New story in Science and Health from Time: The Chang’e 5 Capsule Returns to Earth Carrying Moon Rocks In the Latest Breakthrough for China’s Space Program The Chang’e 5 Capsule Returns to Earth Carrying Moon Rocks In the Latest Breakthrough for China’s Space Program

BEIJING (AP) — A Chinese lunar capsule returned to Earth on Thursday with the first fresh samples of rock and debris from the moon in more than 40 years.

The capsule of the Chang’e 5 probe landed in the Siziwang district of the Inner Mongolia region, state media reported shortly after 2 a.m. (1800 GMT). The capsule earlier separated from its orbiter module and performed a bounce off Earth’s atmosphere to reduce its speed before passing through and floating to the ground on parachutes.

Two of the Chang’e 5’s four modules set down on the moon on Dec. 1 and collected about 2 kilograms (4.4 pounds) of samples by scooping them from the surface and by drilling 2 meters (about 6 feet) into the moon’s crust.

The samples were deposited in a sealed container that was carried back to the return module by an ascent vehicle.

The successful mission was the latest breakthrough for China’s increasingly ambitious space program that includes a robotic mission to Mars and plans for a permanent orbiting space station.

Recovery crews had prepared helicopters and off-road vehicles to home in on signals emitted by the lunar spacecraft and locate it in the darkness shrouding the vast snow-covered region in China’s far north, long used as a landing site for China’s Shenzhou crewed spaceships.

The spacecraft’s return marked the first time scientists have obtained fresh samples of lunar rocks since the former Soviet Union’s Luna 24 robot probe in 1976.

The newly collected rocks are thought to be billions of years younger than those obtained earlier by the U.S. and former Soviet Union, offering new insights into the history of the moon and other bodies in the solar system. They come from a part of the moon known as the Oceanus Procellarum, or Ocean of Storms, near a site called the Mons Rumker that was believed to have been volcanic in ancient times.

As with the 382 kilograms (842 pounds) of lunar samples brought back by U.S. astronauts from 1969 to 1972, they will be analyzed for age and composition and are expected to be shared with other countries.

The age of the samples will help fill in a gap in knowledge about the history of the moon between roughly 1 billion and three billion years ago, Brad Jolliff, director of the McDonnell Center for the Space Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, wrote in an email. They may also yield clues as to the availability of economically useful resources on the moon such as concentrated hydrogen and oxygen, Jolliff said.

“These samples will be a treasure trove!” Jolliff wrote. “My hat is off to our Chinese colleagues for pulling off a very difficult mission; the science that will flow from analysis of the returned samples will be a legacy that will last for many, many years, and hopefully will involve the international community of scientists.”

Chang’e 5 blasted off from a launch base in China’s southern island province of Hainan on Nov. 23 and appeared to have completed its highly technically sophisticated mission without a hitch.

It marked China’s third successful lunar landing but the only one to lift off again from the moon. Its predecessor, Chang’e 4, became the first probe to land on the moon’s little-explored far side and continues to send back data on conditions that could affect a future extended stay by humans on the moon.

The moon has been a particular focus of the Chinese space program, which says it plans to land humans there and possibly construct a permanent base. No timeline or other details have been announced.

China also has joined the effort to explore Mars. In July, it launched the Tianwen 1 probe, which was carrying a lander and a robot rover to search for water.

In 2003, China became the third country to send an astronaut into orbit on its own after the Soviet Union and the United States and its space program has proceeded more cautiously than the U.S.-Soviet space race of the 1960s, which was marked by fatalities and launch failures. By taking incremental steps, China appears on the path toward building a program that can sustain steady progress.

“They have read, and admired the (U.S. lunar program) Apollo playbook, but learned format as well,” said Joan Johnson-Freese, an expert on the Chines space program at the U.S. Naval War College. “Better to go slow and set up infrastructure for the future than to do it quickly and end up with little that allows you to continue.”

The latest flight includes collaboration with the European Space Agency, which is helping to monitor the mission. Amid concerns over the Chinese space program’s secrecy and close military connections, the U.S. forbids cooperation between NASA and the CNSA unless Congress gives its approval. That has prevented China from taking part in the International Space Station, something it has sought to compensate for with the launching of an experimental space station and plans to complete a permanent orbiting outpost within the next two years.

New story in Science and Health from Time: SpaceX Launched Its Starship on the Highest Test Flight Yet. It Crash-Landed SpaceX Launched Its Starship on the Highest Test Flight Yet. It Crash-Landed

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — SpaceX launched its shiny, bullet-shaped, straight-out-of-science fiction Starship several miles into the air from a remote corner of Texas on Wednesday, but the 6 1/2-minute test flight ended in an explosive fireball at touchdown.

It was the highest and most elaborate flight yet for the rocketship that Elon Musk says could carry people to Mars in as little as six years. Despite the catastrophic finale, he was thrilled.

“Mars, here we come!!” he tweeted.

This latest prototype — the first one equipped with a nose cone, body flaps and three engines — was shooting for an altitude of up to eight miles (12.5 kilometers). That’s almost 100 times higher than previous hops and skimming the stratosphere.

Starship seemed to hit the mark or at least come close. There was no immediate word from SpaceX on how high it went.

The full-scale, stainless steel model — 160 feet (50 meters) tall and 30 feet (9 meters) in diameter — soared out over the Gulf of Mexico. After about five minutes, it flipped sideways as planned and descended in a free-fall back to the southeastern tip of Texas near the Mexican border. The Raptor engines reignited for braking and the rocket tilted back upright. When it touched down, however, the rocketship became engulfed in flames and ruptured, parts scattering.

The entire flight — as dramatic and flashy as it gets, even by SpaceX standards — lasted six minutes and 42 seconds. SpaceX broadcast the sunset demo live on its website; repeated delays over the past week and a last-second engine abort Tuesday heightened the excitement among space fans.

Musk called it a “successful ascent” and said the body flaps precisely guided the rocket to the landing point. The fuel tank pressure was low, however, when the engines reignited for touchdown, which caused Starship to come down too fast.

“But we got all the data we needed!” he tweeted.

Musk had kept expectations low, cautioning earlier this week there was “probably” 1-in-3 chance of complete success.

Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, who founded the Blue Origin rocket company, offered swift congratulations.

“Anybody who knows how hard this stuff is is impressed by today’s Starship test.”

Two lower, shorter SpaceX test flights earlier this year from Boca Chica, Texas — a quiet coastal village before SpaceX moved in — used more rudimentary versions of Starship. Essentially cylindrical cans and single Raptor engines, these early vehicles reached altitudes of 490 feet (150 meters). An even earlier model, the short and squat Starhopper, made a tiny tethered hop in 2019, followed by two increasingly higher climbs.

Wednesday’s test followed SpaceX’s latest space station supply run for NASA by three days, and the private company’s second astronaut flight by less than a month from Florida’s Kennedy Space Center.

Starship is actually the upper stage of Musk’s envisioned moon- and Mars-ships. It will launch atop a mega booster still in development known as the Super Heavy. The entire vehicle will tower 394 feet (120 meters) — 31 feet (9.4 meters) taller than NASA’s Saturn V rocket that hurled men to the moon a half-century ago.

SpaceX intends to use Starship to put massive satellites into orbit around Earth, besides delivering people and cargo to the moon and Mars. Earlier this year, SpaceX was one of three prime contractors chosen by NASA to develop lunar landers capable of getting astronauts on the moon by 2024.

Right before Wednesday’s launch, NASA announced the 18 U.S. astronauts who will train for the Artemis moon-landing program.

While accepting an award in Berlin last week, Musk said he’s “highly confident” of a human flight to Mars in six years — “if we get lucky, maybe four years.” But Musk is the first to admit his timelines can be overly optimistic.

New story in Science and Health from Time: Why Chuck Yeager Claimed He Had No “Right Stuff” Why Chuck Yeager Claimed He Had No “Right Stuff”

Frank Borman did not expect to hear congratulations from Chuck Yeager one day in 1962—and that’s just as well because he didn’t get one. It wasn’t a surprise that Yeager wouldn’t extend much courtesy to the likes of Borman. There were rules, after all, and there was a hierarchy after all, and Yeager, who on Dec. 7 died at the age of 97, was then the commander of the flight school at Edwards Air Force Base in California, where test pilots were trained. Borman was just one more young Air Force officer who had scrapped and competed to be assigned to so coveted a billet as learning under Yeager—the first person to break the sound barrier, a feat he’d accomplished 15 years earlier.

At the time, a lot of Yeager’s officers were being seduced away by NASA, which promised them the chance not just to fly jets through the atmosphere, but rocket ships high above it. Neither man could know in 1962 what history had in store for Borman—that he would become not just any astronaut, but a figure on the space age’s Mt. Rushmore, commanding Apollo 8 in 1968, the first mission to orbit the moon. All they knew, as Borman told me in a conversation in 2015, was that he was one more young defector from Yeager’s flying family—and that would not make for an easy audience with his commander.

“Colonel,” Borman said when he presented himself before Yeager, who was seated at his desk going through paperwork, “I just got some good news.”

“What’s that?” Yeager said, looking up with only passing interest.

“I was just selected to go to NASA and join the astronaut corps.”

Yeager said nothing at first, merely nodding. Then, at last, he spoke. “Well Borman,” he said, “You can kiss your Air Force career goodbye.” Then he looked back down at his work.

If Yeager was gruff, and he was; if he was unsentimental, and he was; if he was brusque and dismissive and impossible to rattle but easy to annoy—and he was—there was almost no other way he could be. You don’t fly 64 combat missions in World War II—shooting down 13 German planes, including five in one day to earn the honorific of “flying ace”—without a tough hide. You don’t get shot down over France, suffering leg and head wounds, and elude capture by the German Army by hiking across the Pyrenees with French partisans, making it to neutral Spain and eventually returning to England, by being easily moved. And you don’t return to battle during the Vietnam War, at age 43 flying 127 missions, if you are easily unsettled by such existential matters as injury and death.

All of that was true of Yeager, and all of that would have been enough to earn him his own spot on aviation’s more modest Rushmore. But it was on Oct. 14, 1947 when Yeager truly chiseled his name in history, flying a Bell X-1 aircraft 13,000 m (43,000 ft.) above the Mojave desert, gunning his jet to nearly 1,125 km/hr (700 mph), thereby exceeding the speed of sound and producing the first sonic boom ever created by human beings.

The achievement was more than just the stuff of record-setting. At the time, nobody knew if challenging the sound barrier meant that the sound barrier would slap back, ripping to pieces any plane that tried to defy it. It didn’t, and shortly after his historic flight, Yeager spoke almost indifferently about the experience, pronouncing it “nice,” and adding that it was “just like riding a fast car.”

It was inevitable that the astronauts who trained under Yeager would eclipse their one-time mentor. What was flying an airplane compared to circling—and walking on—the moon, after all? Mention the name Yeager to school children in the 1960s and they’d look back at you blankly. But mention names like Glenn and Armstrong and Shepard and Lovell and Aldrin and Grissom and, yes, Borman? That would get a reaction.

It wasn’t until 1979, when Tom Wolfe’s book The Right Stuff was released, and 1983 when the movie followed, that the world became reacquainted with Yeager. Wolfe understood what pilots understood: that it didn’t matter where a man ( they were all men then) flew his machines, or what kinds of machines they were. Aircraft or spacecraft—either way it was thousands or even millions of pounds of explosive, high-speed hardware controlled by a comparative fly-weight bit of human. The stakes were mortal, the whole exercise was madness, but that was what made it worth doing.

Wolfe fell all over himself applauding Yeager, calling him “the most righteous of all the possessors of the right stuff.” But Yeager did not think much of all that. Never mind that he flew a total of 341 different kinds of planes in his life; never mind that he not only broke the sound barrier the first time but many times after, at much higher speeds. Never mind that in 2002, at age 79, he flew an F-15 jet at a speed of more than 1,600 k/h (1,000 mph) just because he could. None of that, Yeager believed, was the result of any kind of natural “stuff”—right or not. It was practice; it was work; it was nothing more.

“There’s no such thing as a natural born pilot,” he told Borman and the other young hot-rodders who came to learn at his knee. “If you can walk away from a landing, it’s a good landing. If you can use the airplane the next day, it’s an outstanding landing.”

Yeager used lots of airplanes the next day over the course of his near-century-long life. And he taught uncounted other pilots to do the same. Honor his claim that he had no right stuff—and let’s hope he’d honor our belief that, yeah, he actually did.

New story in Science and Health from Time: 2020 Marks the Point When Human-Made Materials Outweigh All the Living Things on Earth, a New Study Finds 2020 Marks the Point When Human-Made Materials Outweigh All the Living Things on Earth, a New Study Finds

In a startling sign of the impact that humans are having on our planet, a study published Dec. 9 estimates that 2020 marks the point when human-made materials outweigh the total mass of Earth’s living biomass.

Scientists at Israel’s Weizmann Institute of Science found that the total mass of human-made materials—such as concrete, steel and asphalt—have grown rapidly since 1900, when they made up the equivalent of just 3% of the mass of living biomass—plants, animals and microorganisms. As humans have constructed more buildings, roads, structures and objects over the last 120 years, the mass of human-produced materials has grown from less than 0.1 teratonnes to roughly 1 teratonne (1 trillion tonnes), the study, published in the journal Nature estimates.

Meanwhile, humans have been steadily reducing the amount of plant biomass on Earth through thousands of years of land-use, like cutting down trees to plant fields and raise livestock. Today, according to the study, all the living plants on Earth weigh roughly 1 teratonne, half of what they did when the agricultural revolution began 12,000 years ago. Plants account for 90% of the Earth’s living biomass, per the study.

To produce their estimates, scientists at Israel’s Weizmann Institute of Science integrated a vast number of existing datasets. For the biomass side of the calculation they used data from a 2018 study, in which some of the same researchers collated data to find the mass of all living things on Earth and how it was distributed. That study found that humans themselves make up less than 0.01% of the world’s living biomass. To estimate the weight of human-made materials, they relied largely on the work of Vienna’s Institute of Social Ecology and University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences which for years have been collating data from national statistics bureaus, industry groups and other research in the field of material-flow analysis.

Ron Milo, one of the authors of the recent study, tells TIME that, though there is a large margin for error in the data given its “gigantic” scale, his team can say with 95% confidence that the “tipping point” where human-made materials outweigh living biomass takes place in the six years before or after 2020, with this year as the most likely date.

There is no sign that humans are slowing the expansion of our footprint on the planet, the study says. The rate at which new human-made materials are created began to speed up in the 1950’s, as a post-war construction boom took hold. Production has accelerated ever since, with the mass of human-made materials on earth doubling every 20 years for the last century.

For the last five years, humans have produced on average 30 gigatonnes (30 billion tonnes) of material every year. Another way to look at it: every week, we produce more than the equivalent of the body weight of every person in the world. If current trends continue, human-produced materials will weigh triple the total mass of living biomass by 2040, according to the study.

Milo says these findings are further evidence that we are living through a new geological era in which human activity is the dominant force shaping Earth’s climate and environment, which scientists have dubbed the Anthropocene. “Some people think that humanity is just one species out of many, and that we’re tiny and the world is huge. But our impact is not tiny,” Milo says. “Having a number really quantifies that.”

He hopes that the study—published at a time when governments, businesses and communities around the world are re-evaluating their contribution to environmental problems—will be a wake-up call. “It’s not that we should stop making things, but we need to be aware of the impact we are having and think about how we’re consuming natural resources. Our decisions, our policymaking could affect the rate at which human made materials become double or triple the mass of living things.”

New story in Science and Health from Time: The World Is Headed for 3 Degrees of Warming, U.N. Report Warns—But a Green Pandemic Recovery Could Offer Hope The World Is Headed for 3 Degrees of Warming, U.N. Report Warns—But a Green Pandemic Recovery Could Offer Hope

Dense U.N. reports may not make onto anyone’s must read list for the holidays, so think of the United Nations Environment Program’s 2020 Emissions Gap survey as a warning letter from Santa, on behalf of the planet. The report, released today, is published at the end of every year and measures national commitments to reduce emissions against what science says is needed to limit global warming to an increase of 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels, the goal set out by the 2015 Paris Agreement. This year, we are still firmly on the naughty list, as we have been for the past five years. But there is an opportunity to turn that looming lump of coal in our future—a global climate catastrophe—into a gift, if governments turn their post-Covid recovery plans green. Think of it as the ultimate sendoff for 2020, turning the horrors of the past year into a vaccine for a new, more resilient era where the planet is protected along with the humans that live on it.

The report looks at what global emissions will look like in 2030 if countries fully implement their climate promises. So far, “we are not even close to where we should be,” says Anne Olhoff, Head of Strategy, Climate Planning and Policy at UNEP, and the report’s lead author. Despite a brief dip in carbon dioxide emissions caused by the pandemic, the world is still heading for a temperature rise of 3.2 °C this century. In fact, 2020 is on track to be one of the warmest on record, with wildfires, droughts, storms and glacier melt intensifying.

On Dec. 2, Petteri Taalas, the secretary general of the World Meteorological Organization announced that 2020’s global temperature is set to reach 1.2 °C above the pre-industrial levels, and that there is 20% chance of the global average temperature temporarily exceeding 1.5 degrees Celsius by 2024. That is the milestone the Paris Accords were established to avoid. Backed by almost every country on earth, the global compact called for keeping the global temperature from rising no more than 2°C, with a goal of 1.5 °C. Anything more than that represents an existential risk for many low-lying island states as sea levels rise.

In a Dec. 2 speech marking the release of the U.N. State of the Climate report, UN Secretary-General António Guterres listed extreme-weather events that occurred over the past year, including wild fires and the record active Atlantic hurricane season that were linked to climate change. He also cited the bleaching of coral reefs and reductions in biodiversity, saying that “humanity is waging war on nature. This is suicidal. Nature always strikes back, and it is already doing so with growing force and fury.”

A rise of 3.2°C is almost impossible to comprehend, says Olhoff. “You have to keep in mind, these are global averages. A rise of 3.2 may mean two degrees in Denmark, but it could mean seven degrees in central Africa. It will make large parts of the earth uninhabitable. The increase in extreme weather events, the impact of melting of ice sheets, will be enormous.”

In order to slow that temperature rise, nations need to cut greenhouse gas emissions by at least 6% a year through 2030. That is roughly on par with the reductions as a result of this year’s global shutdown over the Covid-19 pandemic, when factories closed and people around the world stopped flying, shopping and commuting. “We would need to see something of a similar magnitude every year to get on track to the Paris goals,” says Olhoff. But we need to do it in a way where we are not shutting down economies, where it won’t hurt people like it’s done this year.” In fact, this year’s suffering won’t count for much at all unless it is backed by long term structural changes to the way the world consumes energy and uses fossil fuels.

Which is why it is vital that post-Covid recovery plans focus as much on reducing carbon emissions as they do economic growth. According to the report, a green pandemic recovery could cut around 25% off the greenhouse emissions predicted for 2030 and put the world on the 2°C path (even more reductions would be required to achieve the 1.5°C goal).

That means governments need to support zero-emissions technologies and infrastructure, reduce or eliminate fossil fuel subsidies, ban new coal plants, and promote nature-based solutions such as large-scale landscape restoration and reforestation, all as an essential part of their recovery plans. According to Olhoff, fiscal investments into global recovery plans are worth 12% of global GDP this year. “That money can only be spent once,” she says. If the investments are not green, “there’s a big risk that they will commit us to an even more fossil fuel-based future that will be very difficult to break out of.”

So far, few recovery plans include the kind of green commitments that will make a difference. Olhoff is still optimistic that there is room for change. “A lot of these investments are just announced, they are not implemented yet, so there is still the opportunity to make them greener.” That’s where believing in Santa, or, say, an enlightened leadership from all nations, comes in. At least this year, according to the report, there has been a big increase in the number of countries, including large emitters, that have announced commitments to net zero emissions targets before or around the middle of the century. Of course, says Olhoff, “It doesn’t help if you just announce that you will be climate neutral in 2050. You have to back it up with climate action now and with much stronger climate commitments for 2030.” Santa’s watching.

New story in Science and Health from Time: Chinese Spacecraft Lifts Off From Moon Carrying Lunar Rocks Chinese Spacecraft Lifts Off From Moon Carrying Lunar Rocks

(BEIJING) — A Chinese spacecraft lifted off from the moon Thursday night with a load of lunar rocks, the first stage of its return to Earth, the government space agency reported.

Chang’e 5, the third Chinese spacecraft to land on the moon and the first to take off from it again, is the latest in a series of increasingly ambitious missions for Beijing’s space program, which also has a orbiter and rover headed to Mars.

The Chang’e 5 touched down Tuesday on the Sea of Storms on the moon’s near side. Its mission: collect about 2 kilograms (4 pounds) of lunar rocks and bring them back to Earth, the first return of samples since Soviet spacecraft did so in the 1970s. Earlier, the U.S. Apollo astronauts brought back hundreds of pounds of moon rocks.

The landing site is near a formation called the Mons Rumker and may contain rocks billions of years younger than those retrieved earlier.

The ascent vehicle lifted off from the moon shortly after 11 p.m. Beijing time Thursday (1500 GMT) and was due to rendezvous with a return vehicle in lunar orbit, then transfer the samples to a capsule, according to the China National Space Administration. The moon rocks and debris were sealed inside a special canister to avoid contamination.

It wasn’t clear when the linkup would occur. After the transfer, the ascent module would be ejected and the capsule would remain in lunar orbit for about a week, awaiting the optimal time to make the trip back to Earth.

Chinese officials have said the capsule with the samples is due to land on Earth around the middle of the month. Touchdown is planned for the grasslands of Inner Mongolia, where China’s astronauts have made their return in Shenzhou spacecraft.

Chang’e 5’s lander, which remained on the moon, was capable of scooping samples from the surface and drilling 2 meters (about 6 feet).

While retrieving samples was its main task, the lander also was equipped to extensively photograph the area, map conditions below the surface with ground penetrating radar and analyze the lunar soil for minerals and water content.

Right before the ascent vehicle lifted off, the lander unfurled what the space administration called the first free-standing Chinese flag on the moon. The agency posted an image — apparently taken from the lander — of the ascend vehicle firing its engines as it took off.

Chang’e 5 has revived talk of China one day sending astronauts to the moon and possibly building a scientific base there, although no timeline has been proposed for such projects.

China launched its first temporary orbiting laboratory in 2011 and a second in 2016. Plans call for a permanent space station after 2022, possibly to be serviced by a reusable space plane.

While China is boosting cooperation with the European Space Agency and others, interactions with NASA are severely limited by U.S. concerns over the secretive nature and close military links of the Chinese program.

New story in Science and Health from Time: China Says Its Moon Probe Is Preparing to Return Rock Samples to Earth China Says Its Moon Probe Is Preparing to Return Rock Samples to Earth

BEIJING — China said Thursday its latest lunar probe has finished taking samples of the moon’s surface and sealed them within the spacecraft for return to Earth, the first time such a mission has been attempted by any country in more than 40 years.

The Chang’e 5, the third Chinese probe to land on the moon, is the latest in a series of increasingly ambitious missions for Beijing’s space program, which also has a probe en route to Mars carrying a robot rover.

The Chang’e 5 touched down Tuesday on the Sea of Storms on the moon’s near side, on a mission to return lunar rocks to Earth for the first time since 1976.

The probe “has completed sampling on the moon, and the samples have been sealed within the spacecraft,” the China National Space Administration said in a statement.

Plans call for the upper stage of the probe known as the ascender to be launched back into lunar orbit to transfer the samples to a capsule for return to Earth. The timing off its return was not immediately clear and the lander can last up to one moon day, or 14 Earth days, before plummeting temperatures would make it inoperable.

Chang’e is equipped to both scoop samples from the surface and drill 2 meters (more than 6 feet) to retrieve materials that could provide clues into the history of the moon, Earth other planets and space features.

While retrieving samples is its main task, the lander is also equipped to extensively photograph the area surrounding its landing site, map conditions below the surface with ground penetrating radar and analyze the lunar soil for minerals and water content.

Chang’e 5’s return module is supposed to touch down around the middle of December on the grasslands of Inner Mongolia, where China’s crewed Shenzhou spacecraft have made their returns since China first put a man in space in 2003, becoming only the third country do so after Russia and the United States.

Chang’e 5 has revived talk of China one day sending a crewed mission to the moon and possibly building a scientific base there, although no timeline has been proposed for such projects.

China also launched Its first temporary orbiting laboratory in 2011 and a second in 2016. Plans call for a permanent space station after 2022, possibly to be serviced by a reusable space plane.

While China is boosting cooperation with the European Space Agency and others, interactions with NASA are severely limited by concerns over the secretive nature and close military links of the Chinese program.