Orlando FL (UPI) Dec 25, 2020
Elon Musk's SpaceX, Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin and a lesser-known company, Huntsville, Ala.-based Dynetics, are preparing for a major decision by NASA early in 2021 about which company will build human-carrying landers for trips to the moon. The three space firms were selected in April to submit proposals early this month. Having done that, they now await NASA's decision, which is scheduled

Washington DC (SPX) Dec 25, 2020
It took fifteen years of imaging and nearly three years of stitching the pieces together to create the largest image ever made, the 8-trillion-pixel mosaic of Mars' surface. Now, the first study to utilize the image in its entirety provides unprecedented insight into the ancient river systems that once covered the expansive plains in the planet's southern hemisphere. These three billion-year-old

Changchun, China (XNA) Dec 25, 2020
An international team of researchers has identified over 109,000 previously unrecognized impact craters on the moon using machine learning methods. The study, led by researchers from Jilin University, was published in the journal Nature Communications. Impact craters are the most prominent lunar surface feature and occupy most of the moon's surface. With traditional automatic identif

Changsha, China (XNA) Dec 25, 2020
China plans to launch the core module of its manned space station in the first half of 2021, a senior official said Friday. The core module will be sent by a Long March-5B Y2 rocket from the Wenchang Spacecraft Launch Site in Hainan Province, said Zhou Jianping, chief designer of China's manned space program, at a handover ceremony for the return capsule of the Shenzhou-10 manned spacecraf

Washington DC (UPI) Dec 25, 2020
In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic demanded the attention of thousands of scientists, but they had a lot to look in to, including vaccines and treatments for the novel coronavirus. Many scientists kept their attention on the skies, searching for answers to cosmic mysteries and preparing for the next chapter in the history of human spaceflight. Here are five of the most astounding space-r

Moscow (Sputnik) Dec 25, 2020
The United States may buy a seat on Russia's Soyuz MS-18 spacecraft to deliver its astronaut to the International Space Station (ISS) in the spring of 2021, a source in the space and rocket industry told Sputnik. In November, the Russian state space corporation of Roscosmos said that the crew of the Soyuz MS-18 spacecraft, whose launch is scheduled for April 9, will consist of three Russia

Sao Paulo, Brazil (SPX) Dec 22, 2020
A paper on research conducted by Meirielen Caetano de Sousa, postdoctoral fellow at the University of Sao Paulo's Physics Institute (IF-USP) in Brazil, is highlighted as Editor's Pick in the September issue of Physics of Plasmas, published by the American Institute of Physics with the cooperation of The American Physical Society. The paper, entitled "Wave-particle interactions in a long tr

Schenefeld, Germany (SPX) Dec 23, 2020
An international team from Germany, Sweden, Russia and the USA, led by scientists from European XFEL, has published the results of an experiment that could provide a blueprint for the analysis of transitions states in atoms and molecules. This would open up new opportunities to gain insights into important processes such as photocatalysis, elementary steps in photosynthesis and radiation damage.

Greenbelt MD (SPX) Dec 21, 2020
As glaciers flow outward from the Greenland Ice Sheet, what lies beneath them offers clues to their role in future ice thinning and sea-level rise contribution. Outlet glaciers are rivers of ice flowing within the cracks of the bedrock and draining into the surrounding sea. They retreat and start to thin as climate warms, and this thinning works its way toward the center of the ice sheet.