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Yahoo
25 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Spokane astronaut Anne McClain, Crew-10 safely splashdown on 'greatest planet in the solar system'
Aug. 9—Spokane native and NASA astronaut Anne McClain has now safely traveled to space and back, twice. McClain, a U.S Army Colonel and commander of NASA's SpaceX Crew-10 mission, splashed down off the coast of San Diego, California, Saturday morning at 8:33 a.m. Pacific Time alongside her team of space travelers. The crew's arrival back on Earth marks the end of a 148-day round-trip, with all but two of those days spent aboard the International Space Station conducting groundbreaking research, maintenance and educational downlinks, much like the one McClain held with Spokane students at her Alma Mater Gonzaga Preparatory School in May. On Tuesday, the members of Crew-10 each took a moment to reflect on their time in microgravity at a changing of the guard ceremony with Crew-11, who arrived last week. The predominant theme was gratitude: for the experience with one another, the support of those on Earth and, as McClain put it, "to represent humanity." "All of us are keenly aware that we may never get to do this again," McClain said. "We've been very pensive over the last few days, understanding what we have all got to be a part of. And we know that there's some tumultuous times on Earth. ... We want this mission, our mission, to be a reminder of what people can do when we work together, when we explore together." Returning with McClain were NASA astronaut Nichole Ayers, Roscosmos cosmonaut Kirill Peskov and astronaut Takuya Onishi of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency. Roscosmos is the Russian space agency. The world may seem different then when she left it, but their mission was only a "short snapshot" of a decades-long international collaboration for the betterment of humanity, McClain said. In November, the International Space Station will mark 25 years of being continually staffed with human crews. "I truly believe that this is one of the biggest feats of cooperation that humans have ever accomplished. It takes people from every country, all around the world, every single day, showing up to support this mission, to make it happen." McClain said the crew will be returning to Earth at a time when the geopolitical landscape is not unlike that of 40 years ago, when the idea of the International Space Station first arose amid high political tensions between global powers. "There's a lot of people that would say 'That's not going to be possible,'" McClain said. "But all it took was visionaries from all around the world to work together, to have a mustard seed of faith that something like this could be done when we work together." McClain and company landed in the Pacific Ocean Saturday aboard the SpaceX Dragon capsule that ferried them to the station, called Endurance. The trip took more than 17 hours after undocking from the ISS while roughly 260 miles above Jakarta, Indonesia. The completely autonomous return flight started at an orbiting speed of around 17,500 mph before eventually being slowed by the Endurance's thrusters in a roughly 18-minute deorbit burn, which allowed the craft to drop into the Earth's atmosphere and cut the flight speed by 100 yards per second. Temperatures around the craft reached as high as 3,500 degrees Fahrenheit due to the friction generated as the Endurance pushed and rubbed against the air around it, super heating the molecules into a plasma. A series of parachutes were deployed after the pod reached an altitude of about 18,000 feet, followed by a deployment of four larger chutes at around 6,500 feet from the Earth's surface. Contact with the Endurance cut out for approximately 7 minutes during re-entry, which happens due to intense heat and plasma buildup, a NASA spokesperson said. The crew were traveling at a speed of around 16 mph by the time they hit the water, after experiencing gravitational forces as high as 5-G's on the way down. Laying in wait for Crew-10 was the SpaceX recovery ship dubbed "Shannon," one of two crafts used to recover Dragon capsules from aquatic landing zones. Equipped with a specialized crane, a helipad, medical experts and technical crews, the ship has been used in more than 20 recovery missions since 2019. Around 9:20 a.m., the space travelers were assisted out of the Endurance as the effects of gravity washed over them for the first time in more than five months. McClain flashed several smiles, while raising her arms triumphantly, as she shakily made her way out. Crew-10 is the first to land in the Pacific as part of the space agency's commercial crew program, through which NASA partners with various companies for more cost effective human spaceflight. With their home base in Hawthorne, California, SpaceX has previously recovered capsules in the area three times , including the Axiom 4 mission, a private 20-day space flight to the station and back between June and July. The Axiom 4 crew included retired NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson, who holds the record for any American with the most days in space at 695. Whitson was on the astronaut selection committee that selected McClain in 2013, and McClain was on the 2021 selection committee that selected Ayers. McClain commemorated their cosmic reunion with a social media post and a pair of photos on July 10. "When you reach your goals, send the elevator back down!" McClain wrote. Now with two space flights under her belt, McClain has spent 352 days in space and participated in three spacewalks for a total of 18 hours and 52 minutes. She may add to that resume in the years to come as a member of the Artemis program, which seeks to return humans to the moon. But McClain indicated Tuesday that for now, she's just excited to be back on "the greatest planet in the solar system." "We've checked," she said. Solve the daily Crossword
Fox News
7 hours ago
- Fox News
Astronauts splash down in Pacific after completing ISS mission that relieved stranded crew members
Four crew members who flew to the International Space Station (ISS) earlier this year to relieve two astronauts who were left stranded by a beleaguered space capsule returned to Earth on Saturday. NASA astronauts Anne McClain and Nichole Ayers, along with Japan's Takuya Onishi and Russia's Kirill Peskov, splashed down in the Pacific off the coast of Southern California on Saturday morning at 11:33 a.m. ET in a SpaceX capsule. It was the first Pacific splashdown for NASA in 50 years, and the third for SpaceX with people on board. NASA astronauts last splashed down in the Pacific in 1975, during the Apollo-Soyuz mission, the first crewed international space mission that involved Americans and Soviets. The crew launched in March, replacing Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore, who were left stuck at the space station for nine months on what was meant to be a week-long mission after the Boeing Starliner they arrived in suffered thruster problems and helium leaks. NASA concluded returning them to Earth in the capsule was too risky, so the Starliner flew back crewless, and Wilmore and Williams came home in a SpaceX capsule in March after their replacements arrived. Wilmore announced his retirement after 25 years with NASA this week. "We want this mission, our mission, to be a reminder of what people can do when we work together, when we explore together," McClain said before leaving the space station on Friday, mentioning "some tumultuous times on Earth." She said she was looking forward to "doing nothing for a couple of days" once back home, and her crewmates were excited about hot showers and burgers. Earlier this year, SpaceX decided to switch their splashdowns from Florida to California to reduce the risk of debris falling on populated areas. After exiting the spacecraft, the crew received medical checks before being flown via helicopter to meet up with a NASA aircraft bound for Houston. "Overall, the mission went great, glad to have the crew back," Steve Stich, manager of NASA's Commercial Crew Program, said in a press conference after splashdown. "SpaceX did a great job of recovering the crew again on the West Coast." Dina Contella, deputy manager for NASA's International Space Station program, added that she was "pretty happy to see the Crew 10 team back on Earth. They looked great, and they are doing great." She noted the crew had orbited the Earth 2,368 times and traveled more than 63 million miles during their 146 days at the space station.
Yahoo
8 hours ago
- Yahoo
NASA Rovers Keep Getting Stuck, And We Finally Know Why
Although humanity is getting better at sending robotic probes out into the Solar System to explore the places no human can tread, we're still very much on a learning curve. The first extraterrestrial robotic rover was launched from Earth in 1970. It's only now, more than half a century later, that scientists have figured out why these marvels of ingenuity and engineering keep getting stuck in the soils of alien worlds. "In retrospect, the idea is simple: We need to consider not only the gravitational pull on the rover but also the effect of gravity on the sand to get a better picture of how the rover will perform on the Moon," explains mechanical engineer Dan Negrut of the University of Wisconsin-Madison. "Our findings underscore the value of using physics-based simulation to analyze rover mobility on granular soil." Related: We Will Never Get Tired of This Video of Astronauts Falling Over on The Moon Making a rover that will operate in an alien environment is more complicated than making one that will work on Earth. We've lost more than one Mars mission to giant dust storms that leave drifts of sand on solar panels, preventing the machinery from being able to generate power, for instance. Gravity is another one. The Solar System bodies on which we have deployed robotic rovers have lower gravity than Earth, and this has an effect on how things move around. Engineers, when designing rovers, have therefore taken into account the effects the target gravitational environment will have. Nevertheless, rovers still manage to get stuck pretty often, requiring control teams to conduct a series of maneuvers to try and free the poor robot. It's usually fine, if annoying, although in one notable case it was not: NASA's Mars rover Spirit got stuck in soft soil in 2009, and there it remains to this day. Using computer simulations running on a physics-based engine called Project Chrono, Negrut and his colleagues set out to get to the bottom of this recurring problem. Comparing their results with real-world tests on sandy surfaces revealed a discrepancy that pointed right to it. Previous tests of rover designs in Moon- and Mars-simulated dirt omitted one very, very important detail: sand, also, behaves differently under different gravitational conditions. The dust that coats the Moon and Mars is fluffier and squishier than dust on Earth, shifting more easily, and hindering traction – making it far easier for their wheels to get stuck. Think of a vehicle on Earth that has driven into slippery mud, or very loose desert sand. This eureka moment could be the missing piece of the puzzle that could keep future space exploration rovers out of a dusty jam. "It's rewarding that our research is highly relevant in helping to solve many real-world engineering challenges," Negrut says. "I'm proud of what we've accomplished. It's very difficult as a university lab to put out industrial-strength software that is used by NASA." The research has been published in the Journal of Field Robotics. Related News Wild New Theory Suggests Gravitational Waves Shaped The Universe August's Full Sturgeon Moon Is Here: What It Is And How to See It An Astrophysicist Proposes We Send a Spacecraft to Visit a Black Hole Solve the daily Crossword
