Slashdot reader Required Snark shared this article from Ars Technica: Almost exactly two years ago, as it prepared for the next generation of human spaceflight, NASA chose a pair of private companies to design and develop new spacesuits. These were to be new spacesuits that would allow astronauts to both perform spacewalks outside the International Space Station as well as walk on the Moon as part of the Artemis program. Now, that plan appears to be in trouble, with one of the spacesuit providers — Collins Aerospace — expected to back out, Ars has learned. It's a blow for NASA, because the space agency really needs modern spacesuits.

NASA's Apollo-era suits have long been retired. The current suits used for spacewalks in low-Earth orbit are four decades old. "These new capabilities will allow us to continue on the International Space Station and allows us to do the Artemis program and continue on to Mars," said the director of Johnson Space Center, Vanessa Wyche, during a celebratory news conference in Houston two years ago. The two winning teams were led by Collins Aerospace and Axiom Space, respectively. They were eligible for task orders worth up to $3.5 billion — in essence NASA would rent the use of these suits for a couple of decades. Since then, NASA has designated Axiom to work primarily on a suit for the Moon and the Artemis Program, and Collins with developing a suit for operations in-orbit, such as space station servicing...

The agency has been experiencing periodic problems with the maintenance of the suits built decades ago, known as the Extravehicular Mobility Unit, which made its debut in the 1980s. NASA has acknowledged the suit has exceeded its planned design lifetime. Just this Monday, the agency had to halt a spacewalk after the airlock had been de-pressurized and the hatch opened due to a water leak in the service and cooling umbilical unit of Tracy Dyson's spacesuit. As a result of this problem, NASA will likely only be able to conduct a single spacewalk this summer, after initially planning three, to complete work outside the International Space Station.
Collins designed the original Apollo suits, according to the article. But a person familiar with the situation told Ars Technica that "Collins has admitted they have drastically underperformed and have overspent" on their work, "culminating in a request to be taken off the contract or renegotiate the scope and their budget."

Ironically, the company's top's post on their account on Twitter/X is still a repost of NASA's February announcement that they're "getting a nextx-generation spacesuit" developed by Collins Aerospace, and saying that the company "recently completed a key NASA design milestone aboard a commercial microgravity aircraft."

NASA's post said they needed the suit "In order to advance NASA's spacewalking capabilities in low Earth orbit and to support continued maintenance and operations at the Space Station."

The Wall Street Journal reports that a European initiative studying the feasibility data centers in space "has found that the project could be economically viable" — while reducing the data center's carbon footprint.

And they add that according to coordinator Thales Alenia Space, the project "could also generate a return on investment of several billion euros between now and 2050." The study — dubbed Ascend, short for Advanced Space Cloud for European Net zero emission and Data sovereignty — was funded by the European Union and sought to compare the environmental impacts of space-based and Earth-based data centers, the company said. Moving forward, the company plans to consolidate and optimize its results. Space data centers would be powered by solar energy outside the Earth's atmosphere, aiming to contribute to the European Union's goal of achieving carbon neutrality by 2050, the project coordinator said... Space data centers wouldn't require water to cool them, the company said.
The 16-month study came to a "very encouraging" conclusion, project manager Damien Dumestier told CNBC. With some caveats... The facilities that the study explored launching into space would orbit at an altitude of around 1,400 kilometers (869.9 miles) — about three times the altitude of the International Space Station. Dumestier explained that ASCEND would aim to deploy 13 space data center building blocks with a total capacity of 10 megawatts in 2036, in order to achieve the starting point for cloud service commercialization... The study found that, in order to significantly reduce CO2 emissions, a new type of launcher that is 10 times less emissive would need to be developed. ArianeGroup, one of the 12 companies participating in the study, is working to speed up the development of such reusable and eco-friendly launchers. The target is to have the first eco-launcher ready by 2035 and then to allow for 15 years of deployment in order to have the huge capacity required to make the project feasible, said Dumestier...

Michael Winterson, managing director of the European Data Centre Association, acknowledges that a space data center would benefit from increased efficiency from solar power without the interruption of weather patterns — but the center would require significant amounts of rocket fuel to keep it in orbit. Winterson estimates that even a small 1 megawatt center in low earth orbit would need around 280,000 kilograms of rocket fuel per year at a cost of around $140 million in 2030 — a calculation based on a significant decrease in launch costs, which has yet to take place. "There will be specialist services that will be suited to this idea, but it will in no way be a market replacement," said Winterson. "Applications that might be well served would be very specific, such as military/surveillance, broadcasting, telecommunications and financial trading services. All other services would not competitively run from space," he added in emailed comments.

[Merima Dzanic, head of strategy and operations at the Danish Data Center Industry Association] also signaled some skepticism around security risks, noting, "Space is being increasingly politicised and weaponized amongst the different countries. So obviously, there is a security implications on what type of data you send out there."
Its not the only study looking at the potential of orbital data centers, notes CNBC. "Microsoft, which has previously trialed the use of a subsea data center that was positioned 117 feet deep on the seafloor, is collaborating with companies such as Loft Orbital to explore the challenges in executing AI and computing in space."

The article also points out that the total global electricity consumption from data centers could exceed 1,000 terawatt-hours in 2026. "That's roughly equivalent to the electricity consumption of Japan, according to the International Energy Agency."

Lego teamed up with the European Space Agency to make Lego pieces from actual meteorite dust, writes Engadget.

"It's a proof of concept to show how astronauts could use moondust to build lunar structures." Consider the sheer amount of energy and money required to haul up building materials from Earth to the Moon. It would be a game changer to, instead, build everything from pre-existing lunar materials. There's a layer of rock and mineral deposits at the surface of the Moon, which is called lunar regolith...

However, there isn't too much lunar regolith here on Earth for folks to experiment with. ESA scientists made their own regolith by grinding up a really old meteorite. [4.5 billion years, according to Lego's site, discovered in Africa in 2000.] The dust from this meteorite was turned into a mixture that was used to 3D print the Lego pieces. Voila. Moon bricks. They click together just like regular Lego bricks, though they only come in one color (space gray obviously.)
"The result is amazing," says ESA Science Officer Aidan Cowley on the Lego site (though "the bricks may look a little rougher than usual. Importantly the clutch power still works, enabling us to play and test our designs.")

"Nobody has built a structure on the Moon," Cowley said in an ESA statement. "So it was great to have the flexibility to try out all kinds of designs and building techniques with our space bricks." And the bricks will also be "helping to inspire the next generation of space engineers," according to the ESA's announcement — since they'll be on display in select Lego stores in the U.S., Canada, the U.K., Spain, France, Germany, the Netherlands, and Australia through September 20th.

Researchers in South Africa have injected radioactive material into the horns of 20 rhinos to deter poaching, aiming to leverage existing radiation detectors at borders for early detection and interception of trafficked horns. The Associated Press reports: The research, which has included the participation of veterinarians and nuclear experts, begins with the animal being tranquilized before a hole is drilled into its horn and the nuclear material carefully inserted. This week, researchers at the University of the Witwatersrand's Radiation and Health Physics Unit in South Africa injected 20 live rhinos with these isotopes. They hope the process can be replicated to save other wild species vulnerable to poaching -- like elephants and pangolins. "We are doing this because it makes it significantly easier to intercept these horns as they are being trafficked over international borders, because there is a global network of radiation monitors that have been designed to prevent nuclear terrorism," said Professor James Larkin, who heads the project. "And we're piggybacking on the back of that."

According to figures by the International Union for Conservation of Nature, an international conservation body, the global rhino population stood at around 500,000 at the beginning of the 20th century. It now stands at around 27,000 due to continued demand for rhino horns on the black market. South Africa has the largest population of rhinos with an estimated 16,000, making it a hotspot with over 500 rhinos killed yearly. [...] While the idea has received support from some in the industry, the researchers have had to jump many ethical hurdles posed by critics of their methodology.

Pelham Jones, chairperson of the Private Rhino Owners Association, is among the critics of the proposed method and doubts that it would effectively deter poachers and traffickers. "(Poachers) have worked out other ways of moving rhino horn out of the country, out of the continent or off the continent, not through traditional border crossings," he said. "They bypass the border crossings because they know that is the area of the highest risk of confiscation or interception." Professor Nithaya Chetty, dean of the science faculty at Witwatersrand, said the dosage of the radioactivity is very low and its potential negative impact on the animal was tested extensively.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Bill Gates has defended the rapid rise in energy use caused by AI systems, arguing the technology would ultimately offset its heavy consumption of electricity. Speaking in London, Gates urged environmentalists and governments to "not go overboard" on concerns about the huge amounts of power required to run new generative AI systems, as Big Tech companies such as Microsoft race to invest tens of billions of dollars in vast new data centres.

Data centres will drive a rise in global electricity usage of between 2-6 per cent, the billionaire said. "The question is, will AI accelerate a more than 6 per cent reduction? And the answer is: certainly," said Gates, the Microsoft co-founder who has been a prolific investor in companies developing sustainable energy and carbon- reduction technologies. In May, Microsoft admitted that its greenhouse gas emissions had risen by almost a third since 2020, in large part due to the construction of data centres.

Gates, who left Microsoft's board in 2020 but remains an adviser to chief executive Satya Nadella, said tech companies would pay a "green premium" -- or higher price -- for clean energy as they seek new sources of power, which was helping to drive its development and deployment. "The tech companies are the people willing to pay a premium and to help bootstrap green energy capacity," he said at the Breakthrough Energy Summit in London on Thursday.

Nine astronauts aboard the International Space Station were forced to take shelter late Wednesday when a satellite broke up in low Earth orbit. This "debris-generating event" created "over 100 pieces of trackable [space junk]," according to U.S. space-tracking firm LeoLabs. Space.com reports: The Expedition 71 crew on the International Space Station (ISS) went to their three spacecraft, including Boeing Starliner, shortly after 9 p.m. EDT (0200 GMT), according to a brief NASA update on X, formerly known as Twitter. As the ISS follows a time zone identical to GMT, according to the European Space Agency, the astronauts were likely in their sleep period when the incident occurred. The procedure was a "precautionary measure", NASA officials added, stating that the crew only stayed in their spacecraft for about an hour before they were "cleared to exit their spacecraft, and the station resumed normal operations."

NASA did not specify which satellite was associated with the incident, but satellite monitoring and collision detection firm LeoLabs identified a "debris-generating event" that same evening. "Early indications are that a non-operational Russian spacecraft, Resurs-P1 [or] SATNO 39186, released a number of fragments," the company wrote on X. U.S. Space Command also reported the Resurs-P1 event, saying on X that over 100 pieces of trackable debris were generated. The military said it "observed no immediate threats and is continuing to conduct routine conjunction assessments." (A conjunction refers to a close approach of two objects in orbit to one another.)

The number of climate lawsuits filed against companies around the world is rising swiftly, a report has found, and a majority of cases that have concluded have been successful. From a report: About 230 climate-aligned lawsuits have been filed against corporations and trade associations since 2015, two-thirds of which have been initiated since 2020, according to the analysis published on Thursday by the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment. One of the most rapidly growing forms of litigation is over "climate-washing" -- when companies are accused of misrepresenting their progress towards environmental targets -- and the analysis found that 47 such cases were filed against companies and governments in 2023.

As climate communications are increasingly scrutinised, there has been arise in climate-washing litigation, often with positive outcomes for those bringing the cases. Of the 140 climate-washing cases reviewed between 2016 and 2023, 77 have officially concluded, 54 of which ended with a ruling in favour of the claimant. More than 30 cases in 2023 concerned the "polluter pays" principle, whereby companies are held accountable for climate damage caused by high greenhouse gas emissions. The authors also highlighted six "turning off the taps" cases, which challenge the flow of finance to areas which hinder climate goals.

Early analysis of the near-Earth asteroid Bennu has revealed unexpected evidence of magnesium-sodium phosphate, suggesting Bennu might have originated from a primitive ocean world. Space.com reports: On Earth, magnesium-sodium phosphate can be found in certain minerals and geological formations, as well as within living organisms where it is present in various biochemical processes and is a component of bone and teeth. According to a NASA press release, however, its presence on Bennu surprised the research team because it wasn't seen in the OSIRIS-REx probe's remote sensing data prior to sample collection. The team says its presence "hints that the asteroid could have splintered off from a long-gone, tiny, primitive ocean world." "The presence and state of phosphates, along with other elements and compounds on Bennu, suggest a watery past for the asteroid," said Lauretta. "Bennu potentially could have once been part of a wetter world. Although, this hypothesis requires further investigation."

The OSIRIS-REx spacecraft obtained a sample of Bennu's regolith on October 20, 2020 using its Touch-and-Go Sample Acquisition Mechanism (TAGSAM), which comprises a specialized sampler head situated on an articulated arm. Bennu is a small B-type asteroid, which are relatively uncommon carbonaceous asteroids. "[Bennu] was selected as the mission target in part because telescopic observations indicated a primitive, carbonaceous composition and water-bearing minerals," stated the team in their paper. [...] Further analysis on the samples revealed the prevailing component of the regolith sample is magnesium-bearing phyllosilicates, primarily serpentine and smectite -- types of rock typically found at mid-ocean ridges on Earth. A comparison of these serpentinites with their terrestrial counterparts provides possible insights into Bennu's geological past. "Offering clues about the aqueous environment in which they originated," wrote the team.

While Bennu's surface may have been altered by water over time, it still preserves some of the ancient characteristics scientists believe were present during the early solar system's days. Bennu's surface materials still contain some original features from the cloud of gas and dust from which our solar system's planets formed -- known as the protoplanetary disk. The team's study also confirmed the asteroid is rich in carbon, nitrogen and some organic compounds -- all of which, in addition to the magnesium phosphate, are essential components for life as we know it on Earth.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNN: Dairy farmers in Denmark face having to pay an annual tax of 672 krone ($96) per cow for the planet-heating emissions they generate. The country's coalition government agreed this week to introduce the world's first carbon emissions tax on agriculture. It will mean new levies on livestock starting in 2030. Denmark is a major dairy and pork exporter, and agriculture is the country's biggest source of emissions. The coalition agreement -- which also entails investing 40 billion krone ($3.7 billion) in measures such as reforestation and establishing wetlands -- is aimed at helping the country meet its climate goals.

"With today's agreement, we are investing billions in the biggest transformation of the Danish landscape in recent times," Foreign Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen said in a statement Tuesday. "At the same time, we will be the first country in the world with a (carbon) tax on agriculture." The Danish dairy industry broadly welcomed the agreement and its goals, but it has angered some farmers. [...] The tax, expected to be approved by Denmark's parliament later this year, will amount to 300 krone ($43) per tonne (1.1 ton) of CO2-equivalent emissions from livestock from 2030, rising to 750 krone ($107) in 2035. A 60% tax break will apply, meaning that farmers will effectively be charged 120 krone ($17) per tonne of livestock emissions per year from 2030, rising to 300 krone ($43) in 2035.

On average, Danish dairy cows, which account for much of the cattle population, emit 5.6 tons of CO2-equivalent per year, according to Concito, a green think tank in Denmark. Using the lower tax rate of 120 krone results in a charge of 672 krone per cow, or $96. With the tax break in place, that levy will rise to 1,680 krone per cow in 2035 ($241). In the first two years, the proceeds from the tax will be used to support the agricultural industry's green transition and then reassessed. "The whole purpose of the tax is to get the sector to look for solutions to reduce emissions," Concito's chief economist Torsten Hasforth told CNN. For example, farmers could change the feed they use.

Air freight operators have increased their greenhouse gas emissions by 25% compared to 2019, according to a report [PDF] by campaign group Stand.earth. The analysis found that operators ran about 300,000 more flights in 2023 than in 2019, a 30% increase in volume. The United States accounted for over 40% of global air freight emissions. The Guardian adds: FedEx and UPS were responsible for 24.7% of the industry's carbon emissions in 2023. It is estimated that 99.8% of aviation fuel is produced from fossil fuels, with the scaling of low carbon replacements a distant prospect. Research published last year forecast that global annual parcel volume could increase to 800bn parcels a year by 2030 [PDF], compared with 315bn in 2022.

In a new study published in the journal Nature Geoscience, scientists have identified a new Antarctic ice sheet "tipping point" where slight increases in the temperature of seawater infiltrating coastal ice sheets can lead to significant ice loss due to feedback loops that expand underwater cavities and accelerate ice collapse into the ocean. This mechanism could potentially cause future sea level rise to far exceed current predictions, impacting major global cities and billions of people. The Guardian reports: The researchers used computer models to show that a "very small increase" in the temperature of the intruding water could lead to a "very big increase" in the loss of ice -- ie, tipping point behavior. It is unknown how close the tipping point is, or whether it has even been crossed already. But the researchers said it could be triggered by temperature rises of just tenths of a degree, and very likely by the rises expected in the coming decades. [...] The new research [...] found that some Antarctic ice sheets were more vulnerable to seawater intrusion than others. The Pine Island glacier, currently Antarctica's largest contributor to sea level rise, is especially vulnerable, as the base of the glacier slopes down inland, meaning gravity helps the seawater penetrate. The large Larsen ice sheet is similarly at risk. The so-called "Doomsday" glacier, Thwaites, was found to be among the least vulnerable to seawater intrusion. This is because the ice is flowing into the sea so fast already that any cavities in the ice melted by seawater intrusion are quickly filled with new ice.

China brought a capsule full of lunar soil [non-paywalled link] from the far side of the moon down to Earth on Tuesday, achieving the latest success in an ambitious schedule to explore the moon and other parts of the solar system. From a report: The sample, retrieved by the China National Space Administration's Chang'e-6 lander after a 53-day mission, highlights China's growing capabilities in space and notches another win in a series of lunar missions that started in 2007 and have so far been executed almost without flaw. "Chang'e-6 is the first mission in human history to return samples from the far side of the moon," Long Xiao, a planetary geologist at China University of Geosciences, wrote in an email. "This is a major event for scientists worldwide," he added, and "a cause for celebration for all humanity."

Such sentiments and the prospects of international lunar sample exchanges highlighted the hope that China's robotic missions to the moon and Mars will serve to advance scientific understanding of the solar system. Those possibilities are contrasted by views in Washington and elsewhere that Tuesday's achievement is the latest milestone in a 21st-century space race with geopolitical overtones. In February, a privately operated American spacecraft landed on the moon. NASA is also pursuing the Artemis campaign to return Americans to the lunar surface, although its next mission, a flight by astronauts around the moon, has been delayed because of technical issues. China, too, is looking to expand its presence on the moon, landing more robots there, and eventually human astronauts, in the years to come.

Birth rates in the world's rich economies have more than halved since 1960 to hit a record low, according to a study that urged countries to prepare for a "lower fertility future." From a report: The average number of children per woman across the 38 most industrialised countries has fallen from 3.3 in 1960 to 1.5 in 2022, according to a study by the OECD published on Thursday. The fertility rate is now well below the "replacement level" of 2.1 children per woman -- at which a country's population is considered to be stable without immigration -- in all the group's member countries except for Israel. "This decline will change the face of societies, communities and families and potentially have large effects on economic growth and prosperity," warned the Paris-based organisation.

Faltering population growth acts as a drag on economic expansion. Across the EU, the rise in overall labour force participation will soon not be enough to compensate for its falling working-age population, exacerbating labour shortages, according to the IMF and European Commission's 2024 ageing report. Coupled with rising life expectancy, low births also put pressure on public finances as they leave fewer people contributing the tax revenues needed to pay for the rising costs of an ageing population. A lack of pupils is also driving an increase in school closures across Europe, Japan and South Korea.

While NASA engineers review propulsion system data, Boeing's Starliner will remain docked at the ISS longer than planned, with a new departure date yet to be specified due to upcoming spacewalks and ongoing engineering reviews. "After repeated delays, the spacecraft was set to leave the outpost on June 25 and land at White Sands, New Mexico," notes The Register. NASA has stated that the crew is not in a hurry to leave, with sufficient supplies available, and the delay will allow more time to address helium leaks and thruster issues observed during docking. From the report: The Starliner will need to depart the ISS before August without some additional engineering analysis. During the post-docking news conference, Steve Stich, NASA's Commercial Crew Program manager, gave a figure of 45 days for the docked duration, meaning a docking would have to occur during the latter half of July at the very latest. The delay will remove any potential conflict with the upcoming spacewalks and give engineers more time to review data from the Starliner's propulsion system. The vehicle has been bedeviled by helium leaks and thruster problems. Once the Starliner commences its return to Earth, the service module where the problematic hardware is located will be discarded, depriving engineers of an avenue of investigation.

Stich said, "We are taking our time and following our standard mission management team process. We are letting the data drive our decision-making relative to managing the small helium system leaks and thruster performance we observed during rendezvous and docking. Additionally, given the duration of the mission, it is appropriate for us to complete an agency-level review, similar to what was done ahead of NASA's SpaceX Demo-2 return after two months on orbit, to document the agency's formal acceptance on proceeding as planned." The Starliner has been cleared for use as a return vehicle in the event of an emergency.

In the highly unlikely event that NASA opts not to use the Starliner as a crew return vehicle, the agency has a few options open to it. One could be to remove two crew members from the next Crew Dragon launch -- currently set for the latter half of August -- or use an upcoming Soyuz, although the latter requires custom seat liners for the crew. During the June 18 teleconference Stich confirmed that the team had already cleared the vehicle for a contingency or emergency return, and added "I think we will work through each of these issues and we will get to a point where we can bring Butch and Suni back in Starliner."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: A new law coming into effect in Colorado in July is banning everyday products that intentionally contain toxic "forever chemicals," including clothes, cookware, menstruation products, dental floss and ski wax -- unless they can be made safer. Under the legislation, which takes effect on 1 July, many products using per- and poly-fluoroalkyl substances -- or PFAS chemicals linked to cancer risk, lower fertility and developmental delays -- will be prohibited starting in 2026. By 2028, Colorado will also ban the sale of all PFAS-treated clothes, backpacks and waterproof outdoor apparel. The law will also require companies selling PFAS-coated clothing to attach disclosure labels.

The initial draft of state senate bill 81, introduced in 2022, included a full ban on PFAS beginning in 2032. But that measure was written out after facing opposition. Colorado has already passed a measure requiring companies to phase out PFAS in carpets, furniture, cosmetics, juvenile products, some food packaging and those used in oil and gas production. The incoming law's diluted version illustrates the challenges lawmakers have in regulating chemicals that are used to make products waterproof, nonstick or resistant to staining. Manufacturers say the products, at best, will take time to make with a safer replacement -- or at worst, are not yet possible to get made in such fashion. [...]

In Colorado, state senator Lisa Cutter, one of the sponsors of the new law there, has said she still wants a complete ban on PFAS but acknowledges the problems. "As much as I want PFAS to go away forever and forever, there are going to be some difficult pivots," she told the outlet. They include balancing the potential cost to consumers in making products PFAS-free. Cutter told CBS News that it was "really hard" challenging lobbying groups that "spent a lot of money ensuring that these chemicals can continue being put into our products and make profits." Cutter had been accused of stifling innovation and industry. She said she believed companies could be successful while also looking out for the communities they serve. "Certainly, there are cases where it's not plausible right away to gravitate away from them, but we need to be moving in that direction," Cutter said. "Our community shouldn't have to pay the price for their health."

It's been a 1,000 years since there was a significant volcanic eruption from Mount Rainier, CNN reminds readers. It's a full 60 miles from Tacoma, Washington — and 90 miles from Seattle. Yet "more than Hawaii's bubbling lava fields or Yellowstone's sprawling supervolcano, it's Mount Rainier that has many U.S. volcanologists worried."

"Mount Rainier keeps me up at night because it poses such a great threat to the surrounding communities, said Jess Phoenix, a volcanologist and ambassador for the Union of Concerned Scientists, on an episode of CNN's series "Violent Earth With Liv Schreiber." The sleeping giant's destructive potential lies not with fiery flows of lava, which, in the event of an eruption, would be unlikely to extend more than a few miles beyond the boundary of Mount Rainier National Park in the Pacific Northwest. And the majority of volcanic ash would likely dissipate downwind to the east away from population centers, according to the US Geological Survey. Instead, many scientists fear the prospect of a lahar — a swiftly moving slurry of water and volcanic rock originating from ice or snow rapidly melted by an eruption that picks up debris as it flows through valleys and drainage channels.

"The thing that makes Mount Rainier tough is that it is so tall, and it's covered with ice and snow, and so if there is any kind of eruptive activity, hot stuff ... will melt the cold stuff and a lot of water will start coming down," said Seth Moran, a research seismologist at USGS Cascades Volcano Observatory in Vancouver, Washington. "And there are tens, if not hundreds of thousands of people who live in areas that potentially could be impacted by a large lahar, and it could happen quite quickly." The deadliest lahar in recent memory was in November 1985 when Colombia's Nevado del Ruiz volcano erupted. Just a couple hours after the eruption started, a river of mud, rocks, lava and icy water swept over the town of Armero, killing over 23,000 people in a matter of minutes... Bradley Pitcher, a volcanologist and lecturer in Earth and environmental sciences at Columbia University, said in an episode of CNN's "Violent Earth"... said that Mount Rainier has about eight times the amount of glaciers and snow as Nevado del Ruiz had when it erupted. "There's the potential to have a much more catastrophic mudflow...."

Lahars typically occur during volcanic eruptions but also can be caused by landslides and earthquakes. Geologists have found evidence that at least 11 large lahars from Mount Rainier have reached into the surrounding area, known as the Puget Lowlands, in the past 6,000 years, Moran said.
Two major U.S. cities — Tacoma and South Seattle — "are built on 100-foot-thick (30.5-meter) ancient mudflows from eruptions of Mount Rainier," the volcanologist said on CNN's "Violent Earth" series.

CNN's article adds that the US Geological Survey already set up a lahar detection system at Mount Rainier in 1998, "which since 2017 has been upgraded and expanded. About 20 sites on the volcano's slopes and the two paths identified as most at risk of a lahar now feature broadband seismometers that transmit real-time data and other sensors including trip wires, infrasound sensors, web cameras and GPS receivers."

Tuesday a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket will launch a special satellite — a state-of-the-art weather-watcher from America's National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

It will complete a series of four GOES-R satellite launches that began in 2016. Space.com drills down into how these satellites have changed weather forecasts: More than seven years later, with three of the four satellites in the series orbiting the Earth, scientists and researchers say they are pleased with the results and how the advanced technology has been a game changer. "I think it has really lived up to its hype in thunderstorm forecasting. Meteorologists can see the convection evolve in near real-time and this gives them enhanced insight on storm development and severity, making for better warnings," John Cintineo, a researcher from NOAA's National Severe Storms Laboratory , told Space.com in an email.

"Not only does the GOES-R series provide observations where radar coverage is lacking, but it often provides a robust signal before radar, such as when a storm is strengthening or weakening. I'm sure there have been many other improvements in forecasts and environmental monitoring over the last decade, but this is where I have most clearly seen improvement," Cintineo said. In addition to helping predict severe thunderstorms, each satellite has collected images and data on heavy rain events that could trigger flooding, detected low clouds and fog as it forms, and has made significant improvements to forecasts and services used during hurricane season. "GOES provides our hurricane forecasters with faster, more accurate and detailed data that is critical for estimating a storm's intensity, including cloud top cooling, convective structures, specific features of a hurricane's eye, upper-level wind speeds, and lightning activity," Ken Graham, director of NOAA's National Weather Service told Space.com in an email.

Instruments such as the Advanced Baseline Imager have three times more spectral channels, four times the image quality, and five times the imaging speed as the previous GOES satellites. The Geostationary Lightning Mapper is the first of its kind in orbit on the GOES-R series that allows scientists to view lightning 24/7 and strikes that make contact with the ground and from cloud to cloud. "GOES-U and the GOES-R series of satellites provides scientists and forecasters weather surveillance of the entire western hemisphere, at unprecedented spatial and temporal scales," Cintineo said. "Data from these satellites are helping researchers develop new tools and methods to address problems such as lightning prediction, sea-spray identification (sea-spray is dangerous for mariners), severe weather warnings, and accurate cloud motion estimation. The instruments from GOES-R also help improve forecasts from global and regional numerical weather models, through improved data assimilation."
The final satellite, launching Tuesday, includes a new sensor — the Compact Coronagraph — "that will monitor weather outside of Earth's atmosphere, keeping an eye on what space weather events are happening that could impact our planet," according to the article.

"It will be the first near real time operational coronagraph that we have access to," Rob Steenburgh, a space scientist at NOAA's Space Weather Prediction Center, told Space.com on the phone. "That's a huge leap for us because up until now, we've always depended on a research coronagraph instrument on a spacecraft that was launched quite a long time ago."

"A Chinese launch of the joint Sino-French SVOM mission to study Gamma-ray bursts early Saturday saw toxic rocket debris fall over a populated area..." writes Space News: SVOM is a collaboration between the China National Space Administration (CNSA) and France's Centre national d'études spatiales (CNES). The mission will look for high-energy electromagnetic radiation from these events in the X-ray and gamma-ray ranges using two French and two Chinese-developed science payloads... Studying gamma-ray bursts, thought to be caused by the death of massive stars or collisions between stars, could provide answers to key questions in astrophysics. This includes the death of stars and the creation of black holes.

However the launch of SVOM also created an explosion of its own closer to home.A video posted on Chinese social media site Sina Weibo appears to show a rocket booster falling on a populated area with people running for cover. The booster fell to Earth near Guiding County, Qiandongnan Prefecture in Guizhou province, according to another post...

A number of comments on the video noted the danger posed by the hypergolic propellant from the Long March rocket... The Long March 2C uses a toxic, hypergolic mix of nitrogen tetroxide and unsymmetrical dimethylhydrazine (UDMH). Reddish-brown gas or smoke from the booster could be indicative of nitrogen tetroxide, while a yellowish gas could be caused by hydrazine fuel mixing with air. Contact with either remaining fuel or oxidizer from the rocket stage could be very harmful to individuals.
"Falling rocket debris is a common issue with China's launches from its three inland launch sites..." the article points out.

"Authorities are understood to issue warnings and evacuation notices for areas calculated to be at risk from launch debris, reducing the risk of injuries.

The artificial intelligence revolution will demand more electricity, warns the Washington Post. "Much more..."

They warn that the "voracious" electricity consumption of AI is driving an expansion of fossil fuel use in America — "including delaying the retirement of some coal-fired plants." As the tech giants compete in a global AI arms race, a frenzy of data center construction is sweeping the country. Some computing campuses require as much energy as a modest-sized city, turning tech firms that promised to lead the way into a clean energy future into some of the world's most insatiable guzzlers of power. Their projected energy needs are so huge, some worry whether there will be enough electricity to meet them from any source... A ChatGPT-powered search, according to the International Energy Agency, consumes almost 10 times the amount of electricity as a search on Google. One large data center complex in Iowa owned by Meta burns the annual equivalent amount of power as 7 million laptops running eight hours every day, based on data shared publicly by the company...

[Tech companies] argue advancing AI now could prove more beneficial to the environment than curbing electricity consumption. They say AI is already being harnessed to make the power grid smarter, speed up innovation of new nuclear technologies and track emissions.... "If we work together, we can unlock AI's game-changing abilities to help create the net zero, climate resilient and nature positive works that we so urgently need," Microsoft said in a statement.

The tech giants say they buy enough wind, solar or geothermal power every time a big data center comes online to cancel out its emissions. But critics see a shell game with these contracts: The companies are operating off the same power grid as everyone else, while claiming for themselves much of the finite amount of green energy. Utilities are then backfilling those purchases with fossil fuel expansions, regulatory filings show... heavily polluting fossil fuel plants that become necessary to stabilize the power grid overall because of these purchases, making sure everyone has enough electricity.
The article quotes a project director at the nonprofit Data & Society, which tracks the effect of AI and accuses the tech industry of using "fuzzy math" in its climate claims. "Coal plants are being reinvigorated because of the AI boom," they tell the Washington Post. "This should be alarming to anyone who cares about the environment."

The article also summarzies a recent Goldman Sachs analysis, which predicted data centers would use 8% of America's total electricity by 2030, with 60% of that usage coming "from a vast expansion in the burning of natural gas. The new emissions created would be comparable to that of putting 15.7 million additional gas-powered cars on the road." "We all want to be cleaner," Brian Bird, president of NorthWestern Energy, a utility serving Montana, South Dakota and Nebraska, told a recent gathering of data center executives in Washington, D.C. "But you guys aren't going to wait 10 years ... My only choice today, other than keeping coal plants open longer than all of us want, is natural gas. And so you're going see a lot of natural gas build out in this country."
Big Tech responded by "going all in on experimental clean-energy projects that have long odds of success anytime soon," the article concludes. "In addition to fusion, they are hoping to generate power through such futuristic schemes as small nuclear reactors hooked to individual computing centers and machinery that taps geothermal energy by boring 10,000 feet into the Earth's crust..." Some experts point to these developments in arguing the electricity needs of the tech companies will speed up the energy transition away from fossil fuels rather than undermine it. "Companies like this that make aggressive climate commitments have historically accelerated deployment of clean electricity," said Melissa Lott, a professor at the Climate School at Columbia University.

Jonathan O'Callaghan reports via Scientific American: Despite more than a century of efforts to show otherwise, it seems Albert Einstein can still do no wrong. Or at least that's the case for his special theory of relativity, which predicts that time ticks slower for objects moving at extremely high speeds. Called time dilation, this effect grows in intensity the closer to the speed of light that something travels, but it is strangely subjective: a passenger on an accelerating starship would experience time passing normally, but external observers would see the starship moving ever slower as its speed approached that of light. As counterintuitive as this effect may be, it has been checked and confirmed in the motions of everything from Earth-orbiting satellites far-distant galaxies. Now a group of scientists have taken such tests one step further by observing more than 1,500 supernovae across the universe to reveal time dilation's effects on a staggering cosmic scale. The researchers' findings, once again, reach an all-too-familiar conclusion. "Einstein is right one more time," says Geraint Lewis of the University of Sydney, a co-author of the study.

In the paper, posted earlier this month on the preprint server arXiv.org, Ryan White of the University of Queensland in Australia and his colleagues used data from the Dark Energy Survey (DES) to investigate time dilation. For the past decade, researchers involved with DES had used the Victor M. Blanco Telescope at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile to study particular exploding stars called Type 1a supernovae across billions of years of cosmic history. [...] Type 1a supernovae are keystone cosmic explosions caused when a white dwarf -- the slowly cooling corpse of a midsized star -- siphons so much material from a companion that it ignites a thermonuclear reaction and explodes. This explosion occurs once the growing white dwarf reaches about 1.44 times the mass of our sun, a threshold known as the Chandrasekhar limit. This physical baseline imbues all Type 1a supernovae with a fairly consistent brightness, making them useful cosmic beacons for gauging intergalactic distances. "They should all be essentially the same kind of event no matter where you look in the universe," White says. "They all come from exploding white dwarf stars, which happens at almost exactly the same mass no matter where they are."

The steadfastness of these supernovae across the entire observable universe is what makes them potent probes of time dilation -- nothing else, in principle, should so radically and precisely slow their apparent progression in lockstep with ever-greater distances. Using the dataset of 1,504 supernovae from DES, White's paper shows with astonishing accuracy that this correlation holds true out to a redshift of 1.2, a time when the universe was about five billion years old. "This is the most precise measurement" of cosmological time dilation yet, White says, up to seven times more precise than previous measurements of cosmological time dilation that used fewer supernovae. [...] This particular supernova-focused facet of the Dark Energy Survey has concluded, so until a new dataset is taken, White's measurement of cosmological time dilation is unlikely to be beaten. "It's a pretty definitive measurement," says [Tamara Davis of the University of Queensland, a co-author of the paper]. "You don't really need to do any better." Jonathan O'Callaghan is an award-winning freelance journalist covering astronomy, astrophysics, commercial spaceflight and space exploration.