NASA’s X-57 Maxwell is the agency’s first all-electric airplane. It's also the first X-plane for NASA in two decades. (Credit: NASA)
NASA is getting ready to test their first all-electric
plane, the X-57 Maxwell, at the Armstrong Flight Research Center in Edwards,
California.
This latest version of the aircraft, called Modification II
or Mod II, just arrived at Edwards from San Luis Obispo, California, where the
plane was being developed by Empirical Systems Aerospace.
E ...read more
(Credit: Africa Studio/Shutterstock)
If you get a cut, it'll heal. If you lose some skin to road rash, it'll grow back. But lose a limb, and it's gone for good. Unless you're a salamander, a zebrafish or an axolotl, of course — all of which can regrow missing limbs. Now, scientists find that some of the molecules crucial to that process are at work inside of us.
Specific microRNA molecules are key to limb regeneration in salamanders. It turns out that similar molecules in our own bod ...read more
A reconstruction of the predatory dinosaur's skull based on partial fossils of Siamraptor suwati. (Credit: Chokchaloemwong et al., 2019)
Siamraptor suwati joins the ranks of predatory dinosaurs known to science — and it's the first of its lineage from Southeast Asia, giving its discovery greater significance.
When it comes to bitey dinos, most people think of T. rex and
velociraptors (thanks, Jurassic Park...). But if toothy terrors are
your thing, you should really get to know t ...read more
(Credit: Abigail Malate, Staff Illustrator. Copyright American Institute of Physics)
(Inside Science) -- The 2019 Nobel Prize in chemistry has been awarded to three scientists "for the development of lithium-ion batteries."
The prize goes jointly to John B. Goodenough of the University of Texas at Austin, M. Stanley Whittingham of Binghamton University in New York, and Akira Yoshino, of Meijo University in Nagoya, Japan.
At 97, Goodenough will be the oldest Nobel laureate ever awar ...read more
The new orbiter will orbit in the ionosphere and study the interactions of Earth and space weather. (Credit: ASA Goddard's Conceptual Image Lab/B. Monroe)
NASA will launch its Ionospheric Connection Explorer (ICON) satellite on Wednesday, October 9, from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida at 9:30 p.m. EDT.
The new satellite will orbit Earth, studying what happens when space weather and Earth weather interact in Earth’s ionosphere, the atmosphere level populated by ions a ...read more
The first exoplanets ever discovered were found orbiting the pulsar PSR B1257+12. It took years for astronomers to find exoplanets around sun-like stars. (Credit:NASA/JPL-Caltech)
In 1992, astronomers discovered the first exoplanet, or planet
outside our solar system. But it didn’t come in any form they’d really
anticipated.
Neutron stars are the second densest type of object in the
universe outside black holes. They form when a giant star dies and explodes
outward as a result ...read more
Following the only deaths to have ever occurred in space, the USSR started a policy requiring all cosmonauts to wear pressurized spacesuits during reentry. (Credit: Peakpx.com)
For many wannabe astronauts, the idea of venturing into the great unknown would be a dream come true. But over the past 50 years, there's been a slew of spaceflight-related tragedies that are more akin to an astronaut's worst nightmare.
In the last half-century, about 30 astronauts and cosmonauts have died while tr ...read more
(Credit: Abigail Malate, Staff Illustrator/Courtesy American Institute of Physics)
(Inside Science) -- The 2019 Nobel Prize in physics has been awarded to three scientists “for contribution to our understanding of the evolution of the universe and Earth’s place in the cosmos."This year’s prize was awarded to James Peebles of Princeton University “for theoretical discoveries in physical cosmology, and Michel Mayor of the University of Geneva and Didier Queloz, of the Un ...read more
