James' World 2

Click the link below the picture

.

With Artemis II’s Orion spacecraft and its four crew nearing a splashdown off San Diego, Calif., after a spectacularly successful flyby of the moon, NASA’s plan to return humans to the lunar surface for the first time in more than 50 years now seems almost unstoppable. But it may still be Chinese astronauts, rather than American ones, who will take the next fateful steps on the moon in the 21st century.

NASA’s Artemis II circumlunar mission has dominated the spaceflight calendar this year, with its crew reaching new heights and returning stunning views of Earth from deep space. Yet China has quietly been making its own large, if less headline-grabbing, strides toward putting its astronauts on the moon.

On February 11, a single-stage version of China’s in-development moon rocket, the Long March 10, topped with a Mengzhou spacecraft, lifted off from a pad at the Wenchang Space Launch Site on the nation’s southern island of Hainan. Early in the ascent, mission controllers deliberately triggered a solid rocket system designed to rapidly pull the spacecraft away from danger in case of trouble with its launcher. Mengzhou then descended via parachutes for recovery in the South China Sea, marking a successful in-flight abort of the uncrewed spacecraft. Meanwhile the Long March 10 stage continued its flight to simulate a full orbital mission before it performed a boost-back burn and a controlled, propulsive splashdown into the waves—a feat that NASA’s current moon rocket, the Space Launch System (SLS), simply cannot match.

These tests pave the way for the next crucial milestone: a full orbital flight of the Long March 10 and Mengzhou later this year, though most likely without crew. As is typical of China, which tends to be tight-lipped about many specifics of its space plans, the nation has not divulged when exactly this flight will take place. Candidate mission patches for the inaugural flight suggest that Mengzhou, which features a low-Earth orbit variant designed to carry six or seven astronauts and another to take three to low lunar orbit, could rendezvous with or fly alongside China’s Tiangong space station. The rocket will be the Long March 10A, a slimmed-down version of the rocket that will be meant for low-Earth orbit rather than any lunar destination.

China is not yet ready to perform a crewed circumlunar mission like the U.S., which began development of the Orion spacecraft in the 2000s and redesigned it to go with the SLS rocket in the early 2010s. But China is progressing on all the necessary hardware to reach the moon, with a stated goal of a crewed landing before 2030. Notably, the nation has already tested a key component that the U.S. is still working to bring online: the landing hardware. Last year, China demonstrated its Lanyue crewed lunar lander, performing a propulsive lunar landing and lunar launch tests in simulated moon gravity conditions. In the U.S., SpaceX and Blue Origin are both working on NASA-funded lander concepts needed to make a 2028 Artemis landing possible. Meanwhile, new launch facilities at Wenchang to host the full Long March 10 rocket are almost completed.

The full Long March 10 will use a common booster core configuration, similar to how the SpaceX Falcon Heavy is essentially a triple-sized Falcon 9. After test flights of the 10A, the next step will be bundling together three booster cores—something commercial firm CAS Space achieved in China for the first time late last month—for the larger rocket and test flights to the moon.

To get to the moon, China will use two Long March 10 rockets, one launching a crewed Mengzhou spacecraft and the other lofting the Lanyue lunar lander. These will meet up in low lunar orbit, with two astronauts transferring from Mengzhou to Lanyue for the descent to the lunar surface. It is likely that China will perform crewed low-Earth orbit and uncrewed lunar missions before progressing to an Artemis II–style mission in the next couple of years, setting up a potential crewed lunar landing attempt before the decade is out.

NASA, aiming for a landing in 2028 with Artemis IV, relies on a complex network of commercial and international partners, while China’s more centralized approach depends largely on its state-owned contractor, the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation.

“If the Chinese can maintain a single concentrated effort, they will retain an advantage, as the U.S. is splitting its resources and seemingly making large structural programmatic changes very late in the day,” says Bleddyn Bowen, co-director of the Space Research Center at Durham University in England. “Ironically, today China’s effort resembles the 1960s U.S. Apollo moon program more, while the U.S. Artemis program resembles the Soviet Union’s competing design bureaus of the late 1960s.”

The narrative of a “race” is hard to avoid. But that depends on the point of view of the competitor. “It really is one-sided, at least in public,” says Victoria Samson, chief director for space security and stability at the Secure World Foundation. “The United States constantly cites China’s intentions for the moon as the reason why the U.S. has to get back there first, while I don’t think I’ve seen anything equivalent come from Chinese statements.” That’s not to say China isn’t invested in lunar exploration: Samson views geopolitical competition with the U.S. as a driver for the Chinese space program.

“I do see the United States getting there first but just barely, and I think that the Chinese have a better chance of getting a permanently crewed station on the moon first,” she adds.

Race or not, the two rivals will need to reach an understanding on key aspects of lunar exploration, Samson says.

“If the United States is serious about having a permanent human presence on the moon, we are going to have to figure out how to coordinate with the Chinese on matters of safety and interoperability—whether we like it or not,” she says. “People’s lives will depend on it.”

.

.

.

Click the link below for the complete article:

.

__________________________________________

Click the link below the picture

.

.

Nato secretary general Mark Rutte with Donald Trump at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on 21 January 2026. Photograph: Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images

.

.

Click the link below for the complete article:

.

__________________________________________

Click the link below the picture

.

When President Trump attacked Iran on Feb. 28, we called his decision reckless. He went to war without seeking congressional approval or the support of most allies. He offered thin and contradictory justifications to the American people. He failed to explain why this naïve attempt at regime change would end better than earlier attempts by the United States in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere.

In the six weeks since, the recklessness of his war has become clearer yet. He has disdained careful military planning and acted on gut instinct and wishfulness. After Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel predicted to Mr. Trump that the attacks would inspire a popular uprising in Iran, the director of the C.I.A. countered that the notion was “farcical,” The Times reported. Mr. Trump proceeded nonetheless. He was so confident that he assembled no plan to respond to an obvious countermove available to Iran: causing a spike in oil prices by blocking the Strait of Hormuz. Nor did he develop a feasible strategy for securing the enriched uranium that Iran can use to rebuild its nuclear program.

Last week he careened from illegal and immoral threats about erasing Iranian civilization to a last-minute cease-fire that accomplishes few of his announced war aims. Iran continues to defy a central part of the deal and block most traffic from crossing the Strait of Hormuz. Mr. Trump’s irresponsibility has left t

The United States on the cusp of a humiliating strategic defeat.

As we have emphasized, Iran’s regime deserves no sympathy. It has spent decades oppressing its people and sponsoring terrorism elsewhere. And the current war, combined with the June attacks by the United States and Israel and other Israeli operations since 2023, weakened Iran in important ways. Its navy, air force, and air defenses have been degraded, and its nuclear program has been set back. Its murderous network of regional allies — including Hamas, Hezbollah, and Syria’s fallen government — has been eroded.

Yet these successes cannot mask the ways in which the war has weakened the United States. We count four main setbacks for America’s national interests that are the direct result of Mr. Trump’s carelessness. These setbacks likewise weaken global democracy when authoritarians in China, Russia, and elsewhere were already feeling emboldened.

The most tangible blow to the United States and the world is the increased influence that Iran has secured over the global economy by weaponizing the Strait of Hormuz. About 20 percent of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas flows through the strait, which is next to Iran’s southern shore.

Before the war, Iran’s leaders feared that blocking traffic would invite new economic sanctions and a military attack. Once the attack happened anyway, Iran closed the strait to nearly all traffic except its own ships. The policy is inexpensive because it mostly involves a threat, namely that a drone, missile, or small boat  blow up a tanker. Forcibly reopening the strait, by contrast, would require an enormous military operation potentially including ground troops and an extended occupation.

Mr. Trump’s lack of foresight about the Strait reveals glaring incompetence. The two-week cease-fire does not bring back the status quo because Iran is still limiting traffic and has threatened to impose tolls as part of a final peace deal. The war has shown Iran’s leaders that controlling the waterway is a real possibility. Eventually, other countries are likely to develop alternatives, including pipelines, but those solutions will take time. For now, Iran appears to have won diplomatic leverage that it could have only dreamed of six weeks ago. The only apparent way to change the situation would be for a global coalition to demand the strait’s reopening — the sort of coalition that Mr. Trump is distinctly unsuited to lead.

The second setback is to America’s military standing around the world. This war, together with recent U.S. assistance to Ukraine, Israel and other allies, has burned through a substantial portion of the stockpile of some weapons, such as Tomahawk missiles and Patriot interceptors (which can shoot down other missiles). Experts believe the Pentagon used more than one-quarter of its Tomahawk missiles just in the war against Iran. Returning the stockpile to its previous size will take years, and the United States will have to make tough choices about where to maintain its military strength in the meantime. Already, the Pentagon has pulled missile defenses from South Korea.

The war has also revealed that the U.S. military is vulnerable to new ways of warfare. America used billions of dollars’ worth of high-tech munitions to destroy Iran’s traditional air and naval forces, while Tehran used cheap, disposable drones to halt traffic through the Strait of Hormuz and hit targets in the region. The world saw how a country that spends one-hundredth of what the United States does on its military can seek to outlast it in a conflict. It is a reminder of the urgent need to reform America’s military.

The war’s third big cost is to America’s alliances. Japan, South Korea, Australia, Canada and most of Western Europe refused to support the United States in this war — unsurprisingly, given Mr. Trump’s treatment of them. When he demanded their help in reopening the Strait of Hormuz, most allies declined. These countries will remain allies in important ways, but they have made clear that they no longer consider the United States a reliable friend. They are working to build stronger relationships with one another so that they can better resist Washington in the future. “Perhaps the greatest long-term damage to the United States from the Iran war will be in its relationships with allies around the world,” Daniel Byman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington wrote on Wednesday.

The situation in the Middle East is more nuanced. Iran’s decision to attack its Arab neighbors during the war may draw those countries closer to the United States. But that prospect is uncertain. Saudi Arabia and other Persian Gulf countries have been damaged economically by the war and feel abandoned by Mr. Trump’s cease-fire. The past six weeks have given them reason to question his judgment and his understanding of their interests.

The fourth setback is to America’s moral authority. For all the flaws of this country, it remains a beacon to many around the world. When pollsters ask people where they would move if they could, the United States is consistently the runaway No. 1 answer. America’s appeal stems not only from its prosperity but also from

ts freedom and democratic values. Mr. Trump has undercut those values for his entire political career and perhaps never more than in the past week, when he made odious threats to erase Iranian civilization. His Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, made a series of bloodthirsty remarks, including a threat to offer “no quarter, no mercy for our enemies.”

Those would be war crimes. Mr. Trump and Mr. Hegseth have embraced a brutal approach to armed conflict that the United States led the world in rejecting after World War II. By doing so, they have undermined the foundations of America’s global leadership, which claims to place human dignity at the center of an argument for a freer and more open world.

Our editorial board has long opposed Mr. Trump’s approach to politics and governing. Yet we take no pleasure in his failures over the past six weeks. For one thing, there have been deaths, injuries, and destruction, in Iran, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, and elsewhere. At least 13 U.S. service members have died in the war.

It is also a mistake for any Americans, including Mr. Trump’s critics, to root for this country to fail. We all have a stake in the nation that he leads. So does the rest of the free world. There are no other democracies with the economic and military strength to counter China and Russia. When America is weaker and poorer, as this war has made us, authoritarianism benefits.

The best hope now may sound naïve, but it remains true. Mr. Trump should at long last recognize the ineptitude of his impulsive, go-it-alone approach. He should involve Congress and seek help from America’s allies to minimize the damage from his war.

.

Jason Hendardy for The New York Times

.

.

Click the link below for the complete article:

.

__________________________________________

Click the link below the bottom picture

.

After a record-breaking trip around the moon and back, the Artemis II mission is on its way home to Earth, and preparations are in full swing for its final descent. NASA is targeting splashdown—the moment that the capsule holding the crew will hit the Pacific Ocean—for Friday at 8:07 P.M. EDT. But the hours and minutes leading up to that moment are all critical.

The four Artemis II astronauts—Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch and Jeremy Hansen—will begin their day at 11:35 A.M. Shortly after that, at approximately 1:50 P.M., they will be working to configure the capsule’s cramped cabin for reentry, stowing away baggage and making sure that everything they need for their journey through the Earth’s atmosphere is ready to go.

Next, NASA has scheduled a final trajectory-course-correction burn for 2:53 P.M. if needed to keep the mission’s Orion capsule, named Integrity by the crew, on track for its final target—Earth.

The astronauts will also review their reentry checklist to make sure that they are each properly in their space suit, which will help protect them on the potentially bumpy ride down, and clear on their responsibilities during the fall.

NASA will livestream the entire process, with the space agency’s own broadcast coverage beginning at around 6:30 P.M.—a little more than an hour before the capsule is due to reenter Earth’s atmosphere.

Moments before it does, the capsule will ditch its bulky service module at about 42 minutes before splashdown. Then, at approximately 7:37 P.M., the Orion capsule will perform a quick burn to maneuver into the right position and attitude for reentry and splashdown. Subsequently, at around 7:53 P.M., Orion will reenter Earth’s upper atmosphere some 400,000 feet above the surface, kicking off a 13-minute descent. At this time, the capsule will be traveling at about 24,000 miles an hour.

.

NASA

.

.

Click the link below for the complete article:

.

__________________________________________

Click the link below the picture

.

Sixteen weeks into my second pregnancy, I had a miscarriage alone at home on an otherwise unremarkable autumn afternoon. I had officially entered the supposed “safe zone” of the second trimester, the point in pregnancy where risks of fetal complications and loss drop dramatically. By the time I saw bright red blood, I was certain I was “out of the woods.” I had finally begun to wrap my mind around the idea of having another child. My husband and I were excited to introduce a newborn into the confident rhythm we had established with our 3 1/2-year-old son. It was the beginning of one of the most devastating and profound experiences of my life. As a clinical psychologist who specializes in reproductive and maternal mental health, I was well aware that up to 1 in 4 pregnancies end in miscarriage. I knew the heart-wrenching reality of that experience as well as I could without having yet lived through it myself. Throughout my own pregnancy, I’d listened to heartbreaking stories of pregnancy loss, including chemical pregnancies, ectopic pregnancies, twin loss, infant loss, stillbirths, and terminations for medical reasons. I’d sat with countless women as they processed their grief, how their histories and experiences compounded those feelings, and how the unfortunate silence, stigma, and shame that so often follows pregnancy and infant loss heightened their pain. Now, however, my theoretical knowledge of the experience became corporeal.

Despite the fact that up to 25% of known pregnancies end in miscarriage (the actual number being likely much higher due to chemical pregnancies and underreporting), research shows that a majority of women feel a sense of shame, self-blame, and guilt in the aftermath of pregnancy loss. Cultural ideas about women’s bodies and patriarchal messages have wormed their way into women’s own perceptions of themselves, firmly planting the idea that if we haven’t “successfully” carried a healthy baby to term, our bodies must be somehow defective or inadequate, or we must have done something “wrong” to cause the loss. However, most miscarriages are the result of fetal chromosomal abnormalities, not the result of anything a woman did or didn’t do. Despite this, a national survey found that people believed miscarriage could be caused by going through a stressful event (76% of responders), lifting a heavy object (64%), previously having an intrauterine device (IUD) (28%), or taking birth control pills (22%). The misconceptions surrounding miscarriage get even wilder: The survey found 21% of people believed it could be caused by getting into an argument, 7% thought it could be caused by moderate exercise, and 4% thought it could be caused by having sex.

In my practice, I’ve found that the impulse to blame ourselves is often about perceptions of control. If I did something wrong and this is my fault, that means maybe I can do things differently the next time around and therefore change the outcome. There is shame in those thoughts, but perversely, there is also a sense of agency. That grasp for control is closely related to the cultural stigma attached to pregnancy loss that prevents women from talking about it openly and breeds isolation and misinformation. But when women know the facts about miscarriage and why it happens, they are less likely to blame themselves.

While I fully believe in the importance of talking about stigmatized issues like pregnancy loss, sexual trauma, anxiety and depression, and aging, I know from experience that doing so is hard.

 

We live in a culture that tells women that so many of the challenges they face are somehow our fault and that whatever we’re feeling about those challenges should be kept quiet. That cultural message often keeps us from talking about the most important and real experiences in our lives, overwhelmed by the fear that if we do speak our truths, we will be met with stunned stares or awkward lapses in conversations. But in the absence of real, nuanced, and sometimes messy conversations about the truth of our experiences, we feel ashamed and often end up turning our pain inward, convinced we should be able to swallow it and push through.

Even as someone who fully believes in the importance of talking about stigmatized issues like pregnancy loss, sexual trauma, anxiety and depression, and aging, I know from experience that doing so is hard. There’s no single source of the pressure to stay silent about these taboo subjects; it’s in the water, so to speak. Women go through so many potentially momentous transitions over the course of their lives, inhabiting many roles and navigating continually changing bodies while fielding messages from a culture hell-bent on telling them how to look, how to feel, how to act, how to be at every available opportunity. In so many moments in a woman’s life, there’s an insidious whisper: This is too messy. Don’t talk about it.

.

MTStock Studio/E+/Getty Images

.

.

Click the link below for the complete article:

.

__________________________________________

Click the link below the picture

.

By Julian E. Barnes

Julian E. Barnes reports on national security and has been tracking the Iranian effort to mine the Strait of Hormuz.

April 10, 2026

Iran has been unable to open the Strait of Hormuz to more shipping traffic because it cannot locate all of the mines it laid in the waterway and lacks the capability to remove them, according to U.S. officials.

The development is one reason Iran has not been able to quickly comply with the Trump administration’s admonitions to let more traffic pass through the strait. It is also potentially a complicating factor as Iranian negotiators and a U.S. delegation led by Vice President JD Vance meet in Pakistan this weekend for peace talks.

Iran used small boats to mine the strait last month, soon after the United States and Israel began their war against the country. The mines, plus the threat of Iranian drone and missile attacks, slowed the number of oil tankers and other vessels passing through the strait to a trickle, driving up energy prices and providing Iran with its best leverage in the war.

Iran left a path through the strait open, allowing ships that pay a toll to pass through.

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps has issued warnings that ships could collide with sea mines, and semiofficial news organizations have published charts showing safe routes.

Those routes are limited in large part because Iran mined the strait haphazardly, U.S. officials said. It is not clear that Iran recorded where it put every mine. And even when the location was recorded, some mines were placed in a way that allowed them to drift or move, according to the officials.

As with land mines, removing nautical mines is far more difficult than placing them. The U.S. military lacks robust mine removal capabilities, relying on littoral combat ships equipped with mine sweeping capabilities. Iran also does not have the capability of quickly removing mines, even the ones it planted.

In a social media post on Tuesday discussing a pause in the American-Israeli war with Iran, President Trump said a two-week cease-fire was contingent on the “COMPLETE, IMMEDIATE, and SAFE OPENING” of the Strait of Hormuz.

On Wednesday, Abbas Araghchi, the Iranian foreign minister, said that the strait would be open to traffic “with due consideration of technical limitations.” American officials have said Mr. Araghchi’s comment about technical limitations was a reference to Iran’s inability to quickly find or remove the mines.

Mr. Araghchi is now in Islamabad for meetings on Saturday with Mr. Vance. Given Mr. Trump’s demands to open the strait, the issue of how quickly safe passage through the waterway can be increased is likely to be a point of discussion.

The U.S. military sought to destroy Iran’s navy, sinking ships and targeting naval bases. But Iran has hundreds of small boats that it can use to harass ships or lay mines. Destroying all of those small boats has proved impossible.

Even before Iran began laying mines, threats from its leaders quickly disrupted global shipping and sent oil prices up sharply. On March 2, a senior official with the Revolutionary Guards announced that the strait was closed and claimed Iran would set ships “ablaze” if they entered the waterway, according to state media.

In the days after that threat, Iran began mining the strait, even as the United States intensified strikes on Iranian naval assets. At the time, American officials said Iran was not planting mines quickly or efficiently.

Because it was difficult to track the small boats deploying the mines, the United States is uncertain precisely how many Iran has placed in the strait or where they are located.

.

Cargo ships near the Strait of Hormuz, as seen last month from northern Ras al-Khaimah in the United Arab Emirates. 

Credit…Reuters.

.

Click the link below for the complete article:

https://www.nytimes.com

.

__________________________________________

Click the link below the picture

.

Say you accidentally cut the tip of your finger off. Especially if this happened to you as a child, there’s a good chance it would regrow—skin, nail, and all. The same is true for other mammals such as monkeys and mice. Unfortunately, however, our regenerative abilities stop there. While some other creatures, most notably salamanders and starfish, can regenerate entire limbs, mammals don’t have this evolutionary superpower.

“The big question is: Why are mammals limited?” says Jessica Whited, an associate professor of stem cell and regenerative biology at Harvard University.

Part of the reason why our cells only have a limited ability to regenerate may have to do with our genes. But according to new research, two key environmental mechanisms may be at play, too.

How rich a tissue is in hyaluronic acid and how well it can sense oxygen may affect its ability to regrow and heal, a pair of new studies published in Science on Thursday suggest. The results could lead to better wound treatments and possibly the ability to one day regrow larger pieces of human tissue—even limbs.

In one study, researchers investigated what might makes the mammalian fingertip special: Why can only the tip of the finger regrow, whereas the rest of it can’t? “Same finger, two entirely different outcomes,” says Byron Mui, lead author of the study and a postdoctoral fellow at the Stanford University School of Medicine.

The researchers found that mice with a partial finger amputation could regrow part of their finger more easily and with less scarring when there were higher levels of hyaluronic acid in the animals’ “extracellular matrix”—the material between cells. Hyaluronic acid may be familiar to some readers: it is a common ingredient in face creams and moisturizers that claim to reduce wrinkles.

The study “elegantly challenges” the idea that scarring is a given in mammals that have lost a limb or digit, according to a related commentary in Science that was co-authored by Whited, who was not involved with either study.

In the other study, researchers compared two species: African clawed frog tadpoles and embryonic mice. Tadpoles can regenerate their limbs; embryonic mice can’t.

The researchers subjected amputated tissues from tadpoles and embryonic mice to various laboratory tests, explains molecular biologist Georgios Tsissios, the study’s lead author. In a low-oxygen environment—similar to that of tadpoles’ usual aquatic habitat—mice tissue healed better than when it was exposed to more oxygen.

“These experiments showed that lowering oxygen in embryonic mouse limbs can make them mimic frog tadpole limbs, enabling them to activate the very early regenerative responses,” Tsissios says.

Tsissios and his colleagues found, however, that tadpole cells appear to be worse at sensing oxygen than embryonic mice cells do—suggesting that tissue regeneration may be influenced by both levels of oxygen and the animals’ ability to sense it.

The results are preliminary: in neither study did the researchers regrow entire mammalian limbs. And any kind of tissue regeneration therapy for humans based on these findings is a long way off, Whited says. But the studies do offer hope for human research because they offer clues to what factors—both in the animals’ biology and their environment—may determine their tissue’s regenerative powers.

“As a field, the way that we piece all of these puzzle pieces together will eventually lead to human limb regeneration,” Whited predicts.

.

.

.

Click the link below for the complete article:

.

__________________________________________

Click the link below the picture

.

Click unmute on the 17-minutes + video for sound!

Welcome back to the Fluctus Channel, as we explore China’s massive Goupitan shiplift, one of the world’s tallest ship elevators, and the advanced elevator operations onboard US Aircraft Carriers. Fluctus is a website and YouTube channel dedicated to sea geeks. Whenever you are curious or an incorrigible lover of this mysterious world, our videos are made for you ! We publish 3 videos a week on our YouTube channel and many more articles on our website. Feel free to subscribe to not miss any of our updates and visit our website to discover additional content. Don’t forget to follow us on twitter: Please keep the comments section respectful. Any spam, insults, or troll will be deleted. To contact us, make sure to use our email in the about section of this channel.

.

.

.

Click the link below for the complete article (17 minutes + video):

.

__________________________________________

Click the link below the bottom picture

.

Here’s what happened in the war in the Middle East on Thursday.

.

.

Click the link below for the complete article:

https://www.nytimes.com

.

__________________________________________

Click the link below the bottom picture

.

NASA’s Artemis II moon mission began the return leg of its historic voyage on Monday night, completing the first half of an elegant figure eight “free return” trajectory from the Earth to the moon and back again.

“We will continue our journey even further into space before Mother Earth succeeds in pulling us back,” said astronaut Jeremy Hansen, one of Artemis II’s missions specialists, as the team broke a distance record from Earth for space travel on Monday. “We most importantly choose this moment to challenge this generation and the next to make sure this record is not long-lived.” In marking the record, the Artemis II astronauts proposed that one crater be named Integrity, after their Orion spacecraft, and that another be named Carroll, for mission commander Reid Wiseman’s late wife, Carroll Taylor Wiseman, who died in 2020.

The spacecraft has performed as expected, despite some minor computer glitches and toilet trouble, according to NASA.

Launched on April 1, Artemis II is now in the seventh day of its mission to demonstrate a successful crewed trip around the moon—the first in more than a half-century. Around 7:02 P.M. EDT on Monday, the Orion capsule and its crew of four astronauts set a distance record for human spaceflight, reaching 252,756 miles from Earth as it arced around the moon before falling back home.

That’s right: falling. Artemis II’s homecoming is already baked into the voyage, courtesy of the moon’s gravity bending the Orion spacecraft’s trajectory to wing the capsule home without much, if any, help from Orion’s rocket engines. That’s the “free” part of the free return trajectory, says Samantha Kenyon, an assistant professor of aerospace engineering at Virginia Tech.

The choice, Kenyon says, was to either fire Orion’s engines as the spacecraft swooped over the far side of the moon and out of radio contact with Earth—or to fire them much earlier in the mission and closer to Earth. Choosing the latter course “means less risk for the astronauts in the capsule” if something were wrong with the rockets, she says. The free return trajectory also set up the spaceflight distance record that the crew set yesterday.

Last Thursday, the Orion capsule—officially named Integrity—fired its rockets for nearly six minutes in a “translunar injection burn” that consumed roughly 1,000 pounds of fuel, just enough to loosen Earth’s gravitational grip and set a course for looping around the lunar far side and free return. The maneuver went so well that the space agency skipped two out of three smaller corrective burns built into the mission’s schedule.

Aerospace engineers can plot such trajectories by thinking of the respective pulls of Earth and the moon as gravity “wells,” Kenyon says. Imagine these gravity wells as topographic maps of sorts, where Earth and the moon are two gravitational holes rotating around each other, surrounded by curving hills. The free return trajectory is essentially a marble trick of sending Integrity scooting along the curves mapped around the moon’s moving gravity well on a path that gets captured again by Earth’s gravity well. “Once you get to a certain height on that hill’s topographic map and get on that path, you stay on for free,” she says. “All the spacecraft is doing is just following the path that’s associated with the energy that it’s been given.”

.

.

.

Click the link below for the complete article:

.

__________________________________________