Science

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A key NASA commercial partner faces severe financial challenges

artemis, axiom space, CLDs, NASA, Science, Space, space station / /

Station struggles —

“The business model had to change.”

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Spacious zero-g quarters with a big TV.

Enlarge / Rendering of an individual crew quarter within the Axiom habitat module.

Axiom Space

Axiom Space is facing significant financial headwinds as the company attempts to deliver on two key commercial programs for NASA—the development of a private space station in low-Earth orbit and spacesuits that could one day be worn by astronauts on the Moon.

Forbes reports that Axiom Space, which was founded by billionaire Kam Ghaffarian and NASA executive Mike Suffredini in 2016, has been struggling to raise money to keep its doors open and has had difficulties meeting its payroll dating back to at least early 2023. In addition, the Houston-based company has fallen behind on payments to key suppliers, including Thales Alenia Space for its space station and SpaceX for crewed launches.

“The lack of fresh capital has exacerbated long-standing financial challenges that have grown alongside Axiom’s payroll, which earlier this year was nearly 1,000 employees,” the publication reports. “Sources familiar with the company’s operations told Forbes that co-founder and CEO Michael Suffredini, who spent 30 years at NASA, ran Axiom like a big government program instead of the resource-constrained startup it really was. His mandate to staff up to 800 workers by the end of 2022 led to mass hiring so detached from product development needs that new engineers often found themselves with nothing to do.”

The report underscores a lot of what Ars has been hearing about the financial struggles of Axiom in recent months. Dozens of employees have been laid off, and Thales officials have made no secret of their discontent at not being paid in full for the production of pressure modules for the Axiom space station. Although the departure of Suffredini as chief executive was framed as being his decision for personal reasons, it seems probable that he moved out of the company for performance reasons.

Space station troubles

All of this raises significant questions about Axiom’s ability to deliver on the primary reason the company was created—to build a successor to the International Space Station. Suffredini joined Ghaffarian in the venture after serving as manager of NASA’s space station program for more than a decade. When they founded the company in 2016, the plan was to launch an initial space station module in 2020.

The timeline for station development has since been delayed multiple times. Presently, Axiom plans to launch its first module to the International Space Station no earlier than late 2026. And the company’s ambitions have been downsized, according to the report. Instead of a four-module station that would be separated from the government-operated space station by 2030, Axiom is likely to go forward with a smaller station consisting of just two elements. This station would have lower power and reduced commercial potential, according to the article.

“The business model had always counted on having significant power for microgravity research, semiconductor production, and pharmaceutical production, plus supporting life in space,” a source told the publication. “The business model had to change… and that has continued to make it challenging for the company to get around its cash flow issues.”

Axiom is one of several companies—alongside Blue Origin, Voyager Space, Vast Space, and potentially SpaceX—working with NASA to devise commercial replacements for the International Space Station after that facility retires in 2030.

NASA plans to issue a “request for proposals” for the second round of commercial space station contracts in 2025 and make an award the following year. Multiple sources have indicated that the space agency would like to award at least two companies in this second phase. However, Ghaffarian told Forbes that he would prefer NASA to decide next year and award a single competitor.

“Today there’s not enough market for more than one,” he said.

This may be true, although some of Axiom’s competitors may dispute it. Nevertheless, Ghaffarian’s desire for an award next year, and for a sole winner, underscores the evident urgency of Axiom’s fundraising needs.

Dragons and spacesuits

The report also notes that Axiom has lost significant amounts of funding on three private astronaut missions it has flown to the International Space Station to date. Ghaffarian said these missions were conducted at a loss to build relationships with global space agencies. This does make some sense, as space agencies in Europe, the Middle East, and elsewhere are likely to be customers of commercial space stations in the next decade. However, Axiom is ill-positioned to absorb such launches financially.

The publication reveals that Axiom is due to pay $670 million to SpaceX for four Crew Dragon missions, each of which includes a launch and ride for four astronauts to and from the station encompassing a one- to two-week period. This equates to $167.5 million per launch, or $41.9 million per seat.

Axiom’s other major line of business is a $228 million development contract with NASA to develop spacesuits for the Artemis Program, which will allow astronauts to venture outside the Starship lunar lander on the Moon’s surface. According to the Forbes report, this initiative has pulled resources away from the space station program.

Multiple sources have told Ars that, from a financial and technical standpoint, this spacesuit program is on better footing than the station program. And at this point, the spacesuit program is probably the one element of Axiom’s business that NASA views as essential going forward.

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Boar’s Head will never make liverwurst again after outbreak that killed 9

boar's head, CDC, contamination, deli meat, health, listeria, liverwurst, outbreak, Science, USDA / /

Insanitary —

The Jarratt, Virginia, plant is now closed indefinitely.

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A recall notice is posted next to Boar's Head meats that are displayed at a Safeway store on July 31, 2024, in San Rafael, California.

Enlarge / A recall notice is posted next to Boar’s Head meats that are displayed at a Safeway store on July 31, 2024, in San Rafael, California.

The Boar’s Head deli-meat plant at the epicenter of a nationwide Listeria outbreak that killed nine people so far harbored the deadly germ in a common area of the facility deemed “low risk” for Listeria. Further, it had no written plans to prevent cross-contamination of the dangerous bacteria to other products and areas. That’s according to a federal document newly released by Boar’s Head.

On Friday, the company announced that it is indefinitely closing that Jarratt, Virginia-based plant and will never again produce liverwurst—the product that Maryland health investigators first identified as the source of the outbreak strain of Listeria monocytogenes. The finding led to the recall of more than 7 million pounds of Boar’s Head meat. The Jarratt plant, where the company’s liverwurst is made, has been shuttered since late July amid the investigation into how the outbreak occurred.

In the September 13 update, Boar’s Head explained that:

[O]ur investigation has identified the root cause of the contamination as a specific production process that only existed at the Jarratt facility and was used only for liverwurst. With this discovery, we have decided to permanently discontinue liverwurst.

While the statement seems to offer some closure on the outbreak’s source, previously released inspection reports described a facility riddled with sanitation failures. Between August 1, 2023, and August 2, 2024, the facility was cited for 69 violations, which included water leaks, mold in numerous places, algal growth, “meat buildup” caking equipment, and walls that were also crawling with flies and gnats, sightings of other insects, rancid smells, trash and debris on the floors, and even “ample amounts of blood in puddles.”

The New York Times also reported that a 2022 inspection found that the plant posed an “imminent threat” to public health and that inspectors cited “extensive rust, deli meats exposed to wet ceilings, green mold and holes in the walls.”

Cross-contamination

The document newly released by Boar’s Head is a letter dated July 31 from the US Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service notifying the company that the Jarratt facility was suspended. The basis of the suspension was an inspection finding from July 24 and 25 of L. monocytogenes contaminating a pallet jack in a large room where ready-to-eat meats were processed. The room was a common area not specific to liverwurst processing and was deemed by Boar’s Head to be “low risk” for Listeria.

Meats from eight processing lines were in the room, with lines 1 through 4 on the left side and 5 through 8 on the right, handling hot dogs and other small sausages. The contaminated pallet jack was designated for production line 2, which was handling Beechwood Hams, and was used to move racks of hams from blast coolers to production lines in the processing room.

However, inspectors noted that the pallet jacks and product racks in the room weren’t kept to designated production lines, and instead, employees moved them between all of the lines and all of the blast coolers, enabling cross-contamination. And, while the equipment was moved around, people did, too. Although employees typically stuck to one production line, they would sometimes move between lines, and there were no procedures for employees to change personal protective equipment (PPE)—gloves, disposable aprons, and arm covers—when they switched. Inspectors saw them switching without changing their PPE.

“They also observed employees who freely move between all lines without directly interacting with product such as those removing garbage, removing product debris from the floors, removing condensation from overhead structures, or performing maintenance,” the USDA officials wrote.

Outbreak spread

Given that this was in a room full of meats that were supposedly ready to eat, the USDA concluded that Boar’s Head “failed to maintain sanitary conditions” and that its Listeria control program was “ineffective.”

To date, 57 people from 18 states have been sickened. All 57 were hospitalized, and nine people died. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that health officials have interviewed 44 people sickened during the outbreak, who said they ate various deli-sliced meats. Only 25 reported eating deli-sliced liverwurst.

In light of the outbreak, Boar’s Head said it is revamping its safety and quality assurances at its other facilities and hiring experienced food safety experts. “You have our promise that we will work tirelessly to regain your trust and ensure that all Boar’s Head products consistently meet the high standards that you deserve and expect. We are determined to learn from this experience and emerge stronger.”

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Mice made transparent with a dye used in Doritos

biochemistry, Biology, optics, refractive index, Science, transparency / /

Under the skin —

Matching refractive indexes lets some wavelengths pass cleanly through the skin.

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Zihao Ou, who helped develop this solution, holds a tube of it.

Enlarge / Zihao Ou, who helped develop this solution, holds a tube of it.

One key challenge in medical imaging is to look past skin and other tissue that are opaque to see internal organs and structures. This is the reason we need things like ultrasonography, magnetic resonance, or X-rays. There are chemical clearing agents that can make tissue transparent, like acrylamide or tetrahydrofuran, but they are almost never used in living organisms because they’re either highly toxic or can dissolve away essential biomolecules.

But now, a team of Stanford University scientists has finally found an agent that can reversibly make skin transparent without damaging it. This agent was tartrazine, a popular yellow-orange food dye called FD&C Yellow 5 that is notably used for coloring Doritos.

Playing with light

We can’t see through the skin because it is a complex tissue comprising aqueous-based components such as cell interiors and other fluids, as well as protein and lipids. The refractive index is a value that indicates how much light slows down (on average, of course) while going through a material compared to going through a vacuum. The refractive index of those aqueous components is low, while the refractive index of the proteins and lipids is high. As a result, light traveling through skin constantly bends as it endlessly crosses the boundary between high and low refractive index materials.

This scatters the light—once it penetrates the skin, it never gets back. What we see is just the light that bounces off the skin’s surface. The trick to making things transparent is mostly about making their refractive index uniform, so light, or at least some part of the spectrum, doesn’t bend all the time and doesn’t get scattered. This is exactly where the Doritos dye came in.

“The most surprising part of this study is that we usually expect dye molecules to make things less transparent,” says Guosong Hong, an assistant professor of materials science and engineering at Stanford and senior author of the paper. “For example, if you mix blue pen ink in water, the more ink you add, the less light can pass through the water. However, in our experiment, when we dissolve tartrazine in an opaque material like muscle or skin, which normally scatters light, the more tartrazine we add, the clearer the material becomes. This goes against what we typically expect with dyes.”

Transparency lotion

Hong’s team simply dissolved the dye in an aqueous solution and created a transparency-inducing lotion of sorts. It worked, because the dye reduced the difference in refractive index between water and lipids in the skin. Then the team started massaging it gently into a bit of polymer gel that emulated the light-scattering properties of tissue. From there, they moved to thinly sliced chicken breasts and to live mice.

The “transparency lotion” needed just a few minutes to start working when applied to a mouse’s skin. Massaged into a shaven scalp, it lets the scientists see the cerebral blood vessels with laser speckle contrast imaging, a technique that normally requires removal of the scalp to work. When applied to the mouse’s abdomen, it made all the internal organs, including the liver, bladder, and small intestine, visible to the naked eye. All that was needed to reverse the effect and make the skin opaque again was washing the lotion off with water.

There were some problems, though. One of them was that tartrazine absorbed most light at wavelengths around 257 and 428 nanometers, which let us see shades of violet and blue. On the other hand, it had minimal absorption above 600 nanometers, which meant that the transparent skin tinted everything red. The second issue was the depth of penetration. The lotion worked well only at spots where the skin was thin, and couldn’t penetrate deep enough where the skin was thicker.

Finally, its formulation was not universal. It relied on finding a chemical that could match the refractive index of lipids when dissolved in water, but the exact composition of the lotion was determined through trial and error. If there’s a lot of mouse-to-mouse variation, it might make it hard to come up with a one-size-fits-all solution.

Tattoos and needles

The problem of penetrating deeper into thick skin was partially solved by making the application a bit more painful. “Using microneedle patch applicators or subcutaneous injections could help deliver the molecules through thicker layers of skin,” Hong explains. The red tint issue, he suggested, might be handled by testing different dyes. “The research in my lab is currently focused on identifying molecules with sharp absorption in the near-ultraviolet region, minimizing spectral tailing into the visible range to ensure tissue transparency without the presence of a red tone,” Hong said.

“This study has only been conducted on animals. However, if the same technique could be applied to humans, it could offer a variety of benefits in biology, diagnostics, and even cosmetics,” Hong suggests. The benefits he is focusing on include evaluating deep-seated tumors without relying on biopsies, making blood tests less stressful by making locating the veins easier, and even things like improved laser tattoo removals by allowing the pigment beneath the skin to be targeted precisely.

But there is some bad news. Even though the FD&C Yellow 5 dye is widely available, replicating Hong’s results at home and making the transparency lotion on your own is not the brightest idea. “We strongly discourage attempting this on the human skin, as the toxicology of dye molecules in humans, particularly when applied topically, has not been fully evaluated,” Hong says.

And, in the end, it might not even work. “The human skin is significantly thicker than mouse skin, with the stratum corneum, the outermost layer of the epidermis, serving as a substantial barrier that prevents effective delivery of molecules into the dermis,” Hong explains

Science, 2024. DOI: 10.1126/science.adm6869

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Bizarre, nine-day seismic signal caused by epic landslide in Greenland

climate change, glaciers, Greenland, Science, seismology, syndication / /

Big splash —

Unidentified seismic object resulted in skyscraper-high tsunami.

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Ice calving from a glacier

Earthquake scientists detected an unusual signal on monitoring stations used to detect seismic activity during September 2023. We saw it on sensors everywhere, from the Arctic to Antarctica.

We were baffled—the signal was unlike any previously recorded. Instead of the frequency-rich rumble typical of earthquakes, this was a monotonous hum, containing only a single vibration frequency. Even more puzzling was that the signal kept going for nine days.

Initially classified as a “USO”—an unidentified seismic object—the source of the signal was eventually traced back to a massive landslide in Greenland’s remote Dickson Fjord. A staggering volume of rock and ice, enough to fill 10,000 Olympic-sized swimming pools, plunged into the fjord, triggering a 200-meter-high mega-tsunami and a phenomenon known as a seiche: a wave in the icy fjord that continued to slosh back and forth, some 10,000 times over nine days.

To put the tsunami in context, that 200-meter wave was double the height of the tower that houses Big Ben in London and many times higher than anything recorded after massive undersea earthquakes in Indonesia in 2004 (the Boxing Day tsunami) or Japan in 2011 (the tsunami which hit Fukushima nuclear plant). It was perhaps the tallest wave anywhere on Earth since 1980.

Our discovery, now published in the journal Science, relied on collaboration with 66 other scientists from 40 institutions across 15 countries. Much like an air crash investigation, solving this mystery required putting many diverse pieces of evidence together, from a treasure trove of seismic data, to satellite imagery, in-fjord water level monitors, and detailed simulations of how the tsunami wave evolved.

This all highlighted a catastrophic, cascading chain of events, from decades to seconds before the collapse. The landslide traveled down a very steep glacier in a narrow gully before plunging into a narrow, confined fjord. Ultimately, though, it was decades of global heating that had thinned the glacier by several tens of meters, meaning that the mountain towering above it could no longer be held up.

Uncharted waters

But beyond the weirdness of this scientific marvel, this event underscores a deeper and more unsettling truth: climate change is reshaping our planet and our scientific methods in ways we are only beginning to understand.

It is a stark reminder that we are navigating uncharted waters. Just a year ago, the idea that a seiche could persist for nine days would have been dismissed as absurd. Similarly, a century ago, the notion that warming could destabilize slopes in the Arctic, leading to massive landslides and tsunamis happening almost yearly, would have been considered far-fetched. Yet, these once-unthinkable events are now becoming our new reality.

The “once unthinkable” ripples around the world.

As we move deeper into this new era, we can expect to witness more phenomena that defy our previous understanding, simply because our experience does not encompass the extreme conditions we are now encountering. We found a nine-day wave that previously no one could imagine could exist.

Traditionally, discussions about climate change have focused on us looking upwards and outwards to the atmosphere and to the oceans with shifting weather patterns, and rising sea levels. But Dickson Fjord forces us to look downward, to the very crust beneath our feet.

For perhaps the first time, climate change has triggered a seismic event with global implications. The landslide in Greenland sent vibrations through the Earth, shaking the planet and generating seismic waves that traveled all around the globe within an hour of the event. No piece of ground beneath our feet was immune to these vibrations, metaphorically opening up fissures in our understanding of these events.

This will happen again

Although landslide-tsunamis have been recorded before, the one in September 2023 was the first ever seen in east Greenland, an area that had appeared immune to these catastrophic climate change induced events.

This certainly won’t be the last such landslide-megatsunami. As permafrost on steep slopes continues to warm and glaciers continue to thin, we can expect these events to happen more often and on an even bigger scale across the world’s polar and mountainous regions. Recently identified unstable slopes in west Greenland and in Alaska are clear examples of looming disasters.

Landslide-affected slopes around Barry Arm fjord, Alaska. If the slopes suddenly collapse, scientists fear a large tsunami would hit the town of Whittier, 48km away.

Enlarge / Landslide-affected slopes around Barry Arm fjord, Alaska. If the slopes suddenly collapse, scientists fear a large tsunami would hit the town of Whittier, 48km away.

Gabe Wolken/USGS

As we confront these extreme and unexpected events, it is becoming clear that our existing scientific methods and toolkits may need to be fully equipped to deal with them. We had no standard workflow to analyze the 2023 Greenland event. We also must adopt a new mindset because our current understanding is shaped by a now near-extinct, previously stable climate.

As we continue to alter our planet’s climate, we must be prepared for unexpected phenomena that challenge our current understanding and demand new ways of thinking. The ground beneath us is shaking, both literally and figuratively. While the scientific community must adapt and pave the way for informed decisions, it’s up to decision-makers to act.

The authors discuss their findings in more depth.

Stephen Hicks is a Research Fellow in Computational Seismology, UCL and Kristian Svennevig is a Senior Researcher, Department of Mapping and Mineral Resources, Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland

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

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A single peptide helps starfish get rid of a limb when attacked

biochemistry, Biology, muscles, Science, signaling, Starfish / /

You can have it —

A signaling molecule that’s so potent injected animals may drop more than one limb.

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A five-armed starfish, with orange and yellow colors, stretched out across a coral.

For many creatures, having a limb caught in a predator’s mouth is usually a death sentence. Not starfish, though—they can detach the limb and leave the predator something to chew on while they crawl away. But how can they pull this off?

Starfish and some other animals (including lizards and salamanders) are capable of autonomy (shedding a limb when attacked). The biology behind this phenomenon in starfish was largely unknown until now. An international team of researchers led by Maurice Elphick, professor of Animal Physiology and Neuroscience at Queen Mary University of London, have found that a neurohormone released by starfish is largely responsible for detaching limbs that end up in a predator’s jaws.

So how does this neurohormone (specifically a neuropeptide) let the starfish get away? When a starfish is under stress from a predatory attack, this hormone is secreted, stimulating a muscle at the base of the animal’s arm that allows the arm to break off.

The researchers confirmed this neuropeptide “acts as an autotomy-promoting factor in starfish and such it is the first neuropeptide to be identified as a regulator of autotomy in animals,” as they said in a study recently published in Current Biology.

Holding on

Elphick’s team studied how the neuropeptide known as ArSK/CCK1 facilitates autonomy in the European Starfish, Asterias rubens. ArSK/CCK1 is already known to inhibit feeding behavior in A. rubens by causing the stomach to contract, and muscle contraction plays a role in limb loss. The researchers found that its ability to trigger contractions goes beyond feeding.

Starfish underwent an experiment that simulated conditions where a predator’s jaw clamped down on one arm. Clamps were placed on one of three sections on a single arm, either on the end, middle, or at the site in the base where autotomy is known to occur, also known as the autotomy plane. The starfish were then suspended by these clamps above a glass bowl of seawater. During the first part of the experiment, the starfish were left to react naturally, but during the second part, they were injected with ArSK/CCK1.

Without the injection, autotomy was seen mostly in animals that had arms that were clamped closest to the autotomy plane. There was not nearly as much of a reaction from starfish when the arms were clamped in the middle or end.

In the second half of the experiment, the clamping used before was combined with an injection of ArSK/CCK1. For comparison, some were injected with the related neuropeptide ArSK/CCK2. A staggering 85 percent of ArSK/CCK1-injected animals that were clamped in the middle of the arm or closer to the autotomy plane exhibited autonomy, and some autotomized additional arms. This only happened in about 27 percent of those injected with ArSK/CCK2.

Letting go

While ArSK/CCK1 proved to be the most effective chemical trigger for autotomy, its activity in the autotomy plane depends on certain aspects of a starfish’s anatomy.

Like all echinoderms, starfish have endoskeletons built of tiny bones, or ossicles, linked by muscles and collagen fibers that allow the animals to change posture and move. Two exclusive features only found in the autotomy plane allow this structure to break. Under the skin of the autotomy plane, there is a region where bundles of collagen fibers are positioned far apart to make breakage easier. The second of these features is a band of muscle close to the region of collagen bundles. Known as the tourniquet muscle, this muscle is responsible for the constriction that allows an arm in danger to fall off.

Analyzing starfish arm tissue while it was undergoing autotomy gave the scientists a new perspective on this process. Right after a starfish has its arm seized by a predator,  ArSK/CCK1 tells nerves in the tourniquet muscle to start constricting in the region right by the autonomy plane. While this is happening, the collagen in the body wall in that region softens and breaks, and so do the muscles and ligaments that hold together ossicles. It is now thought that ArSK/CCK1 is also involved in the softening of this tissue that prepares it for breakage.

After starfish autotomize a limb, that limb eventually regenerates. The same happens in other animals that can use autotomy to their advantage (such as lizards, which also grow their tails back). In the future, finding out why some animals have the ability to regenerate may tell us why we either never evolved it or some of our ancestors lost the ability. Elphick acknowledged that there might still be other unidentified factors working together with ArSK/CCK1, but further insight could someday give us a clearer picture of this process.

“Autotomy is a key adaptation for survival that has evolved in several animal taxa,” the research team said in the same study, “[and] the findings of this study provide a seminal insight into the neural mechanisms that control this remarkable biological process,”

Current Biology, 2024.  DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2024.08.003

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Navy captains don’t like abandoning ship—but with Starliner, the ship left them

Boeing, commercial crew, Commercial space, international space station, NASA, Science, Space, starliner / /
NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams wave to their families, friends, and NASA officials on their way to the launch pad June 5 to board Boeing's Starliner spacecraft.

Enlarge / NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams wave to their families, friends, and NASA officials on their way to the launch pad June 5 to board Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft.

NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams are no strangers to time away from their families. Both are retired captains in the US Navy, served in war zones, and are veterans of previous six-month stays on the International Space Station.

When they launched to the space station on Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft on June 5, the astronauts expected to be home in a few weeks, or perhaps a month, at most. Their minimum mission duration was eight days, but NASA was always likely to approve a short extension. Wilmore and Williams were the first astronauts to soar into orbit on Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft, a milestone achieved some seven years later than originally envisioned by Boeing and NASA.

However, the test flight fell short of all of its objectives. Wilmore and Williams are now a little more than three months into what has become an eight-month mission on the station. The Starliner spacecraft was beset by problems, culminating in a decision last month by NASA officials to send the capsules back to Earth without the two astronauts. Rather than coming home on Starliner, Wilmore and Williams will return to Earth in February on a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft.

Grateful for options

On Friday, the two astronauts spoke with reporters for the first time since NASA decided they would stay in orbit until early 2025.

“It was trying at times,” Wilmore said. There were some tough times all the way through. Certainly, as the commander or pilot of your spacecraft, you don’t want to see it go off without you, but that’s where we wound up.”

Both astronauts are veteran Navy test pilots and have previous flights on space shuttles and Russian Soyuz spacecraft. Captains never want to abandon ship, but that’s not what happened with Starliner. Instead, their ship left them.

Williams said she and Wilmore watched Starliner’s departure from the space station from the lab’s multi-window cupola module last week. They kept busy with several tasks, such as monitoring the undocking and managing the space station’s systems during the dynamic phase of the departure.

“We were watching our spaceship fly away at that point in time,” Williams said. “I think it’s good we had some extra activities. Of course, we’re very knowledgeable about Starliner, so it was obvious what was happening at each moment.”

NASA’s top managers did not have enough confidence in Starliner’s safety after five thrusters temporarily failed as the spacecraft approached the space station in June. They weren’t ready to risk the lives of the two astronauts on Starliner when engineers weren’t convinced the same thrusters, or more, would function as needed during the trip home.

It turned out the suspect thrusters on Starliner worked after it departed the space station and headed for reentry on September 6. One thruster on Starliner’s crew module—different in design from the thrusters that previously had trouble—failed on the return journey. Investigating this issue is something Boeing and NASA engineers will add to their to-do list before the next Starliner flight, alongside the earlier problems of overheating thrusters and helium leaks.

“It’s a very risky business, and things do not always turn out the way you want,” Wilmore said. “Every single test flight, especially a first flight of a spacecraft or aircraft that’s ever occurred, has found issues …  90 percent of our training is preparing for the unexpected, and sometimes the actual unexpected goes beyond what you even think that could happen.”

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Remembering where your meals came from key for a small bird’s survival

animal intelligence, Behavioral science, Biology, evolution, Science / /

Where’d I leave that again? —

For small birds, remembering where the food is beats forgetting when it’s gone.

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a small, black and grey bird perched on the branch of a fir tree.

It seems like common sense that being smart should increase the chances of survival in wild animals. Yet for a long time, scientists couldn’t demonstrate that because it was unclear how to tell exactly if a lion or a crocodile or a mountain chickadee was actually smart or not. Our best shots, so far, were looking at indirect metrics like brain size or doing lab tests of various cognitive skills such as reversal learning, an ability that can help an animal adapt to a changing environment.

But a new, large-scale study on wild mountain chickadees, led by Joseph Welklin, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Nevada, showed that neither brain size nor reversal learning skills were correlated with survival. What mattered most for chickadees, small birds that save stashes of food, was simply remembering where they cached all their food. A chickadee didn’t need to be a genius to survive; it just needed to be good at its job.

Testing bird brains

“Chickadees cache one food item in one location, and they do this across a big area. They can have tens of thousands of caches. They do this in the fall and then, in the winter, they use a special kind of spatial memory to find those caches and retrieve the food. They are little birds, weight is like 12 grams, and they need to eat almost all the time. If they don’t eat for a few hours, they die,” explains Vladimir Pravosudov, an ornithologist at the University of Nevada and senior co-author of the study.

The team chose the chickadees to study the impact cognitive skills had on survival because the failure to find their caches was their most common cause of death. This way, the team hoped, the impact of other factors like predation or disease would be minimized.

First, however, Welklin and his colleagues had to come up with a way to test cognitive skills in a fairly large population of chickadees. They did it by placing a metal square with two smart feeders attached to each side among the trees where the chickadees lived. “The feeders were equipped with RFID receivers that recognized the signal whenever a chickadee, previously marked with a microchip-fitted leg band, landed near them and opened the doors to dispense a single seed,” Welklin says. After a few days spent getting the chickadees familiar with the door-opening mechanism, the team started running tests.

The first task was aimed at testing how good different chickadees were at their most important job: associating a location with food and remembering where it was. To this end, each of the 227 chickadees participating in the study was assigned just one feeder that opened when they landed on it; all the other feeders remained closed. A chickadee’s performance was measured by the number of trials it needed to figure out which feeder would serve it, and how many errors (landings on the wrong feeders) it made over four days. “If you were to find the right feeder at random, it should take you 3.5 trials on average. All the birds learned and performed way better than chance,” Pravosudov says.

The second task was meant to test reversal learning skills, widely considered the best predictor of survival. Once the chickadees learned the location of the reward-dispensing feeders, the locations were changed. The goal was to see how fast the birds would adapt to this change.

Once the results of both tests were in, the team monitored the birds using their microchip bands, catching them and changing the bands every year, for over six years. “Part of the reason that’s never been done in the past is just because it takes so much work,” says Welklin. But the work paid off in the end.

Remembering where your meals came from key for a small bird’s survival Read More »

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Rocket Report: China leaps into rocket reuse; 19 people are currently in orbit

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Ascendant —

Launch startups in China and Europe are borrowing ideas and rhetoric from SpaceX.

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Landspace's reusable rocket test vehicle lifts off from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center on Wednesday, September 11, 2024.

Enlarge / Landspace’s reusable rocket test vehicle lifts off from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center on Wednesday, September 11, 2024.

Welcome to Edition 7.11 of the Rocket Report! Outside of companies owned by American billionaires, the most imminent advancements in reusable rockets are coming from China’s quasi-commercial launch industry. This industry is no longer nascent. After initially relying on solid-fueled rocket motors apparently derived from Chinese military missiles, China’s privately funded launch firms are testing larger launchers, with varying degrees of success, and now performing hop tests reminiscent of SpaceX’s Grasshopper and F9R Dev1 programs more than a decade ago.

As always, we welcome reader submissions. If you don’t want to miss an issue, please subscribe using the box below (the form will not appear on AMP-enabled versions of the site). Each report will include information on small-, medium-, and heavy-lift rockets as well as a quick look ahead at the next three launches on the calendar.

Landspace hops closer to a reusable rocket. Chinese private space startup Landspace has completed a 10-kilometer (33,000-foot) vertical takeoff and vertical landing test on its Zhuque-3 (ZQ-3) reusable rocket testbed, including a mid-flight engine reignition at near supersonic conditions, Aviation Week & Space Technology reports. The 18.3-meter (60-foot) vehicle took off from the Jiuquan launch base in northwestern China, ascended to 10,002 meters, and then made a vertical descent and achieved an on-target propulsive landing 3.2 kilometers (2 miles) from the launch pad. Notably, the rocket’s methane-fueled variable-thrust engine intentionally shutdown in flight, then reignited for descent, as engines would operate on future full-scale booster flybacks. The test booster used grid fins and cold gas thrusters to control itself when its main engine was dormant, according to Landspace.

“All indicators met the expected design” … Landspace hailed the test as a major milestone in the company’s road to flying its next rocket, the Zhuque-3, as soon as next year. With nine methane-fueled main engines, the Zhuque-3 will initially be able to deliver 21 metric tons (46,300 pounds) of payload into low-Earth orbit with its booster flying in expendable mode. In 2026, Landspace aims to begin recovering Zhuque-3 first-stage boosters for reuse. Landspace is one of several Chinese companies working seriously on reusable rocket designs. Another Chinese firm, Deep Blue Aerospace, says it plans a 100-kilometer (62-mile) suborbital test of a reusable booster soon, ahead of the first flight of its medium-class Nebula-1 rocket next year. (submitted by Ken the Bin)

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Isar Aerospace sets low bar for success on first launch. Daniel Metzler, CEO of German launch startup Isar Aerospace, stated that the first flight of the Spectrum rocket would be a success if it didn’t destroy the launch site, European Spaceflight reports. During an interview at the Handelsblatt innovation conference, Metzler was asked what he would consider a successful inaugural flight of Spectrum. “For me, the first flight will be a success if we don’t blow up the launch site,” explained Metzler. “That would probably be the thing that would set us back the most in terms of technology and time.” This tempering of expectations sounds remarkably similar to statements made by Elon Musk about SpaceX’s first flight of the Starship rocket last year.

In the catbird seat? … Isar Aerospace could be in a position to become the first in a new crop of European commercial launch companies to attempt its first orbital flight. Another German company, Rocket Factory Augsburg, recently gave up on a possible launch this year after the booster for its first launch caught fire and collapsed during a test at a launch site in Scotland. Isar plans to launch its two-stage Spectrum rocket, designed to carry up to 1,000 kilograms (2,200 pounds) of payload into low-Earth orbit, from Andøya Spaceport in Norway. Isar hasn’t publicized any schedule for the first flight of Spectrum, but there are indications the publicity-shy company is testing hardware at the Norwegian spaceport. (submitted by Ken the Bin)

FAA to introduce new orbital debris rules. The Federal Aviation Administration is moving ahead with efforts to develop rules for the disposal of upper stages as another Centaur upper stage breaks apart in orbit, Space News reports. The FAA released draft regulations on the matter for public comment one year ago, and the head of the agency’s commercial spaceflight division recently said the rules are a “high priority for our organization.” The rules would direct launch operators to dispose of upper stages in one of five ways, from controlled reentries to placement in graveyard or “disposal” orbits not commonly used by operational satellites. One change the FAA might make to the draft rules is to reduce the required timeline for an uncontrolled reentry of a disposed upper stage from no more than 25 years to a shorter timeline. “We got a lot of comments that said it should be a lot less,” said Kelvin Coleman, head of the FAA’s commercial spaceflight office. “We’re taking that into consideration.”

Upper stages are a problem … Several recent breakups involving spent upper stages in orbit have highlighted the concern that dead rocket bodies could create unnecessary space junk. Last month, the upper stage from a Chinese Long March 6A disintegrated in low-Earth orbit, creating at least 300 pieces of space debris. More recently, a Centaur upper stage from a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket broke apart in a much higher orbit, resulting in more than 40 pieces of debris. This was the fourth time one of ULA’s Centaur upper stages has broken up since 2018. (submitted by Ken the Bin)

Rocket Report: China leaps into rocket reuse; 19 people are currently in orbit Read More »

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CEO of “health care terrorists” faces contempt charges after Senate no-show

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Horrific greed —

Senators are pursuing both civil and criminal contempt charges.

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The name placard for Dr. Ralph de la Torre, founder and chief executive officer of Steward Health Care System, in front of an empty seat during a Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee hearing in Washington, DC, on Thursday, September 12, 2024.

Enlarge / The name placard for Dr. Ralph de la Torre, founder and chief executive officer of Steward Health Care System, in front of an empty seat during a Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee hearing in Washington, DC, on Thursday, September 12, 2024.

The CEO of a failed hospital system who was paid hundreds of millions of dollars while patients were allegedly “killed and maimed” in his resource-starved and rotting facilities, was a no-show at a Senate hearing on Thursday—despite a bipartisan subpoena compelling him to appear.

Lawyers for Ralph de la Torre—the Harvard University-trained cardiac surgeon who took over the Steward Health Care System in 2020—told senators in a letter last week that he was unable to testify at the hearing. Despite previously agreeing to the hearing, de la Torre and his lawyers argued that a federal court order stemming from Steward’s bankruptcy case, filed in May, prevented him from discussing anything amid reorganization and settlement efforts.

But that argument was found to be without merit by the Senate committee that issued the subpoena in July—the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP), chaired by Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.). In comments to the Associated Press Wednesday, Sanders said there were plenty of topics he could have safely discussed.

“Tell me about your yacht”

“He has decided not to show up because he doesn’t want to explain to the American people how horrific his greed has become,” Sanders said. “Tell me about your yacht. Tell me about your fishing boat. I want to hear your justification for that. Tell that to the community where staff was laid off while you made $250 million.”

On Thursday, lawmakers prepared a seat for de la Torre at the hearing, but it stayed empty.

In a statement to ABC News Thursday, Steward defended de la Torre’s absence. “The Committee continues to ignore the fact that there is an ongoing settlement effort underway with all interested parties that paves the way to keep all of Steward’s remaining hospitals open and preserve jobs,” the statement said. “Dr. de la Torre will not do anything that could jeopardize this effort.”

Lawmakers, meanwhile, have moved forward with plans to pursue civil and criminal contempt of Congress charges. “A witness cannot disregard and evade a duly authorized subpoena,” ranking member Bill Cassidy (R-La.) said at today’s hearing. “Therefore, today, the chair and I will be asking the committee to report a resolution to authorize civil enforcement and criminal contempt proceedings against Dr. de la Torre requiring compliance with the subpoena.”  The committee has scheduled a session on Thursday, September 19, to adopt the two resolutions.

While the star witness was AWOL, the hearing moved on, offering stunning and horrifying testimony from two Massachusetts nurses and Louisiana state leaders who experienced the conditions at Steward’s hospitals, which number over 30 across eight states. The most heart-wrenching testimony came from Ellen MacInnis, a nurse at St. Elizabeth’s Medical Center in Boston, which was taken over by Steward.

CEO of “health care terrorists” faces contempt charges after Senate no-show Read More »

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Here’s why you shouldn’t freak out about lead in your cinnamon

cinnamon, health, lead, Science / /

A rant —

For the most part, you’d have to eat a weirdly large amount to cause a problem.

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Cinnamon buns.

Enlarge / Cinnamon buns.

Consumer Reports on Thursday reported the concentration of lead it found in 36 ground cinnamon products, leading to a round of startling headlines. The testing is particularly nerve-racking given that it closely follows the tragic poisoning of at least 519 US children, who were exposed to extremely high levels of lead from purposefully tainted cinnamon in applesauce snack pouches.

With that horrifying event in mind, parents are likely primed to be alarmed by any other lead findings in cinnamon. So, how concerning were the concentrations Consumer Reports found? And does one need to strictly adhere to the limits the organization recommends? By my calculations, not very and probably not. It’s really not an alarming report.

Similar to the outlet’s chocolate testing before it, the lead concentrations found in cinnamons were largely within standard ranges. In all, the report is more of a reminder that trace amounts of heavy metals are present in various common foods. And such watchdog testing can play a crucial role in keeping consumers safe, especially with underfunded and underpowered regulators.

Before I go into the data, I’ll be upfront with my conflict of interest here: I love cinnamon about as much as I love chocolate, which is to say: a lot. I can’t imagine fall or holidays without heavily cinnamoned treats. And if you believe that cinnamon isn’t a verb, you are incorrect (at least in my book). Still, my love of this tree-bark spice could certainly be shaken by my healthy aversion to neurotoxic things, especially with a small child at home gobbling up my baked goods. That’s why I dug in and did the math—and I’m happy to show my work.

Regulated concentrations

So, what did Consumer Reports (CR from here) find? The company collected three samples of each of the 36 products from grocery stores, specialty/international food shops, and online sellers. Then, they sent them off to a commercial lab for testing and reported back the average concentrations of lead in parts per million (ppm), which is equivalent to milligrams per kilogram (mg/kg).

CR judged the results by a threshold level of 1 ppm, which is the concentration at which the state of New York will issue a recall for a spice (currently, at least, they have proposed lowering it). It’s important to note that, even at the current 1 ppm threshold, New York is an outlier. As CR notes, New York is the only state to have such a threshold. The Food and Drug Administration doesn’t have a clear cut-off, but recent warnings from the agency were all regarding products that had lead concentrations of more than 2 ppm, not 1 ppm. The FDA also notes that the international food standard-setting body, Codex Alimentarius Commission, sets a limit for bark spices at 2.5 ppm. Further, the European Union set the maximum allowable lead concentration for bark spices at 2 ppm, according to regulations set in 2021 (PDF).

Despite the unusually low threshold, CR highlighted 12 products—mostly uncommon brands—that wouldn’t make it in the Big Apple. Of those, only three products were above the 2 ppm threshold that would have drawn the eyes of FDA and European Union regulators. The two brands behind the two highest readings (Paras at 3.52 ppm and EGN at 2.91 ppm) indicated to CR that they would voluntarily recall their products. The other product that came in above 2 ppm was Mimi’s Products cinnamon, with an average of 2.03 ppm. CR data shows that only one of the three samples was above 2 ppm (with readings of 1.97 ppm, 2.16 ppm, and 1.97 ppm).

That said, concentration thresholds for the purposes of regulatory recalls are one thing. Other things—likely to be far more relevant to consumers—are how much cinnamon people actually eat and what the maximum safe amount of lead is. So, what are those?

Here’s why you shouldn’t freak out about lead in your cinnamon Read More »

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Evidence of “snowball Earth” found in ancient rocks

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On ice —

An outcrop in Scotland has material from when the Earth went into a deep freeze.

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Image of a white planet with small patches of blue against a black background.

Enlarge / Artist’s conception of the state of the Earth during its global glaciations.

Earth has gone through many geologic phases, but it did have one striking period of stasis: Our planet experienced a tropical environment where algae and single-celled organisms flourished for almost 2 billion years. Then things changed drastically as the planet was plunged into a deep freeze.

It was previously unclear when Earth became a gargantuan freezer. Now, University College London researchers have found evidence in an outcrop of rocks in Scotland, known as the Port Askaig Formation, that show evidence of the transition from a tropical Earth to a frozen one 717 million years ago. This marks the onset of the Sturtian glaciation and would be the first of two “snowball Earth” events during which much of the planet’s surface was covered in ice. It is thought that multicellular life began to emerge after Earth thawed.

Found in the Scottish islands known as the Garvellachs, this outcrop within the Port Askaig Formation is unique because it offers the first conclusive evidence of when a tropical Earth froze over—underlying layers that are a timeline from a warmer era to a frigid one. Other rocks that formed during the same time period in other parts of the world lack this transitional evidence because ancient glaciers most likely scraped it off.

“The Port Askaig preserves a relatively complete record of the global “Sturtian glaciation,” the researchers said in a study recently published in the Journal of the Geological Society.

In my snowball era

Underneath the rocks that formed during the Sturtian glaciation is a deep layer of carbonate rocks known as the Garb Eileach Formation. These were dated to the warm, tropical Tonian period, which started 1 billion years ago and lasted until 717 million years ago, when the cold took over. The youngest rocks in this formation are evidence of the transition to the first “snowball Earth.”

Why did Earth endure such a big chill to begin with? A sudden decrease in solar radiation probably led to an especially long winter that set off a (if you’ll pardon the pun) snowball effect. With less radiation, more ice forms, and more ice makes the planet more reflective, meaning it sends more sunlight back into space and causes the planet to continue cooling, allowing even more ice to form.

To find out when this global chill began, the research team collected 11 sandstone samples from the Garvellach Islands to analyze zircons in the sandstone. Zircons are especially useful in dating rock formations because they are often as old as the rock they are in, making some of them the oldest minerals on Earth. They also resist being chemically degraded. What is especially important about zircons is that they contain uranium, which decays into lead over long periods. The amount of uranium that has changed to lead can tell us the amount of time that has passed since the zircon’s formation.

Just a phase

Using both laser ablation (a type of laser imaging that reveals how elements and isotopes are distributed in a sample) and plasma mass spectrometry, the researchers determined the uranium-lead ratio. The time it had taken for the uranium to become lead was in line with their estimates, which were based on previous studies that had estimated, but not confirmed, the time of onset for the Sturtian glaciation.

Another thing that the outcrop’s zircons told the researchers is that the Sturtian glaciation lasted around 58 million years. It was closely followed by the Marinoan glaciation, thought to have lasted another 16 million years, and both these “snowball Earth” phases make up what is known as the Cryogenic period. The rocks containing these zircons were probably deposited by a moving glacier as the supercontinent Rodinia (which preceded the more famous Pangaea) was breaking apart.

The Port Askaig Formation is now, as the scientists say in the same study, “one of the thickest (up to 1.1 km) and most complete records of Cryogenic glaciation.”

Because glaciers did not scrape this formation away, a record of when Earth started to warm up again is also preserved. The zircon crystals that formed during the Sturtian glaciation gradually disappear in younger rocks until they are replaced by zircons formed after the ice began to melt. So not only is there evidence of the beginning of the deep freeze, but also evidence for the thaw that began around 635 million years ago.

As the ice melted, complex multicellular life began to burst onto the scene during the Ediacaran period. There could be several reasons for this. Hypotheses suggest that the temperature of the seawater rose, an influx of sunlight sparked photosynthesis, and there was a greater availability of nutrients than before.

The scientists involved in the Port Askaig study think that any life that survived the Cryogenian period faced an immense challenge once the ice began to melt. These organisms had been used to perpetual cold for millions of years, and now they faced the struggle of adapting as soon as possible—or perishing.

What about those that survived? They ended up being the ancestors of all animals that ever existed, and that includes us.

Journal of the Geological Society, 2024.  DOI: 10.1144/jgs2024-02

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Meet the winners of the 2024 Ig Nobel Prizes

Features, Ig Nobel Prizes, Science / /

Science that makes you laugh then think —

The award ceremony features miniature operas, scientific demos, and the 24/7 lectures.

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The Ig Nobel Prizes honor

Enlarge / The Ig Nobel Prizes honor “achievements that first make people laugh and then make them think.”

Aurich Lawson / Getty Images

Curiosity is the driving force behind all science, which may explain why so many scientists sometimes find themselves going in some decidedly eccentric research directions. Did you hear about the WWII plan to train pigeons as missile guidance systems? How about experiments on the swimming ability of a dead rainbow trout or that time biologists tried to startle cows by popping paper bags by their heads? These and other unusual research endeavors were honored tonight in a virtual ceremony to announce the 2024 recipients of the annual Ig Nobel Prizes. Yes, it’s that time of year again, when the serious and the silly converge—for science.

Established in 1991, the Ig Nobels are a good-natured parody of the Nobel Prizes; they honor “achievements that first make people laugh and then make them think.” The unapologetically campy awards ceremony features miniature operas, scientific demos, and the 24/7 lectures whereby experts must explain their work twice: once in 24 seconds and the second in just seven words. Acceptance speeches are limited to 60 seconds. And as the motto implies, the research being honored might seem ridiculous at first glance, but that doesn’t mean it’s devoid of scientific merit.

Viewers can tune in for the usual 24/7 lectures, as well as the premiere of a “non-opera” featuring various songs about water, in keeping with the evening’s theme. In the weeks following the ceremony, the winners will also give free public talks, which will be posted on the Improbable Research website.

Without further ado, here are the winners of the 2023 Ig Nobel prizes.

Peace

Citation: B.F. Skinner, for experiments to see the feasibility of housing live pigeons inside missiles to guide the flight paths of the missiles.

This entertaining 1960 paper by American psychologist B.F. Skinner is kind of a personal memoir relating “the history of a crackpot idea, born on the wrong side of the tracks intellectually speaking but eventually vindicated in a sort of middle class respectability.” Project Pigeon was a World War II research program at the Naval Research Laboratory with the objective of training pigeons to serve as missile guidance systems. At the time, in the early 1940s, the machinery required to guide Pelican missiles was so bulky that there wasn’t much room left for actual explosives—hence the name, since it resembled a pelican “whose beak can hold more than its belly can.”

Skinner reasoned that pigeons could be a cheaper, more compact solution since the birds are especially good at responding to patterns. (He dismissed the ethical questions as a “peacetime luxury,” given the high global stakes of WWII.) His lab devised a novel harnessing system for the birds, positioned them vertically above a translucent plastic plate (screen), and trained them to “peck” at a projected image of a target somewhere along the New Jersey coast on the screen—a camera obscura effect. “The guiding signal was picked up from the point of contact of screen and beak,” Skinner wrote. Eventually, they created a version that used three pigeons to make the system more robust—just in case a pigeon got distracted at a key moment or something.

Nose cone of NIST glide bomb showing the three-pigeon guidance system.

Enlarge / Nose cone of NIST glide bomb showing the three-pigeon guidance system.

American Psychological Association/B.F. Skinner Foundation

There was understandably a great deal of skepticism about the viability of using pigeons for missile guidance; at one point, Skinner lamented, his team “realized that a pigeon was more easily controlled than a physical scientist serving on a committee.” But Skinner’s team persisted, and in 1944, they finally got the chance to demonstrate Project Pigeon for a committee of top scientists and show that the birds’ behavior could be controlled. The sample pigeon behaved perfectly. “But the spectacle of a living pigeon carrying out its assignment, no matter how beautifully, simply reminded the committee of how utterly fantastic our proposal was.” Apparently, there was much “restrained merriment.”

Even though this novel homing device was resistant to jamming, could react to a wide variety of target practice, needed no scarce materials, and was so simple to make that production could start in 30 days, the committee nixed the project. (By this point, as we now know, military focus had shifted to the Manhattan Project.) Skinner was left with “a loftful of curiously useless equipment and a few dozen pigeons with a strange interest in a feature of the New Jersey coast.” But vindication came in the early 1950s when the project was briefly revived as Project ORCON at the Naval Research Laboratory, which refined the general idea and led to the development of a Pick-off Display Converter for radar operators. Skinner himself never lost faith in this particular “crackpot idea.”

Meet the winners of the 2024 Ig Nobel Prizes Read More »