Science

ISS crew relocates Soyuz MS-17 spacecraft

On Friday afternoon, three International Space Station (ISS) astronauts will relocate the Soyuz MS-17 spacecraft in preparation for the arrival of its next crew members.

The relocation will clear the Rassvet port for the docking of another Soyuz vehicle, known as Soyuz MS-18.

NASA SUCCESSFULLY TESTS WORLD’S MOST POWERFUL ROCKET

Soyuz MS-18 will carry three Expedition 65 crew members on April 9, including NASA’s Mark Vande Hei and Russian cosmonauts Oleg Novitsky and Pyotr Dubrov.

Expedition 64 Roscosmos astronauts Commander Sergey Ryzhikov and Sergey Kud-Sverchkov, along with NASA Flight Engineer Kate Rubins, will undock from the Earth-facing port of the station’s Rassvet module at around 12:38 p.m. ET.

The Rassvet module is used for cargo storage and some payload operations and attached to the Earth-facing port of the Zarya module.

They will dock again at the space-facing Poisk port at approximately 1:07 p.m. ET.

This expedition marks the 15th overall Soyuz port relocation and the first since August of 2019.

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Rubins, Ryzhikov and Kud-Sverchkov are all slated to return to Earth aboard the Soyuz MS-17 on April 17.

Live coverage of the relocating will be aired on NASA TV, the NASA app and the agency’s website.

NASA successfully tests world’s most powerful rocket

NASA successfully test-fired the core stage of its Space Launch System (SLS) rocket for the second time on Thursday afternoon.

The powerful moon rocket’s four RS-25 engines fired for eight minutes and 19 seconds at approximately 4:37 p.m. ET at NASA’s Stennis Space Center near Bay St. Louis, Mississippi.

NASA TO CONDUCT SECOND ROCKET TEST FOR ARTEMIS MOON MISSIONS

The “Green Run” series hot fire test of the 212-foot-tall core stage marks what NASA says is a “critical milestone” ahead of their future lunar missions.

The core stage design will be used for all configurations of the 322-foot-tall SLS rocket and the team will use the data from their tests to validate the design for flight.

“The SLS is the most powerful rocket NASA has ever built, and during today’s test the core stage of the rocket generated more than 1.6 million pounds of thrust within seven seconds. The SLS is an incredible feat of engineering and the only rocket capable of powering America’s next-generation missions that will place the first woman and the next man on the Moon,” Acting NASA Administrator Steve Jurczyk said in a Thursday release.

“Today’s successful hot fire test of the core stage for the SLS is an important milestone in NASA’s goal to return humans to the lunar surface – and beyond,” he added.

NASA’s first hot fire test of the SLS core stage was conducted on Jan. 16, when the four engines fired for approximately one minute. The test was aborted earlier than planned due to an error with the hydraulic system, reinforcing the need for a second, longer hot fire test.

The second hot fire test allowed engineers to try out a multitude of operational conditions, like directing thrust, throttling up and down and power the engines up to 100%.

The propellant tanks in the core stage can hold more than 700,000 gallons of cryogenic propellant and simulate almost 2 million pounds of thrust.

In addition, the stage — for which Boeing is the prime contractor — is technologically advanced, with sophisticated flight software and avionics systems, propulsion systems and hydraulic systems.

Next, the stage will be refurbished as needed and shipped to NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida for the launch of the Artemis I mission.

Artemis I, which is very tentatively scheduled for liftoff by the end of the year, will use an SLS rocket to send an uncrewed Orion spacecraft on a flight around the moon and back to Earth.

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“Today is a great day for NASA, Stennis and this nation’s human space exploration program. This final test in the Green Run series represents a major milestone for this nation’s return to the Moon and eventual mission to Mars,” said Stennis Center Director Richard Gilbrech. “So many people across the agency and the nation contributed to this SLS core stage, but special recognition is due to the blended team of test operators, engineers, and support personnel for an exemplary effort in conducting the test today.”

The John C. Stennis Space Center is the country’s largest rocket engine test complex.

Zoos, scientists aim to protect animals from people spreading coronavirus

The coughing among the western lowland gorillas at the San Diego Zoo Safari Park in January was the first warning sign. Soon the fears were confirmed: A troop of gorillas became the first apes known to test positive for the coronavirus.

Around the world, many scientists and veterinarians are now racing to protect animals from the coronavirus, often using the same playbook for minimizing disease spread among people: That includes social distancing, health checks and, for some zoo animals, a vaccine.

GORILLAS TEST POSITIVE FOR CORONAVIRUS AT SAN DIEGO ZOO SAFARI PARK

Karen, a 28-year-old orangutan, became the first ape in the world to get a coronavirus vaccine on Jan. 26 at the San Diego Zoo.

Karen has received two shots of a vaccine from Zoetis, a veterinary pharmaceutical company in New Jersey, and has shown no adverse reactions. Since then, nine other primates at the San Diego Zoo have been fully vaccinated: five bonobos and four orangutans. Four more animals — one bonobo and three gorillas — got their first shot this month and will get a second one in April.

“I was really convinced that we wanted to get that to protect our other great apes,” said the zoo’s wildlife health officer Nadine Lamberski, who explained she felt urgency to act after the eight gorillas fell sick.

That virus outbreak was linked to a zookeeper who was infected but had no symptoms. Seven gorillas recovered after a mild cases of sniffles, but one elderly silverback had pneumonia, likely caused by the virus, as well as heart disease. He was put on antibiotics and heart medication, and received an antibody treatment to block the virus from infecting cells.

About three dozen zoos across the United States and abroad have put in orders for the Zoetis vaccine, which is formulated to elicit a strong immune response in particular animal species.

“We will jump at the opportunity to get the Zoetis vaccine for our own great apes,” said Oakland Zoo’s veterinary director Alex Herman, who is ordering 100 doses.

Zoetis got a permit from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to provide the doses on an experimental basis to the San Diego Zoo. The company will need to apply for the same permission to provide vaccine to additional zoos.

Scientists believe the coronavirus likely originated in wild horseshoe bats, before jumping — perhaps through an intermediary species — to humans. Now many researchers worry that humans may unwittingly infect other susceptible species.

“Right now, humans are the main vectors of SARS-CoV-2, with consequences for many animal species,” said Arinjay Banerjee, a disease researcher at McMaster University in Canada.

CHEETAH ATTACKS OHIO ZOOKEEPER, SCENT OF OTHER ANIMALS LIKELY TRIGGERED THE CAT

Great apes such as gorillas, which share 98% of their DNA with humans, are especially susceptible, as are felines. So far, confirmed coronavirus cases include gorillas, tigers and lions at zoos; domestic cats and dogs; farmed mink, and at least one wild mink in Utah.

Scientists have also experimentally shown that ferrets, racoon dogs and white-tailed deer are susceptible, although pigs and cattle are not.

“This could be a conservation concern, especially if the virus began to spread in a wild species with extremely reduced populations, like the black-footed ferret,” which is endangered, said Kate Langwig, an infectious disease ecologist at Virginia Tech.

Another worry is that virus spread among other species could produce new variants, complicating health authorities’ efforts to curb the pandemic.

In Denmark, workers at a mink farm accidentally infected the animals. As the coronavirus spread among the mink, it mutated — and human handlers contracted the new variant. In response, the government ordered millions of mink to be killed.

“Mutations happen when there’s a lot of disease transfer going on between animals,” said Scott Weese, a veterinary microbiologist at the Ontario Veterinary College.

Shaki, Ciro and Buddy look out from their enclosure at Buenos Aires’ city zoo on July 2, 2016.
(AP)

Many recommended steps to minimize disease spread to animals are familiar: wearing masks and sanitizing shared equipment, regular health checks, and maintaining physical distance.

Since the outbreak, the San Diego Zoo and its safari park north of San Diego have installed more fans at its indoor primate areas to increase air circulation. The staff wears double masks and face shields and limits their time indoors with animals.

Scientists and conservationists who monitor wild primates have also adapted their daily routines.

“Covid-19 has been a wake-up call for the world about the fact that these viruses can go from wild animals to people, and from people to great apes,” said Kirsten Gilardi, executive director of Gorilla Doctors, a conservation group that includes field veterinarians who treat wild gorillas in Rwanda, Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

There are only about 1,000 wild mountain gorillas, so the threat of coronavirus infection “has changed the way we do our work,” said Felix Ndagijimana, the Rwanda country director for Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund International, a conservation group.

For the past year, field trackers who check on gorillas daily in the rainforest first get a coronavirus test, then stay with other trackers in an encampment for work stints of several weeks. This is to ensure that they don’t pick up the bug by returning to their villages at night.

“It was really a big ask of our team, especially during the pandemic. People want to be close to their families, but also keep the gorillas safe,” said Ndagijimana. To date, he said, there have been no coronavirus cases among wild gorillas.

While some wild gorillas were vaccinated against measles in the 1980s, there are currently no plans to vaccinate them against the coronavirus. With wild apes, the first choice is always to be as hands-off as possible, said Jean Bosco Noheli, a field veterinarian for Gorilla Doctors in Rwanda. “Let’s focus on other measures we can take first to protect wild gorillas,” he said.

But more zoo animals could soon be getting virus shots.

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“There’s a lot of interest,” said Sharon Deem, a veterinary epidemiologist at the St. Louis Zoo who is also part of a hazard preparedness group of the Association of Zoos & Aquariums that represents 240 zoos.

“I think given how horrible this particular pathogen has been to humans, and that we know it can be transmitted between humans and animals, that there is great interest to use an animal vaccine as soon as it is available,” she said.

Mars Perseverance rover captures first sounds of driving on Red Planet

NASA has released the first-ever recordings of a vehicle driving across Mars.

The Mars Perseverance rover’s metal wheels banged as it shuffled through the rocky terrain, heard in a pair of newly released audio clips.

NEW NASA STUDY CHALLENGES BELIEFS ABOUT WATER ON MARS

Two versions of the 90-foot drive on Mar. 7 — recorded using the rover’s entry, descent, and landing (EDL) microphone — were presented to the public in a Wednesday news release.

The first version is the “raw cut.” At more than 16 minutes long, listeners can hear the rover’s mobility system, as well as a high-pitched scratching that engineers believe is sourced from either electromagnetic interference or interactions between its suspension and the surface.

The release notes that the EDL microphone had not been intended for surface operations and had undergone limited testing before launching.

The second version lasts for just 90 seconds and filters out some of the noise from the unfiltered cut.

PERSEVERANCE MARS ROVER’S SUPERCAM DELIVERS FIRST READINGS, IDENTIFIES ROCK TARGETS

“If I heard these sounds driving my car, I’d pull over and call for a tow,” said Mars 2020 EDL camera and microphone subsystem’s lead engineer Dave Gruel. “But if you take a minute to consider what you’re hearing and where it was recorded, it makes perfect sense.”

On March 10, NASA also released clips from its SuperCam microphone in which both Martian wind and the sound of the instrument’s laser zapping rocks could be heard.

Perseverance has been undergoing extensive testing since it landed on Mars on Feb. 18 in preparation for its next missions.

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The rover has begun to search for a suitable flight zone for the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter to attempt its first flight tests, and on Wednesday NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory announced it had selected a location.

Then, Perseverance will begin its hunt for signs of ancient microbial life in earnest.

Scientists in US, Canada gear up for battle against murder hornets

Scientists in the U.S. and Canada are opening new fronts in the war against so-called murder hornets as the giant insects begin establishing nests this spring.

The scientists said Wednesday that the battle to prevent the apex predators from establishing a foothold in North America is being fought mostly in Whatcom County, Washington, and the nearby Fraser Valley of British Columbia, where the hornets have been spotted in recent years.

OVER 500 ‘MURDER HORNETS’ WERE FOUND IN WASHINGTON NEST, INCLUDING NEARLY 200 QUEENS

“This is not a species we want to tolerate here in the United States,” said Sven-Erik Spichiger of the Washington state Department of Agriculture, which eradicated a nest of the Asian giant hornets last year. “The Asian giant hornet is not supposed to be here.”

“We may not get them all, but we will get as many as we can,” he said of eradication efforts this year.

Paul van Westendorp of the British Columbia Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Fisheries said the hornets pose threats to human life, to valuable bee populations needed to pollinate crops and to other insects.

“It’s an absolutely serious danger to our health and well-being,” he said. “These are intimidating insects.”

In this Oct. 24, 2020, file photo, a Washington state Department of Agriculture worker holds two of the dozens of Asian giant hornets vacuumed from a tree in Blaine, Wash.
(AP Photo/Elaine Thompson, File)

One major front will be setting thousands of traps this spring to capture queens that are trying to establish nests, officials said. Both government agencies and private citizens will set traps, they said.

Another effort is underway to determine exactly where in Asia these hornets came from, to try and learn how they are getting across the Pacific Ocean, scientists said. The theory is they are crossing on cargo ships, Spichiger said.

While hundreds of the hornets were killed when the nest in Whatcom County was destroyed last October, only a handful of the hornets were spotted in British Columbia last year, van Westendorp said.

Scientists have been studying the genetics of captured hornets and comparing them with those that exist in South Korea, Japan and China, Spichiger said.

Initial findings indicate the hornets found in the U.S. were linked to hornets in South Korea, while those in British Columbia were linked to hornets found in Japan, Spichiger said.

OPERATION ERADICATES FIRST ‘MURDER HORNET’ NEST IN US

But it is not clear that the hornets found in North America actually migrated directly from those countries, said Anne LeBrun, a scientist for the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The agency is working to pin down the origin of murder hornets found here.

Hornet queens tend to emerge from winter quarters in the spring and establish nests to birth worker hornets. The hornets start attacking and destroying beneficial honey bees later in the year, eating the bees for protein as they raise more hornets, Soichiger said.

Whatcom County is about 55 miles (88 kilometers) south of Vancouver, British Columbia.

The Washington state agency will continue using orange juice and rice cooking wine in traps this year, while citizens can use either orange juice or a brown sugar-based bait, officials said. Residents in Whatcom, Skagit, San Juan, Island, Jefferson, and Clallam counties in Washington have been encouraged to make their own traps starting in July.

Half of the confirmed reports of the species in the state last year and all of the reports about the hornets in British Columbia came from members of the public, officials said.

The first confirmed detection of an Asian giant hornet in Washington was made in December 2019 and the first hornet was trapped last July. Several more were subsequently caught, all in Whatcom County, which is in the northwestern corner of the state.

Asian giant hornets, an invasive pest not native to the U.S., are the world’s largest hornet and a predator of honey bees and other insects. A small group of Asian giant hornets can kill an entire honey bee hive in a matter of hours. The honey bees pollinate many of the crops in Washington’s multibillion-dollar agriculture industry.

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Asian giant hornets can deliver painful stings to people and spit venom. Despite their nickname and the hype that has stirred fears, the world’s largest hornets kill at most a few dozen people a year in Asian countries, and experts say it is probably far less. Meanwhile, hornets, wasps and bees typically found in the United States kill an average of 62 people a year, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has said.

The real threat from Asian giant hornets — which are 2 inches (5 centimeters) long — is their devastating attacks on honeybees, which are already under siege from problems like mites, diseases, pesticides and the loss of food.

New NASA study challenges beliefs about water on Mars

A new study from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and researchers at the California Institute of Technology questions whether or not a longheld theory about Mars still holds water.

In their research, the team of scientists posits that a large quantity of the Martian planet’s water had not escaped into space due to its low gravity as previously assumed, but instead was trapped in its crust.

NASA TO CONDUCT SECOND ROCKET TEST FOR ARTEMIS MOON MISSIONS

While it is known that abundant water had flown on the planet billions of years ago, the team said that their findings revealed between 30 to 99% of it had been stuck in minerals.

Their conclusions, published in Science magazine and presented at the 52nd Lunar and Planetary Science Conference, were reached by using cross-mission data from the agency’s Planetary Data System (PDS).

The data pertained to meteorite lab work as well as NASA Mars Exploration Program missions and the team focused on the quantity of water on Mars over time and the chemical composition of the planet’s current atmosphere.

In particular, they examined the ratio of deuterium to hydrogen (D/H), according to a Tuesday news release.

“While water is made up of hydrogen and oxygen, not all hydrogen atoms are created equal. The vast majority of hydrogen atoms have just one proton within the atomic nucleus, while a tiny fraction (about 0.02%) exists as deuterium, or so-called ‘heavy’ hydrogen, which has a proton and a neutron. The lighter-weight hydrogen escapes the planet’s gravity into space much easier than its denser counterpart,” the release explained. “Because of this, the loss of a planet’s water via the upper atmosphere would leave a revealing sign on the ratio of deuterium to hydrogen in the planet’s atmosphere: There would be a very large amount of deuterium left behind.”

But, they say, because the loss of water solely through the atmosphere cannot be representative of both the “deuterium-to-hydrogen signal” in the atmosphere and large amounts of water in the past, two mechanisms are in play: both trapping of water in minerals in the planet’s crust and the loss of water to the atmosphere.

WHAT THE PERSEVERANCE MARS ROVER HAS ACCOMPLISHED SO FAR

In addition, because Mars has no tectonic plates, it cannot recycle water into the atmosphere through volcanism like on Earth, making any “drying” at the surface permanent.

“The hydrated materials on our own planet are being continually recycled through plate tectonics,” said NASA Mars Exploration Program lead scientist at NASA’s headquarters Michael Meyer. “Because we have measurements from multiple spacecraft, we can see that Mars doesn’t recycle, and so water is now locked up in the crust or been lost to space.”

NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover has already found signs of water erosion on Mars rocks during its astrobiological quest.

A key objective of the rover is to attempt to find signs of ancient microbial life during its mission by collecting and caching both rock and sediment.

Two of the lead authors of this study will aid in the effort to collect the samples that will be returned via the Mars Sample Return program in the early 2030s.

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Meyer, who is part of the Mars Sample Return Program, told Fox News on Wednesday that they look forward to the continual analysis of their “intriguing results.”

“The history of water on Mars and its relation to the astrobiological search for habitability and life is one of the biggest questions we continue to study with our missions at the Red Planet,” he said. “This is ultimately why we hope to collect pristine samples of the Red Planet with the Mars Perseverance rover and safely bring them back to Earth for scientific study through the Mars Sample Return campaign.”

What the Perseverance Mars rover has accomplished so far

It has been almost a month since the Perseverance Mars rover successfully landed on the red planet to the cheers of scientists and onlookers millions of miles away.

The rover has been kept busy since touching down in the northeastern Jezero Crater and has run multiple tests in preparation for its next missions, unfurling its mechanical arm and observing its new home.

NASA TO CONDUCT SECOND ROCKET TEST FOR ARTEMIS MOON MISSIONS

Perseverance, or “Percy,” is tasked with searching for traces of ancient microbial life in addition to collecting and caching samples for later return to Earth.

That trip is slated for no earlier than 2031 after Percy gathers around 30 tubes of Martian rock and sediment.

On March 13, the rover dropped its “belly pan,” or the protective covering that protects its sampling system.

In addition, the rover has been harboring a stowaway for its second mission: the first-ever Mars helicopter aptly named Ingenuity — to be tested in June.

While one of the next steps for Percy and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory engineers is to drive from the newly-named “Octavia E. Butler Landing” site to a place to test Ingenuity, the rover has been able to accomplish a lot.

With advanced, high-definition imaging from its SuperCam and audio recording capability, all-new images and sounds have been beamed back to Earth to the wonderment of scientists and civilians alike.

The SuperCam is a rock-vaporizing instrument that is mounted on the “head” of the rover’s mast and will play an active role in selecting which rocks are worthy of examination.

In a joint news conference with France’s Centre National D’Etudes Spatiales (CNES) updating the public on their progress, NASA released audio of wind and the rover’s laser hitting Máaz, one of its first rock targets, in addition to some of its first SuperCam Remote Micro-Imager (RMI) readings.

The historic recordings were released on March 10 and now each have more than 900,000 plays on the NASA SoundCloud page.

Just a few days earlier, NASA announced that Percy had performed its first drive on the Martian planet’s surface covering 21.3 feet.

By surveilling the terrain, scientists have determined that several of the rocks they’ve spotted are chemically similar to volcanic rocks and that wind and water have eroded them.

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Geologists told the scientific journal Nature that the wind patterns appeared to have blasted the rocks primarily from the northwest and that darker colored rocks that could have been weathered by water might have tumbled in the ancient river delta that once flowed through the crater and its lake.

Although much of Mars’ astrobiological history still remains unknown, Percy has been able to give researchers a closer look — providing crucial data for future missions.

Hubble Space Telescope science operations, camera back online after error

The iconic Hubble Space Telescope (HST) is back online after entering “safe mode” following a “software error.”

NASA announced operations had resumed late last week and the telescope returned to normal science operations on Friday.

On Sunday, the agency wrote in a release that its Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) instrument was restored on March 13 at around 7 p.m. ET.

NASA’S CHANDRA OBSERVATORY LOOKING AT BARRED SPIRAL GALAXY 86 MILLION LIGHT-YEARS AWAY

NASA said that after the HST started its recovery process, the WFC3 stalled due to a lower-than-normal voltage reading for its power supply that ultimately triggered an internal instrument safeguard.

Further analysis revealed that voltage levels in the WFC3 power supplies have slowly decreased over time.

“The electronics experience colder temperatures when the hardware is turned off in safe mode. This factor coupled with the power the instrument components draw as they are turned back on contributed to the small voltage fluctuation that suspended WFC3 recovery operations,” NASA explained. “Further detailed analysis indicated that it would be safe to slightly reduce the low voltage limit to avoid a future suspend, and it would be safe to recover the instrument to its science state.”

Other pre-observation activities and further tests are set to be conducted this week.

Safe mode is a setting that puts the telescope into a “stable configuration that suspends science observations” and positions the HST’s solar panels toward the sun to make sure its energy requirements are met.

The HST initially entered safe mode unexpectedly on Sunday, March 7.

The mission operations team at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center later identified that the software error was related to a recent enhancement to the spacecraft made with the aim of helping to compensate for fluctuations from one of its gyroscopes.

The gyroscopes assist in turning the HST and locking it on to new targets by measuring the speed at which the spacecraft turns.

“They determined that the enhancement did not have permission to write to a specific location in computer memory, which caused an issue with the main flight computer and subsequently caused the spacecraft to enter a safe mode,” NASA wrote.

In addition, the team also found that the aperture door at the top of the HST had failed to automatically close. The door was designed as a “safeguard” to protect the spacecraft’s interior from any sun damage.

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While multiple commands from the ground to close the door failed, NASA crew were able to determine commands to the HST’s backup motor indicated movement.

That motor is now set as the primary motor for the more than 30-year-old telescope.

Meteor seen over New England, Canada explodes with force of 440 lbs of TNT

A fireball flashed through the night sky in New England on Sunday, releasing the energy of around 440 pounds of TNT.

NASA Meteor Watch reported on Monday that as residents witnessed the meteor streaking over Vermont and Massachusetts, the space rock “fragmented violently, producing a pressure wave that rattled buildings and generated the sound heard by those near the trajectory.”

UK DOORBELL CAMERAS AND DASHCAMS CAPTURE METEOR ON VIDEO

Although the agency had initially believed the meteor — which was likely a fragment of an asteroid — to have been moving at a rate of 47,000 miles per hour when it appeared at around 5:38 p.m. ET, further analysis slowed that rate down to 42,000 miles per hour.

NASA Meteor Watch had first reported that the meteor was visible at a height of 52 miles above the Green Mountain State’s Mount Mansfield State Forest and moving northeast as it traversed 33 miles through the upper atmosphere until it burned up 33 miles above Beach Hill.

“As the object … penetrated deeper into the atmosphere, pressure built up on its front while a partial vacuum formed behind it. About 30 miles up, the pressure difference between front and back exceeded its structural strength,” NASA Meteor Watch wrote.

Furthermore, the pressure wave experienced after its fragmentation could cause minor tremors and be detected by infrasound stations.

THE MOON HAS A TAIL THAT SENDS BEAMS ACROSS EARTH, RESEARCHERS SAY

“In the case of last night, we were obtained infrasound measurements from three nearby stations — the amplitudes and durations of the signals put the energy of the fireball fragmentation at 440 pounds (200 kilograms) of TNT,” the government organization wrote. “We can combine this energy with the speed to get a mass and size of the object — 10 pounds (4.5 kilograms) and 6 inches (15 centimeters) in diameter.”

More than 100 reports were made to the American Meteor Society from New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts and Canada, according to WMUR.

In a video of the incident posted by Twitter user Jeremy LaClair, the fireball was captured on a webcam at Burlington International Airport, with other witnesses chiming in with their own accounts.

Even more people commented on NASA’s post on Facebook and user Shannon Lemley-Willis wrote she had heard the “boom” in Johnson, Vermont.

“Kids were playing outside and described it as ‘big trucks crashing,'” she wrote.

“I didn’t get a video, but I definitely saw it in Watertown, MA. It was dusk, so the sky was fading to a deeper blue, and I saw a bright red, orange and yellow streak to the north of me,” wrote Dan Nystedt. “I thought it must have been something much bigger than a standard ‘shooting star’ to be so visible when not totally dark yet.”

A fireball is a meteor with a magnitude of brightness that’ greater than -4, or the brightness of the planet Venus in the morning or night sky, according to the American Meteor Society.

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Whereas, a meteor is the streak of light seen when an asteroid or meteoroid enter’s the Earth’s atmosphere, according to NASA. If an asteroid or meteoroid does not burn up before impact, it is called a meteorite.

The moon has a tail that sends beams across Earth, researchers say

The moon has a “comet-like” tail made of millions of sodium atoms, researchers reported this week.

While the lunar surface is hit by solar wind, UV photons and meteorids, atoms liberated by the impact are pushed by light pressure into “a long comet‐like tail” opposite the sun, according to a study published Wednesday in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets.

HUBBLE TELESCOPE SOLAVES MYSTERY OF STAR’S DIMMING

“Near [a] New Moon, these atoms encounter the Earth’s gravity and are ‘focused’ into a beam of enhanced density,” the Boston University astrophysicists wrote in their abstract.

When the New Moon shifts between the Earth and the sun, the downflowing structure’s “beam” shoots around the Blue Marble’s atmosphere as well as out into space.

Although the tail is invisible to the naked eye — sunlight reflected from the moon’s surface is perhaps a million times brighter — it can be viewed using sensitive cameras equipped with filters tuned to the orange light emitted by the sodium atoms.

While ground-based spectrographs detected sodium atoms in the moon’s thin atmosphere in 1998, data gathered from the El Leoncito Observatory’s All-Sky-Imager revealed details about changes to the shape and brightness.

For example, the spot is brighter when the New Moon occurs at the point of orbit at which it is closest to the Earth, when the New Moon is north of the ecliptic path and approximately five hours after the New Moon.

NASA ASTRONAUTS EMBARK ON 236TH SPACEWALK AT INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION

Dr. Luke Moore, a senior research scientist at Boston University and the study’s co-author, told Fox News on Saturday that Boston University’s Imaging Science Lab maintains a global network of similar cameras that was crucial to the study.

“This network turned out to be ideal for studying the ‘Sodium Moon Spot’ (SMS), or the lunar sodium tail that can be seen near New Moon, however, because they are constantly operating,” he said.

“Thus, while this study focuses on understanding the long-term variation of the SMS from one site, it is also possible to see the lunar tail from multiple observatories simultaneously.”

After long-term study, researchers found a correlation between the brightness of the SMS spot and the rate at which meteors hit the planet, controlling the spot’s brightness and flicker.

An airplane flies against the backdrop of the rising moon after taking off from Miami International airport, Sunday, Feb. 12, 2017, above Surfside, Fla. (AP Photo/Wilfredo Lee)
(AP)

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While annual meteor showers can coincide with a brighter beam, impacts by sporadic meteors are more closely related to its brightness — potentially due to the amount of energy they produce.

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