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Mysterious Large Mass Discovered on Moon

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A large mass of unknown material has been discovered on the largest crater on the Moon and scientists aren’t sure what it is.

According to an April 2019 study published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, the researchers believe the mass could contain metal from an asteroid that crashed into the celestial satellite, which resulted in the aforementioned crater, known as the Lunar South Pole-Aitken basin.

“Imagine taking a pile of metal five times larger than the Big Island of Hawaii and burying it underground. That’s roughly how much unexpected mass we detected,” lead author Dr. Peter James, assistant professor of planetary geophysics at Baylor University, said in a statement. . .

“When we combined that with lunar topography data from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, we discovered the unexpectedly large amount of mass hundreds of miles underneath the South Pole-Aitken basin,” James said. “One of the explanations of this extra mass is that the metal from the asteroid that formed this crater is still embedded in the Moon’s mantle.”

The anomaly – “whatever it is, wherever it came from,” James added – is weighing down the basin floor by more than half a mile. The team of researchers ran computer simulations that show the iron-nickel core of an asteroid could have been placed into the upper mantle of the Moon following impact. (Read more from “Mysterious Large Mass Discovered on Moon” HERE)

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NASA Nixes 1st All-Female Spacewalk

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By AP. Astronaut Anne McClain was supposed to float out of the International Space Station this Friday with newly arrived Christina Koch, to replace old batteries. But McClain pulled herself from the lineup because there’s not enough time to get two medium suits ready for them. Koch will go out with a male crewmate, Nick Hague.

NASA spokeswoman Brandi Dean said Tuesday that McClain trained before flight in both medium and large spacesuits. She wore a medium when she went out on her first spacewalk last Friday and was supposed to switch to a large this week. But after last week’s spacewalk, she decided that a large would be too big. . .

In 54 years of spacewalking, women have only gone outside with men. That’s because men have always outnumbered women in space. As women continue to make up a greater percentage of the astronaut corps, more gender records will be set and not just in spacewalking, Dean noted. (Read more from “NASA Nixes 1st All-Female Spacewalk” HERE)

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NASA Explains Why It Didn’t Have Enough Space Suits for an All-Female Spacewalk

By BGR. This was supposed to be a history-making week for NASA, with the first all-female spacewalk originally planned to take place on Friday. Unfortunately, a last-second swap has led to one of the expected participants, Anne McClain, being replaced with fellow ISS inhabitant Nick Hague.

NASA’s explanation was that McClain wouldn’t have a space suit available to her for the spacewalk due to sizing, since Christina Koch will be wearing the medium-sized suit that McClain wore during her previous spacewalk last week. This left a lot of people scratching their heads. After all, NASA says there’s two of every size of space suit on board the ISS, so why can’t both McClain and Koch wear the same sized suits? Speaking with CNN, NASA representatives offered a deeper explanation. . .

NASA has two of each size of space suit on the ISS, but only one of them is fully outfitted and ready to use at any given time. The other suits, which are considered backups, can’t be pulled out and used immediately, and they must be prepped for use in space. . .

Training in various space suits on Earth can’t adequately predict what suit will fit you better in space, and in this case the time crunch between the two spacewalks has forced NASA to replace McClain with Hague. It’s obviously a bummer for McClain, but nobody wants to be floating around in space in a suit that doesn’t fit. (Read more from “NASA Explains Why It Didn’t Have Enough Space Suits for an All-Female Spacewalk” HERE)

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Astronaut Candidate First to Resign in 50 Years

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A member of NASA’s latest class of astronaut candidates has resigned from the space agency before completing his basic training.

Robb Kulin, 35, is leaving the program just over a year after he was chosen to join NASA’s 22nd group of spaceflight trainees. His departure reduces the 2017 class, nicknamed “The Turtles,” to 11 members.

Kulin’s resignation, effective on Friday (Aug. 31), is “for personal reasons,” NASA public affairs officer Brandi Dean told reporters on Monday. No further details were released.

A native of Anchorage, Alaska, Kulin is a private pilot with a master’s degree in materials science and a doctorate in engineering from the University of California, San Diego. Prior to becoming an astronaut candidate, he previously worked as an ice driller in Antarctica, a commercial fisherman in Chignik, Alaska, and as the senior manager for flight reliability at SpaceX, leading the company’s Launch Chief Engineering group in Hawthorne, California. . .

The last time that a NASA astronaut candidate resigned before being qualified for a spaceflight assignment was 50 years ago. Chemist John Llewellyn, a member of NASA’s sixth group of trainees and second scientist-astronaut group chosen in 1967, withdrew from the program after realizing he was not cut out for flying jets. (Read more from “Astronaut Candidate First to Resign in 50 Years” HERE)

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NASA: Organic Matter Found on Mars

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By WND. NASA announced Thursday its Curiosity rover has found organic matter preserved on Mars, suggesting the red planet may have once been home to life.

“The chances of being able to find signs of ancient life with future missions, if life ever was present, just went up,” said Curiosity’s project scientist, Ashwin Vasavada of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator for the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington, said that with the new findings, “Mars is telling us to stay the course and keep searching for evidence of life.” . . .

NASA describes the Mars Curiosity rover, launched Nov. 6, 2011, as the most technologically advanced rover ever built. It landed on Gale Crater on Aug. 6, 2012, with the aim of determining whether Mars ever had the capacity to support microbial life.

The rover already has analyzed a rock sample collected by the vehicle in 2013 showing ancient Mars could have supported living microbes. It also detected other organic molecules in a rock-powder sample collected by its drill. (Read more from “NASA: Organic Matter Found on Mars” HERE)

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New Discoveries on Mars Are Advancing the Case for Life on the Red Planet

By TIME. New Mars discoveries are advancing the case for possible life on the red planet, past or even present.

Scientists reported Thursday that NASA’s Curiosity rover has found potential building blocks of life in an ancient Martian lakebed. Hints have been found before, but this is the best evidence yet.

The organic molecules preserved in 3.5 billion-year-old bedrock in Gale Crater — believed to once contain a shallow lake the size of Florida’s Lake Okeechobee — suggest conditions back then may have been conducive to life. That leaves open the possibility that microorganisms once populated our planetary neighbor and might still exist there.

“The chances of being able to find signs of ancient life with future missions, if life ever was present, just went up,” said Curiosity’s project scientist, Ashwin Vasavada of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. (Read more from “New Discoveries on Mars Are Advancing the Case for Life on the Red Planet” HERE)

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NASA Warns of New Solar Storm That Could Affect U.S. and Canada This Week

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Earth could travel through the path of particles released by a solar storm this week, according to experts who advise of the possible impact of such an event.

According to WPXI, NASA satellites Sunday night revealed what is called a solar mass ejection, through which material from the sun is blasted with great force out into space. That eruption continued until Monday morning.

Computer projections indicate the storm is on track to impact or narrowly miss Earth Thursday morning.

If the relatively weak flare does cross paths with our planet, the effects could be noticeable but are not expected to be substantial.

Solar storms can create fluctuations in power grids, though any effects from Thursday’s event are expected to be minor. Experts predict the same for any interference with satellite operations due to emission.

The flare can also result in an aurora visible in the skies above areas within 30 and 60 degrees north or south of the equator. Within the U.S., these lights are most likely to appear over the west coast.

Some migratory animals are affected by solar storms, with the impact most evident in northern locations, including Canada.

Flares are common occurrences on the sun, with particulate matter routinely ejected at millions of miles per hour. Of the more than 150 storms that break out in a given year, however, only a small fraction collide with Earth.

While we could experience such a collision Thursday, the event has been classified as a G1, or minor storm. One week last September provided an extended example of the types of storms the sun is capable of producing.

As Space.com reported at the time, a series of seven powerful flares were recorded in a seven-day period beginning Sept. 4. Each storm originated from the sun’s Active Region 2673 as that area rotated out of sight from Earth.

One forceful storm from that series did pass close to North and South America, prompting an advisory from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration via its Space Weather Prediction Center. Among the possible effects of that storm, the agency wrote, were high-frequency radio blackouts and low-frequency communication issues lasting for about an hour on the sunlit side of the planet.

“While a fast event, the CME was off the Sun-Earth line and is not expected to produce notable geoeffective impacts,” the SWPC wrote.

Three of the major flares recorded that week were classified as the most severe X storms, including one on Sept. 6 that registered as the strongest in 12 years.

Thursday’s event could be a more direct impact than any of those, but its relatively low force should keep any negative effects to a minimum, according to WHIO meteorologist Brett Collar.

“Don’t think that this storm will be historic by any means but certainly something to keep an eye on over coming days,” he said. (For more from the author of “NASA Warns of New Solar Storm That Could Affect U.S. and Canada This Week” please click HERE)

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NASA’s ‘Fake News’ About Water on Mars

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It was big news in 2015 when NASA declared “liquid water found in Mars.”

Now, according to the U.S. Geological Survey, the announcement that Mars contains large amounts of water was premature.

Scientists had reasoned that water must be present on the red planet to explain mysterious darkish streaks that appeared to ebb and flow with the seasons.

A new paper in Nature Geoscience says that “Recurring Slope Lineae,” or RSL, in Eos Chasma, a deep depression on the planet, are “inconsistent with models for water sources.”

The researchers — working in cooperation with the NASA Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Project — found that the RSL were instead “identical to the slopes of sand dunes where movement is caused by dry granular flows.” (Read more from “NASA’s ‘Fake News’ About Water on Mars” HERE)

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NASA Spots a 7,000mph Whirlpool of Plasma on the Surface of the Sun

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A stunning new Nasa image shows an extremely rare pattern streaming from the sun at close to 7,000 miles per hour (11,200 km/h).

A dark snake-like filament can be seen erupting from the star, but while the formations are normally stretched out like a strand, this one is circular like a whirlpool.

This is because it is being yanked back by the star’s staggering gravitational pull – which is about 27.9 times that of Earth.

The rare sight, captured by Nasa’s orbiting Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO), has only been seen a ‘handful of times’, the agency said.

‘Solar filaments are clouds of charged particles that float above the sun, tethered to it by magnetic forces,’ Nasa said in a statement. (Read more from “NASA Spots a 7,000mph Whirlpool of Plasma on the Surface of the Sun” HERE)

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NASA Engineers Test Engine for World’s Most Powerful Rocket

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NASA engineers tested the RS-25 rocket engine, which will play a crucial role in eventual missions to Mars, on Tuesday . . .

The forthcoming Space Launch System (SLS) rocket will be powered by four R2-25 engines firing simultaneously. The RS-25s will provide 2 million pounds of thrust, according to NASA and will work in conjunction with a pair of solid rocket boosters, which provide an additional 6.8 million pounds of thrust.

The first unmanned flight of the heavy-lift SLS – a trip around the moon – was scheduled for 2018, but was recently pushed back to 2019, Space.com reports. A crewed mission was expected to take place in 2021, but it has also been pushed back. NASA said there will be a minimum of 33 months between the unmanned and crewed missions. (Read more from “NASA Engineers Test Engine for World’s Most Powerful Rocket” HERE)

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NASA Reports Huge Explosion of Seven Meter Space Rock Over the Atlantic

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Photo Credit: Andrezej Wojcicki/Science Photo A huge fireball crashed into the Atlantic earlier this month – and went almost unseen.

The event took place on February 6 at 14:00 UTC when a meteor exploded in the air 620 miles (1,000km) off the coast of Brazil.

It released energy equivalent to 13,000 tons of TNT, which is the same as the energy used in the first atomic weapon that leveled Hiroshima in 1945.

This was the largest event of its type since the February 2013 fireball that exploded over Chelyabinsk, Russia, leaving more than 1,600 people injured . . .

That fireball measured 18 meters across and screamed into Earth’s atmosphere at 41,600 mph. Much of the debris landed in a local lake called Chebarkul. (Read more from “Nasa Reports Huge Explosion of Seven Meter Space Rock Over the Atlantic” HERE)

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NASA-Funded Study: Over 32 Advanced Civilizations Have Collapsed Before Us, and We’re Next in Line

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A recent research paper funded by NASA highlights this premise. According to the authors:

“Collapses of even advanced civilizations have occurred many times in the past five thousand years, and they were frequently followed by centuries of population and cultural decline and economic regression.”

The results of their experiments show that some of the very clear trends which exist today– unsustainable resource consumption, and economic stratification that favors the elite– can very easily result in collapse . . .

But here’s the thing– between massive debts, deficits, money printing, war, resource depletion, etc., our modern society seems riddled with these risks . . .

Empires rise and fall. The global monetary system is always changing. The prevailing social contract is always changing. (Read more from “NASA-Funded Study: Over 32 Advanced Civilizations Have Collapsed Before Us, and We’re Next in Line” HERE)

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