Science | The Guardian

It is now less than 100 days until Cop15, the UN convention on biological diversity. At these talks, which are taking place in Montreal, Canada in December, governments from around the world will come together to agree targets aimed at halting the destruction of the natural world and protecting biodiversity. With the Earth experiencing the largest loss of life since the extinction of the dinosaurs, what is decided at this meeting could shape the future of the planet and humanity.Madeleine Finlay speaks to biodiversity reporter Phoebe Weston about how negotiations have been going so far, and what’s next on the road to Cop15Archive: BBC News, Sky News Continue reading...

Cambridge research finds 60cm-tall humanoid called Nao helped children open up about feelingsThe Nao robot looks more like a prop from a low-budget sci-fi film than the cutting edge of medical research. But a study found that children felt more comfortable confiding in the child-sized, quizzical-looking humanoid than when responding to mental health assessments with their parents, in some cases disclosing information that they had not previously shared.The team, from the University of Cambridge, say the findings suggest a wider role for robots in assessing children’s mental health – although they said that they would not be intended as a substitute for professional mental health support. Continue reading...

Researchers hope scaled-up version could one day generate oxygen to sustain humans on MarsAn instrument the size of a lunchbox has been successfully generating breathable oxygen on Mars, doing the work of a small tree.Since February last year the Mars oxygen in-situ resource utilisation experiment, or Moxie, has been successfully making oxygen from the red planet’s carbon dioxide-rich atmosphere. Continue reading...

Romanian research shows ‘micro-breaks’ of up to 10 minutes may help to reduce fatigueIt may not be long enough to pop to the shops or head out for a run, but taking a work break of less than 10 minutes could still boost wellbeing, research suggests.The team behind the analysis say “micro-breaks” appear to reduce fatigue and help workers feel more vigorous. Continue reading...

Exchanging pleasantries can leave lasting impression and affect future social interactions, research suggestsThe British may be mocked for their weather-related small talk but exchanging idle pleasantries can leave a lasting impression and affect future social interactions, research suggests.The study found just four minutes of chit-chat can give away aspects of our personality, such as whether we are extroverted or introverted, and influence subsequent social interactions. Continue reading...

Chief medical officers said the wave of Omicron variants was ‘subsiding’, although ‘further surges are likely’The UK’s Covid-19 alert level has been downgraded to level 2, meaning the virus is in “general circulation” but healthcare pressures and transmission are “declining or stable”.The chief medical officers of the UK nations and the national medical director of the NHS in England have jointly recommended that the Covid alert level be moved down from level 3 amid falling cases. They said the Covid-19 wave of the Omicron subvariants BA.4 and BA.5 was “subsiding”. Continue reading...

Palaeontologists studied growth lines and elements preserved in fossil teeth to reconstruct the day-to-day life of Pantolambda bathmodonPalaeontologists have identified the earliest example of a placental mammal in the fossil record to date, which could provide new insights into how our furry ancestors came to dominate Earth after the extinction of the dinosaurs.They made the breakthrough by studying the odontological (tooth) equivalent of tree rings – growth lines and elements preserved in fossil teeth – which they used to reconstruct the day-to-day life of one of our early cousins: Pantolambda bathmodon, a stocky dog-pig-like creature, which trotted around approximately 62m years ago – soon after the dinosaur extinction. Continue reading...

Psychologists have suggested imagining yourself as an impenetrable grey rock when confronted with overbearing and manipulative people. The trick is to appear as uninterested, and uninteresting, as humanly possibleName: Grey rocking.Age: Relatively new. Continue reading...

Biosecurity expert, recycling pioneer and nanomaterials engineer among other Australian scientists recognised with awards

UK cases are falling – and scientists around the world are getting closer to being able to define and treat long CovidAs a scientist who works every day on the immunology of Covid-19 and long Covid, I’m well aware that, heading into autumn and the return to school, the UK faces yet more Covid confusion and disharmony. Where are we headed next? Isn’t it over? And why keep harping on about mitigation when we now have so many other concerns?Any discussion of our current Covid situation must consider the legacy of disability and misery associated with long Covid. In my opinion, there is now some good news among the old bad news. Over the past few months, Office for National Statistics data shows the estimated number of people with long Covid beginning to fall, from a peak of 2 million in May to about 1.8 million. I take this to mean that some are gradually recovering. And while long Covid following Omicron BA.5 infection is clearly happening, new cases of long Covid are appearing at a lower frequency. Colleagues in Singapore, a country with a large peak of Omicron infections following a relatively mild early pandemic, mention talk of quiet long Covid clinics without patients.Danny Altmann is professor of immunology at Imperial College London, a trustee of the Medical Research Foundation and of Long Covid Support, and co-author of The Long Covid Handbook Continue reading...

Key cities of Shenzhen, Guangzhou and Dalian are under curbs again, amid protests and data showing factory slowdownChina has placed millions of its citizens under renewed lockdown after fresh outbreaks of Covid-19 as the government persists in its hardline policy on containing the virus in the face of more evidence that it is suffocating the economy.The measures affected cities from the southern cities of Shenzhen and Guangzhou to the northern port city of Dalian, and from the western metropolis of Chengdu to Shijiazhuang in central Hebei province. Continue reading...

Revolutionary treatment for C diff infections that transfers gut bacteria from healthy faeces given the green light by NiceHundreds of patients struggling to ward off superbugs are to be treated with poo transplants on the NHS using gut bacteria taken from healthy donors’ faeces.The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (Nice), the health regulator, has given the green light for a faecal microbiota transplant (FMT) to be offered to people who have been treated for two or more Clostridium difficile (C diff) infections without success. Continue reading...

One of largest donations in Australian history to go towards therapeutic treatments for global pandemics

An engine problem foiled Monday’s efforts but mission managers said a change in fueling procedures would helpNasa will make a second attempt at launching its Space Launch System moon rocket this Saturday, the agency has said, five days after technical issues foiled an initial attempt.The US space agency made the decision on Monday to delay its first attempt to launch a rocket capable of putting astronauts on the moon in 50 years due to engine issues. Continue reading...

History-rich communcation centre in Lizard peninsula will track the rocket using its Merlin antennaNaturally, mission control in Houston and the Kennedy Space Center in Florida are the places most closely associated with Nasa’s Artemis 1 moon adventure but a lesser-known spot on a remote heath in the far south-west of Britain is also playing a crucial part.When the mission does blast off, hopefully later this week, scientists at Goonhilly Earth Station on the Lizard peninsula in Cornwall will help Nasa track the rocket using a giant deep space antenna nicknamed Merlin, and then command six small research satellites that are piggy-backing a ride on Artemis. Continue reading...

The BBC’s superb adaptation of Sartre’s story of love, shame and France’s fall is a stark reminder that self-reproach has gone from British public life. Why, asks playwright David Hare, do we tolerate a ruling class that can’t confess fault?In the late 1970s, I was part of a raucous lobby to liberate television drama from the confines of the studio and progress it to film. Ken Loach had shown the way. In works such as Cathy Come Home, he had lifted us with a blast of freedom that was impossible with lumbering videotape cameras recording what were essentially televised stage plays. Film was the modern medium – swift, versatile and punchy. If British drama was ever going to take flight with the vigour of the French New Wave, it had to be shot on real locations.How wrong I was! This summer, when so many people have found themselves hooked on the BBC Four reruns of the 1970 studio productions of The Roads to Freedom, it has become clear that, in our victory, something vital got mislaid. It isn’t simply that, in the transition to film, British television inevitably became more of a director’s medium and less of a writer’s. Rather, if you compare the formulaic, neutered drama currently offered on the BBC with the depth and ambition of this Sartre adaptation, you will conclude that flashy style is intentionally being deployed in today’s schedules to make sure there’s no danger of significant content. Continue reading...

Advances in DNA analysis enabled researchers to identify victims and sequence oldest genomes from Jewish individualsThe remains of children and adults found in a disused well in Norwich have been identified as victims of a bloody medieval pogrom, researchers have revealed.The team said the discovery not only underscored the horror of the antisemitic atrocity, but provided new insights into when genetic disorders often found among Ashkenazi Jews first appeared. Continue reading...

Holidaymakers heading to British beaches and rivers were faced with a very unpleasant problem this summer – raw sewage. The sewage system usually carries rainwater and dirty wastewater from bathrooms and kitchens to treatment works but during ‘exceptional events’ such as heavy rainfall, when it is likely to be overwhelmed, raw sewage can be diverted and discharged into rivers and seas.Available data shows that in 2021, water companies released untreated sewage into waterways for 2.7m hours – with many discharge pipe monitors not working or left uninstalled. Madeleine Finlay speaks to reporter Helena Horton about why this is happening, and the damage it is doing to the environment, our health, and the UK’s seafood industryArchive: 5 News, BBC News, Channel 4 News Continue reading...

Craft being monitored by CSIRO will carry mannequins as a dress rehearsal for human mission in 2025

US space agency technicians working against the clock to correct ‘engine bleed’ in time for possible rescheduled lift-off on FridayNasa is delaying a decision on the timing of its next launch attempt for Artemis 1, the US space agency’s first human-rated moon rocket in 50 years, after calling off Monday’s scheduled liftoff late in the countdown because of an issue related to “engine bleed”.Engineers at Nasa’s launch complex in Cape Canaveral, Florida, discovered the problem with one of the four core-stage engines of the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket during overnight loading of 2.76m litres (730,000 gallons) of liquid hydrogen and oxygen fuel needed to send the spacecraft off on its 1.3m-mile, 42-day journey to the far side of the moon and back. Continue reading...

Data from UK Biobank suggests people who drink two or more cups of black tea a day have lower risk of mortalityIt is a welcome piece of research for those who regard having a cup of tea as one of life’s everyday pleasures.A study has suggested that having a brew could be associated with a lower risk of mortality. When compared with those who do not have tea, people who consumed two or more cups each day had between a 9% and 13% lower risk of mortality, researchers said. Continue reading...

A dispute over who should fund the free kits will leave test sites or insurance reimbursement as the available optionsThe US government is suspending its program of free home tests for Covid-19 this week amid disagreements over who should pay for the initiative.The free home tests, which have provided up to 16 tests for each household, are scheduled to come to a halt on Friday. In the future, people requiring tests for work or travel, or wanting to confirm whether they have the illness, will need to claim the costs of a home test on health insurance or seek results through federally backed testing sites. Continue reading...

In behaviour only previously seen in humans, ‘social brain’ helps dolphins form complex alliances to see off their rivals for femalesDolphins form decade-long social bonds, and cooperate among and between cliques, to help one another find mates and fight off competitors, new research has found – behaviour not previously confirmed among animals.“These dolphins have long-term stable alliances, and they have intergroup alliances. Alliances of alliances of alliances, really,” said Dr Richard Connor, a behavioural ecologist at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth and one of the lead authors of the paper. “But before our study, it had been thought that cooperative alliances between groups were unique to humans.” Continue reading...

An article in the Nature Climate Change journal argues that non-violent direct action taken by experts is effectiveScientists should commit acts of civil disobedience to show the public how seriously they regard the threat posed by the climate crisis, a group of leading scientists has argued.“Civil disobedience by scientists has the potential to cut through the myriad complexities and confusion surrounding the climate crisis,” the researchers wrote in an article, published in the scientific journal Nature Climate Change on Monday. Continue reading...

Oversight review into US research on newborn piglets led by Prof William Armstead, which has been called ‘utterly reprehensible’The federal Office of Research Integrity (ORI) has begun an investigation into alleged misconduct after the retraction of five papers involving animal experiments on newborn piglets led by a now retired professor at the University of Pennsylvania.The ORI confirmed that it had initiated an oversight review into the retracted papers that were produced by teams of researchers led by pharmacology professor William Armstead at Penn, which is part of the US’s prestigious Ivy League. Continue reading...

Benefits of cholesterol-lowering drug taken by 8 million people in UK outweigh low risk of side-effects, study findsStatins do not commonly cause muscle pain, the world’s most comprehensive study of their risks has found, prompting health experts to reassure millions of patients that taking the pills is safe.The drugs are widely prescribed to prevent heart disease, but there have been concerns for years that they may frequently cause muscle pain or weakness. Continue reading...

‘Conditioning issue’ with one of four engines on rocket’s main stage means launch called off, with next attempt 2 SeptemberWe’re closing our space blog now after a disappointing morning at Cape Canaveral that saw Nasa scrub its first attempt to launch its Artemis 1 moon mission because of an engine issue.But mission managers will point out this is a test flight designed to iron out mechanical issues and other problems to ensure astronaut safety ahead of placing human crews aboard in subsequent missions. Continue reading...

Problem with one of four rockets calls halt to Monday’s scheduled launch, with next attempt due on 2 SeptemberNasa on Monday was hoping to launch for the first time in 50 years a rocket that can ferry humans to and from the moon, but the US space agency had to postpone the start of the mission because of an unexpected engine issue.The rocket’s engine “didn’t get the high accuracy temperature that they were looking for”, the launch control communicator, Derrol Nail, said of engineers’ efforts to “condition” the engine for launch. Continue reading...

Can we really intuit an animal’s feelings, or are we merely projecting our own?When a dog growls at you, is it angry? When a squirrel flees up a tree at your approach, is it fearful? When an elephant stands for days on a spot where another has died, is it grieving? If you live with an animal (the non-human kind) you might think the answer is obvious, but the scientific question remains tantalisingly open.Let’s start with some well-established findings. Every animal’s brain regulates its organs, hormones and the other systems of its body via electricity and swirling chemicals. Inside your own body, these processes keep you alive and also, somehow, produce your general mood in ways that scientists are still puzzling out. Your mood is kind of a summary of how your whole body is doing. It ranges from pleasant to unpleasant and from still to activated. Mood is not emotion – it is always with you, even when you’re not emotional. Continue reading...

Researchers find link between learning instrument while young and improved thinking skills later in lifeThe ageing rocker clinging on to their youth may be a figure of mockery, but research suggests they should be envied for their sharpness of mind.Researchers have found a link between learning a musical instrument in youth and improved thinking skills in old age. People with more experience of playing a musical instrument showed greater lifetime improvement on a test of cognitive ability than those with less or no experience, a paper from the University of Edinburgh has said. Continue reading...

Not all of the constellation is visible from the UK, but some may see the most recognisable central portionIt is time to take a look at the summer constellation Sagittarius. From the UK, the constellation never rises high in the sky. The chart shows the view looking south from London at 9.30pm BST on 29 August. Although not all of the constellation is visible from the UK, the most recognisable central portion can be seen by those with a good southern horizon.For those in more built-up areas, viewing from a nearby hilltop can sometimes make all the difference because it elevates your line of sight. The central portion of Sagittarius creates an asterism that is known to astronomers as the teapot because of its obvious shape. Continue reading...

Sensor-rigged dummies named Moonikin Campos, Helga and Zohar will oversee cargo ranging from cubesats to Apollo artefacts and Shaun the SheepAt three metres tall, Nasa’s Orion capsule is roomier than Apollo’s capsule and seats four astronauts instead of three, but for Monday’s test flight it will have a payload ranging from a mannequin named Helga to bits of Apollo 11’s engine and the odd stuffed toy.For the flight, a full-sized dummy in an orange flight suit will occupy the commander’s seat, rigged with vibration and acceleration sensors. The “commander” was named Moonikin Campos in a public contest, in honour of Arturo Campos, a Nasa engineer who helped save Apollo 13 from disaster by working out how to jury-rig its partly crippled electrical system to bring the astronauts home. Continue reading...

Exclusive: analysis of 126,000 cases over a decade shows black and Asian people wait longer for diagnosis than white peopleBlack and Asian people in England have to wait longer for a cancer diagnosis than white people, with some forced to wait an extra six weeks, according to a “disturbing” analysis of NHS waiting times.A damning review of the world’s largest primary care database by the University of Exeter and the Guardian discovered minority ethnic patients wait longer than white patients in six of seven cancers studied. Race and health leaders have called the results “deeply concerning” and “absolutely unacceptable”. Continue reading...

Richard Zimler is trying to keep the terrible facts alive in the stories he writesIn 1968, when I was 12, I read The Diary of Anne Frank for the first time. Closing the book’s cover created an ache of guilt in me because I seemed to be shutting the door on Anne in her hiding place in Amsterdam. I wanted to stay with her and somehow keep her from being sent to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.A few days later, Anne’s diary gave me the courage to speak for the first time to a Hungarian-Jewish neighbour in our New York suburb who had his camp number tattooed on his arm. His name was Aaron Goldberg and he was from Budapest. His wife, Sara, also had an identification number on her arm. Continue reading...

Poets and songwriters have long known that love hurts, but now scientists are examining the physical anguish caused by a breakup – and the results are helping people understand and recover from their distressIn the winter of 2004, women started arriving at Japanese hospitals complaining of chest pains and a shortness of breath. It was a month since a major earthquake had shaken the country, causing mudslides in the mountains, injuring 4,805 people and killing 68. In emergency rooms, doctors hooked the women up to ECG monitors, and saw the same extreme changes they’d expect with heart attacks. But subsequent tests showed their coronary arteries weren’t blocked, as they would be by a heart attack. Instead, their hearts had changed shape. It didn’t take long for these cases to be diagnosed as takotsubo cardiomyopathy, or “broken heart syndrome”.Heartbreak is not simply a metaphor. Today, up to 7% of all sudden cardiac hospital admissions in Japan are diagnosed as takotsubo, when stress hormones after a traumatic event have caused a weakening of the left ventricle, meaning it can no longer pump effectively – for a while, it gives up. It hurts. And it clearly shows the link between the stresses happening in a person’s life, whether an earthquake or the end of a relationship, and their heart. Continue reading...

Archaeologists and volunteers make find at what may be one of UK’s best-preserved deserted medieval villagesArchaeologists believe they may have found the remains of a medieval alehouse or inn on a dig uncovering what could be one of the UK’s best-preserved deserted medieval villages.The archaeological work at a field in High Hunsley, near Beverley in east Yorkshire, is a dig with a difference in that a key motivation of organisers has been to get new people involved in heritage projects. Continue reading...

Psychiatrists may soon recognise ‘maladaptive daydreaming’ as a clinical disorder. But what is it, and how can it be treated?Every day, Kyla* travels to a fictional universe with advanced space travel. It’s not real, of course – but an incredibly vivid daydream, centred on a protagonist with a detailed history. “It covers 79 years in the life of my main character,” she says. “I know how the whole thing plays out, and I can drop into it at whatever point I want to experience.”Today, this habit is pure entertainment, which she limits to just an hour a day. “It’s like watching Netflix,” she says. “I just go into my head and enjoy it.” In the past, however, she had felt that her fantasies had become all-consuming. “There was a point where it was like an addiction.” Continue reading...

Archaeologists fear they are ‘villains of the piece’ in movie, co-written by Coogan and directed by Stephen Frears, about search for British monarchKing Richard III did not deserve his evil reputation, yet battles waged in his name have raged on long after his death more than five centuries ago at the Battle of Bosworth. Now, on the eve of the premiere of a starry British film about the amazing discovery of his remains under a Leicester car park, the great “lost king” of England is again the subject of conflict.The group of expert archaeologists who retrieved his bones from the hidden ruins of the Greyfriars church 10 years ago last week, and who skilfully proved who he was, are this weekend fighting to stop their side of the story being buried for ever. They fear that the “pretty reckless” new film, The Lost King, will reduce their role in the extraordinary historical find. Continue reading...

Britain was ill-prepared for a pandemic because politicians didn’t want to make the risks publicBlame-shifting is the oldest political trick in the book.Recent comments from Rishi Sunak and others about the role of scientists in the management of the pandemic – blaming us for encouraging lockdowns and thereby exacerbating the disaster – are an example of rewriting history. They also overlook the important role that the political classes and their acolytes have had in the crisis. I want to put the record straight. Continue reading...

Megarocket to lift off from Florida on Monday morning, one of final crucial test steps before astronauts’ return to the moonThe most powerful space rocket ever to leave Earth will take a 50-year leap across the heavens when it rises from its Florida launchpad on Monday, one of the final crucial test steps before humanity’s return to the moon for the first time since 1972.Artemis 1, comprising Orion, a six-person deep-space exploration capsule, atop a 98m (322ft), 2,600-tonne (2,875-ton) Space Launch System (SLS) megarocket, is scheduled for its maiden liftoff at 8.33am ET (1.33pm UK time) from the same Cape Canaveral launch complex that staged the Apollo lunar missions half a century ago. Continue reading...

Half a century ago the Apollo programme helped change our perspectives on our own world. Imagine what the view from Mars will doIf all goes to plan on Monday, the first vehicle in 50 years that is capable of ferrying humans to the moon will lift off from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The giant Space Launch System rocket will hurl aloft an Orion spacecraft, designed to carry up to six astronauts, on a 1.3m mile test mission labelled Artemis 1. If successful, the 42-day flight, which will take its unmanned Orion craft 40,000 miles beyond the far side of the moon, will demonstrate that the United States is once again ready to put humans on the lunar surface.The achievement will come at a price, however. The US taxpayer will pay $93bn to fund the Artemis programme that will take humans back to the moon before acting later as a springboard to send astronauts to Mars. It is a colossal investment and there are nagging doubts that it is justified at a time when private space companies, such as Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin and Elon Musk’s SpaceX, are developing giant reusable rockets that could slash deep-space mission costs. From this perspective, many analysts say that private enterprise should bear the brunt of ferrying people to the moon and Mars. Continue reading...

Researchers believe vertebrae and ribs indicate a brachiosaurid sauropod 25 metres long and 12 metres highThe remains of what could be the largest dinosaur ever found in Europe have been uncovered in a back garden in Portugal.Excavation work began in the garden in the city of Pombal in 2017, when the owner of the property noticed fragments of fossilised bone and contacted researchers from the University of Lisbon. Continue reading...

As her new book on the origins of the universe is published, the Albanian-American scientist explains how her work on multiverse theory influenced Stephen Hawking, and how Soviet rule shaped her hunger for knowledgeLaura Mersini-Houghton was born in Albania and grew up under a totalitarian communist regime which, until its collapse in 1991, cut the country off from the rest of the world. Influenced by her father, Nexhat Mersini, a mathematician, she developed a keen interest in physics and, in 1994, won a Fulbright scholarship to study in the US. Her first book, Before the Big Bang, describes her quest to illuminate the origins of our universe and prove that we are one of many universes in a much vaster multiverse. Mersini-Houghton is now professor of theoretical physics and cosmology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, though she is currently in Cambridge, England, where she spends time every summer doing research.How did life in a closed society shape your thinking?

Dame Kate Bingham aghast at civil service database changes that ‘will deter’ volunteers from signing upThe leader of Britain’s successful Covid vaccination programme has accused health officials of dismantling a critically important database, set up to aid Covid vaccine trials, when it could be used for other vital medical research programmes.“All this talk about the UK becoming a serious science superpower is bollocks,” Dame Kate Bingham told the Observer. “These people don’t actually care. If you really want to make our clinical research strong, you don’t start dismantling what’s been put in place.” Continue reading...

This week, columnist Marina Hyde asks why all the blame for the sewage dumping scandal is pointed towards politicians and not the water company bosses (1m50s), writer Sam Parker on the Gen Z entrepreneurs who are turning their backs on office nine to fives and turning their personal passions into full-time jobs (9m20s), historian Lucy Worsley on whether best-selling author, Agatha Christie, really did go into hiding to frame her husband for murder (26m06s), and finally, neuroscientist and psychologist Lisa Feldman Barrett asks: can we really tell what animals are feeling, or are we merely projecting? (43min19)

The late actor best known as Lieutenant Uhura will join James Doohan, who played Scotty, and creator Gene RoddenberryThe late actor Nichelle Nichols, best known as Lieutenant Uhura on Star Trek, will become the latest member of the 1960s television series to be memorialized by having some of her earthly remains flown into space.Nichols, who died on 30 July at age 89, is credited with helping shatter racial stereotypes and redefining Hollywood roles for Black actors at the height of the US civil rights movement, as one of the first Black women to portray an empowered character on network television. Continue reading...

Company is suing pharmaceutical rival and its German partner for patent infringementModerna is suing its US pharmaceutical rival Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech for patent infringement in the development of the first Covid-19 vaccine approved in the United States, alleging they copied technology that Moderna developed years before the pandemic.The lawsuit, which seeks undetermined monetary damages, was being filed in US district court in Massachusetts and the regional court of Düsseldorf in Germany, Moderna said in a news release on Friday. Continue reading...

Synthetic embryos and three-person babies among advances revised fertility laws need to consider

Exclusive: HFEA discussing how to ‘future-proof’ legislation to keep pace with scientific advances

Nasa’s original moon mission photographs, kept locked in a freezer in Houston, are some of the most vital artefacts of human endeavour. Now, they have been remastered for a new century. Introduction by Tim Peake. Photographs restored by Andy SaundersYou have to make time for awe and wonder. When you’re working in space, you’re so mission-focused, you can almost forget your environment. It can be hard to process the remoteness and isolation until you get back to Earth.The cover image of Apollo Remastered, a new book of restored images from the Nasa archive billed as the ultimate photographic record of humankind’s greatest adventure, is of Commander Jim McDivitt looking up on Apollo 9 in 1969. I think a lot of people read awe and wonder in his face, but I see immense concentration; he’s docking the lunar module. When you’re docking, you’re using a robotic arm to grab another visiting vehicle, and it’s the most intense 90 seconds of your life. Everything depends on you.Apollo 9, 7 March 1969 James McDivitt docks the lunar module – ‘an almost impossible task’, according to Russell Schweickart, who took the picture. Photograph: Nasa/JSC/ASU/Andy Saunders Continue reading...