For the first time ever, a dust storm has been observed outside of our Solar System — and naturally, it was the powerful James Webb Space Telescope that made the discovery.
A press release on the Space Telescope Science Institute’s Webb-site details the JWST-detected storm, which took place on exoplanet VHS 1,256 b, a “massive brown dwarf” planet located about 40 lightyears from Earth.
“Ever had hot sand whip across your face?” the press release quips. “That’s a soothing experience compared to the volatile conditions discovered high in the atmosphere of planet VHS 1,256 b.”
The Six Million Dollar Man is an American science fiction and action television series about a former astronaut, Colonel Steve Austin, portrayed by American actor Lee Majors. Austin has superhuman strength due to bionic implants and is employed as a secret agent by a fictional U.S. government office named OSI The series was based on the Martin Caidin novel Cyborg, which. was the working title of the series during pre-production.
Following three television pilot movies, which all aired in 1973, the The Six Million Dollar Man aired on the ABC network as a regular episodic series for five seasons from 1974 to 1978. Steve Austin became a pop culture icon of the 1970s. A spin-off television series, The Bionic Woman, featuring the lead female character Jaime Sommers, ran from 1976 to 1978 (and was the subject of a remake in 2007). Three television movies featuring both bionic characters were also produced from 1987 to 1994.
When NASA astronaut Steve Austin is severely injured in the crash of an experimental lifting body aircraft, he is “rebuilt” in an operation that costs six million dollars. His right arm, both legs and the left eye are replaced with “bionic” implants that enhance his strength, speed and vision far above human norms: he can run at speeds of 60 mph (97 km/h), and his eye has a 20:1 zoom lens and infrared capabilities, while his bionic limbs all have the equivalent power of a bulldozer. He uses his enhanced abilities to work for the OSI (Office of Scientific Intelligence) as a secret agent.
Using cameras set to monitor the moon, Daichi Fujii, curator of the Hiratsuka City Museum, recorded an event that occurred on February 23 at 20:14:30.8 Japan Standard Time (7:14 a.m. EST, or 1,114 GMT).
The animation shows a subset of more than 1,500 light curves collected by the Large Area Telescope over nearly 15 years in space.
NASA has released an intriguing animated video of the sky in gamma rays, the “highest-energy form of light”. Captured by the Large Area Telescope (LAT) aboard NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, the animation shows activity during observations from February 2022 to February 2023.
According to a press release, the “pulsing circles represent just a subset of more than 1,500 light curves – records of how sources change in brightness over time – collected by the LAT over nearly 15 years in space”. The LAT detects gamma rays with energies ranging from 20 million to over 300 billion electron volts.
Neutrinos created by LHC went undetected earlier, but FASER changed that and can help us learn more about deep space.
Researchers at the European Organization for Nuclear Research, commonly known as CERN, have detected neutrinos created by the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) experiment for the very first time. These were the highest energy neutrinos that were ever produced in a laboratory setup and are similar to those found in particle showers from deep space.
First detected in 1956, neutrinos are subatomic particles that play a key role in the burning of stars. Every time nuclei of atoms either come together (fusion) or break apart (fission) in the universe, neutrinos are released.
Today we’re going to try to save reality — or at least realism. However this rescue effort has a price; one that you may not be willing to pay. Your very soul, or at least your free will, is on the line.
The framework will enable satellite access for smartphone users in emergency situations.
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) intends to establish a new regulatory framework to enable connections between satellite operators and wireless firms to connect smartphone users in isolated or underserved regions worldwide.
FCC stated in a release that it aims to “create clear and open protocols to facilitate supplemental coverage from space.”
Designing, building, and launching a spacecraft is hugely expensive. That’s why NASA missions to Mars are designed with the hope that they’ll last as long as possible — like the famous Opportunity rover which was supposed to last for 90 days and managed to keep going for 15 years. The longer a mission can keep running, the more data it can collect, and the more we can learn from it.
That’s true for the orbiters which travel around Mars as well as the rovers which explore its surface, like the Mars Odyssey spacecraft which was launched in 2001 and has been in orbit around Mars for more than 20 years. But the orbiter can’t keep going forever as it will eventually run out of fuel, so figuring out exactly how much fuel is left is important — but it also turned out to be more complicated than the NASA engineers were expecting.
Odyssey started out with nearly 500 pounds of hydrazine fuel, though last year it looked as if the spacecraft was running much lower on fuel than had been predicted.