Tag: environment
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White House budget proposal tightens the screws on science, from space to salmon
An artist’s conception shows NASA’s Space Launch System in flight. (NASA Illustration) The White House’s $4.7 trillion spending plan for fiscal year 2020 aims to give a boost to the Space Force, but would dial down work on NASA’s Space Launch System, zero out the Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope, leave salmon in the lurch…
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Final Delta 2 rocket launch puts NASA’s ICESat-2 satellite in orbit to monitor ice
A United Launch Alliance Delta 2 rocket rises from its launch pad at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, carrying NASA’s ICESAT-2 satellite into orbit. (NASA via YouTube) NASA kicked off its ICESat-2 mission to monitor our planet’s ice sheets from space using a laser-scanning satellite this morning, with a launch that marked the end…
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Do rockets blast away the ozone layer? It’s no biggie today … but watch the skies
The dark exhaust seen streaming from the Merlin engines on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket that launched last October contains black carbon, which chemists say may play a role in ozone-depleting chemistry. (SpaceX via YouTube) Thanks to Blue Origin, SpaceX and other space ventures, the skies could well be filled with rockets in years to…
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Air-launched rocket puts eight CYGNSS microsatellites in orbit to study hurricanes
A photo taken from a NASA F-18 chase plane shows Orbital ATK’s L-1011 Stargazer jet deploying a Pegasus XL rocket to launch eight CYGNSS satellites. (NASA Photo / Lori Losey) After several days of delays, a squadron of eight microsatellites was sent into orbit by a rocket launched from a high-flying airplane. Their mission? To study…
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Has Leonardo DiCaprio signed up for Elon Musk’s trip to Mars? It’s just a joke, people!
President Barack Obama mixed it up with Leonardo DiCaprio during the White House’s South by South Lawn festival. (Credit: White House) For a time, the Internet was agog over Leonardo DiCaprio’s claim that he’s getting a ticket to Mars – presumably as part of SpaceX billionaire Elon Musk’s plan to send a million people to the…
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From haven to hell: NASA climate models suggest Venus may have been habitable
A land-ocean pattern like the one shown in this artist’s conception was used in a climate model to show how storm clouds could have shielded ancient Venus from strong sunlight. (Credit: NASA) Today Venus is a hellish planet with a crushingly dense atmosphere of carbon dioxide, but billions of years ago, it could have had…