On September 26, 1983, a Russian Soyuz rocket exploded on the launch pad. Two cosmonauts Vladimir Titov and Gennady Strekalov were inside their Soyuz T-10-1 spacecraft atop the rocket, and barely made it out alive. Titov and Strekalov’s mission was to launch cosmonauts from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan to the Salyut 7 space station. … Read more
A Martian rock formation that looked like an ancient coastline from space now appears to preserve a much more surprising water history. Since 2021, NASA’s Perseverance rover has explored Jezero Crater, a 45-kilometer-wide basin on Mars where rivers once fed a lake. Scientists hoped to find sedimentary rocks along the crater rim, a clue that … Read more
This comeback is becoming a gigantic task for artificial intelligence. Scientists working to de-extinct the woolly mammoth report that the project is taking longer than expected and are relying on artificial intelligence to solve the 4,000-year-old problem. Dallas-based Colossal Biosciences is attempting to revive the hairy elephant ancestor through gene-editing technology and DNA harvested from … Read more
Parachutes rarely get the credit they deserve. They transform a deadly free fall into a gentle descent, saving lives in war zones, rescue missions and even humanitarian aid deliveries. But they have a flaw: once released, they are at the mercy of the wind. A carefully targeted medication package can easily go off target. Now, … Read more
A new study has made argon-argon dating more precise using the well-recorded eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 CE. Sunset over the ancient ruins of Pompeii, Italy. Credit: Nirjhar Basak The eruption buried Pompeii and killed Pliny the Elder. His nephew, Pliny the Younger, witnessed the event and recorded a detailed account. The researchers used … Read more
Sign up to see the future today. Unmissable innovations from the cutting edge of science and technology. So far, astronomers have confirmed more than 6,300 exoplanets orbiting a host star beyond our solar system. They range from small rocky worlds to huge gas orbs like our own Jupiter or Saturn. Some, scientists suspect, could harbor … Read more
There’s a lot riding on SpaceX’s upcoming Starship launch, both physically and conceptually, as the company prepares the giant rocket for its biggest test flight to date. SpaceX is targeting September 28 for Starship Flight 14, the next liftoff of its industry-shaking launch vehicle, and plans to fly the towering spacecraft farther and longer than … Read more
Marine ecologists used to call them “black puddles of death.” Just a decade ago, blue-green deep-sea brine pools were assumed to be oxygen-depleting dead zones, despite the wealth of deeply strange and extraterrestrial “extremophiles” that biologists have found living at their margins. But something was alive inside these phenomenally salty underwater lakes, and now researchers … Read more
In the enduring search for life in the universe, new evidence is pointing researchers toward Saturn’s moon Enceladus. Enceladus is Saturn’s sixth largest moon with a diameter roughly equal to the width of Arizona, and is believed to have a huge underground ocean that spews columns of water into space. Enceladus, one of 145 known … Read more
