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Ae inflatable habitats the future of human space exploration? This is what the space-tech company, Sierra Space, hopes to achieve as they recently conducted a successful Ultimate Burst Pressure test on June 18 with its Large Integrated Flexible Environment (LIFE®) technology at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center. The goal of these tests is to inflate the test article until it explodes while ascertaining if the maximum pressure falls within NASA’s strict safety guidelines regarding a recommended operating pressure of 60.8 psi (maximum operating pressure of 15.2 psi times four as a safety factor). Upon explosion, Sierra Space engineers immediately found the recent test achieved 74 psi, thus exceeding NASA’s safety standards by 22 percent.

“We are 100 percent committed to maintaining U.S. leadership in Low Earth Orbit. Sierra Space is leading the way with the first commercial space station to replace the International Space Station when it is decommissioned and ensure there is no gap in LEO,” said Sierra Space CEO Tom Vice. “Our revolutionary, expandable space station technology reinvents the space station. Our technology, for the first time, will enable the right unit economics that will usher in the full commercialization of space. Our biotech and industrial partners will utilize our factories of the future to innovate new products that will massively disrupt terrestrial markets and benefit life on Earth.”

This recent test marks the technology’s second full-scale structural test and seventh key validation test, which comes after Sierra Space successfully conducted its first full-scale burst test in December 2023, achieving 77 psi and exceeding NASA’s safety standards by 27 percent. Both test units stood at more than 6 meters (20 feet) in height and had volumes of 300 m3 (10,594 ft3), or approximately 1/3rd of the pressurized volume of the International Space Station (ISS). Sierra Space is now planning for the first test of its 500 m3 (17,657 ft3) space station technology in 2025, which will be 55 percent of the pressurized volume of the ISS.

December 2023 burst test of the Large Integrated Flexible Environment (LIFE®)

“No other company is moving at the speed of Sierra Space to develop actual hardware, stress-tested at full scale, and demonstrate repeatability. We’ve taken a softgoods system that very few companies around the world have been able to design, and now we have consistent, back-to-back results,” said Shawn Buckley, VP of Earthspace Systems, Space Stations, at Sierra Space. “A second successful full-scale test is an absolute game changer. We now know it’s possible to equal or surpass the total habitable volume of the entire International Space Station, in a single launch.”

While these two recent tests were conducted at full-scale, Sierra Space conducted two sub-scale burst tests in July 2022 and November 2022, achieving maximum pressures of 192 and 204 psi, respectively, with NASA’s safety standards being 182.4 psi given the sub-scale sizes, thus both tests successfully exceeding these safety standards.

July 2022 sub-scale burst test November 2022 sub-scale burst test

Sierra Space stated in June 2023 that they hope to launch a “pathfinder” version of the LIFE® habitat in 2026 with the goal of the technology being an essential piece to the Orbital Reef commercial space station, with the latter scheduled to be operational in 2027. Given its size, Sierra Space estimates the LIFE® habitat can comfortably accommodate four astronauts with the remaining volume being used for science experiments, exercise equipment, small medical facilities, and the Astro Garden® system, which can potentially grow food in space and has previously undergone testing at the Sierra Space Madison WI facility.

This comes as numerous commercial space companies are attempting to launch their own space stations, including the Axiom Station, Starlab Space Station, Haven-1, and the aforementioned Orbital Reef space station. Additionally, this also comes as NASA announced their plans to “retire” the ISS in 2030, although the agency announced in a July 2024 white paper that they will evaluate the possibility of extending the lifetime of the ISS if no commercial space stations are able to accommodate space-based research at that time.

How will Sierra Space’s Large Integrated Flexible Environment (LIFE®) technology help advance human space exploration 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 Watch an Inflatable Habitat Burst in Super Slo-Mo appeared first on Universe Today.

The topic of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) is a great target for science communication because public attitudes have largely been shaped by deliberate misinformation, and the research suggests that those attitudes can change in response to more accurate information. It is the topic where the disconnect between scientists and the public is the greatest, and it is the most amenable to change.

The misinformation comes in several forms, and one of those forms is the umbrella claim that GMOs have been bad for farmers in various ways. But this is not true, which is why I have often said that people who believe the misinformation should talk to farmers. The idea is that the false claims against GMOs are largely based on a fundamental misunderstanding of how modern farming works.

There is another issue here, which falls under another anti-GMO strategy – blaming GMOs for any perceived negative aspects of the economics of farming. Like in many industries, farm sizes have grown, and small family farms (analogous to mom-and-pop stores) have given way to large corporate owned agricultural conglomerates. This is largely due to consolidation, which has been happening for over a century (long before GMOs). It happens because larger farms have an economy of scale – they can afford more expensive high technology farm equipment. They can spread out their risk more. They are more productive. And when a small farm owner retires without a family to leave it to, they tend to consolidate with a larger farm. Also, government subsidies tend to favor larger farms.

Some small family farms have found a business model that works, and they do well. We have many local farms where I live, who do agricultural events, pick your own, pumpkin picking, sell many heirloom vegetables, sell wine, have a corn maze, and do other things to stay profitable.

You will notice that none of this has anything to do with GMOs. But let’s get back to the first strategy and see why it is flawed and can be fixed by talking to a farmer.

One anti-GMO claim is that farmers don’t like to have to buy their seeds from big companies. They would rather save their seeds to plant the next year. There are two reasons why this argument fails as an anti-GMO argument. One is that farmers have been buying their seeds for decades, again – long before GMOs came on the scene. In the 1990s (before GMOs) greater than 90% of all seeds planted in developed countries were hybrids, and hybrid seeds are patented and owned by seed companies. GMOs literally changed nothing. Also, you cannot replant hybrid seeds because the hybrid traits do not breed through. They are worthless for replanting.

Further, farmers generally don’t want to save their seeds, store them over winter, keeping them dry and vermin-free. This is a lot of work. It’s easier just to buy fresh seeds each season. Again, there will be exceptions for some crops and some farmers, but they can still do that if they wish. They can preserve their heirloom crops in this way, no one is stopping them.

Another claim is that GMOs hurt farmers, because they are expensive. But farmers buy GMOs because they are more profitable. In a 2022 study:

Over the period 1996 to 2020, the economic benefits have been significant with farm incomes for those using the technology having increased by $261.3 billion US dollars. This equates to an average farm income gain across all GM crops grown in this period of about $112/hectare.

So the narrative that farmers are forced to buy GMO seeds they don’t want, it costs them money, and they are prevented from saving and replanting seeds is completely false. A basic understanding of the farming industry would correct this false narrative – i.e., talk to an actual farmer. Further, use of some GMO crops makes farming outcomes more predictable, which is critical to farmers. They are less likely to lose their crop to pests or drought. GMOs make it easier to do no-til farming, and to use less pesticide, which saves on labor.

In terms of the effect of GMOs on small-scale farmers specifically:

The most significant advantages of GM crops include being independent to farm size, environment protection, improvement of occupational health issues, and the potential of bio-fortified crops to reduce malnutrition. Challenges faced by small-scale farmers for adoption of GM crops comprise availability and accessibility of GM crop seeds, seed dissemination and price, and the lack of adequate information.

Like all technologies, smaller farms are less able to afford them and reap their benefits. Of course, this is no reason to ban the technology (there is no discussion of banning other high-tech agricultural technology because it is difficult for small-scale farmers to afford). Again, they have to find a business model that works for their scale. There are challenges for any small business to compete with the big boys.

Finally, there is one thing that some farmers worry about when it comes to GMOs – they can be controversial. But this is a circular argument – they are controversial because they are controversial. This is precisely the strategy of the anti-GMO lobby – demonize GMOs and make them controversial so that the controversy becomes a negative unto itself.

We can talk about the economics of farming, how to protect small farmers, and we can have this discussion in the context of business as a whole. Again – the trend toward consolidation is a general trend across most industries for reasons generic to business, capitalism, and scale. But let’s remove the fake arguments from the GMO discussion. This is not about forcing farmers to buy GMO seeds – they do so voluntarily because they are profitable. Let’s also not pretend that most farmers want to save their seeds but can’t. This is simply not a good business model, and most farmers have abandoned the practice of saving seeds long before GMOs entered the scene. Also, most seeds were patented long before GMO technology.

Most farmers recognize that GMO technology is simply an extension of breeding and cultivation and has resulted in some extremely useful cultivars, with more to come. Abandoning GMOs will hurt farmers, will reduce food production, and will hurt the environment.

 

 

The post GMOs – Ask a Farmer first appeared on NeuroLogica Blog.

Academic research on solar system objects has increased dramatically over the last twenty years. However, information on most of the estimated 1.2 million objects discovered in our solar system has been spread throughout various databases and research papers. Putting all that data into a single data store and making it easy to access would allow researchers to focus on their research rather than on where to collect data. That is the idea behind the Solar System Open Database Network (SsODNet), a project by data scientists at the Observatoire de Paris.

So why is this important? Ease of access to data can lower barriers to entry into the field of researching solar system objects (SSOs), allowing more people to participate in that research. The more people that research SSOs, the more likely we are to spot a potentially dangerous or economically interesting one. 

Additionally, even for researchers already involved in the field, collecting data relevant to their current research can be a time-consuming, manual process. Introducing machine-readable tools like SsODNet can dramatically speed up the time it takes to produce new research on SSOs, enabling those researchers to do better-quality work.

One potential application of the database is AI – how useful can that be?

What parameters would those researchers be looking at? The database includes data on diameter, taxonomy, thermal inertia, rotational period, albedo, and more – the most exciting characteristics scientists want to know about an SSO. To collect this data, the developers, led by Jerome Berthier, combined data from several publicly available databases, such as the Jet Propulsion Laboratory Small Bodies Database and the Lowell Observatory Minor Planet Services, with manual data published in dozens of papers on solar system objects. Many of these preexisting databases also didn’t have machine-friendly systems, meaning that Dr. Berthier and his co-authors had to manually scrape data from them and the manuscripts to include it in SsODNet.

When building out SsODNet itself, machine interfaces were a central tenant of development. It is designed as a web service, with standard machine-interfacing protocols accepted for queries, such as Rest and web services. They also implemented a Python interface called “rocks,” which can be called from a command-line interface.

These simple interfaces combine features the SSO research community has asked for, such as standardizing the names of the 1.2 million objects in the database (called quaero in the program) and providing statistical analyses of a set of objects (ssoBFT). There are also several estimates for what properties might be correct if conflicting data points are found in the literature.

Finding asteroids is the first step in stopping the deadly ones – SsODNet can help with that.

It is still incomplete even with as much data as they could gather on the 1.2 million objects in the database. The authors admit that most of the data points currently in the database are for asteroids since they are most interested in studying the type of object. However, while asteroids make up a large percentage of SSOs, they don’t include comets, satellites, or even planets, though this is planned for future database releases.

However, perhaps the most impressive part of this data collection effort is its ongoing commitment to support. The authors have committed to updating the database with new SSO data weekly (at least to the quaero name resolver) and releasing major monthly updates to the other applications. Doing so would include adding new data from new papers released during that time. Getting the data into a sustainable format to launch the database in the first place was a Herculean effort, and maintaining it for the foreseeable future will be another one. The SSO research community will undoubtedly thank them for it.

Learn More:
Berthier et al. – SsODNet: Solar system Open Database Network
Solar System Portal – SsODNet
UT – Solar System Guide
UT – Want to be an asteroid miner? There’s a database for that.

Lead Image:
Illustration of an interstellar object approaching our solar system.
Credit: Rubin Observatory/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/J. daSilva

The post The Properties of 1.2 Million Solar System Objects Are Now Contained In A Machine-Readable Database appeared first on Universe Today.

Measures are in place to prevent athletes from using performance-enhancing drugs at the Olympic Games, but concerns linger over the use of CRISPR to edit genes and even the inhalation of carbon monoxide

Fossils in rocks that are 3.8 billion years old have puzzled biologists as they look nothing like modern cells, but now it seems they may be an ancient precursor life form that was unable to control its structure

Is your phone really tracking your driving habits and selling the data? Maybe more so than you know.

Universe Today has had the incredible opportunity of exploring various scientific fields, including impact craters, planetary surfaces, exoplanets, astrobiology, solar physics, comets, planetary atmospheres, planetary geophysics, cosmochemistry, meteorites, radio astronomy, extremophiles, organic chemistry, black holes, cryovolcanism, planetary protection, dark matter, supernovae, neutron stars, and exomoons, and how these separate but unique all form the basis for helping us better understand our place in the universe.

Here, Universe Today discusses the incredible field of evolutionary biology with Dr. David Baum, who is a Professor of Botany at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, regarding the importance of studying evolutionary biology, his career highlights, what evolutionary biology can teach us about finding life beyond Earth, and what advice he can offer upcoming students who wish to pursue studying evolutionary biology. Therefore, what is the importance of studying evolutionary biology?

Dr. Baum tells Universe Today, “Humans and all living species are the products of evolution, so what could be more important than understanding how evolution works and yielded such amazing organisms and ecosystems! Most of biology is concerned with How questions, such as: How do we fight off infections? How do animals pick mates? How do plants use light energy to convert carbon dioxide and water into plant matter?”

Dr. Baum continues, “Evolutionary biologists ask Why questions. When we do that, the answer can be either historical or general ahistorical. In either case, evolutionary models enrich our understanding of the natural world. Evolution also helps us make predictions, such as the almost inevitable evolution of resistance to antibiotics, pesticides, herbicides, etc.”

The field of evolutionary biology, also called evolution by natural selection, was kickstarted in 1859 by Charles Darwin who famously crafted the notion of evolution by natural selection with his book On the Origin of Species. While groundbreaking, this new insight into the evolution of life was not accepted by the academic community as its own field until the 1930s, and waited another five decades until departments of evolutionary biology were created within the university system, as well.

Since then, the field of evolutionary biology has “evolved” into better understanding speciation, sexual reproduction, ageing, and cooperation, while incorporating fields like computer science and molecular genetics into answering these questions. It involves the study of various types of evolution, including adaptive, convergent, divergent, and coevolution, which attempt to explain how life evolves over time based on its environment, species, and interactions. Additionally, the field of medicine uses evolutionary biology to gain greater insights into evolutionary medicine and evolutionary therapies. Therefore, what are some of the career highlights that Dr. Baum has encountered while studying evolutionary biology?

Dr. Baum tells Universe Today, “Too many to recount, but perhaps the best was proposing a hypothesis for how complex cells with nuclei might have originated in 2014 and then having researchers discover a new group of organisms in 2015 that, when visualized in 2020, supported our model surprisingly well to the point where textbooks on the subject were rewritten!”

As its name implies, the field of evolutionary biology involves studying how biology evolves over time, ranging anywhere from thousands to billions of years. Evolutionary biologists aim to understand the processes that allowed life on the Earth to evolve from the first single-celled organisms that existed early in our planet’s history to the millions of complex species that inhabit our planet today. But despite the Earth being the only known planetary body with life, the questions that drive the field of evolutionary biology span beyond the confines of our small, blue world. In doing so, evolutionary biologists ask if these same processes could have allowed life to emerge on other planetary bodies, including the planets Mars and Venus, and even moons like Europa and Titan.

Today, the planet Mars is a dry, cold, and desolate world, but could life have formed billions of years ago after the Red Planet’s own formation? And while the surface of Venus exhibits extreme temperatures and pressures where life as we know it cannot exist, what about billions of years ago, as well? And what about Venus’ atmosphere, which has exhibited evidence that life as we know it might exist today at high altitudes where the conditions are more Earth-like regarding temperature and pressure? Does life exist in the deep oceans of Europa, and what about the liquid methane and ethane lakes and seas on Titan? Armed with these burning questions, what can evolutionary biology teach us about finding life beyond Earth?

“My lab is studying how evolution can get started on non-living planets,” Dr. Baum tells Universe Today. “We use both chemical experiments and analytical work that draws on principles from physics and evolutionary theory. I believe that this work will eventually clarify whether some kind of evolving biosphere is inevitable and whether it is likely to be composed of individualized entities, like cells, and whether those units are likely to have some analog of genetic systems. It is too early to know, but I suspect that individualization is likely to be universal, but I am less sure about genetics. We do suspect, however, that without genetic-like systems, cellular complexity is likely to be limited.”

As noted above, the field of evolutionary biology encompasses a wide range of expertise from a myriad of scientific disciplines, including computer science, genetics, and medicine. Additionally, it has enabled the creation of new research fields studying the evolution of robotics, engineering, architecture, and economics. For evolutionary robotics, scientists used the theory of natural selection to improve robots using artificial intelligence (AI) where the algorithms are produced to discard the least efficient robotic designs based on a specific task they’ve been assigned to do, which has allowed engineers to design efficient robots that can function in environments not friendly to humans, like nanoscales or space. Therefore, what advice can Dr. Baum give upcoming students who wish to pursue studying evolutionary biology?

Dr. Baum tells Universe Today, “Read lots of wonderful popular books to get a feel for the underlying principles but be critical of your own thinking – the concept of evolution by natural selection seems simple, but it turns out to be much more subtle and complex that folk usually realize.”

As the field of evolutionary biology continues to grow, expand, and “evolve” and help other scientific fields do the same, so will our understanding of how life on the Earth came to be and potentially on other worlds, as well. In the 165 years since its introduction by Charles Darwin, the field of evolutionary biology has grown to encompass far more than what Darwin potentially imagined, so it’s exciting to think where evolutionary biology will be in the next 165 years, as well.

Dr. Baum concludes by telling Universe Today, “Evolutionary biology is central to the study of why organisms are the way they are, but also underlies the most profound questions in astrobiology and physics: Is there a drive to life in the universe? When a world spawns life, is there a drive to complexity and intelligence? And, by extrapolation, are we alone in the Universe?!”

How will evolutionary biology help us understand our place in the universe 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 Evolutionary Biology: Why study it? What can it teach us about finding life beyond Earth? appeared first on Universe Today.

How will future robotic explorers navigate the difficult subterranean environments of caves and lava tubes on the Moon and Mars? This is what a recent study published in Science Robotics hopes to address as a team of researchers from Stanford University investigated the use of a novel robotic explorer called ReachBot, which could potentially use its unique mechanical design to explore deep caves and lava tubes on the Moon and Mars in the future.

Here, Universe Today discusses this incredible research with Dr. Tony Chen, who is a postdoctoral research fellow in the Harvard Microrobotics Laboratory at Harvard University and lead author of the study, regarding the motivation behind developing ReachBot, significant results, what steps he thinks need to be taken for ReachBot to actually go to the Moon, and how ReachBot could contribute to the upcoming Artemis missions. Therefore, what was the motivation behind ReachBot?

Dr. Chen tells Universe Today, “ReachBot started as a NASA NIAC [NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts] project, where the program is focused on the development of far-reaching and long-term technologies. The main motivation behind ReachBot is to enable robotic exploration of previous inaccessible planetary environments (such as lava tubes) that could provide interesting scientific discoveries and advancements.”

What makes ReachBot unique is its ability to maneuver difficult terrain like uneven rock surfaces by using its elongated appendages with pivoting wrists and grippers guided by a series of algorithms to determine the best course of action. This allows ReachBot to contort its body in a variety of ways while traversing both tight and wide areas within a confined space like a tube or cave. The concept of ReachBot for use in Martian lava tubes was discussed in a 2021 study (Dr. Chen as co-author), followed by prototype testing in a 2022 study (Dr. Chen as lead author), prototype improvements in a 2022 study (Dr. Chen as co-author), and further improvements in a 2022 study (Dr. Chen as co-author).

For this study, the researchers conducted field tests of ReachBot and its capabilities within a lava tube in the Lavic Lake volcanic field in the Mojave Desert as an analog for Martian lava tubes while building off the previous studies. This included investigating how ReachBot could predict how it will both grip and grasp rocky surfaces, gripper design, rocky surface site identification and selection, and how ReachBot performed in a lava tube using its extended appendages that enables the robot’s extreme maneuverability. In the end, the researchers found a wide range of possible extensions for ReachBot, along with favoring convex (outward curved) rocky surfaces that could provide stronger grips, as well.

Image of the ReachBot prototype with its extended boom and grabber within a lava tube of the Lavic Lake volcanic field in the Mojave Desert. (Credit: Stanford University Biomimetics and Dextrous Manipulation Lab) Image of grabber attached to extended boom on ReachBot. (Credit: Stanford University Biomimetics and Dextrous Manipulation Lab) Closeup image of grabber attached to extended boom on ReachBot. (Credit: Stanford University Biomimetics and Dextrous Manipulation Lab) Closeup of the ReachBot grabber without the extended boom. (Credit: Stanford University Biomimetics and Dextrous Manipulation Lab) Closeup of the ReachBot grabber without the extended boom testing its dexterity. (Credit: Stanford University Biomimetics and Dextrous Manipulation Lab)

Dr. Chen tells Universe Today, “The lava tubes in the Mojave Desert were chosen because it was a close analogous cave system to what the lava tubes could potentially be like on Mars. It allowed us to bring a partial ReachBot system into this environment and investigate how the various subsystems perform in a realistic environment.”

This study comes as an international team of researchers led by the University of Trento in Italy successfully constructed a 3D map of a lava tube skylight entrance located in the Mare Tranquillitatis pit (MTP) on the Moon using radar data obtained by NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO). The team determined the lava tube could be tens of meters in length with the skylight itself being almost 100 meters in diameter, noting such lava caves could shield future astronauts from the harsh solar and cosmic radiation that endlessly blasts the lunar surface, thus opening the potential for long-term human exploration of the Moon.

Lava tubes have long been studied for potential future human exploration on both the Moon and Mars, with more than 200 skylights having been observed on the Moon up to this point. Shielding future astronauts from harmful space radiation prevents potentially catastrophic health consequences, including biological effects, radiation sickness, cancer, and death. Being able to send a robotic explorer ahead of time could help astronauts and scientists better determine the most ideal lava caves where astronauts could call home for long-term missions. Therefore, what steps does Dr. Chen believe need to be taken for ReachBot to actually go to the Moon?

“As it currently stands, only a partial prototype of ReachBot has been constructed and tested in a relevant environment,” Dr. Chen tells Universe Today. “There are many other technological developments needed in this project to push it forward. These include but are not limited to the further development of retractable space booms to be more suitable for ReachBot application, full system prototype, and further testing in relevant environments.”

This study also comes as NASA plans to send humans back to the Moon for the first time since 1972 with the agency’s Artemis Program, including landing the first woman and person of color on the lunar surface in history. This program started with the uncrewed Artemis I mission that took the Orion spacecraft, performing a couple flybys of the Moon while testing out the various flight hardware during the mission. This will be followed with the crewed Artemis II mission, which is currently scheduled for a September 2025 launch, will consist of a 10-day mission and four astronauts (three from NASA and one from the Canadian Space Agency) who conducts flybys of the Moon without touching down on the surface.

The first crewed landing on the lunar surface will be the Artemis III mission, which is currently scheduled for September 2026, which will occur near the lunar south pole in hopes of extracting water ice hidden within the deep and dark craters known as the permanently shadowed regions (PSRs). While lava caves and tubes are currently not part of the program, how can ReachBot contribute to the upcoming Artemis missions?

“As you noted earlier, ReachBot was originally designed as a concept to explore Martian lava tubes,” Dr. Chen tells Universe Today. “But there are also lava tubes on the Moon that ReachBot could also provide interesting capabilities to explore. These lava tubes could potentially be a habitat for future space explorers, and ReachBot can help both exploring these caves to provide crucial data and forceful manipulation capabilities for potential construction tasks.”

How will ReachBot help improve lava cave exploration on the Moon and Mars 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 Moon and Mars cave exploration could be easier with ReachBot appeared first on Universe Today.

After a few significant solar flares over the past few days, the chances of auroras (i.e. northern and southern lights) is high enough that it’s probably worth keeping an eye on polar skies for the next couple of nights. At the moment the forecast is for the best chances to be in Asia, but forecasting auroras is far from an exact science, and there could be surprises.

The Aurora Borealis, or Northern Lights, shines above Bear Lake, Alaska. USAF photo: credit Senior Airman Joshua Strang

To know when to start looking, I keep an eye on data from the ACE satellite.  When a cloud of slow particles from a solar flare’s coronal mass ejection arrives, ACE’s data goes all haywire; you’ll see it as a sudden change in the plots’ appearance, as shown below. ACE satellite sits 950 thousand miles [1.5 million kilometers] from Earth, and is located between Earth and the Sun.  At that vantage point, it gives us (and our other satellites) a little early warning, of up to an hour.

Another good place to look is NOAA’s space weather dashboard. Its first panel, an example of which is shown below, displays three plots; the bottom plot is called “Geomagnetic Activity”. When that plot goes deep orange or red, then there’s probably some serious auroras going on in areas where they aren’t so often seen.

But be warned — the plot shows not what is happening now but what happened in a three-hour interval that is already past. If a geomagnetic storm is long enough, that’s still useful, but be aware that the data is out of date by the time we get to see it. That’s why the ACE satellite may well give you the best heads-up.

Semaglutide-based medicines such as Ozempic and Wegovy, which can help people lose weight, may also reduce tobacco cravings

AI-powered image recognition could give researchers a new tool in hunt for dark matter.

AI-powered image recognition could give researchers a new tool in hunt for dark matter.

AI-powered image recognition could give researchers a new tool in hunt for dark matter.

Inspired by the paper-folding art of origami, engineers have discovered a way to make a single plastic cubed structure transform into more than 1,000 configurations using only three active motors.

Inspired by the paper-folding art of origami, engineers have discovered a way to make a single plastic cubed structure transform into more than 1,000 configurations using only three active motors.

Researchers have developed a self-powered 'bug' that can skim across the water, and they hope it will revolutionize aquatic robotics.

Researchers have developed a self-powered 'bug' that can skim across the water, and they hope it will revolutionize aquatic robotics.

Researchers have developed a means to realize cold-atom integrated nanophotonic circuits.

Researchers have developed a means to realize cold-atom integrated nanophotonic circuits.

One of the hazards astronauts must contend with is muscle loss. The more time they spend in a microgravity environment, the more muscle loss they suffer. Astronauts use exercise to counter the effects of muscle atrophy, but it’s not a perfect solution. Researchers want to develop drugs to help, and understanding the muscle-loss process in space is a critical first step.

In the early days of space travel, researchers weren’t certain what effects microgravity had on astronauts. As the length of space missions grew and scientific monitoring became more prevalent, researchers gained a better understanding of the problem. After the Skylab missions in 1973 and 1974, researchers acquired better data and began to reach some conclusions. It was clear that microgravity contributed to a host of health problems, and muscle atrophy was among them.

Many of the problems astronauts suffer mimic the same problems stemming from aging.

“Space is a really unique environment that accelerates qualities associated with aging and also impairs many healthy processes,” said Ngan Huang, an associate professor at Stanford University. “Astronauts come back with muscle atrophy, or a reduction of muscle function, because the muscle isn’t being actively used in the absence of gravity. As space travel becomes more common and available to civilians, it’s important to understand what happens to our muscle in microgravity.”

Huang is the co-author of new research published in the journal Stem Cell Reports. The study is “Skeletal muscle-on-a-chip in microgravity as a platform for regeneration modeling and drug screening.”

Age-related muscle loss is called sarcopenia. Many factors, including immobility, hormonal changes, and even nutrition, contribute to sarcopenia. Currently, there aren’t any FDA-approved drugs to treat the condition, so exercise, lifestyle, and nutrition are the only ways to treat it. Exercise is critical for astronauts in their struggle against muscle loss. However, space for exercise equipment is limited on the ISS. An effective medication to treat astronaut sarcopenia would be a huge boon.

In this new research, the researchers grew live muscle cells on scaffolds on tiny chips and then sent them for study in microgravity aboard the ISS. The cells grew for seven days under the watchful eyes of astronauts and were exposed to a pair of used to counteract sarcopenia and enhance muscle regeneration. Then, they compared the microgravity muscle cells to ones grown under normal gravity in a lab here on Earth.

This figure from the research gives an outline of the study. (A) shows human muscle cells were seeded onto collagen scaffolds, then placed into a bioreactor with media to become muscles on a chip. (B) shows an overview of the experiment, including travelling to the ISS, being exposed to different drugs, and later extracted and analyzed. Image Credit: Kim et al. 2024.

The results showed that the microgravity muscle cells had impaired muscle fibre formation, differences in gene activity, and differences in their protein profiles.

Muscle tubes, or myotubes, are precursors to muscle fibres. The study results showed reduced myotube length and width, as well as a reduced fusion index. The fusion index basically tells researchers how many muscle cell nuclei are present.

The mitochondria generate most of a cell’s energy, and the results showed that genes affecting their function were compromised. Since muscles have such high metabolic function, any impairment to mitochondria will play out in reduced muscle regeneration. Results also showed that genes associated with forming fat were bolstered. The researchers say the combined effect takes a large toll on muscle regeneration in microgravity.

Protein profiles are like snapshots of what cellular machinery is doing at a particular time. They reveal critical information about the cell’s function and health. In this research, the team examined 200 different proteins.

The results showed that five proteins were produced in greater abundance. Two of those are associated with chronic inflammation, and one is “a biomarker for mitochondrial dysfunction and cellular senescence.” Four of the proteins showed reduced abundance. One of those is “an important player in the maintenance of muscle and myogenesis,” the researchers write in their paper.

This image shows the “muscles-on-a-chip” experiment. Image Credit: Kim et al. 2024.

Overall, the changes the muscle cells underwent shared similarities with changes induced by aging.

“We think our research on muscle chips in microgravity may have broader implications on sarcopenia,” says Huang. “Sarcopenia usually takes decades to develop on Earth, and we think that microgravity may have some ability to accelerate the disease process in orders of days.”

The research also helped understand the role drugs could play. “We next used the muscle-on-a-chip platform to perform proof-of-concept drug screening studies,” the researchers write. They exposed the cells to drugs used to counteract sarcopenia and enhance muscle regeneration.

Geneticists use the terms down-regulation and up-regulation to describe negative and positive effects on gene expression. They found that 286 genes were down-regulated in microgravity. Of those, 200 showed a positive response to drug treatment and similar expression levels to cells in normal gravity.

These Venn diagrams from the research show upregulated genes (left) and downregulated genes (right) in microgravity. The two drugs tested in the research are IGF-1 and 15-PDGH-i. The study showed that 286 genes in muscle tissue are downregulated in microgravity and that 200 of them responded positively to drugs. Image Credit: Kim et al. 2024.

“In conclusion, we show that engineered muscle-on-a-chip bioconstructs exposed to microgravity induced prominent changes to their transcriptome that mimic aspects of impaired myogenesis,” the authors write.

Space research is difficult and resource-intensive, so the researchers intend to continue their work using equipment that mimics microgravity to dig deeper into the issue here on Earth. In 2025, the muscles-on-a-chip are scheduled for another space flight. That experiment will help to identify more drugs that can combat muscle loss.

The benefits of this research extend beyond just muscle loss. “This concept of engineered tissue chip platform in microgravity is a potentially transformative tool that could allow us to study a variety of diseases and do drug screening without animal or human subjects,” says Huang.

The authors conclude in their paper, “This work further highlights the utility of microgravity as a unique environment for drug discovery.”

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