Ingenuity will attempt the first flight on another planet. The four-pound helicopter is strapped to NASA’s Perseverance rover. On Mars, the aircraft will perform a series of test flights to demonstrate if flight is possible. If the missions are a…
In order to engage kids in science and the legislative process, Rep. Jack Lewis hatched a plan. The state representative set up a poll on Twitter to pick the state’s official dinosaur. He wanted to show kids how a bill…
Scientist Nathan Myhrvold is one of three people who has created a camera that can take pictures of snowflakes at a microscopic level. Myhrvold’s photos are the highest resolution. He camera is specially equipped to capture the images before the…
Weather and climate disasters have a devastating—and pricey—toll. In 2020, there were 22 billion-dollar weather disasters in the U.S. This is a record number. The most damage came from the seven billion-dollar tropical cyclones. They created over $40 billion in…
Mark your calendars. The Smithsonian has ten celestial events that will be visible in North America in 2021. If you missed the conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn, you can catch Mercury, Jupiter and Saturn forming a cluster in early January.…
It’s a New Year’s Eve tradition: watching the ball drop in New York City’s Time Square. It began in 1907. The city banned New York Times from doing their usual pyrotechnics and fireworks display. The Times needed something new. They…
There’s a new driver on Uber’s self-driving car project, a new start-up company called Aurora. Uber began work on autonomous vehicles back in 2015 to replace its drivers and increase profits. However, the company ran into many financial and legal…
Human-controlled prescribed forest fires have increased bee populations. The scheduled burnings open up the treetops to admit sunlight. And the fires create nutrients for the soil. This helps flowers grow. Bees are attracted to flowers, so they flock to the…
People have long assumed that the moon is geologically dead. After all, our natural satellite lacks the internal heat needed for tectonic activity. Right? But new analysis of data recorded by seismometers during the Apollo era is shedding light on…
In May 2019, American explorer Victor Vescovo and his team completed the deepest-ever ocean dive—35,849 feet below the surface. Descending in a submersible to the bottom of the Pacific Ocean’s Mariana Trench, Vescovo identified new species of shrimp-like creatures called…