Existence of volcanoes makes idea that dwarf planet is inert ball of ice look increasingly improbable. From a report: Strung out in the icy reaches of our solar system, two peaks that tower over the surface of the dwarf planet Pluto have perplexed planetary scientists for years. Some speculated it could be an ice volcano, spewing out not lava but vast quantities of icy slush -- yet no cauldron-like caldera could be seen. Now a full analysis of images and topographical data suggests it is not one ice volcano but a merger of many -- some up to 7,000 metres tall and about 10-150km across. Their discovery has reignited another debate: what could be keeping Pluto warm enough to support volcanic activity? Sitting at the southern edge of a vast heart-shaped ice sheet, these unusual surface features were initially spotted when Nasa's New Horizons spacecraft flew past in July 2015, providing the first close-up images of the icy former planet and its moons.

"We were instantly intrigued by this area because it was so different and striking-looking," said Dr Kelsi Singer, a New Horizons co-investigator and deputy project scientist at Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado. "There are these giant broad mounds, and then this hummocky-like, undulating texture superimposed on top; and even on top of that there's a smaller bouldery kind of texture." At the time, an ice volcano seemed like the least-weird explanation for these features -- there were no impact craters from asteroids or meteors nearby, suggesting these features had been erased by relatively recent geological events; and no evidence of plate tectonics -- a key contributor to mountain formation on Earth.

SpaceX has ended production of new Crew Dragon astronaut capsules, a company executive told Reuters, as Elon Musk's space transportation company heaps resources on its next-generation spaceship program. From the report: Capping the fleet at four Crew Dragons adds more urgency to the development of the astronaut capsule's eventual successor, Starship, SpaceX's moon and Mars rocket. Starship's debut launch has been delayed for months by engine development hurdles and regulatory reviews. It also poses new challenges as the company learns how to maintain a fleet and quickly fix unexpected problems without holding up a busy schedule of astronaut missions.

"We are finishing our final (capsule), but we still are manufacturing components, because we'll be refurbishing," SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell told Reuters, confirming the plan to end Crew Dragon manufacturing. She added that SpaceX would retain the capability to build more capsules if a need arises in the future, but contended that "fleet management is key." Musk's business model is underpinned by reusable spacecraft, so it was inevitable the company would cease production at some point. But the timing was not known, nor was his strategy of using the existing fleet for its full backlog of missions. "Crew Dragon has flown five crews of government and private astronauts to space since 2020, when it flew its first pair of NASA astronauts and became the U.S. space agency's primary ride for getting humans to and from the International Space Station," notes Reuters.

NASA plans to encourage the development of another commercial vehicle that can land its Artemis astronauts on the moon. Space.com reports: In April 2021, NASA picked SpaceX to build the first crewed lunar lander for the agency's Artemis program, which is working to put astronauts on the moon in the mid-2020s and establish a sustainable human presence on and around Earth's nearest neighbor by the end of the decade. But SpaceX apparently won't have the moon-landing market cornered: NASA announced today (March 23) that it plans to support the development of a second privately built crewed lunar lander.

"This strategy expedites progress toward a long-term, sustaining lander capability as early as the 2026 or 2027 timeframe," Lisa Watson-Morgan, program manager for the Human Landing System Program at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama, said in a statement today. "We expect to have two companies safely carry astronauts in their landers to the surface of the moon under NASA's guidance before we ask for services, which could result in multiple experienced providers in the market," Watson-Morgan added. [...] Congress is "committed to ensuring that we have more than one lander to choose [from] for future missions," [NASA Administrator Bill Nelson] said during a news conference today, citing conversations he's had with people on Capitol Hill over the past year. "We're expecting to have both Congress support and that of the Biden administration," Nelson said. "And we're expecting to get this competition started in the fiscal year [20]23 budget."

Exact funding amounts and other details should be coming next week when the White House releases its 2023 federal budget request, he added. "So what we're doing today is a bit of a preview," Nelson said. "I think you'll find it's an indication that there are good things to come for this agency and, if we're right, good things to come for all of humanity." NASA plans to release a draft request for proposals (RFP) for the second moon lander by the end of the month and a final RFP later this spring, agency officials said. If all goes according to plan, NASA will pick the builder of the new vehicle in early 2023. That craft will have the ability to dock with Gateway, the small moon-orbiting space station that NASA plans to build, and take people and scientific gear from there to the surface (and back). This newly announced competition will be open to all American companies except SpaceX. But Elon Musk's company will have the opportunity to negotiate the terms of its existing contract to perform additional lunar development work, NASA officials said during today's news conference.

NASA JPL announced a cosmic milestone with the confirmed discovery of over 5,000 exoplanets (planets located outside our solar system). CNET reports: A new batch of 65 planets joined the NASA Exoplanet Archive on Monday, triggering a celebratory mood. "It's not just a number," Exoplanet Archive science lead Jessie Christiansen said in a statement. "Each one of them is a new world, a brand new planet. I get excited about every one because we don't know anything about them."

The first exoplanets were confirmed in the early 1990s, which means we've set an impressive pace for discovery. NASA announced the planet count had hit 4,000 in June 2019 and it took less than three years to add another thousand to that haul. [...] We haven't definitively found an Earth clone yet, but the exoplanets spotted so far range from rocky worlds like ours to jumbo gas giants bigger than Jupiter. While 5,000 is an impressive number, it's just a tiny sliver of what's out there. Said NASA, "We do know this: Our galaxy likely holds hundreds of billions of such planets."

A China Eastern Boeing 737-800 with 132 people on board crashed in a remote mountainous area of southern China on Monday, officials said, setting off a forest fire visible from space in the country's worst air disaster in nearly a decade. From a report: More than seven hours after communication was lost with the plane, there was still no word of survivors. The Civil Aviation Administration of China said in a statement the crash occurred near the city of Wuzhou in the Guangxi region. The flight was traveling from Kunming in the southwestern province of Yunnan to the industrial center of Guangzhou along the east coast, it added. Villagers were first to arrive at the forested area where the plane went down, sparking a blaze big enough to be seen on NASA satellite images. Hundreds of rescue workers were swiftly dispatched from Guangxi and neighboring Guangdong province. State media reported all 737-800s in China Eastern's fleet were ordered grounded, while broadcaster CCTV said the airliner had set up nine teams to deal with aircraft disposal, accident investigation, family assistance and other pressing matters.

On Thursday, NASA's new giant rocket, the Space Launch System, emerged out into the Florida air, embarking on a torturously slow 11-hour journey to its primary launchpad at Kennedy Space Center. The Verge reports: It was a big moment for NASA, having spent more than a decade on the development of this rocket, with the goal of using the vehicle to send cargo and people into deep space. The rollout of the SLS was just a taste of what's to come. The rocket will undergo what is known as a wet dress rehearsal in April, going through all the operations and procedures it will go through during a typical launch, including filling up its tanks with propellant. If that goes well, then the rocket will be rolled back to NASA's Vehicle Assembly Building, the giant cavernous building where the SLS was pieced together. Following a few more tests, the rocket will be rolled back out to the launchpad ahead of its first flight, scheduled for sometime this summer at the earliest. You can view photos from the SLS's big debut embedded in The Verge's article.

sciencehabit shares a report from Science.org: For years, scientists have believed frigid craters at the Moon's poles hold water ice, which would be both a scientific boon and a potential resource for human missions. Now, researchers have discovered (PDF) a reason why the ice has persisted on an otherwise bone-dry world: Some polar craters may be protected by ancient magnetic fields. Researchers have known about the anomalies ever since the Apollo 15 and 16 missions in 1971 and 1972, when astronauts measured regions of unusual magnetic strength on the surface. Some anomalies are now known to be up to hundreds of kilometers across. Although their origin is debated, one possibility is they were created more than 4 billion years ago when the Moon had a magnetic field and iron-rich asteroids crashed into its surface. The resultant molten material may have been permanently magnetized.

Thousands of the anomalies are thought to exist across the lunar surface, but the team mapped ones at the south pole in detail using data from Japan's Kaguya spacecraft, which orbited the Moon from 2007 to 2009. They found at least two permanently shadowed craters that were overlapped by these anomalies, the Sverdrup and Shoemaker craters, and there are likely more. Although the remnant fields are thousands of times weaker than Earth's, they could be sufficient to deflect the solar wind. Craters with known anomalies could become prime targets for science and exploration. NASA is already planning to visit the south polar region with a rover due for launch next year, called VIPER, and the agency intends to send humans there later this decade as part of its Artemis program. Studying the ice could reveal how it was delivered, which may in turn shed light on how Earth got its water.

BeerFartMoron shares a report from CBS News: After weeks of microscopic adjustments, NASA unveiled the first fully focused image from the James Webb Space Telescope Wednesday, a razor-sharp engineering photo of a nondescript star in a field of more distant galaxies that shows the observatory's optical system is working in near-flawless fashion. The goal was to demonstrate Webb can now bring starlight to a near-perfect focus, proving the $10 billion telescope doesn't suffer from any subtle optical defects like the aberration that initially hobbled the Hubble Space Telescope. The galaxies in the image were a bonus, whetting astronomers' appetites for discoveries to come. "This is one of the most magnificent days in my whole career at NASA, frankly, and for many of us astronomers, one of the most important days that we've had," said NASA science chief Thomas Zurbuchen. "Today we can announce that the optics will perform to specifications or even better. It's an amazing achievement."

Former astronaut Scott Kelly said he is ending his feud with the head of Russia's space program after the National Aeronautics and Space Administration asked former astronauts to dial down criticism of their Russian counterparts. From a report: The dustup began when Roscosmos Director General Dmitry Rogozin and other Russian government entities published a series of social-media posts, including one video showing Russian cosmonauts abandoning the International Space Station and leaving behind U.S. astronaut Mark Vande Hei. Mr. Kelly, who spent nearly a year in 2015 and 2016 aboard the ISS, got into a heated exchange on Twitter last week with the Russian space chief over the series of posts. Now Mr. Kelly said he is ending the spat with Mr. Rogozin after NASA sent an email to former astronauts asking them to stop criticizing their Russian partners because it was hurting the mission aboard the ISS, an orbiting lab where American astronauts and Russian cosmonauts work side by side. "I respect their position. They have a tough job. I believe in NASA and what they do. I want to help them. I respect the person that sent it greatly," Mr. Kelly said in an interview. "I would say that if I was in their position, I would have done the same exact thing."

The US astronaut Mark Vande Hei has made it through nearly a year in space, but now faces what could be his trickiest assignment: riding a Russian capsule back to Earth in the midst of deepening tension between the two countries. From a report: Nasa insists Vande Hei's homecoming at the end of the month remains unchanged, even as Russia's invasion of Ukraine has resulted in canceled launches, broken contracts and an escalating war of words from the leader of the Russian Space Agency. Many worry Dmitry Rogozin is putting decades of peaceful partnership at risk, most notably at the International Space Station (ISS). Vande Hei, who on Tuesday will break the US single spaceflight record of 340 days, is due to leave with two Russians aboard a Soyuz capsule for touchdown in Kazakhstan on 30 March. He will have logged 355 days in space. The world record of 438 days belongs to Russia.

The retired Nasa astronaut Scott Kelly, America's record-holder until Tuesday, is among those sparring with Rogozin, a longtime ally of Vladimir Putin. Kelly has returned a medal to the Russian embassy in Washington but believes the two sides "can hold it together" in space. "We need an example set that two countries that historically have not been on the most friendly of terms, can still work somewhere peacefully. And that somewhere is the International Space Station. That's why we need to fight to keep it," Kelly said. Nasa wants to keep the space station running until 2030, as do the European, Japanese and Canadian space agencies. The Russians have not committed beyond the original end date of 2024 or so.

Pi day is here — 3/14. And to celebrate, NASA released their ninth annual NASA Pi Day Challenge — "some math problems related to current and future NASA missions."

MIT Bloggers released a videogame-themed video to welcome the class of 2026.

If you Google "pi day" (or Pi), you're given an interactive doodle that (when you click the pi symbol in the upper-left) presents a Simon-like game challenging you to type in approximations of pi to an ever-increasingnumber of digits.

Guinness World Records points out that the most accurate value of pi is 62,831,853,071,796 digits, "achieved by University of Applied Sciences (Switzerland) in Chur, Switzerland, on 19 August 2021." (Note: the number of digits looks suspiciously significant....)

And USA Today published an article which shares the history of how Pi Day got started. Former physicist Larry Shaw, who connected March 14 with 3.14, celebrated the first Pi Day at the Exploratorium with fruit pies and tea in 1988. The museum said Shaw led Pi Day parades there every year until his passing in 2017.

In 2009, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a resolution marking March 14 as National Pi Day.

The date is significant in the world of science. Albert Einstein was born on this day in 1879. The Exploratorium said it added a celebration of Einstein's life as part of its Pi Day activities after Shaw's daughter, Sara, realized the coincidence. March 14 also marks the death of renowned theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking, who passed away in 2018.
And "For those who don't enjoy math, you get pie," the article quips, noting that numerous pizza chains and restaurants are offering appropriately-adjusted one-day sale prices on pizza (and fruit) pies.

Instacart has even released a list showing which pie flavors enjoy the highest popularity over the national average in each of America's 50 states. ("New York — Boston Cream Pie. Washington — Marionberry Pie....")

This week Silicon Valley's Computer History Museum posted a PDF transcript (and video excerpts) from an interview with 81-year-old Margaret Hamilton, the programmer/systems designer who in the 1960s became director of the Software Engineering Division at the MIT Instrumentation Laboratory which developed the on-board flight software for NASA's Apollo program. Prior to that Hamilton had worked on software to detect an airplane's radar signature, but thought, "You know, 'I guess I should delay graduate school again because I'd like to work on this program that puts all these men on the Moon....'"

"There was always one thing that stood out in my mind, being in the onboard flight software, was that it was 'man rated,' meaning if it didn't work a person's life was at stake if not over. That was always uppermost in my mind and probably many others as well."

Interestingly, Hamilton had originally received two job offers from the Apollo Space Program, and had told them to flip a coin to settle it. ("The other job had to do with support systems. It was software, but it wasn't the onboard flight software.") But what's fascinating is the interview's glimpses at some of the earliest days of the programming profession: There was all these engineers, okay? Hardware engineers, aeronautical engineers and all this, a lot of them out of MIT... But the whole idea of software and programming...? Dick Battin, Dr. Battin, when they told him that they were going to be responsible for the software...he went home to his wife and said he was going to be in charge of software and he thought it was some soft clothing...
Hamilton also remembers in college taking a summer job as a student actuary at Travelers Insurance in the mid-1950s, and "all of a sudden one day word was going around Travelers that there were these new things out there called computers that were going to take away all of their jobs... Pretty soon they wouldn't have jobs. And so everybody was talking about it. They were scared they wouldn't have a way to make a living.

"But, of course, it ended up being more jobs were created with the computers than there were...."

Hamilton's story about Apollo 8 is amazing...

Right now an asteroid is zooming past earth "at a relatively close distance" reports Newsweek, "and the event can be viewed live." The asteroid, called 2022 ES3, will be traveling at 41,000 miles per hour when it comes between the moon and the Earth at around 2:18 p.m. ET on Sunday, March 13, according to NASA's Center for Near Earth Object Studies (CNEOS).

The space rock isn't expected to hit Earth. Instead, it will pass by at a distance of about 206,000 miles, which is about 87 percent of the distance between us and the moon.

The event provides a great viewing opportunity. An Italian astronomy organization called the Virtual Telescope Project, which often tracks asteroids and other space objects through the sky, is due to host a livestream of what it calls 2022 ES3's "very close, but safe, encounter with us" on its WebTV page starting at 18:30 UTC on March 13th.

Astronomers don't consider 2022 ES3 to be potentially hazardous, probably due to its size. The asteroid is predicted to be somewhere between 33 and 72 feet in diameter — about as wide as the length of a bowling lane.... [S]cientists track more than 28,000 near-Earth asteroids as they travel through the solar system. Around 900 of these are more than one kilometer, or 3,280 feet, in size.

Ever since Russia invaded Ukraine, the fate of the International Space Station, which has 15 partner nations and is the crown jewel of unity in space between NASA and Russia, has been up in the air (figuratively, of course). What we do know is that there are no plans to abandon NASA astronaut Mark Vande Hei on the space station, despite a number of stories claiming otherwise. "Vande Hei is scheduled to return to Earth in a Soyuz capsule at the end of this month, landing in Kazakhstan," reports Ars Technica. "NASA officials are expected to be there to greet him and bring him back to the United States." Ars Technica sets the record straight and explains where these Russian "threats" originated: The source of this "news" appears to be a video published more than a week ago by a Kremlin-aligned publication, RIA Novosti. Roscosmos TV provided footage for the video, but in sharing it acknowledged that the video was a "joke." Now, this is an exceptionally poor joke given the tensions on Earth, but it is important to understand that sharing a video a week ago does not mean Russia is threatening to leave Vande Hei behind. Nothing has changed since the video was posted. Since the beginning of this crisis, NASA officials have said operations with Russian colleagues working on the space station have proceeded nominally. "Operations have not changed at all," one NASA source confirmed Friday. On Monday, NASA's manager of the International Space Program, Joel Montalbano, is scheduled to speak at a news conference about upcoming spacewalks. He likely will say something similar.

Additionally, Vande Hei could not be abandoned. At present there are three other Americans living on board the International Space Station -- Raja Chari, Kayla Barron, and Thomas Marshburn. There is also an allied astronaut, Matthias Maurer, from Germany. NASA has its own transportation to and from the station, so Vande Hei can be assured of a safe ride home whenever NASA wants. The status of the ISS partnership is subject to change, of course. It could do so quite quickly. Russia is doing horrible things in Ukraine, and the Western world has responded with harsh sanctions. No one really knows whether Vladimir Putin will decide to end Russian participation in the International Space Station. Certainly, making it appear to a domestic audience that he was stranding a NASA astronaut in space might make him look "strong" to some Russian people. But there are simply no indications this will happen.

Scientists at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston are preparing to open the first tube that one of the astronauts on the Apollo missions hammered into the surface of the moon. As NPR reports, it's "remained tightly sealed all these years since that 1972 Apollo 17 mission -- the last time humans set foot on the moon." From the report: The unsealed tube from that mission was opened in 2019. The layers of lunar soil had been preserved, and the sample offered insight into subjects like landslides in airless places. Because the sample being opened now has been sealed, it may contain something in addition to rocks and soil: gas. The tube could contain substances known as volatiles, which evaporate at normal temperatures, such as water ice and carbon dioxide. The materials at the bottom of the tube were extremely cold at the time they were collected. The amount of these gases in the sample is expected to be very low, so scientists are using a special device called a manifold, designed by a team at Washington University in St. Louis, to extract and collect the gas.

Another tool was developed at the European Space Agency (ESA) to pierce the sample and capture the gases as they escape. Scientists there have called that tool the "Apollo can opener." The careful process of opening and capturing has begun, and so far, so good: the seal on the inner sample tube seems to be intact. Now, the piercing process is underway, with that special "can opener" ready to trap whatever gases might come out. If there are gases in the sample, scientists will be able to use modern mass spectrometry technology to identify them. (Mass spectrometry is a tool for analyzing and measuring molecules.) The gas could also be divided into tiny samples for other researchers to study.

If Congress' sweeping new spending bill is signed, it would finally provide full funding to some major NASA projects that have been underfunded over the last few years. From a report: Notably, NASA's program to develop a new human lunar lander would be fully funded as the president's budget requested, as will a program to develop new commercial space stations in low Earth orbit. Overall, NASA would receive $24.041 billion for 2022 in this new bill, which will fund the US government for fiscal year 2022. NASA's portion is roughly $800 million less than the $24.8 billion that President Joe Biden's budget request called for in May of 2021. However, NASA would still see a slight bump from its total funding for fiscal year 2021, which sat at $23.27 billion.

Though Congress's plan would not fully meet the president's budget request, there are a few projects that House and Senate lawmakers are finally agreeing to fund in their entirety. The bill would give NASA's human landing system the full $1.195 billion that the request asked for. Currently, NASA is developing a new human lunar lander as part of its Artemis program, an initiative to send the first woman and first person of color to the Moon. Previously, Congress showed its reluctance to give NASA the money it requested for the lander. For 2021, appropriators only provided $850 million of the requested $3.4 billion for the lander.

McGruber writes: Retired NASA Astronaut Scott Kelly just announced that he was returning a medal awarded to him by Russia. A translation of his announcement, which Mr Kelly made in Russian:

"In a galaxy far, far away, two giant black holes appear to be circling each other like fighters in a galactic boxing ring," reports USA Today.

"Gravity is causing this death spiral, which will result in a collision and formation of a single black hole, a massive event that will send ripples through space and time." The collision itself happened eons ago — the two black holes are located about 9 billion light years from Earth. Scientists won't be able to document it for 10,000 years. Even so, there are imperceptible gravitational waves generated before the collision that are hitting us right now. These waves from the black holes' activity will increase, but will not affect Earth. However, they could help increase our understanding of how our universe has evolved.

Such supermassive black holes "are the most powerful and energetic objects in the universe and they have an enormous effect on the evolution of galaxies and stars," Tony Readhead, an astronomy professor at the California Institute of Technology, told USA TODAY. He is the co-author of the report by Caltech astronomers who detail the discovery in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, a peer-reviewed scientific journal. "If we want to understand the evolution of our universe we need to understand these objects," Readhead said....

Each of the black holes identified in this study has a mass amounting to hundreds of millions of times more than that of our sun, the researchers say. It took about 100 million years for the two objects to converge on their orbit, which has them at a distance of about 50 times that separating our sun and Pluto, NASA said. The two black holes are more than 99% of the way toward colliding, the agency said....

This is only the second pair of orbiting black holes identified by scientists, the researchers say. Space-time undulations from gravitational waves made by two colliding black holes 1.3 billion light-years away were recorded in 2015 by the National Science Foundation's Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: This week, the US Air Force Research Laboratory released a video on YouTube that didn't get much attention. But it made an announcement that is fairly significant -- the US military plans to extend its space awareness capabilities beyond geostationary orbit, all the way to the Moon. "Until now, the United States space mission extended 22,000 miles above Earth," a narrator says in the video. "That was then, this is now. The Air Force Research Laboratory is extending that range by 10 times and the operations area of the United States by 1,000 times, taking our reach to the far side of the Moon into cislunar space."

The US military had previously talked about extending its operational domain, but now it is taking action. It plans to launch a satellite, likely equipped with a powerful telescope, into cislunar space. According to the video, the satellite will be called the Cislunar Highway Patrol System or, you guessed it, CHPS. The research laboratory plans to issue a "request for prototype proposals" for the CHPS satellite on March 21 and announce the contract award in July. The CHPS program will be managed by Michael Lopez, from the lab's Space Vehicles Directorate. (Alas, we were rooting for Erik Estrada).

This effort will include the participation of several military organizations, and it can be a little confusing to keep track of. Essentially, though, the Air Force lab will oversee the development of the satellite. The US Space Force will then procure this capability for use by the US Space Command, which is responsible for military operations in outer space. Effectively, this satellite is the beginning of an extension of operations by US Space Command from geostationary space to beyond the Moon. [...] So why is US Space Command interested in expanding its theater of operations to include the Moon? The primary reason cited in the video is managing increasing space traffic in the lunar environment, including several NASA-sponsored commercial missions, the space agency's Artemis program, and those of other nations. Another strategic element includes the ability to detect space objects, such as those placed into cislunar space by other governments, that could swing around the Moon and potentially come back to attack a U.S. military satellite in geostationary space.

"I think that's far fetched, but it is feasible from a physics perspective and would definitely exploit a gap in their current space domain awareness," said Brian Weeden, director of program planning for the Secure World Foundation. "I think they are far more concerned about that than any actual threats in cislunar space because the US doesn't have any military assets in cislunar space right now."

Thelasko shares a report from CNET: NASA's Curiosity rover snapped a gorgeous, delicate formation on Mars that looks like it could be a branching piece of ocean coral. It's not coral, but it's worth contemplating how we see familiar Earth objects in random shapes on Mars. The miniscule Martian sculpture invites poetic comparisons. It resembles a water droplet captured at the moment of explosion against a surface, or the tendrils of an anemone in a tide pool.

The image comes from Curiosity's Mars Hand Lens Imager (Mahli) instrument, which NASA describes as "the rover's version of the magnifying hand lens that geologists usually carry with them into the field." So the formation in the image is quite small. Abigail Fraeman, a deputy project scientist for Curiosity, tweeted a helpful visual guide that compares the object with a US penny to give an approximate sense of the scale. Fraeman writes that the image "shows teeny, tiny delicate structures that formed by mineral precipitating from water."