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After more than 50 years of silence, the moon is about to become a destination for space travelers again.
The public will soon hear the names of the four astronauts who will venture around the moon next year aboard the Artemis II rocket. The three Americans and one Canadian, to be revealed by NASA on April 3, will fly farther than any humans who traveled during the Apollo missions.
The selection process remains secret, but the astronaut pool is much more diverse than it was decades ago.
As stated in Tom Wolfe’s 1979 book on the space race, each crew member must embody “the right things”—demonstrate the qualities of a good teammate and effective communicator who expects the unexpected.
And if the Artemis III astronauts take things a step further by potentially landing on the moon as early as 2025, they’ll need something else: the right suit.
This week, NASA and Axiom Space unveiled the new spacesuit that will be worn by the first woman and first person of color to walk on the moon.
The Artemis III crew will attempt to land at the moon’s undiscovered south pole, home to frigid, permanently shadowed regions where ice has remained frozen for billions of years.
The updated suit provides more freedom of movement and includes extra insulated boots and other innovations that should make it easier to explore the lunar surface. And it was about time: The spacesuits worn by American astronauts haven’t improved since the Space Shuttle program was active.
The prototype of the new design that Axiom Space unveiled looks black, blue and orange. However, the actual suits will be the traditional white from the Apollo days to protect the astronauts from wild temperature swings.
Dinosaurs were some of the largest creatures to roam the Earth. Now researchers have discovered one that broke records among giants.
A dino named Mamenchisaurus sinocanadorum once enjoyed munching on the leafy greens of trees – which he could easily reach because the creature had a huge neck longer than a school bus.
The sauropod’s 50-foot (15.1-meter) neck, the longest of any known dinosaur, allowed it to stand in place and chew for hours.
But how did Mamenchisaurus manage to avoid being weighed down by such an extreme feature? The secret was in the air-filled bones.
A stunning orchid species has just been discovered in rural gardens and suburban balcony boxes in Japan.
The rare find, with delicate pinkish-white blossoms that appear to have been spun out of glass, belongs to a group of orchids called Spiranthes, or “ladies’ locks.”
Scientists were able to distinguish this orchid from others in its family because the flowers bloomed earlier and the plant has smooth rather than hairy stems.
When a NASA mission scientist recently reviewed 1991 images of Venus captured by the Magellan spacecraft, he noticed something unusual. Two photos of the same feature, taken months apart, looked drastically different.
Eight months after Magellan’s first pass, a vent in one of the world’s largest volcanoes had nearly doubled in size and filled with a lake of lava.
The change reveals never-before-seen evidence of volcanic activity on the surface of Venus, something future missions could track within a decade.
Meanwhile, the search for water on Mars has turned up signs of a recent glacier that existed near the red planet’s warm equator.
The glacier is no longer there. But researchers noticed a crusty layer of salt that has preserved surprising details of the ice chunk — and it’s right in an area where humans could eventually land on Mars.
“Watch out for The Blob, it crawls / And jumps and slides and slides / Across the floor!”
Those dramatic lyrics come from the theme song to the 1958 movie “The Blob,” but they also serve as a warning of a giant mass making its way across the ocean. A tangled ball of sargassum seaweed has formed in the Atlantic Ocean that spans more than 5,000 miles (8,047 kilometers).
The floating blob — which may be the largest ever — could dump stinky clumps of seaweed on beaches in Florida and elsewhere along the Gulf of Mexico this summer.
The unprecedented phenomenon could pose serious risks to both humans and ocean life.
The seaweed mass makes a great habitat for fish and other marine life, but it can also create dead zones – and even release toxic gas once it comes ashore.
Prepare to have your mind blown:
— This might be scarier than the blob. Scientists have found ‘terrifying’ rocks made from plastic waste on Brazil’s volcanic Trindade Island.
— The remains of a Roman aristocrat were buried along with her jewelry in a lead-lined coffin after archaeologists discovered a hidden burial ground in northern England.
— The James Webb Space Telescope has captured a sparkling new image of a rare star about to explode.
