocket’s crater is permanently obscured by shadows, my colleagues and I have struggled for a decade to determine the depth of this buried ice-rich layer.

Observing with the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter

The accidental experiment of the March 4 crash will give planetary scientists the chance to observe a very similar crater in the light of day. It will be like seeing the LCROSS crater in full detail for the first time.

Since the impact occurred on the far side of the moon, it was out of view for Earth-based telescopes. But about two weeks after the impact, NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter was expected to begin to get glimpses of the crater as its orbit takes it above the impact zone. Once conditions are right, the lunar orbiter’s camera will start taking photos of the impact site with a resolution of about a 3 feet (1 meter) per pixel. Lunar orbiters from other space agencies may also train their cameras on the crater.

The shape of the crater and ejected dust and rocks will hopefully reveal how the rocket was oriented at the moment of impact. A vertical orientation will produce a more circular feature, whereas an asymmetric debris pattern might indicate more of a belly flop. Models suggest that the crater could be anywhere from around 30 to 100 feet (10 to 30 meters) in diameter and about 6 to 10 feet (2 to 3 meters) deep.

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The amount of heat generated from the impact will also be valuable information. If observations can be made quickly enough, there’s a possibility the lunar orbiter’s infrared instrument will be able to detect glowing-hot material inside the crater. This could be used to calculate the total amount of heat from the impact. If the orbiter can’t get a view fast enough, high-resolution images could be used to estimate the amount of melted material in the crater and debris field.

By comparing before and after images from the orbiter’’ camera and heat sensor, scientists will look for any other subtle changes to the surface. Some of these effects can extend for hundreds of times the radius of the crater.

Why this is important

Impacts and crater formation are a pervasive phenomenon in the solar system. Craters shatter and fragment planetary crusts, gradually forming the loose, granular top layer common on most airless worlds. However, the overall physics of this process are poorly understood despite how common it is.

Observing the upcoming rocket impact and resulting crater could help planetary scientists better interpret the data from the 2009 LCROSS experiment and produce better impact simulations. With a veritable phalanx of missions planned to visit the Moon in the coming years, knowledge of lunar surface properties – especially the quantity and depth of buried ice – is in high demand.

Regardless of this wayward rocket’s identity, this rare impact event will provide new insights that may prove critical to the success of future missions to the Moon and beyond.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Spring has officially started, and if that makes you want to get out and explore, you’re not alone. But with gas prices continuing to soar, a road trip may not be the most cost-effective way of doing that right now.

But from now through Tuesday, March 29th, you can snag a USA Rail Pass from Amtrak—which gets you 30 days of train travel—for $399. Here’s what to know.

How Amtrak’s USA Rail Pass works

So what do you get for $399 (other than $100 off the usual price)? The USA Rail Pass is good for 10 train rides (officially known as “segments”) over a 30-day period, allowing you to travel between more than 500 Amtrak destinations. But there are a few things you need to keep in mind.

Travel segments

First, any time you board and disembark a train (or Amtrak shuttle or bus), it counts as a “segment”—including connections. So, if you want to go from New York City to Springfield, Illinois, for example, you’ll have to switch trains in Chicago, making it a two-segment trip.

Expiration date

You have to use your USA Rail Pass within 120 days of purchasing it. This means that the latest you can embark on your railway journey is 90 days after you buy it. The pass’s 30-day period begins the day you take your first trip.

Ticketing

The USA Rail Pass is not, itself, a ticket. You can’t just hop on a train and flash the pass at the conductor: You have to have a ticket and reservation for each train you board. Not only that, but you’re also expected to confirm each leg of your trip (the train and the date) on the Amtrak website or app, or with an agent before you travel. While friends and family are permitted to travel together, each person must have their own USA Rail Pass and book separate reservations.

The rail pass only includes regular coach-class seats. If you want to treat yourself to an upgrade to business class or a sleeping car, you’ll have to pay for that separately. Another sneaky part: You’re only allowed to book Saver and Value fares with the rail pass—even if a segment only offers Flexible Fares.

Other restrictions

If you’re planning on traveling back-and-forth between two cities, keep in mind that’ll only work twice: The USA Rail Pass can only be used for two roundtrip journeys (four one-way trips) between the same two stations—along with all the intermediate destinations on the route.

There are also some restrictions on routes. The USA Rail Pass is not valid on the following Amtrak services:

• Acela
• Auto Train
• Maple Leaf (Canadian stations only)
• Thruway Bus Series 7000-7999

You can find the rest of the fine print here. 

After nearly four decades, an ancient secret buried deep in Windows 1.0 has been discovered by an intrepid digital archeologist. It’s a simple Easter egg, but one which was most likely impossible to find back in the day.

As spotted by PC Gamer, Lucas Brooks is a big fan of Microsoft’s graphical operating system, Windows. Brooks is often seen tweeting about various things he has found in older builds of Windows, including Easter eggs. And recently he discovered a never-before-seen secret in Windows 1.0 RTM (the RTM stands for “release to manufacturing”). A credits list, featuring the names of all the folks who helped create Window 1.0, can be found hidden inside a bitmap file.

It should be noted that by hiding this already-encrypted data inside a bitmap file, the devs were essentially making it impossible for anyone back in the day to ever discover the secret credits. That’s because, according to Brooks, the tools needed to extract a bitmap file from an NE (new executable file format) didn’t exist when Windows 1.0 was released. And even if someone did manage to rip out the bitmap, they wouldn’t have been able to spot the extra, encrypted data hidden in the file.

While Brooks was able to reverse engineer the secret, discovering the credits list in the process, they have yet to figure out how to actually access the Easter egg in Windows 1.0 without doing some hacking. It’s believed that there is some series of keystrokes in Windows 1.0 that will unlock the secret credits list. This is how it works in all later versions which also have hidden credits and similar secrets. But for now, nobody has been able to figure that out.

You may recognize one of the names in the newly discovered credits. Valve co-founder and president Gabe Newell is listed in the Easter egg and that’s because…he worked there. He left Microsoft in 1996 along with Mike Harrington to create Valve and start work on their first game, Half-Life. I wonder how that all worked out…

Microsoft recently released its DirectStorage API to game developers, giving them access to the same technology that has made Quick Resume one of the best features on the Xbox Series X|S consoles. Theoretically, DirectStorage promises lightning-fast speed for loading a PC game, and in practice, it looks like it could be a massive upgrade on that platform.

As spotted by PC Gamer, footage of upcoming RPG Forspoken showed the game being loaded in an astonishing 1.9 seconds from an M.2 SSD. Using a SATA SSD, that time increased to a still-impressive 3.7 seconds, and on a regular SATA SSD the game was ready to play in 21.5 seconds. The scenes used to show off these speeds were made up of around 20,000 files weighing in at 4.5GB in total, with the DirectStorage API boasting a file IO speed of 4,839MB/s against the Win32 API on the same drive which was clocked at 2,826MB/s.

There is a caveat to this though, as the technology isn’t exactly plug-and-play software. Developer Luminous Productions had to optimize it for Forspoken, and the studio did note that improvements could be made to prevent data bottlenecks with graphics decompression. Microsoft is working on fine-tuning the technology and refining it in the future.

As for how it works, DirectStorage allows the GPU to communicate directly with an SSD so that games and textures can be loaded without needing to check in first with the CPU and main memory. This potentially allows for near-instantaneous loading of a game, something which has become a hallmark for the current generation of console gaming with titles such as Spider-Man: Miles Morales and Doom Eternal showcasing blistering speeds on the respective SSDs of the PS5 and Xbox Series X|S consoles.

Forspoken is shaping up to be a good-looking showcase of new technologies, as it also incorporates AMD’s new FidelityFX Super Resolution tech into its design. The game does have a story for its protagonist Frey Holland though, which was revealed in more detail this week ahead of its upcoming launch on PC and PS5 this May.

Got a news tip or want to contact us directly? Email news@gamespot.com

Swedish company Jetson has been working on a way to give people the experience of flying like a drone with the Jetson One electric single-seater aircraft. Jetson One is powered by a high discharge lithium-ion battery and eight electric motors. The electric aircraft can reach speeds of over 60 mph with a flight time of 20 minutes. The fastest way to fully charge the Jetson One is by using a 220V outlet; it takes only an hour to charge. Jetson One weighs just 190 pounds, with a recommended max weight of 210 pounds for the pilot. The Jetson One is equipped with lidar sensors, terrain tracking, obstacle avoidance, a ballistic parachute, hands-free hover, and more. Jetson One will cost $92,000, requiring a $22,000 down payment and the remaining $70,000 once it is ready to be delivered. That’s all before tax and destination charges. Would you strap yourself into the Jetson One and go for a spin?    

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