US Unveils Mural Honoring 'Rebel Women' who Campaigned for Voting Rights

Artist Phyllis Garibay-Coon, in white, stands in front of a maintenance worker on a lift following the unveiling of her mural in the Statehouse honoring women who campaign for decades for voting rights, Wednesday, Jan. 29, 2025, in Topeka, Kan. (AP Photo/John Hanna)
Artist Phyllis Garibay-Coon, in white, stands in front of a maintenance worker on a lift following the unveiling of her mural in the Statehouse honoring women who campaign for decades for voting rights, Wednesday, Jan. 29, 2025, in Topeka, Kan. (AP Photo/John Hanna)
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US Unveils Mural Honoring 'Rebel Women' who Campaigned for Voting Rights

Artist Phyllis Garibay-Coon, in white, stands in front of a maintenance worker on a lift following the unveiling of her mural in the Statehouse honoring women who campaign for decades for voting rights, Wednesday, Jan. 29, 2025, in Topeka, Kan. (AP Photo/John Hanna)
Artist Phyllis Garibay-Coon, in white, stands in front of a maintenance worker on a lift following the unveiling of her mural in the Statehouse honoring women who campaign for decades for voting rights, Wednesday, Jan. 29, 2025, in Topeka, Kan. (AP Photo/John Hanna)

Kansas has a new mural in its Statehouse honoring women who campaigned for voting rights for decades before the 1920 ratification of the 19th Amendment to the US Constitution granted those rights across the nation.
Gov. Laura Kelly and other state officials unveiled the “Rebel Women” painting that spans an entire wall on the first floor on Wednesday, the anniversary of Kansas' admission as the 34th US state in 1861.
While Kansas Day is traditionally marked with renditions of the official state song, “Home on the Range,” Wednesday's event also featured the women's voting rights anthem, "Suffrage Song,” to the tune of “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.”
A 2022 law authorized the mural, and artist Phyllis Garibay-Coon, of Manhattan, in northeastern Kansas, won the contest with a depiction of 13 prominent Kansas suffragists. A few women in the crowd of several hundred people were dressed as 19th century campaigners who were active before statehood.
Kansas prides itself as entering the union as an anti-slavery free state, but it also was more progressive than other states in gradually granting women full voting rights. Women could vote in school elections in 1861 and in city elections in 1887, and the nation's first woman mayor, Susanna M. Salter, was elected in Argonia, Kansas, that year. Voters amended the state constitution in 1912 to grant women full voting rights.



NASA Launches Satellite on Mission to Detect Water on the Moon 

The NASA Nova-C lunar lander, part of the Intuitive Machines IM-2 mission, lifts off on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, from the Launch Complex 39A at the Kennedy Space Center in Titusville, Florida, USA, 26 February 2025. (EPA)
The NASA Nova-C lunar lander, part of the Intuitive Machines IM-2 mission, lifts off on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, from the Launch Complex 39A at the Kennedy Space Center in Titusville, Florida, USA, 26 February 2025. (EPA)
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NASA Launches Satellite on Mission to Detect Water on the Moon 

The NASA Nova-C lunar lander, part of the Intuitive Machines IM-2 mission, lifts off on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, from the Launch Complex 39A at the Kennedy Space Center in Titusville, Florida, USA, 26 February 2025. (EPA)
The NASA Nova-C lunar lander, part of the Intuitive Machines IM-2 mission, lifts off on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, from the Launch Complex 39A at the Kennedy Space Center in Titusville, Florida, USA, 26 February 2025. (EPA)

A dishwasher-sized NASA satellite was launched into space from Florida on Wednesday to identify where water - a precious resource for lunar missions - resides on the moon's surface in places such as the permanently shadowed craters at its poles.

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifted off from the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral carrying NASA's Lunar Trailblazer orbiter. The Lunar Trailblazer spacecraft was built by Lockheed Martin's space division. The satellite was a secondary payload onboard the rocket, with the primary payload being a lunar lander mission led by Intuitive Machines.

The lunar surface is often thought of as arid but previous measurements have found the presence of some water, even in warmer sun-lit locations. In cold and permanently shadowed places at the lunar poles, it has long been hypothesized that there could be significant amounts of water ice.

Lunar Trailblazer, which weighs about 440 pounds (200 kg) and measures about 11.5 feet (3.5 meters) wide when its solar panels are fully deployed, is being sent to find and map this water on the moon's surface.

For future moon exploration, including potential long-term lunar bases staffed by astronauts, lunar water would be of vital importance because it could be processed not only as a drinking supply but also into breathable oxygen and hydrogen fuel for rockets.

The bottoms of hundreds of craters at the moon's South Pole, for instance, are permanently shadowed and may hold ice patches. Some water also may be locked inside broken rock and dust on the lunar surface.

Lunar Trailblazer is scheduled to perform a series of moon flybys and looping orbits over a span of several months to position itself to map the surface in detail. It eventually will orbit at an altitude of roughly 60 miles (100 km) and collect high-resolution images of targeted areas to determine the form, distribution and abundance of water and to better understand the lunar water cycle.

"We see tiny amounts of water on sunlit portions of the moon, which is mysterious," said planetary scientist Bethany Ehlmann, the mission's principal investigator and director of Caltech's Keck Institute for Space Studies.

But, Ehlmann added: "The most interesting (aspect) for many is the potentially large amounts of ice in the permanently shadowed regions of the lunar poles. Lunar Trailblazer will peer inside to see how much is at the surface."

Such locations could serve as a resource for lunar explorers in the future.

"Understanding where a rover would drive or an astronaut would walk to examine deposits for science and future resource use will benefit all future landed missions," Ehlmann said.

Two Lunar Trailblazer instruments will take measurements from orbit together. The Lunar Thermal Mapper, or LTM, will map and measure the lunar surface temperature. The High-resolution Volatiles and Minerals Moon Mapper, or HVM3, will look at the moon's surface for a telltale pattern of light given off by water.

"We believe that the movement of water on the moon is likely driven by the surface temperature. So, by measuring the presence and amount of water via the HVM3 instrument and the surface temperature via the LTM instrument we can better understand this relationship," said University of Oxford planetary scientist Tristram Warren, who worked on developing the LTM instrument.

Lunar water is thought to come from several potential sources. One possibility is that solar wind - charged particles from the sun - could react with lunar minerals to create water. Another source might be comets or meteorites, which may have delivered water to the moon over billions of years. The exact amount of lunar water remains uncertain, but it is potentially hundreds of millions of tons.

"Other than for human exploration, lunar water is also scientifically very exciting. The moon has been orbiting near the Earth almost since the formation of Earth itself. So, understanding the origin of the lunar water might help us to understand the origin of water on Earth," Warren said.