Nasa puts up deep-space atomic clock

 Nasa has put a miniaturised atomic clock in orbit that it believes can revolutionise deep-space navigation.

This was only the third time a Falcon Heavy had flown 

About the size of a toaster, the device is said to have 50 times the stability of existing space clocks, such as those flown in GPS satellites.

If the technology proves itself over the next year, Nasa will install the clock in future planetary probes.

The timepiece was one of 24 separate deployments from a Falcon Heavy rocket that launched from Florida on Tuesday.

The other passengers on the flight were largely also demonstrators. They included a small spacecraft to test a new type of "green" rocket fuel, and another platform that aims to propel itself via the pressure of sunlight caught in a large membrane; what's often called a "lightsail".

But it is the mercury-ion atomic clock, developed at Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), which has had most attention.

Today, deep-space probes are tracked across the Solar System via radio signals.

These signals are sent from Earth and are immediately returned by the spacecraft. The very precise time taken for the speed-of-light messages to echo back enables navigators to work out the mission's exact position and to command the necessary course corrections. 

But if probes carried their own atomic clocks, this two-way system could be reduced to one-way, and the missions' onboard computers would then make all the necessary navigational calculations.

Development of the satellite to carry the clock was started by SSTL's US division

The atomic clocks currently used on Earth for deep-space navigation are refrigerator-sized. JPL's engineers have shrunk this down to something that can easily be accommodated on a spacecraft.

Deputy principal investigator Jill Seubert said "self-driving spacecraft" were one of the top technologies needed to put humans on Mars.

"Autonomous onboard navigation means that a spacecraft can perform its own navigation in real-time without waiting for directions to be sent from navigators back here on Earth. And with this capability, a human-crewed spacecraft can be delivered safely to a landing site with less uncertainty in their path," she told reporters.

Don Cornwell, from Nasa's Space Communications and Navigation Program, added: "Of course, for a spacecraft travelling well beyond Earth orbit, the smallest clock inaccuracies can lead to large navigational errors. But [the new clock] has a high degree of clock stability, meaning it can maintain its accuracy over many years.

"The deep space atomic clock's design should gain or lose less than 2 nanoseconds per day, or an error of one second in nine million years." 

The development of the spacecraft chassis, or bus, that is carrying the clock was begun by the British manufacturer Surrey Satellite Technology Limited at its US division, which was then later sold to the American General Atomics company.

Surrey itself had an interest in six other spacecraft launched on Monday's Falcon Heavy.

The UK firm assembled this sextet of platforms to be part of a constellation known as FORMOSAT-7. It is a joint US-Taiwanese initiative to monitor the weather by interrogating the way radio signals from GPS satellites are affected as they pass through the atmosphere.

Tuesday was the third time a Falcon Heavy had flown. The rocket is essentially three Falcon-9 rockets strapped together.

As is customary now for the rocket operator SpaceX, the three boosters were commanded to come back to Earth under control once they had finished the job of sending the multi-satellite mission on its way.

Two of the boosters successfully landed back at Cape Canaveral. The third just missed its touchdown target on a drone ship out in the Atlantic.

Weather satellites: FORMOSAT-7 is also known as COSMIC-2 in the US

How Deadly Were the UK’s Secret Nazi Concentration Camps?

Smithsonian Channel

 Six million Jews died in the Holocaust, and yet not a word about them is spoken during Adolf Island, a new documentary special premiering on the Smithsonian Channel (June 23) that investigates the only SS-run concentration camps on British soil—specifically, on the Jersey Island of Alderney, 60 miles off the South Coast of England.

A hevily protected concrete block house on the camp's perimiter, note the especially thick concrete roof, this camp was expecting to be heavily bombed and was clearly being built for a very special purpose. SS larger Sylt was the only Nazi Concentration Camp built on UK soil

According to the program, the men and women rounded up by the Nazis were “dissidents and outsiders” and “political opponents,” but as for Jews, well, they don’t warrant a single mention, even in passing—an omission that epitomizes the speciousness of this hour-long program.

Adolf Island claims that it wants to uncover long-buried WWII Alderney atrocities in order to pay tribute to the experiences of the slain. However, it goes out of its way to not actually identify the types of people who might have perished on the island. Alderney boasted two work camps (Borkum and Helgoland) and two concentration camps (Norderney and Sylt), and Sylt was operated by the SS—and housed, that’s right, Jews.

The Dachau concentration camp was a Nazi concentration camp near the town of Dachau in Munich, Germany. It was built in 1933 and was opened until 1945. Dachau is one of the Nazi concentration camps best known and visited by the public. At the moment the facilities fulfill the function of Commemorative Museum on July 23, 2018 in Munich, Germany.

 Regardless, the show only discusses these facilities’ victims in a generic manner, even as archival footage depicts gaunt concentration camp inmates who, at least to some degree, were likely Jewish. Its narrative-warping silence is all the more striking considering its purported goal, articulated by a Washington, D.C., Holocaust Museum interviewee: to learn more about small concentration camps because “one of the things that we really try to do here is bring back people’s identities, humanize them. That they’re not just numbers, but that they’re actual people that had lives.”

The Dachau concentration camp was a Nazi concentration camp near the town of Dachau in Munich, Germany. It was built in 1933 and was opened until 1945. Dachau is one of the Nazi concentration camps best known and visited by the public. At the moment the facilities fulfill the function of Commemorative Museum on July 23, 2018 in Munich, Germany.

 That they did—many of them Jewish lives!—although good luck finding out much about them here. Adolf Island details the work of professor and forensic investigator Caroline Sturdy Colls, whose prior research led to the discovery of mass graves at the Treblinka concentration camp.

As Colls explains, Hitler invaded Alderney in 1940 as part of his larger takeover of the entire Jersey Islands, which he planned to fortify as military bases that would help him control the English Channel. Archival footage of German officers having their car doors opened by British police officers certainly proves chilling, as does present-day imagery of the remnants of the German occupation—concrete barrier walls, gun turrets and army barracks—that still pepper the windswept locale’s landscape.

The Dachau concentration camp was a Nazi concentration camp near the town of Dachau in Munich, Germany. It was built in 1933 and was opened until 1945. Dachau is one of the Nazi concentration camps best known and visited by the public. At the moment the facilities fulfill the function of Commemorative Museum on July 23, 2018 in Munich, Germany

Colls arrives in Alderney with the hope of excavating near a cemetery at Longis Common where 336 German prisoners were buried, because she suspects that the actual body count was far greater. Given the Nazis’ homicidal ruthlessness, Colls’ suspicions seem perfectly valid. 

The actual evidence she has to suggest this is true, however, only amounts to her familiarity with Nazi practices, and a few anecdotal accounts about which we’re briefly informed. Nonetheless, Colls acts as if she’s on the verge of making monumental history. “This is probably the biggest murder case on British soil in the modern age,” she proclaims at outset.

An impediment to Colls’ research soon arises in the form of the local Alderney government, via a letter denying her request to perform archaeological digs; only non-invasive measures are permitted. This is cast by Colls, and Adolf Island, as a blatant denial of history and cover-up of wartime horrors, because doing so allows Colls to present herself as a persecuted crusader.

The Dachau concentration camp was a Nazi concentration camp near the town of Dachau in Munich, Germany. It was built in 1933 and was opened until 1945. Dachau is one of the Nazi concentration camps best known and visited by the public. At the moment the facilities fulfill the function of Commemorative Museum on July 23, 2018 in Munich, Germany.

The problem is, we never directly hear from the Alderney government about its reasoning, which makes this David-vs.-Goliath dynamic feel as false and manufactured as the many shots of Colls walking around Alderney. Never fear, though, as Colls enlists the help of an expert team of drone operators (their airborne devices equipped with LIDAR technology) to photograph the sites in question—techniques that afford never-before-seen views of the structures hidden beneath Alderney’s brush-covered surface.

The results, you’ll be stunned to hear, are…underwhelming. Moreover, they fail to achieve Colls’ stated aims: to comprehend the true scale of the camp (which remains only vaguely known); to deduce how it functioned (the best she can tell, it was a labor camp, and sometimes sent prisoners back to Germany’s Neuengamme camp); and to determine who its victims were (again, maybe…Jews?!?).

German artist Gunter Demnig puts 3 Snublesten (Stolpersteine; stumbling stones) - in front of the Synagogue in Copenhagen, on June 17, 2019. - Stumbling blocks are memorial stones laid in the pavement next to houses where victims of Nazism had their homes. The Danish initiative group behind the decommissioning has chosen to put the stumbling blocks for 12 people, all of whom became victims of the Holocaust. Some of the victims are Danish Jews, others are stateless. The Danish victims were deported after Nazi Germany in October 1943 decided to take all Danish Jews and send them to concentration camps in Germany. Since 1992, Gunter Demnig has placed over 74, 000 Snublesten in 24 European countries.

Rather than providing real insight into its central questions, Adolf Island infers through unsubstantiated tidbits as a means of tricking viewers into thinking the fluff they’re hearing about and seeing is concrete proof of something. That’s never more true than during the finale, when Colls reports that she’s “identified features that have characteristics of unmarked burials”—and then the narrator baldly triples down by stating that Colls has unearthed “a crime scene” and that her data “confirm the presence of the mass grave.”

Speaking of the narrator: rarely has voiceover been as bluntly expository as it is in this program. Everything is relayed in the most loaded, portentous and/or overblown language imaginable, and that goes for Colls as well, whose to-the-camera utterances are all carefully written sound bites.

The Dachau concentration camp was a Nazi concentration camp near the town of Dachau in Munich, Germany. It was built in 1933 and was opened until 1945. Dachau is one of the Nazi concentration camps best known and visited by the public. At the moment the facilities fulfill the function of Commemorative Museum on July 23, 2018 in Munich, Germany.

Practical maps, cursory newsreel clips and ominous music round out this unimaginative package. While it’s easy to excuse such crude aesthetics as part and parcel of a reality-TV production designed for easy digestion—replete with post-commercial recaps of the prior action, for those viewers just tuning in—they stand in sharp contrast to the more daring non-fiction artistry that can be found, on a routine basis, on HBO, Netflix, and numerous other small-screen outlets.

In effect, Adolf Island is a lot like those dishonest ghost-hunting cable shows that overhype the importance of their sleuthing, treat each new development like a bombshell (before speeding on to the next one), and then end by making definitive conclusions that aren’t supported by the preceding findings.

The Dachau concentration camp was a Nazi concentration camp near the town of Dachau in Munich, Germany. It was built in 1933 and was opened until 1945. Dachau is one of the Nazi concentration camps best known and visited by the public. At the moment the facilities fulfill the function of Commemorative Museum on July 23, 2018 in Munich, Germany

Colls comes across as sincerely interested in examining and exposing heretofore-ignored Nazi malevolence. Nonetheless, by trading in faux-revelations, and treating common-sense logic as headline-deserving news—I mean, can you believe Himmler gave SS commandants the authority to kill concentration camp prisoners?—her Alderney inquiry comes across as a disingenuous attempt to give voice to those who died in the Holocaust.

The vast majority of which were, you know, Jews. 

Nanda Devi: seven bodies recovered in search for eight missing climbers in the Himalayas

Seven bodies have been recovered during the search for eight missing climbers in the Himalayas, according to officials.

A group of eight mountaineers, including four Brits, went missing at the end of May during an expedition on Nanda Devi East.

An administrator of Uttarakhand state, Vijay Jogdande, said soldiers reached the bodies on Sunday but they had yet to be identified.

The bodies will be brought from where they were found, at an altitude of more than 5,000 metres, to the base camp.

Contact with the team was lost on May 26 following an avalanche.

Eight climbers went missing on Nanda Devi mountain in India

Officials said they were all presumed dead.

Veteran British mountaineer Martin Moran led a team of four Britons, two Americans, an Australian and an Indian on the expedition.

Five bodies believed to be from the missing team were spotted by air nearly two weeks ago.

Ground expeditions, by the Indian paramilitary forces and the Indian Mountaineering Foundation, were launched after helicopter missions failed to reach the area.

The search for the missing eighth mountaineer will continue, Mr Jogdande said.

While HS Chauhan, president of the Indian Mountaineering Foundation, said authorities would decide on an air evacuation of the bodies depending on weather conditions and ground expeditions also are in the area for the task.

Mr Moran has been a mountain guide since 1985 and set up his company - Moran Mountain, based in Strathcarron in the Scottish Highlands - with his wife Joy.

Their grown-up children, Hazel and Alex, also work for the business.

In an earlier statement, the Moran family said: "We are deeply saddened by the tragic events unfolding in the Nanda Devi region of the Indian Himalayas."

Academic Richard Payne, from the University of York, is also believed to be among the missing climbers.

Dogs pull a sled on water-covered sea ice near Qaanaaq, Greenland, on June 13, 2019. An abundance of water from a rapid summer melt had pooled on top of a wide swath of solid sea ice.

Researchers Discover Giant Freshwater Aquifer off U.S. East Coast

The south shore of Martha’s Vineyard.

In a welcome bit of news as water shortages hit major cities worldwide, scientists have discovered an enormous low-salinity aquifer off the U.S. East Coast. The researchers say it could indicate other such aquifers trapped beneath the salty seas in ocean sediments across the planet.

Hints of the aquifer’s existence go all the way back to the 1970s, when companies drilling for oil off the Eastern seaboard would occasionally encounter relatively freshwater instead. But scientists weren’t aware of its full extent until a Columbia-led research expedition set out to map subterranean water offshore in 2015. The results of that analysis, published Tuesday in Scientific Reports, suggests this thing’s gigantic: about 650 feet deep, extending up to 50 miles wide, and stretching from New Jersey to Massachusetts and possibly farther.

All told, the researchers estimate the aquifer contains some 670 cubic miles of water. As noted in a press release, if brought to the surface it could create a lake spanning 15,000 square miles. “There’s been drilling on all continents showing this [offshore subterranean freshwater] occurs everywhere,” lead study author Chloe Gustafson, a PhD candidate at Columbia’s Earth Institute, told Earther. “But drilling boreholes are just point measurements. Our study confirms [an] extensive and robust aquifer extending from the shore.”

To reach that conclusion, the researchers surveyed off the coast of New Jersey, where boreholes previously indicated freshwater, and off the coast of Martha’s Vineyard, where onshore drill holes and models hinted at the presence of freshwater in offshore sediments. They used two different electromagnetic (EM) mapping techniques, deploying passive receivers on the seafloor to measure ambient EM fields, and towing a transmitter behind the ship that emitted its own EM field. As Gustafon explained, when EM fields penetrate the seafloor, the nature of the waves changes as they interact with water of different conductivities. Since saltwater is much more conductive than freshwater, the two create distinct EM profiles.

Hatched area shows the likely extent of the aquifer scientists have mapped off the U.S. eastern seaboard, with triangles showing ship tracks. The dotted white line shows the southern extent of the Laurentide Ice Sheet during the last Ice Age.

This analysis revealed a continuous, low-salinity aquifer system in both locations, most of it separated from the overlying seawater by hundreds of feet of sediment. Given the similarities between the two sites and the fact that onshore aquifers exist up and down the coast, the researchers believe it’s very likely the aquifer spans this entire stretch of coastline—although doing more surveys between New Jersey and Massachusetts in order verify that would be a “next logical step,” Gustafon said.

You might wonder how a giant freshwater aquifer winds up buried beneath hundreds of feet of seawater. The likely answer is that it didn’t use to be at the bottom of the ocean at all.

During the last Ice Age, sea levels were much lower and much of what’s now the continental shelf would have been exposed land. At that time, rivers and rainfall could have started to build up an aquifer from the surface. In the case of Martha’s Vineyard, which was buried beneath the Laurentide Ice Sheet, glacial meltwater could have also contributed. Over time, more sediments would have been deposited, trapping this water in place. Eventually, the Earth warmed up, the ice sheets retreated, sea levels rose, and the aquifer found itself at the bottom of the sea.

Mysterious glowing light on Mars captured by Nasa's Curiosity probe

Mars.

A photograph taken by Nasa’s Curiosity rover on Mars has captured a mysterious bright glow on a distant Martian hillside.

The black and white photograph shows the desert landscape with high rocky hills in the background.

The image from Curiosity’s left navcam at the same time shows the craft was attempting to take a self-portrait over the Martian terrain.

 In front of the larger rock formations, a tiny elongated white blob appears to be streaking past.

Since Aug. 6, 2012, NASA's Curiosity rover has been exploring the red planet, investigating its climate and geology, detecting favorable environmental conditions that could support microbial life, investigating into the role of water and the planet's habitability to support human exploration in the future. We take a look at some incredible photographs that help explain what Mars looks like up close.

(Pictured) Curiosity takes a selfie — by combining around 60 photographs taken by its Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) camera. The 23 feet (7 meters) tall M12 mesa (a flat-topped hill) is seen in the background.

Nasa has previously admitted to similar anomalies in pictures taken by the probe. This image was taken on 16 June, and while conspiracy theorists have said the photograph is evidence of extra-terrestrials on the Red Planet, it appears more likely to have been a cosmic ray, some kind of camera lens flare or sunlight reflecting on rocks.

The Curiosity rover landed on the surface of Mars in 2012, and is armed with 17 cameras. Since then it has roamed all over the planet, beaming back huge amounts of data along with vast quantities of photographs. Many other pictures it has captured have featured anomalous lights too.

The image from Curiosity’s left navcam at the same time shows the craft was attempting to take a self-portrait over the Martian terrain

The rover has two mounted “navcams” on its mast, which act as a stereo pair of cameras – a bit like eyes. The black and white images capture panoramic 3D imagery and each has a 45 degree field of view, giving ground control crews a detailed view of the planet’s terrain.

The image in question was taken by the right navcam. Unfortunately, the left camera wasn’t looking in the same direction, and photos from the same set and time show it having swivelled down to take some kind of space selfie, showing parts of the craft over rocks and dust on the ground.

The appearance and disappearance of the unidentified white blob appears to have been rapid, as photos taken immediately before and after don’t show the same unidentified phenomenon.

When another bright spot captured in pictures taken by the rover made headlines in 2014, people claimed it was “light from an alien hut”.

But Justin Maki, the leader of the team that built and operates Curiosity’s navcams rapidly put those theories to bed.

He said: “In the thousands of images we’ve received from Curiosity, we see ones with bright spots nearly every week.

“These can be caused by cosmic-ray hits or sunlight glinting from rock surfaces, as the most likely explanations.”

Cosmic rays are formed by highly charged atomic particles, often from outside our own solar system, which travel through space at almost the speed of light and can produce visual effects upon impact. They are more common on Mars than on Earth due to the thin atmosphere which doesn’t provide as effective a barrier to cosmic radiation.

NASA spacecraft snaps detailed asteroid picture from closest orbit yet

A picture of asteroid Bennu, taken by NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft from .4 miles away

NASA’s asteroid-sampling spacecraft OSIRIS-REx just snapped its closest picture yet of Bennu, the deep-space rock it’s been hovering around since the end of last year. 

The high-resolution image highlights the object’s very rocky surface and even showcases a very large boulder on its southern half.

OSIRIS-REx took this up-close picture on June 13th, right after the spacecraft inserted itself into orbit around Bennu for the second time.

The vehicle first got into Bennu’s orbit on December 31st, 2018, flying about a mile away from the asteroid’s surface. From that path, OSIRIS-REx mapped Bennu’s surface in intricate detail, and also observed some interesting things from this vantage point, including rocks spewing from Bennu’s surface.

The closest orbit that any spacecraft has ever achieved around another space object

OSIRIS-REx is still mapping Bennu, and last week, its mission team maneuvered the spacecraft even closer to the asteroid. Now, OSIRIS-REx is orbiting within just 0.4 miles of Bennu’s surface, which is less than the height of the Burj Khalifa in Dubai. That’s the closest orbit that any spacecraft has ever achieved around another space object. And that makes the picture that OSIRIS-REx snapped above the closest image ever taken of an orbiting spacecraft.

OSIRIS-REx will stay in its tight orbit until the second week of August and will continue to figure out which sites would be best for grabbing a sample next year.

It’s going to be tough, though, since OSIRIS-REx has found that Bennu is a particularly rocky place.

The mission team wants the spacecraft’s sample site to be clear of debris and rocks, in order to make scooping up materials an easier process. Hopefully, this tighter orbit will allow OSIRIS-REx to get an even better view of Bennu, helping scientists figure out the best place for a sample grab by summer of 2020.