Coldplay beam up new single 'Higher Power' to space

LONDON - British band Coldplay chose an out of this world way to mark the release of their latest single “Higher Power” on Friday - by beaming up into space.

The rock group, known for hit songs “Paradise” and “Viva la Vida”, linked up with the International Space Station (ISS) to speak with French ESA astronaut Thomas Pesquet about life in space.

They also shared a recorded outdoor performance of their new song, featuring colourful alien holograms dancing to the tune, to Pesquet, who played it on board the ISS.

“Right now we aren’t able to play for anybody on Earth, so we thought we’d just play for you,” lead singer Chris Martin to Pesquet during their chat, a video of which was shared on Friday. “It’s like our one-man concert.”

Last week, the band wrote on its Twitter page that the song, produced by Swedish songwriter and producer Max Martin, “arrived on a little keyboard and a bathroom sink at the start of 2020”.

Coldplay will open next week’s BRIT Awards, Britain’s pop music honours, with a performance of “Higher Power” on the River Thames near the ceremony’s O2 arena venue in London.

They are also set to perform at Glastonbury’s livestream concert on May 22 after the festival’s usual greenfield music event was cancelled again this year due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Reporting by Marie-Louise Gumuchian; Editing by Raissa Kasolowsky

-reuters-

US astronaut returns to Earth after longest mission by woman

NASA's Christina Koch returned to Earth safely on Thursday after shattering the spaceflight record for female astronauts with a stay of almost 11 months aboard the International Space Station.

Koch touched down at 0912 GMT on the Kazakh steppe after 328 days in space, along with Luca Parmitano of the European Space Agency and Alexander Skvortsov of the Russian space agency.

Koch was shown seated and smiling broadly after being extracted from the Soyuz descent module in the Roscosmos space agency's video footage from the landing site.

"I am so overwhelmed and happy right now," said Koch, who blasted off on March 14 last year. 

Parmitano pumped his fists in the air after being lifted into his chair while Skvortsov was shown eating an apple.

Local Kazakhs on horseback were among those to witness the capsule landing in the snow-covered steppe as support crews gathered around the three astronauts, NASA commentator Rob Navias said.

"I've never seen this," Navias exclaimed, reporting that the men stopped to chat with engineering personnel. 

Koch, a 41-year-old Michigan-born engineer, on December 28 last year beat the previous record for a single spaceflight by a woman of 289 days, set by NASA veteran Peggy Whitson in 2016-17.

Koch called three-time flyer Whitson, now 60, "a heroine of mine" and a "mentor" in the space program after she surpassed the record. 

She also spoke of her desire to "inspire the next generation of explorers." 

Koch also made history as one half of the first-ever all-woman spacewalk along with NASA counterpart Jessica Meir -- her classmate from NASA training -- in October last year. 

The spacewalk was initially postponed because the space station did not have two suits of the right size for women, leading to allegations of sexism.

Ahead of the three-and-a-half-hour journey back to Earth, Koch told NBC on Tuesday that she would "miss microgravity". 

"It's really fun to be in a place where you can just bounce around between the ceiling and the floor whenever you want," she said, smiling as she twisted her body around the ISS.

She will now head to NASA headquarters in Houston, via the Kazakh city of Karaganda and Cologne in Germany, where she will undergo medical testing. 

Koch's medical data will be especially valuable to NASA scientists as the agency draws up plans for a long-duration manned mission to Mars. 

'Make space for women'

Koch's return comes after an advert for a skincare brand ran during an intermission in the American football Super Bowl with a call to "make space for women". 

The advert featured NASA astronaut Nicole Stott and saw the company promise to donate up to $500,000 to the non-profit Women Who Code, which works with young women seeking careers in tech and scientific fields. 

The first woman in space was Soviet cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova whose spaceflight in 1963 is still the only solo mission carried out by a woman.

Russia has sent only one woman to the ISS since expeditions began in 2000 -- Yelena Serova whose mission launched in 2014.

Both Tereshkova and Serova are now lawmakers in the Russian parliament, where they represent the ruling United Russia party. 

Unlike Koch, whose ISS stay was extended, Parmitano and Skvortsov were rounding off regular half-year missions.

Parmitano handed over command of the ISS to Roscosmos's Oleg Skripochka on Tuesday. 

The 43-year-old Italian posted regular shots of the Earth while aboard, highlighting the plight of the Amazon rainforest and describing the Alps as "like a spinal column, never bending to time". 

Four male cosmonauts have spent a year or longer in space as part of a single mission with Russian Valery Polyakov's 437 days the overall record. 

Scott Kelly holds the record for a NASA astronaut, posting 340 days at the ISS before he returned home in 2016.

source: news.abs-cbn.com

Alexei Leonov, first human to walk in space, dies at 85

MOSCOW - Alexei Leonov, who became the first human to walk in space in 1965, died on Friday at the age of 85 after a long illness, Russia's TASS news agency reported.

Though less well known internationally than Yuri Gagarin, the first man in space, Leonov was a household name in his native Russia and will be remembered in particular for his role in the 1965 Voskhod-2 mission.

During that flight, one of two he made into space in his career, Leonov became the first human to conduct a spacewalk, an episode that lasted 12 minutes and 9 seconds.

The outing was stressful for Leonov whose spacesuit filled with air to the point where he struggled to get back into his spacecraft.

Leonov flew into space again in 1975, commanding the Soviet half of the Apollo-Soyuz mission, the first US–Soviet space flight. It occurred at a time when Russia and the United States, which spent part of the Cold War locked in a space race, were pursuing a policy of detente.

Leonov trained as a military pilot before becoming a cosmonaut. He received a 'Hero of the Soviet Union' medal - one of the Russian state's most prestigious awards - twice and has a small crater on the Moon named after him.

Leonov helped train other cosmonauts before retiring in 1992, a year after the Soviet Union collapsed. He devoted himself to private business and his twin passions of art and writing in later life.

Russian President Vladimir Putin knew Leonov well and had great respect for his courage, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Friday, TASS reported.

NASA said in a statement on Twitter it was saddened by Leonov's death.

"His venture into the vacuum of space began the history of extravehicular activity that makes today’s Space Station maintenance possible," it said. 

source: news.abs-cbn.com

John Young, who set records in space with NASA, is dead at 87

WASHINGTON - John Young, a legendary US astronaut who went into space 6 times, orbited the moon and then walked on its craggy surface, has died, NASA announced Saturday.

He was 87 and died late Friday of complications from pneumonia, the space agency said. He lived in a Houston suburb just minutes from the NASA Space Center.

"NASA and the world have lost a pioneer," agency administrator Robert Lightfoot said in a statement. "We will stand on his shoulders as we look toward the next human frontier."

Young was a man of many firsts: the only astronaut to fly in the Gemini, Apollo and space shuttle programs (and the first to command a shuttle flight); and the first to fly into space six times.

He once held the world record for total time spent in space, NASA said.

'BOLDEST FIGHT IN HISTORY' 

Young joined Gus Grissom on the Gemini 3 mission, then commanded the first space shuttle mission in what some people called "the boldest test flight in history."

He commanded Gemini 10, the first mission to rendezvous with two other spacecraft during a single flight.

Young orbited the moon in Apollo 10, and made a lunar landing with Apollo 16. "In an iconic display of test pilot 'cool,' he landed the space shuttle (STS-9) with a fire in the back end," NASA said.

"He was in every way the 'astronaut's astronaut,'" Lightfoot said. But he was also described as a savvy engineer and a "test pilot's test pilot."

While in the navy, Young set world records for the fastest ascension from a standing start in an F-4 Phantom II jet.

Once, during an air-to-air missile test, Young and another pilot approached each other's aircraft at a potentially calamitous speed of Mach 3 (2,300 miles per hour, or 3,700 kilometers per hour), according to Young's website.

"I got a telegram from the chief of naval operations," Young said in his understated way, "asking me not to do this any more."

Fellow astronaut Charles Bolden called Young and Robert "Hoot" Gibson the two best pilots he had ever known.

"Never met two people like them," he said. "Everyone else gets into an airplane; John and Hoot wear their airplane. They're just awesome."

source: news.abs-cbn.com

Gene Cernan, last astronaut to walk on moon, dies at 82

Eugene Cernan, the last astronaut to walk on the moon - an experience that he said made him "belong to the universe," died on Monday at the age of 82, the U.S. space agency said.

Cernan, who was also the second man to walk in space, died surrounded by his family, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration said in a statement without providing details.

A separate statement from his family and released by NASA said his death came after "ongoing health issues."

Cernan and fellow Apollo 17 astronaut Harrison Schmitt became members of the most exclusive club in the universe on Dec. 11, 1972, when they stepped from their lunar landing module onto the moon's surface. Only 10 other people - all American astronauts - had done so before and none since.

"Oh, my golly," Cernan told mission control in Houston as he touched the moon. "Unbelievable."

For three days, the moon was home for Cernan and Schmitt. They rambled more than 19 miles (30 km) in their lunar roving vehicle and gathered more than 220 pounds (100 kg) of rocks during their 22 hours of exploration of craters and hills.

"I knew that I had changed in the past three days and that I no longer belonged solely to the Earth," Cernan wrote in a memoir titled "The Last Man on the Moon." "Forever more, I would belong to the universe."

Cernan was 38 years old when he blasted off for the moon on Dec. 7, 1972, as commander of Apollo 17. With Ronald Evans orbiting above in the command module, Cernan and Harrison Schmitt, a geologist, rode the lunar lander to the moon's surface four days later.

They explored for about seven hours each day and Cernan wrote that moonwalking was painful for him because he had injured a tendon in his leg two months earlier playing softball.

On the day before returning to the command module, Cernan drove the rover to a point away from the lunar module so that a camera on the vehicle could film their departure. He then paid tribute to his young daughter, Tracy.

"I took a moment to kneel and with a single finger, scratched Tracy's initials, TDC, in the lunar dust, knowing those three letters would remain there undisturbed for more years than anyone could imagine," Cernan wrote in his memoir.

The size 10-1/2 boot prints that Cernan made on his walk back to the module afterward marked the last steps man has taken on the moon. Cernan said he spoke spontaneously as he returned to the lunar module.

"As we leave the moon and Taurus-Littrow (a deep lunar valley where they had landed), we leave as we came, and God willing, as we shall return, with peace and hope for all mankind," he told mission control.

"As I take these last steps from the surface for some time to come, I'd just like to record that America's challenge of today has forged man's destiny of tomorrow. Godspeed to the crew of Apollo 17."

WANTED TO STAY
In a 2007 interview for NASA's oral history program, Cernan recalled his final moments before climbing back in the lander.

"Those steps up that ladder, they were tough to make," he said. "I didn't want to go up. I wanted to stay a while."

Apollo 17 was Cernan's last flight as an astronaut after 566 hours and 15 minutes in space.

Cernan was born March 14, 1934, and grew up near Chicago. He was in the military officers training program at Purdue University, where he first met Neil Armstrong, who would become the first moonwalker.

Cernan became a Navy test pilot and joined the astronaut corps in October 1963. His first space flight came three years later due to a tragedy. Cernan and Thomas Stafford had been designated to be the backups for Gemini 9 and had to take over the three-day mission when the original crew members were killed in a plane crash.

Cernan became the third person - following a Russian cosmonaut and U.S. astronaut Ed White - to make a spacewalk on the Gemini mission and set what was then a record by being outside the spacecraft for two hours and nine minutes.

In 1969, Cernan was the pilot of the Apollo 10 lunar module that came within 9.6 miles (15.6 km) of the moon's surface after separating from the command module. The descent toward the surface served as a dress rehearsal for Apollo 11, which two months later delivered the first men to the moon, Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin.

Cernan retired from NASA and the Navy in 1976. As a civilian he helped start Air One airline, worked as an energy and aerospace consultant, served as chairman of an engineering company and was a space commentator for ABC News.

In 2011, after NASA ended the space shuttle program, Cernan joined Armstrong in testifying before a congressional committee to urge the government not to give up on space exploration. Cernan was particularly critical of the decision by President Barack Obama's administration not to pursue the Constellation program, which aimed to send astronauts to the moon and Mars.

"I don't think he fully understands what traditional America is all about because he didn't literally grow up here," Cernan said of Obama in a 2012 interview with Fox News.

Cernan met his first wife, Barbara, who had been a flight attendant for Continental Airlines, on a plane. They divorced in 1981 after 20 years and one child and in 1987 he married Jan Nanna with whom he had two daughters.

Cernan is survived by his wife, Jan Nanna Cernan, his daughter and son-in-law, Tracy Cernan Woolie and Marion Woolie, step-daughters Kelly Nanna Taff and husband, Michael, and Danielle Nanna Ellis and nine grandchildren.

(Reporting by Daniel Trotta; Writing by Bill Trott; Editing by Paul Simao, Cynthia Osterman and Alan Crosby)

source: news.abs-cbn.com

Astronaut Scott Kelly to retire in April

MIAMI, United States - Astronaut Scott Kelly will retire from NASA next month, after spending nearly a year in space and setting a record for the most cumulative days in space of any American, the US space agency said.

Kelly, a former Navy pilot who joined NASA in 1996, will leave the agency April 1.

"This year-in-space mission was a profound challenge for all involved, and it gave me a unique perspective and a lot of time to reflect on what my next step should be on our continued journey to help further our capabilities in space and on Earth," Kelly said in a statement.

"I am humbled and excited by new opportunities for me to support and share the amazing work NASA is doing to help us travel farther into the solar system and work with the next generation of science and technology leaders."

He gave no further details on his plans post-retirement.

However, Kelly -- who is allowing his body to be studied to further research on the effects of long-term spaceflight -- will "continue to participate in the ongoing research related to his one-year mission," NASA said.

"He will provide periodic medical samples and support other testing in much the same way that his twin brother, former astronaut Mark Kelly, made himself available for NASA's Twins Study during his brother's mission."

Kelly is a four-time veteran of spaceflight. His first trip was aboard the space shuttle Discovery in 1999, during a mission to repair NASA's Hubble Space Telescope. His other three missions were to the International Space Station.

His latest mission lasted 340 days, and gave him a US record of 520 cumulative days in space.

Kelly said he hoped the legacy of his near-year mission would be to help pave the way toward a deep space mission to Mars someday.

For now, the risks of long-term spaceflight remain unclear, amid concerns such as high radiation, food supply and the psychological challenges of spending months or years away from Earth.

"When the first Americans set foot on Mars, they will be following in the footsteps of one of the finest astronauts in the history of the space program, my friend, Commander Scott Kelly," said NASA Administrator Charles Bolden.

"I can think of no one more deserving of some well-deserved rest and time on the same planet as his family and friends."

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com

Air Force pilot withdraws from Axe space program

MANILA -- The Philippine Air Force pilot who is vying to become the first-ever Filipino astronaut has dropped out of the space race, organizers of AXE Apollo Space Camp said on Wednesday.

Air Force pilot Lt. Mario Mendoza Jr., 31, and Evan Rey Datuin, 24, bested 400 other applicants in the AXE Apollo Space Academy Philippines as they battled it out at the AXE Apollo National Challenge at Bonifacio Global City in late August.

Mendoza and Daturin were to be sent to the Axe Apollo International Space Camp in Orlando, Florida for training. One of them is guaranteed to travel to space in 2014.

But on Wednesday, Axe in a statement said Mendoza, who is currently in-training to become a jet fighter pilot in the Philippine Air Force, has withdrawn from the space program citing scheduling conflicts.

“Unfortunately, in the midst of preparations, conflict arose with Mendoza’s scheduled military training and duties prompting him to withdraw from the AXE Apollo space program,” the statement said.

Axe said it is now “evaluating and deliberating” on Mendoza’s replacement, who will be joining the other finalists of the AXE Apollo Space Academy at space camp.

“We respect Mario’s decision to finish his military training and serve the country first as a jet fighter pilot,” Axe brand manager Gem Laforteza said in the statement/

After consulting with Mendoza and the PAF leadership, Unilever Philippines vice president for corporate affairs Chito Macapagal also commented on the news of Mendoza’s withdrawal.

“The needs of the country have to come first. With a greater good in mind, everyone agrees with Lt. Mendoza’s decision,” Macapagal said.

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com

Search for 1st Pinoy astronaut starts

Hindi na magiging imposibleng pangarap para sa mga Pinoy ang maging astronaut. Pormal nang inanunsyo sa Pilipinas ang search para sa kauna-unahang Pinoy astronaut na swerteng makapaglalakbay sa kalawakan sa 2014.

source: abs-cbnnews.com