Month: December 2016

Enlarge / SpaceX has released the first image of its Falcon Heavy rocket. (credit: SpaceX)

On Wednesday afternoon SpaceX released the first photo of actual hardware for the Falcon Heavy rocket—the interstage, which connects the first and second stages of booster—and the photo included the massive launch vehicle's official logo. Published on Instagram, the photo included this caption: "Falcon Heavy interstage being prepped at the rocket factory. When FH flies next year, it will be the most powerful operational rocket in the world by a factor of two."

Ars understands that the new photo does not augur any kind of major announcement regarding a Falcon Heavy launch—at least not yet. A company official told Ars last week that SpaceX is now targeting "early-to-mid" 2017 for the launch of the massive rocket, which would indeed immediately become the most powerful operational booster on the planet, doubling the capacity of the Delta IV Heavy.

But could the long-delayed rocket actually be close to flying? A photo of real hardware offers a positive sign that the rocket may indeed be getting closer to the launch pad. And the fact that the Falcon Heavy's pad at Launch Complex 39A in Florida is now almost ready for use also lends credence to the fact that the long-promised booster may soon fly.

Enlarge / The Atacama Desert today is barren, its sands encrusted with salt. And yet there were thriving human settlements there 12,000 years ago. (credit: Vallerio Pilar)

When humans first arrived in the Americas, roughly 18,000 to 20,000 years ago, they traveled by boat along the continents' shorelines. Many settled in coastal regions or along rivers that took them inland from the sea. Some made it all the way down to Chile quite quickly; there's evidence for a human settlement there from more than 14,000 years ago at a site called Monte Verde. Another settlement called Quebrada Maní, dating back almost 13,000 years, was recently discovered north of Monte Verde in one of the most arid deserts in the world: the Atacama, whose salt-encrusted sands repel even the hardiest of plants. It seemed an impossible place for early humans to settle, but now we understand how they did it.

At a presentation during the American Geophysical Union meeting this month, UC Berkeley environmental science researcher Marco Pfeiffer explained how he and his team investigated the Atacama desert's deep environmental history. Beneath the desert's salt crust, they found a buried layer of plant and animal remains between 9,000 and 17,000 years old. There were freshwater plants and mosses, as well as snails and plants that prefer brackish water. Quickly it became obvious this land had not always been desert—what Pfeiffer and his colleagues saw suggested wetlands fed by fresh water.

Quaternary Science Reviews