US-Russian ISS Space Crew Returns to Earth Tonight

Russian cosmonaut Alexander Skvortsov (center), Soyuz commander; NASA astronaut Steve Swanson (left), Expedition 40 commander; and Russian cosmonaut Oleg Artemyev, flight engineer, conduct a suit leak check in their Soyuz TMA-12M spacecraft ahead of a return home from the International Space Station set for Sept. 10, 2014.

Credit: NASA

A trio of space travelers will return to Earth tonight (Sept. 10) to end a months-long expedition to the International Space Station, and you can watch the landing live online.

American astronaut Steve Swanson and Russian cosmonauts Alexander Skvortsov and Oleg Artemyev are due to land their Russian-built Soyuz space capsule on the Central Asian steppes of Kazakhstan at 10:23 p.m. EDT (0243 Sept. 11 GMT), after more than five months in orbit.

You can watch the space crew's landing on Space.com in a live webcast provided by NASA. The webcast will include a series of broadcasts for each stage of the landing.

The landing webcast begins at 3:15 p.m. EDT (1915 GMT) with a farewell ceremony, then resumes at 6:45 p.m. EDT (2245 GMT) for live views of undocking. The landing coverage will begin at 9:15 p.m. EDT (0115 GMT).

Swanson and his crewmates launched to the International Space Station on March 25, with Swanson commanding the outpost's Expedition 40 mission. Three other station crewmembers — NASA astronaut Reid Wiseman, cosmonaut Maxim Suarev and German astronaut Alexander Gerst — arrived at the station in late May.

"We've accomplished a lot. We've had a lot of fun," Swanson said Tuesday (Sept. 9) as he handed control of the space station over to Suarev. "This was a team effort. We got together and did it as a team.

During the Expedition 40 mission, the station astronauts and cosmonauts watched over a flurry of robotic cargo ship arrivals and departures by Russian, European and commercial American spacecraft. Skvortsov and Artemyev performed two spacewalks, and tossed a tiny Peruvian satellite into space on their second excursion.

Swanson made a bit of space history by becoming the first astronaut to post Instagram photos from space. And then there were the science experiments. Many, many experiments.

"We actually set the record for the number of hours of science in a week," Swanson said.

The return of Swanson, Skvortsov and Artemyev tonight will mark the official start of Expedition 41 on the International Space Station. Suarev will command that mission.

International Space Station Expedition 35 Crew Return to Earth Tonight: Watch Live on NASA TV

Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield, Expedition 35 commander, poses in his Russian Sokol spacesuit while preparing for a May 13, 2013 landing on a Soyuz spacecraft.

CREDIT: Canadian Space Agency/Chris Hadfield

After months living in space, two astronauts and a Russian cosmonaut will return home from the International Space Station tonight (May 13) and you can watch their landing live online.

Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield, American astronaut Tom Marshburn and cosmonaut Roman Romanenko are preparing to leave the space station aboard a Russian-built Soyuz spacecraft for a planned landing at 10:31 p.m. EDT (0231 May 14 GMT) on the Central Asian steppes of Kazakhstan, where the local time will be early Tuesday morning.

You can watch the Soyuz landing webcast live on NASA TV. The webcast will begin at 6:45 p.m. EDT (2245 GMT) to show the Soyuz departing the space station.

The Soyuz landing will mark the end of the station's Expedition 35 mission, which Hadfield commanded, and comes just two days after an emergency spacewalk on Saturday (May 11) by Marshburn and NASA astronaut Chris Cassidy to fix a serious ammonia coolant leak on the station.

The leak was detected on Thursday (May 9), forcing Mission Control and the astronauts to come up with the impromptu spacewalk plans in record time.

"The real-time execution of that is what made me feel so good as a commander of this crew," Hadfield said Sunday (May 13) as he handed command over to Russian cosmonaut Pavel Vinogradov, who will lead the station's Expedition 36 mission.

Vinogradov will remain behind on the space station with Cassidy and fellow Russian cosmonaut Alexander Misurkin. They will be joined by three new crewmembers in late May.

Hadfield, Marshburn and Romanenko are wrapping up a five-month mission to the space station that began in December.

They launched as part of the station's Expedition 34 crew, with Hadfield taking command of the Expedition 35 mission midway through the flight.

No sex tonight honey, I haven't taken my statins - New Scientist

No sex tonight honey, I haven't taken my statins - New Scientist

High cholesterol isn't just bad for the heart it could also make it harder for women to become sexually aroused. That might mean that cholesterol-lowering drugs like statins would help to treat so-called female sexual dysfunction (FSD).

Hyperlipidemia, or raised levels of cholesterol and other fats in the blood, is associated with erectile dysfunction in men, because the build-up of fats in blood vessel walls can reduce blood flow to erectile tissue. Since some aspects of female sexual arousal also rely on increased blood flow to the genitals, Katherine Esposito and her colleagues at the Second University of Naples in Italy compared sexual function in premenopausal women with and without hyperlipidemia.

Women with hyperlipidemia reported significantly lower arousal, orgasm, lubrication, and sexual satisfaction scores than women with normal blood lipid profiles. And 32 per cent of the women with abnormal profiles scored low enough on a scale of female sexual function to be diagnosed with FDS, compared with 9 per cent of women without normal levels. Women's sexual desire was not affected by hyperlipidemia, however.
Underlying condition

In a separate paper, Annamaria Veronelli at the University of Milan, Italy, and her colleagues found that female sexual dysfunction was also associated with diabetes, obesity and an underactive thyroid gland.

"These two papers suggest that there are strong connections between women's sexual arousal and organic diseases in the same way that men's sexual problems arise," says Geoffrey Hackett, a urologist at the Holly Cottage Clinic in Fisherwick, UK. "This is currently not even considered in women."

Hackett therefore suggests that a loss of sexual arousal in women might be an indicator of other underlying conditions, so such problems should be raised with a doctor.


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