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To the moon, Artemis II!

After more than 50 years, NASA aims to return humans to the moon with the April 1 launch of the Artemis II mission.

The last mission to land astronauts on the moon took place in December 1972 and was about planting a flag on the moon. So, what’s the difference this time?

NASA has bigger plans.

The Artemis program started with the 2022 launch of Artemis I, an unmanned flight test of NASA’s latest deep-space exploration systems. These include the Orion capsule — the vehicle that will launch from the Space Launch System (SLS) and sustain the mission crew. The mission lasted 25 days.

CAPTION: A portion of the far side of the moon looms large just beyond Orion in this image taken on the sixth day of the Artemis I mission by a camera on the tip of one of Orion’s solar array wings. IMAGE: NASA

Artemis II is the first manned part of the mission. A four-person crew – commander Reid Wiseman, pilot Victor Glover, mission specialist Christina Koch and mission specialist Jeremy Hansen – are on a 10-day trip that will circle the moon and return to Earth.

The Artemis II mission is critical because, according to NASA, it will “confirm the spacecraft’s systems operate as designed with crew aboard in the actual environment of deep space.”

CAPTION: From right: NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, commander; Christina Koch, mission specialist; Victor Glover, pilot; and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen, mission specialist, wave to family and friends. IMAGE: NASA

Tests for the Orion capsule team include: life-support environment; systems from ground to launch; flight and recovery; retrieval of flight hardware and data; emergency operations, including systems capabilities, abort operations and rescue processes; and finally verifying subsystems and validating data.

Artemis III is intended to test meeting and docking capabilities between the Orion capsule and commercial spacecraft from SpaceX, Blue Origin or both, required for landing boots on the moon. This mission will occur in low-Earth orbit.

The fourth Artemis mission is targeted for early 2028 and is expected to be the program’s first lunar landing. Once the craft is within lunar orbit, two astronauts will head down to the surface for a week of exploring close to the moon’s south pole.

CAPTION: NASA IMAGE:  Christina Koch peers out of one of the Orion spacecraft’s main cabin windows, looking back at Earth, as the crew travels toward the moon.

Artemis V is set for late 2028, landing another two crew members on the moon to begin constructing a lunar base for longer-term science missions.
After this final journey, missions are intended to occur approximately once a year.

The established lunar base will serve as a steppingstone for deeper space exploration, ultimately intent on sending crews to Mars.

Though this is an American mission, remember NASA’s motto: “For the benefit of all.” Space exploration has the unique ability to bring nations together, as countries collaborate in the shared pursuit of discovery, innovation and an enhanced comprehension of our place in the universe.

CAPTION: Artemis II crew members Jeremy Hansen, Reid Wiseman, Christina Koch and Victor Glover answer questions from reporters during the first downlink event of their mission. IMAGE: NASA

From onboard the Orion capsule, looking back at the Earth, mission pilot Glover says, “Trust us, you look amazing, you look beautiful, and from up here you look like one thing. Homo sapiens are all of us; no matter where you’re from or what you look like, we’re all one people.”

After traveling a record-breaking 252,760 miles from Earth (within 4,006 miles from the moon’s surface), the Artemis II crew is expected to splash down April 10 in the Pacific Ocean, likely off the California coast near San Diego.

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Send it back

Eugenia Kargbo is Freetown’s “chief heat officer,” an unusual title for a government employee.

Freetown, capital city of Sierra Leone, has always been hot, but it’s getting hotter. Climate change is making the mercury rise, and the urban heat island effect exacerbates the problem: On average, cities are 5 to 9 degrees hotter than rural areas. Kargbo says the data shows everywhere in Freetown is getting hotter, but some communities stay hotter throughout the day.

Freetown’s Climate Action Strategy reported 94 percent of residents said the city was hotter in 2022 than five years earlier. They’re not wrong.

Sierra Leone is the 18th most climate-vulnerable country in the world, according to the Notre Dame Global Adaptation Index. And Adrienne Arsht-Rockefeller Foundation Resilience Center data says by 2050, around 120 days every year in Freetown will be as warm as the hottest 10 days currently.

Kargbo had experimented with planting trees throughout the city and installing shading structures made of reflective plastic, but the real improvement was felt when a team of researchers approached her with an ambitious plan: Cover roofs with mirrors to reflect the sun.

Mirrors for Earth’s Energy Rebalancing (MEER) was founded by Harvard University’s Ye Tao. His theory? Develop “nontoxic surface-based reflectors that can redirect solar radiation back into space.”

This isn’t actually so crazy. We know that ice- and snow-covered areas offer the albedo effect, where light-colored surfaces return a large part of the sun’s UV rays back to the atmosphere.

It’s why skiers and pole-trekkers need sunglasses and sunscreen. The planet has a natural “surface-based reflector” mechanism in snow and ice.

But with climate change come increased global temperatures and a dramatic loss of sea ice at the poles, snow in the mountains and glaciers in the north. Darker surfaces absorb a larger fraction of the incoming solar radiation, creating a vicious cycle.

MEER’s project aimed to cover buildings in Freetown with a reflective film made out of recycled PET plastic and aluminum. They started small: Two buildings got the film, another one was painted white and a fourth had a new metal roof installed. The two mirrored buildings were 15 degrees cooler than the surrounding buildings without the film, while the white-roofed building experienced a 3 degree cooling effect. MEER says if the entire neighborhood were covered, the cooling effects would be even greater.

Researchers at the University of Maryland are taking a similar approach. They developed a reflective coating using glass and aluminum oxide particles that can be painted onto roofs and roads.

The team’s “cooling glass” is environmentally stable — able to withstand up to 1,000 degrees — and uses finely ground glass particles to recycle and avoid polymers.

The particle size maximizes infrared emissions and reflects sunlight through the atmosphere back into space. The glass paint also comes in four colors.

George Ban-Weiss, an environmental engineer at the University of Southern California, says it’s simple to paint roofs white or light gray to increase the albedo effect — in theory. In reality, if this happens at a large enough scale, Ban-Weiss says it could have an unintended regional side effect.

In coastal cities, for example, the urban warmth contrasting with the ocean drives a reliable sea breeze. Bring the temperatures closer to each other, and there could be less of this wind, which would mean less clean air and a reduced natural cooling effect.

Not just where roofs are but their shapes matter too. Covering flat roofs would project the rays straight back to space, but slanted roofs could shine on the ground or the city’s inhabitants, heating them instead of the buildings.

One skyscraper in London is notorious for this. 20 Fenchurch St. is covered in glass — normal glass, not cooling glass — and its shape concentrates and reflects the sun’s rays into a beam of light that hits the pavement and makes it hot enough to fry an egg.

“It’s kind of a tug of war,” Ban-Weiss says. “You’ve got a reduction in air temperature to make people more comfortable.” But at the same time, he adds, sunlight reflecting off the side of a building could make pedestrians less comfortable.

Portland State University’s Vivek Shandas studied the heat island effect in over 100 U.S. cities. He says thinking about heat reduction is still very novel in urban planning: “When we’re talking about a place that’s designed in a particular way, how has the climate system been brought into the design of that place? How has the infrastructure been brought into its ability to mediate or moderate the amplifying temperatures? These are the kinds of questions I think we’re really up against here.”

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Camels vs. superbugs

Antimicrobial resistance is listed among the top 10 biggest threats to humanity by the World Health Organization. And the most prevalent is drug-resistant bacteria.

But help might be on the way from the dromedary camel.

A new study published in Frontiers in Immunology discovered three teeny infection-fighting molecules called peptides in camel blood.

These peptides can be considered microscopic guards. Two of the three packed a lethal punch against dangerous bacteria that include MRSA and resistant strains of klebsiella.

They are successful by effectively punching holes in bacteria resulting in cell leakage and ultimate collapse.

What’s the catch? Before medical use, further tweaks are required as one of the peptides can damage human red blood cells at increased doses.

The findings, however, suggest that camels that are naturally built to survive harsh desert climates may provide high-powered tools that could be a catalyst for future antibiotics.

More like this: Immune cell sabotage

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Arctic plants make an epic comeback

Sealing Arctic plants in ice all winter might seem redundant, but researchers in Svalbard, Norway, did it anyway over five years.

Over five winters, the research team iced the plants and then slowly warmed it in the spring and summer months to observe the impact of slow warming on the tundra.

The slowly warmed plants grew sluggishly in spring.

The good news, though: They did eventually catch up.

However, the plants that had been covered in ice also often failed to flower, sometimes producing half as many flowers as those not iced over the winter. Fewer flowers equals lower reproduction.

The research, published in the Journal of Ecology concluded that while Arctic plants are incredibly resilient, the icy winter that results from Arctic warming comes at a cost and could reshape the tundra.

More like this: Arctic faces rapid, permanent change