Category Archives: Transhuman News

The project will focus on Mars, the 'red planet', due to its shared characteristics with Esch-sur-Alzette's red earth

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Scientists and artists are clubbing together to build a fictional second earth as part of Esch-sur-Alzette becoming European Capital of Culture next year.

The experts will focus on Mars the red planet due to its shared characteristics with the southern Luxembourg citys red earth, which allowed the region to have a successful steel industry.

The project, dubbed Esch Mars, is at the intersection of science, art, and utopic societies and will end with an exhibition in October next year, posing the question of what if we were to colonize a completely new world?

The idea behind Esch Mars is to build a fictional mission to question our current reality. If we had the chance to contribute to a new world order, what would that world look like? What kind of science would be needed? What social structures should be put in place? And, what would a combination of experts' and citizens' perspectives generate?

Artists will discuss with experts, such as scientists and astronauts, for 40 days to establish ideas on how to build a new society. The artists will then ask citizens to share their opinions on what they think is crucial to live together.

Seven artists from various backgrounds will then use the information they gather from scientists and citizens to create artworks.

Esch Mars allows people to imagine a utopic scenario where everyone can combine their knowledge and opinions to create a better alternative world, giving a glimpse into a world where everyones opinions are valued and integrated into an improved version of current societies. The aim is to give hope that it is possible to build a better world through the creation of a fictitious one.

Esch Mars portrayal of colonisation as an opportune moment can be problematic. Colonialism, especially western colonialism, has shown the negative impact of a group of people appropriating a foreign land. Genocide, oppression, and racism are just some of the long-term costs of a civilisation imposing their ideas of what a new society should be.

Experts specialising in the history of colonisation will be taking part in the project, organisers said. Hopefully, through the acknowledgment of the suffering rooted in histories of colonisation, Esch Mars will not only create a utopic society far away from earth but also a society far away from intolerance.

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What if we were to colonize a completely new world? - Luxembourg Times

Perseverance and Ingenuity landed on Mars almost exactly nine months ago. Over that time, both vehicles have already expanded our understanding of Mars, which will only increase over time as both vehicles will continue to conduct further experiments in the months and years to come. Perseverance is a rover based on Curiositys general design but with its own unique capabilities and some features Curiosity lacked. Ingenuity is the small helicopter that became the first human-built vehicle to fly on another world in the spring of 2021. Together, they fight crime do science.

Weve rounded up the major discoveries made by both the rover and its copter buddy, as well as the technologies deployed on each.

The principal mission of Perseverance and Ingenuity is to search for signs of ancient microbial life on Mars. In service to that goal, the Perseverance rover is loaded with imaging hardware, with which it can capture EM emissions from radio to hard UV. With these instruments, the rover is equipped to make on-the-spot judgments about whats in the Martian regolith, rocks and atmosphere.

One such piece of imaging tech aboard Perseverance is the Scanning Habitable Environments with Raman & Luminescence for Organics & Chemicals (SHERLOC) instrument. SHERLOC is a boresighted resonance Raman and fluorescence spectrometer. To break that down a bit, it uses a UV laser to ping tiny bits of grit with photons of controlled wavelength, so we can analyze the photons thrown back off the sample to record their wavelength, polarization and other metadata. SHERLOCs sidekick and second eye, WATSON, zooms out where SHERLOC zooms in: WATSON is a wide-angle camera used to document the spectrometers samples on the macro scale, just like a terrestrial photographer would try to get good macros of a subject with a DSLR.

Another instrument is the ground-penetrating Radar Imager for Mars Subsurface Experiment, known as RIMFAX. Radar waves are sensitive to the dielectric properties of the materials they survey, much like X-rays are sensitive to the absorptive properties of the materials they move through. RIMFAX will peer below the surface, as far as ten meters down into the regolith. Ultimately, this differential response allows us to make a 3D radar model of the subsurface stratigraphy of Mars, with a resolution or voxel size of ten centimeters. RIMFAX is there to characterize what lies below the landing site, but also to look for water ice hidden below the Martian surface where it might not have been sublimated away.

Ingenuity and Perseverance, in a selfie they sent from Mars. Image credit: NASA

So far, perhaps the biggest discovery is that there is montmorillonite clay in the bottom of Jezero Crater. Clay is formed by the weathering of silicate rock in the presence of water. Even if theres no detectable water ice in the deposit at the moment, clay is taken as a dead giveaway that water was present at one point. Evidence indicates that Jezero once held a crater lake, fed by a river whose delta opens up into a formation called Three Forks on the northwestern edge of the crater.

The Mars 2020 mission is looking for a lot of things, but one of the most important is water and Jezero was full of it. Here on Earth, water is life: we think the very first amino acids stumbled into being from water full of organic building blocks. Its believed that if there are traces of life on Mars, theyll be where the water is, or at least where it was. (Martian lava tubes are another hopeful candidate, because of the traces of early life found in terrestrial lava tubes.) Whats more, we think that the delta is full of boulders. How did they get there? On Earth, rocks that size are only lifted and carried by sizeable floods. Images and data that RIMFAX, SHERLOC and WATSON gather will help us learn more about the history of Mars geological features, including just how wet ancient Mars might have been.

The total combined mass of Perseverance is just over a metric ton, with the chassis and instrumentation accounting for much of its weight. But Perseverance also carries an ultralight lab, in which its carrying out several side experiments to test how things behave in the Martian atmosphere, gravity, and radiation.

The star of the onboard material science show is the SHERLOC spectrometers calibration panel. Perseverance is carrying a plate inlaid with swatches of almost a dozen different materials, which SHERLOC will use to calibrate itself. One standout is a section of the polycarbonate material NASA uses in helmet visors. Confirming NASAs awareness of their weapons-grade backronym habits, the polycarbonate is backed with a piece of opal glass bearing the fictional Sherlocks street address. It doubles as a geocache for the public. You know, because were all just hanging out up there with our GoPros. (Please, please, let me live long enough for my response to the idea of a geocache on Mars is to change into sincere excitement at the ability to buy tickets.)

Also on the swatch plate are sections of certain ultra-high-performance flexible composite materials that we use to make the rest of the space suit. Theres a piece of Ortho-Fabric, a tiramisu of thermal/MMOD protective fabrics including Teflon, Kevlar, elastic Dacron for compression, and insulating Gore-Tex fleece. Theres also a piece of the Teflon-coated fiberglass fabric that shields the space suits gauntlets, and one of an upgraded version with a new dust coating. In between using them to calibrate its sensors, SHERLOC will periodically examine these swatches to see how they fare under constant exposure to the radiation on Mars surface, and the abrasion of its pervasive regolith dust.

SHERLOCs calibration plate. Top row, from left: aluminum gallium nitride on sapphire; a quartz diffuser; a slice of Martian meteorite; a maze for testing laser intensity; a separate aluminum gallium nitride on sapphire with different properties. Bottom row, from left: fanservice; Vectran; Ortho-Fabric; Teflon; and coated Teflon. (Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech)

While SHERLOC will stare unblinking at our own materials to see how they behave, MOXIE does its work by chemically changing matter it gathers onsite. It speaks to the Mars 2020 mission directive to gather data and test technologies that will help prepare for crewed missions to Mars. MOXIE, short for the Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment instrument, is on Mars to see what it takes to make breathable amounts of oxygen out of Mars CO2 atmosphere. To do this, it draws in CO2 and pressurizes it to about one atmosphere. Then it electrolytically snaps the CO2 apart right at the cathode, leaving good old diatomic oxygen along with some carbon monoxide waste and some residual CO2.

MOXIE also serves the broader mission goal of using in-situ resources to answer in-situ needs. We are trying to explore, and potentially colonize, other planets. With our current best propulsion technology, the trip between Earth and Mars is still most easily described in months, not miles. Its not plausible to ship bottled air to another planet as the sole source of everyones next breath let alone to send bulk metal and concrete to space, when theres a whole rocky planet underfoot to source our infrastructure from if we can. This is another entry in NASAs long history of launching one mission along with hardware and intent to clear the way for the next.

After fifteen flights, Ingenuity is still going strong. It has now flown almost three kilometers, and now that it has finished its demo phase, its now engaging with Perseverance on their joint objective to pore over the Jezero Crater.

Ingenuity began its illustrious career on Mars as a technology demo for rotorcraft flight in a low-pressure environment, well below anything we encounter here on Earth. Mars atmosphere at surface level is about one and a half percent the density of Earths atmosphere at sea level. For comparison, the all-time helicopter altitude record on Earth reached the high-end of the passenger jet cruising altitude range, at approximately 42,500 feet. Even at that height the air on Earth is thirty times denser than Martian STP (Standard Temperature and Pressure). That makes piloting Ingenuity not just a first for aerodynamics, but a game-changer for offworld exploration as a whole.

Jezero Crater, as seen by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). Image credit: NASA

Beyond getting into the record books, being able to fly around on Mars opens up a whole new class of possibilities for exploration. NASA is exploring new pathfinding and problem-solving methods and investing in off-world flight as part of its broad effort to get traction in the second great space race: the rush to commercialize low-earth orbit, and eventually to push the human sphere of influence outward into the greater solar system. Rovers are limited in their abilities by the fact that they have to contend with boulders, cliffs and crevasses, but NASAs showing at DARPAs 2021 rescue robot Olympics showed that the whole game changes if a robot can just use the Z axis to opt out of a terrain hazard altogether.

In addition to being the literal pilot project for powered flight on another planet, Ingenuity has two different cameras on board that enable high-res imaging of its environment. One is a downward-facing black-and-white camera for navigation, and the other is a forward-facing 13-megapixel color camera with stereoscopic imaging capabilities. The ability to photograph the landscape and terrain with this kind of resolution and fidelity is important all on its own for reasons of navigation: we need to know just where Ingenuity is, because it would be terribly unfortunate to perform unplanned lithobraking, what with the communications delay between Earth and Mars. But between those two cameras, Ingenuity is also capturing enough information to make a high-fidelity 3D map of the Martian landscape. Heres one such image, in stereoscopic red and blue 3D:

Depicted: the Martian rock formation named Faillefeu, located within the Jezero crater. This stereoscopic image should work with standard red and blue 3D glasses! Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Between the stereoscopic 3D and the repeated imaging of the terrain at different times on different sols, the amount of data produced can be used to map the Martian landscape right down to the individual rocks. Not so long ago, we werent even certain there was water anywhere else in the cosmos. Now we have a small population of robots on another planet, looking for traces of the emergence of life, and squinting down into the soil to see about the water were almost certain is there. This is valuable for legitimate, very serious, and very important scientific reasons. Its also just incredibly cool that anyone with internet access can watch videos beamed to us from the surface of another planet.

NASA/JPL-Caltech

Because of how it aced its initial objectives, Ingenuitys documentary mission got an extension in 2021. Until theyre decommissioned, Ingenuity and Perseverance will both be working in concert with the other landers, rovers, and probes we have surveying Mars. Percy and the MRO are already checking each others work concerning the evidence of water on Mars. The rovers samples, including the rock cores it has already collected, will be stored in caches on Mars. A future Mars mission in cooperation with the ESA (European Space Agency) will eventually retrieve them.

As time goes by and these results continue to roll in, well update this article. If you have questions about what Ingenuity and Perseverance have been up to on Mars, or what weve learned from their tenure there, do let us know in the comments we will address them in a future update.

Between now and then, if you want to get involved with Perseverance and Ingenuity yourself, you can! Anyone interested is formally invited to dive headfirst into Percys photostream as part of the open-access AI4Mars project, which labels the terrain the images depict in order to help train SPOC, the navigation AI that guides our robots on Mars. (No, Sulu was the navigator but I digress.)

If youre feeling extra creative, you could even take a shot at improving the algorithm under the hood of AI4Mars itself. The project is committed to making its data and code freely available, both libre and gratis. If someone outside JPL creates an algorithm that works better than ours using our dataset, thats great, too, explained Hiro Ono, the JPL researcher and AI expert who led the development of AI4Mars. It just makes it easier to make more discoveries.

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What Ingenuity and Perseverance Have Discovered on Mars So Far - ExtremeTech

Billionaire Jeff Bezos doesnt see us lasting much longer on earth. Speaking at the Ignatius Forum in Washington, DC this week, Bezos provided his vision for where humanity is headed.

He claimed earth might one day become a vacation destination, just like our national parks. All manufacturing would be in outer space, with workers permitted occasional visits to the surface.

Yes, humans will be born in space and then visit,The way you visit Yellowstone National Park.

Bezos dreams of floating space cities that contain rivers, forests and wildlife, he said during his panel discussion, the Independent reported.

Over centuries, many people will be born in space, it will be their first home, said the Amazon entrepreneur. They will be born on these colonies, live on these colonies, then theyll visit Earth the way you would visit, you know, Yellowstone National Park.

He added that the floating cities of the future are more likely than colonizing distant planets, a subtle dig at Elon Musks predictions of Mars.

Bezos didnt indicate whether Amazon would deliver to the floating cities.

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Jeff Bezos Makes Out There Prediction About Humanitys Future - Deadline

NBC 5 Exclusive: Read part one and two of our special three-night event, "SpaceX Effect," below. The event continues Wednesday night at 10 p.m. with Brian Curtis, only on NBC 5. Check back and refresh this page to read and see the full story.

NBC 5 launches the SpaceX Effect Monday on NBC 5 News at 10 p.m.

Humanity's greatest adventure ever may launch from Texas. At the southernmost tip of the state, Elon Musk's company, SpaceX, is building and testing giant rockets. The hope is to send them to Mars someday to colonize the red planet.

SpaceX has two major facilities taking shape in a remote location near Brownsville called Boca Chica. They are along State Highway 4, which runs from the city to the Gulf of Mexico. One is a manufacturing site. The other is a launch and landing complex. SpaceX has dubbed the area "Starbase."

SpaceX's towering stainless steel vehicle is called Starship. Several of them point skyward from the flat landscape at Boca Chica. There have already been unmanned tests, with the rockets soaring into the South Texas sky. The most recent launch ended with a successful landing. But there have also been crashes and explosions.

Starship is massive. When it's fully stacked atop its Super Heavy booster, it stands nearly 400 feet tall, making it the largest rocket ever built. It is designed to carry cargo and astronauts into low Earth orbit as well as to the Moon and Mars.

SpaceX is still in the early stages of its plans for Boca Chica. The manufacturing and launch sites continue to grow. The first Starship destined for orbit, known as SN20, test-fired all six of its engines for the first time last week.

Work continues on the launch tower, which will have the ability to catch landing Starships using a mechanism likened to giant chopsticks. The goal is a fully reusable rocket that can be quickly relaunched.

Elon Musk has said that Starship could be ready for an attempted orbital launch as soon as this month. But that depends on clearance from the Federal Aviation Administration, which regulates the project.

Most observers believe the first unmanned orbital flight might come in early 2022.

Whenever it happens, SpaceX said it hopes Starship SN20 will reach orbit and then splashdown in the Pacific Ocean near Hawaii.

Not everyone is happy about what SpaceX is doing at Boca Chica. Environmentalists say the industrial complex thats rising near the Gulf coast is a disaster in the making.

Not everyone is happy about what SpaceX is doing at Boca Chica. Environmentalists say the industrial complex that's rising near the Gulf coast is a disaster in the making.

The SpaceX sites are on private property the company owns just off Highway 4.But they're surrounded by protected public lands including the Lower Rio Grande Valley National Wildlife Refuge, Laguna Atascosa National Wildlife Refuge, Boca Chica State Park and Brazos Island State Park.

"This is a bad place to do what they want to do," said Jim Chapman with Friends of the Wildlife Corridor. "You have these habitats for especially wading birds and shorebirds that exist in very few other places," said Chapman. The area is also home to endangered species such as Kemp's ridley sea turtles and ocelots.

SpaceX, which declined to be interviewed for this story, has said in public documents that research from launch activity at Cape Canaveral in Florida shows that environmental damage at Boca Chica would not be significant.

Some people fear explosions, which SpaceX calls 'anomalies.'They have already happened during testing, raining debris outside SpaceX property. No one has been hurt. "I am worried," said Molly Smith with the group Save RGV.

SpaceX always clears the area for safety. Smith's concern is a rocket malfunction that could threaten nearby South Padre Island, the tourist and retirement mecca where she lives."How are you going to face up to an explosion that could be so much bigger than the explosions we've already had?" Smith said. SpaceX says it has the ability to end any flight that goes off course.In the future, SpaceX plans to launch Starships from platforms far out at sea.

There is also the question of access to Boca Chica Beach, which is popular with many local residents."I know people that spend the day collecting shells, and fishing and the family can come out," said Molly Smith with Save RGV.Highway 4 is the only way out to Boca Chica, and SpaceX wants permission to close the road for up to 500 hours per year.

There has been talk of building a tunnel from nearby South Padre Island to provide access to Boca Chica. Cameron County Judge Eddie Trevio says it is a real idea from one of Elon Musk's other companies, The Boring Company, which specializes in building tunnels. "They came down, took a look.Our staff met with them.They believe it's possible," said Trevio.

As the top elected official in Cameron County, Trevio says he understands the value of preserving Boca Chica and its environment. "The concerns that have been raised by environmental groups are extremely valid and have to be taken into consideration," said Trevio.

But Trevio also believes there's a way to move forward with the Starship project without sacrificing a community treasure."It can't be an all-or-nothing scenario.It has to be a win-win for everybody," said Trevio.

Trevio says he has spoken directly to Elon Musk about the environmental concerns raised by people in Cameron County. "The conversations that I've had with Mr. Musk and the members of his team at SpaceX all have voiced their concern and their support that they don't negatively impact the environment," said Trevio.

The job of regulating the project lies with the federal government, specifically the Federal Aviation Administration.SpaceX must have a permit from the FAA to continue its work and launch Starships into orbit from Boca Chica.

The FAA is in process of evaluating what's called the Draft Programmatic Environmental Assessment (PEA).It's a lengthy document outlining SpaceX's plans at Boca Chica and their impact on the environment.It was prepared by SpaceX with oversight from the FAA.Chapman says that's a big problem."When the company that wants to do it gets to write it, this is what you get," he said.The FAA says its evaluation will be independent.

During a recent public hearing process, the FAA says it received more than 17,000 written comments and 121 verbal comments on the Draft PEA. The agency says it will take all of that information into account before making a decision on what comes next. The FAA says it hopes to complete that process by December 31, 2021 - a date now highly anticipated by SpaceX and environmentalists alike.

The SpaceX Effect, a three-night special event, continues Wednesday on NBC 5 News at 10 p.m.

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The SpaceX Effect' on the Lone Star State - NBC 5 Dallas-Fort Worth

Jessica Watkins is set to becomethe first Black woman to join the crew atthe International Space Station next year.

What Happened: U.S. space agency NASA on Tuesday named Watkins to serve as a mission specialist on the agencys upcoming SpaceX Crew-4 mission.

Tesla Inc (NASDAQ: TSLA) CEO Elon Musk-owned SpaceX'sFalcon 9 rocket is expected toferry Watkins and three other astronauts to the International Space Station in April 2022, who would then spend six months at the microgravity laboratory.

Watkinswas selected as a NASA astronaut in 2017.

The other astronauts joining Watkins include Kjell Lindgren and Robert Hines, as well as European Space Agency astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti, as crewfor the Crew-4 mission.

Watkins has a bachelor's degree in geological and environmental sciences from Stanford University and a doctorate in geology from University of California.

See Also: SpaceX Docks Crew-3 Astronauts With International Space Station Nearly A Day After Taking Flight

In September, Sian Proctor, a member of SpaceXs Inspiration4 amateur astronaut mission that went to orbit but not to the space station, became the first Black woman to serve as a spacecraft pilot.

Falcon 9 capsule last week delivered four Crew-3 astronauts to the ISS, uniting them with the three crew members aboard the space station that orbits on, average, 248 miles above earth.

The Crew-3 astronauts are expected to leave the orbiting laboratory and return to Earth after a six-month stay.

The Big Picture: SpaceX and NASA are working on multiple projects including a $2.9 billion lunar landing contract. Musk dreams of colonizing Mars and has in the past said he remains highly confident that SpaceX would land humans on Mars by 2026.

2021 Benzinga.com. Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved.

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Jessica Watkins Set To Become First Black Woman To Join International Space Station Crew As NASA Names Her For SpaceX Crew-4 Mission - Benzinga