Venice (AFP) Sept 3, 2021
Giant worms and inter-planetary battles rocked the Venice Film Festival on Friday as "Dune", one of the most hotly anticipated blockbusters in years, was finally set for its world premiere. It brought a cavalcade of A-listers to the city's glitzy Lido island, along with fans packing the waterfront for the arrival of Timothee Chalamet, Zendaya, Oscar Isaac, Josh Brolin and Javier Bardem.

Washington DC (UPI) Sep 3, 2021
Scientists have developed a more compact CRISPR system that can be more easily delivered to cells. The technology, described Friday in the journal Molecular Cell, promises to make cell-engineering more effective and efficient. The world's most popular and powerful gene-editing tool, CRISPR-Cas9, has enabled numerous scientific discoveries. It works by excising specific DNA sequen

Piscataway NJ (SPX) Sep 07, 2021
Leading companies and organizations in the space industry, including two major branches of the U.S. Department of Defense, have come together to form the Digital IF Interoperability (DIFI) Consortium, a non-profit industry group created to advance interoperability among space and ground system networks. Formed under the auspices of The IEEE Industry Standards and Technology Organization (I

Huntsville AL (SPX) Sep 07, 2021
NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory has successfully resumed observations after recovery from a problem involving one of its science instruments, the Low Energy Transmission Grating (LETG). The LETG is used to measure the intensity of X-rays at different energies. In preparation for an observing run Aug. 31 using the LETG, the movement of this instrument into its operating position - where it

Santa Cruz CA (SPX) Sep 07, 2021
Astronomers can't touch the stars they study, but astrophysicist Nia Imara is using 3-dimensional models that fit in the palm of her hand to unravel the structural complexities of stellar nurseries, the vast clouds of gas and dust where star formation occurs. Imara and her collaborators created the models using data from simulations of star-forming clouds and a sophisticated 3D printing pr

Moscow (Sputnik) Sep 07, 2021
During his spacewalk from the International Space Station (ISS), cosmonaut Pyotr Dubrov first approached the new module Nauka, calling it a historic moment, according to the crew's talks with the Earth, broadcast by Roscosmos. On Friday, Dubrov and his colleague Oleg Novitsky make a spacewalk to connect Nauka module to the US power supply. "A historic moment - the first grab of the h

New Orleans LA (SPX) Sep 07, 2021
Recovery and damage assessments continue at NASA's Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans following Hurricane Ida. The powerful category 4 hurricane made landfall in Louisiana Aug. 29 on the 16th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. The Michoud Safety and Security team completed an initial assessment of the 829-acre facility and its 81 buildings and structures on Aug. 31. Teams determined M

Pasadena CA (JPL) Sep 07, 2021
Seven days after this historic milestone, a massive antenna at NASA's Deep Space Network Goldstone complex imaged another, far larger object. On Aug. 14, 2021, a small near-Earth asteroid (NEA) designated 2021 PJ1 passed our planet at a distance of over 1 million miles (about 1.7 million kilometers). Between 65 and 100 feet (20 and 30 meters) wide, the recently discovered asteroid wasn't a

Washington (AFP) Sept 5, 2021
It was only supposed to fly five times. And yet NASA's helicopter on Mars, Ingenuity, has completed 12 flights and it isn't ready to retire. Given its stunning and unexpected success, the US space agency has extended Ingenuity's mission indefinitely. The tiny helicopter has become the regular travel companion of the rover Perseverance, whose core mission is to seek signs of ancient life

Washington DC (UPI) Sep 3, 2021
Texas-based Firefly Aerospace's first rocket launch attempt ended in an explosion minutes after liftoff from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California on Thursday night. Videos and photos posted online showed an orange fireball about two minutes after liftoff of the Firefly Alpha rocket at 9:59 p.m. EDT. White smoke trailed as a piece of debris as it fell into the Pacific Ocean.