Good News, The B117 Strain Is Not Linked to Greater Severity of COVID-19

The English variant of the novel coronavirus does not increase the severity of COVID-19 compared to other strains, according to research published Tuesday that also confirmed its increased transmissibility.

The variant, known as B117, is now the dominant viral strain across much of Europe, and previous studies had shown it was linked to a higher likelihood of death than normal variants.

But two studies published in The Lancet Infectious Diseases and The Lancet Public Health journals found no evidence that people with B117 experience worse symptoms or a greater risk of developing long COVID than those infected with different variants.

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Newly Discovered Region of The Milky Way Is Filled With Stars Ready to Blow Up

Astrophysicists have found a new region of the Milky Way, and it's filled with searingly hot, bright-blue stars that are about to explode.

Nestled between the Orion Arm – where our solar system is – and the constellation Perseus, the spur is a belt between two spiral arms filled with enormous stars three times the size of the sun and colored blue by their blistering heat.

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Ingenuity update

The Ingenuity team has identified a software solution for the command sequence issue identified on Sol 49 (April 9) during a planned high-speed spin-up test of the helicopter’s rotors.

The process of updating Ingenuity’s flight control software will follow established processes for validation with careful and deliberate steps to move the new software through the rover to the base station and then to the helicopter.

Intermediate milestones include:
- Diagnose the issue and develop potential solutions
- Develop/validate and upload software
- Load flight software onto flight controllers
- Boot Ingenuity on new flight software

Once these milestones are passed, NASA will prepare Ingenuity for its first flight, which will take several sols, or Mars days. Their best estimate of a targeted flight date is fluid right now, but they are working toward achieving these milestones and will set a flight date next week.

Source | #Mars2020
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NASA's Insight Mars Lander Is 'in Crisis', And Has Entered Emergency Hibernation

Unlike other sites where NASA has sent rovers and landers – including the landing spot of the new Perseverance rover and its Mars helicopter – powerful gusts of wind have not been sweeping Elysium Planitia.

These winds, called "cleaning events," are needed to blow the red Martian dust off the solar panels of NASA's robots. Without their help, a thick layer of dust has accumulated on InSight, and it's struggling to absorb sunlight.

By pausing its scientific operations, the lander should be able to save enough power to keep its systems warm through the frigid Martian nights, when temperatures can drop to -90°C.

The agency expects to restart InSight's full operations after Mars swings back toward the sun in July.

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Mind-Bending NASA Visualization Shows The Wild Warping of Binary Black Holes

Although it's extremely difficult to directly image the shadow of and the space around a black hole, that's not the only tool astronomers have in their kit.

Fascinatingly, simulations came very close to what we saw when a huge international team of scientists finally captured a direct image of a supermassive black hole, the now-famous M87*.

Because of the intense gravitational fields involved, stuff gets really whack. Light bends and its intensity changes, depending on which direction it's moving. So what happens when there's not one, but two black holes locked in mutual orbit, each with its own gravity, and each orbited by its own glowing accretion disk of dust and gas?
Well, it might look a little something like the latest, extremely trippy black hole visualization from NASA.

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The Doubly Warped World of Binary Black Holes

A pair of orbiting black holes millions of times the Sun’s mass perform a hypnotic dance in this NASA visualization. The movie traces how the black holes distort and redirect light emanating from the maelstrom of hot gas – called an accretion disk – that surrounds each one.
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Video (NASA) | Stream on YouTube
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As Artemis Moves Forward, NASA Picks SpaceX Human Lunar Lander
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NASA is developing a plan to build an Arecibo-like telescope on the moon

NASA is funding research into how a radio telescope could be built on the far side of the moon. It could function similarly to the Arecibo telescope, which collapsed in December.

A lunar telescope could hear radio waves from the early universe that Earth-based telescopes can't as such a telescope would be shielded from the cacophony of radio signals that such a device on Earth would hear from all kinds of equipment and satellites.

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Latest Martian Update

Targeting Monday, April 19 for the Ingenuity #MarsHelicopter first flight.

07:30 – approximate time of 1st flight
10:15 – livestream on NASA TV
18:00 – post-flight briefing
(All times in UTC)

Learn more | #Mars2020
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NASA’s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter became the first aircraft in history to make a powered, controlled flight on another planet.

Ingenuity took this shot of its shadow while hovering over the Martian surface. It used its navigation camera, which autonomously tracks the ground during flight.

The Ingenuity team at the agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California confirmed the flight succeeded after receiving data from the helicopter via NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover at 10:46 a.m. UTC

“Ingenuity is the latest in a long and storied tradition of NASA projects achieving a space exploration goal once thought impossible,” said acting NASA Administrator Steve Jurczyk. “The X-15 was a pathfinder for the space shuttle. Mars Pathfinder and its Sojourner rover did the same for three generations of Mars rovers. We don’t know exactly where Ingenuity will lead us, but today’s results indicate the sky – at least on Mars – may not be the limit.”

Early video of flight

Read more | #Mars2020
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First Video of NASA's Ingenuity Mars Helicopter in Flight

In this video captured by NASA’s Perseverance rover, the agency's Ingenuity Mars Helicopter took the first powered, controlled flight on another planet

Stitched together from multiple images, the mosaic is not white balanced; instead, it is displayed in a preliminary calibrated version of a natural-color composite, approximately simulating the colors of the scene as it would appear on Mars

The solar-powered helicopter first became airborne at 7:34 a.m UTC – 12:33 Local Mean Solar Time (Mars time) – a time the Ingenuity team determined would have optimal energy and flight conditions. Altimeter data indicate Ingenuity climbed to its prescribed maximum altitude of 3 meters and maintained a stable hover for 30 seconds. It then descended, touching back down on the surface of Mars after logging a total of 39.1 seconds of flight.

Video updated at 21:20 19/04/21 UTC
Video | #Mars2020
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