#science
- The Space Stories That Defined 2021
Looking back at the year's biggest space milestones, from JWST's launch to a record pace of Falcon 9 flights.
- Webb's Nail-Biting 29-Day Drive to L2 Has Begun
The day after launch, JWST is now on its month-long trip to L2, facing roughly 50 deployment steps that all have to work with no chance of a repair mission.
- Merry Christmas, We Have a Telescope in Orbit
The James Webb Space Telescope launched this morning from French Guiana, beginning its month-long journey to L2.
- Log4j Gets a Second Patch While the Geminids Light Up the Sky
Apache ships Log4j 2.16.0 after CVE-2021-45046 exposes gaps in the first fix, and the Geminid meteor shower peaks the same week.
- Comet Leonard Just Made Its Closest Pass by Earth
Comet Leonard (C/2021 A1) swung within about 21 million miles of Earth today, giving skywatchers a shot at 2021's brightest comet before it heads for the Sun.
- How Webb's Origami Mirror Is Supposed to Work
A look at the 18-segment folding mirror that has to unfurl perfectly in space for the James Webb Space Telescope to see anything at all.
- The James Webb Space Telescope Is Ready. Now Comes the Scary Part.
As November ends, JWST sits encapsulated in French Guiana ahead of its December 22 launch — and an even harder month of deployment after that.
- WHO Names Omicron: A New Variant of Concern Enters the Chat
The WHO designated a heavily mutated SARS-CoV-2 lineage as Omicron, a variant of concern, prompting an emergency Geneva meeting and swift travel restrictions.
- NASA's DART Just Launched, and It's Going to Punch an Asteroid
NASA's DART spacecraft launched today on a Falcon 9 to test whether slamming into an asteroid moonlet can actually change its orbit.
- TESS Finds a Gas Giant With a 16-Hour Year, and It's Doomed
NASA's TESS mission has spotted TOI-2109b, an ultra-hot Jupiter with the shortest orbital period ever seen for a gas giant.
- DART Is About to Try Something No One's Ever Done: Punch an Asteroid on Purpose
NASA's DART spacecraft is gearing up for a late-November Falcon 9 launch to test whether we can nudge an asteroid's orbit by ramming into it.
- James Webb's Launch Slips Again, and This Time It's a Clamp Band's Fault
NASA, ESA, and Arianespace push the James Webb Space Telescope's launch to no earlier than December 22 after an unplanned clamp band release rattled the observatory.
- Mars Check-In: Ingenuity's 14th Flight and Perseverance Wakes Back Up
NASA's Ingenuity helicopter logs its 14th Mars flight while Perseverance resumes science after October's solar-conjunction blackout.
- Halley's Comet Sends Its Fireworks: The Orionids Peak Tonight
The annual Orionid meteor shower, made of debris from Halley's Comet, peaks around October 21-22 with up to 20 meteors an hour under dark skies.
- A Bacterial Protein Could Make Rare-Earth Mining a Lot Less Toxic
A newly described protein called lanmodulin offers a greener way to separate rare-earth elements than today's harsh solvent-extraction processes.
- The 2021 Chemistry Nobel Just Rewarded a Better Way to Build Molecules
Benjamin List and David MacMillan won the 2021 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for asymmetric organocatalysis, a cleaner tool for building molecules now used across drug manufacturing.
- The Nobel Physics Prize Just Validated Decades of Climate Modeling
The 2021 Nobel Prize in Physics honors Manabe, Hasselmann, and Parisi for turning chaotic, seemingly unpredictable systems into physics we can actually model.
- September's Space Firsts: Inspiration4, Perseverance, and a Month That Kept Delivering
A look back at a September packed with commercial spaceflight, Mars sample collection, and prep for the next big launches.
- A Pig Kidney Just Worked Inside a Human Body
NYU Langone surgeons attached a genetically modified pig kidney to a human patient and watched it function like the real thing.
- Counting Down to the James Webb Space Telescope
Webb is on track to launch by year's end, and its risky journey to L2 makes it one of the most nerve-wracking missions NASA has ever attempted.
- Perseverance Finally Has a Rock in the Tube
NASA's Perseverance rover successfully cored and sealed its first Mars rock sample, a second-attempt success after an August failure.
- A Third of All Sharks and Rays Are Now Staring Down Extinction
A new study finds roughly a third of sharks, rays and chimaeras are threatened with extinction, mostly from decades of overfishing.
- Perseverance's Empty Drill Hole and the Long Road to Mars Sample Return
After Perseverance's first coring attempt came up empty, here's where the Mars Sample Return campaign goes from here.
- The Billionaire Space Race Has an Air Pollution Problem
As Branson, Bezos, and Musk ramp up launch cadence, scientists are starting to ask what all that rocket exhaust is doing to the upper atmosphere.
- Fusion's Getting Closer, and the Numbers Just Jumped
NIF's August 8 shot hit 1.3 megajoules of fusion yield, 8x better than earlier 2021 results, putting inertial-confinement fusion near ignition.
- This Year's Perseids Might Be the Best Show in Years
The Perseid meteor shower peaked this week, and a new moon plus dark skies made 2021 an unusually good year to watch.
- The IPCC Just Called Code Red, and It's Worth Reading Past the Headline
The UN's Sixth Assessment Report says human-caused warming is unequivocal and some changes are now irreversible for centuries.
- Perseverance's First Drill Attempt Comes Up Empty, and That's Fine
NASA's Perseverance rover drilled its first Martian rock sample, but the tube came back empty — here's why that's not actually a failure.
- Perseverance Is About to Drill Its First Hole in Mars
NASA's $2.7 billion rover is set to attempt its first rock core sample in Jezero Crater within days, using the percussive drill on its 7-foot arm.
- Meet the Borgs: Giant DNA Elements That Might Be Rewriting Microbial Genomes
Berkeley researchers describe huge extrachromosomal DNA structures in marshland microbes that appear to assimilate genes from their surroundings.