Blink And You’ll Miss It: The Surprising Everyday Object Set To Fly Over The UK On Tuesday

A toolkit will fly above the UK on Tuesday night, after it was drifted into the ether during a mission last week.

Nasa astronauts Jasmin Moghbeli and Loral O’Harra were fixing a solar panel on the International Space Station (ISS) when their tool bag just… slipped into space.

And because it was seen as low risk, the astronauts just left it behind.

Now, the bright, white bag is travelling 250 miles above Earth, around five minutes ahead of the ISS.

It’s surprisingly visible to people on the ground too, meaning you don’t have to be a NASA astronaut to see it – you just need binoculars or a telescope, and a spot of good weather.

Anyone in the south of the UK should be able to spot it between 6.24pm and 6.34pm on Tuesday evening, and it’s expected to return on November 24 between 5.30pm and 5.41pm.

It was first spotted by the Virtual Telescope Project last week, and it’s now being tracked by the US Space Force to make sure it doesn’t threaten the ISS or satellites.

Some estimates reported last week in the Smithsonian Magazine suspect it will re-enter the atmosphere between March and July 2024.

This is not the first time astronauts have lost something into space, though.

Nasa astronaut Ed White lost a spare glove in 1965 during a spacewalk, and in 2006, fellow Nasa astronaut Piers Seller lost a spatula as he repaired a heat shield.

And Nasa’s Heidemarie Stefanyshyn-Piper also lost her toolbag when attempting to repair parts of the ISS back in November 2008, as she became the first woman to lead a space walk, ever, at the time.

Worries about space debris are growing.

More than 170 million pieces have been dropped into the universe since that first glove was dropped back by White almost 60 years ago.

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Mexican Congress Holds Hearing On UFOs Featuring Purported ‘Alien’ Bodies

Mexican lawmakers heard testimony that “we are not alone” in the universe and saw the alleged remains of non-human beings in an extraordinary hearing marking the Latin American country’s first congressional event on UFOs.

In the hearing on Tuesday on FANI, the Spanish acronym for what are usually now termed Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP), politicians were shown two artifacts that Mexican journalist and long-time UFO enthusiast Jaime Maussan claimed were the corpses of extraterrestrials.

The specimens were not related to any life on Earth, Maussan said.

The two tiny “bodies,” displayed in cases, have three fingers on each hand and elongated heads.

Maussan said they were recovered in Peru near the ancient Nazca Lines in 2017.

He said that they were about 1,000 years old, analysed through a carbon dating process by Mexico’s National Autonomous University (UNAM).

Similar such finds in the past have turned out to be the remains of mummified children.

Maussan said it was the first time such evidence had been presented.

“I think there is a clear demonstration that we are dealing with non-human specimens that are not related to any other species in our world and that all possibilities are open for any scientific institution… to investigate it,” Maussan said.

“We are not alone,” he added.

Remains of allegedly 'non-human' beings presented in Mexico
Remains of allegedly ‘non-human’ beings presented in Mexico

HENRY ROMERO

Jose de Jesus Zalce Benitez, Director of the Scientific Institute for Health of the Mexican navy, said X-rays, 3-D reconstruction and DNA analysis had been carried out on the remains.

“I can affirm that these bodies have no relation to human beings,” he said.

UNAM on Thursday republished a statement first issued in 2017, saying the work by its National Laboratory of Mass Spectrometry with Accelerators (LEMA) was only intended to determine the age of the samples.

“In no case do we make conclusions about the origin of said samples,” the statement said.

Lawmakers also heard from former US Navy pilot Ryan Graves, who has participated in US Congressional hearings about his personal experience with UAP and the stigma around reporting such sightings.

Congressman Sergio Gutierrez, from President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador’s ruling Morena party, said he hoped the hearing would be the first of other similar events in Mexico.

“We are left with reflections, with concerns and with the path to continue talking about this,” Gutierrez said.

In recent years, the US government has done an about-face on public information on UAP after decades of stonewalling and deflecting.

The Pentagon has been actively investigating reported sightings in recent years by military aviators, while an independent NASA panel studying UFOs is the first of its kind by the space agency.

NASA is set to discuss findings from the study on Thursday.

Maussan faced swift backlash and criticism from sceptics on Wednesday who questioned the authenticity of his presentation.

“This could really hurt efforts to take the issue seriously,” said a user of X social media platform, formerly known as Twitter. “Why didn’t they wait until a scientific paper was ready to publish it?”

(Reporting by Cassandra Garrison and Reuters TV, Editing by Rosalba O’Brien)

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China’s Mars Rover Is Hibernating And Doesn’t Want To Wake Up

China’s rover on Mars has not woken up after months of hibernating, the scientists operating it finally explained on Tuesday.

Zhurong, as the solar-powered rover is known, was in a scheduled sleep during the red planet’s winter. And though it was named after an ancient Chinese god of fire, it seems remarkably… docile, right now.

So what’s stopping it from waking up? Dust, apparently, as this stops it turning sunlight into electricity.

Chief designer of the Mars exploration programme, Zhang Rongqiao, explained: “Based on our analysis, the most likely possibility is that an unpredictable accumulation of dust from Mars led to a decrease in its ability to produce electricity, such that it’s insufficient for it to wake up.”

If the dust levels exceed more than 40% that the Chinese engineers had prepared for, it would become inactive “forever”. No amount of solar activity could help it, Zhang told Chinese state broadcasters.

He did not explain how much dust is already on it.

The rover successfully landed back in May 2021, meaning China was only the second country after the US to succeed to landing a probe like this on Mars.

The landing was seen as a sign that Beijing was really starting to establish itself in space exploration.

When the rover first touched down, it explored Mars for about a year in Earth days (358 days in Martian time) and covered 1.2 miles, even though it was only meant to look around for three Martian months.

It was then put to sleep in May 2022, and was meant to autonomously wake up December 2022 during the planet’s northern spring equinox.

Five months later, it’s looking like the rover has decided it would rather stay sleeping. And who can blame it?

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‘A Bear On Mars?’ NASA Spots Trippy Phenomenon On Planet’s Surface

Scientists looking at the surface of Mars have spotted what looks like a bear staring back at them.

A camera on NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter took a photo of the formation on December 12. It was shared Wednesday by the University of Arizona, which operates the camera.

A hill with a V-shaped collapse structure forms the bear’s nose and a circular fracture pattern creates the head, the university’s Lunar and Planetary Laboratory explained in the blog for its High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera.

“The circular fracture pattern might be due to the settling of a deposit over a buried impact crater. Maybe the nose is a volcanic or mud vent and the deposit could be lava or mud flows?” it said.

This is due to a tendency for the human brain to try and see recognisable shapes in objects or data that are otherwise not familiar to us, known as pareidolia.

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First Water Detected On Potentially ‘Habitable Super-Earth’

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Mars Rover Assembly Completed In Stevenage

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