Latest news with #Burkhart
USA Today
02-05-2025
- Politics
- USA Today
Trump budget proposal: NASA's SLS rocket, Orion and science on chopping block
Trump budget proposal: NASA's SLS rocket, Orion and science on chopping block Show Caption Hide Caption Rutgers scientist discovers massive molecular cloud near Earth, Sun Eos, a massive gas cloud, is one of the largest structures in the sky. NatureLifePhoto/Flickr (New York City Skyline), Burkhart et al. 2025 + NASA The White House budget proposal aims to discontinue NASA's Space Launch System (SLS) after three missions due to cost overruns. NASA's overall budget, including science programs, faces cuts, with the Mars Sample Return mission slated for termination. The days of NASA's Space Launch System moon rocket and Orion space capsule may be limited, as a White House budget proposal for the space agency aims to phase out the overbudget SLS after just two more missions. And it's not just Artemis. NASA's budget as a whole would see agency-wide cuts that go beyond human exploration with the total budget dropping $6 billion from $24.8 billion to $18.8 billion — or nearly 25 percent. NASA's science budget takes a particularly significant hit. "The White House has proposed the largest single-year cut to NASA in American history," The Planetary Society said in a statement, noting that the proposal comes as President Trump's proposed pick to lead NASA, businessman space traveler Jared Isaacman, still is not in the job. "It would recklessly slash NASA's science budget by 47%, forcing widespread terminations of functional missions worth billions of dollars." On Friday, May 2, the 46-page Discretionary Budget Request for fiscal year 2026 was made public. Among the proposed cuts drawing attention: NASA's SLS rocket and the Gateway space station — which was planned to orbit the moon starting during Artemis IV through an international partnership. "The Budget funds a program to replace SLS and Orion flights to the Moon with more cost effective commercial systems that would support more ambitious subsequent lunar missions," the document reads. SLS is stated to cost $4 billion per launch and run about 140% over budget. The giant rocket's cost overruns and delays have been the subject of continued concern, but it was seen as a centerpiece in the effort to return Americans to the moon ahead of the Chinese. The budget didn't outline what would replace SLS but many have pointed to SpaceX's Starship, although that vehicle still has not been able to successfully complete an orbital mission. The budget says the cuts come so effort can be refocused on beating China and "putting the first human on Mars." To do that, the budget allocates more than $7 billion for lunar exploration and another $1 billion for Mars-focused programs. The budget also includes an increase of $647 million for Human Space Exploration. By eventually eliminating the SLS rocket and Orion, officials suggest an annual savings of $879 million. To date, NASA's SLS has launched once on an uncrewed mission back in late 2022. During the flight, the Orion spacecraft was found to have heat shield issues upon reentry forcing some adjustments to its planned trajectory. The SLS rocket for the Artemis II mission, which is set to fly around the moon no earlier than spring 2026, is currently being stacked inside Kennedy Space Center's massive Vehicle Assembly Building. Artemis III is planned to launch four astronauts in the Orion spacecraft atop NASA's SLS no earlier than mid-2027. The crew will than meet with a SpaceX Starship in lunar orbit, and two astronauts will transfer over and land on the lunar surface for the first time in more than 50 years. Messages seeking comment with U.S. Rep. Mike Haridopolos' office were not immediately returned Friday. Haridopolos represents Florida's Space Coast. Mars becomes a new focus Landing Americans on Mars has been a large talking point of President Donald Trump and SpaceX CEO turned Department of Government Efficiency leader, Elon Musk. In a press release, NASA officials said the proposed budget 'accelerates human space exploration of the Moon and Mars with a fiscally responsible portfolio of missions.' 'This proposal includes investments to simultaneously pursue exploration of the Moon and Mars while still prioritizing critical science and technology research,' Acting NASA Administrator Janet Petro said in the release. Also in the proposal is a scale-back of International Space Station operations as the aging station is planned to cease operations by 2030, and NASA moves onto private space stations such as Axiom's planned space station. NASA science budget cuts proposed Proposed cuts go beyond human exploration. Space Science will see a cut of $2.2 billion while Earth Science is set to see a $1.1 billion cut. Areas mentioned in particular were things deemed climate-related. "To achieve these objectives, the Budget would streamline the NASA workforce, information technology services, NASA Center operations, facility maintenance, and construction and environmental compliance activities. The Budget also terminates multiple unaffordable missions and reduces lower priority research, resulting in a leaner Science program that reflects a commitment to fiscal responsibility," a statement on the NASA website reads. Space Science cuts would terminate: the delayed and over-budget Mars sample return project, the budget said. Instead, human missions to Mars could achieve that sample return by the previously estimated date in the 2030s, the budget projects. Opposition to the budget cuts On April 30, a coalition of 10 space advocacy groups ranging from the American Astronomical Society to The Mars Society sent a joint letter to Congress expressing 'profound alarm' at the potential of deep cuts in NASA science. 'The impact extends far beyond mission hardware. These cuts would eviscerate space science research and analysis programs, crippling university departments, research institutions, and NASA centers,' the letter said. 'It would decimate the nation's STEM talent pipeline, eliminating vital training opportunities for the next generation of scientists and engineers and likely lead to widespread layoffs within this highly skilled workforce, both in the government and industry. If enacted, this budget will have real downstream impacts on America's ability to field next generation technology, impacting U.S. national security and economic development,' the letter said. Among the areas they cited for concern: planetary defense, which is finding and tracking asteroids that could pose a threat to Earth, and heliophysics which helps protect satellites and communications from solar storms and other space weather. On May 2, The Planetary Society warned: Slashing NASA's budget by this much, this quickly, without the input of a confirmed NASA Administrator or in response to a considered policy goal, won't make the agency more efficient — it will cause chaos, waste the taxpayers' investment, and undermine American leadership in space." NASA has already seen some cuts. In early March, NASA announced it was closing its Office of Technology, Policy, and Strategy; the Office of the Chief Scientist; and a DEI-themed branch, impacting 23 jobs. Brooke Edwards is a Space Reporter for Florida Today, part of the USA TODAY Network. Contact her at bedwards@ or on X: @brookeofstars.
Yahoo
02-05-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
'It's huge, and it's been hidden for this whole time': Gigantic, glow-in-the-dark cloud near Earth surprises astronomers
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. Astronomers have discovered the closest known molecular cloud to Earth, giving them a rare close-up view of the cosmic recycling of matter that fuels the creation of new stars and planets. Named "Eos" after the Greek goddess of dawn, the newfound cloud is an enormous, crescent-shaped blob of hydrogen gas located just 300 light-years from Earth. At roughly 100 light-years wide, it spans the equivalent of about 40 Earth moons lined up side by side, making it one of the largest structures in the sky. "It's huge, and it's been hidden for this whole time," Blakesley Burkhart, an associate professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Rutgers University in New Jersey who led the discovery, told Live Science. Despite its enormous size and relatively close proximity to Earth, Eos had thus far eluded detection due to its low content of carbon monoxide (CO) — a bright, easily detectable chemical signature astronomers typically rely on to identify molecular clouds. Instead, the researchers detected Eos through the fluorescent glow of hydrogen molecules within it — a novel approach that could reveal many similarly hidden clouds throughout the galaxy. "There definitely are more CO-dark clouds waiting to be discovered," Burkhart said. Molecular hydrogen is the most abundant substance in the universe. By discovering and studying hydrogen-filled clouds like Eos, astronomers could uncover previously undetected hydrogen reservoirs, thereby allowing them to more precisely gauge the amount of material available for star and planet formation across the universe. The researchers reported the discovery in a paper published April 28 in the journal Nature Astronomy. Burkhart discovered Eos while analyzing 20-year-old data from a spectrograph aboard the Korean Science and Technology Satellite-1, which was launched into Earth orbit in 2003 to map the distribution of hot gas in the Milky Way. Related: Astronomers discover 'Quipu', the single largest structure in the known universe Similar to how a prism splits visible light, the spectrograph on board the satellite broke down far-ultraviolet light into a spectrum of wavelengths. This enabled scientists to identify emissions from different molecules. In what seemed to be an empty region of the sky, data cataloging of the hydrogen molecules revealed Eos to be "literally glowing in the dark," Burkhart said in a Rutgers statement. "It was very serendipitous," she told Live Science. "I was looking at this data and saw this structure. I was like, 'Huh, I don't know what that is. That's unique.'" Eos has been sculpted into its crescent shape through interactions with a nearby colossal feature in the sky — the North Polar Spur, a vast region of ionized gas that extends from the plane of the Milky Way all the way toward the northern celestial pole. Eos' shape aligns perfectly with the North Polar Spur at high latitudes, Burkhart said, indicating that the energy and radiation from this massive structure, likely driven by past supernovas or stellar winds, have interacted and influenced the surrounding gas, including Eos. Simulations tracing Eos' evolution — particularly how its molecular hydrogen reservoir is torn apart by incoming photons and high-energy cosmic rays from the North Polar Spur and other sources — suggest it will evaporate in about 6 million years, the new study found. A follow-up study of Eos searched for signs of recent or ongoing star formation with data from the European Space Agency's recently retired Gaia space telescope. The findings, which have yet to be peer-reviewed, suggest the cloud has not undergone any substantial bursts of star formation in the past. However, it remains uncertain whether the cloud will begin to form stars before it dissipates, Burkhart said. RELATED STORIES —'It's answering one of the questions of the century': Scientists may finally know where the oldest gold in the universe came from —Astronomers discover giant 'bridge' in space that could finally solve a violent galactic mystery —James Webb Space Telescope finds a wild black hole growth spurt in galaxies at 'cosmic noon' Burkhart and her colleagues are developing a mission concept for a NASA spacecraft named after the newly discovered molecular cloud. This proposed Eos space telescope would observe in far-ultraviolet wavelengths to measure the molecular hydrogen content in clouds across the Milky Way, including its namesake, to conduct a census of the formation and destruction of molecular hydrogen gas. "There's still tons of open questions," she said. "We're just getting started."
Los Angeles Times
01-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
The Sausalito bartender who created the Tequila Sunrise, and served it to the Rolling Stones, has died
The creator of the modern-day Tequila Sunrise, concocted and popularized in a Sausalito bar in the 1970s, has died. Robert 'Bobby' Lozoff, a longtime bartender at The Trident, a well-known bar, music venue and restaurant frequented by many celebrities, died earlier this month in Hawaii of unknown causes. He was 77. Lozoff's death was first reported by the Marin Independent Journal. Jeff Burkhart, a columnist there, said Lozoff's longtime friend confirmed his death. Lozoff and a co-bartender, Billy Rice, are credited with creating the 'most famous and most popular version of the Tequila Sunrise,' according to a historic plaque denoting the milestone, which the Marin History Museum erected in 2023. As the story goes, Lozoff served the drink to a member of the Rolling Stones in 1972, when the band was at The Trident for a party. It was an immediate hit. 'I poured [the band member] the tequila sunrise, and you could sort of see the light go on in his head. Bingo. You don't need a bartender to travel with you, just buy a bottle of Cuervo, a bottle of orange juice, and grenadine,' Lozoff recalled in 2016. In some versions of the story, Lozoff first served the drink to Mick Jagger; in others it was Keith Richards. Either way, the bandmates loved it, taking the tequila, orange juice and grenadine drink with them on tour, quickly popularizing the combination. Their 1972 tour would become known as the Cocaine and Tequila Sunrise tour, spreading the drink 'all around the globe,' the Marin History Museum plaque says. An earlier version of the Tequila Sunrise is said to have been created in the 1930s or 1940s at the Arizona Biltmore Hotel, using tequila, soda, lime juice and créme de cassis — a heavy, red liqueur, according to Chilled Magazine. But Lozoff and Rice created today's more ubiquitous Tequila Sunrise, using orange juice and grenadine for a beachy, ombré effect. 'Over the years, I had the great fortune to interview Lozoff on a number of occasions, and he wasn't all that interested in his cocktail legacy — which is the opposite of how those things usually work,' Burkhart wrote in his column remembering Lozoff. But he said Lozoff had very fond memories of working at The Trident. 'It was a fun time, and I have no regrets,' Lozoff told Burkhart in 2012. According to The Trident, this was Lozoff's recipe for a Tequila Sunrise: 1 part Jose Cuervo Especial Silver2 parts orange juice1 tsp grenadine From there, the recipe says, 'pour tequila and orange juice into a glass, over ice. Then, slowly pour in grenadine. Enjoy in a way the Rolling Stones would approve of.'
Yahoo
30-04-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Huge, Invisible Cloud Discovered Just 300 Light-Years From The Solar System
A giant object that has been lurking in the relative galactic vicinity of the Solar System this entire time has just been unmasked in all its enormous, invisible glory. Just 300 light-years away, at the edge of the Local Bubble of space, astronomers have discovered a huge, crescent-shaped cloud of molecular hydrogen, the basic building block of everything in the Universe. It's the first time scientists have managed to discover molecular material in interstellar space by looking for the glow of far-ultraviolet light. Its discoverers have named the cloud Eos, after the ancient Greek goddess of the dawn. "This is the first-ever molecular cloud discovered by looking for far-ultraviolet emission of molecular hydrogen directly," says astrophysicist Blakesley Burkhart of Rutgers University in the US. "The data showed glowing hydrogen molecules detected via fluorescence in the far-ultraviolet. This cloud is literally glowing in the dark." When you look into the night sky, the stars and planets look like glittering diamonds strewn across velvet. You see pinpricks of light, but not much between them. Interstellar space, however, is not empty. Tenuous molecular material drifts between the stars, sometimes coming together in a higher-density cloud. This material is the stuff from which the stars are born, but it's hard to see when it's not all clumped together to form a nebula. Stars are very, very bright, and the glow emitted by the interstellar medium is very, very faint. There are ways to detect it; for instance, light traveling through a cloud of something can be subtly changed, either in the orientation of the wave, or a shift in the frequency. One theory about the matter in interstellar space is that it may have been evading detection. One of the most popular tracers that astronomers look for, for example, is carbon monoxide, and it has yielded a lot of information about the interstellar medium. But what about clouds that don't have a lot of carbon monoxide? Burkhart and her colleagues took a different approach, analyzing publicly released observations collected by South Korea's STSat-1 ultraviolet space telescope. Hydrogen makes up around 90 percent of the visible Universe by atoms, and 73 percent by mass. Molecular hydrogen fluoresces in far-ultraviolet when irradiated by ultraviolet starlight, so the researchers focused their efforts on searching for a strong emission associated with this interaction. This is what led them to Eos, and enabled them to map its size and shape. It's roughly crescent-shaped and has a diameter of about 80 to 85 light-years. Within that contour, it contains around 2,000 solar masses' worth of hydrogen, representing around 36 percent of the total mass of the cloud. If we could see it with our eyes in the night sky, Eos would be 40 times the width of the full Moon. This material within the cloud, the team determined, is likely being evaporated by the stars around it, a process called photodissociation. It's dissipating at a rate of around 600 solar masses per million years, and will be totally gone in around 5.7 million years' time. That's not very long, on cosmic timescales. "When we look through our telescopes, we catch whole solar systems in the act of forming, but we don't know in detail how that happens," Burkhart says. "Our discovery of Eos is exciting because we can now directly measure how molecular clouds are forming and dissociating, and how a galaxy begins to transform interstellar gas and dust into stars and planets." What's even more exciting is that the work shows a viable way to search for the heretofore invisible molecular clouds that are lurking throughout the Milky Way, and even the wider Universe. It'll offer new insight into our own galaxy's history of star formation, and how the process has taken place across the vastness of space and time. "The use of the far-ultraviolet fluorescence emission technique could rewrite our understanding of the interstellar medium, uncovering hidden clouds across the galaxy and even out to the furthest detectable limits of cosmic dawn," cosmologist Thavisha Dharmawardena of New York University says. The research has been published in Nature Astronomy. This Eerie Crack of Darkness in The Sky Is Hiding a Glittering Secret Almost a Quarter of Moon Impact Debris Eventually Hits Earth NASA Reveals First-of-Its-Kind Image of Mars Rover Seen From Space
Yahoo
29-04-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Scientists Intrigued by Glowing Cloud Near Our Solar System
Scientists have discovered a gigantic, glowing gas of hydrogen gas lurking just 300 light-years away. As detailed in a paper to be published in the journal Nature Astronomy, the international team of researchers spotted the crescent-shaped gas cloud, dubbed Eos, on the edge of the Local Bubble, an enormous cavity that encompasses our entire solar system. The team discovered the cloud by scanning the skies for ultraviolet emissions of molecular hydrogen, the first implementation of such a technique, which they conducted using the far-ultraviolet spectrograph attached to the South Korean satellite STSAT-1. Conventionally, researchers use radio or infrared observatories to pick up the chemical signatures. "The data showed glowing hydrogen molecules detected via fluorescence in the far ultraviolet," said Rutgers School of Arts and Sciences associate professor and team lead Blakesley Burkhart in a statement. "This cloud is literally glowing in the dark." The researchers are hoping the discovery could allow them to better understand the interstellar medium, the space between stars, and how molecular clouds of gas eventually go on to form new stars. "When we look through our telescopes, we catch whole solar systems in the act of forming, but we don't know in detail how that happens," Burkhart explained. "Our discovery of Eos is exciting because we can now directly measure how molecular clouds are forming and dissociating, and how a galaxy begins to transform interstellar gas and dust into stars and planets." Eos itself has a mass of roughly 3,400 times that of the Sun, and it could take six million years to evaporate. "The story of the cosmos is a story of the rearrangement of atoms over billions of years," Burkhart explained. "The hydrogen in Eos has been traveling for 13.6 billion years since the Big Bang." The cloud eluded scientists for so long because it doesn't emit the usual mix of carbon monoxide gases that have previously been picked up in radio and infrared observations. Meanwhile, Burkhart and her colleagues are excited about spotting far more distant clouds of hydrogen with the help of NASA's James Webb Space Telescope. As detailed in a draft paper, the team believes that "we may have found the very furthest hydrogen molecules from the Sun," Burkhart explained in the statement. "So, we have found both some of the closest and farthest using far-ultraviolet emission," she added. More on molecular clouds: Scientists Detect "Strange Filaments" at the Heart of Our Galaxy
