Polaris Dawn mission will send crew on a wild, risky ride

By Ashley Strickland, CNN

(CNN) — When astronauts conduct spacewalks to perform maintenance outside of the International Space Station, the view can be distracting.

The sun gleams and Earth emits a glow from 220 miles (354 kilometers) away in the surrounding darkness.

“The only thing between you and the rest of the universe, seeing the whole cosmos of creation, is the glass faceplate of your visor on your helmet,” NASA astronaut Mike Fincke previously told CNN.

Now, four civilians could witness what Fincke described as “truly breathtaking” as they aim to pull off the first-ever commercial spacewalk.

Defying gravity

The Polaris Dawn mission is about to take flight on a wild, risky ride around Earth as early as Tuesday.

Billionaire Jared Isaacman, former Air Force pilot Scott “Kidd” Poteet, and SpaceX engineers Anna Menon and Sarah Gillis will spend five days aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule in an attempt to orbit the planet at a record-setting height.

About 870 miles (1,400 kilometers) from Earth, the quartet will encounter the Van Allen radiation belts, where trapped high-energy solar particles create two dangerous bands of radiation.

The crew members will be exposed to the vacuum of space when they open the hatch and conduct a spacewalk at a lower, safer altitude, wearing brand-new spacesuits developed by SpaceX.

In other space news, NASA has decided that the Starliner astronauts will have a delayed return to Earth in February 2025 aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule — while the Boeing Starliner capsule will come back empty.

Wild kingdom

Each day as the sun sets over paddy fields in central China, orb-weaving spiders build new webs to entrap fireflies — and commandeer their flickering signals to capture even more prey.

The spider, known as Araneus ventricosus, achieves this lethal feat by making male fireflies emit the single light pulses used as mating signals by female fireflies.

Researchers aren’t sure how the spiders are manipulating the male fireflies to mimic females, but it may be due to their venom or a series of strategic bites.

A long time ago

A study of unmarked graves found at the British settlement of Jamestown, Virginia, has revealed a long-hidden secret within the family of the colony’s first governor, Thomas West.

When researchers analyzed DNA from two skeletons within the graves, they discovered both men were related to West through a shared maternal lineage. One of the men, Capt. William West, was illegitimate and born to West’s spinster aunt, Elizabeth.

That scandal might be what caused William West to cross the Atlantic Ocean and join the colony, according to the study authors.

Separately, researchers have determined how ancient humans made a monument out of stone as heavy as two jumbo jets, which dwarfs Stonehenge, 5,600 years ago in what’s now southern Spain.

Other worlds

When the Chandrayaan-3 mission landed on the moon just over a year ago, India became the fourth country to achieve such a feat.

Now, findings from the mission’s Pragyan rover, deployed near the lunar south pole, add evidence to a theory about the moon’s history.

Samples collected during the Apollo missions have suggested that billions of years ago, the moon was a deep magma ocean that slowly cooled and formed layers of minerals and rocks.

The Pragyan rover analyzed the lunar soil and found a type of rock that likely crystallized on top of the magma ocean to form the moon’s crust.

Meanwhile, the European Space Agency’s Juice mission to explore the habitability of Jupiter’s icy moons conducted the first double flyby of Earth and the moon this week. The risky maneuver put the spacecraft on track to reach Jupiter in 2031, and it captured some postcard-like images of both encounters.

Fantastic creatures

Two male flamingos have hatched an egg together and are nurturing the thriving fluffy chick at the Paignton Zoo in southwest England.

Although the zoo has hosted other male pairs during breeding season, the staff has no idea how Arthur and Curtis came by the egg.

“It’s likely that this egg became available — unprotected, kind of just left (in a nest) — and then they’ve taken the opportunity,” said Pete Smallbones, the zoo’s curator of birds.

The egg adoption and hatching highlight the birds’ parental instincts, and experts have theories about why the flamingo duo paired up to parent the little chick.

Curiosities

These fascinating stories may mesmerize you:

— Astronomers discovered an unusual object that may be a rare hypervelocity star.
It’s moving so fast that it may escape the gravity of the Milky Way.

— A surprising view of a dinosaur fossil and the gliding dance of two birds are just two wonders captured in the winning images of the 2024 BMC Ecology and Evolution and BMC Zoology Image Competition.

— The Perseverance rover is embarking on a steep climb up the rim of a Martian crater, and what it finds could change the way scientists understand the history of Mars. 

— “ManhattAnts” have thrived beneath the feet of New Yorkers for more than a decade. Now, researchers have solved the mystery of where the ant species originated.

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