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thousands-of-us-kids-are-overdosing-on-melatonin-gummies,-er-study-finds

Thousands of US kids are overdosing on melatonin gummies, ER study finds

children, emergency department, ingestion, melatonin, poison control, Science, sleep aid, supplement / /

treats or treatment? —

In the majority of cases, the excessive amounts led to only minimal side effects.

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In this photo illustration, melatonin gummies are displayed on April 26, 2023, in Miami, Florida.

Enlarge / In this photo illustration, melatonin gummies are displayed on April 26, 2023, in Miami, Florida.

Federal regulators have long decried drug-containing products that appeal to kids—like nicotine-containing e-cigarette products with fruity and dessert-themed flavors or edible cannabis products sold to look exactly like name-brand candies.

But a less-expected candy-like product is sending thousands of kids to emergency departments in the US in recent years: melatonin, particularly in gummy form. According to a new report from researchers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, use of the over-the-counter sleep-aid supplement has skyrocketed in recent years—and so have calls to poison control centers and visits to emergency departments.

Melatonin, a neurohormone that regulates the sleep-wake cycle, has become very popular for self-managing conditions like sleep disorders and jet lag—even in children. Use of melatonin in adults rose from 0.4 percent in 1999–2000 to 2.1 percent in 2017–2018. But the more people have these tempting, often candy-like supplements in their homes, the more risk that children will get ahold of them unsupervised. Indeed, the rise in use led to a 530 percent increase in poison control center calls and a 420 percent increase in emergency department visits for accidental melatonin ingestion in infants and kids between 2009 and 2020.

And the problem is ongoing. In the new study, researchers estimate that between 2019 and 2022, nearly 11,000 kids went to the emergency department after accidentally gulping down melatonin supplements. Nearly all the cases involved a solid form of melatonin, with about 47 percent identified specifically as gummies and 49 percent listed as an unspecified sold form, likely to include gummies. These melatonin-based emergency visits made up 7 percent of all emergency visits by infants and kids who ingested medications unsupervised.

The candy-like appeal of melatonin products seems evident in the ages of kids rushed to emergency departments. Most emergency department visits for unsupervised medicine exposures are in infants and toddlers ages 1 to 2, but for melatonin-related visits, half were ages 3 to 5. The researchers noted that among the emergency visits with documentation, about three-quarters of the melatonin products involved came out of bottles, suggesting that the young kids managed to open the bottles themselves or that the bottles weren’t properly closed. Manufacturers are not required to use child-resistant packaging on melatonin supplements.

Luckily, most of the cases had only mild to no effects. Still, about 6.5 percent of the cases—a little over 700 children—were hospitalized from their melatonin binge. A 2022 study led by researchers in Michigan found that among poison control center calls for children consuming melatonin, the reported symptoms involved gastrointestinal, cardiovascular, or central nervous systems. For children who are given supervised doses of melatonin to improve sleep, known side effects include drowsiness, increased bedwetting or urination in the evening, headache, dizziness, and agitation.

According to the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health—part of the National Institutes of Health—supervised use of melatonin in children appears to be safe for short-term use. But there’s simply not much data on use in children, and the long-term effects of regular use or acute exposures are unknown. The NCCIH cautions: “Because melatonin is a hormone, it’s possible that melatonin supplements could affect hormonal development, including puberty, menstrual cycles, and overproduction of the hormone prolactin, but we don’t know for sure.”

For now, the authors of the new study say the data “highlights the continued need to educate parents and other caregivers about the importance of keeping all medications and supplements (including gummies) out of children’s reach and sight.”

Thousands of US kids are overdosing on melatonin gummies, ER study finds Read More »

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Rocket Report: Starbase will expand into state park; another Japanese rocket

rocket report, Science, Space / /

43 for 477 —

“Those launches are exciting the young minds that are watching them.”

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This satellite view of SpaceX's Starbase facility shows a fully-stacked Starship rocket on the launch pad, just inland from the Gulf of Mexico.

Enlarge / This satellite view of SpaceX’s Starbase facility shows a fully-stacked Starship rocket on the launch pad, just inland from the Gulf of Mexico.

Welcome to Edition 6.34 of the Rocket Report! It’s Starship season again. Yes, SpaceX appears to be about a week away from launching the third full-scale Starship test flight from the company’s Starbase site in South Texas, pending final regulatory approval from the Federal Aviation Administration. Ars will be there. SpaceX plans to build a second Starship launch pad at Starbase, and the company’s footprint there is also about to get a little bigger, with the expected acquisition of 43 acres of Texas state park land.

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.

Astra’s founders take the company private. Astra’s three-year run as a public company is over. Chris Kemp and Adam London, Astra’s co-founders, are taking the company private after a string of rocket failures and funding shortfalls, Ars reports. Kemp and London bought the company for 50 cents a share. Astra’s board approved the transaction, the company announced Thursday, as the only alternative to bankruptcy. Kemp and London founded Astra in 2016. After emerging from stealth mode in 2020, Astra launched its light-class launcher, called Rocket 3, seven times, but five of those flights were failures. Astra went public via a special purpose acquisition company (or SPAC) in 2021, reaching a valuation of more than $2 billion. Today, its market cap sits at approximately $13 million.

What’s next for Astra? … Where Astra goes from here is anyone’s guess. The company abandoned its unreliable Rocket 3 vehicle in 2022 to focus on the larger Rocket 4 vehicle. But Rocket 4 is likely months or years from the launch pad. It faces stiff competition not just from established small launch players such as Rocket Lab and Firefly but also from new entrants as well, including ABL Space and Stoke Space. Additionally, all of these small launch companies have been undercut in price by SpaceX’s Transporter missions, which launch dozens of satellites at a time on the Falcon 9 booster. Additionally, Astra’s spacecraft engine business—acquired previously from Apollo Fusion—may or may not be profitable now, but there are questions about its long-term viability as well.

Virgin Galactic is retiring its only operational spaceship. Over the last year, Virgin Galactic has proven it has the technical acumen to pull off monthly flights of its VSS Unity rocket plane, each carrying six people on a suborbital climb to the edge of space. But VSS Unity has never been profitable. It costs too much and takes too much time to reconfigure between flights. Virgin Galactic plans to fly the suborbital spaceship one more time before taking a hiatus from flight operations, Ars reports. This, along with layoffs announced last year, will allow the company to preserve cash while focusing on the development of a new generation of rocket planes, called Delta-class ships, designed to fly more often and with more people. Michael Colglazier, Virgin Galactic’s president and CEO, says the first of the Delta ships is on track to begin ground and flight testing next year, with commercial service targeted for 2026 based out of Spaceport America in New Mexico.

Bigger and faster… The Delta ships will each carry six customers in the spacecraft’s pressurized passenger cabin, compared to a maximum of four passengers on each VSS Unity flight. Virgin Galactic’s goal is to fly each Delta ship eight times per month, and the company will do this by eliminating many of the inspections required between each VSS Unity flight. The company is building a Delta ship structural test article to put through extensive checks on the ground, validating component life and cycle limits for major components of the vehicle. This will give engineers enough confidence to forego many inspections, according to Mike Moses, president of Virgin Galactic’s spaceline operations. Virgin Galactic has nearly $1 billion in cash or cash equivalents on its balance sheet, so it’s not in any immediate financial trouble. But the company reported just $7 million in revenue last year, with a net loss of $502 million. So, there’s an obvious motivation to make a change.

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A new Japanese rocket will launch this weekend. A privately held Japanese company named Space One is set to shoot for orbit with the first flight of its Kairos rocket Friday night (US time), News on Japan reports. Space One will attempt to become the first Japanese private company to launch a rocket into orbit. Japan’s existing launch vehicles, like the H-IIA, the H3, and the Epsilon, were developed with funding from the Japanese space agency. But there is some involvement from the Japanese government on this flight. The Kairos rocket will launch with a small “quick response” spacecraft for the Cabinet Intelligence and Research Office, which is responsible for Japan’s fleet of spy satellites. Kairos, which is the Ancient Greek word for “timeliness,” is made up of three solid-fueled stages and a liquid-fueled upper stage. It can place a payload of up to 550 pounds (250 kilograms) into low-Earth orbit.

Winning hearts and minds… The Kairos rocket will take off from Space One’s Space Port Kii, located on a south-facing peninsula on the main Japanese island of Honshu. This new launch site is hundreds of miles away from Japan’s existing spaceports. Local businesses see the arrival of the space industry in this remote part of Japan as a marketing opportunity. A local confectionery store, not wanting to miss the opportunity to attract visitors, is selling manju shaped like rockets. There are two paid viewing areas to watch the launch, and a total of 5,000 seats sold out in just two days, according to News on Japan. (submitted by tsunam)

UK spaceport project to get 10 million pounds from government. The UK government has pledged 10 million pounds in funding to SaxaVord Spaceport in Scotland, European Spaceflight reports. This funding is sorely needed for SaxaVord, which slowed construction last year after its developer ran into financial trouble. In the last couple of months, SaxaVord raised enough money to resume payments to the contractors building the launch site. The UK government’s pledge of 10 million pounds for SaxaVord apparently is not quite a done deal. The UK’s science minister posted on X that the funding was “subject to due diligence.” SaxaVord will eventually have three launch pads, one of which has been dedicated to German launch startup Rocket Factory Augsburg. This company’s rocket, RFA ONE, is expected to be the first orbital launch from SaxaVord later this year.

The UK spaceport scene… The UK government, local entities, and private industry are making a pretty serious effort to bring orbital launches to the British Isles. Spaceport Cornwall became the first UK facility to host an orbital attempt last year with the failed launch of Virgin Orbit’s LauncherOne rocket, which was released from a carrier jet that took off from Cornwall. There are several vertical launch spaceports under construction or in the concept development phase. SaxaVord appears to be among those closest to reality, along with Sutherland spaceport, also in Scotland, to be used by the UK launch startup Orbex Space. (submitted by Ken the Bin)

Rocket Report: Starbase will expand into state park; another Japanese rocket Read More »

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After Astra loses 99 percent of its value, founders take rocket firm private

astra, Science, Space / /

What goes up must come down —

First you burn the cash, then comes the crash.

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Image of a rocket launch.

Enlarge / Liftoff of Astra’s Rocket 3.0 from Cape Canaveral, Florida.

Astra’s long, strange trip in the space business is taking another turn. The company announced Thursday that it is going private at an extremely low valuation.

Four years ago, the rocket company, based in Alameda, California, emerged from stealth with grand plans to develop a no-frills rocket that could launch frequently. “The theme that really makes this company stand out, which will capture the imagination of our customers, our investors, and our employees, is the idea that every day we will produce and launch a rocket,” Astra co-founder Chris Kemp said during a tour of the factory in February 2020.

Almost exactly a year later, on February 2, 2021, Astra went public via a special purpose acquisition company (or SPAC). “The transaction reflects an implied pro-forma enterprise value for Astra of approximately $2.1 billion,” the company stated at the time. For a time, the company’s stock even traded above this valuation.

But then, rockets started failing. Only two of the seven launches of the company’s “Rocket 3” vehicle were successful. In August 2022, the company announced a pivot to the larger Rocket 4 vehicle. It planned to begin conducting test launches in 2023, but that did not happen. Accordingly, the company’s stock price plummeted.

Last November Kemp and the company’s co-founder, Adam London, proposed to buy Astra shares at $1.50, approximately double their price. The company’s board of directors did not accept the deal. Then, in late February, Kemp and London sharply cut their offer to take the company private, warning of “imminent bankruptcy” if the company doesn’t accept their new proposal. They offered $0.50 a share, well below the trading value of approximately $0.80 a share.

On Thursday, Astra said that this deal was being consummated.

“Astra Space, Inc. announced today that it has entered into a definitive merger agreement pursuant to which the acquiring entity has agreed, subject to customary closing conditions, to acquire all shares of Astra common stock not already owned by it for $0.50 per share in cash,” the company stated. The acquiring entity consists of Kemp, London, and other long-term investors.

Where Astra goes from here is anyone’s guess. Rocket 4 is likely months or years from the launch pad. It faces stiff competition not just from established small launch players such as Rocket Lab and Firefly but also from new entrants as well, including ABL Space and Stoke Space. Additionally, all of these small launch companies have been undercut in price by SpaceX’s Transporter missions, which launch dozens of satellites at a time on the Falcon 9 booster.

Additionally, Astra’s spacecraft engine business—acquired previously from Apollo Fusion—may or may not be profitable now, but there are questions about its long-term viability as well.

“I don’t fault management for seizing the opportunity to raise hundreds of millions of dollars by SPAC’ing, but a pre-revenue launch company without a proven rocket was probably never a good match for the public markets,” said Case Taylor, investor and author of the Case Closed newsletter.

Taylor added that he hopes that Astra spacecraft engines find a way to thrive in the new Astra, as the space industry values their performance. “I hope to see that diamond survive and thrive,” he said.

After Astra loses 99 percent of its value, founders take rocket firm private Read More »

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Don’t use these six cinnamon products, FDA warns after concerning lead tests

CDC, cinnamon, contamination, fda, lead, lead poisoning, Science / /

More lead —

The FDA is putting manufacturers on notice to do more to keep contaminants out.

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Don’t use these six cinnamon products, FDA warns after concerning lead tests

Six different ground cinnamon products sold at retailers including Save A Lot, Dollar Tree, and Family Dollar contain elevated levels of lead and should be recalled and thrown away immediately, the US Food and Drug Administration announced Wednesday.

The brands are La Fiesta, Marcum, MK, Swad, Supreme Tradition, and El Chilar, and the products are sold in plastic spice bottles or in bags at various retailers. The FDA has contacted the manufacturers to urge them to issue voluntary recalls, though it has not been able to reach one of the firms, MTCI, which distributes the MK-branded cinnamon.

Products identified by the FDA as containing elevated lead levels.

Enlarge / Products identified by the FDA as containing elevated lead levels.

The announcement comes amid a nationwide outbreak of lead poisoning in young children linked to cinnamon applesauce pouches contaminated with lead and chromium. In that case, it’s believed that a spice grinder in Ecuador intentionally added extreme levels of lead chromate to cinnamon imported from Sri Lanka, likely to improve its weight and/or appearance. Food manufacturer Austrofoods then added the heavily contaminated cinnamon, without any testing, to cinnamon applesauce pouches marketed to toddlers and young children across the US. In the latest update, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has identified 468 cases of lead poisoning that have been linked to the cinnamon applesauce pouches. The cases span 44 states and are mostly in very young children.

The alarming contamination spurred the FDA to conduct more sampling of cinnamon products, focusing an initial survey on products from discount retail stores, the agency said. The FDA makes note that the elevated lead levels found in the six products announced this week are significantly lower than what was seen in the cinnamon added to the applesauce pouches. The six products contained lead at levels ranging from 2.03 to 3.4 parts per million (ppm), while samples of the cinnamon added to the applesauce had levels ranging from 2,270 ppm to 5,110 ppm in the cinnamon.

The FDA has previously reported that 2.5 ppm is the limit being considered for bark spices, which includes cinnamon, by the international standard-setting body, Codex Alimentarius Commission.

So the six newly identified products are right around or just over that potential threshold and do not pose the same level of risk as the applesauce pouches. But the FDA warned that the elevated levels in the ground cinnamon could cause elevated blood lead levels after prolonged use, which the agency defined as months to years. This, in turn, could contribute to harmful health effects, particularly in children who absorb lead more readily than adults and are still developing. Lead is a potent neurotoxic metal that can damage the brain and nervous system, which for young children can lead to learning, behavior, and developmental problems.

“Today’s actions serve as a signal to industry that more needs to be done to prevent elevated levels of contaminants from entering our food supply,” Jim Jones, the FDA’s Deputy Commissioner for Human Foods, said in a statement. “Food growers, manufacturers, importers, and retailers share a responsibility for ensuring the safety of the foods that reach store shelves. The levels of lead we found in some ground cinnamon products are too high and we must do better to protect those most vulnerable to the negative health outcomes of exposure to elevated levels of lead.”

Don’t use these six cinnamon products, FDA warns after concerning lead tests Read More »

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Daily Telescope: A brilliant shot of a comet as it nears the Sun

daily telescope, Science, Space / /

A streaker —

The comet should brighten further as it nears the Sun in the coming weeks.

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Comet 12P/Pons-Brooks and the great Andromeda Galaxy.

Enlarge / Comet 12P/Pons-Brooks and the great Andromeda Galaxy.

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 March 7, and today’s photo features a Halley-type comet that is currently approaching the Sun. It will reach perihelion on April 21.

The comet, named 12P/Pons–Brooks, features a brilliant ion tail, and its nucleus is estimated to be around 30 km in diameter. The comet should brighten further as it nears the Sun in the coming weeks. However, at an apparent magnitude of 4.5, it is unlikely to be visible to the naked eye—that’s why we have telescopes.

12P/Pons–Brooks was imaged here by the Virtual Telescope Project facility in Manciano, Italy. The covered field of view is about 16×11 square degrees, and there is a bonus photobombing by the Andromeda Galaxy.

Source: Gianluca Masi

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

Daily Telescope: A brilliant shot of a comet as it nears the Sun Read More »

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Russia’s next-generation rocket is a decade old and still flying dummy payloads

angara, angara a5, launch, russia, Science, Space, vostochny / /

A winding road —

Russia’s heavy-lift Angara A5 rocket is about to launch on its fourth test flight.

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Technicians assemble an Angara A5 rocket at the Vostochny Cosmodrome in Russia's Far East.

Enlarge / Technicians assemble an Angara A5 rocket at the Vostochny Cosmodrome in Russia’s Far East.

Roscosmos

By some measures, Russia’s next-generation flagship rocket program—the Angara—is now three decades old. The Russian government approved the development of the Angara rocket in 1992, soon after the fall of the Soviet Union ushered in a prolonged economic recession.

It has been nearly 10 years since Russia launched the first Angara test flights. The heaviest version of the Angara rocket family—the Angara A5—is about to make its fourth flight, and like the three launches before, this mission won’t carry a real satellite.

This next launch will be a milestone for the beleaguered Angara rocket program because it will be the first Angara flight from the Vostochny Cosmodrome, Russia’s newest launch site in the country’s far east. The previous Angara launches were based out of the military-run Plesetsk Cosmodrome in northern Russia.

All dressed up and nowhere to go

On Wednesday, Russia’s space agency, Roscosmos, said technicians at Vostochny have fueled the Angara A5’s Orion upper stage and will soon install it on the rest of the rocket. The Angara A5 will roll to its launch pad a few days before liftoff, currently scheduled for next month.

The Angara A5 rocket is supposed to replace Russia’s Proton launch vehicle, which uses toxic propellant and only launches from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. Angara’s launch pads are on Russian territory. Until a few years ago, the Proton was a competitor in the global commercial launch market, but the rocket lost its position due to reliability problems, competitive pressure from SpaceX, and the fallout of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Russian officials once touted Angara as a successor to Proton on the commercial market. Now, Angara will solely serve the Russian government, but it’s doubtful the government has enough demand to fill the Angara A5’s heavy launch capacity on a regular basis. According to RussianSpaceWeb.com, a website run by veteran Russian space reporter Anatoly Zak, the Russian government didn’t have any functional satellites ready to fly on the upcoming Angara A5 launch from Vostochny.

Eventually, the Angara A5 could take over the launch responsibility of the handful of large satellites that require the capacity of the Proton rocket. But this is a small number of flights. The Proton has launched three times in the last two years, and there are roughly a dozen Proton launch vehicles remaining in Russia’s inventory.

Russia plans a next-generation crew spacecraft, Orel, that officials claim will begin launching on the Angara A5 rocket in 2028. There’s no evidence Orel could be ready for test flights within four years. So, while the Angara rocket is finally flying, albeit at an anemic rate, there aren’t many payloads for Russia to put on it.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and Russian President Vladimir Putin visited the Angara rocket's launch pad at the Vostochny Cosmodrome last year.

Enlarge / North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and Russian President Vladimir Putin visited the Angara rocket’s launch pad at the Vostochny Cosmodrome last year.

Russia’s economic woes might explain some of the delays that have befallen the Angara program since 1992, but Russia’s space program has long suffered from chronic underfunding, mismanagement, and corruption. Angara is the only rocket Russia has developed from scratch since the 1980s, and the Russian government selected Khrunichev, one of the country’s oldest space companies, to oversee the Angara program.

Finally, in 2014, Russia launched the first two Angara test flights, one with a single-booster lightweight version of the rocket, called the Angara 1.2, and another with the heavy-lift Angara A5, made up of five Angara rocket cores combined into one rocket.

The Angara A5 can place up to 24.5 metric tons (about 54,000 pounds) into low-Earth orbit, according to Khrunichev. The expendable rocket has enough power to launch modules for a space station or deploy the Russian military’s largest spy satellites, but in 2020, each Angara A5 reportedly cost more than $100 million, significantly more than the Proton.

The smaller Angara 1.2 has flown twice since 2014, but both missions delivered functional satellites into orbit for the Russian military. The much larger Angara A5 has launched three times, all with dummy payloads. The most recent Angara A5 launch in 2021 failed due to a problem with the rocket’s Persei upper stage. The Orion upper stage set to fly on the next Angara A5 mission is a modified version of the Persei, which is itself modeled on the Block-DM upper stage, a design with its roots in the 1960s.

Essentially, the Angara A5 flight will allow engineers to test out changes to the upper stage and allow Russia to activate a second launch pad at Vostochny, which itself has been mired in corruption and delays. Medium-lift Soyuz rockets have been flying from Vostochny since 2016.

Russia’s next-generation rocket is a decade old and still flying dummy payloads Read More »

de-extinction-company-manages-to-generate-first-elephant-stem-cells

De-extinction company manages to generate first elephant stem cells

Biology, colossal, de-extinction, elephants, mammoths, Science, stem cells / /
Large collection of cells with a red outline and white nucleus.

Enlarge / Elephant stem cells turned out to be a hassle to generate. (credit: Colossal.)

A company called Colossal plans on pioneering the de-extinction business, taking species that have died within the past few thousand years and restoring them through the use of DNA editing and stem cells. It’s grabbed headlines recently by announcing some compelling targets: the tylacine, an extinct marsupial predator, and an icon of human carelessness, the dodo. But the company was formed to tackle an even more audacious target: the mammoth, which hasn’t roamed the northern hemisphere for thousands of years.

Obviously, there are a host of ethical and conservation issues that would need to be worked out before Colossal’s plans go forward. But there are some major practical hurdles as well, most of them the product of the distinct and extremely slow reproductive biology of the mammoth’s closest living relatives, the elephants. At least one of those has now been cleared, as the company is announcing the production of the first elephant stem cells. The process turned out to be extremely difficult, suggesting that the company still has a long road ahead of it.

Lots of hurdles

Colossal’s basic road map for de-extinction is pretty straightforward. We have already obtained the genomes of a number of species that have gone extinct recently, as well as those of their closest living relatives. By comparing the two, we can identify key genetic differences that make the extinct species distinct. We can then edit those differences into stem cells obtained from the living species and use that species as a surrogate for embryos produced from these stem cells. This will have to be done using stem cells from a number of individuals to ensure that the resulting population has sufficient genetic diversity to be stable.

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The next Starship mission has a tentative launch date: March 14

Science, Space, spacex, starship / /

Excitement guaranteed —

This third flight has a reasonable chance of success.

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SpaceX's Starship rocket completes a fueling test on Sunday night.

Enlarge / SpaceX’s Starship rocket completes a fueling test on Sunday night.

SpaceX

After SpaceX completed a fueling test of its third full Starship stack on Sunday night, successfully loading more than 10 million pounds of methane and liquid oxygen propellant onto the rocket, it was only a matter of time before the world’s largest rocket took flight.

Now, we have a tentative date. In a post on the social media site X, the company posted a link to watch “Starship’s third flight test” at 7: 30 am ET (11: 30 UTC) on March 14. Published on Tuesday morning, the social media post was ‘hidden,’ but somehow discovered late Tuesday night.

Nevertheless, this is a credible date that the company is working toward. Following the fueling test on Sunday night at the company’s Starbase site in South Texas, the hardware appears to be in good shape. Although SpaceX has yet to receive its launch license from the Federal Aviation Administration, the agency recently announced that it has closed its investigation into the second Starship test flight in November. So a mid-March launch date is plausible from a regulatory standpoint.

The first two Starship flights in April and November last year ultimately failed, but each of the experimental launches provided valuable data. On the second mission four months ago, the first-stage Super Heavy booster performed a nominal flight before it separated from the Starship upper stage. The Starship vehicle exploded a few minutes into its flight due to a leak during a liquid oxygen vent.

Based upon learnings from these first two flights, this next mission, with upgraded hardware and flight software, likely has a reasonable chance of success. Among the milestones SpaceX will seek to complete during this test flight are:

  • Nominal first-stage performance, followed by a controlled descent of the Super Heavy booster into the Gulf of Mexico
  • Starship separation from the first stage using “hot staging,” meaning engine ignition while the first stage is still firing its engines
  • Starship reaching an orbital velocity and engine shutdown
  • Early-stage testing of in-space refueling technology inside the propellant tanks of Starship
  • Controlled splashdown of Starship near the Hawaiian islands after flying around two-thirds of the planet.

SpaceX is seeking to demonstrate the basic flight capabilities of Starship so that it can move into a more operational phase with the big rocket. The company wants to begin deploying larger Starlink satellites from the vehicle this year, which will enable direct-to-cell phone Internet connectivity.

Additionally, a higher cadence of missions will allow the company to begin developing the technology and procedures needed for the in-space storage and transfer of propellant for deep-space missions. This is a necessary step for SpaceX to fulfill its obligations to NASA for the Artemis program, which seeks to return humans to the Moon later this decade.

In a recent update, the company said more Starships are ready for flight, so a higher cadence is possible if this month’s flight is a success. Recently, the Federal Aviation Administration disclosed that SpaceX is seeking to launch Starship at least nine times this year.

The next Starship mission has a tentative launch date: March 14 Read More »

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SpaceX just showed us what every day could be like in spaceflight

Science, Space, Space X / /
A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket streaks into orbit Sunday night from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, ferrying a crew of four to the International Space Station.

Enlarge / A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket streaks into orbit Sunday night from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, ferrying a crew of four to the International Space Station.

Between Sunday night and Monday night, SpaceX teams in Texas, Florida, and California supervised three Falcon 9 rocket launches and completed a full dress rehearsal ahead of the next flight of the company’s giant Starship launch vehicle.

This was a remarkable sequence of events, even for SpaceX, which has launched a mission at an average rate of once every three days since the start of the year. We’ve reported on this before, but it’s worth reinforcing that no launch provider, commercial or government, has ever operated at this cadence.

SpaceX has previously had rockets on all four of its active launch pads. But what SpaceX accomplished over a 24-hour period was noteworthy. Engineers inside at least four control centers were actively overseeing spacecraft and rocket operations simultaneously.

The sprawl of SpaceX

On Sunday night at the Starbase facility in South Texas, teams loaded more than 10 million pounds of methane and liquid oxygen propellants into the nearly 400-foot-tall (121-meter) Starship rocket slated to lift off as soon as this month on the third full-scale test flight of SpaceX’s next-generation launcher.

This was likely the final major test before SpaceX launches the third Starship test flight. The countdown rehearsal of the fully stacked rocket ended as planned at T-minus 10 seconds, just before the booster’s Raptor engines were ignited; SpaceX then drained the vehicle of propellant. SpaceX previously test-fired the Super Heavy booster and Starship upper stage separately.

The schedule for the next Starship launch hinges on approval from the Federal Aviation Administration, which is reviewing SpaceX’s actions to correct the malfunctions that occurred on the second Starship test flight in November. Last week, the FAA announced it closed its investigation into the second Starship test flight, which was largely successful in demonstrating significant progress on SpaceX’s privately funded rocket program. But the test flight ended with explosions of the Super Heavy booster and Starship upper stage, prompting an FAA investigation.

On the next Starship flight, SpaceX wants to perform some early-stage testing of the in-space refueling technology it will need for later Starship flights, such as missions to the Moon for NASA.

SpaceX's Super Heavy booster and Starship rocket undergo a countdown rehearsal Sunday night in South Texas.

Enlarge / SpaceX’s Super Heavy booster and Starship rocket undergo a countdown rehearsal Sunday night in South Texas.

At the same time that SpaceX’s team in Texas managed the Starship countdown rehearsal, another group of engineers and technicians on Florida’s Space Coast stepped through a Falcon 9 launch countdown Sunday night. Three NASA astronauts and one Russian cosmonaut strapped into their seats on SpaceX’s Crew Dragon Endeavour spacecraft on top of the Falcon 9 rocket, then waited for liftoff from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center at 10: 53 pm EST Sunday (03: 53 UTC Monday).

The Falcon 9 launch of NASA’s Crew-8 mission Sunday night was the first of three Falcon 9 launches over the next 20 hours. Next in line was a launch at 5: 05 pm EST (2205 UTC) Monday from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California with 53 small payloads on SpaceX’s 10th Transporter rideshare mission. The customer payloads on this Falcon 9 launch included MethaneSAT, an $88 million satellite funded primarily by philanthropic donations to monitor methane greenhouse gas emissions around the world.

Then, less than two hours later, at 6: 56 pm EST (2356 UTC), a Falcon 9 rocket took off from SpaceX’s most active launch pad at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. This mission delivered 23 more Starlink broadband satellites into orbit for SpaceX’s commercial Internet network. At 1 hour and 51 minutes, this was the shortest time separation to date between two SpaceX launches.

All three Falcon 9 launches ended with landings of the rockets’ first-stage boosters.

A view of 53 small satellite payloads before encapsulation into the Falcon 9 rocket's payload fairing, ahead of liftoff on the Transporter 10 rideshare mission.

Enlarge / A view of 53 small satellite payloads before encapsulation into the Falcon 9 rocket’s payload fairing, ahead of liftoff on the Transporter 10 rideshare mission.

While controllers at Starbase, Cape Canaveral, and Vandenberg looked after these three Falcon 9 launches, SpaceX engineers at the company’s headquarters near Los Angeles tracked the performance and progress of the Crew Dragon Endeavour spacecraft on its way to the International Space Station, where it docked early Tuesday. Next week, another SpaceX capsule, Crew Dragon Endurance, will depart the station to bring a different four-person crew back to Earth.

SpaceX, which now has more than 13,000 employees, pulled off a similar rapid-fire launch cadence in mid-February with three Falcon 9 launches in approximately 23 hours, but this time included the additional complexity of operating a Dragon crew capsule en route to the ISS, plus the Starship countdown in Texas. While all this was going on, a handful of ground controllers also monitored the health of the Dragon spacecraft currently docked at the space station.

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Scientists get dung beetles to collect DNA samples for biodiversity studies

beetles, biodiversity, Biology, DNA, peru, Science / /

High tech/low tech solutions —

Researchers are sequencing the DNA of wildlife using dung beetle stomach contents.

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Image of forest-covered hillsides and a river winding through the jungle.

Enlarge / The Manu area of Peru contains a number of ecological zones.

Peru’s Manu Biosphere Reserve is the largest rainforest reserve in the world and one of the most biodiverse spots on the planet. Manu is a UNESCO-protected area the size of Connecticut and Delaware combined, covering an area where the Amazon River Basin meets the Andes Mountain Range. This combination forms a series of unique ecosystems, where species unknown to science are discovered every year. The remoteness of the region has helped preserve its biodiversity but adds to the challenges faced by the scientists who are drawn to study it.

Trapping wildlife for research in the dense jungle is impractical, especially considering the great distances researchers have to travel within Manu, either through the forest or on the waterways. It’s an expensive proposition that inevitably exposes the trapped animals to some amount of risk. Trapping rare and endangered animals is even more difficult and comes with significant risks to the animal.

Trapping beetles, however, does not pose the same challenges. They’re easy to catch, easy to transport, and, most importantly, carry the DNA of many animals in and on them. Any animal a biologist could hope to study leaves tracks and droppings in the forest, and the beetles make a living by cleaning that stuff up.

Beetles as DNA collectors

Beetles are plentiful in the rainforest, and the species that Alejandro Lopera-Toro’s team studies are not endangered. The study does mean that the beetles are killed, but overall, the effect on the ecosystem is minimal.

According to Peruvian biologist and team member Patricia Reyes, “The impact depends on the abundance and reproductive cycle of each species. Reducing the beetle population could have an effect on their predators, such as birds, reptiles, and other insects. The health of the forest depends on the beetles’ function to break down organic matter and disperse seeds. Despite not having found any effect on the ecosystem so far, we still limit how many individual beetles we collect and identify sensitive areas where collecting is prohibited. We promote sustainable methods of collection to mitigate possible impacts in the future.”

Getting beetles to do the work of collecting DNA for researchers took some adjustments. The traps normally used to study beetles cause the beetles to fall into a chemical solution, which kills and preserves them until they are collected. However, those traps contaminate the beetle’s stomach contents, making the DNA unusable. Lopera-Toro’s traps keep them alive, protecting the delicate strands of DNA that the beetles have worked so hard to collect. He and his team also go out into the forest to collect live beetles by hand, carefully recording the time and place each one was collected. Starting in July 2022, the team has been collecting dung beetles across Manu’s diverse ecosystems up and down the altitude gradient, from 500 to 3,500 meters above sea level.

In addition to obtaining DNA from the beetles, researchers also use them as test subjects for metabolic studies.

Enlarge / In addition to obtaining DNA from the beetles, researchers also use them as test subjects for metabolic studies.

Elena Chaboteaux

The Manu Biological Station team is using Nanopore technology to sequence the DNA found in the beetles’ stomachs, with the goal of finding out what animals are represented there. They specifically targeted dung beetles because their feeding habits depend on the feces left by larger animals. The main advantage to the Nanopore minION device is that it can separate long lengths of DNA on-site. “Long nanopore sequencing reads provide enhanced species identification, while real-time data analysis delivers immediate access to results, whether in the field or in the lab,” according to the Nanopore website.

Biologist Juliana Morales acknowledges that Nanopore still has a high rate of error, though as this new technology is refined, that issue is continually decreasing. For the purposes of the Manu Biological Station team, the margin of error is a price they’re willing to pay to have devices they can use in the rainforest. Since they’re not studying one specific species, but rather building a database of the species present in the region, they don’t need to get every nucleotide correct to be able to identify the species. They do, however, need a strand long enough to differentiate between a common woolly monkey and a yellow-tailed woolly monkey.

Though the researchers prefer to sequence DNA on-site with Nanopore minION devices, when they have more than a dozen samples to analyze, they send them to the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada. It’s a logistical nightmare to send samples from the Peruvian jungle to Canada, but Lopera-Toro says it’s worth it. “The University of Guelph can process hundreds of DNA samples per day. I’m lucky if we can process 10 samples a day at the [Manu] lab.”

In the most recent batch of 76 samples, they analyzed the stomach contents of 27 species from 11 genera of beetles. From those 76 samples, they identified DNA of howler monkeys, spider monkeys, red brocket deer, night monkeys, peccaries, mouse opossum, Rufous-breasted wood quail, and two species of armadillos. Oddly, the beetles had also eaten about a dozen species of fruit, and one had consumed pollen from a tropical plant called syngonium.

The implications could be vast. “The dung beetle that ate the jaguar’s excrement will tell us not only the DNA of the jaguar but also what the jaguar is eating,” said Lopera-Toro. “If the jaguar kills a peccary and eats 80 percent of the peccary, beetles will eat some of the other 20 percent. If a beetle walks over a jaguar print or saliva, there could be traces of jaguar DNA on the beetle. We analyze the stomach contents and the outside of the beetle. We have an endless number of options, opportunities, and questions we can answer from studying these small insects. We can see the bigger picture of what is happening in the jungle.”

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Daily Telescope: A new Webb image reveals a cosmos full of galaxies

daily telescope, Science, Space / /

Deep field —

See a galaxy as it was just 430 million years after the Big Bang.

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This image from Webb’s NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) instrument shows a portion of the GOODS-North field of galaxies.

Enlarge / This image from Webb’s NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) instrument shows a portion of the GOODS-North field of galaxies.

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 March 5, and today’s image comes from the James Webb Space Telescope.

It’s a new deep-field image from the infrared space telescope, showcasing a portion of the “Great Observatories Origins Deep Survey” region of space that has previously been observed by other space telescopes, including Hubble and Chandra. Almost everything in this image that doesn’t have lines emanating from it is a galaxy.

Such deep field images are poetic in that they’re just showing a tiny fraction of a sky—the width of this image is significantly less than a single degree of the night sky—and yet they reveal a universe teeming with galaxies. We live in a cosmos that is almost incomprehensibly large.

If you click through to the Webb telescope site you will find an annotated image that highlights a galaxy in the far lower-right corner. It is galaxy GN-z11, seen at a time just 430 million years after the Big Bang.

Source: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, et. al.

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

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NASA cancels a multibillion-dollar satellite servicing demo mission

Maxar, NASA, osam-1, satellite servicing, Science, Space / /
Artist's illustration of the OSAM-1 spacecraft (bottom) linking up with the Landsat 7 satellite (top) in orbit.

Enlarge / Artist’s illustration of the OSAM-1 spacecraft (bottom) linking up with the Landsat 7 satellite (top) in orbit.

NASA

NASA has canceled an over-budget, behind-schedule mission to demonstrate robotic satellite servicing technology in orbit, pulling the plug on a project that has cost $1.5 billion and probably would have cost nearly $1 billion more to get to the launch pad.

The On-orbit Servicing, Assembly, and Manufacturing 1 mission, known as OSAM-1, would have grappled an aging Landsat satellite in orbit and attempted to refuel it, while also demonstrating how a robotic arm could construct an antenna in space. The spacecraft for the OSAM-1 mission is partially built, but NASA announced Friday that officials decided to cancel the project “following an in-depth, independent project review.”

The space agency cited “continued technical, cost, and schedule challenges” for the decision to cancel OSAM-1.

Mission creep

The mission’s cost has ballooned since NASA officially kicked off the project in 2016. The mission’s original scope called for just the refueling demonstration, but in 2020, officials tacked on the in-orbit assembly objective. This involved adding a complex piece of equipment called the Space Infrastructure Dexterous Robot (SPIDER), essentially a 16-foot-long (5-meter) robotic arm to assemble seven structural elements into a single Ka-band communications antenna.

The addition of SPIDER meant the mission would launch with three robotic arms, including two appendages needed to grab onto the Landsat 7 satellite in orbit for the refueling demonstration. With this change in scope, the name of the mission changed from Restore-L to OSAM-1.

A report by NASA’s inspector general last year outlined the mission’s delays and cost overruns. Since 2016, the space agency has requested $808 million from Congress for Restore-L and OSAM-1. Lawmakers responded by giving NASA nearly $1.5 billion to fund the development of the mission, nearly double what NASA said it wanted.

Restore-L, and then OSAM-1, has always enjoyed support from Congress. The mission was managed by NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland. Former Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-Maryland) was a key backer of NASA missions run out of Goddard, including the James Webb Space Telescope. She was the top Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Committee when Congress started funding Restore-L in late 2015.

At one time, NASA projected the Restore-L mission would cost between $626 million and $753 million and could be ready for launch in the second half of 2020. That didn’t happen, and the mission continued facing delays and cost increases. The most recent public schedule for OSAM-1 showed a launch date in 2026.

In 2020, after reshaping the Restore-L mission to become OSAM-1, NASA formally laid out a budget for the renamed mission. At the time, NASA said it would cost $1.78 billion to design, build, launch, and operate. An independent review board NASA established last year to examine the OSAM-1 mission estimated the total project could cost as much as $2.35 billion, according to Jimi Russell, a NASA spokesperson.

The realities of the satellite servicing market have also changed since 2016. There are several companies working on commercial satellite servicing technologies, and the satellite industry has shifted away from refueling unprepared spacecraft, as OSAM-1 would have demonstrated with the Landsat 7 Earth-imaging satellite.

Instead, companies are focusing more on extending satellite life in other ways. Northrop Grumman has developed the Mission Extension Vehicle, which can latch onto a satellite and provide maneuvering capability without cutting into the customer spacecraft to refuel it. Other companies are looking at satellites that are designed, from the start, with refueling ports. The US military has a desire to place fuel depots and tankers in orbit to regularly service its satellites, giving them the ability to continually maneuver and burn propellant without worrying about running out of fuel.

NASA cancels a multibillion-dollar satellite servicing demo mission Read More »