#01

Doug Hurley and Bob Behnkin are now living in the International Space Station, the first astronauts to be delivered there by a private company. Although their entry into the orbiting lab would have been more dignified had Hurley not thwacked his head on the hatch as they came through, that was fortunately about it for problems. Now its time to get to work! The SpaceX Dragon capsule has a number of advantages over the Russian Soyuz capsule: its cheaper for one, can fly on a more flexible schedule, and can will carry four astronauts instead of three (although the Dragon is capable of carrying up to seven, NASA will use that extra space for cargo). All that means that soon the station will be better equipped to deliver on one of its primary purposes performing science for the benefit of those of us back on Earth. 

The astute observer may have noticed a stuffed dinosaur that was released by the astronauts just after reaching orbit. Meet Tremor who will join his stuffed friend Earthy for a stint in space.  Also enjoy a tour of the capsule from the astronauts themselves.

In other space station news, the orbiting lab has recently been outfitted with an antenna that will allow tracking of animals across the globe tagged with a low cost transmitter weighing only 5 grams.

#02

The shutdowns imposed by COVID-19 have given scientists across the globe an unprecedented look a a world lacking in human intervention. Congaree National Park in South Carolina is no exception. The park is home to a unique species of firefly which lights up dark forests in a synchronized display during a brief window every spring. The partial shutdown of the park means less light pollution interfering with the remarkable displays of these little critters, which is an opportunity researches  can't just pass up.

#03

Mars exploration is not just for highly trained scientists and engineers. You can help too! NASA has just launched a crowd-sourcing initiative called AI4Mars that asks users to classify different types of terrain in pictures taken from Curiosity's cameras. The information will be used to improve navigation algorithms under development, allowing future rovers to safely drive further and faster. 

The Insight Mars lander been struggling to deploy one of it's main instruments, affectionately dubbed the mole, for over a year now. The mole was supposed to burrow itself 15 feet into the ground and measure the temperature of the planet but hasn't made it past the surface, until now! The lander's robot arm was actually used to help push the mole downwards. It's unclear if progress will continue to be made but I wish the team the best of luck on a challenging problem!

#04

Kathy Sullivan has another impressive accolade to add to her long list. In 1984 Kathy became the first American woman to walk in space. After leaving NASA and serving as the administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration among other things, her career took a literal turn downwards last week after she visited the Marianas Trench, the deepest point in the Earth's oceans. She became the first woman, and only the 7th individual, to do so. 

#05

Have you ever wanted to find a buried treasure? Well you may have just missed your chance.  "For a decade, hundreds of thousands of people have combed the deserts and mountains of the southwest, looking for a treasure of unknown value, hidden by an art collector named Forrest Fenn. Some left jobs and families behind in their quest; a few died during the search." And now, the Forrest Fern treasure has been found.

#06

Sometimes it's easy to forget that the reason we send robotic spacecraft into the solar system is to collect information for scientists back on Earth. I think this is particularly true for the Juno spacecraft which has been orbiting Jupiter without much fanfare since 2016. Catch up on what Juno has discovered since going into orbit.

Slightly closer to home the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft made a close approach to the asteroid Bennu. The spacecraft has been in orbit since 2018 and if all goes well, will return to Earth in 2023 with a sample from the asteroid's surface.

#07

The biggest public lands bill in a generation is about to become law. The law, called the Great American Outdoors Act, has bi-partisan support and will fund the Land and Water Conservation Fund to the tune of $900 million per year. Hopefully enough to catch up on a backlog in national parks and other public lands. 

China has granted addition protection to the Pangolin, the only mammal in the world to have scales covering its body. The endangered animal has been removed from a list of approved ingredients for traditional pharmaceuticals.

#07

Meet the young naturalists promoting diversity in the outdoors with the  #BlackBirderWeek initiative, and get a better understanding of what racism looks like through the eyes of an adventure photographer.  

The Bookshelf

The Far North is a mysterious place, but thanks to Barry Lopez's Arctic Dreams, it no longer lives solely in my imagination. Lopez's far reaching work covers Arctic history, biology, and anthropology yet is much more than a book of facts (however, I did learn that Muskoxen take delight in playing in streams, and the liver of a polar bear contains toxic levels of vitamin A). Fundamentally, Lopez's book is a compendium on the relationship between humans and the arctic landscape from prehistoric times all the way up to today.  To truly understand it Lopez notes,

"You must get off into the country and sleep on the ground, or take an afternoon to take a tussok apart. Travel on the schedule of the muskoxen. Camp on a seaward point and watch migrating sea ducks in their days of passage. You need to stand before the green serpentine walls of the Jade Mountains, or walk out over the sea ice to the flaw lead in winter to hear the pack ice grinding and scraping... When you have walked for days under the remoteness of the world ... you begin to sense the timeless, unsummarized dimensions of a deeper landscape."

I've never done most of those things and probably never will, but I'm sure glad Lopez did and is able to describe to us what it is like.

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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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