MYSTERY WIRE — UFO organizations and researchers have long suspected that they’re under some kind of government surveillance. Is it true, or is it paranoia?
The answer is, it’s a little of both. Documents show that CIA officers infiltrated UFO organizations years ago. The Air Force Office of Special Investigations, for a period, spread disinformation about UFO cases and sent operatives to UFO conventions to gather intelligence.
"I've Seen the Documents" - Rep. Ratcliffe Confirms Obama Deep State Was Lying and Spying on Trump Camp Way Before… https://t.co/L3dIZWmu3bgatewaypundit (from St. Louis, Missouri)Fri Feb 28 22:38:30 +0000 2020
Oh look. It's not the NSA "spying" on you - it's private companies and anyone who gets their data on your every mov… https://t.co/4owLnlZp7uericgarland (from USA)Fri Feb 28 13:21:17 +0000 2020
Sir Richard Branson's firm, which completed its first sub-orbital test flight in 2018, said it had received almost 8,000 registrations of interest for future commercial flights.
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The news comes as Virgin Galactic's latest company results show a net loss of $73m (£55.6m) for the last quarter.
On Wednesday, the California-based company said it would begin taking $1,000 refundable deposits as it prepares to release the next batch of tickets to the general public.
SpaceX wins the $117 million launch contract to explore Psyche’s heavy metal asteroid
The Psyche mission will use a Falcon Heavy rocket, which will launch from Launch Complex 39A at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.
Located between Mars and Jupiter, the Psyche asteroid is made of the exposed nickel-iron core of an early planet and represents a fragment of one of the earliest building blocks of our solar system.
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"With the transition into this new mission phase, we are one big step closer to uncovering the secrets of Psyche, a giant mysterious metallic asteroid, and that means the world to us," said principal investigator Lindy Elkins-Tanton of Arizona State University in Tempe, in a statement when NASA announced that it was approving the mission.
Space tourism could spur the next Space Race | Opinion | Columns | Opinion | Daily Collegian |
UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa., - Many students are enjoying the expanded menu that is available at the newly renovated Market Pollock. One menu item garnish, the kale topping for the avocado toast is grown less than 100 feet away from where it is served. With the combined efforts from both the studen…
Country artist Luke Combs and his guitarist perform at the Bryce Jordan Center on Thursday, Feb. 13, 2020. Fellow artists Drew Parker and Ashley McBryde opened for Combs on the "What You See Is What You Get Tour".
Mae Jemison teaches lessons from time as astronaut, aims high for human interstellar space travel
Jemison, former NASA astronaut and the first woman of color in the world to go into space, shared how her personal experiences of finding confidence and a place at the table shaped the work she does today—as well as her visions for human interstellar space travel.
"And that's the person I grew up to be," she said. "That's how I thought of the world—that I would be able to participate."
Participating, however, wasn't all smooth sailing. Jemison told the audience that in order to use her skills, experiences and authority to "make things happen," she had to be confident and empowered.
Daily Inter Lake - Local News, Whitefish inventors develop new kind of rocket engine
Aaron Davis, founder and chief executive officer of Whitefish-based Mountain Aerospace Research Solutions, shows off the first Fenris rocket engine that he says will make getting into space cheaper and safer. The engine was created on a 3D metal printer, contains no moving parts and can be reusable. It was test fired on July 26, 2019, at a test facility in California�s Mojave Desert. (Photo courtesy Doug Jorgensen, for Mountain Aerospace Research Solutions)
This prototype Fenris engine was test-fired on July 26, 2019, at the Mojave Air and Space Port in Mojave, California. The successful test demonstrated beyond a doubt that the engine pulled in plenty of oxygen from the surrounding air to sustain combustion. (Photo courtesy Doug Jorgensen for Mountain Aerospace Research Solutions)
New 'detonation' engine could revolutionise space travel, but there's a problem
Engineers have developed a new kind of engine that could make rockets much easier to build – but it's very unstable.
In more than half a century since humans first walked on the moon, little has changed in the area of space propulsion. Existing rocket engines – such as the ones that brought NASA's Space Shuttle into orbit – required more than 1.5m kg of chemical fuel, which is 15 times heavier than a blue whale.
Now, however, researchers from the University of Washington have designed a new rocket engine concept that could potentially bring propulsion into the 21st century. Writing in Physical Review E , they said this new engine – referred to as a rotating detonation engine – would not only make rockets more fuel-efficient, but also more lightweight and less complicated to construct.
Virgin Galactic Stock Skyrockets As Investors Buy Into The Billionaire Space Race
Topline: Virgin Galactic Holdings (SPCE) stock has continued to rally in recent weeks, gaining almost 200% this year alone as investors flock to buy shares of the space tourism company, which is competing with the likes of Elon Musk's Space X and Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin.
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Big numbers: UBS estimates that the commercial space travel business will become a $3 billion industry by 2030. Virgin Galactic has some 600 reservations and $80 million in deposits for flights, which are priced at $250,000 per ticket.
Wall Street Week Virgin Galactic $SPCE: -27% Tesla $TSLA: -26% Apple $AAPL: -13% Dow: -12% Oil: -12% S&P 500: -11%… https://t.co/Bh5APW9sEacharliebilello (from New York, NY)Fri Feb 28 21:39:00 +0000 2020
Millennial traders who bought Virgin Galactic at top, now loading up on 'plague stocks' https://t.co/BhSOvaUcfKCNBC (from Englewood Cliffs, NJ)Fri Feb 28 16:38:45 +0000 2020
Another billionaire for #BTC What percentage do you invest in $BTC? What percent in alts? Fiat? Comment 👇 https://t.co/657kusE1v2Poloniex Sat Feb 29 07:38:04 +0000 2020
Billionaire Richard Branson's wealth is falling with Virgin Galactic's stock https://t.co/ocZKIzKDhibusiness (from New York and the World)Sun Mar 01 00:43:06 +0000 2020
The magnetic field in one zone on Mars is about 10 times stronger than scientists expected, and it's changing rapidly.
New data gathered from NASA's InSight lander , which has been on the Red Planet for a little over a year now, shows that the planet's magnetic field fluctuates rapidly . InSight is the first landing mission to carry a magnetic sensor, which allows it to measure these fields from up close.
"The ground-level data give us a much more sensitive picture of magnetization over smaller areas, and where it's coming from," lead author Catherine Johnson, a professor at the University of British Columbia and senior scientist at the Planetary Science Institute, said in a statement . "In addition to showing that the magnetic field at the landing site was ten times stronger than the satellites anticipated, the data implied it was coming from nearby sources."
Mars is a seismically active world, first results from NASA's InSight lander reveal | Space
The first official science results from NASA's quake-hunting InSight Mars lander just came out, and they reveal a regularly roiled world.
"We've finally, for the first time, established that Mars is a seismically active planet," InSight principal investigator Bruce Banerdt, of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, said during a teleconference with reporters Thursday (Feb. 20).
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"In fact, it's probably close to the kind of seismic activity you would expect to find away from the [tectonic] plate boundaries on Earth and away from highly deformed areas," he said.
Study of Crater Shows How Mars Could Have Hosted Oceans | Digital Trends
Lyons and his team wanted to know how it was possible for Mars to have had water on its surface in the past , as it is further from the sun than Earth is and at the time the sun would not have given out that much heat. "To have made the planet warm enough for liquid surface water, its atmosphere would likely have needed an immense amount of greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide specifically," explained Chris Tino, a UCR graduate student and co-first author of the paper.
There’s no way to measure the amount of carbon dioxide that was historically in the Martian atmosphere, so the team looked for an analog here on Earth. They found the Nordlinger Ries crater in Germany, which was formed when a meteorite hit the Earth 15 million years ago. They studied this crater and found the water it had contained had a high pH level and high alkalinity, a combination that could allow microorganisms to survive.
Why Mars Needs Leap Days, Too - The New York Times
This Saturday, you have the gift of time. Feb. 29 is a leap day — a calendar oddity that gives us an extra day.
You probably know why: The time it takes Earth to rotate on its axis is called a day — but it doesn't take an even number of days to complete a single loop around the sun, or one orbit. Instead it takes a messy 365.2422 spins. And yet the calendar year runs out after 365 days. That means that when the clock strikes midnight on New Year's Eve, Earth hasn't quite circled all the way back to its starting point.
Japan to launch a sample-return mission to Mars moon Phobos in 2024 | Space
The Martian Moon Exploration (MMX) mission, which aims to haul pieces of the Mars moon Phobos to Earth, has officially become a Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) project, mission team members announced on Thursday (Feb. 20).
"The mission was previously in the pre-project phase, where the focus was on research and analysis, such as simulating landings to improve spacecraft design," MMX team members wrote in a blog post . "The focus will now move onto the development of mission hardware and software."
Star freshman Rodney Gallagher leads Laurel Highlands past Mars in WPIAL Class 5A thriller - Trib
Laurel Highlands’ Rodney Gallagher celebrates after defeating Mars in the WPIAL Class 5A championship game Friday, Feb. 28, 2020, at Petersen Events Center.
Laurel Highlands captains carry the championship trophy from the court after defeating Mars in the WPIAL Class 5A championship game Friday, Feb. 28, 2020, at Petersen Events Center.
Laurel Highlands’ Rodney Gallagher sinks the winning free throw in the final seconds of the WPIAL Class 5A championship game against Mars Friday, Feb. 28, 2020, at Petersen Events Center.
Cornell Project Team Practices for Mars Exploration | The Cornell Daily Sun
The 30-member team focuses on designing a rover that can assist humans with research on Mars by completing specifically programmed missions, testing their work in annual competitions against other college teams. Mimicking a real Mars mission, team members can only see what is happening through cameras that communicate with the base station via radio.
According to the group's website , "each team must design, build, and operate a rover to compete against other contending universities in a variety of field tasks that actual Mars rovers face on missions to the Red Planet," at the University Rover Challenge, with the winning team going on a trip to the annual International Mars Society Convention.
Planetology - The exploration of the Moon and Mars continues apace | Science and technology | The
T HIS WEEK has seen the publication of results collected by probes to two heavenly bodies: Chang'e 4 , a Chinese mission to the Moon, and InSight , an American mission to Mars. Chang'e 4 landed in January 2019; InSight arrived the previous November. The Chinese team, bowing to the realities of scientific publishing, have presented their results in Science Advances , an American journal.
Chang'e 4 is China's second successful lunar lander, and the first from any country to touch down intact on the Moon's far side—the part never visible from Earth. Its purpose, other than demonstrating China's technological prowess, is to investigate the geology of Von Kármán crater in the Moon's southern hemisphere. To that end it is fitted with a ground-penetrating radar which can peer many metres down.
The Marsquakes just keep on coming. To date, NASA's InSight lander has cataloged about 450 events, and the frequenc… https://t.co/HmT04XSi47ScienceNews (from Washington, DC)Sat Feb 29 01:15:00 +0000 2020
Mission complete for @NASAJPL's twin MarCO spacecraft, which traveled all the way to Mars with @NASAInsight & relay… https://t.co/3f655nvzCpNASA Fri Feb 28 01:00:01 +0000 2020
Eruptions from enormous black holes aren't uncommon. The explosions are powered by the release of pent-up energy in encircling disks of hot gas. But the team notes that this newfound eruption is thousands of times more powerful than most.
The source of the eruption was a beast of a galaxy at the center of the Ophiuchus cluster, a gathering of galaxies nearly 400 million light-years from Earth. In 2016, researchers noticed the edge of a cavity in the cluster's hot, X-ray emitting gas , about 400,000 light-years from the central galaxy. The excavated region appears to be over a million light-years across.
The most enormous black hole explosion ever has now been observed
That something was a supermassive black hole quietly lurking in the Ophiuchus galaxy cluster until it literally spilled all its guts. It was a boom so massive, the gas crater it left in its wake was easily the size of 15 Milky Ways. Simona Giacintucci of the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington and her research team recently observed it from NASA's Chandra X-Ray Observatory, which teamed up with a European space observatory and several ground telescopes to see this shocker.
As objects and material are drawn into a black hole , they'll undergo a process evocatively called spaghettification . This is because gravity is so extreme and increasing so rapidly as you approach the black hole that your head and feet would experience drastically different gravitational environments. You would be physically stretched out, and your sense of time would slow to a crawl in the brief moments before you fell into the singularity, the zero-point of the black hole itself.
Black Hole Shredding a Star Leads to a New Astronomical Discovery
This computer-simulated image shows gas from a tidally shredded star falling into a black hole. Some of the gas also is being ejected at high speeds into space. Astronomers observed the flare in ultraviolet light using NASA’s Galaxy Evolution Explorer, and in optical light using the Pan-STARRS1 telescope on Mount Haleakala, Hawaii. The light comes from gas falling into the black hole, and glowing helium from the star’s helium-rich gas expelled from the system.
All across the Universe, gigantic black holes are lurking in the dark within centers of galaxies. Like an ambush predator they patiently wait for unsuspecting stars to fly by, then use their overwhelming gravity to pull it apart into a spaghetti strand and finally swallow it up. Astronomers sometimes see this spectacle in visible light, sometimes in X-rays, but almost never in both types of light at the same time. Do black holes have two different ways of eating a star?
This fundamental constant remains the same even near a black hole | Science News
According to standard physics, the fine-structure constant, which governs interactions of electrically charged particles, is the same everywhere in the universe. Some alternative theories, however, suggest that the constant might be different in certain locales, such as the extreme gravitational environment around a black hole.
The fine-structure constant is one of an assortment of unchanging numbers found in physics formulas, such as the mass of an electron or the speed of light. It determines the strength with which electrically charged particles pull on one another. Scientists don't know why it has the value it does — about 1/137. But its size seems crucial : If that number were much different, atoms wouldn't form ( SN: 11/2/16 ).
Our galaxy's huge black hole may have created organic molecules | New Scientist
These days, the black hole, known as Sagittarius A* , is relatively calm. But there are hints that millions of years ago it may have been much more active, swallowing down matter and spewing out high-energy radiation including large amounts of X-rays.
Student built instrument onboard NASA's OSIRIS-REx Spacecraft detects new Black Hole -
REXIS, a shoebox-sized student instrument, was designed to measure the X-rays that Bennu emits in response to incoming solar radiation. X-rays are a form of electromagnetic radiation, like visible light, but with much higher energy.
This image shows the X-ray outburst from the black hole MAXI J0637-043, detected by the REXIS instrument on NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft. The image was constructed using data collected by the X-ray spectrometer while REXIS was making observations of the space around asteroid Bennu on Nov. 11, 2019. (NASA/Goddard/University of Arizona/MIT/Harvard)
Bad Astronomy | Does our galaxy's huge black hole have a little black hole buddy?
In the center of our galaxy lies a huge black hole , so big we call it supermassive: It has the mass of four million times our Sun's. Called Sgr A* (literally spoken as "Sagittarius A star," or "Saj A star"), the evidence for it is overwhelming; we can see stars orbiting it , their positions changing over the course of years and in some cases months.
But… is it alone? Could there be a second black hole there, one less massive but still dizzyingly hefty, orbiting Sgr A* closely?
Publisher: SYFY WIRE
Date: 2020-02-26T09:00:00-05:00
Author: https www facebook com Phil Plait 251070648641
"It turns out, the greatest lesson is to always be open to discovering the unexpected." While using an instrument o… https://t.co/vO3O0jPSKdNASA Fri Feb 28 20:30:07 +0000 2020
Supermassive black hole causes biggest explosion ever spotted in the universe https://t.co/igo2UrtB05 https://t.co/jZraQNYATlCBSNews (from New York, NY)Fri Feb 28 20:19:47 +0000 2020
Woo-hoo! Our student-built REXIS instrument detected X-rays radiating from a newly discovered black hole 🌑✨ This gi… https://t.co/MUPSaIBON8OSIRISREx (from Asteroid Bennu)Fri Feb 28 19:27:41 +0000 2020
Based at the University of Arizona, Tucson, the NASA-funded Catalina Sky Survey is part of a larger effort, called the Near Earth Object Observation Program, to scan the skies for potentially hazardous objects. The astronomical network tracks the orbital paths of objects that may zip a little too close to home for comfort. These astronomers have the seemingly impossible mandate of identifying and tracking 90 percent of all objects in our solar system that are larger than roughly 460 feet.
New Moon Musings by Holiday Mathis – Boston Herald
The Pisces new moon has insights about decision-making. Often, the biggest difference between two options is a feeling. Feelings don’t follow the rules of logic. They have to be figured out (if that’s even possible) through the subtle communicatory arts, the manual for which is intuitive.
ARIES (March 21-April 19). You’re trying to get at the truth, some kind of understanding, an insight into the motives of others. You can learn from those who argue with you. It’s much harder to learn from those who dodge your questions.
WATCH: NASA Tapping University Teams for Innovative Ideas to Enhance Moon to Mars Missions |
ABOVE VIDEO: NASA, in collaboration with the National Space Grant Foundation, is giving university teams the opportunity to develop innovative design ideas that will assist NASA's Moon to Mars mission objectives.
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The 2021 Moon to Mars eXploration Systems and Habitation (M2M X-Hab) Academic Innovation Challenge is an opportunity for NASA to build partnerships and tap into the ingenuity and creativity of the rising Artemis generation space explorers.
Moon of Candy Sprinkles and Cherries by Holiday Mathis – Boston Herald
ARIES (March 21-April 19). The lesson of fizzy soda, sparklers and flash pots? Excitement and brevity go together like Siamese twins. Yes, they can be separated, but usually not without great risk of terrible consequences.
GEMINI (May 21-June 21). The friendly, sweet and giving person is going to help you, and so will the curmudgeon and the negative Nellie and all the others. State what you need and help will come.
LEO (July 23-Aug. 22). You would have told the other person so many different things if you weren’t in the position you’re in. But positioning is everything. You’ll hold something back out of compassion. Be proud you have it.
How to design a moon garden | Chattanooga Times Free Press
Punctuated with flowers that bloom at night, the magical glow of a moon garden is optimal for night owls or those who prefer understated elegance. The key to moon gardens lays in utilizing white- or silver-colored flowers so moonlight will bounce off the petals, which can also yield a monochromatic day look.
"In the summer, especially here in the South, you'll see the Limelight hydrangeas. Any of those big white paniculata hydrangeas make great bones in the background of a moon garden," says Donna Dent with The Barn Nursery. She has dabbled with custom design and specialized in container design for the garden center for the past 21 years.
China's Rover Finds Layers of Surprise Under Moon's Far Side - The New York Times
China's robotic Chang'e-4 spacecraft did something last year that had never been done before: It landed on the moon's far side , and Yutu-2, a small rover it was carrying, began trundling through a crater there. One of the rover's instruments, a ground-penetrating radar, is now revealing what lies beneath.
In a paper published Wednesday in the journal Science Advances , a team of Chinese and Italian researchers showed that the top layer of the lunar soil on that part of the moon is considerably thicker than some expected — about 130 feet of what scientists call regolith.
How scientists found Earth's new minimoon and why it won't stay here forever https://t.co/Z0bsHskX3l https://t.co/3WHTqufjWTSPACEdotcom (from NYC)Fri Feb 28 14:18:05 +0000 2020
Earth has a new moon! Kinda! A small car-sized asteroid is currently orbiting the Earth, making loop-de-loops arou… https://t.co/D6TlJXPUzrBadAstronomer (from Boulder)Thu Feb 27 16:32:34 +0000 2020
Possible new 'minimoon' discovered orbiting Earth https://t.co/5lwof2AbTG https://t.co/aq4s3xbvVYSPACEdotcom (from NYC)Thu Feb 27 17:22:34 +0000 2020
Earth has a new 'minimoon', scientists announce https://t.co/Q1ONRG3pHPIndependent (from London, England)Thu Feb 27 07:54:13 +0000 2020
"The Little Prince" goes digital. An interactive CD-ROM of the book with narration by Kenneth ... [+] Branagh was made in 2000. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)
In the classic children's book, a pilot lost in the Sahara meets a strange little boy, who claims to be a space traveler from a tiny asteroid called B612. It's a fanciful little world about the size of a house, with two active volcanoes and a dormant one, a stubborn infestation of baobab trees, and a sentient rose.
NASA Asteroid Alert: 4 Asteroids To Approach Earth This Saturday
NASA's asteroid tracking system has detected four space rocks that will fly past Earth this Saturday. According to the agency's Center for Near-Earth Object Studies (CNEOS), three of the approaching asteroids follow orbits that intersect the planet's path.
CNEOS reported that the first asteroid that will approach Earth this weekend is known as 2020 DV1 . This asteroid is currently moving towards Earth at a speed of almost 35,000 miles per hour. It has an estimated diameter of about 282 feet, which makes it almost as tall as the Statue of Liberty.
So, you've just read that an asteroid is heading towards Earth today, tomorrow, maybe next week, or even next month. And you're wondering, is it really going to hit us, end civilization, or cause a decades-long nuclear winter?
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Because there are so many asteroids passing Earth, information on them can often be limited – NASA isn't going to issue a press release about every event. In the rest of February 2020 alone there are more than a dozen other smaller asteroids making close passes with Earth.
"Vesta is the only largely intact asteroid which shows complete differentiation with a metallic core, a silicate mantle and a thin basaltic crust, and it's also very small, with a diameter of only about 525 kilometers," Professor Jourdan said.
"In a sense it's like a baby planet, and therefore it is easier for scientists to understand it than say, a fully developed, large, rocky planet."
To give you an idea of its size, you could squeeze at least three Vesta-size asteroids side by side in the state of New South Wales, Australia.
Date: Turbulent times revealed on Asteroid 4 Vesta
KUOW - Earth Snags A 'Mini-Moon' As Asteroid Is Ensnared In Orbit
The “near-Earth asteroid” or "temporary captured object" has been orbiting our planet since 2017. The natural asteroid is thought to be about 12 feet across, or roughly the size of a car.
Astronomers in Arizona first observed the small object earlier this month, giving it the provisional name 2020 CD3.
Eric Christensen, director of the Catalina Sky Survey, a NASA-funded near-Earth asteroid search team based at The University of Arizona’s Lunar and Planetary Laboratory, says astronomers believe the mini-moon has been orbiting Earth for a few years.
SpaceX Falcon Heavy Rocket To Launch NASA Mission To 'Unique' Asteroid In 2022
NASA has announced that SpaceX will launch the agency's Psyche spacecraft in 2022, a mission to study an asteroid of the same name in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.
The launch will take place from Launch Complex 39A at Cape Canaveral in Florida. There will also be two secondary payloads onboard – EscaPADE, which will study the atmosphere of Mars, and Janus, designed to study binary asteroids.
The spacecraft will take more than three years to reach its target, entering orbit in January 2026, where it will then study the 250-kilometer-wide object from afar to work out how it was formed and if it is similar to Earth's own core.
