NASA’s Spirit down, but has a good Opportunity
The NASA Mars rover Opportunity experienced an unexpected power surge this past month, with its solar cells producing more power than ground control had expected. This is a pleasant surprise for NASA, adding to the fact that the two rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, have been now working for more than six months after their design lifetimes. Opportunity’s solar cell output had fallen in June, probably due to Martian dust settling on the panels. The cells began to increase their output a month ago, possibly because wind blew the dust away (scientists aren’t sure). Spirit, however, is not in as good shape: with one of its front wheels has been malfunctioning.
-Zoe Cormier
Source: New Scientist
New life for old fungus
Indian researchers were able to grow fungus, estimated to be between 180,000 and 430,000 years old, from sediment cores drilled from a depth of 6,000 metres in the Indian Oceans. This new finding from the National Institute of Oceanography in Goa, India adds to the growing evidence for the remarkable survival capabilities of microorganisms. Some microbiologists were unsurprised, however, as previous scientists were able to grow ancient fungi recovered from ice. Researchers hope that studying the distributions and number of fungal organisms could provide information about past climatic conditions on Earth.
-Wendy Gu
Source: BBC
Monkey cloned, almost
Scientists have come very close to cloning a primate. Researchers created cloned monkey embryos and implanted them into the wombs of 25 monkey mothers. Although none of the pregnancies lasted more than a month, scientists are now one step closer to cloning primates (including humans). They used a method developed in Korea earlier this year for cloning human embryos. Biologists were able to clone human embryos for the first time by gently squeezing the DNA out of a grown-up human cell and implanting the DNA into a human egg cell (the embryos were destroyed after six days).
-Z.C.
Source: Nature
