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NASA’s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter became the first aircraft in history to make a powered, controlled flight on another planet. Ingenuity took this shot of its shadow while hovering over the Martian surface. It used its navigation camera, which autonomously tracks the ground during flight. The Ingenuity team at the agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California confirmed the flight succeeded after receiving data from the helicopter via NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover at 10:46 a.m. UTC “Ingenuity is the latest in a long and storied tradition of NASA projects achieving a space exploration goal once thought impossible,” said acting NASA Administrator Steve Jurczyk. “The X-15 was a pathfinder for the space shuttle. Mars Pathfinder and its Sojourner rover did the same for three generations of Mars rovers. We don’t know exactly where Ingenuity will lead us, but today’s results indicate the sky – at least on Mars – may not be the limit.” Early video of flight Read more | #Mars2020 @EverythingScience

Technology Really Is Changing Human Circadian Rhythms, Scientists Say Article @EverythingScience

Latest Martian Update Targeting Monday, April 19 for the Ingenuity #MarsHelicopter first flight. 07:30 – approximate time of 1st flight 10:15 – livestream on NASA TV 18:00 – post-flight briefing (All times in UTC) Learn more | #Mars2020 @EverythingScience

This Is The Point When People Start Trusting Algorithms More Than Other Humans Article @EverythingScience

Microplastics Are Now Spiralling Around The Globe in The Air We Breathe Article @EverythingScience

Scientists Develop New Blood Test That Could Diagnose Your Level of Depression Article @EverythingScience

NASA is developing a plan to build an Arecibo-like telescope on the moon NASA is funding research into how a radio telescope could be built on the far side of the moon. It could function similarly to the Arecibo telescope, which collapsed in December. A lunar telescope could hear radio waves from the early universe that Earth-based telescopes can't as such a telescope would be shielded from the cacophony of radio signals that such a device on Earth would hear from all kinds of equipment and satellites. Article @EverythingScience

As Artemis Moves Forward, NASA Picks SpaceX Human Lunar Lander Article @EverythingScience @SpaceX

The Doubly Warped World of Binary Black Holes A pair of orbiting black holes millions of times the Sun’s mass perform a hypnotic dance in this NASA visualization. The movie traces how the black holes distort and redirect light emanating from the maelstrom of hot gas – called an accretion disk – that surrounds each one. Read more Video (NASA) | Stream on YouTube @EverythingScience

Mind-Bending NASA Visualization Shows The Wild Warping of Binary Black Holes Although it's extremely difficult to directly image the shadow of and the space around a black hole, that's not the only tool astronomers have in their kit. Fascinatingly, simulations came very close to what we saw when a huge international team of scientists finally captured a direct image of a supermassive black hole, the now-famous M87*. Because of the intense gravitational fields involved, stuff gets really whack. Light bends and its intensity changes, depending on which direction it's moving. So what happens when there's not one, but two black holes locked in mutual orbit, each with its own gravity, and each orbited by its own glowing accretion disk of dust and gas? Well, it might look a little something like the latest, extremely trippy black hole visualization from NASA. Article | Watch Video @EverythingScience

Only 3% of Earth's Land Ecosystems Remain Intact, But All Is Not Lost Article @EverythingScience

Astronomers Are Homing in on The Colossal Feeding Processes of Huge Black Hole Article @EverythingScience

NASA's Insight Mars Lander Is 'in Crisis', And Has Entered Emergency Hibernation Unlike other sites where NASA has sent rovers and landers – including the landing spot of the new Perseverance rover and its Mars helicopter – powerful gusts of wind have not been sweeping Elysium Planitia. These winds, called "cleaning events," are needed to blow the red Martian dust off the solar panels of NASA's robots. Without their help, a thick layer of dust has accumulated on InSight, and it's struggling to absorb sunlight. By pausing its scientific operations, the lander should be able to save enough power to keep its systems warm through the frigid Martian nights, when temperatures can drop to -90°C. The agency expects to restart InSight's full operations after Mars swings back toward the sun in July. Article @EverythingScience

Here's What You Need to Know About Japan's Fukushima Water Release Plan Article @EverythingScience

Ingenuity update The Ingenuity team has identified a software solution for the command sequence issue identified on Sol 49 (April 9) during a planned high-speed spin-up test of the helicopter’s rotors. The process of updating Ingenuity’s flight control software will follow established processes for validation with careful and deliberate steps to move the new software through the rover to the base station and then to the helicopter. Intermediate milestones include: - Diagnose the issue and develop potential solutions - Develop/validate and upload software - Load flight software onto flight controllers - Boot Ingenuity on new flight software Once these milestones are passed, NASA will prepare Ingenuity for its first flight, which will take several sols, or Mars days. Their best estimate of a targeted flight date is fluid right now, but they are working toward achieving these milestones and will set a flight date next week. Source | #Mars2020 @EverythingScience

Newly Discovered Region of The Milky Way Is Filled With Stars Ready to Blow Up Astrophysicists have found a new region of the Milky Way, and it's filled with searingly hot, bright-blue stars that are about to explode. Nestled between the Orion Arm – where our solar system is – and the constellation Perseus, the spur is a belt between two spiral arms filled with enormous stars three times the size of the sun and colored blue by their blistering heat. Article @EverythingScience

Good News, The B117 Strain Is Not Linked to Greater Severity of COVID-19 The English variant of the novel coronavirus does not increase the severity of COVID-19 compared to other strains, according to research published Tuesday that also confirmed its increased transmissibility. The variant, known as B117, is now the dominant viral strain across much of Europe, and previous studies had shown it was linked to a higher likelihood of death than normal variants. But two studies published in The Lancet Infectious Diseases and The Lancet Public Health journals found no evidence that people with B117 experience worse symptoms or a greater risk of developing long COVID than those infected with different variants. Article @EverythingScience

Betelgeuse Is Destined to Explode as a Supernova…But When? Long considered one of the brightest stars in the night sky, Betelgeuse has begun to dramatically fade then brighten again for reasons we can’t quite pin down. And it’s caused some people to wonder if it's about to explode. Video (Seeker) | Stream on YouTube @EverythingScience

Infographic Shows What Rain Is Like Elsewhere in The Solar System Article | High-res Infographic @EverythingScience

New Hubble Photo Reveals The Wisps of a Dying Galaxy From the smallest microbe to the mightiest oak, death is as true for above as it is for below, even for the mightiest galaxies. The process, however, is not a quick one. A haunting new Hubble photo of the galaxy NGC 1947 demonstrates this well: Even from a distance of around 45.4 million light-years away (in the southern constellation of Dorado), we can see that the galaxy is slowly on the decline. Article @EverythingScience