Latest news with #AstroForge
Yahoo
28-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
How Asteroid Mining Could Make the World's First Trillionaire
Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson has long posited that the world's first trillionaire will emerge from asteroid mining. With advancements in space technology and resource extraction, this prediction is finally gaining traction. Asteroids are rich in metals like platinum, nickel, and iron, often in concentrations far exceeding those found on Earth. For instance, some asteroids contain platinum at levels up to 15 parts per million, compared to Earth's 0.0005 parts per million. Some asteroids even contain enough precious metals to make everyone on the planet billionaires. These metals are crucial for renewable energy technologies and fuel cells, making them highly valuable, which could easily lead to whoever perfects mining them becoming the world's first ever trillionaire. In an interview with CNBC's 'On The Money' in 2015, Tyson said: "The first trillionaire there will ever be is the person who exploits the natural resources on asteroids. "There's this vast universe of limitless energy and limitless resources. I look at wars fought over access to resources. That could be a thing of the past, once space becomes our backyard." As of yet, no individual has managed to reach trillionaire status. The combined wealth of the world's billionaires is substantial, but it falls short of the $1 trillion mark, although many speculate that Elon Musk will become the world's first ever trillionaire by 2027, and Jeff Bezos might not be too far behind him either. According to Business Insider, a single asteroid could contain around £40 billion worth of platinum, showing the immense wealth potential of asteroid mining. Recent developments indicate that asteroid mining is becoming more feasible. In February 2025, California-based AstroForge launched its Odin spacecraft on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, targeting asteroid 2022 OB5 to test mining technologies. While the mission faced communication challenges, it marks a significant step toward commercial asteroid mining. But how far are we from actually seeing resources from space being mined and brought back to Earth? Well, billionaire Victor Vescovo, one of the investors in AstroForge told the BBC: "Bring back a few micrograms to show it can be done and then scaling the process up is relatively straightforward. "To fully realise asteroid mining may be a multi-decade project. But it's just a mathematical problem." With the vast amounts of money to be made from mining asteroids, could greed do humanity a favour for once, and speed up the race to become the first asteroid miners?
BBC News
23-03-2025
- Science
- BBC News
Metals from space: The rocky future of asteroid mining
As an asteroid mining start-up's latest mission goes awry, Josh Sims look at how close we really are extracting rare minerals from the many celestial bodies floating above us. Thirty years ago the seminal BBC science programme Tomorrow's World made a few predictions about how the world might be by 2025. It was a testament to how hard predicting the technological future is: we would, the programme suggested, have microchip implants to help us deal with ATMs, chat with holographic helpmates in our homes and there would be riots over internet access. The episode also suggested we would be mining asteroids by now. And while we aren't there yet, it's something that some start-ups argue will happen sooner than many imagined. The founder of the California-based company AstroForge believes it will be the first to get there, and the company has already taken the first tentative steps. On 27 February 2025 it launched its first $6.5m (£5.1m) unmanned spacecraft on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Around nine days later, AstroForge believes the spacecraft – named Odin – likely passed beyond the Moon and into deep space as planned. Unfortunately, however, AstroForge developed major communications problems with Odin, which it is still trying to rectify at the time of writing. The firm hopes Odin has now entered its nine-month long coast to its mission destination: a fly-by of the carefully pre-selected asteroid 2022 OB5, some eight million km (five million miles) from Earth, which Odin will assess the composition of using its sensors. "Move fast and break rocks" might be the mantra of Matt Gialich, AstroForge's ebullient founder with a penchant for swear words, who is not dissuaded by the perhaps unresolvable technical trouble. AstroForge expected nothing less than many hurdles and has, he says, learned much even if contact isn't made with this spacecraft again. "Yes, there are a lot more baby steps to take," he concedes. "But we're going to start to actually do it. You have to try." Following a further launch next year, the company plans to develop ways to mine near-Earth asteroids for the valuable, concentrated metals some contain – particularly the platinum-group metals essential to much of our fuel cell and renewable technology. Scientists have highlighted that these are increasingly costly to mine on Earth – financially, environmentally, socially and even geopolitically. But others question whether mining these metals in space and bringing them back to Earth is really feasible, especially in the near term – and whether it could have its own unique, but just as impactful, environmental costs. Gialich hopes that over subsequent test launches over the next decade, AstroForge will recover small quantities of metal – initially a few grams, working up to kilograms as its programme advances – from target asteroids of a few metres to half a kilometre in diameter. Early hauls would likely not be commercial but, Gialich says, depending on the metals extracted, could take them on the way to commercialisation. Just one kilogram of rhodium, for example, is currently priced at $183,000 (£141,000). It certainly sounds optimistic. But Victor Vescovo – one of the firm's main investors and the explorer who built a submersible that in 2019 made him the first person to visit the bottom of all five oceans – feels that the technical challenges are "just a question of developing the tools". "Bring back a few micrograms to show it can be done and then scaling the process up is relatively straightforward," he says. "To fully realise asteroid mining may be a multi-decade project. But it's just a mathematical problem." While it's no doubt a major engineering feat to pull off, he adds, taking samples of material direct from asteroids has already been done by state space agencies, including Japan's Jaxa with Hayabusa 1 and 2 back in 2005 and 2014, and NASA with its Osiris-Rex mission in 2020. And if the idea of mining asteroid seems outlandish, Vescovo argues, many technological breakthroughs – the Wright brothers' first manned flight, for example – have likewise carried the same burden. Until, that is, they actually happen. Ian Lange, associate professor at the Colorado School of Mines, an engineering research institution with a space resource programme, stresses that we can currently only estimate the technological hurdles of asteroid mining. A spacecraft rendezvousing with an asteroid may be only marginally more complicated than doing so with another spacecraft, he notes. But how, for example, might resources be extracted without the stabilising force of gravity? "Mining – separating ore from dirt – is relatively straightforward, but then some kind of chemical or heat process, and gravity, is required to separate what we want from what we don't," Lange says. "Reproducing that in space is going to be much harder. At this stage it's hard to say whether [established] techniques can be employed or whether [the asteroid mining industry] will have to develop entirely new ones." The idea of asteroid mining was largely the stuff of academic interest until the 1980s, when Nasa began to formulate ideas of just how space resources might be gathered, says Lange. These ideas gathered pace with growing environmental concerns during the 1990s, he adds. Indeed, since then several private companies the likes of Moon Express, Planetary Resources or Deep Space Industries struggled against the high development costs. By the end of the 2010s, the latter two were acquired and directed towards other projects. Small wonder Lange believes the combination of business and technological challenges means that asteroid mining is still another 30 years away. The real game-changer, argues Vescovo, has been the technological pace of change over the last 10 years. New observatories, such as the nearly complete Vera C Rubin Observatory in Chile, will soon offer better tracking of asteroids. Optics and spectrographic analysis are affording easier identification of those that look to be candidates for mining – even if quite how many of these there are remains open to debate. Powerful computing has become more widely available. And there are more, and more affordable, off-the-shelf components with which spacecraft can be built. "It wasn't long ago that only governments could do this kind of thing or had access to the technology, and they never used it with much efficiency," says Joel Sercel, founder of TransAstra, a Los-Angeles-based company developing various technologies for the fledgling asteroid mining sector. TransAstra will be running a demonstration of its inflatable "capture bag" tech for the collection of orbital debris on the International Space Station later this year. "Now we have a vibrant private space business that's going to make asteroid mining happen vastly sooner than people predict." The most crucial development for asteroid mining is that it has become far easier and cheaper than ever to get a payload into orbit, due to the privatisation of the space industry and its development of reusable rockets. "We've gone from it costing $10,000 (£7,850) to put 1lb (450g) into space 15 years ago, to a few thousand now," says Vescovo. "And with the likes of Space X's Starship the prospect of it costing hundreds of dollars in the near future." The astrophysicist and science communicator Neil deGrasse Tyson has said that the first trillionaire will come through asteroid mining, "I do hope he's not wrong," laughs Vescovo. Either way, he believes asteroid mining will prove essential to stop metal mining's ongoing despoliation of the Earth. Lange, however, is sceptical of AstroForge's plans: yes, asteroid mining will likely prove technologically possible, he reckons, but he is much less certain about Astroforge's platinum group-focussed business model. "While Earth remains rich in [these resources], even if at the bottom of the sea, that still means a tonne of possibilities [to attain them] that are certainly easier than collecting them from space," he says. "If, that is, we allow ourselves to take them." But Kathryn Miller, an environmental scientist at the University of Lancaster argues that asteroid mining could make for an environmentally more attractive option than, say, deep-sea mining – the still theoretical but soon to be regulated proposal to scrape the seabed for resources. While terrestrial mining is also "[not] exactly good…given the habitat destruction, the social justice issues and so on… gathering the nodules of cobalt and copper from the seafloor isn't just a matter of removing the substrate, but destroying the seabed," Miller says. Of course, getting rockets into space and back is highly polluting and energy intensive but then so is mining. A 2018 study from researchers at the University of Paris–Saclay compared mining platinum on Earth to a projection of mining it from asteroids. The researchers estimated that 150kg of CO2 would be emitted into the Earth's atmosphere for each kilogram of platinum mined from an asteroid. Producing 1kg of platinum on Earth using current practices, meanwhile, generates 40,000kg. This is essentially down to their rarity on Earth: the Earth's upper crust is only 0.0005 parts per million platinum, with even the most productive mines currently operating at around five to 15 parts per million. Daynan Crull, the founder of asteroid mining company Karmen+, thinks the future of asteroid mining lies more realistically in the search for resources to build an economy in space. The World Economic Forum predicts the space economy will be worth a staggering $1.8 trillion (£1.4 trillion) by 2035. Mining in space could shift the balance of power between often developing nations naturally rich in minerals and developed ones able to harness the technology required to harvest them in space, argues Deganit Paikowsky, a scholar at George Washington University Space Policy Institute who researches the politics of space mining. Deganit is wary of the potential disruption to the status quo that asteroid mining might bring. "It's one thing to mine resources in space for use in space – look at the leading space-faring nations now and they're more about creating an enduring human presence in space, so exploiting materials to that end is logical," she says. "But it's another thing to bring those resources back to Earth for use in an [established] Earth economy. That's going to impact many different stakeholders in many ways." When it comes to asteroid mining, says Crull, the headline grabbers tend to be platinum group metals, along with other resources that might be mined, such as rare earths and the helium-3 required for nuclear fusion. But, he says, consider mining of water for its life-sustaining oxygen and rocket propellant hydrogen, or of clay for the 3D printing of ceramics that can be used to make, say, space habitats or solar collectors. Mining would circumvent much of the costs of getting these into space from Earth entirely. "We looked at bringing asteroid resources back to Earth but the feasibility and economics seem fuzzy to us," says Crull. Instead, Karmen+ is looking to mine resources in space to then be used in space, for making space habitats or in the maintenance of satellites, for example. Karmen+ has recently raised $20m (£15.4m) institutional investment and has a launch for its first spacecraft – to test sampling capabilities – booked for February 2027. It still leaves many unanswered questions. Is this just swapping one kind of environmental damage for another? Some have expressed concern about the creation of space tailings – the rubble left over from asteroids once they're mined. They worry about the problem of how to dispose of this waste and, like other space debris, that it otherwise might eventually fall to Earth. Scientists such as Monica Grady, a professor of planetary and space sciences at The Open University in the UK, have argued that space's pristine environment should not be tarnished, with humans instead learning "to clean up as we go along". Gialich, however, argues that the resources in space should instead be viewed as a way to protect those on Earth. "There's infinite space out there and countless asteroids but only one Earth," he says. More like this:• What does spending a long time in space do to the human body?• Where did asteroid 2024 YR4 come from?• The satellites that will skim the sky There's one more question that needs answered, though, before we start buying asteroid resources mined by these companies here Earth: are they really theirs to sell? That is some way off being decided, says Rosanna Deplano, a professor of international space law at the University of Leicester in the UK and an advisor to the Asteroid Mining Corporation, a London-based space mining company. The 1967 Outer Space Treaty, the oldest but most widely ratified agreement on international space law – signed by 115 countries – says we should treat space as a commons but makes no reference to its resources. "So that implies [mining is] not forbidden," says Deplano. The 1979 Moon Agreement, meanwhile, says that the Moon's natural resources shouldn't become anyone's property – but that has only been ratified by seven states, including Chile, the Netherlands and Morocco, and none of which to date have their own manned spaceflight programmes. A United Nations special committee is set to convene in 2027 to discuss the utilisation of space resources, but any pronouncement won't be legally-binding. Indeed, as indicated by discussions between the US and Ukraine on a potential deal over Ukraine's mineral resources, it may be that national interests could take precedence. "If the extraction from asteroids is for scientific research I don't think it will be terribly problematic," says Deplano. "But the problem arises on the political level when it's commercial." Countries are already giving interpretations on this issue from their own national perspectives, she adds. "That's only incentivising commercialisation. It's going to happen." -- For more science, technology, environment and health stories from the BBC, follow us on Facebook, Xand Instagram.
CNN
08-03-2025
- Science
- CNN
Two moon missions touched down on the lunar surface. How they unfolded was a stark contrast
Each time a robotic explorer launches from Earth, it faces innumerable challenges — any of which could cut the mission short. California-based asteroid mining company AstroForge shared on Thursday that its Odin spacecraft, which ventured to space a week and a half ago with Intuitive Machines' Athena lunar lander, met an untimely end. The probe was heading for an asteroid to scout for the valuable resource platinum. But Odin's team said the vehicle is likely tumbling through space, with little hope of restoring communications. Space is hard, and every bold mission adds lessons learned. This week, a tale of two lunar landers demonstrates why scientists and engineers always expect the unexpected in the saga of space exploration. Defying gravity On March 2, Firefly Aerospace's Blue Ghost lunar lander touched down on the moon, making it the second private sector company to execute the feat. Photos showcasing the spacecraft's dramatic shadow on the lunar surface and its feet within moon dust confirmed the mission's success. The Cedar Park, Texas-based company has since shared a video of the lander's nail-biting descent just north of the moon's equator. Blue Ghost will spend the next week collecting samples, drilling into the subsurface and capturing high-definition imagery. Lunar update The Athena lander also made it to the moon, after descending near the lunar south pole on Thursday in hopes of conducting a water-finding mission. Initially, Intuitive Machines was scrambling to determine the spacecraft's orientation. But images from Athena's suite of cameras helped confirm that the mission ended prematurely, with the lander lying on its side inside a crater. The lander is 820 feet (250 meters) from the target landing site of Mons Mouton, a flat-topped mountain, the Houston-based company said. Before powering down, Athena briefly operated and transmitted data, making it the 'southernmost lunar landing and surface operations ever achieved,' according to the company. Back to the future Meet the woolly mouse, genetically modified to have several woolly mammoth-like traits. Engineered by Colossal Biosciences, the mice have curly whiskers and hair that grows three times longer than that of typical lab mice. Colossal is attempting to resurrect mammoths and other extinct creatures, and the mice will enable its team to test links between specific genetic sequences and physical traits that enabled the giants to endure bitterly cold environments, according to the private Dallas company. But the new study doesn't address whether the modified mice are actually tolerant of the cold, said Robin Lovell-Badge, head of the Stem Cell Biology and Developmental Genetics Laboratory at The Francis Crick Institute in London. 'As it is, we have some cute looking hairy mice, with no understanding of their physiology, behaviour, etc,' Lovell-Badge said via email. Force of nature The adventure of the world's biggest iceberg, known as A23a, may have come to an end after it spent five years wandering the Southern Ocean near Antarctica and, for a time, spinning around an undersea mountain. The 'megaberg,' weighing 1.1 trillion tons (nearly 1 trillion metric tonnes) and slightly smaller than Rhode Island, ran aground on the island of South Georgia in the southern Atlantic Ocean. 'Nutrients stirred up by the grounding and from its melt may boost food availability for the whole regional ecosystem, including for charismatic penguins and seals,' said Andrew Meijers, an oceanographer at the British Antarctic Survey. Now, scientists are trying to predict what will happen to A23a next, and what impact the iceberg will have if it splits into pieces. A long time ago Archaeologists have uncovered a cache of tools that ancient human ancestors crafted from elephant and hippopotamus bones 1.5 million years ago in Olduvai Gorge, known as the 'Cradle of Humankind,' in Tanzania. The unexpected discovery makes these the oldest known bone tools by about 1 million years. The 27 bone fragments appear to have been systematically sharpened and shaped using stone. Researchers believe our early human ancestors took the same sophisticated techniques they used to make stone tools and applied them to carefully selected limb bones from large animals. The finding suggests that hominins were capable of critical thinking and innovative craftsmanship, but scientists are still trying to figure out who exactly made the tools. Explorations Let your curiosity ascend to new heights with these stories: — For the second time this year, SpaceX's megarocket Starship exploded midflight during a test mission, disrupting air traffic and raining down flaming debris that was captured on video by onlookers in the Caribbean. — The narwhal is often called the 'unicorn of the sea' because of its signature spiral tusk. Now, scientists have recorded the first video evidence revealing some surprising ways the Arctic whales use their tusks, including for playful behavior. — The twin Voyager probes are each turning off a science instrument to conserve power and prevent both historic missions from ending within a few months.
Yahoo
08-03-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Two moon missions touched down on the lunar surface. How they unfolded was a stark contrast
Editor's note: A version of this story appeared in CNN's Wonder Theory science newsletter. To get it in your inbox, sign up for free here. Each time a robotic explorer launches from Earth, it faces innumerable challenges — any of which could cut the mission short. California-based asteroid mining company AstroForge shared on Thursday that its Odin spacecraft, which ventured to space a week and a half ago with Intuitive Machines' Athena lunar lander, met an untimely end. The probe was heading for an asteroid to scout for the valuable resource platinum. But Odin's team said the vehicle is likely tumbling through space, with little hope of restoring communications. Space is hard, and every bold mission adds lessons learned. This week, a tale of two lunar landers demonstrates why scientists and engineers always expect the unexpected in the saga of space exploration. On March 2, Firefly Aerospace's Blue Ghost lunar lander touched down on the moon, making it the second private sector company to execute the feat. Photos showcasing the spacecraft's dramatic shadow on the lunar surface and its feet within moon dust confirmed the mission's success. The Cedar Park, Texas-based company has since shared a video of the lander's nail-biting descent just north of the moon's equator. Blue Ghost will spend the next week collecting samples, drilling into the subsurface and capturing high-definition imagery. The Athena lander also made it to the moon, after descending near the lunar south pole on Thursday in hopes of conducting a water-finding mission. Initially, Intuitive Machines was scrambling to determine the spacecraft's orientation. But images from Athena's suite of cameras helped confirm that the mission ended prematurely, with the lander lying on its side inside a crater. The lander is 820 feet (250 meters) from the target landing site of Mons Mouton, a flat-topped mountain, the Houston-based company said. Before powering down, Athena briefly operated and transmitted data, making it the 'southernmost lunar landing and surface operations ever achieved,' according to the company. Meet the woolly mouse, genetically modified to have several woolly mammoth-like traits. Engineered by Colossal Biosciences, the mice have curly whiskers and hair that grows three times longer than that of typical lab mice. Colossal is attempting to resurrect mammoths and other extinct creatures, and the mice will enable its team to test links between specific genetic sequences and physical traits that enabled the giants to endure bitterly cold environments, according to the private Dallas company. But the new study doesn't address whether the modified mice are actually tolerant of the cold, said Robin Lovell-Badge, head of the Stem Cell Biology and Developmental Genetics Laboratory at The Francis Crick Institute in London. 'As it is, we have some cute looking hairy mice, with no understanding of their physiology, behaviour, etc,' Lovell-Badge said via email. The adventure of the world's biggest iceberg, known as A23a, may have come to an end after it spent five years wandering the Southern Ocean near Antarctica and, for a time, spinning around an undersea mountain. The 'megaberg,' weighing 1.1 trillion tons (nearly 1 trillion metric tonnes) and slightly smaller than Rhode Island, ran aground on the island of South Georgia in the southern Atlantic Ocean. 'Nutrients stirred up by the grounding and from its melt may boost food availability for the whole regional ecosystem, including for charismatic penguins and seals,' said Andrew Meijers, an oceanographer at the British Antarctic Survey. Now, scientists are trying to predict what will happen to A23a next, and what impact the iceberg will have if it splits into pieces. Archaeologists have uncovered a cache of tools that ancient human ancestors crafted from elephant and hippopotamus bones 1.5 million years ago in Olduvai Gorge, known as the 'Cradle of Humankind,' in Tanzania. The unexpected discovery makes these the oldest known bone tools by about 1 million years. The 27 bone fragments appear to have been systematically sharpened and shaped using stone. Researchers believe our early human ancestors took the same sophisticated techniques they used to make stone tools and applied them to carefully selected limb bones from large animals. The finding suggests that hominins were capable of critical thinking and innovative craftsmanship, but scientists are still trying to figure out who exactly made the tools. Let your curiosity ascend to new heights with these stories: — For the second time this year, SpaceX's megarocket Starship exploded midflight during a test mission, disrupting air traffic and raining down flaming debris that was captured on video by onlookers in the Caribbean. — The narwhal is often called the 'unicorn of the sea' because of its signature spiral tusk. Now, scientists have recorded the first video evidence revealing some surprising ways the Arctic whales use their tusks, including for playful behavior. — The twin Voyager probes are each turning off a science instrument to conserve power and prevent both historic missions from ending within a few months. Like what you've read? Oh, but there's more. Sign up here to receive in your inbox the next edition of Wonder Theory, brought to you by CNN Space and Science writers Ashley Strickland, Katie Hunt and Jackie Wattles. They find wonder in planets beyond our solar system and discoveries from the ancient world.
Yahoo
08-03-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Two moon missions touched down on the lunar surface. How they unfolded was a stark contrast
Editor's note: A version of this story appeared in CNN's Wonder Theory science newsletter. To get it in your inbox, sign up for free here. Each time a robotic explorer launches from Earth, it faces innumerable challenges — any of which could cut the mission short. California-based asteroid mining company AstroForge shared on Thursday that its Odin spacecraft, which ventured to space a week and a half ago with Intuitive Machines' Athena lunar lander, met an untimely end. The probe was heading for an asteroid to scout for the valuable resource platinum. But Odin's team said the vehicle is likely tumbling through space, with little hope of restoring communications. Space is hard, and every bold mission adds lessons learned. This week, a tale of two lunar landers demonstrates why scientists and engineers always expect the unexpected in the saga of space exploration. On March 2, Firefly Aerospace's Blue Ghost lunar lander touched down on the moon, making it the second private sector company to execute the feat. Photos showcasing the spacecraft's dramatic shadow on the lunar surface and its feet within moon dust confirmed the mission's success. The Cedar Park, Texas-based company has since shared a video of the lander's nail-biting descent just north of the moon's equator. Blue Ghost will spend the next week collecting samples, drilling into the subsurface and capturing high-definition imagery. The Athena lander also made it to the moon, after descending near the lunar south pole on Thursday in hopes of conducting a water-finding mission. Initially, Intuitive Machines was scrambling to determine the spacecraft's orientation. But images from Athena's suite of cameras helped confirm that the mission ended prematurely, with the lander lying on its side inside a crater. The lander is 820 feet (250 meters) from the target landing site of Mons Mouton, a flat-topped mountain, the Houston-based company said. Before powering down, Athena briefly operated and transmitted data, making it the 'southernmost lunar landing and surface operations ever achieved,' according to the company. Meet the woolly mouse, genetically modified to have several woolly mammoth-like traits. Engineered by Colossal Biosciences, the mice have curly whiskers and hair that grows three times longer than that of typical lab mice. Colossal is attempting to resurrect mammoths and other extinct creatures, and the mice will enable its team to test links between specific genetic sequences and physical traits that enabled the giants to endure bitterly cold environments, according to the private Dallas company. But the new study doesn't address whether the modified mice are actually tolerant of the cold, said Robin Lovell-Badge, head of the Stem Cell Biology and Developmental Genetics Laboratory at The Francis Crick Institute in London. 'As it is, we have some cute looking hairy mice, with no understanding of their physiology, behaviour, etc,' Lovell-Badge said via email. The adventure of the world's biggest iceberg, known as A23a, may have come to an end after it spent five years wandering the Southern Ocean near Antarctica and, for a time, spinning around an undersea mountain. The 'megaberg,' weighing 1.1 trillion tons (nearly 1 trillion metric tonnes) and slightly smaller than Rhode Island, ran aground on the island of South Georgia in the southern Atlantic Ocean. 'Nutrients stirred up by the grounding and from its melt may boost food availability for the whole regional ecosystem, including for charismatic penguins and seals,' said Andrew Meijers, an oceanographer at the British Antarctic Survey. Now, scientists are trying to predict what will happen to A23a next, and what impact the iceberg will have if it splits into pieces. Archaeologists have uncovered a cache of tools that ancient human ancestors crafted from elephant and hippopotamus bones 1.5 million years ago in Olduvai Gorge, known as the 'Cradle of Humankind,' in Tanzania. The unexpected discovery makes these the oldest known bone tools by about 1 million years. The 27 bone fragments appear to have been systematically sharpened and shaped using stone. Researchers believe our early human ancestors took the same sophisticated techniques they used to make stone tools and applied them to carefully selected limb bones from large animals. The finding suggests that hominins were capable of critical thinking and innovative craftsmanship, but scientists are still trying to figure out who exactly made the tools. Let your curiosity ascend to new heights with these stories: — For the second time this year, SpaceX's megarocket Starship exploded midflight during a test mission, disrupting air traffic and raining down flaming debris that was captured on video by onlookers in the Caribbean. — The narwhal is often called the 'unicorn of the sea' because of its signature spiral tusk. Now, scientists have recorded the first video evidence revealing some surprising ways the Arctic whales use their tusks, including for playful behavior. — The twin Voyager probes are each turning off a science instrument to conserve power and prevent both historic missions from ending within a few months. Like what you've read? Oh, but there's more. Sign up here to receive in your inbox the next edition of Wonder Theory, brought to you by CNN Space and Science writers Ashley Strickland, Katie Hunt and Jackie Wattles. They find wonder in planets beyond our solar system and discoveries from the ancient world.
