Tag: University of Washington

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Moon lander mission will carry DNA to the final frontier

Astrobotic moon lander prepared for launch
Astrobotic’s Peregrine lander is prepared for placement within its launch vehicle’s fairing. (Astrobotic Photo)

A mission to send a commercial lander to the moon, set for launch in a couple of days, will bring the fruition of projects that have been in the works for years — including projects that aim to put DNA into cold storage on the final frontier.

Pittsburgh-based Astrobotic’s robotic Peregrine lander is scheduled to begin a circuitous 40-day trip to the moon with liftoff from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida at 2:18 a.m. ET Jan. 8 (11:18 p.m. PT Jan. 7). NASA TV will stream coverage of the countdown.

It’ll mark the first launch for United Launch Alliance’s next-generation Vulcan Centaur rocket, and the first use of the BE-4 engines built by Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space venture for Vulcan’s first-stage booster — coming nearly 10 years after the partnership between ULA and Blue Origin was announced.

A successful touchdown next month would go into the history books as the first soft landing of a commercially built spacecraft on the lunar surface — in fact, the first soft lunar landing of any U.S.-built spacecraft since Apollo 17 in 1972. Among the payloads placed aboard the lander is the Iris mini-rover, which would become the first U.S.-built vehicle to wheel around the moon since the Apollo era.

Several NASA-supported payloads will take measurements at the landing site, around a region known as the Gruithuisen Domes, during a science mission that’s projected to last a couple of weeks. Other payloads include micro-robots from Mexico, an art project called MoonArk, mementos and bits of cryptocurrency.

And then there’s the DNA. Samples of DNA — either contributed by donors or synthesized to contain coded information — will be riding on the Peregrine lander as well as the Vulcan’s Centaur V upper stage.

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NASA boosts far-out radio dishes and other wild ideas

Concept illustrations from NIAC Phase I projects
This collage highlights several concepts proposed by 2024 NIAC Phase I awardees. (NASA Illustration)

A proposal to build a far-flung set of radio antennas to measure the cosmos is one of 13 far-out concepts to receive seed funding from the NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts program.

University of Washington astronomer Matthew McQuinn will receive a grant of $175,000 to flesh out his plan for a solar-system-scale interferometer capable of determining cosmological distances with precision that’s an order of magnitude beyond what’s possible today.

The plan would require building and launching a constellation of four radio dishes, each measuring at least several meters (yards) in diameter. The detectors would have to be widely separated, far out in deep space. How far out? “The science gets interesting when they are more than about 10 AU apart,” McQuinn told me in an email. That distance of 10 AU is just a bit less than the width of Jupiter’s orbit.

The detectors would be on the lookout for fast radio bursts that flash from beyond our Milky Way galaxy. By measuring the difference in arrival times at the different detectors, scientists could calculate the distance to the source of a burst with sub-percent precision. “It’s kind of like GPS localizations, but applied to fast radio bursts,” McQuinn explained.

In his proposal, McQuinn says such measurements could lead to new discoveries in fields ranging from gravitational-wave detection to the study of dark matter. McQuinn and a UW colleague, Kyle Boone, lay out the details in a research paper that was published last year in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

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Fiction Science Club

How rowing has changed since ‘The Boys in the Boat’

Scene from "The Boys in the Boat" showing rowers in racing shell
"The Boys in the Boats" recounts the saga of the University of Washington's rowing crew in 1936. (Image Copyright © Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer)

Thanks to tectonic shifts in technology and training, Olympic-level rowing has come a long way since the University of Washington’s eight-man crew pulled off the ultimate underdog win at the 1936 Olympics in Nazi Germany — the achievement celebrated in the brand-new movie adaptation of “The Boys in the Boat.”

On paper, the performance of the rowers at the center of the movie — and at the center of the bestselling book on which the movie is based — pales in comparison with current Olympic and world records. Today, the world’s fastest time for a 2,000-meter course is just under 5 minutes and 20 seconds, which is more than a minute faster than the time that won the gold medal for the Boys in the Boat in Berlin.

One of the big reasons for that speedup can be found at Everett, Wash.-based Pocock Racing Shells. The company’s founder, George Pocock, built the Husky Clipper — the boat in which the Boys won their Olympic gold. In the movie, Pocock (as portrayed by Peter Guinness) plays a role similar to Yoda in the Star Wars saga, performing wizardry with wood and dispensing wisdom at just the right moment.

Today, wood just doesn’t cut it for championship-level racing shells. “The boats have no wood,” says John Tytus, the current president of Pocock Racing Shells. “These boats are all built out of advanced composites, mainly carbon fiber — which, for its weight, is the strongest material available.”

Lightweight materials are just part of the equation. Hydrodynamics and computer modeling have helped Tytus and other boatbuilders tweak their designs to an extent that would impress even George Pocock.

Science has also transformed how today’s rowing men and women are being trained to outperform the Boys in the Boat. “As stark as the difference between wood and carbon fiber might be, the training volume that the crews do now, compared to what the Boys did in ’36 — that’s actually a bigger quantum leap,” Tytus says.

In the latest episode of the Fiction Science podcast, Tytus explains how innovations have taken athletic performance far beyond what moviegoers see when they watch “The Boys in the Boat.”

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Scientists team up to turn cells into tiny recording devices

Cell lineage map
A small section of a cell lineage map produced using DNA Typewriter. (Allen Institute / UW Image)

The Allen Institute, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative and the University of Washington have launched a collaboration called the Seattle Hub for Synthetic Biology, with the goal of using genetically modified cells to capture a DNA-based record showing how they change over time.

If the project works out as hoped, it could lead to a deeper understanding of the mechanisms behind cellular processes — including, for example, how tumors grow — and point to new methods for fighting disease and promoting healthy cell growth.

Over the next five years, the Seattle Hub for Synthetic Biology will receive $35 million from the Allen Institute, and another $35 million from the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, founded by Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan.

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Asteroid-hunting algorithm passes a tricky test

Bird's eye view showing orbital paths for Earth and asteroid 2022 SF289 at closest approach
A bird’s-eye view of the solar system shows the orbital path for Earth in blue and the projected orbit for the asteroid known as 2022 SF289 at its closest approach in green. Orbits of Venus and Mars are shown in orange and red. (Credit: Joachim Moeyens / UW / OpenSpace)

A new technique for finding potentially hazardous asteroids before they find us has chalked up its first success.

In this case, the asteroid isn’t expected to threaten Earth anytime in the foreseeable future. But the fact that the technique — which uses a new computer algorithm called HelioLinc3D — actually works comes as a confidence boost as astronomers get set to step up the asteroid hunt with the Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile.

The University of Washington’s DiRAC Institute will play a leading role in analyzing the data from the Rubin Observatory, and HelioLinc3D is meant to make the job easier.

It’ll be another couple of years before the Rubin Observatory starts surveying the skies, but researchers put HelioLinc3D to the test by feeding it data from the NASA-funded Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System, or ATLAS.

During the July 18 test run, the algorithm combined fragments of ATLAS data from four nights of observations to identify an asteroid that had been previously missed.

The asteroid, designated 2022 SF289 and described in a Minor Planet Electronic Circular, is thought to be about 600 feet wide. That’s wide enough to cause widespread destruction on Earth in the event of an impact. The good news is that projections of 2022 SF289’s orbital path show it staying 140,000 miles away from Earth at its closest. Nevertheless, the space rock fits NASA’s definition of a potentially hazardous asteroid because of its estimated size and the fact that it can come within 5 million miles of our planet.

UW researcher Ari Heinze, the principal developer of HelioLinc3D, said the algorithm’s success should carry over to the Rubin Observatory’s future database.

“By demonstrating the real-world effectiveness of the software that Rubin will use to look for thousands of yet-unknown potentially hazardous asteroids, the discovery of 2022 SF289 makes us all safer,” Heinze said in a news release.

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A new type of salt crystal could exist on Europa

Galileo's view of Europa's surface
An image from NASA’s Galileo orbiter shows Europa’s surface of salt-streaked ice. (Credit: NASA / JPL / Ted Stryk)

A prime target in the search for extraterrestrial life is Europa, a moon of Jupiter that’s covered with a sheet of salty ice. But what kind of salt is there? Researchers say they’ve created a new kind of salt crystal that could fill the bill, and perhaps raise hopes for finding life under the ice.

This salt crystal is both exotic and common: It’s actually table salt — also known as sodium chloride, with the chemical formula NaCl — but bound up with water molecules to form a hydrate that doesn’t exist naturally on Earth.

Earthly sodium chloride hydrates are composed of one salt molecule linked by hydrogen bonds with two water molecules. In contrast, the hydrates created in the lab consist of two NaCl molecules to 17 water molecules, or one NaCl molecule to 13 water molecules. (The structure for a third type of “hyperhydrated hydrate” couldn’t be determined.)

That’s promising news for scientists who study Europa and other ice-covered worlds — including two other Jovian moons, Callisto and Ganymede; and the Saturnian moons Enceladus and Titan. Spectral observations indicate that Europa’s surface ice contains salts, including sodium chloride, but the observed levels of concentration don’t match up well with Earth’s run-of-the-mill NaCl hydrates.

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Are quantum computers for real? The answer is fuzzy

IonQ quantum hardware in data center
The IonQ Forte quantum system is roughly the same size as a standard data center cabinet. (IonQ Photo)

Do full-fledged quantum computers already exist, or will it be a decade before they come into being? Will they have to be the size of a football field? A data center cabinet? A microwave oven?

It seems as if the more you talk to computer scientists involved in the quantum computing quest, the less certain the answers become. It’s the flip side of the classic case of Schrödinger’s Cat, which is both dead and alive until you open the box: Quantum computers could be regarded as already alive, or not yet born.

For example, Microsoft is working on a full-stack quantum computer based on an exotic technology that’s expected to come to fruition on the time scale of a decade. Maryland-based IonQ has been making its quantum systems commercially available since 2019, and plans to start building next-gen quantum computers next year at a research and manufacturing facility in Bothell, Wash. Meanwhile, D-Wave Systems, which is headquartered near Vancouver, B.C., has been selling quantum hardware for more than a decade.

So are quantum computers ready for prime time? Researchers say that they’re not, and that the timeline for development is fuzzy. It all depends on how you define quantum computers and the kinds of problems you expect them to handle.

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Synthetic peptide molecules open the way for new drugs

Peptides slipping through cell membrane
An illustration shows how peptide molecules can slip through a cell membrane. (Image by Ian C. Haydon / UW IPD)

Researchers at the University of Washington have discovered how to create peptide molecules that can slip through membranes to enter cells — and they’ve also created a company to take advantage of the discovery for drug development.

The findings, which were published today in the journal Cell, could eventually lead to new types of oral medications for health disorders ranging from COVID-19 to cancer.

“This new ability to design membrane-permeable peptides with high structural accuracy opens the door to a new class of medicines that combine the advantages of traditional small-molecule drugs and larger protein therapeutics,” senior study author David Baker, a biochemist at the University of Washington School of Medicine, said in a news release.

Small-molecule drugs — for example, aspirin — are small enough to slip through cell membranes to do their work. Protein therapeutics — for example, monoclonal antibodies — can target more complex ailments, but the protein molecules are typically too big to wedge their way through lipid-based cell walls.

Peptide drugs are made from the same building blocks as protein, and offer many of the advantages of protein-based drugs. They can bind protein targets in the body more precisely than small-molecule drugs, promising fewer side effects.

“We know that peptides can be excellent medicines, but a big problem is that they don’t get into cells,” said study lead author Gaurav Bhardwaj, an assistant professor of medicinal chemistry at the UW School of Pharmacy. “There are a lot of great drug targets inside our cells, and if we can get in there, that space opens up.”

The newly reported experiments used a couple of molecular design techniques to create types of peptide molecules that can get into cells more easily.

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How ‘Big Data’ can help scientists focus the search for E.T.

Gaia spacecraft
Artwork shows the Gaia spacecraft against the background of the Milky Way. (ESA Illustration / D. Ducros)

Could far-off aliens be sending out signals telling us they exist? If so, how would we know where to look? Researchers focusing on the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, or SETI, have laid out a new strategy for focusing their quest.

The strategy applies simple trigonometry to millions of data points, with the aim of seeking out potential interstellar beacons that are synchronized with hard-to-miss astronomical phenomena such as supernovae.

University of Washington astronomer James Davenport and his colleagues lay out the plan in a research paper submitted to the arXiv pre-print server this month. The idea is also the subject of a talk that Davenport’s giving this week at the Breakthrough Discuss conference in California.

“I think the technique is very straightforward. It’s dealing with triangles and ellipses, things that are like high-school geometry, which is sort of my speed,” Davenport told GeekWire half-jokingly. “I like simple shapes and things I can calculate easily.”

The pre-print paper, which hasn’t yet been published in a peer-reviewed journal, draws upon data from the European Space Agency’s Gaia sky-mapping mission. But Davenport said the technique is tailor-made for the terabytes of astronomical data that will be coming from the Vera C. Rubin Observatory nightly when it goes online, a couple of years from now.

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How using the cloud can rev up the search for asteroids

Asteroid orbital tracks
This visualization shows trajectories for scores of asteroids. (B612 Asteroid Institute / UW Dirac Institute / OpenSpace Project)

Astronomers have used a cloud-based technique pioneered at the University of Washington to identify and track asteroids in bunches of a hundred or more. Their achievement could dramatically accelerate the quest to find potentially threatening space rocks.

The technique makes use of an open-source analysis platform known as Asteroid Discovery Analysis and Mapping, or ADAM; plus a recently developed algorithm called Tracklet-less Heliocentric Orbit Recovery, or THOR. The THOR algorithm was created by Joachim Moeyens, an Asteroid Institute Fellow at UW; and Mario Juric, director of UW’s DiRAC Institute.

Teaming up ADAM and THOR may sound like a cross between a Bible story and a Marvel comic, but this dynamic duo’s superpower is strictly scientific: When ADAM runs the THOR algorithm, the software can determine the orbits of asteroids, even previously unidentified asteroids, by sifting through any large database of astronomical observations.

ADAM has been a long-term project for the Asteroid Institute, a program of the California-based B612 Foundation.

“Discovering and tracking asteroids is crucial to understanding our solar system, enabling development of space, and protecting our planet from asteroid impacts,” former NASA astronaut Ed Lu, the Asteroid Institute’s executive director, said today in a news release. “With THOR running on ADAM, any telescope with an archive can now become an asteroid search telescope.”

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