2,959 source-backed science facts - each attributed to a named person and a number, linked to the original source. Page 19 of 30.
“Conventional wisdom held that modern humans emerged from one parent population in an East African savanna and did not encounter rainforests until around 12,000 years ago, after agriculture emerged to support survival in these climes.”
“Neon green auroras from space will take your breath away | Space photo of the day for June 26, 2026”
“Then, in 2017, scientists identified the oldest modern-human fossils — except they weren't in East Africa, but rather in Jebel Irhoud, Morocco.”
“Day 127, orbit 1968 — That aurora was absolutely spectacular… shimmering and dancing beneath us, stretching as far as the eye could see, and so intense it lit up the Station in shades of green,”
“The following year, Eleanor Scerri, an archaeological scientist at the Max Planck Institute of Geoanthropology in Germany, and her colleagues reviewed archaeological evidence, including the Jebel Irhoud fossils, and integrated it with gene…”
“served as a Senior Writer for Space.com from 2018 to 2022 before returning in 2026”
“In Africa, stone tools reveal humans were in coastal tropical forests in what is now Kenya roughly 78,000 years ago, the tropical rainforests of what is now Equatorial Guinea from around 45,000 years ago, and the rainforests of what is now…”
“launching a song to space in 2021 with Inspiration4”
“Then, in 2025, researchers revealed that stone tools previously found in a tropical rainforest in the Ivory Coast in the 1980s were 150,000 years old.”
“It calculates that NASA's final investment into the canceled hardware, which was originally contracted at a combined $2.9 billion, reached $5.9 billion by the time work was ceased”
“Because the area was also a tropical rainforest 150,000 years ago, this is evidence that our species inhabited rainforests 'much earlier than previously thought,' study first author Eslem Ben Arous, a geochronologist and archaeologist at t…”
“NASA is currently targeting 2028 for the program's first lunar landing on Artemis 4.”
“cluster of four islands and two rocky islets belonging to Yemen.”
“would have increased the rocket's capabilities to send Orion and heavier cargo to the moon by 40%.”
“Located about 250 miles (400 kilometers) south of the Arabian Peninsula and 140 miles (220 km) east of the Horn of Africa.”
“selected to design and manufacture EUS in February 2017.”
“home to around 60,000 people.”
“to the tune of $962 million, with a delivery date set for March 2021.”
“As of 2023, visitors could reach it only via a weekly flight from Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates.”
“By that time, the EUS allocations in Boeing's contract had risen to nearly $2 billion, with the company estimating that the number would rise to $3.7 billion by the project's completion.”
“The archipelago has one main island, Socotra, which makes up 95% of the landmass, along with three smaller islands and two islets.”
“end of 2028 — 7.5 years after its original due date.”
“Socotra was recognized as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2008.”
“in 2018 to expedite completion of the SLS core stage”
“Socotra is a leftover fragment from when Arabia and Africa pulled apart around 30 million years ago.”
“contracted to manufacture the USA for $131 million in 2017, and added another $9 million for the incorporation of the adapter's environmentally-controlled secondary payload deployment capability in 2022.”
“which have evolved in isolation for at least 15 million years.”
“That number had reached $353 million when NASA issued Dynetics' stop work order in February, and would have climbed to $497 million before the USA's completion, which the OIG report estimates would have been delayed to May 2030.”
“More than one-third of Socotra's plants, 90% of its reptiles and 95% of its land snail species are found exclusively in the archipelago, according to UNESCO.”
“contract awarded to Bechtel National, Inc. in June 2019 for $383 million.”
“more than 250 species of reef-building corals.”
“ballooned the contract to $1.6 billion by the start of 2026.”
“Currently, the U.S. has only one active lithium mine, in Nevada,”
“expected to complete ML-2 by this summer, but the OIG report estimates it would have been closer to December, with another one to two years of validation testing for NASA to ready the tower to support a launch, and costs reaching $2 billio…”
“the government and private companies are planning to open at least 115 new mines across the country,”
“contract for HALO with Northrop Grumman Innovation Systems began as a $187 million sole-source acquisition in 2019, which had increased to $1.8 billion by September 2024.”
“published May 28 in the journal Communications Earth & Environment,”
“reached $1.9 billion by the time NASA issued their stop work order in April, but was projected to continue to rise as delivery estimates were pushed to 2031.”
“The U.S. imports more than 50% of its lithium, mostly from Chile and Argentina.”
“free up more than $3 billion in the years ahead.”
“the 22 proposed mines that are the closest to coming online,”
“NASA is paying $30 million for a 1st-of-its-kind rescue mission to the aging Swift telescope before it falls from space.”
“Our analysis estimated that if all 22 advanced [stage] proposed mines and the sole operating mine continued operation into 2050, 0.14 [to] 0.25 million metric tons [0.15 to 0.28 million tons] of lithium content in products could be produce…”
“Swift, it turns out, is still worth it, according to NASA. The observatory has spent over two decades as a sort of orbital sentinel that scans the cosmos for gamma-ray bursts, ready to quickly point itself at the short-lived — but insanely…”
“This range falls short of the 0.83 million to 1.9 million tons (0.75 million to 1.7 million metric tons) of lithium per year that other researchers previously estimated the U.S. would need to cover its own demand.”
“NASA originally built and launched Swift in 2004 for $250 million.”
“the 23 lithium mines most likely to be active in 2050,”
“So NASA is launching a rescue mission on June 30, one led by the company Katalyst Space using its new Link spacecraft.”
“under four modeled socioeconomic-climate scenarios between 2040 and 2060.”
“NASA's Swift rescue mission, called Swift Boost, is now scheduled to launch Tuesday (June 30) — about 3 days later than originally planned — on the last-ever Pegasus XL rocket...”
“Southern California's Salton Sea, which contains roughly 4.5 million tons (4.1 million metric tons) of lithium.”
“NASA has turned to the untested Arizona-based company Katalyst Space, which the space agency picked to fly the Swift Boost mission just nine months ago, in September 2025.”
“There were four exceptions in the study, including lithium-rich sites in North Carolina and Arkansas, which may have enough water to support future mines.”
“Katalyst calls its rescue ship Link. It's a small spacecraft about the size of a refrigerator that has three main ion engines, three robotic arms and a suite of sensors and thrusters to attempt to capture the falling Swift observatory.”
“Currently, the U.S. has only one active lithium mine, in Nevada”
“It's a small spacecraft about the size of a refrigerator that has three main ion engines, three robotic arms and a suite of sensors and thrusters to attempt to capture the falling Swift observatory.”
“the government and private companies are planning to open at least 115 new mines across the country”
“and then push the Swift telescope to a higher orbit — one that will guarantee at least five or more years of science life, if successful.”
“Published May 28 in the journal Communications Earth & Environment”
“(NASA renamed Swift the Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory in 2018 after the mission's first principal investigator, who died a year earlier.)”
“U.S. imports more than 50% of its lithium, mostly from Chile and Argentina.”
“In 2022, Swift discovered a gamma-ray burst so bright, scientists nicknamed it the 'BOAT,' short for Brightest of All Time.”
“the existing Nevada mine and the 22 proposed mines that are the closest to coming online”
“ready to quickly point itself at the short-lived — but insanely powerful — space explosions at a moment's notice.”
“Southern California's Salton Sea contains roughly 4.5 million tons (4.1 million metric tons) of lithium.”
“The Hubble Space Telescope can capture sharper photos than Swift, but it takes up to two days to point Hubble at a new target, Cenko said. It takes Swift mere minutes.”
“Unlike digital bits in a classical computer, which are represented as either "on" or "off," a quantum bit (qubit) has a much higher failure rate — roughly 1 in 1,000, compared with 1 in 1 billion for digital bits.”
“And over time, our exceptional operations team, led by Penn State, has found new and innovative ways for the satellite to rapidly respond to these discoveries.”
“In the new study, published May 9 in the journal Nature Communications, the researchers described how this quantum computing chip uses photons captured from laser pulses as qubits.”
“Rocket Lab launched the "Ten Owl of Ten" mission from New Zealand today (June 26)”
“The chip can be programmed to imitate errors in multiple ways, thus making it possible to simulate specific types of loss due to noise. The researchers can essentially modulate the amount of noise the system simulates in order to generate …”
“sent up Synspective's 10th synthetic aperture radar (SAR) satellite”
“Krishna, G., Gao, J., O’Brien, S., Yadgirkar, R., Deenadayalan, V., Preble, S., Zwiller, V., & Elshaari, A. W. (2026). Emulation of coherent absorption of Fock-state quantum light in a programmable linear photonic circuit. Nature Communica…”
“The launch was Rocket Lab's 12th so far in 2026, and the ninth for Electron this year”
“stands 59 feet (18 meters) tall”
“can launch payloads weighing up to 661 pounds (300 kilograms)”
“with 17 more on the rocket's manifest expected to launch before 2030”
“Each Strix satellite weighs about 220 pounds (100 kg)”
“stretches to 16.4 feet (5 meters) wide”
“on-orbit lifespan of about five years”
“cruise in LEO between 15 and45 degrees of inclination”
“deliver the "Ten Owl of Ten" Strix to an inclination of 42 degrees, at a LEO altitude of 343 miles (552 kilometers)”
“second stage separated about 2 minutes, 40 seconds after liftoff today”
“with the third or "kick" stage taking over about nine minutes into flight”
“Payload separation occurred on schedule 45 minutes later, around T+1 hour after liftoff”
“which is located around 1,110 light‑years from Earth.”
“the solar system's most massive planet has a density 28 times greater than TOI-791 c and 35 times greater than TOI-791 b.”
“the inner planet complete five orbits as the outer planet completes three orbits. This is known as a 5:3 mean‑motion resonance.”
“lasting 11 hours per planet”
“TOI-791 b and TOI-791 c were first identified as candidate planets in 2019 and 2023, respectively”
“The team's research was published on Thursday (June 25) in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.”
“Both planets, designated TOI-791 b and TOI-791 c, have densities lower than that of cotton candy, making them the lightest exoplanets ever seen.”
“The two planets orbit a dwarf star called TOI-791, which is located around 1,110 light-years from Earth.”
“Both planets are around the same size as Jupiter, but the solar system's most massive planet has a density 28 times greater than TOI-791 c and 35 times greater than TOI-791 b.”
“The super-puff siblings are also locked in a rare dance that sees the inner planet complete five orbits as the outer planet completes three orbits. This is known as a 5:3 mean-motion resonance.”
“These transits are some of the longest ever seen, lasting 11 hours per planet, and were integral to discovering the worlds.”
“TOI-791 b and TOI-791 c were first identified as candidate planets in 2019 and 2023, respectively, when the Planet Hunters citizen scientist group assessed data from NASA's exoplanet-hunting spacecraft TESS (Transiting Exoplanet Survey Sat…”
“Buy this Canon EOS R5 body from Amazon for $2599.”
“It captures images at up to 45 megapixels”
“100 to 51,200 (expanded 50 to 102,400) ISO range”
