New story in Science and Health from Time: China Is Poised to Bring Home Moon Samples in its Most Ambitious Lunar Mission Yet China Is Poised to Bring Home Moon Samples in its Most Ambitious Lunar Mission Yet

The moon’s Ocean of Storms was once a busy place. Back in 1967, the U.S. successfully landed its Surveyor 3 spacecraft in the vast plain in the northern lunar hemisphere; little more than two years later, the Apollo 12 crew returned, touching down within 200 meters (656 ft.) of the Surveyor and collecting more than 34 kg (75 lbs.) of lunar rock and soil to bring back to Earth. But things have been quiet in the Ocean of Storms since—until now.

Nearly 50 years after the U.S. abandoned its lunar dreams, China’s Chang’e 5 spacecraft is set for a Dec. 1 landing in NASA’s long-ago stomping grounds, attempting to become the first country to return any samples from the moon since the Soviet Union’s robotic Luna 24 spacecraft retrieved 170 grams (6 oz.) of lunar soil in 1976. If Beijing succeeds—and its lunar endeavors to date suggest it will—it could portend big things for a country that has fast become one of the world’s leading space powers.

It was at 4:30 a.m. local time on Nov. 24 that Chang’e 5 lifted off aboard a 20-story tall Long March 5 rocket—a launch that was broadcast live across China, “leaving many spectators…in awe and excitement as the gigantic booster thundered skyward,” the China National Space Administration’s official announcement read. That sort of success has been true of all of China’s recent lunar missions. In 2007 and 2010, Chang’e 1 and Chang’e 2 successfully executed lunar orbital missions. In 2013, Chang’e 3 landed on the moon and deployed a small rover. And in 2019 Chang’e 4 did the same, becoming the first spacecraft to touch down on the far side of the moon.

Chang’e 5 will be a landing mission too—but an order of magnitude more difficult than its predecessors. The 8.2 metric ton spacecraft is actually a four-part ship: an orbiter, a lander, an ascent stage and a reentry capsule. On Nov. 28, after a four-day translunar journey, the entire assembly entered an eight-hour elliptical orbit around the moon. It later conducted an engine burn to lower itself into a circular 200 km (120 mile) orbit—about twice the altitude at which the Apollo spacecraft used to fly.

The lander and the ascent stage have since separated from the rest of the craft and the plan for Dec. 1 involves an extensive engine burn that will bring them to a soft touchdown touch down near Mons Rümker, a volcanic formation in the Ocean of Storms that features relatively young and pristine soil—with relatively the key word. The scarcity of craters on the formation suggest that the area is about 2 billion years old, less than half of the moon’s estimated 4.5 billion year-old age.

The lander will spend less than two weeks there, excavating as deep as two meters (about 6.5 ft.) below the surface, and collecting up to 2 kg (about 4.4 lbs.) of rock and soil. Those samples will then be packed into to the ascent vehicle, which will lift off and rendezvous with the orbital segment still circling the moon. The samples will then be transferred to the re-entry vehicle which will separate from the orbiter and peel off for Earth, aiming for a landing in Inner Mongolia sometime in mid-December.

In some ways the final stage of the mission—the reentry through Earth’s atmosphere—will be the most hair-raising. Spacecraft that are orbiting the Earth fly at about 28,200 km/h (17,500 mph) and can more or less ease back into the atmosphere by tapping the brakes and slowing their speed. Spacecraft returning from the moon slam into the atmosphere at a much faster 40,200 km/h and must fly in a sort of roller coaster trajectory as they descend, bleeding off speed and g-forces if they are going to survive the intense heat of reentry.

If Chang’e 5 indeed succeeds in that final step, it will open the door to robotic, sample-return mission from Mars—and, eventually, crewed missions to the moon. Pei Zhaoyu, deputy director of China’s Lunar Exploration and Space Engineering Center, sees the robotic lunar program continuing even after taikonauts—or China’s astronauts—reach the moon. “I think future exploration activities on the moon are most likely to be carried out in a human-machine combination,” he said in a press statement before the launch.

The exact nature of those future missions might be uncertain at the moment, but the likelihood that they will take place is much less so. China—like the U.S. in the 1960s—has made a commitment to the moon. And like the U.S. in the 1960s, it seems determined to make good on it.

New story in Science and Health from Time: For Much of the U.S., Good Weather Will Allow for an Outdoor (and Safer) Thanksgiving For Much of the U.S., Good Weather Will Allow for an Outdoor (and Safer) Thanksgiving

Public-health officials have for weeks been urging Americans to avoid gathering for Thanksgiving this year, lest the holiday turn into a national super-spreading event. But for those who still plan on getting together, experts say an outdoor get-together is far safer than prolonged time indoors, where it’s easier for the virus that causes COVID-19 to spread. Whether an outdoor Thanksgiving is really feasible, however, largely depends on, well, the weather.

Good news: a look at the Thanksgiving Day forecast reveals that, for most of the U.S., temperatures will be above normal and the skies will be clear.

“When it comes to Thanksgiving weather, most of the country will have lucked out,” says John Homenuk, a meteorologist at New York Metro Weather, via email. “Warmer than normal air and calm conditions are expected from the Plains states to the Great Lakes and Tennessee Valley. Cooler, but mostly pleasant weather is also expected in the Pacific Northwest down the West Coast to the Desert Southwest. Outdoor activities should at least be possible in many of these regions, but especially the Central U.S. and Ohio Valley, where temperatures are expected to be several degrees warmer than normal.”

Homenuk also sent along this map, which shows expected temperatures across the U.S. in terms of how far above or below normal they’re expected to be for this time of year:

However, an outdoor Thanksgiving may be less of an option across much of the U.S. East Coast, which is likely in for some wet weather. “Areas like Philadelphia, New York City and Boston are likely to be dealing with showers and dreary conditions throughout the morning and early afternoon,” says Homenuk. “Some clearing is possible later in the day if a cold front can sweep through quickly enough.”

Even with this weather forecast in mind, it’s still safer to avoid gathering this year with anybody you don’t already live with (and no, getting a single COVID-19 test can’t guarantee a safe Thanksgiving). But if you’re committed to having people over or heading somewhere else despite the risks, it’s looking like turkey al fresco will be a viable option for many.

Still, it’s wise to keep the guest list as short as possible and ensure everybody stays masked and distanced as much as possible; it’s especially important to keep people apart while they’re masks-down and eating. One other suggestion: rather than inviting a bunch of people over for an all-day hang and dinner, have a smaller group over for a distanced outdoor hangout for part of the day, then do dinner with your immediate household later.

New story in Science and Health from Time: China Launches a Mission to Bring Back Material From the Moon China Launches a Mission to Bring Back Material From the Moon

WENCHANG, China — China launched an ambitious mission on Tuesday to bring back rocks and debris from the moon’s surface for the first time in more than 40 years — an undertaking that could boost human understanding of the moon and of the solar system more generally.

Chang’e 5 — named for the Chinese moon goddess — is the country’s boldest lunar mission yet. If successful, it would be a major advance for China’s space program, and some experts say it could pave the way for bringing samples back from Mars or even a crewed lunar mission.

The four modules of the Chang’e 5 spacecraft blasted off at just after 4:30 a.m. Tuesday (2030 GMT Monday, 3:30 p.m. EST Monday) atop a massive Long March-5Y rocket from the Wenchang launch center along the coast of the southern island province of Hainan.

Minutes after liftoff, the spacecraft separated from the rocket’s first and second stages and slipped into Earth-moon transfer orbit. About an hour later, Chang’e 5 opened its solar panels to provide its independent power source.

Spacecraft typically take three days to reach the moon.

The launch was carried live by national broadcaster CCTV which then switched to computer animation to show its progress into outer space.

The mission’s key task is to drill 2 meters (almost 7 feet) beneath the moon’s surface and scoop up about 2 kilograms (4.4 pounds) of rocks and other debris to be brought back to Earth, according to NASA. That would offer the first opportunity for scientists to study newly obtained lunar material since the American and Russian missions of the 1960s and 1970s.

The Chang’e 5 lander’s time on the moon is scheduled to be short and sweet. It can only stay one lunar daytime, or about 14 Earth days, because it lacks the radioisotope heating units to withstand the moon’s freezing nights.

The lander will dig for materials with its drill and robotic arm and transfer them to what’s called an ascender, which will lift off from the moon and dock with the service capsule. The materials will then be moved to the return capsule to be hauled back to Earth.

The technical complexity of Chang’e 5, with its four components, makes it “remarkable in many ways,” said Joan Johnson-Freese, a space expert at the U.S. Naval War College.

“China is showing itself capable of developing and successfully carrying out sustained high-tech programs, important for regional influence and potentially global partnerships,” she said.

In particular, the ability to collect samples from space is growing in value, said Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. Other countries planning to retrieve material from asteroids or even Mars may look to China’s experience, he said.

While the mission is “indeed challenging,” McDowell said China has already landed twice on the moon with its Chang’e 3 and Chang’e 4 missions, and showed with a 2014 Chang’e 5 test mission that it can navigate back to Earth, re-enter and land a capsule. All that’s left is to show it can collect samples and take off again from the moon.

“As a result of this, I’m pretty optimistic that China can pull this off,” he said.

Read more: China is Quickly Becoming a Space Superpower

The mission is among China’s boldest since it first put a man in space in 2003, becoming only the third nation to do so after the U.S. and Russia.

Chang’e 5 and future lunar missions aim to “provide better technical support for future scientific and exploration activities,” Pei Zhaoyu, mission spokesperson and deputy director of the Chinese National Space Administration’s Lunar Exploration and Space Engineering Center told reporters at a Monday briefing.

“Scientific needs and technical and economic conditions” would determine whether China decides to send a crewed mission to the moon, said Pei, whose comments were embargoed until after the launch. “I think future exploration activities on the moon are most likely to be carried out in a human-machine combination.”

While many of China’s crewed spaceflight achievements, including building an experimental space station and conducting a spacewalk, reproduce those of other countries from years past, the CNSA is now moving into new territory.

Chang’e 4 — which made the first soft landing on the moon’s relatively unexplored far side almost two years ago — is currently collecting full measurements of radiation exposure from the lunar surface, information vital for any country that plans to send astronauts to the moon.

China in July became one of three countries to have launched a mission to Mars, in China’s case an orbiter and a rover that will search for signs of water on the red planet. The CNSA says the spacecraft Tianwen 1 is on course to arrive at Mars around February.

China has increasingly engaged with foreign countries on missions, and the European Space Agency will be providing important ground station information for Chang’e 5.

U.S. law, however, still prevents most collaborations with NASA, excluding China from partnering with the International Space Station. That has prompted China to start work on its own space station and launch its own programs that have put it in a steady competition with Japan and India, among Asian nations seeking to notch new achievements in space.

China’s space program has progressed cautiously, with relatively few setbacks in recent years. The rocket being used for the current launch failed on a previous launch attempt, but has since performed without a glitch, including launching Chang’e 4.

“China works very incrementally, developing building blocks for long-term use for a variety of missions,” Freese-Johnson said. China’s one-party authoritarian system also allows for “prolonged political will that is often difficult in democracies,” she said.

While the U.S. has followed China’s successes closely, it’s unlikely to expand cooperation with China in space amid political suspicions, a sharpening military rivalry and accusations of Chinese theft of technology, experts say.

“A change in U.S. policy regarding space cooperation is unlikely to get much government attention in the near future,” Johnson-Freese said.

New story in Science and Health from Time: Exclusive: Pfizer CEO Discusses Submitting the First COVID-19 Vaccine Clearance Request to the FDA Exclusive: Pfizer CEO Discusses Submitting the First COVID-19 Vaccine Clearance Request to the FDA

On Friday, Pfizer CEO and chairman Albert Bourla announced that the company has filed a request to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for emergency use authorization of its COVID-19 vaccine, making it the first to do so. In a discussion on TIME 100 Talks, Bourla says that if the FDA authorizes the vaccine, the company will be ready “within hours” from receiving the green light to start distributing the vaccine. Pfizer has been manufacturing doses even while safety and efficacy tests were ongoing, in order to avoid delays in shipping once authorized.

According to Bourla, Pfizer is on “on track” to deliver the 50 million doses promised to the U.S. government by the end of the year, with 1.3 billion doses through next year.

In an in-depth conversation about the journey the company has taken in developing its vaccine, Bourla admitted that, throughout the process, he wasn’t always sure that having a safe and effective vaccine ready for FDA review in less than a year was possible. “Conviction is a part of it, so I was always telling [our teams] that we will make it, and we will make it by October, and if not us, then who?” he says. “But I knew that it was an extremely risky suggestion, I knew it was going to be difficult, and the stars needed to be aligned all the way to the end.”

Pfizer capitalized on a partnership begun in 2018 with German company BioNTech, which was founded by a husband-and-wife team of scientists with expertise in a genetic technology called mRNA. The platform is fast and flexible for developing vaccines, since it only requires knowing the genetic sequence of the virus the vaccine will target, rather than growing and manipulating the virus in question.

Still, no mRNA-based vaccine against an infectious disease had ever been approved, so Pfizer and BioNTech began exploring whether influenza might be the first. Instead, when the pandemic hit a year later, the teams shifted their attention to SARS-CoV-2, the novel coronavirus that causes COVID-19, with surprising success. Bourla says the partnership is built on a mutual focus on advancing science, and that the two companies began work, including sharing confidential information, before signing a formal contract, since those agreements can take months. “In fact, we are still finalizing the contractual obligations we have that we need to sign with them,” says Bourla. “It’s the perfect relationship for me. Ugur [Sahin, BioNTech’s co-founder and chief executive] is a wonderful human being, and a great scientist. He shares the same passion [as I do] about saving lives and I’m very optimistic that not only will we do very well together bringing a COVID-19 vaccine to the world, but later hopefully a flu vaccine.”

Bourla also believes the success of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine, as well as that of Massachusetts-based biotech Moderna (which also has an mRNA COVID-19 vaccine candidate, shown to be 94.5% effective) validates the mRNA platform, and makes it a serious contender for future vaccines and drugs against emerging infectious diseases. That validity of mRNA vaccines will be further tested once their efficacy can be compared to those of other vaccines that use the more proven methods of relying on weakened cold viruses to deliver viral material to the immune system, or selected fragments of viral proteins.

While he expressed concern about the skepticism and mistrust that many American have expressed about the COVID-19 vaccines, mostly because they were developed so quickly, Bourla says he hopes the completion of the election and the magnitude of the efficacy and safety data start to reassure people. “The problem is that this vaccine, and the pandemic in general, became the focal point of political debate,” he says. “It was discussed in political rather than scientific terms. We reached an unthinkable point that wearing a mask is a political statement, which I think is wrong. Wearing a mask is something you need to do because science is telling you to do it.”

He noted that in an effort to reassure the public about the scientific integrity of the vaccine development and testing process, vaccine makers in the pharmaceutical industry came together in an unprecedented show of support against political pressure by pledging to stick to scientific standards and nothing else. “Myself, I released a lot of letters saying I will never succumb to any political pressure,” he says. “The only pressure we feel at Pfizer is the pressure 7 billion people around the world are giving us for a solution to this pandemic.”

Vaccine makers are a little less united on the question of whether they should profit from a pandemic shot. While some have said they will price their vaccines so they don’t profit from them, Bourla says Pfizer is making its vaccine available on a non-for-profit basis only for lower-income countries receiving vaccines through the World Health Organization vaccine distribution coalition run by GAVI. “We have elected for developed countries, to give [the vaccine] at a very low price [around $19.50]. We believe the price allows governments all over the world to give the vaccine free to their citizens,” he says. “If you think about the economic value of a vaccine—I’m not speaking about the human value because there is no way to measure human life—I think the millions of jobs that will not be lost, that hopefully will come back, and the billions in economic value that a successful vaccine will enable—I think it’s not appropriate to discuss if we sell it at $19.50 per dose.”

Bourla would not speculate on how long the FDA might take to decide on the company’s EUA request, but given the urgency of the pandemic, that decision could come soon. The agency will likely take into consideration the fact that the vaccine’s 95% effectiveness is in protecting against COVID-19 disease—not preventing infection from the virus. But with cases of COVID-19 continuing to surge around the world, stalling the virus and preventing people from getting sick would be a welcome advantage. More studies will also explore whether people who don’t become sick because they are vaccinated are less likely to spread infection; if that’s the case then the vaccines will be even more critical for controlling the pandemic.

“I hope the same time next year, we will be in a very, very different place,” he says. “When you have vaccine protection that is that high, 95% for example”—the effectiveness level Pfizer’s vaccine has shown in studies—”it takes less time to be able to develop protection through a vaccination scheme. So I truly believe the light at the end of the tunnel is not only real but it is bright and is coming. We need to be patient.”

New story in Science and Health from Time: The Renowned Arecibo Radio Telescope in Puerto Rico Is to Close in a Blow to Science The Renowned Arecibo Radio Telescope in Puerto Rico Is to Close in a Blow to Science

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico — The National Science Foundation announced Thursday that it will close the huge telescope at the renowned Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico in a blow to scientists worldwide who depend on it to search for planets, asteroids and extraterrestrial life.

The independent, federally funded agency said it’s too dangerous to keep operating the single dish radio telescope — one of the world’s largest — given the significant damage it recently sustained. An auxiliary cable broke in August and tore a 100-foot hole in the reflector dish and damaged the dome above it. Then on Nov. 6, one of the telescope’s main steel cables snapped, leading officials to warn that the entire structure could collapse.

NSF officials noted that even if crews were to repair all the damage, engineers found that the structure would still be unstable in the long term.

“This decision is not an easy one for NSF to make, but the safety of people is our number one priority,” said Sean Jones, the agency’s assistant director for the Mathematical and Physical Sciences Directorate. “We understand how much Arecibo means to this community and to Puerto Rico.”

He said the goal was to preserve the telescope without placing people at risk, but, “we have found no path forward to allow us to do so safely.”

The telescope was built in the 1960s with money from the Defense Department amid a push to develop anti-ballistic missile defenses. In its 57 years of operation, it endured hurricanes, endless humidity and a recent string of strong earthquakes.

The telescope boasts a 1,000-foot-wide (305-meter-wide) dish featured in the Jodie Foster film “Contact” and the James Bond movie “GoldenEye.” Scientists worldwide have used the dish along with the 900-ton platform hanging 450 feet above it to track asteroids on a path to Earth, conduct research that led to a Nobel Prize and determine if a planet is potentially habitable.

In recent years, the NSF-owned facility has been managed by the University of Central Florida.

Alex Wolszczan, a Polish-born astronomer and professor at Pennsylvania State University who helped discover the first extrasolar and pulsar planets, told The Associated Press that while the news wasn’t surprising, it was disappointing. He worked at the telescope in the 1980s and early 1990s.

“I was hoping against hope that they would come up with some kind of solution to keep it open,” he said. “For a person who has had a lot of his scientific life associated with that telescope, this is a rather interesting and sadly emotional moment.”

The announcement saddened many beyond the scientific world as well, with the hashtag #WhatAreciboMeansToMe popping up on Twitter along with pictures of people working, visiting and even getting married or celebrating a birthday at the telescope.

Ralph Gaume, director of NSF’s Division of Astronomical Sciences, stressed that the decision has nothing to do with the observatory’s capabilities, which have allowed scientists to study pulsars to detect gravitational waves as well as search for neutral hydrogen, which can reveal how certain cosmic structures are formed.

“The telescope is currently at serious risk of unexpected, uncontrolled collapse,” he said. “Even attempts at stabilization or testing the cables could result in accelerating the catastrophic failure.”

Officials suspect a potential manufacturing error is to blame for the auxiliary cable that snapped after a socket holding it failed, but say they are surprised that a main cable broke about three months later given that it was supporting only about 60% of its capacity. Engineers had assessed the situation after the first cable broke, noting that about 12 of the roughly 160 wires of the second cable that eventually broke had already snapped, said Ashley Zauderer, program officer for Arecibo Observatory at NSF.

“It was identified as an issue that needed to be addressed, but it wasn’t seen as an immediate threat,” she said.

She and other NSF officials said that all standard maintenance procedures had been followed.

The closure is a blow for many of the more than 250 scientists that have used a telescope that is also considered one of Puerto Rico’s main tourist attractions, drawing some 90,000 visitors a year. It also has long served as a training ground for hundreds of graduate students.

“It was my Disney,” wrote Edgard Rivera-Valentín, a Universities Space Research Association scientist at the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Texas, in a series of tweets. He recalled first visiting when he was 4 or 5.

“Think about what the Golden Gate Bridge means to San Francisco, Statue of Liberty to New Yorkers. Arecibo is this and more to Puerto Rico because it has gone beyond an icon.”

The NSF said it intends to restore operations at the observatory’s remaining assets including its two LIDAR facilities, one of which is located in the nearby island of Culebra. Those are used for upper atmospheric and ionospheric research, including analyzing cloud cover and precipitation data. Officials also aim to resume operations at the visitor center.

Wolszczan, the astronomer, said the value of the telescope won’t instantly disappear because he and many other scientists are still working on projects based on observations and data taken from the observatory.

“The process of saying goodbye to Arecibo will certainly take some years,” he said. “It won’t be instantaneous.”

New story in Science and Health from Time: COVID-19 Vaccines Are Coming. Here’s What to Expect COVID-19 Vaccines Are Coming. Here’s What to Expect

Vaccines normally take decades to develop and test, but two COVID-19 shots, from Moderna and Pfizer (in partnership with BioNTech), have gone from nonexistent to about 95% effectiveness in 10 months. Public-health officials and governments now have the dual challenge of convincing the public that the vaccines are both safe and scientifically sound, as well as figuring out how to distribute billions of doses. Here’s what we know so far about how that’s going.

When can I get vaccinated?

That depends.

Manufacturers have already begun producing vaccines, betting that they will be effective, so they can be ready to ship if the FDA authorizes them, possibly as soon as December. Still, doses will be limited this year and will be reserved for those at highest risk of infection, such as health care workers as well as those with essential jobs, like first responders and law-enforcement personnel. As vaccine manufacturers fire up production, more people, including those with chronic health conditions, and the elderly, will be able to get immunized. Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, says it may not be until spring that most Americans can start to get vaccinated.

Who approves the vaccines?

The Food and Drug Administration must approve any vaccine. But most COVID-19 vaccine makers won’t initially apply for normal approval, which typically requires six or more months of follow-up study. Instead, they will likely ask for emergency-use authorization (EUA), which makes it possible to release new drugs and vaccines during a health emergency. For an EUA, the FDA has said companies should monitor trial participants for two months to make sure the vaccines are safe and don’t lead to serious side effects. All of the testing and other requirements for evaluating safety and effectiveness remain the same for an EUA as for full approval. Many vaccine makers plan to apply for full approval of their shots once they accumulate the appropriate amount of follow-up data.

Were shortcuts taken to develop these vaccines?

According to leading public-health experts and the vaccine makers, the same rigorous scientific process that goes into developing any vaccine was used to create the COVID-19 shots. But in some cases, new technology like the mRNA-based technique used by Moderna and Pfizer—the first two companies to finish human testing—have sped up the development process. The mRNA method doesn’t require researchers to grow or manipulate SARS-CoV-2, the virus responsible for COVID-19; all they need is its genetic sequence, which Chinese scientists released in January. The technology is both fast and flexible, and allowed vaccine makers to develop and start testing their vaccines in a matter of months.

If I get vaccinated, does that mean that I can’t get infected?

Not necessarily.

But it means you are less likely to get sick. When Pfizer announced that its vaccine was more than 95% effective and Moderna said its shot was 94.5% effective, that was how well they kept people from getting sick. In the studies, people were randomly assigned to get the vaccine or a placebo. If anyone in either group felt symptoms of COVID-19 (including fever, cough, headache and difficulty breathing), they reported it to the researchers, who then decided whether to test for COVID-19. So the studies did not test everyone to see how many people in the vaccinated group got infected compared with the placebo group. Instead, the scientists took those participants who tested positive for COVID-19 and compared how many in the vaccinated group went on to develop disease and how many in the placebo group did. The companies will continue to test people in the studies for antibodies to the COVID-19 virus, which would include people who did not show any symptoms of their infection, so they can get a better sense of whether or not the vaccines protect against not only getting sick but also against infection.

Are all the vaccines made the same way?

No.

The various companies are relying on different technologies. Moderna and Pfizer use the mRNA technology based on the pandemic virus’s genetic code. The AstraZeneca and University of Oxford team, as well as Johnson & Johnson/Janssen, are relying on different inactivated cold viruses loaded with COVID-19 viral genes that can produce viral proteins to activate the immune system, while both Novavax and the Sanofi/GlaxoSmithKline partnership are producing and then introducing proteins from the virus itself to trigger an immune response. All are close to completing testing of their shots.

Where can I get vaccinated?

In the first few months after the initial doses are shipped, there will likely be a limited number of ­providers—mostly in public-health clinics and major hospitals. But the federal government has authorized pharmacists to administer COVID-19 vaccines, so eventually retail pharmacies, community health centers and other locations will be offering COVID-19 shots.

Can I choose which vaccine I get?

Probably not.

State health departments will likely be coordinating the ordering and distribution of doses, and they won’t know which vaccines they will receive. Some health departments may request certain vaccines depending, for example, on factors such as whether some of their vaccine facilities have the proper storage equipment like the ultra-cold freezers needed for Pfizer’s vaccine, or perhaps whether the shots show any differences in effectiveness among people of different ages, ethnicities or health conditions. So far, the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines don’t show such distinctions, so they will likely be shipped out based on proposals that state health departments have submitted for how many doses they will need. Although Pfizer’s vaccine needs to be stored at –70°C, the company plans to ship its doses in thermal packaging that can maintain that temperature for up to 15 days, as long as users replenish the dry ice included in the packaging.

Why do I need two doses of vaccine?

All of the COVID-19 vaccines being tested, with the exception of Johnson & Johnson/Janssen’s, require two doses. That’s because researchers found that while the body launches an immune response after the first dose, boosting that initial exposure to the virus magnifies that defense significantly. If a person hasn’t been infected by the COVID-19 virus, it takes a little longer to prime the pump of their immune system against it.

Will I have to pay for a COVID-19 vaccine?

Vaccines supported by U.S. taxpayer dollars under the Operation Warp Speed ­program—which includes those from AstraZeneca, Johnson & Johnson/Janssen, Moderna, Pfizer/BioNTech, Sanofi/GlaxoSmithKline and others—should be free for all Americans, although the details of the purchasing contracts are still unclear. Some health facilities may also charge an administration fee for giving the vaccine, which people will have to pay out of pocket.

Will I still have to wear a mask after I get vaccinated?

Yes.

Studies so far show only that the vaccines can protect against getting sick with the disease, and may not prevent being infected with the virus. So it’s important to still follow all the public-health measures that throw up an invisible wall against the coronavirus. Even if you’re immunized, you can still get infected with the virus and therefore pass it on to others. That’s why even as more and more people get vaccinated, health officials will continue to ask you to wear a mask in public, practice social distancing and avoid large indoor gatherings. Those basic behaviors will remain critical in keeping the virus from finding new hosts.

New story in Science and Health from Time: The SpaceX Capsule With Four Astronauts On Board Has Reached the International Space Station The SpaceX Capsule With Four Astronauts On Board Has Reached the International Space Station

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — SpaceX’s newly launched capsule with four astronauts arrived Monday at the International Space Station, their new home until spring.

The Dragon capsule pulled up and docked late Monday night, following a 27-hour, completely automated flight from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center.

“Oh, what a good voice to hear,” space station astronaut Kate Rubins called out when the Dragon’s commander, Mike Hopkins, first made radio contact. The linkup occurred 262 miles (422 kilometers) above Idaho.

This is the second astronaut mission for SpaceX. But it’s the first time Elon Musk’s company delivered a crew for a full half-year station stay. The two-pilot test flight earlier this year lasted two months.

The three Americans and one Japanese astronaut will remain at the orbiting lab until their replacements arrive on another Dragon in April. And so it will go, with SpaceX — and eventually Boeing — transporting astronauts to and from the station for NASA.

This regular taxi service got underway with Sunday night’s launch.

Hopkins and his crew — Victor Glover, Shannon Walker and Japan’s Soichi Noguchi — join two Russians and one American who flew to the space station last month from Kazakhstan. Glover is the first African-American to move in for a long haul. A space newcomer, Glover was presented his gold astronaut pin Monday.

The four named their capsule Resilience to provide hope and inspiration during an especially difficult year for the whole world. They broadcast a tour of their capsule Monday, showing off the touchscreen controls, storage areas and their zero gravity indicator: a small plush Baby Yoda.

Walker said it was a little tighter for them than for the two astronauts on the test flight.

“We sort of dance around each other to stay out of each other’s way,” she said.

For Sunday’s launch, NASA kept guests to a minimum because of coronavirus, and even Musk had to stay away after tweeting that he “most likely” had an infection. He was replaced in his official launch duties by SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell, who assured reporters he was still very much involved with Sunday night’s action, although remotely.

As they prepared for the space station linkup, the Dragon crew beamed down live window views of New Zealand and a brilliant blue, cloud-streaked Pacific 250 miles below.

“Looks amazing,” Mission Control radioed from SpaceX headquarters in Hawthorne, California.

“It looks amazing from up here, too,” Hopkins replied.

___

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

New story in Science and Health from Time: SpaceX’s Crewed Launch Continues What NASA’s Gemini Astronauts Started SpaceX’s Crewed Launch Continues What NASA’s Gemini Astronauts Started

We’re not sure if Jim Lovell and Buzz Aldrin were watching Sunday when SpaceX’s Crew Dragon lifted off from Pad 39A at Cape Canaveral for its first fully operational mission—but the odds are pretty good that they were. Astronauts from past eras of space travel tend to keep up with the doings in the modern one. Either way, the overall audience for the launch was big—NASA’s site carried it live, as did the cable news channels. But of all the people who were watching, it was Lovell and Aldrin whose attention would be the most important, or at least the most poignant.

Fifty-four years earlier to the day, in 1966, the pair splashed down in the Atlantic Ocean northeast of Turks and Caicos after a nearly four day, 59-orbit mission in their Gemini 12 spacecraft. The flight was close to flawless. The crew successfully docked with an uncrewed Agena spacecraft, and Aldrin logged more than five hours outside the Gemini over the course of three separate spacewalks. The tenth and final flight of the Gemini series, it was by any measure a perfect capstone.

“In 10 manned Gemini missions since March, 1965,” read the next day’s New York Times, “Gemini astronauts demonstrated their ability to rendezvous and link up with target vehicles, fire a target Agena’s rocket to climb to a record altitude, fly for 14 days without any ill effects and bring their crafts to precise landings.”

NASAAstronauts James A. Lovell Jr. (left), command pilot, and Edwin E. Aldrin Jr., pilot, receive official welcome as they arrive aboard the aircraft carrier USS Wasp. Gemini-12 splashed down in the Atlantic Ocean recovery area at 2:21 p.m. (EST), Nov. 15, 1966.

All of those achievements were essential dress rehearsals for getting astronauts to and from the moon. But the success of the Gemini program was as much about hardware as it was about piloting acumen. Those 10 flights over the course of 20 months factored out to one crewed mission every eight weeks, with Geminis rolling off the assembly line at McDonnell Aircraft Corporation in St. Louis, getting mounted atop their Titan boosters and rocketing into space with a regularity that was unimaginable only a few years earlier.

SpaceX is aiming to achieve a similar gas-up-and-go capability—and in some ways it already has, with more than 100 launches in its various fleet of rockets since 2010. But only two so far have been crewed: the current four-person mission, and the first, experimental one, which carried two astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS) back in May. Because space station crews stay aloft for six months at a time, there is no need for the company to match Gemini’s pace. But with crew members’ lives on the line, it is very much aiming for the same reliability—a thought echoed by outgoing NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine after this weekend’s launch.

“This is another historic moment,” he said. “[But] make no mistake: Vigilance is always required on every flight.”

NASA learned that lesson in the worst of all possible ways just over two months after Gemini 12’s successful return, when the Apollo 1 astronauts died in a launch pad fire early in the evening of Jan. 27, 1967. At the moment the men were killed, Lovell and a contingent of other astronauts were at the White House, mingling with dignitaries celebrating the ratification of the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, which bound signatory nations to keep weapons of mass destruction out of space, to refrain from militarizing the moon or other celestial bodies and to render aid to other countries’ astronauts in distress. Just three years after that tragic evening, Lovell himself was very much in distress, when the Apollo 13 spacecraft he was commanding suffered a crippling explosion en route to the moon, nearly claiming the lives of another Apollo crew.

Space—as people say over and over—is hard, but the shopworn nature of the phrase makes it no less true. Nov. 15, 2020 was a very, very good day for SpaceX and the nation as a whole. We will need many more good days to see that space continues to be explored routinely, reliably and, far and away most importantly, safely.

New story in Science and Health from Time: Early Data Suggests Moderna’s COVID-19 Vaccine Is Nearly 95% Effective—And You Can Keep It in the Fridge Early Data Suggests Moderna’s COVID-19 Vaccine Is Nearly 95% Effective—And You Can Keep It in the Fridge

For the second time this month, there’s promising news from a COVID-19 vaccine candidate: Moderna said Monday its shots provide strong protection, a dash of hope against the grim backdrop of coronavirus surges in the U.S. and around the world.

Moderna said its vaccine appears to be 94.5% effective, according to preliminary data from the company’s still ongoing study. A week ago, competitor Pfizer Inc. announced its own COVID-19 vaccine appeared similarly effective — news that puts both companies on track to seek permission within weeks for emergency use in the U.S.

Dr. Stephen Hoge, Moderna’s president, welcomed the “really important milestone” but said having similar results from two different companies is what’s most reassuring.

“That should give us all hope that actually a vaccine is going to be able to stop this pandemic and hopefully get us back to our lives,” Hoge told The Associated Press.

“It won’t be Moderna alone that solves this problem. It’s going to require many vaccines” to meet the global demand, he added.

A vaccine can’t come fast enough, as virus cases topped 11 million in the U.S. over the weekend — 1 million of them recorded in just the past week. The pandemic has killed more than 1.3 million people worldwide, more than 245,000 of them in the U.S.

Still, if the Food and Drug Administration allows emergency use of Moderna’s or Pfizer’s candidates, there will be limited, rationed supplies before the end of the year. Both require people to get two shots, several weeks apart. Moderna expects to have about 20 million doses, earmarked for the U.S., by the end of 2020. Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech expect to have about 50 million doses globally by year’s end.

Moderna’s vaccine, created with the National Institutes of Health, is being studied in 30,000 volunteers who received either the real vaccination or a dummy shot. On Sunday, an independent monitoring board broke the code to examine 95 infections that were recorded starting two weeks after volunteers’ second dose — and discovered all but five illnesses occurred in participants who got the placebo.

The study is continuing, and Moderna acknowledged the protection rate might change as more COVID-19 infections are detected and added to the calculations. Also, it’s too soon to know how long protection lasts. Both cautions apply to Pfizer’s vaccine as well.

But Moderna’s independent monitors reported some additional, promising tidbits: All 11 severe COVID-19 cases were among placebo recipients, and there were no significant safety concerns.

The main side effects were fatigue, muscle aches and injection-site pain after the vaccine’s second dose, at rates that Hoge characterized as more common than with flu shots but on par with others such as shingles vaccine.

The Cambridge, Massachusetts, company’s vaccine is among 11 candidates in late-stage testing around the world, four of them in huge studies in the U.S.

Both Moderna’s shots and the Pfizer-BioNTech candidate are so-called mRNA vaccines, a brand-new technology. They aren’t made with the coronavirus itself, meaning there’s no chance anyone could catch it from the shots. Instead, the vaccine contains a piece of genetic code that trains the immune system to recognize the spiked protein on the surface of the virus.

The strong results were a surprise. Scientists have warned for months that any COVID-19 shot may be only as good as flu vaccines, which are about 50% effective.

Another steep challenge: distributing doses that must be kept very cold. Both the Moderna and Pfizer shots are frozen but at different temperatures. Moderna announced Monday that once thawed, its doses can last longer in a refrigerator than initially thought, up to 30 days. Pfizer’s shots require long-term storage at ultra-cold temperatures.

New story in Science and Health from Time: SpaceX Launches 2nd Crewed Flight, Sending 4 Astronauts to the International Space Station SpaceX Launches 2nd Crewed Flight, Sending 4 Astronauts to the International Space Station

(CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla.) — SpaceX launched four astronauts to the International Space Station on Sunday on the first full-fledged taxi flight for NASA by a private company.

The Falcon rocket thundered into the night from Kennedy Space Center with three Americans and one Japanese, the second crew to be launched by SpaceX. The Dragon capsule on top — named Resilience by its crew in light of this year’s many challenges, most notably COVID-19 — was due to reach the space station late Monday and remain there until spring.

Sidelined by the virus himself, SpaceX founder and chief executive Elon Musk was forced to monitor the action from afar. He tweeted that he “most likely” had a moderate case of COVID-19. NASA policy at Kennedy Space Center requires anyone testing positive for coronavirus to quarantine and remain isolated.

Gregg Newton–AFP/Getty ImagesA SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket streaks toward space in this time exposure at liftoff from launch complex 39A at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Nov. 15, 2020. NASA’s SpaceX Crew-1 mission is the first crew rotation mission of the SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft and Falcon 9 rocket to the International Space Station as part of the agency’s Commercial Crew Program.

Sunday’s launch follows by just a few months SpaceX’s two-pilot test flight. It kicks off what NASA hopes will be a long series of crew rotations between the U.S. and the space station, after years of delay. More people means more science research at the orbiting lab, according to officials.

“This is another historic moment,” NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine said Friday. But he noted: “Make no mistake: Vigilance is always required on every flight.”

The flight to the space station — 27 1/2 hours door to door — should be entirely automated, although the crew can take control if needed.

With COVID-19 still surging, NASA continued the safety precautions put in place for SpaceX’s crew launch in May. The astronauts went into quarantine with their families in October. All launch personnel wore masks, and the number of guests at Kennedy was limited. Even the two astronauts on the first SpaceX crew flight stayed behind at Johnson Space Center in Houston.

Vice President Mike Pence, chairman of the National Space Council, traveled from Washington to watch the launch.

Outside the space center gates, officials anticipated hundreds of thousands of spectators to jam nearby beaches and towns.

NASA worried a weekend liftoff — coupled with a dramatic nighttime launch — could lead to a superspreader event. They urged the crowds to wear masks and maintain safe distances. Similar pleas for SpaceX’s first crew launch on May 30 went unheeded.

The three-men, one-woman crew led by Commander Mike Hopkins, an Air Force colonel, named their capsule Resilience in a nod not only to the pandemic, but also racial injustice and contentious politics. It’s about as diverse as space crews come, including physicist Shannon Walker, Navy Cmdr. Victor Glover, the first Black astronaut on a long-term space station mission, and Japan’s Soichi Noguchi, who became the first person in almost 40 years to launch on three types of spacecraft.

They rode out to the launch pad in Teslas — another Musk company — after exchanging high-fives and hand embraces with their children and spouses, who huddled at the open car windows. Musk was replaced by SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell in bidding the astronauts farewell.

Besides its sleek design and high-tech features, the Dragon capsule is quite spacious — it can carry up to seven people. Previous space capsules have launched with no more than three. The extra room in the capsule was used for science experiments and supplies.

The four astronauts will be joining two Russians and one American who flew to the space station last month from Kazakhstan.

The first-stage booster — aiming for an ocean platform several minutes after liftoff — is expected to be recycled by SpaceX for the next crew launch. That’s currently targeted for the end of March, which would set up the newly launched astronauts for a return to Earth in April. SpaceX would launch yet another crew in late summer or early fall.

SpaceX and NASA wanted the booster recovered so badly that they delayed the launch attempt by a day, to give the floating platform time to reach its position in the Atlantic over the weekend following rough seas.

Boeing, NASA’s other contracted crew transporter, is trailing by a year. A repeat of last December’s software-plagued test flight without a crew is off until sometime early next year, with the first astronaut flight of the Starliner capsule not expected before summer.

NASA turned to private companies to haul cargo and crew to the space station, after the shuttle fleet retired in 2011. SpaceX qualified for both. With Kennedy back in astronaut-launching action, NASA can stop buying seats on Russian Soyuz rockets. The last one cost $90 million.

The commander of SpaceX’s first crew, Doug Hurley, noted it’s not just about saving money or easing the training burdens for crews.

“Bottom line: I think it’s just better for us to be flying from the United States if we can do that,” he told The Associated Press last week.

New story in Science and Health from Time: A Fond Farewell to Trump’s NASA Administrator A Fond Farewell to Trump’s NASA Administrator

There were plenty of reasons to wince back in 2017 when U.S. President Donald Trump announced he was appointing Jim Bridenstine as NASA administrator. A former Republican congressman from Oklahoma, Bridenstine was a political pick—unlike most of his predecessors, who came out of the astronaut corps or the aerospace industry. Moreover, Bridenstine had previously questioned the role of human beings in climate change. A politician with so wrong-headed a view of so fundamental and existential an issue was not someone you wanted anywhere near the helm of a science-driven agency.

But flash forward to 2020. With Trump now a lame duck and President-elect Joe Biden just 68 days away from moving into the Oval Office, there is reason to regret Bridenstine’s announcement this week that he’s stepping down.

“What you need is somebody who has a close relationship with the President of the United States,” Bridenstine told Aviation Week. “You need somebody who is trusted by the administration…including the OMB [Office of Management and Budget], the National Space Council and the National Security Council, and I think that I would not be the right person for that in a new administration.”

That’s a shame, since Bridenstine’s brief tenure has been an unexpected success. Early in his confirmation process, he cleared up the climate change nonsense, saying he now embraced the science fully. While he couldn’t wave his lack of space industry experience away with a similar statement, his experience as a politician in many ways made up the difference. And over the last few years, he became something NASA always needs: a leader with both a vision to sell and the ability to sell it.

Under his tenure, NASA’s public-private hybrid Commercial Crew program has been thriving, with SpaceX having sent one crew to the International Space Station (ISS) and Boeing set to follow early next year. He proved himself effective not only at keeping enthusiasm up for the program, but also in keeping the commercial providers in line—once notably getting into a Twitter scrap with SpaceX chief Elon Musk over deadlines and delays.

More important, Bridenstine has led America’s most serious push to put astronauts on the moon since the Apollo era. Before Bridenstine’s arrival, NASA was in a slow drift either moon-ward or Mars-ward, with no clear goal or target date. The Trump Administration chose the moon as the target and 2024 as the deadline, and Bridenstine ran with that. With a politician’s eye for salesmanship, he dubbed the new program Artemis—Apollo’s sister—and announced that the program would be landing “the first woman and next man” on the surface of the moon. The muscle matched the marketing, with Bridenstine pushing the agency to meet the target date, choose private contractors to compete for the job of building the new lunar lander, and help craft the “Artemis Accords,” a multilateral pact to turn the lunar push into an international effort.

There is no word yet about who President-elect Biden will tap to replace Bridenstine. Whoever it is would be well-advised to study the success of Bridenstine’s 30-month tenure, take lots of notes, and then set about doing plenty of the same things. In a fractious four years during which Administration heads rolled and revolving doors spun, the NASA chief was something of a lode-star for how to get the job done. He will be rightly and roundly missed.

New story in Science and Health from Time: My Octopus Teacher Became a Viral Sensation on Netflix. Its Human Star Craig Foster Wants the Film to Inspire Change My Octopus Teacher Became a Viral Sensation on Netflix. Its Human Star Craig Foster Wants the Film to Inspire Change

The dense kelp forest off the southern tip of South Africa is home to an unparalleled diversity of sea animals including sharks, rays, and, once upon a time, a common octopus that has just had an uncommon run as the star of the new Netflix documentary, My Octopus Teacher.

Her onetime den lies a couple of dozen feet off the coast of Cape Town suburb Simon’s Town. The Octopus is long gone—octopuses rarely survive more than 18 months in the wild—but her co-star and “student,” filmmaker Craig Foster, still visits her former home in daily dives that are as much about pilgrimage as they are about science. “When an animal has such an influence on you… you can’t help but love the environment that made her,” he says, gazing down at her kelp-forest cove from the picture window of his cliffside bungalow. “Going there feels like going home.”

Foster’s land-based home is laden with treasures brought back from his own hunting expeditions. Shells and sea glass colonize the flat surfaces. Stacks of abalone shells the size of dinner plates teeter in a corner. The skin of a small shark wraps around a driftwood pillar. It’s as if, piece by piece, he is trying to bring the ocean into his living room.

Since it premiered on the streaming platform in September, the documentary has become a viral hit. Although Netflix does not release viewer data, it says it has been a global success, in the top 10 most watched in Israel, South Africa and Australia. Amy Schumer recommended it to her 10.2 million Instagram followers.

With the same introspective cadences of the film’s voiceover, Foster muses that in a time of growing separation from nature, the film has triggered a fundamental human longing to reconnect with our origins. “Just under the skin we’re still fully wild. And I think this touches on what it’s like to glimpse that.”

How a filmmaker became a student

My Octopus Teacher tells the story of the unusual bond between Foster and a wild octopus he encounters while freediving. For more than a year Foster follows her on daily dives as she hunts for prey and evades her predators with an uncanny ingenuity that calls into question human assumptions of superior intelligence.

But Foster is no detached observer. He also documents his own efforts to understand her world and how that quest led to emotional and intellectual growth. “She taught me humility,” he says, while grazing on a post-dive snack of wholegrain toast with butter. “She taught me compassion. She opened my mind to just how complex and precious wild creatures are.”

Celebrated for his groundbreaking 2000 film, The Great Dance, about the San bush-hunters of the Kalahari desert, Foster found himself in 2011 burnt out and physically wrecked by the stress of trying to survive as a nature documentary filmmaker. He felt like he had lost his connection to the world around him, he says, and even to his own family. He recalled the San hunters’ deep immersion in nature and realized that was what was missing in his life. “I desperately wanted to have that feeling,” he says. “If I could spend every day in a wild environment, how well could I get to know it? Could I learn to read tracks like the hunters in the Kalahari? Could I predict animals’ behavior?”

Courtesy of NetflixAerial view of Craig Foster in the Great African Sea Forest.

Rather than go to the desert, he turned to the sea at his front door, and vowed to himself to free-dive every single day for ten years. Braving frigid waters and epic storms, Foster has rigidly kept that commitment. The experience has been transformative, he says. “The cold calms you. It fills your brain with these feel-good chemicals. And then you’re in this golden forest, this liquid environment that hasn’t any gravity. And that becomes your underwater home, especially if you’re visiting it every day.”

It was only several years in that the strange behavior of a small speckled octopus sparked his curiosity, and kept his attention for the duration of her short life. By studying her actions and observing her learn, play and recover from injury, he applied lessons to his own life — even knitting together a fractured relationship with his son.

While Foster documented every dive with a video camera, he did not set out with a plan to make a film. His goal was to better understand the complex ecosystem at his front door, and in doing so, draw attention to what he calls the Great African Sea Forest, a 1200-kilometer-long stand of golden sea bamboo, or kelp, along Africa’s southwestern coast. One of only eight kelp forests in the world, it is vital for ocean biodiversity but little known outside of conservation circles.

In order to safeguard the region, Foster cofounded The SeaChange Project in 2012. “The idea was to get this great African Sea Forest, the home of the octopus teacher, recognized as a global icon, like the Serengeti or the Great Barrier Reef.” He is hoping that the success of My Octopus Teacher, which was backed by his NGO, will effectively brand the sea forest in the popular consciousness. “You have to name a place in order for people to care about and protect it,” he says.

Intimacy with nature

His snack finished, Foster gets up to give a tour of his collections. An old library card catalogue has been repurposed as a specimen case, each drawer containing shells found in the abandoned den of a single octopus. Some octopuses were urchin specialists, others hunted giant turbo snails. As Foster points out a tiny hole in an abalone shell that shows where an octopus has drilled down to get at the creature inside, his quiet reserve disappears. Each item has a story, and he starts tripping over his words in an attempt to tell them all. “This is a helmet shell snail,” he says, picking up a creamy orange spiral. It took him two years of dedicated tracking to figure out how it killed sea urchins, something, he says “even scientists didn’t know.”

One doesn’t need an exotic location (or an octopus) to reconnect with nature, Foster says. While he was fortunate to have the ocean at his doorstep, wildlife teachers can be found anywhere, even in the middle of a city. “If you suddenly took one tree in New York and figured out how that tree changed over 365 days and what animals interacted with it, what insects live in there, how that tree is surviving, I think that could have quite a large effect on your life.”

For Foster, it’s that intimate knowledge that offers real transformation. Just a few months shy of completing his ten-year vow, Foster says he can’t imagine ever giving up his daily dives. He’s not even tempted to dive anywhere else. “The amazing thing is that when you get to know this kelp forest like I have, it’s the most exciting place to dive on earth because you’re just about to solve ten amazing mysteries. You know that crab. You know that octopus, and you just can’t wait to know them better. So I’d actually rather be here than in some exotic place.”

And the discoveries keep coming. Just this morning he found an unusual sea star, one that was blue when it should have been orange. Is it an aberration? A mutation? Or a whole new species? He doesn’t know, but he can’t wait to get back into the water to learn more. As with the octopus that changed his life, “It always starts with these little mysteries… all these mysteries you’re trying to figure out.” With any luck, that sea star may become his next teacher.

 

New story in Science and Health from Time: As a Candidate, Biden Said Little About Space. Here’s What He Might Do as President As a Candidate, Biden Said Little About Space. Here’s What He Might Do as President

Charlie Bolden likes to tell the story about the time he and Joe Biden composed a sort of a song. It was back in 2010, when the former Vice President was overseeing the Obama White House push to pass a NASA budget authorization bringing private sector players like SpaceX and Boeing into the business of launching crew and cargo to the International Space Station (ISS). Bolden, then head of NASA, was championing the plan and he and Biden huddled to discuss how best to sell it to skeptical lawmakers on Capitol Hill.

“I remember when we were really having trouble getting funding out of Congress,” Bolden said at a press conference this past May, shortly before SpaceX launched its first crew to the ISS. “I went in and talked to the Vice President and he said, ‘I can help you. I know the tune but you’ve got to give me the lyrics.'”

It worked. Congress did pass the authorization bill establishing the commercial crew and cargo program and in the last decade, NASA and the private sector have become close partners in keeping the ISS staffed and supplied. That was one of the signature—if less-touted—achievements of the Biden vice presidency. And for the space community, it bodes well for NASA now that Biden has snagged the top job in D.C..

The enthusiasm is not without merit. Ever since the administration of President John Kennedy, space has often though not always been part of the vice president’s portfolio. Lyndon Johnson handled the job under JFK, Dan Quayle did the same for President George H.W. Bush, as did Biden for President Barack Obama and Mike Pence for President Donald Trump. Until now, it was only Johnson who later became president himself and from 1963 to 1969 he oversaw what was by any measure NASA’s golden age—a time of robust funding, ambitious goals and a successful push to put boots on the moon. Biden seems well positioned to fit the Johnson mold—but there are plenty of reasons for space enthusiasts to keep their expectations in check.

When the Trump era ends on January 20, 2021, Biden will inherit more than a few messes—not least the pandemic and its devastating economic consequences. On the less urgent but more positive side, he will also inherit a 21st century space program enjoying a mini golden era. Trump and Pence have been exceedingly space-friendly, overseeing steady if modest increases in funding that have seen the NASA budget grow from $19.65 billion in 2017, to $20.7 billion in 2018, $21.4 billion in 2019, and $22.629 billion in 2020. That represents a little more than 0.4% of the federal budget, compared to a comparatively huge 4.0% in the mid-1960s, but funding boosts are funding boosts and NASA welcomes every dollar.

With the additional money, NASA has been able to proceed with its plans for the Artemis program, which aims to return astronauts to the moon by 2024; support the commercial crew program; continue funding the James Webb Space Telescope; and bankroll interplanetary missions like the Perseverance rover, now on its way to Mars, as well as the Dragonfly mission to the Saturnian moon Titan and the Europa Clipper mission to the Jovian moon Europa, both of which are planned for launch later in the 2020s. Notably, Trump also established the U.S. Space Force as a sixth branch of the armed forces. Funding for the Force does not come out of NASA’s shallow pockets but the Pentagon’s far, far deeper ones—in any case, it is one more sign of a growing and ambitious U.S. presence in space.

That, however, could change under Biden. As a candidate, he said almost nothing about space, breaking his silence only in May to celebrate the SpaceX crew launch. The topic did not come up in either presidential debates and was never a staple—or even a topic—of Biden’s stump speeches. That doesn’t mean he’s gone entirely cold to space—especially since the pandemic and the economy made it hard to talk about much else, particularly something like space which feels, to many voters, like a pricey luxury.

For starters, Biden will surely continue robustly backing the commercial crew and cargo program as it has his fingerprints all over it and it’s been a clear and so-far unalloyed success. The Space Force might be a different matter. Critics argued that it was little more than a vanity project for Trump—a chance to unveil a new logo, new uniforms, and a new seat at the table of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, all in the service of work that the U.S. Air Force is doing anyway, such as protecting U.S. assets in low-Earth orbit. Biden could scrap the new branch and fold its services back into the Air Force both to save money and to divorce his Administration from so conspicuously Trump-branded a program.

The same could be said about the Artemis lunar program, especially since the 2024 target date—which has never been realistic, given that none of the flight hardware needed for a lunar landing has been flown, or is even fully built yet—was picked to coincide with the last year of a possible Trump second term. What’s more, the day after the election was called for Biden, NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine—a champion of the 2024 plan—told Aviation Week that he would be stepping down and allowing the new president to pick his own space agency chief. But bet on Artemis at least to survive.

Way too much of that hardware is already being built and way too many years have gone into developing it for a new Administration to throw it away now. The Space Launch System (SLS)—the 21st century answer to the Saturn V moon rocket—has been in the works since 2004, as has the Orion crew capsule, and both are planned for their first flight sometime in 2021. Plus, NASA recently announced the signing of the Artemis Accords, an international partnership to get to the moon, similar to the 15-nation consortium that built and maintains the ISS. In both cases, partner nations would provide hardware like habitation modules and cooperate to launch and maintain them. Biden spent no shortage of campaign-trail oxygen condemning Trump’s flouting of international agreements like the Paris climate accord and the Iranian nuclear deal to make one of his first acts in office walking away from even a modest pact like Artemis. What’s all but certain to change is the 2024 landing date—both because it is likely to be logistically impossible anyway and because there is no Trump second-term deadline to satisfy.

One thing that’s all but certain is that Earth science missions, which often involve climate monitoring and were targeted for cuts under Trump, will be in for a funding boost under a much more climate-friendly Biden Administration.

Less knowable is if NASA will continue seeing the steady funding increases under President-elect Biden that it did under Trump. This year, for the first time in the Trump era, funding has remained flat, with the fiscal year 2021 request matching that from 2020. Biden, with a Democratic House but an all-but certain Republican Senate, would not be able to work his will even if he strongly advocated for a major increase. And GOP lawmakers, who are typically less friendly to environmental spending than Democrats, might be less inclined to sign off on more NASA cash if the Earth science programs receive a meaningful share of the money.

Whatever a Biden space policy turns out to be, it is likely to be a low priority item, with the pandemic and the economy, as well as the job of rejoining the Paris climate deal and repairing international partnerships overall consuming at least the new president’s first year in office. Space will have to wait its turn. If Biden and NASA have another collaborative song in them, don’t expect it to be sung for a while yet.

New story in Science and Health from Time: The U.S. Just Officially Left the Paris Agreement. Can it Be a Leader in the Climate Fight Again? The U.S. Just Officially Left the Paris Agreement. Can it Be a Leader in the Climate Fight Again?

The U.S. – the world’s second largest emitter of greenhouse gases – formally withdrew from the U.N.’s 2015 Paris climate change agreement on Nov. 4.

Now ratified by 189 countries, the Paris Agreement is the most important international accord on combating climate change. It sets a central goal of limiting global average temperature increase to well below 2 degrees Celsius over the pre-industrial era – a threshold at which the impacts of climate change become catastrophic for life on earth. Under the Obama administration, the U.S. was central to negotiating the deal five years ago.

But in June 2017 President Donald Trump announced his intention to pull the U.S. out of the agreement, arguing that its rules, which require countries to set national goals for cutting emissions, “[disadvantage] the United States to the exclusive benefit of other countries”. Under the terms of the agreement, countries had to wait until three years after the pact entered into force in November 2016 to make plans to leave, and then a further year after their official notification. By chance, that brought the U.S.’ formal exit date to the day after the 2020 presidential election – which has so far returned no clear winner.

Until today, U.S. representatives have been allowed to take part in Paris-related talks to offer technical expertise but it has lost its leadership role on climate action, says Kelley Kizzier, associate vice president for international climate at the Environmental Defense Action Fund, who has served as an E.U. negotiator for the Paris Agreement. “But on a political level, the U.S. has essentially been a no-show since 2017.”

The American withdrawal has not only hurt climate action in the U.S. itself, but the agreement as a whole. “It created a leadership vacuum and left doors open to more obstructive voices [in U.N. climate talks], with some actors empowered by the Trump administration,” Kizzier says. It also contributed to lowering ambition among some Paris signatories, she adds, with many countries failing to scale up their emissions targets as they were due to this year.

Future presidents may wish to change the climate course that President Trump has set. If he emerges as the winner of the 2020 election, Joe Biden has pledged to put the U.S. back in the Paris agreement “on day one” and to make the U.S. a world leader on climate action. But as other world powers pull ahead on policy and innovation, is it too late for the U.S. lead the world on climate change?

What would it take for the U.S. to rejoin the Paris Agreement?

Technically, not a lot. To rejoin the Paris Agreement, a president would have to issue a formal notification to the U.N., and would be able to rejoin 30 days later.

But to become a bonafide member of the agreement– and regain the trust of the international community– the U.S. needs to do a lot more than send a notification. All parties to the deal are due to submit new emissions targets – known as nationally determined contributions (NDCs)– before the next U.N. climate summit in Glasgow in November 2021. (The summit had been due to take place this month, but was delayed because of the pandemic.) If a Biden administration wanted to put the U.S. on track to become a climate leader again, he’d need to come up with “an ambitious and credible NDC”, Kizzier says. “Ambitious meaning in the range of a 45% to 50% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions on 2005 levels by 2030, a level commensurate with Europe.”

Being “credible” will be just as difficult for the U.S. Its withdrawal from the Paris Agreement is not the first time the U.S. has abandoned an international climate accord it helped to negotiate – the U.S. never ratified the 1997 Kyoto Protocol on greenhouse gases, either. “Given that the world has watched that happen twice, this will require more than the sweep of a presidential pen,” Kizzier says. The U.S.’ new emissions target would need to show how it will reach its emissions reductions with as much detail as possible, citing specific policies and legislation. “U.S. commitment needs to go beyond the White House, with action and support from congress too.”

Has its withdrawal from the Paris Agreement stopped the U.S. from taking action on climate?

Not entirely. In response to Trump’s withdrawal from the agreement, other actors stepped up to make climate commitments. More than 500 cities and counties across the U.S., and 25 state governors, have formed a coalition, along with thousands of businesses, universities and others who are working to reduce emissions on a local level in line with the Paris agreement. This group now represents “almost 70 percent of U.S. GDP” and 65 and “more than half of U.S.” greenhouse gas emissions, according to the World Resources Institute.

But on a federal level, the Trump administration rolled back more than 100 environmental and climate regulations, and slashed funding for climate programs and research. U.S. emissions have been failing over the last four years, as they have in other developed countries, as renewable energies and natural gas became cheaper and displaced fossil fuels. But the U.S. is not on track to meet its Paris commitment of cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 26% from 2005 levels to 2025.

U.S. willingness to take part in international efforts to fight climate change has fallen away. Aside from leaving the Paris Agreement, the president blocked diplomatic resolutions on climate at the G20 and cut contributions to the U.N.’s Green Climate Fund.

That’s left the country unable to take advantage of valuable economic opportunities, says Andrew Light, a former state department official in the Obama administration and a professor of public policy at George Mason University. A 2016 report by the World Bank’s International Finance Corporation found that the Paris agreement would trigger $23 trillion worth of investment opportunities in emerging market economies in sectors like renewable energy and sustainable forest management. “If the U.S. stays out of the agreement, the rest of the world is going to gobble up all that opportunity and all the jobs that come with it,” Light says. ”The U.S. won’t benefit from those markets and it’s going to become a pariah nation on this.”

How would U.S. re-entry to the Paris Agreement realign the balance of power on climate?

The E.U. and China have stepped in to fill the leadership role abandoned by the U.S., setting landmark climate neutrality goals, and, in the E.U. case, laying out a radical Green Deal plan. Both countries have taken leading roles in U.N. negotiations.

Europe is still hoping for an eventual U.S. return to the Paris agreement, though, according to Rachel Kyte, dean of the Fletcher School at Tufts and a former vice president of climate at the World Bank. “The geopolitics of the world could be rewritten [as the climate changes],” she says. “You want every major power at the table when you’re going to go through that kind of transition.”

If the U.S. does not re-engage with the international fight against climate change, it could find itself on a collision course with other world powers. E.U. leaders are considering implementing a carbon border tax, which would effectively tax products imported to member states according to their carbon footprint. That would disadvantage businesses in countries with weaker climate policy. “When we’re dealing with a global bad, such as carbon, it is difficult to imagine how a major power can sustain a position whereby you will benefit from not engaging on the issue,” Kyte says.

For international climate leaders, the “real power” of having the U.S. as an ally – aside from the significant emissions cuts it could make domestically – lies in its ability to use investment and other finance to drive climate action in other countries, Light says. And, as a major investor in development banks like the World Bank and regional Development bank’s, the U.S. can also use its influence to stop investments in fossil fuels – as the E.U.’s development Bank has been doing.

As the U.S. has receded from a global leadership role, and scaled back its investments in other countries’ development, China has pushed forward with massive expansions in Africa and Latin America. And, though the country has pledged to reach climate neutrality at home before 2060, it has not always prioritized the climate abroad. As part of China’s massive Belt and Road infrastructure initiative, Chinese companies are involved in hundreds of projects to generate power from coal – the most polluting fossil fuel – in 25 countries. “Europeans know that offering developing countries a non-fossil alternative to the infrastructure investment they can get from China right now becomes a viable prospect with the United States,” Light says, “And it’s an incredibly difficult prospect without the United States.“

With reporting by Justin Worland