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- Ryan Gosling Praises ‘Girl of My Dreams’ Eva Mendes During Festival Speech PEOPLE
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- Ryan Gosling receives honour by Santa Barbara Film Festival: Expanding horizons The News International
Tag Archives: Astronaut
NASA astronaut Frank Rubio returning to Earth after U.S. record-setting yearlong space station flight – CBS News
- NASA astronaut Frank Rubio returning to Earth after U.S. record-setting yearlong space station flight CBS News
- Change of Station Command as Three Crew Members Prepare to Depart Early Wednesday NASA Blogs
- Accidental 1-year astronaut crew hands over command of ISS ahead of Sept. 27 landing Space.com
- Two cosmonauts, NASA astronaut head for Wednesday landing after yearlong mission – Spaceflight Now Spaceflight Now
- International Space Station: Health Investigations, Payload Maintenance, and Departure Countdown SciTechDaily
- View Full Coverage on Google News
‘A Million Miles Away’ fact check: Who is astronaut Jose M. Hernandez? – USA TODAY
- ‘A Million Miles Away’ fact check: Who is astronaut Jose M. Hernandez? USA TODAY
- A Million Miles Away review – charming space biopic tells an inspiring story The Guardian
- Watch the inspiring true story of NASA astronaut José Hernández in ‘A Million Miles Away’ on Amazon Prime (video) Space.com
- A Million Miles Away Interview: Director Alejandra Márquez Abella on Entering Orbit ComingSoon.net
- Why Astronaut José Hernández Picked Michael Peña to Portray Him in New Movie ‘A Million Miles Away’ (Exclusive) PEOPLE
- View Full Coverage on Google News
‘A Million Miles Away’ follows journey of California migrant farmworker who becomes NASA astronaut – KABC-TV
- ‘A Million Miles Away’ follows journey of California migrant farmworker who becomes NASA astronaut KABC-TV
- A Million Miles Away review – charming space biopic tells an inspiring story The Guardian
- Watch the inspiring true story of NASA astronaut José Hernández in ‘A Million Miles Away’ on Amazon Prime (video) Space.com
- Stream It Or Skip It: ‘A Million Miles Away’ on Amazon Prime Video, a Feelgood Inspirational Bio about Mexican-American Astronaut Jose Hernandez Decider
- A Million Miles Away Interview: Director Alejandra Márquez Abella on Entering Orbit ComingSoon.net
- View Full Coverage on Google News
NASA Artemis 2 moon-bound astronaut rumors name candidates: report
NASA will soon name the astronauts on its first crewed moon mission since 1972.
Artemis 2 is the next flight after the agency’s uncrewed Artemis 1 mission, which launched Nov. 16 on the Space Launch System rocket and splashed down in the Pacific Ocean on Dec. 11. No astronauts flew on board that Orion spacecraft, although it did have a trio of mannequins and similar passengers.
The selection process for astronauts is secretive, so much so that even the astronauts selected often do not know how they were prioritized for particular missions, even decades later. The crews are also announced on a strict schedule determined by participating space agencies, and information leaks are uncommon.
Recently, CNN spoke with “nearly a dozen current and former NASA officials and astronauts,” some of whom the news outlet kept anonymous. Based on these interviews, the news outlet has shared a few predictions (opens in new tab) as to who will be selected. NASA’s Reid Wiseman and Canada’s Jeremy Hansen are the most common predictions among the interviewees, with several other astronauts rumored to be among the four-person crew. NASA did not confirm any of the predictions by CNN, nor did the agency issue an official comment in regards to CNN’s report.
Related: NASA’s Artemis program: Everything you need to know
Artemis 2 will be a joint mission between NASA and the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) to bring astronauts around the moon and back in 2024 or so. (The Canadians got their seat by contributing robotic technology, the Canadarm3, to a planned lunar station called Gateway.)
The mission will mark the first time astronauts approach the moon since December 1972, when NASA’s Apollo 17 sent Eugene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt to the lunar surface (Ronald Evans piloted the command module from orbit). Artemis missions that touch down will start with Artemis 3 no earlier than 2025.
CNN predicted that Wiseman, 47, will be on the Artemis 2 crew based on his resume, which includes serving as a naval aviator, test pilot and chief of the astronaut office. He stepped down from that management position in November, and CNN suggests the move was because “the chief isn’t eligible to fly in space.” Wiseman joined NASA in 2009 and is a veteran of International Space Station (ISS) mission Expedition 41 from May to November 2014. He also commanded the underwater NEEMO (NASA Extreme Mission Operations) 21 mission in Florida in 2016.
Hansen, also 47, is a fighter pilot with the Canadian Armed Forces whose resume includes serving with NORAD (North American Aerospace Defense Command). He joined the CSA in 2009 and has not yet flown to space; Canada contributes a roughly 2.5% share to the ISS consortium, which works out to a flight roughly every 5 or 6 years. Notably, Hansen served as the first Canadian ever to manage the training schedule of a new astronaut class, which he did between 2017 and 2020.
Who exactly will occupy the four seats of Artemis 2 remains a big question, however. NASA determined Artemis missions would be open to all active astronauts in 2022. The announcement rolled back a 2020 initiative selecting 18 astronauts for these missions, which NASA then called “the Artemis Team.”
NASA has repeatedly said it will include women and people of color on its Artemis missions (all of the people who flew on Apollo were white men). CNN determined that 41 NASA astronauts are eligible all told, with a third of those being women and 12 being people of color.
CNN guessed at a few veteran astronauts who may serve on Artemis 2 such as Victor Glover (a Black astronaut who flew to the ISS in 2021), Christina Koch (a woman who served nearly a year on the ISS beginning in 2019) or Anne McClain (an astronaut who reached the ISS in 2018; after her flight, legal accusations from her estranged wife made her the first active astronaut publicly identified with the LGBTQ+ community), but none of these are confirmed.
As much as we can speculate who else could fly on Artemis 2, the reality is NASA isn’t prepared to offer that information yet. When asked by CNN, administrator Bill Nelson said the target for announcing all four crew members to the public will be “later this spring.”
Elizabeth Howell is the co-author of “Why Am I Taller (opens in new tab)?” (ECW Press, 2022; with Canadian astronaut Dave Williams), a book about space medicine. Follow her on Twitter @howellspace (opens in new tab). Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom (opens in new tab) or Facebook (opens in new tab).
Retired astronaut Buzz Aldrin marries ‘longtime love’ on his 93rd birthday
CNN
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Their wedding must have been out of this world.
Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin, who became the second person to ever set foot on the moon in 1969, following crewmate Neil Armstrong, married his “longtime love” on his 93rd birthday on Friday.
The former astronaut announced his nuptials on Twitter.
“On my 93rd birthday & the day I will also be honored by Living Legends of Aviation I am pleased to announce that my longtime love Dr. Anca Faur & I have tied the knot,” Aldrin wrote. “We were joined in holy matrimony in a small private ceremony in Los Angeles & are as excited as eloping teenagers.”
He posted two photos of himself in a tuxedo and Faur in a long-sleeved glittering dress.
Aldin also thanked fans for their birthday wishes in another Friday tweet. “It means a lot and I hope to continue serving a greater cause for many more revolutions around the sun,” he wrote.
In July 1969, mission commander Armstrong, lunar module pilot Buzz Aldrin, and command module pilot Michael Collins blasted off in Apollo 11 on a nearly 250,000-mile journey to the moon. It took them four days to reach their destination.
Armstrong was on the moon’s surface for two hours and 32 minutes and Aldrin, who followed him, spent about 15 minutes less than that.
The two astronauts set up an American flag, scooped up moon rocks, and set up scientific experiments before returning to the spacecraft. They also spoke to President Richard Nixon via radio from the Oval Office.
All three astronauts returned home to a hero’s welcome.
SpaceX astronaut says he saw rainforests burning and dried-up lakes when he looked at the Earth from space
© Provided by Business Insider
Matthias Maurer in the Cupola in the International Space Station. NASA/ESA–M.Maurer
- Astronaut Matthias Maurer said he saw burning rainforests and dried-up lakes from space.
- Dark and light green areas distinguish the rainforests and agricultural activities, Maurer said.
- Astronauts can see from the ISS the impact that the climate crisis is having on Earth, he said.
An astronaut who was onboard a SpaceX mission said he saw rainforests burning and dried-up lakes from space as a result of climate change.
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Matthias Maurer, a European Space Agency astronaut, said on Thursday during a talk at the World Economic Forum at Davos that people had asked him whether he could see the impact of the climate crisis on Earth from space.
He said that although the climate crisis takes effect over a long period of time, he could see indications that Earth is suffering.
When observing Earth from space, you can see dark green areas, which are rainforests, and light green areas, which are agricultural areas, Maurer said.
“Somehow there are very, very many fires exactly on the border between the dark green and the light green,” he said. “That’s when you understand people are burning down the rainforests to create more room for agriculture.”
“Then you fly further on and you see like desert areas, and you think shouldn’t there be a lake here? In my maps, there’s a lake,” he said. “And it’s gone. You don’t see anything.”
Rising temperatures across the world have triggered heatwaves, droughts, heavy rainfall, and wildfires, according to research. Astronauts understand that the climate crisis is happening, but satellite data can provide far more insights on the matter, Maurer said.
Other astronauts have spoken out about how they’ve seen the damage that the climate crisis has done to Earth. NASA astronaut Megan McArthur previously told Insider’s Morgan McFall-Johnsen she was “saddened to see fires over huge sections of the Earth, not just the United States.”
Maurer was part of SpaceX’s Crew-3 mission, which shuttled four astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS) on behalf of NASA in November 2021. They remained on the ISS for six months, conducting scientific experiments, before returning back to Earth in May 2022.
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It looks like NASA will finally have an astronaut live in space for a full year
Enlarge / NASA’s Frank Rubio is on track to become the first American astronaut to spend a full year in space.
NASA
Amid much fanfare, NASA astronaut Scott Kelly returned from space nearly seven years ago, landing on a barren, frozen steppe of Kazakhstan inside a hardy little Soyuz spacecraft.
NASA made much of this flight, billing it as the agency’s first year-long mission. PBS was among the broadcast television stations that did extended features on Kelly’s mission, its multi-episode series was titled “A year in space.” But the dirty little secret is that, due to the inevitable shuffling of schedules in spaceflight, Kelly and a Russia colleague, Mikhail Kornienko, spent 340 days in space rather than a full year of 365.25 days.
After Kelly’s mission, NASA health officials said they hoped to fly more one-year missions as they sought to better understand the biological effects of long-duration spaceflight on humans and how the agency might better mitigate bone loss and other deleterious effects.
These missions, at least by planning, have not happened. However, largely by the vagaries of scheduling, NASA astronauts have spent long periods of time on the International Space Station since Kelly’s pioneering flight.
Peggy Whitson spent 289 days in space from late 2016 to 2017 after her planned six-month mission was extended due to a realignment of Russian launch schedules. Then, from 2019 to 2020, Christina Koch spent nearly 329 days in space. She broke Whitson’s record for the longest single spaceflight by a woman and conducted four spacewalks. Koch knew an extended mission was a possibility before she launched in 2019 on a Soyuz vehicle, but the scheduling decision—to free up a Soyuz seat for the United Arab Emirates’ first astronaut, Hazza al-Mansoori—was not made until she was living on board the space station.
When Mark Vande Hei launched to the space station in April 2021, he was planning for a six-month mission. But again, the Russians shuffled the schedule in order to use a Soyuz spacecraft to make a movie on the station. So instead of launching a replacement crew on Soyuz MS-19, film director Klim Shipenko and actress Yulia Peresild flew to the station on that spacecraft, along with cosmonaut Anton Shkaplerov.
With this extended mission, Vande Hei spent 355 days in space and currently holds the record for longest-duration spaceflight by an American astronaut. But still, he did not spend a full year in space.
That may now finally happen, however. On Tuesday, a senior official in NASA’s International Space Station Program, Dina Contella, said during a news briefing that the crew of the damaged Soyuz spacecraft would now “probably” come back to Earth in late September.
Cosmonauts Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitri Petelin and NASA’s Frank Rubio launched on the Soyuz MS-22 vehicle on September 21, 2022. The mission was due to return this spring, but after a micrometeorite strike in December, the vehicle’s external cooling loop was damaged. (Russian officials are convinced it was a micrometeorite rather than orbit debris due to the high velocity of the strike and its unlikely impact vector.)
As a result, this three-person crew will now return to Earth on a new Soyuz vehicle, MS-23, that will launch and fly autonomously to the station next month. Because the next Soyuz crew spacecraft will not be ready for flight until the fall, this will delay the launch of a replacement crew. A source said that at present, NASA’s internal schedule calls for this Soyuz MS-23 vehicle to return to Earth after September 21, 2023.
With the caveat that such schedules are invariably fluid and emergencies are always possible, this means Rubio is presently on course to spend more than a full year in space—becoming the first NASA astronaut to do so. It’s a nice and unexpected feat for the first-time flyer, who only joined NASA in 2017 and is the space agency’s first astronaut of Salvadoran origin.
The current record for longest-duration spaceflight is out of reach. Valery Polyakov spent 438 days on the Mir space station in the 1990s. This record is unlikely to be broken for a long time. However, if the return of Soyuz MS-23 slips a bit, second place on this list could be in play for Rubio and his two crew mates. That mark is held by cosmonaut Sergey Avdeev, who spent 379 days on Mir in the late 1990s.
Walter Cunningham: Last surviving Apollo 7 astronaut has died
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CNN
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Walter Cunningham, a retired NASA astronaut and pilot of the first crewed flight in the space agency’s famed Apollo program, died early Tuesday morning at the age of 90, NASA said.
Cunningham was one of the earliest members of NASA’s human spaceflight program as a member of its third astronaut class, joining the space agency in 1963. He was selected to pilot Apollo 7, the first crewed mission of the NASA program that went on to land humans on the moon for the first time.
“We would like to express our immense pride in the life that he lived, and our deep gratitude for the man that he was — a patriot, an explorer, pilot, astronaut, husband, brother, and father,” the Cunningham family noted in a statement shared by NASA. “The world has lost another true hero, and we will miss him dearly.”
The Apollo 7 mission launched in 1968 and lasted roughly 11 days, sending the crew on a journey into orbit that amounted to a test flight that could demonstrate the Apollo capsule’s ability to rendezvous with another spacecraft in orbit and pave the way for future exploration deeper into space. It was also notable for featuring in the first live TV broadcast of Americans from space, according to NASA.
Cunningham was the last surviving member of the Apollo 7 crew, which also included astronauts Wally Schirra and Donn Eisele.
Born in Creston, Iowa, and a recipient of an honors bachelor’s degree in physics and a masters with distinction in physics from the University of California at Los Angeles, Cunningham was 36 years old when the Apollo 7 mission launched. During an interview with NASA’s Oral History Office in 1999, he reflected on his career path and motivations.
“I’m one of those people that never really looked back. I only recall that when someone asked me after I became an astronaut,” Cunningham said. “All I remember is just kind of keeping my nose to the grindstone and wanting to do the best I could as — I didn’t realize at the time, but that was because I always wanted to be better prepared for the next step. I’ve always been looking to the future. I don’t live in the past.”
Though he ventured into outer space only once, Cunningham went on to become a leader in NASA’s Skylab program, the United States’ first space station that orbited Earth from 1973 to 1979.
Before joining NASA, Cunningham enlisted in the US Navy and began training as a pilot in 1952, according to his official NASA biography, and he served as a fighter pilot with the US Marine Corps on 54 missions in Korea.
“The only thing I can ever recall doing specifically to become an astronaut, because I looked at it that I had become one of, if not the best, fighter pilot in the world,” Cunningham said in the interview with NASA’s Oral History Office.
Cunningham also completed a doctorate in physics at UCLA without completing a thesis, and later, in 1974, he completed an advanced management program at the Harvard Graduate School of Business, according to NASA.
He worked as a physicist for the Rand Corporation, a nonprofit military think tank, prior to joining the astronaut corps.
After leaving the space agency, Cunningham wore many hats, taking on various roles in the private sector. According to his NASA biography, he served in a number of executive roles at development companies, worked as a consultant for startups, became an entrepreneur and investor, and, eventually, became a radio talk show host.
In later years, Cunningham also became an outspoken critic of prevailing notions about humanity’s impact climate change.
Apollo astronaut Walter Cunningham dead at 90
Sign up for CNN’s Wonder Theory science newsletter. Explore the universe with news on fascinating discoveries, scientific advancements and more.
CNN
—
Walter Cunningham, a retired NASA astronaut and pilot of the first crewed flight in the space agency’s famed Apollo program, died early Tuesday morning at the age of 90, NASA said.
Cunningham was one of the earliest members of NASA’s human spaceflight program as a member of its third astronaut class, joining the space agency in 1963. He was selected to pilot Apollo 7, the first crewed mission of the NASA program that went on to land humans on the moon for the first time.
“We would like to express our immense pride in the life that he lived, and our deep gratitude for the man that he was — a patriot, an explorer, pilot, astronaut, husband, brother, and father,” the Cunningham family noted in a statement shared by NASA. “The world has lost another true hero, and we will miss him dearly.”
The Apollo 7 mission launched in 1968 and lasted roughly 11 days, sending the crew on a journey into orbit that amounted to a test flight that could demonstrate the Apollo capsule’s ability to rendezvous with another spacecraft in orbit and pave the way for future exploration deeper into space. It was also notable for featuring in the first live TV broadcast of Americans from space, according to NASA.
Cunningham was the last surviving member of the Apollo 7 crew, which also included astronauts Wally Schirra and Donn Eisele.
Born in Creston, Iowa, and a recipient of an honors bachelor’s degree in physics and a masters with distinction in physics from the University of California at Los Angeles, Cunningham was 36 years old when the Apollo 7 mission launched. During an interview with NASA’s Oral History Office in 1999, he reflected on his career path and motivations.
“I’m one of those people that never really looked back. I only recall that when someone asked me after I became an astronaut,” Cunningham said. “All I remember is just kind of keeping my nose to the grindstone and wanting to do the best I could as — I didn’t realize at the time, but that was because I always wanted to be better prepared for the next step. I’ve always been looking to the future. I don’t live in the past.”
Though he ventured into outer space only once, Cunningham went on to become a leader in NASA’s Skylab program, the United States’ first space station that orbited Earth from 1973 to 1979.
Before joining NASA, Cunningham enlisted in the US Navy and began training as a pilot in 1952, according to his official NASA biography, and he served as a fighter pilot with the US Marine Corps on 54 missions in Korea.
“The only thing I can ever recall doing specifically to become an astronaut, because I looked at it that I had become one of, if not the best, fighter pilot in the world,” Cunningham said in the interview with NASA’s Oral History Office.
Cunningham also completed a doctorate in physics at UCLA without completing a thesis, and later, in 1974, he completed an advanced management program at the Harvard Graduate School of Business, according to NASA.
He worked as a physicist for the Rand Corporation, a nonprofit military think tank, prior to joining the astronaut corps.
After leaving the space agency, Cunningham wore many hats, taking on various roles in the private sector. According to his NASA biography, he served in a number of executive roles at development companies, worked as a consultant for startups, became an entrepreneur and investor, and, eventually, became a radio talk show host.
In later years, Cunningham also became an outspoken critic of prevailing notions about humanity’s impact climate change.