Tracking Trends, Breaking News
Billionaire Jared Isaacman and SpaceX crew trainer Sarah Gillis plan to open the forward hatch of their Polaris Dawn spacecraft Thursday morning to take turns floating outside in the first non-government spacewalk in the history of space exploration. With crewmates Anna Menon and Scott Poteet monitoring safety tethers and umbilicals inside the SpaceX Crew Dragon
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After an exhaustive review of suspect transistors in NASA’s Europa Clipper spacecraft, NASA managers have cleared the probe for launch next month as planned on a $5.2 billion mission to find out if a suspected sub-surface ocean on Jupiter’s icy moon Europa is a habitable environment. The transistor issue cropped up in May, raising fears
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A hospitalized patient in Missouri was infected with bird flu despite having had no known contact with dairy cows or other animals associated with an ongoing outbreak, health officials said Friday. This is the 14th person in the U.S. sickened with bird flu since March, when the virus was detected in cows, after infecting wild
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In the ocean food chain, large sharks generally only have to worry about keeping orcas at bay — but a new study suggests the apex predators may have to watch out for their own. Researchers have discovered evidence pointing to the first known case of a porbeagle shark — which can grow up to 12 feet
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The Federal Aviation Administration has grounded SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rockets pending an investigation to determine what caused a first-stage booster to crash onto a landing barge early Wednesday after helping launch another batch of Starlink internet satellites. After standing down from the piloted Polaris Dawn launch late Tuesday because of an unfavorable long-range forecast, SpaceX
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After standing down from the piloted Polaris Dawn launch late Tuesday, SpaceX shifted gears and pressed ahead with plans for back-to-back launches of Starlink internet satellites early Wednesday, one from Florida and the other from California. But the second flight was called off after the first stage used in the Florida launch toppled into the
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A team of paleontologists found matching dinosaur footprints on what are now two different continents, separated by thousands of miles of ocean. The footprints, dating back to the Early Cretaceous period, were found in Brazil and in Cameroon, researchers wrote in a study published Monday by the New Mexico Museum of Natural History & Science.
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Reykjavik — Icelandic authorities said Friday that a second fissure had formed on the southwestern Reykjanes peninsula after lava started spewing forth for the sixth time in the region since December. After weeks of warnings, the Icelandic Meteorological Office (IMO) said Thursday that a new eruption had started at 9:26 p.m. (5:26 p.m. Eastern) that
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The saga of the large invasive Joro spiders that parachute through the air isn’t over. A new study found that the critters with 4-inch-long legs are truly built differently, with hearts that are able to withstand the loud and bustling noises of big cities. University of Georgia researcher Andy Davis made the discovery while conducting cardiac
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A blockchain entrepreneur, a cinematographer, a polar adventurer and a robotics researcher plan to fly around Earth’s poles aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule by the end of the year, becoming the first humans to observe the ice caps and extreme polar environments from orbit, SpaceX announced Monday. The historic flight, launched from the Kennedy
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