SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule successfully reached outer space at around 2 a.m. EST Saturday morning. Repeated cheers rang out from the crowds at the Kennedy Space Center launch-site as the capsule passed each flight stage.
If the rest of the flight goes well over the next six days, and NASA certifies the capsule is safe, Elon Musk’s rocket company could begin launching astronauts into orbit this summer. That would mark the first time a private company has launched a human into orbit ...read more
(Inside Science) -- Shifting, slipping and colliding tectonic plates played an essential role in the emergence and evolution of life on Earth. Such tectonic activity generated volcanoes that spewed carbon dioxide and other gases into the air. Rain brought the gases down to Earth, where they were pushed underground again by moving plates. For billions of years the cycle has regulated the climate and stabilized the temperature, which helped enable life to arise.
Plate tectonics like what's ...read more
High in the cloud forests of Costa Rica, a distinct chirping sound ripples across the landscape. This high-pitched staccato refrain trills not from birds, but mice. Now researchers have found that the tiny rodents making these sounds, known as Alston’s singing mice, take turns belting out their tunes much in the same way people take turns when they talk to each other. The discovery could shed light on communication problems in human speech.
Some 10 percent of the Americans suffer from ...read more
SpaceX’s Dragon Crew Capsule is set to launch from Cape Canaveral in a pivotal test flight for human-crewed missions that could happen as soon as this summer. The only passengers for this mission are a mannequin and some cargo for the International Space Station. It will dock on Sunday, stay for five days, and then depart before splashing down in the Atlantic Ocean on March 8.
This flight is a milestone for NASA and for SpaceX. NASA has been without a domestic carrier for t ...read more
Apollo 9 launched 50 years ago, on March 3, 1969, and it might be the most important but least celebrated of the early Apollo missions. In fact, it was so important to NASA’s ultimate lunar landing goal that the space agency had a series of contingency missions in place to ensure it could get as much data as possible if something went wrong.
Apollo 9’s mission wasn’t necessarily glamorous. Commander Jim McDivitt, Command Module Pilot (CMP) Dave Scott, and Lunar Module Pilot ...read more
Science fiction is a genre committed to the concept of "run before you can walk." Long before anyone knew whether heavier-than-air flight was possible, writers were imagining travel to other planets. By the time interplanetary space probes were a reality in the 1960s, the storytellers had long since moved on to thinking interstellar.
Today, two or three generations of happy nerds have grown up in a world saturated with science fiction TV shows and movies featuring the word "star" in their tit ...read more
"Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee." The quote is so familiar that most people have no idea where it originally comes from (I'll admit, I had to look it up myself to be sure: It is Mediation XVII from John Donne's Devotions upon Emergent Occasions.) In recent years, though, the words have taken on new meaning, at least for those of us who are devoted to astronomical exploration. Any spa ...read more
You may have heard that dogs and their owners really do look alike. Now, new research has shown that owners and their pups often share personality traits, too.
A paper, published in the Journal of Research in Personality, says a dog's personality reflects the personality of its owner. It also explains that dogs experience personality changes similar to how humans do over the course of their lives.
Two researchers from Michigan State University surveyed the owners of 1,600 d ...read more
Susanne Hecker, Muki Haklay, Anne Bowser, Zen Makuch, Johannes Vogel & Aletta Bonn. (2018). Citizen Science: Innovation in Open Science, Society and Policy. University College London Press.
Scientific progress is intertwined with the triad of the state, the scientist, and the citizen, all of which are emphasized in the field of citizen science. Taking a largely European perspective, Citizen Science: Innovation in Open Science, Society and Policy by Hecker at al., is in ...read more
