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SpaceX Launches 12th Long-duration Crew to ISS

NASA’s Crew-12 members, Russian cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev, NASA astronauts Jack Hathaway, Jessica Meir, and ESA astronaut Sophie Adenot walk out of the Operations & Checkout Building at the Kennedy Space Center before transport to Launch Complex 40, ahead of their launch to the International Space Station, in Cape Canaveral, Florida, US, February 13, 2026. REUTERS/Steve Nesius
NASA’s Crew-12 members, Russian cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev, NASA astronauts Jack Hathaway, Jessica Meir, and ESA astronaut Sophie Adenot walk out of the Operations & Checkout Building at the Kennedy Space Center before transport to Launch Complex 40, ahead of their launch to the International Space Station, in Cape Canaveral, Florida, US, February 13, 2026. REUTERS/Steve Nesius
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SpaceX Launches 12th Long-duration Crew to ISS

NASA’s Crew-12 members, Russian cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev, NASA astronauts Jack Hathaway, Jessica Meir, and ESA astronaut Sophie Adenot walk out of the Operations & Checkout Building at the Kennedy Space Center before transport to Launch Complex 40, ahead of their launch to the International Space Station, in Cape Canaveral, Florida, US, February 13, 2026. REUTERS/Steve Nesius
NASA’s Crew-12 members, Russian cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev, NASA astronauts Jack Hathaway, Jessica Meir, and ESA astronaut Sophie Adenot walk out of the Operations & Checkout Building at the Kennedy Space Center before transport to Launch Complex 40, ahead of their launch to the International Space Station, in Cape Canaveral, Florida, US, February 13, 2026. REUTERS/Steve Nesius

A SpaceX rocket lifted off from Florida early on Friday with a crew of two US NASA astronauts, a French astronaut and a Russian cosmonaut headed to the International Space Station for an eight-month science mission in Earth orbit.

The two-stage Falcon 9 rocket, topped with an autonomously operated Crew Dragon capsule dubbed Freedom, was launched from the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, along Florida's Atlantic Coast, at about 5:15 a.m. EST (1015 GMT).

A live NASA-SpaceX webcast showed the 25-story-tall vehicle rising from the launch tower as its nine Merlin engines roared to life, gulping 700,000 gallons of fuel per second, emitting clouds of vapor and a reddish fireball that lit up the predawn sky, Reuters reported.

The four crew were set to ‌reach the space ‌station on Saturday afternoon after a 34-hour flight, docking with ‌the orbiting ⁠laboratory platform some ⁠250 miles (420 km) above Earth.

The mission, designated Crew-12, marks the 12th long-duration ISS team that NASA has flown aboard a SpaceX launch vehicle since the private rocket venture founded in 2002 by billionaire Elon Musk began sending US astronauts to orbit in May 2020.

Crew-12 was led by Jessica Meir, 48, a veteran astronaut and marine biologist on her second trip to the space station, nearly seven years after making history with NASA colleague Christina Koch by ⁠completing history's first all-female spacewalk.

Joining her was Jack Hathaway, 43, ‌a former US Navy fighter pilot and rookie ‌astronaut; European Space Agency astronaut Sophie Adenot, 43, a master helicopter pilot from France; and Russian cosmonaut ‌Andrey Fedyaev, a former military pilot on his second mission to the ISS.

Upon ‌arrival, the team will get busy with a host of scientific, medical and technical research tasks in microgravity, according to NASA.

Those include studies of pneumonia-causing bacteria to improve treatments on Earth, and experiments with plant and nitrogen-fixing microbe interactions to boost food production in space.

Crew-12 will be welcomed aboard ‌the space station by three current ISS occupants - NASA astronaut Chris Williams and Roscosmos cosmonauts Sergey Kud-Sverchkov and Sergei Mikaev.

Four Crew-11 ⁠members who were ⁠supposed to have stayed aboard until the arrival of Crew-12 departed a few weeks early, when an undisclosed serious health condition affecting one forced an unprecedented medical evacuation flight home in mid-January.

The ISS, which spans the length of a football field and ranks as the largest human-made object in space, has been continuously operated by a US-Russian-led consortium that includes Canada, Japan and 11 European countries.

The first hardware for the outpost was launched more than a quarter century ago. It was conceived as part of a multinational venture to improve ties between Washington and Moscow following the Soviet Union's collapse and the end of Cold War rivalries that spurred the original US-Soviet space race in the 1950s and 1960s.

NASA has said it is committed to keeping the space station operating until the end of 2030.

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Dinosaur Fossils in Brazil Reveal New Giant Species

An employee works at the excavation site where dinosaur bones were found in Davinopolis, Maranhao state, Brazil, April 28, 2021. Giovani de Toledo Viecili/Handout via REUTERS
An employee works at the excavation site where dinosaur bones were found in Davinopolis, Maranhao state, Brazil, April 28, 2021. Giovani de Toledo Viecili/Handout via REUTERS
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Dinosaur Fossils in Brazil Reveal New Giant Species

An employee works at the excavation site where dinosaur bones were found in Davinopolis, Maranhao state, Brazil, April 28, 2021. Giovani de Toledo Viecili/Handout via REUTERS
An employee works at the excavation site where dinosaur bones were found in Davinopolis, Maranhao state, Brazil, April 28, 2021. Giovani de Toledo Viecili/Handout via REUTERS

Brazilian scientists have identified a new species of giant dinosaur with ties to a similar animal found in Spain, reinforcing knowledge that land routes once connected parts of South America, Africa and Europe about 120 million years ago.

Named Dasosaurus tocantinensis, the species is one of the biggest found in the South American country and was described this month in the Journal of Systematic Palaeontology, Reuters reported.

The fossils were uncovered in 2021 at a site hosting infrastructure works near Davinopolis, in Brazil's northeastern state of Maranhao, and the research was led by Elver Mayer of the Federal University of the Sao Francisco Valley.

The remains include a femur measuring about 1.5 meters (59 inches), which helped researchers estimate the animal stretched roughly 20 meters long.

"As the excavation progressed over the days, we began to see the evidence of that huge bone, which is the femur," said Leonardo Kerber, a paleontologist at the Federal University of Santa Maria (UFSM) who contributed to the research.

"This indicates it was a very large dinosaur. Today we know Dasosaurus is among the biggest dinosaurs ever found in Brazil," he noted.

According to UFSM, analysis indicated the species is the closest known relative of Garumbatitan morellensis, a dinosaur described in Spain.

Their lineage was European and may have dispersed into what is now South America roughly 130 million years ago, likely via northern Africa, before the Atlantic fully opened, the university said.

Dasosaurus tocantinensis's name combines references to the region where the dinosaur was found, including the Tocantins River, a major waterway whose eastern margins lie near the fossil site.

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German Philosopher Jurgen Habermas Dies Age 96

German philosopher Professor Juergen Habermas makes a speech during the awards ceremony for the "Understanding and Tolerance" prize at the Jewish museum in Berlin, November 13, 2010. REUTERS/Odd Andersen/Pool/File Photo
German philosopher Professor Juergen Habermas makes a speech during the awards ceremony for the "Understanding and Tolerance" prize at the Jewish museum in Berlin, November 13, 2010. REUTERS/Odd Andersen/Pool/File Photo
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German Philosopher Jurgen Habermas Dies Age 96

German philosopher Professor Juergen Habermas makes a speech during the awards ceremony for the "Understanding and Tolerance" prize at the Jewish museum in Berlin, November 13, 2010. REUTERS/Odd Andersen/Pool/File Photo
German philosopher Professor Juergen Habermas makes a speech during the awards ceremony for the "Understanding and Tolerance" prize at the Jewish museum in Berlin, November 13, 2010. REUTERS/Odd Andersen/Pool/File Photo

The German philosopher Jurgen Habermas has died, a spokesperson for his publishing house, Suhrkamp Verlag, told AFP on Saturday.

He died at the age of 96 in Starnberg, in southern Germany, she said, citing information from the family of the politically engaged theorist.

Habermas was considered the most influential German philosopher of his generation, involved in all the major postwar debates and seeing a united Europe, in his view, as the only remedy for the rise of nationalism, AFP reported.

In his later years, he devoted himself to promoting a federal European project and prevent the continent from falling, as it did in the 20th century, into nationalist rivalries.

Throughout his life, Habermas linked philosophy and politics, thought and action.

After serving as the voice of German student protest in the 1960s, he became its target thirty years later while warning of the risks of "left-wing fascism".

In 1989, he criticised the terms of German reunification, guided essentially by the demands of the market, and which made "the Deutsche mark its standard."

Born on June 18, 1929 in Duesseldorf, Habermas had been enrolled in the Hitler Youth, but he was too young to have taken an active part in the war. As a teenager, he was deeply marked by the collapse of Nazism.

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Research Reveals Decades-Long Silverpit Crater Triggered by Tsunami 40 Million Years Ago

A massive asteroid struck the North Sea millions of years ago (Getty)
A massive asteroid struck the North Sea millions of years ago (Getty)
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Research Reveals Decades-Long Silverpit Crater Triggered by Tsunami 40 Million Years Ago

A massive asteroid struck the North Sea millions of years ago (Getty)
A massive asteroid struck the North Sea millions of years ago (Getty)

A long-running dispute about the origin of a North Sea crater has finally been settled, as new research finds a massive asteroid hit the water and triggered a towering tsunami millions of years ago.

Scientists have found that the Silverpit Crater – which lies around 700 meters beneath the southern North Sea seabed, roughly 80 miles off the coast of Yorkshire – was formed when an asteroid or comet struck the region roughly 43 to 46 million years ago, sparking a 330 feet tsunami.

Since geologists first identified the formation in 2002, the 3km-wide crater and its surrounding ring of circular faults spanning about 20 km have sparked intense debate, according to The Independent.

But researchers say their new study marks the clearest evidence yet that the structure is one of Earth’s rare impact craters.

This confirmation places it in the same category as well-known structures such as the Chicxulub Crater in Mexico, which is linked to the dinosaur mass extinction.

The team used computer modelling and analyzed newly available seismic imaging and microscopic geological samples taken from beneath the seabed.

Dr. Uisdean Nicholson, a sedimentologist in Heriot-Watt University’s School of Energy, Geoscience, Infrastructure and Society, who led the investigation, said: “New seismic imaging has given us an unprecedented look at the crater.”

He said samples from an oil well in the area also revealed rare ‘shocked’ quartz and feldspar crystals at the same depth as the crater floor.

“We were exceptionally lucky to find these – a real ‘needle-in-a-haystack’ effort. These prove the impact crater hypothesis beyond doubt, because they have a fabric that can only be created by extreme shock pressures,” said Nicholson.

The scientists say these microscopic minerals form only under the extreme pressures generated during asteroid impacts, providing strong confirmation of the event.

Early research proposed that the feature was created by a high-speed asteroid impact. Supporters of that idea pointed to its round shape, central peak, and surrounding concentric faults, which are often seen in known impact craters.

But other scientists suggested different explanations. Some proposed that underground salt movement distorted the rock layers and created the structure.

Others argued that volcanic activity may have caused the seabed to collapse.

In 2009, geologists even voted on the issue. According to a report in the December 2009 issue of Geoscientist magazine, most participants rejected the asteroid impact explanation at the time.

The latest findings, published in the journal Nature Communications and funded by the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC), now appear to overturn that conclusion.

Dr. Nicholson said: “Our evidence shows that a 160-meter-wide asteroid hit the seabed at a low angle from the west.”

“Within minutes, it created a 1.5 km high curtain of rock and water that then collapsed into the sea, creating a tsunami over 100 meters high.”

The impact would have produced a violent explosion at the seafloor and sent enormous waves spreading across the region.

Professor Gareth Collins, of Imperial College London, who attended the 2009 debate about the crater’s origin and contributed to the new research, said the researchers have “finally found the silver bullet” to end the debate.

He said: “I always thought that the impact hypothesis was the simplest explanation and most consistent with the observations.”

“It is very rewarding to have finally found the silver bullet. We can now get on with the exciting job of using the amazing new data to learn more about how impacts shape planets below the surface, which is really hard to do on other planets,” Collins added.

Dr. Nicholson also expressed his excitement about using the new findings for further research into asteroids.

“Silverpit is a rare and exceptionally preserved hypervelocity impact crater,” he said.

“These are rare because the Earth is such a dynamic planet – plate tectonics and erosion destroy almost all traces of most of these events.”