An anonymous reader quotes a report from The New York Times: Exxon Mobil, which has long been criticized by environmentalists and some investors and elected leaders for not doing enough to curb climate change, said on Monday it would invest $3 billion over the next five years in energy projects that lower emissions. The company said the first area it would work on is capturing carbon dioxide emissions from industrial plants and storing the gas so it does not enter the atmosphere, where it contributes to global warming. Many climate experts have said that such carbon capture and sequestration will be critical in the fight against climate change. Exxon said it was creating a new business called ExxonMobil Low Carbon Solutions and is working on 20 carbon capture projects around the world, including in Texas, the Netherlands, Singapore and Qatar.

The Verge reports that SpaceX's first high-altitude test flight of its Starship rocket, "which launched successfully but exploded in a botched landing attempt in December, violated the terms of its Federal Aviation Administration test license, according to two people familiar with the incident." Both the landing explosion and license violation prompted a formal investigation by the FAA, driving regulators to put extra scrutiny on Elon Musk's hasty Mars rocket test campaign. The so-called mishap investigation was opened that week, focusing not only on the explosive landing but on SpaceX's refusal to stick to the terms of what the FAA authorized, the two people said. It was unclear what part of the test flight violated the FAA license, and an FAA spokesman declined to specify in a statement to The Verge.

"The FAA will continue to work with SpaceX to evaluate additional information provided by the company as part of its application to modify its launch license," FAA spokesman Steve Kulm said Friday. "While we recognize the importance of moving quickly to foster growth and innovation in commercial space, the FAA will not compromise its responsibility to protect public safety. We will approve the modification only after we are satisfied that SpaceX has taken the necessary steps to comply with regulatory requirements."

The heightened scrutiny from regulators after the launchpad spectacle has played a role in holding up SpaceX's latest "SN9" Starship test attempt, which the company said would happen on Thursday. The shiny steel alloy, 16-story-tall rocket was loaded with fuel and ready to fly. But at the time, FAA officials were still going through their license review process for the test because of several changes SpaceX made in its license application, a source said. Musk, frustrated with the process, took to Twitter.
"Unlike its aircraft division, which is fine, the FAA space division has a fundamentally broken regulatory structure," Musk tweeted on Thursday. "Their rules are meant for a handful of expendable launches per year from a few government facilities. Under those rules, humanity will never get to Mars."

The Verge also notes that Musk was asked by the Wall Street Journal what role government should play in regulating innovation just a few hours before Starship's test in December. Musk's reply? "A lot of the time, the best thing the government can do is just get out of the way."

Despite bad weather and early technical difficulties, employee-owned bluShift Aerospace "made history Sunday afternoon when it launched its prototype rocket, Stardust 1.0," reports Maine's Portland Press Herald: The company became the first in Maine to launch a commercial rocket and the first in the world to launch a rocket using bio-derived fuel... It carried three payloads, two commercial and one, free of charge, from Falmouth High School... The rocket and payloads returned to the ground under a parachute shortly after launch and were retrieved by a team of snowmobilers. The rocket is intended to be reusable and environmentally friendly.

While the components of the biofuel remain a company secret, bluShift CEO Sascha Deri said it is solid, non-toxic and carbon neutral. "I can tell you this much, I discovered it with a friend of mine on my brothers farm here in Maine," he said. The company describes its business model as the Uber of space, where they will target a specific customer who wishes to send their payload into a particular orbit.

"We are targeting people that want to go to a specific orbit, they want to have control of their launches, they want to be the primary payload even though their payload is very small," Deri said.
The rocket is roughly 20 feet tall and 14 inches in diameter, the newspaper reports — noting that an earlier launch planned for January 15th had to be called off due to bad weather. "It turns out launching rockets is complicated, apparently it's rocket science," CEO Deri told them.

"We did learn a lot from that failed launch. We learned, first and foremost, that you can't rely upon weather websites, you really need to use a professional meteorologist."

The Associated Press also reports the rocket carried "a Dutch dessert called stroopwafel, in an homage to its Amsterdam-based parent company. Organizers of the launch said the items were included to demonstrate the inclusion of a small payload."

A new research study at the University of Missouri is using CRISPR gene-editing technology to produce mosquitoes that are unable to replicate Zika virus and therefore cannot infect a human through biting. Slashdot reader wooloohoo shared an announcement from Cornell's Alliance for Science: Alexander Franz, an associate professor in the MU College of Veterinary Medicine, collaborated with researchers at Colorado State University... Their work was recently published in the journal Viruses. Franz added that the genetic modification is inheritable, so future generations of the altered mosquitoes would be resistant to Zika virus as well... "[W]e are simply trying to expand the toolbox and provide a solution by genetically modifying the mosquitoes to become Zika-resistant while keeping them alive at the same time."

Franz' research is designed to help prevent another outbreak of Zika virus disease from occurring while also addressing concerns that have some have raised about reducing populations of mosquitoes, which are a food source for some animals...

The study was funded by the National Institutes of Health.

Long-time Slashdot reader schwit1 shared this article from Sky.com: Dr. Fatima Ebrahimi "has invented a new fusion rocket thruster concept which could power humans to Mars and beyond," writes Sky.com

Long-time Slashdot reader schwit1 shared their report: The physicist who works for the U.S. Department of Energy's Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory designed the rocket which will use magnetic fields to shoot plasma particles — electrically charged gas — into the vacuum of space. According to Newton's second and third laws of motion, the conservation of momentum would mean the rocket was propelled forwards — and at speeds 10 times faster than comparable devices.

While current space-proven plasma propulsion engines use electric fields to propel the particles, the new rocket design would accelerate them using magnetic reconnection... Dr. Ebrahimi's new concept performs much better than existing plasma thrusters in computer simulations — generating exhaust with velocities of hundreds of kilometres per second, 10 times faster than those of other thrusters.

That faster velocity at the beginning of a spacecraft's journey could bring the outer planets within reach of astronauts, the physicist said.... "The next step is building a prototype!"

sciencehabit shares a report from Science Magazine: President Joe Biden today created a task force that will conduct a 120-day review of scientific integrity policies across the U.S. government, including documenting instances in which "improper political interference" interfered with research or led to the suppression or distortion of data. The review is part of a lengthy memorandum from Biden on his plans for "restoring trust" in government by emphasizing scientific integrity and the use of evidence in policymaking. The memo also calls on federal research agencies to name Chief Scientific Officers, and for all agencies to spend 90 days reviewing the role of dozens of panels that provide scientific advice to government. Agencies will also determine if they want to recreate technical advisory panels dismantled under former President Donald Trump.

"Scientific and technological information, data, and evidence are central to the development and iterative improvement of sound policies," states the memo. "Improper political interference in the work of Federal scientists or other scientists who support the work of the Federal Government and in the communication of scientific facts undermines the welfare of the Nation." Today's memo largely restates policies outlined in laws passed by Congress and in memos released by former President Barack Obama in 2009 and by his science adviser, John Holdren, in 2010. In general, those policies attempt to create uniform practices across the federal government for handling and sharing data, using technical evidence, and insulating researchers from political concerns.

"Researchers from the fields of print media technology, chemistry, physics, acoustics, electrical engineering, and economics from six nations developed a continuous, highly productive, and reliable roll production of loudspeaker webs," reports project manager Georg C. Schmidt. [For those unfamiliar with roll-to-roll processing, it is the process of creating electronic devices on a roll of flexible plastic or metal foil, which, among other things, reduces manufacturing cost.]

This is an improvement upon the 2015 T-Book -- a large-format illustrated book equipped with printed electronics that outputs sound through a speaker invisibly located inside the sheet of paper. "The T-Book was and is a milestone in the development of printed electronics, but development is continuing all the time," says Prof. Dr. Arved C. Hubler, under whose leadership this technology trend has been driven forward for more than 20 years. Phys.Org reports: Not only did they use the roll-to-roll (R2R) printing process for this, but they also developed inline technologies for other process steps, such as the lamination of functional layers. "This allows electronics to be embedded in the paper -- invisibly and protected," says Hubler. In addition, he says, inline polarization of piezoelectric polymer layers has been achieved for the first time and complete inline process monitoring of the printed functional layers is possible. The final project results were published in the renowned journal Advanced Materials.

The potential of loudspeaker paper was extended to other areas of application in the T-Paper project. For example, meter-long loudspeaker installations can now be manufactured in web form or as a circle (T-RING). "In our T-RING prototype, an almost four-meter-long track with 56 individual loudspeakers was connected to form seven segments and shaped into a circle, making a 360-degree surround sound installation possible," says Schmidt. The speaker track, including printed circuitry, weighs just 150 grams and consists of 90 percent conventional paper that can be printed in color on both sides. "This means that low-cost infotainment solutions are now possible in museums, at trade shows and in the advertising industry, for example. In public buildings, for example, very homogeneous sound reinforcement of long stretches such as corridors is possible. But the process technology itself could also become interesting for other areas, such as the production of inline measurement systems for Industry 4.0," says the project manager, looking to the future.

Robin George Andrews, reporting for National Geographic: A 62-year-old adventure mystery that has prompted conspiracy theories around Soviet military experiments, Yetis, and even extraterrestrial contact may have its best, most sensible explanation yet -- one found in a series of avalanche simulations based in part on car crash experiments and animation used in the movie Frozen. In an article published this week in the journal Communications Earth and Environment, researchers present data pointing to the likelihood that a bizarrely small, delayed avalanche may have been responsible for the gruesome injuries and deaths of nine experienced hikers who never returned from a planned 200-mile adventure in Russia's Ural Mountains in the winter of 1959.

In what has become known as the Dyatlov Pass incident, ten members of the Urals Polytechnic Institute in Yekaterinburg -- nine students and one sports instructor who fought in World War II -- headed into the frigid wilderness on a skiing and mountaineering expedition on January 23, 1959. One student with joint pain turned back, but the rest, led by 23-year-old engineering student Igor Dyatlov, continued on. According to camera film and personal diaries later found on the scene by investigators, the team made camp on February 1, pitching a large tent on the snowy slopes of Kholat Saykhl, whose name can be interpreted as "Dead Mountain" in the language of the region's Indigenous Mansi people. The nine -- seven men and two women -- were never heard from again.

When a search team arrived at Kholat Saykhl a few weeks later, the expedition tent was found just barely sticking out of the snow, and it appeared cut open from the inside. The next day, the first of the bodies was found near a cedar tree. Over the next few months, as the snow thawed, search teams gradually uncovered more spine-chilling sights: All nine of the team members' bodies were scattered around the mountain's slope, some in a baffling state of undress; some of their skulls and chests had been smashed open; others had eyes missing, and one lacked a tongue. Each body was a piece in a grim puzzle, but none of the pieces seemed to fit together. A criminal investigation at the time blamed their deaths on an "unknown natural force," and the Soviet bureaucracy kept the case quiet. The lack of detail about this shocking event, an apparent massacre that transpired in a deeply secretive state, gave rise to dozens of long-lived conspiracy theories, from clandestine military tests to Yeti attacks.

Photographer and scientist Nathan Myhrvold has developed a camera that captures snowflakes at a microscopic level never seen before. Smithsonian Magazine reports: Myhrvold, who holds a PhD in theoretical mathematics and physics from Princeton University and served as the Chief Technology Officer at Microsoft for 14 years, leaned on his background as a scientist to create the camera. He also tapped into his experience as a photographer, most notably as the founder of Modernist Cuisine, a food innovation lab known for its high-resolution photographs of various food stuffs published into a five-volume book of photography of the same name that focuses on the art and science of cooking. Myhrvold first got the idea to photograph snowflakes 15 years ago after meeting Kenneth Libbrecht, a California Institute of Technology professor who happened to be studying the physics of snowflakes.

In simple terms, the system Myhrvold developed is comprised of one part microscope and one part camera, but with a number of parts that work in tandem to complete the arduous task of capturing an image of a snowflake, a subject that's not only miniscule (most snowflakes measure less than a half-inch in diameter) but also quick to melt. In fact, a snowflake's tendency to disintegrate was one of the biggest challenges Myhrvold had to overcome with this project. His solution: equipping his 50-pound camera system with a thermoelectric cooling system, a carbon fiber frame and LED lights, which give off less heat than standard lights. Every single part of his Frankenstein-esque device, which stands at about five feet in height off the ground when placed on a table, was built using materials that are less likely to cause melting or sublimation of the subject matter.

Myhrvold also had to figure out how to physically capture a snowflake. (It's not quite as simple as hoping that the perfect snowflake just so happens to fall into your mittened hand.) He quickly learned that catching them on a glass microscope slide wouldn't work; glass is a known insulator. But an artificial sapphire slide, made of the same crystal material as one would find in a high-end watch, had a lower thermal conductivity ratio than glass, making it the perfect material to gather specimens. [...] Once safely on the slide, he focuses his microscope to take the photograph, changing the exposure one micron at a time. (For reference, the width of a human hair measures approximately 70 microns.) On average, Myhrvold photographs each snowflake more than 100 times, or as many times as he can before the snowflake starts to melt. Using specialized computer software, Myhrvold combines multiple photographs of a single specimen to create the final photograph. "That photo [is usually the result of] 100 photographs put together using computer software," he says. "You have to take many photos in order to get a high enough resolution, because many photos put together allows you to have enough depth of field to see an entire snowflake very sharply."

Microsoft this morning disclosed investments in more climate-related companies as part of efforts to make good on its year-old pledge to become "carbon negative" by 2030. From a report: One company the tech behemoth is staking is Climeworks, a firm looking to scale up deployment of direct air capture technology that removes CO2 already in the atmosphere. The size of the investment was not disclosed. Microsoft also revealed that it's a customer of the Swiss firm. "Through Microsoft's purchase of negative emissions from Climeworks, we will permanently remove 1,400 metric tons of carbon," Lucas Joppa, Microsoft's top environmental official, said in a blog post. It's part of a growing move by deep-pocketed companies and investors to back the fledgling direct air capture sector -- and pay them for carbon removal. The volumes currently being removed are a tiny drop in the bucket, but DAC could be among the technologies that eventually join the list of meaningful tools against warming. Another firm, Carbon Engineering, counts backers including Bill Gates, Chevron and Occidental Petroleum. Climeworks' other investors and customers include e-commerce heavyweight Shopify.

Astronomers have used a combination of telescopes to reveal a system consisting of six exoplanets, five of which are locked in a rare rhythm around their central star. "The researchers believe the system could provide important clues about how planets, including those in the Solar System, form and evolve," reports Phys.Org. From the report: The first time the team observed TOI-178, a star some 200 light-years away in the constellation of Sculptor, they thought they had spotted two planets going around it in the same orbit. However, a closer look revealed something entirely different. "Through further observations we realised that there were not two planets orbiting the star at roughly the same distance from it, but rather multiple planets in a very special configuration," says Adrien Leleu from the Universite de Geneve and the University of Bern, Switzerland, who led a new study of the system published in Astronomy & Astrophysics. The new research has revealed that the system boasts six exoplanets and that all but the one closest to the star are locked in a rhythmic dance as they move in their orbits. In other words, they are in resonance. This means that there are patterns that repeat themselves as the planets go around the star, with some planets aligning every few orbits. A similar resonance is observed in the orbits of three of Jupiter's moons: Io, Europa and Ganymede. Io, the closest of the three to Jupiter, completes four full orbits around Jupiter for every orbit that Ganymede, the furthest away, makes, and two full orbits for every orbit Europa makes.

The five outer exoplanets of the TOI-178 system follow a much more complex chain of resonance, one of the longest yet discovered in a system of planets. While the three Jupiter moons are in a 4:2:1 resonance, the five outer planets in the TOI-178 system follow a 18:9:6:4:3 chain: while the second planet from the star (the first in the resonance chain) completes 18 orbits, the third planet from the star (second in the chain) completes 9 orbits, and so on. In fact, the scientists initially only found five planets in the system, but by following this resonant rhythm they calculated where in its orbit an additional planet would be when they next had a window to observe the system.

More than just an orbital curiosity, this dance of resonant planets provides clues about the system's past. "The orbits in this system are very well ordered, which tells us that this system has evolved quite gently since its birth," explains co-author Yann Alibert from the University of Bern. If the system had been significantly disturbed earlier in its life, for example by a giant impact, this fragile configuration of orbits would not have survived.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from NPR: New coronavirus variants seem to be cropping up everywhere. There's one from the U.K., which is more contagious and already circulating in the United States. There's one from South Africa, which is forcing Moderna and Pfizer to reformulate their COVID-19 vaccines and create "booster" shots, just to make sure the vaccines maintain their efficacies. But for some scientists, the most worrying variant might be the newest one. A variant called P.1, which emerged in early December in Manaus, Brazil, and by mid-January had already caused a massive resurgence in cases across the city of 2 million people. [...] The concern with P.1 is twofold: scientists don't understand why the variant has spread so explosively in Brazil, and the variant carries a particularly dangerous set of mutations.

While the variant from the U.K. took about three months to dominate the outbreak in England, P.1 took only about a month to dominate the outbreak in Manaus. In addition, Manaus had already been hit extremely hard by the virus back in April. One study estimated that the population should have reached herd immunity and the virus shouldn't be able to spread easily in the community. So why would the city see an even bigger surge 10 months later? Could P.1 be evading the antibodies made against the previous version of the virus, making reinfections easier? Could it just be significantly more contagious? Could both be true? "While we don't *know* exactly why this variant has been so apparently successful in Brazil, none of the explanations on the table are good," epidemiologist Bill Hanage, at Harvard University, wrote on Twitter.

Reinfections are a serious concern for several reasons. First off, like the variant from South Africa, P.1 carries a cluster of mutations along the surface of the virus where antibodies -- especially the potent antibodies -- like to bind. "They are kind of the major targets of the immune system," says virologist Penny Moore at the National Institute for Communicable Diseases in South Africa and the University of KwaZulu-Natal. "So when we see a whole lot of mutations in [those surfaces], it raises the possibility that the mutations might be conferring immune escape." That is, the mutations are helping the virus evade antibodies or escape recognition by them. In essence, the mutations are providing the virus with a type of invisibility cloak. And thus, now we have a game of "cat and mouse," says virologist Ravi Gupta, between the virus and the vaccine. The virus finds ways around the vaccine (and our immune system), says Gupta, and so the manufacturers have to reformulate the vaccines (or else we run the risk of getting infected twice).

AmiMoJo shares a report from Live Science: In his inaugural address last week, President Joe Biden called for unity. But how can Americans come together, given what seems to be growing political contention and deep divides? New research suggests the answer can be found in stories, not statistics. People respect those they disagree with more when their position comes from a place of personal experience, not facts and figures, finds a new series of experiments published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. This is especially true when the personal stories are rooted in experiences of harm or vulnerability.

"In moral disagreements, experiences seem truer than facts," said Kurt Gray, a psychologist and director of the Center for the Science of Moral Understanding at the University of North Carolina. For the new research, Gray and his colleagues focused on how facts versus experiences affected people's perceptions of their opponent's rationality and their respect for that opponent. Over 15 separate experiments, they found that, although people think they respect opponents who present facts, they actually have more respect for opponents who share personal stories.

Joe2020 shares a report: China has begun using anal swabs to test those it considers to be at high risk of contracting Covid-19, state TV has reported. Officials took anal swabs from residents of neighbourhoods with confirmed Covid-19 cases in Beijing last week, according to the state broadcaster CCTV, while those in designated quarantine facilities have also had the tests. Small, localised outbreaks in recent weeks have resulted in multiple cities in northern China being sealed off from the rest of the country and prompted mass testing campaigns, which had mostly been conducted using throat and nose swabs. The anal swabs method "can increase the detection rate of infected people" as traces of the virus linger longer in the anus than in the respiratory tract, Li Tongzeng, a senior doctor from Beijing's Youan hospital, told CCTV. CCTV said on Sunday anal swabs would not be used as widely as other methods, as the technique was "not convenient."

Bill Gates and Melinda Gates write in their annual letter, shared by reader cusco: To prevent the hardship of this last year from happening again, pandemic preparedness must be taken as seriously as we take the threat of war. The world needs to double down on investments in R & D and organizations like CEPI that have proven invaluable with COVID-19. We also need to build brand-new capabilities that don't exist yet. Stopping the next pandemic will require spending tens of billions of dollars per year -- a big investment, but remember that the COVID-19 pandemic is estimated to cost the world $28 trillion. The world needs to spend billions to save trillions (and prevent millions of deaths). I think of this as the best and most cost-efficient insurance policy the world could buy.

The bulk of this investment needs to come from rich countries. Low- and middle-income countries and foundations like ours have a role to play, but governments from high-income nations need to lead the charge here because the benefits for them are so huge. If you live in a rich country, it's in your best interest for your government to go big on pandemic preparedness around the world. Melinda wrote that COVID-19 anywhere is threat to health everywhere; the same is true of the next potential pandemic. The tools and systems created to stop pathogens in their tracks need to span the globe, including in low- and middle-income countries. To start, governments need to continue investing in the scientific tools that are getting us through this current pandemic -- even after COVID-19 is behind us. New breakthroughs will give us a leg up the next time a new disease emerges. It took months to get enough testing capacity for COVID-19 in the United States. But it's possible to build up diagnostics that can be deployed very quickly. By the next pandemic, I'm hopeful we'll have what I call mega-diagnostic platforms, which could test as much as 20 percent of the global population every week.

Teenagers' mental health is being damaged by heavy social media use, a report has found. From a report: Research from the Education Policy Institute and The Prince's Trust said wellbeing and self-esteem were similar in all children of primary school age. Boys and girls' wellbeing is affected at the age of 14, but girls' mental health drops more after that, it found. A lack of exercise is another contributing factor - exacerbated by the pandemic, the study said. According to the research: One in three girls was unhappy with their personal appearance by the age of 14, compared with one in seven at the end of primary school. The number of young people with probable mental illness has risen to one in six, up from one in nine in 2017. Boys in the bottom set at primary school had lower self-esteem at 14 than their peers. The wellbeing of both genders fell during adolescence, with girls experiencing a greater decline, the report said.

New submitter wooloohoo shares a report from Ars Technica: The rollout of the COVID-19 vaccine means a ton of people are soon going to be looking for vaccination sites. As usual, Google wants to be at the center of getting people where they're going, and in a new blog post Google says it will start loading Search and Maps with information on vaccination sites. "In the coming weeks," the company writes, "COVID-19 vaccination locations will be available in Google Search and Maps, starting with Arizona, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas, with more states and countries to come."

Soon you'll be able to search "COVID vaccine" and get location results showing access requirements, appointment information, and if a site has a drive-through. Google says it is partnering with the Boston Children's Hospital's VaccineFinder.org, government agencies, and retail pharmacies for the data. Elsewhere in the Google Empire, the company says it will open up various Google facilities as vaccine sites. "Google also says it plans on launching a 'Get the Facts' campaign across its services," the report adds. "The post says the initiative will run across Google and YouTube to 'get authoritative information out to the public about vaccines.'"

An American real estate investor, a Canadian investor, and a former Israeli Air Force pilot are paying $55 million each to be part of the first fully private astronaut crew to journey to the International Space Station. The Verge reports: The trio will hitch a ride on SpaceX's Crew Dragon capsule early next year, with a veteran NASA astronaut as the commander. The Ax-1 mission, arranged by Houston, Texas-based space tourism company Axiom Space, is a watershed moment for the space industry as companies race to make space travel more accessible to private customers instead of governments. Private citizens have trekked to the space station in the past, but the Ax-1 mission marks the first to use a commercially built astronaut capsule: SpaceX's Crew Dragon, which flew its first two crews to the ISS last year.

Larry Connor, an entrepreneur and nonprofit activist investor; Mark Pathy, the Canadian investor and philanthropist; and Eytan Stibbe, the former Israeli fighter pilot and an impact investor, were revealed by Axiom on Tuesday morning as the company's inaugural crew. Connor, 71, is president of The Connor Group, a luxury real estate investment firm based in Ohio. He'd become the second-oldest person to fly to space after John Glenn, who flew the US space shuttle Discovery at 77 years old.

The crew's flight to the space station, an orbital laboratory some 250 miles above Earth, will take two days. They'll then spend about eight days aboard the station's US segment, where they'll take part "in research and philanthropic projects," Axiom said in a statement. Living alongside working astronauts from the US, Russia, and likely Germany, the private crew members will roll out sleeping bags somewhere on the station. [...] The Ax-1 mission will have to be approved by the Multilateral Crew Operations Panel, the space station's managing body of partner countries that includes the US, Russia, Canada, Japan, and others. That approval process kicked off today...

sciencehabit shares a report from Science Magazine: Researchers have discovered a common martian mineral deep within an ice core from Antarctica. The find suggests the mineral -- a brittle, yellow-brown substance known as jarosite -- was forged the same way on both Earth and Mars: from dust trapped within ancient ice deposits. It also reveals how important these glaciers were on the Red Planet: Not only did they carve valleys, the researchers say, but they also helped create the very stuff Mars is made of.

Jarosite was first spotted on Mars in 2004, when the NASA Opportunity rover rolled over fine-grained layers of it. The discovery made headlines because jarosite needs water to form, along with iron, sulfate, potassium, and acidic conditions. The work suggests jarosite forms the same way on Mars, says Megan Elwood Madden, a geochemist at the University of Oklahoma who was not involved with the research. But she wonders whether the process can explain the huge abundance of jarosite on Mars. "On Mars, this is not just some thin film," she says. "These are meters-thick deposits."

[Giovanni Baccolo, a geologist at the University of Milan-Bicocca] concedes that the ice core contained only small amounts of jarosite, particles smaller than an eyelash or a grain of sand. But he explains that there's much more dust on Mars than in Antarctica, which only receives small amounts of airborne ash and dirt from northern continents. "Mars is such a dusty place -- everything is covered in dust," Baccolo says. More ash would favor more jarosite formation under the right conditions, he says. Baccolo wants to use Antarctic cores to investigate whether ancient martian ice deposits were cauldrons for the formation of other minerals. He says jarosite shows how glaciers weren't just land carving machines, but might have contributed to Mars's chemical makeup. "This is just the first step in linking deep Antarctic ice with the martian environment." The researchers reported their findings this month in Nature Communications.

SpaceX has begun launching Starlink satellites with laser links that will help provide broadband coverage in polar regions. As SpaceX CEO Elon Musk wrote on Twitter on Sunday, these satellites "have laser links between the satellites, so no ground stations are needed over the poles." From a report: The laser links are included in 10 Starlink satellites just launched into polar orbits. The launch came two weeks after SpaceX received Federal Communications Commission approval to launch the 10 satellites into polar orbits at an altitude of 560km. "All sats launched next year will have laser links," Musk wrote in another tweet yesterday, indicating that the laser systems will become standard on Starlink satellites in 2022. For now, SpaceX is only including laser links on polar satellites. "Only our polar sats have lasers this year & are v0.9," Musk wrote. Alaskan residents will benefit from the polar satellites, SpaceX told the FCC in an application to change the orbit of some of its satellites in April 2020.