Two ion thrusters firing on BepiColombo. (Credit: QinetiQ)
Glowing Blue
In December, two discs on the bottom of a minibus-sized spacecraft headed for Mercury will start to glow blue. These blue, glowing discs are the solar-powered electric thrusters that will get the BepiColombo mission to Mercury.
BepiColombo, a collaborative mission between the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), launched from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana on October 20, ...read more
Participants at the World Economic Forum’s 2018 Annual Meeting of New Champions wave hello to the Manus robots. (Credit: ATONATON)
When I pick up my iPhone and tell it do something, it feels natural. That’s much of the appeal behind Apple devices — the intuitiveness of their interfaces makes it easy for us to translate human thoughts into the language of a machine.
The machines in Madeline Gannon’s latest project sit at the other extreme of this spectrum. The ...read more
(Credit: melissaf84/Shutterstock)
Humpback whales are crooners. During the breeding season, all the males typically sing the same tune, which changes over time.
Now, researchers find the humpback whales’ song doesn’t just change, it gets gradually more complex each year. That is, until the progression abruptly ends and restarts with a new song, something the researchers term a “cultural revolution”. The new song is simpler and may represent a cap on social learning ...read more
A cholla cactus. (Credit: Focqus/Shutterstock)
As anyone who’s gotten too close to a jumping cholla cactus can attest, the experience is singularly painful — and difficult to resolve, as the cactus’ spines are particularly stubborn to remove.
Cactus spines have many functions, from protection to the collection of vital water in dry climates, but some are so much harder to remove than others. Now researchers have found out why.
Microstructure Matters
Stephanie Crofts and ...read more
A newly-described dinosaur from Brazil is the oldest long-necked dino ever found, dating back 225 million years. (Credit: Müller et al 2018)
There’s a lot missing from the fossil record when it comes to the earliest dinosaurs. That makes the discovery of not one but three well-preserved skeletons, two of them nearly complete, all the more significant. Even better: The new species they represent, Macrocollum itaquii, is the oldest long-necked dinosaur known. The trio gives us a s ...read more
Destroyed homes and cars in Ventura, California after the 2018 Thomas Fire. Wildfires and other climate-related hazards will be more commonplace over the next century, a report predicts. (Credit: Joseph Sohm/Shutterstock)
If you think recent natural disasters have been terrifying — just wait. Things will only get worse over the next century, a group of leading climate change researchers warns in a paper published in Nature Climate Change this week.
Currently ...read more
Researchers 3D-printed these pieces using fake moon dust, or regolith. (Credit: ESA–G. Porter, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO)
A Future on the Moon
To support a potential, future lunar base, researchers at the European Space Agency (ESA) have 3D-printed and baked fake moon dust into screws, gears, and even a coin.
Both private and government space agencies have expressed serious intentions and started developing plans to build a human-inhabited base on the moon. But it takes a lot of fu ...read more
Mars Insight will touch down on November 26. (Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech)
On November 26th, NASA’s Insight mission will land on Mars. That’s the plan anyway. Something like half of all Mars missions have failed, usually well before they approached the Red Planet, either because of launch failure or some error on its outward trip. While space agencies’ records have improved, especially over the last decade, Mars is littered with spacecraft that didn’t quite stick the landi ...read more
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A Successful Test Flight
Virgin Orbit, a spinoff of Virgin Galactic, flew its LauncherOne rocket for the first time ever this past Sunday, November 18. The company performed the test flight with the 21-meter rocket strapped to the wing of a modified Boeing 747-400 aircraft nicknamed Cosmic Girl.
The 80-minute-long captive-carry test flight took off from California’s Victorville Airport, northeast of Los Angeles.
“The vehicles flew like a dream today. Everyone ...read more
An artist’s interpretation of what Barnard’s star b, a super-Earth recently discovered just six light-years from Earth, may look like. (Credit: ESO/M. Kornmesser)
Perhaps no other star system has elicited so much wonder, mystery and frustration as Barnard’s Star.
Astronomers announced last Wednesday they’d discovered a planet in its thrall weighing in at around three Earth-masses, with a frigid, 233-day orbit. The find finally answers whether we have any planetary ...read more
