A national "butterfly emergency" has been declared by Butterfly Conservation after the lowest Big Butterfly Count since records began. From a report: An average of just seven butterflies per 15-minute count were recorded by participants in this summer's butterfly count, the lowest in the survey's 14-year history. It was the worst year on record for once-ubiquitous species, including the common blue, small tortoiseshell, small white and green-veined white. Eight out of the 10 most-seen species have declined -- in many cases dramatically -- over the count's history. Previous lowest-ever numbers of butterflies-per-count were logged in 2022, 2021 and 2020.

Butterfly Conservation is calling for the government to declare a "nature emergency" and ban insect-killing neonicotinoid pesticides, with no exceptions. Britain and the EU banned neonicotinoids in 2018 but the UK government has authorised an exemption for the pesticides to be used on sugar beet every year since 2021. Before the election, Labour promised to ban all neonicotinoids. Further reading: UK Nature Chief Sounds Alarm Over Ecosystem Collapse as Butterfly Numbers Halve.

Electric cars now outnumber petrol cars in Norway for the first time, an industry organisation has said, a world first that puts the country on track towards taking fossil fuel vehicles off the road. From a report: Of the 2.8m private cars registered in the Nordic country, 754,303 are all-electric, against 753,905 that run on petrol, the Norwegian road federation (OFV) said in a statement. Diesel models remain the most numerous at just under 1m, but their sales are falling rapidly. "This is historic. A milestone few saw coming 10 years ago," said OFV director Oyvind Solberg Thorsen. "The electrification of the fleet of passenger cars is going quickly, and Norway is thereby rapidly moving towards becoming the first country in the world with a passenger car fleet dominated by electric cars."

A small asteroid, 2024 PT5, will temporarily become a mini-moon for Earth, orbiting in a horseshoe shape from September 29 to November 25, 2024. CBS News reports: Researchers at the Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System, an asteroid monitoring system funded by NASA, spotted the asteroid using an instrument in Sutherland, South Africa and labeled it 2024 PT5. Scientists from the Universidad Complutense de Madrid have tracked the asteroid's orbit for 21 days and determined its future path. 2024 PT5 is from the Arjuna asteroid belt, which orbits the sun, according to their study published in Research Notes of the AAs. But Earth's gravitational pull will draw 2024 PT5 towards it and, much like our moon, it will orbit our planet -- but only for 56.6 days. 2024 PT5, which is larger than some of the other mini-moons, will also return to Earth's orbit -- in 2055. [...]

The study's lead author Carlos de la Fuente Marcos told Space.com the mini-moon will be too small to see with amateur telescopes or binoculars but professional astronomers with stronger tools will be able to spot it.

Young corals bred using in vitro fertilisation (IVF) and planted in reefs around the US, Mexico and the Caribbean have surprised scientists, after most survived last year's record marine heatwave, while older corals struggled. From a report: A study has found that 90% of the young IVF-created corals surveyed remained healthy and colourful, holding on to the algae that live within them and supply them with nutrition. In contrast, only about a quarter of older non-IVF corals remained healthy. The rest, including large colonies that may have lived for centuries, were either bleached by the heat -- expelling the algae from their tissues and turning white -- or paled, expelling some of the algae. Some died in the heatwave before the survey was conducted.

Dr Margaret Miller, lead author and research director at Secore International, a reef conservation organisation, said: "[The heatwave] was a horrible time. But I was impressed and surprised that the data came out with such an extreme pattern." The young corals were bred over the past five years using a version of IVF developed by Secore. Divers collected coral spawn, which was used to fertilise eggs in the laboratory. The resultant baby corals were then planted on reefs across the Caribbean to form colonies.

Most coral restoration efforts have historically focused on fragmentation techniques -- where corals are broken into smaller pieces and transplanted to a new location. Rather than producing exact clones, as fragmentation does, breeding corals by IVF increased the genetic diversity, giving them a higher chance of adapting to heat over time. "Natural selection back in the reef environment will choose the best ones," said Miller. The 771 young corals in the study -- a fraction of the thousands bred each year by Secore and partner institutions -- live in restored reefs off Mexico, the Dominican Republic, the US Virgin Islands, and the Dutch Caribbean territories of Bonaire and Curacao.

Fossil fuel companies pumped at least $5.6bn of sponsorship money into motorsports, football, golf and even snow sports in an effort to "buy social licence to operate," according to a new report. From a report: Almost no major spectator sport remains untouched by oil and gas money, according to research carried out by the New Weather Institute (NWI), a climate thinktank, which traced more than 200 sponsorship deals between sports teams and the industry. In addition, sports stars such as Cristiano Ronaldo, Lionel Messi, Tyson Fury and Anthony Joshua have all been successfully recruited to spend time in the Middle East as part of sponsorship deals, the report says.

It comes as concern grows about the fossil fuel industry's increasing efforts to launder its global standing through "sportswashing" -- a practice, long used by nation states, of building associations with sporting events to improve tarnished reputations. In 2023, Mohammed bin Salman, the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, said: "If sportswashing is going to increase my GDP by 1%, then we'll continue doing sportswashing." According to NWI's Dirty Money report, Aramco, Saudi Arabia's national oil company, was the biggest single investor in sports sponsorship identified by NWI's report, handing out almost $1.3bn across 10 deals. The petrochemical company Ineos was second, with $777m in sponsorship deals; Shell had sponsored sports to the tune of $470m; and TotalEnergies, France's leading oil company, had $340m in deals.

Google's philanthropic arm is partially funding a new initiative that "aims to deploy more than 50 small satellites in low-Earth orbit to pinpoint flare-ups as small as a classroom anywhere in the world," reports Ars Technica. From the report: The FireSat constellation, managed by a nonprofit called Earth Fire Alliance (EFA), will be the first satellite fleet dedicated to detecting and tracking wildfires. Google announced a fresh investment of $13 million in the FireSat constellation Monday, building on the tech giant's previous contributions to support the development of custom infrared sensors for the FireSat satellites. Google's funding commitment will maintain the schedule for the launch of the first FireSat pathfinder satellite next year, EFA said. The first batch of satellites to form an operational constellation could launch in 2026.

The FireSat satellites will be built by Muon Space, a California-based satellite manufacturing startup. Each of the Muon Space-built microsatellites will have six-band multispectral infrared instruments, eyeing a swath of Earth some 900 miles (1,500 kilometers) wide, to pinpoint hotspots from wildfires. The satellites will have the sensitivity to find wildfires as small as 16 by 16 feet (5 by 5 meters). The network will use Google AI to rapidly compare observations ofany area of this size with previous imagery to determine if there is a fire, according to Google. AI will also take into account factors like nearby infrastructure and local weather in each fire assessment.

Google said it validated its detection model for smaller fires and established a baseline dataset for the AI by flying sensors over controlled burns. FireSat's partners announced the constellation in May after five years of development. The Environmental Defense Fund, the Moore Foundation, and the Minderoo Foundation also support the FireSat program. After detecting a wildfire, it's crucial for FireSat to quickly disseminate the location and size of a fire to emergency responders. With the first three satellites, the FireSat constellation will observe every point on Earth at least twice per day. "At full capability with 50+ satellites, the revisit times for most of the globe improve to 20 minutes, with the most wildfire-prone regions benefitting from sampling intervals as short as nine minutes," Muon Space said in a statement. "Today's announcement marks a significant milestone and step towards transforming the way we interact with fire," Earth Fire Alliance said in a statement. "As fires become more intense, and spread faster, we believe radical collaboration is key to driving much needed innovation in fire management and climate action."

NASA will coordinate with U.S. government stakeholders, partners, and international standards organizations to establish a Coordinated Lunar Time (LTC) following a policy directive from the White House in April. From a report: The agency's Space Communication and Navigation (SCaN) program is leading efforts on creating a coordinated time, which will enable a future lunar ecosystem that could be scalable to other locations in our solar system. The lunar time will be determined by a weighted average of atomic clocks at the Moon, similar to how scientists calculate Earth's globally recognized Coordinated Universal Time (UTC). Exactly where at the Moon is still to be determined, since current analysis indicates that atomic clocks placed at the Moon's surface will appear to 'tick' faster by microseconds per day. A microsecond is one millionth of a second. NASA and its partners are currently researching which mathematical models will be best for establishing a lunar time. To put these numbers into perspective, a hummingbird's wings flap about 50 times per second. Each flap is about .02 seconds, or 20,000 microseconds. So, while 56 microseconds may seem miniscule, when discussing distances in space, tiny bits of time add up.

"It is with great relief that I welcome you home!" SpaceX COO Gwynne Shotwell posted on X. "This mission was even more extraordinary than I anticipated."

"SpaceX's Polaris Dawn crew is home," reports CNN, "capping off a five-day mission to orbit — which included the world's first commercial spacewalk — by splashing down in the Gulf of Mexico." The Crew Dragon capsule carrying four astronauts landed off the coast of Dry Tortugas, Florida, at 3:37 a.m. ET Sunday.

The Polaris Dawn mission made history as it reached a higher altitude than any human has traveled in five decades. [870 miles (1,400 kilometers) — beating the 853-mile record set in 1966 by NASA's Gemini 11 mission.] A spacewalk conducted early Thursday morning also marked the first time such an endeavor has been completed by a privately funded and operated mis.sion.

But returning to Earth is among the most dangerous stretches of any space mission. To safely reach home, the Crew Dragon capsule carried out what's called a "de-orbit burn," orienting itself as it prepared to slice through the thickest part of Earth's atmosphere. The spacecraft then reached extremely hot temperatures — up to 3,500 degrees Fahrenheit (1,900 degrees Celsius) — because of the pressure and friction caused by hitting the air while still traveling around 17,000 miles per hour (27,000 kilometers per hour). The crew, however, should have remained at comfortable temperatures, protected by the Crew Dragon's heat shield, which is located on the bottom of the 13-foot-wide (4-meter-wide) capsule. Dragging against the air began to slow the vehicle down before the Crew Dragon deployed parachutes that further decelerated its descent. Having hit the ocean, the spacecraft briefly bobbed around in the water until rescue crews waiting nearby hauled it out of the ocean and onto a special boat, referred to as the "Dragon's nest." Final safety checks took place there before the crew disembarked from the capsule and began the journey back to dry land.
You can watch video of the splashdown on YouTube.

While in space, the crew performed 40 science experiments and research, according to the article. "Gillis, a trained violinist, also brought her instrument along for the mission and delivered a rendition of 'Rey's Theme' from "Star Wars: The Force Awakens." (Slashdot reader SuperKendall points out that the "Rey's Theme" rendition "was not just the astronaut playing violin in space, but was in conjunction with young adult orchestras around the world.")

SpaceX's COO said the performance "made me tear up. Thank you all for taking this journey."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CBC News: Stranded astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams said Friday it was hard to watch their Boeing capsule return to Earth without them. It was their first public comments since last week's return of the Boeing Starliner capsule that took them to the International Space Station in June. They remained behind after NASA determined the problem-plagued capsule posed too much risk for them to ride back in. "That's how it goes in this business," said Williams, adding that "you have to turn the page and look at the next opportunity."

Wilmore and Williams are now full-fledged station crew members, chipping in on routine maintenance and experiments. They, along with seven others on board, welcomed a Soyuz spacecraft carrying two Russians and an American earlier this week, temporarily raising the station population to 12, a near record. NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams spoke to the press on Friday for the first time since their Boeing Starliner capsule returned to Earth without them. The two, who have been on the International Space Station since June 6, said they are taking the mission's unexpected extension into 2025 in stride -- even if it means they've had to change their voting plans. The transition to station life was "not that hard" since both had previous stints there, said Williams, who will soon take over as station commander. "This is my happy place. I love being up here in space," she said.

The two Starliner test pilots -- both retired U.S. navy captains and longtime NASA astronauts — will stay at the orbiting laboratory until late February. They have to wait for a SpaceX capsule to bring them back. That spacecraft is due to launch later this month with a reduced crew of two, with two empty seats for Wilmore and Williams for the return leg. The duo said they appreciated all the prayers and well wishes from strangers back home. Wilmore said he will miss out on family milestones such as being around for his youngest daughter's final year of high school. The astronauts, who prepared for eight days in space, will now be up there for eight months, which could have a greater impact on the body. "It is a bit of a change from a sprint to a marathon," said Dr. Adam Sirek of the Canadian Society of Aerospace Medicine.

Two astronauts, billionaire Jared Isaacman and SpaceX engineer Sarah Gillis, completed the world's first private spacewalk outside a SpaceX capsule, testing new spacesuits and procedures in a risky mission that pushes the boundaries of commercial spaceflight. Reuters reports: The astronauts on the Polaris Dawn mission went one at a time, each spending about 10 minutes outside the gumdrop-shaped Crew Dragon capsule on a tether, as Elon Musk's company again succeeded in pushing the boundaries of commercial spaceflight. Jared Isaacman, a pilot and the founder of electronic payments company Shift4, exited first, followed by SpaceX engineer Sarah Gillis, while crewmates Scott Poteet and Anna Menon watched from inside. The whole process, unfolding about 450 miles (730 km) above Earth, lasted an hour and 46 minutes. The four astronauts have been orbiting Earth since Tuesday's launch from Florida. Isaacman is bankrolling the Polaris mission, as he did his Inspiration4 flight with SpaceX in 2021.

Streamed live on SpaceX's website, the mission tested trailblazing equipment including slim spacesuits and a process to fully depressurize the Crew Dragon cabin - technology that Musk hopes to advance for ambitious future private missions to Mars. "Back at home we all have a lot of work to do. But from here, Earth sure looks like a perfect world," Isaacman said after emerging from the spacecraft, silhouetted with the half-lit planet glittering below. It was one of the riskiest missions yet for SpaceX, the only private company that has proven to be capable of routinely sending people to and from Earth's orbit. "Today's success represents a giant leap forward for the commercial space industry and @NASA's long-term goal to build a vibrant U.S. space economy," said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson.

You can watch a livestream recording of the Polaris Dawn Mission here.

fjo3 shares a report from NASA: Engineers working on NASA's Voyager 1 probe have successfully mitigated an issue with the spacecraft's thrusters, which keep the distant explorer pointed at Earth so that it can receive commands, send engineering data, and provide the unique science data it is gathering. After 47 years, a fuel tube inside the thrusters has become clogged with silicon dioxide, a byproduct that appears with age from a rubber diaphragm in the spacecraft's fuel tank. The clogging reduces how efficiently the thrusters can generate force. After weeks of careful planning, the team switched the spacecraft to a different set of thrusters. [...]

Switching to different thrusters would have been a relatively simple operation for the mission in 1980 or even 2002. But the spacecraft's age has introduced new challenges, primarily related to power supply and temperature. The mission has turned off all non-essential onboard systems, including some heaters, on both spacecraft to conserve their gradually shrinking electrical power supply, which is generated by decaying plutonium. While those steps have worked to reduce power, they have also led to the spacecraft growing colder, an effect compounded by the loss of other non-essential systems that produced heat. Consequently, the attitude propulsion thruster branches have grown cold, and turning them on in that state could damage them, making the thrusters unusable.

The team determined that the best option would be to warm the thrusters before the switch by turning on what had been deemed non-essential heaters. However, as with so many challenges the Voyager team has faced, this presented a puzzle: The spacecraft's power supply is so low that turning on non-essential heaters would require the mission to turn off something else to provide the heaters adequate electricity, and everything that's currently operating is considered essential. Studying the issue, they ruled out turning off one of the still-operating science instruments for a limited time because there's a risk that the instrument would not come back online. After additional study and planning, the engineering team determined they could safely turn off one of the spacecraft's main heaters for up to an hour, freeing up enough power to turn on the thruster heaters. It worked. On Aug. 27, they confirmed that the needed thruster branch was back in action, helping point Voyager 1 toward Earth.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Associated Press: A daredevil billionaire rocketed back into orbit Tuesday, aiming to perform the first private spacewalk and venture farther than anyone since NASA's Apollo moonshots. Unlike his previous chartered flight, tech entrepreneur Jared Isaacman shared the cost with SpaceX this time around, which included developing and testing brand new spacesuits to see how they'll hold up in the harsh vacuum. If all goes as planned, it will be the first time private citizens conduct a spacewalk, but they won't venture away from the capsule. Considered one of the riskiest parts of spaceflight, spacewalks have been the sole realm of professional astronauts since the former Soviet Union popped open the hatch in 1965, closely followed by the U.S. Today, they are routinely done at the International Space Station.

Isaacman, along with a pair of SpaceX engineers and a former Air Force Thunderbirds pilot, launched before dawn aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Florida. The spacewalk is scheduled for Thursday, midway through the five-day flight. But first the passengers are shooting for way beyond the International Space Station -- an altitude of 870 miles (1,400 kilometers), which would surpass the Earth-lapping record set during NASA's Project Gemini in 1966. Only the 24 Apollo astronauts who flew to the moon have ventured farther. The plan is to spend 10 hours at that height -- filled with extreme radiation and riddled with debris -- before reducing the oval-shaped orbit by half. Even at this lower 435 miles (700 kilometers), the orbit would eclipse the space station and even the Hubble Space Telescope, the highest shuttle astronauts flew.

All four wore SpaceX's spacewalking suits because the entire Dragon capsule will be depressurized for the two-hour spacewalk, exposing everyone to the dangerous environment. Isaacman and SpaceX's Sarah Gillis will take turns briefly popping out of the hatch. They'll test their white and black-trimmed custom suits by twisting their bodies. Both will always have a hand or foot touching the capsule or attached support structure that resembles the top of a pool ladder. There will be no dangling at the end of their 12-foot (3.6-meter) tethers and no jetpack showboating. Only NASA's suits at the space station come equipped with jetpacks, for emergency use only.

"The first Starships to Mars will launch in 2 years," Elon Musk posted on X.com this weekend.

Musk said the launches will happen when the next Earth-Mars transfer window opens, which the science blog NextBigFuture identifies as "about November through December 2026." Musk noted that the 2026 missions "will be uncrewed to test the reliability of landing intact on Mars," but "If those landings go well, then the first crewed flights to Mars will be in 4 years."

"Flight rate will grow exponentially from there, with the goal of building a self-sustaining city in about 20 years. Being multiplanetary will vastly increase the probable lifespan of consciousness, as we will no longer have all our eggs, literally and metabolically, on one planet."

"Solar farms could blanket millions of acres in the United States over the coming decades," writes the New York Times.

But "the sites that capture that energy take up land that wildlife needs to survive and thrive." "We have to address both challenges at the same exact time," said Rebecca Hernandez, a professor of ecology at the University of California, Davis, whose research focuses on how to do just that. Insects, those small animals that play a mighty role in supporting life on Earth, are facing alarming declines. Solar farms can offer them food and shelter by providing a diverse mix of native plants. Such plants can also decrease erosion, nourish the soil and store planet-warming carbon. They can also attract insects that improve pollination of nearby crops...

On a recent morning at the solar meadow in Ramsey, it was time to count insects... In solar pollinator habitat, Minnesota was an early leader among states. Since 2017, funded by the Department of Energy, Lee Walston [a landscape ecologist at Argonne National Laboratory] has been studying sites there and throughout the Midwest. "If you build it, will they come?" he asks in his research. So far, the answer is a resounding yes, if you grow the right plants. In a study published late last year, his team found that insect abundance had tripled over five years on test plots at two other Minnesota solar sites. The abundance of native bees grew twentyfold. The results come amid a global decline of wildlife that leaders are struggling to address.

Some of the most well-known insect species are in trouble: Later this year, the federal government is expected to rule on whether to place monarch butterflies on the Endangered Species List. North American birds, for their part, are down almost 30% since 1970. But at this site, called Anoka County Solar, acoustic monitoring has documented 73 species of birds, presumably attracted by the buffet of seeds and insects. Some build nests in the structures supporting the panels. Mammals are showing up, too... What makes this meadow possible is the height of the panels. A prairie restoration firm had told ENGIE, the owner and developer, that taller panels would allow for a sharp increase in native vegetation species, providing much more ecological diversity, said John Gantner, the director of engineering and delivery for ENGIE's smaller-scale sites. The price of the additional steel and the native seeds were "insignificant to the overall project cost," Gantner said. Over the life of the project, ENGIE has found, pollinator-friendly landscaping actually saves money because it needs far less mowing...

Nationwide, it's unclear what portion of solar farms include any kind of pollinator habitat. The federal project that Walston is part of has a running rough count of just under 24,000 acres. That's compared with about 600,000 acres of currently operating large-scale sites across the country, according to the Solar Energy Industries Association, with a sharp increase expected over the next couple decades.
The article adds that it also helps develoipers get their projects approved "at a time when communities are increasingly wary of vast solar farms. Developers are taking note..."

Others have also suggested "agrivoltaics" — where farming land is also used for generating renewable energy.

"China is on track to launch its Tianwen-3 mission to Mars in 2028, two years earlier than previously planned," writes the South China Morning Post, a change that one space policy research believes "suggests a rising confidence by China in its ability to get the technology right for the complex operation." On Thursday, Liu Jizhong, chief designer of China's Mars mission, told the Second International Conference on Deep Space Exploration in Huangshan, Anhui province, that the team aimed to bring back around 600 grams (21 oz) of Martian soil... A 2028 launch date should see Martian samples returned to Earth around July 2031, according to a previous presentation made by Tianwen-1 mission lead Sun Zezhou at Nanjing University in 2022.
The mission will actually consist of two launches from Earth, reports Space News: Two Long March 5 rocket launches will carry a lander and ascent vehicle and an orbiter and return module respectively. Entry, descent and landing will build on technology used for the Tianwen-1 rover landing. The mission may also include a helicopter and a six-legged crawling robot for collecting samples away from the landing site...

NASA is working on its own, more complex Mars sample return mission. However the program is being reassessed, following projected cost overruns. Studies are being conducted to identify concepts that can deliver samples faster and cheaper than current plans.

Liu stated that the search for evidence of life is the Tianwen-3's top scientific goal, according to state media China Central Television (CCTV). Earlier reporting notes that potential landing areas will be selected based partly on astrobiological relevance. This includes environments potentially suitable for the emergence of life and its preservation, such as sedimentary or hydrothermal systems, evidence of past aqueous activity and geological diversity.
"China states that it plans to work with scientists worldwide to cooperatively study and share Martian samples and data," according to the article: The China National Space Administration has made samples from its Chang'e-5 lunar nearside sample return mission available to research applications for international researchers. The same is expected for the recently-completed Chang'e-6 lunar farside mission."

Further ahead, Tianwen-3 will include partnering with countries and research institutions to define the objectives and tasks of a future Mars research station. This will include analyzing requirements, conducting conceptual studies, design implementation plans, and tackling key technological challenges.
Thanks to Slashdot reader Iamthecheese for sharing the news.

The European Space Agency (ESA) has successfully 3D printed the first metal part aboard the International Space Station. This achievement marks a significant advancement in in-orbit manufacturing that could enable the production of essential spare parts and tools for future long-duration space missions. "The first metal shape was produced in August, and three more are planned as part of the experiment," notes The Register. "All four will eventually be returned to Earth for analysis -- two to ESA's technical center, ESTEC, in the Netherlands, one to the agency's astronaut training center in Cologne, and the last sample to the Technical University of Denmark." From the report: During a panel discussion following the UK premiere of Fortitude, a film about the emerging commercial space industry, Advenit Makaya, Advanced Manufacturing Engineer at ESA, remarked on the potential for recycling space debris in the process rather than having to rely on raw materials launched to the ISS. Rob Postema, ESA Project Manager for Metal 3D, told The Register that the agency was indeed looking at "circular" solutions in its drive for greater sustainability. However, don't hold your breath for putting bits of space garbage into one end and getting shiny metal parts out of the other: "A timeline is difficult to indicate, some early results are achieved with ground activities, ready to evaluate solutions in space."

The printer is overseen from the ground and operated for around four hours per day. The ground team has to check each layer via images and a scan of the surface area; printing a sample can take 10-25 days. However, Postema said: "Through automated control of the printing process as well as continuous operations, this can be substantially reduced." Knick-knacks from orbits are all well and good, but could something more substantial be produced? Yes, although not with this demonstrator, which can print to the outer dimensions of a soft drink can. Postema noted that while the demonstrator could manage smaller parts, either as a single unit or as part of larger structures, "there are definitely opportunities to create 3D shapes and parts with this technology larger than what we have done with this Technology Demonstrator."

"SpaceX deployed its 7,000th Starlink satellite this week, making the vast majority of active satellites around earth part of a single megaconstellation," writes Slashdot reader DogFoodBuss. "The Starlink communications system is now orders of magnitude larger than its nearest competitor, offering unprecedented access to low-latency broadband from anywhere on the planet." According to the latest data from satellite tracker CelesTrak, SpaceX now controls over 62% of all operational satellites. The Independent reports: The latest data from non-profit satellite tracker CelesTrak shows that SpaceX has 6,370 active Starlink satellites in low-Earth orbit, with several hundred more inactive or deorbited. The figure, which has risen more than six-fold in just three years, represents just over 62 per cent of all operational satellites, and is roughly 10-times the number of Starlink's closest rival, UK-based startup OneWeb.

SpaceX plans to launch up to 42,000 satellites to complete the Starlink constellation, capable of delivering high-speed internet and phone connectivity to any corner of the globe. Starlink currently operates in 102 countries and has more than three million customers paying a monthly fee to access the network through a $300 ground-based dish. The company expects to launch its service in dozens more countries, with only Afghanistan, China, Iran, North Korea, Russia and Syria not on the current waitlist due to internet restrictions or trade embargos. "Starlink now constitutes roughly 2/3 of all active Earth satellites," SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said on X following the latest SpaceX launch.

Boeing's "beleaguered" Starliner spacecraft "successfully landed in New Mexico just after midnight Eastern time," reports NPR: After Starliner made a picture-perfect landing, Stich told reporters that the spacecraft did well during its return flight. "It was a bullseye landing," he said. "It's really great to get the spacecraft back...." He said while he and others on the team felt happy about the successful landing, "there's a piece of us, all of us, that we wish it would've been the way we had planned it" with astronauts on board when it landed...

Now that Starliner is back on the ground, Boeing and NASA will further analyze the thrusters to see if modifying the spacecraft or how it's flown could keep the thrusters from overheating in the future.
Futurism explains why NASA wanted an uncrewed Starliner flight: While attempting to duplicate the issue at NASA's White Sands Test Facility in New Mexico, engineers eventually found what appeared to be the smoking gun, as SpaceNews' Jeff Foust details in a detailed new breakdown of the timeline. A Teflon seal in a valve known as a "poppet" expanded as it was being heated by the nearby thrusters, significantly constraining the flow of the oxidizer — a disturbing finding, because it greatly degraded the thrusters' performance.

Worse, without being able to perfectly replicate and analyze the issue in the near vacuum of space, engineers weren't entirely sure how the issue was actually playing out in orbit... While engineers found that the thrusters had returned to a more regular shape after being fired in space, they were worried that similar deformations might take place during prolonged de-orbit firings.

A lot was on the line. Without perfect control over the thrusters, NASA became worried that the spacecraft could careen out of control. "For me, one of the really important factors is that we just don't know how much we can use the thrusters on the way back home before we encounter a problem," NASA associate administrator for space operations Ken Bowersox said, as quoted by SpaceNews.
Now CBS News reports that "the road ahead is far from clear" for Starliner: The service module was jettisoned as planned before re-entry, burning up in the atmosphere, and engineers will not be able to examine the hardware to pin down exactly what caused the helium leaks and degraded thruster performance during the ship's rendezvous with the station. Instead, they will face more data analysis, tests and potential redesigns expected to delay the next flight, with or without astronauts aboard, to late next year at the earliest.

"Even though it was necessary to return the spacecraft uncrewed, NASA and Boeing learned an incredible amount about Starliner in the most extreme environment possible," Ken Bowersox, space operations director at NASA Headquarters, said in a statement. "NASA looks forward to our continued work with the Boeing team to proceed toward certification of Starliner for crew rotation missions to the space station," Bowersox added. In any case, the successful landing was a shot in the arm for Boeing engineers and managers, who insisted the Starliner could have safely brought Wilmore and Williams back to Earth.

Steve Stich, manager of NASA's commercial crew program, agreed that if the crew had been on board "it would have been a safe, successful landing."
Two details about the astronauts now waiting for their February return flight from the International Space Station.

• NPR reports that "in case the space station suffers an emergency that forces an evacuation before that capsule arrives, the station's crew had to jerry-rig two extra seats in a different SpaceX spacecraft that's currently docked there."

• Space.com reports that when the uncrewed Starliner returned, "Among the gear that it carried home were the 'Boeing Blue' spacesuits that Williams and Wilmore wore aboard the capsule. The astronauts have no need for them now. "The suits are not compatible," Steve Stich, manager of NASA's Commercial Crew Program, said during a press conference on Wednesday (Sept. 4). "So the Starliner suits would not work in Dragon, and vice versa."

An intense heatwave across the US west has brought unusually warm temperatures to the region -- some of the highest of the season -- and broken heat records. From a report: Millions of Americans from Phoenix to Los Angeles to Seattle are under heat alerts. Even before this latest bout of extreme weather, which began on Wednesday and is expected to last through the weekend, summer 2024 was already considered the hottest summer on record.

In California, the desert city of Indio saw its hottest 5 September at 121F (49.4C), breaking a previous record of 120 from 2020, while Palm Springs tied its heat record for the day at 121F. The city recorded its all-time high of 124F in July. The Los Angeles region has not yet broken any records -- although Burbank tied for its all-time high of 114F -- the area is bracing for a days-long stretch of triple-digit temperatures. This week Phoenix marked 100 straight days at 100F or more and its hottest 5 September at 116F. In the Pacific north-west, schools around Portland closed early due to the heat and the typically cool Seattle broke its daily temperature record on Thursday at 89F.

This summer was the hottest on record across the world and the Earth saw its hottest day in recorded history on 22 July, which broke a record set the previous day. Heatwaves are growing more frequent, more extreme and longer-lasting in the US west and across the world as the climate crisis drives increasingly severe and dangerous weather conditions. Heatwaves are the weather event most directly affected by the climate crisis, an expert told the Guardian in July.

"Earth.com has an interesting article about the temporary "disappearance" of Saturn's rings in about six months," writes longtime Slashdot reader YVRGeek. From the report: Come March 2025, Saturn's majestic rings will become virtually invisible to earth-based observers. This phenomenon occurs due to the unique tilt of Saturn's axis, which will position the rings edge-on to our line of sight. [...] Saturn's axial tilt, which is the angle its axis leans compared to its orbit around the Sun, is about 27 degrees. As Saturn moves during its 29.5 year orbit around the Sun, this tilt means different parts of its rings and moons get sunlight at different angles, changing how they look. So, the rings are not really disappearing but rather playing a celestial game of hide and seek. At their reappearance, we can also enjoy an accentuated view of Saturn's moons.