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Curiosity took the images with its Mast Camera (Mastcam) on September 8. The rover team plans to assemble several large, color mosaics from the multitude of images taken at this location in the near future. “Curiosity’s science team has been just thrilled to go on this road trip through a bit of the American desert Southwest on Mars,” said Curiosity Project Scientist Ashwin Vasavada, of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California....

Before it attempts takeoff, the Mars Helicopter must first survive the arduous journey to Mars – from the turbulent liftoff to the harrowing landing – as well as dangerously cold nights where it must maintain power to keep itself warm enough to operate. The duration of Ingenuity’s mission is 30 days, where one or more test flights will be attempted. As a technology demonstration, Ingenuity is testing a new capability for the first time: showing controlled flight is possible in the very thin Martian atmosphere....

On September 10, 2014, NASA’s IRIS satellite observed an X1.6 class flare based on the high intensity of X-ray radiation. “X-class” events are the most powerful, and this one comes on the heels of another large flare two days earlier. The region responsible for these bursts, Active Region 12158, was situated just right of Sun-center in a perfect location for plasma ejected by the flares to collide with Earth. It’s very difficult to accurately predict what the impact at Earth will be, but we’re likely to experience some geomagnetic storm activity as these eruptions wash over the planet in 2-3 days, possibly triggering auroras at high latitudes....

NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory spacecraft successfully refined its flight path Wednesday with the biggest maneuver planned for the mission’s journey between Earth and Mars. “We’ve completed a big step toward our encounter with Mars,” said Brian Portock of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, deputy mission manager for the cruise phase of the mission. “The telemetry from the spacecraft and the Doppler data show that the maneuver was completed as planned....

Since those amazing days in July 2015 the New Horizons spacecraft has transmitted numerous images and many other kinds of data home for scientists and the public alike to study, analyze, and just plain love. From Pluto’s iconic “heart” and sweeping ice‐mountain vistas to its flowing glaciers and dramatic blue skies, it’s hard to pick just one favorite picture. So the mission team has picked 10 – and in no special order, placed them here....

The Voyager 1 spacecraft has experienced three shock wavesThe most recent shock wave, first observed in February 2014, still appears to be going onOne wave, previously reported, helped researchers determine that Voyager 1 had entered interstellar space The “tsunami wave” that NASA’s Voyager 1 spacecraft began experiencing earlier this year is still propagating outward, according to new results. It is the longest-lasting shock wave that researchers have seen in interstellar space....

Following Crew Dragon’s link up to the Harmony module, the astronauts aboard the Endurance and the space station will begin conducting standard leak checks and pressurization between the spacecraft in preparation for hatch opening scheduled for approximately 8:10 p.m. Chari, Marshburn, Barron, and Maurer will join the Expedition 66 crew of Mark Vande Hei of NASA and cosmonauts Anton Shkaplerov and Pyotr Dubrov of Roscosmos for a planned six-month mission living and working aboard the microgravity laboratory to advance scientific knowledge and demonstrate new technologies for future human and robotic exploration missions as part of NASA’s Moon and Mars exploration approach, including lunar missions through NASA’s Artemis program....

A satellite built to observe nearly all the water on our planet’s surface lifted off on its way to low-Earth orbit at 3:46 a.m. PST on Friday, December 16. The Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) spacecraft launched atop a SpaceX rocket from Space Launch Complex 4E at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. SWOT was built for NASA and the French space agency Centre National d’Études Spatiales (CNES) and also has contributions from the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) and the UK Space Agency....

Doctors routinely track their patients’ hand-eye coordination to monitor any neuromuscular deficits, particularly as patients age or when they are injured — but the tests doctors have been using to track this kind of information may be subjective and qualitative. Researchers at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University, the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC), and Hebrew SeniorLife, Boston, recently completed the first clinical study of a new rapid neuroassessment device they developed to quantitatively measure neuromuscular performance, as reported in the online Journal of Gerontology: Series A: Biological Sciences and Medical Sciences....

The researchers found that a protein called Npas4, previously identified as a master controller of gene expression triggered by neuronal activity, controls the strength of connections between neurons in the CA3 and those in another part of the hippocampus called the dentate gyrus. Without Npas4, long-term memories cannot form. “Our study identifies an experience-dependent synaptic mechanism for memory encoding in CA3, and provides the first evidence for a molecular pathway that selectively controls it,” says Yingxi Lin, an associate professor of brain and cognitive sciences and a member of MIT’s McGovern Institute for Brain Research....

Fast-forwarding quantum calculations skips past the time limits imposed by decoherence, which plagues today’s machines. A new algorithm that fast forwards simulations could bring greater use ability to current and near-term quantum computers, opening the way for applications to run past strict time limits that hamper many quantum calculations. “Quantum computers have a limited time to perform calculations before their useful quantum nature, which we call coherence, breaks down,” said Andrew Sornborger of the Computer, Computational, and Statistical Sciences division at Los Alamos National Laboratory, and senior author on a paper announcing the research....

A national marine survey of China’s marine resources paints a disturbing portrait of its current coastal environment. The survey was launched in 2004 by the Chinese State Oceanic Administration (SOA) and was finally completed last month. The unpublished survey shows that roughly 90% of coastal cities suffer from intermittent water shortages. China’s mangrove swamps have decreased in area by 73% and its coral reefs have diminished by 80% since the 1950s....

The inset above magnifies a portion of the eastern limb in the global view of Charon at left, imaged by NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft several hours before its closest approach on July 14, 2015. A deep canyon informally named Argo Chasma is seen grazing the limb. The section of it seen here measures approximately 185 miles (300 kilometers) long. As far as New Horizons scientists can tell, Argo’s total length is approximately 430 miles (700 kilometers) long – for comparison, Arizona’s Grand Canyon is 280 miles (450 kilometers) long....

As reported today in Nature, the laboratories of electrical engineer Jun Yao and microbiologist Derek Lovley at UMass Amherst have created a device they call an “Air-gen,” or air-powered generator, with electrically conductive protein nanowires produced by the microbe Geobacter. The Air-gen connects electrodes to the protein nanowires in such a way that electrical current is generated from the water vapor naturally present in the atmosphere. “We are literally making electricity out of thin air,” says Yao....

New images from the Planck mission show previously undiscovered islands of star formation and a mysterious haze of microwave emissions in our Milky Way galaxy. The views give scientists new treasures to mine and take them closer to understanding the secrets of our galaxy. Planck is a European Space Agency mission with significant NASA participation. “The images reveal two exciting aspects of the galaxy in which we live,” said Planck scientist Krzysztof M....

Front-line health workers had similar infection rates whether they took a daily regimen of hydroxychloroquine or not. In a clinical trial testing whether a daily regimen of hydroxychloroquine could protect those most likely to be exposed to COVID-19, researchers from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania found there was no difference in infection rates among health care workers who took the drug versus those taking a placebo....

The findings, from a nationally representative sample of more than 2,400 older adults, are consistent with prior studies showing that hearing loss might be a contributing factor to dementia risk over time, and that treating hearing loss may lower dementia risk. The findings are highlighted in a research letter published online on January 10, 2023, in the Journal of the American Medical Association. “This study refines what we’ve observed about the link between hearing loss and dementia, and builds support for public health action to improve hearing care access,” says lead author Alison Huang, PhD, MPH, a senior research associate in the Bloomberg School’s Department of Epidemiology and at the Cochlear Center for Hearing and Public Health, also at the Bloomberg School....

New research reveals the economic costs of behavioral responses to the pandemic in the U.S. Throughout its unsteady course, the COVID-19 pandemic has altered the behavior of businesses and households. Those behavioral changes, intensified by government actions like mandatory closures, have had a reverberating impact on the U.S. economy. A new study led Adam Rose, research professor at University of Southern California’s Price School of Public Policy, analyzes the economic impacts of specific behavioral responses such as closures, re-openings, workplace avoidance, and a reduction in entertainment activities, as well as federal government stimulus packages....

The study’s findings were based on data from the D.C. Cat Count, a Washington, D.C.–wide survey that used 60 motion-activated wildlife cameras placed across 1,500 sampling locations. The researchers emphasized that humans bear a primary responsibility in reducing these risks by keeping cats indoors. The cameras recorded what cats preyed on and demonstrated how they overlapped with native wildlife, which helped researchers understand why cats and other wildlife are present in some areas, but absent from others....

Efflux pumps are surface proteins that prevent antimicrobial drugs from getting a foothold in a bacterial cell by identifying and pumping them out of the cell. New research suggests that small pieces of those drugs could keep the efflux pumps busy and allow the antimicrobial drugs to reach a critical mass inside the cell. Harmful bacteria have evolved some ingenious mechanisms to resist antibiotics. One of those is the drug efflux pump — proteins that stand guard along bacterial cell membranes, identifying antibacterial agents that pass through the membrane and swiftly ejecting them from the cell....