SpaceX plans an ambitious in-orbit refueling test between two Starships in March 2025. "The orbital demonstration is a major step for Starship, and a crucial part of SpaceX's capability of delivering NASA's Artemis mission to the Moon," reports Gizmodo. The plans were unveiled during Spaceflight Now's recent interview (source: YouTube) with Kent Chojnacki, the deputy manager for NASA's Human Landing System program. Gizmodo reports: SpaceX is under a $53.2 million contract with NASA, signed in 2020, to use Starship tankers for in-orbit propellant transfer. During its third test flight, SpaceX transferred around 10 metric tons of liquid oxygen from Starship's header tank to its main tank while it was in space. The upcoming demonstration, however, requires a lot more of the launch vehicle. Two Starships will launch to low Earth orbit around three to four weeks apart, the spacecraft will meet and dock in orbit, and one will transfer propellant to another. After the demonstration, the two Starships will undock from one another and deorbit.

"Once you've done that, you've really cracked open the opportunity to move massive amounts of payload and cargo outside of the Earth's sphere," Chojnacki said during the interview. The in-flight propellant transfer tests are set to conclude in the summer. With in-flight refueling, NASA is aiming to develop technologies to "enable long-term cryogenic fluid management, which is essential for establishing a sustainable presence on the Moon and enabling crewed missions to Mars," the space agency stated when the contract was signed.

SpaceX is developing a version of Starship to land humans on the Moon in September 2026 as part of NASA's Artemis 3 mission. To prepare for the Moon mission, SpaceX is expected to launch between eight and 16 propellant tanker Starships into low Earth orbit in rapid succession. Each of the tankers will carry around 100 to 150 tons of liquid oxygen and liquid methane and will dock with a larger fuel depot. The orbiting depot will then connect with the Human Landing System Starship, filling its massive 1,200-ton fuel tanks. Once refueled, the Starship lander will continue its journey toward the Moon.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: A trend has emerged among a small group of climate tech founders who start with their eyes fixed on space and soon realize their technology would do a lot more good here on Earth. Halen Mattison and Luke Neise fit the bill. Mattison spent time at SpaceX, while Neise worked at Vanderbilt Aerospace Design Laboratory and Varda Space Industries. The pair originally wanted to sell reactors to SpaceX that could turn carbon dioxide into methane for use on Mars. Today, they're building them to replace natural gas that's pumped from underground. Their company, General Galactic, which emerged from stealth in April, has built a pilot system that can produce 2,000 liters of methane per day. Neise, General Galactic's CTO, told TechCrunch that he expects that figure to rise as the company replaces off-the-shelf components with versions designed in-house.

"We think that's a big missing piece in the energy mix right now," said Mattison, the startup's CEO. "Being able to own our supply chains, to be able to fully control all of the parameters, to challenge the requirements between components, all of that unlocks some real elegance in the engineering solution." At commercial scale, the company's reactors will be assembled using mass production techniques. It's a contrast to how most petrochemical and energy facilities are built today. General Galactic is focused on producing methane. However, Mattison said the company isn't necessarily looking to displace the fuel from heating and energy. "Those are generally going toward electrification," he said. Instead, it intends to sell its methane to companies that use it as an ingredient or to power a process, like in chemical or plastic manufacturing. The company isn't ruling out transportation entirely either. Mattison hinted that General Galactic is working on other hydrocarbons that could be used for transportation, like jet fuel. "Stay tuned," he said. General Galactic plans to deploy its first modules next year. The startup "hopes its modules will be able to plug into existing infrastructure, speeding its adoption relative to other fuels like hydrogen," notes TechCrunch.

NASA hopes to stimulate in-space manufacturing through a multi-year "laser beam welding collaboration" with Ohio State University. The project "seeks to understand the physical processes of welding on the lunar surface," according to NASA.gov, "such as investigating the effects of laser beam welding in a combined vacuum and reduced gravity environment." The goal is to increase the capabilities of manufacturing in space to potentially assemble large structures or make repairs on the Moon, which will inform humanity's next giant leap of sending astronauts to Mars and beyond. "For a long time, we've used fasteners, rivets, or other mechanical means to keep structures that we assemble together in space," said Andrew O'Connor, a Marshall materials scientist who is helping coordinate the collaborative effort and is NASA's technical lead for the project. "But we're starting to realize that if we really want strong joints and if we want structures to stay together when assembled on the lunar surface, we may need in-space welding."

The ability to weld structures in space would also eliminate the need to transport rivets and other materials, reducing payloads for space travel. That means learning how welds will perform in space. To turn the effort into reality, researchers are gathering data on welding under simulated space conditions, such as temperature and heat transfer in a vacuum; the size and shape of the molten area under a laser beam; how the weld cross-section looks after it solidifies; and how mechanical properties change for welds performed in environmental conditions mimicking the lunar surface. "Once you leave Earth, it becomes more difficult to test how the weld performs, so we are leveraging both experiments and computer modeling to predict welding in space while we're still on the ground," said O'Connor.

In August 2024, a joint team from Ohio State's Welding Engineering and Multidisciplinary Capstone Programs and Marshall's Materials & Processes Laboratory performed high-powered fiber laser beam welding aboard a commercial aircraft that simulated reduced gravity. The aircraft performed parabolic flight maneuvers that began in level flight, pulled up to add 8,000 feet in altitude, and pushed over at the top of a parabolic arc, resulting in approximately 20 seconds of reduced gravity to the passengers and experiments. While floating in this weightless environment, team members performed laser welding experiments in a simulated environment similar to that of both low Earth orbit and lunar gravity. Analysis of data collected by a network of sensors during the tests will help researchers understand the effects of space environments on the welding process and welded material.
They performed that laser-beam welding in a vacuum chamber during the parabolic flight (on a Boeing 727), according to the article — and successfully completed 69 out of 70 welds in microgravity and lunar gravity conditions. "The last time NASA performed welding in space was during the Skylab mission in 1973...

"Practical welding and joining methods and allied processes, including additive manufacturing, will be required to develop the in-space economy."

SpaceX has launched the world's first wood-paneled satellite into space "to test the suitability of timber as a renewable building material in future exploration of destinations like the Moon and Mars," reports the BBC. From the report: Made by researchers in Japan, the tiny satellite weighing just 900g is heading for the International Space Station on a SpaceX mission. It will then be released into orbit above the Earth. Named LignoSat, after the Latin word for wood, its panels have been built from a type of magnolia tree, using a traditional technique without screws or glue. Researchers at Kyoto University who developed it hope it may be possible in the future to replace some metals used in space exploration with wood.

"Wood is more durable in space than on Earth because there's no water or oxygen that would rot or inflame it," Kyoto University forest science professor Koji Murata told Reuters news agency. "Early 1900s airplanes were made of wood," Prof Murata said. "A wooden satellite should be feasible, too." If trees could one day be planted on the Moon or Mars, wood might also provide material for colonies in space in the future, the researchers hope. Along with its wood panels, LignoSat also incorporates traditional aluminium structures and electronic components. It has sensors on board to monitor how its wood reacts to the extreme environment of space during the six months it will orbit the Earth. You can watch the launch on YouTube.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the European Space Agency: White dots arranged in five clusters against a black background (PNG). This is the simulated extraterrestrial signal transmitted from Mars and deciphered by a father and a daughter on Earth after a year-long decoding effort. On June 7, 2024, media artist Daniela de Paulis received this simple, retro-looking image depicting five amino acids in her inbox. It was the solution to a cosmic puzzle beamed from ESA's ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) in May 2023, when the European spacecraft played alien as part of the multidisciplinary art project 'A Sign in Space.' After three radio astronomy observatories on Earth intercepted the signal, the challenge was first to extract the message from the raw data of the radio signal, and secondly to decode it. In just 10 days, a community of 5000 citizen scientists gathered online and managed to extract the signal. The second task took longer and required some visionary minds.

US citizens Ken and Keli Chaffin cracked the code following their intuition and running simulations for hours and days on end. The father and daughter team discovered that the message contained movement, suggesting some sort of cellular formation and life forms. Amino acids and proteins are the building blocks of life. Now that the cryptic signal has been deciphered, the quest for meaning begins. The interpretation of the message, like any art piece, remains open. Daniela crafted the message with a small group of astronomers and computer scientists, with support from ESA, the SETI Institute and the Green Bank Observatory. The artist and collaborators behind the project are now taking a step back and witnessing how citizen scientists are shaping the challenge on their own.

NASA's economic impact report highlights that in fiscal year 2023, the agency's initiatives contributed $75.6 billion to the U.S. economy, created over 300,000 jobs, and drove advancements in areas like space exploration, climate research, and technology innovation. The agency's budget for that year was $25.4 billion. Space.com reports: The Moon to Mars program alone created $23.8 billion in economic output and 96,479 jobs, while investments in climate research and technology contributed $7.9 billion and 32,900 jobs. The report also drills down into impacts in each state, with 45 states seeing over $10 million in impact and eight states surpassing the $1 billion mark. [...]

NASA's missions supported 304,803 jobs across America, according to the report -- the third agency-wide study of its kind -- generating an estimated total of $9.5 billion in federal, state, and local taxes. Additionally, NASA's technological innovations and transfers in 2023 led to 40 new patent applications, 69 patents issued, and thousands of software usage agreements. A number of NASA technology spinoffs have become everyday household items. The full NASA economic impact report can be found here.

Ars Technica's Stephen Clark reports: For those who follow NASA's human spaceflight program, a burning question for the last year-and-a-half has been what caused the Orion spacecraft's heat shield to crack and chip away during atmospheric reentry on the unpiloted Artemis I test flight in late 2022. Multiple NASA officials said Monday they now know the answer, but they're not telling. Instead, agency officials want to wait until more reviews are done to determine what this means for Artemis II, the Orion spacecraft's first crew mission around the Moon, officially scheduled for launch in September 2025.

"We have gotten to a root cause," said Lakiesha Hawkins, assistant deputy associate administrator for NASA's Moon to Mars program office, in response to a question from Ars on Monday at the Wernher von Braun Space Exploration Symposium. "We are having conversations within the agency to make sure that we have a good understanding of not only what's going on with the heat shield, but also next steps and how that actually applies to the course that we take for Artemis II," she said. "And we'll be in a position to be able to share where we are with that hopefully before the end of the year."

While the space program is far down the list of most voters' priorities, this means a decision and announcement on what will happen with Artemis II won't come until the post-election lame duck period in the waning weeks of the Biden administration, and likely Bill Nelson's tenure as NASA administrator. This is several months later than NASA officials expected to make a decision. The question here is whether NASA managers decide it is safe enough to fly the Orion heat shield as-is on Artemis II, or if it is too risky with people onboard. Artemis II will be a 10-day mission taking its four-person crew on a path around the far side of the Moon, then back to Earth. This will be the first time people travel to such distances since the Apollo program ended more than 50 years ago.

Longtime Slashdot reader MattSparkes writes: NASA is working on plans to send another, much larger helicopter to Mars than Ingenuity. The "Chopper" craft would land itself after "screaming into" the planet's atmosphere at speed, before covering several kilometers a day while carrying scientific equipment. It would probably be the most graceful arrival on the red planet of any lander yet.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Wikipedia's "Timeline of the Far Future" is one of my favorite webpages from the internet's pre-slop era. A Londoner named Nick Webb created it on the morning of December 22, 2010. "Certain events in the future of the universe can be predicted with a comfortable level of accuracy," he wrote at the top of the page. He then proposed a chronological list of 33 such events, beginning with the joining of Asia and Australia 40 million years from now. He noted that around this same time, Mars's moon Phobos would complete its slow death spiral into the red planet's surface. A community of 1,533 editors have since expanded the timeline to 160 events, including the heat death of the universe. I like to imagine these people on laptops in living rooms and cafes across the world, compiling obscure bits of speculative science into a secular Book of Revelation.

Like the best sci-fi world building, the Timeline of the Far Future can give you a key bump of the sublime. It reminds you that even the sturdiest-seeming features of our world are ephemeral, that in 1,100 years, Earth's axis will point to a new North Star. In 250,000 years, an undersea volcano will pop up in the Pacific, adding an extra island to Hawaii. In the 1 million years that the Great Pyramid will take to erode, the sun will travel only about 1/200th of its orbit around the Milky Way, but in doing so, it will move into a new field of stars. Our current constellations will go all wobbly in the sky and then vanish.

Some aspects of the timeline are more certain than others. We know that most animals will look different 10 million years from now. We know that the continents will slowly drift together to form a new Pangaea. Africa will slam into Eurasia, sealing off the Mediterranean basin and raising a new Himalaya-like range across France, Italy, and Spain. In 400 million years, Saturn will have lost its rings. Earth will have replenished its fossil fuels. Our planet will also likely have sustained at least one mass-extinction-triggering impact, unless its inhabitants have learned to divert asteroids.

Newsweek writes that the missing atmosphere of Mars "may be locked up in the planet's clay-rich surface, a new study by MIT geologists has suggested." According to the researchers, ancient water trickling through Mars' rocks could have triggered a series of chemical reactions, converting CO2 into methane and trapping the carbon in clay minerals for billions of years...

The dominant explanation relies on an interaction between the sun's rays and gases in the atmosphere. Mars lost its protective magnetic field billions of years ago, likely allowing high-energy solar particles to strike the upper atmosphere, kicking molecules off into space, according to NASA... But this might not be the whole story. The researchers focused on a type of clay mineral called smectite, known for its ability to trap carbon. These minerals, abundant on Mars, contain tiny folds that can store carbon molecules for aeons. The study was published in the journal Science Advances.

"There is plenty of evidence for a thick clay layer on the Martian surface. Almost 80 percent of satellite spectra detect these high-surface-area clay minerals on the Martian surface. Clay has been detected in craters as deep as 17 kilometers [10.5 miles]," [lead author Joshua] Murray said... Their model suggested that Mars' surface could contain up to 1.7 bar of CO2 — roughly 80 percent of its early atmospheric volume — sequestered as methane within clay deposits. This methane could still be present today, lying beneath the planet's dry and barren crust. "We know this process happens, and it is well-documented on Earth. And these rocks and clays exist on Mars," Oliver Jagoutz, the study's author, said in a statement. "So, we wanted to try and connect the dots."

The discovery that Mars' ancient atmosphere could be hidden within its surface clays offers a new perspective on the planet's history and raises intriguing possibilities for future exploration. For example, if the sequestered carbon could be recovered and converted, it could serve as a propellant for future space missions between Earth, Mars and beyond.
"In some ways, Mars' missing atmosphere could be hiding in plain sight," says the study's lead author — and the article adds that this raises some interesting possibilities.

"For example, if the sequestered carbon could be recovered and converted, it could serve as a propellant for future space missions between Earth, Mars and beyond..."

Scientific American has surprising news about the possibility of black holes the size of an atom but containing the mass of an asteroid — the so-called "primordial black holes" formed after the birth of the universe which could solve the ongoing mystery of the missing dark matter.

These atom-sized black holes "may fly through the inner solar system about once a decade, scientists say... And if they sneak by the moon or Mars, scientists should be able to detect them, a new study shows." If one of these black holes comes near a planet or large moon, it should push the body off course enough to be measurable by current instruments. "As it passes by, the planet starts to wobble," says Sarah R. Geller, a theoretical physicist now at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and co-author of the study, which was published on September 17 in Physical Review D. "The wobble will grow over a few years but eventually it will damp out and go back to zero."

Study team member Tung X. Tran, then an undergraduate student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, built a computer model of the solar system to see how the distance between Earth and nearby solar system objects would change after a black hole flyby. He found that such an effect would be most noticeable for Mars, whose distance scientists know within about 10 centimeters. For a black hole in the middle of the mass range, "we found that after three years the signal would grow to between one to three meters," Tran says. "That's way above the threshold of precision that we can measure." The Earth-Mars distance is particularly well tracked because scientists have been sending generations of probes and landers to the Red Planet...

In a coincidence, an independent team published a paper about its search for signs of primordial black holes flying near Earth in the same issue of Physical Review D. The researchers' simulations found that such signals could be detectable in orbital data from Global Navigation Satellite Systems, as well as gravimeters that measure variations in Earth's gravitational field.
"For decades physicists thought dark matter was likely to take the form of so-called weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs)," the article points out. "Yet generations of ever more sensitive experiments meant to find these particles have come up empty."

California astrophysicist Kevork Abazajian tells the site that now in the scientific community, "Primordial black holes are really gaining popularity."

New research suggests that Mars' missing atmosphere may have been absorbed by minerals in the planet's clays, in a process similar to geological reactions on Earth. It may explain Mars' loss of its atmosphere and potential to support life, with methane possibly still present and usable as an energy source. Longtime Slashdot reader Baron_Yam writes: Conditions on early Mars were highly likely to have had CO2 carried down into the ground by water, where reactions with rock resulted in iron oxide (and Mars' rust-red surface) and released hydrogen, which in turn reacted with the water to form methane that was bound in smectite clays. It's all still there, just under the surface. The research has been published in the journal Science Advances.

SpaceX plans to launch about five uncrewed Starship missions to Mars in two years, CEO Elon Musk said on Sunday. From a report: Earlier this month, Musk had said that the first Starships to Mars would launch in two years "when the next Earth-Mars transfer window opens."

The CEO on Sunday said that the first crewed mission timeline will depend upon the success of the uncrewed flights. If the uncrewed missions land safely, crewed missions will be launched in four years. However, in case of challenges, crewed missions will be postponed by another two years, Musk said.

More details on that report about NASA from the Washington Post: NASA is 66 years old and feeling its age. Brilliant engineers are retiring. Others have fled to higher-paying jobs in the private space industry. The buildings are old, their maintenance deferred. The Apollo era, with its huge taxpayer investment, is a distant memory. The agency now pursues complex missions on inadequate budgets. This may be an unsustainable path for NASA, one that imperils long-term success. That is the conclusion of a sweeping report, titled "NASA at a Crossroads," written by a committee of aerospace experts and published Tuesday by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine. The report suggests that NASA prioritizes near-term missions and fails to think strategically. In other words, the space agency isn't sufficiently focused on the future.

NASA's intense focus on current missions is understandable, considering the unforgiving nature of space operations, but "one tends to neglect the probably less glamorous thing that will determine the success in the future," the report's lead author, Norman Augustine, a retired Lockheed Martin chief executive, said Tuesday. He said one solution for NASA's problems is more funding from Congress. But that may be hard to come by, in which case, he said, the agency needs to consider canceling or delaying costly missions to invest in more mundane but strategically important institutional needs, such as technology development and workforce training. Augustine said he is concerned that NASA could lose in-house expertise if it relies too heavily on the private industry for newly emerging technologies. "It will have trouble hiring innovative, creative engineers. Innovative, creative engineers don't want to have a job that consists of overseeing other people's work," he said...

The report is hardly a blistering screed. The tone is parental. It praises the agency — with a budget of about $25 billion — for its triumphs while urging more prudent decision-making and long-term strategizing.

NASA pursues spectacular missions. It has sent swarms of robotic probes across the solar system and even into interstellar space. Astronauts have continuously been in orbit for more than two decades. The most ambitious program, Artemis, aims to put astronauts back on the moon in a few short years. And long-term, NASA hopes to put astronauts on Mars. But a truism in the industry is that space is hard. The new report contends that NASA has a mismatch between its ambitions and its budget, and needs to pay attention to fundamentals such as fixing its aging infrastructure and retaining in-house talent. NASA's overall physical infrastructure is already well beyond its design life, and this fraction continues to grow," the report states.
NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said the report "aligns with our current efforts to ensure we have the infrastructure, workforce, and technology that NASA needs for the decades ahead," according to the article.

Nelson added that the agency "will continue to work diligently to address the committee's recommendations."

Annapurna Interactive's entire gaming staff has resigned from the company following a leadership dispute, according to a Bloomberg report. From a report: The report, which IGN can confirm based on conversations with our own sources, states that Annapurna Interactive president Nathan Gary had recently been in negotiations with Annapurna founder and billionaire Megan Ellison to spin the gaming segment off as its own company. However, Ellison eventually pulled out of negotiations, at which point Gary resigned. Almost 30 other individuals, including division co-heads Deborah Mars and Nathan Vella, as well as the entire remaining staff of Annapurna Interactive, joined him.

"All 25 members of the Annapurna Interactive team collectively resigned," Gary and the resigned staff said in a joint statement to Bloomberg. "This was one of the hardest decisions we have ever had to make and we did not take this action lightly." While negotiations were still ongoing, Annapurna Interactive re-hired former Epic Games executive Hector Sanchez as its president of interactive and new media, and Paul Doyle as its head of strategy. IGN understands that Sanchez was expected to head up Annapurna's gaming efforts in Gary's absence once his part of the company was spun-off. With Gary now having resigned, Sanchez has taken the lead. Annapurna has earned success and awards for games including Cocoon, Stray, Neon White, The Artful Escape, and Sayonara Wild Hearts.

Two astronauts, billionaire Jared Isaacman and SpaceX engineer Sarah Gillis, completed the world's first private spacewalk outside a SpaceX capsule, testing new spacesuits and procedures in a risky mission that pushes the boundaries of commercial spaceflight. Reuters reports: The astronauts on the Polaris Dawn mission went one at a time, each spending about 10 minutes outside the gumdrop-shaped Crew Dragon capsule on a tether, as Elon Musk's company again succeeded in pushing the boundaries of commercial spaceflight. Jared Isaacman, a pilot and the founder of electronic payments company Shift4, exited first, followed by SpaceX engineer Sarah Gillis, while crewmates Scott Poteet and Anna Menon watched from inside. The whole process, unfolding about 450 miles (730 km) above Earth, lasted an hour and 46 minutes. The four astronauts have been orbiting Earth since Tuesday's launch from Florida. Isaacman is bankrolling the Polaris mission, as he did his Inspiration4 flight with SpaceX in 2021.

Streamed live on SpaceX's website, the mission tested trailblazing equipment including slim spacesuits and a process to fully depressurize the Crew Dragon cabin - technology that Musk hopes to advance for ambitious future private missions to Mars. "Back at home we all have a lot of work to do. But from here, Earth sure looks like a perfect world," Isaacman said after emerging from the spacecraft, silhouetted with the half-lit planet glittering below. It was one of the riskiest missions yet for SpaceX, the only private company that has proven to be capable of routinely sending people to and from Earth's orbit. "Today's success represents a giant leap forward for the commercial space industry and @NASA's long-term goal to build a vibrant U.S. space economy," said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson.

You can watch a livestream recording of the Polaris Dawn Mission here.

"The first Starships to Mars will launch in 2 years," Elon Musk posted on X.com this weekend.

Musk said the launches will happen when the next Earth-Mars transfer window opens, which the science blog NextBigFuture identifies as "about November through December 2026." Musk noted that the 2026 missions "will be uncrewed to test the reliability of landing intact on Mars," but "If those landings go well, then the first crewed flights to Mars will be in 4 years."

"Flight rate will grow exponentially from there, with the goal of building a self-sustaining city in about 20 years. Being multiplanetary will vastly increase the probable lifespan of consciousness, as we will no longer have all our eggs, literally and metabolically, on one planet."

"China is on track to launch its Tianwen-3 mission to Mars in 2028, two years earlier than previously planned," writes the South China Morning Post, a change that one space policy research believes "suggests a rising confidence by China in its ability to get the technology right for the complex operation." On Thursday, Liu Jizhong, chief designer of China's Mars mission, told the Second International Conference on Deep Space Exploration in Huangshan, Anhui province, that the team aimed to bring back around 600 grams (21 oz) of Martian soil... A 2028 launch date should see Martian samples returned to Earth around July 2031, according to a previous presentation made by Tianwen-1 mission lead Sun Zezhou at Nanjing University in 2022.
The mission will actually consist of two launches from Earth, reports Space News: Two Long March 5 rocket launches will carry a lander and ascent vehicle and an orbiter and return module respectively. Entry, descent and landing will build on technology used for the Tianwen-1 rover landing. The mission may also include a helicopter and a six-legged crawling robot for collecting samples away from the landing site...

NASA is working on its own, more complex Mars sample return mission. However the program is being reassessed, following projected cost overruns. Studies are being conducted to identify concepts that can deliver samples faster and cheaper than current plans.

Liu stated that the search for evidence of life is the Tianwen-3's top scientific goal, according to state media China Central Television (CCTV). Earlier reporting notes that potential landing areas will be selected based partly on astrobiological relevance. This includes environments potentially suitable for the emergence of life and its preservation, such as sedimentary or hydrothermal systems, evidence of past aqueous activity and geological diversity.
"China states that it plans to work with scientists worldwide to cooperatively study and share Martian samples and data," according to the article: The China National Space Administration has made samples from its Chang'e-5 lunar nearside sample return mission available to research applications for international researchers. The same is expected for the recently-completed Chang'e-6 lunar farside mission."

Further ahead, Tianwen-3 will include partnering with countries and research institutions to define the objectives and tasks of a future Mars research station. This will include analyzing requirements, conducting conceptual studies, design implementation plans, and tackling key technological challenges.
Thanks to Slashdot reader Iamthecheese for sharing the news.

NASA's 2022 DART mission "successfully demonstrated how a fast-moving spacecraft could change an asteroid's trajectory by crashing into it," remembers Gizmodo, "potentially providing a way to defend Earth — though the asteroid in this test was never a real threat."

But a followup study suggests debris from that 525-foot (160-meter) asteroid "could actually strike back," they add, "though we're not in any danger." The [DART] team posits that the collision produced a field of rocky ejecta that could reach Earth within 10 years... [Various aerospace scientists] studied data collected by the Light Italian CubeSat for Imaging of Asteroids, or LICIACube, which observed DART's impact of Dimorphos up close. Then, they fed LICIACube's data into supercomputers at NASA's Navigation and Ancillary Information Facility to simulate how the debris from the asteroid — basically dust and rock — may have disseminated into space. The simulations tracked about 3 million particles kicked up by the impact, some of which are large enough to produce meteors that could be spotted on Earth. Particles from the impact could get to Mars in seven to 13 years, and the fastest particles could make it to our own world in just seven years.

"This detailed data will aid in the identification of DART-created meteors, enabling researchers to accurately analyze and interpret impact-related phenomena," the team wrote in the paper.
"However, these faster particles are expected to be too small to produce visible meteors, based on early observations," said Dr. Eloy Peña-Asensio, who lead the research team, in an interview with Universe Today. (He's a Research Fellow with the Deep-space Astrodynamics Research and Technology group at Milan's Polytechnic Institute.) The team's simulations indicated it could take up to 30 years before any of the ejecta is observed on Earth, in a new (and human-created) meteor shower called the Dimorphids.

So while they won't pose any risk, "If these ejected Dimorphos fragments reach Earth... their small size and high speed will cause them to disintegrate in the atmosphere, creating a beautiful luminous streak in the sky."

Slashdot reader Dave Knott writes: After once again being plagued by controversy, this time due to a thwarted ballot-stuffing campaign, the 2024 Hugo Awards have been awarded at the 2024 World Science Fiction Convention.

This year's winners are:

* Best Novel: Some Desperate Glory, by Emily Tesh
* Best Novella: Thornhedge, by T. Kingfisher
* Best Novelette: "The Year Without Sunshine", by Naomi Kritzer
* Best Short Story: "Better Living Through Algorithms", by Naomi Kritzer
* Best Series: Imperial Radch, by Ann Leckie
* Best Graphic Story or Comic: Saga, Vol. 11, written by Brian K. Vaughan, art by Fiona Staples
* Best Related Work: A City on Mars: Can We Settle Space, Should We Settle Space, and Have We Really Thought This Through?, by Kelly Weinersmith and Zach Weinersmith
* Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form: Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves
* Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form: The Last of Us: "Long, Long Time", written by Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann, directed by Peter Hoar
* Best Game or Interactive Work: Baldur's Gate 3, produced by Larian Studios
* Best Editor Short Form: Neil Clarke
* Best Editor Long Form: Ruoxi Chen
* Best Professional Artist: Rovina Cai
* Best Semiprozine: Strange Horizons, by the Strange Horizons Editorial Collective
* Best Fanzine: Nerds of a Feather, Flock Together, editors Roseanna Pendlebury, Arturo Serrano, Paul Weimer; senior editors Joe Sherry, Adri Joy, G. Brown, Vance Kotrla
* Best Fancast: Octothorpe, by John Coxon, Alison Scott, and Liz Batty
* Best Fan Writer: Paul Weimer
* Best Fan Artist: Laya Rose
* Lodestar Award for Best YA Book: To Shape a Dragon's Breath by Moniquill Blackgoose
* Astounding Award for Best New Writer: Xiran Jay Zhao