Science
SpaceX launches 4 amateurs on private Earth-circling trip
SpaceX’s first private flight streaked into orbit Wednesday night with two contest winners, a health care worker and their rich sponsor, the most ambitious leap yet in space tourism.
It was the first time a spacecraft circled Earth with an all-amateur crew and no professional astronauts.
“Punch it, SpaceX!” the flight’s billionaire leader, Jared Isaacman, urged moments before liftoff.
The Dragon capsule’s two men and two women are looking to spend three days going round and round the planet from an unusually high orbit — 100 miles (160 kilometers) higher than the International Space Station — before splashing down off the Florida coast this weekend.
Read:4 will circle Earth on 1st SpaceX private flight
It’s SpaceX founder Elon Musk’s first entry in the competition for space tourism dollars.
Isaacman is the third billionaire to launch this summer, following the brief space-skimming flights by Virgin Galactic’s Richard Branson and Blue Origin’s Jeff Bezos in July. Only 38, Isaacman made his fortune from a payment-processing company he started in his teens.
Joining Isaacman on the trip dubbed Inspiration4 is Hayley Arceneaux, 29, a childhood bone cancer survivor who works as a physician assistant where she was treated — St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee. Isaacman has pledged $100 million out of his own pocket to the hospital and is seeking another $100 million in donations.
Arceneaux became the youngest American in space and the first person in space with a prosthesis, a titanium rod in her left leg.
Also along for the ride: sweepstakes winners Chris Sembroski, 42, a data engineer in Everett, Washington, and Sian Proctor, 51, a community college educator in Tempe, Arizona.
Once opposed to space tourism, NASA is now a supporter. “Low-Earth orbit is now more accessible for more people to experience the wonders of space,” tweeted NASA Administrator Bill Nelson, a congressman when he hitched a ride on a space shuttle decades ago.
The recycled Falcon rocket soared from the same Kennedy Space Center pad used by the company’s three previous astronaut flights for NASA. But this time, the Dragon capsule aimed for an altitude of 357 miles (575 kilometers), just beyond the Hubble Space Telescope.
Read: Space station supplies launched with a pizza delivery for 7
Across the country, SpaceX employees at company headquarters in Hawthorne, California, cheered wildly at every flight milestone, including when the spent first-stage booster landed upright on an ocean platform. French astronaut Thomas Pesquet rooted from the space station on Twitter: “No matter if you’re a professional or not, when you get strapped to a rocket and launch into space, we have something in common. All the very best from, well, space.”
Isaacman noted upon reaching orbit that few people have been to space — fewer than 600 over 60 years. But he added, “Many are about to follow. The door’s opening now and it’s pretty incredible.”
Their capsule has already been to orbit: It was used for SpaceX’s second astronaut flight for NASA to the space station. The only significant change is the large domed window at the top in place of the usual space station docking mechanisms.
An accomplished pilot, Isaacman persuaded SpaceX to take the fully automated Dragon capsule higher than it’s ever been. Initially reluctant because of the increased radiation exposure and other risks, SpaceX agreed after a safety review.
“Now I just wish we pushed them to go higher,” Isaacman told reporters on the eve of the flight. “If we’re going to go to the moon again and we’re going to go to Mars and beyond, then we’ve got to get a little outside of our comfort zone and take the next step in that direction.”
Isaacman, whose Shift4 Payments company is based in Allentown, Pennsylvania, is picking up the entire tab for the flight, but won’t say how many millions he paid. He and others contend those big price tags will eventually lower the cost.
“Yes, today you must have and be willing to part with a large amount of cash to buy yourself a trip to space,” said Explorers Club President Richard Garriott, a NASA astronaut’s son who paid the Russians for a space station trip more than a decade ago. “But this is the only way we can get the price down and expand access, just as it has been with other industries before it.
Though the capsule is automated, the four Dragon riders spent six months training for the flight to cope with any emergency. That training included centrifuge and fighter jet flights, launch and reentry practice in SpaceX’s capsule simulator and a grueling trek up Washington’s Mount Rainier in the snow.
Read: New Russian lab briefly knocks space station out of position
Four hours before liftoff, the four met with Musk before emerging from SpaceX’s huge rocket hangar, waving and blowing kisses to their families and company employees, before they were driven off to get into their sleek white flight suits. Once at the launch pad, they posed for pictures and bumped gloved fists, before taking the elevator up. Proctor danced as she made her way to the hatch.
Unlike NASA missions, the public won’t be able to listen in or watch events unfold in real time. Arceneaux hopes to link up with St. Jude patients, but the conversation won’t be broadcast live.
SpaceX’s next private trip, early next year, will see a retired NASA astronaut escorting three wealthy businessmen to the space station for a weeklong visit. The Russians are launching an actress, film director and a Japanese tycoon to the space station in the next few months.
“Someday NASA astronauts will be the exception, not the rule,” said Cornell University’s Mason Peck, an engineering professor who served as NASA’s chief technologist nearly a decade ago. “But they’ll likely continue to be the trailblazers the rest of us will follow.”
Egypt team identifies fossil of land-roaming whale species
Egyptian scientists say the fossil of a four-legged prehistoric whale, unearthed over a decade ago in the country’s Western Desert, is that of a previously unknown species. The creature, an ancestor of the modern-day whale, is believed to have lived 43 million years ago.
The prehistoric whale, known as semi-aquatic because it lived both on land and sea, sported features of an accomplished hunter, the team’s leading paleontologist, Hesham Sallam, told The Associated Press — features that make it stand out among other whale fossils.
The fossil was first found by a team of Egyptian environmentalists in 2008 in an area that was covered by seas in prehistoric times, but researchers only published their findings confirming a new species last month.
Sallam said that his team did not start examining the fossil until 2017 because he wanted to assemble the best and the most talented Egyptian paleontologists for the study.
Read:Fossil leaves may reveal climate in last era of dinosaurs
“This is the first time in the history of Egyptian vertebrate paleontology to have an Egyptian team leading a documentation of a new genus and species of four-legged whale,” said Sallam.
The fossil sheds light on the evolution of whales from herbivore land mammals into carnivorous species that today live exclusively in water. The transition took place over roughly 10 million years, according to an article published on the discovery in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.
Egypt’s Western Desert region is already known for the so-called Whale Valley, or Wadi Al-Hitan, a tourist attraction and the country’s only natural World Heritage site that contains fossil remains of another type of prehistoric whales.
The newly discovered creature belongs to the family of Protecetids, extinct semi-aquatic whales that lived from 59 to 34 million years ago, Sallam said. It would have walked on land but also hunted in the water.
“This is yet another new species of early whales from the time when they retained four functional limbs,” said Jonathan Geisler, an expert on the evolutionary history of mammals with New York Institute of Technology.
He said that the location of the discovery in Egypt is also a clue as to when and how they spread around the globe. Geisler was not involved in the find.
The oldest fossil whales are about 50 million years old and are believed to have originated in modern-day Pakistan and India. However, scientists have not been able to reach a conclusive answer as to when whales moved out of their point of origin to all the world’s oceans.
“This new species by itself cannot answer that question, but when viewed in the context of other fossil discoveries, suggests that this dispersal occurred 43 million years ago,” said Geisler, adding the new find could possibly serve as a link between Indo-Pakistan and North American regions.
The fossil whale has been named Phiomicetus Anubis, after the god of death in ancient Egypt.
Read:Japan aims to bring back soil samples from Mars moon by 2029
“We chose the name Anubis because it had a strong and deadly bite,” said Sallam, professor of paleontology at Mansoura University in Egypt. “It could kill any creature it crossed paths with.”
The new species stands out for its elongated skull and snout that suggest it was an efficient carnivore capable of grasping and chewing its prey, he said. It was about 3 meters (9 feet long) and weighed around 600 kilograms, according to researchers. It is also believed to have had sharp hearing and sense of smell.
The discovery followed a four-year collaboration between Egyptian paleontologists and U.S-based scientists, Sallam added.
His team has previously made headlines worldwide with their 2018 discovery of Mansourasaurus, a new species of long-necked herbivorous dinosaurs that lived in the Nile Delta province of Mansoura.
4 will circle Earth on 1st SpaceX private flight
For the first time in 60 years of human spaceflight, a rocket is poised to blast into orbit with no professional astronauts on board, only four tourists.
SpaceX’s first private flight will be led by a 38-year-old entrepreneur who’s bankrolling the entire trip. He’s taking two sweepstakes winners with him on the three-day, round-the-world trip, along with a health care worker who survived childhood cancer.
They’ll ride alone in a fully automated Dragon capsule, the same kind that SpaceX uses to send astronauts to and from the International Space Station for NASA. But the chartered flight won't be going there.
Also read: Space station supplies launched with a pizza delivery for 7
Set to launch Wednesday night from Kennedy Space Center, the two men and two women will soar 100 miles (160 kilometers) higher than the space station, aiming for an altitude of 357 miles (575 kilometers), just above the current position of the Hubble Space Telescope.
By contrast, Virgin Galactic’s Richard Branson and Blue Origin’s Jeff Bezos briefly skimmed space during their short rides in July — Branson reached 53 miles (86 kilometers) while Bezos hit 66 miles up (106 kilometers).
As the private flight's benefactor, Jared Isaacman, sees it: “This is the first step toward a world where everyday people can go and venture among the stars."
A look at the spaceflight, dubbed Inspiration4:
BILLIONAIRE’S QUEST
Isaacman’s idea of fun is flying fighter jets and keeping up with the Air Force Thunderbirds. He quit high school and started his own payment-processing company, Shift4 Payments in Allentown, Pennsylvania. He segued into aviation, founding Draken International for tactical aircraft training. While he won’t divulge what he’s paying for the flight, Isaacman acknowledges the “worthwhile debates” over whether the wealthy should spend their fortunes fixing problems on Earth, versus sightseeing in space. But he contends investing in space now will lower costs in the future. “Because it’s so expensive, space has been the exclusive domain of world superpowers and the elite that they select,” he told The Associated Press last week. “It just shouldn’t stay that way.” When he announced the flight in February, he pledged $100 million to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital and aims to raise another $100 million in donations.
LUCK OF THE DRAW
Isaacman offered one of the four capsule seats to St. Jude, which offered it to physician assistant Hayley Arceneaux, a former patient who now works at the Memphis, Tennessee, hospital. Now 29, Arceneaux was 10 when diagnosed with bone cancer, and had much of her left thigh bone replaced with a titanium rod. She’ll be the first person in space with a prosthesis, proud to pave the way for “those who aren’t physically perfect.” She’ll also be the youngest American in space, beating the late Sally Ride, who became the first American woman in space in 1983 at age 32. Contest winners claimed the final two seats. Sian Proctor, 51, a community college educator in Tempe, Arizona, and former geology instructor, beat out 200 other Shift4 Payments clients with her space-themed artwork business. Also a pilot, she was a NASA astronaut finalist more than a decade ago. Chris Sembroski, 42, a data engineer and former Air Force missileman from Everett, Washington, entered an open lottery by donating to St. Jude. He didn’t win, but a friend from his college days did and gave him the slot.
TRAINING LIKE ASTRONAUTS
It’s been a whirlwind since all four came together in March. They hiked up Washington’s Mount Rainier in the snow, sampled brief bursts of weightlessness aboard modified aircraft and took intense, rapid spins in fighter jets and centrifuges. “I know that my prosthesis can now handle 8 G’s of force,” Arceneaux told the AP. Her only compromise: SpaceX had to adjust her capsule seat to relieve pain in that knee. Although the capsule is fully automated, the four spent time in the SpaceX capsule simulator rehearsing launch, reentry and other critical operations. “We definitely had some Apollo 13-like simulation rides home where virtually everything was broken, and everybody made it back. So I think we passed all the tests,” Isaacson said. While acknowledging the risks, the four are impressed with SpaceX's focus on safety and reusability. But Sembroski said his wife, a schoolteacher, will hold off celebrating until splashdown.
PRIVATE VS NASA MISSION
This is SpaceX’s first private flight and the company is running the show -- NASA isn't involved. So SpaceX is providing its own facilities for private passengers to sleep, eat and hang out before launch, and to get into their white-with-black-trim flight suits. The leased launch pad used by SpaceX is the same one used by Apollo moonwalkers, shuttle astronauts and all three previous NASA crews. And at mission’s end, they’ll splash down off the Florida coast just like their predecessors. The pandemic is again limiting spectators: St. Jude is scaling back its launch delegation, with actor Marlo Thomas, whose father Danny Thomas, founded St. Jude, canceling her trip to Florida with husband, talk show host Phil Donahue.
Also read: Want to pretend to live on Mars? For a whole year? Apply now
THREE DAYS ALOFT
Isaacman and SpaceX settled on three days as the sweet spot for orbiting the Earth. It gives him and his fellow passengers plenty of time to take in the views through a custom bubble-shaped window, take blood samples and conduct other medical research, and drum up interest for auction items to benefit the hospital. While roomy for a capsule, the Dragon offers virtually no privacy; only a curtain shields the toilet. Unlike the space station and NASA’s old shuttles, there is no galley or sleeping compartments, or even separate work areas. As for food, they’ll chow down on cold pizza following liftoff. They’re also packing ready-to-eat, astronaut-style fare.
SPACE TOURISM ON THE RISE
Space tourism has never been hotter. Branson and Bezos rode their companies’ rockets into space to fulfill lifelong dreams but also advance ticket sales. Too busy to launch himself, SpaceX founder Elon Musk has two tourist flights to the space station coming up in the next year — the first as early as January — and also a private moonshot in the works. The businessmen shelling out $55 million apiece to fly SpaceX to the space station won’t be the first to pay their own way there. Seven wealthy clients of Virginia-based Space Adventures rode Russian rockets to the space station from 2000 to 2009. Isaacman traveled to Kazakhstan in 2008 to watch one of them soar: Richard Garriott, the video game-developing son of the late NASA astronaut Owen Garriott. While once opposed to space tourism, NASA is rooting for these newcomers. “I can’t wait for them to fly and fly safely and fly often,” said NASA’s commercial spaceflight director, Phil McAlister.
Fossil leaves may reveal climate in last era of dinosaurs
Richard Barclay opens a metal drawer in archives of the Smithsonian Natural History Museum containing fossils that are nearly 100 million years old. Despite their age, these rocks aren’t fragile. The geologist and botanist handles them with casual ease, placing one in his palm for closer examination.
Embedded in the ancient rock is a triangular leaf with rounded upper lobes. This leaf fell off a tree around the time that T-rex and triceratops roamed prehistoric forests, but the plant is instantly recognizable. “You can tell this is ginkgo, it’s a unique shape,” said Barclay. “It hasn’t changed much in many millions of years.”
What’s also special about ginkgo trees is that their fossils often preserve actual plant material, not simply a leaf’s impression. And that thin sheet of organic matter may be key to understanding the ancient climate system — and the possible future of our warming planet.
But Barclay and his team first need to crack the plant’s code to read information contained in the ancient leaf.
Read: China dinosaur footprint fossil named after Doraemon's "Nobita"
“Ginkgo is a pretty unique time capsule,” said Peter Crane, a Yale University paleobotanist. As he wrote in “Ginkgo,” his book on the plant, “It is hard to imagine that these trees, now towering above cars and commuters, grew up with the dinosaurs and have come down to us almost unchanged for 200 million years.”
If a tree fell in an ancient forest, what can it tell scientists today?
“The reason scientists look back in the past is to understand what’s coming in the future,” said Kevin Anchukaitis, a climate researcher at the University of Arizona. “We want to understand how the planet has responded in the past to large-scale changes in climate — how ecosystems changed, how ocean chemistry and sea levels changed, how forests worked.”
Of particular interest to scientists are “ hothouse ” periods when they believe carbon levels and temperatures were significantly higher than today. One such time occurred during the late Cretaceous period (66 million to 100 million years ago), the last era of the dinosaurs before a meteor slammed into Earth and most species went extinct.
Learning more about hothouse climates also gives scientists valuable data to test the accuracy of climate models for projecting the future, says Kim Cobb, a climate scientist at Georgia Tech University.
But climate information about the distant past is limited. Air bubbles trapped in ancient ice cores allow scientists to study ancient carbon dioxide levels, but those only go back about 800,000 years.
That’s where the Smithsonian’s collection of ginkgo leaves come in. Down a warren of corridors, Barclay hops across millennia – as is only possible in a museum – to the 19th century, when the Industrial Revolution had started changing the climate.
From a cabinet, he withdraws sheets of paper where Victorian-era scientists taped and tied ginkgo leaves plucked from botanical gardens of their time. Many specimens have labels written in beautiful cursive, including one dated Aug. 22, 1896.
Read:120,000-year-old fossils in Israel link to human family tree
The leaf shape is virtually identical to the fossil from around 100 million years ago, and to a modern leaf Barclay holds in his hand. But one key difference can be viewed with a microscope — how the leaf has responded to changing carbon in the air.
Tiny pores on a leaf’s underside are arranged to take in carbon dioxide and respire water, allowing the plant to transform sunlight into energy. When there’s a lot of carbon in the air, the plant needs fewer pores to absorb the carbon it needs. When carbon levels drop, the leaves produce more pores to compensate.
Today, scientists know the global average level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is about 410 parts per million – and Barclay knows what that makes the leaf look like. Thanks to the Victorian botanical sheets, he knows what ginkgo leaves looked like before humans had significantly transformed the planet’s atmosphere.
Now he wants to know what pores in the fossilized ginkgo leaves can tell him about the atmosphere 100 million years ago.
But first he needs a codebreaker, a translation sheet — sort of a Rosetta stone to decipher the handwriting of the ancient atmosphere.
That’s why he’s running an experiment in a forest clearing in Maryland.
One morning earlier this year, Barclay and project assistant Ben Lloyd tended rows of ginkgo trees within open-topped enclosures of plastic sheeting that expose them to rain, sunlight and changing seasons. “We are growing them this way so the plants experience natural cycles,” Barclay said.
The researchers adjust the carbon dioxide pumped into each chamber, and an electronic monitor outside flashes the levels every five seconds.
Read:Weird ‘living fossil’ fish lives 100 years, pregnant for 5
Some trees are growing at current carbon dioxide levels. Others are growing at significantly elevated levels, approximating levels in the distant past, or perhaps the future.
“We’re looking for analogues — we need something to compare with,” said Barclay. If there’s a match between what the leaves in the experiment look like and what the fossil leaves look like, that will give researchers a rough guide to the ancient atmosphere.
They also are studying what happens when trees grow in super-charged environments, and they found that more carbon dioxide makes them grow faster.
But adds Barclay, “If plants grow very quickly, they are more likely to make mistakes and be more susceptible to damage. ... It’s like a race car driver that’s more likely to go off the rails at high speeds.”
Japan aims to bring back soil samples from Mars moon by 2029
Japan’s space agency plans to bring soil samples back from the Mars region ahead of the U.S. and Chinese missions now operating on Mars, in hopes of finding clues to the planet’s origin and traces of possible life.
The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, or JAXA, plans to launch an explorer in 2024 to land on the Martian moon Phobos to collect 10 grams (0.35 ounce) of soil and bring it back to Earth in 2029.
The rapid return trip would put Japan ahead of the United States and China in bringing back samples from the Martian region despite starting later, project manager Yasuhiro Kawakatsu said in an online news conference Thursday.
Also read: Want to pretend to live on Mars? For a whole year? Apply now
NASA’s Perseverance rover is operating in a Mars crater where it is to collect 31 samples that are to be returned to Earth with help from the European Space Agency as early as 2031. China landed a spacecraft on Mars in May and plans to bring back samples around 2030.
JAXA scientists believe about 0.1% of the surface soil on Phobos came from Mars, and 10 grams could contain about 30 granules, depending on the consistency of the soil, Kawakatsu said.
Tomohiro Usui, professor at the Institute of Space and Astronautical Science, said soil on Phobos is likely to be a mixture of material from the moon itself and material from Mars that was spread by sandstorms. Collecting samples from multiple locations on Phobos could provide a greater chance of obtaining possible traces of life from Mars than obtaining soil from a single location on Mars, he said.
Any life forms that might have come from Mars will have died because of harsh solar and cosmic radiation on Phobos, JAXA scientists said. The NASA and the European Space Agency missions focus on potential life forms and evolution of the area of the Jezero crater, believed to be an ancient lake.
Also read: China’s Mars rover touches ground on red planet
By studying Phobos soil samples including material from Mars, scientists hope to learn about the evolution of the Martian biosphere, Usui said.
He said Japanese research on Phobos and NASA’s samples from specific locations in the Martian crater can complement each other and could lead to answers to questions such as how Martian life, if present, emerged and evolved in time and place.
Last December, a JAXA probe, Hayabusa2, brought back more than 5 grams (0.19 ounce) of soil from the asteroid Ryugu, more than 300 million kilometers (190 million miles) from Earth, in the world’s first successful return of an asteroid sample.
Higher but still slim odds of asteroid Bennu slamming Earth
The good news is that scientists have a better handle on asteroid Bennu’s whereabouts for the next 200 years. The bad news is that the space rock has a slightly greater chance of clobbering Earth than previously thought.
But don’t be alarmed: Scientists reported Wednesday that the odds are still quite low that Bennu will hit us in the next century.
“We shouldn’t be worried about it too much,” said Davide Farnocchia, a scientist with NASA’s Center for Near Earth Object Studies at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, who served as the study’s lead author.
While the odds of a strike have risen from 1-in-2,700 to 1-in-1,750 over the next century or two, scientists now have a much better idea of Bennu’s path thanks to NASA’s Osiris-Rex spacecraft, according to Farnocchia.
Also read: Dinosaur-killing asteroid strike gave rise to Amazon rainforest
“So I think that overall, the situation has improved,” he told reporters.
The spacecraft is headed back to Earth on a long, roundabout loop after collecting samples from the large, spinning rubble pile of an asteroid, considered one of the two most hazardous known asteroids in our solar system. The samples are due here in 2023.
Before Osiris-Rex arrived at Bennu in 2018, telescopes provided solid insight into the asteroid, about one-third of a mile (one-half kilometer) in diameter. The spacecraft collected enough data over 2 1/2 years to help scientists better predict the asteroid’s orbital path well into the future.
Their findings — published in the journal Icarus — should also help in charting the course of other asteroids and give Earth a better fighting chance if and when another hazardous space rock heads our way.
Before Osiris-Rex arrived on the scene, scientists put the odds of Bennu hitting Earth through the year 2200 at 1-in-2,700. Now it’s 1-in-1,750 through the year 2300. The single most menacing day is Sept. 24, 2182.
Also read: Japan awaits capsule’s return with asteroid soil samples
Bennu will have a close encounter with Earth in 2135 when it passes within half the distance of the moon. Earth’s gravity could tweak its future path and put it on a collision course with Earth in the 2200s — less likely now based on Osiris-Rex observations.
If Bennu did slam into Earth, it wouldn’t wipe out life, dinosaur-style, but rather create a crater roughly 10 to 20 times the size of the asteroid, said Lindley Johnson, NASA’s planetary defense officer. The area of devastation would be much bigger: as much as 100 times the size of the crater.
If an object Bennu’s size hit the Eastern Seaboard, it “would pretty much devastate things up and down the coast,” he told reporters.
Scientists already are ahead of the curve with Bennu, which was discovered in 1999. Finding threatening asteroids in advance increases the chances and options for pushing them out of our way, Johnson said.
“One-hundred years from now, who knows what the technology is going to be?” he said.
In November, NASA plans to launch a mission to knock an asteroid off-course by hitting it. The experimental target will be the moonlet of a bigger space rock.
Space station supplies launched with a pizza delivery for 7
Northrop Grumman’s latest space station delivery includes pizza for seven.
The company’s Cygnus cargo ship rocketed away from Virginia’s eastern shore Tuesday. It should reach the International Space Station on Thursday.
Read: Virgin Galactic restarts space-trip sales at $450,000 and up
The 8,200-pound (3,700-kilogram) shipment includes fresh apples, tomatoes and kiwi, along with a pizza kit and cheese smorgasbord for the seven station astronauts.
Also flying: a mounting bracket for new solar wings launching to the orbiting lab next year, a material simulating moon dust and dirt that will be used to create items from the space station’s 3D printer, slime mold for a French educational experiment called Blob and an infrared-detecting device meant as a prototype for future tracking satellites.
It is Northrop Grumman’s 16th supply run for NASA and its biggest load yet. The company’s Antares rocket hoisted the capsule from NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility.
“Aloha to the S.S. Ellison Onizuka,” Northrop Grumman said via Launch Control minutes before liftoff. The capsule was named for Hawaii’s Onizuka, the first Asian American in space who died in the 1986 Challenger launch disaster.
Read:New Russian lab briefly knocks space station out of position
NASA’s other shipper, SpaceX, will follow with a cargo run in a few weeks.
The space station is currently home to three Americans, two Russians, one French and one Japanese.
Want to pretend to live on Mars? For a whole year? Apply now
Want to find your inner Matt Damon and spend a year pretending you are isolated on Mars? NASA has a job for you.
To prepare for eventually sending astronauts to Mars, NASA began taking applications Friday for four people to live for a year in Mars Dune Alpha. That’s a 1,700-square-foot Martian habitat, created by a 3D-printer, and inside a building at Johnson Space Center in Houston.
The paid volunteers will work a simulated Martian exploration mission complete with spacewalks, limited communications back home, restricted food and resources and equipment failures.
Also read: Navigation error sends NASA’s Mars helicopter on wild ride
NASA is planning three of these experiments with the first one starting in the fall next year. Food will all be ready-to-eat space food and at the moment there are no windows planned. Some plants will be grown, but not potatoes like in the movie “The Martian.” Damon played stranded astronaut Mark Watney, who survived on spuds.
“We want to understand how humans perform in them,” said lead scientist Grace Douglas. “We are looking at Mars realistic situations.”
The application process opened Friday and they’re not seeking just anybody. The requirements are strict, including a master’s degree in a science, engineering or math field or pilot experience. Only American citizens or permanent U.S. residents are eligible. Applicants have to be between 30 and 55, in good physical health with no dietary issues and not prone to motion sickness.
That shows NASA is looking for people who are close to astronauts, said former Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield. And, he said. that’s a good thing because it is a better experiment if the participants are more similar to the people who will really go to Mars. Past Russian efforts at a pretend Mars mission called Mars 500 didn’t end well partly because the people were too much like everyday people, he said.
Also read: China’s Mars rover touches ground on red planet
For the right person this could be great, said Hadfield, who spent five months in orbit in 2013 at the International Space Station, where he played guitar and sang a cover video of David Bowie’s “Space Oddity.”
“Just think how much you’re going to be able to catch up on Netflix,” he said. “If they have a musical instrument there, you could go into there knowing nothing and come out a concert musician, if you want.”
There could be “incredible freedom” in a “year away from the demands of your normal life.”
Attitude is key, said Hadfield, who has a novel “The Apollo Murders” coming out in the fall. He said the participants need to be like Damon’s Watney character: “Super competent, resourceful and not relying on other people to feel comfortable.”
Virgin Galactic restarts space-trip sales at $450,000 and up
The ticket window is open again for space flights at Virgin Galactic, with prices starting at $450,000 a seat.
The space-tourism company said Thursday it is making progress toward beginning revenue flights next year. It will sell single seats, package deals and entire flights.
Virgin Galactic announced the offerings as it reported Thursday that it lost $94 million in the second quarter on soaring costs for overhead and sales. The company posted revenue of $571,000, barely enough to cover one seat on a future flight.
Also read: Virgin Galactic’s Richard Branson flying own rocket to space
The company’s most noteworthy recent achievement came last month, after the quarter ended, when founder Richard Branson and five crewmates soared to 53.5 miles (86 kilometers) above the New Mexico desert.
CEO Michael Colglazier said the company resumed sales on Thursday to take advantage of a surge in consumer interest after the flight by Branson, who beat rival billionaire Jeff Bezos and his Blue Origin ship into space by nine days.
The company based in Las Cruces, New Mexico, won regulatory approval in June to fly people into space.
Virgin Galactic said “early hand-raisers” will get first priority to book seats, and another list will be created for new customers.
The company’s next spaceflight is scheduled for late September in New Mexico with the Italian air force.
Also read: Blue Origin’s Bezos reaches space on 1st passenger flight
Virgin Galactic said it ended the quarter with cash and equivalents totaling $552 million.
The results were released after the stock market closed. The company’s shares were up nearly 5% in after-hours trading.
Melting ice imperils 98% of Emperor penguin colonies by 2100
With climate change threatening the sea ice habitat of Emperor penguins, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on Tuesday announced a proposal to list the species as threatened under the Endangered Species Act.
“The lifecycle of Emperor penguins is tied to having stable sea ice, which they need to breed, to feed and to molt,” said Stephanie Jenouvrier, a penguin ecologist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.
Read:Study: Northwest heat wave impossible without climate change
Research published Tuesday in the journal Global Change Biology found that by 2100, 98% of Emperor penguin colonies may be pushed to the brink of extinction, if no changes are made to current rates of carbon emissions and climate change.
Around 70% of colonies will be in danger sooner, by 2050.
The new study looked at overall warming trends and the increasing likelihood of extreme weather fluctuations due to global warming. And it noted that extremely low levels of sea ice in 2016 led to a massive breeding failure of an Emperor penguin colony in Antarctica’s Halley Bay.
That year, seasonal sea ice broke up before penguin chicks had time to develop waterproof adult feathers, and about 10,000 baby birds drowned, Jenouvrier said. The colony did not recover afterward.
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Emperor penguins breed exclusively in Antarctica during winter. They endure temperatures of minus 40 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 40 degrees Celsius) and wind speeds approaching 90 miles (144 kilometers) per hour by huddling together in groups of several thousand birds. But they can’t survive without sufficient sea ice.
“These penguins are hard hit by the climate crisis, and the U.S. government is finally recognizing that threat,” said Sarah Uhlemann, international program director at the nonprofit Center for Biological Diversity.
The U.S. government has previously listed species outside the country as threatened, including the polar bear, which lives in Arctic regions and is also imperiled by climate change and sea ice loss.
Emperor penguins — the world’s largest penguins — currently number about 270,000 to 280,000 breeding pairs, or 625,000 to 650,000 individuals. The proposed listing will be published in the Federal Register on Wednesday to open to a 60-day public comment period.
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Listing the bird provides protections such as prohibition against importing them for commercial purposes. Potential impacts on penguins must also be evaluated by U.S. marine fisheries currently operating in Antarctica.
“Climate change, a priority challenge for this Administration, impacts a variety of species throughout the world,” said Martha Williams, principal deputy director of the wildlife service. “The decisions made by policymakers today and during the next few decades will determine the fate of the Emperor penguin.”