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Climate analysis checks for most livable exoplanets

TRAPPIST-1 planets
This illustration shows the seven Earth-size planets of TRAPPIST-1, an exoplanet system about 39 light-years away. The image shows the relative sizes of planets b through h, from left to right, but does not represent their orbits to scale. (NASA / JPL-Caltech Illustration)

If you had to pick a place to set up shop amid the seven planets in the TRAPPIST-1 star system, 39 light-years from Earth, the fourth rock from that alien sun is the best place to start.

That Earth-sized world, known as TRAPPIST-1 e, came out on top in a recent round of exoplanetary climate modeling, detailed in a paper published Nov. 1 by the Astrophysical Journal.

Not that anyone’s planning on setting up shop there soon: Unless there’s a breakthrough that allows us to travel at a significant fraction of the speed of light, it would take hundreds of thousands of years to get to TRAPPIST-1. But the climate modeling methods developed for the TRAPPIST-1 system could help scientists decide which planets to target first with telescopes capable of analyzing alien atmospheres.

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NASA to review safety after Elon Musk smokes pot

Dragon and Starliner
SpaceX’s Crew Dragon and Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner are being developed to transport astronauts to and from the International Space Station for NASA. (SpaceX / Boeing Illustrations)

NASA has ordered a review of workplace safety at SpaceX and Boeing, the two companies developing spaceships to ferry its astronauts to and from the International Space Station, in the wake of a video showing SpaceX CEO Elon Musk smoking pot and drinking whiskey on a YouTube talk show.

The safety review, first reported by The Washington Post, could involve site inspections and hundreds of interviews. It’s not yet clear whether the review could hold up the first crewed demonstration flights of SpaceX’s Crew Dragon or Boeing’s Starliner capsule. Those flights are currently scheduled for June and August of 2019, respectively, but that schedule could well slip due to technical snags.

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Boeing and SparkCognition launch SkyGrid venture

SkyGrid graphic
SkyGrid plans to develop a software platform that will facilitate the smooth integration of autonomous cargo craft and passenger air vehicles in the global airspace. (Boeing Illustration)

Four months after announcing that they were linking up to create a traffic management system for drones, Boeing and SparkCognition say they’re kicking things up a notch with a new venture called SkyGrid to address the broader challenges associated with urban air mobility.

SkyGrid aims to develop a software platform that will facilitate the smooth integration of autonomous cargo craft and passenger air vehicles in the global airspace, the two companies said today in a news release.

The platform will go beyond drone traffic management to handle a wide range of tasks involving unmanned aircraft systems, including package delivery, remote sensing, industrial inspections and emergency assistance.

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Hello, Starship: SpaceX’s big rocket gets new name

BFR illustration
An artist’s conception shows SpaceX’s newly renamed Starship in flight. (SpaceX Illustration)

First it was the Mars Colonial Transporter, or MCT … then it was the Interplanetary Transport System, or ITS … then it was the Big Falcon Rocket, or BFR. Now it’s Starship.

Tonight SpaceX CEO Elon Musk announced the latest name for the spaceship that he says SpaceX aims to use to deliver a million people to Mars, send a Japanese billionaire and an assortment of artists around the moon and back, carry passengers on supersonic trips around the globe, and basically do everything big that needs to be done in space.

The name change comes just days after Musk tweeted that the design for the spaceship is being radically revised once again. “New design is very exciting! Delightfully counter-intuitive,” he wrote.

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NASA picks landing site for Mars 2020 rover

Jezero Crater
This color-coded image of the Jezero Crater delta combines information from two instruments on NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, the Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars and the Context Camera. (NASA / JPL-Caltech / MSSS / JHU-APL)

One week before the next Mars mission is due to land, NASA has chosen the landing site for its next next Mars mission. Jezero Crater will be where NASA’s yet-to-be-named rover will land on Feb. 18, 2021, the space agency announced today.

“It’s a Thursday,” said Allen Chen, who’s leading the entry, descent and landing team for what’s currently known as NASA’s Mars 2020 rover. That touchdown is due to come seven months after the mission’s launch in mid-July 2020.

Jezero Crater is thought to be the site of an ancient river delta on the western edge of Isidis Planitia, a giant impact basin just north of the Martian equator. Scientists say the 28-mile-wide crater’s rocks and soil may contain organic molecules and other traces of microbial life from the water and sediments that flowed into the crater billions of years ago.

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Virgin Orbit jet aces first flight with rocket attached

Cosmic Girl with Launcher One
Virgin Orbit’s 70-foot-long LauncherOne rocket is hooked beneath the left wing of the modified 747 jet known as Cosmic Girl during the first captive-carry flight. (Virgin Orbit Photo)

Virgin Orbit’s modified Boeing 747 jet, nicknamed Cosmic Girl, has made its first test flight with a LauncherOne rocket tucked under its wing.

The 80-minute captive-carry flight from California’s Victorville Airport and back came on Nov. 18 after months of step-by-step preparations, and represents a major step forward in Virgin Orbit’s plan to start sending satellites to orbit next year.

In a news release, Virgin Orbit CEO Dan Hart said the outing was “a picture-perfect flight.”

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GM’s self-driving car venture plans Seattle office

Cruise Chevy Bolt
GM-owned Cruise Automation is developing autonomous driving capabilities using the Chevy Bolt as a testbed. (General Motors / Cruise Automation Photo)

Cruise Automation, General Motors’ autonomous-vehicle subsidiary, says it’s getting ready to open up an office in the Seattle area that could employ as many as 200 engineers within a year.

Don’t expect Cruise to start putting its self-driving Chevy Bolts on the streets of Seattle, as the San Francisco-based venture has done in its hometown as well as in Arizona and the Detroit area. There aren’t any plans to test autonomous vehicles in the Seattle area. But Cruise has big plans to take advantage of Seattle’s status as a magnet for software engineers, data analysts and experts in computer vision and machine learning.

“To continue growing a team that is diverse and rich in talent, we feel that it’s important to explore talent pools outside of the Bay Area, and Seattle’s vibrant tech community and proximity to our headquarters in San Francisco make it a logical choice,” Kyle Vogt, Cruise’s CEO and co-founder, said in a statement emailed to GeekWire.

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Cygnus cargo ship heads to space station

Cygnus launch
Northrop Grumman’s Antares rocket rises from its launch pad at NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia. (NASA Photo / Joel Kowsky)

Two uncrewed cargo craft are now en route to the International Space Station, thanks to the launch of a Northrop Grumman Cygnus spaceship atop an Antares rocket.

Liftoff came right on time at 4:01 a.m. ET (1:01 a.m. PT) today at NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia. NASA said the Antares’ ascent should have been visible from a stretch of America’s East Coast ranging from Massachusetts to the Carolinas, given acceptable weather conditions and viewing elevation.

A round of applause could be heard at Wallops’ launch control center when spacecraft separation was announced.

The rocket’s red glare came less than 15 hours after Russia’s robotic Progress spaceship began its trip to the space station from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. The close timing was the result of a couple of weather-caused delays for the Cygnus launch. The Progress is due to rendezvous with the station on Nov. 18, followed by the Cygnus’ arrival on Nov. 19.

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Elon Musk celebrates tunnel’s big breakthrough

Tunnel worker
A worker knocks dirt off the Boring Company’s tunneling machine after its emergence into a vertical shaft. (Elon Musk via Twitter)

The Boring Company’s “cutting-edge technology” got a shout-out from billionaire founder Elon Musk tonight after the venture’s tunneling machine, nicknamed Godot, broke through into a vertical exit shaft in Hawthorne, Calif.

“Congratulations … on completing the LA/Hawthorne tunnel!” Musk wrote in a tweet.

The breakthrough apparently finishes up the heavy-duty boring job for a test tunnel that connects a parking lot next to SpaceX’s headquarters to another piece of property purchased by the Boring Company.

Musk mandated the project to demonstrate a low-cost, small-bore approach to urban tunnelling. The first mile-long section of the Hawthorne Test Tunnel — including a spur line to the exit shaft, known as O’Leary Station — is scheduled to open for invitation-only tours starting on Dec. 10.

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Arecibo makes plans for new message to aliens

Arecibo Message
A global contest will give the 1974 Arecibo Message a reboot. (Arecibo Observatory Illustration)

The Arecibo Observatory today kicked off a student-focused competition to design a new message to beam to extraterrestrials, 44 years to the day since the first deliberate message was sent out from Arecibo’s 1,000-foot-wide radio telescope.

“Our society and our technology have changed a lot since 1974,” Francisco Cordova, the observatory’s director, said in a news release. “So if we were assembling our message today, what would it say? What would it look like? What one would need to learn to be able to design the right updated message from the earthlings? Those are the questions we are posing to young people around the world through the New Arecibo Message – the global challenge.”

It’s not just about the message, however: Competitors will have to solve brain-teasing puzzles posted on Arecibo’s website in order to qualify, get instructions, register and submit their designs. Along the way, they’ll learn about space science, the scientific method and Arecibo’s story.

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