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Four astronauts, three from NASA and one from the European Space Agency, arrived at the International Space Station on Thursday and docked their SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule with the orbiting laboratory to begin a six-month science mission.

The rendezvous came about 21 hours after the team and its capsule were launched atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, on Wednesday night, following a string of weather delays that postponed the liftoff for a week and a half.

The docking took place about 6:30 p.m. EST (5am IST on Friday) while the Crew Dragon vehicle, dubbed Endurance, and the space station were flying about 260 miles (420 km) above the eastern Caribbean Sea, according to NASA.

The Endurance crew consists of three American NASA astronauts — flight commander Raja Chari, 44, mission pilot Tom Marshburn, 61, and mission specialist Kayla Barron, 34 — as well as German astronaut Matthias Maurer, 51, a mission specialist from the European Space Agency.

On arrival, the crew took inventory, conducted standard leak checks and pressurized the space between the spacecraft in preparation for opening the hatch to the space station about two hours later.

A live NASA video feed from the station showed the new arrivals floating headfirst through a padded passageway from their capsule into the orbiting outpost.

They were welcomed aboard with hugs from the three current space station occupants – Russian cosmonauts Pyotr Dubrov and Oleg Novitskiy and NASA astronaut Mark Vande Hei, who shared a Soyuz flight with his Roscosmos crewmates to the complex.

Astronaut wings

Endeavor’s second-in-command, Marshburn — a medical doctor and former NASA flight surgeon — has logged two previous spaceflights to the space station and four spacewalks.

Maurer, a materials science engineer, was making his debut spaceflight, as were Chari, a US Air Force combat jet and test pilot, and Barron, a US Navy submarine officer and nuclear engineer. Shortly after coming aboard, Marshburn pinned astronaut wings to the collars of his three rookie colleagues amid handshakes and smiles.

Both Chari and Barron also are among the first group of 18 astronauts selected for NASA’s upcoming Artemis missions, aimed at returning humans to the moon later this decade, over a half century after the Apollo lunar program ended.

“I think we all loved the ride up here,” Chari said during brief remarks in a welcoming ceremony webcast from the station. “It was way smoother than we could have imagined.”

The SpaceX Dragon also delivered more than 4,000 pounds (1,800 kg) of hardware and research equipment, NASA said.

The crew arriving on Thursday was officially designated “Crew 3” – the third full-fledged “operational” crew that NASA and SpaceX have flown together to the space station after a two-astronaut test run in May 2020.

“Crew 2” returned safely to Earth from the space station on Monday with a splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico off Florida that capped a record 199 days in orbit.

SpaceX, the rocket company formed in 2002 by billionaire Elon Musk, founder of electric car maker Tesla, has logged a total of 15 human spaceflights in 17 months, including its astro-tourism launch in September of the first all-civilian crew sent to Earth orbit without professional astronauts.

The space station, spanning the size of an American football field end to end, has been continuously occupied since November 2000, operated by an international partnership of five space agencies from 15 countries.

An international crew of at least seven people typically lives and works aboard the platform while traveling 5 miles (8 km) per second, orbiting Earth about every 90 minutes.

© Thomson Reuters 2021


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New Study Finds Hercules-Corona Borealis Great Wall Bigger and Nearer Than Thought

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New Study Finds Hercules-Corona Borealis Great Wall Bigger and Nearer Than Thought

Astronomers have revealed that the Hercules-Corona Borealis Great Wall, a massive network of galaxies, might be bigger than they realised. By mapping the cosmos with gamma-ray bursts (GRBs)—the brightest explosions in the universe—astronomers found that this structure is even bigger than previously estimated. Surprisingly, portions of it also lie significantly closer to Earth than previously believed, challenging fundamental assumptions about how the universe is structured and evolves.
This cosmic structure was first observed in 2014 — a dense galaxy forming a filament of a supercluster.

A new study now extends the researchers’ previous work, but with a wider GRB sample. Hakkila and Zsolt Bagoly, authors of the study, have refined the measurements. They detected a number of relatively nearby GRBs in their sample. The evidence also shows the Great Wall is larger and wider than previously predicted.

Gamma-Ray Bursts Expose Structure Too Large for Current Models

According to a Space.com report, the GRBs figure prominently in the early discovery and more recent growth of the Hercules–Corona Borealis Great Wall. These explosive outbursts — from either collapsing massive stars or colliding neutron stars — produce powerful jets that can be spotted over cosmological distances. Hakkila told the publication that GRBs act as another bright beacon for identifying galaxies, even those too faint to see directly. Because of their brightness, scientists can follow matter throughout the universe more distinctly than ever.

The Great Wall, over 10 billion light-years long, challenges the cosmological principle of uniform universe appearance. Its massive size indicates gaps in current theories and implies that the universe’s formation time was insufficient for such massive structures.

THESEUS May Reveal Full Scale of Cosmic Great Wall

NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Burst observations reveal 542 GRB events, but more data is needed to fully understand the Great Wall’s scope due to misidentified origins and sparse sampling. Hakkila points toward the upcoming ESA mission THESEUS — the Transient High Energy Sources and Early Universe Surveyor — as the next major leap.

The mission aims to dramatically expand the catalogue of known GRBs, particularly at extreme distances. “It could finally provide the observational leverage needed to map the Hercules–Corona Borealis Great Wall to its full extent,” Hakkila told Space.com, emphasising its role in refining our understanding of the universe’s large-scale structure.

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Ancient Greenland Rocks Found in Iceland Sheds Light on Late Antique Ice Age

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Ancient Greenland Rocks Found in Iceland Sheds Light on Late Antique Ice Age

A study published in April 2025 provides new insight into one of the mysterious historical climate change periods known as LALIA (the Late Antique Ice Age). This period is known to last from 536 to 660 AD. The trio of scientists, namely, Christopher Spencer, Ross Mitchell and Thomas Gernon, published in a journal describing the analysis of misplaced Greenland rocks found lodged in the cliffs of Iceland, offering direct evidence of iceberg activity connected to this period of an ice age.

Discovery of the LALIA

The study was published in the journal Geology. As per Phys.org, the earlier research has depicted that the Earth’s northern hemisphere had undergone a chilly spell beginning around 540 AD because of the eruption of huge volcanoes, which led to the rise in debris in the atmosphere, leading to the darkening of the skies. A few historians speculated that the sudden cold weather led the Goths to attack the Romans in Europe, as they moved toward the south, warmer regions led to the fall of the Roman Empire.

Understanding the Misplaced Rocks

The researchers studied some cliffs on the western coast when they noticed that the rocks actually looked out of place. They collected a few rocks to study in the lab. The team crushed the rocks in the lab to study their remnants under a microscope. They pulled the zircon crystals from the centre of these rocks.

In their lab, the team crushed the rocks and looked at their remnants under a microscope, allowing them to pull out zircon crystals from their centres. These crystals can be used as a time capsule. After studying their age and composition, the scientists could trace the original place of these rocks across Greenland. This predicts that these rocks were moved by someone more than 1500 years ago.

The scientists studied the rocks’ age placed at the LALIA, depicting that the rocks were moved after breaking the ice from the large glaciers of Greenland that formed as per the colder scenarios formed during that period.

Scope of the Study

The research stands as a major step forward in understanding the Earth’s climate in the past. These rocks have given clear proof of increased glacial activity at the time of LALIA, indicating the outcomes of modern and future climatic changes.

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SpaceX Sends Europe’s First Reentry Capsule into Orbit on Bandwagon-3 Rideshare Mission

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SpaceX Sends Europe’s First Reentry Capsule into Orbit on Bandwagon-3 Rideshare Mission

A Falcon 9 rocket soared into space from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida on April 21 at 8:48 p.m. EDT (0048 GMT, April 22), carrying multiple payloads on SpaceX’s latest rideshare mission, Bandwagon-3. Among the diverse cargo onboard was Phoenix 1, a European-built reentry capsule developed by the German company Atmos Space Cargo. History will be made here in European aerospace with this launch, as Phoenix 1 becomes the first capsule from Europe intending to return from space and splash down on Earth after just one orbit, barely 1,200 miles offshore of Brazil.

Phoenix 1 Debuts as Europe’s First Private Reentry Capsule on SpaceX Bandwagon-3 Flight

According to Atmos Space Cargo, this mission is the first-ever atmospheric reentry attempt of a European private entity. Phoenix 1 is meant to test out essential technologies, including the company’s inflatable heat shield needed to return high-value cargo from space safely, the company noted. “Our mission is to revolutionise space logistics by enabling groundbreaking advancements in microgravity research, in-orbit manufacturing, defence applications, and life sciences,” says the firm’s website. The successful reentry and splashdown will support future commercial applications across these sectors.

Phoenix 1 shared the ride with several other payloads, including 425Sat-3, operated by South Korea’s Agency for Defence Development, and Tomorrow-S7, a weather satellite from the meteorological technology company Tomorrow Companies Inc. These collaborative launches are part of SpaceX’s growing commitment to enabling diverse and cost-effective access to low Earth orbits via its ridesharing programs. The Bandwagon missions, which began in April 2024 and continued with a second flight in December that year, operate alongside the long-established Transporter series, which has completed 13 missions since 2021.

Phoenix 1 Marks Shift Toward Scalable Reentry Missions in European Space Logistics

While the Transporter program is known for launching a large number of satellites—including a record-breaking 143 on a single flight in January 2021—the Bandwagon series focuses on smaller, more flexible ridesharing configurations. The dispatch of Phoenix 1 on Bandwagon 3 is the latest sign of a trend toward greater mission flexibility to develop and operate bespoke space technologies in support of different kinds of space exploration and logistics, and yet another indication of commercial innovation extending the boundaries of the possible in space.

A successful test flight of Phoenix 1 would have significant ramifications for European space companies, being positioned as proof of the Phoenix program—demonstrating mission-critical capabilities regarding return flights and retrofitting, while being the seed for a scalable reaping capability for research institutions and commercial entities.

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