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On Monday, Chinese company LandSpace executed a static-fire test with its 217-foot-tall Zhuque-3, a reusable rocket that China hopes will rival SpaceX. The rocket is on the way to its inaugural test flight expected at some point later this year.

Astronomers have found a new super-Earth only about 20 light years away. At that distance, it's a candidate for direct imaging.

Disease-causing bacteria that have been recently discovered in the teeth of Napoleonic soldiers may have spurred the massive infantry’s demise during its retreat from Russia

The Universe is a strange place. The X-Ray Imaging and Spectroscopy Mission (XRISM) orbiting observatory recently highlighted this fact, when it was turned on a pulsar to document its powerful cosmic winds. The discovery comes courtesy of ESA’s Resolve instrument, a soft X-ray spectrometer aboard XRISM. The study looked at neutron star GX 13+1. This is a strong X-ray source located in the constellation Sagittarius, very near the galactic plane towards the core of our galaxy. GX 13+1 is about 23,000 light-years distant.

Week in images: 20-24 October 2025

Discover our week through the lens

This is the third Salmonella-related egg recall of 2025. Here’s what to do if you have recalled eggs

Fibromyalgia, which causes chronic pain all over the body, is poorly understood, but two studies – made up of millions of participants – are helping us get to the roots of the condition

Fibromyalgia, which causes chronic pain all over the body, is poorly understood, but two studies – made up of millions of participants – are helping us get to the roots of the condition

After a quiet summer, bird flu cases are rising again. Scientists expected the development, but what happens next is still uncertain

Cliff-rappelling scientists uncovered a crossbow bolt, part of a slingshot and 25 shoes in ancient vulture nesting sites

A comet’s brightness depends on how it’s made, how and when we see it, and even a bit of unpredictable luck

Despite the widespread use of medication during pregnancy, a lack of clinical research leaves patients and doctors navigating treatment with dangerously few data.

Driving on the Moon for the first time has got to be an exhilarating experience. But driving the same path on the Moon for the 500th time probably won’t be nearly as exciting to whatever poor astronaut got stuck with that duty for the day. With that in mind, a team of researchers led by PhD student Alec Krawciw and Professor Tim Barfoot of the University of Toronto are working on a way to automate the mundane task of driving goods back and forth from a lunar landing site to a nascent lunar exploration base.

Are we alone? It’s probably one of the, if not the most basic questions of human existence. People have been trying to answer it for millennia in one form or another, but only recently have we gained the tools and knowledge to start tractably trying to estimate whether we are or not. Those efforts take the form of famous tools like the Fermi Paradox and the Drake Equation, but there’s always room for a more nuanced understanding. A new paper in Acta Astronautica from Antal Veres of the Hungarian University of Agriculture introduces a new one - The Solitude Zone.

The crescent Moon returns and waxes to first quarter. Two binocular comets are on the way out. And Arcturus is once again the Ghost of Summer Suns.

The post This Week's Sky at a Glance, October 24 –November 2 appeared first on Sky & Telescope.

A four-fingered robotic hand built from Lego Mindstorms pieces can push, pull and grip with almost as much force as a leading 3D-printed hand

A four-fingered robotic hand built from Lego Mindstorms pieces can push, pull and grip with almost as much force as a leading 3D-printed hand