New story in Science and Health from Time: Hidden Figures Hero Katherine Johnson Reminded Us That Space Was Never Safe From America’s Worst Impulses Hidden Figures Hero Katherine Johnson Reminded Us That Space Was Never Safe From America’s Worst Impulses

Katherine Johnson performed what might have been the most important job of her life backwards—because backwards was exactly the right way to do it. The job was figuring out how to ensure that John Glenn, the first American to orbit the Earth, would splash down in the Atlantic as close as possible to the recovery team that would be awaiting him. So Johnson—the legendary NASA “computer,” or mathematician, who was made famous by the book and movie Hidden Figures and who died at 101 on Monday—simply reverse-engineered the entire mission, from desired landing point, back through three orbits and onto the launch pad.

“Early on, when they said they wanted the capsule to come down at a certain place, they were trying to compute when it should start,” she told NASA in a 2008 interview. “I said, ‘Let me do it. You tell me when you want it and where you want it to land, and I’ll do it backwards and tell you when to take off.’ That was my forte.”

Johnson, of course, was only one of a host of great mathematical minds who made NASA’s early history such a success, but it was both her race and gender—she was an African-American woman, working in a white, male field—that helped make her tale both compelling and best-selling. She started at NASA five years before it even became NASA in 1958, having taken a job with the precursor National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) back in 1953. John Glenn, Neil Armstrong, Al Shepard, Gus Grissom? All newbies and novices when they finally joined, compared to the likes of Johnson.

President Obama recognized her work in 2015—the year before Hidden Figures became a phenomenon—by awarding her the Medal of Freedom. The medal, the movie and the book ensured that an African-American pioneer who might have lived and died in obscurity finally received the notice she had earned. But not all such often hidden figures have enjoyed such good fortune. From the very beginning, America’s most soaring enterprises—its achievements in space—have not escaped the stain of its primal crime: slavery, and the legacy of racism and institutional injustice that began here in the 17th century and continues into the 21st.

In the same week Johnson died, TIME will release its virtual-reality recreation of the 1963 March on Washington, and the Smithsonian Channel is airing Black in Space: Breaking the Color Barrier, a documentary exploring the halting progress the nation that denied African-Americans their freedom has made in extending that freedom into the realm of space.

The idea of integrating the space program began with good intentions and a surprisingly proactive President. In 1962, President John F. Kennedy ordered the Pentagon to choose an African American to join the third class of astronauts, following the so-called New Nine class, selected in October of that year, and the Original Seven, named in 1959. The Air Force complied, recommending Captain Edward Dwight, a 29-year-old pilot with a degree in aeronautical engineering and 2,000 hours of flight experience. He was slight of build, in keeping with the model of the mid-century astronaut, who had to fit comfortably into spacecraft little larger than phone booths. He was fiercely competitive, which fit the model even more so, and he was a gifted flier.

But none of that meant he was actually going to space.

Dwight thrived in his astronaut training and flight qualification classes, easily making the cut to be included in the group of 26 finalists sent to NASA in 1963, for the next astronaut class. But then, with little explanation, he effectively disappeared from contention.

“I did not dream that I was going to be the first black astronaut,” Dwight, now 86, told Smithsonian. “That never entered my mind because there was a big obstacle standing in my way. I knew there was going to be a racial component to that obstacle but I didn’t know it was going to be as sophisticated and determined as it was.”

As he himself predicted, Dwight did not go to space—and even at the time, his conspicuous absence was noted. At a press conference after the third class of all-white astronauts was named, a reporter put the question of Dwight’s candidacy directly to Deke Slayton, the head of the astronaut office. In footage from the Smithsonian Channel’s documentary, the exchange goes as follows:

“Was there a Negro boy in the last 30 or so that you brought here for consideration?” the reporter asked.

“No, there was not,” Slayton answered, erroneously.

It would take another 20 years before an African American would fly in space, when Air Force Colonel Guion Bluford and the rest of the crew of the shuttle Challenger took off from Cape Canaveral on Aug. 30, 1983. Bluford’s fight came five years after the Soviet Union launched Cuban cosmonaut Arnoldo Tomayo Méndez, the first space traveler of African descent, aboard the Soyuz 38 spacecraft.

It would not be until 1989 that Frederick Gregory would become the first African American to command a NASA mission. And it would not be until 1992 that Dr. Mae Jemison would become the first African-American woman to fly in space. And only in the last few years that Johnson got the recognition she long deserved.

Smithsonian’s Black in Space documentary, TIME’s March on Washington Project and, most poignantly, the death of Katherine Johnson, are vital reminders—and, as in space flight itself, useful course corrections—as America continues its four-century fight for equality. The NASA of now is very different from the NASA of the past, and today’s space agency is a diverse group of multi-cultural men and women better reflecting the equally diverse nation they represent. The agency’s new Artemis program may or may not succeed in its goal of returning astronauts to the lunar surface by 2024, but whenever it happens, the first crew and the ones that follow will look very different from the ones who went before them—the 24 white men who still represent the only human beings who have ever visited another world.

New story in Science and Health from Time: NASA Mars Lander Confirms ‘Marsquakes,’ Frequent Seismic Activity on Red Planet NASA Mars Lander Confirms ‘Marsquakes,’ Frequent Seismic Activity on Red Planet

(CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla.) — NASA’s newest Mars lander has confirmed that quakes and even aftershocks are regularly jolting the red planet.

Scientists reported Monday that the seismometer from the InSight spacecraft has detected scores of marsquakes.

A series of research papers focus on the 174 marsquakes noted through last September. Twenty-four were relatively strong — magnitude 3 to 4 — and apparently stemmed from distant underground triggers. The rest were smaller, with uncertain magnitude and origin. Even the stronger quakes would not have posed a hazard to anybody on the planet’s surface, researchers said in a press conference.

The overall tally has since jumped to more than 450 marsquakes, most of them small, InSight’s lead scientist, Bruce Banerdt of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said in an email.

The basic cause of Martian quakes is a long-term cooling of the planet, which makes it contract, fracturing its brittle outer layers, Banerdt told reporters. But it’s not clear what detailed mechanisms bring on specific quakes, he said.

While the team cannot rule out meteor impacts, the source of the tremors appears to be underground, according to the researchers. Nevertheless, Mars-orbiting spacecraft are on the lookout for signs of recent impacts, and InSight’s cameras scan the night sky for meteors. So far, they’ve come up empty.

Banerdt said he had hoped to find more larger quakes, which are useful for probing deeper under the planet’s surface. In an email, he said “another year of observations will be needed to complete the goals of the mission.”

InSight landed in a small crater in Mars’ Elysium Planitia in November 2018. Its French seismometer was placed directly on the volcanic plain the following month.

This region has especially turbulent weather, with dust devil-like vortexes.

The lander still has another year of geologic observations for a total of two years, or one full Martian year. There likely are more quakes occurring than the seismometer is registering; interference from wind and other weather conditions can mask the measurements.

And while no marsquakes with magnitudes greater than 4 have been detected, that doesn’t mean they aren’t occurring, according to Banerdt.

Banerdt describes Mars as moderately active from a seismic standpoint, more than the moon but less than Earth. The findings are close to initial predictions. The moon’s seismic activity is known thanks to instruments left behind a half-century ago by the Apollo astronauts.

“Knowledge of the level of seismic activity is crucial for investigating the interior structure and understanding Mars’ thermal and chemical evolution,” Banerdt wrote in an overview article in Nature Geoscience. The journal as well as Nature Communications feature four papers from the InSight team.

Other key findings: The first magnetic measurements from the Martian surface show a local magnetic field that’s 10 times stronger than detected from orbit, and weather instruments have found a surprisingly dynamic atmosphere around the spacecraft.

While the French seismometer is exceeding expectations, a German-built probe has had trouble burrowing into Mars, barely penetrating a couple feet (50 centimeters). Scientists have not yet given up on the mechanical mole, which keeps popping out of the ground.

The mole was supposed to bury 16 feet (5 meters) into Mars to measure the planet’s internal temperature.

___

Science writer Malcolm Ritter in New York contributed to this report.

New story in Science and Health from Time: Katherine Johnson, NASA Mathematician Whose Work Inspired the Film Hidden Figures, Dies at 101 Katherine Johnson, NASA Mathematician Whose Work Inspired the Film Hidden Figures, Dies at 101

(HAMPTON, Va.) — NASA says Katherine Johnson, a mathematician who worked on NASA’s early space missions and was portrayed in the film Hidden Figures, about pioneering black female aerospace workers, has died.

In a Monday morning tweet, the space agency said it celebrates her 101 years of life and her legacy of excellence and breaking down racial and social barriers.

We're saddened by the passing of celebrated #HiddenFigures mathematician Katherine Johnson. Today, we celebrate her 101 years of life and honor her legacy of excellence that broke down racial and social barriers: https://t.co/Tl3tsHAfYB pic.twitter.com/dGiGmEVvAW

— NASA (@NASA) February 24, 2020

Johnson was one of the so-called “computers” who calculated rocket trajectories and earth orbits by hand during NASA’s early years.

Until 1958, Johnson and other black women worked in a racially segregated computing unit at what is now called Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia. Their work was the focus of the Oscar-nominated 2016 film.

In 1961, Johnson worked on the first mission to carry an American into space. In 1962, she verified computer calculations that plotted John Glenn’s earth orbits.

At age 97, Johnson received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor.

New story in Science and Health from Time: ‘Your Workday Is Easier Thanks to His Revolutionary Ideas.’ Computer Scientist Who Created ‘Copy’ and ‘Paste’ Dies ‘Your Workday Is Easier Thanks to His Revolutionary Ideas.’ Computer Scientist Who Created ‘Copy’ and ‘Paste’ Dies

(NEW YORK) — Larry Tesler, the Silicon Valley pioneer who created the now-ubiquitous computer concepts such as “cut,” “copy” and “paste,” has died. He was 74.

He made using computers easier for generations as a proponent and pioneer of what he called “modeless editing.” That meant a user wouldn’t have to use a keyboard to switch between modes to write and edit, for example.

“The inventor of cut/copy & paste, find & replace, and more was former Xerox researcher Larry Tesler. Your workday is easier thanks to his revolutionary ideas,” Xerox said in a tweet Wednesday.

Tesler was born in New York and attended Stanford University, where he received a degree in mathematics in 1965.

In 1973, he joined Xerox Palo Alto Research Center, a division of the copier company that worked on creating computer products. There, he pioneered concepts that helped make computers more user-friendly. That included such concepts as moving text through cut and paste and inserting text by clicking on a section and just typing.

He continued that work when he joined Apple in 1980. At Apple, he worked on a variety of products including the Lisa computer, the Newton personal digital assistant and the Macintosh.

After leaving Apple in 1997 he co-founded an education software company and held executive positions at Amazon, Yahoo and the genetics-testing service 23andMe before turning to independent consulting.

In 2012, Tesler told the BBC that he enjoyed working with younger people.

“There’s a very strong element of excitement, of being able to share what you’ve learned with the next generation,” he said.

New story in Science and Health from Time: NASA Could Get a Raise Next Year to Help Fund a 2024 Human Trip to the Moon NASA Could Get a Raise Next Year to Help Fund a 2024 Human Trip to the Moon

For decades, NASA has been the kid politely asking for a raise in its allowance. Time was NASA’s pocket money was huge. Go back 54 years, to 1966, and the space agency was getting $5.9 billion a year—which would be a tidy $47 billion in 2020 dollars. That represented 4.1% of America’s annual household budget. But in 1966 there was also a bully on the block, whose mailbox at the time read “the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.” They were racing the U.S. to be the first to leave the block altogether and fly to the moon, so the States were willing to spend whatever amount of money it took to beat them there.

Then, in 1969, the U.S. did beat them. And that’s when NASA’s allowance began to crash, dropping to $4.2 billion that year, or just 2.3% of the family budget; to $3.2 billion in 1974 (1.2% of the budget), and on down from there. In the current fiscal year, the space agency’s $22.629 billion budget represented just 0.48% of annual federal outlays.

But now comes a bump. The scientific community has made no secret of the fact that it finds little to love in the Trump Administration—especially in its rollback of environmental protections. But President Trump has been a champion of space. For example, he revived the National Space Council in 2017, putting back in play a presidential advisory group that had existed intermittently from 1958 to 1973, then again from 1989 to 1993, and often had an influential role in keeping space exploration a priority item for presidents who often felt they had more immediate needs to address. And Trump’s Space Force has made a lot of headlines—even if it will likely amount to little more than a new flag, a new insignia and a lot of money wasted on bureaucracy, with the work the ostensible sixth branch of the military will be doing already being handled perfectly well by the Air Force.

But when it comes to the idea of returning Americans to the moon, the Trump Administration does appear to be delivering on a popular promise: laying down a 2024 marker for NASA. The space agency has embraced the challenge, promising that sometime that year the country will land “the first woman and the next man on the moon.” The first-woman piece is a significant (and very worthy) part of NASA’s marketing campaign and the program itself is appropriately named Artemis, after the sister of Apollo.

The budget has crept up accordingly over the past three years, and last week the White House announced that it would be asking Congress for another NASA raise in 2021, with the budget increasing 12% to $25.2 billion. The lion’s share of the new funding is earmarked for Artemis.

For space enthusiasts, this is the rare story out of Washington that is all good news. NASA’s heavy-lift rocket, the blandly named Space Launch System (SLS), has been in start-stop development for a preposterously long 14 years, hamstrung by flat budgets and ever-changing policies from ever-changing Administrations. (By contrast, it took NASA little more than four years to invent and build the Saturn V rocket, launching the first one in 1967 and a dozen more by 1973.) At last, however, the SLS is close to completion, as is the Orion spacecraft—the Artemis version of the Apollo orbiter. The lunar landing vehicle is less far-along, but the new cash infusion will help and while NASA has not yet chosen a private contractor to design and build the spacecraft, the smart money is on Blue Moon, a lander that is already nearly four years into development by Blue Origin, the space company established by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.

Whether NASA can actually stick a lunar landing by 2024 is not remotely a sure thing—not least because a presidential election is just nine months away and a change in administrations could mean yet another change in NASA policy. But a return to the moon has popular appeal, a woman on the moon has even more, and with the lunar hardware so close to completion, mothballing it due to budget fights or politics would be an embarrassment on both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue.

Indeed, politics can actually help ensure Artemis’s future—thanks in large part to the electoral map. Florida, remains the swingiest of swing states and Texas is trending purple. Between them they have 67 electoral votes, or nearly 25% of the total needed for victory. Would you like to be the presidential candidate telling the good folks of Houston and Cape Canaveral that their moon dreams have to be shelved again?

It takes smarts, brass and courage to get to the moon. But it takes money too. At this point, NASA’s funding—while still modest by 1960s standards—could be just enough to put the moon mission over the top.

---

A version of this article was originally published in TIME’s Space newsletter. Click here to sign up to receive these stories early.

New story in Science and Health from Time: Sandra the Orangutan, Granted Legal Personhood by Judge in Argentina, Celebrates 34th Birthday Sandra the Orangutan, Granted Legal Personhood by Judge in Argentina, Celebrates 34th Birthday

(WAUCHULA, Fla.) — A orangutan named Sandra, who was granted legal personhood by a judge in Argentina and later found a new home in Florida, celebrated her 34th birthday on Valentine’s Day with a special new primate friend.

Patti Ragan, director of the Center for Great Apes in Wauchula, Florida, says Sandra “has adjusted beautifully to her life at the sanctuary” and has befriended Jethro, a 31-year-old male orangutan.

Prior to coming to Florida, Sandra had lived alone in a Buenos Aires zoo. Sandra was a bit shy when she arrived at the Florida center, which is home to 22 orangutans.

“Sandra appeared most interested in Jethro, and our caregivers felt he was a perfect choice because of his close age, calm demeanor, and gentle nature,” Ragan said in a news release. “Sandra still observes and follows Jethro from a distance while they are in the process of getting to know and trust each other. But they are living harmoniously in the same habitat spaces as they continue to gain confidence in their relationship.”

Judge Elena Liberatori’s landmark ruling in 2015 declared that Sandra is legally not an animal, but a non-human person, and thus entitled to some legal rights enjoyed by people, and better living conditions.

“With that ruling I wanted to tell society something new, that animals are sentient beings and that the first right they have is our obligation to respect them,” she told The Associated Press.

But without a clear alternative, Sandra remained at the antiquated zoo, which closed in 2016, until leaving for the U.S. in late September. She was in quarantine for a month at the Sedgwick County Zoo in Kansas before arriving in Florida.

On Friday, Sandra celebrated her birthday, complete with pink signs and wrapped packages. Jethro, who was once in the entertainment business, attended the party.

Ragan said that Sandra and Jethro will “sit in the vicinity of each other,” but not close enough to touch. Sandra weighs 129 pounds, and Jethro, 260.

“Sandra does like to watch Jethro eat,” Ragan said. “Some adult male orangutans will advance an introduction forcefully, but Jethro has been patient and calm giving Sandra more confidence in his presence.”

New story in Science and Health from Time: A Group of Big Businesses is Backing a Carbon Tax. Could It Be a Solution to Climate Change? A Group of Big Businesses is Backing a Carbon Tax. Could It Be a Solution to Climate Change?

The long list of big companies backing a carbon tax as a solution to climate change grew this week with financial giant J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. endorsing a legislative plan billed as a centrist approach to reducing emissions.

The announcement comes as the Climate Leadership Council (CLC), the organization behind the proposal, which was first released in 2017, redoubles efforts to promote the plan before an expected introduction in Congress as the conversation around various climate solutions heats up in Washington.

The CLC announced new backers—including former Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz and former UN climate chief Christiana Figueres—and released internal poll numbers showing bipartisan voter support for the plan. Supporters now include a broad coalition of companies, from oil giants like ExxonMobil to tech behemoths like Microsoft, major environmental groups like Conservation International, and a range of economists and political leaders.

“The markets can and will do much to address climate change,” David Solomon, CEO of Goldman Sachs, a founding member of the CLC, told TIME in an emailed statement. “But given the magnitude and urgency of this challenge, governments must put a price on the cost of carbon.”

The thinking behind the plan is straight forward. Economists have long argued that a carbon tax, which makes companies pay for what they pollute and gives them an incentive to stem carbon emissions, is the most efficient way to reduce such emissions. But carbon tax proposals have been met with opposition in the past from across the political spectrum, including from some Democrats, in large part because they increase energy costs. The CLC proposal would give the money collected by the tax back to taxpayers in the form of a quarterly dividend, an effort to make it more politically palatable.

On Feb. 13, the CLC provided additional details about the plan, including introducing a new mechanism that would rapidly increase the price on carbon if targets are not met. Backers say the plan will cut U.S. emissions in half by 2035. “We think it has a compelling economic logic,” says Janet Yellen, the former chair of the Federal Reserve and a backer of the plan, in an interview.

But despite the growing coalition, actually passing the plan remains a challenging uphill battle. While more and more Republicans have stopped denying the science of climate change, many continue to insist that they would never support anything resembling a carbon tax. Meanwhile, many leading Democrats, including presidential candidate Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, have downplayed the role a carbon tax might play in future climate legislation. Many Democrats argue that the time has passed for such a market-driven approach to climate change, arguing that they are too little, too late and that a corporate-backed plan shouldn’t be trusted.

Still, big corporations increasingly see a carbon tax—especially a proposal like the CLC plan—as the simplest solution to a thorny problem. With clear science, activists in the streets and voters experiencing extreme weather events in their own backyards, business leaders see new climate rules as all but an inevitability, if not at the U.S. federal level then in states or other countries where they have operations.

The CLC proposal offers a business-friendly approach: nixing many existing climate regulations, a “border carbon adjustment” that would create a fee on imports from countries without a carbon price, and a dividend system that pays out the revenue collected by the carbon tax back to taxpayers. “If we do one without the other,” says Shailesh Jejurikar, CEO of Procter & Gamble’s Fabric & Home Care division, “it doesn’t work.”

Still, even as more than a dozen Fortune 500 firms support the legislation, many other businesses and influential business groups continue to either oppose a carbon tax or haven’t taken a position at all. That’s particularly true of the fossil fuel industry’s trade groups like the American Petroleum Institute, which officially has no position. Even though major oil companies like ExxonMobil and Shell have joined the CLC initiative, independent oil companies, oil refiners and other related companies remain largely opposed.

One of the biggest challenges to this measure—or any carbon tax for that matter—is the growing interest in other approaches to climate legislation. Republicans this week pushed legislation to plant trees and expand tax incentives for capturing carbon, measures that wouldn’t match the scale of the challenge but allow Republicans to offer a different message on the issue. Earlier this month, Representative David McKinley, a Republican from West Virginia, and Kurt Schrader, an Oregon Democrat, called for legislation that would lead to an 80% reduction in emissions from the power sector by 2050 using a combination of regulation and funding for innovation and infrastructure. And more than 30 Democratic senators introduced a bill to require the Environmental Protection Agency to come up with a plan for the U.S. to eliminate its carbon footprint by 2050. “This is the quickest way we can jumpstart government-wide climate action,” Senator Tom Carper of Delaware, who introduced the legislation, said on the Senate floor.

None of these measures are likely to become law anytime soon, and any legislative approach to addressing climate change will involve intense debate on Capitol Hill.

Even some backers of the carefully crafted CLC plan acknowledge it’s not likely to pass in its current form. “Inevitably, Congress will have some of its own ideas in terms of the implementation,” Moniz, who endorsed the CLC proposal this week, tells TIME.“ “I would welcome seeing that negotiation start in earnest.” Indeed, even having a discussion in Congress indicates a new climate for climate in Washington.