It’s easy to take for granted the detailed, almost real-time knowledge of Mars that we have at our fingertips. After all, in the not-too-distant past, Mars was largely mysterious. All we had were ground-based images of the planet. Now? Now we have daily weather reports and images of dust storms. Martian dust storms are one
We already know what a wondrous material graphene can be – filtering water, dyeing hair, super-strengthening substances – but now scientists have figured out a way to produce it much more cheaply: with the help of bacteria. When mixed with oxidised graphite, which is relatively easy to produce, the bacterium Shewanella oneidensis removes most of the oxygen
WASHINGTON — NASA’s leadership offered few details July 11 about the sudden reassignment of two top officials in its human spaceflight program the day before, a move that drew criticism from leading House members. In a memo late July 10, NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine announced he was reassigning Bill Gerstenmaier, NASA associate administrator for human
Chandrayaan-2, India’s second lunar exploration mission, is ready for its prime time and is less than two days away from its launch. The Chandrayaan-2 mission will explore the Moon’s South Polar Region. The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) mission is being viewed as a demonstration of deep space exploration technologies and to stimulate the advancement
WASHINGTON — The initial prototype of SpaceX’s next-generation reusable launch vehicle will make its first, albeit low-altitude, test flight early next week, Elon Musk announced July 12. In a series of late-night tweets, Musk, the founder and chief executive of SpaceX, said the “Starhopper” vehicle SpaceX is assembling at its test site near Brownsville, Texas,
Something strange is happening 130 milling light-years away in spiral galaxy NGC 3147: there’s a thin disc of material surrounding its small and ‘starving’ black hole that’s a complete surprise to astronomers. Discs like the one spotted in NGC 3147 – made up of gas, dust and other debris pulled into the black hole’s orbit
WASHINGTON — Airbus and the French Space Agency CNES have agreed to cofinance a constellation of four Earth observation satellites while leaving the door open for Airbus to finance additional satellites with other partners. The four satellites, referred to as the CO3D system, are expected to launch in 2022 aboard a Vega C rocket, with
Feasts are rare on the barren landscape of the ocean depths. So researchers couldn’t believe their luck when they recently stumbled on a feeding frenzy of deep-sea sharks chowing down on a fallen swordfish off the US coast. But they never imagined they would also capture footage of one of those sharks becoming the prey
In an incredible first, scientists have captured the world’s first actual photo of quantum entanglement – a phenomenon so strange Einstein famously described it as ‘spooky action at a distance’. The image was captured by physicists at the University of Glasgow in Scotland, and it’s so breathtaking we can’t stop staring. It might not look like
If you listen to any number of love songs, dating “experts”, or plunge head first into a romance novel, you’re likely to think it’s in our destiny to find that special someone – your soul-mate. But how do you know if you’ve found “the one”? Will the birds sing? Will you see fireworks or a
SpaceX is about to perform its most ambitious test-launch yet of a shiny Mars rocket prototype in south Texas. Workers have descended upon the developing coastal launch site over the past 8 months to build and prepare the stout, three-legged prototype for testing. It’s built out of stainless steel, has the shape of a badminton
How can you know that any animal, other human beings, or anything that seems conscious, isn’t just faking it? Does it enjoy an internal subjective experience, complete with sensations and emotions like hunger, joy, or sadness? After all, the only consciousness you can know with certainty is your own. Everything else is inference. The nature
FILE PHOTO: A model of Tiangong 2 space laboratory by China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation is displayed at China Beijing International High-tech Expo in Beijing, China June 8, 2017. REUTERS/Jason Lee BEIJING (Reuters) – China’s manned space lab Tiangong-2 has finished experiments and will re-enter Earth’s atmosphere on July 19, authorities said on Saturday.
SAN FRANCISCO — NASA awarded a $73.7 million contract to Made In Space to additively manufacture ten-meter beams onboard Archinaut One, a small satellite scheduled to launch in 2022. “As manufacturing progresses, each beam will unfurl two solar arrays that generate as much as five times more power than traditional solar panels on spacecraft of
When a rocket blasts off from an island in the Bay of Bengal in the coming days, it will carry not only a moon rover but a nation’s growing ambitions in space. On Monday, India will embark on its most complex space odyssey to date with the launch of its second lunar mission. Chandrayaan-2, whose
WASHINGTON — NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine said he reassigned the agency’s human spaceflight head, Bill Gerstenmaier, because time was limited to address cost and schedule issues with the agency’s key exploration programs and still meet a 2024 deadline for returning humans to the moon. In an interview with reporters from SpaceNews and The Washington Post
In a post-apocalyptic future, what might happen to life if humans left the scene? After all, humans are very likely to disappear long before the sun expands into a red giant and exterminates all living things from the Earth. Assuming that we don’t extinguish all other life as we disappear (an unlikely feat in spite
People just keep on dying, which means more and more room is needed for those who want to be buried – and one expert has come up with an environmentally friendly solution to the issue of graveyard overcrowding. UK public health consultant John Ashton is proposing green ‘burial corridors’ along transport links – roads, railways
HELSINKI — China appears set to deorbit its Tiangong-2 space lab in the near future, according to a social media release from the China Manned Space Engineering Office (CMSEO).CMSEO announced a quiz competition (Chinese) Friday through its WeChat social media platform account, testing knowledge of launch times and mission details, to mark the ‘return of
Behold, the Earth! See live views of Earth from the International Space Station coming to you by NASA’s High Definition Earth Viewing (HDEV) experiment. While the experiment is operational, views will typically sequence through the different cameras. If you are seeing a black image, the Space Station is on the night side of the Earth.
The diversity of life here on Earth is constantly in flux, but this universal pattern of evolution and extinction is not easily explained. Some scientists have reasoned that mass extinction events occur on our planet every 26 to 30 million years and that biodiversity changes every 62 million years. But the marine fossil record suggests
On 31 January 1971, the Apollo 14 mission launched from Earth and spent nine days in space. Along with the necessary space gear, scientific equipment, and two golf balls, the Kitty Hawk command module was also housing 500 seeds. You might be surprised to know that those seeds live on today, despite enduring space radiation, and
The life of an asteroid is lonely. The rocks spend eons drifting through the cold vacuum of space. But on Wednesday, the asteroid Ryugu welcomed a special visitor: Japan’s Hayabusa-2 probe successfully landed on the asteroid’s surface at 21:06 ET (01:06 UTC on Thursday). The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) launched Hayabusa-2 into space in
WASHINGTON — After years of delays, PlanetiQ says its constellation of commercial weather satellites will be ready to start launching in January thanks to $18.7 million in new capital. A redesign that right-sized its satellites while increasing the overall constellation number from 12 to 20 helped make the system more affordable, PlanetiQ Founder and Chairman
India’s heavy-lift rocket Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle – Mark III (GSLV Mk III), nicknamed as ‘Bahubali’, and its passenger Chandrayaan-2 were being readied up for their historic flight to the Moon on July 15, said space agency officials. “Preparations are going at a hectic pace at the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota for the
A weird-looking foot preserved in 99 million-year-old Burmese amber has revealed a new species of ancient bird with one insanely long middle toe. The newly-named Elektorornis chenguangi is a small bird distinct from all others, either extinct or living – simply because of its hindlimb. The third digit on its foot, researchers say, is twice
In the event of a zombie apocalypse, it’s imperative that you have a plan. If you’re influenced by the movies, then you might be inclined to take your chances and head for the nearest pub or shopping mall in order to outwit a growing horde of bloodthirsty zombies. Your average shopping mall is equipped with all
A team of Russian and Norwegian scientists just made a grim, timely discovery. Just one week after a nuclear-powered Russian submarine caught fire, killing 14 sailors, researchers sent a remote submarine to collect samples around the sunken wreckage of another nuclear sub, which caught fire in 1989 leading to the deaths of 42 crew members.
Gen. Mark Milley said he fully supports the establishment of a Space Force and rejects the criticism that the new branch is just an “added layer of bureaucracy.” WASHINGTON — In his confirmation hearing as President Trump’s pick to be the next chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Army Gen. Mark Milley said he
More often than not, today’s academic writing is full of dry and serious jargon-heavy language. So when you find a paper that breaks all the rules and makes you laugh, you’ll want to shout it from the top of a mountain. That’s essentially what University of Western Australia obstetrics and microbiology researcher Lisa Stinson did
India is getting ready to launch its first-ever lunar lander on Sunday 14 July. As part of the Chandrayaan-2 mission, the lander will be riding on top of the country’s most powerful rocket, the Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle Mark III. The plan is to both launch an orbiter module and a 56-pound (25 kilogram) mobile
Congratulations Mauna Loa, on the island of Hawaii: you are once more the biggest shield volcano on the planet, without even having done anything. New research suggests the previous record holder, Tamu Massif in the northwest Pacific Ocean, should be disqualified on a technicality. It all comes down to what you count as a single shield
SAO PAULO (Reuters) – Brazilian cotton producers in the state of Mato Grosso on Thursday sued Bayer AG (BAYGn.DE), seeking to cancel the chemical company’s patent protection for its Bollgard II RR Flex genetically modified cotton seed, according to a statement sent to Reuters. Logo of Bayer AG is pictured at the annual results news
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — The engineers who developed the computers that enabled the Apollo 11 lunar landing had little doubt the mission could be a success, and half a century later have advice for how NASA should return to the moon. In the 1960s, the MIT Instrumentation Laboratory had a NASA contract to develop the Apollo
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Earth’s magnetic field protects and makes our planet habitable by stopping harmful high-energy particles from space, including from the Sun. The source of this magnetic field is the core at the centre of our planet. But the core is very difficult to study, partly because it starts at a depth of about 2,900 kilometres (1,800
It’s been half a century since the magnificent Apollo 11 Moon landing, yet many people still don’t believe it actually happened. Conspiracy theories about the event dating back to the 1970s are in fact more popular than ever. A common theory is that film director Stanley Kubrick helped NASA fake the historic footage of its
Thanks to gravitational wave astronomy, we are getting a better understanding of what happens when black holes collide. But the closely orbiting black holes only generate ripples in space-time strong enough to be detected from just before they smash. What happens before then? We can only extrapolate. But a new discovery could change all that.
The world is about to undergo a drastic transformation that will see cities around the globe inherit the disparate climates of places hundreds of miles away, new research shows. By 2050, scientists say over three-quarters of the world’s cities will have had their climate systems rearranged as part of this rapid metamorphosis. Most concerning of
ORLANDO, Fla. (Reuters) – As NASA scrambles to meet U.S. President Donald Trump’s mandate to return humans to the moon by 2024, two longtime heads of NASA’s human exploration wing were demoted Wednesday in a slew of administrative shakeups, officials said in an internal memo. FILE PHOTO: Bill Gerstenmaier, Associate Administrator, NASA’s Human Exploration and
WASHINGTON — The fifteenth launch of a European Vega rocket ended in failure July 10, resulting in the loss of an imaging satellite for the United Arab Emirates. The Vega rocket, built by Italian manufacturer Avio, lifted off at 9:53 p.m. Eastern from Europe’s spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana on the northern coast of South
Richard Branson’s Virgin Orbit on Wednesday released a rocket from the wing of a modified Boeing 747 jetliner in mid-air in a key test of its high-altitude launch system for satellites, the company said. In the penultimate mission before Virgin Orbit offers commercial satellite launch services, the 70-foot (21.34 m) LauncherOne rocket cleanly separated from
A skull fragment found in Greece has inspired a startling hypothesis about when our species first arrived in Europe and immediately generated excitement and skepticism among experts who study how and when Homo sapiens dispersed from Africa. Researchers say the fossilized skull, found in the late 1970s in a cave in southeast Greece and stored
SEATTLE (Reuters) – Richard Branson’s Virgin Orbit on Wednesday released a rocket from the wing of a modified Boeing 747 jetliner in mid-air in a key test of its high-altitude launch system for satellites, the company said. Virgin Orbit’s chief engineer Kevin Sagis kisses the tip of a test rocket underneath the wing of a
WASHINGTON — Virgin Orbit performed a key test of its LauncherOne air launch system July 10, dropping an inert vehicle from its carrier aircraft in one of the last milestones before the vehicle’s first orbital launch attempt. Virgin Orbit’s Boeing 747 aircraft took off from the Mojave Air and Space Port in California at 11:43
In western Antarctica, a glacier the size of Florida is losing ice faster than ever before. Sections of the Thwaites Glacier are retreating by up to 2,625 feet (800 metres) per year, contributing to 4 percent of sea-level rise worldwide. That ice loss is part of a broader trend: The entire Antarctic ice sheet is melting
A compact device that uses waste heat shed by solar cells to purify water could one day change the lives of hundreds of millions of people around the globe. The new spin on old technology from King Abdullah University of Science and Technology in Saudi Arabia promises to ease increasing pressures on the nexus point
SEATTLE (Reuters) – Richard Branson’s Virgin Orbit on Wednesday plans to release a rocket from the wing of a modified Boeing 747 jetliner in mid-air in a key test of its high-altitude launch system for satellites, a person familiar with the matter told Reuters. FILE PHOTO: Sir Richard Branson attends the “Venezuela Aid Live” concert
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