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NASA rover peers up at space, sees strange Mars moon and distant Earth

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Robotic Martians can see blue Earth in Mars‘ sky.

The Curiosity rover, a car-sized NASA robot looking to find evidence of past habitability on the Red Planet, recently snapped an image of Mars’ misshapen moon, Phobos, and Earth next to each other.

“It’s the first time an image of the two celestial bodies have been captured together from the surface of Mars,” the space agency explained.

SEE ALSO:

NASA scientist viewed first Voyager images. What he saw gave him chills.

In the photo below, you can spot a ridge of Mars’ Mount Sharp at the bottom of the image. The upper right contains both Phobos — a moon 17 miles long — and Earth, which from some 200 million miles away appears as a bright speck of bluish light. (The second image is a blown-up view of the two objects.)


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“From the rover’s perspective, the inset area would be about half the width of a thumb held at arm’s length,” NASA explained.

The moon Phobos and Earth seen in the upper right.

The moon Phobos and Earth seen in the upper right.
Credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / MSSS

A zoomed-in view of Phobos, on left, and Earth.

A zoomed-in view of Phobos, on left, and Earth.
Credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / MSSS

The Curiosity rover captured this image on Sept. 9, 2024, during its 4,295th Martian day (called a “sol”) on Mars. It’s been rumbling over Martian terrain for over 12 years, and is currently ascending the 3.4-mile (5.5-kilometer) high Mount Sharp, a place that once experienced dramatic Martian floods.

Compared to our moon, which appears almost perfectly round, Phobos is misshapen. It’s not massive enough for its gravity to form a sphere. What’s more, Phobos has been hit time and time again by potent space rocks. “Phobos was nearly shattered by a giant impact, and has gouges from thousands of meteorite impacts,” NASA noted. The glaring impact site is Stickney crater, which is 5.6 miles (nine kilometers) wide.

As Curiosity continues its long slog up Mount Sharp, its robotic sibling, the Perseverance rover, is sleuthing the irradiated Martian surface for past evidence of microbial life. This means “chemical signatures and structures that could possibly have been formed by life billions of years ago,” the agency said.

Still today, no evidence of life has been found on Mars — though NASA has spotted some compelling geologic leads. It’s clear, however, that the now-desert planet once teemed with lakes and rivers, back when it was a warmer, more hospitable, world.





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Blue Origin Set To Launch Brand New Human Rated Capsule To Space Today; Watch Live

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October 7, 2024

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Blue Origin is introducing its brand new space capsule today. The New Shepard spacecraft, which was originally scheduled to launch on the NS-27 mission at 6:30 pm IST from West Texas, will now lift off at 9:40 pm. This is the second human-rated vehicle which is being tested to expand the company’s flight capacity in order to “meet growing customer demand.”

You can watch the launch live on BlueOrigin.com. The webcast will begin 15 minutes before liftoff.

The new capsule named RSS Kármán Line, the company said, is equipped with advanced technologies that will improve its performance, reusability and accommodations for payloads on the booster.

ALSO SEE: Indian Civilians Can Visit Space Almost Free Of Cost Thanks To Blue Origin; Here’s How

Similar to its predecessor, 99 percent of the RSS Kármán Line’s components including the booster, capsule, engine, landing gear, and parachutes are reusable.

The vehicle will be tested by flying it to the Kármán Line, the internationally recognised boundary of space 100 km above Earth. This is an uncrewed flight meaning there are no humans onboard. Instead, the capsule will be carrying 12 payloads – five on the booster and seven inside the crew capsule.

The payloads include new navigation systems developed for New Shepard and Blue Origin’s upcoming rocket New Glenn; two different LIDAR sensors for the Lunar Permanence program – a collaboration between NASA and Blue Origin and ultra-wideband proximity operations sensors flying as part of a NASA TechFlights grant with Blue Origin’s Space Systems Development group.

ALSO SEE: Jeff Bezos-Owned Blue Origin Fires Rocket That Will Rival Elon Musk’s SpaceX; Watch

(Image: Blue Origin)





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Nobel Prize 2024 In Medicine Awarded To Two US Scientists For Discovery Of MicroRNA

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October 7, 2024

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Scientists Victor Ambros and Gary Ruvkun have been jointly awarded the 2024 Nobel Prize in Medicine for “the discovery of microRNA and its role in post-transcriptional gene regulation.”

RNA or Ribonucleic Acid plays a key role in cell function. There is a messenger RNA or mRNA that directs the cells to make proteins using natural machinery.

The microRNA is a new class of tiny RNA molecules that play a crucial role in gene regulation. Gene regulation is basically the process by which cells control the expression of genes. It helps them decide which genes to turn on or off, and to what extent. This allows the cells to adapt to different environment, develop and grow and maintain cellular balance among other key functions.

Failure in gene regulation can cause mutations which can cause diseases and unregulated cell growth that can lead to cancer and even diabetes. Cells and tissues have been found to develop abnormally without microRNAs.

“Their groundbreaking discovery revealed a completely new principle of gene regulation that turned out to be essential for multicellular organisms, including humans,” a release from the Nobel committee said.

The finding also revealed an entirely new dimension to gene regulation and that microRNAs are proving to be fundamentally important for how organisms develop and function.

The discovery of the microRNA by Ambros and Ravkun was made in 1993 after years of research that started in the 1980s on a 1mm long roundworm. Thanks to their findings, scientists now know that gene regulation by microRNA has enabled the evolution of increasingly complex organisms and its abnormal regulation can cause many diseases. Besides, mutations in genes coding for microRNAs have caused congenital hearing loss, eye and skeletal disorders in humans.

ALSO SEE: Scientists Who Discovered How Our Bodies Feel Hugs And Heat Win Nobel Prize

More about the Nobel Prize winners

Victor Ambros is Silverman Professor of Natural Science at the University of Massachusetts Medical School after serving as a Professor at Dartmouth Medical School from 1992-2007. After receiving his PhD from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Cambridge in 1979, he also did postdoctoral research from 1979-1985 at the institution. He later became a Principal Investigator at Harvard University, Cambridge.

Gary Ruvkun is a Professor of Genetics at the Harvard Medical School. He has also worked as a Principal Investigator at Massachusetts General Hospital. Ruvkun received his PhD from Harvard University in 1982 and worked as a postdoctoral fellow at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Cambridge from 1982-1985.

The two scientists will share the award and approximately $1 million that comes with the diploma.

ALSO SEE: Scientists Who Developed Cheap And Environmental-Friendly Molecular Toolkits Awarded Chemistry Nobel





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Brilliant Red Auroras Cover US Skies After Geomagnetic Storm; Pictures Surface

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October 7, 2024

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Red auroras were photographed in several states in the United States after the latest eruption on the Sun. The charged particles expelled by the Sun last week reached Earth today, causing a geomagnetic storm. This storm triggered auroras which extended from the polar regions down south to many U.S. states, a majority of them bordering Canada.

Several eruptions of solar flares coupled with coronal mass ejections (CME) were captured by solar observatories since early October prompting scientists to issue warnings about severe geomagnetic storms. Solar flares are intense bursts of energy which can affect power grids and radio communications on Earth while CMEs are expulsion of charged particles, which when interact with Earth’s atmosphere create auroras.

Many photographers posted pictures of the brilliant red auroras caused as a result of the geomagnetic storm.

“Easily the deepest reds I’ve ever seen in the aurora! Still going!!” posted Alex Resel on X from Watertown, South Dakota.

“Never seen colors like this on camera. Was briefly visible to the naked eye,” said Peter Forister posting a picture of the aurora from Blue Ridge Mountains in Virginia.

ALSO SEE: Sun Unleashes Strongest Solar Flare In 7 Years Toward Earth, It Could Trigger Widespread Auroras

While many images flooded social media, experts said the aurora activity wasn’t as intense as expected considering the strong solar eruptions that recently occurred. The solar flare eruption on October 3 was the strongest since 2017, said British astrophysicist Ryan French.

“Auroral activity continues to fluctuate thanks to some sustained energy in our magnetosphere, but overall the magnetic field structure of the solar storm is starting to wane. With time the aurora will do the same,” said space weather forecaster and meteorologist Sara Housseal.

“We have possibly the last large substorm of this #solarstorm causing #aurora to brighten and drop as far south as Missouri, USA! catch the shows while you can, as it looks like the storm might wane for a while after this settles down,” space weather physicist Dr. Tamitha Skov said on X.

The National Ocean And Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) space department, earlier today, warned about a moderate level geomagnetic storm.

ALSO SEE: Geomagnetic Storm Triggers Stunning Auroras After Intense Solar Explosions; Pics Surface

(Image: X/@forecaster25/@aresel_)





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