Nottingham UK (SPX) Jan 09, 2023
New research has uncovered that pollen preserved in 250 million year old rocks contain compounds that function like sunscreen, these are produced by plants to protect them from harmful ultraviolet (UV-B) radiation. The findings suggests that a pulse of UV-B played an important part in the end Permian mass extinction event. Scientists from the University of Nottingham, China, Germany and th

Boston MA (SPX) Jan 09, 2023
When deep learning models are deployed in the real world, perhaps to detect financial fraud from credit card activity or identify cancer in medical images, they are often able to outperform humans. But what exactly are these deep learning models learning? Does a model trained to spot skin cancer in clinical images, for example, actually learn the colors and textures of cancerous tissue, or

Huntsville AL (SPX) Jan 09, 2023
As NASA's Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer mission explores black holes, neutron stars, and other cosmic phenomena - helping to answer fundamental questions about extreme space environments - it relies on the mission operations team at the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics, or LASP. Some 700 people - engineers, scientists, mission-operations personnel and data specialists - st

Cambridge UK (SPX) Jan 09, 2023
Little 'hurricanes' that form in the discs of gas and dust around young stars can be used to study certain aspects of planet formation, even for smaller planets which orbit their star at large distances and are out of reach for most telescopes. Researchers from the University of Cambridge and the Institute for Advanced Study have developed a technique, which uses observations of these 'hur

Pasadena CA (JPL) Jan 09, 2023
Curiosity is continuing to make the most of the new year - both on Earth and on Mars which recently entered Mars Year 37, only a few days before the new year on Earth. After a successful drive along the slope below the Marker Band, we're ready for a full weekend. On our first sol, ChemCam has a LIBS observation on the target 'Waimiri' followed by two mosaics on the Marker Band and the dist

Kennedy Space Center FL (SPX) Jan 09, 2023
Inside the Multi-Payload Processing Facility at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, engineers and technicians conduct inspections of the heat shield on the Orion spacecraft for the Artemis I mission. Orion returned to Kennedy on Dec. 30, 2022, after splashing down in the Pacific Ocean on Dec. 11, following a 1.4-million-mile mission beyond the Moon and back. In this photo, technicians

Houston TX (SPX) Jan 09, 2023
A radiation protection vest, olive oil, and sutured tissues are among the scientific samples returning from the International Space Station on the 26th SpaceX commercial resupply services mission for NASA. The Dragon spacecraft, which arrived at the station Nov. 27, is scheduled to undock on January 9, with splashdown several hours later off the coast of Florida. The cargo returns to NASA'

Newquay UK (SPX) Jan 09, 2023
virginorbit.com Partners for the United Kingdom's first orbital launch announced that the initial window for the historic Start Me Up mission will officially open on Monday, 9 January at 22:16 UTC with additional back-up dates continuing into mid and late January. Start Me Up is a collaborative effort between the United Kingdom Space Agency (UKSA), Cornwall Council, the Royal Air Force, and Vir

Tokyo, Japan (SPX) Jan 09, 2023
At ITER - the world's largest experimental fusion reactor, currently under construction in France through international cooperation - the abrupt termination of magnetic confinement of a high temperature plasma through a so-called "disruption" poses a major open issue. As a countermeasure, disruption mitigation techniques, which allow to forcibly cool the plasma when signs of plasma instabilities

Vilnius, Lithuania (SPX) Jan 09, 2023
Kongsberg NanoAvionics (NanoAvionics) has announced the successful launch of Europe's first solar sail mission aboard SpaceX Transporter-6. The 6U nanosatellite nicknamed 'Alpha' was manufactured for France's Gama. It is one of four satellites, built by the Lithuanian smallsat mission integrator for multiple customers, that got sent into low Earth Orbit. It is the first time for NanoAvioni