Extending its mission well past 2015’s groundbreaking exploration of Pluto, the New Horizons spacecraft made a close pass on New Year’s Day with the distant trans-Neptunian object (486958) 2014 MU69, better known by its nickname, Ultima Thule. This event is not only a great start to the New Year for NASA, it also sets a new record for the farthest object in the Solar System visited by a spacecraft.
read more
Efforts to supply arid regions with water have been undertaken ever since humanity began spreading into the world’s deserts, with ingenious methods being invented throughout history to hydrate populations and their agriculture in deserts and mountains. This problem is becoming more acute as the Earth’s climate shifts: while there are regions that are experiencing increased flooding, there are corresponding locations that suffer more frequent droughts, meaning we need to find new ways of providing the people there with a ready source of water. One engineering team with Ohio State University are now studying new water collection methods, inspired by desert plants and animals, to develop a new generation of simple devices that can literally pull water out of thin air.
read more
The 2018 United Nations Climate Change Conference, also known as COP24, has concluded its 13-day series of negotiations and deliberations, hosted in the Polish city of Katowice. The conference focused on how the world will push forward in curbing human-generated carbon emissions in an effort to address the rapidly-growing threat imposed by the effects of global warming, and included agreements on how individual nations will measure and report their greenhouse gas emissions, with the new rules coming into effect in 2020.
read more
Although it’s found on another planet altogether, there’s a permanent "winter wonderland" on Mars that would never suffer a green Christmas — or a red one, as the case may be. The European Space Agency’s Mars Express orbiter used its High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) to take pictures of the 82 kilometer (51 mile)-wide Korolev crater near Mars’ north pole, home to a massive mound made of water ice that persists year-round due to the crater’s peculiar topography.
Korolev crater’s ice sheet is 1.8 kilometers (1.1 miles) deep, and with a volume of 2,200 cubic kilometers (530 cubic miles), the ice pack holds a similar amount of water in ice form as Canada’s Great Bear Lake, or five times that of Lake Erie. read more