Science

Updated 7:25 p.m. Eastern with Lockheed Martin statement. WASHINGTON — Lockheed Martin has abandoned plans to acquire the portion of satellite manufacturer Terran Orbital it does not own for more than $500 million. In a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission after the markets closed May 2, Terran Orbital said it was notified

A UK team of archaeologists on Thursday revealed the reconstructed face of a 75,000-year-old Neanderthal woman, as researchers reappraise the perception of the species as brutish and unsophisticated. Named Shanidar Z after the cave in Iraqi Kurdistan where her skull was found in 2018, the latest discovery has led experts to probe the mystery of

It’s always dark and stormy on the nightside of the exoplanet Astrolábos. There, in the permanent shadow facing away from its host star WASP-43, the skies of the gas giant also known as WASP-43b are scudding with crashing clouds, but that’s not all. So close is the exoplanet to the star that its temperature, even

Fifth-generation or ‘5G’ connectivity for cellular technology has only been the standard for networks for around five years, but with 6G already on the horizon, developers are looking for ways to take full advantage of the next generation’s expansive bandwidth. A technology demo carried out in Japan has shown a prototype wireless device reaching 100

An editorial recently published on SpaceNews took the position that my company’s Luna Memorial Spaceflight service should not be permitted on the Moon because the Navajo Nation views the Moon as sacred. In essence, the author is arguing that lawful space missions should be subject to the religious test of a single culture. The heart

It’s a stereotype universally acknowledged that a woman at room temperature must be in want of a coat. But is it a scientific truth? Sheer observations aside, very few controlled studies have investigated how male and female bodies withstand cold temperatures. A new study has surprised researchers at the US National Institutes of Health (NIH),

Meteors – commonly known as shooting stars – can be seen on any night of the year. But some nights are better than others. As Earth moves around the Sun, we encounter streams of dust and debris from comets and asteroids. That debris gives birth to “meteor showers” – times when the number of shooting

WASHINGTON — Millennium Space Systems, a subsidiary of Boeing, won a $414 million contract from the Space Development Agency to produce specialized satellites aimed at detecting and tracking hypersonic missile threats, the agency announced April 30.  Under the agreement, Millennium will build eight satellites equipped with advanced infrared and optical sensors, provide the ground system

Anyone indulging in a paleo-style diet might want to think about adding a few more vegetables. The teeth and bones of pre-agricultural human hunter-gatherers who lived some 15,000 years ago in what is now Morocco reveal that their diet – long thought to have been significantly loaded with animal protein – was actually weighted much

The Lyrid meteor shower is in full swing this week. Every year from April 15 to April 29, dozens of shooting stars streak through the sky in this spectacular show. The meteor shower was most active from Sunday night to Monday morning, but it will remain visible for the next week. On Tuesday night, the

SAN FRANCISCO – Finnish startup Kuva Space will provide hyperspectral data to the European Space Agency under a 1.8 million euro ($1.93 million) contract announced April 29. Kuva Space will develop onboard data processing and rapid communications links to support Finnish government agencies focused on border security, wildfires and landslides. The three-year research and development

With a name that means ‘little brain’ in Latin, the cerebellum comprises just 10 percent of the entire brain’s mass. Don’t let that small size fool you, though; with more than three-quarters of the brain’s neurons packed within that small space, there’s a lot going on inside. Traditionally it’s thought this part of the nervous

The hunt for the elusive Planet Nine goes on, and new research claims to have the “strongest statistical evidence yet” that there is such a planet orbiting somewhere around the far edges of the Solar System. That claim was made to Andrew Griffin at The Independent by astronomer Konstantin Bogytin from the California Institute of

In the two decades to 2019, global plastic production doubled. By 2040, plastic manufacturing and processing could consume as much as 20 percent of global oil production and use up 15 percent of the annual carbon emissions budget. Most of the plastic we make ends up as waste. As plastic manufacturers increase production, more and

WASHINGTON — NASA says SpaceX is on track to demonstrate in-space refueling of Starship next year, a critical technology for returning humans to the lunar surface using that vehicle. Speaking to the NASA Advisory Council’s Human Exploration and Operations Committee April 26, Amit Kshatriya, NASA deputy associate administrator for the Moon to Mars Program, said

How do we understand past societies? For centuries, our main sources of information have been pottery sherds, burial sites and ancient texts. But the study of ancient DNA is changing what we know about the human past, and what we can know. In a new study, we analysed the genetics of hundreds of people who

Solar sails are an enigmatic and majestic way to travel across the gulf of space. Drawing an analogy to the sail ships of the past, they are one of the most efficient ways of propelling craft in space. On Tuesday a RocketLab Electron rocket launched NASA’s new Advanced Composite Solar Sail System. It aims to

Over the last 25 years, the ozone hole which forms over Antarctica each spring has started to shrink. But over the last four years, even as the hole has shrunk it has persisted for an unusually long time. Our new research found that instead of closing up during November it has stayed open well into

Today we are in the middle of Solar Cycle 25, which began in 2019 and will last approximately until 2030, going through cyclical highs and lows of solar flares, coronal mass ejections and solar storms that will peak this or next year — making this a crucial period of time to invest in solar weather

Most of us have experienced the sudden, deafening blare of a car’s modified muffler, shattering your tranquility into a million pieces as it speeds past. If you live in a neighborhood where these disruptive sounds are familiar, it probably won’t surprise you that research links a desire to own this type of car to higher

There may not be any insects on Mars, but new photos from an orbiting spacecraft have revealed a plethora of ‘spiders’ that seem to scuttle across the dusty surface. They’re not, of course, real, living arachnids; rather, they are dark, spindly features on the Martian surface created entirely via non-biological processes. They are named “spiders”

Of all plastic waste pollution that can be traced back to its producer, almost a quarter can be traced back to just five major corporations, a new study has found. An international team of researchers analyzed some 1.87 million environmental plastic waste items logged between 2018 and 2022, finding more than half of the items

HELSINKI — Central American state Nicaragua has joined the ILRS moon base program as China continues its push to attract partners for the project. The China National Space Administration (CNSA) also reached agreements April 24 with the Asia-Pacific Space Cooperation Organization, headquartered in Beijing, and the Arab Union for Astronomy and Space Sciences. The agreements

New research reveals that the process of remembering something long-term comes at a cost – specifically, inflammation in the brain and DNA damage in nerve cells, as the memories get ‘fused’ into neurons and stored. The international team of researchers suggests that memory formation is not unlike making an omelet by breaking a few eggs:

The venerable Hubble Space Telescope is like a gift that keeps on giving. Not only is it still making astronomical discoveries after more than thirty years in operation. It is also making discoveries by accident! Thanks to an international team of citizen scientists, with the help of astronomers from the European Space Agency (ESA) and

As the climate warms and Antarctica’s glaciers and ice sheets melt, the resulting rise in sea level has the potential to displace hundreds of millions of people around the world by the end of this century. A key uncertainty in how much and how fast the seas will rise lies in whether currently “stable” parts

WASHINGTON — Rocket Lab launched a South Korean smallsat and a NASA solar sail experiment on the company’s fifth flight of the year April 23. An Electron rocket lifted off from Rocket Lab’s Launch Complex 1 in New Zealand at 6:32 p.m. Eastern. Liftoff was delayed nearly 20 minutes because of a problem with ground

When it comes to its connection to the sky, Stonehenge is best known for its solar alignments. Every midsummer’s night tens of thousands of people gather at Stonehenge to celebrate and witness the rising Sun in alignment with the Heel stone standing outside of the circle. Six months later a smaller crowd congregates around the

NASA’s Voyager 1 probe – the most distant man-made object in the Universe – is returning usable information to ground control following months of spouting gibberish, the US space agency announced Monday. The spaceship stopped sending readable data back to Earth on November 14, 2023, even though controllers could tell it was still receiving their

WASHINGTON — NASA is continuing to refine its response to a decadal survey for biological and physical sciences in space, balancing ambitious science goals with limited budgets. The decadal survey, released in September, identified 11 key science questions in three themes: adapting to space, living and traveling to space, and probing phenomena hidden by gravity