Close-up pictures of Mars provided by Mariner 4
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Ammon
17 hours ago
- Ammon
Close-up pictures of Mars provided by Mariner 4
Ammon News - Mariner 4, an uncrewed space probe launched by NASA in 1964, flew by Mars and returned close-up pictures of its surface on this day in 1965, the pictures proving that the planet's rumoured canals were actually illusions. Britannica
Ammon
18 hours ago
- Ammon
Astronauts from India, Poland, Hungary return with NASA veteran from space station
Ammon News - NASA retiree turned private astronaut Peggy Whitson splashed down safely in the Pacific early on Tuesday after her fifth trip to the International Space Station, joined by crewmates from India, Poland and Hungary returning from their countries' first ISS mission. A SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule carrying the four-member team parachuted into calm seas off the Southern California coast at around 2:30 a.m. PDT (0930 GMT) following a fiery reentry through Earth's atmosphere that capped a 22-hour descent from orbit. The return flight concluded the fourth ISS mission organized by Texas-based startup Axiom Space in collaboration with SpaceX, the private rocket venture of billionaire Elon Musk headquartered near Los Angeles. The return was carried live by a joint SpaceX-Axiom webcast. Two sets of parachutes, visible through the darkness and light fog with infrared cameras, slowed the capsule's final descent to about 15 mph (24 kph) moments before its splashdown off San Diego. Minutes earlier, the spacecraft had been streaking like a mechanical meteor through Earth's lower atmosphere, generating enough frictional heat to send temperatures outside the capsule soaring to 3,500 degrees Fahrenheit (1,927 degrees Celsius). The astronauts' flight suits are designed to keep them cool as the cabin heats up. The Axiom-4 crew was led by Whitson, 65, who retired from NASA in 2018 after a pioneering career that included becoming the U.S. space agency's first female chief astronaut and the first woman ever to command an ISS expedition. She radioed to mission control that the crew was "happy to be back" moments after their return. A recovery ship was immediately dispatched to secure the capsule and hoist it from the ocean onto the deck of the vessel. The crew members were to be extricated from the capsule one by one and undergo medical checkups before the recovery vessel ferries them to shore, a process expected to take about an hour. FOUR ASTRONAUTS, FOUR NATIONS Now director of human spaceflight for Axiom, Whitson has now logged 695 days in space, a U.S. record, during three previous NASA missions, a fourth flight to orbit as commander of the Axiom-2 crew in 2023 and her fifth mission to the ISS commanding Axiom-4.
Ammon
3 days ago
- Ammon
Hungary's oldest library is fighting to save 100,000 books from a beetle infestation
Ammon News - Tens of thousands of centuries-old books are being pulled from the shelves of a medieval abbey in Hungary in an effort to save them from a beetle infestation that could wipe out centuries of history. The 1,000-year-old Pannonhalma Archabbey is a sprawling Benedictine monastery that is one of Hungary's oldest centers of learning and a UNESCO World Heritage site. Restoration workers are removing about 100,000 handbound books from their shelves and carefully placing them in crates, the start of a disinfection process that aims to kill the tiny beetles burrowed into them. The drugstore beetle, also known as the bread beetle, is often found among dried foodstuffs like grains, flour and spices. But they also are attracted to the gelatin and starch-based adhesives found in books. They have been found in a section of the library housing around a quarter of the abbey's 400,000 volumes. 'This is an advanced insect infestation which has been detected in several parts of the library, so the entire collection is classified as infected and must be treated all at the same time,' said Zsófia Edit Hajdu, the chief restorer on the project. 'We've never encountered such a degree of infection before.' The beetle invasion was first detected during a routine library cleaning. Employees noticed unusual layers of dust on the shelves and then saw that holes had been burrowed into some of the book spines. Upon opening the volumes, burrow holes could be seen in the paper where the beetles chewed through. The abbey at Pannonhalma was founded in 996, four years before the establishment of the Hungarian Kingdom. Sitting upon a tall hill in northwestern Hungary, the abbey houses the country's oldest collection of books, as well as many of its earliest and most important written records. To kill the beetles, the crates of books are being placed into tall, hermetically sealed plastic sacks from which all oxygen is removed. After six weeks in the pure nitrogen environment, the abbey hopes all the beetles will be destroyed. ABC
