NASA has signed deals with 4 private companies for buying moon dust for prices as low as $1. This is a significant milestone in space exploration. Molly Gambhir brings you a report.

Gravitas: NASA's dirt-cheap deal for moon dirt

An amount of just one dollar will be given by NASA to various private space companies to collect rocks from the Moon.&nbsp;

On Thursday, Lunar Outpost was given the contract to collect samples for NASA.&nbsp;

Also read | <a href="https://www.wionews.com/science/nasas-hubble-space-telescope-captures-cosmic-cinnamon-bun-344894">NASA's Hubble Space Telescope captures 'cosmic cinnamon bun'</a>

The contract was part of NASA's low-cost lunar resource collection programme for which four contracts will be awarded.

Also read | <a href="https://www.wionews.com/science/nasa-resolves-the-mystery-of-blue-ring-nebula-reveal-stellar-missing-link-344087">NASA resolves the mystery of Blue Ring Nebula, reveal stellar missing link</a>

California-based Masten Space Systems and Tokyo-based ispace, and its European subsidiary are the other organisations that won the contract.&nbsp;

The US space agency will be paying for collections of lunar regolith, or moon soil, between 50 and 500 grams in weight, as reported by The BBC.&nbsp;

"The companies will collect the samples and then provide us with visual evidence and other data that they've been collected," a NASA spokesperson said.&nbsp;

<a href="https://www.wionews.com/videos/gravitas-nasas-dirt-cheap-deal-for-moon-dirt-347602">WATCH|</a>

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Lunar Outpost CEO Justin Cyrus told the BBC said that the contract is for a 2023 mission, but they are in talks with different lander companies, that may lead to an earlier launch date. &nbsp;

The company will be paid one dollar for bringing moon rocks from the lunar South Pole.&nbsp;

Interestingly, the amount of one dollar will also be paid in instalments, which is divided into 10 per cent when the contract is awarded, further 10 per cent when the spacecraft is launched for the project and remaining 80 per cent when the NASA verifies the rocks.&nbsp;

However, the nominal amount is not the motivation behind this program for companies.&nbsp;

The mission opens the door of extracting resources outside the earth.&nbsp;

"The innovation here is not of financial value but of creating business and legal norms of creating a market of buyers and sellers outside of Earth's constraints," said Sinead O'Sullivan, a space expert.

An amount of just one dollar will be given by NASA to various private space companies to collect rocks from the Moon. On Thursday, Lunar Outpost was given the contract to collect samples for NASA.

An amount of just one dollar will be given by NASA to various private space companies to collect rocks from the Moon. On Thursday, Lunar Outpost was given the contract to collect samples for NASA. Also read | NASA's Hubble Space Telescope captures 'cosmic cinnamon bun' The contract was part of NASA's low-cost lunar resource collection programme for which four contracts will be awarded. Also read | NASA resolves the mystery of Blue Ring Nebula, reveal stellar missing link California-based Masten Space Systems and Tokyo-based ispace, and its European subsidiary are the other organisations that won the contract. The US space agency will be paying for collections of lunar regolith, or moon soil, between 50 and 500 grams in weight, as reported by The BBC. "The companies will collect the samples and then provide us with visual evidence and other data that they've been collected," a NASA spokesperson said. WATCH| × Lunar Outpost CEO Justin Cyrus told the BBC said that the contract is for a 2023 mission, but they are in talks with different lander companies, that may lead to an earlier launch date. The company will be paid one dollar for bringing moon rocks from the lunar South Pole. Interestingly, the amount of one dollar will also be paid in instalments, which is divided into 10 per cent when the contract is awarded, further 10 per cent when the spacecraft is launched for the project and remaining 80 per cent when the NASA verifies the rocks. However, the nominal amount is not the motivation behind this program for companies. The mission opens the door of extracting resources outside the earth. "The innovation here is not of financial value but of creating business and legal norms of creating a market of buyers and sellers outside of Earth's constraints," said Sinead O'Sullivan, a space expert.

$1 for collecting moon rocks: NASA awards contract for bringing lunar samples

December 4 in History: Abolition of Sati, first Sunday newspaper, and more

A team of scientists is working on a technology that could one day stop asteroids from smashing into Earth. The high-precision timers being built by hand in the lab of Latvian start-up Eventech are currently being used to track satellites.

This year, the company won a European Space Agency (ESA) contract to develop timers that will study the possibility of re-directing an asteroid before it comes too close to our planet for comfort.

Although Latvia only became a full member of the ESA in 2016, its engineers have been tracking satellites since the Soviet-era. The University of Latvia even has its own satellite laser ranging station in a forest south of Riga.

NASA plans to launch the first part of the Asteroid Impact and Deflection Assessment (AIDA) mission -- known as the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) -- on July 22, 2021 on a Falcon 9 rocket belonging to tech tycoon Elon Musk's Space X.

The 500-kilogram (1,100-pound) camera-equipped probe will fly to an asteroid named Didymos and smash into it, trying to blow it off its current course that will see it pass near&nbsp;Earth sometime in 2123.

Eventech's deep space event timers are being developed for the follow-up HERA mission, which is planned to launch five years later, to determine if the first mission succeeded.

Eventech's timers are part of a space technology tradition in the Baltic state stretching back to Soviet times when Sputnik -- the first man-made satellite to orbit the Earth -- was launched in 1957.

They measure the time needed for an impulse of light to travel to an object in orbit and back.

Eventech devices can record the measurement to within a picosecond -- or one trillionth of a second -- which allows astronomers to convert a time measure into a distance measurement with up to two millimetres of precision.

Around 10 of the timers are produced every year and they are used in observatories around the world.

They track Earth's increasingly crowded atmosphere, filled with a new crop of private satellites alongside traditional scientific and military ones.

Eventech's engineers said they use analogue parts as much as possible, mainly because microchips take nanoseconds to compute the signal, which is too long for incoming measurements ranging in picoseconds.

Even the physical length of the motherboard can affect how fast the signal travels from one circuit to another.

While these timers are used for calculations on Earth, a different appliance for deep space missions is being developed in another corner of the same lab to track planetary objects from a moving space probe.

(with inputs)

A team of scientists is working on a technology that could one day stop asteroids from smashing into Earth. The high-precision timers being built by hand in the lab of Latvian start-up Eventech are currently being used to track satellites.

A team of scientists is working on a technology that could one day stop asteroids from smashing into Earth. The high-precision timers being built by hand in the lab of Latvian start-up Eventech are currently being used to track satellites. This year, the company won a European Space Agency (ESA) contract to develop timers that will study the possibility of re-directing an asteroid before it comes too close to our planet for comfort. Although Latvia only became a full member of the ESA in 2016, its engineers have been tracking satellites since the Soviet-era. The University of Latvia even has its own satellite laser ranging station in a forest south of Riga. NASA plans to launch the first part of the Asteroid Impact and Deflection Assessment (AIDA) mission -- known as the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) -- on July 22, 2021 on a Falcon 9 rocket belonging to tech tycoon Elon Musk's Space X. The 500-kilogram (1,100-pound) camera-equipped probe will fly to an asteroid named Didymos and smash into it, trying to blow it off its current course that will see it pass near Earth sometime in 2123. Eventech's deep space event timers are being developed for the follow-up HERA mission, which is planned to launch five years later, to determine if the first mission succeeded. Eventech's timers are part of a space technology tradition in the Baltic state stretching back to Soviet times when Sputnik -- the first man-made satellite to orbit the Earth -- was launched in 1957. They measure the time needed for an impulse of light to travel to an object in orbit and back. Eventech devices can record the measurement to within a picosecond -- or one trillionth of a second -- which allows astronomers to convert a time measure into a distance measurement with up to two millimetres of precision. Around 10 of the timers are produced every year and they are used in observatories around the world. They track Earth's increasingly crowded atmosphere, filled with a new crop of private satellites alongside traditional scientific and military ones. Eventech's engineers said they use analogue parts as much as possible, mainly because microchips take nanoseconds to compute the signal, which is too long for incoming measurements ranging in picoseconds. Even the physical length of the motherboard can affect how fast the signal travels from one circuit to another. While these timers are used for calculations on Earth, a different appliance for deep space missions is being developed in another corner of the same lab to track planetary objects from a moving space probe. (with inputs)

A lab in Latvia is developing a device to help Earth dodge asteroids

November 30 in history: Pakistan People's Party founded, Winter War and more

The early environment of our planet was as poisonous as that of present-day Venus, as gases got away from a magma sea during Earth's turn of events, researchers have found, subsequent to dissolving drifting marbles with lasers for their exploration.&nbsp;

As indicated by researchers, an item the size of Mars probably collided with youthful Earth in an effect that delivered enough energy to liquefy down the early planet's whole mantle – the layer between the center and covering – transforming it into magma.&nbsp;

This mammoth occasion would have stripped the majority of Earth's then-climate, to be supplanted by another one, overwhelmed via carbon dioxide and with little nitrogen - much like the barometrical creation of Venus today, and like Mars.&nbsp;

Also read:&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/science/asteroid-size-of-burj-khalifa-set-to-collide-with-earths-orbit-next-week-345021" hreflang="en">Asteroid size of Burj Khalifa set to collide with Earth’s orbit next week</a>

The discoveries come from an investigation by Paolo Sossi and his group at ETH Zurich in Switzerland, whose paper, distributed in Science Advances on Wednesday, taken a gander at "Earth's magma sea and its Venus-like early air."&nbsp;

To comprehend the air of early Earth the group set out to reproduce those conditions by gliding a little bit of rock over a gas stream and afterward softening it with a 1900°C laser.&nbsp;

"This little liquefied marble gliding at very nearly 2000 degrees is kind of a small Earth in its liquid state," Sossi disclosed to New Scientist.&nbsp;

By utilising various gases in the stream to suspend the bit of liquid stone, the specialists reproduced differing environmental conditions, permitting them to see which one most firmly related to tests of Earth's mantle and the geographical record.&nbsp;

The group found that once the environment delivered from early Earth's magma sea cooled, it would have "looked like that of present-day Venus." This, they state, infers that the current contrasts among Earth and Venus' climates, reflect what occurred after the two planets shaped.&nbsp;

Our planet is large enough that gravity keeps its air set up, not at all like Mars, while Earth's situation in the close planetary system additionally makes it adequately cool contrasted with Venus, the second planet from the sun.&nbsp;

This implies that, in contrast to Venus, the water stays in fluid-structure on the Earth's surface and can retain carbon dioxide from the climate to forestall the planet overheating - and, vitally, make and keep up the conditions essential for supporting life.

The early environment of our planet was as poisonous as that of present-day Venus, as gases got away from a magma sea during Earth's turn of events, researchers have found, subsequent to dissolving drifting marbles with lasers for their exploration.

The early environment of our planet was as poisonous as that of present-day Venus, as gases got away from a magma sea during Earth's turn of events, researchers have found, subsequent to dissolving drifting marbles with lasers for their exploration. As indicated by researchers, an item the size of Mars probably collided with youthful Earth in an effect that delivered enough energy to liquefy down the early planet's whole mantle – the layer between the center and covering – transforming it into magma. This mammoth occasion would have stripped the majority of Earth's then-climate, to be supplanted by another one, overwhelmed via carbon dioxide and with little nitrogen - much like the barometrical creation of Venus today, and like Mars. Also read: Asteroid size of Burj Khalifa set to collide with Earth’s orbit next week The discoveries come from an investigation by Paolo Sossi and his group at ETH Zurich in Switzerland, whose paper, distributed in Science Advances on Wednesday, taken a gander at "Earth's magma sea and its Venus-like early air." To comprehend the air of early Earth the group set out to reproduce those conditions by gliding a little bit of rock over a gas stream and afterward softening it with a 1900°C laser. "This little liquefied marble gliding at very nearly 2000 degrees is kind of a small Earth in its liquid state," Sossi disclosed to New Scientist. By utilising various gases in the stream to suspend the bit of liquid stone, the specialists reproduced differing environmental conditions, permitting them to see which one most firmly related to tests of Earth's mantle and the geographical record. The group found that once the environment delivered from early Earth's magma sea cooled, it would have "looked like that of present-day Venus." This, they state, infers that the current contrasts among Earth and Venus' climates, reflect what occurred after the two planets shaped. Our planet is large enough that gravity keeps its air set up, not at all like Mars, while Earth's situation in the close planetary system additionally makes it adequately cool contrasted with Venus, the second planet from the sun. This implies that, in contrast to Venus, the water stays in fluid-structure on the Earth's surface and can retain carbon dioxide from the climate to forestall the planet overheating - and, vitally, make and keep up the conditions essential for supporting life.

Scientists unravel Earth's early atmosphere after melting hovering marbles with lasers

A large asteroid – named (153201) 2000 WO107 – will sweep past Earth in late November, providing astronomers with a good opportunity to study it. Closest approach to Earth will happen on November 29, 2020.&nbsp;

The asteroid is expected to be a real monster, estimated to range anywhere between 12,00ft to 2,5700ft across (370m and 820m).

To put this into perspective, the rogue space rock at it widest is almost the height of Dubai’s iconic Burj Khalifa skyscraper.

The building, found in the United Arab Emirates city has been the world's tallest since 2009 when it took the title from the Taipei 101 in Taiwan.

NASA has also forecast how the asteroid is currently speeding through space at a whopping 25.07km/s – the equivalent of 56,000mph.

The asteroid will not be visible to the eye, but people with small telescopes might catch it. Astronomers are gearing up to observe this asteroid further, in part because of its relatively large size, and in part, because subsequent passes of 2000 WO107 will be closer than this year’s pass.

NASA defines a Near-Earth Object (NEO) as any asteroid or comet coming within 1.3 AU of Earth.

(With inputs from agencies)

A large asteroid – named (153201) 2000 WO107 – will sweep past Earth in late November, providing astronomers with a good opportunity to study it. Closest approach to Earth will happen on November 29, 2020.

A large asteroid – named (153201) 2000 WO107 – will sweep past Earth in late November, providing astronomers with a good opportunity to study it. Closest approach to Earth will happen on November 29, 2020. The asteroid is expected to be a real monster, estimated to range anywhere between 12,00ft to 2,5700ft across (370m and 820m). To put this into perspective, the rogue space rock at it widest is almost the height of Dubai’s iconic Burj Khalifa skyscraper. The building, found in the United Arab Emirates city has been the world's tallest since 2009 when it took the title from the Taipei 101 in Taiwan. NASA has also forecast how the asteroid is currently speeding through space at a whopping 25.07km/s – the equivalent of 56,000mph. The asteroid will not be visible to the eye, but people with small telescopes might catch it. Astronomers are gearing up to observe this asteroid further, in part because of its relatively large size, and in part, because subsequent passes of 2000 WO107 will be closer than this year’s pass. NASA defines a Near-Earth Object (NEO) as any asteroid or comet coming within 1.3 AU of Earth. (With inputs from agencies)

Asteroid size of Burj Khalifa set to collide with Earth’s orbit next week

In a first, China has launched an unmanned spacecraft to bring samples of lunar rocks back to the Earth, making it the first country to do so in nearly four decades.

A Long March 5 rocket has been launched carrying&nbsp;the Chang'e-5 probe. It was launched from the&nbsp;Wenchang Space Center on the southern island province of Hainan at 4:30 am.

The aim of the mission is to bring back lunar rocks and soil so that the scientists can learn about the Moon's origins, formation and volcanic activity on the lunar surface.

Also read|&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/china-to-launch-unmanned-spacecraft-to-the-moon-this-week-344632">China to launch unmanned spacecraft to the moon this week</a>

This mission was supposed gt be launched in 2017, but was delayed due to an engine failure in the Long March 5 rocket. It is expected to land in late November and will be collecting material in one lunar day — which is equivalent to 14 Earth days.

Before this, only&nbsp;the United States and the Soviet Union in the 1960s and 1970s respectively have been able to bring back such lunar rocks. So, if China is successful in its mission, it will the third country overall and first in nearly four decades to bring back lunar rock samples.

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China has launched a robotic spacecraft to bring samples of lunar rocks back to the Earth, making it the first country to do so in nearly four decades. It was launched from the Wenchang Space Center on the southern island province of Hainan. <a href="https://twitter.com/Shobhit10Mittal?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@Shobhit10Mittal</a> gets you more details <a href="https://t.co/1Dqt4OyR8b">pic.twitter.com/1Dqt4OyR8b</a>
— WION (@WIONews) <a href="https://twitter.com/WIONews/status/1331163144895553536?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">November 24, 2020</a></blockquote>
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The experts will collect nearly two kilograms (4.5 pounds) of surface material in an area known as&nbsp;Oceanus Procellarum&nbsp;(or "Ocean of Storms") which mainly consists of lava plain.

After being picked, the samples will be brought back to the Earth in a capsule that will land in northern China's&nbsp;Inner Mongolia region in early December.

In a first, China has launched an unmanned spacecraft to bring samples of lunar rocks back to the Earth, making it the first country to do so in nearly four decades.

In a first, China has launched an unmanned spacecraft to bring samples of lunar rocks back to the Earth, making it the first country to do so in nearly four decades. A Long March 5 rocket has been launched carrying the Chang'e-5 probe. It was launched from the Wenchang Space Center on the southern island province of Hainan at 4:30 am. The aim of the mission is to bring back lunar rocks and soil so that the scientists can learn about the Moon's origins, formation and volcanic activity on the lunar surface. Also read| China to launch unmanned spacecraft to the moon this week This mission was supposed gt be launched in 2017, but was delayed due to an engine failure in the Long March 5 rocket. It is expected to land in late November and will be collecting material in one lunar day — which is equivalent to 14 Earth days. Before this, only the United States and the Soviet Union in the 1960s and 1970s respectively have been able to bring back such lunar rocks. So, if China is successful in its mission, it will the third country overall and first in nearly four decades to bring back lunar rock samples. China has launched a robotic spacecraft to bring samples of lunar rocks back to the Earth, making it the first country to do so in nearly four decades. It was launched from the Wenchang Space Center on the southern island province of Hainan. @Shobhit10Mittal gets you more details pic.twitter.com/1Dqt4OyR8b — WION (@WIONews) November 24, 2020 × The experts will collect nearly two kilograms (4.5 pounds) of surface material in an area known as Oceanus Procellarum (or "Ocean of Storms") which mainly consists of lava plain. After being picked, the samples will be brought back to the Earth in a capsule that will land in northern China's Inner Mongolia region in early December.

China launches first unmanned spacecraft to moon to collect lunar rocks

Mars was once home to seas and oceans, and perhaps even life. But our neighboring world has long since dried up and its atmosphere has been blown away, while most activity beneath its surface has long ceased. It’s a dead planet.

Or is it?

Previous research has hinted at volcanic eruptions on Mars 2.5 million years ago. But a new paper suggests an eruption occurred as recently as 53,000 years ago in a region called Cerberus Fossae, which would be the youngest known volcanic eruption on Mars. That drives home the prospect that beneath its rusty surface pocked with gigantic volcanoes that have gone silent, some volcanism still erupts to the surface at rare intervals.

Also read|&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/skeletons-of-rich-man-and-his-male-slave-found-from-ashes-at-pompeii-excavation-344621" hreflang="en">Skeletons of rich man and his 'male slave' found from ashes at Pompeii excavation</a>

“If this deposit is of volcanic origin then the Cerberus Fossae region may not be extinct and Mars may still be volcanically active today,” scientists at the University of Arizona and Smithsonian Institution write in their paper — which was posted online ahead of peer review and has been submitted to the journal Icarus.

The site of the potential eruption, seen in images from Martian orbit, is near a large volcano called Elysium Mons. It is about 1,000 miles east of NASA’s stationary InSight lander, which touched down on Mars in 2018 to study tectonic activity on the red planet. Appearing like a crack in the surface, the feature looks like a recent fissure eruption, where subsurface volcanic activity has caused superheated volcanic ash and dust to burst through the surface. It is similar to deposits caused by pyroclastic eruptions that scientists have spotted on the moon, Mercury and Earth.

Also read|&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/science/climate-change-is-making-winter-ice-more-dangerous-344406" hreflang="en">Climate change is making winter ice more dangerous</a>

Originating from magma deep beneath the surface, the eruption would have reached a height of several miles before falling back to the ground. The amount of material is estimated at 100 times less than the eruption of Mount St. Helens in 1980, said Steven Anderson, an earth sciences professor at the University of Northern Colorado in Greeley, who was not involved in the paper.

It is the presence of darker material here, coupled with its symmetrical appearance around the fissure, that hints at an eruption. Known as a fault scarp, this type of feature is “very common in Hawaii” as magma near volcanoes causes the surface to expand and crack, says Robert Craddock from the Smithsonian Institution, a co-author on the paper.

Also read|&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/science/this-alaska-town-will-see-sun-after-60-days-344268" hreflang="en">This Alaska town will see sun after 60 days</a>

By counting the number of craters visible around the feature and in the deposit itself, which is roughly six miles across, the team date the potential eruption ranging from 53,000 to 210,000 years ago. This would by far be the youngest known volcanic eruption on Mars.

“I think it’s pretty compelling,” Anderson said.

If it holds up to scrutiny, the discovery would have large implications for Mars. In geological terms, 53,000 years is the blink of an eye, suggesting Mars might well still be volcanically active now. It could also have big implications for the search for life on Mars.

Such volcanic activity could melt subsurface ice, providing a potential habitable environment for living things.

“To have life, you need energy, carbon, water and nutrients,” Anderson said. “And a volcanic system provides all of those.”

NASA’s InSight lander may have already recorded activity linked to this site. Using a seismometer, it has measured hundreds of “marsquakes” or vibrations in the Martian surface. But only two of these have been localized — and both came from Cerberus Fossae.

“It is certainly plausible that the tectonic activity is related to volcanic activity,” said Suzanne Smrekar from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, who is the deputy principal investigator on the InSight mission.

It might be possible for InSight to look for more such activity soon.

“It is an exciting paper,” Smrekar said. “Understanding the present day activity on Mars is indeed a mystery and key to investigating its evolution and habitability.”

Questions still remain, however. Lu Pan, a planetary scientist from the University of Copenhagen in Denmark, isn’t so sure about the team’s dating method.

“If you want to date a very recent surface, you rely on the population of small impact craters,” Pan said. “And we have yet to build this large database of small impact craters.”

Even in a conservative scenario, however, David Horvath of the University of Arizona, the paper’s lead author, said the eruption would have been only a million years ago. That alone would breathe new life into our understanding of Mars.

“It definitely leaves open the possibility that, deep in the surface, it may be active today,” he said.

Mars was once home to seas and oceans, and perhaps even life. But our neighboring world has long since dried up and its atmosphere has been blown away, while most activity beneath its surface has long ceased.

Mars was once home to seas and oceans, and perhaps even life. But our neighboring world has long since dried up and its atmosphere has been blown away, while most activity beneath its surface has long ceased. It’s a dead planet. Or is it? Previous research has hinted at volcanic eruptions on Mars 2.5 million years ago. But a new paper suggests an eruption occurred as recently as 53,000 years ago in a region called Cerberus Fossae, which would be the youngest known volcanic eruption on Mars. That drives home the prospect that beneath its rusty surface pocked with gigantic volcanoes that have gone silent, some volcanism still erupts to the surface at rare intervals. Also read| Skeletons of rich man and his 'male slave' found from ashes at Pompeii excavation “If this deposit is of volcanic origin then the Cerberus Fossae region may not be extinct and Mars may still be volcanically active today,” scientists at the University of Arizona and Smithsonian Institution write in their paper — which was posted online ahead of peer review and has been submitted to the journal Icarus. The site of the potential eruption, seen in images from Martian orbit, is near a large volcano called Elysium Mons. It is about 1,000 miles east of NASA’s stationary InSight lander, which touched down on Mars in 2018 to study tectonic activity on the red planet. Appearing like a crack in the surface, the feature looks like a recent fissure eruption, where subsurface volcanic activity has caused superheated volcanic ash and dust to burst through the surface. It is similar to deposits caused by pyroclastic eruptions that scientists have spotted on the moon, Mercury and Earth. Also read| Climate change is making winter ice more dangerous Originating from magma deep beneath the surface, the eruption would have reached a height of several miles before falling back to the ground. The amount of material is estimated at 100 times less than the eruption of Mount St. Helens in 1980, said Steven Anderson, an earth sciences professor at the University of Northern Colorado in Greeley, who was not involved in the paper. It is the presence of darker material here, coupled with its symmetrical appearance around the fissure, that hints at an eruption. Known as a fault scarp, this type of feature is “very common in Hawaii” as magma near volcanoes causes the surface to expand and crack, says Robert Craddock from the Smithsonian Institution, a co-author on the paper. Also read| This Alaska town will see sun after 60 days By counting the number of craters visible around the feature and in the deposit itself, which is roughly six miles across, the team date the potential eruption ranging from 53,000 to 210,000 years ago. This would by far be the youngest known volcanic eruption on Mars. “I think it’s pretty compelling,” Anderson said. If it holds up to scrutiny, the discovery would have large implications for Mars. In geological terms, 53,000 years is the blink of an eye, suggesting Mars might well still be volcanically active now. It could also have big implications for the search for life on Mars. Such volcanic activity could melt subsurface ice, providing a potential habitable environment for living things. “To have life, you need energy, carbon, water and nutrients,” Anderson said. “And a volcanic system provides all of those.” NASA’s InSight lander may have already recorded activity linked to this site. Using a seismometer, it has measured hundreds of “marsquakes” or vibrations in the Martian surface. But only two of these have been localized — and both came from Cerberus Fossae. “It is certainly plausible that the tectonic activity is related to volcanic activity,” said Suzanne Smrekar from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, who is the deputy principal investigator on the InSight mission. It might be possible for InSight to look for more such activity soon. “It is an exciting paper,” Smrekar said. “Understanding the present day activity on Mars is indeed a mystery and key to investigating its evolution and habitability.” Questions still remain, however. Lu Pan, a planetary scientist from the University of Copenhagen in Denmark, isn’t so sure about the team’s dating method. “If you want to date a very recent surface, you rely on the population of small impact craters,” Pan said. “And we have yet to build this large database of small impact craters.” Even in a conservative scenario, however, David Horvath of the University of Arizona, the paper’s lead author, said the eruption would have been only a million years ago. That alone would breathe new life into our understanding of Mars. “It definitely leaves open the possibility that, deep in the surface, it may be active today,” he said.

Signs of recent volcanic eruption on Mars hint at Habitats for life

The&nbsp;Hubble Space Telescope by the&nbsp;National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has captured a cosmic cinnamon bun.

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Nom nom nom 😋 Our <a href="https://twitter.com/NASAHubble?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@NASAHubble</a> Space Telescope captured a delicious glance of what resembles a cosmic cinnamon bun. Bluer stars sprinkled around the edges highlight the regions where new stars are most likely being formed: <a href="https://t.co/Uc4r0suWOm">https://t.co/Uc4r0suWOm</a> <a href="https://t.co/mmg02e6jkk">pic.twitter.com/mmg02e6jkk</a>
— NASA (@NASA) <a href="https://twitter.com/NASA/status/1330595660849172480?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">November 22, 2020</a></blockquote>
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Unlike many spiral galaxies, UGC 12588 displays neither a&nbsp;bar of stars across its center&nbsp;nor the classic prominent&nbsp;spiral arm pattern. Instead, to a viewer, its circular, white and mostly unstructured center makes this galaxy more reminiscent of a cinnamon bun than a megastructure of stars and gas in space.

Also read:&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/science/nasa-resolves-the-mystery-of-blue-ring-nebula-reveal-stellar-missing-link-344087" hreflang="en">NASA resolves the mystery of Blue Ring Nebula, reveal stellar missing link</a>

Lying in the constellation of&nbsp;Andromeda&nbsp;in the Northern Hemisphere, this galaxy is classified as a&nbsp;spiral galaxy. Unlike the classic image of a spiral galaxy, however, the huge arms of stars and gas in UGC 12588 are very faint, undistinguished, and tightly wound around its center.

The clearest view of the spiral arms comes from the bluer stars sprinkled around the edges of the galaxy that highlight the regions where new star formation is most likely taking place.

&nbsp;

The Hubble Space Telescope by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has captured a cosmic cinnamon bun. Nom nom nom 😋 Our @NASAHubble Space Telescope captured a delicious glance of what resembles a cosmic cinnamon bun.

The Hubble Space Telescope by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has captured a cosmic cinnamon bun. Nom nom nom 😋 Our @NASAHubble Space Telescope captured a delicious glance of what resembles a cosmic cinnamon bun. Bluer stars sprinkled around the edges highlight the regions where new stars are most likely being formed: https://t.co/Uc4r0suWOm pic.twitter.com/mmg02e6jkk — NASA (@NASA) November 22, 2020 × Unlike many spiral galaxies, UGC 12588 displays neither a bar of stars across its center nor the classic prominent spiral arm pattern. Instead, to a viewer, its circular, white and mostly unstructured center makes this galaxy more reminiscent of a cinnamon bun than a megastructure of stars and gas in space. Also read: NASA resolves the mystery of Blue Ring Nebula, reveal stellar missing link Lying in the constellation of Andromeda in the Northern Hemisphere, this galaxy is classified as a spiral galaxy. Unlike the classic image of a spiral galaxy, however, the huge arms of stars and gas in UGC 12588 are very faint, undistinguished, and tightly wound around its center. The clearest view of the spiral arms comes from the bluer stars sprinkled around the edges of the galaxy that highlight the regions where new star formation is most likely taking place.

NASA's Hubble Space Telescope captures 'cosmic cinnamon bun'

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory has resolved a&nbsp;16-year-old cosmic mystery and found the missing links to the&nbsp;Blue Ring Nebula.

The Blue Ring Nebula spotted by the Galaxy Evolution Explorer (GALEX) perplexed scientists for several years.

A new study published online on Wednesday&nbsp;in the journal Nature may have cracked the case.&nbsp;

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16-year-old cosmic mystery solved!🧐 
The Blue Ring Nebula spotted by the Galaxy Evolution Explorer (GALEX) perplexed scientists for years. It appears to be the youngest known example of 2 stars merged into 1 &amp; first known merged star system at this stage. <a href="https://t.co/wedtyWgsuz">https://t.co/wedtyWgsuz</a> <a href="https://t.co/8th7ccZBcf">pic.twitter.com/8th7ccZBcf</a>
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By applying cutting-edge theoretical models to the slew of data that has been collected on this object, the authors posit the nebula,&nbsp;a cloud of gas in space,&nbsp;is likely composed of debris from two stars that collided and merged into a single star.

<iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/WY8J8hFHhiw" width="560"></iframe>

While combined star frameworks are believed to be genuinely normal, they are almost difficult to concentrate following they structure since they're clouded by flotsam and jetsam the crash kicks up. When the garbage has cleared - at any rate countless years after the fact - they're trying to distinguish on the grounds that they look like non-consolidated stars.

The Blue Ring Nebula has all the earmarks of being the missing connection: Astronomers are seeing the star framework two or three thousand years after the consolidation when proof of the association is as yet abundant. It gives off an impression of being the main known cause of a consolidated star framework at this stage.&nbsp;

<img alt="F" data-entity-type="file" data-entity-uuid="3944c9ca-4af6-4f4a-bdf4-96b1913eeb4f" src="//cdn.wionews.com/sites/default/files/inline-images/e2-PIA23867-and-23868-640.jpg" />

The Blue Ring Nebula consists of two hollow, cone-shaped clouds of debris moving in opposite directions away from the central star. The base of one cone is traveling almost directly toward Earth. As a result, astronomers looking at the nebula see two circles that partially overlap. Credit: NASA

The group inferred that the cloud was the result of a moderately new heavenly consolidation that probably happened between a star like our Sun and another star just around one-10th that size (or around multiple times the mass of Jupiter). Approaching an incredible finish, the Sun-like star started to grow, crawling nearer to its buddy. In the end, the more modest star fell into a descending twisting toward its bigger buddy. En route, the bigger star destroyed the more modest star, enclosing itself by a ring of flotsam and jetsam prior to gulping the more modest star altogether.&nbsp;

This was the savage occasion that prompted the development of the Blue Ring Nebula. The consolidation dispatched a haze of hot trash into space that was cut in two by the gas plate. This made two cone-formed trash veils of mist, their bases moving ceaselessly from the star in inverse ways and getting more extensive as they travel outward. The base of one cone is coming straightforwardly toward Earth and the other legitimately away. They are too weak to even think about seeing alone, however, the territory where the cones cover (as observed from Earth) frames the focal blue ring GALEX noticed.&nbsp;

Centuries passed. The extending flotsam and jetsam cloud cooled and shaped particles and residue, including hydrogen atoms that crashed into the interstellar medium, the scanty assortment of molecules, and vigorous particles that occupy the space between stars. The impacts energized the hydrogen atoms, making them emanate in a particular frequency of far-UV light. Over the long haul, the shine turned out to be sufficiently brilliant for GALEX to see.&nbsp;

Heavenly consolidations may happen as regularly as once like clockwork in our Milky Way world, which means it's conceivable that a sizeable populace of the stars we find in the sky was once two.&nbsp;

"We see a lot of two-star frameworks that may combine some time in the future, and we think we've recognized stars that blended possibly a great many years prior. However, we have practically no information on what occurs in the middle of," said Metzger. "We think there are presumably a lot of youthful remainders of heavenly consolidations in our system, and the Blue Ring Nebula may show us what they resemble so we can recognize a greater amount of them."&nbsp;

Despite the fact that this is likely the determination of a 16-year-old riddle, it might likewise be the start of another part in the investigation of heavenly consolidations.&nbsp;

"Unfortunately GALEX had the option to discover this truly weak article that we weren't searching for however that ends up being something truly intriguing to space experts," said Seibert. "It just repeats that when you take a gander at the universe in another frequency or in another way, you discover things you never envisioned you would."

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory has resolved a 16-year-old cosmic mystery and found the missing links to the Blue Ring Nebula. The Blue Ring Nebula spotted by the Galaxy Evolution Explorer (GALEX) perplexed scientists for several years.

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory has resolved a 16-year-old cosmic mystery and found the missing links to the Blue Ring Nebula. The Blue Ring Nebula spotted by the Galaxy Evolution Explorer (GALEX) perplexed scientists for several years. A new study published online on Wednesday in the journal Nature may have cracked the case. 16-year-old cosmic mystery solved!🧐 The Blue Ring Nebula spotted by the Galaxy Evolution Explorer (GALEX) perplexed scientists for years. It appears to be the youngest known example of 2 stars merged into 1 & first known merged star system at this stage. https://t.co/wedtyWgsuz pic.twitter.com/8th7ccZBcf — NASA JPL (@NASAJPL) November 18, 2020 × By applying cutting-edge theoretical models to the slew of data that has been collected on this object, the authors posit the nebula, a cloud of gas in space, is likely composed of debris from two stars that collided and merged into a single star. While combined star frameworks are believed to be genuinely normal, they are almost difficult to concentrate following they structure since they're clouded by flotsam and jetsam the crash kicks up. When the garbage has cleared - at any rate countless years after the fact - they're trying to distinguish on the grounds that they look like non-consolidated stars. The Blue Ring Nebula has all the earmarks of being the missing connection: Astronomers are seeing the star framework two or three thousand years after the consolidation when proof of the association is as yet abundant. It gives off an impression of being the main known cause of a consolidated star framework at this stage. The Blue Ring Nebula consists of two hollow, cone-shaped clouds of debris moving in opposite directions away from the central star. The base of one cone is traveling almost directly toward Earth. As a result, astronomers looking at the nebula see two circles that partially overlap. Credit: NASA The group inferred that the cloud was the result of a moderately new heavenly consolidation that probably happened between a star like our Sun and another star just around one-10th that size (or around multiple times the mass of Jupiter). Approaching an incredible finish, the Sun-like star started to grow, crawling nearer to its buddy. In the end, the more modest star fell into a descending twisting toward its bigger buddy. En route, the bigger star destroyed the more modest star, enclosing itself by a ring of flotsam and jetsam prior to gulping the more modest star altogether. This was the savage occasion that prompted the development of the Blue Ring Nebula. The consolidation dispatched a haze of hot trash into space that was cut in two by the gas plate. This made two cone-formed trash veils of mist, their bases moving ceaselessly from the star in inverse ways and getting more extensive as they travel outward. The base of one cone is coming straightforwardly toward Earth and the other legitimately away. They are too weak to even think about seeing alone, however, the territory where the cones cover (as observed from Earth) frames the focal blue ring GALEX noticed. Centuries passed. The extending flotsam and jetsam cloud cooled and shaped particles and residue, including hydrogen atoms that crashed into the interstellar medium, the scanty assortment of molecules, and vigorous particles that occupy the space between stars. The impacts energized the hydrogen atoms, making them emanate in a particular frequency of far-UV light. Over the long haul, the shine turned out to be sufficiently brilliant for GALEX to see. Heavenly consolidations may happen as regularly as once like clockwork in our Milky Way world, which means it's conceivable that a sizeable populace of the stars we find in the sky was once two. "We see a lot of two-star frameworks that may combine some time in the future, and we think we've recognized stars that blended possibly a great many years prior. However, we have practically no information on what occurs in the middle of," said Metzger. "We think there are presumably a lot of youthful remainders of heavenly consolidations in our system, and the Blue Ring Nebula may show us what they resemble so we can recognize a greater amount of them." Despite the fact that this is likely the determination of a 16-year-old riddle, it might likewise be the start of another part in the investigation of heavenly consolidations. "Unfortunately GALEX had the option to discover this truly weak article that we weren't searching for however that ends up being something truly intriguing to space experts," said Seibert. "It just repeats that when you take a gander at the universe in another frequency or in another way, you discover things you never envisioned you would."

NASA resolves the mystery of Blue Ring Nebula, reveal stellar missing link

Four astronauts riding a newly designed spacecraft from Elon Musk's SpaceX docked with the International Space Station. In this video watch, SpaceX and NASA's joint press conference.

Crew Dragon arrives at International Space Station, SpaceX and NASA hold joint press conference

Four astronauts riding a newly designed spacecraft from Elon Musk's SpaceX docked with the International Space Station.

SpaceX capsule, carrying four astronauts, docks with International Space Station

On Monday, SpaceX and NASA made history by successfully launching a four-member team for the International Space Station. The launch event was attended by Vice President Mike Pence and his wife as well as NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine.

News Alert: SpaceX-NASA makes history, successfully launches first operational crew mission

SpaceX has launched four astronauts on a flight to the International Space Station under NASA's first full-fledged mission sending a crew into orbit aboard a privately owned spacecraft.

SpaceX's newly designed Crew Dragon capsule, which the crew has dubbed Resilience, lifted off atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket at 7:27 p.m. Sunday eastern time (0027 GMT on Monday) from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida.

The 27-hour ride to the space station, an orbiting laboratory some 250 miles (400 km) above Earth, was originally scheduled to begin on Saturday. But the launch was postponed for a day due to forecasts of gusty winds that would have made a return landing for the Falcon 9's reusable booster stage difficult.

US Vice-President Mike Pence attended the launch and said beforehand that under President Donald Trump, America had "renewed our commitment to lead in human space exploration."

President-elect Joe Biden tweeted his congratulations, saying the launch was "a testament to the power of science."

NASA is calling the flight its first "operational" mission for a rocket and crew-vehicle system that was 10 years in the making. It represents a new era of commercially developed spacecraft - owned and operated by a private entity rather than NASA - for sending Americans into orbit.

A trial flight of the SpaceX Crew Dragon in August, carrying just two astronauts to and from the space station, marked NASA's first human space mission to be launched from US soil in nine years.

Elon Musk, the billionaire SpaceX chief executive who is also CEO of electric carmaker and battery manufacturer Tesla Inc, will likely not have watched the liftoff from the Kennedy Space Center launch control room. Musk said on Saturday he "most likely" has a moderate case of COVID-19.

SpaceX has launched four astronauts on a flight to the International Space Station under NASA's first full-fledged mission sending a crew into orbit aboard a privately owned spacecraft.

SpaceX has launched four astronauts on a flight to the International Space Station under NASA's first full-fledged mission sending a crew into orbit aboard a privately owned spacecraft. SpaceX's newly designed Crew Dragon capsule, which the crew has dubbed Resilience, lifted off atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket at 7:27 p.m. Sunday eastern time (0027 GMT on Monday) from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida. The 27-hour ride to the space station, an orbiting laboratory some 250 miles (400 km) above Earth, was originally scheduled to begin on Saturday. But the launch was postponed for a day due to forecasts of gusty winds that would have made a return landing for the Falcon 9's reusable booster stage difficult. US Vice-President Mike Pence attended the launch and said beforehand that under President Donald Trump, America had "renewed our commitment to lead in human space exploration." President-elect Joe Biden tweeted his congratulations, saying the launch was "a testament to the power of science." NASA is calling the flight its first "operational" mission for a rocket and crew-vehicle system that was 10 years in the making. It represents a new era of commercially developed spacecraft - owned and operated by a private entity rather than NASA - for sending Americans into orbit. A trial flight of the SpaceX Crew Dragon in August, carrying just two astronauts to and from the space station, marked NASA's first human space mission to be launched from US soil in nine years. Elon Musk, the billionaire SpaceX chief executive who is also CEO of electric carmaker and battery manufacturer Tesla Inc, will likely not have watched the liftoff from the Kennedy Space Center launch control room. Musk said on Saturday he "most likely" has a moderate case of COVID-19.

SpaceX, NASA begin first operational astronaut mission to space

SpaceX is slated to launch four astronauts into the International Space Station on Sunday -- the first of what the US hopes will be many routine missions following a successful test flight in late spring.

Three Americans -- Michael Hopkins, Victor Glover and Shannon Walker -- and Japan's Soichi Noguchi will blast off at 7:27 pm Sunday (0027 GMT Monday) from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida -- on the SpaceX Crew Dragon "Resilience".

In May, SpaceX completed a demonstration mission showing it could take astronauts to the ISS and bring them back safely, thus ending almost a decade of reliance on Russia for rides on its Soyuz rockets.

The launch will be attended by Vice President Mike Pence and second lady Karen Pence.

The crew will dock at their destination at around 11:00 pm Monday night (0400 GMT Tuesday), joining two Russians and one American onboard the station, and stay for six months.

The Crew Dragon earlier this week became the first spacecraft to be certified by NASA since the Space Shuttle nearly 40 years ago.

At the end of its missions, the Crew Dragon deploys parachutes then splashes down in water, just as in the Apollo era.

NASA turned to SpaceX and Boeing after shuttering the checkered Space Shuttle programme in 2011, which failed in its main objectives of making space travel affordable and safe. &nbsp;

SpaceX, founded by Elon Musk in 2002, has leapfrogged its much older rival Boeing, whose program has floundered after a failed test of its uncrewed Starliner last year.&nbsp; 
&nbsp;

SpaceX is slated to launch four astronauts into the International Space Station on Sunday -- the first of what the US hopes will be many routine missions following a successful test flight in late spring.

SpaceX is slated to launch four astronauts into the International Space Station on Sunday -- the first of what the US hopes will be many routine missions following a successful test flight in late spring. Three Americans -- Michael Hopkins, Victor Glover and Shannon Walker -- and Japan's Soichi Noguchi will blast off at 7:27 pm Sunday (0027 GMT Monday) from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida -- on the SpaceX Crew Dragon "Resilience". In May, SpaceX completed a demonstration mission showing it could take astronauts to the ISS and bring them back safely, thus ending almost a decade of reliance on Russia for rides on its Soyuz rockets. The launch will be attended by Vice President Mike Pence and second lady Karen Pence. The crew will dock at their destination at around 11:00 pm Monday night (0400 GMT Tuesday), joining two Russians and one American onboard the station, and stay for six months. The Crew Dragon earlier this week became the first spacecraft to be certified by NASA since the Space Shuttle nearly 40 years ago. At the end of its missions, the Crew Dragon deploys parachutes then splashes down in water, just as in the Apollo era. NASA turned to SpaceX and Boeing after shuttering the checkered Space Shuttle programme in 2011, which failed in its main objectives of making space travel affordable and safe. SpaceX, founded by Elon Musk in 2002, has leapfrogged its much older rival Boeing, whose program has floundered after a failed test of its uncrewed Starliner last year.

SpaceX to launch four astronauts to International Space Station

NASA and high-tech entrepreneur Elon Musk`s rocket company SpaceX announced on Friday a 24-hour weather delay of their planned launch of four astronauts into orbit for NASA`s first full-fledged human mission using a privately owned spacecraft.

The liftoff time slipped from Saturday to Sunday evening due to forecasts of gusty, onshore winds over Florida - remnants of Tropical Storm Eta - that would have made a return landing for the Falcon 9 rocket`s reusable booster stage difficult, NASA officials said.

SpaceX`s newly designed Crew Dragon capsule, dubbed "Resilience" by its crew, was rescheduled for launch atop the Falcon 9 at 7:27 p.m. Eastern time on Sunday (0027 GMT on Monday) from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral.

Also read|&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/science/another-big-leap-spacex-set-to-launch-first-fully-crewed-iss-mission-342288">'Another big leap': SpaceX set to launch first fully-crewed ISS mission</a>

The crew for the flight to the International Space Station includes three American astronauts - Victor Glover, Shannon Walker and the mission commander, Mike Hopkins, a U.S. Air Force colonel who is to be sworn into the fledgling U.S. Space Force once aboard the orbiting laboratory.

The fourth crew member is Japanese astronaut Soichi Noguchi, making his third trip to orbit after flying on the U.S. space shuttle in 2005 and a Russian Soyuz spacecraft in 2009.

The journey to the space station - lengthened from about eight hours to a little over a day by the new launch time - is considered SpaceX’s first "operational" mission for the Crew Dragon.

A so-called test flight of the vehicle to and from the space station with two crewmen aboard the Dragon in August marked the first space flight of NASA astronauts launched from U.S. soil in nine years, following the end of the shuttle program.

Also read|&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/science/spacexs-envisioned-machinery-will-not-only-take-us-to-mars-but-reduce-travel-time-on-earth-tremendously-306615">SpaceX's envisioned machinery will not only take us to Mars, but reduce travel time on Earth tremendously!</a>

NASA officials only just signed off on Crew Dragon’s final design earlier this week, capping a nearly 10-year development phase for SpaceX under the space agency’s public-private crew program.

The advent of the Falcon 9 and Crew Dragon represents a new era of commercially developed space vehicles - owned and operated by a private entity rather than NASA - being used to carry Americans into orbit.

"The history being made this time is we’re launching what we call an operational flight to the International Space Station," NASA chief Jim Bridenstine said at a press conference at Kennedy Space Center on Friday.

Musk, the billionaire Silicon Valley titan who also is chief executive of electric carmarker and battery manufacturer Tesla Inc , usually attends high-profile SpaceX missions in person. But his presence for the launch was thrown into question on Thursday after he said he had taken a series of four coronavirus diagnostic tests, with two coming back positive and two negative.

Also read|&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/spacex-launches-third-batch-of-mini-satellites-into-orbit-272623">SpaceX launches third batch of mini-satellites into orbit</a>

Asked if Musk would be in the launch control room for liftoff, Bridenstine said agency policy required employees to quarantine and self-isolate after testing positive for the disease, "so we anticipate that that will be taking place."

Whether Musk came into contact with the astronauts was unclear but unlikely since the crew has been in routine quarantine for weeks prior to the flight.

NASA contracted SpaceX and Boeing in 2014 to develop competing space capsules aimed at replacing the shuttle program that ended in 2011 and weaning the United States off dependence on Russian rockets to send U.S. astronauts to space.

Boeing’s first crewed test mission with its Starliner capsule is planned for late next year.

NASA and high-tech entrepreneur Elon Musk`s rocket company SpaceX announced on Friday a 24-hour weather delay of their planned launch of four astronauts into orbit for NASA`s first full-fledged human mission using a privately owned spacecraft.

NASA and high-tech entrepreneur Elon Musk`s rocket company SpaceX announced on Friday a 24-hour weather delay of their planned launch of four astronauts into orbit for NASA`s first full-fledged human mission using a privately owned spacecraft. The liftoff time slipped from Saturday to Sunday evening due to forecasts of gusty, onshore winds over Florida - remnants of Tropical Storm Eta - that would have made a return landing for the Falcon 9 rocket`s reusable booster stage difficult, NASA officials said. SpaceX`s newly designed Crew Dragon capsule, dubbed "Resilience" by its crew, was rescheduled for launch atop the Falcon 9 at 7:27 p.m. Eastern time on Sunday (0027 GMT on Monday) from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral. Also read| 'Another big leap': SpaceX set to launch first fully-crewed ISS mission The crew for the flight to the International Space Station includes three American astronauts - Victor Glover, Shannon Walker and the mission commander, Mike Hopkins, a U.S. Air Force colonel who is to be sworn into the fledgling U.S. Space Force once aboard the orbiting laboratory. The fourth crew member is Japanese astronaut Soichi Noguchi, making his third trip to orbit after flying on the U.S. space shuttle in 2005 and a Russian Soyuz spacecraft in 2009. The journey to the space station - lengthened from about eight hours to a little over a day by the new launch time - is considered SpaceX’s first "operational" mission for the Crew Dragon. A so-called test flight of the vehicle to and from the space station with two crewmen aboard the Dragon in August marked the first space flight of NASA astronauts launched from U.S. soil in nine years, following the end of the shuttle program. Also read| SpaceX's envisioned machinery will not only take us to Mars, but reduce travel time on Earth tremendously! NASA officials only just signed off on Crew Dragon’s final design earlier this week, capping a nearly 10-year development phase for SpaceX under the space agency’s public-private crew program. The advent of the Falcon 9 and Crew Dragon represents a new era of commercially developed space vehicles - owned and operated by a private entity rather than NASA - being used to carry Americans into orbit. "The history being made this time is we’re launching what we call an operational flight to the International Space Station," NASA chief Jim Bridenstine said at a press conference at Kennedy Space Center on Friday. Musk, the billionaire Silicon Valley titan who also is chief executive of electric carmarker and battery manufacturer Tesla Inc , usually attends high-profile SpaceX missions in person. But his presence for the launch was thrown into question on Thursday after he said he had taken a series of four coronavirus diagnostic tests, with two coming back positive and two negative. Also read| SpaceX launches third batch of mini-satellites into orbit Asked if Musk would be in the launch control room for liftoff, Bridenstine said agency policy required employees to quarantine and self-isolate after testing positive for the disease, "so we anticipate that that will be taking place." Whether Musk came into contact with the astronauts was unclear but unlikely since the crew has been in routine quarantine for weeks prior to the flight. NASA contracted SpaceX and Boeing in 2014 to develop competing space capsules aimed at replacing the shuttle program that ended in 2011 and weaning the United States off dependence on Russian rockets to send U.S. astronauts to space. Boeing’s first crewed test mission with its Starliner capsule is planned for late next year.

SpaceX launch of crew on first 'operational' mission delayed by weather

November 12 in history: Release of the first images of Saturn's rings and more

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Elon Musk's rocket company&nbsp;SpaceX is set to launch its first fully-crewed bound for the International Space Station on Saturday.

It is&nbsp;the program's first six-month routine mission since the United States resumed crewed space flight in May after nine years of reliance on Russia. &nbsp;

Also read:&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/science/spacexs-envisioned-machinery-will-not-only-take-us-to-mars-but-reduce-travel-time-on-earth-tremendously-306615">SpaceX's envisioned machinery will not only take us to Mars, but reduce travel time on Earth tremendously!</a>

NASA on Tuesday officially certified as safe the Crew Dragon capsule developed for regular astronaut transportation by SpaceX, the company founded by Elon Musk that carried two astronauts to the ISS in May and back to Earth again in August without major incident.&nbsp;

"I'm extremely proud to say we are returning regular human spaceflight launches to American soil on an American rocket and spacecraft," NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine said.&nbsp;

The mission, named CREW-1, will deliver four of the seven individuals from Expedition 64 to the ISS: NASA space travelers Michael Hopkins, Victor Glover, and Shannon Walker, just as Japanese space explorer Soichi Noguchi. Endeavor 64 is the term for this 64th gathering of individuals to possess and chip away at the ISS long haul.

Take-off is planned for 7:49 pm Saturday (0049 GMT Sunday) from Kennedy Space Center in Florida and they are expected to arrive at the ISS eight hours later, at 0920 GMT Sunday.&nbsp;

Also read:&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/spacex-launches-third-batch-of-mini-satellites-into-orbit-272623">SpaceX launches third batch of mini-satellites into orbit</a>

The mission marks a culmination for SpaceX, setting it up to be NASA's favored,&nbsp;and so far most reliable, transportation provider as the agency waits on Boeing's Starliner capsule, which has been held up in testing and is not expected to be ready before next year.&nbsp;

SpaceX has been operating space station re-supplying flights with the cargo version of the Dragon since 2012.&nbsp;

"For the next 15 months, we will fly seven crew and cargo Dragon missions for NASA," SpaceX head of crewed flights Benji Reed said during a phone call Tuesday.&nbsp;

"That means that (from December) starting with Crew-1, there will be a continuous presence of SpaceX Dragons in orbit."

The next crewed mission is expected to blast off at the end of March 2021, carrying one European, one Japanese and two American crew members.&nbsp;

Elon Musk's organisation has dispatched two individuals into space to date: NASA space explorers Douglas Hurley and Robert Behnken, who rode to the International Space Station May 30 on board a Crew Dragon container mounted on a Falcon 9 rocket. That experimental drill, named DEMO-2, denoted the primary ever business manned dispatch, and the principal dispatch from American soil since the finish of the Space Shuttle program in 2011.

In any case, it was an experimental drill, with only two space explorers on board, enduring only 64 days with the vast majority of that time in zero-gravity spent on the International Space Station (ISS). On Nov. 14, if all works out as expected, four space explorers will take a Crew Dragon to the ISS and stay on the space station for a half year. It will check the start of the period of commonsense business spaceflight.&nbsp;

Elon Musk's rocket company SpaceX is set to launch its first fully-crewed bound for the International Space Station on Saturday. It is the program's first six-month routine mission since the United States resumed crewed space flight in May after nine years of reliance on Russia.

Elon Musk's rocket company SpaceX is set to launch its first fully-crewed bound for the International Space Station on Saturday. It is the program's first six-month routine mission since the United States resumed crewed space flight in May after nine years of reliance on Russia. Also read: SpaceX's envisioned machinery will not only take us to Mars, but reduce travel time on Earth tremendously! NASA on Tuesday officially certified as safe the Crew Dragon capsule developed for regular astronaut transportation by SpaceX, the company founded by Elon Musk that carried two astronauts to the ISS in May and back to Earth again in August without major incident. "I'm extremely proud to say we are returning regular human spaceflight launches to American soil on an American rocket and spacecraft," NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine said. The mission, named CREW-1, will deliver four of the seven individuals from Expedition 64 to the ISS: NASA space travelers Michael Hopkins, Victor Glover, and Shannon Walker, just as Japanese space explorer Soichi Noguchi. Endeavor 64 is the term for this 64th gathering of individuals to possess and chip away at the ISS long haul. Take-off is planned for 7:49 pm Saturday (0049 GMT Sunday) from Kennedy Space Center in Florida and they are expected to arrive at the ISS eight hours later, at 0920 GMT Sunday. Also read: SpaceX launches third batch of mini-satellites into orbit The mission marks a culmination for SpaceX, setting it up to be NASA's favored, and so far most reliable, transportation provider as the agency waits on Boeing's Starliner capsule, which has been held up in testing and is not expected to be ready before next year. SpaceX has been operating space station re-supplying flights with the cargo version of the Dragon since 2012. "For the next 15 months, we will fly seven crew and cargo Dragon missions for NASA," SpaceX head of crewed flights Benji Reed said during a phone call Tuesday. "That means that (from December) starting with Crew-1, there will be a continuous presence of SpaceX Dragons in orbit." The next crewed mission is expected to blast off at the end of March 2021, carrying one European, one Japanese and two American crew members. Elon Musk's organisation has dispatched two individuals into space to date: NASA space explorers Douglas Hurley and Robert Behnken, who rode to the International Space Station May 30 on board a Crew Dragon container mounted on a Falcon 9 rocket. That experimental drill, named DEMO-2, denoted the primary ever business manned dispatch, and the principal dispatch from American soil since the finish of the Space Shuttle program in 2011. In any case, it was an experimental drill, with only two space explorers on board, enduring only 64 days with the vast majority of that time in zero-gravity spent on the International Space Station (ISS). On Nov. 14, if all works out as expected, four space explorers will take a Crew Dragon to the ISS and stay on the space station for a half year. It will check the start of the period of commonsense business spaceflight.

'Another big leap': SpaceX set to launch first fully-crewed ISS mission

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has issued warnings regarding three&nbsp;asteroids over 30 metres&nbsp;in diametre&nbsp;travelling&nbsp;Earth’s way starting&nbsp;on November 10 with a double-header.&nbsp;

Estimating generally a large portion of the size of the Statue of Liberty (46m), space rock 2020 UN3 will pass the planet at a projected separation of 4.4 million kilometers. Not long after, and practically twofold the size, the 72-meter 2020 UL3, will take shots past at 5.8 million kilometers.&nbsp;

<iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/LJBv4reH9IU" width="560"></iframe>

In case anybody gets excessively agreeable,&nbsp;on November 12, space rock 2020 VC, estimating 34 meters in width or generally, a large portion of the wingspan of a 747 fly, is set to buzz the planet a ways off of 5.2 million kilometers.&nbsp;

The respectable notice goes to 2018 VS4, 23 metres&nbsp;in breadth (generally half as tall as the Arc de Triomphe) and the 27-meter 2020 VC1 (a large portion of the Leaning Tower of Pisa), the two of which will make a flyby of Earth this week yet are not expected to represent any danger to humankind.

In the interim, information from NASA's Osiris-Rex rocket, which as of late ravaged the potential planet-executioner space rock Bennu for a portion of its residue, demonstrates this specific feature taking space rock may, indeed, be empty.&nbsp;

Moreover, not exclusively is Bennu probably empty, yet it is additionally turning quickly, driving material to its surface and conceivably destroying itself all the while.&nbsp;

Still some 321,868,800km away, Bennu has a one-in-2,700 possibility of affecting Earth somewhere in the range of 2175 and 2199.&nbsp;

In an ongoing report, the University of Colorado analysts figured out how to compute its gravity, and along these lines, it's mass,&nbsp;by following the movement of rocks flung outwards by the space rock before they slammed down on its surface. The discoveries lead the boffins to speculate that Bennu has an unfilled center.

"It's as though there is a void at its middle, inside which you could fit two or three football fields," Daniel Scheeres, who drove the exploration, clarified.&nbsp;

The most recent information from the space rock shows that it finishes one revolution at regular intervals, however, that its pace of turn is expanding.&nbsp;

"You could envision perhaps in 1,000,000 years or less, the entire thing flying separated," Scheeres said.&nbsp;

The NASA group behind the fantastic mission likewise found that Bennu's stone was shockingly delicate, after the Osiris-Rex test shot the surface with an explosion of nitrogen gas, stirring up substantially more material than anticipated, finding everybody napping.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has issued warnings regarding three asteroids over 30 metres in diametre travelling Earth’s way starting on November 10 with a double-header.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has issued warnings regarding three asteroids over 30 metres in diametre travelling Earth’s way starting on November 10 with a double-header. Estimating generally a large portion of the size of the Statue of Liberty (46m), space rock 2020 UN3 will pass the planet at a projected separation of 4.4 million kilometers. Not long after, and practically twofold the size, the 72-meter 2020 UL3, will take shots past at 5.8 million kilometers. In case anybody gets excessively agreeable, on November 12, space rock 2020 VC, estimating 34 meters in width or generally, a large portion of the wingspan of a 747 fly, is set to buzz the planet a ways off of 5.2 million kilometers. The respectable notice goes to 2018 VS4, 23 metres in breadth (generally half as tall as the Arc de Triomphe) and the 27-meter 2020 VC1 (a large portion of the Leaning Tower of Pisa), the two of which will make a flyby of Earth this week yet are not expected to represent any danger to humankind. In the interim, information from NASA's Osiris-Rex rocket, which as of late ravaged the potential planet-executioner space rock Bennu for a portion of its residue, demonstrates this specific feature taking space rock may, indeed, be empty. Moreover, not exclusively is Bennu probably empty, yet it is additionally turning quickly, driving material to its surface and conceivably destroying itself all the while. Still some 321,868,800km away, Bennu has a one-in-2,700 possibility of affecting Earth somewhere in the range of 2175 and 2199. In an ongoing report, the University of Colorado analysts figured out how to compute its gravity, and along these lines, it's mass, by following the movement of rocks flung outwards by the space rock before they slammed down on its surface. The discoveries lead the boffins to speculate that Bennu has an unfilled center. "It's as though there is a void at its middle, inside which you could fit two or three football fields," Daniel Scheeres, who drove the exploration, clarified. The most recent information from the space rock shows that it finishes one revolution at regular intervals, however, that its pace of turn is expanding. "You could envision perhaps in 1,000,000 years or less, the entire thing flying separated," Scheeres said. The NASA group behind the fantastic mission likewise found that Bennu's stone was shockingly delicate, after the Osiris-Rex test shot the surface with an explosion of nitrogen gas, stirring up substantially more material than anticipated, finding everybody napping.

Three asteroids over 30 metres in diametre travelling Earth’s way

A decade ago, a band of astronomers set out to investigate one of the oldest questions taunting philosophers, scientists, priests, astronomers, mystics and the rest of the human race: How many more Earths are out there, if any? How many far-flung planets exist that could harbor life as we know it?

Their tool was the Kepler spacecraft, which was launched in March 2009 on a 3-1/2-year mission to monitor 150,000 stars in a patch of sky in the Milky Way. It looked for tiny dips in starlight caused by an exoplanet passing in front of its home star.

“It’s not E.T., but it’s E.T.’s home,” said William Borucki when the mission was launched in March 2009. It was Borucki, an astronomer now retired from NASA’s Ames Research Center, who dreamed up the project and spent two decades convincing NASA to do it.

Before the spacecraft finally gave out in 2018, it had discovered more than 4,000 candidate worlds among those stars. So far, none have shown any sign of life or habitation. (Granted, they are very far away and hard to study.) Extrapolated, that figure suggests that there are billions of exoplanets in the Milky Way galaxy. But how many of those are potentially habitable?

After crunching Kepler’s data for two years, a team of 44 astronomers led by Steve Bryson of NASA Ames has landed on what they say is the definitive answer, at least for now. Their paper has been accepted for publication in the Astronomical Journal.

Also Read | <a href="https://www.wionews.com/science/scientists-uncover-oldest-evidence-of-slingshot-tongue-341109">Scientists uncover oldest evidence of 'slingshot' tongue</a> 
 
Kepler’s formal goal was to measure a number called eta-Earth: the fraction of sunlike stars that have an Earth-size object orbiting them in the “goldilocks” or habitable zone, where it is warm enough for the surface to retain liquid water.

The team calculated that at least one-third, and perhaps as many as 90%, of stars similar in mass and brightness to our sun have rocks like Earth in their habitable zones, with the range reflecting the researchers’ confidence in their various methods and assumptions. That is no small bonanza, however you look at it.

According to NASA estimates there are at least 100 billion stars in the Milky Way, of which about 4 billion are sunlike. If only 7% of those stars have habitable planets — a seriously conservative estimate — there could be as many as 300 million potentially habitable Earths out there in the whole Milky Way alone.

“We want to be very conservative in case nature has any surprises regarding habitability,” said Ravi Kumar Kopparapu, a researcher at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, and one of the authors of the report. “So we are lowballing the estimates intentionally.”

On average, the astronomers calculated, the nearest such planet should be about 20 light-years away, and there should be four of them within 30 light-years or so of the sun.

“It took 11 years from launch to publication, but this is it,” said Natalie Batalha, an astronomer at the University of California, Santa Cruz, who directed the Kepler mission during most of its life and was one of the authors of the new paper, in a triumphant email. “This is the science result we’ve all been waiting for — the reason that Kepler was selected for flight in December 2001.”

Also Read | <a href="https://www.wionews.com/science/did-we-just-discover-the-moons-long-lost-sibling-340734">Did we just discover the Moon's long-lost sibling?</a>

The new result means that the galaxy is at least twice as fertile as estimated in one of the first analyses of Kepler data, in 2013. That finding, by Andrew Howard, Erik Petigura and Geoffrey Marcy, who were not part of the Kepler team, concluded that about one-fifth of sunlike stars harbored planets in their habitable zones.

Batalha said that one improvement this time around was the addition of data from the European GAIA satellite, which has measured the position and brightness of 1 billion stars. That knowledge allowed the Kepler scientists to more precisely chart the habitable zones of their stars.

Another improvement was better handling of the statistics, although, as Batalha noted, “surveys are inherently incomplete. You can’t call up every citizen; you can’t observe every star.”

In the case of Kepler, that limitation was serious. The spacecraft’s orientation system failed before Kepler could complete its prime survey, which limited it to detecting planets that had orbital periods of less than about 700 days — about twice the duration of an Earth year.

In an email, David Charbonneau, of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, said he was slightly skeptical of the results: “The Kepler Mission didn’t detect many (arguably, any) true Earth analogues, i.e. planets with the same radius as Earth AND orbiting at the same period, and hence receiving the same amount of light, AND orbiting sun-like stars.”

As Batalha said at the time, “We don’t yet have any planet candidates that are exact analogues of the Earth in terms of size, orbit or star type.” We still don’t. As a result, the astronomers had to extrapolate data from the planets they did see.

Although these Kepler planets are Earth-size — one-half to 1 1/2 the radius of Earth — and are presumably rocky, nobody knows what they are like in any detail, nor whether anything does, or could, live on them. They are too far away for further study. So far we know of only one planet, our own, that harbors life.

But there are plenty of opportunities yet to find one. The Kepler measurement of eta-Earth only pertains to stars like the sun, but in the galaxy those stars are vastly outnumbered by smaller, dimmer stars known as red dwarfs. One-quarter to one-half of red dwarfs also harbor habitable-zone planets, according to work by Courtney Dressing, now at the University of California, Berkeley, although some astronomers worry that radiation flares from such stars would doom any life trying to get started there. Red dwarf planets were not included in the new analysis of eta-Earth.

The red dwarf planets are relevant to the search for life because Kepler has passed the torch to a spacecraft called the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, or TESS, which was launched in 2018 to scour the entire sky for exoplanets within a few hundred light years of Earth — the local neighborhood. So far TESS has discovered 66 new exoplanets and has cataloged more than 2,000 candidates.

Most of those planets were expected to be found circling red dwarfs, said George Ricker, an astrophysicist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and principal investigator for the mission, in an email: “Since about three-fourths of the stars in the solar neighborhood are M dwarfs, that leaves open a very large discovery space for TESS in the decade ahead!”

Batalha said that young scientists in the future might yet find a way to improve the value of eta-Earth; “until then, this will be the de facto standard.”

The value of eta-Earth is an important and hitherto unknown factor in a mathematical expression known as the Drake equation. It is used by astronomers to estimate how many technological civilizations might exist in the galaxy — and that we might be able to contact by radio or other means some cosmic day.

It’s time to move on the next factor in the Drake equation for extraterrestrial civilizations: the fraction of these worlds on which life emerges. The search for even a single slime mold on some alien rock would revolutionize biology, and it is a worthy agenda for the next half-century as humans continue the climb out of ourselves and into the universe in the endless quest to end our cosmic loneliness.

A decade ago, a band of astronomers set out to investigate one of the oldest questions taunting philosophers, scientists, priests, astronomers, mystics and the rest of the human race: How many more Earths are out there, if any?

A decade ago, a band of astronomers set out to investigate one of the oldest questions taunting philosophers, scientists, priests, astronomers, mystics and the rest of the human race: How many more Earths are out there, if any? How many far-flung planets exist that could harbor life as we know it? Their tool was the Kepler spacecraft, which was launched in March 2009 on a 3-1/2-year mission to monitor 150,000 stars in a patch of sky in the Milky Way. It looked for tiny dips in starlight caused by an exoplanet passing in front of its home star. “It’s not E.T., but it’s E.T.’s home,” said William Borucki when the mission was launched in March 2009. It was Borucki, an astronomer now retired from NASA’s Ames Research Center, who dreamed up the project and spent two decades convincing NASA to do it. Before the spacecraft finally gave out in 2018, it had discovered more than 4,000 candidate worlds among those stars. So far, none have shown any sign of life or habitation. (Granted, they are very far away and hard to study.) Extrapolated, that figure suggests that there are billions of exoplanets in the Milky Way galaxy. But how many of those are potentially habitable? After crunching Kepler’s data for two years, a team of 44 astronomers led by Steve Bryson of NASA Ames has landed on what they say is the definitive answer, at least for now. Their paper has been accepted for publication in the Astronomical Journal. Also Read | Scientists uncover oldest evidence of 'slingshot' tongue Kepler’s formal goal was to measure a number called eta-Earth: the fraction of sunlike stars that have an Earth-size object orbiting them in the “goldilocks” or habitable zone, where it is warm enough for the surface to retain liquid water. The team calculated that at least one-third, and perhaps as many as 90%, of stars similar in mass and brightness to our sun have rocks like Earth in their habitable zones, with the range reflecting the researchers’ confidence in their various methods and assumptions. That is no small bonanza, however you look at it. According to NASA estimates there are at least 100 billion stars in the Milky Way, of which about 4 billion are sunlike. If only 7% of those stars have habitable planets — a seriously conservative estimate — there could be as many as 300 million potentially habitable Earths out there in the whole Milky Way alone. “We want to be very conservative in case nature has any surprises regarding habitability,” said Ravi Kumar Kopparapu, a researcher at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, and one of the authors of the report. “So we are lowballing the estimates intentionally.” On average, the astronomers calculated, the nearest such planet should be about 20 light-years away, and there should be four of them within 30 light-years or so of the sun. “It took 11 years from launch to publication, but this is it,” said Natalie Batalha, an astronomer at the University of California, Santa Cruz, who directed the Kepler mission during most of its life and was one of the authors of the new paper, in a triumphant email. “This is the science result we’ve all been waiting for — the reason that Kepler was selected for flight in December 2001.” Also Read | Did we just discover the Moon's long-lost sibling? The new result means that the galaxy is at least twice as fertile as estimated in one of the first analyses of Kepler data, in 2013. That finding, by Andrew Howard, Erik Petigura and Geoffrey Marcy, who were not part of the Kepler team, concluded that about one-fifth of sunlike stars harbored planets in their habitable zones. Batalha said that one improvement this time around was the addition of data from the European GAIA satellite, which has measured the position and brightness of 1 billion stars. That knowledge allowed the Kepler scientists to more precisely chart the habitable zones of their stars. Another improvement was better handling of the statistics, although, as Batalha noted, “surveys are inherently incomplete. You can’t call up every citizen; you can’t observe every star.” In the case of Kepler, that limitation was serious. The spacecraft’s orientation system failed before Kepler could complete its prime survey, which limited it to detecting planets that had orbital periods of less than about 700 days — about twice the duration of an Earth year. In an email, David Charbonneau, of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, said he was slightly skeptical of the results: “The Kepler Mission didn’t detect many (arguably, any) true Earth analogues, i.e. planets with the same radius as Earth AND orbiting at the same period, and hence receiving the same amount of light, AND orbiting sun-like stars.” As Batalha said at the time, “We don’t yet have any planet candidates that are exact analogues of the Earth in terms of size, orbit or star type.” We still don’t. As a result, the astronomers had to extrapolate data from the planets they did see. Although these Kepler planets are Earth-size — one-half to 1 1/2 the radius of Earth — and are presumably rocky, nobody knows what they are like in any detail, nor whether anything does, or could, live on them. They are too far away for further study. So far we know of only one planet, our own, that harbors life. But there are plenty of opportunities yet to find one. The Kepler measurement of eta-Earth only pertains to stars like the sun, but in the galaxy those stars are vastly outnumbered by smaller, dimmer stars known as red dwarfs. One-quarter to one-half of red dwarfs also harbor habitable-zone planets, according to work by Courtney Dressing, now at the University of California, Berkeley, although some astronomers worry that radiation flares from such stars would doom any life trying to get started there. Red dwarf planets were not included in the new analysis of eta-Earth. The red dwarf planets are relevant to the search for life because Kepler has passed the torch to a spacecraft called the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, or TESS, which was launched in 2018 to scour the entire sky for exoplanets within a few hundred light years of Earth — the local neighborhood. So far TESS has discovered 66 new exoplanets and has cataloged more than 2,000 candidates. Most of those planets were expected to be found circling red dwarfs, said George Ricker, an astrophysicist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and principal investigator for the mission, in an email: “Since about three-fourths of the stars in the solar neighborhood are M dwarfs, that leaves open a very large discovery space for TESS in the decade ahead!” Batalha said that young scientists in the future might yet find a way to improve the value of eta-Earth; “until then, this will be the de facto standard.” The value of eta-Earth is an important and hitherto unknown factor in a mathematical expression known as the Drake equation. It is used by astronomers to estimate how many technological civilizations might exist in the galaxy — and that we might be able to contact by radio or other means some cosmic day. It’s time to move on the next factor in the Drake equation for extraterrestrial civilizations: the fraction of these worlds on which life emerges. The search for even a single slime mold on some alien rock would revolutionize biology, and it is a worthy agenda for the next half-century as humans continue the climb out of ourselves and into the universe in the endless quest to end our cosmic loneliness.

Looking for another Earth? Here are 300 million, maybe

With only four days to go for the US election 2020,&nbsp;President Donald Trump's differences with rival presidential candidate Joe Biden extend far beyond planet Earth.

However, NASA's moonshot, aerospace company Boeing,&nbsp;Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos, and&nbsp;SpaceX owner and Tesla CEO Elon Musk also have a&nbsp;lot riding on the <a href="https://www.wionews.com/topics/us-election">US&nbsp;election</a> on November 3.

While Republican candidate&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/topics/donald-trump">Trump</a>&nbsp;plans to win the race in space call for a 2024 moon mission and ending direct US&nbsp;financial support for the International Space Station in 2025, turning&nbsp;over control of the decades-old orbital laboratory to private space companies.

Biden, on the other hand, would likely call for a delayed&nbsp;moonshot&nbsp;and propose a funding extension for the International Space Station if he wins the White House, according to people familiar with the fledging Biden space agenda.

Earlier,&nbsp;NASA had&nbsp;selected&nbsp;Bezos's Blue Origin and Musk's SpaceX&nbsp;to develop human landers for Artemis moon missions.&nbsp;

Also read:&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/bezoss-blue-origin-and-musks-spacex-to-collaborate-in-building-nasas-lunar-lander-296099">Bezos's Blue Origin and Musk's SpaceX to collaborate in building NASA's lunar lander</a>

Pushing back the moon mission could cast more doubt on the long-term fate of Boeing Co's Space Launch System (SLS) rocket, just as Elon Musk's SpaceX and Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin scramble to bring rival rockets to market as soon as next year.

Extending support for the space station for a decade would also be a major boost for Boeing, whose $225 million annual ISS operations contract is set to expire in 2024 and is at the depths of a financial crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and the 737 MAX grounding after fatal crashes.

Also read:&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/new-shepard-capsule-bezos-blue-origin-conducts-successful-test-flight-for-space-tourism-335120">New Shepard capsule: Bezos' Blue Origin conducts successful test flight for space tourism</a>

Boeing and SpaceX are already supplying spacecraft to ferry astronauts to the ISS under a program begun under the Obama administration and supported by both Trump and Biden.

Though slowing the&nbsp;moonshot&nbsp;would push back contracts for moon landers and related equipment the companies aim to win, the emerging Biden space agenda appears broadly set to promote competition between traditional defense contractors like Boeing and "new space" rivals like SpaceX who promise lower-cost and reusable rocket systems and space vehicles.

Craving consistency

For the commercial space industry, "consistency is key," said Mike French, a vice president at the Aerospace Industries Association trade group who earlier served as NASA chief of staff under Obama.

"If you shake the etch-a-sketch now, you will (be) risking a series of potentially historic accomplishments and the strong and sustained bipartisan support NASA has seen across its portfolio," French told Reuters.

Roughly 20 former senior NASA officials and scientists have assembled as a volunteer subgroup under the Biden campaign's science committee to informally help draw up ideas for a space platform.

Many held jobs in the Obama administration and are jockeying for influential roles on the transition team or in a Biden administration.

Members of the subgroup also want to boost NASA funding for Earth science and support partnerships with other nations. They stressed that Biden's space agenda, and the staff assignments to lead it, were in a formative stage as his campaign prioritizes more pressing issues, like the coronavirus pandemic and joblessness.

A Biden campaign spokesman pointed to earlier remarks from Biden. In August, after SpaceX launched and returned the first astronauts from US&nbsp;soil on a trip to the ISS in nearly a decade, Biden said he looked forward to "leading a bold space program that will continue to send astronaut heroes to expand our exploration and scientific frontiers."

Representatives for Blue Origin and Boeing declined to comment. SpaceX and the Trump campaign did not respond to requests for comment.

Fight over Boeing rocket

But the Biden space group is divided on what to do about Boeing's SLS, several sources said.

The super heavy-lift rocket has been beset by development delays and cost overruns, but supports tens of thousands of jobs in Alabama and California and is seen by backers as central to NASA's exploration plans and the only path to Trump's 2024 timeline for the Artemis mission.

Critics say the rocket's aging technology and launch costs of $1 billion or more permission should prompt a formal White House or Congressional review of the program, particularly if SpaceX and Blue Origin are able to offer new rockets at a lower cost.

It costs as little as $90 million to fly Musk's massive but still less-powerful Falcon Heavy, and some $350 million per launch for United Launch Alliance's legacy Delta IV Heavy.

Whether a Biden space policy would be more friendly to SLS or to newer commercial alternatives from "new space" players will be heavily influenced by his choice for NASA administrator, a role the campaign wants to be filled by a woman, two people said.

NASA views SLS as its only human-rated ride to the moon in the near term, said Doug Loverro, the former NASA head of human spaceflight.

"But is that the long-term direction to continue to pursue?" Loverro asked.

With only four days to go for the US election 2020, President Donald Trump's differences with rival presidential candidate Joe Biden extend far beyond planet Earth.

With only four days to go for the US election 2020, President Donald Trump's differences with rival presidential candidate Joe Biden extend far beyond planet Earth. However, NASA's moonshot, aerospace company Boeing, Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos, and SpaceX owner and Tesla CEO Elon Musk also have a lot riding on the US election on November 3. While Republican candidate Trump plans to win the race in space call for a 2024 moon mission and ending direct US financial support for the International Space Station in 2025, turning over control of the decades-old orbital laboratory to private space companies. Biden, on the other hand, would likely call for a delayed moonshot and propose a funding extension for the International Space Station if he wins the White House, according to people familiar with the fledging Biden space agenda. Earlier, NASA had selected Bezos's Blue Origin and Musk's SpaceX to develop human landers for Artemis moon missions. Also read: Bezos's Blue Origin and Musk's SpaceX to collaborate in building NASA's lunar lander Pushing back the moon mission could cast more doubt on the long-term fate of Boeing Co's Space Launch System (SLS) rocket, just as Elon Musk's SpaceX and Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin scramble to bring rival rockets to market as soon as next year. Extending support for the space station for a decade would also be a major boost for Boeing, whose $225 million annual ISS operations contract is set to expire in 2024 and is at the depths of a financial crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and the 737 MAX grounding after fatal crashes. Also read: New Shepard capsule: Bezos' Blue Origin conducts successful test flight for space tourism Boeing and SpaceX are already supplying spacecraft to ferry astronauts to the ISS under a program begun under the Obama administration and supported by both Trump and Biden. Though slowing the moonshot would push back contracts for moon landers and related equipment the companies aim to win, the emerging Biden space agenda appears broadly set to promote competition between traditional defense contractors like Boeing and "new space" rivals like SpaceX who promise lower-cost and reusable rocket systems and space vehicles. Craving consistency For the commercial space industry, "consistency is key," said Mike French, a vice president at the Aerospace Industries Association trade group who earlier served as NASA chief of staff under Obama. "If you shake the etch-a-sketch now, you will (be) risking a series of potentially historic accomplishments and the strong and sustained bipartisan support NASA has seen across its portfolio," French told Reuters. Roughly 20 former senior NASA officials and scientists have assembled as a volunteer subgroup under the Biden campaign's science committee to informally help draw up ideas for a space platform. Many held jobs in the Obama administration and are jockeying for influential roles on the transition team or in a Biden administration. Members of the subgroup also want to boost NASA funding for Earth science and support partnerships with other nations. They stressed that Biden's space agenda, and the staff assignments to lead it, were in a formative stage as his campaign prioritizes more pressing issues, like the coronavirus pandemic and joblessness. A Biden campaign spokesman pointed to earlier remarks from Biden. In August, after SpaceX launched and returned the first astronauts from US soil on a trip to the ISS in nearly a decade, Biden said he looked forward to "leading a bold space program that will continue to send astronaut heroes to expand our exploration and scientific frontiers." Representatives for Blue Origin and Boeing declined to comment. SpaceX and the Trump campaign did not respond to requests for comment. Fight over Boeing rocket But the Biden space group is divided on what to do about Boeing's SLS, several sources said. The super heavy-lift rocket has been beset by development delays and cost overruns, but supports tens of thousands of jobs in Alabama and California and is seen by backers as central to NASA's exploration plans and the only path to Trump's 2024 timeline for the Artemis mission. Critics say the rocket's aging technology and launch costs of $1 billion or more permission should prompt a formal White House or Congressional review of the program, particularly if SpaceX and Blue Origin are able to offer new rockets at a lower cost. It costs as little as $90 million to fly Musk's massive but still less-powerful Falcon Heavy, and some $350 million per launch for United Launch Alliance's legacy Delta IV Heavy. Whether a Biden space policy would be more friendly to SLS or to newer commercial alternatives from "new space" players will be heavily influenced by his choice for NASA administrator, a role the campaign wants to be filled by a woman, two people said. NASA views SLS as its only human-rated ride to the moon in the near term, said Doug Loverro, the former NASA head of human spaceflight. "But is that the long-term direction to continue to pursue?" Loverro asked.

US election 2020: Why are the polls crucial for NASA's moonshot, Boeing, Bezos and Musk

NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has been used to study a rare metallic asteroid, named Psyche 16, during two points of its rotation. The investigation has given interesting results.

The new study, which was published this week in The Planetary Science Journal, indicates that asteroid’s composition is key to its astronomical value.

The value when written out in full comes out to be $10,000,000,000,000,000,000. This makes Psyche 70,000 times more valuable than the global economy, worth about $142 trillion in 2019.

Also, the said asteroid could have been a protoplanet. Researchers said, "The Earth has a metallic core, a mantle and a crust. It is possible that during the formation of a protoplanet Psyche, it was struck by another object in our solar system and lost its mantle and crust."

The asteroid is the largest piece of space debris in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. It is currently about 230 million miles from Earth in the Solar System’s main asteroid belt.

NASA plans to send a spacecraft into orbit around the asteroid. The mission, named Psyche, will launch in 2022, with the spacecraft reaching the asteroid in 2026.

NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has been used to study a rare metallic asteroid, named Psyche 16, during two points of its rotation. The investigation has given interesting results.

NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has been used to study a rare metallic asteroid, named Psyche 16, during two points of its rotation. The investigation has given interesting results. The new study, which was published this week in The Planetary Science Journal, indicates that asteroid’s composition is key to its astronomical value. The value when written out in full comes out to be $10,000,000,000,000,000,000. This makes Psyche 70,000 times more valuable than the global economy, worth about $142 trillion in 2019. Also, the said asteroid could have been a protoplanet. Researchers said, "The Earth has a metallic core, a mantle and a crust. It is possible that during the formation of a protoplanet Psyche, it was struck by another object in our solar system and lost its mantle and crust." The asteroid is the largest piece of space debris in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. It is currently about 230 million miles from Earth in the Solar System’s main asteroid belt. NASA plans to send a spacecraft into orbit around the asteroid. The mission, named Psyche, will launch in 2022, with the spacecraft reaching the asteroid in 2026.

Hubble telescope gives closer look at rare asteroid worth 70,000 times the global economy

October 27 in history: Killing of Armenia's prime minister in an open fire and more

Osiris-Rex spacecraft of&nbsp;the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is set to begin on Tuesday a delicate operation&nbsp;to stow its samples collected from asteroid Bennu.

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One week ahead of schedule &amp; exceeding all expectations, our <a href="https://twitter.com/OSIRISREx?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@OSIRISREx</a> spacecraft is ready to stow its samples collected from asteroid Bennu! 
 
Read more about the latest mission developments <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/ToBennuAndBack?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#ToBennuAndBack</a>: <a href="https://t.co/GFjKADhuaT">https://t.co/GFjKADhuaT</a> <a href="https://t.co/ciTXUD73Kj">pic.twitter.com/ciTXUD73Kj</a>
— NASA (@NASA) <a href="https://twitter.com/NASA/status/1320836379383877632?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 26, 2020</a></blockquote>
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The probe is on a mission to collect fragments that scientists hope will help unravel the origins of our solar system, but that hit a snag after it picked up too big of a sample.

On October 22,&nbsp;the OSIRIS-REx mission team received images that showed the spacecraft’s collector head overflowing with material collected from Bennu’s surface, well over the two-ounce (60-gram) mission requirement, and that some of these particles appeared to be slowly escaping from the collection head, called the Touch-And-Go Sample Acquisition Mechanism (TAGSAM).

A mylar flap on the TAGSAM allows the material to easily enter the collector's head and should seal shut once the particles pass through. However, larger rocks that didn’t fully pass through the flap into the TAGSAM appear to have wedged this flap open, allowing bits of the sample to leak out.

Also read:&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/science/nasa-collected-an-asteroid-sample-but-some-of-it-is-leaking-into-space-337667" hreflang="en">NASA collected an asteroid sample. But some of it is leaking into space</a>

Because the first sample collection event was so successful, NASA’s Science Mission Directorate has given the mission team the go-ahead to expedite sample stowage, originally scheduled for November&nbsp;2, in the spacecraft’s Sample Return Capsule (SRC) to minimize further sample loss.

"The abundance of material we collected from Bennu made it possible to expedite our decision to stow,” said Dante Lauretta, OSIRIS-REx principal investigator at the University of Arizona, Tucson. “The team is now working around the clock to accelerate the stowage timeline so that we can protect as much of this material as possible for a return to Earth."

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Tomorrow, the OSIRIS-REx mission will begin the process to stow its abundant sample of asteroid Bennu. It’s a few days earlier than originally anticipated, but the team is working hard to make sure we get every bit of Bennu we possibly can. More details: <a href="https://t.co/b7Wnoz219q">https://t.co/b7Wnoz219q</a> <a href="https://t.co/PXIlkZhnzi">pic.twitter.com/PXIlkZhnzi</a>
— NASA's OSIRIS-REx (@OSIRISREx) <a href="https://twitter.com/OSIRISREx/status/1320826816202825728?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 26, 2020</a></blockquote>
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Fragments from the asteroid's surface area in a collector at the end of the probe's three-meter (10-foot) arm, slowly escaping into space because some rocks have prevented the compartment from closing completely.

That arm is what came into contact with Bennu for a few seconds last Tuesday in the culmination of a mission launched from Earth some four years ago.&nbsp;

The team will send the preliminary commands to the spacecraft to start the stow sequence and, once OSIRIS-REx completes each step in the sequence, the spacecraft sends telemetry and images back to the team on Earth and waits for the team’s confirmation to proceed with the next step.

Osiris-Rex is set to come home in September 2023, hopefully with the largest sample returned from space since the Apollo era.

The stowing operation will take several days, NASA said, because it requires the team's oversight and input unlike some of Osiris-Rex's other operations that run autonomously.

After each step in the process, the spacecraft will send information and images back to Earth so scientists can make sure everything is proceeding correctly.

The probe is so far away that it takes 18.5 minutes for its transmissions to reach Earth, and any signal from the control room requires the same amount of time to reach Osiris-Rex.

Osiris-Rex spacecraft of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is set to begin on Tuesday a delicate operation to stow its samples collected from asteroid Bennu.

Osiris-Rex spacecraft of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is set to begin on Tuesday a delicate operation to stow its samples collected from asteroid Bennu. One week ahead of schedule & exceeding all expectations, our @OSIRISREx spacecraft is ready to stow its samples collected from asteroid Bennu! Read more about the latest mission developments #ToBennuAndBack: https://t.co/GFjKADhuaT pic.twitter.com/ciTXUD73Kj — NASA (@NASA) October 26, 2020 × The probe is on a mission to collect fragments that scientists hope will help unravel the origins of our solar system, but that hit a snag after it picked up too big of a sample. On October 22, the OSIRIS-REx mission team received images that showed the spacecraft’s collector head overflowing with material collected from Bennu’s surface, well over the two-ounce (60-gram) mission requirement, and that some of these particles appeared to be slowly escaping from the collection head, called the Touch-And-Go Sample Acquisition Mechanism (TAGSAM). A mylar flap on the TAGSAM allows the material to easily enter the collector's head and should seal shut once the particles pass through. However, larger rocks that didn’t fully pass through the flap into the TAGSAM appear to have wedged this flap open, allowing bits of the sample to leak out. Also read: NASA collected an asteroid sample. But some of it is leaking into space Because the first sample collection event was so successful, NASA’s Science Mission Directorate has given the mission team the go-ahead to expedite sample stowage, originally scheduled for November 2, in the spacecraft’s Sample Return Capsule (SRC) to minimize further sample loss. "The abundance of material we collected from Bennu made it possible to expedite our decision to stow,” said Dante Lauretta, OSIRIS-REx principal investigator at the University of Arizona, Tucson. “The team is now working around the clock to accelerate the stowage timeline so that we can protect as much of this material as possible for a return to Earth." Tomorrow, the OSIRIS-REx mission will begin the process to stow its abundant sample of asteroid Bennu. It’s a few days earlier than originally anticipated, but the team is working hard to make sure we get every bit of Bennu we possibly can. More details: https://t.co/b7Wnoz219q pic.twitter.com/PXIlkZhnzi — NASA's OSIRIS-REx (@OSIRISREx) October 26, 2020 × Fragments from the asteroid's surface area in a collector at the end of the probe's three-meter (10-foot) arm, slowly escaping into space because some rocks have prevented the compartment from closing completely. That arm is what came into contact with Bennu for a few seconds last Tuesday in the culmination of a mission launched from Earth some four years ago. The team will send the preliminary commands to the spacecraft to start the stow sequence and, once OSIRIS-REx completes each step in the sequence, the spacecraft sends telemetry and images back to the team on Earth and waits for the team’s confirmation to proceed with the next step. Osiris-Rex is set to come home in September 2023, hopefully with the largest sample returned from space since the Apollo era. The stowing operation will take several days, NASA said, because it requires the team's oversight and input unlike some of Osiris-Rex's other operations that run autonomously. After each step in the process, the spacecraft will send information and images back to Earth so scientists can make sure everything is proceeding correctly. The probe is so far away that it takes 18.5 minutes for its transmissions to reach Earth, and any signal from the control room requires the same amount of time to reach Osiris-Rex.

NASA's Osiris-Rex ready to stow its samples collected from asteroid Bennu

NASA has confirmed, for the first time, that there is water on the sunlit surface of the moon. The discovery means future missions to the moon could be prolonged by making use of these water molecules which are scattered across the moon.

NASA reveals discovery of water molecules on moon

NASA has confirmed the presence of water on the sunlit surface of the Moon. This discovery indicates that water may be distributed across the lunar surface.

NASA's Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA) has detected water molecules (H2O) in Clavius Crater, one of the largest craters visible from Earth, located in the Moon’s southern hemisphere.&nbsp;

In an announcement on Monday, Nasa said the molecules discovered are equivalent to a twelve-ounce bottle of water within a cubic meter of lunar soil.

The water likely arrived at the Moon via one of two ways. It may have been carried there by radiation known as the solar wind, or on tiny meteorites, NASA said.

SOFIA’s results build on years of previous research examining the presence of water on the Moon.

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We just announced that - for the first time - we’ve confirmed H2O💧 in sunlit☀️ areas of the Moon. This indicates that water might be distributed across the lunar surface. <a href="https://t.co/Gn0DSu5K95">https://t.co/Gn0DSu5K95</a>
— NASA Moon (@NASAMoon) <a href="https://twitter.com/NASAMoon/status/1320763660629807106?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 26, 2020</a></blockquote>
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Previous research has found indications of water by scanning the surface -- but these were unable to distinguish between water (H2O) and hydroxyl, a molecule made up of one hydrogen atom and one oxygen atom.&nbsp;&nbsp;

SOFIA’s follow-up flights will look for water in additional sunlit locations and during different lunar phases to learn more about how the water is produced, stored, and moved across the Moon.&nbsp;

Scientists still don’t know exactly where the water is being stored on the Moon, or if it can be used at all.&nbsp;

Two papers describing the new discoveries – ‘Molecular water detected on the sunlit Moon by SOFIA’ and ‘Micro cold traps on the Moon’ – are published today in Nature Astronomy.

Using data from the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA) Airborne Telescope, researchers scanned the lunar surface at a more precise wavelength than had been used before -- six microns instead of three.&nbsp;

This allowed them to "unambiguously" distinguish the spectral fingerprint of molecular water, said co-author Casey Honniball, of the Hawaii Institute of Geophysics and Planetology.

Researchers believe the water might be trapped in glass beads, or another substance that protects it from the harsh lunar environment.

Further observations would help better understand where the water may have come from and how it is stored.&nbsp;

The second study looks at areas of the Moon's polar regions, where water ice is believed to be trapped in lunar craters that never see sunlight.&nbsp;

Large hollows had previously been discovered --&nbsp;&nbsp;NASA in 2009 found water crystals in a deep crater near the Moon's southern pole.&nbsp;

But the new study found evidence of billions of micro-craters that could each cradle a miniscule amount of water ice.

"If you were standing on the Moon near one of the poles, you would see a whole 'galaxy' of little shadows speckled across the surface," said lead author Paul Hayne of the Department of Astrophysics at the University of Colorado.&nbsp;&nbsp;

"Each of these tiny shadows -- most of them smaller than a coin -- would be extremely cold, and most of them cold enough to harbour ice."&nbsp;

This suggests that water could be much more widespread on the Moon than previously thought.

Scientists hope that samples from these cold traps could tell us more about how the Moon -- and even Earth -- got its water, he said, perhaps providing evidence of water delivered by asteroids, comets and the solar wind.&nbsp;&nbsp;

NASA, which plans to establish a space station in the lunar orbit called Gateway, envisages that ice excavated from the Moon's south pole may one day supply drinking water.&nbsp;They could also split the molecules apart to make rocket fuel for an onward journey.

(with inputs)

NASA has confirmed the presence of water on the sunlit surface of the Moon. This discovery indicates that water may be distributed across the lunar surface. NASA's Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA) has detected water molecules (H2O) in Clavius Crater, one of the largest craters visible from Earth, located in the Moon’s southern hemisphere.

NASA has confirmed the presence of water on the sunlit surface of the Moon. This discovery indicates that water may be distributed across the lunar surface. NASA's Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA) has detected water molecules (H2O) in Clavius Crater, one of the largest craters visible from Earth, located in the Moon’s southern hemisphere. In an announcement on Monday, Nasa said the molecules discovered are equivalent to a twelve-ounce bottle of water within a cubic meter of lunar soil. The water likely arrived at the Moon via one of two ways. It may have been carried there by radiation known as the solar wind, or on tiny meteorites, NASA said. SOFIA’s results build on years of previous research examining the presence of water on the Moon. We just announced that - for the first time - we’ve confirmed H2O💧 in sunlit☀️ areas of the Moon. This indicates that water might be distributed across the lunar surface. https://t.co/Gn0DSu5K95 — NASA Moon (@NASAMoon) October 26, 2020 × Previous research has found indications of water by scanning the surface -- but these were unable to distinguish between water (H2O) and hydroxyl, a molecule made up of one hydrogen atom and one oxygen atom. SOFIA’s follow-up flights will look for water in additional sunlit locations and during different lunar phases to learn more about how the water is produced, stored, and moved across the Moon. Scientists still don’t know exactly where the water is being stored on the Moon, or if it can be used at all. Two papers describing the new discoveries – ‘Molecular water detected on the sunlit Moon by SOFIA’ and ‘Micro cold traps on the Moon’ – are published today in Nature Astronomy. Using data from the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA) Airborne Telescope, researchers scanned the lunar surface at a more precise wavelength than had been used before -- six microns instead of three. This allowed them to "unambiguously" distinguish the spectral fingerprint of molecular water, said co-author Casey Honniball, of the Hawaii Institute of Geophysics and Planetology. Researchers believe the water might be trapped in glass beads, or another substance that protects it from the harsh lunar environment. Further observations would help better understand where the water may have come from and how it is stored. The second study looks at areas of the Moon's polar regions, where water ice is believed to be trapped in lunar craters that never see sunlight. Large hollows had previously been discovered -- NASA in 2009 found water crystals in a deep crater near the Moon's southern pole. But the new study found evidence of billions of micro-craters that could each cradle a miniscule amount of water ice. "If you were standing on the Moon near one of the poles, you would see a whole 'galaxy' of little shadows speckled across the surface," said lead author Paul Hayne of the Department of Astrophysics at the University of Colorado. "Each of these tiny shadows -- most of them smaller than a coin -- would be extremely cold, and most of them cold enough to harbour ice." This suggests that water could be much more widespread on the Moon than previously thought. Scientists hope that samples from these cold traps could tell us more about how the Moon -- and even Earth -- got its water, he said, perhaps providing evidence of water delivered by asteroids, comets and the solar wind. NASA, which plans to establish a space station in the lunar orbit called Gateway, envisages that ice excavated from the Moon's south pole may one day supply drinking water. They could also split the molecules apart to make rocket fuel for an onward journey. (with inputs)

NASA discovers water on sunlit surface of the Moon

The historic collection of a sample from the near-Earth asteroid Bennu by NASA's OSIRIS-REx spacecraft has become a victim of its own success.

The US probe that collected a sample from the asteroid earlier this week retrieved so much material that a rock is wedged in the container door, allowing rocks to spill back out into space, NASA officials said on Friday.

The robotic arm of the probe, OSIRIS-REx, on Tuesday night kicked up a debris cloud of rocks on Bennu, a skyscraper-sized asteroid some 200 million miles (320 million km) from Earth and trapped the material in a collection device for the return to Earth.

But images of the spacecraft's collection head beamed back to ground control revealed it had caught more material than scientists anticipated and was spewing an excess of flaky asteroid rocks into space.

The leakage had the OSIRIS-REx mission team scrambling to stow the collection device to prevent additional spillage.

The team isn't sure of the exact loss rate because it's not steady.

If this continues, NASA will not know how much material it collected until the sample capsule returns in 2023.&nbsp;

The roughly $800 million, minivan-sized OSIRIS-REx spacecraft, built by Lockheed Martin, launched in 2016 to grab and return the first US sample of pristine asteroid materials.

The spacecraft won't begin its journey back to Earth until March 2021

The historic collection of a sample from the near-Earth asteroid Bennu by NASA's OSIRIS-REx spacecraft has become a victim of its own success. The US probe that collected a sample from the asteroid earlier this week retrieved so much material that a rock is wedged in the container door, allowing rocks to spill back out into space, NASA officials said on Friday.

The historic collection of a sample from the near-Earth asteroid Bennu by NASA's OSIRIS-REx spacecraft has become a victim of its own success. The US probe that collected a sample from the asteroid earlier this week retrieved so much material that a rock is wedged in the container door, allowing rocks to spill back out into space, NASA officials said on Friday. The robotic arm of the probe, OSIRIS-REx, on Tuesday night kicked up a debris cloud of rocks on Bennu, a skyscraper-sized asteroid some 200 million miles (320 million km) from Earth and trapped the material in a collection device for the return to Earth. But images of the spacecraft's collection head beamed back to ground control revealed it had caught more material than scientists anticipated and was spewing an excess of flaky asteroid rocks into space. The leakage had the OSIRIS-REx mission team scrambling to stow the collection device to prevent additional spillage. The team isn't sure of the exact loss rate because it's not steady. If this continues, NASA will not know how much material it collected until the sample capsule returns in 2023. The roughly $800 million, minivan-sized OSIRIS-REx spacecraft, built by Lockheed Martin, launched in 2016 to grab and return the first US sample of pristine asteroid materials. The spacecraft won't begin its journey back to Earth until March 2021

NASA collected an asteroid sample. But some of it is leaking into space

NASA released new images by the OSIRIS-REx mission on the asteroid Bennu.&nbsp;

The spacecraft collected a sample that will reach earth in 2023.&nbsp;

Also read |&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/science/nasas-osiris-rex-grabs-a-piece-of-asteroid-bennu-in-historic-mission-336773">NASA's Osiris-Rex grabs a piece of asteroid Bennu in historic mission</a>

In the photographs, the spacecraft could be seen touching down, crushing some rocks on the surface.

<img alt="NASA asteroid mission" data-entity-type="file" data-entity-uuid="977612ff-933d-4652-9c3e-9bbaeade4ca0" src="//cdn.wionews.com/sites/default/files/inline-images/Untitled%20design%20%281%29_158.jpg" />

<img alt="NASA asteroid mission" data-entity-type="file" data-entity-uuid="11062abf-6c74-48d8-9170-cda8dedb0638" src="//cdn.wionews.com/sites/default/files/inline-images/Untitled%20design%20%283%29_78.jpg" />

<img alt="NASA asteroid mission" data-entity-type="file" data-entity-uuid="1cb4d794-dcbf-4a40-979e-086c4d7063dc" src="//cdn.wionews.com/sites/default/files/inline-images/Untitled%20design%20%282%29_111.jpg" />

(Courtesy: AFP)

Osiris-Rex will return back in September 2023, hopefully with the largest sample ever collected from space since the Apollo mission, potentially helping in knowing the origins of our solar system.&nbsp;

The images taken provide a play-by-play sequence of the dramatic landing, which include Osiris-Rex's sampling arm breaking a large but fragile rock on contact.&nbsp;

"Bottom line is, from analysis of the images that we've gotten down so far, is that the sampling event went really well, as good as we could have imagined it would," said Dante Lauretta, mission head.&nbsp;

"Particles are flying all over the place. We really did kind of make a mess on the surface of this asteroid, but it's a good mess, it's the kind of mess we were hoping for."&nbsp;

 
&nbsp;

NASA released new images by the OSIRIS-REx mission on the asteroid Bennu. The spacecraft collected a sample that will reach earth in 2023. Also read | NASA's Osiris-Rex grabs a piece of asteroid Bennu in historic mission In the photographs, the spacecraft could be seen touching down, crushing some rocks on the surface.

NASA released new images by the OSIRIS-REx mission on the asteroid Bennu. The spacecraft collected a sample that will reach earth in 2023. Also read | NASA's Osiris-Rex grabs a piece of asteroid Bennu in historic mission In the photographs, the spacecraft could be seen touching down, crushing some rocks on the surface. (Courtesy: AFP) Osiris-Rex will return back in September 2023, hopefully with the largest sample ever collected from space since the Apollo mission, potentially helping in knowing the origins of our solar system. The images taken provide a play-by-play sequence of the dramatic landing, which include Osiris-Rex's sampling arm breaking a large but fragile rock on contact. "Bottom line is, from analysis of the images that we've gotten down so far, is that the sampling event went really well, as good as we could have imagined it would," said Dante Lauretta, mission head. "Particles are flying all over the place. We really did kind of make a mess on the surface of this asteroid, but it's a good mess, it's the kind of mess we were hoping for."

NASA releases new images to show historic landing, sample collection on asteroid

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has shared news of "exciting new discovery" about the moon on Twitter and revealed it will hold a media conference onboard it’s Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA) on Monday (October 26) to disclose the findings.

The new results are courtesy of the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA). It's the world's largest airborne observatory and is actually a Boeing 747SP plane with a hole cut out in it, modified to carry a large reflecting telescope.&nbsp;

"Mark your calendars: We will be revealing a new discovery about the surface of the Moon from our airborne SOFIATelescope observatory, and YOU are invited," it wrote on Twitter.

"Pencil us in for 12 pm ET on Monday, Oct. 26!

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🗓️ Mark your calendars: We will be revealing a new discovery about the surface of the Moon from our airborne <a href="https://twitter.com/SOFIAtelescope?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@SOFIATelescope</a> observatory, and YOU are invited. 
 
✏️ Pencil us in for 12pm ET on Monday, Oct. 26! To participate: <a href="https://t.co/gzfTK43snB">https://t.co/gzfTK43snB</a> <a href="https://t.co/HHNXOAYfMh">pic.twitter.com/HHNXOAYfMh</a>
— NASA (@NASA) <a href="https://twitter.com/NASA/status/1319072983630123008?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 22, 2020</a></blockquote>
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According to NASA's press release, "This new discovery contributes to NASA’s efforts to learn about the Moon in support of deep space exploration. Under NASA’s Artemis program, the agency will send the first woman and next man to the lunar surface in 2024 to prepare for our next giant leap – the human exploration of Mars as early as the 2030s. Understanding the science of the Moon also helps piece together the broader history of the inner solar system."

(With inputs from agencies)

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has shared news of "exciting new discovery" about the moon on Twitter and revealed it will hold a media conference onboard it’s Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA) on Monday (October 26) to disclose the findings.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has shared news of "exciting new discovery" about the moon on Twitter and revealed it will hold a media conference onboard it’s Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA) on Monday (October 26) to disclose the findings. The new results are courtesy of the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA). It's the world's largest airborne observatory and is actually a Boeing 747SP plane with a hole cut out in it, modified to carry a large reflecting telescope. "Mark your calendars: We will be revealing a new discovery about the surface of the Moon from our airborne SOFIATelescope observatory, and YOU are invited," it wrote on Twitter. "Pencil us in for 12 pm ET on Monday, Oct. 26! 🗓️ Mark your calendars: We will be revealing a new discovery about the surface of the Moon from our airborne @SOFIATelescope observatory, and YOU are invited. ✏️ Pencil us in for 12pm ET on Monday, Oct. 26! To participate: https://t.co/gzfTK43snB pic.twitter.com/HHNXOAYfMh — NASA (@NASA) October 22, 2020 × According to NASA's press release, "This new discovery contributes to NASA’s efforts to learn about the Moon in support of deep space exploration. Under NASA’s Artemis program, the agency will send the first woman and next man to the lunar surface in 2024 to prepare for our next giant leap – the human exploration of Mars as early as the 2030s. Understanding the science of the Moon also helps piece together the broader history of the inner solar system." (With inputs from agencies)

NASA to announce an 'exciting new discovery about the moon' 

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