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‘Aliens,’ or a foreign power? Pentagon UFO chief says someone is in our backyard This week, the director of the U.S. government’s UFO analysis office stated that there is “evidence” of concerning unidentified flying object activity “in our backyard.” According to physicist Seán Kirkpatrick, who heads the congressionally-mandated All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, this alarming UFO activity can be attributed to one of two extraordinary sources: either a foreign power or “aliens.” To be sure, the ramifications of either would be significant. But Kirkpatrick’s comments, which come as he is about to retire after a 27-year defense and intelligence-focused career, are...

Space can make humans insufferable. Despite humanity's meager history of space travel, over which only a few hundred individuals have ventured beyond the cozy confines of Earth's atmosphere to the great vacuum beyond, we've already had numerous examples of misbehavior. Much lower gravity than we're used to on Earth reshapes the brain, which in turn can worsen our behavior.

For a few years now, ion propulsion technology's sci-fi mechanics have raised the standard for flying spacecraft, replacing fiery rocket tails as the new in-thing. Ion propulsion can be about 10 times faster than normal fuel and can continuously run for prolonged periods of time, gaining a wicked amount of speed along the way. One drawback, however, is it's typically employed with xenon thrusters. JAXA's Hayabusa2 mission used the classic xenon as a fuel. Xenon, a heavy noble gas, is exceptionally rare on Earth, pricey and difficult to maintain. That's why French aerospace company ThrustMe is pursuing a plan for...

Can anyone with experience with this please give me some advise? Thanks.

NASA's InSight lander has measured one of the biggest and longest marsquakes yet, which featured tremors of 4.2 magnitude lasting nearly an hour and a half, the space agency said. The robotic seismometre celebrated 1,000 days on the Red Planet on September 18, when it detected the largest tremor since it arrived at the Elysium Planitia in 2018. The 4.2 magnitude quake equals the largest detected so far on Mars... ...NASA launched InSight with the goal of studying seismic waves to learn more about the interior of the Red Planet, and understand how it formed and its inner core.

The Starship vehicle is poised to revolutionize human spaceflight. With SpaceX and NASA working together to develop Starship for the Artemis Program, our ambitions in space have profoundly changed. Aspiring Martian Colonist Dr Ryan MacDonald charts the course towards the first human missions to the Red Planet.

We’ve all seen the movie. The first human mission to Mars descends towards the ochre-coloured surface on a roaring column of rocket thrust. After touching down, the astronauts clamber down the ladder, plant a flag in the soil and snap some photos of their footprints.We’ve done it on the Moon, so why not Mars? Aside from all the hazards that would need to be accounted for in order to ensure astronauts survive the journey to Mars, (such as exposure to cosmic radiation and the effects of space on human genes), the landing itself could actually be pretty problematic.Philip Metzger and...

CHINA'S Chang'e-5 moon probe has landed in the northern Chinese region of Inner Mongolia, the official Xinhua news agency reported, completing its return to Earth and bringing back the first lunar samples since the 1970s. The return capsule touched down in the Siziwang, or Dorbod, banner of Inner Mongolia, in the early hours of Thursday local time, Xinhua said, citing the China National Space Administration. China launched the Chang'e-5 spacecraft on Nov. 24 and landed a vehicle on the moon at the start of December.

A map of the global arch-like structure of Solar System manifolds. (Todorovic et al., SciAdv, 2020) ================================================================= Invisible structures generated by gravitational interactions in the Solar System have created a "space superhighway" network, astronomers have discovered. These channels enable the fast travel of objects through space, and could be harnessed for our own space exploration purposes, as well as the study of comets and asteroids. By applying analyses to both observational and simulation data, a team of researchers led by Nataša Todorović of Belgrade Astronomical Observatory in Serbia observed that these superhighways consist of a series of connected arches inside...

The "EmDrive" claims to make the impossible possible: a method of pushing spacecraft around without the need for — well, pushing. No propulsion. No exhaust. But the EmDrive doesn't just violate our fundamental understanding of the universe; the experiments that claim to measure an effect haven't been replicated. [A]ll forms of rocketry (and indeed, all forms of motion across the entire universe) require conservation of momentum. In order to set yourself in motion, you have to push off of something. Your feet push off of the ground, airplanes push themselves off of the air, and rockets push parts of themselves...

Seattle-based Ultra Safe Nuclear Technologies (USNC-Tech) has developed a concept for a new Nuclear Thermal Propulsion (NTP) engine and delivered it to NASA. Claimed to be safer and more reliable than previous NTP designs and with far greater efficiency than a chemical rocket, the concept could help realize the goal of using nuclear propulsion to revolutionize deep space travel, reducing Earth-Mars travel time to just three months. Because chemical rockets are already near their theoretical limits and electric space propulsion systems have such low thrust, rocket engineers continue to seek ways to build more efficient, more powerful engines using some...

How an unprecedented strategy cut costs, shook up the status quo, and returned the US to the forefront of space exploration. On Saturday afternoon, the Florida thunderstorms broke just long enough for history to be made. After 10 years of slow and sometimes painful change, NASA finally took the historic step of taking an astronaut into orbit in a private spacecraft. While discussion of this remarkable event has been overshadowed by riots and lockdowns occurring across the US, the importance of this launch cannot be understated. It shows the success of an unprecedented policy of privatization, with immense, positive consequences...

Scientists: Astronauts Could Build Moon Base Using Human Urine Need a resilient lunar building material? Urine luck. VICTOR TANGERMANN5 HOURS AGO In cooperation with the European Space Agency (ESA), a team of European researchers have conducted a… strange experiment. They mixed urea — the main compound found in mammalian urine — with materials, including Moon rocks, to test if we could one day use astronaut pee to build a lunar base. The urea itself acted as a “plasticizer” — stuff that allows us to shape other harder materials into different forms. In their unusual experiment, the team used an analog...

Russia Admits It Isn’t Ready to Fight Space Aliens Fortunately America’s got a plan Russia Admits It Isn’t Ready to Fight Space Aliens UNCATEGORIZED October 2, 2013 David Axe Fortunately America’s got a plan by DAVID AXE A Russian space official just admitted that Moscow has no strategy for combating an invasion by galactic marauders. Lucky for Planet Earth, the United States does have a plan. And it counts on Russia and America fighting together. Sergei Berezhnoy, on the staff of the Titov Space Control Center near Moscow, said that Russian air-defense officers “have not been tasked with preparing for...

"NASA astronauts endure weeks or even months exposed to microgravity and cosmic radiation—not to mention the extreme G forces of take-off and re-entry," says senior author Dr. Satish K. Mehta of KBR Wyle at the Johnson Space Center. "This physical challenge is compounded by more familiar stressors like social separation, confinement and an altered sleep-wake cycle." "During spaceflight there is a rise in secretion of stress hormones like cortisol and adrenaline, which are known to suppress the immune system. In keeping with this, we find that astronaut's immune cells—particularly those that normally suppress and eliminate viruses—become less effective during spaceflight...

Full Title: "Fresh blow for Mars missions as researchers find long-duration space travel causes crippling back pain that can last for up to four YEARS" The changes in muscle composition are still present up to four years after long-duration spaceflight, according to the new research by Katelyn Burkhart, MS, of Massachusetts Institute of Technology and colleagues. They write, 'Spaceflight-induced changes in paraspinal muscle morphology may contribute to back pain commonly reported in astronauts.' The researchers analyzed computed tomography (CT) scans of the lumbar (lower) spine in 17 astronauts and cosmonauts who flew missions on the International Space Station. Scans obtained...

Herb Meyer would be commended by the intelligence community for his extraordinary 1983 memo predicting that America was going to win the Cold War — this at a time when virtually no one (other than Ronald Reagan and Bill Casey) thought winning was possible. Today his task remains the same. It should come as a revelation to those glued to the 24-hour news cycle that things aren’t as bad “out there” as we think. The evening news never reports the countless airplanes that land on time and unharmed, or the daily billions who walk through malls and shopping centers without...

“As we once again lead in space exploration, we will continue to make the investments and presence in space to ensure the safety and security of the American people,” Pence said. “Space is vital to our national security. I saw it firsthand when I visited Schriever Air Force Base just a few weeks ago. And I can assure you, under President Donald Trump, American security will be as dominant in the heavens as we are here on Earth.” “We will beat back any disadvantage that our lack of attention has placed and America will once again lead in space,” Pence...

It boils down to building a maglev train to outer space. Here's how it works: Magnetically-levitated spacecraft will be propelled inside a curved tube aimed skyward. All air will be evacuated from the tube in order to eliminate drag. Craft will exit the lengthy tube at a speed of 8.8 kilometers per second in order to escape Earth's atmosphere. ... There are four key hurdles that need to be overcome for StarTram to work. First off, to propel spacecraft to necessary speeds, a massive amount of power will need to be stored and discharged over roughly thirty seconds, think between...

While stuck in traffic in 1961, James Powell, a young researcher at Brookhaven National Laboratory came up with the idea of using powerful magnets to lift and propel massive passenger-carrying cars. Over the next seven years, he and his colleague Gordon Danby spent their spare time piecing together a concept. They obtained a patent for the breakthrough in 1968. Powell and Danby's magnetic levitation, or maglev, technology must have seemed like magic back then, but it is now being used to move large trains at speeds up to 375 miles per hour! Not content to rest on this sole accomplishment,...