Commercial space efforts continue around the world, as the Chinese company Space Pioneer fired up a partially-fueled rocket engine Sunday for a short-duration test of its reusable rocket on the ground. But Space News reports that the test "ended in catastrophic failure and a dramatic explosion."

"Amateur footage captured by Gongyi citizens and posted on Chinese social media shows the nine-engine test stage igntiing and then, exceptionally, taking off." Hold-down clamps and other structures are typically used to securely keep stages in place. The stage is seen climbing into the sky before halting, apparently with its engines shutting off, and returning to Earth. The stage impacted the ground around 50 seconds after it took off, apparently with much of its kerosene-liquid oxygen propellant remaining, causing a large explosion.

The Tianlong-3 first stage would likely fire for a number of minutes on an orbital flight. Space Pioneer was conducting its test as a buildup to an orbital launch of the Tianlong-3, which is benchmarked against the SpaceX Falcon 9, in the coming months. The company announced earlier this month that it has secured $207 million in new funding.

Shanghai-based digital newspaper The Paper reported Henan officials as saying there were no casualties reported. Space Pioneer issued its own statement later, stating there was a structural failure at the connection between the rocket body and the test bench. The rocket's onboard computer automatically shut down the engines and the rocket fell 1.5 kilometers southwest. It reiterated earlier reports that no casualties were found. The company said the test produced 820 tons of thrust.
The article speculates on whether the event will delay the development of the rocket — or the planned launches for a Chinese megaconstellation of satellites. "Space Pioneer says it will conduct an analysis and restart testing with new hardware as soon as possible."

Slashdot reader Required Snark shared this article from Ars Technica: Almost exactly two years ago, as it prepared for the next generation of human spaceflight, NASA chose a pair of private companies to design and develop new spacesuits. These were to be new spacesuits that would allow astronauts to both perform spacewalks outside the International Space Station as well as walk on the Moon as part of the Artemis program. Now, that plan appears to be in trouble, with one of the spacesuit providers — Collins Aerospace — expected to back out, Ars has learned. It's a blow for NASA, because the space agency really needs modern spacesuits.

NASA's Apollo-era suits have long been retired. The current suits used for spacewalks in low-Earth orbit are four decades old. "These new capabilities will allow us to continue on the International Space Station and allows us to do the Artemis program and continue on to Mars," said the director of Johnson Space Center, Vanessa Wyche, during a celebratory news conference in Houston two years ago. The two winning teams were led by Collins Aerospace and Axiom Space, respectively. They were eligible for task orders worth up to $3.5 billion — in essence NASA would rent the use of these suits for a couple of decades. Since then, NASA has designated Axiom to work primarily on a suit for the Moon and the Artemis Program, and Collins with developing a suit for operations in-orbit, such as space station servicing...

The agency has been experiencing periodic problems with the maintenance of the suits built decades ago, known as the Extravehicular Mobility Unit, which made its debut in the 1980s. NASA has acknowledged the suit has exceeded its planned design lifetime. Just this Monday, the agency had to halt a spacewalk after the airlock had been de-pressurized and the hatch opened due to a water leak in the service and cooling umbilical unit of Tracy Dyson's spacesuit. As a result of this problem, NASA will likely only be able to conduct a single spacewalk this summer, after initially planning three, to complete work outside the International Space Station.
Collins designed the original Apollo suits, according to the article. But a person familiar with the situation told Ars Technica that "Collins has admitted they have drastically underperformed and have overspent" on their work, "culminating in a request to be taken off the contract or renegotiate the scope and their budget."

Ironically, the company's top's post on their account on Twitter/X is still a repost of NASA's February announcement that they're "getting a nextx-generation spacesuit" developed by Collins Aerospace, and saying that the company "recently completed a key NASA design milestone aboard a commercial microgravity aircraft."

NASA's post said they needed the suit "In order to advance NASA's spacewalking capabilities in low Earth orbit and to support continued maintenance and operations at the Space Station."

The Wall Street Journal reports that a European initiative studying the feasibility data centers in space "has found that the project could be economically viable" — while reducing the data center's carbon footprint.

And they add that according to coordinator Thales Alenia Space, the project "could also generate a return on investment of several billion euros between now and 2050." The study — dubbed Ascend, short for Advanced Space Cloud for European Net zero emission and Data sovereignty — was funded by the European Union and sought to compare the environmental impacts of space-based and Earth-based data centers, the company said. Moving forward, the company plans to consolidate and optimize its results. Space data centers would be powered by solar energy outside the Earth's atmosphere, aiming to contribute to the European Union's goal of achieving carbon neutrality by 2050, the project coordinator said... Space data centers wouldn't require water to cool them, the company said.
The 16-month study came to a "very encouraging" conclusion, project manager Damien Dumestier told CNBC. With some caveats... The facilities that the study explored launching into space would orbit at an altitude of around 1,400 kilometers (869.9 miles) — about three times the altitude of the International Space Station. Dumestier explained that ASCEND would aim to deploy 13 space data center building blocks with a total capacity of 10 megawatts in 2036, in order to achieve the starting point for cloud service commercialization... The study found that, in order to significantly reduce CO2 emissions, a new type of launcher that is 10 times less emissive would need to be developed. ArianeGroup, one of the 12 companies participating in the study, is working to speed up the development of such reusable and eco-friendly launchers. The target is to have the first eco-launcher ready by 2035 and then to allow for 15 years of deployment in order to have the huge capacity required to make the project feasible, said Dumestier...

Michael Winterson, managing director of the European Data Centre Association, acknowledges that a space data center would benefit from increased efficiency from solar power without the interruption of weather patterns — but the center would require significant amounts of rocket fuel to keep it in orbit. Winterson estimates that even a small 1 megawatt center in low earth orbit would need around 280,000 kilograms of rocket fuel per year at a cost of around $140 million in 2030 — a calculation based on a significant decrease in launch costs, which has yet to take place. "There will be specialist services that will be suited to this idea, but it will in no way be a market replacement," said Winterson. "Applications that might be well served would be very specific, such as military/surveillance, broadcasting, telecommunications and financial trading services. All other services would not competitively run from space," he added in emailed comments.

[Merima Dzanic, head of strategy and operations at the Danish Data Center Industry Association] also signaled some skepticism around security risks, noting, "Space is being increasingly politicised and weaponized amongst the different countries. So obviously, there is a security implications on what type of data you send out there."
Its not the only study looking at the potential of orbital data centers, notes CNBC. "Microsoft, which has previously trialed the use of a subsea data center that was positioned 117 feet deep on the seafloor, is collaborating with companies such as Loft Orbital to explore the challenges in executing AI and computing in space."

The article also points out that the total global electricity consumption from data centers could exceed 1,000 terawatt-hours in 2026. "That's roughly equivalent to the electricity consumption of Japan, according to the International Energy Agency."

Long-time Slashdot reader jrronimo says JILA physicist Jun Ye's group "has made a breakthrough towards the next stage of precision timekeeping."

From their paper recently published to arXiv: Optical atomic clocks use electronic energy levels to precisely keep track of time. A clock based on nuclear energy levels promises a next-generation platform for precision metrology and fundamental physics studies.... These results mark the start of nuclear-based solid-state optical clocks and demonstrate the first comparison of nuclear and atomic clocks for fundamental physics studies. This work represents a confluence of precision metrology, ultrafast strong field physics, nuclear physics, and fundamental physics.

Lego teamed up with the European Space Agency to make Lego pieces from actual meteorite dust, writes Engadget.

"It's a proof of concept to show how astronauts could use moondust to build lunar structures." Consider the sheer amount of energy and money required to haul up building materials from Earth to the Moon. It would be a game changer to, instead, build everything from pre-existing lunar materials. There's a layer of rock and mineral deposits at the surface of the Moon, which is called lunar regolith...

However, there isn't too much lunar regolith here on Earth for folks to experiment with. ESA scientists made their own regolith by grinding up a really old meteorite. [4.5 billion years, according to Lego's site, discovered in Africa in 2000.] The dust from this meteorite was turned into a mixture that was used to 3D print the Lego pieces. Voila. Moon bricks. They click together just like regular Lego bricks, though they only come in one color (space gray obviously.)
"The result is amazing," says ESA Science Officer Aidan Cowley on the Lego site (though "the bricks may look a little rougher than usual. Importantly the clutch power still works, enabling us to play and test our designs.")

"Nobody has built a structure on the Moon," Cowley said in an ESA statement. "So it was great to have the flexibility to try out all kinds of designs and building techniques with our space bricks." And the bricks will also be "helping to inspire the next generation of space engineers," according to the ESA's announcement — since they'll be on display in select Lego stores in the U.S., Canada, the U.K., Spain, France, Germany, the Netherlands, and Australia through September 20th.

"Stars very close to the center of our galaxy could be fueled by dark matter in perpetuity," writes Gizmodo, "according to a team of astronomers who recently studied the distant light sources." The group of stars, known as S-cluster stars, is just three light-years from the center of the Milky Way (for reference, we are about 26,000 light-years from the center of our galaxy, which hosts a supermassive black hole at its core). The stars are surprisingly young for their galactic neighborhood, yet they don't look like stars that simply migrated to this part of the Milky Way after forming in another location...

As reported by Space.com, the research team posits that these weird stars may be accreting dark matter, which they then use as fuel to keep burning. Since models estimate there is plenty of dark matter near the galaxy's core, the stars are "forever young," as study lead author Isabelle John, an astrophysicist at the Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology told Space.com. Effectively, the stars have a long, long way to go before they start running low on fuel. The team's paper is currently hosted on the preprint server arXiv, meaning it has not yet gone through the process of peer review.
Dark matter is only "seen" through its effects on other objects, the article points out — leading to lots of theories as to where it's actually located. "Earlier this year, a different team of researchers proposed that neutron stars — extremely dense stellar remnants — could actually be a source of dark matter. Last July, yet another team suggested that the Webb Telescope had detected stars that were powered by dark matter."

An anonymous reader shares a report: Bill Gates has defended the rapid rise in energy use caused by AI systems, arguing the technology would ultimately offset its heavy consumption of electricity. Speaking in London, Gates urged environmentalists and governments to "not go overboard" on concerns about the huge amounts of power required to run new generative AI systems, as Big Tech companies such as Microsoft race to invest tens of billions of dollars in vast new data centres.

Data centres will drive a rise in global electricity usage of between 2-6 per cent, the billionaire said. "The question is, will AI accelerate a more than 6 per cent reduction? And the answer is: certainly," said Gates, the Microsoft co-founder who has been a prolific investor in companies developing sustainable energy and carbon- reduction technologies. In May, Microsoft admitted that its greenhouse gas emissions had risen by almost a third since 2020, in large part due to the construction of data centres.

Gates, who left Microsoft's board in 2020 but remains an adviser to chief executive Satya Nadella, said tech companies would pay a "green premium" -- or higher price -- for clean energy as they seek new sources of power, which was helping to drive its development and deployment. "The tech companies are the people willing to pay a premium and to help bootstrap green energy capacity," he said at the Breakthrough Energy Summit in London on Thursday.

Longtime Slashdot reader thephydes writes: NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) has announced that the SHERLOC (Scanning Habitable Environments with Raman & Luminescence for Organics and Chemicals) instrument on the Perseverance rover has been brought back online "Six months of running diagnostics, testing, imagery and data analysis, troubleshooting, and retesting couldn't come with a better conclusion," said SHERLOC principal investigator Kevin Hand of JPL.

JPL writes in a press release. "Mounted on the rover's robotic arm, SHERLOC uses cameras, spectrometers, and a laser to search for organics and minerals that have been altered by watery environments and may be signs of past microbial life." In addition to its black-and-white context camera, SHERLOC is assisted by WATSON, a color camera for taking close-up images of rock grains and surface textures. The instrument stopped working this past January when it encountered an issue where the "movable lens cover designed to protect the instrument's spectrometer and one of its cameras from dust became frozen in a position that prevented SHERLOC from collecting data," says JPL.

"Analysis by the SHERLOC team pointed to the malfunction of a small motor responsible for moving the protective lens cover as well as adjusting focus for the spectrometer and the Autofocus and Context Imager (ACI) camera. By testing potential solutions on a duplicate SHERLOC instrument at JPL, the team began a long, meticulous evaluation process to see if, and how, the lens cover could be moved into the open position."

A study from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) analyzed data from nearly 400,000 healthy adults over 20 years and determined that "multivitamin use to improve longevity is not supported." The findings were published in JAMA Network Open. ABC News reports: The study found no evidence that daily multivitamin consumption reduced the risk of death from conditions such as heart disease or cancer. Rather than living longer, otherwise healthy people who took daily multivitamins were slightly more likely (4%) than non-users to die in the study period, according to researchers. Researchers reported nearly 165,000 deaths occurring during the follow-up period of the study, out of the initial group of 390,000 participants. The study, however, did not analyze data from people with pre-existing vitamin deficiencies. "What this study shows is that, generally, multivitamins aren't going to help you live longer," Dr. Jade A Cobern, MD, MPH, board-certified physician in pediatrics and general preventive medicine, told ABC News. "Even though the cost of many multivitamins isn't high, this is still an expense that many people can be spared from."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Ultra-processed foods (UPFs) are displacing healthy diets "all over the world" despite growing evidence of the risks they pose and should be sold with tobacco-style warnings, according to the nutritional scientist who first coined the term. Prof Carlos Monteiro of the University of Sao Paulo will highlight the increasing danger UPFs present to children and adults at the International Congress on Obesity this week. "UPFs are increasing their share in and domination of global diets, despite the risk they represent to health in terms of increasing the risk of multiple chronic diseases," Monteiro told the Guardian ahead of the conference in Sao Paulo. "UPFs are displacing healthier, less processed foods all over the world, and also causing a deterioration in diet quality due to their several harmful attributes. Together, these foods are driving the pandemic of obesity and other diet-related chronic diseases, such as diabetes."

Monteiro and his colleagues first used the phrase UPF 15 years ago when designing the food classification system "Nova." This assesses not only nutritional content but also the processes food undergoes before it is consumed. The system places food and drink into four groups: minimally processed food, processed culinary ingredients, processed food and ultra-processed food. Monteiro told the Guardian he was now so concerned about the impact UPF was having on human health that studies and reviews were no longer sufficient to warn the public of the health hazards. "Public health campaigns are needed like those against tobacco to curb the dangers of UPFs," he told the Guardian in an email. "Such campaigns would include the health dangers of consumption of UPFs. Advertisements for UPFs should also be banned or heavily restricted, and front-of-pack warnings should be introduced similar to those used for cigarette packs."

He will tell delegates: "Sales of UPFs in schools and health facilities should be banned, and there should be heavy taxation of UPFs, with the revenue generated used to subsidize fresh foods." Monteiro will tell the conference that food giants marketing UPFs know that, in order to be competitive, their products must be more convenient, more affordable and tastier than freshly prepared meals. "To maximize profits, these UPFs must have lower cost of production and be overconsumed," he said. He will also draw parallels between UPF and tobacco companies. "Both tobacco and UPFs cause numerous serious illnesses and premature mortality; both are produced by transnational corporations that invest the enormous profits they obtain with their attractive/addictive products in aggressive marketing strategies, and in lobbying against regulation; and both are pathogenic (dangerous) by design, so reformulation is not a solution."

An anonymous reader shares a report: A top executive at McDonald's says the chain does not have plans to bring back plant-based options after a test of its McPlant burger in San Francisco and Dallas failed. "It was not successful in either market," Joe Erlinger, McDonald's U.S. president, said during the Wall Street Journal Global Food Forum in Chicago on Wednesday.

American consumers are not coming to McDonald's looking for a McPlant burger or other plant-based proteins, Erlinger added. The chain had previously partnered with Beyond Meat to make McPlant burgers and nuggets. Plant-based items are off the menu for now, but Erlinger didn't rule out the possibility that salads could one day make a return. That'll depend on whether customer demand is there.

"If people really want salads from McDonald's, we will gladly relaunch salads," Erlinger said. "But what our experience has proven is that's not what the consumer is looking for from McDonald's." Instead, consumers are looking for french fries, $5 meal deals, and hot, fresh sandwiches, he added.

Nine astronauts aboard the International Space Station were forced to take shelter late Wednesday when a satellite broke up in low Earth orbit. This "debris-generating event" created "over 100 pieces of trackable [space junk]," according to U.S. space-tracking firm LeoLabs. Space.com reports: The Expedition 71 crew on the International Space Station (ISS) went to their three spacecraft, including Boeing Starliner, shortly after 9 p.m. EDT (0200 GMT), according to a brief NASA update on X, formerly known as Twitter. As the ISS follows a time zone identical to GMT, according to the European Space Agency, the astronauts were likely in their sleep period when the incident occurred. The procedure was a "precautionary measure", NASA officials added, stating that the crew only stayed in their spacecraft for about an hour before they were "cleared to exit their spacecraft, and the station resumed normal operations."

NASA did not specify which satellite was associated with the incident, but satellite monitoring and collision detection firm LeoLabs identified a "debris-generating event" that same evening. "Early indications are that a non-operational Russian spacecraft, Resurs-P1 [or] SATNO 39186, released a number of fragments," the company wrote on X. U.S. Space Command also reported the Resurs-P1 event, saying on X that over 100 pieces of trackable debris were generated. The military said it "observed no immediate threats and is continuing to conduct routine conjunction assessments." (A conjunction refers to a close approach of two objects in orbit to one another.)

Scientists have uncovered a new gene-editing tool with potential to rival CRISPR, according to studies published in Nature on Wednesday. The system, based on a bacterial DNA parasite called IS110, uses RNA guides to target specific genomic locations. While showing promise for precise DNA cutting, the method currently lacks the accuracy needed for human applications. At best, it achieved 94% accuracy in lab tests. The team also revealed the molecular structure of IS110's DNA-cutting enzyme, shedding light on its unique four-step editing mechanism.

Nature, 2024. DOI: 10.1038/s41586-024-07552-4, 10.1038/s41586-024-07570-2.

The number of climate lawsuits filed against companies around the world is rising swiftly, a report has found, and a majority of cases that have concluded have been successful. From a report: About 230 climate-aligned lawsuits have been filed against corporations and trade associations since 2015, two-thirds of which have been initiated since 2020, according to the analysis published on Thursday by the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment. One of the most rapidly growing forms of litigation is over "climate-washing" -- when companies are accused of misrepresenting their progress towards environmental targets -- and the analysis found that 47 such cases were filed against companies and governments in 2023.

As climate communications are increasingly scrutinised, there has been arise in climate-washing litigation, often with positive outcomes for those bringing the cases. Of the 140 climate-washing cases reviewed between 2016 and 2023, 77 have officially concluded, 54 of which ended with a ruling in favour of the claimant. More than 30 cases in 2023 concerned the "polluter pays" principle, whereby companies are held accountable for climate damage caused by high greenhouse gas emissions. The authors also highlighted six "turning off the taps" cases, which challenge the flow of finance to areas which hinder climate goals.

Early analysis of the near-Earth asteroid Bennu has revealed unexpected evidence of magnesium-sodium phosphate, suggesting Bennu might have originated from a primitive ocean world. Space.com reports: On Earth, magnesium-sodium phosphate can be found in certain minerals and geological formations, as well as within living organisms where it is present in various biochemical processes and is a component of bone and teeth. According to a NASA press release, however, its presence on Bennu surprised the research team because it wasn't seen in the OSIRIS-REx probe's remote sensing data prior to sample collection. The team says its presence "hints that the asteroid could have splintered off from a long-gone, tiny, primitive ocean world." "The presence and state of phosphates, along with other elements and compounds on Bennu, suggest a watery past for the asteroid," said Lauretta. "Bennu potentially could have once been part of a wetter world. Although, this hypothesis requires further investigation."

The OSIRIS-REx spacecraft obtained a sample of Bennu's regolith on October 20, 2020 using its Touch-and-Go Sample Acquisition Mechanism (TAGSAM), which comprises a specialized sampler head situated on an articulated arm. Bennu is a small B-type asteroid, which are relatively uncommon carbonaceous asteroids. "[Bennu] was selected as the mission target in part because telescopic observations indicated a primitive, carbonaceous composition and water-bearing minerals," stated the team in their paper. [...] Further analysis on the samples revealed the prevailing component of the regolith sample is magnesium-bearing phyllosilicates, primarily serpentine and smectite -- types of rock typically found at mid-ocean ridges on Earth. A comparison of these serpentinites with their terrestrial counterparts provides possible insights into Bennu's geological past. "Offering clues about the aqueous environment in which they originated," wrote the team.

While Bennu's surface may have been altered by water over time, it still preserves some of the ancient characteristics scientists believe were present during the early solar system's days. Bennu's surface materials still contain some original features from the cloud of gas and dust from which our solar system's planets formed -- known as the protoplanetary disk. The team's study also confirmed the asteroid is rich in carbon, nitrogen and some organic compounds -- all of which, in addition to the magnesium phosphate, are essential components for life as we know it on Earth.