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As astronauts and engineers like to say, space is tough, but that has never stopped bright minds from dreaming big.
A Seattle-based company has revived NASA’s spaceplane plans, which were abandoned in 2001 due to technical difficulties. Radian Aerospace wants to replace vertical rocket launches with aircraft that launch into space from a rocket-powered sled. Still, such a reinvention won’t be easy.
Meanwhile, the fate of Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft under NASA’s Commercial Crew Program remains uncertain, which will determine whether it will eventually become a spacecraft capable of carrying astronauts to low Earth orbit.
The spacecraft successfully launched and delivered NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams to the International Space Station in June, but what seemed like an eight-day journey turned into months of questions about the Starliner’s ability to return the crew safely to Earth.
Now, due to propulsion issues, NASA and Boeing have decided to send Starliner back without its two astronauts to complete the mission.
Defying gravity
Nearly three months later, the Starliner spacecraft returned to Earth without its two test pilots after departing the space station Friday night and parachuting into the New Mexico desert Saturday morning.
Starliner becomes the first U.S.-built capsule to land by parachute rather than crash into the ocean.
Wilmore and Williams watched their spacecraft lift off and will remain at the orbiting laboratory until 2025.
“There’s a part of all of us that would have liked everything to have gone the way we planned. We had planned for the mission to land with Butch and Suni on board,” said Steve Stich, manager of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program.
Now that Starliner is back on Earth, Boeing engineers will inspect the spacecraft and determine what work needs to be done to fix problems that arose during its first flight into space. It’s not yet clear how or when Starliner will be certified to carry astronauts into space on a regular basis.
Ocean Secrets
Researchers tagged a pregnant shark off the coast of Cape Cod, Massachusetts, to track its movements and see where she was likely to give birth.
But five months later, its tag floated to the ocean surface, and the team realized a large predator had likely eaten the shark.
The investigation turned into a scientific murder mystery, and two possible suspects emerged in the waters where the porbeagle disappeared: great white and shortfin mako sharks.
The discovery revealed that shark behavior is more complex than previously thought and that large sharks hunting each other may be a common behavior.
Wild Kingdom
The Iberian lynx has been saved from extinction after decades of conservation efforts, and new technology could ensure that the lynx population in Spain has a long future.
Habitat loss, reduced food resources and road accidents were the lynx’s biggest obstacles, and the European Union and Spanish government funded a major project to restore habitats and prey.
But the Iberian lynx remains under threat. To prevent the cats from being run over on busy highways, conservationists are installing virtual fences equipped with sensors that use sound and light alarms. And in the future, scientists could design scent corridors, creating artificial paths to connect different lynx populations.
Other worlds
An asteroid 20 times the size of the one that caused the extinction of the dinosaurs may have slammed into Jupiter’s moon Ganymede 4 billion years ago, according to a new study.
The force of the impact may have caused the Moon, the largest planet in the Solar System, to shift on its axis.
Astronomers may find more answers about Ganymede’s history and how the impact affected the global ocean beneath its icy surface when the European Space Agency’s Juice spacecraft arrives and studies the moon in 2031.
Meanwhile, a small asteroid burned up in Earth’s atmosphere near the Philippine island of Luzon this week, causing a flare.
Frequently asked questions
By mixing yellow food coloring, a common substance, with water, researchers were able to observe how a mouse’s organs worked after temporarily making its skin transparent.
The scientists applied the mixture to the skin on the skulls and abdomens of live mice, and the team was then able to directly observe the blood vessels on the surface of the brain and the muscle contractions that move food through the digestive tracts.
When the light-absorbing dye mixes with water, it suppresses the skin tissue’s ability to scatter light.
A scientific breakthrough similar to the plot of HG Wells’s “The Invisible Man” could revolutionise biomedical research and make veins more visible during blood draws.
Discoveries
Grab your favorite morning coffee and start your day with these fresh reads:
— A team led by Cornell University researchers has combined living organisms with machines to design robots controlled by king oyster mushrooms.
— New photos taken at the site of the Titanic disaster have revealed how much the 1912 shipwreck has decayed in recent years, while also revealing the location of a surprisingly intact statue of a Roman goddess.
— An amateur archaeologist has unearthed an ancient, intricate kite-shaped ring that has been buried for more than 1,000 years at the site of a castle in north-east Scotland.
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