Inked!

Astronaut Scott Kelly to Retire from NASA in April

NASA logo. March 13, 2016 NASA astronaut and one-year crew member Scott Kelly will retire from the agency, effective April 1. Kelly joined the astronaut corps in 1996 and currently holds the American record for most time spent in space. After retiring, Kelly will continue to participate in the ongoing research related to his one-year mission. He will provide periodic medical samples and support other testing in much the same way that his twin brother, former astronaut Mark Kelly, made himself available for NASA’s Twins Study during his brother’s mission. “This year-in-space mission was a profound challenge for all involved, and it gave me a unique perspective and a lot of time to reflect on what my next step should be on our continued journey to help further our capabilities in space and on Earth,” Kelly said. “My career with the Navy and NASA gave me an incredible chance to showcase public service to which I am dedicated, and what we can accomplish on the big challenges of our day. I am humbled and excited by new opportunities for me to support and share the amazing work NASA is doing to help us travel farther into the solar system and work with the next generation of science and technology leaders.”

Image above: NASA astronaut Scott Kelly inside the cupola of the International Space Station, a special module that provides a 360-degree viewing of the Earth and the station. Image Credit: NASA. Kelly flew in space four times, beginning with space shuttle Discovery’s trip to NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope on the STS-103 servicing mission in 1999. On his second mission, STS-118, he crossed the threshold of the International Space Station for the first time as commander of space shuttle Endeavour. He returned to the station for a six-month stay in 2010, commanding Expedition 26. A veteran of spaceflight, Kelly accepted the opportunity to participate in NASA’s unprecedented yearlong space station mission, which aimed to expand the boundaries of space exploration beyond low-Earth orbit through the collection of critical data on how the human body responds to extended space missions. On this mission, Kelly eclipsed two American space records. “Records are meant to be broken,” Kelly said. “I am looking forward to when these records in space are surpassed.” Kelly broke the American record for most cumulative time in space during his one-year mission, accruing 520 days. “Scott’s contributions to NASA are too many to name,” said Brian Kelly, director of Flight Operations at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. “In his year aboard the space station, he took part in experiments that will have far-reaching effects, helping us pave the way to putting humans on Mars and benefiting life on Earth. His passion for this work has helped give hundreds of thousands of people a better understanding of what NASA does, thanks in part to the numerous photos and updates he shared from space. We appreciate his years of service and anticipate many benefits to come from them, thanks to the research he’s supporting.” Related links: One-year crew: https://www.nasa.gov/content/one-year-crew Twins Study: https://www.nasa.gov/twins-study For Kelly’s biography, visit: http://www.jsc.nasa.gov/Bios/htmlbios/kellysj.pdf Image (mentioned), Text, Credits: NASA/Tabatha Thompson/Johnson Space Center/Brandi Dean/Karen Northon. Greetings, Orbiter.ch Full article

laser-free diet.

The Mud Dragons of Calvert Island, BC

Shedding light on these mysterious marine creatures.

by Josh Silberg

Spiky headed dragons roam the ocean floor from the poles to the tropics. But these are not winged beasts from the pages of science fiction. These strange creatures are Kinorynchs, aka “mud dragons“, and they are very real.

Roughly the size of a grain of salt, mud dragons are often overlooked, but a team from the Hakai Institute and the University of British Columbia (UBC) hopes to give them the spotlight they deserve.

“Canada has very few reports on these animals. The first step is to know what is there,” says Dr. Maria Herranz, a Hakai post-doctoral scholar and resident mud dragon expert at UBC…

(read more and see video: Hakai)

images by Marria Harranz

Untitled by twyscape

Satomi’s pygmy seahorse (Hippocampus satomiae) is the smallest known seahorse in the world with an average length of 13.8 millimeters. (via)

Bawean warty pig may be world’s rarest pig, with only 230 around 

by Fred Pearce

By day, they rest in the surviving scraps of rainforest on their remote tropical-island home. By night, they grub around for tubers and roots in the forest gardens of local communities, dodging guard dogs and the occasional angry farmer with a gun.

Now, the diminutive warty pigs of Bawean, a small island in Indonesia’s Java Sea, have a new claim to fame: they may be the rarest pigs in the world.

The warty pigs of Southeast Asia come in many shapes and sizes – and, it seems, many species too. Often dismissed as little more than pests, they are receiving a taxonomic makeover, with a dozen distinct species now acknowledged, and others likely to emerge.

The latest is the Bawean warty pig (Sus blouchi), a dwarf relative of the Javan warty pig (Sus verrucosus), but now claimed to be a species in its own right…

(read more: New Scientist)

photograph via: Bawean Endemik Konservasi Initiatif

Meet the orchid mantis.

Orchid mantises—particularly juveniles—seem aptly named. They’re predominantly white with pink or yellow accents, similar to some orchids and other flowers, and their four hind legs are lobed, like petals. But if you search for an exact floral counterpart, as behavioral ecologist James O’Hanlon did, you probably won’t find one. “I spent forever looking for a flower that they look just like,” he says, to no avail.

As it turns out, rather than mimicking one floral species, the insect instead may embody a “generic or an average type of flower” in order to attract bees and other pollinating insects as prey.

What’s more, as far as O’Hanlon can tell, it’s the only animal on record that “takes on the guise of a whole flower blossom” as a predatory strategy. 

Learn more here.

The Okeanos Explorer has discovered a very cute octopus at a depth of 4,290 metres.

This is the deepest an octopus of this particular sub order of octopus has ever been seen. 

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration noted this is a completely unsubscribed species and perhaps not belonging to any specific genus. Highlighting how little we still know about the creatures in the depths of our oceans.

(Ocean Explorer)

Killer whales are smart animals. This is what they do in their natural habitat:

Not this:

Do animals have sex for fun? This video attempts to answer a question all of us might have asked ourselves at some point!