The dome where crew members practiced red-planet missions will now be converted to a simulated moon base. Excerpt from a report: For the last five years, a small Mars colony thrived in Hawaii, many miles away from civilization. The Hawaii Space Exploration Analog and Simulation, or HI-SEAS, was carried out in a small white dome nestled along the slope of a massive volcano called Mauna Loa. The habitat usually housed six people at a time, for as long as eight months. They prepared freeze-dried meals, took 30-second showers to conserve water, and wore space suits every time they left the dome. To replicate the communication gap between Earth and Mars, they waited 20 minutes for their emails to reach their family members, and another 20 to hear back. Sometimes, as they drifted off to sleep, with nothing but silence in their ears, they really believed they were on Mars.

In February of this year, something went wrong. The latest and sixth mission was just four days in when one of the crew members was carried out on a stretcher and taken to a hospital, an Atlantic investigation revealed in June. There had been a power outage in the habitat, and some troubleshooting ended with one of the residents sustaining an electric shock. The rest of the crew was evacuated, too. There was some discussion of returning -- the injured person was treated and released in the same day -- but another crew member felt the conditions weren't safe enough and decided to withdraw. The Mars simulation couldn't continue with a crew as small as three, and the entire program was put on hold. [...]

Five years and sixty potential locations later, NASA has chosen the Jezero Crater as the landing site for its Mars 2020 rover mission. "Slated to launch in July the Mars 2020 rover mission will touch down at the Jezero Crater as NASA's exploration of the Red Planet enters its next phase," reports TechCrunch. From the report: The rover will be looking for signs of habitable conditions -- and past microbial life -- while also collecting rock and soil samples that will be stored in a cache on the Martian surface. "The landing site in Jezero Crater offers geologically rich terrain, with landforms reaching as far back as 3.6 billion years old, that could potentially answer important questions in planetary evolution and astrobiology," said Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, in a statement. "Getting samples from this unique area will revolutionize how we think about Mars and its ability to harbor life."

The crater is located on the western edge of Isidis Planitia, a giant impact basin just north of the Martian equator, with some of the oldest and most scientifically interesting landscapes Mars has to offer, according to NASA scientists. Mission scientists believe the 28-mile-wide crater once held an ancient river delta, and could have collected and preserved organic molecules and other potential signs of microbial life from the water and sediments that flowed into the crater. NASA thinks it can collect up to five different kinds of Martian rock, including clays and carbonates that may preserve indicators of past life. There's also the hope that minerals have been swept into the crater over the last billion years which Rover could also collect.

Lockheed Martin's X-59 Quiet Supersonic Technology aircraft is officially in "the manufacturing phase," bringing the company "one step closer to enabling supersonic travel for passengers around the world." The experimental jet was awarded a contract from NASA earlier this year as it is capable of flying at supersonic speeds without creating loud supersonic booms. Currently, commercial supersonic aircraft are banned from flying over land because of the noise and potential damage the booms may cause. WTOP reports: "The long, slender design of the aircraft is the key to achieving a low sonic boom," said Peter Iosifidis, Low Boom Flight Demonstrator program manager at Lockheed Martin. "As we enter into the manufacturing phase, the aircraft structure begins to take shape, bringing us one step closer to enabling supersonic travel for passengers around the world," he said.

Lockheed expects to conduct its first flight in 2021 and gather community response data on the acceptability of the "quiet sonic boom" the plane creates. NASA will use that information to establish an acceptable commercial supersonic noise standard to overturn current regulations banning supersonic travel over land. The X-59 will cruise at a speed of about 940 mph and an altitude of 55,000 feet. Lockheed says it will create a sound about as loud as a car door closing, instead of a deafening sonic boom.

NASA is considering selling seats on the spacecraft that will ferry its astronauts to the International Space Station, offering rides to the public while opening another line of revenue as the agency attempts to broaden its appeal [Editor's note: the link may be paywalled; alternative source]. From a report: On several occasions, Russia has flown wealthy individuals who paid millions for the ride to space. And a trio of private companies backed by billionaires, is also looking to fly tourists out of the atmosphere. But except for a couple of rare exceptions, such as Christa McAuliffe, the teacher who was killed when the space Shuttle Challenger exploded in 1986, NASA has not allowed private citizens on its rockets. "Just like in the early days of aviation, with barnstorming, these initial activities will help build the infrastructure and the foundation that can lead to future innovations that, frankly, we cannot imagine right now," said Michael Gold, the general counsel of Maxar Technologies, who is leading the advisory council's policy reform effort.

The proposal, backed Friday by a NASA advisory subcommittee, is still in the nascent stage, and is part of moves by the agency to better insert itself into the public consciousness by working with the private sector. The proposals would have to be approved by the entire advisory council and then forwarded to NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine. Friday's meeting comes two months after Bridenstine announced he was standing up the committee, and tasking it to look at how the agency could better partner with industry. He said then that he wants NASA and its astronauts "embedded into the American culture." On Friday, he reiterated the point, saying: "The reality is, we're in a new era now."

NASA is building a giant rocket ship to return astronauts to the moon and, later on, ferry the first crews to and from Mars. But agency leaders are already contemplating the retirement of the Space Launch System (SLS), as the towering and yet-to-fly government rocket is called, and the Orion space capsule that'll ride on top. From a report: NASA is anticipating the emergence of two reusable and presumably more affordable mega-rockets that private aerospace companies are creating. Those systems are the Big Falcon Rocket (BFR), which is being built by Elon Musk's SpaceX; and the New Glenn, a launcher being built by Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin. "I think our view is that if those commercial capabilities come online, we will eventually retire the government system, and just move to a buying launch capacity on those [rockets]," Stephen Jurczyk, NASA's associate administrator, told Business Insider at The Economist Space Summit on November 1. However, NASA may soon find itself in a strange position, since at least one of the two company's systems may beat SLS back to the moon -- and possibly be the first to reach Mars.

pgmrdlm writes: Bill Nye says the idea of Mars colonization and terraforming -- making a planet more Earth-like by modifying its atmosphere -- is science fiction. "This whole idea of terraforming Mars, as respectful as I can be, are you guys high?" Nye said in an interview with USA TODAY. "We can't even take care of this planet where we live, and we're perfectly suited for it, let alone another planet." As for living on Mars permanently: Sorry, Nye says that's not happening either. "People disagree with me on this, and the reason they disagree is because they're wrong," he quipped. The famous science educator and CEO of The Planetary Society appears on National Geographic Channel's series "MARS." While the series explores human beings living on the Red Planet and even mining it, that doesn't mean Nye buys into the idea. For starters, he points to Antarctica, where scientists are stationed even during the harsh winter months but no one lives permanently.

"Nobody goes to Antarctica to raise a family. You don't go there and build a park, there's just no such thing. Nobody's gonna go settle on Mars to raise a family and have generations of Martians," Nye said. "It's not reasonable because it's so cold. And there is hardly any water. There's absolutely no food, and the big thing, I just remind these guys, there's nothing to breathe." Plus living in a dome, then putting on a spacesuit to go outside will get tiring -- fast. "When you leave your dome, you're gonna put on another dome, and I think that will get old pretty quick," he said. "Especially the smell in the spacesuit 00 all the Febreze you can pack, I think it will really help you up there."

"Quantum computing is complex and it's not all it's cracked up to be," writes Slashdot reader nickwinlund77, pointing to this new article from IEEE Spectrum arguing it's "not in our foreseeable future": Having spent decades conducting research in quantum and condensed-matter physics, I've developed my very pessimistic view. It's based on an understanding of the gargantuan technical challenges that would have to be overcome to ever make quantum computing work.... Experts estimate that the number of qubits needed for a useful quantum computer, one that could compete with your laptop in solving certain kinds of interesting problems, is between 1,000 and 100,000. So the number of continuous parameters describing the state of such a useful quantum computer at any given moment must be at least 2**1,000, which is to say about 10**300. That's a very big number indeed. How big? It is much, much greater than the number of subatomic particles in the observable universe. To repeat: A useful quantum computer needs to process a set of continuous parameters that is larger than the number of subatomic particles in the observable universe. At this point in a description of a possible future technology, a hardheaded engineer loses interest....

[I]t's absolutely unimaginable how to keep errors under control for the 10300 continuous parameters that must be processed by a useful quantum computer. Yet quantum-computing theorists have succeeded in convincing the general public that this is feasible.... Even without considering these impossibly large numbers, it's sobering that no one has yet figured out how to combine many physical qubits into a smaller number of logical qubits that can compute something useful. And it's not like this hasn't long been a key goal.... On the hardware front, advanced research is under way, with a 49-qubit chip (Intel), a 50-qubit chip (IBM), and a 72-qubit chip (Google) having recently been fabricated and studied. The eventual outcome of this activity is not entirely clear, especially because these companies have not revealed the details of their work...

I believe that, appearances to the contrary, the quantum computing fervor is nearing its end. That's because a few decades is the maximum lifetime of any big bubble in technology or science. After a certain period, too many unfulfilled promises have been made, and anyone who has been following the topic starts to get annoyed by further announcements of impending breakthroughs. What's more, by that time all the tenured faculty positions in the field are already occupied. The proponents have grown older and less zealous, while the younger generation seeks something completely new and more likely to succeed.
He advises quantum computing researchers to follow the advice of IBM physicist Rolf Landauer. Decades ago Landauer warned quantum computing's proponents that they needed a disclaimer in all of their publications.

"This scheme, like all other schemes for quantum computation, relies on speculative technology, does not in its current form take into account all possible sources of noise, unreliability and manufacturing error, and probably will not work."

Long-time Slashdot reader PuddleBoy quotes NasaSpaceflight.com: Northrop Grumman Innovation System's Antares rocket has launched the NG-10 Cygnus, named the S.S. John Young, on its way to the International Space Station on Saturday morning from the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport in Virginia... With its second and final flight of 2018 upon it, Antares lofted the S.S. John Young Cygnus up to the International Space Station with 3,268 kg (7,205 lb) of pressurized cargo and 82 kg (181 lb) of unpressurized cargo....

Cygnus is undertaking a two phase to the International Space Station, aligning for close approach to the orbital lab for grapple on Monday morning, 19 November -- just over 48 hours after launch. Expedition 57 Flight Engineer Serena Aunon-Chancellor will grapple Cygnus with the Station robotic arm, known as the SSRMS or the Space Station Remote Manipulator System).
John Young was a pioneering astronaut who died in January at the age of 87 -- 36 years after he became the ninth person to walk on the moon, driving the Lunar Roving Vehicle. He was also the commander on the very first Space Shuttle flight in 1981.

"We're really proud to name it after John Young," said one executive at Northrop Grumman Innovation Systems, "and we'll work hard to do him proud."

dmoberhaus writes: NASA's Mars Opportunity rover appeared to briefly make contact with the agency's Deep Space Network on Thursday afternoon after 5 months of silence. In June, a dust storm took Opportunity offline and every attempt to bring the rover back to life has failed. NASA scientists were hoping that seasonal winds that sweep the planet from November to February might blow the dust off of Opportunity's solar panels. Was this the rover's first attempt trying to get back into contact with Earth? Update 11/17/18: No. It turns out that the data received by the Deep Space Network was not from the Opportunity rover. "Today [the Deep Space Network website] showed what looked like a signal from Opportunity," JPL said in a tweet. "As much as we'd like to say this was an #OppyPhoneHome moment, further investigation shows these signals were not an Opportunity transmission. Test data or false positives can make it look like a given spacecraft is active on [the Deep Space Network website]. Our work to reestablish comms continues."

brindafella writes: Veterinary scientists from Viena have shown that Goffin's cockatoos can do an excellent job of remaking cardboard into tools to get rewards. This follows on from earlier experiments with the New Caledonian crow that can select tools for its purposes. So, birds are definitely not "bird-brained." "[The study] tells us that the cockatoos' mind is highly flexible and that they can modify their solution to a problem in order to save effort," said Alice Auersperg, a cognitive biologist at the University of Veterinary Medicine Vienna and lead author of the paper.

The Australian Broadcast Company explains how the study was conducted: "[S]ix trained birds were given a piece of cardboard and placed in front of a cage that had food accessible through a small hole, but placed at different distances away. The birds used their beak to cut strips of cardboard they then used to reach the food. Importantly, when the food was close, the birds made a shorter strip. When it was far away, they made a longer strip. But when the researchers made the hole in the cage smaller, only one of the birds was able to fashion their cardboard tool to be narrow enough to fit through the hole. The successful bird was the only female in the group, and the researchers think she was able to do this because her beak was small enough to make a narrow tool."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from NPR: A team of researchers conducted their analysis using data stored in something called the UK Biobank. More than 500,000 people have contributed blood, urine and saliva samples to the biobank, which scientists can use to answer various research questions. The volunteers also filled out questionnaires asking a variety of health-related questions, including how much coffee they drink. Part of what determines our sensitivity to bitter substances is determined by the genes we inherit from our parents. So the researchers used genetic analysis of samples from the biobank to find people who were more or less sensitive to three bitter substances: caffeine, quinine (think tonic water) and a chemical called propylthiouracil that is frequently used in genetic tests of people's ability to taste bitter compounds.

Then they looked to see if people sensitive to one or more of these substances drank more or less coffee than people who were not sensitive. To the researchers' surprise, people who were more sensitive to caffeine reported increased coffee consumption compared with people who were less sensitive. The result was restricted to the bitterness of caffeine. People sensitive to quinine and propylthiouracil -- neither of which is in coffee -- tended to drink less coffee. The effect of increased caffeine sensitivity was small: it only amounted to about two tablespoons more coffee per day. But by analyzing so many samples, the researchers were able to detect even small differences like that. The reason may be that people "learn to associate that bitter taste with the stimulation that coffee can provide," says one of the study authors.

An anonymous reader shares a report from Reuters: Alphabet's life sciences division Verily said on Friday that it was putting on hold one of its oldest and highest-profile projects, a smart contact lens designed to help monitor sugar levels. The project, started in 2014, aimed to help diabetics better manage their blood sugar levels by embedding sensors on a contact lens to monitor the glucose levels in their tears. In a blog update, Verily cited here insufficient consistency in the correlation between tear glucose and blood glucose concentrations to support the requirements of a medical device. On the bright side, Alphabet and Verily said they would continue to work on two other "Smart Lens" projects -- one for presbyopia (far-sightedness), and another to improve sight following cataract surgery.

Late last month, NASA announced that it would be retiring the Kepler space telescope after nearly ten years of service -- double its initial mission life. Now, as Space.com reports, the planet-hunting telescope has been officially decommissioned, "beaming 'goodnight' commands to the sun-orbiting observatory." From the report: "Kepler's team disabled the safety modes that could inadvertently turn systems back on, and severed communications by shutting down the transmitters," NASA officials wrote in a statement today (Nov. 16). "Because the spacecraft is slowly spinning, the Kepler team had to carefully time the commands so that instructions would reach the spacecraft during periods of viable communication."

The final commands were sent from Kepler's operations center at the University of Colorado Boulder's Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics, NASA officials said. The commands got to the spacecraft via NASA's Deep Space Network, the system of big radio dishes the space agency uses to keep in touch with its far-flung probes.

A new report published in the journal Science Direct says there is no link between insomnia and early death. The researchers reportedly "reviewed 17 studies, which covered close to 37 million people, to compile their results," the BBC notes. From the report: This new report goes against what the NHS says, which claims that as well as putting people at risk of obesity, heart disease and type 2 diabetes, that insomnia shortens life expectancy. The NHS recommends things like exercising to tire yourself out during the day and cutting down on caffeine. It also says smoking, eating too much or drinking alcohol late at night can stop you from sleeping well. Other recommendations include writing a list of things that are playing on your mind and trying to get to bed at a similar time every night. "There was no difference in the odds of mortality for those individuals with symptoms of insomnia when compared to those without symptoms," the study says. "This finding was echoed in the assessment of the rate of mortality in those with and without symptoms of insomnia using the outcomes of multivariate models, with the most complete adjustment for potential confounders, as reported by the individual studies included in this meta-analysis. Additional analyses revealed a tendency for an increased risk of mortality associated with hypnotic use."

Despite vast increases in the time and money spent on research, progress is barely keeping pace with the past. What went wrong? An anonymous reader shares a report: Today, there are more scientists, more funding for science, and more scientific papers published than ever before. On the surface, this is encouraging. But for all this increase in effort, are we getting a proportional increase in our scientific understanding? Or are we investing vastly more merely to sustain (or even see a decline in) the rate of scientific progress? It's surprisingly difficult to measure scientific progress in meaningful ways. Part of the trouble is that it's hard to accurately evaluate how important any given scientific discovery is.

[...] With that in mind, we ran a survey asking scientists to compare Nobel prizewinning discoveries in their fields. We then used those rankings to determine how scientists think the quality of Nobel prizewinning discoveries has changed over the decades. As a sample survey question, we might ask a physicist which was a more important contribution to scientific understanding: the discovery of the neutron (the particle that makes up roughly half the ordinary matter in the universe) or the discovery of the cosmic microwave background radiation (the afterglow of the Big Bang). Think of the survey as a round-robin tournament, competitively matching discoveries against one another, with expert scientists judging which is better.

For the physics prize, we surveyed 93 physicists from the world's top academic physics departments (according to the Shanghai Rankings of World Universities), and they judged 1,370 pairs of discoveries. [...] The first decade has a poor showing. In that decade, the Nobel Committee was still figuring out exactly what the prize was for. There was, for instance, a prize for a better way of illuminating lighthouses and buoys at sea. That's good news if you're on a ship, but scored poorly with modern physicists. But by the 1910s the prizes were mostly awarded for things that accord with the modern conception of physics. A golden age of physics followed, from the 1910s through the 1930s. [...]

Our graph stops at the end of the 1980s. The reason is that, in recent years, the Nobel Committee has preferred to award prizes for work done in the 1980s and 1970s. In fact, just three discoveries made since 1990 have yet been awarded Nobel Prizes. This is too few to get a good quality estimate for the 1990s, and so we didn't survey those prizes. However, the paucity of prizes since 1990 is itself suggestive. The 1990s and 2000s have the dubious distinction of being the decades over which the Nobel Committee has most strongly preferred to skip back and award prizes for earlier work. Given that the 1980s and 1970s themselves don't look so good, that's bad news for physics.

Scientists have changed the way the kilogram is defined. Currently, it is defined by the weight of a platinum-based ingot called "Le Grand K" which is locked away in a safe in Paris. On Friday, researchers meeting in Versailles voted to get rid of it in favour of defining a kilogram in terms of an electric current. From a report: The decision was made at the General Conference on Weights and Measures. But some scientists, such as Perdi Williams at the National Physical Laboratory in the UK, have expressed mixed feelings about the change. "I haven't been on this project for too long but I feel a weird attachment to the kilogram," she said. "I think it is such an exciting thing and this is a really big moment. So I'm a little bit sad about [the change]. But it is an important step forward and so the new system is going to work a lot better. It is also a really exciting time, and I can't wait for it to happen."

Le Grand K has been at the forefront of the international system of measuring weights since 1889. Several close replicas were made and distributed around the globe. But the master kilogram and its copies were seen to change -- ever so slightly -- as they deteriorated. In a world where accurate measurement is now critical in many areas, such as in drug development, nanotechnology and precision engineering -- those responsible for maintaining the international system had no option but to move beyond Le Grand K to a more robust definition.

Tulsa, Oklahoma is offering full-time remote workers in the U.S. free office space, a subsidized furnished apartment, and $10,000 cash if you move there and stay for at least one year. The city wants to attract so-called "digital nomads," who would, presumably, start paying taxes, launch businesses, and otherwise contribute to the economy of wherever they're drawn to. Nextgov reports: Tulsa Remote is one of several revitalization projects in the region funded by the George Kaiser Family Foundation. The Tulsa-based philanthropic organization was started by George B. Kaiser, an oil and banking billionaire who has signed on to Warren Buffett and Bill and Melinda Gates' "Giving Pledge," whose wealthy signees promise to give away at least half their fortunes to charity.

The organization has budgeted for 20 new remote workers in the program's first year, says Ken Levit, GKFF's executive director. Applicants must be at least 18, eligible to work in the U.S., already working full-time for an employer based outside the boundaries of Tulsa County, and prepared to move to Tulsa within six months. Applications opened Tuesday at the website TulsaRemote.com; the city hopes to settle the first new residents within the next three months, Levit said.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: A spinning turbine that can capture wind traveling in any direction and could transform how consumers generate electricity in cities has won its inventors a prestigious international award and ~$38,000 prize. Nicolas Orellana, 36, and Yaseen Noorani, 24, MSc students at Lancaster University, scooped the James Dyson award for their O-Wind Turbine, which -- in a technological first -- takes advantage of both horizontal and vertical winds without requiring steering.

O-Wind Turbine is a 25cm sphere with geometric vents that sits on a fixed axis and spins when wind hits it from any direction. When wind energy turns the device, gears drive a generator that converts the power of the wind into electricity. The students believe the device, which could take at least five years to be put into commercial production, could be installed on large structures such as the side of a building or balcony, where wind speeds are highest. Dyson, who chose the winners, hailed it as "an ingenious concept." He continued: "Designing something that solves a problem is an intentionally broad brief. It invites talented, young inventors to do more than just identify real problems. It empowers them to use their ingenuity to develop inventive solutions. O-Wind Turbine does exactly that. It takes the enormous challenge of producing renewable energy and using geometry it can harness energy in places where we've scarcely been looking -- cities."

SpaceX has successfully sent up a communications satellite for the country of Qatar, marking the aerospace company's 18th mission in 2018, which ties the company's record in 2017 for the most launches done in a year. Since the company has several more missions planned for this year, it's very likely that the company will set a new all-time high soon. The Verge reports: For this mission, SpaceX is employing another one of its used rockets, a Falcon 9 booster that launched the Telstar 19 VANTAGE satellite in July. After that mission, the rocket landed on one of SpaceX's autonomous drone ships in the Atlantic Ocean, and the company hopes to pull off the same feat following today's launch. If successful, this particular Falcon 9 booster could be capable of flying a third time in the near future.

The payload is the Es'hail-2 satellite, which is meant to provide communications services to the Middle East and North Africa. It's primarily meant to be used for government and commercial purposes, however, amateur radio operators can also use this satellite. Es'hail-2 has two transponders on board that can connect to amateur radios from South America to Asia. It's not the only satellite with this capability, but Es'hail-2 is going to a particularly high orbit 22,000 miles up. That will make it the first satellite at this altitude to link amateur radios from Brazil to India. SpaceX managed to successfully deploy the Es'hail-2 satellite into orbit "32 minutes after takeoff," The Verge reports in an update. "The company also landed its Falcon 9 rocket on one of its drone ships following liftoff, bringing its total number of successful booster landings to 31." You can watch the full launch here.

schwit1 shares a report: Researchers have used a neural network to generate artificial fingerprints that work as a "master key" for biometric identification systems and prove fake fingerprints can be created. According to a paper [PDF] presented at a security conference in Los Angeles, the artificially generated fingerprints, dubbed "DeepMasterPrints" by the researchers from New York University, were able to imitate more than one in five fingerprints in a biometric system that should only have an error rate of one in a thousand.

The researchers, led by NYU's Philip Bontrager, say that "the underlying method is likely to have broad applications in fingerprint security as well as fingerprint synthesis." As with much security research, demonstrating flaws in existing authentication systems is considered to be an important part of developing more secure replacements in the future. In order to work, the DeepMasterPrints take advantage of two properties of fingerprint-based authentication systems. The first is that, for ergonomic reasons, most fingerprint readers do not read the entire finger at once, instead imaging whichever part of the finger touches the scanner.