SpaceX launched and landed a used rocket Friday (Dec. 15), pulling off yet another spaceflight double play during a delivery mission for NASA that gets the company a big step closer to its goal of complete reusability.
SpaceX's two-stage Falcon 9 rocket lifted off Friday at 10:36 a.m. EST (1536 GMT) from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida, sending the company's robotic Dragon capsule on a resupply run to the International Space Station (ISS) that just might include some Christmas presents for the station’s crew.
Source & further reading:https://www.space.com/39063-spacex-launches-used-rocket-dragon-spacecraft-for-nasa.html
Traditionally, researchers have sought potential biosignatures as ways of identifying inhabited worlds: byproducts from life as we know it such as oxygen or methane that over time accumulate in the atmosphere to detectable amounts. But with current technology, according to Vladimir Airapetian, lead author of a Nature Scientific Reports study published on Nov. 2, 2017, identifying these gases on distant terrestrial exoplanets is time-consuming, requiring days of observation time. The new study suggests hunting for cruder signatures of potentially habitable worlds instead, which would be easier to detect with current resources in less time.
“We’re in search of molecules formed from fundamental prerequisites to life — specifically molecular nitrogen, which is 78 percent of our atmosphere,” said Airapetian, who is a solar scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, and at American University in Washington, D.C. “These are basic molecules that are biologically friendly and have strong infrared emitting power, increasing our chance of detecting them.”
Present life on Earth tells Airapetian and his team of researchers they should look for atmospheres rich with water vapor and nitrogen, and oxygen, the product of life. Oxygen and nitrogen free-float stably in their molecular form — that is, two atoms of either oxygen or nitrogen bound together in one molecule. But in the vicinity of an active dwarf star, extreme space weather sparks distinct chemical reactions, which researchers can use as indicators of atmospheric composition.
Source & further reading:https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2017/atmospheric-beacons-guide-nasa-scientists-in-search-for-life
Journal article:https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-017-14192-4
Credits: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/Mary Pat Hrybyk
The Möbius strip — sometimes called the Möbius band — is named after mathematician and astronomer August Ferdinand Möbius, who came up with the idea in September 1858. Curiously, German mathematician Johann Benedict Listing independently developed the same idea a few months earlier in July 1858. Unfortunately for Listing, one of the most famous surfaces in mathematics bears the name of Möbius, not Listing.
So what's the big deal with the Möbius strip? It's quite simple, actually. The Möbius strip is famous because it has only one side and one edge.
Read & learn:http://mathworld.wolfram.com/MoebiusStrip.html
https://wonderopolis.org/wonder/what-is-a-mobius-strip
Animation by OmniDailyhttp://omnidaily.tumblr.com/
Source: Corina Marinescu
