When Associated Press journalist and Marine Corps veteran James LaPorta agreed to advise the NBC-TV show “This Is Us” about depicting the military authentically, he found more than he'd bargained for.

Thanks to Cassidy for sending us today’s Picture of the Day from Rocky Mount!

In this image from video made available by NASA, astronauts Doug Hurley, left, and Bob Behnken prepare for undocking from the International Space Station, aboard the SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule on Saturday, Aug. 1, 2020. Space station commander Chris Cassidy rang the ship's bell as Dragon pulled away, 267 miles (430 kilometers) above Johannesburg, South Africa. The astronauts' homecoming will cap a mission that ended a prolonged launch drought in the U.S., which has relied on Russian rockets to ferry astronauts to the space station since the end of the shuttle era. The flag which also flew on the first shuttle flight in 1981 became a prize for the company that launched astronauts first. The next SpaceX crew flight is targeted for the end of September.

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. A spacewalking astronaut added to the pieces of junk orbiting the Earth on Friday, losing a small mirror as soon as he stepped out of the International Space Station for battery work. Commander Chris Cassidy said the mirror floated away at about a foot per second. Spacewalking astronauts wear a wrist mirror on each sleeve to get better views while working. Cassidy and Bob Behnken, who followed him out without mishap, were conducting the first of at least four spacewalks to replace the last bunch of old station batteries. ___The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institutes Department of Science Education.

Cassidy Stay, the lone survivor of a massacre that claimed the lives of her whole family, took the stand on Tuesday to testify against her uncle, Ronald Haskell. Haskell is accused of killing his ex-wife's sister, Katie Stay, her husband, Stephen Stay, and four of their children in Spring, Texas, 2014. Cassidy, then just 15, was shot in the head but managed to survive by playing dead. He then allegedly killed Stephen before lining up the children and going down the line, shooting them one by one. "It was just 'boom, boom, boom, boom' all in a row," said Cassidy.