In “Space: the longest goodbye,” Scientists investigating the problems of long-term space exploration are going further than films have gone before. Send astronauts into hibernation to save scarce resources? Link them to an artificially intelligent entity that can act as a friend and sounding board? Screenwriters have tried these things, and the results are probably best preserved in fiction.

But such gambits could provide real solutions to getting humans to Mars. And it’s gambles that this whimsically intriguing, sometimes wide-eyed documentary, directed by Ido Mizrahy, takes seriously.

“Soft, gentle people are completely inscrutable to engineers,” says Jack Stuster, an anthropologist who asked residents of the International Space Station to keep diaries. One of the key interviewees is Al Holland, a psychologist who has created a unit at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration to provide support to astronauts. He discusses his 2010 experience advising on the Chilean mining disaster, which had striking parallels to the isolation of life in space.

We hear about it too Kayla Barron, a submarine warfare officer who decided to go into space, and her husband, who stayed behind; as a military couple they were used to living apart, but this presented another challenge. And we see snippets of personal video chats that astronaut Cady Coleman had with her husband and son on Earth, through a system that sometimes didn’t work. “It’s hard for me to really realize how hard it was for a little kid to have to be so patient,” she recalls in the documentary.

On Mars missions, distance will make comparable real-time communication impossible, meaning astronauts won’t even have such intermittent contact. “Space: The Longest Goodbye” leaves open the question of whether someone could make it to the red planet with their sanity intact.

Space: the longest goodbye
Not judged. Running time: 1 hour 27 minutes. In theaters and available to rent or buy most major platforms.

South-east London has temporarily lost one of its most famous residents: a giant taxidermy walrus that has been on display for more than a century.

For most of the past 120 years, the walrus has sat in the middle of the Natural History Gallery of the Horniman Museum and Gardens. The museum displays the collection of Frederick Horniman, a wealthy tea merchant who lived in Victorian England.

The gallery, which houses other taxidermied animals, skeletons and insects in addition to the walrus, will close while the museum redevelops the space, with a focus on “ecological sustainability and a commitment to combating the climate crisis,” according to the museum’s website. . (The rest of the museum, which also houses a large collection of musical instruments and an aquarium, remains open.)

When the gallery reopens in 2026, visitors will be able to see the walrus in the same place they left it — prominently in the center of the room atop a fake iceberg, said Louis Buckley, a senior curator at the museum. The collection will include more context about how Mr. Horniman came to own the walrus. The museum’s website notes that Mr. Horniman’s wealth “was dependent on the exploitation of people living in the British Empire.”

“It is in many ways an expression of the British Empire and its relationship with the colonies and Canada in particular,” Mr Buckley said.

During his lifetime, Mr. Horniman amassed a collection of ethnographic objects, natural history specimens and musical instruments. When his collection became too large to fit in his house, he commissioned architects to build a museum, which opened in 1901.

In the renovated gallery, the walrus will “encapsulate a lot of different themes that we explore,” Buckley said. As well as a closer look at how Mr Horniman’s objects came to be in the museum, climate change and humans’ relationship to nature will also be explored.

The walrus is the unmistakable showstopper of the collection. It is the only item in the gallery that is not in a display case.

However, looking at it can make a visitor feel a little strange, as if something is not right.

“People describe it as a bit too big,” Mr Buckley said.

Living walruses have skin folds and wrinkles. Not the one in the museum, although the traces of where those skin folds would be are visible. The walrus, Mr. Buckley said, “is completely stuffed, a lot bigger than it would have been in life.”

Whoever originally stuffed the animal has probably never seen a walrus, Mr Buckley said. He added: “After all, they are difficult animals to observe up close.”

Mr. Horniman purchased the walrus at an exhibition in London around 1886. The walrus itself likely comes from the Hudson Bay area of ​​Canada, Mr. Buckley said, although it is unknown who hunted and killed it.

The prevailing atmosphere in the museum on Sunday was one of enthusiasm and walrus appreciation. Against the sounds of squeaking – and sometimes crying – children on a rare sunny day in March, several visitors said they had made a pilgrimage that day specifically to say goodbye.

“We came to greet the walrus,” said Julia King, one of the visitors. It was her first time seeing the walrus in real life. “He’s great,” she said.

Mrs. King said she enjoyed looking at the absurd things in life, and the walrus lived up to her expectations.

“He’s clearly the star of south-east London,” said Sian Thomas, another visitor, who said she found the overstuffed animal important as a way of understanding how we see the world differently to people in Victorian times, and how our scientific understanding has changed. evolved.

As visitors walked past the walrus on Sunday, many of them took photos, explained the animal to their children and marveled at its size. The walrus’s total weight is unknown, but it will take at least five people to move it, Mr Buckley said.

“I didn’t expect it to be so big,” said Kasia Kaniuka, a Londoner who visited the museum with her boyfriend after hearing the gallery was closing. “It’s quite overwhelming.”

For Josh Alford, the gallery’s closure was also the main reason for visiting on Sunday. He came to see the walrus from East London. “I expected it to be about the size of a seal,” Mr Alford said. “That looks like a horse, to be honest.” (He quickly added that the animal looked “cute enough to cuddle.”)

Some said they were sad to see the walrus go away for a while, and many of them called it a family favorite. Others, who had no idea of ​​the impending closure, were pleased with their coincidental timing.

“I’m devastated,” said Kara Tritton, who grew up in the area and still lives there. She said she remembers seeing the walrus for the first time as a child and the impression it made on her. Through the museum, she said she also felt connected to her great-grandparents, who were local residents and had most likely also visited the walrus.

“I absolutely had to come today,” she said. ‘I’ll miss him. Two years will be a long time.”

No tissues

Dear Diary:

I stayed with a friend in Murray Hill while back in New York for a 2019 visit. I came with an old boyfriend. He was a drummer and I went with him to a gig in Brooklyn.

We talked openly, honestly, and deeply on the subway ride back, acknowledging the love that still connected us.

I kissed him goodbye at Grand Central and started walking. I cried loudly. He had been the love of my life and I knew this might be the last time I ever saw him.

My face was soaked and I had no tissues. Hoping to get some napkins, I stopped at a restaurant on Lexington Avenue that I had frequented when I lived in the city.

There was a long line for tables and takeout. I told the people waiting that I wasn't going too far. I just needed some napkins.

“Hey, let her through,” a man in line shouted. “She is crying.”

The crowd gave way and I stepped up to the counter. The manager recognized me as a regular customer.

He handed me a packet of napkins.

“Some nights are tough,” he said. “It will be better.”

– Sandra Eisenberg

Back in town

Dear Diary:

I landed at La Guardia Airport, excited to be greeted by the familiar skyline. I had been away for a year. It felt like a lifetime, but the rhythm of the city quickly came back to me.

When the car I was in got stuck in traffic on 31st Street in Queens, I decided to call.

“L & M Deli,” a familiar voice replied.

“Two Italians, hot, add banana peppers,” I said. “Please go.”

There was a pause.

“It's you!” said the familiar voice.

I knew I was home.

“That's true,” I said. “See you soon.”

– Alisha Bouzaher

Weststraat 23

Dear Diary:

I was 22 and had just moved to Manhattan. I lived alone on 24th Street. Every day I walked along the north side of 23rd Street from Ninth Avenue to the Eighth Avenue subway station, where I took the train to work.

I soon noticed a handsome young man who regularly passed me as he walked in the opposite direction on 23rd Street.

Eventually we started smiling and nodding at each other as we walked by. This happened every weekday for months: passing, smiling and nodding. We never spoke, but I started to look forward to seeing him again.

Then I moved to 21st Street, and I switched to the south side of 23rd Street when I walked to the subway. I haven't seen the handsome young man for a while.

But one day he saw me and ran across the street. He asked for my phone number, but I was hesitant to give it to him. A few days later he ran across the street again.

“Are we just going to keep meeting like this but never talk?” he asked.

We agreed to meet at a coffee shop after work. When we met, I discovered that we shared many interests and that he had a number of talents.

He wore a large knitted hat and a six-foot scarf that he had knitted himself. He knew Japanese archery, learned flamenco guitar and had gone to school to study photography, which I loved. We were both interested in poetry and writing.

That's how our relationship started. We lived together, got married, had a child and divorced. Unfortunately he has now passed away. But our beautiful daughter is now 48.

– Patricia Barconey

Photo bomber

Dear Diary:

It was the winter of 1981 or 1982. My friend Maya and I were modeling for a friend who wanted to photograph us on the subway for a project she was working on.

We got into number 6 at Astor Place and headed into town. At 23rd Street, comedian Andy Kaufman boarded the train and sat on the other side of the car.

Apparently when he noticed my friend was taking pictures, he stood up, walked into the picture, sat back down and looked straight over the car. As the train approached the next stop, 28th Street, my friend took the photo.

The train stopped, the doors opened and Andy Kaufman stood up without a word and walked onto the platform.

– Lowell Downey

At the corner

Dear Diary:

When I reached the corner of 59th Street and First Avenue, a man and a woman were standing there talking. They disagreed on whether to cross the street.

The man argued that no cars were coming and the street was empty, so they should go.

That would be jaywalking, the woman replied in shock.

While she was talking, another man passed by.

“Here we just call it crossing the street,” he said.

– Karen Raffensperger

Read all recent entries and our submission guidelines. Reach us by email diary@nytimes.com or follow @NYTMetro on Twitter.

Illustrations by Agnes Lee

Last summer, Lincoln Center said goodbye to the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra, a fixture on the city's cultural scene since 1973, saying it was time to reimagine the ensemble for a modern and more inclusive era.

On Monday, the center gave a preview of its plans. Although the ensemble remains the same in size and composition, it now has a new name, a new music director and a program aimed at attracting a more diverse audience to classical music.

The Festival Orchestra of Lincoln Center, as the ensemble is now known, will convene for its inaugural season in July under the baton of emerging conductor Jonathon Heyward as part of the center's Summer for the City festival.

Heyward said in an interview that he wanted to maintain the orchestra's innovative spirit.

“It's not like I'm completely reinventing the wheel,” he said. “We are simply continuing in a way that is very much in line with a previous legacy of the orchestra.”

This summer's line-up includes a world premiere by composer Hannah Kendall; the North American premiere of Huang Ruo's “City of Floating Sounds”; and classics by Beethoven, Haydn and, yes, even a little Mozart.

There will also be offerings aimed at attracting new people to Lincoln Center, including a “Symphony of Choice” concert in which audience members can curate the program by voting, as well as an augmented reality exhibit on mental health and Schumann, who suffered from depression.

The changes reflect the recent effort under Henry Timms, president and CEO of Lincoln Center, to appeal to a younger and also more diverse audience. These efforts have led to some broader complaints from audience members and music critics, who say the center isn't doing enough to promote classical music – once a regular feature of the summer season and festivals, but significantly reduced in recent years.

The Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra was loved by many classical fans, but its future became hazy during the pandemic. The Mostly Mozart Festival and several other mentioned festivals at Lincoln Center had their final seasons in 2019, before the pandemic. They were replaced in 2022 by Summer for the City, featuring a wider variety of genres including pop music, social dance and comedy.

The orchestra's music director, Louis Langrée, who helped cement the ensemble's reputation as an acclaimed interpreter of Mozart's music and classical repertoire, left last year after more than two decades at the helm.

Last year, the center announced his successor: Heyward, 31, the first black music director of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra.

There are some signs that the ensemble's audience is starting to change: Last summer, about 59 percent of attendees at Mostly Mozart concerts had never previously reserved a ticket to a Lincoln Center performance. Tickets for the festival orchestra's concerts this summer, which will take place in the newly renovated David Geffen Hall, are offered on a choose-what-you-pay basis, starting at $5.

Shanta Thake, Lincoln Center's artistic director, said in an interview that the center aimed to “really open this up to large parts of New York City that previously couldn't come to concerts.”

“We want to make sure our audiences feel as involved in this conversation as these composers do,” she added.

Much of the upcoming season will be focused on forging new connections with audiences.

For Huang's 'City of Floating Sounds', audience members can use an app to hear music samples in the city before attending the live performance.

The exhibition on mental health and Schumann is billed as an immersive experience that explores the composer's struggles and his admiration for Bach's music. Heyward said he was keen to show “how the power of music can really just be a vehicle through very dark and difficult times.”

'Symphony of Choice', which opens the season on July 20, invites spectators to put together a concert by voting on different symphonic fragments. Heyward said he had been intrigued by the idea for years.

“I've always been so fascinated by how we can make the audience feel like there's a sense of ownership in the evening – that they've come to help create what's being performed,” he said.

Mozart will be seen in early August during two concerts, including the overture to his opera 'Le Nozze di Figaro', the 'Haffner' symphony and other works. Heyward said the ensemble would maintain its relationship with the composer.

“Mozart will always be a big part of the orchestra and the identity of the orchestra,” he said. “That cannot be taken away.”

The New York Police Department robot sat motionless like a sad Wall-E on Friday morning, collecting dust in an empty storefront in New York City's busiest subway station.

The cameras no longer scanned the belt hangers walking through Times Square. Subway riders no longer pressed the help button, if they ever did.

New York City has retired the robot, known as the Knightscope K5, from its Times Square station. Police were forced to assign officers to escort the robot, which is 6 feet tall and weighs 400 pounds. It couldn't use the stairs. Some straphangers wanted to abuse it.

“The K5 Knightscope has completed its pilot in the New York City subway system,” a department spokesperson said in an email.

On Friday, the white device in the paint scheme of the NYPD stood amid a mountain of cardboard boxes, separated from the traveling masses by a glass window. People passing by said they were often baffled by the robot.

“I thought it was a toy,” said Derek Dennis, 56, a signal engineer.

It was an ignominious end for an experiment that Mayor Eric Adams, a self-described tech geek, hoped would help bring safety and order to the subway at a time when crime remained a pressing concern for many New Yorkers.

The robot was supposed to be an extra pair of eyes in a system where passenger numbers remain well below pre-pandemic levels. The presence of the squats was supposed to deter crime, and the communication skills would provide a way for straphangers in need to seek help.

“Ultimately this will be part of the fabric of our metro system,” Mr Adams said Septemberas he welcomed the robot's arrival in Times Square, part of a months-long pilot project that he said cost the city just $9 an hour.

“This is below the minimum wage,” Mr Adams said. “No toilet breaks. No meal breaks. This is a good investment.”

But on Friday, Jose Natera, 49, a construction worker, said he would normally see two police officers standing awkwardly next to the robot under Seventh Avenue.

“Who took care of whom,” he asked. “The robot for the police, or the police for the robot?”

Kelvin Caines, a security guard, said he never saw the robot making the rounds. Instead, it was plugged into a charging station and people posed for selfies next to it.

The officers “never let it do anything,” he said. “At least they could walk down the hall with it.”

The city borrowed the robot from Knightscope, a Mountain View, California-based company. When the mayor first announced it had come to New York last April, his office said the city had signed a seven-month contract with the company, including three months to get the device ready for use and four months to to test, all for the cost of $12,250. The robot started its patrol in September.

The Adams administration said in a statement Friday that it was “continually exploring innovative technologies” and was reviewing options for the robot's “next deployment.”

The mayor had said the robot would not use facial recognition technology, but its arrival immediately raised concerns among civil libertarians, who warned that the robot was the harbinger of an increasingly dystopian surveillance society and would further infringe on the privacy of New Yorkers.

Last year the Legal Aid Society called for an investigation into police use of surveillance technology, arguing it was inconsistent a city law that makes it public how new technology is used and how data is protected.

On Thursday, Shane Ferro, a staff attorney with the group's Digital Forensics Unit, said the Adams administration was “distracted by false claims about high-tech solutions to age-old problems.”

The mayor has long been interested in new, if not bizarre, technologies. As Brooklyn borough president, he touted a lasso-like device called BolaWrap, which was designed to incapacitate emotionally unstable people. His friend Frank Carone had invested in the company. Mr. Carone would serve as Mr. Adams' chief of staff at City Hall.

Mr Adams has also advocated the city's use of a robot dog – the Digidog – to assist emergency responders in situations that pose a risk of bodily harm.

The arrival of the K5 in New York City was announced with not one, but two media events. His at least temporary retirement was accompanied by barely a peep.

Earlier this week, Edward Caban, the police commissioner, gave his State of the Department address at Cipriani in Manhattan, where a huge screen showed a video montage of all the technological gadgets and machines officers have used over the past year.

There were dramatic images of drones, the Digidog and a gun that can attach electronic trackers to fleeing cars.

There was no mention of the K5.

A spokeswoman for Knightscope had no immediate comment. The company's stock traded at 59 cents per share on Thursday, compared to $16.29 at its initial public offering on January 28, 2022.

With major crimes down and the mayor imposing budget cuts on municipal agencies, Albert Fox Cahn, executive director of the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project, a privacy and civil rights group, says people should question spending on gadgets.

“I've described it as a garbage can on wheels, but it looks like the wheels aren't even working right now,” Mr Cahn said.

Thursday night, as rush-hour crowds poured through the Times Square station, the robot sat quietly in its brightly lit exile. Two police officers standing near the turnstiles said that although they were not regularly assigned to the station, they did not recall ever seeing the robot on beat.

One of the officers said he was relieved the robot was mothballed. He didn't want to be responsible for it.

Maria Kramer And Nate Schweber reporting contributed.