China has launched its first carbon-tracking satellite.

China is among the countries affected the most by pollution and has been one of the leading supports of climate change initiatives like the Paris Agreement. Recently, it has successfully launched its first carbon-tracking satellite into orbit.

The name of the satellite is TanSat, as “Tan” means carbon in Chinese. It was deployed on top of the country’s Long March 2D booster on Wednesday, December 22^nd, from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Centre, located in the Gobi Desert of Mongolia.

The TanSat carbon-tracking satellite was first started in the first months of 2011, and it was initially scheduled to launch at the end of 2015. The satellite passed both the Preliminary Design Review as well as the Critical Design Review. However, Chinese officials did not reveal what led to the series of delays during the Satellite Readiness Review stage. Nonetheless, all hurdles were passed and the satellite has been deployed into Earth’s orbit.

The TanSat project was developed by Chinese Academy of Sciences, and it features two deployable solar arrays which are capable of sustaining it for its three-year-long mission. The satellite’s main purpose is to monitor the global distribution of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. China hopes that the collected data will help scientists better understand the impact of carbon dioxide and its contribution to climate change as well as its variation throughout the seasons.

The satellite will monitor the global levels of carbon every 16 days, with a high degree of accuracy. The data will also be used for a wide range of project in various research fields such as meteorology and oceanography. The launch came after a new study revealed that greenhouse gas emissions have remained stable due to cuts made by China. The country hopes that the new mission will be followed by a further decline in their carbon emissions.

Besides the TanSat satellite, the rocket also launched one high-resolution and two spectrum micro-nano satellites. They are meant to monitor the agriculture and forests in China. The launch of their carbon-tracking satellites makes China the third country to deploy such a satellite into orbit, behind the United States and Japan.

What do you think about China’s carbon-tracking satellite? Should other countries follow suit?

Image source: Flickr

Scientists discover a sun-like star which ate some of its planets.

A team of scientists has announced their discovery of a sun-like star which has destroyed some of its own planets. Researchers can use this behavior to determine what could happen to our solar system in the future.

Researchers from the La Silla Observatory in Chile used the 3.6-meter telescope to study a star they found around 300 light-years away from Earth. What makes this sun particularly interesting to observe is that it consumed some of the planets in its system and scientists think it may provide useful data to determine what fate some of the planet’s in our solar system can expect in the future.

Although there isn’t any chance for our sun to start destroying planets, at least not in the near future, scientists hope to use their discovery to learn more about the evolution and life cycles of solar systems. This discovery complement the overall exploration efforts of scientists around the world in their attempt to learn how the universe works.

Scientists discovered the sun-like star named HIP68468 after it was part of a study with the purpose of discovering planets that orbit stars which are very similar to our own sun. Although researchers discover an increasing number of exoplanets, they still haven’t found one that orbits a solar twin which has the same characteristics of our sun in terms of size, luminosity, and color.

The study, which was published in the Astronomy & Astrophysics journal, revealed that it found evidence regarding the existence of a super-Neptune as well as a super-Earth orbiting the sun-like star. The evidence must still be reviewed, but if it’s confirmed then this discovery would mark the first time that scientists have found an Earth-like exoplanet orbiting a solar twin.

The scientists think that star might have consumed some of its planets because a six billion years old star should not have as much lithium as they found it to have. This finding coupled with a number of other elements associated with rocky planets led scientists to conclude that the only explanation must be that it consumed some of its planets.

The research team has emphasized the lack of any immediate danger of our solar system, as the sun is 1.5 billion years younger than HIP68468. They also will continue to monitor 60 solar twins in hopes of finding more Earth-like exoplanets.

Image credit: Gabi Perez/Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias Illustration

Scientists developed a soft robotic hand named Gentle Bot.

A lot of challenges need to be met before robots will become available for consumers. However, thanks to the hard work scientists, the fear that robots can easily harm us with their metal hands will gradually become unfounded. They have developed a robot hand with a human-like touch.

Researchers from the Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, have revealed in their study, published in the journal Science Robotics, that they developed a robot hand with sensitive and soft touch known as the Gentle Bot. The robot hand is able to touch and manipulate fragile items as well as being able to sense their shape and texture.

The lead author of the article, Huichan Zhao, a doctoral candidate in mechanical engineering, has revealed that their Gentle Bot is not using motors to power the joints. Instead, the robot hand is soft and comes equipped with many sensors, both outside and inside it. This invention will allow developers to close the gap between human and robot hands.

 A cruder version of the soft robotic technology is already in use in warehouses where they have to handle food and other types of fragile products. The novel aspect of the scientists’ invention is that it is able to handle even more delicate items than ever before. Although the technology requires further research, it holds the potential for various applications in robotics, allowing them to safely interact with humans, as well as in other fields like prosthetics.

Before this invention, robots could only detect the items they were holding if they conducted electricity. Thanks to the technology demonstrated by the Gentle Bot, for the soft robot hand to sense the items, they only need to conduct light. This is due to the fact that the robot hand is equipped stretchy optical waveguides with LEDS built-in. This sensor is able to detect any small alterations in the amount of the light that goes into the device, acting similar to nerves.

The Gentle Bot also has the added benefit of being cheaper to make. Robot hands which rely on light signals rather than electricity can be produced with cheaper materials. This, in turn, could lower the cost of all of its applications, from robots to prosthetics.

Image credit: Huichan Zhao/Organic Robotics Lab, Cornell University

The West Antarctic Ice Sheet shows signs of collapse.

Although the Antarctic Ice Sheet was previously thought not to be as affected by climate change as the Artic, scientists have now revealed that a glacier which bounds the West Antarctic Ice Sheet shows signs of collapse from inside out.

One of the largest bodies of ice in the Antarctica, the Pine Island Glacier is showing the first signs of wear caused by the increase in global temperatures.  Back in 2015, a large part of the iceberg measuring 225 square miles, broke off from the glacier and started to drift away.

Now, while testing a new imaging software, researchers found that the large break off started around 20 miles inland instead at happening on the edge of the glacier, where normally the structure is the weakest. Scientists believe that this is evidence of deep rift beneath the surface caused by the warming of the ocean. Additionally, the speculate that it only lead to more often and greater breaks in the next years.

The leader of the research team and the main author of the study published this Monday in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, Ian Howat, has emphasized the unusual fact that the rift happened in the center of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet and then propagated towards the edges. He speculates that the main cause of this phenomenon is the fact that a crevasse has been melted at the bedrock level of the glacier because of increased temperature of the ocean.

This study seems to strengthen the findings of other similar studies which suggested that the West Antarctica Ice Sheet could collapse in the next century. As Antarctica contains more than 50 percent of the world’s fresh water in the form of ice, its melting would mean a potential rise in sea level of up to 10 feet. Such a drastic increase from Antarctica alone could prove devastating for many coastal cities in the US and around the world.

Scientists have clearly stated that the melting of the West Antarctica Ice Sheet is now inevitable, the only question remains is when it will happen. Studying the early signs of the rift could help us better understand when a catastrophic breakdown of the ice sheet is likely to happen. Unfortunately, we would not be able to stop it in any way.

Image credit: NASA