Plus space station archeology, lasers, red blood cells, and some curiosity.

#01 THE MORAL IS CORAL

+ Coral reefs are challenging to describe in words, but I think "acres of giant, pristine, rose-shaped corals blossoming from the sea floor" is about as good as you can get for a newly discovered reef in Tahiti. The reef is 230 feet deep (a depth known as the twilight zone due to the relatively small amount of sunlight that penetrated that deep), much deeper than the 50-75 feet that most corals are found in. Importantly, this new reef is surprisingly healthy and seems to have avoided the large-scale coral bleaching events that have heavily impacted coral reefs around the world in the last 2 decades. The discovery raises hopes that there could be other as yet undiscovered deep water coral environments around the world that are more resilient to rising ocean temperatures. 

+ The world's seabed is clearly underexplored, but the Seabed 2030 project is trying to change that by producing detailed maps of the entire seafloor by 2030.

#02 SPACE ARCHEOLOGY

+ A basic technique in archeology is to layout a square on a site of interest and catalog everything inside of it, no matter how small. An experiment inspired by that method is now happening on the space station. Every day the astronauts are taking a picture of a few different locations on the station, and researchers on the ground will catalog and identify all the objects within each defined area. "What we'll learn is how objects circulate around the space station, and how long they stay in one spot. It's about the patterns and routines of everyday life in microgravity."

+ In less great news for aspiring astronauts, being in space seems to cause the loss of red blood cells (which we knew about) and it doesn't necessarily get better once back on Earth (which we didn't really know about). 

#03 SOME CURIOSITY

+ Curiosity has been roving mars for nearly a decade now and that has given the rover a chance to sniff an awful lot of rocks. A recently published analysis of rock samples collected throughout the mission has found an overabundance of a particular isotope of carbon that is often associated with biologic activity on Earth. The finding is compelling for those studying the possibility of past life on Mars, but other potential causes for the carbon isotope include geologic and even cosmic origins.

#04 LASERS ARE COOL

+ Drones and lasers are becoming increasingly important in archeology. A recent application of lidar (that's Light Detection and Ranging, sort of like radar but using a laser pulse instead of radio waves) has revealed a dozen of previously unknown structures in the vicinity of Machu Picchu. Lidar can be used to see beneath dense tree cover and foliage, revealing to scientists what lies beneath an otherwise featureless rainforest canopy.

#05 FOLLOW-UPS

Following up on a couple of stories from last time:

+ Perseverance has cleared debris from its sample ingestion system and is ready to get back to work.

+ The Insight lander is out of "safe" mode after a regional dust storm on Mars caused power levels on the solar-powered spacecraft to plummet.

+ The James Webb Space telescope has roughly aligned its mirror segments and fired its thrusters to position the spacecraft at its final destination, a gravitationally stable point known as L2. It went so well that the spacecraft was able to conserve fuel, possibly extending the mission lifetime by up to a decade.

That's all for this week! To tell me about anything you liked or didn't like, suggest a story, or otherwise get in touch, you can simply respond to this email. If you particularly enjoyed it please forward to a friend so they can subscribe too!

- Evan Hilgemann