critical

Satellites are critical to fighting the climate crisis, scientists say

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Space remains a vital resource in studying climate change on our own planet. On Monday (Feb. 28), the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released the second piece of its latest climate report. (The first piece was published in August 2021August and the third will be released in April). The report details how … Read more

NASA’s New Flagship Telescope Fully Deploys Sunshield in Critical Mission Milestone

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The James Webb Space Telescope fully deployed its tennis-court sized sunshield Tuesday, a critical milestone for the success of its mission to study every phase of cosmic history, NASA said.   “All five layers of the sunshield are fully tensioned,” said an announcer at the observatory’s control center in Baltimore, where team members cheered, a … Read more

JWST: James Webb Space Telescope is carrying out its most critical manoeuvre

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The massive space telescope, which launched on Christmas Day, is in the process of deploying its sunshield. If anything goes wrong, it could endanger the entire mission Space 4 January 2022 By Alex Wilkins A final glimpse of the James Webb Space Telescope Arianespace, ESA, NASA, CSA, CNES After a nail-biting launch on Christmas Day, … Read more

Covid-19 news: Hospitals in England declare critical incidents

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By Michael Le Page, Clare Wilson, Jessica Hamzelou, Sam Wong, Graham Lawton, Adam Vaughan, Conrad Quilty-Harper, Jason Arunn Murugesu and Layal Liverpool A man passes a temporary ‘Nightingale’ field hospital constructed in south London, England, 3 January 2022. NEIL HALL/EPA-EFE/Shutterstoc​k Latest coronavirus news as of 12pm on 4 January Staff shortages force health service providers … Read more

Biologist E. O. Wilson Dies at 92. His Legacy Is More Critical Now Than Ever

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E. O. Wilson was an extraordinary scholar in every sense of the word. Back in the 1980s, Milton Stetson, the chair of the biology department at the University of Delaware, told me that a scientist who makes a single seminal contribution to his or her field has been a success.   By the time I … Read more

For The First Time in History, a Spacecraft Has ‘Touched’ The Sun

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In an incredible historic first, a human-made spacecraft has swooped in and made contact with the Sun. On 28 April 2021, NASA’s Parker Solar Probe actually flew into and through the solar corona, the upper atmosphere of the Sun. Not only did it live to tell the tale – proving the efficacy of Parker’s high-tech … Read more