Why Evolution is True is a blog written by Jerry Coyne, centered on evolution and biology but also dealing with diverse topics like politics, culture, and cats.
Artemis II returns today, if everything works okay. As I’ve said, there are some concerns about the heat shield, but not serious concerns. The space.com article below (click on it to read) gives the details as well as several links. I’ve put its video link (the best one, I think) below. Be sure to watch it live starting about 7:40 this evening, Eastern time, as several events will occur at or during re-entry.
Jim Batterson sent this link and added a few words:
In particular item #14 talks about their egress and being carried to the Navy recovery ship by helicopter. After the crew are safe on board the ship, I think that the capsule is simply retrieved into the ship’s onboard “well”. The astronauts are then helicoptered to firmer terra firma.
A short excerpt:
The Artemis 2 Orion capsule will return to Earth tonight, April 10, at 8:07 p.m. EDT (0007 April 11 GMT) with a splashdown in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of San Diego, California. Returning home on the ship to end a 10-day trip to the moon are NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman (commander), Victor Glover (pilot), Christina Koch (mission specialist) and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen (mission specialist). You can watch the landing live on Space.com, beginning at 6:30 p.m. EDT (2230 GMT). You can also follow the mission live online on our Artemis 2 mission updates page.
After an epic trip to the moon and back, it’s landing day for the four astronauts of NASA’s Artemis 2 mission. For the first time in over 53 years, astronauts are returning to Earth from the moon.
But returning from deep space is no easy feat, especially for the Artemis 2 astronauts, who are the first crew to fly on NASA’s Orion spacecraft. The most harrowing part of the journey lies ahead: a fiery 13-minute plunge through Earth’s atmosphere at about 24,000 mph (38,600 kph) that will subject them to temperatures of up to 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit (2,760 degrees Celsius) with only their heat shield for protection and parachutes to slow down.
“Every system we’ve demonstrated over the past nine days — life support, navigation, propulsion, communications — all of it depends on the final minutes of flight,” NASA Associate Administrator Amit Kshatriya told reporters Thursday (April 9). “We have high confidence in the system, in the heat shield, and the parachutes and the recovery system that we’ve put together.”
Today the Artemis 2 capsule with its four astronauts does its transit around the Moon, going further into space than any human have gone into space. They’ll also see parts of the Moon’s backside that have never been seen by the living human eye, though the backside has been amply photographed.
Shortly after midnight this morning, the capsule entered the Moon’s “sphere of influence,” meaning the part of space where the gravity of the Moon exceeds the gravity of Earth. The schedule is below, and I’ve put a video of the live proceedings below.
They crossed the celestial threshold early Monday morning (April 6), becoming the first people to do so since the crew of Apollo 17, in 1972.
The pull of the moon’s gravity on the Artemis 2 Orion capsule officially became stronger than Earth’s influence on the spcecraft at 12:37 a.m. EDT (0437 GMT), as Orion flew 39,000 miles (62,764 kilometers) above the moon and 232,000 miles (373,368 km) from Earth.
Today, they will break the distance record set by Apollo 13, which flew 248,655 miles (400,171 kilometers) from Earth. Artemis 2 reach that, and then some, but between breaking the record and setting their own, they will have hours of lunar observations to conduct as Orion makes its closest approach to the moon.
Here’s a full breakdown of what to expect today (all times in EDT):
There will be about a 40-minute communications blackout (starting at about 6:47 pm) when they go around the Moon. Here’s today’s schedule:
1 p.m.: NASA lunar flyby coverage begins. 1:56 p.m.: Apollo 13 distance record broken 2:10 p.m.: Crew remarks about record 2:15 p.m.: Crew configures Orion for flyby 2:45 p.m.: Lunar observation period begins 6:47 p.m.: Loss of communications (estimated 40-min.) 7:02 p.m.: Closest approach to the moon 7:05 p.m.: Maximum distance from Earth 8:35 p.m.: Orion enters solar eclipse period 9:20 p.m.: Lunar observation period ends 9:32 p.m.: Solar eclipse period concludes
Watching a bit this morning, I see there is a possible cabin leak, which is worrying, but it may have been a false alarm.
If the video is not working, you can see it on the Space.com site: You can also scroll back and see what was going on previously.
This is a question I’ve entertained for a long time, probably because I’m preoccupied with death. But I was curious about what would happen if astronauts, like the ones going around the Moon now, found themselves stranded in space with no way to get home, facing death from oxygen depletion or starvation. Or what would happen if the astronauts who were on the Moon years couldn’t start up the Lunar Module to get back to the Command Module and then back to Earth? Would they have been carrying something that would allow them to commit suicide quickly, avoiding a prolonged death?
I asked Jim Batterson, our resident NASA expert, and he didn’t know the answer. I then turned to the AI bot Grok, which I got for free when X (“Twitter”)—for reasons unknown—gave me a free blue checkmark.
My question to Grok is in bold below, and the short answer (indented) is that no, American astronauts don’t carry anything to do themselves in, though one Russian astronaut did. Grok went though the data in 11 seconds, and spat out the following. Note that there are references (the bot gives you the links, which I haven’t included) to check the statements.
Do the astronauts carry cyanide capsules or anything they can use to commit suicide if they are stuck in space?
Thought for 11s
No, astronauts do not carry cyanide capsules or any dedicated suicide pills as standard equipment.
iflscience.com
NASA has never issued suicide pills (sometimes called “L-pills” or cyanide capsules) to its astronauts, including during the Apollo lunar missions or on current ISS and Artemis programs. Astronaut Jim Lovell (Apollo 13 commander) explicitly debunked this long-standing rumor: “Since Apollo 13 many people have asked me, ‘Did you have suicide pills on board?’ We didn’t, and I never heard of such a thing in the eleven years I spent as an astronaut and NASA executive.”
iflscience.com
The idea appears to stem from spy-movie tropes, urban legends, or sci-fi (e.g., the film Contact), but it has been consistently denied by NASA and astronauts. Multiple sources, including direct statements from astronauts, confirm that no such pills have ever been part of U.S. spaceflight medical kits.
quora.com
Why the rumor persists, and why pills aren’t needed anywayIn a worst-case scenario of being stranded in space with no rescue possible (e.g., a failed re-entry or detached during a spacewalk), astronauts have pointed out that the vacuum of space itself provides a relatively quick way to end life if someone chose to—by simply opening a suit valve or venting the spacecraft’s atmosphere. This would cause unconsciousness in seconds and death shortly after, making a pill unnecessary.
theguardian.com
NASA’s focus is on prevention and survival: rigorous psychological screening, crew training, rescue protocols (e.g., multiple docked return vehicles on the ISS), and detailed medical kits. Those kits contain painkillers, anti-nausea drugs, antibiotics, etc., but nothing lethal like cyanide.
nasa.gov
If an astronaut were to experience a mental health crisis in space (e.g., becoming suicidal or psychotic), NASA has written procedures: crewmates are instructed to restrain the person with duct tape and bungee cords, monitor them, and administer sedatives like Haldol or Valium (orally or by injection if needed). The goal is stabilization, not euthanasia.
cbsnews.com
One historical exception (Soviet side) The only verified case involves Soviet cosmonaut Alexei Leonov (the first person to spacewalk, in 1965 on Voskhod 2). He stated that he was issued a suicide pill for that specific high-risk mission—in case he couldn’t re-enter the spacecraft and his crewmate had to leave him behind in orbit. His suit ballooned during the walk, and he barely made it back inside after partially depressurizing it. This was not standard practice for the Soviet program overall, and no evidence exists of it being routine for cosmonauts then or now.
iflscience.com
In short, modern astronauts (NASA, ESA, Roscosmos, etc.) rely on engineering, training, and international rescue plans rather than personal suicide options. No agency equips crews with cyanide or equivalent for “stuck in space” scenarios.
The ten-day around-the-Moon mision launches at 6:26 pm Eastern US time, about 26 minutes from when this is posted. Actually, that is the start of a 2-hour launch window. Stay tuned!
When the two American astronauts Butch Wilmore and Sunita Williams were stranded at the International Space Station (ISS) last June because their return vehicle had a problem that could not be fixed, I wailed to my friend Jim Batterson (a former employee at NASA) that they were going to die. How could they survive if they couldn’t get back? Batterson (“Bat”) reassured me that there were plenty of vehicles that could bring them home, and there was nothing to worry about. But their one-week visit turned into nine months of waiting, and my wailing increased. (To be sure, they did seem happy to have an extended stay on the ISS, since they like being in space.)
Well, it now looks like they’re coming home, so I have one less thing (among millions!) to worry about. I got the good news from Bat yesterday in an email, and asked him to expand it as a post, but also to keep some of the wording in his orginal email to me, which is beneath the asterisks. Bat’s post, original and fleshed out, are indented.
In 2014, contracts were awarded to SpaceX and to Boeing to each develop ways to take human crews to the International Space Station (ISS) and return them safely to Earth. SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule was developed and has been operating successfully since 2020. It’s also used (along with Russian vehicles) to effect crew rotations of the ISS about every six months. The Boeing Starliner capsule, after much delay, underwent a crewed test flight to ISS last June with two senior NASA astronauts onboard: Barry (Butch) Wilmore and Sunita (Suni) Williams. The mission called for them to rendezvous and dock with the ISS and to stay aboard ISS for a week. But unexpected anomalies on the Starliner during rendezvous and docking led to NASA delaying their return until Boeing could understand and fix the cause of the anomalies.
After several months of testing both the docked Starliner and ground-based models, the problem was neither understood nor resolved, to NASA’s satisfaction. The astronauts could not be safely returned on this vehicle, so Starliner returned to Earth, uncrewed, in September 2024, having a soft landing in the New Mexico desert. Astronauts Butch and Suni, as veterans of previous ISS missions, were integrated into the standing ISS crew to work and await the appearance of two future capsule seats for return to Earth.
Those seats finally appeared when the Crew 9 SpaceX capsule with two astronauts and two empty seats docked with the ISS in Septemberl, 2024. The Crew 9 capsule is scheduled to undock and return to Earth with four astronauts—including Butch and Suni—in the next week or so. Meanwhile four fresh astronauts (Crew 10) are scheduled to launch in a SpaceX capsule on Wednesday, March 12 and spend a week getting the ISS duties handed over to them.
This has been an excellent use of the ISS as a “safe haven” for astronauts, an idea that came about after the Columbia Shuttle accident for situations in which there are safety concerns about a return vehicle, allowing astronauts to await a rescue vehicle or simply another set of available return seats. While there is constant danger in space, NASA decided that spending time on the ISS was deemed safer than returning on the Boeing Starliner ship.
************
But now Bat is worried that I might have been right: the returning astronauts might be in some danger. From Bat’s original post:
But NOW: Jerry,
You may have been right all along, as it is unfortunately turning out.
Now I also worry about Butch and Suni. USA Today described tomorrow’s launch (Wednesday March 12 at 7:48 PM EDT – I usually go to Space.com to get a link or C-SPAN may carry it) of Crew-10, the replacement for Butch and Suni and the two Crew9 astronauts as routine. But Jeebus…nothing about human spaceflight is routine, and as soon as people start thinking it is, we are closer to losing a crew due to inattention. Then there is Musk, who in the past few weeks has exploded two suborbital spacecraft, raining debris down on the National Airspace System and on populated Caribbean islands, leading to significant flight delays and endangering 100’s if not 1000’s of air passengers. I am convinced that Musk’s inattention to his launches led to at least the second failure and maybe both since it appears to me that he is the kind of hands-on boss whose constant physical presence makes a huge difference. So with him running all over the world as Trump’s chief of federal gov’t chaos, his space operations are running on autopilot for maybe the first time. Both the booster rocket and the capsule for Crew 10 tomorrow are SpaceX products as is the Crew 9 capsule, currently docked at Station, which Butch and Suni are scheduled to return to Earth in sometime in the next several days.
And of course NASA has just announced a Reduction in Force per Trump’s and Musk’s actions, which has to get pretty much everyone’s (in NASA) attention.
Here’s Butch and Suni talking about their return. Look how her hair stands up in zero gravity!
Here’s a livestream video you may want to check in on from time to time. As Space.com describes, it’s from the ISS:
Cameras are officially rolling! Or, in this case, streaming.
SpaceTV-1, a set of Ultra High Definition 4k cameras from space streaming company Sen, was delivered to the International Space Station (ISS) last year, and is now broadcasting live views of Earth and space for all the world to see.
The London-based company is pursuing a mission to provide anyone and everyone with easy access to an experience usually reserved for astronauts — the overview effect. A phenomenon coined for the awe of seeing our planet from space and the effect it has on a person’s perception of humanity, Apollo 14‘s lunar module pilot NASA astronaut Ed Mitchell described the overview effect as, “an instant global consciousness,” accompanied with “an intense dissatisfaction with the state of the world and a compulsion to do something about it,” and Sen wants that for everybody.
. . . The SpaceTV-1 camera suite was delivered to the ISS in March, 2024, aboard a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft on the CRS-30 cargo mission last year. SpaceTV-1 was attached to the Bartolomeo platform on the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Columbus module. The package includes three cameras, providing three unique views of space around the ISS and Earth below.
A wide angle lens captures the long curve of Earth’s horizon, with the occasional piece of the space station moving in and out of frame. A tighter view focuses directly on Earth, showing a stretch about 150 miles x 110 miles (240 kilometers x 180 kilometers). The third camera looks at the space station’s forward docking port, connected the the Harmony module.
It’s very easy to get mesmerized by the video, but you can always keep it in the background of your computer screen (there are some replays as there is signal loss when the ISS is on the other side of Earth from the receiver, but there are also helpful descriptions at the bottom of the screen. It is a YouTube video.
If you have good wildlife photos, don’t forget to send them in! Thanks.
Today’s theme is astronomical phenomena, and we have two contributors. Both contributors’ words are indented, and you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them.
First, Bryan Lepore sends two photos and a video.
I submit two photos of the geomagnetic storm on Friday, 10 May, 2024 as viewed from latitude ~42 N ~71 W (Massachusetts), at about 10 PM.
One more item occurred to me that should fit with the aurora photos : a map from Aurora Alerts on 10 May :
… you can see it goes down to New England. So I saw that indoors, and immediately stepped outside. Readers can scroll through Aurora Alerts to see the info, and I recommend subscribing. I think there is supposed to be more solar activity than usual in the next so many months – some cyclic activity of many years length (I’d need a refresher).
Bryan also made a short video for YouTube showing the International Space Station flying by during the aurora:
Our second contributor is Rik Gern, who sent photos taken the day of the eclipse:
Here is a small batch that represents all the remaining pictures I currently have processed and ready to go. They are of varying quality, but there is a theme running thru them; they were all taken in my yard in Austin, TX on April 6th, the day of the full eclipse.
Where I live the totality lasted for about 90 seconds and I didn’t bother to try to photograph the eclipse itself because a lot of people who know a lot more about photography than I do were setting up to take and share some nice pictures of the corona and other great effects. Instead, because I was fascinated by the rapidly changing light, I took pictures of plant life around the yard as the early afternoon light got steadily darker and everything started to look like evening time, but without the long shadows. It was subtly disorienting.
The first picture is of one of my favorite volunteer plants, the false dayflower (Tinantia anomala). I love the “face” in the flower! This species initially made an appearance in the yard about ten years ago and at first there weren’t many, but when I discovered what a good looking plant it is I let it grow pretty much wherever it made an appearance and now it dominates the back end by the compost pile.
This next plant, common hedge parsley, aka spreading hedge parsley or tall sock-destroyer (Trills arvensis), wasn’t fully in bloom at the time. Even when it does bloom the flowers are very tiny and easy to overlook. The leaves remind me of carrot tops, though I don’t know if they’re related.
The tufted yellow woodsorrell (Oxalis priceae) was growing at the base of a cactus plant. For the longest time I confused woodsorrel with clover and they do look similar, but their flowers are different and unlike clover, woodsorrel in not a nitrogen-fixing plant and livestock shouldn’t graze on it. Both are bee friendly though. You can learn more about the similarities and differences here.
It was too early in the year to observe flowers on this spineless prickly pear cactus (Opuntia ellisiana), but the new pads that appear every year are intriguing in their own right.This picture was taken just a few seconds before the eclipse reached totality.
Despite a light cloud cover at the time, the total eclipse was dramatic and picturesque, and I can understand why people travel a great distance to observe the phenomenon. The eclipse’s totality inspired the hours of photoshop processing that transformed the cactus picture into this personification of nature.
