NASA's oldest active astronaut returns to Earth on 70th birthday
Cake, gifts and a low-key family celebration may be how many senior citizens picture their 70th birthday. But NASA's oldest serving astronaut Don Pettit became a septuagenarian while hurtling towards the Earth in a spacecraft to wrap up a seven-month mission aboard the International Space Station (ISS). A Soyuz capsule carrying the American and two Russian cosmonauts landed in Kazakhstan on Sunday, the day of Pettit's milestone birthday.
'Today at 0420 Moscow time (0120 GMT), the Soyuz MS-26 landing craft with Alexei Ovchinin, Ivan Vagner and Donald (Don) Pettit aboard landed near the Kazakh town of Zhezkazgan,' Russia's space agency Roscosmos said. Spending 220 days in space, Pettit and his crewmates Ovchinin and Vagner orbited the Earth 3,520 times and completed a journey of 93.3 million miles over the course of their mission.
This hanodut picture shows Roscosmos cosmonaut Ivan Vagner (center) being carried to a medical tent shortly after he, and Roscosmos cosmonauts Alexey Ovchinin and Ivan Vagner landed in their Soyuz MS-26 spacecraft near the town of Zhezkazgan, Kazakhstan.
This hanodut picture shows the Soyuz MS-26 spacecraft is seen as it lands in a remote area near the town of Zhezkazgan.
This hanodut picture courtesy of NASA shows Roscosmos cosmonaut Alexey Ovchinin (center) outside the Soyuz MS-26 spacecraft after he landed with NASA astronaut Don Pettit and Roscosmos cosmonaut Alexey Ovchinin.
It was the fourth spaceflight for Pettit, who has logged more than 18 months in orbit throughout his 29-year career. The trio touched down in a remote area southeast of Kazakhstan after undocking from the space station just over three hours earlier. NASA images of the landing showed the small capsule parachuting down to Earth with the sunrise as a backdrop. The astronauts gave thumbs-up gestures as rescuers carried them from the spacecraft to an inflatable medical tent.
Despite looking a little worse for wear as he was pulled from the vessel, Pettit was 'doing well and in the range of what is expected for him following return to Earth,' NASA said in a statement. He was then set to fly to the Kazakh city of Karaganda before boarding a NASA plane to the agency's Johnson Space Center in Texas.
The astronauts spent their time on the ISS researching areas such as water sanitization technology, plant growth in various conditions and fire behavior in microgravity, NASA said. The trio's seven-month trip was just short of the nine months that NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams unexpectedly spent stuck on the orbital lab after the spacecraft they were testing suffered technical issues and was deemed unfit to fly them back to Earth. Space is one of the final areas of US-Russia cooperation amid an almost complete breakdown in relations between Moscow and Washington over the Ukraine conflict.—AFP
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Kuwait Times
21 hours ago
- Kuwait Times
Polar bear biopsies to shed light on Arctic pollutants
With one foot braced on the helicopter's landing skid, a veterinarian lifted his air rifle, took aim and fired a tranquillizer dart at a polar bear. The predator bolted but soon slumped into the snowdrifts, its broad frame motionless beneath the Arctic sky. The dramatic pursuit formed part of a pioneering research mission in Norway's Svalbard archipelago, where scientists, for the first time, took fat tissue biopsies from polar bears to study the impact of pollutants on their health. The expedition came at a time when the Arctic region was warming at four times the global average, putting mounting pressure on the iconic predators as their sea-ice habitat shrank. 'The idea is to show as accurately as possible how the bears live in the wild - but in a lab,' Laura Pirard, a Belgian toxicologist, told AFP. 'To do this, we take their (fatty) tissue, cut it in very thin slices and expose it to the stresses they face, in other words pollutants and stress hormones,' said Pirard, who developed the method. Moments after the bear collapsed, the chopper circled back and landed. Researchers spilled out, boots crunching on the snow. One knelt by the bear's flank, cutting thin strips of fatty tissue. Another drew blood. Each sample was sealed and labelled before the bear was fitted with a satellite collar. Scientists said that while the study monitors all the bears, only females were tracked with GPS collars as their necks are smaller than their heads - unlike males, who cannot keep a collar on for more than a few minutes. This photograph taken with a thermical-infrared camera shows the head of the Polar Bear Program Jon Aars (right) changing the GPS collar of a female polar bear, in front of Norwegian veterinarian Rolf Arne Olberg (right) measuring a big polar bear male (left) in eastern Spitzbergen.--AFP French scientist Marie-Anne Blanchet (right) and Norwegian scientist Magnus Andersen take a badipose biopsie on a just sedated big polar bear male, in eastern Spitzbergen, in the Svalbard archipelago. French spatial scientist Marie-Anne Blanchet examines bear cubs before taking adipose tissue biopsies and blood samples from their sedated mother. French scientist Marie-Anne Blanchet (right) and Norwegian scientist Magnus Andersen take a badipose biopsie on a just sedated big polar bear male. French scientist Marie-Anne Blanchet walks past a helicopter as she brings biopsies in a thermos to the toxicolgists onboard "Kronprins Haakon" vessel. Belgian toxicologist Laura Pirard (right), specialized in marine mammals, tests the 'Slice' method on polar bear adipose tissue biopsies, with Finnnish toxicologist specialized in marine mammals, Heli Routti (left), in a laboratory onboard the science icebreaking vessel 'Kronprins Haakon' while sailing in eastern Spitzbergen. Belgian toxicologist Laura Pirard, specialized in marine mammals, shows biopsy slices samples of polar bears adipose tissue, in a laboratory onboard the science icebreaker vessel 'Kronprins Haakon'. The head of the Polar Bear Program, Jon Aars (second right) from Norway adresses a briefing to scientists, Marie-Anne Blanchet (second left) from France, Laura Pirard (top left) from Belgium, Sofie Soderstrom from Sweden, helicopter pilot Stig Folid (right) from Norway and helicopter mechanic Elias birkeflet (left) from Norway, in eastern Spitzbergen, while sailing to the Svalbard archipelago onboard the 'Kronprins Haakon'. This photograph shows a sedated female polar bear with a GPS collar and her two cubs. This photograph shows blood samples of polar bears. This photograph shows two adipose biopsies of polar bears. This photograph shows the scientific ice-going vessel "Kronprins Haakon" sailing through the sea ice in eastern Spitzbergen. This photograph shows a helicopter looking for traces of polar bears near glaciers. A male polar bear bear walks on the sea ice near glaciers. Finnnish toxicologist specialized in marine mammals Heli Routti poses in the Scientific Ice going vessel "Kronprins Haakon". Arctic lab For the scientists aboard the Norwegian Polar Institute's research vessel Kronprins Haakon, these fleeting encounters were the culmination of months of planning and decades of Arctic fieldwork. In a makeshift lab on the icebreaker, samples remained usable for several days, subjected to controlled doses of pollutants and hormones before being frozen for further analysis back on land. Each tissue fragment gave Pirard and her colleagues insight into the health of an animal that spent much of its life on sea ice. Analysis of the fat samples showed that the main pollutants present were per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) - synthetic chemicals used in industry and consumer goods that linger in the environment for decades. Despite years of exposure, Svalbard's polar bears showed no signs of emaciation or ill health, according to the team. The local population has remained stable or even increased slightly, unlike parts of Canada, where the Western Hudson Bay group declined by 27 percent between 2016 and 2021, from 842 to 618 bears, according to a government aerial survey. Other populations in the Canadian Arctic, including the Southern Beaufort Sea, have also shown long-term declines linked to reduced prey access and longer ice-free seasons. Scientists estimate there are around 300 polar bears in the Svalbard archipelago and roughly 2,000 in the broader region stretching from the North Pole to the Barents Sea. The team found no direct link between sea ice loss and higher concentrations of pollutants in Svalbard's bears. Instead, differences in pollutant levels came down to the bears' diet. Two types of bears - sedentary and pelagic - feed on different prey, leading to different chemicals building up in their bodies. Changing diet With reduced sea ice, the bears' diets have already started shifting, researchers said. These behavioral adaptations appeared to help maintain the population's health. 'They still hunt seals but they also take reindeer (and) eggs. They even eat grass (seaweed), even though that has no energy for them,' Jon Aars, the head of the Svalbard polar bear program, told AFP. 'If they have very little sea ice, they necessarily need to be on land,' he said, adding that they spend 'much more time on land than they used to... 20 or 30 years ago'. This season alone, Aars and his team of marine toxicologists and spatial behavior experts captured 53 bears, fitted 17 satellite collars, and tracked 10 mothers with cubs or yearlings. 'We had a good season,' Aars said. The team's innovations go beyond biopsies. Last year, they attached small 'health log' cylinders to five females, recording their pulse and temperature. Combined with GPS data, the devices offer a detailed record of how the bears roam, how they rest and what they endure. Polar bears were once hunted freely across Svalbard but since an international protection agreement in 1976, the population here has slowly recovered. The team's findings may help explain how the bears' world is changing, and at an alarming rate. As the light faded and the icebreaker's engines hummed against the vast silence, the team packed away their tools, leaving the Arctic wilderness to its inhabitants. — AFP
Kuwait Times
16-07-2025
- Kuwait Times
Bull sharks linger in warming Sydney waters
Bull sharks are lingering off Sydney's beaches for longer periods each year as oceans warm, researchers said Friday, predicting they may one day stay all year. The predators are migratory, swimming north in winter when Sydney's long-term ocean temperatures dip below 19 degrees Celsius (66 degrees Fahrenheit) to bask in the balmier waters off Queensland. A team of scientists looked at 15 years of acoustic tracking of 92 tagged migratory sharks in an area including Bondi Beach and Sydney Harbor. Records show the sharks now spend an average of 15 days longer off Sydney's coast in summer than they did in 2009, said James Cook University researcher Nicolas Lubitz. 'If they're staying longer, it means that people and prey animals have a longer window of overlap with them.' Bull sharks gather to inspect a group of divers and a bait box that has caught their attending off the coast of Jupiter, Florida. Shark attacks are rare in ocean-loving Australia, and most serious bites are from three species: bull sharks, great whites, and tiger sharks, according to a national database. There have been more than 1,200 shark incidents around Australia since 1791, of which over 250 resulted in death. Researchers found an average warming of 0.57C in Bondi for the October-May period between 2006 and 2024, said the study published in the peer-reviewed journal Science of The Total Environment. Over a longer period, remotely sensed summer sea-surface temperatures in the area rose an average 0.67C between 1982 and 2024, they said. Bull sharks 'year-round' 'If this trend persists, which it likely will, it just means that these animals are going to spend more and more time towards their seasonal distributional limit, which currently is southern and central New South Wales,' Lubitz said. 'So it could be that a few decades from now, maybe bull sharks are present year-round in waters off Sydney,' he added. 'While the chances of a shark bite, and shark bites in Australia in general, remain low, it just means that people have to be more aware of an increased window of bull shark presence in coastal waters off Sydney.' Climate change could also change breeding patterns, Lubitz said, with early evidence indicating juvenile sharks were appearing in rivers further south. There was some evidence as well that summer habitats for great whites, which prefer colder waters, were decreasing in northern New South Wales and Queensland, he said. Tagged sharks trigger an alarm when they swim within range of a network of receivers dotted around parts of the Australian coast, giving people real-time warnings on a mobile app of their presence at key locations.—AFP This handout image released by Simon Fraser University/James Cook University shows bull sharks in the waters off Fiji. --AFP photos
Arab Times
16-07-2025
- Arab Times
Astronomers discover hidden alien planet 35 times heavier than Earth
NEW YORK, July 16: Astronomers have uncovered a previously undetected alien planet, Kepler-139f, by analyzing the orbits of known planets within the Kepler-139 star system. This hidden exoplanet is about twice the mass of Neptune and 35 times the mass of Earth, taking approximately 355 days to orbit its host star. The discovery was published on May 2, 2025, in The Astrophysical Journal Letters. Kepler-139f had managed to remain elusive due to limitations in early detection methods used by NASA's Kepler Space Telescope. Kepler, which identified nearly 3,000 exoplanets over its nine-year mission, primarily detected planets that passed directly between their star and Earth, causing a brief dimming of the star's light. This allowed scientists to identify the size of these planets. However, Kepler could not detect planets that were positioned above or below the line of sight of the telescope, meaning some planets remained hidden. However, because Kepler-139 is home to multiple planets, astronomers had the opportunity to search for worlds outside of Kepler's original detection range. The system was known to contain three rocky super-Earths that transit their star, and later, a fourth gas giant was discovered. Astronomers observed gaps in the orbits of these planets, suggesting the presence of an additional, unseen world. By studying these orbital gaps in detail, scientists were able to infer the existence of Kepler-139f. "The challenge isn't in finding non-transiting planets but in identifying situations where we can deduce the location of these hidden worlds," explained Caleb Lammers, a graduate student at Princeton University and co-author of the study. "It was through precise measurements of the known planets' orbits, including radial velocity (RV) and transit timing variations (TTVs), that we could infer the existence of Kepler-139f." The RV technique measures the gravitational pull a planet exerts on its host star, helping astronomers determine the planet's mass. Additionally, TTVs—subtle variations in the timing of transits of known planets—can indicate the presence of other planets that don't transit the star themselves. Lammers and his colleague, Joshua Winn, an astrophysicist at Princeton and participating scientist on the Kepler mission, worked together to identify these gaps in the system. Using a combination of RV and TTV measurements, the pair discovered Kepler-139f nestled between the outermost super-Earth and a gas giant in the system. Kepler-139f's discovery also provided clarity on the previously puzzling density of Kepler-139c, the outermost super-Earth in the system. The earlier density readings were incorrectly influenced by the pull of the hidden planet, but with Kepler-139f identified, the team revised the data, providing more typical density values for Kepler-139c. The discovery raises the possibility that other unseen planets may be lurking in the Kepler-139 system. "There may still be other undiscovered planets in the system, especially given the prominent gap between planets b and c," said Lammers. "The challenge now is to find them." While the Kepler and TESS (Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite) missions have been adept at detecting planets closer to their stars—where transits are more frequent and easier to observe—planets further away with wider orbits present more difficulties. Additionally, the RV method is more effective for detecting larger, more massive planets due to their stronger gravitational influence. This bias toward larger worlds has made it harder to detect smaller, more distant planets, particularly those that don't transit their stars. To combat these challenges, astronomers are combining multiple methods—transits, RVs, and TTVs—to identify smaller, hidden planets. "It's likely that many planetary systems host unseen worlds, particularly in their outer regions," Lammers added. Looking ahead, the European Space Agency's upcoming PLATO mission, launching in 2026, will provide an even more powerful tool for detecting these hidden planets. PLATO will survey transiting planets and revisit the Kepler field, refining TTV measurements and boosting the potential for discovering more misaligned and hidden worlds. "In the near future, TTV-based planet detection is expected to accelerate significantly with the PLATO mission," Lammers concluded.
