Four new astronauts arrive at the International Space Station to replace NASA’s evacuated crew.

SpaceX delivered the U.S., French and Russian astronauts a day after launching them from Cape Canaveral.

Last month’s medical evacuation was NASA’s first in 65 years of human spaceflight. One of four astronauts launched by SpaceX last summer suffered what officials described as a serious health issue, prompting their hasty return. That left only three crew members to keep the place running -- one American and two Russians -- prompting NASA to pause spacewalks and trim research.

Moving in for eight to nine months are NASA’s Jessica Meir and Jack Hathaway, France’s Sophie Adenot and Russia’s Andrei Fedyaev. Meir, a marine biologist, and Fedyaev, a former military pilot, have lived up there before. During her first station visit in 2019, Meir took part in the first all-female spacewalk.

Adenot, a military helicopter pilot, is only the second French woman to fly in space. Hathaway is a captain in the U.S. Navy.

“Bonjour!” Adenot called out once the capsule docked to the space station 277 miles (446 kilometres) up. Added Meir: “Grateful to be on board, and we’re ready to get to work.”

NASA has refused to divulge the identity of the astronaut who fell ill in orbit on Jan. 7 or explain what happened, citing medical privacy. The ailing astronaut and three others returned to Earth more than a month sooner than planned. They spent their first night back on Earth at the hospital before returning to Houston.

The space agency said it did not alter its preflight medical checks for their replacements.

New #astronauts launch to the International Space Station after medical evacuation.

SpaceX launched the replacements as soon as possible at NASA’s request, sending the U.S., French and Russian astronauts on an expected eight- to nine-month mission stretching until fall. The four should arrive at the orbiting lab Saturday, filling the vacancies left by their evacuated colleagues last month and bringing the space station back to full staff.

“It turns out Friday the 13th is a very lucky day,” SpaceX Launch Control radioed once the astronauts reached orbit. “That was quite a ride,” replied the crew’s commander, Jessica Meir.

NASA had to put spacewalks on hold and deferred other duties while awaiting the arrival of Americans Meir and Jack Hathaway, France’s Sophie Adenot and Russia’s Andrei Fedyaev. They’ll join three other astronauts -- one American and two Russians -- who kept the space station running the past month.

Satisfied with medical procedures already in place, NASA ordered no extra checkups for the crew ahead of liftoff and no new diagnostic equipment was packed. An ultrasound machine already up there for research went into overdrive Jan. 7 when used on the ailing crew member. #NASA has not revealed the ill astronaut’s identity or health issue. All four returning astronauts went straight to the hospital after splashing down in the Pacific near San Diego.

Chance glimpse of star collapse offers new insight into black hole formation.

A watched pot never boils and love happens when you least expect it -- turns out, the same logic applies to capturing a star as it collapses into a black hole.

At least that proved true for one group of researchers whose work took a turn when they accidentally witnessed what appears to be an example of the astronomical unicorn, a “surprise” discovery they detailed in findings published Thursday in the journal Science.

It’s the strongest observational record yet of the long-theorized phenomenon that some stars simply fade into black holes, the authors say.

Lead author and astrophysicist Kishalay De told AFP the project began as something quite different, a study of stars under infrared light in the neighbouring Andromeda Galaxy.

But the team encountered an unusual stellar object that brightened... and then dimmed until it disappeared.

“That’s where the mystery really started,” said De, a professor at New York’s Columbia University and researcher at the Flatiron Institute.

Researchers were using long-term observations from NASA’s NEOWISE mission, which used a space telescope that surveyed the sky in infrared to detect and characterize near-Earth objects.

They were able to piece together a large data set, going back through those archives and others more than a decade to study what they’d seen.

It’s not the first time scientists have spotted a convincing example of a “failed supernova” -- when a star’s core collapses directly into a black hole and starts shedding its turbulent outer layers without a dazzling explosion.

Another prime candidate was identified in research published about a decade ago.

De said this new observation offers another clue -- and one that comes from the closest galaxy to ours, about 2.5 million light-years from Earth, meaning it was much brighter and easier to examine.

Daniel Holz -- a University of Chicago astrophysicist focused on black holes, who was not involved in the study -- told AFP the “serendipitous” nature of the latest example makes it particularly exciting.

Because it popped up within a larger-scale data collection, there was a backlog of images to analyze -- what Holz likened to “baby pictures,” or earlier documentation that could tie together the research.
‘Dying gasp’

Scientists have long carried out efforts trying to find individual stars in nearby galaxies that abruptly disappear, “but to catch them in the act is hard,” Holz said, explaining that the death of a star often comes after billions of years of living.

“You have to be really lucky,” he said. “You can’t just look at one star and say, ‘I’m just going to sit here and wait.’”

De said that’s precisely why this new research could be door-opening.

When stars die they’re thought to shed their outer layers and thus appear brighter for a time -- in this case, that shift “was flagged to us in infrared light, and that’s what led to the discovery,” De said.

“It really points us to a completely new method of identifying the disappearance of stars, by not just looking for the individual stars disappearing, but to look for the infrared brightening that’s associated with the process,” De said, what he called the star’s “dying gasp.”

The astronomer also said the star identified was slightly smaller than one scientists would “nominally expect to turn into a black hole.”

At the end of its life, De said it would have been approximately five times the mass of the Sun -- giant, but about half the size they might have anticipated.

“What this really tells us is that what we’ve assumed about the landscape of stars that turn into black holes might be much wider than what we’ve anticipated in the past,” he said.

Holz said this latest research is an “exciting step” in “teasing out the role of black holes in the universe.”

“This is another example of, you know, they’re really out there,” he said. “And that’s just really, unbelievably cool.”

Launch to ISS delayed again over weather: NASA. It is targeting Feb. 13 for the lift-off of Crew-12’s mission aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, with a window opening at 5:15 a.m. local time.

“Mission teams completed a weather review Tuesday morning and have waived off the Thursday, Feb. 12, launch opportunity due to forecast weather conditions along Crew-12’s flight path,” #NASA said in a statement.

Weather at the site in Florida has been in fact favourable, NASA officials told a briefing Monday, but higher winds forecast across the rest of the East Coast are to blame for the delays.

These winds could complicate any potential emergency manoeuvres, like an early splashdown of the spacecraft carrying the astronauts, for example.

If Friday’s launch goes as planned, the astronauts should arrive at the space station by approximately 3:15 p.m. on Saturday.

Crew-12 is composed of Americans Jessica Meir and Jack Hathaway, along with French astronaut Sophie Adenot and Russian cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev.

They remain in quarantine in NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, waiting to blast off.

The travellers will replace Crew-11, which returned to Earth in January a month earlier than planned in the first medical evacuation in the space station’s history.

ISS, a scientific laboratory orbiting 400 kilometres above Earth, has since been staffed by a skeleton crew of three.

Continuously inhabited for the last quarter-century, the aging ISS is scheduled to be de-orbited and crashed into an isolated spot in the Pacific Ocean in 2030.

NASA confirms first flight to ISS since medical evacuation. Four astronauts will blast off to re-staff the International Space Station (ISS) next week, NASA said Friday, after an emergency medical evacuation of the previous crew.

Crew-12 will lift off on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket early Wednesday, the US space agency said, with launch time “targeted for no earlier than 6:01 am” local time (1101 GMT).

The confirmation provides a sliver of certainty for the Crew-12 mission, which had faced last-minute rocket problems and staffing changes.

Earlier this week, SpaceX had grounded its Falcon 9 rockets while investigating what the Federal Aviation Administration said was a “stage 2 engine’s failure to ignite.”

“The Falcon 9 vehicle is authorized to return to flight,” an FAA spokesman told AFP Friday.

The temporary pause from SpaceX raised concerns the Crew-12 flight could have been delayed.

The mission will be replacing Crew-11, which returned to Earth in January, a month earlier than planned, during the first medical evacuation in the space station’s history.

The scientific laboratory, which orbits 250 miles (400 kilometres) above Earth, has since been staffed by a skeleton crew of three.

NASA has declined to disclose any details about the health issue that cut the mission short.

Additionally, the mission’s crew changed in November, when Russian cosmonaut Oleg Artemyev was suddenly replaced by Andrey Fedyaev.

Reports from independent media in Russia suggested Artemyev had been photographing and sending classified information with his phone. Russian space agency Roscosmos merely said he had been transferred to a different job.

In addition to Fedyaev, Crew-12 comprises Americans Jessica Meir and Jack Hathaway and French astronaut Sophie Adenot.

Once the astronauts finally get on board, they will be one of the last crews to live on board the football field-sized space station.

Continuously inhabited for the last quarter century, the ageing ISS is scheduled to be pushed into #Earth’s orbit before crashing into an isolated spot in the Pacific Ocean in 2030.

HELSINKI — China’s main space contractor says it will push into new commercial space domains in the coming years as the country formulates its latest Five-year plan.

The China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC), the country’s state-owned main space contractor, outlined plans for space tourism, digital infrastructure, resource development and space traffic management, state media China Central Television (CCTV) reported Jan. 29.

The statement comes as China prepares for annual political sessions in Beijing in March at which the country’s 15th Five-year plan (2026-2030) will be approved. The CASC statements indicate the corporation’s broad strategic intent rather than confirmed funding and schedules, but appears to fit into the Chinese government’s wider support for commercial space and strategic areas such as digital and AI infrastructure.

On space resources, CASC calls for feasibility studies for a proposed “Tiangong Kaiwu” major initiative, referring to an earlier-proposed, multi-decade roadmap for solar system-wide resource utilization. It will also seek breakthroughs for technology needed for celestial small body resource prospecting, autonomous extraction technologies and low-cost transport and on-orbit processing. While vague and in some cases far off in terms of implementation, the calls reflect China’s already known longer-term interests in asteroid exploration, cislunar infrastructure and space resource governance.

Regarding space-based digital infrastructure, CASC proposes gigawatt-scale space-based computing infrastructure, envisioning integrated cloud-edge-terminal architecture in orbit. Concepts include space data processed in space and joint space-ground computing. This aligns with Chinese interests in reducing reliance on downlink bandwidth, autonomous satellite operations and space-based AI and data processing, as demonstrated by experimental satellites and push to develop capabilities including optical inter-satellite links.

Mysterious dark matter may be better understood through a new map of far-off galaxies.

The ordinary matter all around us — stars, planets and people — makes up just 5 per cent of the universe. For decades, researchers have hoped to demystify what’s known as dark matter, a material that comprises just over a quarter of our universe. Another equally mysterious force called dark energy makes up the rest.

Dark matter doesn’t absorb or give off light so scientists can’t study it directly. But they can observe how its gravity warps and bends the star stuff around it — for example, the light from distant galaxies. By studying these distortions across large swathes of the universe, scientists can get closer to unmasking dark matter and its various hiding places.

The latest map, created with images from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, is the most detailed yet over such a large patch of sky. It has twice the resolution of previous attempts using the Hubble Space Telescope and captures hundreds of thousands of galaxies over the past 10 billion years.

“Now, we can see everything more clearly,” said study author Diana Scognamiglio with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

The latest map, published Monday in the journal Nature Astronomy, includes information on new galaxy clusters and the strands of dark matter that connect them. Piece by piece, these structures help form the skeleton of the universe. Scientists can study this map to see how dark matter has clumped up over billions of years.

Dark matter doesn’t have much of an impact on your midday lunch order or your nightly bedtime ritual. But it silently passes through your body all the time and has shaped the universe.

As humans, we’re naturally curious to know more about where we come from and that story can’t be told without dark matter, said #astrophysicist Rutuparna Das with the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics

“Our home is the universe and we want to understand what the nature of it is,” said Das, who was not involved with the new study.

#Astronauts say space station’s ultrasound machine was critical during medical crisis.

During their first public appearance since returning to Earth, the four astronauts refused Wednesday to say which one of them needed medical attention and for what reason. It was NASA’s first medical evacuation in 65 years of human spaceflight.

NASA’s Mike Fincke said the crew used the onboard ultrasound machine once the medical problem arose Jan. 7, the day before a planned spacewalk that was abruptly canceled. The astronauts had already used the device a lot for routine checks of their body changes while living in weightlessness, “so when we had this emergency, the ultrasound machine came in super handy.”

It was so useful that Fincke said there should be one on all future spaceflights. “It really helped,” he said.

“Of course, we didn’t have other big machines that we have here on planet Earth,” he added. “We do try to make sure that everybody before we fly are really, really not prone to surprises. But sometimes things happen and surprises happen, and the team was ready ... preparation was super important.”

The space station is set up as well as it can be for medical emergencies, said NASA’s Zena Cardman, who commanded the crew’s early return flight with SpaceX. She said NASA “made all the right decisions” in canceling the spacewalk, which would have been her first, and prioritizing the crew’s well-being.

Japanese astronaut Kimiya Yui said he was surprised how well all the preflight training paid off in dealing with the health concerns.

“We can handle any kind of difficult situation,” Yui said. “This is actually very, very good experience for the future of human spaceflight.”

Joining them on what turned out to be a 5 1/2-month mission — more than a month shorter than planned — was Russia’s Oleg Platonov. They launched last August from Florida and splashed down in the Pacific off the San Diego coast last week.

Welcoming them back to Houston were their replacements, who aren’t due to launch until mid-February. NASA and SpaceX are working to move up the flight.

“We were hoping to give them hugs in space, but we gave them hugs on Earth,” Fincke said.

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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

Marcia Dunn, The Associated Press

Four #astronauts are about to make an abrupt exit from the International Space Station amid a health concern — and their unprecedented early departure will leave behind a bare-bones staff to look after the outpost.

Only three people will remain on the orbiting laboratory: Roscosmos cosmonauts Sergey Kud-Sverchkov and Sergei Mikaev of Russia and #NASA astronaut Chris Williams.

The four returning astronauts climbed aboard their SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule on Wednesday afternoon and, just before 3:30 p.m. ET, closed the hatch between the spacecraft and the International Space Station in preparation for their departure.

The U.S. space agency will livestream Crew-11’s final departure from the ISS on NASA+ starting at 4:45 p.m. ET Wednesday, with the capsule set to undock from the space station around 5 p.m. ET.

It’s a less-than-ideal scenario. NASA has repeatedly signaled that keeping the ISS fully staffed is a top priority, as the agency aims to maximize the amount of scientific research it can conduct on the aging station before it’s permanently retired early next decade.

NASA’s new administrator, Jared Isaacman, made the decision last week to bring the four-person crew home early when the agency canceled a January 8 spacewalk slated to be carried out by American astronauts Mike Fincke and Zena Cardman.

“For over 60 years, NASA’s set the standard for safety and security in crewed spaceflight,” Isaacman said during a news conference last week. “In these endeavors, including the 25 years of continuous human presence on board the International Space Station, the health and the well-being of our astronauts is always and will be our highest priority.”

Fincke and Cardman, along with astronaut Kimiya Yui of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, or JAXA, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Oleg Platonov, are part of the Crew-11 mission that’s leaving the space station. NASA did not say which crew member is experiencing a medical concern — nor did the space agency provide any details about the nature of the condition, citing privacy concerns. However, NASA has said the affected astronaut is in stable condition.

“Everyone on board is stable, safe, and well cared for,” Fincke confirmed in a statement posted to LinkedIn. “This was a deliberate decision to allow the right medical evaluations to happen on the ground, where the full range of diagnostic capability exists. It’s the right call, even if it’s a bit bittersweet.”

The Crew-11 team is slated to splash down in the Pacific Ocean aboard the Crew Dragon capsule around 3:40 a.m. ET Thursday.

Meanwhile, NASA is working to expedite the launch of a replacement crew, called Crew-12, which originally had been slated for mid-February.

What an understaffed ISS means

The space station hasn’t had such a small crew on board in years. However, during a news conference last week, Amit Kshatriya, NASA’s associate administrator, noted that it’s not unprecedented.

Before SpaceX began routinely flying its Crew Dragon capsule on staffing rotation missions to the space station in 2020, NASA had to purchase seats on Russia’s Soyuz capsule for rides to the outpost for nearly a decade after the Space Shuttle was retired in 2011.

“The crew on board, both Russian and American, are well trained to operate in the environment that they’re in, and can operate the nominal systems, the nominal research, per the plan, until their crewmates arrive,” Kshatriya said, using the spaceflight term “nominal” to refer to normal operations.

Still, the remaining crew members will likely need to leave some tasks unattended. For example, Kshatriya acknowledged, the trio will not be able to carry out the spacewalk that Fincke and Cardman had been slated to execute.

The American duo had been tasked with exiting the space station to prepare its exterior for the installation of new solar panels, which provide the outpost with power.

Delays installing the solar panels are not expected to create any urgent issues as the new hardware was intended to give the space station a power boost for expanding activity on board, Kshatriya said.

As things stand, the outpost does not need additional power for baseline operations, and there’s “plenty of margin,” Kshatriya noted.

Still, attempting to maintain the space station with only three crew members on board does have its challenges and risks, according to Garret Reisman, a former NASA astronaut who himself was part of a three-person crew alongside two Russians at the orbital outpost more than a decade ago.

“If I was going to put my finger on one thing that is significantly increased risk — it would be if something breaks on the outside,” Reisman told CNN in a Tuesday phone interview.

For example, should an issue arise on the exterior of the U.S. side of the space station — such as an electrical switching unit suddenly breaking — Williams would not be able to conduct a spacewalk to fix the issue on his own.

Likely, one of his Russian colleagues would have to use an American suit and attempt to aid him on such an excursion, possibly with little training.

Such an emergency scenario is highly unlikely, Reisman noted, but it highlights why NASA typically does not like to bring an ISS crew home until a replacement crew is already in place.

4 astronauts to depart ISS, leaving behind just 3 crewmates to staff the orbiting lab