[ad_1] BBCBillionaire businessman Jared Isaacman has a big vision for the future of humanity. He set off on his first mission to space in 2021 – a private journey he paid an estimated $200m (£160m) for – and announced that he wanted space travel to be for the masses, not only for the 600 who have experienced it to date – most of them professional astronauts employed by Nasa and
[ad_1] Alison FrancisSenior Science JournalistNASA/Goddard/University of ArizonaAsteroid Bennu is a 500m-wide pile of boulders, rocks and rubbleThe chemical building blocks of life have been found in the grainy dust of an asteroid called Bennu, an analysis reveals.Samples of the space rock, which were scooped up by a Nasa spacecraft and brought to Earth, contain a rich array of minerals and thousands of organic compounds.These include amino acids, which are the
[ad_1] Getty ImagesClimate change was a major factor behind the hot, dry weather that gave rise to the devastating LA fires, a scientific study has confirmed.It made those weather conditions about 35% more likely, according to World Weather Attribution - globally recognised for their studies linking extreme weather to climate change. The authors noted that the LA wildfire season is getting longer while the rains that normally put out the
[ad_1] Watch: SpaceX loses Starship spacecraft but catches booster on seventh test flightThe latest test of Space X's giant Starship rocket has failed, minutes after launch. Officials at Elon Musk's company said the upper stage was lost after problems developed after lift-off from Texas on Thursday.But the Super Heavy booster managed to return to its launchpad as planned, prompting an eruption of applause from ground control teams.The mission came hours
[ad_1] Georgina RannardClimate and science reporterWatch: Lift-off for Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin as rocket New Glenn launches into orbitAmazon founder Jeff Bezos's space company has blasted its first rocket into orbit in a bid to challenge the dominance of Elon Musk's SpaceX.The New Glenn rocket launched from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida at 02:02 local time (07:02 GMT).It firmly pits the world's two richest men against each other
[ad_1] BBCIn a gleaming laboratory in Edinburgh, robotic machines whirr and mix. The final product that they are creating will be a pine-smelling chemical that can be used as an ingredient in perfumes. But the starting point is very different: a brown, gloopy, fat mixture, recently fished out from below ground - fatbergs.Fatbergs are the foul phenomenon found lurking in (and blocking up) sewers. The development of the technology used
[ad_1] Chris BaraniukScience and technology journalistGetty ImagesIt was terrible timing. In the late morning of Tuesday 6 January, a "life-threatening and destructive" windstorm was heading for the northern suburbs of Los Angeles. The local office of the US National Weather Service published a strongly worded alert at roughly 10:30am local time. At almost that exact moment, a fire erupted in the Palisades neighbourhood of LA."The fire was able to get
[ad_1] Maddy SavageTechnology Reporter, Skellefteå, SwedenGetty ImagesThere were great hopes for the Northvolt battery plant Skellefteå, SwedenHeavy snow blends into white thick clouds in Skellefteå, a riverside city in northern Sweden that is home to 78,000 residents.It's also the location of what was supposed to become Europe's biggest and greenest electric battery factory, powered by the region's abundance of renewable energy.Swedish start-up Northvolt opened its flagship production plant here in
[ad_1] BBCOn Christmas Eve, an autonomous spacecraft flew past the Sun, closer than any human-made object before it. Swooping through the atmosphere, Nasa's Parker Solar Probe was on a mission to discover more about the Sun, including how it affects space weather on Earth.This was a landmark moment for humanity – but one without any human directly involved, as the spacecraft carried out its pre-programmed tasks by itself as it
[ad_1] SPLArtwork: Uranus and its five largest moons had been thought to be inactive and sterile. The planet Uranus and its five biggest moons may not be the dead sterile worlds that scientists have long thought.Instead, they may have oceans, and the moons may even be capable of supporting life, scientists say.Much of what we know about them was gathered by Nasa’s Voyager 2 spacecraft which visited nearly 40 years
