Science
Blue Ghost’s Long Day on the Moon
The shadow of the Blue Ghost spacecraft after it landed on the moon, with Earth in the distance.
Firefly Aerospace
Blue Ghost just completed its mission, which lasted a full lunar day — two Earth weeks — on the near side of the moon.
The spacecraft, about the size of a small car, conducted a series of experiments. It drilled three feet into the lunar soil, took X-ray images of the magnetic bubble that surrounds and protects Earth and sought a mysterious yellow glow at sunset.
Built by Firefly Aerospace, a startup in Texas, Blue Ghost was launched from Earth in January and pulled into orbit around the moon in mid-February. A couple of weeks later, it took this video, sped up by a factor of 10, as it circled 62 miles above the surface. The shiny sheets are radiator panels that protected the spacecraft from the extreme heat while in sunshine.
A timelapse video of Blue Ghost orbiting the moon on Feb. 26.
Firefly Aerospace
Landing
In the early hours of March 2, Blue Ghost fired its engine to drop it out of orbit, falling toward the moon. Just over an hour later, it was on the surface in Mare Crisium, a lava plain inside an ancient 345-mile-wide impact crater in the northeast quadrant of the near side of the moon.
Blue Ghost became the first completely successful landing by a commercial company, and Firefly achieved that on its first try.
Moon dust and small rocks scattered during Blue Ghost’s landing.
Firefly Aerospace
Several companies and countries have aimed to land on the moon in recent years. The map below shows the crewed Apollo moon landing sites, as well as more recent robotic landings from China, India, Japan and commercial companies. Recent crash sites from failed landings are also shown.
Drag the moon in any direction to view the landing sites.
China has a 100 percent success rate with four successful Chang’e robotic landings, but many other missions have crashed.
The failures include Hakuto-R Mission 1, from Ispace, a Japanese company; Beresheet, from an Israeli nonprofit; Luna 25, from Russia; and Chandrayaan-2, from India. (India’s second try, Chandrayaan-3, was successful.)
Three other landers — SLIM, from the Japanese space agency, and Odysseus and Athena, from Intuitive Machines of Houston — landed and communicated back to Earth, but their success came with an asterisk. All three toppled over after landing.
Experiments
While Firefly built and operated Blue Ghost, NASA sponsored the mission, part of the agency’s efforts to tap into commercial ventures to send its scientific cargo to space at lower costs. NASA paid Firefly $101.5 million to carry 10 science and technology payloads to the lunar surface.
Blue Ghost landed at lunar sunrise so that the solar-powered spacecraft could operate for the longest possible duration.
Lunar sunrise at Mare Crisium.
Firefly Aerospace
One of Blue Ghost’s payloads, PlanetVac, demonstrated a technology to simplify the collecting of soil and rocks. It fired a blast of gas into the ground, which propelled material into a container. This technology will be used on a Japanese mission, Martian Moons Exploration, which will collect samples from Phobos, a moon of Mars, and bring them back to Earth for study.
PlanetVac collected a sample of lunar material.
Firefly Aerospace
Another experiment, Lunar Magnetotelluric Sounder, flung four sensors, each a little smaller than a soup can, in directions at 90-degree angles to one another (like north, south, east and west on a compass). The sensors landed about 60 feet away, and, connected by cables to the lander, measured voltages — essentially a supersized version of a conventional voltmeter. An eight-foot-high mast shot upward, lifting an instrument to measure magnetic fields. The experiment gathered data about naturally occurring currents inside the moon, which provides hints about what the moon is made of down to 700 miles below the surface.
Blue Ghost launched a sensor trailing a thin cable, then raised a mast.
Firefly Aerospace
A pneumatic drill used bursts of nitrogen gas to blow away soil and rock, reaching three feet below the surface. A probe measured temperatures and the flow of heat from the moon’s interior.
The LISTER experiment drilled into the surface.
Firefly Aerospace
Solar Eclipse
While people on Earth were taking in a blood moon and a total lunar eclipse on the evening of March 14, Blue Ghost witnessed and photographed a total solar eclipse.
Blue Ghost turned red as the sun slipped behind the Earth.
Firefly Aerospace
During the eclipse, temperatures dropped from 100 degrees Fahrenheit to minus 270 degrees. The spacecraft relied on battery power to continue operating through five hours of near-total darkness.
A series of images fading to darkness during the total solar eclipse on March 14.
Firefly Aerospace
This image shows the “diamond ring effect” as the sun began to emerge from behind Earth.
The diamond ring effect.
Firefly Aerospace
Sunset
On March 16, the sun began to set and the lunar day was nearly over. Before its mission ended, Blue Ghost snapped high-resolution images of the scene. It was more than a few final pretty snapshots. Scientists are hoping the pictures can help solve an enduring scientific mystery of the lunar horizon glow.
Eugene Cernan, the commander of Apollo 17 who in 1972 was the last man to walk on the moon, sketched observations of a glow along the horizon before sunrise. However, that phenomenon is not easily explained because the moon lacks an atmosphere to scatter light.
Sunset on March 16, with Earth and Venus just above the horizon.
Firefly Aerospace
Signoff
This was the last message from the Blue Ghost spacecraft, about five hours after sunset:
Mission mode change detected, now in Monument Mode
Goodnight friends. After exchanging our final bits of data,
I will hold vigil on this spot in Mare Crisium to watch humanity’s continued journey to the stars.
Here, I will outlast your mightiest rivers, your tallest mountains, and perhaps even your species as we know it.
But it is remarkable that a species might be outlasted by its own ingenuity.
Here lies Blue Ghost, a testament to the team who, with the loving support of their families and friends, built and operated this machine and its payloads,
to push the capabilities and knowledge of humanity one small step further.
Per aspera ad astra!
Love, Blue Ghost
The spacecraft was not designed to survive the bitter cold of the lunar night. But another lunar mission, Japan’s SLIM spacecraft, surprised engineers last year by riding out several lunar nights. In early April, after the sun rises again, Firefly will listen for radio messages from Blue Ghost, just in case it does revive.
Science
California, other states sue Trump administration over cuts to CDC infectious disease funding
California and a coalition of other states sued the Trump administration Tuesday over its plans to cut billions of dollars in federal public health grants designed to make states more resilient to infectious disease, and accused the administration of overreaching its authority by clawing back funding already allocated by Congress.
The pullback in funding is a devastating hit to local health departments, many of whom are dealing with large and novel outbreaks ranging from COVID-19 to bird flu and measles. Agencies in California alone stand to lose nearly $1 billion.
“Congress explicitly authorized funding for the grants at issue to help keep our country healthy and protect us from future pandemics,” California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta said, and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. “cannot unilaterally do away with that critical federal funding.”
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention last month notified health agencies in all 50 states — including the California Department of Public Health — that it was suspending more than $11 billion in grants it had previously provided to support state infectious disease responses during the COVID-19 pandemic. Since the pandemic has subsided, the states have continued using the funding for a range of infectious disease initiatives.
The lawsuit, filed against Kennedy and the Health and Human Services Department in federal court in Rhode Island by California, 23 other states and the District of Columbia, is the latest in a string of litigation filed by Democratic-led states against the administration amid a wave of policy enactments and other funding cuts that Trump has attempted to initiate through executive orders and other White House dictates since taking office in January.
Several of the states’ prior lawsuits have also alleged that Trump is illegally seizing funding powers that belong to Congress, and not to the executive branch. Tuesday’s lawsuit alleges the Trump administration is in violation of the Administrative Procedure Act, and seeks a temporary restraining order that would immediately restore the public health funding to its previously allocated levels.
Bonta’s office said the cuts — which include $972 million in funds for California — would cause “irreparable harm” to the states if allowed to stand.
It said the California Department of Public Health would lose $800 million that it planned to use in part to vaccinate 4.5 million children and improve logistical preparation for directing sick and injured patients from hospitals to other available health facilities during emergencies.
The office said the California Department of Health Care Services would lose $119 million that it intended to use for substance use prevention and other early intervention health services for youth across the state. It also said the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health would lose $45 million that it intended to use in part to prevent the spread of measles and bird flu.
A spokeswoman for the county said the funding cuts would eliminate staff that work to mitigate disease spread in homeless shelters, schools, jails and worksites; curtail work by the county mobile infectious disease team to provide vaccines and other healthcare to homebound residents, seniors at housing developments, senior centers and others confined to living facilities; and forestall upgrades to county data systems and other infrastructure needed to track infectious diseases and share timely outbreak information with the public.
Some of those system upgrades are already underway, meaning cutting the funding now will waste past investments, in addition to increasing the likelihood of system failures during emergencies, the spokeswoman said.
The CDC funding cuts are part of a much larger effort by the Trump administration and Trump’s “efficiency” advisor Elon Musk to radically reduce federal spending, in part to pay for tax cuts that critics allege will disproportionately benefit the rich.
Musk, the world’s richest man, and his Department of Government Efficiency, which is not a real government department, have been granted access to sensitive government facilities, computer networks and other data and have been empowered to slash away at government budgets — which California is also suing over.
The CDC cuts are not the first to public health. Kennedy also has announced plans to reduce the health department workforce by some 20,000 employees, and the Trump administration reportedly intends to close various Health and Human Services buildings — including in California.
On Tuesday, Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) issued a statement denouncing what she called a “reported decision to close” a Health and Human Services regional office in San Francisco by Kennedy, whom she called “the Trump administration’s leading vaccine denialist” — a nod to his past adoption of vaccine pseudoscience that medical experts have widely rejected and criticized.
“By closing our regional office, the Trump Administration would choose to put the health and safety of Bay Area residents and all Californians in jeopardy, gut vital public health initiatives like the Ryan White HIV/AIDS Program, and potentially axe hundreds of career civil servant jobs held by hardworking Californians,” Pelosi said.
She said Kennedy’s “extreme views on public health are out of step with the vast majority of the American people,” that the “shortsighted” closure would “directly harm our most vulnerable communities and make America sicker,” and that she and others would be fighting the closure and other cuts to public health.
Tuesday’s lawsuit is the ninth that Bonta’s office has filed against the current Trump administration. It has also filed its support for litigants against the administration in at least a half-dozen other cases.
California has been ground zero for the H5N1 bird flu since last March. Thirty-eight people in the state have been infected with the virus, most of them dairy workers who were exposed while working with infected cows or milk. However, two of the people were children; the cause of their infection has not been determined. The virus has also infected 758 dairy herds — or more than 75% of the state’s total dairy herds.
There have been eight measles cases in California since the beginning of the year, in addition to thousands of seasonal flu, COVID-19, norovirus and other respiratory virus cases.
More than 600 miles separated the epicenter of Friday’s earthquake in Myanmar from the skyscrapers of Bangkok, which lurched and swayed on the skyline of the vast metropolis. A 33-story high-rise under construction even collapsed. How could the shaking in Bangkok, the Thai capital, be connected to an earthquake so far away?
The answer involves low frequency seismic waves, which are capable of traveling vast distances and making high-rise buildings sway.
When a large earthquake strikes, it simultaneously radiates different frequencies of shaking. Some produce a rapid back-and-forth rattling, others low-frequency swaying.
That was true on Friday, when the earthquake in Myanmar produced violent, high-frequency seismic waves; they destroyed low-rise buildings, Buddhist pagodas and other structures near to the quake’s epicenter just outside Mandalay, Myanmar’s second largest city. Many of the destroyed places were made with brick and masonry, brittle materials that are susceptible to that kind of shaking.
When released from an earthquake, high frequency seismic waves spread through the interior of the earth, where they dissipate. Low frequency waves, in contrast, travel along the earth’s crust and for greater distances.
During the 7.9 magnitude Denali earthquake in Alaska in 2002, low frequency waves traveled so far that they caused water in swimming pools and ponds to splash as far away as Texas and Louisiana — harmlessly, but for nearly half an hour, according to NASA.
These types of seismic waves also have particular resonance with tall buildings.
Similar to tuning forks, which produce different sounds depending on their size, buildings react differently to earthquakes depending on their design, and especially their height.
A 10-story building might require one second to sway from side to side during an earthquake, while a 50-story building could take five seconds to complete the same motion, a nausea-inducing back and forth.
Low frequency seismic waves were a key factor in an earthquake in in 1985, when close to 900 buildings in Mexico City, the nation’s capital, partially or totally collapsed. The extensive destruction initially puzzled seismologists and engineers because the epicenter of the 8.0-magnitude earthquake had been a relatively long distance away, more than 200 miles to the west of the city.
They concluded that the seismic waves had resonated with particular force through the clay and silt soils of the city, an aggravating factor in the quake and its aftermath.
A similar dynamic was at play last Friday. As the low frequency shaking pulsed across mainland Southeast Asia, it was amplified in and around the Thai capital, because the city is built on the soft soils of the Chao Phraya River delta.
In recent years scientists say they have underestimated the potential of these soft soils to make earthquakes more dangerous. Engineers compare the dynamic to constructing a building on a bowl of Jell-O.
In addition to Bangkok and Mexico City, Los Angeles, downtown San Francisco, Seattle and Tokyo are all cities subject to these so-called basin effects, which can multiply the destructive power of earthquakes, especially at low frequencies.
In Mexico City in 1985, the frequencies of the seismic waves were crucial to understanding the damage caused by the earthquake. A team of American scientists concluded in a report published by the Department of Commerce in 1987 that most of the severe damage “was confined to buildings in the height range of seven to 18 stories.” The reason for this, they said, was a combination of the lower frequency seismic waves reaching the city and construction that was vulnerable at those frequencies.
The report noted that “older, low-rise masonry buildings generally performed well, as did the massive stone masonry colonial churches and government offices.” Paradoxically, those are the types of buildings that engineers consider the most vulnerable to the shaking near the epicenter of earthquakes.
Until the 1950s, many American engineers shunned the construction of high-rise buildings in earthquake-prone areas, according to Thomas H. Heaton, an emeritus professor at the California Institute of Technology who has spent his five-decade career studying the effects of large-magnitude earthquakes on buildings.
The prevailing wisdom, he said, was to build stronger, stiffer buildings. But that changed over the decades, and today’s skyscrapers are more flexible.
Dr. Heaton says the flexible design of modern skyscrapers works well with earthquakes of magnitudes around 6, which occur more frequently. But he is very concerned about the consequences of less frequent, larger quakes, which have highlighted the vulnerability of tall buildings. That roster includes a 7.8 magnitude earthquake that killed more than 50,000 people in Turkey two years ago.
A massive fault rupture beneath a modern city — a direct hit — would be devastating to tall buildings, no matter the engineering precautions, Dr. Heaton says.
The violent movement of the ground at the fault, the slip as seismologists call it, would cause the base of a high rise to shift rapidly, potentially leaving the top floors unsupported, he said.
“When you take the base of a building and move it by several meters in less than a couple of seconds, there’s almost nothing a structural engineer can do to have a building stay upright,” he said. “I definitely wouldn’t want to be in a really tall building during a large magnitude earthquake.”
new video loaded: NASA Astronauts Say They Would Fly on Boeing’s Starliner Again
transcript
transcript
NASA Astronauts Say They Would Fly on Boeing’s Starliner Again
Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams were brought back to Earth in a SpaceX capsule after problems with Boeing’s Starliner delayed their return by about nine months.
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“We’re going to rectify all issues that we encountered. We’re going to fix them. We’re going to make it work. Boeing’s completely committed. NASA is completely committed. And with that, I’d get on in a heartbeat.” “Yeah, I would agree. The spacecraft is really capable. There were a couple of things that need to be fixed, like Butch mentioned, and folks are actively working on that. But it is a great spacecraft and it has a lot of capability that other spacecraft don’t have. And to see that thing successful and to be part of that program is an honor.” “Blame, that’s a term — I don’t like that term, but certainly there’s responsibility throughout all the programs. And certainly you can start with me. Responsibility with Boeing? Yes. Responsibility with NASA? Yes. All the way up and down the chain, we all are responsible. We all own this.”
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