NASA has released its plan to return to the moon. In an accompanying live stream presentation, NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine put to bed a story that the space agency was contemplating sending the first woman and the next man to land on the moon to one of the Apollo landing sites. The idea got a lot of negative reactions on social media. Bridenstine stated that the next moon landing will go to the lunar South Pole, full stop. The plan did not have too many surprises. Artemis 1 will be an unpiloted jaunt around the moon taking place sometime in 2021. Artemis 2 will take the first crew around the moon in 2023. Then, in 2024, NASA will mount the first moon landing since 1972, something that will be a world historic event and more than a bit of good news for a planet that has had a dearth of such in recent years.
George Edward Hurrell (June 1, 1904 – May 17, 1992) was a photographer who contributed to the image of glamour presented by Hollywood during the 1930s and 1940s.Hurrell originally studied as a painter with no particular interest in photography. He first began to use photography only as a medium for recording his paintings. After moving to Laguna Beach, California from Chicago, Illinois in 1925 he met many other painters who had connections. One of those connections was Edward Steichen who encouraged him to pursue photography after seeing some of his works. Hurrell also found that photography was a more reliable source of income than painting. Hurrell was an apprentice to Eugene Hutchinson. His photography was encouraged by his friend aviator Pancho Barnes, who often posed for him. He eventually opened a photographic studio in Los Angeles.
Prisoners in Nazi concentration camps made music; now it's being discovered and performed. More than 6 million people, most of them Jews, died in the Holocaust. The music they wrote as a temporary escape, however, did not die with them, thanks in part to the efforts of Francesco Lotoro. An Italian composer and pianist, Lotoro has spent 30 years recovering, performing, and in some cases, finishing pieces of work composed in captivity. Nearly 75 years after the camps were liberated, Francesco Lotoro is on a remarkable rescue mission, reviving music such as the one created by a young Jewish woman in a Nazi concentration camp in 1944.
An international team of astronomers has detected a rare chemical in the atmosphere of Venus that could be produced by living organisms, according to a study published Monday. The discovery instantly puts the brightest object in the night sky back into the conversation about where to search for extraterrestrial life. The researchers made clear that this is not a direct detection of life on Venus. But the astronomical observations confirmed the presence of the chemical phosphine in the atmosphere. The chemical, produced on Earth by bacteria, is considered a potential “biosignature” of life.
