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NASA’s InSight lander captures audio of first likely ‘quake’ on Mars

May 6, 2019 by Editor

NASA’s Mars InSight lander has measured and recorded for the first time ever a likely “marsquake.”

The faint seismic signal, detected by the lander’s Seismic Experiment for Interior Structure (SEIS) instrument, was recorded on April 6, the lander’s 128th Martian day, or sol.

This is the first recorded trembling that appears to have come from inside the planet, as opposed to being caused by forces above the surface, such as wind. Scientists still are examining the data to determine the exact cause of the signal.

“InSight’s first readings carry on the science that began with NASA’s Apollo missions,” said InSight Principal Investigator Bruce Banerdt of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California. “We’ve been collecting background noise up until now, but this first event officially kicks off a new field: Martian seismology!”

The new seismic event was too small to provide solid data on the Martian interior, which is one of InSight’s main objectives. The Martian surface is extremely quiet, allowing SEIS, InSight’s specially designed seismometer, to pick up faint rumbles. In contrast, Earth’s surface is quivering constantly from seismic noise created by oceans and weather. An event of this size in Southern California would be lost among dozens of tiny crackles that occur every day.

“The Martian Sol 128 event is exciting because its size and longer duration fit the profile of moonquakes detected on the lunar surface during the Apollo missions,” said Lori Glaze, Planetary Science Division director at NASA Headquarters.

NASA’s Apollo astronauts installed five seismometers that measured thousands of quakes while operating on the Moon between 1969 and 1977, revealing seismic activity on the Moon. Different materials can change the speed of seismic waves or reflect them, allowing scientists to use these waves to learn about the interior of the Moon and model its formation. NASA currently is planning to return astronauts to the Moon by 2024, laying the foundation that will eventually enable human exploration of Mars.

InSight’s seismometer, which the lander placed on the planet’s surface on Dec. 19, 2018, will enable scientists to gather similar data about Mars. By studying the deep interior of Mars, they hope to learn how other rocky worlds, including Earth and the Moon, formed.

Three other seismic signals occurred on March 14 (Sol 105), April 10 (Sol 132) and April 11 (Sol 133). Detected by SEIS’ more sensitive Very Broad Band sensors, these signals were even smaller than the Sol 128 event and more ambiguous in origin. The team will continue to study these events to try to determine their cause.

Regardless of its cause, the Sol 128 signal is an exciting milestone for the team.

“We’ve been waiting months for a signal like this,” said Philippe Lognonné, SEIS team lead at the Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris (IPGP) in France. “It’s so exciting to finally have proof that Mars is still seismically active. We’re looking forward to sharing detailed results once we’ve had a chance to analyze them.”

Most people are familiar with quakes on Earth, which occur on faults created by the motion of tectonic plates. Mars and the Moon do not have tectonic plates, but they still experience quakes – in their cases, caused by a continual process of cooling and contraction that creates stress. This stress builds over time, until it is strong enough to break the crust, causing a quake.

Detecting these tiny quakes required a huge feat of engineering. On Earth, high-quality seismometers often are sealed in underground vaults to isolate them from changes in temperature and weather. InSight’s instrument has several ingenious insulating barriers, including a cover built by JPL called the Wind and Thermal Shield, to protect it from the planet’s extreme temperature changes and high winds.

SEIS has surpassed the team’s expectations in terms of its sensitivity. The instrument was provided for InSight by the French space agency, Centre National d’Études Spatiales (CNES), while these first seismic events were identified by InSight’s Marsquake Service team, led by the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology.

“We are delighted about this first achievement and are eager to make many similar measurements with SEIS in the years to come,” said Charles Yana, SEIS mission operations manager at CNES.

JPL manages InSight for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate. InSight is part of NASA’s Discovery Program, managed by the agency’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. Lockheed Martin Space in Denver built the InSight spacecraft, including its cruise stage and lander, and supports spacecraft operations for the mission.

A number of European partners, including CNES and the German Aerospace Center (DLR), support the InSight mission. CNES provided the SEIS instrument to NASA, with the principal investigator at IPGP. Significant contributions for SEIS came from IPGP; the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research in Germany; the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH Zurich) in Switzerland; Imperial College London and Oxford University in the United Kingdom; and JPL. DLR provided the Heat Flow and Physical Properties Package (HP3) instrument, with significant contributions from the Space Research Center of the Polish Academy of Sciences and Astronika in Poland. Spain’s Centro de Astrobiología supplied the temperature and wind sensors.

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NASA selects experiments for possible lunar flights in 2019

May 1, 2019 by Editor

NASA has selected 12 science and technology demonstration payloads to fly to the Moon as early as the end of this year, dependent upon the availability of commercial landers.

These selections represent an early step toward the agency’s long-term scientific study and human exploration of the Moon and, later, Mars.

“The Moon has unique scientific value and the potential to yield resources, such as water and oxygen,” said NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine. “Its proximity to Earth makes it especially valuable as a proving ground for deeper space exploration.” [Read more…] about NASA selects experiments for possible lunar flights in 2019

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Filed Under: News, Space Tagged With: center, fly, instrument, landers, lunar, measure, moon, nasa, payload, payloads, selected, spectrometer, surface, technology, will

National Geographic Society and Campaign for Nature representatives join nations in Canada to push environmental agenda

May 1, 2019 by Editor

With only 18 months left before world leaders meet in China to finalize an agreement to address biodiversity loss, reduce historic rates of wildlife extinction, mitigate the impacts of climate change, and protect the planet’s last wild places, governmental and non-governmental entities from more than a dozen nations are uniting today and tomorrow in Montreal to push an ambitious global deal for nature.

Hosted by the Canadian government, the Nature Champions Summit will set the stage for October 2020 when policy-makers meet in Kunming, China at the Convention on Biological Diversity Conference of Parties to set global biodiversity policy for the next decade.

The meeting is kicking off the day after Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported that the definitive study on the state of biodiversity, expected to be issued by the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), will find that the loss of nature and the ongoing wildlife extinction crisis is even worse than previously known.

“The scientific community is clear on the matter: nations need to rapidly accelerate the pace and scale at which we are protecting the planet before it is too late,” said Brian O’Donnell, Director of the Campaign for Nature who will be a participant in the summit this week. “Only by protecting far more land and water can we safeguard nature for the billions of people who depend upon healthy and functional natural areas.”

Government representatives from Chile, China, Costa Rica, Germany, Norway, and the United Kingdom, among others, will be joining the Canadian government this week in Montreal.

The high-level summit reflects renewed urgency in developing new, bold, and achievable goals for protecting more land and ocean around the world.

As philanthropist Hansjörg Wyss – who has committed $1 billion to nature conservation – discussed in an op-ed published on Monday in the Toronto Star, the summit is an important opportunity for nations to start talking about specific strategies for safeguarding life on Earth.

The event will focus, specifically, on two areas critical for the success of any ambitious global agenda for nature: financing protections and indigenous-led conservation.

Effectively conserving at least 30 percent of the planet’s lands and oceans will require the global community to commit the resources necessary to manage parks, marine protected areas, wildlife refuges, and other conserved areas. Resources are needed for planning, monitoring, interpretation, and patrolling protected and conserved areas.

The second focal area this week is the importance of prioritizing indigenous-led conservation. Though indigenous communities represent less than 5 percent of the world’s population, they manage or hold land-tenure over 25 percent of the planet’s land area comprising 80 percent of its plant and wildlife diversity.

Only by valuing sovereignty and empowering indigenous communities to protect their traditional lands and waters will nations be successful in protecting nature at the scale necessary to safeguard wildlife and wild places.

To stem the tide of nature loss, a growing coalition of scientists, indigenous groups, government leaders, environmental groups, business leaders, and philanthropists, are coalescing around a goal to protect at least 30 percent of the planet by 2030.

Just last week, more than 75 groups around the world endorsed that goal, and 19 of the world’s leading scientists published a study in Science Advances to make a data-driven, science-backed case for protecting more of the planet.

“The science is clear: we need to protect 30 percent of the planet within the next decade.” said Dr. Enric Sala, a National Geographic explorer-in-residence and one of the study’s authors who will also be participating in this week’s meetings. “What we need now is political leadership to save the natural world that gives us the oxygen we breath, the food we eat, and the clean water we drink.”

Scientists have shown that the current state of nature is grim. Our planet is losing wildlife 1,000 times faster than at any other time in human history – and the problem is getting worse, not better. Huge numbers of species are already on the path to extinction, including 14 percent of birds, 25 percent of mammals, and 40 percent of amphibians.

Communities are seeing tangible consequences from the rapid loss of nature. Pollution, overfishing, and invasive species are threatening peoples’ livelihoods; the destruction of forests and wetlands are worsening local air quality and leaving people more vulnerable to hurricanes, flooding, and other natural disasters; the loss of pollinators is forcing some communities to pay to pollinate their plants by hand.

Conversely, children who live next to protected areas have better health and economic outcomes than those who do not.

As Hansjörg Wyss noted in this week’s op-ed: “It will take all of us — across borders, across generations, and across cultures — working together to protect our natural world… The Nature Champions Summit [this] week offers a remarkable opportunity to chart an ambitious shared path to protecting nature for all living things.”

Filed Under: News Tagged With: areas, biodiversity, communities, global, government, loss, nations, natural, nature, percent, planet, protect, protecting, summit, week, wildlife, will

Folding smartphones are here to stay despite reported problems with breakages

April 30, 2019 by Editor

samsung galaxy-fold

If you’re among the millions of people who watched the sci-fi TV show Westworld and saw the folding smartphones used by some of the characters, you probably immediately thought, “I want one of those.”

That’s what we thought anyway.

And whereas the old, 1960s Star Trek showed off tablet computers and other technologies many decades before they were beamed into our collective – and possibly holographic – reality, nowadays, things happen slightly faster. [Read more…] about Folding smartphones are here to stay despite reported problems with breakages

Filed Under: Features, Uncategorized Tagged With: apple, company, customers, despite, device, display, fold, foldable, folding, galaxy, galaxy fold, hereaus, launch, material, materials, people, production, question, release, reported, reviewers, samsung, samsung fold, samsung galaxy fold, screen, smartphone, smartphones, stretchable, tablet, technologies, tests, will

Iris Automation launches ‘first turnkey collision-avoidance solution’ for commercial drones

April 29, 2019 by Editor

Iris Automation, an artificial intelligence and safety avionics company, today announced the launch of Casia – the first commercially available computer vision detect-and-avoid solution to enable Beyond Visual Line of Sight (BVLOS) operations for autonomous vehicles.

For the first time, says Iris, there’s a system that allows an Unmanned Aircraft System (UAS) to truly understand the aviation environment around it as if a pilot were on board.

Casia detects other aircraft, uses machine learning to classify them, makes intelligent decisions about the threat they may pose to the vehicle, and triggers automated maneuvers to avoid collisions.

Casia is a combination of both hardware and software that’s ultra lightweight, low power and small in size. It comprises sophisticated artificial intelligence algorithms and software packaged in a self-contained supercomputer that works with a machine vision camera.

“Casia is the critical piece our industry has been dreaming about for years – finally allowing us to use drones to their full commercial potential,” said Iris Automation CEO Alexander Harmsen. “By unlocking BVLOS flight with Casia, operators all over the world will be able to use their aircraft in every conceivable scenario.”

The Casia technology has been extensively tested, with 7,000+ real-world test flights and mid-air collision scenarios – flying various manned aircraft against UAS – and over 40,000 encounters in simulation. Casia also ran a successful early adopter program with more than 30 participating beta customers from five countries.

Iris Automation is working directly with regulators around the world to make drones safer and more accessible, ensuring Casia achieves the highest levels of safety for national airspace use. With the Casia launch, Iris Automation will also offer customers regulatory support for Part 107 waiver writing and regulatory approval processes to secure the necessary permissions for their unique UAS operations.

Filed Under: News Tagged With: aircraft, artificial, automation, bvlos, casia, commercial, customers, drones, intelligence, iris, launch, machine, operations, regulatory, safety, software, solution, system, uas, vision, will

NASA selects mission to study space weather from ISS

April 29, 2019 by Editor

NASA has selected a new mission that will help scientists understand and, ultimately, forecast the vast space weather system around our planet.

Space weather is important because it can have profound impacts – affecting technology and astronauts in space, disrupting radio communications and, at its most severe, overwhelming power grids.

The new experiment will, for the first time, obtain global observations of an important driver of space weather in a dynamic region of Earth’s upper atmosphere that can cause interference with radio and GPS communications.


The Atmospheric Waves Experiment (AWE) mission will cost $42 million and is planned to launch in August 2022, attached to the exterior of the Earth-orbiting International Space Station.

From its space station perch, AWE will focus on colorful bands of light in Earth’s atmosphere, called airglow, to determine what combination of forces drive space weather in the upper atmosphere.

Researchers once thought that only the Sun’s constant outflow of ultraviolet light and particles, the solar wind, could affect the region. However, recently they have learned that solar variability is not enough to drive the changes observed, and Earth’s weather also must be having an effect.

To help unravel that connection, AWE will investigate how waves in the lower atmosphere, caused by variations in the densities of different packets of air, impact the upper atmosphere.

AWE is a Mission of Opportunity under NASA’s Heliophysics Explorers Program, which conducts focused scientific research and develops instrumentation to fill the scientific gaps between the agency’s larger missions.

Since the 1958 launch of NASA’s first satellite Explorer 1, which discovered Earth’s radiation belts, the Explorers Program has supported more than 90 missions. The Uhuru and Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE) missions led to Nobel prizes for their investigators.

“The Explorers Program seeks innovative ideas for small and cost-constrained missions that can help unravel the mysteries of the universe and explore our place in it,” said Paul Hertz, NASA’s Director of Astrophysics. “This mission absolutely meets that standard with a creative and cost-effective mission to solve mysteries about Earth’s upper atmosphere.”

AWE was selected for development based on its potential science value and the feasibility of its development plans. The mission is led by Michael Taylor at Utah State University in Logan and it is managed by the Explorers Program Office at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

NASA also has selected the Sun Radio Interferometer Space Experiment (SunRISE) for a seven-month, $100,000 extended formulation study. SunRISE would be an array of six CubeSats operating like one large radio telescope. This proposed mission would investigate how giant space weather storms from the Sun, called solar particle storms, are accelerated and released into planetary space.

While SunRISE has not yet demonstrated its readiness for the next phase of mission development, the proposed concept represents a compelling use of new NASA-developed technology. SunRISE is led by Justin Kasper at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor and managed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

The Explorers Program, the oldest continuous NASA program, is designed to provide frequent, low-cost access to space using principal investigator-led space science investigations relevant to the work of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in astrophysics and heliophysics.

The program is managed by Goddard for the Science Mission Directorate, which conducts a wide variety of research and scientific exploration programs for Earth studies, space weather, the solar system and universe.

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Filed Under: News Tagged With: atmosphere, awe, earth, explorers, mission, missions, nasa, program, radio, science, solar, space, sunrise, upper, weather, will

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