NASA has selected teams led by Blue Origin, Dynetics and SpaceX to develop lunar landing systems capable of putting astronauts on the moon by as early as 2024. "We want to be able to go to the moon, but we want to be a customer," NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine told reporters today during a teleconference. "We want to drive down the costs, we want to increase the access, we want...

Bill Gates has been big on vaccines since before the start of the coronavirus pandemic, but in a new blog posting, the Microsoft co-founder and billionaire philanthropist says the only way to end the pandemic for good is to offer a vaccine to almost all of the planet's 7 billion inhabitants. That's big. "We've never delivered something to every corner of the world before,"...

US space agency satellites follow the melting trends in Antarctica and Greenland over 16...

UK scientists provide a new estimate for the amount of space rock falling to Earth each...

How African researchers are using the continent's languages to help spur innovation in Artificial...

The discovery that the badger-like animal lived alongside dinosaurs challenges ideas about...

The first near-complete skeleton of a bizarre mammal that lived on the ancient supercontinent of Gondwana has been discovered in...

A squadron of Labrador retrievers are being trained to possibly sniff out the coronavirus in unsuspecting carriers, The Washington Post reports.A University of Pennsylvania research project has enlisted eight dogs to determine whether they can detect an odor associated with the virus (a similar program is under way at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine). If it works out, dogs could...

One of the world's largest lunar meteorites goes on private sale at Christie's on Thursday, valued at 2 million pounds ($2.49 million). The moon rock, weighing over 13.5 kg, was probably struck off the surface of the moon by a collision with an asteroid or comet and then showered down on the Sahara desert. Known as NWA 12691, it is thought to be the fifth largest piece of the moon ever found on...

This story is part of the Pulitzer Center’s nationwide Connected Coastlines reporting initiative. For more information, go to https://pulitzercenter.org/connected-coastlines-initiative.“Do Not Drink/Do Not Boil” is not what anyone wants to hear about their city’s tap water. But the combined effects of climate change and degraded water quality could make such warnings more frequent across...

Nasa and the European Space Agency have shared new images of Comet Atlas as it flies towards Earth.The space object had provoked excitement in recent months, as it became brighter and brighter. Astronomers suggested it could be one of the brightest comets to fly past Earth in decades, promising a display visible with the naked...

The space rock made its closest approach just before 11am BST on...

Scientists predict the explosive behaviour of two supermassive black holes almost to the...

NASA has awarded a $2 million grant to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, The Aerospace Corp. — and Xplore, a Seattle-based space venture — to develop the design architecture for a far-out telescope array that would use the sun's gravitational field as a lens to focus on alien planets. The Phase III award from the NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts program, or NIAC, would cover two years of...

Low humidity triggers wildfire watch as drought provides fields of tinder in Everglades National Park and state-owned land in South...

A giant asteroid from the depths of our solar system will fly by Earth at midweek. This is the largest space rock to zoom past the planet since the start of the year.Estimated to be a little over a mile wide, asteroid (52768) 1998 OR2 will make its closest approach to Earth on Wednesday, April 29; this is the closest it has come to the planet in over 100 years.There is no chance that it will...

Cold-water plankton is being replaced by warm-water...

An “unprecedented” hole in the ozone layer which developed to become the largest ever seen over the Arctic has closed just weeks after opening, scientists observing the phenomenon have said.The gap in the vital layer, which protects the Earth from harmful radiation from the sun, set a new record for ozone depletion in the northern hemisphere when it formed earlier this...

The University of Oxford's Jenner Institute made waves last week when U.K. Health Minister Matt Hancock announced a team is starting trials on a potential coronavirus vaccine of which there could be a million doses by September, which is, in vaccine terms, incredibly fast. There's still a long way to go before determining if the vaccine is viable, but The New York Times reports there's...

The black hole didn’t swallow the red giant whole, but chewed off its outer layers and trapped it in a deadly...

Meteorologists say 2020 on course to be hottest year since records began. Global lockdowns have lowered emissions but longer-term changes needed, say...

The USGS has made it easy to study the Moon's surface by releasing the first comprehensive geologic map of the lunar...

New techniques are being used to transform images from Hubble into spectacular 3D...

Surviving trees growing near to an active volcano face an uncertain future for several years after an eruption, a study...