An emergency evacuation alert given to NASA astronauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS) has been lifted following urgent repairs of leaks within the Russian segment of the orbital laboratory.

The four astronauts of NASA's Crew-12 mission to the ISS — consisting of U.S. astronauts Jessica Meir and Jack Hathaway, French astronaut Sophie Adenot, and Russian cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev — were ordered to put on their spacesuits and shelter inside their docked Crew Dragon spacecraft on Friday (June 5) while two members of the station's Russian crew attempted fixes on structural faults leaking air out of the station.

"Following new leaks, Roscosmos has elected to proceed with a more extensive repair operation on Friday, June 5," NASA press secretary Bethany Stevens wrote on X on Friday as the situation developed. "Out of an abundance of caution, NASA has directed all four of the agency's SpaceX Crew-12 members and NASA astronaut Chris Williams to assume an elevated safety posture in the Dragon spacecraft while the repair is underway."
(Williams, a NASA astronaut, launched to the ISS as part of Russia’s Soyuz ms-28 mission, and would have had to evacuate with the Russian cosmonauts had the emergency continued.)

After initial efforts by the Russian crewmembers to patch the leaks, one of which was successful, Roscosmos announced a pause to its structural repair efforts "as more measurements and data is assessed," Stevens wrote in a follow-up post on X. "NASA has instructed the crew members inside the Dragon spacecraft to end the safe haven procedures and return to planned operations aboard the International Space Station."

A persistent problem

The location of the leaks is the PrK module, a transfer tunnel that connects the Russian Zvezda Service Module to a docking port used by Progress, a spacecraft used for delivering Roscosmos cargo.

Air leaks caused by micro-cracks in this module have been a recurring headache for both NASA and Roscosmos since 2019, requiring constant monitoring and for the hatch leading to the Zvezda module to be closed except for when the station is receiving cargo.

Despite multiple attempts to patch up these leaks, they have persisted. Additionally, despite downplaying their severity in public, NASA considers the leaks from the Roscosmos module to be both high in likelihood and high in consequence, with potential for "catastrophic failure," according to Ars Technica.

While the threat posed by the worsening leaks appears to have been stemmed for now, this event will likely further complicate plans to extend the ISS's lifespan. The station was originally due to be retired by the end of 2030, when it would be nudged through Earth’s atmosphere before plunging into the Pacific Ocean.

However, NASA and the U.S. Congress have been eyeing plans to extend the station's lifespan to at least 2032 to give controversial private space stations time to come online. Russia, for its part, has repeatedly signaled a desire to withdraw from the ISS as soon as possible.

Today's top story

Splash landing

Researchers have filmed a sperm whale giving birth while being assisted by 10 other females in her social unit. It's the first time an event of this kind has ever been seen in non-primates.

The birth, captured by airborne drones in July 2023, took place over the course of an hour, during which time females surrounded the mother and newborn in a protective circle, taking turns to raise the calf to the surface — giving it time for its flukes to unfurl and acquire its own natural buoyancy control.

Sperm whale social groups are matriarchies, with life-long bonds formed between mothers, daughters, grandmothers and unrelated females. The males, meanwhile, primarily roam the oceans alone, creating one of the most extreme geographical separations between the sexes in nature.

The trend

Under pressure

It's been a busy time for NASA, with the announcement that the agency plans to build a permanent lunar base and construct a nuclear-powered rocket. The plans were revealed just a week before the planned launch of its crewed Artemis II rocket to the moon.

The Artemis program has been touted as a test for critical systems before an eventual attempt to send humans to Mars, but it's also testing something else — the human body.

NASA will rely heavily on astronauts not just as explorers but as experimental subjects, carefully monitoring how radiation, isolation and microgravity affect them both physically and mentally as they venture deeper into space.

Three to read

1. 'Major disruption in Neanderthal history': 65,000 years ago, all Neanderthals in Europe died out except for one lineage [Live Science]
2. Anduril wants to own the future of war tech. Mishaps, delays, and challenges abound [Wired]
3. Brain aging results from a loss of control over how genes are regulated, mouse study suggests [Live Science]

Photo of the day

Counting down

NASA's Artemis II rocket stands poised at Launch Pad 39B at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The 322-foot-tall (98 meters) Space Launch System and Orion crew capsule stack is ready to launch the mission's four-astronaut crew on a 10-day flight around the moon and back as soon as April 1.

Say it, said it

Word of the day

Masripithecus — Arabic and Greek, with "Masri" meaning "Egyptian" and "pithecus" meaning "monkey" or "trickster." It is the genus name of a newly identified, 18-million-year-old fossil believed to be the common ancestor of all living apes.

Quote of the day

"From the moment a sperm begins its journey to the moment an embryo starts to develop, gravity appears to play a role we are only starting to uncover. Gravity is not just a backdrop to life, it is deeply embedded in the biological processes that create it."

Nicole McPherson, a researcher who runs the Sperm and Embryo Biology Group at Adelaide University's Robinson Research Institute, on why sperm lose their bearings in space.

Fun and games

The discovery of an ancient ape common ancestor in Egypt could rewrite our prehistory. But what do you know about our human relatives? Take the quiz.

Follow Live Science on social media

Want more science news? Follow our Live Science WhatsApp Channel for the latest discoveries as they happen. It's the best way to get our expert reporting on the go, but if you don't use WhatsApp we're also on Facebook, X (formerly Twitter), Flipboard, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, Bluesky and LinkedIn.

On Tuesday (March 18) NASA astronauts Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore splashed down into the Gulf of Mexico inside a SpaceX crew capsule, ending a more than nine-month stay in space that was originally slated to last just a few weeks. When their capsule was finally opened, the astronauts were carried out of the spacecraft and loaded onto stretchers.

The astronauts were not sick or injured; the reason for this procedure has nothing to do with Williams and Wilmore's specific mission aboard the International Space Station (ISS), but is simply a matter of protocol that all astronauts must follow, experts told Live Science.

When astronauts return to Earth from space, they can't immediately walk upon landing. This is due to temporary changes to the body that occur in space — a fact that NASA addresses with strict safety procedures.

"A lot of them don't want to be brought out on a stretcher, but they're told they have to be," John DeWitt, director of applied sports science at Rice University in Texas and a former senior scientist at NASA's Johnson Space Center, where he developed methods to improve astronaut health during spaceflight, told Live Science.

"Space motion sickness"

Just like someone might experience motion sickness on a roller coaster or while riding in a boat on choppy waters, astronauts can experience dizziness and nausea when they return to Earth. Primarily for this reason, astronauts are typically rolled out on a stretcher after their landing as a precautionary measure, DeWitt said.

The temporary sensation occurs because our bodies are designed to take advantage of the constant force pulling us down here on Earth — gravity. However, orbital space habitats such as the ISS are in perpetual freefall toward our planet, which creates a feeling of weightlessness for the astronauts inside and prompts their bodies to adapt to the altered environment.

Related: Boeing Starliner astronauts spent nearly 300 days stuck in space — is that a new record?

One significant change occurs in the sensory vestibular system within the inner ear that's crucial for maintaining balance, DeWitt said. In space, this system becomes accustomed to ignoring certain sensory inputs as the brain adjusts to weightlessness. So when astronauts return to Earth and gravity is reintroduced, they begin readjusting once again, which can temporarily cause "space motion sickness," DeWitt said.

Another change astronauts experience, especially those who spend long durations in space, is gradual muscle and bone loss. While walking here on Earth is usually sufficient to keep our muscles strong due to gravity, astronauts in space don't need to use their muscles as much. This lack of activity causes the muscles to weaken and shrink over time, leading to a condition known as muscle atrophy.

"We feel strong and ready"

To counteract these and other spaceflight-related effects, astronauts who spend extended periods in space — including Williams Wilmore — follow a thorough daily exercise regimen using a suite of equipment on board the station.

"Been working out for the past nine months," Williams told Live Science via an email to DeWitt. "We feel strong and ready to tackle Earth's gravity."

Williams and Wilmore are part of the Crew-9 mission alongside NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Roscosmos cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov, who all returned to Earth aboard a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft on March 18. Their return marked the end of an unexpected nine-month stay for Williams and Wilmore, after the Boeing Starliner capsule they launched on encountered several issues during its journey to the ISS, including thruster malfunctions and leaking propulsion, which led NASA to bring the spacecraft back to Earth empty.

Despite the setbacks, "They're in good spirits and feel very confident that there's not going to be any major issues because of being on the space station so long from a physiological perspective," DeWitt said. "They're getting exactly what they would have gotten had their trip been planned to be nine months."

The effects of long-term spaceflight on the human body are an active area of research. Currently, Russian Cosmonaut Valeri Polyakov holds the record for the longest consecutive time in space having spent 437 days — just over 14 months — aboard the now-defunct Mir space station in 1994 and 1995.

Editor's note: This article was updated on March 18 after the astronauts successfully returned to Earth.

A former U.K. Paralympian has been given the green light to undertake a future mission to the International Space Station (ISS), which would make him the first person with a physical disability to travel to space.

John McFall, 43, is an orthopedic surgeon and former medal-winning Paralympic sprinter who has represented Great Britain at multiple competitions. He had his right leg amputated above the knee when he was 19 years old after a motorcycling accident. McFall joined the European Space Agency (ESA) in 2022 as part of the agency's "Fly!" program to assess the feasibility of someone with a prosthesis becoming an ISS crew member.

On Friday (Feb. 14), ESA announced in an online media briefing that McFall has passed the medical tests needed to undertake a long-term ISS mission and is now on the waiting list to travel to the space station.

McFall said that he was "hugely proud" to be cleared for a future ISS mission. "This is way bigger than me — this is a cultural shift," he said during the briefing.

Related: 'Stranded' NASA astronaut Suni Williams photographed from Earth during record-breaking spacewalk. Can you spot her?

McFall is now fully qualified to become an astronaut but is currently not scheduled for a specific mission.

"Now he's an astronaut like everybody else who wants to fly to the space station, waiting for a mission assignment," Daniel Neuenschwander, the director of human and robotic exploration at ESA, said during the briefing.

However, ESA has previously stated that the agency wants to send a disabled person to the ISS before the space station is decommissioned, which is currently scheduled to happen at some point after 2030.

"At this stage, it's looking very positive," McFall told the BBC's Sky At Night Magazine in 2024. "I think [it could happen] within the next few years."

'A cultural shift'

McFall is now in line to become the first para-astronaut. However, he has previously pushed back against using the "para" prefix to describe himself.

"I'm not a para-surgeon, I'm a surgeon. I'm not a para-dad, I'm a dad," McFall told The Guardian in 2024. "I think that if we continue to use [the 'para' prefix], it probably continues to create a divide, which isn't necessary."

The new announcement comes during a period of uncertainty surrounding diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) in space, following a wave of controversial changes at NASA imposed by the new Trump administration.

"We are now entering a world which is changing a bit from a DEI perspective from one of our [ISS] partners," Neuenschwander said during the conference.

In the last few weeks, NASA has been ordered to end all DEI initiatives, altered web pages celebrating female scientists and allegedly told workers to purge workspaces of LGBTQI+ symbols.

However, all ISS partners — including the U.S. — cleared McFall for a future ISS mission, according to French news agency AFP.

Stranded Starliner astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams finally have a return date to head back to Earth, and it's a few weeks earlier than previously expected.

NASA announced Tuesday (Feb. 11) that the two astronauts, who hitched a ride to the International Space Station (ISS) on a Boeing Starliner spacecraft last June, will head home on a SpaceX Dragon capsule that will leave Earth with the ISS Crew-10 on Wednesday, March 12. After a few days' handover period, Williams and Wilmore will leave the ISS with the rest of the Crew-9 mission, after having spent about 250 consecutive days in orbit.

Williams and Wilmore were initially meant to spend about a week in space, but problems with the propulsion and helium systems on their Boeing Starliner led NASA to return the capsule to Earth empty after three months of troubleshooting couldn't resolve the issues. The capsule ended up landing safely in New Mexico on Sept. 7, 2024. However, a watchdog report just released by the Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel found that new thruster problems did appear during the descent. In October, The Wall Street Journal reported that Boeing is in the early stages of considering a sale of its space business, including Starliner.

Related: Boeing Starliner astronauts could spend nearly 300 days stuck in space — is that a new record?

As for the stranded pair, they have made the most of their time in orbit: Williams recently broke the record for the most nonconsecutive hours of spacewalking by a female astronaut.

A long-awaited homecoming

In December 2024, NASA announced that Williams and Wilmore would return on a newly designed SpaceX Dragon capsule in late March 2025 at the earliest. But now, the astronauts and the rest of Crew-9 will come home on a previously flown Dragon capsule, the Endurance. This will allow the swap between Crew-9 and Crew-10 to happen sooner while SpaceX continues to finalize the interior and final integration of the new Dragon capsule, according to NASA.

Along with Wilmore and Williams, astronaut Nick Hague and Roscosmos cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov will leave the ISS in March. They'll be replaced by NASA astronauts Anne McClain and Nichole Ayers, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency astronaut Takuya Onishi, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Kirill Peskov. The precise day of the return will be determined by weather conditions near Florida, where Endurance will splash down.

An amateur photographer on Earth has captured an extremely rare photo of "stranded" NASA astronaut Suni Williams floating outside the International Space Station (ISS) as it passed overhead. The image was taken during a recent spacewalk, when Williams broke the record for most non-consective hours spent spacewalking by a female astronaut.

Charline Giroud, a biochemist at the University of Oxford in England and astrophotography enthusiast, snapped the striking photo Jan. 30 using a small telescope as the ISS passed over Oxfordshire at an altitude of around 250 miles (410 kilometers). The shoot required extreme precision as the space station was traveling at around 17,500 mph (28,000 km/h).

"I was very lucky to capture this event under clear skies with my telescope from my hometown, it was a fantastic moment," Giroud told Spaceweather.com.

At the time, ISS commander Sunita "Suni" Williams was undertaking her fifth career spacewalk, or extravehicular activity (EVA), to help remove a defunct part of the station. Following this excursion, Williams has now accumulated a total of 62 hours and 6 minutes floating in the vacuum of space, overtaking retired NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson to become the female astronaut with the most non-consecutive hours spent spacewalking, according to Live Science's sister site Space.com. (Whitson still holds the record for most individual spacewalks by a female astronaut with six EVAs.)

In the photo, Williams is visible as a tiny white blob attached to the end of the robotic arm, named Canadarm-2, which looks like a golden line near the station's center (see below).

Related: 15 jaw-dropping spacewalk images

In addition to breaking the impressive EVA record, Williams is "also the first female astronaut to be photographed from the ground during a spacewalk," Giroud said. "Congratulations Suni!"

NASA astronaut Barry "Butch" Wilmore, who has been stuck on the ISS alongside Williams for seven months, was also on the spacewalk, which lasted 5 hours and 26 minutes. However, he was working in the shadow of an airlock as the space station passed over the U.K. and is therefore invisible in the photo, Giroud said.

Stranded in space

Williams and Wilmore have been on board the ISS since June 6, 2024. They were initially scheduled to stay in space for around a week. However, they became stranded when the Boeing Starliner capsule that delivered them to the station experienced multiple leaks, temporarily forcing it out of commission. The astronaut pair could now spend a total of more than 300 days orbiting Earth.

The faulty Starliner capsule was eventually returned to Earth in September and successfully touched down in New Mexico upon reentry, leading to speculation that the astronauts may have been able to safely travel onboard the spacecraft. However, the risks to their safety were deemed too great at the time.

The astronaut pair has since had their return date pushed back several times due to logistical challenges — most recently in December, when their February return date was pushed back to some point in late March.

Related: 10 times space missions went very wrong in 2024

Since taking office, U.S. president Donald Trump has made it a priority to return Williams and Wilmore to Earth and has "ordered" Elon Musk to return the pair on a SpaceX capsule before the proposed March return date, Space.com recently reported. However, it is currently unclear how or if this will happen.

The renewed urgency of their return may have been fueled by recent tabloid rumours that Williams' health has deteriorated significantly during her stay on the ISS. However, these unfounded stories were refuted by Williams, who has only experienced minor health effects that are expected of astronauts that experience long stays in space — and is clearly still fit enough to set spacewalking records.

This is also not the first time that NASA astronauts have endured extended missions in space. In 2023, NASA's Frank Rubio completed a 371-day stay in space — a record for an American astronaut — after the Russian Soyuz capsule he was traveling in was damaged by a piece of renegade space junk.

A pair of astronauts who launched aboard Boeing's Starliner spacecraft in June for a 10-day trip to the International Space Station (ISS) will now spend at least nine months in space, after NASA announced yet another delay to their return flight.

NASA said in a blog post Tuesday (Dec. 17) that the next crew swap to the ISS will happen no earlier than late March 2025. The Crew-10 mission will launch four crew members to the space station. It was originally scheduled for February, but NASA and SpaceX have delayed the launch in order to complete a new Dragon spacecraft for the mission. The Dragon spacecraft is the private spaceflight company's crewed vehicle that can carry up to seven astronauts at a time into low-earth orbit.

"Fabrication, assembly, testing, and final integration of a new spacecraft is a painstaking endeavor that requires great attention to detail," Steve Stich, the manager of NASA's Commercial Crew Program, said in the blog post.

The delay, however, means an extra month in space for NASA's Butch Wilmore and Sunita Williams — the two astronauts who flew to the station aboard Boeing's Starliner crew-delivery vehicle earlier this year. The mission was expected to last a little more than a week, but the craft experienced issues with its thrusters on its approach to the ISS. This led to a three-month delay in the spacecraft's return as NASA tried to figure out the problem. Ultimately, the agency sent the spacecraft back to Earth without its crew. It landed in September without incident.

Related: NASA warns of potential 'catastrophic failure' on leaking ISS — but Russia doesn't want to fix it

Record stays in space

Wilmore and Williams have inadvertently become long-term residents of the ISS, though their trip is not threatening any records. For example, astronaut Scott Kelly stayed aboard the ISS for 340 days between 2015 and 2016 as part of a twin study — his astronaut twin brother Mark stayed on Earth so researchers could compare the two and learn about the impacts of space on health and physiology. In 2023, astronaut Frank Rubio spent a year straight in orbit, the first American to do so. (Rubio's length of stay was also unplanned, as his Soyuz spacecraft sprung a leak.) Six other people have spent more than a year in space.

The Crew-10 mission will carry NASA astronauts Anne McClain and Nichole Ayers, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency astronaut Takuya Onishi, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Kirill Peskov to the ISS. After a handover period, Williams and Wilmore, along with NASA astronauts Nick Hague and Roscosmos cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov will return to Earth. The ISS was resupplied in November, according to NASA, including "special items" for the astronauts to celebrate the holidays in space.

What it is: The Large Magellanic Cloud and the Small Magellanic Cloud, two dwarf satellite galaxies of the Milky Way

Where it is: 160,000 light-years away, in the constellations Dorado and Mensa (for the Large Magellanic Cloud) and 200,000 light-years away, in the constellations Tucana and Hydrus (for the Small Magellanic Cloud)

When it was shared: Dec. 2, 2024

Why it's so special: Our Milky Way galaxy does not travel through space alone. A spiral galaxy with a disk that spans more than 100,000 light-years, it sits within a neighborhood called the Local Group, which includes more than 50 other galaxies. Some of the neighborhood's less-massive galaxies orbit the Milky Way as satellites.

Two satellite galaxies, the Large Magellanic Cloud and the Small Magellanic Cloud, can be seen in the night sky only from the Southern Hemisphere — or from space. This image was taken by Don Pettit, NASA's oldest active astronaut, at 69 years old. He arrived at the International Space Station (ISS) on Sept. 11, after launching from Kazakhstan in a Russian Soyuz spacecraft, along with two Russian cosmonauts.

He took this long-exposure image from a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule docked to the ISS. It was one of three related images published on X by NASA; two featured the Magellanic Clouds, and the other showed the Milky Way.

Called irregular satellite galaxies because of their distorted shapes, the Magellanic Clouds each contain billions of stars. Many incredible astronomical observations have been made there. Perhaps the most famous was in the Large Magellanic Cloud, where in 1987, astronomers spotted the last supernova to be seen with the naked eye.

Last month, astronomers revealed the first high-quality, zoomed-in photo of a star outside our galaxy. Located in the Large Magellanic Cloud, the star, WOH G64, is 1,500 times wider than the sun and on the brink of exploding in a violent supernova.

The Magellanic Clouds are most easily seen between December and April from the Southern Hemisphere.

On his fourth spaceflight, Pettit has been taking long-exposure images and posting them on X, including a star trail, SpaceX Starlink satellites and Las Vegas at night, one of the brightest places on Earth.

For more sublime space images, check out our Space Photo of the Week archives.

Emily Calandrelli made history on Nov. 22, 2024, when she became the 100th woman to go to space. But thanks to "small men on the internet," the monumental milestone was marred by misogyny, Calandrelli told Live Science.

"This is something that I had been working towards for two decades," the astronaut, MIT engineer, bestselling author, TV host and STEM influencer, told Live Science. "It's been a dream of mine for the longest time and in every moment leading up to me being in space I was nervous that it wasn't actually going to happen. Then once we got into space, all of these emotions came welling up, like 'I did it. I'm here. I'm in space!'"

Footage of the historic launch, led by aerospace company Blue Origin, was shared by the company to social media. But it wasn't long before misogynistic, objectifying comments began to flood in.

"This all happened as I was flying home after experiencing the most perfect, wonderful dream-achieving experience of my life," Calandrelli, of West Virginia, wrote in a post on Instagram. "Instead of being on cloud nine, I’m crying in my seat staring out the window. Because of course this happened. Of course I should have expected this."

In the post, she said that hoards of internet trolls made sexual comments about her voice and reaction, leading Blue Origin to take the video down.

Related: 25 amazing women in science and math

"I didn't expect to see so many people really mocking a reaction to a dream like that," Calandrelli told Live Science. "I got to experience something that only 100 women in history have seen, and 700 humans in the history of this planet, out of 100 billion humans that have ever lived — of course I'm going to have a pretty extreme reaction to that."

However, Calandrelli has not let this deter her from sharing her excitement — she put the video back up on social media in a post that has received over 6 million views across TikTok and Instagram as of Friday (Dec. 6).

"The only thing in this world that I can compare it [the spaceflight] to is literally having my children," she said. "I'd always dreamed of being a mom and you have this baby in your belly for nine months. You love it, you see it on the sonogram, and then you finally get to meet them."

Spaceflight is still a heavily male dominated industry — according to World Space Flight statistics trackers and United States Airforce Definitions, 714 people have been to space as of Dec. 6, 2024. Only 14% have been female.

"For these big dreams, you really have to want them. They're not just going to come to you, you have to fight for them. You have to risk a lot of things for them," Calandrelli said. "You have to sacrifice certain things. And I think that grit and that resilience to failure is one of the best life skills that anyone can learn."

More details of Calandrelli's career running up to the launch can be found on Live Science's sister site, Space.com.

The International Space Station (ISS) is leaking — and major space agencies are divided over what to do about it.

The leak is located in a Russian segment of the station known as a PrK module, which connects Russia's Zvezda service module to the space station's main body. NASA and Russian space agency Roscosmos have known about the leak since at least 2019, but its underlying cause remains a mystery. Since its discovery, cosmonauts have taken various steps to minimize its impact, including sealing off the segment when it is not in use. But Roscosmos and NASA now disagree about the leak's severity.

According to a recent NASA report, the leak has intensified to the point where it poses a risk to the ISS's goal of operating until 2030. What's more, some NASA officials believe it could lead to "a catastrophic failure" of the station, Bob Cabana, the chair of the agency's ISS Advisory Committee, said during a public meeting.

However, Russian space officials have downplayed the severity of the leak, insisting that it will not jeopardize future ISS operations, according to CNN.

The ISS has been continuously occupied since November 2000. Most of its infrastructure is a quarter-century old, and it is possible that years of mechanical stress have caused tiny fissures to form in the walls of certain sections. Additional stress from colliding with small pieces of debris and micrometeors could also have contributed to the perforation.

Related: NASA offers SpaceX $843 million to destroy the International Space Station

NASA and Roscosmos have agreed to seal off the leaky segment if the rate of air loss becomes "untenable." But they have not yet reached a consensus on what, exactly, qualifies as an untenable rate. Currently, air is escaping at a rate of around 2 to 2.5 pounds (0.9 to 1.1 kilograms) per day above the space station's equilibrium, according to NASA. In April, it briefly spiked to 3.7 pounds per day (1.7 kg); if left unchecked, it could spike again.

The agencies are reportedly working closely with one another to monitor the situation as it unfolds. And NASA plans to add an extra seat — called a "pallet seat" — aboard future SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft in case any astronauts need to evacuate.

"The station is not young," NASA astronaut Michael Barratt said during a news briefing. "We will expect to see more wear and tear in various other places."

The space station is expected to operate through to 2030, after which it will be deorbited into Earth's atmosphere for a fiery farewell. NASA currently has no plans to build a replacement for the ISS and instead will focus on crewed missions to the moon and Mars, according to the agency.

The moon's glow meets a multicolored aurora in a new astronaut image from space.

International Space Station (ISS) and NASA astronaut Matthew Dominick, a veteran photographer of the Expedition 71 crew, captured the moon and auroras from his perch 250 miles (400 kilometers) above Earth.

"The aurora have been amazing the past few days. Great timing for trying out a new lens that recently arrived on Cygnus," Dominick said on X, formerly Twitter, in one of the posts. (Cygnus is a cargo spacecraft from Northrop Grumman that arrived Aug. 6).

Dominick and the Expedition 71 crew witnessed powerful auroras in recent days, which happen when the sun's charged particles interact with gas molecules in Earth's atmosphere. The gas molecules emit light when they become excited to higher energy levels than the norm, with different molecules spurring different colors of light. (Green, for example, results from oxygen.)

Related: 32 stunning photos of auroras seen from space

Both green and red hues are visible in Dominick's recent images and video. "The moon makes it way towards the horizon to set amongst red and green aurora," Dominick wrote in another X post. "Felt so lucky to grab this shot."

The red-and-green auroras, tinged with moonlight, are Dominick's latest photos as part of the SpaceX Crew-8 mission. His visit happens to coincide with a peak in auroral activity, allowing him to capture images of auroral shows backdropped by spacecraft like Boeing's Starliner, SpaceX Crew Dragon or Russia's Soyuz.

Dominick said recently that he has obtained as many as 200,000 photos aboard the ISS, during the mission meant to last half a year. Many of these photos were taken in his spare time, although, like all astronauts, he also does photography for Earth observation and ISS maintenance purposes.

Originally posted on Space.com.

For the past few weeks, NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams have been stuck on the International Space Station (ISS) after the first crewed voyage of Boeing's new Starliner spacecraft hit a snag. Concerns raised by Boeing and NASA over thruster problems and several helium leaks (helium is used in Starliner's engine system) have prevented the craft from making the return journey as scheduled. NASA has now said the astronauts may have to stay put until the next scheduled crew switchover in August — potentially on another ship.

Boeing and NASA are trying to put a positive spin on the extension by saying they are testing systems required for longer Starliner missions. But the project has already suffered several delays, having originally been set to lift off for the first time with crew in 2017. This, combined with the latest problems raise questions over the whole Starliner programme.

Starliner was noted as having a small helium leak before it even launched. Helium is an inert gas (much like neon or xenon), meaning that it is very unreactive with other materials.

This makes it ideal when coming into contact with rocket fuel and high temperatures, although producing it is an expensive process. It is pressurised and used to push fuel into the engines at the correct rate. Helium leaks can mean that not enough fuel will reach a thruster.

The leak spotted while Starliner was on the launch pad was determined to be negligible and the spacecraft was sent to orbit regardless. However, this turned into a larger problem when additional helium leaks were identified following launch, meaning that several of the spacecraft's small manoeuvring thrusters couldn't be used.

Four of the five thrusters have been repaired while Starliner has been docked to the ISS, but it raises concern for other thrusters cutting out during the return journey to Earth. On Starliner's return, re-entering Earth's atmosphere requires a very specific "angle of attack" to ensure there is not too much friction heating up the vessel.

RELATED: NASA astronauts say they're 'confident' Starliner will bring them home, despite no return date in sight

An inability to adjust the orientation of the craft or the orbital parameters for re-entry could in the worst-case scenario result in massive heat build up and the destruction of the spacecraft with two astronauts on board.

There are additional thrusters and other so-called "redundancies" — back up systems — designed into the spacecraft, so this is a very unlikely scenario. However, so were the helium leaks. While Boeing and NASA have considered it safe to return on Starliner, it's perfectly conceivable that the astronauts might have some trepidation and anxiety — especially as these issues did not occur with the uncrewed test flights.

The next particular problem is that Starliner returns and jettisons its service module on re-entry as it returns to the surface on land rather than at sea (like Russian spacecraft Soyuz did and the SpaceX Dragon capsules do). This means that the bit of the spacecraft with all the vital information on will be burned up, making it very difficult to determine what actually went wrong.

Investigations in space

Currently ground tests are being run by NASA and investigations are being conducted on the ISS to gather as much information as possible before the return.

The astronauts made it up to the ISS and are safe there. While it is likely that Starliner will return to Earth, should a major fault be discovered while it is docked to the ISS, there are other return vehicles that can be used to ferry the two crew members back home.

The astronauts' safety will no doubt be paramount in the minds of both agency and industry. But this is not the first problem with Starliner. The vehicle has suffered from major delays since conception as part of the Commercial Crew Program in 2010.

The contract indicated that Starliner should be ready by 2017 with a two-year delay before the first successful unmanned launch in 2022 (there was a failed attempt in 2019). The main crewed launch was then delayed by a month.

These delays indicate that Boeing is falling behind its main commercial competitor SpaceX, which won a contract at the same time as Boeing in 2010 to build vehicles that could transport crew to the ISS. SpaceX successfully launched a crewed mission with the Dragon capsule in 2020. To give an indication of the success, Crew Dragon is currently completing its fifth manned mission to the ISS, and has also completed 30 cargo missions.

Boeing has been a major player in space missions with NASA for decades, playing a major role in the space shuttle programme, for example. This relationship continues with the company's role in the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket that will send astronauts on their way to the Moon.

The company has been one of the biggest and most admired contractors in the aerospace industry. However, the problems with the Starliner come not long after widely publicised incidents with Boeing aircraft, so the corporation could do without any further problems with its crewed spacecraft to add to its woes.

This edited article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Only about 600 people have ever traveled to space. The vast majority of astronauts over the past six decades have been middle-aged men on short-duration missions of fewer than 20 days.

Today, with private, commercial and multinational spaceflight providers and flyers entering the market, we are witnessing a new era of human spaceflight. Missions have ranged from minutes, hours and days to months.

As humanity looks ahead to returning to the moon over the coming decade, space exploration missions will be much longer, with many more space travelers and even space tourists. This also means that a wider diversity of people will experience the extreme environment of space — more women and people of different ethnicities, ages and health status.

Since people respond differently to the unique stressors and exposures of space, researchers in space health, like me, seek to better understand the human health effects of spaceflight. With such information, we can figure out how to help astronauts stay healthy both while they're in space and once they return to Earth.

RELATED: Mars-bound astronauts will face incredible stress. Here's how we can prepare them to make history.

As part of the historic NASA Twins Study, in 2019, my colleagues and I published groundbreaking research on how one year on board the International Space Station affects the human body.

I am a radiation cancer biologist in Colorado State University's Department of Environmental and Radiological Health Sciences. I've spent the past few years continuing to build on that earlier research in a series of papers recently published across the portfolio of Nature journals.

These papers are part of the Space Omics and Medical Atlas package of manuscripts, data, protocols and repositories that represent the largest collection ever assembled for aerospace medicine and space biology. Over 100 institutions from 25 countries contributed to the coordinated release of a wide range of spaceflight data.

The NASA Twins Study

NASA's Twins Study seized on a unique research opportunity.

NASA selected astronaut Scott Kelly for the agency's first one-year mission, during which he spent a year on board the International Space Station from 2015 into 2016. Over the same time period, his identical twin brother, Mark Kelly, a former astronaut and current U.S. senator representing Arizona, remained on Earth.

My team and I examined blood samples collected from the twin in space and his genetically matched twin back on Earth before, during and after spaceflight. We found that Scott's telomeres — the protective caps at the ends of chromosomes, much like the plastic tip that keeps a shoelace from fraying — lengthened, quite unexpectedly, during his year in space.

When Scott returned to Earth, however, his telomeres quickly shortened. Over the following months, his telomeres recovered but were still shorter after his journey than they had been before he went to space.

As you get older, your telomeres shorten because of a variety of factors, including stress. The length of your telomeres can serve as a biological indicator of your risk for developing age-related conditions such as dementia, cardiovascular disease and cancer.

In a separate study, my team studied a cohort of 10 astronauts on six-month missions on board the International Space Station. We also had a control group of age- and sex-matched participants who stayed on the ground.

We measured telomere length before, during and after spaceflight and again found that telomeres were longer during spaceflight and then shortened upon return to Earth. Overall, the astronauts had many more short telomeres after spaceflight than they had before.

One of the other Twins Study investigators, Christopher Mason, and I conducted another telomere study — this time with twin high-altitude mountain climbers — a somewhat similar extreme environment on Earth.

We found that while climbing Mount Everest, the climbers' telomeres were longer, and after they descended, their telomeres shortened. Their twins who remained at low altitude didn't experience the same changes in telomere length. These results indicate that it's not the space station's microgravity that led to the telomere length changes we observed in the astronauts — other culprits, such as increased radiation exposure, are more likely.

Civilians in space

In our latest study, we studied telomeres from the crew on board SpaceX's 2021 Inspiration4 mission. This mission had the first all-civilian crew, whose ages spanned four decades. All of the crew members' telomeres lengthened during the mission, and three of the four astronauts also exhibited telomere shortening once they were back on Earth.

What's particularly interesting about these findings is that the Inspiration4 mission lasted only three days. So, not only do scientists now have consistent and reproducible data on telomeres' response to spaceflight, but we also know it happens quickly. These results suggest that even short trips, like a weekend getaway to space, will be associated with changes in telomere length.

Scientists still don't totally understand the health impacts of such changes in telomere length. We'll need more research to figure out how both long and short telomeres might affect an astronaut's long-term health.

Telomeric RNA

In another paper, we showed that the Inspiration4 crew — as well as Scott Kelly and the high-altitude mountain climbers — exhibited increased levels of telomeric RNA, termed TERRA.

Telomeres consist of lots of repetitive DNA sequences. These are transcribed into TERRA, which contributes to telomere structure and helps them do their job.

Together with laboratory studies, these findings tell us that telomeres are being damaged during spaceflight. While there is still a lot we don't know, we do know that telomeres are especially sensitive to oxidative stress. So, the chronic oxidative damage that astronauts experience when exposed to space radiation around the clock likely contributes to the telomeric responses we observe.

We also wrote a review article with a more futuristic perspective of how better understanding telomeres and aging might begin to inform the ability of humans to not only survive long-duration space travel but also to thrive and even colonize other planets. Doing so would require humans to reproduce in space and future generations to grow up in space. We don't know if that's even possible — yet.

Plant telomeres in space

My colleagues and I contributed other work to the Space Omics and Medical Atlas package, as well, including a paper published in Nature Communications. The study team, led by Texas A&M biologist Dorothy Shippen and Ohio University biologist Sarah Wyatt, found that, unlike people, plants flown in space did not have longer telomeres during their time on board the International Space Station.

The plants did, however, ramp up their production of telomerase, the enzyme that helps maintain telomere length.

As anyone who's seen "The Martian" knows, plants will play an essential role in long-term human survival in space. This finding suggests that plants are perhaps more naturally suited to withstand the stressors of space than humans.

This edited article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Boeing's Starliner has sprung two additional leaks en route to the International Space Station (ISS), forcing the two astronauts on board to close them manually, according to NASA.

After years of delays, Boeing's Starliner capsule successfully blasted off on its inaugural crewed flight from Florida's Cape Canaveral Space Force Station at 10:52 a.m. EDT yesterday (June 5). Following a 25-hour flight, the two-person crew are set to join a team of astronauts on the ISS later today (June 6).

But a handful of hours into the journey, just as NASA astronauts Barry Wilmore and Sunita Williams were preparing to go to sleep for the night, two helium leaks appeared on the spacecraft. This is in addition to a third leak that engineers discovered prior to launch.

The astronauts were given instructions on how to fix the new leaks, and were required to close valves manually to stop the helium from escaping. 

"Teams have identified three helium leaks on the spacecraft. One of these was previously discussed before flight along with a management plan," NASA wrote on X late on Wednesday . "The other two are new since the spacecraft arrived on orbit. Two of the affected helium valves have been closed and the spacecraft remains stable."

Related: China's secret space plane has released another unknown object over Earth

Fixing the faults cut into an hour of the crew's nine-hour bedtime. But following the fixes, Boeing and NASA determined the crew were safe and told them to sleep while the situation was monitored.

"Helium is used in spacecraft thruster systems to allow the thrusters to fire and is not combustible or toxic," Boeing noted during a previous helium leak.

The effect of the leaks remains unclear. Nonetheless, Starliner remains on course and is expected to dock with the ISS today. 

Boeing developed the Starliner capsule as a part of NASA's Commercial Crew Program, a partnership between the agency and private companies to ferry astronauts into low Earth orbit following the retirement of NASA's space shuttles in 2011. SpaceX's Crew Dragon also came from this initiative and has racked up 12 crewed flights since it began operating in 2020.

But Boeing's capsule has lagged significantly behind. Starliner's first uncrewed test flight in 2019 was scuppered by a software fault that placed it in the wrong orbit, and a second attempt was held back by issues with a fuel valve. After more reviews last year, the company had to fix issues with the capsule's parachutes and remove around a mile (1.6 kilometers) of tape that was found to be flammable. 

The current launch is Boeing's third attempt to take the crew to the ISS. The previous two were scrubbed by a vibrating oxygen valve on the United Launch Alliance's Atlas V rocket on which Starliner is mounted (and which was developed by Lockheed Martin) and a computer glitch in a ground launch sequencer, respectively.

As NASA prepares to send its first crew to the moon since 1972 and eventually establish a permanent lunar base, scientists have come up with an innovative way to counteract the toll space travel can take on the body: by getting astronauts to perform a daredevil circus stunt on the "Wall of Death."

The stunt involves traveling around the inside of a barrel-shaped wooden cylinder. Humans on Earth can't run fast enough to stay on the wall, so this scary feat is usually achieved using a motorcycle. 

However, on the moon, which has one-sixth of the gravity of Earth, astronauts could conquer the wall at running speeds of just 8 mph (13 km/h), according to new research, published May 1 in the journal Royal Society Open Science. This could help astronauts stay fit on the lunar surface, the scientists wrote.  

NASA intends to send astronauts back to the moon as early as 2025 and plans to establish a permanent lunar base to aid future space missions. But low-gravity conditions put less pressure on the bones and muscles, meaning they are likely to weaken and deteriorate faster than they would on Earth. 

Related: 'Space headaches' are a literal pain for astronauts. Why do they happen?

In the new study, two researchers, one male and one female, took on the nerve-wracking task of running round a 31-foot-diameter (9.5 meters) Wall of Death. The researchers were attached to a bungee cord that was suspended from a 118-foot-high (36 m) crane, which simulated lowering their body weight by around 83%, mimicking conditions of low gravity on the moon. 

Using data from this test, combined with treadmill data that evaluated how fast the researchers could run in varying gravity levels, the team predicted that running for just a couple of minutes at the beginning and end of each day would be enough to protect astronauts from microgravity-induced muscle and bone loss. 

"A training regime of a few laps a day promises to be a viable countermeasure for astronauts to quickly combat whole-body deconditioning, for further missions and home return," the team wrote in the paper. 

While the findings are promising, there are still several logistical challenges. For instance, shuttling a giant Wall of Death to the moon would be a difficult task. Instead, astronauts could run around the walls of circular homes to achieve these benefits, the authors suggest. However, early lunar habitats may not be big enough to accommodate this kind of training, and astronauts would still require specific training for other daily activities, experts who were not involved in the research told The Guardian. 

For the moment, the Wall of Death will remain a circus attraction rather than a key component of space travel. 

Ever wonder why some people build muscle more easily than others or why freckles come out in the sun? Send us your questions about how the human body works to community@livescience.com with the subject line "Health Desk Q," and you may see your question answered on the website!

NASA astronauts plan to watch the total eclipse from space on April 8, but there will be some complications.

The Expedition 71 crew, which will include SpaceX's Crew-8 slated to launch no earlier than Feb. 22, is finalizing its solar eclipse observing schedule. The goal is to catch the event from the International Space Station as it sweeps over the United States on April 8. However, NASA astronauts told Space.com on Jan. 25 that, while the cameras are ready and the astronauts are trained, timing can't be decided for a long time.

This is because the ISS' precise orbit isn't guaranteed. For instance, the station may need to dodge space debris, Crew-8 NASA astronaut Michael Barratt told Space.com. That'd inevitably adjust its trajectory. "Every once a while, we have to tweak the orbit of our station to avoid hitting stuff," Barratt said. "The closer we get [to April], the more we'll be able to sharpen our approach. We'll know what our viewing angle is going to be."

Crew-8 will spend roughly half a year on the International Space Station (ISS), and the upcoming total solar eclipse will occur during this stay. On board will be NASA astronauts Matthew Dominick (commander), Barratt (pilot) and Jeanette Epps (mission specialist), along with mission specialist Alexander Grebenki, of the Russian space agency Roscosmos.

Related: April 8 solar eclipse: What is the path of totality, and where's the best spot to watch?

Solar eclipses happen when the moon passes in front of the sun from Earth's perspective. A total solar eclipse occurs when the moon is close enough in its orbit around our planet to cover the entire sun. The next total solar eclipse passes across much of the U.S. as well as some parts of Canada and Mexico. It'll take place on April 8.

This won't be Barratt's first time observing an eclipse while aloft. When the last total solar eclipse went across the U.S. in 2017, he was on board an Alaska Airlines charter flight observing it at 40,000 feet. "The shadow was just speeding, hurtling towards the mainland. It was really amazing to me," he recalled.

As the astronauts get ready to aim their cameras, they are enjoying the progressions in digital technology since the last 2017 total eclipse in the U.S., Barratt said in a press conference at NASA's Johnson Space Center held on Jan. 25.

"The big difference now is the camera complement (and) the imagery will be, I think, much more crisp and much, much more capable," Barratt said, adding, "we will stand ready on our very unique platform to capture it the best we can."

On the Roscosmos side of the ISS, Grebenkin said in a separate interview that discussions are also ongoing with the Russians regarding how to best approach the event.

"I didn't really train specifically for the observing," Grebenkin said, speaking in Russian through an English interpreter. "I do know that it's going to happen, and I am planning to do my best to take pictures and also observe the event itself."

If you're looking to observe the solar eclipse on Earth, we have you covered. Our guide on how to observe the sun safely guide tells you what you need to know to look at the sun. We also have a guide to solar eclipse glasses, and how to safely photograph the sun if you'd like to get practicing before the big day.

Originally posted on Space.com.

Out in space right now, scientists are growing tiny, three-dimensional models of human organs. What may feel like a scene pulled from the beginning of a sci-fi film is actually a relatively new application of a type of research that's already breaking boundaries of discovery back on Earth. 

From tiny, beating hearts to "mini-brains," so-called organoids are usually grown from human stem cells that, with the help of a cocktail of growth chemicals, can be pushed to self-organize into 3D structures that resemble tissues in the human body. Unlike traditional animal models, such as mice or monkeys, organoids allow scientists to more accurately recreate the unique intricacies of human organs. Therefore, these tiny organs could help accelerate drug development by helping to reveal which compounds will really work in humans and which ones won't.  

Organoid research can be described as out of this world — in some cases, literally so.

Since 2019, tiny models of organs — including the brain, heart and breast — have been grown on the International Space Station (ISS). But this research raises a question: Why are scientists crafting miniature organs in space?

Related: Tiny lab-grown testicles look remarkably like the real thing under the microscope

Aging organoids in microgravity

One reason is that the harsh environment of space could help scientists study aging and related disorders that affect humans back on Earth.  

Alysson Muotri, a professor of pediatrics at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), has been sending human stem cells to the ISS for years, with the goal of growing brain organoids that model various diseases. Disorders such as Alzheimer's disease can take decades to develop in a person, but studies suggest that the low gravity in space can accelerate aging in cells. So, by studying brain organoids in microgravity, scientists could pinpoint how age-related changes happen and help devise treatments to prevent them.  

Many approaches to modeling the aging brain have involved stressing neurons in lab dishes, by adding certain chemicals, for example. However, these experiments don't capture what really happens as the body ages, Muotri told Live Science. "You don't receive like a cascade of molecules in your brain that makes you age overnight," he said.

The team's organoid research was inspired by the NASA twins study, during which astronaut Scott Kelly went to space for a year while his identical twin brother, Mark, stayed on Earth. When Scott came back, he showed signs of enhanced cognitive decline compared with his brother; he found it harder to learn and memorize things, for instance.

It's unknown why these effects were seen, Muotri said. One theory is that it could be because microgravity reduces the activity of an enzyme called telomerase, which helps reverse the natural process whereby sections of DNA at the end of our chromosomes shorten as we age, he said. These aglets at the ends of our DNA are called telomeres, and because shrinking telomeres are linked to aging, some scientists think lengthening telomeres could fight aging and extend the human life span. 

In an upcoming paper, Muotri's team will fully describe how the brain organoids are behaving on the ISS — but from what they can tell so far, the organoids that have already returned to Earth are showing signs of accelerated aging, Muotri said. The brain organoids show features of neurological diseases, such as degeneration and cellular stress, commonly seen in several conditions. This has allowed the researchers to test new drug candidates for the diseases, with promising early findings. 

"The first paper will report the first drug that was discovered in space for a brain disease," Muotri said. However, the exact publication date has yet to be confirmed.

Related: In a 1st, 'minibrains' grown from fetal brain tissue

Tiny tumors in space

The NASA twin study also inspired another UCSD research team to grow organoids in space — but rather than minibrains, they're tiny tumors. The team is led by Dr. Catriona Jamieson, a professor of medicine. 

After returning to Earth, Scott Kelly was found to have signs of shortened telomeres, DNA damage and signaling molecules in his blood that are known to activate certain genes that allow cancer to grow and spread. This suggests that the stressful conditions in space could somehow stimulate cancer growth and could therefore be a good model for studying how the disease develops, Jamieson told Live Science. 

The team started by sending blood stem cells to space, and after just one month, the cells showed signs of cancer-related genetic mutations being switched on. These changes were tied to abnormal growth and division in the cells. 

The researchers then sent a bunch of tumor organoid models of leukemia, colon cancer and breast cancer into space with the private Axiom Mission 1. They found that the models also grew "dramatically" while on board. The cells within the organoids also switched on a gene called ADAR1, which codes for an enzyme thought to allow cancer to multiply. In a separate experiment, the team were able to show that two drugs which inhibit ADAR1 — fedratinib and rebecsinib — could slow the growth of the miniature tumors. 

Now, as part of their latest launch to the ISS in January 2024, the team is testing the cancer-busting potential of these drugs in more breast cancer organoids.  

"We're very pleased to work with NASA on trying to accelerate the development of the world's first ADAR inhibitors, a small molecule that would be given intravenously," Jamieson said. 

Related: Scientists develop 'crying' model of human eye tissue

The future of organoids in space

This research is as much about protecting people on Earth as it is for helping astronauts in space. One day, for instance, Jamieson envisions that people taking part in commercial space flights could be given a pill before they go, to protect the stem cells in their blood from turning cancerous. Back Earthside, using their discoveries in space, the researchers are planning to start a clinical trial of rebecsinib later this year to target myelofibrosis, a blood cancer that scars the bone marrow. 

Other researchers have taken advantage of the potential dual benefits of this kind of extraterrestrial research. They include Catherine Yeung, an associate professor in the School of Pharmacy at the University of Washington, whose team has been studying how the accelerated aging environment in space affects the kidneys. 

Rather than organoids, Yeung's team is using a different model of human tissue known as an "organ-on-a-chip" device. This technology mimics human tissues on credit-card-sized devices and are seen as complementary to organoids.

Related: Scientists invent 1st 'vagina-on-a-chip' 

"If we can learn things from space that can help us treat conditions on Earth, I think that's the overarching goal — I don't know that we need to choose one or the other," Yeung told Live Science. 

Growing organoids on the ISS is very different from doing so on Earth, Muotri said. For example, you're limited by the amount of lab equipment you can have and there's always a risk that the rocket launch will be canceled at the last minute, he said. Returning the organoids to Earth can also be quite "perilous," Jamieson said, as the load carried by the spacecraft often lands in the ocean. 

Nevertheless, the experts hope to use these organoids to surpass new frontiers of discovery. 

"I'm excited about working in space," Jamieson said. "I think this is a literal cancer moonshot, and we've found a cancer kill switch." 

Ever wonder why some people build muscle more easily than others or why freckles come out in the sun? Send us your questions about how the human body works to community@livescience.com with the subject line "Health Desk Q," and you may see your question answered on the website!

Let's imagine an astronaut suddenly collapses during a spacewalk and dies of cardiac arrest only minutes later.

Thankfully, this has never happened. While 21 people have died in space, spacecraft malfunctions that killed the entire crew, rather than health issues that affected only one person, have been to blame. But if a crewmember did die and others remained, they would have to do something with the body — or else risk contamination as the body began to decay. One option? Release it into space.

Out in the harshness of space, how would a dead body break down? And where could it end up?

Related: How long does it take for a body to decompose?

In the low-pressure vacuum of space, any liquid from the body's surface — the skin, eyes, mouth, ears and lungs — would immediately turn to gas, Jimmy Wu, chief engineer at the Translational Research Institute for Space Health at the Baylor College of Medicine in Texas, told Live Science. Blood vessels near the surface could also rupture and bleed, even after death, Wu added.

The remaining water in the body would likely freeze, Wu said, due to space's low baseline temperature of minus 454.81 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 270.45 degrees Celsius). Liquid loss, plus freezing, could cause a mummified state, essentially preserving the body. "What it might look like is some sort of dehydrated body that's now in space," Wu said.

Any astronaut exposed to space without a spacesuit would meet this fate. What would happen next would depend on if any bacteria were around.

Research on the International Space Station (ISS) has shown that bacteria can survive in space for at least three years. If bacteria were still alive on the body, they would begin to digest it. While most of space is extremely cold, space can also be hot — temperatures on the surface of the ISS can range from minus 328 F to 392 F (minus 200 C to 200 C). In a hotter setting, decomposition would greatly accelerate.

Powerful radiation in space would also likely do a number on the body, breaking apart carbon bonds and causing the skin and muscles to degrade.

After being jettisoned from the spacecraft, the dehydrated and decomposing body would go into orbit, following the direction in which it was pushed out — unless it encountered another object.

With all the space debris and satellites in orbit around Earth, running into one "is actually a risk" a dead body could face, Myles Harris, a doctoral student at the University College London Institute for Risk and Disaster Reduction, told Live Science.

To avoid this risk, NASA recommends going further into space and "leaving planetary orbit" before releasing a body. "It's a hard object, right?" Wu said. A collision between a body and a spaceship or satellite could cause real damage — to both parties.

If the body did avoid collision with satellites and space junk, over time it would slowly be drawn toward Earth by the pull of gravity, especially if the death occurred within low Earth orbit, or about 1,200 miles (2,000 kilometers) or less from Earth. Eventually, in what would probably be the most dramatic part of the cadaver's journey through space, it would reenter the atmosphere and burn up.

Releasing a body from a spaceship isn't the only option after death. Space burial is another possibility, although it comes with the risk of contaminating planetary surfaces. NASA is also developing a body bag that could preserve remains on a spaceship for 48 to 72 hours — plenty of time to return to Earth from the International Space Station. But if trips were far away, like a Mars mission with a seven-month flight back to Earth, crews would have to find other options.

As spaceflights venture farther from Earth, NASA is preparing mission mortality procedures. The commercial spaceflight industry should plan for how to handle death in space too, Wu said.

"Hopefully it never happens, but it might," Harris said. And if it does, it's better to be prepared.

Russian cosmonaut Oleg Kononenko recently broke the record for most cumulative time spent in space while circling Earth in the International Space Station (ISS). The new record, which will continually extend until he returns to Earth later this year, could remain unchallenged for years to come. 

On Feb. 4, 59-year-old Kononenko surpassed fellow cosmonaut Gennady Padalka's cumulative record of 878 days, 11 hours, 29 minutes and 48 seconds spent in space, the Russian state-owned news site TASS announced the same day.  

Kononenko is currently participating in his fifth mission on the ISS since his first flight in 2008, which is the joint most missions on the station. He arrived for his most recent mission on Sept. 15, 2023, and is expected to stay on the ISS until Sept. 23 this year, by which time he will have spent 1,110 days in space, Live Science's sister site Space.com reported.

To put this into context, by the time Kononenko returns to Earth, he will be single-handedly responsible for around 1.5% of the total time spent in space by more than 600 humans over the last 63 years, since the first human space flight was accomplished by Kononeko's compatriot Yuri Gagarin.

"I fly into space to do my favorite thing, not to set records," Kononeko told TASS, as reported by Reuters. 

Related: Record-breaking astronaut Frank Rubio finally returns to Earth after accidentally spending 371 days in space 

It is currently unclear if this will be Kononeko's last mission in space. But he told TASS that being a cosmonaut, or Russian astronaut, is "becoming more complicated" and that preparing for missions "has not become easier" over time.

Regardless of any future missions, Kononeko's record-breaking time in space will help scientists learn more about the physiological effects of living in space, such as muscle degeneration, bone loss, reduced eyesight and impaired balance.

Kononeko's record will likely remain unbroken for quite some time because the next 10 entries in the list of astronauts with the longest cumulative time spent in space — nine of which are also Russian or were part of the former Soviet Union — are either retired or dead. Russia dominates this list largely because the Russian space agency Roscosmos allows its cosmonauts to spend longer periods in space than NASA does. 

The next active astronaut on the list is cosmonaut Sergey Prokopyev, who is currently 12th in rank and who has spent 567 non-consecutive days in space. However, Roscosmos is expected to fully withdraw from the ISS by 2025, which means that Prokopyev and other cosmonauts won't be able to spend extended periods in space until they create their own space station, such as China's Tiangong space station, or build a base on the moon.   

The only American and female in the top 10 list of cumulative days in space is NASA's Peggy Whitson, who is ninth on the list and spent 675 non-consecutive days in space across four ISS missions. This is an impressive feat considering NASA normally only allows men to spend the longest periods in space, because they have a higher risk of developing cancer from ionizing radiation in space.

The longest continuous stay in space is also held by a Russian named Valeri Polyakov, who spent 437 consecutive days onboard the former Mir space station between 1994 and 1995.

Dr. Frank Rubio, the first American astronaut to live in space continuously for more than a year, has returned to Earth. He spent 371 consecutive days on the International Space Station (ISS), eclipsing the nearly yearlong stints of astronauts Mark Vande Hei (355 days) and Scott Kelly (340 days). The record-setting trip was more than twice as long as originally scheduled.

Rubio, along with Russian cosmonauts Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitri Petelin, touched down in rural Kazakhstan on Sept. 27. They were pulled out of their Soyuz capsule and carried away because they were unable to walk due to their extended stay in microgravity. 

Rubio, Prokopyev and Petelin arrived on the ISS aboard a Soyuz capsule on Sept. 21, 2022. They were due to return to Earth on March 28 but had to remain in space after their spacecraft was hit by a piece of space junk or meteoroid in December 2022, which caused an uncontrollable radiator leak. The unrepairable capsule was returned to Earth and was replaced by another uncrewed capsule in February, which the trio used to return home.

Due to other scheduling conflicts, Rubio, Prokopyev and Petelin had to remain aboard the ISS until now. But Rubio's extended stay provides an unexpected opportunity to learn more about prolonged spaceflight.

"Frank's record-breaking time in space is not just a milestone; it’s a major contribution to our understanding of long-duration space missions," NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said in a statement. "He embodies the true pioneer spirit that will pave the way for future exploration to the Moon, Mars, and beyond."

Related: Why does NASA let male astronauts stay in space longer than females?

The previous record spaceflight by an American was held by Vande Hei, who spent 355 consecutive days on board the ISS between 2021 and 2022. But the longest-ever consecutive time spent in space was a whopping 437 days, which was set by cosmonaut Valeri Polyakov between 1994 and 1995.

During his mission, Rubio completed approximately 5,936 orbits of Earth, which equates to around 157 million miles (253 million kilometers), or roughly 328 trips to the moon and back, according to NASA. He also carried out three spacewalks totaling around 21 hours and had 28 different crewmates on the ISS.

In a Sept. 19 interview on board the ISS, Rubio explained that it had been hard to be away from his family for such a long time but that he had tried hard to "stay positive" during his extended mission. "You try to just focus on the job and on the mission and remain steady, because ultimately, every day, you have to show up and do the work," he said.

Related: How long could a person survive in space without a spacesuit?

Rubio conducted a variety of scientific experiments during his time in space, including testing how bacteria behave in microgravity. But his favorite experiments were carried out on a tomato plant. "I love working with that little plant and seeing it grow and develop," he said.

It will be particularly interesting to see how well Rubio adjusts to life back on Earth. Prolonged time in space can cause muscle degeneration, bone loss, reduced eyesight and impaired balance, and can even change the shape of the brain. The recent record-breaking mission was Rubio's first time in space, which means his body has not experienced any of these issues before. He predicts that it could take two to six months to feel completely normal again.

A drug shows promise for preventing the extreme bone loss that astronauts experience on lengthy space missions, a mouse study suggests. 

Humans on Earth normally lose bone tissue as they age, but in space, the low levels of gravity reduce the "mechanical loading," or strain placed on bone that drives it to grow. This microgravity leads astronauts to lose up to 1.5% of their bone mass per month spent in space. Exercise can help increase the mechanical loading on bones, but it's time-consuming, may be impractical for injured astronauts and may not fully prevent bone loss.  

In a new study, published Sept. 18 in the journal npj Microgravity, scientists report that a drug called BP-NELL-PEG "successfully diminished" spaceflight-induced bone loss without causing any side effects in mice on the International Space Station (ISS). The treated mice showed increased bone density, while the bone density of untreated mice on the ISS declined significantly. 

"Our findings hold tremendous promise for the future of space exploration, particularly for missions involving extended stays in microgravity," co-author Dr. Chia Soo, a plastic surgeon at UCLA Health, said in a statement. 

Related: Astronauts suffer decades of bone loss from months in space, study reveals

BP-NELL-PEG is a tweaked version of the protein NELL-1. In animal studies, the protein has been shown to boost the activity of cells that form bone tissue, while inhibiting the cells that break bone down and jump-starting processes involved in bone repair. The drug is also set to be trialed in humans to treat adults undergoing surgery for degenerative disc disease, in which the discs of the spine wear out over time. 

In the mouse study, "NELL-1 was chosen because it is one of a few molecules that can not only minimize bone loss, but may be able to restore bone that is already lost," Soo told Live Science in an email. 

The team adapted the drug to remain active in the body longer, so that fewer injections would be needed. They also coupled it with a drug used to treat osteoporosis, a disease in which bones weaken over time, called bisphosphonate, so that the drug would be more likely to target bone. 

As part of the SpaceX CRS-11 mission in 2017, 20 mice were sent to the ISS, while 20 were kept Earthside at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. In both groups, half of the mice received BP-NELL-PEG and the other half received a salt solution. After nine weeks, the treated mice in space and on Earth showed a significant increase in bone formation. The untreated ISS mice showed a decline, while the untreated Earth mice remained stable. 

The authors noted limitations of the research. For instance, due to time constraints, they couldn't take small-scale CT scans or closely track the behavior of the mice, so the effect of other factors, like stress, on the rodents' bone loss is unclear. They also noted that, under current conditions on the ISS, they wouldn't be able to repeat or expand upon these experiments. 

Nevertheless, the authors hope that someday, BP-NELL-PEG will be used by humans in space and possibly on Earth.

"If human studies bear this out, BP-NELL-PEG could be a promising tool to combat bone loss and musculoskeletal deterioration, especially when conventional resistance training is not feasible due to injuries or other incapacitating factors," Dr. Kang Ting, co-author and a professor at the Forsyth Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts, said in the statement.

Next, the authors will review data from additional mice sent to space on the SpaceX CRS-11 mission and then returned to Earth. With these rodents, they hope to learn more about how to help astronauts recover from long trips to space. The team is also testing BP-NELL-PEG in a large animal model of bone loss, Soo told Live Science. 

NASA is aiming to send its first crewed mission to Mars as soon as the 2030s, so only time will tell if this drug could potentially be used by the astronauts on board.

For the first time, fossilized remains of ancient human relatives have gone to the edge of outer space — and scientists are not happy about it.

Fragmentary remains of two ancient human relatives, Australopithecus sediba and Homo naledi, were carried aboard a Virgin Galactic flight on Sept. 8. Departing from Spaceport America in New Mexico, the fossils, carried by South African-born billionaire Timothy Nash in a cigar-shaped tube, were rocketed to the edge of space.

The fossils were chosen by Lee Berger, a National Geographic Society explorer in residence and the director of the Centre for the Exploration of the Deep Human Journey at the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa, who was instrumental in the discovery of both species. A fragment of the collarbone of 2 million-year-old A. sediba, first discovered by Berger's son Matthew in 2008, was chosen for the trip, as well as a thumb bone from H. naledi, the still-mysterious 300,000-year-old hominin found in the Rising Star cave in 2013 by a group of researchers Berger dubbed "Underground Astronauts."

Lee Berger did not reply to a request for comment by the time of publication, but in a statement, he noted that "the journey of these fossils into space represents humankind's appreciation of the contribution of all of humanity's ancestors and our ancient relatives," while Matthew Berger speculated that these hominins "never could have dreamed while alive of taking such an incredible journey as ambassadors of all of humankind's ancestors."

The fact that these ancient species would not have understood their journey into the upper atmosphere is one of many reasons anthropologists and others have critiqued the space flight.

Related: What did the last common ancestor between humans and apes look like?

In a thread on X (formerly Twitter), Alessio Veneziano, a biological anthropologist and co-organizer of the AHEAD conference (Advances in Human Evolution, Adaptation and Diversity), succinctly identified four main issues that have been discussed: 1) the lack of scientific justification for the flight; 2) ethical issues surrounding respect for human ancestral remains; 3) Berger's access to the fossils, which few other researchers share; and 4) the misrepresentation of the practice of palaeoanthropology.

The fossils' space journey has been roundly criticized for lacking a scientific purpose, especially since a malfunction on the mission could have destroyed the priceless specimens. Berger's original permit request, which was ultimately approved by the South African Heritage Resources Agency (SAHRA), mentioned that the goal of the journey was to promote science and bring global recognition to human origins research in South Africa rather than to address any scientific questions.

The effects of spaceflight on heritage items "hasn't been an area of scientific study," Justin Walsh, a professor of art and archaeology at Chapman University in California, told Live Science in an email. "Space archaeologists like me are definitely interested in the effect of the space environment on items in space," he said, "but I don't think we'd use a piece of heritage from here on Earth as a test article to see what happens to it."

"I am horrified that they were granted a permit," Sonia Zakrzewski, a bioarchaeologist at the University of Southampton in the U.K., wrote in an X thread, noting she would use it as an example in her class about unethical approaches. "This is NOT science."

Walsh echoed Zakrzewski's concerns with the ethics of the flight. Because the fossilized bones are not just scientific specimens but the remains of our collective ancestors, we owe them respect, Walsh said. For the purpose of the permit, however, the fossils appear to have been categorized as paleontological — rather than human — remains, getting around ethical and legal issues, which speaks to the larger, ongoing scientific discussion of who we consider to be "human."

As of 19 September, at least four professional organizations have put out statements condemning the hominin space flight, including the Association of Southern African Professional Archaeologists, which noted that the venture "raises ethical concerns regarding the treatment of our heritage (ancestral human remains) while exposing the fossils to unnecessary risk for publicity purposes."

"As a sovereign state, South Africa can manage its national estate as it sees fit, including shooting part of that estate into space like the US, Russia, Denmark, and others all have," Rachel King, an associate professor of cultural heritage studies at University College London, told Live Science in an email. But "the fact that it happened through what looks like a standard compliance procedure should make everyone think about potential wider consequences," she noted, including future events that may put archaeological heritage at risk of destruction.

That documentation is a key aspect of Berger's permit request, in which he justified the selection of the fossils — and mitigated the risk of their loss — because they have been "extensively studied" and "published many times." But there are few fossil hominin casts other than Homo naledi available for study and public viewing, often owing to a lack of financial and material resources in the countries in which they are found. On top of that, the final major critique of the fossils' space journey is the entitlement and privilege revealed by the flight.

The fossils were carried aboard Virgin Galactic by Nash, whose father John made his fortune in aviation. Nash was one of the first people to buy a ticket on the second commercial flight of Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic space plane. Nash has also been friends with Lee Berger for over a decade and owns most of the so-called Cradle of Humankind — including the land where the Bergers discovered A. sediba, which he hopes to develop into a "paleotourism" industry.

While most paleoanthropological researchers do not have the access to land and fossils afforded to Berger, the problem remains, in the eyes of many, that Berger has misrepresented what these researchers actually do.

"This is an unusual activity for ancient fossils," Walsh said, with "no sign that Berger was interested in performing science and answering that question [on the effects of spaceflight] by flying the fossils." Instead, in keeping with standard scientific practice, Walsh would have liked an open dialogue about the mission, including more information about the risks and benefits, prior to the flight.

"We should ask: can the University of the Witwatersrand and Lee Berger be trusted to care for these fossils going forward, if this is what they think is an appropriate thing to do with them?" Walsh said.

Published on Sept. 12 and updated on Sept. 20 to note that four professional organizations have condemned the event since the article came out.

Astronauts are some of the most adventurous explorers among us. In this thrilling gallery, American and international astronauts undertake various spacewalks for research and repair against the stunning backdrop of Earth.

1. Helping Hubble

Astronaut Steven L. Smith moves along the Hubble Space Telescope while docked in the space shuttle Discovery's cargo bay. Behind him is a distant view of Australia on a Feb. 15, 1997 spacewalk.

2. Space selfie

Woody Hoburg, a NASA astronaut and Expedition 68 flight engineer, takes a "space-selfie" during a spacewalk on June 9, 2023.

3. Building the ISS

Mission specialists Jerry L. Ross and James H. Newman work together on the first International Space Station (ISS) assembly mission on Dec. 6, 1998.

4. Mind the glare

Expedition 35 flight engineer Chris Cassidy completes a spacewalk on May 11, 2013.

5. Teamwork in space

Chris Cassidy and Tom Marshburn, Expedition 35 flight engineers, inspect and replace a pump controller box on the ISS on a May 11, 2013 spacewalk.

6. Activate shields

Expedition 69 crew members Dmitri Petelin and Sergey Prokopyev, both from Russia's space agency Roscosmos, install orbital debris shields on the ISS during a spacewalk on Aug. 9, 2023.

7. Hello from space

Astronaut Robert L. Curbeam, STS-98 mission specialist, completes a spacewalk ahead of schedule on Feb. 12, 2001.

8. Job with a view

Josh Cassada, Expedition 68 flight engineer and NASA spacewalker, works on the ISS on Dec. 22, 2022.

9. Sideways work

NASA astronaut Stephen Bowen and United Arab Emirates astronaut Sultan AlNeyadi on an April 28, 2023 spacewalk.

10. First time for everything

Nicole Mann, NASA astronaut and Expedition 68 flight engineer on her first career spacewalk on Jan. 20, 2023, to install a modification kit on the ISS's starboard truss structure.

11.Working on Hubble

Astronauts John M. Grunsfeld, payload commander, and Richard M. Linnehan, mission specialist, participate in their first spacewalk to perform work on Hubble on March 4, 2002.

12. The glowing Earth

Astronaut Stephen Bowen moves outside the ISS on his eighth career spacewalk on April 28, 2023.

13. Outdoor work

Astronauts Stephen Bowen and Sultan Alneyadi on a spacewalk on April 28, 2023.

14. Floating with Hubble

Astronaut John M. Grunsfeld floats past Hubble as it is docked in the space shuttle Columbia's cargo bay during a spacewalk on March 8, 2002.

15. Discoveries abound

Astronaut Andrew S. W. Thomas, mission specialist, in the cargo bay of the Space Shuttle Discovery during a March 2001 spacewalk.

Ever since Neil Armstrong took one small step onto the moon, lunar dust has proved to be a messy problem for astronauts, coating their spacesuits in a powdery film that's difficult to clean off and can be unhealthy if inhaled. However, scientists have come up with a novel solution that could ultimately leave this problem in, well, the dust.

For their experiment, researchers at Washington State University (WSU) dressed Barbies in makeshift spacesuits constructed of materials similar to what NASA uses. Then, the team blasted the dolls with liquid nitrogen to test how well the cryogenic fluid could remove moon dust — or, in this case, volcanic ash collected from the 1980 eruption of nearby Mount Saint Helens, which is similar in consistency to lunar dust — from the gear. (It's illegal to own or sell moon materials.)

They found that spraying the spacesuit-clad dolls with liquid nitrogen not only removed more than 98% of the moon dust substitute but also caused little to no damage to the Kevlar-like suit material. This proved to be a better solution than older methods; Apollo program astronauts would use brushes to swipe the highly abrasive material from their suits post-moonwalk, which would ultimately degrade the material, according to the team's new study, published online Feb. 10 in the journal Acta Astronautica.

Not only is lunar dust annoyingly clingy — the researchers likened it to cleaning up a spilled box of static-charged packaging peanuts — but coming into contact with it can prove toxic to human cells and can lead to "lunar hay fever," an illness that causes watery eyes, a sore throat and sneezing. That's not exactly something astronauts would want to contend with while conducting an already-risky mission to the moon.

Related: Cockroach-eaten Apollo 11 moon dust goes up for auction

"Moon dust … is abrasive, electrostatically charged and it gets everywhere," lead author Ian Wells, a mechanical engineering student at WSU, told Live Science. "It can work its way into the seals on spacesuits and make them unusable, since too much dust causes them to not seal properly. It can also have a negative impact on the lungs of anyone who encounters it, since it's similar to breathing in ground-up fiberglass."

The liquid-nitrogen experiment worked thanks to a phenomenon known as the Leidenfrost effect, which occurs when water hits a surface that's hotter than its boiling point, causing the droplet to "skitter across the surface."

"When liquid nitrogen boils, it expands 800 times and it's almost like a little explosion when it hits the surface of a hot material," co-author Jacob Leachman, an associate professor in the WSU School of Mechanical and Materials Engineering, told Live Science. "Because it's exploding and expanding so much, it can push those particles far away from the surface."

Or, in this case, the liquid nitrogen blasted the moon dust substitute almost completely off the Barbies' spacesuits.

The team presented its findings to NASA as part of its upcoming Artemis mission to the moon, winning the space agency's 2021 Breakthrough, Innovative and Game-Changing (BIG) Idea Challenge.

"We used the doll primarily because it's a one-sixth-scale person," Wells said. "However, it was also chosen as the Artemis mission's aim [is] to send the first woman and person of color to the moon, and we wanted our project to reflect that commitment to diversity."

NASA astronaut Mark Vande Hei can't wait to see his wife after landing back on Earth after a record-breaking 355-day space mission.

Early this morning (March 30), Vande Hei landed safely aboard a Russian Soyuz capsule in the grasslands of Kazakhstan together with his Russian colleagues Anton Shkaplerov and Pyotr Dubrov. The trio appeared to have arrived in good health and, after a record-breaking 355 days in space, Vande Hei will finally get to see his wife and family in person again, something he shared his excitement for just before leaving the station.

Vande Hei said he had "enthusiasm for the opportunities back on Earth to see my family to be present physically with my wife, where... I haven't been in her vicinity since January of last year. So that'll be wonderful," he said during a video broadcast from the International Space Station yesterday (March 29).

Related: Hubble Space Telescope hits record-breaking 1 billion seconds in the final frontier

But the space-farer also admitted that the return to Earth was "bittersweet" as it marked the end of his active astronaut career. 

"I'm sure I'll have lots of conflicting emotions," he said before the flight to Earth. "I promised my wife I will not be flying to space again, so that will be bittersweet," he said, adding that still "I'm very, very grateful to have had this amazing opportunity to come up to the space station here with such wonderful people who I consider friends for the rest of my life; to serve my country and all of humanity." 

Vande Hei shared both his "gratitude" as well as "a little bit of sadness too, because I'll be shutting the door and I won't be able to come back. And this is a very, very special place."

After the crew's arrival in Kazakhstan today, they were carried to a medical tent and then flown by helicopter to Karaganda. From there, Vande Hei was set to fly to Houston, Texas, aboard a NASA jet. Once home, he will likely continue to recuperate from his 355 consecutive days in space, the longest single spaceflight ever made by an American astronaut. This beat NASA astronaut Scott Kelly's previous record of 340 days. 

U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris shared her congratulations for Vande Hei on the historic, record-breaking feat shortly after his landing, writing online: "Congratulations on your historic journey and 355 days in space. Welcome home, @Astro_Sabot"

"Fantastic place, occupied by amazing people, working for all of humanity. I’ll forever cherish the memories of serving on the International Space Station. Now, though, I’m thrilled to be back on Mother Earth!" Vande Hei tweeted shortly after his arrival back on his home planet. 

Prior to Vande Hei's arrival back on Earth, there was speculation that, seeing as the U.S. has condemned Russia's actions to invade Ukraine and ignite a war, Vande Hei might not fly home aboard a Soyuz capsule with cosmonauts. However, today is has been seen that Vande Hei's planned return, remaining unchanged, has gone forth safely and successfully.

Email Chelsea Gohd at cgohd@space.com or follow her on Twitter @chelsea_gohd. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.

Buzz Aldrin is a veteran astronaut who became only the second person to ever set foot on the moon. Part of the Apollo 11 spaceflight commanded by Neil Armstrong, he made the journey to the lunar surface in July 1969 where he collected lunar rock samples, photographed the terrain and helped to raise an American flag according to NASA. As such, the former fighter pilot and engineer soon became a celebrity but he continued to promote space exploration long after he left NASA. In 2016, he also explored Antarctica — an experience which nearly killed him.

Early Life

Buzz Aldrin was born in the United States on January 20, 1930 in Montclair, New Jersey, according to Johnson Space Center (JSC), NASA. He was actually named Edwin Eugene Aldrin Jr., after his father (the US Army aviator and officer Edwin Eugene Aldrin Sr) but when one of the youngster's two elder sisters, Fay Ann, began mispronouncing "brother" as "buzzer" the nickname, shortened to Buzz, soon stuck according to Space.com. 

All of his family including mother Marion and eldest sister Madeleine called him Buzz and he liked it so much he used it himself, finally making it his legal first name in 1988, according to Encyclopaedia Britannica. During his childhood, however, he didn't display any great interest in space. He was intrigued by science fiction — Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon in particular — but he didn't look towards the night sky with a great desire to explore, Aldrin said in an interview in 1988.

Education and military experience

Growing up in Montclair, New Jersey, Aldrin was a bright and athletic child. He graduated from Montclair High School a year early and, in 1947, he enrolled at the United States Military Academy, also known as West Point, where he gained a Bachelor of Science in mechanical engineering, according to buzzaldrin.com. Joining the United States Air Force, he served with distinction as a jet fighter pilot during the Korean War which raged between 1950 and 1953. He flew 66 combat missions in total in F-86 Sabres and shot down two MiG-15 enemy aircraft, according to Encyclopaedia Britannica.

The Korean War ended on July 27, 1953, with an armistice that caused hostilities to cease. Aldrin later spent some time on a tour of duty in West Germany flying F100s Super Sabres — jet fighters which had been introduced in 1954 and were capable of supersonic speed in level flight. Deciding to go back to university in 1959, he earned a Doctor of Science in Astronautics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 

Shortly after graduating four years later, having written a 311-page thesis called Line-of-Sight Guidance Techniques for Manned Orbital Rendezvous, according to the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, he was selected by NASA to become an astronaut. It was the second time he had applied, having been inspired by his friend, Gemini and Apollo astronaut Ed White, Aldrin stated in a tweet in March 2020.

Race into space

Since 1955, the United States and the Soviet Union had been engaged in a space race. In that year, the  president Dwight D Eisenhower's press secretary James Hagerty announced America's intention to launch a science satellite and this spurred the Soviets into action, according to NASA History Division — the USSR's Sputnik 1 satellite was sent into space just two years later, according to Space.com. It saw both sides embroiled in a competition to demonstrate their respective technological might and, in 1961, the USSR stole a march yet again when Yuri Gagarin became the first human to go into space.

That year, president John F Kennedy announced his intention to land a man on the moon and return him safely to Earth, according to NASA. To aid such a mission, Aldrin built on the knowledge gained during his thesis and worked on docking and rendezvous techniques for spacecraft in Earth and lunar orbit. Becoming known as Dr Rendezvous, Aldrin also pioneered underwater training techniques to simulate spacewalking which would prepare astronauts to work in a weightlessness environment, according to NASA. 

In 1966, Environmental Research Associates paid McDonogh — a private military boys' school in Maryland — $10 an hour to rent its pool and Aldrin plunged in for underwater exercises, according to McDonogh. Along with fellow astronaut Jim Lovell, he'd been assigned to the tenth and final flight of the Gemini series, Gemini 12, which launched on Nov. 11, 1966. According to NASA’s Space Science Data and Coordinated Archive, underwater training paved the way for Aldrin to perform three successful spacewalks, Extra-Vehicular Activities that saw him spend more than five-and-a-half hours outside a spacecraft.

Apollo 11

NASA also set up the Apollo space program. It was a three-person spacecraft as opposed to the two-person Gemini project and its primary aim was to land astronauts on the moon. Aldrin became part of the back-up crew for Apollo 8, according to NASA, having been assigned as the command module pilot, and he worked with commander Neil Armstrong and lunar module pilot Fred W Haise Jr.

Although Apollo 8 didn't see him venture into space, Aldrin's time would come with Apollo 11 which launched from Cape Kennedy on July 16, 1969. He was the lunar module pilot, Armstrong was commander and Michael Collins was the command module pilot, according to NASA.

On the moon

This mission made history, touching down with just 30 seconds' worth of fuel left in the landing tank and overshooting the intended location by four miles, according to Space.com. Armstrong set foot on the moon first, followed by Aldrin 19 minutes later. According to the Science and Media Museum, the event was watched by an estimated 650 million people on television and Aldrin would describe the moon as "magnificent desolation". 

Since then, there have been reports that Aldrin also claimed to have seen aliens on the journey to the lunar surface but this isn't true, Live Science previously reported. Although he did see an unidentified object, this was quickly explained as the sun reflecting off a panel that had earlier been jettisoned: "The UFO people back in the United States became very angry with me," he wrote on Reddit.

Aldrin, Armstrong and Collins' work was more important than simply allowing NASA to get one over on their Soviet counterparts. Aldrin and Armstrong spent 21 hours and 36 minutes on the lunar surface, according to NASA’s Apollo 1 mission overview, (Collins stayed in orbit on the command module) and they used the time to collect samples as well as take photographs and videos. According to Smithsonian, they also conducted experiments, took a phone call from President Richard Nixon and planted the American flag. As an elder at Webster Presbyterian Church, Aldrin performed a Christian communion on the moon, too, having taken bread and wine with him. 

He and Armstrong almost didn't make it back from the surface, however. A circuit breaker switch broke off the instrument panel and they had to find a way of pushing it back in so that the ascent engine could ignite. Aldrin decided to use a felt-tipped pen and it worked, according to Space.com. When the astronauts finally got back to Earth, they were treated as heroes and embarked on a world tour. 

Although Aldrin was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom and helped design the Space Shuttle, he didn't enjoy being in the limelight. He retired from NASA in 1971 to return to the Air Force, according to the Encyclopaedia Britannica. He then retired from active duty the following year.

Dancing with the stars

Aldrin's life took a turn for the worse. He'd retired from the Air Force because he'd been asked to command a test pilot school even though he'd never actually trained as a test pilot. He was also still coming to terms with the death of his mother who had committed suicide in May 1968, according to Space.com.

Turning to alcohol as a way of coping with depression, he divorced his first wife Joan Archer in 1974, according to biography.com. He married Beverly Zile in 1975 (divorcing three years later) but became teetotal in 1979 and began to get his life back on track. 

He had long dreamt that humans will one day permanently settle on Mars (he has a t-shirt which says “Get Your Ass to Mars”) and this has involved him developing a system called the Aldrin Mars Cycler which he says would be capable of regular flights to the Red Planet, Aldrin said in a conversation with Space.com. 

Aldrin also holds a number of patents including one for multi-crew modules for space flight, a space station facility and a flyback booster, according to JUSTIA Patents. The Aldrin Space Institute, formed in 2015, at Florida Institute of Technology is also focussed on a human presence on Mars.

Not that there hasn't been time for lots of frivolous fun along the way. Aldrin took part in Dancing with the Stars on ABC in 2010 and he has made many other film, TV and video game appearances from The Big Bang Theory and 30 Rock to The Simpsons and Mass Effect: Legendary Edition, according to IMDb. He has also written many books, had an asteroid and lunar crater named after him and received the Congressional Gold Medal. He calls himself a Global Statesman for Space, according to NASA.

Antarctica

What's more, his appetite for exploration hasn't waned. In 1998 he traveled to the North Pole and, in 2016, Aldrin visited Antarctica, charting his journey on his Twitter account. He developed altitude sickness at 9,000 feet shortly after arriving, however, and he was rushed to a hospital in Christchurch, New Zealand, where he remained for a week suffering from fluid on his lungs, according to Phys.org. Responding well to antibiotics, he recovered and said he didn't have any regrets. He was the oldest person to travel to the South Pole, after all.

Additional resources:

• See the photograph Buzz Aldrin took of his lunar footprint: NASA Space Science Data Coordinated Archive
• Read about NASA’s mission to land on the moon, including in-depth interviews with Buzz Aldrin: Apollo 11: The Inside Story
• Hear Buzz Aldrin tell the story of the first moon landing: Science Museum

Imagine you're an astronaut exploring the vast expanses of space and — uh oh! — you're accidentally thrown out of your spacecraft's airlock. What would happen to your body if it were exposed to the vacuum of space if you weren't wearing a spacesuit? 

The first thing to note is that many Hollywood depictions of this scenario are overblown. They show people, unprotected by helmets or spacesuits, exploding or instantly freezing to death. In reality, the effects would be the same, but less exaggerated. 

An astronaut floating without a suit in space wouldn't survive, but their demise would happen within minutes, not within seconds, and it would be a gnarly exit, with boiling bodily fluids and a nearly frozen nose and mouth.

Related: Why is space a vacuum?

Space is a vacuum devoid of air — meaning that, unlike on Earth, there's no atmosphere and no pressure exerted by air molecules. Atmospheric pressure determines the temperatures at which liquids boil and turn gaseous. If the pressure exerted by the air outside a liquid is high, as it is at sea level on Earth, it's harder for bubbles of gas to form, rise to the surface and escape. But because there is virtually no atmospheric pressure in space, the boiling point of liquids decreases significantly. 

"As you can imagine, given that 60% of the human body is made up of water, this is a serious problem," Dr. Kris Lehnhardt, an element scientist for the Human Research Program at NASA, told Live Science. In the absence of pressure, liquid water in our bodies would boil — changing immediately from a liquid to a gas. "In essence, all of your body tissues that contain water will start to expand," he said.

Some humans have actually been exposed to near-vacuums and survived to tell the tale. In 1966, an aerospace engineer at NASA, Jim LeBlanc, was helping to test the performance of spacesuit prototypes in a massive vacuum chamber. At some point in the test, the hose feeding pressurized air into his suit was disconnected. "As I stumbled backwards, I could feel the saliva on my tongue starting to bubble just before I went unconscious, and that's kind of the last thing I remember," he recalled in the 2008 "Moon Machines" documentary series episode "The Space Suit."

The formation of gas bubbles in bodily fluids, known as an ebullism, also occurs in deep-water scuba divers who surface too quickly because they go from an underwater environment of high pressure to low pressure at the water's surface. For suit-less astronauts, the blood flowing through the veins boils less quickly than water in the tissues because the circulatory system has its own internal pressure, but massive ebullism in the body's tissues would result rapidly. A 2013 review in the journal Aerospace Medicine and Human Performance that looked at previous exposures to vacuums in animals and humans found that they lost consciousness within 10 seconds. Some of them then lost control of their bladders and bowel systems, and the swelling in their muscles constricted blood flow to their hearts and brains, as their expanded muscles acted as a vapor lock. 

"No human can survive this — death is likely in less than two minutes," Lehnhardt said.

According to NASA's bioastronautics data book, the vacuum of space would also pull air out of your lungs, causing you to suffocate within minutes. After an initial rush of air surged out, the vacuum would continue to pull gas and water vapor from your body through your airways. The continuous boiling of water would also produce a cooling effect — the evaporation of water molecules would absorb heat energy from your body and would cause the parts near your nose and mouth to nearly freeze. The remainder of your body would also cool, but it would do so more slowly because not as much evaporation would take place. 

As astrophysicist Paul Sutter told Forbes, temperature is a measure of how much energy atoms and molecules have to move about — and because space is almost empty, there's not much to move at all, making it "cold." This also means that there isn't matter in space to transfer heat to. However, a person could freeze from the evaporation of their body's water and the slow loss of heat via the radiation emanating from their body. 

The lesson from all of this? Always wear a spacesuit. 

Editor's note: This story was updated at 12:45 p.m. EST on Nov. 15 to state that Dr. Kris Lehnhardt is an element scientist at NASA. 

Originally published on Live Science.

Blue Origin founder and billionaire Jeff Bezos is scheduled to blast off to space today (July 20), a flight that will concurrently set two records for oldest and youngest person in space. 

Bezos will be aboard Blue Origin's New Shepard rocket, accompanied by female aviation pioneer Wally Funk, 82, his brother Mark Bezos, and 18-year-old Oliver Daemen, a physics student from the Netherlands whose father was the ultimate winner of an auction for a seat on the inaugural crewed flight of the private spacecraft. 

You can watch the launch right here, as Live Science will host a livestream. The rocket will leave the pad in remote West Texas at approximately 9 a.m. EDT/6 a.m. PDT. Coverage begins at 7:30 a.m. EDT/4:30 a.m. PDT. There is no public in-person viewing of the launch site. 

Related: See photos of Blue Origin's New Shepard rocket

Inaugural voyage 

Bezos founded Blue Origin in 2000 with the goal of developing vehicles for suborbital spaceflight, a goal that later expanded to orbital flight and even the development of a moon lander, Blue Moon. (The goal for an operational lander is set for 2024, but NASA awarded the contract for the development of a lander for its current Artemis mission to the moon to another private spaceflight company, SpaceX, leaving the future timeline of the project in question.) 

Part of Blue Origin's goal is to enable private space tourism. The company held an auction for a seat on today's inaugural crewed flight, and an anonymous winner paid $28 million for the ticket. That person backed out, however, saying that they had scheduling conflicts and would ride a later mission. Oliver Daemen's father Joes Daemen, a hedge-fund manager from the Netherlands, was the runner-up. 

The younger Daemen will become the youngest person ever to travel to space, beating by seven years the record of cosmonaut Gherman Titov, who orbited Earth at the age of 25 in 1961. Meanwhile, Funk will beat John Glenn's record for oldest person in space, which he set at the age of 77 in 1998.

Technical spectacle

Today's flight will be the 16th for New Shepard, but the first with any humans aboard. The rocket first flew in April 2015, though the model that the Bezos brothers, Funk and Daemen will fly aboard was first launched in January 2021. 

New Shepard consists of a six-person crew compartment perched atop a reusable booster powered by a BE-3 engine (for "Blue Engine 3"). It's piloted by onboard computers and does not require human intervention either from a pilot or from the ground. It's designed to reach the Kármán line located 62 miles (100 kilometers) up, which is one internationally-recognized boundary for space. (According to the U.S. government, space starts 50 miles, or 80.5 kilometers, up, and anyone who travels to that altitude is eligible for a U.S. astronaut badge.) 

Bezos, Bezos, Funk and Daemen will experience suborbital spaceflight, meaning their craft will reach space, but that its trajectory will take it back down to Earth before it could actually orbit the planet. The passengers will experience a few moments of weightlessness and a pretty dramatic view of the planet. In 2016, Blue Origin fitted one of its boosters with a camera for a flight nearly to the Kármán line, which is available on YouTube and approximates what the passengers aboard New Shepard will see.

The flight comes on the heels of another billionaire's cruise into space. On July 11, Virgin Galactic founder Richard Branson traveled on the first crewed mission of the Unity 22 spacecraft, reaching 53 miles (86 km) above Earth's surface. 

Originally published on Live Science

Blue Origin has revealed the identity of the first paying customer aboard its New Shepard capsule, set to launch on Tuesday, July 20, and reach the edge of space. And it might not be someone you expected.

The lucky (and wealthy) winner of an auction for the seat is Oliver Daemen, an 18-year-old physics student who would set the record for youngest person in space. Daemen is the son of Joes Daemen, the CEO of Somerset Capital Partners in the Netherlands.

The elder Daemen was the runner-up in an auction for the ticket aboard the first crewed New Shepard launch. The winner paid $28 million, according to Blue Origin, but backed out of the inaugural flight due to scheduling conflicts. According to the private spaceflight company, that person will ride to space in a future Blue Origin flight. 

Related: Here's every spaceship that's ever carried an astronaut into orbit

The company did not disclose what Daemen paid for his son's ticket. 

The New Shepard rocket is a reusable vehicle that can carry up to six people into suborbital space. It has launched successfully 15 times, including three test flights that involved ensuring that the crew escape system works properly. The rocket is controlled by onboard computers and does not require a human pilot. 

Four people will be aboard the inaugural crewed launch on July 20: Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos, the former head of Amazon; his brother, Mark Bezos, Daemen and pioneering female aviator Wally Funk, age 82. Funk was one of 13 graduates of the private Women in Space program, which put female pilots through the same paces as astronauts in training in the 1960s. NASA never considered sending these women to space, though, and Funk went on to a barrier-breaking career as a Federal Aviation Administration inspector and National Transportation Safety Board air safety investigator. 

With the choice of Funk and Daemen as passengers, Blue Origin will set records for both the oldest person and the youngest person in space. Funk will break the record of astronaut John Glenn, who traveled aboard the space shuttle Discovery at the age of 77 in 1998. Daemen will break the record of Russian cosmonaut Gherman Titov, who orbited Earth at the age of 25 in 1961. 

Originally published on Live Science

The world's largest swimming pool designed for astronaut training and development of subsea robots will be built in the U.K. near the Cornwall Airport Newquay, which expects to serve as a spaceport for Virgin Orbit launches beginning next year. 

Part of what will become the Blue Abyss underwater center, the 164 feet long (50 meters) 130 feet deep (40 m) pool will have a stepped floor and a 164 feet deep (50 m) shaft measuring 52 feet wide (16 m). The company said in a statement that the pool would be able to hold 1,483,216 cubic feet (42,000 cubic meters) of water, which is equivalent to 17 Olympic-sized swimming pools or 168 million cups of tea.

The company is now negotiating with the local authority, Cornwall Council, to purchase four plots of land next to the future Spaceport Cornwall, where the center will be located. It will then apply for a planning permission, assuming construction to be completed within 18 months after that. The center is expected to open in 2023.

Photos: NASA is testing the first of its new moonwalking spacesuits underwater

The company didn't say whether it has already raised the entire sum of £150 million ($213 million) required for the construction of the center, which will also feature hypobaric and hyperbaric chambers simulating the effects of high and low pressure, as well as a microgravity suite, a training center with classrooms and on-site accommodation facilities. 

British astronaut Tim Peake, who spent 186 days on the International Space Station in 2016, is one of the company's board members. 

"Cornwall is the perfect home for Blue Abyss, a region with great potential for its space, aerospace and renewable energy ambitions," Peake said in the statement. "This project will join Goonhilly Earth Station (a large radiocommunication space station located in Cornwall) and Spaceport Cornwall as significant national assets, creating a deep-sea and space-research training and test facility, as well as a fantastic educational resource, helping to widen our knowledge of how humans and technology can function in extreme environments."

Related: Virtual reality will be a big part of Boeing's Starliner astronaut training

The center, the brainchild of former British Army diving instructor John Vickers, was designed by British architect Robin Partington, who led the design of the Gherkin, one of London's most recognizable skyscrapers. 

"We are planning a globally unique facility with a wide range of potential uses that tap into so many of the industries that Cornwall and the U.K. Southwest are known for," Vickers said in the statement. "Blue Abyss will be a huge research asset for aerospace, offshore energy, underwater robotics, human physiology, defense, leisure and maritime industries."

The center will have a sliding roof through which a 33-ton (30 metric tonne) crane will lower large objects into the pool. These objects might include mock-ups of components of the International Space Station, as well as underwater film sets or mock-up cave systems for testing of remotely operated submarines. 

The pool's temperature, lighting and salinity will be adjustable to simulate different conditions, including different currents at varied depths.

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

We can probably all agree that sharing your unwashed underwear with another person isn't ideal. However, for astronauts onboard the International Space Station (ISS), performing a spacewalk requires that they share not only the spacesuits, but also a next-to-the-skin piece of clothing that's worn underneath the spacesuit and resembles long underwear, known as the Liquid Cooling and Ventilation Garment (LCVG). 

Access to a freshly laundered LCVG isn't an option on the ISS, but technicians with the European Space Agency (ESA) are taking steps to improve the antimicrobial properties in LCVG materials to keep these shared garments clean and fresh for longer, ESA representatives said in a statement.

In a new two-year project called Biocidal Advanced Coating Technology for Reducing Microbial Activity (Bacterma), ESA researchers are collaborating with the Vienna Textile Lab — a private biotechnology company in Austria that produces fabric dyes from bacteria. Compounds generated by these bacteria can also make textile fibers more resistant to certain types of microbes, according to the statement.

Related: 7 everyday things that happen strangely in space

Astronauts on the ISS keep their hands and bodies clean with no-rinse cleaning solutions and dry shampoo, but laundering clothes — including underwear — would require too much water and is simply not possible, according to NASA. Nor is there enough room on the ISS for astronauts to pack a fresh change of clothes for every day of their mission.

When it comes to dirty underwear, astronauts don't have the luxury of being squeamish, and may wear a pair more than once. American astronaut Don Pettit wrote that he changed his underwear once every three or four days when he was on the ISS, according to NASA. And when Japanese astronaut Koichi Wakata tested bacteria-resistant underwear coverings in space in 2009, he wore one pair "for about a month," the San Francisco Times reported.

"Wakata reported no pungent-smelling effects after wearing the fabrics within a scheduled timeline," according to the Times.

When clothing becomes too soiled or smelly for an astronaut to wear any longer, it is either returned to Earth as trash or is packed up into a capsule, which is then ejected into space and burns up in Earth's atmosphere, NASA says.

LCVGs are only worn during spacewalks, but astronauts are working harder than usual when they wear this communal undergarment. An LCVG is very form-fitting, covering the limbs and torso, and it keeps astronauts cool during the extreme physical exertion of working in the vacuum of space (an adult diaper is worn underneath, in case the astronaut needs to relieve themselves during an hours-long spacewalk). Gas ventilation draws moist air away from extremities, while flexible tubes that are sewn into the garment circulate cooling water around the body and help to remove excess heat and maintain a comfortable core body temperature, according to the National Air and Space Museum.

ESA scientists were already investigating candidate materials for upgrading outer spacesuit layers, so this new initiative "is a useful complement, looking into small bacteria-killing molecules that may be useful for all kinds of spaceflight textiles — including spacesuit interiors," ESA material engineer Malgorzata Holynska said in the statement.

"It might sound counterintuitive to get rid of microbes using the products of microbes," Seda Özdemir-Fritz, a Bacterma project scientist with the Austrian Space Forum, said in the statement. "But all kinds of organisms use secondary metabolites to protect themselves from an extreme environmental conditions. The project will examine them as an innovative antimicrobial textile finish."

Scientists will test the performance of antimicrobial properties in the new textiles by exposing them to sweat, lunar dust and radiation, to simulate conditions that could accelerate aging and deterioration of the fabric in space, Holynska added.

Originally published on Live Science.

It's the dream of so many children to become an astronaut — to break free of gravity, float above the Earth and travel the cosmos. For many, this dream fades by adulthood. But for some, this elusive career will always be a goal.

So, what does it take to become an astronaut?

First, to be a candidate, you usually must be a citizen of a country that’s a member of a space agency. To sign up with NASA, for example, you must be a U.S. citizen. However, some private space companies may recruit astronauts without regard to their citizenship.

Related: Why is space a vacuum?

Many qualifications, such as education, are similar across space agencies. To apply to be an astronaut with the European Space Agency (ESA), for example, you need a master's degree or higher in the natural sciences, medicine, engineering, mathematics or computer science, or you need an experimental test pilot degree, which teaches graduates how to pilot aircraft that are being tested and how to manage research programs. NASA has the same requirements but also allows two years toward a doctorate in these subjects.

A degree isn't enough, though. To meet candidate requirements, applicants also need real-world experience — at least two years of relevant post-graduate experience in their field of study for NASA or three years for the ESA. NASA’s requirement can also be met with 1,000 pilot-in-command hours aboard a jet. Because English is the language used on the International Space Station, you must be fluent. (Fluency in other languages, such as Russian, is an asset but not a requirement, according to the ESA.)

Astronauts must also have a passing health record. For example, ESA requires medical certification for a Private Pilot License or higher with the initial application, although you do not need to hold the license itself. NASA candidates must be able to pass a long-duration flight astronaut physical. "Typically, as we near the end of the selection process, we put them through the same evaluation process that we would use for assigning a current astronaut to a mission, just to make sure that they would be eligible for a spaceflight assignment," said Anne Roemer, astronaut selection manager at NASA.

In the past, most physical disabilities would have disqualified a person from being an astronaut. But ESA has launched the Parastronaut Feasibility Project to recruit at least one astronaut with short stature, or under 4 feet, 3 inches (130 centimeters); a pronounced leg length difference; or lower limb deficiency, such as amputation at the knee. The agency will work with this astronaut to determine what alterations the space agency needs to make to existing protocols to send this person to space.

Mental health is just as important as physical health. Astronauts work long hours in high-stress situations. They are away from their friends and family for months at a time, and communication with those on Earth can be challenging.  For instance, on the International Space Station, email is available and astronauts can make video calls, but they can only receive audio on their end and calls have a few seconds of lag. For missions to Mars, communicating with family back home would likely be more difficult. Instead, astronauts are stuck in small, enclosed areas with no real way to get alone time.

Related: Where is the center of the universe?

"During the selection process, we will test, through psychometric testing and other tools, the mental stability of the person, particularly with respect to if there are any red flags that go up," such as psychiatric disorders, said Dagmar Boos, head of ESA's Competence and Policy Centre. This mental stability is important for both the individual astronauts and the safety of the team as a whole, Boos said.

Those are the minimum requirements, but it takes much more to be selected as an astronaut. More than 18,000 people applied to NASA's astronaut class of 2017, but only 12 were chosen. Candidates must be truly impressive to stand out from the crowd.

One quality that the selection team looks for is the ability to be both a leader and a follower. Experience working in extreme environments, like the North Pole or the desert, can further woo the judges, Boos said. She also looks for people who have had responsibility over the lives of others, such as by being part of a rescue team.

In addition to flying in space, astronauts have technical roles on Earth and are the faces of the spaceflight program, so they have to be able to work in a range of contexts. "We're looking for well-rounded people across the board," Roemer said. "That can include career accomplishments, hobbies and interests."

Finally, astronauts must be easy to work with. "The goal is eventually to go to Mars, which is a fairly long mission," Roemer said. "They're trying to assess, could I be locked in a tin can with this person and ensure that we have a successful mission?"

Originally published on Live Science.

Michael Collins, the Apollo 11 command module pilot and first astronaut to orbit the far side of the moon alone, has died at age 90 of cancer.

"Today the nation lost a true pioneer and lifelong advocate for exploration in astronaut Michael Collins," NASA Administrator Steve Jurczyk said in a statement published Wednesday (April 28). "As pilot of the Apollo 11 command module — some called him 'the loneliest man in history' — while his colleagues walked on the moon for the first time, he helped our nation achieve a defining milestone."

On that famous mission, Collins worked alone in the command module "Columbia" for 21.5 hours, during which time the module drifted behind the moon, Space.com previously reported. In the last moments before he temporarily lost contact with Mission Control, he wrote, "I am alone now, truly alone, and absolutely isolated from any known life. I am it. If a count were taken, the score would be 3 billion plus two over on the other side of the moon, and one plus God knows what on this side."

Hence, Collins earned the nickname "loneliest man in history;" he's also been called the "forgotten astronaut," since he was on the Apollo 11 mission but never walked on the moon as Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin did that day, NPR reported.

Related: Alone at the Moon: What Was Michael Collins Thinking During the Apollo 11 Lunar Landing? 

"It's a shame that when people are asked, 'Can you name the Apollo 11 crew.' Mike Collins is normally the name that doesn't come to mind," Francis French of the San Diego Air and Space Museum and author of many books on the space program, told NPR. "He was the one who really knew how to fly the spacecraft solo (the only person who flew a spacecraft solo in the entire mission) and the only one who could get all three of them home."

In later interviews about the mission, Collins said he didn't actually feel lonely while passing behind the moon, Space.com reported.

"Behind the moon it was very peaceful — no one in Mission Control is yakkin' at me and wanting me to do this, that, and the other. So I was very happy, it was a happy home," he said at an Explorer's Club event in 2019. That said, during the pass, Collins did worry about the small colony of white mice they'd brought along on the mission, he confessed. The crew would quarantine with the mice when they returned to Earth, to see if the rodents developed any strange illnesses during the trip.

Before his second and last mission to space on Apollo 11, Collins served as a pilot on Gemini 10, the 16th crewed spacecraft to circle Earth, according to Space.com. He also played important roles at Mission Control on other missions, communicating with astronauts aboard Apollo 8, for instance.

After clocking more than 266 hours in space, Collins left NASA in 1970 and became director of the National Air & Space Museum in Washington, D.C., where he worked for eight years.

Regarding Collins' passing, his family said "He spent his final days peacefully, with his family by his side," according to the NASA statement. "Please join us in fondly and joyfully remembering his sharp wit, his quiet sense of purpose, and his wise perspective, gained both from looking back at Earth from the vantage of space and gazing across calm waters from the deck of his fishing boat," they wrote. 

Originally published on Live Science.

What do extreme long-distance swimming and spaceflight have in common? They can both shrink the heart, according to a new study.

Both activities reduce the pressure of gravity on the heart, making it so that it doesn't have to work as hard to pump blood upwards through the body. The heart is a muscle, and just like any other muscle in the body, if it's not used as much as it used to be, it will shrink.

To understand what effect weightlessness has on the heart, a group of researchers analyzed health data from retired astronaut Scott Kelly's year aboard the International Space Station from 2015 to 2016, and health data from elite endurance swimmer Benoît Lecomte, who swam 1,753 miles (2,821 kilometers) across the Pacific Ocean in 2018.

Related: 5 ways climate change will affect your health

Lecomte swam for 159 days between June 5 and Nov. 11 of 2018, taking 7-day and 32-day breaks due to unfavorable weather (which was a limitation in data gathering but was for his own safety), according to the study. He swam about 5.8 hours per day, on average. 

Kelly spent 340 days up in space and exercised a couple of hours a day, 6 days a week by cycling, using the treadmill and doing resistance exercises. Doctors analyzed both men's hearts before, during and after their respective journeys.

The researchers found that during his year out in space, Kelly lost about 0.74 grams of heart mass per week in his left ventricle, the heart's main pumping chamber. Lecomte, during his swim across the Pacific, lost 0.72 greams of heart mass a week in his left ventricle. The researchers also found that when Kelly and Lecomte first began their journeys, both men experienced an initial drop in the diameter of their left ventricle. The average heart is about 280 to 340 grams in men and 230 to 280 grams in women, according to Live Science.

Overall, Kelly had a 19% to 27% left ventricle mass loss over his year out in space and Lecomte had a 20 to 25% loss in the five months he was swimming, co-author Dr. James MacNamara, a cardiology fellow at the University of Texas  Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas told the BBC.

In other words, despite exercising in a weightless environment (water and space), both mens' hearts shrank during their journeys. That was surprising to the scientists, as high-intensity swim training of 1 to 3 hours a day has previously been found to be linked with an increased left ventricle size and mass. "We anticipated that a long duration of swimming exercise would have been enough of a stimulus," to increase the left ventricle mass, the authors wrote.

"The heart is remarkably plastic and especially responsive to gravity or its absence," senior author Dr. Benjamin Levine, a professor of internal medicine at UT Southwestern Medical Center said in a statement. "Both the impact of gravity as well as the adaptive response to exercise play a role, and we were surprised that even extremely long periods of low-intensity exercise did not keep the heart muscle from shrinking." 

But after their journeys, both mens' hearts returned to their normal sizes once they returned to walking on the ground, according to the BBC. The researchers still plan to analyze magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans of Lecomte's heart from before and after his swim to further understand if the long-term effects of weightlessness can be fully reversed, according to the statement. 

The findings were published March 29 in the journal Circulation.

Originally published on Live Science.

Mark Kelly has won a seat in the U.S. Senate, making him only the fourth NASA astronaut to be elected to Congress.

Kelly, who launched four times into space before pursuing a career in politics, was successful in his bid to represent the state of Arizona in the U.S. Senate. Kelly, a Democrat, ran against incumbent Martha McSally, a Republican and former U.S. Air Force combat pilot. The special election was held to complete the six-year term of Senator John McCain, who died in 2018 (McSally was temporarily appointed by Arizona's governor after McCain's death).

"When we launched this campaign from this very spot, right here, 619 days ago, I could have never anticipated just how many Arizonians would be part of this mission," said Kelly, addressing supporters at the Hotel Congress in Tucson on Tuesday night (Nov. 3). "This mission does not end when the last vote is counted. It is only the beginning."

Kelly won the election by a margin of 52.63 percent, according to the Secretary of State for the state of Arizona.

Related: What the 2020 presidential election mean for space exploration

"When I was at NASA, we would train for two years for a space shuttle mission. From being in the space shuttle simulator and flying and training, two years of focusing on the details. Two years before we were on the launchpad ready to go. And then the work started," he said. "Now the work starts."

Kelly, who is married to former Arizona Congresswoman Gabby Giffords, moved to Tucson in 2012 after he retired from NASA and Giffords survived an assassination attempt the year earlier. Together, the couple co-founded "Giffords" to advocate for reduced gun violence and to help make communities safer.

Kelly could possibly take office as soon as the end of the month, pending the state certifying the results of the election. When he is sworn in, Kelly will become the only active member of Congress who has flown in space. He is preceded in the legislative branch of the U.S. government by three former NASA astronauts and two members of Congress who flew on the space shuttle as payload specialists.

How astronauts vote from space: The only American in orbit now explains

Full speed ahead

Kelly, a former captain in the U.S. Navy, a naval aviator and test pilot who flew combat missions in Operation Desert Storm, was selected for NASA's 1996 class of astronaut candidates — the same group that included his twin brother, Scott.

Kelly logged more than 54 days in space on four shuttle missions. He served as the pilot on his first flight, STS-108, launching on the space shuttle Endeavour to deliver supplies to the International Space Station in 2001. Five years later, Kelly flew as pilot of the shuttle Discovery on STS-121, NASA's second return-to-flight mission after the loss of the orbiter Columbia and its crew in 2003.

Kelly commanded Discovery's STS-124 crew in 2008, which installed Japan's Kibo laboratory on the space station. His fourth and final mission, STS-134, marked the last flight of Endeavour and delivered the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer, a cosmic ray detector, to be mounted to the station's backbone truss.

After leaving NASA, Kelly volunteered for one more "mission," allowing the agency's scientists to collect his physiological and medical data while his brother provided the same during a year aboard the space station. The landmark "twins study" helped further reveal the effects that long-duration space travel has on the human body.

Related: Presidential Visions for Space: From Ike to Trump

Science + data + facts

The first astronaut to trade his spacecraft couch for a seat in Congress was John Glenn, the first American to orbit Earth. One of the original Mercury 7 astronauts, Glenn served as a U.S. Senator representing the state of Ohio as a Democrat for four terms, from 1974 to 1999. After leaving office, Glenn, then 77, flew into orbit again, launching on space shuttle Discovery as a payload specialist.

Apollo 13 command module pilot John "Jack" Swigert was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives representing Colorado's 6th district as a Republican in 1982, but tragically died of cancer before he could take office.

Apollo 17 lunar module pilot Harrison "Jack" Schmitt followed up being one of the two last people to walk on the moon in 1972 by serving the state of New Mexico in the Senate as a Republican for six years, from 1977 to 1983.

Following the opposite path, Senator Jake Garn (R-UT) and Representative Bill Nelson (D-FL) were chosen to fly on the space shuttle as congressional observers and payload specialists at a time when NASA was working towards opening up spaceflight to "citizen" passengers. Garn joined the STS-51D crew on Discovery for a week-long mission to deploy two communications satellites in 1985.

Nelson, who later was elected to the Senate, flew on Columbia with the STS-61C crew. The six-day mission, which was the last to fly before the shuttle Challenger tragedy, deployed a satellite and conducted science in 1986.

In addition to those five space explorers and Kelly, four other U.S. astronauts ran for Congress, but were unsuccessful in their bids.

Apollo 15 command module pilot Al Worden campaigned for but lost the Republican primary for Florida's 12th district seat in the House of Representatives in 1982. Skylab and space shuttle crew member Jack Lousma won the Republican primary, but lost the election to be a senator from Michigan in 1984.

Jay Buckey, who flew as an STS-90 payload specialist on Columbia, withdrew his bid for a New Hampshire Senate seat prior to the Democratic primary in 2008. Two years later, STS-128 mission specialist José Hernández won the Democratic nomination but lost the election for California's 10th district seat in the House of Representatives.

Follow collectSPACE.com on Facebook and on Twitter at @collectSPACE. Copyright 2020 collectSPACE.com. All rights reserved.

Fluid around the brain redistributes in the skull during spaceflight, scientists found in a new study of 11 cosmonauts who visited the International Space Station (ISS). 

The study, which confirms previous findings about the effects of microgravity on the human brain, was led by Steven Jillings, a doctoral student at the Lab for Equilibrium Investigations and Aerospace (LEIA) at the University of Antwerp in Belgium. Previously, Jillings co-authored two studies that examined the effect of spaceflight on the brains of Russian cosmonauts, and recently Jillings took the analytical helm to further explore the topic.

Jillings and the team studied the brains of 11 cosmonauts before their spaceflights, then again nine days after landing, and then again six to seven months after their return to Earth. Jillings participated in previous work on spaceflyer brains that used a standard type of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), and this new work used a particular type of MRI scan that involved a series of diffusion MRI (dMRI) images. This allowed for a more in-depth look at the brain landscape to see how spaceflight has changed it. 

Related: Space travel can seriously change your brain

Jillings became interested in the effects of spaceflight on the human brain with the help of his supervisor, Floris Wuyts, who has a background in studying the vestibular system — a set of sensory organs  in the inner ear that are responsible for balance and spatial orientation. 

In 2009, Wuyts wrote a proposal to do MRI scans on 11 cosmonauts from the Russian space agency Roscosmos to study brain neuroplasticity, or the capacity of the brain to adjust to new environments. That work began in 2013 and Jillings joined in 2016. The new analyses were based on observations of the cosmonauts' brains which began in 2017, by which time the researchers had enough data to do a formal statistical test. Jillings primarily analyzed and interpreted the data for this study. 

The human body is designed to function under Earth's gravity, and many of its parts have evolved to respond to this downward pull. These biological systems change when humans (and other mammals) spend an extended period of time in orbit, where a microgravity environment causes a sensation of weightlessness. 

On Earth's surface, liquid and gel-like material in our body responds to gravity in ways that are important for our day-to-day functioning. One place where this happens is in the otolith organ, a part of the vestibular system.  

The otolith, found inside the inner ear, helps the brain to receive information that tells it how the head is oriented. It is made up of tiny, crystal structures called otoconia, which lie flat on top of a gel in the inner ear. 

When the head makes a movement like tilting down to one shoulder, gravity pulls the otoconia crystals down across hairs within the inner ear, sending a signal to the brain that the head has tilted. But in microgravity there is not enough gravitational pull to tell the brain that the head has changed position. The first several days in space are disorienting for space crew members, and prolonged exposure to microgravity means they need a period of readjustment to gravity when they come back down to Earth. 

Related: Landmark NASA Twins Study reveals space travel's effects on the human body

Jillings and his team found that, during spaceflight, the fluid around the brain and spine doesn't move the way it does on Earth. This new work found that cosmonauts who had served six-month missions on the ISS experienced upward shifting of their brains, and that the fluid found around the brain and spine redistributed as a result of being in microgravity. 

"The cerebrospinal fluid is all the fluid that goes around your brain and spinal cord; it surrounds it," Jillings told Space.com. "[The fluid] has multiple functions, but the fact that it's around your brain also helps [when you] bump your head. It acts as a buffer space [so] you don't immediately hit your brain tissue." 

In addition to cushioning the brain, the cerebrospinal fluid also helps to clear waste products from the mind's organ. And in the bodies of the cosmonauts monitored in this study, this fluid seemed to pool near the lower part of the brain after they returned from space. This suggests that the brain has lifted. However this is temporary and reversible, as follow-up scans showed that the brains had almost fully returned to what they looked like in pre-flight scans. 

The study confirmed what earlier studies also detected, which was that the open structures found deep inside the brain where cerebrospinal fluid is produced, called ventricles, become dilated in space. And this new work found that, although the ventricles did shrink between post-flight exams and the 7-month follow-up exams, there was still more cerebrospinal fluid inside cosmonaut ventricles than before they went to space. 

The researchers saw that there is indeed a hampering of the normal circulation of this fluid. And, although it doesn't seem to have an effect on the pressure inside the skull, this disruption to the normal circulation of craniospinal fluid could be the reason that generally, some crewmembers experience blurry vision during and after spaceflight. 

Jillings told Space.com that using different MRI techniques in future related research could help scientists glean even more information about the brain in space, like whether or not spaceflight causes any structural change to the brain itself.

Jillings' study was funded by the European Space Agency and it is a collaboration with the Institute of Biomedical Problems of the Russian Academy of Science. The research is detailed in a paper published Sept. 4 in the journal Science Advances. 

Follow Doris Elin Urrutia on Twitter @salazar_elin. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook. 

An unidentified astronaut aboard the International Space Station had a deep vein thrombosis (DVT) — or blood clot — in the jugular vein of their neck, according to a new case study.

The astronaut's identity and exactly when the incident took place are being kept secret for privacy reasons, so identifying information was omitted from the case study. The astronaut was two months into a six-month stay at the International Space Station (ISS) when the DVT was discovered.

This was the first time a blood clot was discovered in an astronaut in space, and NASA had no established method for treating the condition in a "zero gravity" environment.

Video: NASA Astronaut Had Blood Clot on Space Station - UNC MD Called
Related: Weightlessness and Its Effect on Astronauts 

Blood clot expert

One of the experts brought in by NASA to treat the situation was blood clot expert Stephan Moll, M.D., professor of medicine at the University of North Carolina (UNC) School of Medicine at Chapel Hill. Moll was the only non-NASA physician NASA consulted to help come up with a treatment plan for the clot, UNC officials said in a statement.

"Moll and a team of NASA doctors decided blood thinners would be the best course of treatment for the astronaut. They were limited in their pharmaceutical options, however," because the ISS has only a small supply of medications on board, UNC officials said in the statement. 

When the clot was discovered, there was a limited amount of the blood thinner Enoxaparin available. Moll helped NASA determine how to ration the space station's stock of Enoxaparin in order to effectively treat the DVT while also making sure that the astronaut would not run out of the drug before NASA could launch a new shipment of drugs on the next cargo mission.

Treatment process

The astronaut's blood clot was treated with Enoxaparin — a drug delivered by an injection into the skin — for about 40 days. On the 43rd day of the astronaut's treatment, a supply of Apixaban — a pill taken orally — arrived at the ISS on an unspecified cargo resupply spacecraft.

The treatment process lasted more than 90 days, and during that time the astronaut closely monitored the blood clot by performing ultrasounds on their own neck with guidance from a radiology team on Earth. Moll also spoke with the astronaut through email and phone calls.

The astronaut landed safely on Earth at the end of their six-month mission, and the blood clot required no further treatment.

More research needed

Somewhat ironically, the DVT was discovered when the astronaut was taking ultrasounds of their neck for a research study on how body fluid is redistributed in zero gravity. The astronaut had not experienced any symptoms of an abnormality. "If it wasn't for the study, there's no telling what the outcome could have been," UNC officials said. 

In the statement, Moll said there's a need for more research of how blood and blood clots behave in space. "Is this something that is more common in space?" he said.

"How do you minimize risk for DVT? Should there be more medications for it kept on the ISS? All of these questions need answering, especially with the plan that astronauts will embark on longer missions to the Moon and Mars," Moll added.

Moll co-wrote a case study on the successful treatment that was published Jan. 2 in the New England Journal of Medicine. NASA astronaut Serena Auñón-Chancellor, a medical doctor who served as a flight engineer at the ISS for six months in 2018, during Expeditions 56 and 57, is the lead author on the study. 

"These new findings demonstrate that the human body still surprises us in space," Auñón-Chancellor said in a statement. "We still haven't learned everything about Aerospace Medicine or Space Physiology."

"The biggest question that remains is how would we deal with this on an exploration class mission to Mars? How would we prepare ourselves medically? More research must be performed to further elucidate clot formation in this environment and possible countermeasures."

• The Human Body in Space: 6 Weird Facts
• Here's What Emergency Medicine Will Look Like for Astronauts in Space
• NASA Twins Study Verifies Long-Term Health Effects of Space Travel

Leonard David is author of the recently released book, "Moon Rush: The New Space Race" published by National Geographic in May 2019. A longtime writer for Space.com, David has been reporting on the space industry for more than five decades. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom or Facebook. 

When NASA sends humans to the moon for the first time in more than half a century, one lucky astronaut will go down in history for becoming the first woman on the moon. Then it won't be long before we see the first woman on Mars, and she just might beat the first man there, according to NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine.

"We could very well see the first person on Mars be a woman," Bridenstine told reporters on Friday (Oct. 18) during a news conference about the first all-woman spacewalk. "I think that could very well be a milestone," he added.

NASA currently has no concrete plans for landing humans on Mars — the moon is the agency's first priority — but Bridenstine has said that the first crewed Mars landing could happen sometime in the 2030s.  Meanwhile, the private spaceflight company SpaceX is working on its Starship Mars-colonizing rocket, which could help NASA send those astronaut pioneers to the Red Planet. 

Related: Women in Space: A Gallery of Firsts

"If my 11-year-old daughter has her way, we'll have a woman on Mars in the not-too-distant future," Bridenstine said, adding that whoever ends up going to Mars is probably too young to have already been selected to join NASA's astronaut corps at this time. However, the soon-to-be first woman on the moon will likely be selected from NASA's current pool of active astronauts. 

NASA has not yet announced who will be the first woman on the moon, but whoever she may be, she's scheduled to land in 2024. That moon landing mission is part of NASA's Artemis program, which is the agency's precursor to establishing a permanent human presence on and around the moon — something that may help pave the way to Mars.

• Men, Women … and Mars: How Gender Diversity Is Key for Success on the Red Planet
• Will NASA's Rush to Land Astronauts on the Moon Get Us to Mars Any Faster?
• Female Figure on Mars Just a Rock

Email Hanneke Weitering at hweitering@space.com or follow her @hannekescience. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.

Outer space is a notoriously harsh environment, exposing astronauts to high levels of radiation. And radiation exposure can increase cancer and heart disease rates in earthbound humans.

But a new study has some good news: Space radiation doesn't seem to increase astronauts' risk of death from cancer or heart disease, at least not at the doses they experienced during historical missions. Still, longer missions — such a mission to Mars — will likely come with much greater radiation doses that could pose larger health risks, the authors said.

Space travel exposes the body to higher levels of ionizing radiation than those typically experienced on Earth. And at high doses, that radiation has been tied not just to cancer and heart disease, but to a host of other health problems as well.

Previous studies haven't found a link between space travel and an increased risk of death from cancer or heart disease; but since relatively few people have traveled to space, these studies may have been too small to detect such a link, the authors said. [7 Everyday Things That Happen Strangely in Space]

The new study analyzed information from 418 space travelers, including 301 NASA astronauts who had traveled to space at least once since 1959, and 117

Russian or Soviet cosmonauts who had traveled to space at least once since 1961. These participants were followed for about 25 years, on average.

During this time, 89 of the participants died. Among the 53 NASA astronauts who died, 30% died from cancer and 15% from heart disease; while among the 36 Russian or Soviet cosmonauts who died, 50% died from heart disease and 28% from cancer.

The researchers used a special statistical technique to determine whether deaths from cancer and heart disease likely had a common cause — in this case, the common cause would be space radiation. But their results did not point to a common cause of death.

"If ionizing radiation is impacting the risk of death due to cancer and cardiovascular disease, the effect is not dramatic," the authors wrote in their study, published July 4 in the journal Scientific Reports.

Still, the study cannot determine whether longer missions would pose different risks.

"It is important to note that future missions of deep space exploration will likely offer much greater doses of space radiation than have historical doses, which will lead to a different risk profile for future astronauts and cosmonauts," the authors said. Future studies should continue to surveil astronauts "for potential harmful effects of exposure to space radiation," they concluded.

• 10 Do's and Don'ts to Reduce Your Risk of Cancer
• Space Oddity: 10 Bizarre Things Earthlings Launched into Space in 2018
• Interstellar Space Travel: 7 Futuristic Spacecraft to Explore the Cosmos

Originally published on Live Science.

Something went wrong Saturday (April 20) as SpaceX tested the emergency escape system on the company's Crew Dragon spacecraft. The incident was bad news for SpaceX and NASA's goal of putting astronauts into space via a commercial mission in the near future.

The company and NASA have been a bit cagey about the exact nature of the incident, which both SpaceX and NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine termed an "anomaly" in their statements. But Florida Today reported that a smoke plume was visible for "miles" around Cape Canaveral after the incident. And an unconfirmed video (shared on Twitter and since deleted) appeared to show a severe explosion in the spacecraft. No one was aboard the craft during the test.

"The NASA and SpaceX teams are assessing the anomaly that occurred today during a part of the Dragon SuperDraco static fire test at SpaceX Landing Zone 1 in Florida," Bridenstine posted on Twitter Saturday night. "This is why we test. We will learn, make the necessary adjustments and safely move forward with our Commercial Crew Program." [Photos: Colonial-Age Shipwrecks Found Off Cape Canaveral Coast]

The damaged spacecraft was the same Crew Dragon capsule that traveled to space on March 2 as part of an uncrewed mission (dubbed Demo-1) to the International Space Station, as Live Science sister site Space.com reported.

The static fire test (in which the spacecraft is held in place) was a precursor to a live test of the SuperDraco thrusters. These are designed to safely heave the capsule away from the rocket in the event of an emergency. The Dragon capsule was being prepared for that test.

Spaceflight Now reported that the first crewed mission on Dragon, called Demo-2, would have involved a new Dragon capsule. It was scheduled for sometime after July 25, though Spaceflight Now reported that the launch was already likely going to be delayed by several months before this incident happened.

SpaceX isn't the only company working to build a viable spacecraft for crewed missions. Boeing is due to launch its Starliner capsule uncrewed later this year. However, as Space.com reported, that launch has faced its own delays.

Until one of these companies gets its crewed rockets working, NASA (which has invested in commercial crewed missions in a big way since the space shuttle's retirement in 2011) is stuck hitching rides for its astronauts to and from space on Russian Soyuz capsules.

• In Photos: A Look at China's Space Station That's Crashing to Earth
• 11 Fascinating Facts About Our Milky Way Galaxy
• 10 Interesting Places in the Solar System We'd Like to Visit

Originally published on Live Science.

An international team of astronauts has discovered a new species of blind, colorless, cave-dwelling crustacean — and they didn't even have to leave Earth to find it.

The fingernail-size crustacean, named Alpioniscus sideralis after the Latin word for "stellar," was discovered scuttling about a pitch-black pool in the Sa Grutta cave system below Sardinia, Italy. Fledgling astronauts discovered the tiny cave-dweller while spending six nights belowground as part of the European Space Agency's CAVES training program, which encourages International Space Station candidates to conduct research together in perilous subterranean environments.

During a 2012 expedition underground, astronaut trainees from Europe, the United States, Russia, Canada, Japan and China encountered the tiny, translucent crustaceans in a small cave pond. The astronauts lured the creatures out of the water using a bait of liver and rotten cheese, then transported the specimens back to the surface. [In Images: Creepy, Crawly Cave Creatures]

Molecular analysis showed that A. sideralis' genetics didn't match that of any other species collected from the region, allowing the intrepid astronauts to describe it for the first time in a new study published December 2018 in the journal ZooKeys.

A. sideralis was revealed to be a type of woodlice — tiny crustaceans that left the water to colonize land millions of years ago. Remarkably, A. sideralis seems to have done an evolutionary about-face, turning its armored back on the land and returning to subterranean waters like the cave pools of Sardinia.

"I would like to think that when humans land on Mars and explore its caves, this experience will help them to look for other species, knowing that life has few limits and can develop in the most inhospitable places," Paolo Marcia, a zoologist from the University of Sassari and co-author of the study, said in a statement.

• Photos: The Creatures That Call Lava-Tube Caves Their Home
• Amazing Caves: Pictures of Earth's Innards
• The 7 Longest Caves in The World

Originally published on Live Science.

SpaceX's famous "Starman" dummy onboard the inaugural Falcon Heavy launch in 2018 is about to have some competition — from a new dummy, named Ripley, who will fly on the first test mission of the company's Crew Dragon capsule.

Ripley is not onboard to be dead weight: It is packed with a range of sensors that SpaceX engineers will use to monitor the journey to and from the International Space Station.

"We call it a smartie, and her [sic] name is Ripley," SpaceX vice president of Build and Flight Reliability Hans Koenigsmann said of the dummy during a news conference Thursday (Feb. 28) previewing the mission's launch, which is scheduled for early in the morning of March 2. Liftoff is set for 2:49 a.m. EST (0749 GMT).

The name is a nod to Ellen Ripley, the main character of the 1979 movie "Alien" and some of its sequels. The name follows a SpaceX trend of naming things after science fiction icons. It's first spacesuit-clad figure (launched in a Tesla Roadster by a Falcon Heavy rocket in 2018) was called "Starman" in honor of David Bowie's sci-fi themed music. The Falcon rockets themselves are named after the Millennium Falcon from "Star Wars."

SpaceX CEO and founder Elon Musk unveiled the first glimpse of the Ripley dummy on Friday (March 1) via Twitter.

"Ripley," Musk wrote in a simple note.

The sensors inside the Ripley dummy will measure forces and acceleration experienced by a future human passenger, as well as the environment around them.

"The goal is to get an idea of how humans would feel in her [sic] place, basically," Koenigsmann said. "I don't expect, actually, a lot of surprises there, but it's better to verify, make sure that it's safe and everything's comfortable for our astronauts going on the next flight of the capsule."

Fortunately, Ripley the dummy's odds of encountering any chestbursters on the flight are pretty slim.

Editor's note: This story was updated March 1 with the first photo of SpaceX's Ripley test dummy on Crew Dragon. You can watch the Crew Dragon Demo-1 test launch live on Space.com here Saturday, March 2, beginning at 2 a.m. EST.

• SpaceX Dragon Crew Demo-1 Flight to Space Station: Full Coverage
• SpaceX's Epic Road Trip Photos: Starman Rides a Tesla Roadster Across Space
• Take a Walk Through SpaceX's Crew Dragon Spaceship

Email Meghan Bartels at mbartels@space.com or follow her @meghanbartels. Follow uson Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.

Bacteria on the International Space Station are evolving and changing in their strange orbital environment -- but according to a new study, they don't seem to be any more dangerous to humans.

That's good news for astronauts, as some previous research suggested that space travel might make certain microbes mutate into strains that are more harmful to people .

"There has been a lot of speculation about radiation, microgravity and the lack of ventilation and how that might affect living organisms, including bacteria," lead study author Erica Hartmann, a biological design professor at Northwestern University, said in a statement. "These are stressful, harsh conditions," leading researchers to wonder if space travel would increase the odds that bacteria would evolve into so-called superbugs to survive.

Based on the new study, published today (Jan. 8) in the journal mSystems, “the answer appears to be 'no,'" Hartmann said.

In the study, researchers analyzed DNA from two kinds of bacteria that had taken a trip to the ISS: Staphylococcus aureus (which is found on skin and causes staph infections) and Bacillus cereus (which is present in digestive systems and soil and usually harmless). Both microbes were collected from the ambient environment of the space station and probably hitched a ride to space on the skin of astronauts or inside their bodies. The results revealed that while the returned bacteria had mutated differently than their Earthbound counterparts, they hadn't developed any of the obvious genetic traits of superbugs. (Superbugs are bacteria that have become resistant to antibiotics.) [Over Earth: Day & Night from ISS]

On Earth, the researchers said, bacteria routinely fall away from the human bodies they prefer to inhabit and undergo changes to adapt to nonliving surfaces. But researchers were especially concerned that the close quarters of spacecraft, where humans and bacteria share the same air and small spaces for months on end, might produce dangerous changes.

It seems, however, that while the bacteria did change themselves to adapt to space, those changes didn't produce any abnormalities that would make them produce diseases that would be more infectious or difficult to treat.

This is good news for long-term spaceflight. While NASA's rigorous quarantine procedures before launches have made infectious diseases in space exceedingly rare, the prospect of an outbreak in a sealed spacecraft speeding toward Mars remains alarming. So far, though, it seems that nothing about the space environment itself is working to make that bacterial risk any more dire — even if there are other health issues to worry about.

• What a View: Amazing Astronaut Images of Earth
• Tiny & Nasty: Images of Things That Make Us Sick
• 8 Awful Parasite Infections That Will Make Your Skin Crawl

Originally published on Live Science.

Thousands of microscopic worms will be launched into space — wriggling around in SpaceX's next cargo shipment to the International Space Station aboard the SpaceX Dragon.

But the launch, which was planned for today (Dec. 4), has been postponed to tomorrow, and scientists are now worried that the worms will be a day "too old" for some of the planned experiments, according to the BBC.

If all goes well in spite of the delay, these tiny but mighty creatures with muscle structures very similar to that of humans, might help us understand why and how astronauts lose muscle mass in space. [Photos: The First Space Tourists]

In the absence of gravity, people do not have to use as much muscle to move around and support themselves — so their unused muscles begin to waste away. On a long mission, astronauts can lose as much muscle as they would if they had aged from 40 to 80 on our planet, according to The Conversation.

Though this is a well-known problem, and astronauts do hours of exercise in space each day to slow down the loss, there is nothing yet that can prevent it, according to The Conversation article written by sports scientist Christopher Gaffney and physiologist Bethan Phillips.

To test possible prevention drugs and figure out the molecular underpinnings of muscle loss in space, scientists will pack 36,000 of these worms, called C. elegans, into plastic bags and ship them up to the International Space Station.

There these worms, each smaller than the thickness of a dime, will be left to live and reproduce for about 6.5 days, after which they will be frozen, until their planned return to Earth in a couple of months, according to Live Science's sister site Space.com.

There are many analyses planned for these tiny critters. Scientists will look at their brain cells for signs of stress and how they affect or direct their muscles up in space, according to The Conversation article.

Some of the worms were treated with drugs that could potentially prevent muscle loss by targeting genes that were previously shown to be expressed less in space than they are on our planet, according to The Conversation. Meanwhile, other worms had their genes altered such that they took up more or less glucose — a process that gets less efficient with aging on Earth and with spaceflight. 

At the time of launch, the worms should have just been turning into adults — and because of this one-day delay in a creature that has a life span of only a few weeks, scientists may have to rely on back-up colonies, according to the BBC.

• Now Boarding: The Top 10 Private Spaceships
• Rise of SpaceShipTwo: The Test Flight Photos
• How Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo Passenger Space Plane Works (Infographic)

Originally published on Live Science.

A former NASA astronaut who was the 12th person to walk on the moon may have seen Earth from space — but he doesn't see that human actions are shaping global climate change.

Today (Oct. 15), Harrison Schmitt, a geologist who flew on the Apollo 17 mission in 1972 and who was the last person (who is still living) to have visited the lunar surface, told a roomful of science journalists that he did not believe climate change is caused by human activity, despite overwhelming evidence and scientific consensus to the contrary.

Schmitt is known for denying scientifically proven aspects of climate change, Discover Magazine reported in 2011; in an article Schmitt co-wrote for the Wall Street Journal in 2013, he claimed that increasing levels of carbon dioxide (CO2) would actually benefit humanity. Schmitt recently doubled down on these views while at the Science Writers 2018 conference in Washington, D.C., during an appearance in a panel about the past, present and future of the U.S. space program. [Photographic Proof of Climate Change: Time-Lapse Images of Retreating Glaciers]

At a Q&A after the panel "Apollo Plus 50," New York Times reporter Nicholas St. Fleur asked Schmitt about his documented denials of human-influenced climate change. Schmitt countered by saying that he "saw no evidence" that global warming was taking place as a result of human activity, and that climate change wasn't happening as quickly as reported, audience member and astrophysicist Adam Becker wrote in a thread on Twitter.

According to Becker, St. Fleur first read aloud from a 2009 article in the New York Times that quoted Schmitt bemoaning the stubborn denial of conspiracy theorists who claim astronauts never visited the moon. St. Fleur then asked if Schmitt saw the irony in denying climate science, after speaking out about people who claimed that the moon landing was a hoax.

"I see no irony at all," Schmitt answered St. Fleur (his response was recorded by National Geographic writer Maya Wei-Haas, who shared the audio in a tweet).

In the recording, Schmitt said that the Earth had experienced climate change events in the past and was undergoing climate change now. "The only question is, 'Is there any evidence that human beings are causing that change?'" Schmitt said. A chorus of voices rose immediately from the audience, responding with cries of "Yes!" But Schmitt countered by saying that in his profession — geology — there was no evidence of human influence on the climate, only models. And models are "often wrong," he said.

But a geologist in the audience, Betsy Mason, also a writer for National Geographic, quickly interjected that Schmitt "should reconsider speaking for all geologists on that topic."

In fact, The Geological Society of London concluded that humans were the cause of rapidly accelerating climate change in a statement published in 2010. Society members wrote an addendum to the statement in 2013 explaining that new climate data from the geologic record bolstered their original conclusion — "that CO2 is a major modifier of the climate system, and that human activities are responsible for recent warming."

Schmitt was correct about one thing: Earth has undergone dramatic climate shifts in its geologic past. However, those climate change events unfolded over millions of years; the current effects of global warming — spurred by excessive quantities of carbon dioxide pumped into the atmosphere by human activity — are spooling out over decades. Climate hazards such as droughts, floods, wildfires and extreme storms are already reshaping the world, and their impacts will only intensify if CO2 consumption continues unchecked, 700 scientific authors and editors recently wrote in a report for the United Nation's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Originally published on Live Science.

New data from one of the many spacecraft at work around Mars confirm just how dangerous a round-trip human journey would be by measuring the amount of radiation an astronaut would experience.

Cosmic radiation is made up of incredibly tiny particles moving incredibly fast, nearly at the speed of light — the sort of phenomenon a human body isn't very well equipped to withstand. That radiation travels across all of space, but Earth's atmosphere buffers us from the worst of its impacts. That means the farther away from Earth's surface you go, the more cosmic radiation your body absorbs. [Space Radiation Threat to Astronauts Explained (Infographic)]

By the time you're traveling to and from Mars, that gets to be a very big problem. "Radiation doses accumulated by astronauts in interplanetary space would be several hundred times larger than the doses accumulated by humans over the same time period on Earth, and several times larger than the doses of astronauts and cosmonauts working on the International Space Station," Jordanka Semkova, a physicist at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences and lead scientist on the new research, said in a statement. "Our results show that the journey itself would provide very significant exposure for the astronauts to radiation."

Those results are based on data from the European Space Agency's Trace Gas Orbiter, a spacecraft that has been circling the Red Planet since 2016. One of the instruments it carries is a dosimeter, which has been taking measurements throughout the orbiter's journey.

According to the team behind the new research, those measurements show that just getting to and from Mars would expose astronauts to at least 60 percent of the current recommended maximum career exposure.

What precisely that recommended maximum is varies with sex and age, but it ranges from 1 sievert for a 25-year-old woman to 4 sieverts for a 55-year-old man. (The measurement of sieverts already accounts for differences in weight.)

But 60 percent just for the round-trip is particularly concerning, since presumably the point of going to Mars is to spend at least a little time on the planet's surface — ideally, without overdosing on radiation.

Email Meghan Bartels at mbartels@space.com or follow her @meghanbartels. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article on Space.com.

And cameras aboard the International Space Station managed to catch incredible footage just a few minutes after the storm's landfall.

At the time, the storm carried winds of about 90 mph (145 km/h), making it a Category 1 storm, but that ranking belies the hurricane's massive clouds and the downpour it is visiting on the coastline, with some areas already drenched in 30 inches (76 centimeters) of rain.

Yesterday, the European Space Agency released a short video of astronauts aboard the space station watching the storm out of the cupola armed with powerful cameras to capture its giant knot of storm clouds.

In the video, the astronauts expressed awe at the size of the storm, while also pointing out Isaac, a former tropical storm now making its way through the Caribbean.

Satellites also continue to monitor Hurricane Florence as it passes over North Carolina to help meteorologists make more accurate predictions of how the storm will impact people living in the region.

Right now, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's National Hurricane Center is predicting that Florence will become a tropical storm tomorrow (Sept. 15) over South Carolina, continue northwest to eastern Kentucky, then swing northeast and track over most of New England early next week.

Email Meghan Bartels at mbartels@space.com or follow her @meghanbartels. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article on Space.com.

The hurricane, which is forecast to begin pummeling the islands later today (Aug. 22), has already prompted the governor of Hawaii to declare a state of emergency, and views from space offer a shocking look at just how daunting the storm is. It was briefly a Category 5 storm but has now been downgraded to a Category 4.

Today, NASA astronaut Ricky Arnold tweeted two photographs showing the view of the storm from the International Space Station and offered best wishes to people in Hawaii.

NASA's Twitter account dedicated to the space station also shared a video showing the huge size of the hurricane. The video includes two different perspectives from the space station, both of which highlight the clear eye of the storm at the heart of the giant knot of clouds.

Right now, meteorologists are expecting that the storm's center will pass uncomfortably close to the state between today and Saturday (Aug. 25).

Hawaii is expected to experience extremely powerful winds, heavy rain, storm surge and potentially even tornadoes and waterspouts as the hurricane progresses, according to a statement from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) National Weather Service.

A fleet of government satellites is also working to support the meteorologists watching Hurricane Lane strengthen and approach Hawaii.

Those include NASA's Terra satellite, which gathers infrared data that tells scientists how hot storm clouds are — a crucial piece of information for understanding the probability of serious thunderstorms and heavy rainfall.

The Geostationary Operational Environment Satellite, which is operated via a partnership between NASA and NOAA, is also hard at work observing the storm using visible and infrared light and watching for flashes of lightning.

A third satellite, co-run with the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency and called the Global Precipitation Measurement mission, can build 3D models of the storm. The models will give scientists a better understanding of the cloud structure inside the hurricane.

Taken together, this satellite data can help meteorologists better predict what the storm will do and how the residents of Hawaii can stay safe.

Email Meghan Bartels at mbartels@space.com or follow her @meghanbartels. Follow us& @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article on Space.com.

The wildfires raging across California are a sight to behold from 250 miles (400 kilometers) above Earth.

Astronauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS) have taken dramatic new photos of the dangerous and destructive blazes, which are blackening huge swaths of the Golden State and throwing off smoke that billows far to the east.

"California burning. These fires are frightening to watch, even from space," European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut Alexander Gerst wrote via Twitter Friday (Aug. 3), where he posted images of several big fires and their even larger smoke plumes. "Here's a shout-out from space to all firefighters on this planet, my former colleagues. Stay safe, my friends!" [In Photos: The 2018 California Wildfires as Seen from Space]

A geophysicist and volcanologist, Gerst also worked as a volunteer firefighter while in school, according to his ESA biography.

NASA astronaut Ricky Arnold — a crewmember on the ISS' current Expedition 56 along with Gerst and four other spaceflyers — posted some fire photos of his own via Twitter today (Aug. 6).

"Plumes of billowing smoke from the #CaliforniaWildfires stretch eastwards [toward] the Rocky Mountains," Arnold tweeted.

Dozens of fires are currently burning across California. The biggest is the Mendocino Complex, which is now the second-largest wildfire in state history.

The Mendocino Complex consists of two neighboring Northern California blazes, the Ranch and River fires. The Ranch Fire has scorched 225,001 acres (91,055 hectares) to date and is just 21 percent contained, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (Cal Fire). The River Fire has burned 48,663 acres (19,693 hectares) and is 58 percent contained.

The Mendocino Complex fire has not killed anyone so far. The same cannot be said of the Carr Fire, which is raging farther north, in Shasta County; it has claimed seven lives to date. The Carr Fire has burned 163,207 acres (66,048 hectares) as of this morning and is 45 percent contained, according to Cal Fire.

For the latest updates about all California's wildfires, go to Cal Fire's "Incidents" page.

ISS crewmembers aren't the only eyes tracking the fires from orbit. A variety of satellites are doing precision monitoring work, including NASA's Terra and Aqua craft.

Follow Mike Wall on Twitter @michaeldwall and Google+. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook or Google+. Originally published on Space.com.

How much would you pay for a Bible that flew to the moon?

A rare, miniature Bible that traveled on board NASA's Apollo 14 mission in 1971 is up for auction, with bidding — currently underway — starting at $50,000.

Along with the microform King James Bible, which is mounted and framed in a gold-and-enamel setting, the auction lot includes two certificates of authenticity. One document was signed by Apollo 14 astronaut Edgar Mitchell, verifying that the Bible made a lunar landing; the other was signed by the Rev. John M. Stout, a NASA information scientist and the director of the Apollo Prayer League (APL), which organized the moon visits of this and other lunar Bibles. [Photos: Hidden Text Discovered in England's Oldest Bible]

The tiny Bible didn't take up much room while on board the spacecraft — all 1,245 pages were condensed and printed on a single microfilm square that measures about 1.6 square inches (4.1 square centimeters), according to the item description posted online by Nate D. Sanders Auctions (NSA), which is conducting the auction.

Apollo 14, which landed on the moon on Feb. 5, 1971, was the first mission to successfully transport a Bible to the lunar surface, following two failed attempts during Apollo 12 and Apollo 13, according to the APL website. The lunar Bible initiative was launched by the APL, an organization founded in 1968 by pastors working within NASA "to pray for the safety of the astronauts and the skill of NASA employees who built the rockets they would fly," according to the APL mission statement.

"And — most importantly — to land a Bible on the moon," the statement concluded.

APL's efforts commemorate Apollo 1 astronaut Edward White, who wanted to bring a Bible to the moon but never made it there. White died when a fire ignited during a launch rehearsal on Jan. 27, 1967; the blaze also claimed the lives of two other astronauts, Virgil "Gus" Grissom and Roger Chaffee, NASA wrote in a mission summary.

Hundreds of these so-called lunar Bibles were bundled in packets and carried by Apollo 14 to the moon. The lunar module held 100 copies, and 200 copies were stowed in the command module, Space.com reported. According to the APL, an additional 212 microfilm Bibles were stowed onboard in a small bag reserved for astronauts' personal items; these bags were known as personal preference kits (PPK). Though NASA could only confirm the presence of 300 microfilm Bibles on the Apollo 14 mission, it was not unusual for small, undocumented items to travel to space as part of an astronaut's collection of personal effects, Elizabeth Suckow, an archivist with NASA's History Division, told Live Science in an email.

"Such informal stowage to take items into space (often U.S. currency, such as Mercury dimes, or handmade signs) took place on nearly every mission from Mercury through Apollo," Suckow said.

"Unless the item was found or used by astronauts in flight, it remained undocumented and was removed when the spacecraft returned to Houston," she explained.

In 1971, Mitchell carried 100 Bibles to the moon's surface. Only 11 copies of the Apollo 14 lunar Bibles bear letters of authenticity signed by both Mitchell and Stout, and of those, seven copies remain in circulation, NSA representatives wrote in the catalog.

After the Apollo 14 mission returned to Earth, Mitchell presented the lunar Bibles to Stout, Space.com previously reported. Stout kept some of the Bibles and distributed copies among APL members; decades later, a six-year legal battle concerning several of those Bibles was launched after a state agency questioned a private owner's claim to the artifacts, according to Space.com. (The suit was eventually dropped in May 2017.)

Not all of the spacebound Bibles made it back to Earth. One paper copy of a Bible with a red cover — brought to the moon on the Apollo 15 mission — still rests on an abandoned Lunar Roving Vehicle dashboard, left by astronaut David Scott, Suckow told Live Science.

Bids for this Bible can be submitted online, and the auction concludes on July 26 at 2 p.m. EDT.

Editor's Note: This story was corrected on July 25 to note that the number of Bibles carried by Apollo 14 (according to NASA records) was 300, not 512. It was further amended on Aug. 14 to identify David Scott (not James Irwin as was previously stated) as the Apollo 15 astronaut who left behind a Bible on the moon. 

Original article on Live Science.