Enlarge / Balloons carrying anti-North Korea leaflets are released by North Korean defectors, now living on South Korea, on February 16, 2013, in Paju, South Korea. (credit: Getty | Chung-Sung Jun) After an intense, detailed investigation, North Korea has determined what sparked an explosive outbreak of COVID-19 that has led to over 4.7 million “fevers”…
Category Archives: Blog
Enlarge / SpaceX launched the SES-22 mission (shown here) this week, its 27th of the year. The company’s Falcon 9 launches have become so routine it didn’t even make this week’s Rocket Report! (credit: Trevor Mahlmann) Welcome to Edition 5.01 of the Rocket Report! The Rocket Report turns 5 years old today, which means we…
Enlarge / Lindy Elkins-Tanton, second from left, and colleagues in Siberia. (credit: Scott Simper / ASU) Lindy Elkins-Tanton is a Siberian-river-running, arc-welding, code-writing, patent-holding, company-founding, asteroid-exploring, igneous petrologist professor. At various times, she has been a farmer, a trainer of competition sheepdogs, a children’s book author, and a management consultant for Boeing Helicopters. She’s currently…
Enlarge / Jumbo-Visma team’s Belgian rider Wout Van Aert cycles to the finish line during the first stage of the 109th edition of the Tour de France cycling race in Copenhagen, Denmark, on July 1, 2022. (credit: Thomas Samson/Getty) Imagine you begin pedaling from the start of Stage 12 of this year’s Tour de France….
Enlarge / Boeing’s Orbital Flight Test-2 mission launches on May 19, 2022. (credit: Trevor Mahlmann) Five weeks have passed since Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft returned from a largely successful test flight to the International Space Station, and the company continues to review data from the mission alongside engineers from NASA. So far, there have been no…
Enlarge / The California condor is a New World vulture, the largest North American land bird. This condor became extinct in the wild in 1987, but the species has been reintroduced in California and Arizona. (credit: OldFulica/Getty) The first California condor to reach Yurok ancestral land in over a century arrived by plane and car…
Enlarge / A variety of pain-relieving drugs are available both over the counter and by prescription. (credit: SelectStock/Getty) Without the ability to feel pain, life is more dangerous. To avoid injury, pain tells us to use a hammer more gently, wait for the soup to cool or put on gloves in a snowball fight. Those…
Enlarge / Cosmonauts Oleg Artemyev, Denis Matveyev, and Sergey Korsakov pose with a flag of the Luhansk People’s Republic on the International Space Station. The Russian state space corporation responsible for spaceflight activities, Roscosmos, on Monday posted images to its official Telegram channel showing three cosmonauts with the tri-color flags of the Luhansk People’s Republic…
Enlarge (credit: Julius Csotonyi) A group of researchers has recently made an astounding discovery. Using an innovative imaging technique, an international team of scientists has uncovered remarkable details of a pterosaur’s soft tissue. Despite an age of approximately 145–163 million years, the wing membrane and the webbing between both feet managed to survive fossilization. Armed…
Enlarge / A woman watches white flags on the National Mall on September 18, 2021 in Washington, DC. Over 660,000 white flags were installed here to honor Americans who have lost their lives to COVID-19 epidemic. (credit: Getty | Chen Mengtong) COVID-19 was the third leading cause of death in Americans between March 2020 and…