Recent photos taken by India’s Space Research Organization moon orbiter, known as Chandrayaan 2, clearly show the Apollo 11 and Apollo 12 landing sites more than 50 years later.
The photos were taken by the Chandrayaan 2 orbiter in April 2021 and were reshared on Curiosity’s X page – which posts about space exploration – on Wednesday.
"Image of Apollo 11 and 12 taken by India's Moon orbiter. Disapproving Moon landing deniers," Curiosity wrote on X, along with the overhead photos that show the landing vehicles on the surface of the moon.
Apollo 11 landed on the moon on July 20, 1969, making Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin the first men to walk on its surface.
Astronaut Michael Collins, the third man on the Apollo 11 mission, remained in orbit while Aldrin and Armstrong walked on the moon.
The lunar module, known as Eagle, was left in lunar orbit after it rendezvoused with the command module Collins was in the next day and Eagle eventually landed back on the moon’s surface.
Apollo 12 was NASA’s second crewed mission to land on the moon on Nov. 19, 1969, in which Charles "Pete" Conrad and Alan Bean became the third and fourth men to walk on its surface.
The Apollo missions continued until December 1972, when the program was shut down and astronaut Eugene Cernan became the last man to walk on the moon.
The Chandrayaan-2 mission launched on July 22, 2019, exactly 50 years after the Apollo 11 mission and two years before it captured images of the 1969 lunar landers.
This week, NASA finalized its strategy for sustaining a human presence in space. A document emphasized the importance of maintaining the ability for extended stays in orbit after the International Space Station is retired.
"NASA's Low Earth Orbit Microgravity Strategy will guide the agency toward the next generation of continuous human presence in orbit, enable greater economic growth, and maintain international partnerships," the document stated.
The commitment comes amid questions of whether the new space stations will be ready to go. With the incoming Trump administration’s effort to cut spending through the Department of Government Efficiency, there are also fears NASA could face cuts.
"Just like everybody has to make hard decisions when the budget is tight, we've made some choices over the last year, in fact, to cut back programs or cancel them all together to make sure that we're focused on our highest priorities," said NASA Deputy Administrator Pam Melroy.
Commercial space company Voyager is working on one of the space stations that could replace the International Space Station when it de-orbits in 2030. The company applauded NASA’s strategy to keep humans in space.
"We need that commitment because we have our investors saying, ‘Is the United States committed?’" said Jeffrey Manber Voyager's president of international and space stations.
President Reagan first launched the effort to keep humans in space at a permanent residence. He also warned of the need for private partnerships.
"America has always been greatest when we dared to be great. We can reach for greatness," Reagan said during his 1984 State of the Union address. "The market for space transportation could surpass our capacity to develop it."
The first piece of the ISS was launched in 1998. Since then, it has hosted more than 28 people from 23 countries. For 24 years, humans have occupied the ISS continuously.
The Trump administration released a national space policy in 2020 that called for maintaining a "continuous human presence in earth orbit" and also emphasized the need to transition to commercial platforms. The Biden administration maintained that policy.
"Let's say we didn't have commercial stations that are ready to go. Technically, we could keep the space station going, but the idea was to fly it through 2030 and de-orbit it in 2031," NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said in June.
In recent months, there have been questions whether the policy would be maintained.
"I just want to talk about the elephant in the room for a moment, continuous human presence. What does that mean? Is it continuous heartbeat or continuous capability? While we kind of originally hoped that this would just sort of emerge from this process, we're still having conversations about that and understanding it," Melroy said at the International Astronautical Congress in October.
NASA’s finalized strategy took into account concerns from commercial and international partners over what it would mean to lose the ISS without a commercial station ready to go.
"Almost all of our industry partners agreed. Continuous presence is continuous heartbeat. And so that's where we stand," Melroy said. "I think this continuous presence, it's leadership. Today, the United States leads in human spaceflight. The only other space station that will be in orbit when ISS de-orbits, if we don't bring a commercial destination up in time, will be the Chinese space station. And we want to stay and remain the partner of choice for our industry and for our goals for NASA."
Three companies, including Voyager, are working with NASA to develop commercial space stations. Axiom signed an agreement with NASA in 2020. The agency awarded contracts to Nanoracks, now part of Voyager Space, and Blue Origin in 2021.
"We've had some challenges, to be perfectly honest with you. The budget caps that were a deal that was cut between the White House and Congress for fiscal year (2024 and 2025) have left us without as much investment. So, what we do is we co-invest with our commercial partners to do the development. I think we're still able to make it happen before the end of 2030, though, to get a commercial space station up and running so that we have a continuous heartbeat of American astronauts on orbit," Melroy said.
Voyager says it is not behind in the development process and is still planning to launch their starship space station in 2028.
"We're not asking for more money. We're going ahead. We're ready to replace the International Space Station," Manber said. "Everyone knows SpaceX, but there's hundreds of companies that have created the space economy. And if we lose permanent presence, you lose that supply chain."
Additional funds have been provided for the three companies since the initial space station contracts. A second round of funding could be crucial for some projects. NASA could also award funding for new space station proposals. One prospect is Long Beach, California’s Vast Space. The company recently unveiled concepts for its Haven modules. It plans to launch the Haven-1 as soon as next year.
"We absolutely think competition is critical. This is a development project. It's challenging. It was hard to build the space station. We're asking our commercial partners to step up and do this themselves with some help from us. We think it's really important that we carry as many options going forward to see which one really pans out when we actually get there," Melroy said.
A homeowner in New York uncovered a complete mastodon jaw in their backyard in what officials are calling a "remarkable discovery."
The jaw of the extinct mammal, which was similar to an elephant, and several bone fragments were excavated from a property in Scotchtown by researchers from the New York State Museum and SUNY Orange.
"The fossils – discovered by a curious homeowner – will undergo carbon dating and extensive scientific analysis to determine the mastodon’s age, diet, and habitat," the New York State Museum said in a statement. "Once preserved and studied, the jaw and related findings will be showcased in public programming in 2025, offering visitors a glimpse into New York’s rich Ice Age history."
The Albany-based Museum said the homeowner first noticed the jaw when they spotted "two unusual teeth concealed by plant fronds and, intrigued, dug a bit deeper to uncover two more teeth just inches beneath the surface."
"When I found the teeth and examined them in my hands, I knew they were something special and decided to call in the experts," the museum quoted the homeowner as saying. "I’m thrilled that our property has yielded such an important find for the scientific community."
The discovery is also being described by the museum as the first of its kind in New York in 11 years, and a "prehistoric treasure."
"Excavation efforts by the New York State Museum and SUNY Orange unearthed a full, well-preserved mastodon jaw belonging to an adult individual," it said. "Alongside the jaw, researchers also recovered a piece of a toe bone and a rib fragment, offering valuable additional clues about the mastodon’s life and environment."
Museum officials said 150 mastodon fossils have been found across New York, but a third of them have come from Orange County, where the jaw was discovered.
"While the jaw is the star of the show, the additional toe and rib fragments offer valuable context and the potential for additional research," Cory Harris, Chair of SUNY Orange’s Behavioral Sciences Department, said in a statement. "We are also hoping to further explore the immediate area for more bones that may have been preserved."
NASA has confirmed that after a pause in communications with Voyager 1 in late October, the spacecraft has regained its voice and resumed regular operations.
Voyager unexpectedly turned off its primary radio transmitter, known as its X-band, before turning on its much weaker S-band transmitter in October.
The interstellar spacecraft is currently located about 15.4 billion miles away from Earth and the S-band had not been used in over 40 years.
Communication between NASA and Voyager 1 has been spotty at times and the switch to the lower band prevented the Voyager mission team from downloading science data and information about the spacecraft’s status.
Earlier this month, the team was able to reactivate the X-band transmitter and resume collection of data from the four operating science instruments onboard Voyager 1.
Now that the data can be collected and communications have resumed, engineers are finishing a few remaining tasks to return Voyager 1 back to the state it was in before the issue came up. One task is to reset the system that synchronizes Voyager 1’s three onboard computers.
The S-band was activated by the spacecraft’s fault protection system when engineers activated a heater on Voyager 1. The fault protection system determined the probe did not have enough power and automatically turned off systems that were not necessary to keep the spacecraft flying in order to keep providing power to critical systems.
But in the process, the probes turned off all nonessential systems except for science instruments, NASA said, turning off the X-band and activating the S-band, which uses less power.
Voyager 1 had not used the S-band to communicate with Earth since 1981.
Voyager 1′s odyssey began in 1977, when the spacecraft and its twin, Voyager 2, were launched on a tour of the gas giant planets of the solar system.
After beaming back dazzling postcard views of Jupiter’s giant red spot and Saturn’s shimmering rings, Voyager 2 hopscotched to Uranus and Neptune. Meanwhile, Voyager 1 used Saturn as a gravitational slingshot to power itself past Pluto.
There are 10 science instruments on each spacecraft, and according to NASA, four are currently being used to study the particles, plasma and magnetic fields in interstellar space.
Planet Earth is parting company with an asteroid that’s been tagging along as a "mini moon" for the past two months.
The harmless space rock will peel away on Monday, overcome by the stronger tug of the sun’s gravity. But it will zip closer for a quick visit in January.
NASA will use a radar antenna to observe the 33-foot asteroid then. That should deepen scientists’ understanding of the object known as 2024 PT5, quite possibly a boulder that was blasted off the moon by an impacting, crater-forming asteroid.
While not technically a moon — NASA stresses it was never captured by Earth’s gravity and fully in orbit — it’s "an interesting object" worthy of study.
The astrophysicist brothers who identified the asteroid’s "mini moon behavior," Raul and Carlos de la Fuente Marcos of Complutense University of Madrid, have collaborated with telescopes in the Canary Islands for hundreds of observations so far.
Currently more than 2 million miles away, the object is too small and faint to see without a powerful telescope. It will pass as close as 1.1 million miles of Earth in January, maintaining a safe distance before it zooms farther into the solar system while orbiting the sun, not to return until 2055. That’s almost five times farther than the moon.
First spotted in August, the asteroid began its semi jog around Earth in late September, after coming under the grips of Earth’s gravity and following a horseshoe-shaped path.
By the time it returns next year, it will be moving too fast — more than double its speed from September — to hang around, said Raul de la Fuente Marcos.
NASA will track the asteroid for more than a week in January using the Goldstone solar system radar antenna in California’s Mojave Desert, part of the Deep Space Network.
Current data suggest that during its 2055 visit, the sun-circling asteroid will once again make a temporary and partial lap around Earth.
Researchers have discovered a new species of glowing sea slug deep in the ocean’s midnight zone.
Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI) scientists said in a press release on Tuesday that while Bathydevius caudactylus is classified as a sea slug, it was nicknamed the "mystery mollusk" because the creature was unlike any other that’s been encountered before.
The mystery mollusk’s genus name, Bathydevius, is a play on the deep-sea animal’s "devious" nature that fooled researchers, the researchers said.
Bathydevius is the first nudibranch, or sea slug, known to live in the deep sea. The sea slug’s body is made up of a large gelatinous hood and paddle-like tail. It can glow with bioluminescence.
It lives at an extreme depth of 1,000 to 4,000 meters, or 3,300 to 13,100 feet, below the surface in the ocean’s midnight zone, creating a unique challenge for scientists who’ve worked for decades to catalog the mysterious animal.
"We’ve invested more than 20 years in understanding the natural history of this fascinating species of nudibranch," said MBARI Senior Scientist Bruce Robison. "Our discovery is a new piece of the puzzle that can help better understand the largest habitat on Earth."
It uses a cavernous hood to trap crustaceans "like a Venus fly trap plant," like some jellies, anemones and tunicates. The mysterious creature also hides from predators in plain sight, taking advantage of its transparent body.
If it feels threatened, however, the sea slug will light up with bioluminescence to deter and distract hungry predators. Researchers once observed the creature illuminate and detach a "a steadily glowing finger-like projection from the tail, likely serving as a decoy to distract a potential predator."
Bathydevius, like other nudibranchs, is a hermaphrodite, having both male and female sex organs. Researchers said that the animal will descend to the seafloor to spawn, using their muscular foot to anchor to the muddy seafloor before releasing their eggs.
MBARI scientists said that it was only thanks to the facility’s advanced underwater technology that they were able to compile the most comprehensive description of any deep-sea creature to date.
"What is exciting to me about the mystery mollusk is that it exemplifies how much we are learning as we spend more time in the deep sea, particularly below 2,000 meters," said MBARI Senior Scientist Steven Haddock. "For there to be a relatively large, unique, and glowing animal that is in a previously unknown family really underscores the importance of using new technology to catalog this vast environment."
After a brief pause in communications with Voyager 1, NASA re-established a connection with the interstellar spacecraft located more than 15 billion miles away from Earth, using a frequency not used more than forty years.
Communication between NASA and Voyager 1 has been spotty at times. In fact, the spacecraft stopped sending readable data to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California on Nov. 14, 2023, and it was not until April that mission controllers began receiving commands once again.
More recently, the spacecraft turned off one of its two transmitters after what engineers suspected was due to Voyager 1’s fault protection system, which autonomously responds to onboard issues.
For instance, if the spacecraft uses too much power from its supply source, fault protection will kick in to conserve power by turning off non-essential systems, NASA explained.
The space agency said the flight team sent a command to activate one of the spacecraft’s heaters on Oct. 16. The command takes nearly 23 hours to travel from Earth to the spacecraft, and then another 23 hours for the data to travel back.
Engineers suspected Voyager 1 should have had plenty of power to operate the heather, though the fault protection system was triggered.
On Oct. 18, the team learned about the issue, because the Deep Space Network was unable to detect Voyager 1’s signal. Communication between NASA and the spacecraft occurs on the X-band radio transmitter, named for the frequency it uses.
The fault protection system lowered the rate the transmitter was able to send data back to NASA, engineers determined, therefore changing the X-band signal the Deep Space Network needed to listen for.
Once the signal was located, Voyager 1 appeared to be in a stable state and the team began investigating what happened.
But on Oct. 19, communication between the team and Voyager 1 stopped again, this time entirely.
The team believed Voyager 1’s fault protection system was triggered two more times and switched to a second radio transmitter called the S-band, which uses less power.
Voyager 1 had not used the S-band to communicate with Earth since 1981.
Engineers with the Deep Space Network were ultimately able to detect the spacecraft’s communication from the S-band. Rather than risk turning the X-band back on before finding out what caused the fault protection system to trigger, the team sent a command on Oct. 22 to confirm the S-band transmitter was working.
Now, the team is working to gather information to help them find out what happened so it can return Voyager 1 back to normal operations.
Voyager 1′s odyssey began in 1977 when the spacecraft and its twin, Voyager 2, were launched on a tour of the gas giant planets of the solar system.
After beaming back dazzling postcard views of Jupiter’s giant red spot and Saturn’s shimmering rings, Voyager 2 hopscotched to Uranus and Neptune. Meanwhile, Voyager 1 used Saturn as a gravitational slingshot to power itself past Pluto.
The Orionids meteor shower, which is considered to be one of the most beautiful showers of the year, could light up the sky with shooting stars through most of next month.
NASA said the Orionids peak during mid-October every year, and the meteors are known for their brightness and speed.
The ability to see the shooting stars depends on clear nighttime skies, as a bright waning gibbous moon moves between full and last quarter phases, outshining more faint meteors and reducing the number of meteors visible to sky-gazers.
According to NASA,some of the Orionids leave behind glowing "trains," or incandescent bits of debris in the wake of the meteor, which could last up to several minutes, and some faster meteors could also become fireballs.
The Orionids meteors are pieces of the Halley's Comet and are framed by some of the brightest stars in the night sky.
"Each time that Halley returns to the inner solar system, its nucleus sheds ice and rocky dust into space. These dust grains eventually become the Orionids in October and the Eta Aquarids in May if they collide with Earth’s atmosphere," NASA said.
At the meteor shower’s peak, which is scheduled for Monday, skywatchers could see up to 15 meteors per hour, depending on where they are in the Northern Hemisphere.
While clear skies are important, the second most crucial viewing condition is a dark sky away from light pollution.
Bill Cooke, who leads NASA’s Meteoroid Environment Office at Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, suggests budding skywatchers find an area away from city lights.
"Come prepared with a blanket. Lie flat on your back and look up, taking in as much of the sky as possible," he said on NASA’s site. "In less than 30 minutes in the dark, your eyes will adapt, and you will begin to see meteors."
While the Orionids meteor shower peak is on Oct. 21, the Orionids will be active through Nov. 22.
It takes Halley’s Comet 76 years to orbit the sun, and the last time it was visible to casual astronomers was in 1986. The comet is not expected to enter the inner solar system again until 2061, NASA said.
A U.S. startup company is reportedly offering wealthy couples the chance to screen their embryos for IQ and other favorable genetic traits, which has raised ethical concerns.
Heliospect Genomics is charging up to $50,000 to test 100 embryos and claims their technology can help couples undergoing IVF pick children with IQ scores six points higher or more over babies conceived naturally, The Guardian reports.
The company has already worked with more than a dozen couples, undercover video footage reviewed by the outlet reveals.
"Everyone can have all the children they want, and they can have children that are basically disease-free, smart, healthy; it’s going to be great," CEO Michael Christensen said on a video call in November 2023, according to the report. The call was recorded by an undercover researcher for Hope Not Hate, an antifascist group that works to "expose and oppose far-right extremism."
On the call, Heliospect employees reportedly walk prospective parents through the experimental genetic selection techniques advertised by the company. One employee explained how couples could use polygenic scoring to rank up to 100 embryos based on "IQ and the other naughty traits that everybody wants," including sex, height, risk of obesity and risk of mental illness, according to The Guardian.
Heliospect says its prediction tools use data from UK Biobank, a publicly funded genetic repository with half a million British volunteers. The database permits approved researchers and scientists around the world to access it for "health-related research that is in the public interest."
United Kingdom law prohibits parents from selecting embryos on the basis of predicted high IQ, but the practice is currently legal in the U.S., even if the technology is not yet commercially available.
Expert geneticists and bioethicists told The Guardian the prospect of selecting embryos for favorable genetic traits is ethically questionable since it could reinforce the idea of "superior" and "inferior" genetics. Hope Not Hate went further in its own reporting, tying a handful of Heliospect employees to people and publications that have purportedly promoted so-called scientific racism, or the contested belief that human races have innately different levels of physical, intellectual and moral development determined by their genetics.
Katie Hasson, associate director of the Center for Genetics and Society in California, warned in comments to The Guardian that embryo selection technology could mainstream "the belief that inequality comes from biology rather than social causes."
Heliospect Genomics did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital's request for comment.
Heliospect managers told The Guardian the U.S.-based company operates within the bounds of all applicable law and regulations. The company said it is currently in "stealth mode" and is still developing its services before a planned public launch. They added that couples who have screened fewer embryos were charged around $4,000 for the service.
On the calls recorded by Hope Not Hate, Heliospect's team described how its "polygenic scoring" service uses algorithms to analyze the genetic data given by parents to predict the specific traits of their individual embryos. The company does not offer IVF services, according to The Guardian.
Christensen presented an ambitious vision for how the technology could develop, even suggesting that "lab-grown eggs would allow couples to create embryos on an industrial scale – a thousand, or even a million – from which an elite selection could be handpicked," the report said.
According to The Guardian, he suggested that future technology might be able to screen for personality types, including what he referred to as "dark triad" traits, namely machiavellianism, narcissism and psychopathy.
"Beauty is something lots of people actually ask about," he reportedly added.
Heliospect told The Guardian it does not condone industrial-scale egg or embryo production or elite selection and that it does not plan to offer personality screening services.
Among Heliospect's senior staff is Jonathan Anomaly, a controversial academic who has defended so-called "liberal eugenics," or the idea that parents should use genetic technology to enhance their children's prospects.
Anomaly told The Guardian that as a professor of philosophy, he has published provocative articles intended to stimulate debate and that "liberal eugenics" was an accepted term by bioethicists.
Records show Heliospect gained access to UK Biobank's data in June 2023. In its application, the company said it planned to use advanced techniques to improve the prediction of "complex traits." But Heliospect did not disclose screening embryos as an intended commercial application or mention IQ, The Guardian reported.
UK Biobank told the outlet Heliospect's use of its data appeared to be "entirely consistent with our access conditions."
Experts suggested to The Guardian that restrictions on access to databases like UK Biobank may need to be strengthened in light of the ethical concerns around embryo screening.
"UK Biobank, and the UK government, may want to think harder about whether it needs to impose some new restrictions," said professor Hank Greely, a bioethicist at Stanford University.
Heliospect emphasized that its use of UK Biobank data is lawful and complies with relevant regulations. The company told The Guardian it supports addressing concerns about preimplantation embryonic screening through public education, policy discussions and properly informed debates about the technology, which it strongly believed had the potential to help people.
In less than 48 hours, SpaceX pulled off a stunning feat, conducting four launches in three states, with huge implications for the future of space exploration.
The first launch came on Sunday, with the enormous Starship rocket blasting off from the southern tip of Texas. Remarkably, the first-stage booster flew back to the launch pad, where the tower’s metal arms caught the descending 232-foot booster.
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk called it a "Big step towards making life multiplanetary."
The spacecraft continued its journey around the world, soaring more than 130 miles high before eventually landing in the Indian Ocean, piling on SpaceX’s achievements.
Starship is the biggest and most powerful rocket ever built, with 33 methane-fuel engines on the booster alone.
The next day, a NASA spacecraft lifted off aboard SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket from the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, bound for Jupiter and its moon Europa.
The Europa Clipper will peer beneath the moon’s icy crust to determine whether conditions there could support life.
Then on early Tuesday, SpaceX launched two Falcon 9 rockets – one from Florida and another in California – sending dozens of Starlink satellites into orbit.
The first launch, from Cape Canaveral, marked SpaceX’s 100th launch of the year, with still two-and-a-half months left in 2024.
A NASA spacecraft is ready to set sail for Jupiter and its moon Europa, one of the best bets for finding life beyond Earth.
Europa Clipper will peer beneath the moon’s icy crust where an ocean is thought to be sloshing fairly close to the surface. It won’t search for life, but rather determine whether conditions there could support it. Another mission would be needed to flush out any microorganisms lurking there.
"It’s a chance for us to explore not a world that might have been habitable billions of years ago, but a world that might be habitable today — right now," said program scientist Curt Niebur.
Its massive solar panels make Clipper the biggest craft built by NASA to investigate another planet. It will take 5 1/2 years to reach Jupiter and will sneak within 16 miles of Europa's surface — considerably closer than any other spacecraft.
Liftoff is targeted for this month aboard SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. Mission cost: $5.2 billion.
One of Jupiter’s 95 known moons, Europa is almost the size of our own moon. It's encased in an ice sheet estimated to be 10 miles to 15 miles or more thick. Scientists believe this frozen crust hides an ocean that could be 80 miles or more deep. The Hubble Space Telescope has spotted what appear to be geysers erupting from the surface. Discovered by Galileo in 1610, Europa is one of the four so-called Galilean moons of Jupiter, along with Ganymede, Io and Callisto.
What type of life might Europa harbor? Besides water, organic compounds are needed for life as we know it, plus an energy source. In Europa’s case that could be thermal vents on the ocean floor. Deputy project scientist Bonnie Buratti imagines any life would be primitive like the bacterial life that originated in Earth’s deep ocean vents. "We will not know from this mission because we can’t see that deep," she said. Unlike missions to Mars where habitability is one of many questions, Clipper’s sole job is to establish whether the moon could support life in its ocean or possibly in any pockets of water in the ice.
When its solar wings and antennas are unfurled, Clipper is about the size of a basketball court — more than 100 feet end to end — and weighs nearly 13,000 pounds. The supersized solar panels are needed because of Jupiter’s distance from the sun. The main body — about the size of a camper — is packed with nine science instruments, including radar that will penetrate the ice, cameras that will map virtually the entire moon and tools to tease out the contents of Europa’s surface and tenuous atmosphere. The name hearkens to the swift sailing ships of centuries past.
The roundabout trip to Jupiter will span 1.8 billion miles. For extra oomph, the spacecraft will swing past Mars early next year and then Earth in late 2026. It arrives at Jupiter in 2030 and begins science work the next year. While orbiting Jupiter, it will cross paths with Europa 49 times. The mission ends in 2034 with a planned crash into Ganymede — Jupiter’s biggest moon and the solar system's too.
There’s more radiation around Jupiter than anywhere else in our solar system, besides the sun. Europa passes through Jupiter’s bands of radiation as it orbits the gas giant, making it especially menacing for spacecraft. That’s why Clipper’s electronics are inside a vault with dense aluminum and zinc walls. All this radiation would nix any life on Europa’s surface. But it could break down water molecules and, perhaps, release oxygen all the way down into the ocean that could possibly fuel sea life.
Earlier this year, NASA was in a panic that the spacecraft's many transistors might not withstand the intense radiation. But after months of analysis, engineers concluded the mission could proceed as planned.
NASA’s twin Pioneer spacecraft and then two Voyagers swept past Jupiter in the 1970s. The Voyagers provided the first detailed photos of Europa but from quite a distance. NASA’s Galileo spacecraft had repeated flybys of the moon during the 1990s, passing as close as 124 miles. Still in action around Jupiter, NASA’s Juno spacecraft has added to Europa’s photo album. Arriving at Jupiter a year after Clipper will be the European Space Agency’s Juice spacecraft, launched last year.
Like Europa, Jupiter’s jumbo moon Ganymede is thought to host an underground ocean. But its frozen shell is much thicker — possibly 100 miles thick — making it tougher to probe the environment below. Callisto’s ice sheet may be even thicker, possibly hiding an ocean. Saturn’s moon Enceladus has geysers shooting up, but it’s much farther than Jupiter. Ditto for Saturn’s moon Titan, also suspected of having a subterranean sea. While no ocean worlds have been confirmed beyond our solar system, scientists believe they’re out there — and may even be relatively common.
Like many robotic explorers before it, Clipper bears messages from Earth. Attached to the electronics vault is a triangular metal plate. On one side is a design labeled "water words" with representations of the word for water in 104 languages. On the opposite side: a poem about the moon by U.S. poet laureate Ada Limon and a silicon chip containing the names of 2.6 million people who signed up to vicariously ride along.
A severe solar storm that reached Earth on Thursday could stress power grids even more as the U.S. reels from back-to-back major hurricanes, according to space weather forecasters.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) said Thursday that a Coronal Mass Ejection (CME) blasted from the Sun reached Earth at about 11 a.m.
The Space Weather Prediction Center issued multiple warnings and alerts for geomagnetic storm conditions, and by Thursday, the Earth was experiencing G4, or severe, conditions.
NOAA said a severe geomagnetic storm is a major disturbance in Earth’s magnetic field. The storms often have varying intensity between lower levels and severe storm conditions throughout the course of the event.
Geomagnetic storms could impact the power grid, satellites and GPS technology.
"Storm conditions are anticipated to occur overnight as CME progression continues," NOAA said on its website. "Variations due to CME passage will result in periods of weakening and escalation in geomagnetic storm levels."
Earlier this week, NOAA issued a severe geomagnetic storm watch for Thursday into Friday after an outburst from the sun was detected. A geomagnetic storm has the potential of temporarily disrupting power and radio signals.
In preparation for the storm, NOAA notified power plant operators and those controlling spacecraft orbiting the planet to take precautions.
NOAA also notified the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) about possible power disruptions as it deals with the devastation left behind from Hurricane Helene, and now Hurricane Milton, which made landfall near Siesta Key, Florida, on Wednesday night as a Category 3 storm, packing winds up to 120 mph.
Space weather forecasters do not expect the latest solar storm to surpass the one that slammed Earth in May, which was the strongest in more than 20 years.
Florida is far enough south to avoid any power disruptions from the solar surge unless it gets a lot bigger, scientist Rob Steenburgh of NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center told The Associated Press on Wednesday.
"That adds a little bit more to the comfort level," Steenburgh said. "Why we’re here is to let them know so that they can prepare."
Experts are more concerned about potential effects on the power grids in areas slammed by Hurricane Helene two weeks ago, NOAA space weather forecaster Shawn Dahl said.
The storm also may trigger northern lights as far south in the U.S. as the lower Midwest and Northern California, though exact locations and times are uncertain, according to NOAA. Sky gazers are reminded to point their smartphones upward for photos; the devices can often capture auroras that human eyes cannot.
May’s solar storm produced dazzling auroras across the Northern Hemisphere and resulted in no major disruptions.
The sun is near the peak of its current 11-year cycle, sparking all the recent solar activity.
Two pioneers of artificial intelligence — John Hopfield and Geoffrey Hinton — won the Nobel Prize in physics Tuesday for helping create the building blocks of machine learning that is revolutionizing the way we work and live but also creates new threats for humanity.
Hinton, who is known as the godfather of artificial intelligence, is a citizen of Canada and Britain who works at the University of Toronto, and Hopfield is an American working at Princeton.
"These two gentlemen were really the pioneers," said Nobel physics committee member Mark Pearce. "They ... did the fundamental work, based on physical understanding which has led to the revolution we see today in machine learning and artificial intelligence."
The artificial neural networks — interconnected computer nodes inspired by neurons in the human brain — the researchers pioneered are used throughout science and medicine and "have also become part of our daily lives, for instance in facial recognition and language translation," said Ellen Moons, a member of the Nobel committee at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.
Hopfield, whose 1982 work laid the groundwork for Hinton's, told The Associated Press Tuesday, "I continue to be amazed by the impact it has had."
Hinton predicted that AI will end up having a "huge influence" on civilization, bringing improvements in productivity and health care.
"It would be comparable with the Industrial Revolution," he said in an open call with reporters and officials of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.
"Instead of exceeding people in physical strength, it’s going to exceed people in intellectual ability. We have no experience of what it’s like to have things smarter than us. And it’s going to be wonderful in many respects," Hinton said.
"But we also have to worry about a number of possible bad consequences, particularly the threat of these things getting out of control."
The Nobel committee also mentioned fears about the possible flipside.
Moons said that while it has "enormous benefits, its rapid development has also raised concerns about our future. Collectively, humans carry the responsibility for using this new technology in a safe and ethical way for the greatest benefit of humankind."
Hinton shares those concerns. He quit a role at Google so he could speak more freely about the dangers of the technology he helped create.
"I am worried that the overall consequence of this might be systems more intelligent than us that eventually take control," Hinton said.
For his part, Hopfield, who signed early petitions by researchers calling for strong control of the technology, compared the risks and benefits of machine learning to work on viruses and nuclear energy, capable of helping and harming society.
Neither winner was home when they received the news. Hopfield, who was staying with his wife at a cottage in Hampshire, England, said that after grabbing coffee and getting his flu shot, he opened his computer to a flurry of activity.
"I’ve never seen that many emails in my life," he said. A bottle of champagne and bowl of soup were waiting on his desk for him, he added, but he doubted there were any fellow physicists in town to join the celebration.
Hinton said he was shocked at the honor.
"I’m flabbergasted. I had no idea this would happen," he said when reached by the Nobel committee on the phone. He said he was at a cheap hotel with no internet.
Hinton, 76, helped develop a technique in the 1980s known as backpropagation that has been instrumental in training machines how to "learn" by fine-tuning errors until they disappear. It’s similar to the way a student learns from a teacher, with an initial solution graded and flaws identified and returned to be fixed and repaired. This process continues until the answer matches the network’s version of reality.
His team at the University of Toronto later wowed peers by using a neural network to win the prestigious ImageNet computer vision competition in 2012. That win spawned a flurry of copycats and was "a very, very significant moment in hindsight and in the course of AI history," said Stanford University computer scientist and ImageNet creator Fei-Fei Li.
"Many people consider that the birth of modern AI," she said.
Hinton and fellow AI scientists Yoshua Bengio and Yann LeCun won computer science’s top prize, the Turing Award, in 2019.
"For a long time, people thought what the three of us were doing was nonsense," Hinton told told the AP in 2019. "They thought we were very misguided and what we were doing was a very surprising thing for apparently intelligent people to waste their time on."
"My message to young researchers is, don’t be put off if everyone tells you what are doing is silly."
And Hinton himself uses machine learning in his daily life, he said.
"Whenever I want to know the answer to anything, I just go and ask GPT-4," Hinton said at the Nobel announcement. "I don’t totally trust it because it can hallucinate, but on almost everything it's a not-very-good expert. And that’s very useful."
Hopfield, 91, created an associative memory that can store and reconstruct images and other types of patterns in data, the Nobel committee said.
"What fascinates me most is still this question of how mind comes from machine," Hopfield said in a video posted online by The Franklin Institute after it awarded him a physics prize in 2019.
Hinton used Hopfield's network as the foundation for a new network that uses a different method, known as the Boltzmann machine, that the committee said can learn to recognize characteristic elements in a given type of data.
Bengio, who was mentored by Hinton and "profoundly shaped" by Hopfield’s thinking, told the AP that the winners both "saw something that was not obvious: Connections between physics and learning in neural networks, which has been the basis of modern AI."
He said he was "really delighted" that they won the prize. "It’s great for the field. It’s great for recognizing that history."
Six days of Nobel announcements opened Monday with Americans Victor Ambros and Gary Ruvkun winning the medicine prize for their discovery of tiny bits of genetic material that serve as on and off switches inside cells that could one day lead to powerful treatments for diseases like cancer.
The prize carries a cash award of $1 million from a bequest left by the award's creator, Swedish inventor Alfred Nobel. The laureates are invited to receive their awards at ceremonies on Dec. 10, the anniversary of Nobel’s death.
Nobel announcements continue with the chemistry prize on Wednesday and literature on Thursday. The Nobel Peace Prize will be announced Friday and the economics award on Oct. 14.
NASA found the boulders on what has been dubbed "Mount Washburn," a rocky field on the Jezero crater, where an ancient lake is believed to have been located billions of years ago.
The name "Mount Washburn" was given to the field of rocks in honor of a mountain in Yellowstone National Park.
The rover came upon a white-striped rock within the field of blue boulders. The Perseverance science team nicknamed the light-toned boulder with dark speckles "Atoko Point."
While the blue rocks are primarily volcanic basalt, which is typical of Martian terrain, NASA concluded that "Atoko Point" is made of anorthosite-a silica-rich volcanic rock, which has never been documented on Mars.
The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) said Mount Adams typically experiences an earthquake every two to three years, but in September, there were six earthquakes alone, marking the most in a single month since monitoring began in 1982.
The earthquakes were monitored by the USGS Cascades Volcano Observatory (CVO) and Pacific Northwest Seismic Network (PNSN) and ranged in magnitudes from 0.9 to 2.0. None of the earthquakes were felt at the surface, the USGS said.
With only one seismic station near the volcano, the USGS said monitoring capabilities are limited.
CVO and PNSN plan to install temporary seismic stations near Mount Adams to help detect smaller earthquakes while acquiring better estimates of size, location and depth. The data will help scientists assess the significance of the increased seismic activity near the volcano.
With permission from the U.S. Forest Service, CVO will place the temporary stations south and southwest of Mount Adams. Once activated, the data will be transmitted to CVO and PNSN in real-time.
Despite the spike in seismic activity, the USGS says there is no indication that there is cause for concern and the alert level and color code for Mount Adams remains at Green and Normal.
Mount Adams is located in south central Washington, nearly 50 miles west-southwest of Yakima, Washington.
In the north-south trending Mount Adams-King Mountain volcanic field of over 120 smaller volcanos, Mount Adams is the most prominent summit. It is also the second-tallest volcano in Washington and is the state's largest active volcano in volume and area, according to the USGS.
The agency said over the past 12,000 years, there have been four lava flows that started on the apron of the volcano and two vents along the south ridge. The flows have typically only traveled a few miles from their vents.
The last time Mount Adams erupted was between 3,800 and 7,600 years ago, the USGS added.
But one of the biggest threats to people who live near the volcano are lahars, or muddy flows of rock, ash and ice that rush downstream like fast flowing concrete.
The summit, which is covered in ice, also covers up large volumes of hydrothermally weakened rock, which, if weakened by future landslides, could generate lahars.
A comet not seen for more than 80,000 years will be visible from Earth, potentially during two separate time periods over the next month.
Comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS, also known as Comet A3, is believed to have an orbit around the sun of more than 80,000 years, according to earth.com.
The comet was first visible starting on Sept. 27 and will continue until shortly before sunrise on Oct. 2. It is expected to appear like a fuzzy ball with a tail stretching across the sky.
"C/2023 A3 has an orbital period of approximately 80,000 years, classifying it as a long-period comet. This means its behavior and appearance can be unpredictable, with potential changes in brightness and tail development as it approaches the sun," Minjae Kim, a space expert in the University of Warwick's astronomy department, told earth.com.
"If predictions hold, it could be visible to the naked eye, appearing as a fuzzy star with a tail stretching across the sky. Otherwise, binoculars or a small telescope may reveal more detail in the comet’s structure and tail," Kim added.
Sept. 27th also marked perihelion, or closet point to the sun, after which the comet will begin its trip back to the outer solar system, according to WKMG.
Another viewing opportunity, which is expected to have better visibility, will be in the middle of October if the comet survives the trip around the sun, as comets will often break apart as they move closer to the sun.
If the comet survives the trip around the sun, the comet could be visible with the naked eye as it becomes its closest to Earth, with its best visibility expected from Oct. 12 until Oct. 20.
Venomous creatures were spotted washing up on the beaches of the Outer Banks in North Carolina, and the National Park Service sent out a warning about the punch these slugs pack.
The Cape Hatteras National Seashore posted on Facebook that Blue Sea Dragons (Glaucus atlanticus) have been spotted on the beaches.
"This venomous sea slug lives in the open ocean and occasionally gets stranded on land following strong winds," officials from the National Seashore posted to Facebook. "They may only grow to about an inch long, but don't let their size fool you. They pack a punch!"
According to Oceana.org, Blue Sea Dragons go by other names like sea swallow or blue angel and can grow to about 1.3 inches.
The specimen is considered a sea slug and spends most of its life floating upside-down at the surface and staying afloat by storing air bubbles in its stomach, the organization wrote.
Cape Hatteras National Seashore officials say Blue Sea Dragons move through ocean currents feeding on their meal of choice: the Portuguese man o’ war.
"Because their meals consist of such a venomous creature, they are capable of storing that venom for their own defense," the park service wrote. "They concentrate that ingested venom and deliver a sting that is even more powerful! Talk about a fiery bite for such a small dragon."
Since these tiny slugs carry such a strong toxin, park officials advise anyone who comes across one of these blue beauties to admire it from a safe distance and be cautious of others nearby.
"Blue Sea Dragons can travel in groups known as ‘Blue Fleets,’" the post read. "If they are discovered, dead or alive, they remain venomous. Please enjoy this fascinating organism without touching it."
The geomagnetic storm can sometimes cause disruption in communications or electrical blackouts.
The phenomenon can also cause the "Northern Lights" effect at high altitudes, illuminating the night sky with brilliant colors.
Earlier this summer, the dancing lights of the aurora borealis were seen across the U.S. and even in some of the southern states, after the strongest geomagnetic storm in 20 years took place.
Fox News Digital's Sydney Borchers contributed to this report.
A study published last week proposed that dark matter may be responsible for an observable wobble in Mars’ orbit.
The study, published in the peer-reviewed scientific journal Physical Review, postulates the theory that dark matter compromises microscopic, or primordial, black holes.
Unlike astrophysical black holes, these primordial black holes formed when dense pockets of gas collapsed in the seconds after the Big Bang and scattered throughout the universe because of expansion.
Despite being as small as an atom, these primordial black holes would be heavier than thousands of solar masses and constitute dark matter.
First theorized in the 1930s by Swiss astronomer Fritz Zwicky, dark matter is a form of matter undetectable to the human eye. It does not emit light or energy but makes up roughly a quarter of the universe’s mass. Researchers have proposed its existence based on the gravitational pull on other visible matter.
The new study, "Close encounters of the primordial kind," theorizes that dark matter, made up of primordial black holes, is pushing Mars’ orbit slightly off track because of its extreme mass.
The researchers, comprising MIT physicists, backed up their theory with a simulation of Mars’ orbit which aligned with their proposal.
The researchers theorized that these primordial black holes would introduce a wobble into Mars' orbit at least once per decade during zooms through the solar system.
Astronomers can detect such a wobble thanks to advances in telemetry, or measuring the distance between planets.
"We’re taking advantage of this highly instrumented region of space to try and look for a small effect," said co-author and physics professor David Kaiser. "If we see it, that would count as a real reason to keep pursuing this delightful idea that all of dark matter consists of black holes that were spawned in less than a second after the Big Bang and have been streaming around the universe for 14 billion years."
Scientists in Albuquerque, New Mexico, say potentially dangerous asteroids could possibly be deflected by exploding a nuclear warhead more than a mile from its surface and showering it with X-rays to send it in a different direction.
Previous methods, as seen in blockbuster movies like "Armageddon" and "Deep Impact," involved blowing up a nuclear warhead on an asteroid or comet and shattering it into multiple pieces.
But scientists now say the method would change the space object from a lethal bullet headed toward Earth into a shotgun blast of multiple fragments.
Last year, the National Academy of Sciences released a report calling planetary defense a national priority, and according to an ongoing NASA sky survey, the threat is credible.
The sky survey found there are about 25,000 objects big enough to cause varying degrees of destruction to Earth, and only about a third of them have been detected and tracked, according to a press release from the Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque.
Many of the objects move invisibly in the sun’s glare. In 2013, a relatively small object created chaos in Russia while a larger asteroid is credited with ending the age of dinosaurs.
"To most people, the danger from asteroids seems remote," Nathan Moore, a physicist at Sandia National Laboratories said. "But our planet is hit by BB-sized asteroids every day. We call them shooting stars. We don’t want to wait for a large asteroid to show up and then scramble for the right method to deflect it."
Moore’s team conducted several experiments with Sandia’s Z machine, the most powerful pulsed-power machine on Earth, to monitor the deflection of synthetic asteroids hit by Z’s sudden shocks.
While the machine is on Earth, all experiments are affected by gravity, though Moore’s team was able to beat the inevitable force temporarily to create a better simulation of asteroids floating freely in space.
Moore’s experiments used a technique called X-ray scissors, which removed the skewing effect of friction and gravity for a few microseconds.
The X-ray scissors allowed the model to create the effect of redirecting a free-floating asteroid when hit by a series of nuclear-intensity explosions.
Although the experiments were done in a much smaller environment than space, they could be scaled to predict the effects of nuclear explosions on an actual asteroid.
"I started working through the logic of how I could deflect a miniature asteroid in a laboratory just like in outer space," Moore said. "A key fact was that asteroids in outer space aren’t attached to anything. But in a lab, everything is pulled down by Earth’s gravity, so everything is held in place by its gravitational attachment to something else. This wouldn’t let our mock asteroid move with the freedom of one in outer space. And mechanical attachments would create friction that would perturb the mock asteroid’s motion."
And that’s where the X-ray scissors came in. The method allowed scientists to release a mock asteroid the size of a tenth of a gram and made of silica, into the free space vacuum.
The material was suspended by foil eight times thinner than human hair, which vaporized instantly when the Z machine fired.
The silica was then left free-floating as the X-ray burst hit it.
"It was a novel idea," Moore said. "A mock asteroid is suspended in space. For a one-nanometer fall, we can ignore Earth’s gravity for 20 millionths of a second as Z produces a burst of X-rays that sweeps over the mock-asteroid surface 12.5 millimeters across, about the width of a finger.
"The trick is to use just enough force to redirect the flying rock without splitting it into several equally deadly subsections advancing toward Earth," Moore added, referring to a real intercept scenario like the recent NASA DART experiment.
The news comes just days after NASA monitored a "potentially hazardous" asteroid moving past Earth last Tuesday.
NASA told Fox News Digital that the rocky object, which has been named 2024 ON, is 350 meters long by 180 meters wide, which roughly equals 1,150 feet by 590 feet — larger than previous estimates.
NASA has deemed the asteroid "stadium-sized" and reported it was 621,000 miles away from Earth, which is considered relatively close. Davide Farnocchia, a navigation engineer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, told Fox News Digital that an asteroid of this size coming this close to Earth only happens every five to ten years.
Although the asteroid was close enough to Earth to be deemed a "potentially hazardous object," Farnocchia said there is no chance the asteroid would hit Earth. The asteroid would need to be within a couple of hundred miles to be a concern.
The asteroid was one of five that would pass by Earth last week, but the other rocky objects were not expected to come nearly as close as 2024 ON. The four asteroids were between 1.1 to 3.9 million miles away from Earth, and three of the asteroids measured roughly 51 feet in diameter, which is the size of a house.
Fox News Digital’s Andrea Vacchiano contributed to this report.
NASA told Fox News Digital that the rocky object, which has been named 2024 ON, is 350 meters long by 180 meters wide, which roughly equals 1,150 feet by 590 feet – larger than previous estimates.
NASA has deemed the asteroid "stadium-sized" and reported it was 621,000 miles away from Earth on Tuesday morning, which is considered relatively close. Davide Farnocchia, a navigation engineer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, told Fox News Digital that an asteroid of this size coming this close to Earth only happens every five to ten years.
Farnocchia, who works at the laboratory's Center for Near-Earth Object Studies, said that the last time a large meteor entered the Earth's atmosphere was in Russia in 2013. Earth has not been hit by a meteor of 2024 ON's size since prehistoric times.
Although the asteroid is close enough to Earth to be deemed a "potentially hazardous object," Farnocchia said there is no chance the asteroid will hit Earth. The asteroid would need to be within a couple of hundred miles to be a concern.
"We actually check [about the possibility of collision], not just for the immediate future, but also for the next hundred years," the engineer explained. "And there is no possibility of collision in the next hundred years."
The asteroid is one of five that will pass by Earth over the next two days, but the other rocky objects will not come nearly as close as 2024 ON. The four asteroids will be between 1.1 to 3.9 million miles away from Earth, and three of the asteroids measure roughly 51 feet in diameter, which is the size of a house.
One of the asteroids, named 2013 FW13, measures around 510 feet in diameter and will pass by Earth on Wednesday.
NASA's Asteroid Watch Dashboard tracks "asteroids and comets that will make relatively close approaches to Earth." According to a data table, 2024 ON was traveling at around 8.8 kilometers per second on Tuesday morning, which is nearly 20,000 miles per hour.
"The dashboard displays the date of closest approach, approximate object diameter, relative size and distance from Earth for each encounter," the organization's website explains.
"The dashboard displays the next five Earth approaches to within 4.6 million miles (7.5 million kilometers or 19.5 times the distance to the moon); an object larger than about 150 meters that can approach the Earth to within this distance is termed a potentially hazardous object."
Boeing's Starliner spacecraft touched down on Earth early Saturday morning, with two test pilots left behind in space until next year over NASA's concerns that their return was too risky.
Starliner parachuted into New Mexico's White Sands Missile Range six hours after leaving the International Space Station, landing at 12:01 a.m. ET.
"I am extremely proud of the work our collective team put into this entire flight test, and we are pleased to see Starliner’s safe return," Ken Bowersox, associate administrator of Space Operations Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington, said in a statement.
"Even though it was necessary to return the spacecraft uncrewed, NASA and Boeing learned an incredible amount about Starliner in the most extreme environment possible," he added. "NASA looks forward to our continued work with the Boeing team to proceed toward certification of Starliner for crew rotation missions to the space station."
This comes after the June launch of Boeing's long-delayed crew debut and a mission plagued by thruster failures and helium leaks. The return of Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams was in question for months as engineers struggled to understand what was wrong with the spacecraft.
Boeing claimed after extensive testing that Starliner was safe to bring the crew home, but NASA disagreed and instead tapped SpaceX to fly them back to Earth. The SpaceX spacecraft will not launch until the end of this month, so they will remain in space until February.
Wilmore and Williams were initially scheduled to have flown Starliner back to Earth by mid-June, a week after it was launched. However, the flight to the space station faced issues over thruster trouble and helium loss, leading NASA to determine it was too risky to bring them home on Starliner.
After receiving new software updates, the fully automated capsule departed with the crew's blue spacesuits and some old station equipment.
Starliner's crew demo concluded a series of delays and setbacks for the spacecraft.
After the space shuttles retired more than a decade ago, NASA hired Boeing and SpaceX for orbital taxi service. But Boeing faced many problems on its first test flight without a crew in 2019, so it had to try again. The do-over three years later revealed even more issues, and it cost more than $1 billion to complete the needed repairs.
SpaceX's crew ferry flight later this month will be the 10th it has done for NASA since 2020. The Dragon capsule will launch on the half-year expedition with only two astronauts, since two seats are needed to bring Wilmore and Williams back home.
Even prior to launch in early June from Cape Canaveral, Florida, Starliner’s propulsion system was leaking helium. The leak was small and believed to be isolated, but four more were discovered after liftoff. Five thrusters then failed and while four of them were recovered, the problems gave NASA concerns about whether more malfunctions might cause problems with the capsule's descent from orbit.
Boeing conducted numerous thruster tests in space and on the ground over the summer, and believed its spacecraft could safely bring the astronauts back. NASA, however, remained skeptical over the thruster issues and tasked SpaceX with their return.
Flight controllers conducted more test firings of the capsule’s thrusters after undocking, with one failing to ignite. Engineers believe the thrusters become hotter the more they are fired, causing protective seals to swell and obstruct the flow of propellant. None of the parts will be able to be examined, as the section holding the thrusters was tossed just before reentry.
"I want to recognize the work the Starliner teams did to ensure a successful and safe undocking, deorbit, re-entry and landing," Mark Nappi, vice president and program manager of Boeing's Commercial Crew Program, said in a statement. "We will review the data and determine the next steps for the program."
NASA's commercial crew program manager Steve Stich said earlier this week that the space agency still wants to have two competing U.S. companies transporting astronauts into space. NASA hopes SpaceX and Boeing can take turns launching crews until the space station is abandoned in 2030 ahead of its fiery reentry.
"We are excited to have Starliner home safely. This was an important test flight for NASA in setting us up for future missions on the Starliner system," Steve Stich, manager of NASA's Commercial Crew Program, said in a statement after Starliner returned to Earth. "There was a lot of valuable learning that will enable our long-term success. I want to commend the entire team for their hard work and dedication over the past three months."
The mystery behind a "strange noise" that a NASA astronaut heard coming from the Boeing Starliner spacecraft while aboard the International Space Station has been solved, the space agency said Monday.
Astronaut Butch Wilmore first reported the pulsating sound coming from a speaker inside the spacecraft to Mission Control at Johnson Space Center in Houston on Saturday, just days before it was set to leave the station and return to Earth on autopilot.
NASA said in a statement on social media that the pulsing sound from the speaker has since stopped and determined the feedback was the result of an audio configuration between the space station and Starliner.
"The space station audio system is complex, allowing multiple spacecraft and modules to be interconnected, and it is common to experience noise and feedback," NASA said. "The crew is asked to contact mission control when they hear sounds originating in the comm system. The speaker feedback Wilmore reported has no technical impact to the crew, Starliner, or station operations, including Starliner’s uncrewed undocking from the station no earlier than Friday, Sept. 6."
The mystery of the pulsating sound comes as Starliner is slated to undock from the space station empty and attempt to return on autopilot with a touchdown in the New Mexico desert.
Wilmore and astronaut Suni Williams, who have been stuck on the space station since June, are expected to remain in space until February after NASA decided it was too risky to bring the seasoned pilots back to Earth aboard Starliner. The current plan is to bring the astronauts back in a SpaceX capsule.
The astronauts were originally slated for a weeklong trip, but the mission has been mired in problems after thruster failures and helium leaks.
Boeing had counted on Starliner’s first crew trip to revive the troubled spacecraft program after years of delays and ballooning costs. The company had insisted Starliner was safe based on recent thruster tests in both space and on the ground.
Fox News Digital’s Bradford Betz and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
A NASA astronaut at the International Space Station (ISS) on Saturday reported hearing a "strange noise" coming from the Boeing Starliner spacecraft just days before it is set to leave the station and return to Earth on autopilot.
The astronaut, Butch Wilmore, radioed Mission Control at Johnson Space Center in Houston to inquire about the noise.
On an audio recording of the exchange, Wilmore holds up a phone to the speakers so that Mission Control could hear the noise he was referring to. A pulsating sound emanating at steady intervals can be heard through Wilmore’s device.
"Butch, that one came through," Mission Control says after not hearing it the first time. "It was kind of like a pulsating noise, almost like a sonar ping."
"I’ll do it one more time and let you all scratch your heads and see if you can figure out what’s going on," Wilmore tells Mission Control, playing the sound one more time.
Mission Control tells Wilmore the recording will be passed along and that they'll let him know what they find.
Wilmore clarifies that the sound is emanating from the speaker inside the Starliner.
The bizarre sound was first reported by Ars Technica, which cited a recording first captured and shared by Michigan-based meteorologist Rob Dale.
Fox News Digital has reached out to Mission Control and Boeing to inquire if the source of the sound has been identified.
Starliner is slated to undock from the ISS, empty, and attempt to return on autopilot with a touchdown in the New Mexico desert.
NASA decided it was too risky to bring back Wilmore and Suni Williams until February. The astronauts were originally slated for a weeklong trip in early June, but the mission has been mired in problems after thruster failures and helium leaks.
Boeing had counted on Starliner’s first crew trip to revive the troubled spacecraft program after years of delays and ballooning costs. The company had insisted Starliner was safe based on all the recent thruster tests in both space and on the ground.
A new carnivore has come to town — 165 million years ago at least.
The Alpkarakush kyrgyzicus, a new species and genus of theropod dinosaur, has been discovered in Kyrgyzstan by an expedition team of German and Kyrgyz researchers, according to the Bavarian State Natural History Collections in Germany.
Alpkarakush kyrgyzicus is the first theropod dinosaur found in Kyrgyzstan and the "find is one of the most significant in Central Asia," the institution said in a news release.
Before the new species' discovery, no large Jurassic predatory dinosaurs had been known to live in the area around Kyrgyzstan between Central Europe and Eastern Asia, according to the institution.
The first fossils of Alpkarakush kyrgyzicus were uncovered in 2006 by Kyrgyz paleontologist Aizek Bakirov in a mountainous desert area of the country near the city of Tashkumyr.
Between 2006 and last year, more fossils, including skull bones, pelvic vertebrae and forearms, were found.
The dinosaur is believed to be around 30 feet long.
"Particularly impressive is its extremely protruding ‘eyebrow’ on the so-called postorbital bone, a skull bone behind the eye-opening, which indicates the presence of a horn at this point," the institution said. "Other unique features are found on the dorsal vertebrae and the femur."
Alpkarakush kyrgyzicus and Tyrannosaurus rex (T. rex) were both theropods — although T. rex lived later during the Cretaceous period and in different parts of the world — dinosaurs who walked on strong back legs and had shorter front limbs. Modern-day birds evolved from theropods.
Professor Oliver Rauhut of the Bavarian Collection of Paleontology and Geology in Munich, who was a first author of the study published in the Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society, said in a statement: "This discovery closes a huge gap in our knowledge of the Jurassic theropods. It leads us to important new insights into the evolution and biogeography of these animals."
A smaller, juvenile Alpkarakush kyrgyzicus specimen was found at the site along with the adult dinosaur, leading researchers to believe it may have been a parent and child.
Alpkarakush kyrgyzicus is named for a mythological Kyrgyz bird called Alpkarakush that often aids heroes in critical moments and for being found in the Kyrgyz Republic.
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