SCIENCE

The findings, described in a paper published in the Astronomical Journal, showed a planetary system that comprises a star and at least two gas giant planets, each roughly the size of Saturn and located unusually close to one another. The discovery is significant because it's rare to find gas giants -- like Saturn in the solar system -- as close to their host star as they were in this case.

The Prawn Nebula is a massive stellar nursery located in the constellation Scorpius, about 6,000 light years from Earth. Though the nebula stretches 250 light-years and covers a space four times the size of the full moon, it emits light primarily in wavelengths the human eye cannot detect, making it extremely faint to earthbound viewers.

This DART mission is targeted to launch at 1:21 a.m. EST (11:51 am India time) on November 24, aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California, NASA said in a statement. The DART spacecraft is designed to impact an asteroid as a test of technology to see if it can change the motion of an asteroid in space. The mission aims to see if intentionally crashing a spacecraft into an asteroid is an effective way to change its course.

The study led by an international team of researchers from Australia, the UK and China conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis of non-pharmaceutical interventions showing for the first time that mask wearing, social distancing and handwashing are all effective measures at curbing cases -- with mask wearing the most effective.

The Axiom Mission 1 (Ax-1) crew will conduct approximately 25 experiments, in human research, life and physical sciences, technology demonstrations and Earth observation, while onboard the ISS, the company said in a statement.

The understanding of physical properties of exoplanets with extreme accuracy can help to explore the ones that could be similar to planet Earth and hence might be habitable. With this purpose, a group of astronomers at Indian Institute of Astrophysics (IIA), Bengaluru, has been using the ground-based optical telescopes available in India and the data obtained by the space telescope "Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite" or TESS.

Scientists at the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP) at the University of Colorado, Boulder and the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) have examined collisions between the Parker Solar Probe spacecraft and dust.

The newly found black hole was spotted lurking in NGC 1850, a cluster of thousands of stars roughly 160,000 light-years away in the Large Magellanic Cloud -- a neighbour galaxy of the Milky Way. The detection in NGC 1850 marks the first time a black hole has been found in a young cluster of stars.

The trial to determine the safety and immunogenicity of the vaccine called ChAdOx1 biEBOV, will be conducted on 26 volunteers, aged between 18 and 55 years. "We are carrying out a clinical trial of a new Ebola vaccine called 'ChAdOx1 biEBOV' which is designed to target two of the deadliest species of Ebola-causing viruses," said Jenner Institute, University of Oxford in a statement.

NASA selected INCUS through the agency's Earth Venture Mission-3 (EVM-3) solicitation that sought complete, space-based investigations to address important science questions and produce data of societal relevance within the Earth science field. NASA received 12 proposals for EVM-3 missions in March 2021.