A retired Technical Fellow from Rockwell Collins "released a 65-page paper that details an easy-to-understand, relatively inexpensive, and feasible plan to turn an asteroid into a space habitat," reports Universe Today (in an article republished at Science Alert): Dr. David W. Jensen breaks the discussion into three main categories — asteroid selection, habitat style selection, and mission strategy to get there (i.e., what robots to use)... He eventually settled on a torus as the ideal habitat type and then dives into calculations about the overall station mass, how to support the inner wall with massive columns, and how to allocate floor space.

All important, but how exactly would we build such a massive behemoth? Self-replicating robots are Dr. Jensen's answer. The report's third section details a plan to utilize spider robots and a base station that can replicate themselves. He stresses the importance of only sending the most advanced technical components from Earth and using materials on the asteroid itself to build everything else, from rock grinders to solar panels...

With admittedly "back-of-the-envelope" calculations, Dr. Jensen estimates that the program would cost only $4.1 billion. That is far less than the $93 billion NASA plans to spend on the Apollo program. And the result would be a space habitat that provides 1 billion square meters of land that didn't exist before. That's a total cost of $4.10 per square meter to build land — in space. Possibly even more impressive is the timeline — Dr. Jensen estimates that the entire construction project could be done in as little as 12 years. However, it will still take longer to fill the habitat with air and water and start regulating its temperature.

The CBC reports that "Some parts of the Halifax harbour turned a bright shade of pink on Thursday — for science."

After researchers dumped in 500 litres of safe, water-soluble dye, "boats, drones and underwater robots were then deployed to map the movement of the dye, so researchers can understand where materials spread and how quickly they do so." The CTV calls it "part of long-term research project that could help reverse some of the world's greenhouse gas emissions" by Dalhousie University and the climate-solutions research organization Planetary Technologies: The move is the first step, says Katja Fennel, an oceanographer at Dalhousie, before researchers release alkaline material into the water this fall. That material will effectively act as an antacid for the ocean, helping to neutralize the additional acidic carbon dioxide being absorbed by the world's oceans. "The purpose is to actually induce the ocean to take up atmospheric CO2 — CO2 from the air — and help us reduce legacy carbon dioxide emissions to the atmosphere," Fennel told CTV News.
To track the uptake of carbon dioxide, researchers need to account for the movement of water. So "The ultimate goal here is to test an idea for a technology that would help us reduce atmospheric CO2," one oceanographer leading the research told the CBC, "and could be one tool in the toolbox for fighting climate change..."

They point out that the ocean holds 50 times as much CO2 as is in the atmosphere, and call the experiment "cutting edge...world-leading research... Ocean alkalinity enhancement has the greatest potential, actually, in terms of storing carbon permanently and safely at a scale that is relevant for global climate."

Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader Baron_Yam for sharing the article.

A UCLA-led study of NASA's DART mission found that the collision launched a cloud of boulders from its surface. "The boulder swarm is like a cloud of shrapnel expanding from a hand grenade," said Jewitt, lead author of the study and a UCLA professor of earth and planetary sciences. "Because those big boulders basically share the speed of the targeted asteroid, they're capable of doing their own damage." From a news release: In September 2022, NASA deliberately slammed a spacecraft into the asteroid Dimorphos to knock it slightly off course. NASA's objective was to evaluate whether the strategy could be used to protect Earth in the event that an asteroid was headed toward our planet. Jewitt said that given the high speed of a typical impact, a 15-foot boulder hitting Earth would deliver as much energy as the atomic bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima. Fortunately, neither Dimorphos nor the boulder swarm have ever posed any danger to Earth. NASA chose Dimorphos because it was about 6 million miles from Earth and measured just 581 feet across -- close enough to be of interest and small enough, engineers reasoned, that the half-ton Double Asteroid Redirection Test, or DART, planetary defense spacecraft would be able to change the asteroid's trajectory.

When it hurtled into Dimorphos at 13,000 miles per hour, DART slowed Dimorphos' orbit around its twin asteroid, Didymos, by a few millimeters per second. But, according to images taken by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, the collision also shook off 37 boulders, each measuring from 3 to 22 feet across. None of the boulders is on a course to hit Earth, but if rubble from a future asteroid deflection were to reach our planet, Jewitt said, they'd hit at the same speed the asteroid was traveling -- fast enough to cause tremendous damage. The research, published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters, found that the rocks were likely knocked off the surface by the shock of the impact. A close-up photograph taken by DART just two seconds before the collision shows a similar number of boulders sitting on the asteroid's surface -- and of similar sizes and shapes -- to the ones that were imaged by the Hubble telescope. The boulders that the scientists studied, among the faintest objects ever seen within the solar system, are observable in detail thanks to the powerful Hubble telescope.

The Biden administration will spend $1.2 billion to help build the nation's first two commercial-scale plants to vacuum carbon dioxide pollution from the atmosphere, a nascent technology that some scientists say could be a breakthrough in the fight against global warming, but that others fear is an extravagant boondoggle. From a report: Jennifer Granholm, the energy secretary, announced Friday that her agency would fund two pilot projects that would deploy the disputed technology, known as direct air capture. Occidental Petroleum will build one of the plants in Kleberg County, Texas, and Battelle, a nonprofit research organization, will build the other in Calcasieu Parish on the Louisiana coast. The federal government and the companies will equally split the cost of building the facilities.

"These projects are going to help us prove out the potential of these next-generation technologies so that we can add them to our climate crisis fighting arsenal, and one of those technologies includes direct air capture, which is essentially giant vacuums that can suck decades of old carbon pollution straight out of the sky," Ms. Granholm said on a telephone call with reporters on Thursday. The 2021 bipartisan infrastructure law included $3.5 billion to fund the construction of four commercial-scale direct air capture plants. Friday's announcement covered the first two. Oil and gas companies lobbied for the direct air capture money to be included in the law, arguing that the world could continue to burn fossil fuels if it had a way to clean up their planet-warming pollution.

Russia has successfully launched Luna 25, the country's first lunar lander in 47 years. From a report: The uncrewed spacecraft lifted off from the Vostochny Cosmodrome in Amur Oblast, Russia. Hitching a ride aboard a Soyuz-2 Fregat rocket, Luna 25 took flight at 8:10 a.m. local time Friday, or 7:10 p.m. ET Thursday. Residents of a Russian village were temporarily evacuated Friday morning since there is a "one in a million chance" that one of Luna 25's rocket stages could fall there, according to Reuters.

The spacecraft is expected to first enter an orbit around Earth before transferring to a lunar orbit and ultimately descending to the surface of the moon. Russia's last lunar lander, Luna 24, landed on the moon on August 18, 1976. Luna 25 and India's Chandrayaan-3 mission, which launched in mid-July, are both expected to land at the lunar south pole on August 23, and it's a race to see which country will land first, according to Reuters. But Roscomos said the two missions are not expected to cause a problem for each other because their specific landing zones differ, Reuters reported.

Extreme "glacial cooling" that occurred more than a million years ago in southern Europe is likely to have caused an "extinction of early humans" on the continent, according to new research. From a report: The previously unknown ice age pushed the European climate to "beyond what archaic humans could tolerate" and likely wiped out human life on the continent temporarily, concluded an academic paper published in the journal Science. The findings by 11 researchers from institutions including University College London and the University of Cambridge challenge the long-held idea that humans have continuously occupied Europe since first arriving in the region.

The newly discovered cooling event was "comparable to some of the most severe events of recent ice ages," said the paper's lead author Vasiliki Margari from UCL. "We suggest that these extreme conditions led to the depopulation of Europe," the researchers concluded. Glacial-interglacial cycles, or warmer and colder periods each lasting thousands of years, have occurred cyclically over the past 2.6mn years, with large ice sheets forming during the colder spells and melting during the warmer periods. According to the academic paper, a previously unknown glacial period that occurred about 1.1mn years ago led to abrupt cooling that lasted about 4,000 years. This happened as conditions began to warm and large ice sheets melted into the Atlantic Ocean, which pushed down European sea and land temperatures.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Virgin Galactic's VSS Unity, the reusable rocket-powered space plane carrying the company's first crew of tourists to space, successfully launched and landed on Thursday. The mission, known as Galactic 02, took off shortly after 11am ET from Spaceport America in New Mexico. Aboard the spacecraft were six individuals total -- the space plane's commander and former Nasa astronaut CJ Sturckow, the pilot Kelly Latimer, as well as Beth Moses, Virgin Galactic's chief astronaut instructor who trained the crew before to the flight. The spacecraft also carried three private passengers, including the health and wellness coach Keisha Schahaff and her 18-year-old daughter, Anastasia Mayers, both of whom are Antiguan. [...]

Galactic 02 is a suborbital flight. However, despite VSS Unity not reaching orbit, the trajectory allows passengers to experience several minutes of weightlessness at an altitude high enough for them to see the Earth's curvature, Space.com explains. Following liftoff, Virgin Galactic's carrier plane VMS Eve transported VSS Unity to an altitude of about 44,300ft. Eve then dropped Unity which then fired its own rocket motor and ascended to suborbital space. Passengers aboard experienced approximately 3Gs. Live footage inside the spacecraft showed the passengers unstrapping themselves from their seats and peering out down to earth through the windows as they floated throughout the spacecraft.

Despite Galactic 02 being Virgin Galactic's second commercial spaceflight mission, it is the first flight to carry private customers. In June, Galactic 01 carried three crew members from the Italian air force and the National Research Council of Italy. According to Virgin Galactic, the company has already booked a backlog of about 800 customers. Tickets have ranged from $250,000 to $450,000. Galactic 03, the company's third commercial spaceflight, is planned for September.

A scientist has observed a "gravitational anomaly" in certain star systems that could potentially upend a fundamental assumption about the universe, according to a new study. Motherboard reports: Kyu-Hyun Chae, an astronomer at Sejong University, has now put these models to the test by analyzing the accelerations of stars in 26,500 wide binaries located within about 650 light years of Earth using imagery captured by the European Space Agency's Gaia observatory. Scientists have previously searched for signs of modified gravity in these systems, but Chae took the next step by developing a new code that could account for special details, like the occurrence rate of so-called "nested" binaries in which the loosely orbiting stars also have close stellar companions. The new data suggests that when the gravitational accelerations of these stars slip below one nanometer per second squared, they begin to move in ways that are more aligned with MOND models than by the standard model. Chae said the findings offer "direct evidence for the breakdown of standard gravity at weak acceleration" and reveal "an immovable anomaly of gravity in favor of MOND-based modified gravity," according to a recent study published in The Astrophysical Journal.

In the new study, Chae reports what he calls "clear evidence" that the movements of binaries at points of weak acceleration seem to sync up with a particular MOND prediction known as AQUAL, according to the study. This discovery suggests that the standard view of gravity cannot account for these motions at low accelerations, which may inspire scientists to rethink aspects of Newton's inverse square law of gravity and Einstein's general relativity, as well as the necessity of dark matter. "Because a large amount of dark matter -- six times the baryonic or ordinary matter based on the standard model -- was required by assuming that general relativity was valid in the low acceleration limit, such a need for a large amount of dark matter is no longer valid," Chae explained. "This does not necessarily preclude the possibility that new particles, such as sterile neutrinos, could not be found. But, it is clear that there is no need for as much dark matter as required by general relativity." "When the results started to show up from my new and more reliable code, my initial reaction was that it was unbelievable," Chae said in an email to Motherboard. "I was feeling like I was dreaming. It seemed so unreal. This is because my results did not match any previous results."

"Several previous results even claimed that the standard gravity was preferred by wide binaries data including Gaia DR3. One group has been claiming an anomaly for some time, but the anomaly seemed not to match well the predictions of existing modified gravity theories. However, those previous studies did not self-calibrate or fully take into account the amount of hidden nested binaries."

Researchers are now waking up to another factor why so many places on earth are getting warmer, one that could be filed under the category of unintended consequences: disappearing clouds known as ship tracks. From a report: Regulations imposed in 2020 by the United Nations's International Maritime Organization (IMO) have cut ships' sulfur pollution by more than 80% and improved air quality worldwide. The reduction has also lessened the effect of sulfate particles in seeding and brightening the distinctive low-lying, reflective clouds that follow in the wake of ships and help cool the planet. The 2020 IMO rule "is a big natural experiment," says Duncan Watson-Parris, an atmospheric physicist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. "We're changing the clouds."

By dramatically reducing the number of ship tracks, the planet has warmed up faster, several new studies have found. That trend is magnified in the Atlantic, where maritime traffic is particularly dense. In the shipping corridors, the increased light represents a 50% boost to the warming effect of human carbon emissions. It's as if the world suddenly lost the cooling effect from a fairly large volcanic eruption each year, says Michael Diamond, an atmospheric scientist at Florida State University. The natural experiment created by the IMO rules is providing a rare opportunity for climate scientists to study a geoengineering scheme in action -- although it is one that is working in the wrong direction. Indeed, one such strategy to slow global warming, called marine cloud brightening, would see ships inject salt particles back into the air, to make clouds more reflective. In Diamond's view, the dramatic decline in ship tracks is clear evidence that humanity could cool off the planet significantly by brightening the clouds. "It suggests pretty strongly that if you wanted to do it on purpose, you could," he says.

July has been confirmed as the hottest month on record globally after several heatwaves in parts of Europe, according to the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S). From a report: The global average temperature was 16.95C last month, surpassing the previous record set in 2019 by a substantial 0.33C. Temperatures exceeded 40C last week in several countries across Europe including Greece, France, Italy and Spain. Wildfires forced the evacuation of thousands of residents and tourists from several Greek islands including Rhodes. There were also high temperatures in South American countries, despite it being winter there.

July is estimated to have been about 1.5C warmer than the average for 1850-1900, according to C3S, and 0.72C warmer than the 1991-2020 average. Dr Samantha Burgess, deputy director of C3S, said: "We just witnessed global air temperatures and global ocean surface temperatures set new all-time records in July. These records have dire consequences for both people and the planet exposed to ever more frequent and intense extreme events. Antarctic sea ice has also been at record lows this July, freezing less than in any other winter since satellites began observations in 1979. Further reading: Iran Declares 2-Day Public Holiday on Extreme Heat.

Floods, fires and heavy rains have landed more blows across Europe this week, with the authorities on the continent scrambling to respond to the extreme weather that has become increasingly common in the past few years. From a report: The most recent events have destroyed large amounts of land, left dozens of people injured, forced thousands to evacuate and, in some cases, caused deaths, and they come on the heels of scorching temperatures that have engulfed much of Southern Europe this summer. Climate change has made extreme heat a fixture of the warmer months in Europe, but experts say that the continent has failed to significantly adapt to the hotter conditions. Governments in many countries are now struggling to address the devastating effects.

"The extreme weather conditions across Europe continue to be of concern," Roberta Metsola, the president of the European Parliament, wrote on Twitter. "The EU is showing solidarity with all those in need." Heavy rains in recent days have led rivers to overflow across Slovenia in what the authorities there said was the worst natural disaster since the country's independence in 1991. At least six people have died, according to the Slovenian news agency STA, and thousands have been forced to flee their homes to escape the floods. Several countries have tried to help, with France and Germany sending equipment such as prefabricated bridges, and even Ukraine, in the middle of a war with Russia, promising to send a helicopter.

Long-time Slashdot reader William Robinson shares a report from the BBC: India's space agency has released the first images of the Moon taken by the Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft, which entered lunar orbit on Saturday. The images show craters on lunar surface getting larger and larger as the spacecraft draws closer. Chandrayaan-3's lander and rover are due to reach the surface on August 23. If successful, India will be the first country to perform a controlled "soft landing" near the south pole. It will also become only the fourth to achieve a soft landing on the Moon after the US, the former Soviet Union and China.

After the spacecraft orbited the Earth for about 10 days, it was sent into the translunar orbit last Tuesday and successfully injected into the lunar orbit on Saturday. Indian Space Research Agency (Isro) said that all checks showed that Chandrayaan-3 was in good "health." It has also pointed out that "this is the third time in succession that Isro has successfully injected a spacecraft into the lunar orbit." Scientists say Chandrayaan-3, the third in India's program of lunar exploration, is expected to build on the success of its earlier Moon missions.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from New Atlas: Scientists have discovered that the Sun produces higher energy light than was thought possible. An unusual type of telescope detected gamma rays with energies of over 1 tera electron volt (TeV), at least five times more energetic than previously known. The Sun emits light spanning a wide range of energies, from infrared through visible light and up to ultraviolet. It was previously predicted that the Sun could produce gamma rays -- electromagnetic radiation with the highest energy -- through interactions with cosmic rays from distant sources, but these would rarely reach Earth to be detectable. A few decades later, these gamma rays were eventually detected by NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope in 2011. With more and more observations over the years since, Fermi found that the Sun was producing around seven times more gamma rays than had been predicted. Their energies were detected at up to 200 giga electron volts (GeV), which is the upper limit that Fermi can pick up.

So for the new study, scientists used a different instrument that's sensitive beyond that limit. The instrument in question is called the High-Altitude Water Cherenkov Observatory (HAWC), and it works in a way unlike your everyday telescope. It's made up of a series of 300 big tanks filled with 200 tons of water each. When gamma rays hit molecules in the Earth's atmosphere, they create a cascade of lower energy particles, and these can interact with the water molecules in those big tanks. Sensitive instruments keep watch for these interactions, and scientists can work backwards to calculate the energy of the original gamma ray. Using HAWC data gathered between 2015 and 2021, the researchers discovered that the Sun was producing gamma rays with energies well beyond that which Fermi detected. They were reaching energies on the scale of TeV, with some spiking to almost 10 TeV. Exactly how the Sun produces them remains a mystery, the team says, but further research will investigate how their energy gets so high and what role the Sun's magnetic field might play. The research was published in the journal Physical Review Letters.

After growing "increasingly frustrated" with the Google Maps experience, Fast Company's Michael Grothaus has highlighted five main reasons the app has "become a cluttered, frustrating mess" -- and why he finds himself turning to Apple Maps more often. An anonymous Slashdot reader shares an excerpt from the report: ENOUGH WITH THE HOTEL AND BAR PINS: Whenever I'm in a major metropolitan area, Google Maps seems to have an obsession with displaying as many hotels, bars, and clubs on the map as it can. This happens even when I haven't searched for a single hotel or bar. And it happens not only when I'm on vacation in a new city, but when I'm in my home city. Google knows my home address. So, why on Earth does it default to showing me as many hotels as possible in the city where I live? The same is true of clubs and bars. I see pins for more dance clubs and bars in one small area shown on my smartphone's display than I've ever actually been to in my life. Google knows I'm middle-aged and get up early to work. When I'm just browsing the map, can it really think I might care about the nearest club where patrons normally don't leave until well past midnight? By displaying all these irrelevant hotels and bars, Google makes it much harder to browse and navigate the map, since frequently the pins' labels overlap or obscure more important elements, such as the shape and layout of streets.

TOO MANY ADS CLUTTER THE MAP: The square pins you see in Google Maps are ad pins. They represent a place of business (a hotel, spa, etc.) that is paying Google to make sure it's displayed on the map, despite the business's irrelevance to me. Again, ad pins for hotels dominate, but right behind them are ad pins for restaurants with small text underneath them imploring me to "Order Delivery with Uber Eats," which just further clutters the map. Google is, of course, first and foremost an advertising company. Data compiled by Oberlo showed that 78.2% of its Q1 2023 total revenue of $69.8 billion came from ads. But its enthusiasm for placing ads in every corner of Google Maps just makes it all the more cluttered and increasingly hard to read. And that's before we even get to

PHOTO PINS SIGNIFY WHAT, EXACTLY?: Google Maps identifies points of interest primarily by pin color and glyph: Hotels are represented by a pink pin with an image of a person sleeping in a bed, restaurants get an orange pin with a fork and knife, and so forth. Regular pins, denoting businesses or other points of interest, are reverse teardrop-shaped, while ad pins are square-shaped. But, since last year, there is also now a third form: the photo pin. As best as I can tell, a photo pin is a pin for a business, but instead of a typical category glyph, it shows a large photo ostensibly related to the establishment. These pins don't appear to signify that the business is notable in any way. (I mean, I'm sure I've seen photo pins for muffler repair shops -- not exactly a tourist attraction.) The photo pin might be the ultimate map monopolizer. It's bigger, and the photo, seemingly pulled from a business's Google Maps listing, doesn't always even represent the business well. One photo pin I came across, oddly, seemed to show a photo of the dumpsters behind a restaurant. This just adds to user confusion and more clutter. It isn't helping the business, either.

I HAVE NO INTEREST IN SOMEONE'S WORK-FROM-HOME BUSINESS: Another major contributor to Google Maps being an eyesore these days is a holdover from the pandemic when so many people were stuck working from home -- or decided to begin offering their services from home. It is not uncommon to be browsing a residential area on Google Maps and be faced with a sea of work-from-home business pins. The number of "consultant" businesses I've seen in residential areas on Google Maps has been shocking. The same goes for web designers, app programmers, and handymen -- all of whom operate out of their residential homes. These may all be legitimate businesses run by self-employed people, but why on earth does Google Maps surface their listings on maps if they never have a single client enter their doors and, more important, if I've not searched for a provider of any of these services? Clutter, clutter, clutter.

WHY WON'T YOU SHOW ME THE STREET NAME?: Finally, Google Maps seems more intent today on showing bars, restaurants, ads, and work-from-home businesses than useful map-related features. Sometimes it doesn't even show the most basic information anymore, including street names. Many times I just want to see the name of the street I'm standing on. So, I open Google Maps and zoom in on my current location. Yet no matter how far in I zoom in, Google Maps doesn't always apply a label to the street I'm standing on. It just remains blank. Of course, business pins I have no interest in are still prominently displayed. A workaround I've stumbled upon whenever this happens is to select a business pin on the next street over. When Google Maps centers on that, it for some reason will label the street I'm standing on. Among all the gripes on this list, I think this one is my biggest. If my ad-hoc workaround doesn't work, I often have to open Apple Maps just to look up the name of the street I'm on.

Britain faces being left with no hope of meeting its crucial climate crisis goals and losing its status as a world leader in offshore wind energy without an urgent overhaul of government support, ministers are being warned. From a report: The sudden halting of one of the country's biggest offshore windfarm projects last month could signal a "tipping point" in the construction of new sites unless ministers intervene, a number of senior energy industry figures told the Observer.

They warn that a swathe of new projects, which Britain is relying on to meet key climate targets, could also become economically unviable under the existing regime. While the industry has been hit by huge price inflationary pressures, it warns that the government has failed to adjust the scheme that guarantees the price it is paid for energy. "If the government doesn't do something, there's a very real risk that, come September, just before party conferences, the story won't just be about getting rid of the 'green crap' -- it'll be about failing to deliver on the projects they've already said that they wanted," said one industry insider.

After a hurricane hit Florida, 484 buildings just at the Tyndall Air Force base were destroyed or damaged beyond repair. Five years later, it's part of a $5 billion, nine-year rebuilding effort the Washington Post describes as rare "blank slate." The plan is "not merely to rebuild it, but to construct what the U.S. military calls 'the installation of the future,' which will be able to withstand rising seas, stronger storms and other threats..." The rebuild at Tyndall, which is expected to continue into 2027, marks the largest military construction project undertaken by the Pentagon. "Think of it as the Air Force throwing its Costco card down on the table and buying buildings in bulk," said Michael Dwyer, deputy chief of the Natural Disaster Recovery Division. A dizzying array of new technologies and approaches have been incorporated into the effort, from semiautonomous robot dogs patrolling the grounds to artificial intelligence software designed to detect and deter any armed person who enters the base.

But the most robust funding is aimed at making Tyndall more efficient, connected and resilient in the face of a warming world. Structures under construction — from dormitory complexes to a child care center to hangars that will house three new squadrons of the F-35A Lightning II later this year — are being built to withstand winds in excess of 165 mph. Steel frames, high-impact windows, concrete facades and roofing with additional bracing are among the features meant to weather the stronger storms to come.

At nearby Panama City, sea level rise has accelerated in recent years, with federal data showing seas have risen there more than 4 inches since 2010. Planners factored in the potential for as much as 7 feet of sea level rise by the end of the century, and as a result placed the "vast majority" of new buildings at elevations that should be safe from storm surges for decades, Dwyer said. In addition, sensors placed near the low spots of buildings will send alerts the moment a flood threatens. The Air Force also has created a "digital twin" of Tyndall — essentially, a virtual duplicate of the base that allows officials to simulate how roads, buildings and other infrastructure would hold up in different scenarios, such as a hurricane or historic rainfall events.
Other efforts include restoring the beach's 10-foot sand dunes and its rocky shoreline, along with "the installation of submerged oyster reef breakwater that can reduce wave energy and erosion."

But the article points out that the Air Force also has a second hope for their base: "that the lessons unfolding here can be replicated at other bases around the world that will face — or already are facing — similar threats...

Is natural gas really a cleaner alternative to coal and oil? That claim "is facing increasing scrutiny," writes Slashdot reader sonlas: One significant concern with natural gas is the release of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas, during its extraction, production, transportation, and processing. Methane is approximately 30 times more effective at trapping heat in the atmosphere than CO2 over a 100-year period. (And methane leaks can occur at various stages of the gas supply chain, from wellhead emissions during drilling and extraction to leakage during transportation and distribution.) Additionally, intentional venting or flaring of methane also contributes to the problem.

An article published in Environmental Research Letters challenges the assumption that natural gas is a cleaner energy source compared to coal or oil. Their study takes into account the full lifecycle emissions of natural gas, including methane leakage rates, and arrives at a different conclusion. With a methane leakage rate of 7.5% and other relevant factors considered, the greenhouse gas emissions from natural gas can be on par with or even exceed those of coal. Even a lower methane leakage rate of 2% can diminish the environmental advantage of natural gas significantly.

A key aspect of this study is its focus on real-world methane leakage rates. Aerial measurements conducted in various oil and gas production regions in the U.S. revealed substantial methane leak rates ranging from 0.65% to a staggering 66.2%. (Similar leakage rates have been identified in other parts of the world.) These findings raise serious concerns about the climate impact of natural gas and cast doubt on its role as a so-called "transition energy" in the quest for cleaner and more sustainable energy sources, especially liquefied natural gas...

This complicates the search for sustainable energy solutions, especially in Europe where gas was included in the green taxonomy following a push from Germany.

A new analysis "shows that over 4,000 gigawatts (GW) of offshore wind potential is available along the U.S. coastline," capable of fulfilling up to 25% of U.S. energy demand in 2050. (And it could also add $1.8 trillion in economy-boosting investment, while employing up to 390,000 workers.)

This new analysis comes from Berkeley researchers, who worked with nonprofit clean energy research firm GridLab and climate policy think tank Energy Innovation, reports the Verge: The Biden administration has committed to halving the nation's emissions by the end of the decade and has plans to source electricity completely from carbon pollution-free energy by 2035. Adding to that urgency, U.S. electricity demand is forecast to nearly triple by 2050, according to the Berkeley report. On top of a growing economy, the clean energy transition means electrifying more vehicles and homes — all of which put more stress on the power grid unless more power supply comes online at a similar pace.

To meet that demand and hit its climate goals, the report says the U.S. has to add 27 gigawatts of offshore wind and 85 GW of land-based wind and solar each year between 2035 and 2050. That timeline might still seem far away, but it's a big escalation of the Biden administration's current goal of deploying 30 GW of offshore wind by 2030. Europe, with an electricity grid about 70% the size of the U.S., already has about as much offshore wind capacity as the Biden administration hopes to build up by the end of the decade. Right now, wind energy makes up just over 10% of the U.S. electricity mix, and nearly all of that comes from land-based turbines...

For now, the U.S. has just two small wind farms off the coasts of Rhode Island and Virginia. Construction started on the foundations for the nation's first commercial-scale wind farm off Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts, in June... Project costs have gone up with higher interest rates and rising prices for key commodities like steel, Heatmap reports. That's led to power purchase agreements falling through for some projects in early development, including plans in Rhode Island for an 884-megawatt wind farm that alone would have added more than 20 times as much generation capacity as the U.S. has today from offshore wind. Developers are struggling to make projects profitable without passing costs on to consumers...

The study found a modest 2 to 3 percent increase in wholesale electricity costs with ambitious renewable energy deployment. But renewable energy costs have fallen so dramatically in the past that the researchers think those costs could wind up being smaller over time.
The report points out that wind energy complements solar, by producing the most wind energy right when demand is peaking (in the summertime on the West Coast, and during the winter on the East Coast).

Recently Ars Technica reported on "another application for SpaceX's Starship architecture that the company is studying," adding that NASA "is on board to lend expertise.

"Though still in a nascent phase of tech development, the effort could result in repurposing Starship into a commercial space station, something NASA has a keen interest in because there are no plans for a government-owned research lab in low-Earth orbit after the International Space Station is decommissioned after 2030." NASA announced last month a new round of agreements with seven commercial companies, including SpaceX. The Collaborations for Commercial Space Capabilities (CCSC) program is an effort established to advance private sector development of emerging products and services that could be available to customers — including NASA — in approximately five to seven years... NASA passed over SpaceX's bid for a funded space station development agreement in 2021, identifying concerns about SpaceX's plans for scaling its life-support system to enable long-duration missions and SpaceX's plan for a single docking port, among other issues. The space agency isn't providing any funding for the new CCSC effort, which includes the Starship space station concept, but the government will support the industry with technical expertise, including expert assessments, lessons learned, technologies, and data.

Apart from the SpaceX agreement, NASA said it will provide non-financial support to Blue Origin's initiative to develop a crew spacecraft for orbital missions that would launch on the company's New Glenn rocket. The agency also supports Northrop Grumman's development of a human-tended research platform in low-Earth orbit to work alongside the company's planned space station. The other companies NASA picked for unfunded agreements were: Sierra Space's proposal for a crewed version of its Dream Chaser spacecraft, Vast's concept for a privately owned space station, ThinkOrbital's plan to develop welding, cutting, inspection, and additive manufacturing technology for construction work in space, and Special Aerospace Services for collaboration on an autonomous maneuvering unit to assist, or potentially replace, spacewalkers working outside a space station.

Despite the lack of NASA funding, the new collaboration announcement with SpaceX laid out — in broad strokes, at least — one of the directions SpaceX may want to take Starship. NASA said it will work with SpaceX on an "integrated low-Earth orbit architecture" that includes the Starship vehicle and other SpaceX programs, including the Dragon crew capsule and Starlink broadband network.
The artice links to a recent NASA document detailing SpaceX's space station concept. Phil McAlister, who heads NASA's commercial spaceflight division, says its size and reduced cost "could have a far-reaching impact on the sustainable development of the low-Earth orbit) economy...

"Adding increased confidence is the company's plan to self-fund Starship development from its launch and satellite enterprises."

Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader Amiga Trombone for sharing the article.

"NASA has reestablished full communications with Voyager 2," according to a mission update posted Friday: The agency's Deep Space Network facility in Canberra, Australia, sent the equivalent of an interstellar "shout" more than 12.3 billion miles (19.9 billion kilometers) to Voyager 2, instructing the spacecraft to reorient itself and turn its antenna back to Earth. With a one-way light time of 18.5 hours for the command to reach Voyager, it took 37 hours for mission controllers to learn whether the command worked. At 12:29 a.m. EDT on Aug. 4, the spacecraft began returning science and telemetry data, indicating it is operating normally and that it remains on its expected trajectory.
"Had the Earth-based signals not reached Voyager 2, the spacecraft is already programmed to reorient itself multiple times a year to keep its antenna pointing in our planet's direction," CNN points out. "The next reset was already scheduled for October 15. But the team didn't want to wait that long..."

After controllers sent the wrong command to the 46-year-old spacecraft, Voyager 2's antenna needed to be shifted "a mere 2 degrees," notes The Associated Press:

Voyager 2 has been hurtling through space since its launch in 1977 to explore the outer solar system. Launched two weeks later, its twin, Voyager 1, is now the most distant spacecraft — 15 billion miles (24 billion kilometers) away — and still in contact. As long as their plutonium power holds, the Voyagers may be alive and well for the 50th anniversary of their launch in 2027, according to Dodd. Among the scientific tidbits they've beamed back in recent years include details about the interstellar magnetic field and the abundance of cosmic rays.