Axiom’s 1st private crew launch to space station delayed to March

Houston-based Axiom Space now plans to launch its first space mission to the International Space Station on March 31, more than one month later than its initial target. NASA quietly made the announcement Tuesday (Jan. 18) at the bottom of an International Space Station blog post otherwise focused on a recent Russian spacewalk at the … Read more

Gene-edited crops may be 5 years away from sale in the UK

The UK parliament passed a law to help researchers do trials of gene-edited crops in England, and the chief scientist at the UK’s Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs says it would take at least five years for a product to go from research trials to market Environment 20 January 2022 By Adam Vaughan … Read more

Neil Armstrong: First Man on the Moon

Neil Armstrong was a NASA astronaut and aeronautical engineer. He famously became the first person to walk on the moon on July 20, 1969 during Apollo 11. Armstrong also flew on NASA’s Gemini 8 mission in 1966.  He retired from NASA in 1971 and remained active in the aerospace community, although he chose to keep … Read more

Expansion of the universe: Conflicting measurements are becoming a serious problem

The Hubble constant describes how fast the universe is expanding, but our measurements won’t line up, which may mean our standard model of the universe is wrong Space 20 January 2022 By Leah Crane Images taken by the Hubble Space Telescope of galaxies looked at in the study ESA The expansion of the universe is … Read more

The Moon That Resembles The Death Star Has Been Hiding Another Epic Secret

The Solar System may be an even soggier place than we suspected. New analysis of one of Saturn’s moons suggests that it may harbor a liquid ocean. No, not the usual suspects – the new culprit is Mimas, the little moon with a big crater, which gives it more than a passing resemblance to the … Read more

Cosmosphere craft beer: Space museum set to launch ‘Space Race’ IPA

For 60 years, the Cosmosphere has been a leader in the presentation and preservation of space exploration history. From its dynamic exhibits to its collection of recovered and restored space artifacts, the Hutchinson, Kansas institution has had everything you would want and expect from a world-class museum. Everything, that is, except its own beer. “As … Read more

Elephants: Trunk may be one of most sensitive body parts of any animal

The bundle of nerves that controls the elephant’s trunk contains 400,000 neurons – a lot more than we expected – suggesting the trunk is incredibly sensitive Life 20 January 2022 By Jason Arunn Murugesu An Asian elephant (Elephas maximus) Gerry Ellis/Minden Pictures/Alamy Elephant trunks may be one of the most sensitive body parts in the … Read more

NASA’s InSight Mars lander awakens from ‘safe mode’ after Red Planet dust storm

A NASA spacecraft has safely emerged from a precautionary “safe mode” after an intense Martian dust storm. The solar-powered InSight lander, which is designed to study the interior of Mars, entered safe mode to save power on Jan. 7; it went back to “more normal operations” by Jan. 19, the mission said in a Twitter … Read more

How Marine Wildlife can Coexist With Offshore Wind [Sponsored]

This podcast was produced for Ørsted by Scientific American Custom Media, a division separate from the magazine’s board of editors. April Reese: Offshore wind in the US is poised for a boom. States from Rhode Island on down to Virginia all have plans to ramp up offshore wind over the next decade, and the Biden administration … Read more

What is string theory? | Space

String theory is the idea in theoretical physics that reality is made up of infinitesimal vibrating strings, smaller than atoms, electrons or quarks. According to this theory, as the strings vibrate, twist and fold, they produce effects in many, tiny dimensions that humans interpret as everything from particle physics to large-scale phenomena like gravity.  String … Read more