On Thursday, aerospace company Boeing is set to conduct a critical test flight of its new passenger spacecraft, the CST-100 Starliner — a mission that will launch the gumdrop-shaped capsule to the International Space Station without any people on board. It’s a flight that Boeing desperately needs to go well after a long journey to … Read more
NASA astronaut Butch Wilmore speaks with reporters Wednesday at the Kennedy Space Center. Credit: NASA / Joel Kowsky The NASA astronauts training for the first crew missions on Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft will be closely watching each step of the capsule’s unpiloted test flight to the International Space Station, set for blastoff Thursday from Cape Canaveral … Read more
Like many octopuses, the California two-spot octopus (Octopus bimaculoides) declines and dies shortly after breeding. Credit: Tom Kleindinst, Marine Biological Laboratory Changes in cholesterol production lead to a tragic octopus death spiral. New research finds remarkable parallels in steroid hormone biology across cephalopods, mice, and humans that can have dire consequences when disrupted. Despite their … Read more
An artist’s rendering shows how a cluster of galaxies (lensing cluster) acts as a gravitational lens that magnifies and extends the light from a background galaxy. This results in a projected image (marked in the rectangle panel) that is brighter and easier to detect with a telescope. This allowed astronomers to use Keck Observatory’s KCWI … Read more
Dr Christian Sonnendecker and his team discovered an enzyme that breaks down PET plastic at record speed. Credit: Leipzig University / Swen Reichhold Plastic bottles, punnets, wrap—lightweight packaging made of PET plastic becomes a problem if it is not recycled. Scientists at Leipzig University have now discovered a highly efficient enzyme that degrades PET in … Read more
A new record-breaking set of images of the sun captured by the Solar Orbiter probe during its close pass of the star in March has been released, revealing a plethora of never-before-seen details, including a curious geyser of gas scientists have nicknamed the “solar hedgehog.” During the passwhich took Solar Orbiter It was the first … Read more
Since the dawn of astronomy, humans have been obsessed with the question as to whether there is life elsewhere in the universe. Indeed, much of the scientific focus on Mars is devoted to answering this question, as there are hints that the red planet may have had microbial life in its youth. But you don’t … Read more
NASA’s Voyager 1 spacecraft, shown in this illustration, has been exploring our solar system since 1977, along with its twin, Voyager 2. Credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech While the Voyager 1 spacecraft continues to return science data and otherwise operate as normal, the mission team is searching for the source of a system data issue. The … Read more
A close-up of the tooth from a’birds-eye’ viewpoint. Credit: Fabrice Demeter (University of Copenhagen / CNRS Paris) Denisovans, a sister species of modern humans, inhabited Laos from 164,000 to 131,000 years ago with important implications for populations out of Africa and Australia. What connects a finger bone and some fossil teeth discovered in a cave … Read more
Live coverage of the countdown and launch of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The Starlink 4-18 mission launched SpaceX’s next batch of 53 Starlink broadband satellites. Follow us on Twitter.. SFN Live ” alt=””/> . SpaceX’s third Starlink satellite deployment mission in five days … Read more
