Category: 7. Science

Airbus reports that four CO3D (Constellation Optique 3D) satellites it built were placed in orbit by an Arianespace Vega-C rocket from Kourou and will begin their mission to map the Earth’s surface in high detail in 3D.

These dual-use CO3D satellites will provide a high-resolution global digital surface model (DSM) with 50 cm resolution stereoscopic images for CNES and 2D images for government and commercial customers.

Over the next six months, these 285-kg satellites in a sun-synchronous orbit at an altitude of 502 km will undergo orbital tests before beginning an 18-month campaign to provide CNES with a 3D map of France and the ‘arc de crise’.

The data will feed into a digital ground segment operated by Airbus to produce the final 3D map, supporting critical military and civil applications ranging from geology and hydrology to urban planning and civil security.

Airbus adds that the MicroCarb satellite, for which it supplied the infrared spectrometer, was also deployed during the same launch, with the aim of mapping the carbon content of the atmosphere on a global scale.

Basically, the spacecraft looks ahead along its orbital path and rapidly processes and analyses imagery with its onboard AI. This is to determine where to point an instrument, without any human involvement. The whole process took less than 90 seconds, it reports.

The Irish space AI company Ubotica designed and developed the CogniSAT-6 satellite’s AI payload, which was a first for such processing. It runs on the company’s SPACE:AI platform, a commercially available space-capable AI processor.

This AI-enabled autonomy will be crucial for a range of applications, believes Ubotica CEO, Fintan Buckley. For example, real-time wildfire detection, dark vessel tracking and climate science.

CogniSAT-6 first launched in March 2024 on the SpaceX Transporter-10 launch from the Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.

Φsat-2

Last week we reported on the European Space Agency’s Φsat-2 satellite completing its commissioning. The craft is testing onboard AI, using the intelligence to efficiently process and compress the EO images.

The Nasa test was conducted on CogniSAT-6, a CubeSat designed, built, and operated by Open Cosmos, which was also the prime contractor on the more recent Φsat-2 mission.

Dynamic Targeting

Ubotica highlighted it as the first test of Dynamic Targeting. This is a NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) technology for spacecraft to analyse upcoming terrain in real time. And then make smart decisions autonomously. For example, to avoid cloud-covered areas and focus on capturing usable, high-value data.

“The idea is to make the spacecraft act more like a human: Instead of just seeing data, it’s thinking about what the data shows and how to respond,” said Steve Chien, a technical fellow in AI at JPL and principal investigator for the Dynamic Targeting project.

“When a human sees a picture of trees burning, they understand it may indicate a forest fire, not just a collection of red and orange pixels. We’re trying to make the spacecraft have the ability to say, ‘That’s a fire’, and then focus its sensors on the fire.”

How does it work?

Since CogniSAT-6 lacks an imager dedicated to looking ahead, the spacecraft tilts forward 40 to 50 degrees to point its optical sensor. This is a camera that sees both visible and near-infrared light.

Once look-ahead imagery has been acquired, Dynamic Targeting’s algorithm analyses it. Then the software determines where to point the sensor for cloud-free views. Meanwhile, the satellite tilts back for the planned imagery, capturing only the ground.

This all takes place in 60 to 90 seconds, as the spacecraft speeds in LEO at nearly 17,000 mph (7.5 kilometers per second).

Clouds

According to Nasa, this first flight test for Dynamic Targeting wasn’t hunting specific phenomena. For example the search for something like like fires will come later. This initial test was about avoiding the omnipresent phenomenon of clouds.

It is estimated that for EO satellites with optical sensors, clouds can get in the way as much as two-thirds of the time. Dynamic Targeting looks 300 miles (500 kilometers) ahead and has the ability to distinguish between clouds and clear sky. Only if the scene is clear will the spacecraft capture the surface when passing overhead. If it’s cloudy, the spacecraft cancels the imaging activity to save data storage for another target.

“If you can be smart about what you’re taking pictures of, then you only image the ground and skip the clouds. That way, you’re not storing, processing, and downloading all this imagery researchers really can’t use,” said Ben Smith of JPL, an associate with NASA’s Earth Science Technology Office, which funds the Dynamic Targeting work.

“This technology will help scientists get a much higher proportion of usable data.”

What next?

Following these initial test – with cloud-avoidance capability now proven – the next test will be hunting for severe weather. Basically, now targeting clouds instead of avoiding them.

Another test will be to search for thermal anomalies like wildfires and volcanic eruptions. The JPL team has developed unique algorithms for each application.

“This initial deployment of Dynamic Targeting is a hugely important step,” added Chien. “The end goal is operational use on a science mission, making for a very agile instrument taking novel measurements.”

Also, Dynamic Targeting could be adapted for use on Earth, For example, for use with radar to allow scientists to study dangerous extreme winter weather events called deep convective ice storms.

These are too rare and short-lived to closely observe with existing technologies. Specialised algorithms, however, could identify these storm formations with a satellite’s look-ahead instrument.

Alternatively, Dynamic Targeting could find a use on multiple spacecraft. In this case, communicating the results of onboard image analysis from a leading satellite to a trailing satellite. This could be targeting specific phenomena.

A test of the concept called Federated Autonomous MEasurement (FAME) will begin later this year.

Image: Ubotica’s CogniSAT-XE2 hardware platform

See also: Ubotica funded by EC to pioneer AI In Space Defence

“For many transition metal complexes, they are most stable when surrounded by 18 formal valence electrons. This is a chemical rule of thumb on which many key discoveries in catalysis and materials science are based,” said Dr. Satoshi Takebayashi, lead author of the paper published in Nature Communications, in collaboration with scientists from Germany, Russia, and Japan. Ferrocene is a classic example that embodies this rule. “We have now shown for the first time that it is possible to synthesize a stable 20-electron ferrocene derivative,” he added.

This breakthrough improves our understanding of the structure and stability of metallocenes, a class of compounds known for their characteristic “sandwich” structure, in which a metal atom sits between two organic rings. 

Rebuilding our conceptual understanding 

First synthesized in 1951, ferrocene revolutionized chemistry with its unexpected stability and unique structure, eventually earning its discoverers the 1973 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. In many ways, ferrocene opened a new chapter in our understanding of metal–organic bonding and launched the modern field of organometallic chemistry, which continues to inspire generations of scientists to explore metal–organic compounds. 

This new study builds on that foundation. By designing a novel ligand system, the team was able to stabilize a ferrocene derivative with 20 valence electrons, coordination chemistry that was previously considered improbable. “Moreover, the additional two valence electrons induced an unconventional redox property that holds potential for future applications,” Dr. Takebayashi noted. This is important because even though ferrocene is already used in reactions involving electron transfer, known as redox reactions, it has traditionally been limited to a narrow range of oxidation states. By enabling access to new oxidation states through the formation of an Fe–N bond in this derivative, it expands the ways in which ferrocene can gain or lose electrons. As a result, it could become even more useful as a catalyst or functional material across a variety of fields, from energy storage to chemical manufacturing. 

Understanding how to break and rebuild the rules of chemical stability enables researchers to design molecules with tailor-made properties. These insights could inspire new research aimed at advancing sustainable chemistry, including the development of green catalysts and next-generation materials. 

A platform for future innovation 

Ferrocene derivatives have already made their way into various technologies, from solar cells and pharmaceuticals to medical devices and advanced catalysts. By expanding the conceptual toolkit available to chemists, this latest breakthrough could help build on and diversify these applications while inspiring entirely new ones. 

The Organometallic Chemistry Group at OIST focuses on uncovering the fundamental principles that govern metal-organic interactions and applying them to real-world challenges. The team has a special interest in unconventional compounds that defy standard chemical rules, such as the 20-electron ferrocene derivative reported in this study. 

This work was supported by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS), the JSPS Program for Forming Japan’s Peak Research Universities, the Instrumental Analysis and Engineering Sections of the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University (OIST), and the OIST Buribushi Fellowship. 

Have you ever wondered why you don’t have thick hair covering your whole body like a dog, cat or gorilla does?

Humans aren’t the only mammals with sparse hair. Elephants, rhinos and naked mole rats also have very little hair. It’s true for some marine mammals, such as whales and dolphins, too.

Scientists think the earliest mammals, which lived at the time of the dinosaurs, were quite hairy. But over hundreds of millions of years, a small handful of mammals, including humans, evolved to have less hair. What’s the advantage of not growing your own fur coat?

I’m a biologist who studies the genes that control hairiness in mammals. Why humans and a small number of other mammals are relatively hairless is an interesting question. It all comes down to whether certain genes are turned on or off.

Hair benefits

Hair and fur have many important jobs. They keep animals warm, protect their skin from the sun and injuries and help them blend into their surroundings.

They even assist animals in sensing their environment. Ever felt a tickle when something almost touches you? That’s your hair helping you detect things nearby.

Humans do have hair all over their bodies, but it is generally sparser and finer than that of our hairier relatives. A notable exception is the hair on our heads, which likely serves to protect the scalp from the sun. In human adults, the thicker hair that develops under the arms and between the legs likely reduces skin friction and aids in cooling by dispersing sweat.

So hair can be pretty beneficial. There must have been a strong evolutionary reason for people to lose so much of it.

Why humans lost their hair

The story begins about 7 million years ago, when humans and chimpanzees took different evolutionary paths. Although scientists can’t be sure why humans became less hairy, we have some strong theories that involve sweat.

Humans have far more sweat glands than chimps and other mammals do. Sweating keeps you cool. As sweat evaporates from your skin, heat energy is carried away from your body. This cooling system was likely crucial for early human ancestors, who lived in the hot African savanna.

Of course, there are plenty of mammals living in hot climates right now that are covered with fur. Early humans were able to hunt those kinds of animals by tiring them out over long chases in the heat – a strategy known as persistence hunting.

Humans didn’t need to be faster than the animals they hunted. They just needed to keep going until their prey got too hot and tired to flee. Being able to sweat a lot, without a thick coat of hair, made this endurance possible.

Genes that control hairiness

To better understand hairiness in mammals, my research team compared the genetic information of 62 different mammals, from humans to armadillos to dogs and squirrels. By lining up the DNA of all these different species, we were able to zero in on the genes linked to keeping or losing body hair.

Among the many discoveries we made, we learned humans still carry all the genes needed for a full coat of hair – they are just muted or switched off.

In the story of “Beauty and the Beast,” the Beast is covered in thick fur, which might seem like pure fantasy. But in real life some rare conditions can cause people to grow a lot of hair all over their bodies. This condition, called hypertrichosis, is very unusual and has been called “werewolf syndrome” because of how people who have it look.

In the 1500s, a Spanish man named Petrus Gonsalvus was born with hypertrichosis. As a child he was sent in an iron cage like an animal to Henry II of France as a gift. It wasn’t long before the king realized Petrus was like any other person and could be educated. In time, he married a lady, forming the inspiration for the “Beauty and the Beast” story.

While you will probably never meet someone with this rare trait, it shows how genes can lead to unique and surprising changes in hair growth.

Marina Chikina is an Assistant Professor of Computational and Systems Biology at the University of Pittsburgh. Follow Marina on X @ChikinaLab.

A version of this article was originally posted at Conversation and has been reposted here with permission. Any reposting should credit the original author and provide links to both the GLP and the original article. Find Conversation on X @Conversation_US

Octopuses can be fooled into thinking a fake arm is actually their own.

When scientists in Japan pinched an artificial appendage during experiments, octopuses recoiled in defense – swimming away, suddenly changing their color, or retracting their arms, as if they’d really been hurt.

The reaction is not proof that cephalopods are dim-witted or easily tricked – quite the contrary.

The findings are a first and they suggest that octopuses are highly intelligent creatures that feel a sense of responsibility over their appendages.

Related: Microbe ‘Flavors’ Tell Octopuses Which Babies Deserve Their Care

Even we humans fall for the body transfer illusion, which is used to study an animal’s sense of body ownership. The trick was originally reported in our own species in 1998, and more recently in monkeys and mice.

Now, it seems invertebrates can be fooled too.

That’s remarkable, as octopus arms are controlled by a nervous system like no other.

“Our findings suggest, like humans, octopuses have a multisensory representation of their body,” the study authors conclude.

To figure out how octopuses feel about their own bodies, animal behavior scientists Sumire Kawashima and Yuzuru Ikeda of the University of the Ryukyus placed plain-body night octopuses (Callistoctopus aspilosomatis) in a tank for a series of experiments.

During the trials, one of the octopus arms was hidden from sight by a screen. A fake arm made of soft gel was then placed in front of the screen.

Scientists stroked both the fake limb and the hidden limb simultaneously. Immediately after, researchers pinched the fake arm.

Within seconds, the octopus responded as if it had been attacked, though it wasn’t physically hurt.

That might seem like an overreaction, but even humans who are prepared can fall for this trick. If one of our hands is placed behind a screen and a fake hand placed in front, we can be made to ‘feel’ the fake hand.

Our brains are essentially fooling us into thinking the touch we are feeling on our real hand is related to the touch we are seeing. Once that link is established, our brain automatically takes ownership of the fake hand.

If we see the fake hand being prodded, then we also feel it.

The reason we fall for this illusion is complicated, but essentially, it’s because our brains are exceptional at rapidly integrating perceptions of touch, vision, and proprioception (which is the sense of where our bodies are in space).

Octopus brains are apparently also skilled in this respect.

These marine mollusks have extremely flexible, incredibly dexterous arms, with approximately 500 million neurons running through each.

All eight limbs can make decisions independent of the brain, and they can even ‘taste’ with their finger-like suckers.

Similar to humans, however, it seems that the octopus brain also prefers visual information over other senses, like touch, taste, or proprioception.

This makes it possible for the creature to adopt a limb they see that isn’t actually theirs.

“These results suggest that the basic perceptual rules that determine body ownership in octopuses are similar to those of mammals,” argue Kawashima and Ikeda.

“These findings in the octopus, which has a complex nervous system that has developed independently of vertebrates, may be an important model for studying the evolution of the sense of body ownership.”

The correspondence was published in Current Biology.

“For the first time, we have identified the earliest moment when planet formation is initiated around a star other than our Sun,” says Melissa McClure, a professor at Leiden University in the Netherlands and lead author of the study, published recently in Nature.

A massive cloud of gas and dust collapses under its own gravity, forming a protostar (an infant stage of a star’s formation) like HOPS-315. These protostars have leftover gas, dust, and ice that flatten into a spinning protoplanetary disc (a rotating disk of matter around a young star), where new planets form. Over time, the disc cools and particles begin to stick together, eventually forming rocky planetesimals (precursor building-blocks of planets) that become planets or remain as smaller bodies.

When our solar system formed, the first grains to cool and solidify near Earth’s orbit were minerals containing silicon monoxide (SiO). These solid grains clumped together to form rocky planetesimals, the building blocks of terrestrial planets, such as Earth. Some SiO-rich grains were trapped in ancient meteorites during the solar system’s formation, preserving a record of early planet formation. Scientists now study these meteorites to uncover when the first solid grains appeared.

Astronomers have now observed the birth of solid stardust around HOPS-315, using JWST and ALMA. They detected silicon monoxide (SiO) as both gas and freshly forming crystals, explaining how building blocks of planets appear in the protoplanetary disc.

The team used JWST’s infrared telescope to study the chemical composition of material around the star. Different molecules absorb specific wavelengths of infrared radiation based on their chemical properties, creating distinct dips (absorption lines) in the spectrum, which is a graph showing how much light is absorbed at each colour. These lines, like unique fingerprints, allow astronomers to identify the molecules present and determine their temperature, providing insights into the composition and conditions of molecules in the protoplanetary disc (the disk-shaped region of matter around a young star where planets can form).

Also read: Why Earth is in a hurry and July 9 saw one of the shortest days ever

In HOPS-315’s disk, the team detected warm silicon monoxide (SiO) alongside SiO-rich silicate minerals for the first time. The star’s midsection, nearly 1200K, was hot enough to vaporise rocks. In this region, silicates turned into gas, which later cooled and condensed into solid minerals, forming the material that would eventually become planets. “This hot mineral is the first feedstock that you have to start growing things in the disk,” says McClure.

JWST identified key chemical ingredients, while ALMA pinpointed their location. Using ALMA, the team traced the sources of these signals. JWST detected SiO gas moving at 10 km/s, but ALMA found SiO jets moving ten times faster, showing that slower SiO is concentrated in a region near the star, similar to our Solar System’s asteroid belt.

While SiO jets shoot from the disc, the SiO gas concentration in the jets is less than in the disc itself. This suggests that some SiO gas is cooling and turning into solid dust, similar to steam condensing into water.

The team identified these chemical signatures in a small section of HOPS-315’s disc, which is similar in size to our asteroid belt. They recognised the same minerals seen in ancient meteorites from our solar system, confirming signals from a region where Earth-like planets may form. The jets contained less silicon and iron gas than expected, hinting that these elements are being absorbed by growing planetary seeds.

“We’re really seeing these minerals at the same location in this extrasolar system as where we see them in asteroids in the Solar System,” says co-author Logan Francis, a postdoctoral researcher at Leiden University.

HOPS-315 is among 410 young stellar objects identified by the Herschel Orion Protostar Survey using the Spitzer Space Telescope. The survey identified different types of protostars, ranging from very young to more developed ones, and demonstrated how their surroundings evolve over time, ultimately leading to the formation of planetary systems.

Also read: All eyes on India’s first space mission in four decades; Shubhanshu Shukla on board

HOPS-315, in the Orion molecular cloud complex about 1,300 light years away, drew astronomers’ attention for its crystalline silicate minerals, a sign of early planet formation. McClure and her team focused on this protostar using JWST and ALMA.

An added benefit came from HOPS-315’s accidental alignment. While jets from newborn stars often block the disc, HOPS-315’s tilt allowed astronomers a direct view of its gas and dust disk. The protoplanetary disc of HOPS-315 extends 35 Astronomical Units (AU), or the distance between Earth and the Sun, resembling a solar system in formation. “The star is on track to grow to be as large as the Sun,” McClure says, “and the disc is about the same mass and radius… as the Sun’s disc at a similar age.”

Until now, astronomers debated whether rocky planets formed farther out (where water freezes) or closer to the star (where SiO — silicon monoxide — is abundant). HOPS-315 confirms the latter, hot minerals condense into rock near the star.

“Our results… provide physical constraints on what the region around the sun within 1 AU might have looked like for our solar system,” McClure says, “which will allow people to test these theories.”

“What we’ve been trying to do is find a baby version of our Solar System somewhere else,” says Merel van’t Hoff, an astronomer at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana, and a co-author of the study. HOPS-315 provides a wonderful analogue for studying our own cosmic history. As van’t Hoff says, “This system is one of the best that we know to actually probe some of the processes that happened in our solar system.”

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Landscapes left behind by ancient rivers and buried beneath the Antarctic ice may affect the rate of ice loss, researchers report in Nature Geoscience.

The team used radio echo sounding, a technique that measures ice thickness using radar, to study the East Antarctic Ice Sheet between Princess Elizabeth Land and George V Land in Antarctica. Parts of the ice sheet are thought to be particularly susceptible to climate change because the land beneath it contains huge troughs that let warming ocean water reach the ice, causing rapid shrinking.

Radar measurements of the thickness elevation of the ice revealed a 2,100-mile stretch of previously undiscovered flat surfaces beneath the ice. The surfaces had never been mapped.

The “coherent, pre-glacial surfaces” probably formed after the East Antarctic separated from the supercontinent of Gondwana, the researchers write.

The smoothness of the surface is consistent with it having been formed by ancient river systems that eroded the bedrock below. The rougher surfaces beneath the ice sheet were probably shaped by ice itself, they write, which further eroded the landscape and carved deep troughs.

East Antarctica’s tectonic plate probably broke off of the supercontinent about 80 million years ago, with today’s ice sheet forming 34 million years ago. Today, the researchers write, the flat surfaces probably “play a stabilizing role” in parts of the ice sheet, while rapid melting is more likely to occur in the troughs.

The radar images of the region were covered in flat surfaces, study lead Guy Paxman, a Royal Society university research fellow in the geography department at Durham University, said in a news release. “The flat surfaces we have found have managed to survive relatively intact for over 30 million years, indicating that parts of the ice sheet have preserved rather than eroded the landscape,” he added.

Further study of the ice sheet’s past could have “important implications for projections of future ice change and sea-level rise in a warming world,” the researchers conclude.