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When astronauts launch spacewalks to perform maintenance outside the International Space Station, the view can be gravitating.
The sun shines and the Earth emits a glow from 220 miles (354 kilometers) away in the surrounding darkness.
“The only thing between you and the rest of the universe, looking at the entire cosmos of creation, is the glass faceplate of your visor on your helmet,” NASA astronaut Mike Fincke told CNN previously.
Now, four civilians could witness what Fincke described as “amazing” as they set out to pull off the first ever commercial space shuttle.
Defying gravity
The Polaris Dawn mission is set to fly on a wild, dangerous journey around Earth as early as Tuesday.
Billionaire Jared Isaacman, former Air Force pilot Scott “Kidd” Poteet, and SpaceX engineers Anna Menon and Sarah Gillis will spend five days aboard the SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule in an attempt to orbit the planet at a record-setting altitude.
About 870 miles (1,400 kilometers) from Earth, the quartet will cross the Van Allen radiation belts, where trapped high-energy solar particles create two dangerous bands of radiation.
Crew members will be exposed to the vacuum of space when they open the hatch and steer a space path at a lower, safer altitude, wearing brand new space suits developed by SpaceX.
In other space news, NASA has decided that the Starliner astronauts will delay their return to Earth in February 2025 aboard the SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule – and the Boeing Starliner capsule will return empty.
Wild kingdom
Every day as the sun sets over the paddy fields of central China, orb-weaving spiders build new webs to catch fireflies – and manipulate their flickering signals to catch more prey.
The spider, known as Araneus ventricosus, achieves this deadly feat by making male fireflies from the single pulses of light that female fireflies use as mating signals.
Researchers aren’t sure how the spiders manipulate the male fireflies into imitating females, but it could be due to their posture or a series of strategic bites.
A long time ago
A study of unmarked graves found at the British settlement of Jamestown, Virginia, has revealed a long-hidden secret within the family of the colony’s first governor, Thomas West.
When researchers analyzed DNA from two skeletons inside the graves, they discovered that both men were related to the West through shared maternal descent. One of the men, Captain William West, was illegitimate and gave birth to West’s spinster aunt, Elizabeth.
That scandal may have been the reason for William West to cross the Atlantic Ocean and enter the colony, according to the authors of the study.
Separately, researchers have determined how ancient people made a stone monument as heavy as two jumbo jets, which threatened Stonehenge, 5,600 years ago in what is now southern Spain.
Another life
When the Chandrayaan-3 mission landed on the moon just over a year ago, India became the fourth country to achieve such a feat.
Now, results from the mission’s Pragyan rover, deployed near the south lunar pole, add evidence to a theory about the moon’s history.
Samples collected during the Apollo missions suggested that billions of years ago the moon was a deep magma ocean that slowly cooled and formed layers of minerals and rocks.
The Pragyan rover analyzed the lunar soil and found a type of rock that probably crystallized on top of the magma ocean to form the lunar crust.
Meanwhile, the European Space Agency’s Juice mission to explore the habit of Jupiter’s icy moon made the first double flyby of Earth and the moon this week. The risky maneuver put the spacecraft on track to reach Jupiter in 2031, and captured several postcard-like images of the two encounters.
Amazing creatures
Two flamingos have hatched an egg together and are raising a successful chick at Paignton Zoo in south-west England.
Although the zoo has hosted other male pairs during the breeding season, staff have no idea how Arthur and Curtis came to have the egg.
“This egg probably became available — unprotected, kind of just left (in a nest) — and then they took the opportunity,” said Pete Smallbones, the zoo’s bird keeper.
The adoption and hatching of the eggs highlights the birds’ parental instincts, and experts have theories as to why the two flamingos came together to parent the baby chick.
Inquiries
These interesting stories may mesmerize you:
— Astronomers have discovered an unusual object that may be a rare hypervelocity star.
It is moving so fast that it could escape the gravity of the Milky Way.
— The winning images of the 2024 BMC Ecology and Evolution and BMC Zoology Image Competition and BMC Zoology Image Competition do not include a spectacular view of a dinosaur fossil and the dance of two birds’ kites.
— The Endurance rover is beginning a steep climb up the edge of a Martian crater, and what it finds could change the way scientists understand the history of Mars.
— “ManhattAnts” have thrived under New York for over a decade. Now, researchers have solved the mystery of where the ant species came from.
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