Tag Archives: space exploration

NASA: NASA Telescope Data Becomes Music You Can Play

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NASA: NASA Telescope Data Becomes Music You Can Play. “Since 2020, the “sonification” project at NASA’s Chandra X-ray Center has translated the digital data taken by telescopes into notes and sounds. This process allows the listener to experience the data through the sense of hearing instead of seeing it as images, a more common way to present astronomical data. A new phase of the sonification project takes the data into different territory. Working with composer Sophie Kastner, the team has developed versions of the data that can be played by musicians.”

Space: Watch NASA build its VIPER moon rover with these free online watch parties

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Space: Watch NASA build its VIPER moon rover with these free online watch parties. “The rover, called VIPER (Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover), will explore the moon and collect water-ice samples from permanently shadowed areas near the lunar south pole. VIPER has an expected launch date of November 2024, and its mission team has begun final assembly and testing procedures, which NASA will broadcast live during monthly watch parties for the public to follow along in the final stages of preparing the rover for space.”

Engadget: NASA is launching a free streaming service with live shows and original series

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Engadget: NASA is launching a free streaming service with live shows and original series. “NASA has announced a new streaming service called NASA+ that’s set to hit most major platforms next week. It’ll be completely free, with no subscription requirements, and you won’t be forced to sit through ads. NASA+ will be available starting November 8.”

The Guardian: ‘Callous, reckless, unethical’: scientists in row over rare fossils flown into space

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The Guardian: ‘Callous, reckless, unethical’: scientists in row over rare fossils flown into space. “It was meant to be a grand gesture that would raise the profile of South African science – by allowing fossil bones found at the nation’s Cradle of Humankind site to be flown into space on a Virgin Galactic flight last month. The result was very different. A wave of global condemnation has since engulfed the research team – led by the palaeoanthropologist Lee Berger – that allowed the ancient bones to be used this way.”

Space: Scientists bury time capsule to celebrate upcoming Extremely Large Telescope (photos)

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Space: Scientists bury time capsule to celebrate upcoming Extremely Large Telescope (photos) . “On Oct. 13, the European Southern Observatory (ESO) celebrated its upcoming Extremely Large Telescope (ETL) by burying a time capsule that was sealed in 2017, when construction first began. The capsule is filled with tokens celebrating ESO staff and the cooperation between the observatory and Chile. It also celebrates the amazing science and technology behind the 39.3-meter telescope.”

Engadget: NASA will reveal what OSIRIS-REx brought back from asteroid Bennu on Wednesday

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Engadget: NASA will reveal what OSIRIS-REx brought back from asteroid Bennu on Wednesday. “NASA will give the public a look at the asteroid sample brought back to Earth by its OSIRIS-REx spacecraft next week. A livestream of the reveal is set for 11 AM ET on Wednesday, October 11. The capsule containing rocks and dust taken from the surface of the near-Earth asteroid ‘Bennu’ touched down at a Department of Defense training site in the Utah desert on September 24, and scientists have since been at work making their initial analyses.”

Columbia University: An Archive of the Stars Is Born

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Columbia University: An Archive of the Stars Is Born. “Like other NASA-curated extraterrestrial materials including meteorites, Moon rocks and cosmic dust, the Bennu samples will generate huge amounts of data. But in recent years, NASA has recognized a big problem: for a long time, there was no central home for all this data, with the results of analyses scattered across the globe at labs, universities and institutes that did the testing. Much of this data has not been easily accessible, and in some cases, has been lost. So the agency decided to create such a home, at the Astromaterials Data System, based at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory.”

Space: The CIA knows a lot about other nations’ space programs. You can too with its new ‘World Factbook’ update

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Space: The CIA knows a lot about other nations’ space programs. You can too with its new ‘World Factbook’ update . “The United States Central Intelligence Agency, better known as the CIA, has released a new entry in its World Factbook that catalogues the programs and milestones of NASA, as well as other space agencies around the world. Over 90 countries and the European Union are represented in the new Space Programs section of the agency’s factbook, spanning from Algeria to Zimbabwe.”

University of Oxford: Researchers successfully train a machine learning model in outer space for the first time

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University of Oxford: Researchers successfully train a machine learning model in outer space for the first time . “For the first time, researchers have trained a machine learning model in outer space, on board a satellite. This achievement could enable real-time monitoring and decision making for a range of applications, from disaster management to deforestation.”

NASA: NASA Launches Beta Site; On-Demand Streaming, App Update Coming Soon

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NASA: NASA Launches Beta Site; On-Demand Streaming, App Update Coming Soon. “Later this year, NASA also will launch its new streaming platform, NASA+., and upgrade the NASA app. Through the ad-free, no cost, and family-friendly streaming service, users will gain access to the agency’s Emmy Award-winning live coverage and views into NASA’s missions through collections of original video series, including a handful of new series launching with the streaming service.”

Observer: The Master Recording of NASA’s Voyager Golden Record Heads to Auction

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Observer: The Master Recording of NASA’s Voyager Golden Record Heads to Auction. “The call of a humpback whale, a Navajo night chant and the brain waves of a woman falling in love… these are just some of the sounds recorded on NASA’s Golden Record, the phonograph time capsule affixed to spacecraft Voyager 1 and 2. As the space-faring record continues on its now 46-year journey through the emptiness, the Golden Record’s master recording is expected to fetch $600,000 at auction later this month.”

Berkeley Lab: DESI Early Data Release Holds Nearly Two Million Objects

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Berkeley Lab: DESI Early Data Release Holds Nearly Two Million Objects. “The first batch of data from the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument is now available for researchers to mine. Taken during the experiment’s ‘survey validation’ phase, the data include distant galaxies and quasars as well as stars in our own Milky Way.”

BBC Sky at Night Magazine: How CCTV cameras can play a huge role in meteor science

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BBC Sky at Night Magazine: How CCTV cameras can play a huge role in meteor science. “When my husband and I set up our first meteor camera back in 2018, we did it not only to learn more about the orbits of the meteor events we observed and captured with our DSLR cameras, but also to see what we were missing while we slept. We loved our first meteor camera so much that we soon set up three more and we now have almost full sky coverage. We had no idea back then just what an important and valuable contribution they would make to so many aspects of meteor and asteroid science.”

Rochester Institute of Technology: RIT scientists unveil Citizen Science Project to search for distant galaxies

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Rochester Institute of Technology: RIT scientists unveil Citizen Science Project to search for distant galaxies. “In collaboration with NASA, RIT unveiled a website asking for volunteers to join an effort to take critical measurements that will aid astronomers in identifying the ‘fingerprints’ of different chemical elements present in galaxies and measuring their distances.”

Phys .org: Want to be an asteroid miner? There’s a database for that

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Phys .org: Want to be an asteroid miner? There’s a database for that. “Asteroid mining is slowly but surely coming closer to reality. Many start-ups and governmental agencies alike are getting in on the action. But plenty of tools that would help get this burgeoning industry off the ground are still unavailable. One that would be particularly useful is a list of potential candidate asteroids to visit. While the information has been available in various places, no one has yet combined it into a single, searchable database until now.”