Humans on the moon and Mars would face the problem of damaging space radiation.

But new research suggests one possible solution to the fact that "Space wants to kill you," according to CNET: To protect astronauts, scientists have been studying an unusually hardy organism, discovered in one of the most radioactive places on the planet: Chernobyl... In some parts of the plant, the level of radiation spiked so high that exposure would kill a human in about 60 seconds. But several species of fungi have been discovered in the reactor. And they're thriving, "feeding" on the extreme levels of radiation. A new study, yet to undergo peer review, was published on the pre-print repository bioRxiv on July 17 and examines one of these species, Cladosporium sphaerospermum. It suggests the fungi could be used as a self-healing, self-replicating shield to protect astronauts in deep space...

Researchers placed the fungi aboard the ISS for 30 days and analyzed its ability to block radiation... The proof-of-concept study showed that the fungi was able to adapt to microgravity and thrive on radiation. It was able to block some of the incoming radiation, decreasing the levels by almost 2%. One of the major advantages, the researchers write, is the fungi self-replicates from microscopic amounts. You would only need to send a small amount to orbit, give it some nutrients and let it replicate, forming a biological radiation shield. With some tweaking, the fungi could be used to shield bases on the moon or Mars.

It's a long while until we put boots on the red planet, but the groundwork is being laid now.

IEEE Spectrum reports: There's still plenty that can disrupt radio communications... Rather than waiting for a human on Earth to tell the radio how to adapt its systems — during which the commands may have already become outdated — a radio with a neural network can do it on the fly. Such a device is called a cognitive radio. Its neural network autonomously senses the changes in its environment, adjusts its settings accordingly — and then, most important of all, learns from the experience... Worcester Polytechnic Institute and Penn State University, in cooperation with NASA, recently tested the first cognitive radios designed to operate in space and keep missions in contact with Earth. In our tests, even the most basic cognitive radios maintained a clear signal between the International Space Station (ISS) and the ground. We believe that with further research, more advanced, more capable cognitive radios can play an integral part in successful deep-space missions in the future, where there will be no margin for error...

Our own effort to create a proof-of-concept cognitive radio for space communications was possible only because of the state-of-the-art Space Communications and Navigation (SCaN) test bed on the ISS. NASA's Glenn Research Center created the SCaN test bed specifically to study the use of software-defined radios in space. The test bed was launched by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency and installed on the main lattice frame of the space station in July 2012... Ours would be the first-ever cognitive radio experiments conducted in space...

During the tests, the cognitive radio clearly showed that it could learn how to maintain a communications link. The radio autonomously selected settings to avoid losing contact, and the link remained stable even as the radio adjusted itself...

Overall, the success of our tests on the SCaN test bed demonstrated that cognitive radios could be used for deep-space missions.

"They've been up there about a month now, floating around on the International Space Station, keeping tabs on their ride home," reports the Washington Post: "Certainly, the highlight for both Doug and I was the initial arrival at space station, coming through the hatch again and being on board after several years of working on a new spacecraft," Behnken said in an interview from the station this week. Since then, he has performed two spacewalks with Cassidy, successfully replacing batteries on the outside of the station... Now, NASA and the astronauts are turning their focus to the return trip. At the moment, the space agency says the soonest Behnken and Hurley could return is Aug. 2.

If all goes well, the Dragon would undock from the station, fire its thrusters and descend through the atmosphere. The entire mission is a test to see how SpaceX's Dragon capsule performs, and while NASA said its ascent went flawlessly, there still are many risks ahead. As it plunges down, the thickening air will cause friction and generate enormous heat, testing the capsule's heat shield. Then the spacecraft's parachutes are to deploy to slow the vehicle further. SpaceX has struggled with its parachute designs in the past, however. "Parachutes are way harder than they look," Elon Musk said in an interview with The Post before the launch. "The Apollo program actually had a real morale issue with the parachutes because they were so damn hard. They had people quitting over how hard the parachutes were. And then you know we almost had people quit at SpaceX over how hard the parachutes were. I mean they soldiered through, but, man, the parachutes are hard."

Another risk will be landing in the ocean. American astronauts have not splashed down in the water since 1975 — the Space Shuttles landed on land, as do the Russian Soyuz spacecraft. Behnken said he and Hurley expect to spend about an hour bobbing on the ocean surface before they are hoisted on the deck of a ship. SpaceX has been training extensively for the recovery mission, working to get the astronauts to safety as quickly as possible, but that will also be a key test.

Space tourism company Space Adventures announced a deal on Thursday with the S.P. Korolev Rocket and Space Corporation to fly two space tourists to the International Space Station. What makes this contract an eye-opener is that it would give one of the tourists an opportunity to go for a spacewalk outside the ISS. CNET reports: Space Adventures said this person would become "the first private citizen in history to experience open space." The S.P. Korolev Rocket and Space Corporation (known as Energia) makes the Soyuz equipment for Russia's space agency Roscosmos, which confirmed the Space Adventures agreement on Thursday. Roscosmos is targeting the flight for 2023.

The spacewalking tourist won't be sent out of the air hatch alone. A professional cosmonaut will go along. The spacewalk will also call for quite a bit of prep work. "Accepted and secured candidates will be required to complete specialized training and additional simulations in preparation for the spacewalk attempt," Space Adventures said. The flight will take place using a Russian Soyuz spacecraft, and the spacewalk participant will stay at the Russian segment of the station for 14 days.

Later this year, the International Space Station will receive a new and improved toilet system designed to bridge the gap between current lavatorial space tech and what humans will need to make extended visits to, say, Mars, in comfort. Space.com reports: It has a fancier name, of course; officially, the commode is NASA's Universal Waste Management System (UWMS). The launch is targeted for no earlier than the fall, a NASA spokesperson confirmed to Space.com, although the agency is still determining what spacecraft will carry the new plumbing up. The toilet currently on offer on the U.S. side of the space station was designed in the 1990s and based on its shuttle counterpart, according to a detailed review of space toiletry. But the apparatus has its flaws. It can be clunky to use, particularly for women, and it is "sensitive to crew alignment on the seat," sometimes resulting in messes, according to that review.

So NASA has tried to keep the aspects that have gotten positive reviews while trimming mass and volume and making some design changes, like adjusting the shape of the seat and replacing the apparatus that compresses the waste. Another change mimics a feature of the toilet on the Russian side of the space station, where astronauts simply hook their feet into toe bars, rather than the thigh bars used on the American equivalent to anchor the astronaut in the microgravity environment. The UWMS will remain on the space station for the rest of the orbiting laboratory's lifetime, and a second toilet of the same model will fly on the Orion capsule that astronauts use to fly around the moon on the first crewed Artemis mission in NASA's ambitious lunar return plan, according to the agency.

NASA astronauts Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken flew to the International Space Station on SpaceX's Crew Dragon. But they're also uniquely qualified to describe what it felt like, since both had also flown twice on NASA's Space Shuttle. So how did its solid-fueled booster rockets during the first stage of lift-off compare to SpaceX's liquid-fueled booster rockets? A Slashdot reader shares their answer, in an article from Spaceflight Now: The Crew Dragon astronauts said the ride on the Falcon 9 rocket was smoother than the space shuttle for the first couple of minutes... "[O]ur expectation was, as we continued with the flight into second stage, that things would basically get a lot smoother than the space shuttle did. But Dragon was huffing and puffing all the way into orbit..." Behnken said. "A little bit less Gs, but a little bit more alive is probably the best way I would describe it." Hurley said, "it was very similar to what you saw in the Apollo 13 movie, where they staged from first to second stage... "That was the highlight of the ascent for me," Hurley said.

"So totally different than shuttle," Hurley said. "It was smooth. It got a little rougher."

The Dragon's automatic docking with the space station felt more gentle than expected, Hurley said. "The thing that really stood out to both us — and we mentioned it was soon as we docked — is we didn't feel the docking," he said. "It was just so smooth, and then we were docked. In shuttle, you felt a little bit of a jolt, nothing real heavy, but you felt it."

Hurley and Behnken also had positive reviews for their SpaceX-made pressure suits. The astronauts wore them during launch and docking, and will put them on again for their return to Earth — expected in late July or August. "They're custom designed and custom fitted, so they're very comfortable," Hurley said. The astronauts said taking off the suits and putting them on in space, without the effect of gravity, was much easier than on Earth. "We'd have to give the suits a five star rating," Behnken said....

"For us — as the test pilots, so to speak — we're there to evaluate how it does the mission, and so far it's done just absolutely spectacularly," Hurley said.

On board the International Space Station since May 2018 is a mini-fridge-size facility called the Cold Atom Lab (CAL), capable of chilling atoms in a vacuum down to temperatures one ten billionth of a degree above absolute zero. It is, for all intents and purposes, one of the coldest spots in the known universe. And according to a new study published in Nature, scientists have just used it to create a rare state of matter for the first time ever in space. From a report: Bose-Einstein condensates, sometimes called the fifth state of matter, are gaseous clouds of atoms that stop behaving like individual atoms and start to behave like a collective. BECs, as they're often called, were first predicted by Albert Einstein and Satyendra Nath Bose over 95 years ago, but they were first observed in the lab by scientists just 25 years ago. The general idea when making a BEC is to inject atoms (in the case of CAL, rubidium and potassium) into an ultra-cold chamber to slow them down. A magnetic trap is then created in the chamber with an electrified coil, which is used along with lasers and other tools to move the atoms into a dense cloud. At this point the atoms "kind of blur into one another," says David Aveline, a physicist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and the lead author of the new study.

To run experiments using a BEC, you need to turn down or release the magnetic trap. The cloud of crowded atoms will expand, which is useful because BECs need to stay cold, and gases tend to cool off as they expand. But if the atoms in a BEC get too far apart, they no longer behave like a condensate. This is where the microgravity of low Earth orbit comes into play. If you try to increase the volume on Earth, says Aveline, gravity will just pull the atoms in the center of the BEC cloud down to the bottom of the trap until they spill out, distorting the condensate or ruining it entirely. But in microgravity, the tools in the CAL can hold the atoms together even as the trap's volume increases. That makes for a longer-lived condensate, which in turn allows scientists to study it longer than they could on Earth (this initial demonstration ran for 1.118 seconds, although the goal is to be able to detect the cloud for up to 10 seconds). Though only a first step, the CAL experiment could one day allow BECs to form the basis of ultra-sensitive instruments that detect faint signals from some of the universe's most mysterious phenomena, like gravitational waves and dark energy. From a more practical perspective, Aveline believes the team's work could pave the way for better inertial sensors. "The applications range from accelerometers and seismometers to gyroscopes," he says.

An anonymous reader writes: When talking about the nine year gap since America last flew astronauts with their own spacecraft, it's often said that NASA didn't have a plan in place when they retired the Space Shuttle. But the reality is a lot more complicated than that. NASA was working on a new spacecraft and rocket, and even made a successful test flight two years before the last Shuttle flight, but the program ended up getting canceled when the White House Administration changed. A review concluded that completing the program "would cost at least $150 billion dollars, and even then, a return to the Moon or a mission to Mars in the foreseeable future was unlikely," according to the article. Money was instead allocated to private alternatives like Sierra Nevada's Dream Chaser spaceplane as well as Boeing's CST-100 Starliner -- though in the end it was SpaceX's Crew Dragon which would launch the next American rocket carrying American astronauts into space. "The dark horse soundly beat the entrenched giants," the article concludes, "and the democratization of space has never been closer.

"It's hard to predict what the next decade of human spaceflight will look like, but there's no question it's going to be a lot more exciting than the previous one."

"We're less than 10 meters away..."

"@AstroBehnken and @Astro_Doug are suited up, strapped in their seats and ready to be welcomed by the crew aboard the @Space_Station," NASA tweeted an hour ago.

They're now just 135 meters away from the space station, and you can watch the docking live on YouTube.

1,024,406 people are already watching...

"NASA astronauts Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken reported that the capsule was performing beautifully, as they closed in for the docking," reports the Associated Press. "The gleaming white capsule was easily visible from the station, its nose cone open exposing its docking hook, as the two spacecraft zoomed a few miles apart above the Atlantic, then Africa, then Asia." It's the first time a privately built and owned spacecraft is carrying crew to the orbiting lab. Hurley, the Dragon's commander, prepared to take manual control for a brief test, then shift the capsule into automatic for the linkup, 19 hours after liftoff. In case of a problem, the astronauts slipped back into their pressurized launch suits for the docking. The three space station residents trained cameras on the incoming capsule for flight controllers at SpaceX headquarters in Hawthorne, California, as well as NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston.
UPDATE: At 7:16 PST, soft capture was successfully completed. We are now "moments away" from their boarding, with an official "welcoming ceremony" expected to happen soon.

"Crew Dragon's hatch is closed, securing @AstroBehnken and @Astro_Doug in the spacecraft ahead of liftoff," SpaceX tweeted an hour ago.

Livestreaming of the launch has already begun, with liftoff scheduled in about 41 minutes.

GeekWire reports: If liftoff from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida occurs today at 3:22 p.m. ET (12:22 p.m. PT), it'll be a feat that America hasn't been able to perform since NASA retired its space shuttles, nearly nine years ago. "We are going to launch American astronauts on American rockets from American soil," NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine declared during a launch-eve briefing at the space center's countdown clock.

But even Bridenstine acknowledged that's not a sure bet for today. "Weather challenges remain with a 50% chance of cancellation," he tweeted this morning. A drenching rainstorm swept over Florida's Space Coast overnight, but the skies cleared up this morning... The launch can be scrubbed at any time, all the way down to the last second, if the weather doesn't cooperate or if a technical glitch arises. If the gumdrop-shaped Crew Dragon doesn't lift off today, Sunday is an option. The chances of acceptable weather are expected to improve to 60%. The weather outlook is even better for a June 2 backup opportunity...

Hurley and Behnken, who are both experienced shuttle astronauts, are scheduled to rendezvous with the space station on Sunday and move in alongside its current occupants, NASA's Chris Cassidy and Russia's Anatoly Ivanishin. NASA hasn't yet decided how long the Dragon riders will spend in orbit. Their stay could be as short as six weeks, or as long as 16 weeks, depending on how the test mission proceeds. For the return trip, Hurley and Behnken will strap themselves back inside the Dragon and descend to an Atlantic splashdown.

This whole flight serves as an initial demonstration of the Crew Dragon's capabilities with an actual crew aboard. If the mission is successful, yet another Crew Dragon will carry four different astronauts to the space station weeks after Hurley and Behnken return.
Reuters reporter Joey Roulette also spotted NASA astronaut Garrett Reisman by the side of the road as his fellow astronauts drove by. He was holding a sign that said "Take me with you."

And GeekWire notes that NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine sees this event as historic. "I really think, when we look into the future, we're going to see these models of doing business with public-private partnerships apply not just to low Earth orbit... but we're taking this model to the moon and even on to Mars."

UPDATE: SpaceX just tweeted that the re-usable Falcon 9 booster rocket "has landed on the Of Course I Still Love You droneship!"

"One of the longer chapters of the International Space Station has come to a close," writes Engadget.

"NASA has sent the last of its 11 ExPRESS (Expedite the Processing of Experiments to the Space Station) science racks to the orbiting facility, 19 years after sending the first two." They don't look like much, but they provide the power, storage, climate control and communications for up to 10 small payloads — they're key to many of the experiments that run aboard the ISS and will help the station live up to its potential research capabilities. This last rack was carried aboard a Japanese cargo ship and should be installed and functioning by fall 2020. While the EXPRESS racks should be useful for a while yet, this effectively marks the end of an era for NASA's ISS work...
Originally developed by engineers at Boeing and the Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama, "The first two completed racks were delivered to the space station on STS-100 in 2001 and have been in continuous operation ever since," notes a NASA press release, "as have all the subsequent added racks." And since then NASA has logged more than 85 total years of combined rack operational hours. "The sheer volume of science that's been conducted using the racks up til now is just overwhelming," says Shaun Glasgow, project manager for the EXPRESS Racks at Marshall.

"And as we prepare to return human explorers to the Moon and journey on to Mars, it's even more exciting to consider all the scientific investigations still to come."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Space.com: No showstoppers were found during a crucial flight readiness review (FRR) for SpaceX's Demo-2 mission, keeping the company's first-ever crewed flight on track for a May 27 liftoff, NASA officials announced today (May 22). "The Flight Readiness Review has concluded, and NASA's SpaceX Demo-2 mission is cleared to proceed toward liftoff on the first crewed flight of the agency's Commercial Crew Program," NASA officials wrote in an update today. Demo-2 will send NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley to the International Space Station (ISS) aboard SpaceX's Crew Dragon capsule, which will launch atop a Falcon 9 rocket from Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida. The mission will be the first orbital human spaceflight to depart from American soil since NASA retired its space shuttle fleet in July 2011. Ever since then, the space agency has relied completely on Russian Soyuz rockets and spacecraft to get its astronauts to and from the orbiting lab.

The FRR began yesterday (May 21) at KSC and stretched into this afternoon. During the meeting, NASA, ISS and SpaceX managers discussed in detail "the readiness of the Crew Dragon and systems for the Demo-2 mission; the readiness of the International Space Station Program and its international partners to support the flight; and the certification of flight readiness," NASA officials wrote in an update yesterday. And everything went very well, NASA officials said. "It was an excellent review," NASA associate administrator Steve Jurczyk said during a teleconference with reporters today. "There are no significant open issues, I am happy to report." There are still some boxes to tick before Demo-2 can get off the ground. "For example, this afternoon, SpaceX will conduct a 'static fire' of the Falcon 9 that will launch the mission, testing out its first-stage engines while the rocket remains tethered to the ground," reports Space.com. "And tomorrow (May 23), the teams will hold a 'dry dress' exercise, during which Behnken and Hurley will suit up and the teams will run through many of the procedures that will occur on launch day."

"Data from these two tests, as well as other information, will then be analyzed in detail on Monday (May 25) during a final launch readiness review."

FallOutBoyTonto shares a report from Ars Technica: On Tuesday, NASA announced that its chief of human spaceflight had resigned from the space agency. The timing of Doug Loverro's departure is terrible, with NASA's first launch of humans in nearly nine years due to occur in just eight days. The space agency offered a bland statement regarding Loverro's resignation as Associate Administrator for Human Exploration and Operations (HEO) at NASA.

"Associate Administrator for Human Exploration and Operations Doug Loverro has resigned from his position effective Monday, May 18," the statement said. "Loverro hit the ground running this year and has made significant progress in his time at NASA. His leadership of HEO has moved us closer to accomplishing our goal of landing the first woman and the next man on the Moon in 2024. Loverro has dedicated more than four decades of his life in service to our country, and we thank him for his service and contributions to the agency." Loverro's resignation set off a firestorm of speculation after it was announced. He was due to chair a Flight Readiness Review meeting on Thursday to officially clear SpaceX's Crew Dragon spacecraft for the first flight of humans to the International Space Station. The final go or no-go decision for that mission was to be his. That launch is presently scheduled for May 27.

New submitter quantumghost writes: SpaceX has opened up a new online simulator that mimics the Crew Dragon capsule controls. The game was released in anticipation of SpaceX's upcoming launch of Crew Dragon to the International Space Station. On May 27th, it'll be the first American-built spacecraft to haul American astronauts to the ISS in 11 years.

The goal of the simulator is to see if you can dock your spacecraft to the ISS. "According to the new game's opening slide, this is the actual interface on which astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley, Crew Dragon's inaugural test pilots, have been," reports Popular Mechanics. "The central interface is packed with a slew of numbers. The green numbers indicate whether corrections need to be made. When they're below 0.2, it means you've successfully docked and beat the simulation."

Daniel Oberhaus writes via Wired: Later this summer, physicists at the Argonne and Fermi national laboratories will exchange quantum information across 30 miles of optical fiber running beneath the suburbs of Chicago. One lab will generate a pair of entangled photons -- particles that have identical states and are linked in such a way that what happens to one happens to the other -- and send them to their colleagues at the other lab, who will extract the quantum information carried by these particles of light. By establishing this two-way link, the labs will become the first nodes in what the researchers hope will one day be a quantum internet linking quantum computers around the nation. [...] The problem is that quantum information hates long-distance travel. Send entangled photons out into the real world through optical fiber and, in less than 50 miles, environmental interference will destroy their quantum state. But if the photons were relayed through a satellite instead, they could be sent to destinations hundreds -- and potentially thousands -- of miles away. So in 2018, NASA partnered with MIT's Lincoln Laboratory to develop the technologies needed to make it happen.

The goal of the National Space Quantum Laboratory program, sometimes referred to as Quantum Technology in Space, is to use a laser system on the International Space Station to exchange quantum information between two devices on Earth without a physical link. The refrigerator-sized module would be attached to the outside of the space station and would generate the entangled photons that carry the quantum information to Earth. The demonstration would pave the way for a satellite that could take entangled particles generated in local quantum networks and send them to far-flung locations.

Russian officials said they've halted manufacturing of the country's workhorse Soyuz rocket, which most recently flew on April 9 to carry three astronauts to the ISS in a launch that was essentially unaffected by the pandemic. Space.com reports: The news of the pandemic's impact on its production comes from an English-language transcript released on April 10 by Russia's government of a call held by President Vladimir Putin and a group of space center leaders. During that call, Putin cautioned against using the pandemic as a scapegoat for issues within the industry. "Clearly, the fact that we have to fight the coronavirus is forcing us to make adjustments in our country, the economy in general and Roscosmos specifically," Putin said at the end of the public portion of the call, according to the transcript. "At the same time, I would like to warn you against the temptation to blame unresolved issues and loose ends -- which are still in abundance -- on the coronavirus."

Russian space manufacturing has raised concerns since a small air leak on a Soyuz spacecraft docked to the space station in August 2018 and a failed Soyuz rocket launch in October 2018 sent two astronauts tumbling back to Earth during an emergency abort (they landed safely). Since then, all crewed launches have gone smoothly, and last week's launch relied on a different model of the Soyuz 2 rocket than the version that failed.

But for now, Soyuz 2 production is on hold, Dmitry Baranov, general director of the Progress Rocket and Space Center where the rocket is built, said during the call. Baranov said that decision was made because 52 completed Soyuz 2 rockets are on hand at the facility and at launch sites worldwide. Other aspects of rocket work are continuing as usual, including maintenance and testing of completed Soyuz 2 rockets and production of the Soyuz 5, a heavy-lift launch vehicle planned to make its first flight in late 2022, Baranov said. The facility will also consider restoring the full workforce with protective measures in place sometime after next week, he said.

The last space shuttle launched in 2011 and NASA hasn't sent astronauts to space from US soil since then. That long dry patch is set to end on May 27 when the SpaceX Crew Dragon is scheduled to head to the International Space Station with two crew members on board. NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine posted the news on social media Friday along with a short video hyping the event.

NASA has awarded SpaceX with a contract to supply Gateway, the moon-orbiting space station that the agency aims to start building in 2022, agency officials announced Friday. Space.com reports: Gateway is a key part of NASA's Artemis exploration program, which seeks to establish a sustainable, long-term human presence on and around the moon by the late 2020s. The small space station will serve as a jumping-off point for sorties, both crewed and uncrewed, to the lunar surface. SpaceX will help to keep the Gateway supplied, delivering scientific experiments and a variety of other gear to the outpost, NASA officials said. The company is guaranteed two missions under its newly announced Gateway Logistics Services contract.

SpaceX's robotic ISS resupply runs employ the company's Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon capsule, which can loft 13,200 lbs. (6,000 kilograms, or 6 metric tons) to low-Earth orbit. But SpaceX's Gateway missions will use different hardware: the huge Falcon Heavy rocket and a special capsule variant called Dragon XL. (SpaceX has also developed another Dragon version, Crew Dragon, which will fly astronauts to and from the ISS under yet another NASA contract.) Dragon XL will be able to carry more than 5 metric tons of cargo to the Gateway, SpaceX representatives said via Twitter Friday. Dragon cargo missions to the ISS typically last about a month from launch to splashdown. But Dragon XL will likely stay attached to the Gateway for six to 12 months at a time, NASA officials said. Other companies may end up joining SpaceX in the Gateway resupply game.

More than 99% of Italy's coronavirus fatalities were people who suffered from previous medical conditions, according to a study [PDF] by the country's national health authority. Reader schwit1 shares a report: The new study could provide insight into why Italy's death rate, at about 8% of total infected people, is higher than in other countries. The Rome-based institute has examined medical records of about 18% of the country's coronavirus fatalities, finding that just three victims, or 0.8% of the total, had no previous pathology. Almost half of the victims suffered from at least three prior illnesses and about a fourth had either one or two previous conditions. More than 75% had high blood pressure, about 35% had diabetes and a third suffered from heart disease.

The Transportation Security Administration told employees to stop posting to TIkTok on Sunday, after New York Senator Chuck Schumer raised security concerns about the China-owned app. The Verge reports: The TSA's announcement to ban employees from using TikTok came shortly after Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) penned a letter to its administrator, David Pekoske, requesting that the agency halt its use. According to The Hill, TSA employees have used TikTok to create and post videos explaining some of the agency's boarding processes and rules. The Department of Homeland Security, which houses the TSA, banned the use of TikTok from government-issued devices last month. Schumer cited this policy in his letter on Saturday. In December, the US Army banned soldiers from using the app, too. "TSA has never published any content to Tik Tok nor has it ever directed viewers to Tik Tok," a TSA spokesperson told The Verge. "A small number of TSA employees have previously used Tik Tok on their personal devices to create videos for use in TSA's social media outreach, but that practice has since been discontinued."