A SpaceX flight surgeon and an elite track cyclist are among the new class of 10 astronaut candidates, NASA announced on Monday.
Why it matters: "These NASA astronauts will plan, train and fly missions to the International Space Station and to the Moon under Artemis, and eventually onto Mars," Vanessa Wyche, the director of NASA's Johnson Space Center, said during an event announcing the new astronaut candidates.
The Lower 48 states have seen record-shattering warmth so far this December, with temperatures running as high as 35°F above average for this time of year. The warmth has been so pronounced that during the weekend, brush fires broke out in a snowless, unusually mild Denver metro area.
The big picture: The jet stream, which is a river of air that rides at about 30,000 feet along the temperature contrast between air masses, steering storms as it goes, has been stuck in a position well north of the contiguous U.S., keeping storms and cold weather at bay.
The Adam McKay film “Don’t Look Up,” coming to Netflix later this month, is a gut-punch of a climate change comedy disguised as a movie about a comet headed directly at Earth.
Driving the news: In a virtual press conference Sunday, the film’s stars discussed how they constructed a comedy about a fictional doomsday crisis that’s a stand-in for another, all-too-real-life threat.
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