Just how many planets are visible without a telescope? Not including our own planet, most people will answer “five” (Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn).
Those are the five brightest planets, but in reality, there is a sixth planet that can be glimpsed without the aid of either a telescope or binoculars.
NASA has announced it is looking for private companies to go to the moon and collect dust and rocks from the surface and bring them back to Earth.
The American space agency would then buy the moon samples in amounts between 50 to 500 grams for between $15,000 to $25,000.
The NASA administrator, Jim Bridenstine, announced on Thursday that the moon material collection would become part of a technology development program that would help astronauts “live off the land” for crewed missions in the future to the moon or elsewhere.
Canada reported no new deaths from COVID-19 on Friday for the first time in six months. The last time the country reported no new deaths from the virus on March 15, at the start of lockdowns in North America due to the pandemic, Reuters reports.
As of Friday evening, over 6 million people had been tested for COVID-19 in Canada, 2.1% of which came back positive. Some 702 new cases were reported on Friday, but no new deaths, the Public Health Agency of Canada reported.
An early analysis of the data, which did not include patients enrolled later in the trial, found that median time to recovery was 11 days for patients on remdesivir and 15 days for patients on placebo. It also suggested a lower death rate, 8 percent on remdesivir compared to 11.6 percent on placebo, but that difference was just short of statistical significance.
UCSF and Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital together enrolled about 30 patients in the NIH trial. Because the trial was double-blinded, neither the doctors nor the patients knew which patients received remdesivir or placebo. With survival rates in San Francisco relatively high compared to harder hit cities, it was hard to attribute any specific improvement to the drug, said Chin-Hong and Doernberg, who both cared for patients in the trial.
“We’re talking about a couple days of faster recovery overall, so in any one particular patient, that may not be so apparent,” said Doernberg. “This is why you have to do large trials.”
Elon Musk has shared some details about future testing of Starship, the SpaceX launch vehicle currently being developed by the company at its Boca Chica, Texas facility. Recently, SpaceX has completed short, 150 meter (just under 500 feet) test flights of two earlier Starship prototypes, SN5 and SN6 – and SN8, which is currently set to be done construction “in about a week” according to Musk will have “flaps & nosecone” and ultimately is intended for a much higher altitude test launch.
The prototypes that SpaceX has flown and landed for its so-called ‘short-hop’ tests over the past few weeks have been full-sized, but with a simulated weight installed on the top in place of the actual domed nosecone that will perch atop the final production Starship and protect any cargo on board. SN5 and SN6, which are often compared to grain silos, are also lacking the large control flaps on either side of the nosecone that will help control its flight. SN8 will have both, according to Musk.
This version of the prototype will also undergo the same early testing and its precursors, including a static fire and other ground checkouts, followed by another static fire before ultimately attempting to fly to an altitude of 60,000 feet – and then returning back to the ground for a controlled landing.
Episode 3: Time Machines – Hubble has looked back billions of years in time to see some of the earliest galaxies in their infancy, and it has fundamentally changed what we know about the universe itself. Find out from Nobel Laureate John Mather and Hubble Senior Project Scientist Jennifer Wiseman how Hubble will work with the future James Webb Space Telescope to revolutionize our understanding of the universe even further.
Because much cancer research and clinical trials have been based on white populations, efforts to explore the ways race and ethnicity influence disease are underway.