News Feeds

US start-up Savor says its synthetic vegan fat, made without livestock or the crops needed for margarine, could cut carbon emissions and save rainforests

Welcome to the Cruelest Day: Tuesday, July 9, 2024, and National Sugar Cookie Day, the simplest of all cookies but not the worst. This photo, from Wikipedia, suggests to me that they should be dunked in coffee:

AceDragonfly, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons

It’s also Martyrdom of the Báb, Cow Appreciation Day, National No Bra Day (this was the norm when I was in college), Fashion Day, Constitution Day in Australia and Nunavut Day (in Nunavut, of course).

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the July 9 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*The French elections were a surprise with the right-wing Rally Party not winning. Actually, nobody won. From the BBC:

Nobody expected this. High drama, for sure, but this was a shock.

When the graphics flashed up on all the big French channels, it was not the far right of Marine Le Pen and her young prime minister-in-waiting Jordan Bardella who were on course for victory.

It was the left who had clinched it, and Emmanuel Macron’s centrists – the Ensemble alliance – had staged an unexpected comeback, pushing the far-right National Rally (RN) into third.

Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the veteran left-wing firebrand seen by his critics as an extremist, wasted no time in proclaiming victory.

“The president must call on the New Popular Front to govern,” he told supporters in Stalingrad square, insisting Mr Macron had to recognise that he and his coalition had lost.

His alliance, drawn up in a hurry for President Macron’s surprise election, includes his own radical France Unbowed, along with Greens, Socialists and Communists and even Trotskyists. But their victory is nowhere big enough to govern.

Here’s Matthew’s take on it, posted with permission:

It’s all rather complicated.

France has a two-round system. In the first round, if a candidate gets >50%, they are elected straight away (this is relatively rare). If no one gets a majority in the first round, all candidates with >12.5% of the vote can go through to the second round, which is straight first-past-the-post.

In the first round, the Rassemblement National (National Rally – ex-Front National) was the largest single party, but did not win any seats outright. The evident threat was that they would go on and win a parliamentary majority in the second round. In the run-up to the election, the left parties – Unbowed France, Socialist Party, Communist Party, Greens, and some small groups – came together as the New Popular Front (a reference to the Popular Front of 1936) put forward a common programme and a single candidate in each constituency. As soon as the results of the first round were known, the NPF said they would stand down their candidates in the second round where they came third, behind a right-wing candidate, in order to beat the FN. The right-wing parties were much less prepared to reciprocate, and in many cases maintained their candidacy, even when they had come a poor third.

In the week or so before the election, although the pollsters and pundits were predicting an RN absolute majority, the racist and anti-semitic nature of some of their candidates was revealed; together with the mobilisation of the left parties, this was sufficient to ensure that the RN were pushed into third place, with the NPF getting the largest number of seats. This was a huge relief to many people – hence the joyous scenes in many cities around France. In the cases where right-wingers stood as a third candidate, they were all defeated.

However, no party, and no group of parties on the same political wavelength, has a majority. This is a hung parliament. Whoever is the future prime minister (the current PM, from Macron’s party, has offered his resignation but has been asked to stay on for a while) will have to negotiate legislation on a case-by-case basis. This is not new – Macron’s party has been a minority government for the last two years.

Macron called the early elections because he wanted to lance the boil of the RN, which had done remarkably well in the European elections. He obviously really wanted his party to gain a majority (the only reason he was elected – twice – is because he was standing against the leader of the RN, Marine Le Pen, and he clearly hoped that might happen again, at a parliamentary scale). Things didn’t work out quite as he hoped – he now has to deal with the legitimate claim of the NPF that it should form the new government. There will be a lot of horse-trading in the coming weeks. If the NPF does form a government, one of its key measures would be to halt the attacks on pensions that have been a key part of Macron’s policies and which have provoked enormous discontent. While this policy would be opposed by the traditional parties of the right, it did feature in the RN”s manifesto, so could technically pass in parliament…

*Biden is holding very firm about remaining the Democratic candidate for President, and he even wrote a letter to Congressional Democrats saying he’s committed to staying in the race:

President Biden issued defiant responses on Monday to high-ranking lawmakers calling for him to step aside, challenging Democrats to run against him and telling congressional Democrats in a letter that he was “firmly committed to staying in the race.”

Calling into “Morning Joe” on MSNBC, Mr. Biden said he didn’t care about any of the “big names” urging him to drop out of the race, his voice rising considerably as he spoke.

“If any of these guys don’t think I should run, run against me,” he said. “Go ahead, announce for president. Challenge me at the convention.”

Less than an hour earlier, Mr. Biden’s campaign released a letter to congressional Democrats in which he wrote that he was “firmly committed to staying in the race.”

His pledge to remain in the race kicks off what could be the most crucial week of his presidency, as he faces crumbling support from Democratic lawmakers and mounting fears of a rout by former President Donald J. Trump and his followers in November’s races for the White House and Congress.

Here’s an excerpt from his letter:

Let’s have a poll. Will he stay or will he go?

Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.

*The descriptions of negotiations between Israel and Hamas have been confusing, but yesterday Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu has issued a list of  four “nonnegotiable demands” that, he says, he’ll stick to during the negotiations. From the Times of Israel:

Ahead of the Israeli negotiating team’s departure for further hostage deal talks in Cairo and Doha later this week, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu presented a list on Sunday evening of what he said were four nonnegotiable Israeli demands, including a guarantee that Israel could resume fighting, which would need to be met in any hostage release and ceasefire deal with Hamas.

Netanyahu’s statement, at a crucial phase ahead of the resumption of talks, sparked anger, both in Israel and among mediators, with some accusing him of attempting to sabotage hard-won progress.

The renewed negotiations in both Egypt and Qatar come after the Hamas terror group said on Saturday that it was ready to discuss a hostage deal and an end to the war in Gaza without an upfront commitment by Israel to a “complete and permanent ceasefire.” That statement constitutes a shift in the position Hamas has held in all previous negotiations since November.

Here are the four nonnegotiable demands:

1. “Any deal will allow Israel to return to fighting until its war aims are achieved.”

2. “Weapons smuggling to Hamas from the Gaza-Egypt border will not be possible.”

3. “The return of thousands of armed terrorists to the northern Gaza Strip will not be possible.”

4. “Israel will maximize the number of living hostages who will be returned from Hamas captivity.”

#1 is probably not acceptable to Hamas, for it would force them surrender (see also #3), though it’s not clear that this will eventually remove Hamas from power.  And #4 is a bit ambiguous; it should say “Hamas must return ALL the hostages, living or dead. Despite the fact that many of the Israeli public seem willing to keep Hamas in power if they just let the hostages go, I don’t think keeping Hamas in power is in Israel’s interests.

*Columbia University has fired the three deans who became infamous for exchanging anti-Semitic text messages during presentations about antisemitism by rabbis and other pro-Jewish people. (The text messages were photographed over the shoulders of the texting deans.)

Three Columbia University administrators have been removed from their posts after sending text messages that “disturbingly touched on ancient antisemitic tropes” during a forum about Jewish issues in May, according to a letter sent by Columbia officials to the university community on Monday.

The administrators are still employed by the university but have been placed on indefinite leave and will not return to their previous jobs.

Nemat Shafik, the Columbia president, described the sentiments in the text messages as “unacceptable and deeply upsetting, conveying a lack of seriousness about the concerns and the experiences of members of our Jewish community.” She said the messages were “antithetical to our university’s values and the standards.”

The announcement came about a month after a conservative website published photos that showed some of the text messages sent by the administrators.

And it followed weeks of unrest at Columbia over the war in Gaza as the university emerged as the center of a nationwide protest movement. Pro-Palestinian demonstrations led Dr. Shafik to order the arrest of students on trespassing charges this spring. In late April, protesters occupied a campus building, leading to more arrests. In May, citing security concerns, the university canceled its main commencement ceremony.

The three Columbia administrators involved in the text message exchanges are Cristen Kromm, formerly the dean of undergraduate student life; Matthew Patashnick, formerly the associate dean for student and family support; and Susan Chang-Kim, formerly the vice dean and chief administrative officer. They did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Josef Sorett, the dean of Columbia College, also engaged with the administrators in the text exchange.

He will remain in his post, according to the university provost, Angela V. Olinto.

Remember that they’re not FULLY fired, as they’re on leave, presumably not getting paid, and one source said that they’re just being “reassigned.” Also remember that the arrested Columbia students, with (I think) one exception, had all their charges dropped, though I don’t know whether they’ll get disciplined internally by Columbia.

At least the school did SOMETHING about the deans, though. It’s pretty damn embarrassing to have several deans joking and making antisemitic remarks during a symposium on Columbia’s Jewish issues. I am surprised that Sorett remains in office, given that he was involved in the text exchange, but maybe he didn’t say anything antisemitic. (Plus he’s the Big Dean.) One might think that this is free speech, but it’s a violation of institutional neutrality and I think deans serve at Columbia’s will.

*The undisputed king of hot-dog eating, Joey Chestnut, didn’t compete in Nathan’s annual wiener-eating contest this year, so somebody else won. But, wolfing down the pups in another location, Chestnut made the winner look bad.

Patrick Bertoletti gobbled up 58 hot dogs to win his first men’s title Thursday at the annual Nathan’s Famous Fourth of July hot dog eating contest, taking advantage of the absence of the event’s biggest star. In the women’s competition, defending champion Miki Sudo won her 10th title and set a new world record by downing 51 links.

Joey “Jaws” Chestnut, the reigning men’s champion and winner of 16 out of 17 previous competitions, didn’t attend this year over a sponsorship tiff. Instead he competed later in the day against four soldiers at a U.S. Army base in El Paso, Texas, where he wolfed down 57 hot dogs in five minutes.

Bertoletti, 39, of Chicago, won in a tight, 10-minute race where the leader bounced back and forth, defeating 13 competitors from around the world. He said he lost weight and practiced for three months with “an urgency” to prepare for the event, thinking he had a good chance of winning.

“With Joey not here, I knew I had a shot,” Bertoletti said. “I was able to unlock something that I don’t know where it came from.”

Bertoletti bested his prior record of 55 hot dogs at the event, which is held every Independence Day on New York’s Coney Island, a beachfront destination with amusement parks and a carnivalesque summer culture.

Chestnut: 57 dogs in five minutes.  Bertoletti: 58 dogs in ten minutes. Chestnut was almost twice as fast. In fact, Chestnut was banned from the Nathan’s contest because he signed a deal with Impossible Foods, which makes vegan dogs! (I’m not sure the 58 dogs Chestnut ate in Texas were vegan or not.) But here’s Bertoletti (the female champion, Miki Sudo, downed 51 dogs, a really good total for a woman).

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is kvetching:

Hili: Do people still write books? A: Of course, why do you ask? Hili: Its been a long time since you bought any. In Polish: Hili: Czy ludzie jeszcze piszą książki? Ja: Oczywiście, dlaczego pytasz? Hili: Dawno żadnej nie kupowałeś.

. . . and a lovely picture of Szaron:

*******************

From Cat Memes:

From Jesus of the Day:

From Now That’s Wild: (I am not a fan of IPAs, especially if they’re very hoppy)

From Masih; translation from Farsi:

“What are you supporting?” Strong criticism #بهاره_هدایت of famous figures who are standing by the Islamic Republic today with their backs to the people. Bahare Hedayat bravely said that [her] estimate is that because of this interview, [s]hewill be returned to prison despite his bad physical conditions, but [s]he refused to remain silent. Shame on them for not even remaining silent and showing that they do not deserve people’s trust at every opportunity.

Hedayat is an Iranian woman’s rights activist who’s been imprisoned several times.

«از چی دارید حمایت می‌کنید؟»
انتقاد تند #بهاره_هدایت از چهره‌های سرشناس که امروز پشت به مردم، در کنار جمهوری اسلامی ایستاده‌اند.
بهاره هدایت شجاعانه گفت برآوردش این است او را به دلیل این مصاحبه، با وجود شرایط بد جسمی به زندان برمی‌گردانند اما حاضر نشد سکوت کند.
شرم بر آنها که… pic.twitter.com/9nd4qL5cdM

— Sheler Haghanifar | شلر حقانی‌فر (@ShelerHaghani) July 4, 2024

From Keith, translation from the Japanese:

[Sad news] Alpaca found looking thin and sad

It just got a haircut!

【悲報】アルパカさん、やせたかなしい姿で見つかる#ほっこりトゥイッター#アルパカ #やなせたかし pic.twitter.com/izy9ix6kXy

— 滝沢ガレソ (@tkzwgrs) July 6, 2024

From Sullivan. This is what happens when you calmly question a person who doesn’t have an answer:

Perfection. https://t.co/VqSQq2C1mJ

— Andrew Sullivan (@sullydish) April 10, 2023

Two tweets from my own feed:

Idk what this cat is going through but it’s totally a mood pic.twitter.com/hu1DJfGItR

— Why you should have a cat (@ShouldHaveCat) July 8, 2024

I didn’t know of this place:

The Crooked House of Windsor is the oldest teahouse in all of England. pic.twitter.com/gfcadtMa3L

— Giles Paley-Phillips (@eliistender10) July 7, 2024

From the Auschwitz Memorial, a French girl gassed upon arrival, age one:

8 July 1942 | A French Jewish girl, Denise Repper, was born in Paris to Alexander and Madeleine.

In December 1943 she was deported to #Auschwitz. After the selection she was murdered in a gas chamber. pic.twitter.com/bMrJPTozEF

— Auschwitz Memorial (@AuschwitzMuseum) July 8, 2024

Two tweets from Dr. Cobb. Matthew helped organize these Crick letters for the auction. Proceeds go to to the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds:

Got some money – or does your library? Original Crick letters to Peter Lawrence, including the slightly crazed 1971 letter where he announces his bonkers idea about the life coming to Earth on a spaceship, up for auction. https://t.co/2wbThCwuPx

— Matthew Cobb (@matthewcobb) July 7, 2024

As Matthew said, “This could mean trouble!”  I hope it doesn’t! The Starmers have a cat!

I look forward to welcoming the Starmer family cat JoJo to my team (the cat-inet). The fact that my new housemates are already cat-trained is excellent news. https://t.co/uCgOyL3G6z

— Larry the Cat (@Number10cat) July 7, 2024

The Netflix movie Don’t Look Up received plenty of accolades for its scarily realistic portrayal of a professor from Michigan State University attempting to warn the world about a civilization-ending asteroid impact. In reality, there are plenty of organizations in the US government and beyond whose job it is to find and avoid those impacts. And the best way to train them to do those jobs is to run scenarios and try to determine what actions would need to be taken. That was the idea behind the fifth Planetary Defense Interagency Tabletop Exercise, held at John Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in April. NASA recently released a preliminary report on the results of the exercise, with a fully detailed one to come in August.

This is the fifth in a series of exercises that have been ongoing for the last eleven years. Each exercise focuses on a different scenario of a possible strike to determine what actions would need to be taken immediately or over a more extended period.

International collaborators contributed to the discussion for the first time in one of these exercises. Over 100 people participated, including representatives of the UN, UK, ESA, and JAXA. Notably absent were two other space powers—Russia and China—who would obviously impact any decision-making in a realistic scenario of an asteroid impact.

Finding asteroids before they impact us is one of the main tasks of the planetary defense community, as Fraser explains.

In this case, the scenario some participants developed didn’t directly impact China or Russia. However, both could have been affected by a tidal wave if the target asteroid had landed in the Pacific Ocean. The scenario called for an asteroid a few hundred meters across that had a 72% chance of impacting the Earth in about 14 years. 

The projected path that the asteroid carved across the Earth went from the Pacific across northern Mexico and the southern US, passing directly over Dallas and Washington DC before crossing over the Atlantic Ocean, passing over Portugal, Spain (including Madrid), and northern Africa. It was probably not lost on participants that this scenario could directly affect the town they were sitting in.

Calculations showed that there was a 45% chance the impact wouldn’t affect anybody, a relatively high chance it would impact between 1,000 and 100,000 people, and a .04% chance it would impact more than 10 million people—for example, if it scored a direct hit on the Dallas metropolitan area. That uncertainty and the extended timeline gave the planetary defense officials the most significant trouble for this exercise.

Stopping a potentially hazardous asteroid comes with its own challenges, as Fraser discusses in this video.

As in Don’t Look Up, political considerations played the forefront in the participant’s minds. Many repeated the sentiment of one anonymous participant reported in the preliminary report: “I know what I would prefer [to do], but Congress will tell us to wait.” The uncertainty about impact, and especially about whether it would affect anyone at all, was a significant consideration. In the scenario, the asteroid passed behind the Sun, so additional observations to clarify those estimates weren’t possible for another seven months. 

The availability of resources was again a primary consideration, both to track the potential impactor closely enough and to design and execute a mission to potentially deflect it. Participants didn’t believe there would be enough resources for either task and stated that it was one of their main concerns in the future. 

They also agreed that the tabletop exercise was a massive success, with it allowing decision-makers who would be involved in an actual process of determining what to do with a potential real asteroid strike to think through the steps they would have to take and what the likely political and public responses would be. Plans for additional exercises are already in the works, and the final report of the session is due to be released on August 5th, with specific assignable action items to come as part of it. While any expected asteroid impact isn’t foreseen in the coming decades, these sorts of exercises will continue to hone what is arguably one of the most valuable skills of any space agency – how to protect ourselves from one of our biggest threats.

Learn More:
NASA – Quick-Look Report – Planetary Defense Interagency Tabletop Exercise 5
NASA – NASA Asteroid Experts Create Hypothetical Impact Scenario for Exercise
UT – Another Asteroid Discovered Hours Before it Impacts the Earth
UT – If You’re Trying to Prevent an Asteroid Impact, the Technical and Political Challenges are Staggering

Lead Image:
This artist’s concept depicts an asteroid drifting through space. Many such objects frequency pass Earth. To help prepare for the discovery of one with a chance of impacting our planet, NASA leads regular exercises to figure out how the international community could respond to such a threat.
Credit – NASA / JPL-Caltech

The post NASA Imagines a Catastrophic Asteroid Impact to Study How to Prevent it appeared first on Universe Today.

The magnificent tree frog (Litoria splendida) is normally a vibrant green, but conservationists in Australia have spotted a blue-skinned individual

Not only is the entire wellness industry BS, it exists because of people who are especially gullible.

An artificial sports pitch that stores water below the surface cools itself down on hot days by letting water evaporate, just like natural grass

Through the Artemis Program, NASA will return astronauts to the lunar surface for the first time since Apollo 17 landed in 1972. Beyond this historic mission, scheduled for September 2026, NASA plans to establish the infrastructure that will enable annual missions to the Moon, eventually leading to a permanent human presence there. As we addressed in a previous article, this will lead to a huge demand for cargo delivery systems that meet the logistical, scientific, and technical requirements of crews engaged in exploration.

Beyond this capacity for delivering crews and cargo, there is also the need for transportation systems that will address logistical needs and assist in exploration efforts. These requirements were outlined in a 2024 Moon to Mars Architecture white paper titled “Lunar Mobility Drivers and Needs.” Picking up from the concurrently-released “Lunar Surface Cargo,” this whitepaper addresses the need for lunar infrastructure that will enable the movement of astronauts and payloads from landing sites to where they are needed the most. As usual, they identified a critical gap between the current capabilities and what is to be expected.

Once again, the authors cite the need for mobility systems in keeping with NASA’s objectives, as detailed in the Moon to Mars Architecture Definition Document (ADD). As they indicate, recent analyses of integrated surface operations have highlighted the importance of transportation systems that can move cargo from points of delivery to points of use across the lunar surface. This could range from “crew logistics and consumables to science and technology demonstrations, to large-scale infrastructure that requires precision relocation.”

Artist’s illustration of the new spacesuit NASA is designing for Artemis astronauts. It’s called the xEMU,, or Exploration Extravehicular Mobility Unit. Credit: NASA

In short, in addition to landers capable of delivering crews, supplies, experiments, and habitats, NASA’s Moon to Mars program also requires vehicles and support networks that can deliver them from point A to point B. As they state, the currently defined mobility elements are either primarily for crew use or are limited in mobility. This includes elements like the Lunar Terrain Vehicle (LTV) and the Pressurized Rover (PR) – which are elements of the Artemis Base Camp – and robotic missions contracted through the Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program.

In addition, the needs and challenges that will emerge as the Artemis Program unfolds are broken down into three segments: Human Lunar Return (HLR), Foundational Exploration (FE), and Sustained Lunar Evolution (SLR). The HLR segment includes the Artemis III mission, currently scheduled for September 2026, where a crew of two will land on the lunar surface using a Starship HLS. The FE segment will coincide with Artemis IV and Artemis V (2028 and 2030), where crew sizes will expand from two to four, and the necessary infrastructure will expand.

After that, during the SLR segment, NASA plans to mount a mission a year and establish a permanent lunar habitat. Throughout this period, the demands for payloads and transportation systems will exceed current capabilities, limited to 15,000 kg (33,070 lbs) of cargo. Similar to what NASA related in their Lunar Surface Cargo whitepaper, accomplishing key mission objectives will require cargo of sizes and masses beyond these capabilities, creating the need for additional solutions.

Separation and Transportation

As the authors state, a major issue on the lunar surface affecting mobility is the need for separation between landing sites and points of use. This separation is motivated by several factors, including science objectives, lighting conditions, and safety considerations. In short, crew vehicles, habitats, and key infrastructure will be positioned at a distance from landing sites so as not to be affected by darkness caused by the landers’ shadow, contamination by the landers, and regolith or blast ejecta created by engine plumes. Based on the level of concern, separation distances are broken down into three tiers:

• Separation from lander shadowing (tens of meters; tens of yards)
• Lander blast ejecta constraints due either to separation between the lander and existing infrastructure or lander ascent (>1,000 m; ~1090 yards)
• Support for aggregation of elements in ideal habitation zones from available regional landing areas
  (up to 5,000 m; ~5470 yards)

In addition, NASA’s Moon to Mars mission architecture emphasizes the need for In-Situ Resource Utilization (ISRU), such as water ice, regolith, and minerals. NASA also recognizes the need to select habitation and hibernation sites that minimize the exposure to darkness from shadows caused by the local topography and the inclination of the Sun during lunar nights (which last two weeks at a time). This is easiest at higher elevations and on top of crater ridges. This necessitates two things:

• Exploration, habitation, and power sites will need to be located far from landing and ISRU sites
• Traverses from landing to habitation zones could encounter slopes of up to 20 degrees

As the authors state, these overlapping challenges can be met by ensuring systems are in place so mission elements can move away from landers once they are deployed on the surface:

“This could be done using independent or integrated mobility systems. The frequency of traverses between downslope and upslope locations would be driven by the cadence with which landers deliver cargo to the lunar surface and the mass that a given mobility system can carry on each traversal. Integrated architecture operations will necessitate non-trivial relocation and aggregation ranges for cargo and assets.”

Transport Capabilities

During the FE segment of the Artemis Program, NASA plans to expand surface crews from two to four, which will need to operate on the surface for about 30 days. This will require a wide range of mobility needs that can accommodate payloads of varying size and mass and over a range of distances. These include:

• Smaller technology demonstrations: 500 to 2000 kg (~1100 to 4410 lbs)
• Logistic Elements per crewed surface mission: 2,000 to 6,000 kg (~4410 to 13,230 lbs)
• Habitation Systems: 12,000 to 15,000 kg (~26455 to 33,070 lbs)

The authors acknowledge that current mobility elements could provide some cargo relocation capabilities – the LTV, for example, can accommodate 800 kg (~1764 lbs) of cargo when uncrewed. However, according to the NASA team’s analysis, the mobility capacity falls short of demand by 1,000 to 15,000 kg (2,200 to 33,070 lbs) per asset for ranges of 50 to 5,000 m (~55 to 5470 yards). Moreover, the “frequency of relocation needs” (i.e., how often payloads need to be moved) will vary considerably, ranging from single operations for large elements to multiple trips a year for containers and smaller cargo.

Mobility demand forecast ranges compared to LTV and LRV transport capabilities. Credit: NASA Conditions

The authors also address how lunar conditions are important when developing mobility systems. One of the greatest hazards on the Moon is regolith (aka. “moondust”), the fine silicate powder that covers much of the surface and sticks to everything it comes into contact with. There are lighting conditions where parts of the South Pole region will be shadowed due to the inclination of the Sun and permanently shadowed regions (PSRs) that experience perpetual darkness. Last is the matter of the terrain, which can be rocky or covered by 1 to 10 m (3.3 to 33 ft) of regolith and where slopes of more than 10 degrees are common.

This combination of factors, they argue, “creates a significant technological gap between existing systems and mobility demands for future exploration.” For starters, energy systems must provide enough power so vehicles can maintain sufficient speeds and carrying capacity and can operate during lunar nights. The authors also recommend conducting more studies on regolith mitigation strategies to prevent wear and tear and the effects regolith could have on electro-mechanical systems. They also stress the need for sufficient autonomy and/or teleoperation, allowing greater flexibility and range.

These autonomous systems must contend with the challenging lunar terrain, map the local topography, recognize obstacles and unpassable regions, and identify optimal pathways to reach their destinations. As the authors note, these systems could offer increased flexibility for mission planning and increase the speed of mobile assets, especially in areas where the terrain interferes with communications and makes remote operations impossible.

In summary, the “Lunar Mobility Drivers and Needs” whitepaper identifies some robust requirements for creating a permanent human presence on the Moon. This will entail moving cargo and assets across the lunar surface from landing sites to destinations 5 to 5,000 meters (~5.5 to 5470 yards) away. It must also be able to accommodate payloads of up to 12,000 kg or more, which is significantly higher than the current capabilities of the proposed LTV – 800 kg (~1765 lbs).

Artist rendering of an Artemis astronaut exploring the Moon’s surface during a future mission. Credit: NASA

In addition, the paper indicates that energy and environmental considerations are crucial to the design process. It is not simply a matter of scaling up small-scale mobility systems to create large-scale ones. Lastly, the computer systems and software running future mobility systems will need to be interoperable, exchanging information between vehicles and base sites, and have the ability to function autonomously or semi-autonomously.

Like the “Lunar Surface Cargo,” these findings will be explored in more detail with the 2024 Architecture Concept Review (2024 ACR), which will be released later this year, along with white papers describing NASA’s cargo return needs and lunar surface strategy.

Further Reading: NASA

The post A Moon Base Will Need a Transport System appeared first on Universe Today.

Planes flying into one of the world's busiest airports are ingesting around 10kg of dust per 1,000 flights.

Ten million new cases of dementia are diagnosed each year but the presence of different dementia forms and overlapping symptoms can complicate diagnosis and delivery of effective treatments. Now researchers have developed an AI tool that can diagnose ten different types of dementia such as vascular dementia, Lewy body dementia, and frontotemporal dementia, even if they co-occur.

New research predicts significant shifts in marine fish communities in the North Atlantic and Arctic Oceans as a result of climate warming.

Is it possible to create a new class of materials from very different substances using the 'one-pot synthesis' approach? Chemists explain how they enable the synthesis of such novel materials.

The use of certain substances in batteries is polluting air and water.

An exoplanet infamous for its deadly weather has been hiding another bizarre feature -- it reeks of rotten eggs, according to a new study of data from the James Webb Space Telescope.

Organizations using AI to monitor employees' behavior and productivity can expect them to complain more, be less productive and want to quit more -- unless the technology can be framed as supporting their development, research finds.

A new way to store carbon captured from the atmosphere works much faster than current methods without the harmful chemical accelerants they require.

An artificial intelligence (AI) model that can estimate with high accuracy a person's lung function just by using a chest radiograph has been successfully developed.

An artificial intelligence (AI) model that can estimate with high accuracy a person's lung function just by using a chest radiograph has been successfully developed.

Researchers have developed a bioelectric device that can detect and classify new variants of coronavirus to identify those that are most harmful. It has the potential to do the same with other viruses, as well.

Particles generated by cosmic rays can penetrate indoor and underground environments with ease, and could provide a more secure alternative to GPS for synchronising financial transactions worldwide

Dingoes, the native wild dogs of Australia, arrived on the continent more than 3000 years ago and their gene pool has had little input from domestic dogs