Future of Spaceflight The upcoming year is shaping up to be a big one for private spaceflight. A number of big players in the race to get paying passengers to space seem poised to actually make that happen, and companies like Boeing and SpaceX have announced a number of ambitious goals. It looks like they might be beat by the Brit, though. Last week, billionaire entrepreneur Richard Branson claimed that his company Virgin Galactic will send astronauts into space by Christmas of this year. ...read more

How did the manta ray get its horns? That’s something biologists at San Francisco State University have been trying to figure out. While not actual horns, the two fleshy growths are the reason why the manta are called “devil rays.” A new study published in the journal Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution shows that these hornlike lumps, known as “cephalic lobes,” are actually the foremost part of the manta ray’s fin and not separate appendages, as pre ...read more

Detecting Gravitational Waves Scientists have announced the detection of four new gravitational waves, bringing the total to 11. First captured by the LIGO detectors in 2015, the new observations of ripples in the fabric of space-time are quickly adding up and helping researchers to better understand powerful and distant cosmic phenomena like black holes and neutron stars. Scientists, using LIGO and the European-based Virgo gravitational wave detectors, have detected gravitational waves ...read more

(Inside Science) -- While fruit flies may bother people who have week-old bananas at home, the humble insects have for decades benefited scientists studying how organisms live and grow. The tiny flies are more like humans than you might initially think -- about 60 percent of fly genes match with a similar human gene -- and they breed quickly in the lab. Beginning in 1933, the Nobel committee has so far awarded six prizes in physiology or medicine for fly research, including the 2017 Prize fo ...read more

Plastic is in just about everything these days, including living, breathing creatures, from sea critters to people. Environmental waste and litter breaks down into tiny, microscopic particles. Those particles can then seep into water supplies and subsequently work their way into just about anything. That includes plastics in the seafood we eat. Now, a new study in the journal Environmental Science and Technology has found that it takes just six hours for billions of nanoplastic particles  ...read more

Giant tortoises have exceptionally long lifespans and often live well past 100 years old. Now, a new study unveils genetic clues to the animals’ longevity, including gene changes that may protect giant tortoises from cancer, bolster the immune system and help regulate metabolism. The findings add to how these processes contribute to aging. “We found interesting [genetic] variants potentially affecting six [aging] hallmarks in giant tortoises, opening new lines for aging research,&rd ...read more

K2 might have run out of fuel a few months ago, but astronomers are still using its data to uncover a slew of new worlds. Using stats from ESA’s Gaia mission and K2, an extension of NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope, two recent studies have confirmed the existence of 104 new exoplanets. Their characteristics stretch far and wide, including multi-planet systems, terrestrial compositions and planets that orbit dangerously close to their host stars. These newfound bodies can be used to und ...read more

Uncertainty continues to swirl around scientist He Jiankui’s gene editing experiment in China. Using CRISPR technology, He modified a gene related to immune function in human embryos and transferred the embryos to their mother’s womb, producing twin girls. Many questions about the ethical acceptability of the experiment have focused on ethical oversight and informed consent. These are important issues; compliance with established standards of practice is crucial for public trust in ...read more

NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft, the space agency’s first craft to bring samples from an asteroid back to Earth, is set to rendezvous with its target, Bennu, at around noon EST today. A special webcast is scheduled for just before the spacecraft reaches Bennu, at 11:45 a.m. EST. During this webcast, NASA officials and scientists will discuss the mission in depth. OSIRIS-REx (Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security-Regolith Explorer) launched in September of ...read more

BAIKONUR COSMODROME, KAZAKHSTAN - It was not even two months ago that a crew confidently told the Russian space commission here that it was ready to perform its duties in space. The journey was supposed to take half a year, but it only ended up being a few minutes. Expedition 57's Soyuz rocket rose from the ground, began to experience some strange vibration, and then triggered an abort. Its two crew members returned home safely, but it left behind a trail of problems for the Russian space pr ...read more