SPACE/COSMOS
SpaceX launches Starship but fails to repeat booster catch as Trump, Musk look on
SpaceX launched its Starship megarocket Tuesday, attended by President-elect Donald Trump and allies. The Super Heavy booster splashed into the Gulf of Mexico, missing the "chopstick" tower catch. SpaceX cited technical issues, overshadowing the event despite Trump's praise of the engineering feat during his victory speech.
Issued on: 20/11/2024 -
By: NEWS WIRES
Video by: Fraser JACKSON
SpaceX flew its latest test flight of its Starship megarocket on Tuesday, with President-elect Donald Trump joining Elon Musk to witness the spectacle firsthand in the latest sign of their ever closer ties.
But the Republican leader was deprived of the chance to see the descending first stage caught in the launch tower's "chopstick" arms, an engineering marvel demonstrated by the company last month and one he personally lauded during his election victory speech.
Instead, the massive Super Heavy booster made a more subdued splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico.
Company representatives cited unmet technical criteria, dampening the triumph of an event attended by an array of Trump-world figures.
Space X founder and CEO Musk has been a constant presence at Trump's side since the incoming president's election victory, joining him at a meeting with Argentina's President Javier Milei and even at a UFC bout.
Trump's decision to travel to Musk's home turf was the latest sign of the burgeoning bond between the billionaire duo, which has raised questions over possible conflicts of interests given SpaceX's lucrative contracts with NASA and the Pentagon.
Watch more Spectacular landing: SpaceX catches giant Starship booster with mechanical arms
Flying in from his Mar-a-Lago home, Trump greeted Musk warmly on Tuesday afternoon, sporting a red MAGA hat as the pair headed off to watch from the control tower of the company's Starbase in Boca Chica, Texas, where Starship blasted off at 4:00 pm (2200 GMT).
Tuesday's launch marked the quickest turnaround between test flights for the world's most powerful rocket, a gleaming, 400-foot-tall (121-meter) stainless steel colossus central to Musk's ambition of colonising Mars and making humanity a multiplanetary species.
Musk aims to launch the first uncrewed missions to the Red Planet as early as 2026, coinciding with the next "Mars transfer window" -- a period when the journey between Earth and Mars is at its shortest.
NASA is also counting on a specialised version of Starship to ferry astronauts to the lunar surface later this decade under its Artemis program.
Stuffed banana
Flight six of Starship was seen as a test of whether SpaceX's first booster catch was pure precision or relied on a stroke of luck after Musk -- perhaps inadvertently -- disclosed how close the last flight came to disaster.
In a clip posted to X showcasing his gaming chops in "Diablo IV," sharp-eared fans caught an employee briefing him that the Super Heavy booster was "one second away" from a system failure that could have spelled catastrophe.
Starship's upper stage meanwhile made a partial orbit of Earth, reentered the atmosphere and splashed down in the Indian Ocean around an hour and five minutes after launch.
SpaceX employees erupted in cheers during a live feed watched by nearly nine million viewers, as the upper stage executed a near-vertical daylight splashdown off Australia's northwest coast, sending up a towering plume of water vapor before tipping over.
Key milestones included reigniting Starship's Raptor engines for the first time in space and trialing new heat shield materials. The flight also carried Starship's first ever payload -- a stuffed banana -- and served as a swan song for the current generation of Starship prototypes.
With twice the thrust of the Saturn V rockets that powered Apollo missions, Starship is the most powerful rocket ever built.
Musk has already teased that its successor, Starship V3, will be "3X more powerful" and could take flight in about a year.
The flight comes as Musk is riding high on Trump's November 5 White House win, having campaigned extensively for the returning Republican leader, as well as donating staggering sums from his own fortune to the cause.
His loyalty has paid off. Musk has been tapped to co-lead a new "Department of Government Efficiency" -- or DOGE, a cheeky nod to the meme-based cryptocurrency Musk loves to promote.
That in turn has led to concerns Musk could engage in "self-dealing" as the CEO is poised to straddle the line between government insider and corporate titan.
(AFP)
Unlocking the secrets of the first quasars: how they defy the laws of physics to grow
Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica
image:
AI-generated representation of an accreting supermassive black hole, surrounded by gas spiralling toward it along the equatorial plane (the accretion disk) and emitting powerful winds of matter as it falls in. This representation is based on a NASA's artist's concept that illustrates a supermassive black hole with millions to billions times the mass of our sun.
view moreCredit: Credits: Emanuela Tortosa
In the article published today in the Astronomy & Astrophysics journal, new evidence suggests how supermassive black holes, with masses of several billion times that of our Sun, formed so rapidly in less than a billion years after the Big Bang. The study, led by researchers of the National Institute for Astrophysics (INAF), analyses a sample of 21 quasars, among the most distant ever discovered, observed in the X-rays band by the XMM-Newton and Chandra space telescopes. The results suggest that the supermassive black holes at the centre of these titanic quasars, the first formed during the cosmic dawn, may have reached their extraordinary masses through very rapid and intense accretion, thus providing a plausible explanation for their existence in the early stages of the Universe.
Quasars are active galaxies powered by the central supermassive black holes (known as active galactic nuclei), which emit an enormous amount of energy as they attract matter. They are extremely luminous and distant from us. In particular, the quasars examined in this study are among the most distant objects ever observed, dating back to a time when the Universe was less than a billion years old.
In this work, the analysis of X-ray emissions from these objects revealed an entirely unexpected behaviour of the supermassive black holes at their centres: a connection emerged between the shape of the X-ray emission and the speed of the winds of matter ejected by the quasars. This relationship links the wind speed, which can reach thousands of kilometres per second, to the temperature of the gas in the corona, the region that emits X-rays closest to the black hole. Thus, the corona turned out to be connected to the powerful accretion mechanisms of the black hole itself. Quasars with low-energy X-ray emission, and thus a lower temperature in the corona, show faster winds. This indicates a highly rapid growth phase that exceeds a physical limit for the accretion of matter called the Eddington limit, which is why this phase is called "super-Eddington." Conversely, quasars with higher-energy X-ray emissions tend to exhibit slower winds.
"Our work suggests that the supermassive black holes at the centre of the first quasars formed within the first billion years of the Universe's life may have actually increased their mass very rapidly, challenging the limits of physics," says Alessia Tortosa, lead author of the study and researcher at INAF in Rome. "The discovery of this connection between X-ray emission and winds is crucial for understanding how such large black holes could have formed in such a short time, thus providing a concrete clue to solve one of the greatest mysteries of modern astrophysics."
The result was achieved mainly by analysing data collected with the XMM-Newton space telescope of the European Space Agency (ESA), which allowed for approximately 700 hours of observations of the quasars. Most of the data, collected between 2021 and 2023 as part of the Multi-Year XMM-Newton Heritage Programme, under the direction of Luca Zappacosta, a researcher at INAF in Rome, is part of the HYPERION project, which aims at studying hyperluminous quasars during the cosmic dawn of the Universe. The extensive observation campaign was led by a team of Italian scientists and received crucial support from INAF, which funded the program, thereby supporting cutting-edge research on the evolutionary dynamics of the early structures of the Universe.
"In the HYPERION program, we focused on two key factors: on one hand, the careful selection of quasars to observe, choosing the titans, meaning those that had accumulated as much mass as possible, and on the other hand, the in-depth study of their properties in X-rays, something never attempted before on such a large number of objects from the cosmic dawn," says Luca Zappacosta, a researcher at INAF in Rome. We hit the jackpot! The results we're getting are genuinely unexpected, and they all point to a super-Eddington growth mechanism of the black holes."
This study provides important insights for future X-ray missions, such as ATHENA (ESA), AXIS, and Lynx (NASA), which are scheduled for launch between 2030 and 2040. In fact, the results obtained will be useful for refining the next-generation observational instruments and for defining better strategies for investigating black holes and active galactic nuclei in X-rays at more distant cosmic epochs. These are key elements for understanding the formation of the first galactic structures in the primordial Universe.
Related journal article: “HYPERION. Shedding light on the first luminous quasars: A correlation between UV disc winds and X-ray continuum”, di Tortosa A. et al. 2024, Astronomy & Astrophysics.
Journal
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Article Title
HYPERION. Shedding light on the first luminous quasars: A correlation between UV disc winds and X-ray continuum
Article Publication Date
20-Nov-2024
Astronauts found to process some tasks slower in space, but no signs of permanent cognitive decline
Researchers found that astronauts’ processing speed, working memory, and attention slowed down, but a few months in space did not result in lasting cognitive impairment
A stay in space exerts extreme pressures on the human body. Astronauts’ bodies and brains are impacted by radiation, altered gravity, challenging working conditions, and sleep loss – all of which could compromise cognitive functioning. At the same time, they are required to perform complex tasks, and minor mistakes can have devastating consequences.
Little is known, however, about whether astronauts’ cognitive performance changes while in space. Now, working with 25 astronauts who spent an average of six month on the International Space Station (ISS), researchers in the US have examined changes in a wide range of cognitive performance domains. This dataset makes up the largest sample of cognitive performance data from professional astronauts published to date.
“We show that there is no evidence of any significant cognitive impairment or neurodegenerative decline in astronauts spending six months on the ISS,” said Dr Sheena Dev, a researcher at NASA’s Behavioral Health and Performance Laboratory and first author of the Frontiers in Physiology study. “Living and working in space was not associated with widespread cognitive impairment that would be suggestive of significant brain damage.”
Slower, but no less accurate
Astronauts underwent a series of tests developed to assess a range of cognitive domains using 10 subtests. For each of these tests, the researchers measured speed and accuracy at five time points: pre-mission, early and late flight respectively, as well as at 10 and 30 days after landing.
The results showed that responses to tasks assessing processing speed, working memory, and attention were slower than on Earth, but they were no less accurate. These changes, however, did not persist equally long. “Slowed performance on attention, for example, was only observed early during the mission while slowed performance on processing speed did not return to baseline levels until after the mission ended and crew were back on Earth,” Dev pointed out.
Overall, astronauts’ cognitive performance was stable, and the researchers did not find evidence that would suggest damage to the central nervous system during a six-month space mission.
Data for future space missions
The results showed that some cognitive domains were more susceptible to be impacted than others. “Even on Earth, processing speed, working memory, and attention are cognitive domains that can show temporary changes when an individual is under stress. Other domains, such as memory, are less vulnerable to stressors. For example, if you happen to have a really busy day but couldn’t get much sleep the night before, you might feel like it’s hard to pay attention or that you need more time to complete tasks,” explained Dev.
Astronauts are exposed to these stressors, too, but additional stressors that are unique to space also take their toll. “We found that the most vulnerable domains while astronauts are aboard the ISS are the same as those that are more susceptible to stressors on Earth,” Dev said.
The researchers said that their study can help them understand which changes in cognitive performance might be expected when humans go to extreme environments. What the study didn’t show, however, is why those changes happened, the researchers cautioned. It also didn’t set out to assess whether astronauts’ operational performance suffered. “It could be that even in areas with observed declines, astronauts were still able to compensate and effectively complete their tasks,” Dev said.
Once astronauts start traveling deeper into space – to the moon or Mars, for example – this data from the low Earth orbit can also provide a comparison which can help detect cognitive changes brought about by increased radiation exposure and extended communication delays more quickly, the researchers concluded.
Journal
Frontiers in Physiology
Method of Research
Observational study
Subject of Research
People
Article Title
Cognitive Performance in ISS Astronauts on 6-month Low Earth Orbit Missions
Article Publication Date
20-Nov-2024
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