Two days after touching down on asteroid Bennu, NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission team received on Thursday, Oct. 22, images that confirm the spacecraft has collected more than enough material to meet one of its main mission requirements – acquiring at least 2 ounces (60 grams) of the asteroid’s surface material. The spacecraft captured images of the sample collector head as it moved…
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It will probably be another 100,000 years until the giant red star Betelgeuse dies in a fiery explosion, according to a new study by an international team of researchers. This is based on a study from The Australian National University (ANU), led by Dr Meridith Joyce. The research not only gives Betelgeuse a new lease on life, but shows it is both smaller and closer to Earth than…
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SpaceX is targeting Thursday, October 22 at 12:14 p.m. EDT, 16:14 UTC, for its fifteenth Starlink mission, which will launch 60 Starlink satellites to orbit. Falcon 9 will lift off from Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC-40) at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. There is a backup opportunity available on Friday, October 23 at 11:53 a.m. EDT, 15:53 UTC. Falcon 9’s…
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The September 2020 globally averaged temperature departure from average over land and ocean surfaces was the highest for that month in the 141-year NOAA global temperature dataset record, which dates back to 1880. In simpler terms, scientists at NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI), are saying that unprecedented heat around the world vaulted the ninth month of…
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NASA has awarded Intuitive Machines of Houston approximately $47 million to deliver a drill combined with a mass spectrometer to the Moon by December 2022 under the agency’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services initiative. The delivery of the Polar Resources Ice Mining Experiment known as PRIME-1 will help NASA search for ice at the Moon’s South Pole and, for the first…
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The U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced in a Drug Safety Communication that it is requiring labeling changes for nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs). These changes include new labeling to explain that if women take the medications around 20 weeks or later in their pregnancy, the drugs can cause rare but serious kidney problems in the unborn baby, which can lead…
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The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved Inmazeb (atoltivimab, maftivimab, and odesivimab-ebgn), a mixture of three monoclonal antibodies, as the first FDA-approved treatment for Zaire ebolavirus (Ebola virus) infection in adult and pediatric patients. “Today’s action demonstrates the FDA’s ongoing commitment to responding to public health threats—both domestically and abroad—on the basis of science and data,” said FDA Commissioner Stephen M….
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By Laura Ceville As the days grow shorter and cooler, I have pondered whether or not it is time to take down our hummingbird feeder. As far as timing, I know that some hummingbirds start migrating as early as mid-July and others wait until August or September. But I wonder if these tiny, energetic birds have all left for…
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NASA has selected 14 American companies, including several small businesses, as partners to develop a range of technologies that will help forge a path to sustainable Artemis operations on the Moon by the end of the decade. U.S. industry submitted the proposals to NASA’s fifth competitive Tipping Point solicitation, and the selections have an expected combined award value of more…
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A large asteroid will pass Earth at more than 11 times the moon’s distance on November 29, 2020 and will approach our planet more closely in later flybys. 2000 WO107 is an asteroid, classified as near-Earth object and potentially hazardous asteroid of the Aten group. It was discovered on 29 November 2000, by astronomers of the Lincoln Near-Earth Asteroid Research at the Lincoln Laboratory’s Experimental Test Site near…
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