El Siglo 21 es Hoy

Por NASA Podcast #Recomendado Tweet Gravity Assist: Season 5 Trailer – What’s Your Gravity Assist? Go behind the scenes at NASA with Chief Scientist Jim Green in the Gravity Assist podcast. We’ll talk to people who work in lots of different areas to make space missions and scientific investigations happen. How does someone become an astronaut, or an engineer working on the Ingenuity helicopter, or a science communicator? Everyone has a gravity assist – that person, place, thing, or event that inspired them to do what they’re doing now. New episodes will be released on Fridays.

Por NASA Podcast #Recomendado Tweet Gravity Assist: Driving on Mars, with rover driver Sophia Mitchell What does it take to drive a rover that’s more than 100 million miles away? Sophia Mitchell at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory has been driving the Mars Curiosity rover since 2018. In addition to her science and engineering background, Mitchell is also an avid hiker and pilot, and explains how she combines all of these interests and skills in her job. Curiosity landed on Mars on Aug. 6, 2012, and sends back images and other science data from Mount Sharp in Gale Crater. On Feb. 18, 2021, NASA’s Perseverance rover will land on Mars at Jezero Crater. Mitchell also explains how these craters are different and why she’s excited to have a second rover exploring the Red Planet.

Por NASA Podcast #Recomendado Tweet Gravity Assist: The Bright Spot of the Asteroid Belt, with Britney Schmidt Between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter is a mysterious dwarf planet called Ceres. Its surface is dark and muddy, but has hundreds of patches of bright material. The salt-covered dome and other bright features in Occator Crater are so reflective that they looked like flashlights in distant images. NASA’s Dawn spacecraft got a close look, and pointed scientists to the idea that liquid brine has come up from the interior of Ceres, forming the Occator dome and other bright features. Ceres’ crust also contains a significant amount of ice. Astrobiologist Britney Schmidt discusses the implications, as well as her fieldwork in Antarctica.

Por NASA Podcast #Recomendado Tweet Gravity Assist: Set Sail for Europa, with Bob Pappalardo NASA’s Europa Clipper mission will give us the most detailed look yet at Jupiter’s extraordinary moon Europa. Smaller than our own Moon, Europa is one of the prime candidates for life beyond Earth because it has a deep ocean under its icy shell. The Europa Clipper spacecraft, named for speedy 19th century merchant ships, will map the surface, learn more about the ocean using ice-penetrating radar, and see if there are plumes of water shooting out from the cracks in the ice, among many other scientific activities. Project scientist Bob Pappalardo at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory discusses this mission as well as the possibility of life on Europa and how it would be able to survive without sunlight.

Por NASA Podcast #Recomendado Tweet Gravity Assist: Mars Takes a Breath, with Jen Eigenbrode The Curiosity rover has been probing the secrets of Mars since its arrival in 2012. Its discoveries include chemical signatures that could be related to life – or, alternatively, to geological processes. The Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) instrument has found organic molecules, which are fundamental building blocks of life on Earth, but can also be produced in non-biological ways. Scientists have also observed sudden rises and falls in methane, a gas also associated with life, but which can be geological in nature, too. But with such a thin atmosphere, cold temperatures and scathing radiation from the Sun, the surface of Mars would be hostile to life. Where could life be hiding, if it were on Mars? Jen Eigenbrode, astrobiologist at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, discusses.

Por NASA Podcast #Recomendado Tweet Gravity Assist: The History of the Future, with Steven Dick People have long wondered whether there is life beyond Earth, but it is only recently that scientists have been able to apply the tools of space exploration to go after this question. In 1996, the Allan Hills 84001 Meteorite shook the world as scientists debated whether it had tiny fossils inside of it that came from Mars. The consensus is that this rock does not contain Martian fossils, but the questions it raised energized many researchers. Today, the field of astrobiology is looking at how life arose on Earth and where else in the solar system and beyond life could exist. Beyond these scientific investigations, there are also philosophical questions one could ask. Would we be ready as a society for such a groundbreaking discovery? Astronomer and historian Steven Dick tells us there are many approaches to consider and many questions we should ask ourselves to get ready, in case extr

Por NASA Podcast #Recomendado Tweet Gravity Assist: Is Artificial Intelligence the Future of Life? With Susan Schneider If astrobiologists find life beyond Earth in the solar system, it will most likely be in the form of tiny organisms called microbes – nothing that would talk to us. But the galaxy is a big place; the universe even bigger. Somewhere out there, life may have evolved to become as smart, or even much smarter, than us. And the next step in that ladder may be “post-biological,” argues Susan Schneider, the Baruch S. Blumberg NASA/Library of Congress Chair in Astrobiology, Exploration, and Scientific Innovation. Advanced life may be entirely based on microchips and silicon, using the tools of artificial intelligence instead of brains. In this episode of “Gravity Assist,” learn about what life might be like in the future and how science fiction has influenced thinking around this topic. Bonus: Jim Green’s theory about the movie “2001: A Space Odyssey.”

Por NASA Podcast #Recomendado Tweet Gravity Assist: Our Sun, Our Life, with Vladimir Airapetian How well do you know the Sun? It hasn’t always looked the way it does today. Billions of years ago, the Sun was fainter but also more active, throwing out huge flares of radiation in powerful tantrums. This “young Sun” helped shape the evolution of life as we know it. By understanding what our Sun was like when life emerged on Earth, scientists can look to other stars in the galaxy and think about whether life could emerge on planets there, too. Vladimir Airapetian, scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, explains what researchers hope to find as they gaze beyond our solar system.

Por NASA Podcast #Recomendado Tweet Gravity Assist: ‘Oxygen is Tree Poop’ – Looking For Life in Ancient Lakes As the Perseverance Rover flies toward Jezero Crater on Mars, which once hosted water, astrobiologists are interested in places on Earth that are similar to the rover landing site. Kennda Lynch, scientist at the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston, Texas, has been doing fieldwork in an ancient lake location in Utah called the Pilot Valley Playa. In this episode she describes her recent discoveries and why she’s excited about Perseverance. She also explains how all life forms create waste products, even bacteria, that could leave tracers or “biosignatures” for scientists to detect. By looking at how microbes survive in extreme environments on Earth, scientists can explore the bigger question of how life could sustain itself on other planetary bodies like Mars and Jupiter’s moon Europa.

Por NASA Podcast #Recomendado Tweet Gravity Assist: Gardens at the Bottom of the Sea, with Laurie Barge Billions of years ago, life may have gotten started at hydrothermal vents, cracks in the sea floor where hot fluids from inside our planet mix with colder ocean water. Laurie Barge, an astrobiologist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, studies how plant-looking mineral structures called chimneys grow from chemicals found at the deepest depths of the ocean. In her lab she has glass vials and bulbs full of different chemical mixtures that simulate undersea conditions. Through careful mixing, scientists can even form amino acids, which are essential building blocks of life. Could similar processes happen in oceans under the ice shells of moons farther away in our solar system, like Europa and Enceladus?

Por NASA Podcast #Recomendado Tweet Gravity Assist: She Protects Other Planets from Our Germs As we explore Mars and other places in the solar system that might have life, scientists who work in Planetary Protection are busy making sure that we don’t contaminate them. While engineers prepare the Perseverance Rover for launch, Lisa Pratt, NASA’s Planetary Protection Officer, is making sure that it’s not carrying too many spores — cells that could re-activate and transport Earthly bacteria to Mars. It’s especially important to keep Perseverance clean because it will collect samples on Mars that will one day return to Earth. Learn what your hand sanitizer has in common with NASA’s clean rooms, and how scientists are thinking about protecting Mars in terms of future human missions.

Por NASA Podcast #Recomendado Tweet Gravity Assist: If They Call, Will We Listen? The Search for Technosignatures So far we’ve talked about life in terms of its chemistry and telltale signs of biology. But what if there’s intelligent life out there in the universe that has created technologies just as good, or even more advanced, than our own? Some scientists are thinking about how we would detect the signals that would come from distant civilizations, if they are out there. Those signals are called “technosignatures.” Jason Wright, professor of astronomy and astrophysics at Penn State, has been thinking about the different technosignatures we could pick up using the telescopes we already have, and the telescopes that we could develop in the future.

Por NASA Podcast #Recomendado Tweet Gravity Assist: Where are the Goldilocks Stars? With Giada Arney Without our Sun, there would be no life on Earth. The Sun gives us exactly the amount of heat we need to survive. But our Sun represents only one type of star in the universe. Smaller, fainter stars called K stars are more common in our galaxy and also have planets, but we know far less about them. Giada Arney, astrophysicist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, is looking at the potential for K stars to host habitable worlds. Learn about how stars affect planetary environments and why complex life on early Earth was impossible.

Por NASA Podcast #Recomendado Tweet Gravity Assist: Is Our Solar System Weird? With Shawn Domagal-Goldman We now know there are more planets than stars in the galaxy. Many of them are very different from ours. How would we know if any of them had life? Shawn Domagal-Goldman, astrobiologist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, discusses these strange and wondrous worlds beyond our Sun. He and others at NASA are working on concepts for future space telescopes that could actually find exoplanets that resemble Earth, and detect chemicals that only life could produce. And what would such a discovery mean? Find out in this episode.

Por NASA Podcast #Recomendado Tweet GA ChrGravity Assist: There’s Life Under Ice in Antarctica. How About Mars?is McKay Mix 3 From diving in Antarctica’s ice-covered lakes to exploring Mexico’s Cave of the Crystals, NASA astrobiologist Chris McKay has been searching for life in a wide variety of extreme environments on Earth. He’s also working on an idea to send a probe called Icebreaker to the polar caps of Mars. Beyond merely finding life on another planet, he’s excited about the idea that potential life on a place like Titan, with a totally different chemistry than ours, could have arisen independently from life on Earth. Learn about Chris’s exciting fieldwork and the concept of life’s “second genesis” in this episode.

Por NASA Podcast #Recomendado Tweet Gravity Assist: Deep Oceans in Deep Space, with Morgan Cable Some of the most fascinating targets in the search for life in our solar system are moons of giant planets. Did you know If you had wings, you could fly on Titan, a moon of Saturn? Did you know that Europa, a moon of Jupiter, is thought to have more water than Earth under its icy shell? NASA is planning to send spacecraft to both of these places in the coming years to look for signs and ingredients of life. Another intriguing moon of Saturn is Enceladus, which is spouting a wall of water nearly 100 miles high. Morgan Cable, an astrobiologist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, discusses these wondrous worlds, the exotic locations where she has done fieldwork, and the research she has done on the chemistry of life that could thrive on Titan.

Por NASA Podcast #Recomendado Tweet Gravity Assist: Persevering on Mars, with Mitch Schulte Mars has long been the subject of fascination among those who have ever wondered if there is life beyond Earth. NASA’s upcoming Mars Perseverance rover, scheduled to launch in July, is bringing a set of technologies to explore the Red Planet in new ways. The rover will search for signs of ancient microbial life on Mars in the astrobiology portion of its mission. Perseverance will also characterize the planet's climate and geology, collect samples for future return to Earth, and pave the way for human exploration of the Red Planet. Perseverance is also bringing a helicopter named Ingenuity to test out aerial flight on another planet for the first time. Mitch Schulte of NASA Headquarters discusses this mission and the effort to explore whether Mars had life in the past, or even now.

Por NASA Podcast #Recomendado Tweet Gravity Assist: The Moon Quakes! With Walter Kiefer Just like earthquakes help scientists figure out what's going on inside our home planet, moonquakes have taught scientists a lot about the interior of the Moon. NASA's Gravity Recovery And Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) mission has also given us a clearer picture of the Moon beneath its surface. Seismic activity on the Moon is one area of scientific interest as NASA makes plans to send the first woman and the next man to the Moon by 2024.

Por NASA Podcast #Recomendado Tweet Gravity Assist: Fire Fountains on the Moon, with Dave Draper Early in its history, the Moon was molten, with “fire fountains” erupting from its surface. Astronauts have found tiny beads of glass on the Moon that preserve this history. How did the Moon cool down and become the quiet, cratered world we know today? NASA’s Chief Scientist Jim Green chats with NASA’s Deputy Chief Scientist Dave Draper about the Moon’s volcanic past and what we have learned from Apollo lunar samples.

Por NASA Podcast #Recomendado Tweet Gravity Assist: When the Moon Was Like a Magnet, with Sonia Tikoo From lunar samples brought back in the Apollo program, scientists have figured out that the Moon once had a shield around it called a magnetosphere, just like the Earth has today. As NASA prepares to send humans to the Moon, and eventually on to Mars, scientists are exploring the Moon's magnetic past.