What dream job? Gen Z and millennials are being forced to confront a difficult job market.

Jennifer Sor
Tue, October 29, 2024 

DNY

Gen Z and millennials are increasingly turning away from their dream careers.


The unemployment rate rose to 3.9% last month, the highest level in two years.


Graduates are adjusting their expectations of what a career may hold, labor experts say.

Gen Z and millennials entering the job market or in the early stages of their careers are facing a much tougher job market than in recent years, and many are adjusting their expectations for a dream career as the hiring landscape worsens.


While the job market has looked pretty robust in recent months, there are now signs that tighter economic conditions engineered by the Federal Reserve are set to make things much tougher for anyone looking to get hired. The unemployment rate rose to 3.9% last month, the highest level in two years, while wage growth slowed, according to the February nonfarm payroll report published on Friday.

But job-seeking was already turning way bleaker for fresh graduates and America's youngest workers before the latest data, and the younger demographic is usually the first to feel the blow of a weakening job market.

Layoff announcements — which often impact more junior workers first — rose 410% year-over-year in February, according to data from the career coaching firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas, the worst February recorded since 2009.

That already looks to be showing up in the unemployment numbers. The jobless rate for 20- to 24-year-olds surged to 7.2% in January, compared to just 3.2% for workers over 25, per the latest jobs data.

One in three 2023 college graduates say they don't believe they have the skills to land a full-time offer, according to a survey from the job listings site Handshake. Meanwhile, 74% of Gen Zers and millennials are worried about their job security — significantly higher than the overall population, where just 47% say they're concerned about job stability, according to a study last year by McKinsey & Company.

"It remains a strong labor market, but not quite as tight as it was a few years ago," Harry Holzer, a Georgetown professor and the former chief economist of the Labor Department, told Business Insider. "So young people are going to feel that before anyone else."

That was the case for Natasha Bernfeld, a 32-year-old former HR professional who was out of work for 11 months after getting laid off in November 2022.

Much of those 11 months were spent battling a constant wave of rejection, she says, despite the fact that she was job searching around 40 hours a week and had already had five years of experience in her chosen field. She estimates that she's applied to over 200 jobs, even applying to some companies twice.

"It was defeating," Bernfeld told Business Insider in an interview. "We didn't plan for me to be unemployed."

Despair about the ailing job market looks most acute among recent graduates, or students quickly approaching their graduation dates. Larry Jackson, senior associate director at Berkeley Career Engagement, says he's seen a 25% increase in students coming in for career help compared to before the pandemic. Alumni visits, meanwhile, are up 30%.
Dimming outlook

Recent graduates appear to be managing their expectations for what a career may hold.

Nearly three-quarters of 2023 graduates said the most important thing was stability from an employer, according to Handshake.

As areas like tech, finance, and media go through waves of layoffs, white-collar work looks less secure. Meanwhile, enrollment in trade programs has been on the rise in recent years. Mechanic and other repair trade programs saw enrollment jump 11% in 2022, while construction trades saw a 19% jump, per the National Student Clearinghouse.

On the flip side, enrollment in liberal arts programs — an area of academics often tarred as impractical in the job market — dropped 17% from 2018 to 2023. That's compared to computer and information sciences, for which enrollment has soared 34% since 2019.

Only 44% of workers under 30 said they were "very satisfied" with their job, according to a 2023 Pew Research study. Just 39% said they were fulfilled at least most of the time.

According to Emily Bianchi, an Emory University psychologist, college graduates entering the job market during a recession tend to report lower levels of grandiosity and self-adulation when it comes to their career aspirations well beyond their post-grad years.

"Recessions tend to be particularly hard on young adults. They tend to be the last to get hired, the first to get fired," Bianchi said. "It's hard to keep a perception that you're special and unique and the world owes you everything when it's really told to you again and again: it really doesn't."


The US isn't in a recession, but young Americans may already feel as if one is here. Bernfeld said she felt a downturn had already arrived by late 2023, when she posted a viral TikTok on her job-search struggles.

Bernfeld, who originally aspired to be an actor, says she gave up on that dream years ago.

"That was my dream since I was a kid. But I also knew I wasn't making enough money to live in my teeny shoebox of an apartment in New York to really do it," she said. "I didn't want to act enough to live in my car for it."

The job market boomed during the pandemic, with the unemployment rate going from 6.4% at the beginning of 2021 to 3.5% at the end of 2022. It hovered at historic lows through last year, finally notching an uptick to two-year highs in the latest payroll report.

Tougher times may be ahead, Georgetown's Holzer said. The hiring frenzy was another symptom of an economy thrown out of whack by pandemic distortions and massive monetary and fiscal stimulus that led to sky-high inflation, which are all conditions the Federal Reserve is now trying to reverse.

And there are no signs that millennials or Gen Zers will feel better about the job market anytime soon, especially if their expectations were set by the 2021 labor boom, according to André Dua, a senior partner at McKinsey & Company.

"It's not in the same environment of plenty that it seemed just a few years ago," Dua said.

Correction: March 11, 2024 — an earlier version of this article misstated Larry Jackson's title and his organization. He is a senior associate director at Berkley Career Engagement. The article also misspelled the name of the job listing service cited. It is Handshake, not Handshakes.

This story was originally published in March 2024.

 Business Insider

Jamie Dimon says World War III may have already begun

Jamie Dimon, chief executive officer of JPMorgan Chase, is keeping his eye keenly on geopolitics. · Fortune · Kent Nishimura/Bloomberg - Getty Images

Eleanor Pringle
Tue, October 29, 2024 


JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon isn't hugely optimistic about the state of global politics. In fact, he thinks it's the biggest threat facing the economy.

But he now fears conflicts in the likes of Ukraine and the Middle East have begun a chain of events that may spiral into a third world war.

Speaking at the Institute of International Finance last week, Dimon said the outlook on the next quarter and whether the U.S. will have a hard or soft landing is a "teeny" matter compared with geopolitics.


Russia, North Korea, and Iran—a trio Dimon previously labeled as an "evil axis"—as well as China, are actively working together to "dismantle" the systems set up by the allies following World War II such as NATO, he added.

"And they're talking about doing it now," he said in a recording obtained by Fortune. "They're not talking about waiting 20 years. And so the risk of this is extraordinary if you read history."

Referencing a Washington Post article, Dimon continued, "World War III has already begun. You already have battles on the ground being coordinated in multiple countries."

"Mistakes happen," he added. "Look at how we tripped into World War II. When Czechoslovakia was split up—sounds a little like Ukraine—that was the end of it. Until they invaded Poland.

"We shan't be naive. What we should be thinking about is we can't take the chance this will resolve itself. We have to make sure that we are involved in doing the right things to get it resolved properly."


Luckily for those watching the news with a sense of impending doom, Dimon did have some faith that all-out war isn't a foregone conclusion.

"It may diminish over time," the Wall Street veteran added. There may be "armistices struck" in the likes of Ukraine and the Middle East.

Of course, the man who runs America's biggest bank with a military tactic called the “OODA loop”—analyzing potential scenarios from every standpoint—isn't betting on the situation improving.

Dimon, who was paid $36 million for his work in 2023, takes his concerns to the board of the financial giant.

"I talk about the risk to us if those things go south," Dimon said. "We run scenarios that would shock you. I don't even want to mention them."
Nuclear concern outweighs climate change

Dimon also placed the nuclear threat out of Russia—and indeed any potential adversary—at the top of the list of concerns.

"We've never had a situation where a man [Putin] is threatening nuclear blackmail. That: 'If your military starts to win, we're rolling out the nuclear weapons' type of thing," said Dimon.

"If that doesn't scare you, it should."

Nuclear proliferation—the continued spread of nuclear weapons being obtained by countries that don't currently have them—is the "biggest risk mankind faces," Dimon continued.

"It's not climate change, it's nuclear proliferation," he doubled down. "We've got to be very careful about what we're trying to accomplish in the next couple of years."

If the spread of nuclear powers continues, "it's just a matter of time before these things are going off in major cities around the world," Dimon said. "I think we have to just have clarity and subordinate a lot of things to make sure this ends up right."

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

World’s first nuclear radiation-detecting chip can fit on phones and drones

Interesting Engineering
Mon, October 28, 2024


A state-owned nuclear company in China has announced that it is beginning to mass produce a world-first chip that can detect radiation.

The announcement adds to the long list of semiconductor related breakthroughs that have come from the Asian country in the past few years.

The claim of beginning mass production of chips that can detect X-ray and gamma radiation have come from the China National Nuclear Corporation (CNNC). According to a report by the South China Morning Post (SCMP), the claim was made by the company in a statement released on its official WeChat channel.
Detecting radiation with chip

According to the SCMP report, CNNC has claimed that its homegrown chip can “measure dose rates of X- and gamma-ray radiation ranging from 100 nanoSievert per hour to 10 milliSievert per hour.”

The Chinese firm also claims that it can be used for a broad number of applications, ranging from monitoring radiation doses in all types of settings – such as nuclear-related workplaces like reactors, weapon plants, and more.

Further, it can also be used in the nature and other places with proximity to radiation zones to keep a tab on the rise or fall of levels.

To put things into perspective, a normal flight on a commercial plane can lead to a typical dose rate of roughly 3,000 nanoSievert per hour. On the other hand, in nature it is around 60 to 200 nanoSievert per hour.

One of the important features of the chip is that it is quite small in size - measuring just 15 mm by 15 mm by 3 mm - as per the Chinese firm. At the same time, the small size does not hinder its performance or its abilities – and CNNC says that it can be compared to a Geiger-Muller counter for efficiency.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6KUuUh8uaLo

More uses of nuclear energy-detecting chip

The small size will enable the chip to be placed inside smartphones or even attached to unmanned aerial vehicles or ground drones. The phones, or drones, can then be used as smart devices for measuring radiation at the desired places, the company stated.

The chip can function on extremely low power - one milliwatt – and it can detect energies from 50 kiloelectron volt to 2 mega electron-volt.

CNNC also states that the whole development of the chip - right from designing to testing, and now the mass production – has been carried out in its factories, by its own team of engineers.

This is also a significant development as the US had been sanctioning companies from supplying semiconductors and artificial intelligence (AI) chips to China and Chinese firms.

Earlier this year, analysts had predicted that China might be able to overtake the United States in important sectors such as semiconductors, electric vehicles, quantum computing, nuclear power, and material science.

Analysts at the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF), a think tank based in Washington, had come to this conclusion after closely following the progress and innovation capability made by 44 Chinese firms.

For a long time, China had been considered a copycat in innovation and there is a good reason for this. However, in recent years, a lot has changed. China became the second-largest economy, and the Chinese government and companies heavily invested in research and development of high-value technologies.

All of this has resulted in China’s rising dominance in several key areas. For instance, the number of nuclear reactors China developed in the last 10 years is more than what the US deployed in the last 30 years.

Chinese state-owned nuclear company claims breakthrough with radiation detection chip

South China Morning Post
Mon, October 28, 2024 


A Chinese state-owned nuclear company said it has started mass production of the world's first chip that can detect X-ray and gamma radiation, in the latest sign of China's unrelenting efforts to seek semiconductor technology breakthroughs.

The state-owned China National Nuclear Corporation (CNNC) said in a statement on its official WeChat channel that the self-developed chip can measure dose rates of X- and gamma-ray radiation ranging from 100 nanoSievert per hour to 10 milliSievert per hour. The typical dose rate of radiation exposure when flying on a commercial aeroplane, for instance, is around 3,000 nanoSievert per hour, while that of exposure to natural background is around 60 to 200 nanoSievert per hour.

CNNC said the proposed applications were "broad", as customers can use the chip to monitor radiation doses in various scenarios including nuclear-related workplaces, personnel and environmental settings, after adapting the circuit based on instructions in the manual.

Do you have questions about the biggest topics and trends from around the world? Get the answers with SCMP Knowledge, our new platform of curated content with explainers, FAQs, analyses and infographics brought to you by our award-winning team.

It can also be integrated into smartphones and drones as a radiation sensor, which could then be used as smart devices with a radiation detection function, according to CNNC.


The core module of a small modular reactor (SMR) developed by CNNC. Photo: CCTV alt=The core module of a small modular reactor (SMR) developed by CNNC. Photo: CCTV>

The chip's sensitivity is comparable to a Geiger-Muller counter widely used in environmental measurement, despite its small size of 15mm by 15mm by 3mm, according to CNNC.

It can detect energies from 50 kiloelectron volt to 2 mega electron-volt, and has extremely low power consumption of one milliwatt.

The US sanctioned CNNC said its team was involved in the whole development process, from chip design and tape-out to packaging and testing, and has now outsourced mass production to "authorised factories".

The development comes as China continues to push for self-reliance in technology, especially in semiconductors, amid an intensifying tech war with the US, which has sought to curb China's high-tech access over national security concerns.

Earlier this month, Chinese President Xi Jinping reiterated the importance of science and technology in China's modernisation, and the need for self-reliance.

"High-tech development cannot be begged for; we must accelerate the realisation of high-level technological self-reliance and self-improvement," state news agency Xinhua quoted Xi as saying during his visit to the southeastern high-tech hub of Hefei.

This article originally appeared in the South China Morning Post (SCMP), the most authoritative voice reporting on China and Asia for more than a century. For more SCMP stories, please explore the SCMP app or visit the SCMP's Facebook and Twitter pages. Copyright © 2024 South China Morning Post Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved.

China warns of deep-sea spying devices, underwater 'lighthouses' that guide foreign submarines

Mon, October 28, 2024 

By Joe Cash

BEIJING (Reuters) - China's Ministry of State Security said on Tuesday that it had retrieved spying devices both on the ocean surface and in the depths of the sea, including underwater "lighthouses" that could guide the transit of foreign submarines.

The ministry said it had uncovered devices that had been hidden on the ocean floor and were sending back information that could "pre-set the field for battle," in an article on its official WeChat account, China's most popular social media app.

Recent sea and air confrontations in the South China Sea between China and the Philippines over competing territorial claims in the highly strategic waterway have raised the risk of an escalation that could eventually involve the U.S., which is treaty-bound to defend the Philippines if it is attacked.

China has also recently staged war games around Taiwan in which it simulated attacks and deployment of ships and aircraft, drawing condemnation from the democratically governed island's government and the United States.

"National security forces have seized a variety of special technical devices used for spying on marine information and data, hidden in the vastness of the sea," the state security ministry said, without specifying where the devices were found.

"Some act as 'secret agents,' drifting and floating with the waves, monitoring the situation in our territorial waters in real time. Some act as underwater 'lighthouses,' indicating the direction for foreign submarines that have invaded our waters."

China claims sovereignty over nearly all the South China Sea, including areas claimed by Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines and Vietnam.

Beijing has also said it will never renounce the use of force over Taiwan, which rejects China's sovereignty claims and says only the island's people can decide their future.

A submarine arms race is intensifying between China and the United States and its allies, analysts say, with Beijing on track to have a new generation of nuclear-powered and -armed submarines in operation by the end of the decade.

"Facing a serious and complicated covert struggle for deep-sea security and the real threat of foreign espionage and intelligence agencies... (the ministry) will firmly defend China's sovereignty, security and development interests and contribute to the construction of a strong maritime nation," the ministry said.

(Reporting by Joe Cash; Editing by Michael Perry)

PhD student discovers lost Maya city with pyramids in Campeche, Mexico jungle

Interesting Engineering
Tue, October 29, 2024 

Archaeologists have uncovered over 6,500 previously unknown Maya structures, including a hidden city with grand pyramids, within southeast Mexico. This major discovery highlights the impressive and populous ancient Maya landscape that had long been hidden beneath dense forests and modern settlements.

Lead author Luke Auld-Thomas, a PhD student from Northern Arizona University noted the significance of the find, saying, “We didn’t just find rural areas and smaller settlements… We also found a large city with pyramids right next to the area’s only highway, near a town where people have been actively farming among the ruins for years.”

Using LiDAR technology, which stands for Light Detection and Ranging, researchers were able to peer beneath the forest canopy in eastern Campeche, a lesser-studied region of the Maya civilization.

This powerful remote-sensing technique, which fires laser pulses to generate highly accurate 3D models of the landscape, revealed intricate details of Maya urbanism in an area that had remained unexplored by archaeologists until now.
A lush, urbanized landscape

The study focused on a roughly 50-square-mile area in east-central Campeche, an “unmapped” zone in Maya archaeology. By analyzing LiDAR data initially gathered in 2013 to monitor carbon in Mexico’s forests, researchers discovered the hidden expanse of Maya settlements.

The Maya civilization thrived during the Classic Period (A.D. 250–900), and areas like the central Maya Lowlands—covering parts of Guatemala, Belize, and the Mexican states of Campeche and Quintana Roo—were hubs of advanced urbanism.

“Our analysis not only revealed a picture of a region that was dense with settlements, but it also revealed a lot of variability,” explained Auld-Thomas. Many of the newly found sites, including the urban area called Valeriana, showcase the diversity and scale of Maya settlements.

A map shows details of the Valeriana site's core in Campeche state, Mexico. Image Credit: Antiquity 2024

This “major urban area” includes two main hubs of monumental structures connected by continuous settlements, along with evidence of sophisticated landscape engineering that supported such a large population.

The Valeriana site contains multiple plazas, grand pyramids, a ball court, and a large reservoir created by damming an arroyo, or dry creek bed—a design common in Maya cities to capture seasonal rainwater for use in arid months.

The findings shed light on the Classic Maya’s ability to transform their natural surroundings into a highly organized, urban landscape. This discovery reshapes our understanding of Maya cities, showing that much of the central Maya Lowlands was as densely populated and urban as other ancient civilizations.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k1TO7-iG8Jw
Unseen depths of the Maya civilization

The study challenges previous assumptions about the Maya civilization by unveiling a picture of a more interconnected and urbanized society than previously known. While archaeologists have long understood that the Maya occupied and engineered vast tracts of land in the region, certain areas like east-central Campeche had largely escaped scientific attention.

By focusing on this “blank spot” in Maya archaeology, Auld-Thomas’s team has opened new doors to understanding the scope and organization of the ancient Maya.

LiDAR technology has become essential in modern archaeology, especially for exploring dense forests like those covering the Maya Lowlands. “Scientists in ecology, forestry and civil engineering have been using LiDAR surveys to study some of these areas for totally separate purposes,” Auld-Thomas added.

However, the technology is uniquely suited to archaeology, as it can reveal hidden structures buried under vegetation, exposing sites that would otherwise remain unknown.

The Valeriana site is a stark example of just how much more there is to uncover. The researchers wrote in the study, “The discovery of Valeriana highlights the fact that there are still major gaps in our knowledge of the existence or absence of large sites within as-yet unmapped areas of the Maya Lowlands.”



They concluded that the latest findings, when added to current knowledge, indicate that dense cities and extensive settlements were common across large portions of the central Maya Lowlands.

The findings are detailed in the journal Antiquity.

PhD student finds lost city in Mexico jungle by accident

Georgina Rannard -BBC  Science reporter
Tue, October 29, 2024

A huge Maya city has been discovered centuries after it disappeared under jungle canopy in Mexico.

Archaeologists found pyramids, sports fields, causeways connecting districts and amphitheatres in the southeastern state of Campeche.

They uncovered the hidden complex - which they have called Valeriana - using Lidar, a type of laser survey that maps structures buried under vegetation.

They believe it is second in density only to Calakmul, thought to be the largest Maya site in ancient Latin America.

The team discovered three sites in total, in a survey area the size of Scotland's capital Edinburgh, “by accident” when one archaeologist browsed data on the internet.

“I was on something like page 16 of Google search and found a laser survey done by a Mexican organisation for environmental monitoring,” explains Luke Auld-Thomas, a PhD student at Tulane university in the US.

It was a Lidar survey, a remote sensing technique which fires thousands of laser pulses from a plane and maps objects below using the time the signal takes to return.

But when Mr Auld-Thomas processed the data with methods used by archaeologists, he saw what others had missed - a huge ancient city which may have been home to 30-50,000 people at its peak from 750 to 850 AD.

That is more than the number of people who live in the region today, the researchers say.

Mr Auld-Thomas and his colleagues named the city Valeriana after a nearby lagoon.

The find helps change an idea in Western thinking that the Tropics was where “civilisations went to die”, says Professor Marcello Canuto, a co-author in the research.

Instead, this part of the world was home to rich and complex cultures, he explains.

We can’t be sure what led to the demise and eventual abandonment of the city, but the archaeologists say climate change was a major factor.

There are no pictures of the city but it had pyramid temples similar to this one in nearby Calakmul [Getty Images]

Valeriana has the “hallmarks of a capital city” and was second only in density of buildings to the spectacular Calakmul site, around 100km away (62 miles).

It is “hidden in plain sight”, the archaeologists say, as it is just 15 minutes hike from a major road near Xpujil where mostly Maya people now live.

There are no known pictures of the lost city because “no-one has ever been there”, the researchers say, although local people may have suspected there were ruins under the mounds of earth.

The city, which was about 16.6 sq km, had two major centres with large buildings around 2km (1.2 miles) apart, linked by dense houses and causeways.

It has two plazas with temple pyramids, where Maya people would have worshipped, hidden treasures like jade masks and buried their dead.

It also had a court where people would have played an ancient ball game.

How ancient Maya cities have withstood the ravages of time

There was also evidence of a reservoir, indicating that people used the landscape to support a large population.

In total, Mr Auld-Thomas and Prof Canuto surveyed three different sites in the jungle. They found 6,764 buildings of various sizes.

The ruins were found in eastern Mexico, in Campeche [BBC]

Professor Elizabeth Graham from University College London, who was not involved in the research, says it supports claims that Maya lived in complex cities or towns, not in isolated villages.

"The point is that the landscape is definitely settled - that is, settled in the past - and not, as it appears to the naked eye, uninhabited or ‘wild’," she says.

The research suggests that when Maya civilisations collapsed from 800AD onwards, it was partly because they were so densely populated and could not survive climate problems.

"It's suggesting that the landscape was just completely full of people at the onset of drought conditions and it didn't have a lot of flexibility left. And so maybe the entire system basically unravelled as people moved farther away," says Mr Auld-Thomas.

Warfare and the conquest of the region by Spanish invaders in the 16th century also contributed to eradication of Maya city states.

Evidence of the ruins were found by a plane using laser remote sensing to map beneath the jungle canopy [Getty Images]

Many more cities could be found

Lidar technology has revolutionised how archaeologists survey areas covered in vegetation, like the Tropics, opening up a world of lost civilisations, explains Prof Canuto.

In the early years of his career, surveys were done by foot and hand, using simple instruments to check the ground inch by inch.

But in the decade since Lidar was used in the Mesoamerican region, he says it’s mapped around 10 times the area that archaeologists managed in about a century of work.

Mr Auld-Thomas says his work suggests there are many sites out there that archaeologists have no idea about.

In fact so many sites have been found that researchers cannot hope to excavate them all.

"I've got to go to Valeriana at some point. It's so close to the road, how could you not? But I can't say we will do a project there," says Mr Auld-Thomas.



"One of the downsides of discovering lots of new Maya cities in the era of Lidar is that there are more of them than we can ever hope to study," he adds.

The research is published in the academic journal Antiquity.


Lost Mayan city discovered under Mexican jungle by accident

Sarah Knapton
Tue, October 29, 2024

The city, which has been named Valeriana by archaeologists, was found by studying laser scans

A lost Mayan city, complete with pyramids and a ball court, has been discovered buried deep under the Mexican jungle.

The city, which has been named Valeriana by archaeologists, was found by studying laser scans that had been taken in 2013 as part of a forest monitoring project in the southeastern state of Campeche.

The scans unveiled the outlines of multiple enclosed plazas, temple pyramids, a reservoir and several curved amphitheatre-like patios in the city, which is thought to be the second-largest of its kind in Latin America.



The team said Valeriana had “all the hallmarks of a Classical Maya political capital” and, at its peak, may have been home to up to 50,000 people between AD 750 and 850.

The find was initially made by Luke Auld-Thomas, a doctoral student at Tulane University in New Orleans, who was browsing Google to find out if anyone had carried out a Lidar (light detecting and ranging) survey of the area.

“Scientists in ecology, forestry and civil engineering have been using Lidar surveys to study some of these areas for totally separate purposes,” said Mr Auld-Thomas. “So what if a lidar survey of this area already existed?”

Lidar works by firing a short laser pulse from a plane or satellite and recording the time it takes for the signal to bounce back.

Mr Auld-Thomas discovered a laser survey of around 50 square miles of dense Mexican forest which was rarely visited, even by locals.

While there are no pictures of the city, it may have looked similar to ruins in Calakmul

Working with colleagues, he studied the maps and found a dense, vast array of totally unstudied Maya settlements dotted throughout the region, comprising 6,674 undiscovered Mayan structures.

“Our analysis not only revealed a picture of a region that was dense with settlements, but it also revealed a lot of variability,” said Mr Auld-Thomas. “We didn’t just find rural areas and smaller settlements.

“We also found a large city with pyramids right next to the area’s only highway, near a town where people have been actively farming among the ruins for years.



“The government never knew about it; the scientific community never knew about it. That really puts an exclamation point behind the statement that, no, we have not found everything, and yes, there’s a lot more to be discovered.”

Scans unveil more sites discovered in the lost Mayan city

Valeriana comprised two major hubs of monumental architecture 1.2 miles apart, which were linked by continuous dense settlement and landscape engineering and watercourses. It also appears to have pyramids like those at the famous sites of Chichén Itzá or Tikal.

A ball court, where the ancient Mayan game of Pitz may have been played, was also found. The game could last two weeks, and its aim was to get the ball to the other side of the court without dropping it using only the hip, knee or elbow.

The team are now planning to conduct fieldwork in the areas identified on the survey.

The findings are published in the journal Antiquity.

Ancient lost Mayan city with pyramids discovered accidentally by student

Vishwam Sankaran
Wed, October 30, 2024 


Ancient lost Mayan city with pyramids discovered accidentally by student

An American student analysing publicly available data found a sprawling Mayan city with thousands of undiscovered structures, including pyramids, under a Mexican forest.

The data came from laser scans of the Campeche region and revealed a buried world, since named “Valeriana”, with nearly 6,700 undiscovered structures.

Archeologists have been using laser scanning lidar technology to assess anomalies in landscapes across the Yucatan peninsula in Central America and stumbling upon pyramids, family houses and other Mayan infrastructure.

For a long time, surveys to find ancient structures sampled just a couple of hundred square kilometres. “That sample was hard won by archaeologists who painstakingly walked over every square metre, hacking away at the vegetation with machetes, to see if they were standing on a pile of rocks that might have been someone’s home 1,500 years ago,” said Luke Auld-Thomas, PhD candidate at the Northern Arizona University who made the discovery.

In recent years, researchers have been analysing data from lidar scans taken for unrelated purposes to look for evidence of Mayan structures.

Ancient buildings and landscape modifications, including public plazas, agricultural terraces and field walls, discovered under Mexican forest (Auld-Thomas et al, Antiquity)

Mr Auld-Thomas analysed data from one such lidar project from 2013, focused on measuring and monitoring carbon in Mexico’s forests, to see what lay underneath 50 square miles of Campeche. “I was on something like page 16 of Google search and found a laser survey done by a Mexican organisation for environmental monitoring,” he told the BBC.

Analysing the data using modern archaeological methods revealed a dense and diverse array of Mayan settlements, including one sprawling city dating to between 250 to 900AD.

“The government never knew about it, the scientific community never knew about it. That really puts an exclamation point behind the statement that, no, we have not found everything, and yes, there’s a lot more to be discovered,” Mr Auld-Thomas said.

His study was recently published in the journal Antiquity.

The lost city has “all the hallmarks of a Classic Maya political capital”, Mr Auld-Thomas noted. “We did not just find rural areas and smaller settlements. We also found a large city with pyramids right next to the area’s only highway, near a town where people have been actively farming among the ruins for years.”

Studying such ancient cities could help solve modern problems facing urban development, researchers said. “There were cities that were sprawling agricultural patchworks and hyperdense,” Mr Auld-Thomas said. “Given the environmental and social challenges we are facing from rapid population growth, it can only help to study ancient cities and expand our view of what urban living can look like.”

Laser archeology finds lost Maya cities hidden under forests

Saul Elbein
Tue, October 29, 2024


Laser imaging of the rainforests of Mexico’s Yucatan peninsula have turned up thousands of ancient Maya structures — and an entire previously unknown city, a new study has found.

By flying aircraft over jungle in the Mexican state of Campeche and pummeling the trees with laser pulses, scientists have shown that beneath the forest lie the ruins of both a dense city and its crowded suburban hinterlands, according to results published on Tuesday in Antiquity.

The Yucatan is remarkable for being an essentially post-apocalyptic landscape, where over the past millennium forests returned to fill in the parks and boulevards of once-powerful Maya cities like Tikal and El Mirador after their inhabitants left them around 900 CE.

On the east side of the peninsula, for example, the Sian Ka’an Biosphere Reserve sprawls over the ruins of the ancient city of Muyil — where crocodiles swim through straight-line creeks that were once urban canals and howler monkeys swing through the trees above lakes that were once city reservoirs.

That combination of dense forest atop the long-vanished cities of what was once a dense urban region has meant a succession of surprising finds for archeologists. Last year, for example, Slovenian archeologist Ivan Šprajc found a significant regional hub — which he called Ocomtun — in the “black hole” of the Balamku Biosphere Reserve, in the center of Campeche.

As it did for Šprajc, the lack of easy road access forced the Antiquity researchers to turn to a high-tech solution to penetrate the trees: aircraft using LiDAR (light detection and ranging) to scan the forest, looking for obstructed and impermeable stone structures.

The new sites described in Antiquity are a combination of rural farming villages, regional market towns and “a large city with pyramids,”coathor Luke Auld-Thomas said in a statement.



LiDAR, he added, “allows us to map large areas very quickly, and at really high precision and levels of detail, that made us react, ‘Oh wow, there are so many buildings out there we didn’t know about, the population must have been huge.’”

Those surprising findings — indicating huge populations in places where the conventional historical record suggests they should not have been — represent part of the promise of LiDAR‘s use in archeology. The technology has also been used to find lost cities beneath the Amazon rainforest in Bolivia and Ecuador, upending established narratives that the region lacked a deep history of dense urban life — and suggesting that vast Amazonian metropolises of the present day like Manaus and Iquitos might be less modern innovation than a return to an ancient pattern.

“LiDAR is teaching us that, like many other ancient civilizations, the lowland Maya built a diverse tapestry of towns and communities over their tropical landscape,” coauthor Marcello Canuto, a professor of anthropology at Tulane, said in a statement.

Some newly discovered areas are Maya fields and farming villages, which offer insight about ancient rural life, Canuto said, while others once sported “dense populations.”

In 2018, Canuto and his team used LiDAR to uncover 60,000 previously unknown Maya structures beneath the Maya Biosphere Reserve in Northern Guatemala, a park that also houses the well-known site of Tikal, according to National Geographic.

“LiDAR is revolutionizing archaeology the way the Hubble Space Telescope revolutionized astronomy,” Francisco Estrada-Belli, a colleague of Canuto’s at Tulane, told National Geographic at the time. “We’ll need 100 years to go through all [the data] and really understand what we’re seeing.”

Whether the settlements discovered are big or small, in all cases, Canuto noted the new sites hidden beneath the forest show how the Maya managed their environment “to support a long-lived complex society” — urban structures that still shape the movement of animals through the forests that covered them.

The sites announced on Tuesday are, at least by the standards of the Yucatan, in plain sight. They were “right next to the area’s only highway, near a town where people have been actively farming among the ruins for years,” Auld-Thomas said.

But despite that local knowledge, Auld-Thomas said, “the government never knew about it; the scientific community never knew about it.”

The discovery, he added, “really puts an exclamation point behind the statement that, no, we have not found everything, and yes, there’s a lot more to be discovered.”

Copyright 2024 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

Remember the ‘alien’ signal sent by Mars orbiter? It’s just been decoded

Vishwam Sankaran
Wed 30 October 2024 


A simulated “alien” signal sent by a Nasa orbiter circling Mars has finally been cracked after months by a father-daughter duo, revealing the cosmic coded message.

Nasa collaborated with SETI Institute and media artist Daniela de Paulis on a project to simulate sending an alien message to Earth to observe how humans might interpret such an otherworldly code.

The “alien” message was developed with a small group of astronomers and computer scientists, with support from the European Space Agency.

The encoded message was beamed from Nasa’s ExoMars orbiter circling the Red Planet in May 2023, and the SETI Institute invited the public to decipher it.

Over several months, thousands of people attempted to decipher the alien code, sharing ideas on online forums.

The message consisted of cryptic white dots arranged in five clusters against a black background.

After running simulations “for hours and days on end”, a father-daughter duo Ken and Keli Chaffin have finally cracked the code – but what it conveys is still up for debate and discussion.

‘Alien’ signal decoded (Ken and Keli Chaffin via ESA)

They found that “blocks” interpreted from the signal have 1, 6, 7 or 8 “pixels” representing the atomic number of hydrogen, carbon, nitrogen and oxygen.

The duo successfully found that the “alien” message contained in the ExoMars signals symbolised amino acid molecules, which are protein building blocks.

They described the message as symbolising cell formation, the European Space Agency noted in a blog post.

“My decoded message is a simple image with 5 amino acids displayed in a universal (hopefully) organic molecular diagram notation and a few single pixel points that appear between the clusters and molecular diagrams,” the father wrote, sharing an image of his discovery.

Now that the message has been decoded, the project’s next step is to interpret it and determine what it was meant to convey – an interpretation that remains open.

“Could this sign of extraterrestrial intelligence be a recipe for destruction or a peaceful message? Are we ready for a first contact with an alien civilisation?” the ESA noted, adding that people can contribute their ideas online.

Participants are also required to include a description of the method they used to interpret the message so that it can be replicated and verified.

As Musk seeks to launch tens of thousands of Starlink satellites, space researchers urge caution

Noah Haggerty
Tue, October 29, 2024 

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carrying 21 Starlink satellites launches from Vandenberg Space Force Base in January. (Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

More than 100 space researchers signed a letter urging the federal government to perform an environmental review before allowing SpaceX to continue launching thousands of satellites for its internet service, Starlink.

The Federal Communications Commission has licensed Elon Musk's company to launch nearly 12,000 satellites into space — more than double the number of non-SpaceX satellites orbiting Earth. SpaceX is asking the FCC to allow it to launch over 20,000 more.

While the FCC evaluates the potential harms of satellite constellations, it currently exempts almost all telecommunications projects — including satellites — from facing formal environmental reviews. The researchers' letter, released on Thursday, argues that much has changed since the rule was created almost four decades ago.



"This is a new technology," said Lucas Gutterman, the director of the Designed to Last Campaign at Public Interest Research Groups, or PIRG, which organized the letter. "It could have benefits for the public and that's great, but the benefits need to be weighed against the potential harms, and the way you do that is with an environmental review."

Read more: Scientists long urged NASA to search for signs of life near Jupiter. Now it's happening

Gutterman said PIRG has heard back from the FCC and is excited to meet with the agency to discuss the group's concerns.

The Starlink constellation provides internet coverage across the globe, especially to rural communities and countries without reliable cell tower service. The service has provided internet access to Ukrainian soldiers, hurricane victims and commercial flight passengers.



SpaceX's satellites are designed to have a roughly five-year lifespan, after which SpaceX ground controllers will deorbit the satellites, let them burn up in Earth's atmosphere and launch replacements. This injection of metals and other compounds into the upper atmosphere from the incineration of the spent satellites has the potential to disturb the delicate balance of elements and molecules in the air, the letter argues.

"The industry has moved faster than regulators can act and faster than the public has really been aware," Gutterman said. "The results aren't in — we just don't actually have the data on what effects this new technology could have."

In a 2022 report, the Government Accountability Office — a nonpartisan federal agency tasked with saving taxpayer money and increasing government efficiency — recommended the FCC review whether the satellite constellations normally have significant environmental impacts. The FCC agreed with the findings.

The space researchers who signed the letter not only study the effects of satellites and rocket launches on the atmosphere but also rely on clear skies for their observations.



As satellites whiz past the field of view of telescopes, they leave streaks in astronomers' images. To compensate, scientists have had to frequently retake images and develop more sophisticated computer programs to remove the streaks.

"Picture an open book. Then picture a big marker streak across the page," said David Jewitt, a distinguished professor of astronomy at UCLA who signed the letter. "That's what they do."

Read more: A star is about to explode. Here's how to watch it

Jewitt first heard about the letter while dealing with satellite streaks on his observations from a telescope in Spain.



"It was so obvious that the number of satellite trails is just way, way up since I started doing astronomy," he said. "People want to use space for good purposes. Communication is a good purpose. ... So, there has to be some moderation between the effective use of space and its effects on our view of the night sky."

Environmental review of satellite mega-constellations would be a first step along a path of much-needed space policy reform, Gutterman said.

Currently, there is limited international cooperation in regulation of satellite constellations, and within the United States, oversight of different aspects of their life cycles — from launch to orbit to decommissioning — is handled by separate agencies.

Setting clear international standards and streamlining the process in the U.S. would be a win-win for concerned scientists and the space industry, Gutterman said.

It's not the first time Starlink has run into pushback from the public and government officials. After the first few batches of satellites were launched in 2019, astronomers around the world raised concerns about the satellites' reflectivity. In response, SpaceX began applying a coating to the satellites to make them less shiny.

And earlier this month, the California Coastal Commission rejected a SpaceX plan to increase the number of rocket launches from Vandenburg Space Force Base to 50 a year, on the grounds that SpaceX was increasingly using the launches for its Starlink satellites instead of for military missions.

SpaceX subsequently sued.

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.

NASA Backs Proposal to Orbit Starlink Satellites Closer to Earth

PC Mag
Tue, October 29, 2024


SpaceX has received support from NASA in its proposal to orbit satellites about 200 kilometers closer to Earth.

SpaceX wants permission to orbit its cellular Starlink satellites 340 to 360 kilometers around Earth, the benefits of reduced latency for an upcoming direct-to-cell Starlink service. The issue is that SpaceX wants to potentially orbit thousands of Starlink satellites below the International Space Station, which circles the Earth between altitudes of 360 to 470 km.



In 2022, NASA the proliferation of Starlink satellites as a potential obstacle to sending missions to the International Space Station. But in a Tuesday letter to the FCC, the space agency said it has been working with SpaceX on a "visiting vehicle study" to assess whether low-orbiting satellites can operate below the space station in 300km orbits.

"Given the progress made and the continued positive collaboration between SpaceX and NASA, NASA supports FCC action that would allow SpaceX to initially operate 400 satellites continuously in the 300 km orbital shells,” the agency added. “This support reflects the ongoing cooperation between both parties to ensure safe and effective satellite operations.”

But for now, it looks like NASA only wants to let SpaceX orbit the satellites closer to Earth on a trial basis. Its letter alludes to granting the company a “Special Temporary Authority” to orbit the cellular Starlink satellites in the 300km orbits for 60 days, which SpaceX requested in May.

“Upon completion of the visiting vehicle study, NASA will coordinate any change on the number of satellites it endorses in the 300 km orbital shells,” the space agency added in the letter.

Still, the NASA letter is a win in SpaceX’s efforts to upgrade the Starlink network by lowering the satellites' orbits, which could raise opposition from rival companies, in addition to . Earlier this month, the company also made a with the FCC to operate nearly 30,000 second-generation Starlink satellites, including in the 340-360km orbit range.


SpaceX launching 20 Starlink internet satellites from California on Oct. 30
Mike Wall
Mon, October 28, 2024 

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launches 22 Starlink satellites to orbit from Florida on June 23, 2024. | Credit: SpaceX

SpaceX plans to launch another batch of its Starlink internet satellites from California early on Wednesday (Oct. 30).

A Falcon 9 rocket carrying 20 Starlink spacecraft, including 13 with direct-to-cell (DTC) capability, is scheduled to lift off from Vandenberg Space Force Base today, during a nearly hour-long window that opens at 7:07 a.m. ET (1207 GMT; 4:07 a.m. local California time).

SpaceX will stream the launch live via X, beginning about five minutes before liftoff.

If all goes according to plan, the Falcon 9's first stage will come back to Earth about eight minutes after liftoff. It will touch down on the drone ship "Of Course I Still Love You," which will be stationed in the Pacific Ocean.

It will be the 14th launch and landing for this particular booster and its 11th Starlink mission overall, according to a SpaceX mission description.

The Falcon 9's upper stage will haul the Starlink satellites to low Earth orbit (LEO), where they'll be deployed about an hour after liftoff.

SpaceX has already launched more than 100 Falcon 9 missions in 2024, about two-thirds of them devoted to building out the Starlink megaconstellation.

The company currently operates more than 6,400 Starlink spacecraft in LEO, according to astrophysicist and satellite tracker Jonathan McDowell. About 250 of them are DTC satellites.

Editor's note: This post was updated on Oct. 29 to reflect the most current launch window provided by SpaceX.


Let There Be Broadband: SpaceX Lights Up Starlink in US National Radio Quiet Zone

PC Mag
Mon, October 28, 2024


SpaceX's Starlink is now rolling out to thousands of residents living in the "National Radio Quiet Zone" in Virginia and West Virginia, where wireless signals are restricted.

The access arrives following a three-year effort between SpaceX and US scientists to prevent Starlink from disrupting local radio telescopes, which is why the quiet zone exists.



"Based on these results, SpaceX will begin a one-year assessment period to offer residential satellite internet service to 99.5% of residents within the NRQZ starting October 25,” the Green Bank Observatory said on Friday.


The radio quiet zone around the observatory restricts cellular and Wi-Fi signals, although many residents do have Wi-Fi and fiber-based broadband.

The quiet zone is needed to help radio telescopes detect the faintest signals from deep space. SpaceX has refrained from beaming Starlink internet to the area because the radio signals from its satellites could disrupt or even damage the “eye” of the radio telescopes.

In August, SpaceX said it was ready to start rolling out Starlink access to users in the radio quiet zones around the Green Bank Observatory and another telescope in New Mexico. To prevent interference, the company developed a system that can quickly steer satellite beams away from the radio telescopes as they pass overhead


As a result, Starlink is now live in 42 of the 46 cell areas around the Green Bank Observatory’s telescopes; previously, the satellite internet access was unavailable across all 46 sites.

“This collaboration will allow residents to access high-quality, high-speed internet, and also expand opportunities for improved communication, like those needed by emergency services and first responders,” says Green Bank Observatory Director Jim Jackson. During the one-year-period, SpaceX and the observatory will monitor and try to resolve any interference issues.

A growing number of counties in the area have called for the dissolution of the National Radio Quiet Zone, citing the danger of people not having access to emergency services.

"This is still keeping a portion of Pendleton and Pocahontas Counties in the dark ages of communications systems,” Pendleton County Emergency Services Coordinator Rick Gillespie told West Virginia's WOWK-TV.

In an email, Gillespie also told PCMag that the Roam version of Starlink had actually been available across 100% of the quiet zone for the past two years. But after SpaceX announced its agreement with the Green Bank Observatory, about 0.5% of the quiet zone has lost the Starlink access, he said.

"This means that a large section of southeastern Pendleton County and an even larger section of northern Pocahontas will NOT be able to utilize Starlink," he added in a statement. "Those areas ARE the 0.5% exclusion zone. In many cases, Starlink was the only Internet provider option residents and emergency responders had. This is unacceptable."

In response, Gillespie has been urging representatives of the National Radio Quiet Zone to loosen the radio restrictions, enabling wireless communications for local public safety services. "Throughout this process, any adjustments to the NRQZ regulations have been made without our involvement. These restrictions continue to escalate without our input, which must cease," he added.

We've reached out to the Green Bank Observatory and SpaceX for comment, and we'll update the story if we hear back.

Florida's Space Coast breaks record for most launches in a year

Matt Trezza
Mon, October 28, 2024 


CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - With the launch of a SpaceX rocket on Saturday, the Space Coast hit a major milestone, with 73 launches this year.

The Falcon Nine carried 22 Starlink satellites into orbit. At Jetty Park, Mary Harris said her son works for Blue Origin, and she never gets tired of watching the rockets go up.

"I still like to catch the night ones, because they're really nice, I like them."

Saturday’s record-breaking mission capped off a very busy week in space news. NASA’s crew of eight members returned to Earth on Friday, after a nearly eight-month mission. The SpaceX Dragon capsule splashed down in the Gulf of Mexico just before 3:30 a.m., EST. The three NASA astronauts and a Russian cosmonaut spent 235 days in space, the longest of any human SpaceX mission.

"It wasn’t that long ago when we were happy to have 20 launches a year. We’re doing four to five times that now. It’s almost surreal now," said Don Platt, Associate Professor of Space Systems at Florida Tech.

On Wednesday, SpaceX launched another Falcon Nine mission that carried 23 Starlink satellites into orbit. KSC officials said that after some infrastructure upgrades, they aimed to host five commercial human space flight companies on-site by next year.

"It is the vision that we laid out back in 2014 with the Kennedy Space Center master plan," said Tom Engler, Center Planning & Development Director for the Kennedy Space Center.

With two more months to go in the year, there are still plenty more launches expected. Launch 74 is set for Wednesday. Jerry Eller, a Merritt Island resident, said the space industry has the potential to bring more people together.

Artemis 2 astronauts train for emergencies with Orion spacecraft ahead of 2025 moon launch (photos)

Elizabeth Howell
Mon, October 28, 2024 

Artemis 2 astronaut Christina Koch, of NASA, poses at the opening of an Orion spacecraft mockup. | Credit: Lockheed Martin

In case of emergency on Earth, open the spacecraft door.

The four Artemis 2 astronauts recently practiced a key contingency operation as they continue to prepare for their moon mission: opening the side hatch of their Orion spacecraft.

If all goes well during Artemis 2's planned September 2025 launch and round-the-moon mission, of course, the astronauts will keep all doors firmly shut. Conducting the first human lunar mission since Apollo 17 in 1972, however, requires a strict focus on safety — just in case.

The Artemis 2 astronauts are NASA commander Reid Wiseman, NASA pilot Victor Glover (who will become the first Black person to leave low Earth orbit, or LEO), NASA mission specialist Christina Koch (the first woman to do so) and Canadian Space Agency (CSA) mission specialist Jeremy Hansen (the first non-American).

Related: Artemis 2 astronauts simulated a day in the life on their moon mission. Here's what they learned (exclusive)

victor glover facing an open spacecraft hatch and using a tool on the door

NASA and the CSA announced the four astronauts in April 2023 for what was then supposed to be a December 2024 liftoff. The mission was delayed in January 2024 due to several critical engineering issues, particularly longstanding examinations of irregularities in the heat shield.

two people peering at an open spacecraft door that has a lot of gears and mechanics on it

But the mission is a developmental one, the crew continues to emphasize, meaning that getting the hardware and crew safely ready must override any expectation of a firm schedule.

If all goes well with the launch, the astronauts will not touch the hatches, as the ground systems team at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center will secure the crew inside, NASA officials said in a statement on Wednesday (Oct. 23). During splashdown, recovery teams in the Pacific Ocean (including folks from both NASA and the U.S. Navy) will open the hatch.

jeremy hansen standing at an open spacecraft door while two people stand nearby him

RELATED STORIES:

— Artemis 2 astronauts simulated a day in the life on their moon mission. Here's what they learned (exclusive)

— 'We're pushing the limits:' Artemis 2 backup astronaut on 2025 round-the-moon mission (exclusive)

— Astronauts won't walk on the moon until 2026 after NASA delays next 2 Artemis missions



The side hatch mockup — which crew members trained on with Orion spacecraft manufacturer Lockheed Martin Space in Littleton, Colorado — normally swings open using manual gearboxes. But in an emergency, the release mechanism has pyrotechnic (explosive) devices that "release the latch pins on the hatch instantaneously, allowing the hatch to open quickly," NASA stated.

Artemis 2 is the first crewed mission of NASA's Artemis program, which aims to establish a permanent human presence on and around the moon in the next decade or so. An uncrewed mission, Artemis 1, flew to lunar orbit and back in 2022. Humans will first land on the moon again with Artemis 3, which will fly in 2026 or so using SpaceX's Starship spacecraft to touch down.


NASA provides an update on Artemis III moon mission

Mel Holt,Brittany Caldwell
Mon, October 28, 2024 

NASA wants to land astronauts near an unexplored region of the moon.

The agency believes the lunar South Pole may hold valuable resources, like water.

These potential landing sites are still subject to change based on science potential, launch window availability, and even lighting conditions. Still, the target location will remain in the South Pole region.

At the Kennedy Space Center, teams continue to work toward a 2025 Artemis III Mission.

Read: NASA announces delays for Artemis missions

NASA’s first crewed mission around the moon in more than five decades.

The agency’s SLS rocket will launch NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Kristina Koch along with Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen on a roughly 10-day mission aboard an Orion spacecraft.

NASA just released this updated map with nine potential landing regions near the lunar South Pole for the Artemis II Mission.

Read: To boldly go: NASA reveals new spacesuits for planned Moon landing mission

“They’ve never sent any astronauts before to the South Pole,” said Dr. Ken Kremer of Space Up Close. “So this (is) brand new going to bring us just tremendous science on the state of the moon today and the history of the solar system, as well as being able to live off the land because we don’t have to bring all those supplies from the Earth, which is very expensive.”

NASA identifies nine possible landing regions for Artemis III moon mission

Mon, October 28, 2024 


Nine candidate lunar landing regions, which NASA revealed Monday in a photo of the moon, include Peak near Cabeus B; Haworth; Malapert Massif; Mons Mouton Plateau; Mons Mouton; Nobile Rim 1; Nobile Rim 2; de Gerlache Rim 2 and Slater Plain. Image courtesy of NASA

Oct. 28 (UPI) -- NASA has identified nine possible landing sites for its Artemis III mission in 2026 that will return astronauts to the moon for the first time in more than 50 years, the space agency announced Monday.

"Artemis will return humanity to the moon and visit unexplored areas. NASA's selection of these regions shows our commitment to landing crew safely near the lunar south pole, where they will help uncover new scientific discoveries and learn to live on the lunar surface," said Lakiesha Hawkins, assistant deputy associate administrator, Moon to Mars Program.

The nine landing regions, which NASA released in a photo Monday and were assessed for their "science value and mission availability" near the moon's south pole, include Peak near Cabeus B; Haworth; Malapert Massif; Mons Mouton Plateau; Mons Mouton; Nobile Rim 1; Nobile Rim 2; de Gerlache Rim 2 and Slater Plain.

Scientists and engineers analyzed the nine regions -- using data from NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter -- to determine terrain, lighting and communication capabilities with Earth.

NASA's Artemis III mission is targeting a crewed landing in September 2026 near the moon's south pole, which NASA Administrator Bill Nelson called a "different moon" from the 1969 Apollo mission with Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin.

Scientists and engineers analyzed the nine regions for a possible future moon landing by using data from NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. NASA's Artemis III mission is targeting a crewed landing in September 2026 near the moon's south pole. File Photo by Tannen Maury/UPIMore

"The south pole is pockmarked with deep craters and because of the angle of the sun coming in -- most of those craters are in total darkness. It lessens the amount of area we can land on and utilize," Nelson said last year.

The lunar south pole has never been explored by a crewed mission and contains permanently shadowed areas that could preserve resources, including water, according to NASA.

"The moon's south pole is a completely different environment than where we landed during the Apollo missions," said Sarah Noble, Artemis lunar science lead at NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C.

"It offers access to some of the moon's oldest terrain, as well as cold, shadowed regions that may contain water and other compounds. Any of these landing regions will enable us to do amazing science and make new discoveries," Noble added.

NASA will work to narrow down its lunar landing site choices for Artemis III, once it identifies the mission's target launch dates. Those dates will determine orbital paths and surface environment conditions, according to Jacob Bleacher, NASA's chief exploration scientist.

"Finding the right locations for this historic moment begins with identifying safe places for this first landing," Bleacher said, "and then trying to match that with opportunities for science from this new place on the moon."


NASA identifies 9 possible landing spots for 2026 mission returning humans to the moon

Anthony Robledo, USA TODAY
Updated Tue, October 29, 2024 

NASA plans to bring humankind back to the moon, but it first needs to figure out exactly where to land.

The space agency has outlined nine potential lunar landing sites for its Artemis III mission, the agency's first planned return to the moon in over five decades. The mission, set for 2026, intends to land near the lunar south pole, where astronauts will visit unexplored areas, according to NASA.

The nine regions selected are areas where crew can safely land to help uncover new discoveries and better grasp how to live on the lunar surface, according to NASA. The agency has not determined a priority ranking for the selected regions.

For the selection process, experts considered terrain suitability, launch window availability, lighting conditions, science potential and communication capabilities with Earth, among other factors. NASA officials also considered the combined trajectory capabilities of its Space Launch System rocket, the Orion spacecraft and Starship Human Landing System.

"The Moon’s South Pole is a completely different environment than where we landed during the Apollo missions," Artemis lunar science lead Sarah Noble said in a statement. "It offers access to some of the Moon’s oldest terrain, as well as cold, shadowed regions that may contain water and other compounds. Any of these landing regions will enable us to do amazing science and make new discoveries."
What are the 9 lunar landing spots?

NASA has selected nine potential landing regions, each with its diverse geological characteristics and flexibility for mission landing. Each spot is in the lunar South Pole, which has never been explored in a crewed mission and features permanently shadowed areas that can preserve resources like water.

The following lunar sites have been considered:

The moon is pictured in this image on Dec. 6, 2006.

Peak near Cabeus B


Haworth


Malapert Massif


Mons Mouton Plateau


Mons Mouton


Nobile Rim 1


Nobile Rim 2


de Gerlache Rim 2


Slater Plain
When was the last human visit to the moon?

The last human to land on the moon was on Dec. 19, 1972, during NASA's Apollo 17 mission.

The astronauts on that mission were the last to visit the moon and the last to travel more than 400 miles from the Earth, according to the National Space Air and Space Museum.

Humankind first touched down on the moon on July 20, 1969, on the Apollo 11 mission, in which Neil Armstrong became the first man to step foot on the moon.

Artemis III, which will send two astronauts to the surface of the moon, is scheduled for September 2026. Artemis II, which will send astronauts around the moon, is slated for September 2025.