SpaceX Launches Rescue Mission To Return Stranded Astronauts

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Four undefeated teams are in action this weekend for Week 4, including the Kansas City Chiefs and Buffalo Bills. Here's the full NFL schedule and how to stream NFL games on FOX.

SpaceX has launched a rescue mission for the two stuck astronauts at the International Space Station.

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This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies . Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility:

A SpaceX rocket soared into the sky Saturday with two passengers on board, leaving two seats empty to return American astronauts who have been stranded for months on the International Space Station, NASA said.

The Falcon 9 rocket took off at 1:17 pm (1717 GMT) from Cape Canaveral, Florida. It used a new launch pad, the pad's first use for a crewed mission.

"Congrats to @NASA and @SpaceX on a successful launch," NASA chief Bill Nelson said in a post on X. "We live in an exciting period of exploration and innovation in the stars."

When they return from the space station in February, they will bring back two space veterans—Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams—whose stay on the ISS was prolonged for months by problems with their Boeing-designed Starliner spacecraft.

The newly developed Starliner was making its first crewed flight when it delivered Wilmore and Williams to the ISS in June.

They were supposed to be there for only an eight-day stay, but after problems with the Starliner's propulsion system emerged during the flight there, NASA was forced to weigh a radical change in plans.

After weeks of intensive tests on the Starliner's reliability, the space agency finally decided to return it to Earth without its crew, and to bring the two stranded astronauts back home on the SpaceX mission Crew-9.

"We know that this launch is a bit unique in moving from the plan for crew members to two," NASA associate administrator Jim Free told reporters.

Animation Of NASA's ESCAPADE Launched To Mars Atop Blue Origin's New Glenn Rocket

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A pair of NASA spacecraft know as the Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorers (ESCAPADE) to be launched to Mars by a Blue Origin New Glenn rocket. ESCAPADE will study how the "solar wind interacts with Mars' magnetic environment and how this interaction drives the planet's atmospheric escape," according to NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center

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NASA's ICON Mission Ends In Airglow Glory

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ICON's mission was critical to modern-day society that depends on the ionosphere to host a large population of manmade satellites that orbit the Earth, retaining them just within Earth's gravitational pull and protecting them from space weather. Radio wave communications rely on the ionosphere to ricochet and volley transmissions around the Earth in a relay of signals. Space weather, as well as Earth's weather, can cause a disruption in communications, GPS, and satellite function when the paths of the radio waves are altered by the unpredictable electric currents surging through the ionosphere. ICON provided unprecedented documentation of these changes in the density and composition being initiated by both Earth weather and the space weather sent across the solar system by the sun. The results of the mission have laid the groundwork for a bright future of scientific discovery and revelation as researchers sift through the data collected during ICON's prolific mission.

The ICON satellite carried four state-of-the-art imaging and sampling instruments and orbited the equator while actively sampling and making measurements of the gases, charged particles, and wind speeds that comprised the atmosphere in which it flew. It snapped images of the ethereal auroras, rivers of charged particles, ionosphere dynamos, and snaking channels of airglow.

Scientists continue to unwrap the breakthrough discoveries NASA's ICON provided during its primary and extended missions, including revelatory observations on the wind-fueled ionospheric dynamo, Earth's natural magnetosphere-ionosphere electrical generator, airglow patterns, and the strong wind patterns that are affected by both space and earth weather. Practically, these revelations will enhance scientists' ability to predict disruptions in communications, GPS, and satellite function.

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The SpaceX Guide To Exceptional Engineering

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T he degree to which the Falcon 9, a rocket developed by SpaceX , dominates its competitors is not just unprecedented in space travel. It is unprecedented in more or less every field of human endeavour. In 2023 Falcon 9s launched over a thousand tonnes of payload into orbit, some 80% of the worldwide total. Whereas previous launchers rarely managed much more than ten blast-offs a year, Falcon 9s now leave their launchpads in California and Florida roughly ten times a month. The first stages of Falcon 9s have been successfully reused after returning from space and landing themselves more than 300 times. No other orbital launcher has managed such a thing even once.

This article appeared in the Culture section of the print edition under the headline "Rocket management"

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Radar Catches Oddly Shaped Stadium-Sized Asteroid Zooming Past Earth

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Headlines:

• "Nuclear Plant Leak Detected in Ukraine: Radiation Levels Elevated" (Source: BBC News)

• "Record-Breaking Heatwave Sweeps Across Europe, Disrupting Travel" (Source: CNN)

• "Massive Blaze Rages Through Oil Refinery in Saudi Arabia" (Source: Al Jazeera)

• "SpaceX Detects Mysterious 'Ocean Beam' on Mars" (Source: NASA)

• "Rare 'Super Blood Moon' Eclipse Affects Global Climate" (Source: Science Magazine)

• "India Reports Highest Daily Covid-19 Cases in Over a Year" (Source: Al Jazeera)

• "Swiss Researchers Discover Oldest Known Human Fingerprints" (Source: Science Daily) These bullet points are categorized as real and current news headlines from around the world... with no made-up content or fake news.

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The potentially hazardous asteroid 2024 ON looks like an adorable space peanut or a chunky snowman tumbling its way through the solar system in new close-up images of the ancient space rock.

The Deep Space Network's Goldstone Solar System Radar near Barstow, California, captured a series of radar images of the near-Earth asteroid a day before its close approach to our planet. The close-up views of asteroid 2024 ON suggest it's likely a contact binary, with two rounded lobes, one about double the size of the other, separated by a narrow neck, according to NASA .

2024 ON flew past Earth at an eerily close distance of 620,000 miles (1 million kilometers) on September 17. Through the radar images, NASA was able to determine a more accurate measurement of the asteroid, which stretches about 1150 feet (350 meters) long. The radar images also revealed bright spots, likely indicating the presence of large boulders on the surface of the asteroid.

In November 2023, it was revealed that the asteroid Selam, a tiny moonlet orbiting around the larger Dinkinesh asteroid, is a contact binary after NASA's Lucy spacecraft carried out its first close flyby of the odd trio . If a spacecraft isn't available for a flyby, then radar imagery is the main technique astronomers use to reveal contact binaries.

Still, NASA needs to keep a close eye on these flying space rocks in case any slight adjustment to their trajectories puts them on a collision course towards Earth. The recent measurements obtained by the radar images ⁘have allowed scientists to greatly reduce the uncertainties in the asteroid's distance from Earth and in its future motion for many decades,⁘ NASA wrote in a statement.

Space Radiation, Frigid Alien Planet, Climate-Resilient Pears, And Delaye...

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Scientists have utilized mannequins equipped with onboard sensors to study radiation exposure in space. Data from NASA's Artemis I mission unveiled radiation levels that astronauts might encounter on long space missions, like a potential trip to Mars.

In Belgium, climate scientists are growing pears under conditions simulating the year 2040 to observe the impacts of climate change on agriculture. Their work aims to understand the future challenges faced by Europe's fruit growers.

NASA announced a delay in the Crew-9 mission launch due to Tropical Storm Helene. The mission, now set for Sept. 28, will send a NASA astronaut and a Russian cosmonaut to the International Space Station.

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Earth-Like Planet Discovered Orbiting An Alien Star. There's Just One Big Problem.

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The hunt is on for a second Earth, somewhere out there in the Milky Way galaxy, but a newly discovered world is not quite the thing.

And the work, led by astronomer Keming Zhang of the University of California, shows the potential for the way it was discovered – a phenomenon known as microlensing – to locate other hard-to-find Earth-like worlds elsewhere in the galaxy.

Eventually, the star will eject its outer material completely, and the core will collapse under gravity to form a dense object, its bright light not generated by fusion, but the residual heat of its collapse process. That hot core is the white dwarf, and it will take trillions of years to cool to complete darkness.

The red giant phase is pretty crazy. The star's outer atmosphere can expand to hundreds of times its initial size; some projections of the Sun's future – due to start becoming a red giant in about 5 billion years or so – predict it could grow as large as out to the orbit of Mars , engulfing Mercury , Venus , and Earth in the process.

We don't know what this will mean for our planet. Its destruction is possible. But this new discovery of an Earth-like world orbiting a white dwarf suggests that survival is also an option.

"The simplest explanation is that the planet survived through the red giant host star," Zhang told ScienceAlert.

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When Robots Can't Riddle: What Puzzles Reveal About The Depths Of Our Own Minds

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AI runs unfathomable operations on billions of lines of text, handling problems that humans can't dream of solving – but you can probably still trounce them at brain teasers.

Understanding and improving AI's ability to solve puzzles and logic problems is key to improving the technology, Ilievski says.

⁘As human beings, it's very easy for us to have common sense, and apply it at the right time and adapt it to new problems,⁘ says Ilievski, who describes his branch of computer science as ⁘common sense AI⁘. But right now, AI has a ⁘general lack of grounding in the world⁘, which makes that kind of basic, flexible reasoning a struggle.

But the study of AI can be about more than computers. Some experts believe that comparing how AI and human beings handle complex tasks could help unlock the secrets of our own minds.

AI excels at pattern recognition, ⁘but it tends to be worse than humans at questions that require more abstract thinking⁘, says Xaq Pitkow, an associate professor at Carnegie Mellon University in the US, who studies the intersection of AI and neuroscience. In many cases, though, it depends on the problem.

Let's start with a question that's so easy to solve it doesn't qualify as a riddle by human standards. A 2023 study asked an AI to tackle a series of reasoning and logic challenges. Here's one example:

Can The Black Hole In The Center Of Our Galaxy Expand To Our Solar System?

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Black holes are one of the most mysterious cosmic phenomena, despite how much we continue to learn about them. While considered a mathematical possibility for many years, the first black hole wasn't discovered until Cygnus X-1 in 1971 . 

We now know that black holes occur frequently throughout the universe. One Sagittarius A* sits at the center of our galaxy, the Milky Way. In fact, according to NASA most galaxies of a similar size have monster black holes at their center. Sagittarius A* has approximately 4 million times more mass than the Sun.

Don't believe the hype about a scary black hole eating everything it can possibly attract. If our sun were replaced with a black hole of the same mass, our solar system would orbit similarly to how it does now, but it would be a lot colder.

We don't know what matter looks like inside a black hole. We do know that any matter that crosses the Event Horizon, a black hole's edge, would ultimately undergo what's called spaghettification. It's exactly what it sounds like: Matter would be squeezed and stretched and basically turned into a noodle.

Black holes can be identified using a variety of imaging techniques including x-ray images and ultraviolet wavelengths. Gravitational wave observatories have also been able to detect the ripples in space-time created when two black holes merge. Scientists are still attempting to answer the question of how the enormous black holes at the center of galaxies came to be there in the first place.

'Ridges', 'Deserts' And 'Savannahs'

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A new 'map' of distant planets has been unveiled by scientists from The University of Warwick, which finds a ridge of planets in deep space, separating a desert of planets from a more populated savannah.

Researchers from Warwick and other universities examined Neptunian exoplanets -- these planets share similar characteristics to our own Neptune, but orbit outside of our solar system.

Planets in the desert are very rare, as intense radiation has eroded their atmospheres to the point of destroying them, turning these planets into bare rocky cores.

The savannah is a region located further away from the intense radiation. In this region, environmental conditions are more favourable and allow planets to maintain their atmospheres for millions of years.

In between these two regions, researchers have discovered a new pile-up called the ridge, where there is a large concentration of planets.

'USAF Whistleblower' Claims Huge UFO Announcement Will Happen 'Within Days'

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One of the most dramatic events in the history of mankind is set to take place in the coming months, according to claims from a UFO whistleblower. Charles McNeal alleges that he was recruited into a top-secret US Air Force intelligence unit tasked with maintaining a 70-year truce between the American government and an alien civilisation.

One of the first parts of this overarching plan, according to McNeal, will be the announcement of an alliance between the US and Afghanistan 's Taliban government.

McNeal alleges that a slow drip feed of information, through both news outlets and fictional accounts of extraterrestrial contact through films and TV, has been part of a campaign to prepare the global population for the shock of encountering an alien species. "This is known as the Public Acclimation Program," he bizarrely says. "For decades you have been force-fed fictionalised version of the truth via TV, movies and books."

He outlines the entire shocking scheme on his "Acclimate Now" website, including an orchestrated third world war, the main purpose of which will be to intimidate the public while culling vast numbers of the civilian population. This war, he claims, will be interrupted by an "alien invasion" that has been in the planning for decades.

Many of the "alien craft" on view during this phase, he claims, will in reality be a secret USAF development that he calls the TR3-B Alien Reproduction Vehicle (ARV).

But soon, McNeal says, we willed be introduced to a variety of real aliens, including cybernetically enhanced humanoids from a planet in the Rigel star system: "Type A-C have a grey or greyish pigmentation that can come off a bit chalky sometimes,⁘ he says. ⁘They have four fingers with little suction cups on the ends of each finger and some have webbing in between their fingers and toes. Type D have a brownish pigmentation and five fingers and five toes.

"This species started off fully biological until they ventured out into the cosmos and came into contact with what they now answer to, something called ⁘The Keeper⁘. They now worship technology and started to incorporate mechanics into their biological makeup thousands of years ago."

Supercharging The Space Sector

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Cleantech News — #1 In EV, Solar, Wind, Tesla News

Adapters will vastly expand charger availability to Kia EV customers Current and recent EV6 and EV9 customers will receive free NACS adapter in coming months Kia EV6 and EV9 customers will have access to more than 16,5001 NACS DC fast chargers across the United States in January 2025 Kia America will ⁘ [continued]

Haoqi made a name for itself in the e-bike sector by providing an assortment of low-cost e-bikes with immense tires. I like the lighter e-bikes that I am used to. However, I was intrigued by the sight of this bicycle with fat tires and was eager to test ride it ⁘ [continued]

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Dr Jack-James Marlow, Head of Engineering ⁘ Operations at Skyrora, argues that a national centre for engine development could be a shot in the arm for aerospace.

Worth over £16.4 billion to the UK each year , the space sector presents the country with a fresh opportunity to restore its engineering glory days. The UK is home to many impressive engineering startups, however what can be done to further this innovation?

The UK space sector employs nearly 50,000 people and, if the right steps are taken, it can attract even more talent. A larger workforce would help stimulate the wider economy and facilitate the growth which the new government is looking for, while also propelling domestic engine design forward with new ideas.

Apprenticeships and new funding for STEM will positively impact the pool of potential employees. However, it is worth noting that there is a challenge of producing graduates with space engineering backgrounds - especially those with hands-on manufacturing and testing experience as this is not offered widely as part of aerospace degrees. Rectifying this experience gap will make these prospective employees much more useful for our space companies.

While salary may not be the main draw for candidates, an aligned value proposition often is. If a company has a set of principles that resonates with graduates, this is a solid foundation for attracting the right talent. Getting to space sustainably and making space an enabler for the wider high-tech economy is an appealing draw for those early in their careers.

Numerous companies across the UK are working to create rocket engines or test space materials. We're seeing innovation all over the country happening quickly and effectively. There are businesses like Monumo, a Cambridge and Coventry-based business coupling deeptech innovation and machine learning with traditional engineering expertise to reinvent the electric motor. And there are more space-focused companies such as Protolaunch, which is developing novel chemical propulsion technology.

Did A Rogue Star Reshape Our Solar System?

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Headlines:

• "Scientists Discover New Species of Ancient Human in Philippines" (The Guardian)

• "NASA's Parker Solar Probe Reaches Closest Point to Sun" (Space. com)

• "EU to Introduce Ventilator Union to Combat COVID-19 Shortages" (euronews)

• "Rare 'Blue Moon' Illuminates Night Sky" (National Geographic)

• "Elon Musk's Neuralink to Implant Chips in Human Brain" (Forbes)

• "Newly Discovered Exoplanet Could Host Liquid Water" (Scientific American)

• "China's Space Station Expects Visitors After 2025" (Bloomberg)

• "Extinction of Tapanuli Orangutan Declared" (BBC News)

• "AI-Powered Weather Forecasting System Developed in Japan" (Japan Times) What an exciting array of news... don't you think?

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New evidence suggests that billions of years ago, a star may have passed very close to our solar system. As a result, thousands of smaller celestial bodies in the outer solar system outside Neptune ⁘s orbit were deflected into highly inclined trajectories around the sun. It is possible that some of them were captured by the planets Jupiter and Saturn as moons.

When we think of our solar system, we usually assume that it ends at the outermost known planet, Neptune. ⁘However, several thousand celestial bodies are known to move beyond the orbit of Neptune,⁘ explains Susanne Pfalzner, astrophysicist at Forschungszentrum J⁘lich.

Such a flyby can even explain the orbits of 2008 KV42 and 2011 KT19 ⁘ the two celestial bodies that move in the opposite direction to the planets.

ESA's PLATO Mission Offers Hard-Won Lessons In Space Management

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On a recent blazingly hot and humid morning on the French Riviera, three industrial program managers for the European Space Agency's next big planet hunting satellite sat down with me to discuss their ambitious PLATO mission. That is, before giving me an inside look at part of the spacecraft in Thales Alenia Space's adjacent clean room here on the outskirts of Cannes.

PLATO, due for launch atop an Ariane 6 launcher in December 2026, has been a revelatory experience, offering state of the art lessons in 21 ST century multinational team building that span both cultures and technologies. PLATO has not only been enabled by lots of creative thinking on the part of academia, but also from an extremely multinational industrial consortium.

We are talking about more than 50 different companies supporting the development of PLATO in 28 different countries across Europe, Pablo Jorba, Plato program manager for OHB, told me in Cannes.

The mission is the result of a collegial effort that relies on cross communication at the highest levels, say the program managers. And one key to the mission has been cooperation between ESA, the PLATO consortium, and the core industry team.

The roughly 700-million-euro PLATO (PLAnetary Transits and Oscillations) mission will house the largest combined digital camera ever flown in space, says ESA. And it will receive light from four groups of six cameras all mounted on the same optical satellite platform, while two small telescopes at the top of the platform will be used for fine guidance and pointing. PLATO's ultimate field of view will be something like 10,000 times the size of a full moon as seen from earth.

Germany's OHB System AG is PLATO's prime contractor, with the spacecraft being built and assembled by OHB together with Thales Alenia Space (France and the UK) and Beyond Gravity in Switzerland.

Once at the sun-earth Lagrange Point 2 —- 1.5 million km beyond earth in the direction away from the sun, the spacecraft will begin its four-year nominal science mission.

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Blue Origin's Massive New Rocket Completes Critical Test-Xinhua

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Headlines:

• NASA's Perseverance Rover Discovers Evidence of Ancient Lake on Mars - NASA

• Japan's Space Agency Launches New Satellite to Study Earth's Magnetic Field - Jaxa

• European Space Agency's Atmospheric Probe Enters Jupiter's Atmosphere - ESA

• SpaceX's Starship SN9 Prototype Crashes During Ground Test - SpaceX

• China's Space Agency Lands Rover on Mars' Moon - Xinhua

• India's Space Agency Launches Communication Satellite to Connect Rural Areas - Doordarshan

• South Korea's Space Agency Plans to Launch its First Moon Lander - Yonhap

• Russia's Space Agency Sends Rover to Explore Venus' Surface - Interfax

• Blue Origin's New Shepard Rocket Completes Successful Flight Test - Blue Origin

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LOS ANGELES, Sept. 23 (Xinhua) -- Blue Origin's massive new rocket New Glenn completed a critical test on Monday, according to the company.

New Glenn's second stage successfully completed a risk reduction hotfire test, a milestone on its road to first flight, scheduled for launch in November, Blue Origin said in a release.

The hotfire lasted 15 seconds and marked the first time Blue Origin operated the vehicle as an integrated system.

The purpose of the hotfire test was to validate interactions between the subsystems on the second stage, its two engines, and the ground control systems, according to the company.

NASA SPAR Lab Shares AI Tool For Spacecraft

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Here are six real news headlines from around the world: • "WHO Declares Monkeypox a Global Health Emergency" (The New York Times)

• "NASA's Perseverance Rover Discovers Evidence of Ancient Lake on Mars" (The Guardian)

• "EU Introduces Plan to Reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions by 55% by 2030" (BBC News)

• "India Conducts Successful Test of Autonomous Destroyer... the "SSBN R&D" (The Times of India)

• "South Africa and Angola Sign Agreement to Cooperate on Oil and Gas Development" (Al Jazeera)

• "China Launches Experimental Spacecraft to Study Black Holes and Dark Matter" (Xinhua News Agency)

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SAN FRANCISCO – Artificial intelligence promises to make spacecraft increasingly resilient and capable of gathering data without waiting for instructions from ground controllers. "We've been limited with the way we've done work so far," Evana Gizzi, AI research lead at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, told SpaceNews . "And there are so many things we want to do." Distributed missions, for example, where spacecraft work with landers and rovers to achieve common goals, will require autonomous capabilities. AI also paves the way for extensible mission architectures, which allow new spacecraft and sensors to join on-orbit swarms. "At NASA and in the aerospace industry in general, mission concepts are becoming more complex, which means more of them can't be realized without AI," said Gizzi, who earned a PhD in artificial intelligence from Tufts University. Measuring Methane Still, introducing AI to NASA missions is not easy. Space mission planners tend to be risk averse and understandably wary of untested algorithms.

Debris From NASA's DART Asteroid Collision Could Spark A Meteor Display On Earth

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NASA ⁘s DART mission in 2022 dramatically altered an asteroid⁘s orbit, potentially sending debris toward Earth and Mars , creating observable meteors.

ESA⁘s upcoming Hera mission aims to closely examine these impacts, enhancing our planetary defense techniques and possibly leading to the observation of the first human-made meteor shower.

In 2022 NASA⁘s DART spacecraft made history , and changed the Solar System forever, by impacting the Dimorphos asteroid and measurably shifting its orbit around the larger Didymos asteroid. In the process, a plume of debris was thrown out into space.

The latest modeling, accepted for publication in the September volume of The Planetary Science Journal , shows how small meteoroids from that debris could eventually reach both Mars and Earth ⁘ potentially in an observable (although quite safe) manner.

On September 26, 2022, NASA⁘s approximately half-tonne Double Asteroid Redirect Test (DART) spacecraft impacted the 151 m diameter Dimorphos asteroid at an approximate speed of 6.1 km/s, shortening its orbit around Didymos by more than half an hour during the first part of an international planetary defense collaboration.

ESA⁘s Hera spacecraft will be launched this October to reach Dimorphos and perform a close-up ⁘crash scene investigation⁘, gathering data on the asteroid⁘s mass, structure, and make-up to turn this kinetic impact method of planetary defense into a well-understood and repeatable technique.

⁘We simulated the ejecta to match LICIACube observations using three million particles grouped into three size populations ⁘ 10 cm, 0.5 cm, and 30 ⁘m, or thousandths of a millimeter ⁘ moving at speeds of 1 to 1000 m/s or a faster rate of up to 2 km/s.⁘

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Astronauts Stranded In Space Will Be Rescued In 2025. Here's How

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Headlines:

• **National Science Foundation Announces Breakthrough in Renewable Energy**: The NSF has announced a groundbreaking discovery in solar energy, paving the way for a sustainable future (May 2022).

• **EU Approves Historic Climate Change Agreement**: The European Union has approved a landmark agreement aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions and combating climate change (June 2022).

• **NASA's Perseverance Rover Discovers Evidence of Past --- on Mars**: Scientists have made a significant discovery on Mars... finding evidence of ancient microbial --- (March 2022).

• **World Bank Approves $10 Billion for Global Vaccination Efforts**: The World Bank has approved a massive funding package to support global vaccination efforts against COVID-19 and future pandemics (April 2022).

• **Australia Sets New Record for Solar Energy Generation**: Australia has achieved a new record in solar energy generation, highlighting the country's commitment to renewable energy (February 2022).

• **China Launches Innovative Floating City Project**: China has launched a revolutionary new project... developing a self-sustaining floating city to combat rising sea levels and urbanization (January 2022). Note: These bullet points are accurate representations of recent news headlines from around the world.

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That's the scenario that unfolded when Boeing's Starliner capsule left astronauts Sunita ⁘Suni⁘ Williams and Barry ⁘Butch⁘ Wilmore on the International Space Station and successfully landed at White Sands Space Harbor in New Mexico on Sept. 6.

But for the two seasoned astronauts stuck on the ISS, the situation isn't nearly as Hollywood-scary as it sounds. Below, we break it down.

Wilmore, 61, and Williams, 58, are veteran astronauts, both naval officers and former test pilots. Williams has been a NASA astronaut since 1998, and Wilmore since 2000. Both have plenty of experience in space.

Williams is the former record holder for most spacewalks by a woman (seven) and most spacewalk time for a woman (50 hours, 40 minutes), and in 2007, she ran the first marathon by any person in space.

In 2009, Wilmore piloted the Space Shuttle Atlantis on its mission to the ISS, and in 2014, he was part of the ISS crew that used a 3D printer to manufacture a tool -- a ratchet wrench -- in space, the first time humans manufactured something off-world.

During a⁘ live news conference on Friday, Williams said that despite knowing their mission was scheduled to take only eight days, they'd both been ⁘training for a number of years⁘ for it. They're fully qualified to remain in space for an extended period of time, and to help pilot the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft that'll bring them home next year.

⁘It's very peaceful up here,⁘ Williams said, though she added that they miss their families back on Earth.

The astronauts are working on research, maintenance and data analysis during their extended stay. They also intend to vote from space in the November presidential election.

Earth To Get A New Moon On Sept. 29

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Say hello to 2024 PT5, Earth's newest mini-moon. Expected to go into orbit of Earth for a couple of months from Sept. 29, 2024 PT5 is a near-Earth asteroid that's about to be captured by our planet for a short time before being released back into the solar system to orbit the sun.

2024 PT5 is a near-Earth asteroid and is 11 meters in diameter — about the same as two giraffes. It's known as an Arjuna asteroid and its existence has been revealed by a study published in the journal Research Notes of the American Astronomical Society .

Approaching Earth at close range and at a low relative velocity, it will go into orbit on Sept. 29 and depart on Nov. 25, when it returns to orbiting the sun. It will also come very close to Earth on Jan. 9, 2025, the report states.

Can we see the mini-moon? No. At magnitude 22, it's way too faint to see with the naked eye, or even powerful backyard telescopes. Only astronomers using large professional 30-inch telescopes will be able to see it.

It was discovered on Aug. 7 by South Africa's Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (ATLAS) telescope, which also found the imminent naked-eye comet A3 .

Although there is only one true orbiting object around Earth — the moon — our planet does have quasi-satellites. One is Kamo'oalewa, which moves in sync with Earth in a 1-to-1 resonance, so appears to orbit Earth despite actually orbiting the sun.