Science

NASA’s 1st Moon Crew To Fly To The Moon By Next Year Since Apollo

(CTN NEWS) – The first woman and the first African American assigned to a lunar journey were among the four astronauts named by NASA on Monday. They will fly around the moon in the latter part of next year.

Three Americans and one Canadian, the nation’s first lunar crew in 50 years, were unveiled at a ceremony in Houston, which also serves as the location of Mission Control.

Bill Nelson, the administrator of NASA, stated, “This is humanity’s crew.”

The four astronauts will be the first to fly NASA’s Orion capsule

The four astronauts will launch atop a Space Launch System rocket from the Kennedy Space Center no sooner than late 2024 to become the first to fly NASA’s Orion capsule.

They will fly around the moon instead of landing or even entering lunar orbit, setting up two more people to arrive on the moon a year from now.

Reid Wiseman, the mission’s commander, will accompany Christina Koch, the world record holder for the longest space journey by a woman, Victor Glover, an African American navy aviator, and Jeremy Hansen, a former fighter pilot the crew’s lone space novice from Canada.

Koch, Wiseman, and Glover have all spent time aboard the International Space Station. They are all in their 40s.

‘It’s a significant day.’ Glover says we have a lot to be happy about, and it goes far beyond the four identities that have been revealed.

The first crew in NASA’s new moon mission to be named Artemis after Apollo’s mythical twin sister and the first moon crew to include a non-American.

An empty Orion spacecraft made a long-awaited practice flight to the moon and returned in late last year.

“Am I ecstatic? Yes,” Koch affirmed to applause from the assembled students, lawmakers, and others. To more applause, she added, “But my real question is: ‘Are you excited?'”

Because of its donations of large robotic arms to NASA’s space shuttles and space station, the Canadian Space Agency was given a seat. The moon mission is also expected to include one.

Hansen expressed his appreciation for Canada’s inclusion in the trip.

‘Together, we are traveling to the moon. Let’s go,’ he exclaimed.

NASA sent 24 men to the moon during the Apollo program from 1968 to 1972. 12 of them touched down.

With the exception of Harrison Schmitt, a geologist who completed that moon landing period with the late Gene Cernan, all were male test pilots with military training.

NASA hopes to send two astronauts to the moon by around 2025, assuming that the upcoming 10-day moonshot proceeds smoothly.

NASA selected its first Artemis team from among 41 currently employed astronauts.

Four competitors were from Canada. Nearly all of them attended the ceremony on Monday at Ellington Field of the Johnson Space Center, a type of pep rally culminating with Wiseman leading the crowd in a chant.

Many retired astronauts, including Buzz Aldrin of Apollo 11 and Scott Kelly, the first American to spend nearly a year in orbit, sent their congratulations.

“Big risks, big dedication, and eternal rewards for all. Chris Hadfield, the first Canadian to manage the space station ten years ago, tweeted, “What a crew! David Bowie’s “Space Oddity” was performed from space.

On Sunday, the four astronauts and their families had a conversation with President Joe Biden.

The mission, according to a tweet from Biden on Monday, “will inspire the next wave of explorers, and show every child — in America, in Canada, and across the world — that if they can dream it, they can be it.”

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Science

NASA Switches Off Instrument On Voyager 2 Spacecraft To Save Power

NEW YORK — To save power, NASA turned off another scientific equipment on its long-running Voyager 2 spacecraft.

NASA Switches Off Instrument On the Spacecraft To Save Power

The space agency announced on Tuesday that 2’s plasma science instrument, meant to study the movement of charged atoms, was turned off in late September to allow the spacecraft to continue exploring for as long as possible, which is estimated to be into the 2030s.

NASA turned off a suite of instruments on Voyager 2 and its twin, Voyager 1, after exploring the gas giant planets in the 1980s. Both are currently in interstellar space or the region between stars. The plasma instrument on Voyager 1 stopped working years ago and was finally shut off in 2007.

The remaining four instruments on 2 will continue to collect data on magnetic fields and particles. Its mission is to investigate the regions of space beyond the sun’s protective sphere.

NASA Switches Off Instrument On Voyager 2 Spacecraft To Save Power

It launched in 1977, is the only spacecraft to have visited Uranus and Neptune. It is now more than 12 billion miles (19.31 billion kilometers) from Earth. 1 is more than 15 billion miles (24.14 billion kilometers) beyond Earth.

SOURCE | AP

Science

Hurricane Kirk Could Cause Dangerous Surf Conditions Along The US East Coast

MIAMI — Hurricane Kirk’s waves could generate life-threatening surf and rip current conditions this weekend throughout the United States East Coast, as well as in Bermuda, the Greater Antilles, and the Bahamas, according to forecasters.

Kirk was a Category 3 hurricane in the middle Atlantic Ocean that might grow further but was predicted to stay away from land, according to the Miami-based National Hurricane Center on Thursday.

Hurricane Kirk Could Cause Dangerous Surf Conditions Along The US East Coast

Kirk-generated swells were forecast to reach parts of the Leeward Islands on Friday, Bermuda and the Greater Antilles on Saturday, and the East Coast and the Bahamas on Sunday, according to the center.

No coastal watches or warnings were in effect. The major storm was around 1,130 miles (1,820 kilometers) east of the Leeward Islands, with maximum sustained winds of 125 mph (205 km/h).

Meanwhile, Tropical Storm Leslie formed late Wednesday in the eastern Atlantic and is expected to strengthen into a hurricane in the following days, forecasters said. It was also not considered a threat to the land.

Hurricane Kirk Could Cause Dangerous Surf Conditions Along The US East Coast

The storm was about 540 miles (870 kilometers) southwest of Cabo Verde’s southernmost tip, with maximum sustained winds of 45 mph (75 kph), according to the center.

The storms raged in the Atlantic as rescuers in the United States Southeast sought for missing persons after Hurricane Helene struck last week, leaving a trail of death and devastation.

SOURCE | AP

Science

Giant Fossilised Footprint Of Dinosaur Found in China

(CTN News) – A team of palaeontologists believes they have discovered fossilized footprints of one of China’s largest raptors. The collection of five fossilized dinosaur footprints is half the length of a school bus.

The footprints were discovered in a dinosaur trackway in south-east China in 2020. Scientists believe dinosaurs walked over the muddy river during the Cretaceous period, leaving footprints. Some footprints have been preserved for tens of millions of years.

The dinosaur trackway was unearthed in Longxiang and is around the size of a hockey rink. Some of the footprints are unusually formed, with intact imprints of only two toes.

Fossilised footprint of megaraptor found in China

Giant fossil footprints lead to megaraptor dinosaur discovery in China

Raptors, or predatory birds, are often small and referred to as deinonychosaurs. For example, a Velociraptor is around the size of a turkey. Few raptors, such as the Utahraptor and Dakotaraptor, increased in size significantly, reaching lengths of 5 to 6 metres. The Triassic ichthyosaur was the largest raptor known until now.

“Exploring Longxiang: The Rich Dinosaur Trackway in Southeastern China”

According to the scientists, the predator would have attacked its prey with a pair of huge “killing claws” on each foot.

What scientists discovered recently in China is massive, far larger than the largest superpredator known to date.

Scott Persons of the College of Charleston in South Carolina, and his colleagues, added another large raptor to the list. They named it Fujianipus, and they believe it lived in East Asia some 96 million years ago.

Scott Persons at the College of Charleston in South Carolina and his colleagues added another giant raptor to the list. They named it Fujianipus, and they say it lived in East Asia about 96 million years ago. Photograph:(Twitter)

Persons and his colleagues are currently working on areas of Fujianipus’ skeleton, therefore little is known. The investigators only discovered a few of its 36-centimetre-long imprints.

“Preservation conditions were right for footprints but not so great for bones,” Persons said. However, scientists are certain that the footprints belong to a raptor because each one contains the imprint of only two toes, which corresponds to the foot anatomy of raptors. Raptors generally have three toes, but they keep one off the ground to preserve the big claw at the tip from wear and tear.

People believe Fujianipus demonstrates that raptors had the ability to grow much larger and compete with the largest predatory dinosaurs on the landscape at the time – allosauroids, some of which exceeded 10 metres or more in length.

According to Persons, raptors had an advantage over allosauroids in terms of speed. However, without fossilized leg bones, the researchers cannot correctly measure Fujianipus’ speed.