Understanding astronaut muscle wasting at the molecular level
Tuesday, 11 May 2021 11:33
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Researchers from the University of Tsukuba have sent mice into space to explore effects of spaceflight and reduced gravity on muscle atrophy, or wasting, at the molecular level.
Gravity is a constant force on Earth, which all living creatures have evolved to rely on and adapt to. Space exploration has brought about many scientific and technological advances, yet manned spaceflights come at a cost to astronauts, including reduced skeletal muscle mass and strength.
Conventional studies investigating the effects of reduced gravity on muscle mass and function have used a ground control group that is not directly comparable to the space experimental group. Researchers from the University of Tsukuba set out to explore the effects of gravity in mice subjected to the same housing conditions, including those experienced during launch and landing. "In humans, spaceflight causes muscle atrophy and can lead to serious medical problems after return to Earth," says senior author Professor Satoru Takahashi. "This study was designed based on the critical need to understand the molecular mechanisms through which muscle atrophy occurs in conditions of microgravity and artificial gravity.
US space probe Osiris-Rex heads home with asteroid dust
Tuesday, 11 May 2021 10:52 Write a comment
The US space probe Osiris-Rex on Monday left the orbit of the asteroid Bennu, from which it collected dust samples last year, to begin its long journey back to Earth.
The probe still has a vast distance to cover before it lands in the Utah desert on September 24, 2023.
Osiris-Rex is "now moving away over 600 miles an hour from Bennu, on its way home," Dante Lauretta, head of the mission Scientists catch exciting magnetic waves in action in the Sun's photosphere
Tuesday, 11 May 2021 10:41 Write a comment
Researchers have confirmed the existence of magnetic plasma waves, known as Alfvén waves, in the Sun's photosphere. The study, published in Nature Astronomy, provides new insights into these fascinating waves that were first discovered by the Nobel Prize winning scientist Hannes Alfvén in 1947.
The vast potential of these waves resides in their ability to transport energy and information over very large distances due to their purely magnetic nature. The direct discovery of these waves in the solar photosphere, the lowest layer of the solar atmosphere, is the first step towards exploiting the properties of these magnetic waves.
The ability for Alfvén waves to carry energy is also of interest for solar and plasma-astrophysics as it could help explain the extreme heating of the solar atmosphere—a mystery that has been unsolved for over a century.
Elusive waves
Alfvén waves form when charged particles (ions) oscillate in response to interactions between magnetic fields and electrical currents.
Within the solar atmosphere bundles of magnetic fields, known as solar magnetic flux tubes, can form.
Cabana to succeed Jurczyk as NASA associate administrator
Tuesday, 11 May 2021 10:41 Write a comment
WASHINGTON — Bob Cabana, a former astronaut and longtime head of NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, will become NASA associate administrator later this month, replacing the retiring Steve Jurczyk.
In separate announcements May 10, NASA said that Jurczyk will retire from the agency effective May 14.
NASA says demand for private ISS missions exceeds flight opportunities
Tuesday, 11 May 2021 10:00 Write a comment
WASHINGTON — NASA says it’s seeing strong interest from companies proposing private astronaut missions to the International Space Station, with the demand for such missions exceeding the agency’s ability to accommodate them.
NASA announced May 10 that it had finalized an agreement with Axiom Space for that company’s first crewed mission to the station, scheduled for launch no earlier than January 2022.
Aircraft issue could delay resumption of SpaceShipTwo test flights
Tuesday, 11 May 2021 07:42 Write a comment
WASHINGTON — Virgin Galactic said May 10 that while it believes it corrected a problem with its SpaceShipTwo suborbital spaceplane that aborted a test flight five months ago, the resumption of those test flights could be further delayed by a problem with the plane that carries SpaceShipTwo aloft.
Flying at up to Mach 16 could become reality with UCF's developing propulsion system
Tuesday, 11 May 2021 01:54 Write a comment
University of Central Florida researchers are building on their technology that could pave the way for hypersonic flight, such as travel from New York to Los Angeles in under 30 minutes.
In their latest research published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the researchers discovered a way to stabilize the detonation needed for hypersonic propulsion by creating NASA, Axiom Agree to First Private Astronaut Mission on Space Station
Tuesday, 11 May 2021 01:54 Write a comment
NASA and Axiom Space have signed an order for the first private astronaut mission to the International Space Station to take place no earlier than January 2022.
"We are excited to see more people have access to spaceflight through this first private astronaut mission to the space station," said Kathy Lueders, associate administrator for human exploration and operations at NASA Headquarters Want to become a space tourist
Tuesday, 11 May 2021 01:54 Write a comment
Billionaire Jeff Bezos's space launch company Blue Origin has announced it will sell its first flights into microgravity to the highest bidder.
Blue Origin and its two greatest competitors in the "space tourism" field, SpaceX and Virgin Galactic, claim to be advancing humanity through the "democratisation" of space. But these joyrides aren't opening up access to space for all.
At fac In the emptiness of space, Voyager I detects plasma 'hum'
Tuesday, 11 May 2021 01:54 Write a comment
Voyager 1 - one of two sibling NASA spacecraft launched 44 years ago and now the most distant human-made object in space - still works and zooms toward infinity.
The craft has long since zipped past the edge of the solar system through the heliopause - the solar system's border with interstellar space - into the interstellar medium. Now, its instruments have detected the constant drone of NASA's OSIRIS-REx Spacecraft Heads for Earth with Asteroid Sample
Tuesday, 11 May 2021 01:54 Write a comment
After nearly five years in space, NASA's Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security, Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx) spacecraft is on its way back to Earth with an abundance of rocks and dust from the near-Earth asteroid Bennu.
On Monday, May 10, at 4:23 p.m. EDT the spacecraft fired its main engines full throttle for seven minutes - its most significant maneuver si VIPER Hits the SLOPEs
Tuesday, 11 May 2021 01:54 Write a comment
Before NASA's next lunar rover paves the way for long-term human exploration of the Moon, it must first pass a series of rigorous mobility tests along the banks of Lake Erie.
The Simulated Lunar Operations Laboratory, or SLOPE Lab, at NASA's Glenn Research Center in Cleveland is home to multiple sandboxes that mimic the lunar and Martian terrain to evaluate the traction performance and lim First ever discovery of methanol in a warm planet-forming disk
Tuesday, 11 May 2021 01:54 Write a comment
An international team of researchers led by Alice Booth (Leiden University, the Netherlands) have discovered methanol in the warm part of a planet-forming disk. The methanol cannot have been produced there and must have originated in the cold gas clouds from which the star and the disk formed.
Thus, the methanol is inherited. If that is common, it could give the formation of life elsewhere How planets form controls elements essential for life
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The prospects for life on a given planet depend not only on where it forms but also how, according to Rice University scientists.
Planets like Earth that orbit within a solar system's Goldilocks zone, with conditions supporting liquid water and a rich atmosphere, are more likely to harbor life. As it turns out, how that planet came together also determines whether it captured and retained Space weather is difficult to predict - with only an hour to prevent disasters on Earth
Tuesday, 11 May 2021 01:54 Write a comment
Recent developments at the forefront of astronomy allow us to observe that planets orbiting other stars have weather. Indeed, we have known that other planets in our own solar system have weather, in many cases more extreme than our own.
Our lives are affected by short-term atmospheric variations of weather on Earth, and we fear that longer-term climate change will also have a large impact