On January 28, 1986, the space shuttle Challenger launched with America’s first civilian to be sent into space, Christa McAuliffe. McAuliffe was chosen from a list of over 11,000 applicants for NASA’s Teacher in Space Project, aimed at sending civilian educators into orbit to later relate their experience as astronauts to their terrestrial students. Tragically, Challenger was destroyed 73 seconds into her ascent, killing all seven crewmembers, including McAuliffe.
read more

A collision that occurred between two neutron stars in a galaxy 138 million light years from Earth was observed in August of 2017, generating both gravitational waves that were detected by the LIGO and Virgo gravity-wave observatories, and a gamma-ray burst that was recorded by the Fermi and INTEGRAL satellites. This is the first time that both gravity and electromagnetic waves have been detected from an astronomical event, as all previous detections of gravity waves have come from collisions between black holes.read more

While the global average temperature continues to rise, it does so disproportionately around the world: the closer to the poles one gets, the more drastic this temperature rise becomes, a phenomenon in climate science called Polar Amplification. This effect has become so drastic that some areas of the Arctic, such as the Barents and Chukchi seas, are up to 4ºC (7.2ºF) warmer than average. And now these temperature extremes are breaking climate data algorithms, such as in the case of climate data being recorded in Utqiagvik, Alaska.
read more

The United States Geological Survey has confirmed that a bright meteor that broke up over the Detroit area on the evening of January 16 caused a 2.0 magnitude earthquake in Michigan. The meteorite fell about five miles (8 kilometers) from the village of New Haven.

"After reviewing several observational datasets, the NWS can confirm the flash and boom was NOT thunder or lightning, but instead a likely meteor," tweeted the Detroit’s National Weather Service office, in response to social media activity regarding the 8:08 PM event. The USGS confirmation followed shortly after the NWS tweet.
read more