Daily Archives: May 6, 2022

20 AGs call for end to Disinformation Governance Board, cite threat to free speech – ABC10.com KXTV

Posted: May 6, 2022 at 12:49 am

The Department of Homeland Security has so far released few details on how the Disinformation Governance Board will function and what powers it will have.

WASHINGTON Attorneys general in 20 states have signed onto a letter asking the Biden administration to shut down a Disinformation Governance Board. The AGs say it's an infringement on free speech and could cause people to "self-censor" if they disagree with the government.

The board, part of the Department of Homeland Security, was announced last week. But DHS has so far released few details on how the board will function and what powers it will have.

"The existence of the Disinformation Governance Board will inevitably have a chilling effect on free speech," wrote Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares. "Americans will hesitate before they voice their constitutionally protected opinions, knowing that the governments censors may be watching, and some will decide it is safer to keep their opinions to themselves."

Miyares threatened legal action if the board is not disbanded.

The states signing on are Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Texas, Utah, and West Virginia. All the attorneys general are Republican.

Disinformation board's work, plans remain a mystery

DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas was attacked Wednesday by members of Congress who have already called for the board to be disbanded.

With disinformation campaigns working to shape opinions on everything from the war in Ukraine to the presidential election in the United States, the rocky start for the board may undermine its effectiveness and hurt the efforts to staunch the harm that false narratives can cause.

It is just an episodic failure, said Brian Murphy, a former director of DHS intelligence arm, of the boards launch. And it has set the true disinformation professionals, wherever they live, back.

Testifying before Congress on Wednesday, Mayorkas said the board would examine how DHS currently counters disinformation and make sure the agency does not infringe on freedom of speech, rights of privacy, civil rights and civil liberties. DHS already has an office of civil rights and civil liberties.

It is going to establish what should have been established years ago: standards, definitions, guidelines and policies, he said.

The boards bungled rollout could also hurt existing efforts to identify and stop foreign disinformation campaigns, which have been labeled a national security threat by both Republican and Democratic administrations.

Russia, China and other adversaries have used social media to push messages at U.S. audiences that stoke division and spread conspiracy theories or falsehoods. In recent months, Russia has waged an aggressive disinformation campaign across platforms to claim images and reports of dead bodies and attacks in Ukraine are fake.

The top Republicans on two key congressional panels wrote to the department on Friday demanding more information. Even privately, congressional staffers say they know little about the board or how it's being funded beyond the spare public announcements made by the department's leadership.

Given the complete lack of information about this new initiative and the potential serious consequences of a government entity identifying and responding to disinformation, we have serious concerns about the activities of this new Board, wrote Reps. Mike Turner of Ohio and John Katko of New York, the top Republicans on the House Intelligence and Homeland Security committees.

DHS that same day held a call with congressional staffers and the boards new director, Nina Jankowicz, an author and expert on Russian disinformation.

According to one person on the call, Jankowicz said there was a broad vision for what the board would do but did not offer specifics to some questions, including how her organization would work with existing anti-disinformation efforts with DHS. The department also has not provided Congress with detailed written plans beyond a summary it sent to Capitol Hill on Wednesday, the same day the department publicly announced the creation of the board.

The person was not authorized to speak publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.

Ninety-five percent of Americans identified misinformation last year as a problem when theyre trying to access important information, according to a poll conducted by The Pearson Institute and The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.

But the difference between opinion and disinformation is often contested and many argue the government shouldn't be responsible for drawing the line.

The boards creation spurred outrage across social media, with dozens of conservative pundits and Republican politicians dubbing it the Ministry of Truth, a reference to the government agency responsible for creating propaganda in George Orwells novel 1984. The term Ministry of Truth trended on Twitter for hours.

Thousands of posts focused on Jankowicz, including past social media posts that criticized Republicans and questioned the veracity of stories about Hunter Biden, the president's son. Other posts used anti-Semitic language to attack Jankowicz, who is not Jewish, and Mayorkas, who was born to Jewish parents.

While the board was set up in part to combat Russian disinformation, it instead fueled conspiracy theories and more stories in Russian state media. One Kremlin-backed piece carried the headline: Bidens Ministry of Truth is another propaganda tool.

Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah on Wednesday echoed that point to Mayorkas directly on Wednesday, calling the board a terrible idea that communicates to the world that were going to be spreading propaganda in our own country.

Homeland Security initially said the board would have the two-part mission of countering Russian disinformation activities and false narratives smugglers use to induce people in Latin America to try to reach the U.S.-Mexico border.

For anyone whos out there who may be concerned about the increase in migrants to the border, this is the kind of apparatus thats working to address disinformation, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said during a briefing on Monday.

On Monday, the department also announced it would provide quarterly reports to Congress.

Trying to tamp down concerns about thought police, Mayorkas said in a television interview to CNN on Sunday that we in the Department of Homeland Security dont monitor American citizens.

In fact, DHS does. The sprawling department, created in response to the security failures leading up to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, has broad authorities to track and collect data on American citizens. It has repeatedly been accused of misusing those powers. In a bulletin earlier this year, DHS said it was using social media to identify potential conspiracy theories that might inspire domestic violence or terrorism. In a statement on Monday, the agency also released examples of how it has responded to misinformation in the past, including during Hurricane Sandy in 2012 when falsehoods spread about drinking water and shelter locations.

And organizations tracking disinformation monitor social media, where its sometimes impossible to determine the nationality or location of individual users. Disinformation researchers often identify popular conspiracy theories and trending falsehoods in the U.S. by monitoring public social media groups, pages and accounts.

DHS wont have the ability to remove posts or accounts that it deems are spreading disinformation. That power still rests with the tech companies themselves, said Katie Harbath, a former public policy director for Facebook who is now the International Republican Institutes technology and democracy director.

The new disinformation board could help the platforms spot some information operations they might be missing, she said.

DHS is going to have to do what they normally do, Harbath said. If theres a post they think should be taken down or fact-checked, they can report that to the platforms, but the platforms are going to make their own call.

Associated Press writers Farnoush Amiri and Ben Fox contributed to this report.

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Free Speech on Twitter? Not If the EU Can Help It – theTrumpet.com

Posted: at 12:49 am

Last week a great blow was struck for online freedom. Billionaire Elon Musk bought Twitter. Liberals around the world have clutched their pearls as Musk promises to bring the once cherished principle of freedom of speech to the platform.

But his task may not be so easy. Its not just Twitters governance that wants to restrict what can be said on Twitter. Other very powerful forces also want to control what is said online.

At the same time that Musk was putting in his bid for Twitter, the European Union agreed on outlines for its Digital Services Act, which would create a new European bureaucracy able to police what is said online, with a global reach.

After 16 months of negotiation, on April 23 the European Commission, European Parliament and national governments agreed to plans to regulate Twitter and other social networks.

The Digital Services Act (dsa) is now set to become a reality by the end of the year. It will set up a new EU bureaucracy to manage the biggest tech companiesthose with more than 45 million European users. The European Commission will be hiring around 150 people to regulate these companies, as well as spending money on outside advisers.

The act will establish broad responsibilities for big companies to curb disinformation. Penalties for noncompliance are huge: Firms could face fines of up to 6 percent of global revenue. For Twitter, this would be hundreds of millions of dollars. For Facebook, it would be billions.

The response from many advocates for free speech online has been a sigh of relief. Some of what the EU had been proposing would have been horrific for free speech. For example, one idea under discussion would have forced large social networks to prescreen all their posts. Rather than deleting bad posts, the networks would have had to approve all posts before they went live, largely by using some kind of computer program. Not only would this have brought in a level of censorship beyond anything weve seen so far, it would have also been completely unworkable, and so it was dropped.

But the fact that it could have been worse shouldnt blind us to what is happening. The European Union is essentially setting up a new regulatory body that will control what is said online around the world.

There are also quite a lot of good things in the new plan. There are provisions that limit the way big companies harvest data on you, track you, and target you with ads.

The EU cites some excellent reasons for introducing these changes. It is correct that there are major problems with social media. It rightly points to the real harm theyre causing, especially among teens.

But just because the problem is real doesnt mean the EUs solution will be an improvement. None of this eliminates the fact that the EU wants more control over what people say on large social networks.

To the EU, one of the biggest problems with social media is that there is too much free speech. Businesses arent doing enough to curb disinformation.

The EU has no first amendment, and speech that would be protected in the United States is often classed as hate speech and outlawed in European companies. The dsa brings these restrictions online.

Large social media sites will have an obligation to deal with disinformationspeech that is not classed hate speech but that the EU still doesnt like. They wont have to ban it, but theyll have to do somethinge.g. putting on a disinformation warning, shadow banning it, quietly stopping the post from spreading, or putting on a fact check.

The EU will be able to grab even more power in a crisis. If the EUs national authorities vote to declare a crisis, for example due to a pandemic, the EU wants the power to tell social media companies exactly what a user can and cannot post.

The EU is already threatening to ban Twitter if Musk goes for what they call a free speech absolutists direction. Thierry Breton, EU commissioner for the internal market, told the Financial Times that if Twitter does not comply with our law, there are sanctions6 percent of the revenue and, if they continue, banned from operating in Europe.

This law will likely soon restrict what can be posted in the U.S. too. Columbia law professor Anu Bradford writes in her book The Brussels EffectHow the European Union Rules the World: Instead of being guided by Americas First Amendment free-speech protections, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube follow the EUs definition of hate speech worldwide when deciding which content to remove from their platforms.

Having certain posts show up in the U.S. but not in the EU is possible, but a lot of work. Its much simpler just to apply the EUs rules worldwide, which is what happens time and again.

This is why many on the radical left, such as former U.S. presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton, are cheering the EU on. When social media companies were in the hands of billionaires that thought like them, the left in the U.S. said, Theyre private businesses; they can do whatever they wantif they want to censor, they can do so. As soon as Twitter gets bought out by someone they dont agree with, they start setting up a Disinformation Governance Board. But in the U.S. theres only so much the government can do to censor; it is limited by the First Amendment. But the EU isnt. If the EU does the enforcing, its much harder for Americans to object.

The radical left is so desperate to keep control over social media it would rather empower the EU to police it than allow political opponents free speech. If the U.S. really fought for free speech online, the EU would have a hard time taking that away from them. But instead, Americas leaders are helping the German-led EU.

This law is still many months from going into effect. But already it is exposing a lot about both the radical left and the EU. In his 2019 article Germany Is Taking Control of the Internet, Trumpet editor in chief Gerald Flurry wrote:

The European Union is working to gain control of the Internet. It has already made significant progress in this effort.

Germanys ambitions for the Internet should concern everyone, even those who dont have a computer. The EUs behavior on this issue exposes the dictatorial nature of this German-dominated entity. Really, we are witnessing the manifestation of the spirit of the Holy Roman Empire in the tech world. The biblically prophesied seventh and final resurrection of this empire wants to control the Internet!

We must put this issue in the context of Bible prophecy and history. The German-led EU is behaving the way the Holy Roman Empire has always behaved. Germany is once again seeking to impose its will on the world. This is a difficult message to accept, and many people will disagree with it, but it is the truth!

The Internet is changing before your eyes. It was once a free-for-all. Now the vast majority of traffic is funneled through a handful of gatekeepers who will only allow you to see certain things. And it is the German-led European Union that wants to determine exactly what you can and cant see.

This new power is already making itself felt, and it wants to control what you read and say. This is exactly the kind of power described in the Bibleand one weve been forecasting for decades.

Revelation 17 describes a power that repeatedly rises in Europe. What is rising today is an extension of what has gone before. Verse 8 calls this power the beast that was, and is not, and yet is. Theres a power with a similar, censorious character that comes and goes on the European scenethe Holy Roman Empire. Revelation 18 shows this power dominating global trade and commerce. We see this building in the EUs regulatory superpower. Other chapters describe this power regulating religious belief, trying to control what people think and say.

This power rising in Europe is already making itself felt around the world. A crucial part of end-time events is already affecting your life. To learn more about it and where it is leading, read Mr. Flurrys article Germany Is Taking Control of the Internet.

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Free speech and social media: Reset the debate – Hindustan Times

Posted: at 12:49 am

Social media platforms achieved unbridled growth by adopting a laissez faire approach to user-generated content. This approach was underpinned by legislative frameworks around the world which sought to indemnify content hosting internet intermediaries from liability arising out of user-generated content. At the same time, as private companies, social media platforms have the freedom to decide what content they want to host. This freedom is reflected in differential content standards across different platforms and differential application of standards for the same piece of content.

Platforms have carte blanche to decide what content they want to host and distribute. However, since all major social media platforms were based primarily in the United States (US), their content moderation policies drew upon American First Amendment principles (which prohibit government from curtailing free speech, among other freedoms) to restrict only narrowly defined categories of content. Platforms have similarly sought recourse to First Amendment free speech principles to reject calls for an interventionist approach towards misinformation. Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook are all on the record stating their aversion to being the arbiters of truth and that the platforms should be a marketplace of ideas.

Taken at face value, these platforms proclivity towards free speech seems not just reasonable, but laudable. However, it can be argued that, for social media platforms, free speech is a business model instead of a principled imperative. It is evident that a hands-off approach to speech is operationally simpler since content moderation is not just complex but also politically fraught. Moreover, important high-profile content moderation decisions by platforms are often ad hoc and driven by external pressure especially government, media, and public relations instead of coherent speech policies. Further, platforms have been known to take down or block content (including critical political speech) based on government requests while also making exceptions for powerful users linked to the government and its affiliates.

Most importantly, platforms have opportunistically used free speech and the protection against liability for intermediaries to advance their business models. Traditional news media is liable for published content and must thus invest time and resources to vet information before publishing. Platforms compete with traditional news publishers for advertising revenue while enjoying the double advantage of speed (to get content to users) and protection from liability (for unvetted content). Since, advertising revenue is directly proportional to the amount of time users spend, platforms have exploited this twin advantage to boost user engagement without caring about the deleterious impact of a surfeit of misinformation on the information ecosystem and wider democracy.

Social media platforms keep users engaged by constantly keeping their feeds populated with new content from sources and content creators that the user has not proactively followed. This deliberate boost to the organic reach of a subset of content by the platforms is known as amplification. Since quality and value-based amplification is difficult due to the challenge of determining quality and value, platforms rely on amplification based primarily on engagement signals.

This approach absolves platforms of the need to exclude vast swathes of bad content while remaining value agnostic and avoiding charges of editorial control. Since hateful and polarising content gets more engagement (as admitted by platforms themselves), this value-neutral and engagement-driven approach is resulting in amplification of misinformation and other harmful content.

It is this turbocharged distribution through social media platforms, which has made misinformation and propaganda invasive and pervasive. These platforms have further elided the distinction between different sources of information which has removed an important signal of credibility and ideological positioning of the consumed content. Instead, engagement is perceived to be a bigger driver of the importance and by extension credibility of a piece of news.

This equal treatment (appearance and placement of different and unequal sources of information) and making virality instead of quality the primary determinant of a sources credibility and/or a piece of contents importance has eroded the distinction between vetted information, propaganda and misinformation in the minds of the user. The impact is acute in India because platforms have de-facto control over the distribution of the message combined with low-digital literacy among users.

It is a testament to the efficacy of the lobbying efforts of social media platforms that instead of focusing on the amplified distribution of misinformation, the discourse has exclusively framed measures to reduce misinformation as being in tension with freedom of expression, an issue which can arise only in the case of outright removal. Moreover, since platforms are private companies, the issue even in the case of outright removal of content, is not freedom of speech but political neutrality of the platform. The degree of permissiveness for misinformation, hate speech, etc is thus a political and/or commercial choice by the platforms.

It is clear that even if free speech was an article of faith for social media platforms, it has now evolved into a justification for a lucrative business model that privileges user engagement over information quality. Moreover, the platform-fuelled binary between misinformation and free speech is a red herring designed to obfuscate platforms role in the distribution and amplification of misinformation. The first step to addressing the problem of disinformation is to reset the terms of the debate in a manner which helps our democracy instead of private platforms.

Ruchi Gupta is executive director of the Future of India Foundation. This article is based on the Foundations upcoming report, Politics of Disinformation. The views expressed are personal

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Four-astronaut team departs International Space Station on flight back to Earth – Reuters.com

Posted: at 12:48 am

May 4 (Reuters) - The third long-duration team of astronauts launched by SpaceX to the International Space Station (ISS) for NASA safely departed the orbiting outpost early on Thursday to begin their descent back to Earth, capping a six-month science mission.

The SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule carrying three U.S. NASA astronauts and a German astronaut from the European Space Agency undocked from the ISS at 1:20 a.m. EDT (0520 GMT) to embark on a return flight expected to last about 23 hours.

Live video showing the capsule drifting away from the station as the two vehicles soared high over Australia was shown on a NASA webcast.

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Wearing helmeted white-and-black spacesuits, the four astronauts were seen strapped into the crew cabin shortly before the spacecraft separated from the space station, orbiting some 250 miles (400 km) above the Earth.

A series of several brief rocket thrusts then autonomously pushed the capsule safely clear of the ISS and lowered its orbit to line up the spacecraft for later atmospheric re-entry and splashdown.

If all goes smoothly, the Crew Dragon craft, dubbed Endurance, will parachute into the sea off the coast of Florida at 12:43 a.m. EDT on Friday (0443 GMT).

The Endurance crew, consisting of American astronauts Tom Marshburn, 61, Raja Chari, 44 and Kayla Barron, 34, along with ESA crewmate Matthias Maurer, 52, arrived at the space station on Nov. 11.

Their departure came about a week after they welcomed their replacement team aboard the station, also currently home to three Russian cosmonauts on a long-term mission. One of those cosmonauts, Oleg Artemyev, assumed command of the ISS from Marshburn in a handover before Thursday's undocking, NASA said.

Earlier in April, a separate all-private astronaut crew launched by SpaceX to the space station under contract for the Houston-based company Axiom Space left the orbiting laboratory, concluding two weeks in orbit.

The NASA-ESA team flying home on Thursday was officially designated "Crew 3," the third full-fledged long-duration group of astronauts that SpaceX has launched to the space station for the U.S. space agency.

They will be carrying some 550 pounds of cargo with them on their flight back to Earth.

SpaceX, the California-based company founded in 2002 by Elon Musk, the billionaire CEO of electric carmarker Tesla Inc (TSLA.O) who recently clinched a deal to buy social media platform Twitter (TWTR.N), has launched a total of seven human spaceflights over the past two years.

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Reporting by Steve Gorman from Los Angeles; Editing by Simon Cameron-Moore and Stephen Coates

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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Russia will pull out of the International Space Station, space agency chief confirms – Livescience.com

Posted: at 12:48 am

Russia has confirmed it will pull out of the International Space Station (ISS), perhaps as soon as two years from now, because of the sanctions imposed on it after its invasion of Ukraine, according to news reports.

"The decision has already been made, we are not obliged to talk about it publicly," Dmitry Rogozin, the director-general of the federal Roscosmos space agency, told the state-owned Rossiya-24 TV channel on Saturday (April 30), according to the independent Russian news agency TASS.

Rogozin didn't say when Russia's involvement in the ISS project will come to an end, although he affirmed it would give at least a year's notice "in accordance with our obligations."

Russian space analysts have already noted that Russia never agreed to extend its involvement in the ISS beyond 2024; the U.S. space agency NASA and the other international partners now want the project extended to at least 2030.

Rogozin, an experienced politician with close ties to Russian president Vladimir Putin, has a history of making blustery statements.

He posted on Twitter on Feb. 24 the day after Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine that any international sanctions on Russia imposed over the Ukrainian invasion would "destroy" the partnership between NASA and Roscosmos that keeps the space station operating and aloft.

And he reaffirmed those comments last month, tweeting that normal relations between the ISS partners could only be restored after "the complete and unconditional lifting of illegal sanctions."

Related: Russia's Ukraine invasion could imperil international science

The first modules of the International Space Station were boosted into orbit in 1998, and expected to last just 15 years.

The space station's mission has since been extended, although maintenance problems especially on the Russian half of the space station have increased in recent years; and experts have warned that some of the ISS modules are getting old, NBC News reported.

The U.S. and Russia are the major partners on the ISS project, which was initiated after they cooperated on the last stages of the Mir space station in the 1990s, according to NASA.

Historically, the U.S. has mainly been responsible for providing life support for the up to 10 people who lived aboard the ISS at any one time, and Russia has mainly been responsible for keeping the ISS in orbit, with regular blasts from the engines of the Soyuz spacecraft docked there.

Russia also controlled access to the ISS for several years because only its Soyuz flew there after the U.S Space Shuttle ended operations in 2011; but the advent of new passenger-carrying spacecraft like the SpaceX Dragon means that's no longer the case.

Space experts have also noted that NASA is now testing its ability to keep the ISS in orbit with blasts from the engines of the Cygnus cargo spacecraft, which is manufactured and launched by the U.S. aerospace company Northrop Grumman meaning that Russia's involvement in the ISS might no longer be needed.

Rogozin's latest comments seem to imply that Russia could soon give notice and start its pullout from the ISS project.

But activities on the space station have been relatively normal since he made his initial comments, including the arrival of three Russian cosmonauts in mid-March, Live Science sister site Space.com reported.

TASS also reported comments Rogozin had made a day earlier than his television interview, which seemed to suggest that any decision on the fate of the ISS project wasn't yet final.

"A decision regarding the ISS future will depend to a great extent on the developing situation both in Russia and around it," he told the news agency in an interview on Friday, April 29.

He also said Roscosmos proposals for cooperation on the ISS project after 2024 had been sent to the Russian government and President Putin.

And in another story on TASS dated the same day, Rogozin said that Russia would begin to test "one-orbit" flights to the ISS by Soyuz spacecraft in 2023 and 2024 a trip that usually requires the spacecraft to make at least four Earth orbits.

That schedule, too, doesn't seem to fit well with assertions that the demise of Russia's involvement in the ISS project is imminent.

Either way, Russia already has advanced plans to build a successor space station to the ISS, according to Space.com.

The first module, being built by the Energia corporation, would cost at least $5 billion and could go into orbit as soon as 2025.

Originally published on Live Science.

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Watch What Happens to Astronauts When the International Space Station Gets an Orbital Reboost – Universe Today

Posted: at 12:48 am

This is reminiscent of going down slide on the playground and then immediately getting back in line to go down again. Except in space.

Heres what it looks like on board the International Space Station when thrusters fire for an orbital reboost. While it seems like the astronauts are moving inside the station, in in reality it is the Space Station that is moving around them. And in actuality, the acceleration doesnt happen this fast the video is sped up eight times. But it still looks like fun!

The data for the acceleration rate/change for this particular burn was not available, but for a previous burn with a duration of 12 minutes, 17 seconds had a Delta-V of 1.34 meters/second.

The crew seen here is Expedition 66, which includes NASA astronauts Raja Chari, Thomas Marshburn Kayla Barron and Mark Vande Hei ; ESA (European Space Agency) astronaut Matthias Maurer; Roscosmos cosmonauts Anton Shkaplerov and Pyotr Dubrov.

The astronauts are obviously enjoying the experience. It must feel somewhat similar to when a car or airplane accelerates it feels like you are being pushed back into the seat, when in reality, the seat is being pushed into you by the acceleration of the vehicle.

The ISS usually orbits about 400 km (250 miles) above the Earth. But the effects of atmospheric drag can cause the station to lose as much as 100 meters a day in altitude. Therefore, regular reboosts are required, usually about once a month. Theres no real schedule of when a reboost is done, as the density of Earths atmosphere at those altitudes constantly changes, depending on how much energy is being fed into it by the Sun. Therefore, the orbital decay rate is not a constant. But the ISS orbits decays faster than other satellites at a similar altitude due to its massive size and surface area.

Reboosts are also done to optimize the ISSs orbital position for future visiting vehicles arriving at the station. This particular reboost was performed in March 2022 using Russias ISS Progress 79 cargo craft. By firing its engines for several minutes, the station was put at the proper altitude for an arriving Soyuz for the new crew members that arrived in March. crew ship orbit rendezvous and landing operations.

NASA says that all ISS propulsion is provided by the Russian Segment and Russian cargo spacecraft. Propulsion is used for station reboost, attitude control, debris avoidance maneuvers (as well as eventual deorbit operations) are handled by the Russian Segment and Progress cargo craft. The U.S. gyroscopes provide day-to-day attitude control or controlling the orientation of the station. Russian thrusters are used for attitude control during dynamic events like spacecraft dockings and provide attitude control recovery when the gyroscopes reach their control limits.

Northrop Grummans Cygnus is the only U.S. commercial spacecraft currently available to provide reboosts, although it is still currently in testing mode. The first Cygnus capable to performing reboosts arrived at the ISS in February 2022.

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Italian EVOO Reaches the International Space Station – Olive Oil Times

Posted: at 12:48 am

Last week, four Italian olive oils were sent into orbit on the International Space Station (ISS), and they are now flying at an altitude of approximately 400kilometers above Earth.

They were brought into space by the European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti, who returned to the ISS for her second mission, Minerva.

This year, Samantha Cristoforettis return to the International Space Station, obtained through our negotiations with the ESA in the last few years, underlines, also symbolically, the importance our country has been giving to space activities for some time, said Giorgio Saccoccia, the president of the Italian Space Agency (ASI).

I wish good luck and all the best in her work to Samantha for her new and extraordinary adventure, he added.

As amission specialist, Cristoforetti took on the role of USOS Lead, responsible for operations within the United States Orbital Segment of the ISS for the duration of the mission.

Moreover, during her time in orbit, she will conduct numerous experiments, covering different sectors of medicine and nutrition, including six experiments set up by ASI.

Among these, the EVOO project is focused on balanced nutrition. It studies the impact of space environment conditions on the physio-chemical, nutritional and microbiological characteristics of extra virgin olive oil, with aspecific focus on its reactions to microgravity and radiations.

Furthermore, part of the oils is intended for the preparation of the so-called bonus food, which indicates the specialties, prepared and packaged on the ground, that each astronaut can choose to bring with them to supplement the provided standard diet.

All the members of the crew will benefit from the quality choices of Cristoforetti and find on their spatial table four monovarietals: aCarolea, Itrana, Moraiolo and aCoratina.

The sensory profiles and pairing suggestions are indicated on their labels: Carolea is recommended for fish, Itrana with salads, Moraiolo on the meat and Coratina to enhance the most intense flavors.

The project is the result of an agreement between the Italian Space Agency and the Council for Agricultural Research and Economics (CREA), with the collaboration of Coldiretti and Unaprol, the Italian association of olive oil producers, which selected the high-quality extra virgin olive oils from different regions.

Proper nutrition of astronauts is avery important health issue aboard the ISS, said Coldiretti in apress release. The extra virgin olive oils that we selected with Unaprol for the project share ahigh content of natural antioxidants, which are essential for those who, like astronauts, are subjected to conditions of intense psychophysical stress.

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Space: a New Frontier for Manufacturing and Research – Association of Equipment Manufacturers (AEM)

Posted: at 12:48 am

The International Space Station (ISS) is a very important, yet often forgotten, part of U.S. research efforts. Its also recently been found to be quite valuable to manufacturers, thanks in large part to the ongoing efforts of Congress and outside organizations.

As a part of those efforts, Congress andthe Center for the Advancement of Science in Space (CASIS)have teamed up to try and get manufacturers interested in using their ISS lab to research manufacturing in space, bring new innovation back to earth and ultimately build a better world for us all.

With as many trips as rockets are making, its not going to be too far into the future that you can make products in space and bring them back to install, said ChristineKretz, vice president of programs and partnerships at the International Space Station U.S. National Laboratory, who spoke to attendees at AEMs Annual Conference last fall.

According to Kretz, the ISS is in the sky because of U.S. tax dollars, to make Earths economy better, and to provide access to research opportunities. NASA and Congress have displayed great interest in commercial work in space and a low-orbit economy. There are different conditions in space, like sustained microgravity, that could be conducive to higher quality products being made there. Not so far in the future, it is quite possible that the U.S. will have a low-orbit economy or, at the very least, possess the ability to make certain products exclusively in space.

The ISS has been floating around in space for more than decades so, one cant help but wonder -- Why has this opportunity only recently been made?

Things are really coming into confluence in space, explained Kretz. Prior to this year, the U.S still had to take our astronauts to Russia to put them into space.

Now that the U.S. can send rockets up to the ISS from its home turf, its become far easier to take trips to and from the station. In addition, there is much more equipment onboard now than there was in the past. In the beginning, the station had a camera and a microscope; 21 years later it has a ton of hardware, and plans are in place for a bigger and better space station in the future. Lastly, the amount of funding has increased. Within CASIS, there are 245 venture capital organizations watching what's going in and out of the station, as well as looking for investment opportunities.

NASA and Congress have recently extended use of the ISS until 2030 to allow for additional research and manufacturing opportunities. In addition, Congress has several grants for projects that focus on key areas, such as sustainability or the reduction of carbon usage.

There are many perks to using the ISS for research, as all of the tools one would need are already onboard. Hewlett-Packard and IBM have provided supercomputers for other companies to use, with a huge amount of data available to use and analyze. In addition, while other satellites do collect and store data, the ISS has more room for varying types of that data. As an example, one satellite could provide data on a singular area of interest, while the ISS has all of the information one may need in a singular place.

We have a vantage point looking down on our planet 24/7, rotating the earth every 90 minutes and collecting a huge amount of data, explained Kretz. With different kinds of sensors, we collect different kinds of data, whether it be data on methane gas pockets, plastics in the oceans, and different kinds of things. The sensors collect the data, and then it is available to you. So, you can ask for that data, or ask for a different kind of data that you want to be included.

There are plenty of opportunities for manufacturers to get involved. Additive manufacturing is currently happening on the ISS, printing materials such as ceramic, plastic and cell tissue, among others. With the thin layer deposition in space being 10 times higher quality than that on Earth, there is less of a chance for things to get in the way of that deposition, and there is no sedimentation and far fewer bubbles. Products like semiconductors, medical implants, solar panels and consumer electronics could all be manufactured in space one day -- potentially helping to alleviate issues such as the shortage of semiconductors.

The resources are there. Now it's up to manufacturers to take the next step and explore this opportunity. The ISS is truly valuable and exciting initiative. And now that NASA and Congress have extended the lifecycle of the ISS, it's even more important to take advantage of it. In the future, the U.S. economy could look very different than it is right now, and manufacturers would be wise to consider all of the options in front of them.

The Association of Equipment Manufacturers (AEM) Annual Conference delivers a single place for members to gather with their peers to examine what this transformational decade will mean for their organization and the equipment manufacturing industry. For more information, visitaem.org./annual.

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VIDEO: California’s Drought Is Visible From The International Space Station – On Air with Ryan Seacrest

Posted: at 12:48 am

A recent video from the International Space Station has captured an alarming view of California's intense drought. Although Northern California received some late-season snow in April, nearly all of the state remains under significant drought conditions. At the start of last month, it was revealed that the Sierra Nevada snowpack had hit one of its lowest levels for the end of the winter in 70 years. The snowpack is the source of 30% of California's water supply.

The video posted to Twitter was taken on Friday, April 29, and shows the dwindling snowpack from the International Space Station. Just how much snow is in Northern California and The Sierra Mountains? Not all that much."

According to KTLA, data from the U.S. Drought Monitor released on April 26 showed that over 95% of California was classified under severe or extreme drought, which is an increase from the 66% recorded in February. While an April storm did bring a decent amount of precipitation to the state, it wasn't enough. The National Weather Service reported that the storm brought double the amount of rain seen in January, February, and March combined.

The Metropolitan Water District of Southern California declared a water shortage emergency, placing outdoor watering restrictions on several counties in the area as they continue to navigate the severe drought conditions.

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VIDEO: California's Drought Is Visible From The International Space Station - On Air with Ryan Seacrest

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New study reveals the effect of extended space flight on astronauts’ brains – OHSU News

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OHSU researchers compared before and after brain images of International Space Station astronauts prior to launch and again when they returned. (Getty Images)

Long-duration space flight alters fluid-filled spaces along veins and arteries in the brain, according to new research from Oregon Health & Science University and scientists across the country.

The study published today in the journal Scientific Reports.

Juan Piantino, M.D. (OHSU)

These findings have important implications as we continue space exploration, said senior author Juan Piantino, M.D., assistant professor of pediatrics (neurology) in the OHSU School of Medicine. It also forces you to think about some basic fundamental questions of science and how life evolved here on Earth.

The research involved imaging the brains of 15 astronauts before and after extended tours of duty on the International Space Station.

Researchers used magnetic resonance imaging to measure perivascular space or the space around blood vessels in the brains of astronauts prior to their launch and again immediately after their return. They also took MRI measurements again at one, three and six months after they had returned. Astronauts images were compared with those taken of the same perivascular space in the brains of 16 Earth-bound control subjects.

Comparing before and after images, they found an increase in the perivascular spaces within the brains of first-time astronauts, but no difference among astronauts who previously served aboard the space station orbiting earth.

Experienced astronauts may have reached some kind of homeostasis, Piantino said.

In all cases, scientists found no problems with balance or visual memories that might suggest neurological deficits among astronauts, despite the differences measured in the perivascular spaces of their brains.

In comparing a large group of deidentified astronauts, the study is amongthe first to comparatively assess an important aspect of brain health in space.

Human physiology is based on the fact that life evolved over millions of years while tethered to Earths gravitational pull. Unbound by the forces of gravity, the normal flow of cerebrospinal fluid in the brain is altered in space.

We all adapted to use gravity in our favor, Piantino said. Nature didnt put our brains in our feet it put them high up. Once you remove gravity from the equation, what does that do to human physiology?

Researchers decided to find out by measuring perivascular spaces, where cerebrospinal fluid flows in the brain.

These spaces are integral to a natural system of brain cleansing that occurs during sleep. Known as the glymphatic system, this brain-wide network clears metabolic proteins that would otherwise build up in the brain. Scientists say this system seems to perform optimally during deep sleep.

The perivascular spaces measured in the brain amount to the underlying hardware of the glymphatic system. Enlargement of these spaces occurs in aging, and also has been associated with the development of dementia.

Researchers used a technique developed in the laboratory of co-author Lisa C. Silbert, M.D., M.C.R., professor of neurology in the OHSU School of Medicine, to measure changes in these perivascular spaces through MRI scans.

Piantino said the study could be valuable in helping to diagnose and treat Earth-bound disorders involving cerebrospinal fluid, such as hydrocephalus.

These findings not only help to understand fundamental changes that happen during space flight, but also for people on Earth who suffer from diseases that affect circulation of cerebrospinal fluid, Piantino said.

In addition to Piantino and Silbert, co-authors included first authors Kathleen E. Hupfeld and Sutton B. Richmond of the University of Florida; Heather R. McGregor and Rachael D. Seidler of the University of Florida; Daniel L. Schwartz and Madison N. Luther of OHSU; Nichole E. Beltran, Igor S. Kofman, Yiri E. De Dios and Ajitkumar P. Mulavara of PBR in Houston; Roy F. Riascos of the University of Texas Health Science Center; Scott J. Wood and Jacob J. Bloomberg of NASA; and Jeffrey J. Iliff of the University of Washington School of Medicine and the VA Puget Sound Health Care System.

The research was supported by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, grant NNX11AR02G; the National Space Biomedical Research Institute, award NCC 9-58; the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship, grants DGE-1315138 and DGE-1842473; the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, grant T32-NS082128; the National Institute on Aging fellowship 1F99AG068440 and grant awards R01AG056712, P30AG008017 and P30AG066518; and the National Heart Lung and Blood Institute, grant K23HL150217-01.

The co-authors also thank all of the astronauts who volunteered their time, without whom this project would not have been possible.

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