Category: Science

PARIS (Reuters) – The Canadian government’s contracting arm is backing a proposed new satellite system that will use big data analytics to provide commercially available data about the Earth and its orbit amid growing concerns about the risks posed by space debris. Support from the Canadian Commercial Corporation (CCC) will allow Canadian startup NorthStar Earth…

MOSCOW (Reuters) – About 40,000 years ago, a wolf died in what we know as Siberia. Now its severed head has been found, and because of the freezing conditions, it is so well preserved that its fur, teeth, brain and facial tissue are largely intact. A Yakutia resident, Pavel Yefimov, found the head last summer…

NEW DELHI (Reuters) – India will look to create its own space station following the completion of the country’s first manned mission into space in 2022, its space agency chief said on Thursday. The space station, where astronauts can stay for 15 to 20 days, would be placed in an orbit of about 400 kilometers…

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Marijuana chemical residue has been found in incense burners apparently used during funerary rites at a mountainous site in western China in about 500 BC, providing what may be the oldest evidence of smoking cannabis for its mind-altering properties. The evidence was found on 10 wooden braziers containing stones with burn marks…

BENGALURU (Reuters) – India said on Wednesday it will launch its second lunar mission in mid-July, as it moves to consolidate its status as a leader in space technology by achieving a controlled landing on the moon. The mission, if successful, would make India only the fourth country behind the United States, Russia and China…

BUDAPEST (Reuters) – The head of Hungary’s oldest scientific institute said it was considering taking legal action to challenge government moves to take more control over research work and budgets. The nationalist administration of Prime Minister Viktor Orban has proposed a shake-up of the 200-year-old Hungarian Academy of Sciences that it says is meant to…

(Reuters) – Relativity Space, a venture-backed rocket maker, said on Tuesday it will lease space from NASA in Mississippi, where its gigantic 3D printers will produce low-cost rockets to be used to launch small-payload satellites into orbit. The lease, for 220,000 square feet (20,000 square meters) at NASA’s Stennis Space Center rocket-testing facility, is the…

LONDON (Reuters) – Britain’s Ocado is plowing 17 million pounds ($22 million) into the emerging “vertical farming” industry, further diversifying the online grocer and technology group’s business. Vertical farming involves producing food indoors, with crops grown on a series of stacked levels in a controlled environment. “We foresee a day where customers’ vegetables are harvested…

(Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump on Friday criticized NASA for aiming to put astronauts back on the moon by 2024 and urged the space agency to focus instead on “much bigger” initiatives like going to Mars, undercutting his previous support for the lunar initiative. “For all of the money we are spending, NASA should…

LA SERENA, Chile (Reuters) – The total solar eclipse expected in northern Chile early next month is already drawing flocks of visitors eager to glimpse a rare view of the phenomenon through the region’s clear skies. In Coquimbo, a region spanning the Pacific coast and the Andes, tourism demand has already eclipsed offerings of some…