They finally came back

Crew-8 astronauts Matthew Dominick, Michael Barratt and Jeanette Epps all with NASA and Roscosmos cosmonaut Alexander Grebenkin splashed down in the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Pensacola, Florida on Friday (Oct. 25) at 3:29 a.m. EDT (0729 GMT). Their landing after 235 days — including a more than two-week wait on board the International Space Station (ISS) for acceptable conditions — set a record for their spacecraft.

“After spending 232 days docked to the space station, [Crew-8 is] the longest mission Dragon has spent on-orbit to date,” SpaceX noted about its Crew Dragon “Endeavour” in a social media post. The previous longest duration of nearly 200 days was also set by Endeavour by the Crew-2 mission in 2021.

Originally targeted for an Oct. 8 homecoming after completing an already-extended seven-month science mission aboard the ISS, Dominick, Barratt, Epps and Grebenkin were waived off from departing the station on almost a daily basis as NASA and SpaceX flight controllers continued to watch the weather systems in the Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico for their potential to produce adverse sea state conditions near the Dragon’s splashdown zones.

People genetically adapted to diving, 13 min. is a record, not average for them, they are exceptional anyway.

Picture yourself holding your breath. How long can you last underwater? A minute? Two? You probably imagined yourself sitting a foot or so beneath the surface of a pool during this exercise, but consider how long you can hold your breath actively swimming as deep below the surface of the ocean as you can go. This would probably look like maybe 30 seconds of swimming down followed by a rush to the surface. The Bajau people of the Philippines, though, according to reports, could quite confidently imagine swimming 200 feet below the ocean surface for up to 13 minutes.

These abilities aren’t merely the result of dedicated training. The Bajau people have lived their lives at sea for generations, so much so that they’ve developed special adaptations to their oceanic lifestyle.

Discovering Earth’s third global energy Field.

A NASA-led rocket team has finally discovered the long-sought electric field driving particles from Earth’s atmosphere into space

First hypothesized over 60 years ago, it is “an agent of chaos” whose impacts are still not fully known: go.nasa.gov/3XcDDLD

An international team of scientists has successfully measured a planet-wide electric field thought to be as fundamental to Earth as its gravity and magnetic fields. Known as the ambipolar electric field, scientists first hypothesized over 60 years ago that it drove atmospheric escape above Earth’s North and South Poles. Measurements from a suborbital rocket have confirmed the existence of the ambipolar field and quantified its strength, revealing its role in driving atmospheric escape and shaping our ionosphere — a layer of the upper atmosphere — more broadly. The paper was published today in the journal Nature.

Astronaut John McFall hopes to see an ISS astronaut with a disability fly by 2030 — video.

A European Space Agency (ESA) reserve astronaut, McFall was selected for the program in 2022 based on his experience as a trauma and orthopedic specialist, surgeon and exercise scientist. McFall also has lived experience with a disability as he has used prosthetics regularly since the amputation of his right leg at age 19, following a motorcycle accident. (He even won a bronze medal in the 2008 Paralympics in the 100-meter sprint, class T42.)

A recent study dubbed “Fly!” — in which McFall played a key role — found there would be no major issues to International Space Station missions should an astronaut use a prosthesis on board. There is more work to be done, but the goal is for it all to culminate in flying “someone with a physical disability” to the ISS, McFall told Space.com in an exclusive interview on Aug. 8. “By the end of this decade, hopefully that would have happened.”

We have to do this

Replacing research animals with tools that better mimic human biology could improve medicine.

By Rachel Nuwer

When it came time for Itzy Morales Pantoja to start her Ph.D. in cellular and molecular medicine, she chose a laboratory that used stem cells—not only animals—for its research. Morales Pantoja had just spent two years studying multiple sclerosis in mouse models. As an undergraduate, she’d been responsible for ­giving the animals painful injections to induce the disease and then observing as they lost their ability to move. She did her best to treat the mice gently, but she knew they were ­suffering. “As soon as I got close to them, they’d start peeing—a sign of stress,” she says. “They knew what was coming.”

This creature can regress to the larval stage. Sometimes better start from the beginning

Meet the tiny, gelatinous animal that has found a way to live forever.

When an interdisciplinary conference lasts a little longer…

929 likes, — adamdthompson on July 22, 2024: ‘Mine in this week’s @newyorkermag’

Elon Musk says his startup Neuralink has implanted a brain chip into a second patient and plans to perform another eight trials later this year.

Almost half the electrodes are working… for now.

Fried Egg Jellyfish

Who thought a fried egg could be so beautiful?

We are not alone “Birds as keepers of human history… Read the full story and listen to lyrebirds mimicking the sound of everything from cameras clicking to chainsaws revving”

Birds as keepers of human history… Read the full story and listen to lyrebirds mimicking the sound of everything from cameras clicking to chainsaws revving

Have you ever heard a bird singing a melody that sounds suspiciously like a human tune? Well, that’s not as far-fetched as it seems.

Deep in the forests of southeastern Australia lives one of nature’s greatest vocal impressionists – the superb lyrebird. This pheasant-sized songbird is renowned for its breathtaking ability to mimic sounds from its environment with uncanny accuracy. From the cackling laughter of kookaburras to the strident whip-crack calls of other birds, the lyrebird can recreate these sounds so perfectly that even the original species is fooled.

But the lyrebird’s repertoire extends far beyond just imitating its feathered neighbors. These avian virtuosos can also mimic man-made sounds like cameras clicking, chainsaws revving, fire alarms blaring, and even human voices and music. Up to 80% of a male lyrebird’s rich, complex song consists of meticulously learned mimicry woven together. An individual bird may accurately reproduce the calls of over 20 different species.