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People who went from using social media for at least 2 hours a day to just 30 minutes a day reported no improvement to their sleep or emotional well-being

I wrote earlier this week about the latest successful test of Starship and the capture of the Super Heavy booster by grabbing arms of the landing tower. This was quite a feat, but it should not eclipse what was perhaps even bigger space news this week – the launch of NASAs Clipper probe to Europa. If all goes well the probe will enter orbit around Jupiter in 2030.

Europa is one of the four large moons of Jupiter. It’s an icy world but one with a subsurface ocean – an ocean that likely contains twice as much water as the oceans of Earth combined. Europa is also one of the most likely locations in our solar system for life outside Earth. It is possible that conditions in that ocean are habitable to some form of life. Europa, for example, has a rocky core, which may still be molten, heating Europa from the inside and seeding its ocean with minerals. Chemosynthetic organisms survive around volcanic vents on Earth, so we know that life can exist without photosynthesis and Europa might have the right conditions for this.

But there is still a lot we don’t know about Europa. Previous probes to Jupiter have gathered some information, but Clipper will be the first dedicated Europa probe. It will make 49 close flybys over a 4 year primary mission, during which it will survey its magnetic field, gravity, and chemical composition. Perhaps most exciting is that Clipper is equipped with instruments that can sample any material around Europa. The hope is that Clipper will be able to fly through a plume of material shooting up geyser-like from the surface. It would then be able to detect the chemical composition of Europa material, especially looking for organic compounds.

Clipper is not equipped specifically to detect if there is life on Europa. Rather it is equipped to determine how habitable Europa is. If there are conditions suitable to subsurface ocean life, and certainly if we detect organic compounds, that would justify another mission to Europa specifically to look for life. This may be our best chance and finding life off Earth.

Clipper is the largest probe that NASA has sent out into space so far. It is about the size of an SUV, and will be powered by solar panels that span 100 feet. Light intensity at Jupiter is only 3-4% what it is on Earth, so it will need large panels to generate significant power. It also has batteries so that it can operate while in shadow. NASA reports that soon after launch Clipper’s solar arrays successfully fully unfolded, so the probe will have power throughout the rest of its mission. These are the largest solar arrays for any NASA probe. At Jupiter they will generate 700 watts of power. NASA says they are “more sensitive” than typical commercial solar panels, but I could not find more specific technical information, such as their conversion efficiency. But I did learn that the panels have much more sturdy, in order to survive the frigid temperatures and heavy radiation environment around Jupiter.

Clipper will take a somewhat indirect path, first flying to Mars where it will get a gravity boost and swing back to Earth where it will get a second gravity boost. Only then will it head for Jupiter, where it will arrive in 2030 and then use its engines to enter into orbit around Jupiter. The orbit is designed to bring it close to Europa, where it will get as close at 16 miles from the surface over its 49 flybys. At the end of its mission NASA will crash Clipper into Ganymede, another of Jupiter’s large moons, in order to avoid any potential contamination of Europa itself.

I always get excited at the successful launch of another planetary probe, but then you have to wait years before the probe finally arrives at its destination. The solar system is big and it takes a long time to get anywhere. But it is likely to be worth the wait.

An even longer wait will be for what comes after Clipper. NASA is “discussing” a Europa lander. Such a mission will take years to design, engineer, and build, and then more years to arrive and land on Europa. We won’t get data back until the 2040s at the earliest. So let’s get hopping. The potential for finding life off Earth should be one of NASA’s top priorities.

The post The Clipper Europa Mission first appeared on NeuroLogica Blog.

The natural motors that power tail-like appendages in bacteria seem to have a single evolutionary origin, allowing parts from different species to be combined to create a tiny new engine

Colossal, a US firm that is aiming to revive lost species such as the woolly mammoth, says it now has a near-complete genome of the extinct thylacine

Testing the equipment on an interstellar mission is one of the first things operators do when the spacecraft successfully launches. In some cases, those tests show the future troubles the mission will face, such as what happened to NASA’s Lucy mission a few years ago. However, in some cases, the mission provides us with perspectives we might never have seen before, which was the case for Hera, ESA’s mission to Dimorphos. This asteroid was deflected successfully during NASA’s DART test in 2022.

Hera was successfully launched on October 7th and carries a series of instruments designed to peer at the asteroids using different wavelengths. Some instruments were turned toward the Earth and Moon from about a million km away as part of the mission’s Near-Earth Commissioning Phase. The resulting pictures showcase the spacecraft’s capabilities and provide a new perspective of our “terraqueous globe,” as Carl Sagan once put it, and our much more sterile neighbor.

First, we have an image from the Asteroid Framing Camera or AFC. Technically comprised of two cameras (for redundancy, as so many space missions do), this monochrome 1020×1020 image is the clearest of the three released by ESA as part of a press release. It gives a sense of the scale of the distance between the Earth and the Moon, which can be hard to judge when down on the planet’s surface.

Image of the Earth (left) and Moon from Hera’s AFC.
Credit – ESA

Next up is the Thermal Infrared Imager, or TIRI. This one was taken slightly closer, at 1.4 million kilometers away (about three times the distance from the Earth to the Moon itself). TIRI is designed to capture infrared wavelengths of light – which we usually think of as heat. Watching Dimorphos over time will allow it to understand the “thermal inertia” of certain regions, which scientists can use to discern some important physical properties of the asteroid. While not the most exciting space image ever captured, the successful operation of this sensitive instrument is critical to the mission.

Image of the Earth (center) and Moon from Hera’s TIRI.
Credit – ESA

Finally, there’s Hyperscout H. It, too, is designed to capture Dimorphos in wavelengths that humans can’t visibly see – in this case, 650 nm to 950 nm wavelengths, which is considered “near infrared” as compared to the “mid-infrared” capabilities of TIRI. Also, this imager comes with its own false color depiction, showing “shorter” wavelengths, which are closer to our visible spectrum, as shades of blue, whereas “reds” represent wavelengths farther away from visible light. 

Image of Earth (bottom left) and Moon from Hera’s Hyperscout H imager.
Credit – ESA

The Earth and Moon have been imaged most likely millions of times in these wavelengths before, so it’s unlikely that any science will be gleaned from these images. Still, these images are invaluable as proof of concept for the operation of the systems. The three cameras comprise some of the essential parts of Hera’s “asteroid deck,” which houses most of the spacecraft’s other instruments, including two CubeSat deployers, a laser rangefinder, and antennas for deep-space communication with Earth. Many of those different instruments will have to wait until “show time” when the craft arrives at the binary asteroid system in December 2026. Hopefully, we will also receive plenty more images from the three systems covered here.

Learn More:
ESA – Hera’s first images offer parting glimpse of Earth and Moon
UT – Hera Probe Heads Off to See Aftermath of DART’s Asteroid Impact
UT – ESA’s Hera Mission is Bringing Two Cubesats Along. They’ll Be Landing on Dimorphos
UT – The Smallest Radar Ever Sent to Space Will Probe the Interior of Dimorphos After its Impact From DART

Lead Image:
Image of Earth from the AFC
Credit – ESA

The post Hera Says Farewell to the Earth and Moon appeared first on Universe Today.

Producing a kilogram of farmed salmon may require 4 or 5 kilograms of wild fish, which isn't a sustainable approach to feeding the world's growing population

Dolphins in the Gulf of Mexico have tiny bits of plastic in their breath, and this is probably a worldwide problem

From shops to ride-share apps, queuing is everywhere. Peter Rowlett explains how the maths behind queuing can help us spend less time in line

Moin Hussain's debut feature film Sky Peals sees a man discover his father may be from outer space. Part sci-fi, part family drama, part coming-of-age tale, it is odd and otherworldly

Our three-day festival of science, discoveries and innovation, with talks by names from Alice Roberts to Venki Ramakrishnan, took place from 12-14 October. Here's a taste of the fun in pictures

General relativity teaches us that observing a black hole is all a question of perspective – and technique, says Chanda Prescod-Weinstein

Neurosurgeon James Doty and neuroscientist Sabina Brennan ask if there is any real science in manifesting in their new books

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There is a dirty secret in publishing: most popular science books aren't fact-checked. This needs to change, says Michael Marshall

A debating technique known as the "truth sandwich" is helping archaeologists combat a false narrative about an advanced ancient civilisation forgotten in human history

While quantum computers are still in their infancy, more and more people are training to become quantum software developers

From some place I can’t recall I learned about a site called Ad Fontes Media, which has a figure called an  Interactive Media Bias Chart that looks like this (click to enlarge):

On the X axis various sources are ranked for political bias, with “left” sources on the left (of course) and right-wing sources to the right. On the Y axis is a measure of credibility, with low scores on the bottom and high scores on the top.  You’ll want to know how the rankings are done, and you can see that on this page. (You can also get digital downloads, which are free for educational, personal, and nonprofit use.)

You’ll want to enlarge the chart at the original site and see how your media sources rank. You can also search for a given media source (including television and other digital media).

The source with the most balanced coverage and also the most reliable appears to be USAFacts, to which you must subscribe (I ahven’t heard of it or seen it).  The CBS Evening News and the Wall Street Journal are also given as credible centrist sources.

The politically extreme sources tend to be less credible, and that’s understandable, of course, for they slant the news.  Among left-leaning and less credible sources are the PBS News Hour (surprise), but, even worse: Jezebel, and Jen Psaki on NBC. Then the left-wing sources go even more downhill to sites like Wonkette and the Tony Michaels Podcast.

Not credible right-wing sources include The Post Millenial and Fox and Friends, and, even more extreme and less credible (and not surprising) are Louder with Crowder and, of course, Alex Jones.

Scores are based on panels of three people rating individual articles, and I can’t seem to find an overall score for places like the New York Times, but here’s their chart, showing a left skew and moderate credibility (each dot is an article)

The Wall Street Journal shows, as indicated above, more centrist and credible news:

Reuters is left-centrist and pretty reliable:

The Washington Post, like the NYT, is also skewed left and not terribly credible:

I haven’t examined the methodology or overall scores for each source, but I’ll let readers do that for themselves. Anyway, it’s fun to play around with and see where your own news sources fall.

What life is and how the mind works fall within the compass of one bold concept. But critics say that by attempting to explain everything, it may end up explaining nothing

Teleoperated robots for gathering moon dust are a step closer, according to new research.

Teleoperated robots for gathering moon dust are a step closer, according to new research.