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746 articles · page 13 of 16 · The Science front page
The Holei Sea Arch, a scenic 27-metre-high cliff formation on the Big Island of Hawaii, has collapsed into the Pacific Ocean, the National Park Service has confirmed. The collapse likely occurred between Wednesday and Sunday during Tropical Storm Nolo, marking what the NPS called 'the latest transformation of the park's remote and rugged coastline.'
Milt Windler, one of the NASA flight directors who orchestrated the safe return of the Apollo 13 astronauts in 1970, has died at age 94.
Members of Seattle Mountain Rescue have begun testing powered exoskeletons during backcountry search operations, strapping assistive devices to their hips and legs in hopes of gaining greater strength and stamina when climbing rugged terrain with heavy packs.
The US military has ended a long-running, classified satellite program that monitored for nuclear missile launches from orbit, with the last operational payloads flying until last month, according to reports.
SpaceX has achieved the first orbital launch of its new Starship rocket, Ars Technica reports. The Monday morning flight, the 14th for the super-heavy vehicle, also deployed the first 26 of Starlink's new-generation V3 satellites, opening the way for faster growth of the satellite internet network.
Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh have discovered that the direction of energy flow in turbulent systems can be reversed by a simple geometric factor, overturning a long-held assumption in fluid dynamics. Led by engineer Lei Fang, the study published October 2, 2026, emerged from observations of brine shrimp, commonly known as sea monkeys, moving through a two-dimensional turbulent flow.
Sydney Morning Herald and Brisbane Times reported on 1 October 2026 that SpaceX has sent four astronauts to the International Space Station. The brief articles, published across both Nine Entertainment mastheads, provided no additional information about the crew, the launch date, or the mission designation.
For nearly half a century, the thick, yellowish haze wrapped around the lower atmosphere of Venus has puzzled planetary scientists. Now a research team from Tohoku University in Japan has identified the source: microscopic particles from disintegrating meteorites interacting with sulfuric acid.
A four-person crew launched into orbit Thursday from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida, beginning a six-month expedition aboard the International Space Station. The launch, delayed from mid-September due to a faulty valve in the Dragon spacecraft's propulsion system, proceeded after SpaceX performed a repair that involved cutting into a propellant line to replace the component.
A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifted off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida on Oct. 1, 2026, carrying NASA astronauts Jessica Watkins and Luke Delaney, Canadian Space Agency (CSA) astronaut Joshua Kutryk, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Sergey Teteryatnikov to the International Space Station for a long-duration science mission.
NASA has announced that the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has delivered new observations shedding light on catastrophic collisions between planetary bodies, offering a clearer understanding of how planets form and evolve through violent impacts. The findings, published by the space agency, use Webb's infrared capabilities to study debris disks and the aftermath of planetary-scale crashes.
Australian scientists have identified two contributors to recurrent bacterial vaginosis (BV), a common sexual health condition that affects about one in four women globally. The discovery by Melbourne researchers builds on their previous breakthrough in understanding BV transmission.
The Canadian government has awarded its first contracts to three domestic rocket companies — NordSpace, Reaction Dynamics and Canada Rocket Company — as part of a push to secure sovereign access to space, spurred by worsening relations with the United States under the Trump administration.
An attempt to save NASA's $500 million Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory from falling out of orbit has failed, but government and commercial space officials are highlighting the unprecedented speed and collaboration behind the rescue effort. Katalyst Space Technologies built and launched a recovery spacecraft called Link under a $30 million contract, but a malfunction caused it to spin out of control, forcing NASA to abort the mission in August.
Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology have built a local networking system that lets medical implants communicate through the body's own tissue, an approach designed to replace power-hungry radio protocols in coordinating devices like pacemakers and insulin pumps.
About 66 million years ago, the Chicxulub asteroid struck what is now the Yucatan Peninsula, triggering a mass extinction that killed off non-avian dinosaurs. New analysis of rock samples drilled from the impact zone suggests the crater later hosted a long-lived hydrothermal system that may have been teeming with microbial life.
Nearly two decades after Russia began work on a next-generation crewed spacecraft, the programme now known as Eagle (Orel) has yet to demonstrate meaningful flight hardware, according to an Ars Technica report. The project, which once involved possible European cooperation, has survived multiple name changes but critics say it may remain more a public relations exercise than a genuine engineering effort.
Communities across California are rushing to prepare for the arrival of a so-called Kelvin wave, a massive underwater band of warm water that could raise sea levels by a foot along the coast, according to scientists. The wave is nearing southern California and is expected to reach the San Francisco Bay Area by early October as it continues north toward Alaska.
Researchers have published late-stage clinical trial data for retatrutide, the latest obesity drug expected to be the most powerful yet, showing patients on the highest dose lost an average of 25% of their body weight after 80 weeks, with some losing 30% or more over two years. The results, published today in the New England Journal of Medicine, also revealed significant improvements in knee pain, sleep apnea, and cardiometabolic health markers.
A large US study has found that flight attendants and pilots recorded the highest and second-highest proportions of radiation-related cancer deaths among 500 occupations, a finding researchers say supports stronger occupational radiation protections for aircrew.
NASA and Boeing say Starliner will fly again, with an uncrewed cargo mission to the International Space Station scheduled for late 2026 and a crewed mission planned for 2028, despite a troubled history that has limited the capsule to a single crewed flight.
NASA is confronting a difficult decision regarding SpaceX's Dragon spacecraft, with the agency's long-standing goal of fostering a competitive commercial space economy in low-Earth orbit now at a crossroads. The dilemma, highlighted by Ars Technica, appears to have no straightforward resolution.
A study published in Nature has identified a protein in fruit flies that records their larval diet and influences how long they live as adults, providing a potential mechanism for the long-observed link between early-life nutrition and lifespan.
A SpaceX rocket has reached orbit despite encountering engine trouble during flight, according to reports published by The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age and the Brisbane Times.
Scientists at Monash University have uncovered a new form of antibiotic resistance in a dangerous hospital bug, a discovery they warn shows bacteria are evolving in ways researchers did not anticipate. The unexpected finding, involving Clostridioides difficile, which causes severe gut infections in hospitals, has also revealed a potential new weapon against bacteria.
A comprehensive study published by the World Health Organization in The Lancet Oncology reveals that approximately 12% of the world's new cancer cases in 2024, about 2.3 million cases, were likely caused by an infection. The research identifies five main infectious agents responsible for the majority of these cases: Helicobacter pylori, human papillomavirus (HPV), hepatitis B, Epstein-Barr virus and hepatitis C.
A 200-year-old giant clam shell from the northern Great Barrier Reef has provided researchers with a month-by-month climate record dating back to the early 1800s, revealing that summers were cooler before widespread industrial-era warming while winters were surprisingly similar to current conditions.
SpaceX's Starship rocket achieved orbit for the first time early Monday, launching from South Texas on its 14th test flight and deploying 26 of the company's newest generation of Starlink broadband satellites — a milestone that demonstrates the vehicle's operational capability after a series of suborbital flights.
A space weather mystery dating back to the 1840s has been resolved with a new study suggesting that an 1841 report of a magnetic disturbance disrupting train travel in Exeter, England, was most likely a typo, with the real disruption occurring several years later. The finding, published in Space Weather, clarifies the timeline of humanity's earliest encounters with space weather.
Eighty years after five engineers arrived at a dusty California airfield to pioneer supersonic flight, NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center in Edwards, California, is celebrating its legacy of aviation breakthroughs while charting a future that includes quiet supersonic travel, support for Artemis moon missions, and continued Earth science research from the air.
Australian researchers have launched an open-source climate tool that estimates how much a new coal, gas or oil project will warm the planet and the damage it will do across eight areas, from crop losses to heatwave deaths. The developers say it challenges the long-running 'drop in the ocean' defence used to justify new fossil fuel developments.
Bhabisara Gharti Magar, a young mother living in Banya, Queensland, discovered she had one of the world's rarest blood types — a subset of the Bombay blood group called Para-Bombay — while planning her pregnancy. Now, a new partnership between The University of Queensland and the Australian Red Cross Lifeblood aims to scale lab-grown blood production in a Brisbane laboratory, offering hope for people with rare blood types who face severe challenges finding suitable donors.
The Canadian Space Agency's Canadarm2 robotic arm on the International Space Station has stopped working after a routine 'walk-off' maneuver, leaving the arm and its mobile transporter unable to move, according to a report from Ars Technica.
Mathematicians have cracked a problem posed by the late juggler and mathematician Ronald Graham in 1971, using randomness to prove that any finite set of nonzero integers can be rearranged so that all partial sums are distinct, even when the numbers live in a finite, clock-like arithmetic world. The breakthrough ends a 55-year wait and may have roots in the mathematics of juggling.
SpaceX's Starship, the largest and most powerful rocket ever built, achieved orbit for the first time on Monday, deploying 26 next-generation Starlink satellites before returning to Earth after a shortened flight. The milestone mission, which nearly failed when one of the upper stage's engines shut down shortly after launch, ended with a controlled splashdown in the Pacific Ocean about three hours into what was planned as a nearly 10-hour flight.
New peer-reviewed research published in Environmental Health Perspectives has identified at least 485 chemicals used in US pesticide products that are linked to breast cancer, raising concerns about the safety of food and other products as early-onset breast cancer rates surge worldwide.
Renowned virologist Peter Piot, who co-discovered the Ebola virus 50 years ago, has turned his attention to Australian research efforts to develop multi-strain vaccines — work he describes as more challenging than landing a human on the moon.
NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day for September 26, 2026, features a striking image of a bright meteor streaking across the night sky, captured alongside the Milky Way and reflected in the surface of a large segmented telescope mirror.
NASA and Boeing leadership will hold a news conference at 3 p.m. EDT Monday, Sept. 28, to discuss the development of Boeing's Starliner spacecraft and plans for regular crew flights to and from the International Space Station, the agency announced.
Starfish Space, a spacecraft company founded in October 2019 by former Blue Origin engineers, is releasing its 'Otters' into the wild after seven years of development. The milestone follows a journey that began with a question about how humanity would manage a growing number of satellites in low-Earth orbit — and survived the onset of a global pandemic just months after the company was founded.
NASA has given the green light to PRIMA, the first mission in its new Probe Explorers class, targeting a launch in the early 2030s. The billion-dollar infrared observatory aims to fill a gap between lower-cost Explorer missions and multibillion-dollar flagships like the Roman Space Telescope, the agency announced this week.
NASA has completed environmental and physical testing of a small satellite designed to fly a single, integrated propulsion system that feeds both high-thrust and low-thrust engines from one shared fuel tank. The ASCENT mission, a flight demonstration of the dual-mode concept, could simplify spacecraft design and open the door to smaller, cheaper launch vehicles.
A seven-metre uncrewed vessel powered by the sun and wind has set off on a 22,000km journey around Antarctica, gathering data to help Australian scientists understand how the oceans absorb carbon emissions.
Hurricane Polo, the second-most intense hurricane ever recorded in the eastern Pacific, is barrelling toward Mexico’s Baja California region with sustained winds of 150 mph, while a separate system, Hurricane Nolo, is strengthening near Hawaii — the third hurricane threat to the islands this year.
This year's Antarctic ozone hole peaked at over 27 million square kilometers in September, making it the second-largest ever observed for that time of year, according to scientists from the University of Otago and the Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service. Researchers had predicted a severe ozone hole as early as May, citing unusual atmospheric circulation patterns.
NASA has assigned four crew members from three space agencies to launch to the International Space Station no earlier than spring 2027 for a long-duration science expedition as part of the SpaceX Crew-14 mission.
NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman has expressed concern that China could deny American access to valuable real estate at the Moon's south pole, after Beijing delayed its Chang'e 7 robotic mission to the Shackleton crater — the same location NASA views as prime territory for water ice and future exploration.
NASA announced Wednesday that the PRobe far-Infrared Mission for Astrophysics (PRIMA) has moved into the next phase of development, becoming the first mission in the agency’s new Probe Explorers class. The space telescope, designed to explore the universe in far-infrared light, is targeted for launch in 2033 with a project cost cap of $1.2 billion.