Signs of water on asteroid Bennu

Voyager 2 probe crosses into interstellar space

ORLANDO, Fla, Dec 11, (RTRS): NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft has discovered ingredients for water on a relatively nearby skyscraper-sized asteroid, a rocky acorn-shaped object that may hold clues to the origins of life on Earth, scientists said on Monday.

OSIRIS-REx, which flew last week within a scant 12 miles (19 km) of the asteroid Bennu some 1.4 million miles (2.25 million km) from Earth, found traces of hydrogen and oxygen molecules – part of the recipe for water and thus the potential for life – embedded in the asteroid’s rocky surface.

The probe, on a mission to return samples from the asteroid to Earth for study, was launched in 2016. Bennu, roughly a third of a mile wide (500 meters), orbits the sun at roughly the same distance as Earth. There is concern among scientists about the possibility of Bennu impacting Earth late in the 22nd century.

“We have found the water-rich minerals from the early solar system, which is exactly the kind of sample we were going out there to find and ultimately bring back to Earth,” University of Arizona planetary scientist Dante Lauretta, the OSIRIS-REx mission’s principal investigator, said in a telephone interview.

Asteroids are among the leftover debris from the solar system’s formation some 4.5 billion years ago. Scientists believe asteroids and comets crashing into early Earth may have delivered organic compounds and water that seeded the planet for life, and atomic-level analysis of samples from Bennu could provide key evidence to support that hypothesis.

closed for her, she had a police escort and the mayor joined her for a jog.

“When you see all the traffic banked up at the traffic lights for you, you just think ‘wow I need to be running faster or something’,” she said.

Despite an itinerary that would be the envy of many a seasoned traveller, Guli and her six-strong support team have no time for tourism. (AFP)

Last elephant stay or go?:

When the last African elephant at the Johannesburg Zoo lost her male companion to illness in

OSIRIS-REx will pass later this month just 1.2 miles (1.9 km) from Bennu, entering the asteroid’s gravitational pull and analyzing its terrain. From there, the spacecraft will begin to gradually tighten its orbit around the asteroid, spiraling to within just 6 feet (2 meters) of its surface so its robot arm can snatch a sample of Bennu by July 2020.

The spacecraft will later fly back to Earth, jettisoning a capsule bearing the asteroid specimen for a parachute descent in the Utah desert in September 2023.

Voyager 2, a NASA probe launched in 1977 and designed for just a fiveyear mission, has become only the second human-made object to enter interstellar space as it continues its marathon trek billions of miles (km) from Earth, scientists said on Monday.

Data from instruments aboard the spacecraft showed it crossed the outer edge of the heliosphere, a protective bubble of particles and magnetic fields produced by the sun, on Nov 5, 2018, the US space agency said.

The boundary crossed by the intrepid probe as it journeys a bit more than 11 billion miles (18 billion km) from Earth is called the heliopause, a place where the hot solar wind runs up against the interstellar medium, the soup of stuff residing between the stars of our Milky Way galaxy.

“This is a very exciting time again in Voyager’s 41-year journey, so far, of exploring the planets and now the heliosphere and entering interstellar space,” Ed Stone, Voyager project scientist based at Caltech, told a news

September, some people said 39-year-old Lammie should be sent to a bigger sanctuary so she wouldn’t spend her final years alone. The debate is particularly sensitive because the world’s biggest land mammal is known for intelligence, strong social bonds and even the ability to grieve. The zoo now says Lammie is staying, and that a search for a new mate is underway.

The case of Lammie, born in the zoo, echoes that of Happy, an Asian elephant that has lived at the Bronx Zoo in New York since 1977, including over a decade without another elephant in the same enclosure. Some activists say Happy should briefing.

Voyager 2 was launched in 1977, 16 days before its twin probe Voyager 1, which reached interstellar space in 2012. Voyager 2’s instrument called the Plasma Science Experiment (PLS) is able to provide observations of the nature of this region of space. While Voyager 1 is still going strong on its own journey in interstellar space, its PLS stopped working in 1980.

The Voyager probes were designed to last five years and study the giant gas planets Jupiter and Saturn. Their refusal to die has also let them study Uranus and Neptune, the solar system’s outermost giant planets.

Two Russian cosmonauts are preparing to venture outside the International Space Station to inspect a section where a mysterious leak has been discovered.

The leak was spotted on Aug 30, 2018 in the Russian Soyuz spacecraft attached to the station. The crew quickly located and sealed the tiny hole that created a slight loss of pressure, and space officials said the station has remained safe to operate.

Russian cosmonauts Oleg Kononenko and Sergei Prokopyev will conduct a six-hour spacewalk Wednesday to inspect the Soyuz’s outer surface. They will uncover the thermal insulation covering the patched hole and take samples that would be studied by experts.

Roscosmos chief Dmitry Rogozin has previously said that the hole could have been drilled during manufacturing or while in orbit.

go to a sanctuary with other elephants, but the zoo said in 2016 that she is “healthy and comfortable,” has bonded with the people who care for her and has “tactile and auditory contact” with the zoo’s other two elephants.

In Johannesburg, Lammie had lived for 17 years with Kinkel, a 35-year-old male elephant who was rescued in the wild after his trunk was caught in a snare in 2000. Since he died on Sept 4, Lammie has been on her own and some conservation groups say it’s time to move out.

“Now that Lammie has lost her companion, she is in desperate need of a happier existence and the chance to live out her years with other elephants,” Audrey Delsink, wildlife director of Humane Society International/Africa, said in a statement. She said many zoos around the world have recognized the “welfare challenges” of confining such a complex animal and that a sanctuary similar to the wild is ready to take Lammie if the Johannesburg Zoo agrees to let her go.

South Africa’s NSPCA, an animal welfare group, appealed for an end to “the endless and redundant cycle of continuously condemning elephants to captivity for many years to come.”

The Johannesburg Zoo says it serves an educational role and hosts visitors from low-income communities who don’t have the means to visit wildlife parks. But Michele Pickover, director of the EMS Foundation, which lobbies on African wildlife topics, said “nobody learns anything” by seeing a “tormented elephant” in an enclosure and that watching a documentary film about elephants would be more educational. (AFP)