Science
Titan Submersible’s Scientific Director Says The Sub Malfunctioned Just Prior To The Titanic Dive
The scientific director of the corporation that owned the Titan submarine, which collapsed last year while en route to the Titanic ruins, testified Thursday that the sub had malfunctioned immediately before the tragic dive.
Steven Ross, speaking before a US Coast Guard panel, described a platform issue that the experimental submersible encountered in June 2023, just days before it collapsed on its route to the Titanic site. The breakdown prompted passengers on the submersible to “tumble about,” and it took an hour to pull them out of the water.
Ross stated the submersible pilot, OceanGate co-founder Stockton Rush, slammed into bulkheading during the incident. Ross claimed no one was hurt in the encounter, which he described as uncomfortable.
Titan Submersible’s Scientific Director Says The Sub Malfunctioned Just Prior To The Titanic Dive
“A passenger was dangling upside down. “The other two managed to wedge themselves into the bow end cap,” Ross said, adding that he didn’t know if the Titan’s safety or hull were inspected following the event.
An investigative panel heard three days of testimony that highlighted concerns about the company’s practices before the disastrous trip. Rush was one of five persons killed when the submarine imploded en route to the Titanic disaster in June 2023.
Renata Rojas, the company’s mission expert, told the Coast Guard earlier Thursday that the organization was staffed by qualified people who wanted to “make dreams come true.” Rojas’ evidence contrasted with that of several of the other witnesses, who depicted the corporation as plagued from the top down and more concerned with profit than research or safety.
“I was learning a lot and working with amazing people,” Rojas told me. “Some of those people are very hard-working individuals that were just trying to make dreams come true.”
Rojas also stated that she thought the corporation was sufficiently transparent leading up to the Titanic sinking. Her testimony was emotional at times, and the Coast Guard panel suggested she take a small pause to calm herself.
Rojas is a member of the Explorers Club, which lost Hamish Harding and Paul-Henri Nargeolet during the Titan explosion. Following the implosion, the club described Rush as “a friend of The Explorers Club”.
“I was aware that what I was doing was extremely unsafe. “I never felt unsafe during the operation,” Rojas said in testimony Thursday.
Earlier this month, the Coast Guard held a public hearing as part of a high-level investigation into the cause of the implosion. The public hearing began on Sept. 16, and some of the testimony has touched on issues the corporation faced before to the deadly 2023 dive.
Investigators have also published underwater footage of the submersible wreckage. The footage captures the submersible’s tail cone and other wreckage on the ocean floor.
Former OceanGate operations director David Lochridge testified Tuesday that he frequently argued with Rush and that the business was primarily concerned with making money.
“The whole idea behind the company was to make money,” Lochridge stated. “There was very little in the way of science.”
The session is set to last until Friday, with more witnesses scheduled to appear and resume next week.
Lochridge and other witnesses described a corporation run by people eager to get the unconventionally designed craft into the sea. The fatal disaster sparked a global debate over the future of private undersea exploration.
At the opening of the hearing, Coast Guard officials stated that the submersible had not been independently reviewed, which is typical protocol. That, together with Titan’s unconventional design, drew scrutiny from the submarine exploration community.
Titan Submersible’s Scientific Director Says The Sub Malfunctioned Just Prior To The Titanic Dive
OceanGate, situated in Washington state, halted operations following the implosion. The company currently has no full-time employees, although it was represented by an attorney at the hearing.
During the submersible’s final dive on June 18, 2023, the crew lost contact after exchanging texts about the Titan’s depth and weight as it plummeted. The support ship Polar Prince then sent several communications enquiring whether the Titan could still see the spacecraft on its onboard monitor.
According to a graphic simulation shown earlier in the hearing, one of Titan’s crew’s final transmissions to Polar Prince before the submersible collapsed said, “all good here.”
When the submersible was reported lost, rescuers hurried ships, planes, and other equipment to a location around 435 miles (700 km) south of St. John’s, Newfoundland. Four days later, wreckage from the Titanic was discovered on the ocean floor roughly 330 yards (300 meters) off the Titanic’s bow, according to Coast Guard officials.
OceanGate stated that it has been fully participating with the Coast Guard and NTSB investigations since they began. The Titan had been making voyages to the Titanic crash site since 2021.
SOURCE | AP
Science
A Spacecraft Is On Its Way To A Harmless Asteroid Slammed By NASA In A Previous Save-The-Earth Test
CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida – A spacecraft launched Monday to probe the site of a cosmic accident.
The European Space Agency’s Hera spacecraft launched on a two-year trip to the little, harmless asteroid slammed by NASA two years ago as a practice run for the day when a murderous space rock threatens Earth. It’s the second phase of a planetary defense experiment that could one day save the globe.
SpaceX’s Falcon rocket vanished with Hera into the late morning clouds. An hour later, cheering erupted in the control center in Germany as the spacecraft split from the rocket’s upper stage and returned home. “It’s an amazing day,” the space agency’s director general, Josef Aschbacher, said later.
The 2022 crash of NASA’s Dart spacecraft reduced Dimorphos’ orbit around its larger companion, indicating that if a harmful rock was heading our way, it might be pushed off course with adequate warning.
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A Spacecraft Is On Its Way To A Harmless Asteroid Slammed By NASA In A Previous Save-The-Earth Test
Scientists are eager to analyze the aftermath of the impact up close to determine how effective Dart was and what improvements may be required to protect Earth in the future.
“The more detail we can glean the better as it may be important for planning a future deflection mission should one be needed,” University of Maryland astronomer Derek Richardson stated before launch.
Researchers want to know if Dart (short for Double Asteroid Redirection Test) created a crater or changed the 500-foot (150-meter) asteroid more dramatically. It seemed to be a flying saucer before Dart’s blow and may now resemble a kidney bean, according to Richardson, who participated in the Dart mission and is assisting Hera.
Dart’s wallop sent rubble and boulders hurtling off Dimorphos, adding to the impact’s momentum. For months, the debris track extended thousands of miles (almost 10,000 kilometers) into space.
According to flight director Ignacio Tanco, some rocks and debris may still be hovering about the asteroid, posing a threat to Hera.
A Spacecraft Is On Its Way To A Harmless Asteroid Slammed By NASA In A Previous Save-The-Earth Test
“We don’t really know very well the environment in which we are going to operate,” Tanco informed me. “But that’s the whole point of the mission is to go there and find out.”
European authorities refer to the $400 million (363 million euros) effort as a “crash scene investigation.”
“Hera is going back to the crime scene and getting all the scientific and technical information,” said project manager Ian Carnelli.
Carrying a dozen science instruments, the compact car-sized Hera must swing past Mars in 2025 for a gravitational boost before landing at Dimorphos by the end of 2026. It’s a moonlet of Didymos, the Greek word for twin, a five-times larger asteroid that spins quickly. At that point, the asteroids will be 120 million miles (195 million kilometers) from Earth.
Hera will attempt to enter orbit around the rocky duo, progressively reducing flyby distances from 18 miles (30 kilometers) to a half-mile (1 kilometer). The spacecraft will examine the moonlet for at least six months to determine its mass, shape, composition, and orbit around Didymos.
Before the crash, Dimorphos circled its larger partner from three-quarters of a mile (1,189 meters) away. Scientists believe the orbit has become tighter and more oval-shaped, and that the moonlet may be tumbling.
Two shoebox-sized Cubesats will launch from Hera for even closer drone-like examinations, with one employing radar to peek beneath the moonlet’s boulder-strewn surface. Scientists believe Dimorphos was produced from particles shed by Didymos. The radar measurements should assist in determining whether Didymos is the small moon’s parent.
A Spacecraft Is On Its Way To A Harmless Asteroid Slammed By NASA In A Previous Save-The-Earth Test
After their survey, the CubeSats will attempt to land on the moonlet. If the moonlet tumbles, the situation will become more complicated. Hera may potentially conclude its mission with a perilous touchdown but on the bigger Didymos.
Asteroids, which are remnants of the solar system’s origin 4.6 billion years ago, circle the sun principally between Mars and Jupiter in what is known as the main asteroid belt, where millions of them live. When they fall from the belt and land in our area, they become near-Earth objects.
NASA now has around 36,000 near-Earth objects, the majority of which are asteroids, although there are also some comets. More than 2,400 of them are deemed potentially dangerous to the Earth.
SOURCE | AP
NEW YORK — Prepare to spot a rare and dazzling comet.
The space rock is hurling toward Earth from the far reaches of the solar system and will make its closest approach on Saturday. It should be visible through the end of October, assuming clear skies.
A Rare Comet Brightens The Night Skies In October
Comet Tsuchinshan-Atlas should be visible to the naked eye, but binoculars and telescopes will provide a clearer view.
“It’ll be this fuzzy circle with a long tail stretching away from it,” explained Sally Brummel, planetarium manager at the Bell Museum in Minnesota.
What is a comet?
They are frozen remains from billions of years ago when the solar system was formed. They heat up as they swing toward the sun, revealing their distinctive streaming tails.
In 2023, a green one that had last visited Earth 50,000 years ago flew past again. Other significant flybys were Neowise in 2020 and Hale-Bopp and Hyakutake in the mid to late 1990s.
Where did Tsuchinshan-Atlas come from?
Also known as C/2023 A3, was found last year and named after the observatories in China and South Africa that spotted it.
It originated in the Oort Cloud, which extends far beyond Pluto. After making its closest approach to Earth at 44 million miles (71 million kilometers), it will not return for another 80,000 years, provided it survives the journey.
A Rare Comet Brightens The Night Skies In October
Every year, several comets are detected, but many of them burn up near the sun or are too far away to be observed without special equipment, according to Larry Denneau, a key researcher with the Atlas telescope that helped discover it.
How to View
Those seeking to see Tsuchinshan-Atlas should go outside about an hour after sunset on a clear night and look to the west.
The comet should be visible from both the Northern and Southern Hemispheres.
SOURCE | AP
NEW YORK — To save power, NASA turned off another scientific equipment on its long-running Voyager 2 spacecraft.
NASA Switches Off Instrument On the Spacecraft To Save Power
The space agency announced on Tuesday that 2’s plasma science instrument, meant to study the movement of charged atoms, was turned off in late September to allow the spacecraft to continue exploring for as long as possible, which is estimated to be into the 2030s.
NASA turned off a suite of instruments on Voyager 2 and its twin, Voyager 1, after exploring the gas giant planets in the 1980s. Both are currently in interstellar space or the region between stars. The plasma instrument on Voyager 1 stopped working years ago and was finally shut off in 2007.
The remaining four instruments on 2 will continue to collect data on magnetic fields and particles. Its mission is to investigate the regions of space beyond the sun’s protective sphere.
NASA Switches Off Instrument On Voyager 2 Spacecraft To Save Power
It launched in 1977, is the only spacecraft to have visited Uranus and Neptune. It is now more than 12 billion miles (19.31 billion kilometers) from Earth. 1 is more than 15 billion miles (24.14 billion kilometers) beyond Earth.
SOURCE | AP
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