News Mash-up: Space

SpaceX delivers four new crew members to join space station until spring A SpaceX capsule with four astronauts arrived at the International Space Station on Nov. 11. The flight took 21 hours from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. The astronauts — three Americans and a German — will stay in the ISS until spring. “Floating in space and shining like a diamond,” said German astronaut Matthias Maurer when he first spotted the space station. The new arrivals were welcomed to the ISS by its three current residents. There had been seven on board but SpaceX returned four of them to Earth on Nov. 8, including Japanese astronaut Akihiko Hoshide. One of the current residents, NASA astronaut Mark Vande Hei, embraced each newcomer. “I can’t tell you how happy I am to see these smiling faces,” he said. Back on Earth, Hoshide tweeted: “Gravity sucks, but getting used to it slowly.” (AP) Jupiter’s Great Red Spot deeper than expected Data from NASA’s Juno spacecraft is providing a deeper understanding of Jupiter’s violent atmosphere, including its Great Red Spot, showing that this immense swirling storm extends much further down than expected. Juno took microwave and gravity measurements of the planet that indicated the Great Red Spot plunges up to 500 km below Jupiter’s cloud tops, the researchers said Oct. 28. The finding is giving scientists a three-dimensional account of the atmosphere of Jupiter. The planet is the largest in the solar system — so big that 1,000 Earths could fit inside it — and composed primarily of hydrogen and helium. (Reuters) These articles were provided by The Japan Times Alpha.