Four volunteers have entered a simulated Mars habitat as part of a year-long Nasa experiment to test astronauts’ resilience to isolation and other psychological stress factors. The CHAPEA (Crew Health and Performance Exploration Analog) mission will see the participants live and work in a 158-square-metre (1,700-square-foot) habitat at Nasa’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. It is the first of three one-year simulated Mars missions, which each aim to assess the health and performance of crew members when living in confinement with limited resources. Participants will take part in simulated spacewalks, science experiments and habitat maintenance, while also attempting to grow crops for food. “The simulation will allow us to collect cognitive and physical performance data to give us more insight into the potential impacts of long-duration missions to Mars on crew health and performance,” said Grace Douglas, CHAPEA principal investigator. “Ultimately, this information will help Nasa make informed decisions to design and plan for a successful human mission to Mars.” The four members of the CHAPEA mission are research scientist Kelly Haston, structural engineer Ross Brockwell, emergency medicine physician Nathan Jones and microbiologist Anca Selariu. Each were chosen after Nasa put out a call for “healthy, motivated” applicants in 2021. There have been several previous research projects involving simulated Mars habitats, with the Mars-500 missions between 2007 and 2011 seeing volunteers spend months locked inside a facility in Mosco, Russia. The HI-SEAS program in Hawaii also saw participants spend time living in isolation, though one mission lasted just four days after one of the crew members suffered an electric shock. Nasa plans to return humans to the Moon within the next three years as part of its Artemis missions, which the US space agency hopes to use as a foundation to eventually send astronauts to Mars. Private space firm SpaceX also plans to send people to Mars aboard its Starship rocket, which is currently under development at the company’s Starbase facility in Texas. SpaceX boss Elon Musk said a second attempt at an orbital flight test will be made before the end of August, after the first attempt in April ended in a large explosion just minutes after take off. The 480 million kilometre (300 million mile) journey to Mars is expected to take around seven months, with the planet’s orbit meaning that a travel window only opens up every 26 months. This means that any return mission would likely take close to four years to complete. Read More Elon Musk to launch biggest ever rocket after dramatic failure Elon Musk eyes ‘highly habitable’ planet that’s ‘practically next door’ Elon Musk eyes ‘highly habitable’ planet that’s ‘practically next door’ Apple releases urgent update to iPhone and iPad users Twitter hacker who took over Musk, Obama, Biden accounts gets prison sentence

A new study has revealed that black holes could be lurking much closer to Earth than anticipated. A black hole in space is when "gravity pulls so much that even light can not get out," NASA explains. "The gravity is so strong because matter has been squeezed into a tiny space. This can happen when a star is dying." Due to no light being present, they are invisible. Only special tools can pick up on them. There are said to be around 10 million to 1 billion mass black holes in the Milky Way, according to Science Alert. However, astrologers only know of about 20 of them. Now, a recent study has revealed that they could be a lot closer to Earth than previously thought after investigating the Hyades cluster, "a group of stars located 150 light-years away". In a statement, astrophysicist Stefano Torniamenti of the University of Padua explained: "Our simulations can only simultaneously match the mass and size of the Hyades if some black holes are present at the centre of the cluster today (or until recently). The Hyades with hundreds of stars is said to be approximately 625 million years old. Due to its packed environment, "higher rates of collisions and mergers" are expected. At 153 light-years away, it is considered the closest star cluster to Earth. Researchers were able to observe two or three black holes in the Hyades, which are either still present or ejected less than 150 million years ago and hovering around the outskirts. "This observation helps us understand how the presence of black holes affects the evolution of star clusters and how star clusters in turn contribute to gravitational wave sources," Professor Mark Gieles of the University of Barcelona said. Sign up for our free Indy100 weekly newsletter Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

The University of Michigan has been without full internet access for two days after staff shut the school's connections down in response to a "significant [cyber]security concern" on the eve of the new school year.

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Rumours of a global internet outage due to a severe solar storm have been swirling online, but how true are they? With plenty of us relying on internet access on a daily basis for our work, entertainment and communication needs, the rumour of an internet apocalypse has left many worried. Throughout June, the possibility that we could lose internet for months has been spreading. But, the very possibility first gained public attention back in 2021 when computer scientist Sangeetha Abdu Jyothi at the University of California Irvine warned that a catastrophic solar storm could occur within the next 10 years. Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter It seems the space agency NASA is taking the risk seriously and launched the Parker Solar Probe (PSP) which revealed clues about the sun’s atmosphere after successfully navigating through the powerful solar winds generated there. What is a solar storm and how could it cause an internet apocalypse? A solar storm refers to the atmospheric effects we experience on Earth that originate from the sun, typically caused by solar flares. During such storms, a stream of an electromagnetic field is directed towards Earth which causes the aurora borealis. NASA believes solar storms run on an 11-year cycle with their frequency varying. Their severity can also vary, with stronger geomagnetic storms causing interruptions to satellite, radio and internet functions. A 2011 geomagnetic storm interrupted radio signals in South China, meanwhile in 1859 a particularly intense storm caused auroras to appear in the skies all around the world. Should such an event strike today, there could be a worldwide blackout causing disruption for months, with its effects predicted to be 20 times that of a catastrophic hurricane due to its impact on the supply chain of essentials like foods and medication. Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.