Poland's only cosmonaut, Gen. Miroslaw Hermaszewski, who circled the Earth in a Soviet spacecraft in 1978, has died. He was 81.

The retired air force pilot's death on Monday was announced via Twitter by his son-in-law, European Parliament member Ryszard Czarnecki. He later told Polish media outlets that Hermaszewski died at a hospital in Warsaw of complications from a surgery he had undergone in the morning.

"On behalf of the family, I'm confirming the very sad news about the death of Gen. Miroslaw Hermaszewski," Czarnecki tweeted, calling him a "great pilot, good husband and father, and much beloved grandfather."

Hermaszewski became a national hero thanks to his trip to space. For nine days in June and July of 1978, Hermaszewski and Soviet cosmonaut Pyotr Klimuk circled the Earth in the Soyuz 30 spaceship that docked at the Salyut 6 orbital space station. They went around the globe 126 times.

In an 2018 interview with the Polish newspaper Rzeczpospolita, Hermaszewski said his biggest fear during the flight was that their spacecraft would be struck by a meteor. His and Klimuk's senses were sharpened, catching even the smallest sound, he said.

In a forward-looking article, George Church, Ph.D., from Harvard University and the Wyss Institute, proposes the use of picogram to nanogram-scale probes that can land, replicate, and produce a communications module at the destination to explore nearby stars. The new article is published in a special issue on "Interstellar Objects in Astrobiology" of Astrobiology.

"One design is a highly reflective light sail, traveling a long straight line toward the gravitational well of a destination star, and the photo-deflected to the closest non-luminous mass—ideally a planet or moon with exposed liquid water," states Dr. Church.

"Most living cells on Earth are picogram-scale and yet perform functions, such as replication from only simple chemical inputs, impossible for all current human-made machines," notes Dr. Church. He considers factors such as acceleration and deceleration, and how to build communications devices using some form of electromagnetic radiation. Environments suitable for microbial replication require appropriate temperature, chemicals, and energy sources.

"Clearly, a considerable amount of work remains for improving the theory, design, and testing aspects of this proposal, some of which can be done on Earth or within our home solar system," concludes Dr.

NASA's Lunar Flashlight has communicated with mission controllers and confirmed it is healthy after launching Sunday, Dec. 11, at 2:38 a.m. EST (Saturday, Dec. 10, at 11:38 p.m. PST) from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. About 53 minutes after launch, the small satellite, or SmallSat, was released from its dispenser to begin a four-month journey to the moon to seek out surface water ice in permanently shadowed craters at the lunar South Pole.

The animation shows the full launch sequence for the first Meteosat Third Generation Imager (MTG-I1) satellite. MTG-I1 launches on an Ariane 5 rocket from Europe's Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana.

MTG-I1 is the first of six satellites that form the full MTG system, which will provide critical data for weather forecasting over the next 20 years. In full operations, the mission will comprise two MTG-I satellites and one MTG Sounding (MTG-S) satellites working in tandem.

The MTG-I satellites carry two completely new instruments, a Flexible Combined Imager and Europe's first Lightning Imager, to deliver high-quality data for better weather forecasting.