(MOSCOW) — NASA astronaut Christina Koch, who has spent nearly 11 months in orbit on the longest spaceflight by a woman, landed safely in Kazakhstan on Thursday along with two of her International Space Station crewmates.
The Soyuz capsule carrying Koch, along with station Commander Luca Parmitano of the European Space Agency and the Russian space agency Roscosmos’ Alexander Skvortsov, touched down southeast of Dzhezkazgan, Kazakhstan, at 3:12 p.m. (0912 GMT).
Koch wrapped up a 328-day mission on her first flight into space, providing researchers the opportunity to observe the effects of long-duration spaceflight on a woman. The study is important since NASA plans to return to the moon under the Artemis program and prepare for the human exploration of Mars.
Koch smiled and gave a thumbs-up as support crew helped her get out of the capsule and placed her in a chair for a quick post-flight check-up alongside her crewmates. Russian space officials said they were in good shape.
Koch, who grew up in Jacksonville, North Carolina, and now lives near the Gulf of Mexico in Galveston, Texas, with her husband, Bob, told The Associated Press last month that taking part in the first all-female spacewalk was the highlight of her mission.
Koch said she and fellow NASA astronaut Jessica Meir appreciated that the Oct. 18 spacewalk “could serve as an inspiration for future space explorers.”
Parmitano and Skvortsov spent 201 days in space.
After preliminary medical evaluations, the crew will be flown by Russian helicopters to the city of Karaganda in Kazakhstan. Koch and Parmitano will then board a NASA plane bound for Cologne, Germany, where Parmitano will be greeted by European space officials before Koch proceeds home to Houston.
Skvortsov will be flown to the Star City Cosmonaut Training Center outside Moscow.
Newly-released documents from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) show officials reacting with frustration to President Donald Trump’s repeated claim last fall that Hurricane Dorian might hit Alabama, despite the fact that scientists inside the agency disagreed with him.
The documents — which include over 1,000 emails — were released late Friday night in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request filed by BuzzFeed News and other publications. BuzzFeed News Investigative Reporter Jason Leopold posted a Twitter thread of his findings on Friday night.
BREAKING #FOIA: At 10 pm EST tonight, NOAA released hundreds of pages of documents in response to my and other #FOIA requests about Hurricane Dorian and Sharpiegate.
A late night dump from NOAA! Hmm wonder what's in here.
Back in early September, Hurricane Dorian was headed towards the U.S. after devastating the Bahamas and killing dozens. On Sept. 1, President Trump tweeted that Hurricane Dorian was on a path to hit multiple southern states, including Alabama. (Dorian did not end up hitting Alabama, but skirted the coast of Florida and Georgia.)
The National Weather Service (NWS) in Birmingham, Ala., quickly responded that he was wrong, tweeting, “Alabama will NOT see any impacts from#Dorian. We repeat, no impacts from Hurricane#Dorianwill be felt across Alabama. The system will remain too far east.”
Alabama will NOT see any impacts from #Dorian. We repeat, no impacts from Hurricane #Dorian will be felt across Alabama. The system will remain too far east. #alwx
The President then doubled down on his claim that Alabama was at risk. On Sept. 4, he gave an update on the storm while sitting in front of a map that appeared to have been altered with a black marker to make it seem like Alabama might be hit.
Chip Somodevilla/Getty ImagesPresident Trump references a map with the storm’s forecast that appears to have been altered by a black marker to extend the hurricane’s range to include Alabama. The photo was taken on Sept. 04, 2019 in Washington, DC.
Public backlash ensued, and the moment was swiftly deemed #sharpiegate on social media. On Sept. 6, NOAA released a statement that seemed to back the White House and disown the Birmingham station’s tweet.
The unsigned statement read, “From Wednesday, August 28, through Monday, September 2, the information provided by NOAA and the National Hurricane Center to President Trump and the wider public demonstrated that tropical-storm-force winds from Hurricane Dorian could impact Alabama. The Birmingham National Weather Service’s Sunday morning tweet spoke in absolute terms that were inconsistent with probabilities from the best forecast products available at the time.”
The newly-released emails uncovered by the FOIA request show that there was also confusion, frustration and anger inside the agency as the controversy played out.
Emails on Sept. 4 show officials reacting to the President’s apparently-altered map, writing, “Note that the [National Hurricane Center] forecast product includes an extra black line over Alabama. Do we know what day this product was from, and whether the AL portion was included on our original product?”
Another email from an hour later shows officials being told to not to publicly respond to the White House’s claims about the storm’s path.
Multiple emails show that some NOAA officials believed the White House doctored the image of Dorian’s path. An email from NOAA communications official Corey Pieper confirming that “yes, that [advisory] was doctored.” Another email from Sept. 4 shows officials discussing a press request, asking, “How do you want to handle this one? Looks like someone at the WH drew with a market on the images of our official forecast.”
WOW!! BIG FIND in the NOAA #FOIA document dump tonight by @chrisgeidner re: Hurricane Dorian and the map Trump showed during the WH briefing
More emails confirm that people inside NOAA thought the White House doctored the Sept. 4 map. In one email from Sept. 5, NOAA official Makeda Okolo writes, “Apparently the President is convinced that Alabama was in the path of Dorian and someone altered a NOAA map (with a sharpie) to convince folks.”
Benjamin Friedman, NOAA’s Deputy Under Secretary for Operations, responds, “yep, crazy.”
On Sept. 6, in response to NOAA’s statement disavowing the NWS Birmingham tweet correcting the President, NOAA employee Alek Krautmann writes to communications official Scott Smullen, “I’m reaching out just to help provide feedback from the agency. This statement is deeply upsetting to NOAA employees that have worked the hurricane and not fully accurate based on the timeline in question.”
On Sept. 7, NOAA acting Chief Scientist Craig McLean also addresses the statement. In an email to other top officials he writes, “For an agency founded upon and recognized for determining scientific truths, trusted by the public and responsible in law to put forward important science information, I find it unconscionable that an anonymous voice inside of NOAA would be found to castigate a dutiful, correct, and loyal NWS Forecaster who spoke the truth.”
“What concerns me most is that this Administration is eroding the public trust in NOAA for an apparent political recovery from an ill timed and imprecise comment from the President,” the letter goes on.
WHOA!
Hell of an email from NOAA official Craig McLean to NOAA's chief and other top officials:
"What concerns me most is that this Administration is eroding the public trust in NOAA for an apparent
political recovery from an ill timed and imprecise comment from the President" pic.twitter.com/mviytsFMGi
Email exchanges from later that week show how frustrated officials were with the White House’s discussion of the storm.
NOAA Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Environmental Observation and Prediction Dr. Neil Jacobs wrote in an email, “You have no idea how hard I’m fighting to keep politics out of science. We are an objective science agency, and we won’t and never will base any decision on anything other than science.”
Another official wrote, “People across agency are hurting… not just those directly involved. Some employees have lost their minds I fear. Trying to maintain calm and focus[.]”
After posting a thread of some of his findings, Leopold tweeted, “I’ve been waiting 3 years to see if I could use#FOIAto get a candid look inside a govt agency that found itself in turmoil over something Trump tweeted. Never thought it would be NOAA.”
I've been waiting 3 years to see if I could use #FOIA to get a candid look inside a govt agency that found itself in turmoil over something Trump tweeted.
(NEW YORK) — A telescope in Hawaii has produced its first images of the sun, revealing its turbulent gas surface in what scientists called unprecedented detail.
They show the surface covered with bright cell-like areas, each about the size of Texas, that result from the transporting of heat from the sun’s interior. The telescope can reveal features as small as 18 miles (30 km) across, according to the National Science Foundation, which released the images.
Further observations will help scientists understand and predict solar activity that can disrupt satellite communications and affect power grids, the foundation said. The telescope is on the island of Maui.
(CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla.) — Spacewalking astronauts plugged a leak in a cosmic ray detector outside the International Space Station on Saturday, completing a series of complex repairs to give the instrument new life.
The $2 billion Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer could resume its hunt for elusive antimatter and dark matter by midweek.
Team members around the world expressed relief as NASA’s Andrew Morgan and Italy’s Luca Parmitano wrapped up work on the spectrometer. It was their fourth and final spacewalk since November to revive the instrument’s crippled cooling system.
“Congratulations … the AMS pump system is now leak tight,” tweeted the European Organization for Nuclear Research, or CERN, which helps run the spectrometer.
Mission Control cautioned it was too soon to declare success with the space station’s premier science instrument, but noted: “It still has a good heartbeat.”
Last month, Morgan and Parmitano installed new coolant pumps on the spectrometer. They went back out Saturday to check for any leaks in the plumbing.
Parmitano quickly discovered a leak in one of the eight coolant lines — the first one he tested — and tightened the fitting. “Our day just got a little more challenging,” Mission Control observed.
The line still leaked after a mandatory one-hour wait, and Parmitano tightened it again. Finally, success — the leak was gone. “Let us all take a breath,” Mission Control urged. By then, the astronauts were already halfway into their six-hour spacewalk.
Mission Control acknowledged the leak added some unwanted “drama” to the spacewalk. “Everybody’s hearts stopped,” Mission Control told the astronauts. Parmitano wondered aloud what his heart rate was when the leak erupted. “It either flat-lined or spiked, one of the two.”
“It was hard fought today, really well done. Cool heads prevailed,” Mission Control said as the spacewalk drew to a close.
Barring further trouble, the spectrometer — launched to the space station in 2011 — will have its coolant lines filled with more carbon dioxide Sunday. One pump will be turned on as early as Monday and the remaining three Tuesday. That could lead to the resumption of science observations by Wednesday.
NASA described the spectrometer spacewalks as the most complicated since the Hubble Space Telescope repair missions a couple decades ago. Unlike Hubble, this spectrometer was never intended for astronaut handling in orbit, and once it started faltering in 2014, it took NASA years to devise a repair plan.
Morgan and Parmitano had to cut into stainless steel pipes to bypass the spectrometer’s old, degraded coolant pumps on a previous spacewalk. Then they spliced the tubes into the new pumps — no easy job when working in bulky gloves. New tools had to be created for the intricate job.
“We did it. We all did it,” Morgan said once he was back inside.
Astronaut Jessica Meir noted that the day ended up being more interesting than anyone envisioned. “But you guys rolled with all the punches and got the job done.. … Dinner is waiting,” she said.
The massive 7 1/2-ton (6,800-kilogram) spectrometer was launched to the space station on NASA’s next-to-last shuttle flight. Until it was shut down late last year for the repair work, it had studied more than 148 billion charged cosmic rays. The project is led by Samuel Ting, a Nobel laureate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
The repairs should allow the spectrometer to continue working for the rest of the life of the space station, or another five to 10 years. It was designed to operate for only three years.
NASA’s two other astronauts on board, Meir and Christina Koch, performed two spacewalks over the past 1 1/2 weeks to upgrade the space station’s solar power system.
Altogether, this station crew went out on nine spacewalks — or 61 hours in total. That’s more than any other station expedition.
Parmitano, Koch and Russian Alexander Skvortsov return to Earth in less than two weeks.
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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.
(WASHINGTON) — The Pentagon’s new U.S. Space Force is not Star Trek‘s Starfleet Command, but their logos bear a striking similarity.
President Donald Trump unveiled the Space Force logo Friday, writing on Twitter that he had consulted with military leaders and designers before presenting the blue-and-white symbol, which features an arrowhead shape centered on a planetary background and encircled by the words, “United States Space Force” and “Department of the Air Force.”
The logo, which bears the date 2019 in Roman numerals, also is similar in design to that of Air Force Space Command, from which Space Force was created by legislation that Trump signed in last month.
Space Force is the first new military service since the Air Force was created in 1947. It is meant mainly to improve protection of U.S. satellites and other space assets, rather than to put warriors in orbit to conduct combat in outer space. The idea became a regular applause line for Trump at his political rallies. He originally wanted a Space Force that was “separate but equal” to the Army, Navy and Air Force, but instead Congress made it part of the Department of the Air Force.
“After consultation with our Great Military Leaders, designers, and others, I am pleased to present the new logo for the United States Space Force, the Sixth Branch of our Magnificent Military!” Trump wrote.
George Takei, who played Mr. Sulu in the original Star Trek TV series and films, tweeted in response, “Ahem. We are expecting some royalties from this.”
(CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla.) — The results are finally in for the first chocolate chip cookie bake-off in space. While looking more or less normal, the best cookies required two hours of baking time last month up at the International Space Station. It takes far less time on Earth, under 20 minutes.
And how do they taste? No one knows.
Still sealed in individual baking pouches and packed in their spaceflight container, the cookies remain frozen in a Houston-area lab after splashing down two weeks ago in a SpaceX capsule. They were the first food baked in space from raw ingredients. The makers of the oven expected a difference in baking time in space, but not that big.
“There’s still a lot to look into to figure out really what’s driving that difference, but definitely a cool result,” Mary Murphy, a manager for Texas-based Nanoracks, said this week. “Overall, I think it’s a pretty awesome first experiment.”
Located near NASA’s Johnson Space Center, Nanoracks designed and built the small electric test oven that was launched to the space station last November. Five frozen raw cookies were already up there.
Italian astronaut Luca Parmitano was the master baker in December, radioing down a description as he baked them one by one in the prototype Zero G Oven.
The first cookie — in the oven for 25 minutes at 300 degrees Fahrenheit (149 degrees Celsius) — ended up seriously under-baked. He more than doubled the baking time for the next two, and the results were still so-so. The fourth cookie stayed in the oven for two hours, and finally success.
“So this time, I do see some browning,” Parmitano radioed. “I can’t tell you whether it’s cooked all the way or not, but it certainly doesn’t look like cookie dough any more.”
Parmitano cranked the oven up to its maximum 325 degrees F (163 degrees C) for the fifth cookie and baked it for 130 minutes. He reported more success.
Additional testing is required to determine whether the three returned cookies are safe to eat.
As for aroma, the astronauts could smell the cookies when they removed them from the oven, except for the first.
That’s the beauty of baking in space, according to former NASA astronaut Mike Massimino. He now teaches at Columbia University and is a paid spokesman for DoubleTree by Hilton. The hotel chain provided the cookie dough, the same kind used for cookies offered to hotel guests. It’s offering one of the space-baked cookies to the Smithsonian Institution’s National Air and Space Museum for display.
“The reminder of home, the connection with home, I think, can’t be overstated,” Massimino said. “From my personal experience … food is pretty important for not just nutrition but also for morale in keeping people connected to their home and their Earth.” Eating something other than dehydrated or prepackaged food will be particularly important as astronauts head back to the moon and on to Mars.
Nanoracks and Zero G Kitchen, a New York City startup that collaborated with the experiment, are considering more experiments for the orbiting oven and possibly more space appliances. What’s in orbit now are essentially food warmers.
There’s an added bonus of having freshly baked cookies in space.
“We made space cookies and milk for Santa this year,” NASA astronaut Christina Koch tweeted.
Scientists have discovered four new species of walking sharks proving the ocean somehow can always seem a little more mysterious.
According to a study published in the Marine and Freshwater Research journal on Tuesday, the Hemiscylliidae genus of sharks “walk” using their pectoral and pelvic fins to move across the ocean floor and live in coastal waters around northern Australia and the island of New Guinea.
But if you’re now having visions of a walking Jaws strolling toward you through the surf, not to worry. The scientists who authored the study say that walking sharks, also called “epaulette” sharks, pose no threat to humans as they are less than a meter long on average and feed on only small fish and invertebrates.
“Walking sharks present no threat to people but their ability to withstand low oxygen environments and walk on their fins gives them a remarkable edge over their prey of small crustaceans and molluscs,” Dr. Christine Dudgeon, the lead author of the study who is a researcher at Australia’s University of Queensland, said in a statement.
The discovery of four new species brings the total number of known walking shark species to nine. These sharks are thought to have started to evolve around 9 million years ago (not long at all in evolutionary terms), which makes them the “youngest” sharks on the planet, according to Dr. Mark Erdmann, a co-author of the study who is the vice president of Conservation International’s Asia-Pacific marine division.
“The discovery proves that modern sharks have remarkable evolutionary staying power and the ability to adapt to environmental changes,” Erdmann told CNN.
