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In the third year of the coronavirus pandemic, expect more variants, lower death rates and some continuing restrictions Health 4 January 2022 By Michael Le Page, Clare Wilson and Helen Thomson Theme park visitors show their covid passes in France, July 2021 SEBASTIEN SALOM-GOMIS/AFP via Getty Images While the pandemic is unlikely to fully end in 2022, … Read more
The brightest comet in the night sky right now makes its closest approach to the sun Monday (Jan. 3) and — even if it survives the journey — that will be the only time the comet sees our star close up. That icy wanderer is Comet Leonard, which got brighter unexpectedly in late December as … Read more
The astronauts and cosmonauts aboard the International Space Station are marking the New Year, becoming only the 37th crew in history to be in space as Earth begins another revolution around the Sun. Expedition 66 crew members Raja Chari, Tom Marshburn, Kayla Barron and Mark Vande Hei of NASA, Matthias Maurer of the European Space … Read more
For something that’s meant to lend order to our lives, the modern Western calendar has a messy history. The mess, in part, comes about because of the difficulty of coordinating the orbits of celestial bodies with the cycles of day and night, and the passage of the seasons. The year measured by the earth’s … Read more
This article was originally published at The Conversation. The publication contributed the article to Space.com’s Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights. Aaron McGowan, Principal Lecturer in Physics and Astronomy, Rochester Institute of Technology If you ask a physicist like me to explain how the world works, my lazy answer might be: “It follows the Standard Model.” … Read more
Mars exploration took some big steps forward in 2021. During this very eventful year, two nations joined the Mars club, a helicopter plied Red Planet skies for the first time ever and humanity kicked off an ambitious interplanetary sample-return campaign. A lot of the action took place in February, which saw the arrival of three … Read more
China moved its Tianhe space station module twice this year to avoid SpaceX Starlink internet satellites, and the nation apparently isn’t too happy about it. Chinese officials filed a note with the United Nations (UN) earlier this month explaining that Starlink spacecraft had two “close encounters” with Tianhe this year, both of them occurring when … Read more
Beijing on Tuesday accused the United States of irresponsible and unsafe conduct in space over two “close encounters” between the Chinese space station and satellites operated by Elon Musk‘s SpaceX. Tiangong, China’s new space station, had to maneuver to avoid colliding with one Starlink satellite in July and with another in October, according to … Read more
Governments are drafting new laws to protect your privacy online, but are people even that bothered about companies using their data? Technology 28 December 2021 By Matthew Sparkes Governments are looking to control data giants Antons Jevterevs / Alamy Despite the Cambridge Analytica scandal, the Edward Snowden leaks and revelations from Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen, … Read more
This year saw more space tourists fly to space on a bunch of different systems, and the story has only just begun. Virgin Galactic, Blue Origin and SpaceX each flew their first tourist-focused missions this year, sending aloft several people each with minimal training in professional spaceflight. Meanwhile, Roscosmos (the Russian federal space agency) brought … Read more