After nearly two decades of work, scientists have completed a wiring diagram of the central nervous system of an adult male fruit fly (Drosophila melanogaster).
The post Researchers Unveil Complete Fruit Fly Connectome appeared first on Sci.News: Breaking Science News.
For the first time, astronomers combined Hubble and Webb space telescopes to hunt down some of the smallest, faintest objects ever spotted in the outer Solar System.
The post Hubble and Webb Team Up to Spy Tiny Frozen Worlds beyond Neptune appeared first on Sci.News: Breaking Science News.
Solar system simulations starting from varied initial conditions suggest that Earth-like planets can emerge naturally from planet formation. Computer simulations of planetary systems can now begin from thousands of different starting conditions, allowing researchers to explore how worlds might emerge without assuming the final outcome. Over the past three decades, these models have advanced from [...]
Program Scientist
Dr. Delia Santiago-Materese wants things to get complex
From terrestrial animals to experiments in microgravity and Martian clouds, this NASA program scientist’s career path links diverse challenges. Today, she supports a mission to Saturn’s moon Titan, a world teeming with organic molecules that could hold valuable clues about the origin of life.
When novelty is your hobby, you already have a large part of the recipe for a career full of challenges. That is why Dr. Delia Santiago-Materese describes her path within NASA as “meandering.” Her diverse roles have taken her to low Earth orbit, to the clouds of Mars, and to the surroundings of Jupiter. Now, they are also bringing her closer to the surface of Titan, an intriguing moon of Saturn. Woven together by her exploring spirit and a perennial curiosity, all these experiences have one point in common: life.
Today, Santiago-Materese is part of the Planetary Science Division at NASA Headquarters in Washington. The main decoration in her office is a model of Jupiter, larger than a basketball, resting next to a scale model of the spacecraft exploring it, Juno. Small black and red pins with the inscription “Dragonfly” rest in the center of a round table. Several framed diplomas cover a wall. From here, Santiago-Materese does “a little bit of everything” on any given workday as a program scientist for the Juno and Dragonfly missions, and for the Discovery program, which features a portfolio of several missions in our cosmic neighborhood.
This medley of roles is no coincidence. Santiago-Materese describes herself as someone who does not pursue a single goal, but rather diverse interests that she discovers along the way. “I am always looking for something new to add to my experiences,” she says, “because I think I also get bored easily.”
The daughter of a military family, Santiago-Materese was born in Spain by coincidence. Her roots are actually on another continent: her mother is Mexican-American and her father is Puerto Rican. From her time in Spain, she only keeps some baby photos; she lived part of her life in Texas and then in California, which she considers her home—despite having spent her childhood summers in San Sebastián, Puerto Rico. It was in the Golden State where she first imagined herself as a veterinarian and decided to study Biological Sciences. And it was during her studies at Stanford University, “just around the corner” from NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley, that Santiago-Materese discovered astrobiology.
This elective course brought her closer to a discipline that, to some extent, was in its infancy. Today, NASA’s Astrobiology Program investigates life in the universe on many levels: how it began, how it evolved here on Earth, and where it might exist elsewhere. And that was how Santiago-Materese realized that biology and space were not two isolated things, she recounts.
After finishing her studies, Santiago-Materese completed a one-year internship at the San Francisco Zoo. But the unknown that astrobiology presents continued to intrigue her, so she went back to one of her professors to inquire more about it. She asked around and found someone at Lockheed Martin, a company that often contracts with NASA on space projects. They were looking for people for a new project studying the nutrition of the food bars for rodents traveling to space aboard the space shuttle.
Santiago-Materese has applied that formula ever since: identifying what truly interests her and finding the right person to ask questions. If people “don’t know what you’re interested in, they can’t help you,” she explains. After experience with the Space Shuttle Program, including managing databases for science payloads aboard the space shuttle, she went on to work with the International Space Station, which was then beginning its legacy of over 25 years in Earth orbit. She supported the development of biological experiments in microgravity, this time with fruit flies. But Santiago-Materese wanted to keep moving farther from Earth and investigate future space destinations.
This curiosity led her to the Martian sky. As part of her graduate studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz, Santiago-Materese investigated the Martian atmosphere, focusing on ice in the clouds and the development of climate models for the Red Planet. She earned her master’s degree and would later return to complete her doctorate under the NASA Pathways program, which is one of the agency’s primary early-career hiring pathways. She would defend her thesis six months after giving birth to her first daughter (one of the achievements she is most proud of, she says). That is why, although she loves the “weird” planets of the outer solar system, she is “more of a Mars person,” by training.
At NASA Ames, Santiago-Materese held various roles, ranging from social media and open science to lunar sciences. She then became a program officer for the Solar System Workings program in the Planetary Science Division at NASA Headquarters as part of a detail, or temporary assignment. And then, she took off for Maryland along with her family.
Santiago-Materese sums up her current role as a program scientist as the “science liaison” between NASA Headquarters and a mission. “When you do program scientist work, you might not be specialized or an expert in the exact science, but you need to be able to understand it and talk about it, to understand its importance,” she explains. “In general, we are supporting other people so they can do science.” In this endeavor, being someone who “gets more energy from working with people” is useful… and necessary: “You are having conversations all day long” with colleagues from different disciplines— from science and engineering to finance.
The Juno mission, in orbit around Jupiter since 2016, and Dragonfly, which is scheduled to launch no earlier than July 2028, are part of NASA’s New Frontiers program. Santiago-Materese also oversees the array of missions in the Discovery program, which includes ongoing science missions like Psyche and Lucy—heading to different asteroids—and future missions to Venus.
For Santiago-Materese, sharing her unconventional path can be valuable for students and youth in general, especially those who are unsure of what they want to do. “Your dream job,” she says, “you might not know it exists, or maybe it doesn’t exist today.” Beyond that, this zigzagging path has led her to accumulate experiences and relationships with different people, which she treasures even as she sets off for her next destination.
About two years out from Dragonfly’s launch, it is no surprise that this robotic mission takes up much of Santiago-Materese’s time. “Dragonfly feels like a combination of all my different experiences over time,” she reflects. And it signifies, to some extent, a return to her roots: it is an astrobiology mission. Although not designed to detect life, Dragonfly will investigate prebiotic chemistry: the chemical processes that could have led to the emergence of life on Earth.
Dragonfly will embark on a journey of about six years to the surface of Titan. The spacecraft will carry an array of science instruments and will be the first NASA science mission to explore another world by flying from location to location. This car-sized rotorcraft will touch down at various geological sites of interest to analyze the moon’s composition and its habitability potential.
When it arrives at Titan, it will encounter a landscape that is strange and familiar at the same time: it could be a window into Earth’s remote past. This frozen world has a thick atmosphere and clouds drifting across the sky; dunes, lakes, rivers, canyons and mountains. Titan even has a process equivalent to our water cycle. However, on Titan, it is not water that flows but hydrocarbons, primarily methane and ethane. “It’s a more methane-based chemistry, so it is very alien, and that is what I really love about Titan,” says Santiago-Materese. And on this moon, organic molecules abound.
These molecules contain carbon and are used by all known forms of life. They are fundamental to understanding the origin of life, as they can be produced by both biological and non-biological processes. On Titan, these organic molecules fall to the surface and form dense deposits over its bedrock of water ice. Scientists believe that the complex chemistry precursor to life could be triggered there if provided with a little liquid water, such as that generated by an asteroid impact.
Santiago-Materese is especially excited about what the Dragonfly Mass Spectrometer (DraMS) instrument will help discover. DraMS, designed and built at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, will analyze samples from Titan’s surface. “The more complex things get, the more interesting things happen,” she says. “So I’m curious: just how complex do the molecules get? Will we find any interesting patterns?”
But in science, every time you ask a question, a new one arises. Dragonfly will try to answer several of them. “When you have a planet with complex chemistry but not life, what happens? What is there before life?” the program scientist wonders.
Titan, a valuable natural laboratory, “is going to completely change our understanding of what another world can be like,” she anticipates. In addition to what the scientific community expects to discover thanks to Dragonfly, Santiago-Materese is interested in the potential unexpected findings. “There are very defined science goals, but a lot of it is exploratory work,” she explains. “It is kind of nice to know that there is a big range [of possibilities], that we could be very surprised.”
By Noelia González, NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland
Lee esta historia en español aquí.
The post Dr. Delia Santiago-Materese appeared first on NASA Science.
A volcano on an Indonesian archipelago began erupting on Sept. 4, and satellites in orbit have been watching closely.
The volcano Anak Krakatau started spitting out ash and lava on Sept. 4. On an archipelago between Sumatra and Java, the island volcano's sudden eruption grounded flights, closed schools and even stopped fishing in the area.
The volcano launched ash into the air and into the city of Jakarta and the Lampung province during a 25-hour-long eruption. But even following this eruption, Anak Krakatau remained active throughout the weekend. In fact, the volcano is still so active that it could erupt again soon.
But it wasn't just people on Earth watching the volcano erupt this past weekend. The Landsat 8 satellite, operated by NASA and the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), spotted a white plume of volcanic gas billowing into the atmosphere all the way from space. The white plumes of gas are thought to mainly contain water vapor, carbon dioxide and sulfur dioxide, while ash and debris make up the brown clouds surrounding the plumes.
While Anak Krakatau simmers after this most recent eruption, this event isn't a major shock, as the volcano sits in what is known as the "Ring of Fire." This "ring" (a loose term, as it's not exactly a ring) snakes about 25,000 miles (40,000 kilometers) around the Pacific Ocean and includes over 750 volcanoes, some dormant and some active.
In fact, in Indonesia alone there are 500 volcanoes, and 127 of them are active, including Anak Krakatau. And this volcano has a particularly interesting story: It emerged from the sea in 1927, rising from the caldera formed by the 1883 eruption of Krakatau (also known as Krakotoa), which was one of the most famous and destructive volcanic events in history. (Anak Krakatau means "child of Krakatau" in the Indonesian language.)
While not all geologists agree on the exact margins of the Ring of Fire, it rests on a string of tectonic plates and has existed for over 35 million years. And not only is this ring home to hundreds of volcanoes, it's also a hot spot for earthquakes.
Se você costuma trocar mensagens e/ou vídeos com os seus seguidores no TikTok, sabe o quão útil e divertido pode ser isso.
Para personalizar ainda mais esses chats, é possível alterar os sons de alerta de um contato específico (ao todo, são oito opções de toques diferentes).
Veja como é supersimples alterar isso! 💬
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China is making progress on its Tianwen 3 Mars sample return mission, which aims to bring back to Earth roughly 500 grams (17.6 ounces) of Red Planet collectibles in 2031.
According to the China National Space Administration, the Tianwen 3 mission will have a lander, an ascender, a service capsule, an orbiter and an Earth reentry module.
If all goes to plan, Tianwen 3 will launch in 2028 on two Long March 5 heavy-lift rockets from the Wenchang Space Launch Site on the island of Hainan, China's southernmost province.
"The Tianwen 3 mission is progressing smoothly, with intensified efforts being made to overcome technical challenges," Hou Zengqian, the mission's chief scientist, recently told CCTV, a state-run Chinese broadcaster.
"The probe equipment has entered the prototype development phase, and scientifically, many scientist teams from across the country are working together to tackle the challenges in accordance with the mission's scientific objectives," Hou added.
Meanwhile, NASA's plans for hauling Mars samples to Earth are murky at the moment. So China appears to be in the lead to notch a major space milestone.
"If accurate, this represents a Sputnik moment," said former NASA "Mars Czar" Scott Hubbard, referring to the reported Tianwen 3 progress.
"China will not only grab the headlines but may be the first to find evidence of life on another planet," Hubbard, who also previously directed NASA's Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley, told Space.com.
"The Tianwen 3 mission will look for microbial traces potentially similar to early forms of life on Earth, while also taking into consideration the possibility of unknown forms of life that may have emerged through Mars' unique evolutionary history, providing crucial evidence to answer this major scientific question," Hou told the state-run Xinhua news agency in a recent interview.
Searching for potential signs of life on Mars is the top scientific goal of the Tianwen 3 mission, Hou said on Sept. 3 during the 2026 International Deep Space Exploration Conference on, which was held in Hefei, the capital of eastern China's Anhui Province.
China's Mars sample-return trek will be launched "around 2028" on two Long March 5 rockets departing from the Wenchang Space Launch Site in China's southernmost island province of Hainan. (Launch windows for Mars missions come around just once every 26 months. The next one opens in November-December of this year, and the one after that, which Tianwen 3 apparently is targeting, runs from December 2028 to January 2029.)
Hou also said China expects to finalize the landing site for the mission by the end of 2026, with Chinese specialists advancing work on a next-generation geological map of Mars in its entirety.
If everything goes according to plan, the mission will collect samples from the Martian surface and then send them back to Earth around 2031.
"Regardless of whether signs of life are found, the returned Martian samples will have irreplaceable scientific value," Hou said.
Hou added that analyses of the returned samples at microscopic, molecular and isotopic scales could deepen our understanding of Mars' geology and environment, as well as the evolution of habitability and the conditions under which life may originate.
According to Hou, Mars sample return is an extremely complex project, with landing-site selection, planetary protection and contamination control, and the identification of potential signs of life among its key challenges.
Chinese Mars researchers are selecting candidate landing sites for the mission based on factors that include geological age, history of water activity, habitability and the potential for preserving biosignatures.
Xinhua reported last month that a "planetary protection laboratory" is to be built in the first phase of Hefei's Deep-Space Science City in east China's Anhui Province, citing the Deep Space Exploration Laboratory (DSEL).
"The planetary protection laboratory will implement a two-way protection system that guards both the returning Martian samples and Earth's biosphere," Xinhua reports.
The lab's tasks encompass sample sterilization, unsealing, processing and biological risk assessment. "The facility is designed to support the implementation of major deep-space missions and to enable scientific research on Martian samples," added Xinhua.
China "will follow the planetary protection policies of the Committee on Space Research, to prevent biological contamination of Mars by terrestrial organisms and to protect Earth from any potential extraterrestrial life forms that may be carried back in the samples," said Li Hang, director of the development planning department at DSEL, according to Xinhua.
You can view a video about China's Mars sample return plans here.
Scientists may finally know why Venus, Earth's twin, lacks a moon, finding that the hottest planet in the solar system may have consumed its own natural satellite.
Venus is often referred to as Earth's twin due to its size, mass, rocky composition, and distance from the sun, but there are some glaring differences between the two planets. Aside from Venus' blisteringly hot temperature, which could melt lead, incredible surface pressure, violent high-speed winds, and clouds of sulfuric acid, one of the key differences between Earth and Venus can be seen from afar. While our planet has a constant companion in the form of the moon, Venus lacks a moon of its own. In fact, the only solar system planets lacking moons are Venus, the second planet from the sun, and Mercury, the closest planet to the sun.
One question that scientists have puzzled over for years is whether Venus always lacked a moon, or if the hottest planet in the solar system once had a natural satellite and somehow lost it. Now, a team of researchers may have arrived at an answer, determining the fate that would have befallen a hypothetical moon orbiting Venus.
"I have always had a fascination with moon formation and evolution in the solar system, and particularly with Venus since my research is centered around its evolution and potential for past habitability," team leader Stephen R. Kane of the University of California, Riverside told Space.com. "Venus is Earth's twin, and both are nearly identical in size, mass, and composition. However, Earth has a large moon, and Venus has no moon at all, not even a small captured satellite.
"Venus undoubtedly experienced large impacts, just as Earth has, and so has had as much, if not more, opportunity to form a moon similar to what we see in our own skies."
Kane and colleagues constructed a simulation to test their ideas of what could have become of the Venusian moon.
"The work involved going back to fundamental physics and creating the simulation from the ground up, which I validated by ensuring I could reproduce the evolution of the Earth-moon system," Kane said. "The moment I realized that our model provided a complete explanation for Venus not having a moon was an exciting one!"
The team modelled a gravitational tug-of-war between Venus, a hypothetical moon, and the sun, following this forward over billions of years.
"This is the same physics that governs our own moon, which is slowly drifting away from Earth. We ran the calculations across a wide range of possibilities for how fast Venus was spinning and how massive its moon might have been, using two independent mathematical descriptions of how tides work," Kane explained.
The researcher said that this was done so the conclusions reached wouldn't hinge on one set of assumptions. They found in most cases a Venusian moon would not drift safely outward the way ours does. Instead, the modelling showed that a moon orbiting Venus would eventually reverse its course and spiral inward, causing it to be torn apart by the planet's gravity.
Kane and colleagues found that possessing an intimidating size wouldn't guarantee a Venusian moon's survival, either.
"An interesting aspect is that a heavier moon is destroyed faster, since a massive moon would drain Venus's spin so efficiently that it hastens its destruction," Kane added.
But are there any circumstances under which a Venusian moon could have survived?
"Survival came down to two main things: Venus had to be spinning fast when the moon formed, with a day shorter than about 12 hours, and the moon couldn't be too massive, up to roughly the mass of our own moon," team leader Stephen R. Kane of the University of California, Riverside told Space.com. "In that narrow window, the moon migrates outward and stabilizes, much as Earth's did. Outside that range, the moon is unfortunately doomed to be consumed by Venus.
"So a surviving moon would have had to be modest in size, orbiting a rapidly spinning early Venus, which are conditions that don't match what we think early Venus was actually like."
We may never conclusively know if Venus has indeed destroyed its own moon, as Kane thinks that collecting direct evidence from astronomical observations will be very difficult.
"Finding direct observational evidence is pretty tough. A moon lost billions of years ago would leave little to no direct trace we can point a telescope at today, so we can't observe the event itself," Kane said. "However, there are indirect avenues. For example, if a moon was destroyed and its debris rained down on Venus, it could have left a chemical fingerprint in the planet's surface or atmosphere, and upcoming missions to Venus, including NASA's DAVINCI (Deep Atmosphere Venus Investigation of Noble gases, Chemistry, and Imaging) probe, will measure atmospheric composition in detail."
If missions such as DAVINCI could help us develop a better understanding of the Venusian interior, then this would also improve the models such as the one used in this research. That is because the outcomes of such models depend on properties of Venus's interior, which aren't currently well understood.
"There's a broader test beyond our solar system because our results predict that slowly rotating, Venus-like planets around other stars should generically lack large moons, so as astronomers begin searching for moons around exoplanets, that's a prediction that can eventually be checked against real data," Kane said.
Kane and colleagues don't intend to rest on their laurels while further data from Venus or even Venus-like exoplanets are delivered. They have plenty to work on in the meantime.
"There are numerous implications of our work that I would like to explore further. These include the compositional and atmospheric effects of a Venusian moon consumption event that may be testable now," Kane concluded. I would also like to explore similar effects for Mercury and Mars, and conduct further studies on exoplanet cases where such moon collision scenarios may have occurred."
The team's research is available as a pre-peer-reviewed paper on the repository site arXiv.
A cubic meter of lunar soil might be one of our best bets for finding physical proof that another advanced civilization once existed somewhere in the Milky Way, according to a new paper to be published in the International Journal of Astrobiology.
The post Could Scoop of Moon Dust Reveal Alien Technology? appeared first on Sci.News: Breaking Science News.
Claude did not rediscover the proof. It made the existing one machine-checkable.
A hidden molecular defect in inflammatory bowel disease may help explain why flare-ups can return even when patients appear well. Even when inflammatory bowel disease appears under control, intestinal cells may remain primed to die. In a WEHI-led study, researchers found this hidden molecular defect in patients with few or no symptoms, and higher levels [...]The moon could have formed in a matter of hours following the giant impact between Earth and a Mars-size protoplanet early in the history of the solar system. The theory comes from new simulations that take into account how the internal temperature of young protoplanets affected their geologic properties and therefore the collisions they experienced.
This giant impact scenario has become the leading theory of how the moon formed, thanks in particular to work done by planetary scientist Robin Canup. Since 2001, she has conducted and refined numerous computer simulations that describe how a Mars-size body called Theia collided at an angle just right to throw debris into orbit around the proto-Earth.
Now other researchers are getting in on the act. Adeene Denton of the South-west Research Institute led a team who performed some of the most detailed simulations of the collision yet, taking into account more of the geologic properties of the colliding worlds.
"Models have evolved to include material strength, something that's really important when you're studying collisions between smaller bodies like asteroids or for my previous paper about the formation of the Pluto–Charon system," said Denton in a statement. "We weren't sure it would matter for the moon or not. When we did the simulations, we found it actually matters quite a bit."
It turns out that warmer bodies are weaker than colder ones. After the planets formed, they were still hot inside from their formation, which would have affected their material strength. Given that the moon-forming impact occurred not long after the solar system's formation, this would have affected the collision with Theia — but to what degree depends on exactly when the collision occurred and how much Theia had cooled.
As Theia smashed into Earth, it was utterly destroyed. While much of what was left of Theia's shattered iron core sank into the Earth, a large ring of debris wrapped around Earth to form the moon.
The main effect of the temperature being warmer in the outer few hundred miles of Theia was that it would have affected its ability to deform upon impact and absorb the momentum of the collision. This, in turn, would have affected how debris was strewn around Earth to form the moon. Therefore, by including varying temperatures and material strengths in the simulations, Denton's team was able to get a better look at how the collision and the resulting formation of our moon played out.
Previous simulations have shown two possible scenarios. One is that the ring of debris hung around for a substantial amount of time, allowing the moon to accrete from it gradually. The other scenario, first depicted in NASA-led simulations in 2022, implies that the moon came together from this debris in a matter of hours.
Now, Denton's models potentially bolster this startling possibility.
If Theia was colder, meaning that the impact occurred a little later in the history of the solar system, perhaps 100 to 150 million years after the birth of the planets, then the ring of debris would have formed in such a way as to allow the moon to accrete gradually. And because it was stronger, more of Theia would have survived intact to merge with Earth.
On the other hand, a warmer Theia that impacted Earth less than 60 million years after the planets' formation, would create a scenario where the moon could form very quickly while Theia itself would be obliterated.
"Depending on how hot the Earth and Theia are prior to the collision, the impact can destroy Theia and produce this massive disk of debris that eventually forms the moon," said Denton. "But when I used the same parameters as original impact modeling – down to the equal temperature structures inside both bodies — within around five hours, an intact moon emerged."
That would have been quite a day in the history of our planet, acquiring a new moon and an almighty headache all at once.
"These surprising and exciting new results imply a potential connection between the physical properties of the moon today, including perhaps its volatile content, and the thermal state of the Earth and Theia at the time of the giant impact," said the Southwest Research Institute's Robin Canup, who was not involved in this study. "This in turn might help scientists better constrain when the moon-forming event occurred."
In both scenarios, the moon appears to be made mostly from Theia's mantle material, with just a little bit of Earth's mantle mixed in. This latter finding is surprising, given the similarities between the moon's composition and Earth's mantle. However, research has shown that there's clearly more to the story because despite the similarities there are also some puzzling differences in the levels of isotopes that cannot be easily explained by current simulations, including Denton's.
The simulations could have repercussions in the search for exomoons. If the moon did form in a matter of hours, then searching for exomoon-forming disks around terrestrial exoplanets might be a fruitless endeavor because such disks would be so short-lived. Moon-forming disks around gas giant exoplanets would be a different matter, however, because those disks do not form from impacts, but rather from material leftover from assembling those planets.
The results were published on Sept. 1 in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.
xTool says its new X1 laser will be the last one you’ll ever need. The machine is modular, allowing users to add every style of laser xTool makes to the system: CO2, Diode, UV, Fiber, and MOPA. It will also be xTool’s first flying-galvo unit, combining the large size of a gantry system with the speed of a galvo.
And if that isn’t interesting enough, it's also a dual-head system, meaning the galvo will sit side by side with a CO2 laser. The unit will be able to pick and choose which head to deploy for the job – both if needed.
The announcement was made at The Next Level Maker Conference in Grapevine, TX. The event is a combination of maker retreat and expo, with a wide variety of classes and motivational talks by experts who have turned maker hobbies into successful businesses.
Disclaimer: xTool provided travel accommodations for this trip. Coverage remains editorially independent.
Previous “all in one” machines have used swappable toolheads, but these have been limited to various powers of diode and IR lasers. The X1 will use a swappable backpack system to provide the different laser frequencies routed to the galvo toolhead. This means the galvo can be a wood-burning diode, a crystal engraving UV, or a metal etching MOPA.
The machine’s default build will be a powerful 55w CO2 laser paired with a 20w diode for the galvo head. No price was mentioned at the reveal, so we’ll have to wait until closer to the laser’s October launch date to learn more.
A representative from xTool said the company wanted to embrace all forms of making, and be more than “just” a laser manufacturer. To that end, they announced an upcoming embroidery machine, the SE1. The machine, capable of both normal stitching and single-color embroidery, is presented as an entry point to embroidery for those already within the xTool ecosystem. The machine can be paired with the O1 Omni to paint the threads with DTG color.
This may seem to be an overly complex way to achieve colorful stitching, until you consider that full-color embroidery is accomplished with multi-needle machines costing thousands of dollars. They are also insanely complex and require high levels of skill to manage and maintain, whereas a single-color embroidery machine can be purchased for way less and operated by a beginner.
The SE1 will also use the xTool design suite, which makes transferring designs between the sewing machine and UV printer fairly straightforward. During the demo, a piece of fabric was stitched on the SE1, removed from the hoop, then placed inside the UV printer to add color. It was finished with a heat press to set the DT ink.
xTool wasn’t the only company presenting at the show. The vendor hall was full of makers turned small business owners, something that xTool actively encourages with its products and ecosystem.
Marc Pendergraft and John Modi started selling laser-cut products right out of college, and now own Makerflo, a wholesaler that provides “the kind of materials we wish we had.” They sell premium laser-ready merchandise that comes with upscale gift packaging. Their booth also has several new items seeking feedback from shoppers. I was impressed with a coaster that consisted of absorbent stone with a laser-ready metal disc embedded in the center.
Marc and John also led several popular breakout sessions on running a successful laser business.
Angela Cruise, owner of Smokey Hill Designs, brought pallets full of high-quality plywood, acrylic, leatherette, and other sparkly laser substrates. Most were custom printed in eye-catching designs using a diode-safe material. Her goal is to use premium materials, like natural wood and pre-finished acrylics, that require less effort to turn into amazing, high-value products. Nearly everything she sells is manufactured in-house at her company’s North Carolina shop and is held to strict quality standards for use in lasers.
One of the unique materials they had for sale was Freshy Sheets, a thick absorbent material with a colorful printed surface, designed to hold essential oil and act as an air freshener. Naturally, the sheets are designed to be cut in shapes and encased in laser-cut designs.
Aaron Pratt created BurnForge, a subscription-based business tracking system for crafters. The app lets makers track customer orders every step of the way so you stop “ruining expensive blanks.” The program helps you remember machine settings and tracks your inventory and orders. He’s offering a 30-day free trial with the code NEXTLEVEL30 for a limited time.
Brothers Elias and Isaiah Grey designed Maker Studio, a suite of apps that create custom maps you can reproduce with a laser cutter, CNC, or 3d printer. The maps come in either a layered style that looks great when laser cut and stacked, or 3D terrain relief maps that can be 3D printed or CNC carved. Their product lets makers easily turn real locations into design files without needing CAD skills.
Maker Studio is a subscription service that will soon include a box maker, a fit sheet for help with packaging, and a tumbler art maker. You can sign up for a 14-day free trial to test out the program before you commit.
We are a planet-based species: With a few notable (astronaut) exceptions, everyone who has ever lived remained glued to our spinning Earth, which now houses 8.3 billion people.
That's the gravity of the situation. But we're also a world of floods, typhoons, earthquakes, heat and cold calamities, volcanic eruptions and even encounters with sun-caused auroras and bruises from incoming asteroids.
It's quite a world worth watching — and for decades that's what spacecraft have been doing. But what do they view and who's on the other end of the space-based telescopes capturing our daily doings, faults and all, down here on terra firma?
Recently, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), a group based in Paris, published a report on the expanding access to satellite Earth-observation data, spotlighting what it means for privacy, security and trust.
"Advances in optical systems, photonics, cloud computing and artificial intelligence [AI] have democratized both the quality and accessibility of satellite data. However, this convergence of technologies also carries risks, including for national security and privacy," states the report, which was authored by the OECD's Marit Undseth and Claire Jolly.
Broadening access to advanced satellite data also creates new challenges, states the report, such as one of the key characteristics of Earth observation — its dual-use nature. "The same satellites used to track illegal fishing can often also detect military troop movements," the authors write.
The OCED report notes that Earth-observation data and the technological convergence with artificial intelligence raise new concerns about national security, privacy and the ethical use of these data.
In fact, the report points to the growing hazard of fake or incorrectly used satellite imagery. "As part of the growing trend of digital disinformation, the trust in satellite data can be eroded by fake, misinterpreted or intentionally misrepresented imagery," it states.
Space.com asked leading remote-sensing specialists what's being done, what's being learned and what we should worry about.
Viktor Stoyanov is the chief operating officer of Smart Solutions at Space42, where he oversees the business unit's operational and financial performance.
Space42 is a United Arab Emirates-based space technology company that integrates satellite communications, geospatial analytics and AI capabilities. The group runs the Foresight Earth Observation constellation of synthetic aperture radar (SAR) satellites.
Space.com asked Stoyanov about the growing international use of remote-sensing data.
"Governments increasingly expect Earth-observation systems to deliver both sovereignty and cost efficiency, two goals that were long seen as mutually exclusive, as sovereignty typically meant heavy in-country investment in duplicative research and development and capital infrastructure," he responded.
Stoyanov said Space42's focus is to combine those two outcomes.
"We believe that can only be achieved through international cooperation. Our Foresight constellation reflects this model, as the first sovereign dual-use synthetic aperture radar constellation in the region," Stoyanov said.
The satellites were manufactured in partnership with ICEYE in Finland, with critical integration and testing completed in the organization's facility in Abu Dhabi.
"The Abu Dhabi facility was built in cost-cautious and scalable manner, so that it can satisfy current sovereignty requirements commensurate with the constellation size, with the ability to expand the facility and meet demand of future programs," Stoyanov said.
What new in-orbit technologies are being applied to Earth observation?
"The biggest shift in recent years has been the move from few, large, general-purpose platforms to constellations of small, specialized satellites and synthetic aperture radar," said Stoyanov.
"SAR satellites image through cloud, dust and darkness, which matters enormously for our region and for any customer who needs consistency regardless of timing and weather," he added.
Looking ahead, Stoyanov said that the short lifespan of satellites in low Earth orbit is an opportunity to ensure that each replenishment cycle becomes an upgrade cycle.
"As we plan to maintain and expand our fleet, we will continuously seek to deploy technical improvements across various performance metrics of the system — resolution, latency, satellite life, for example," said Stoyanov.
A SAR constellation generates far more imagery than analysts can review manually within the allocated time, Stoyanov said. So the value lies in what can be extracted from it, not in the pixels themselves.
AI is therefore becoming increasingly important as a sorting tool for remote-sensing data, Stoyanov said. It is now the only practical way to work, for three reasons: volume, speed and accuracy.
Customers responding to a flood, a maritime incident or a supply-chain disruption need an answer in minutes, not a report next week — "decision-grade intelligence within minutes," explained Stoyanov.
On the topic of accuracy, while trained analysts are excellent at interpretation and large-object classification — like buildings and sea vessels — there are changes that the eye can easily miss. "Algorithms comparing each new pass against the historical baseline — they catch those consistently, without fatigue," said Stoyanov.
Francis Doumet is the CEO and co-founder of Metaspectral, a company based in Vancouver, British Columbia, that builds AI technology to rapidly analyze hyperspectral imagery.
Doumet views collaboration between different national space agencies as "extensive and, somewhat uniquely, very open." Missions are frequently carried out through "shared funding, instruments, expertise and ground infrastructure," he said, with the resulting scientific data made available internationally.
Commercial imagery is less openly distributed because it is commercially licensed and may have security implications, Doumet said, but it is increasingly enabling international cooperation in the defense sector.
For example, the U.S. Space Force's Tactical Surveillance, Reconnaissance and Tracking (TacSRT) program combines commercial satellite imagery and analytics from American companies and allied nations to rapidly respond to operational requests, Doumet said.
"This has shaped the Earth-observation sector into a hybrid model," said Doumet. Governments and allies share requirements and intelligence, he explained, while commercial operators supply imagery and analytics "at a speed and scale that would be difficult or impossible for a single nation to produce alone."
The improvement in the spatial resolution of hyperspectral sensors is an important advance in Earth observation, Doumet pointed out.
Better sensors, high-speed compression and improved communications, such as optical links, are now narrowing a "resolution gap." Onboard AI is equally transformative, he added.
"Satellites can analyze imagery in real time, identify relevant signatures and transmit alerts or compact intelligence products instead of waiting to download an entire hyperspectral data cube," Doumet explained.
Angie Crews is a principal research associate with the University of Colorado, Boulder's Center for National Security Initiatives.
"There has been a tremendous growth in the commercial remote-sensing industry," Crews told Space.com, noting that this field had previously been government-based. "It's now possible for these commercial companies to deploy entire constellations of Earth-observing satellites, which fundamentally changes the architecture in place."
Crews pointed to the hyperspectral nature of Earth remote sensing — taking the "spectral fingerprints" of what's occurring on Earth.
"It's impressive how the industry is moving forward with some of these capabilities," she said.
"There are some tremendous benefits as well as some things that we need to think about" when it comes to the new direction that Earth observation is taking, Crews said. Remote-sensing data can be inherently dual use, she added.
"Overall, I think we're seeing some enormous benefits from our increasingly capable commercial remote-sensing systems. But it does raise some security and governance questions," said Crews.
It's a balancing act to manage, according to Crews. How best to secure the information for national security purposes versus not putting the squeeze on innovation exhibited by the private Earth-observation firms?
Shifting to her teaching role at the University of Colorado, Boulder, Crews told Space.com that one of the things that's especially important is to train students in the remote-sensing field to think beyond any single sensor or dataset.
"The next generation needs to understand how different sensing technologies work and also how to work with very large datasets and extract meaningful information using AI and machine learning," Crews said.
"We also need to train the students on critical thinking and ensure they are aware of the limitations of AI. The underlying physics need to be understood and the results need to be validated so that the students use and interpret the results appropriately," she concluded.
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