Monthly Archives: March 2021

The other half of SpaceX's Starship deep-space transportation system is starting to come out into the light.

Over the past three months, three full-size prototypes of the 165-foot-tall (50 meters) Starship spacecraft have launched on high-altitude test flights, each time with impressive but ultimately explosive results. However, the company hadn't showcased any versions of Super Heavy, the 230-foot-tall (70 m) booster that will launch Starship off Earth until now.

"First Super Heavy booster," SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk said via Twitter on Thursday afternoon (March 18), where he posted a photo of the big rocket at the company's South Texas site, near the Gulf Coast village of Boca Chica.

Booster 1 "is a production pathfinder, figuring out how to build & transport 70-meter-tall stage. Booster 2 will fly," Musk said in another Thursday tweet.

Starship and Super Heavy: SpaceX's Mars-colonizing vehicles in images

SpaceX is developing Starship and Super Heavy to get people and payloads to the moon, Mars and other distant destinations. Both vehicles will be fully reusable, Musk has said. Super Heavy will come back to Earth for a vertical landing shortly after liftoff, as the first stages of SpaceX's Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets already do, and Starship will be capable of making many trips to and from Mars or the moon. (Starship will be powerful enough to launch itself off both of those bodies, but it needs Super Heavy to get off the much more massive Earth.)

Starship and Super Heavy will start flying soon, if all goes according to Musk's plan. The billionaire entrepreneur recently said that SpaceX aims to launch Starship to orbit sometime this year, and that he envisions the Starship-Super Heavy duo being fully operational by 2023.

SpaceX already has a Starship mission on the books with a target launch date of 2023 the "dearMoon" flight around Earth's nearest cosmic neighbor, which was bought by Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa.

Mike Wall is the author of "Out There" (Grand Central Publishing, 2018; illustrated by Karl Tate), a book about the search for alien life. Follow him on Twitter @michaeldwall. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom or Facebook.

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Elon Musk shows off SpaceX's 1st Starship Super Heavy booster - Space.com

Mars today is pretty dry. The polar caps have water frozen in them, and there's some buried under the surface at mid-latitudes, but not a whole lot on a planetary scale; maybe enough to cover the entire surface of Mars to a depth of 20 to 40 meters.

Ancient Mars is another story. Billions of years ago there was a lot more. Estimates vary, but it may have been enough to cover the surface of the planet to a depth of 100 meters to as much as 1,500! Clearly, something dried Mars up.

Some of it evaporated and was eventually lost to space from the upper atmosphere, but it doesn't look like that process could've desiccated the whole planet. So what did? A new paper looking at various observations of the Red Planet indicates that a big chunk of the water from a third up to a staggering 95% was the victim of crustal hydration: The crust of Mars sucked it up. Or down, to be more accurate.

The key factor to this is the deuterium/ hydrogen (D/H) ratio. Deuterium is an isotope of hydrogen; an atom of regular hydrogen has one proton in its nucleus (really, the whole nucleus is just that proton), but deuterium has a neutron in there as well. That makes it twice as heavy as regular hydrogen, and that's a big deal.

In general, a bucket of water will have 1 deuterium atom for every 5,000 hydrogen atoms. If you let it sit, the lighter hydrogen atoms will evaporate more easily. Wait some amount of time, and the ratio of D/H will change, with more deuterium than you'd expect. In a sense, it's like a clock telling you how long that water was sitting out.

We know the current D/H ratio on Mars by looking at water in its atmosphere, and we can also see what it was like billions of years ago by looking at Martian meteorites, chucks of rock from Mars that fell to Earth after a large asteroid impact sent them into space. Sure enough, the meteorites show a lower ratio, meaning Mars used to have more water.

However, combining that information with how water escapes from Mars to space, that implies the amount of water on Mars long ago was around 50 240 meters depth if spread out over the whole planet, which is at the very lowest part of the range of 1001,500 meters depth the geological evidence indicates. This in turn implies a lot of that ancient water is missing.

The scientists used a model of sources and sinks of water places where water could come from, and places it could go to try to figure out what happened. They based this on rover data, orbital measurements, and observations from Earth, and, long story short, the crust absorbed it. A lot of it. Up to 95%.

This would have happened during what's called the Noachian Period on Mars, from 4.1 to 3.7 billion years ago. To be clear, this doesn't mean there's an underground ocean like on Jupiter's moon Europa and Saturn's Enceladus. Instead, it got locked up into minerals, becoming part of their structure.

If this is true, it's a bit disappointing in some sense. There's a lot of water on Mars! Well, in Mars. But it's locked up in ways where it can't be released. Once it was absorbed, it took a one-way trip. A bit of a bummer if you want to find life on Mars.

maybe. At the same time, astrobiologist Nathalie Cabrol, who is the Director of the Carl Sagan Center for Research at the SETI Institute, published what is essentially a science-based OpEd in the journal Nature Astronomy. In it, she argues that life on Mars may be all over the planet, saying that once it got started it could have spread to the whole planet via various methods before the water all went away (the article is behind a paywall, but this press release from the SETI Institute sums it up well).

She makes two overall points. The first is that we only have snapshots of what Mars was like in the past, and these are spread out over various places representing thin slices of time. So our viewpoint is a little skewed; a lot was happening on Mars pretty much anywhere you choose, and it's had a lot of time to makes changes. After all, the Sahara Desert here on Earth used to be lush with vegetation; you shouldn't judge a place for all time based on what you see now.

She goes into a bit of detail, but her point there is, as she writes, "Early life on Mars had the potential to spread and colonize globally." She points out that water existed all over the planet, there were several outlets for life to spread, and some of those outlets may yet exist today (such as recent volcanism, or cyclic thawing and freezing of water underground). And water may not be the only thing to look for; there are other patterns like soil pH and conditions that could shelter life from the otherwise harsh environment that could lead us to find "hidden oases" of life on Mars.

Her second point picks up from there, saying that if we want pristine samples of Mars to look for life we'd better get cracking. Humans will be there soon enough, and contamination is almost inevitable. We might be able to get samples from underground with properly sterilized tools and such, but we don't know how long it will take before our own interplanetary microbiome tries to make itself at home. We need to be extremely careful to install protocols to keep contamination minimized, both us to Mars and Mars to us (should extant life on Mars exist).

I think she makes a good point. We don't know if life still exists on Mars, but we don't know it doesn't, either. It's a wager with pretty high stakes. If we don't want to screw up our chance to seek out new life, then we need to think carefully about how we explore Mars. We can't just send a million people there to stomp around and ruin whatever scientific evidence might be found there, evidence with grand philosophical implications as well.

Mars isn't just some target, some light in the sky, some backup plan. It's a world. One just as old as Earth, that once had water and air and warmth and, perhaps, life. We need to make sure that is foremost in our minds as we proceed with its exploration.

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Where did the waters of Mars go? Underground. Maybe Martian life did, too. - SYFY WIRE

The Green Space is a biweekly blog about all things environmental whether were talking a mason-jar compost heap or the entire world.

Google Elon Musk, and its likely that the top five search results will be negative news articles. Most recently, the CEO of Tesla tweeted out misinformation about the COVID-19 vaccine to his millions of followers, has been sued by an investor for his erratic tweets and received criticism for opening the Tesla factory back in May despite local health rules a decision which has now resulted in more than 100 COVID-19 cases at the plant.

Elon Musk is a flawed character to say the least, yet despite that his various companies indelibly connected with his person have flourished through all the controversy. Thats because he has a cult following of mostly male idolizers who dont hesitate to attack anyone who criticizes Musk. No doubt many believe that despite his insolent Twitter comments, he deserves admiration for his aspirations to save the planet and create a more sustainable future. But we must beg the question given Musks attitude, the astronomical price of his electric vehicles and his aspirations to colonize Mars, for whom is he creating this sustainable future?

A fantastic article from Marcie Bianco demonstrates that Musk is one more in a long line of patriarchal colonizers, whom she describes as drunk on megalomania and the privilege of indifference. The modern space race, Bianco writes, is the direct result of men giving up on the planet they have all but destroyed. Cultivating Mars for human life is not a solution for everyone it is only for those at the tippy top who have already contributed disproportionately to the destruction of the planet. The concept of having a fallback planet to which the rich can flee when the going gets too tough on Earth can only contribute to the environmental fatalism its no use trying to stop climate change, lets just move to another planet that already threatens to overtake many of us in other forms (including myself, on bad days).

But Musk certainly isnt all bad, not because of any personal accomplishments or innovations, but because there is another, more positive side to the masculine image he presents. He shows a way to get more people, specifically overtly masculine men, interested in creating a sustainable future. Researchers have shown that women in general are more concerned about the environment and more willing to take action against climate change, and that toxic masculinity can often play into environmentally unfriendly practices like driving an inefficient car or eating more meat. Given the general perception of environmentalism as more related to the feminine values of care and community, Musks ability to appeal to masculinity to get men interested in environmentalism is genuinely impressive. He just goes about it the wrong way, promoting fatalism and colonization in a way that can only be detrimental to the environmental movement as a whole.

Musk provides a practical framework for what scholars are calling ecomasculinity the male counterpart to ecofeminism. Ecomasculinity emphasizes examining how sexism negatively impacts men while also promoting a philosophy of care for the environment, for those around you and so on. It encourages deconstructing and reconsidering the ways in which societal structures pressure men to be better, higher, stronger, more virile, smarter, richer, more powerful, composed and adored than their supposed competition. This pressure can lead to men oppressing other groups in order to prove their superiority around other men a phenomenon that we can see in action close to home at the college frat party.

Musk has demonstrated that its possible to inspire men to care about the environment, but ecomasculinity shows us that men need role models who inspire care while also working to closely consider gendered behaviors. You cant have one without the other. Think Bob Ross or Mr. Rogers, but for climate advocacy.

Unfortunately, no such role model exists. Bill McKibben, Hank Green, David Wallace-Wells and many other men offer more nuanced information about climate change and a greater emphasis on caring for what we have instead of abandoning it. Even Bill Gates, who recently published the book How to Avoid a Climate Disaster, would make for a better billionaire idol than Musk. But none of them have the cool factor that Musk imbues in his every tweet. None of them sell flamethrowers or sleek self-driving cars. I understand Musks appeal, but there must be some middle ground between his dangerous, glamorous form of masculinity, and the boring, unglamorous work of actually solving problems.

I appreciate the work that Musk has done in inspiring young men to dream of starting an entrepreneurial career based on products that combat climate change, but I dont think its too much to ask for an unproblematic male climate role model. Musk fans might argue that his asshole behavior has nothing to do with his accomplishments as a businessman and innovator, but his personality is what propelled him to both fame and infamy. Tesla, SpaceX and his various other business ventures would not be nearly as successful if not for his headline-grabbing behavior. Even his environmental ideals smack of the kind of toxic masculinity that brings men down instead of lifting them into the future.

All this is to say men, dump Elon Musk. Leave him! Hes bad for you! Youd be so much better off without him! If you truly want to help the environment, Musks brand of toxic masculinity certainly isnt going to get you there. Instead, we must embrace a philosophy of care as both masculine and feminine, and accept that no one man could possibly solve a problem as vast as climate change.

Sarah writes primarily about trees, climate change and walking. You can reach her at [emailprotected].

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The Green Space | Elon Musk and Ecomasculinity - University of Pittsburgh The Pitt News

Four strains of bacteria which could help promote plant growth have been found in testing facilities onboard the ISS. One of the strains - Methylorubrum rhodesianum - was already known to scientists but three have been determined to be a "novel species".

The three strains have been called IF7SW-B2T, IIF1SW-B5, and IIF4SW-B5 and are closely related to Methylobacterium indicum.

Methylobacterium species help to promote plant growth and are commonly found in soils on Earth.

Experts from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) believe the strains could help create the "fuel" needed for plant growth on Mars when humans eventually arrive.

Mars' and Earth's soil obviously differ in many ways.

One of the main differences is that Earth's soil has much more moisture, which is better suited for plant growth.

But by creating a resilient fuel which can withstand the harsh Martian environment, it could help with colonisation of the Red Planet, according to the research published in the journal Frontiers in Microbiology.

Dr Kasthuri Venkateswaran and Dr Nitin Kumar Singh of JPL said that the strains might possess "biotechnologically useful genetic determinants" to help grow crops on Mars.

The pair added: "To grow plants in extreme places where resources are minimal, isolation of novel microbes that help to promote plant growth under stressful conditions is essential."

READ MORE:Elon Musk's bold Mars plans dismissed as ''dangerous delusion'

In their study, the researchers said the discovery could potentially lead to more novel bacteria findings which could benefit humanity's mission to Mars.

They wrote: "The whole genome sequence assembly of these three ISS strains reported here will enable the comparative genomic characterisation of ISS isolates with Earth counterparts in future studies.

"This will further aid in the identification of genetic determinants that might potentially be responsible for promoting plant growth under microgravity conditions and contribute to the development of self-sustainable plant crops for long-term space missions in future."

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NASA: Unknown bacteria found on the ISS - and it could help with the move to Mars - Daily Express

The audio of NASA's newest rover crunching across the surface of Mars has been documented, bringing a whole new dimension to Mars exploration.

(Photo: NASA via Getty Images)With NASA one day seeking to take humans to the Red Planets surface, and possibly beyond, the United States National Research Council Decadal Survey suggests that the space agency uses the ISS as a test-bed for studying microorganisms.

A sensitive microphone carried by the Perseverance rover recorded the bangs, pings, and rattles of the robot's six wheels as they rolled through Martian terrain. However, the audio recording has an unexplained high-pitched scraping noise. Engineers are attempting to solve the dilemma.

Dave Gruel, the lead engineer for Mars 2020's EDL Camera and Microphone subsystem, said per the Associated Pressthat he'd pull over and call for a tow if he heard these sounds driving his car.

"But if you take a minute to consider what you're hearing and where it was recorded, it makes perfect sense," he said.

Vandi Verma, a senior engineer and rover driver at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, said people don't know the wheels are metal when they see the photos. She explained in a statementthat the rover is definitely very loud when someone is rolling on rocks with these wheels.

Perseverance, the largest and most advanced rover ever sent to Mars on Feb. 18, touched down near an ancient river delta to look for evidence of past existence. The most promising rocks will be sampled for potential return to Earth.

The sighing of Martian wind and the fast ticking soundof the instrument's laser zapping rocks were previously picked up by a second microphone, which was part of the rover's SuperCam instrument. Scientists will use this data when they search Jezero Crater for evidence of life.

The SuperCam sounds were part of a sequence of system tests performed by Perseverance. These included everything from the robotic arm's unstowing to the rover's first temperature measurements using the Mars Environmental Dynamics Analyzer.

The rover has also been looking for a suitable airfield to conduct its first flight tests with the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter. The Perseverance and Ingenuity teams are making arrangements for the rover to launch the helicopter. It would have 30 Martian days, or sols (31 Earth days), to complete up to five test flights now that the right spot has been discovered.

The EDL and SuperCam mic recordings are taking Mars down to Earth in a whole different way, Space.com said. These audio files will be used to remind models of the Red Planet's environment and assist engineers in monitoring Perseverance's fitness, according to project team members. Furthermore, the images of SuperCam's snaps will show valuable knowledge about zapped rocks, such as their hardness and whether or not they are coated.

ALSO READ: Viral Mars Perseverance Rover Video With Sound Is Fake! Here's Why

Astrobiology, including the quest for evidence of ancient microbial life, is a crucial goal for Perseverance's work on Mars. The rover will research the planet's geology and climate evolution. It would pave the way for human colonization of Mars, and be the first mission to gather and cache Martian rock and regolith (broken rock and dust).

Following NASA flights, in collaboration with the European Space Agency (ESA), the spacecraft will be sent to Mars to retrieve these sealed samples from the soil and return them to Earth for further study.

The Mars 2020 Perseverance mission is part of NASA's Moon to Mars exploration strategy, which involves Artemis lunar missions to better prepare for human discovery of Mars.

The Perseverance rover was built and is operated by JPL, which is managed for NASA by Caltech in Pasadena, California.

Perseverance will drop off an experimental tag-along helicopter called Ingenuity before it begins digging into rocks for core samples. Next month, the helicopter will attempt the first powered, operated flight on another world.

RELATED ARTICLE: Can NASA Perseverance Rover Bring Back Ambient Sound to Earth?

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NASA Perseverance Rover Officially Shares the Sounds of Driving on Mars - Science Times