SCIENCE - Page 17

Blue Origin, the aerospace company founded by billionaire Jeff Bezos, expects to break up a corporate partnership formed years ago to build a commercial space station, reassigning staff, and changing leadership as it adapts to more urgent priorities. The changes come amid a renewed push by companies to win contracts to replace the International Space Station, which is due to retire in 2030. The move is the latest sign of the challenges facing industry plans to develop private replacements for

The Nobel Assembly on Monday awarded the 2023 Nobel Prize in Medicine to Hungarian-American biochemist Katalin Karik? and immunologist Drew Weissman for their pioneering work on mRNA vaccines. Their research has been instrumental in the fight against COVID-19, enabling the development of vaccines within months of the virus striking the world. The scientists figured out how to deliver gene-editing mRNA to the target cells inside a protective nanoparticle and how to trigger a robust immune response to evade the host’s

Scientists working with NASA’s Perseverance rover have made a significant discovery during its exploration of Mars’ Jezero Crater. On the mission’s 899th Martian day or sol, the rover captured the lower portion of a Martian dust devil moving along the crater’s western rim. The fascinating video, composed of 21 frames taken four seconds apart and sped up 20 times, was captured by one of the rover’s navigation cameras, Navcams. It’s the first time any of the rover’s sensors have recorded

Austria, France, Germany, Poland, and Switzerland announced their hottest September on Friday. The unseasonable warmth in Europe comes in a year expected to be the warmest in human history as climate change accelerates. The European countries sweltered through a heat wave from June through August, when temperatures were often above 104 degrees Fahrenheit. That made it the hottest summer on record in Europe, surpassing the previous record set in 2016. The scorching weather also brought widespread drought, which slashed crop

A world-class team of astronomers has begun the four-year process of fabricating and polishing its seventh and final primary mirror, bringing the Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT) closer to completion. When finished, GMT will be the world’s largest optical telescope, with a light-collecting surface nearly three times larger than any other telescope, allowing researchers to peer deeper into space and capture more detail than ever. Scientists are eager to investigate a vast array of new mysteries with the telescope, including searching

After almost 375 years, geoscientists have discovered a continent hiding in plain sight. Zealandia, also known as Te Riu-a-Maui in the Maori language, is approximately 1.89 million square miles and was once part of a supercontinent called Gondwana that included Western Antarctica and Eastern Australia over 500 million years ago. However, around 105 million years ago, Zealandia began to “pull away” from Gondwana for reasons that geologists are still trying to understand. Most of the continental fragment is now underwater,

The International Space Station is hailed as one of the most complex engineering, scientific, and collaborative human achievements in modern history. It was launched 20 years ago by two old Cold War rivals and has since been the center of life for six astronauts. Now, the station is nearing the end of its lifespan and will eventually crash back to Earth, landing in the remote Pacific Ocean away from populated areas. NASA is now asking US companies to design a

The sea ice that packs the ocean around Antarctica has hit extremely record low levels this winter, adding to scientists’ fears that the impact of climate change at the southern pole is ramping up. Scientists at the U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) said on Monday that the ice extent has been lower than ever recorded this winter — the middle of the Antarctic season. The team said that’s an area just a bit bigger than Texas and

The Sahara desert is known for its undulating dunes and unforgiving Sun, but it wasn’t always that way. Scientists believe it was once green and wet. But what caused it to turn from a verdant savannah to a dry, sandy wasteland? Scientists have been trying to answer this question for a while, but now, a new study has unveiled insights into the periodic greening of the Sahara. The research, published in Nature Communications, reveals that the Sahara’s climatic pendulum swings

The most significant sample ever collected from an asteroid in space, and the first for NASA, made a difficult but successful landing in the Utah desert Sunday after a fiery final descent through Earth’s atmosphere. The OSIRIS-REx sample return capsule, containing 4.5 billion-year-old asteroid debris, landed at 8:52 a.m. local time at the military’s Utah Test and Training Range, three minutes ahead of schedule. Scientists had watched anxiously as the brown-and-white capsule jettisoned from the spacecraft early Sunday morning. It