(CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla.) — A newly discovered comet is streaking past Earth, providing a stunning nighttime show after buzzing the sun and expanding its tail. NASA’s Neowise infrared space telescope discovered the comet in March. Comet Neowise — the brightest comet visible from the Northern Hemisphere in a quarter-century — swept within Mercury’s orbit a week ago. Its...

One of the world's most influential climate activist groups tries to find a new path forward after losing its way

The maker of a drug shown to shorten recovery time for severely ill COVID-19 patients says it will charge $2,340 for a typical treatment course for people covered by government health programs in the United States and other developed countries. Gilead Sciences announced the price Monday for remdesivir, and said the price would be $3,120 for patients with private insurance. The amount that...

Researchers in England say they have the first evidence that a drug can improve COVID-19 survival: A steroid called dexamethasone reduced deaths by up to one third in severely ill hospitalized patients. Results were announced Tuesday and researchers said they would publish them soon. The study is a large, strict test that randomly assigned 2,104 patients to get the drug and compared them with...

When Dr. Anthony Fauci said in late May that there’s a “good chance” a COVID-19 vaccine will be ready by the end of this year, Steve Roth badly wanted to believe him. Roth, a 74-year-old New Yorker who endured fever, pneumonia and anxiety while fighting the virus, wants life to go back to normal as much as anyone. And he respects Fauci, the longtime head of the National...

The world’s renewable power capacity grew at a faster rate last year than ever before, while the cost of adding new capacity fell to a record low, says a U.N. Environment Program report released June 10. Researchers found that in 2019, governments and companies created 184 gigawatts (GW) of new renewable power capacity —12% more than was added in 2018. That increase came despite...

The COVID-19 outbreak is a global tragedy. Hundreds of thousands have died, healthcare systems are buckling, and the future is uncertain for millions of people whose livelihoods are collapsing. It is absolutely right that the focus today is on saving lives here and now. In the same spirit of doing what we can to safeguard people’s wellbeing, we must not content ourselves with containing...

The U.K. has recorded its sunniest spring, with May being its sunniest calendar month, since records began over 90 years ago, according to data published by the Met Office—the U.K.’s national weather service—on June 1. For many people in the U.K, it has meant long days of soaking up the sun as lockdown restrictions eased from May 13. However, experts say that this record, along...

(CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla.) — SpaceX delivered two astronauts to the International Space Station for NASA on Sunday, following up a historic liftoff with an equally smooth docking in yet another first for Elon Musk’s company. With test pilots Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken poised to take over manual control if necessary, the SpaceX Dragon capsule pulled up to the station and docked...

You never know what you’ve got til it’s gone. And if you don’t believe that, consider the national jubilation at 3:22 PM EDT Saturday afternoon, when an American rocket carrying an American crew lifted off from American soil for the first time since 2011, carrying astronauts Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken to the International Space Station (ISS). The successful launch comes just a...

When you’ve got a 230-ft. tall rocket filled with 76,000 gallons of explosive fuel sitting on the launch pad, the President in the viewing stands and millions worldwide waiting to watch the great machine fly, you’d figure you wouldn’t schedule the event for a spring afternoon in Florida, when bad weather stands to wreck the whole party. Those are exactly the conditions in which...

(Cape Canaveral, Fla.) — The launch of a SpaceX rocket ship with two NASA astronauts on a history-making flight into orbit has been called off with 16 minutes to go in the countdown because of the danger of lightning. Liftoff is rescheduled for Saturday. The spacecraft was set to blast off Wednesday afternoon for the International Space Station, ushering in a new era in commercial...

(CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla.) — Stormy weather is threatening to delay SpaceX’s first astronaut launch. A SpaceX rocket is scheduled to blast off Wednesday afternoon from Kennedy Space Center, carrying a Dragon capsule with NASA astronauts Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken to the International Space Station. It will be the first time astronauts launch from Florida in nine years and a first for a...

(LOS ANGELES) — Richard Branson’s Virgin Orbit failed Monday on its first attempt to launch a test satellite into space aboard a rocket carried aloft by a Boeing 747 and released over the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Southern California. The inaugural launch had appeared to be going well until moments after the rocket was dropped from beneath the left wing of the jumbo jet dubbed...

It’s been a long time since the country that once flew nine crewed missions to the moon has been able to launch even a single human being to space aboard its own rockets from its own soil. Ever since the final flight of the space shuttle in July 2011, the U.S. has been dependent on buying rides aboard Russia’s Soyuz spacecraft—at a current $80 million a seat—if it wants...

(Sterling, Va.) — President Donald Trump plans to be on the Florida coast Wednesday to watch American astronauts blast into orbit from the Kennedy Space Center for the first time in more than a decade. It will be the first time since the space shuttle program ended in 2011 that U.S. astronauts will launch into space aboard an American rocket from American soil. Also new Wednesday: a...

In the largest observational study thus far investigating the drug hydroxychloroquine as a treatment for COVID-19, researchers found little evidence that it helps, and worrying evidence that the medication may cause harm. In a study published May 22 in the journal Lancet, scientists in the U.S. and Switzerland report on an analysis of more than 96,000 people hospitalized with confirmed COVID-19...

On May 1, the U.S Food and Drug Administration issued an emergency-use authorization of remdesivir, an experimental anti-viral drug. With this clearance, doctors in the U.S. are now allowed to use the drug to treat patients with severe cases of COVID-19. Remdesivir isn’t new. It was initially developed to treat Ebola and was also tested in the lab against SARS and MERS—two other...

From her laboratory in the far western reaches of Montana, Elizabeth Fischer is trying to help people see what they’re up against in COVID-19. Over the past three decades, Fischer, 58, and her team at the Rocky Mountain Laboratories, part of the National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, have captured and created some of the more...

(COLUMBUS, Ohio) — Annie Glenn, wife of the late astronaut and U.S. Sen. John Glenn who overcame a childhood stutter to become an advocate for others with speech disorders, died Tuesday of complications from COVID-19. She was 100. Glenn died at a nursing home near St. Paul, Minnesota, where she’d moved in recent years to be near her daughter, said Hank Wilson, a spokesman for the...

(CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla.) — The U.S. military’s mystery space plane rocketed into orbit again Sunday, this time with an extra load of science experiments. It’s the sixth flight of an X-37B, a solar-powered plane that’s flown by remote control without a crew. Officials aren’t saying how long the spacecraft will remain in orbit this time or the purpose of the mission....

In the depths of the ocean, and out of sight for most of us, there’s a quiet miracle happening. Many humpback whale populations, previously devastated by commercial whaling, are making a comeback. And no, before you ask, this has nothing to do with the coronavirus. A recent study on humpbacks that breed off the coast of Brazil and call Antarctic waters home during the summer has shown that...

Here’s betting you wouldn’t want anyone blowing smallpox scabs up your nose. But you might feel differently if you lived in 15th century China. Long ago, the Chinese recognized that people who had contracted smallpox once were immune to reinfection. They came up with the idea of preserving scabs from individuals who had suffered mild cases, drying them out, crushing them to a powder...

Report after report has documented the warning President Trump received about the growing threat the new coronavirus posed to the U.S. But Trump remained defiant, reports say, seeking to settle the markets and sustain the three years of economic growth that had underpinned his reelection campaign. Even after recommending social distancing and the closing of the U.S. economy, Trump insisted that...