This week marked the beginning of the Vera C. Rubin Observatory’s Legacy Survey of Space and Time, a massive effort to observe the sky that comes more than two decades in the making. It could help us to better understand our own solar system and the mysteries of the cosmos, from dark energy and dark matter to the expansion of the universe. Read on to learn more about that, plus other science news that grabbed our attention this week.
The Vera C. Rubin Observatory gets to work
The Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile, which contains the largest digital camera in the world at 3,200 megapixels, has begun its 10-year survey of the universe. Its campaign kicked off on June 30, and for the next decade it will capture a new image roughly every 40 seconds, observing the entire southern sky every few nights. A press release announcing its commencement said its observations will “create an ultrawide, ultrahigh-definition time-lapse record of the universe.”
“Today, we begin filming the greatest cosmic movie ever made,” Brian Stone of the National Science Foundation said in the announcement. The observatory captured its first images last summer in a test run of its capabilities, producing a remarkable look at millions of galaxies and stars, along with thousands of previously unseen asteroids. Over the course of its decade-long survey, called the Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST), it will revisit each point in the sky roughly 800 times, allowing it to record changes and cosmic events. Rubin will take about a thousand images per night, amounting to about ten terabytes of data daily.
“It is embarking on a mission that will redefine modern cosmology and astrophysics,” said Darío Gil, Under Secretary for Science at the US Department of Energy. Gil added, “By seeking to understand the enigmatic phenomena of dark energy and dark matter, we are not just observing the stars; we are striving to grasp the fundamental laws that govern our existence.”
Diving suits for swimming cyborg cockroaches
This week in Research That Makes My Skin Crawl, scientists from Nanyang Technological University Singapore and Waseda University announced that they’ve developed a tiny diving suit that allows cyborg cockroaches to survive swimming underwater for hours at a time. If you’re wondering why, exactly, roaches need to be borg-ified and forced to swim underwater at all, I’m right there with you.
According to the team, cyborg insects have potential for use in search and rescue operations, as they can access spaces that would be inaccessible to humans, animals and larger robots. Cyborg roaches were recently deployed in the field for the first time to assist with search and rescue efforts after a devastating earthquake in Myanmar this spring.
NTU Singapore/Waseda University
A flooded environment would normally prove a no-go for the cyborg roaches, which are living Madagascar hissing cockroaches fitted with electronic controllers. The flexible diving suit consists of an oxygen-generation tank, a flexible shell and four silicone supply tubes that are attached to the roaches’ spiracles, or the openings that they breathe through. The team says these tubes can be removed painlessly afterward without harming the roach. In a paper published this week in Nature Communications, the researchers report that the cyborg robots were able to swim underwater for up to 3 hours with this setup in tests.
NASA picks three companies for 2028 Moon Base deliveries
Earlier this year, NASA overhauled its plans for lunar exploration, announcing that it was hitting pause on building an orbiting Lunar Gateway space station and would instead build a $20 billion Moon Base. The first three missions to deliver payloads to the lunar surface for the eventual Moon Base are scheduled to happen before the end of 2026. This week, NASA announced four more missions heading to the moon, these ones scheduled for late 2028. The space agency says it’s awarded contracts totaling nearly $600 million to Astrobotic, Firefly Aerospace and Intuitive Machines to deliver science payloads for the Moon Base.
Astrobotic will make two trips to the moon, while the other two companies will each make one. All of these deliveries will rely on updated versions of each company’s lander designs, building on insights from previous missions under NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program. The payloads will be the same for each delivery: a Stereo Camera for Lunar Plume Surface Studies (SCALPSS) to collect landing data, a Laser Retroreflector Array (LRA) for precision in determining the location of spacecraft in lunar orbit or landing on the surface, and a Linear Energy Transfer Spectrometer (LETS) for measuring the energy of incoming space radiation. If it seems redundant, well, that’s the point.
NASA/Astrobotic/Intuitive Machines/Firefly
“By flying the same science instruments on multiple landers, we will better understand potential hazards during landing and build out a global network of environmental data and location markers on the Moon,” said Joel Kearns, deputy associate administrator for exploration, Science Mission Directorate, at NASA Headquarters. “It’s akin to having weather stations in different locations on Earth. These three payloads are flight-proven and their data is critical to supporting safe human exploration of the lunar surface.”
