Science

here’s-why-a-japanese-billionaire-just-canceled-his-lunar-flight-on-starship

Here’s why a Japanese billionaire just canceled his lunar flight on Starship

dearmoon, Science, Space, spacex / /

No Moon —

“I feel terrible making the crew members wait longer.”

–

Elon Musk speaks as Yusaku Maezawa, founder and president of Start Today Co., looks on at an event at the SpaceX headquarters in Hawthorne, California, in 2018.

Enlarge / Elon Musk speaks as Yusaku Maezawa, founder and president of Start Today Co., looks on at an event at the SpaceX headquarters in Hawthorne, California, in 2018.

Patrick T. Fallon/Bloomberg via Getty Images

On Friday night the dearMoon project—a plan to launch a Japanese billionaire and 10 other ‘crew members’ on a circumlunar flight aboard SpaceX’s Starship vehicle—was abruptly canceled.

“It is unfortunate to be announcing that ‘dearMoon’, the first private circumlunar flight project, will be cancelled,” the mission’s official account on the social media site X said. “We thank everyone who has supported us and apologize to those who have looked forward to this project.”

Shortly afterward the financial backer of the project and its ‘crew leader,’ Yusaku Maezawa, explained this decision on X. When Maezawa agreed to the mission in 2018, he said, the assumption was that the dearMoon mission would launch by the end of 2023.

“It’s a developmental project so it is what it is, but it is still uncertain as to when Starship can launch,” he wrote. “I can’t plan my future in this situation, and I feel terrible making the crew members wait longer, hence the difficult decision to cancel at this point in time. I apologize to those who were excited for this project to happen.”

The mission was to be Starship’s first human spaceflight to launch from Earth, fly around the Moon, and come back. Now, it’s not happening. Why did this happen, and what does it mean?

Origins of the mission

Maezawa and Musk made the announcement, side by side, at SpaceX’s rocket factory in Hawthorne in September 2018. It was something of an odd but important moment. It seemed significant that SpaceX was signing its first commercial contract for the massive Starship rocket. And while the value was not disclosed, Maezawa was injecting something on the order of the low hundreds of millions of dollars into the program.

Maezawa, however, always came off as a bit non-serious. He said he would hold a competition to fill 10 other seats on board the vehicle. “I did not want to have such a fantastic experience by myself,” he said. “I would be a little lonely.” Later, he did select a crew of creative people.

Initially, however, Maezawa did take the project seriously. When I watched the very first Starship hop test in July 2019, there were only a handful of visitors on hand to view the brief flight of “Starhopper.” One of them was a representative of Maezawa who was keeping close tabs on the progress of Starship.

As big space projects do—and to the surprise of no one—Starship ran behind in its development. The first test flight did not occur until April 2023, and that was just the beginning. The dearMoon mission lay at the very end of a long line of tests that the vehicle must complete: safe launch, controlled flight in space, safe landing of the Starship upper stage, in-space refueling, habitability in space, and much more.

With the fourth test flight of Starship coming in a few days, as early as June 5, SpaceX has so far demonstrated the ability to safely launch Starship. So it remains at the beginning of a challenging technical journey.

A turning point

One of the biggest impacts to the dearMoon project came in April 2021, when NASA selected the Starship vehicle as the lunar lander for its Artemis Program. This put the large vehicle on the critical path for NASA’s ambitious program to land humans on the surface of the Moon. It also offered an order of magnitude more funding, $2.9 billion, and the promise of more if SpaceX could deliver a vehicle to take humans down to the Moon’s surface from lunar orbit, and back.

Since then SpaceX has had two clear priorities for its Starship program. The first of these is to become operational, and begin deploying larger Starlink satellites. And the second is to use these flights to test technologies needed for NASA’s Artemis Program, such as in-space propellant storage and refueling.

As a result other aspects of the program, including dearMoon, were deprioritized. In recent months it became clear that if Maezawa’s mission happened, it would not occur until at least the early 2030s—at least a decade after the original plan.

Changing fortunes

In the meantime, Maezawa’s priorities also likely changed. According to Forbes, when the plan was announced in 2018, the entrepreneur had a net worth of about $3 billion. Today he is estimated to be worth only half of that. Additionally, he scratched his itch to go to space in 2021, flying aboard a Russian Soyuz vehicle for a 12-day trip to the International Space Station.

The writing has been on the wall for a while about Maezawa, since SpaceX founder Elon Musk unfollowed the Japanese entrepreneur on X earlier this year. (This is a sure sign of his disfavor. Musk has unfollowed me twice on Twitter/X after stories or interactions he did not like.) It is probable that the combination of developmental delays and Maezawa’s personal fortunes led the parties to disband the project.

This all leaves a clearer road ahead for Starship: Become operational, start flying Starlink satellites, and begin ticking off the technical challenges for Artemis. Then, several years from now, the company will turn its attention toward the challenging prospect of launching humans inside Starship from Earth, and then landing back on the planet. The first of these people will be another billionaire, Jared Isaacman, who has already flown on Crew Dragon and plans at least two more such flights before the pioneering Starship mission.

Here’s why a Japanese billionaire just canceled his lunar flight on Starship Read More »

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Daily Telescope: The most distant galaxy found so far is a total surprise

daily telescope, Science, Space / /

A delightful surprise —

“Its discovery has profound implications.”

–

Behold, the most distant galaxy found to date.

Enlarge / Behold, the most distant galaxy found to date.

NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI 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 June 1, and today’s photo comes from the James Webb Space Telescope. It’s a banger.

This telescope, launched 18 months ago now, had as one of its express goals to deliver insights about the early Universe. The most straightforward way of doing so is to collect the faintest, most distant light that has spent the longest time traveling to reach Earth.

In some eye-opening new results, the telescope has found and confirmed the discovery of a very bright galaxy that existed just 300 million years after the Big Bang. Based on their observations, astronomers believe the galaxy is 1,600 light-years across and has a mass several hundreds of millions of times the mass of the Sun.

The galaxy may not have the catchiest name—it’s JADES-GS-z14-0, after the JWST Advanced Deep Extragalactic Survey program—but in every other way, it’s a remarkable find.

“All of these observations, together, tell us that JADES-GS-z14-0 is not like the types of galaxies that have been predicted by theoretical models and computer simulations to exist in the very early universe,” the astronomers said. “Its discovery has profound implications for the predicted number of bright galaxies we see in the early universe.”

Source: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Brant Robertson (UC Santa Cruz), Ben Johnson (CfA), Sandro Tacchella (Cambridge), Phill Cargile (CfA)

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

Daily Telescope: The most distant galaxy found so far is a total surprise Read More »

nitrogen-using-bacteria-can-cut-farms’-greenhouse-gas-emissions 

Nitrogen-using bacteria can cut farms’ greenhouse gas emissions 

agriculture, bacteria, Biology, climate change, fertilizer, nitrogen, Science / /

Keeping crops from the greenhouse —

Nitrogen fertilizers get converted to nitrous oxide, a potent greenhouse gas.

–

A tractor amidst many rows of small plants, with brown hills in the background.

Fritz Haber: good guy or bad guy? He won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1918 for his part in developing the Haber-Bosch process, a method for generating ammonia using the nitrogen gas in air. The technique freed agriculture from the constraint of needing to source guano or manure for nitrogen fertilizer and is widely credited for saving millions from starvation. About half of the world’s current food supply relies on fertilizers made using it, and about half of the nitrogen atoms in our bodies can be traced back to it.

But it also allowed farmers to use this newly abundant synthetic nitrogen fertilizer with abandon. This has accentuated agriculture’s role as a significant contributor to global warming because the emissions that result from these fertilizers is a greenhouse gas—one that has a warming potential almost 300 times greater than that of carbon dioxide and remains in the atmosphere for 100 years. Microbes in soil convert nitrogen fertilizer into nitrous oxide, and the more nitrogen fertilizer they have to work with, the more nitrous oxide they make.

Agriculture also leaks plenty of the excess nitrogen into waterways in the form of nitrate, generating algal blooms that create low-oxygen ‘dead zones’ where no marine life can live.

One way to reduce nitrogen emissions from farms would be to simply use fertilizer more efficiently. But—as we’ve seen with fossil fuels (and antibiotics and plastics)—when humans have a miraculous substance on our hands, we just can’t seem to use it at levels that minimize its impact. We instead seem compelled to throw around as much of the stuff as we can. But even if we were to start using less fertilizer now, we are past time to choose a single technique to curb greenhouse gas emissions; we need to put them all into action.

Denitrifying bacteria reduces levels of nitrous oxide in soil by converting it to the molecular form of nitrogen found in air. They use it as an oxidizer for respiration under conditions with low or no oxygen. So adding these nitrogen-respiring bacteria to soil could help decrease nitrous oxide emissions.

Modifying the microbiome of soil is just as hard as modifying the microbiome in our bodies. So instead of trying to promote the growth of any denitrifying bacteria that might happen to already be in soil, researchers decided to grow them externally and then add them in. Their source was partially treated sewage, called digestate, that was destined as organic fertilizer anyway. Keeping the digestate in oxygen-free conditions enriched their levels of one strain of nitrogen-respiring bacteria.

The researchers homed in on this particular strain because it has the enzyme needed to break down nitrous oxide, but not the enzymes used to make it from other nitrogen compounds. And although it is not the fastest, most efficient strain at nitrogen respiration, it won because it is the most tenacious: It grows to high concentrations even when oxygen is present, and it works well in soil.

When this digestate was mixed into soil, fertilizer-induced emissions were reduced by 50–95 percent, depending on the pH and organic carbon content of the soils. The effect lasted over the entire growing season. The presence of the added nitrogen-respiring bacteria did not seem to affect the indigenous microbiota already present in the soil, and the added bacteria did not carry genes for antibiotic resistance or pathogenicity, which is obviously essential if they are to be used in farming. What hasn’t been tested yet, however, is whether the presence of these bacteria influence the growth of crops.

Using mathematical modeling of future emissions, the researchers concluded that adding these bacteria to soil could reduce nitrous oxide emissions by 60 percent, and if they are added to all liquid manure systems in Europe, Europe could reduce its anthropogenic nitrous oxide emissions by 3 to 4 percent.

Nature, 2024.  DOI: 10.1038/s41586-024-07464-3

Nitrogen-using bacteria can cut farms’ greenhouse gas emissions  Read More »

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Boeing’s Starliner capsule poised for second try at first astronaut flight

atlas v, Boeing, commercial crew, human spaceflight, international space station, NASA, Science, Space, starliner, united launch alliance / /
Boeing's Starliner spacecraft sits on top of a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida.

Enlarge / Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft sits on top of a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida.

NASA and Boeing officials are ready for a second attempt to launch the first crew test flight on the Starliner spacecraft Saturday from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida.

Liftoff of Boeing’s Starliner capsuled atop a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket is set for 12: 25 pm EDT (16: 25 UTC). NASA commander Butch Wilmore and pilot Suni Williams, both veteran astronauts, will take the Starliner spacecraft on its first trip into low-Earth orbit with a crew on board.

You can watch NASA TV’s live coverage of the countdown and launch below.

The first crew flight on a new spacecraft is not an everyday event. Starliner is the sixth orbital-class crew spacecraft in the history of the US space program, following Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, the space shuttle, and SpaceX’s Crew Dragon. NASA signed a $4.2 billion contract with Boeing in 2014 to develop Starliner, but the project is running years behind schedule and has cost Boeing nearly $1.5 billion in cost overruns. SpaceX, meanwhile, won a contract at the same time as Boeing and started launching astronauts on the Crew Dragon four years ago this week.

Now, it is finally Starliner’s turn. A successful crew test flight would set the stage for six operational Starliner flights to ferry astronauts to and from the International Space Station (ISS).

Assuming the test flight gets off the ground Saturday, the spacecraft is due for docking at the ISS at 1: 50 pm EDT (17: 50 UTC) Sunday to begin a stay of at least eight days. Once managers are satisfied the mission has achieved all its planned test objectives, and pending good weather conditions in Starliner’s landing zone in the western United States, the spacecraft will depart the station and return to Earth for a parachute-assisted touchdown. If the mission takes off on Saturday, the earliest nominal landing date would be Monday, June 10.

Wilmore and Williams have been here before. On May 6, the astronauts were strapped into their seats inside Starliner’s cockpit awaiting takeoff on a flight to the International Space Station. A valve malfunction on the Atlas V rocket prevented launch that day, and officials subsequently discovered a helium leak on Starliner’s service module that delayed the mission until this weekend.

Flying as-is

After weeks of reviews and analysis, managers determined Starliner is safe to fly as-is with the leak. The spacecraft uses helium gas to pressurize its propulsion system and push hydrazine and nitrogen tetroxide propellants from internal tanks to the capsule’s maneuvering thrusters.

“When we looked at this problem, it didn’t come down to trades,” said Mark Nappi, Boeing’s vice president and program manager for Starliner. “It came down to: Is it safe or not? And it is safe, and that is why we determined that we can fly with what we have.”

Ground teams traced the leak to a flange on one of four doghouse-shaped propulsion pods around the perimeter of the Starliner spacecraft’s service module. In a worst-case scenario, if the condition grew worse during the flight, ground controllers could isolate it by closing the manifold feeding the leak. If the leak doesn’t worsen, engineers are confident they can manage it with no major impacts to the mission.

“We looked really hard at what our options were with this particular flange,” said Steve Stich, manager of NASA’s commercial crew program, which oversees the agency’s contract with Boeing. The flange has a helium conduit and lines for the spacecraft’s toxic fuel and oxidizer, which makes a repair “problematic,” Stich said.

Starliner commander Butch Wilmore and pilot Suni Williams arrived back at NASA's Kennedy Space Center earlier this week to prepare for launch.

Enlarge / Starliner commander Butch Wilmore and pilot Suni Williams arrived back at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center earlier this week to prepare for launch.

In order to safely fix the leak, which officials believe is likely caused by a defective seal, ground teams would have to disconnect the capsule from the Atlas V rocket, take it back to a hangar, drain its propellant tanks. This would probably push back the long-delayed Starliner test flight until late this year.

But the leak is relatively small and stable. “It’s about a half-pound per day out of 50 pounds of total capability in the tank,” Stich said.

“In our case, we have margin in the helium tank, and we’ve looked really hard to understand that margin and to understand the worst cases, and we took the time to go through that data,” Stich said. “We really think we can manage this leak, both by looking at it before the launch, and then if it got bigger in flight, we could manage it.”

Boeing’s Starliner capsule poised for second try at first astronaut flight Read More »

fda’s-review-of-mdma-for-ptsd-highlights-study-bias-and-safety-concerns

FDA’s review of MDMA for PTSD highlights study bias and safety concerns

bias, clinical trial, fda, health, mdma, PTSD, Science / /

Complicated —

FDA advisors will meet June 4 to discuss and vote on the therapy’s effectiveness.

–

MDMA is now in the FDA's hands.

Enlarge / MDMA is now in the FDA’s hands.

The safety and efficacy data on the use of MDMA (aka ecstasy) for post-traumatic stress disorder therapy is “challenging to interpret,” the Food and Drug Administration said in a briefing document posted Friday. The agency noted significant flaws in the design of the underlying clinical trials as well as safety concerns for the drug, particularly cardiovascular harms.

On Tuesday, June 4, the FDA will convene an advisory committee that will review the evidence and vote on MDMA’s efficacy and whether its benefits outweigh its risks. The FDA does not have to follow the committee’s recommendations, but it often does. If the FDA subsequently approves MDMA as part of treatment for PTSD, it would mark a significant shift in the federal government’s stance on MDMA, as well as psychedelics, generally. Currently, the US Drug Enforcement Administration considers MDMA a Schedule I drug, defined as one with “no currently accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse.” It would also offer a new treatment option for patients with PTSD, a disabling psychiatric condition with few treatment options currently.

As Ars has reported previously, the submission of MDMA for approval is based on two clinical trials. The first trial, published in Nature Medicine in 2021, involved 90 participants with moderate PTSD and found that MDMA-assisted psychotherapy significantly improved Clinician-Administered PTSD Scale for DSM-5 (CAPS-5) scores compared with participants who were given psychotherapy along with a placebo. In the second study, published in September in Nature Medicine, the finding held up among 104 participants with moderate or severe PTSD (73 percent had severe PTSD).

In the briefing documents released Friday, the FDA highlighted that there was a high potential for bias to have crept into those results. Though the trials were designed to be double-blind (meaning that therapists and trial participants were not told who received MDMA), the FDA noted that MDMA “produces profound alterations in mood, sensation, suggestibility, and cognition.” Blinding is “nearly impossible,” the FDA wrote.  And indeed, approximately 90 percent of those assigned to take MDMA and 75 percent of those assigned to a placebo were able to accurately guess their treatment assignment, the FDA notes. As such, it is “reasonable to assume” that bias and “expectation bias” affected the results of the trials, the FDA concluded.

The agency also noted concerns that MDMA caused “significant increases in blood pressure and pulse,” which could trigger cardiac events, such as heart attacks. However, the trial data was limited for assessing the risks of these adverse events.

The FDA also dinged the studies for not including data on whether participants experienced effects such as “euphoria” after taking MDMA—an anticipated effect that could indicate the drug’s potential for abuse.

In all, the FDA’s review presented a complicated picture of MDMA’s risk-benefit assessment, one that should make for an interesting discussion Tuesday. The FDA’s criticisms follows an even more critical report released earlier this month by the Institute for Clinical and Economic Review (ICER), which identified “substantial concerns about the validity of the results” from the clinical trials.

Like the FDA, ICER found the trials to be “essentially unblinded.” However, ICER went further, having conducted a number of interviews with trial participants and others involved, finding that the trials largely pulled from an existing community of psychedelic advocates and supporters, introducing significant bias. “Concerns have been raised by some that therapists encouraged favorable reports by patients and discouraged negative reports by patients including discouraging reports of substantial harms, potentially biasing the recording of benefits and harms,” the report said. MDMA is known to induce confusion, depression, and paranoia in some. One participant reported feeling “relentlessly suicidal” after the trial, as a result of participating in it, but that result was not reflected in the trial’s reported results.

Various people told ICER that the community involved in the trials regarded psychedelics “more like a religious movement than like pharmaceutical products.” Some participants felt as though “they could be shunned if they reported bad outcomes or that it could lead to future patients being denied the benefits of MDMA-AP.”

In all, ICER concluded that the evidence available to assess for MDMA treatment is “insufficient.”

Editor’s Note: This story was corrected to report that the participant’s suicidal thoughts occurred after the trial, as a result of participation, not during the trial.

FDA’s review of MDMA for PTSD highlights study bias and safety concerns Read More »

mutations-in-a-non-coding-gene-associated-with-intellectual-disability

Mutations in a non-coding gene associated with intellectual disability

Biology, developmental disorders, Genetics, neurobiology, neurodevelopment, RNA, Science, spacing / /

Splice of life —

A gene that only makes an RNA is linked to neurodevelopmental problems.

–

Colored ribbons that represent the molecular structure of a large collection of proteins and RNAs.

Enlarge / The spliceosome is a large complex of proteins and RNAs.

Almost 1,500 genes have been implicated in intellectual disabilities; yet for most people with such disabilities, genetic causes remain unknown. Perhaps this is in part because geneticists have been focusing on the wrong stretches of DNA when they go searching. To rectify this, Ernest Turro—a biostatistician who focuses on genetics, genomics, and molecular diagnostics—used whole genome sequencing data from the 100,000 Genomes Project to search for areas associated with intellectual disabilities.

His lab found a genetic association that is the most common one yet to be associated with neurodevelopmental abnormality. And the gene they identified doesn’t even make a protein.

Trouble with the spliceosome

Most genes include instructions for how to make proteins. That’s true. And yet human genes are not arranged linearly—or rather, they are arranged linearly, but not contiguously. A gene containing the instructions for which amino acids to string together to make a particular protein—hemoglobin, insulin, serotonin, albumin, estrogen, whatever protein you like—is modular. It contains part of the amino acid sequence, then it has a chunk of DNA that is largely irrelevant to that sequence, then a bit more of the protein’s sequence, then another chunk of random DNA, back and forth until the end of the protein. It’s as if each of these prose paragraphs were separated by a string of unrelated letters (but not a meaningful paragraph from a different article).

In order to read this piece through coherently, you’d have to take out the letters interspersed between its paragraphs. And that’s exactly what happens with genes. In order to read the gene through coherently, the cell has machinery that splices out the intervening sequences and links up the protein-making instructions into a continuous whole. (This doesn’t happen in the DNA itself; it happens to an RNA copy of the gene.) The cell’s machinery is obviously called the spliceosome.

There are about a hundred proteins that comprise the spliceosome. But the gene just found to be so strongly associated with neurodevelopmental disorders doesn’t encode any of them. Rather, it encodes one of five RNA molecules that are also part of the spliceosome complex and interact with the RNAs that are being spliced. Mutations in this gene were found to be associated with a syndrome with symptoms that include intellectual disability, seizures, short stature, neurodevelopmental delay, drooling, motor delay, hypotonia (low muscle tone), and microcephaly (having a small head).

Supporting data

The researchers buttressed their finding by examining three other databases; in all of them, they found more people with the syndrome who had mutations in this same gene. The mutations occur in a remarkably conserved region of the genome, suggesting that it is very important. Most of the mutations were new in the affected people—i.e. not inherited from their parents—but there was one case of one particular mutation in the gene that was inherited. Based on this, the researchers concluded that this particular variant may cause a less severe disorder than the other mutations.

Many studies that look for genes associated with diseases have focused on searching catalogs of protein coding genes. These results suggest that we could have been missing important mutations because of this focus.

Nature Medicine, 2024. DOI: 10.1038/s41591-024-03085-5

Mutations in a non-coding gene associated with intellectual disability Read More »

rocket-report:-north-korean-rocket-explosion;-launch-over-chinese-skyline

Rocket Report: North Korean rocket explosion; launch over Chinese skyline

Boeing, china, Commercial space, european space agency, falcon 9, human spaceflight, india, launch, North Korea, rocket lab, rocket report, russia, Science, Space, spacex, starliner, starship / /
A sea-borne variant of the commercial Ceres 1 rocket lifts off near the coast of Rizhao, a city of 3 million in China's Shandong province.

Enlarge / A sea-borne variant of the commercial Ceres 1 rocket lifts off near the coast of Rizhao, a city of 3 million in China’s Shandong province.

Welcome to Edition 6.46 of the Rocket Report! It looks like we will be covering the crew test flight of Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft and the fourth test flight of SpaceX’s giant Starship rocket over the next week. All of this is happening as SpaceX keeps up its cadence of flying multiple Starlink missions per week. The real stars are the Ars copy editors helping make sure our stories don’t use the wrong names.

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.

Another North Korean launch failure. North Korea’s latest attempt to launch a rocket with a military reconnaissance satellite ended in failure due to the midair explosion of the rocket during the first-stage flight this week, South Korea’s Yonhap News Agency reports. Video captured by the Japanese news organization NHK appears to show the North Korean rocket disappearing in a fireball shortly after liftoff Monday night from a launch pad on the country’s northwest coast. North Korean officials acknowledged the launch failure and said the rocket was carrying a small reconnaissance satellite named Malligyong-1-1.

Russia’s role? … Experts initially thought the pending North Korean launch, which was known ahead of time from international airspace warning notices, would use the same Chŏllima 1 rocket used on three flights last year. But North Korean statements following the launch Monday indicated the rocket used a new propulsion system burning a petroleum-based fuel, presumably kerosene, with liquid oxygen as the oxidizer. The Chŏllima 1 rocket design used a toxic mixture of hypergolic hydrazine and nitrogen tetroxide as propellants. If North Korea’s statement is true, this would be a notable leap in the country’s rocket technology and begs the question of whether Russia played a significant role in the launch. Last year, Russian President Vladimir Putin pledged more Russian support for North Korea’s rocket program in a meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. (submitted by Ken the Bin and Jay500001)

Rocket Lab deploys small NASA climate satellite. Rocket Lab is in the midst of back-to-back launches for NASA, carrying identical climate research satellites into different orbits to study heat loss to space in Earth’s polar regions. The Polar Radiant Energy in the Far-InfraRed Experiment (PREFIRE) satellites are each about the size of a shoebox, and NASA says data from PREFIRE will improve computer models that researchers use to predict how Earth’s ice, seas, and weather will change in a warming world. “The difference between the amount of heat Earth absorbs at the tropics and that radiated out from the Arctic and Antarctic is a key influence on the planet’s temperature, helping to drive dynamic systems of climate and weather,” NASA said in a statement.

Twice in a week… NASA selected Rocket Lab’s Electron launch vehicle to deliver the two PREFIRE satellites into orbit on two dedicated rides rather than launching at a lower cost on a rideshare mission. This is because scientists want the satellites flying at the proper alignment to ensure they fly over the poles several hours apart, providing the data needed to measure how the rate at which heat radiates from the polar regions changes over time. The first PREFIRE launch occurred on May 25, and the next one is slated for May 31. Both launches will take off from Rocket Lab’s base in New Zealand. (submitted by Ken the Bin)

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.

A rocket launch comes to Rizhao. China has diversified its launch sector over the last decade to include new families of small satellite launchers and new spaceports. One of these relatively new small rockets, the solid-fueled Ceres 1, took off Wednesday from a floating launch pad positioned about 2 miles (3 km) off the coast of Rizhao, a city of roughly 3 million people in China’s Shandong province. The Ceres 1 rocket, developed by a quasi-commercial company called Galactic Energy, has previously flown from land-based launch pads and a sea-borne platform, but this mission originated from a location remarkably close to shore, with the skyline of a major metropolitan area as a backdrop.

Range safety … There’s no obvious orbital mechanics reason to position the rocket’s floating launch platform so near a major Chinese city, other than perhaps to gain a logistical advantage by launching close to port. The Ceres 1 rocket has a fairly good reliability record—11 successes in 12 flights—but for safety reasons, there’s no Western spaceport that would allow members of the public (not to mention a few million) to get so close to a rocket launch. For decades, Chinese rockets have routinely dropped rocket boosters containing toxic propellant on farms and villages downrange from the country’s inland spaceports.

Rocket Report: North Korean rocket explosion; launch over Chinese skyline Read More »

modern-lives-are-messing-up-menstrual-cycles—earlier-starts,-more-irregularity

Modern lives are messing up menstrual cycles—earlier starts, more irregularity

Apple, health, IPhone, JAMA, menstrual cycles, obesity, period, puberty, Science / /

downward trend —

Earlier and irregular periods are both linked to poor health outcomes.

–

Panty liners, hygienic tampons, and sanitary pads.

Enlarge / Panty liners, hygienic tampons, and sanitary pads.

People in the US are starting their menstrual cycles earlier and experiencing more irregularities, both of which raise the risk of a host of health problems later in life, according to an Apple women’s health study looking at data from over 70,000 menstruating iPhone users born between 1950 and 2005.

The mean age of people’s first period fell from 12.5 years in participants born between 1950 and 1969 to 11.9 years in participants born between 2000 and 2005, with a steady decline in between, the study found. There were also notable changes in the extremes—between 1950 and 2005, the percentage of people who started their periods before age 11 rose from 8.6 percent to 15.5 percent. And the percentage of people who started their periods late (at age 16 or above) dropped from 5.5 percent to 1.7 percent.

In addition to periods shifting to earlier starting ages, menstrual cycles also appeared to become more irregular. For this, researchers looked at how quickly people settled into a regular cycle after the start of their period. Between 1950 and 2005, the percentage of people obtaining regularity within two years fell from 76.3 percent to 56 percent.

The study, published by researchers at Apple and Harvard in the journal JAMA Network Open, notes that both of these findings bode poorly for long-term health. Early starting age of menstrual cycles is linked to adverse health outcomes, including cardiovascular diseases, cancers, spontaneous abortion, and premature death, the researchers write. And a longer time to regularity is linked to fertility problems, longer menstrual cycles, and an increased risk of metabolic conditions and all-cause mortality.

Looking across race and ethnicity categories, researchers found that the trends affected all groups. However, Black and Hispanic participants had consistently earlier menstrual starting ages than white and Asian participants. Black participants also saw a larger magnitude shift toward earlier starting ages compared with white participants.

It’s unclear what’s driving the menstrual changes, but the authors speculate that there could be a multitude of factors. The most prominent potential factor is childhood obesity, which has increased in the US over the course of the study period and is known to be linked to earlier puberty. However, the authors note that obesity doesn’t explain the totality of the shifts—an exploratory analysis indicated that obesity only accounted for 46 percent of the trends seen in the study. And other studies have indicated that the shift toward earlier menstrual cycles began before the upward trend of obesity in the US.

The authors of the current study point to various potential environmental factors, including endocrine-disrupting chemicals, metals, air pollutants, dietary patterns, psychosocial stress, and adverse childhood experiences.

The study has limitations, of course, including that it relied on self-reported data and was limited to people who own iPhones, who generally skew toward higher socioeconomic status. Thus, the findings may not be generalizable to the population overall. Still, the data fits with other studies, and the researchers called for more awareness among health care practitioners and more studies to look at trends and health outcomes.

Modern lives are messing up menstrual cycles—earlier starts, more irregularity Read More »

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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.

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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 »

ars-live:-how-profitable-is-starlink?-we-dig-into-the-details-of-satellite-internet.

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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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 »