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The UK had no plans for preventing or limiting the spread of a covid-19-like infection because it assumed the next pandemic would be caused by an unstoppable flu virus, an inquiry into the outbreak has revealed

This morning something got screwed up with the wildlife post, and so it was posted by accident when it was only partially written.  That means that the email went out with about 15% of the post included. If you read posts on the emails, then, I urge you to go back to Bruce Lyon’s original post, which has three videos and many photos of adorable Arctic fox cubs, at the new site.

I have no idea what happened, but it was a pain to restore the post. It is, however, well worth perusing, as those cubs are somethin

NOTE:  I put this post up the other day, but then got a very irate email from a Kiwi saying that no, I was WRONG: Health New Zealand, he asserted, never sent around any notice to employees encouraging them to say spiritual prayers (karakia) during the day: a Māori custom.  I objected to this as a mixing of religion and government (governmental health efforts), as well as a partial sacralization of indigenous practices. Because of the correspondent’s objection, and because I had no original evidence for such a notice being sent out—just a reader’s assertion—I pulled the post. I also informed a NZ outlet, which had asked to republish my post, to hold off until they could get evidence that such a notice about karakia was indeed circulated.

The organization in NZ has now procured such evidence, so I’m reposting what I took down, but have added the notice (with a link) verifying the government’s urging employees to pray.  And to the person who told me in very strong terms that no such notice existed, well, this is a family site and I won’t tell him what to do—but you can guess.

My post, now with the notice and a link to it:

This item, from the Breaking Views website in New Zealand, is one of the rare cases of a Kiwi speaking up against forcible adherence to Māori customs on the job—in this case, saying Māori prayers. First, “Health New Zealand,” the organization in question, is a government agency that, according to its own description:

. . . . will manage all health services, including hospital and specialist services, and primary and community care. Hospital and specialist services will be planned nationally and delivered more consistently across the country. Primary and community services will be commissioned through four regional divisions, each of which will network with a range of district offices (Population Health and Wellbeing Networks) who will develop and implement locality plans to improve the health and wellbeing of communities.

And the author of this short plaint, A. E. Thompson, is described as “a working, tax-paying New Zealander who speaks up about threats to our hard-fought rights, liberties, egalitarian values, rational thinking and fair treatment by the state.”  He or she is also courageous! (It’s not clear whether Thompson is employed by Health New Zealand; if so, that won’t be for long!)

The beef is that the government sent out a notice to Health New Zealand’s staff encouraging them to say Māori prayers daily.  From the site:

I was made aware that Health New Zealand recently sent an email to its staff as follows:

“We encourage everyone to incorporate karakia daily. To help support you with this we have created some pre-recorded videos to learn karakia. Our resource is designed to give you some options that will enable you to learn and develop your confidence and skills. Note over time we will be adding more recordings for you to choose from.”

The word ‘karakia’ surely must be a Maorified way of saying ‘prayer’, but it seems very difficult and may be impossible to determine whether the term was used before Europeans arrived or if there were other terms that iwi used for their incantations, chants and verbal offerings of respect to their various spiritual entities. Regardless, karakia almost always involve references to supernatural forces whether they be Christian (in practice, they usually end with ‘amine’), pagan or spiritualist. They often involve communication intended for (usually unspecified) long-dead ancestors.

Massey University assistant lecturer Te Rā Moriarty was quoted as saying: “Karakia allow us to continue an ancestral practice of acknowledging orally the divine forces that we, as Māori, understand as the sources of our natural environment. We call these forces atua. So, it is a way to connect through the words of our tūpuna to the world that we live.”

Here’s the notice that the NZ news site that was going to publish my post eventually found. And yes, it is real, and came with a note:

NAME REDACTED tells me she has been advised that an email was sent to employees and invited them to view the message in their browser.

Click the notice to see the announcement—on a Health New Zealand website. The “you can read more” link doesn’t work for me; it apparently requires credentials to access. But the notice says exactly what my informant claimed.  Yes, the New Zealand government is urging some of its employees to pray daily.

In the Māori dictionary, “karakia” is defined this way:

(noun) incantation, ritual chant, chant, intoned incantation, charm, spell – a set form of words to state or make effective a ritual activity. Karakia are recited rapidly using traditional language, symbols and structures. Traditionally correct delivery of the karakia was essential: mispronunciation, hesitation or omissions courted disaster. . . . .

So what we have is a government agency “encouraging” its staff to chant to supernatural powers in hope of connecting to one’s ancestors (tūpuna). This encouragement, of course, violates the separation of church and state, and is an unwarranted sop to the indigenous people. (New Zealand, of course, doesn’t have a First Amendment.)  It’s one more sign of how the sacralization of the oppressed is spreading in New Zealand.  Of course these prayers have no effect, and encouraging the descendants of “colonists” to say them is to force one’s beliefs on others who may not share them.

Thompson has a few words about this:

We can choose not to attend places where the religious practices feel offensive or intolerant to us, and the hosts in those places can exercise similar choice about visiting our spaces.

However, when we are employed and rely upon that employment for our survival, we don’t have the choice to avoid our place of employment. Being employed in a state service under a secular government, workers should have choice over whether they participate even passively in practices involving claimed spiritual entities or supernatural beliefs. Expecting employees to participate denies their right to choose to follow their own religion or philosophical belief and not other people’s, a characteristic of totalitarian rule.

This is especially true in New Zealand, where refusal to sacralize the presumed “oppressed” is sometimes punished severely, with threats of losing one’s job. Thompson’s piece continues:

Sure, the email to health staff only used the word “encourage” but really, when your employer issues an email saying that, you know it will be expected and that ignoring or opposing it will be held against you and may cost you your job.

Pressuring state employees and even private company employees to participate in karakia sets a dangerous precedent in eroding separation between state and religion. As we speak, Muslim immigrants in Europe are deliberately imposing their religious practices on non-Muslim populations by having their distorting loudspeakers call dozens or hundreds of faithful to prostrate themselves in prayer on public footpaths and roadways (even though nearby mosques are plentiful). The practice reflects their belief that Islam is so important that everyone either needs to convert to it or be discriminated against or killed.

As usual, I was sent this with the assumption that the sender would remain anonymous. Thompson, however, clearly has some guts, for even if he/she doesn’t work for Health New Zealand, it’s a huge risk to publish something like this anywhere.

After a long break doing field work, Bruce Lyon of UC Santa Cruz, now in Alaska working on birds, sent some photos of bonus mammals: cute Arctic foxed with added VIDEOS. His captions and IDs are indented, and you can enlarge his photos by clicking on them. His intro:

Since foxes are honorary cats on WEIT, I thought people would enjoy some photos and videos of an arctic fox (Vulpes lagopus) family on St Paul Island, Alaska, where I have spent the summer studying birds. There is a fox den in the boulders next to the beach near my lodging and the pair has a whopping nine pups! The other day all nine adorable fuzzballs were playing out in the open on the beach and I was able to watch and photograph their antics. There were lots of playfights, chases and pounces, tossing bits of dried fish into the air, chewing and attacking a piece of driftwood on the beach, and leaping up and pirouetting in the air.

Arctic foxes are native to St Paul Island and virtually all individuals are blue morph rather than white morph foxes. Occasionally, white morph individuals do get here by crossing the winter sea ice. The morphs are apparently produced by a single Mendelian gene (the MC1R gene). However, three of the pups have white feet, so perhaps the coat color is mostly but not entirely determined by the MC1R gene.

JAC: Here’s the location of St. Paul Island in the Priblofs (from Wikipedia):

A video best shows how adorable these fuzzballs are. Seven of the nine pups are in view:

Another video—the pups having fun with their driftwood toy:

One last video—a sibling’s tail makes for a great toy:

The fox playground. The pup on the right is in pounce mode and pounced on its sib just after I took the photograph:

A pup inspects a fish head. Someone from the local fish processing plant may have dumped a bunch of fish on the beach for the foxes but it is also possible that the parents dragged the fish here from wherever the fish scraps are dumped:

A chase:

These guys took a break from playfighting but then the one on the right batted its sib and in the process lost its balance and toppled over (the following photo):

Next few photos: Mom’s home!  The adult female showed up and the pups mobbed her. They were so excited to see her—lots of bouncing and tail-wagging. She nursed them for a bit (I think they had to take turns; too many to fit at one time) but she soon decided she had had enough and nipped at the kids to chase them off:

A pup checks me out:

Despite the hype, there is no evidence to show magnesium oil is effective for any purpose.

The post Magnesium oil: Not so magical first appeared on Science-Based Medicine.

Smartphones contain some of our most intimate data, but are you willing to share it with your most intimate partner? A survey has revealed that 51 per cent of people are happy to give their PIN to their partner, but other forms of data sharing are less agreeable

An asteroid’s size, shape, and rotational speed are clues to its internal properties and potential resources for mining operations. However, of the more than 20,000 near-Earth asteroids currently known, only a tiny fraction have been sufficiently characterized to estimate those three properties accurately. That is essentially a resource constraint – there aren’t enough dedicated telescopes on Earth to keep track of all the asteroids for long enough to characterize them, and deep space resources, such as the Deep Space Network required for communications outside Earth’s orbit, are already overutilized by other missions. Enter the Autonomous Nanosatellite Swarming (ANS) mission concept, developed by Dr. Simone D’Amico and his colleagues at Stanford’s Space Rendezvous Laboratory. 

The concept behind ANS is relatively simple. A primary “mothership” spacecraft travels to an asteroid, where it deploys several smaller, autonomous nanosatellites upon arrival. These nanosatellites take up positions surrounding the asteroid and, using relatively inexpensive sensor and communications technology, map the asteroid’s features. After observing for some time, they send data back to the mothership, where an algorithm pieces together information similar to a stereo vision system on Earth and calculates the asteroid’s shape, size, and rotational speed.

There are several deeper layers to unpack in the mission, though. Communication is the first one. In ANS, only the mothership communicates back to Earth using a high-gain antenna. The smaller swarming robots all communicate with each other – partly to estimate distances between the different swarming satellites but also to coordinate observations.

Characterization is the first step toward exploitation, as Fraser discusses.

Each nanosatellite utilizes only a few relatively inexpensive pieces of hardware, including a star tracker for overall positioning, short range camera (as compared to more expensive lidar systems typically used in asteroid characterization missions), atomic clocks to synchronize timing, and radio frequency communication modules. These components allow for relatively independent operation of each nanosatellite and lower the burden of communication back with Earth – freeing up those deep space communications resources for other critical work.

But the critical component of ANS isn’t so much the hardware—it’s the software, particularly the control and estimation algorithm. Dr. D’Amico and his team describe a technical tool known as an unscented Kalman filter, which allows them to estimate asteroid shape, size, and rotation based on landmarks noticed by each swarming nanosatellite and run through this algorithm.

To demonstrate the effectiveness of that algorithm, the team tested it using a relatively well-characterized asteroid: 443 Eros. That asteroid had the distinction of being both the first near-Earth object ever found, back in 1898, and the first ever visited by a mission – the NEAR mission 100 years later. The NEAR Shoemaker craft that visited 433 Eros also successfully landed on it, another first for humanity. Even with the comparatively simple sensing technology of a quarter century ago, Eros is still one of the most characterized asteroids in the solar system.

Here’s a talk about autonomous swarming given by Dr. D’Amico, the head of Stanford’s Space Rendezvous Lab.

The demonstration results clearly showed that the ANS algorithm does its job well. It can coordinate the positioning of the nanosatellites surrounding the asteroid and coalesce their disparate data sets into a coherent picture of the asteroid they are monitoring. And it can do so remotely, with very minimal input from Earth.

For now, that is how far the algorithm has gotten. Several missions, some of which we’ll cover in the near future, further explore the idea of nanosatellite swarms. But ANS itself hasn’t yet been adopted into a formal mission architecture. One day, though, thousands of satellites might be swarming the tens of thousands of small bodies surrounding our home, leading to the first stages of a genuinely off-Earth economy.

Learn More:
NASA – Autonomous Nanosatellite Swarming (ANS) Using Radio Frequency and Optical Navigation
Stacey, Dennison, & D’Amico – Autonomous Asteroid Characterization through Nanosatellite Swarming
UT – What Are Asteroids Made Of?
UT – Water Found on the Surface of an Asteroid

Lead Image:
Artist’ depiction of an ANS mission to Eros.
Credit – Stacey, Dennison, & D’Amico

The post Swarming Satellites Could Autonomous Characterize an Asteroid appeared first on Universe Today.

A survey of people in the US has revealed the widespread belief that artificial intelligence models are already self-aware, which is very far from the truth

Science is at last confirming what many people have long suspected - that mammals, birds and perhaps some invertebrates have elements of consciousness

When ants try to invade their nest, Japanese honeybees flutter their wings and tilt their bodies to beat away their enemies

What is the true definition of a planet, and could there be a more refined definition in the future? This is what a recent study published in The Planetary Science Journal hopes to address as a team of researchers from the United States and Canada investigated the potential for a new definition of a “planet”. This study holds the potential to challenge the longstanding definition outlined by the International Astronomical Union (IAU), which established IAU Resolution B5 in 2006, resulting in demoting Pluto from a “planet” to a “dwarf planet”.

Here, Universe Today discusses this incredible research with study lead author, Dr. Jean-Luc Margot, who is a professor in the Department of Earth, Planetary & Space Sciences at the University of California, Los Angeles, regarding the motivation behind the study, significant results, what steps need to be taken for the IAU to implement his new definition, and whether Dr. Margot thinks Pluto should be reclassified as a planet. So, what was the motivation behind this study?

“IAU Resolution B5 is problematic – it is vague and excludes exoplanets – and the problems will not go away on their own,” Dr. Margot tells Universe Today. “Our community and the public deserve better definitions for such important astrophysical terms as ‘planet’ and ‘satellite’. We have had 18 years to identify the problems and consider possible ways forward. There are good reasons to believe that we are better equipped in 2024 than in 2006 to produce a good outcome.”

According to IAU Resolution B5, the current definition of a planet is as follows:

(a) is in orbit around the Sun,

(b) has sufficient mass for its self-gravity to overcome rigid body forces so that it   assumes a hydrostatic equilibrium (nearly round) shape, and 

(c) has cleared the neighborhood around its orbit.

Unfortunately, this resulted in Pluto being demoted from a planet to a dwarf planet since it did not meet criteria (c). Additionally, IAU Resolution B5 limits itself to planets within our solar system, specifically pertaining to planets orbiting a single star. In contrast, approximately 50 exoplanets have been confirmed to orbit one star within a binary (two-star) system. Therefore, a new IAU definition that encompasses exoplanets could help establish a better framework for planets throughout the cosmos.

While IAU Resolution B5 is considered a qualitative (non-mathematical) definition for planets, this recent study attempted to develop a more quantitative (mathematical) definition, or planetary taxonomy (classification), that could encompass planets and satellites (moons) both within and beyond our solar system. To accomplish this, the researchers used a series of equations to calculate a planetary body’s “ability to clear a zone” which coincides with criteria (c) of IAU Resolution B5, with the goal of ascertaining the approximate size a planetary body needs to be to “clear a zone”. Additional equations were also used to ascertain the difference between a planet and a satellite, as well. Therefore, what were some of the most significant results from this study?

“We suggest that planetary bodies can be classified on the basis of properties that are easily measurable: orbital elements and masses,” Dr. Margot tells Universe Today. “We find that unsupervised clustering of solar system bodies according to orbital elements and masses yields distinct groups. The clustering reveals that satellites are distinct from planets, and it reveals that the 8 planets are distinct from all other bodies. The presence of these groups and the gaps between these groups provides natural dividing lines for planetary taxonomy.”

Dr. Margot continues, “We emphasize the focus on the ability to clear a zone in a specified timescale as opposed to the state of having cleared a zone. The former is robust and easily quantifiable and observable, the latter is difficult to implement and difficult to quantify. We propose a single clearing timescale applicable to all stars, stellar remnants, and brown dwarfs. We propose a definition that is aligned with IAU recommendations, but we also examine potential difficulties related to these recommendations. We propose a simpler, mass-based proposal that avoids some of these difficulties.”

This proposal consists of the following definition:

A planet is a celestial body that

(a) orbits one or more stars, brown dwarfs, or stellar remnants, and

(b) is more massive than 1023 kg, and

(c) is less massive than 13 Jupiter masses (2.5 × 1028 kg).

A satellite is a celestial body that orbits a planet.

Headquartered in Paris, France, the IAU was formed on July 28, 1919, in Brussels, Belgium with the goal of promoting and improving all facets of astronomy, including scientific research, public outreach, and global education. As of May 2024, the IAU is comprised of 92 countries and a membership of 12,738 individuals. The IAU has held 32 General Assemblies during its history with the goal of establishing scientific protocol, or in the case of planets, providing a new definition during the 26th General Assembly in 2006. Examples of more recent resolutions include protections of radio astronomy from radio interference and advancements in ultraviolet astronomy, both at the 31st General Assembly in 2021. Therefore, what steps need to be taken for the IAU to implement these three criteria for defining planets?

“The IAU has an established process for considering and voting on proposed resolutions,” Dr. Margot tells Universe Today. “In my opinion, the IAU ought to follow its established process and consider all reasonable submissions. We were unsuccessful in 2024, but we are likely to resubmit in advance of the 2027 General Assembly, and we are hoping for a more positive outcome at that time.”

As noted, the motivation of this study was derived from IAU Resolution B5 in 2006 that established a new definition of a planet, which resulted in Pluto being demoted from planet to dwarf planet based on the new criteria. This was immediately met with skepticism from the scientific community, including from Dr. Alan Stern, who is the Principal Investigator of the New Horizons mission that visited Pluto in 2015, with Pluto being demoted less than a year after New Horizons launched in early 2006. This pushback was also seen in politics as several state governments, including California, New Mexico, and Illinois, publicly denounced the demotion. Therefore, in Dr. Margot’s opinion, should Pluto be reclassified as a planet?

“Pluto is an amazing planetary body that is worthy of exploration,” Dr. Margot tells Universe Today. “However, it does not make sense to classify Pluto with the eight planets. One may have legitimate concerns about the scope and precision of the 2006 IAU planet definition, but at least the outcome of the IAU resolution was sensible: Pluto did not belong with the eight planets and needed to be assigned to a different class. Our work is not focused on Pluto but instead on quantifying and generalizing the definition of planet.”

As of this writing, NASA has confirmed the existence of 5,690 exoplanets and this number continues to grow at a steady rate daily, which means the number of exoplanets orbiting multiple stars will grow, as well. Therefore, a new definition of a planet could provide a better framework for identifying and characterizing exoplanets and their respective satellites (exomoons) as we continue to explore the cosmos. This recent study could help establish that framework by developing a quantitative approach to defining planets and satellites both in our solar system and beyond, which could help shape our understanding of the universe and our place in it. Additionally, using mathematics to establish a new definition could also remove any subjectivity from defining planets, as well.

“Nothing is engineered in our proposal to keep the number of planets small,” Dr. Margot tells Universe Today. “The clustering analysis is completely agnostic about human feelings. It could have resulted in a group of 8 planets, 12 planets, or 50 planets, and we would have done exactly the same thing. It identified 8 planets. Readers who are chagrined that smaller bodies are not recognized as planets should take comfort in the fact that these bodies are no less worthy of exploration. A taxonomic classification in one group or another is not an indicator of scientific importance.”

How will this new definition help scientists better understand planets and exoplanets in the coming years and decades? Only time will tell, and this is why we science!

As always, keep doing science & keep looking up!

The post Officially, Only the Sun Can Have Planets. Is it Time to Fix the Definition of “Planet”? appeared first on Universe Today.

X-ray binaries are some of the oddest ducks in the cosmic zoo and they attract attention across thousands of light-years. Now, astronomers have captured new high-resolution radio images of the first one ever discovered. It’s called Circinus X-1. Their views show a weird kind of jet emanating from the neutron star member of the binary. The jet rotates like an off-axis sprinkler as it spews material out through surrounding space, sending shockwaves through the interstellar medium.

The MeerKAT radio telescope in South African spotted the S-shaped jets emanating from the neutron star. Its images are the first-ever high-resolution views of such jets, according to lead researcher Fraser Cowie. “This image is the first time we have seen strong evidence for a precessing jet from a confirmed neutron star,” he said, referring to the neutron star’s off-axis spin. “This evidence comes from both the symmetric S shape of the radio-emitting plasma in the jets and from the fast, wide shockwave, which can only be produced by a jet changing direction.”

Such an awkward spin gives the jets their peculiar S-like configuration. Since scientists aren’t completely sure what phenomena caused them to launch in the first place, studying the odd behavior gives insight into the extreme physics behind its existence.

Examining the Neutron Star Jets in Detail

The MeerKAT measurements showed not only the jet but revealed termination shocks moving away from the neutron star. These occur in regions where the jets slam into material in surrounding space. This is the first time astronomers found such shocks around an X-ray binary like Circinus X-1. Those waves are moving fast—at about 10 percent the speed of light and their structure points back to the jet as their source. “The fact that these shockwaves span a wide angle agrees with our model,” Cowie said. “So we have two strong pieces of evidence telling us the neutron star jet is processing.”

A MeerKAT radio image of the S-shape jet precessing in the Circinus X-1 X-ray binary pair system. The jet emanates as a result of the accretion of material around the neutron star. Courtesy: Fraser Cowie, Attribution CC BY 4.0.

The speed of those shockwaves turns them into particle accelerators producing high-energy cosmic rays. The fact that those rays exist tells astronomers the action around the X-ray binary is extremely energetic. That high-energy activity has grabbed astronomers’ attention for half a century. Still, it remains a mysterious system, so as Cowie points out, it’s important to observe the jets and see how their behavior changes over time. “Several aspects of its behavior are not well explained so it’s very rewarding to help shed new light on this system, building on 50 years of work from others,” he said. “The next steps will be to continue to monitor the jets and see if they change over time in the way we expect. This will allow us to more precisely measure their properties and continue to learn more about this puzzling object.”

About Circinus X-1

The Circinus X-1 system contains a neutron star and a companion. The pair lies some 30,000 light-years away in the direction of the southern hemisphere constellation Circinus. It was first spotted in June 1969 by an Aerobee suborbital rocket carrying X-ray-sensitive instruments and has been studied for years by astronomers using optical, X-ray, and radio telescopes.

Composite image of Circinus X-1, which is about 24,000 light-years from Earth in the constellation Circinus. Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/Univ. of Wisconsin-Madison/S. Heinz et al; Optical: DSS; Radio: CSIRO/ATNF/ATCA

The system is a pretty young member of the X-ray-binary class of objects. Typically, a binary pair consists of a black hole and a sun-like star, or a neutron star and a sun-like star. The tremendous gravity of the more massive member of the pair continually pulls material from the companion. Eventually, a hot disk of gas forms and spirals down to the surface of the neutron star. This accretion process unleashes huge amounts of energy, and some of it powers the jets. They carry material away from the system at close to the speed of light.

Illustration of Circinus X-1 and its jets.

Circinus X-1 is about 4,600 years old, based on studies of the material around the binary system done using observations by the Chandra X-ray Observatory. It’s one of the brightest objects in the X-ray sky and has been studied ever since its discovery. The neutron star component is extremely dense and is the leftover neutron-rich core of a supermassive star that exploded as a supernova some 4,600 years ago.

Astronomers know of hundreds of X-ray binaries in the Milky Way alone. Studies of Circinus X-1 give them insight into events and processes occurring early in the life of the binary. Interestingly one other X-ray binary shows an s-shape jet structure. It’s called SS 433. However, it may not have a neutron star. Instead, there may be a black hole powering that system. That makes the existence of Circinus X-1 doubly interesting since it contains a neutron star doing much the same thing.

For More Information

“Garden Sprinkler-like” Jet Seen Shooting out of Neutron Star
X-ray Binary Circinus X-1

The post Neutron Star is Spraying Jets Like a Garden Sprinkler appeared first on Universe Today.

NASA says it intends to discontinue development of its VIPER moon rover, due to cost increases and schedule delays — but the agency is also pointing to other opportunities for robotic exploration of the lunar south polar region.

The Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover was originally scheduled for launch in late 2023, targeting the western edge of Nobile Crater near the moon’s south pole.

The south polar region is a prime target for exploration because it’s thought to hold deposits of water ice that could sustain future lunar settlements. NASA plans to send astronauts to that region by as early as 2026 for the first crewed lunar landing since 1972.

Unfortunately, the VIPER project ran into a series of delays, due to snags in the testing and development of the rover as well as the Astrobotic Griffin lander that was to deliver the rover to the lunar surface. The readiness date for VIPER and Griffin was most recently pushed back to September 2025.

During an internal review, NASA managers decided that continuing with VIPER’s development would result in cost increases that could lead to the cancellation or disruption of other moon missions in NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services program, or CLPS. NASA notified Congress of its intent to discontinue development.

The budgeted cost for building VIPER was $433.5 million, and the estimated cost of building and launching the Griffin lander is $235.6 million, according to a 2022 report from NASA’s Office of the Inspector General.

NASA said it will continue supporting Astrobotic’s Griffin Mission One, with launch set for no earlier than the fall of 2025. Instead of delivering VIPER, the mission would provide a flight demonstration of the lander and its engines. In January, Astrobotic’s Peregrine lander passed up an opportunity to land on the moon due to a problem with its propulsion system.

NASA said other missions could verify the presence of ice in the moon’s south polar region and determine how such resources could be used to further exploration goals.

“We are committed to studying and exploring the moon for the benefit of humanity through the CLPS program,” Nicola Fox, NASA’s associate administrator for science, said today in a news release. “The agency has an array of missions planned to look for ice and other resources on the moon over the next five years. Our path forward will make maximum use of the technology and work that went into VIPER, while preserving critical funds to support our robust lunar portfolio.”

Late this year, for example, Intuitive Machines is due to deliver an ice-mining experiment called PRIME-1 to the south pole under the terms of the CLPS program. PRIME-1 is designed to drill for water ice and study what happens to the H2O when it’s brought up to the surface.

In league with NASA, the CLPS program and a wide array of other partners, the Canadian Space Agency is planning to send an ice-hunting rover to the lunar south polar region by as early as 2026. The Artemis program’s crewed missions will also study the moon’s ice deposits and how they can be used.

NASA said it plans to disassemble VIPER and arrange for the reuse of the rover’s components and scientific instruments for other missions to the moon. But prior to disassembly, the agency said it would consider expressions of interest from commercial and international partners for use of the existing VIPER rover system at no cost to the federal government. Interested parties can email HQ-CLPS-Payload@mail.nasa.gov anytime between July 18 and Aug. 1.

NASA said the VIPER team would conduct an “orderly close-out” through next spring.

Word of VIPER’s demise was met with disappointment in some quarters of the space community. “In the Artemis era, why is lunar science targeted for cancellation?” Laura Seward Forczyk, founder and executive director of the space consulting firm Astralytical, asked in a posting to the X social-media platform.

Phil Metzger, a planetary physicist at the University of Central Florida, said NASA was making a “bad mistake.”

“This was the premier mission to measure lateral and vertical variations of lunar ice in the soil,” Metzger wrote in a posting to X. “It would have been revolutionary. Other missions don’t replace what is lost here.”

The post NASA Stops Work on VIPER Moon Rover, Citing Cost and Schedule Issues appeared first on Universe Today.

The Cassini-Huygens mission to Saturn generated so much data that giving it a definitive value is impossible. It’s sufficient to say that the amount is vast and that multiple scientific instruments generated it. One of those instruments was a radar designed to see through Titan’s thick atmosphere and catch a scientific glimpse of the moon’s extraordinary surface.

Scientists are still making new discoveries with all this data.

Though Saturn has almost 150 known moons, Titan attracts almost all of the scientific attention. It’s Saturn’s largest moon and the Solar System’s second largest. But Titan’s surface is what makes it stand out. It’s the only object in the Solar System besides Earth with surface liquids.

Cassini’s radar instrument had two basic modes: active and passive. In active mode, it bounced radio waves off surfaces and measured what was reflected back. In passive mode, it measured waves emitted by Saturn and its moons. Both of these modes are called static modes.

But Cassini had a third mode called bistatic mode that saw more limited use. It was experimental and used its Radio Science Subsystem (RSS) to bounce signals off of Titan’s surface. Instead of travelling back to sensors on the spacecraft, the signals were reflected back to Earth, where they were received at one of NASA’s Deep Space Network (DNS) stations. Critically, after bouncing off of Titan’s surface, the signal was split into two, hence the name bistatic.

A team of researchers has used Cassini’s bistatic data to learn more about Titan’s hydrocarbon seas. Their work, “Surface properties of the seas of Titan as revealed by Cassini mission bistatic radar experiments,” has been published in Nature Communications. Valerio Poggiali, a research associate at the Cornell Center for Astrophysics and Planetary Science, is the lead author.

This schematic shows how Cassini’s bistatic radar experiment worked. The orbiter used its Radio Science Subsystem to send signals to Titan’s surface. The signals then reflected off Titan to Earth, where they were received by one of the DNS receivers at Canberra, Goldstone, or Madrid. The signals are either Right Circularly Polarized (RCP) or Left Circularly Polarized (LCP). Image Credit: Poggiali et al. 2024.

The signals that reach the DNS are polarized, which reveals more information about the hydrocarbon seas on Titan. While Cassini’s radar instrument revealed how deep the seas are, the bistatic radar data tells researchers about both their compositions and surface textures.

This image of the hydrocarbon seas on Titan is well-known and was radar-imaged by Cassini. That radar data told us how deep the seas are. New bistatic radar data can reveal more about the composition and surface texture of the seas. Image Credit: [JPL-CALTECH/NASA, ASI, USGS]

“The main difference,” Poggiali said, “is that the bistatic information is a more complete dataset, and is sensitive to both the composition of the reflecting surface and to its roughness.”

“It’s like on Earth, when fresh-water rivers flow into and mix with the salty water of the oceans.”

Valerio Poggiali, lead author, Cornell Center for Astrophysics and Planetary Science

The experimental bistatic radar required meticulous cooperation.

Philip Nicholson, a professor in the Department of Astronomy at Cornell, is one of the study’s co-authors. “The successful execution of a bistatic radar experiment requires exquisite choreography between the scientists who design it, Cassini mission planners and navigators, and the team who collects the data at the receiving station,” Nicholson said.

These results are based on bistatic radar data from four Cassini flybys from 2014 to 2016. In this work, the researchers focused on three large seas on the surface of Titan’s polar regions: Kraken Mare, Ligeia Mare and Punga Mare.

The bistatic radar data revealed new information about the three seas. Though they’re all hydrocarbon seas, their composition varies based on latitude and their proximity to other features like estuaries and rivers. The bistatic radar measured the dielectric constant of Titan’s seas. The dielectric constant is a material’s capacity to store electrical energy. In practical terms, it’s a measure of a surface’s reflectivity, so it reveals the composition. Earth’s water has a dielectric constant of about 80. Titan’s methane and ethane seas have a dielectric constant of only about 1.7. Kraken Mare’s southernmost region had the highest dielectric constant.

This figure from the study shows Titan’s polar regions with the three large seas labelled. The colour key on the right and the text on the image show the dielectric constants of different regions. The white lines labelled T101, T102, T106, and T124 are the four flybys. Image Credit: Poggiali et al. 2024.

Bistatic radar data also showed all three seas had calm surfaces during the four flybys. Waves were no more than 3.3 mm, about 0.13 of an inch. Near estuaries, straits, and coastal areas, the waves were slightly larger: 5.2 mm or 0.2 of an inch. So small they barely merit the name ‘wave.’

This figure from the study is similar to the previous image but shows wave height instead of dielectric constant. Image Credit: Poggiali et al. 2024.

The bistatic radar data also revealed the composition of some of the rivers that flow into the seas.

“We also have indications that the rivers feeding the seas are pure methane,” Poggiali said, “until they flow into the open liquid seas, which are more ethane-rich. It’s like on Earth, when fresh-water rivers flow into and mix with the salty water of the oceans.”

These results agree with scientific models of Titan’s hydrocarbon seas and thick atmosphere. Models show that methane rains down from Titan’s atmosphere and then flows into its lakes and seas. They also show that the rain contains only tiny amounts of ethane and other hydrocarbons and almost completely consists of methane.

“This fits nicely with meteorological models for Titan,” Nicholson said, “which predict that the ‘rain’ that falls from its skies is likely to be almost pure methane, but with trace amounts of ethane and other hydrocarbons.”

The Cassini mission is very instructive for future missions. Though it ended its mission when it plunged into Saturn in 2017, scientists are still making new discoveries with its vast trove of data. The same will be true of missions like Juno when they end.

The researchers behind this work say there’s lots left to learn from all of Cassini’s data.

“There is a mine of data that still waits to be fully analyzed in ways that should yield more discoveries,” Poggiali said. “This is only the first step.”

The post Experimental Radar Technique Reveals the Composition of Titan’s Seas appeared first on Universe Today.

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