Category: Science

Rising temperatures will cut the number of days when conditions favor prescribed fires by 17% on average across the western US, mostly in spring and summer, according to a recent study.

Prescribed fires are typically lit by trained firefighters to clear away excess plant matter to help prevent conditions that might otherwise turn a healthy vegetation fire into a raging inferno.

A narrowing window for these controlled burns means even more challenges for land managers to use one of the most common tools for preventing catastrophic wildfires in the western United States.

Winter, however, will see a net 4% increase in the number of favorable days for implementing controlled burns. The researchers found most of those extra days in winter in the northern range of the study area, meaning there could be a silver lining for the Pacific Northwest where winter prescribed burn windows are expected to increase by up to 5 to 10 more days.

“For the Pacific Northwest, the results are actually more optimistic,” says Deepti Singh, a researcher in Washington State University’s School of the Environment and coauthor of the study published in Communications Earth and Environment.

“We already see a trend in this region toward increasing number of days that are conducive to prescribed fires in the winter and springtime. That’s something that we can use to our advantage to plan for fire management activities.”

With continued drying and warming, there will be fewer windows for prescribed burns in the summertime across much of the West, and catastrophic wildfires will present an ongoing threat in the Pacific Northwest as well as in drier more southern regions of the US West.

The researchers found other regional variation in the changes. In California, for example, the warmer and drier weather in coastal and southern parts of the state mean many places could lose a month of days suitable for prescribed fires each year.

Climate change will require the agencies responsible for prescribed burns to adjust, says lead author Daniel Swain of UCLA because most personnel who prepare for and manage prescribed fires are seasonal workers whose jobs end by mid-autumn each year. Going forward, the use of prescribed fires will require changes in staff availability.

“Global warming will reduce the number of favorable days for prescribed fires throughout the American West, but winter in particular may emerge as an increasingly favorable time for prescribed burns if the relevant policy and staffing changes can be made,” Swain says.

Currently, scientists project warming of 2.0 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) by 2060—a projection Swain called “optimistic” given the current trajectory of even greater warming.

Even at current temperatures, more efforts are necessary to prevent destructive fires, he says.

“We’re just not doing a lot of prescribed fire compared to what is needed, at scale, to really address the escalating wildfire crisis,” he says.

For the study, the researchers focused on historical and projected climate conditions and vegetation dryness, comparing 1980–2020 with 2020–2060. They did not address other factors important to the use of prescribed fire: impact on ecology, public policy considerations, effects of smoke on humans and wildlife, as well as availability of staff to do prescribed burns.

Specific burn prescriptions vary by location and vegetation type, but target temperatures commonly range from 50–70 degrees Fahrenheit with 10–20% relative humidity, says coauthor Kristen Shive of UC Berkeley.

As wildfires in the American West have dramatically increased for a variety of reasons—including climate change, human development in fire-prone areas, and aggressive fire suppression in the 20th century—tools like prescribed fires will only become more critical. Anticipating future opportunities and limitations to the use of this tool enables agencies to plan ahead, particularly in regard to the firefighting work force.

“This paper is giving us advanced warning,” Shive says. “Hopefully, we can change policies to either extend those folks or create winter-specific crews.”

Additional coauthors are Washington State, UCLA, UC Berkeley, UC Merced, and the Nature Conservancy.

Source: Washington State (Originally adapted from a UCLA release)

Economic headwinds: You feel them at the pump, the grocery store, and now in space.

Investment in the space industry has fallen back to Earth, totaling only $2.2B in Q1, according to Space Capital. Q2 was better, but excluding the Maxar take-private transaction, Q2 was the lowest quarter for private market investment in the space industry since 2015. In general, funding is scarcer, investors are more cautious, and company leadership more crucial.

Is space business dying? Hardly. The global space economy is growing. But are investors more selective? Absolutely.

“We are seeing a sharp bifurcation between the winners and everyone else, as the market mania of the previous two years has fully subsided, tourist investors have left the market, and VCs are increasingly reserving capital for companies built on strong fundamentals,” Space Capital explained in its Q1 report.

Consolidation is in the offing.

So who will survive the shakeout?

There are a lot of factors behind that answer, including financials, sector demand, proprietary technology, partner dependency, business planning, processes, risk, government support, regulation, artificial intelligence, and geopolitics.

One factor in space business success, however, is often overlooked: clarity.

Do investors and prospects truly know what your business does? Do new contacts really understand it when you explain it? Is your relevance obvious? Too often, the answer is no.

Start making sense

Investors and prospects may overlook you if you haven’t made yourself clear. Too often, we in business talk more to ourselves than our most important audiences. When we’re meeting a new contact and sharing our company’s value proposition, we subconsciously imagine that insider jargon, ten-dollar words, and high-minded abstraction make us sound smarter. It happens in conversations and in marketing. And it’s a miscalculation.

Try dumbing your story down a bit – or rather, clearing it up. Clarity beats cleverness. Simplicity is smart, memorable, and inclusive.

Especially in this more discerning investment climate, audiences need to understand what your company is actually making or doing. How does your product or service relate to a) mission success, whatever that may look like, and b) timeless concerns like human discovery, prosperity, sustainability, or national security?

Most importantly, how does what you’re doing in space benefit Earth? That’s critical: More than three in five Americans believe any public spending on space programs should have an immediate benefit to life on this planet.

Remember the generalists

But still, why simplify your value proposition when you’re talking to fellow insiders in the space community? Easy. Although space is a profoundly technical world, many audiences with big sums of money – investors, CEOs, generals, and senators – aren’t engineers. Neither are decision-makers at of the world’s most influential business publications and broadcasters. For them, deep technology discussions yield quickly diminishing returns. Few of them like to be dragged into the weeds.

So, here are five ways to achieve clarity, which will go far to answer people’s questions and extinguish their doubt:

Talk to me like I’m 12. Politicians are great at this, constantly distilling their messages to ultrasimple concepts: jobs, jobs, jobs; it’s the economy (stupid); good schools. Embrace your audiences from the start with easy concepts, then walk them gently down the road of detail to your unique value proposition. Orbit Fab’s tagline is, frankly, great: We’re gas stations in space. Although that’s literally incorrect, it’s simplicity conveys a lot of relevant information and plants the seed of curiosity.

Start with the why. You’ve seen the video. Every company was founded for a reason. There is an unmet need and you aim to solve it. You’re not in business to make propellant; you’re in business to move vital spacecraft so humans can continue getting video, broadband, or spy pictures. Your purpose matters.

Tell stories. A story always starts with a problem and leads toward a solution (or resolution). Humans love stories, and audiences will lean forward to hear them. Tell stories of your company’s origin, your executives’ lives, your clients’ needs, and how customers will benefit from what you make/do. People remember stories.

Don’t rely entirely on logic. Although we love Spock, he was missing a little something. Infuse your company story with purpose, colorful sensory details, values, and ways you create community. Use video, animation, infographics, and beautiful photography.

Communicate often. Investors and prospects need to know who you are as much as what you do. Still, many companies stay dark on social media, opaque on their websites, and absent from the news. They’re in perpetual stealth mode. Be transparent. Look alive on social media, document your success in news releases, and spotlight your people. Get your executives out there telling stories and commenting on news.

Try these clear communication techniques to help you survive the cruel winds of the global economy. Or get to the next level. Some businesses will still suffer in this climate, but chances are you won’t have heard of them.

Steve McGrath is senior vice president of Brodeur Space Group.

This article originally appeared in the September issue of SpaceNews magazine.

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LOS ANGELES — Northrop Grumman will drop plans to develop its own commercial space station and instead assist a competing effort led by Voyager Space, the companies announced Oct. 4.

Under the new partnership, the companies will cooperate on the development of fully autonomous docking systems for Northrop’s Cygnus cargo spacecraft, allowing it to dock with Voyager’s Starlab space station. The companies also said they will “further explore opportunities to strengthen the development of Starlab” that could include Northrop providing engineering design services for that station. Ars Technica first reported about a potential partnership between the companies.

“This collaboration is a major step forward for the Starlab program,” said Dylan Taylor, chairman and chief executive of Voyager Space, in a statement. “Northrop Grumman’s technical capability and proven success in cargo resupply services will play a pivotal role as we accelerate Starlab’s development.”

The two companies had been independently working on space station concepts. Both were support by funded NASA Space Act Agreements as part of its Commercial Low Earth Orbit Destinations (CLD) program awarded in late 2021. Those agreements are intended to mature the designs of their stations as part of NASA efforts to assist the development of commercial successors to the International Space Station, set to retire in 2030. Voyager Space recently added Airbus Defence and Space to its team, creating a joint venture to enable development of Starlab.

The Voyager-Northrop statement did not discuss the future of Northrop’s proposed station. However, NASA said in a separate statement that Northrop will withdraw from its agreement. The company has received $36.6 million out of a total $125.6 million for achieving certain milestones in that agreement.

The agency spun the partnership as a positive development. “Northrop Grumman has determined that its best strategy is to join the Nanoracks team, and NASA respects and supports that decision,” said Phil McAlister, director of commercial space at NASA Headquarters. Nanoracks is part of Voyager Space. “We continue to see a strong competitive landscape for future commercial destinations, and I am pleased that Northrop is staying with the program.”

NASA stated it will take the $89 million that Northrop Grumman did not receive on its CLD agreement and other, unspecified funding to add milestones to the agreements it has with Voyager Space, Blue Origin and Axiom Space, “assuming NASA and the companies can agree on the additional milestones and value.”

Northrop did not indicate in the statement why it decided to no longer pursue its own station. Company officials previously discussed challenges with the business case for commercial stations. Rick Mastracchio, director of strategy and business development at Northrop Grumman Space Systems, said at the ISS Research and Development Conference in August that regulatory and liability challenges, as well as uncertainties about how international partners would be part of commercial stations, were issues that needed to be addressed.

He said at the same conference that Northrop, even while still developing its own station concept, was offering Cygnus to other commercial space station providers. Another company official said at the conference that among the upgrades to Cygnus being studied was one that would allow Cygnus to dock, rather than be berthed by a robotic arm as it is today at the ISS.

“We are fully committed to the future of commercial LEO,” Steve Krein, vice president of civil and commercial space at Northrop Grumman, said in the Voyager Space statement. “Our new role with Starlab supports NASA’s initiatives to encourage commercial space station development as part of a growing LEO economy.”

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TAMPA, Fla. — Japanese small satellite thruster developer Pale Blue has raised $7.5 million to establish a mass production facility for its water vapor propulsion systems.

The financing comprises loans and a recently closed Series B round backed by existing investors, Mitsui Sumitomo Insurance Venture Capital and Incubate Fund, the three-year-old University of Tokyo spin-off said Oct. 4

NEDO, a national research and development agency in Japan, has also awarded Pale Blue a grant to research ways to mass produce its technology, covering the development of manufacturing and inspection machines.

Pale Blue said it successfully demonstrated its Resistojet thruster for the first time in March on a Sony Corp. Star Sphere satellite that launched in January on SpaceX’s Transporter 6 rideshare mission. Star Sphere is a 6U cubesat built by the University of Tokyo around a full-frame Sony camera optimized for photography rather than science or mapping. 

Setting up a mass production facility would enable Pale Blue to reduce costs and accelerate manufacturing for potential customers it sees in the United States, Europe, and Asia.

“The realization of a propulsion system for small satellites that uses water as a propellant will contribute to the sustainable development of the space industry,” Pale Blue CEO and co-founder Jun Asakawa said.

He said the venture aims to launch mass production within a few years but is still deciding on the location of the facility and its production capacity.

Pale Blue is currently headquartered in Chiba, near Tokyo, and expects to obtain more venture funding from a second phase of the Series B round this fall.

The venture, which raised $4.1 million in a Series A round in 2021, did not give further details about the Series B or its ambitions for mass production.

In addition Resistojet, Pale Blue is also developing an Ion Hall-effect thruster that it expects to reach orbit for the first time by 2025.

The venture raised $4.1 million in a Series A round in 2021.

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New research shows the potential of fermentation for producing plant-based cheese that people want to eat.

Increasing pressure on Earth’s resources and climate change call for our food system to turn in a more plant-based direction. As a result, scientists are looking into how to transform protein-rich plants like peas and beans into a new generation of non-dairy cheeses that possess the similar sensory properties as the dairy-based ones that humans have enjoyed for thousands of years.

Several plant-based cheeses are already on the market. The challenge is that plant proteins behave differently than milk proteins. To meet this challenge, producers add starch or coconut oil to harden plant cheeses, as well as an array of flavorings to make them taste like cheese.

But it turns out that this can be done with the help of nature’s smallest creatures. In a new research result from the University of Copenhagen’s food science department, researcher Carmen Masiá has succeeded in developing plant-based cheeses made from yellow pea protein with a firm texture and improved aroma profile. She used the same natural fermentation process with bacteria that we have used with cheeses made from milk for thousands of years.

“Fermentation is an incredibly powerful tool to develop flavor and texture in plant-based cheeses. In this study, we show that bacteria can serve to develop firmness in non-dairy cheese in a very short period of time while reducing the bean-like aroma of yellow pea protein, which is used as the main and only protein source,” explains Masiá.

The result builds upon a research result from last year by the same researcher, who found that yellow pea protein constituted a good “protein base” for making fermented plant-based cheese. In the new result, the researcher examined 24 bacterial combinations made from bacterial cultures supplied by the biotech company Chr. Hansen, where Masiá is completing her Industrial PhD.

“The whole point of this study has been to combine the commercially available bacterial cultures that are suitable for the fermentation of a plant-based raw material, and test them in a pea protein matrix to develop both taste and texture that would be suitable for a cheese-like product. And, even if some bacterial combinations performed better than others, all of them actually provided firm gels and reduced beaniness in the samples” says Masiá.

To study the behavior of the bacterial combinations, the scientist inoculated them in a protein base made of yellow pea protein. After only eight hours of incubation, the result was a firm “cheese-like gel” reminiscent of a fresh soft white cheese.

“All bacterial blends produced firm gels, which means that one can get a fermentation-induced gel without necessarily adding starch or coconut oil to the base. From an aroma perspective, we had two goals: To reduce the compounds that characterize the beaniness of yellow peas, and to produce compounds that are normally found in dairy cheese. Here we saw that some bacteria were better at producing certain volatile compounds than others, but that they all worked great to reduce beaniness—which is a very positive outcome. Furthermore, all blends acquired dairy aroma notes to different degrees” explains Masiá.

Fermentation is an ancient technique which originated in China. Today, it is used to make beer, wine, cheese, pharmaceuticals, and much more. Fermented foods are preserved by initiating a fermentation process in which natural lactic acid bacteria and enzymes are formed. This is done as microorganisms convert sugars in the selected food into lactic acid, acetic acid, and carbon dioxide. This makes food acidic and prevents the growth of putrefactive and pathogenic bacteria.

The first textual evidence of cabbage fermentation is found in China’s oldest collection of poems, Shi Jing (Book of the Odes), which dates back to approximately 600 BC.

Masiá points out there is still a way to go to before achieving this plant-based cheese, but that research is on the right track. She says tailored bacterial compositions and cultures must be developed in order to achieve the optimal cheese-like characteristics. Furthermore, the plant-based cheese might need to mature over time so that it develops flavor and character, just as dairy-based cheeses do.

Finally, the new generation of fermented plant-based cheeses must be judged by consumers, so that the flavor is perfected. All in all, this is to make plant-based cheeses so delicious that people seek them out and purchase them.

“The most challenging thing for now is that, while there are a lot of people who would like to eat plant-based cheese, they aren’t satisfied with how it tastes and feels in the mouth. In the end, this means that no matter how sustainable, nutritious, etc. a food product is, people aren’t interested in buying it if it doesn’t provide a good experience when consumed,” says Masiá, who adds:

“One needs to remember that dairy cheese production has been studied over many years, so it’s not something that we can just mimic overnight with totally different raw materials. Nevertheless, there are many scientists and companies out there doing great progress in the field; I hope that we will get closer to making non-dairy cheeses that taste good over the next few years. We are getting there.”

The study took place in collaboration with the department of food science and microbial ingredients supplier Chr. Hansen, a bioscience company that produces ingredients for the food and pharmaceutical industries, among other things.

The study appears in the journal Future Foods. The research has funding from Innovation Fund Denmark.

Source: University of Copenhagen

HOUSTON — Intuitive Machines’ first lunar lander is complete and ready to ship for a launch next month as executives say they’re cautiously optimistic about the prospects of a successful landing.

The company unveiled its completed Nova-C lander at its new headquarters here Oct. 3, a day after completing a pre-ship review that confirmed that the spacecraft is ready to be transported to the Kennedy Space Center for launch on a Falcon 9 on a mission designated IM-1.

That launch is scheduled for a six-day period that opens Nov. 16 from KSC’s Launch Complex 39A. The lander will separate from the upper stage 32 minutes after launch and begin a five-day journey to the moon. A day after going into orbit around the moon, the spacecraft will attempt a landing at Malapert Crater, about 300 kilometers from the lunar south pole.

“We’re ready to go,” Tim Crain, chief technology officer of Intuitive Machines, said in an interview. Engineers completed all testing of the vehicle’s hardware and software ahead of shipment with no remaining issues to deal with before launch. “We’re really pleased about where we are.”

The biggest issue now for launch is out of the company’s hands: “pad congestion” at Launch Complex 39A, the launch site for the mission. There are several launches ahead of IM-1 on that pad, including the Falcon Heavy launch of Psyche that was recently delayed a week to Oct. 12. IM-1 is required to launch from LC-39A because only that pad is configured to fuel the lander with methane and liquid oxygen propellants shortly before liftoff.

“We’re working with SpaceX to try and thread the needle,” Crain said. “We’ll be ready to go on Nov. 16, but we’ve got to work through that pad congestion.” There is a backup launch opportunity in mid-December if IM-1 does not launch in November.

IM-1 is the company’s first lander mission and the first that is part of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program, where the agency buys payload space on commercial landers. IM-1 is carrying five NASA payloads as well as six commercial payloads from customers ranging from Embry Riddle Aeronautical University to artist Jeff Koons.

IM-1 is seeking to become the first non-governmental spacecraft to successfully land on the moon. Beresheet, by Israeli venture SpaceIL, crashed trying to land on the moon in 2019, while HAKUTO-R M1 from Japanese company ispace crashed in a landing attempt in April.

Fewer than 45% of lunar landing missions, dating back to the beginning of the Space Age, have been successful, but Intuitive Machines executives expressed confidence in the changes IM-1 will make it to the surface successfully.

“I feel really good,” said Crain. He noted the company paid close attention to failed landing attempts to see if their Nova-C design was also susceptible to similar failure modes. For example, the Beresheet lander suffered problems with its inertial measurement units (IMUs) during its descent. Crain said Nova-C has dissimilar redundant IMUs to avoid a scenario like that.

Steve Altemus, chief executive of Intuitive Machines, estimated the odds of success at “upwards of 65% to 75%,” higher than the historical average. That’s based, he said, on the experience the company has built up with key technologies on the lander, such as precision landing and its propulsion system.

It is also based on lessons learned from those failed missions. “Each one of those things that we witnessed in terms of anomalies that caused the failures of those missions, we have internalized,” he said. “Therefore, I think our odds are higher.”

More than just IM-1

Company executives emphasized they are not betting the company on a single lander mission. The same high bay that has the completed IM-1 lander also has components for IM-2, ready to be assembled in the coming months.

“We have a chance of failure. I’m pretty open about that,” Altemus said. “But we have multiple missions to the moon. We have other business lines that diversify us and insulate us from failure.”

The company has three NASA CLPS awards for lunar lander missions but has also moved into other business areas. The company teamed with KBR to win a NASA engineering services contract called Omnibus Multidiscipline Engineering Services (OMES) III earlier this year that has a maximum value of $719 million over five years. Intuitive Machines also was one of three companies that won recent Air Force Research Lab contracts to work on designs of nuclear-powered spacecraft.

“Look at Intuitive Machines as a diversified space exploration company,” Altemus said, with several lines of business. In addition to its recent awards, the company is bidding on a NASA contract to provide communications services for its Near Space Network, supporting lunar missions, as well as NASA’s Lunar Terrain Vehicle lunar rover for future Artemis crewed missions.

Intuitive Machines, he said, “is a modern instantiation of an aerospace company that is not tied to the traditional cost-plus-award-fee contracting methods of the past but can live and work in a fixed price environment, or even NASA just buying a service.”

The company is also publicly traded after going public in February through a SPAC merger. Doing so helps bring more attention to the company, he argued, but also scrutiny. “Investors can be fickle and be hard on us at times,” he acknowledged. “If I continue to focus on growing the business for the long term and looking at creating real value for shareholders, that will win the day whether we succeed or fail in any given task.”

“We’re confident in the system we’re delivering to the Cape,” he said of IM-1, adding that employees are “elated” that the mission is nearing launch. “It’s time to go fly.”

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Reducing the amount of fishing gear in the water could go a long way to saving humpback whales while having little impact on California’s crab fishers, according to a new study.

Sometimes simple solutions are better. It all depends on the nature of the problem. For humpback whales, the problem is the rope connecting a crab trap on the seafloor to the buoy on the surface. And for fishermen, it’s fishery closures caused by whale entanglements.

Managing this issue is currently a major item on California’s agenda. After modeling the benefits and impacts that several management strategies would have on whales and fishermen, researchers say it appears less fishing gear may be the optimal solution.

Their results, published in the journal Biological Conservation, find that simply reducing the amount of gear in the water is more effective than dynamic approaches involving real-time monitoring of whale populations. There may even be solutions on the horizon that provide these benefits with fewer drawbacks.

“We were trying to figure out what types of management strategies would work best at reducing whale entanglements in the Dungeness crab fishery while also minimizing impacts to fishing,” says first author Christopher Free, a researcher at the Marine Science Institute at the University of California, Santa Barbara. “And what we found is that some of the simpler strategies, such as just reducing the amount of gear allocated to the fishermen, outperformed a lot of the more complex management strategies.”

Best option for all

Management falls into two basic categories. Static strategies remain the same regardless of conditions. These include gear reductions, season delays, and early closures. Meanwhile, dynamic strategies adapt based on incoming information. These come in proactive and reactive flavors, depending on whether the change is based on surveys determining where whales are abundant or observed entanglements indicating where risk might be high.

Free and his colleagues created a computer model to investigate different management actions based on crab abundance, fisherman behavior, and whale behavior. The model predicts how a given approach will affect total catch as well as the frequency with which whales encounter traps. Strategies included gear reductions and closures triggered by surveys, entanglements or time of year. The authors judged each action based on how well it reduced entanglement risk, while minimizing disruptions to the fishing season and total landings.

“No strategy was a panacea,” Free says. “But when we weighed these different methods holistically, gear reductions really stuck out as being the most efficient way of protecting whales with the least impacts to fishing.” A 30% reduction emerged as the optimal course of action.

Free has several explanations for these findings. First and foremost, reducing the amount of gear directly addresses the problem: the number of lines in the water for whales to get entangled in. Dynamic closures merely move these lines around. Static strategies also don’t rely on surveys or monitoring efforts which can be inconsistent, irregular, and expensive.

The logistics involved in dynamic approaches also hamper their effectiveness. Unlike many types of fishing gear, crab traps are unsupervised, often for days at a time. What’s more, dynamic actions have a two-week implementation period. “That two-week delay really undermines the effectiveness of this type of dynamic management,” Free says.

Given this caveat, a regional closure might end up moving traps into an area that’s actually more risky for whales. There can also be a long delay between when a whale gets entangled and when it’s spotted. The animal could have dragged the gear for several weeks and hundreds of miles, meaning nobody can be sure where and when the whale got ensnared.

In contrast, static strategies are cheap and predictable. They require no costly equipment, and don’t introduce any uncertainty into the fishing season or fishing grounds. The Dungeness crab fishery is a derby fishery, characterized by intense fishing effort early on. The abundance of crabs means that fishermen can still make good catches in those early weeks even with fewer traps. Indeed, most of the catch is landed early in the season.

Saving humpback whales

According to Free, the fishery regularly catches 90% of male crabs in a season, yet simple management measures have maintained a sustainable and profitable fishery. Fishermen can only keep males above a certain size during a certain season. This ensures that young crabs can grow up, females can lay eggs, and the studs can fertilize the next generation. Turns out that the crab population is not limited for want of males.

But what was once the easiest fishery to manage is now among the hardest. Climate change has shifted whale foraging ground inshore—intensifying the overlap with fishing—and made toxic algae blooms more common—which can delay the opening of the season due to health risks.

For instance, a severe algae bloom in 2015 delayed the opening until April, precisely when humpbacks are headed north to their summer feeding grounds. This caused a huge spike in entanglements, and the Center for Biological Diversity sued California for failing to comply with the Endangered Species Act and Marine Mammal Protection Act. The state settled, and there’s since been a rush to overhaul the fishery’s management plan.

To that end, the researchers developed a tool that enables policy-makers and regulators to test any management strategy they can think of, including ones the authors didn’t consider. Models such as this one are crucial for these sorts of questions, where it’s impractical, unethical, or impossible to run an experiment.

One shortcoming of this model is that it aggregates all fishermen together, despite significant differences between them. For instance, some fishermen switch to different species after the initial boom, while others continue to focus on crabs. Vessel size, geography, and license type all matter as well. It will take more research to understand how regulatory impacts distribute among different fishermen.

Free plans to investigate how to minimize the impact of toxic algae blooms on the fishery. Dynamic strategies actually show much more promise for tackling this issue. He’d like to design a more precise algae monitoring system so that closures are limited to just what is essential for protecting public health. Clearly, there’s still much to learn about what makes an issue more amenable to static or adaptive management strategies.

Some people are searching for an option that could avoid entanglements altogether. “Ropeless gear would be the silver bullet solution to this problem,” Free says. If there are no ropes, then whales can’t get tangled.

This technology does exist, but it presents challenges. A submerged buoy that can be released by an acoustic signal lets fishermen recover their traps without leaving lines to entangle whales in the water. But these high-tech traps are far more expensive than a simple crab pot on a line. The highest cost would likely come from the additional time required to locate and recover such traps. A few extra minutes can compound over hundreds of traps. Surface buoys also signal to other fishermen that a spot is claimed, and enable officials to locate and check traps. Clearly the concept still has some bugs to work out.

There is another viable alternative though: stringing multiple traps along a single line. With this strategy, fishermen could deploy the same number of traps while reducing the number of lines in the water, which are the real threat to whales.

“It would be better than gear reductions,” Free says. However, it is currently illegal in California to string multiple traps together. The technique is widespread in the Atlantic lobster fishery, so may work for crabs as well. Regulations could simply be changed to require a certain percentage of traps be trawled together.

“I really believe in this result,” Free says, “that gear reductions offer the most promise for saving whales while maintaining a profitable fishery.”

Source: UC Santa Barbara

HOUSTON — A prototype satellite launched by AST SpaceMobile a year ago is at times one the brightest objects in the night sky, raising new concerns about its impact on astronomy.

In an advanced copy of a paper to be published by the journal Nature released Oct. 2, astronomers documented several months of observations of BlueWalker 3, a spacecraft launched into low Earth orbit by AST SpaceMobile in September 2022. The spacecraft subsequently deployed a 64-square-meter antenna to support direct-to-device communications.

The paper analyzed observations of the spacecraft made in the months following its launch by astronomers around the world. Shortly after the spacecraft deployed that antenna in November 2022, the spacecraft’s brightness increased from magnitude 6, the limit of naked-eye observations in dark sites, to magnitude 0.4. That made the satellite one of the brightest objects in the night sky, similar in brightness to the stars Procyon and Achernar.

The spacecraft later dimmed, likely because of changes in its orientation, only to brighten again, returning to magnitude 0.4 in April 2023. The satellite’s brightness is a function of several factors, astronomers said, including its elevation above the horizon, range to the observer on the ground and solar phase angle.

“These results demonstrate a continuing trend towards larger, brighter commercial satellites, which is of particular concern given the plans to launch many more in the coming years,” said Siegfried Eggl of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, one of the authors of the study, in a statement released by the International Astronomical Union Centre for the Protection of the Dark and Quiet Sky from Satellite Constellation Interference, or IAU CPS. That center works to study the impact of satellite constellations on astronomy and methods to mitigate those impacts.

A spokesperson for AST SpaceMobile, in a statement to SpaceNews, did not directly address the brightness observations of BlueWalker 3 reported in the paper. However, the company said it is collaborating with “NASA and certain astronomy working groups to develop advanced industry solutions, including potential operational interventions,” to address those concerns.

AST SpaceMobile said it is working to reduce the brightness of its satellites with “roll-tilting flight maneuvers” to minimize sunlight reflected to the ground. It is also planning to add anti-reflective materials to future satellites.

The company also noted that its constellation will be far smaller, in terms of number of satellites, than others, with only about 90 satellites needed “to provide substantial global coverage.” OneWeb has more than 600 satellites in orbit while SpaceX’s Starlink constellation is approaching 5,000 satellites in orbit.

Those satellites, though, are substantially fainter than BlueWalker 3. SpaceX has worked with astronomers on ways to reduce the brightness of its Starlink satellites and signed a coordination agreement with the National Science Foundation (NSF) in January to collaborate on ways to address the brightness of its larger V2 satellites.

At a Sept. 19 meeting of the Astronomy and Astrophysics Advisory Committee, an NSF official said that the agency was finalizing similar coordination agreements with Amazon and OneWeb for their constellations, and praised the Federal Communications Commission for putting requirements in updated licenses for smaller constellations operated by Iceye and Planet that those companies also coordinate with the NSF.

The NSF, though, has not announced a coordination agreement with AST SpaceMobile. At that committee meeting, Connie Walker, co-director of the IAU CPS and an astronomer at the NSF’s National Optical-Infrared Astronomy Research Laboratory, noted that a paper on observations of BlueWalker 3 would soon be published in Nature and that its conclusions had been shared with AST SpaceMobile in advance, but did not discuss the contents of the paper.

Astronomers also remain worried about radio astronomy interference from AST SpaceMobile spacecraft, which use spectrum allocated for terrestrial communications. Those frequencies are close to those used for radio astronomy, said Federico Di Vruno, the other co-director of the IAU CPS, and radio telescopes located in “radio-quiet zones” on the ground intended to avoid terrestrial interference could still be susceptible to interference from satellite transmissions.

AST SpaceMobile said it will avoid broadcasts from its satellites into or adjacent to the U.S. National Radio-Quiet Zone in Virginia and West Virginia, as well as “other radioastronomy locations as required or needed, including those not officially recognized.” The company will also avoid radio-quiet zones for its gateway antennas.

While the potential for optical and radio astronomy interference from satellite constellations alarms astronomers, they also recognize they will have to co-exist with such systems.

“The astronomical community understands the need for greater connectivity and improvements to internet access, particularly for rural and underserved communities,” said Jeremy Tregloan-Reed, a co-author of the paper at the Universidad de Atacama in Chile, in the IAU CPS statement. “However, that progress has to be balanced against the negative impact that bright satellites can have on the night sky.”

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Introducing llamas to land exposed by retreating glaciers can speed the establishment of stable soils and ecosystem formation and mitigate some of the harmful effects of climate change, a new study shows.

“Glaciers are melting rapidly around the world, creating unstable and dangerous landscapes, acid rock drainage, and land rushes for mining that are disrespecting local and Indigenous land rights,” says Tim Beach, professor of geography and the environment at the University of Texas at Austin and an author of the study in Nature Scientific Reports.

“The research shows that llamas, when managed by Indigenous herders, are accelerating soil fertility and plant succession.”

Land exposed by glacial melting initially has low nutrient soil that is inhospitable to vegetation. Without intervention, these landscapes can take hundreds of years to stabilize.

The researchers partnered with the Llama 2000 Asociación, a local community of farmers whose village had been affected by acid rock drainage. Working at the exposed edge of the Uruashraju glacier in the Cordillera Blanca, Peru, the team created eight 925-square-meter (about 9956.62 square feet) plots, half of which would house llamas and half of which would remain unoccupied control plots. They then monitored soil quality and plant species prevalence in the plots from 2019 to 2022.

By the end of three years of observation, the llama plots showed significantly increased soil organic carbon and nitrogen levels and also a 57% increase in plant cover, with four plant species identified between the second and thirds years of the experiment that were not present at the start.

The increase in soil fertility on the llama plots can be attributed to the animals’ dung, fur, and grazing. The researchers also analyzed dung samples to see whether llamas could act as seed redistributors. They found 12 species of seeds among the dung, five of which still had germination capabilities, meaning that llamas could introduce plant species for lower elevations to recently deglaciated land.

As mountain glaciers continue to rapidly shrink in the wake of climate change, gathering data on the management of post-melt ecosystems is critical.

“No such experiment has been done like this in these areas, and at this altitude, though there have been grazing experiments with other types of grazing animals, and we know they can often be helpful for ecosystem management,” says first author Anaïs Zimmer, a recent PhD graduate from UT Austin.

“The findings also have a high sociocultural impact since the llamas are part of ancestral herding practices. Andean camelid rewilding, in collaboration with local communities, might help to ameliorate the destructive processes of global warming-induced deglaciation while favoring the local economy.”

Source: UT Austin

WASHIINGTON — Axiom Space has selected an unconventional partner to assist in its development of spacesuits that will be worn by the next NASA astronauts to walk on the moon: Prada.

Axiom Space and Prada, the Italian luxury fashion house, announced Oct. 4 they would collaborate on spacesuits Axiom is developing for use on Artemis missions, starting with Artemis 3 in 2025. Axiom Space will take advantage of Prada’s expertise in soft goods and other technologies to help with the suits.

“While it doesn’t seem obvious what the technological reasons are for collaborating with a company like Prada,” acknowledged Michael Suffredini, chief executive of Axiom Space, in an interview, “they’re more than just a fashion company. They actually do quite a bit of technologically advanced things.”

“Embedded in the culture of the company is much more than fashion,” said Lorenzo Bertelli, Prada Group marketing director, in an interview. He pointed to the company’s expertise in composite materials that dates back to the 1990s, when it founded the Luna Rossa yachting team to compete for the America’s Cup.

Prada will assist Axiom in working on the outer layer of its spacesuit, which has to protect the suit’s inner layers from the space environment, including lunar dust, without hindering its mobility. “When it comes to the design side of that piece of it makes a lot of sense because Prada has a lot of experience in the design, the look and feel,” Suffredini said. “More importantly, there’s these technological challenges to try to overcome as well.”

“The suit, I think, is a perfect representation of something where you need a holistic approach,” Bertelli said. “We have a lot of know how in how to package fabrics together to create better mobility.”

Suffredini said he is also interested in taking advantage of Prada’s expertise in composites. Using composites for parts of the torso and pants of the suit, he said, could make the suit lighter. “When you’re going to space, mass is king, so this can be a huge advantage for us.”

He said that he had heard about Prada’s technological expertise while in Italy on other business for Axiom Space. Bertelli said that, around that time, Prada was looking at how to leverage its technical expertise in other fields.

“Our first meeting was very interesting because we were really talking about ideas about how to work together. We didn’t really know exactly what those would be,” Suffredini said. “We wanted to work with very forward-leaning companies in other industries, not just in space.”

“We really understood each other very quickly, and I think what we’re doing is going to be a win-win for both of us,” Bertelli said. “I’m sure in the future we will have bigger projects to work together on.”

Suffredini said that the partnership with Prada could expand to other projects, such as Axiom’s commercial space station plans. “I think there’ll be a lot there’s a lot of areas where you could see Prada helping out.”

For now, though, the focus in on the spacesuit. “The most important thing I tell my team every day is that we’re going to make this schedule. We’re going to build a suit., it’s going to be a fantastic suit, but we’re going to build it on time,” Suffredini said.

That suit is being developed for NASA under a $228.5 million task order awarded in September 2022 as part of the Exploration Extravehicular Activity Services program, where NASA will procure spacesuits for both Artemis missions and the International Space Station as services. Suffredini said Axiom Space informed NASA of its plans to work with Prada and that the agency is supportive. “They’ve been very receptive to everything we’ve done so far in the suit world and are open to this as well.”

One question is what the suit will look like with that outer layer developed in partnership with Prada; the companies released only glimpses of the suit. The focus on the design of that outer layer, Bertelli said, will be on its functionality. “But there are areas where you feel there will be a bit of room for creativity,” he added.

“I am excited to see what the ultimate design looks like with the creativity of Prada involved,” Suffredini said. “I can’t tell you what it’s going to look like, but I feel good about it. It’s going to look very unique compared to what spacesuits formerly looked like.”

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