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Georgia Tech professor behind design of Artemis II spacesuits
Less than a month after the historic Artemis II mission began, a Georgia Tech researcher is being recognized for his work in helping keep astronauts safe in space.
Thomas Orlando, a Regents’ professor at Georgia Tech, designed the spacesuits worn by astronauts on Artemis 2. He said his team focused on protecting the suits from micrometeorite impacts and especially lunar dust.
“We realized that a bigger problem, at least from NASA’s perspective, is dust," Orlando said. “We don’t really want dust to be on spacesuits. It can get into the seals. It could, you know, cause them to leak.”
Orlando works with graduate students to study the challenges astronauts may face in space and on the moon.
WJCL 22 Savannah
Southeast wildfires driven by climate and weather patterns
Zachary Handlos, Georgia Tech atmospheric science educator, explains how drought, heat, and shifting weather patterns are fueling more intense Southeast wildfires.
11Alive News
Opinion: Why the Southeast is burning. Extreme drought is only part of the reason.
Zachary Handlos, senior academic professional in the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, explains how weather patterns can lead to conditions conducive to the types of wildfires currently seen in Florida and Georgia.
This piece also appeared in The Washington Post and The Conversation.
Atlanta Journal Constitution
Angle of collision between galaxies affects the merger of supermassive black holes
Researchers have long known that when two galaxies approach each other and merge, the supermassive black holes at their centers form a pair and are eventually expected to merge as well. It is precisely these mergers that are considered one of the sources of the gravitational-wave background — a faint “hum” of spacetime detected in recent years. However, the role played by the geometry of the collision in this process has remained an open question.
Graduate student Sena Ghobadi of the Georgia Institute of Technology’s School of Physics, along with her colleagues, has developed three-dimensional dynamic models of such collisions.
A similar story appeared in Sky & Telescope.
Universe Magazine
It’s a sing‑off! Myth‑busting about birds and sex when it comes to defending the nest
Assistant Professor Benjamin Freeman and graduate student Shreyas Arashanapalli of the School of Biological Sciences detail their study on the use of birdsong for territorial defense. They highlight that male birds — and many female birds — sing and defend territories. Their examination uncovered that cooperative territorial defense is especially common in birds with long-term social bonds or that live close to the equator.
The Conversation