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Humans landed on the moon during NASA’s Apollo program in the late 1960s and 1970s using computers that had much less processing power than today’s smartphones.
Still, even five decades later, landing on the Moon is far from easy.
Several notable missions in recent years have proven that point: Israel’s Beresheet spacecraft crashed into the ancient lunar volcanic field called the Sea of Serenity in 2019, and last year, the Russian Luna-25 mission and a lander Japanese commercial called Hakuto-R. crashed into the surface of the moon. (India, however, celebrated becoming the fourth country to land a spacecraft on the moon.)
Successful or not, the efforts are part of a new space race in which the push for lunar exploration has taken center stage. Several projects are expected to head towards the moon this year with an eye on a soft landing.
The first to take off, a commercial mission from the United States, did not go as planned.
Explorations
Astrobotic Technology, the Pittsburgh-based company that, under a $108 million contract with NASA, developed the first American lunar lander to launch in five decades, abandoned plans to attempt a soft landing for its Peregrine One Mission on the Moon.
The spacecraft successfully lifted off Monday atop a Vulcan Centaur rocket, a new vehicle developed by United Launch Alliance that was on its maiden flight. Shortly after, Peregrine suffered a “critical” loss of propellant due to a fuel leak, meaning a controlled landing, originally scheduled for February 23, is out of the question, according to Astrobotic.
NASA hoped Peregrine 1 would achieve early success in its Commercial Lunar Cargo Services program, which aims to reduce the cost of building a lunar lander, particularly as the space agency faces long delays in returning astronauts to space. Moon.
Discoveries
Northern Europeans are among those most prone to the debilitating autoimmune disease multiple sclerosis, and a new study based on DNA recovered from ancient bones and teeth has offered clues as to why.
A comparison of more than 1,000 ancient genomes, collected as part of a new database, found a link between multiple sclerosis risk and a shared ancestry with a group of nomadic Bronze Age pastoralists known as the Yamnaya.
Researchers believe these nomads, who came from the central European steppe, moved west and introduced a genetic variant that once offered protection against infectious pathogens carried by domesticated animals, but evolved to affect modern diseases in a way very different.
Dig this
What led to the disappearance of the largest apes that ever lived?
New research published this week has shed more light on the mystery of why Gigantopithecus blacki, a type of primate sometimes called the real King Kong because it stood nearly 10 feet (3 meters) tall, disappeared.
Paleontologists analyzed and dated fossils and sediments from the caves where the animals’ remains were found to understand how their diet and the environment the creatures lived in changed over time, narrowing down a likely time period and reason for the extinction. of the species.
Gigantopithecus was discovered in 1935 after paleontologist GHR von Koenigswald found large teeth being sold as “dragon bones” in a traditional medicine shop in Hong Kong.
Through the universe
The first fast radio burst, or FRB, was discovered in 2007, and since then, scientists have detected hundreds of intense, millisecond-long bursts of radio waves coming from distant points across the universe.
Much is still unknown about these rapid cosmic flashes and their origins. But now astronomers have traced one of the most powerful and distant fast radio bursts ever detected to its unusual cosmic home: a rare “blob-like” group of galaxies.
The unexpected discovery could offer insights into the causes of mysterious bursts of radio waves, a question that has baffled scientists for years.
once upon a time on a planet
The world’s oldest known fossilized skin belonged to a species of reptile that lived before dinosaurs roamed the Earth.
With a pebble surface that resembles crocodile scales, the skin fragment is more than 289 million years old, at least 130 million years older than what was previously the oldest known skin fossil, according to a new study published Thursday.
Skin and other types of soft tissue rarely fossilize, as they decompose much more easily than bones.
But researchers at the University of Toronto Mississauga believe this sample was preserved because of the unique characteristics of its location: the Richards Spur limestone cave system in Oklahoma, where many of the oldest examples of early animals have been found. terrestrial.
Curiosities
Take note of these notable stories:
— China, in partnership with the European Space Agency and other institutions, has launched a probe that will search for X-ray bursts from black holes and other high-energy space phenomena.
— Despite growing concern from scientists and environmentalists, Norway could become the first country to allow deep-sea mining.
— A 106-year-old three-masted sailing ship is on a two-year voyage retracing the seminal voyage made by British naturalist Charles Darwin that did much to inspire his theory of evolution.
— An older and equally large relative of T. rex has recently been identified in New Mexico, according to researchers.
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