Enlarge / A nurse practitioner named Heidi Johnson administers a vaccine from Johnson & Johnson. (credit: Tom Williams / Getty Images) On Tuesday morning, the US Centers for Disease Control and Food and Drug Administration issued a release acknowledging an extremely rare clotting disorder was associated with the use of the Johnson & Johnson COVID […]
Enlarge / Artist’s rendering of the Mission Extension Vehicle-2 (foreground) docked to a client satellite. (credit: Northrop Grumman) A large, passenger van-sized spacecraft sidled up to an active, 6-ton satellite on Monday afternoon about 36,000 km above the Earth’s surface. Slowly, ever so slowly, the distance between the two vehicles closed. There was nothing wrong […]
Enlarge (credit: WISA WOODSAT) Late last year, we were extremely skeptical of reports regarding a plan for wooden satellites that seemed confused about what could be gained from using the natural material. But a wooden satellite looks like it might get to orbit later this year, via a project we can fully endorse. It’s a […]
Enlarge / Rochelle Walensky, director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), adjusts her protective mask during a Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee hearing in Washington, DC. (credit: Getty | Bloomberg) Highly effective COVID-19 vaccines are simply too slow to stop surges like the one underway in Michigan, Rochelle Walensky, […]
Enlarge / Egyptian archaeologists have discovered a 3400-year-old city just outside Luxor, dating back to the reign of Amenhotop III, grandfather to King Tut. (credit: Zahi Hawass) A team of Egyptian archaeologists has unearthed what some describe as an industrial royal metropolis just north of modern-day Luxor, which incorporates what was once the ancient Egyptian […]
The first photo of Yuri Gagarin after his historic spaceflight. [credit: Russian Government ] Sixty years ago today, a single Soviet man climbed into a small spherical capsule at a secretive spaceport in modern-day Kazakhstan. A Vostok-K rocket sent the capsule, carrying Yuri Gagarin, into low orbit with an apogee of 327 km. Gagarin would […]
Enlarge / Most geoengineering plans involve humanity doing what some volcanoes already do: inject particles into the stratosphere that reflect sunlight. (credit: NASA) Without condoning or condemning the poorly understood tactic, recent reports suggest we should try to understand one proposed strategy to cool the planet: altering the atmosphere to reflect sunlight. Called solar radiation […]
Enlarge / Physicist Gerry O’Neill popularized the notion of space settlement. (credit: Subtractive) A new movie brings to life the legacy of a physicist who has played an influential—but largely unheralded—role in shaping the vision of space settlement. The documentary The High Frontier: The Untold Story of Gerard K. O’Neill takes its name from the […]
Enlarge / Lightning strikes in the far north of Canada. (credit: Sandra Angers-Blondin) The Arctic isn’t doing so hot. That’s because it is, in fact, too hot. It’s warming at least twice as fast as the rest of the planet, which is setting off vicious feedback loops that accelerate change. Ice, for instance, is more […]
Enlarge (credit: Marina Dekhnik | Getty Images) In mid-February, three travelers were stopped at the airport in Luanda, Angola. Even during the pandemic, the country, a hub for the oil industry, had seen plenty of passengers from Europe and South Africa, where two concerning variants of the virus that causes Covid-19 hold sway. But the […]