Monthly Archives: September 2021

Thomas Pesquet's photograph of the Earth will wow you.

If the state of the planet is getting you down or you're just terrified that ducks can now speak human words, then I advise you to stop what you're doing for a few moments and gaze in awe at this photo by Thomas Pesquet, a French astronaut currently residing inside the International Space Station.

Pesquet, an engineer with the European Space Agency, is one of the members of the SpaceX Crew-2 mission and member of NASA's Expedition 65, which launched to the station in April. It's his second spaceflight and he's become known around these parts for delivering some absolutely surreal images of our home planet.

This may be his best yet.

Snapped from the cupola of the ISS, Pesquet's view of the Earth sees city lights "battle it out" with the light from distant stars. The orange band around the Earth is, according to astronomer Juan Carlos Munoz, the emission of sodium atoms, approximately 90 kilometers above Earth's surface.

There's also a faint green band just beyond it if you squint hard enough -- that's created by oxygen atoms being excited.

It's not easy to get such a photo and Pesquet notes he's missed his share of shots.

"Not only do you as a photographer have to stay extremely still holding the camera, but also the Space Station moves so fast that there will be some motion anyway," Pesquet explains in his photo caption. The ISS is travelling at over 17,000 miles an hour and completes an orbit over the Earth every 90 minutes or so.

It's a busy time up on the station, with the third SpaceX Crew-3 mission expected to launch on Halloween and begin ISS Expedition 66. Pesquet will take over as the commander in late October when the four-person crew on the Crew-3 mission join the station. Expedition 66 is also notable because it will include two Russian civilians, film director Klim Shipenko and actress Yulia Peresild, who will launch on a Soyuz rocket on Oct. 5 to film scenes for a movie called The Challenge. Not quite Tom Cruise, we know, but he's heading up there sometime soon, too.

If you're after more holy moly moments, you should visit Pesquet's Flickr account, which includes an assortment of space stunners.

From the lab to your inbox. Get the latest science stories from CNET every week.

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Space station astronaut captures breathtaking view of the edge of the Earth - CNET

An AI-powered robot with a digital face is ready for a new mission on the International Space Station.

The robot, called CIMON-2 (it's short for Crew Interactive Mobile Companion) worked alongside two European astronauts on past missions to the station in recent years and just got a software upgrade that will enable it to perform more complex tasks with a new human crewmate later this year.

The cute floating sphere with a cartoon-like face has been stored at the space station since the departure of the European Space Agency's (ESA) astronaut Luca Parmitano in February 2020. The robot will wake up again during the upcoming mission of German astronaut Matthias Maurer, who will arrive at the orbital outpost with the SpaceX Crew-3 Dragon mission in October.

In the year and a half since the end of the last mission, engineers have worked on improving CIMON's connection to Earth so that it could provide a more seamless service to the astronauts, CIMON project manager Till Eisenberg at Airbus, which developed the intelligent robot together with the German Aerospace Centre DLR and the LMU University in Munich, told Space.com.

Related: A floating 'brain' will assist astronauts aboard the space station

"The sphere is just the front end," Eisenberg said. "All the voice recognition and artificial intelligence happens on Earth at an IBM data centre in Frankfurt, Germany. The signal from CIMON has to travel through satellites and ground stations to the data centre and back. We focused on improving the robustness of this connection to prevent disruptions."

CIMON relies on IBM's Watson speech recognition and synthesis software to converse with astronauts and respond to their commands. The first generation robot flew to the space station with Alexander Gerst in 2018. That robot later returned to Earth and is now touring German museums. The current robot, CIMON-2, is a second generation. Unlike its predecessor, it is more attuned to the astronauts' emotional states (thanks to the Watson Tone Analyzer). It also has a shorter reaction time.

"During the first steps in the development process, we had a delay of about ten seconds, which was not very convenient," Eisenberg said. "Through improving the software architecture we managed to get down to two seconds, just in time for the first mission. With further software upgrades, we have now tried to eliminate delays that might occur when the connection breaks."

Airbus and DLR have signed a contract with ESA for CIMON-2 to work with four humans on the orbital outpost in the upcoming years. During those four consecutive missions, engineers will first test CIMON's new software and then move on to allowing the sphere to participate in more complex experiments.

During these new missions CIMON will, for the first time, guide and document complete scientific procedures, Airbus said in a statement.

"Most of the activities that astronauts perform are covered by step by step procedures," Eisenberg said. "Normally, they have to use clip boards to follow these steps. But CIMON can free their hands by floating close by, listening to the commands and reading out the procedures, showing videos, pictures and clarifications on its screen."

The robot can also look up additional information and document the experiments by taking videos and pictures. The scientists will gather feedback from the astronauts to see how helpful the sphere really was and identify improvements for CIMON's future incarnations.

For now, CIMON has only been trained to navigate in the European Columbus module of the space station, Eisenberg said. The 11-pound (5kg) sphere floats around using its small air jets. A set of ultrasonic sensors together with a stereo camera help the robot navigate in space and avoid walls and equipment. CIMON is also fitted with a high-resolution camera that enables it to recognise faces of individual astronauts. Two smaller cameras on the sphere's sides are used to take pictures and videos. An overall nine microphones help CIMON to identify the source of sounds and detect and record speech.

In the future, the team hopes to make CIMON independent on the ground-based data center. Astronauts on future missions to the moon and Mars will surely appreciate a robotic assistant. However, for such missions it would be impossible to wait for the speech processing to be done on Earth.

"There is already enough computational power aboard the space station that would be able to support CIMON," Eisenberg said. "It's only a question of sharing these computational resources. But we want to start working in parallel on CIMON-3, which would be able to use services directly on board without the need of a connection to the ground."

Follow Tereza Pultarova on Twitter @TerezaPultarova. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.

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Astronauts in space will soon resurrect an AI robot friend called CIMON - Space.com

Days after Russian cosmonauts pointed at cracks on the International Space Station (ISS), Moscow on Tuesday announced its plans to create a new space station that will be "more efficient" than the present flying laboratory. The announcement was made by the general director of the Russian space agency, Roscosmos, Dmitry Rogozin.

In a statement, the Russian space agency chief said that Roscosmos plans to create a Russian orbital service station with an efficiency higher than that of the ISS. We want to make a station, the efficiency of which will be several orders of magnitude higher than that of the ISS, Rogozin was quoted as saying by TASS.

He stated that the new station, which is scheduled to begin deployment in five to six years, will have elements of artificial intelligence along with extravehicular robots that will likely reduce the pressure on cosmonauts from walking out of the airlock to conduct repairs and maintenance of the orbital outpost.

According to Rogozin, the station in combination with the promising nuclear tug "Zeus" can become a prototype for future systems of long-term interplanetary space flights.

The latest announcement comes just days after Russian cosmonauts discovered cracks in one of the segments of the flying laboratory that could widen in the coming months. "Superficial fissures have been found in some places on the Zarya module. This is bad and suggests that the fissures will begin to spread over time," Vladimir Solovyov, chief engineer of rocket and space corporation Energia, told RIA news agency.

The International Space Station flying in orbit around Earth. (Photo: Nasa)

Russia had already hinted at walking out of the International Space Station, which is in the last leg of its operation life. Moscow had warned the United States to lift sanctions imposed on the space sector or else it will withdraw from the ISS. Russia has been deliberating over withdrawing from the ISS, which is reaching its operational deadline, by 2025.

The sanctions that Rogozin talked about date back to 2014, when the US and western countries came down upon Moscow in the wake of its annexation of Crimea from Ukraine.

Rogozin had in April this year said that by 2030, Russia will be able to launch its own space station in orbit if President Vladimir Putin gives the go-ahead. According to reports, Moscow is planning to spend up to $6 billion for the ambitious project amid its growing proximity with Beijing, which has also been a cause of concern for Washington. The two countries have already joined hands to develop a Joint International Lunar Research Station (ILRS) on the Moon.

The two countries are now looking for collaboration from other nations for long-term, autonomous and comprehensive scientific experiments base on the lunar surface.

The US is already investigating reasons behind a recent mishap on the space station after the Russian Nauka module fired inadvertently throwing the flying laboratory in an uncontrolled spin. Washington has been calling partnering nations including Canada and Europe to keep the Space Station functioning amid a new alternative from China's under-construction space Station Tinagong.

While the ISS reaches its operational age, Nasa has been pushing for extending its services till 2030, however, Russia's exit could jeopardise its plans.

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Russia announces plans to construct Space Station within five years, says efficiency will be higher than ISS - India Today

High-tech solar greenhouses inspired by technology developed for missions to the moon and Mars could soon grow food in Arabian deserts and in Earth orbit, according to the space services company Nanoracks.

Nanoracks, known for deploying small satellites from the International Space Station, has just set up a spinoff in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) called StarLab Oasis. The new company, supported by the government of the desert-covered state, which imports 90% of its food, will open its first experimental greenhouse in 2022, the company's general manager Allen Herbert told Space.com.

In addition, the company's scientists will send seeds to space to induce mutations in the hopes of creating new, more resilient and productive varieties of key agricultural crops. This technique, also known as space mutagenesis, has been successfully used in China for more than three decades.

China is currently the only country in the world with a space breeding program that delivers benefits for the country's residents. China has been sending seeds for trips to space, a few weeks long, since the late 1980s. In 2006, it launched its Shijian-8 satellite which orbited and returned to Earth 470 pounds (215 kilograms) of vegetable, fruit and grain seeds.

More than 200 space-mutated crop varieties with improved yields, environmental resilience and disease resistance have been approved by agriculture regulators in China since the 1990s including the country's second most grown wheat variety, Luyuan 502.

Related: Could space greenhouses solve Earth's food crisis?

"A great amount of the world's sustainable and economically efficient food production will one day come from deserts, harsh environments and off Earth," Herbert said. "The reason for that is the abundance of renewable solar energy. I believe that thanks to the technology that we develop, we will be able to grow plants more efficiently in deserts and in space because of the available energy."

The progressing effects of climate change may make larger and larger swaths of the planet's arable land vulnerable to unpredictable weather. At the same time, global space agencies are looking into technology that could sustainably grow food in places far more inhospitable than the Earth, like the moon, Mars or other celestial bodies with freezing temperatures, no atmosphere and little liquid water. StarLab Oasis wants to harness and commercialize these developments to help turn countries that currently cannot feed their populations without international help into self-sufficient producers.

"Abu Dhabi is investing a lot into research and development of agricultural technologies," Herbert said. "The issue has more of an urgency for them than it has, for example, for the U.S. or U.K, who import much less food."

This urgency, Herbert added, extends to the entire Middle Eastern region, as well as Africa and South Asia. StarLab Oasis, which is directly supported by the Abu Dhabi Investment Office (ADIO), hopes that its space-inspired greenhouses and new more resilient crop varieties will help transform agriculture across many regions that currently rely on food imports.

"By the year 2100, two thirds of the world's population are expected to live in those regions," Herbert said. "What we're doing now in terms of food security is really, really important. We are really excited about our work because we believe that Abu Dhabi will become an important hub for that."

Nanoracks has previously flown plant seeds to the International Space Station, including palm tree seeds selected by the UAE Space Agency in 2019. These seeds are currently being studied by researchers at the UAE University, Herbert said.

Last year, Nanoracks expanded its footprint at the International Space Station with the Bishop airlock, which can pass five times more payload in and out of the station than the Nanoracks CubeSat Deployer located in the Japanese Experiment Module that the company currently uses.

Nanoracks is also working on technology that would turn spent rocket stages into miniature space stations. First of these stations might start operating in 2024 and it's quite likely that some of them will serve as StarLab Oasis's orbiting greenhouses, Herbert said.

Follow Tereza Pultarova on Twitter @TerezaPultarova. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.

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Nanoracks' spinoff aims to bring food production to Earth's deserts and orbital space - Space.com

latest happenings around NASA

ABOVE VIDEO: A long-distance call to space, space station cameras capture Hurricane Ida, and another successful cargo delivery to the station a few of the stories to tell you about This Week at NASA!

A Long-Distance Call to the Space Station

Guys, you really look good Bill Nelson, NASA Administrator

During a visit to our Johnson Space Centers Christopher C. Kraft Jr. Mission Control Center, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson, Deputy Administrator Pam Melroy and several members of Congress talked with the crew aboard the International Space Station about the stations critical role in low-Earth orbit.

The space station is a really great research platform, so theres lots of instruments outside the space station that are constantly taking data and can take data for years.Megan McArthur, NASA Astronaut

I just cant tell you how awesome it is to see all of you, especially the wonderful diversity of the crew.Pam Melroy, NASA Deputy Administrator

They also touched on the centers work for NASAs Artemis program to build a long-term human presence on and around the Moon

And then were going to Mars. Onward and upward.Bill Nelson, NASA Administrator

Hurricane Ida Seen from Space

Cameras on the space station captured views of Hurricane Ida as the category 4 storm neared the southeast Louisiana coast, where it eventually made landfall on Aug. 29, packing sustained winds of 150 miles per hour. More than 1 million customers reportedly lost power by midday on Aug. 30. Idas landfall came exactly 16 years to the day after historic hurricane Katrina also hit this region.

Hurricane Ida Impacts to Michoud, Stennis

When Hurricane Ida made landfall on Aug. 29, the storm affected our Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans and Stennis Space Center in Mississippi. No injuries have been reported, but both locations sustained damage. Stennis was able to open for some operations while Michoud was closed with limited access to essential personnel only, as teams conducted detailed damage assessments and initial cleanup work. Michoud manufactures and assembles some of the largest parts of NASAs Space Launch System rocket and Orion spacecraft and Stennis is the agencys premier propulsion test complex.

SpaceX Cargo Dragon Docks to Station

A SpaceX Dragon cargo spacecraft arrived at the International Space Station on Aug. 30, a day after launching from our Kennedy Space Center. The Dragon delivered more than 4,800 pounds of cargo including about 2,300 pounds of new science experiments that will look at how microgravity affects plant genetics, robotic assistants, bone tissue and astronaut vision among other phenomena.

Asking More Industry Input on Artemis LTV Solutions

NASA is asking interested American companies for more input about approaches, options and solutions to providing a lunar terrain vehicle or LTV. The LTV similar to the Apollo era Moon Buggy is an unenclosed rover that will transport astronauts wearing spacesuits around the lunar South Pole during Artemis exploration surface missions to the Moon. The LTV will need to last at least 10 years to span multiple Artemis missions.

Russian Spacewalk Outside Space Station

On Sept. 3, Russian cosmonauts Oleg Novitskiy and Pyotr Dubrov of Roscosmos ventured outside the International Space Station on the first of up to 11 spacewalks to prepare the new Nauka multipurpose laboratory module for operations in space. Nauka arrived at the station on July 29, eight days after launching from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

Thats whats up this week @NASA

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THIS WEEK @NASA: SpaceX Cargo Dragon Docks to Station, Long-Distance Call to the Space Station - SpaceCoastDaily.com

By NASA Earth ObservatorySeptember 4, 2021

December 23, 2020

Strings of light emanate from the Imperial Palace in the citys center and follow the expressway system outward.

Months before the world turned its eye toward Tokyo for the2020 Summer Olympics, an astronaut on the International Space Station captured this image of the Japanese megacity. The photograph offers a distinctive, high-resolution view of the citys structure via its nighttime light.

Many cities are oriented around a center. In most modern cities, this is abright downtown. In Tokyo, its the Imperial Palace. Strings of light emanate from the palace and follow Tokyos major expressway system outward. The brightest points indicate clusters of large buildings in several downtown areas. Major sports venueslike the Olympic Stadium and horse racing tracksalso leave subtle marks on the Tokyo nightscape.

In a city so well illuminated, the dark areas stand out as much as the bright. As Tokyos population pushes past 40 million, the city is reaching geographic limits on outward growth. Naturally bounded by Tokyo Bay to the east and mountains to the west, darker areas farther from the city center are often designated parks. The park system of Tokyo is extensive, covering 36 percent of the total land area in the prefecture.

The other negative space in the photo is Tokyo Bay and the major rivers (the Sumida, Tama, and Edo) that run through the city and into the bay. The only interruption to the darkness of the bay is the small points of light caused by ships traveling to and from Tokyos busy docks. The sharp, angular nature of the docks contrasts with the winding of the rivers and highlights their human-made origin.

Astronaut photographISS064-E-15098was acquired on December 23, 2020, with a Nikon D5 digital camera using a 400 millimeter focal length and is provided by the ISS Crew Earth Observations Facility and the Earth Science and Remote Sensing Unit, Johnson Space Center. The image was taken by a member of theExpedition 64 crew.The image has been cropped and enhanced to improve contrast, and lens artifacts have been removed. TheInternational Space Station Programsupports the laboratory as part of theISS National Labto help astronauts take pictures of Earth that will be of the greatest value to scientists and the public, and to make those images freely available on the Internet. Additional images taken by astronauts and cosmonauts can be viewed at the NASA/JSCGateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth.Caption by Alex Stoken, Jacobs, JETS Contract at NASA-JSC.

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Stunning Astronaut Photo From the Space Station Captures Tokyos Lights at Night - SciTechDaily

Humanity has had its share of natural disasters this year, with people all over the world growing to hate the names Henri, Ida, or Elsa. This years hurricane season was unmerciful and just when you think winds have calmed down, another one of these bad-tempered boys or girls starts wreaking havoc in one place or another. These days, we have hurricane Larry in the limelight, and astronauts on the Space Station tell us it looks even bigger than Ida.As administrator Ben Friedman from the NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) said it best, it takes just one storm to devastate an entire community, which is why everyone is keeping an eye on Larry, including the astronauts in space.

Megan McArthur recently shared an image on social media giving us a glimpse of hurricane Larry, as seen from the International Space Station (ISS). Shes been monitoring Larry for days now, and according to her latest image caption, it looks much larger than Ida, at least from the astronauts viewpoint on the Space Station.

According to the National Hurricane Center (NHC), Larry is classified as a Category 3 hurricane, which is pretty massive. Category 3 hurricanes are considered major, with sustained winds between 111 to 129 mph (178 to 207 kph), and Larry packs in winds of up to 115 mph (185 kph).

The same NHC describes category 3 hurricanes as being able to remove roofs from homes, uproot trees, and make water and electricity unavailable for days or even weeks.

This classification is based on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale, with the most catastrophic hurricanes being the Category 5 ones, with sustained winds of more than 157 mph (252 kph and higher). These can make the affected areas uninhabitable for weeks or even months.

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Astronauts on the ISS Share Disturbing Image of Hurricane Larry, Looks Larger Than Ida - autoevolution

By Ashley Strickland, CNN

Our planet is wonderfully wild.

Its easy to forget that amid the daily hustle and bustle of our lives especially for those of us who only see wildlife when a bird or a squirrel darts by the window.

Remember when you were a kid and evidence of Earths menagerie was all around you? Whether we see them living in mighty jungles, grassy plains or desert oases, our view of animals shapes how we look at the world, from the time were just grasping how to speak, read and write.

A photograph of a wild animal can stop you in your tracks for me, the first time was when I saw an image of a rare snow leopard when I was 6.

These images carry an intrinsic message, something we knew as children but maybe forgot: We can do more to protect our world and all of its life so future generations may share in the same joy of discovery.

Narwhal shrimp in the deep blue water of the French Mediterranean. Ghost fungus in Australia. Cheetahs battling to swim across a raging river.

These are some of the stunning entries to the Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition, organized by the Natural History Museum in London.

The photos reveal some of the wonder to be found in nature, as well as challenges our planet is facing due to the climate crises.

In the face of so much awe, dont forget to laugh. Photographers also managed to capture animals at their funniest in the 2021 Comedy Wildlife Photo Awards Im torn between the goofy gophers and the grumpy bird. You can vote for the image that makes you chuckle the most until October 10.

The vast, inhospitable deserts across the Arabian Peninsula dont seem ideal for a long trek, but ancient Green Arabia was much more welcoming to our early human ancestors.

Periods of heavy rainfall in the desert between 400,000 and 50,000 years ago created lush grasslands that served as the perfect backdrop for both animals and humans migrating to and from Africa.

Perhaps the most intriguing idea to result from this latest finding is that multiple species of early humans, including Neanderthals, may have interacted and mated in this area. While this helps fill a gap in human history, the discovery points to a more ancient mystery.

Sometimes, space gets a little complicated (and not just when were trying to figure out the universe).

Despite threatening to pull Russia out of the International Space Station prematurely, the head of the countrys space agency is now promising to remain NASAs partner at least until the orbiting outpost is eventually retired. This is a family, where a divorce within a station is not possible, Dmitry Rogozin told CNN in his first interview with western media since becoming Roscosmos director general.

The Federal Aviation Administration is also investigating Richard Bransons recent flight to space, saying the rocket-powered plane operated by his company, Virgin Galactic, veered off course during its descent.

But space doesnt always have to be so serious. If you prefer to jam out to some stellar tunes while watching spacewalks, check out our out-of-this-world playlist. These songs are perfectly suited for listening while you watch a starman waiting in the sky. And who says food has to be boring on the space station? Watch these astronauts have a pizza party in space.

Its been a rough week for many across the US facing natural disasters including wildfires, drought and Hurricane Ida that are only exacerbated by the climate crises.

Hurricane Ida forged a path of devastation from the southern states up through the Northeast, bringing unusually catastrophic flooding to New York City.

Human-caused climate change is making hurricanes stronger, slower and wetter. Scientists warn that storms like Ida will only become more common as the planet warms.

What can we do stop it? Deep cuts to greenhouse gas emissions and ending our dependence on fossil fuels could stave off some of the more catastrophic climate change impacts the world is currently experiencing.

If youve missed watching gymnastics since the Olympics ended, look no further than the wacky world of agile animals.

Meet spotted skunks. Theyre the acrobats of the skunk world, and scientists have discovered more of these species than they previously thought existed.

To scare off predators, they perform an intimidatingly impressive handstand. The squirrel-sized skunks kick out their back legs, puff up their tails and rush at their attackers they even use this trick to freak out mountain lions.

And while you may think that geckos can scale just about anything because they have sticky feet, guess again. When leaping from tree to tree, some of these lizards crash headfirst but a remarkable (and awkward) maneuver allows them to land securely at ballistic speeds and they owe it all to another part of their anatomy.

Consider these worthy of a double-take:

Babies may have the cutest laughs ever and infant laughter is very similar to that of another species.

The fossil of Big John, the worlds largest Triceratops skeleton, is up for sale, but youll need deep pockets to bring him home.

Mars is home to planet-encircling dust storms just one reason we have to be able to forecast the weather on other worlds before we can visit them.

Like what youve read? Oh, but theres more. Sign up here to receive in your inbox the next edition of Wonder Theory, brought to you by CNN Space and Science writer Ashley Strickland, who finds wonder in planets beyond our solar system and discoveries from the ancient world.

The-CNN-Wire & 2021 Cable News Network, Inc., a WarnerMedia Company. All rights reserved.

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