Ripples In A Teacup

Apparently NASA is finalizing plans to bring Williams and Wilmore back to Earth, along with their two space station crewmates, Crew 9 commander Nick Hague and cosmonaut Alexander Gorbunov, around March 19. That's two weeks earlier than their previously announced ETA. This has come about because   the next set of station fliers, known as Crew 10, are expected to be switched to a different Crew Dragon spacecraft (Endeavor) and launched on March 12th . The SpaceX ferry ship meant to make its maiden flight to bring back Williams and Wilmore is taking longer than expected and will not be used to for the March trip. During her stay on the ISS, Sunita broke the record for total spacewalking time by a woman by logging 62 hours and 6 minutes of spacewalk. Williams and Wilmore sauntered outside the ISS to remove degraded radio communications hardware and collect samples that may show whether microorganisms exist on the exterior of the orbiting laboratory. A week ago, Sunita told CBS Evenin...

 Unexpectedly, January 2025 has been declared the world's warmest January on record . Scientists had anticipated some cooling of global temperatures due to the end of the most recent El Niño event which is known to boost the amount of heat in the atmosphere. However, this was not the case. Western Europe , as well as parts of Italy, Scandinavia, the Baltic countries, Alaska, Canada, central and eastern Russia, eastern Australia, southeastern Africa, and southern Brazil had “wetter-than-average conditions” in January 2025, marked by “heavy precipitation” and flooding in some regions. On the other hand, drier than average conditions were recorded in the northern UK and Ireland, eastern Spain and north of the Black Sea. But southwestern United States, northern Mexico, northern Africa, the Middle East, across Central Asia and in eastern China, southern Africa, southern South America and Australia had drier-than-average conditions. January 2025 was 1.75°C above pre-industrial levels...

  I’m not meant to be blogging, since my final Board exams are almost upon me, but when Sunita Willams, who’s been stuck on the International Space Station for over 10 months, performed a spacewalk in order to replace a planar reflector 260 miles above the South Pacific Ocean , I had to. The spacewalk done on January 16 th was Sunita’s first spacewalk in 12 years , and the eighth in her career .   NASA has scheduled a second spacewalk on January 23 , from 8:15 a.m. onwards. During the second mission, Sunita and Nick Hague will remove a radio frequency group antenna assembly from the station's truss, and collect samples of surface material for analysis from the Destiny laboratory and the Quest airlock to see whether microorganisms may exist on the exterior of the orbital complex. They will also prepare a spare elbow joint for the Canadarm2robotic arm in the event it is needed for a replacement. Looks like I was panicking over Sunita unnecessarily. In case you m...

I was planning to take a break from blogging and focus on my final exams which are less than five weeks away, but the wildfires in LA make it impossible for me to do so. I always thought wildfires are a summer-time hazard and we are in the midst of what’s meant to be winter! Some learnings for me: A combination of high temperatures, dryness, and high winds give rise to conditions ripe for fires. We are not meant to have these conditions in the middle of winter, but we do now. And when we do, the smaller spark can set off a large-scale wildfire. In 2024, Southern California had an exceptionally hot summer . In the past, a hot summer is usually followed by fall and early winter rains. This year, the rains went missing and left the landscape parched and ready to burn. Southern California experienced two consecutive years of above-average rainfall prior to this dry spell , leading to an overgrowth of vegetation, which, when dried out, became highly flammable fuel. Wildfires are getti...