By Terry Poulos, special to the Hellenic News of America
ARTEMIS MAKES HISTORY! The Greek gods and goddesses continue to make space travel history. Rather, their namesake missions do. NASA’s 1969 Apollo 11 mission launched three astronauts to space, two of whom became the first to step foot on the moon. Five additional Apollo missions in the 70’s resulted in human footprints on the lunar surface. On April 6, 2026, Artemis II took Apollo 11 a small leap farther, if not technically further. It included four astronauts – one female and one a person of color – both historic in their own right. And while Artemis did not land a spacecraft on the moon, on April 6 its fly-by eclipsed the distance that each Apollo mission had previously traveled and took humankind farther away from Earth than it had ever achieved. The Apollo missions landed on the near side of the moon, which is tidally locked with Earth and always shows the same ‘face.’ The far side, at times referred to as the ‘dark side,’ is thousands of miles farther than the near side.
ENTERS ASTRONAUT TRAINING! Greek terminology is everywhere in science and medicine and now a Greek citizen who’s both an MD and holds a Masters of Space studies has entered a portal to potentially rocketing to space! Dr. Adrianos Golemis – following a highly-selective process that involved more than 22,000 candidates – has officially been accepted into the European Space Agency’s astronaut training program, reports Euro News. It’s a first for Greece. Dr. Golemis, officially listed as a flight surgeon, studied medicine at Aristotle University of Thessoloniki and earned a MS at International Space University in France.
SOLAR SYSTEM AMBASSADOR: Dr. Voula Saridakis, a NASA Solar System Ambassador and head curator at the world-renowned Griffin Museum of Science & Industry in Chicago, made front page headlines in the Chicago Tribune on March 31, the day before the Artemis II launch. The headline read “‘Humanity’s call:’ Chicago space expert weighs in on launch of mission to orbit moon.” Saridakis’ bio also mentions “history of science and technology, history of astronomy/space sciences, women/gender in the history of science and technology, artifact biography.”OPERATION KYRTHERA: The Romans were known to re-appropriate Greek gods and give them new names. For example, Aphrodite became Venus. In effect, the planet Venus was inspired by Aphrodite, goddess of the island of Kythera which is, according to Greek myth, considered her “birthplace” as it’s the first land she appeared on after she ascended from the sea. With that in mind, a new concept for a space mission was recently introduced by researchers at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands. They presented their mission, titled “Kyrthera,” at the Lunar & Planetary Science Conference, reports Universe Today. The group proposes to send a lander to the almost entirely molten surface of Venus to perform atmospheric and geologic studies.
STUDY LEAD ON SILENT SYNOPSES: Scientists are beginning to discover that so-called “junk DNA” isn’t merely all junk and in fact has some utility. Could the human brain have similar hidden features that might be recruited to cure Alzheimer’s disease? Lead author Dr. Dimitra Vardalaki, an MIT graduate student in the discipline of neuroscience, and several colleagues released findings of a groundbreaking new study on the brains of adult mice that was profiled this March in SciTech Daily. While the study involves mice, it’s often been the case that human application follows. Researchers “uncovered a surprisingly large reserve of `silent synapses’ in the adult brain – unused neural connections that can be rapidly activated to store new memories,” writes SciTech. Synapses are connections between neurons, a bridge for signaling. Silent synapses, however, “were thought to exist only in infancy, when the brain is rapidly wiring itself in response to new experiences,” continues Sci-Tech. “They were believed to largely disappear early in life. The new findings challenge that view and suggest the adult brain keeps a large number of these unused connections on standby.” Dr. Vardalaki explained to SciTech that ““This lets the brain create new memories without overwriting the important memories stored in mature synapses, which are harder to change.” The discovery, like so many great breakthroughs in history, came by accident. Senior author Mark Harnett told SciTech, “The first thing we saw, which was super bizarre and we didn’t expect, was that there were filopodia everywhere.” Filopodia, derived from the Greek radical pod– or podion (“foot” or “leg-like structure, literally means “thread foot,” according to its dictionary etymology. These filopods were extending directly from dentrites, the original focus of the study. Their focus pivoted real fast.
2000-YR OLD PAPYRUS FOUND IN CAIRO: French antiquities experts in Cairo, Egypt recently stumbled upon a 2000-year old papyrus that was lost in their vast archives that “revels 30 previously unpublished verses by Empedocles, a pre-Socratic philosopher of the fifth century BCE,” according to Phys.org. Previously, the entire body of knowledge on this subject was derived from “fragments of other parts” authored by sources considered “intermediary of often partial or biased sources.” The new-found document is said to be the original text and the only known copy of `Physica.’
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