“Astronomers have been crying out for a better instrument to scan the stars to find these asteroids before they find us. Fortunately, they’re about to get two.

The first is Nasa’s Near-Earth Object Surveyor, or NEO Surveyor, mission. It’s essentially a sniper that is going to be hidden in outer space. Within 10 years of being launched, it will find 90% or more of those city-killer asteroids that have yet to be found by conventional means…

It is to be launched sometime in the next five years. And when it does, it will already have a ground-based partner tallying up its own near-Earth asteroid count: the Vera C Rubin Observatory, under construction now in the mountains of Chile.

Unlike NEO Surveyor, Rubin is not a dedicated asteroid hunter, and it relies on reflected starlight, not infrared emissions. But it has the most technologically advanced mechanical eye ever made. With a colossal mirror that collects even the faintest, most distant starlight, and a 3,200-megapixel digital camera the size of a car, it will see and chronicle anything that moves in the dark sky above, from distant exploding stars to interstellar comets.

It will also create a detailed inventory of pretty much everything in the solar system, including the host of objects flying around close to our planet. The first asteroid was spotted in 1801, and it took two centuries to find a million more. In the first six months of operations, which begin in 2025, Rubin will double that number. It is, in other words, a polymathic telescope; one that, among all its other tasks, will find asteroids of all shapes and sizes faster than any other spotter on Earth.”

From The Guardian.

“Most of the passengers emerging from the station in Bellvitge, a working-class neighborhood outside Barcelona, have no idea just how innovative the city’s subway system is. Using technology not unlike the regenerative braking found in hybrids and electric vehicles, the trains they rode generated some of the power flowing to the EV chargers in the nearby parking lot, the lights illuminating the station, and the escalators taking them to the platforms.

Every time a train rumbles to a stop, the energy generated by all that friction is converted to electricity, which is fed through inverters and distributed throughout the subway system. One-third of that powers the trains; the rest provides juice to station amenities and a growing network of EV chargers.”

From Grist.

“Now found only in India and Nepal, these crocodile relatives once inhabited over 30,000 square miles of South Asian rivers. Due to habitat loss, poaching, and accidental fishing deaths, the species’ population shrunk from 10,000 animals in 1946 to fewer than 250 adults in 2006, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature. The gharial gets its name from the male’s bulbous snout, which resembles an earthen pot called a gharia.

In an effort to save the unique animal, the Indian government and nonprofits launched targeted conservation efforts, including captive breeding and monitoring of nesting gharials. Such initiatives have boosted the wild population of mature individuals to about 650, according to the IUCN.”

From National Geographic.

“The sihek (Todiramphus cinnamominus) was once endemic to the forests of Guam, an island in the western Pacific that is today a U.S. territory. The accidental introduction of the brown tree snake (Boiga irregularis) in the 1940s devastated the island’s native wildlife, including many local birds whose eggs were eaten by the snakes.

A rescue operation in the 1980s brought 29 birds into captivity. These individuals formed the foundation of a breeding program that has kept the species alive for the past 35 years, even as the sihek was declared extinct in the wild by 1988.

Finally, on Sept. 23, 2024, six young sihek were released from their temporary aviaries into the lush forests of Palmyra Atoll, a predator-free sanctuary about 5,900 kilometers (3,700 miles) east of Guam.”

From Mongabay.