In 1982, author James Michener published his sprawling novel "Space." In it, he describes a fictional Apollo 18 mission to the moon. While the astronauts are on the surface, the sun unleashes a huge storm, trapping them outside of their protective capsule.

Rice is one of the world's staple crops. It is regularly eaten by more than half the world's population. And now, it's been grown in microgravity, on board the newly launched Chinese Wentian space laboratory.

Wentian launched in July and joined up with the Tianhe module of China's new space station. Its original complement of eight experiments included one that attempted to grow rice in microgravity.

Rice typically grows to 3 to 4 feet over four months, and the stalks on Wentian have not been able to complete their entire maturation cycle since the experiment started in July. However, they seem to be on track compared to their Earth-bound counterparts.

There were actually two types of rice launched as part of the experiment. A tall shoot variety reached almost 30 centimeters in the first month of growth, and a dwarf variety reached around 5 cm. Both of these growth amounts are on par for these particular rice varieties on Earth.

A little Martian dust appears to go a long way. A small amount of simulated crushed Martian rock mixed with a titanium alloy made a stronger, high-performance material in a 3D-printing process that could one day be used on Mars to make tools or rocket parts.

The parts were made by Washington State University researchers with as little as 5% up to 100% Martian regolith, a black powdery substance meant to mimic the rocky, inorganic material found on the surface of the red planet.

While the parts with 5% Martian regolith were strong, the 100% regolith parts proved brittle and cracked easily. Still, even high-Martian content materials would be useful in making coatings to protect equipment from rust or radiation damage, said Amit Bandyopadhyay, corresponding author on the study published in the International Journal of Applied Ceramic Technology.

While hundreds of thousands of people made their way to the Space Coast two weekends in a row for a shot to see the most powerful rocket to ever lift off from Earth, a couple of scrubs for NASA's Artemis I mission left them disappointed.

But for those who were making a weekend out of their efforts, there was at least one rocket that lit up the sky for those who hung around.

SpaceX has continued its frenetic pace of Falcon 9 launches including a couple of Starlink missions that took flight: one right before midnight last weekend on Aug. 27, about 32 hours before NASA called off its first Artemis I attempt; and then again Sunday night about 32 hours after NASA was aiming for its second try to send up its Space Launch System rocket with the Orion capsule to the moon.

So while NASA may eventually have to roll back the Artemis I hardware capable of 8.8 million pounds of thrust on liftoff to the Vehicle Assembly Building, SpaceX keeps sending up its 1.7 million pounds of thrust servings.