Daily Archives: February 5, 2022

Early chances for life on Mars might have been diminished by meteorites.

A new study suggests that a period of heavy cratering on the Red Planet (and elsewhere in the solar system) persisted 30 million years longer than thought. Studies of the Late Heavy Bombardment, as this period is called, also has implications for the rise of life on Earth.

The new study is largely based upon a meteorite known as Northwest Africa (NWA) 7034, nicknamed "Black Beauty." The meteorite includes part of the ancient crust of Mars during the period considered for study, which is nearly 4.5 billion years ago.

Related:Scientists spot water ice under the 'Grand Canyon' of Mars

A fresh look at the meteorite (first found in 2013) found signs of "shocking", or very high-intensity damage during a meteorite impact. A proxy of such shocking is an element called zircon, which only occurs during the largest and most powerful meteorite impacts.

"The type of shock damage in the Martian zircon ... has been reported from all of the biggest impact sites on Earth, including the one in Mexico that killed off the dinosaurs, as well as the moon, but not previously from Mars," study lead author Morgan Cox, a Ph.D. candidate at Curtin University in Australia, said in a statement.

Black Beauty is about 4.45 billion years old, which has larger implications for the rise of life on Mars. Previously, a majority of studies suggested that large meteorite impacts on Mars ceased 30 million years before that period, or roughly 4.85 billion years ago.

Early Mars was considered a warmer and wetter environment, with a thicker atmosphere that may have allowed life to persist on the surface. Over the eons, however, the Red Planet lost most of its atmosphere and today is very arid.

The amount of water available on the surface or underground today is highly debated; a study released just weeks ago, for example, suggests that a purported polar underground water reserve may just be volcanic rock. Meanwhile, an independent study of NASA Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter images suggests water may have persisted on the surface longer than previously suggested.

Water is one metric that might suggest a life-friendly environment, but meteorites would also be important. If an area is continually pummeled by space rocks, that provides a less stable spot for microbes to persist.

"Prior studies of zircon in Martian meteorites proposed that conditions suitable for life may have existed by 4.2 billion years ago based on the absence of definitive shock damage," co-author and planetary scientist Aaron Cavosie, who is also from Curtin, said in the same statement.

"Mars remained subject to impact bombardment after this time, on the scale known to cause mass extinctions on Earth. The zircon we describe provides evidence of such impacts, and highlights the possibility that the habitability window may have occurred later than previously thought, perhaps coinciding with evidence for liquid water on Mars by 3.9 to 3.7 billion years ago."

It is likely that other Martian meteorites will need to be examined or re-examined for evidence of zircon, in an effort to further support the findings, however. A study based on the research was published in Science Advances on Wednesday (Feb. 2).

Follow Elizabeth Howell on Twitter@howellspace. Follow uson Twitter@Spacedotcomand onFacebook.

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The chances of early life on Mars faced a meteorite problem - Space.com

A UFO conspiracy theorist claims to have uncovered "proof" of alien life in a NASA photo from Mars which he insists shows a small pink extraterrestrial on the red planet.

Self-proclaimed expert Scott C Waring says thephoto shows a foot-long pink alien watching the Mars rover "from a safe distance".

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Waring said the sighting was "100% proof of intelligent life" after making the discovery from his home in Taiwan.

Writing on his UFO Sightings Daily blog, he said: "Everyone here knows I love to comb through NASA photos. Well, I came across something unique...something that is 100% proof of intelligent life."

He went on: "There is a person laying down watching the NASA Mars rover from a safe distance away.

"The person is about 1 foot tall, 0.3 meters, and is laying down, pinkish upper chest, neck, and face, reddish hair, wearing a dark suit, but has a grey object over one shoulder... looks like a backpack of some sort.

"There are even footprints behind the person leading up to the location they chose to lay down at."

However, not everyone was convinced about Scott's find.

Commenting online, one person wrote: "So this alien is casually laying on her left side with the left hand supporting her head and calmly watching the rover... yeah, I can see that!"

Another added: "Time to delete this c***."

A third, referencing the 2015 film Martian, joked: "Is Matt Damon still up there?"

Scott C Waring set up UFO Sightings Daily in 2010, and it quickly became one of the most popular sites for UFO enthusiasts.

In June 2017, his fans were shocked when hiswebsite was mysteriously closed downbriefly.

On the front page of his website, he wrote: "My last post. Thanks for the seven years of support.

"We have accomplished a lot together."

Some conspiracy theorists claimed the site had been shut down by the authorities or a secret agency, but Scott said he had stopped because UFO enthusiasts like himself weren't being taken seriously.

"This is serious stuff that has depths that even I can't fathom," he fumed.

"It deserves serious thought and research, not contempt and ridicule."

There is a person laying down watching the NASA Mars rover from a safe distance away

Thankfully, for all fans of aliens, his website soon returned.

Last month, Waring claimed to have discoveredproof of a huge alien base on Marsthat NASA doesn't want us to know about.

In a bizarre clip, he tells fans: "Hey guys, I got something kind of interesting for you - it's a 25km facility on the planet Mars."

He goes on: "You can't see it, but I can on my photo programme."

Among Waring's other more outlandish claims are that he saw a10,000-year-old alien face carved on Mars.

Alongside the image of this apparent Martian Mount Rushmore, he wrote: "I found an ancient alien face carved into the top side of the mountain. It shows the side profile of an almost human-like alien species."

Some of Waring's findings have irritated other members of the UFO-expert community, who argue that his more eccentric claims undermine the entire profession.

Speaking toExpress.co.ukafter Waring's site shut down in 2017, Nigel Watson, author of the UFO Investigations Manual, said: "I think he was genuinely trying to find and share UFO sightings and anomalies captured by the cameras of the International Space Station and other space vehicles, but the sheer quantity of his 'discoveries' undermined their quality.

"How many people really believe his photographic evidence that everything from massive skyscrapers to squirrels exist on the surface of Mars?"

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I found a 1ft tall pink alien on Mars rover camera & its 100% proof of intelligent life, claims UFO h... - The US Sun

Athens, Greece Greece has rejected Turkish accusations that its border guards stripped and summarily expelled 12 asylum seekers who later froze to death near its border.

It is Turkeys responsibility to prevent illegal departures, said Notis Mitarakis, Greeces migration minister, referring to a 2016 agreement between Turkey and the European Union.

The lawsuit of an expelled Iranian woman, filed in international court this week, could prove that Greece has systematically pushed asylum seekers away for the past two years.

The lawsuit filed on Tuesday at the United Nations Human Rights Committee accuses Greece of summary expulsion and refoulment the exposure of an asylum seeker to danger and possible death, a crime under the Geneva Convention of 1951.

I was pushed back from Greece six times, said the claimant, Parvin, a trained psychologist, in a videotaped statement released by the Berlin office of theEuropean Center for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR), the legal aid group handling her case.

A Greek officer arrested me and put me in a dirty cell, in cargo containers, packing us in with no air. Nothing to eat. No toilet. They beat me, kids, and also [a] pregnant woman. They took our cellphone, also our food and clothes. I was handcuffed, beaten, shot at, teargassed, tortured and nearly killed, she said.

What makes Parvins case important is that during her first two attempts to cross the border from Turkey to Greece, in February 2020, she managed to keep her mobile phone, and kept video and GPS locations.

The data, included in her lawsuit, have been processed by Forensic Architecture, a research agency based at Goldsmiths, University of London.

They reveal that Parvin crossed into Greek territory and was held at Neo Heimonio, Iasmos and Soufli police stations, in each of which she filmed her holding cell.

At no location was she processed for deportation, which would have entailed an opportunity to apply for asylum.

At Neo Heimonio, she said she was tied to a chair and tortured, and her life was threatened.

In a chilling echo of the stripping of the dozen asylum seekers, she said her jacket was never returned to her, and the men expelled with her were left with T-shirts in 4C (39F) weather.

Whats become very clear is that the Greek government has created black sites, has created a zone of lawlessness along the border. Thats wholly unacceptable, Pavlos Eleftheriadis, professor of public law at the University of Oxford, told Al Jazeera.

I want to tell my story because I want justice. I want my human rights to be recognised and I want this system to change, Parvin said.

Parvins lawsuit is the latest in a string of lawsuits against Greece for summary expulsions.

No fewer than 32 others were filed last year with the European Court of Human Rights at Strasbourg, which communicated them to Greece on December 2.

Panayotis Dimitras, head of the Greek Helsinki Monitor, which litigates against human and minority rights violations, said such a large batch of ECHR cases on the same broad topic has never happened before.

The government has been claiming all around that anyone who says that there are illegal pushbacks is a liar, is an agent of Turkey or is propagating Turkish propaganda, Dimitras told Al Jazeera. Is the [European] court propagating Turkish propaganda?

Also new is the cruel and degrading treatment of the plaintiffs on Greek soil.

We claim that this extent of torture, etc, is unprecedented. Not even during the junta did we have so many cases, said Dimitras, referring to the seven-year colonels dictatorship that ruled Greece until 1974.

Before and after the dictatorship, however, Greece kept a high profile on human rights.

It was a founding signatory to the Geneva Convention on the Status of Refugees in 1951, under which it is now being prosecuted.

It used to be a tenet of Greek foreign policy to highlight Turkeys detentions of journalists, politicians and activists.

But Greece began to break with that policy in 2017, when it blocked a European Union statement at the United Nations criticising Chinas human rights record.

The previous year, China had bought a 35-year lease of the Greek port of Piraeus, and had become one of the countrys biggest investors.

Asked about the change in policy at the time, then-Foreign Minister Nikos Kotzias told Al Jazeera: I respect that the Chinese have a different opinion on human rights.

What worries human rights advocates is that the increased scale of pushbacks suggests they have become government policy.

If you look back in time, it was primarily the coast guard and border guards who engaged in pushbacks; but we saw in Parvins case that she was detained 200km [124 miles] inland, said Nils Muiznieks, former European human rights commissioner and now European regional director for Amnesty International.

In Amnestys own work, weve seen expulsion from deep within Greek territory so its not just people at the border, its law enforcement more broadly with political cover. Its not rogue actors but its become a system its become policy in fact, but not in name, and not acknowledged, he told Al Jazeera.

Parvins description supported this impression of collusion across state services.

She reported that army commandos in black balaclavas were involved in the final stage of expulsion across the Evros river, which forms the border with Turkey.

Aid groups such as Aegean Boat Report and Legal Centre Lesvos have recorded dozens of similar observations during pushbacks at sea.

The Greek Helsinki monitor said that during the past three years, it has sent more than 200 cases of summary expulsion, including torture, rape and robbery, to 20 Greek prosecutors, to the National Agency for Transparency and to the Greek Ombudsman.

None has resulted in a prosecution.

I am shocked that the Greek courts are not investigating, said Eleftheriadis. The Greek courts, if they are independent, have to risk becoming unpleasant to the Greek government.

We dont expect anything from prosecutors, said Dimitras. Who promotes the prosecutor from the court of first instance to appeals, and from appeals to the supreme court? The government.

Ignoring the problem internally risks reputational damage and exposure internationally, said Eleftheriadis.

The consequences for the reputation of Greece are already happening, he told Al Jazeera. All journalists who write about these matters in the international press take the same view they accept that pushbacks are routine, and they accept that Greece is not a place where the rule of law is respected.

He also said the issue did not get attention in the Greek press, but everyone can make the connection.

If you dont respect the rule of law in one area, especially an area where you might get political benefit, you might not respect the law somewhere else, too, he said. Its not something you can carefully isolate. In terms of creating a hospitable environment for foreign direct investment, Im sure its going to reflect very badly on the standing of Greece.

The centre-right New Democracy government, in power since 2019, has made the pursuit of multinational investors a signature policy.

Its successful courtship of companies like Microsoft, Amazon, Volkswagen and Citron has been broadly publicised.

Yet, Greece continues to rank poorly among developed economies in transparency and rule of law evaluations.

Parvin claimed to have heard English, French and possibly German during her numerous detentions, raising questions about the possible collusion of European forces during illegal Greek expulsions.

During the crisis of March 2020, when Turkey encouraged refugees to storm Greek borders, Austria, Poland and other EU members sent elite police units to the Greek border. And lawsuits for pushbacks have been brought against other EU frontier states.

Last year, the Greek Helsinki Monitor joined a group of aid organisations to file a lawsuit against the European Border and Coast Guard (Frontex) for failing to prevent crimes it witnesses.

In December 2020, members of the European Parliament called on Frontex chief Fabier Leggeri to resign on suspicion that his agency had turned a blind eye to pushbacks.

A European parliamentary committee investigation concluded last July that collusion could not be proven.

Apart from possible criminal collusion at the border, there is a policy vacuum in the EU that leaves Greece very much alone to face flows of refugees and asylum seekers that the Greek economy has difficulty absorbing.

Under EU rules, asylum seekers must apply at the first EU member in which they arrived.

In the first nine months of last year, Greece registered 4.8 percent of EU asylum applications, although it is home to 2.4 percent of the EU population and its per capita GDP is among the EUs five lowest.

Greece and other external border countries have called for a solidarity mechanism that shares the burden of asylum applications with other EU states. More than a year of discussion has not led to agreement.

EU attitudes towards migration were hardened when Turkey and Belarus encouraged refugees to storm European borders in March 2020 and last year, in an attempt to put pressure on the bloc.

These two incidents have helped turn a humanitarian crisis into a security issue.

Al Jazeera has learned that further lawsuits against Greece are in the works.

For the moment, there is no official reaction from the government on how they will be rebutted.

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Lawlessness at the border mars Greeces reputation over migration - Al Jazeera English

Based on visual and theoretical evidence, astronomers think that Mars has ice in caves that were carved out by volcanic activity. Spacecraft orbiting Mars have captured skylight openings and pit craters that could lead to caves. Based on new research, these caves might have the right conditions for preserving ice and potentially even frozen evidence of life. A recent study by Norbert Schorghofer at the Planetary Science Institute sought to determine where Martian caves might have ice and what these cave ice formations could look like.

Mars gets far colder than any known cave on Earth and is also much drier. On average, Mars stays below freezing all the time, and underground caves likely stay around the yearly average temperature because they are too deep below the surface to be affected by daily and seasonal variations. This is important because it means ice could be found in caves anywhere on Mars where the average temperature is below freezing.

Some caves on Earth are a lot colder than surface temperatures due to the shape of the cave or airflow patterns. Because of the low gravity and thin atmosphere, Martian caves cannot be cooled by airflow and evaporation in the same way according to the authors calculations. This means that cave temperatures are determined almost entirely by the local average temperature, which the author predicts would limit ice to the colder latitudes. This prediction contradicts previous research, where a group of scientists concluded that ice caves should be able to exist all over Mars. Until people can directly observe caves on Mars, it will be very difficult to determine which conclusion is correct.

Under certain conditions, water vapor can turn directly into solid ice, a process known as reverse sublimation. Due to caves on Mars that can contain ice always remaining below freezing temperatures, liquid cannot form in them. Because of this, Martian cave ice is predicted to be hoarfrost. Hoarfrost is different from frozen dew, which can also be known as frost, because it is formed by reverse sublimation. Hoarfrost can sometimes be found in caves on Earth.

The majority of the Martian surface is extremely old, so ice has had a long time to form. Furthermore, volcanic caves on Mars may last far longer than the caves on Earth due to the lower gravity and thin atmosphere. This suggests that enormous hoarfrost deposits might form in Martian caves over millions of years. Sublimation crystals can form on any surface and may be more likely to form on the ceiling, though the reasons for this are not well-understood. Ice could only get so thick on the ceiling of the cave though, at a certain point, these structures would get too heavy and would collapse.

Caves are uniquely ideal for microbes to grow in and develop due to factors like temperature and light. These caves full of ice on Mars could have once been home to living things, and its possible the ice has preserved evidence of this life for us to find one day.

When ice crystallizes from the vapor phase, it can take on a wide range of shapes. However, it is unknown which shapes it would take on at Martian temperatures and humidity. Because of the very low temperatures in the caves, there would be no water dripping down and freezing, so stalagmites and stalactites would not form. This is one way that cave ice could look very different than on Earth.

It may be possible to explore caves on Mars in the near future due to advances in technology. Researchers are developing robots capable of operating in the dangerous Martian environment and all-terrain drones that can travel safely in small areas. These small vehicles could carry tiny tools or sampling equipment for the scientific exploration of extraterrestrial caves.

One day, these caves could be used as radiation shields for future human exploration and even habitation. The ice in the caves would be a valuable resource at this point, since humans need water for so many activities. However, we will need to answer more questions and do more research before this can occur, like examining ancient cave ice and investigating hoarfrost in caves on Earth to better understand what similar places could be like on Mars.

Link:

Could there be ice in caves on Mars? - Sciworthy

By John Custodio

In mid-January, Mars Inc. announced that the well-known M&M anthropomorphized mascots would be getting an update to be more inclusive to modern American values and woke culture. There are two main problems with this. The move is simply a dumb advertisement, but also a distraction from child slavery lawsuits against Mars, Nestle and Hershey that were popularized online recently.

As Washington Post columnist John Paul Brammer said in his opinion article about the M&M debacle, if you want to make a man more progressive, you adjust his personality. If you want to update a woman, evidently, you give her new shoes. Although the mascots are animated chocolate-and-sugar candies with no anatomical male or female characteristics, the two feminine-presenting characters are given new shoes, with the green M&M swapping boots for sneakers, and dropping the Ms title before their colored name. No longer Ms Green, simply Green, they are accompanied by the masculine-presenting candies who have been given entirely new outlooks on their advertisement lives. Red is nicer, Yellow is no longer a bumbling idiot, and Orange panders to the younger generations with the M&M marketing team saying he is one of the most relatable characters with Gen-Z, which is also the most anxious generation.

While some older ideas and mascots are in need of desperate redesign or removal, such as the Washington Redskins or my hometowns Native American Warrior head, this is simply a dumb ploy to give popular loudmouths like Tucker Carlson something to complain about. While negative stereotypes are constantly played up for commercial purposes, I doubt the harm done to women by having a green candy created over 80 years ago wear heels in advertisements will the thing that undoes all feminist movements. It seems like a cheap and large advertisement to get talk show hosts to discuss not only the change, but the arguments about wokeness and changing old mascots. The argument continues and continues, bouncing from shows like InfoWars on the right to Hasan Piker on the left and at the heart, it is just a corporation trying to sell more slave labor chocolate.

The change is simply a clever distraction from allegations of child slavery made by six African men that was shut down by the U.S. Supreme Court. Justice Clarence Thomas wrote the decision, with the court ruling business decisions made in the United States had no impact on forced labor. The men claimed they were tricked into joining the workforce before being trafficked from Mali to the Ivory Coast, with one man working for two years without pay at the age of 11. While the lawsuit was ruled 8 1 in favor of the corporations, the marketing teams of these supercompanies can never rest and have to remind first world countries to think of the chocolate and lovable characters, not the actual lives used, abused and tossed aside to bring it to them.

Instead of human rights violations taking center stage in the debates on Fox and the Today Show, Mars Inc. pits both sides against each other instead of agreeing on the true enemy: massive corporations profiting from human suffering, and the 1%.

Image via Flickr

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Mars Inc. diverts attention with campaign The Oswegonian - Oswegonian

The confectionary wit of Mars, Inc.as captured by its marquee candy, M&Mshas long been the companys ability to keep heat off its chocolate until it successfully lands. (Hence: Melts in your mouth, not in your hand.)

So it is, with the Beijing Winter Olympics set to begin Friday, that the food manufacturing giant has, in geopolitical terms, largely dodged criticism while continuing its play for the appetites of China, the worlds fastest-growing consumer economy.

Despite being the only U.S. company to have partnered directly with the Beijing Organizing Committeefor which its Snickers brand serves as the official chocolate supplierMars has avoided the kind of scorn thats confronted other American businesses with less intimate ties to the host of this years Games.

Those predicates may explain, if somewhat paradoxically, why Mars has been made to sweat less than its American corporate brethren: the organizing committees sponsors tend to be much less searchable online than, say, the International Olympic Committees.

Mars did not respond to a request for comment.

Coca-Cola, Intel, Visa and Airbnb, which are among the premier corporate partners to the IOC, have endured persistent (if ultimately ineffective) pressure campaigns from activists and politicians. Last summer, senior executives for those four companies, as well as IOC sponsor Proctor & Gamble, were called before a bipartisan Congressional Committee for a hearing titled, China, Genocide and the Olympics. There, they were made to publicly address their moral obligations to take a stand against Chinas human rights violations.

The harsh glare of political and media scrutiny has carried forth to this weeks Opening Ceremony, even though none of the 13 sponsors in the Olympic Partner Program have made any significant concessions. (Intel backed off and apologized to the Communist government in December, shortly after sending a letter to its suppliers that directed them not to source products from a Chinese region, where U.S. officials have said Muslim Uyghurs are exploited for forced labor.)

Meanwhile, the patronage of Mars, whose global headquarters in suburban Washington sits just 13 miles from the Capitol, has mostly flown under the radar. That has been particularly exasperating to Pema Doma, campaigns director for Students for a Free Tibet. Mars, Doma argues, cannot even fall back on the justification that IOC partners cite.

They are not a company that is consistently sponsoring Olympic Games, Doma said in a telephone interview. They dont need favorable recognition from the IOC, whereas other companies have expressed that if [they] dropped out of this , it could impact future Olympics.

(Mars has had past Olympic involvements, including as the lone worldwide food sponsor of the 1992 Games in Barcelona.)

Indeed, even within the short lineage of official Olympic chocolate suppliers, Mars has coasted. Ahead of the 2012 Summer Games, the London Organizing Committee was forced to respond to criticism about its paid partnership with Cadbury, owing to public concerns in Britain about increasing rates of childhood obesity. Japanese candy maker Meiji, a gold partner for Tokyo 2020, was later made to defend itself against charges of violating the local committees codes of conduct by the sourcing of its palm oil.

Last summer, Domas group thought it had made some headway outside Mars corporate offices in New Jersey, where protesters sought to deliver an open letter calling on the company to cancel its sponsorship because of Chinas human rights record. The letters signatories included a Tibetan and Uyghur survivor of [Chinese Communist Party] atrocities.

Doma said that Students for a Free Tibet initially targeted Mars after noticing it was the only non-Chinese-state-owned company publicly listed as a sponsor of the Beijing Organizing Committee. A few months earlier, Mars had launched a social advocacy initiative, #HereToBeHeard, to help shape a more inclusive business environment and create a world where all women can thrive.

For Doma, Mars hashtag campaign seemed like an obvious jumping-off point.

Maybe this company would like to hear from women who feel this world isnt equitable because of occupation and genocide, she said.

After initially being rebuffed, Doma recalled that Mars eventually sent two public relations staffers to receive the activists letter in the company parking lot, one of whom appeared to be visibly moved by the groups pleadings. That staffer offered Doma her email address and assurances that the message was received, Doma says, but did not respond to multiple emails in the weeks that followed. (The staffer, a Mars senior manager, did not respond to emailed questions from Sportico.)

For Doma, the experience in Hackettstown, N.J., offered a lesson in the defense mechanism of PR slow play, something she says her group has learned from as it has since moved on to challenge other companies with Olympic ties. Mars, meanwhile, had kept the Beijing Games heat off entirely until two weeks ago, when the companys latest social awareness campaignfor more inclusive representations of M&Msraised the eyebrows and tweeting fingers of one international human rights activist.

@MarsGlobal to make M&Ms more inclusive as it sponsors the Beijing 2022 Uyghur Genocide Olympics, wrote Hillel Neuer, the executive director of the Swiss-based U.N. Watch.

Notwithstanding that, and the lone grumblings of a Tennessee Congressional candidate, the candy shell remained perfectly intact.

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Mars Unattacked: Candy Maker and Olympic Sponsor Skates to Beijing - Sportico

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said in a Lex Friedman podcast published on YouTube that sending people to Mars in the current conditions will cost a trillion dollars.

We can't colonize Mars because it's too expensive for now. At the moment, sending people to Mars will cost one trillion dollars. The fact is that one rocket is not enough, people need medical equipment, means of communication, the businessman specified.

He also said that he wants to build self-sustaining colony cities using underground hydroponic farms, which will use solar energy. This will provide conditions for growing crops and food for people.

Musk noted that he plans to land people on Mars within five to ten years, and now his engineers are looking for ways to reduce the cost of getting colonists and cargo to the Red Planet.

Previously, Musk said that the exploration of Mars will lead to human casualties, but it will be a glorious adventure and an incredible experience.

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Too expensive: Musk called the cost of colonizing Mars - The Times Hub

KINGSTON, R.I. Jan. 3, 2022 Thirteen University of Rhode Island mechanical engineering students are working with NASA and other prestigious universities on a project that could cut in half the travel time for a human mission to Mars.

The project involves nuclear thermal propulsion, which scientists and engineers say can get astronauts to Mars more quickly and safely than they can with current chemical propulsion and technology. The students are enrolled in Professor Bahram Nassersharifs senior capstone mechanical engineering class, which spends a year working on problems or projects from industry and then delivers design and/or production recommendations, prototypes and more.

When Nassersharif, distinguished university professor, capstone design director and professor and Nuclear Engineering Program director, first set up the project, he envisioned a four-student team.

I introduced the project at the start of the class in September and there was so much interest, I decided to create three separate teams, Nassersharif said. Since the very beginning, they have been very dedicated to the project. The three teams all work well together and with their colleagues on the teams at other universities. I am very impressed with their communication and organizational skills.

According to Nassersharif, the project involves a proposed nuclear thermal propulsion system with 19 fuel tubes partially filled with uranium metal. The uranium melts at a temperature of 2,070 degrees Fahrenheit. The work of the URI students centers on getting the fuel tubes to spin fast enough to spin the uranium liquid metal at startup, during the bulk of the journey, and at completion so that the liquid uranium stays attached to the walls of the tubes and does not escape. In other words, the students are working on a system that generates centrifugal force. To produce the necessary spinning, hydrogen would run through the walls of the rocket, cooling the fuel tubes. And as the hydrogen heats up, it becomes the propellant that exits out of the rockets nozzle and sends the spacecraft on its way.

Advantages of thermal nuclear propulsion

So what are the advantages of nuclear thermal propulsion over the current and best chemical rockets in use today?

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Pennsylvania State University College of Engineering, University of Michigan College of Engineering and the University of Alabama, Huntsville, are the other academic collaborators.

The URI students are focused on three parts of the project, all of which are integrated with the work of the other collaborators.

The URI teams made two presentations in class during the fall semester and will deliver two major design presentations during the spring semester, a build-test report and final design showcase, which will include a working model. Michael Houts, the nuclear research manager at NASAs Marshall Space Flight Center, participated in the fall presentations by Zoom.

URI students are performing important research related to the Centrifugal Nuclear Thermal Rocket (CNTR), and we are extremely glad they are part of the research team, Houts said recently. Their work is excellent, and they continue to make significant contributions to the advancement of the CNTR high performance space propulsion concept.

Student Jacob Murphy of Coventry said, The goal of his team is to develop, by the end of the spring semester, a prototype 3D model of the engine. Our entire group is only focused on the mechanical portion of the rocket.

Basically a nuclear reaction heats the uranium, which then heats the hydrogen, which then becomes the rockets propellant, said Connor Venagro, also a member of the 3D model team from Cranston.

Seeds of the project

The seeds of the project were sown when Nassersharif met NASAs Houts, the nuclear research manager at NASAs Marshall Space Flight Center, at a conference of the American Nuclear Society. One of Nassersharifs masters degree students, Miguel Lopez, talked with the professor and Houts about the project, and then they decided to develop a proposal. It was submitted to NASAs Rhode Island Space Grant Consortium at Brown University, which provided funding for the project. Houts is the NASA mentor to the URI students.

One of the great things about this project is that our students meet (remotely) with students from the other schools and they talk about their projects, which are different from URIs. But being able to share ideas helps connect all of the students to the wide ranging work being done on this, Nassersharif said.

The buzz among students in the classroom in URIs Fascitelli Center for Advanced Engineering was palpable one afternoon as they discussed the project and what it means to them.

Part of the problem with a chemical rocket (traditional rocket) is the amount of time it would take to propel it to Mars, said Marco DeFruscio, a mechanical engineering major from Providence. Being able to get to Mars in an efficient manner is the goal of this project. There is lots of competition to prove that we can get humans to Mars.

In the 1960s, NASA worked on nuclear propulsion for its rockets, but fears around putting astronauts next to a nuclear fuel source, and public controversies around nuclear power over the decades, made it difficult to proceed with that option, according to Zachary Hermanson of Woonsocket.

But this technology is very similar to what we use already in our submarines and surface ships, Hermanson said.

All of us in Team 1 have worked in the nuclear submarine arena, said North Kingstowns Rachael Bjorn, another member of team one.

Nassersharif added that some of the 13 students have taken at least one of 10 nuclear engineering courses offered by the University and several are physics, mathematics, and nuclear engineering minors.

Working with NASA has been a dream of mine since 9th grade when I did a National History Day Project on Neil Armstrong, Hermanson said.

Bjorn, who is a mechanical engineering-German double major, said her mom told her when she was young that she wanted to be able to say, My daughter, the rocket scientist.

And when this actually does happen, I can say I had a hand in that, Bjorn said.

Working on this project is very cool, said Danny Kruzick of South Windsor, Connecticut. Like most kids, I wanted to be an astronaut. The science of space and the engineering to get to space are two demanding disciplines. Its not guesswork.

Collin Treacy of Ballston Spa, New York, an applied mathematics and mechanical engineering student, said the course incorporates everything he and his fellow students have learned during their first three years in the mechanical engineering program. This project brings together physics, chemistry, engineering and math.

Honghao Zhen of Westerly, Rhode Island, knows that such a course is important because it gives me a start in the space industry and it could lead to careers with NASA or aerospace firms. We have spent many late nights together in virtual and in-person meetings. We have even looked at old textbooks for background.

Murphy and Venagro said among the most enjoyable parts of the project are working with students at the other schools and interns at NASA.

This rocket is an entirely new concept, Venagro said.

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URI engineering students work with NASA on nuclear thermal propulsion for human mission to Mars - URI Today

Elon Musk will host a presentation on SpaceXs Mars-bound Starship next week.

It is the first time that Mr Musk has given such an update on the spacecraft since 2019.

SpaceX is expected to conduct a test that will see Starship go into orbit for the first time. Recent months have seen a range of high-altitude flights, but attempts to conduct that major orbital test have been delayed, in part because of regulatory problems.

Starship is SpaceXs big hope for the future of space travel, with chief executive Elon Musk saying it is key for his plans to head onto the Moon and Mars, and that its vast size is required to carry the cargo needed to go and live on other planets.

The update will take place on Thursday, 10 February at 8pm Texas time, Mr Musk said. (Texas is in two time zones, but Mr Musk is likely referring to the Central Time Zone, which would put the event at 9pm eastern time or 2am in the UK.)

The announcement came at the end of a run of tweets during which Mr Musk was asked about the future of Starship. Mr Musk had announced that SpaceXs other Falcon 9 vehicle is expected to launch about once a week in 2022, and a follower replied to ask how that would change when Starship came into use.

Starship is in a different league. Orders of magnitude more mass to orbit than Falcon. Necessary for creating a self-sustaining city on Mars, he wrote.

Starship aspires to be the first fully reusable orbital launch vehicle, the holy grail of rocketry. This is the critical breakthrough needed to make life multiplanetary.

He then announced the time for the new presentation, though did not give any clues to what it might contain or what was planned.

Mr Musk has given a number of such presentations through the life of Starship, which has been renamed and redesigned in a number of ways since it was first discussed in 2005. In the past, they have focused not only on new announcements but also on building excitement about the project.

At the last update, in 2019, Mr Musk said that SpaceX was hoping to put Starship into orbit within six months. He recognised then that the target was nuts, and the company is still yet to meet it.

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Elon Musk to host major presentation on SpaceXs Mars-bound Starship spacecraft - The Independent