Center Pierre-Louis: For scientific American‘S science quicklyI’m Kendra Pierre-Louis on behalf of Rachel Feltman. You’re listening to our weekly science news roundup.
First up, we have an update on humans going back to the Moon.
The first launch windows for NASA will open in the coming weeks Artemis II Objective. Planned lunar flyby will be first crewed mission to go beyond low-Earth orbit apollo 17 In 1972.
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We chatted with Lee Billings to learn more about it, SciencePhysics Senior Desk Editor. Here he is.
Lee Billings: Artemis is NASA’s mission to return astronauts to the Moon. It has been in development in various forms, under various guises, for 20 years now. Artemis II It really is where the rubber meets the road. Apparently, there was Artemis I, but Artemis I was crewed out – there were no astronauts on board. Its purpose was simply to show that key hardware components functioned properly, that they could go into space, go to the Moon and back. And now we’re doing it with humans, so there’s a huge risk.
Artemis II There is no moon landing. It will not even revolve around the Moon. Some people get confused about this. It will be on what is called a free-return trajectory, meaning it will use the Moon’s gravity to loop around our natural satellite and then send the Orion capsule, the Orion spacecraft, back to Earth at very high speed. And that means some interesting space flight records will be broken. One would be that the group of Artemis II Will be the farthest humans have ever been from Earth. They will also be the fastest humans in history, because when they return and hit Earth’s atmosphere, they will be traveling at about 25,000 miles per hour, pretty fast, and hopefully the heat shield will remain intact.
In terms of the things it’s going to study, it’s a mix of a lot of human studies and space-medicine studies. The four astronauts in this mission will revolve around the Moon, they will be instrumented and censored. They will have all types of biometrics. And we will do so to better learn how humans respond to the deep space environment for anticipated future missions to the lunar surface. Artemis III and further.
And, and so where are we now Artemis II It’s that on January 17, in this very prestigious and ceremonial proceeding, it rolled out of the Vehicle Assembly Building, this huge building that’s at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida. And it was loaded onto this giant diesel-electric tractor, essentially, to go from the vehicle assembly building to the actual launch pad where it would be launched, slowly, glacially, at about a mile an hour.
The next big step is going to be called a “wet dress rehearsal”; It is scheduled for February 2. And that is when they pump the cryogenic propellant fuel into the rocket so that they can see that it is able to withstand all the pressures of all the fuel going in, making sure that there are no leaks or anything like that. And hopefully, we won’t see any leaks because if we see a lot of leaks, it will probably delay the start of the launch window, which is February 6th. And there’s about five days every month when the Moon and Earth align, so that, you know, we can pull off this launch, so if they miss that kind of five-day window in early February, well, we’re looking at March.
And why do we want to go back to the moon? Well, a big part of it is geopolitics. We are no longer in a world like the Cold War and the Golden Age of the Space Race. This is a new way now. There are other players too. India wants to go to the moon. China Is Going to the moon. And now the big question is whether or not we can beat them back to the Moon, even though we may have done so more than 50 years ago.
There are also very interesting scientific questions. For example, the places people want to go to the Moon for this new generation of missions are primarily concentrated around the Moon’s south pole, where we know there are deposits of water ice and other types of volatiles. This is a very special area with almost constant illumination from the Sun but also permanently shadowed craters. And that region of the Moon is also important because it can tell us a lot about the Moon’s formation and its history and evolution over time.
And finally, the south pole and most of the areas of interest are actually on the far side of the Moon, the part that people don’t see from Earth, and that’s important because you can build a variety of facilities there to do cutting-edge science, such as a giant radio telescope that is, essentially, meant to look back to the beginning of time. And you can do that there and be completely safe from the Earth-based radio interference that you would otherwise receive that would screw up all your measurements.
Pierre-Louis: For more information about NASA’s lunar missions, visit here ScientificAmerican.com.
Back on Earth, a team led by researchers at the University of Cambridge has found a way to give some patients their voices back after a stroke. Researchers say the key is a new tool Is called revoice.
You see, about half of patients who experience stroke also develop dysarthria, which weakens the muscles used to control speech and breathing. This condition can cause slurred, slow, or strained speech. It’s not that the patient doesn’t know what they want to say; This is because they struggle to say it.
The good news is that with rehabilitation many patients regain their speech, but this process can take months to years. Given that recovery is possible for patients, the scientists behind the new study wanted to help patients communicate faster than existing technologies, which require letter-by-letter input.
The ReVoice device developed by the scientists consists of a soft collar equipped with sensors that track neck movements and heart rate and provide that information to two AI agents. Both of these agents process data using a large language model. One of the agents silently reconstructs the words from the spoken speech and vibrations in the throat. The second then expands those words into full sentences using the wearer’s pulse to analyze the wearer’s emotional state and detect broader ambient conditions, including weather and time of day. Combined, the systems can guess what the person is trying to say and, with just two shakes of their head, speak for them.
The research has some limitations: The study, published last Monday in the journal nature communicationThere was a small sample size of only five patients. But the researchers plan to expand the study to clinical trials. If the results hold true, ReVoice could be a useful tool not only for stroke patients, but also for people with other neurological conditions, including Parkinson’s disease.
In other news about communication, a study published Wednesday in the journal… Nature Reportedly the oldest cave art ever found. Previously, the oldest known cave art depicted a pig and three human-like figures, thought to be more than 51,000 years old. That art was found on the island of Sulawesi in Indonesia.
This new discovery was found on the same island but in a different cave. Generally, dating cave paintings is difficult. But Sulawesi’s limestone caves are easier said than done. The cave had actually been studied before, but the new painting – a hand stencil on the ceiling – was ignored. A chemical analysis found that the stencil is at least 67,800 years old, making it about 15,000 years older than previously discovered cave art.
This discovery could help us figure out when humans first settled in Australia. Archaeologists suspect that humans came there via Indonesia, but have been unable to determine an exact time frame.
Franco Viviani, a physical anthropologist who was not involved in the new study, told Science Adding that the findings also provide new insights into ancient societies, quoting, “They confirm what is known today: art is positively related to critical thinking and creative problem-solving skills.”
And speaking of creative problem solvers, a new study on bats sheds some light on how these winged mammals get around. Every school-age child learns at some point that bats are able to navigate in the dark using echolocation – that is, they send out a call and can tell where an object is based on how the sound comes back. But scientists have long wondered how bats navigate object-rich environments.
A bat call will send back echoes hitting multiple objects from different directions and distances. In complex situations, scientists thought it was not really possible for bats to analyze each individual echo, so they must rely on an alternative strategy. The focus of a study published on Wednesday was to find out how bats might live in this type of environment Proceedings of the Royal Society B.
To study this, the research team built a “bat accelerator” machine equipped with 8,000 movable acoustic reflectors, or fake leaves. The goal was to mimic the experience of a bat flying through an enclosure covered with real leaves. Over the course of three nights 104 pipistrelle bats walked the entire eight meters, or about 26 feet, of the test track.
The results showed that bats are sensitive to Doppler shift, the same phenomenon you experience when an ambulance siren changes in pitch as it passes you. According to the study, by paying attention to sound changes based on their movement, bats are able to assess their surroundings and control their movement. The researchers say their findings could be useful in advancing drone technology in the future.
That’s all for today’s episode. Tune in Wednesday when we explore the emerging science about which foods make people stink.
But before you go, we’d like to ask for your help with a future episode—it’s about kissing. Tell us about your most memorable kiss. What makes it special? how did it feel? Record a voice memo on your phone or computer and send it to scienceQuickly@sciam.com. Be sure to include your name and where you’re from.
science quickly It is produced by me, Kendra Pierre-Louis, with Fonda Mwangi, Sushmita Pathak, and Jeff DelVisio. This episode was edited by Alex Sugiura. Scheana Poses and Aaron Shattuck fact-check our show. Our theme music was composed by Dominic Smith. agree scientific American For more latest and in-depth science news.
For scientific American, This is Center Pierre-Louis. have a great week!
