Category: Science

BEIJING (Reuters) – China indefinitely postponed on Tuesday the launch of the final satellite of its Beidou navigation network because of technical problems in the rocket meant to launch it into orbit. The official website for the Beidou network said in a statement that problems were detected during pre-launch tests of the Long March-3B booster…

(Reuters) – Houston-based engineering company KBR Inc said on Monday it was awarded a $570.3 million contract by NASA to develop and execute spaceflight operations at Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. Under the contract, KBR will perform International Space Station payload operations and support the testing of NASA’s flagship space launch system. NASA…

BANGKOK (Reuters) – Researchers in Thailand began collecting samples from horseshoe bats to test them for coronavirus amid concerns they may pose a threat to local residents, a government statement said on Saturday. They plan to collect 300 bats over three days from a cave in the Chanthaburi province in the southeast of the country.…

POSTOJNA, Slovenia (Reuters) – Three rare aquatic creatures known as baby dragons are going on display in an aquarium at Slovenia’s Postojna Cave, one of the country’s biggest tourist attractions. The cave-dwelling animals, officially called proteus or olms, have pale pink skin, no eyesight, a long thin body and four legs. They live only in…

BEIJING (Reuters) – The Chinese Beidou navigation network will be complete this month when its final satellite goes into orbit, giving China greater independence from U.S.-owned GPS and heating up competition in a sector long dominated by the United States. The idea to develop Beidou, or the Big Dipper in Chinese, took shape in the…

SANTIAGO (Reuters) – Chilean and Argentine researchers have unearthed teeth in far-flung Patagonia belonging to a mammal that lived 74 million years ago, the oldest such remains yet discovered in the South American country, the Chilean Antarctic Institute reported on Thursday. Scientists uncovered the tiny teeth, which belonged to a species called Magallanodon baikashkenke, on…

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A tiny statuette of a bird carved from burnt bone about 13,500 years ago reveals the origins of Chinese art, embodying a style different from prehistoric three-dimensional artwork by people in other parts of the world, researchers said on Wednesday. The figurine, found at a site called Lingjing in Henan Province in…

LONDON (Reuters) – Scientists have used human embryonic stem cells to create an embryo-like research model to help them study some of the earliest stages of human development. The model overcomes some of the ethical restrictions on using human embryos for research and will allow scientists to study a period of human development known as…

SYDNEY (Reuters) – The world’s largest population of nesting green turtles is nearly twice as big as previously thought, scientists said on Wednesday, after drones enabled better surveys of the animals. Australian scientists determined that there were about 64,000 green turtles waiting to lay eggs on Raine Island – a vegetated coral cay on the…

MOSCOW (Reuters) – Americans should show more respect for Russia’s space program after relying on it for nine years as the only way to send U.S. astronauts into orbit, the head of Russia’s space agency said. The United States launched the first astronauts from U.S. soil since 2011 last month in a rocket built by…