Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
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Rice University students are developing a research satellite to help alleviate the space junk orbiting our planet.

The OwlSat CubeSat will collect data over the course of one year to see how extreme ultraviolet radiation, which is always emitted from the sun but becomes more intense during events such as solar flares, can alter a satellite’s path in low-Earth orbit, the area where the International Space Station resides. Better understanding a satellite’s orbit can help prevent collisions that can create space junk, said Ryan Udell, president of Rice University’s chapter of Students for the Exploration and Development of Space.

“We don’t have a fool-proof way of mapping orbits,” Udell said. “There are very good predictors out there, but we can’t fully predict it.”

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“I, personally, have pareidolia with respect to insects, beetles in particular,” Maddison told Space.com. “I’ve worked on beetles for decades; I have collected many thousands of beetles around the world. Through the years I have built into my brain a pattern-recognition system for picking out beetles.”

In other words, Rosomer is probably wrong, even though he probably thinks he’s right.

“I do not think there are insects on Mars,” Maddison added. “The photographs that are in that press release you sent are entirely unconvincing, as they fall within the range expected in zillions of non-insect objects photographed in lowish resolution on a Marscape.”

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a large body of water in front of a building: Light wave readings taken at the IRAM 30-meter telescope in Granada, Spain (pictured above) helped scientists detect signatures of molecular oxygen in the Markarian 231 galaxy, the first time the compound has been detected outside the Milky Way © Provided by Daily Mail Light wave readings taken at the IRAM 30-meter telescope in Granada, Spain (pictured above) helped scientists detect signatures of molecular oxygen in the Markarian 231 galaxy, the first time the compound has been… For the first time ever, astronomers have identified molecular oxygen in a galaxy outside the Milky Way.

The discovery was made by a team of astronomers at Shanghai Astronomical Observatory, led by Junzhi Wang.

The team identified the presence of molecular oxygen by analyzing light waves that had reached Earth from Markarian 231, a galaxy around 581 million light years away.

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JAXA, Japan’s national space agency, has just approved a robotic mission to visit the Martian moons Phobos and Deimos and retrieve a small sample from the former to bring back to Earth.

The mission plan: It’s called Martian Moon eXploration, or MMX. JAXA currently plans to launch MMX in 2024 and make it to the Martian system the following year. MMX will spend three years in the system studying and mapping the moons. The mission will make use of 11 different instruments, including a NASA-funded instrument called MEGAE that will measure the elemental composition of both bodies (perhaps revealing signs of ancient water).

The mission will also deploy a small rover to zip around the surface of Phobos, not unlike what JAXA’s Hayabusa2 mission deployed on the surface of the asteroid Ryugu.

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