SPACE/COSMOS
International astronauts launch to ISS after NASA's first medical evacuation
“It turns out Friday the 13th is a very lucky day,”
“It turns out Friday the 13th is a very lucky day,” SpaceX Launch Control radioed once the astronauts reached orbit.
A fresh team of astronauts launched toward the International Space Station on Friday aboard a SpaceX rocket, set to take over for crew members who had been brought back to Earth in what marked NASA's first medical evacuation from orbit.
NASA requested the expedited launch to quickly fill the positions left vacant by the evacuated astronauts.
The incoming crew—comprising astronauts from the United States, France, and Russia—is scheduled for an eight- to nine-month stay that will extend through until autumn. They arrive on Saturday and will restore the space station to its complete crew complement.
Once the spacecraft reached orbit, SpaceX Launch Control jokingly noted, "It turns out Friday the 13th is a very lucky day." Mission commander Jessica Meir responded with enthusiasm: "That was quite a ride."
During the month-long crew shortage, NASA suspended spacewalks and postponed various tasks while awaiting the replacements. Americans Meir and Jack Hathaway, alongside France's Sophie Adenot and Russia's Andrei Fedyaev, will now join the skeleton crew of three astronauts—one American and two Russians—who maintained station operations in the interim.
NASA said it saw no need for additional pre-launch medical screenings or specialised diagnostic equipment, expressing confidence in existing protocols aboard the station. However, an onboard ultrasound machine, typically used for research purposes, was pressed into urgent service on January 7 to examine the unwell crew member.
NASA has declined to identify the astronaut or disclose details about their condition. All four returning crew members were hospitalised immediately upon their Pacific Ocean splashdown near San Diego.
It marked the first instance in 65 years of human spaceflight that NASA terminated a mission early due to medical concerns.
Satisfied with medical procedures already in place, NASA ordered no extra checkups for the crew ahead of liftoff, and no new diagnostic equipment was packed.
An ultrasound machine already up there for research went into overdrive on Jan. 7 when used on the ailing crew member. NASA has not revealed the ill astronaut’s identity or health issue. All four returning astronauts went straight to the hospital after splashing down in the Pacific near San Diego.
With missions becoming longer, NASA is constantly looking at upgrades to the space station’s medical gear, said deputy programme manager Dina Contella.
“But there are a lot of things that are just not practical, and so that’s when you need to bring astronauts home from space,” she said earlier this week.
In preparation for moon and Mars trips, where health care will be even more challenging, the new arrivals will test a filter designed to turn drinking water into emergency IV fluid, try out an ultrasound system that relies on artificial intelligence and augmented reality instead of experts on the ground, and perform ultrasound scans on their jugular veins in a blood clot study.
They will also demonstrate their Moon-landing skills in a simulated test.
Adenot is only the second French woman to launch to space. She was 14 when Claudie Haignere flew to Russia’s space station Mir in 1996, inspiring her to become an astronaut. Haignere travelled to Cape Canaveral to cheer her on.
“I thought it would have been a quiet joy with pride for Sophie, but it was so hugely emotional to see her with a successful launch," Haignere said.
Hathaway, like Adenot, is new to space, while Meir and Fedyaev are making their second station trip. Just before liftoff, Fedyaev led the crew in a cry of “Poyekhali" — Russian for “Let's Go” — the word uttered at liftoff by the world's first person in space, the Soviet Union's Yuri Gagarin, in 1961.
On her first mission in 2019, Meir took part in the first all-female spacewalk. The other half of that spacewalk, Christina Koch, is among the four Artemis II astronauts waiting to fly around the moon as early as March. A ship-to-ship radio linkup is planned between the two crews.
ESA satellite finds 'inside-out' planetary system that challenges formation theories
A newly discovered planet orbiting a distant star may change scientists’ understanding of how planetary systems form.
Astronomers say they have discovered a distant planetary system with planets arranged in a surprising order, challenging long-standing ideas about how planets form.
In our Solar System, the four planets closest to the Sun are small and rocky, while the four farther away are large gas giants. Scientists have long believed this pattern — rocky planets near the star and gaseous planets farther out — was common across the universe.
However, a star called LHS 1903 discovered in the Milky Way's thick disc suggests otherwise.
In a collaborative effort involving researchers across Europe, astronomers analysing data from several telescopes had already identified three planets orbiting the red dwarf star, which is cooler and dimmer than our Sun.
The closest planet to the star was rocky, followed by two gas giants. That is the order scientists expect.
But digging into observations made by the European Space Agency (ESA)'s exoplanet-probing Cheops space telescope revealed a fourth planet farther from the star. Surprisingly, this outermost planet also appears to be rocky.
"That makes this an inside-out system, with a planet order of rocky-gaseous-gaseous-and then rocky again," Thomas Wilson, the lead author of the study and a planetary astrophysicist from the University of Warwick in the United Kingdom, said in a statement with ESA.
"Rocky planets don't usually form so far away from their home star," Wilson added.
One planet after another
Inner planets are expected to be small and rocky because intense radiation from the nearby star blasts most of the gas away from their rocky core.
But farther out in the cold reaches of the system, a thick atmosphere can form around cores, creating gas giants.
Trying to explain the unusual LHS 1903 system, researchers tested several possibilities before proposing a new idea: the planets may have formed one after another rather than all at once.
According to the currently most widely accepted theory, planets form simultaneously in a massive ring of gas and dust called a protoplanetary disc.
This involves tiny dust grains clumping together, then snowballing into cores that eventually evolve into mighty planets.
But in this system, scientists believe LHS 1903 may have formed after most of the gas had already disappeared.
"Yet here is a small, rocky world, defying expectations," Wilson said.
"It seems that we have found the first evidence for a planet which formed in what we call a gas-depleted environment," he added.
Since the 1990s, astronomers have discovered more than 6,000 planets outside our Solar System, called exoplanets, mostly by spotting slight changes in brightness as they cross in front of their star.
"Historically, our planet formation theories are based on what we see and know about our Solar System," said Isabel Rebollido, a planetary disc researcher at ESA.
"As we are seeing more and more different exoplanet systems, we are starting to revisit these theories."
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