NASA on Friday selected SpaceX to build spacecraft that would land astronauts on the moon for the first time since the last Apollo mission, according to a source selection document obtained by The Washington Post. From the report: The contract marks another major victory for the hard-charging company that vaults it to the top tier of the nation's aerospace companies and solidifies it as one of the space agency's most trusted partners. In winning the $2.9 billion contract, SpaceX beat out Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin, which had formed what it called a "national team" by partnering with aerospace giants Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and Draper. SpaceX also won over Dynetics, a defense contractor based in Huntsville, Ala. NASA had originally chosen all three companies for the initial phase of the contract, and was expected to choose two of them to build the lunar lander. In other major programs, NASA has chosen multiple providers to foster competition and to ensure it has redundancy in case one can't deliver. But in choosing SpaceX alone, it sent a message that it fully trusts the growing company to fly its astronauts for its signature human exploration program -- Artemis, a campaign to return astronauts to the moon for the first time since 1972.

California and its partners are set to launch by 2023 two satellites to spot and monitor plumes of planet-warming carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane. "If all goes right, dozens more could follow," reports Science Magazine. From the report: The $100 million Carbon Mapper project, announced today and financed by private philanthropists including Michael Bloomberg, will advance efforts to track concentrated emissions of greenhouse gases, which rise from fossil fuel power plants, leaky pipelines, and abandoned wells. Previous satellites have lacked the resolution and focus to monitor point sources rigorously. [...] The satellites will be built and managed by Planet, a California company that already operates a constellation of Earth-imaging satellites. The spacecraft will rely on "hyperspectral" imaging spectrometers developed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). Rather than gathering light in just a few discrete wavelength channels, like the human eye, these spectrometers capture reflected sunlight and subdivide it into more than 400 wavelength channels across the visible and into the infrared. The intensity of light across these channels can be tied to specific chemistries and reflect the abundances of certain gases in the air molecules below.

The satellites won't just measure gases in the air; they will also detect chemical signatures on the ground. By measuring the intensity of green chlorophyll or detecting the signatures for excess salts or fungus, for example, researchers will be able to evaluate the health of crops and forests. They can prospect for minerals in remote regions. They can map and identify different coral and algae species, and they can track dust and soot. Even snow and ice pops out in these sensors, says Robert Green, a remote-sensing scientist at JPL. "Snow is one of the most colorful materials on Earth if you look beyond visible light."

The first two Carbon Mapper satellites will each be roughly the size of a washing machine, weighing up to 200 kilograms. They will provide imagery with a resolution of 30 meters but won't offer global coverage at first. Instead, they will target regions known to host superemitters, like power plants, oil and gas drilling, or livestock operations. The regions will be revisited every few weeks to start. All emission data, calculated from the plume intensity and length, will be made publicly available -- in the hopes that governments and businesses will do more to staunch leaks and tamp down discharges. [...] Should Carbon Mapper's first two satellites prove successful, Planet envisions building a commercial constellation of similar satellites that would revisit every spot on the planet once a day, and selling those data to regulators and companies.

Google Earth has partnered with NASA, the U.S. Geological Survey, the EU's Copernicus Climate Change Service, and Carnegie Mellon University's CREATE Lab to bring users time-lapse images of the planet's surface -- 24 million satellite photos taken over 37 years. Together they offer photographic evidence of a planet changing faster than at any time in millennia. Shorelines creep in. Cities blossom. Trees fall. Water reservoirs shrink. Glaciers melt and fracture. From a report: "We can objectively see global warming with our own eyes," said Rebecca Moore, director of Google Earth. "We hope that this can ground everyone in an objective, common understanding of what's actually happening on the planet, and inspire action." Timelapse, the name of the new Google Earth feature, is the largest video on the planet, according to a statement from the company, requiring 2 million hours to process in cloud computers, and the equivalent of 530,000 high-resolution videos. The tool stitches together nearly 50 years of imagery from the U.S.'s Landsat program, which is run by NASA and the USGS. When combined with images from complementary European Sentinel-2 satellites, Landsat provides the equivalent of complete coverage of the Earth's surface every two days. Google Earth is expected to update Timelapse about once a year.

If your heart stops en route to Mars, rest assured that researchers have considered how to carry out CPR in space. (One option is to plant your feet on the ceiling and extend your arms downwards to compress the patient's chest.) From a report: Astronauts, because of their age range and high physical fitness, are unlikely to suffer a stroke or have their appendix suddenly explode. That's good because, if it does happen, they're in the realm of what Jonathan Scott -- head of the medical projects and technology team at the European Space Agency -- describes as 'treatment futility.' In other words: there's nothing anyone can do about it. On the ISS, when medical incidents arise, astronauts can draw on the combined expertise of a host of medical experts at Nasa. "The patient is on the space station, the doctor is on the ground, and if there's a problem the patient consults the doctor," says Scott. By the time astronauts reach Mars, there'll be a 40-minute time lag in communications, if it's possible to make contact at all. "We have to begin preparing for not only being able to diagnose things in spaceflight but also to treat them as well," Scott says.

Artificial intelligence is likely to be a part of the solution. If you're imagining the holographic doctor from Star Trek, downgrade your expectations, at least for the next few decades. Kris Lehnhardt, the element scientist for exploration medical capability at Nasa, says: "We are many, many, many years away from: please state the nature of the medical emergency." Emmanuel Urquieta is deputy chief scientist at the Translational Institute for Space Health (TRISH), a Nasa-funded program which conducts research into healthcare for deep space missions. While full AI may be a way off, Urquieta believes some form of artificial intelligence will still play a crucial role. "It's going to be essential for a mission to Mars," he says. While the crew for a mission to Mars will likely include a medical doctor, he explains: "No single physician can know everything." And, of course: "What happens if that astronaut gets sick?" Research projects funded by TRISH include Butterfly iQ, a handheld ultrasound device for use by non-medical personnel to make diagnoses that would otherwise require bulky equipment and a trained operator. VisualDx is an AI diagnostics tool originally developed to analyse images and identify skin conditions. The technology is now being adapted to help astronauts diagnose a wide range of conditions most commonly encountered in space, without an internet connection.

An anonymous reader shares this announcement from NASA: Based on data from the Ingenuity Mars helicopter that arrived late Friday night, NASA has chosen to reschedule the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter's first experimental flight to no earlier than April 14 [this Wednesday].

During a high-speed spin test of the rotors on Friday, the command sequence controlling the test ended early due to a "watchdog" timer expiration. This occurred as it was trying to transition the flight computer from 'Pre-Flight' to 'Flight' mode. The helicopter is safe and healthy and communicated its full telemetry set to Earth.

The watchdog timer oversees the command sequence and alerts the system to any potential issues. It helps the system stay safe by not proceeding if an issue is observed and worked as planned.

The helicopter team is reviewing telemetry to diagnose and understand the issue. Following that, they will reschedule the full-speed test.

"NASA's Ingenuity Mars Helicopter has emerged from its first night on the surface of Mars," reports NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The Ingenuity Mars Helicopter was deployed from the belly of NASA's Perseverance rover on April 3rd. In the days to come, Ingenuity will be the first aircraft to attempt powered, controlled flight on another planet. From the report: Evening temperatures at Jezero Crater can plunge as low as minus 130 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 90 degrees Celsius), which can freeze and crack unprotected electrical components and damage the onboard batteries required for flight. "This is the first time that Ingenuity has been on its own on the surface of Mars," said MiMi Aung, Ingenuity project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. "But we now have confirmation that we have the right insulation, the right heaters, and enough energy in its battery to survive the cold night, which is a big win for the team. We're excited to continue to prepare Ingenuity for its first flight test."

To ensure the solar array atop the helicopter's rotors could begin getting sunlight as soon as possible, Perseverance was instructed to move away from Ingenuity shortly after deploying it. Until the helicopter put its four legs onto the Martian surface, Ingenuity remained attached to the belly of the rover, receiving power from Perseverance, which touched down at Jezero Crater on Feb. 18. The rover serves as a communications relay between Ingenuity and Earth, and it will use its suite of cameras to observe the flight characteristics of the solar-powered helicopter from "Van Zyl Overlook."

The moon is just 27% the size of earth. So long-time Slashdot reader fahrbot-bot shares an interesting question from Science Alert.

"If you were to hop in a spaceship, don a spacesuit and go on an epic lunar hike, how long would it take to walk all the way around it? " During the Apollo missions, astronauts bounced around the surface at a casual 1.4 mph (2.2 km/h), according to NASA. This slow speed was mainly due to their clunky, pressurized spacesuits that were not designed with mobility in mind. If the "moonwalkers" had sported sleeker suits, they might have found it a lot easier to move and, as a result, picked up the pace...

At this new hypothetical max speed, it would take about 91 days to walk the 6,786-mile (10,921 km) circumference of the moon. For context, it would take around 334 days to walk nonstop (i.e., not stopping to sleep or eat) around the 24,901-mile (40,075 km) circumference of Earth at this speed, although it is impossible to do so because of the oceans.

Obviously, it's not possible to walk nonstop for 91 days, so the actual walk around the moon would take much longer.
Of course, it's not that easy, with ongoing solar radiation, extreme temperatures, and the need to walk around mile-deep craters. Aidan Cowley, a scientific adviser at the European Space Agency, also pointed out to Live Science that you'd need a support vehicle following you with food, water, and oxygen (which could also double as shelter, "kind of like portable mini-bases."). But he also identified another issue: This type of mission would also require a huge amount of endurance training because of the demands of exercising in low gravity on your muscles and cardiovascular system. "You'd have to send an astronaut with ultra-marathon-level fitness to do it," Cowley said. Even then, walking at a top speed would be possible only for around three to four hours a day, Cowley said. So, if a person walked at 3.1 mph (5 km/h) for 4 hours a day, then it would take an estimated 547 days, or nearly 1.5 years to walk the moon's circumference, assuming your route isn't too disrupted by craters and you can deal with the temperature changes and radiation.

However, humans won't have the technology or equipment to accomplish such a feat until at least the late 2030s or early 2040s, Cowley said. "You'd never get an agency to support anything like this," Cowley said. "But if some crazy billionaire wants to try it, maybe they can pull it off."

In major international tests, the physics-defying EmDrive has failed to produce the amount of thrust proponents were expecting. In fact, in one test at Germany's Dresden University, it didn't produce any thrust at all. Is this the end of the line for EmDrive? Popular Mechanics: The crux of the EmDrive is if you bounce microwaves around inside the tube, they exert more force in one direction than the other, creating a net thrust without the need for any propellant. And when NASA and a team at Xi'an in China tried this, they actually got a small-but-distinct net force. Now, however, physicists at the Dresden University of Technology (TU Dresden) are saying those promising results showing thrust were all false positives that are explained by outside forces. The scientists recently presented their findings in three papers at Space Propulsion Conference 2020 +1, with titles like "High-Accuracy Thrust Measurements of the EmDrive and Elimination of False-Positive Effects." (Other two studies here and here)

Using a new measuring scale and different suspension points of the same engine, the TU Dresden scientists "were able to reproduce apparent thrust forces similar to those measured by the NASA team, but also to make them disappear by means of a point suspension," researcher Martin Tajmar told the German site GreWi. The verdict: "When power flows into the EmDrive, the engine warms up. This also causes the fastening elements on the scale to warp, causing the scale to move to a new zero point. We were able to prevent that in an improved structure. Our measurements refute all EmDrive claims by at least 3 orders of magnitude."

A new NASA mission, called the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission due for launch this summer, aims to launch a spaceship that will directly punch an asteroid. Motherboard reports: The mission's target is an asteroid system called Didymos, which contains two space rocks that orbit each other. In late 2022, DART will forcefully impact the smaller asteroid in this system, a tiny moon called Dimorphos, so that scientists can assess the feasibility of knocking any space rocks that threaten Earth off course in the future. [...] DART will pioneer a subtler form of planetary defense, in which the trajectory of an asteroid is changed by a very small amount that becomes significant over time. Late next year, the mission will crash into Dimorphos at about seven kilometers per second. Shortly before the collision, the spacecraft will deploy a small satellite provided by the Italian Space Agency that is tasked with watching "the mess we make," [said Andy Rivkin, a planetary astronomer at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory and the investigation team lead for DART].

Observations from the Italian satellite, as well as from powerful telescopes on Earth, will reveal just how much Dimorphos was affected by the crash. Rivkin and his colleagues expect the change in orbital speed to be small -- about one millimeter per second -- which would add up to a shortening of the orbital period by about 10 minutes. But even this very slight shift would be enough to redirect the trajectory of a hazardous asteroid that threatened Earth, provided scientists have a lead-time of a decade or two before the projected impact.

New submitter catmar68 writes: CERN proposes "space elevator" accelerator to answer this fundamental question: "Do antimatter apples fall up?" From the press release: The true question, they say, is whether antimatter apples fall down differently. If a difference were spotted, it would spell the end of "CPT invariance" -- a principle that has underpinned every theory of physics since the invention of quantum mechanics. "The Standard Model of particle physics has been very successful, but it can't explain the 95% of the universe which is 'dark', and neither Einstein nor any physicist since has been able to cook up a working theory of quantum gravity," says theorist Flora Oilp. "It's time to challenge its most fundamental principle head-on." The way forward, according to Oilp and her colleagues, is to build a vertical accelerator that will put gravity to the test directly. Every previous particle accelerator has been horizontal. A combination of high speeds and frequent course corrections using focusing magnets has always meant that the effect of gravity can be neglected. But by utilising a range of new, revolutionary techniques, including accelerating particles upwards inside a vacuum vessel, and timing how long they take to fall back down to Earth, physicists can study the elusive fourth force directly. Furthermore, by comparing results with protons and antiprotons, they can watch for signs of "CPT violation." Such behaviour cannot be explained using conventional theories, which rely on this principle to ensure the conservation of probability.

The accelerator would be built in two stages. Stage one proposes a 500 m vertical accelerator, starting from the base of the LHC shafts. An exciting collaboration with NASA may come to fruition by utilising detectors on the International Space Station (ISS) to detect beams of particles fired by the accelerator every time the ISS is overhead. This "reverse cosmic-ray" experiment would allow the measurement of Earth's gravity on particle trajectories at unprecedented levels. Stage one will seek to match the roughly 1% precision on measurements of the gravitational constant "g," which is currently being targeted in parallel by experiments with antihydrogen at the Laboratory's Antimatter Factory. This moderate build will also allow engineers and physicists to understand the intricacies of running a vertical accelerator in preparation for stage two -- the space elevator. "If built, however, this advanced particle accelerator would nevertheless be three times taller than the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, which has been the tallest structure in the world since 2009."

The Crew Dragon capsule poised to fly four civilian astronauts to space this year is getting an upgrade: a glass dome will be added at the top to give space tourists a 360-degree view of the cosmos. MSN reports: The glass dome-shaped window replaces Crew Dragon's docking adapter at its nose since the spacecraft won't be docking to the International Space Station. It's similar to the famed cupola aboard the International Space Station, but Crew Dragon's appears to be an uninterrupted sheet of glass, with no support structures dividing the window's view. Crew Dragon's protective aerodynamic shell that shields the hatch door area during launch will pop open to expose the glass dome once the craft is safely in orbit. Based on the rendering SpaceX tweeted, the cupola would fit at least one crew member from the chest up, revealing panoramic views of space.

NASA, which certified Crew Dragon for astronaut flights last year, said it doesn't plan to use the cupola version of Crew Dragon for NASA astronaut missions and that the window's installation doesn't require NASA safety approval. "We've done all the engineering work, we continue to go through all the analysis and testing and qualification to ensure everything's safe, and that it doesn't preclude any use of this spacecraft for other missions," Benji Reed, SpaceX's director of Crew Dragon mission management, said during a press conference on Tuesday.

The US space agency says it expects now to fly the first helicopter on Mars in early April. From a report: The little chopper was carried to the Red Planet by the Perseverance rover, which made its dramatic landing in Jezero Crater just over a month ago. Called Ingenuity, the 1.8kg, twin-rotor aircraft will attempt a series of short hops in Mars' rarefied air. If successful, it would represent something of a "Wright Brothers moment", says Nasa. This is a reference of course to Orville and Wilbur Wright, who in 1903 conducted the historic first heavier-than-air, powered aircraft flight here on Earth. And to mark the connection, the agency revealed that a postage stamp-sized piece of fabric from a wing of the brothers' plane has been taped to Ingenuity.

At the moment, the chopper is still attached to Perseverance, to its belly. A protective covering was released at the weekend and in the coming days the craft will be lowered to the ground. Engineers have identified a 10m by 10m area in Jezero that they're calling the "airfield". This is at one end of a 90m "flight zone", inside which perhaps five sorties will be performed. Perseverance will endeavour to record everything on camera. "We are going to do our very best to capture Ingenuity in flight," said Nasa engineer Farah Alibay. "We're going to be taking images, we're hoping to take video." This will be challenging, she cautioned. Both rover and helicopter function autonomously and carry separate clocks. The timing devices will need to be in sync for the photography to catch the action.

It's been almost half a century since the three astronauts on board the Skylab 4 space mission famously fell out with mission control. Soon afterwards, reports began to circulate that they went on strike. But Ed Gibson, the only one of the crew still alive, says the idea that they stopped work is a myth. From a report: Bill Pogue got sick soon after the three astronauts arrived at the space station. It came as a surprise because Bill had been nicknamed "Iron Belly" during training at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. He could endlessly tolerate sitting in a rapidly rotating chair while moving his head backwards and forwards and side to side, without being sick. But this was the first time the three men had been in space and evidently resistance to motion sickness back on Earth didn't mean much up there.

Commander Jerry Carr suggested Bill eat a can of tomatoes to settle his stomach. Ed Gibson was sitting between the two men, and remembers the can floating past from left to right before his eyes. "Then I remember some bad noises coming from Bill, and a barf bag floating back from right to left," he says. "We felt discouraged because we knew we had so much work to do -- that's when we made our first mistake." Ed is 84 now and the Skylab 4 mission began in November 1973 but time hasn't dulled his most vivid memories -- the Earth from space, the blazing corona of the sun and the silence of a spacewalk. He's the last one of the astronauts able to share the story, because Jerry Carr and Bill Pogue have both died -- Carr last summer and Pogue in 2014. The Skylab space station was a research platform in orbit where astronauts helped scientists to study the human body's response to space flight, carried out experiments and made observations of the Sun and Earth. Skylab 4 was the final mission and as a result it had a long list of tasks to fulfil. The 84-day mission -- the longest ever at that point -- was on a tight schedule. Nasa was very concerned about someone getting sick, which would have meant losing precious time.

Nasa accepts that mission planners had not given the crew the typical period of adjustment to acclimatise to working weightlessly in orbit and had packed their schedules with large amounts of work. The number of spacewalks was also doubled, to four, to observe a newly discovered comet, Kohoutek. So the astronauts were already under pressure when they made their first bad decision. "We wanted to get organised before starting a big flurry with the ground so we decided to delay telling them about Bill being sick," says Ed. But they had forgotten that everything they said on board was being recorded, and that mission control was listening in. It wasn't long before the voice of Astronaut Office chief Alan Shepard came crackling over the radio from down in mission control, an exchange also broadcast to the public. "He got on the line and read us the riot act for not telling them immediately," says Ed. "Al was OK, we just didn't like being chewed out in front of the whole world."

"A pallet of batteries was released from the International Space Station last week, becoming the heaviest single piece of junk ever jettisoned from the station," reports UPI: Mission controllers in Houston commanded the Canadarm2 robotic arm to release an external pallet loaded with the 2.9 tons of nickel-hydrogen batteries into Earth's orbit Thursday morning. "It is safely moving away from the station and will orbit Earth between two to four years before burning up harmlessly in the atmosphere," NASA said in a statement.
Gizmodo shares a photo of the pallet orbiting 265 miles (427 km) above Chile. And they add that this chain of events starte in 2011 when NASA decided to switch the Space Station from nickel-hydrogen batteries to lithium-ion batteries. This effort required four supply missions from the Japanese H-II Transfer Vehicle (HTV) cargo spacecraft, 13 different astronauts, and 14 spacewalks, in which 48 nickel-hydrogen batteries were replaced by 24 lithium-ion batteries...

"It used to be that it wasn't a big deal to toss stuff from ISS because very few satellites were below it [at altitudes below 250 miles (400 km)], " Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, explained in an email. "That's not so true any more with a bunch of cubesats and with recently launched Starlinks during orbit raising. So I have concerns."

To which he added: "I don't immediately see what else they could have done except fly a whole extra HTV mission just to get rid of it."

According to the European Space Agency, around 34,000 objects larger than 3.9 inches (10 cm) are currently in orbit around Earth, in addition to millions of tinier objects, such as tools and bits of spacecraft. The volume of objects in space, both functional and non-functional, is steadily increasing, prompting concerns of potential collisions and even more orbital debris.
A NASA representative told Gizmodo their ballistics officers "indicate no threat" of the pallet smashing into other space objects, but added "this item, like all, will be tracked by U.S. Space Command."

President Joe Biden is expected to nominate former Sen. Bill Nelson of Florida to lead NASA, settling on a longtime booster of the space program to lead the agency's return to the moon, POLITICO reported Thursday, citing sources. From the report: If confirmed by the Senate, Nelson would lead the space agency as it partners with the new crop of private space companies to establish a long-term presence on the lunar surface in preparation for sending astronauts to Mars. A Senate staffer and a second source familiar with the decision told POLITICO that the administration has picked Nelson, and that the announcement will come on Friday. Both sources spoke on background because they were not authorized to speak ahead of the formal announcement. Nelson, 78, who himself spent six days in orbit when he flew to space in 1986 aboard the Space Shuttle Columbia, served as the top Democrat on the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee during his 18 years in Congress, where he was instrumental in establishing many of NASA's current priorities.

AmiMoJo shares a report from ScienceAlert: The menagerie of bacterial and fungal species living among us is ever growing -- and this is no exception in low-gravity environments, such as the International Space Station (ISS). Researchers from the United States and India working with NASA have now discovered four strains of bacteria living in different places in the ISS -- three of which were, until now, completely unknown to science.

Three of the four strains were isolated back in 2015 and 2016 -- one was found on an overhead panel of the ISS research stations, the second was found in the Cupola, the third was found on the surface of the dining table; the fourth was found in an old HEPA filter returned to Earth in 2011. All four of the strains belong to a family of bacteria found in soil and freshwater; they are involved in nitrogen fixation, plant growth, and can help stop plant pathogens. Basically, good bacteria to have around if you're growing things. The research has been published in Frontiers in Microbiology.

NASA is counting down to what should be the final major test of the massive rocket it is building to put the first woman and the next man on the moon. From a report: More than 700,000 gallons of supercold propellant will fill up the tanks of the 212-foot tall core stage so that it can fire its four engines without actually blasting off. The goal is to simulate what will happen during its first launch, a mission to send a capsule with no crew around the moon and back. That lunar mission is currently targeted for November, says NASA's acting administrator Steve Jurczyk, who notes that this rocket "is going to be the most powerful rocket ever developed." The window for the rocket test opens on Thursday, March 18, at 3 pm EDT, and the core stage of the rocket is set up at NASA's Stennis Space Center in Mississippi. In a firing test earlier this year, one of the rocket's engines had a failure that forced an early shutdown after only 67 seconds.

"We can understand exactly what happened in the first test and what cut it short," says Jurczyk, who explains that one test parameter had been set too narrowly and that's now been fixed. "Start up on the first test went really well, and so we're reasonably confident we're going to have a good test this week." The test should last around eight minutes, to simulate the entire flight profile of this rocket stage, he explains, but the minimum of what they'd like to see is around 4 minutes. If all goes well, the rocket will move on to Kennedy Space Center in Florida, where the rest of the launch hardware is already waiting. Under the Trump administration, the agency had been aiming to get boots on the lunar surface by 2024, which would have been in a second term if the former president had been re-elected. That deadline was a goal that most in the space community felt was unrealistic. These days, NASA admits that there's no way to get people to the moon that quickly, given the recent appropriations given by Congress.

Oceans' worth of water may remain buried in the crust of Mars, and not lost to space as previously long thought, a new study finds. Space.com reports: Data from NASA's MAVEN (Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN) mission and the European Space Agency's Mars Express orbiter revealed that at the rate water disappears from the Red Planet's atmosphere, Mars would have lost a global ocean of water only about 10 to 82 feet (3 to 25 m) deep over the course of 4.5 billion years. Now scientists find that much of the water Mars once had may remain hidden in the crust of the Red Planet, locked away in the crystal structures of rocks beneath the Martian surface. They detailed their findings online March 16 in the journal Science and at the Lunar Planetary Science Conference.

In the new study, the scientists found chemical reactions may have led between 30% to 99% of the water that Mars initially had to get locked into minerals and buried in the planet's crust. Any remaining water was then lost to space, explaining the hydrogen-to-deuterium ratios seen on Mars. All in all, the researchers suggested Mars lost 40% to 95% of its water during its Noachian period about 4.1 billion to 3.7 billion years ago. Their model suggested the amount of water on the Red Planet reached its current levels by about 3 billion years ago.

New submitter byennie writes: A new airless bicycle tire called "METL" was introduced today by The SMART Tire Company. The tire is made from shape memory alloys (SMAs) and was originally designed for Mars rover missions (it's headed to Mars in 2026 as part of the Fetch rover). The structural tire claims to be flat-free and high performance, leaning on the unique properties of SMAs developed at NASA for future heavy vehicles in space. According to the company, "the shape memory alloy tire is made from advanced, lightweight materials known as NiTinol+, creating a tire that is elastic like rubber yet strong like titanium, exhibiting perfect shape memory without ever going flat."

The Verge reports: A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launched the latest batch of 60 Starlink satellites into orbit Sunday, and returned to Earth successfully, landing on its Of Course I Still Love You drone ship in the Atlantic Ocean, the company announced. Sunday's mission marked a record ninth flight and landing for this Falcon 9 booster, SpaceX said...

Sunday's launch from NASA's Kennedy Space Center was the second in the past few days for SpaceX, which sent another of its Falcon 9 rockets skyward from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station on Thursday. That launch also brought 60 satellites into orbit.
Sharing a video about the mission, CNET calls it "a new standard for rocket recycling." The first stage that boosted the satellites is a veteran of five previous Starlink missions, Crew Dragon's first demonstration flight, a SiriusXM satellite launch and a Canadian Space Agency satellite mission. The fairing, or nose cone, also previously flew on the Transporter-1 ride-share mission.