SPACE/COSMOS

Exclusive-Moon sample talks show space engagement by rivals US and China

Wed, October 23, 2024

FILE PHOTO: The Chang'e 6 lunar probe and the Long March-5 Y8 carrier rocket combination sit atop the launch pad at the Wenchang Space Launch Site in Hainan province

By Joey Roulette

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - NASA and Chinese officials are engaged in talks to let American scientists analyze rocks retrieved by China from the moon's far side, according to the head of the U.S. space agency, as Washington pursues improved communication with Beijing on issues involving space.

China in June became the first country to collect rock samples from the permanently dark side of the moon's surface, a demonstration of its growing prowess in space. Chinese officials offered the material to the world's scientists for study, but publicly mentioned a U.S. law that limits cooperation by NASA with China.


NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said officials with his agency have been discussing with their Chinese counterparts the terms of Beijing's loan agreement for the moon rocks after he assured American lawmakers "a month or two ago" that the talks would not pose national security concerns.

"We are now going through further clarification" with China, Nelson told Reuters at the International Astronautical Congress, a gathering of the world's space agencies, in Milan.

Nelson said he thinks the talks will end "positively," with China agreeing to provide access to the samples.

China's uncrewed Chang'e-6 spacecraft returned to Earth on June 25 carrying the moon samples. Chang'e-6 earlier had landed on the moon's South Pole-Aitken Basin, an impact crater on the side of the moon that always faces away from Earth.

The discussions on access to the rocks are among a handful of ongoing exchanges between the United States and China on space issues even as the countries continue to compete for military and economic dominance in space. They are the world's two biggest space powers and two biggest economies.

Officials from multiple U.S. government agencies in the past year have embarked on delicate efforts to engage with China to establish areas of coordination and communication in space, according to three U.S. officials involved in the talks, speaking on condition of anonymity. This represents a shift in U.S. strategy toward China's space program that is aimed at avoiding miscalculations in future space operations, they said.

U.S.-Chinese scientific cooperation has been criticized in recent years by some U.S. lawmakers focused on the military rivalry between the two nations. In August, President Joe Biden's administration let a decades-old science and technology agreement with China expire. The two countries are now negotiating over whether to renew it.

Diplomacy on space has long been deterred by a 2011 U.S. law called the Wolf Amendment, named after now-retired U.S. congressman Frank Wolf, that was passed by Congress to ensure that American technologies stay out of the hands of China's military. Under this law, NASA must work with the FBI to certify to Congress that any such talks with China would not threaten U.S. national security.

Space has become an increasingly contested arena, charged by the rise of Elon Musk's U.S.-based company SpaceX and a resurgence in interest by governments in expanding satellite communication networks and space exploration.

ENGAGEMENT WITH THE PENTAGON

China this year stepped up its engagement with the Pentagon and various U.S. agencies on its space activities, from rocket launch notifications to the timing of its satellite reentries into Earth's atmosphere, Stephen Whiting, the commander of the U.S. military's Space Command, told Reuters.

"China had done this episodically, but not like they're doing now," Whiting said. "I think the more they operate in space, the more value they probably see on mechanisms to increase safety."

Some space companies and scientists have voiced concern that U.S.-Chinese military and economic tensions could jeopardize a new era of satellite communications and exploration missions in space, including sending astronauts to the moon and later possibly to Mars.

Under NASA's Artemis program, the United States intends in the coming years to return astronauts to the moon for the first time in five decades.

China aims to land its own astronauts in roughly the same lunar region as Artemis by 2030. It also has started deploying constellations of thousands of low Earth-orbiting satellites that will fly near SpaceX's Starlink and Amazon's future Kuiper network. These developments add urgency to the longstanding goal of U.S. space officials to set global standards for space traffic management.

U.S. officials have criticized China's practice of allowing expandable first-stage rocket boosters to fall to Earth in rural China, risking the lives of villagers, and expressed frustration in August when a Chinese rocket stage broke apart in space, creating one of the largest fields of debris in recent history.

RARE TALKS

The moon rock talks represent a rare instance of contact between the two rivals in recent years.

NASA officials exchanged data with their Chinese counterparts in 2021 to avoid possible collisions between their robotic spacecraft orbiting Mars. NASA and U.S. State Department officials last year held brief talks with their Chinese counterparts regarding China's first lunar sample mission, Chang'e-5, which in 2020 brought to Earth moon rocks from its sunlit side.

The rocks retrieved by Chang'e-6 from the moon's far side may give researchers insight into how the lunar surface could be exploited for resources to sustain long-term astronaut missions and moon bases within the next decade.

Roughly four U.S. universities have applied for access to the Chang'e-6 samples, according to Nelson. Some of them are believed to have been accepted through the science review phase of China's application process, according to Clive Neal, a University of Notre Dame professor who has been involved in efforts to gain access to moon samples obtained by China.

NASA is awaiting Chinese clarification on the terms of the loan agreement, according to two people familiar with the discussions, speaking on condition of anonymity. One of the sources also said some U.S. officials are hesitant about a potential agreement because it could weaken the U.S. posture of toughness toward China.

Nelson said he expects NASA to have to work with the FBI for another certification on national security to Congress to enable any moon rock deliveries to U.S. universities for research.

"When you actually start getting cooperation, you get an enduring space program," Neal said. "Science diplomacy should not be underestimated."

(Reporting by Joey Roulette; Editing by Will Dunham)

China says foreign spies trying to steal space program secrets

Wed, October 23, 2024 

FILE PHOTO: A Long March-2F carrier rocket carrying the Shenzhou-18 spacecraft takes off from Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center


By Farah Master

HONG KONG (Reuters) - China's state security ministry said foreign spy intelligence agencies have been trying to steal secrets from the country's space programme as the arms race in space intensifies and emerges as a new "battlefield for military struggle".

Safeguarding space security had become a key strategy for China's future survival and development, the ministry said in a post on its official Wechat account on Wednesday."In recent years, some Western countries have formed space combat forces, exercised space action capabilities and even regarded (China) as a major competitor in the space field," it said.


Foreign spy intelligence agencies had also conducted remote sensing detection against China through high-precision satellites, intending to observe and steal secrets from China from space.

It did not name any specific countries but said some had "carried out infiltration and stealing activities in China's aerospace field".

High-precision satellites had emerged as a focus in modern warfare, with their importance a highlight in Russia's war on Ukraine where real-time and ultra-detailed images would offer substantial leverage in the battlefield.

Competition for space resources was becoming "increasingly tense", space exploration faced a shortage of orbital and spectrum resources, and abandoned satellites and rocket debris increased the risk of collisions.

China’s lunar strategy includes its first astronaut landing around 2030 in a programme that counts Russia as a partner. In 2020 China conducted its first lunar sample return mission with Chang'e-5, retrieving samples from the moon's nearer side.

In June, China landed an uncrewed spacecraft on the far side of the moon, overcoming a key hurdle in its landmark mission to retrieve the world's first rock and soil samples from the dark lunar hemisphere.

Its space agency has set 2035 as the date by when a "basic station" on the moon's south pole will be built, with a moon-orbiting space station added by 2045.

(Reporting by Farah Master; additional reporting by Ryan Woo and the Beijing newsroom; Editing by Stephen Coates)


Euclid telescope reveals 1st section of largest-ever 3D map of the universe — and there's still 99% to go

Ben Turner
Wed, October 23, 2024 


Credit: ESA/Euclid/Euclid Consortium/NASA; ESA/Gaia/DPAC; ESA/Planck Collaboration

The first piece of what will one day be the largest-ever 3D map of the universe has been revealed, and it's crammed with 14 million galaxies.

The snapshot was taken by the European Space Agency's (ESA) Euclid space telescope. Launched on July 1, 2023, Euclid was designed to compile wide-lens images to help scientists hunt for two of the universe's most mysterious components: dark matter and dark energy.

The stunning new image is a mosaic of 208 gigapixels, representing just a fraction of a percent of the sky. By capturing hundreds of images like this one, the space telescope will eventually catalog one-third of the entire night sky and image more than a billion galaxies that are up to 10 billion years old, according to ESA.

"This stunning image is the first piece of a map that in six years will reveal more than one third of the sky," Valeria Pettorino, a Euclid project scientist at ESA, said in a statement. "This is just 1% of the map, and yet it is full of a variety of sources that will help scientists discover new ways to describe the Universe."

Related: Mysterious 'Green Monster' lurking in James Webb photo of supernova remnant is finally explained

The released image is a mosaic of 260 observations collected across two weeks between March and April 2024. It represents a 132-square-degree sweep of the southern sky that is more than 500 times the area of the full moon.

The map, which contains 100 million sources of light, is just one small piece in the cosmic jigsaw puzzle being assembled by Euclid. Upon completion, it will enable scientists to probe the mysteries of dark matter and dark energy.

On the top left, an all-sky map is visible with the location of Euclid’s mosaic on the Southern Sky highlighted in yellow. In the middle, there is a graphic of the galaxy showing cloudy starry shapes. On the right, there are close-ups of various features.

RELATED STORIES

—Our entire galaxy is warping, and a gigantic blob of dark matter could be to blame

—Dark matter's secret identity could be hiding in distorted 'Einstein rings'

—James Webb telescope reveals 3 possible 'dark stars' — galaxy-size objects powered by invisible dark matter

Researchers think dark matter and dark energy together make up about 95% of the universe. But they do not interact with light, so they can't be detected directly.

Instead, scientists study the mysterious components by observing the way they interact with the visible universe around them: Dark matter can be seen by observing its gravitational warping effects on galaxies, and dark energy is evident in the force propelling the universe's runaway expansion.

So far, 12% of Euclid's mission has been completed. Further releases, including a preview of Euclid's Deep Field areas, are planned for release in March 2025, and the mission's first year of cosmology data will appear in 2026.

SPACE / COSMOS

A 21st-century moon suit: Axiom Space's lunar spacesuit sports 4G comms, Prada looks and Oakley visors for Artemis astronauts

By Andrew Jones 

Space.com

Oct 16/2024

The AxEMU is designed to allow Artemis 3 astronauts to explore the south pole of the moon.

Axiom Space and Prada unveiled the design of the new Axiom Extravehicular Mobility Unit (AxEMU) spacesuit at the International Astronautical Congress in Milan on Oct. 16, 2024. (Image credit: Andrew Jones/Space.com)

MILAN — If you're going to team up with Prada for a 21st-century moon suit, it only makes sense to unveil it in one of the fashion capitals of the world.

Axiom Space and Prada revealed the Axiom Extravehicular Mobility Unit (AxEMU) spacesuit in a press conference held at the International Astronautical Congress (IAC) here today (Oct. 16).

AxEMU will be used for NASA's Artemis 3 mission, which is currently scheduled to launch in late 2026. It has been specially designed for the lunar south pole, which will be a colder environment than astronauts experienced on the Apollo missions, which landed around the moon's equator.


The AxEMU spacesuit that Artemis astronauts will wear on the moon. 

(Image credit: Axiom Space)

The new spacesuit incorporates multiple redundant systems and an onboard diagnostic system to ensure safety for crewmembers, according to Axiom. It features lights and an HD camera on the helmet, 4G/LTE communication, a suit control interface, biometric monitoring, regenerable carbon dioxide scrubbing and portable life support to keep astronauts safe for up to eight hours. It can also accommodate a wide range of crewmembers, male or female.


Related: Artemis moon suit designed by Axiom Space and Prada revealed in Milan (photos)

Matt Ondler, Axiom Space president, described the unveiling as an historic day. "So two years from now, when NASA applies the Artemis 3 mission, the astronauts will be wearing the suit design," Ondler said. "More profoundly for us, the first woman to walk on the moon will wear this suit, the first person of color [on the moon] will be wearing this suit, and the first non-American will be wearing this suit."


The suit needs to be ready for 2026, but further testing, including in vacuum chambers and reduced-gravity environments, is needed to meet the deadline. Teams have also been working on integration of the spacesuit with SpaceX's new Starship vehicle — which will be NASA's human landing system for the mission — and address any remaining interface challenges.

The partnership with Prada was highlighted as a cross-industry collaboration success. "I'm very proud of the result we're showing today, which is just the first step in a long-term collaboration with Axiom Space," said Lorenzo Bertelli, Prada chief marketing officer, in a statement. "We've shared our expertise on high-performance materials, features, and sewing techniques, and we learned a lot."

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Russell Ralston, Axiom's executive vice president of extravehicular activity, speaking at the unveiling, said the partnership was groundbreaking.

"This collaboration exemplifies the power to create better technology solutions together by merging Axiom Space's elite engineering experience with Prada's all-round craftsmanship. We've blended engineering, science and art to produce the ultimate garments, ensuring that astronauts can perform their tasks and missions in safety and comfort."



The AxEMU suit has a variety of advanced features, including 4G/LTE communications and an HD camera system. (Image credit: Axiom Space)

Building a new suit for the extreme conditions on the moon has not exactly been a walk in the park, however.

Ralston, in response to a question, also highlighted many challenges, including the suit's boots. "How you insulate the foot from the surface is a tough challenge," Ralston said, noting the extreme temperatures and temperature changes, but also the need to ensure comfort and safety.

The suit has a mostly white external layer in order to reflect the sun and keep wearers cool despite extremely high temperatures. Many components also went through extensive testing to ensure the suit can withstand strong radiation environments.

AxEMU will not have a heads-up display but instead will come with a handheld device. This will offer an "enhanced confirmation display, imagery and navigation data," Ralston said.

The suit also has features and materials designed to combat the accumulation of fine and damaging lunar dust on the suit's exterior. This includes proprietary coatings and cleaning tools.

In contrast to Apollo suits, AxEMU is specifically geared to the lunar south pole. This means taking into account factors such as the sun often being low in the sky and affecting visibility. For this, Axiom looked elsewhere for solutions.

"We've partnered with others like Oakley for optimal system design to enhance astronaut visibility," Ondler said.

Related: The evolution of the spacesuit in pictures

AxEMU will not just be heading to the moon. The suit will also be used for Axiom's planned space station activities. "We also think there are commercial opportunities to work with commercial and private astronauts," Ondler said.

The architecture is evolvable, scalable and adaptable for missions on the lunar surface and in low Earth orbit, an Axiom statement noted.

Minor tweaks may still be made to AxEMU as the suit enters more strenuous testing. However, the team is committed to pushing forward with the schedule and ensuring the spacesuit is ready for its intended missions, according to Ondler.

It is not just Axiom's new lunar spacesuit that has recently emerged. China late last month unveiled the exterior design of its new extravehicular spacesuit that will allow its astronauts to walk on the moon. The country aims to launch its first crewed lunar mission before 2030.


Andrew Jones
Contributing Writer
Andrew is a freelance space journalist with a focus on reporting on China's rapidly growing space sector. He began writing for Space.com in 2019 and writes for SpaceNews, IEEE Spectrum, National Geographic, Sky & Telescope, New Scientist and others. Andrew first caught the space bug when, as a youngster, he saw Voyager images of other worlds in our solar system for the first time. Away from space, Andrew enjoys trail running in the forests of Finland. You can follow him on Twitter @AJ_FI.

The cataclysmic origins of most of Earth’s meteorites have been found

Seventy percent of meteorites can be linked to a just a handful of asteroid belt collisions

A brilliant meteor blazes through the sky over radio dishes of the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array in the Chilean Andes.
Christoph Malin, ESO

By Robin George Andrews

Most of Earth’s meteorites can be linked to just a few collisions within the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, two new studies report, including a particularly cataclysmic impact event around 470 million years ago.

The upside to this discovery, published October 16 in Nature, is that it provides researchers with vital context: By knowing the return address of meteorites, scientists can more easily work out how and where the building blocks of planets came together to create the solar system we see today. The downside is that it may mean researchers have an extremely biased meteorite collection that can tell only a sliver of the story.

Meteorites record the tumultuous history of the solar system’s formative years, but the origins of these ancient space rocks are often unknown (SN: 4/18/18). “It’s absolutely like a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow for a meteoriticist to know what asteroid the sample’s come from,” says Sara Russell, a planetary scientist at London’s Natural History Museum who wasn’t involved with either study. Without that information, a meteorite is like a piece of a jigsaw puzzle without a picture of the full puzzle to accompany it.

Most of the meteorites on Earth are stony ones named ordinary chondrites. Two classes of these chondrites, known as H and L, make up 70 percent of all meteorite falls.

Scientists had suspected that the L chondrites originated from a single parent asteroid. Many have mineralogical features indicating they were heavily shocked, scorched and degassed before gradually cooling, implying they were liberated from a giant asteroid — at least 100 kilometers long — via a supersonic collision.

Using radioactively decaying elements to determine the age of the meteorites has revealed that they first emerged from a collision that happened 470 million years ago. To search for the site of that destruction derby in the asteroid belt, researchers used NASA’s Infrared Telescope Facility in Hawaii to scan many prominent stony-type asteroids, comparing each one’s mineral signatures to those of L chondrites.

The best fit was a group of asteroids named the Massalia family. Their scattered presence and current orbits could effectively be rewound by the scientists — and it looked like the asteroids all formed around 500 million years ago after splitting from an older, larger asteroid. That timing suggested that the impact that created the L chondrites also created the Massalia family. One of the asteroids in that family is about 140 kilometers long, a perfect fit for the estimated size range of the L chondrite parent body.

Other independent lines of data also point to the Massalia family, including the fact that near-Earth asteroids with L chondrite–like signatures have orbits that trace back to the family, as do the orbits of the L chondrite meteors that burn through Earth’s skies, before leaving telltale meteorites behind.

“All point at the same thing. There’s no doubt,” says Michaël Marsset, an astronomer at the European Southern Observatory in Santiago, Chile, and an author of both studies.

That ancient impact also set the stage for a more recent bombardment, sending streams of L chondrite material tumbling back onto the largest asteroid remnant. Another impact no more than 40 million years ago then sent that rubble Earth’s way.

What of the H chondrites? Many are 5 million to 8 million years old, so came from a different impact event — or two events, it seems. By reconstructing the past orbits of the mineralogically matching Koronis2 asteroid family, the team found that many of those asteroids existed unified as a single asteroid 7.6 million years ago.

Prior research had already applied the same time-rewinding technique to another asteroid group, known as the Karin family, and found many of those were also united as a solitary asteroid 5.8 million years ago, just before another asteroid struck it. As both families cover each end of the date range for the H chondrites, the team concluded that they are the source of this meteorite class.

That Earth’s meteorite collection could be highly biased to just a few asteroids is distressing, Russell says. The asteroid belt is home to a dizzying array of rocks, boulders and even dwarf planets, each revealing something unique about the solar system (SN: 8/3/16). “Maybe we’re only just seeing a tiny fraction of them” through our meteorites, she says.

There is a solution, though more costly than scouring Earth for more meteorites. “We’ve got to have space missions to go out there,” she says, and hunt these ancient rocky archives down ourselves (SN: 2/15/24).

Citations

M. Brož et al. Young asteroid families as the primary source of meteorites. Nature. Published online October 16, 2024. doi: 10.1038/s41586-024-08006-7.

M. Marsset et al. The Massalia asteroid family as the origin of ordinary L chondrites. Nature. Published online October 16, 2024. doi: 10.1038/s41586-024-08007-6.

About Robin George Andrews

Saturn’s first Trojan asteroid has finally been discovered

All four giant planets now have known asteroids sharing their orbits

Saturn is known for its stunning rings and its many moons (four seen here), but they aren’t the planet’s only companions. Its first known Trojan — an asteroid that shares the planet’s orbit around the sun — has now been discovered.

USGS/JPL/NASA

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By Ken Croswell

October 11, 2024 

Astronomers have finally found an asteroid keeping pace with Saturn in its orbit around the sun. Such objects, called Trojan asteroids, are already known for the other three giant planets.

“Saturn was sort of the odd man out, if I can call it that, because even though it’s the second most massive planet in the solar system, it didn’t have any Trojans,” says Paul Wiegert, an astronomer at the University of Western Ontario in London, Canada. Like Saturn, the new asteroid takes about 30 years to revolve but lies 60 degrees ahead of the planet in its orbit, Wiegert and colleagues report in work submitted September 29 to arXiv.org

Most asteroids in the solar system revolve around the sun between the paths of Mars and Jupiter. In 1906, however, German astronomer Max Wolf discovered the first Trojan, which he named Achilles, orbiting the sun 60 degrees ahead of Jupiter. Since then, astronomers have found thousands of additional Trojan asteroids — some are 60 degrees ahead of Jupiter, others are 60 degrees behind. The NASA spacecraft Lucy will visit eight of them between 2027 and 2033 (SN: 10/15/21) .

Trojan asteroids also exist for Uranus and Neptune and even for Earth and Mars (SN: 2/1/22).

After a telescope image in Hawaii captured the new asteroid in 2019, an amateur astronomer in Australia, Andrew Walker, suggested that the object might be a Saturnian Trojan — if it had the right orbit around the sun.

“The key to getting a good orbit for something in our solar system is having a lot of observations of it through different telescopes over a long period of time,” Wiegert says. So astronomer Man-To Hui at Macau University of Science and Technology in China looked for previous images of the asteroid and planned new observations as well. Measurements of the asteroid’s position — from 2015 to 2024 — confirmed its Trojan nature. Named 2019 UO14, the asteroid is only about 13 kilometers across, the same size as Deimos, the smaller of the two moons of Mars.

Scientists have long predicted Saturnian Trojans, says astronomer Carlos de la Fuente Marcos of Complutense University of Madrid, who was not involved with the discovery. But all Saturnian Trojans should have unstable orbits, because Saturn has giant planets on either side of it.

“Jupiter seems to be the culprit,” de la Fuente Marcos says. Jupiter’s great gravity gradually pulls on a Saturnian Trojan, making its orbit around the sun more and more elliptical. The asteroid then wanders so close to Jupiter or Uranus that one of those giant planets yanks the small body out of its Trojan orbit.

In fact, the researchers estimate the asteroid has been a Trojan for only about 2,000 years and will remain so for only another 1,000 years. Prior to its affair with the ringed planet, the asteroid was probably a centaur, an asteroid moving around the sun among the orbits of the giant planets (SN: 11/12/77).

The asteroid probably isn’t Saturn’s sole Trojan. “I’m quite sure there are more — maybe only a few, but this can’t be the only one,” Wiegert says.

Citations

M.-T. Hui et al. 2019 UO14: a transient Trojan of Saturn. arXiv:2409.19725. Submitted September 29, 2024.

See the First Section of the Largest-Ever Cosmic Map, Revealed in Stunning Detail by the Euclid Space Telescope

The final 3D atlas of the sky will help scientists study dark matter and dark energy, which make up 96 percent of the universe but remain mysterious

An area of the mosaic released by ESA’s Euclid space telescope on October 15, 2024, which is zoomed in 36 times compared to the large mosaic.

 ESA / Euclid / Euclid Consortium / NASA, CEA Paris-Saclay, image processing by J.-C. Cuillandre, E. Bertin, G. Anselmi


Margherita Bassi

SMITHSONIAN
Daily Correspondent

Smart News | October 16, 2024


On its mission to reveal the secrets of the “dark universe,” the Euclid space telescope has released its most detailed image yet. The wide-angle telescope built and operated by the European Space Agency (ESA) has been investigating the cosmos since it launched into space aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket on July 1, 2023.

Its mission? To create a 3D map of one-third of the sky—the largest such map ever made. This “cosmic atlas,” as it’s also called, will be the culmination of six years of observations with Euclid’s 600-megapixel camera, studying billions of galaxies up to ten billion light-years away.

The world got its first sneak peeks of Euclid’s magnificent images in November 2023 and May 2024, with the space telescope’s survey officially beginning in February of this year. These first looks only built up anticipation in the scientific community, which expressed thrill and awe when ESA officials revealed the first part of Euclid’s cosmic atlas at the International Astronautical Congress in Milan, Italy, on Tuesday.

This mosaic capturing a section of the southern sky contains 260 observations from the Euclid space telescope gathered over the course of just two weeks. ESA / Euclid / Euclid Consortium / NASA, CEA Paris-Saclay, image processing by J.-C. Cuillandre, E. Bertin, G. Anselmi

This first section is a mosaic created from 260 observations of the southern sky captured between March 25 and April 8, 2024, per a statement from the ESA. The final product is a 208-gigapixel image revealing tens of millions of stars in the Milky Way, as well as 14 million other galaxies in shocking detail. To the human eye, its area is equivalent to more than 500 times the area of the full moon as it appears in the sky.

“This stunning image is the first piece of a map that in six years will reveal more than one-third of the sky,” Valeria Pettorino, a Euclid project scientist at ESA, says in the statement. “This is just 1 percent of the map, and yet it is full of a variety of sources that will help scientists discover new ways to describe the universe.”

Euclid is nicknamed the “dark universe detective,” because it’s meant to reveal truths about little-understood phenomena such as dark energy and dark matter, which make up about 96 percent of the universe. Dark energy is hypothesized to be the cause behind the universe’s accelerated expansion. But details about these “dark” elements of the universe remain a mystery.

To shed light on these concepts, Euclid will image a wide range of galaxies. Dark matter will have bent the light from the most distant galaxies over time, so scientists could work backward from Euclid’s observations to find out where that dark matter lies. By tracing the distribution of galaxies throughout the universe’s history, the telescope can also uncover more about dark energy.

“Euclid is observing the universe in a brand new way, and it’s gonna get a gigantic census of the galaxies,” Universidad ECCI cosmologist Luz Ángela García Peñaloza tells Space.com’s Robert Lea. “Any image that reveals information about the distribution of galaxies in the large-scale structure of the universe will provide handfuls of information on the nature of the dark side of the cosmos.”

Spiral galaxy ESO 364-G036 appears in detail, even though this view is zoomed in 600 times from Euclid's full mosaic. ESA / Euclid / Euclid Consortium / NASA, CEA Paris-Saclay, image processing by J.-C. Cuillandre, E. Bertin, G. Anselmi

Astronomers can zoom into the mosaic 600 times relative to the original image and still see celestial bodies in shocking detail. The telescope resolved the structure of spiral galaxy ESO 364-G036, which is about 420 million light-years away and fills up less than 0.0003 percent of the mapped area.

Another magnificent element captured by Euclid in this first atlas section is “galactic cirrus,” a mix of galactic gas and dust that forms dim clouds between the stars within our galaxy and reflects optical light from the Milky Way. Like wispy cirrus clouds on Earth, this phenomenon appears as streaks of light blue in the image.

“Before Euclid, we would never be able to see the faint cirrus clouds in the Milky Way and pick out every star that’s illuminating them in super-high resolution,” Mat Page, lead for Euclid’s VIS (visible instrument) camera, tells the Guardian’s Nicola Davis.

Shown against a backdrop of the entire universe, Euclid's new detailed mosaic (highlighted in yellow) makes up just 1 percent of what the telescope will capture. ESA / Euclid / Euclid Consortium / NASA; ESA / Gaia / DPAC; ESA / Planck Collaboration


Since February, Euclid has completed 12 percent of its survey. In March 2025, experts and casual enthusiasts alike can expect the reveal of 53 square degrees of the map, as well as a preview of the Euclid Deep Field areas—a detailed survey of just three patches of sky. Data from the mission’s first year will be released in 2026.

“This is just the beginning of what we will be able to see in Euclid’s lifetime,” García Peñaloza adds to Space.com. “For sure, the best is still to come! I’m positive Euclid will shed light on our understanding of the cosmic mysteries.”

Margherita Bassi | READ MORE
Margherita Bassi is a freelance journalist and trilingual storyteller. Her work has appeared in publications including BBC Travel, Discover magazine, Live Science, Atlas Obscura and Hidden Compass.

A wolf’s killing shocked Canada. Then his image appeared on a hunting site

Leyland Cecco in Toronto

THE GUARDIAN
Sun, 4 August 2024


Takaya, the Canadian sea wolf, left behind a legacy reflecting the complex relationship between humans and wildlife.Photograph: Cheryl Alexander/Wild Awake Images


Ever since he was killed by a hunter in 2020, the Canadian sea wolf Takaya has appeared all over the world.

Paintings, poems, sculptures and statues – including a 150lb (68kg) mixture of driftwood, sea shells and dried kelp – have memorialized a wolf whose legacy reflects the complex relationship between humans and wildlife.

But photographer Cheryl Alexander, a relentless advocate against government-sanctioned wolf culls, was shocked to see her most famous image used to advertise a big game hunting company.

Related: Canada mourns Takaya – the lone sea wolf whose spirit captured the world

“I shocked and a bit horrified. And it really pissed me off that company was using Takaya as an advertisement to come up to Canada and kill a wolf,” she told the Guardian. “It hurt too because Takaya has become, in many ways, an international image for positive coexistence with humans.”

The unlikely story of the wolf’s years of self-imposed isolation captivated residents of Vancouver Island, some of whom would paddle by the rocky outcrops and windswept trees hoping to glimpse the animal. But one day in late March, a hunter’s rifle brought an untimely end to the wolf.

Alexander recently found British Columbia-based Terminus Mountain Outfitters was using her photo to advertise its wolf hunting package. She soon posted to her Instagram page, appealing to her 33,000 followers to share news of the company’s decision to use the photo.

The owner of Terminus said in a statement he didn’t mean to “offend” anyone with the image.

“[A web design company] chose some live wildlife photos to use on the [website]. July 27th I was contacted by a disgruntled person upset about a wolf picture that they recognized as a wolf named Takaya. I had no idea of the story behind this wolf or even which of the three pictures on my website was of Takaya. I asked my web developer … to simply remove all three of the photos. July 29th they were removed. Neither I nor my web developer meant to offend anyone,” he said. “Unfortunately, because of the media attention we are now getting emails that are threatening and quite angry when we had nothing to do with the live pictures chosen. We are a legal family-run business.”

Both the image, and the page on wolf hunting, have since been taken down.

In British Columbia, hundreds of wolves – which are seen as vermin that must be eradicated – are killed for sport each year. Hunters usually only take the pelts, discarding the remains. Channelling growing outrage – and changing perceptions – Alexander and local conservation groups have started a petition calling for a moratorium on wolf hunting in British Columbia that has so far received more than 65,000 signatures. Alexander has also founded the non-profit Takaya’s Legacy which works to support wolf protection initiatives.

While Takaya’s legacy has aligned with the aims of conservation groups, his curiosity – or lack of fear – also raised difficult questions about the relationship locals had fostered with the wolf that led to his demise.

“I was angry about the photo, but there’s a silver lining, because it actually allows word to get out there about what’s happening in Canada regarding trophy hunting – the whole range of wild animals that are hunted in Canada is quite disgusting,” said Alexander. “We’re grappling with loss of biodiversity. That trophy hunters are continuing to hunt them just for fun and for recreation is not acceptable.”

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John Mayall: India’s guitar stars shower love on the Godfather of British Blues

Ehsaan Noorani, Amyt Datta, Arinjoy Sarkar and Rudy Wallang share their ‘Beano album' favourites; salute the incubator of ideas that flowered within and beyond the tenets of the blues

Shantanu Datta

 Published 26.07.24

TELEGRAPH CALCUTTA


John MayallInstagram: johnmayallofficial

The blues, it is universally accepted, is immortal. So, in the passing of pioneering British musician and band leader John Mayall, whose ensembles of the 1960s acted as incubators of this essentially African American musical form, the blues lived once again.

“John Mayall gave us ninety years of tireless efforts to educate, inspire and entertain," said his family in a Facebook post announcing his death early this week. That immediately took me back to the Calcutta of the ’80s when some of us had just finished school. Presidency College, hallowed for its academic record down the ages, was the setting for my initiation into Mayall’s music, courtesy seniors with acoustic guitars, in-between statistics classes. All Your Love, with its infectious opening swipe, was the song.

That was Eric Clapton playing electric guitar on the album, Blues Breakers with Eric Clapton, affectionately referred to as the “Beano album,” the debut record (1966) of this Mayall band. And we, like the rest of the world, were merely trying to emulate. For accomplished musicians of this country, Mayall has always been a benchmark. A rite of passage, just like it was for guitarists Clapton, Peter Green, Mick Taylor; drummer Mick Fleetwood, bassists Jack Bruce, John McVie and many others.

Ehsaan Noorani, the guitar arm of the Mumbai music composing trio Shankar- Ehsaan-Loy, fondly recalls how his first blues album was in the form of a cassette recording of Mayall’s Jazz Blues Fusion, which he reckons is one of his finest. Arinjoy Sarkar of Calcutta’s Arinjoy Trio reminisces about his meeting with the legend himself in Mumbai at the Mahindra Blues Festival where, would you believe it, they were both slated to perform. Ditto for Rudy Wallang of Shillong’s Great Society and Soulmate, whose world of guitar heroes exploded with Mayall’s influence and who bumped into the legend at the Jakarta Blues Festival. Guitar guru Amyt Datta opens up about the British blues invasion and how the lines distinguishing it from its American counterpart were being blurred with Mayal and Co.



Ehsaan NooraniInstagram (@ehsaan)

One of the most progressive blues musicians ever: Ehsaan

“I have always maintained that Mayall was one of the most progressive blues musicians (I think he even had an album called Progressive Blues). He was always pushing the envelope with the form of the blues, not necessarily sticking to the 12 bar thing, which he did earlier on when he was with his own band,” says Noorani, calling in from Chicago where he is unspooling after a very successful series of Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy concerts. He admits he still transcribes music from Mayall’s Jazz Blues Fusion album, a compilation of three concerts, side A featuring a gig in Boston in November, 1971, and side B a selection of tracks from two concerts in New York in December of the same year.


Aside of the "Beano album", Noorani’s go-to Mayall albums are Blues From Laurel Canyon, Jazz Blues Fusion and A Hard Core Package. “In Hard Core, he had guitarist James (Quill) Smith, who is really fantastic. If you hear the album, you’ll realise it’s out of the blues format. But it’s still like a blues album. He always had these musicians whom you’d never heard of before. As a result, his music always took on a very fresh sound, whatever the album.”



Arinjoy SarkarTT Online

He showed us all a new way of playing the blues: Arinjoy


Arinjoy Sarkar found himself thinking “end of an era” when he heard of Mayall’s demise. “He was one of those stalwarts who helped in the transition of the blues to rock ‘n’ roll, even though there were people like Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley before him. But I always saw him as one who was able to bring the rock ‘n roll grit into the blues,” he says thoughtfully, explaining why he holds Mayall so dear to his heart. “He showed us all a new way of playing the blues.”


The Calcutta guitarist remembers meeting him in Mumbai in 2018 at the Mahindra Blues Festival which Mayall was headlining. “That was the year we won Band Hunt, because of which we were scheduled to play two half-hour slots. We met at the customary meet and greet before opening day. ‘We must hear you play,’ he told me when I was introduced to him. Unfortunately that did not happen, but as I shook his hand, I still remember thinking, ‘Man, this guy gave Clapton a break’. ” A lot of pictures were taken, but sadly Arinjoy doesn’t have a copy.


“For all of us guitar players, I guess the 'Beano album' has been the go-to standard,” says Arinjoy, whose playing is tilted more towards the American side of things. “I am more of the 1950-’60s Freddie King, Albert King, Joe Louis Walker kind. But whenever I have to channel a bit of rock ‘n’ roll, I look to Mayall.” Three of his songs that have left an indelible mark on Arinjoy form the core of lessons he’s designed for his students: All Your Love (Otis Rush cover, opening track), Little Girl (side A) and Double Crossing Time. “I go back to them time and again. So Mayall's playing has to be somewhere there inside of me when I am playing.”



Rudy Wallang with John MayallRudy Wallang

Nature’s Disappearing a staple in our setlist: Rudy Wallang


Wallang owes a lot to John Mayall. “It was because of him that we got to hear the greats like Eric Clapton and Peter Green, who were all my inspirations. Back in the day when I was with Great Society and we used to travel across the northeast, there would always be at least one Mayall CD in our car. He was a big part of our lives,” he says.


Circa 2012-11, Wallang’s band Soulmate is at the Jakarta Blues Festival, where, lo and behold, the legend is there too! “We got to meet Mayall right after his sound check. And that was a blessing.” Like all aspiring guitar players, Wallang too started off playing the blues and trying to copy the greats like Buddy Guy, Freddie King and Albert Collins. “As a 15-year-old, I would play a lot of Clapton, little knowing then that he also came from the blues and Mayall’s band.”


Wallang remembers playing All Your Love, knowing it then as a John Mayall song. “It was only later that we found out it was a cover of the Otis Rush song. There is another song we still do today. It’s called Nature’s Disappearing. And it’s so relevant even now. I just love the song and its message. It’s one of the staples in our setlist.”


For Wallang, it is very important to have his own voice. “I am not that much of a singer, even though I do sing. But I think I sing better through my guitar,” he says. A guitar player’s search for his tone is a work in progress. But Wallang believes that after all these years, he has been able to learn from all these greats and “find my own voice”. What was unsaid but implicit in this assertion is that somewhere deep within that confidence lay the legacy of a John Mayall.



Amyt DattaTT Online

Mayall, the master of the blues crossover: Amyt Datta


Amyt Datta sees John Mayall as iconic for the manner in which he was able to bring the blues into the mainstream. “He was one of the first British White guys to sort of adopt the blues and make it ready for people’s ears. His 'Beano album' was path-breaking in the way it introduced Eric Clapton. We used to play a lot of Clapton, his songs with Cream, Derek and Dominoes and must have also played a few Mayall numbers.”


On British and American Blues, Datta explains it simply. “The soul is the same but the mind is different, if you know what I mean,” he says, attributing this cross pollination to the advent of the Beatles in America and the American blues into Britain. “This crossover led to the lines getting blurred. American bands started imbibing punk, while the British musicians took in the blues. The stories and the themes were the same, but the British band presentations had a flavour of rock, while the Americans were ‘bluesy’ blues.”


Born in the ’60s, Datta remembers experiencing this during his early playing days. “When I was growing up this whole influx thing had already started. I was born into the blurred line,” he says, referring to the fading distinctions in the various styles of the practitioners of the blues. “Before that, till about the late ’50s, you could spot the line. You could tell an American blues player. Soon after the music really got crossed over, which to my mind, was a good thing to happen.”



John MayallInstagram: johnmayallofficial

The summing up


In his heartfelt tribute to his mentor John Mayall, Eric Clapton calls him his surrogate father. “He taught me all I really know and gave me the courage and enthusiasm to express myself without fear or without limit.”


For legions of musicians who have been influenced and inspired by the godfather of British blues, it is a time to reflect on the musical boundaries Mayall crossed, the lines Mayall helped blur. For what is the British Blues without the American Blues? The cross-pollination of style, technique and substance that Mayall helped forge within the secular traditions of the blues has left us with even richer musical experiences.


Both Amyt Datta and Ehsaan Noorani agree. “When Clapton plays the blues you can hear more elements of rock. It’s the same with, say, a Rory Gallaghar, even though, now, the blues and rock are married so tightly that you may find it difficult to identify one from the other. The rock music of Allman Brothers cannot exist without the blues elements,” notes Datta.


Noorani talks of the manner in which British musicians recognised this form of music and made it popular for the artistes from the USA. “You know Howlin’ Wolf, Albert King, BB King and Jimmy Hendrix himself. Suddenly, these artistes became big. They got recognised by US promoters as well. From playing in small dives and juke joints, they became stars that played at the Fillimore and even bigger venues. So it was very crucial in the way the British gave this music the recognition it needed,” he explains.


In the UK, thanks to Mayall and Co., even the Rolling Stones and Fleetwood Mac started off as blues bands. “These guys took the music and interpreted it in their own ways. They would do covers of songs of the American artistes, but in a way that would lead to bands like Cream and Eric Clapton becoming ‘God’, he adds, referring to, among others, acts such as Ten Years After, Chicken Shack, Savoy Brown, all big bands that were part of the British blues explosion.


Ultimately, as Datta put it, this free flow of musical ideas that flowered within and beyond the tenets of the blues, is the embodiment of a simple but profound assertion that in the end, it really doesn’t matter if you are Black or White. It’s the music that keeps shining through. And we have to thank John Mayall for that.

Post script: Why is it called the ‘Beano album’? Look at the cover and you’ll see why. Clapton is reading the British comic book.

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