News about PaperPanda, Open Access, and Research
NASA’s first moonbound mission for the Artemis program is in final testing. The team executed its second launch countdown sequencing test Monday (Jan. 24), with no major issues reported, according to an agency blog post. “The test demonstrated the ground launch software and ground launch sequencer, which checks the health and status of the rocket … Read more
The thought of sharing an ice cream cone with a stranger can trigger feelings of disgust – however that’s often not the case with someone close to us, such as a romantic partner or child. A new study in the journal Science on Thursday shows that children are aware of this dynamic from a … Read more
China’s Shenzhou 13 astronauts conducted a manual rendezvous and docking test over the weekend to test emergency procedures for spacecraft visiting the Chinese space station. The complex test involved the Tianzhou 2 cargo spacecraft undocking from the Tianhe core module of China’s Tiangong space station. The astronauts aboard Tianhe then teleoperated Tianzhou 2, guiding it … Read more
A large robotic arm on China’s space station has successfully grasped and maneuvered a cargo spacecraft in a crucial test ahead of upcoming module launches. The 33-foot-long (10 meters) robotic arm on the Tianhe module of China’s new Tiangong space station took hold of the Tianzhou 2 supply ship and moved it around 20 degrees, … Read more
Up to 8% of pregnant people develop high blood pressure that can damage their organs or even kill their babies. Often there’s no sign of the condition, known as preeclampsia, until late in pregnancy. Now, by analyzing patterns of gene activity through RNA markers in a pregnant woman’s blood, researchers have come up with a … Read more
We may soon be able to test one of Stephen Hawking’s most controversial theories, new research suggests. In the 1970s, Hawking proposed that dark matter, the invisible substance that makes up most matter in the cosmos, may be made of black holes formed in the earliest moments of the Big Bang. Now, three astronomers have … Read more
A year after its last launch, Russia’s newest rocket lifted off again — and things didn’t go entirely according to plan. The third test flight of the Angara A5 rocket took off from Plesetsk Cosmodrome in northwestern Russia on Monday (Dec. 27). The launcher reached low Earth orbit but was unable to go higher as … Read more
Rapid Covid home tests are more likely to give a false negative with the heavily-mutated Omicron variant compared to earlier strains, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said Tuesday. The news comes as the country is facing a massive surge in cases that experts say is being under-captured as a result of a … Read more
SpaceX’s latest Starship prototype has breathed fire again. The Starship SN20 vehicle performed a “static fire” test on Wednesday (Dec. 29) at the company’s Starbase site in South Texas, briefly igniting its Raptor engines while remaining anchored to the ground. The trial continued the launch-prep campaign for SN20 (“Serial No. 20”), which is scheduled to … Read more
We’ll have to wait a bit longer for the orbital debut of SpaceX’s Starship Mars rocket. SpaceX had been aiming to launch Starship on its first orbital test flight in January or February, provided that the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) wrapped up a programmatic environmental assessment (PEA) of the company’s South Texas launch site … Read more