Environment

Another month, another try at the moon.A robotic lunar lander is scheduled to launch in the early morning hours of Wednesday. If all goes well, it will become the first American spacecraft to set down softly on the moon’s surface since the Apollo 17 moon landing in 1972.It is also the latest private effort to send spacecraft to the moon. Earlier attempts have all ended in failure. But the company in charge of the latest effort, Intuitive Machines of Houston, is optimistic. “I feel fairly confident that we’re going to be successful softly touching down on the moon,” said Stephen Altemus, the president and chief executive of Intuitive Machines. “We’ve done the testing. We’ve tested and tested and tested. As much testing as we could do.”When is the launch and how can I watch?The Intuitive Mac...

Listen, I know there are folks on TikTok sharing good advice — but there’s a heck of a lot of bad advice there, too. Financial tips and tricks? Yeah, look elsewhere; 63% of it is misleading. We’re giving away a $1,000 laptop! Enter to win right now here. Good luck!It’s not surprising why. On a platform with just seconds to grab someone’s attention, creators have to make big promises to get views. Following that advice can bite you in some big ways — looking at you, get rich quick scheme.Let’s skip the clickbait and hype. I’ve got 15 tech tips to improve life without downsides.TECH SECURITY TO-DO: LOCK DOWN YOUR SMART STUFFBest picture goes too: You might be tempted to change your TV’s picture mode to Game for sports. Don't — that's for video games. The best setting for football? Cinema or ...

Brazil is experiencing an enormous outbreak of dengue fever, the sometimes fatal mosquito-borne disease, and public health experts say it is a harbinger of a coming surge in cases in the Americas, including Puerto Rico.Brazil’s Health Ministry warns that it expects more than 4.2 million cases this year, outstripping the 4.1 million cases the Pan-American Health Organization recorded for all 42 countries in the region last year.Brazil was due for a bad dengue year — numbers of cases of the virus typically rise and fall on a roughly four-year cycle — but experts say a number of factors, including El Niño and climate change, have significantly amplified the problem this year.“The record heat in the country and the above-average rainfall since last year, even before the summer, have increased ...

The Stanley Tumbler, this year’s smash hit, is, at first glance, a win for the planet.It’s durable. It’s reusable. Unlike the throwaway plastic bottles it’s meant to replace, it doesn’t generate mountains of plastic trash.But the craze has sparked some less-than-sustainable behavior. People boast about owning dozens of them. When Target released special editions, including a much-coveted Starbucks version, it caused a mini stampede.Some trend forecasters say the fad is already over. “Some millennials or Gen-Z are already embarrassed to carry a Stanley,” said Casey Lewis, who writes the trendspotting newsletter, After School. “And we know what’s going to happen,” she said. They’ll sit unused, gather dust on a shelf or in a basement, or “worst case scenario, they’ll end up in landfills.” Sta...

Scientists have found pieces of a meteorite that fell near Berlin just after midnight on Jan. 21. It is a rare find, from an asteroid that was identified just before it entered Earth’s atmosphere. Only a handful of such events in the recent past have allowed astronomers to trace an incoming rock’s origin in the solar system.Early analysis of the fragments has shown something equally rare. The meteorite is an aubrite, a class with unknown origins that some scientists argue may be pieces of the planet Mercury. They are so rare that they made up just 80 of the 70,000 or so meteorites that were collected on Earth before last month’s event.“It’s really exciting,” said Sara Russell, a meteorite expert at the Natural History Museum in London. “There are very, very few aubrites.”The asteroid that ...

Scientists think eruptions on the Reykjanes Peninsula could continue for decades or even centuries. Source link

Astronauts from Turkey, Italy and Sweden returned to Earth on Friday, ending a private three-week mission to the International Space Station.The trio were accompanied by a retired NASA astronaut who now works for Axiom Space, the Houston company that arranged the chartered flight. The crew returned in a SpaceX capsule that parachuted into the Atlantic off the Florida coast.Turkey celebrated Alper Gezeravci’s launch from Cape Canaveral last month. A former fighter pilot and captain for Turkish Airlines, he became the first person from his country to fly in space.HOW SPACEX AND COMMERCIAL FLIGHT ARE OPENING A UNIVERSE OF POSSIBILITIES ABOARD THE ISS: ASTRONAUTSGezeravci was joined on the trip by Italian Air Force Col. Walter Villadei, Sweden’s Marcus Wandt, a former fighter pilot chosen as a...

A gaggle of students from Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh traveled to Florida last month during their winter break.The students, many of them studying to be engineers and scientists, went there to watch a rocket launch that would send a small 4.8-pound robotic rover that they had helped build on its journey to the moon. Afterward, they hoped to have time for some sun and fun, renting a large house just three blocks from the beach.Their trip did not go as planned.“We never saw the beach,” said Nikolai Stefanov, a senior studying physics and computer science.The rover, named Iris, headed toward the moon on schedule in a perfect inaugural flight of Vulcan, a brand-new rocket. But the spacecraft carrying the rover malfunctioned soon after launch, and the students turned their rental h...