Science

Is there life on Mars? Well, there's Claude in the machine

Anthropic's Claude machine learning model has boldly planned what no Claude has planned before – a path across Mars for NASA's Perseverance rover.…

Spot's new cleanup gig involves gamma rays, alpha particles, and considerably less PPE than fleshy colleagues

Bark!Bark!Bark!  Sellafield Ltd is to use Boston Dynamics' Spot robot dogs in "routine, business-as-usual operations" amid the ongoing cleanup and decommissioning of the notorious UK nuclear site.…

Governors offered atomic megasites and federal cash as hundreds of pages of regulations go missing

The Department of Energy (DOE) is inviting US states to host "Nuclear Lifecycle Innovation Campuses" to revitalize atomic power amid reports the agency has weakened safety rules governing the way nuclear sites operate.…

How a cold morning, failed O-rings, and flawed decision-making led to tragedy

Forty years ago, Space Shuttle Challenger disintegrated 73 seconds into its flight, killing its crew of seven and exposing the management culture and decision-making process that led NASA to launch on a freezing January day.…

Communication attempts ongoing for stricken spacecraft

NASA is setting up an anomaly review board to look into the fate of its Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) spacecraft, which was last heard from on December 6.…

RIKEN links up with Argonne, Fujitsu, and Nvidia to build next-gen infrastructure

Japan's RIKEN scientific research institute and Fujitsu are working with America's Argonne National Laboratory (ANL) and Nvidia to build and operate next-gen compute infrastructure for AI and high-performance computing (HPC), in line with President Trump's Genesis Mission.…

In space, no one can hear you bork

NASA has confirmed that its planet hunter, TESS (Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite), entered safe mode due to a command error that inadvertently left the spacecraft's solar arrays angled away from the Sun.…

40 years later, mission boffin recalls being told to pronounce it correctly

It is 40 years since Voyager 2 performed the first and, so far, only flyby of the planet Uranus. The resulting trove of data, however, was a bonus that almost didn't happen.…

Pointing problem left TESS in the dark

Good news for planet hunters – NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) is back online after a short flirtation with safe mode.…

Launch vehicle due to make maiden flight this year, company promises update in February earnings call

Rocket Lab suffered a setback after a Neutron Stage 1 tank ruptured overnight while the company was performing a hydrostatic pressure trial at its Space Structures Complex in Middle River, Maryland.…

From adaptive wearables to light-based signaling ideas, researchers are exploring what comes next

The feathers of a hummingbird, the wings of a butterfly, and the sparkle of an opal are all examples of nature's ability to produce structural, iridescent colors that typically require lab-grade materials and techniques to replicate. An MIT team says it has found a way to make that process far more accessible.…

Still or sparkling? Either way, the problem of scale remains

Lithium-ion batteries are everywhere, and recycling them cleanly and safely at scale is still hard. Now, a Chinese research team claims to have discovered a way to recycle Li-ion batteries using carbon dioxide and water. Just don't expect it to revolutionize the market overnight.…

If it all goes wrong, British kids of the '80s might remember an alternative

NASA's monster Moon rocket, the Space Launch System (SLS), has trundled out to the launch pad – though the upper stage and Orion spacecraft look uncannily like a prop from a 1980s British children's television show.…

Agency dodges deep cut and mass mission shutdowns, but ambitious red planet plan gets the boot

US Congress has rejected plans to slash NASA's science budget, restoring most funding with one notable exception: Mars Sample Return remains cancelled.…

Much of the damage done well before first power-on, in bit barns' childhood, says study

Constructing datacenters accounts for 39 percent of their total carbon dioxide emissions, almost as much as operating them, according to an environmental analysis covering the entire lifecycle of a facility.…

One payload out of fifteen survived and sent home some useful data

India’s Space Research Organisation (ISRO) has commenced an investigation into the failure of a PSLV launcher.…

Sick astronaut back on Earth by Thursday, nature of ailment remains undisclosed

NASA astronaut Mike Fincke has handed command of the ISS to Roscosmos cosmonaut Sergey Kud-Sverchkov as Fincke and the rest of Crew-11 are scheduled to head back to Earth on Wednesday.…

Medical issue forces mission curtailment and leaves station short-handed

NASA is bringing the Crew-11 astronauts back to Earth early after one encountered a medical issue that could not be dealt with aboard the orbiting outpost.…

Analysts say production will top out this decade while global electrification keeps ramping

Concerns are mounting over copper supplies, with a fresh study warning that demand will likely outstrip production within a decade, threatening to constrain global technological advancement.…

Extremophile bacteria could help turn Martian dirt into building material for human habitats

Tough microbes able to survive extreme environments on Earth could be the key to constructing buildings to allow humans to survive on Mars, according to a research paper.…