Category Science

Images from space that show Earth as nothing more than a blur of blue tug at our hearts in a way that can’t be put into words. The ones that you see here, while evoking such emotions, are also iconic in their own right. This is because they show the first human ever to walk untethered in space. The subject of these photographs is NASA astronaut Bruce McCandless II.

Born in Boston in 1937, McCandless did his schooling at Long Beach, California and received his Bachelor of Science degree from the United States Naval Academy in 1958. He then obtained his Master of Science degree in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University in 1965, and eventually also ended up with a Masters in Business Administration from the University of Houston in 1987.

Communicator role

A retired U.S. Navy captain, McCandless was one of 19 astronauts selected by NASA in April 1966. He served as the mission control communicator for Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin during their famous 1969 Apollo 11 mission, which included the first human landing on the moon. McCandless, in fact, famously felt let down by Armstrong as the latter hadn’t revealed ahead what he had planned to say while setting foot on the moon.

McCandless flew as the mission specialist on two space shuttles, STS-41B in 1984 and STS-31 in 1990. While the 1984 mission saw him become the first human to perform an untethered spacewalk, he helped deploy the Hubble Space Telescope during the 1990 mission.

Helps develop MMU

Apart from these, McCandless also served as a member of the astronaut support crew for the Apollo 14 mission and was a backup pilot for the first crewed Skylab mission. For the M-509 astronaut manoeuvring experiment that was flown in the Skylab programme, McCandless was a co-investigator. He collaborated on the development and helped design what came to be known as the MMU – manned manoeuvring unit.

The STS-41B was launched on February 3, 1984. Four days later, on February 7, McCandless stepped out of the space shuttle Challenger into nothingness. As he moved away from the spacecraft, he floated freely without any earthly anchor.

“Heck of a big leap for me”

“It may have been a small step for Neil, but it’s a heck of a big leap for me,” were McCandless’ first words. If the mood at mission control had been apprehensive before, the raucous laughter that followed this comment certainly reduced the tension – a fact that was confirmed by his wife, who was also at mission control. McCandless would later say that his comment was consciously thought out and that it was his way of saying things were going okay, apart from getting back at Armstrong for not revealing his words in 1969.

The images that were shot then, showing McCandless spacewalking without tethers, gained widespread fame. The spacewalk was the first time the MMU that he helped develop was used. These nitrogen-propelled, hand-controlled devices afforded much greater mobility to their users as opposed to restrictive tethers used by previous spacewalkers.

Fellow astronaut Robert L. Stewart later tried out the MMU that McCandless first used. Two days later, both of them tried another similar unit with success. By February 11, the STS-41B mission was complete as the Challenger safely landed at NASA’s Kennedy Space Centre.

In one of his last interviews, before his death in December 2017, McCandless told National Geographic what he had probably told countless others who wanted to know how it was out there.

Fun, but cold

While he always maintained that it was fun, he also adds that the single thing that disturbed him as he moved away from the shuttle was that he got extremely cold, with shivers and chattering teeth.

The reason for that is pretty straightforward. While he had prepared for that moment for years, he wasn’t prepared for the temperature in the suit. As the suit was designed to keep astronauts comfortable while working hard in a warm environment, even the H (hot) position on the life support system actually provided minimal cooling. Considering that McCandless wasn’t really performing strenuous labour during the first hours of his untethered spacewalk, he felt cold. That’s a small price to pay for becoming the first-ever human to walk freely in space.

Picture Credit : Google

Plastic pollution from discarded fishing gear in the Ganges River poses a threat to wildlife such as the critically endangered three-striped Ganges river dolphin. The fishing nets – all made of plastic – were the most common type of gear found.

“Ingesting plastic can harm wildlife, but our threat assessment focussed on entanglement, which is known to injure and kill a wide range of marine species,” said Sarah Nelms, University of Exeter, UK.

The researchers used a list of 21 river species of “conservation concern” identified by the Wildlife Institute of India in Uttarakhand.

They combined existing information on entanglements of similar species worldwide with the new data on levels of waste fishing gear in the Ganges to estimate which species are most at risk.

The findings offer hope for solutions based on “circular economy” where waste is dramatically reduced by reusing materials. A high proportion of the fishing gear found was made of nylon 6, which can be used to make products including carpets and clothing. Collection and recycling of nylon 6 has strong potential as a solution because it would cut plastic pollution and provide an income.

Picture Credit : Google

Animals that that have a magnetic ‘sixth sense include sea turtles, birds, fish, and lobsters, Specific species use this ability as a navigation tool, such as sea turtles that are, impressively, able to return to the location of their birthplace.

Researchers propose that the magnetic sense comes from a symbiotic relationship with magnetotactic bacteria, a special type of bacteria whose movement is influenced by magnetic fields, including that of Earth’s.

Magnetotactic bacteria are associated with many animals, including a penguin species, loggerhead sea turtles, bats and Atlantic right whales. It is still not known where in these animals the bacteria would live, but it may well be associated with nervous tissue, like the eye or brain.

Learning how organisms interact with magnetic fields can improve humans’ understanding of how to use Earth’s magnetic fields for their own navigation purposes.

Picture Credit : Google

Researchers have named a type of burrowing frog Sphaerotheca Bengaluru to highlight the gap in the documentation of amphibians from non-forested areas and the need to restore frog habitats in Bengaluru.

The discovery of the new species in an unexpected location not only indicates that the city is home to other uncatalogued species, but has also come as a warning on the pollution of water bodies.

The frog was found outside normal habitats, in a barren tract of land near Rajankunte where there is no permanent source of water. “This genus of frog is generally located around freshwater areas or in forested landscapes. Water is vital to the completion of their life cycle,” said Dr K. P. Dinesh of the Zoological Survey of India. The presence of the new frog, which has not been found in or around any of the city’s water bodies, suggests that they could have become uninhabitable for the new species. “They are the first to be affected by water pollution and their behaviour tells us about the quality of an ecosystem,” Dr Dinesh added.

Picture Credit : Google