Category: Science

BEIJING (Reuters): China’s Chang’e-5 lunar vehicle has finished collecting samples of lunar rocks and soil more than a day ahead of schedule in the first lunar sample retrieval mission since the 1970s, the country’s space agency said on Thursday. The robotic vehicle has stored the samples and will now dock with the orbiting Chang’e-5 for… Continue reading China completes lunar sample collection ahead of schedule

(AP): As an extreme year for hurricanes, wildfires and heatwaves come to an end, the head of the United Nations challenged world leaders to make 2021 the year that humanity ends its “war on nature” and commits to a future free of planet-warming carbon pollution. With new reports highlighting 2020’s record-breaking weather and growing fossil… Continue reading UN calls on humanity to end ‘war on nature,’ go carbon-free

TOKYO (AP): A Japanese spacecraft is nearing Earth after a yearlong journey home from a distant asteroid with soil samples and data that could provide clues to the origins of the solar system, a space agency official said Friday. The Hayabusa2 spacecraft left the asteroid Ryugu, about 300 million kilometers (180 million miles) from Earth,… Continue reading Japan spacecraft carrying asteroid soil samples nears home

(The Guardian): A huge US space telescope nestled deep in the Puerto Rican jungle will be shut down after suffering two destructive mishaps in recent months, ending 57 years of astronomical discoveries. Operations at the Arecibo observatory, one of the largest in the world, were halted in August when one of its supportive cables slipped… Continue reading US to shut down famed huge Arecibo space telescope in Puerto Rico jungle

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP): The International Space Station’s two Russian astronauts began spacewalking work Wednesday to prepare for next year’s arrival of a long-delayed lab, but had to scrap another chore because of a stubborn bolt. Sergey Ryzhikov and Sergey Kud-Sverchkov — dubbed Sergey 1 and Sergey 2 by flight controllers — left four Americans… Continue reading Spacewalking astronauts prep for 2021 arrival of Russian lab

(The Guardian): When astronauts return to the moon in the next decade, they will do more with the dust than leave footprints in it. A British firm has won a European Space Agency contract to develop the technology to turn moon dust and rocks into oxygen, leaving behind aluminium, iron and other metal powders for… Continue reading UK firm to turn moon rock into oxygen and building materials

(The Guardian): A two million-year-old skull from a large-toothed distant human cousin has been unearthed at an Australian-led archaeological dig deep in a South African cave system. The discovery is the earliest known and best-preserved example of the small-brained hominin called Paranthropus robustus, La Trobe University researchers say. The almost complete male skull, found in… Continue reading Two million-year-old skull of human cousin found by Australian team in South African cave

CAPE TOWN (Reuters): South African researchers plan to release scores of abandoned, hand-reared African penguin chicks at the Western Cape’s De Hoop nature reserve, boosting efforts to start a new breeding colony of the seabirds at risk of extinction. The only penguin that breeds in Africa, it was once South Africa’s most abundant seabird. But… Continue reading As African penguin population dwindles, researchers plan new colony

PETRIFIED FOREST NATIONAL PARK, Ariz. (AP) — Researchers have discovered fossils of a tiny burrowing reptile among a vast expanse of petrified wood in eastern Arizona. The new species has been named Skybalonyx skapter, a part of a group known as drepanosaurs from the Triassic Period, about 220 million years ago.Petrified Forest National Park outside… Continue reading Researchers discover fossils of new species in Arizona