Daily Archives: April 19, 2021

Human civilization started in Africa. But for thousands of years, humans gradually scattered around the world and built civilizations that turned into countries today. Now, humans are looking up the sky to the Moonand the planets in the solar system, particularly on Mars, and think of the possibility of putting up a human colony outside of Earth.

NASA and other space agencies around the world are planning to put up bases on the Moon and Mars to create a human colony to further human space exploration.

But creating a human settlement on the lunar surface and the Red Planet is not easy. It comes with challenges that they might face when living there.

As John F. Kennedy saidin his famous Rice Moon speech: "We choose to go to the Moon, not because it is easy, but because it is hard."

(Photo: Wikimedia Commons)A vision of a future Moon base that could be produced and maintained using 3D printing.

Science journalist Christopher Wanjek outlined some of the challenges that human settlement o the Moon and Mars might face by comparing what it would be like to live on the Moon versus on Mars, according to Spaceflight Insider.

According to Wanjek, Mars could potentially host human life because it has every element needed to support life, including the night/day cycle, axial tilt, and landscape similar to Earth, and 38% of Earth's gravity.

On the other hand, the Moon is less hospitable because of its zero gravity, fluctuating temperatures (extreme heat and extreme cold), and sharp regolith dust that could tear human lungs.

Wanjek said that the Moon could become like the Antarctica on Earth, where scientists could maintain a permanent infrastructure in the south pole to generate power via solar panels from the shallow angle of sunlight along the crater rims.

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If ice is present in the south pole, they could generate oxygen for drinking water, breathing, and rocket fuel. It would also be possible to grow plants.

But the low gravity on the Moon poses the greatest danger to future settlers because scientists do not know yet what zero gravity might do to the body. Instead of creating human settlements, scientists think that making the Moon another ISS would be better for research in astronomy, geology, biology, and also for tourism.

Mars is more suitable for human settlements, although getting there is also not an easy feat. Science Timespreviously reported that there are still hurdles that need to address before humans can go to the Red Planet.

Inverselisted five dangers before successfully sending humans on Mars. This includes the radiation exposure during the travel to the planet, isolation, and confinement during the nine-month-long journey that disrupts the circadian rhythm, long-distance from Earth, effects of microgravity on the health, and Mars' hostile environment.

Wanjek suggested a few alternatives to human settlement in space other than the Moon and Mars. This could be rotating habitats inside asteroids, planet Mercury which has similar gravity to Mars, Pluto, and Charon.

He also included to the list the moons of Saturn, namely, the very cold Titan, and Enceladus which has hydrothermal vents that can host life other than Earth.

RELATED ARTICLE: 5 Major Threats to Overcome Before Humans Reach Mars

Check out more news and information on the Moonand Marson Science Times.

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Living on the Moon and Mars: Challenges That Humans Might Face - Science Times

The successful landing of the persistent US spacecraft on Mars provided stunning images of the red planet. It wasnt the first successful Mars landing, but it was the fifth for the Americans. And above Mars, another Chinese mission will soon land, and a satellite from the United Arab Emirates, looking into the Martian atmosphere.

The red planet has been in the spotlight for a long time, because its closest neighbor in our solar system has an almost terrestrial character. Mars still has something of the atmosphere and the water flowing at once. The mission of perseverance centers on the intriguing question of whether there is life on Mars.

Dont imagine much of that earthly character

Some scientists, space entrepreneurs and earth-hungry rulers dream of humans on Mars, which is a space colony. But dont imagine much of that friendly earthy character. The defective atmosphere of Mars is made almost entirely of carbon dioxide and has an average temperature of minus 60 degrees. You cant breathe and freeze to death. A colony on Mars means living in a bubble, literally. This would be technically possible; The raw materials needed are available on Mars, and labs have already shown how to use them.

But why would you want to go to Mars as a human? For fun? Go ahead, but youll have to wait at least two years for the return trip to Earth. To start extracting minerals and bring them back to Earth? To do this, it must increase the current raw material prices by a factor of one million or more. As a rule? Colonization of Mars to explore space from there standing on the newspaper of the scene. You think you made a huge leap with that colony, but you became one more pill in the Sahel.

Exploring celestial bodies is a wonderful science. Science has made remarkable discoveries and incredible achievements, such as the successful landing of 50 million kilometers from the Flight Control Center.

Man became possible thanks to the earth

But dreaming about people living on Mars is a misunderstanding of what life is. Man is not the supreme form of life who happens to have chosen Earth as their home. It is a form of life provided by the earth itself.

Other life forms are conceivable. In fact, there is a great chance that other forms of life may exist elsewhere in the universe. For them, Earth would be an uninhabitable Hell, with this toxic oxygen in its atmosphere. But man and other terrestrial life were made for and by this planet. This does not exclude space colonies. Bacteria, rodents, and humans can all live elsewhere in the universe, which is not the point. But survival is not life. This life is not separated from the earth. You wont find it anywhere else.

Commentary is the opinion of Trouw newspaper expressed by members of the editor-in-chief and senior editors.

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Mars is great for science, but it is not a travel destination. Human creation for the sake of this planet - Aviation Analysis Wing

MOSCOW (AP) The Russian state penitentiary service said Monday a decision has been made to transfer imprisoned Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who is in the third week of a hunger strike, to a hospital.

The announcement comes two days after Navalnys physician said his health was deteriorating rapidly and the 44-year-old Kremlin critic could be on the verge of death.

The state prison service, FSIN, said in a statement that Navalny would be transferred to a hospital for convicts located in another penal colony in Vladimir, a city 180 kilometers (110 miles) east of Moscow. According to the statement, Navalnys condition is deemed satisfactory and he has agreed to take vitamin therapy.

Navalnys physician, Dr. Yaroslav Ashikhmin, said Saturday that test results he received from Navalnys family show him with sharply elevated levels of potassium, which can bring on cardiac arrest, and heightened creatinine levels that indicate impaired kidneys. Our patient could die at any moment, he said in a Facebook post.

Navalny went on hunger strike to protest the refusal to let his doctors visit when he began experiencing severe back pain and a loss of feeling in his legs. Russias state penitentiary service has said that Navalny was receiving all the medical help he needs.

In response to the alarming news about Navalnys health this weekend, his allies have called for a nationwide rally on Wednesday, the same day that President Vladimir Putin is scheduled to deliver his annual state of the nation address.

Navalny, Putin's fiercest opponent, was arrested in January upon his return from Germany, where he had spent five months recovering from a nerve agent poisoning he blames on the Kremlin accusations Russian officials have rejected. Navalnys arrest triggered a massive wave of protests all across Russia, the biggest show of defiance in recent years.

Soon after the arrest, a court ordered Navalny to serve 2 1/2 years in prison on a 2014 embezzlement conviction he said was fabricated and the European Court of Human Rights deemed to be arbitrary and manifestly unreasonable. Last month, the politician was transferred to a penal colony east of Moscow, notorious for its harsh conditions.

Navalny has complained about being sleep-deprived due to guards conducting hourly checks on him at night, and said he has developed severe back pain and numbness in his legs within weeks of being transferred to the colony. His demands for a visit from an independent civilian physician were rebuffed by prison officials, and he went on hunger strike on March 31.

In a message from prison on Friday, Navalny said prison officials threatened to force-feed him imminently, using straitjacket and other pleasures.

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Jailed Navalny to be moved to a hospital in another prison - Yahoo News

When researchers from the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) published a study last year on its discovery of 11 new colonies of emperor penguins, they acknowledged an unusual source of assistance students at Stirling High School in Scotland. Inspired by a David Attenborough program on the plight of the iconic bird, the teens and their teacher used satellite mapping imagery from the European Space Agencys Copernicus Sentinel-2, developed an algorithm, and found traces of unknown and unconfirmed colonies. They then passed on their findings to the BAS.

The notion that schoolkids are as capable of accessing Earth Observation data as scientists and government ministers is an indication of how satellite technology has revolutionized scientific research across the globe, and especially of the environment.

Satellites change everything, says Nathalie Pettorelli, a senior research fellow at the Zoological Society of London and author of the book Satellite Remote Sensing and the Management of Natural Resources. Monitoring extraordinarily large territories, providing access through visibility to remote areas, and boosting transparency of countries environmental standards are some of the benefits she cites. They provide you with the opportunity to monitor the Earth globally and monitor aspects of biodiversity that were very much neglected before.

But its not just biodiversity that satellites are aiding. Ever since the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) together with the United States Geological Survey launched the worlds first Landsat satellite in 1972, a continual stream of data on everything from deforestation to glacier retreat to weather patterns has been recorded and archived, providing an incredibly valuable picture of long-term change to scientists, land managers, policy-makers and many others. Today, a veritable constellation of satellites of all shapes and sizes, both public and private, constantly orbit and monitor whats happening on Earth, deepening and extending that pool of knowledge.

When you talk about NASA, many people know only about things like our Mars expedition, says Sachidananda Babu, who is in charge of its Sustainable Land Imaging Technology (SLI-T) program, but they dont realize how much effort we spend on preserving our own planet, Earth.

Over the decades since its first launch, Landsat and other civil satellites have proven useful to ecologists with their ability to monitor plant health, land cover and water, he says. For example, the Thermal Infrared Sensor (TIRS) on Landsat measures evapotranspiration, and western states water management of the Colorado River depends heavily on this measurement.

Babu and his colleagues are now in the process of developing a new tool, which they hope to have ready soon, for identifying potential forest fires. The tool will take data from satellite measurements and calculate moisture index, he says, which can estimate the chances of forest or bush fires. Is fire due to lack of moisture? Or hot air thats in that area? So thats a very advanced thing thats going on right now.

This September will see the launch of Landsat 9, which is, says Babu, mostly identical to Landsat 8 in shape, size, and weight, and it uses the same hardware. But we refined it a little bit. By sending down 14-bit image data instead of 12-bit, he says, you have a more dynamic range of data, and that means you can see even smaller changes on the ground, which enhances the quality of the data.

As program manager of NASAs In-space Validation of Earth Science Technologies (InVEST), Babu also works in the relatively new field of CubeSats. A new, low-cost pathway to research, these can, he explains, provide trial runs for new technologies in space. So far, these have included compact instruments to measure evapotranspiration and radio occultation measurements that can measure root zone soil moisture.

CubeSats are the best way to try out whether that technology is really useful, he says. To do that, we put that one specific part of the technology on a satellite and fly it. We see if it works well, then we can infuse the technology into a bigger program.

Providing higher resolution imagery than civil satellites, the pint-sized CubeSat at anywhere from 10 to 240 square centimeters in size is also used for commercial and educational purposes, and for scientific research. Educational institutions and non-profits in the U.S. can send their CubeSats into space using rockets, belonging to NASA or private companies such as Virgin Orbit, SpaceX or Rocket Labs, the latter of which includes a Book My Launch tab on its webpage. They can also be launched directly from the International Space Station on a Cygnus orbiter.

More than a hundred CubeSats have already been selected and taken into space as part of NASAs Educational Launch of Nanosatellites (ELaNa) Missions, and Babu credits their success to fostering close working relationships with the principal investigators of the selected proposals. What we do is take personal interest and mentor the team, he says. Calibrated and traceable measurements are required for any impactful science measurements looking at minute changes.

But with such complex data and so much of it available, how can the people who need it make sense of it all? Enter initiatives like Digital Earth Africa (DEA), a unique platform that democratizes the capacity to process and analyze satellite data.

A successful pilot study involving five African countries proved that better use of Earth Observation data had significant benefits for decision making, national statistics, resource management and innovation on the African continent, says DEAs managing director Adam Lewis. DEA also created the Africabased leadership team that produced the vision, mission and principles the initiative, which is funded by the Helmsley Charitable Trust and the Australian government.

The platforms sources of information are the time series data produced by civil satellites, especially the Landsat series and Sentinel-1 and Sentinel-2 constellations. These are underexploited because the satellites have advanced so quickly that people are unable to keep up with the big data they produce, says Lewis. So there is immense untapped potential.

DEA is overcoming those difficulties by doing some of the heavy lifting for the data users, providing the data in an analysis-ready form, accessible in the cloud, and with the open data cube as a processing system what DEA calls decision-ready data.

What we are striving for with our approach is information that is close enough to a decision-makers problem that they can see how they can engage with the products, says Lewis. Telling a decision-maker that youve got satellite data can be pretty abstract for them. Its not their job to know how relevant that is. But if we can say we are mapping the surface water of Africa through time, how it has changed, and are updating it, then they can identify and link it into their decision-making process.

To use his example, observations that map surface water can show where water has been seen in the past, says Lewis. The fact that it hasnt been seen in certain places for 10 or 15 years doesnt mean its not going to come back and be there again. There are patterns, and we can use the patterns of the past to understand the future.

Founded just two years ago, DEA has, over the past year, made food security another priority by developing a crop map area product. We can produce the sort of information on crops that Earth observation can give, like, how green is the countryside? How green is it compared to a normal year? Is that an indicator of drought? Now, in a particular country or region, an agronomist or a company might say, thats an indication that farmers in this area should be planting at this point, or not planting. That, he adds, then gets communicated to those farmers in ways that make sense.

Platforms like DEA with its training material and mapping and analysis tools are already proving useful to ecosystem scientists. Wetlands can be monitored, says Lewis. Forest can be monitored. We can look at land degradation. All these things can be done.

At the moment, DEA is not using data from CubeSats because their data is not free and open, and they dont give universal and automatic daily coverage. But DEA is starting to explore how CubeSat data can nonetheless still be effectively used alongside that of other satellites. It is quite possible for a country to bring in high resolution data from a CubeSatand to use the data in conjunction with those lower-resolution earth observing satellites that the USGS and Copernicus run. It is a really interesting area.

For Pettorelli, it is nonetheless crucial that access to earth monitoring tools remains open and free. You can really see the boom in science as Landsat opened its archive for free, she points out.

Theres an important message behind that, which is, the more we show that this is transformational, the more it becomes really important to protect those resources so we can continue to do what we do on the long term and monitor, for example, the effectiveness of various actions. Because they not only give you access to remote places on the earth, they allow you to look at things over a long time, she says. So its hugely important to continue to protect that, for humanity as a whole.

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How satellite mapping technology is revolutionizing the way we see Earth - Landscape News