Апрель 2025 г.

Российская наука и мир (по материалам зарубежной электронной прессы)

CONTENTS / ОГЛАВЛЕНИЕ


• Yana, a 130,000 year old baby mammoth, goes under the scalpel
• Nitrogen and argon plasma boosts performance of carbon based supercapacitor electrodes
• Stunning reconstruction reveals warrior and his weapons from 4,000 year old burial in Siberia
• New genomic research sheds more light on evolutionary history of mammoths
• Genghis Khan’s empire treasures rediscovered in museum storage
• Cerium glows yellow: Chemists discover how to control luminescence of rare earth elements
• U.S.-Russian ISS Commission: Controlled deorbit, no gap, are imperatives
• Arctic rivers project receives "National champion" designation from Frontiers Foundation
• Kosmos 482: 1,000-pound Soviet Venus probe could crash to Earth after 53 years
• Astronomers investigate an extremely X-ray-luminous, radio-loud quasar
• Thawing permafrost dots Siberia with rash of mounds

В Северо-Восточном федеральном университете начали исследование мумифицированных останков мамонтенка, найденного летом 2024 г. в Якутии и получившего имя по названию местной реки - Яна. Ученые надеются найти уникальные древние микроорганизмы и сделать генетический анализ растений, которыми питался мамонтенок.

Making incisions and carefully taking samples, the scientists at a laboratory in Russia's far east looked like pathologists carrying out a post mortem.
But the body they were dissecting was a baby mammoth who died around 130,000 years ago. Discovered last year, the calf nicknamed Yana, for the river basin where she was found is in a remarkable state of preservation, giving scientists a glimpse into the past and, potentially, the future as climate change thaws the permafrost in which she was found.
Yana's skin has kept its grayish brown color and clumps of reddish hairs. Her wrinkled trunk is curved and points to her mouth. The orbits of her eyes are perfectly recognizable and her sturdy legs resemble those of a modern day elephant.
This necropsy an autopsy on an animal "is an opportunity to look into the past of our planet," said Artemy Goncharov, head of the Laboratory of Functional Genomics and Proteomics of Microorganisms at the Institute of Experimental Medicine in Saint Petersburg. Scientists hope to find unique ancient bacteria and carry out genetic analysis of the plants and spores Yana ate to learn more about the place and time she lived.
The calf largely avoided the ravages of time because she lay for thousands of years encased in permafrost in the Sakha region in Siberia. Measuring 1.2 meters (nearly four feet) at the shoulder and two meters long, and weighing 180 kilograms (nearly 400 pounds), Yana could be the best preserved mammoth specimen ever found, retaining internal organs and soft tissues, the Russian scientists said.
Stomach, intestines
Dissecting her body is a treasure trove for the half dozen scientists that were carrying out the necropsy in late March at the Mammoth Museum at North Eastern Federal University in the regional capital, Yakutsk.
Wearing white sterile bodysuits, goggles and facemasks, the zoologists and biologists spent several hours working on the front quarters of the mammoth, a species that died out almost 4,000 years ago.
"We can see that many organs and tissues are very well preserved," Goncharov said. "The digestive tract is partly preserved, the stomach is preserved. There are still fragments of the intestines, in particular the colon," enabling scientists to take samples, he said.
They are "searching for ancient microorganisms" preserved inside the mammoth, so they can study their "evolutionary relationship with modern microorganisms," he said.
While one scientist cut Yana's skin with scissors, another made an incision in the inner wall with a scalpel. They then placed tissue samples in test tubes and bags for analysis. Another table held the mammoth's hindquarters, which remained embedded in a cliff when the front quarters fell below. The scent emanating from the mammoth was reminiscent of a mixture of fermented earth and flesh, macerated in the Siberian subsoil.
"We are trying to reach the genitals," said Artyom Nedoluzhko, director of the Paleogenomics Laboratory of the European University at Saint Petersburg. "Using special tools, we want to go into her vagina in order to gather material to understand what microbiota lived in her when she was alive."
"Milk tusks"
Yana was first estimated to have died around 50,000 years ago, but is now dated at "more than 130,000 years" following analysis of the permafrost layer where she lay, said Maxim Cheprasov, director of the Mammoth Museum. As for her age at death, "it's already clear that she is over a year old because her milk tusks have already appeared," he added. Both elephants and mammoths have early milk tusks that later fall out. Scientists are yet to determine why Yana died so young.
At the time when this herbivore mammal was chewing grass, "here on the territory of Yakutia there were not yet any humans," Cheprasov said, since they appeared in modern day Siberia between 28,000 and 32,000 years ago.
The secret to Yana's exceptional preservation lies in the permafrost: the soil in this region of Siberia that is frozen year round and acts like a gigantic freezer, preserving the carcasses of prehistoric animals. The discovery of Yana's exposed body came about because of thawing permafrost, which scientists believe is due to global warming.
The study of the microbiology of such ancient remains also explores the "biological risks" of global warming, Goncharov said. Some scientists are researching whether the melting permafrost could release potentially harmful pathogens, he explained. "There are some hypotheses or conjectures that in the permafrost there could be preserved pathogenic microorganisms, which when it thaws can get into the water, plants and the bodies of animals and humans," he said.

Исследователи из Сколтеха и Института нанотехнологий микроэлектроники РАН обнаружили, что обработка углеродных электродов суперконденсаторов (высокоэффективных накопителей энергии) плазмой из смеси азота и аргона может вдвое увеличить их поверхностную емкость.

Scientists from Skoltech, the Institute of Nanotechnology of Microelectronics, RAS, and other research centers have refined the understanding of how plasma treatment of carbon based electrodes affects the key characteristic of supercapacitors. These are energy storage devices that complement batteries in electric cars, trains, port cranes, and elsewhere. As scientists investigate the effects of various electrode modifications on capacitance, the toolkit for enhancing supercapacitor performance will expand and these devices will store more energy and find more applications. The findings are reported in Electrochimica Acta. The study was supported by the Russian Science Foundation.
"Our team is investigating ways to improve the performance of devices known as supercapacitors by tinkering with the carbon based material used in their electrodes," the principal investigator of the study, Assistant Professor Stanislav Evlashin of Skoltech Materials, commented. "Basically, there are two ways to increase the amount of energy a supercapacitor stores. Either you enhance the effective surface area of the electrodes by intricate surface design or you introduce foreign atoms into the carbon material of the electrodes. In this study, we made an advance in understanding the effect of foreign atom inclusion."
Supercapacitors are energy storage devices often used in tandem with lithium ion tech. Unlike conventional batteries, they deliver or harvest energy nearly instantaneously, so they can enable the quick burst of power required to lift a load, put a vehicle in motion, pull the brakes, etc. Supercapacitors can handle wider temperature ranges, too. They also suffer little wear and tear, have long service life and can considerably extend the lifetime of lithium ion batteries. Compared with metal ion technology, supercapacitor failures pose no significant fire hazards. And the materials used are comparatively easy to dispose of in an environmentally friendly way.
Supercapacitors enable uninterruptible power supply for hospital, data center, and telecommunications equipment to ensure continuous service and avoid memory loss. The technology is also used to even out peak demand on the power grid. Supercapacitors have potential for Internet of Things sensors and communication devices, as well as wearable medical devices and portable electronics.
In electric and hybrid cars supercapacitors are useful for starting up and stopping, as well as power steering. Working in conjunction with gasoline engines, supercapacitors promise faster charging for vehicle batteries. Electric vehicles in general and trains in particular could benefit from supercapacitors capturing the energy released in braking to boost overall efficiency.
The greater the capacitance of a supercapacitor, the more energy it can store. Skoltech researchers are studying the way foreign atom inclusion in the carbon material making up the electrodes of a supercapacitor affects capacitance.
In the recent study in Electrochimica Acta, the Skoltech team tested the effect of plasma of six chemical compositions on the capacitance of carbon nanowalls, a material used to make supercapacitor electrodes. Of those six compositions, only the mixture of nitrogen and argon proved suitable, modifying the material in a way that doubled its areal capacitance. While this is in no way a record for such carbon based electrode modifications, the results of the study shed light on the electrochemistry involved.
"We found that what happens first is that the amorphous carbon remaining after the growth of carbon nanowall structures is cleared away. This is followed by the formation of new defects and the incorporation of heteroatoms into the carbon material structure. Amorphous carbon, along with the heteroatoms of nitrogen, contributes to the occurrence of pseudocapacitance," Evlashin said.

Якутские антропологи реконструировали облик лучника, жившего около 4 тысяч лет назад. Уникальное по сохранности погребение было обнаружено в 2004 г. в местности Кердюген и принадлежало ымыяхтахской культуре позднего неолита Якутии. 3D сканирование помогло создать полноразмерную реконструкцию не только внешности воина, но и его доспехов, оружия и другого погребального инвентаря.

A new full body reconstruction depicts a warrior wearing armor and holding weapons, all of which were found in a 4,000 year old burial in Siberia.
A new reconstruction reveals the face, shield and weapons of a late Stone Age warrior, whose remains were found in a 4,000 year old burial in Siberia.
The warrior's burial was unearthed in 2004 during an archaeological survey of the Kerdugen area, about 87 miles (140 kilometers) east of the central Siberian city of Yakutsk in Russia's Sakha Republic, also known as Yakutia. His remains were discovered relatively near the surface, along with several arrowheads indicating he once had a bow, although this has since rotted away and plates of animal bone that would have formed a large shield. Radiocarbon dating determined the grave was about 4,000 years old.
Work on the reconstruction started in 2023, and the model recently went on display in the archaeology museum at the North Eastern Federal University in Yakutsk, according to a translated report by the government owned TASS news agency.
Stone Age remains
An examination of the man's remains suggested he was about 5 feet 5 inches (165 centimeters) tall, and that he died between the ages of 40 and 50, making him elderly for a person in the late Stone Age. The shape of his skull suggested he had the same ethnicity as people native to Siberia's Arctic regions, and healed injuries on his bones suggested he had lived a very active and combative life possibly the life of a warrior and archer.
To create a reconstruction based on the man's skull, researchers used photogrammetry, which involves knitting together many digital images to make a virtual 3D model. They also used techniques for creating faces from skulls that were pioneered by the Soviet anthropologist Mikhail Gerasimov. The researchers also reconstructed the large shield. It was originally made from plates of animal bone, probably from a type of elk called an Altai wapiti (Cervus canadensis sibiricus), that seem to have been glued onto a leather base. The archaeologists also found fragments from arrowheads stuck into six of the bone plates, which indicated the shield had protected its user in battle.
Siberian Stone Age
The warrior was from Yakutia's prehistoric Ymyyakhtakh culture, which has left distinctive pottery and other artifacts throughout the region. The Ymyyakhtakh people were Neolithic from the "New Stone Age" which in some areas implies farmers; but in this case the Ymyyakhtakh were nomadic hunter gatherers who used advanced tools, weapons and materials.
TASS reported that the burial in the Kerdugen area had been unusually well preserved.
The warrior's grave also held fragments of bones from a second human body, which may be evidence that a human sacrifice took place during the ancient burial ceremony possibly even accompanied by ritual cannibalism, signs of which have been reported at other ancient ritual sites in Siberia.

Международная группа ученых (Швеция, Великобритания, Дания, Бельгия, Канада, Нидерланды, Россия, Германия) извлекла и проанализировала 34 новых митохондриальных ДНК мамонтов (Mammuthus spp.) из Сибири и Северной Америки, живших в период 1,6 млн - 126 тыс. лет назад, и сравнила их с 200 уже известными. Исследование подтвердило, что две из трех основных клад мамонтов позднего плейстоцена появились в Сибири. Кроме того, мамонты, жившие в раннем плейстоцене, были не очень похожи на более поздних особей - вероятно, из-за уменьшения генетического разнообразия.

Scientists have extracted and analyzed 34 new mammoth (Mammuthus spp.) mitochondrial genomes, including two Early Pleistocene and nine Middle Pleistocene mammoth specimens from Siberia and North America. They have identified the oldest known mammoth DNA in North America, from a 200,000 year old specimen found in the Old Crow River, Yukon Territory, Canada. The results confirm previous research, showing that mammoths from around a million years ago do not closely resemble later mammoths.
Ancient DNA recovered from specimens dated to the Early Pleistocene (2.6 million to 780,000 years ago) and Middle Pleistocene (780,000 to 126,000 years ago) stages has the potential to allow the direct study of the deep time evolutionary events that are key to understanding species formation.
Unfortunately, access to such deep time DNA is limited, and so far only a handful of studies have been able to obtain either genome wide data or complete mitochondrial genomes (mitogenomes) from deep time specimens.
"Our analyses provide an unprecedented glimpse into how major deep time demographic events might have shaped the genetic diversity of mammoths through time", said Dr J. Camilo Chacón Duque, a researcher at Stockholm University.
By analyzing 34 new mammoth mitogenomes alongside over 200 previously published mammoth mitogenomes, the researchers were able to find that diversification events across mammoth lineages seem to coincide with well described demographic changes during the Early and Middle Pleistocene. Their findings support an ancient Siberian origin for major mammoth lineages and reveal how shifts in population dynamics might have contributed to the expansion and contraction of distinct genetic clades.
"With the ever decreasing costs of sequencing technologies, mitogenomes have been somewhat forgotten. However, our study shows that they remain crucial for evolutionary biology since they are more abundant than nuclear DNA," said Dr. Jessica A. Thomas Thorpe, a researcher at the Wellcome Sanger Genome Institute.
The current study not only advances our understanding of mammoth evolution but also contributes to the broader field of ancient DNA research. The scientists developed and applied an improved molecular clock dating framework, refining how genetic data can be used to estimate the ages of specimens beyond the radiocarbon dating limit. This methodological advancement offers a powerful tool for future research on extinct and endangered species.
"These results add to our earlier work where we reported million year old genomes for the first time," said Professor Love Dalén, a researcher at Stockholm University. I’m very excited that now we have genetic data from many more mammoth specimens sampled across the last million years, which helps us understand how mammoth diversity has changed through time."
The team’s results were published in the journal Molecular Biology and Evolution.

Археологи Сибирского федерального университета обнаружили в запасниках Енисейского музея-заповедника им. А.И.Кытманова неучтенные артефакты (в основном наконечники стрел и топоры) из захоронения времен Монгольской империи Чингисхана, обнаруженные еще в 1960-х гг. во время строительных работ в окрестностях Енисейска.

A treasure trove of weapons and tools from the era of Genghis Khan has been rediscovered in a Siberian museum’s storage, after remaining concealed for decades.
The find includes arrowheads, axes, and a rare Y-shaped fork believed to date back to the 13th and 14th centuries - a time when the Mongol Empire was at its height. Researchers from the Humanities Institute at Siberian Federal University uncovered the artifacts while reviewing unregistered items at the Kytmanov Yenisei Museum-Reserve in Yeniseisk. The project was led by Dr. Eva Kietmanova and her team, who were surprised to find the items had never been properly studied.
"We have the opportunity for the first time to present these items to the scientific community," said Ksenia Biryuleva, senior researcher at the Yenisei Siberia Archaeology Laboratory.
Weapons tied to Mongol expansion
The artifacts include flat arrowheads, long spiked arrows used to pierce armor, and signs of fire damage, suggesting they came from a cremation site. Experts say these tools were likely buried with a local figure and may have been part of a ceremonial warrior’s grave. Many of the pieces match the styles used during the Mongol Empire, particularly during its expansion into Siberia. Some weapons reflect regional designs from the Lesosibirsk culture, a group native to the taiga forests of Siberia that came under Mongol influence.
The Genghis Khan treasures, first unearthed in the 1960s during construction near Yeniseisk, were later placed in museum storage and forgotten. Now, researchers believe they offer key evidence of Mongol cultural impact in remote parts of Russia.
Linking Siberia to the Mongol Empire
The Lesosibirsk culture represents one of many Indigenous Siberian communities that encountered the expanding Mongol Empire in the 13th century. The connection is made clearer through the newly studied weapons, which bear characteristics of both local craftsmanship and Mongol design.
Biryuleva explained that this gives us a rare look into how Mongol traditions blended with local cultures. It shows their reach extended much further than commonly assumed.
The Mongol Empire, founded by Temüjin - later known as Genghis Khan - became the largest land empire in history, stretching across Asia and reaching into Europe. The rediscovered items now offer a tangible link to that past.
Study backed by national academic initiative
The research is part of a broader project under Russia’s Priority 2030 program, which aims to support scientific and cultural development. Funded through the Siberian Federal University Development Program, the project focuses on building digital records of historic items and sharing them with both scholars and the public.
Further study will help determine how the artifacts were made and used. The museum is also considering an exhibition to allow the public to view the items for the first time.

Исследователи НИУ «Высшая школа экономики» и Института нефтехимического синтеза им. А.В.Топчиева РАН нашли способ управлять цветом и яркостью свечения редкоземельных элементов посредством изменения их химического окружения. Циклопентадиенильные комплексы создают вокруг ионов металлов электростатическое поле, изменяющее энергию 5d-орбиталей, что влияет на спектр люминесценции. Например, церий, обычно испускающий ультрафиолетовый свет, начинает светиться желтым.

Researchers at HSE University and the Institute of Petrochemical Synthesis of the Russian Academy of Sciences have discovered a way to control both the color and brightness of the glow emitted by rare earth elements. Their luminescence is generally predictable - for example, cerium typically emits light in the ultraviolet range.
However, the scientists have demonstrated that this can be altered. They created a chemical environment in which a cerium ion began to emit a yellow glow. The findings could contribute to the development of new light sources, displays, and lasers. The study has been published in Optical Materials.
Rare earth elements are used in microelectronics, LEDs, and fluorescent materials because of their ability to emit light in precisely defined colors. This depends on how their electrons behave when absorbing and releasing energy.
When an atom absorbs energy - such as from light or an electric current - one of its electrons can be excited to a higher energy level. However, this excited state is unstable, and after a short time, the electron returns to its original level, releasing the excess energy as light. This process is known as luminescence.
In rare earth elements, the glow results from electron transitions between 4f orbitals - regions around the atomic nucleus where electrons can reside. Typically, the energy of these transitions is fixed, meaning the color of the glow remains constant: cerium emits invisible ultraviolet light, while terbium emits green.
The 4f orbitals are situated deep within the atom and interact minimally with the surrounding environment. In contrast, the 5d orbitals are sensitive to external influences but generally do not contribute to the luminescence of lanthanides due to their excessively high energy.
However, scientists from HSE University and the Institute of Petrochemical Synthesis of the Russian Academy of Sciences have demonstrated that the color of the radiation can be altered by adjusting the chemical environment of the metals. They synthesized cerium, praseodymium, and terbium complexes using organic ligands - molecules that surround metal ions. These ligands shape the geometry of the complex and influence its properties.
In all cases, three cyclopentadienyl anions were symmetrically arranged around the metal. These anions consist of regular pentagons of carbon atoms, to which large organic fragments are attached, providing the required structure for the complex. This environment generates a specific electrostatic field around the ion, which alters the energy of the 5d orbitals and, consequently, affects the luminescence spectrum.
"Previously, a change in the color of the glow had been observed, but the underlying mechanism was not understood. Now, in collaboration with our physicist colleagues, we have been able to understand the mechanism behind this effect. We deliberately designed compounds with an electronic structure that is atypical for lanthanides.
"Rather than focusing on a single example, we synthesized a series of compounds from cerium to terbium to observe how their properties change and to identify common patterns," comments Daniil Bardonov, a master's student at the HSE Faculty of Chemistry.
In conventional compounds, cerium emits ultraviolet light with wavelengths between 300 and 400 nanometers. In the new complexes, its emission shifted to the red range, reaching up to 655 nanometers. This indicates that the energy gap between the 4f and 5d levels has decreased. A similar rearrangement of electronic levels was observed in the other lanthanides studied, also resulting in changes to their luminescence.
"To understand how this process works, it's important to first grasp the mechanism of energy transfer. Typically, a ligand molecule absorbs ultraviolet light, enters an excited state, and then transfers this energy to the metal atom, causing it to emit light," explains Dmitrii Roitershtein, Academic Supervisor of the Chemistry of Molecular Systems and Materials Programme and co-author of the paper.
"However, in the new compounds, the process occurred differently: energy was transferred not directly to the 4f electrons, but via an intermediate 5d state."
The researchers believe that being able to predict the luminescence spectrum will make it possible to design materials with desired properties more efficiently by eliminating the need for time-consuming trial and error. This could facilitate the creation of new and advanced light sources.
"We were able to demonstrate exactly how the environment of an atom influences its electronic transitions and lanthanide luminescence," says Fyodor Chernenkiy, bachelor's student at the HSE Faculty of Chemistry. "We can now intentionally select the structure of compounds to control luminescence and produce materials with specific optical properties."

18-21 февраля этого года состоялось заседание Совместной американо-российской комиссии Консультативного комитета NASA и Консультативно-экспертного совета Роскосмоса по Международной космической станции. Стороны обсудили запланированный контролируемый спуск с орбиты и последующее затопление МКС в Тихом океане. Весь процесс должен занять два с половиной года и завершиться в конце 2030 г. Другим важным вопросом было создание новых космических станций до того, как МКС будет выведена с орбиты, что позволит избежать прерывания критически важных научных исследований.

The U.S.-Russian Joint Commission that advises NASA and Roscosmos on operations of the International Space Station is stressing the need for a planned, controlled deorbit of the ISS at the end of its lifetime. Both primary and backup deorbit capabilities must be in place before the two-and-a-half year orbit-lowering process begins. That would put the ISS into the Pacific Ocean at the end of 2030. They also want to ensure there is no gap between ISS and whatever replaces it to ensure research critical to supporting human missions to the Moon and Mars continues uninterrupted.
The Joint Commission, a combination of NASA’s International Space Station (ISS) Advisory Committee and Roscosmos’s Advisory Expert Council, met at NASA’s Johnson Space Center from February 18-21, 2025.
The NASA committee is chaired by Bob Cabana, a former astronaut, former Director of Kennedy Space Center, and former NASA Associate Administrator who retired from the agency at the end of 2023. Today Cabana provided a public recap of their findings and recommendations.
A partnership among the United States, Russia, Japan, Canada and 11 European countries working through the European Space Agency, the first two modules were launched in 1998 and it’s been permanently occupied by international crews rotating on roughly six month schedules for more than 24 years.
In short, the ISS is old. And showing it. Persistent air leaks were first detected in 2019 in a tunnel that connects Russia’s Service Module to a docking port for Progress cargo vehicles - dubbed PrK. They are ongoing and a source of worry not only to the Joint Commission, but NASA’s Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel.
All of the partners except Russia have agreed to operate the ISS until 2030. Russia is formally committed only through 2028, but NASA expects them to extend that to 2030 in due course. The questions are whether it will remain safe for human occupancy that long, what’s the deorbit plan, and what comes next to ensure microgravity research continues.
At the Joint Commission’s last meeting in September 2024, the U.S. and Russian sides couldn’t agree on the root cause of the leaks or the risk they pose. NASA is more concerned than Roscosmos and requires that the hatch between the Russian and U.S. segments be closed whenever cosmonauts open the hatch to that docking port. In response to a recommendation from the Joint Commission in September, the two space agencies agreed to bring in independent experts from industry and academia to assist in diagnosing the problem.
Cabana said they were told at this meeting that their recommendation is being executed and a NASA-Roscosmos team will meet in Moscow next month "to exchange data and better understand the problem." But it doesn’t appear much progress has been made since the last meeting. The Joint Commission said today simply that they support "face-to-face meetings of U.S. and Russian materials and structural experts to find a common understanding of the leaks." Once that’s determined, they want the space agencies to "reevaluate the nominal and contingency procedures on orbit."
Assuming nothing catastrophic happens before 2030, the plan is to use a U.S. Deorbit Vehicle, or USDV, to intentionally deorbit the ISS into a remote part of the Pacific Ocean at the end of its lifetime. The Joint Commission wants a secondary deorbit capability in case something goes awry with the USDV. The contingency plan is using two Russian Progress cargo vehicles and the Russian segment itself to dispose of the ISS. That requires ensuring the propellant tanks on the Russian segment are full. Cabana said they reviewed a plan to have the tanks on the Zvezda Service Module and Zarya Functional Cargo Block (FGB) "sufficiently filled by 2028," the same year the USDV should arrive so the two-and-a-half year process to slowly lower the orbit can begin.
"The Joint Commission agreed that to ensure public safety with a safe deorbit of the ISS, lowering the ISS altitude cannot start until 2028 when the critical capabilities are expected to be available. This results in ISS reentry no earlier than late 2030." - Bob Cabana.
They asked NASA and Roscosmos to come up with "an integrated deorbit decision timeline" that takes into account safety milestones, hardware readiness, and the availability of critical capabilities.
No mention was made during Cabana’s outbrief of Elon Musk’s comments that the ISS should be deorbited two years from now instead of 2030. That doesn’t appear to be a safe option based on the timeline Cabana laid out. Musk’s SpaceX is building the USDV under a $843 million contract with NASA, not including launch. Unlike the Cargo Dragon and Crew Dragon spacecraft SpaceX developed through Public-Private Partnerships with NASA that it owns and operates, the USDV will be owned and operated by NASA.
Keeping the ISS operating and then safely deorbiting it into the ocean in 2030 still leaves the question of what comes next.
Cabana emphasized the "critical" importance of the research being conducted on ISS for future human spaceflight and shared an intriguing scientific finding - microbiological growth has been found on exterior space station surfaces. "These microorganisms seem to be genetically identical to terrestrial organisms" and may have been transported there by the "tiny amount of atmosphere" at that altitude. "It’s surprising" they exist and underscores the importance of continued research.
"Knowledge gaps in both human biological research and fundamental science will require further study for the safety of future human spaceflights, including to the Moon and Mars. For example, eye and possibly brain changes have been observed in astronauts during long duration spaceflight. The precise cause of these changes is not yet known, nor are there currently any valuable mitigations or treatments. We should continue to find new observations as we continue to extend the limits of human exploration in space." - Bob Cabana.
The Joint Commission wants to accelerate research on the ISS and ensure future space stations are in place before the ISS is deorbited.
"It is critical to continue the uninterrupted joint international scientific and engineering work, having a continuous human presence with no gap for human laboratories in low Earth orbit to enable success of future human missions to low Earth orbit, the Moon and Mars." - Bob Cabana.
Cabana is one of four former NASA astronauts on the ISS Advisory Committee who were on the call today. The others were Frank Culbertson, Bill Shepherd and Mark Vande Hei. Cabana commanded the space shuttle mission, STS-88, that delivered the first ISS module (Node 1 or Unity) to orbit. Shepherd was the U.S. astronaut on the three-person crew that initiated permanent occupancy of the ISS on November 2, 2000, along with Russia’s Sergei Krikalev and Yuri Gidzenko.
Culbertson led the U.S. side of the Shuttle-Mir program in the 1990s when U.S. astronauts flew to Russia’s Mir space station and Russian astronauts flew on the U.S. shuttle. He was aboard the ISS on Expedition 3 on September 11, 2001 when terrorists attacked the United States and has shared moving recollections of what it was like to be in space watching the tragedy unfold. Vande Hei is one of several astronauts and cosmonauts who ended up staying on the ISS longer than expected setting what was then a U.S. record of 355 continuous days in space in 2022 (Frank Rubio surpassed that in 2023 at 371 days, another unexpectedly extended mission).
NASA’s Advisory Committee Management Division’s website doesn’t list the members of this committee and the committee’s own website shows only its charter. Cabana was the only committee member who spoke during the approximately 15-minute presentation. According to the roll call taken at the start of the meeting, former NASA astronaut Nicole Stott is also a member, but wasn’t present today (nor was Ginger Kerrick). Other members who were there: Bill Vantine, Chuck Daniel, Dan Heimerdinger, Harmony Myers, and Joe Schmid. Most but not all were members at the last meeting according to the minutes.

Международный проект «Арктическая обсерватория великих рек» (ArcticGRO) вышел в финал конкурса на премию Frontiers Planet Prize с опубликованной в журнале Nature статьей об изменениях химического состава крупных северных рек и их влияния на панарктический бассейн. В ней авторы из Канады, США, Франции и России рассматривают последние тенденции в составе шести «великих рек Арктики» (Обь, Енисей, Лена, Колыма, Юкон, Маккензи), дренирующих более чем две трети водосбора Северного Ледовитого океана.
Премия Frontiers Planet Prize, учрежденная в 2022 г. фондом Frontiers Research Foundation, присуждается выдающимся ученым и научным коллективам, работающим в области устойчивого развития.

The Frontiers Planet Prize, the world’s largest science competition to enhance planetary health by fast-tracking innovative research, has announced National Champions from 19 different countries who now advance to the International competition, which will award three winners $1M each to scale up their research.
Suzanne Tank and co-authors from the Arctic Great Rivers Observatory (ArcticGRO), a multinational project founded at the Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL), were recognized for their publication, "Recent trends in the chemistry of major northern rivers signal widespread Arctic change", published in Nature Geosciences.
Tank, an associate professor at University of Alberta, was selected as the 2025 National Champion for Canada. She was a postdoctoral scientist at the MBL when she first got involved with ArcticGRO and is currently a principal investigator on the project.
ArcticGRO was conceived in 2002 by Bruce Peterson, R. Max Holmes, and James McClelland while the three were working together at the MBL’s Ecosystems Center. Peterson was the founding director of the project, followed by Holmes, and McClelland is the current director. The project, initially called PARTNERS, has been supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation since its inception and is a component of NSF's Arctic Observing Network.
ArcticGRO’s work involves a large cast of collaborators from the United States, Canada, and Russia, and its ongoing success relies on the strong international partnerships that have been forged and sustained over the past 20 plus years.
"This recognition from Frontiers highlights the value of sustained international collaborations for solving global challenges," McClelland said. "I am proud of Suzanne and the ArcticGRO team for their vision and long-term commitment to the project."
Since 2003, ArcticGRO has provided essential data about six large Arctic rivers that originate in Canada, Russia, and the United States (Alaska) and discharge into the Arctic Ocean, transporting huge quantities of water and water-borne materials from the continents to the ocean. Changes in river water flow and chemistry reflect changes occurring on land and lead to changes in the chemistry, biology, and circulation of the receiving ocean waters.
"When measured at their outflow, the chemistry of these large rivers provides a "fingerprint" that integrates a multitude of processes occurring over vast spatial scales," Tank writes in the project description for Frontiers. "Our multinational team has worked together to measure the chemistry of these six large rivers for over two decades. This long-standing, cross-jurisdictional collaboration has built a time series that has provided critical insight into the functioning of the land-ocean Arctic system, while also amassing a sample archive that enables retrospective analyses as important new questions emerge."
"MBL Ecosystems Center scientists have been conducting exemplary research in the U.S. Arctic for half a century," said MBL Director Nipam Patel. "It is gratifying to see the ArcticGRO, one of their initiatives, recognized by the Frontiers Foundation for its sustained contributions to understanding global change in a critical region of the planet."
The National Champions were selected by 100 independent experts - the Jury of 100 - all renowned sustainability and planetary health leaders. A list of the 2025 National Champions is here.
A direct response to the urgent need for faster global scientific consensus, the Frontiers Planet Prize has already engaged with more than 10,000 researchers, 23 academies of science, and 600 leading universities and research institutions from 62 countries, to bring forward transformational and globally scalable research from around the world, with a focus on enabling healthy lives on a healthy planet.
"Faced with immense threats to people and planet, we need bold, transformative solutions, rooted in evidence and validated by science. Innovative yet scalable solutions are the only way for us to ensure healthy lives on a healthy planet," said Jean-Claude Burgelman, director of the Frontiers Planet Prize.

Советский венерианский зонд Космос-482, запущенный в марте 1972 г., но так и не покинувший околоземную орбиту из-за неисправности, войдет в атмосферу Земли в ближайшие недели. Поскольку прочность и термозащита зонда были рассчитаны на посадку в суровых венерианских условиях, есть вероятность, что он не сгорит в плотных слоях атфмосферы, а упадет на поверхность.

Half a century after its launch, Kosmos 482 - the doomed Soviet Venus probe that that never made it beyond Earth orbit - is making headlines again.
The super tough venus lander is making an uncontrolled reentry to the earth in the coming weeks, sparking concerns as scientists do not where it may fall. Designed to survive the brutal conditions of Venus’s atmosphere, parts of the probe could endure the plunge through Earth’s atmosphere and strike the surface.
Marco Langbroek, a satellite tracker based in Netherlands, said the lander module from the Kosmos 482 mission could come down in the second week of May.
"Because this lander was built to withstand Venus’s harsh atmosphere, there’s a real chance it could survive reentry intact," Langbroek noted in a recent blog update. He added that while the overall risk to people is low, it is not zero.
Doomed launch, lingering threat
Launched on March 31, 1972, the mission attempted to deliver a lander to Venus. However, the spacecraft failed to escape Earth’s orbit due to a premature shutdown of its Blok L upper stage, attributed to an incorrectly set timer. Consequently, it was designated as "Kosmos 482," a common practice for Soviet missions that remained in Earth orbit.
The spacecraft split into four pieces after launch, with two smaller fragments reentering the atmosphere and falling over Ashburton, New Zealand, just two days later. The descent module, weighing approximately 1,091 pound has been orbiting Earth since the mission’s failure.
Considering its mass, "risks are similar to that of a meteorite impact," Langbroek wrote.
For now, predicting the exact timing of the spacecraft’s reentry remains difficult. Marco Langbroek estimates it could occur around May 10, though the forecast will become more accurate as the date approaches. The uncertainty is largely due to heightened solar activity - the Sun’s current active phase is heating and expanding Earth’s atmosphere, increasing atmospheric drag and causing orbiting objects to lose altitude more quickly.
It’s equally challenging to predict where any surviving debris might land. The location will depend on the precise moment the spacecraft reenters and starts to break apart.
Typically, the risk to populated areas is low, with debris more likely to fall into remote regions of the ocean. Due to its robust construction, if it lands on solid ground, it could provide valuable insights into the durability of spacecraft materials after prolonged exposure to space.
However, even though the risk is small, uncontrolled reentries are never entirely without danger.
This is not the first time reentry predictions have been made for Kosmos 482.
In 2018, Russian astronomer Pavel Shubin estimated that the spacecraft would crash between 2023 and 2025. Further analyses in 2019 and 2022 refined these predictions, with simulations indicating a reentry window between mid-2024 and mid-2027, most likely around 2025-2026.
Space junk cleanup race
Since the start of the Space Age in the late 1950s, thousands of satellites have been launched into orbit. While many have completed their missions, they remain in space as "dead" or defunct satellites, contributing to the growing problem of orbital debris.
According to the European Space Agency, around 3,000 dead satellites like Kosmos 482 are currently orbiting Earth, posing a potential risk to human safety.
With space traffic steadily increasing, managing this growing clutter has become more urgent. Scientists are working on strategies to safely bring defunct satellites back to Earth rather than letting them fall uncontrollably through the atmosphere.

Астрономы Института космических исследований РАН и Специальной астрофизической обсерватории РАН изучили квазар SRGA J2306+1556, открытый несколько лет назад. Его особенность в том, что он чрезвычайно ярок в рентгеновском диапазоне, но почти недоступен для прямого наблюдения из-за плотной газо-пылевой завесы. Ученые обнаружили, что с момента открытия рентгеновское излучение квазара снизилось в несколько раз, но он по-прежнему является одним из самых ярких затемненных квазаров в наблюдаемой Вселенной, а его чёрная дыра имеет массу в 1,4 млрд солнц.

Using the Spektr-RG (SRG) space observatory, astronomers from the Russian Academy of Sciences have inspected a radio-loud quasar known as SRGA J2306+1556, which is extremely luminous in the X-ray band. Results of the new study are reported in a research paper published April 18 on the arXiv preprint server.
Quasars, or quasi-stellar objects (QSOs), are active galactic nuclei (AGN) of very high luminosity powered by supermassive black holes (SMBHs), emitting electromagnetic radiation observable in radio, infrared, visible, ultraviolet and X-ray wavelengths. They are among the brightest and most distant objects in the known universe, and serve as fundamental tools for numerous studies in astrophysics as well as cosmology.
SRGA J2306+1556 is a radio-loud quasar at a redshift of approximately 0.44, discovered in 2022 with Spektr-RG. Previous observations of SRGA J2306+1556 have found that it is heavily obscured and its intrinsic X-ray luminosity exceeds 4.0 quattuordecillion erg/s.
Recently, a team of astronomers led by Grigory Uskov decided to re-investigate SRGA J2306+1556 with Spektr-RG in order to get more insights into its nature. Their study was complemented by data from NASA's Swift spacecraft.
"To study this interesting quasar in detail, we organized its follow-up pointed X-ray observations with SRG/ART-XC and the XRT telescope aboard the Neil Gehrels Swift observatory, which revealed a strongly absorbed X-ray spectrum," the researchers wrote in the paper.
During the new observations, the unabsorbed X-ray luminosity of SRGA J2306+1556 ranged between 1.0 and 6.0 quattuordecillion erg/s, and the source exhibited a strongly absorbed X-ray spectrum. The astronomers noted that such X-ray luminous obscured AGN are extremely rare at redshifts below 0.5.
The collected data indicate that SRGA J2306+1556 experienced an X-ray outburst in 2020–2021 and was in a "low" state in June 2023. The researchers estimate that the outburst could have lasted about one year or more.
Furthermore, it was found that SRGA J2306+1556 showcases a complex morphology in the radio band with a core and two extended radio lobes. The findings suggest that the radio counterpart of SRGA J2306+1556 is a giant radio galaxy (GRG) of the FR II type with a radio power at a level of 286 YW/Hz, which is equivalent to 0.004 quattuordecillion erg/s.
The study also found that SRGA J2306+1556 has a bolometric luminosity of around 60 quattuordecillion erg/s and that its central black hole has a mass of about 1.4 billion solar masses. Summing up the results, the authors of the paper underlined that SRGA J2306+1556 is one of the most luminous obscured quasars in the observable universe and accretes mass at a high rate.

Все более быстрое таяние вечной мерзлоты в Восточной Сибири меняет ландшафт, разрушает дома и способствует выделению парниковых газов.

In the vast white expanse around Churapcha in eastern Siberia, the ever more rapid thaw of the permafrost is changing the landscape, cracking up houses and releasing greenhouse gases.
A growing number of little mounds are appearing across the region of Yakutia in the Russian Far East.
Known as "bylars" in the Yakut language, the tiny hillocks are no more than a metre high and have an almost regular polygonal shape.
"The peaks of these formations are stable. It is the space between the mounds that is sinking," said Nikita Tananayev, director of the climate laboratory at the Federal Northeastern University in the regional capital Yakutsk. "With climate change, the ice is melting faster," he told AFP.
The mounds' distinctive shape is due to the fact that the underground ice that is melting is shaped in polygons. Permafrost is a layer of soil that is never supposed to thaw and covers around 65 percent of Russia's territory.
Record mild weather
The distinctive mounds have even been appearing in urban areas in Yakutia. In the town of Churapcha, around 135 kilometres from Yakutsk, the land Innokenty Poselsky bought last year to build a house has around 20 mounds.
"About 40 years ago, there was an airstrip here and the land used to be quite flat," the 34-year-old said.
"Over the last four decades, the landscape has become pockmarked. It's like that everywhere here," he said.
Poselsky said he has only managed to level around half of the land. His house is built on piles deeply embedded in the permafrost - like all the buildings in the region.
The thaw is having a visible effect on residential and commercial property - the walls of some buildings are subsiding and cracking.
"Over 40 percent" of buildings on permafrost are affected by thawing, Mikhail Kuznetsov, head of the federal agency for development of the Russian Far East, said last year.
Tananayev said rising temperatures were to blame. Temperatures have gone up by "1.5 degrees Celsius in the last 30 years" in Yakutia and "up to two degrees in some areas", he added.
The numbers chime with data from global observatories using ice cores that show the last two years - 2023 and 2024 - were the hottest on Earth for more than 120,000 years. Global warming is largely caused by fossil fuel consumption and Russia is the world's fifth biggest global emitter of greenhouse gases.
Viruses and bacteria
"A difference of one or two degrees Celsius, even if the temperatures are still negative, is very big in scientific terms because the permafrost does not freeze as deeply as usual," said Alexander
Makarov, director of the Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute in Saint Petersburg.
The Institute is investigating the permafrost at 78 observation points in 12 regions of Russia and is hoping to increase the number to 140 points. The thaw is also releasing more carbon dioxide and methane - two greenhouse gases that were preserved in the ice for thousands of years. That creates a vicious circle as the gases make climate change worse and in turn lead to more permafrost thaw.
Apart from effects on the climate, scientists warn that the thawing permafrost also has a health risk as it can release bacteria and viruses. In 2016, a child died in Siberia because of anthrax - which had not been seen in the region for 75 years. Scientists believe it came from a reindeer that died of anthrax and was preserved in ice for decades. Once released, the bacterium, which can stay in the ice for more than 100 years, had infected a reindeer herd.

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