Kendra Pierre-Louis: For Scientific AmericanIt is Science quicklymy name is Kendra Pierre-Louis, I’m replacing Rachel Feltman. You are listening to our weekly summary of scientific news.
First, we have an update on humans returning to the moon.
In the coming weeks, the first launch window will open for Artemis II assignment. The planned lunar flyby will be the first crewed mission to exceed low Earth orbit since Apollo 17 in 1972.
On supporting science journalism
If you enjoy this article, please consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribe. By purchasing a subscription, you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.
To find out more, we spoke with Lee Billings, SciAmBureau Editor for Physical Sciences. Here it is.
Lee Billings: Artemis is NASA’s mission to return astronauts to the Moon. It has been in development in various forms, in various guises, for 20 years now. Artemis II This is truly where the rubber meets the road. There was of course Artemis I, but Artemis I had no crew: there were no astronauts on board. It was just about showing that the key hardware components are working properly, that they can go into space, go to the Moon and come back. And now we’re doing this with humans on board, so the stakes are much higher.
Artemis II is not going to land on the moon. It won’t even go around the Moon. Some people are confused about this. It will follow what’s called a free return trajectory, which means it will use the Moon’s gravity to loop around our natural satellite and then send the Orion capsule, the Orion spacecraft, back to Earth at very high speeds. This therefore means that interesting spaceflight records will be broken. The first would be that the crew of Artemis II will be the furthest humans from Earth ever. They’ll also be the fastest humans in history, because when they come back and enter Earth’s atmosphere, they’ll be going about 25,000 miles per hour, pretty fast, and hopefully their heat shield will hold up.
As far as the things he’s going to study, it’s a mix of a lot of human studies and space medicine studies. The four astronauts who will be on board this mission, looping around the Moon, will be fully instrumented and sensorial. They will have all kinds of biometric data. And we will do this to get a better idea of how humans respond to the deep space environment for future theoretical missions that go to the surface of the Moon, with Artemis III and beyond.
And, and so where we are now with Artemis II is that on January 17, it was deployed, as part of this very prestigious and ceremonial procedure, from the Vehicle Assembly Building, this giant building that NASA owns at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida. And it was loaded onto this giant diesel-electric tractor, essentially, to travel slowly and glacially at about a pace of about a mile per hour, from the vehicle assembly building to the actual launch pad where it will take off from.
The next big step will be what is called the “wet dress rehearsal”; It’s scheduled for February 2. And that means they’ll pump cryogenic propellant fuel into the rocket so they can see that it’s able to withstand all the pressures of all that fuel coming in, making sure there’s no leaks or anything like that. And I hope we don’t see any leaks, because if we see a bunch of leaks, it will probably delay what is supposed to be the start of the launch window, which is February 6th. And every month there are about five days where the Moon and Earth are aligned so that, you know, we can make that launch, so if they miss that kind of five day window in early February, well, we’re looking at March.
And why do we want to return to the moon? Well, a lot of this is geopolitical. We are no longer in this world of the Cold War and the golden age of the space race. It’s a new way now. There are more players. India wants to go to the Moon. China East go to the moon. And the big question now is whether or not we can push them back to the Moon, even though we already did that more than 50 years ago.
There are also some extremely interesting scientific questions. For example, the places people want to go on the Moon for this new generation of missions are largely concentrated around the lunar south pole, where we know there are deposits of water ice and other types of volatiles. This is a very special region benefiting from almost constant solar lighting, but also from permanently shadowed craters. And this region of the moon is also important because it could tell us a lot about how the moon formed, its history and how it changed over time.
And finally, a lot of the south pole and regions of interest are actually on the far side of the Moon, the part that people don’t see from Earth, and that’s important because you can build different kinds of facilities there to do cutting-edge scientific research, like a giant radio telescope to look at, essentially, the beginning of time. And you can do it there and be completely protected from the terrestrial radio interference that you would otherwise receive and that would cause all your measurements to fail.
Pierre-Louis: To learn more about NASA’s lunar mission, visit ScientificAmerican.com.
Back on Earth, a team led by researchers at the University of Cambridge may have found a way to restore the voice of some patients after a stroke. The key, researchers say, is a new device called Revoice.
You see, about half of all stroke patients also develop dysarthria, which weakens the muscles used for speech and breathing control. This condition can cause slurred, slow, or strained speech. It’s not that the patient doesn’t know what he means; it’s because they have difficulty saying it.
The good news is that with rehabilitation, many patients regain their speech, but the process can take several months to several years. Since recovery is possible for patients, the scientists behind the new study wanted to help patients communicate faster than existing technologies that require letter-by-letter typing.
The Revoice device developed by the scientists consists of a soft collar integrated with sensors that track throat movements and heart rate and provide this information to two AI agents. These two agents process data using a large language model. One of the agents reconstructs the words from silently spoken words and vibrations in the throat. The other then expands these words into full sentences using the wearer’s pulse to analyze their emotional state and detect broader ambient conditions, including weather and time of day. Combined, the system can anticipate what the person is trying to say and, with just two nods, speak for them.
The research has certain limitations: the study, published last Monday in the journal Natural communicationshad a small sample size of only five patients. But the researchers plan to expand the study into a clinical trial. If the results are confirmed, Revoice could be a useful tool not only for stroke patients, but also for those suffering from other neurological diseases, including Parkinson’s disease.
Furthermore, on communication, a study published Wednesday in the journal Nature reveals the oldest rock art ever discovered. Previously, the oldest known cave paintings were representations of a pig and three human-like figures it is thought to be over 51,000 years old. This art was discovered on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi.
This new discovery was found on the same island but in a different cave. Usually, it is difficult to date cave paintings. But the limestone caves of Sulawesi are easier to work with. In fact, the cave had already been studied, but the new painting – a stencil on the ceiling – was neglected. A chemical analysis revealed that the stencil dates back at least 67,800 years, about 15,000 years older than previously discovered rock art.
This discovery could help us determine when humans first settled Australia. Archaeologists suspect humans migrated there via Indonesia, but have not been able to determine the exact time period.
Franco Viviani, a physical anthropologist who was not involved in the new study, said SciAm that the results also offer new insight into ancient societies, saying, quote: “They confirm what is known today: that art is positively correlated with critical thinking and creative problem-solving skills.” »
And speaking of creative solutions to problems, a new study on bats sheds light on how these winged mammals move. Every school-age child learns at some point that bats are able to navigate in the dark using echolocation, that is, they send out a call and, based on how the sound bounces, they can tell where an object is. But scientists have long wondered how bats move in object-rich environments.
A single bat call will send echoes ricocheting off multiple objects coming from different directions and distances. In complex situations, scientists reasoned that it wasn’t really possible for a bat to analyze each individual echo and so they had to rely on an alternative strategy. Figuring out exactly how bats might navigate these types of environments was the focus of a study published Wednesday in Proceedings of the Royal Society B.
To study this, the research team built what they called a “bat accelerator” with 8,000 moving acoustic reflectors, or false leaves. The aim was to mimic the experience of a bat flying through a hedge covered in real leaves. Over the course of three nights, 104 pipistrelle bats traveled the eight meters, or about 26 feet, of the test track.
The results suggest that bats are sensitive to Doppler shift, the same phenomenon you experience when an ambulance siren changes pitch as it passes you. According to the study, by paying attention to sound changes based on their own movements, bats are able to assess their surroundings and control their speed. Researchers say their findings could be useful in advancing technology drones in the future.
That’s all for today’s episode. Tune in Wednesday, when we delve into the emerging science behind which foods make people stink.
But before we go, we’d like to ask for your help with an upcoming episode: it’s about kisses. Tell us about your most memorable kiss. What made him special? How did you feel? Record a voice memo on your phone or computer and send it to ScienceQuickly@sciam.com. Be sure to include your name and where you are from.
Science quickly is produced by me, Kendra Pierre-Louis, with Fonda Mwangi, Sushmita Pathak and Jeff DelViscio. This episode was edited by Alex Sugiura. Shayna Posses and Aaron Shattuck check in on our show. Our theme music was composed by Dominic Smith. Subscribe to Scientific American for more recent and in-depth scientific news.
For Scientific American, This is Kendra Pierre-Louis. Have a good week!
