CAPITALI$M IN SPACE

It’s a date: Blue Origin gets set to launch space crew that will mark milestone for Portugal and Egypt


Alan Boyle
Sat, July 30, 2022 

Blue Origin reveals its latest crew list, with launch set for Aug. 4. 

(Blue Origin Photo)

Update: Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space venture says it’s aiming to launch its next suborbital space mission on Aug. 4, sending up a six-person crew that includes the first Egyptian and Portuguese spacefliers.

Liftoff is due to take place at Blue Origin’s Launch Site One in West Texas, during a launch window that opens at 8:30 a.m. CT (6:30 a.m. PT) next Thursday. The countdown, launch and landing will be webcast via Blue Origin’s website starting at T-minus-30 minutes.

Technical issues or weather concerns could force launch delays. Keep tabs on Blue Origin’s Twitter account for updates.

Previously: Blue Origin still has some final-frontier firsts up its sleeve: The company says its next crewed suborbital flight will send up the first spacefliers to hail from Egypt and Portugal.

The crew for Blue Origin’s sixth crewed mission — which is known as NS-22 because it’s the 22nd flight overall, including uncrewed flights — will also include a co-founder of the Dude Perfect sports/entertainment video venture, a British-American mountaineer, a driverless-car pioneer and a former telecom executive.

The July 22 announcement of NS-22’s lineup came a year and two days after Blue Origin’s first-ever crewed flight, which sent Bezos and three others beyond the 100-kilometer Karman Line. That altitude marks the internationally accepted boundary of outer space.

The flight plan for NS-22 follows the model set by past missions: The crew will lift off from Blue Origin’s Launch Site One in West Texas aboard a reusable New Shepard rocket ship, and experience a few minutes of weightlessness before descending to a parachute-aided landing amid the rangeland surrounding the launch site.

Blue Origin hasn’t said how much its customers are paying to fly, but one report suggests that the fare for one of the crew members is in the range of $1.25 million.

Here’s a quick rundown on the lineup, in alphabetical order:

Coby Cotton is one of Dude Perfect’s five co-founders. His seat is sponsored by MoonDAO, a crypto-centric collective that aims to decentralize access to space research and exploration. Members voted to have Cotton represent them on this flight. MoonDAO is said to have transferred $2.575 million in cryptocurrency to pay for two New Shepard seats.

Mario Ferreira is a Portuguese entrepreneur, investor and president of Pluris Investments, a business group that includes more than 40 companies involved in tourism, media, real estate, insurance and renewable energy. Several Portuguese citizens are in the running to join the European Space Agency’s astronaut corps, but Blue Origin says Ferreira would be the first person from Portugal to cross into the space frontier.

Vanessa O’Brien is a British-American explorer and a former banking executive. Blue Origin says her flight to space would make her the first woman to complete the “Explorers’ Extreme Trifecta,” which also includes an Everest climb and a dive to the Challenger Deep. (Private-equity investor Victor Vescovo finished the Trifecta with a New Shepard spaceflight in June.)

Clint Kelly III started the Autonomous Land Vehicle Project in 1984 while working at the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, and is credited with starting the development of the technology base leading to today’s driverless cars.



Sara Sabry is an Egyptian mechanical and biomedical engineer, and the founder of Deep Space Initiative, a nonprofit group that aims to increase accessibility for space research. She became Egypt’s first female analog astronaut in 2021 after completing a simulated moon mission in Poland. Sabry is the second citizen spaceflier to be sponsored by Space for Humanity, a nonprofit group that paid for Mexican native Katya Echazarreta’s trip on New Shepard in June.

Steve Young is the former CEO of Young’s Communications LLC (Y-COM), which was the largest telecommunications contractor in the state of Florida under his leadership. Y-COM was acquired by Grain Management last year. Young is also the owner of Pineapples, a restaurant in Melbourne on Florida’s Space Coast.

Russia and NASA have been on edge for years. Threats to leave the International Space Station are no surprise.

Morgan McFall-Johnsen

Sat, July 30, 2022 

The International Space Station, as pictured from the SpaceX Crew Dragon Endeavour during a flyaround on November 8, 2021.NASA

• Russia's top space official said Roscosmos is pulling out of the International Space Station after 2024.

• NASA and Roscosmos plan to split after the ISS, but it's unclear when and how the partnership will end.

• NASA has been learning to fly astronauts and the ISS without Russia, as tensions have escalated.

Russia is talking about abandoning NASA on the International Space Station. Though the news shocked many and inspired a flurry of headlines, the threat is neither new nor particularly threatening.

NASA and Russia's agreement on the ISS is up for renewal in 2024. NASA has already committed to maintaining the station through 2030, but Russia's space agency, Roscosmos, has been dubious about the partnership for years. On Tuesday, the agency's leader made an official-sounding declaration on the matter to President Vladimir Putin.

"Of course, we will fulfill all our obligations to our partners, but the decision about withdrawing from the station after 2024 has been made," Yuri Borisov, the new director general of Roscosmos, told Putin in a meeting, according to The New York Times.

"I think that by this time we will begin to form the Russian orbital station," he added. "Good," Putin said.

Russian President Vladimir Putin (left) meets with Roscosmos chief Yuri Borisov at the Kremlin in Moscow, Russia, on July 26, 2022.Mikhail Klimentyev/Sputnik/Kremlin Pool Photo via AP

While space enthusiasts wrung their hands, the exchange didn't shock space-policy wonks. Borisov's predecessor, Dmitry Rogozin, who Putin fired earlier this month, repeatedly made similar threats.

"This has been seen as coming for the past two or three years," John Logsdon, the founder of George Washington University's Space Policy Institute, told Insider, adding, "It's nothing new."

NASA officials told reporters that Russia had not notified them of any new decisions.

"We've seen this story many times before. Color me skeptical of any immediate changes," Casey Dreier, senior space-policy advisor at The Planetary Society, said on Twitter on Tuesday.

Astronauts from the US and Europe pose with Russian cosmonauts on the International Space Station, on September 27, 2019.ESA/NASA

On Wednesday, Kathy Leuders, NASA's head of human spaceflight, told Reuters she'd received word from Russian officials that they intended to keep collaborating on the ISS until completing their own space station. In a Friday statement, translated by Google, Borisov predicted an "avalanche" of technical failures on the Russian segment of the ISS after 2024. At that point, it would be more economical to invest in a new Russian space station, he added.

"Whether it will be in the middle of 2024 or in 2025 — it all depends," Borisov said.

When Russia does leave the ISS, it won't necessarily be a disaster for NASA. The agency has been preparing to operate the station without Russia for nearly a decade, as relations between the two space powers frayed.

"The Russian announcement is not a surprise, and reiterating their current commitment through 2024 is helpful for planning," Scott Pace, director of the Space Policy Institute, said in a written statement shared with Insider. "What comes after 2024 is still very unknown, however, and the real question is when do in-depth technical discussions begin for *how* the transition will be managed (rather then whether there will be a transition)."

NASA's been preparing for a break from Roscosmos for almost a decade

Russian cosmonaut Sergey Ryazanskiy takes a break during a six-hour spacewalk to help with assembly and maintenance on the International Space Station, on August 22, 2013.Johnson Space Center

Roscosmos and NASA had a tense partnership from the beginning. Even as the two agencies were building the first parts of the ISS, NASA was making contingency plans. In the late '90s, Russia was behind schedule building the Zvezda Service Module that would be a core component of the station. NASA built a backup module in case Zvezda never came.

A decade later, NASA became reliant on Russian hardware. When the Space Shuttle Program ended in 2011, the US could only fly its astronauts to and from the ISS aboard Russian Soyuz spacecraft.

To dial back that dependence, the Obama administration started funding private development of human-rated spacecraft. The result, SpaceX's Crew Dragon spaceship, now regularly ferries astronauts to and from the ISS.

SpaceX workers help NASA astronaut Doug Hurley out of the Crew Dragon "Endeavour" spacecraft after splashing down in the Gulf of Mexico, on August 2, 2020.Bill Ingalls/NASA

NASA's remaining reliance on Russia is aboard the ISS itself. The station was constructed for interdependence: Russia's side relies on solar arrays in the Western section for power, and the station can't maintain altitude without regular boosts from Russian Progress spaceships, which fire their boosters to push the station a little higher about once a month.

NASA is learning how to do those "orbital reboost" maneuvers with the Cygnus spacecraft developed by its contractor Northrop Grumman. It conducted a successful test of the maneuver in June, a week after an initial test attempt failed.

Northrop Grumman's Cygnus space freighter is pictured moments away from being captured with an ISS robotic arm, on February 21, 2022.NASA

It's unclear what a transition to a Russia-free ISS might look like. According to Pace, the chief challenges would be orbital reboosts, replacing Moscow ground support, and figuring out what to do with Russia's modules and other ISS hardware.

"I am confident, without having any specific information, that the US and its partners have thought through what might be done," Logsdon said. Otherwise, they would be "derelict of their duty," he added.

The US-Russia space alliance has become increasingly strained

The Soyuz MS-10 spacecraft launches with astronauts from NASA and Roscosmos, on April 9, 2021, at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.NASA/Bill Ingalls

Over the years, the NASA-Roscosmos partnership has involved public spats. In 2014, Russia announced that it would kick NASA off the ISS by 2020 in retaliation for US sanctions over its invasion of Crimea. The threat never came to fruition.

Last year, a Roscosmos official accused a NASA astronaut of having a mental breakdown and drilling holes into a Soyuz spacecraft in 2018. NASA firmly denied the accusations.

ESA astronaut Thomas Pesquet photographed Russia's Soyuz spaceship and Nauka module on the International Space Station, high above Earth, on September 15, 2021.ESA/NASA–T. Pesquet

In November, Russia launched a missile at one of its defunct satellites as a weapons test. The explosion scattered thousands of bits of high-speed debris through Earth's orbit, forcing the ISS crew to retreat to their spaceships in case they had to make an emergency exit, and drawing condemnation from NASA.

Tensions escalated when Russia invaded Ukraine. Rogozin, then leading Roscosmos and known for his inflammatory tweets, got into strongly worded Twitter arguments with former NASA astronaut Scott Kelly and Elon Musk, the CEO of SpaceX, a NASA contractor. Rogozin even suggested that Russia might abandon the ISS to crash into Earth.

Russian cosmonauts Oleg Artemyev, Denis Matveev and Sergey Korsakov pose with a flag of the self-proclaimed Luhansk People's Republic on the International Space Station, in this picture released on July 4, 2022.Roscosmos/Reuters

Cosmonauts have displayed flags and imagery on the ISS supporting the Russian invasion and occupation of Ukraine, invoking a rebuke from NASA officials.

The US and Russia plan to go their own ways after the ISS

The moon rises past NASA's Space Launch System, which it's building to return astronauts to the moon, at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, on June 14, 2022.NASA/Ben Smegelsky

Beyond the ISS, US and Russian paths diverge. NASA is funding the development of commercial space stations by three companies — Blue Origin, Nanoracks, and Northrop Grumman. Its plan is to become a customer, renting room and lab space on an orbiting station operated by a private company.

Roscosmos says it's planning its own space station, but hasn't shared much detail.

"You could take that with a grain of salt, given their overall economic situation," Logsdon said.

Artist's concept of the Artemis Base Camp on the moon.NASA

Both NASA and Roscosmos aim to build new space stations on the moon, but not together.

NASA has established a set of agreements for the new era of lunar exploration, called the Artemis Accords, which 20 other countries signed. Russia and China have not signed the accords. Instead, they've said they plan to build their own base, together, on the lunar surface.

"I think there will be international cooperation among like-minded countries, and the addition of Russia to the International Space Station will be seen as an artifact of the politics of a particular time, and not setting a pattern for the future," Logsdon said.

8 unforgettable moments during the International Space Station's decades in orbit, from DNA research to making space tacos

Marianne Guenot,Paola Rosa-Aquino

Thu, July 28, 2022 

The sun beams off the Coral Sea, northeast of Australia, as the International Space Station orbits 264 miles above.NASA

• Over two decades, the International Space Station has been humanity's home in space.

• The orbiting laboratory was launched in 1998 and has exceeded its 15-year expected lifespan.

• ISS science led to cutting-edge research and international science collaborations.

The International Space Station has been humanity's only inhabited outpost in space for decades.

NASA aims to keep the space station going until 2030 and beyond, even opening it up to commercial spaceflight.

Russia's space agency head announced on Tuesday that it would pull out of the aging station after 2024. But officials have since told NASA that they would like to keep cooperation going at least until they build their own space station, per Reuters. This could mean the ISS would remain a beacon of international collaboration for at least six more years, Reuters reported.

Here are eight unforgettable moments from the ISS's 24 years in space:

The landmark 'Twins Study,' which showed that living in space can change human DNA

Identical twin astronauts, Mark and Scott Kelly, took part in the "Twins Study."NASA

Much of the research at the ISS is preparation to understand the effect of space exploration on humans, ahead of putting boots on the moon and Mars. NASA's groundbreaking "Twins Study" compared the health and biology of astronaut Mark Kelly to his Earth-bound identical twin, Scott Kelly.

The study, published in 2019, found that Kelly's DNA changed in space. Upon Scott's return to Earth after 340 days aboard the ISS, researchers found that his telomeres — the protective caps at the end of DNA strands — were unexpectedly longer than Mark's telomeres.

Scientists are also conducting experiments aboard the ISS to combat bone and muscle loss. According to NASA, astronauts lose between 1 and 2% of their bone density for every month spent in space.

The first observation of an unusual 'cool-flame'

An experiment aboard the ISS shows the appearance of a steadily-burning "cool flame."NASA

During an unrelated experiment, conducted in 2012, scientists aboard the ISS were able to observe large fuel droplets of heptane extinguishing twice. While the initial burn was at the traditional higher temperature, the second time it went out, the scientists observed low-temperature, soot-free flames in steadily burning fuels for the first time.

This so-called "cool flame" flickers at about 600 degrees Celsius (about 1,120 degrees Fahrenheit), according to NASA. That's about half the temperature of a candle flame, which burns at about 1,400 degrees Celsius (2,500 degrees Fahrenheit).

The flame burns for much longer in a low-gravity environment, such as aboard the ISS, which allowed the scientists to see the flame in heptane fuel burn for the first time, according to NASA.

The discovery could help scientists use fuel more efficiently in the future, and improve fire safety on the ISS.

Astronauts send the first tweets from the ISS

In 2010, astronaut Timothy "TJ" Creamer sent the first live tweet from the International Space Station, after the space station updated to a better internet connection, which allowed astronauts access to social media.

This, however, was not the first tweet sent from an astronaut aboard the ISS.

Access to the internet on the space station was limited until 2010, so astronaut Mike Massimino had a tweet sent by NASA on his behalf in 2009. Massimino transmitted messages to NASA's Mission Control Center on Earth and NASA tweeted them out:

"From orbit: Launch was awesome!! I am feeling great, working hard, & enjoying the magnificent views, the adventure of a lifetime has begun," Massimo tweeted, with help from NASA.

The ISS became one of the first space tourism destinations

Yusaku Maezawa, a Japanese billionaire, floats inside the International Space Station in this photo, uploaded on December 9, 2021, and obtained from social media.Yusaku Maezawa/Instagram/Reuters

The first space tourist was Dennis Tito, a US millionaire who boarded the ISS on April 30, 2001, and stayed aboard for eight days.

In total, 14 people have gone to the space station as commercial spaceflight participants, the official term for space tourists, including Cirque du Soleil founder Guy Laliberté, Russian film director Klim Shipenko, actor Yulia Peresild, billionaire Yusaku Maezawa, and production assistant, Yozo Hirano.

NASA also opened ISS commercial space opportunities in recent years. In April 2022, Axiom Space, a commercial aerospace company, launched the first private mission to the ISS. "We are opening a new era in human spaceflight," Michael López-Alegría, a former NASA astronaut, who is also an Axiom executive and mission commander, said on Twitter in April. "We are taking the first step in a next generation platform initiative that's going to bring working, living, and research in space to a much broader and more international audience."

Astronauts grew plants on the ISS and made space tacos

Astronauts have successfully grown fresh food aboard the space station, in order to help NASA study plant growth in low gravity, give them fresh grub, and gain insights into how to provide future spacefarers with a sustainable, long-lasting food source. The agency says the ISS astronauts have successfully harvested three types of lettuce, radishes, and peas. In 2021, scientists aboard the ISS cultivated the chili peppers grown in space, using them, along with fajita beef and vegetables, to make the first space tacos.

Astronauts are not just growing edible plants. In 2016, astronaut Scott Kelly shared photos of his space-grown zinnia flower, making it the first flower to bloom in space.

A Russian film crew filmed the first fiction movie fully shot in space

A Russian film crew went to the ISS in October 2021 to film a full, feature-length film aboard the space station. The film follows a Russian doctor sent to the station to treat a critically ill cosmonaut.

"I'm feeling a bit sad today," actress Yulia Peresild said on Russian state TV, after landing on Earth after 12 days of filming, according to CBS News. "It seemed that 12 days would be a lot, but I did not want to leave when everything was over."

Actress Yulia Peresild attends her spacesuit check ahead of her expedition to the International Space Station, at the Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan, on September 19, 2021.Andrey Shelepin/GCTC/Roscosmos/Handout via Reuters

Still, there is controversy about whether this is the first fiction production filmed in space. An eight-minute movie shot by space tourist Richard Garriot, called "Apogee of Fear," took place aboard the ISS in 2008 and starred astronauts on the ISS.

An ongoing example of international cooperation in a divided world

View of an aurora taken from the International Space Station as it crossed over the southern Indian Ocean, on September 17, 2011.NASA

The ISS has been a shining example of international collaboration since it launched in 1998. The station involves space agencies from the United States, Europe, Canada, and Japan, with a rotating crew of astronauts.

As of May 2022, hundreds of individuals from 20 countries have visited the ISS, according to NASA.

In July 2022, amid high tension between Russia and the US over the war in Ukraine, Russia's space agency announced its plans to pull out of the ISS after 2024, ending a decades-long partnership with NASA at the orbiting outpost. In a July 26 statement, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said the agency has not been notified by Roscosmos of any plans to end ISS cooperation.

"NASA is committed to the safe operation of the International Space Station through 2030, and is coordinating with our partners," Nelson said in the statement, according to The New York Times. "NASA has not been made aware of decisions from any of the partners."

Dazzling views of Earth from space — including auroras and volcanic eruptions

The city lights of Italy, including the French island of Corse and Italian islands of Sardinia and Sicily, from the International Space Station.NASA

Astronauts aboard the ISS — like the station itself — are traveling at 17,500 mph, 250 miles above the planet, and orbiting it every 90 minutes. With this vantage point, they regularly share beautiful images looking down at Earth, snapping shots of phenomena like aurora, harsh storms, volcanic eruptions, and light pollution. In a 1987 book, author Frank White coined the term "the overview effect," referring to the high astronauts report experiencing after seeing Earth from space.

WESTERN PANIC FOR NOTHING
China says remains of rocket booster fall to Earth


FILE - In this photo released by Xinhua News Agency, the Long March 5B Y3 carrier rocket, carrying Wentian lab module blasts off from the Wenchang Space Launch Center in Wenchang in southern China's Hainan Province Sunday, July 24, 2022. Debris from the rocket that boosted part of China’s new space station into orbit fell into the sea in the Philippines on Sunday, July 31, the Chinese government announced. Most of the final stage of the Long March-5B rocket burned up after entering the atmosphere at 12:55 a.m., the China Manned Space Agency reported. (Li Gang/Xinhua via AP, File) 


Sun, July 31, 2022 at 2:06 AM·2 min read


BEIJING (AP) — Debris from a rocket that boosted part of China’s new space station into orbit fell into the sea in the Philippines on Sunday, the Chinese government announced.

Most of the final stage of the Long March-5B rocket burned up after entering the atmosphere at 12:55 a.m., the China Manned Space Agency reported. The agency said earlier the booster would be allowed to fall unguided.

The announcement gave no details of whether remaining debris fell on land or sea but said the “landing area” was at 119 degrees east longitude and 9.1 degrees north latitude. That is in waters southeast of the Philippine city of Puerto Princesa on the island of Palawan.

There was no immediate word from Philippine authorities about whether anyone on the ground was affected.

China has faced criticism for allowing rocket stages to fall to Earth uncontrolled twice before. NASA accused Beijing last year of “failing to meet responsible standards regarding their space debris” after parts of a Chinese rocket landed in the Indian Ocean.

The country’s first space station, Tiangong-1, crashed into the Pacific Ocean in 2016 after Beijing confirmed it lost control. An 18-ton rocket fell uncontrolled in May 2020.

China also faced criticism after using a missile to destroy one of its defunct weather satellites in 2007, creating a field of debris that other governments said might jeopardize other satellites.

The July 24 launch of the Long March-5B, China’s most-powerful rocket, carried the Wentian laboratory into orbit. It was attached on Monday to the Tianhe main module, where three astronauts live.

The remains of a separate cargo spacecraft that serviced the station fell into a predetermined area of the South Pacific after most of it burned up on reentry, the government announced earlier.

UK
Eye-popping fossil fish found in cattle field


Jonathan Amos - BBC Science Correspondent
Fri, July 29, 2022 

Pachycormus: It looks like it is going to jump out at you

A ferocious-looking fossil fish has been unearthed from a remarkable new Jurassic dig site just outside Stroud, in Gloucestershire.

The creature - a tuna-like predator called Pachycormus - is beautifully preserved in three dimensions.

With its big teeth and eyes, it gives the impression it is about to launch an attack.

The specimen was identified by prolific West Country fossil-hunters Neville and Sally Hollingworth.

"It was a real surprise because, when you find fossils, most of the time they've been pressed flat through pressure over time," Neville told BBC News.

"But when we prepared this one, to reveal its bones bit by bit, it was amazing because we suddenly realised its skull was uncrushed.


"Its mouth is open - and it looks like it's coming out at you from the rock."

Listen: Fossil-hunters Neville and Sally Hollingworth on their find


Ancient fossil is earliest known animal predator


Huge fossilised ‘sea dragon’ found in UK reservoir

The English longhorn cattle are standing on top of an early Jurassic clay layer containing abundant fossils

The couple found the fish head in a grassy bank behind a cow shed in the village of Kings Stanley.

It had been encased in one of the many limestone nodules that were falling out from an exposed clay layer.

The landowner, Adam Knight, had no idea his English longhorn cattle were grazing on top of a rich fossil seam, recalling a time, 183 million years ago, when his farm would have been lying under warm tropical ocean waters.

Mr Knight gave permission to Neville and Sally, and a team led from the University of Manchester, to investigate the bank further.

A digger was brought in to extract hundreds more of the nodules, which were carefully cracked open to see what they held inside.

The landowner allowed the team to investigate the bank further

The haul included more fish, squids and even the bones of two ichthyosaurs, hugely successful marine reptiles that looked a bit like a large dolphin.

"We've got the whole food chain," palaeontologist Dean Lomax, from Manchester, said.

"So this Pachycormus would have been eating the smaller fish and squids.

"And then, the ichthyosaurs would have been eating the Pachycormus."

Interestingly for a marine setting, there is also fossilised wood and insects in the clay layer, suggesting land was not that far away.

Play with a 3D model of Pachycormus here.

The finds are likely to keep researchers busy for a number of years.

There is particular interest because the specimens were extracted from a rare UK example of a time slice in the early Jurassic - the Toarcian Stage.

It is known for exceptional preservation, including of soft tissues, and the team has a fish, for example, in which it is possible to see the stomach contents.

"The last comparable exposure like this was the so-called Strawberry Bank Lagerstätte, in Somerset, in the 1800s - that got built over," Sally said.

"The Court Farm site allows scientists to do modern research with fresh, in-situ material."

'Every mineral has a history and a story to tell'

Earliest evidence of wildfire found in Wales

Remarkable detail: The soft tissues are preserved in the fish

The Hollingworths are celebrated for their extraordinary ability to identify highly productive fossil locations.

They recently uncovered the remains of mammoths in the nearby Cotswold Water Park, featured in a BBC documentary fronted by Sir David Attenborough.

They also made headlines with the discovery of thousands of fossilised echinoderms - starfish, sea urchins and brittle stars - in a quarry in the north of the county.

"These sites tell you there are still many nationally and indeed internationally significant fossil discoveries yet to be made in the UK," Dr Lomax said.

The intention is to stage a public display of the fossils at the Boho Bakery Café, which is very close to Court Farm, in October.

Neville and Sally Hollingworth are renowned for finding exceptional fossils in the area

Scientists have now sequenced ancient herpes DNA from the rotting teeth of human remains

Paola Rosa-Aquino
Wed, July 27, 2022

One of the samples of ancient herpes DNA in a new study came from a male between 26 and 35 years old, excavated in Holland. The man was a fervent pipe smoker.  Dr Barbara Veselka

Researchers sequenced the genome of a strain of ancient herpes from four human remains.

Before this study, genetic data for herpes only went back to 1925.

Researchers said the advent of kissing roughly 5,000 years ago may have helped the virus flourish.

Researchers, who for the first time successfully sequenced the genome of an ancient herpes strain, say our modern-day strain of the virus arose around 5,000 years ago.

In a study published Wednesday in the journal Science Advances, researchers looked at the remains of four individuals stretching over a thousand-year period. They extracted herpes DNA from their rotting teeth, as the viral infection often flares up with mouth infections, and sequenced its genome, or the complete set of genetic information. Then researchers compared the ancient DNA to modern-day herpes samples.

The oldest sample dates back to the late Iron Age, around 1,500 years ago, and came from an adult male excavated in Russia's Ural Mountain region. Two other skeletal remains were found in the United Kingdom, a female dating to the sixth or seventh century, and a male from the late 14th century. The final sample came from the skeletal remains of an adult male excavated in Holland, who most likely died during a French attack on his village in 1672.

Herpes simplex virus 1, or HSV-1, is prevalent among modern humans, as it spreads easily and is a lifelong disease once infected. Two-thirds of the global population younger than age 50 carry the strain, according to the World Health Organization. Still, ancient examples of HSV-1 have been hard to find.

Another sample in the new study came from a young adult male from the late 14th century, buried in the grounds of medieval Cambridge.

Craig Cessford/Cambridge Archaeological Unit

Before this study, genetic data for herpes only went back as far as 1925, but scientists knew the virus' history stretched back millennia. Comparing the ancient samples with herpes samples from the 20th century allowed researchers to put a timeline on the virus' evolution.

"The world has watched COVID-19 mutate at a rapid rate over weeks and months. A virus like herpes evolves on a far grander timescale," Charlotte Houldcroft, co-author of the study and genetics researcher at the University of Cambridge, said in a press release. "Facial herpes hides in its host for life and only transmits through oral contact, so mutations occur slowly over centuries and millennia."

Facial herpes detected in the ancient DNA may have coincided with the advent of mouth-to-mouth kissing, which has not always been a common practice, researchers wrote in the new study. Kissing as a sign of affection began during the Bronze Age, and may have spread westward, from South Asia into Europe and Eurasia.

Centuries later, the researchers said, Roman Emperor Tiberius tried to ban kissing at official functions to limit the spread of disease — a decree that may have been related to herpes.

"Every primate species has a form of herpes, so we assume it has been with us since our own species left Africa," Christiana Scheib, co-author of the study and researcher at the University of Cambridge, said in a press release. "However, something happened around 5,000 years ago that allowed one strain of herpes to overtake all others, possibly an increase in transmissions, which could have been linked to kissing."

Now researchers aim to track the virus even further back in time, into early human history. "Neanderthal herpes is my next mountain to climb," Scheib added.