If you have a little bit of time left in your day, maybe you want to help NASA classify a few galaxies captured by the James Webb Space Telescope. The NASA site has more than 500,000 that need to be classified, and volunteers can make this process faster. For instance, you can help determine if a galaxy is round or has spiral arms.
While a lot of this classification work can be accomplished with artificial attention (AI), the program bumps into numerous images where human eyes can really help. Plus, you will be training the AI as you go.
If this sounds like fun, check out the site. You may be the first human to set eyes on a new galaxy. That sounds like a fun way to end the day.
…on May 2 the White House’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB) dropped a budgetary bombshell, proposing to cut NASA’s top-line funding by a quarter, slash the space agency’s science budget by nearly half and entirely eliminate [the Mars Sample Return (MSR)}. The cancellation is justified, the OMB document claims, because MSR is “grossly overbudget” and its goals of sample return will instead “be achieved by human missions to Mars.”
NASA has canceled plans to find a commercial partner to launch a robotic lunar rover and will instead pursue “alternative approaches” to fly the mission. In a May 7 statement, NASA said it is canceling a solicitation it released in February seeking proposals from industry on ways they could work with NASA to launch the Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover (VIPER) spacecraft. NASA envisioned having a company send VIPER to the south polar regions of the moon and handing operations of the rover there to look for water ice.
NASA is considering launching rockets to Mars next year, a major shift in priorities that could boost the fortunes of Elon Musk’s space company and speed up the timeline for astronauts to reach the red planet. The sudden switch follows the release of the White House’s 2026 budget proposal, which would increase funding for Mars-related projects by $1 billion and pay for the launches. It also signals the Trump’s administration’s intentions to prioritize sending people to Mars.
Credit: Image by Peggy und Marco Lachmann-Anke from Pixabay
If you do not usually visit the stories in Aeon, you may want to make an exception and check out a new article titled “Extraterrestrial Tongues.” It discusses the ways science fiction have portrayed different languages and how it may be too simplistic considering all of the possibilities for “communication” with an alien civilization.
The author cites a few examples from Star Trek, including the Klingon language as well as one episode with Captain Picard (the “Darmok” episode) where the alien speaks in allegories. Of course, any language that makes reference to an unknown history will be almost impossible to understand.
I expect mathematics will probably come to the fore as the primary language from the start. Moreover, I think it is more likely that AI machines will be communicating between the stars rather than humans, but time will tell.
Given our communication problems here on Earth when the underlying language is well understood by all, we will have a mighty challenge in the future surviving an encounter with alien intelligence. We can only hope that the alien civilization does the hard work beforehand to ensure they have a chance to be understood.
If you are watching the Star Wars series Andor on Disney+, you are well aware of the dark workings of the imperial bureaucracy as it crushes the spirit of its citizens.
Reason magazine, always a proponent of less government, has created a fun video that highlights the realistic nature of the bureaucracy in Andor versus the overly-optimistic Star Trek universe where competence and teamwork save the day every time.
I am not saying the Star Trek universe lacks bureaucracy. In fact, more often than not the Enterprise crew is breaking those rules to accomplish their mission. Yet the sheer incompetence of both the rebels and imperial overmasters in Andor is noteworthy, and it that way all the more human.
Take a look at the Reason video yourself and make up your own mind.
Image (Credit): Replica of the Soviet Union’sVernera 8 landing capsule launched towards Venus. (European Space Agency)
“As this is a lander that was designed to survive passage through the Venus atmosphere, it is possible that it will survive reentry through the Earth atmosphere intact, and impact intact.”
-Statement by Marco Langbroek, an expert on Space Situational Awareness at Delft Technical University in the Netherlands, pertaining to the Venera 8 probe that was to be sent to Venus by the Soviets more than 50 years ago. However, the probe, renamed Kosmos 482, never left Earth orbit. Only now is it ready to return to the Earth’s surface tonight, though the exact location is unknown.
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