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When astronauts perform spacewalks for maintenance outside the International Space Station, the view can be distracting.
The sun shines and the earth radiates into the surrounding darkness from a distance of 354 kilometers.
“The only thing that separates you from the rest of the universe and makes you aware of the entire cosmos of creation is the glass pane of your helmet visor,” NASA astronaut Mike Fincke previously told CNN.
Now, four civilians were able to witness what Fincke described as “truly breathtaking” as they attempted the first commercial spacewalk.
Defying gravity
The Polaris Dawn mission is scheduled to set off on a wild and risky journey around the Earth on Tuesday.
Billionaire Jared Isaacman, former Air Force pilot Scott “Kidd” Poteet and SpaceX engineers Anna Menon and Sarah Gillis will spend five days aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule in an attempt to orbit the planet at a record altitude.
At a distance of about 1,400 kilometers from Earth, the quartet will encounter the Van Allen radiation belts, where trapped high-energy solar particles create two dangerous bands of radiation.
When crew members, wearing brand-new spacesuits developed by SpaceX, open the hatch and perform a spacewalk at a lower, safer altitude, they will be exposed to the vacuum of space.
In other space news, NASA has decided that the Starliner astronauts will make a delayed return to Earth in February 2025 aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule – while the Boeing Starliner capsule will return empty.
Wild Kingdom
Every day, as the sun sets over the rice fields of central China, orb-web spiders build new webs to catch fireflies – and use their flickering signals to catch even more prey.
The spider, called Araneus ventricosus, achieves this deadly feat by tricking male fireflies into emitting single pulses of light that are used by female fireflies as mating signals.
Researchers aren’t sure how the spiders manipulate male fireflies into mimicking females, but it could be through their venom or a series of strategic bites.
A long time ago
An investigation of unmarked graves in the British settlement of Jamestown, Virginia, has revealed a long-held secret within the family of the colony’s first governor, Thomas West.
When researchers analyzed the DNA of two skeletons in the graves, they found that both men were related to West on his mother’s side. One of the men, Captain William West, was born out of wedlock, the son of West’s unmarried aunt Elizabeth.
According to the authors of the study, this scandal may have been the reason why William West crossed the Atlantic and joined the colony.
Separately, researchers have discovered how ancient people were able to build a monument out of stone in what is now southern Spain 5,600 years ago that weighed as much as two jumbo jets and dwarfed Stonehenge.
Other worlds
When the Chandrayaan-3 mission landed on the moon just over a year ago, India became the fourth country to achieve this feat.
Now findings from the Pragyan rover, stationed near the moon’s south pole, provide additional evidence for a theory about the moon’s history.
Samples collected during the Apollo missions suggest that billions of years ago the Moon was a deep magma ocean that slowly cooled and formed layers of minerals and rock.
The Pragyan rover analyzed the lunar soil and found a type of rock that probably crystallized on the magma ocean and formed the lunar crust.
Meanwhile, the European Space Agency’s Juice mission to study the habitability of Jupiter’s icy moons performed the first double flyby of Earth and the Moon this week. The risky maneuver put the spacecraft on course to reach Jupiter in 2031, and it captured some postcard-like images of both encounters.
Fantastic creatures
Two male flamingos have hatched an egg together at Paignton Zoo in southwest England and are raising the fluffy chick.
Although the zoo has housed other male pairs during the breeding season, staff have no idea how Arthur and Curtis got the egg.
“It’s likely that this egg was exposed unprotected and just left (in a nest), and then they took advantage of the opportunity,” said Pete Smallbones, the zoo’s bird curator.
Adopting the eggs and hatching them highlights the birds’ parental instincts, and experts have theories as to why the flamingo duo teamed up to raise the little chick.
Curiosities
These fascinating stories might fascinate you:
— Astronomers have discovered an unusual object that may be a rare high-velocity star.
It is moving so fast that it could escape the gravity of the Milky Way.
— A surprising sight of a dinosaur fossil and the gliding dance of two birds are just two wonders captured in the winning images of the BMC Ecology and Evolution and BMC Zoology Image Competition 2024.
– The Perseverance rover begins a steep climb to the rim of a Martian crater. What it discovers could change scientists’ understanding of Mars’ history.
— “ManhattAnts” have been thriving beneath the feet of New Yorkers for more than a decade. Now researchers have solved the mystery of where the ant species comes from.
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