Four Women Astronaut in Space at the Same Time

The women astronauts on the Discovery mission: (from left) Naoko Yamazaki, Stephanie Wilson and Dorothy Metcalf-Lindenburger.

Depending on where you live, you may have the rest of the week off as Easter break, or Monday may have been your last day off and you're back to school on Tuesday.

If you are back to school, here's a question for you... have any of your teachers mentioned the record that was set on Monday, April 5?

Three women blasted off on the space shuttle Discovery early Monday, and they will be joining a fourth woman already on board the International Space Station, so there will be a total of four women in space at the same time - the first time this has happened.

Here are a few news articles:

Discovery lifts off successfully with three women crew members

Washington DC: The Discovery space shuttle blasted off from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, in a spectacular pre-dawn launch on Monday. Carrying a crew of seven astronauts as well as equipment and supplies, it took off on a 13-day mission aboard the International Space Station (ISS).

The shuttle, a multi-purpose logistics module, carries three women-mission specialists — Dorothy Metcalf-Lindenburger, Stephanie Wilson and Naoko Yamazaki. NASA said, “With three female crew members arriving on board Discovery and one already at the station, the STS-131 mission will mark the first time that four women have been in space at one time.” Astronaut Tracy Caldwell Dyson is already at the space station.

NASA added, “And as there is one Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency astronaut on each crew, the mission is also the first time for two JAXA astronauts to be in space at the same time.” Monday's mission follows the successful launch of the Russian Soyuz TMA-18 from Kazakhstan. The Russian mission, also headed for the ISS, carried Ms. Dyson, Russian astronaut Alexander Skvortsov and Mikhail Kornienko.

The ISS, which orbits the Earth at a height of some 400 km, is due to be finished next year and is about 90 per cent complete. The mission entails three spacewalks, unloading, transfer and installation of equipment, replacement of an ammonia tank assembly and retrieving a Japanese experiment from the station's exterior, according to NASA. Earlier this year, NASA administrator Charlie Bolden had said President Barack Obama's new budget for space exploration would demonstrate “our commitment to extend the life of the International Space Station, likely to 2020 or beyond. This will keep a commitment to our international partners and develop the full potential of this amazing orbiting laboratory where humans regularly do things we have never done before in NASA.” On the future plans for the ISS, Mr. Bolden said, “We're going to start by using the ISS as the national lab that it was envisioned to be.”

and

Discovery Teacher-Astronaut Breaks the Mold
Dorothy Metcalf-Lindenburger's Unusual Route to Becoming a NASA Astronaut
Dorothy Metcalf-Lindenburger seems like such an unlikely astronaut --riotously curly hair, and a bubbly personality, passionate about inspiring students. She is a far cry from the test pilots with the right stuff who flew the legendary Apollo missions.

This mission has a record four women among the crew.At 34, "Dottie" is the youngest astronaut on the space shuttle Discovery crew, which is headed to the International Space Station this week after blasting off from Cape Canaveral, Fla., Sunday. She wasn't even alive when Apollo 11 landed on the moon, and was only a toddler when Columbia flew on the first space shuttle mission, and yet somehow, she caught the space bug.

When she entered a contest to go to Space Camp, and came in second, with a consolation prize of a T-shirt, her parents, Keith and Joyce Metcalf scraped together enough money to send their daughter away to space camp. They laugh about that now. "Clearly it was money well spent".

NASA Calls, but Will She Answer It?

NASA has sent teachers to space before, starting with Christa McAuliffe, who died in the Challenger accident in 1986. It would be 20 years before they would try again, with Barbara Morgan in 2007.

Metcalf-Lindenburger grew up in Fort Collins Colo., majored in geology in college and went on to teach high school science, most recently at Hudson's Bay High School in Vancouver, Wash. She runs marathons, and sort of shelved the idea of ever being an astronaut. Until one day in 2003 while researching a question from a student, "how do astronauts go to the bathroom in space?" She discovered NASA was once again recruiting teachers to become astronauts.

Some 8,000 teachers sent in applications, three were picked, including Metcalf-Lindenburger. In 2004, less than a year after the Columbia accident, she got the call while she was teaching a class – a call she was afraid to take in case of disappointing news. She called her mom, who recalled that day for ABC News. "We cried on the phone together, it was just so exciting to have her dream fulfilled."

Her sense of humor shines through as she talks about juggling the brutal training schedule, her marriage, and parenting her three-year-old daughter Cambria. She bubbles with laughter when talking about her very independent daughter. " We sing twinkle, twinkle – she is just turning 3, so and now it is very cool, she always points out the moon, probably because I pointed it out to her for a long period of time, she knows a couple of other songs that have to do with the moon and the sun and has started singing those on her own. Just like any good child she says 'no, no! No singing from you!' And I realize I probably told my mom that a couple of times too!"

You can catch Metcalf-Lindenburger on occasion, singing lead vocals for the astronaut band, Max Q, after a hard day learning the intricacies of space shuttle operation and finessing her skill as a robotics operator. What is she taking on her iPod on this mission? 'I have some show tunes, of course, I have to have some "wizard of Oz" stuff there, being a Dorothy, I love hymns, my great grandmother used to teach me some hymns, stuff like that, I like oldies, my husband's influences, '70s rock 'n' roll, and then of course I have new stuff too, relatively new'.

Metcalf credits her parents, and her younger sister Neva, for encouraging her to pursue her dream even though the odds were stacked against her. She keeps her life as normal as possible. "I try to keep every day normal. I have a normal cup of coffee, do my family stuff, and then come to work, but as it keeps approaching I keep thinking, we are probably really going to take off, unless the weather scrubs us or something, wow, this is going to be amazing!"

She dreams, she says, about her mission. "Sometimes I dream about floating around, in space, I have always dreamt a little bit about flying, and definitely have been dreaming about that more."

Videos: Geology

Video: You Can Be A Woman Marine Biologist

Judith Love Cohen speaks about being a marine biologist







And this is really funny, from an old episode of Seinfeld. Teaches a lesson in not pretending to be something you are not. (The denouement is funny because Kramer had been hitting golf balls into the ocean earlier in the episode):

How To Get Your Own Way

This is a terrible story, and one that may become all too common.

Many environmentalists agitate against manmade development in various parts of the world, because it will, over time, destroy the pristine environment and the habitat for millions of animals and sea creatures.

The solution - destroy this pristine environment right away. Then the environmentalists will have nothing left to protect, and they'll let commercial interests go their own way in the blighted land.

I'm not saying that the Captain of the Chinese ooal carrier in the article below deliberately rammed into the Great Barrier Reef - although being 9 miles distance from where you're supposed to be seems a bit suspicious with today's sophisticated technology...

Officials fear ship breaking apart on Barrier Reef

BRISBANE, Australia – A coal-carrying ship that strayed outside a shipping lane and ran aground in protected waters was leaking oil on Australia's Great Barrier Reef and was in danger of breaking apart, officials said Sunday.

The Chinese Shen Neng 1 ran aground late Saturday on Douglas Shoals, a favorite pristine haunt for recreational fishing east of the Great Keppel Island tourist resort. The shoals — off the coast of Queensland state in the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park — are in a protected part of the reef where shipping is restricted by environmental law.

Authorities fear an oil spill will damage the world's largest coral reef, which is off northeast Australia and listed as a World Heritage site.

The ship hit the reef at full speed, nine miles (15 kilometers) outside the shipping lane, State Premier Anna Bligh said.

A police boat was standing by to remove the 23 crew if the ship broke apart and an evacuation was necessary, she said.

Patches of oil were seen near the stricken ship early Sunday, but Maritime Safety Queensland reported no major loss from the 1,000 tons (950 metric tons) of oil on board.

"We are now very worried we might see further oil discharged from this ship," Bligh told reporters.

Maritime Safety Queensland general manager Patrick Quirk said the vessel was badly damaged on its port side.

"At one stage last night, we thought the ship was close to breaking up," he told reporters. "We are still very concerned about the ship."

"It is in danger of actually breaking a number of its main structures and breaking into a number of parts," he added.

A salvage contract had been signed, but the operation would be difficult and assessing the damage to the ship could take a week, Quirk said.

Bligh said she feared the salvage operation could spill more oil, which could reach the mainland coast within two days.

Local emergency crews were on standby to clean any oil that reached mainland beaches, she said.

Aircraft on Sunday began spraying a chemicals on the oil patches to disperse it, she said.

Federal Environment Minister Peter Garrett said authorities had been working through the night to determine what risks the ship posed to the environment.

"The government is very conscious of the importance of the Great Barrier Reef environment and ensuring that impacts on its ecology are effectively managed," Garrett said in a statement.

The 755 foot (230 meter) bulk carrier was carrying about 72,000 U.S. tons (65,000 metric tons) of coal to China and ran aground within hours of leaving the Queensland port of Gladstone.

Conservationists have expressed outrage that bulk carriers can travel through the reef without a marine pilot with local expertise.

"The state government is being blinded by royalties and their shortsightedness will go down in history as killing the reef," said Larissa Waters, spokeswoman for the Queensland Greens, an environmentally focused political party.

Bligh said the question of when ships should require a marine pilot on the reef was under review because of the increase in freight traffic that will flow from new gas and coal export contracts to China.

She said a separate inquiry would determine how the ship came to stray from its shipping lane.

Quirk said state authorities were seeking information about the effect the coal could have on the reef environment if the ship broke up before its cargo can be salvaged.

God hates Kansas...

It's a cliche... or at least it was until the early 70s, that "God hates Kansas."

What's that all about?

Isaac Asimov wrote about it in one of his essays for the Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, "The Real Finds Waiting."

There are iron meteorites and stony meteorites.

For a long time it was considered that stony meteorites were rather unusual and that it was the iron meteorite that was typical. Of the stony meteorites that were discovered, a disproportionately large number were discovered, in the 1930s, in Kansas.

I can well remember John Campbell, the late editor of Astounding Science Fiction, telling me of this very unusual fact and that scientists couldn't explain it. I even seem to remember he wrote an editorial on the subject and that a novella was written called The Gods Hate Kansas...(November, 1941 Startling Stories).

...

There just isn't any pure iron occurring naturally in the earth's crust, you see, thanks to the high oxygen atmosphere, all crustal iron is in the form of oxides and silicates. Any iron you find on Earth's surface now is either man-made or meteoric, and in the days before the Iron Age, any iron you found was meteoric. Iron meteorites were therefore east to recognize if found, for if an object were iron, it was automatically a meteorite.

Not so stony meteorites. Earth's land surface is richer in stones, generally speaking, than in anything else. Whether a stone has fallen from the sky or has been there all along as part of the planet cannot be told at first glnce.

...

On the other hand, in an area such as Kansas, where the soil is deep and where surface rocks are virtually non-existent, the presence of any rock is unusual enough to call attention to itself, and stony meteorites are much more easily located...

The gods don't hate Kansas; they hate all places equally. It's just more noticeable in Kansas.

Oh, gross! Bathynomus giganteus

Okay, so some scientists have to deal with icky, squishy, gross things. But the more you know, the less frightening they are...

Here's a "giant isopod" that has been in the news lately.

Giant deep-sea bug surfaces in the Gulf of Mexico

A giant isopod was hauled from the ocean darkness after it attached itself to a remote controlled submarine at around 8,500 feet.

The ocean depths are the last great frontier left to explore on planet Earth. True of any great adventure, danger lurks around every unlit corner Yahoo! Buzz illustrates just how creepy the pitch-black depths can actually be -- check out this thirty-inch long deep-sea isopod that surfaced this week.

MSNBC says this of the scary looking bug, “It may look like a creepy-crawly April Fool's joke - but an expert on deep-sea species says the bizarre giant bug shown in pictures circulating on the Internet is the real deal.

‘I've seen the pictures, and they are real, and they really do get that big,’ said Craig McClain, assistant director of science for the National Evolutionary Synthesis Center in North Carolina.”

Pictures of the bug appeared on Reddit earlier this week when the creature was hauled to the surface after reportedly attaching itself to a remotely operated vehicle (ROV) near an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico.

Scary as the giant bug appears, scientists have been aware of them for quite some time. The official name of this species is Bathynomus giganteus and they are commonly found in the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico – usually around 8,500 feet.

Craig McClain told MSNBC, "It's definitely not an April Fool's joke."

The Bathynomus giganteus may be an imposing giant, but it’s very similar to more commonly encountered isopods like rolypolys or pillbugs.

Bathynomus giganteus live on the sea floor and are important scavengers in the deep-sea environment. They are mostly carnivorous and feed on dead whales, fish, and squid.

On earth, scavengers are such beasts as vultures and buzzards, hyenas, and a variety of bugs. Underwater, scavengers look pretty unpleasant, as you can see. But familiarity breeds comfortableness. The more you work with these creatures - well, not really work with them, but see photos of them or even the real thing - the less gross they will seem.

NASA Astronauts are on Twitter!

Here is a list of women astronauts who have Twitter accounts.

You can follow women astronauts both current and former on Twitter at these twitter names:

@Astro_Nicole (Nicole Stott STS-128, Exp. 20/21)

@Astro_Cady (Cady Coleman STS-73, 93)

@Astro_Sandy (Sandy Magnus STS-112, 126, Exp. 18)

@AstroKDS (Kathy Sullivan STS-41G, 31, 45)

@MsCoolAstro (Soyeon Yi Soyuz TMA-12)

@EDyson (Esther Dyson Soyuz TMA-14 back-up only—did not fly in space)

@Astro_Naoko (Naoko Yamazaki - scheduled to launch on STS-131, March 2010)

Follow NASA’s other astronauts on twitter at:

@NASA_Astronauts