#01 LIVING FOSSIL

+ "The gyre is a marine desert more barren than all but the aridest places on Earth. Ocean currents swirl around it, but within the gyre, the water stills and life struggles be­cause few nutrients enter. Near the center is both the Oceanic Pole of Inaccessibility (made famous by H.P. Lo­vecraft as the home of the be-tentacled Cthulhu) and the South Pacific garbage patch. At times the closest people are astronauts passing above on the International Space Station." In this desolate location, marine snow - corpses, poop, dust - settles at a rate of about a meter for every 100 million years. Scientists sampling the ancient sediment expected to find ancient bacteria cells here, but they were rather more surprised when the bacteria came alive and multiplied.

#02 BIG DATA

+ You may have heard about NASA's Rocket Girls, but how about Data Dollies from the Woods Hole Oceanographic institute? "The name 'data dollies' was a tongue-in-cheek way of calling attention to the essential yet unglamorous work these mostly young, college-educated women performed while not at sea." The dollies were in charge of collecting and processing the enormous amounts of data being collected from ocean buoys in the 70s and 80s. Don't ever mistake these ladies for office secretaries though, "It wasn’t like we were oppressed females, begrudgingly slaving away. We liked what we did... We were technicians. We went to sea with all the guys and logged the mooring sheets."

#03 MARS

+ Another spacecraft is about to land on Mars (and may already have depending on when you get this newsletter) but in a much less climactic way than the last one. Since touching down on Mars in February, Perseverance has been toting around a small helicopter named Ingenuity. Over the last couple of weeks, the operations team has carefully deployed the helicopter and it is now suspended under the rover just a few inches from the ground. When Perseverance finally lets go for good, Ingenuity will drop those last few inches and be on her own. After verifying the deployment went well, Perseverance will drive away to a safe distance and Ingenuity will attempt to become the first vehicle to fly in the atmosphere of another planet. Stay tuned, it's about to get good!

+ Meanwhile, Curiosity finished up a drilling campaign next to a 20ft tall cliff and took some really spectacular imagery before driving off.

+ The UAE's Mars orbiter Hope performed a thruster burn and is now in its final science orbit, enabling the various onboard instruments to start studying the planet in earnest.

#04 WRECK DIVE

+ At a depth of 21,180 ft, the USS Johnston is the deepest known shipwreck in the world and is now also the deepest to ever be explored by a submersible. The destroyer was sunk in the Philippines Sea during the Battle of Leyte Gulf in 1944 and remained undisturbed until its discovery and partial exploration by a remotely operated vehicle in 2019. Last week the crewed deep-sea submersible DSV Limiting Factor visited for two 8 hour dives. The explorers commented on "the extent of the wreckage and the severe damage inflicted during the intense battle on the surface. It took fire from the largest warship ever constructed — the Imperial Japanese Navy battleship Yamato — and ferociously fought back." The crew took care not to disturb the wreck, but the hope is that the footage and information that they brought back from their expedition will become useful for historians and naval archivists.

#05 SOME INSPIRATION

+ The final crew has been announced for Inspiration4, the first all-private space flight set to launch aboard a SpaceX Dragon capsule this fall. The group is led by Jared Isaacman who bought the flight and gave away the three remaining seats in a fundraiser for Saint Jude's hospital. Joining him will be child cancer survivor and Saint Jude physician's assistant Hayley Arceneaux, geoscientist and science communicator Dr. Sian Proctor, and space enthusiast Chris Sembroski. 

+ Fortunately, the crew will be flying in a tried and true Dragon capsule, and not that other rocket that keeps exploding.

+ The news isn't all good for space explorers. researchers studying Scott Kelly's heart after he spent a year on the space station saw it shrink in size by nearly 25%. This won't pose hurdles for people who visit space for only a few days, but is yet another challenge to overcome for long-duration missions.

#06 CONSERVATION

+ Endangered California Condors are flying in northern California for the first time in a century thanks to the efforts of the Yurok Tribe, "whose ancestral land encompasses large swaths of forest and coastline in northern California and parts of Redwood national park that were once home to the condor."

+ Along the war-torn southern border of Turkey, endangered Gazelles are making a comeback.

+ Cheetahs are being welcomed back to India after going extinct on the subcontinent 70 years ago 

+ Normally solitary Humpback whales are gathering in huge numbers off the coast of Africa and no one knows why. "So far the consensus seems to be: this is pretty freakin’ weird."

#07 A GOOD BOOK

+ If you've ever wanted to start a nature journal you might gain some inspiration from Explorers' Sketchbooks: The Art of Discovery and Adventure by Huw Lewis-Jones and Kari Herbert. The authors scoured museums and archives to compile field journals kept by explorers around the world, mostly dating to the golden age of exploration. There are plenty of amazing entries in this book like some of Audobon's early watercolors or Livingstone's depiction of life in South Africa. But what I really enjoyed are the imperfections, scribbled notes, and hastily drawn misproportioned sketches that remind me that these glorified explorers are indeed humans with sometimes limited artistic talents just like you and me.

Here is art for its own sake. Images that speak of the thrill and boredom of the field, and the joys and frustrations that are encountered... Next time you go on a journey, pack a little notebook in your rucksack alongside all that electronic gear. Or better yet, leave all that stuff at home. Fill the pages of your notebooks with adventures and experience. Follow your curiosity. Just make sure you come home to share your story.

That's all for this week! You can respond to this email to tell me about anything you liked or didn't like, tell me about a project you're working on, or suggest a story. You might also forward this email to a friend so they can subscribe too!

- Evan Hilgemann

This newsletter was produced as a private venture and not in the author's capacity as an employee of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory/California Institute of Technology or of Griffith Observatory. Any views and opinions expressed herein or on exploreandobserve.com are his own and not those of his employers.

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