Latest news with #BethanyEhlmann
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
The Golden Records tell the story of Earth. Will alien worlds ever find them?
In 1977, NASA launched Voyagers 1 and 2 from Cape Canaveral, Florida into space to embark on a grand tour of the far reaches of our solar system. Mounted on board each probe was a 12-inch gold-plated copper disk—a cosmic 'message in a bottle' engraved with sights, sounds, and depictions of life on Earth, collectively known as the Golden Records—on the slim chance some far-off alien civilization might discover them. And in Disney and Pixar's animated film Elio, in theaters June 20, that's exactly what happens when main character Elio encounters aliens who believe he is Earth's leader. 'It's meant to be a sort of a letter of introduction to any culture who might find the probe,' says Bethany Ehlmann, a planetary scientist at the California Institute of Technology and a 2013 National Geographic Emerging Explorer, of the real-life Golden Records. Though these gilded greetings were partly intended for an alien audience, they mostly served as a message to humans and our tiny blue marble planet. 'It's a love letter to Earth and all that we have come through to get to the point where we could send these probes to understand our solar system.' But where are the Golden Records now—and how much longer are they intended to last in space? We spoke to the experts, including Ehlmann, to find out. When tasked with figuring out what to include in the intergalactic mixtape aboard the Voyager probes, renowned astronomer Carl Sagan assembled a team of scientists, artists, and engineers. For a true depiction of life on Earth aboard humankind's most distant physical emissary, the team included a variety of sounds associated with daily life and nature, like bird calls, humpback whale songs, children's laughter, footsteps, heartbeats, brain wave scans, and a kiss. There are also 90 minutes of music contained on the disk, including Western classical compositions from Mozart, Bach, Beethoven, and Stravinsky, Senegalese percussion music, Australian Aboriginal songs, and Chuck Berry's 'Johnny B. Goode.' (The close of cosmos, and golden voices in the stars.) The carefully thought-out record, designed to endure space travel for billions of years, also consists of spoken greetings in 55 modern and ancient languages, as well as 115 analog-encoded photographs of Earth and its inhabitants. Engraved on the cover of these records is a map to help find one's way to Earth relative to nearby known, flashing, dense cores of stars called pulsars. There are etched diagrams of a hydrogen atom—the most common element in the universe—and instructions for playing each record. Each disk is enclosed in a protective, gold-plated aluminum jacket, together with a cartridge and a needle to play it. "The spacecraft will be encountered and the record played only if there are advanced space-faring civilizations in interstellar space," Sagan, leader of the Voyager Golden Record project, wrote. "But the launching of this 'bottle' into the cosmic 'ocean' says something very hopeful about life on this planet." (Dear Voyagers: How your billion-year journey carries true love.) Over the years, the Voyager probes flew by the solar system's most distant four planets at a rate of 35,000 miles per hour, sending back detailed views of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and their moons. Voyager 2 flying by Uranus and Neptune is the only time humanity has seen these worlds up close. After completing their primary missions to collectively fly by all four outer planets in 1989, the twin probes kept chugging along through the vast outer reaches of the solar system. Voyager 1 and 2 exited the solar system and entered interstellar space in 2012 and 2018, respectively. At more than 15 billion miles from Earth, Voyager 1 has become the most distant human-made object in space. Voyager 2, in second place, is now about 13 billion miles away. The interstellar environment they're in contains a stew of cosmic gas, dust, and rays. The twin Voyager probes are equipped with radiation-resistant parts, but the onslaught of charged particles in their current neck of the woods still pose a threat to their aging electronics. Both Voyager spacecrafts are still collecting and sending back data, updating humans on their intergalactic adventures, albeit slowly—it takes nearly 20 hours for these signals to reach Earth, given the immense distance they need to travel. We're now reaching the end of the Voyager missions, as the twin probes' plutonium power supplies are running out of juice. The Voyager team is attempting to extend their lifetime for as long as they can by shutting down non-essential instruments like heaters to conserve power. 'More than 47 years into the mission, there's very little power left,' says Suzanne "Suzy" Dodd, the current project manager for the Voyager missions. 'The goal of the mission is to get it to 50 years.' Even after the probe's science mission ends, though, the Golden Records will keep quietly drifting further and further into the cosmic abyss, likely for millions and even billions of years.'Long after we've lost communications with the spacecraft, it'll still be traveling with this record—a time capsule,' Dodd says. She remarks that it's exciting 'to think about a little piece of us, a little piece of what Earth and humanity is all about, traveling around the center of our galaxy to be found by whatever being might be out there.' But, as Dodd points out, there are enormous physical and chronological distances involved. It's going to take around 40,000 years for the probes to drift into the vicinity of any other star system, when Voyager 1 will pass within 1.6 light-years of the star Gliese 445. Around the same time, Voyager 2 will be within 1.7 light-years of the star Ross 248. The Golden Records have left a huge cosmic impact. According to Ehlmann, most spacecrafts that followed the Voyager mission included some sort of message from our Earthly abode. 'People sometimes think of science as a cold and calculating endeavor, but really it's the expression of curiosity and awe,' she says. 'It's an ability to leave your mark in the universe.' And almost fifty years after they first took flight, our pair of plucky robot emissaries to the stars continues embarking on the deepest journey ever into space. 'Who knows? The Voyager probes, a million years from now, may end up in some alien museum,' Ehlmann says. 'It's exciting to imagine.'
National Geographic
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- National Geographic
The Golden Records tell the story of Earth. Will alien worlds ever find them?
In 1977, NASA launched two 12-inch gold-plated copper disks filled with the sounds of children's laughter, heartbeats, and bird calls. Is their time in space running out? The Golden Record carried by Voyager 1 and 2. Photographs of Jupiter by Voyager 1 on March 24, 1979 and Uranus by Voyager 2 on January 24, 1986. Photo Illustration by Jesse Barber, National Geographic; Image Sources from Nat Geo Image Collection, NASA/JPL In 1977, NASA launched Voyagers 1 and 2 from Cape Canaveral, Florida into space to embark on a grand tour of the far reaches of our solar system. Mounted on board each probe was a 12-inch gold-plated copper disk—a cosmic 'message in a bottle' engraved with sights, sounds, and depictions of life on Earth, collectively known as the Golden Records—on the slim chance some far-off alien civilization might discover them. And in Disney and Pixar's animated film Elio, in theaters June 20, that's exactly what happens when main character Elio encounters aliens who believe he is Earth's leader. 'It's meant to be a sort of a letter of introduction to any culture who might find the probe,' says Bethany Ehlmann, a planetary scientist at the California Institute of Technology and a 2013 National Geographic Emerging Explorer, of the real-life Golden Records. Though these gilded greetings were partly intended for an alien audience, they mostly served as a message to humans and our tiny blue marble planet. 'It's a love letter to Earth and all that we have come through to get to the point where we could send these probes to understand our solar system.' But where are the Golden Records now—and how much longer are they intended to last in space? We spoke to the experts, including Ehlmann, to find out. When tasked with figuring out what to include in the intergalactic mixtape aboard the Voyager probes, renowned astronomer Carl Sagan assembled a team of scientists, artists, and engineers. For a true depiction of life on Earth aboard humankind's most distant physical emissary, the team included a variety of sounds associated with daily life and nature, like bird calls, humpback whale songs, children's laughter, footsteps, heartbeats, brain wave scans, and a kiss. There are also 90 minutes of music contained on the disk, including Western classical compositions from Mozart, Bach, Beethoven, and Stravinsky, Senegalese percussion music, Australian Aboriginal songs, and Chuck Berry's 'Johnny B. Goode.' (The close of cosmos, and golden voices in the stars.) The carefully thought-out record, designed to endure space travel for billions of years, also consists of spoken greetings in 55 modern and ancient languages, as well as 115 analog-encoded photographs of Earth and its inhabitants. Engraved on the cover of these records is a map to help find one's way to Earth relative to nearby known, flashing, dense cores of stars called pulsars. There are etched diagrams of a hydrogen atom—the most common element in the universe—and instructions for playing each record. Each disk is enclosed in a protective, gold-plated aluminum jacket, together with a cartridge and a needle to play it. "The spacecraft will be encountered and the record played only if there are advanced space-faring civilizations in interstellar space," Sagan, leader of the Voyager Golden Record project, wrote. "But the launching of this 'bottle' into the cosmic 'ocean' says something very hopeful about life on this planet." (Dear Voyagers: How your billion-year journey carries true love.) A far-out cosmic road trip Over the years, the Voyager probes flew by the solar system's most distant four planets at a rate of 35,000 miles per hour, sending back detailed views of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and their moons. Voyager 2 flying by Uranus and Neptune is the only time humanity has seen these worlds up close. After completing their primary missions to collectively fly by all four outer planets in 1989, the twin probes kept chugging along through the vast outer reaches of the solar system. Voyager 1 and 2 exited the solar system and entered interstellar space in 2012 and 2018, respectively. At more than 15 billion miles from Earth, Voyager 1 has become the most distant human-made object in space. Voyager 2, in second place, is now about 13 billion miles away. The interstellar environment they're in contains a stew of cosmic gas, dust, and rays. The twin Voyager probes are equipped with radiation-resistant parts, but the onslaught of charged particles in their current neck of the woods still pose a threat to their aging electronics. Both Voyager spacecrafts are still collecting and sending back data, updating humans on their intergalactic adventures, albeit slowly—it takes nearly 20 hours for these signals to reach Earth, given the immense distance they need to travel. We're now reaching the end of the Voyager missions, as the twin probes' plutonium power supplies are running out of juice. The Voyager team is attempting to extend their lifetime for as long as they can by shutting down non-essential instruments like heaters to conserve power. 'More than 47 years into the mission, there's very little power left,' says Suzanne "Suzy" Dodd, the current project manager for the Voyager missions. 'The goal of the mission is to get it to 50 years.' Even after the probe's science mission ends, though, the Golden Records will keep quietly drifting further and further into the cosmic abyss, likely for millions and even billions of years.'Long after we've lost communications with the spacecraft, it'll still be traveling with this record—a time capsule,' Dodd says. She remarks that it's exciting 'to think about a little piece of us, a little piece of what Earth and humanity is all about, traveling around the center of our galaxy to be found by whatever being might be out there.' But, as Dodd points out, there are enormous physical and chronological distances involved. It's going to take around 40,000 years for the probes to drift into the vicinity of any other star system, when Voyager 1 will pass within 1.6 light-years of the star Gliese 445. Around the same time, Voyager 2 will be within 1.7 light-years of the star Ross 248. The legacy of the Golden Records The Golden Records have left a huge cosmic impact. According to Ehlmann, most spacecrafts that followed the Voyager mission included some sort of message from our Earthly abode. 'People sometimes think of science as a cold and calculating endeavor, but really it's the expression of curiosity and awe,' she says. 'It's an ability to leave your mark in the universe.' And almost fifty years after they first took flight, our pair of plucky robot emissaries to the stars continues embarking on the deepest journey ever into space. 'Who knows? The Voyager probes, a million years from now, may end up in some alien museum,' Ehlmann says. 'It's exciting to imagine.' Disney and Pixar's "Elio" is in theaters June 20, 2025. Get tickets now.
MTV Lebanon
27-02-2025
- Science
- MTV Lebanon
NASA Launches Satellite on Mission to Detect Water on the Moon
A dishwasher-sized NASA satellite was launched into space from Florida on Wednesday to identify where water - a precious resource for lunar missions - resides on the moon's surface in places such as the permanently shadowed craters at its poles. A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifted off from the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral carrying NASA's Lunar Trailblazer orbiter. The Lunar Trailblazer spacecraft was built by Lockheed Martin's (LMT.N), opens new tab space division. The satellite was a secondary payload onboard the rocket, with the primary payload being a lunar lander mission led by Intuitive Machines (LUNR.O), opens new tab. The lunar surface is often thought of as arid but previous measurements have found the presence of some water, even in warmer sun-lit locations. In cold and permanently shadowed places at the lunar poles, it has long been hypothesized that there could be significant amounts of water ice. Lunar Trailblazer, which weighs about 440 pounds (200 kg) and measures about 11.5 feet (3.5 meters) wide when its solar panels are fully deployed, is being sent to find and map this water on the moon's surface. For future moon exploration, including potential long-term lunar bases staffed by astronauts, lunar water would be of vital importance because it could be processed not only as a drinking supply but also into breathable oxygen and hydrogen fuel for rockets. The bottoms of hundreds of craters at the moon's South Pole, for instance, are permanently shadowed and may hold ice patches. Some water also may be locked inside broken rock and dust on the lunar surface. Lunar Trailblazer is scheduled to perform a series of moon flybys and looping orbits over a span of several months to position itself to map the surface in detail. It eventually will orbit at an altitude of roughly 60 miles (100 km) and collect high-resolution images of targeted areas to determine the form, distribution and abundance of water and to better understand the lunar water cycle. "We see tiny amounts of water on sunlit portions of the moon, which is mysterious," said planetary scientist Bethany Ehlmann, the mission's principal investigator and director of Caltech's Keck Institute for Space Studies. But, Ehlmann added: "The most interesting (aspect) for many is the potentially large amounts of ice in the permanently shadowed regions of the lunar poles. Lunar Trailblazer will peer inside to see how much is at the surface." Such locations could serve as a resource for lunar explorers in the future. "Understanding where a rover would drive or an astronaut would walk to examine deposits for science and future resource use will benefit all future landed missions," Ehlmann said. Two Lunar Trailblazer instruments will take measurements from orbit together. The Lunar Thermal Mapper, or LTM, will map and measure the lunar surface temperature. The High-resolution Volatiles and Minerals Moon Mapper, or HVM3, will look at the moon's surface for a telltale pattern of light given off by water. "We believe that the movement of water on the moon is likely driven by the surface temperature. So by measuring the presence and amount of water via the HVM3 instrument and the surface temperature via the LTM instrument we can better understand this relationship," said University of Oxford planetary scientist Tristram Warren, who worked on developing the LTM instrument. Lunar water is thought to come from several potential sources. One possibility is that solar wind - charged particles from the sun - could react with lunar minerals to create water. Another source might be comets or meteorites, which may have delivered water to the moon over billions of years. The exact amount of lunar water remains uncertain, but it is potentially hundreds of millions of tons. "Other than for human exploration, lunar water is also scientifically very exciting. The moon has been orbiting near the Earth almost since the formation of Earth itself. So understanding the origin of the lunar water might help us to understand the origin of water on Earth," Warren said.
New York Times
27-02-2025
- Science
- New York Times
NASA Hitches a Ride to the Moon to Map Water for Astronauts
The moon is not bone dry, scientists now know. But how many drops of water will thirsty astronauts find? No one knows for sure. A robotic NASA spacecraft called Lunar Trailblazer, which launched Wednesday night from Kennedy Space Center in Florida, is aiming to provide a detailed map from orbit of the abundance, distribution and form of water across the moon. Lunar Trailblazer tagged along for the ride to space on the same SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket as Athena, a commercial lunar lander built by Intuitive Machines of Houston, which will deploy a NASA instrument to drill in the moon and sniff for water vapors. Athena will study one spot on the moon. Lunar Trailblazer will provide a global picture of water on the moon. 'That's another exciting thing for us as we get more science into space with one launch,' Nicola Fox, the associate administrator for NASA's science mission directorate, said during a news conference before the launch. Less than an hour after liftoff, Lunar Trailblazer and Athena went their separate ways. Athena is taking a direct path to the moon, with landing scheduled for March 6, while Lunar Trailblazer set off on a meandering but fuel-efficient journey that will take four months to reach its destination. After it enters orbit, the spacecraft will make observations for at least two years. One area of interest is water in the moon's sunlit regions. 'Does it change as a function of time of day?' Bethany Ehlmann, a professor of planetary science at the California Institute of Technology who serves as the mission's principal investigator, said in an interview. 'You could think about it as almost like a frost coming and going.' For decades, the moon has been regarded as a world devoid of water. But beginning in the mid-1990s, spacecraft found evidence of ice in the eternal shadows of craters in the moon's polar regions. In 2009, NASA slammed a rocket stage into one of the craters. The distinct color signatures of water were seen in the debris kicked up by the impact, confirming the earlier hints. That same year, scientists made a surprising discovery that water was observed not just inside the polar craters, but also all around the moon. That came from observations of reflected light by a NASA instrument aboard Chandrayaan-1, India's first lunar orbiter. If water is somehow more widespread, that could ease future settlement of the moon, especially if significant amounts of water could be easily extracted from the soil. The water molecules could then be split to produce oxygen, for breathable air for astronauts. Hydrogen and oxygen can also be used to fuel rockets or generate power. However, the instrument aboard the Indian spacecraft, designed to identify minerals on the surface, did not quite cover the swath of wavelengths needed to identify how the water was arranged. The molecules could have been stacked as crystals of ice or stuck to the surface of minerals — what scientists call adsorbed. Those forms of water would probably not be very difficult to collect. But the signal might also point to hydroxyl, a molecular group consisting of one hydrogen atom and one oxygen atom, as opposed to the two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom of water. Hydroxyl would most likely be trapped inside rocks but could be released as water if heated to about 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit or more. That would require energy-guzzling ovens to bake piles of rock. Lunar Trailblazer is carrying a scientific sensor, built by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, that is similar to the one that was aboard Chandrayaan-1. But the new instrument is more advanced and covers all of the wavelengths needed to differentiate between ice, adsorbed water and hydroxyl. The instrument can even make observations in the shadowed regions of the moon, which are not completely dark because sunlight often bounces indirectly into the crater. 'That is the most fun part,' Dr. Ehlmann said. 'It's effectively a sort of double bounce of light.' A second instrument, built by the University of Oxford in England, will measure the temperature of the surface. 'The two instruments work together to get this simultaneous data set of water temperature and mineral composition all at the same time at the same place,' Dr. Ehlmann said. Lunar Trailblazer is one in a series of lower-cost, higher-risk robotic science missions by NASA. The cost of building and operating the spacecraft is $94 million. But as a secondary payload on the Intuitive Machines mission, the cost of getting to space was only $8 million, much less than if NASA had purchased a rocket just to launch Lunar Trailblazer. It is the third mission to launch from a program called Small, Innovative Missions for Planetary Exploration, or SIMPLEX. The first two failed once they got to space. Two other SIMPLEX spacecraft lost their ride when problems with NASA's Psyche spacecraft delayed the launch and changed the trajectory. One of those, Janus, which was to study asteroids, was canceled. The other, ESCAPADE, which is to measure the magnetic fields of Mars, was then moved to the debut launch of New Glenn, the orbital rocket from Blue Origin, the space company founded by Jeff Bezos. But that mission was moved off when it appeared that New Glenn would not be ready in time to meet a tight launch window to send it on a specific path to Mars. It is still waiting for its launch. Lunar Trailblazer also experienced travel changes. It was originally slated to ride along with the Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe mission, or IMAP, but was then moved to the Intuitive Machines launch as the IMAP mission faced a delay. 'Lunar Trailblazer is being conducted in a fortunate time,' Dr. Ehlmann said, 'because there's a lot of interest in the moon, meaning there are opportunities to get a ride to the moon.'
Asharq Al-Awsat
27-02-2025
- Science
- Asharq Al-Awsat
NASA Launches Satellite on Mission to Detect Water on the Moon
A dishwasher-sized NASA satellite was launched into space from Florida on Wednesday to identify where water - a precious resource for lunar missions - resides on the moon's surface in places such as the permanently shadowed craters at its poles. A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifted off from the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral carrying NASA's Lunar Trailblazer orbiter. The Lunar Trailblazer spacecraft was built by Lockheed Martin's space division. The satellite was a secondary payload onboard the rocket, with the primary payload being a lunar lander mission led by Intuitive Machines. The lunar surface is often thought of as arid but previous measurements have found the presence of some water, even in warmer sun-lit locations. In cold and permanently shadowed places at the lunar poles, it has long been hypothesized that there could be significant amounts of water ice. Lunar Trailblazer, which weighs about 440 pounds (200 kg) and measures about 11.5 feet (3.5 meters) wide when its solar panels are fully deployed, is being sent to find and map this water on the moon's surface. For future moon exploration, including potential long-term lunar bases staffed by astronauts, lunar water would be of vital importance because it could be processed not only as a drinking supply but also into breathable oxygen and hydrogen fuel for rockets. The bottoms of hundreds of craters at the moon's South Pole, for instance, are permanently shadowed and may hold ice patches. Some water also may be locked inside broken rock and dust on the lunar surface. Lunar Trailblazer is scheduled to perform a series of moon flybys and looping orbits over a span of several months to position itself to map the surface in detail. It eventually will orbit at an altitude of roughly 60 miles (100 km) and collect high-resolution images of targeted areas to determine the form, distribution and abundance of water and to better understand the lunar water cycle. "We see tiny amounts of water on sunlit portions of the moon, which is mysterious," said planetary scientist Bethany Ehlmann, the mission's principal investigator and director of Caltech's Keck Institute for Space Studies. But, Ehlmann added: "The most interesting (aspect) for many is the potentially large amounts of ice in the permanently shadowed regions of the lunar poles. Lunar Trailblazer will peer inside to see how much is at the surface." Such locations could serve as a resource for lunar explorers in the future. "Understanding where a rover would drive or an astronaut would walk to examine deposits for science and future resource use will benefit all future landed missions," Ehlmann said. Two Lunar Trailblazer instruments will take measurements from orbit together. The Lunar Thermal Mapper, or LTM, will map and measure the lunar surface temperature. The High-resolution Volatiles and Minerals Moon Mapper, or HVM3, will look at the moon's surface for a telltale pattern of light given off by water. "We believe that the movement of water on the moon is likely driven by the surface temperature. So, by measuring the presence and amount of water via the HVM3 instrument and the surface temperature via the LTM instrument we can better understand this relationship," said University of Oxford planetary scientist Tristram Warren, who worked on developing the LTM instrument. Lunar water is thought to come from several potential sources. One possibility is that solar wind - charged particles from the sun - could react with lunar minerals to create water. Another source might be comets or meteorites, which may have delivered water to the moon over billions of years. The exact amount of lunar water remains uncertain, but it is potentially hundreds of millions of tons. "Other than for human exploration, lunar water is also scientifically very exciting. The moon has been orbiting near the Earth almost since the formation of Earth itself. So, understanding the origin of the lunar water might help us to understand the origin of water on Earth," Warren said.
