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International Space Station

NASA Wants To Dump The International Space Station In The Ocean

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NASA is planning to deorbit the International Space Station (ISS) in the coming years, however, their proposed strategy for doing so is causing a lot of controversies among international governments and ocean conservation groups. This is because NASA is planning to deorbit the ISS by having it come back into Earth’s atmosphere and dumping it into the ocean.

NASA has blueprinted that they will take a series of actions leading up to, and into, 2030 to accomplish the ISS’s deorbiting. In early to mid-2028, the ISS will begin to be lowered through a combination of Earth’s natural atmospheric drag and re-entry measures by Russia’s segment of the station, according to reports from Space.com.

Then, a year later in mid-2029, NASA is planning the launch of a SpaceX-supplied US Deorbit Vehicle that will attach to the ISS and fire 46 Draco thrusters to push the station further down and into the ocean. 

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This plan has ecology experts very concerned, specifically The Ocean Foundation. The foundation is headquartered in Washington D.C., and has an overall mission of improving global ocean health and the relationship humans have with our world’s waters. 

Mark Spalding, the president of the foundation, said that NASA’s plan to deorbit the ISS “raises serious concerns for ocean health that the space community has not adequately grappled with.”  

A recent report from the US Government Accountability Office (GAO) was released to discuss the main problems with NASA’s plan to deorbit the ISS and transition it to commercial space stations. 

The report explained that at the end of 2030 or early 2031, the US Deorbit Vehicle will perform the re-entry burn which will push the ISS through the Earth’s atmosphere and into Point Nemo, also known as the pole of inaccessibility as it’s the furthest point from any landmass in the world. 

“As part of the reentry process, NASA expects portions of the ISS and deorbit vehicle to break up and fall into the remote part of the ocean to minimize the risk to populated areas,” the GAO report says. 

Spalding told Space.com that “there is a troubling structural gap in international law that the ISS deorbit throws into sharp relief,” when it comes to using Point Nemo as the dumping ground for the ISS.

He also pointed out that under the Space Liability Convention of 1972, if space debris falls on another nation’s territory or damages property, the nation that launched the space craft in question owes compensation without “needing to prove fault. But no equivalent protection exists for the ocean.” 

“As a result, when space agencies have control over where debris falls, they aim for the high seas, and in doing so, they incur no legal obligation to pay for cleanup or environmental remediation,” he said. 

While Spalding explained that he understood the rationale for targeting Point Nemo for this mission, considering it’s the furthest point away from any populated area, it doesn’t negate the damage that can be done to the ocean’s ecosystem and marine life. 

“The ocean’s remoteness from human infrastructure should not be mistaken for a lack of value or vulnerability. The ocean and its creatures deserve the same protection that international law affords to national territories.”

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When speaking with Space.com, Spalding begged the question about what will happen to marine ecosystems and life on the seafloor where ISS leftovers end up. Speaking vulnerably, he said there’s no way to truly know until it actually happens, which is problematic.

“The honest answer is, we don’t fully know. That is deeply troubling for a structure the size of a football field. We do know that not everything burns up on reentry. Denser components will survive and reach the seafloor.”

Spalding explained that there hasn’t been enough research put into the specific pieces of the ISS and what would be destroyed upon reentry, what would enter the ocean, and how it would directly impact marine life and the ocean’s ecosystem. This “has not been adequately studied or disclosed. That uncertainty is itself the problem.

What environmental harm may begin before the debris hits the water is worrisome. As the largest reentry in history, the cumulative atmospheric impact of down-falling ISS hardware deserves serious study.”

As a part of his argument regarding the lack of proper research, he cited a newly negotiated High Seas Treaty that is relevant to the deorbiting of the iSS. The Treaty requires parties involved to conduct environmental impact assessments for any activities that may impact marine environments and life that goes beyond the national jurisdiction, especially when the effects are unknown. 

“It is fair to ask whether the ISS deorbit – the largest such reentry in history, targeting the high seas – should trigger that obligation,” he explained. 

The Ocean Foundation laid out what discussions and research should be conducted before the downing of the ISS into the ocean. They revealed that they want a full environmental impact assessment of the anticipated debris that will sink to the seafloor, as well as the atmospheric impact in the air above the ocean. 

The foundation also wants all the materials that will survive the reentry and reach the ocean floor to be disclosed publicly and not kept confidential. 

The foundation also cited obligations and analysis legally required under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, the London Protocol of 1996. This protocol maps our an international standard for nations to both individually and collectively protect and preserve our oceans from pollution that is caused by the dumping of waste. 

“The high seas have no sovereign who can demand accountability. We believe this gap in international law needs to be closed, and the ISS deorbit is a vivid illustration of why,” Spalding concluded.

shark

Blue Sharks Use Nanotech To Shift Color Underwater, Scientists Discover

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Blue sharks are known for their glorious shimmer and glow with one of the rarest colors found in nature. Scientists have now discovered how the shark’s bodies are able to pull this off, and it involves microscopic crystals and pigments hidden within their skin. 

A new study on the blue shark has shown that intricate nanostructures within their skin created the animal’s blue hue and allows for its subtle shifts in color, according to Sci Tech Daily. 

“Blue is one of the rarest colors in the animal kingdom, and animals have developed a variety of unique strategies through evolution to produce it, making these processes especially fascinating,” says Dr. Viktoriia Kamska, a post-doctoral researcher in the lab of Professor Mason Dean at City University of Hong Kong.

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More specifically, the researchers found that the vivid blue appearance is from structures located inside the pulp cavities of dermal denticles, which are tiny, tooth-like scales that form a layer of protection over the shark’s skin. 

The cavities contain what are known as guanine crystals which reflect blue light. They also have melanin-filled vesicles called melanosomes that absorb other wavelengths. 

“These components are packed into separate cells, reminiscent of bags filled with mirrors and bags with black absorbers, but kept in close association so they work together,” explains Dr. Kamska. 

“When you combine these materials together, you also create a powerful ability to produce and change color,” says Professor Dean.

 “What’s fascinating is that we can observe tiny changes in the cells containing the crystals and see and model how they influence the color of the whole organism.”

 “We started looking at color at the organismal level, on the scale of meters and centimeters, but structural color is achieved at the nanometer scale, so we have to use a range of different approaches,” he stated. 

Dr. Kamska and her collaborators used simulations to confirm which architectural parameters the nanostructures within the sharks are credited for the specific wavelengths. 

“It’s challenging to manually manipulate structures at such a small scale, so these simulations are incredibly useful for understanding what color palette is available,” says Dr. Kamska, who added that certain environmental conditions can also impact how the shark shifts its color. 

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 “In this way, very fine scale alterations resulting from something as simple as humidity or water pressure changes could alter body color, which then shapes how the animal camouflages or counter-shades in its natural environment,” says Professor Dean.

Dr. Kamska added that as the sharks swim deeper, the increase in pressure causes the guanine crystals to get tighter and closer together, so the color darkens to better suit their surroundings. 

“The next step is to see how this mechanism really functions in sharks living in their natural environment,” says Dr. Kamska.

 “Not only do these denticles provide sharks with hydrodynamic and antifouling benefits, but we’ve now found that they also have a role in producing and maybe changing color too,” says Professor Dean. 

“Such a multi-functional structural design —a marine surface combining features for high-speed hydrodynamics and camouflaging optics— as far as we know, hasn’t been seen before.”

“A major benefit of structural coloration over chemical coloration is that it reduces the toxicity of materials and reduces environmental pollution,” says Dr. Kamska. 

“Structural color is a tool that could help a lot, especially in marine environments, where dynamic blue camouflage would be useful.”

“As nanofabrication tools get better, this creates a playground to study how structures lead to new functions. We know a lot about how other fishes make colors, but sharks and rays diverged from bony fishes hundreds of millions of years ago – so this represents a completely different evolutionary path for making color,” said Professor Dean. 

volcano

Underwater Volcano On The West Coast To Erupt This Year

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A large undersea volcano hundreds of miles off the coast of Oregon is showing signs of an impending eruption later this year, and it’s set to be publicly livestreamed.

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wave

California Citizens Encouraged To Avoid The Ocean As Large Waves Expected To Impact Shorelines 

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California residents are currently being urged to avoid shorelines and structures such as wharves and piers as 20 to 30 foot waves are expected to impact the northern Pacific coast throughout the rest of the week and into the New Year. 

The National Weather Service advisory came after the wharf in Santa Cruz experienced a 150 foot section collapsing from high waves earlier this week. Debris from multiple storms are also being blamed for the death of a resident in Santa Cruz county. 

The coast guard in southern California announced that it has suspended the search for two men who went missing after a fishing trip off the coast of Palos Verdes, NBC Los Angeles reported. They also suspended the search after finding wreckage from a boat that was believed to belong to the fishermen. 

“Inexperienced swimmers should stay out of the water due to life-threatening surf conditions. Never turn your back on the ocean,” the NWS warned in the Bay Area.

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High surf and rip currents are being reported throughout the Los Angeles area. 

Santa Cruz also experiences three city workers falling into the ocean when a large section of a pier they were working on collapsed and floated away during a high surf this week. Luckily the workers survived with minor injuries. 

“Nearly 20 miles to the south, at Sunset State beach, California state parks and fire crews responded at around 11.30am on Monday about a man trapped under debris. The man was pronounced dead at a local hospital,” a spokesperson for the Santa Cruz county sheriff’s office said. 

“It’s total chaos. I just did a drive through the south side of town and the beaches are all tore up. It looks like a bomb went off,”  a Santa Cruz resident told the Los Angeles Times.

Spare Toy Pieces Still Washing Up On Beaches From The Great Lego Spill Of 1997 

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On February 13th, 1997, the Lego ship Tokio Express was on its way to New York City from Rotterdam, in the Netherlands, when it was hit by a rogue wave, causing more than five million pieces of Lego to spill into the ocean, some of which are still washing to shore to this day. Ironically, a majority of the lego pieces that were spilled in the ocean were from marine-themed play sets.

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saturn

Astronomers Uncover Secret Ocean On One Of Saturn’s Smallest Moons 

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Astronomers have uncovered increasing evidence that one of Saturn’s smallest moons, named Mimas, has a global ocean beneath its icy surface. This is a significant revelation in the overall search for water on other planets, as water is an essential building block for all life, further fueling the potential for discovering habitable worlds in deep space. 

Scientists used to think Mimas was just a big ice chunk before NASA went on their Cassini mission orbiting Saturn, and its 146 moons, from 2004 to 2017. 

Mimas was first discovered in 1789 by English astronomer William Herschel, and was first photographed in 1980 using the Voyager probes. Mimas is covered in craters, with the largest one being 80 miles across. 

Through the Cassini mission, astronomers found that the moon takes around 22 hours to orbit Saturn, and is about 115,000 miles from Saturn. Data also showed that Mimas’ rotation and orbital motion is triggered by the moon’s interior. 

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According to reports, in 2014 European researchers determined that the core of Mimas is either rigid, elongated, rocky, or has a subsurface ocean causing its rotation and motion. Observatoire de Paris astronomer Dr. Valéry Lainey and his colleagues analyzed the orbital motion data to get a clearer conclusion, and their findings were published Wednesday in the journal Nature. 

Through this study, the team was able to determine that the moon’s spin and orbital motion didn’t match up with the theory that Mimas had a rocky core, and instead, the evolution of its orbit suggests an internal ocean that shaped its motion, Lainey explained. 

“This discovery adds Mimas to an exclusive club of moons with internal oceans, including Enceladus and Europa, but with a unique difference: its ocean is remarkably young, estimated to be only 5 (million) to 15 million years old,” said study co author Dr. Nick Cooper.

The team was able to determine the origin and age of Mimas’ ocean by analyzing how the moon responded to Saturn’s gravitational forces. 

“Internal heating must come from the tides raised by Saturn on Mimas. These tidal effects have induced friction inside the satellite, providing heat,” Lainey said. 

The study stated that they suspect the ocean is around 12 to 19 miles below the moon’s ice exterior. Astronomically speaking the ocean is very young, which means there wouldn’t be any outward signs of activity on the surface.

This discovery is a huge moment for science in general, as it could shift the ways in which astronomers think about moons in our solar system. 

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“If Mimas hides a global ocean, this means that liquid water could lie almost anywhere. We already have serious candidates for global oceans (on moons such as) Callisto, Dione and Triton,” Lainey said. 

“The existence of a recently formed liquid water ocean makes Mimas a prime candidate for study, for researchers investigating the origin of life,” Cooper said.

“It may be time to observe other seemingly quiet moons across the solar system that could be hiding conditions that can support life,” the study authors said.

“Lainey and colleagues’ findings will motivate a thorough examination of mid-sized icy moons throughout the Solar System,” wrote Drs. Matija Ćuk and Alyssa Rose Rhoden in an article that accompanied the study.

Rhoden has also written research about a “stealth” ocean on Mimas.

“Basically, the difference between our 2022 paper and this new paper is that we found an ocean could not be ruled out by Mimas’ geology, whereas they are actually detecting the signature of the ocean within Mimas’ orbit. It is the strongest evidence we have, so far, that Mimas really does have an ocean today,” Rhoden said.

“Mimas certainly demonstrates that moons with old surfaces can be hiding young oceans, which is pretty exciting. I do think we can speculate as to moons having developed oceans much more recently than we often assume,” Rhoden said.

coral

Florida Just Recorded The Hottest Ocean Temperatures In History 

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This summer has been breaking heat records all over the world. Most recently, Florida saw an ocean temperature reading of 101.1 degrees Fahrenheit on Monday, and 100.2 degrees on Sunday. The previous world record for hottest ocean temperature was 99.7 degrees in Kuwait Bay, according to a study from 2020. 

“This is shocking, it’s unprecedented, it’s actually quite frightening.” Stefanie Sekich, of the Surfrider Foundation, an ocean-protection advocacy group, told Yahoo News.

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July as a whole has seen the record for the hottest average global temperature broken multiple times as a result of climate change which has caused a multitude of heat waves across the country. 

The oceans have absorbed 90% of the increased heat from climate change, leading to global ocean surface temperatures to reach the highest temperature ever in 174 years of data. 

“These ocean temperatures over the globe have been increasing for the past month. In the North Atlantic, parts of Europe have seen the ocean temperature increase of 7 degrees [Fahrenheit] more than it usually is at this time of year,” Sekich said. 

One of the negative impacts to the ocean’s many ecosystems is coral bleaching, in the US specifically, Florida has been experiencing severe bleaching events since July. Coral bleaching occurs when the corals release algae due to warmer temperatures, causing the coral to turn white. 

On July 20th, the Coral Restoration Foundation reported that Sombrero Reef, near the Florida Keys, experienced a coral bleaching event with a 100% mortality rate. 

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“On July 20th, CRF teams visited Sombrero Reef, a restoration site we’ve been working at for over a decade. What we found was unimaginable — 100% coral mortality. We have also lost almost all the corals in the Looe Key Nursery in the Lower Keys,” said Phanor Montoya-Maya, restoration program manager at Coral Restoration Foundation, in a statement. 

“Sea grasses are another vital ecosystem, they’re an essential fish habitat, they’re the primary food source for manatees, which have been plummeting in recent years. Sea grasses are very vulnerable to warmer waters,” Chris Robbins, associate director of science at Oceans Conservancy, an environmental advocacy group, told Yahoo News.

“The last time we saw a massive seagrass die-off resulting from high water temperatures, high salinities, low oxygen was during the El Nino event in 2015, and of course we’re now in an El Nino event in 2023,” said Robbins.

When it comes to what we can do in order to improve, Sekich explained that “obviously, we need to get off fossil fuels. If we keep putting greenhouse gases into the atmosphere we’re going to keep seeing these effects of climate change.”

Robbins also explained how the state and federal governments need to take charge and implement policies and infrastructure investments to reduce pollution and decrease the use of fertilizer and upgrading wastewater systems.

“If and when these things happen, we’ll potentially need to reduce other stressors on these systems,” Robbins said.

ocean

New Battery-Free, Wireless Underwater Camera From MIT Engineers Could Help Scientists Further Explore The Ocean 

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According to MIT News, researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have potentially advanced the way that scientists can explore unknown regions of the ocean, track pollution, and/or monitor climate change. 

Scientists currently estimate that more than 95% of the oceans on Earth have never been explored. One of the biggest obstacles researchers face is the high cost of powering an underwater camera that can withstand the environmental changes that come from the extreme depths of the ocean. 

Typically, researchers need to have the underwater cameras that currently are in use to observe the ocean tethered to a vessel or need to send a ship out to recharge the batteries of the camera. 

Now, MIT researchers have developed a battery-free wireless underwater camera that is “100,000 times more energy efficient than other undersea cameras.” 

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The device is said to take color photos, even in dark underwater environments, and can transmit the data from the images wirelessly through the water.

The camera itself is powered by sound, and works by converting mechanical energy from sound waves traveling through the water into electrical energy that can then be used to power its imaging and communication systems. Once the camera captures an image, it uses the sound waves to transfer data to a receiver on land that will reconstruct this image taken.

The scientists behind the camera also think the device is so impressive because it doesn’t need a power source, meaning it can be underwater capturing images for weeks before it needs to be retrieved. This will allow researchers to explore new depths for longer periods of time. 

“One of the most exciting applications of this camera for me personally is in the context of climate monitoring. We are building climate models, but we are missing data from over 95 percent of the ocean. This technology could help us build more accurate climate models and better understand how climate change impacts the underwater world,” explained Fadel Adib,  senior author of a report on the device published in Nature Communications. 

Sayed Saad Afzal, Waleed Akbar, and Osvy Rodriguez are co-lead authors on the study as well, as well as Unsoo Ha, Mario Doumet, and Reza Ghaffarivardavagh. 

Adib explained how initially, the group was “trying to minimize the hardware as much as possible, to create new constraints on how to build the system, send information, and perform image reconstruction. It took a fair amount of creativity to figure out how to do that.” 

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The camera uses red, green, and blue LED lights to reflect on the white parts of the image, which can then “reconstruct the color image taken,” according to Akbar. 

“When we were kids in art class, we were taught that we could make all colors using three basic colors. The same rules follow for color images we see on our computers. We just need red, green, and blue — these three channels — to construct color images,” he explained. 

According to the report, the researchers tested the camera in several different underwater environments. Through those trials they were able to take high-quality photos of fish and plants in dark environments that are typically very difficult to capture. 

Now that they have a working prototype, the next step will be for the researchers to enhance the device to be used in more real-world settings. Overall, they want to increase the camera’s memory, extend its range, and ability to stream images and potentially videos in real time. 

“This will open up great opportunities for research both in low-power IoT devices as well as underwater monitoring and research,” says Haitham Al-Hassanieh, an assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

fossil

Scientists May Have Solved the Mystery of an Ancient ‘Alien Goldfish’

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Scientists may have finally figured out where an ancient sea animal fits into the “tree of life.” The animal, known as Typhloesus wellsi, perplexed scientists for nearly 50 years, leading them to dub it the “alien goldfish.”

Typhloesus was just 90 mm long when it was alive. It had no fins other than a singular large tail fin. Bizarrely, it also had no backbone, anus, eyes or shell.

Scientists previously thought the creature was a conodont, a group of jawless vertebrates that resembled eels. Upon closer inspection, scientists realized that the Typhloesus fossil specimen actually showed the animal had the remains of a conodont inside its digestive tract, indicating the Typhloesus ate conodonts.

The recent discovery of a tooth-covered ribbon-like structure in the Typhloesus helped scientists figure out its possible taxonomic placement. Paleontologists believe they were most likely a marine mollusk and an ancient relative of gastropods like sea slugs.

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Dr. Jean-Bernard Caron and Dr. Simon Conway Morris, paleontologists at the University of Cambridge, made the discovery after examining several Typhloesus fossil specimens taken from a 330-million-year-old fossil deposit in the Bear Gulch Limestone site in Montana, US.

Dr. Caron found the toothed tonguelike structure under a high-powered scanning microscope. The structure was similar to that of a radula, an anatomical structure snails and mollusks use to scrape food into their mouths.

The scientists believe the structure was likely attached to a retractable trunk. The alien goldfish would extend it whenever it was feeding, much like a lizard. The existence of the Typhloesus’ radula led scientists to deduce that the mysterious creature may be a mollusk.

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Dr. Caron believes the creature was similar to a sea slug, which swims through water, sticking its radula through trunklike proboscis to hunt prey. Typhloesus also had a flexible body and large tail. They were likely good swimmers and did not move along the sea floor.

Professor Mark Purnell from the Center for Paleobiology at the University of Leicester in the UK suggests that scientists cannot definitively say “the very strange animal” is a mollusk.

“[The researchers] have found some tantalizing new information, but it is far from being a slam-dunk case in terms of definitely knowing what this weird thing is.”

Typhloesus fossils predate the rest of the swimming snail fossil record by over 100 million years. Dr. Christopher Whalen, a paleontologist at the American Museum of Natural History, said that since sea slugs lacked shells and other features commonly imprinted in fossils and quickly swam in the water, they are not as present in fossil records.

Understanding the Typhloesus will help paleontologists learn more about the evolution of mollusks, the planet’s second largest group of invertebrates.

According to Dr. Caron, studying the strangest creatures often unearths the most valuable discoveries.

 “They are enigmatic, but they reveal a lot of important evolutionary information.”

Thousands Of New Viruses Discovered In The Ocean, According To New Study

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More than 5,000 new virus species have been discovered throughout our world’s oceans according to a new study. Researchers at The Ohio State University analyzed tens of thousands of water samples from around the world looking for new RNA viruses, or viruses that use RNA for genetic material. 

These types of viruses are typically understudied when compared to DNA viruses, however, Covid-19 is a type of RNA virus, so scientists and researchers all around the globe have been trying to gain a greater understanding of them. 

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The diversity of the newfound viruses was so great that the researchers have “proposed doubling the number of taxonomic groups needed to classify RNA viruses, from the existing five phyla to 10 phyla. Phylum is a broad classification in biology just below kingdom,” study lead author Matthew Sullivan, a professor of microbiology at The Ohio State University, said in a statement

“There’s so much new diversity here – and an entire new phylum, the Taraviricota, were found all over the oceans, which suggests they’re ecologically important,” he explained. 

“Studies of RNA viruses have usually focused on those that cause diseases. Some well-known RNA viruses include influenza, Ebola and the coronavirus that causes COVID-19. But these are just a tiny slice of RNA viruses on Earth.”

“We wanted to systematically study them on a very big scale and explore an environment no one had looked at deeply,” Sullivan said in the statement.

For the study, published in the journal Science, the researchers “analyzed 35,000 water samples taken from 121 locations in all five of the world’s oceans.”

The researchers team are all members of the Tara Oceans Consortium, a worldwide project created to study the impact of climate change specifically on the ocean. 

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The researchers examined genetic sequences that were extracted from plankton; small aquatic organisms. Plankton is known to be a common host for RNA viruses. By focusing on sequences that belonged to RNA viruses, they were able to find the ancient gene known as RdRp, which is found in all RNA viruses, but absent from other types of viruses. 

The researchers were able to identify over 44,000 sequences with the ancient gene. Since the RdRp gene is billions of years old, it has been able to evolve, which makes it harder for the scientists to determine the actual evolutionary relationship between the sequences and how they changed. 

“Overall, we identified about 5,500 new RNA virus species that fell into the five existing phyla, as well as the five newly proposed phyla, which are named Taraviricota, Pomiviricota, Paraxenoviricota, Wamoviricota and Arctiviricota.”

“Virus species in the Taraviricota phylum were particularly abundant in temperate and tropical waters, while viruses in the Arctiviricota phylum are abundant in the Arctic Ocean,” the researchers wrote.

“Understanding how the RdRp gene diverged over time could lead to a better understanding of how early life evolved on Earth,” the authors said.

“RdRp is supposed to be one of the most ancient genes — it existed before there was a need for DNA. So we’re not just tracing the origins of viruses, but also tracing the origins of life,”study co-first author Ahmed Zayed, a research scientist in microbiology at Ohio State, said in the statement.