Astronaut Salutes Nimoy From Orbit

International Space Station astronaut Terry Virts (@AstroTerry) tweeted this image of a Vulcan hand salute from orbit as a tribute to actor Leonard Nimoy, who died on Friday, Feb. 27, 2015. Nimoy played science officer Mr. Spock in the Star Trek series that served as an inspiration to generations of scientists, engineers and sci-fi fans around the world.

Cape Cod and Boston, Massachusetts, Nimoy’s home town, are visible through the station window. via NASA http://ift.tt/1Anq0nv

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Russia and Ukraine Calm Feud Over Natural Gas Payments by ANDREW E. KRAMER

By ANDREW E. KRAMER

A payment dispute that had been casting a shadow over European energy markets appeared to be winding down on Friday, as both countries agreed to European-brokered negotiations.

Published: February 27, 2015 at 07:00PM

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Feb. 26, 1966 Launch of Apollo-Saturn 201

Apollo-Saturn 201 (AS-201), the first Saturn IB launch vehicle developed by NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC), lifts off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, at 11:12 a.m. on Feb. 26, 1966. The AS-201 mission was an unmanned suborbital flight to test the Saturn 1B launch vehicle and the Apollo Command and Service Modules. This was the first flight of the S-IB and S-IVB stages, including the first flight test of the liquid-hydrogen/liquid oxygen-propelled J-2 engine in the S-IVB stage. During the thirty-seven minute flight, the vehicle reached an altitude of 303 miles and traveled 5,264 miles downrange.

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Chicago in Winter

From the International Space Station (ISS), European Space Agency astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti took this photograph of Chicago and posted it to social media on Feb. 19, 2015. She wrote, “How do you like #Chicago dressed for winter?”

Crewmembers on the space station photograph the Earth from their unique point of view located 200 miles above the surface as part of the Crew Earth Observations program. Photographs record how the planet is changing over time, from human-caused changes like urban growth and reservoir construction, to natural dynamic events such as hurricanes, floods and volcanic eruptions. Astronauts have used hand-held cameras to photograph the Earth for more than 40 years, beginning with the Mercury missions in the early 1960s. The ISS maintains an altitude between 220 – 286 miles (354 – 460 km) above the Earth, and an orbital inclination of 51.6˚, providing an excellent stage for observing most populated areas of the world.

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Voters Wary of Promises in Britain’s Unpredictable Election by THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Posters are being printed and slogans are being polished as Britain’s politicians battle it out in the most unpredictable national election in decades. One top election analyst has dubbed it “the lottery election.”

Published: February 24, 2015 at 09:17PM

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Astronaut Barry Wilmore on the First of Three Spacewalks

NASA astronaut Barry Wilmore works outside the International Space Station on the first of three spacewalks preparing the station for future arrivals by U.S. commercial crew spacecraft, Saturday, Feb. 21, 2015. Fellow spacewalker Terry Virts, seen reflected in the visor, shared this photograph on social media.

The spacewalks are designed to lay cables along the forward end of the U.S. segment to bring power and communication to two International Docking Adapters slated to arrive later this year. The new docking ports will welcome U.S. commercial spacecraft launching from Florida beginning in 2017, permitting the standard station crew size to grow from six to seven and potentially double the amount of crew time devoted to research.

The second and third spacewalks are planned for Wednesday, Feb. 25 and Sunday, March 1, with Wilmore and Virts participating in all three.

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Australia Cyclone Spares Coal Miners, Farmers by REUTERS

By REUTERS

Commodities producers were spared the full wrath of a powerful cyclone that smashed into the east cost of Australia packing winds up to 285 kph (175 mph), but thousands of coastal residents on Monday faced a third day without electricity.

Published: February 22, 2015 at 06:20PM

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A Thankless Task by DAVID SHENK

By DAVID SHENK

Acknowledgments give up fantastic clues about writers.

Published: February 21, 2015 at 07:00PM

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John Glenn During the Mercury-Atlas 6 Spaceflight

On Feb. 20, 1962, astronaut John H. Glenn, Jr., became the first American to orbit Earth. Launched from Cape Canaveral Launch Complex 14, Glenn’s Mercury-Atlas 6 “Friendship 7″ spacecraft completed a successful three-orbit mission, reaching a maximum altitude (apogee) of approximately 162 statute miles and an orbital velocity of approximately 17,500 miles per hour. The flight lasted a total of 4 hours, 55 minutes, and 23 seconds before the spacecraft splashed down in the ocean. This photograph of John Glenn during the Mercury-Atlas 6 spaceflight was taken by a camera onboard the spacecraft.

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Homes Destroyed as Twin Cyclones Slam Into Northern Australia by REUTERS

By REUTERS

A powerful cyclone slammed into northeast Australia on Friday, destroying homes, upending trees, cutting power lines and causing flash floods, while a second storm severed communications to a northern island where heavy damage was expected.

Published: February 19, 2015 at 11:03PM

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‘Terrifying’ Storm Slams Into Northeast Australia by REUTERS

By REUTERS

Tens of thousands of residents in northeastern Australia were warned on Friday to take shelter wherever they could after a huge storm unexpectedly intensified into a cyclone before it made landfall, cutting rail links and closing ports.

Published: February 19, 2015 at 12:11PM

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Magnetospheric Multiscale Observatories Processed for Launch

NASA’s Magnetospheric Multiscale (MMS) observatories are processed for launch in a clean room at the Astrotech Space Operations facility in Titusville, Florida. MMS is an unprecedented NASA mission to study the mystery of how magnetic fields around Earth connect and disconnect, explosively releasing energy via a process known as magnetic reconnection. MMS consists of four identical spacecraft that work together to provide the first three-dimensional view of this fundamental process, which occurs throughout the universe.

The mission observes reconnection directly in Earth’s protective magnetic space environment, the magnetosphere. By studying reconnection in this local, natural laboratory, MMS helps us understand reconnection elsewhere as well, such as in the atmosphere of the sun and other stars, in the vicinity of black holes and neutron stars, and at the boundary between our solar system’s heliosphere and interstellar space.

MMS is a NASA mission led by the Goddard Space Flight Center. The instrument payload science team consists of researchers from a number of institutions and is led by the Southwest Research Institute. Launch of the four identical observatories aboard a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket from Space Launch Complex 41 on Cape Canaveral Air Force Station is managed by Kennedy Space Center’s Launch Services Program. Liftoff is currently targeted for 10:44 p.m. EDT on March 12.

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The National Front’s Post-Charlie Hebdo Moment by SUSAN DOMINUS

By SUSAN DOMINUS

France’s ultranationalist fringe party isn’t so fringe anymore.

Published: February 21, 2015 at 07:00PM

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As Rivals Falter, India’s Economy Is Surging Ahead by KEITH BRADSHER

By KEITH BRADSHER

Long considered a laggard, India is seeing a lift in its stock market as multinational companies look to expand operations there or start new ones.

Published: February 17, 2015 at 07:00PM

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Dawn Approaches: Two Faces of Ceres

These two views of Ceres were acquired by NASA’s Dawn spacecraft on Feb. 12, 2015, from a distance of about 52,000 miles (83,000 kilometers) as the dwarf planet rotated. The images have been magnified from their original size.

The Dawn spacecraft is due to arrive at Ceres on March 6, 2015.

Dawn’s mission to Vesta and Ceres is managed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington. Dawn is a project of the directorate’s Discovery Program, managed by NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. UCLA is responsible for overall Dawn mission science. Orbital ATK, Inc., of Dulles, Virginia, designed and built the spacecraft. JPL is managed for NASA by the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. The framing cameras were provided by the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research, Göttingen, Germany, with significant contributions by the German Aerospace Center (DLR) Institute of Planetary Research, Berlin, and in coordination with the Institute of Computer and Communication Network Engineering, Braunschweig. The visible and infrared mapping spectrometer was provided by the Italian Space Agency and the Italian National Institute for Astrophysics, built by Selex ES, and is managed and operated by the Italian Institute for Space Astrophysics and Planetology, Rome. The gamma ray and neutron detector was built by Los Alamos National Laboratory, New Mexico, and is operated by the Planetary Science Institute, Tucson, Arizona.

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India Blocked an Activist From Traveling to Britain by NIDA NAJAR

By NIDA NAJAR

A Greenpeace India activist was stopped from boarding a flight to Britain in January, where she was scheduled to brief members of Parliament on the effect of mining on indigenous communities in central India.

Published: February 14, 2015 at 07:00PM

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Growing Deltas in Atchafalaya Bay

The delta plain of the Mississippi River is disappearing. The lobe-shaped arc of coastal land from the Chandeleur Islands in eastern Louisiana to the Sabine River loses a football field’s worth of land every hour. Put another way, the delta has shrunk by nearly 5,000 square kilometers (2,000 square miles) over the past 80 years. That’s as if most of Delaware had sunk into the sea.

Though land losses are widely distributed across the 300 kilometer (200 mile) wide coastal plain of Louisiana, Atchafalaya Bay stands as a notable exception. In a swampy area south of Morgan City, new land is forming at the mouths of the Wax Lake Outlet and the Atchafalaya River. Wax Lake Outlet is an artificial channel that diverts some of the river’s flow into the bay about 16 kilometers (10 miles) west of where the main river empties.

Both deltas are being built by sediment carried by the Atchafalaya River. The Atchafalaya is a distributary of the Mississippi River, connecting to the “Big Muddy” in south central Louisiana near Simmesport. Studies of the geologic history of the meandering Mississippi have shown that—if left to nature—most of the river’s water would eventually flow down the Atchafalaya. But the Old River Control Structure, built in the 1960s by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, ensures that only 30 percent of the Mississippi flows into the Atchafalaya River, while the rest of the keeps moving toward Baton Rouge and New Orleans.

More information.

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