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fracking-wastewater-has-“shocking”-amount-of-clean-energy-mineral-lithium

Fracking wastewater has “shocking” amount of clean-energy mineral lithium

clean energy, green energy, lithium, Science, syndication / /
fracking operation in Pennsylvania

Enlarge / A hydro-fracking drilling pad for oil and gas operates October 26, 2017 in Robinson Township, Pennsylvania.

A fracking drilling pad operates in the Marcellus Shale formation near Robinson Township, Pa. Credit: Robert Nickelsberg/Getty Images

In 2007, a geoscientist at Penn State named Terry Engelder calculated that Pennsylvania could be sitting on more than 50 trillion cubic feet of accessible natural gas deposits. Engelder later revised his calculation upward, to 489 trillion cubic feet, enough to meet U.S. natural gas demand for 18 years. These massive numbers set off the fracking boom in Pennsylvania, leading to drilling across the state. Since the rush began, there have been 13,000 unconventional wells drilled in Pennsylvania.

Now, a new “astounding” calculation has caught the attention of the gas industry: A study from researchers at the National Energy Technology Laboratory shows the wastewater produced by Pennsylvania’s unconventional wells could contain enough lithium to meet 38 to 40 percent of current domestic consumption. Lithium is a critical mineral that’s an “essential component” of many clean energy technologies, including batteries for electric vehicles. 

The study used chemical and production compliance data from the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection to estimate that approximately 1,160 metric tons of lithium per year could be extracted from this produced water, which is a combination of fluids used for fracking and water from natural formations underground that returns to the surface during the drilling process. The lithium in Pennsylvania’s produced water likely comes from ancient volcanoes that were erupting at the time the natural gas deposits were being formed. This volcanic ash contained lithium that eventually seeped into the water underground.

“The researcher community in the U.S. is really working hard to find the materials and methods that will enable us to meet our climate goals and decarbonize the economy,” said Justin Mackey, the study’s lead investigator. “Sometimes you might be surprised where that material actually comes from.” 

The Marcellus Shale Coalition, an industry trade group dedicated to the Marcellus Shale formation, the natural gas deposit beneath Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Ohio and New York, reacted to the news with enthusiasm. “This scientific analysis by one of the leading energy laboratories in the world shows once again how abundant Pennsylvania natural gas can enhance America’s energy, environmental and national security,” the coalition said in a statement. 

The United States currently relies on imports from Argentina, Chile and China to fully meet its lithium needs, and the demand for lithium is expected to rise dramatically as the clean energy transition accelerates. 

Mackey, a research geochemist at the National Energy Technology Laboratory, said he had focused on lithium because it is a strategic material for the American economy and defense industries and because it has insecure supply chains. “We’re reliant on foreign entities like China and Chile and Australia to source these raw materials, but they’re critical to our economies,” he said. “And more importantly, they’re critical to decarbonizing the U.S. automotive fleet.”

He said the researchers were “shocked” that the highest concentrations of lithium found in the Marcellus “are comparable to lithium brine, to water that is actually being mined for lithium.” 

“I think having more domestic sources of lithium is definitely a positive thing, especially if you don’t have to create a mine to exploit the resource,” Mackey said. Unconventional drilling waste is likely to be produced in large quantities for the foreseeable future, he said, and if remediating this waste safely could also be made economically valuable, that could be beneficial for the environment as well.

Fracking wastewater has “shocking” amount of clean-energy mineral lithium Read More »

alpacas-in-idaho-test-positive-for-h5n1-bird-flu-in-another-world-first

Alpacas in Idaho test positive for H5N1 bird flu in another world first

alpacas, bird flu, dairy cows, H5N1, Science, USDA / /

Spit-take —

The alpacas were known to be in close contact with infected birds.

–

Suri alpacas on a farm in Pennsylvania.

Enlarge / Suri alpacas on a farm in Pennsylvania.

Four backyard alpacas in southern Idaho have tested positive for highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) H5N1, marking the first time bird flu has been detected in members of the fleecy camelid family, according to the US Department of Agriculture.

On Tuesday, the USDA announced that the agency’s National Veterinary Services Laboratories confirmed the infection on a farm in Jerome County on May 16. While the infections are a first for the spitting llama relatives, the USDA said they weren’t particularly surprising. The alpacas were in close contact with HPAI-infected poultry on the farm, which were “depopulated” this month. Of 18 alpacas on the affected farm, only four were found to be infected. There were no deaths documented, according to a report the USDA submitted to the World Organization for Animal Health.

Genomic sequencing indicates that the H5N1 virus infecting the alpacas (B3.13) matches both the virus currently circulating among US dairy cows and the virus that infected birds on the farm.

According to the Alpaca Owners Association, there are over 264,000 alpacas in the US.

The finding does not increase the threat of H5N1 to the general public, but it again highlights the virus’s alarming ability to readily spread to mammals. The USDA has documented hundreds of cases of H5N1 in a wide range of mammals since May 2022, when the outbreak strain began spreading in North America. In March, the USDA announced the unprecedented outbreak among dairy cows. But the agency has found the virus spreading in mink, raccoons, foxes, cats, seals, bears, mountain lions, bottlenose dolphins, goats, and coyotes, among other animals. With each new species and infection, H5N1 gains new opportunities to adapt to better infect and spread among mammals. And as the virus jumps to mammals in close contact with humans, the risk increases that the virus will have the opportunity to adapt to spread among humans.

The USDA and state officials continue to identify H5N1 in dairy herds. According to the latest data on the USDA’s tracking site, at least 66 dairy herds in nine states have been infected.

Alpacas in Idaho test positive for H5N1 bird flu in another world first Read More »

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Ars Live: How profitable is Starlink? We dig into the details of satellite Internet.

ars live, Science, Space, starlink / /

Let’s talk —

How has Starlink has gone from zero to profitability in five years?

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A stack of 60 Starlink satellites being launched into space, with Earth in the background.

Enlarge / A stack of 60 Starlink satellites launched in 2019.

SpaceX began launching operational Starlink satellites five years ago this month. Since then, the company has been rapidly developing its constellation of broadband satellites in low-Earth orbit. SpaceX has now launched about 6,000 satellites with its Falcon 9 rocket and has delivered on its promise to provide fast Internet around the world. Today, the company is the largest satellite operator in the world by a factor of 10.

But is this massive enterprise to deliver Internet from space profitable?

According to a new report by Quilty Space, the answer is yes. Quilty built a model to assess Starlink’s profitability. First, the researchers assessed revenue. The firm estimates this will grow to $6.6 billion in 2024, up from essentially zero just four years ago. In addition to rapidly growing its subscriber base of about 3 million, SpaceX has also managed to control costs. Based upon its model, therefore, Quilty estimates that Starlink’s free cash flow from the business will be about $600 million this year.

So, what does it mean for this industry that Starlink has gone from zero to profitability in five years? What’s next for the network? Are there credible competitors to Starlink in OneWeb, Amazon’s Project Kuiper, or other planned megaconstellations? Can low-Earth orbit accommodate all of these satellites?

Please join me for a discussion of Starlink and these questions with Caleb Henry, the director of research for Quilty. Henry is a true expert in the area of satellite-based Internet, and we’ll get into the weeds of this topic. We’ll also be taking your questions.

This will be the first Ars Live event we’ve done in a few years. During these discussions, reporters and editors at Ars Technica speak with industry leaders about the most important technology and science news of the day. So please join us at 2 pm ET (18: 00 UTC) on June 11 on our YouTube livestream.

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Ars Live: How profitable is Starlink? We dig into the details of satellite Internet. Read More »

dinosaurs-needed-to-be-cold-enough-that-being-warm-blooded-mattered

Dinosaurs needed to be cold enough that being warm-blooded mattered

Biology, climate change, dinosaurs, evolution, paleontology, Science, warm blooded / /

Some like it less hot —

Two groups of dinosaurs moved to cooler climes during a period of climate change.

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Image of a feathered dinosaur against a white background.

Enlarge / Later theropods had multiple adaptations to varied temperatures.

Dinosaurs were once assumed to have been ectothermic, or cold-blooded, an idea that makes sense given that they were reptiles. While scientists had previously discovered evidence of dinosaur species that were warm-blooded, though what could have triggered this adaptation remained unknown. A team of researchers now think that dinosaurs that already had some cold tolerance evolved endothermy, or warm-bloodedness, to adapt when they migrated to regions with cooler temperatures. They also think they’ve found a possible reason for the trek.

Using the Mesozoic fossil record, evolutionary trees, climate models, and geography, plus factoring in a drastic climate change event that caused global warming, the team found that theropods (predators and bird ancestors such as velociraptor and T. rex) and ornithischians (such as triceratops and stegosaurus) must have made their way to colder regions during the Early Jurassic. Lower temperatures are thought to have selected for species that were partly adapted to endothermy.

“The early invasion of cool niches… [suggests] an early attainment of homeothermic (possibly endothermic) physiology in [certain species], enabling them to colonize and persist in even extreme latitudes since the Early Jurassic,” the researchers said in a study recently published in Current Biology.

Hot real estate

During the Mesozoic Era, which lasted from 230 to 66 million years ago, proto-dinosaurs known as dinosauromorphs began to diversify in hot and dry climates. Early sauropods, ornithischians, and theropods all tended to stay in these regions.

Sauropods (such as brontosaurus and diplodocus) would become the only dinosaur groups to bask in the heat—the fossil record shows that sauropods tended to stay in warmer areas, even if there was less food. This suggests the need for sunlight and heat associated with ectothermy. They might have been capable of surviving in colder temperatures but not adapted enough to make it for long, according to one hypothesis.

It’s also possible that living in cooler areas meant too much competition with other types of dinosaurs, as the theropods and ornithiscians did end up moving into these cooler areas.

Almost apocalypse

Beyond the ecological opportunities that may have drawn dinosaurs to the cooler territories, it’s possible they were driven away from the warm ones. Around 183 million years ago, there was a perturbation in the carbon cycle, along with extreme volcanism that belched out massive amounts of methane, sulfur dioxide, and mercury. Life on Earth suffered through scorching heat, acid rain, and wildfires. Known as the Early Jurassic Jenkyns Event, the researchers now think that these disruptions pushed theropod and ornithischian dinosaurs to cooler climates because temperatures in warmer zones went above the optimal temperatures for their survival.

The theropods and ornithischians that escaped the effects of the Jenkyns event may have had a key adaptation to cooler climes; many dinosaurs from these groups are now thought to have been feathered. Feathers can be used to both trap and release heat, which would have allowed feathered dinosaurs to regulate their body temperature in more diverse climates. Modern birds use their feathers the same way.

Dinosaur species with feathers or special structures that improved heat management could have been homeothermic, which means they would have been able to maintain their body temperature with metabolic activity or even endothermic.

Beyond the dinosaurs that migrated to high latitudes and adapted to a drop in temperature, endothermy might have led to the rise of new species and lineages of dinosaurs. It could have contributed to the rise of Avialae, the clade that includes birds—the only actual dinosaurs still around—and traces all the way back to their earliest ancestors.

“[Our findings] provide novel insights into the origin of avian endothermy, suggesting that this evolutionary trajectory within theropods… likely started in the latest Early Jurassic,” the researchers said in the same study.

That really is something to think about next time a sparrow flies by.

Current Biology, 2024.  DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2024.04.051

Dinosaurs needed to be cold enough that being warm-blooded mattered Read More »

the-hornet-has-landed:-scientists-combat-new-honeybee-killer-in-us

The hornet has landed: Scientists combat new honeybee killer in US

bees, giant hornet, honeybees, hornet, Murder hornets, Science, syndication / /

a rich hunting ground —

Researchers are working to limit the threat while developing better eradication methods.

–

2023 marked the first sighting of a yellow-legged hornet in the United States, sparking fears that it may spread and devastate honeybees as it has in parts of Europe.

Enlarge / 2023 marked the first sighting of a yellow-legged hornet in the United States, sparking fears that it may spread and devastate honeybees as it has in parts of Europe.

In early August 2023, a beekeeper near the port of Savannah, Georgia, noticed some odd activity around his hives. Something was hunting his honeybees. It was a flying insect bigger than a yellowjacket, mostly black with bright yellow legs. The creature would hover at the hive entrance, capture a honeybee in flight, and butcher it before darting off with the bee’s thorax, the meatiest bit.

“He’d only been keeping bees since March… but he knew enough to know that something wasn’t right with this thing,” says Lewis Bartlett, an evolutionary ecologist and honeybee expert at the University of Georgia, who helped to investigate. Bartlett had seen these honeybee hunters before, during his PhD studies in England a decade earlier. The dreaded yellow-legged hornet had arrived in North America.

With origins in Afghanistan, eastern China, and Indonesia, the yellow-legged hornet, Vespa velutina, has expanded during the last two decades into South Korea, Japan, and Europe. When the hornet invades new territory, it preys on honeybees, bumblebees, and other vulnerable insects. One yellow-legged hornet can kill up to dozens of honeybees in a single day. It can decimate colonies through intimidation by deterring honeybees from foraging. “They’re not to be messed with,” says honeybee researcher Gard Otis, professor emeritus at the University of Guelph in Canada.

The yellow-legged hornet is so destructive that it was the first insect to land on the European Union’s blacklist of invasive species. In Portugal, honey production in some regions of the country has slumped by more than 35 percent since the hornet’s arrival. French beekeepers have reported 30 percent to 80 percent of honeybee colonies exterminated in some locales, costing the French economy an estimated $33 million annually.

The yellow-legged hornet’s nests can be quite large and house as many as 6,000 workers.

Enlarge / The yellow-legged hornet’s nests can be quite large and house as many as 6,000 workers.

All that destruction may be linked to a single, multi-mated queen that arrived at the port of Bordeaux, France, in a shipment of bonsai pots from China before 2004. During her first spring, she established a nest, reared workers, and laid eggs. By fall, hundreds of new mated queens likely exited and found overwintering sites, restarting the cycle in the spring. The hornet’s fortitude—it is the Diana Nyad of invasive social wasps—allowed it to surge across France’s borders into Spain, Portugal, Italy, Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and Switzerland in only two decades, hurtling onward by as much as 100 kilometers a year.

Suspected stowaway

As the hornet fanned out across Europe, scientists in North America wondered when it might arrive on their side of the Atlantic. Queens sometimes overwinter in crates and containers, allowing them to stow away on ships and be transported long distances. In 2013, researchers cautioned that a yellow-legged hornet invasion at any one point along the US East Coast would have the potential to spread across the country.

After the first sighting last summer, Georgia’s agricultural commissioner urged people to report hornets and nests, and warned that the yellow-legged hornet could threaten the state’s $73 billion agriculture industry. American farmers grow more than 100 different crops, including apples, blueberries, and watermelons, that depend on pollinators. Georgia mass-produces honeybees and ships them north to jumpstart spring crops, like Maine blueberries, before local pollinators have awakened.

In response to the arrival of the yellow-legged hornet, the Georgia Department of Agriculture has placed hundreds of traps to monitor the insects’ spread near Savannah. This map shows the locations of those traps (gray dots), sightings of the hornet (pink dots) and five nests (red squares) as of December 15, 2023.

Enlarge / In response to the arrival of the yellow-legged hornet, the Georgia Department of Agriculture has placed hundreds of traps to monitor the insects’ spread near Savannah. This map shows the locations of those traps (gray dots), sightings of the hornet (pink dots) and five nests (red squares) as of December 15, 2023.

Less than two weeks after the first hornet was spotted, scientists found a nest in a tree 25 meters off the ground. In a night operation, while the hornets idled, a tree surgeon climbed to the nest, sprayed it with insecticide, and cut it down. Just a quarter of the full nest was the size of a human torso, and the Georgia Department of Agriculture displayed a chunk, still wrapped around the branch, at a press conference—warning that this was larger than those seen in Europe.

“Savannah, Georgia, is primo climate for these guys,” says Otis. It’s a lush, subtropical paradise, giving the insect a long growing season—and a rich hunting ground.

For the next several months, Bartlett helped the state agricultural researchers set traps and follow individual hornets to find other nests. By the end of 2023, they’d removed four more. “We think we’ve discovered them at a very early stage, which is why pursuing eradication is very, very plausible,” Bartlett said in November. If not, Georgia and its neighbors could get caught in an endless—and costly—game of whack-a-mole.

The hornet has landed: Scientists combat new honeybee killer in US Read More »

“deny,-denounce,-delay”:-the-battle-over-the-risk-of-ultra-processed-foods

“Deny, denounce, delay”: The battle over the risk of ultra-processed foods

health, Science, syndication, ultraprocessed foods / /
A shopping cart by a store shelf in a supermarket

When the Brazilian nutritional scientist Carlos Monteiro coined the term “ultra-processed foods” 15 years ago, he established what he calls a “new paradigm” for assessing the impact of diet on health.

Monteiro had noticed that although Brazilian households were spending less on sugar and oil, obesity rates were going up. The paradox could be explained by increased consumption of food that had undergone high levels of processing, such as the addition of preservatives and flavorings or the removal or addition of nutrients.

But health authorities and food companies resisted the link, Monteiro tells the FT. “[These are] people who spent their whole life thinking that the only link between diet and health is the nutrient content of foods … Food is more than nutrients.”

Monteiro’s food classification system, “Nova,” assessed not only the nutritional content of foods but also the processes they undergo before reaching our plates. The system laid the groundwork for two decades of scientific research linking the consumption of UPFs to obesity, cancer, and diabetes.

Studies of UPFs show that these processes create food—from snack bars to breakfast cereals to ready meals—that encourages overeating but may leave the eater undernourished. A recipe might, for example, contain a level of carbohydrate and fat that triggers the brain’s reward system, meaning you have to consume more to sustain the pleasure of eating it.

In 2019, American metabolic scientist Kevin Hall carried out a randomized study comparing people who ate an unprocessed diet with those who followed a UPF diet over two weeks. Hall found that the subjects who ate the ultra-processed diet consumed around 500 more calories per day, more fat and carbohydrates, less protein—and gained weight.

The rising concern about the health impact of UPFs has recast the debate around food and public health, giving rise to books, policy campaigns, and academic papers. It also presents the most concrete challenge yet to the business model of the food industry, for whom UPFs are extremely profitable.

The industry has responded with a ferocious campaign against regulation. In part it has used the same lobbying playbook as its fight against labeling and taxation of “junk food” high in calories: big spending to influence policymakers.

FT analysis of US lobbying data from non-profit Open Secrets found that food and soft drinks-related companies spent $106 million on lobbying in 2023, almost twice as much as the tobacco and alcohol industries combined. Last year’s spend was 21 percent higher than in 2020, with the increase driven largely by lobbying relating to food processing as well as sugar.

In an echo of tactics employed by cigarette companies, the food industry has also attempted to stave off regulation by casting doubt on the research of scientists like Monteiro.

“The strategy I see the food industry using is deny, denounce, and delay,” says Barry Smith, director of the Institute of Philosophy at the University of London and a consultant for companies on the multisensory experience of food and drink.

So far the strategy has proved successful. Just a handful of countries, including Belgium, Israel, and Brazil, currently refer to UPFs in their dietary guidelines. But as the weight of evidence about UPFs grows, public health experts say the only question now is how, if at all, it is translated into regulation.

“There’s scientific agreement on the science,” says Jean Adams, professor of dietary public health at the MRC Epidemiology Unit at the University of Cambridge. “It’s how to interpret that to make a policy that people aren’t sure of.”

“Deny, denounce, delay”: The battle over the risk of ultra-processed foods Read More »

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NASA finds more issues with Boeing’s Starliner, but crew launch set for June 1

atlas v, Boeing, commercial crew, NASA, Science, Space, starliner, united launch alliance / /
Boeing's Starliner spacecraft atop its Atlas V rocket on the launch pad earlier this month.

Enlarge / Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft atop its Atlas V rocket on the launch pad earlier this month.

Senior managers from NASA and Boeing told reporters on Friday that they plan to launch the first crew test flight of the Starliner spacecraft as soon as June 1, following several weeks of detailed analysis of a helium leak and a “design vulnerability” with the ship’s propulsion system.

Extensive data reviews over the last two-and-a-half weeks settled on a likely cause of the leak, which officials described as small and stable. During these reviews, engineers also built confidence that even if the leak worsened, it would not add any unacceptable risk for the Starliner test flight to the International Space Station, officials said.

But engineers also found that an unlikely mix of technical failures in Starliner’s propulsion system—representing 0.77 percent of all possible failure modes, according to Boeing’s program manager—could prevent the spacecraft from conducting a deorbit burn at the end of the mission.

“As we studied the helium leak, we also looked across the rest of the propulsion system, just to make sure we didn’t have any other things that we should be concerned about,” said Steve Stich, manager of NASA’s commercial crew program, which awarded a $4.2 billion contract to Boeing in 2014 for development of the Starliner spacecraft.

“We found a design vulnerability… in the prop [propulsion] system as we analyzed this particular helium leak, where for certain failure cases that are very remote, we didn’t have the capability to execute the deorbit burn with redundancy,” Stich said in a press conference Friday.

These two problems, uncovered one after the other, have kept the Starliner test flight grounded to allow time for engineers to find workarounds. This is the first time astronauts will fly into orbit on a Starliner spacecraft, following two unpiloted demonstration missions in 2019 and 2022.

The Starliner program is running years behind schedule, primarily due to problems with the spacecraft’s software, parachutes, and propulsion system, supplied by Aerojet Rocketdyne. Software woes cut short Starliner’s first test flight in 2019 before it could dock at the International Space Station, and they forced Boeing to fly an unplanned second test flight to gain confidence that the spacecraft is safe enough for astronauts. NASA and Boeing delayed the second unpiloted test flight nearly a year to overcome an issue with corroded valves in the ship’s propulsion system.

Last year, just a couple of months before it was supposed to launch on the crew test flight, officials discovered a design problem with Starliner’s parachutes and found that Boeing installed flammable tape inside the capsule’s cockpit. Boeing’s star-crossed Starliner finally appeared ready to fly on the long-delayed crew test flight from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida.

NASA commander Butch Wilmore and pilot Suni Williams were strapped into their seats inside Starliner on May 6 when officials halted the countdown due to a faulty valve on the spacecraft’s United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket. ULA rolled the rocket back to its hangar to replace the valve, with an eye toward another launch attempt in mid-May.

But ground teams detected the helium leak in Starliner’s service module in the aftermath of the scrubbed countdown. After some initial troubleshooting, the leak rate grew to approximately 70 psi per minute. Since then, the leak rate has stabilized.

“That gave us pause as the leak rate grew, and we wanted to understand what was causing that leak,” Stich said.

NASA finds more issues with Boeing’s Starliner, but crew launch set for June 1 Read More »

daily-telescope:-the-initial-results-from-europe’s-euclid-telescope-are-dazzling

Daily Telescope: The initial results from Europe’s Euclid telescope are dazzling

daily telescope, Science, Space / /

A brilliant debut —

“Euclid’s instruments can detect objects just a few times the mass of Jupiter.”

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Messier 78 is a nursery of star formation enveloped in a shroud of interstellar dust.

Enlarge / Messier 78 is a nursery of star formation enveloped in a shroud of interstellar dust.

ESA/Euclid/Euclid Consortium/NASA et. al.

Welcome to the Daily Telescope. There is a little too much darkness in this world and not enough light, a little too much pseudoscience and not enough science. We’ll let other publications offer you a daily horoscope. At Ars Technica, we’re going to take a different route, finding inspiration from very real images of a universe that is filled with stars and wonder.

Good morning. It’s May 24, and today’s photo comes from the European Space Agency’s new Euclid space telescope.

Launched in July 2023, the mission is intended to create a giant map of the Universe, across more than one-third of the nighttime sky. Its big-ticket goal is to help scientists better understand the nature of dark matter and dark energy, which account for the vast majority of the mass in the Universe—but about which we know almost nothing.

On Thursday the mission’s operators released five images, each of which was taken shortly after the instrument’s launch. The image in this post features the Messier 78 object, a star nursery wrapped in interstellar gas some 1,300 light-years from Earth.

According to the European scientists, “Euclid peered deep into this nursery using its infrared camera, exposing hidden regions of star formation for the first time, mapping its complex filaments of gas and dust in unprecedented detail, and uncovering newly formed stars and planets. Euclid’s instruments can detect objects just a few times the mass of Jupiter, and its infrared ‘eyes’ reveal over 300,000 new objects in this field of view alone.”

It’s fabulous.

Source: ESA/Euclid/Euclid Consortium/NASA, image processing by J.-C. Cuillandre (CEA Paris-Saclay), G. Anselmi

Do you want to submit a photo for the Daily Telescope? Reach out and say hello.

Daily Telescope: The initial results from Europe’s Euclid telescope are dazzling Read More »

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US officials: A Russian rocket launch last week likely deployed a space weapon

ASAT, keyhole, launch, military space, russia, Science, Space, space warfare, spy satellite / /

Co-planar —

“Naming space as a warfighting domain was kind of forbidden, but that’s changed.”

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A Russian Soyuz rocket climbs away from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome on May 16.

Enlarge / A Russian Soyuz rocket climbs away from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome on May 16.

The launch of a classified Russian military satellite last week deployed a payload that US government officials say is likely a space weapon.

In a series of statements, US officials said the new military satellite, named Kosmos 2576, appears to be similar to two previous “inspector” spacecraft launched by Russia in 2019 and 2022.

“Just last week, on May 16, Russia launched a satellite into low-Earth orbit that the United States assesses is likely a counter-space weapon presumably capable of attacking other satellites in low-Earth orbit,” said Robert Wood, the deputy US ambassador to the United Nations. “Russia deployed this new counter-space weapon into the same orbit as a US government satellite.”

Kosmos 2576 is flying in the same orbital plane as a National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) spy satellite, meaning it can regularly approach the top-secret US reconnaissance platform. The launch of Kosmos 2576 from Russia’s Plesetsk Cosmodrome on a Soyuz rocket was precisely timed to happen when the Earth’s rotation brought the launch site underneath the orbital path of the NRO spy satellite, officially designated USA 314.

The Soyuz rocket’s Fregat upper stage released Kosmos 2576 into an orbit roughly 275 miles (445 km) above Earth at an inclination of 97.25 degrees to the equator.

Conventional but concerning

So far, Kosmos 2576 is nowhere near USA 314, a bus-size spacecraft believed to carry a powerful Earth-facing telescope to capture high-resolution images for use by US intelligence agencies. This type of spacecraft is publicly known as a KH-11, or Keyhole-class, satellite, but its design and capabilities are top-secret.

It’s no surprise that the Russian military wants to get a close look in hopes of learning more about the US government’s most closely held secrets about what it does in orbit. Russian satellites have also flown near Western communications satellites in geostationary orbit, likely in an attempt to eavesdrop on radio transmissions.

Russia’s deputy foreign minister, Sergei Ryabkov, dismissed the US government’s assessment about the purpose of Kosmos 2576 as “fake news.” However, in the last few years, Russia has steered satellites into orbits intersecting with the paths of US spy platforms, and demonstrated it can take out an enemy satellite using a range of methods.

The current orbit of Kosmos 2576 will only occasionally bring it within a few hundred kilometers of the USA 314, according to Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist and expert tracker of spaceflight events. However, analysts expect additional maneuvers to raise the altitude Kosmos 2576 and put it into position for closer passes. This is what happened with a pair of Russian satellites launched in 2019 and 2022.

These two previous Russian satellites—Kosmos 2542 and Kosmos 2558— continually flew within a few dozen kilometers of two other NRO satellites—USA 245 and USA 326—in low-Earth orbit. In a post on the social media platform X, McDowell wrote that the Russian military craft “shadowed US satellites at a large distance but have not interfered with them.”

Because of this, McDowell wrote that he is “highly skeptical” that Kosmos 2576 is an anti-satellite weapon.

But one of these Russian satellites, Kosmos 2542, released a smaller sub-satellite, designated Kosmos 2543, which made its own passes near the USA 245 spacecraft, a KH-11 imaging satellite similar to USA 314. At one point, satellite trackers noticed USA 245 made a slight change to orbit. Its Russian pursuer later made a similar orbit adjustment to keep up.

In 2020, Kosmos 2543 backed off from USA 245. Once well away from the NRO satellite, Kosmos 2543 ejected a mysterious projectile into space at a speed fast enough to damage any target in its sights.

At the time, US Space Command called the event a “non-destructive test of a space-based anti-satellite weapon.” The projectile fired from Kosmos 2543 at a relative velocity of some 400 mph (700 km per hour), according to McDowell’s analysis of publicly available satellite tracking data.

Gen. Charles

Enlarge / Gen. Charles “CQ” Brown, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, says the US military must have an ability to defend itself in space.

The US military has identified China as its most significant strategic adversary in the coming decades. Most aspects of Russia’s space program are in decline, but it still boasts formidable anti-satellite capabilities. Russia intentionally destroyed one of its retired satellites in orbit with a ground-based missile in 2021. The Russian military has also deployed several Peresvet laser units capable of disabling a satellite in orbit. A Russian cyberattack at the start of the invasion of Ukraine in 2022 knocked a commercial satellite communications network offline.

Most recently, US government officials have claimed Russia is developing a nuclear anti-satellite weapon. Russian officials also denied this. But Russia vetoed a UN Security Council resolution last month reiterating language from the 1967 Outer Space Treaty banning weapons of mass destruction in orbit.

The US military has its own fleet of inspector satellites in orbit to track what other nations are doing in space. The Space Force’s development of any offensive military capability in space is classified.

“The space domain is much more challenging today than it was a number a number of years ago,” said Air Force Gen. Charles “CQ” Brown, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, in an event Wednesday hosted by the Atlantic Council. “We looked at it as a very benign environment, where you didn’t have to worry about conflicts in space. As a matter of fact, naming space as a warfighting domain was kind of forbidden, but that’s changed, and it’s been changed based what our adversaries are doing in space.”

“We don’t want to have our satellites … be challenged,” Brown said. “So we want to make sure that we have the capabilities to defend ourselves, no matter what domain we’re in, whether it’s in the space domain, air, land, or maritime. That’s where our focus is as a military, in making sure we’re investing to provide the capabilities and expertise to do that.”

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SpaceX sets date for next Starship flight, explains what went wrong the last time

Science, Space, spacex, starship / /

IFT-4 on June 5 —

Clearing blocked filters and clogged valves is the order of the day.

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SpaceX's Starship vehicle undergoes a wet dress rehearsal prior to its fourth launch attempt.

Enlarge / SpaceX’s Starship vehicle undergoes a wet dress rehearsal prior to its fourth launch attempt.

SpaceX

SpaceX is targeting June 5 for the next flight of its massive Starship rocket, the company said Friday.

The highly anticipated test flight— the fourth in a program to bring Starship to operational readiness and make progress toward its eventual reuse—will seek to demonstrate the ability of the Super Heavy first stage to make a soft landing in the Gulf of Mexico and for the Starship upper stage to make a controlled reentry through Earth’s atmosphere before it falls into the Indian Ocean.

This mission will carry no payloads as SpaceX seeks additional flight data about the performance of the complex Starship vehicle. It is simultaneously the largest and most powerful rocket ever built and the first launch system ever intended to be fully and rapidly reusable.

As part of its announcement of the flight date, SpaceX provided some information about its learnings from the most recent flight test, Flight 3, which launched on March 14, 2024.

Dissecting Flight 3

During that flight, SpaceX also attempted a soft landing of the Super Heavy first stage. After its separation from the Starship upper stage, as intended, 13 of Super Heavy’s 33 Raptor engines successfully relit to make a controlled flight through the lower atmosphere. During this boostback burn, however, six of these engines shut down early. Later in the descent, as the rocket neared the sea surface, the rocket was supposed to use the same 13 engines to make a final landing burn.

“The six engines that shut down early in the boostback burn were disabled from attempting the landing burn startup, leaving seven engines commanded to start up with two successfully reaching mainstage ignition,” the company said in its recap of the flight. “The booster had lower than expected landing burn thrust when contact was lost at approximately 462 meters in altitude over the Gulf of Mexico and just under seven minutes into the mission.”

The cause of this failure was traced to blockage in a filter where liquid oxygen flows into the Raptor engines. Notably, a similar problem occurred during the second test flight of Starship in November 2023. SpaceX says it implemented “hardware changes” to address this blockage issue for the third test flight. Now, the company said, “Super Heavy boosters for Flight 4 and beyond will get additional hardware inside oxygen tanks to further improve propellant filtration capabilities.” It will be interesting to see whether the company’s engineers have successfully addressed this issue.

As for the Starship upper stage, the vehicle began losing the ability to control its attitude during its coast phase in space. This was found to be due to clogged valves used by reaction control thrusters on the upper stage. The company’s update notes that “SpaceX has since added additional roll control thrusters on upcoming Starships.” But it is not clear that they will be available for Flight 4. Indeed, the fact that SpaceX is not attempting an in-flight relight of Raptor engines on the Starship upper stage suggests these new roll control thrusters are not yet in place.

Ultimately this lack of attitude control during Flight 3 resulted in a non-nominal reentry to Earth’s atmosphere. SpaceX was able to maintain contact with the vehicle down to 65 km in altitude before telemetry was lost due to excess heating.

Back to the basics

On Flight 3, SpaceX achieved some important milestones, including the opening of the Starship payload bay door in space and a small propellant transfer demonstration. Due to the loss of attitude control, however, a planned Raptor rocket engine re-light test was not conducted. This is an important test, as Raptor ignition is needed to perform a controlled reentry—essentially to ensure that Starship returns to a remote section of ocean rather than land.

For the next flight, SpaceX is focused on solving the technical issues observed on Flight 3: the filter blockages observed during Super Heavy’s boostback and landing burns, Starship’s attitude control during its coast phase, and managing reentry of that vehicle from orbital velocity.

Once these issues are resolved, the company can proceed to more advanced tests, including landing the Super Heavy booster back at the South Texas launch site, deployment of Starlink satellites, and additional tests of propellant transfer essential for NASA’s Artemis Program to land humans on the Moon.

SpaceX sets date for next Starship flight, explains what went wrong the last time Read More »

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After mice drink raw H5N1 milk, bird flu virus riddles their organs

avian influenza, bird flu, CDC, cows, dairy cows, fda, flu, H5N1, Infectious disease, Mice, milk, outbreak, raw milk, Science, USDA, virus / /

Deadly dairy —

No, really, drinking raw milk during the H5N1 outbreak is a bad idea.

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Fresh raw milk being poured into a container on a dairy farm on July 29, 2023, in De Lutte, Netherlands.

Enlarge / Fresh raw milk being poured into a container on a dairy farm on July 29, 2023, in De Lutte, Netherlands.

Despite the delusions of the raw milk crowd, drinking unpasteurized milk brimming with infectious avian H5N1 influenza virus is a very bad idea, according to freshly squeezed data published Friday in the New England Journal of Medicine.

Researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison squirted raw H5N1-containing milk from infected cows into the throats of anesthetized laboratory mice, finding that the virus caused systemic infections after the mice were observed swallowing the dose. The illnesses began quickly, with symptoms of lethargy and ruffled fur starting on day 1. On day 4, the animals were euthanized to prevent extended suffering. Subsequent analysis found that the mice had high levels of H5N1 bird flu virus in their respiratory tracts, as well their hearts, kidneys, spleens, livers, mammary glands, and brains.

“Collectively, our data indicate that HPAI [Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza] A(H5N1) virus in untreated milk can infect susceptible animals that consume it,” the researchers concluded. The researchers also found that raw milk containing H5N1 can remain infectious for weeks when stored at refrigerator temperatures.

Bird flu has not historically been considered a foodborne pathogen, but prior to the unexpected outbreak of H5N1 in US dairy cows discovered in March, it had never been found at high levels in a food product like milk before. While experts have stepped up warnings against drinking raw milk amid the outbreak, the mouse experiment offers some of the first data on the risks of H5N1 from drinking unpasteurized dairy.

Before the mouse data, numerous reports have noted carnivores falling ill with H5N1 after eating infected wild birds. And a study from March in the journal Emerging Infectious Diseases reported that over half of the 24 or so cats on an H5N1-infected dairy farm in Texas died after drinking raw milk from the sick cows. Before their deaths, the cats displayed distressing neurological symptoms, and studies found the virus had invaded their lungs, brains, hearts, and eyes.

While the data cannot definitely determine if humans who drink H5N1-contaminated raw milk will suffer the same fate as the mice and cats, it highlights the very real risk. Still, raw milk enthusiasts have disregarded the concerns. PBS NewsHour reported last week that since March 25, when the H5N1 outbreak in US dairy cows was announced, weekly sales of raw cow’s milk have ticked up 21 percent, to as much as 65 percent compared with the same periods a year ago, according to data shared by market research firm NielsenIQ. Moreover, the founder of California-based Raw Milk Institute, Mark McAfee, told the Los Angeles Times this month that his customers baselessly believe drinking H5N1 will give them immunity to the deadly pathogen.

In normal times, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Food and Drug Administration strongly discourage drinking raw milk. Without pasteurization, it can easily be contaminated with a wide variety of pathogens, including Campylobacter, Cryptosporidium, E. coli, Listeria, Brucella, and Salmonella.

Fortunately, for the bulk of Americans who heed germ theory, pasteurization appears completely effective at deactivating the virus in milk, according to thorough testing by the FDA. Pasteurized milk is considered safe during the outbreak. The US Department of Agriculture, meanwhile, reports finding no H5N1 in retail beef so far and, in laboratory experiments, beef patties purposefully inoculated with H5N1 had no viable virus in them after the patties were cooked to 145°F (medium) or 160°F (well done).

To date, the USDA has reported that H5N1 has infected at least 58 dairy herds in nine states.

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Rocket Report: SpaceX focused on Starship reentry; Firefly may be for sale

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Fiery news —

“Teams are in the process of completing a follow-on propulsion system assessment.”

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A Falcon 9 rocket launches the NROL-146 mission from California this week.

Enlarge / A Falcon 9 rocket launches the NROL-146 mission from California this week.

SpaceX

Welcome to Edition 6.45 of the Rocket Report! The most interesting news in launch this week, to me, is that Firefly is potentially up for sale. That makes two of the handful of US companies with operational rockets, Firefly and United Launch Alliance, actively on offer. I’ll be fascinated to see what the valuations of each end up being if/when sales go through.

As always, we welcome reader submissions, and 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.

Firefly may be up for sale. Firefly Aerospace investors are considering a sale that could value the closely held rocket and Moon lander maker at about $1.5 billion, Bloomberg reports. The rocket company’s primary owner, AE Industrial Partners, is working with an adviser on “strategic options” for Firefly. Neither AE nor Firefly commented to Bloomberg about the potential sale. AE invested $75 million into Texas-based Firefly as part of a series B financing round in 2022. The firm made a subsequent investment in its Series C round in November 2023.

Launches and landers … Now more than a decade old and with a history of financial struggles, Firefly has emerged as one of the apparent winners in the small launch race in the United States. The company’s Alpha rocket has now launched four times since its unsuccessful debut in September 2021, and it is due to fly a Venture Class Launch Services 2 mission for NASA in the coming weeks. Firefly also aims to launch its Blue Ghost spacecraft to the moon later this year and is working on an orbital transfer vehicle.

Blue Origin makes successful return to flight. With retired Air Force captain and test pilot Ed Dwight as the headline passenger, Blue Origin’s New Shepard spacecraft returned to flight on Sunday morning. An African American, Dwight was one of 26 pilots the Air Force recommended to NASA for the third class of astronauts in 1963, but the agency didn’t select him. It took another 20 years for America’s first Black astronaut, Guion Bluford, to fly in space in 1983. At the age of 90, Dwight finally entered the record books Sunday, becoming the oldest person to reach space. “I thought I didn’t need it in my life,” Dwight said after Sunday’s fight. “But I lied!”

One chute down … This was the seventh time Blue Origin, the space company owned by billionaire Jeff Bezos, has flown people to suborbital space, and the 25th flight overall of the company’s fleet of New Shepard rockets. It was the first time Blue Origin had launched people in nearly two years, resuming suborbital service after a rocket failure on an uncrewed research flight in September 2022. In December, Blue Origin launched another uncrewed suborbital research mission to set the stage for the resumption of human missions Sunday. There was one issue with the flight, as only two of the capsule’s three parachutes deployed. It’s unclear how long it will take to address this problem.

The easiest way to keep up with Eric Berger’s space reporting is to sign up for his newsletter, we’ll collect his stories in your inbox.

RFA tests first stage of its rocket. German launch startup Rocket Factory Augsburg announced Sunday that it had begun the hot-fire campaign for the first stage of its RFA One rocket. “We hot-fired a total of four Helix engines, igniting one by one at four-second intervals,” the company said on the social media site X. “All engines ran simultaneously for 8 seconds with a total hot-fire duration of 20 seconds. The test ran flawlessly through start-up, steady-state, and shutdown.” It’s a great step forward for the launch company.

Targeting a test flight this year, but … The test occurred at the SaxaVord Spaceport in the United Kingdom. The RFA One vehicle is powered by nine Helix engines and will have a payload capacity of 1.6 metric tons to low-Earth orbit. The company is targeting a debut launch later this year, but I’m fairly skeptical of that. By way of comparison, SpaceX began test firing its Falcon 9 first stage in 2008, with a full-duration test firing of all nine engines in November of that year. But the rocket did not make its debut flight until June 2010.

China expanding commercial spaceport. China is planning new phases of expansion for its new commercial spaceport to support an expected surge in launch and commercial space activity, Space News reports. Construction of the second of two launch pads at Hainan Commercial Launch Site could be completed by the end of May. The first, completed in December and dedicated to the Long March 8 rocket, could host its first launch before the end of June.

Fulfilling a mega-need … However this appears to be just the beginning, as the spaceport could have a total of 10 pads serving both liquid and solid rockets. The reason for the dramatic expansion appears to be increasing access to space and allowing China to achieve a launch rate needed to build a pair of low-Earth orbit megaconstellations, each over 10,000 satellites strong. It is also a further sign of China’s commitment to establishing a thriving commercial space sector. (submitted by Ken the Bin)

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