Dominique Luchart's Blog, page 671
March 23, 2021
On This Day in Space! March 23, 1840: First photo of the moon taken!, ,
On March 23, 1840, a New Yorker named John William Draper became the first person to take a photo of the moon.
Draper was a doctor, scientist and photographer who studied photochemistry to come up with better ways to take pictures. Before Draper photographed the moon, another photographer Louis Daguerre had tried to do the same, but his image came out fuzzy.
How to observe the moon (infographic)
Capturing the moon in a so-called daguerreotype image involved long exposures, and Daguerre had some technical difficulties while tracking the moon’s movement with his telescope. Draper’s first successful photo also took several tries. He took a 20-minute exposure with a 5-inch telescope to create a daguerreotype of the moon, and he publicly announced his results on March 23.
Catch up on our entire “On This Day In Space” series on YouTube with this playlist.
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Still not enough space? Don’t forget to check out our Space Image of the Day, and on the weekends our Best Space Photos and Top Space News Stories of the week.
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Saturn’s summer season ends as Hubble telescope watches (photos), ,
Saturn is now in the “September” of its lengthy year, and an iconic space telescope is watching the ringed planet’s change of seasons.
Spring and autumn officially got underway here on Earth’s Northern and Southern Hemispheres, respectively, just a few days ago with the arrival of the vernal equinox. The coming and going of seasons is possible when a planet has a tilted axis — and both Earth and Saturn have a lean in their spins.
But there’s a big difference in their length of seasons. Earth takes one year to orbit the sun, during which our planet experiences the cold and dreary, the sunny and delightful, and every seasonal middle-ground in between. But Saturn, the sixth planet from the sun, takes 29 Earth years to go around our star once. Earth moves through all its seasons repeatedly all the while Saturn remains in just one season; it takes roughly seven Earth years for Saturn to begin and end one of its seasons.
Related: Saturn has no summertime blues in this amazing Hubble photo
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This series of images was taken in (from left to right), in 2018, 2019, and 2020. During this time, Saturn is at the tail end of summer and approaching the autumn of its northern hemisphere. (Image credit: NASA/ESA/STScI/A. Simon/R. Roth)Thankfully, lengthy space missions like NASA’s Cassini mission and the Hubble Space Telescope got plenty of time to observe seasonal changes on Saturn.
On March 18, Hubble team members based out of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland published new images that show subtle shade differences to the appearance of Saturn’s clouds over the last several Earth years. In these images taken by Hubble during 2018, 2019 and 2020, Saturn’s northern hemisphere is experiencing summertime and approaching its autumn. Meanwhile, like on Earth, it was winter (ang going on spring) in Saturn’s southern hemisphere.
“What we found was a slight change from year-to-year in color, possibly cloud height, and winds — not surprising that the changes aren’t huge, as we’re only looking at a small fraction of a Saturn year,” according to Amy Simon, planetary scientist at Goddard, who commented in the NASA press release that describes the new images. “We expect big changes on a seasonal timescale, so this is showing the progression towards the next season.”
The Hubble data show that, from 2018 to 2020, the equator brightened by about 5% to 10%, and some cloud bands that were visible during certain years do not appear at other times.
Wind speeds also changed, according to NASA. Back when Cassini observed Saturn during the years 2004 to 2009, winds near the equator were roughly 800 miles per hour (roughly 1,300 kilometers per hour), according to the release.
Hubble’s 2018 observations show equatorial wind speeds became much faster, about 1,000 mph (roughly 1,600 kph). By 2019 and 2020, however, Hubble detected that those wind speeds dropped back to the Cassini speeds from more than a decade ago.
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Saturn’s rings, as seen by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft. Cassini observed Saturn and its moons from June 30, 2004, until Sept. 15, 2017. (Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute)The Hubble Space Telescope has been operating since 1990. The 30-year old spacecraft went into safe mode briefly this month, but it has returned to its science work once again as of March 11.
Follow Doris Elin Urrutia on Twitter @salazar_elin. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.
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Mars is leaking water into space during dust storms and warmer seasons, ,
Water is leaking from Mars’ atmosphere through changing seasons and swirling Martian storms, scientists found in two new studies.
There is water on Mars, but it seems to only exist either in ice caps at the planet’s poles or as gas in the planet’s thin atmosphere. Water has been escaping the planet for billions of years, since Mars lost its magnetic field (and subsequently much of its air and water), and two new studies show how water moves through and leaves the planet’s atmosphere.
The two new studies, led by Anna Fedorova, a researcher at the Space Research Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences and Jean-Yves Chaufray, a scientist at the Laboratoire Atmospheres Observations Spatiales in France, use data from the European Space Agency’s (ESA) ExoMars orbiter, which began its main science mission in 2018, and ESA’s Mars Express orbiter, which to show that the escape rate of mars’ water is determined by changing weather and climate on Mars and the planet’s distance from the sun.
“The atmosphere is the link between surface and space, and so has much to tell us about how Mars has lost its water,” Fedorova said in an ESA statement.
Related: Mars may be wetter than we thought (but still not that habitable)
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Researchers are exploring how Mars’ water escapes out into space. (Image credit: ESA)In these studies, the teams used data from ExoMars’ SPICAM (Spectroscopy for the Investigation of the Characteristics of the Atmosphere of Mars) instrument, which observed Mars’ atmosphere.
“We studied the water vapor in the atmosphere from the ground up to [62 miles] 100 kilometers in altitude, a region that had yet to be explored, over eight Martian years,” Fedorova said. (One year on Mars is about two Earth year.)
The researchers found that when the planet is farthest from the sun, at about 250 million miles (400 million km) away, water vapor in Mars’ atmosphere really only exists less than 37 miles (60 km) from the planet’s surface. However, when the planet is closest to the sun, at about 207 million miles (333 million kilometers), water can be found as far out as 56 miles (90 km) above the surface.
When Mars and the sun are farther apart, the cold makes the water vapor at a certain altitude in Mars’ atmosphere freeze out, but as the planet gets closer and warmer, that water can circulate farther. Because water vapor can travel out farther in Mars’ atmosphere during warmer seasons, those are also the times when the planet loses more water.
“The upper atmosphere becomes moistened and saturated with water, explaining why water escape rates speed up during this season — water is carried higher, aiding its escape to space,” Fedorova added.
But it’s not just seasons that dictate how much of Mars’ water leaks out into space; dust storms also play an important role, the researchers found in these studies. In poring over eight years of data, the scientists found that in the years that Mars experienced global dust storms, water traveled higher in the planet’s atmosphere. In these years, the researchers found water vapor over 50 miles (80 km) from the planet’s surface.
The scientists found that every billion years, Mars loses the equivalent of “a global [six feet] two-meter-deep layer of water,” according to the statement.
“This confirms that dust storms, which are known to warm and disrupt Mars’ atmosphere, also deliver water to high altitudes,” Fedorova said. “Thanks to Mars Express’ continuous monitoring, we were able to analyze the last two global dust storms, in 2007 and 2018, and compare what we found to storm-free years to identify how the storms affected water escape from Mars.”
Still, this work does not fully explain the amount of water that Mars has lost over the past 4 billion years, according to the statement. “A significant amount must have once existed on the planet to explain the water-created features we see,” Chaufray said. “As it hasn’t all been lost to space, our results suggest that either this water has moved underground, or that water escape rates were far higher in the past.”
These two studies were published Dec. 11, 2020, in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets and Jan. 1 in the journal Icarus.
Email Chelsea Gohd at cgohd@space.com or follow her on Twitter @chelsea_gohd. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.
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Paraguay’s 1st satellite is in orbit after launch from space station, ,
Earth has a new spacefaring country: Paraguay.
On March 14, the nation’s first-ever satellite entered orbit around Earth, deployed from the International Space Station (ISS) as part of a collaboration with a Japanese university. The satellite was built by two Paraguayan engineering students in conjunction with an international program, according to a NASA statement about the satellite.
The name of the satellite likely pays homage to Guarani, the indigenous-derived official language spoken in Paraguay as well as in parts of Brazil and Bolivia. (The language shares this official status with Spanish, which is spoken throughout most of the continent.)
Related: Only total solar eclipse of 2020 thrills spectators in South America
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The three small-looking satellites in this image are cubesats developed by Japan, Nepal and Sri Lanka for the BIRDS-3 project. This picture comes from aboard the International Space Station as it orbited 256 miles (412 kilometers) above the Amazon River in Brazil. (Image credit: NASA)Guaranisat-1 is a small spacecraft of the type known as a cubesat and it will orbit for up to two years, according to NASA.
Paraguayan aerospace engineering students Adolfo Jara and Anibal Mendoza developed Guaranisat-1. Jara is a Ph.D. student and Mendoza is obtaining a master’s degree at Kyutech, or the Kyushu Institute of Technology in Japan. Kyutech facilitates the Joint Global Multi-Nation Birds Satellite project, or BIRDS, a program that is also supported by the Japanese government and its space agency, JAXA.
BIRDS supports space engineers in nonspacefaring nations, according to NASA; Guaranisat-1 is part of the fourth iteration of the program.
Previous satellites launched through the program came from Ghana, Bangladesh, Mongolia, Bhutan, Nepal, and Sri Lanka. “Participating countries pay for student training, satellite hardware, and launch. The space station provides a low-cost option for launching satellites, helping to keep the program affordable,” NASA officials wrote.
The satellite is primarily a technology demonstration. It is equipped with a camera to take images from space, and uses artificial intelligence to sort pictures for efficient, cost-effective downloads.
The Paraguayan scientists also installed sensors onto Guaranisat-1 that can detect the presence of the triatomine bug, also called the kissing bug. This insect carries the parasite that causes Chagas disease, which infects about 8 million people in Mexico, Central America and South America, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Protection (CDC). The infection is often undiagnosed and can be fatal.
“Data from those sensors will be automatically transmitted via a central hub to the satellite and downloaded by a ground station to create a map of disease risk,” NASA officials wrote in the statement. “Health authorities can use this map to help determine prevention actions.”
Guaranisat-1 entered space via the Japanese Experiment Module Small Satellite Orbital Deployer-16 (J-SSOD) aboard the space station last week.
“Our country’s first satellite marks a historic moment,” Alejandro Roman, who manages the “Paraguay to Space” project at the Paraguayan Space Agency (AEP). “It is the first step in a long path to bring the benefits of space to Paraguay in areas like disaster risk reduction, agriculture, natural resources management, land management and climate.”
Follow Doris Elin Urrutia on Twitter @salazar_elin. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.
Join our Space Forums to keep talking space on the latest missions, night sky and more! And if you have a news tip, correction or comment, let us know at: community@space.com.
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Newly discovered bacteria on space station could help astronauts grow plants on Mars, ,
What will future astronauts living on Mars or traveling in deep space eat? Researchers have discovered three new strains of bacteria on the International Space Station that they think could one day help astronauts to grow their own food.
While space food has evolved from the puree packets of NASA’s early years, it will likely need to advance further; future astronauts on Mars missions and other long treks through deep space will probably need to grow some of their own food, experts have said. But growing food in space is no easy feat, as plants depend on “helpful” bacteria in soil that wouldn’t exist off-Earth (as far as we know).
In a new study, researchers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL),the University of Southern California, Cornell University and the University of Hyderabad in India discovered and isolated strains of bacteria aboard the International Space Station. The scientists think it’s possible that these bacteria could help plants grow in extreme environments like space.
“To grow plants in extreme places where resources are minimal, isolation of novel microbes that help to promote plant growth under stressful conditions is essential,” Kasthuri Venkateswaran (Venkat), a senior research scientist at JPL, and Nitin Kumar Singh, a microbiologist and postdoctoral fellow at JPL, said in a statement.
Related: Plants in space: photos by gardening astronauts
The space station is a pretty clean place.It has to be, for the safety of the astronauts on board and to protect ongoing experiments and technology on the orbiting lab. But it’s not a sterile environment, and humans are microbe havens, with the average person carrying over 100 trillion microscopic organisms in and on their body. So it’s no surprise that bacteria live on the station.
The bacterial strains found as part of this study all belong to the family Methylobacteriaceae, and they were spotted all over the space station during two consecutive flights. The team found four total strains, three of which were previously undiscovered. (The previously discovered strain belongs to the genus Methylorubrum.)
The three new bacteria were designated IF7SW-B2T, IIF1SW-B5 and IIF4SW-B5.However, the team is proposing to name the crop of novel species Methylobacterium ajmalii, after the renowned Indian biodiversity scientist Ajma Khan. Genetic analysis done by the team shows that they’re closely related to Methylobacterium indicum, which was isolated from rice seeds in previous, unrelated work.
Methylobacterium species are often involved in important plant processes like nitrogen fixation, phosphate solubilization and abiotic stress tolerance. They’re also known to promote plant growth and help protect against plant diseases, according to the statement.
Because of their ties to plant health and growth, the team thinks that these bacterial strains could have “biotechnologically useful genetic determinants” that could be helpful in growing crops in space.
However, while it is interesting to consider using bacteria like this for future space farming, further experimentation is necessary to prove that they will be effective, according to the statement. This is why the U.S. National Research Council Decadal Survey recommends that NASA use the space station as a “test-bed for surveying microorganisms,” according to the researchers.
“Since our group possess[es] expertise in cultivating microorganisms from extreme niches, we have been tasked by the NASA Space Biology Program to survey the ISS for the presence and persistence of the microorganisms,” the researchers said.
“Needless to say, the ISS is a cleanly maintained extreme environment. Crew safety is the number 1 priority and hence understanding human/plant pathogens are important, but beneficial microbes like this novel Methylobacterium ajmalii are also needed,” they added.
This work was published March 15 in the journal Frontiers in Microbiology.
Email Chelsea Gohd at cgohd@space.com or follow her on Twitter @chelsea_gohd. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.
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How to watch the OnePlus 9 series launch event,
Android phones by OnePlus have a considerable set of fans, and if you count yourself among their number, you will probably want to be in on this year’s launch of the company’s latest line: the OnePlus 9 series.
What’s in store? Well, in its videos, OnePlus is touting Fluid Display 2.0, an OLED panel which is supposed to have a really fast refresh rate while still (according to the company) maintaining an impressive battery life. There is the possibility of three models — OnePlus 9, 9 Pro, and 9R — and perhaps a new watch.
For more information, the best thing to do is to attend the event. Here’s how:
WHEN DOES THE ONEPLUS EVENT START?It starts today, March 23rd, at 10AM ET / 7AM PT / 2PM BST.
WHERE CAN I WATCH THE ONEPLUS EVENT?We will have the live stream video embedded up top, so you can stick around here to watch when it begins. Otherwise, head to these links:
OnePlus is streaming the event live on its website and on YouTubeFollow @verge on TwitterKeep an eye on @verge on Instagram for live updatesThe post How to watch the OnePlus 9 series launch event, appeared first on NEWDAWN Blog.
Google fixes issue causing Android apps to crash with updates to Chrome and WebView,
Some apps were crashing for Android users, but Google has fixed it. The issue was due to a system component called Android System WebView that lets Android apps display web content. Google now has a fix that requires users to update Android System WebView to version 89.0.4389.105 and Google Chrome to the latest version. Both are available on Google Play.
The issues began on Monday afternoon and lasted about seven hours, according to the Google Workspace dashboard for Gmail. The company recommended using the desktop interface until issues were resolved.
“We are aware of an issue with WebView causing some apps on Android to crash for some users,” Google said in a statement to The Verge. “We are currently working to fully validate the scope and a fix is in progress.”
Some users said that removing the latest update to WebView fixed the issue — and in fact, Samsung’s official US support Twitter account recommended taking that exact step.
Hi! Thanks for bringing this to our attention. Please remove the Webview Update and then restart the phone. Here are the steps: Go settings > apps > tap the three dots in the top right corner > show system apps > search for Android System WebView > select Uninstall updates. ^Nina
— Samsung Support US (@SamsungSupport)
The dashboard currently shows all services operating without problems.
Update March 22nd, 10:45PM ET : Added statement from Google.
Update March 23rd, 4:16AM ET: Added links to updated WebView and Chrome browser that solve the issue.
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OLED Nintendo Switch reportedly uses new Nvidia chip with DLSS support,
The next Nintendo Switch will use a new Nvidia system-on-chip with support for DLSS (Deep Learning Super Sampling), according to a report in Bloomberg. The chip is said to bring improvements to GPU and CPU performance, with DLSS serving as Nintendo’s solution for displaying higher resolution images on 4K TVs.
DLSS was introduced with Nvidia’s RTX 20-series GPUs, based on the Turing architecture. It makes use of neural networks to reconstruct game images in real time at a higher quality. Different versions of the technology have variously relied on the GPU’s tensor cores and training the AI on specific games, but the upshot is that you can render a game at a lower traditional resolution and get a much higher output with minimal performance penalty.
That theoretically makes it a good fit for the Switch, which often struggles to hit its own native resolutions of 720p in handheld mode or 1080p on a TV screen. It’s also not surprising to hear that the new Switch would require an all-new chip design from Nvidia; the original Switch used a Tegra X1, which was announced in 2015 before Nvidia stopped producing general-purpose mobile SoCs. With the Switch’s success, though, it’s undoubtedly worth Nvidia’s while to deliver a new custom design.
Bloomberg has already reported that the new Switch will have a 7-inch OLED screen. Today’s report says the device is planned for this holiday season.
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Budget TV maker Vizio is planning a NYSE IPO and pitching investors on its growing ad and streaming businesses, driven by SmartCast, which has 12.2M accounts (Ari Levy/CNBC)
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March 22, 2021
Android apps like Gmail and Google Pay are crashing and “WebView” is to blame; Google says it is working on a fix (R. Lawler/Engadget)
The post Android apps like Gmail and Google Pay are crashing and “WebView” is to blame; Google says it is working on a fix (R. Lawler/Engadget) appeared first on NEWDAWN Blog.
