NASA's 'Nuclear Option' May Be Crucial for Getting Humans to Mars

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January 27, 2022

Space Exploration NASA's 'Nuclear Option' May Be Crucial for Getting Humans to Mars After decades of false starts, a new push for nuclear-powered rocketry could make or break the space agency's plans to send astronauts to the Red Planet By David W. Brown

Aerospace How Airlines Can Solve Their 5G Problem A delayed rollout bought time to address worries that the new telecommunications standard would interfere with aviation instruments By Sophie Bushwick

Space Exploration Whistleblowers Make Spaceflight Safer, Says Witness to Apollo Tragedy As we continue to push into space, the 55th anniversary of the deadly fire reminds us to prioritize both safety and people By Matthew Beddingfield

Climate Change Louisiana's $2-Billion Gamble: Flood the Land to Save the Coast A new engineering project would bring much needed land to eroding marshes but at a huge cost to the fishing industry By Duy Linh Tu,Julian Lim

Public Health Nuclear-Testing 'Downwinders' Speak About History and Fear An archival project aims to document the experiences of people who suffered from U.S. nuclear weapons testing By Sarah Scoles

Climate Change Gas Stoves Leak More Methane than Previously Thought The appliances also release nitrogen dioxide, an air pollutant that can exacerbate asthma and other conditions By David Iaconangelo,E&E News

Black Holes Could Echoes from Colliding Black Holes Prove Stephen Hawking's Greatest Prediction? Subtle signals from black hole mergers might confirm the existence of "Hawking radiation"—and gravitational-wave detectors may have already seen them By Anil Ananthaswamy

Health Care When Should You Get a COVID Test? It depends, but vaccinated people should generally wait five days after exposure before taking an antigen test. Here's why By Sara Reardon

Quantum Physics Can We Gauge Quantum Time of Flight? Measuring the time it takes particles to travel between two points may be the best test yet for Bohmian mechanics By Anil Ananthaswamy

Psychology Aha! Moments Pop Up from below the Level of Conscious Awareness People in a study handily solved puzzles while juggling an unrelated mental task by relying on spontaneous insight, not analytic thinking By Emily Laber-Warren

FROM THE STORE Revolutions in Science Normally science proceeds in incremental steps, but sometimes a discovery is so profound that it causes a paradigm shift. This eBook is a collection of articles about those kinds of advances, including revolutionary discoveries about the origin of life, theories of learning, formation of the solar system and more.

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FROM THE ARCHIVE Will NASA Go Nuclear to Return to the Moon? A new reactor design could make nuclear-powered space exploration cheap, reliable and safe By Rebecca Boyle | May 2018

QUOTE OF THE DAY "There are no physics breakthroughs needed, no miracles necessary. But just like terrestrial systems, you're going to need to have some really good engineering." Michael Houts, manager of nuclear research at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center

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