Russia Will Send A Backup "Lifeboat" Soyuz To ISS In February... And The "All Clear" Re Ebola -- In Uganda...

Two separate items, as follow-up, on a cold January Saturday night, by the fire: first, as we earlier mentioned might be the case, Roscosmos, the Russian space agency, has this past week definitively decided not to fly the crew of three home, on the Soyuz module that was observed spraying coolant into space, about 45 days ago. Here's NASA's telling of that bit:

. . .Roscosmos engineers determined the Soyuz MS-22 spacecraft is not viable for a normal crew return, but is available for crew return in an emergency aboard the space station. The Soyuz MS-22 will be replaced by the Soyuz MS-23 spacecraft that will launch to the space station without a crew on Monday, Feb. 20. NASA astronaut Frank Rubio and cosmonauts Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitri Petelin will return to Earth in the replacement Soyuz after spending several additional months on the station. . . .

And next, ebola has officially been declared arrested, in Uganda, by WHO.

That is very good news, indeed. [The president of Uganda had jumped the gun, and declared an all clear right before Christmas -- to permit more commerce and travel over the long holidays there. But it seems not to have re-ignited the outbreak -- for which we are all breathing a sigh of relief.]

Onward, grinning -- these nights, as compared to the 70 degree arid sunsets, in the Sonoran desert we recently left. . . are tougher, with each passing year. But it reminds us we are. . . alive -- that much is certain. Smile.

नमस्ते