NASA

After a month and a half of controversy, NASA will publish the 3I/ATLAS photos it took from Mars

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It’s been the hottest topic of conversation in ufology circles for the past six weeks. While 3I/ATLAS, the third known interstellar object, crossed our solar system, NASA kept receiving the same question: where are the photos of its passage through Mars? Here are the damn photos. After 47 days of silence, the US space agency has confirmed that it will make public the 3I/ATLAS images and all the data collected by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter probe during its approach to Mars in early October. will do it through press conference on Wednesday, November 19, at 3:00 PM EST (9:00 PM PST). The event will be attended by heavyweights such as Nicky Fox (Associate Administrator of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate) and will be broadcast online on the NASA+ channel. A little context. Between October 2 and 3, the interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS passed within about 29 million kilometers of Mars. At that time, NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and its powerful HiRISE camera had a golden opportunity: observe the object from a unique lateral angle, impossible to achieve from Earth. However, the images never appeared, and Avi Loeb soon raised his voice. The controversial Harvard cosmologist argues that there are enough anomalies in 3I/ATLAS to consider the possibility that it is an artificial alien object“possibly hostile.” Loeb accused NASA of withholding “extremely scientifically valuable” images, and managed to involve a Republican congresswoman to demand their release. The reason for the wait. It was not a kidnapping, but one of the many consequences of the US government shutdown, which kept 83% of the NASA staff suspended from employment and pay between October 1 and November 13. In fact, the position of NASA and counterparts like the European Space Agency regarding 3I/ATLAS is absolutely calm. The agencies maintain that 3I/ATLAS is a comet. Its observations with the Hubble and James Webb telescopes suggest that it is an icy body between 440 meters and 5.6 kilometers with an active coma. And his behavior, including non-gravitational acceleration As it passes through the Sun, it is a natural effect of the sublimation of ice when heated. What can we expect? The side view of the comet will be crucial to understanding the geometry of the comet’s gas and dust jets, and ruling out the exotic theory that they are artificial propellants. In any case, they will not be the last images we see of 3I/ATLAS. The European probe Juice is observing the object, but the data will take months to arrive due to the position of the spacecraft relative to the Sun. 3I/ATLAS will pass its closest point to Earth, about 270 million kilometers, on December 19, 2025. For now, the scoreboard is: Bureaucracy 1 – Science 0. In Xataka | It went from a supposed alien ship to definitely a comet. Now 3I/ATLAS surprises again with another possibility

Jeff Bezos’ giant rocket is ready and NASA is making eyes at it

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For once, Elon Musk’s Starship is not the protagonist. In the midst of a heated public debate about Who will take astronauts to the Moon first?Blue Origin, Jeff Bezos’ aerospace company, is about to launch the first New Glenn rocket mission for NASA, with an unexpected lunar spin. Ready to take off. Now that Starbase platform 1 is undergoing renovationsall eyes are on the LC-36 platform at Cape Canaveral. The giant rocket that attracts attention this time is the imposing New Glenn from Blue Origin, another beast 98 meters high and seven meters in diameter, ready for its first order. After successfully completing a 38-second static burn with its seven BE-4 engines, Jeff Bezos’ megarocket has the green light for its first assignment: NASA’s ESCAPADE mission to Mars. When? In the absence of confirmation from Blue Origin, the United States Federal Aviation Administration aim for a first try on November 7 between 19:51 and 21:50 UTC, with another two-hour backup window on November 8 starting at 19:49. It is not a minor release. ESCAPADE is NASA’s first multi-craft mission to Mars orbit. The New Glenn will launch the twin Blue and Gold probes, built by Rocket Lab to study the magnetosphere of the red planet. Second landing attempt. For Blue Origin, the secondary mission is almost as important as the main one: recovering the rocket propellant for the first time. In your January inaugural flightthe New Glenn managed to reach orbit, but failed in its first propulsive landing attempt, SpaceX’s specialty. Now the first stage of the rocket, 65 meters high, will have a second chance to land in the Atlantic Ocean. To do this, Blue Origin will once again deploy the autonomous barge “Jacklyn”, named in honor of Jeff Bezos’ mother. Getting it is key to the company’s lunar plansin more literal ways than we thought. From Mars to the Moon. According to Ars TechnicaBlue Origin has ambitious plans for this same rocket. If the New Glenn manages to land successfully after launching the ESCAPADE mission, Jeff Bezos’ company hopes to quickly refit it for a third flight. And what does that third flight consist of? Nothing less than the launch of the first Blue Moon Mk-1 lunar cargo module. The same one that Blue Origin is trying to adapt against the clock to replace the SpaceX Starship in the first manned lunar landings of NASA’s Artemis missions. NASA waits for no one. In the midst of a self-imposed race to reach the Moon before China does in 2030, NASA (or more specifically, NASA’s internal administrator, Sean Duffy) has reopened the Human Landing System contract for the private sector to make simpler proposals than Starship HLS to take astronauts from lunar orbit to the surface of the Moon. Although it is actually simpler, the Blue Origin architecture It would not be without problems, including cryogenic refueling in orbit, an extremely complex choreography of ships that, to this day, neither SpaceX nor Blue Origin have demonstrated on the required scale. Image | Blue Origin In Xataka | We already know why Jeff Bezos invests so much money in space: he believes that in 20 years millions of people will live there

A Harvard astronomer has accused NASA of hiding 3I/ATLAS images. has an explanation

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Avi Loeb, the controversial cosmologist of Harvard University, has accused NASA of withholding important data on the interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS, and is mobilizing the US Congress to demand its release. But this alleged concealment of evidence is not what it seems. Weeks without seeing the photos. In one post on your blogLoeb denounces that NASA has not made public images of the object taken with the HiRISE camera of the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter probe from Mars orbit for weeks. These images, captured between October 2 and 3, when 3I/ATLAS passed within 30 million kilometers of the red planet, are, according to Loeb, “extremely valuable” scientific data. The reason is that they would have a resolution of 30 kilometers per pixel, three times greater than the best available image of the interstellar object, taken by the Hubble Space Telescope. This “side perspective” could be important for understanding the object’s geometry and its brightness, so Loeb asked US Congresswoman Paulina Luna to demand that NASA’s acting administrator, Sean Duffy, release it. The explanation. NASA has justified the lack of images with a very earthly argument: the delays caused by the closure of the United States government since October 1. NASA is officially on “shutdown” and with 83% of its staff on unpaid leave due to the lack of agreement in Congress on the 2026 federal budgets. Only the International Space Station control room and the operators in charge of ship and satellite security, as well as a handful of critical jobs, continue to function. The rest (a large part of science, dissemination, aid processing, etc.) is on pause. Why so much interest in 3I/ATLAS. Comet 3I/ATLAS is the third interstellar object detected in our solar system. Since its discovery, it has shown behavior somewhat disconcerting which has led Avi Loeb to defend the hypothesis that it could be an artificial extraterrestrial object. The latest anomaly occurred near its perihelion (the closest point in its orbit to the Sun) on October 29, when 3I/ATLAS shone brightly in blue and experienced an acceleration which cannot be explained by the gravity of the Sun. Most likely? That the comet was degassing as it warmed up, and the sublimated ice acted as propellants. If you don’t pay attention to it you get bored. Loeb has calculated the possibility that 3I/ATLAS is a natural object: “less than one part in ten quadrillion”. The astronomer highlights the trajectory almost perfectly aligned with the plane of the planets, an unusually large mass, a very low proportion of water (only 4%) and a surprising abundance of nickel as evidence. But this is not the first time that Loeb has proposed that an interstellar object is a technological and “possibly hostile” object. In fact, it’s the second time he’s done it (the first with ‘Oumuamua), and we only know of three interstellar objects that have visited our solar system. The scientific community does not play along. Compared to Loeb’s hypotheses, the vast majority of astronomers offer much more mundane explanations. The blue glow is consistent with emissions of ionized gas from other active comets. Other physical characteristics could be explained if 3I/ATLAS were the ejection of a piece of exoplanet by a natural collision far from Earth. As for the news that “NASA” activated its defense protocol against 3I/ATLAS, it also has a simple explanation: the International Asteroid Warning Network has chosen measure the position of the interstellar comet for an observation campaign that had been planned since 2024, not with the aim of defending ourselves from. an alien attack, but to improve astrometry systems. Image | Q. Zhang and K. Dattams In Xataka | The theory that says our Universe was created in a laboratory: when science merges with science fiction

NASA has had enough of SpaceX and will offer the return to the Moon to other companies. Elon Musk has not taken it well at all

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NASA’s strategy to return to the Moon has just been blown up. In a series of television appearances and public statements, the acting administrator of the US space agency, Sean Duffy, has announced a change of course: NASA is going to reopen the public tender to build the manned lunar landing module (HLS), a contract that until now was held by SpaceX alone for the Artemis III and IV missions. Because. The official reason is transparent: “We are in a race against China,” confirmed Duffy in an interview with CNBC. And in this race, “SpaceX is falling behind.” “Competition and innovation are the keys to our dominance in space, so NASA will open HLS production to Blue Origin and other large American companies.” “The president and I want to reach the moon during this president’s term.” The decision ends NASA’s “all-to-SpaceX” bet and reopens a multibillion-dollar battle for the most crucial contract in modern space exploration. As expected, Elon Musk has not remained silent. The hell of space refueling. To understand NASA’s frustration, you have to look beyond the delays in Starship test flights. The real bottleneck is the mission architecture itself. As analyzes Daniel Marín in Eurekathe lunar version of Starship is a giant 52-meter rocket that cannot reach the Moon without first refueling in low Earth orbit. This operation is of unprecedented complexity due to Starship’s cryogenic liquid fuel, which tends to evaporate. This is not a simple fuel transfer; It requires multiple launches of tankers (up to 15 or 20) to fill one or several orbital tanks that will then transfer hundreds of tons of liquid methane and oxygen to the lunar Starship. It is a technology that has never been tested on this scale. While SpaceX continues to deal with problems with its prototypes (Musk assures that version 3 of Starship will be able put 100 tons of cargo into orbit in 2026, but that was precisely the promise with version 2), NASA has gotten nervous. Every SpaceX delay is an unforeseen victory for China, whose lunar program is advancing at a methodical pace to put astronauts on the Moon before 2030. The Chinese Lanyue lunar module is much simpler than Starship. Plan B is Blue Origin. Duffy’s statement is not a bluff. There are already at least two clear alternatives on the table that NASA is seriously considering. Plan B is Blue Origin. But when Duffy mentions Blue Origin, he is not referring to the Blue Moon Mk 2 HLS module that Jeff Bezos’ company is already developing for the future Artemis V mission (and which, ironically, also requires complex orbital refueling). As revealed Eric Berger in Ars TechnicaBlue Origin has been quietly developing a plan B: a modified version of its Blue Moon Mark 1 lander. This vehicle, originally designed for cargo only, would be adapted to carry crew. Its great advantage: it would not require refueling in space. It would be a much simpler and faster solution, that we had already mentioned in Xataka. Plan C is Lockheed Martin. Duffy also said “maybe others.” Those “others” are the giants of the traditional aerospace industry, with Lockheed Martin at the helm. Traditional NASA contractors have assured Duffy that they can build an Apollo-style lunar module in 30 months. The proposal, backed by analysis like this one from SpaceNewswould be based on proven technologies: storable propellants (that do not evaporate like cryogenic methane and hydrogen) and already operational subsystems, such as those of the Orion spacecraft. Bob Behnken, vice president of Lockheed Martin, told Ars Technica who are up for the challenge: “We have been working with a cross-industry team… to address Secretary Duffy’s request to meet our country’s lunar goals.” Does it stick? The price. A contract of this type, cost-pluscould skyrocket to $20 or $30 billion, compared to $2.9 billion in the original SpaceX contract. But for Duffy, price appears to be a secondary factor if it guarantees arriving before China. Elon takes out the flamethrower. Elon Musk’s reaction to the threat of losing his lunar monopoly has been visceral and has come in several waves of tweets. First, Musk defended his company’s work. “SpaceX is moving like lightning compared to the rest of the space industry. Plus, Starship will end up doing the entire lunar mission. Mark my words.” He then moved on to direct attack against your rival with an incendiary claim: “Blue Origin has never delivered a payload to orbit, let alone to the Moon.” The tweet was quickly corrected by Community Notes of X, who reminded Musk that Blue Origin did reach orbit with its NG-1 mission on January 16, 2025. From contempt to insult. Seeing what was coming at him, Musk began to despise the very objective of the Artemis III mission. “A permanently manned lunar science base would be much more impressive than a repeat of what Apollo already did incredibly well in 1969.” A clear message: the race that NASA wants to win is irrelevant. Finally, the SpaceX CEO responded directly to a post by Sean Duffy about the “race against China” with a meme of a Ugandan anti-LGBT activist repeatedly asking “Why are you gay?” A derogatory reaction that makes it clear how bad the announcement felt. Beat China or beat Trump? While the “race against China” is the public justification, Ars Technica suggests a much more mundane domestic political plot. Sean Duffy is not the permanent administrator of NASA, but rather the acting Secretary of Transportation. According to the outlet’s sources, Duffy is immersed in a “fierce internal battle” to keep the job permanently, a position that the billionaire and private astronaut Jared Isaacmanwho apparently has regained his good rapport with President Trump. Duffy’s television appearances would, in reality, be a political maneuver aimed at a single viewer: the president. By showing himself as a leader of action and results, willing to do anything to “beat the Chinese” and achieve a moon landing during Trump’s presidential term (which ends in January 2029), Duffy … Read more

NASA has managed to grow lettuce in space. What he has discovered later was not part of the plan

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In the International Space Station they are cultivating lettuce that seem as green as those of any land greenhouse. Astronauts water them with recycled water, illuminate them with pink LED lights and collect them carefully, as if they were the first daily gesture of an interplanetary humanity. It is the perfect image of a self -sufficient future: life making its way in a vacuum. However, the data is telling another story. A discouraging finding. A study Posted in Nature – Based in NASA’s open scientific repository – he has detected that space crops are losing nutrients while the human body, in microgravity, becomes more fragile. The analysis shows that the lettuce cultivated in the International Space Station and in the China Tiangong II ship contains between 29 % and 31 % less calcium and about 25 % less magnesium than its land equivalent. Iron appears in variable quantities and potassium, sometimes, shoots. At first glance, plants seem healthy, but their nutritional value bites. “A space salad can be perfect in the photos, but does not strengthens the bones,” The authors warn. And, in microgravity, the human body already loses bone mass rapidly; A diet with less calcium only accelerates the problem, while the lack of iron aggravates anemia and fatigue. What is behind. Microgravity alters more than satellite trajectories: it modifies the way in which plants absorb nutrients, distribute water and handle oxidative stress. Antioxidants such as phenolic and carotenoids decrease, leaving plants – already who consume them – with less defense against radiation. The study detected That species cultivated in orbit produce less protective molecules and more compounds associated with stress, as if plants were in survival mode. That chemical imbalance not only affects the taste, but also its ability to nourish. A cocktail of deficiencies. But not only plants change, astronauts too. According to NASA Twins Study data and Jaxa experiments, They were recorded Alterations in 163 genes linked to calcium metabolism, responsible for bone formation and immune regulation. Some of these genes behave anomalously in microgravity, which accelerates the loss of bone density and weakens the defenses. Human sampling analysis also show signs of permeable intestine syndrome or Leaky Gut: The intestinal wall, normally hermetic, becomes porous. Inflammatory molecules are filtered, the nutrients are absorbed worse and the immune system enters into tension. In that context, a diet devoid of iron and antioxidants can multiply exhaustion, cramps and radiation vulnerability. A dangerous combination when each bite counts. The space database. The work combines decades of astronaut records with the results of agricultural experiments in orbit. From the repositories OSD and Soma From NASA, scientists compared the mineral and antioxidant profiles of spatial crops with those of the earth and crossed them with human biomarkers. The objective was not only to analyze vegetables, but to understand how cultivated food interacts with a body that changes in microgravity. As explained on the Earth pageThe project is part of NASA’s analysis work groups, which gather researchers and volunteers from all over the world to study nutrition, biology and space health using open data. Looking for solutions. Even so, the panorama is not entirely discouraging. Scientists are applying bioengineering and biofortification to increase calcium, magnesium and iron content in plants. They also test crops rich in flavonoids such as quercetin – present in onion, broccoli and red lettuce – which protects cells and strengthens bones. According to Earthspecies such as soybeans, garlic or parsley already show natural advantages and could replace lettuce as the basis of the space diet. Besides, As we explain in Xatakaa team managed to ferment miso at the International Space Station, demonstrating that microbial processes can prosper in orbit. Fermentation not only improves flavor: it strengthens the intestinal microbiota and could help repair the intestinal barrier damaged by microgravity. And on earth, agencies continue to innovate. The Italian Space Agency It is developing A superannan and more nutritious rice, adapted to lunar soils and small spaces. It is the same philosophy proposed by the study: genetically designed crops to survive and feed better. Beyond plants, researchers also look towards alternative protein sources, Like the cricketscapable of closing ecological cycles in closed systems and providing essential nutrients with a minimum expenditure of resources. Mars’s challenge. The research is set on the missions to Mars, where each lost nutrient account. The full trip could last three years without refueling, and each food will depend on what is grown on board. If these plants lack calcium or antioxidants, crew health could deteriorate long before landing on the red planet. “Improve orbit nutrition today feels the foundations to survive on Mars tomorrow,” The authors of the study conclude. Space agriculture is not an aesthetic experiment: it is a matter of survival. Beyond the menu. Cultivating food in space is possible, but it is not yet enough. Plants lose nutrients, the human body changes and solutions advance more slowly than missions. What this study makes it clear is that space agriculture is no longer just about filling stomachs: it is part of the health system of the future. Biofortification, fermentation, microbiota and personalized nutrition will be as important as rockets or space costumes. Survival outside the earth will depend on both engineering and biology. Perhaps that is the deepest lesson in this finding: that human life – and that of the plants that support it – remains anchored to terrestrial gravity. Each outbreak cultivated in space reminds us where we come from and what we still do not carry with us: the earth itself. Image | Freepik Xataka | If the question is “what we will eat on the moon” the answer is “risotto”. At least if the Italians leave with their

NASA is so obsessed with defeating China that, instead of delaying its next flight to the moon, it has advanced it

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It seemed like him Artemis program It was intended to be delayed again and again, but NASA’s last movement betrays the enormous geopolitical pressure of the moment. Artemis II, the mission with which the United States will return to lunar orbit for the first time in more than 50 years, is no longer scheduled for April 2026. They have advanced the launch window to February 5. A declaration of intentions. This two -month advance is not a simple recalibration of the calendar of the Artemis missions. It is the NASA’s evening response to the feeling that the United States is staying behind the Methodical Lunar Program of China. NASA recognizes that “there is a desire that we are the first to return to the surface of the moon,” and Artemis II is a first step. The mission without a launic had been postponed from 2024 to 2025, and then to “not before April 2026”. Now the launch window opens two months before: on February 5, 2026, leaving as a deadline “not later April 2026”. Solving the ghosts of Artemis I. To understand why this advance is significant, you have to remember why Artemis II was delayed first. The main cause was the thermal shield of the Orion ship. After the return of the mission without crew Artemis I in 2022, NASA’s engineers found a disturbing surprise: the Orion shield had lost pieces of protective material. The gases generated by the heat of the reentry did not dissipate as planned, creating an overpressure that started fragments of the shield. After almost two years of research, NASA says having understood and solved the problem with “maximum trust.” Of course, the solution is quite simple: they have modified the trajectory of the ship in their return to the earth to prevent the high temperatures that caused the failure. Next to him, NASA has solved other minor failures such as liquid hydrogen leaks that plagued the launch attempts of Artemis I. The second space race. “The administration has asked us to recognize being in what is commonly called a second space race,” said the buliesha Hawkins, NASA’s attached administrator. His current boss, Sean Duffy, agency administrator and Trump’s Secretary of Transportation, has a more direct rhetoric: “We are going to win the Chinese on the moon.” The fear in Washington is that China, which plans to send its first astronauts to the lunar surface in 2030, the American Mission Artemis III is ahead. While the Artemis program accumulated delays (largely due to the slowness of the Spacex Starship ship, necessary for the Aunidation of Artemis III), the Chinese program advanced with a firm step and without making a lot of noise. Experts in China’s spatial capacities such as Dean Cheng have come to affirm which is “quite likely that the Chinese terrify on the moon before NASA.” Advance Artemis II (the previous step without alansimiza) is the form that NASA has to demonstrate that it is still in the game. What is Artemis II. Its main objective is to certify that the Orion ship and the SLS rocket can take humans to the moon safely. For ten days, American astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch, as well as Canadian Jeremy Hansenthey will go around the moon without landing, following a free return trajectory that will bring them back to the earth. The mission also has an important symbolic burden. They will be the first humans in more than 50 years to leave the orbit low terrestrial, traveling further than any other human being in history, more than 9,000 kilometers from the hidden face of the moon. From this unique perspective, They will carry out crucial geological observationsphotographing craters and old lava flows. They could even be the first humans to see with their own eyes the eastern basin, a gigantic structure on the boundary between the visible face and the hidden face of the moon. Their descriptions and data will be vital for the alunage of Artemis III. The great irony. The advance of Artemis II is a calculated movement. NASA shows the world that it has overcome its technical problems and is ready to accelerate. Artemis II is not just a step towards the moon, it is a sprint in a geopolitical career and for the control of lunar resources. The great contradiction is that, while NASA accelerates the overflight of Artemis II, its star mission, the alun of Artemis III planned for 2027, remains in serious trouble. Just a few days ago, the agency’s security advisors panel launched a blunt warning: They doubt that the modified version of the Spacex Starship is ready on time. His estimate is that he could accumulate a “year” delay. Therefore, the result of this space race is still open. Image | POT In Xataka | When the first human being stepped on the moon we all believed that he had abandoned the “earth.” We were wrong

Now NASA has vetoed Chinese citizens even in zoom

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The tension between the two largest space superpowers has reached a new peak. The unprecedented measure of Block the access of Chinese citizens To all the programs, facilities and networks of NASA remembers the last century, with some turns of the times that are running: the veto is so strict that It extends even to zoom meetings. Beyond the Wolf amendment. US laws They already prohibited direct collaboration Between NASA and Chinese entities. The most famous law is the Wolf amendment, which prevents China’s access to the International Space Station since 2011, which is why the Chinese Space Agency has put in orbit Your own space station permanently inhabited. The new veto, which entered into force on September 5, affects all citizens of Chinese nationality, although they reside in the United States with visas in order. NASA not only prevents them from working on agency projects as contractors, but also as postgraduate students or university scientists. All Chinese have restricted physical access to NASA’s facilities, materials and networks for a matter of “cybersecurity.” In full lunar career. The veto is produced just when NASA’s acting administrator Sean Duffy has adopted an aggressive rhetoric against China. “We are in a second space race,” he said In a recent meeting With NASA employees. “We are going to win the Chinese on the Moon. We are going to do it safely. We are going to do it fast. We are going to do it well.” Not everyone shares their optimism. The former NASA Chief Jim Bridenstine, the original promoter of the Artemis program, declared otherwise Before the United States Senate: “Unless something changes, it is very unlikely that the United States exceeds the calendar planned by China to reach the surface of the moon.” Duffy’s response? “That they condemn me if that is the story we write.” A cold war for the control of the moon. The background of this new lunar career is both geopolitical and economic. Whoever first arrives at the South Lunar Pole and establishes a permanent basis will have a decisive advantage to exploit resources such as ice water and communications: the country that installs the first antenna in a high place will be the one who establishes the protocols and technical standards of the southern space. But the greatest fear in Washington is that China can declare an “exclusion zone” installing a small nuclear reactor on the moon for its electrical systems. A concern that led the government to order NASA that Accelerate your plans to install your own nuclear reactor Before Ilrs do it, the Sino-Rusa Alliance to establish a laboratory on the Moon. A spying plot. The distrust climate is also fed by a long history of accusations of industrial and technological espionage between countries. This fear has been revived with the Artificial intelligence boomtaking giants such as Google and OpenAi to harden their selection processes to avoid the filtration of commercial secrets. The semiconductor sector, a pillar of modern technology, has been one of the most affected by blockages between the two countries. Not for reason: key companies such as Dutch Asml and Taiwanese TSMC have suffered Theft of commercial secrets by employees linked to Chinese companies. The United States even extends its concern to the renewable energy sector, where it claims to have found Non -documented communication components on Chinese manufacturing devices. The veto to Chinese citizens is the last movement. An unequivocal sign that, before The internal problems of your lunar programThe United States is willing to take drastic measures to protect what its technological leadership and national security consider. The new space race has ceased to be an engineering competition to become an open conflict, where talent and scientific collaboration now have a passport. Image | POT In Xataka | While NASA faces the cancellation of 41 missions, China is making authentic virguerías in space

According to NASA, there has only been one person injured by a meteorite. The Ottoman Empire has another opinion

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It could be a trivial question: how many people have been injured by the impact of a meteorite? The official answer, the only documented by NASA, is one. Only one. His name was Ann Hodges. He was taking a nap on the couch of his house, and survived to tell it. However, the dusty files of the Ottoman Empire tell a different story. One that does not end with a great Moraton, but with a death. The interrupted nap of Ann Hodges. The probability that a rock rock falls is very small, but it is never zero. On November 30, 1954, Ann Hodges was sleeping on the sofa of his house in Alabama when an object of the size of a softball ball crossed the roof, bounced on a radio and hit it on the hip. The result: a considerable bruise and a legal dispute between Hodges and her homemade. Tired of media care and curious tourists, the woman ended up donating the meteorite to Alabama Natural History Museum In 1956, where it can still be visited. Two subsequent cases. From the interrupted nap of Ann Hodges there have been two doubtful cases. In 1992, a Uganda child said he was reached in the head by a small rock fragment. The Meteoritus rain existedbut the child suffered any damage. In 2016, a man died in India for the alleged impact of a meteorite. NASA It ended up determining that had not been a meteorite, but an explosion on land. A death in Ottoman archives. In 2020, a team of researchers diving in the state archives of Türkiye found something unexpected. Three manuscripts written in Turkish Ottoman described with chilling details An event occurred on August 22, 1888. The documents, which were official reports aimed at Sultan Abdul Hamid II, report that a “bright light accompanied by smoke” was followed, for about ten minutes, of meteorites that fell “like the rain” on a village of Sulaymaniyah, a region that today is part of Iraq. The consequences were tragic: “A man died and another was seriously injured and was paralyzed.” The texts also mention extensive damage to crops. No one knows where those rocks are. The documents mention that samples of the rocks were sent to the capital, but the researchers have not found them. Even so, it is the first report in the story, backed by three manuscripts, which states that the impact of a meteorite killed a man. The incident has gone unnoticed by more than a century by the idiomatic barrier and the little interest in reviewing historical archives of this type, but seems authentic. “Because these documents come from official government sources, we have no suspicion about their truthfulness,” the study concludes. Unlikely, but not impossible. Every day, about 44 tons of meteoritic material bombard the earthbut the vast majority disintegrates in the atmosphere. That a large enough fragment survives and, in addition, impacts a populated area and, to top it off, hit a person, it is statistically unlikely, but not impossible. Even so, it is not the meteorites that should worry, but our own garbage. Every day three large pieces of space garbage, such as dead satellites or rocket stages re -entering in the atmosphere. The majority burns or falls into the ocean, but luck is not eternal. With the new megaconstellations, the resentments will multiply. “Sooner or later we will have bad luck and someone will be injured by the fall of space garbage,” warns the astrophysic Jonathan McDowell. Images | Public domain In Xataka | A huge meteorite boiled the oceans 3,000 million years ago. It was a “fertilizer bomb” for the earth

In 1995, NASA began to drug spiders with amphetamines, marijuana and the most devastating: caffeine

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We carry decades experimenting with animals. Despite the Ethical issueand that we see more and more vegan products that imply that there has been no experimentation in animals, until Large technological ones resort to this method. And in 1995, NASA made one of the more curious experiments To measure the drug toxicity. And they did it drugs. Measuring toxicity. It is not that someone woke up one day and wondered what would happen if we die LSD to spiders. Or well, exactly that is what happened, but for a good reason and not for fun. In 1948, the researcher Peter N. Witt He wanted to help his colleague HM Peters, a zoologist who wanted to modify the schedule in which his laboratory spiders began to weave the nets. To do this, he administered substances such as LSD, Mescalina (hallucinogen), amphetamines, caffeine and strychnine (stimulating such as cocaine) To the arthropods and discovered something: the schedule did not change the least, but the patterns of the cobwebs. Depending on the drug Administered, the pattern changed, and that revelation served as an economic model to prove the neurological impact of drugs and toxic on living systems. Why spiders? The problem is that the nervous system of arthropods is different from ours, so it is useless to draw conclusions when we want to try effects on humans, but it is interesting to know how these psychoactive substances influence their organism. In 1995, NASA, inspired by Witt’s experiment, chose spiders for new research, but also did it for An ethical issue. They wanted to measure the toxic effect of different compounds, but without resorting to mammals or “higher organisms.” They needed a sensitive and reliable organism, but not controversial. In addition, spiders are perfect because their cobwebs follow fixed and instinctive patterns that, as Witt already demonstrated, was extremely sensitive to chemical alterations. The experiment. Baptized as “Using Spider-Web Patterns to Determine Toxicity“, he experiment It consisted of exposing different European garden spiders to different drugs. To do this, they dissolved a certain amount of drugs in sugary water and administered it directly to the spider through the mouth or by means of flies previously fed with the solution. Once administered, they let each spider weave their air and, later, photographed the web that had been fabric, comparing that creation with cobwebs photographs that those same spiders had made before applying the drug. If you get drugs, don’t tile. The results They speak for themselves: In addition, the methodology was stricter than the one carried out by Witt half a century earlier when using statistical tools to measure changes in the number of complete sides of the ‘cells’ of each web and the general regularity of the design. In other words: high doses of caffeine, for example, and because it is the one that produces the most chaotic result, generated disorganized and incomplete patterns. Until the lowest doses they already allowed irregularities to be observed in the web that allowed researchers to correlate toxicity with tissue morphology. Consequences. We must not be a genius for this, but the greater the toxicity, the more incomplete and chaotic the web was. But the most important thing is that this thorough methodology of NASA converted the experiment In an alternative to traditional toxicity tests, especially in a scenario that, as we said, had less tolerance to tests with other types of animals. They were biological evidence, yes, and chemicals were also administered to living beings, but in a little invasive way and without losing rigor. And, precisely, the visibility of this work helped the debate on animal ethics to increase even more, evidencing that alternative, but economic methods could be used, with rigorous and replicable results, being more ethical than other models that were made -and they continue to do. Like Witt’s, NASA’s experiment provided very valuable information, but not applicable to humansdue to the differences between the nervous system of a human and other animals … and that of arthropods. For example, caffeine causes total chaos in spiders, but in humans, although It is not good if we want to make certain decisionsIt does not produce the same effects. Image | Das Morton In Xataka | If the question is “how much caffeine each cup of coffee or tea has”, this graph offers revealing responses

Solar storms are increasingly threatening for the earth. NASA wants to prepare with a “digital twin” of the sun

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The sun, that star that gives us life, also has an unpredictable character and potentially destructive. So much so that A large solar storm It could return to us technologically to the stone age in the blink of an eye. To avoid this, NASA and IBM They have joined forces To create a model that simulates the behavior of the sun. And how could it be otherwise, it has been generated with artificial intelligence. A authentic twin of the sun to understand it better. The union of forces of these two institutions has resulted in the creation of Surya, an artificial intelligence Designed to act as a digital twin of the sun and anticipate their violent outbursts with precision that with the models that are currently used cannot be achieved. Training an AI with the heart of a star. The challenge of predicting the space climate is undoubtedly a great challenge For scientists. To build Surya, the engineers turned to an inexhaustible data source: the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) NASA Hala. For nine years, this probe has State watching the sun without restcapturing images of very high resolution every 12 seconds in different wavelengths and measuring its complex magnetic field. Once you have all this information is where artificial intelligence comes into action to be able to organize and interpret them for experts. That is why the first thing Surya did is standardize all data formats to be able to process them together. Intelligent filtering of all this information. Once the data was unified, the next step was to use a long -range vision transformer, an architecture capable of analyzing gigantic images to identify patterns and relationships between points of solar activity, regardless of how far they are from each other. But he did not stay here, because thanks to a mechanism known as ‘spectral door’, the system was able to filter the ‘noise’ of the data to reduce memory use and improve the quality of the information with which it worked. Therefore, researchers were removed a lot of work to have to label all the images, causing it to adapt rapidly. More precision and twice as much time to react. The results of the initial tests are very promising. Until now, Traditional models barely gave us an hour in advance before a solar eruption. With Surya it has been shown to be able to launch a reliable warning two hours in advance, doubleing the humanity preparation window. But it is not only faster, but also accurate. The IBM and NASA team recorded a 16% improvement in precision when classifying solar rashes compared to the models used right now. Something that is also thanks to the ability to integrate information from other missions such as Parker solar probe or the Soho Observatory. An open tool for the science of the future. Far from saving this powerful tool in a key drawer, IBM and NASA have made it available to the entire scientific community. Surya is now available on platforms such as Hugging Face, GITHUB or even the Terratorch library. Kevin Murphy, NASA scientific data director, is clear: “We facilitate the analysis of the complexity of our star’s behavior with unprecedented speed and precision. This opens the door to a better understanding of the impact of solar activity on the systems on which our daily life depends.” The goal is for the Earth to be prepared. Although we see the central star of our system as harmless, the reality is that at any time this sensation can change. In this way, preparation and anticipation is fundamental and for the moment all hopes are put in this model of where it is possible to learn from the processes behind the evolution of the sun with the aim of having a greater amount of information. Images | Javier Miranda In Xataka | How the Solar System was formed: So that the Earth was born, a star had to die

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