Space walk with unexpected: the astronaut drops a mirror, that’s what … Corriere AdriaticoView full coverage on Google News .
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Russia’s Roscosmos have named the vehicle faults Elon musk Crew Dragon – RBC
- Russia’s Roscosmos have named the vehicle faults Elon musk Dragon Crew RBC
- ‘Roscosmos’ described shortcomings of the ship’s Crew Dragon Elon musk RIA NOVOSTI
- In Roscosmos told about the shortcomings of the ship’s Crew Dragon Mask Газета.Ru
- Specialist described as “alarming” elements of spacecraft Crew Dragon RT in Russian
- Roscosmos has listed the shortcomings of the ship’s Crew Dragon SIGHT.RU
- Look up “Google news”
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NASA has called the possible source of benzene to the ISS – RBC
NASA has called the possible source of benzene to the ISS RBCLook up “Google news” .
What happened during the night. Breaking news RBC :: Society :: RBC
What new sanctions prepared by the United States against Russia, how many Russians reach financial independence, 2 million cases COVID-19 in the United States, Musk praised Rogozin’s article; top news — a review of RBC
The US has proposed to impose “tough” sanctions against Russia
The Republican study Committee submitted a 120-page report, which included “the most stringent ever proposed” sanctions against Russia, China and Iran.
- In particular, Russia, the Republicans are urging to recognize the “state sponsor of terrorism for its support of the Islamic revolutionary guard Corps, Hezbollah, the Taliban (an organization banned in Russia) and “Russian Imperial movement”.
- Sanctions, in the opinion of the Committee, you must enter against companies that support the Russian oil and gas projects. Also Russia should be excluded from the international system SWIFT. Restrictions should also apply against “the leaders of her campaign of disinformation”: the head of AFK “Sistema” Vladimir Yevtushenkov, the former Prime Minister of Georgia Bidzina Ivanishvili, the leader of Ukrainian party “the Opposition platform For life” Viktor Medvedchuk.
- In addition, Republicans believe that Congress should authorize the U.S. Department of state to arrange for the collection of news and information to Russians directly, what did the Obama administration.
Sberbank called the age of achieving financial independence in Russia
A study of the savings Bank have shown that the Russians are financially independent from their parents, on average, 26 years. Respondents in the far East and Siberia
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The new world of commercial space travel
WIf everything goes according to plan, a manned missile could start from Cape Canaveral for a flight into near-Earth space for the first time in almost nine years. Probably in the afternoon of May 27, the two American astronauts Robert Behnken and Douglas Hurley will set off for the International Space Station (ISS) on board a Dragon-2 capsule at the tip of a Falcon rocket. They are supposed to moor there after a flight of only 18 hours. This flight would put the United States back in a position to launch manned space flights with its own transportation vehicles from American territory. This has not been possible since the space shuttle flights were discontinued in July 2011. That is why NASA had to buy tickets from the Russian state company Roskosmos for almost a decade to send their astronauts to the ISS on board Soyuz capsules.
When Douglas Hurley and three other astronauts took off on space shuttle Atlantis for the last manned flight from launch pad 39A on Florida’s Atlantic coast on July 8, 2011, American space travel had a completely different structure than it does today. Since the days of the Gemini and Apollo missions in the last third of the last century, manned space travel has been the sole responsibility of NASA, a government agency directly under the White House.
If Hurley takes off for orbit again in a few weeks, it will go into the hands of a private company. Both the Dragon-2 capsule and the Falcon rocket as a carrier have been developed and manufactured by SpaceX. Engineers from the company will control both takeoff, orbital flight and mooring from the company’s control center in Hawthorne, a suburb of Los Angeles. Although SpaceX was able to draw on NASA’s decades of experience in manned space travel, the responsibility for the flight lies solely with the company and the agency is only a paying customer.
Second iron in the fire
In fact, NASA has a second iron in the fire for the resumption of manned flights. In the competition for SpaceX, the Boeing Group also received an order from the authority to transport astronauts. A first unmanned test flight of the so-called Starliner capsule went wrong last December due to a programming error. A second unmanned test flight is planned for autumn. If it is successful, astronauts could also fly to the ISS on board such a capsule in less than a year.
NASA has long been an avid customer of private companies in the space industry. Since the era of flights with the shuttle fleet came to an end in 2011, two private companies have carried out a total of 34 unmanned cargo flights to the ISS on behalf of NASA. Capsules by SpaceX have so far docked at the station a total of 22 times, the competition company Northrop Grumman undertook twelve flights with their Cygnus capsules. Together, these spaceships brought tons of supplies and scientific experiments to the space station and disposed of comparable amounts of waste.
From unmanned transport flights, however, it is a big leap to manned space travel. This applies not only to the technical equipment of a room capsule. If people fly in it, it must be equipped with so-called life support systems. This does not only include a pressurized cabin and the supply of oxygen to the interior. Astronauts also need to be able to do some basic human needs. There is even a toilet in the interior of the Dragon capsule, which is only nine cubic meters in size. In addition, manned space flight places significantly higher demands on flight safety. This means that manned capsules have the option of detonating themselves from a wrecked launcher during the various phases of the flight so that they can then safely return to the surface of the earth. SpaceX demonstrated this ability of its Dragon capsule impressively during an unmanned test flight in January.
Nevertheless, the two young pilots Behnken and Hurley, as former test pilots of the American armed forces, are aware that the first manned flight of a completely new space capsule is particularly risky. The last time America put a completely new manned spacecraft into service was almost 40 years ago. On April 12, 1981, the two astronauts John Young and Bob Crippen also took off from Cape Canaveral’s launch pad 39A. The era of the Space Shuttle, which lasted until 2011, began with her 54-hour flight on board the Columbia space shuttle. Just as the experienced astronaut John Young embodied the transition from Gemini and Apollo to a reusable spacecraft at the time, Hurley will be the link between the NASA space shuttle and the new world of commercial space travel at the end of May.
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“Never in our resuscitation department we had received 34 patients with the same symptoms”
D-18. The patient in room 172 has been fighting the Covid-19 for the last eighteen days. Intubated and ventilated, the man is 52 years old. Several probes gravitate around his naked body. His cheeks are pale, his eyelids yawn, his swollen hands are motionless. Everything seems extinct in him. Only his chest moves, under the impulse of the artificial respirator. At D-15, the resuscitators tried to free him from the machine. The latest analyzes indicated that the patient had regained enough strength to oxygenate himself. The family had been notified. But when he was extubated, the patient whistled, unable to breathe: edema had formed in his windpipe. We put him back to sleep and put the hose back on. “In the face of this disease, the fight for recovery is not a sprint. It’s a marathon “, recalls Jérôme Fichet, physician-resuscitator at the North Cardiological Center of Saint-Denis.
In this private clinic in Seine-Saint-Denis, 33 other patients
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Conversation with the astronaut Gerhard Thiele about isolation
Mr. Thiele, in 2000 you were the tenth German spaceman for eleven days in space – eleven days in great confinement …
I was in the space shuttle and the space is very, very limited. You can’t compare that to the space station. However, the astronauts have to stay there much longer.
How can you imagine the dimensions in concrete terms?
The space is about the size of two by three seats. There are four seats on the flight deck, two of which have to stay in there permanently. The third dimension helps a bit, you are not tied to the floor. Nevertheless: the space is very cramped.
Did you find it difficult to spend time in such a small space with five other people?
It was not difficult for me personally, tightness doesn’t bother me. In the end, the eleven days were comparatively short. You go into space with an assignment that you want to fulfill as well as possible, and this is where all concentration is directed. Therefore, possible restrictions are not perceived as such. In my opinion, this applies at least to a short-term mission. I think that basically also applies to a longer mission, although there are certainly other things that come into play here.
For example?
As a human being, you can limit and reduce yourself for a very short time. I think almost everyone can do that. It may not be given to everyone to keep this up for a long time. So I would expect astronauts to have a range of ways to cope with isolation and tightness – even though we have all been specially selected for this task.
What is this bandwidth based on?
We are all different! I could imagine that someone who is more introverted will find it easier to do that than someone who needs external contact all the time. In the shuttle I had five dear colleagues who were always available, in the immediate vicinity. So I wasn’t alone. On a space station, it may be more difficult if you are always surrounded by the same people over a long period of time. In the end, it depends on the right mix, how well the individual copes with the situation of tightness and isolation.
After your flight, you were responsible for the selection of astronauts at ESA. Is there also an issue of how candidates can deal with isolation?
We try to take this into account in the selection. Psychologists have very detailed and well-founded questionnaires to find out who is better or less suitable for such a task. But you have to say very clearly: The proof is in eating the pudding. We cannot reliably rule out that we are completely wrong. Fortunately, we really hit the mark in the last European selection, in a positive sense. Unfortunately there are examples where this was not necessarily the case.
Indeed?
Naturally. There have been cases where you have seen that this is a nice and nice person, just not the right one for this job.
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Interview with the German spaceman Thomas Reiter
Mr. Reiter, you spent a total of more than 350 days in space, including 176 days on board the Russian Mir space station and 166 days on the International Space Station. How spacious was it there?
On the Russian space station Mir, it was already tight compared to the ISS. I tried to roll over the square meter yesterday. A total of five modules were docked together. They come to about 60 square meters, but you shouldn’t imagine a room of 60 square meters, because the modules are very narrow: long corridors, 1.20 meters wide, ten to twelve meters long. The service module was a little wider, so to speak it was the lounge.
Was it different on the ISS?
Yes, we had almost twice as much space on the ISS, but it wasn’t as well developed as it is today. Alexander Gerst experienced the ISS almost in its final stages of construction and the interior volume is comparable to that of a Boeing 747.
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Spacemen are prepared for life in a very limited space for a long time. How do you imagine this preparation?
Overall, it takes about one and a half years to prepare for a mission, and that goes hand in hand with an infinite number of simulations. You work on earth in the modules and train the typical daily tasks. About 70 percent of the working time is for science, 30 percent for the maintenance and repair of the on-board systems. In these simulations, you are optimally prepared for the situation later on board the space station.
Was it really difficult for you to really stay at MIR 1995?
Not at all, on the contrary. That may come as a surprise, but you are looking forward to performing these diverse tasks on board the space station. In a way you are at the destination of your dreams. It is not noticeable that you are in isolation. You are thrilled, and of course you have an incredibly great view from up there. During a normal working day it is not the case that you can look out of the window permanently, but for example in the evening before you go to rest. In this respect, this situation is not comparable in all areas with the one we are in today.
Was there anything you suffered from anyway?
Of course, a period of adjustment takes place over the months. At the beginning it is as I have just described: it is almost euphoric that you can finally get started, and time literally flies by. But when you are four months behind, you look at the calendar and say: Oh, two more months, but that’s long. Then you start to notice the tightness. However, this is not something that burdens you, because you really don’t have a second of boredom. But after half a year you are of course looking forward to coming back to earth.
In the current situation, where we all stay at home, after two weeks, the impatience is already high that the isolation may finally be over again. Do you have strategies on how to deal with it?
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A clot in the jugular of an astronaut forces NASA to improvise a cure in orbit | Science
We don’t know the exact date, but NASA recently lived another time. “Houston, we have a problem”. The scare came during a routine experiment at the International Space Station (ISS), of the hundreds that are made on the ship to study the effects of gravity shortage. Scanning the neck of one of the crew found a clot in his jugular. The dangerous consequences of this diagnosis forced to improvise medical decisions due to the lack of treatments on board the ship. This thrombus, the first one detected in an astronaut outside the Earth, shows that in space travel there are still unknown health risks. An important factor to keep in mind now that interest in manned flights to the Moon, in the near future, and Mars has been revived.
The ship only had 20 limited anticoagulants and syringes, and new supplies would not arrive until after 40 days. Also, on board they had no antidotes
“These new findings show that the human body still surprises us in space,” says the doctor Serena Auñón-ChancellorIn addition to being a NASA astronaut, she is certified as an expert in space medicine, a specialty that has already published several scientific studies. “We have not yet learned all about aerospace medicine or space physiology,” adds Auñón, who signs a study with three colleagues, published in the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine, in which they have made public the details of the condition and treatment, but keeping the secret about the person of the crew who suffered this complication.
The affected astronaut had already been in the ISS for two months when the ultrasound machine that studied the vascular health of the crew detected that thrombus in the jugular vein. This picture can have life-threatening complications, such as systemic sepsis and pulmonary embolism, so it was urgent to act even if the patient was in orbit, coordinating multiple space agencies to “overcome numerous logistical and operational challenges.” The ship had anticoagulants, but only 20 injectable doses and limited syringes, and new supplies would not arrive until after 40 days. In addition, on board they had no antidotes to their effects, so an astronaut hemorrhage could be fatal. In this situation, NASA doctors chose to go to a thrombus specialist outside the space agency, Dr. Stephan Moll of the University of North Carolina, who established a plan to ration the doses until provisions arrived.
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“My first reaction when NASA contacted me was to ask if I could visit the ISS to examine the patient myself. They couldn’t take me to space fast enough, so I proceeded with the evaluation and treatment process from here,” Moll jokes. During the months that the orbit treatment lasted, Moll and the astronaut communicated almost with the naturalness of a patient and a physician under normal circumstances. “When the astronaut called my home phone, my wife answered and then handed me the phone saying: ‘Stephan, a phone call from space.’ That was quite surprising,” says Moll. in a note from his university. And remember: “I just wanted to talk to myself as if I were one of my patients. And, surprisingly, the connection of the call was better than when I talk to my family in Germany, even though the ISS travels the Earth at 28,000 kilometers per hour. “
This astronaut was injecting the doses recommended by Moll for forty days, while following the evolution of his thrombus with the indications of two NASA radiologists from Earth. That was when the supplies arrived, with a more appropriate anticoagulant that is taken in pills. The thrombus was remitting as expected, but the space patient only stopped taking medication four days before returning home, due to the danger of bleeding on landing. In total, he spent about six months in orbit, four of them with the diagnosed clot, for which there was no risk population in any of the possible factors. The ground tests revealed a small residual thrombus 24 hours after landing, which had disappeared completely ten days after landing. Six months after returning to Earth, the astronaut remained without symptoms. “If not for the study [que detectó el coágulo]”, they say at the University of North Carolina,” we don’t know what the consequences would have been. “
“The most important question that remains is how would we deal with this on an exploration mission on Mars? How would we prepare medically?” Says astronaut Auñón
“The most important question that remains is how would we deal with this on an exploration mission on Mars? How would we prepare medically? More research should be done to better understand clot formation in this environment and possible countermeasures,” says the astronaut Auñón in a note offered by the Louisiana State University, in which he investigates.
Auñón also published in December the study on the vascular health of eleven astronauts in which the thrombus was discovered. In that job, published in JAMA, they discovered that in microgravity the crew members were exposed to constant cerebral venous congestion with the potential to stagnate blood flow. “The active surveillance of astronauts and experimental models are critical for the development of prevention strategies and management of venous thromboembolism in weightlessness, especially with future plans for prolonged space travel to the Moon and Mars,” said this study.
In the article of JAMA It was noted that humans have been flying into space for more than 50 years, and yet this is the first finding of a thrombosis during a space flight. “It is plausible that thrombi not previously detected during human spaceflight missions have occurred, although without negative clinical results attributed to thrombus sequelae to date,” the authors said. This possible risk adds to others already well known, such as intense radiation, among the dangers that space travelers will face in the future.
You can write to javier@esmateria.com or follow Materia at Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or subscribe here to our newsletter.
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Science, the doubts of an amputee ministry | Science
Spanish science has been in a crisis that seems to have no end for more than a decade. The public investigation system has lost more than 20,000 million euros since 2009. Although the economic recovery came years ago, laboratories have barely felt the improvements. Public investment in science is stagnant at levels similar to those of 2012, largely due to political instability and the inability to approve new budgets.
Among all this darkness, the scientific community saw one of its historical claims fulfilled in the summer of 2018 with the appointment of Pedro Duque at the head of a ministry that combined the competences of science, innovation and universities, three areas that he considers inseparable. The new Government that Pedro Sánchez profiles is now taking away that conquest to create a Ministry of Universities assigned to the sociologist Manuel Castells, a decision that has achieved a unanimous rejection of scientists, rectors and leaders in innovation.
“These powers cannot be separated, doing so can cause a fight between these two ministries for resources that are already scarce,” says physicist Perla Wahnón, president of the scientific societies of Spain (Cosce). “It is also a decision contrary to what we see in the main European powers, in the EU executive itself and that reduces political weight to science in the Council of Ministers,” adds Wahnón. “It’s bad news for Spain,” said in a joint statement sent last Friday by Cosce, the rectors of public universities, scientific-medical associations and Severo Ochoa centers and units, the elite of scientific research in Spain.
The key is now in the detailed structure of the new Government, which will define how many powers and budget the Duke Ministry loses in favor of Universities. “The separation of universities and science is not the most recommended model, but it is not something new,” explains Jorge Barrero, general director of the Cotec Foundation. “These powers have been separated for 14 of the last 20 years, first in the Aznar Government, then in the Zapatero Government and since 2012 in the Rajoy Government,” he said. What is unprecedented is that of a ministry of universities separated from education and science, he adds, possibly because most university competences are transferred to the autonomous communities and there is very little left to the State.
In Spain around 70% of scientific research is done by universities, but the state funding they receive for this depends on the National R & D & I Plan managed by the Ministry of Science and is granted based on a competitive competition , hence the suspicions of the research community before possible Solomon divisions of these funds. “Breaking this unique bag to take part of this money to universities would be irresponsible,” says Barrero, who sees it more feasible to give Castells a ministry in charge of lifelong learning that manages Vocational Training, currently attached to Education , and job training courses that depend on Work.
The challenges of the next legislature
“Give me 700 million and I will tell you how many scientists can return to Spain,” Pedro Duque told EL PAÍS in November 2018, four months after taking office. That was an impossible wish because the budgetary pact reached by the Government of Pedro Sánchez and Podemos barely contemplated raising the science budgets by 273 million euros. That pact never materialized and the budgets remain frozen and extended, but Duke can say that he fulfilled one of his main promises: to approve a package of urgent measures for science that ended the previous intervention, the bureaucratic work that was suffocating the public research centers to the point that scientists could not even buy chairs.
In this new term, the main problem will be money again. In 2018, investment in R&D rose a shy 6%, which is explained by the greater investment in the private sector. Scientists now ask for a public counterpart, but without going crazy. They do not even ask to get Spain to spend 2% of GDP on R&D, something that most parties have in their program, including Podemos, but that scientists and experts see completely unfeasible in the short span of four years .
“If this legislature were able to double the budget of the National Plan, which is a total of about 350 million euros, it would be a great achievement,” said Luis Serrano, president of Somma.
This program is bread and salt for the vast majority of scientists in Spain and especially nourishes the middle classes of research, those who do not have the resources or human capital to handle large projects, but who make up the critical mass of the system of public R&D. This group faces in this legislature two years of cuts of up to 20% due to the new calendar of calls promoted by the Duke Ministry and that has helped the scientific community, especially cancer researchers grouped in the ASEICA association. “Our position is to wait and see,” explains Xosé Bustelo, president of this organization. “The minister has so far spoken more than he has done. Hopefully in this term the batteries will be put to solve the pending problems that our suffered R & D & I system has ”, he adds.
“Almost everything remains to be done,” says Pablo Jiménez, spokesman for the Federation of Young Researchers. “The R&D system is dismembered and needs an important money injection,” he says.
Despite the measures against the bureaucracy approved by Duke there are still many present. One of them, explains Álvaro Rodríguez-Lescure, president of the Society of Medical Oncology, is that under current regulations cooperative groups such as cancer network research centers, cardiovascular or respiratory ailments, among others, are not “tax subjects can be financed, which prevents them from attending calls for public funds, ”he says. “Another objective for Duque’s new mandate should be to create a specific item to conduct independent clinical trials that, due to their objectives, are not profitable for the pharmaceutical industry but that can bring great benefits to patients and the biomedical community,” he explains. These are, for example, studies designed to reuse drugs already approved and without a patent or to carry out studies that prevent cancer patients already cured from having to go through the usual protocol and receive a year of additional treatment.
The forgotten Cajal museum
Manuel Ansede
Another task of the Ministry of Science will be to find a solution for the so-called Cajal Legacy: 22,000 pieces – letters, drawings, manuscripts, photographs – of Santiago Ramón y Cajal that have been stored in boxes in a basement of the Cajal Institute since 1989, a center of the Higher Council for Scientific Research (CSIC) located in Madrid. The scientific community has been calling for the creation of a Ramón y Cajal National Museum for years, dedicated to the winner of the 1906 Nobel Prize in Medicine, father of neuroscience.
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