The world's oceans are in worse health than realised, scientists have said today, as they warn that a key measurement shows we are "running out of time" to protect marine ecosystems. From a report: Ocean acidification, often called the "evil twin" of the climate crisis, is caused when carbon dioxide is rapidly absorbed by the ocean, where it reacts with water molecules leading to a fall in the pH level of the seawater. It damages coral reefs and other ocean habitats and, in extreme cases, can dissolve the shells of marine creatures.

Until now, ocean acidification had not been deemed to have crossed its "planetary boundary." The planetary boundaries are the natural limits of key global systems -- such as climate, water and wildlife diversity -- beyond which their ability to maintain a healthy planet is in danger of failing. Six of the nine had been crossed already, scientists said last year. However, a new study by the UK's Plymouth Marine Laboratory (PML), the Washington-based National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and Oregon State University's Co-operative Institute for Marine Resources Studies found that ocean acidification's "boundary" was also reached about five years ago.

"Replanting forests can help cool the planet even more than some scientists once believed, especially in the tropics," according to a recent announcement from the University of California, Riverside. In a new modeling study published in Communications Earth & Environment, researchers at the University of California, Riverside, showed that restoring forests to their preindustrial extent could lower global average temperatures by 0.34 degrees Celsius. That is roughly one-quarter of the warming the Earth has already experienced. The study is based on an increase in tree area of about 12 million square kilometers, which is 135% of the area of the United States, and similar to estimates of the global tree restoration potential of 1 trillion trees. It is believed the planet has lost nearly half of its trees (about 3 trillion) since the onset of industrialized society.
The Washington Post noted that the researchers factored in how tree emissions interacted with molecules in the atmosphere, "encouraging cloud production, reflecting sunlight and cooling Earth's surface." In a news release, the researchers acknowledge that full reforestation is not feasible... "Reforestation is not a silver bullet," Bob Allen, a professor of climatology at the University of California at Riverside and the paper's lead author, said in a news release. "It's a powerful strategy, but it has to be paired with serious emissions reductions."

"NASA engineers have spent the past decade developing a rugged, partially autonomous lander designed to explore Europa, one of Jupiter's most intriguing moons," reports Gizmodo.

But though NASA "got cold feet over the project," the engineers behind the project are now suggesting the probe could instead explore Enceladus, the sixth-largest moon of Saturn: Europa has long been a prime target in the search for extraterrestrial biology because scientists suspect it harbors a subsurface ocean beneath its icy crust, potentially teeming with microbial life. But the robot — packed with radiation shielding, cutting-edge software, and ice-drilling appendages — won't be going anywhere anytime soon.

In a recent paper in Science Robotics, engineers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) outlined the design and testing of what was once the Europa Lander prototype, a four-legged robotic explorer built to survive the brutal surface conditions of the Jovian moon. The robot was designed to walk — as opposed to roll — analyze terrain, collect samples, and drill into Europa's icy crust — all with minimal guidance from Earth, due to the major communication lag between our planet and the moon 568 million miles (914 million kilometers) away. Designed to operate autonomously for hours at a time, the bot came equipped with stereoscopic cameras, a robotic arm, LED lights, and a suite of specialized materials tough enough to endure harsh radiation and bone-chilling cold....

According to the team, the challenges of getting to Europa — its radiation exposure, immense distance, and short observation windows — proved too daunting for NASA's higher-ups. And that's before you take into consideration the devastating budget cuts planned by the Trump administration, which would see the agency's funding fall from $7.3 billion to $3.9 billion. The lander, once the centerpiece of a bold astrobiology initiative, is now essentially mothballed.

But the engineers aren't giving up. They're now lobbying for the robot to get a second shot — on Enceladus, Saturn's ice-covered moon, which also boasts a subsurface ocean and has proven more favorable for robotic exploration. Enceladus is still frigid, but `has lower radiation and better access windows than Europa.

It's no longer a hypothetical question, writes the Washington Post. "In recent years, scientists have devised powerful genetic tools that may be able to eradicate mosquitoes and other pests once and for all."

But along with the ability to fight malaria, dengue, West Nile virus and other serious diseases, "the development of this technology also raises a profound ethical question: When, if ever, is it okay to intentionally drive a species out of existence...?" When so many wildlife conservationists are trying to save plants and animals from disappearing, the mosquito is one of the few creatures that people argue is actually worthy of extinction. Forget about tigers or bears; it's the tiny mosquito that is the deadliest animal on Earth. The human misery caused by malaria is undeniable. Nearly 600,000 people died of the disease in 2023, according to the World Health Organization, with the majority of cases in Africa... But recently, the Hastings Center for Bioethics, a research institute in New York, and Arizona State University brought together a group of bioethicists to discuss the potential pitfalls of intentionally trying to drive a species to extinction. In a policy paper published in the journal Science last month, the group concluded that "deliberate full extinction might occasionally be acceptable, but only extremely rarely..."

It's unclear how important malaria-carrying mosquitoes are to broader ecosystems. Little research has been done to figure out whether frogs or other animals that eat the insects would be able to find their meals elsewhere. Scientists are hotly debating whether a broader "insect apocalypse" is underway in many parts of the world, which may imperil other creatures that depend on them for food and pollination... Instead, the authors said, geneticists should be able to use gene editing, vaccines and other tools to target not the mosquito itself, but the single-celled Plasmodium parasite that is responsible for malaria. That invisible microorganism — which a mosquito transfers from its saliva to a person's blood when it bites — is the real culprit.
A nonprofit research consortium called Target Malaria has genetically modified mosquitoes in their labs (which get core funding from the Gates Foundation and from Open Philanthropy, backed by Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz and his wife). ), and hopes to deploy them in the wild within five years...

An anonymous reader shares a report: There are more than 1,000 technology unicorns, meaning venture-backed companies worth $1 billion or more, but at least one in 5 are likely to fail, said Rich Wong, a partner at venture capital firm Accel Partners. "I think maybe out of that thousand, 20% fully die. The end," Wong said on Thursday at the Bloomberg Tech conference in San Francisco.

The estimate reinforces what's become a grim calculus for many companies. Tech start-up valuations soared during the 2021 pandemic boom -- before crashing back to earth, as interest rates rose and venture capital investments fell. Of the companies that don't fail, about half will be stuck -- muddling along without being able to grow bigger or go public, Wong said. Some of those may "ultimately have reality set in," and sell themselves for lower prices than once seemed feasible. Others, not quite failing, "will be a bit zombie-ish and grind on," he said.

Japan-based Ispace confirmed its Resilience lander likely crashed during its second failed attempt at a lunar landing, after a sensor malfunction prevented proper deceleration. Despite the setback, the company remains committed to future missions, with funding secured for a third attempt using a new lander, Apex 1.0, scheduled for 2027. "Until then, Ispace has its work cut out for it," reports CNN. "[Ispace CEO and founder Takeshi Hakamada] said during the news briefing he will need to work to regain the trust of investors, and the company will need to deeply investigate what went wrong on the Resilience mission to ensure similar issues don't plague Apex 1.0."

The company has ambitious "plans to eventually build a city on the lunar surface that would house a thousand people and welcome thousands more for tourist visits," notes ABC News. "If ispace is going to establish a colony on the moon, it will need to identify an ample supply of ice or water, which it will convert into fuel for a future lunar fueling station. The ability to produce fuel on the moon will enable the company to transport people back and forth between the Earth and the moon."

alternative_right shares a report from Phys.Org: Using conventional propulsion and low-energy trajectories, it takes six to nine months for crewed spacecraft to reach Mars. These durations complicate mission design and technology requirements and raise health and safety concerns since crews will be exposed to extended periods in microgravity and heightened exposure to cosmic radiation. Traditionally, mission designers have recommended nuclear-electric or nuclear-thermal propulsion (NEP/NTP), which could shorten trips to just 3 months. In a recent study, a UCSB physics researcher identified two trajectories that could reduce transits to Mars using the Starship to between 90 and 104 days.

The study was authored by Jack Kingdon, a graduate student researcher in the Physics Department at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB). He is also a member of the UCSB Weld Lab, an experimental ultracold atomic physics group that uses quantum degenerate gases to explore quantum mechanical phenomena. [...] As outlined on its website, conference presentations, and user manual, the SpaceX mission architecture consists of six Starships traveling to Mars. Four of these spacecraft will haul 400 metric tons (440 U.S. tons) of cargo while two will transport 200 passengers. Based on the Block 2 design, which has a 1,500 metric ton (1,650 U.S. ton) propellant capacity, the crewed Starships will require 15 tankers to fully refuel in low Earth orbit (LEO). The cargo ships would require only four, since they would be sent on longer low-energy trajectories. Once the flotilla arrives at Mars, the Starships will refuel using propellant created in situ using local carbon dioxide and water ice. When the return window approaches, one of the crew ships and 3-4 cargo ships will refuel and then launch into a low Mars orbit (LMO). The cargo ships will then transfer the majority of their propellant to the crew ship and return to the surface of Mars. The crew ship would then depart for Earth, and the process could be repeated for the other crew ship.

Kingdon calculated multiple trajectories using a Lambert Solver, which produces the shortest elliptical arc in two-body problem equations (aka Lambert's problem). The first would depart Earth on April 30th, 2033, taking advantage of the 26-month periodic alignment between Earth and Mars. The transit would last 90 days, with the crew returning to Earth after another 90-day transit by July 2nd, 2035. The second would depart Earth on July 15th, 2035, and return to Earth after a 104-day transit on December 5th, 2037. As Kingdon explained, the former trajectory is the most likely to succeed: "The optimal trajectory is the 2033 trajectory -- it has the lowest fuel requirements for the fastest transit time. A note that may not be obvious to the layreader is that Starship can very easily reach Mars in ~3 months -- in fact, it can in any launch window, over a fairly wide range of trajectories. However, Starship may impact the Martian atmosphere too fast (although we do not know, and likely SpaceX don't either actually how fast Starship can hit the Martian atmosphere and survive). The trajectories discussed are ones that I am confident Starship will survive." The paper describing the work has been published in the journal Scientific Reports.

An anonymous reader shared this report from Space.com: Three world travelers, two Space Camp alums and an aerospace executive whose last name aptly matched their shared adventure traveled into space and back Saturday, becoming the latest six people to fly with Blue Origin, the spaceflight company founded by billionaire Jeff Bezos.

Mark Rocket joined Jaime Alemán, Jesse Williams, Paul Jeris, Gretchen Green and Amy Medina Jorge on board the RSS First Step — Blue Origin's first of two human-rated New Shepard capsules — for a trip above the Kármán Line, the 62-mile-high (100-kilometer) internationally recognized boundary between Earth and space...

Mark Rocket became the first New Zealander to reach space on the mission. His connection to aerospace goes beyond his apt name and today's flight; he's currently the CEO of Kea Aerospace and previously helped lead Rocket Lab, a competing space launch company to Blue Origin that sends most of its rockets up from New Zealand. Alemán, Williams and Jeris each traveled the world extensively before briefly leaving the planet today. An attorney from Panama, Alemán is now the first person to have visited all 193 countries recognized by the United Nations, traveled to the North and South Poles, and now, have been into space. For Williams, an entrepreneur from Canada, Saturday's flight continued his record of achieving high altitudes; he has summitted Mt. Everest and five of the other six other highest mountains across the globe.
"For about three minutes, the six NS-32 crewmates experienced weightlessness," the article points out, "and had an astronaut's-eye view of the planet..."

On social media Blue Origin notes it's their 12th human spaceflight, "and the 32nd flight of the New Shepard program."

India faces a paradoxical climate challenge that requires embracing air conditioning despite the environmental costs, according to analysis of the country's warming patterns and pollution crisis. While the past decade marked India's warmest on record, the nation has warmed at only 0.09C per decade compared to 0.30C globally, with horrific air pollution serving as an unintended cooling agent by intercepting solar radiation and making clouds more reflective.

The cooling effect creates a dangerous trade-off: cleaner air would accelerate temperature rises just as the country desperately needs relief from intensifying heat waves. Only one in ten Indian households owns air conditioning, compared to two-thirds in China and four-fifths in Malaysia, despite air-conditioner sales doubling between 2020 and 2024. During heat waves, cooling systems already account for one-fifth of power demand, mostly supplied by coal plants that worsen the pollution problem India must eventually solve.

The world is facing a new form of climate denial -- not the dismissal of climate science, but a concerted attack on the idea that the economy can be reorganised to fight the crisis, the president of global climate talks has warned. The Guardian reports: Andre Correa do Lago, the veteran Brazilian diplomat who will direct this year's UN summit, Cop30, believes his biggest job will be to counter the attempt from some vested interests to prevent climate policies aimed at shifting the global economy to a low-carbon footing.

"There is a new kind of opposition to climate action. We are facing a discredit of climate policies. I don't think we are facing climate denial," he said, referring to the increasingly desperate attempts to pretend there is no consensus on climate science that have plagued climate action for the past 30 years. "It's not a scientific denial, it's an economic denial." This economic denial could be just as dangerous and cause as much delay as repeated attempts to deny climate science in previous years, he warned in an exclusive interview with the Guardian.

The world faces an 80% probability of breaking another annual temperature record within the next five years, according to a forecast released Wednesday by the World Meteorological Organization and the UK Meteorological Office.

The projections, derived from more than 200 computer simulations run by 10 global scientific centers, indicate an 86% chance that one of the next five years will surpass the 1.5 degrees Celsius warming threshold established by the Paris climate accord, with a 70% chance that the entire five-year period will average above that milestone.

For the first time, the agencies identified a slight possibility that global annual temperatures could reach the more alarming 2 degrees Celsius benchmark before the decade's end.

Great swathes of the planet's oceans have become darker in the past two decades, according to researchers who fear the trend will have a severe impact on marine life around the world. From a report: Satellite data and numerical modelling revealed that more than a fifth of the global ocean darkened between 2003 and 2022, reducing the band of water that life reliant on sunlight and moonlight can thrive in. The effect is evident across 75m sq km (30m sq miles) of ocean, equivalent to the land area of Europe, Africa, China and North America combined, and disturbs the upper layer of water where 90% of marine species live.

Dr Thomas Davies, a marine conservationist at the University of Plymouth, said the findings were a "genuine cause for concern," with potentially severe implications for marine ecosystems, global fisheries and the critical turnover of carbon and nutrients in the oceans. Most marine life thrives in the photic zones of the world's oceans, the surface layers that allow sufficient light through for organisms to exploit. While sunlight can reach a kilometre beneath the waves, in practice there is little below 200 metres.

SpaceX's Starship Flight 9 successfully launched and reached space -- marking the first reuse of a Super Heavy booster -- but both rocket stages were ultimately lost mid-mission due to a "rapid unscheduled disassembly." SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said in a statement: "Starship made it to the scheduled ship engine cutoff, so big improvement over last flight! Leaks caused loss of main tank pressure during the coast and re-entry phase. Lot of good data to review." Musk said the next three Starship test launches could lift off every three to four weeks in the days ahead. Space.com reports: The mission lifted off from Starbase today at 7:37 p.m. EDT (2337 GMT; 6:37 p.m. local Texas time), sending the 40-story-tall rocket into the Texas sky atop a pillar of flame. It was a milestone launch, marking the first-ever reuse of a Super Heavy booster; this one earned its wings on Flight 7 in January. (SpaceX swapped out just four of its Raptors after that mission, meaning that 29 of the engines that flew today were flight-proven.) "Lessons learned from the first booster refurbishment and subsequent performance in flight will enable faster turnarounds of future reflights as progress is made towards vehicles requiring no hands-on maintenance between launches," the company wrote in a Flight 9 mission preview.

The Super Heavy had a somewhat different job to do today; it conducted a variety of experiments on its way back down to Earth. For example, the booster performed a controlled rather than randomized return flip and hit the atmosphere at a different angle. "By increasing the amount of atmospheric drag on the vehicle, a higher angle of attack can result in a lower descent speed, which in turn requires less propellant for the initial landing burn," SpaceX wrote in the mission preview. "Getting real-world data on how the booster is able to control its flight at this higher angle of attack will contribute to improved performance on future vehicles, including the next generation of Super Heavy." These experiments complicated Super Heavy's flight profile compared to previous missions, making another "chopsticks" catch at Starbase a tougher proposition. So, rather than risk damaging the launch tower and other infrastructure, SpaceX decided to bring the booster back for a "hard splashdown" in the Gulf of Mexico on Flight 9. That was the plan, anyway; Super Heavy didn't quite make it that far. The booster broke apart about 6 minutes and 20 seconds into today's flight, just after beginning its landing burn. "Confirmation that the booster did demise," [Dan Huot, of SpaceX's communications team] said during the Flight 9 webcast. Super Heavy's flight ended "before it was able to get through landing burn," he added.

Ship, by contrast, improved its performance a bit this time around. It reached space today on a suborbital trajectory that took it eastward over the Atlantic Ocean -- the same basic path the vehicle took on the truncated Flight 7 and Flight 8. But Flight 9 got choppy for Ship after that. The vehicle was supposed to deploy eight dummy versions of SpaceX's Starlink satellites about 18.5 minutes after liftoff, which would have been a landmark first for the Starship program. That didn't happen, however; the payload door couldn't open fully, so SpaceX abandoned the deployment try. Then, about 30 minutes after launch, Ship started to tumble, which was the result of a leak in Ship's fuel-tank systems, according to Huot. "A lot of those [tanks] are used for your attitude control," he said. "And so, at this point, we've essentially lost our attitude control with Starship." As a result, SpaceX nixed a plan to relight one of Ship's Raptor engines in space, a test that was supposed to happen about 38 minutes after launch. And the company gave up hope of a soft splashdown for the vehicle, instead becoming resigned to a breakup over the Indian Ocean during Ship's reentry.

The company therefore will not get all the data it wanted about Flight 9. And there was quite a bit to get; for example, SpaceX removed some of Ship's heat-shield tiles to stress-test vulnerable areas, and it also tried out several different tile materials, including one with an active cooling system. But the company plans to bounce back and try again soon, just as it did after Flight 7 and Flight 8. You can watch a recording of the launch on YouTube.

Around the world fungal infections kill an estimated 2.5 million people a year, notes a report from CNN. But new research predicts that certain species of infection-causing Aspergillus fungi could spread into new areas as the earth's temperature rises. ("The study, published this month, is currently being peer reviewed...") Aspergillus fungi grow like small filaments in soils all over the world. Like almost all fungi, they release huge numbers of tiny spores that spread through the air. Humans inhale spores every day but most people won't experience any health issues; their immune system clears them. It's a different story for those with lung conditions including asthma, cystic fibrosis and COPD, as well as people with compromised immune systems, such as cancer and organ transplant patients, and those who have had severe flu or Covid-19. If the body's immune system fails to clear the spores, the fungus "starts to grow and basically kind of eat you from the inside out, saying it really bluntly," said Norman van Rijn, one of the study's authors and a climate change and infectious diseases researcher at the University of Manchester. Aspergillosis has very high mortality rates at around 20% to 40%, he said. It's also very difficult to diagnose, as doctors don't always have it on their radar and patients often present with fevers and coughs, symptoms common to many illnesses. Fungal pathogens are also becoming increasingly resistant to treatment, van Rijn added. There are only four classes of antifungal medicines available...

Aspergillus flavus, a species that tends to prefer hotter, tropical climates, could increase its spread by 16% if humans continue burning large amounts of fossil fuels, the study found... [Mainly in parts of Europe and the northernmost edges of Scandinavia, Russia, China, and Canada, and the western edge of Alaska.] This species can cause severe infections in humans and is resistant to many antifungal medications. It also infects a range of food crops, posing a potential threat to food security. The World Health Organization added Aspergillus flavus to its critical group of fungal pathogens in 2022 because of its public health impact and antifungal resistance risk...

Conversely, temperatures in some regions, including sub-Saharan Africa, could become so hot they are no longer hospitable to Aspergillus fungi. This could bring its own problems, as fungi play an important role in ecosystems, including healthy soils. As well as expanding their growing range, a warming world could also be increasing fungi's temperature tolerance, allowing them to better survive inside human bodies. Extreme weather events such as drought, floods and heatwaves can affect fungi, too, helping to spread spores over long distances.
Thanks to Slashdot reader quonset for sharing the article.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: One of Microsoft's latest AI models can accurately predict air quality, hurricanes, typhoons, and other weather-related phenomena, the company claims. In a paper published in the journal Nature and an accompanying blog post this week, Microsoft detailed Aurora, which the tech giant says can forecast atmospheric events with greater precision and speed than traditional meteorological approaches. Aurora, which has been trained on more than a million hours of data from satellites, radar and weather stations, simulations, and forecasts, can be fine-tuned with additional data to make predictions for particular weather events.

AI weather models are nothing new. Google DeepMind has released a handful over the past several years, including WeatherNext, which the lab claims beats some of the world's best forecasting systems. Microsoft is positioning Aurora as one of the field's top performers -- and a potential boon for labs studying weather science. In experiments, Aurora predicted Typhoon Doksuri's landfall in the Philippines four days in advance of the actual event, beating some expert predictions, Microsoft says. The model also bested the National Hurricane Center in forecasting five-day tropical cyclone tracks for the 2022-2023 season, and successfully predicted the 2022 Iraq sandstorm.

While Aurora required substantial computing infrastructure to train, Microsoft says the model is highly efficient to run. It generates forecasts in seconds compared to the hours traditional systems take using supercomputer hardware. Microsoft, which has made the source code and model weights publicly available, says that it's incorporating Aurora's AI modeling into its MSN Weather app via a specialized version of the model that produces hourly forecasts, including for clouds.

Out of 186 countries, only Guyana produces enough food to self-sufficiently feed all its citizens without foreign imports, according to new research. From a report: The study, published in Nature Food, investigated how well each country could feed their populations in seven food groups: fruits, vegetables, dairy, fish, meat, plant-based protein and starchy staples.

Worldwide, the study found that 65% of countries were overproducing meat and dairy, compared to their own population's dietary needs. It also found that Guyana, located in South America, was the only country that could boast total self-sufficiency, while China and Vietnam were close behind, being able to produce enough food in six out of seven food groups. Just one in seven of the tested countries were judged self-sufficient in five or more categories.

Scientists have discovered a previously unknown bacterium aboard China's Tiangong space station. "It has been named Niallia tiangongensis, and it inhabited the cockpit controls on the station, living in microgravity conditions," reports Wired. From the report: According to China Central Television, the country's national broadcaster, taikonauts (Chinese astronauts) collected swab samples from the space station in May 2023, which were then frozen and sent back to Earth for study. The aim of this work was to investigate the behavior of microorganisms, gathered from a completely sealed environment with a human crew, during space travel, as part of the China Space Station Habitation Area Microbiome Program (CHAMP). A paper published in the Journal of Systematic and Evolutionary Microbiology describes how analysis of samples from the space station revealed this previously unseen bacterial species, which belongs to the genus Niallia. Genomic sequencing showed that its closest terrestrial relative is the bacterium Niallia circulans, although the Tiangong species has substantial genetic differences. [...]

It is unclear whether the newly discovered microbe evolved on the space station or whether it is part of the vast sea of as yet unidentified microorganisms on Earth. To date, tens of thousands of bacterial species have been cataloged, although there are estimated to be billions more unclassified species on Earth. The discovery of Niallia tiangongensis will provide a better understanding of the microscopic hazards that the next generation of space travelers will face and help design sanitation protocols for extended missions. It is still too early to determine whether the space bacterium poses any danger to taikonauts aboard Tiangong, although it is known that its terrestrial relative, Niallia circulans, can cause sepsis, especially in immunocompromised people.

"With the help of more than five dozen fossils, paleontologists have uncovered a tiny three-eyed predator nicknamed the 'sea moth'," reports CNN, "that swam in Earth's oceans 506 million years ago."

Tiny as in 15 to 61 mm in total body length. (That's 0.60 to 2.4 inches...) But check out the illustration in CNN's article... Mosura fentoni, as the species is known, belongs to a group called radiodonts, an early offshoot of the arthropod evolutionary tree, according to a new study published Tuesday in the journal Royal Society Open Science. While radiodonts are now extinct, studying their fossilized remains can illuminate how modern arthropods such as insects, spiders and crabs evolved. One of the most diverse animal groups, arthropods are believed to account for more than 80% of living animal species, said lead study author Dr. Joe Moysiuk, curator of paleontology and geology at the Manitoba Museum in Winnipeg.

Well-preserved specimens of the previously unknown Mosura fentoni also reveal something that's never been seen in any other radiodont: an abdomen-like body region with 16 segments that include gills at its rear. This part of the creature's anatomy is similar to a batch of segments bearing respiratory organs at the rear of the body found in distant modern radiodont relatives like horseshoe crabs, woodlice and insects, Moysiuk said.... No animal living today quite looks like Mosura fentoni, Moysiuk said, although it had jointed claws similar to those of modern insects and crustaceans. But unlike those critters, which can have two or four additional eyes used to help maintain orientation, Mosura had a larger and more conspicuous third eye in the middle of its head.

"Although not closely related, Mosura probably swam in a similar way to a ray, undulating its multiple sets of swimming flaps up and down, like flying underwater," Moysiuk said in an email. "It also had a mouth shaped like a pencil sharpener and lined with rows of serrated plates, unlike any living animal." About the size of an adult human's index finger, Mosura and its swimming flaps vaguely resemble a moth, which led researchers to call it the "sea moth."
The Royal Society publication notes the etymology of the species name (Mosura fentoni is "from the name of the fictional Japanese monster, or kaiju... also known as 'Mothra'...in reference to the moth-like appearance of the animal."

Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader walterbyrd for sharing the news.

Australia's first orbital-class rocket launch was delayed after the nose cone of Gilmour Space's Eris rocket unexpectedly detached due to an electrical fault during final preparations. Although no damage occurred and no payload was onboard, the company is postponing the launch to investigate and replace the fairing before attempting another test flight. Ars Technica reports: Gilmour, the Australian startup that developed the Eris rocket, announced the setback in a post to the company's social media accounts Thursday. "During final launch preparations last night, an electrical fault triggered the system that opens the rocket's nose cone (the payload fairing)," Gilmour posted on LinkedIn. "This happened before any fuel was loaded into the vehicle. Most importantly, no one was injured, and early checks show no damage to the rocket or the launch pad."

Gilmour was gearing up for a launch attempt from a privately owned spaceport in the Australian state of Queensland early Friday, local time (Thursday in the United States). The company's Eris rocket, which was poised for its first test flight, stands about 82 feet (25 meters) tall with its payload fairing intact. It's designed to haul a payload of about 670 pounds (305 kilograms) to low-Earth orbit.

While Gilmour didn't release any photos of the accident, a company spokesperson confirmed to Ars that the payload fairing "deployed" after the unexpected electrical issue triggered the separation system. Payload fairings are like clamshells that enclose the satellites mounted to the top of their launch vehicle, protecting them from weather on the launch pad and from airflow as the rocket accelerates to supersonic speeds. Once in space, the rocket releases the payload shroud, usually in two halves. There were no satellites aboard the rocket as Gilmour prepared for its first test flight. The report notes that the Eris rocket is aiming to "become the first all-Australian launcher to reach orbit."

NASA engineers have successfully revived Voyager 1's backup thrusters, unused since 2004 and once considered defunct. Space.com reports: This remarkable feat became necessary because the spacecraft's primary thrusters, which control its orientation, have been degrading due to residue buildup. If its thrusters fail completely, Voyager 1 could lose its ability to point its antenna toward Earth, therefore cutting off communication with Earth after nearly 50 years of operation. To make matters more urgent, the team faced a strict deadline while trying to remedy the thruster situation. After May 4, the Earth-based antenna that sends commands to Voyager 1 -- and its twin, Voyager 2 -- was scheduled to go offline for months of upgrades. This would have made timely intervention impossible.

To solve the problem, NASA's team had to reactivate Voyager 1's long-dormant backup roll thrusters and then attempt to restart the heaters that keep them operational. If the star tracker drifted too far from its guide star during this process, the roll thrusters would automatically fire as a safety measure -- but if the heaters weren't back online by then, firing the thrusters could cause a dangerous pressure spike. So, the team had to precisely realign the star tracker before the thrusters engaged. Because Voyager is so incredibly distant, the team faced an agonizing 23-hour wait for the radio signal to travel all the way back to Earth. If the test had failed, Voyager might have already been in serious trouble. Then, on March 20, their patience was finally rewarded when Voyager responded perfectly to their commands. Within 20 minutes of receiving the signal, the team saw the thruster heaters' temperature soar -- a clear sign that the backup thrusters were firing as planned. "It was such a glorious moment. Team morale was very high that day," Todd Barber, the mission's propulsion lead at JPL, said in the statement. "These thrusters were considered dead. And that was a legitimate conclusion. It's just that one of our engineers had this insight that maybe there was this other possible cause, and it was fixable. It was yet another miracle save for Voyager."