Space rocks and asteroid dust are pricey, but these aren’t the most expensive materials used in science

By Chris Impey
THE CONVERSATION

I use Moon and Mars rocks in my teaching and have a modest collection of meteorites. I marvel at the fact that I can hold in my hand something that is billions of years old from billions of miles away.

Meteorites can get pricey, but they’re not the most expensive material.

(Image credit: Photo/Thibault Camus)

After a journey of seven years and nearly 4 billion miles, NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft landed gently in the Utah desert on the morning of Sept. 24, 2023, with a precious payload. The spacecraft brought back a sample from the asteroid Bennu.


Roughly half a pound of material collected from the 85 million-ton asteroid (77.6 billion kg) will help scientists learn about the formation of the solar system, including whether asteroids like Bennu include the chemical ingredients for life.

NASA’s mission was budgeted at US$800 million and will end up costing around $1.16 billion for just under 9 ounces of sample (255 g). But is this the most expensive material known? Not even close.

I’m a professor of astronomy. I use Moon and Mars rocks in my teaching and have
a modest collection of meteorites. I marvel at the fact that I can hold in my hand something that is billions of years old from billions of miles away.

The cost of sample return

A handful of asteroid works out to $132 million per ounce, or $4.7 million per gram. That’s about 70,000 times the price of gold, which has been in the range of $1,800 to $2,000 per ounce ($60 to $70 per gram) for the past few years.

The first extraterrestrial material returned to Earth came from the Apollo program. Between 1969 and 1972, six Apollo missions brought back 842 pounds (382 kg) of lunar samples.

The total price tag for the Apollo program, adjusted for inflation, was $257 billion. These Moon rocks were a relative bargain at $19 million per ounce ($674 thousand per gram), and of course Apollo had additional value in demonstrating technologies for human spaceflight.

NASA is planning to bring samples back from Mars in the early 2030s to see if any contain traces of ancient life. The Mars Sample Return mission aims to return 30 sample tubes with a total weight of a pound (450 g). The Perseverance rover has already cached 10 of these samples.

However, costs have grown because the mission is complex, involving multiple robots and spacecraft. Bringing back the samples could run $11 billion, putting their cost at $690 million per ounce ($24 million per gram), five times the unit cost of the Bennu samples.

Some space rocks are free

Some space rocks cost nothing. Almost 50 tons of free samples from the solar system rain down on the Earth every day. Most burn up in the atmosphere, but if they reach the ground they’re called meteorites, and most of those come from asteroids.

Meteorites can get costly because it can be difficult to recognize and retrieve them. Rocks all look similar unless you’re a geology expert.

Most meteorites are stony, called chondrites, and they can be bought online for as little as $15 per ounce (50 cents per gram). Chondrites differ from normal rocks in containing round grains called chondrules that formed as molten droplets in space at the birth of the solar system 4.5 billion years ago.





A chondrite from the Viñales meteorite, which originated from the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. (Image credit: Ser Amantio di Nicolao/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA)

Iron meteorites are distinguished by a dark crust, caused by melting of the surface as they come through the atmosphere, and an internal pattern of long metallic crystals. They cost $50 per ounce ($1.77 per gram) or even higher. Pallasites are stony-iron meteorites laced with the mineral olivine. When cut and polished, they have a translucent yellow-green color and can cost over $1,000 per ounce ($35 per gram).

More than a few meteorites have reached us from the Moon and Mars. Close to 600 have been recognized as coming from the Moon, and the largest, weighing 4 pounds (1.8 kg), sold for a price that works out to be about $4,700 per ounce ($166 per gram).


An iron meteorite. (Image credit: Llez/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA)

About 175 meteorites are identified as having come from Mars. Buying one would cost about $11,000 per ounce ($388 per gram).

Researchers can figure out where meteorites come from by using their landing trajectories to project their paths back to the asteroid belt or comparing their composition with different classes of asteroids. Experts can tell where Moon and Mars rocks come from by their geology and mineralogy.

The limitation of these “free” samples is that there is no way to know where on the Moon or Mars they came from, which limits their scientific usefulness. Also, they start to get contaminated as soon as they land on Earth, so it’s hard to tell if any microbes within them are extraterrestrial.

Expensive elements and minerals

Some elements and minerals are expensive because they’re scarce. Simple elements in the periodic table have low prices. Per ounce, carbon costs one-third of a cent, iron costs 1 cent, aluminum costs 56 cents, and even mercury is less than a dollar (per 100 grams, carbon costs $2.40, iron costs less than a cent and alumnium costs 19 cents). Silver is $14 per ounce (50 cents per gram), and gold, $1,900 per ounce ($67 per gram).

Seven radioactive elements are extremely rare in nature and so difficult to create in the lab that they eclipse the price of NASA’s Mars Sample Return. Polonium-209, the most expensive of these, costs $1.4 trillion per ounce ($49 billion per gram).

Gemstones can be expensive, too. High-quality emeralds are 10 times the price of gold, and white diamonds are 100 times the price of gold.


High-quality white diamonds can cost millions of dollars.

(Image credit: AP Photo/Mary Altaffer)

Some diamonds have a boron impurity that gives them a vivid blue hue. They’re found in only a handful of mines worldwide, and at $550 million per ounce ($19 million per gram) they rival the cost of the upcoming Mars samples – an ounce is 142 carats, but very few gems are that large.

The most expensive synthetic material is a tiny spherical “cage” of carbon with a nitrogen atom trapped inside. The atom inside the cage is extremely stable, so can be used for timekeeping. Endohedral fullerenes are made of carbon material that may be used to create extremely accurate atomic clocks. They can cost $4 billion per ounce ($141 million per gram).

Most expensive of all

Antimatter occurs in nature, but it’s exceptionally rare because any time an antiparticle is created it quickly annihilates with a particle and produces radiation.



The particle accelerator at CERN can produces 10 million antiprotons per minute. That sounds like a lot, but at that rate it would take billions of years and cost a billion billion (1018) dollars to generate an ounce (3.5 x 1016 dollars per gram).

Warp drives as envisaged by “Star Trek,” which are powered by matter-antimatter annihilation, will have to wait.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher.

GERMANY
Climate scientist and sustainable builder win top eco prize

Stuart Braun
DW

Climatologist Friederike Otto and low-carbon construction innovator Dagmar Fritz-Kramer have jointly won the German Environmental Award and its €500,000 prize for their efforts to limit global heating.

Extreme flooding in Germany in 2021 was made more likely by climate change: The German Environmental Award has been awarded to women looking for solutionsI

mage: Sebastien Bozon/Getty Images/AFP

Understanding how global heating, caused in large part by burning carbon-intensive fossil fuels, is worsening extreme weather such as floods, storms and droughts, and finding ways to create a carbon-neutral world define the work of this year's German Environmental Award winners.

Friederike Otto, climatologist at Imperial College London and co-founder of World Weather Attribution, which draws a connection between climate change and extreme weather events, and Dagmar Fritz-Kramer, the managing director of Baufritz, a climate-neutral building company utilizing low-carbon timber, shared the award presented on October 29.

"With the outstanding energy they have shown in their respective fields, both award winners have demonstrated that we cannot afford to lose any more time in the fight against the climate crisis," said Alexander Bonde, the secretary general of the German Federal Environmental Foundation (DBU – Deutsche Bundesstiftung Umwelt) behind the award.

"They are a true inspiration and motivation for us to learn from the impacts of global warming, which are already evident today, and to continue implementing more and more environmental and resource protection measures so that our planet remains a habitable place."

Recent review shows Germany unlikely to reach climate goals 01:37

Connecting climate change and extreme weather

When Friederike Otto was working on climate models as a postdoctoral student in Oxford in the early 2010s, she noticed that many in the scientific community were wary of attributing single extreme weather events to climate change.

There was a belief that it was too difficult to say whether global heating made a single storm or heat wave more likely, or more severe, she told DW.

"It was almost a dangerous thing for the scientific community not to say anything," she said of a failure to attribute the increasing frequency and impacts of extreme heat, flooding or storms to the changing climate.

But based on her own climate models — and her motivation to compare historical weather data when there was less warming compared to today — Otto "felt that we can do this." She then founded WWA with her colleague Geert Jan van Oldenborgh in 2015.

"I still think that in order for us to do something really about climate change, we need to connect our experiences with the theory," she said. "And that's what we do at World Weather Attribution, only that we do it quickly. When extreme events are happening, that's when people care about it, that's when people have questions."

Friederike Otto wanted to use her climate modeling experience to understand how rising temperatures make extreme weather more likely

TT/imago images

World Weather Attribution has since developed into a global network of experts that provide rapid analysis of the influence of human-caused climate change on world weather events: from the wildfires consuming southern Europe this summer to the extreme German floods of 2021, and to unprecedented heat waves in North America.

In recognition of the importance of this work, in 2021 both Otto and Oldenborgh were included in Time magazine's list of the top 100 most influential people.

"The reason why we are so successful is because there is a big demand in understanding the role of climate change in everyday experiences. We are more or less the only group doing this," she said.

Using scientific evidence to explain the link between worsening storms and heat waves and greenhouse gas emissions is also helping to hold those who create these emissions — including fossil fuel companies — accountable in the courts, Otto explained.

6 young people sue 32 nations over climate inaction  01:48

Beyond attribution analysis that is turned around quickly to accompany reporting of weather disasters, the climate scientist is embarking on deeper research to support claims for so-called loss and damage, or compensation, from climate vulnerable communities.

Otto told DW that despite the ever-increasing body of evidence linking extreme weather to global heating, she's also concerned about the increasing demonization of climate protesters and activists like Last Generation.

"The way they are talked about by politicians is really disconcerting," she said, adding that activist demands for rapid emission cuts are simply what "countries have signed up to anyway in the Paris agreement."

Climate activists protest by any means  01:33

Pioneering carbon-neutral housing in Germany

German Environmental Award co-winner Dagmar Fritz-Kramer is continuing a four-generation tradition of Baufritz builders using local timber from the Allgäu region of southern Germany and applying this heritage to constructing carbon-neutral housing.

Certified timber grown in sustainably managed European forests accounts for around 85% of the material used in a Baufritz house. The wood captures, on average, 50 metric tons of CO2 from the atmosphere per house after deducting the environmental impact from construction and transport. This saving is equivalent to the carbon emissions of an average mid-range car over 20 years.

"There was way too much resource consumption in the past," Fritz-Kramer told DW of a construction industry which, she said, produces 50% of all waste in Germany. Much of these materials are high-carbon concrete and steel, explaining why around 40% of Germany's annual planet-heating greenhouse gases are emitted by the sector.

Dagmar Fritz-Kramer has helped Baufritz to build homes mostly with low-carbon timber

Image: Jongebloed/DBU

This is why Fritz-Kramer is pushing for a "construction transition" in Germany, she said.

This will demand that new buildings are comprised largely of "renewable raw materials," but also that "we increasingly work with recycled building materials," she said, explaining other means to limit resource use. Renovation and upgrading of existing buildings to make them more sustainable, including by retrofitting renewable energy like solar, is also key, she said.

With around 65% of the 21 million buildings in Germany still heated with climate-wrecking oil and gas, according to Fritz-Kramer, she is determined to help make all buildings climate-neutral by 2045 to fulfill Germany's net-zero targets.

"She and her company are a true driving force of industry and the changes shaping the construction sector," said DBU's Bonde of Baufritz's efforts to make sustainable construction mainstream.

Switzerland: Building a cement-free future  03:24

Award winners collaborate on climate mitigation

Dagmar Fritz-Kramer and Friederike Otto are, in fact, working together to generate climate finance for sustainable, low-carbon buildings.

Working with some of Otto's students at Imperial College London, Fritz-Kramer said the project aims to show how responding to the climate crisis with carbon-neutral construction can also become an opportunity to grow the economy.

Arctic shifts are driving dramatic population swings among gray whales, study explains

A gray whale breaching. 

(Credit: NOAA Fisheries (Photo taken under permit))

OCTOBER 29, 2023

by StudyFinds

CORVALLIS, Ore. — Gray whales undergo substantial “boom-and-bust” population cycles in response to shifting Arctic conditions, new research reveals. Since the 1980s, scientists have observed three significant die-offs in the eastern North Pacific gray whale population. Each die-off, including an ongoing one that started in 2019, has led to a reduction in the gray whale population by as much as 25 percent within just a few years.

“These are extreme population swings that we did not expect to see in a large, long-lived species like gray whales. When the availability of their prey in the Arctic is low, and the whales cannot reach their feeding areas because of sea ice, the gray whale population experiences rapid and major shocks,” says the study’s lead author Dr. Joshua Stewart, assistant professor with Oregon State University’s Marine Mammal Institute, in a media release. “Even highly mobile, long-lived species such as gray whales are sensitive to climate change impacts.”

The researchers note that the eastern North Pacific gray whales, having rebounded from the effects of commercial whaling, are likely nearing the carrying capacity of their Arctic feeding areas, making them more vulnerable to environmental changes due to resource competition.

Gray whales migrating south between their summer feeding grounds in the Arctic and wintering lagoons in Mexico. Permit number 14097. 

(Credit: NOAA Fisheries/SWFSC/MMTD)

Interestingly, the harsh Arctic conditions causing two of the die-offs in the 1980s and 1990s weren’t permanent. The whale population swiftly bounced back when conditions became favorable.

“It turns out we didn’t really know what a healthy baleen whale population looks like when it isn’t heavily depleted by human impacts. Our assumption has generally been that these recovering populations would hit their environmental carrying capacities and remain more or less steady there,” says Dr. Stewart. “But what we’re seeing is much more of a bumpy ride in response to highly variable and rapidly changing ocean conditions.”

Currently, about 14,500 eastern North Pacific gray whales make an impressive 12,000-mile annual migration along the Pacific Coast, transitioning from the warm waters off Baja California, Mexico, during winter to the chilly, nutrient-rich waters of the Arctic for summer feeding. For decades, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Southwest Fisheries Science Center in California has monitored this species, making the eastern North Pacific gray whales among the most extensively researched large whale populations globally.

“When we began collecting data on gray whales in 1967, little did we realize the important role they would play in understanding the effects of climate change on an iconic sentinel species in the Pacific. This research would not have been possible without our reliable long-term record,” says Dr. Dave Weller from the Southwest Fisheries Science Center.

A Southwest Fisheries Science Center researcher scans for gray whales during a survey as part of the long-term population monitoring research.

 (Credit: NOAA Fisheries)

The research team’s analysis, which linked long-term data on gray whales with Arctic environmental information, found connections between the “Unusual Mortality Events” in 1999 and 2019 and factors like sea ice levels and the crustacean food source for the whales. They also identified a similar event in the 1980s that wasn’t associated with a surge in strandings, likely due to less efficient reporting before the 1990s.

Though shorter ice-covered periods in the Arctic initially seem beneficial for the whales, this trend, accelerated by climate change, may not be sustainable. The whales’ primary food source, benthic amphipods, relies on the sea ice. Algae growing beneath the ice nourish the amphipods, but less ice means less sustenance for them. As a result, smaller crustaceans thrive in warmer waters, and faster currents diminish habitats for the preferred whale prey.

“With less ice, you get less algae, which is worse for the gray whale prey. All of these factors are converging to reduce the quality and availability of the food they rely on,” Dr. Stewart emphasizes.

The current die-off event, according to Dr. Stewart, is lingering much longer than its predecessors. He postulates that the sustained impact might be due to the long-term shift in prey quality induced by climate change.

“An Arctic Ocean that has warmed significantly may not be able to support 25,000 gray whales like it has in the recent past,” Dr. Stewart cautions.

However, given the gray whale’s ability to adapt over hundreds of thousands of years, the team remains optimistic about the animal’s long-term survival.

The study is published in the journal Science.

South West News Service writer Stephen Beech contributed to this report.

Tracking down environmental toxins

Detection of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) by interrupted energy transfer

Date:October 27, 2023

Source:Wiley

PFAS, a family of highly fluorinated substances, represent a danger for humans and the environment. Particularly problematic members of this family, such as perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS) and perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) appear to cause organ damage and cancer, as well as disrupting the endocrine system. In the journal Angewandte Chemie, researchers have now introduced a new method for an economical, easy-to-use fluorescence sensor for sensitive on-site testing for PFAS in water samples.

The term per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) refers to a group of organic compounds in which most or all the hydrogen atoms bound to the carbon atoms have been replaced with fluorine atoms. They are used to provide water-, oil-, and dirt-resistance to a variety of products, such as nonstick pans, outdoor clothing, and packaging. They may also be found in fire-suppressing foam, paint, and car polish. These compounds are highly useful -- and highly dangerous when they find their way into the environment: they do not break down and thus become concentrated in plants, animals, and people.

Limits of 100 ng/l for individual specific PFAS substances and 500 ng/l for the total of all PFAS were set for drinking water in the EU. In Germany, water providers must begin testing drinking water for PFAS in 2026. The US Environmental Protection Agency has set stricter limits: for the most widespread PFAS (PFOS and PFOA), the upper limit is set at 4nm/l for each substance.

The usual method used to detect such trace amounts involves chromatography and mass spectrometry, is time-consuming and expensive, and requires complex equipment and experienced personnel. Timothy M. Swager and Alberto Concellón at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, USA, have now introduced a technique for making a portable, inexpensive test that uses fluorescence measurements to easily and selectively detect PFAS in water samples.

The test is based on a polymer -- in the form of a thin film or nanoparticles -- with fluorinated sidechains that have fluorinated dye molecules (squaraine derivatives) embedded in them. The special polymer backbone (poly-phenylene ethynylene) absorbs violet light and transfers the light energy to the dye by an electron exchange (Dexter mechanism). The dye then fluoresces red. If PFAS are present in the sample, they enter the polymer and displace the dye molecules by a fraction of a nanometer. This is enough to stop the electron exchange and thus the energy transfer. The dye's red fluorescence is "switched off," while the blue fluorescence of the polymer is "switched on." The degree of fluorescence change is proportional to the concentration of PFAS.

This new technique, which has a detection limit in the µg/l range for PFOA and PFOS is suitable for on-site detection in highly contaminated regions. Detection of trace amounts of these contaminants in drinking water can be achieved with sufficient precision after pre-concentration of the samples by solid-phase extraction.

Journal Reference:

Alberto Concellón, Timothy M. Swager. Detection of Per‐ and Polyfluoroalkyl Substances (PFAS) by Interrupted Energy Transfer. Angewandte Chemie International Edition, 2023; DOI: 10.1002/anie.202309928

SCI-FI-TEK

ABB and Imperial agree second decade of carbon capture collaboration

29 Oct 2023

Technology giant ABB and Imperial College London have renewed their longstanding carbon capture joint venture for a second 10 year period.

To date, since 2012, the site has trained an estimated 4,500 students in the use of ABB’s state-of-the-art technology solutions. The plant, said to be the only one of its kind in the world, employs more than 250 instrument and sensors feeding data and measurements to a distributed control system intended to replicate actual working conditions. 

Senior Teaching Fellow at Imperial Dr Colin Hale, explained that the original purpose of the venture had been to tackle the shortage of recruits for chemical engineering.

“One of the ways to do this was to set up this carbon capture plant so we could enthuse students to follow through on the environmental topics they have learnt previously. ABB shares this collective vision,” said Hale.

Head of Energy Industries, ABB UK & Ireland Simon Wynne added that extending the partnership with Imperial provided students with necessary practical training to prepare for a career in industry. He pointed out a recent EngineeringUK report had assessed that more scientists were needed with sufficient skills to ensure the UK met emissions targets by 2050.

Interest in the potential demand for carbon capture and storage (CCS) appears to be borne out by the Global CCS Institute which, says ABB, cited that in 2022 there was a 44 percent increase in the number of CCS facilities around the world compared with the previous year.

With this in mind, ABB is investing heavily in technology solutions to lower the capital and operational investment cost,  enable integration of carbon capture technology into existing and new operations and ensure the scale-up of commercial CCS.

In March 2023 ABB signed an agreement with London-based Pace CCS to improve access to the capture, transportation and storage of industrial carbon dioxide emissions more accessible, employing digital twin technology to to provide proof of concept. Again this year, the Government’s Powering Up Britain policy for net-zero this year pledged £20 billion to encourage private investment and jobs in CCS.

Bacteriophages Enhance Cellular Growth and Survival for Mammalian Cells

October 29, 2023

Bacteriophage particle interacting with mammalian cells.[T2Q and Barr Lab

 (CC-BY 4.0, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)]

Phage interactions with bacteria are well known, and interactions between bacteria and their mammalian host can lead to a range of symbioses. However, the impact of bacteriophages on mammalian cellular and immunological processes is not well understood. Now, a new study by researchers at Monash University suggests that mammalian cells internalize phages as a resource to promote cellular growth and survival.

The findings are published in PLOS Biology in an article titled, “Mammalian cells internalize bacteriophages and use them as a resource to enhance cellular growth and survival.”

“There is a growing appreciation that the direct interaction between bacteriophages and the mammalian host can facilitate diverse and unexplored symbioses,” wrote the researchers. “Yet the impact these bacteriophages may have on mammalian cellular and immunological processes is poorly understood. Here, we applied highly purified phage T4, free from bacterial byproducts and endotoxins to mammalian cells and analyzed the cellular responses using luciferase reporter and antibody microarray assays.”

In order to investigate how mammalian cells’ immune responses interact with and are modulated by interactions with phages, researchers led by Jeremy J. Barr, PhD, associate professor at Monash University, applied phage T4 to mammalian cells in vitro and analyzed the cellular responses using luciferase reporter and antibody microarray assays.

The researchers found that T4 phages did not activate DNA-mediated inflammatory pathways, but triggered a sequence of signaling pathway events that promote cellular growth and survival.

“Highly purified T4 phages were rapidly internalized by mammalian cells and accumulated within macropinosomes but did not activate the inflammatory DNA response TLR9 or cGAS-STING pathways,” noted the researchers. “Following 8 hours of incubation with T4 phage, whole cell lysates were analyzed via antibody microarray that detected expression and phosphorylation levels of human signaling proteins. T4 phage application led to the activation of AKT-dependent pathways, resulting in an increase in cell metabolism, survival, and actin reorganization, the last being critical for macropinocytosis and potentially regulating a positive feedback loop to drive further phage internalization.”

Future studies are needed to determine why cells use phage particles as resources, and whether they have specifically evolved via adaptation to benefit from this internalization.

According to the authors, “This preliminary study provides novel insights into the impact phages have on mammalian systems, with broader potential implications across the fields of immunology, phage therapy, microbiome, and human health.”

Barr added, “This work provides new insights into the additional benefits that bacteriophages may have on their mammalian hosts. This is of particular importance given the increased use of phage therapy to treat antibiotic-resistant infections.”

SEE

https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/search?q=PHAGES

 https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/search?q=BIOPHAGES

 https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/search?q=PHAGE

 https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/search?q=BACTERIOPHAGE

Robots at your doorstep: acceptance of near-future technologies for automated parcel delivery

Maher Said,
Spencer Aeschliman &
Amanda Stathopoulos

Scientific Reports volume 13, Article number: 18556 (2023) Cite this article

Article
Open access
Published: 29 October 2023
details


Abstract

The logistics and delivery industry is undergoing a technology-driven transformation, with robotics, drones, and autonomous vehicles expected to play a key role in meeting the growing challenges of last-mile delivery. To understand the public acceptability of automated parcel delivery options, this U.S. study explores customer preferences for four innovations: autonomous vehicles, aerial drones, sidewalk robots, and bipedal robots. We use an Integrated Nested Choice and Correlated Latent Variable (INCLV) model to reveal substitution effects among automated delivery modes in a sample of U.S. respondents. The study finds that acceptance of automated delivery modes is strongly tied to shipment price and time, underscoring the importance of careful planning and incentives to maximize the trialability of innovative logistics options. Older individuals and those with concerns about package handling exhibit a lower preference for automated modes, while individuals with higher education and technology affinity exhibit greater acceptance. These findings provide valuable insights for logistics companies and retailers looking to introduce automation technologies in their last-mile delivery operations, emphasizing the need to tailor marketing and communication strategies to meet customer preferences. Additionally, providing information about appropriate package handling by automated technologies may alleviate concerns and increase the acceptance of these modes among all customer groups.

Introduction

The last-mile logistics of freight distribution is a critical and challenging aspect of the supply chain. It is often the least efficient and most expensive stage1,2,3, accounting for up to 28% of delivery transportation costs, and is a considerable source of congestion and other externalities, such as pollution and noise2,3,4,5. These inefficiencies and negative impacts on citizen well-being make improving last-mile logistics a priority for businesses and policymakers alike2. Last-mile delivery challenges are likely to become more pressing due to factors such as increased e-commerce, rising consumer expectations, and the growth of ride-hailing competing for scarce curbspace6. Increased e-commerce and expectations for speed by consumers have been tied to the growing volume of parcels, smaller shipment sizes, and higher frequency of delivery trips7. Additionally, the rapid proliferation of ridehailing services presents a series of novel challenges to the effective management of curbside operations, including reduced available space for loading and parking for conventional urban delivery vehicles8,9,10. The global COVID-19 pandemic, the transformation of work, and a corresponding surge in e-commerce and delivery demands11,12 have also brought to light critical vulnerabilities in the supply chain, particularly related to cascading disruptions, lasting reliance on residential home-deliveries, and labor shortages13,14.

To address these challenges, firms such as Amazon, Walmart, Einride, Eliport, and UPS are exploring the deployment of autonomous freight delivery options15,16. The market size for automated delivery technologies, including autonomous vehicles (AVs), drones, and robots, is projected to reach $665 billion (about $2,000 per person in the US) by 2030, representing up to 20% of the package delivery industry17. These technologies offer numerous benefits, including greater efficiency, safety, and sustainability, and can help reduce human error. Smaller-scale automation technologies, such as drones and delivery robots, can offer more efficient, safer, cheaper, and sustainable solutions than traditional truck deliveries by, for example, bypassing congested streets and curbsides15,16. Yet, the shift towards automation can be fraught with negative effects on employment, safety, and security, and open questions about shipping performance, operational needs, and regulatory support18. However, by combining various automated delivery technologies, such as launching drones from autonomous vehicles, it is possible to mitigate these drawbacks and enhance efficiency compared to single technology operations15,16. Combined systems can address obstacles for ground delivery in urban environments and expand service in suburban and rural areas, where higher delivery costs are a significant challenge19,20,21. Thus, the (combined) deployment of robots, autonomous vehicles, and drones holds promise for addressing reliance on human drivers, managing curbside challenges, meeting growing demand and customer expectations, and preparing for future disruptions22,23,24.

The materialization of these benefits, however, is dependent on the adoption and public acceptability of these technologies25. While most acceptability research to date has focused on self-driving vehicle use among passengers19,20,21,26,27, limited insight exists on customer attitudes toward near-future automated delivery modes25,28,29,30,31,32,33. Both delivery performance attributes and attitudes toward automated services will play a role in their acceptance. Existing studies find that acceptance is linked to the perceived usefulness, convenience, and flexibility of automated parcel delivery28,31,32,33,34,35,36, all constructs related to cost and delivery speed. Studies also identify several adoption barriers, namely concerns over package handling, security, and privacy, as well as a lack of trust and familiarity25,28,29,30,31,32,33. The role of environmental concerns is not yet clear. Research is still needed to determine the impact of automation on supply chain sustainability. For example, recent simulation work suggests that while drones offer some energy efficiency improvements over traditional delivery, their per-day energy consumption would be comparable to battery electric vehicles on normal days and as high as diesel trucks on windy days37. Other work suggests that drone delivery leads to lowered CO2 emissions for logistics38. Additionally, the link between customers' perceptions of the environmental impact of delivery automation and their acceptance of these technologies remains ambiguous39. A general takeaway is that the acceptability of automated delivery options depends on a complex set of attitudinal, demographic, and market-based factors. A current challenge is that studies generally focus on a single technology (e.g. Figliozzi and Jennings40 and Hwang et al.41), while in reality customers will likely be faced with a portfolio of innovative options, and make trade-offs between several delivery attributes at once. A notable exception is Polydoropoulou et al.42, who study a multi-option decision context in a choice experiment in Greece, finding that respondents were generally unwilling to opt for innovative delivery modes over traditional ones due to cost, lack of familiarity, and infrastructure barriers. More research is needed to understand the relative importance of these different factors and how they interact, especially in light of multiple competing or complementary automation technologies, and different urban delivery contexts.

This paper aims to understand the potential acceptability of near-future automated delivery technologies among U.S. customers. The paper makes three main contributions to the literature. First, we study the adoption likelihood of a portfolio of multiple innovative delivery automation technologies in tandem. We design a Bayesian efficient choice experiment including traditional delivery along with four automated delivery innovations: (a) autonomous vehicles, (b) drones, (c) sidewalk robots, and (d) bipedal robots. This multi-technology setting enables us to examine patterns in customer acceptability and relationships among similar technologies. Second, we examine the role of shipping attributes, shipped item type, and socio-demographic and behavioral variables, thereby revealing the role of personal and shipping characteristics on the preference over future technologies. Third, we explore the impact of attitudes on delivery mode preferences. Specifically, we study the role of packaging preferences, environmental awareness, and affinity towards technology on the acceptability of automated delivery technologies.

Using an Integrated Nested Choice and Correlated Latent Variable (INCLV) model, we account simultaneously for dependence across alternative technologies and for correlated attitudinal latent variables, uncovering critical factors that influence customer acceptance of automated parcel delivery innovation. The model reveals the importance of attributes like shipment price, time performance, customer-specific attributes like age and education, and attitudes such as concerns about package handling and affinity towards technology. Scenario simulation is applied to examine business strategies and contextual events on the preference for automation. Our findings provide valuable insight and recommendations for analysts, policymakers, and practitioners, including retailers and couriers, seeking to successfully introduce these technologies to the market while mitigating their negative impacts on customers, society, and the environment.

Survey shows 60% of Japanese wrongly believe antibiotics can treat a cold

COLDS ARE BACTERIA NOT VIRUSES

In an online survey, nearly 67% of parents with preschool children said they believe antibiotics can fight viruses, while roughly 56% said they can cure a cold. |

 BLOOMBERG

KYODO

Oct 29, 2023

Nearly 60% of people erroneously believe that antibiotics are effective in treating a cold, according to a recent survey in Japan, with medical experts warning their misuse and overuse can increase antimicrobial resistance.

Both the common cold and influenza are viral infections, meaning antibiotics are ineffective treatments. The same is true of a sore throat or a runny nose, according to the Center Hospital of the National Center for Global Health and Medicine in Tokyo.

In an online survey of 500 people, nearly 67% of parents with preschool children said they believe antibiotics can fight viruses, while roughly 56% said they can cure a cold.

In a separate survey, about 63% of people aged 15 and older said that they believe the drugs can cure viral infections.

Influenza, colds and COVID-19 are the top three viruses many respondents thought antibiotics can treat, the hospital said.

Misuse and overuse of antimicrobials are the main factors in the development of drug-resistant pathogens, making infections harder or impossible to combat, according to the World Health Organization.

The Japanese government has said it is concerned about antimicrobial resistance, which is widely considered a "silent pandemic" among medical professionals.

The government has drawn up a five-year action plan in a bid to get a handle on the problem, setting itself the target of reducing daily use of antibiotics per 1,000 people by 15% by the final year from 2020 levels.

BIOLOGY 10

Where the heck did all those structures inside complex cells come from?

There are competing theories about the origin of the nucleus and endoplasmic reticulum.

VIVIANE CALLIER, KNOWABLE MAGAZINE - 10/29/2023

Enlarge / Computer illustration of mitochondria, membrane-enclosed cellular organelles that produce energy.

KATERYNA KON/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY/GETTY15WITH

More than 1.5 billion years ago, a momentous thing happened: Two small, primitive cells became one. Perhaps more than any event—barring the origin of life itself—this merger radically changed the course of evolution on our planet.

One cell ended up inside the other and evolved into a structure that schoolkids learn to refer to as the “powerhouse of the cell”: the mitochondrion. This new structure provided a tremendous energetic advantage to its host—a precondition for the later evolution of complex, multicellular life.

But that’s only part of the story. The mitochondrion is not the only important structure within complex, eukaryotic cells. There’s the membrane-bound nucleus, safekeeper of the genome. There’s a whole system of internal membranes: the endoplasmic reticulum, the Golgi apparatus, lysosomes, peroxisomes and vacuoles—essential for making, transporting, and recycling proteins and other cargo in and around the cell.

Where did all these structures come from? With events lost in the deep past and few traces to serve as evolutionary clues, it’s a very tough question to tackle. Researchers have proposed various hypotheses, but it is only recently, with some new tools and techniques, that cell biologists have been able to investigate the beginnings of this intricate architecture and shed some light on its possible origins.

A microbial merger

The idea that eukaryotes originated from two cells merging dates back more than 100 years but did not become accepted or well-known until the 1960s, when the late evolutionary biologist Lynn Margulis articulated her theory of endosymbiosis. The mitochondrion, Margulis said, likely originated from a class of microbes known as alphaproteobacteria, a diverse group that today includes the bacterium responsible for typhus and another one important for the genetic engineering of plants, among many others.

Nothing was known about the nature of the original host cell. Scientists proposed that it already was fairly complicated, with a variety of membrane structures inside it. Such a cell would have been capable of engulfing and ingesting things—a complicated and energetically expensive eukaryotic feature called phagocytosis. That might be how the mitochondrion first got into the host.

But this idea, called the “mitochondria late” hypothesis, doesn’t explain how or why the host cell had become complex to begin with.

In 2016, evolutionary biologist Bill Martin, cell biologist Sven Gould and bioinformatician Sriram Garg, at the University of Dusseldorf in Germany, proposed a very different model known as the “mitochondria early” hypothesis. They argued that since no primitive cells today have any internal membrane structures, it seems very unlikely that a cell would have had these over 1.5 billion years ago.

Instead, the scientists reasoned, the endomembrane system—the whole hodgepodge of parts found inside complex cells today — could have evolved soon after the alphaproteobacterium took up residence inside a relatively simple host cell, of a kind from a class called archaea. The membrane structures would have arisen from bubbles, or vesicles, released by the mitochondrial ancestor.

Free-living bacteria shed vesicles all the time, for all sorts of reasons, Gould, Garg, and Martin note, so it seems reasonable to think they’d continue to do that when enclosed inside a host.

Eventually, these vesicles would have become specialized for the functions that membrane structures perform today inside eukaryotic cells. They would even fuse with the host cell’s membrane, helping to explain why the eukaryote plasma membrane contains lipids with bacterial features

Vesicles could have served an important initial function, says biochemist Dave Speijer of the University of Amsterdam. The new endosymbiont would have generated plenty of poisonous chemicals called reactive oxygen species, by oxidizing fatty acids and burning them for energy. “These destroy everything, they are toxic, especially on the inside of a cell,” Speijer says. Sequestering them inside vesicles would have helped keep the cell safe from harm, he says.

Another problem created by the new guest could also have been helped by making membrane barriers, Gould, Garg, and Martin add. After the alphaproteobacterium arrived, bits of its DNA would have mixed with the genome of the archaeal host, interrupting important genes. Fixing this would mean evolving machinery to splice out these foreign pieces—today they’re known as introns—from the messenger RNA copies of genes, so those protein-making instructions wouldn’t be garbled.

But that created yet another problem. The protein-making machinery—the ribosome—works extremely fast, joining several amino acids together per second. In contrast, the intron-removing system of the cell is slow, snipping out about one intron per minute. So unless the cell could keep the mRNA away from ribosomes until the mRNA was properly processed, the cell would produce many nonsensical, useless proteins.

The membrane surrounding the nucleus provided an answer. Serving as a spatial barrier, it allows mRNA splicing to finish up in the nucleus before the intron-free mRNA is translated in the cell’s internal fluid, the cytosol. “This is the selective pressure behind the origin of the nucleus,” Martin says. To form it, vesicles secreted by the endosymbiont would have flattened and wrapped around the genome, creating a barrier to keep ribosomes out but still allowing small molecules to pass freely.

An inside-out explanation

In short, Gould, Garg, and Martin’s hypothesis explains why endomembrane compartments evolved: to solve problems created by the new guest. But it doesn’t fully explain how the alphaproteobacterium got inside the host to begin with, says cell biologist Gautam Dey at EMBL in Heidelberg, Germany; it assumes the endosymbiont is already inside. “This is a massive problem,” Dey says.

An alternative idea, proposed in 2014 by cell biologist Buzz Baum of University College London (with whom Dey once worked) and his cousin, University of Wisconsin evolutionary biologist David Baum, is the “ inside-out” model. In this scenario, the alphaproteobacterium and the archaeal cell destined to be its eventual host would have lived side by side for millions of years in an intimate symbiosis, each depending on the other’s metabolic products.

The archaeal cell would have had long protrusions, as seen on some modern-day archaea that live in close association with other microbes. The alphaproteobacterium would have nestled up against these slender extensions.

Eventually, the protrusions would have wrapped around the alphaproteobacterium and enclosed it completely. But during the long stretch of time before that happened, the archaeal cell would have begun some spatial division of labor: It would keep information-processing jobs in its center, where the genome was, while functions like protein building would take place in the cytosol within the protrusions.

The power of the inside-out model, Buzz Baum says, is that it gives the cell eons of time, before the alphaproteobacterium becomes fully enclosed, to evolve ways to regulate the number and size of the mitochondrion and other membrane compartments that would eventually become fully internal. “Until you can regulate them, you’re dead,” Buzz Baum says.

The model also explains why the nucleus has the shape that it does; in particular, it provides an explanation for its unusually large pores. Viewed from inside the center of an archaeal cell, the long protrusions would be openings that could naturally become big pores like those, Baum says.

Most important, the inside-out model explains how the alphaproteobacterium would have gotten inside the archaeal host in the first place.

Still, the inside-out model has features it needs to explain. For example, the mitochondrion would end up in the wrong place—inside the endoplasmic reticulum, the network of tubes on which sit the cell’s protein-making ribosomes, as the archaeal protrusions wrapped around it. And so an additional step would be required to get the alphaproteobacterium into the cytoplasm.

But Martin’s main objection is that the inside-out model does not provide an evolutionary pressure that would have caused the nucleus or other membrane-bound compartments to arise in the first place. The inside-out model “is upside-down and backwards,” Martin says.

The nucleus: A riddle in the middle

Though the models agree that the mitochondrion evolved from an alphaproteobacterium, they have very different ideas about the origin of the nucleus and other organelles.

In the Gould, Garg, and Martin model, the source for all of the structures would have been vesicles released by the evolving mitochondrion. Vesicles to contain reactive chemicals or cellular cargo, and the ability to move this cargo around, would have evolved very early. The nucleus would have come later.

In the inside-out model, the nucleus was, essentially, the remains of the archaeal cell after it wrapped its membranes around the alphaproteobacterium. So it would have appeared immediately. The endoplasmic reticulum also would have formed early, created from those squished-together protrusions. Other organelles would have come later—arising, Buzz Baum says, from buds of archaeal membrane.

Thus the models also make different predictions about the chemical nature of the membranes of cell organelles—at least originally—and how today’s complex cells came to have membrane lipids that are all chemically like the ones in bacteria, not archaea.

In the Gould, Garg, and Martin model, in the beginning all the membranes except for the host cell’s outermost one would have been bacterial, like the membranes of the new resident. Then, as bacterial vesicles fused with this archaeal outer membrane, the bacterial lipids would slowly replace the archaeal ones.

In the inside-out model, the membranes of the nucleus and endoplasmic reticulum—and probably others—would have been archaeal, like the host, to start. Only later on, after genes from the bacterial genome moved over to the archaeal genome, would the lipids become bacterial in nature, Baum suggests.

How to test these ideas? Through experiments, cell biologists are starting to glimpse ways in which simple vesicles could have diversified into different organelles with distinct jobs—by taking on different shapes, like the layered membrane stacks of the modern endoplasmic reticulum or the Golgi body, or by ending up with different proteins inside them or on their membranes.

They are also highlighting the dynamism of the modern-day mitochondrion—and its potential to spawn new membrane structures.

Take, for example, the compartment that Speijer thinks evolved early in order to deal with reactive oxygen species: the peroxisome.

In 2017, cell biologist Heidi McBride of McGill University in Montreal reported that cells lacking peroxisomes could generate them from scratch. Working with mutant human fibroblast cells without peroxisomes, her team found that these cells put proteins that are essential for peroxisome function into mitochondria instead. Then the mitochondrial membrane released them as little bubbles, or vesicles.

These vesicles, or proto-peroxisomes, matured into true peroxisomes when they fused with another type of vesicle derived from endoplasmic reticulum, which carry a third necessary peroxisome protein. “It’s a hybrid organelle,” McBride says.

For McBride, this is an indication that peroxisomes—and probably other organelles—originally came from mitochondria (not exclusively from the endoplasmic reticulum, as previously believed). “The presence of mitochondria launched the biogenesis of new organelles,” she says. “In the case of peroxisomes, it’s quite direct.”

Other mitochondrion antics have also been noted.

First, a 2021 report from the lab of biochemist Adam Hughes at the University of Utah found that when yeast cells are fed toxic amounts of amino acids, their mitochondria will shed vesicles that are loaded with transporter molecules. The transporters move amino acids into the vesicles, where they won’t poison the mitochondria.

Hughes also discovered that the vesicles shed by the mitochondria can form long, tubule-like extensions with multiple layers, reminiscent of the layered stacks of the endoplasmic reticulum and the Golgi body. The structures persist in the cell for a long time. “They’re definitely their own unique structure,” Hughes says.

And in 2022, immunologist Lena Pernas, now at UCLA, showed that multilayered, mitochondria-derived structures can form in other contexts, too. When a cell is infected by the parasite Toxoplasma, her team found, the mitochondria surround the parasite and change shape. The parasite responds, and the upshot is that the mitochondrion ends up shedding large bits of outer membrane.

Pernas, who wrote about mitochondrial remodeling in the Annual Review of Physiology in 2016, recently discovered that these structures, which initially look like simple vesicles, also can grow and take on more complex shapes, such as stacks of sheet-like layers. What’s more, the stress of infection changes what sorts of proteins are placed on these shed bits of mitochondrial membrane. Such changes open the door for the stacked sheets to behave in different ways than they normally would, presenting the opportunity to take on new jobs, Pernas says.

The more Pernas and Hughes study these structures—found in quite different cells and conditions—the more similar they look. It’s tantalizing, says Hughes, to imagine how a structure like this, forming in the early days of eukaryote evolution, could have evolved over eons of natural selection into some of the endomembrane compartments existing in cells today.

It may never be possible to know for sure what happened such a very long time ago. But by exploring what can happen in today’s living bacterial, archaeal, and eukaryotic cells, scientists can get more clarity on what was possible—and even probable. A cell moves into another cell, bringing benefits but also problems, setting off a complex cascade. And then, McBride says, “all this stuff blooms and blossoms.”

Viviane Callier is a freelance science journalist in Rockville, Maryland. This article originally appeared in Knowable Magazine, an independent journalistic endeavor from Annual Reviews. 

Sci-fi inspired tractor beams are real, and could solve a major space junk problem

By Harry Baker 

Live Science

Researchers are developing a real-life tractor beam, with the goal of pulling defunct satellites out of geostationary orbit to alleviate the space junk problem.


An artist's illustration shows how an electrostatic tractor beam could be used to pull defunct satellites out of geostationary orbit around Earth. In reality, the beam would be invisible. (Image credit: Tobias Roetsch - gtgraphics.de)

In science fiction films, nothing raises tension quite like the good guys' spaceship getting caught in an invisible tractor beam that allows the baddies to slowly reel them in. But what was once only a sci-fi staple could soon become a reality.

Scientists are developing a real-life tractor beam, dubbed an electrostatic tractor. This tractor beam wouldn't suck in helpless starship pilots, however. Instead, it would use electrostatic attraction to nudge hazardous space junk safely out of Earth orbit.

The stakes are high: With the commercial space industry booming, the number of satellites in Earth's orbit is forecast to rise sharply. This bonanza of new satellites will eventually wear out and turn the space around Earth into a giant junkyard of debris that could smash into working spacecraft, plummet to Earth, pollute our atmosphere with metals and obscure our view of the cosmos. And, if left unchecked, the growing space junk problem could hobble the booming space exploration industry, experts warn.

The science is pretty much there, but the funding is not.

The electrostatic tractor beam could potentially alleviate that problem by safely moving dead satellites far out of Earth orbit, where they would drift harmlessly for eternity.

While the tractor beam wouldn't completely solve the space junk problem, the concept has several advantages over other proposed space debris removal methods, which could make it a valuable tool for tackling the issue, experts told Live Science.

Related: 11 sci-fi concepts that are possible (in theory)

A prototype could cost millions, and an operational, full-scale version even more. But if the financial hurdles can be overcome, the tractor beam could be operational within a decade, its builders say.

"The science is pretty much there, but the funding is not," project researcher Kaylee Champion, a doctoral student in the Department of Aerospace Engineering Sciences at the University of Colorado Boulder (CU Boulder), told Live Science.

Avoiding Disaster


Tractor beams are a staple of sci-fi films and TV shows, such as Star Trek. 

(Image credit: Star Trek)

The tractor beams depicted in "Star Wars" and "Star Trek" suck up spacecraft via artificial gravity or an ambiguous "energy field." Such technology is likely beyond anything humans will ever achieve. But the concept inspired Hanspeter Schaub, an aerospace engineering professor at CU Boulder, to conceptualize a more realistic version.

Schaub first got the idea after the first major satellite collision in 2009, when an active communications satellite, Iridium 33, smashed into a defunct Russian military spacecraft, Kosmos 2251, scattering more than 1,800 pieces of debris into Earth's orbit.

Related: How many satellites orbit Earth?

In the wake of this disaster, Schaub wanted to be able to prevent this from happening again. To do this, he realized you could pull spacecraft out of harm's way by using the attraction between positively and negatively charged objects to make them "stick" together.

Over the next decade, Schaub and colleagues refined the concept. Now, they hope it can someday be used to move dead satellites out of geostationary orbit (GEO) — an orbit around Earth's equator where an object's speed matches the planet's rotation, making it seem like the object is fixed in place above a certain point on Earth. This would then free up space for other objects in GEO, which is considered "prime real estate" for satellites, Schaub said.

How does it work?


The researchers have been testing the electron gun on pieces of metal in the lab.

 (Image credit: Nico Goda/CU Boulder)

The electrostatic tractor would use a servicer spacecraft equipped with an electron gun that would fire negatively charged electrons at a dead target satellite, Champion told Live Science. The electrons would give the target a negative charge while leaving the servicer with a positive charge. The electrostatic attraction between the two would keep them locked together despite being separated by 65 to 100 feet (20 to 30 meters) of empty space, she said.

Once the servicer and target are "stuck together," the servicer would be able to pull the target out of orbit without touching it. Ideally, the defunct satellite would be pulled into a "graveyard orbit" more distant from Earth, where it could safely drift forever, Champion said.

Related: 15 of the weirdest things we have launched into space

The electrostatic attraction between the two spacecraft would be extremely weak, due to limitations in electron gun technology and the distance by which the two would need to be separated to prevent collisions, project researcher Julian Hammerl, a doctoral student at CU Boulder, told Live Science. So the servicer would have to move very slowly, and it could take more than a month to fully move a single satellite out of GEO, he added.

That's a far cry from movie tractor beams, which are inescapable and rapidly reel in their prey. This is the "main difference between sci-fi and reality," Hammerl said.

Advantages and limitations



The amount of space junk surrounding Earth has greatly increased in recent years. Here is a comparison of space junk in 1965 (left) and 2010 (right). (Image credit: NASA)

The electrostatic tractor would have one big advantage over other proposed space junk removal methods, such as harpoons, giant nets and physical docking systems: It would be completely touchless.

"You have these large, dead spacecraft about the size of a school bus rotating really fast," Hammerl said. "If you shoot a harpoon, use a big net or try to dock with them, then the physical contact can damage the spacecraft and then you are only making the [space junk] problem worse."

Scientists have proposed other touchless methods, such as using powerful magnets, but enormous magnets are both expensive to produce and would likely interfere with a servicer's controls, Champion said.

Related: How do tiny pieces of space junk cause incredible damage?

The main limitation of the electrostatic tractor is how slowly it would work. More than 550 satellites currently orbit Earth in GEO, but that number is expected to rise sharply in the coming decades.

If satellites were moved one at a time, then a single electrostatic tractor wouldn't keep pace with the number of satellites winking out of operation. Another limitation of the electrostatic tractor is that it would work too slowly to be practical for clearing smaller pieces of space junk, so it wouldn't be able to keep GEO completely free of debris.

Cost is the other big obstacle. The team has not yet done a full cost analysis for the electrostatic tractor, Schaub said, but it would likely cost tens of millions of dollars. However, once the servicer were in space, it would be relatively cost-effective to operate it, he added.

Next steps


Researcher Julian Hammerl photographed next to the ECLIPS machine at CU Boulder. (Image credit: Nico Goda/CU Boulder)

The researchers are currently working on a series of experiments in their Electrostatic Charging Laboratory for Interactions between Plasma and Spacecraft (ECLIPS) machine at CU Boulder. The bathtub-sized, metallic vacuum chamber, which is equipped with an electron gun, allows the team to "do unique experiments that almost no one else can currently do" in order to simulate the effects of an electrostatic tractor on a smaller scale, Hammerl said.

Once the team is ready, the final and most challenging hurdle will be to secure funding for the first mission, which is a process they have not yet started.

Most of the mission cost would come from building and launching the servicer. However, the researchers would ideally like to launch two satellites for the first tests, a servicer and a target that they can maneuver, which would give them more control over their experiments but also double the cost.

Related: 10 stunning shots of Earth from space in 2022

If they can somehow wrangle that funding, a prototype tractor beam could be operational in around 10 years, the team previously estimated.

Is it viable?

Space junk is becoming a major problem for the space exploration industry. 

(Image credit: CU Boulder)

While tractor beams may sound like a pipe dream, experts are optimistic about the technology.

"Their technology is still in the infancy stage," John Crassidis, an aerospace scientist at the University at Buffalo in New York, who is not involved in the research, told Live Science in an email. "But I am fairly confident it will work."

If you shoot a harpoon, use a big net or try to dock with them, then the physical contact can damage the spacecraft and then you are only making the [space junk] problem worse.

Removing space junk without touching it would also be much safer than any current alternative method, Crassidis added.

The electrostatic tractor "should be able to produce the forces necessary to move a defunct satellite" and "certainly has a high potential to work in practice," Carolin Frueh, an associate professor of aeronautics and astronautics at Purdue University in Indiana, told Live Science in an email. "But there are still several engineering challenges to be solved along the way to make it real-world-ready."

Scientists should continue to research other possible solutions, Crassidis said. Even if the CU Boulder team doesn't create a "final product" to remove nonfunctional satellites, their research will provide a stepping stone for other scientists, he added.

If they are successful, it wouldn't be the first time scientists turned fiction into fact.

"What is today's science fiction could be tomorrow's reality," Crassidis said.

Starlink satellites ‘leaking’ signals that interfere with radio telescopes

Satellites over the Earth's surface, shown in green. 

Credit: LeoLabs, https://leolabs.space

October 29, 2023
The Conversation
Steven Tingay, Curtin University

When I was a child in the 1970s, seeing a satellite pass overhead in the night sky was a rare event. Now it is commonplace: sit outside for a few minutes after dark, and you can’t miss them.

Thousands of satellites have been launched into Earth orbit over the past decade or so, with tens of thousands more planned in coming years. Many of these will be in “mega-constellations” such as Starlink, which aim to cover the entire globe.

These bright, shiny satellites are putting at risk our connection to the cosmos, which has been important to humans for countless millennia and has already been greatly diminished by the growth of cities and artificial lighting. They are also posing a problem for astronomers – and hence for our understanding of the universe.

In new research accepted for publication in Astronomy and Astrophysics Letters, we discovered Starlink satellites are also “leaking” radio signals that interfere with radio astronomy. Even in a “radio quiet zone” in outback Western Australia, we found the satellite emissions were far brighter than any natural source in the sky.

An animation showing the increase in the number of satellites in Earth orbit, over the course of the space age, so far.

A problem for our understanding of the universe

Our team at Curtin University used radio telescopes in Western Australia to examine the radio signals coming from satellites.

We found expected radio transmissions at designated and licensed radio frequencies, used for communication with Earth.

However, we also found signals at unexpected and unintended frequencies.

We found these signals coming from many Starlink satellites. It appears the signals may originate from electronics on board the spacecraft.

Why is this an issue? Radio telescopes are incredibly sensitive, to pick up faint signals from countless light-years away.

Even an extremely weak radio transmitter hundreds or thousands of kilometres away from the telescope appears as bright as the most powerful cosmic radio sources we see in the sky. So these signals represent a serious source of interference.

And specifically, the signals are an issue at the location where we tested them: the site in WA where construction has already begun for part of the biggest radio observatory ever conceived, the Square Kilometre Array (SKA). This project involves 16 countries, has been in progress for 30 years, and will cost billions of dollars over the next decade.

Huge effort and expense has been invested in locating the SKA and other astronomy facilities a long way away from humans. But satellites present a new threat in space, which can’t be dodged.

What can we do about this?

It’s important to note satellite operators do not appear to be breaking any rules. The regulations around use of the radio spectrum are governed by the International Telecommunications Union, and they are complex. At this point there is no evidence Starlink operators are doing anything wrong.

The radio spectrum is crucial for big business and modern life. Think mobile phones, wifi, GPS and aircraft navigation, and communications between Earth and space.

However, the undoubted benefits of space-based communications – such as for globally accessible fast internet connections – are coming into conflict with our ability to see and explore the universe. (There is some irony here, as wifi in part owes its origins to radio astronomy.)

Regulations evolve slowly, while the technologies driving satellite constellations like Starlink are developing at lightning speed. So regulations are not likely to protect astronomy in the near term.

But in the course of our research, we have had a very positive engagement with SpaceX engineers who work on the Starlink satellites. It is likely that the goodwill of satellite operators, and their willingness to mitigate the generation of these signals, is the key to solving the issue.

In response to earlier criticisms, SpaceX has made improvements to the amount of sunlight Starlink satellites reflect, making them one-twelfth as bright in visible light as they used to be.

We estimate emissions in radio wavelengths will need to be reduced by a factor of a thousand or more to avoid significant interference with radio astronomy. We hope these improvements can be made, in order to preserve humanity’s future view of the universe, the fundamental discoveries we will make, and the future society-changing technologies (like wifi) that will emerge from those discoveries.

Steven Tingay, John Curtin Distinguished Professor (Radio Astronomy), Curtin University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.