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NASA Launches New Mission in “Major Milestone” To Monitor Earth’s Landscapes From Space

Lead image: The United Launch Alliance (ULA) Atlas V rocket with the Landsat 9 satellite onboard launches, Monday, Sept. 27, 2021, from Space Launch Complex 3 at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. The Landsat 9 satellite is a joint NASA/U.S. Geological Survey mission that will continue the legacy of monitoring Earth’s land and coastal regions. Credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls Landsat 9, a NASA satellite built to monitor the Earth’s land surface, successfully launched at 2:12 p.m. EDT Monday from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. A joint mission with the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), Landsat 9 lifted off on a…

Researchers Discover Four Dinosaurs in Montana: Fieldwork Pieces Together Life at the End of “Dinosaur Era”

Lead image: A team of University of Washington students, volunteers, and staff excavate the Flyby Trike Triceratops in northeastern Montana. Credit: Rachel Ormiston/Burke Museum/University of Washington A team of paleontologists from the University of Washington and its Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture excavated four dinosaurs in northeastern Montana this summer. All fossils will be brought back to the Burke Museum where the public can watch paleontologists remove the surrounding rock in the fossil preparation laboratory. The four dinosaur fossils are: the ilium — or hip bones — of an ostrich-sized theropod, the group of meat-eating, two-legged dinosaurs that…

STAMPScreen Pipeline: Taking the Guesswork Out of Genetic Engineering

Lead image: Mammalian cells that have been successfully genetically engineered using the STAMPScreen method. Credit: Wyss Institute at Harvard University STAMPScreen Pipeline Helps Streamline Genetic Studies in Mammalian Cells Today’s genetic engineers have a plethora of resources at their disposal: an ever-increasing number of massive datasets available online, highly precise gene editing tools like CRISPR, and cheap gene sequencing methods. But the proliferation of new technologies has not come with a clear roadmap to help researchers figure out which genes to target, which tools to use, and how to interpret their results. So, a team of scientists and engineers at…

Global Cancer Risk From Burning Organic Matter Comes From Unregulated Chemicals

Lead image: Whenever organic matter is burned, such as in a wildfire, a power plant, a car’s exhaust, or in daily cooking, the combustion releases polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) — a class of pollutants that is known to cause lung cancer. The researchers hope scientists and regulators will consider a broader class of compounds in evaluating cancer risk due to PAH exposure. Whenever organic matter is burned, such as in a wildfire, a power plant, a car’s exhaust, or in daily cooking, the combustion releases polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) — a class of pollutants that is known to cause lung…

Exploring Alien Planets: New Cereal Box-Sized Spacecraft Has Mighty Goals

Lead image: Artist’s depiction of a “hot Jupiter” planet. Credit: NASA/Ames/JPL-Caltech A new miniature satellite designed and built at CU Boulder’s Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP) is providing proof that “cute” things can take on big scientific challenges. The Colorado Ultraviolet Transit Experiment (CUTE) is slated to launch into space on September 27, 2021. The approximately $4 million spacecraft, a smaller-than-usual type of satellite known as a “CubeSat,” is about as large as a “family-sized box of Cheerios,” said LASP researcher Kevin France, principal investigator for the mission. But it has mighty goals: Over the course of about 7…