Science News

By Will Dunham WASHINGTON, Aug 21 (Reuters) - The moon is, to put it mildly, an inhospitable place for people and other living organisms from Earth, with its lack of breathable air, extreme temperatures and exposure to relentless space radiation and en...

By Ethan Wang, Shi Bu and Ryan Woo BEIJING, Aug 21 (Reuters) - China is poised to launch Chang'e-7, its most technologically complex lunar mission to date, in its search for frozen stores of water in permanently shadowed craters near the moon's south p...

WASHINGTON, Aug 20 (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump on ​Thursday signed a ‌memo to help drastically increase the number of U.S. space ‌launches, ​directing ⁠a series of ⁠actions by government agencies. The White House wants to enable at ​least 1...

By Will Dunham Aug 20 (Reuters) - In the Middle Ages, narwhal tusks were sold as unicorn horns blessed with magical powers such as neutralizing poisons and curing diseases - prized possessions of monarchs and nobles worth more than their weight in gold...

SANTIAGO, Aug 20 (Reuters) - As thousands more satellites enter orbit, astronomers may face mounting difficulties in observing the cosmos, according to a study by the European Southern Observatory, which ​operates telescopes in northern Chile. The ESO ...

By Maxim Shemetov WENCHANG, China, Aug 20 (Reuters) - On a sweltering August night, thousands on China's Hainan island thronged the beaches around the Wenchang Space Launch Site, phones raised, waiting for a show. Shortly after 8 p.m., the Long March 7...

By Joey Roulette WASHINGTON, Aug 19 (Reuters) - A mission to rescue NASA's aging Swift observatory in space was canceled on Wednesday after the spacecraft that was launched to tug the satellite ​to a higher orbit suffered irredeemable technical issues ...

WASHINGTON, Aug 19 (Reuters) - Scientists have detected the fastest-known star, a stellar speedster that is zooming around the supermassive black hole residing at the center of our galaxy and might hold the key to measuring the spin of this celestial b...

BEIJING, Aug 19 (Reuters) - A pioneer of China's aerospace programme, Liu Jiyuan, died ​in Beijing aged 93 ‌after an illness, the main space contractor said on Wednesday. • In a career of nearly ‌four ​decades from 1960, ⁠Liu worked on, ⁠and led develo...

By Mirko Miorelli Aug 19 (Reuters) - Italy's fragmented space industry is facing growing pressure to consolidate as defence and government customers increasingly favour larger suppliers capable of handling complex programmes. The shift reflects a broa...

By Shi Bu, Ethan Wang and Joe Cash BEIJING, Aug 19 (Reuters) - Chinese startup LandSpace on Wednesday recovered the first stage of its Zhuque-3 rocket, joining SpaceX and Blue Origin as the only private companies to land an orbital-class booster and na...

By Will Dunham WASHINGTON, Aug 18 (Reuters) - The Milky Way, a large and spiral-shaped galaxy that is home to hundreds of billions of stars including our sun, has taken a long and complicated path to achieve its current dimensions, as illustrated by ne...

By Deborah Mary Sophia Aug 17 (Reuters) - Serve Robotics said on Monday it is partnering with Grubhub to fulfill orders on the food delivery platform using its sidewalk delivery robots, ​tapping a new marketplace days after its years-long tie-up with ‌...

By Fabian Cambero and Nicolas Cortes SANTIAGO, Aug 17 (Reuters) - A team led by Chilean researchers has produced the most complete genetic map yet of one of only ​two flowering plants that grow naturally in Antarctica, potentially ‌helping the developm...

By Enea Lebrun and Stefanie Eschenbacher PANAMA BAY, Panama, Aug 14 (Reuters) - Flocks of seabirds native to the cold, nutrient-rich waters off Peru and Chile are appearing far outside their usual range in Panama Bay as a powerful El Niño warms the eas...

By Joey Roulette WASHINGTON, Aug 14 (Reuters) - U.S. rocket company Astra Space is seeking to raise $250 million at a $1 billion valuation in a funding round expected to close ​this quarter, CEO Chris Kemp said in an interview, ‌as the company looks to...

By Akash Sriram and Suzanne McGee Aug 14 (Reuters) - Alphabet's early bet on SpaceX has multiplied more than 100-fold, with the Google parent disclosing a stake worth about $94 billion at the end of June, up from a $900 million investment in Elon Musk'...

By Corina Pons, Tom Little and David Latona MADRID/REYKJAVIK, Aug 12 (Reuters) - Spectators across Spain watched in wonder, some whipping off their protective glasses and rising to their feet in unison, as a rare total solar eclipse swept across the no...

BERLIN, Aug 11 (Reuters) - A peek inside dogs' brains revealed man's best friend can distinguish emotions in people's faces, researchers at the University of ​Vienna have found, providing what they said ‌was the first ever evidence of such an ability. ...

By Michele Kambas and Renee Maltezou LIMASSOL, Cyprus/ATHENS Aug 11 (Reuters) - Pepis, the bearded skipper of a small fishing boat, deftly picks up two lionfish caught in experimental traps off the coast of Cyprus, cuts off their venomous spines, guts ...