Featuring the latest in daily science news, Verge Science is all you need to keep track of what’s going on in health, the environment, and your whole world. Through our articles, we keep a close eye on the overlap between science and technology news — so you’re more informed.
Once valued at $6 billion, executives have yet to find a bidder for the $50 million gene testing company that has never turned a profit.
A NASA and CNES satellite lets scientists see the ocean floor in new ways.
The company announced $99 million in new funding, part of its goal of transitioning its supply chain to entirely carbon pollution-free energy by 2030. This marks the second phase of the China Clean Energy Fund that Apple launched in 2018, AppleInsider reports.
[appleinsider.com]
The threat of an H5N1 pandemic is here to stay.
The Trump administration’s attacks on diversity could lead to more accidents in space missions, experts say.
The company that operates the pipeline sued the environmental group for $300 million, an amount 10 times Greenpeace USA’s annual budget. The outcome could make it easier to target other groups for their activism, advocates warned.
”Freedom of speech is on the line,” says Waniya Locke, a member of Standing Rock Grassroots, told The Verge recently. “This directly impacts everybody, not just Standing Rock, not just Greenpeace.”
The Trump administration reportedly has plans to slash the EPA’s budget by 65 percent and shut down its research department, firing up to 1,155 scientists.
“This is a wrecking ball assault on the science that protects the air we breathe and the water we drink from toxic chemicals and pollution,” Jennifer Orme-Zavaleta, former principal deputy assistant administrator at the EPA’s Office of Research and Development, said in a statement yesterday.
Right on schedule, the Dragon capsule deployed its parachutes and landed off the coast of Florida as recovery crews began the process of bringing the capsule onboard a recovery ship and extracting its crew.
The Dragon spacecraft is fewer than 20 minutes out from splashdown in Florida. As noted on NASA’s livestream, it has completed the deorbit burn that lasted about seven and a half minutes at 5:18PM ET, and is entering a period of communications blackout as they reenter Earth’s atmosphere.
Its drogue parachutes will deploy four minutes before splashdown, beginning the process of slowing it down from 350 miles per hour before its targeted landing at about 5:57PM ET.
The SpellRing was developed by Cornell researchers and uses AI plus micro-sonar tech to track real-time fingerspelling. Right now, it can be used to input text into computers and smartphones. It’s a neat, given that the researchers say alternatives have been too bulky and impractical for Deaf and hard-of-hearing communities.
There are caveats. This isn’t a consumer product yet and may never be. Plus, fingerspelling is only one aspect of American Sign Language. Still, you love to see people working on accessibility tech!
Last night, Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, along with Crew-9 members Aleksandr Gorbunov and Nick Hague, left the ISS in a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft now that the Crew-10 mission has arrived to relieve them. NASA will resume coverage of their return mission this afternoon, as they are expected to splash down off the coast of Florida at about 5:57PM ET, ending a voyage that started last June.
Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) placed 22 California offices for environmental protection and research on its list of leases to terminate, the Los Angeles Times reports.
That includes the L.A. office of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The federal employee union representing EPA employees told The Verge last month that the Trump administration’s efforts to gut the agency could hamper wildfire recovery efforts in the region.
Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams will soon return to Earth — following an unexpectedly long stay in space due to issues with Boeing’s Starliner craft — after the Crew-10 mission’s SpaceX Dragon capsule docked with the International Space Station early this morning.
Here, in a video shared by NASA, the newcomers are greeted by the ISS crew. NASA said Friday that Wilmore, Williams, and two others “will return to Earth no earlier than Wednesday, March 19.”
SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket lifted off on schedule in its second attempt Friday night, sending the Crew-10 mission on its way to the International Space Station.
Commander Anne McClain, pilot Nichole Ayers, pilot, along with mission specialists Takuya Onishi and Kirill Peskov are back in the Dragon spacecraft, ahead of the mission’s launch, which is scheduled for 7:03PM ET.
According to NASA, once the craft takes off, it will be about 28.5 hours before it meets up with the ISS.
Now that SpaceX ground teams have “successfully flushed a suspected pocket of trapped air” in the ground support hydraulics system used for the clamp arm supporting the Falcon 9 rocket, there will be another attempt to launch the Crew-10 mission to the ISS tonight, after the first one on Wednesday was scrubbed.
It’s scheduled for 7:03PM ET on Friday, March 14th, and once it reaches the space station, that will mean it’s time for Crew-9 and the stranded Boeing Starliner astronauts to make their way back to Earth, which could happen as soon as March 19th.
With less than an hour to go on the countdown, NASA announced tonight’s launch attempt to send a capsule to the ISS on a Falcon 9 rocket is off. There is a backup lunch opportunity already scheduled for tomorrow night, on March 13th at 7:26PM ET, but it hasn’t been confirmed yet.
The “Quantum Visions” art exhibition being hosted at Tabakalera in San Sebastián, Spain celebrates 2025 being proclaimed the “International Year of Quantum Science and Technology” by the United Nations. Eleven artists, including former CERN artists-in-residence, are featured at the exhibit, with works in a variety of mediums that have been inspired by the subatomic world of quantum theory. It sounds like a neat experience, even if my brain hurts just thinking about it.
Donald Trump continues to push his trade war with Canada, saying in a Truth Social post that he’s adding an extra 25 percent tax on steel and aluminum imports — doubling what he announced on Monday. These additional tariffs are in retaliation for a surcharge on electricity coming into the US that Ontario implemented (which itself was retaliation for previous Trump tariffs).
The agency is axing the Office of the Chief Scientist and the the Office of Technology, Policy and Strategy.
NASA contributes significantly to research on climate, weather, air quality, and the environment. Joe Biden appointed chief scientist Katherine Calvin, who was recently stopped from joining a meeting of the United Nations’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Science reports.
“It is the policy of NIH not to prioritize research activities that focuses gaining scientific knowledge on why individuals are hesitant to be vaccinated and/or explore ways to improve vaccine interest and commitment,” says an internal NIH email obtained by Science and The Washington Post.
Donald Trump tapped anti-vax crusader Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has spread disinformation falsely linking vaccines to autism, to lead the Department of Health and Human Services that houses NIH.
[science.org]
Ontario added a 25 percent surcharge on electricity flowing from the Canadian province to the US in response to the Trump administration’s tariff threats toward Canada. The province generates electricity for 1.5 million customers across Minnesota, New York, and Michigan.
”If the United States escalates, I will not hesitate to shut the electricity off completely,” Ontario Premier Doug Ford said at a press conference, the Associated Press reports.
