Daily Archives: April 6, 2024

Opinion | Joe Lieberman and Gordon Humphrey: How to counter Putin’s lies – The Washington Post – The Washington Post

Posted: April 6, 2024 at 11:39 am

Joseph I. Lieberman was a U.S. senator from Connecticut from 1989 to 2013 and the Democratic nominee for vice president in 2000. Gordon J. Humphrey is a former U.S. senator from New Hampshire. Lieberman drafted this piece with Humphrey in the months before Lieberman died on March 27.

Democracies are taking a battering, the editorial board of The Post wrote in December. Russia and China are running rings around us, asserts former CIA director and defense secretary Robert M. Gates.

The Post and Gates have underscored our failure to go on the offensive in the information war by using counternarrative that asserts our values and ideals and explains the priceless advantages of freedom, the rule of law, a free press and freedom to assemble and express opinion. This failure has weakened national security and emboldened adversaries.

The regime of Vladimir Putin, for example, brazenly floods computers around the world daily with malicious falsehoods. Americans are particular targets of false narratives designed to sow confusion about our institutions including our elections and to undermine American confidence.

Formerly, we thought about national security in terms of battles on land, at sea and in the air. The newest battlefield is the human mind. Our adversaries are fully deployed on that field of battle. We are all but absent. Thus, we are losing the information war by default to malefactor regimes in Russia, China and Iran.

What explains this alarming state of affairs? Lack of leadership and lack of means. No one is in charge of telling Americas still-inspiring story to the world. For three years, the U.S. Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy, part of the State Department, has urged the White House and Congress to designate a lead official in the information war. The recommendations appear to have been ignored. This reflects inattention at the very top.

As for lack of means, since 1999, when Congress unwisely abolished the U.S. Information Agency (USIA), the United States has lacked the capability to fight back using counternarrative. We have the invaluable Voice of America, of course, but VOAs product is news. News is not counternarrative. It is not the marshaling of truth and fact to tell our story. Putins high standing in domestic polls and in some nonaligned countries is proof we need more than news to achieve victory on the battlefield of the human mind. We need counternarrative as well.

Joe Biden was one of 49 senators who voted against abolishing the USIA. It should be an easy walk for the president to take the steps necessary to get us on the offensive.

The president should immediately require the National Security Council to produce a strategic plan that puts us on the offensive, a plan that includes the use of counternarrative. He should designate the undersecretary of state for public diplomacy and public affairs with responsibility for executing the plan and ask Congress to fund it robustly. And he should take a personal interest and stay involved.

The personal involvement of President Ronald Reagan in using counternarrative to help win the Cold War is instructive. Reagan appointed a longtime California friend, Charles Z. Wick, who had experience in the motion picture industry, as USIA director. His access was such that Reagan afterward called him my principal adviser on international information.

When Congress abolished the USIA, it simultaneously created the office of undersecretary of state for public diplomacy and public affairs. The intent was for that office to continue all of the USIAs activities except for news broadcasting. Unfortunately, the State Department has treated that office as an unwanted child for the past 24 years, underfunding it and leaving it vacant 40 percent of the time, rendering it virtually mute.

As a measure of the counternarrative lost when the USIA disappeared, its archives contain 20,000 films it produced. One even won an Oscar. The films were not newsreels; they were documentaries meant to persuade. They served as counternarrative to Soviet lies and distortion. Very little counternarrative in modern form videos that could be disseminated on social media has been produced since.

As an example of what could be, consider the excellent video To the People of Russia, produced by the office of Undersecretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs Elizabeth M. Allen. It undermines Putins casting of the United States as an enemy by recalling with vivid news clips dramatic examples of Russian and American cooperation, from World War II to the exploration of space. And it supports Russian antiwar protesters. When the U.S. Embassy in Moscow tweeted the video early last year, it provoked a harsh and threatening response from the Kremlin.

The video was produced more than a year ago, and nothing like it has appeared since. That halting effort in counternarrative stands as a metaphor for the larger U.S. failure to engage seriously in the battle for human minds. The president and Congress should take note and act.

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Opinion | Joe Lieberman and Gordon Humphrey: How to counter Putin's lies - The Washington Post - The Washington Post

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Opinion | I am proud to have spoken out against Putin’s crimes in Ukraine – The Washington Post

Posted: at 11:39 am

On April 3, the Russian Supreme Court will consider a cassation appeal against the sentence of Vladimir Kara-Murza, who was sentenced to 25 years in a strict-regime colony for five public statements he made against the war in Ukraine and Vladimir Putins regime. Kara-Murza, who is being held in Prison Colony No. 7 in Omsk, was blocked from taking part in the hearing via video link.

Instead, he sent the court the following written statement:

For the first time in my life, I am addressing the Supreme Court. This body has performed different functions in different periods of our countrys history: There was a time when it approved convictions for countless innocent victims, sending them to camps and firing squads; later, it overturned these same sentences for lack of grounds and issued decisions on rehabilitation. Today, we are back in the first of these two phases but we should not doubt that the second one is sure to come.

In its essence, cassation is a purely legal procedure, and our cassation appeal cites a number of undisputed legal irregularities, each of which would be enough on its own to overturn my conviction. I could write a great deal more about these irregularities. I could address the issue that this entire case essentially lacks any grounds or specific crime, because I was convicted solely for publicly expressing my opposition to the Putin regime and the war in Ukraine that is, for exercising my constitutional right to freedom of speech. Or I could make the point that the text of the same articles of the Criminal Code according to which I received my 25-year sentence directly contradicts Russias international human rights obligations, rendering my conviction invalid by virtue of Section 4 of Article 15 of the Constitution. This is not merely my opinion; it is an official finding of the U.N. Human Rights Committee.

Or I could write about the fact that my sentence was imposed by a court of illegal composition, since the presiding judge faced an obvious conflict of interest: He was personally subject to international sanctions under the Magnitsky Act, which I helped to implement. This, of course, was organized deliberately and demonstratively. There is much more I could write about.

But I will not take up paper and your time with this argument. First of all, because you, professional lawyers, understand it all perfectly well and it will have no effect on the decision you will put your signatures to. Secondly, because it is strange and rather ridiculous to provide examples of the illegality in a case that is illegal from beginning to end just as the cases of all Russian citizens arrested for speaking out against the war are illegal from beginning to end. And, finally, because any arguments based on law have no relevance to the reality in which Russia exists under the regime of Vladimir Putin.

This reality was once described with startling, frightening accuracy by George Orwell in his great novel 1984: War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is power. This slogan on the facade of Orwells Ministry of Truth very accurately reflects the principle of functioning of todays Russian government.

For the third year now, my country or, more precisely, an aging, irremovable, illegitimate dictator who has arrogated to himself the right to speak and act on behalf of my country has been waging a brutal, unjust, invasive war against a neighboring independent state. In the course of this aggression, the invader has committed genuine war crimes. In two years, tens of thousands of civilians, including children, have been killed and wounded in Ukraine; thousands of residential houses as well as hundreds of hospitals and schools have been destroyed. These facts are common knowledge and have been documented in detail in the reports of international organizations. It was on suspicion of war crimes that the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for citizen Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin.

But in our Orwellian reality, the law enforcement and judicial system is not interested in those who commit war crimes but in those who speak out about them, who try to stop them. Today, there are dozens of people in Russian prisons and penal colonies who have openly spoken out against the war in Ukraine. These are very different people: artists and priests, politicians and journalists, lawyers and police officers, scholars and entrepreneurs, students and pensioners people of different views, ages and professions who did not want to become silent accomplices to the crimes of the current Russian authorities. Today, it is common in the world to berate and condemn all Russian citizens, without distinction, to say that we are all responsible for this war. But I am proud that in this dark, despicable, terrible time in Russia, there have been so many people who were not afraid and did not remain silent even at the cost of their own freedom.

This whole case is based on the denial of the very concepts of law, justice, legality. But it is also based on a crude, cynical forgery an attempt to equate criticism of the authorities with harm to the country; to present opposition activity as treason. But there is nothing new in this, either; it is what every dictatorship does. In Nazi Germany, anti-fascist students from the White Rose movement were tried for treason; in apartheid South Africa, civil rights activists were prosecuted for the same crime. In the Soviet Union, one of our greatest compatriots, Nobel Prize laureate Alexander Solzhenitsyn, was also charged with treason.

History has set everything right has it not?

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Opinion | I am proud to have spoken out against Putin's crimes in Ukraine - The Washington Post

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Georgia’s government plays into Putin’s hands as it moves to suppress art and culture – The Conversation

Posted: at 11:38 am

With media coverage still dominated by the Ukraine war, you might assume that Vladimir Putins machinations in eastern Europe are focused solely on Ukraine. And you might be right. After all, why would Russias president need to get involved in states where homegrown politicians seem more than prepared to do his work for him?

This is the situation currently unfolding in Georgia. The countrys ruling political coalition, Kartuli Otsneba (Georgian Dream), is pursuing a policy of religious nationalism and social conservatism that brings Georgia in step with the social policies of Putin and the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Kirill of Moscow.

More secular Georgians, and those who favour closer relations with the EU and Nato, fear a creeping Russification of society. These fears were crystallised when the government tried to pass the so-called foreign agents law in March 2023, sparking widespread protest on the streets of the countrys capital, Tbilisi.

The proposed legislation was modelled on a Russian law designed to limit the amount of funding that NGOs and other externally funded organisations could accept. Opposition to this measure was fuelled by a fear that its passing would enable the Georgian government to outlaw cultural and social projects deemed incompatible with Georgian values. This would potentially lead to increased harassment of anyone from the LGBTQ+ community to single parents to vegans and vegetarians.

It was also widely believed that other elements of Russian legislation would follow if this first law was enacted. Taken aback by the strength of public feeling, the bill was withdrawn in May 2023. But suspicions that Russia is influencing the actions of a number of Georgian politicians have remained.

The crackdown on culture began when Thea Tsukuliani was named minister of culture, sport and youth in March 2021. Previously, Tsukuliani had been the minister of justice and not shown any apparent interest in Georgian history and culture.

Upon her appointment, Tsukuliani announced that instead of being based in the usual ministry office, she was going to install herself in a suite at the Georgian National Museum in Tbilisi. She reportedly had her eye on a wing of the museum that had recently been reopened as the natural history gallery.

This collection had not been publicly available for some years, so the curatorial staff fought the suggestion that it would be closed again almost immediately. Instead, Tsukuliani took the same suite on another floor, thereby dispossessing the National Geographic team who had signed a contract for that space.

In this way, I was made aware of the situation in Georgia long before it gained wider attention. I received a message from a colleague telling me that a project I was running with the Georgian National Museum could no longer host educational events for schoolchildren, as the room we had just refurbished had become an emergency office for National Geographic staff.

Then, on May 24 2022, the cultural purge began and 22 staff members were fired. The 22 had one thing in common: they had expressed disquiet about the apparent politicisation of Georgian cultural heritage, and argued that archaeology and related disciplines should not be controlled by Georgian Dream.

Those who were dismissed were followed by waves of their colleagues administrators and accountants were targeted as well as researchers, archaeologists and curatorial staff. By September 2022, more than 70 members of staff at the Georgian National Museum had lost their positions. Anyone who dared to speak up in solidarity was informed they were failing in their work duties and dismissed with immediate effect.

This quickly began to affect international research partners. For example, archaeologists arrived in Georgia to find there were no permits for excavation, as the staff of the issuing body had also been reorganised. Within a few months, the threat had spread to other cultural professionals, such as those in the theatre and film industries.

The sacked museum staff unionised and captured the attention of the national media. In August 2022, when the first cases for wrongful dismissal came to court, the Ministry of Culture was deemed to have fired staff unlawfully from the Georgian National Museum and other galleries and museums.

Good news, you might think but you would be wrong. In each case so far, the state has been told to pay the employee several months wages in compensation. But the Ministry of Culture has not been required to reinstate the worker to their former role, meaning that generations of institutional and specialist knowledge has been lost.

Many octogenarians had stayed on long beyond retirement to bridge the gap of the lost generations who fled post-communist Georgia for the US or Europe. They had been working for less than 50 a month to pass on their knowledge to a new generation: the born frees who have never experienced communism.

The older group had, over the past decade, started to believe they could entrust their work to this new generation. But it was the oldest and youngest who appeared to be especially targeted by this purge.

Georgians will head to the polls again in November 2024 to elect a new government. Georgian Dream, which has been leading a governing coalition since 2012, is seeking to extend its mandate.

Colleagues of mine who are still in place in the Georgian National Museum are torn between hope that their ordeal will soon be over, and despondency that Georgian Dream appears on track to remain in power. If it wins again, the feeling in Georgia is that nothing will hold back the creeping Russification of Georgian society that this cultural censorship is facilitating.

Right now, Georgian academics, writers, museum staff and filmmakers seem united in agreeing that their best hope lies in a Ukrainian victory that weakens Russia and, as a result, dilutes its stranglehold on the Georgian ruling class.

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Soyuz Spacecraft Undocks to Return Three Crewmates to Earth – NASA Blogs

Posted: at 11:37 am

The Soyuz MS-24 spacecraft with three crewmates aboard slowly backs away from the space station after undocking from the Rassvet module. Credit: NASA TV

At 11:54 p.m. EDT on Friday, NASA astronaut Loral OHara, Roscosmos cosmonaut Oleg Novitskiy, and spaceflight participant Marina Vasilevskaya of Belarus, undocked from the International Space Station in the Soyuz MS-24 spacecraft to begin the journey back to Earth. The Soyuz is heading for a parachute-assisted landing Saturday, April 6, on the steppe of Kazakhstan, southeast of the remote town of Dzhezkazgan.

NASA coverage of the crews deorbit burn and landing will begin at 2 a.m. on NASA+, NASA TV, the NASA app, YouTube, and the agencys website with landing scheduled at 3:17 a.m. (12:17 p.m. Kazakhstan time).

After landing, the Soyuz MS-24 crew will split up, as per standard crew return practice, with OHara returning to NASAs Johnson Space Center in Houston.

With the undocking of the Soyuz MS-24 spacecraft with OHara, Novitskiy and Vasilevskaya, Expedition 71 officially began aboard the station. NASA astronauts Michael Barratt, Matthew Dominick, Tracy Dyson, and Jeannette Epps as well as Roscosmos cosmonauts Nikolai Chub, Alexander Grebenkin, and Oleg Kononenko make up Expedition 71 and will remain on the station until this fall.

Learn more about station activities by following thespace station blog,@space_stationand@ISS_Researchon X, as well as theISS FacebookandISS Instagramaccounts.

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Soyuz Spacecraft Undocks to Return Three Crewmates to Earth - NASA Blogs

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Multinational team safely returns to Earth from the International Space Station – UPI News

Posted: at 11:37 am

1 of 3 | NASA astronaut Loral O'Hara (C) is shown after the landing of a Soyuz MS-24 spacecraft Saturday in Kazakhstan. She and fellow Expedition 70 members Oleg Novitskiy of Russia and Belarus spaceflight participant Marina Vasilevskaya landed in a remote area near the town of Zhezkazgan following a stay on the International Space Station. Photo provided by Roscosmos/EPA-EFE

April 6 (UPI) -- NASA astronaut Loral O'Hara, Belarus's Marina Vasilevskay and Russian cosmonaut Oleg Novitsky successfully returned to Earth Saturday after spending time on the International Space Station.

The trio landed near Karaganda, Kazakhstan, at 3:17 a.m. EDT after spending 3.5 hours aboard a Soyuz MS-24 spacecraft, the Russian news agency TASS reported.

They departed the International Space Station at 11:54 p.m. EDT Friday.

O'Hara and Vasilevskaya completed their first missions aboard the International Space Station, while Novitsky completed his third. Vasilevskaya is Belarus' first citizen to enter space.

O'Hara arrived on the space station on Sept. 15 to undertake a six-month research mission during her first spaceflight. She spent 204 days in space while orbiting the Earth 3,264 times and covering a distance of more than 86.5 million miles, according to NASA.

O'Hara's mission was in support of NASA's Artemis campaign to explore the Moon to make scientific discoveries, advance technology and learn how to live and work on another celestial body.

While she was on the ISS, O'Hara studied heart health, space manufacturing techniques and cancer treatments.

NASA officials said O'Hara's mission will help the space agency prepare for further exploration of the Moon and eventual crewed missions to Mars.

Vasilevskaya and Novitsky arrived at the space station on March 23 for two-week missions. Novitsky has made four spaceflights and spent a combined total of 545 days in space across the four missions.

Vasilevskaya is a flight attendant for Belavia Airlines and has a total of 14 days in space.

The ISS remains fully manned with NASA astronauts Michael Barratt, Matthew Dominick, Tracy Dyson and Jeannette Epps.

Cosmonauts Nikolai Chub, Alexander Grebenkin and Oleg Kononenkoalso are also aboard the Earth-orbiting ISS until fall.

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Multinational team safely returns to Earth from the International Space Station - UPI News

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Soyuz capsule with crew of 3, including 1st female astronaut from Belarus, lands safely to end ISS mission – Space.com

Posted: at 11:37 am

The first female Belarusian in space, alongside a NASA astronaut and a Russian cosmonaut, came back to Earth early this morning (April 6).

A Rusian Soyuz spacecraft carrying NASA astronaut Loral O'Hara, Roscosmos cosmonaut Oleg Novitskiy, and spaceflight participant Marina Vasilevskaya of Belarus landed near Karaganda, Kazakhstan at 3:17 a.m. EDT (0717 GMT; 12:17 p.m. local Kazakhstan time), about 3.5 hours after departing the International Space Station (ISS) at 11:54 p.m. EDT (0354 GMT) on Friday April 5.

O'Hara, selected by NASA in 2017, and Vasilevskaya were both on their first missions. Novitskiy had already conducted three long-duration missions aboard the ISS: Expeditions 33/34 in 2012-13, Expeditions 50/51 in 2016-17 and Expeditions 64/65 in 2021.

Related: 3 spaceflyers arrive at the ISS aboard Russian Soyuz spacecraft

Novitskiy, Vasilevskaya and NASA astronaut Tracy Caldwell Dyson lifted off from Kazakhstan on March 23 aboard a different Soyuz. Their launch came after a rare abort of a Soyuz rocket two days before, which was traced to a battery issue that was swiftly resolved. O'Hara, meanwhile, launched on yet another Soyuz last September, spending 204 days in space before coming home today.

Belarus is a military ally of Russia, particularly after the latter's internationally condemned invasion of Ukraine in 2022 that is still ongoing. Belarus was thus invited by Russia for a short-term ISS mission. (NASA and other space agencies severed most of their relationships with Russia after the invasion, but the nation's participation in the ISS program program continues more or less unchanged.)

Flight attendant Vasilevskaya, 33, won her seat through the Belarus Academy of Sciences and Belarus Space Agency after a nationwide contest that attracted 3,000 applicants. She and six other finalists were considered for the flight; when Vasilevskaya was chosen, her backup was 28-year-old pediatric surgeon Anastasia Lenkova.

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"I'm overwhelmed with emotions. It's something incredible," Vasilevskaya said immediately after being lifted from the Soyuz capsule. "I wish all people on Earth to treasure and cherish what they have because it is precious.

"We wanted to stay longer [on the ISS], but it is great to be back."

Each of the crew members was showered with gifts after being lifted from the Soyuz capsule including Matryoshkadolls, or stacking dolls, bearing their likenesses.

Vasilevskaya is the first citizen of the Republic of Belarus to reach space. Pyotr Klimuk and Vladimir Kovalyonok, however, were both from the former Belarus Soviet Socialist Republic (SSR) and flew to space for the first time in 1973 and 1977, respectively. (Belarus and a number of other former Soviet states became independent after the USSR collapsed in the early 1990s.)

The Soyuz MS-25 spacecraft, which carried Vasilevskaya, O'Hara and Novitskiy to orbit about two weeks ago, is still docked to the ISS. It will come back in the fall with Dyson and cosmonauts Oleg Kononenko and Nikolai Chub, after the Russians complete a year in space.

The space station is also currently host to the SpaceX Crew-8 Dragon spacecraft with the remaining astronauts of Expedition 71: NASA astronauts Matthew Dominick, Michael Barrett andJeannette Eppsand cosmonaut Alexander Grebenkin. They launched on March 4 for an expected half-year stay in space.

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Soyuz capsule with crew of 3, including 1st female astronaut from Belarus, lands safely to end ISS mission - Space.com

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A Soyuz capsule carrying 3 crew from the International Space Station lands safely in Kazakhstan – Bozeman Daily Chronicle

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A Soyuz capsule carrying 3 crew from the International Space Station lands safely in Kazakhstan - Bozeman Daily Chronicle

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Trio Finalizes Packing, Science Activities Before Friday Departure – NASA Blogs

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Astronaut Loral OHara is pictured inside the cupola as the orbital complex soared 259 miles above Turkmenistan.

The 10 residents aboard the International Space Station worked a half-day then went to bed early on Friday resting up before the departure of three crewmates. During their shortened day, the orbital crewmates packed the departing Soyuz crew ship and continued ongoing science tasks.

NASA astronaut Loral OHara along with Roscosmos cosmonaut Oleg Novitskiy and Belarus spaceflight participant Marina Vasilevskaya are in their sleep period having gone to bed just before lunchtime. The trio is sleep-shifting before entering the Soyuz MS-24 crew ship and undocking from the Rassvet module at 11:54 p.m. EDT tonight. They will ride the Soyuz back to Earth and parachute to a landing in Kazakhstan at 3:17 a.m. on Saturday (12:17 p.m. Kazakh time). Live mission coverage will begin at 8 p.m. on Friday on NASA+, NASA TV, the NASA app, YouTube, and the agencys website.

On Friday morning, OHara finished her packing work and wrapped up biomedical activities documenting her adaptation to microgravity. Novitskiy continued transferring cargo inside the Soyuz and made final checks of the spacecrafts systems. Vasilevskaya relaxed during her shift. The threesome will wake up several hours before their departure, finalize science tasks, and complete loading the Soyuz spacecraft.

NASA Flight Engineers Matthew Dominick and Tracy C. Dyson teamed up Friday morning for biology work inside the Destiny laboratory module. The duo cleaned habitats and fed mice being observed for a study testing a gene therapy to improve eye health in space. NASA Flight Engineers Mike Barratt and Jeanette Epps gathered in the Kibo laboratory module and removed external research hardware that had been placed outside in the space environment. The gear holds samples exposed to space radiation and extreme temperatures to inform the development of advanced materials and promote the commercial space industry.

Cosmonauts Oleg Kononenko and Alexander Grebenkin began their day swabbing station surfaces and collecting microbe samples for analysis. Kononenko also prepared salt tablets for the departing crewmates to ingest and help with their adjustment to Earths gravity. Roscosmos Flight Engineer Nikolai Chub also assisted with the microbe sampling duties then stowed protein crystal growth kits inside the returning Soyuz crew ship.

Learn more about station activities by following thespace station blog,@space_stationand@ISS_Researchon X, as well as theISS FacebookandISS Instagramaccounts.

Get weekly video highlights at:https://roundupreads.jsc.nasa.gov/videoupdate/

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Will the 2024 total solar eclipse be visible from space? – Space.com

Posted: at 11:37 am

NASA astronauts and weather satellites will watch next week's solar eclipse from space.

SpaceX Crew-8 astronauts on the International Space Station (ISS), alongside at least one of the two Russian Soyuz crews on board right now, will experience a "very unique vantage point" when a total solar eclipse sweeps across Mexico, the United States and Canada on April 8, a senior NASA manager said during a livestreamed eclipse science briefing on March 26.

"Instead of looking up at the moon casting the shadow, they'll also be able to see the shadow racing across the Earth," said Pam Melroy, NASA deputy administrator and former astronaut, in the briefing. "So, there is involvement, and they will be able to participate in that way."

The current ISS track suggests the astronauts will have three chances to watch the eclipse, NASA said in a follow-up release: they'll see the shadow cast by a partial eclipse above the Pacific Ocean, a partial above California and Idaho, and perhaps totality over Maine and New Brunswick at 3:30 p.m. EDT (1930 GMT.) Satellites will also have a good view of the unique event, the agency said.

Related: Why ISS astronauts won't know where to look for next total solar eclipse for a while

Total solar eclipses happen when the moon completely blocks the sun from Earth's perspective. Luckily, you don't need to be in space to see the event. As long as you're in the right geographical location on our planet and the skies are clear, you can see the highly anticipated event. You can find out how to do so safely in our sun-observing guide.

ISS astronauts won't be the only ones watching the eclipse from orbit. Two satellites in the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellites (GOES) series, which is jointly operated by NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), will use ultraviolet imagers to gaze at the sun, officials said in the March 26 briefing. The imagers on GOES-16 and GOES-18 will capture the moon's disk passing in front of the sun, while advanced baseline imagers on the satellites will track the moon's shadow.

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Two other satellites are scheduled to launch to space post-eclipse for even more solar observations: NOAA's GOES-U will fly no earlier than June 25 this year to examine the corona, or outer atmosphere of the sun. Also, NOAA's Space Weather Follow On L1 (SWFO-L1) will fly a million miles from Earth in 2025 to Lagrange Point 1, a gravitationally stable point in space. There, the satellite will examine space weather, or the effect the sun's activity has on our planet.

Expedition 71 astronauts on the ISS will be witness to the rare event in space. That group includes Crew-8 and the long-duration astronauts set to come home this fall on Soyuz MS-25. (A short-duration Soyuz crew is in space now, but is expected to return home before eclipse day.)

The astronauts on board the ISS are well trained in taking pictures of dynamic events, but the challenge is their orbit, Crew-8 NASA astronaut Michael Barratt told Space.com on Jan. 25 during a pre-launch telephone interview from NASA's Johnson Space Center.

Since the ISS needs to boost its orbit periodically to avoid falling back into Earth's atmosphere, and may need a last-minute shift to avoid space debris, the astronauts won't have their exact location until close to April 8, he said.

"Every once a while, we have to tweak the orbit of our station to avoid hitting stuff," Barratt said. "The closer we get [to April], the more we'll be able to sharpen our approach. We'll know what our viewing angle is going to be."

Barratt did point out one advantage for ISS observations: Compared to the last total solar eclipse that swept across the U.S. in 2017, the camera technology is improved. He didn't see that eclipse from space, but he did have a unique vantage point on board an Alaska Airlines charter flight observing it at 40,000 feet (12,200 meters).

"The shadow was just speeding, hurtling towards the mainland. It was really amazing to me," he recalled of the 2017 eclipse in the Space.com interview.

The ISS is jointly co-managed by NASA and Roscosmos, the Russian federal space agency. Expedition 71 mission specialist Alexander Grebenki, a cosmonaut who's part of Crew-8, told Space.com on Jan. 25 that he hadn't received specifics yet on eclipse observations.

"I didn't really train specifically for the observing," Grebenkin said, speaking in Russian through an English interpreter. "I do know that it's going to happen, and I am planning to do my best to take pictures and also observe the event itself."

If you're looking to observe the solar eclipse on Earth, we have you covered. Our guide onhow to observe the sun safelyguide tells you what you need to know to look at the sun. We also have a guide to solar eclipse glasses, and how to safely photograph the sun if you'd like to get practicing before the big day.

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Daily Archives: April 6, 2024

Opinion | Joe Lieberman and Gordon Humphrey: How to counter Putin’s lies – The Washington Post – The Washington Post

Opinion | I am proud to have spoken out against Putin’s crimes in Ukraine – The Washington Post

Georgia’s government plays into Putin’s hands as it moves to suppress art and culture – The Conversation

Soyuz Spacecraft Undocks to Return Three Crewmates to Earth – NASA Blogs

Multinational team safely returns to Earth from the International Space Station – UPI News

Soyuz capsule with crew of 3, including 1st female astronaut from Belarus, lands safely to end ISS mission – Space.com

A Soyuz capsule carrying 3 crew from the International Space Station lands safely in Kazakhstan – Bozeman Daily Chronicle

Trio Finalizes Packing, Science Activities Before Friday Departure – NASA Blogs

Will the 2024 total solar eclipse be visible from space? – Space.com

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