Jeff Bezos picks female aerospace pioneer to launch with him

In this 2019 photo made available by NASA, Mercury 13 astronaut trainee Wally Funk visits the Glenn Research Center at Lewis Field in Cleveland, Ohio. On Thursday, July 1, 2021, Blue Origin announced the early female aerospace pioneer will be aboard the company’s July 20 launch from West Texas, flying as an “honored guest.” (NASA via AP)

Marcia Dunn, The Associated Press
Published Thursday, July 1, 2021 3:07PM EDT

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) - Sixty years after acing astronaut tests but barred because she was a woman, Wally Funk will rocket into space alongside Jeff Bezos in just three weeks.

Bezos' company Blue Origin announced Thursday that the pioneering pilot will be aboard the July 20 launch from West Texas, flying in the capsule as an “honored guest.” She'll join Bezos, his brother and the winner of a $28 million charity auction, as the first people to ride a New Shepard rocket.

At 82, she'll be the oldest person to launch into space.

Funk is among the so-called Mercury 13 women who went through astronaut testing in the early 1960s, but never made it to space - or even NASA's astronaut corps - because they were female. Back then, all of NASA's astronauts were male military test pilots.

Funk said she feels “fabulous” about finally getting the chance to go to space.

“I'll love every second of it. Whoooo! Ha-ha. I can hardly wait,” Funk said in an Instagram video posted by Bezos.

“Nothing has ever gotten in my way,” she added. “They said, `Well, you're a girl, you can't do that.' I said, 'Guess what, doesn't matter what you are. You can still do it if you want to do it and I like to do things that nobody has ever done.”

In a cosmic twist, she'll beat the late John Glenn, who set a record at age 77 when flying aboard space shuttle Discovery in 1998. Glenn pooh-poohed the idea of women flying in space, shortly after he became the first American to orbit the world in 1962.

“No one has waited longer,” Bezos said via Instagram. “It's time. Welcome to the crew, Wally.”

The Amazon founder is stepping down as the company's CEO on Monday.

The upcoming launch - which follows 15 successful test flights - will open the door to paying customers. Blue Origin has yet to announce ticket prices or when the public might strap into the spacious six-seat capsule, which reaches an altitude of about 65 miles, just beyond the edge of space. The up-and-down flights last 10 minutes.

The reusable rocket is named for Mercury astronaut Alan Shepard, the first American in space, and July 20 is the 52nd anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing.

Funk, who lives in Texas, was the first female inspector for the Federal Aviation Administration and the first female air safety investigator for the National Transportation Safety Board. In the posted video, she said she has 19,600 flying hours and has taught more than 3,000 people to fly.

She was among two dozen female pilots who underwent six days of rigorous physical tests - the same ones administered to the Mercury astronaut candidates - in 1960 and 1961. The doctor who had tested the Mercury 7 men had heard the Soviets planned to send a woman to space and he wanted to see if women could endure the effects of weightlessness.

The candidates had to spend hours in an isolation water tank, swallow rubber hose, and get needles stuck in their heads, among other things.

Thirteen of the women - including Funk - passed. But the program was abruptly canceled, and the Soviets went on to launch the first woman into space - Valentina Tereshkova - in 1963.

“They told me that I had done better and completed the work faster than any of the guys,” Funk recalled. “So I got hold of NASA four times. I said I want to become an astronaut, but nobody would take me. I didn't think that I would ever get to go up.”

It wasn't until 1983 that the first American woman soared into space - Sally Ride, who died in 2012. And it wasn't until 1995 that an American woman piloted a spaceship - Eileen Collins aboard shuttle Discovery. Many of the Mercury 13 women gathered at Cape Canaveral for that launch.

Keen to get to space, Funk reserved a seat years ago on Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic rocket ship. She remains on the passenger list; the company plans three more test flights from New Mexico, one of them with Branson on board, before launching customers.

In the video, Bezos describes to Funk how the four Blue Origin passengers will experience zero gravity for a few minutes, then land gently on the desert surface and open the hatch.

“You step outside. What's the first thing you say?” he asked her.

“I will say, 'Honey, that was the best thing that ever happened to me!” Funk replied, embracing Bezos in a big bear hug.

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute's Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

 

Are We Missing Other Earths? Dramatic New Evidence Uncovered by Astronomers

By ASSOCIATION OF UNIVERSITIES FOR RESEARCH IN ASTRONOMY (AURA) JUNE 29, 2021

This illustration depicts a planet partially hidden in the glare of its host star and a nearby companion star. After examining a number of binary stars, astronomers have concluded that Earth-sized planets in many two-star systems might be going unnoticed by transit searches, which look for changes in the light from a star when a planet passes in front of it. The light from the second star makes it more difficult to detect the changes in the host star’s light when the planet passes in front of it. Credit: International Gemini Observatory/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/J. da Silva

Astronomers studying stellar pairs uncover evidence that there could be many more Earth-sized planets than previously thought.

Some exoplanet searches could be missing nearly half of the Earth-sized planets around other stars. New findings from a team using the international Gemini Observatory and the WIYN 3.5-meter Telescope at Kitt Peak National Observatory suggest that Earth-sized worlds could be lurking undiscovered in binary star systems, hidden in the glare of their parent stars. As roughly half of all stars are in binary systems, this means that astronomers could be missing many Earth-sized worlds.

Earth-sized planets may be much more common than previously realized. Astronomers working at NASA Ames Research Center have used the twin telescopes of the international Gemini Observatory, a Program of NSF’s NOIRLab, to determine that many planet-hosting stars identified by NASA’s TESS exoplanet-hunting mission^[1] are actually pairs of stars — known as binary stars — where the planets orbit one of the stars in the pair. After examining these binary stars, the team has concluded that Earth-sized planets in many two-star systems might be going unnoticed by transit searches like TESS’s, which look for changes in the light from a star when a planet passes in front of it.^[2] The light from the second star makes it more difficult to detect the changes in the host star’s light when the planet transits.

The team started out by trying to determine whether some of the exoplanet host stars identified with TESS were actually unknown binary stars. Physical pairs of stars that are close together can be mistaken for single stars unless they are observed at extremely high resolution. So the team turned to both Gemini telescopes to inspect a sample of exoplanet host stars in painstaking detail. Using a technique called speckle imaging,^[3] the astronomers set out to see whether they could spot undiscovered stellar companions.

Using the `Alopeke and Zorro instruments on the Gemini North and South telescopes in Chile and Hawai‘i, respectively,^[4] the team observed hundreds of nearby stars that TESS had identified as potential exoplanet hosts. They discovered that 73 of these stars are really binary star systems that had appeared as single points of light until observed at higher resolution with Gemini. “With the Gemini Observatory’s 8.1-meter telescopes, we obtained extremely high-resolution images of exoplanet host stars and detected stellar companions at very small separations,” said Katie Lester of NASA’s Ames Research Center, who led this work.

Lester’s team also studied an additional 18 binary stars previously found among the TESS exoplanet hosts using the NN-EXPLORE Exoplanet and Stellar Speckle Imager (NESSI) on the WIYN 3.5-meter Telescope at Kitt Peak National Observatory, also a Program of NSF’s NOIRLab.

After identifying the binary stars, the team compared the sizes of the detected planets in the binary star systems to those in single-star systems. They realized that the TESS spacecraft found both large and small exoplanets orbiting single stars, but only large planets in binary systems.

These results imply that a population of Earth-sized planets could be lurking in binary systems and going undetected using the transit method employed by TESS and many other planet-hunting telescopes. Some scientists had suspected that transit searches might be missing small planets in binary systems, but the new study provides observational support to back it up and shows which sizes of exoplanets are affected.^[5]

“We have shown that it is more difficult to find Earth-sized planets in binary systems because small planets get lost in the glare of their two parent stars,” Lester stated. “Their transits are ‘filled in’ by the light from the companion star,” added Steve Howell of NASA’s Ames Research Center, who leads the speckle imaging effort and was involved in this research.

“Since roughly 50% of stars are in binary systems, we could be missing the discovery of — and the chance to study — a lot of Earth-like planets,” Lester concluded.

The possibility of these missing worlds means that astronomers will need to use a variety of observational techniques before concluding that a given binary star system has no Earth-like planets. “Astronomers need to know whether a star is single or binary before they claim that no small planets exist in that system,” explained Lester. “If it’s single, then you could say that no small planets exist. But if the host is in a binary, you wouldn’t know whether a small planet is hidden by the companion star or does not exist at all. You would need more observations with a different technique to figure that out.”

As part of their study, Lester and her colleagues also analyzed how far apart the stars are in the binary systems where TESS had detected large planets. The team found that the stars in the exoplanet-hosting pairs were typically farther apart than binary stars not known to have planets.^[6] This could suggest that planets do not form around stars that have close stellar companions.

“This speckle imaging survey illustrates the critical need for NSF telescope facilities to characterize newly discovered planetary systems and develop our understanding of planetary populations,” said National Science Foundation Division of Astronomical Sciences Program Officer Martin Still.

“This is a major finding in exoplanet work,” Howell commented. “The results will help theorists create their models for how planets form and evolve in double-star systems.”

Notes

1. TESS is the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, a NASA mission designed to search for planets orbiting other stars in a survey of around 75% of the entire night sky. The mission launched in 2018 and has detected more than 3500 candidate exoplanets, of which more than 130 have been confirmed. The satellite looks for exoplanets by observing their host stars; a transiting exoplanet causes a subtle but measurable dip in the brightness of its host star as it crosses in front of the star and blocks some of its light.
2. The transit technique is one way of discovering exoplanets. It involves looking for regular decreases in the light of a star that could be caused by a planet passing in front of or “transiting” the star and blocking some of the starlight.
3. Speckle imaging is an astronomical technique that allows astronomers to see past the blur of the atmosphere by taking many quick observations in rapid succession. By combining these observations, it is possible to cancel out the blurring effect of the atmosphere, which affects ground-based astronomy by causing stars in the night sky to twinkle.
4. `Alopeke & Zorro are identical imaging instruments permanently mounted on the Gemini North and South telescopes. Their names mean “fox” in Hawaiian and Spanish, respectively, reflecting their respective locations on Maunakea in Hawaiʻi and on Cerro Pachón in Chile.
5. The team found that planets twice the size of Earth or smaller could not be detected using the transit method when observing binary systems.
6. Lester’s team found that the exoplanet-hosting binary stars they identified had average separations of about 100 astronomical units. (An astronomical unit is the average distance between the Sun and Earth.) Binary stars that are not known to host planets are typically separated by around 40 astronomical units.
   More information

This research is presented in the paper “Speckle Observations of TESS Exoplanet Host Stars. II. Stellar Companions at 1-1000 AU and Implications for Small Planet Detection” to appear in the Astronomical Journal.

Reference: “Speckle Observations of TESS Exoplanet Host Stars. II. Stellar Companions at 1-1000 AU and Implications for Small Planet Detection” by Kathryn V. Lester, Rachel A. Matson, Steve B. Howell, Elise Furlan, Crystal L. Gnilka, Nicholas J. Scott, David R. Ciardi, Mark E. Everett, Zachary D. Hartman and Lea A. Hirsch, Accepted, Astronomical Journal.
arXiv:2106.13354

The team is composed of Kathryn V. Lester (NASA Ames Research Center), Rachel A. Matson (US Naval Observatory), Steve B. Howell (NASA Ames Research Center), Elise Furlan (Exoplanet Science Institute, Caltech), Crystal L. Gnilka (NASA Ames Research Center), Nicholas J. Scott (NASA Ames Research Center), David R. Ciardi (Exoplanet Science Institute, Caltech), Mark E. Everett (NSF’s NOIRLab), Zachary D. Hartman (Lowell Observatory & Department of Physics & Astronomy, Georgia State University), and Lea A. Hirsch (Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology, Stanford University).

NSF’s NOIRLab (National Optical-Infrared Astronomy Research Laboratory), the US center for ground-based optical-infrared astronomy, operates the international Gemini Observatory (a facility of NSF, NRC–Canada, ANID–Chile, MCTIC–Brazil, MINCyT–Argentina, and KASI–Republic of Korea), Kitt Peak National Observatory (KPNO), Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory (CTIO), the Community Science and Data Center (CSDC), and Vera C. Rubin Observatory (operated in cooperation with the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory). It is managed by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA) under a cooperative agreement with NSF and is headquartered in Tucson, Arizona. The astronomical community is honored to have the opportunity to conduct astronomical research on Iolkam Du’ag (Kitt Peak) in Arizona, on Maunakea in Hawai‘i, and on Cerro Tololo and Cerro Pachón in Chile. We recognize and acknowledge the very significant cultural role and reverence that these sites have to the Tohono O’odham Nation, to the Native Hawaiian community, and to the local communities in Chile, respectively.

Astronomers Thrill at Giant Comet Flying into Our Solar System

The huge object may be the biggest comet ever seen. And it is already showing signs of activity as it approaches the orbit of Saturn

By Jonathan O'Callaghan on June 30, 2021

SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN

Image of C/2014 UN271 (Bernardinelli-Bernstein), the largest comet discovered in modern times. It is set to reach the vicinity of Saturn’s orbit in 2031 on its inward journey from the outskirts of the solar system. Credit: Dark Energy

 Survey/DOE/FNAL/DECam/CTIO/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/P. Bernardinelli & G. Bernstein (UPenn)/DESI Legacy Imaging Surveys

Acknowledgments: T. A. Rector (University of Alaska Anchorage/NSF’s NOIRLab), M. Zamani (NSF’s NOIRLab) & J. Miller (NSF’s NOIRLab)


Far beyond the orbits of Neptune and Pluto, a dark and mysterious expanse of space tantalizes astronomers. Here, as many as trillions of comets are thought to swarm, hurled to their present locale by Jupiter or other planets billions of years ago. They form a giant sphere known as the Oort cloud that envelops the solar system and stretches out to perhaps a couple of light-years from the sun. No one really knows just how many comets exist in the Oort cloud or its true extent because so little illuminating sunlight reaches that remote region. But occasionally a passing star or galactic tides will stir these icy leftovers from the solar system’s dawn, causing comets to fall toward the distant sun and into the observability of our telescopes. These so-called long-period comets have an orbit of thousands or millions of years and are predominantly small, no more than a few kilometers across. Yet last week astronomers announced the discovery of one with truly behemoth proportions: a giant comet that may measure hundreds of kilometers from edge to edge. “It was pretty shocking,” says Pedro Bernardinelli of the University of Pennsylvania, one of the researchers who found the object. Now efforts to train more telescopes in the comet’s direction to unearth its secrets of the deep are well underway.

Initially dubbed 2014 UN271, the object has been officially named C/2014 UN271 (Bernardinelli-Bernstein) for its discoverers: Bernardinelli and his University of Pennsylvania colleague Gary Bernstein. It was first observed in 2014 by a project called the Dark Energy Survey (DES), but Bernardelli and Bernstein only found the comet recently, after it popped out of their analysis of the 80,000 or so images taken by DES over the past several years. The images from 2014 revealed it to be lurking at about 30 times the distance between Earth and the sun, or 30 astronomical units (AU). Now, seven years on, the object is at 20 AU and continuing to approach us. Its closest point to the sun will be 10.9 AU, which it will reach in January 2031. That is not too much farther out than the orbit of Saturn—close enough that some have even envisaged sending a spacecraft to the object on a fleeting visit. Current estimates suggest the comet takes three million years to orbit the sun, traveling out to a distance of nearly 0.9 light-year—well into the Oort cloud—before swooping in again.

Both the object’s size and its looming proximity have captivated astronomers. “It’s very exciting,” says David Jewitt of the University of California, Los Angeles. Despite receiving 400 times less sunlight than Earth’s surface at its current location, the comet is bright enough to be seen by telescopes, which hints that its size must be somewhere between 100 and 370 kilometers. The uncertainty arises because of the object’s unknown reflectivity and shape. But at either end of the scale, this estimate would still make it much bigger than any previously known comet. The next largest in terms of its nucleus—Hale-Bopp, which wowed stargazers in 1997—measured a relatively paltry 60 kilometers across. The Bernardinelli-Bernstein comet is “certainly the largest comet we’ve seen in the modern astronomical era,” says Alan Fitzsimmons of Queen’s University Belfast. “We’ve had tremendously bright comets over recorded history, but that was before the invention of the telescope [in the 17th century].”

Efforts to study the object since it was announced have been swift. Already a team of astronomers has been able to detect signs of activity, most likely melting ices forming an atmosphere, or “coma,” around its solid nucleus, confirming it to be a comet. “Its brightness has increased a lot, which means that it’s active,” says Rosita Kokotanekova of the European Southern Observatory, who led the observations using a network of telescopes in the Southern Hemisphere. Getting continued rapid observations will be crucial in learning more about the comet. “There might still be a possibility we can see a rotational signal from the nucleus,” Kokotanekova says. “When the activity gets stronger, it will be completely obscured.”

Observing that activity will be enlightening, too, “because we’ve never observed a comet being active so far out [from the sun],” Kokotanekova says. This will allow researchers to probe the regions of the solar system where cometary activity begins. From the object’s initial apparition in DES optics in 2014 to 2018, it did not appear to show activity, meaning it likely “switched on” at some point in the past three years, Fitzsimmons says. “It’s going to give us a really nice ability to study what happens in this transition region—from being a frozen ice ball out in the Oort cloud to a fully active comet in the solar system.”

At its current distance, temperatures are too low for water ice to melt, so the Bernardinelli-Bernstein comet—which may be on its first foray into the inner solar system—must have some other type of ice that is melting. “The best guess would be carbon monoxide, because we know that’s present in comets, and it’s also very volatile,” Jewitt says.

In part because astronomers still know so little about the object and have never seen anything quite like it before, its exact nature remains unknown. Is it really a large comet or something else entirely? “Some people are speculating it could be round, almost in hydrostatic equilibrium, which makes it go in the direction of dwarf planets,” Kokotanekova says. This seems unlikely, however, given that most models suggest an icy object must be in the vicinity of 800 kilometers across before its own gravity begins sculpting it into a spherical shape. To pin down the object’s true size, Jewitt says the Hubble Space Telescope is the only current facility with sufficient power to peer through the coma and resolve the size of the nucleus. But as of this writing, his formal request to study the comet using the prized orbital observatory has not been approved. Other telescopes are capable of probing different features, though, such as its composition. “It’s so different from everything else we’ve observed that it’s very likely we’ll discover unexpected things,” Kokotanekova says.

Being able to observe the object for such a long time as it reaches its closest point to the sun, with a decade of observations ahead, will be hugely rewarding. Astronomers will be able to watch as it evolves, perhaps changing in its activity levels or even breaking apart. “The fact we can follow this thing for the next 10 years means there’s a lot of opportunity to discover more detail,” says Colin Snodgrass of the University of Edinburgh. And for the time being, a lot of what we might observe remains tantalizingly unknown, says Michele Bannister of the University of Canterbury in New Zealand. “This is something that’s been in the deep freeze for eons—hundreds of thousands of years at the very shortest,” she says. “And now it’s being heated by the sun. What’s going to happen? How active is it going to be? We don’t know yet. That’s going to be really fun to find out.”

The comet is also a taste of what is to come in the near future of solar system astronomy. In October 2023 a new telescope in Chile called the Vera C. Rubin Observatory will begin a 10-year survey of the entire overhead sky called the Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST). Thanks in part to its eight-meter mirror, Rubin will be able to discover much fainter objects than any of its predecessors, including many more expected large comets like this. “Typical telescopes find objects out to 50 or 60 AU,” says LSST team member Mario Jurić of the University of Washington. “With LSST, we can easily go out to 150 AU. We’re going to see things like [the Bernardinelli-Bernstein comet] maybe on a monthly basis.”

For the time being, C/2014 UN271 (Bernardinelli-Bernstein) remains the largest comet ever seen approaching the inner solar system, offering a glimpse into the secrets of our sun’s outermost reaches. How it behaves as it approaches Saturn’s orbit will be thrilling to watch, and the name Bernardinelli-Bernstein likely will not be forgotten any time soon. “It will be studied for years and years,” Kokotanekova says. “It’s only going to become more interesting. We’ll get to know it very well.”

Unusually Alcoholic Comet That Zipped By Earth Showed Some Very Strange Behavior



COMET 46/WIRTANEN MADE AN USUALLY CLOSE APPROCH TO EARTH IN DECEMBER 2018, INCLUDING THIS SPECTACULAR PASS NEAR THE PLEADIES IN THE SKY. ONLY NOW HAVE WE LEARNED IT WAS PUMPING OUT ALCOHOL AT A SURPRISING RATE AT THE TIME. IMAGE CREDIT: TRAGOOLCHITR JITTASALYAPAN/SHUTTERSTOCK.COM


By Stephen Luntz 

01 JUL 2021

SPACE

Go home Comet Wirtanen, you're drunk. Comets consist of some surprisingly complex molecules, often including alcohol. However, Comet 46P/Wirtanen released an unusually large amount of CH3OH as it flew past Earth in 2018. Perhaps it's not surprising then that it also showed some other strange and as 

Comet Wirtanen is a short-period comet, with an orbit of just 5.4 years, not a visitor from the depths of space like Comet Borisov or the recently discovered megacomet Bernardinelli-Bernstein. Indeed, so typical does it seem it was once planned to be the target for the Rosetta mission, which ended up going to comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko instead.

When it made one of the 10 closest approaches to Earth by a comet (around 12 million kilometers) in the last 70 years telescopes worldwide were trained on it. On previous passes, Wirtanen had been dubbed “hyperactive” because it seemed to shed material unusually fast. Results from the Keck telescope, using its NIRSPEC spectrograph upgraded just before the visit, have now been published in the Planetary Science Journal, including some eyebrow-raising features.

"46P/Wirtanen has one of the highest alcohol-to-aldehyde ratios measured in any comet to date," said Dr Neil Dello Russo of Johns Hopkins University in a statement."This tells us information about how carbon, oxygen, and hydrogen molecules were distributed in the early Solar System where Wirtanen formed."

That's not the only odd thing about Wirtanen they found. Comets are "dirty snowballs", icy balls of frozen gases, rocks, and dust. The heat of sunlight falling on a comet's nucleus as it passes the Sun heats the ice. In the absence of an atmosphere, the liquid phase is impossible, so once a particular type of ice melts it sublimates, going directly to a gas, producing a coma around the comet.

The coma is expected to cool down the further away it gets from the nucleus, just as air cools as it expands, but that barely happened for Wirtanen. “We found that the temperature measured for water gas in the coma did not decrease significantly with distance from the nucleus, which implies a heating mechanism," co-author Professor Erika Gibb of the University of Missouri-St Louis said.

The authors are not certain what was heating up the incredibly diffuse molecules within the coma, but offer two possibilities for further exploration. “There may be solid chunks of ice flying off 46P/Wirtanen. We've seen this in some comets visited by spacecraft,” Gibb said. We know Witanen underwent a spectacular explosion at the time. “Those ice chunks tumble away from the nucleus and sublimate [turn to gas], releasing energy further out into the coma.”

Alternatively, ionization of molecules in the coma by sunlight may release high-energy electrons that warm up other molecules when they collide with them.

Sadly for anyone hoping to make Wirtanen the ultimate space party destination, the alcohol detected was methanol not ethanol, so it would send you blind, and not in a good way. Other molecules detected in its coma include formaldehyde and hydrogen cyanide, so it is just as well they are millions of times too diffuse to do us any damage.

If a hot, drunk comet traveling around the inner Solar System and behaving erratically sounds alarming the good news is that Wirtanen never crosses Earth's orbit. Its closest approach to the Sun is 5 percent further out, and its elongated orbit takes it out as far as Jupiter.

SpaceX's first civilian crew will have 'one hell of a view' from the spaceship's toilet in a new glass dome

Morgan McFall-Johnsen

An illustration of SpaceX's Crew Dragon spaceship with a glass dome "cupola" at its nose. SpaceX


SpaceX could launch the world's first all-civilian crew into orbit as soon as September.

The Inspiration4 crew will have a glass dome, or "cupola," on their Crew Dragon spaceship.

That's where SpaceX's mysterious toilet is, according to mission commander Jared Isaacman.

SpaceX's first civilian crew is poised to enjoy what may be the best bathroom views in human history.

It's not clear how the toilet facilities work on SpaceX's Crew Dragon spaceship — the design is shrouded in proprietary secrecy. But we do know that the toilet is on the ceiling. That area of the spaceship will also feature a glass dome, called a cupola, that SpaceX is installing at the nose of the capsule.

So while passengers are using the toilet, they'll be able to gaze out the windows, according to Jared Isaacman, a billionaire entrepreneur and jet pilot who purchased four seats on SpaceX's spaceship for a civilian mission to space. The trip will be the first orbital spaceflight ever with no professional astronauts on board. It will also feature the first space toilet with a 360-degree view.

"It's not a ton of privacy. But you do have this kind of privacy curtain that cuts across the top of the spacecraft, so you can kind of separate yourself from everyone else," Isaacman, who will be commanding the mission, told Insider. "And that also happens to be where the glass cupola is. So, you know, when people do inevitably have to use the bathroom, they're going to have one hell of a view."

Isaacman's planned journey, a mission called Inspiration4, could launch as soon as September 15. The group is expected to orbit Earth at an altitude higher than the International Space Station (ISS) for three days, enjoying the views and conducting science experiments while they're there. Isaacman gave the other three Crew Dragon seats to physician-assistant Hayley Arceneaux, Air Force vet and engineer Chris Sembroski, and scientist and analogue astronaut Dr. Sian Proctor.

The Inspiration4 Crew at NASA's Launchpad 39A. From left to right: Chris Sembroski, Hayley Arceneaux, Dr. Sian Proctor, and Jared Isaacman. SpaceX/AP

Inspiration4 aims to kick off a new era of space tourism — alongside Jeff Bezos's plans to peek above the edge of space for three minutes on July 20 (though that's a suborbital flight), and a mission next year that aims to send three paying customers to the ISS aboard a Crew Dragon capsule.

SpaceX has flown professional astronauts to the space station for NASA three times, but none of those spaceships had a cupola. That's because the capsules' noses needed to dock to the ISS so that the astronauts could climb into the orbiting laboratory. Since the Inspiration4 crew won't be docking to anything, SpaceX is replacing the docking mechanism with a window that passengers can stand in.

The cupola is there to offer passengers stunning views of Earth. The toilet just happens to be nearby.

"Probably most 'in space' you could possibly feel by being in a glass dome," Elon Musk, SpaceX's founder and chief engineer, said of the new cupola on Twitter.

The Inspiration4 crew is learning to use the spaceship's toilet

Jared Isaacman at SpaceX headquarters in Hawthorne, California.

SpaceX/Business Wire via AP Photo

Isaacman, a self-described "space geek," started the payment-processing company Shift4 when he was 16 years old. He is still the company's CEO. He also founded Draken International, which owns a large fleet of ex-military aircraft and trains Air Force and other pilots. Isaacman sold his majority stake in that company for "a nine-figure sum," according to Forbes, which estimates his net worth at $2.9 billion.

Isaacman flies jets in his free time and has circumnavigated the globe at least twice. When he learned that he could buy a Crew Dragon flight, he jumped at the chance. Though neither SpaceX nor Isaacman has said how much he paid, NASA has estimated such a flight might cost $55 million per seat.

As part of the Inspiration4 mission, Isaacman is working with St. Jude Children's Research Hospital to plan science experiments for the crew to do while in orbit. The four crew members also plan to draw each other's blood, take skin samples, and perform cognitive tests to help NASA gather data about how spaceflight affects the human body.

SpaceX and NASA have both declined to reveal details about the location or design of Crew Dragon's toilet, but the spaceship's prior passengers have offered clues.

The toilet "works very similar to the one we were used to in the Space Shuttle, and it worked very well. We had no issues with it," NASA astronaut Doug Hurley told reporters after launching to the ISS on the Crew Dragon's first crewed flight last year.

The toilets on the Space Shuttle and on Russia's Soyuz spacecraft involved rudimentary hose and bag systems, so it's likely the Crew Dragon's resembles those. For civilians like Isaacman and his crewmates, this might be an adjustment. Even NASA Astronaut Peggy Whitson previously told Business Insider that going to the bathroom might have been the worst part about life in space.

Learning to use the toilet is part of the intensive pre-flight training for Inspiration4, according to Isaacman.

"We're just gonna have to work through it," he said.

NOW WATCH: Everything SpaceX had to get right for Crew Dragon's Splashdown

US maker of electric motors free from rare earths raises $225 mln
Hyunjoo Jin

Jars containing rare earth minerals produced by Australia's Lynas Corp from its Mount Weld operations are seen near Laverton, northeast of Perth, Australia, August 23, 2019. REUTERS/Melanie Burton

BERKELEY, California, June 30 (Reuters) - Turntide Technologies, a U.S. startup that makes energy-efficient electric motors without rare earth metals, has raised $225 million, underlining growing investor appetite for climate technology startups.

Most automakers, including Tesla (TSLA.O), use rare earth-based magnets in electronic vehicle motors. But the raw materials are costly, can be environmentally-damaging to process and China dominates production, making Western companies nervous about price or supply shocks.

Ryan Morris, Turntide Chairman and CEO, told Reuters reliance on rare earth minerals exposed companies to "a huge risk".

"Demand for electric motors for vehicles is skyrocketing. The supply (for raw materials) is not increasing very quickly. I think you're going to have a boiling point reached in the next three to four years with the shortage of those materials," he said.

Turntide's electric motors are designed to efficiently circulate air in the buildings of Amazon (AMZN.O) and other customers. "The demand for better air quality has massively increased because of pandemics," Morris said.

The firm also makes motors for commercial vehicles made by Volkswagen’s (VOWG_p.DE) MAN division and for Aston Martin's supercars.

The company this month gained a foothold in the transport sector with its purchase of two U.K.-based firms - Hyperdrive and BorgWarner's engineering technical center business.

The latest funding, which includes investment from Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, allowed it to close the acquisition, he said.

The investment brings the total funding to $400 million for the California-based company whose investors include funds backed by Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, Iron Man actor Robert Downey Jr, Amazon and BMW (BMWG.DE).

New recycling techniques set to make electric vehicles greener

Pratima Desai
Thu., July 1, 2021, 

FILE PHOTO: A used Lithium-ion car battery is opened before its dismantling by an employee of the German recycling firm Accurec in Krefeld


By Pratima Desai

LONDON (Reuters) - Researchers in Britain and the United States have found ways to recycle electric vehicle batteries that can drastically cut costs and carbon emissions, shoring up sustainable supplies for an expected surge in demand.

The techniques, which involve retrieving parts of the battery so they can be reused, would help the auto industry tackle criticism that even though EVs reduce emissions over their lifetime, they start out with a heavy carbon footprint of mined materials.

As national governments and regions race to secure supplies for an expected acceleration in EV demand, the breakthroughs could make valuable supplies of materials such as cobalt and nickel go further. They would also reduce dependence on China and difficult mining jurisdictions.

"We can't recycle complex products like batteries the way we recycle other metals. Shredding, mixing up the components of a battery and pyrometallurgy destroy value," Gavin Harper, a research fellow at the government-backed Faraday Institution in Britain, said.

Pyrometallurgy refers to the extraction of metals using high heat in blast furnaces, which analysts say is not economic.

Current recycling methods also rely on shredding the batteries into very small pieces, known as black mass, which is then processed into metals such as cobalt and nickel.

A switch to a practice known as direct recycling, which would preserve components such as the cathode and anode, could drastically reduce energy waste and manufacturing costs.

Researchers from the University of Leicester and the University of Birmingham working on the Faraday Institution's ReLib project have found a way to use ultrasonic waves to recycle the cathode and anode without shredding and have applied for a patent.

The technology recovers the cathode powder made up of cobalt, nickel and manganese from the aluminium sheet, to which it is glued in the battery manufacture. The anode powder, which would typically be graphite, is separated from the copper sheet.

Andy Abbott, a professor of physical chemistry at the University of Leicester said separation using ultrasonic waves would result in cost savings of 60% compared with the cost of virgin material.

Compared with more conventional technology, based on hydrometallurgy, which uses liquids, such as sulphuric acid and water to extract materials, he said ultrasonic technology can process 100 times more battery material over the same period.

Abbott's team has separated battery cells manually to test the process, but ReLib is working on a project to use robots to separate batteries and packs more efficiently.

As supplies and scrap levels take time to accrue, Abbott said he expected the technology to initially use scrap from battery manufacturing facilities as the feedstock and the recycled material would be fed back into battery production.

PROFITABLE RECYCLING

In the United States, a government-sponsored project at the Department of Energy called ReCell is in the final stages of demonstrating different, but also promising recycling technologies that refurbish battery cathode to make it into new cathode.

ReCell, headed by Jeff Spangenberger, has studied many different methods, including ultrasonics, but focused on thermal and solvent based methods.

"The U.S. doesn't make much cathode domestically, so if we use hydrometallurgy or pyrometallurgy we have to send the recycled materials to other countries to be turned into cathode and shipped back to us," Spangenberger said.

"To make lithium-ion battery recycling profitable, without requiring a disposal fee to consumers, and to encourage growth in the recycling industry, new methods that generate higher profit margins for recyclers need to be developed."

There are challenges for direct recycling, including continuously evolving chemistries, Spangenberger said. "ReCell is working on separating different cathode chemistries."

Early electric vehicle battery cells typically used a cathode with equal amounts of nickel, manganese, cobalt or 1-1-1. This has changed in recent years as manufacturers seek to reduce costs and cathode chemistries can be 5-3-2, 6-2-2 or 8-1-1.

The approach at Faraday's ReLib project is to blend recycled with virgin material to get the required ratios of nickel, manganese and cobalt.

(Reporting by Pratima Desai; editing by Veronica Brown and Barbara Lewis)

Mask Mandates Dropped By American Automakers, UAW

By Matt Posky on June 30, 2021

The COVID-19 Joint Task Force comprised of Detroit automakers and the United Auto Workers (UAW) has announced that it will be removing mask mandates for vaccinated employees. After meeting on Monday to discuss changes within state and federal health policies, the group decided masks should be made voluntary items for staffers. They could not get the rule change to coincide with the date the decision was made, however.

Lineworkers will instead be waiting until July 12th to pitch their masks in the trash bin so they can be deposited upon beaches and sea beds around the world. Of course, if a government agency (city, state, or county) wants to uphold old mandates or introduce new ones, the COVID-19 Joint Task Force said it would automatically comply. But that might not matter if employees have already decided to stop observing pandemic protocols. 

From the UAW:

The COVID-19 Task Force met Monday, June 28 and reviewed the reports of medical experts, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) guidelines and Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) standards to maintain safety as the companies continue to work through the pandemic.

For those fully vaccinated, the wearing of masks will be voluntary. Those who have not been vaccinated will continue to be required to wear a face mask. The Task Force will continue to monitor data carefully and make any adjustments necessary to protect the health and safety of employees.

While the UAW and the companies continue following the protocols that have kept our workplaces safe, we know that one of the best ways to fight this virus is by getting vaccinated. The Task Force continues to encourage everyone to roll up their sleeves and get vaccinated against COVID-19 so that we can protect our sisters and brothers and their families.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has recently started urging fully vaccinated people to continue wearing masks, potentially causing some fresh confusion in what’s been a largely bewildering topic since day one. WHO officials originally stated that COVID-19 was incapable of human transmission while denying the validity of Taiwanese claims to the contrary. It also had to backtrack on claims that temporarily restricting travel with China would have been fruitless.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), stated that people didn’t need to be “walking around with a mask” in March of last year. At the same time, automakers had been tasked by the U.S. government to begin manufacturing personal protective equipment (PPE) and ventilators while we all thought “fifteen days to slow the spread” just meant two weeks. Since then, we’ve seen Fauci confess that he effectively lied to the public to avoid panic buying that might keep healthcare providers from having a sufficient mask supply.

There were also periods where the effectiveness of certain types of masks were called into question and a stint where multiple-masking became all the rage. We learned that the Wuhan lab leak, which was previously being derided across the internet as a ludicrous theory (and there is some debate over whether social-media giants, in a bid to fight misinformation and disinformation, may have removed posts that made legitimate claims of a lab leak. Facebook has already reversed its position on removing claims regarding the lab-leak theory), is now more likely to be considered a possible likely explanation for what happened. The overall messaging has been so wildly inconsistent that we’d wager almost nobody had a real handle on the situation. This could explain why we’ve seen so many people sitting around in vehicles all by themselves wearing makeshift hazmat suits and losing their minds when someone invades their bubble at the grocery store. Though it doesn’t seem to account for the wild levels of restrictions imposed on the citizenry or the rampant politicization of the virus received (and continues to receive) from all sides.

This places automakers in a precarious position. Having spoken to numerous factory employees over the past year, I already know that many are already bucking mask mandates whenever possible. Some no longer believe in their effectiveness, some are just tired of wearing them in sometimes muggy factory conditions, and the rest don’t see the point post-vaccination PPE.

“A lot of people are just fed up,” stated one General Motors employee asking to remain nameless. “Even though we have protocols in place, few [people] are following them closely anymore.”

A small sampling among Ford employees revealed similar sentiments. Two assembly workers stated that employees have gotten lax in adhering to COVID restrictions over the last six months, adding that there are still employees who take masking very seriously.

“It was different last summer,” explained one. “Plenty of guys complained but we all went along with the new restrictions. Now it’s like 50/50.”

Meanwhile, other brands and businesses operating within the country have already begun scaling back restrictions. After the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued relaxed COVID guidance, Penske Automotive Group, and several other dealer organizations stated they would begin reintroducing mask-less stores wherever possible. Toyota Motor Group followed suit by announcing it was lifting mask mandates at several North American facilities last week.

However, eligibility for ditching the mask is still supposed to require proof of being vaccinated. This causes problems for those who cannot get the shot for religious, ethical, or medical reasons. While you could forge a card, since they’re easily duplicated squares of white paper on 100 card stock, the federal government has said the practice would be illegal. But I honestly doubt companies are going to endlessly check on employees’ medical backgrounds. From the sound of things, they have bigger fish to fry and the management at some facilities has already stopped being a stickler for mask rules.

[Image: Mr.Jinda Lungloan/Shutterstock]

Profitability of new European offshore wind projects in spotlight

Lower internal rates of return and long payoff times taking toll, findings show in Stavanger



Under construction: North Star Renewables service vessels for the Dogger Bank wind farm

Photo: NORTH STAR RENEWABLES

Shrinking rates of return and long payoff times are eating away at the profitability of some European offshore wind projects, according to new research.

A Norwegian research group has found that the UK's 3.6-gigawatt Dogger Bank — owned by Equinor, SSE Renewables and Eni — has a nominal internal rate of return (IRR) of 5.6% and a payback time of 17 years.

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The findings, by Petter Osmundsen and Sindre Lorentzen — professor and associate professor at the University of Stavanger's industrial economics section — and Magne Emhjellen, senior economist at Norwegian oil and gas player Petoro, suggest that potential profits from offshore wind in Europe are falling fast.


Oil majors BP and Total win in giant UK offshore wind lease roundRead more

The research was published in the conference proceedings of the International Association for Energy Economics' annual meeting.

The research group, which has received funding from the Norwegian Ministry of Petroleum, has made transparent project calculations for selected bottom-fixed UK offshore wind farms.

Osmundsen explained that the background for the development is aggressive bidding for contracts for difference in the UK.

“We have seen the strike price" — the fixed price offered as an incentive for wind energy development — "fall from around £150 [$208] per megawatt hour to around £40 per MWh in the auction rounds (in 2012 terms),” he said.

Researchers have accounted for lower risk in oil and gas by reducing the required rate of return. The shorter/longer life scenario is an expected 25 years, plus or minus five years. The price sensitivity is for the period after the contracts for difference terms Photo: Chart PETTER OSMUNDSEN ET AL

The researchers made project calculations for the Dudgeon wind farm off eastern England, which was commissioned in 2017 with a strike price of £150 per MWh, and Dogger Bank, which is under construction off north-east England, with a strike price of £40 per MWh.


Concerns raised over Equinor's growing project finance debt for renewablesRead more

They found an expected nominal IRR at Dudgeon of 9% and a payback time of 12 years, compared with Dogger Bank's 5.6% and 17 years.

According to the researchers, the expected IRR over a limited number of years has therefore dropped 38%.

They also calculated IRR sensitivities of Dogger Bank.

“We have calculated the expected IRR of the Eni purchase of 20% of the Dogger Bank project at 2.4%, nominal. The IRR for the sellers, Equinor and SSE, increased by 0.7% by the sale,” Osmundsen said, explaining that the increase in return is much lower than for previous farm-outs in offshore wind.(Copyright)

Research: University of Stavanger petroleum economics professor Petter Osmundsen Photo: UNIVERSITY OF STAVANGER

 

Laser 'comb' systems measure all primary greenhouse gases in the air

by National Institute of Standards and Technology

NIST researchers used a laser frequency-comb instrument (illustration at lower right) to simultaneously measure three airborne greenhouse gases -- nitrous oxide, carbon dioxide and water vapor -- plus the major air pollutants ozone and carbon monoxide over two round-trip paths (arrows) from a NIST building in Boulder, Colo., to a reflector on a balcony of another building, and another reflector on a nearby hill. Credit: N. Hanacek/NIST

Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have upgraded their laser frequency-comb instrument to simultaneously measure three airborne greenhouse gasses—nitrous oxide, carbon dioxide and water vapor—plus the major air pollutants ozone and carbon monoxide.

Combined with an earlier version of the system that measures methane, NIST's dual comb technology can now sense all four primary greenhouse gasses, which could help in understanding and monitoring emissions of these heat-trapping gasses implicated in climate change. The newest comb system can also help assess urban air quality.

These NIST instruments identify gas signatures by precisely measuring the amounts of light absorbed at each color in the broad laser spectrum as specially prepared beams trace a path through the air. Current applications include detecting leaks from oil and gas installations as well as measuring emissions from livestock. The comb systems can measure a larger number of gasses than conventional sensors that sample air at specific locations can. The combs also offer greater precision and longer range than similar techniques using other sources of light.

NIST's latest advance, described in a new paper, shifts the spectrum of light analyzed from the near-infrared into the mid-infrared, enabling the identification of more and different gasses. The older, near-infrared comb systems can identify carbon dioxide and methane but not nitrous oxide, ozone or carbon monoxide.

Researchers demonstrated the new system over round-trip paths with lengths of 600 meters and 2 kilometers. The light from two frequency combs was combined in optical fiber and transmitted from a telescope located at the top of a NIST building in Boulder, Colorado. One beam was sent to a reflector located on a balcony of another building, and a second beam to a reflector on a hill. The comb light bounced off the reflector and returned to the original location for analysis to identify the gasses in the air.

A frequency comb is a very precise "ruler" for measuring exact colors of light. Each comb "tooth" identifies a different color. To reach the mid-infrared part of the spectrum, the key component is a specially engineered crystal material, known as periodically poled lithium niobate, that converts light between two colors. The system in this experiment split the near-infrared light from one comb into two branches, used special fiber and amplifiers to broaden and shift the spectrum of each branch differently and to boost power, then recombined the branches in the crystal. This produced mid-infrared light at a lower frequency (longer wavelength) that was the difference between the original colors in the two branches.

The system was precise enough to capture variations in atmospheric levels of all of the measured gasses and agreed with results from a conventional point sensor for carbon monoxide and nitrous oxide. A major advantage in detecting multiple gasses at once is the ability to measure correlations between them. For example, measured ratios of carbon dioxide to nitrous oxide agreed with other studies of emissions from traffic. In addition, the ratio of excess carbon monoxide versus carbon dioxide agreed with similar urban studies but was only about one-third the levels predicted by the U.S. National Emissions Inventory (NEI). These levels provide a measure of how efficiently fuel combusts in emissions sources such as cars.

The NIST measurements, in echoing other studies suggesting there is less carbon monoxide in the air than the NEI predicts, put the first hard numbers on the reference levels or 'inventories' of pollutants in the Boulder-Denver area.

"The comparison with the NEI shows how hard it is to create inventories, especially that cover large areas, and that it is critical to have data to feed back to the inventories," lead author Kevin Cossel said. "This isn't something that will directly impact most people on a day-to-day basis—the inventory is just trying to replicate what is actually happening. However, for understanding and predicting air quality and pollution impacts, modelers do rely on the inventories, so it is critical that the inventories be correct."

Researchers plan to further improve the new comb instrument. They plan to extend the reach to longer distances, as already demonstrated for the near-infrared system. They also plan to boost detection sensitivity by increasing the light power and other tweaks, to enable detection of additional gasses. Finally, they are working on making the system more compact and robust. These advances may help improve understanding of air quality, specifically the interplay of factors influencing ozone formation.

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'Agricomb' measures multiple gas emissions from... cows

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More information: Fabrizio R. Giorgetta et al, Open-Path Dual-Comb Spectroscopy for Multispecies Trace Gas Detection in the 4.5–5 µm Spectral Region, Laser and Photonics Reviews (2021). DOI: 10.1002/lpor.202000583

Provided by National Institute of Standards and Technology