Science

Solar Orbiter, a new collaborative mission between the European Space Agency (ESA) and NASA to study our Sun, launched at 05:03 CET on February 10, 2020 (11:03 p.m. EST on February 9) on an Atlas V 411 rocket from Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. …

  Boeing and SpaceX are working toward crewed launches for their new spacecraft this year, but there have been setbacks for both companies. While SpaceX seems to have moved past its issues from last year, Boeing is still addressing the failed test flight from December. NASA and Boeing have jointly …

Mud wasp nests have helped establish a date for the Gwion Gwion rock art in the Kimberley region of Western Australia. A typical remnant mud wasp nest (A) overlying pigment from a Gwion motif before removal and (B) the remainder with pigment revealed underneath. Image credit: Damien Finch. “The Kimberley …

An international team of entomologists has conducted a survey of experts from diverse geographic regions to identify the most prominent perceived threats to firefly population and species persistence. Habitat loss, light pollution, and pesticide use were regarded as the most serious threats, although rankings differed substantially across regions. A female …

An international team of planetary scientists and geochemists from the United States and Switzerland has demonstrated that a technique called atom probe tomography can be successfully used to characterize the composition and texture of single grains of lunar dust at near-atomic resolution. A tiny grain of lunar soil brought back by …

Woolly mammoths (Mammuthus primigenius) were among the most abundant cold adapted species during the Pleistocene. Their once large populations went extinct in two waves, an end-Pleistocene extinction of continental populations followed by the mid-Holocene extinction of relict populations on St. Paul Island, a small island in the middle of the …

Paleontologists in Germany have found the 150-million-year-old fossilized remains of the extremely rare squid Plesioteuthis subovata preserved with a tooth of a pterosaur species called Rhamphorhynchus muensteri. Reconstruction of the hunting behavior of Rhamphorhynchus muensteri, flying close to the water surface to grab soft-bodied cephalopods such as Plesioteuthis subovata that …

  The US and Russia have long employed spy satellites to keep tabs on the world, but what about keeping tabs on the satellites? A pair of satellites are currently locked in a bizarre dance as a Russian probe trails its US counterpart for unknown reasons. Russia swears the satellite …

A new species of marine reptile from the Triassic period has been identified from fossils found in southeastern Alaska, the United States. An artist’s depiction of Gunakadeit joseeae. Image credit: Ray Troll. Thalattosaurs (meaning ‘ocean lizards’) were among several reptile lineages that adapted to marine life in the Mesozoic era. …

Named π-ton (pi-ton), the newly-discovered quasiparticle consists of two electrons and two holes. Two electrons and two holes, created by light quanta, held together by a chessboard-like background. Image credit: TU Wien Quasiparticle is a disturbance in a medium that behaves as a particle and that may conveniently be regarded …