NASA aims to launch troubled Mars lander in 2018
NASA has decided to save, rather than scrap, a robotic Mars mission that missed its launch opportunity this month.The space agency is now targeting a May 2018 liftoff for its InSight lander, which will investigate the interior structure of Mars, officials announced Wednesday. (Mars and Earth align favorably for interplanetary missions just once every 26 months.)NASA had been considering ending the mission after a leak in the vacuum chamber surrounding a key instrument -- which was built by the ..>> view originalHow prehistoric food processing helped shape our faces
When our genus, Homo, diverged from other hominins at least 2.8 million years ago, human skeletons began to change in significant and puzzling ways. Homo erectus, for example, was much taller and had a much larger brain case than the Australopith ancestors.But Homo erectus also had significantly smaller teeth, jaws, and faces than the ancestral hominins. How could humans eat enough food to support massive bodies, and presumably massive brains, with such small mouths?Some particularly compelling..>> view originalComet Punch Threw Mars' Magnetism into Chaos
When Comet C/2013 A1 (Siding Spring) swung past the Red Planet in October 2014, it was an unprecedented opportunity for an armada of Mars robots to have a ringside seat of the interplanetary spectacle. But as dazzling as the flyby was, the real drama wasn’t seen by the cameras of Mars orbiters or rovers; it was detected by a magnetometer. And that magnetometer, located 100 miles above the Martian surface, detected chaos. PHOTOS: 7 Intimate Close Encounters with Comets “Comet Siding Spring plung..>> view originalRecord leap in carbon dioxide seen in 2015
The level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere increased at a record pace last year, US government scientists reported, raising new concern about one of the top greenhouse gases and the effects of global warming. The measurement came from the National ...>> view originalPacking Lunches for Space: Scientists Talk Astronaut Health on 1-Year Mission
NASA's Scott Kelly (left) poses with Russian cosmonauts Mikhail Kornienko and Gennady Padalka on March 15, 2015. Kornienko and Kelly spent nearly a year in space, to help scientists understand the physical and psychological impacts of spaceflight. The work paves the way to eventually send humans to Mars. Credit: NASA/Victor Zelentsov NASA astronaut Scott Kelly and Russian cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko are back on Earth after spending a record 340 days on the International Space Station. Th..>> view originalClimate-Heat Link Traced Back to 1930s
The world endured a warm year as President Roosevelt wrangled with crippling drought during the first year of his second term. Scientists now say global temperatures that year, in 1937, were record-breaking for the time. The heat record fell again two years later. More records were set in 1940, 1941 and 1944. For the first time, climate scientists have identified greenhouse gas pollution’s role in global temperatures measured during record-breaking years back to 1937, as industrialized cities a..>> view originalThis Plastic-Eating Bacterium Might Help Deal With Waste One Day
Pedro Armestre/AFP/Getty Images Pedro Armestre/AFP/Getty Images Plastic makes great food packaging. It's waterproof and flexible. And best of all, it's impervious to all known bacteria รข€“ until now. Researchers have found a bacterium in the debris fields around a recycling plant in Japan that can feed off a common type of plastic used in clothing, plastic bottles and food packaging. The bacterium is a new..>> view originalUS secretary: Teddy bear's inspiration off 'threatened' list
NEW ORLEANS (AP) - The Louisiana black bear, the animal behind the “teddy’s bear” inspired by President Theodore Roosevelt, has rebounded enough to pull it off the list of federally protected species, the government says.U.S. Interior Secretary Sally Jewell heralded the “recovery of a species” Thursday, though groups that have worked for decades to protect the bears disagreed or had doubts.The black bear, which once roamed Texas, Mississippi and Louisiana, is now found in two parts of eastern Lo..>> view originalNew details of Ichthyosaurus extinction revealed
Photo c/o Andrey Atuchin Fresh new details on Ichthyosaurus and its eventual extinction some 30 million years before the death of the dinosaurs have just been revealed, offering insight on the broader disappearance of dinosaurs. “Speculation has clouded the severity and timing of their extinction, which was first assumed to occur at the end of the Cretaceous,” the authors wrote in a paper published Tuesday in the journal Nature Communications. “Subsequent analysis placed this extinction at th..>> view original
Thursday, March 10, 2016
NASA aims to launch troubled Mars lander in 2018 and other top stories.
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